I'm really starting to worry that I am becoming an adult. I mean, come on, I'm only 29! This latest realization came this evening while at the food store. I only need a little because I am off to SF on Saturday (more on that later). As I headed to the checkout, I realized I had just had a very adult shopping experience. In the past, things like frozen food, ice cream, snacks, soda, candy, etc would have been on the top of the list. Today, the list consisted of real food INCLUDING fruits and vegetables and some toothpaste. No junk, just food and all of it real food. It's amazing what happens when you start growing up.
November 2004 Archives
More like, yet another year. In an attempt to avoid the stress I caused myself last year by not having renewed my lease 3 weeks before my lease was up, I stopped by my landlord this evening and dropped off a letter of my intention to stay another year. My lease isn't up for another 2 months, so I am way ahead of the curve this time. Hopefully I can have this all taken care of before the end of the year.
Through what could probably be determined to be a large fault of my own, I ended up with 2 Amazon. This would not have mattered much except that I actually used both accounts in some way. Amazon has a WONDERFUL feature of being able to have accounts with the same e-mail address and different passwords. I think this is how this trouble started.
One account was linked to my Amazon Associates account. I use this for both this site and my Dream Theater site. I actually make a little money here and there from it too :) So, I need this account.
On the other account, I have my EXTREMELY large Amazon Wish List. Also, I have the credits from my Amazon Associates account applied to this account, so I even have a positive balance on this account.
Moving the whole wish list to the associates account seemed rather difficult. And moving the positive balance would probably be even harder. On the other hand, creating a new associate ID and re-urling all my sites would be just as little fun.
So, I e-mailed Amazon tech support and asked for some help. I asked if they could combine the 2 accounts, figured it was worth a shot. Well, I got a reply from them this afternoon that they have done just that.
Thanks Amazon!
Spent a bunch of time this evening hacking the install process for GMime. The current CVS didn't build as an RPM with the spec file included, so I spent a bunch of time fixing it and the configure scripts to handle the addition of the Mono bindings, as well as build without them. Hopefully they will commit the changes RSN.
The fourth edition of the Beagle Newsletter is now available
Latest Strongbad E-mail is up and Strongbad has a new toy!
The latest version of MT-Blacklist provides stats on comment spams blocked. I enabled it about this time on Friday and have since have 583 comment spams blocked. Ugh, I hate spammers.
Not really. Very strange being back at work after 4 days of lounging on the couch. Had a fleeting thought this morning of working from home, but gave up on it. Got up later than I should have, got a parking ticket about 5 minutes before I got out to the car. I knew I was going to get it, but getting it that close sorta sucked. Well, time to get back in to the swing of things.
Can someone please explain to me why some blog softwares are not coming with full RSS feeds enabled? Movable Type for a long time came with crap excerpt feeds, but with the the release of MT3, they fixed it so their 1.0, 2.0 and Atom feeds are all now full feeds. The one minor problem is that in an upgrade, they don't upgrade the feeds and leave whatever template was in place. So, anyone who has recently upgraded to MT3, go get the default feeds off the MT site and FIX YOU FEEDS.
So, now that MT is doing it right, why aren't other people? A few feeds I read recently changed over to Wordpress and they ship excerpt feeds now. On some of these sites, I have actually had full feeds turn in to excerpt feeds because of this upgrade.
I'm sorry, but I don't have time to go from site to site reading blog posts. I doubt other people do either. I have over 600 feeds I try to keep up on and having to click through to read things just is not something I am willing to do.
So, people, fix your RSS feeds. Blog software writer, SHIP with full RSS feeds.
Yet another movie, watched Malibu's Most Wanted this afternoon. This was rather amusing. I laughed a lot at the beginning, but after a while, the joke started to get older and older, so the humor sort of wore down. Overall, it was a good movie, definitely something that will pass the time and give you a few laughs.
The Batman LEGO Film - "Batman: Revenge" (2004)
I've had this WMV file sitting on my hard drive for a while, but never had the chance to look at it. Doing some cleaning up today, I decided to watch. All I can say is this is awesome. I don't even want to think about the time spent doing this because it boggles the mind. Just the shadows alone in some parts must have taken hours, forget all the building of the sets. Take a look, I think you will enjoy.
Woah! I noticed someone posted about Skype earlier today. I have been hearing about it for a while, but I thought it was a Windows only thing. I later heard it came out for OSX, but still heard nothing about Linux, so I continued to ignore. Well, after today's post, I headed over to their web site and noticed that there is a linux version of Skype. Woohoo!
I downloaded the FC2 RPM which seems to have worked fine on Fedora Rawhide. I've got it all set up now, but no one to try it out with. So, if you have a Skype account, let me know, so I can play :)
Yes, I've watched a lot of movies on this long weekend.
First, I watched The Italian Job this morning. Neat movie, some cool action, but nothing all that special. I did enjoy the Mini Cooper racing. I have some guys I work with who have these and know there is no chance they could really do that :) And its never a bad thing to watch a movie with Charlize Theron.
Next, I watched Radio. I thought this was a very nice story. The movie itself was good, but nothing amazing. I thought Cuba did a very good job portraying the main character Radio. It felt at points that the movie was rushed along some, but after reading a little online after the movie, I see that they kind of took a story that was 20+ years and tried to push it all in to one year and one movie. A nice watch, but somewhat sad at points, which is never a good way to start a day.
Watched Shrek 2 last night. It was alright. Cute plot, cute movie, had me laughing here and there, but nothing incredible from the plot piece.
On the other hand, the movie itself is just incredible. During the opening montage where the wave splashed over them, it was the most amazing thing to see the characters post water covering. The graphics were just INCREDIBLE. It just amazes me more and more how much they can do in these movies. There were a number of times when I did a double take to remember whether or not this was a live action movie or not.
Another very fun part of the DVD was watching the technical defects videos. You could tell at points what they were trying to do and how they went very wrong.
And just in case anyone was confused, the three blind mice definitely were the best performers on Far Far Away Idol :)
Spent some time today trying to get a TiVo Home Media Server set up again on my Linux machine, so I could listen to the music on my machine through my stereo.
A while back I had set up byRequest and it had worked ok. I grabbed the latest CVS today and started playing with it.
In a "recent" version (quotes because it hasn't been updated in like 6 months), the developers added something they called transcode. This allows media types other than MP3s to be played via HMO. I thought this was great since a lot of my collection is in FLAC and SHN (from downloaded concerts).
I added information for FLAC in to the configuration file and was ready to go. I figured this would be all I needed to do. Boy was I wrong. It continuosly told me that it could not find a transcode method for the file type.
I hate haven't done any serious C coding in a long time, so this was going to be interesting. I spent a bunch of time adding in debug to spit things out to the log. This showed that the stuff I added in to the configuration file was being picked up. I kept tracing the code until I found where it was setting the transcode method. Put in a debug line here, restarted the server and I got the same error and no debug line. Wait a second!
Went back in to the code and saw that the code I just asked to spit out information was in an IFDEF'ed section. So, I looked for another time this was being called. It wasn't! Eureka! I looked again at the IFDEF and saw it went too long. Fixed the IFDEF and things started working again. Woot!
So, the patch is here: byrequest-noxm-transcode.patch.
Glad I can now listen to all my shows via my stereo without having to burn them out to CDs.
I've enabled comment moderation now that I have moved to MT3. This means you not only need to get past MT-Blacklist, but also me before your comments make it on to this site. So, please, just stop.
Wednesday night, I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third installment in the Harry Potter series.
I'm a huge fan of the books, so I have really enjoyed these movies thus far. My biggest worry was that it has been a while since I read book 3, so I wasn't sure how much I was going to remember.
I definitely enjoyed this movie. The effects were very cool. The look of the movie was very different from the earlier movies, as was talked about a lot as it was coming out. The new director felt that the kids in the book were starting to get to a darker time in their life and the look of the movie reflects that.
As I went through I remembered some of the pieces of the book and there are parts that are missing and even one or two that are out of order from what I remember from the book. Otherwise, I felt it told the story real well and moved the story forward. Can't wait for the next one!
The latest cities added to the Metroblogging Universe are Bangkok and Portland. A little late, but gotta get the information out. Now, I just need to return to my posting on Boston Metroblogging RSN.
Watched Elf last night. Will Ferrell is very amusing in it. It had a rather cute theme for the holidays, which I think anyone will enjoy. At the same time, I was laughing my ass off many time. Definitely a must see.
Here's what got done today:
* Upgraded to Movable Type 3.121
* Re-did layout to better match MT3 default
* Removed links to Links, Boston, Reading Pages
* Linked to Wiki
* Cleaned up Wiki just a bit
* Edited Gallery Templates to match new layout
* Updated CD Collection pages to match new layout
* Updated About page to match new layout
* Added in Flickr badge on side bar
* Got rid of Moblog, moving it to Flickr
I think that's about everything.
Update:
* Added Reading List back using BookQueueToo
Still have a few things to finish cleaning up, but I've been much got everything moved over to Movable Type 3. Please let me know if you have any problems. Oh, and if you are reading from RSS, check out the new layout. I think it looks pretty good :)
Doing some work on the blog today, beware of falling concrete.
OK, a little behind on posting today, been going back and forth between sleep and waking all day. Just wanted to pop up and say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. More later....
After my plans to go to Maryland to visit my cousin for Thanksgiving fell through, I decided it would be best to just stay at home and relax and play some catch up for 4 days.
After braving the traffic on 495, I hit a wide open 90E and flew home. 90W, on the other hand, should have been renamed to the Mass ParkingPike or something. It was full from Boston to 496 and beyond. Glad I wasn't going that way.
I relaxed for a bit after getting home, being my normal lazy self, but then decided I should take care of some things. So, I hit the food store and made sure I had enough food to get me through until Monday. Then, I hit the convience store and made sure I had enough smokes until Sunday.
Basically, I am ready for a weekend of not leaving the apartment.
Because I am prepared for a nice long weekend in the apartment, I have a very long list of things to do and an even longer list of hopes to do :) Hopefully, I'll blog through instead of just vegging out in front of the TV for 4 days.
One of my guiltiest pleasures is watching WWE wrestling on Monday nights. Tonight's show started off with a bang, taking shots at ABC, the NFL, the NBA, the FCC and all the other nonsense going on these days. A trranscript of sorts:
Shelton Benjamin in wrestling gear grabs his belt, turns and looks VERY surprised and says "Trish"
Camera shows, naked bottom of legs, comes up to Trish Stratus in a towel, brushing her hair
TS: "Hey Shelton"
SB: "What are you doing here?"
TS: "Oh me? I was just taking a long hot shower. And where are you off to looking so pretty?"
SB: "Monday Night Raw? I got a six man tag match, William and Eugene need me"
TS: "Wh-Wh-What about my needs? What about Trish?"
SB: "Oh sugar, don't worry, you'll find somebody else. I mean you are the biggest slut of raw"
TS: "You're so uptight" Throws brush over shoulder "You need to loosen up and I know just how" Starts to take off towel ...
Vince McMahon (angry): "What the hell is going on here?"
Vince(stunned, almost stuttering): "It's a woman in a towel. I mean, this is uncontienable. This is scandalous. I can see the moral fabric of America disintegrating right before my very eyes. The sexual overtones, the racial overtones"
SB: Excuse me?
VM: Well, Shelton, you may not realize this, but you're an African American, And everybody knows, African Americans are attracted to Canadian white women with broken noses. Now, I'm sorry, but the FCC is not going to tolerate this and neither will I. I mean I'm not going to have a locker room full of miscreants and deviants. This is the WWE. This is not the NFL and it damned sure is not the NBA. Because of this kind of sexual titilation will send you and other professional wrestlers in to the stands to attack the audience. And if that were to happen, that would be the downfall of civilization as we know it.
SB: You know what? You really need to lighten up
VM: But I have a board of directors to answer to. Somehow has to uphold the virture .... Is he gone?
TS: Yup.
Trish drops the towel (queue Monday Night Football Music) and jumps in to Vince's arms.
VM: My God! Ohh. Oh yeah!
(try to make out, but can't because of Trish's nose guard)
VM: Are you ready for some wrestling???
If so, can you please point me in its direction? Thanks!
Today has been such an up and down day. It started off with a flat tire which I mentioned earlier.
Then, I went to the service station and found that the tire had a hole in the side, which meant a new tire. Service station said they may not be able to get to it today, but it didn't look good. Not good as I was rather nervous about driving home on the donut in the dark.
Luckily, I got a phone call around 3:45 that they had the tire and could do the work today. Yay!
Then, I got the $170 bill. Boo!
Then, I got home and had a very late, but very timely birthday present in the form of a check.
So, I guess in the end, the day was a wash, but it has definitely been a roller coaster.
has a very large hump today. Hopefully, I can get over it.
Ever since I got a nail in the sidewall of one of my tires a few months back (just days after a major repair job on the car), I have had a fear of flat tires. Because of that, I pretty much check all 4 tires each and every time I get in the car to make sure none are flat. It's just part of my ritual of driving these days. I know it may seem neurotic, but I do it each and every time.
So, this morning, getting in the car at a decent hour (8:20) instead of some of the rather later times I have gotten in to my car in the last few days, I notice that my front tire is flat. Argh! This is not how I needed to start this day. I got all my stuff out of the car, set the alarm and headed back in to the house to come up with a plan. Contemplated calling AAA. While thinking about that, I realized, I hadn't really checked the spare. So, I headed back out to the car, checked that the spare was ok, and grabbed the manual for the car.
Spare was fine and the manual said it could do 65 for 3000 miles. OK, I have a good spare, what to do next? I decided to read up on how to change the tire (hadn't done this in a long time and never on this car). It seemed rather easy, so I headed out to do it.
The one minor glitch in the tire changing process was that the car was too close to the curb to raise the jack, so I had to move the car ever so slightly. Other than that, things went smoothly. Thank God.
Headed back to the house, got all my stuff, again, and headed out on the road. The drive went rather smoothly considering I had the donut on. Pretty much got in the right lane and set the cruise at 65. Since it was almost 10 by the time I left the house, didn't have to take it off the whole time between 128 and 495. Made it much easier, since I tend to be a fast driver.
So, now I get to find out if I need a new tire or not. I'm hoping not, my wallet can't really afford a new tire at the moment.
I spent a bunch of time today working with Movable Type 3. I got my whole site imported in to a copy of my laptop and redid the design to more match the MT3 default. Hopefully, I'll find some time in the next couple of days to actually update the real site. A quick peek:
I also started playing with some new plugins and see what I may be able to add in to make the site even better.
Nine Inch Nails - Closer (Super Mario Bros Remix)
If you like NIN or video games, you should totally enjoy this. And yes, this is the uncut version of the song, so if you don't like bad words, don't download it.
Torrentocracy posted a few quick video clips of Umprheys McGee with Phil Lesh in a torrent from a show a few weeks ago in CA.
Umphrey's McGee is a band I've been listening to a lot lately, so really wanted to check this out. Anyone happen to have this show in full? I'd love to hear it.
Hi there! How's things? It seems to me that the wind may have blown your calendar ahead a month or two. There really should not be a couple of inches of snow on the ground on November 13th here in Boston. It seems like an honest mistake, so I just ask if you could please fix your calendar and get it back to the 50 degree weather we should be having this time of year.
Thanks!
Skadz
From my panel:
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
With the release of Fedora Core 3, the development branch of Fedora is back in full effect. I noticed yesterday afternoon that the blue check had turned in to the red exclamation point, so I knew I had some updates. I moused over and I had over 160 updates, WOOO! Tried to update, but it seems that not everything has been re-compiled with the new updates yet :( Slowly, fixes are coming in. Updates are up to about 180 now, but still a few missing packages before this mother update can go in. Hopefully it will get there in the next day or two. Some highlights:
Python 2.4.0
GCC 3.4.3
Firefox 1.0RC1
MySQL 4.1.7
I can't wait til everything gets updated :) Yes, I am a geek.
Two new distributions released today.
First, Fedora Core 3 was released today. It can be downloaded here or Bittorrent'ed here.
Second, Novell has put out the first relesae of their Novell Linux Desktop.
I've been running FC3 for a while (actually, development) and it kicks much ass. Gnome 2.8, Evo 2.0, etc etc. Lots of cool new bells and whistles. I could really see this being used by a normal user.
I've heard a lot of good things about NLD from the Novell/Ximian folks. The only bad part thus far is that you can download it, but only get a key to update it for 30 days. After that, I guess you have to pay. Guess I will have to see if work's partner status can get me some full keys.
From the Evolution Blog, Evolution 2.1.0 has been released.
This is a development release that will eventually go along with Gnome 2.10.
Guess it's time to start building snapshots again.
So, I voted for the first time ever this morning. It was very easy, especially since the polling place was a block away from my apartment. Got there right around 8, so I had to wait about 30 mins, but that was no big deal.
The highlight of the experience was when a school bus full of kids pulled up at a red light right in front of the polling place. The kids, seeing the line, all started chanting "Kerry! Kerry!". It was very cute and rather amusing.
So, I've done my part, now it's your turn. Go Vote!
So, this morning, I hit the City of Boston web site. From there, I was able to first, make sure that I really was registered. I knew I had done it, just wanted to confirm. That page also gave me where I need to go to vote. Luckily, its a nice easy two block walk away. So, that's the first thing on the list for tomorrow.
As I got home this evening, my Mom called and reminded me to vote. I told her, I was such a good kid, I knew exactly where I needed to go and planned on doing it in the morning.
So, now I remind all of you. Tomorrow is important. GO VOTE!
