Happy 4th
I believe this was my least eventful ever. I spent last week predicting the fog would be terrible -- hell, it's not the Fourth of July in the Bay Area without a good dose of fog, but it had been so sunny all June. Sure enough, the fog rolled in a few days ago. My dad predicted it's dissolution before the fireworks, and sure enough it did, but it rolled back in yesterday evening, denser than I ever remember it being on the 4th.
Mom and brother in Europe, sister out, other brother out, friends for the most part unseen and unheard, left me, my dad, and a blanket of fog. I drove through the hills on the way home just to make sure. Not a light to be seen across the bay as i was driving down Moser. Well, except for the millions of cars parked on Moser filled with people staring at the fog.
Clam spaghetti, fresh parsley from the back yard, a trip over to my grandfather's to help him into bed, and a chat with Ryan in his purple Accord. Been a long time. And now I'm back here with my mango-passionfruit tea soothing my scratchy throat. (I hope my boss didn't give me something on Wednesday -- he said he was just getting over something -- and I've got a lot of work to do that I really don't want to do. I'm supposed to visit a couple prospects with him on Thursday. I have to be up at 9am! Today I got up at 1:30, decided I was still too tired, and slept til 3. I so need that raise. My credit cards are scaring me.). Pleasant evening however.
In other news, my Thailand pictures have finally made it onto publicly accessible servers. Rather small by my standards -- slightly less than 800x600, a quarter of what they were, but still 214 megabytes. 25 megs each to my seven available Comcast accounts, the remainder to my Berkeley OCF account. Images were still too big for Photobucket, and my OCF account maxes out at a hundred megs. No external linkage from the photo sites, so they're scattered. If you're tricky you can find them yourself, but I'll make them available soon once I put together a bit of text and link the various sites together. Progress though. Progress.
Can I complain about ridiculously trivial and irrelevant things? Thanks. Hell, all of you are gonna find this incredibly dull too. I don't know what I will do. See, I love my car and all, but I'd like something a little faster, with better handling for my enjoyment, and a nicer, quieter interior for my various passengers and my ego. Gas mileage isn't that great, and the beast has seen better days. Paint is oxidizing, and the seats aren't that comfortable all the way to Tahoe. Random things go wrong and it costs me a day taking part of the car apart and putting it back together. But the thing, aside from that, is insanely practical. Put down the seats, I can transport desks and full file cabinets. Turning diameter is unbeatable except in a Miata at 33.8 feet. Speaker wells are big enough for decent sized speakers.And the car fits me damn well, doing what I ask without any interface issues.
So I get my raise, I pay of my credit cards, I wanna replace this thing. But I dunno what to do. I don't really wanna spend more than 15k, although an RX8 sure would be tempting if the gas mileage weren't so pitiful. I've always wanted an M3, and a 330i would probably suit me perfectly well, but I find the seating position a bit high, the car a bit big, and I don't really think I can afford the 35k at this point in my life, even assuming I get the raise I'm promised. At least the 330i has a decent 34.1' turning diameter. Nothing else does.
I figure I could get '97-'98 A4 1.8T, chip it and fix the shocks, or a '97-'98 M3. But both those cars have gigantic ( 36.4 and 38.1 foot, respectively ) turning diameter and 4" speaker wells. That's no good. I live in Berkeley -- I need to make U-turns on narrow streets all the time. On the other end of the spectrum, I could get a newer Integra, but each successive generation since my G2 has seen its turning diameter increase by a good 2 feet, probably due to market demand for large wheels and small wheel gap over functionality. The G3s are even smaller than my car, and the RSXs don't sound like they offer much of an improvement in the handling department. It's just not worth the pain of needless 3-point turns. Or is it? Somebody please send me a new 330i with a 6 speed and sports suspension for Christmas? I'm not even asking for an M3 this year. I'll live with the high seats and the missing hundred horsepower. You can do this for me, can't ya? Thanks.
Hrmm. I finally gave up on IE. If i had time to reinstall windows, I'd be back on IE in a flash. The interface is just so snappy, it nullifies any potential benefits of any other browser in my mind. But my windows installation is moldy, and IE takes 5 minutes to load many web pages on my laptop. I give up and use IE on my desktop through Windows Terminal Services running on my laptop sometimes, which is plenty fast, but then I don't get to use ClearType, and that requires using two computers. I'm not willing to sit at my desktop which is not at a desk and use it's blurry monitor, flickering, non-LCD monitor. And I sure as hell don't have time to reinstall windows and visual studio and everything else in my life right now to get IE back in working order.
And so I downloaded FireFox the other day. It's quick and light. I like the tabbed browsing, and the interface is decent. But it doesn't seem to use native controls, and so there's a slight but perceptible delay every time you click on something that drives me nuts. It seems to be terribly slow when it comes to mouse-while scrolling and typing in large text-boxes like this one. Perhaps the final version will be better (I'm using 0.9), but I'm not counting on it. If only other companies could learn to make their interfaces Microsoft-slick, I might be swayable. But as it is, and the fact that running IE has so little effect on system resources given that its rendering engine is part of windows and always running anyway, alternative software's got a long hard battle with me.
Hey, does anyone besides me have any difficulty accessing www.sbc.com? The Comcast DNS servers I'm attached to seem to ignore it's existence. Makes it hard to pay my phone bill. Today I had to install Exceed on my desktop through Windows Terminal Services, from my laptop. Then still through WTS, SSH from my desktop to ocf.berkeley.edu to run Mozilla on their machine, through Exceed, through WTS, to access SBC's site to pay my phone bill. That's 4 computers, not including any routers along the way, and counting SBC as a single computer. I'm such a geek. It inspired me to put on my "Java Technology Gets You in the Game" shirt from JavaOne.
Along with my computer geekiness, I'd forgotten how shy I am. I just hadn't thought about it in ages. But I realize that I still can't call people outside a very small circle "just to talk" or "just to hang out." It occurs to me that this is dramatically affecting my social life. If I have a reason to call, I can do it no problem, but I'm no good at starting social events either. If someone wants me to call, I'll call. If there's a show, I'll call to see if someone wants to go. If i'm in the neighborhood, I can call. And I've decided it has nothing to do with fear of rejection. Feels like perhaps I subconsciously feel like I don't have the right to disturb someone, outside that very small circle, "just to hang out" or "just to talk". A 3rd party's desire is enough. Reporting a random fact is enough. Seeing a phone number with no message on my phone is enough. But my own whims don't seem to be. I guess the corresponding message, then, is that, if I don't call you, or if I don't invite you to do something, it isn't because I don't want to. I'm sure I do, I just need someone to kick me in the ass to make me get over my stupid mental blocks. or, Please bother me. Perhaps if I forced myself to get over this, i'd stop being single. Ha.
My dad tells me the story of some philosopher or writer or something. When he was young he was very shy, and he decided to change that. So he went to the zoo and stood in front of the lions and forced himself to start a conversation with every female, young or old, that walked by. Supposedly it worked.
Goodnight
Mom and brother in Europe, sister out, other brother out, friends for the most part unseen and unheard, left me, my dad, and a blanket of fog. I drove through the hills on the way home just to make sure. Not a light to be seen across the bay as i was driving down Moser. Well, except for the millions of cars parked on Moser filled with people staring at the fog.
Clam spaghetti, fresh parsley from the back yard, a trip over to my grandfather's to help him into bed, and a chat with Ryan in his purple Accord. Been a long time. And now I'm back here with my mango-passionfruit tea soothing my scratchy throat. (I hope my boss didn't give me something on Wednesday -- he said he was just getting over something -- and I've got a lot of work to do that I really don't want to do. I'm supposed to visit a couple prospects with him on Thursday. I have to be up at 9am! Today I got up at 1:30, decided I was still too tired, and slept til 3. I so need that raise. My credit cards are scaring me.). Pleasant evening however.
In other news, my Thailand pictures have finally made it onto publicly accessible servers. Rather small by my standards -- slightly less than 800x600, a quarter of what they were, but still 214 megabytes. 25 megs each to my seven available Comcast accounts, the remainder to my Berkeley OCF account. Images were still too big for Photobucket, and my OCF account maxes out at a hundred megs. No external linkage from the photo sites, so they're scattered. If you're tricky you can find them yourself, but I'll make them available soon once I put together a bit of text and link the various sites together. Progress though. Progress.
Can I complain about ridiculously trivial and irrelevant things? Thanks. Hell, all of you are gonna find this incredibly dull too. I don't know what I will do. See, I love my car and all, but I'd like something a little faster, with better handling for my enjoyment, and a nicer, quieter interior for my various passengers and my ego. Gas mileage isn't that great, and the beast has seen better days. Paint is oxidizing, and the seats aren't that comfortable all the way to Tahoe. Random things go wrong and it costs me a day taking part of the car apart and putting it back together. But the thing, aside from that, is insanely practical. Put down the seats, I can transport desks and full file cabinets. Turning diameter is unbeatable except in a Miata at 33.8 feet. Speaker wells are big enough for decent sized speakers.And the car fits me damn well, doing what I ask without any interface issues.
So I get my raise, I pay of my credit cards, I wanna replace this thing. But I dunno what to do. I don't really wanna spend more than 15k, although an RX8 sure would be tempting if the gas mileage weren't so pitiful. I've always wanted an M3, and a 330i would probably suit me perfectly well, but I find the seating position a bit high, the car a bit big, and I don't really think I can afford the 35k at this point in my life, even assuming I get the raise I'm promised. At least the 330i has a decent 34.1' turning diameter. Nothing else does.
I figure I could get '97-'98 A4 1.8T, chip it and fix the shocks, or a '97-'98 M3. But both those cars have gigantic ( 36.4 and 38.1 foot, respectively ) turning diameter and 4" speaker wells. That's no good. I live in Berkeley -- I need to make U-turns on narrow streets all the time. On the other end of the spectrum, I could get a newer Integra, but each successive generation since my G2 has seen its turning diameter increase by a good 2 feet, probably due to market demand for large wheels and small wheel gap over functionality. The G3s are even smaller than my car, and the RSXs don't sound like they offer much of an improvement in the handling department. It's just not worth the pain of needless 3-point turns. Or is it? Somebody please send me a new 330i with a 6 speed and sports suspension for Christmas? I'm not even asking for an M3 this year. I'll live with the high seats and the missing hundred horsepower. You can do this for me, can't ya? Thanks.
Hrmm. I finally gave up on IE. If i had time to reinstall windows, I'd be back on IE in a flash. The interface is just so snappy, it nullifies any potential benefits of any other browser in my mind. But my windows installation is moldy, and IE takes 5 minutes to load many web pages on my laptop. I give up and use IE on my desktop through Windows Terminal Services running on my laptop sometimes, which is plenty fast, but then I don't get to use ClearType, and that requires using two computers. I'm not willing to sit at my desktop which is not at a desk and use it's blurry monitor, flickering, non-LCD monitor. And I sure as hell don't have time to reinstall windows and visual studio and everything else in my life right now to get IE back in working order.
And so I downloaded FireFox the other day. It's quick and light. I like the tabbed browsing, and the interface is decent. But it doesn't seem to use native controls, and so there's a slight but perceptible delay every time you click on something that drives me nuts. It seems to be terribly slow when it comes to mouse-while scrolling and typing in large text-boxes like this one. Perhaps the final version will be better (I'm using 0.9), but I'm not counting on it. If only other companies could learn to make their interfaces Microsoft-slick, I might be swayable. But as it is, and the fact that running IE has so little effect on system resources given that its rendering engine is part of windows and always running anyway, alternative software's got a long hard battle with me.
Hey, does anyone besides me have any difficulty accessing www.sbc.com? The Comcast DNS servers I'm attached to seem to ignore it's existence. Makes it hard to pay my phone bill. Today I had to install Exceed on my desktop through Windows Terminal Services, from my laptop. Then still through WTS, SSH from my desktop to ocf.berkeley.edu to run Mozilla on their machine, through Exceed, through WTS, to access SBC's site to pay my phone bill. That's 4 computers, not including any routers along the way, and counting SBC as a single computer. I'm such a geek. It inspired me to put on my "Java Technology Gets You in the Game" shirt from JavaOne.
Along with my computer geekiness, I'd forgotten how shy I am. I just hadn't thought about it in ages. But I realize that I still can't call people outside a very small circle "just to talk" or "just to hang out." It occurs to me that this is dramatically affecting my social life. If I have a reason to call, I can do it no problem, but I'm no good at starting social events either. If someone wants me to call, I'll call. If there's a show, I'll call to see if someone wants to go. If i'm in the neighborhood, I can call. And I've decided it has nothing to do with fear of rejection. Feels like perhaps I subconsciously feel like I don't have the right to disturb someone, outside that very small circle, "just to hang out" or "just to talk". A 3rd party's desire is enough. Reporting a random fact is enough. Seeing a phone number with no message on my phone is enough. But my own whims don't seem to be. I guess the corresponding message, then, is that, if I don't call you, or if I don't invite you to do something, it isn't because I don't want to. I'm sure I do, I just need someone to kick me in the ass to make me get over my stupid mental blocks. or, Please bother me. Perhaps if I forced myself to get over this, i'd stop being single. Ha.
My dad tells me the story of some philosopher or writer or something. When he was young he was very shy, and he decided to change that. So he went to the zoo and stood in front of the lions and forced himself to start a conversation with every female, young or old, that walked by. Supposedly it worked.
Goodnight