Life in General
August 31, 2006
Things are not too shabby right now, and I’ll give you a quick summary in an enormous run-on sentence just because I can and because I’m stupid and so are you: I randomly met the marvelous Asian Provocateur last night and introduced her to the wonderful concotion known as the Fauxrona™ as well as send her the Gnarls Barkley album, the instrumental version of the Lovage – Music to Make Love to Your Lady By album, Outkast’s Idlewild, and the first Morning 40 cd, just got two shots in my arm for Hep A and B vaccinations as a precation for this storm season (and just in general, really), tonight I go to see the premiere of Sex Between Us, I am loving the track bike Molly, work is ok, side work is exploding, and am really looking forward to working a bunch with Jonah, my car insurance is now $350/year because I re-registered in in Austin, Stargate SG-1 is in it’s final season and while I will be sad to see it to, I think it’s really just time and I won’t be signing any petitions to keep it alive – I still have Stargate Atlantis and hopefully Stargate Worlds soon, I weigh 162 lbs. and would like to drop that down a bit and convert this extra mass on my belly back to muscle, so I think I’m going to join the NOAC and get my ass into gear, this weekend and a bit later I’ll we rolling with just a moustache as part of Snakes on a Face™!, had a blast at both Hayley and Lara’s Birthday parties and will upload photos very very soon, I swear.
… the circle is complete …
August 29, 2006
One year ago today, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, but you already know this.
One year ago today, I was at our Houston office on a planned business trip.
In 15 minutes, I’ll be heading to the airport to fly to Houston, to go to our office. However, instead of migrating data and setting it up to be our new main office, I’ll be mostly closing it down, except for the servers.
I’m bringing last night’s backup tape, just in case.
Amazing how far you go in a year, only to end up in the same place.
Kerlerec and Pauger
August 23, 2006
I was going to write about Outkast’s new album, Idlewild, now that I’ve had a week to properly digest it. I’ve since decided to write on a different subject matter.
Last night, a 60 year old woman was mugged, and subsequently hit by her attackers car. When I got there, a minute or two later, she was just sitting in the street, legs splayed.
She could barely talk. I don’t know if it was from getting mugged, or getting hit and falling, or all of the above, but she just seemed too stunned to form words.
It didn’t help that one of the people trying to help her was yelling into the phone at the emergency dispatcher. I took his phone, apologized for his conduct, and gave the dispatcher the info he needed to send out an ambulance. Within another minute or so, about 5 police cars (state, nopd, op sherriff) showed up and started doing their thing. Within 30 minutes, the thieves were apprehended.
Friday night, my friend Mary was jumped and hospitalized for a few days from her injuries. A man, just a few days prior, was confronted by another man toting a (semi?)automatic rifle.
Things are not all well in the Marigny, kids. I don’t need to bring up the slew of robberies and homicides that have been happening since the storm. For those of you who don’t live here, trust me. It’s obscene.
I’m just tired of it.
“We’re not against rap. We’re not against rappers. But we are against those thugs.”
– Bone Thugs n’ Harmony, Thuggish Ruggish Bone
My destiny resided in Theater 16
August 18, 2006
Last night, I had the most high honor of seeing Snakes on a Plane at 12:01 am.
Let me tell you, it was much fun. That’s all I can really formulate right now. Oh, and everyone started cheering when Mr. Jackson bellowed the line: “I want these motherfuckin snakes off this motherfuckin plane!” Go see this movie.
I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met…
August 15, 2006
Intertron, meet Molly. Molly, this is my old freind, the Intertron:
She’s a Spicer steel track frame and fork, Mavic Ellipse wheelset, Vredestein Fortezza tires, Shimano 105 front brake, On One 49tooth crankset, Chris King 1″ Threadless headset, Easton EA50 stem, Sun Ringle Zuzu pedals, Thompson Elite seatpost, Serfas Aria saddle, and “NOLA bars” I cut from an old Peugeot.
I’m as happy as a little girl
August 14, 2006
This past Saturday was the 2006 Red Dress Run, put on by the New Orleans Hash House Harriers.
I met up with Jeremy, William, and Kung Fu Andy II™ (representing missed Andy) at Molly’s at ~11am, and we rolled over to the start point, Tucker’s (used to be Polynesian Joe’s). After a couple of hours of drinking Bud Light straight from taps sticking out of the side of the beer truck, we the rest of our crew arrived: Sonny, Lara, Oscar, and John.
Shortly thereafter, all ~650 of us took off. Ran through the Riverwalk Mall. _All_ of it. Awesome. The rest, well, is the rest. We ran between 5 bars (Club Deactur/Ryan’s, Bonndock Saint/that whole block, Razzoo? (ugh), Bourbon Cowboy?(ugh)/Bourbon House, Lucy’s/Vic’s, back to Tucker’s) by chasing a flour trail. And we only lost the “scent” once.
Jeremy even managed to run through one or more fountains in Jackson Square. Afterwards, on the ride back to Molly’s, William apaprently got hit by a car while riding my chopper, Angelina. He’s pretty much okay, Bot not KFAII, so much. He definitely got it the worst. By the end of the day, he had no hair, no hands/foreams, and the car took his legs. Poor guy.
After that, we rolled to the R. I took a meander back to Molly’s, and then back to the R, where I ended up meeting two ladies who happened to be behind me in line at Forever 21 when Lara and I picked up my first dress (I later got a different one from Buffalo Exchange that I like much better).
After everything was said and done, I ran ~4.5 miles, drank a bunch of crappy beer, got many a compliment of my dress, got a bit burned and a bit sore. But no hangover! And there’s photographic evidence! Below are some of my favorite shots, but there are many more, all in chronological order:
Snakes, y’heard?
August 11, 2006
Last night, Lara and I braved the mall (shudder) to get me (and maybe also her) a new red dress for this year’s Red Dress Run on Saturday. Lemme tell ya, I got some funny looks in after walking out of the dressing room at Forever 21, wearing a red dress with white dots all over it. Good stuff.
Anyways, after doing what we needed to do and getting the hell out of the mall, we hit Borders, where I stubled across the greatest book ever:
Talk about literary gold! Snakes on a Plane! In paperback!
For those of you not familiar with SoaP, read this, then die of shame.
Seriously, can’t wait for 8.18 when it’s out in theaters.
Such Capacitors! With the Bulging!
August 10, 2006
One of my users here at work runs a Dell Optiplex GX270. It’s a good workstation. Plenty of RAM, processing power, and disk space for a plain old workstation.
Recently, it started getting all wonky (yes, that’s a technical term). It was weird. It seemed to be an Office issue – while sorting email or using Word, then system would just turn off.
No Blue Screen of Death, no error, no entry in the Event Log. Not a goddamn thing.
Well, I said screw it. He’s one of the last guys to be running Windows/Office 2000, so I figured it would be time to bump him up to XP/2003.
No deal. Still wonky. So I try reverting to earlier network / video drivers. Nope. Other nics/vid cards. Nope. All CPU/RAM/HDD tests came up clean. No overheating issues.
Finally, Google reveals unto me that this line of systems from Dell had bad capacitors. They apparently bulge. I open the case, and sure enough, thems capacitors are a-bulgin’.
So I hop on the phone yesterday with Dell, and next thing I know, I’m swapping out a mobo. It’s not new – it’s a refurb, which makes sense. The entire motherboard, minus the 5 bulging capacitors, is fine. I reckon they’ll just remove those 5 and replace them with good ones when they get the board I’m sending back and ship it off to some other poor bastard with bulging capacitors.
James blew up for you and me.
August 7, 2006
Metallica. Where do I even start with you?
No, this has nothing to do with the Napster debacle of 2000. This was a full year before.
For many, Metallica died with Cliff Burton. For others, it was the black album or Load/Reload. Look, I tell people I liked Load. I’ll admit it. They get mad at me. I clarify: “I liked it as a rock album, not a metal album.”
No, Metallica died for me the moment I heard the third track from the second disc of S&M, about 3:45 into the track.
James Motherfuckin’ Hetfield, in a moment that he hopefully regrets for the rest of his life, bellows “You Betcha!” into his microphone and out into disgrace during For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Brah. Come one. You Betcha? When did Metallica change genres to Disney Metal?
That was November 23rd, 1999. It was a cold day, indeed. Trapped Under Ice cold.
auto incrementing like a dumbass
August 4, 2006
I woke up at about 4am this morning, in the middle of some fever-induced sleep-coding.
I got up, turned on a desklight, and wrote the following:
kill the $l++ in the for loop!
the for auto increments, dumbass!
See, I’d been having this problem on this stupid ongoing project.
So I get up in the morning, and look at the code this message applied to. Turns out the problem area wasn’t even in a for loop! It was in a while statement! Oh! The humanity!
I hate it when I work out non-applicable code problems in my sleep. Waste of fucking time.