Lots of work tomorrow.... get to implement the new proxy/caching system and test some of the web-perm stuff I did today (if the fscking win98 box in the office would actually see the samba share! awk! kill! kill! kill!). We're getting closer to moving into the office too, the bosses are out tomorrow doing the wiring and stuff. The question now is to decide what posters I get to put up in my room. The Java class poster that was replaced by the whiteboard in my bedroom seems obvious... the 6ft Yosemite one was vetoed though, something about "professionalism" and "high tech look" or something. Oh well... I'll have to go through my stack of old comdex posters to see what I have. I guess my print outs of rock climbing pix aren't going to do either huh? Oh well...

Now I'm really going to bed! Yahohooooooo!

09/29/99

I think I may make it to bed tonight before midnight. What a strange concept. Course, all the times I've done this lately I just lie awake in bed and say to myself "wow, I'm going to get soooo much sleep tonight" till I fall asleep 3 hours later.

Got an email from a guy today who had a dream about me. No, not that kind of dream you perverts, but it was bizzare. Let me quote a bit.

I had a weird dream last night and you were in it. Well, by name only.

Here's how it went: A friend of mine told me he was cutting peoples hair in the style of old rock musicians. He asked if he should cut mine like <some name I can't remember> or maybe -- here it is! -- Arcterex. I said no, 'cause I didn't know what he looked like anyway. I only knew his songs.

Then there was a part with some scotsmen playing Waldhorns (those big horns you have in Austria) with bagpipes stuck on the end. This is not a joke. I realy dreamt it. (so it must be true)

Isn't that weird?

I wonder what it means.

So screw the cleaning, I can do that later. I was doing installs all day, had a workout tonight, even did my crunches (inspired by T, who does 125 a night (I'm at like... 50 or so)), and updated ufies with all sorts of new and (maybe) interesting stuff. So I'll let myself relax a bit by sleeping tonight.

The installs today were actually really nice and easy for a change. There were problems of course, but as usual they were client related. The first was a T1 install, and except for plugging in the eth0 and eth1 in the wrong way, no problems happened getting things going as far as net connection or communication between the lan and the server. Getting the stupid DHCP server to give out the right gateway and dns info was. I don't know the NT dhcp server stuff, hell, I only really dealt with dhcp in linux! The only real "D'oh" moment was when I was trying to surf and had forgotten to unlock myself.

oops

For those who don't know our server, head to the site and learn all about it! (blatent plug)

The second install (putting a co-location box in an ISP) went so smooth it was magic. Plug. Plug. Ping. Working! I'm still waiting for lightning to strike...

Lots of work to do tomorrow, so a semi-early night (maybe I should rant less to decrease the time I spend in between saying that I'm just going to do a couple of updates and finishing them. Did that make sense? Hell, I donno, I don't read what I write. My fingers are stopping working now so I think that's a sign.

09/28/99

For various reasons today sucked.

I started the Great Room Clean though. Amazing the crap you find... old receipts for $2.50 from a year ago, old planners from school, old notes from classes you took a year ago. Wow. The planner was an eye opener. From my last two semesters of school. In it was everything I did, didn't do, noted down, stuffed in it, who I interacted with, whose phone numbers I had, what classes, schedules etc that happened. Basically my life for that year of school was in that planner, quite an eye opener. Found some extra pens in my old school bag, but they were far less philisophical.

This is an "no holds barred" cleaning though. Nothing is spared. Old boxers that were still good except that the waist was all ripped up? Gone. My prized corel balloon? Gone. Socks with holes in them I was going to use when I was shot in the foot? Gone. I'm a brutal guy.

09/27/99

11:17pm
A decent night with a few strange occurences. Went out to dinner with Iambe and then wandered down to the river to relax and stargaze. Somehow I ended up half naked with my new shirt on the ground in front of me explaining the obnosficated perl to her (the code is really not as much deep magic as some of the other japh stuff. Then I got beat on for using words that don't exist (like "obnosficated"), but was relieved that "hypothesi" (the plural of hypothesis) did exist (no matter what ispell says).

Came back home to watch my one soap opera show (<hanging head in shame>), Dawson's Creek. Ah, the trials and tribulations of those we live vicariously through.

To catch you up to the end of last season (I think). Dawson and Joey got togeather, finally after like, years of secretly loving each other but being friends, then they broke up because Joey decided that she needed space and to "find herself" and so on. Sometime after that they got back togeather. But then Dawson saw her dad smuggling dope again (he had just gotten out of jail and her family was whole again and everything was rainbows and cotton candy for her) and had to tell her... and then he and the cops used her to tape her dad admitting to it and then being taken away. Imagine being the one to get the evidence to put your own father away, especially after he is out and everything is fine and dandy again! After that she couldn't forgive Dawson for what he'd done and broke up with him again with a "I never want to speak to you again." I was crushed.

I suppose the lives of those on TV can't be happy and normal because then what interest would we have? There always has to be some sort of turmoil going on to keep us wondering what will happen next episode. This gives me hope that Real Life isn't like that on TV.

Are we a product of genetics, upbringing, or a mix of both? Convo sparked this. Genetics and upbringing are almost the same, in a family where the child and parents are togeather for the majority of the childs life anyway. I sometimes say I'm stubborn because of my german side (not sure if this is an accurate stereotype or not, maybe the german's aren't stubborn and it's the english? hell, who knows). But it would be more likely that I am stubborn because I grew up in close proximity to a german parent.

But if this were true, people who grew up in abusive or other "bad" environments would all be destined to turn out "bad" themselves, which doesn't always happen (though I'm sure there are all sorts of statistics about this I could find but won't bother to and instead will simply make assumptions). So what of it? Are you destined to be the same as your mother/father/growing up environment/ethenticity? (is that another new word or just a bad spelling?) I don't think so. I know too many people who have been through hell and back and had bad hard times or wacked out growing up conditions who are not like that. They are scared that they are going to turn out like their screwed up family, but I don't think that this will happen. It depends on the person mind you, but these people are strong and have their heads on straight, and who have the ability to change.

Maybe what I'm saying is that your parents and/or growing up environment do have an effect on you. However, the effect it has on you maybe to show you what to do, or what not to do. And I think, with the people that I know anyway, that they have the strength of character, learned or inbred, to become the person that they want to be.

Ok enough waxing philosophical for now.. head over to Raskal's journal and laugh your ass off at today's entries.

09/26/99

11:50pm
Oops! Almost forgot. Roomie* aren't moving, so it's up to me to get outta here sometime. They aren't kicking me out or anything, and I can stay as long as I can stand the baby... till they need this room. So I figure sometime midmonth-oct I'll have to start looking for a place.

11:32pm
Wow, an update before 3am for once. Wee.... not that there is much to talk about. Cleaned the inside of my car to go along with the outside cleaning I did yesturday (and no you are not correct those who think the only time a guy cleans his car and armourall's it and does the whole ball of wax (hehehe, wax, get it?) is when he has a hot date... I figured that if it was all fixed up on the inside, why not make it look good on the outside too?). Course, this means it's going to rain tomorrow. Worked out, watched The Professional (again) and did supper.

Note: Next time you say to yourself "Alan, you're running low on Spaghetti, you'd better get some more", do. Cause it really sucks to have everything ready, pots boiling and sauce bubbling to find that you're down to about 10 strands of spaghetti. Needless to say a quick run into town was made.

Oh, almost forgot. Thanks to T and B for keeping me company a few days ago on a slow day at work, you guys are the greatest. Raskal is also commended for keeping me amused with his tales of Sysadmin Folly.

So what does the week hold for me? Well, maybe climbing on Thursday with S and her BF, maybe hitting the badminton thingy on Wed, and a week of work work work. I might even try to get to bed at a decent hour this week.

3:23am
Argh, another late night.

Ever say to yourself "no, I wasn't that stupid, it can't be that"? Well, the answer is yes Alan, you did put the CD in backwards, which of course explains why only 1 of the 6 in my car cd changer wasn't playing.

D'oh!

Also, when you go to the store to buy floss, and look upon the great wall o' floss, and you take one, they are not all equal. For example, not all the floss is floss. Some of them are "Gentle Dental Yarn". Freaked me out, open up the package and get what looks like something I pull off the bottom of a shirt or sock or something. Sucks to floss with too... it's going in my travel bag to be there in case I forget to put the real stuff in (when I get it tomorrow).

Took mom and dad out to dinner at a new place in Maple Ridge called the Frogstone Grill. Funny name, but good food. The quesadia I had was huge. Good too. They even made the guac right in front of me, which was kinda bizzarre at the same time as being cool. Twas a good dinner anyway.

09/25/99

3:17am
Wow, what a night. Finally got togeather with a dear friend of mine (*wave* to Llau) and went (gasp) to a club! For the first time in ages I went to City Limits to dance the night away. I spent the earlier eve at work with da Man watching A Thin Red Line... my conclusion: it sucked. Not what I expected (something similar to Saving Private Ryan) but instead a slow, slow movie with undeveloping characters and a wanked out plot line. It said it was nominated for awards, but did it get any? Well, probably, but that's not the point.

Anyway, went dancing and I had a great time. My brain still was half in fun mode and half in geek mode. Questions in the geek part of the brain not letting go and just having fun included ones such as "who is that old lady really with?", "is the girl in the red dress wearing underwear?" (no idea), "how does she get into those pants??" (I think there was a zipper on the butt), "why is that guy wearing a kilt?", "does it surprise me that the girl with the dyed orange hair is with the guy with the dyed blue and red hair?", "ooohhhh! <drool>" and other similar questions and thoughts.

You'll pardon me for incoherancy as I'm quite tired right now.

So how lucky did Alan get, this manly man of a different woman every night? Well, I came home, said "ciao" to my friend, and came in to update my journal, what does that tell you :P

Anyway, it's almost 4:30, and I'm getting the hell to bed.

09/23/99

9:45am
Roller coaster goes up. Roller coaster goes down. Roller coaster goes up. Roller coaster goes down.

Why do I have a feeling that today is not going to be a good day? At least the cop didn't see me this morning as I road tested the tune up my car got yesturday.

Missed going to the badminton club in Abby yesturday too, due to hanging out with friends and renting The Matrix (again). It sucks, they have charges! $70/year or $5 drop in. Bleah. I suppose I'll go next week and check it out anyway. Hmmm... I'm giving a couple hours of perl training (paid even) tonight too. That outta be interesting.

8:16am
Oh yea, I finally got something done on ufies... the start of setting up quotas (insert maniac-like sysadmin laughing here). Now I just have to see who gets what :) 2 meg should be enough right?

12:05am
Urgh, another long long day. Work was fine... I headed to one of our clients and screwed around in their mac lab for a while (man I hate the iMac puck mice) and tried to get our java going properly. Seems that their version on netscape used 1.1.5 and our applet needed 1.1.7. Ok fine, try ie for mac... and now it loads. It doesn't talk to the server program like it should, but it runs. D'oh! Blame it on the guy who did the java I guess, cause I have no clue what is up with it. Then I (again) explained how to drag a link from netscape's toolbar to the windows desktop (I have no idea why a) it was such an exciting thing and a big deal and b) why it is so hard for him to get it. Even the mac guy muttered something about "if you have to <puts head in hands> teach him how to add accounts...." :) Glad I'm not the only one frustrated.

Got my car back today.... urk, lots of money again. Lots. I guess it's better to get this done now before I'm paying 2x the rent I am now (assuming that roomie* move out). Well, that and I can stop and the car has things like oil, brake fluid, and so on, which I've heard (and I'm not a mechanical type person) help in your driving.

I didn't get the foglamps replaced though. $140+ is not what I'm looking to pay, even if it reduces the work I have to do in going to the wrecker, ripping the things off another car, and putting them on myself. That and the ones he got in were ugly, one being almost the same as what I had but a gross yellow/orange color, and the other being best described as two small eggs. They had the funky blue lights that are supposed to be better in the fog though, but oh well. Now I just have to get the ol' girl cleaned, waxed, fix some trim coming off on the rear tirewell, fix some spots where the paint has chipped, maybe find a gascap that actually matches the dull grey of the car, and boom, all done forever.

Hey! I can tick something off my list! (from the "Life todo" section).

Hmmm... looking at the list I have "skydive" listed. I suppose that's why it's a life todo list, as it's stuff to get to eventually :)

So in the midst of my moneyless state, I picked up a couple of things for myself today. The first was "TigerLily" by Natalie Merchant (listening to it now, awsome cd!) and the second was this picture. It was really a choice between it and The Accolade, but the second was $70 and in an (IMHO) ugly frame, while this one was in a non-frame and < $30. I'll get the other (and similar ones) eventually, but for now this one is the start to my art collection. I figure when (if) roomie* move out or I move out I will need something other than a Java Class poster to decorate the walls.

Sadly though, I have no place to put it right now, so it sits behind my door, still in it's plastic wrap. Soon sweet picture, you will be free.

Oh, and Webforia sent me a full copy of their software for doing some beta testing for them... also (and even cooler IMHO) was the awsome nice pen sent along as well. They said something about a contest for a Palm Pilot, but I guess I didn't win that contest. Anyway, now if I ever need to write something down, and remember your pen, I'll be writing in style! Thanks guys!

09/21/99

11:30pm
Well, the install was... ok. We had the server in and ready to go in under an hour, however, client setup and a few weird dhcp glitches meant we left there around 3. Back in Abby for 4ish to get food (breakfast lunch and dinner, all in one!) and (because the guy at the sushi place was the slow one) barely made it back to collect the curtesy car from the place that got my brakes done. Ouch, more $ out the door. But now I can drive knowing that I can stop if I have to. The tuneup being done tomorrow will do me well too. Then it's back to saving for trips and so on again. Well, that first and then the list of "stuff I want to buy when I have money to spare" that is on the whiteboard.

Rex's eye keeps alternating from ok to not so ok, so I might take him in next weekend. There's this lovely yellow puss stuff that sometimes is there, but his eye is open... Oops, sorry, were you eating? :)

ARGH! in screwing around with netscape somehow I lost the ability to hit space for pagedown :( Same as at work (where I thought "this sucks but at least it works at home"). Bleah.

I think I'm gonna work late tonight, despite the fact I could have gone to bed at 10 or so (and should have) but Wim from work wrote up a way cool (well, we'll see if it works before we make that determination) howto on mod_perl, which I was in the midst of following when I discovered I couldn't leisurely hit <SPACE> to read the next page.

9am
I suppose the most disturbing thing about the start of today was waking up with "Suzi-Q" going through my head. That and the one word of arabic I learnt while in Tunisia around 1989 on a trip there with my parents: "barkaloufe" (spelled wrong I'm sure). Weird.

On the bright side I took my car in today to get it's brakes done. Tomorrow I'll get a curtesy car and get the rest of it all fixed up and ready to go.

09/20/99

Phew, finally back home. After a full day and night last night last night we were wasted. I'll recap for you though (but read all about it in today's column). We (Iambe, Martyn (rouge from cobalt) headed out Saturday morning to surprise Squiz (arranged by Sillz) on his birthday. The trip down was kinda sucky in the morning, as it was cold and foggy and pretty gross. We were however riding in a brand new red Firebird Convertable... which, while a cool ass car, was not the most comfy to ride in the back in. After a quick stop in Bellingham for some food the sun got out and we had awsome weather for the rest of the ride. My head and face got a bit sunburnt, and nose especially, as I was wearing my awsome new sunglasses (thanks for 'em Cat5).

Anyway, when we got to where we were going I was delighted to see the absolute surprise on Squiz's face. Iambe put it best in her saying that he "dumped core". I'm glad we were able to do that for him, travel from so far (well, less than 2 hours drive in actuality) to surprise the shit out of him. Something I'll have to do more often.

We did a trip to the microsoft campus (I was bad I know) and checked it out, making jokes about them the entire time. Didn't get inside the buildings though :( After amusing ourselves most of the day we went for surprise number 2, going out to a little random pub.... with a bunch of Squiz's friends from work there! Again, another core dump. Some hanging out there, a trip to a 24 hour italian food place, back to the pub for a Guiness and then the 5 of us, weary as hell, headed back to the squizpad to (you guessed it) do a final surf, pop of mail, and then finally sleep. Martyn flaked out immediately on the futon, and Iambe and I discussed TCP/IP programming and the OSI's 7 layers (who told me that the user was the last layer? It's application dammit!) till we both ended up passing out from lack of sleep. I woke up with the sun (I think) and almost read a bit, but put the book back down and found myself waking up at 11 or so with everyone else. Squiz entering the bright living room where the visitors were was quite funny... "too bloody light" was what he said I think.

Today (well, yesturday technically) was done doing Seattle. The space needle, some science center place (climbing wall! yay!) and a hill with a good view on it. A long drive, sushi, another long drive, and I'm home.

That was my weekend.

I did come back to 3 things, a good, a neutral, and a bad. The good was a contact from someone I thought had dropped off the ends of the earth, good to hear from again. The neutral was interesting. Roomie* had been thinking of getting a house (they are going in on tuesday to see about loans and such) as you may or may not have known. I am kinda looking forward to this as I can have the whole place to myself, turn the big bedroom (theirs) into a computer room/hobby room/fun room where I can take people without having to worry about my overflowing laundry basket. More room to have multiple computers out and around as well. The living room would be sparse but mine, a couple chairs, stereo, my 9" tv and me, hanging out and listening to tunes and reading and stuff. And my room would be for sleeping and would have space in it again. Maybe I'd get to see the other side of my closet again? Anyway, so they were thinking of getting a house and moving, and as I'm feeding my cats upon arrival roomiewife hits me with "how would you like to own a condo?" Now, this is just something that roomiemom had mentioned, they don't know costs or whatever, but with the leaky window (which is going to cost $8,900) and the baby and everything they are just tired of it or something and are (maybe) offering it to me. Nothing is known about what it would cost (there is still $75,000+ owing at $280/2weeks) or anything, or if I actually want it (the comment I made when I found out about the leaky windows was "man I'm glad I don't own this place"). I mean, for all I know in 2 years I'll be living in Utah or California or something. Not that I'm that dynamic a person, but it could happen, anything is possible. I don't know if I'm ready for that big a commitment yet either, I mean, me, owning a house? I just can't see it. Now on the other hand, I'd much rather my $xxx/month were going into equity of some sort instead of just disapearing into the void. So we'll see. The final bad thing was a full litterbox. Eeek. That was rectified quite quickly.

BTW, when you read the iambe column, remember who actually typed it, and remember how hard it is to take dictation and type in the crammed backseat of a convertable firebird in the middle of the night :)

09/18/99

Welp, another weekend of not relaxing and doing nothing or not relaxing and getting stuff done, but oh well.

First of all I picked up my white board today. It has replaced my Java 1.1 class hierarchy poster behind the door (stupid door is too solid to bash the little nails into :( ). It's even being used! I have my UFies Todo, Life Todo, and Projects lists all written down there. So now I have no need to keep everything that I need to do and all the stuff I want to do in my falliable brain, instead it sits on the wall! Now if I pay more attention to it there is another question :)

I'm heading out early tomorrow morning to go down to Seattle for visiting a friend of mine, the devel lead on the Time City project (and our neighbors at LWE). (We're also going down for a secret surprise thing, but I can't say more right here). It'll be nice to get away, even if it means getting up in ... gah... 6 hours. So much for sleeping in eh? And packing? What is that again? Sure it's only for a night, but I still have to grab sleeping bag etc. Oh well, twill all be done in good enough time I guess.

There seems like there is something else I was going to rant about, but I think that sleep is more important (as always) now.

09/17/99

So much for my brilliant plan of going to bed at a decent hour. After the upgrade of the server I went out for a coffee with a friend and chatted till late at night (apparently I am an easy-to-talk-to-person or something). A long drive home and now I finally get around to email and updating and stuff. But on the bright side, tomorrow night is Friday (whoho!). Course my idea of a rockin' Friday night is getting a chance to veg out on the couch for a few hours, or spend some quality time with a book. Now whether or not I'll get a chance to do that tomorrow night is another question....

When I got in tonight I (for once) didn't go to the computer first and check email/icq... instead I went to the bathroom to take a piss, as sipping on iced teas for 3 hours in Boston Pizza is hard on the bladder. Too much information maybe? I thought so. I eat well today, so tomorrow night will be started off with a run, to make up for having both lunch and dinner (and tomorrow's lunch will probably be home brought, as I bought both lunch and dinner today).

Didn't I say I was going to bed? Yes, I belive I did. I need a white board though. My desk is far too messy, and I think a white board hanging the back of my door would be good, somthing to write down todo lists, projects, ideas, designs and stuff. Having it right there (and not written on a piece of paper buried in my piles of other paper) in front of my face would maybe get me more motivated to do the cool stuff I want to do. That and having your own white board would be neat :) Maybe I'll look at lunch tomorrow at staples or whatever.

Ok, now I'm really going.

09/16/99

8:27
Fortune cookie fortune last night:

Not sure if I believe it though. Unless it means I won't have to do any more installs perhaps?

Argh... go work now.

09/15/99

Something simple today. Well, this early morning anyway. An icq sent my way gave forth inspiration. Check out this page for the works (though it's not the nicest page) of Alfred Lord Tennyson, my favorite poet. Here's a sampling of (coincidently) my favorite poem by him...

"The Eagle"

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

09/14/99

12:27am
Well, apparenly I'm blind. When I did an install today to upgrade one of our clients to ISDN I missed the blindingly obvious (apparently). I looked under the desk where the server was and saw the "tel", "mod1", and "mod2" jacks. In my search for the ISDN jack I apparently missed the jack labeld "ISDN". Duh. So thanks to that I get to go back tomorrow morning, bright and early (I resisted agreeing to meet the guy there at 7:30, and figured an 8:30-9 meeting would "better suit my schedule" (ie: I need more than 2 hours sleep)). Anyway, I think it's just a different dial up number for ISDN customers (hmmm... maybe not, stupid lame ass website).

I did get around to reconfigging my work environment though. Still no mod_perl, but I do have a little button that gives me a root prompt now... I tested and got ready the SCSI drives that raskal kindly donated to me. Just installed the module and boom. 4 more gigs. Course it's going to the ufies.org server as a /home and a /var/ftp, but that's beside the point. The controller is supported just dandily under the 2.0.x kernels so that should be no problem. And Fred's 64 mb of memory should help keep things at bay for a bit too. I'll be taking the server down for a bit on thursday (Tom has graciously agreed to stay a little longer at work so I can come in after my work to do the upgrade).

Oh, and since poor Iambe was called upon to work late late late (still there I think) by Da Man I was called upon to write a column. Head over here to check it out. Or the archives if it's after tomorrow (well, technically today).

09/13/99

Afternoon...
Well I can't vouch for his choice of imiitation, but my buddy raskal has a journal page up that looks remarkably similar to this (note it's addition to the header). His page seems to be more full of things like NT slamming and network and user stuff, not the boring angst that I slam out here. Course this way I get to keep an eye on him as well... <g>

This site is (still) heading for a redesign sometime soon. I've decided to keep the same format, all togeather and not split off by day, but the look of it will be changed (RSN, honest).

Ok, besides work this weekend Alan, what did you do? Hmm... good question. Went for a work out, a ride, and vegged a lot. I suppose the sole productive thing that was done this weekend were two new wallpapers featuring Trinity, from The Matrix. I stuck them up at my wallpaper site.

I'll get the other stuff that I've been meaning to do done soon, honest. This includes upgrading the ufies.org box with new hard drives (thanks Rob!) and memory (thanks Fred!).

Well, there's a lot more to be done but first there's that sleep thing to do...

09/11/99

Well the weekend is upon us.

It is?

I got home from work tonight at 1:30 (that would be now). Well, ok, so I was only at work till 11:30, and stopped by a friend's on the way home but that's not the point! In a funny and probably quite sick way I had a good time tonight. Just sitting and coding cool stuff, munching on some pizza (going for a run tomorrow morning to make up for that health discretion) and chatting with friends. Course, tomorrow I'll be doing the same thing, having offered to work on a Saturday (we have a big project due on Monday that has to get done).

But there's lots of other things to do. I got home and found my credit card bill and my cell phone bill (neither of which I opened, not having the strength at this time to handle it), 2 bags of garbage smelling up the place (I'll be taking those out tomorrow on the way to my run), cats with no cat food (to be got after the run), and a room that hasn't been cleaned or used as anything other than a place to sleep and type for the last week or so. I don't think the vacuum cleaner is working either (I could be wrong) but this place is in need of it (and why does roomie* not do that instead of sitting on their asses in front of mindless game-shows during the day/eve/weekends???).

But I digress.

I hope that the others out there, that would be my faithful readers, are getting out and relaxing, partying it up if you need to unwind, sleeping if you are tired, getting better if you are ill, or not working if you've been working too hard. I won't be, but hey, I slave for you :)

Head to ufies.org too, I'll be sticking some cool links and stuffs up there tonight after I hit save here (well, C-x C-s actually, but whose counting?).

Well I hear cats fighting so that must be my queue....

09/10/99

"It's 5 am and the late late show is over..."

Ok, so it's only 2am, but still. Got out of the LUG meeting (and after-meeting... ie: nachos over at the pub with the boys) late and by the time I got home, did my laundry, and got around to updating, finishing up etc it was already late enough I had no chance of getting the 8 hours of sleep that I was hoping for, and will have to deal with the 5 or so I'll get between now and getting up in the morning to do training.

I did an install for work this afternoon evening, and it sucked. Normally these things are semi ok, but this time a combination of ethernet cards coming up in the wrong order, cables, bad faxes and putting IP addresses wrong the "quick" install turned into a 3 hour ordeal. And the person there was all bitchy-like and had to leave at 5 or something (she was there till 6 cause she couldn't leave with me in there (ha!)). When we finally got it working I didn't have time to set things up on a client machine and do training so guess who gets to wander into Surrey first thing tomorrow. Been a while since I've had rush-hour to deal with though, so I guess it'll be a matter of re-education or something. Getting home was nice after that though, mad people in rush hour trying to kill me aside.

09/08/99

Again, a long, long day, and it's only 5pm so it's far from over. My morning started not too long after my night last night ended, with the alarm across the room exploding at me. Following this was a lovely 3 hour trip to the dentist. Yeap, from 8 to almost 11 I was scraped, frozen, prodded, vacuumed, ground and a host of other things I'd like to forget. My jaw is still sore from being open for so long, and especially with some strange man's hands in it, pushing and prodding my teeth. I had 4 (I think) fillings replaced and some final cleaning work done. All told... $500+. I'm glad I waited till I was back at full pay to go... eek!

I will say somethings for the modern dentist's office though... they have some cool stuff. In this case, TVs mounted in the ceiling. Kinda nice to listen to CMT (or giggle to myself at yet another show where Sally Jesse Rafiel sends bad teens to jail to teach them a lesson) while I'm having bits of me ground out. The check up and cleaning procedure is different too. Voice activated dental programs and stuff so that while they are doing things they just say "cavity, molar 23c" and it shows up in your record. Course, this means they have the notes about bugging me to get my bottom wisdom teeth out in there too (great.... just what I need... I think I'll wait a while on that to spare both the pain (I've heard horror stories) and the expense). At least while they were doing my fillings they had a triangular chunk of plastic in my mouth so I didn't have to keep my mouth open by myself.

The reason of course for the 3 hour visit was to eliminate as much time off as I could (better to take a morning off than try to get 2 afternoons or whatever off). And since they wanted me in once for each side, it was nice to get them all done at once. Course, this also meant freezing both sides of my jaw, not a fun experience either, so take note.

It's worn off now, but that only means my jaw gets to be sore instead of numb :)

Follow that by a slow work day. Yippee... when the boss gets back though we'll be doing some cool perl/oracle stuff (I think) in the time after when I make up for the 2 hours I lost this morning (course, if he offers to let me go home I'm certainly not going to complain!).

So all in all it was a ... well, it was a day. I'm not really bitching though, honest. Just giving you people a (hopefully) semi-interesting story to chew on.

I'm going to work on getting more sleep tonight though, there's an FVLUG meeting tomorrow.

Hmm... I hear our salesperson (whom I just got using the GIMP for win32 (too bad it's on a 256 color display)) bashing on his keyboard, I suppose I should go check to see what's going on.

09/07/99

6:33pm...
Done!

And now I must rant. In searching for some quick link to give you with a reference from whence these pictures came, I came across this site, the homepage of John Williams Waterhouse, painter of The Lady of Shallot (on boat), La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and some other really awsome stuff. The site has poems attached to some of the paintings as well, which are very appropriate and quite awsome.

The actual painting that I put in place of the Lady of Shallot one was by Edmond Blair Leighton, and is entitled God Speed. Hmm.... just found another version of La Bell Dame Sans Merci, this time by Sir Frank Dicksee. Good stuff.

Ok, that's all done now. Twas a long day. Replacing a server was neither "quick" nor "fun", and finding that the problems that kept me there for the extra time was a bad ethernet card did not in anyway improve my mood. Neither did forgetting to grab /etc/group and /etc/password from their old system. Neither did forgetting to grab /etc/shadow while grabbing /etc/group and /etc/password. And then the drive home... well, lets not talk about the drive home k?

1:30pm...
Argh! More changes! I was just informed that the bg pic I used on the aformentioned poem was of the Lady of Shallot, who kills herself. This is not what I wanted to say. So I'm working now on a new background for it, with a similar look.

About 1 hour after the last entry was uploaded...
Minor change in the title graphic. Do you know how hard it is to find pictures of daisies on the web? Nice one here though.

About 2 hours after the last entry was uploaded...
Ok, I found some nice wrapping. Head here to see it. This an other attempts at creativity of course are available from the poetry page. Apologies for the huge background, but who knows who is surfing at 1280... It should be ok I think though.

09/06/99

Well thus ends labor day weekend. Theoretically the last weekend before school starts again, the last long weekend of the summer, and all that stuff.

Theoretically the long weekend where I got all my mod_perl stuff at least started, and all sorts of other things done. Sadly though, I sat on my ass for two of the three days and did pretty much nothing. And I don't feel a bit guilty about it!

Saturday night was possibly the longest wedding I've ever been too. I won't get into it, but basically the wedding itself went quite fast, except for the 10 hour (well it seemed like it) prayer/reading/analysis of some quote/scripture/thingy, intermixed with useless anecdotes about the couple (which I, as a guest of a cousin, knew nothing about). That was long. The reception was nice, but again, long. They had a bunch of good ideas, all of which I've seen employed at one time or another in other weddings I've been to. A slide show, skits, song, prayer, speeches, etc. The bad part was that they used all of them. One or two - ok. More than that - not ok. Got it? At least during the wedding ceremony there were a lot of prayers so I got to put my head down and catch a bit of shut eye without anyone seeing... falling asleep in one's plate in a banquet hall (a nice one I might add, out at a golf course in haney/pitt meadows) would most likely be noticed.

So yea, I got some movies watched (well, on tv) and a lot of writing done, and another little project I've been working on finally all wrapped up. Maybe I'll throw some of it online, I'm debating the (metaphorical) wrapping though. Black on grey for a web page is just so 1990 though you know?

09/04/99

What a morning. First, I drive into town. Get there, am out of the car and heading to the store and realize that I've forgotten my wallet (second time in 2 days too). Drive home. Return to store, get stuff done, drive home. When I get home, I realize I have another task to do in town. Drive back to town. Get stuff done. Drive home. Get back into the apartment and realize I forgot my phone in the car. Walk back to the underground parking. Walk back to the apartment.

Gads...

10 min later...
Wow, dressed like this I should be going into a "power meeting" or the stock market or something.

Oh well, off to a wedding or something. Back later tonight.

09/03/99

Just a quicky before I go back to doing things here. Salespeople are idiots. I say to the dude at future shop (yea, I know, I shouldn't have gone in the first place) "do you have any celeron coolers?" and he said yes, he did, but the ones he showed me wouldn't work on my chip, so he suggested a PII cooler. "What about the fact it doesn't have a case but is just the cpu?". "Oh no no, it'll work fine" he says. I describe my chip to him (again) and he (again) tells me that it'll just clip on hunky dory. So I go home, all excited that I can super cool (kinda) my celeron with this cool 2 fan thingy, only to find there is no way in hell that it'll even fit on there, and yes, I did think of super glue! Needless to say, after I test it with the PII I have in there now it's going back to the store tomorrow morning, with nasty things said about the salesperson. Anyone know of any sites that sell totally cool cpu cooling fans? Throw me an email to let me know about 'em.

Going to a wedding or something tomorrow, hope it's not too hot. Eeek.

Oh, also stuck a new wallpaper up in the "new" section on my wallpaper page.

09/02/99

Late Late Evening
Finally got my run in. It's been a couple of days. It was strange and unusual, but I actually enjoyed it. Before this it seemed like it was forced, and in a way it still was, the starting anyway. But once I got going I was flying. When I stopped to rest (still maintaining a fast walk) I did so for hardly any time, and my feet just seemed to want to fly and cut out this walking stuff. I was sprinting even before the end where I know I'm wasted, and enjoying it. I know this is old hat to those who run all the time, or are in shape and all, but for me it's like (yet another) revelation about something.

Here's something to try. Go for a run, if you don't run, go for a jog, but go. When you are tired, really tired, huffing and puffing and legs like jello, stop and walk. Let your body recoup for a bit. When you're almost ready to go again, lean your body forward and put your arms behind you... visualize you are a giant bird, an eagle, a hawk, whatever. Close your eyes and slowly, slowly flap your wings, feel the feathers on them catch the wind coming at you. Imagine your feet racing faster as your wings slowly flap in the breeze, moving your body faster and faster along. Your troubles, doubts, or fears are left on the ground below as you fly high into the air. Lost love is returned, or love from far away is brought closer. Imagine everything is right as you soar up into the clouds, your wings lifting you higher and higher.

And you know what? It will work.

Note:
You'll look like a bit of an idiot making elaborate prancings and arm motions as you run along, so do this in a quiet street (and make sure you keep in a straight line, running into traffic is a Bad Thing(tm)).

Ok, so I didn't go on an install today. Instead I had the joy of putting a windows box togeather, fighting to re-install over an old directory, figuring out on the great wheel of driver conflicts which device was causing windows not to boot, and discovering that even though you can say to install to a directory other than C:\WINDOWS it still doesn't completely put things there (ie: why do I have a C:\WINDOWS with like 3 files in it?). Fighting with registry problems too is fun, as is trying to figure out how to transfer a file to a floppy disk when there are only 2 computers in the office that have floppy drives and none of them are on the network, where the file resides. But that ended.

Whohoooo! Long weekend! I get friday afternoon off too, but that's to go to a dentist appointment :( I think I'm heading to the PNE on sunday, and saturday I have a wedding (apparently tiggersol and K are showing up (yay)) to go to. No idea who it is for, I was invited and said yes. I hope they don't mind me wearing shorts <g>.

I'm on the XFMail list and have offered this ufies.org server as a distro point and CVS server. Now to figure out how to set those things up properly.

Morning
I've noticed a disturbing trend in daytime TV today. A couple actually. First is the (continuing) trend of shock-isms. When wandering around the office last week I saw a Maury Povitch show on something or other, featuring a young boy of 12 or 14 who had no arms or legs. The show I'm sure was all about how he survived, lived a normal life, wasn't a freak, how he didn't want to be stared at, etc etc. But in doing so, they just increased the shock quotient of the show. I mean, polite as you are and world travelled as you are you can't help but stare at the TV. And gosh golly gee wiz it's almost like they planned it huh? Do your best to shock the hell out of the audience and appease the modern lust for more, faster, gorier, sicker, and more perverted? Lovely.

The other is the "Judge Judy" show and clones. If you haven't heard about these, they are like the people's court on steroids. Some judge with serious social disabilities takes on cases from people who have serious problems being polite, not being idiots, or whatever. They tell their story, the judge is rude, curt, or smarmy with them, and they go off so the next case can come on.

I saw something on the cover of a tabloid (I won't even look in those things, even for a laugh) over the weekend.... "Judge Judy show Rigged - insider tells all" and all I could think was DUH! I mean, come on, you're telling me that a court room with that sort of engineered judge and cases, cameras all over the place, and time for commercial breaks there is no rigging? I'm sure the defendant and the plaintive are paid big bucks to come and be humiliated by some smarmy fast talking old lady!

Mental note: Expense 100km for driving to Hope and back to install a server.

Many thanks to Iambe for the RAM she donated. In addition to the stuff I got from work today (unexpectedly, I didn't expect him to get it for me) my memory counter ticks up to 344064 (336meg RAM)! Wh00p! Not that I can fill 128 of course, but hey, more is always better in the computer hardware field.

Also, many thanks to mikez on #userfriendly who reminded me again and again to check the "stupid shit" list when trying to get my HD to boot (it was accessable just fine when booted with a boot disk, but would not boot itself). I finally found a minutely loose HD cable... I guess the "boot me up" pin was out or something. Everything is working dandy now.

I'm also having sudden heating problems. The Celeron 300a (over clocked to 450) that has been running fine for the last 4 months or so suddenly started crashing the other day. Very disturbing to come home to find your workstation locked solid. I finally broke down and put the spare pII-233 (overclocked to 350) in and guess what, it actually completed a kernel build without locking up! Now my question is why did this suddenly happen, when it was working fine for so long. Maybe I gotta lick the contacts or something (never mind if you don't get it).