Gotta get to work

Classes start in like a week. These breaks just fly by. This semester is gonna kick my ass: Web DB's, User Interface design, 150, and Gogan's networking class.

Scouted out books today at the Student Stores, so I can order them off Amazon and save money. This will enable me to order some extra fun books like Middle Earth for Dummies.

Hrmm. I may need to set up a back up class in case I need to drop Gogan's. I could take Distributed Systems, or COMM has a class on Interactive Media...

I'm back

Hello, gentle readers. I've returned from the Ville. And there was much rejoicing. I was there for 5 whole days. I am glad to be back in the Boro.

Christmas was good. I don't remember crap I got, but then I didn't really want anything to that's ok. My nephew got an unbelievably sweet honeytop Les Paul that I'm very jealous of, but we get by as we must. But the kids got chops, he deserves it. I will officially declare that he's better than me now.

Got to see my old buddy James, who showed me some of the Kali knife fighting form. Interesting stuff. I ever get attacked by one of those guys, I'll just resign myself to dying.

We saw the Return of the King. Rohan is the damn shit. I wish they would have portrayed Eowyn as more confident in her big scene instead of playing the "I didn't know I could do that!" card, but alas. I also wanted to see the Eowyn and Faramir relationship develop, but maybe there'll be a scene or two on the extended DVD. Still, really cool film.

We also got to join up with my our old friend Keeley and have lunch with Mr. Crane, the teacher who taught us Principles of Technology in high school. Our model mag lev train won the state Technology Student Association prize back in the day, and we could have gone to the national competition but nobody really wanted to. We thought it was too expensive to go spend 5 or 6 days in the big city, whichever big city it was. It was good to talk to Mr. Crane. Hell, it was good to know he's still alive. The dude's in his 70's.

Now I will eat my first meal back in Orange County for a while. I'm glad. The coffee and salt heavy diet of my hometown left my stomach aching. I'll have to pick up some Zantac on the way home.

Technology sucks

Last night, in anticipation of wiping my hard drive and setting up an XP/FreeBSD dual boot, I started to back up my data on CD's. Couldn't get my damn cd burner to do jack shit. It usually doesn't even acknowledge that it has a CD in it.

"Well," I thought, "it's time to step up in the data storage department, anyway." So I resolved that I was just going to have to buy an external hard drive. I further thought that I might as well drop some cash on a cheap DVD player, since I can't trust my machine for that, either.

So today I went to Best Buy and got an 80 gig external HD and a Toshiba DVD player. Now, which one of those do you think was easy to set up and which one am I still screaming at two hours later?

That's right. The fucking DVD player is killing me. It has two prong digital and three prong analog coax out, and S-video out. I only have analog coax cables. I do have an S-video cable, but since I've got 3 devices with S-video out and none with S -video in (note to makers of TV's and crap: something needs to have the shit as input or it doesn't work), that doesn't help. I think if I had a two prong digital coax cable I could sent the DVD's out signal to the VCR's in, and take the VCR to the TV with old style coax.

Boo Ya

Take that, music pimping bottom feeders.

It's a Yule tide

I went shopping today. $86 dropped at Southern Season for a gift basket each for Mom and my sister and brother-in-law. That leaves me with about 4 or 5 gifts to buy.

I started to get my dad a leather BBQ apron. But it cost $125. Now, see, the point of an apron is you can get it dirty instead of dirtying your clothes, which theoretically are more valuable. I don't think the makers of the $125 apron have this concept down yet.

Hee hee. That Socom II commercial just came on. You know the one: "My man, Jester, what's the deal dude?!?!?" I love it because that's the level of skill I have with a first person shooter without being distracted by bikini clad women.

Cool thing of the day: Ghost caught on film at Henry VIII's palace?

Economics 101

Today, on the bus ride home, there were many little kids. One of them waxed Marxist, exclaiming deliberately, with weight behind each word, "I wish everything in the world was free!"

"Nunh-uh!," rejoined another, pragmatically. "Then the store would always be out of what we want!"

Then a third kid says, "I wish I was Timmy, but a girl."

3 Down

2 to go. DB final and OE reading journal.

Things I will do one day soon:

• sleep


• eat good food, and take my time doing it


• read the many happy books I bought 3 weeks ago


• build site, Jen's Blossom


• catch up on a month of Smallville


• finally check Ibiblio's submission guidelines for Hamora Lafan


• participate in Christianized Winter Solstice festival


• something or other

One almost down

As if to punctuate my completion of Losee's IR paper, I get one more survey response. I have a disquieting feeling that I'm going to be the next Craig Shergold.

Gotta comment out the mail loop on that damn form when I get a chance.

Crunch

I'm hoping my thesis proposal and Info Retrieval papers will write themselves, but I doubt they will. Thanks, btw, to everyone who filled out my survey. And to those who haven't, there's still time. Come along, you belong.

Last week I bought my first album on iTunes, the incomparable Mark Knopfler's latest, The Ragpicker's Dream. Great album, full of Knopfler's understatedly potent blend of blues, Celtic, bluegrass, country and whatall. This one is full of paeans to working folks, including the standout Why Aye Man, which oddly is about British expats who emigrated to Germany to find work in the building trade. I never knew that happened.

Tonight, I bought my second album, Dido's Life for Rent. Pretty good, so far. Kinda depressing at times.

Last week I got emails from Tom Petty and Eric Clapton. Well, not really. They were identical emails announcing the release of the George Harrison tribute DVD. That'll probably be worth checking out.

But I can't shake the feeling that I got emailed a Time-Warner commercial with Petty and Clapton's names slapped on it.

OK, gotta write papers now.

Fish

I've decided that I should eat more fish. You know, because of the omega-3 fatty acids, and because sharks don't get cancer. Sharks or eskimos. I'm not sure.

I think this was spurred on by reading about "the best types of protein" or some such in a muscle magazine. Yes, I bought not one but two of those "fitness" mags in the last few weeks.

It's an attempt to emotionally manipulate myself. If I spend $6 on a rag with 5 short, dubious articles on fitness interspersed between 157 pages of creatine ads, then I have no excuse not to get off the couch and do some sit-ups a few times a week. So far it's kinda worked to keep me on track. But the supplement guzzling, anaconda-veined freaks are kinda wiggin' me out.

But anyway, I'm gonna try to eat fish 2 or 3 times a week. That probably means more tuna and bacon sandwiches from Subway.

More bacon = healthy.

Holy

sweet mother of frikkin' Jesus

Too much work

Not enough Dukes of Hazzard. But what do you do?

My last database is through. When Prof. Frink, I mean Hemminger, looks at it he's gonna have to put on his beaded wig and start singing "You Dropped a Bomb on Me." It's that good.

It is the charnel, maddening and otherwise super dope H.P. Lovecraft database. A tool for new fans and their reference librarians. Want to know what stories Yog-Sothoth is in? Or Randolph Carter? Just ask. What monster-gods are in The Dunwich Horror? Just ask. You can even query to see when two monsters or a monster and a human character costar.

It even has a "Tell Me More About This Monster" report. Want to get a visual on Dagon or Cthulhu? Just ask.

I dropped a bomb on him.