+++ATH0

Posted by Dan at 10:18 PM

February 07, 2005

Question to you

"You're really lovely, Underneath it all.
D'You really love me, Underneath it all"

Posted by Dan at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2005

February

A quick "Happy Birthday" to all the people in my life with February birthdays, and yes there are lots. Yep, even you.

Oh Jamie, once again congratulations on the birth of Mary Ayako. Now I hope you're able to get some sleep sometime in the near future ;)

Posted by Dan at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2005

Home, home on the Range

... where the deer and the antelope play!

Back from Scottsdale AZ with a whole slew of new information. Unfortunately the conference organizers haven't really figured out that providing your attendees with wireless internet access is a good thing. More importantly, having the hotel's wireless just barely providing a signal in the conference room, only leads to a lot of frustrated attendees and a lack of attention spans to the conference itself. Oh yeah, if you're also providing breakfast, include meat in it somehow (i.e. bacon, sausage, or even lox). Just bagels and coffee doesn't cut it, really!

Oddly enough, my second trip to Arizona has proven to be about as disastrous as the first. The first time was a flight on America West from Philadelphia to Seattle, with a stop at the hub in Phoenix. Thanks to some bad weather, I was delayed in Philly long enough to miss my connecting flight and any flight happening that day to Seattle. America West was willing to put me up in a hotel, but they weren't about to tell me how to get there or even which of the hotels it was (there were a few by the same name). Eventually a group of stranded travelers commandeered a van that knew where he was going, charged it back to the airline and got about 3 hours of sleep before all of us tried to catch the next flight to Seattle.

This time wasn't much different. I arrived at the airport expecting to have a ticket to Phoenix. Despite my insistence, their computer was absolutely positive I was not on the flight (or any flight for that matter). They had the tickets for my two coworkers, but none for me. Odd. I was forced to buy a ticket there in hopes of catching the later flight down at least, with standby on the flight I was supposed to be on being an option. Stand-by didn't happen, and it was then that I realized my luggage was on it's way to Phoenix without me. Finally arriving in Phoenix later in the day, I had to put up with jokes of "you have purchase a plane ticket to fly idiot" and things like that (I knew those ribs were coming). What I hadn't expected was to find my luggage so easily. It was behind a sliding glass holding case, awaiting my pickup with the tracking number. The luggage handler and I walked right on down, moved to open the case, and SNAP the key broke in the lock. The next 40 minutes were spent trying to open the door.

At least Arizona had bright blue skies, beautiful sunsets AND sunrises. Warm weather was there the entire time, and it just felt relaxing. Now if only the conference room had windows, or more sunlight in it.

Posted by Dan at 12:21 AM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2005

Ice Age

For future reference, NEVER believe those who tell you "Oh it never gets icy here, don't worry about it" when you know for a fact you live in an area with a lot of precipitation. I'm currently living my weekend in a prison cell many would call my apartment, thanks to the inability to scale the hill leading to the front door.

Posted by Dan at 01:09 AM | Comments (0)

January 03, 2005

Ringing in the New Year

What a way to ring in the new year... wow.

Sorry for the grainy picture, but camera phones aren't very good normally, and adding in freezing temps doesn't help.

Posted by Dan at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

December 26, 2004

Reflections of the Week Gone Past

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and whatever other holidays there might be.

Things I've learned this past week...

1 Do NOT decide that building a custom modified version of PostgreSQL and running it on a production server is a good idea. Yeah, I know, what was I thinking?

2 Airlines suck. It's not as if the holiday travel push was a surprise, they had 360 days to prepare for it. Despite that, and some beautiful weather the entire flight, I was delayed because somehow they had no airplane.

3 The C# garbage collection system cannot be set to a more aggressive scheduler without computations. It can, however, be told that it sucks and should REALLY do it's job RIGHT NOW. This kind of kills app performance, but when your application starts throwing OutOfMemoryExceptions because the GC refuses to clean up that 2MB allocation that was 14 iterations ago... your app sucketh.

4 Trying to buy a TV is awful. I can't fathom paying 5000$ USD for a high definition tv, nor can I see it being environmentally wise to buy a $400 tv only to be tossed out in a year. Yes a 1500$ USD tv can be purchased, but who really wants to squint at 25" LCD screen from about 20' away? Not me.

5 Having missed the initial release of the song, Manu Chao's "Bongo Bong" has completely addicted me over the past month. It's bad. I can even pretend to know the French portions of the song.

Posted by Dan at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2004

Jobs and more jobs

The recent lack of postings can be explained pretty quickly, I've taken a second job. As the winter months approach the days become shorter and in typical fashion, I become less active after my normal job. This year I've decided to try something different with a part-time position as a ski instructor. In theory this would be a great job, I love to ski, I get to spend hours outside, meet a bunch of new people, etc etc. This works great until you realize that the muscle cramps and what not don't go away quickly making your day job really really painful. Ouch...

Posted by Dan at 12:34 AM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2004

Hypocrites!

I've been hesitating to make this post as I do try to avoid posting personal notes, but the pieces have been nagging at me for a few weeks now.

The title pretty much sums up the situation for me at the moment. Recently a friend of mine had asked for a bit of advice on some aspect of their romantic life. The short of the conversation revolved around if they should be getting back in touch this person after an ugly fight between the two. I don't really know the estranged partner at all, but my general belief was if you wanted restore the relationship one party has to initiate the communication. After a bit more discussion it was decided that the relationship really was worth salvaging. After a bit more discussion it turns out that I am a victim of not following my own advice. Oddly enough, it seems that when asked for opinions, I can find my own counter-points in myself to each of my opinions.

The other odd tidbit of news recently arrived in my US postal mailbox. Not something I typically use to receive much news (beyond the IEEE or ACM subscriptions, or various magazines). A letter arrived announcing the 10 year reunion of my high school class. Ron and I had discussed this a few years ago when we realized we had known each other for almost 16 years, and both generally agreed it wasn't going to happen for a few reasons. The first has been a historical precedent set by the school. Essentially the school is so small that instead of having singular class reunions they hold entire school reunions, mixing those from recent years on back to as far as the former classmates may be living. These mini-reunions happen about twice a year and none as of yet have been graced by my attendance. I don't see why a class specific version should be any different. The second reason Ron and I came up with is that essentially we've kept in touch with everyone we wanted to from high school. Yeah there are one or two people, but they get outweighed by having to deal with many of the same characters again. There were reasons I didn't associate with many of them in the first place, and I'm willing to bet many of them haven't changed at all. Does anyone ever goto a high school reunion to have fun, or is mostly to re-affirm your self-esteem and place against others?

Posted by Dan at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2004

Quick note to Bob

who is no longer on IM: enjoy! Oh, and thanks again...

Posted by Dan at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2004

Discovery By Fire

It turns out that not everyone in the world is happy that you may keep a blog about some things, this set includes my current employer. Thankfully some cooler heads had prevailed and I was able to procure a statement of freedom to make my posts with the exception that I am not to post anything work related to it. Fine, so be it.

I was also able to discover how to get one of the barely known "Own Time" project certifications. Essentially the company realizes that they cannot own everything you do, and with this certificate they are releasing you to do whatever to said project. Basically it means I can work on PHP, ext2, and whatever else without question as long as it's after work.

Posted by Dan at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2004

Happy Birthday...

... to me! Weeeeeeeee! And all the chimpmunks in the park go, weeeee!

Posted by Dan at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2004

Slowly down the pipe

Congratulations go out to Bob and Dia for finally deciding to make things official. Apparently I'm cool enough to even get an EVite. On an odd side note, this is also kind of a sad moment. I realize Bob really hasn't been single in about 5 years, but it wasn't official before. Now that it is going to be, this leaves Kevin, Pat, and myself as pretty much the outcasts from the undergrad days. Yeah yeah, Puzak (who spell check wants to call Muzak) hasn't signed on the dotted line yet, but he may as well give in at this point it's inevitable. What a very odd feeling...

[EDIT: fix the HTML code, close your tags f00!]

Posted by Dan at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2004

How Not to Feed Spiders

The spiders have returned! Only this time they are covering the entrance way to my outdoor garbage area. As such I'm stock piling garbage on my patio until garbage day.

Taking Chris's suggestion, I've bought another loaf of tofu. Why? Because tofu goes bad quickly and smells rather awful when it does. No need to experiment on this one kids, trust me. Instead of feeding the spider raw tofu, I decided to get a little more adventurous with the tofu and fried it up in flavors of plain, butter+garlic, and hot sauce. Since this has become more of an effort, I decided to maintain a bit more scientific data about the even this time, try multiple variations on the same flavors, and enlist the help of my neighbor who thinks I'm rather crazy now I'm sure.

Regular tofu had a no so spectacular result. The cold version resulted in nothing being touched, but the hot version got wrapped up pretty quickly. It was still there a day later when I decided to try the butter+garlic flavored.

Butter+garlic both warm and cold disappeared. I'm not certain that it was eaten by the spider, I can't see it on the ground, and it's certainly not in the web anymore. My guess is that another animal rather liked the smell and took it.

The hot sauce flavored tofu resulted in some interesting "wrestling" in the web. After the initial toss in, the spider ran down to wrap it up, but did not seem to enjoy touching the piece. Adding in multiple other pieces exacerbated the situation I'm sure as the spider fled to the upper corner to hide. The next day the pieces were on the ground. I guess tobasco is too hot for spiders.

Posted by Dan at 12:54 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2004

Reluctance to Post

I've been reluctant to post anything for about two weeks, due primarily to the fact that my laptop has been missing in action and use of a work computer for personal matters is something I try not to do. Where is my laptop?

At an Apple authorized store trying to fix it. I bought an iSight a while back, and it works well enough when used in standalone mode. The bigger problem arises when attempting to use the iSight in a conversation with another user, the video connection just dies. I now understand why Apple has begun to open their own stores though, thanks to this experience. Here is a transcript of the actual conversation on the phone that I've had with this group:

Them: Yeah hi, we're calling about your laptop.
Me: Great what have you discovered?

Them: The iSight works fine, we tested it with another machine and it's not faulty.
Me: Great, but that wasn't the issue at all ever in this case

Them: No? Oh, well what was the issue?

Two days later...

Them: Yeah hi, about your PowerBook. We are able to confirm that the iSight cannot send video to a receiving iChat user.
Me: Okay, so you've confirmed my initial complaint?

Them: Yes.
Me: Why are you telling me? I knew that this problem existed, hence my asking you to fix it.

Them: Well we don't think it's hardware related, we'd like permission to reformat the harddrive.
Me: Well if reformatting it for the 8th time this year will make you happy, go right ahead.

That conversation was 5 days ago, and I haven't heard back from them. My guess is they realized that reformating the drive really didn't do anything at all.

Since I'm already on a bit of a rant here, let's just finish this off with a few others.

If you, for whatever reason, decide to ever own a car within a city, you should be legally required to take a 3 day intensive parallel parking class. I find it amazing the number of people who cannot parallel park their car! I watched a lady try to pull into a spot with her RAV 4 that a Hummer just pulled out of. It took her five tries! Five times to back in, pull out, and repeat. Each time she still hit the curb, and it's not like there wasn't enough space to nose in with the car. She's not alone in the category, but it just happens to be the most recent incident I can recall.

AVIs are probably one of the worst inventions in the world. I've been having to dork around with the RIFF format a lot over the past few days, and it's awful. It's not that the ODML spec is bad actually, it's that there are so many stupid players out there that it doesn't make sense. Some players use signed and some used unsigned markers for total size. Others won't play if the optional idxl chunk is missing (read: Windows Media Player), or for some other completely wacked out reason that is explained only by VIDEO_NO_COMPRESSOR errors.

Spiders, like all sane humans, don't like the taste of plain tofu. After careful experimentation and the purchase of $3.00 of tofu, I've discovered the really big spider outside my window, really doesn't like tofu. The spider doesn't like it in it's web and it doesn't like to eat it. The experiment ended when the spider went away.

Posted by Dan at 10:28 PM | Comments (1)

September 11, 2004

In Memory...

Posted by Dan at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2004

I'm Late I'm Late..

.. for a very important date. It seems somehow that Lisa has a birthday today. Woah. I think that makes her like 2 or something like that.

Posted by Dan at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2004

Rocky Mountain high

For those of you interested, the few pictures from my recent trip to Boulder Colorado are now online for viewing pleasure.

Posted by Dan at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2004

More tech and privacy bloggins

It seems that Chris Riley has also joined into the blogging arena with suspended conversation. Chris is traditionally a theory weenie (mostly CS) who is starting to move towards the law front of things. I expect if he keeps this commentary up AND moves into speculation of things IP related, we'll find this blog to be much more interesting.

Now to figure out why NetNewsWire doesn't like his Atom feed...

[EDIT: I should probably add that Chris is one of the smarter guys I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Now to keep him motivated at updating the blog. ]

Posted by Dan at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2004

Dragon boats!

I was able to attend the recent Washington DC Dragon Boat Festival, and finally got my pictures online, where I cheered on the Schuylkill Dragon teams. All teams did rather well, given the sheer amount of heat and humidity on both days of the competition. I somehow managed to end up badly sun burned not during the day, but rather on my 14 mile cycle back to a friends apartment. Future warning: sun screen while being waterproof, the water does not necessarily mean sweat. Ugh.

Posted by Dan at 12:21 AM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2004

RIP

After a lengthy battle, my grandmother has passed away tonight. At 95, she lived a long and full life, missing her life goal by only 5 years. She did get to see many of the accomplishments of man in her lifetime, from first flight to space travel to even the internet age). During the last three years, her health and mind began to decline to a point of non-responsiveness this past weekend. She quietly passed at 10:28 pm tonight. May she rest in peace.

Posted by Dan at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2004

Jimbo

It seems that Jimbomania has not just started to blog, but to actually continue to blog. While mostly a personal blog, Jim does have those moments of insight and brilliance that are astounding. Check it out occasionally...

Posted by Dan at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

Tape

Anyone who knows me, knows my extreme interest and abuse of the substance better known as duct tape. I've held together couches, boats, fishing poles, pots, shoes, and numerous amounts of other stuff I can't think of right now. Well, it seems that duct tape has been brought into the modern day and age. 3M has announced transparent duct tape with an improved lasting lifetime of 6 months. I know I'll be buying some. [Note thanks to Cool Tools for the pointer]

Posted by Dan at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2004

Mondays

really suck. That's all there is to it. It's not like you can delete Mondays either, because there will need to be something to fill that void. Mondays suck.

Posted by Dan at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2004

Leaving on..

To quote a little John Denver right now...

Leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again..

I woke up early this morning/last night in hopes of starting to sync my clock to new time zones a bit. Packing is never fun, nor is doing all that laundry I've been putting off.

Spent some time talking with Eric who seems to now be in charge of doing what has tenetaviely been called "Son of EROS", since EROS has now been all but mothballed. We've been working on trying to figure out a good acronym that would spell out ERICOS, since the naming process is one of the hardest this project might take awhile.

Looks like Brian has uploaded a collection of fixes to ext2fs. If you're using it, it might be a good idea to upgrade.

Via jwz a link to Greg Deocamp's amazing site. At one time in the past he was a member of EBN, an amazing piece of multimedia performance art. Worth checking out some of his newer videos he's put together. Unfortunately the site seems to be extrodinairly slow so be patient.

Elivs has left the building...

Posted by Dan at 07:14 AM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2004

Where'd you go?

I was recently sent a few emails asking where my regularly schedule postings have gone. Two real answers to this, both of which kind of suck. The most important of which is my trust Titanium Powerbook is no longer in my hands. Apple currently has it and is considering if it is worthy of an upgrade/trade-in under their temporary policy for first generation TiBook owners (thats me). I miss having KungLog (now ecto) to write my posts.

Second is there hasn't been terribly much of interest to post about recently. I've been busy with the job hunt, cleaning up random bits of previous projects, and trying to keep some form of incoming happening while I'm non-salaried.

Posted by Dan at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2004

Winter Humor

Some things during the winter are just too much fun to keep to ones self. For example, Bob decided at some point that tasting randomly discovered objects is a safer means to identification than say... oh I don't know, washing it off maybe? I'm more suprised the added chemicals found in the salt didn't make him instantly ill. Oh well, thanks for providing a good laugh Bob!

Posted by Dan at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)

January 03, 2004

Travels with Pat

Recently I took a trip down to see the National Air and Space Museum's new opening of the Steven F Udvar-Hazy center with Pat. A massive aircraft hanger located off the Dulles airport area that houses many of the aircraft NASM has had in restoration. Upon walking into the building one of the first sights seen looks remarkably like the picture here. I think there will be a lot of pictures that look similar to this from many others. This was a first time I've traveled with Pat and he's not brought his camera, so you'll be subjected to images created by me.

Things of note throughout the gallery are that it is still very much under construction. Laying about the floor were unused pipes, boards, wiring conduits, and containers of paint/sealant that should really be put away. I had some issues with the layout in the sense that one isn't able to easily travel from one floating walk way to another without having to traverse the entire hanger. The cement floors wouldn't be nearly so bad if there had been some areas to sit introduce along the way to exhibits. After having spoken with one of the volunteers, she made it quite apparent that the floor was not fun to stand on all day.

The exhibits themselves were amazing. The SR71, an Air France Concorde, the space shuttle Enterprise, the Enola Gay, a couple of P51s, the collection of modern jet aircraft, hangers, gliders, and some of the original airline inspirations were just impressive. It helps to convey a sense of how large this hanger, especially when you realize these are all under the same roof. There's even room to expand.

Unfortunately, due to time, I didn't get an opportunity to explore the control tower. Parking cost $6 which seems like an entrance fee, but really wasn't that bad. The fact that you have aircraft coming into Dulles overhead the whole time certainly makes it feel more alive and busy too. It's worth going to check out if you're in the area, just bring soft shoes.

[EDIT: corrected the HTML link to NASM]

Posted by Dan at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)

January 02, 2004

New Years

Posted by Dan at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2003

Bizarre Bookmarks

A recently discovered gem of humor while passing in the halls. For those of you without a clue, it's the second entry, and the side bar that make the joke.

Update: I've been told by a few people now that the book is actually quite decent. I'm not trying to insinuate that it's not. Merely that the title and the current state of the released code by Microsoft are not in conjunction with each other.

Posted by Dan at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)

Bond, James Bond

To give those of you an idea what's going on right now. It's Bond time on the TV. That can only mean it's a certain time of year... and no not Christmas.

More technical updates in a few days. Last night was rough and draining. Two job interviews lined up, but I don't wish to curse anything by saying more until later.

Posted by Dan at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2003

Current Projects

For those of you wondering why the silence from me recently a quick update.

If you don't follow it (and why would you, unless you're developing it) some crazy news on the EROS mailing lists. Yep, the project has been shut down.

Bob is back to blogging again. After a lot of ranting about his experience with MT, I think he's starting to like it. Anyways it's always good to get a copy of Bob's thoughts on things...

It snowed here. Lots. I have no shovel. Problem.

Posted by Dan at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2003

FreeBSD 4_9

For future reference, when upgrading a FreeBSD box from a significantly older version of a kernel to a significantly newer kernel: mergemaster first, then reboot. So says the words of experience.

Posted by Dan at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

Fun with foam

Probably one of the coolest things I've found on the web in the past few months: memory foam in custom sizes!

Posted by Dan at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2003

Panther Woes

My Software Updater last night noticed the 10.3.1 upgrade, and I proceeded to install it. After it was done, I chose to shut down the machine as I wasn't really using it, and was about to goto sleep. Waking up this morning I discovered to my great joy, that this was more than an upgrade. It was, in fact, a great many steps backwards! I can only begin to believe this was because I've had FileValut enabled on my system, but I can't be certain.

It seems every PDF found on my desktop somehow became no longer a valid PDF format file, requiring me to re-download them. Almost every preference for Applications I've had is now gone (Safari cache, Kung Log prefs, Safari prefs, iChat prefs, etc), and more importantly my entire iCal is now empty (it knows the calendars, but contains no events for each). Not a good start to the morning, but thankfully I've backed up all of this stuff recently when I upgraded to Panther initially. I'll just make up the difference in data loss somehow. This proves to be no good. Replacing the Library with the backup library doesn't provide any difference in operation. Marko has suggested that somehow the system is looking for my Library in another location, and I'm starting to believe him. But where?

I've now spent a lot of time disabling the FileVault feature in hopes that things will begin to clear up again. Now if only I could figure out how to get everything back to operational status..

So now I'm left with a completely bogus setup. Again. Thanks Apple.

[UPDATE: After talking with Eric for a bit, we discovered that apparently the 10.3.1 updater has a known bug if you try to run it with the FileVault option enabled. My question now is, why did the updater, or even the installer allow this to happen? Shouldn't there have been a check within the Installer at least to stop the process if FileVault had been enabled?

After disabling FileVault, I was able to slowly restore the backup copies of my Preferences. It took awhile, but at least it's back to only a week out of date.]

Posted by Dan at 07:09 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2003

Interview questions

I had the first phone interview on Friday for a potential employer. Beyond the fact that I was under the impression that the interviewer was not paying attention to anything I said (at one point I asked him a question and his response was "yeah, thats great"), but it became painfully obvious how HR oriented he was vs development. One of his questions was about the total lines of code I've written within a project. Now this is a misleading question for many reasons, but mainly for two big ones.

First, the functionality of a piece of code can always be written in a notation that makes it difficult to follow, or it can be made easy to follow. Short or longer. Reusable or not. But typically, this isn't something developers often concern themselves with! I don't make it a habit to write an application with no less/more than N lines of code. Nor do I sit down and count them later.

Second, lines of code is a misleading concept. In my mind a line of code can and should be followed by a through explanation in comments of what each section is doing. Are the lines of comments counted or disregarded in the counting process?

When I brought these points to his attention his comment was "Well just take a guess if you can." This leads me to guessing properly or improperly. Trying to stay honest in the interview, I'm not sure I'll remember the number being given. I still don't understand the point of this question.

Posted by Dan at 10:47 AM | Comments (2)

November 03, 2003

Humor

So a bit of humor that requires some shockwave time:
http://home.tiscali.nl/multicom/DaSchop/endofworld.swf

Oddly enough, Safari wouldn't play it, but Firebird would. Go figure. laugh a little bit.

Posted by Dan at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2003

People

Not to increase his own ego or anything of the sort, but it seems that Lisa was sent some photos of little solider boy OConnell. Good to see that he's still alive and functioning over in Iraq.

Posted by Dan at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2003

3 month notice

I've been given the 3 month notice. It's time to find a new job. Any good suggestions for places to apply to?

Posted by Dan at 09:15 AM | Comments (2)

October 10, 2003

Couple Points

A few quick things to throw out to that I need to mention.

First, it seems Panther's release is only a short period away. I am excited, you should be too. Now to see if I can get a copy of Panther.

Second, thanks to all those who came out and joined me in a birthday celebration, and to those who've emailed me their best wishes. A couple other wishes out to Marisa, George, and the yet to be Bob.

Third, Kill Bill Vol1 is out today. Given Tarantino's appreciation for Hong Kong style cinema, this should be either a really great tribute to those films, or just a truly bad mockery. I'm voting for the great tribute option.

Posted by Dan at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2003

Important truths

A word to the wise, do NOT let your roommate break out Halo when you have deadlines looming overhead. There went another 5 hours without noticing (yikes).

Posted by Dan at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2003

customer service pt2

Small Dog Electronics and I have finally had a resolution to our battle of shipping, but it took a bit more effort on my part to accomplish this. While I'm not completely thrilled at the route taken, I'm very happy to have my order arriving in the next day or two according to the UPS tracking system. In the end, I had to follow the links on the side panel to the Better Business Bureau and discover their BBB representative. Once I found this out, I composed an email that wasn't angry, more disappointed, and asking for help. Now the catch is there are two addresses listed, for what seem to be the same person, only one of them is valid. You get to guess which one.

Anyhow after sending this email, I received a response within 20 minutes, which politely informed me exactly the same information that my earlier two emails told me. I replied yet again, and was informed that it was my bank (not their service) that was in the wrong (failed logic paraphrased: they do this everyday, so it can't be them). A few minutes later I received a phone call from the person running my order and everything was resolved in a matter of minutes.

In the end they seem like nice people, but it will probably be a little while before I order from them again. They do seem to be over worked and understaffed.

Posted by Dan at 07:38 AM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2003

kansas bound simon

Congratulations must be given to Simon who has apparently made it stateside for a job. Too bad it's in Kansas, a bit far. If you end up towards the east coast let me know.

Posted by Dan at 07:04 AM | Comments (1)

August 26, 2003

customer service

I've complained in the past about the quality of the reception on my TiBook, and even pointed out a great little extension hack to increasing the quality. I finally decided to pick up an external antenna, in the hopes of making my life a little easier. After looking around, I discovered Small Dog Electronics was selling the antenna whip. Being a fan of small businesses and having had heard good things about Small Dog, I decided to buy from them. It was back ordered, and I really didn't think twice about it.

On August 19 I received an email informing me that the Debit Card I purchased with was not being authorized to send to either address I gave them (billing/shipping) and asked that I verify my addresses with the issuer of the card. Immediately I called up the bank that issued the card, confirmed that my proper address was there (the Billing address given to Small Dog) on file, and that the shipping address would not be a problem. I send back a response detailing my conversation with the bank and do not hear anything further. I also called at the time to leave a voice message, because sometimes talking to someone on the phone will help clarify things quickly.

A few days go past, and I call again to checkup on the status, only to find that no one (again) answers the phone. I leave a second message to a general mailbox rather than the specific mailbox of the person I"ve been in contact with. On Aug 25th I received another email stating that they still cannot resolve the credit card issue, and that I should check with my issuer again. I call my bank again, and once again verify (with a different person) that the information is correct. This representative went so far as to claim that this must have been a problem on their end and that they should check their equipment. I called the home base of Small Dog once again and received no answer from anyone. I left yet another voice mail but for some reason my hopes are not high.

The question becomes has anyone else had such horrible experiences with Small Dog, or is this just an extremely rare case of cluelessness? Right now I'm about to just say cancel the order, and go with a group I've never heard of.

Posted by Dan at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2003

junkyard wars

I discovered today that I am a mere 2 steps away from Junkward Wars fame! I am connected to Red Captain Doctor Crash via a previous coworker. Seeing how this is one of the more interesting and exciting shows on TV (at least for me), I'm rather excited about this find. I was told a story where Crash tried to use a acetylene torch to cook lobster. A true hero in my book.

Posted by Dan at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2003

The Pudding Theory

Last night, mans cognitive understanding the world around him became just a little bit better. A team of specialists was assembled for the sole purposed of testing the theories of one A. Moody, in an effort to enrich the lives of countless other human beings. This theory is better known as the Pudding Theory.

The hypothesis of the Pudding Theory is elegantly simple. The premise states that upon eating at a chinese buffet, the first time someone receives a plate from the dessert island your check will be presented. The question left of course is, what happens if you eat out of order, starting with your dessert, eventually moving to a full meal. Does the check arrive too early, therefor laying on the table so as to influence the gluttony ("I'm going to get my $10 out of this!!"), or will it be kept quiet disrupting the normal signal used by many wait-staff to deliver a check thus forcing us to ask for it?

A insertion team of two was put into place at the Golden Fortune Chinese Buffet with the intent on discovering what just might happen. The team realized this was a hot zone of activity upon entering by the early signs: a large rush of people sitting there devouring countless plates of meat, the Iraqi 50 most wanted playing cards for sale, and the mob-scene that was the ice cream dispenser. The team was sat at the far end of the room, with a clear view of the entire dining establishment. Upon placing drink orders, the team went into action, gathering two plates and filling them with various items on the dessert isle. This task was more dangerous than initial reconnaissance had suggested. The mass of dining patrons were now entering their need for a sugar fix, leaving much of the dessert isle in ruins, and the trays empty. The fall back plan of ice cream was put into jeopardy when it was discovered the ice cream machine was no longer in service at that time, hence the mob. To sedate the mob, a series of pastries was brought out, which when covered with vanilla pudding worked wonders.

Returning to their seats the team discovered their drinks filled and awaiting consumption. Within a minute of sitting down another wait staff brought over the check, set it down, and left it for us. Working quickly, the team devoured the contents of their plates, put the plates on another table, and proceeded to fill a new plate with a more traditional style dinner item. A few minutes later the original waitress returned to check up on liquid refreshment levels, but had a confused look as to how the check was delivered to the dining patrons while they were still eating.
Some brief yelling could be heard, but the insertion team was unable to make out any of it.

In conclusion, the Pudding Theory does hold when used in a dining establishment. It also can provide a few more minutes of entertainment when needed, but execution must be done with care. The wait staff does not like to be toyed with, so use extreme caution in not getting caught.

Posted by Dan at 06:13 AM | Comments (1)

August 19, 2003

Certificates

On a random side note, I was able to get my first class medical student license yesterday. Only catch with this is a need to wear corrective lens while being the PIC. Granted the license will be a second class license by the time I get to use it any, but it still is nice to know I can go all the way.

Posted by Dan at 01:19 PM | Comments (1)

August 15, 2003

Umm...

Not typical of what you find on this blog, but this article is too bizarre to pass up.

Safe for Work.

[EDIT] Corrected the link, thanks to Erik

Posted by Dan at 06:35 AM | Comments (2)

August 14, 2003

Above and Beyond Duty

I have some amazing friends, who, when pressed, accomplish amazing things with little to no forethought. Just last night I was reminded of this, but not by one of my friends directly. This time rather by the girlfriend of one of my friends who helped put an end to the Philadelphia Groper. Some of the "facts" in the article are a bit wrong (i.e. it's not exclusive). I'm always impressed by what my friends can accomplish.

Posted by Dan at 06:26 AM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2003

Throwing Rocks

The sport of bowling is becoming harder and harder to take part in. This past weekend, it became painfully evident as a group of us set forth on an adventure to include some bowling. The trip out to the alley took more time than expected due to extremely heavy rains, but once there a small wait existed before being granted a lane. We took comfort in the billiards room, enjoying some relaxing games of 8 ball, while taking in the sights of potential purse snatchers.

Things in the bowling alley have changed though since I've been a kid, or maybe it's just the difference between big city bowling and back woods sticks bowling. I remember a fairly plain alley, no bright lights or black lights, and no fancy electronic scoring sheets. Yet the alley found this weekend consisted of 8 giant projection screen TVs located directly above the lanes, constantly spewing forth a series of video snipp-its that became a blur of nonsense. It worked wonderfully for a distraction though to hitting pins of any kind. The use of black lights and rotating colored lights also joined in, but those can generally be tuned out much easier as they are not aimed at the center of your attention. These video screens though were another story. The electronic scoring systems provided little video animation clips of bowling balls and pins in various situations, along with tips and difficulty ratings for how your pins left standing.

I should have known from the start that this was going to be just a bizarre experience. When getting my shoes I had asked for a 13, only to discover they didn't have a pair of 13's only a single shoe. As such I was subjected to a size 14 shoe, which while roomy, wasn't the best shoe to be using when asking for foot control. FInding a ball was difficult as there seemed to be a lack of them on the shelves. We later discovered that the group at the lane next to us was hordeing all the balls like they were going out of style. I've not seen so many little kids dancing on the alley's, or walking down the gutter lanes.

The crowning moment of true bizarreness occurred as Dave was stepping up to let lose some of the fury that is better known as The Dave Bowling Experience, all screens went black and the lights over the alley went dark. The pins were still visible, but not much else on the lane could be seen. Slowly the screens became illuminated with the sights of Michael Jackson in what was called "10 Minute Dance Mix". The sad part about this is that some DJ was able to condense all of the Michael Jackson experience into a 10 minute music video (I guess there's no need to buy his greatest hits album now). This new change in the atmosphere caused a distinct change in game play as you could no longer tell where you are in relation to the line or pin alignment. My own game (I was on a 4 strike roll) was severely hindered by this change (1 or 2 pins at most per roll).

This might have not been so bad if it weren't for the shoddy lanes themselves. There was no slide on the approach, a must for anyone who likes to ease the approach to the line. Another interesting twist added to the game, the 2 or 3 pins on the left side (#4, #7, #8) were better left untouched by a throw. Typically if missed in the first throw, the automatic pin tools would still lose any (or all) of these pins at random. It often gave someone a spare when they hadn't yet earned it. Figuring out the electronic scoring system became much too difficult to correct this, so we just sort of let it slide. Given the amount of money thrown around to make you forget this was a bowling alley, you would hope, or at least expect, that the lane would operate correctly. Oh well..

As a warning to all future outings looking to bowl, if you notice giant TV screens above the pins, just leave. It's for your sake, and the sanity of your game.

Posted by Dan at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

August 06, 2003

Data Representation

It happens at least once or twice every year. A piece of junk mail arrives at my parents house, destined for my father, who inevitably believes it is more important for me to know of it's existence than throw it away. The mail in question though is often an announcement for a presentation on data representation, and how it effects our understanding, a rather interesting discussion to say the least. Working with computers, this becomes an essential area of concern for myself. How can I increase my productivity levels? How do I process what's on the screen? How can I fully understand what data is being fed to me?

It's not something I directly correlate back to my computer use regularly. I have become rather ingrained in my ways, working while subconsciously shifting through the data I've deemed useless. It was only recently that I realized just how bad current operating systems represent applications and other data. Being a CLI type of person, I spend a lot of time typing, and using the least efficient means of visualizing data. This has been a personal trade off for me in many ways, I find less time spent utilizing the mouse directly translates back to more time to stay focused on the task at hand. But take a look at the GUI format for representing applications.

Under Microsoft Windows, it was the Windows-95 release that changed everything. Among it's many changes, the biggest visual impact was the introduction of the Start menu. No longer did a user have to search through billions of small files looking for the .exe, they could easily jump on the Start menu and go. Unfortunately this idea didn't extend any further in the operating system. Try copying an application from one drive to another, or using the command line tool to discover the ugly joy of the application parts. Even today in Windows XP you'll find the same thinking in use, only now there is a protective "are you sure you want to see the ugly parts of your computer?" warning before you can play. Open this up, and you discover that there are hundreds of tiny little files that comprise this application and just make life typically annoying. That oh so nifty Start menu is just a link to the executable in another area, and doesn't necessarily represent everything on your computer.

The current offerings of desktops for UNIX haven't gotten much better. For the most part they're still emulating other services, rather than trying to innovate a new system. I would argue that application layout for UNIX systems is typically even worse than those found on Windows operating systems, but thats for another day.

Apple's current Mac OS X has a really interesting change, one that I don't believe I've fully appreciated until I needed to explain to my father how to copy an application from one drive to another. Under the Aqua GUI, an application appears to be a single icon that contains most (if not all) the necessary files to run the executable. It is easy enough to copy this application from one location to another (just drag it around), or even to share the application across the network. This is all fine and dandy, but what about those of us who are CLI users? Under the command line, you'll discover that each application is actually a directory, postfixed with a .app, that contains a series of directories that define the behavior of the application (resources, versions, etc).

While you can argue that just moving up a directory level would accomplish the same thing in the other windowing systems, you would be missing the elegance that is found here. As far the Apple GUI is concerned, this directory IS the application. The mixture of the two functionalities provides an ease of use that so far has been unparalleled. On the flip side, often times the computer illiterate are not aware that copying an application will require more than one file. This mistake is typically made only once, but is there any reason for it to even exist? Now to see if I can enable such visual representation in the EROS system, but no promises.

Posted by Dan at 08:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 05, 2003

Airplanes

Got a chance to fly in a 1972 Beech Bonanza 36A. I figure if I could ever afford an airplane, it would come down to two choices:

The Beech Bonanza 35 (or heck maybe even a newer Beech) or some type of seaplane (land/sea style) that I haven't figured out what yet.

Very sweet airplane, though the 36A does not have the V tail of the 35.

[EDIT: added in seaplane link]

Posted by Dan at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2003

Airline Searching

Looking online today, I found a rather interesting article (and here) discussing the benefits of the airline profiling mechanism used in CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening) versus sheer mathematical statistics. The article cites a paper by two MIT graduate students (Samidh Chakrabarti, 23, and Aaron Strauss, 22) who claim that using random searches would prove to be statistically more accurate, and proceed to prove this through a series of mathematical equations.

My favorite part of the article comes from the review by Doug Laird, one of the architects of the CAPPS system. His statements to defend the system are classic denial, falling back towards "the information is classified." While the MIT students may have made assumptions, it sounds like their mathematics are not. The real problem is that we, the public, are unable to check, and as such Mr. Laird's statements are unsubstantiated.

Read the article, it's worth your time.

Posted by Dan at 10:35 PM | Comments (0)

Temporary Housing Found

With the immanent need to relocate the machine that houses my servers, there's been a stop gap solution put into place for now. The move happened yesterday, as such I may be slightly unstable for a day or two DNS wise, while everything evens out.

In other news today, I picked up a 256 MB USB drive, and have promptly begun to format it with EXT3 file system. The catch of course on this has been all this has occurred under OS X. Yep, I'm back to work hacking on file systems again. Oddly enough, I've come to really enjoy the USB drives, despite my initial dislike towards them. Lots of really dumb but fun uses for them.

[EDIT: Sorry about that, it seems Kung Log or MT somehow borked that last post.]

Posted by Dan at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2003

Phrase of the Day

"Jumpin Jesus on a pogo stick!"

I've now heard someone use this phrase in an actual conversation, and that pushes the humor value that much further up.

Posted by Dan at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2003

A Tearful Departure

Posted by Dan at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2003

Rain Schedule

One of the more interesting aspects of life in the past few months has not been weather, but an interesting note found describing the changes has been found. It's an interesting comparison to Seattle weather. Now I just wonder if many of the effects of depression will also follow.

Posted by Dan at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2003

Rain

For the first time in many days, it's stopped raining.

Posted by Dan at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2003

Java Joy

Found via Sterling's most recent post.... happy happy...

and people wonder why I don't take the Java language seriously.

Posted by Dan at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

Odd images

Today found on Feedster Images, an odd image that made me laugh.

Posted by Dan at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)

June 03, 2003

Random Tidbits

Random tidbits gathered from today:

1) "XML is nothing more than a really poor means of {}'ing things." -Randomly overheard

2) After careful thinking and some reading on Keith Devens blog, I've decided that maybe namespaces won't be as necessary for PHP I originally believed. They are nice, very nice, but not an essential bit to making the language functional.

Posted by Dan at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

April 30, 2003

On Belay

Tristen took me climbing today, sort of. I knew she did a lot of climbing, and took her up on an offer to teach me some of it. We quickly ran through the rope basics, knots, terminology, and safety mechanisms. She went through them like a pro, right up until I said I'm left handed. Then she had a few problems, but they were easily sorted out.

The top rope climbing took only a few minutes to accomplish, and frankly my first climb was an easy one (5.5 or 5.6). I had made it to about one hand hold away from the top before I lost my grip (my foot slipped off while I was dependent upon it). I subsequently spent a few minutes afterwards working on getting a strong grip with my toes on non-existent holds at base.

Afterwards, Tristen and Emily (another girl at the wall) started doing bouldering. Essentially, they free climb (no ropes) and would place a hand somewhere. This hand pattern had to be continued and extended by each player. I get suckered into it, and started off okay. Not nearly as agile as they I picked the worst hold I could find, but they worked around it. I never could get past it after that. It was interesting to watch Tristen and Emily work the wall though, as you could see in their technique they have been doing this for sometime. It was impressive to watch as they would time their swings to provide optimal foot movements and hand gripping moments. I'll probably try to keep doing this over the summer, but it looks like one more expensive hobby right now. I do suggest trying it if you get a chance. It was a nice stress relief from the rest of the day/week/month.

Posted by Dan at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2003

Is Ivy League worth it?

Kate sent me an article the other day, that questions if the higher cost of a "top tier" school is justified by the expectant salary difference. An interesting argument the researchers Alan Krueger and Stacy Dale make is that it's not really where you are trained that makes a person exceptional. Rather it is your natural drive and desire to succeed that is of importance and ultimately determines an individuals final worth. This feels, to me, like the whole nature vs nurture argument all over again.

The article can be used as the basis though for either side to push their opinion. As with all mainstream media though, it adds a catch all of "take all this [information] with a grain of salt" line, hoping to provide itself an easy way out if wrong. Gotta love lawyers.

Posted by Dan at 03:37 PM | Comments (1)

April 24, 2003

Quoting

"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." -Samuel Clemens June 2 1897.

The silence seen on postings are due to an overwhelming amount of work to be accomplished in an extraordinarily short period of time. Worry not I've some interesting bits to post online soon as I have a moment to type them up.

The server has been acting strange lately though with electrical power issues that seem to be happening at random. Anyone have suggestions for checking a power supply on a colo'd box?

Posted by Dan at 08:16 AM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2003

Good Laws

An article in the SFGate over the weekend got my attention. Apparently the town of Arcata has made it illegal to voluntarily assist with the Patriot Act. It's nice to see that there are some areas where sanity still rules.

The article does mention that many cities have passed resolutions condemning it, but there really is no muscle behind a resolution.

Posted by Dan at 06:30 AM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2003

The countdown has begun

In less than 5 days, I will begin the trip towards Montreal for the one and only PHP Quebec conference. I'll be joined by Derick and Jan on the trip up, which should make for an interesting drive. I'm both excited and worried due to various reasons... the main of which is PHP-ODBC2 presentation. Hopefully all will go well, and I'll see some friendly people again :)

Posted by Dan at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2003

Symbolism

I was visiting the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum the other day, and came across a exhibit on this history of flight. Essentially it was nothing spectacular of an exhibit. The impression I got is that this exhibit has been here for awhile, and it hasn't really changed. I seem to remember it from a few years ago as well, but my memory may be wrong. I'm more interested in the 1950's style aircraft than any of the other aircraft within.

At the very end of the exhibit though were paintings of two women of aviation. One was French and the other was English. Both were portraits of aviators from the real early pioneering days of flight. The names of these women escapes me right now, and honestly the paintings weren't extremely memorable by themselves. What was memorable was the text above the French aviator saying "... wears the symbol of luck on her right breast pocket." Looking at the painting on the right breast pocket you find a scratched out, cut, and ripped area. The symbol of luck has apparently been stolen, or so I thought initially. Someone must really be in need of some good luck to steal for the museum. I began to look at other pictures of her, and found one that (I'm guessing) was the basis for the painting. The symbol itself was a swastika.

I remember being told that the swastika, for a long time before World War II, was a "happy" symbol, and did not suggest the same intonations that the Nazi party gave it. I can also remember seeing some Native American carpets that my parents had with this very symbol on it too. I never really looked into the history of it to prove it. It wasn't something terribly high on my list of things to learn about. This little bit of text made me think it was time to change that.

What is interesting to me that this symbol was so prevalent for good luck and life, but now it's instantly recognized as a symbol of hate. Doing some quick web research, it turns out a town in Canada renamed itself to Swastika after find a gold mine. The Buddhists and Hindu's use (and supposedly continue to use) the symbol for religious purposes (although in some cases direction is important). There is an interesting article by Chirag Badlani over on the iearn.org website talking about an experience with public reaction to the symbol, and some light details on the use of the symbol.

It's surprising to see that even with all of this history, someone would still deface an exhibit painting with this symbol on it. The painting is now covered by a plastic shield, but the damage has been done. A disappointing alteration to an exhibit done by a not-so-tactful means of hacking. The exhibit did do one thing though, it taught me a lot about the swastika symbol though I'm sure it wasn't the desired goal.

Posted by Dan at 10:24 AM | Comments (1)

March 10, 2003

More comments on userland

Chuq Von Rospach has posted an interesting commentary on his interactions with end users. While the medium (appears) slightly different from my original post, it has many of the same connotations that were the inspiration to my original rant. I rather enjoyed the commentary, especially since many times I've had the same scenario.

It wasn't until I read the comment on the entry though that I became rather reflective. A BBS.... wow! I haven't thought about the days of BBS use in a while, and it seems rather funny to look behind me and see the machine I used to run a BBS from. The Quadra 700 was never a terribly fast computer, but it certainly did a lot for me during it's time. Now it collects dust and works as a rudimentary filing system.

What was more interesting is the reason why the comment poster quit running his BBS. The same reasons why Chuq made his post and I did mine. At least there is a constant turn around in this case. Eventually the service provider becomes tired, annoyed with being (ab)used, quits, and leaves the project to die. Hopefully things can be picked up by some new blood, moved along towards the old goals, and bring about some new momentum. It's worked before, after all thats how I got involved in PHP isn't it?

But what has left me to continue working on these projects? This was the question that left me thinking for a lot longer.

Is it fame or popularity? Definitely not, for the PHP project has not brought me either. At most a handful of people have come to recognize who I am and what I have done through the project. I'd even venture to say that my popularity is limited even within the PHP developers clique for having spoken my mind one too many times (the fallout of which is still being witnessed). Though on the other hand, my infamy has risen drastically, and that does look awfully close to fame. Hrm...

Is it the technology? I had to sit here and think about this one for awhile. Initially, while I was learning ODBC, I might have said yes to this. The same sentiments go towards things like IMAP and C programming though as well. Now a long time past, the glow has faded, and the code is no longer an intriguing new beast to be caught. Database technology typically doesn't change radically. This is a good thing despite what you might believe. JWZ and Miguel de Icaza (Feb 26th 2003 entry) ranted about this awhile back.

So if it's not any of these, what is it that keeps me working on a project? Well, in the case of the case of the PHP project, it has been the people. I've met some really interesting, talented, and intelligent people through the project. Some have become friends, some not. Many are spread across the world, providing varying degrees of opinions and insights on things I'd never have given a second thought. It's interesting to think that a sense of group identity does play such an important part in the motivation of one's own development cycle. Bills and monetary incentive can push you only so far before stress and exhaustion set in. But when you begin to feel you're failing your group, there always seems to be renewed interest and energy towards finishing. As cheesy as this might sound, watch and you'll see the effects of it every day. The number of people who request an @php.net address just to have one is amazing (I wish there were a log of these requests).

With this in mind, it was interesting to read a recent post by Joel On Software discussing many of the mechanisms in place to destroy this group identity. It went further on to discuss how software itself needs to be developed to further solidify these groups, rather than try to dissipate them. A very enlightening read that I would highly recommend.

Posted by Dan at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2003

Guarana Guarana Guarana!

Just an update to the previous information posted:

Type of guarana I found: Guarana Brazilia
Imported by Crystal Beverage Corp of Kearny NJ.

An old copy of the can image can be found here... or if Geocities is nice you can see it below. It kind of looks like a poorly drawn pre-op Total Knee Replacement :

Posted by Dan at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2003

Guarana

Probably the single most interesting drink I've ever had that is non-alcoholic, Guarana is also probably the hardest thing to find. My sister first introduced me to it after she had done some traveling around the world. I can remember that night well, we went to a restaurant called Brazils is Old City Philadelphia. She went completely nuts at finding this on the menu, and promptly drank about 4 bottles of it. She was wired for the rest of the night.

The bottle it came in was rather nondescript. It was a transparent green color, with a pasted on paper label. The label had a funky design on it that I can't really remember. But it tasted pretty good. In fact, I think it tasted kind of like a cheaply made vanilla cream soda, but not as sugary sweet. It looks like a ginger ale.

Turns out guarana is not only tasty, but a wonderfully high caffeinated substance! Thankfully the wonders of modern marketing have realized a need for such a drink, and as such we can now find guarana in plenty of new and interesting products (mostly drinks). The one I'd really like to try: Vodka and jelly.... weird.

Tonight though broke my guaranaless string of days. I discovered that a local mini-mart has it in a cooler, hidden in the back area. I sort of found it by mistake as I stumbled in, looking for something to eat at 11 p.m., tired, and annoyed. I passed on the usual mini-mart deal, the fudge stripped cookies and some pringles (thanks OddTodd) and continued to just sort of wonder to the back in a daze. Now realize that the isles in this place are about 2 feet wide, so wondering isn't exactly something easily accomplished for anyone, especially when the floor has boxes of stuff all over it too. I stumbled on a box and in my recovery I saw it. The green bottle I remembered from oh so long ago. I picked up two, and brought them instantly to the counter. $2.50. Not too bad. What I really don't know are, which are the better ones to jump in and get? It's not like buying a single bottle that you can force yourself to drink all of because it's only one bottle. These mail order places force you to buy a case at a time. Thats 24 bottles of potential gag-inducing flavor, and one helluva price tag to pay for gagging! You could buy a bottle of ipecac syrup for less and get the same feeling! So if you have a suggestion on which to try, I'd appreciate hearing your opinions.

Two bottles later and I'm wired... a very odd feeling given that I don't usually drink soda or caffeinated beverages.

Now I know you can buy guarana drinks in the US via mail order and what have you. Unfortunately, I haven't had a steady address that I could order the stuff and have it delivered to since I've discovered the drinks. Don't even begin to ask about the money part too... for now I'm just happy to have some guarana when I need it.

Posted by Dan at 09:20 PM | Comments (2)

Engagement batonga

I received an ominous letter in the mail yesterday from Boston. No real return address or identifying material on it. This left an initial impression of "Oh shit not another one", and a second thought of "Must be Jay... "

I was right.

Jay and Beth have officially announced the wedding date, and I've been sent a "keep this date free" message. What a nice message system it is too. A quaint little book, listing historical sites to see in the city, restaurants, and events to goto during the time. Interesting point, the Bo-Sox will be playing the Phillies over that weekend, a case of mixed allegiances maybe?

In any case, should be a good time.

Posted by Dan at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2003

Music function

Posted by Dan at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

Job Loss

It doesn't seem to be difficult these days, nor unexpected, to hear about a friend or family member losing their job. The effects of the recent economy compression seem to be felt in all areas of employment this time around. It was because of my history of employment that a copy of the article Test of A Model of Coping With Involuntary Job Loss Following a Company Closing was recently given to me to read.

First point is that the article was published in 1999 before the end of the great Internet bubble. It makes me wonder how much (if any) of the points and concepts raised have changed. For example after hearing about company closure parties, and former employees better able to keep in touch with each other via the internet, and what not. Second major point is this doesn't cover layoffs, although I'd fathom that they aren't terribly different from those in the company closure cases. Again in this case there are stories of Pink Slip parties, and I question the idea of Social Support like "Are family and outside work friends the main support received?" If you're partying with your former coworkers, isn't it hard to talk with your non-work friends?

One of the points I'd like to argue is the "Given that education is generally associated with greater marketability, individuals with more education should have greater expectations that they will be reemployed...". I can probably argue this one based on personal experience, saying that even with my short career I've been unable to get much (if any) in the way of responses from potential employers. Now the question becomes is this actually part of the effect of the economy downturn and a huge market flood of qualified applicants, or did the idea of a bachelors degree become equivalent to a 1950's high school diploma? In any case, 50-100 resumes a day didn't get a single response.

"Symptom-focused coping refers to nonwork activities such as ... increased alcohol consumption." Amen to that! Pat and I called that phase San Francisco! Now if only it was a cheaper experience...

Anyways it's an interesting read to see that people typically deal with unemployment the same all over, especially if you've gone through the whole ordeal.

The link above to the article is just to an abstract, unfortunately I can't seem to get the Journal of Applied Psychology to share it's secret copies. If you find a link online feel free to leave it in the comments section.

Posted by Dan at 07:25 AM | Comments (1)

March 02, 2003

Rare Occurances

Posted by Dan at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2003

Further adventures on Open Source Software

Posted by Dan at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2003

Computers and Things

I've been using an Apple Powerbook Titanium for the last 2+ years now running OS X for as long as I've had the machine. I've enjoyed it for many reasons, but there have always been a few dark spots on it. Recently these spots are getting to be much larger, more annoying, and plenty visible.

The main culprit is the Airport wireless ethernet card. The card works alright for me, nothing great. For example, trying to surf the web via the Airport (being the only one on it mind you) is noticeably slower than if I were to plug into the ethernet (yes I know the technical differences).

There are times when the Airport card just can't even download files that it just looked at. When trying to build some software, I can forget about using the internet as it seems large builds kill the cards capability to continue functioning. Thankfully all these issues can be worked around or dealt with somehow. Not saying that they should exist at all, but they aren't the number one priority.

The biggest problem, lack of signal strength. It seems that while I can pick up various signals close by (100 ft max), those that others can find with ease are not to be seen by me. This is typically a problem for normal use and has been worse in the past week while working and having to hunt for a nice hot spot for use. I'm starting to look into using an external antenna based card to see if that will solve any of my issues. I'm really disappointed for the first time with the signal strength issues.

On the other side I've discovered that I don't have any presentation software. This could be a big problem in Montreal, as I have to make a presentation there. So I bought a copy of Keynote. What a nice change this software is from Power Point and the mistakes in designing slides. Mind you, Keynote has the advantage of taking the best of Power Point and trying to do something new without having had to go through years of backwards compatibility support. Too bad I'm running out of disk space now...

Posted by Dan at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2003

End users continued

Hartmut pointed me a few articles of interest. The first (in a babblefish translation from German) works pretty well in describing the scenario yesterday. You can find it