November 3, 2002

in the recent computer history books i've been reading they mentioned that hackers kept strange hours because the computers would run faster at night - because fewer people were using them.

for most of us, that's no longer the case. however, the internet should run faster at night - which is a nice parallel (i can't think of a better word). i remember the network being tremendously faster in the first and last weeks of school - when lots of people were not there.

so it's a new month and a new start for me - last thursday was my last day at ximian. i'm taking a month's vacation then a year leave of absence just in time for vice city to come out.

i'm not sure what i'm going to do (other than vice city) - it might be fun to try some kernel hacking. i have a couple of USB devices that could use OS X drivers. there is also that thing my friends are working on, although it's a bit intimidating.

if you thought the spelling and grammar in this entry were poor, you should have seen it before i edited it. i had at least three mistakes in the previous sentence alone.

November 6, 2002

having written some software in my life, i'm always amazed when i play console games and never see them crash.

well, after having to fail a vice city mission because the car with the stuff in it that i'm supposed to steal got stuck in such a way that i couldn't get the stuff out, so i had to blow it up (which fails the mission) it locks up!

since i had given up on the save-after-every-mission (reverting to a saved game every time you fail a mission is pretty lame, imho), i didn't have a saved game for the last 6 or 7 hours - in which i had passed many missions (including quite a few tough ones).

so not only do i lose all of that time and stuff, but all trust in the game's ability not to crash is gone, and so i have to save after every (successful) mission. blah.

other than that it's still pretty sweet. i stole a police helicopter.

oh and i put the gta3 dvd in my laptop, and it came up with a bunch of files. when i ejected i got a kernel panic.

last night joe and i went over to phil's since we hadn't seen him in almost as long as he hasn't been updating his web page. and, we found out why - evidently he's been practicing sniping in halo quite a bit.

anyway it's getting pretty light out so i should probably go to sleep. i have a lot of missions to redo tomorrow.

November 10, 2002

i haven't seen blizzard in ages.

i don't really have anything to say. i don't really have anything to do so i figure i'd go to sleep; i feel a bit tired but don't know if i'll actually be able to fall asleep. i would like to eat but am still pretty full from dinner last night (thai with phil - related note: vomit stories should not be told while eating bananas [ however this may be because of this one time i was flying to florida and the kids across the aisle were throwing up after eating bananas. could also be the consistency of bananas, especially when cooked ] ).

so i have this guitar/lyrics book of mellon collie and the infinite sadness and i am reading the lyrics to here is no why and thinking hmm that doesn't make sense so i look in the little booklet that comes with the cd which has the lyrics in it and the book with the music is wrong. now, the whole point of purchasing the book is so i don't have to rely on crappy internet tabs. i don't really know where i'm going with this.

anyway i'd kinda like to go for a walk down boylston or something, but i figure i'd just get tired halfway through and want to go to sleep. also it's like 9:30 rather than 6 or 7 so it isn't as inviting. hmm will joe (who recently got tricked by big phik into getting an x-box) wake up before i fall asleep? i would think with it being light out the whole time i'm asleep i'd have trouble sleeping but i've been getting a good 8 - 11 hours a night of uninterrupted sleep. well except when i wake up from the nightmares.

i "won" vice city today. less than a week just like i said i would. this is why you should set goals, kids. beefcake.

zwan moby and the vines are all playing in boston on the same night. a month from tomorrow in fact. well i think moby isn't playing so much as djing but i'm not sure. none of the lamers ever get tickets themselves so we only go to things if i do it but then one or two people cancel and i don't get paid back by others and stuff. however that's not true at all.

i haven't played my guitar in years.

argh i forgot the bruins were on last night. and against ottawa!

can anyone actually use the numpad on laptops? afaict it's unpossible.

November 11, 2002

there is a hidden package i can't find, even with reading a list of where all the hidden packages are. i am tired enough that i spelled can't with a k. soon i will be going to sleep at a reasonable hour again.

since it's not 7 yet i'll put this under the 11th, even though it's the 12th.

inspired by the jimmy carter american experience and the desire to have "slugger" visit us again, i decided to hold a caucus on the state of the refrigerator. i established a zero tolerance stance on paleolithic-era cheese (the colors on the jack cheese rival new england autumn), and a 3 strikes policy on indian sauces (ie, they get a strike every time we change the clocks).

speaking of phil, TiVo now gets newsradio. in true rerun form, the one it got today i'd already seen.

later today, our carpet's going to get vacuumed like it's never been vacuumed before.

i was going to hook up my stereo's speakers to my computer, instead of the little desk cd player speakers i have. the reciever i have in cleveland (from the 1970's) has 2 sets of speaker outputs (labeled A and B) and can output to A, B, or A+B. the one i got in 2000 can do dolby this or that, but can't just do 2 left speakers and 2 right. i guess it just sucks.

i missed the bruins game again (since it was on during the day) and they had another severe win (6-1). i will remember to watch tonight's game though.

November 12, 2002

if you updated to 10.2.2:

jacob@wet-pants:jacob$ sudo diskutil enableJournal / Allocated 8192K for journal file. Journaling has been enabled on / jacob@wet-pants:jacob$ _

i woke up just in time for the bruins game (i actually had a dream where i could do a drum roll). we watched the first two periods, then joe switched to 24 but we remembered the carter thing was on again. hindsight is 20-20, but i think if carter had blamed america's troubles on disco rather than the american people, he probably would have won the '80 election.

i am watching waiting for guffman because it's one of joe's dvds that i haven't seen. i miss the TiVo jump back button.

in watching the carter show, i realized how little of post WWII american history i know. well, at least the period between kent state and hands across america. it coincides somewhat closely with the gap i have in my cd collection, interestingly enough.

it's too bad we studied egpyt 5 times and never learned how our current state of affairs came into being.

maria made me promise to graduate before she gave me this

my room has a lot of stuff in it now that i brought everything home from the office. (back in the day, i used to have everything shipped to the office, since that's where i spent 95% of my time. so, there was stuff that i brought or was sent to me that never actually made it home, until now)

November 13, 2002

i really hate the new gateway commercials.

November 14, 2002

yesterday i was up for 7 hours and slept for like 4, so now i am on a ``normal'' schedule. i don't think it's bought me anything, but i might get to go to busy bee with joe when he wakes up. i'm going to try to go running first, but TiVo has recorded a bunch of stuff.

i was trying to figure out why steve carell left the daily show, but google has been letting me down. all it's told me is that a lot of people like it. well one page talked about how he has a kid, so that might be it.

speaking of google, i'm now number 20 when searching for jacob. shaver and blizzard fare a bit better, but searching for my last name points to me before the baseball player.

honestly i am not sure what this all means, other than illustrating the fact that people haven't updated their links.

joe has a new hat

A LIST OF FOOD-LIKE THINGS PEOPLE EAT THAT I FIND COMPLETELY DISGUSTING:

1. KETCHUP
2. RANCH DRESSING, ESPECIALLY WHEN USED AS A SEASONING ON MEAT
3. CAVIAR, WHEN SERVED ON A BOAT ON THE SEINE AND I THINK IT'S A LITTLE STRAWBERRY PASTRY OR TART
4. TOMATOES

people should write everything as if the grammar police were going to read it:

For the second game in a row Ruff lifting his struggling starting goalie.

November 16, 2002

simon likes to help us cheer for the buckeyes

November 17, 2002

nat likes to complain about the weather, but i find running in 44 degree rain to be pretty fun. especially when the few other people running are wearing tights, a windbreaker, gloves, and a hat. i dunno, it's just slightly humorous to me. and isn't that what life is about, things being funny to me?

"i wish i could retire. boy, that would be sweet."

simon likes to help me be retired.

the simpsons from 1992 and 1993 are so good.

November 18, 2002

i must be getting sick or something, since i'm falling asleep on the couch at 8 pm for the second day in a row. or maybe my sleep "schedule" is still off by a few hours after trying to reverse it over the weekend.

simon waits by the door for joe to get home from work

i think simon is depressed and misses phil. all he does is sleep all day. i've never had a cat before, but i did have a cactus or two in high school, and when they were depressed, that's all they'd do.

November 19, 2002

i managed to sleep for 11 or 12 hours last night, including a couple hours this morning where i had a dream that i was hanging out with joe thornton. i was trying to convince him he should go to an air force base and take a flight in a millitary jet or something.

the neighbors keep dropping stuff and it wakes the sleeping prince

speaking of the bruins, they are going to roll all over the leafs tonight. speaking of the leafs, they'll be in town on january 11 in case anyone wants to visit.

If you're stuffy and Gay and have no character like the bar itself, then it's a place for you.

the only time i was going to go there they wouldn't let me in cause i'm jewish.

sigh the bruins lost.

this is what we mean when joe and i say "nesn or nothin'!"

November 20, 2002

LIST OF THINGS I LEARNED TODAY WHILST READING THE INTERNET:

1. THE "STAR" OF STRANGERS WITH CANDY IS THE SISTER OF DAVID SEDARIS
2. NESN IS OWNED BY THE BRUINS AND RED SOX

joe and i were talking about the voice actors for the simpsons last night, and it seems they're going to be on conan tonight, which should be worth watching.

November 21, 2002

It's shameful. You can't tell me this is what the pioneers of the great broadcast industry had in mind when they brought radio and TV to us. I surely hope my colleagues will join me in addressing this problem.

-- FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps, on the poor writing in the fall lineups of ABC and CBS

joe and i almost went to the bruins game, but it wasn't against ottawa so we just watched it on nesn. i don't think any camera angles i saw actually showed the puck going into the net on any of the 4 goals, but who's counting?

radiohead pumpkins. i like these two, especially the smoke in that one.

November 23, 2002

i tried programming yesterday. i might have mentioned iTunes Remote before, but i thought it sucked and was lame. so i was going to do a better version.

manipulating iTunes is as simple as: (yeah, i need to fix my css)

NSAppleScript *playScript; playScript = [[NSAppleScript alloc] initWithSource:@"tell application \"iTunes\"\nplay\nend tell"]; [playScript executeAndReturnError:nil];

and you can theoretically do remote object calls pretty easily. i figured that, plus some rendezvous would make it a snap.

however, i couldn't see how rendezvous fits with the distributed stuff.

anyway this morning while waiting for the big game i think i've figured it out, and it seems to work. as frustrating as yesterday was, there's still the novelty of a new language / system which i haven't experienced for a while, having been doing gnome stuff for so long.

of course, there's probably a much simpler way to do this - remote applescript is an obvious choice.

November 26, 2002

some stuff happened this weekend but i didn't write it down so i can't remember what it was.

yesterday while i was packing etc. simon kept going in my room so i yelled at him and chased him out. since then he doesn't seem to like me, and runs under the futon whenever i come out of my room. however, i did go to sleep and wake up to him crying and scratching at my door.

i'm in cleveland now and it's snowing. we went to a restaurant i've gone to since i was really little, and it's impressive how much along the way has changed - run down gas stations are now grassy lots, there are a bunch of new restaurants around, etc.

there are defibrilators at dulles, which is strange cause i've never seen them at any other airports. i got searched leaving dulles, but not boston, where they have a neat way of doing random searches. the guy asked the woman in front of me to pick a number (n) from 1 to 5. then, he searched the n^th person behind her. fortunately n was not equal to one. i like this approach more than the "search all people wearing montreal expos hats" method that i've seen other airports use.

i tried to fix my old laptop but broke it completely

ok my battery is dipping into the red. hmm maybe i should have brought my airport home...

our one dog still pees when i pet him. he's like, 4 years old or something, and doesn't do it for anyone else. i guess i should be flattered.

the other one, the one i hadn't seen yet, can jump like 6 feet in the air to catch frisbees. i really wish i had brought my dv camera, but i didn't think i'd use it (since i usually don't). oh well.

my parents don't get nesn, so i missed murray getting a hat trick.

November 28, 2002

the power seems to have gone out in boston, so mail reading is quite unpleasant. these days, i only get 1 or 2 mails a day that i should actually read, if that, since i'm no longer on any mailing lists. anyway.

i seem to have gotten the iTunes program working with rendezvous + distributed objects. it seems someone else did some perl modules using the appletalk interfaces, but that doesn't provide a pretty aqua interface for remote controlling itunes.

i keep hitting Cmd+s rather than C-x-s since i'm getting used to project builder. maybe i should start editing this there.

i did a 5 mile race downtown today. i did it in ~35:50, which is ok. i had no idea how fast/slow i'd been running, so now i have an idea. it was pretty cold - in the 20s - and there was a cold wind coming off the lake at times. anyway i ran the last mile under 7 minutes which was a good end to the race.

i am going to try to find my high school friends now.

November 29, 2002

the bruins are playing montreal tonight, and the only game on tv here is the sabres not playing the bruins.

fortunately ie+wmp brings me the radio stream.

November 30, 2002

one thing cleveland does better than boston is winter. right now there's a nice lake effect snow going on, as opposed to boston's mist-for-a-few-days type storms.

last night i went ice skating with some of my friends.

the dingus is somewhat working. things like AppleScript lists beginning with element 1 were throwing me off.