Zod returns to the Phantom Zone
April 30, 2007
So here was today’s plan:
- Wake up early.
- Gut and install new wiper blades.
- Renew car’s registration.
- Renew brake tag.
- Drive to Planet Houston, pick up servers, close office.
- Drive back to NOLA.
Sounds easy, right? Well, here’s how it went:
- Woke up early.
- Installed new wiper blades.
- On I-35N, car freaked out. Kinda downshifted by itself.
- 3 blocks from Tax Assessor’s Office, car puts itself into neutral.
- Drive (in 3rd gear only) to automotive shop. Turned away. Don’t do transmissions.
- Acquire coffee. Drive (in 3rd gear again) to transmission shop.
- Get estimate. $2000 to fix transmissional woes.
- Drive to Firestation (Andre’s office)
- Get new registration sticker (in Andre’s truck)
- Drive to CarMax (still in 3rd gear), sell car for $250.
- Picked up by the ever wonderful Valentine, fetch rental car.
- Eat at Guero’s with Valentine. Delicious.
- Pick up rest of crap at Firestation
- Back to Andre’s. Beer. Heroes. Blogging. Sleep (soon).
Yeah. Apparently some drum(s) blew or something in the transmission, leaving em with 3rd gear and reverse only. Tomorrow, I pick up the servers in Houston, and return home.
More on the awesome and suck of both this weekend and last to come later. Aforementioned sleep now.
“Better slip with foot than tongue”
April 18, 2007
Ah, such true words, Mr. Franklin.
This past Sunday saw Bea, myself, and a group of friends playing croquet in City Park. We decided to throw in a twist or two: what can only be described as a vat of Long Island Iced Teas and two courts that intersected in the middle at a 90° angle.
I know. Awesome.
Anyways, at some point I slipped while riding Angelina, and earned a quarter-sized scrape on the top of my left foot, as displayed below (with Bea’s ant-bitten foot):
Not a big deal, I know. The only part of this sub-plot that makes it remotely interesting is that this morning, I put some anti-bacterial cream on it. While that isn’t necessarily the most exciting thing you’ve ever heard, by noon today it seemed to have gotten worse. It is swollen, and simply walking was a less than pleasant feeling. I have since gotten home in a most painful manner, soaked it in epsom-salts, and poured H2O2 over it for good measure. We’ll see what happens.
What really bums me out about this is not the painful and limited moving ability, but the painful and limited moving ability. I have plans to leave Friday at Noon-thirty with Sonny, Jonah, and Lara to go to Atlanta.
We’re going to see the Sixth Stage of the Tour de Georgia, a seven-day ProTour Bicycle Race, and pick up Sonny’s new boat while we’re there.
Of course, not being able to easily walk would hinder my fun on a mountain stage. So, hopefully I’ll be fine for Friday. If not, I might just go anyways, and hang out at the base or something.
Cross your fingers for me, chirrens – I really want to go. Next time someone advises me to put anti-bacterial ointment on a scrape, I’ll tell them exactly where on their own body they can apply it.
Best Song Title to Describe My Mood
April 17, 2007
Venom’s Aaaaaaarrghh from their 1983 album At War with Satan.
The Phoenix Also Rises
April 13, 2007
So, a couple of new bits of goodness in the Harry Potterverse:
1) I have a press pass to Phoenix Rising: a conference devoted to all things Harry Potter, will fuse the intensity of academic debate with the improvisation of exploratory dialogue, the rhythms of New Orleans with the colors and pageantry of art. The conference will examine the novels, the movies, and the extraordinary fan phenomenon during the day; then, attendees will revel with the beat of the Crescent City — herself rising from ash and flame — when evening advances.
2) The new Harry Potter game on the Wii uses the Wii’s “wand” to control your character’s wand ingame. Review and screenshots from IGN.
3) More awesomeness from the Penny Arcade:
Love Triangle(s)
April 11, 2007
Finger sandwiches are a wonderful breakfast. That is all.
And now, back to bed.
Rain Rides
April 10, 2007
I really do enjoy riding to/from work in the rain. I actually think it is fun. I have my jacket, my messenger bag is waterproof, and I have a change of clothes at the office.
I have everything except extra socks, apparently. Dammit.
That reminds me, I treated myself to a new bag the other day. I figured a new laptop deserved a new bag. It is the sex.
The Little Box that Could
April 4, 2007
So, I decided to recently take a look at the box that runs my email, in addition to running DNS and some web for me. It’s not a very beefy box by any means, but it’s been stable as hell for a long time. By a long time, I mean ~9 years – it’s a paltry 400MHz. I shit you not.
willt@cog ~ $ date; uptime; uname -a; cat /proc/cpuinfo
Wed Apr 4 17:16:29 CDT 2007
17:16:29 up 238 days, 14:16, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.06, 0.06
Linux cog 2.6.18-rc6 #1 PREEMPT Mon Sep 11 17:51:55 CDT 2006 i586 AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 5
model : 8
model name : AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor
stepping : 12
cpu MHz : 400.938
cache size : 64 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 pge mmx syscall 3dnow k6_mtrr
bogomips : 802.47
I got this processor in ’98 when it came out. It’s been running pretty much ever since.
To be fair, I did give it about a month and a half vacation in 2005 (Katrina).
I think that the most surprising/impressive thing about the above output is that the bike in which it lives hasn’t lost power, well, been out of power for longer than my humble UPS could provide, in ~8 months. This is the pseudo-famously-electrically-unstable Maringy Triangle, chirrens.
Donatello: Smells like a geek ran through here.
April 2, 2007
Yesterday was, well, nerdly. The bulk of the Late Night Krewe™ (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Big Easy Rollergirls), went on a Turtle-fueled movie binge.
Here’s my day yesterday in a nutshell:
Wake up, have a coffee, have a beer. Drive to Harahan (to Bea’s house). Play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters while snacking on food and drinking beer while watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I, II, III and Ghostbusters I and II. Sleep.
My old co-worker, the Spork™ had a similarly awesome weekend:
me: so yesterday, i watched tmnt 1 – 3, and ghostbusters 1 and 2
me: ouch
spork: i actually got you beat.
me: … and i played tmnt: tournament fighter for SNES
spork: something came over me this weekend and i watch 3 seasons of Buffy.
me: wow
her: watched even. yeah.
me: which three?
her: 1-3.
me: damn
If you can, stop envying me and my glamorous life.
If any of you Ghostbuster freaks are looking for a domain name for your own blog, alargeandmovingt.org is available.
And on another note, I’m making it a point to post regularly here again, dammit.