By
jerfunfin
25 Apr 2002
Yes, indeed it was a fun filled eve last friday at madame x. I started with two chocolate Martinis (yum!!) and then moved on to citrus infused vodkas and other concoctions server martini glass style. The cake (thank you Stephanie!!) was a dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate icing on the inside surrounded by a 1/4” layer of solid white chocolate as frosting.
<p>Friends gallore; good times were grabbed, squeezed, and wrestled to the ground for a three count. This created my only problem… waking up for a wedding the next morning.</p>
By
anders pearson
23 Apr 2002
i’ve finally gotten around to writing another theme for thraxil. if you go to your user page and edit your settings, you can now select the ‘barebones’ theme. it’s basically just thraxil with no styling whatsoever; stories aren’t posted on the main page, just their subjects with a link to read the rest of the story. most people probably won’t like it but it could be useful if you consistently visit the site from a slow connection or an old browser that doesn’t like CSS. mostly this was just an exercise to demonstrate that theme selection does actually exist and work properly. expect more to come in the future.
<p>since i now have a <span class="caps">WAP</span>-enabled cellphone, i may even get ambitions and make a <span class="caps">WML</span> version of thraxil so i can read it on my phone.</p>
By
anders pearson
20 Apr 2002
some days i just love technology.
<p>i got my tax return a while ago and my first instinct was to buy a new computer; put together something top of the line and expensive. my current machine is an old celeron 400 that i’ve had for almost 3 years now. unfortunately, i have student loans and credit card payments and stuff so i knew i couldn’t really justify spending all that money on a new computer. but if i didn’t do something to make my machine faster, i’d be more and more tempted to go blow a wad of cash on new hardware. </p>
<p>so i spent some time digging around through all the specs of the hardware i’ve got trying to figure out what i could do to improve performance the most for the least amount of money. i filled it up with <span class="caps">RAM</span> last summer when prices fell through the floor so memory wasn’t the problem. anything more than a trivial processor upgrade would probably require a new motherboard (which would probably require new <span class="caps">RAM</span>). speeding up my hard-drive would require either moving to <span class="caps">SCSI</span> (expensive) or <span class="caps">ATA</span>-100 (requiring a new mobo or at least a controller card).</p>
<p>really, what was killing my system the most was the graphics. my computer came with one of those evil onboard <span class="caps">ATI</span> Mach64’s. turning on 3d acceleration for that card actually makes things slower. so i picked up a cheap ($50) GeForce2 MX 400 card.</p>
<p>wow. what a difference. before, i couldn’t even load tuxracer; it would seriously take several minutes just to render the title screen; 3d graphics were out of the question. now it smokes. X windows even loads almost instantaneously now.</p>
<p>it’s probably a pretty sad commentary on the age of my computer that a $50 upgrade can just about double the performance. it’s also not exaggerating much to say that the graphics card has just about as much processing power as the rest of my system. on the positive side, i’ve now extended the lifespan of my computer for quite a bit longer.</p>
<p>while i was at it i picked up a wireless keyboard and mouse so i can take full advantage of my projector. i can now relax on the couch and work on the computer (or play tuxracer). </p>
<p>the keyboard i got is a logitech itouch keyboard. it’s a pretty standard black keyboard with a nice feel to it and about a dozen assorted buttons and controls on it. it comes with windows software that’s supposed to make all the buttons do simple things like take you to a web site with just one keystroke. most interestingly, it has a volume knob and play/stop/ff/rew keys which look like they might actually be useful.</p>
<p>after some experimentation with <tt>xev</tt>, i confirmed that the extra keys were just sending keycodes in the undefined range. with some <tt>xmodmap</tt> tweaking and help from <a href="http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:tdeheWhqpvoC:xmms-shell.sourceforge.net/">xmms-shell</a> and i now have all the buttons working in linux and bound to things that i find useful. i’ve even got a “thraxil” button that takes me directly to this site. :)</p>
By
emile
20 Apr 2002
i just went to the buddhist meditation center in barre, ma. there was a silence observation in place so i couldn’t actually talk to anyone. nice peaceful place though. reminded me of northern maine:no one to talk to, nothing to distract you, lots of nature, men in orange robes… i thought there would be an actual temple there, since that’s where “the next karate kid” supposedly took place. no dice… my search continues.
By
anders pearson
20 Apr 2002
last night, Gerard turned 0×1D. a significant portion of the people in the office along with other friends of his managed to throw a surprise party for him. i was really impressed that we got as many people as we did without the surprise being blown; i didn’t even realize it was intended to be a surprise party up until right beforehand.
<p>so we all gathered at Madame X, a little bar in the west village, with a cake as one of his friends brought him there under some pretense. between madame X and some other bar that we ended up at later, we pumped him full of birthday cake and martinis and peer-pressured him into doing various embarassing acts (unfortunately, we didn’t have any recording equipment so there will be no future blackmail).</p>
By
lani
20 Apr 2002
so i finally made it to the Giant Robot store. my pilgrammage is complete.
<p>i had to walk around in West LA, not knowing if there was a difference between Avenues and Boulevards. My sister told me that the address on their page said Ave. but the one i could find on the scant bus map was Boulevard. I guess people use them interchangeably in LA. You’d be lost in Northern Virginia, but i think they do that on purpose so they can christianize you or use you for target practice</p>
<p>anyway, i finally bought Sleepwalk (Optic Nerve 1-4 collection) after pouring over many a review. Eric (one of the makers of Giant Robot!) noticed me browsing and asked me if i was a fan. i had to admit that i hadn’t read any yet. just the reviews. the guys at GR are were pretty nice and gave me a poster for the new Optic Nerve collection coming out in the summer to fuel my future addiction. i had to leave after insisting on pictures and announcing myself as the paparazzi of GR. good thing i can hide out in DC.</p>
<p>but i read most of Sleepwalk on various forms of transportation from LA to Claremont, and i love it. i’m already a fan. sometimes it strikes a little too close to home though. close to home is good. a little too close to home is creepy.</p>
By
anders pearson
18 Apr 2002
my old ericsson T28 cellphone has been having issues lately and, in the last week, has pretty much ceased functioning altogether. so i figured it would be a good time to upgrade to the new T68 which has all kinds of neat features like a color screen, WAP with email, a web-browser, and IM, bluetooth, and an IR port plus much better battery life.
<p>it is, unfortunately, not a cheap phone. to get a large discount that brought it down to a price i could afford, i had to sign up for a new contract. that meant that i get a new number. so if anyone reading this has my old cell # written down, change the last 4 digits from 4299 to 1299. sorry about the inconvenience.</p>
<p>and of course, if you don’t have my number at all, just email me. with this phone i can now read my email (and send it) from anywhere.</p>
By
lani
17 Apr 2002
my sister woke me up at 1:30am last night. (which was actually good, because i found 4 mosquito bites that weren’t there before i went to sleep. this lead me to shut the door (no screen) and turn the thermostat to cool against my stingy roommate’s request.) she had to call me to deliver the story of how she was standing in line for something and randomly started talking to the guy in front of her. as it turns out he goes to bates, which leads to, “oh really! my sister went to bates!” at this point the conversation usually ends when person B has no idea who person A’s sister is, conversation dwindles to the sound of toes-tapping and the occasional sigh “ummm”. but as it turns out, the guy is actually neil who was good friends with my good friend and ex-roommate Parv. i spent a night with him observing midnight madness from the “under age scenic viewpoint”.
<p>weird.</p>
By
Mark Boudreau
16 Apr 2002
Try this day on for size:
<p>1) Started the day designing a stupid announcement page for my organization. I was given one set of directives from one person. His boss gave me a whole different set of directives after I had created a design. Grr. The resulting design by committee is one of the ugliest things I’ve ever produced.</p>
<p>2) Was heckled by a homeless guy who informed me that I can’t help being a racist (?!?!?!), that it’s in my blood. He needs to get my label straight. I’m an elitist, capitalist. Sheesh.</p>
<p>4) Tried installing <span class="caps">SGL</span> again. The machine hangs while trying to run Lilo. Ugh. When does the next Red Hat come out? <strong>dejected sigh</strong></p>
<p>3) Tomorrow I get to continue with #1</p>
By
anders pearson
15 Apr 2002
went to connecticut this weekend to meet up with the rest of my family at my grandmother’s house. my sister even brought her dog.
<p>we spent a lot of the time doing yardwork. my grandmother has managed to hang on to a big house with a sizable amount of land (well, a lot considering that it’s the middle of suburbia) but can’t really get around well enough anymore to keep things maintained herself. plants seem to grow at an incredible rate in connecticut. in maine most of the vegetation is killed every winter and the few plants hearty enough to survive a maine winter usually aren’t the kind that grow quickly. everytime my father goes down to visit her, he brings along tools and cuts away huge swaths of the ever-expanding vegetation. and everytime he goes down, it’s grown back and creeped even further out.</p>
<p>so we spent most of the daylight hours on saturday and sunday raking leaves, clearing the branches that had cluttered up the lawn over the winter, and cutting down vines. the whole time, miranda (my sister’s dog) ran around happily smelling all the new connecticut smells and alternating between cooking herself in the sun and cooling off in the shade. despite a little sunburn, i have to admit that a little exercise feels good every once in a while.</p>
<p>on sunday night my aunt (who also lives in connecticut) came over and we all went out and watched <i>A Beautiful Mind</i>. good movie. some of the visualizations of how he ‘saw’ patterns in numbers were kind of cheesy but otherwise it was good.</p>
<p>at 0607 this morning i was roused from <span class="caps">REM</span> sleep, pulled my shoes on, got in the car and rode to the train station. got on the Shoreline East railroad to New Haven, transferred to the Metro North commuter train, rode into Grand Central, got on the subway to 42nd st, transferred to a 1 train up to 103rd, got out and walked to my apartment. took a quick shower (my grandmother forbid us from taking showers while we were there, citing some “water shortage” or something that connecticut is having) and walked to work. considering how poorly my body typically deals with the morning, i’m impressed that i can even remember parts of my day.</p>