October 2002 Archives

I am turning in to a total blog whore. I find ones that I find interesting and start reading them. Any that have RSS feeds, I throw on to the news page and keep up with them. The ones that don't I stop by at least a few times a day to see what they are saying. I definitely am finding this an interesting way to find out about people and see what is happening in their lives.

I even keep too many blogs. I keep this one, my Dream Theater site, and I even keep one for work. That one is locked away at this point, but I do have grand plans of bringing a proposal to some of the higher ups to set them up for everyone at the company. I think it would be both a good source of knowledge management as well as a good way for people to express ideas about parts of the company they are not necessarily involved in. I know that my last 2 companies were very open. The last one we were told very often that we should express our feelings and not fear anything bad coming out of it. We set up lots of mailing lists to let people vent. I think this is somewhat a step above that. The company before, well, I took over. I'm like that sometimes.

I've even gotten very good at keeping this place up to date. I hope to keep writing as often as possible. I like being able to talk about the random things I either think about in my head or talk to myself about. Yes, I talk to myself. Live alone for a while, you end up doing it. Hopefully my forum here will help me slow up on some of that.

Many moons ago when I worked at Bluesky (a local ISP, not the Robohelp guys), we did some work for the Massachusetts division of the American Cancer Society. I basically did up their web site (this was back in the days before everyone knew HTML). I remember the irony of me sitting there and smoking a pack a day and working on this web site. It was rather amusing and many of my friends pointed it out to me. We also got involved in their Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. We even had shirts made up with the walk's logo on the front and ours on the back. Well, I still have the shirt and am wearing it today. This evening, while walking over to Walgreens to buy cigarettes, I realized the irony once again and thought back to the days of working for Bluesky. It was fun times and much easier than the world I make for myself these days.

It's funny how different one day can be to the next. Yesterday, my whole day was interupt driven and to a maddening point. Every time I got started on something, something else came up. Now, may of these thing were minor and just needed a minute or five of my time, they were just enough of an interuption (as I was not my usual self) to totally ruin any progress, thought given, etc to the task I was already working on. Just was a very frustrating day.

Today, on the other hand, I am totally chilled out and relaxed. I got in early (8:45, yes that is very early for me), had 2 meetings which both went smoothly, and then got the tests that were frustrating me to no end yesterday to start working correctly (well, the DB load of the tests). At the second meeting I got assigned a new project, which could be very interesting. So, today has been a calm day, just letting my database build go in the background and starting to get materials for my next project together. I just finished downloading the User's Manual for the product I will be working with, so now it will just be some time reading up and getting prepared to do this work. Much nicer than yesterday.

Just read about Googlism. It basically parses Google hits and looks for things like: "Thing you searched for is" and then spits out what Google "thinks" about this thing. Very interesting. I learned that I am a benevolent dictator. I would assume this was either about The Ytsejam Mailing List or The Dream Theater IRC Network.

This is just messed up. Totally don't understand..

CNN.com - Run-DMC DJ slain in recording studio - Oct. 31, 2002

Rather amusing Foxtrot this morning.

I upgraded to Movable Type 2.51 this evening. Its only a bug fix release, so hopefully there will be no other changes. The changelog is here if you want to see what has changed. The big thing for me is that it fixes my bookmarklet for pinging Trackback on individual articles. Yay!

Hmm, Sprint PCS seems to have upgraded their voice mail system. Noticed because of a slight change in log in procedure and that it now gives more information about a call. The funny part is that the voice, though it seems to be the same person's voice, seems a lot more chipper. Maybe its just because it's early, but it sure seemed happier and more upbeat. Very interesting ....

I set up category rss feeds with some help from andersja after reading this post on his site. Now to read the rest of the optimizations.

Oh yeah, they are at http://www.skadz.com/junt/archives/categories/CATEGORY/index.xml

You would replace CATEGORY there with whatever the real category is.

Told ya so, from the Phish-News List:

Many of you have sent questions, so just to clarify: "Phish will hit the road several times in 2003, including a run of dates in the second half of February that spans both coasts - details to follow in the coming weeks."

The Boston Herald has a review of last night's show entitled Excess not too much for Rush. Pretty good review. Check it out.

From the Phish News Mailing List over at phish.net comes some interesting news from the band today:

NEW PHISH STUDIO DISC: ROUND ROOM

Phish will release ROUND ROOM, their latest studio album, on December 10.
Pre-ordering has begun at http://www.phish.com/drygoods/

According to the Phish press release, "what started as rehearsals for the
upcoming and hotly anticipated Phish New Year's Run quickly progressed
into a full-blown recording session, the results of which are distilled
onto a new studio release, ROUND ROOM. Recorded in four days in October
by producer Bryce Goggin, the album ripples with raw, vital energy and
features a healthy dose of the band's trademark improvisational style. In
total, the album's twelve tracks clock in at over seventy minutes."

The album was recorded at Trey Anastasio's studio, "The Barn," in Vermont.
The tracklist is as follows:

1. Pebbles and Marbles
2. Anything but Me
3. Round Room
4. Mexican Cousin
5. Friday
6. Seven Below
7. Mock Song
8. 46 Days
9. All of These Dreams
10. Walls of the Cave
11. Thunderhead
12. Waves

Well, I guess the tour may get started earlier than hoped, as I expected they would do the New Years dates, go in to the studio, and then come back out and tour, but with the album already done, hopefully they will hit the road right away.

Just saw a couple of announcements abou ta new version of the Apache DoS Evasive Maneuvers Module coming out. This is definitely something I want to check out. Basically rejects requests when it senses a DOS. This could be a very nice thing to have both on a large scale server as well as a home server (much easier to take out a little DSL link). This and adding in some things to block all the stupid script kiddie IIS attacks are on my list of things to do.

See, black people like other white people too, not just me, just check out Black People Love Us!.

Tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Went to see Rush at the Fleet Center last night. Bogie and I had pretty good seats (19 row in the middle second section, 26 rows from the stage). All in all it was a good show. I think listening to a lot of jam bands these days has spoiled some of my concert expectations these days. Rush is amazing and puts on an amazing show, but the songs are all almost note for note what you hear on their CDs. I have gotten very used to lots of improvisation and jamming, which they do not stray in to all that often.

The setlist was pretty much the exact setlist from the Saratoga Show from this summer with Freewill and The Trees added on to replace some of the older songs.

The sound in the Fleet Center, at least from where I was, was not the greatest. The sound in there tends to bounce around a lot. I definitely feel I should have used ear plugs, it sometimes helps some of that. It did sound ok, but not wonderful.

All in all, a good show, though I think it would be cool to just see these guys jam out.

The setlist was:

-Intro (Three Stooges theme)
1. Tom Sawyer
2. Distant Early Warning
3. New World Man
4. Roll The Bones
5. Earthshine
6. YYZ
7. The Pass
8. Bravado
9. The Big Money
10. The Trees
11. Freewill
12. Natural Science

Intermission

13. One Little Victory
14. Driven
15. Ghost Rider
16. Secret Touch
17. Dreamline
18. Red Sector A
19. Leave That Thing Alone
20. The Rhythm Method (Drum Solo)
21. Resist (Acoustic)
22. 2112 (Overture, The Temples Of Syrinx)
23. Limelight
24. La Villa Strangiato
25. The Spirit Of Radio

Encore:

26. By-Tor And The Snow Dog/Cygnus X-1/Working Man

Ugh. I hate when a day starts on the wrong foot. I went to the store this morning to pick up some smokes and a drink and snack for the way in to work. Well, my credit card I went to use didn't work. I figured it was just because I had just activated it last night. I bought just a pack of smokes (I hate driving without something to drink, but had little cash on me) and left and called Fleet right away to see what was up.

Now, this is where the Fleet sucks part comes in. I called and they told me that my account had been cancelled. I was rather annoyed as I had gotten no notification that the account was cancelled. I will have to search through my mail to see if I got something and didn't realize it, but I am almost positive I did not. The worst part was, I activated a brand new card LAST NIGHT and it let me go right through the process of activating it. How annoying is that.

I use Fleet as my primary bank and really have had nothing but trouble with them. Between their fuck ups costing me money (ala, letting two payments that were days apart both go through and then charging me an overlimit fee when they should have just rejected one of the payments) to things like double charging me when I go over my limit with different charges. I really think this is the final straw and I need to find a new bank. My biggest thing right now is some place with good online banking as I live on it. Basically, I think I may just take my check this week to a new bank and get an account started. Anyone have any suggestions?

And here we are at another Monday morning. A couple of things going on this week, first off Rush is over at the Fleet Center tonight (anyone need a ticket, a buddy still has 2 extras.). Should be a good show Bogie and I have good seats. Also going to be meeting up with Brian and cms. Should be a good time. Haven't been to the Fleet Center in a while either.

Also, its Halloween week. I will most likely be heading over to the Bell in Hand to see Central Basement on Thursday to celebrate. I've heard some rumors about what they are dressing as, and even if I don't stay long, I will have to at least stop by for a but.

Other than that, hopefully will catch up on some other stuff that I have not been doing as I have been super busy with work.

Well, Happy Monday, hope everyone has a good week.

Went to Carl and Julie's for their Halloween Party last night. I put a bunch of the pictures I took up here.

It seems to me that most people break their computer without much help and don't really need a guide to help them.

Has anyone joined Amazon Associates Program? Is it worth it? I started to sign up and then saw that they wanted to SSN. Not sure how safe I feel about giving that up to them. Looks like they want it for tax purposes. Maybe I should start my own business and then just give them a tax id.

I want one of these. At least it would be honesty in advertising (unlike many other places / people / etc)

Woo! Got new cards at work today. Now I am an Application Specialist instead of a Member of Technical Services. Much more better.

I set up skadz.com: in the news tonight. It's basically a news aggreagator of some of the pages I read on a normal basis. Going to extend it as I find more pages to read (and as I figure out RSS feeds for some friends sites). It was built using Rippy the Aggregator as its backend.

I got linked over to this memo over on InternalMemos.com. Neat idea by the partners over at Taos. E-mail your former employees and try to get them to do work for you, so you can eventually hire them back (which will probably add to more leads, as their current employer probably won't want to lose them). A nice little plan. The guy does seem rather sincere in his wanting to know how people are and the hope to bring them back.

I have special interest in this because I come from a consulting company. I find it interesting that this CEO took the time out and actually wanted to hear from his former employees. This is something that I could NEVER see coming from my former boss. And I don't think it would come with anything resembling a good reception. Most people I am in communication with from my old company have major issues with the people who run the company and how things were done. I think most would find this sneaky and and deceptive rather than a nice gesture.

I could use the $2000 though :) I do have some former Taos friends. I wonder if I found them some leads they could split the money with me.

Check out this link over to Stuff Magazine. Yummy half naked Real World Vegas girls. I'm wondering why there are no HLA photos.

Found this today:

How do I make Movable Type output valid RSS?

I did this on the site. Anyone else running MT should do this too.

All Too True

While surfing around from Lukas's web site to some of his friends' sites, I saw an amazing piece of new over on trikster. Sports Night is coming to DVD! Now, I know some sports writers (yeah, you Bill Simmons) didn't like this show, but I thought it was great. I really thought it should have stayed on TV, but it was just not watched by enough people. It was sad to me when I heard it was being cancelled. But now, I can live it whenever I want. You can pre-order it here over on amazon.com.

Tim posted this the other day. I read it and I felt a little bad for him, but then after thinking about it, I totally know what he means.

I think this weekend, which involved a whole lot of doing nothing and then drinking at the regular bar in the evenings really reminded me of that. I really had no motivation to do anything all weekend. I tried to move from the TV and start things a couple of times, just to get nowhere and go back to watching nothing on TV. It just was not good.

I seem to have lost all my motivation. Its not just in one thing, its everywhere. I don't seem to have the drive to work hard and do things anymore. I just am drifting through life doing what I need to do to survive, but in the end not really feeling much or caring about anything. It's really not a fun way to live life. It's to the point that I don't even care to go drinking or to hang out. I would rather sit around alone and do nothing.

I need to find things that make me happy again. I think I need rto discover some new things, or go back to some old (like guitar) and really follow them. I still love to code, I just can't find anything that can keep my interest more than a few days.

I know I have lots to do this week, maybe if I get in to a good swing of things, I will keep myself going and head towards a little more motivation, but who knows.

So, I went over to Mitch Kapor's Weblog this evening as it had been mentioened on Slashdot and piqued my interest since it was talking about building a new Outlook stype PIM. This was especially interesting to me, since I do as much as I can to help out the Ximian guys work on Evolution. I submit bug reports often, get on irc to help out other users, and even do some bug triaging. I was wondering why someone would start another project like this when there are all sorts of others out there.

It seems like the reasoning is thet he doesn't want an Outlook clone, but a whole new idea behind the PIM. Also, he wants to make the product OS independent. Seems like it is going to be interesting, but I don't see why a whole new development is necessary for this.

The biggest thing that I saw was his Jabber backend to do things like contact passing between people and stuff. Very interesting. I don' t think it will scale in the least, but ok. He mentioned it will not require a server, but I don't see this as a good thing. I would much rather have an LDAP DB, IMAP server, etc to keep all my information in, it makes me a lot more portable. It's nice to be able to access anything anywhere :) There is some level on syncing, but if I jump on my mom's computer when I am at home, it is much easier for me to fire up mutt in a telnet session and access IMAP and LDAP than have to figure out how to sync an application on the local machine.

I will probably keep some track of this, not going to sign up for the mailing list just yet, but soon, maybe, to see how things are going.

Oh, and the last thing. He talks about how he wants to be all open source and this that and the other thing, but I don't see any anonymous CVS information up on the OASF page just yet. No open source til they figure out what the want to do? I dunno, just thought that was strange :)

I've watched a bunch of movies lately, so I thought I would write a bunch of quick reviews.

Kissing Jessica Stein

Before this movie came out, I was told to go see it by a former co-worker. The reason being thet his sister, Heather Juergensen, was the one of the writers and co-stars. It looked interesting in commercials and since I don't go to the movies all that often, I figured I would just wait until it came out on DVD. This was a really good movie. It was a lot of smart comedy and has a cute premise. Defintely worth seeing. Might even be something I pick up on DVD some time in the future.

Changing Lanes
This movie was nowhere near as good as I had hoped it would be. It had a promising premise, but when it came out, it just didn't come out right. I felt that Sam Jackson did not do a good job of portraying the character he was cast in. It could have been the script as well. In the end, it just didn't come off. He is trying to be a man losing his mind because of the things that Ben Affleck's character was going to him, but in the end he just came off as an angry black man.

Death to Smoochy
This movie was a little wacked. I think I may watch it again this week and pay a little more attention. It had a rather messed up storyline that was more like a storyline on top of a story line. In contrast to Sam Jackson, Robin Williams does an awesome job of potraying a guy going nuts. Some nice little plot twists and stuff in this as well.

Panic Room
This movie was alright. I was not paying all my attention to it, as I was doing stuff here on the computer and stuff, but paid enough attention that I got the jist of it. I think I thought it was going to be more suspenseful, but it just wasn't. Who knows, maybe another viewing this week, but I think its just going to go back to Netflix.

The Scorpion King
This movie was RATHER hyped due to the fact that the WWE's (ne WWF's) star The Rock was the lead in the movie. I heard things like he was the next Arnold and all sorts of stuff. Overall, sure, it was a good action movie, The Rock definitely does a good job of making the fight sequences and whatnot seem real. But, in the end, thats about all it was, nothing spectacular.

I did a bunch of site updates tonight. I added a Search capability, added all the talkback stuff I already mentioned, I fixed the list on the side to say Monthly Archives, and I changed the links below each post a bit.

Skadz's Junt

Here's a link to my site, let's see if it trackback's right.

I set up TrackBack on the site tonight. I'll have to see if anyone actually uses it. Does anyone reading use it? It seems like it could be a neat thing. From what I understand at this point, it basically lets you know when other people link to you and things like that. Gonna play with it some and see if I can do cool things with it :)

I got the new this weekend that my former company did more layoffs this past week. It turns out that 2 good friends and 3 other guys I know all got the ax from the office here in Boston. Not sure if anyone else I know lost their jobs yet, but I have yet to hear anything from other friends around the country. I don't think I have too many people that I am real friendly with left there in other offices, so I just have a few people to check in with. I will probably send some emails out later today.

I think in the end I am happy I lost my job there just about a year ago (th 25th will be a year). I really don't think I could deal with going through this right now. I have enough cash issues that not getting a check would be a HUGE problem. I would definitely not like to be going through what Lukas is going through right now. I actually should be going through some of it to try and solve some of my current money issues, but at least I don't have to do it to an extreme.

Well, back to TV. Some movie reviews coming later.

This article over at CNN sure gives new meaning to a girl being tart, huh?

I think the title on this page should be changed to "Hi, I'm biiter"

Comments: with Greg Rzab & George Porter, Jr. and Danny Louis

1st Set:
Wandering Child (1)
World Gone Wild (1)
Painted Silver Light (1)*
No Need To Suffer (1)
Empty Pages (1)
Rocking Horse (2)
Thorazine Shuffle (2)
Down And Out In New York City (3)
Sco-Mule (3)
Mule (2)

2nd Set:
Larger Than Life (1)
If 6 Was 9 (1)+
Devil Likes It Slow (1)**
World Of Confusion (1)
When Doves Cry (2)> Beautifully Broken (2)> When Doves Cry (2) > Beautifully Broken (2)
Effigy (2)
Banks Of The Deep End (2)
Pygmy Twylyte (2)> Blind Man In The Dark (2)

Encore:
Soulshine (2)***

Setlist Notes:
(1) Greg Rzab on bass
(2) George Porter, Jr. on bass
(3) George Porter, Jr. on bass and Karl Denson on sax
* with Nantucket Sleighride tease
** with Pass The Peas tease
*** with Jessica tease
+ first time played

Don and I went to see Gov't Mule over at the Orpheum last night. We had excellent seats, 7th row from the stage on the left hand side. We basically were 15 feet from Warren the whole night.

It was a great show overall. I actually wore earplugs (I think it was the first time I did it for a whole show) due to two facts. First off, I was right next to the speakers and second, I am going to see Pork Tornado tonight over at the The Paradise Rock Club and wanted to actually be able to hear the show. Wearing the lugs killed some of the highs, but overall, it still sounded pretty good.

Some highlights of the show included:

• Karl Denson joining in on 2 songs before his gig up at the Paradise
  
• When the Doves Cry played around one of the songs
  
• Being at the tour opener!
  

The only real letdown of the night was the fact that Jason Newsted, who Don swore was going to be playing some of the set never came out. I was really hoping to see him.

I definitely enjoy the two different bassists. I liked that they were very different players. The first guy was blues and rock bass player. Very good player, hit all his notes, but didn't seem to have a ton of groove in him. The second bass player was much more of a funk and jazz player. Grooved right along with the songs. Both had lightening fast fingers too, probably the second guy more than the first.

Warren sounded real nice all night. I forget how awesome a voice he has until I see him live. I always think of him more as a great guitar player, but he can really sing excellently as well. He did seem to have some equipment problems over the course of the evening, but nothing all that major. And hell, it was the tour opener, it expected.

Matt sounded great on drums. Nice little solos at some points. He's just a solid drummer as far as I could tell. Nothing all that fancy, but definitely kept the pace going.

The keyboard player didn't really shine all that much in my eyes. First off, I could not hear him for a lot of the songs because of the ear plugs and second, he seemed to wander too much on his solos. I dunno, maybe it was just me.

Again, great show overall. Much thanks to Don for the ticket which was 1/2 of my birthday present (the other is the show tonight!). Hopefully I will get and post the set list at some point laster today.

I upgraded the site to Movable Type 2.5 this evening. Please let me know if you have any problems. Thanks!

I forgot to mention last week that I finally made my Dream Theater site, www.dreamt.org live on its new server. I think it looks pretty good. I have been coding up some more stuff for it recently. Mainly the reviews section, which I have about half done. Hopefuilly I will find some time in the near future to finish it up. Take a look and add a comment over there about what you think.

I forgot to mention that I added some pictures this weekend from my cousin's wedding that I went to on Friday. They can be found here. As you can see from this picture a good time was had by all :)

Well, the National Hockey League season starts today! I hope the Isles and B's have even better seasons than last year. Would be great to have both my teams in the playoffs!

Hmmm. The Mimi Fishman Foundation has an auction going for a pair of tickets to the Phish NYE show at MSG. It also includes backstage passes, a hotel, the new Phish Live CDs and DVDs. The auction ends tonight. Well according to this link, the bidding is up to $8,050. If you have ever been to a Phish show, have YOU ever seen anyone who looked like they could afford eight GRAND to go see theband?

This week is NUTS for shows, I wish I had more time and money. In Boston this week are:

• Gov't Mule
• Pork Tornado
• Little Feat (2 Nights!)
• Karl Denson's Tiny Universe
• John Scofield

I am going to the first two with Don as birthday presents, which rocks. We may catch Denson or Feat if time permits, but I doubt it.

First off, I must say Bill Simmons of ESPN.com's Page 2 is one of the funniest guys around. I wish I could just go out drinking with him a night, he just seems like he would be fun. I should send him email and tell him to come down to Sissys some night with me and some of my friends. That would be a fun night.

His latest column is just classic Simmons. Totally funny stuff. I laughed out loud a good 10 times. The one thing I have a problem with is this:

"but couldn't one of the cast members have come into the show with a gambling problem?"

I would have to say there is still odds of 3-1 or maybe 4-1 that one of the characters will develop a gambling problem. My money would be on Frank or Alton for this one, but I am sure that one of the group will start having gambling issues.

I mean, if I woul dhave known they needed to fill this position, I would have gladly volunteered myself for that gig!

Go here.

Whcih one are you?