Others: [ juliebug | solas | Pixie | Sonya | Alan Cox | raskal | SilverStr | Rynsey | Sillz ]
| 05/31/2001 -{ "It's where my heart is right now" }- |
On my way home tonight I was listening to Rhona, a radio advice talkshow person and a couple of memorable calls came in (abbreviated from some of the twisting that Rhona had to do to get all the information out):
| 05/27/2001 -{ Re-run season sucks. }- |
Thank $DEITY the internet isn't only the web. Least we not forget IRC, NNTP, gopher, archie (and friends), and other wonders such as smtp, uucp, pop3, and other mail protocols.
I know and love you all.
What the hell was that. Heart of a poet perhaps, or maybe it's U2 infecting my soul with love for all, but I doubt it.
Cruel.com had a good link to this page where a lady by the name of Baddgrrl (probably named that because the domain "badgrrl.com" was already taken (see above rant regarding corporate bastards). Anyway, she has (had) a phycho stalker, to whom she sweetly states (amongst other things) at the end of the page:
"If you try to contact me in person I swear, have absolutely no doubt in your mind that I will kick the living SHIT out of you."
This is someone I can respect! Baddgrrl, if you ever read this, right on!
Today... today... what happened today? Tried to learn a little bit of GTK programming, and would have read a little more of Xenocide if I could find that book somewhere. Read some Hacking Exposed instead. Oh yea, saw dinosaur last night up at Iambe's. it was pretty good, typical disney movie, with some awsome CGI. I was less impressed when I found out that all their backgrounds were not CGI, but rather the CGI creatures were stuck in front of real life filmed locations in places like austrailia, hawaii, and mexico. Oh well, I guess all dreams have to die sometime eh?
| 05/26/2001 -{ Baggy Pants Guy, Funny Hat Guy, and Collar Guy <- three funny people I saw today }- |
Friday was yet another (mostly) failed day of company activity. We have had people bitching for a long time now that the weather was too nice to play volleyball inside, and the day we decide to go and play Ultimate or Soccer only 7 people showed up! We played a little, but it really sucked with so few people :( At one point I was trying to do great moves! around Bear and ended up rolling over my ankle, which went pop. Not a good thing I figured, and continued playing. It's swollen a bit, and wrapped up, but I don't think I'll be up for hiking or climbing this awsome weekend :( Walking around shopping kinda sucked too. It feels almost ok, but not quite good enough to run the Sun Run just yet.
I decided to do a bit of shopping around, as I was planning on buying some CDs, and found some interesting things out. The CDs were ones that I had on tape, or should have, but haven't picked up yet. A few U2, some CCR, and some girl named Nelly F-something-or-other (she sings that "I'm like a Bird" song). Also the movie Dinosaur, which I've given up trying to download the DIVX rip with WinMX.
Hopefully this will help some of my fellow abbotsfordians in their buying decisions*.
| Purchase\Store | Chapters.ca | A&B Sound | Future Shop | HMV |
| U2 - All You Can't Leave Behind | $17.99 | $13.79 | $16.99 | $18.99 |
| CCR - Greatest Hits | $26.49 | $18.79 | n/a | n/a |
| U2 - Achtung Baby | $17.99 | $18.49 | n/a | $22.99 |
| U2 - The Jushua Tree | $18.99 | $15.99 | n/a | n/a |
| U2 - Zooropa | $17.99 | n/a | n/a | $23.99 |
| Nelly Fortado - Whoh Nelly | $16.95 | $13.79 | n/a | $17.99 |
| Enya - A Day Without Rain | $16.99 | $13.79 | $14.99 | (didn't look) |
| DVD - Disney's Dinosaur (Special Edition) | $34.99 | $43.99 | n/a | $37.99 |
Notice a couple of things. A&B is the best prices for 90% of the small amount I was getting. HMV kicked A&B for the one DVD price. Future Shop licked donkey balls across the board. Chapters isn't that much of a savings, especially when you consider you still have a $3-5 cost of shipping added on. In this case my comparision shopping (completely un-scientific) paid off, and I learnt a few things :)
This didn't stop me from completely forgetting to put Zooropa into the pile though :( Bah.
In addition to this shopping and food shopping, I also finally took my bike in for a tune up for the summer and picked up a pair of nice columbia hiking shoes, which will be used for walking/hiking, as using my Running (as in "made for running") shoes for day to day walking isn't the best thing for them.
| 05/24/2001 -{ "Life without two-ply isn't worth living!" }- |
Monday was a beautiful day spent up in squamish. I went with Lawrence, Cat5 and Cat5's 2nd cousin from Denmark, who wanted to see what this thing was all about. It was hot, sunny, and there were lots of people. We did some good climbing, the one that made it all worth it was when I did the starting move on a climb about 3 to the left of "Hot Cherry Bendover" on the bluffs. It was rated at 5.7 and was indeed a nice handcrack, but the opening move.... well, I think the ground was higher when it was first done. There was a semi nice flake just in reach of my fingers, and a nice jug a little higher if a 2 foot dyno (and sticking it) was possible. The problem was there was really nothing for your feet. I ended up finding a tiny little pocket to stick a toe in, then hauling hard up with both hands to the side, almost like a layback. After a couple of tries I got it. That made me happy. Heading up "The Zip" was sweet too, even though I didn't feel as good as I used to (as far as grace, etc). Made it up though, and have the signature scrapes just below my left forefinger from the awsome finger jam just above the crux. You know, the one where it's perfectly angled so that your finger slides in and gets caught (allowing you to pull up to the next hold of course). Mmm... mmmm.... good!
I also worked on the bug from work on saturday, sunday, and monday nights. Hell, I probably spent more time coding on the weekend than I did last week at work! (ok, maybe not quite, but you know what I mean). When I finally dragged the boss away from his meetings and stuff to see if he could throw any ideas at it we finally figured it out. system() (and popen(), exec*(), etc) block SIGCHLD. My sigchld handler was set up at the start of the program, and for whatever reason it didn't affect one case, but did the other. End result? Many hours of coding, and the solution was to move one line down about 20 lines. Bah humbug.
Had a dream last night, or was it the night before? Night before I think. Illiad was getting married and I had to get a new shirt (as none of the ones I have/had fit me around the neck. So I went to a place that looked like a pet store, with two olympic sized pools in the back (separated by a walkway) to get one. The guy who was there almost strangled me when measuring my neck with a tape measure. I came back to pick it up and got splashed by water, and then a little later a matress flying from one pool to the other knocked me into the water. I was getting late for the wedding (the amazingness and non-realism of Illiad actually getting married aside) and I just sort of ignored the fact that the shirt (and me for that matter) was wet. At the end of the dream I was talking to someone and when I said goodbye I jumped into the water of the pool (being cool and all that), doing a little flip and such. I couldn't get righted properly and get back to the surface though. I wasn't struggling or anything, it was just I guess that I didn't want to struggle (and look uncool) so I just sort of spireled down towards the bottom of the pool. That's about when I woke up.
Neat horoscope for me today over at the Onion. Check out the Scorpio one.
| 05/15/2001 -{ Ground Control to Major Tom.... }- |
Q: How can you tell the difference between when your body is in a state of perfect relaxation and death?
A: You can't.
Long day. 99% of it in meetings. Productive meetings, don't get me wrong. And meetings in The Nest, so we were sitting on couches for the whole day, but a day of meetings nonetheless. Who the hell is the idiot who thinks up these things? Oh yea, it was me. Created a lot of work for people too, but none of them me. Oh well, I've still got work to do, don't get me wrong (especially if the boss reads this).
I hate Fox. I hate the producers and writers of Dark Angel! How dare they, how fscking dare they get Max and Logan togeather.... almost. They kissed, with real passion and all that, and were just about to get busy with it (bom, chicka, bawh-whaw!) when her buddy that escaped interuppted them, and then she gets captured (or at sitting on the ground surrounded by bad Manacore-dudes waiting to be captured). Damn Those Bastards! I know you have to continue the series and having it end all happy dries up money for you (cause you have so little), but can't for once we just have a happy ending? This reminds me of the old Dawson's Creek days.
Speaking of DC, the last one I happened to see (a couple of fridays ago) they were all heading to the prom with their respective dates and everyone was kinda sorta happy. By the end of the show Dawson's older chick had broken up with him, Pacey had broken up with Joey (he had some sort of issues) and only the gay guy (forget his name) had found any sort of happiness as his relationship had gone from a friendship not knowing what he wanted to an internal (and external) admittance that he wanted this guy for more than a friend. I think Pacey's issues had to do with Joey still wanting Dawson, or Dawson Still wanting Pacey, or something like that. Translation: I didn't watch the show for a year or more and it's still pretty much exactly as I left it.
| 05/13/2001 -{ Who Have We Sold our Humanity To? }- |
Quick Sunday night TV wrapup. Simpsons was unusual as normal tonight. Malcom in the Middle was amusing as always. On the X-Files it looks like Scully's baby will be Superman, and Krychek (sp?) is back helping her, Mulder and Dogget. This episode wasn't all that terrible.... it's a 1/2 so we'll see how the finale next week is. Wonder if it's a series finale or a season finale. Last weeks was far cooler I think, the one about the lizard man... they kinda got back to their roots. The Practice was decent too, a season finale, with all the various people now doubting that they are doing good getting murders off and so on. It was nice to see the character who shot the short funny looking guy getting 2 10 years sentaces.... and then getting an extra 75 years tacked on to both of those sentances.
While watching TV I saw a commercial... well, an advertisement... hmmm... what do you call something that's not an ad and not a TV show that's on TV? Anyway, it was just a little thing for Mothers Day, spelling out the letters in M O T H E R and printing out a little rhyme for each letter. Anyway, as the ad approached it's end I found myself thinking, "who is this brought to us by?" It was curtesy of Global TV of course, but that's not the point.
Have we as a society gotten so entraced in the idea that everything has to be brought to us by someone, or something, needing to get their name in front of our faces to show us what nice people we are so that we'll buy more of their crap? What happened to the idea that one person can do something nice for another, without wanting anything back or asking anything from them? At my University College we got a nice new library and computer lab. First Heritage donated the cash mooooney for it. Know how I know this? Because their name was plastered on both sides of the lab and if I recall correctly, in other places throughout the building. Did they donate the money to us out of the kindness of their hearts? I don't think so.... they donated the money to us because the RTI (Return On Investment) was probably thought to be high enough that it was worth it to them as a company.
I've got a lot of spare hardware sitting around my apartment, computer bits, parts, motherboards, chips, cases, powersupplys, whatever. It comes from being a computer geek, that's what happens. I don't have as much as I did a while back though. Know why? Because people say they are looking for something and I say "I've got one, do you want it?" I (generally) try to give stuff away with no request for any payback, exchange, whatever. If they offer, hey, I won't say no (some of ufies.org is running on hardware that I got from my buddy raskal because of this.
But I try, without saying anything and by trying to promote giving, to show that you can get something for nothing, and when you do that it is not attached to a "brought to you by" or a "from your friends at" message. I don't claim to be good at this, nor any sort of an example to try to follow (I've made more than one mistake in my past). I'd just like to see more Mothers Day commercials that simply say "Happy Mothers Day" period. full stop. end of sentance. fade away...
| 05/04/2001 -{ After Not Watching Dawson's Creek in a Year, it's Still the Same Thing. }- |
| 05/02/2001 -{ Now I Know What it Feels Like to be Regurgitated }- |
Sprint: Hi there this is [someone] calling from sprint
canada, and how are you today?
Arc: Just fine thankyou.
S: I'm calling today to see if maybe we can help you lower
your phone bill.
A: Ok, sure.
S: When do you do most of your long distance calling Mr. Arcterex?
A: Not really... most of the numbers I call are porn lines,
you know, the 1-900 numbers?
S: I'm sorry, the which lines?
A: Porn lines, you know, the phone sex numbers.
S: Oh, I see. Do you do any other long distance?
A: Not really. Do you have a plan that will cover the sex
lines?
S: Well I don't know, I'll see if we have anything that will
cover those numbers.
A: If you could that'd be great, it's costing me five or six
hundred dollars a month now.
S: Please hold sir and I'll find out for you.
<hold
music>
S: I'm sorry sir, those numbers generally come from the
states and are at a fixed rate, so you're stuck with the $1.99 or $2.99 a
call, or minute.
A: Oh gee, that's too bad.
S: I'm sorry sir. If your calling habits change in the next while
please let us know and we'll be able to help you out.
A: [ in a super cheerful voice ] Well, if my sex-change operation comes through in the next
while they certainly will!
S: That's ni... ... ...ce sir [ muffled laugh ] have a nice
day.
A: Good bye.
And they say politeness never got you anywhere.
8:15am
Home again today. Felt like crap all day yesturday at work. I thought I was
feeling better, and I probably was in the morning, but as the day progressed I
sneezed more, was more congested, and had more and more of a desire to die.
Watched The Mummy last night up
at Iambe's with my box of Kleenex(tm)(c)(r) held close. I hope I didn't
sneeze on Fozbaca too much.
If I had felt better this morning I would have done the work thing, but the following schedule convinced me that staying home was a good idea:
It's really sad when my only joy in life (currently) is the one or two minutes of relatively clear breathing I get in between sitting/lying/standing. Guess mucas is as susseptable to gravity as everything else.
This sentance was typed standing up.
And this one sitting down.
Mmm..... tea.....
| 05/01/2001 -{ I sbill hab a code }- |
There is a very article (PDF) about using LISP as a competative advantage.
About a third of the way through Speaker for the Dead. Awsome book!
Had another weird dream last night. I don't remember it all of course, but I know I was downloading books off the internet, but they were physical books, not something you download to the computer. I was also living/sleeping in my parents spare bathroom, and in the next room there was some guy who came into my "room" and just dumped a bunch of stuff. The rest of the night/dream I spent screaming at him "Why the hell did you do that!?" I think I ended up cleaning it up and throwing it all over the floor of his room, but I can't be certain.
I finally have a line on getting my second monitor fixed. Seems that the weenie up the road (who said it'd be about $40 and real fast) who has kept it since December can't get the part he needs. Gee, thanks for telling me this buddy, or returning my calls. Ass. Anyway, I finally called around some dealerships, and after a few calls I found a dealership in Richmond. Now all I have to do is get proof of purchase (<crossed fingers>) and get the thing down to richmond. A week later (in theory) all is well. Again, fingers crossed.
Also finally got my taxes done. Mucho thanks to our financial lady here at work who did them for me (not sure what to get her in return, she did it free, but maybe a gift cert or something?) and got me mucho $$ back. Course, that's enough to pay back my parents for the money I borrowed from them to get the RRSPs that got me the big $$ back.
Ever think that all this planning for the future might be for naught? I mean, people spend countless hours and money investing, putting money away, and doing their best to secure their income in the future, or at least, making sure that they don't have to work at a McDonalds when they're 85 to be able to pay for their adult diapers. What if the stock market completely crashes? What if money becomes useless (ie: the Star Trek universe(tm) where there is no money, poverty, or want)? What if there is a Dark Angel type senario where something goes "bing" and suddenly all the electricity dissapears? Someone tried that in a movie, GoldenEye IIRC, wiping out a countries economy by using an EMP to erase all their computers, stock records, etc. Suddenly what everyone worries about (or should worry about) at least once a year becomes pointless.
Makes me wonder if the people who don't have RRSPs and so forth are the fools I thought them to be or not :)