January 1, 2003

happy new year etc. etc.

simon has a new game this morning. he runs in my room, and dives under the blanket on my bed. then i go and pick the blanket up, uncovering him, and he darts out of my room.

January 3, 2003

last night i read the dns rfc. well, enough of it for the rendezvous source to make more sense. i still don't know how reverse dns lookups work (i think nat explained it once but imbw).

at any rate, i can now ping a linux box from an osx box using multicast dns. however, it doesn't work the other way for some reason.

i ask myself, though, why don't i just do this thing in python. well it's more what joe's going to ask me when i tell him i have to have some api for the rendezvous client library.

[jacob@bron-yr-aur mDNSPosix]$ dig krunk.local ; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> krunk.local ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 5691 ;; flags: qr aa; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;krunk.local. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: krunk.local. 58 IN A 192.168.0.8 ;; Query time: 4 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#5353(127.0.0.1) ;; WHEN: Sat Jan 4 02:23:38 2003 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 45 [jacob@bron-yr-aur mDNSPosix]$ _

this is an improvement, but pinging krunk.local from bron-yr-aur still doesn't work.

January 4, 2003

since joe and i got macs, OSU hasn't lost a football game and won a national championship, and the browns made the playoffs.

[jacob@bron-yr-aur jacob]$ ping caiman.local. PING caiman.local (192.168.0.42) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.0.42: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=50.6 ms 64 bytes from caiman.local (192.168.0.42): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=3.12 ms

hmm some glibc debugging later, and it works. good thing i had that glibc build with debugging symbols around.

January 5, 2003

sigh. the browns still haven't won a road playoff game since the 60's. sometimes i wonder what kind of damaging psychological effects growing up a browns / indians fan has had on me.

this is the size camera i want to get:

January 6, 2003

since last night's late night fog walk (1996 version) (jog your memory) was successful, and i almost went on another one tonight except i ran around the city today doing some errands, including ticket purchasing and phil scaring. to my credit, though, i was told that i was actually welcome, and since phil stopped updating his internet nobody will hear a contrary story. anyway, in the future i'll only use my key if it's known that i'm coming, and by known i mean more than just shaver.

for a while today i tried to type "correctly" - usually i only use my pinky for the control key: i use my left ring finger even for shift. anyway i tried to keep my left fingers on asdf. boy i can't type at all although the keys seem closer together. i bet i could type faster if i learned how to do it right. but why would i need to type faster? it amazes me that joe can use the right shift key.

anyway the whole point of not going on the walk was so i could go to sleep earlier.

January 7, 2003

with a little help from shaver, this stuff is syndicated now (and as loolix_rss on lj also). i bet if shaver walked off of a cliff i'd follow suit. i need to fix relative links (pictures), though.

i really wish i had this a few months ago. it's really smooth, and the native wm is totally balls.

last night i went to sleep thinking i had all these things to do today. however, when i woke up i couldn't remember any of them. what i do remember is having a dream where my old scissors got lost and i was very upset.

hmm, the ahl leafs play the ahl bruins in providence on friday, and ticket prices are on the order of movie tickets rather than evenings at charlie's.

so, it seems lj is lame and doesn't update entries, but keeps adding new ones, so when i update this thing 4 times a day it gets added 4 times. i am not sure whether to spend any time fixing that, or just let lj fix it.

after playing with things like netnewswire and watson, i still think that a a truly rich and elegant internet is still a few years away, maybe as far as 5 years. these tools make some things nice, but they still have a klunky feel to them. maybe the web will always feel klunky? it might be that i'm tired.

i'm worried that wearing my montreal expos hat and being with the canadians will give people the impression that i'm a leafs fan. if shaver brings one of those big maple leafs flags, i'll have to get a bruins shirt so i don't get beat up when the leafs win.

January 8, 2003

The fourth goal was kind of a weird goal. I made a couple of saves and the third shot went in. Not much you can do about that one. The fifth one, I don't even know what happened.

i really need to stop reading these articles with john grahame quotes. i thought i had some other one like this, but i can't find it.

btw you should update your bookmarks, as pj stock's journal has moved.

last night i had a dream where i was playing for the bruins, but it was like a rollerblade pick up game. i couldn't tell if ftorek wasn't me to play in the overtime, since i didn't know like the signs and stuff that they use. also, i was wearing a huml jersey and i think he scored the tying goal to send it into overtime. it was all very confusing.

for the record, i mentioned the leafs/bruins game quite a while ago.

it's been so long i'd stopped checking, but a new TDS was on last night. i didn't know how much i missed their humorous slant on top news stories.

i dunno if it's the fact that TiVo gets three episodes a day, but often after joe and i talk about a simpsons episode, it comes on that week.

this time, it was the one with where homer wants to watch brett favre.

January 9, 2003

ok, so this morning right before i woke up i was having this dream where i was housesitting for phil (perfectly reasonable) with joe and maybe someone else. we were watching a movie, and doing something with phil's laptop. phil was running windows 95 on his laptop, and it needed some new network drivers or something. we were trying to install them, but it was complaining that there were some users still logged in (includeing shaver).

and why were they logged in, you ask?

because of uml, of course.

i don't understand why i'm dreaming about software i've NEVER USED.

the only thing i'm going to read within 5 hours of going to bed from now on is blank pices of paper.

LIST OF THINGS I THOUGHT FOR SURE JOE WOULD GET ME FOR CHRISTMAS BUT HE DID NOT:

1. A GUITAR TUNER. I THOUGHT I HAD GIVEN A GOOD ENOUGH HINT BY ALWAYS PLAYING OUT OF TUNE.
2. A MICHELLE BRANCH CD. I FIGURED THIS WAS OBVIOUS, SINCE MICHELLE AND I HAVE BEEN DATING EXCLUSIVELY FOR ALMOST EIGHT (8) MONTHS NOW.
3. A GIFT CERTIFICATE TO BOSTONJOBS.COM. THIS WAS A NO-BRAINER.
4. MY HEART IN HIS HANDS ... A BOOK FOR THE SAVED SINGLE SISTER WHO DESIRES TO BE MARRIED, BUT HASN'T BEEN FOUND BY HER HUSBAND. IT COMES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FROM AMAZON.
5. A NEW EXPOS HAT. IT'S BEEN OVER A YEAR.
6. A RED JETTA. I WAS REALLY REALLY GOOD LAST YEAR AND I DON'T KNOW ANY OTHER WAY TO GET A GIRLFRIEND.

one of the problems with this safari thing is that it spoils my plans of hacking chimera in order to get a job at apple. it probably wouldn't have worked anyway, since i'd probably be forced to stop when i start therapy.

when joe and i got back from our night on the town, we found an n*star rep in the street by my apt. she asked if we could let her in the basement because there was a report of a gas leak. i replied that i thought the doors were locked, and that the super (who is nice; i've run into him a couple times while doing laundry this week) would be able to let her in. she replied that she'd stop by tomorrow.

i shouldn't have any trouble sleeping tonight or anything.

January 10, 2003

last night i had a dream where i asked miguel if he was going to get one of the new powerbooks, since he's such a fan of warpiggish laptops.

he said he had a bunch of friends in jail, and that the money would be better spent on helping them.

i think i had a job at a cd store, and also it was after christmas and my family was putting away the christmas ornaments and we were all crying.

i attribute these dreams to the renegade chili that staged a coup in my intestines last night.

January 11, 2003

phik, shaver, joe, and i enjoyed a long overdue bruins victory tonight. well, at least joe and i did. there were quite a few leafs fans who were, at times, a bit too loud. except in the third period. i don't know the last time the bruins won at home, since our internet is broken.

with the browns out of the playoffs, it's time to look forward to another exciting XFL season.

i was on in tonight's rounds of halo. i won 3 games of phikwar in a row (and was one point shy of winning my 4th) and had led most of a game of rocket koth (leading by a full minute at one point), but phik beat me by like 6 seconds. also phik and i took names in anal warts. herpes ctf is close to being a good game, but the rules still need some tweaking.

it's definitely time to sleep, as i had originally typed "one" instead of "won" above.

January 12, 2003

today was not unlike the past two days, all of which can be summed up in three words: food, friends, and halo. and i suspect tomorrow will be more of the same. then, shaver leaves and it will be just me wandering the boston streets while phil works and joe sleeps.

tonight we had dinner at the blizzard's. i did try the sweet potatoes and even some cheese. i am not really sure of the difference between things tasting unfamiliar and not liking them.

phil and i were unhappy with one of the halo game choices, and made our feelings felt in a most obnoxious manner. i don't think anyone enjoyed that game. in better news, herpes ctf rules were refined in a most interesting manner, and i think they are pretty good. it sure would have been fun to try it 4-on-2 though. maybe i can trick people into playing again tomorrow? i bet there will be a lot of arm twisting. 2-on-1 anal warts is quite difficult.

i wasted a lot of time today playing with mod_dav and mod_ssl trying to trick my computer into doing things. i thought for sure my original setup would be hosed but it seems to be serving the right pages up.

January 13, 2003

16° (0° windchill) is too cold for my walk. which was fortunate, since if i had planned on going the full distance, i would have spent a lot more than 5 minutes with an iPod out of battery.

YIKES.

as much as i thought he sucked, seeing how happy he was after the win on saturday makes this kind of sad. i won't be sad when the bruins make it past the first round in the playoffs, if they can start winning more than one game in a row.

since thursday, the leafs beat the penguins, the bruins beat the leafs, and the penguins beat the bruins.

i don't have anything even remotely resembling anything interesting to say, so i guess i'll just go to sleep. (and yes, joe, i got the safari update already)

January 14, 2003

mmmm. 11 hours of sleep.

haha

off the top of my head, here are some reasons why os x's dock is better than the windows (or kde/gnome) taskbar/tasklist:

1. since you place the apps you want on the dock, their location in the docks is consistent between restarts of your system. this aides in selecting (and running) apps.
2. since the icons are tied to an applications, rather than a window, there are fewer choices to select from, which speeds up use when switching between applications.
3. the grouping in windows and gnome's (old) tasklist is similar to this, however the dock doesn't have two "modes" - grouped and ungrouped - so the user doesn't have to figure out if it's in grouped mode or not. if an app has multiple windows, the dock icon's context menu will contain a list of windows to choose from, just like the grouping option in the other lists.
4. the tab order in the dock is more consistent - the first Alt-tab brings you to the most recently used app, but after that it goes from left-to-right in the dock. since you can always see the dock, you can have some extra perception of the tab order, rather than with windows which just pops up the window when you press Alt-tab. this goes with #1 above, but is slightly different.
5. because clicking on an app's icon in the dock will launch it if it's not running, you don't have to remember if the app is open or not - just click on the icon and if it's running, it will be focused. if not, it will show up in a few seconds. [ although this doesn't work with alt-tab (by alt i of course mean Cmd) ]

i'm not saying it's the most incredible piece of software ever written, but that it does it's job pretty well. mostly i wanted to see if i could actually come up with a few reasons. i think i only really found 2.

fortunately, i don't actually know anything so you probably should have been ignoring this. i should have distracted you with this picture:

i thought this was funny:

me: does cherry jam stain?
joe: everything stains
me: i don't mean metaphorically
joe: oh

January 15, 2003

i woke up at 7 this morning, but am not at all tired. i blame all the sleep i got yesterday. if i was smarter i would have kept working through the winter, since it's not so fun to go outside this time of year, so there's not much to do.

in that same vein, this morning i decided to remove OS9 support from my laptop, since it wastes disk that i could use for 12 minutes of DV (the os9 applications and system folders take up a little over 1GB on my desktop).

it turned out that my default terminal font was in the OS9 System Folder, and Terminal got confused and tried to use the (null) font at a rather large (something like 239871592387129) size. resetting these two values and rebooting got rid of the garbage on the screen.

the scary thing is that i am liking lucida handwriting as a terminal font.

the funny thing is, you'd have to _pay_ joe to use it.

it seems safari doesn't handle images in <object> tags very well. if you have plug-ins disabled, it ignores all <object> tags. if you omit the type attribute, it says it doesn't know the mime-type of the plug-in. i bet they already know about these things, but since there's no way to check i just reported them anyway. if i report enough bugs, i get a free 12" powerbook right?

January 16, 2003

i slept for either 12 or 13 hours last night. there was one dream where we were trying to do something with dogs, monkies, and guinea pigs and them understanding speech. apparently, guinea pigs were supposed to be able to understand simple commands. i don't realy know why i had this dream.

last night we went to see 25th hour, since it had ed norton and philip seymour hoffman again.

i hope last night's west wing was very purging for rev. sorkin. get it out of your system now, while we haven't found something else to watch! incidentally, i've spent quite a few februaries in ohio, and there were a few discrepancies i noticed in the episode. namely, in ohio during february:

1. there are no leaves on trees.
2. it does not rain. if you are lucky it will snow. if you are unlucky there is just bitter cold.
3. that stream would have had at least some ice on it. (at least there was some fake snow on the banks)

the blatant disregard for realism truly undermined whatever messages the reverend might have had for us this week.

and there isn't even another new west wing on for at least 3 weeks, so i'm going to have to live with this bitter taste in my mouth for some time.

fortunately, the simpsons with homer's sugar pile was on last night. there is some outstanding direction/reading/writing in that episode. truly a classic. have recent simpsons had many sideplots? i can't remember.

i was unsure of why apple is releasing iDVD 3 for free (but charging $50 for iMovie 3 and iPhoto 2) until i ran iDVD 2 side-by-side with the iDVD 3 web page. the thing is, iDVD 2 is the only "iApp" that doesn't use that stupid metal look.

the other night i was trying to go to sleep but mtv2 was rebroadcasting a countdown show from 1999 (i think) with janeane garofalo, chris kattan, denis leary, and jon stewart. they were retiring overplayed videos, and making fun of them. it was pretty good.

someone (no doubt a tv exec) unintelligently invited robert van winkle (vanilla ice) on to destroy his own video.

my laundry is (hopefully) drying, and since i usually write stuff in here when i am doing laundry, well you know the rest. i hoped shaver would find humour and ejnoyment, but alas, all he found were spelling errors. at least i'm getting revenge.

joe never wears this shirt for me. before i knew them, a lot of my current friends were there in ottawa. they look a good deal younger then. i didn't know i had that much of an effect on people.

my laundry should be dry now, so i will close by mentioning that there are a couple of domains i'd like to get, but aren't letting myself because i don't have any income. if you did not get me a christmas present, you can send me domain registering money. i (well actually phik would probably do it) will even hook you up with a phatty mail alias, since you don't get enough spam as it is.

January 17, 2003

lj seems to have fixed its rss importing, and so doesn't show duplicates when i update entries. yay.

last night it wasn't too cold and started snowing, so i went for a walk.

January 18, 2003

(for the record, stock did get a playoff goal last year)

it is getting quite cold in my apartment. i should probably go to sleep, but i've only been out of bed for 12 hours or so. the past few days i've been sleeping for around 12 hours one night, then 5 or 6 the next. it works pretty well, i guess. i don't have any metric to figure this out with, since i don't have any productivity quotient to go by.

when i watch these early seinfeld episodes, it's amazing the show wasn't cancelled early on. some of the simpsons were like that too... when i watch episodes from the first season, they're classics but they're still... off.

the other day i was wondering what the cross section is between the people who would complain about TiVo keeping track of what you watch and the people that complain about their favourite sci-fi channel show being cancelled are.

there are about 2 weeks left until the three month anniversary of me not working. i was going to wait for three months before i started looking for another job, but i really don't feel ready for that yet. hopefully i will be ready soon, because i enjoy eating and eating costs money.

yesterday i saw about schmidt and a guy thing. i don't think tyla would like about schmidt.

January 19, 2003

interesting. doesn't show up in the us or ca amazon, or on acclaim's internet. amazon.co.uk seems like a fun site, since they say stuff like, "usually dispatched within 1 to 2 weeks." too bad they don't ship to the us tho; joe wouldn't be so grumpy if he was beating me in tennis every day. also phik might come out of his hole and either update his internet, or play with his friends.

i looked that up cause i'm watching tennis. they seem to be able to show exactly where the balls hit the lines now, with some computer something or other. they still use judges tho, which which seems dumb since now all the commentators are doing is complaining about the bad judging.

speaking of bad judgement, i played a bunch of battle.net games of the warcraft 3 demo. it runs impressively smoothly on the mac, which is a welcome surprise after the sluggish civ3 and aoe2 ports. i guess all the good players have the retail version, since i don't think i've actually lost a game today other than from being disconnected (one of those was because my laptop locked up).

my watson demo time expired, so i have to decide if i want to buy it (i'd link to the entry dave mason had at his old site about it being weird to have to pay for software, but it's gone) or not. anyway it's a nice piece of software - i definitely prefer internet-enabled apps to web pages (if for no other reason than that it has no ads) - but i can live without it. i didn't use it all that much, and sherlock has most of the same stuff. but i'd rather the smaller company continue putting out a better product than the gorilla just releasing certain stuff for free in order to squash the little guys. but i'll just stick to my web browser.

you may be wondering what the point of this wandering entry is. not fifteen minutes after i posted my entry yesterday mentioning tyla, i got an angry email from her demanding an explanation of my stance on her and about schmidt. my hope is that if i drone on about video games and mac software, she won't see the juicy bits down here.

anyway if someone in europe didn't get me a christmas present and wants to send me a copy of virtua tennis 2, i'd be very receptive.

hmm i need to go to sleep so i can wake up in time for the hockey game tomorrow.

i ate too much chocolate today and can't sleep.

turning up the key repeat rate makes my computer feel faster.

January 20, 2003

well i slept through all but the last half of overtime, but fortunately the bruins got a point even though i'm not a true fan.

speaking of sleep, i've had a couple of interesting dreams in the last couple of days.

two nights ago, i had a dream that i was going to teach kindergarten (at my old elementary school). the bad part was that i never got any training or anything in teaching, and was just showing up on the first day and going from there. things got really bad when i couldn't find the student in my class (i only had one) and i was going around looking for her. fortunately i woke up.

last night i had some dream where i was with some group touring in boston or something. i think i was still in high school. anyway, some of us were wearing tshirts that look like a college shirt but had the name of some alcohol related fake school on them. mine said "BARVARD" but i can't remember what anyone else's said, which is a literal travesty. i thought that was pretty clever, for me being asleep and all.

From: jacob berkman <jacob@assbarn.com> To: aphrodisiacs <???@assbarn.com> Subject: reflections at age 24 in the past two and a half months, i've had a lot of time to take in a lot of things that, well, fell through the cracks in my hurried ride to the top. for me, the 90's were a blur of orchestra rehearsals, bicycle races, ap tests, and, towards the end, late nights of starcraft and watching the gimp compile. i missed a lot of things. smashing pumpkins. seinfeld. forrest gump. girls. and now i can add another thing to that list. the ben stiller show. ben stiller, andy dick, and janeane garofalo doing what they do best: pass the time until i can fall asleep. fortunately this decade isn't passing me by. i caught a few xfl games before that got axed. - j

it turns out that virtua tennis 2 in the US is tennis 2k2 on the dreamcast, and sega sports tennis on the ps2. i've seen some things which say it can do 4 player on the ps2, and some not. i'm going to see if i can find it at a store around here; amazon says it's dicontinued.

and if you missed out on the avs/stars game then you well, missed out. it was a reminder of what exciting (perhaps playoff level?) hockey is. although the 3.5 mintes of stoppage-free OT i caught of the bruins game wasn't bad either.

January 21, 2003

a trek through the blistering cold to babbages, erm software etc... erm, gamespot yielded a used copy of sega sports tennis for my ps2. yay. next time shaver comes to visit i'll have to pick up a multitap dingus so we can play some insane doubles. the fun thing about this game is joe can basically destroy me at it.

i got tired of my sister's christmas present sitting in my room (it's been here for a week or two) so i packaged it up and went to mail it but there was a long line so i was like whatever and i'll do it tomorrow.

my apartment is really cold, in case you were keeping score at home.

January 22, 2003

the water in the kitchen doesn't work, and my left foot just fell off.

today's quackpoll was pretty choice:

which of the following inventions could you not live without?

• toothbrush
• car
• computer
• microwave
• cell phone

it's pretty obvious for me, as i only have two of those things, and i don't use my cell phone much.

January 23, 2003

i started wearing ziplock freezer bags over my socks.

this afternoon i left the bathroom door open so that my shower might warm up the apartment a little. when i got out, it was snowing in the kitchen.

the super says we have frozen pipes.

joe probably rues the day he bought frost king window installation crap. (ed: that day was today)

now, they claim that the contents include "1 Plastic Film Sheet" and "1 Roll of Tape," and that said tape is double sided. however, when reality set in, we discovered that there was actually a single roll: the first half inch or so was tape, and the rest the plastic film stuff. the problem is, you have to unroll the film in order to unroll the tape, which is mighty inconvinient when you have to get tape for our huge (drafty) windows. then we get to the part where the tape is supposed to be double sided. the one side barely stuck to our window (i don't think the adhesive works well in cold temperatures), and the adhesive on the second side just peels off when you try to remove the film on it. i don't think i explained it well, but basically it utterly fails to work. at least it's made in america.

since our house was still terribly cold (i've decided the thermostat can't actually display temperatures below 60° so i have no idea how cold it actually is) joe and i decided to start a fire in our lovely fireplace. we couldn't get the futon frame to light, but fortunately we remembered the new phonebooks were recently delivered. it only took 20 minutes for us to grab all the unclaimed phonebooks on our street, and about 30 seconds for those things to get a good fire going. the thermostat even got up to 64°.

these exciting antics, plus the stunning bruins victory tonight left us with no time to play tennis.

January 24, 2003

i woke up to discover a plumber working downstairs; after a bit we had working water in the kitchen again, which meant clean dishes, which meant having some soup. also a non-double-digit-negative wind chill means the apartment got reasonably warm - i believe it hit 68° - all good news.

in preperation for shaver's arrive in march, phil graced us with a most excellent christmas gift: a multitap dingus and 2 extra controllers for the ps2. it turns out that the ea games (nhl, ncaa football, and madden 200x) support up to 8 players with 2 multitap dingusses. unfortunately i don't have that many friends.

we managed to keep phil from going home and playing simcity 4 long enough to get in some rounds of SEGA SPORTS TENNIS. the sad news is, the player who partnered with the computer won all 3 sets we played. oh well.

i'm still unsure of what to do with my former main computer. it's still sitting in the living room - turned off. the first thing i should probably do is make a backup of it - in case we need to put it back for some reason. blah blah blah.

it's 4am and i can't think of anything else.

January 26, 2003

a couple of things of note happened this weekend, namely that i beat halo on difficult, and i beat joe at virtua tennis. he will like to have you believe it was due to him not wearing his glasses (and being a little drunk), and he's probably right. today he beat me 6-0, 6-1, 7-6. it was not pretty. phil did call during the tie break, which totally threw me off.

this is really fuzzy, but early on last night i had a dream where we were watching TiVo and there was a few frames of something, and then it switched to a different view. we kept going back and playing the first few frames - it apparently had a shot of a serial murderer. i knew his name, and was going to try to remember it so i could search on the internet for it, but i've forgotten it.

as an aside, i kept expecting (to be honest, more like hoping) that jimmy kimmel's show was going to be cancelled half-way through it. i just don't see abc as the kind of company that will tolerate snoop dogg flipping the bird every episode. also i can't stand abc's ads. fortunately i don't have to watch anymore abc until hockey playoffs.

i need to go to sleep since tomorrow is going to be a busy day:

• take a shower
• get milk for my super sugar crisp cereal
• get bruins tickets for the leafs game in march

right now i'd like to see the show at charlie's but who knows what i will feel like tomorrow. i definitely will be skipping super monday (an all new eight simp!). [ i always think/type things as "i definitely will" but then when i reread it i think it should be "i will definitely" ]

the other day i was wondering what life would be like if the simpsons had been cancelled, or weren't popular. it seems all the networks are trying to have "fox attitude" these days, and also bush is president.

today's poll (thanks to abc's A Better Community):

Have you ever volunteerd. [sic]

• Yes, I find it rewarding.
• No, I haven't.

i like how they are trying to alienate those who tried volunteering, but it just didn't work out. i mean, i volunteer to take a shower every few weeks, but i wouldn't say it's particularly rewarding.

January 27, 2003

it's cold again.

i went out to get tickets for the next time the leafs visit. now i know why i slept for 12 hours last night - the double digit below zero windchill is back. i think there should be some hyphens in that sentence but i don't know where.

oh and for fun, i've installed a pinwheel by my bedroom window. it hasn't stopped spinning all day.

and sadly i will have to go outside tomorrow, as zwan's album is coming out. ooh unless i get joe to get it for me.

January 28, 2003

yesterday, while checking game stop for rez, i saw that zwan was realeasing their first album. well, it was after i found out that they didn't have rez, while i walked back to the T station. while reading around on the internet last night, i noticed that there was a smashing pumpkins live album i haven't heard. since i've not heard a single person say smashing pumpkins was good live, i wanted to hear for myself (since that boat has long since sailed).

also, i had decided i wanted to pick up the the sims for ps2, since i hear the online one sucks, and the original is either win32 or "classic" macos (which i don't have on my laptop). also it looked like the graphics suck for the original version. i had a dream about the sims last night (before i had even played it) but it had some aspects of XBill in it - the avatars had a little computer icon below their name.

so, since my parents got me a best buy gift certificate for christmas, i figured i'd stop by there and pick up these three items, and maybe a new copy of caustic window compilation because mine is really scratched. when i got there, they didn't have a copy of the sims, but they did have a copy of SEGA SPORTS TENNIS for ps2, at half the price of what i paid last week.

miraculously, i was able to return my (previously) used SEGA SPORTS TENNIS and pick up the sims at game spot, and get the cheaper SEGA SPORTS TENNIS and smashing pumpkins / zwan albums at best buy. so, all in all, i think i came out on top.

so far, the sims is pretty fun. even my roommate seems to enjoy watching me play it, and he didn't even get to see me making out with my girlfriend. well, i think she is my girlfriend. there is a little heart by her icon, and i dream about her. the one thing the sims really could use is weekends, but maybe it would be too easy with that. it seems to be a really common wish on the internet.

as for the zwan album, i've listened to it once, and i didn't fall in love with it. i did notice that the songs are probably fun to play, and they seem a bit more upbeat than a lot of pumpkins songs, so i guess that's a good thing for mr. corgan.

also, did anyone notice apple slipped the iLife/iDVD release? it was supposed to come out on either the 25th or 28th, but is now slated for "soon."

January 30, 2003

yesterday i played a good deal of the sims. i have a roommate now, who doesn't clean anything up, but he has a girlfriend now. i think he might ask her to move in, which sucks because i can't get my girlfriend to move in (i think she's married to this other guy or something).

i saw some of nosferatu and shadow of the vampire. it made me want to see ed wood again (which still isn't out on dvd).

i've had some strange dreams the last couple of nights, excluding the sims-induced half-dreams. two nights ago phil was mad at me because i was scaring simon, who proceeded to go to the bathroom all over phil's apartment, which phil then stepped in. last night i had a dream where we were at some park - i don't exactly remember who all was there - but we had to find different animals or something. there was a crocodile in the water, but it turned out that the animals were just people dressed up in animal suits, and in retrospect reminds me a little of kaiju. in the center of the park at the top of the hill was a cemetary, and we had to go there for some reason. i think maybe someone died? or we were reading about people who had died before.

right before i woke up, i was dreaming that i was in my parent's basement, and there were a few people down there. there was a band playing, and one of the guys kept wanting me to play drums with them. i was doing something with my laptop and one of the things that connects the screen to the base broke. i was actually happy because it meant i could go to the apple store (you see there is a cute girl who works there).

i missed out on bbq last night due to prior plans, but i guess tonight we are going for indian which i haven't had in a while.

these days i'm almost exclusively typing with my left fingers correctly starting on asdf. i was surprised how little time i took to get used to it, but some stuff in emacs is more difficult. and typing like this on the tiny vaio is pretty hard.

after listening to the zwan cd about 5 times, i like it now, despite its 90s-rush tendencies. the songs aren't as great (manic) as the pumpkins, but jesus, i / mary star of the sea really grew on me yesterday. i wish i had seen them back in december when they were in boston.

i'm not really looking forward to today, since upon waking up, fetchmail was segfaulting when getting my mail. at least it can only go up from here, right?

January 31, 2003

hmm i seem to be getting sick or something. i can't wait for some feverdreams tonight. i had some crazy dreams last night but i don't feel like thinking about it. except at one point there was something about x-trader.com (like e*trade).

last night phil and the blizzards and i went out to dinner. i had the Kon K'dam, which was possibly the best salad i've ever had. i bet those baby softshell crabs would make an excellent breakfast cereal.

my sim moved in with this other girl who seems to really like him. unfortunately the "mission" i'm on is going to make me "score" with a party guest. fortunately when my girlfriend asked if i wanted to have a baby i said no.

yesterday i rearranged my room, and today i went looking for a bookshelf and a dresser. i blame this on my cold.

shaver: this link points to the current month, since your mouse clicks are so precious. but now you won't see my awesome banner ads (which put food on my table), so i might have to move them to all of my pages.

speaking of the internet, today someone asked which blogger i used. i was equally shocked and flattered, as my simple css entries aren't like, tremendously pretty although i like to look at them.

i did ~6 loads of laundry tonight, which i think was $20. i will get to sleep in dryer-warmed flannel sheets tonight. the problem is that it's not cold anymore.

my sim is married and has two kids. they grow up so fast *sniff*.

i'm waiting for people to start syndicating sydication aggregations (although that's basically what jwz was talking about).