Recent diary entries
[ Home | Specials | Account | Customers | Entreés ]Get an account (or log in ) and you can add your own entry .
Recent diary entries:
6 Sep 2008 neoacerbitas »
the worst part about my job.... i have to shave at least every other day now. what a pain. I was really liking shaving once a week or less.3 Sep 2008 stan »
thanks for the update, smax. please hug all of them for me when you get there...3 Sep 2008 smax »
I think they're scheduled to close on the house in the middle of this month. I'm headed there the 27th and they were planning on being moved in by then. I'll see if I can get an update, they visit my parents fairly often.2 Sep 2008 insectaturk »
First day of school spent applying for jobs; welcome to 3L!2 Sep 2008 stan »
smax, do you know if the toastboy family got the house?2 Sep 2008 smax »
It was 80+ until 2 days ago. Then the hail, rain and snow happened. I love living in the mountains. It'll warm back up in a day or two, but I'm going to enjoy the cold while it lasts. Mountains just look so good with a fresh frosting.According to the MRI, after 2 months I still have a pretty badly bruised bone. There's a messy tendon still too. Hopefully in another month I'll be normal again. Yes, I know that's relative.
1 Sep 2008 blvdgirl »
Happy September! Had a nice rainy weekend in Rio followed by a beautiful but chilly day today... Apparently, I've gone completely native--wrapping up in a friendly afghan when the temperature hits the 50s.28 Aug 2008 mercurymouth »
hi, neo - i think the best part of sb is notre dame, that and you aren't far away from the michigan sand dunes and those are really fun. i'll have to ask my sister for more info for you! stay away from that bar you were at!25 Aug 2008 neoacerbitas »
merc, i would really love to know what goes on in this area. I was at a bar in SB saturday night and when i woke up sunday, i checked the news, four people had been shot. :/ Seems nice otherwise. There are lots of trees, and even though i'm close to the expressway, i can't hear it. Too many lights to see stars though...Today was my first day at work. My headache started at about 10pm last night, I woke up today and got the worst haircut of my life, had a drug "screening" and filled out some paperwork, the got my picture taken for my ID, worst picture ever. It's going to be fine. I like the guy i work with so far, but it's only been a day.
25 Aug 2008 mercurymouth »
I'm so happy for you guys, Wags. That is SO cool. Neo - I have family in SB and my brother-in-law goes to ND and is studying chemistry (not sure if it's inorganic or organic, he is just really smart). Let me know if you need any Indianan advice/tips. Good luck with the move! - LL21 Aug 2008 neoacerbitas »
I am moving to indiana friday. I feel like when i got my ear pierced, i don't know if i should smile or scream.Irony alert. I have two friends that went to ND. One of them lives in the same building that i'm going to be living in. I didn't know she lived there, I just couldn't find any other apartment that looked decent, so I got a room there. Weird.
21 Aug 2008 baggins »
yeah. she's also a blast to hang out with. even if she does get crabby and not want to sleep when she should.she just started crawling 2 weeks ago and already she's pulling herself up to stand every chance she can get. she doesn't even like to crawl, you can tell she'd prefer to walk. but she can't so she settles for crawling around the house and standing if you don't watch close enough and she's near something she can pull herself up with.
she also seems to enjoy climbing on dad and trying to gouge out my eyes.
what an incredible blessing she is. i can't even describe the joy she brings us day to day.
20 Aug 2008 mercurymouth »
Oh my goodness, all things holy, holy cow, holy shit - that baby is CUTE!!!!!19 Aug 2008 baggins »
a good one of Aria and dad havin fun17 Aug 2008 pedro »
crazy!17 Aug 2008 baggins »
here's an odd story for you all.
so this dude came into my store this week on thursday. he was looking at some guitars, and picked out an ibanez that he liked. we got to talking, he was going to come back the next day for it. he tells me he just moved here from chicago so we start talking about that. he asks me about local music and live shows and i introduce him to another employee who plays out a couple times a week around town. i give him my business card and he says he'll see me tomorrow.i get a call from him on my cell phone that night. he's got some sob story for me. he apparently left GC and had lunch with his girlfriend and dropped her off at class. she kissed him goodbye and said 'take out some burgers for dinner.'
apparently he went home and took a nap. the next thing he knows is it's 7pm and the cops are knocking at his door. they tell him that she's got a restraining order against him and that he needs to leave. he's apparently freaking out, and has a bag of his clothes and that's it. he wants to know if he can stay at my house!!! i'm like, 'dude there is no way. i have a wife and kid at home and there's no way i'm letting you stay at my house. i will try to find a shelter for you to stay at for the night.' i call around, find a place that can take him in, and call him back with the info. he continues to apologize profusely and says 'i know its a lot to ask. im sorry. you're the only person i've met in Tucson. blah blah blah.' he just called me back a few minutes ago. apparently now he's at a rental car place at the airport and has the cash but his credit card won't go through and they won't rent him a car. he wants to give me the cash and rent the car with my credit card. i tell him 'sorry man. i don't have a credit card. i can't help you. i need to go now, the baby is going crazy.' and he apologizes again and we hang up.
i hate this shit. i don't want to be a dick, but come on. you would have to be a pretty good friend for me to let you stay at my house with my wife and kid there. and to rent a car on my credit card? do i just look that stupid?
crazy. this town is nuts.
15 Aug 2008 smax »
Toastboy and his family will move into their new house in about a month. Look at all the grownups around here. I'm in a mental debate on when to sell my condo and what to do after that. Cabin in the weeds, a better condo, a new state? I need some time to travel and think.
It's finally starting to cool off in Utah. Much more pleasant. Salt Lake is almost tolerable. Going back to the above, if I stay here after this coming winter, I will need to plan on being some place else for about two months around July. Heat just makes me angry. My ankle isn't making me very happy either. I think the doctor was wrong and I did something to a tendon or two. It's been over a month and it still hurts and doesn't move right. I can't complain, life is still pretty darn good. For example, Utah attempted to audit me, turns out they owe me money. How often does that happen? Maine and the IRS do too. Lesson: always keep all your records for at least 7 years.
14 Aug 2008 neoacerbitas »
I started a special about the olympics, with a name of an entree. This way I can complain about the swedish wrestler that didn't like his bronze medal.14 Aug 2008 inkblot »
tara and i found a house that we'll make an offer on this week. it needs work. we probably won't live in it for the first six months we own it.13 Aug 2008 pedro »
neo: thanks!lukas: YEAH! That gymnastics commentary was TERRIBLE. It was all doom and gloom and they kept talking over everything. SO ANNOYING.
13 Aug 2008 neoacerbitas »
Pedro, i'll have the MD sent to you soon, I had trouble finding the AC adapter.I fixed 8 bassoons for iowa state and get them back in their hands yesterday... Hopefully they won't take their time to pay me for it...but i'm sure they will.
I also think i'm finally moving to indiana around the 23rd of the month. There aren't any apartments available, but the place i want to rent from will let me stay in one of their fully furnished units for the same price until there is.
12 Aug 2008 lukas »
A list for today, in two parts.
Things I Like:Things I Don't Like
- my new fixed gear bike
- the weather in DC today (feels like fall)
- riding to work
- the olympics
- fried chicken at jackie's
- laying in the grass and watching the stars
- cold beer in a can
- having to install silverlight to watch the olympics
- al trautwig and tim daggett's terrible gymnastics commentary
- john mccain's racist ads
- laundry
12 Aug 2008 pedro »
it's super beautiful here... alas, we have to come back today.Molokai is really interesting -- it is very REAL -- not a tourist destination, but like visiting the country. alhp said it is like "If Poplar was Hawaii." There are only about 8,000 permanent residents on this island, which is about 10x40 miles.
We had plenty to do, with the explanation that we wanted to just lay around and relax. Other islands have "more to offer" in the way of touristy stuff, but this island really has the very slow island pace, etc. The fastest speed limit on the island is 45 miles per hour and after a few days you start to recognize a lot of people.
It's hard to explain. After having been to several other islands, it was really great to come here and exactly what we neeeded... but if you were going to visit Hawaii for the first time, I wouldn't necessarily recommend coming to Molokai unless you know what you're getting into.
It has been wonderful though.
11 Aug 2008 insectaturk »
Hi kansas girl, good to see you here!10 Aug 2008 baggins »
how's hawaii? what's the weather like right now?i should take Jackie and Aria someday...
Aria has started to crawl. My life is forever changed. seriously, she's mobile now in a very new way. my how the time flies when you live inch by inch and day by day with your first baby. it's the coolest thing in the whole world.
9 Aug 2008 pedro »
sorry for the long outage -- we are in Molokai, Hawaii... I had to get a friend from school to take care of it.6 Aug 2008 pedro »
Say hello to ksgirl! An old friend from NPU...5 Aug 2008 smax »
Any web-nerds on the diner need work? I have some really big "side" projects I might need help with if anyone is interested. Specifically I need a hand with limited on-line storefronts. I've become very scared of the amount of work coming my way lately.5 Aug 2008 BigJ »
I figured you hadn't checked. It's no prblem they just ended up going to the Shedd we're members there and my daughter loves the fishies and dolphins.I'll definitely take you up on it eventually though. :)
4 Aug 2008 scinatfilm »
Hey Big J,Sorry i haven't checked back in a bit. Yes, for any and all - come to the coolest Museum on me. If you can't contact me in advance, just call up the directory and find me.
Big J, I'll try to call tomorrow, but for anyone else, hit me at SCIence and NATural history FILMmaking AT SBCGLOBAL DOT NET. My addy is in caps.
ANyone else still in Chi-town?
I'm looking for pwoplw to connect with again now that I'm back.
Cheers
4 Aug 2008 smax »
Just looked into it. My cable modem has logs too. Pretty similar to what Inkblot posted below. Also, the EFF just posted their network monitoring freeware called Switzerland. I just found out about it and don't know if it does what you're looking for, but maybe.Blvd, of course we think too much. What would you expect from a bunch of nerds? Now if only we could harness this over-thinking for the forces of good. =]
3 Aug 2008 blvdgirl »
M&M story = laughter... you guys think too much. :)2 Aug 2008 inkblot »
don't know about cable modems, but my dsl modem has logs available by http. they clearly indicate the times when it's lost and regained a connection to at&t. the log lines look like this:
2008/07/20 03:30:54 GMT E |DSL |Link Down 2008/07/20 03:30:54 GMT E |DSL |State: WAITING 2008/07/20 03:30:58 GMT E |DSL |State: INITIALIZING 2008/07/20 03:31:06 GMT E |DSL |HYBRID 3 2008/07/20 03:31:06 GMT E |DSL |Link up 871 US 384 DS 1536 (FAST:G.dmt)you can see from these logs that the dsl link was down for 12 seconds starting at 22:30:54 central time on the 19th. your cable modem probably has similar logs. pedro's suggestion of a small script that runs on a schedule would apply.
1 Aug 2008 pedro »
neo: practically nothing, depending on how you want to test whether the connection was lost. Do you want to know if the actual cable company sync between your modem and the network was lost, or do you just want to track when *you* couldn't reach the internet? The latter would be pretty easy to write with a ping utility and perl. The former would probably take some lower level coding.insecta: you're right, but if this guy has really been doing this over many years and finds that certain colors are more prevalent, it may have some value. Or he may be unconsciously biasing the colors. I think the real problem in his test is that he doesn't build a tree for the tests, rather it sounds like the second to last M&M could be winner -- lets say M&M 1 and 2 go head to head, and 1 wins ever fight until the very last one, when fresh M&M #99 comes up but M&M 1 has won 98 other battles. A more honest method would be a tournament tree, and he should enlist his friends to do the same and see if they find the same results.
1 Aug 2008 neoacerbitas »
hypothetically speaking, what do you guys think it would cost to get someone to write a small program that logs when and for how long the connection on say, a cable modem, was lost?1 Aug 2008 insectaturk »
I was assuming he uses two hands, but if he's putting two M&Ms between the finger and thumb of one hand, the problem remains. It could all be in the position of the M&Ms.1 Aug 2008 insectaturk »
His test has a serious design flaw. It is very unlikely that the muscles in his two hands exert exactly the same pressure with the same vectors. So don't worry smax, he's probably not going to contribute to an M&M superrace.30 Jul 2008 smax »
I think I might be afraid of strong m&ms. Why would I want stronger candy? What if they take over the world?In high school, oreo ran a campaign asking people to call in to 1-800-eat-oreo and leave a message about how you eat your oreos. I decided to skew the results and called from as many pay-phones as possible (you were only allowed to call from one number, once) saying each time that I swallow them whole. I even got a friend involved. We probably called over 100 times each. One time my friend called, he got a real person. They asked his address and the sent him a t-shirt, a bag of oreos and a small plastic oreo figure. I still have the oreo figure in my kitchen. Never did hear if we effected the results. Probably got grouped into "other".
I think I have those two new ski web sites going live tonight. The dognotgone.com one is done and I still have one more to do asap. I've been working long hours and almost every day for the past two-three weeks on them. The sites aren't my best work, but considering how fast they were put together, they're almost impressive.
Also, it's hot in Utah and I'm still gimping around on a mediocre ankle. That mild mtn biking incident a few weeks ago. Bruised bone or something. Good thing you don't need your feet much to climb, well at least on severe overhangs.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a apple." - not me
29 Jul 2008 BigJ »
That is funny. Especially to me being in the candy business, and in fact going to work for Mars in the near future.In reality the candies are all identical the only difference is batch to batch variation in coating due to the inconsistencies of pan coating chocolate. :)
29 Jul 2008 pedro »
From R. Crutch:Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.
Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them breaks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.
Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.
When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."
This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.
There can be only one.
(From Roger Ebert's Blog)
28 Jul 2008 pedro »
Heh, ok. You can email me if you want. I'm mostly interested in borrowing it in order to do some transfers and then I'd send it back to you. I'll pay for shipping both ways.27 Jul 2008 neoacerbitas »
Pedro, Indeed, i still have it, "like new" condition... It's not a netMD. let's work something out.27 Jul 2008 BigJ »
For anyone interested. My sister needs to sell her Lollapalooza tickets. She's willing to sell them for a little under face value. the 3 day passes are $195 face. That's 3 days of a lot of good bands for under $200. Let me know.26 Jul 2008 pedro »
neo: do you still have your MD recorder? I have some MDs and yours is the only one I know of that can read some of them.24 Jul 2008 barefootjumper »
learning how to work things out in the world? struggling with the fact that nothing's fair? trying to learn to harness and exert power? because you can? because you love each other and know that at the end of the fight you'll still be loved?perhaps it's all this not fighting getting us "adults" ground down and into therapy.
24 Jul 2008 inkblot »
when my brother and i were 13 and 11 we generally gave each other a wide berth. but then again, we didn't grow up in the city... or any kind of town.24 Jul 2008 stan »
i'm old. i have forgotten why it is that 13 & 11 year old siblings must argue every chance they get and make your life a miserable yelling fest. anyone else young enough to remember?22 Jul 2008 neoacerbitas »
it's called "The W0odwind and the bra5swind", which is owned by musicians buddy, which is owned by GC. I think somewhere in there is another store called "music and ars" but who knows. the only thing i'm not liking is that they don't have a company match on the 401k. it is, however, a 2 billion dollar company so hopefully there is some job security, particularly in comparison to a smaller shop, like the ones i applied at in minneapolis.22 Jul 2008 blvdgirl »
Hi all. I was just thinking about how much I miss my friends in Brazil and then wandered the cyber-road this way to catch up on over a month of posts, and now I'm missing all of you as well... I've been travelling for five weeks here in the states and am definitely overtired--that's my excuse for feeling so sentimental. It's just hard to believe that I didn't see a single diner friend in all my travelling this summer (though this summer was mostly dedicated to relatives); guess there's always next summer... I fly back to Rio tomorrow, and I'm delighted about that. :) Take care of yourselves. xoxo22 Jul 2008 BigJ »
Hey scinatfilm my wife and daughter were thinking about going to the MSI on Thursday afternoon. Is the offer you posted about passes still good?Call me, seven seven three - ate ate five nine nein won six.
Since we're close we go there often, but usually wait until we find a pass at the library.