Manning a booth at a trade show on 2 hours sleep is just not good.
April 2003 Archives
Well, I guess its my blogiversary(sp?) I posted my first post here a year ago today. Yay, me!
I'm off to Sin CIty today for 8 days (trouble) for the EMC Tech Summit and a little vacation. Posting will probably be sportadic (unless there is WiFi) over the next week due to debauchery :) Have a good week!
Man, I am really getting stuff done today. Since my last update, I have gone to the store, started the dishwasher, made lunch, cleaned the bedroom (and then messed it up again with laundry from the closet), put a load of laundry in, put a second load in a basket, and cleaned the lint off my new fleece. Yay me! Now, I just need to do a couple more loads of laundry and pack and then I may give myself permission to go out tonight :)
A lesson I remember every once in a while :) I stayed in last night knowing I needed to at least have a little money for my upcoming trip (more on that later). Woke up this morning, slacked for a bit, but now I am in full productive mode. Kitchen and living room are all clean, CDs are all organized, dishwasher loaded, I'm doing good so far. Now its off to the hell that is the bedroom.
Much like Jeremy, I must have a clean house before going away. I guess I am strange too :)
Well, with a ton of help from the IT guys at work and some more help from Duck, my laptop is back and happy again, yay! Seemingly nothing important lost, thank God.
WHY did my computer have to decide today was a good day for it to go south? I have known there was a hard drive issue for a little while now, but since it was not anywhere near consistent, I haven't decided to have it checked out. Well, today, I booted up (after a crash last night) and now it is getting stuck on recovering the journal of one of the file systems, seemingly hitting what is a bad sector. I am leaving for a week on Sunday and I can't be without my laptop. ARGH. Hopefully my wonderful IT guys can get it all fixed up.
Taking a wee break from the golf circuit, Tiger Woods drives his new Buick Rendezvous into an Irish gas station. An attendant greets him in typical Irish manner, unaware who the golf pro is... "top o'the morning to ya".
As Tiger gets out of the car, two tees fall out of his pocket. "So what are those, son?" asks the attendant.
"They're called tees," replied Tiger.
"And what would ya be usin 'em for, now?" inquired the Irishman.
"Well, they're for resting my balls on when I drive," repliesTiger.
"Aw, Jaysus, Mary an' Joseph!" exclaimed the Irish attendant.
"Those fellas at Buick think of everything!"
Sunday Morning Sex
Upon hearing that her elderly grandfather had just passed away, Katie went
straight to her grandparent's house to visit her 95 year old grandmother
and comfort her.
When she asked how her grandfather had died, her grandmother replied, "He
had a heart attack while we were making love on Sunday morning.
Horrified, Katie told her grandmother that 2 people nearly 100 years old
having sex would surely be asking for trouble.
"Oh no, my dear," replied granny. "Many years ago, realizing our advanced
age, we figured out the best time to do it was when the church bells would
start to ring. It was just the right rhythm. Nice and slow and even.
Nothing too strenuous, simply in on the Ding and out on the Dong."
She paused to wipe away a tear, and continued, "and if the damned ice
cream truck hadn't come along, he'd still be alive today!"
Wouldn't almost every conert be free if we could sue the band for being drunk or having an off night? I mean, I remember seeing Guns N Roses in like 92 or 93 and Axl announced that Slash was out of his head on heroine. Can I go get my money back now?
Recording Industry Goes After Students Over Music Sharing
This bothers me greatly. Firstly, why would you sue a kid for millions of dollars? Do you really think you are ever going to see any of that? It will all be settled out of court anyways, so, why even bother? Kids will be kids, why does this change when it comes to file swapping? First off, how is this REALLY all that different from kids borrowing each other's CDs? I mean, I have a ton of MP3s, most are from my own CDs, that I make available to myself online. Every once in a while a friend will want to hear a track from a certain CD and I will send them the track. If they like what they hear, they go out and buy the CD. This is a good thing. This makes people want to hear new and different music and try out new things. If people hear music they like, it means MORE, not less sales for the record industry. As I mentioned in an earlier post, they need to find a better way to incorporate new technologies rather than try to kill them. Much like they wanted to pretty much make the sale of blank tapes illegal, they are trying to do the same with file sharing. In the end it is very much the same thing. People hear music they like, they go out and buy CDs, go to concerts, buy merchandise at concerts, etc. I love how the RIAA keeps blaming file sharing when at the same time, they released less albums than the year before, they are putting out a LOT of crap, they are putting out virtually the same music by very similar artists constantly. The solution is to put out more and better music, not try to play the blame game. I heard something (and I am never going to remember where I heard it) that someone is now creating a program to listen to what is currently popular and design music that sounds like that music in order for new popular music to come out. How sad is that? I mean, today's radio stations play enouigh of the same crap over and over again, why can't we let new bands come out and see what they have to offer rather than offering us the same stuff packaged differently over and over. I think this is one of the reasons I love the jam band scene so much. Not only can I see 10 different bands that are completely different, but I can see the same band 10 different times and have a very different experience each time. Bands like Phish are doing a WONDERFUL job of dealing with file sharing, they are just making all their shows available online just 48 hours after the show. So, not only are they making money from people going to the show, but those same people are then going home and downloading the same show at a high quality so they can enjoy the experience over and over again. This is innovation, not an excuse, much like the RIAA is doing. OK, enough rambling from me.
I have been rather chatty today.
Just so GG doesn't kill me, I guess I will play along.
I wish ....
I could get better control of my life.
I didn't procrastinate.
I had expendable cash.
OK, just a few today. I think I need to take this a little lighter too :)
I hit 20k miles on my car yesterday. Took me just over 13 months. Is that bad?
An Analysis of Netflix's DVD Allocation System
Yes, I know if was on Slashdot, but this is a very interesting report. I'm thinking it is very close to true too. When I was living back on LI 18 months ago (around that), I was getting 3 movies in the maill, watching all 3, then sending them right back. When I was doing this, I definitely saw a lot of my movies would at least be on Short Wait, if not Long Wait. Well, now, that I am a total Netflix slacker, I see many more movies seem to be available much more often.
I do need to start working on being less of a slacker on this one. I definitely am not properly exploiting my membership. I think if I got a TiVo like I planned on, I would be able to get much better about organizing my time and finding more time for movies and such. Oh yeah and not going out 3-5 nights a week would probably help on this one too.
I swear my desk was clean as could be when I walked in yesterday, how in 2 days did it become a disaster again? Argh!
Update: OK, wasn't as bad as I thought, just needed to throw some stuff away and move some wires around. Much better again.
Don just sent me a link to this: Imax Says Matrix Film Deal A 'Watershed Event' >IMAX
So, I think the plan is:
May 15: Matrix Reloaded @ Park Street
First weekend of June: Matrix Reloaded IMAX (not sure of location, yet!)
Nov 5: BIG DECISION. Do you go to the regular theater or the IMAX theater first? AHHHH. Brain hurts now.
O.J. Simpson Makes Pass for Reality Show
What else would you call it?
Intel plans Itanium course correction
I have to say, working for a hardware manufacturer these days, this somewhat worries me. I think its great that they see the need for 32 bit software to run well, but is software REALLY the place to be fixing this? I mean, sure, Linux and MS will probably be able to put something in, but is that the fix? Shouldn't the fix be fixing the hardware, so ia32 and ia64 both run well? I have been a fan of AMD for a long time and I do think they have done it the right way of extending ia32 to 64 bits rather than a new architecture. This software will fix the advantage they have somewhat, but I still think Intel may be making a bad move here.
An article about Madonna's site getting hacked after she put fake MP3s on the Net with her saying "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
I just find this amusing. Artists and the record companies in general REALLY need to find a better way to deal with this. Putting fake files out there will just lead to people getting annoyed with you and then doing something like this. If there was a better way to do this (like this album was available on mtv.com before it came out via their The Leak service. What this does (if I understand it correcly) is lets a person listen to the album right online via streaming media. To me, this is great. I get to hear an album, make sure it is as good as I could hope for, and then buy it right from that page. This avoids you buying one hit wonder CDs, but also helps people to decide they like a CD they were not sure about. Services like this, would help kill off some piracy in my opinion. There are lots of other ways to do it as well, but I think they have been talked about at such lengths, there is no need to go in to them now.
Also, how ironic is it that she put fake MP3s out there, but at the same time was allowed steaming versions of her CD go out via mtv.com a week before the CD came out?
I feel like crap, I'm exhausted, I just want to go to bed, but gotta at least make it through 24.
and I won. Got up WAY too late this morning. Though I was up at 8, I couldn't drag my ass out of bed until 9:30. Not good.
Marathon weekend was fun. Too much alcohol, too many cigarettes, not enough food, luckily not terribly much drama. Doing 5 nights of drinking in a row is never a good thing though. I am pretty much broken and coming to the realization I may be getting too old to pull this crap.
My socks smell. I just thought everyone should know that :)
Nate is not the only one who get get his name on an O'Reilly Cover.
Monday morning and realizing you are still drunk from the night before is just plain bad.
I hate women.
The sky is blue instead of gray.
There is nothing wet or frozen falling from the sky.
There is a big yellow ball (which appears to be made of fire) up in the sky.
Should I be worried?
I will get my company to send me to this next year come hell or high water.
Isles win! Wow, the Islanders came out fighting in the playoffs. Going up 1-0 on the road is huge for them. (Too bad both the B's and the Sox lost last night, it could have been an awesome day for Skadz Sports :)
This may very well be the new definition of bitter. (Though rather amusing in some respects :)
So, I got all domestic last night and it was actually really nice.
I got home early to wait for Peapod to show up with groceries. They were supposed to be there between 6 and 8. I was hoping they would not be 2 hours late like last time. They showed up around 6:30. This helped make the night very productive.
I made a nice dinner of steak and steamers for myself, did 2 loads of laundry, 2 loads of dishes, cleaned out the cat litter, cleaned out the fridge, took out the garbage and even picked up around the house some.
So nice to have clean clothes, clean dishes, no garbage and food in the house.
I really enjoy helping out with open source projects. And an email this morning did a good job of reminding me why. I sent in a bug about 11:30 on Monday night that had been bugging me for a while and I noticed was still present in the latest development snapshot I am running. Last night, someone from the QA group marked it for the next release. This morning, I get an update to the bug that the developer found a subtle error in the way things were being calculated and its now fixed. So, 36 hours after submitting a bug (which annoys me greatly) it has been fixed and next time I grab a development snapshot, it will be fixed. That just rocks. Just proves to me that running betas and development snapshots of software and reporting bugs really helps a project.
You'd think so, with the way the weather has been here in the Northeast recently.
<Homer>Steeeeeaaaakkkkkkk</Homer>
Woot! We just scored 24th row tickets to Lollapalooza in Boston this summer. Yay!
For those of you who don't recognize the name, this guy is the information minister in Iraq. He is the one on TV saying the US isn't even in Baghdad yet while CNN is streaming video of troops running around the streets.
Some of my recent favs of his:
Sahaf said American troops were beginning to "commit suicide on the walls of Baghdad.
"The soldiers of Saddam Hussein have given them a lesson they will never forget,"
"We will in fact encourage them to commit more suicides. We have given them death and poison."
This guy needs to be saved, brought to NYC and then be put on SNL to do Weekend Update. I think he would be hilarious. Things like:
"The Infidel Russell Crowe did not in fact get married today, it was all American propaganda to make this bad man look like he has changed his ways so that his movies sell more tickets. The Americans are just being greedy and trying to make themselves more money off of foreigners who have aligned themselves with the evil doers"
or some other random shit like that :)
Syracuse just won the NCAA, St Johns won the NIT, now we just need UConn to win the Women's NCAA tomorrow and the FULL sweep will be complete :)
I guess cat's parents don't tell them they'll go blind if they sit too close to the TV. :)
Just heard on the news. The Red Sox just picked up Pedro's option for next year. He has mentioned a few times in interviews lately that it was bugging him and he didn't like it hanging over his head. I'm psyched it got cleared up. Now if the team can actually HIT when he is pitching, he could have a really good season :)
Hmmm, I am thinking a road trip may be in order for the week after July 4th. Dream Theater, Queensryche, and Fates Warning are going out on tour together and are playing the Northeast that week. Currently the shows from the 5th through the 12th include Montreal, Wallingford, CT, Holmdel, NJ, Wantagh, NY, and Wilmington, DE. Hopefully a Boston date will get added in too. So, that would mean 6 shows in 7 days, 2 countries, 5 states. Sounds like fun to me. The $50 or so a ticket could hurt though ;)
It probably won't last, but the coolest thing about coming in early? You get to LEAVE early. I'm gonna be on my couch by 5 :) This rocks.
Hmmmm, John Butler Trio put out a 2 disc live album recently, but its yet to be available online or in the US. It says soon, so hopefully it will be out soon here, definitely one to pick up. Don and I went to see these guys a while back and they kicked my ass all over the club.
This is just a minor warning, with baseball season getting in to full swing and the hockey playoffs starting, there is a good chance of a lot of sports talk (read: gripipng about bad things happening to my teams) in the next couple of weeks :)
Somehow I don't think I am gonna survive this day. Due to the time change and sleeping in yesterday, I couldn't fall asleep until after 3AM and then went and woke up at 6AM. Three hours sleep really is not enough for a day of work, especially when I will have to drive home in the snow tonight. I want this day to end before it starts. No fun.
Update: Yeah, this is gonna be wild, at 9:05 I had already fixed a machine that was having problems and had a set of tests running. Scary.
As the guy said on SportsCenter last evening, can whomever pissed off Mother Nature, please give her a call and apologize? I'm sick of this white stuff falling out of the sky.
Ahhhhhh, very nice. I spent much of the day today getting my computer back to the state I wanted it in. I was running Ximian's Gnome 2.2 (Snapshots) before I upgraded to RH 8 and everything worked nicely. Well, after the upgrade a number of programs stopped working :( I finally spent almost the whole day today getting Gnome 2.2 up and running on my machine and got all my programs working again. Hopefully this week, I will spend a bunch of time getting things all up to Gnome 2.2.1 released version while I wait for Ximian Desktop 2.0 to come out. The best part of this work, is my aggregator FINALLY works again. Turns out it was probably not a gnome issue, but I did figure out where the issue was :) Yay! News again!
I just noticed while sitting here working on my computer that the sun is still shining bright and its 6 at night. I love daylight savings :)
Man, is this war just a LITTLE over covered by the media? I just heard this one CNN: "So and so reports on a wounded Iraqi soldier found by the CNN camera crew." WHAT?!?!?! Why is the CNN crew finding soldiers? Shouldn't the area be 100% secure before news crews go wandering around? Wow, just blows me away.
Woooo! My boys, St Johns beat Texas Tech this evening to make it an all Big East NIT final on Thursday. Woooooooo!
