For me Halloween was over on Saturday after the Halloween party. It doesn't really register on my radar anyways so when a friend asked on the instant messenger if I had dressed up today it took me a moment to realize why I would dress up today. I dressed up Saturday and had some drinks and candy. That was my Halloween today well it's just a day before the candy goes on sale and I gain fifteen pounds from sugar in a weekend...
So happy free candy day/Halloween.
While driving home from Chris' place today I got a call, The Lane Memorial Blood Bank is needing more blood, apparently. This is the 2nd time they have called me and asked if I could go in. Usually I just donate when they come to my work. I told them I wasn't in town currently and if I had time I'd drop in.
Dropped my car off for an oil change and got my self some lunch. I got my self a rather good sized chicken burrito, with rice, beans, salsa, cilantro, and some greens at a place not to far from the oil change place. I was going for protein as the blood people always ask about the last meal and protein.
After eating and paying nearly $80 for an oil change, I stopped in at the blood bank to donated some blood. There was a pretty girl at the same time donating blood across from me, it was a bit awkward as I didn't want to stare or what ever but she was right in front. I finished and got my self a few cookies and went home.
Got home and did some more stuff to my new computer and updated the firmware on my phone. I also played a bunch of Half Life 2.
I have a love hate relationship with my laptop. I love having it, it's convenient it's portable, it's very useful. While it's not the quickest most powerful thing it's great for what I use it for most of the time (web surfing, flickr, email, ssh, etc...)
I do find my self frustrated with it when attempting to work on or with my photos. It isn't a speed thing thats my problem, it is a screen thing. I'm very used to my LCD at home with a much much higher contrast ratio and resolution. So editing/playing with photos on laptop leaves something to be desired.
Having a computer that comes on when power is pressed is awesome. While the game is a few years old now Halflife 2 on it is awesome, my last box had some trouble with it.
Leaving for Chris' later this evening. He is working tonight and this weekend so it could get kinda boring. Gonna pack to entertain my self if I need too...
Costume is ready to go. Even though I have not yet assembled the costume as it is a smoosh of a couple things. Maybe pictures on flickr later when it's on, if I'm feeling brave or nice or something.
Sunday night after Ultimate and dinner with some of the ultimate people at one of the McMenamins I headed back to Chris' place to crash cause I had yesterday off. So I Slept in and later picked up Jon from the airport and we hung out and talked about stuff for a bit before he had to get ready for work and before I headed home.
Got home setup my new computer and then worked some on the Halloween costume, before heading out to the barn...
I'm looking forward to my next two three day weekends....
I ended up going with another shuttle so it's not a whole lot larger than a toaster and from what I can tell the same size as my old/broken system, which is also a shuttle. Only this one is faster and very quite compared to my old/broken one. It's a 64bit X2 4400+ Athalon with Two Gigs of ram and a 300gb Seagate SATA drive and Dual Layer DVD+- burner and some other stuff like gigabit ethernet and 7.1 channel audio.
I've gotten some of my software installed and going on it. I will finish that part up most likely on Sunday or Monday once I get it home and have the rest of my stuff. I'll also use that time to pull the stuff off my old/broken system.
I am currently waiting for people in the second photo shortlisted to say it's ok for me to say it is ok for schmap to use my image. I have until the 22nd to let them know but at the least I can allow one I'm hoping for both.
If I am able to allow both to be published and both are published it would be four schmappings which is/would be kind of cool...
So I am declaring my desktop computer unusable today. Too many things just pissing me off and annoying me with it. Some things may be fixed with an OS reload. Many others not so much.
Today it wouldn't burn a DVD so I attempted to update the firmware for the DVD drive which turned the DVD burner drive into a brick. So even if I wanted to reload the OS I'd have open it up and put a new drive in...
Then the computer has the problem of not wanting to turn on. I press power and wait anywhere from three minutes to thirty minutes for the damn thing to power up. No I don't mean waiting for the OS to load. I mean waiting for lights to come on and for it to POST...
So I'm thinking new computer this weekend...
So I was driving home from Portland last night and got in front of some stupid little car. It's head lights were far far misaligned. They didn't really point at the road at all from what I could tell they pointed directly into my rear view mirror and most likely into the rear views as well...
]
I'm used to lifted trucks and larger SUVs and Trucks shining lights straight into my car while at stop lights or when they decide they wanna follow real close like. Last night it was from a car smaller or about the same size as mine, it certainly didn't a few feet higher than mine to get the blinding effect it had...
I've see this crazy eyed head light thing happen in Eugene from time to time. On a evening or night when there is a bit of fog in the air you can see one beam is pointing up and the other is where it should be or off to the side. At this point why even have head lights? Really? It should be pointing DOWN at the ROAD not at the tree tops and bums pushing their grocery carts... I'm not sure about all cars but I can adjust mine with a the turn of a screw driver... But judging from some of what I've seen some people may need something more, like a pry bar or duct tape to keep things where they should be.
So all you people with head lights pointing every which way. FIX IT! It's unsafe for other drivers who may be blinded by your stupid head lights and your self as I know you can't be seeing much of the road with them pointed to the heavens or sidewalks...
On July 23nd after participating in the Cascade Run Off with Chris and Jana we were on our way back to the car. When I saw a Chevy Cobalt equipied with a odd looking roof rack that had a mast sticking straight up from the middle and near the rear a flat saucer shaped antenna, well see for your self. I first thought what the hell thats a strange looking getup but then I realized the mast was supporting a camera with many lenses and the antenna was a GPS antenna. Then figured it was a Google or someone eleses street view vehicle. So I waited. I waited and sure enough today Portland is on Street view, I too am on street view I'm blury and zoom seems to be useless but it is me.
Half thought of a couple costume ideas today.
Derek Zoolander. Which I doubt will happen... Nearly too easy but yet difficult to so that someone would know who I was supposed to be.
The Stig. Cause he rules. But a race suit isn't to be found for less than $550 and then I'd still need a helmet and gloves, maybe even driving shoes...
I've been officially invited to a Halloween party for the first time in many many years, not that I haven't gone to a couple. I haven't dressed up for the holiday since years before that... So needless to say I feel a bit obligated to dress up and go. It's not just obligation, I do want to go it's just I have no idea what to do for a costume which is my biggest hangup..... So before the 27th I must come up with a costume...
Spent yesterday helping some friends install a fence. It's a temporary fence but that just means the stuff between the posts goes up easier. We still had to put 100 t-posts in the ground and 200 clips on the t-posts and 100 top caps as well. I was on t-post pounding duty. Even after getting a couple blisters then putting the gloves on I still got additional blisters. Then after we were done standing around talking something stung my ring finger on my left hand, it's swollen. So ya yesterday was a bit rough on my hands.
So while taking pictures a week or so ago with my tripod that my camera slipped quite easily on the Manfrotto 322RC2 head thats on my tripod. I made due and was careful and finished shooting.
While taking pictures of my new phone earlier this week I noticed the same thing and was able to figure out what axis it was moving more freely on and tried increasing the friction on the ball. This only helped a little.
Today I decided to see how it worked and maybe even fix it. Well I got it apart with no problem but back together is a bit more difficult as there is a spring that I can't manage to compress enough to get into place while still keeping everything else in their proper places. So not it's on my coffee table in pieces. Not sure if I will get another of the same or try a different head this time or make more attempts to re-assemble this one.
Wired Science was picked up by PBS. I saw the pilot back in January or February via podcast and it looked pretty decent they had some other shows as possible pilots that all looked pretty decent but wired science just appealed to me more than the others. I'm gonna have to give it a watch when I get home tonight.
So a few weeks ago while moving a bunch of data from one server to another I noticed Chris still had a copy of moonbase commander floating around. So I tracked my self a copy down and have been playing it. I'd forgotten how fun and easy it is to play.
The group who made the ssh client made a nifty little java proxy server that could work over a http port. But it caused a connection overload on the blackberry so I could issue a couple commands before it crapped out on me with some damn error about max connections.
People had success putting their ssh servers on alternate ports like port 110. Which was promising. But I don't want to alter ssh on my server to run on port 110 when 22 is fine for me 99% of the time.
To be 100% honest I don't NEED to access 22 on my server from my phone, I did it maybe twice with my MDA in the first couple months, then over a year with out doing it ever again. At some point during the day it became an exercise of can I make it happen / I won't be beat by this crap.
I've still to finalize and automate my method but it works and it works perfectly fine. I didn't have to reconfigure anything on my server, just on my router. My router is running dd-wrt which is an awesome firmware. But it's running an old version that lacks some of the functionality of the newer ones that would have made it easier which I may switch to at a later time.
I logged into my router and punched the following in.
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 110 -j DNAT --to :22 Thats it. now the port for pop3 email is now forwarded/mapped to port 22 on my internal server. I just point the ssh client to port 110 rather than the default 22....
I am so smrt... I mean smart...
I kinda miss summer.
After spending so many weekends in Portland or otherwise fairly active this weekend seemed very slow and dull. But relaxing/refreshing as well. But I found my self somewhat bored for stretches of time. I got out on both Saturday and Sunday to hang out with friends.
I suppose part of the problem could have been weather or I may have gone out and about to take pictures of fall happening. But it rained pretty much all day Sunday. Saturday I didn't even think to go out and take pictures. Maybe tonight after work if weather holds.
Also I'm still loving my new phone, it is awesome...