wednesday night / a site for sore eyes
choose one:
a few recent posts;
links to embarassing things;
rss was for robots.
September 3, 2002
last night i went to sleep a lot later than i wanted to due to
trying to get my new evo build to work. eventually abandoned that
and went to sleep. came back from vacation to spend 4 hours
"reading" email (i use that term quite loosely).
seems all of the tinderboxen have completely broken.
this update is really boring. which is sad, because i had all these
clever, insightful things to say over the weekend.
* * *
i bought some shoes last week. i decided i didn't really like them
as wearing around shoes, but they would be ok for running, so i
started running.
so i still had to get another pair.
i was looking at the box, and thinking back to my days as an
environmentalist in elementary school and noticed that the box was
made of recycled paper, with soy ink, and didn't have any of that
gummy glue stuff. and i thought to myself, "hmm i guess we
won."
* * *
i wonder how long the CODE RED i
drank today will keep me up.
* * *
September 4, 2002
i am having a hard time fathoming anything good coming from today.
* * *
every time i clean my keyboard i am reminded of the simpsons where
their tv breaks and homer tells the story about how he met marge,
and he's getting ready for either prom or their study session and he
is combing his hair and looks in the sink, and says, "there's
plenty more where that came from."
* * *
yay, all the tinderboxen
are doing something more productive than erroring out after 3
seconds.
* * *
stoopid TiVo started recording junkyard wars instead of the west
wing! wtf.
* * *
September 5, 2002
now i remember what i didn't like about getting up early to go run.
the getting up early, and the running.
thirteen minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off, someone
decided to have a conversation right outside my window. which woke
me up, wondering if my alarm clock was going off. THIS IS WHY THEY
INVENTED CELL PHONES, PEOPLE. talk to people while you're parked on
the interstate, not outside my window, which i know how to throw
things out of.
after discovering my window does not make a satisfactory noise when
slammed close, the person decided that maybe they should actually
get into the office today. ahh silence. then my alarm clock went
off...
in the brief moments of sleep i had last night i did manage to have
a dream that michael jackson was putting together some nirvana
covers for a new album. seriously, this is what my subconscious
dwells upon.
* * *
September 6, 2002
sigh. meant to wake up ~8 and go for a run before getting to the
sun meeting at the office at 10. managed to wake up at 9:58 with
just enough time to find the "remote" call in number.
fortunately the only bug i have anything to do with these days is
only a bug on linux.
* * *
TODAY I'VE FELT AS THOUGH MY CAPS LOCK KEY HAS BEEN ON ALL DAY. NOT
MY REAL CAPS LOCK KEY, BUT A METAPHORICAL ONE.
* * *
September 8, 2002
the other day i finished another tape in my camera, so i decided to
get some stills off of it:
dave and pat getting ready to say good bye to the cave
this is where i slept the first month i was in boston
this is where miguel used to make banana milkshakes
the deli on the left makes tasty sandwiches
sometimes joe is mean
* * *
it's remarkable how closely project
searchlight resembled the early days of helix code.
i need to fall asleep now...
* * *
September 9, 2002
i managed to convince myself to sleep more rather than go running,
which sounds pretty easy to do. looking back, 4 hours of sleep was
definitely not enough; 6 seems to be doing ok. well except that i'm
late for work...
* * *
from here on out, i'm only interested in what's real.
* * *
there are still tracks on the purple hendrix box set that i haven't
listened to...
i tried to get the remote dingus for the iPod, but my headphone jack
seems to have gotten damaged enough that it didn't work. at least i
tried it right there so didn't have to go all the way back to return
it.
* * *
in eleven years it's gonna be 1984, man. think about
that!
* * *
"i don't even know what i'm paying for anymore."
"oh oh, you're a john!"
* * *
September 10, 2002
yesterday while looking for some stuff i noticed this in my laptop's
dmesg output:
IOPCCard info: Mac OS X PCMCIA Card Services 3.1.22
IOPCCard info: options: [pci] [cardbus] [pnp]
IOPCCard info: Intel PCIC probe:
IOPCCard info: TI 1410 rev 02 PCI-to-CardBus phys mem 0xa0000000 virt mem 0x1a21b000
it looked quite familiar, both in format and version number, and
after a little digging around came up with this.
* * *
what a great time to be alive
* * *
looking at the latest gaim vulnerability, it seems someone should
make a growth/vaccination chart like children have, but for
exploits/security holes in free software.
* * *
my boredom has outshined the sun / it's all down low
i just want to have some / little fun
* * *
i keep telling alex he looks like oakenfold but he doesn't believe me
* * *
September 11, 2002
i don't know about you, but i'm pretty much ready for fall to start.
* * *
hmm, seems i got what i wanted. it was nice and cold and very windy
when i left work :)
* * *
the best part of doing laundry late at night is reaching the point
where you'd rather sleep than have dry clothes.
* * *
September 12, 2002
yesterday i got vte working somewhat on OS X. this involved some
unix magic, with moving where some file descriptors were closed. it
seems that in one place, the app will hang in close(2),
while in the other, it doesn't. a look at lsof indicates that the
fd gets closed, but the app just sits there. the strange thing is
that it works fine with zvt (they both share the pty-helper code).
i don't know what's up with this.
anyway today i cvs up'd and now it doesn't work again (although
different errors). after struggling with gdb(1) for a bit,
i ended up using this tactic:
kill (getppid (), 11);
and moving it around the code to see how far it's getting. sadly,
this worked quite well and pointed me at the problem:
AC_CHECK_FUNCS(foo) defines HAVE_FOO, while AC_CHECK_FUNC(foo) and
AC_CHECK_LIB(foo, foo) do not. i am sure phil would have something clever to
say about it if he wasn't so sick.
went to elements with nat at the pheonix landing. i didn't
really get into it - not sure why. then we went to charlies and it
went something like this:
me: i'm feeling a little sick.
nat: i'm dehydrated, i think i'm just going to get a water.
me: i was just going to get a water.
nat: ...
me: maybe we should go home and not waste anyone's time
so in general a fun time was had by all.
* * *
September 13, 2002
for obvious reasons there's been a lot of talk about sept. 11
lately, and some talk of whether it should be declared a national
holiday or not.
in light of this, and the predominately negative connotations the
phrase "sept. 11" brings to mind, i've started urging that
people to start refering to sept. 11 as "AMERICA DAY."
i think this captures the true spirit of the day, and puts forward
the movement to get it declared a national holiday. i have no doubt
that many other nations, the first hopefully being canada, will also
decide to adopt this holiday.
anyway joe's out of the shower now so i can get dressed and get phil
his medicine.
* * *
September 17, 2002
ugh, i need a vacation.
a storm somewhere over the east coast
* * *
September 19, 2002
awake. 4:36. ...
* * *
today's chimera nightly can [ finally ] remember passwords entered
on forms. yay.
* * *
September 23, 2002
yesterday i finished reading "netscape time", perhaps the
most depressing book i've read in recent history (note that david
sedaris books are on the whole not very depressing). the
"we're doomed" fatalistic optimism reminds me of the early
days of the company. the
similarities don't stop with late night trips to 24 hour breakfast
joints (them: denny's; us: IHOP) or a respected businessman with one
successful company under his belt (them: jim clark; us: nat) meeting
a softspoken, young midwestern college student (them: marca; us:
miguel), but continue on with the rebellious hackers (them: jwz; us: joe),
in-your-face-products (them: mozilla;
us: rupert),
and underhanded corporate tactics intended to undermine innovation
(them: microsoft trying to get a seat on their board and owning ~20%
of their company in exchange for dial-up networking api reference;
us: well, the best i can come up with is bynari not allowing access
to their web site from *.helixcode.com after they created a unique
blend of ours and apple's web site. i'd like to make up something
about mono and some company but i fear
that some people either have
no sense of humour, or too much. sometimes even i can't tell any
more).
at times, i couldn't help but imagine what my life would be like if
i had a couple million to throw around. what a glorious world it
would be if i could finally unite ask
jeeves and webMD.
web jeeves! jeevesMD! i can already hear the market drooling.
* * *
i got GStreamer to build and
even play oggs and mp3s on OS X.
however whenever it gets to the evil threading voodoo in gstreamer,
violent deaths occur.
* * *
what's up with MLP not getting that emmy? seems like the old boys
network is at it again.
* * *
my laptop doesn't seem able to do S-video- and VGA-out at the same
time. that would have been pretty slick.
* * *
joe or i really need to start dating a tall girl. our ceilings are
like 10 ft tall, so we can't change the lightbulbs even when
standing on a chair. nat has been out
of town too much recently to be of much help...
* * *
sigh. on the way to lunch i dropped my iPod and now it keeps
hanging when i try to play stuff and when i connect it to my laptop
it does this disk-spinning-slowly-with-a-magnifying-glass thing
which makes me believe that it is busted.
i used to think february was the worst month / now i'm not so sure
* * *
September 24, 2002
Say Hello to iPaperWeight.
yesterdays alleged "falling" (joe prefers to say that i
dropped it) of iPod resulted in me getting it replaced. this had a
number of fortunate side effects:
- iPod is now very shiny
- the headphone jack is now new, and works again
- i am not going to get the 20G version
- phil is not going to by my 10G
also it is the old spinny wheel, not the new touchpad one, which is
a plus as far as i'm concerned. sadly i didn't get the remote,
since last time i went to get it and it didn't work, i decided i
didn't like it. however, it has the benefit of probably causing the
headphone jack not to break again, so i should probably get it for
that reason.
...
* * *
A LIST OF GOOD MOVIES I VIEWED TONIGHT, PARTIALLY WHILE WAITING FOR
CLOTHES TO WASH AND DRY, THAT I HAVE VIEWED PREVIOUSLY AND ENJOYED:
- OFFICE SPACE
- THE ROYAL TENEBAUMS
A LIST OF NOT-SO-GOOD MOVIES THAT I VIEW TONIGHT, NOT WHILE WAITING
FOR CLOTHES TO WASH OR DRY, THAT I HAD NOT PREVIOUSLY VIEWED:
- THE MOD SQUAD
* * *
* * *
September 26, 2002
today i plowed through my email with a vengance. i don't even think i read 1% of it.
* * *
today shaver explained
to me that the internet is slow these days, despite increased
bandwidth and faster computers etc., because we have gotten rid of
the convinient tags such as <blink> and replaced them
with bloated behemoths like <span
style="text-decoration: blink">. i would have liked
to tell my children that society advanced during my lifetime,
however it's not looking like that's going to be the case [ i would
put a clever link in each word in that clause, pointing to an
example of things going downhill except that just one link should suffice ].
* * *