Planet MichaelAndKrissy

Fucking A. We have reservations to go out to our expensive dinner tonight, and I've got a toothache.

It's a vagina, lady, not a clown car.. 18 kids. All with J-names.

MY GOD.

I got a letter from the University telling me that my student account is now past due. Past due accounts lead to being dropped from your classes. Can they drop me five days before my final?

I'd hate for anyone to think that it's all doom and gloom. After all, I did just go on vacation with Sarah. We walked from the Palace of Fine Arts to Sausalito via the Golden Gate Bridge, then took a ferry back. I am terrified of heights, so I accidentally crapped my pants while crossing the bridge.

I haven't posted the last batch of doodles because I don't know that people really want to see a post with twenty insane drawings in it pop up amidst their feed reader. While on one hand I post entirely for my own benefit, I hate to grief those people who take it upon themselves to follow my meandering rambles. That said, there is doodle news -- no, I didn't win a weekly thing or get posted in the Weisman, but I did get an email:

[We] were wondering if you would be interested in doing an illustration for one of the stories for the finals issue... it would be about Bruininks.. more information to follow if you are so inclined.

The [we] is a couple of guys who were snickering every week. I accepted their mission.

As long as it won’t get me fired or arrested, I’m down with doing an illustration — especially if it will *almost* get me fired AND arrested.

Negotiations ended in this request:

> The Photo Request goes as follows:

Those two, signing a contract, in which Satan himself promises Fun Bobby that the U will become one of the top three research facilities in the WORLD.

Oh yeah, I can sure do that. Oh, wait, there’s some art direction:

“No Dicks.”

Quotes not mine. Here’s the output, remarkable for being completely dick-free — if you don’t count Bob himself.

Everyone was excited, and then I received this:

So after okaying it with my boss and everyone laying out the paper, the
tops of the top have decided…

After that I stopped reading and started living. I mean screaming. I mean, typing a series of emails with decreasing levels of verbal entropy and increasing levels of obscenity. Then I went back to writing PHP, because that’s what I do.

Sure, the Daily won’t publish it, but I will, because this is my personal site. I make the rules, and the rules say that you should leave more comments.

Tim is left high and dry.

So, in all likelihood, we're going to be switching to Comcast business. It's a slight drop in download speed (6M from 8M), a slight increase in upload (1M from 768K), and we get static IP and the ability to do whatever the fuck we want with it. The difference is only a few bucks. But, if we want, they have a 16M/2M package that's about $25 more.

I called Onestop and managed to keep from any sort of histrionics. Their verdict was that I got boned, and it was the mistake of Onestop/financial aid, with the caveat that I "applied for the Regent's Scholarship late." Right. They couldn't figure that stuff out in time for spring semester or any time sooner in the nine months since I received money last fall. As a result, I won't be taking any classes this summer. I might, however, take classes that I can transfer back to the U. I don't know, but I'm still livid over the misinformation.

Notice of Student Financial Aid Repayment A recent review of your financial aid packaging has resulted in a reversal of the following financial aid types(s) and amount(s). This reversal of financial aid has been posted to your student account and can also be viewed at http://onestop.umn.edu/onestop/ and then click on "Student Account" under Quick Links. 05-03-2008 Fall 2007 05-03-2008 Spr 2008

I understand that borrowing this money was not completely necessary, and that I would have been responsible for paying back the (not insignificant) amounts at one point or another. I haven't spent it all, either. I tell you what, though, without that great big padding, I wouldn't have made it through this year of classes. One big push. Just do it, and damn the torpedos.

The thing is, I asked them, over and over again, if this was for sure my money to borrow. The representatives assured me that it was. If they would have said six months ago that I wasn’t supposed to get it, I would have been fine with that.

I almost dropped my summer class, but if I owe the University money, I might not be able to re-register when/if/never this gets straightened out.

“Oh, you only meant to go part time all year? Why didn’t you say so?”

“I DID! I DID I DID I DID I DID I DID I DID I DID I DID I DID I DID I DID!”

I’m just livid right now. Just let me figure out a budget more than a week in advance. I knew I knew that I couldn’t afford a vacation, but my ulcer told me that I needed to get away from work and school and maybe just for three days smell some flowers. Look, flowers. Ocean. See? This is why you are slogging through classes that are putting you to sleep: for the chance to get the hell out of Dodge, again.

Man. Angry.

Whatever, it’s time for bed.

A long time ago I submitted my photoblog site to Coolphotoblogs and subsequently forgot about it. Today I got an email telling me that the site had been approved for listing. Very cool, and I'm anxious to see what kind of rating the site gets. Please check out Opticalpork and it's Cool Photoblogs profile page.

I don't have the words... - NSFW Music Video

鍋貼: possibly the best food on earth. Oh, you don't read Chinese? Please allow me to translate: "Pot sticker." Yes.

I met Sarah at the CalTrain station after an hour or so of watching California slide past outside the windows. Despite my then-brand-new pants and a reasonably fresh shave, I still felt pretty haggard. I may have showered when I got to our room at the Executive Vintage Court Hotel. I may have staggered around the room in a grim stupor and taken a quick nap under the desk. I’m not really sure which happened, but both Sarah and I were awash with hunger, so I scraped myself up and dumped myself into some fresh clothes so we could head out. Chinatown beckoned, with its writhing live seafood and endless armies of cast resin knick-knacks.

At the entrance to Chinatown is a faux-traditional gate, as though it were the entrance to a bucolic village nestled amongst rice paddies instead of a dirty street buttressed by the cardboard erections of muttering homeless folk. The entrances were guarded by “Foo Dogs” (石狮) — notable for being lions and for sharing their name with the ubiquitous variable $foo — the x of the programming world.

If you don’t go in by the 石狮, you find your path guarded by the “street keyboards,” which are certainly no less fierce.

In Chinatown we sought Dim Sum, hoping to find a place where we could sit down and have wave after wave of steamed delights rolled to our table on small carts. I suppose that I should have checked the internet before sallying forth, but hotel internet and I tend to not get along well, so we went unprepared. At first we weren’t finding any places advertising Dim Sum, so we stopped into a place called “Pot Sticker” and ordered the best pot stickers of my memory. The skins were delicate and had the merest air of sweetness. The pork was tangy and just the right mix of tender and firm. I almost ordered a hundred more, but we agreed that we should seek return to our quest. We continued walking with the simple idea that we would look for signs that say “Dim Sum” (點心) and had Chinese people inside eating. If they live there and eat at a place, it has to be at least all right.

Unless, of course, you are really tired of wandering around looking into empty restaurants and you spot a place that has deli-style dim sum and at least a handful of people, so you head in and order before noticing that those people are either elderly or one step away from being homeless, and garbage has blown into the restaurant and not been removed in a timely manner. This was the situation we found ourselves in as we sat down with our selection of random foodlike items. The menus were entirely in Chinese. This was at first heartening, but then damning, as I came to find out. Sarah commented that she saw the first fly of the day in that place. The food was passable at best, but it had been a bit of an adventure and I admit that I took a certain glee in the knowledge that we were gambling with our lives with every bite. Sarah taste tested each item to ensure that it didn’t have any deadly claw shrimp lurking within, ready to asphyxiate me. (If you don’t know, I’m allergic to fish and shellfish)

The pot stickers were sad, pale, rubbery imitations of the beauty and glory of the pot stickers from Pot Sticker, but I thought that the beef-like balls were pretty tasty, until I put some hot sauce on one and then bit clean through a hidden shrimp, curled and ready to strike its bloody vengeance upon me. I spit it back out, and Sarah and I went pale. I gagged, fell on the floor, and expired right there. In fact, I write this now from beyond the grave.

OOOoooOOOoOOOOOOOOoooOOO oo OOOOOOOooooOOOOOoo, scary! (that’s my ghost voice)

(this photo is by Sarah)

Not being actually dead, we thought that maybe we should exit Chinatown. Unfortunately, an elderly Chinese man named Lo Pan thought Sarah’s eyes were green and kidnapped her. There was a big street fight and then I had to track him down in his lair, which is so improbable I can barely believe it.

After Chinatown, the next logical step was the beach. After all, we were in California, where summer is endless. An hour bus ride up Geary later, we were a mere half mile from the top of the hill that led down to the beach. We walked hurriedly past cute houses perched above their tiny garages are were amazed by the number of white lilies painting the wind with their scents.

“Aren’t those funeral lilies?” I asked Sarah. She looked at me like I was crazy and continued her relentless march west.

I should mention that San Francisco seems gifted with sea, cedar, and acres of flowers. If we could have stopped for even a moment, we would have known what “stop and smell the flowers” means. Instead we blistered our feet onward in hopes of catching even a sliver of the sun before it set over the ocean.

In fact we did! We saw the last twenty seconds of sun before it slipped away.

We fooled around taking pictures for a while and went down to the ocean.

The moon

The moon, again. What? I don’t have to pick my favorite of these two — that’s your job.

We hiked right down to the ocean below Cliff House. There were warning signs, so I told Sarah that if I fell in the ocean she should let the sea take me. As it turns out, the ocean didn’t want me that day.

Sorry this isn’t straight. I was too excited to stand still and we hadn’t brought the tripod.

Back at the room, I had to fight Lo Pan once more, but when I defeated him, he turned into a pyramidal pillow. Really!

Awesome 3D animated movie..

A Gentleman's Duel

Sarah and I expected to do a lot, so I made notes on pieces of scrap paper and laid them out.

Before I could vacation, I ran the Gallery booth at the O’Reilly MySql Conference. It was a bit grueling and not enough people wanted to take the candy. I resorted to pixel art. It didn’t help much, but an African American gentleman did give me a look and say that “chocolate needs nuts. Normally I would say something like “I am known for the size of my nuts,” but I just wasn’t ready.

In fact, I spent the second day completely exhausted — possibly because of the incalculably ridiculous amounts of alcohol provided to me the night before. I resolved to take better care of myself and forced myself to take breaks for meals and not losing my mind.

Nonetheless, by the third day I was about ready to drop. I forced myself to eat an expensive but amazing breakfast burrito at the conference hotel restaurant and nearly fell asleep waiting.

It was totally worth it — not just the burrito (which was filled with the fluffiest, moistest, and most delicate eggs I’ve even had occasion to jam in my gobhole), but talking to people at the Gallery booth and then sticking around an extra day to attend some sessions. I didn’t stick around for lunch or the afternoon sessions, though. I preferred to hop on the Caltrain (thanks in part to a friendly lady who operated the ticket machine and called me “hon,” which I find incredibly charming). The Caltrain would take me to Sarah, who had hopefully made San Francisco ready for me.

While on the train I heard “38th Adventure” by the Hot Springs and put it on repeat for half an hour. Coincidentally, it just came up on random over my stereo, which is probably a sign that I should finish this post and leave the meat of SF for later.

I hope that you like pictures, ‘cause that’s what you’re gonna get.

By "it," I mean "the deluge of photos." I will do my best not to overwhelm you. Step one: the backlog. When I leave Minnesota, I will miss Pizza Luce. Sarah and I go regularly.

This is entirely Sarah’s fault because she encourages me.

The other day some people were protesting Tibet, or China in Tibet, or… I dunno.

Here is where I buy my music — usually when I miss a bus by a minute or two.

Just finished carpet-cleaning the "pee spot". The spot in the livingroom that a previous tenant's cats sprayed on, so our cats (Dinah) have designated it the place to go. Once things dry we're re-arranging the livingroom. Partly to cover that spot, and partly to open it up a bit more.

I think the problem is my distinct lack of a Hasselblad. While in San Francisco, Sarah and I went to see the Friedlander show at SFMOMA and then followed up by seeing his exhibition at the Fraenkel Gallery. If you're in San Francisco, I highly recommend both actions. If you aren't, you can see his work online on artnet.com.

This is a trickle to begin sharing images from our vacation with you. I barely understand what that word means.

This is a photo by Lee Friedlander that made Sarah and I a bit teary at the museum. I suppose that context helps, but hopefully you can get the idea from this image that I looted from the bounty of the internet.

Here’s my version of the same, minus the Hasselblad goodness.

Dear Microsoft.

You have done a lot of things right in both Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1 (and Server 2008) and in Windows XP Service Pack 3. But for some reason, and I really can't understand why, you have done rather arbitrary command line parameter changes in the new Terminal Services client.

As most, of not all, Windows Server administrators I rely heavily on the remote administration capabilities of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).While Windows allows a lot of remote administration methods, some things do need more of a "hands on approach". Remotely connecting to the server console provides an excellent way to get your hands dirty, and as I live in a mostly virtualized environment it's usually the best way of managing some aspects of my servers.


In a pre Vista SP1/Server 2008 and XP SP3 environment, a simple '%windir%\System32\mstsc.exe -v:<ip> /F /console' would do the trick.

All of a sudden, notice that that the /console argument seems to have been replaced by a new /admin argument. What?! All my old shortcuts that connect me directly to the servers console no longer connect me to the console. It doesn't complain when I execute the command, but if I don't use the new /admin parameter I connect to a new session instead of an existing console session.
 


It's a small task to change my own personal shortcuts, but if you have created a set of shared shortcuts for your administrators you now need double sets. At least until you upgrade all you clients. For a set of administrators thats a small task, but it's greatly annoying. Another side effect of this is that if you have old MMC consoles still call the /console option as well, thus are not connecting to the actual console. I noticed that the Remote Admin MMC plugin in Windows Server 2008 has been updated to actually use the new /admin parameter, so at least they got that bit sorted. I haven't checked in XP or Vista yet though.

Microsoft: I can't understand why you did this change, but I can accept it. What I don't understand is this; When you change a parameter like this, didn't you think that it would be a good idea to still support the old syntax as well? At least until the next version?

I wonder how many others are out there that think they connect to their server consoles, but actually aren't. I'm certain this has caused a lot of frustration and confusion all over the place. In mixed environments this can be a real hassle, and a genuine issue. I'm sure there are are other consequences to this as well, that I haven't discovered or thought about yet.

In summary, /console has been deprecated and replaced by /admin when calling the mstsc client. Why? I have no idea, and I haven't seen anything "official" regarding this anywhere.

Dear Mediatemple who is not hosting most of my service any more, I realize that this is a difficult breakup and that you still have some of my stuff, but I hope that we can be friends in the future. Just don't lie to me or trash talk my friends and we're cool in my book. With love always, Jesse

For those of you who are not magnetically handsome mediatemple employees, I bid you welcome to the new digs — a server in a rack in Atlanta. You probably won’t notice anything different, but I get to do stuff like set PHP opcode caching and evict all PHP4 from my box. Yes, things were down for 12 hours or so, but that was just because I jumped the gun on changing the DNS.

I don’t know why, either — I’m all about the testing and clean migration plans.

Whatevs. Now that this beast lives, I can see about posting about San Francisco.

Melody wasn't kidding when she said that baby hormones make her narcoleptic. She, quite literally, fell asleep mid-sentence at least a dozen times today. That's not counting the moments when she fell asleep with a bottle in her hand (in the middle of feeding) or while breastfeeding...

druuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugs.

The Lifestyle And You - Joining The Lifestyle - clean, but NSFW concepts

Noah gave us a little new-parent fright today. For the first time he passed out for almost six hours without any willingness to wake up. We fed him in the middle, but he wouldn't even "wake up" for that. Turns out that his episode of projectile-spew when Melody tried to feed and nap really wore him out.

Right about the time that his unresponsiveness started to worry us, he woke up and turned back into a brat until feeding was concluded. Now he's asleep on my shoulder. Let me just say that while I love my split-key keyboard, it is not suitable for one-handed hunt and peck. (Yet I still insist on using no abbreviations. Go me.)

That is all for now.

We will be flying back to Minneapolis tomorrow morning. I find this most displeasing.

We just got home with Noah. Beginning the process of settling in.

Just for the record, these are dumb: # Example A: reading file = open(somefile) contents = [] for line in file: contents.append(line) # Example B: writing file = open(somefile, \"w\") for line in contents: file.writeline(line) # Example C: filtering result = [] for line in contents: if not line.find(\"boo\"): [...]

I’ve started on A.J. Jacobs’ masterpiece The Year of Living Biblically today. I already raced through the introduction and part of September (his first month of transition) over some hamburger concoction at Red Robin (and no refills on fries; though I had two refills of iced tea). The basic idea is that he has [...]

The first batch of pictures is up. Our webserver's been a little weird lately, but it should be responding ok. Try again if it doesn't respond.

I've been looking at a lot of other sites for design inspiration lately, in yet another attempt at redesigning this site. So far not much has come of it, but at least I think I have a general feel on how I want to lay it out at least. Unlike Khaled, I want to do a revolution not an evolution. I just don't know how to start one just yet.

So, while I wait to get a sudden rush of blood through the right side of my brain I present one of Jim Whimpeys "drawn portaits":

Care to guess who it is? It's really obvious. Really, it is.

Reddit let me to a strange web site for some cracking/hacking/naughtiness (I think. I wasn’t interested enough to read it). What I did see is a sentence on one page that said: Does the underground still breath? My, how the letter E changes things. Does the author ask if the underground is still alive(”does [...]

Noah Fredrick Rossiter
10lb 5oz - 20 inches
Born 3:30PM 4/16/08

Pictures to come.

Melody will be out of recovery shortly - after some complications this morning, everything went beautifully.

Edit: Corrected spelling of middle name.

Dear Mediatemple who went to the bar with me last night, I think that you know where this post is going, so I will leave the completion up to you. With love, Jesse

Last night the rabbit took several limos full of nerds to a dive bar and paid for everyone to drink. In the limo I met a couple of guys from Mediatemple, one of whom told me a series of joke in order of descending taste. It was fairly amazing. I would post pictures, but my SD card reader is in my camera bag in the hotel. Instead, I may have to paint you a “word picture.”

• Eventually the bunny removed her head, which was sweaty on the inside
• I do not recommend drinking a pint of gin and tonic
• One of the bartenders looked a LOT like Jennifer Tilly
• I called Sarah to get assistance finding my room key
• I woke up with my underwear on backwards

Right. I had peanuts for breakfast and hors d’oeuvre for dinner last night, which hopefully explains my rapid descent into madness.

In approximately 7.5 hours we will be in the birthing center. Just finishing up a bit of laundry and such so I have things to wear in the morning. Copying videos to my laptop so that we have things to watch.

P. Nuttles. P dot nuttles.

The bunny came back and we made up.

Okay, fine, here she is:

When I arrived, there was no table, so I considered just holding our sign and throwing the horns for eight hours straight.

At first I despaired that there would be no cosplayers at this Con, but then I saw this rabbit:

I played “pelt the rabbit in its big white head,” then got — oh, just watch the video.

Then, there were Elvises. When I write “Elvises,” my eyes see the word “Penises.” I think that there might be something wrong with me.

I drew eleven dinosaur doodles last night. Alas! I have no scanner here!

This is all the rage lately, so I’m doing it too: [0]tottinge@clicky:~$ history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf \"%5d\t%s\n\",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head 119 sudo 53 ls 34 hpodder 30 cd 19 vi 18 ping [...]

Some of my friends and relatives are getting a start in python. Some are just curious about programming in general, some are interested especially in testing with Twill or the like. I have a few recommendations for the beginner. The first is to go to the python home page. This is [...]

Or am I in Santa Clara? Either way, I have the large-bathroomed "handicapped suite." I am dogged by the persistent yet subtle aroma of feces -- or at least old people. I should be seeking a Kinko's to print something, but instead I want food and a deep sleep. Dot dot dot. The pizza is on it's way, along with a 2 liter of Pepsi. It's an old fashioned sleepover in the poop room. I'm going to watch some Doctor Who and Mighty Boosh until I pass out.

Sarah bought me Pants That Fit brand pants from the Gap before picking me up to go to the airport.

This room can’t seem to air out quickly enough.

No, not the super fun Brazilian band CSS, the web technology called CSS. Eric Meyer asked if I would join his posse, but I wasn't up to the initiation, which involves a semantic beatdown.

I suppose that if I were to say "jet" you wouldn't also need to hear "plane" to know what I was saying -- seeing as there aren't very many jet boats around and the promise of jet cars was never fulfilled. All to my endless dismay. Todaymow (the amalgamation of today and tomorrow that is created when you are awake into the tomorrow of what was once today but is now yesterday, but nonetheless you don't really want to let go) I fly to San Jose for a MySql conference. After three days of manning a booth and fighting sleep during sessions, I will migrate to San Francisco to accompany Sarah on miles of walking around the city. We just watched Zodiac. I'm not allowed to touch knives in Sarah's presence anymore -- or wear the black hood.

So, of course I can’t pack in advance, because the creeping dread overwhelms me. I count out articles of clothing and assign them to days. I try on all the pants that I have outgrown over the winter (and curse the dire cold and recent snows with every failed attempt at buttoning. So much for striding in purposefully and confidently, wearing a sleek new tie that sets off my shirt and hints at the wonder of color to be found in my socks which match my pants or at least my shoes (which, aside from having Minnesota winter ground into their leathers, are generally kicky, indeed) — no (and I realize that this is the mother of all run on sentences, full to bursting with asides and other mental wanderings, but my brain is limp and noodly with the terror of anticipation: O! the ocean, my mistress, whose iciness has embraced me but once, I tremble in remembrance) I will enter the convention center rumpled and shocked from air travel and spend two days smiling and running all my best routines to draw the eye of future employers, hopefully charmed by my pluck, stamina, and pile of chocolate candy.

Yes, Gallery’s booth will feature one elderly college student, an 11x17″ print of the Gallery logo, free Gallery VMWare appliance discs (to avoid the inhumanity of actually having to download the free software and various bite-sized candies. I don’t have a flight case full of plasma screens and elaborate animations proclaiming the awesomeness of our free software, just a winning (but chocolaty) smile, witty banter, and eyes that plead for additional developers to come in and flesh out our already talented but stretched thin crew. As I will be at the table for two days I might even get some coding (or at least reviews) done. I do have some stuff to do for the good Professor in the icon programming language — as in two credits of independent study by the end of the semester. Ouch.

That’s a lot of rambling, but I feel better for it.

Oh yeah, I’m renting a “Pontiac Solstice” for one day of varied shenanigans in San Francisco and the North Bay. I hear what you’re saying: it’s not a Mustang, and I haven’t found a Dodge Charger to chase. When you and I go to SF, we will rent those cars and be ridiculous. It will be fun.

I just finished a ten mile ride on the springwater corridor trail. It's absolutely beautiful today. All in separate instances, I saw two baby rabbits, one adolescent, and one adult.

I managed to kludge a port-tunnel on a system at work, and tweak my MX settings a little. We're getting mail again in a limited fashion. I think I finally got the correct combination of words together so that abuse@comcast's automated-answer-system actually passed my message on to a real person.

Hopefully someone will read it and unblock port 25 for me. If not, I'm not sure what I'm going to do long-term. I've contemplated asking my boss if I can rack up one of my servers in the colo. Other than that, hosting a real mail server somewhere is just insanely expensive.

Edit: I spoke too soon. No more than two minutes later, I got a stupid "please pick your answer out of our list below" responses. Motherfucker.

You see the strangest things in hotel parking lots. Here is a bit of Americana oddity: Today there were two of them. I took the picture with my phone, which is a poor camera, but there it is. By the way, George Sparks sent me a spelling correction and a link to the wienermobile’s [...]

Ugh. So tired right now. Couldn't fall asleep. Just tossed and turned.

In celebration of the release of Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), the Indiana Ubuntu Local Community Team is holding a Hardy Release Party on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at the Reddick Shelterhouse at Fort Harrison State Park in Indianapolis. The shelter house has been reserved from 7:00 AM until 8:30 PM - the party is scheduled for noon until 8:04 PM. Feel free to come earlier and stay as long as you like, but the park does close promptly at 8:30 PM.

The release party is being organized in pitch-in fashion. To RSVP, sign up to bring an item or for more information, visit the wiki page.

Hope to see you there!

read more

Woke up to a phonecall from the boss this morning. "The site's offline!"

The entire colo facility had power issues. Virtually every cabinet owner was in the building when I got in. Several systems didn't recover too gracefully, including the ISP's.

My boss showed up at the colo to see if he could do anything - turned out he could. He had to take Melody to her dr.'s appointment. She came with me on the off chance that things would take a while, and they did.

I might have finally located a tech worth talking to. "Melinda". Have to wait and see. Instead of giving me the off-the-cuff bullshit, she actually quoted me a ticket number that was the cause for the block. I asked for more details, and told her that I've made some corrective actions to my server (not bounce 'suspected' [not confirmed, which is automatically discarded] spam).

Edit: No, of course not. I respond to the competent tech, and get a form-letter response from Sergi that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. FUCK. I'm telling them that I expect a management call tomorrow during business hours.

Tim raves about another pretty guitar, again with P90 pickups.

Fucking comcast. Let me repeat that a few times. Fucking comcast. Fucking comcast. Fucking comcast. Fucking comcast. Fucking comcast.

All incoming data on port 25 (mail) was blocked in the last couple days. I contact support, because this has been something that they could turn on or off on an individual basis. The response I get is "Running a server is against the ToS. You need to take that down."

I'm going to contact business services and see if I get the same "But you're not an office-building" runaround that I got last time. Motherfuckers.

And of course, in the meantime all my mail is bouncing to our failover server, and then getting returned undeliverable after 48 hours.

I had a very simple first brush with twill, in which I drove Google around a little bit. I was successful, and even delighted. It’s a nice language and an even better python library. As a next step, I got some friends around to play with testing a real application. For some [...]

It’s a crazy week. I flew out Sunday, after some flight delays due to weather. I had a minor delay getting a rental car, and then an interruption getting into my room at the hotel. Normally I wouldn’t have minded, but somewhere near the end of the flight I started getting ill. [...]

Flew home on an early flight. Got in at 7:30ish instead if 11:30. That was nice.

I'm exhausted. I'm going to take some pain killers, maybe put some tiger balm/icy hot/whatever on my neck, watch TV in bed, and probably pass out five minutes after laying down. Then I get to get up early so I can go install several of the machines that I packed up today.

13 70lb boxes. But it wasn't just moving the boxes, of course... I had to take the machines out of the racks, cart them around, package them, tape them, label them, put them on carts, help load them onto the Fedex trucks (yes, plural). Oh, and spend a lot of time swearing at my predecessors for their horrid cabling.

11am, and I'm already exhausted.

The title is a bit misleading, I don't hate Apple, but I'm very
critical to the seemingly blind media and general fanboism Apple is
surrounded with, but after resisting the collective hive mind that is
the Apple marketing
machine I finally caved in. I got my non-Apple hands firmly gripped
around a brand new iPod Touch. Black, sleek and very shiny

I am a big music consumer, but I haven't had my own personal portable music player since the Sony Walkman WM-B52 my dad brought home from one of his US trips.
While researching (I actually do that from time to time!) for this
post, I realized something. The Walkman model I had was made available
in 1988, and now 20 years later I just got my second one.Some way to celebrate that anniversary.

Sure, we have a couple of MP3 players that the kids randomly use, but
none of them ever really appealed to me for some reason. They are
small, have a one line display and basically the sound quality on those
devices leaves a lot to be
desired. To be fair, these are very low end, cheap devices that never
promised anything besides what they actually provide.

I was even adement that if/when I were to get a proper MP3 player it
wouldn't be an iPod. The whole marketing machine that Apple employs and
the cult following of all things Steve Jobs really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But due to some rather random events I ended up with an iPod Touch a couple of weeks ago.

This is where I get into trouble and I do have a confession to make.
While I still have the same attitude towards Apple and their disciples
as before, the iPod Touch is simply amazing. There, I said it, I even
did so out in public.

I mean, look at this:



It really does look good, doesn't it?

The iPod Touch is one hell of a device, and I'm falling more in love with it every day. It has even got me actively using music in the same way I used to to when I was a teenager sporting a big yellow brick strapped to my belt wherever I went.
But there is more to it. The touchscreen is fantastic, the video and
photo quality is amazing and the display even works great outside in
the sunshine. The WiFi works great, and in general I'm surprised how
intuitive it really is.

If I had to complain about something, and I usually have to, it would
be that when I connected the iPod for the first time iTunes told me
that there were upgrades available and that I should buy the January Application Update.
I'm sorry, but I bought this in the beginning of March. Shouldn't I be
receiving the latest version? I can understand that the device might
have been manufactured before the update was available but Apple should
really provide a way for me get the updates preceeding my purchase
without expecting me to pay for the updates. After all, I don't think
it's very polite to present a new customer with a "Hi! Glad you bought
one of our products, now pay us a small fee and you'll even get the
latest version". Thats just sneaky.

As for my previous post about the iPhone, I still don't want one.I
still think that the phone components are too weak, and frankly I like
having separate multimedia and phone devices. My music is personal, my
phone is non-personal and work related.

Now all I need is to get into the whole podcasting thing. Any recommendations on what I should be subscribing to?

This post has been written under the heavy influence of Led Zeppelin.

It has been a distressingly long time since I've written.  I apologize to anyone who still checks back periodically.  The sad truth is that since I moved down to DC, got a 'regular job' and moved in with sane, sensible roommates, my Xanga material has dwindled alarmingly low.  On the plus side, I feel less like I'm in a constant state of being Punk'd.  In fact I'm pretty sure people here think I'm making it up when I talk about some of my Vermont stories.  Sometimes I think I'm making it up.

But I think I may have stumbled on to a new sources of Xanga material.  Remember a couple entries back when I said I was attending a Mega-Church and had joined the "audiovisual club"?  Well I'm no longer in the audiovisual club, it really wasn't my thing.  Turns out my thing is.... wait for it... teaching Sunday School!!

Yeah, that's right, I teach Sunday School.  Wanna make something of it?  I got into it because one of my roommates does it, and I miss my days as a substitute teacher.  So I signed up to teach Kindergarten.  I mean, little kids and Jesus, what's not to love? (Think carefully before answering...)

So I've only been doing it for two weeks, but I am very optimistic that 1) I am going to continue to love it and 2)many hilarious things are going to happen.  Every week we start out in "large group" where the kids get to watch a skit and dance around to little-kid worship music.  Actually, the adults are way more into this than the kids.  The kids are sort of standing around in a mass nose-picking session while the twenty- and thirty-somethings who run the thing have turned it into some sort of worship mosh pit.  Thankfully no kids have been moshed, but I'll keep you posted.  (A lot of the songs have 'na-na-na-na' parts.  It's hard not to mosh when there's na-na-na-nas).

Anyway, after large group, the kids get broken up into their classrooms.  This is where I come in. We get a lesson plan emailed out to us in the middle of the week, and then we are supposed to corral our kids and enlighten them.  As my boss would say, it's like herding cats.  Seriously.  I always forget how out of control little boys are. I have to say, it's hard to resist the temptation to tell them if they don't settle down they're going to Hell.  "Sit, or Hell.  Your choice. And remember, Jesus only loves kids who sit quietly."  (I'm kidding, I'm kidding.  The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these, and so forth.)  Also, a lot of them have Biblical names, so I feel like I'm yelling at half the Old Testament: "Samuel, stop it!  David, enough! Moses, you need to wait a minute. Judah, you're going to put Ruth's eye out!" Who yells at Moses, honestly?

But anyway, last week we talked about communion.  It didn't go well.  Mostly everybody just thought it was snack time.  No, you may not have more juice.  I was worried the idea of eating and drinking Jesus would be scary. Apparently the kids were just miffed there wasn't more. "But I'm still thirsty!" 

Actually, while we're on the subject of scaring the daylights out of kids with the Bible, my friend Kate was worried that when we talked about Easter, the kids would be scared about Jesus being alone in the dark tomb by Himself.  She said that when she was a kid, that was a very scary idea for her. 

Cut to Easter, when we were handing out our coloring sheets only to notice the tomb had a window right smack in the middle of the rock.  One of the teachers wondered aloud why there was a window in the tomb, and the other teacher thought about a minute and then suggested we 'not bring it up unless someone asks.'  And no one did. So I was very happy to report back to Kate that none of the kids had been scared, and in fact most had drawn Jesus smiling and waving out His tomb window.

So there you go.  Little kids and Jesus.  A winning combination, I think.  Stay tuned as I continue to teach the Gospel of snacks and windows...

I want to fuck you

There really IS everything on the internet (NSFW)

Actually, it’s better than it sounds. The phrase “Going to Des Moines for spring break” is seldom uttered, and rightfully so. This is not a big tourism town. I’m sure the juxtaposed phrase that does describe it (borrowed from Champaign/Urbana, IL) is “it’s a nice place to live, but I wouldn’t want [...]

Whee. Sitting in the colo on a Sunday reformatting machines due to a bad CD during initial install. Fun fun fun.

Deadlines.

Did you know that currently there are thirteen publicly available themes ready for download and usage for your Habari install? Some of the themes that are available are ported from other blogging platforms, others are "pure" Habari themes that doesn't originate anywhere else.

Head over to the available themes section on habariproject.org and have a look at what is available to you as a Habari user.

In other Habari news, the project has recently announced  "Habari Summer of Collaboration". While Habari as a project can't sponsor full time internship and payment for your open source work like Google can, we still want to use the summer to improve the project as much as we can.

So, if you do have some time available we would love to see you help us make Habari a better product. Whether you have a personal itch to scratch or just want to feel the warm fuzziness of contributing to a open source project, you are sure to receive a warm welcome from the Habari community.