02/03/2004:
Today's weather: Blowing snow. The high today is around 26F. That is positively balmy compared to the highs in the single digits we've had lately. Let's see... it snowed, and then it snowed, and it was that cold kinda weather where the snow squeaks under your feet and salt is useless. Then yesterday all of a sudden, things warmed up to above freezing (!!) for a few hours, letting the snow compact down into an nice sheet of ice (helped along by some freezing rain during) and then things got cold again, and it snowed. So the commute this morning was all about powdery snow over ice, but not just any old ice. No, ice that's been made all bumpy by 20439875 people walking over it and leaving footprints that are now solid casts of their shoes. That is worse than flat ice. Flat ice, you know it's slippery and you can kinda skate along there in your shoes, but shoeprint bumpy ice is just 100% unpredictable.
There were a lot of old tech magazines cluttering up my cube. Those, plus some scissors, glue, and a scanner have been reorganized into yet another new collage.
I realize I owe people recipes. I will try and type them up here tomorrow.
In other news... Both my computers at home work now.
I'd not booted my Linux box in months, mainly 'cuz the video card died. I was using it, and one day, pow, the colors were all "off" and strangely fluorescent, and things had smeared out ghost shadows to the side. Talking to my neighbor Mike S., it turns out that the Dell computers that shipped around when I got mine all had weak video cards. Sigh. But, I thought, I might as well upgrade the OS to redhat 9 at the same time I get a new card so that it can maybe autodetect it during the install and X will all just work. Being lazy, I put it off, put it off. Finally, after coming back from vacation in Virginia in January, it being the New Year and all that, I decided to get the computers and also my desk into general order. So I mail ordered a video card (which turned out to be this XTREEEEM!!?@! kinda card with all these warnings like "don't use this card if you have HEART TROUBLE 'cuz you will die from the xtreeeem gaming graphics AWESOMENESS, d00d!!" all over it, but hey, it displays my xterms absolutely CRISPLY), and proceeded to install it.
The most annoying part was getting the computer out from where it is under the desk. My desk is two black filing cabinets with a solid core door on top - the biggest and bestest desk I've ever had. It's in the corner of the front window room, the front right corner of the house, so there is a wall to the right of the desk and then across the desk from me (I look out the bank of five windows there next to the porch). The filing cabinet that is the right support has one computer on each side. The Linux box is between the cabinet and the wall. So I had to move the desk around, puff puff, then vacuum out scads of cat hair, unplug a buncha cables, etc. Finally it was out, I opened the case, and sproiiingggg! this metal THING shot out of the computer and across the room. Woo. It was some kinda shim deal that was forcing two cards apart, I kid you not. I guess they'd be too close together, and heaven forbid they couldn't just separate them by one slot, so they had to be forced apart by this big springy metal thing. Makes me wonder if that didn't help whatever flaw the video card had along.
I didn't put that metal thing back in. It is now a cat toy.
I installed the new card, moving the card next to it (sound card, as it turns out) down a slot, plugged the thing in. All was good, but no X. Just... blackness. This card doesn't like the standard VESA mode, seems like. Oh yeah, that's why I shoulda installed with default runlevel 3. Heh. Luckily the rest of things were up and happy, so it was a simple matter of ssh in, install drivers obtained off the web, change default runlevel to 3, reboot, things is good, but wavy wavy in the center, like the screen is crawling. Ah yes, I have a flat panel monitor, so despite it detecting some amazing scan range, it needs to be set to 60. Still a bit of crawl, but a final tweak or two to the monitor controls on the front of the actual screen fixed it right up. It is swank. Extremely crisp text and images, which is what I need. So far no heart attacks... but then I guess they don't mean the NYTimes crossword and FreeCell when they talk about games.
Once all was installed I went to Mike L's for a while, came home, only to find... the Windows video card had died! Same exact problem, so it got the same exact fix - same card. All is good. I have computers now. Whee.
Being able to work from home was a wonderful thing over the MLK holiday. Due to all my machines at work breaking and not getting fixed (well, replaced with temporary loaners, more like) until that Friday, and all the Illinois Compass rosters being due that Tuesday before the start of classes, I had to do all the programming to get the information out of the student information system (the infamous Data Warehouse) and into the proper IMS XML formats over that weekend. It was a weekend of 10 hours a day work all three days. It sucked. I finished things at 11 PM Monday night. It was like being back in school, or something. *shudder* But, at least I was at home, rather than in the Hall of Justice for the duration.
So last Friday and this one are all about Comp Time. Yay.
02/05/2004:
Today's weather: Lots of snow, on top of a layer of frozen drizzle glaze. Well, not exactly... that's what's on the ROAD and where people shoveled. Anywhere else, it's compacted old snow, then a glaze, then some fluffy snow, another glaze, and then a buncha snow. I should go take core samples of the yard or something. The squirrels aren't sinking.
Birds of various kinds are currently feasting on the lst of the berries on the lilac bush outside the front room. I can watch this happening, because I am working at home today. I can also watch the high school kids walking home (I live 2 blocks from Urbana High School) in their drapey pants. The thing now is to wear flared pants that are long enough to actually touch the ground, or better yet, get under the back of your shoe as you walk around, so that the ends are always tattered and discolored from ground in mud. Yuck. I can see long pants, drapey pants, but dragging on the ground to the point where they get stepped on with each step is just nasty 'cuz you don't take your pants off when you go inside, do ya? Or maybe you do? They'd be all cold, these people have salty dirty car-snow-salt-melt wicked halfway up their legs. Makes me cold just looking! Thinking about those people walking on Daniel St in front of Kam's and then going inside makes me ill... *shudder*
02/23/2004:
Today's weather: A bit of rain, grey, high of 53F. Yes, it's warmed up quite a bit of late. I first put my red hooded jacket on last Wednesday, and I'm still wearing it! Mostly it's been low 40's for highs, things went back to a high of 37F on Saturday (still balmy, as far as I'm concerned) and supposedly this week will also be mostly highs in the 40'sF.
I finally got around to seeing Lost in Translation. Let's just say, my vacations look nothing like that!!! Well, the street scenes do (part of what I liked about the film) but I usually rent a room in a part of town that is quite a bit more... downmarket. Way more interesting fellow guests though. Vending machine beer, rice balls from Seven Eleven, the newspaper, and people from all over the world sitting around a folding card table, what more do you need?
I did like the movie though, maybe not for the reasons you're supposed to. The good thing is if you understand the Japanese parts, lots of that stuff is funny on its own - like the commercial cameraman guy, he IS completely over the top, using crazy auteur language as if he's making a masterpiece rather than a commercial. That's funny by itself, but then you have the translator, who it seems to me is partly internally rolling her eyes at this guy, and so maybe on PURPOSE isn't forwarding on all his fluff, which is funny again. And yet she's gotta be all polite to the director guy when forwarding the "should he turn from the right or left?" basic question, only to have the director guy annoyed that anyone would even be CONCERNED about that, because what we need is more passion... Anyways, I thought it funny. And then the part where a normal citizen is in the waiting room of a hospital using very easy slow let's talk louder!! language to try and ask the Bob Harris how long he's been in Japan, and naturally Harris doesn't understand a word of it, so the guy shakes his head and gives up...
02/27/2004:
Today's weather: Awesomely sunny, high of 50F. Supposedly this weekend it will get up to a whopping 57F. That is just amazing.
I got a bunch of train books from Amazon about taking tiny little branch lines all over rural Japan, planning my next trip!
