(no subject)
it's computer stuff first, then things that might interest those of you who don't know what a linux is. skim appropriately!
of key importance: PHIL FUCKING RULES.
as you probably ignored in the last entry & are probably currently ignoring in this entry, video wasn't working properly despite phil's site visit. tonight, & the key reason he FUCKING RULES: he made magic happen with a splash of nvidia module, a pinch of v86d, & a dash of uvesafb - & not only did both X & zgv start working together, but my zeros with slashes even turned back into zeros with dots. *happy sigh* I'M DIFFERENT FROM YOU OKAY, SHUT UP. it was perfect timing, too - i hung out with sic737 today, & was so frustrated about the new box that he brought me another new box to try a quick & dirty install on, just to see if svgalib would work. (it didn't, but chris still rules hardcore.)
since the last update: i copied over my website & fixed the cgi-bin programs (one little chmod 701 instead of 700, duh). once that was working, i swapped IPs between the old & new box so i wouldn't have to change my RDNS & dyndns pointers. i also moved the dvd-rw over (as noted in the last entry), but it's still not working. it's closer though - at first the bios didn't see it (until i swapped the IDE cable, go layer one), then my kernel didn't see it during boot (until a full recompile fixed the amd74xx module issues), & now i can hear the disc spin but the system can't read a dvd. efforts continue.
i'd like to state here that my brother, too, is awesome. i note this next bit mostly for 5-10 years from now when i have to go through it again. i had root on a separate & tiny hard drive in the old machine, & i wanted to copy the entire structure to my big drive so i could hang onto all my old config files for a couple months, should i need them. this little line of code allowed me to do just that in a very efficient manner:
tar --one-file-system -cvf - . | ( cd /big/drive/OLD_ROOT/ && tar -xf - )
& thus, back to annoying things from this rash of awesome - my netbook arrived... defective. X segfaulted at the third boot, & thereafter would take a full 3-5 minutes to load any program, including tiny games or a terminal window, with nothing else running. added to that, the dvorak keymap is corrupted - instead of printing 123456 as you type numbers, it literally prints [75831. if i manually loaded the keymap with loadkeys or setxkbmap, it went back to normal. what the fuck, dell. i even had to hack my own root, as it wasn't set to any known default or to nothing, & the root password wasn't included in the documentation. turns out they left sudo available to the primary user, so i was at least able to "sudo passwd root". 9_9 they really don't expect people to know what commandline is anymore, do they.
but oddly enough, the CLI is the only part that DOES work correctly. a replacement machine is on the way, & i insisted on keeping this one until it arrives. if they take forever, i can still use it to ssh into my box from hawaii - i just can't check lj while i'm gone. ...which isn't exactly a problem. (ok, i can check it with lynx, but most of the communities i'm in are image-based. let's not even get STARTED about svgalib on the half broken netbook.)
COMPUTER STUFF IS DONE. OH HEY! REAL PEOPLE STORIES START HERE.
the trip to silverwood last weekend was fantastic. robinhoodvandal & i were pretty well concussed after riding this thrice & all of these & everything else non-little-kid-specific in the park at least once. i maintain that wooden roller coasters fucking hurt to ride. (gorthok the headbanger was in a much better place than we were at the end of the day, & impatient_hands barely went on anything above 20mph, so he was fine too.) this guy was a great piece of entertainment though, not painful at all; we went four times.
for lunch at the park, we went to lindy's, which was my choice as it was the only place on the park map that didn't specialize in deep fat frying. the menu had a ton of interesting sandwich choices, & i convinced the table to order three of the burgers to split four ways. we had a turkey burger with avocado, a bison burger with sauteed peppers, & a barbecued angus hamburger with grilled onions. there wasn't much left on the table afterwards, & nobody felt too overfull to go immediately back to the rides.
james had some interesting one-liners on the drive back, such as, "high colonics are like the aftershock of enemas," referencing the "aftershock" ride we liked so much. he also said, "jugs of milk are like poop," & i'm going to leave that to you to figure out for yourself. later, we stopped for dinner at the sawtooth grill in eastern washington, & it was all i could want in a cobb salad. the huckleberry lemonade was rather tasty, too.
anyhow, the weekend was great, & in total was only about seventy bucks a person including the hotel, park access, & meals. (joe & i split paying for gas since we were using james & jenna's car.) for those really interested, jenna went into greater detail (with pictures!) over here, & so did james here.
btw - squishy black earskins are the ONLY way to go to an amusement park. they're the only choice that's really safe. & now on to fancier choices:
i didn't even order them! - http://community.livejournal.com/stretched/5192955.html:
holy shit.
these arrived today. i had to post right away. no in-ears, no match. just a shitton of
RAINBOW LABRADORITE PORN
& a pic in full light - they're actually a very pretty soft gray when they're not flashing like mad:
for those who like to read, here's the story: i ordered two pairs of plugs from relic - which are both fucking gorgeous & will be featured in upcoming posts once the matches are finished & in-ears are taken - & i talked to him about a single labradorite plug.
i'd bought my labradorite off skaforbreakfast a couple years ago for cheap, because there was one super flashy awesome plug, & one lame plug. i upgraded the dull plug a couple times to slightly better options as free/cheap labs came around, but i basically still had one dumpy plug that looked like dishwater. you saw them in the third drawer of my collection post, on the left.
that one really chatoyant plug was enough to keep me from spending $150 on a gorgeous pair from leo, but eventually i just got sick of trying to upgrade one plug. so i asked leo if i could send him the good one & have him make a match to it while i have two other pairs in the works - & he said yes, plus he'd polish up the one i sent, all for a very nice price.
but he wasn't able to do it - i found this note in my shipment today:
"Hi Lish! Here are your awesome plugs. We hope you love them. So we couldn't find a piece of Labradorite to match the one you sent so we took the liberty of making you a whole set out of a special piece. Just cause we love you and REALLY appreciate your business. Thank you! <3 Kate + Leo"
o m g.
RELIC. BUY FROM THEM.
silver chatoyance in green stone; more rainbow lab pron - http://community.livejournal.com/stretched/5194632.html:
while across the country for a vacation in philly, joe & i were in one of those hippie jewelry stores where all the stone is set in sterling & wolves are friggin' everywhere. you know the type - mostly a lot of crap, but they had this one pendant that was really beautiful. i had the staff write the name on a paper for me, which was then lost to the winds for several months... once found, i immediately googled some pics & emailed them to leo to see if he could get some seraphinite.
i haven't heard anything about seraphinite in our circles, so i had no idea if he'd be able to get a hunk big enough for plugs... but wouldn't you know it, leo had just recently added it to his website. he even had a piece in the same patterning i'd pulled pics of - this is "plume seraphinite":
though leo prefers to make his plugs flat-faced (i ran with his preference, since i like lighter & shorter plugs anyhow), the match is rounded. this is because the best pieces of inexpensive yet flashy seraphinite i could buy on ebay to match it came as beads - i was able to buy eight for a buck. i picked the best from the bunch for use, & dremeled down the side including the hole until i had a ~7mm surface.
so here are the plugs with the match:
those are the plumed sides; because relic is AMAZING, the backs ALSO match, & are more striped:
in-ears:
LOVE them. they're like frosty pine needles in my lobes.
& i posted the story about these guys when they first arrived & i couldn't stop staring. here are in-ears of the rainbow labradorite leo & kate made for me, worn with a mediocre 4ga oracle lab from gaugetrade. (i'd prefer at least a better gray match, but it's not going to be easy.) you wouldn't believe how many fucking light sources i had to set up to make these two flashy shots happen, haha. & the little white specs in the far left shot are actually white chatoyance being picked up.
& the much easier-to-photograph soft gray they turn:
while i was midway through the seraphinite pics, seattle gave me a sunbeam, & i found the labs did this:
so i started snapping pictures as quickly as i could, & snagged these:
mmmmm, enjoy. i have one more new relic pair to post about, but i'm not quite sure how i'm doing the match on those yet. ;)
the third of my three new relic pairs - http://community.livejournal.com/stretched/5199271.html:
this stone purchase was inspired by journalface, from this post. i've liked pietersite before, but the examples i'd seen were mostly black/brown with a bit of red or blue. her pair really struck me - the painterly quality is fascinating.
so hers were from oracle, but i heart leo oh-so much, so i dropped him an email. not only does he work with pietersite, he had a spectacularly chatoyant piece in the mail to him already! he sent these pics:
!! right?! leo also drooled all over my luciferins, & though he couldn't do it right now, we're totally setting up a trade in the future. he wants a pair of 10mm for his conches, how cute is that? :D
so these are of course 3/4" DF, flat fronts as per leo's preference, with a nice fitted wearable. it's been really difficult trying to find a matching pietersite bead for a DIY similar to what i did for my seraphinite, so i just figured i'd paint a tiny version of the big plug like i did with the green ocean jasper. :D here's the pietersite & match, showing the sides i prefer:
& if the brownish variation doesn't work on a certain day, the other sides are also matched:
in-ears:
it's funny - from the pic leo'd initially set (seen above), i was concerned i would end up with two pairs that looked pretty well the same - the seraphinite & the pietersite appeared to have similar structures aside from the color. but man, the pieces they chose are COMPLETELY different. all the more reason to order pairs like this at the same time, so the artist can select the area of stone not only to look incredible alone, but also to work with the rest of your collection.
relic = loooove.
back to planning for hawaii & leavenworth now. the latter is turning into a much nicer trip since the addition of a night at a local b&b. we'll see if the breakfast is at all comparable.
of key importance: PHIL FUCKING RULES.
as you probably ignored in the last entry & are probably currently ignoring in this entry, video wasn't working properly despite phil's site visit. tonight, & the key reason he FUCKING RULES: he made magic happen with a splash of nvidia module, a pinch of v86d, & a dash of uvesafb - & not only did both X & zgv start working together, but my zeros with slashes even turned back into zeros with dots. *happy sigh* I'M DIFFERENT FROM YOU OKAY, SHUT UP. it was perfect timing, too - i hung out with sic737 today, & was so frustrated about the new box that he brought me another new box to try a quick & dirty install on, just to see if svgalib would work. (it didn't, but chris still rules hardcore.)
since the last update: i copied over my website & fixed the cgi-bin programs (one little chmod 701 instead of 700, duh). once that was working, i swapped IPs between the old & new box so i wouldn't have to change my RDNS & dyndns pointers. i also moved the dvd-rw over (as noted in the last entry), but it's still not working. it's closer though - at first the bios didn't see it (until i swapped the IDE cable, go layer one), then my kernel didn't see it during boot (until a full recompile fixed the amd74xx module issues), & now i can hear the disc spin but the system can't read a dvd. efforts continue.
i'd like to state here that my brother, too, is awesome. i note this next bit mostly for 5-10 years from now when i have to go through it again. i had root on a separate & tiny hard drive in the old machine, & i wanted to copy the entire structure to my big drive so i could hang onto all my old config files for a couple months, should i need them. this little line of code allowed me to do just that in a very efficient manner:
tar --one-file-system -cvf - . | ( cd /big/drive/OLD_ROOT/ && tar -xf - )
& thus, back to annoying things from this rash of awesome - my netbook arrived... defective. X segfaulted at the third boot, & thereafter would take a full 3-5 minutes to load any program, including tiny games or a terminal window, with nothing else running. added to that, the dvorak keymap is corrupted - instead of printing 123456 as you type numbers, it literally prints [75831. if i manually loaded the keymap with loadkeys or setxkbmap, it went back to normal. what the fuck, dell. i even had to hack my own root, as it wasn't set to any known default or to nothing, & the root password wasn't included in the documentation. turns out they left sudo available to the primary user, so i was at least able to "sudo passwd root". 9_9 they really don't expect people to know what commandline is anymore, do they.
but oddly enough, the CLI is the only part that DOES work correctly. a replacement machine is on the way, & i insisted on keeping this one until it arrives. if they take forever, i can still use it to ssh into my box from hawaii - i just can't check lj while i'm gone. ...which isn't exactly a problem. (ok, i can check it with lynx, but most of the communities i'm in are image-based. let's not even get STARTED about svgalib on the half broken netbook.)
COMPUTER STUFF IS DONE. OH HEY! REAL PEOPLE STORIES START HERE.
the trip to silverwood last weekend was fantastic. robinhoodvandal & i were pretty well concussed after riding this thrice & all of these & everything else non-little-kid-specific in the park at least once. i maintain that wooden roller coasters fucking hurt to ride. (gorthok the headbanger was in a much better place than we were at the end of the day, & impatient_hands barely went on anything above 20mph, so he was fine too.) this guy was a great piece of entertainment though, not painful at all; we went four times.
for lunch at the park, we went to lindy's, which was my choice as it was the only place on the park map that didn't specialize in deep fat frying. the menu had a ton of interesting sandwich choices, & i convinced the table to order three of the burgers to split four ways. we had a turkey burger with avocado, a bison burger with sauteed peppers, & a barbecued angus hamburger with grilled onions. there wasn't much left on the table afterwards, & nobody felt too overfull to go immediately back to the rides.
james had some interesting one-liners on the drive back, such as, "high colonics are like the aftershock of enemas," referencing the "aftershock" ride we liked so much. he also said, "jugs of milk are like poop," & i'm going to leave that to you to figure out for yourself. later, we stopped for dinner at the sawtooth grill in eastern washington, & it was all i could want in a cobb salad. the huckleberry lemonade was rather tasty, too.
anyhow, the weekend was great, & in total was only about seventy bucks a person including the hotel, park access, & meals. (joe & i split paying for gas since we were using james & jenna's car.) for those really interested, jenna went into greater detail (with pictures!) over here, & so did james here.
btw - squishy black earskins are the ONLY way to go to an amusement park. they're the only choice that's really safe. & now on to fancier choices:
i didn't even order them! - http://community.livejournal.com/stretched/5192955.html:
holy shit.
these arrived today. i had to post right away. no in-ears, no match. just a shitton of
RAINBOW LABRADORITE PORN
& a pic in full light - they're actually a very pretty soft gray when they're not flashing like mad:
for those who like to read, here's the story: i ordered two pairs of plugs from relic - which are both fucking gorgeous & will be featured in upcoming posts once the matches are finished & in-ears are taken - & i talked to him about a single labradorite plug.
i'd bought my labradorite off skaforbreakfast a couple years ago for cheap, because there was one super flashy awesome plug, & one lame plug. i upgraded the dull plug a couple times to slightly better options as free/cheap labs came around, but i basically still had one dumpy plug that looked like dishwater. you saw them in the third drawer of my collection post, on the left.
that one really chatoyant plug was enough to keep me from spending $150 on a gorgeous pair from leo, but eventually i just got sick of trying to upgrade one plug. so i asked leo if i could send him the good one & have him make a match to it while i have two other pairs in the works - & he said yes, plus he'd polish up the one i sent, all for a very nice price.
but he wasn't able to do it - i found this note in my shipment today:
"Hi Lish! Here are your awesome plugs. We hope you love them. So we couldn't find a piece of Labradorite to match the one you sent so we took the liberty of making you a whole set out of a special piece. Just cause we love you and REALLY appreciate your business. Thank you! <3 Kate + Leo"
o m g.
RELIC. BUY FROM THEM.
silver chatoyance in green stone; more rainbow lab pron - http://community.livejournal.com/stretched/5194632.html:
while across the country for a vacation in philly, joe & i were in one of those hippie jewelry stores where all the stone is set in sterling & wolves are friggin' everywhere. you know the type - mostly a lot of crap, but they had this one pendant that was really beautiful. i had the staff write the name on a paper for me, which was then lost to the winds for several months... once found, i immediately googled some pics & emailed them to leo to see if he could get some seraphinite.
i haven't heard anything about seraphinite in our circles, so i had no idea if he'd be able to get a hunk big enough for plugs... but wouldn't you know it, leo had just recently added it to his website. he even had a piece in the same patterning i'd pulled pics of - this is "plume seraphinite":
though leo prefers to make his plugs flat-faced (i ran with his preference, since i like lighter & shorter plugs anyhow), the match is rounded. this is because the best pieces of inexpensive yet flashy seraphinite i could buy on ebay to match it came as beads - i was able to buy eight for a buck. i picked the best from the bunch for use, & dremeled down the side including the hole until i had a ~7mm surface.
so here are the plugs with the match:
those are the plumed sides; because relic is AMAZING, the backs ALSO match, & are more striped:
in-ears:
LOVE them. they're like frosty pine needles in my lobes.
& i posted the story about these guys when they first arrived & i couldn't stop staring. here are in-ears of the rainbow labradorite leo & kate made for me, worn with a mediocre 4ga oracle lab from gaugetrade. (i'd prefer at least a better gray match, but it's not going to be easy.) you wouldn't believe how many fucking light sources i had to set up to make these two flashy shots happen, haha. & the little white specs in the far left shot are actually white chatoyance being picked up.
& the much easier-to-photograph soft gray they turn:
while i was midway through the seraphinite pics, seattle gave me a sunbeam, & i found the labs did this:
so i started snapping pictures as quickly as i could, & snagged these:
mmmmm, enjoy. i have one more new relic pair to post about, but i'm not quite sure how i'm doing the match on those yet. ;)
the third of my three new relic pairs - http://community.livejournal.com/stretched/5199271.html:
this stone purchase was inspired by journalface, from this post. i've liked pietersite before, but the examples i'd seen were mostly black/brown with a bit of red or blue. her pair really struck me - the painterly quality is fascinating.
so hers were from oracle, but i heart leo oh-so much, so i dropped him an email. not only does he work with pietersite, he had a spectacularly chatoyant piece in the mail to him already! he sent these pics:
!! right?! leo also drooled all over my luciferins, & though he couldn't do it right now, we're totally setting up a trade in the future. he wants a pair of 10mm for his conches, how cute is that? :D
so these are of course 3/4" DF, flat fronts as per leo's preference, with a nice fitted wearable. it's been really difficult trying to find a matching pietersite bead for a DIY similar to what i did for my seraphinite, so i just figured i'd paint a tiny version of the big plug like i did with the green ocean jasper. :D here's the pietersite & match, showing the sides i prefer:
& if the brownish variation doesn't work on a certain day, the other sides are also matched:
in-ears:
it's funny - from the pic leo'd initially set (seen above), i was concerned i would end up with two pairs that looked pretty well the same - the seraphinite & the pietersite appeared to have similar structures aside from the color. but man, the pieces they chose are COMPLETELY different. all the more reason to order pairs like this at the same time, so the artist can select the area of stone not only to look incredible alone, but also to work with the rest of your collection.
relic = loooove.
back to planning for hawaii & leavenworth now. the latter is turning into a much nicer trip since the addition of a night at a local b&b. we'll see if the breakfast is at all comparable.