May 1, 2003

last night i had a dream about terrorists: i was at some amusement park, and there was a group of people with guns. i tried to sneak away.

and i had a dream where the super kept nocking on the door, but i didn't answer it because i didn't want him to take simon from me.

more "fair and balanced" reporting from fox "news": right-wing ice cream.

something had been missing from my life the past few days, and now i realize that it was shaver not updating his internet. i don't even want to think about how phik not updating his is affecting me. hopefully i'm used to it by now.

simon was cute tonight:

i had a good run this afternoon. i ran as far as i was running last summer, and didn't let myself walk like i did the other day. when i'm not running, or if i've just started, i always think that running is such a mental thing; that if i just want to i can run longer and faster. at some point during the run, i am always convinced otherwise. but after i'm done, i'm usually not all that tired, so i think i should be able to run longer, if i just push myself a bit more.

i got some claritin today. we'll see how that goes.

i wish iPhoto did sharing like iTunes.

May 3, 2003

strange dreams. joe and i were moving to Donald E. Rumsfeld, OH. my mom and i went to visit the place i was going to get, and i walked done Donald E. Rumsfeld Ave. to a grocery store. they had a lot of large/ripe summertime-in-ohio vegetables (in stark contrast to middle-of-winter imported-from-antartic-vege-mines asparagus here in boston) and i knocked a huge eggplant over. then i needed to get car insurance with the town-sponsored car insurance place. they asked where i was living, and i had a hard time remembering (since it was a dream) but i did remember that the town was named Donald E. Rumsfeld. i was looking at a map trying to figure out what street i lived on, but it was actually a map of southeastern MA, not of OH.

then i was in an elevator with some of my (high school) friends, and one of those squid things from the matrix. i had a TiVo remote in my hand, and pointed it at the squid thing, hit power, and the thing turned off. one of my friends was playing/fighting with knives or swords or something. the other was talking about going to church. he said that he has to hold an almost entirely smoked cigarette, and what jesus really wants is for you to bring "little men" to church. now these "little men" weren't real people, they were something (i had no idea then, i don't know now) about the size of pieces of popcorn. i think they were moving.

to be honest, my friends doing that stuff doesn't surprise me at all.

joe and i just had the most painful bf1492 game ever. i had 191 points. i don't really want to talk about it.

i had a good run this morning, and now i'm tired.

May 4, 2003

i don't think i read very many books, but quite often when i start a book, i spend most of my (free) time reading it. like when i read contact in (i think) two sittings, split by watching the movie. or when i was sick in paris and read a staggering work of heartbreaking genius cover to cover.

anyway, i think i read about half of the new eggars novel (that i ordered last august) today. it wasn't nearly as good as aswohg, but it wasn't difficult to finish, like some other books i've tried to read in the last year. i definitely want to read aswohg again though.

i've felt really tired the past few days, and i want to blame the claritin,

May 5, 2003

today was pretty nice. the weather was nice during my run this morning. there were a bunch of goslings in the park, and most of the trees are blooming. the claritin works pretty well.

we got printing working to joe's cups/samba printer from windows working (we had to install some adobe driver). and, i got my dns problems fixed on my laptop. it turns out that os x's dhcp something-or-other writes its config to /var/run/resolv.conf, and /etc/resolv.conf is supposed to be a symlink to that. on my laptop, it wasn't. once that was fixed, things work again. yay.

also, it's joe's birthday. i got him one of the cool new indians caps with the script I. i got one for myself too.

May 6, 2003

last night i was dreaming about the end of the school year, when every single musical group i used to be in would have a concert. i have a vague memory of there being some race involved too - i guess the boston marathon?

anyway the details of this dream are fading fast, but there was a CYWS concert, and i was the only percussionist there (and hadn't played any of the music before). so, i decided not to play. i was really worried that there would be some parts of the music that really required percussion, but i didn't want to mess up things even more by coming in at entirely wrong places. i figured if ciepluch asked me why i didn't play, i would explain to him how i'd had many nightmares about having to sight read concerts and it not going well at all. i thought he'd understand. i mean, it's normal to have the same nightmares night after night, right?

i had to fax some papers this morning (i couldn't break into phik's house last night). so, i went to copy cop. they did the fax dance, and then it was time to pay. the conversation went something like this:

copy cop: that's 2 dollars and 63 cents.
me: what was that?
cc: 2 dollars and 63 cents.
me: hands him 3 dollars
cc: goes to register and fiddles with some things

at this point, i thought that $2.63 for faxing two pages was a lot.

cc: hands me back 2 dollars and a few coins

also, i can dial my phone from Address Book, which is k-rad.

May 7, 2003

if was was truly smart, i would have stopped working now rather than last november. it was truly beautiful today. at least it was for the half hour i was running. the rest of the day found me hammering on ldap and ssh and whatnot.

for whatever reason, i tend to give software the benefit of the doubt over myself when it comes to things being completely broken. for example, this patch to let sshd pull authorized_keys from ldap. on the surface, it appears to work, and it really does look like the guy that wrote it has it working, but when i really looked at it (after spending a few hours coping with configuration thinkos and crappy tools) it really doesn't do what it looks like it does (ie, let sshd pull authorized_keys from ldap). i got a proof-of-concept patch working tonight, and i'll fix it in the morning.

what i'd like to do now is go to sleep. however, my head is spinning from "hacking". while i was (falling) asleep last night, i was worrying about how to synchronize the audio/video with logging in. i think phik has the right idea: by not sleeping, he doesn't have to worry about nightmares or hallucinations. also, he has more time to update his internet which is good for everyone.

this morning an mp3 saved my life. i woke up with some track from a pete tong essential something cd stuck in my head. i don't think i would have found it if i had to go through the cds, but with iTunes i eventually found it. also, now i have that track that was on the west wing and was in snatch in my head (well, probably because i've had it on repeat since i watched the ww a second time). i always think it was in go.

May 10, 2003

after last night's sleep, i feel so rested.

which is surprising, considering how long i stayed up reading buccigross archives. here are some highlights:

I replied, "Jeez, I'd like to, but I've already committed to the HAROLD SNEPSTS GOLF TOURNAMENT FOR THE BENEFIT OF CANADIAN GEESE WITH EXCESSIVE BOWEL MOVEMENTS."

In Toronto, Ed Belfour will wear a patch commemorating the fifth anniversary of earning his first BILLION dollars.

i don't remember which articles these were from, so you should read them all (well, at least all of the ones from this season).

it's also surprising, considering the awful dreams i was having.

one was your run-of-the-mill terrorist dream. the fbi thought another attack was imminent, and was trying to find terrorists or something, and there was a gunman holed up in a building or something like that. i was there with one of the soldiers who had some sniping gun, and then the terrorist came out and i tried to throw some drinking glasses at him. but it's hard to throw stuff in your sleep.

the second was about the opening of the new matrix movie. i was at some theater where they were showing it, but couldn't see in a bunch of the seats and the projector wasn't working well. and then somehow i got thrown from the balcony and hit the screen and then fell to the floor, and then i tried to find another seat so i could watch. and i guess i ran into a friend from middle school or something. i think it then got very strange, but that might have been another dream.

some time after this i woke up briefly and thought, "at least i didn't have another ldap dream," and went back to sleep. then i had another ldap dream.

May 12, 2003

more tooth dreams last night. 2 of my my bottom right molars fell out. they weren't very thick; only about the thickness of a few quarters. fortunately, there were more teeth coming in to replace those. i put the teeth under my pillow and went to sleep. i remember waking up at times, but i don't know if i was really waking up, or only dreaming about waking up. also, i can't remember if i had dreams while i was dreaming that i was sleeping. it's quite possible.

a quick survey shows that 66% of my incoming mail is flagged as spam by SA. i don't have any stats on how much of the rest mozilla catches or how much i have to kill manually. also, this doesn't count gnome bugzilla mail (which some might consider spam at this point) which is about 3.5% of my incoming mail.

if my desktop turns off the monitor (due to inactivity) and i connect to its iTunes share, the monitor turns on.

the september mint milanos are out, and shaver doesn't have sars. so far, today is turning out all right.

some thoughts on tv:

i had recently thought that i've seen all of the seinfelds (finally). however, i had never seen "the wig master." an excellent episode.

and then this honda ad came on, where they had two people in a car talking about how they've never seen a fat squirrel. it's probably because they are always in their car, since if you go out walking in the fall, there are tons of fat squirrels. or something.

May 13, 2003

since i could never successfully look up my rebate status at their site, i figure i wasn't getting the rebate for my phone. today i found a nice little rebate in my mail box, which paid my phone bill last month (with some left over for lunch and stuff).

i am too tired to work, but not tired enough to fall asleep.

my run today wasn't fun, but i convinced myself to run 3 laps (each lap is about 10-12 minutes, and it's about 4:30 to get to the park) again like on saturday. it is nice to know that i can run longer than i thought i could. i would like to be able to do 7 hours a week, which is maybe 5 times what i do now.

May 14, 2003

a lot of times, i am tired and go to bed. and i can't fall asleep for hours. last night was not one of those nights. i don't really remember not being asleep, and i slept for a good 12 hours apparently. it was interrupted by what i would argue as a gallon of water leaking through my ceilling.

anyway, i have a lot of catching up to do as far as doing things that awake people do.

as usual it's 2:30 am now and there is no chance of me falling asleep soon. fortunately, i was at phik's house this evening, and his TiVo managed to not tape the west wing, so i can go watch that now.

huh. phil needs to come over as soon as his meetings are over so he can watch that. also, i want to play doom 3.

my stomach thinks i ate way too much tonight, and it's probably right.

May 15, 2003

today i was sitting on the couch with my laptop and i thought i smelled burning plastic. a while later, i noticed that my laptop wasn't charging even though it was plugged in. well, the power thingie had fallen into the couch, and was really hot, so i unplugged it. i wonder if it is broken.

however, when you don't eat all day and then end up breathing melted plastic fumes, things get strange.

May 17, 2003

wonders never cease. the ducks are in the cup finals, and i got X working on milano.

• agpgart patch for 2.4 for nforce2
• ati drivers

part of the problem was some setting i had on my monitor's multilink adapter, where it was doing the wrong ding-dong or something.

i am going to try running now.

26 mixes for cash is about as good as it is bright out. time to sleep.

May 18, 2003

boston smelled amazing today.

May 20, 2003

i stayed up until 5 this morning trying to get smtp auth working with postfix. it works on one of my boxes but not the other.

but i was tired, so i went to sleep.

3 hours later i woke up to jackhammering going on like, next door. it's not that i'm a light sleeper, since i slept through large chunks of my ceiling moving to my floor. and by the time i found my earplugs i was too angry to go to sleep.

i wonder if i'll be able to get that wingman song out of my head before the playoffs are over...

due to the two hours of battlefield playage, i only have 6.5 hours until the jackhammering presumably starts up again. that's definitely not enough.

May 21, 2003

today started out much better than yesterday. when the jackhammering started, i promptly put my earplugs in without opening my eyes and easily fell back asleep for another (much needed) 4 hours of sleep. then, when i woke up, i didn't have to vacuum any ceiling off my floor.

last night i had the second dream this week where i could understand what someone was saying and kept having to ask them to say it again.

also, another dream about the last day(s) of (high) school. it had a nice simpsons reference in it, too. someone was talking about going to the one store that sold wooden chairs, next to the other store that sold wooden chairs, and i said, "oh you mean in the wooden chairs district?" i'm so precious.

i'm kind of worried about how the rest of today will go, considering yesterday's poor start and triumphant finish.

i don't know why i bother.

so i just found out that last week's west wing was the last one (of the season, and with aaron sorkin, so maybe ever). also, TiVo doesn't have the one from two weeks ago anymore. this is exactly what i was talking about earlier, with things going badly.

May 24, 2003

yesterday was one of the most manic days i can remember. i was woken up early in the morning by my ceiling leaking, but put the earplugs in which saved me from having to wake up when the jackhammering started.

after escaping from near-disastrous backup attempts i went to return the oakenfold cd i got the other day because it don't play right. they didn't have another copy there so i just got my money back, which was quite surprising. since i still had it on my iPod (and was listening to it at the time) i went over to the virgin to see if they had a copy.

as i get to the electronic section, someone taps me on the shoulder and it was my friend from high school. who also went to chautauqua with me. and also went to cmu. and also dropped out. and also moved to boston.

i got the new bt single. i had heard a low-quality qt of it and wasn't v. excited about it, but after listening to it about 1000 times it's pretty ok. the best part is i now have the wingman song out of my head.

last night, inspired by the E3 trailer from 2000, phik and i decided to fire up the xbox for some one-on-one halo. and my god, what haling it turned out to be. phik won the first game (snipers, on rat race), 15-13. i won the second (phikwar on hang 'em high) 15-13 despite a solid comeback by phik. at one point in the third game (phikwar, hang 'em high) it was 9-1 phik. soon later, it was 12-12 and nobody was "it". i out phikked the phikster to win that on 15-12 to claim my title as champion.

i also destroyed phik and chris earlier in phikwar on derelict. we won't talk about rocket koth on rat race, or phikwar on battle creek.

May 25, 2003

despite not doing very well at most of the bf1492 games yesterday, when we finally got around to playing halo i think i did pretty well.

joe and i went to the mall so i could get APP for my laptop, since its warranty is almost expired. apparently it would also cover a studio display if i happen to get one.

my favorite sorceforget feature for today is the ads on the download pages.

May 26, 2003

i can't believe how bad the weather is. i expect 40s and raining in april or november, but not in june. i know it's not june but it is in my heart. i was going to defy the weather and go run anyway, but i didn't know it was raining so hard. i am going to miss the little park where i run. hopefully phil's house will be near a park or something. does iowa even have parks?

phil and i have spent way too many hours today trying to set up a wan lustre thing. i think he said it'd be the first. i hope openvpn works without too much hassle. the weather has not helped the mood. every time phik curses and then disappears from irc for ten minutes i worry. i think i am going to get that guy a webcam for his birthday, so i can check up on him and make sure he's ok.

i think it was yesterday that i made a playlist in iTunes of stuff that hasn't recently played. just came on and i had forgotten how great of a song it was, so i played all of the bends then ok computer then etc. etc. i remember when i was first listening to the bends it was v. warm and is it ever not that now.

i like to think that i know what i am doing with computers. well, at least using other people's software on linux. and yet, it is amazing how long it takes to get stuff working.

in any case, phil was able to mount the lustre volume here from his apartment. also, i could mount lustre-over-samba on my mac:

May 27, 2003

i hope my friend shaver isn't upset with me. i was quite snippy with him this morning, but you see, i had struggled to get 3, maybe 4, hours of sleep under my belt. after i had finally fallen asleep, i was woken up once by my neighbors taking a shower. then later, by joe taking a shower. then finally the jackjammers started with a vengence (to make up for the 3 day weekend?) and really, i've been happier.

fortunately, the fglrx module phik built for me last night (on the lustre mount no less) works and so i have X on the box in my room again.

at least there's hockey on tonight.

well, i was going to try to do this update on the lustre mount, but i've triggered an LBUG so maybe tomorrow. i do have to say phik gets a lot more excited about these bugs than i do. there might have been a time where i was excited about bugs, but boy, it is a distant memory at best. all i want to do is edit my internet.

and now i don't really have the energy for it. it was going to be about a "reverse ssh" idea that would have been nice to have earlier today when i killed all of the sshd's on a certain server. maybe tomorrow.

while joe and i watched the ducks lose, i had some basil squid thing from the thai place. i learned that 3 peppers on the menu really does mean it's hot.

i went running this morning, and felt horrible. the weather was a lot nicer than yesterday, but it still has a lot of room for improvement.

another night where i won't fall asleep until after 5...

May 28, 2003

i'm living in 1999 again. wavelan is fine for irc/mail/web and occasional file transfers, but if you're using a DFS for real stuff it just can't bacon the sausage. so i went out and got a 10/100 switch and now i'm back on the wired web.

i'm editing this on the lustre mount on milano. since the LBUG yesterday was just caused by the symlink if i edit the file on the real path it's ok.

i almost spent countless hours debugging a crash in what i thought was either chroot or rsync. fortunately i remembered that i added a ulimit the other day to limit a process to only 15M in vsize.

i tried to get the radiohead single today, but newbury comics were out and the virgin never recieved their shipment. newbury was supposed to get more in this evening, so i might try again tomorrow.

i didn't get much done today, but what i did do was pretty ok. i had a post-bbq coma that i just couldn't snap out of. until i played some bf1492. i'm not very good at that game vs. other people on the internet, but i blame the fact that i never play the good levels online.

also, if you think the stuff in the matrix about people learning to "read" is lame then you haven't watched phik read lustre debug logs.

May 29, 2003

you know how some people have internal clocks that let them wake up at a certain time? i have something like that, except that it's an internal TERROR ALERT METER.

this morning i woke up horrified. the dream i was having was that i was in high school in a classroom. there was a high-pitched beeping sound, and some people thought it was a fire drill sound. but i remember those sounded much different (at least the ones i remembered). this sound was a terrorist alarm or something. we all left the building, and when we got out, there were like 30 ambulances in front of the building, and there was that yellow police tape all around. a policeman picked up a broken bottle of something. i had assumed it was what the poison stuff had been kept in or something.

things are a little fuzzy for me after this, but i remember trying to take pictures and take down notes, as if i were a reporter. for some reason i thought that someone from caldera was trying to kill me. which is strange, because while i was still mostly asleep i actually got a call from utah. i have gotten one before, i think.

anyway, i woke up really freaked out. i struggled to get out of bed, and went to check my email and discovered that some things were busted. it turned out to be caused by this bug, which isn't fixed (5 (!!) years later).

today i had a pretty good run. i also played catch with phik, and then joe joined us for some hockey. it was not the most energetic hockey for me, but that's understandable. then we watched the tail end of the ducks' loss. also we had some tasty burgers cooked up by joe and phil while i tried to get squirrelmail set up on my mail server. it turns out that it doesn't really handle folders with 17k emails in them, like my Inbox has.

aparently that box was hitting some bugs that other lustre users were hitting. if joe changes his updatedb to run at midnight every night, phik might be able to fix the bugs before people get to work in the morning.

also on that list is a cray t3e that i am pretty sure i programmed on when i took my computational physics course sophomore year. i think it only had 256 cpus at the time, or maybe it was 128? i remember when we went to visit psc (i thitnk the only field trip i had in college) i thought that machine was neat cause it had a little lcd panel on the side with a spinning cray logo.

wow, it's late and i'm exhausted.

May 30, 2003

May 31, 2003

we were going to play hockey, but it was sprinkling or something, and ended up eating hamburgers and stuff. we watched swingers, the ducks win in OT, and me dominate in halo.

this did not give me very much time to find bugs in lustre, and so ends my bug finding streak at 2 or 3 days.