Monkeys.

2011-06-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

I've been invited to Google+ and wanted to test out the plusone button.

2011-06-07T19:17:00.000-07:00

As an update to the NASbox post of over two years ago - I've built another NAS. A better one. A real one.

About a month ago, the largest hard drive in my computer, a 2TB Western Digital Green drive started dying. The folder and file thumbnails would take literally minutes to load. Not good. A quick boot into Ubuntu showed hundreds of sectors waiting for re-allocation. I started the RMA process with Western Digital right then.

In the meantime, I was kicking myself for having content on that drive that wasn't backup up anywhere else. Because this was my largest single drive by far, I had lazily allowed it to hold some content that "wouldn't fit" on any other drive.

So, some backstory. I've been running Freenas on a laptop in the closet with a 1TB drive connected via USB for the last couple of years. It has worked well, but slow. Because the network adapter on the laptop was just a 10/100, transfer speeds usually ranged from 5-9MB/s. Anytime I needed to copy a bunch of stuff, I'd just leave it overnight.

So back to recent time. The drive fails and I manage (miraculously) to copy everything off of it. Everything is spread across 2 internal drives in my machine, the 1TB NASbox, and two external USB drives (tiny ones to have a backup of a backup of my photos). I'm really not a fan of having all my data so disorganized and spread across so many drives.
I begin researching and ordering parts. The hardware list looks something like this:

1) ASUS AMD motherboard that supports socket AM3 processors and ECC DDR3 memory

2) AMD X2 250 dual core 3.0GHz processor

3) 4 Gigs of ECC DDR3 memory (2x2GB) sticks

4) 2 Western Digital 2TB Green drives and 1 Western Digital 2TB Green AV drive (regret that purchase as it was the drive that had failed, but RMA only replaces like with like)

5) Antec Earthwatts 380W Green power supply

6) Thermaltake V3 Black case

After putting the hardware together, I loaded Windows 7 onto a tiny 40G hard drive to do some stress testing. Using the stock CPU cooler and a single case fan (in addition to the power supply fan for a total of 3 fans) my full load Prime95 on both cores cooked up the CPU to a whopping 38C (to be fair, it was pretty cool in the house). I ended up undervolting the CPU (a full three-tenths of a volt) and getting full load temps down to the low 30s (running it overnight got it to spike to 34C) AFTER taking the casefan out. Perfect. A quick check of the power consumption from the wall with a Kill-a-Watts showed full load to consume a little over 70 watts. Fortunately the box will probably rarely/never operate at full load.
After Memtesting the memory for a few hours, I was satisfied with the hardware.

I decided to stick with FreeNAS for software - I realized with the more powerful hardware that my options for software were much greater, but FreeNAS had served me well and the 8.0 release has good ZFS support. FreeNAS boots from a MicroSD card that is soldered to a very short jumper plugged into a USB header on the motherboard so it's completely internal. Because the header splits to two USB ports, I may go back and solder a second MicroSD adapter to it and set the BIOS to boot from either of them in order in case of card/reader failure. The 3 hard drives are set up as a RAIDZ so I have a little under 4TB of usable space with the benefit that I can suffer a single drive failure and retain all of my data. I also have the benefit of expanding to 6 drives without having to purchase any expansion cards.

Transfer speeds on this new box are significantly faster than the laptop+USB hard drive approach. Write speeds with small files (pictures) are about 35MB/s, large files (disc images, ISOs) are about 55MB/s, and large file read speeds are 70MB/s+.

I originally made a half-hearted attempt to incorporate some pictures into the post, but didn't really feel like taking the time to position everything, so here's a link to a pile of pictures in my Picasa web album. I also made an attempt to find and link all the hardware, but. . . well, didn't take the time after realizing that I'd have to dig around a bit to find the exact memory that I purchased.

2009-07-08T23:52:00.001-07:00

I got an invitation for Google Voice. I registered for the invite probably a year ago. Here's a test of a "Call Widget" that should go directly to my voicemail.
I think the way it works is that you click on it, and you have to put in your actual phone number so that it can make one phone call to the caller, and one to the receiver and connect them both. I wonder if this is possibly an elaborate way to double prank call two people at once. . .

2009-03-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

I woke up on Sunday with a vision - I wanted to set up a low-power Network Attached Storage (NAS) box. I've been jonesin' for a box like this for a long time. Ideally, I'd be able to set up a centralized media streaming machine that wouldn't have to be my main, power-hungry desktop.

In my closet (gathering dust) I had an old laptop with a broken screen (actually shattered broken), bad optical drive, missing miniPCI wifi card, no HD, etc. I found a spare optical drive and installed it. I completely removed the screen - disconnected it and unscrewed it from the box.

From Drop Box

It's basically a machine, about 1 inch thick - Pentium M 1.6Ghz with 256M memory, with a keyboard, 3 USB 2.0 ports, and built in 10/100 networking.

From Drop Box

I downloaded FreeNAS, burned the liveCD .iso to a CD and booted the old non-screened laptop up while connected to my main monitor. After a very brief, bare-bones setup (which consisted of pretty much doing nothing more than figuring out what LAN IP was assigned to the box), I disconnected the monitor and stuck the box near my router (short network cable) and did the rest of the setup through the webUI.

I plugged a 4GB Micro SDHC card through a USB adapter to the machine, formatted it, and shared it. I easily found it in both Windows and Ubuntu, and can read/write from it.

From Drop Box

Access speeds are pretty good so far, with write speeds to the little MicroSDHC card clocking around 3.5MB/sec. (capital B even!) and read speeds at about 4.5MB/sec. I suspect that if I had actually used a spinning disk-type drive in the IDE slot, it would get faster times - but that would cost money, and I think for my money I'd rather buy a 3.5" form-factored external USB HD and use it. I have an 80GB drive sitting in an external enclosure now, and will probably set that up next to play with.

Next up is setting up FTP access - it may be a while though, I'm definitely no networking expert!

It is kind of weird that the machine makes no noise whatsoever. No spinning disc/disk - the cooling fan doesn't even spin up on the CPU. The entire OS is like 60MB and just gets written to a RAMdisk at bootup.

2009-02-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

Yup, everything works just fine from within virtual Windows 7 within Ubuntu. The sound is a little sketchy, it seems to have awkward buffering - it plays fine, then after a few seconds it occasionally makes a gentle snapping noise.

2009-01-31T23:28:00.000-08:00

Oh man, it's been a few months since I messed around with VirtualBox software in Ubuntu. It supports 3D acceleration and 64-bit guest operating systems!

I'm installing Windows 7 x64 beta into it as I type!

2009-01-29T16:22:00.000-08:00

I finally edited the multiple pictures taken at Disneyland a few years ago to make the banner at the top of this page! The original image is HUGE!

2009-01-26T21:09:00.001-08:00

Test test

--
==================================================================
This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

2009-01-26T20:38:00.001-08:00

NOW I'll bet the comments work!

A test of a youtube link:

Picture!

From MiscTest

2008-08-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

Hmm, a test to see if the comments work. I'm a bit lazy to pull the old script out for the 3rd party commenting system that evidently stopped working long ago.

2008-01-21T18:28:00.001-08:00

I'm still alive.

2007-10-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time. A lot has changed since last time I really posted. I've finished all of my coursework and am dragging on a thesis at this point to graduate. It seems that the closer to finishing I get, the more difficult it is to accomplish the things that I've left for myself to do.
I'd probably have left this blog lay fallow for another couple of months if it weren't for an article that I read that I found very disturbing.

The Importance of Family Dinners IV

Now, I'm totally all for the propaganda that this article is intended to put across: the accountability for child/teen drug abuse lies primarily within the family unit. I get that much. But the gist of the article is that they take a correlation between the frequency at which teens have dinner with their family and current and future abuse of drugs and simplify it into a heavily implied causal system. To the layman reading the article, it basically says "if you eat dinner with your children, they will be less likely to use drugs." I read the article through to the end, waiting to see the part in the discussion where they mention that confounding factors make the situation more difficult. I was waiting to read the part where they say that teens who eat dinner with their families are more likely to come from a higher socioeconomic background, are more likely to have parents with higher education levels, are more likely to have more support systems in effect in their lives, are more likely to be religious, are more likely to engage in other healthy self-protective behaviors, are more likely to have positive mentors in their life, etc. So I didn't see any mention of that. It seems like there could possibly be another as yet unidentified (in this particular article, at least) factor that can account for both the frequency of family dinner as well as substance abuse. Like maybe "good" kids both stay away from drugs, AND have frequent family dinners. Then I figure, maybe they took the negative spin, and I waited to read the part where they mention that kids who abuse drugs are more likely to engage in other harmful behaviors, are more likely to *be* abused by their family, are more likely to have friends who they prefer to hang out with who do drugs, are more likely to have run away from home, are more likely to belong to a single parent/grandparent/guardian household, are more likely to have parents who abuse drugs themselves!, etc. Perhaps there is a bigger factor that can account for both the observation of less frequent eating-with-the-family behavior and drug abuse. Maybe "bad" kids, as measured by a factor that accounts for more of the variance can explain both infrequent family dinner as well as drug abuse. Silly me, I'm certain that the simple solution to preventing teens from doing drugs is the simple act of having a family dinner every night of the week. I suspect that maintaining positive communication, having conversation about a teen's attitude toward drugs, modeling good behavior, and abstaining from drugs, might also play some role in teens abusing or not abusing drugs. . .
When I read the last word of the document, I thought "surely this is only the propaganda that resulted in some legitimate scientific research article," but as of yet, I've no evidence that any original article is made as freely available, or exists at all.
It strikes me as being very sad that anyone should be impressed at such a haphazardly, post hoc, inappropriately implied, causal connection. It seems clearly to have an agenda, and I suspect that it is to rally support of those individuals who don't know any better scientifically, but who help approve the flow of grant monies.

2007-08-19T20:45:00.000-07:00

Wild.

2007-01-06T00:29:00.000-08:00

The holiday was great. A week away from it all, just chillin' with family and relaxing. It had been quite a while since I felt like I was able to really relax without the monkey of my schoolwork jumping on my back. I still have things that I ought to be doing, but the really pressing things have subsided.
The Linux thing is going very well so far. I'm running Ubuntu, which is an extremely good beginner's distribution. In fact, I'm very seriously considering putting it on my main machine as a dual boot system. Screen resolution worked straight off - even my wireless card "worked" without hassle. Unfortunately though, my wireless card seems to peg out at about 35Kb/sec, which is unacceptably slow compared to what I know it's capable of. So for now I'm trying to work out that kink while I use a wired PCMCIA network card in the other of the two slots that I have.
I was at a friend's house the other day and the show "King of Queens" was on (I wasn't watching, but was within earshot). All of a sudden I hear the Mr. Belvedere theme song and it's been stuck in my head ever since. I don't know why, but of all the shows that I used to watch as a kid, Mr. Belvedere was one that stood out for me. Perhaps it was even THE show that stands out - well, at least the theme song. So I watched it on Youtube (the intro) a few times.

2006-12-19T15:17:00.000-08:00

Well well well, I'm here in OpenSuse 10.2 AND the internet works, AND I'm running at 1024X768. It's finally mostly working. Good stuff.

2006-12-17T16:35:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am, in OpenSuse linux. I just now got the internet up, but the screen size is still stuck at 800X600 which is lame. I'm not sure how to fix it yet, but I'll just keep reading.
I'll post again if I can get this rascal boat to give me all my 1024X768 and if I can get it to run faster. It seems awfully slow, but I'm sure I can figure something out.

2006-12-15T21:57:00.000-08:00

Well, it's all done - the entire semester. I finished the epic battle of the 7 "mini" responses that together formed my culminating project for one of my classes.
What's neat is that I didn't use Microsoft Office at all while I wrote. I worked exclusively in OpenOffice for the first time. All 181 pages of that project were typed out in OpenOffice. I only used Microsoft on campus as a necessity to print out the items.
I'm starting to itch for Linux again, so I'm thinking of Suse Linux this time. I'm downloading the install discs and I think I'll give it another go on my other laptop.

2006-12-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

"In this subtest, the examiner presents the child with a series of Jeopardy!-styled (Merv Griffin Productions, 1964-Present) “questions” for which the child is to produce the corresponding “answer.” In the case of this Wechsler subtest, of course, children need not phrase their response in the form of a question, though the scoring manual does not address scoring considerations for children who might choose to do so."

"Stereotyping error is, simply put, rater bias that is based on stereotyped beliefs about some identifiable trait of the individual being rated. This can be observed in myriad forms, from stereotypes based on age, sex, race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, hobbies, clique identity, etc. An example (dare to avoid the potentially offensive) might be the unsupported attribution of intelligence to an individual wearing thick glasses who identifies himself as being obsessed with the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (Cook, Tweet, & Williams, 2003). Identified as conforming to the stereotype that the rater has of a “nerd,” this individual has also acquired other qualities associated with the “nerd” stereotype in the rater's mind. Some element of subjective evaluation will have overtaken objectivity through this association."

Still working on "truthiness" though. . .

2006-12-10T13:13:00.000-08:00

My culimating project for the class that I'm currently in consists of seven component pieces - four of which I'm done with. Each of the four already completed portions consist of between 21 to 28 double-spaced pages; the two items that I am partially finished with are 16 and 32 pages long. I haven't even started the 7th item. Blah. My record, and I think it's a personal best, is 28 pages of writing in a single day. It makes me think about the times that I rolled my eyes in disgust when assigned three to five page papers in high school. Or better, when I had to write short responses to readings in english while at community college. Speaking of which, my memories of community college were bittersweet. Anyway, that's the topic of a totally separate blog.

Interesting due date situation though - this project is officially due Tuesday, December 12th. My professor mentioned that since class doesn't meet that night, that he won't be around to accept them during the actual class time. To make it fair, he said that we could turn it in the next day. He added that he won't actually be on campus on that day either, so as long as he was guaranteed to have our project in hand by about 7:00AM Thursday, we would be fine.
Part of me carries that "open source" spirit saying that I should post my entire project in .pdf format somewhere on the internet in case generations beyond would appreciate a nice reference. Part of me says that that I don't want anyone to have any easier of a time than I've had. It makes me turn inward and reflect on myself a little.
Regardless of the outcome, or whether I put all the goodies up on the internet for all to reference at a future date (not like I guarantee that it's high-quality work), I'll be very happy to be done with it all. Whether that turns out to be Tuesday or Wednesday, once I turn it all in (in a three-ring binder, of course - couldn't even spiral bind it if I wanted to, I don't think) I'll be a happy kid again. I won't feel guilty for going to Barnes and Noble to read (which I haven't done in a long time), or just go out to lunch with friends, or enjoy watching a movie or reading a book, or even working again (I've taken the last two entire weeks off from work).
Without exaggeration, I think that the work required for this one single class exceeds all of the time that I spent working on similar projects and papers throughout my entire first three years of undergrad work. Seriously. And it probably exceeds the number of pages of work that I produced for the same duration. And it probably exceeds all of the pages that I've ever blogged in all of my blog's history.
Song of the day today should be something from Handel's Messiah, since I've been listening to a .flac of the entire thing over and over to inspire me to produce, but it's not. I think song of the day would be My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade. Overall it's a pretty good song, but the second part of the song just sorta pulls the beginning down I think. I uberenjoy the beginning of the song. Anyway, maybe I'll put Handel back on. I *do* have a lot of writing left to go.

2006-12-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

I had to squeeze this in somewhere.

"When a first impression sets the tone by which judges rate later observations, they are described as having committed the appropriately named “first-impression error” (Meyers, 2006). Imagine an evening trip through a local fast food drive through. You and a friend (Mike) are out to pick up “the usual,” and knowing that you do not need his input for the order, Mike shows his respect for your musical taste by listening to his death metal through earphones. As you arrive at the intercom system used to place your order, you are greeted with the familiar phrase, but in an unfamiliar voice, “Welcome to Jill-in-the-Box, how may I help you this evening?” You take a moment to recompose your thoughts and your order as the angelic beauty of the drive-through attendant's voice rings in your head. Mike, your head-banging friend, is completely oblivious to the entire ordering process; in fact, you wonder how it is that he has managed to avoid head injury all of these years. As you pull up to the pickup window, you are a bit surprised to see a fairly unattractive individual on the other side. “She, err, he? Is not terribly ugly” you think to yourself, “I'll bet she's a really nice person though.” Mike on the other hand, has abruptly discontinued his head-banging as he disrespectfully stares in awe at what he will later describe to you as an individual of indeterminable gender. What you have committed in this perhaps marginally-appropriate, but very illustrative example is the first-impression error. "

Next up, trying to fit the (non)word "truthiness" somewhere in the writings to come. . .

2006-12-06T22:18:00.000-08:00

Copyright MasteroftheUniverse, 2006.

"Rensis Likert, the man whose names, both first and last, trigger the spell check of OpenOffice.org's (Sun Microsystems, 2006) dictionary was born in 1903 and is famous for both the controversy over the (mis)pronunciation of his last name, as well the creation of the most widely used psychometric response scale used in survey research."

Lick-ert, I thought I told you. Lick-ert.

2006-12-04T11:05:00.000-08:00

One week from tomorrow it's all going down. My culminating project, worth 75% of my grade in this class is due. It's a ginormous collection of seven "smaller" papers responding to test and measurement-related prompt questions. So far I have 2 items completely done, one very nearly done, one halfway done and three just started. The shortest item that I have either done or in the works is 22 pages long. As I think of the road to come in the next week, I can't help but think of Handel's Messiah - the oratorio that allegedly required only 24 days to compose. I always think of how amazing a feat that must have been. I also think of the rumors that Handel might have had bipolar disorder and composed this work in a manic episode.
I think I just need to listen repeatedly to Handel's Messiah while I write, and inspire myself to mania.

2006-11-20T14:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I like it at least.

2006-11-15T21:07:00.000-08:00

Barry Manilow was recently on the Colbert Report, and it was quite nice. The name Barry Manilow brings back a lot of memories of high school - specifically biology, and they are mostly fond memories.
Here's just a piece:

2006-11-12T22:23:00.000-08:00

I totally wish that I had 1.1 million dollars of disposable income. I'd buy the first listing here:

http://www.papeete.com/business/realestate/islands.html

I'd build my castle there too.

2006-11-09T23:18:00.000-08:00

As I was procrastinating doing stuff for school, I was looking up random stuff on Wikipedia and I found this, about Meatloaf's second album, "Bat Out of Hell":

"The album was not an immediate hit; it was more of a growing one. Bat Out of Hell still sells about 200,000 copies per year and has sold an estimated 34 million copies worldwide, 16 million in the US alone, over 1.5 million albums in Australia (even re-entered charts on November 2006, at number 41 on the ARIAs) becoming one of the biggest selling albums of all time. It remained 474 weeks on the UK charts, a feat only surpassed by the 478 weeks of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. In 2003, the album was ranked number 343 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It is also one of only two albums that have never exited the top 200 in the UK charts. This makes it the longest stay in any chart in the world."

It was released in 1977! 4 years before I was born and has never left the UK charts. That is just wild stuff.

2006-11-06T20:10:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am again. Procrastinating on this project. Again. Downloading episodes of the Colbert Report and laughing out loud in my room - all by myself.
/sigh.

2006-10-23T23:18:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile. I almost laugh as I note the time, and register my last few hours against what I was "supposed" to be doing. I have, in the background, the Uniform Guidelines, which, I have read a little over halfway through in varying intervals since yesterday. What have I been doing though, the last 3 hours? Well, I was reading those rapscallion guidelines, when I was distracted, and mixed up a batch of epoxy with aqua-colored glow-in-the-dark powder and coated a 16 meg compact flash card (metal covers removed, so that the displaced space would keep it operable) with it. Why? For fun. And it contrasts with the other side of the card which is covered in *white* glow-in-the-dark powder from when I was bored a couple of days ago. Then I went on e-bay and looked up tons and tons of stuff that I have no intention of buying, but I just wanted to read about. Mp4 video players, stainless steel tension rings, tempered glass, various manufactures of watches, some audio stuff, blah blah blah. Then I pulled out a favorite book from my bookshelf - "Practical Watch Repairing" by Donald de Carle and read about mainspring repair, which is the repair needed for a vintage Bulova that I own. I browsed a few blogs, and stumbled across one that I've checked nearly everyday for 6 weeks with the same entry. Fin. I guess like spanish for "done", "complete". Not sure. But when I loaded it up this time, it was full of crap. Like, stuff that was published seemingly continuously the entire time that I thought I was checking the same "fin." post. Weird.
What else was weird. Well, dooder blogged about things like carefree lifestyle and things that clashed with recent life decisions that were made/executed. I felt like I was looking at my supervisor when he holds up both hands and says "mirror" to describe a therapeutic technique. I felt like writing to console him for time spent with a clashing personality/stance on life. I felt like an opportunity for his success might have been squandered by my not mentioning that I'm living in a house with a room completely vacant since a roommate left. And that we're still [half-heartedly] looking for a "replacement." What can I say, many will play - few will win. Keep playing. I hope Tommy never stops.

2006-08-26T15:05:00.000-07:00

I just reloaded Windows and all that stuff on my laptop. I'm still getting stuff and filling in where everything used to be.
School starts Monday, though I don't have any classes until Tuesday - assuming I can add a class that I sorta want/need for financial aid purposes. Aside from that, it's just school and more school. Between substituting and going to my own classes, it sure is a lot of being in the classroom. I also need to start pwning my thesis - like, hardcore. Just thinking about it is so exciting. . . blah.
I got to talk to Sparklin' Heiny the other night - a pleasure as usual. I'm always happy to hear when things are going good on the other end, but as life goes, things aren't always peachy-keen. I hope S. Heiny doesn't spend too mucy time stressin' this week!
I think once I get back into some habits of school, like, being at my computer and doing actual typing and stuff, that I'll probably blog more often, as instructed by S. Heiny and Mr. Fantastic. Good advice all around. For now though, I'm going to go hunting around the internet for stuff that I still need to put on my laptop to make it a school-worthy productivity-enhanced, epic.

2006-06-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

This is supposed to be the real Bill Haley and his Comets (minus Bill Haley who has passed away). Their song, "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" was a hit before my dad was born, and this is a video of (what's left of) them performing it in 2005. Crazy stuff!

2006-06-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

Well, my school's out - and there's like a week left of substitute teaching school left before summer school. Today was one of the easiest days ever - substituting PE really isn't that bad at all. Especially on a short day - when prep period comes right after lunch, and when the regular teacher is there most of the day. Oh yeah, and when all the kids are running. Tomorrow's 5th grade. . . let's hope for the best.

Well, good news is that I got a job for this summer. I'll be all up in 8th grade remedial math this summer; 5 weeks of it. 5 weeks of learning children to do them math problemsnstuff.

2006-05-08T21:14:00.000-07:00

School's winding down a little - one class is down, two more to blast through. I've got two more tests and a homework assignment for one, and just some administrative paperwork-ish stuff for the other.
I've been playing around with encryption, and it seems like a pretty neat idea. I think everyone should go get some edition of PGP-level encryption software (A nice free version of it is available here) and start makin' some encrypted messages and stuff! I've encrypted one of my compact flash cards, a bunch of e-mail, some archives and stuff. It's pretty versatile stuff.

Kevin

2006-05-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

2006-05-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

While doing research for a paper that I'm (half-heartedly) working on, I came across a description of a familiar program from the past, PGP. I remember, I think, being in junior high school when I heard about it. It was some controversial thing in the news, something about encryption that was so strong that it was very difficult for anyone to "crack" it. And by anyone, the media was sure to include the government. There was a big stink about not allowing the export of PGP out of the country.
Funny story on how PGP was legally exported from the US.

"PGP was originally created inside the USA, but eventually spread to the rest of the world despite the US Export Regulations which controlled export of strong cryptography. PGP 5.0i (released in 1997) was the first PGP version that was legally available outside USA/Canada, because the program was exported as printed books and then scanned and OCRed to make the code available in electronic form."

Anyway, I thought it was neat, and was wondering if anyone out there has used it/uses it. By "anyone" mostly I'm thinking of all three people who read my blog - like Mr. Fantastic, LFA, I can't think of anyone else, but I optimistically reserve a third spot for anyone who wants to comment.
So, I was thinking of downloading it and playin' around with it. Someone else get it so that I can send encrypted stuff!

2006-04-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

Good link on info about batteries.

2006-04-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

2006-04-28T17:58:00.000-07:00

I think Google read my last blog post - now I have to go back and change some calendar entries to NOT notify me via SMS - it works now, and quite well. I get the text message like right on the minute of when I should.
Today I was a guest teacher at my favorite school of all time to sub at. My favorite grade (7th), and some of my favorite kids. Great day overall; one of my best substitute teaching experiences so far. That is, 2nd - 5th period. 6th period today was a handful. There were three "children" in the small class of 15 or so who were immensely disruptive. Two of them I am certain need to be examined for ADHD. I checked through my folder of goodies afterwards and no notes on any formal ADHD diagnoses for the class. I am truly sympathetic; my poor classroom experience was only one hour of one day of my life. Captain Davy gots to run through it one hour of his day 5 days a week. Worse still, those two kids live with it everyday. I truly felt discouraged on behalf of the other 12 or 13 students that are now having their education significantly degraded in what I believe to be a fairly important time; junior high sets the stage for where you'll end up in high school. . .
Anyway. Google Calendar SMS notifications work fine, and school was good today.

2006-04-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I figured it out - I think. To get SMS notification for events on your Google Calendar, you need to be logged in somewhere into your account. SMS notification is pretty sweet, as ResJudicata notes on their latest podcast, but it kinda suxxorz that it doesn't get sent out unless your machine is on, and logged in.

2006-04-22T21:25:00.000-07:00

I was on an interesting train of google (like a train of thought, but on the internet). I was looking at Fluid Dynamic Bearings.
Found this sweet tidbit of information:

"According to the ASME (see reference link), the first Kingsbury/Michell fluid bearing in the USA was installed in the Holtwood Hydroelectric Power Plant (on the Susquehanna River, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA) in 1912. The 2.25-tonne bearing supports a water turbine and electric generator with a rotating mass of about 165 tonnes and water turbine pressure adding another 40 tonnes. The bearing has been in nearly continuous service since 1912, with no parts replaced. The ASME reported it was still in service as of 2000. As of 2002, the manufacturer estimated the bearings at Holtwood should have a maintenance-free life of about 1,300 years."

2006-04-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to save the link - kinda funny.

2006-04-16T15:52:00.000-07:00

I went to San Francisco on Friday - it was great to get out of the area for a while. Plus we took a bunch of random pictures while we were there, and ate in Chinatown, and I found a souvenir!

Normally I don't pick things up off of the ground, but I figured that I'd make an exception for something as shiny as this was, and also that I had already bothered to take a picture of it while it was on the ground. That, and I went indoors shortly afterwards and washed my hands.

While driving around, sort of lost, I took some random pictures.

And then we came home.

2006-04-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

Dude. I did an experiment tonight that I should have done a long time ago. I rejected the null hypothesis and got some phatty significant results. This should fare very will for people like. . . like my room mate. Well, and for me too.

The first part, I've known for a while:
1. Write a text message on your cell phone with the name of a business and a zip code.
Example - "Lollicup 95825"
2. Send the text message to googl - "46645"
3. Wait and you will recieve a list of all of the businesses that you inquired about near the area code that you input.

What I didn't know/wasn't sure about, was if you could get directions like this. You can.
1. Write a text message on your cell phone with just the starting address, the word "to" and the destination address.
Example - "1234 My Street Pleasantville CA 95825 to 4321 Your Street Pleasantville CA 95825"
2. Send it to googl again, "46645"
3. Wait a sec and you'll get a message back that gives you directions!

Wait, but you can do more! Check it!
Google SMS
It doesn't cost anything (except for the text messages) and it's awesome.

2006-04-03T18:42:00.000-07:00

Saw a sweet VW commercial on a friend's myspace and I searched youtube. . .

2006-03-28T22:57:00.000-08:00

I don't do this often enough, but tonight I was driving home from school, listening to music on my iPod and I had all the songs on random. Not just a playlist of a portion of all the songs, but the whole motherload. I say that I don't do it often enough because I feel like I end up getting stuck listening to about 15% of all the music on there like 80% of the time.
So anyway, tonight a song came on that I hadn't heard in a while. It was Pink - Like a Pill. There's nothing immediately significant about that song to me really, it reminds me of an era of my life; a time when I worked at my other job and I borrowed the CD from a co-worker to copy.
It was sort of epiphanastic.

2006-03-21T21:32:00.000-08:00

You know what's a good movie? A Goofy Movie, 1995. There aren't a whole lot of movies that I could watch more than a couple of times a year. I could probably watch Disney's Beauty and the Beast, A Goofy Movie, and Office Space enough times to warrant owning them - the rest of the movies that I own, I've probably never seen more than twice a piece. Well, except the first Lord of the Rings movie, and The Sound of Music. Well, and Fiddler on the Roof. Alright, Fantasia 2000 I've seen quite a few times also. But all the rest. . .
I'm excited for tomorrow - I'm subbing at my favorite school so far (same place I went for my own 7th and 8th grade experience - with MrFantastic and Stoooobie!) Brings back so many memories just to be on campus there again. Last time I was there the students were awesome, and so was the office staff. I talked to one of the teachers that was there while I was a student, which was neat.
Substitute teaching really sets my career logic on end. I've always sort of poo-poo-ed being a teacher. It has the notorious reputation of paying poorly, school-aged children have the rep of being hell on wheels (Heelys?), and the rate at which teachers leave their profession is pretty high. I'm not thinking of swapping my career goals, but I definitely have a lot more respect for teachers, and especially substitute teachers now. I also enjoy working with the students quite a bit also. 7th grade is still my favorite - tomorrow looks like 8th grade from what I can tell. . . we'll see how it goes.

2006-03-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

Linux has evaded me so far - I think though, that I'm gonna give it another (serious) go this weekend; probably Sunday. Lazy Sunday, wake up in the late afternoon, call Parnell just to see how he's doin'. . . Well, I don't plan on waking up late, but I'm definitely gonna give it another go. It's just the friggin' PCMCIA slot that teases me. I'll bust down that door - I hope.
So me, not a lot - I've been substitute teaching quite a bit lately. Pretty much every single day that I haven't spent all day at school, I spent at another school. Subbing. Preschool, kindergarten, 1st, 4th, 7th, 9th, 10th, and 11th grade so far. A pretty good variety to get me acquainted with some different developmental stages and levels of classroom management. Every single class thusfar has been pretty good. In fact, I'd say all but one were excellent. First grade was difficult for me - it was my first day and they pwned me. I felt like a lvl 60 shaman casting frostshock and still gettin' my face melted by a raid of lvl 5 n00bs. It was alright though. So far 7th grade has been my favorite - followed by the high school stuff. 4th grade wasn't bad at all, but 7th grade is a nice balance of kids that are socialized for school, but not yet rebelling against "the man", which I evidently become once I put on a dress shirt. The money's not bad, and the schedule is about as flexible as I want. Don't wanna work Friday? Don't accept any jobs. Need Wed. afternoon open? Hold out for a morning half-day. No complaints yet. . .

2006-02-25T13:49:00.000-08:00

I finally did it. I was always too lazy to figure it out before, but I finally got the recycle bin off the desktop. Well, it's still there, but it's 100% transparent, and it's been renamed from "Recycle Bin" to " " so that unless I click on it, it is completely invisible. When I do click on it, I see the small blue highlight of the name " " and that's it. And I opted to leave the full representation the same, so that I know when there's stuff in it.
I'm in the middle of installing the Slackware distribution of Linux on a different machine. I tried Gentoo, but it was just too difficult for me. I got it up to the point where I wanted to have internet available, but couldn't figure out how to get the PCMCIA card slot to work out, so that I could try to set up the wireless card. If anyone has any insight on that, please drop me a line. If I'm successful with Slackware, I'll try and post on it from the new Linux machine. It's a pretty sweet setup, because I have 3 hard drive caddies for that machine, one has WinXP SP2, the other WinXP SP1, and this third one will hopefully have some working version of Linux. Switching them out is only a matter of shutting down the laptop and swapping out the drive.

2006-02-18T21:14:00.000-08:00

Today was laid back - you know, sleep in, lazy reading, s'posed to work on projects/errands but you don't. That sort of thing. I did retrieve a bunch of my old records and a player and set it up for fun. It sounds great, except for a strange warbling that I can't explain. It's not from warped vinyl, it's higher in frequency than that. Actually, it sounds kinda neat. I'm listening to Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Everytime I bust out the vinyl I feel as though I've sinned, having not listened to it in such a span of time.
Oh, and guess what else? Little jobless old me went and got an ID badge for SJUSD and all of the accompanying paperwork/interviews/background checks/fingerprinting/etc. to become credentialed as a substitute teacher. Starting the week after this one (San Juan has the week off) I'll be checkin' the system for available sub positions. Finally! Maybe a little bit of the old green.
Life's been pushing me around a bit lately - statistics class at school mostly, but just any old obligations that I gotta tend to. I think it's about time to start firing up some stuff to do - IRL style. You know what I'm talkin' about. In Real Life. Yeah, I think that means potluck. I think that means picnic in the park. I think that means driving out to Wallerga, or whatever that street name is, and cruising around in the middle of the night with the windows down - cold and dark.
Anyhow - 9:21PM on a Saturday night. Man.

2006-02-17T13:07:00.000-08:00

It looks very similar, but here we got stacks of 5 goin' on.

2006-02-13T23:32:00.000-08:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. The lyrics to a lot of songs come to mind. Like "Liberate" by Disturbed. Normally I'm not all that into what profundities the F-bomb brings to a song, but in this case the song is just spot on. Spot on, profanity and all.
John Stuart Mill says it pretty good too. Long quote, but a good one:

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for the promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. … It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

It's just a terrible shame - I feel I know the exception.

2006-02-12T14:40:00.000-08:00

Here's my first attempt at putting video directly onto a page - it should be perfect; I didn't write the html or look it up or anything. Just took it straight from the youtube confirmation page of my uploaded video. Enjoy (if it works). One of the finer activities in life that I've been practicing.

2006-02-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

The second ring that I made that had the hematite in it was cool and everything, but today I got my stones in the mail - some 4mm faceted aquamarine stones; round. I thought long and hard about some trillion cut ones, but decided round would be the easiest to work with at first. So, long story short, I removed the hematite bead that was in the one ring, and replaced it with one of the cool aquamarine stones that I got. Check it:

It looks pretty neat, except that the culet protrudes just the slightest amount too far - which is noticeable as a scratching when putting the ring on and taking it off.

And finally, two finger shots:

Next I'm going for a little more flattening of the band (workin' it a little more before the bend), and definitely more finishing. I'm also lookin' to try my hand at sand casting or casting in cuttlefish bone. I borrowed this book from the library and it shows a dude casting a ring in those little bones that you hang in bird cages for them to scratch their beaks on. Weird stuff. I sort of got the impression that anything that was heat-resistant enough to hold molten metal, while also sufficiently shapable was good enough to cast in. Some materials (like sand) seem less likely to impart bubbling and horrific surface imperfections, so I figure I'll try sand first with copper as the metal.

2006-01-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Mr. Fantastic's progress on his motor rebuild, and decided to post pics of my latest project(s). I recently purchased some piano wire from the local hobby shop; a piece about 1/8" diameter and another that's like 1/4" diameter. I haven't done anything (constructive) with the 1/4" stuff; it's really tough. What I have done was make two rings from the 1/8" stuff.
Piano wire is super duper hard to bend - even only 1/8" so for the first ring, I heated it to a dull red and air-cooled the end of the long wire. I should have thought to chronicle the process by taking pics along the way, but I've only got completed pics.
I bent the first ring around a socket extension, which worked - but barely. Once I had a ring-section (turned out to be quite small, but I had little control over the diameter) I began to use the dremel to cut it out of the approximately 3' length of wire. Now I had a really rough, not even round, warped ring. I pounded it with a hammer on a brass block to flatten out the warp (mostly) and began filing out the plier indentations. Then I decided that I would like to set a stone in it. The only setting that seemed suitable for the rudamentary tools that I had was a tension setting. It also seemed appropriate given the material, which is quite springy. So I cut out a randomly sized gap in the ring, filed two grooves in the ends facing each other, and then used a scotch-bright pad to get as much of the filing marks out as I could. I went through my pseudo-roommate's aquamarine polished chip beads to find a slightly oversized stone to set in the wire ring I had just made. Holding the ring between needle-nosed pliers, my roommate "un-squeezed" the ring; that is, he pulled the plier handles apart to spread open the ring a little bit - maybe .020" while I quickly slid the stone in along the two grooves that I had filed. It turned out pretty well - the stone is in there under what I estimate to be approximately 8-12lbs of pressure and didn't shatter like I had anticipated. Here's the pics I took this morning of it:

This pic gives a reasonable view of the setting, the next pic shows it a little better.

Here you can mostly make out the stone wedged between the two grooved faces of the wire. You can also see the hammer marks that I didn't have the stamina to file out - I think it gives the ring character. I should have put a quarter or a nickel in the picture to give a size comparison, but here's the ring on some poker chips at an angle that allows the size to be gauged better:

The ring just fits on my pinky finger, and the stone shows no indication of coming loose. In fact, you can even grip the two sides of the ring and pull on them; I don't think reasonable human force (without the aid of a lever or pliers) could free the stone.
The next ring I made, I did similarly, except rather than bend the wire around the small socket extension, I used the heat of a torch to soften the metal at an orange color and just free-bent it in air without a mandrel of any kind. It took a little practice, but the trick is to move the heat to the larger radiused sections of the ring so that they bend more to match the smaller radiused sections. In the end, I got it pretty round - no hammer pounding necessary.

This pic kinda shows the mounting of the hemitite bead that I lodged diagonally in there.
Next is the ring shown from above, with a couple of flats that I filed in it just for a change from the plain old round-wire that I used:

This ring is large enough to fit comfortably on either of my ring fingers, and barely on my index fingers.

There's the last pic - showing pretty clearing the size of the ring against the chips, and the setting of the "stone". I like it so far, and hope to do some more elaborate things with the 1/4" stuff - stay tuned.

2006-01-25T11:26:00.000-08:00

I was reading some old blog entries - mostly from people that I know in real life. It's interesting how the frequency of entries for most of them tapered off pretty quickly (myself included) after maybe a year or so of writing. What else is interesting is living life in real-time, and reading through someone's writings that make their life appear to move incredibly fast.
One blog in particular has 7 entries on the initial page. If you read through them in chronological order, it goes from intense love and devotion to one romantic interest, heartache and breakup of that relationship, finding someone new, and falling in love [again]. And then, as I compare notes between the blog entries, andhowIseethisinteractioninreallife,I-whoawhoakittykittyya'lldon'tevenknowsomethings
arebetterleftunsaiduntilthedirthassettleddon'tmesswithcheesemayonaissehotgarbagefanta
sticslapattack.
Yeah, so that's pretty much all I got to say about that.
I've started the new semester this week, and had the opportunity to retrieve two test scores and two big ol' papers that I wrote last semester. The grades were just as I had expected, and even better. I was happy for that. Now, if I can keep truckin' through this and next semester, I ought to get myself dangerously close to finishing school - perhaps forever. . .
And here it is, my last huzzah. Respect for those gone past -

And who could forget -

2006-01-16T19:40:00.000-08:00

THIS is a real life soulshard. Weird.

2006-01-12T20:49:00.000-08:00

Wedding day after tomorrow (not mine).

2005-12-23T17:58:00.000-08:00

Probably the sweetest skit I've seen in a long time. I wasn't there to see it live, but I was tipped off by a classmate - I'm fortunate to have people that care about me enough to not let this stuff slip away. Check it.

2005-12-13T21:57:00.000-08:00

I did something tonight that I haven't done in a long time. I switched the input of my stereo to the CD player (from where it's been for months, on the external input that goes to my iPod), and fired it up for some listening in the dark. It was long overdue. I was contemplating going for a walk tonight - which I still may do - because I've been feeling sort of, well, I dunno. I was feeling just that feeling of being small in the world; sort of the feeling you get when you go out on a clear night and actually look at the stars. No, when you actually sit and stare at the stars. And think.
Music is great - you can listen to it however you like, and get what you need out of it. Listening to music from an iPod is like Carl Roger's notion that successful therapy requires only empathy, genuineness, and respect. He said that having those things were "necessary and sufficient." Thing is, just like my iPod, it might be necessary, but it isn't sufficient - and you don't know that until you've tasted more.

Classes are different from semester to semester, but the sort of gist of the whole thing is pretty much the same: go to class to get that much closer to whatever the goal is. Well, sometimes I don't exactly know what the goal is. Superficially the goal is to get the degree that I'm pursuing, maybe help people - make money, build a future, have a satisfying career, etc.
As I tackle the semesters, I realize that I'm pretty much re-enacting my undergraduate years; even my high school years in that I build these significant relationships to people that I have in my classes - but I do it really late in the game. I think my first semester in the program I must have talked to some people in class before it started to kill the time - just that sort of chit-chat that you're almost obligated to have when you share a small class with other people. The chat that proves that you're not socially retarded. Second semester you see the same people, talk to them more - maybe even after class. I think my third semester in I actually made my first contact with these people outside of the context of school. Fourth semester I've been over to study at a classmates house so often that I get the police called on me :-P
Seriously though, I wonder if I'm a mystery. Well, I think I am at least.

2005-12-13T18:04:00.000-08:00

One down, two more to go - then my finals will be over at last! Today's final was psychopharm - I pwned it outright. No mercy. The goods were delivered. Tomorrow I hope to be more of the same. Thursday's what's stressin' me. Dirty dirty Thursday. . .

2005-12-08T01:14:00.000-08:00

I melted today.

2005-12-05T10:22:00.000-08:00

Jorge wins! Here she is in a more familiar, little-girl-style picture.

2005-11-27T18:23:00.000-08:00

Ok, ok, you'll never guess. Here's a hint:

2005-11-26T19:10:00.000-08:00

First correct guess as to who this is, wins.

2005-11-16T17:37:00.000-08:00

I'm doing research on this paper for one of my classes - something about Ainsworth/Bowlby stuff and what it means for adult romantic attachment. I'll prolly post the paper when I'm done with it. While I was researching for it, I was looking up stuff on Phil Shaver, who's like an authority on the topic. He's a professor at UC Davis, married to a professor there that I took a class from as an undergrad, Gail Goodman. I was looking through each of their Curriculum Vitae and holy sweet lovin'. Each is 45 pages long. Gail Goodman, I don't think I ever fully appreciated at the time, is brilliantly prolific; principal investigator for a number of multi-hundred thousand dollar research projects, and even a couple of multi-MILLION dollar projects. Oh, and she's a cute little woman too :-P
Just look at it real quick at least!
Phil Shaver
Gail Goodman

2005-11-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

My teacher quoted most of the lyrics to this song a couple of months ago, and I just found the song on an archival MP3 disc - interesting song.

Ugly Kid Joe - Cats in the Cradle

A child arrived just the other day
Came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
He was talkin' 'fore I knew it
And as he grew he said,
'I'm gonna be like you, dad,
You know I'm gonna be like you.

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man on the moon.
'when you comin' home? '
'dad, I don't know when. we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time then.

Well, my son turned ten just the other day.
He said, 'thanks for the ball, dad. come on, let's play.
Could you teach me to throw?
I said, 'not today. I got a lot to do.
He said, 'that's okay.' and he walked away but his smile never dimmed,
said' I'm gonna be like him, yeah.
You know I'm gonna be like him.

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man on the moon.
'when you comin' home? '
'son, I don't know when. we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time then.

Well, he came from college just the other day,
So much like a man I just had to say,
'son I'm proud of you. could you sit for a while?
He shook his head and he said with a smile,
'what I'd really like, dad, is to borrow the car keys.
See you later. can I have them please ?

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man on the moon.
'when you comin' home? '
'son, I don't know when. we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time then.

I've long since retired, my son's moved away.
I called him up just the other day.
'I'd like to see you, if you don't mind.
He said, 'I'd love to, dad, if I could find the time.
You see my new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu,
But it's sure nice talkin' to you, dad.
It's been sure nice talkin' to you.
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me,
He'd grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man on the moon.
'when you comin' home? '
'son, I don't know when. we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time then.

2005-11-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

I've taken up beef with a couple of things lately, and they weigh on my mind. Blah.

2005-10-20T02:27:00.000-07:00

Song of the Day - Muse: Unintended

That's been like, the song of the week. For some reason it's been stuck in my head all week long. Just like how I sometimes get Dru Hill's "How Deep is Your Love" stuck in my head for extended periods of time. Well, the bassline of that song anyway. That and Aladdin's "Prince Ali" song.
I have a test tomorrow - an essay test, that will probably be the longest in class test in all of history for me. If not time-wise, then writing-wise. I'm generally a good test-taker, and especially good at synthesizing information on an impromptu basis (as I often write my papers), but this test is just silly.

2005-10-12T17:28:00.000-07:00

This guy has wayyy too much bagspace!

2005-09-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

Well, there's been an interesting sequence of events that has occured at work recently. A couple months back, one of my co-workers had approached me and mentioned that he had noticed a discrepancy between the number of hours he had worked, and the number of hours reported on his time card. I didn't think a whole lot of it then, because he had simply mentioned it in passing - I assured him that it was unlikely that he was being denied some of his workhours, suggesting an arithmetic mistake instead. A couple weeks later, he approached me again, this time with one of his time cards and he asked me to do a rough estimate of his hours worked from that time card. I made a rough tabulation and arrived at a number approximating the hours he had worked that week. Sure enough, there was over an hours difference between time card and pay stub. I said that he probably had a time card that was represented by a different pay period's paycheck, and that he probably worked a couple less hours the week earlier or some such. Finally, about 2 weeks ago, he showed me an actual time card - after it had been entered into the computer, and it not only had time deducted directly from it (in writing, NOT by punch machine), but it also had my managers initials next to each modification. It amounted to approximately 1.5 hours worth of labor. Interesting, I thought. I took the opportunity to check my own time card for the same period. I too, had been docked time from my card.
My co-worker proceeded to call the main store to speak to the man in charge of time cards/paychecks/etc. Coincidentally, the very next day, all the locks in the building had been changed, this gentleman's (my co-worker) keys were taken away, and he was formally written up in a disciplinary way and demoted. Eventually, per his request, a number of his time cards were sent back to him via Fed-Ex, of which the vast majority had been "skimmed" - meaning, that between an hour to 2 hours worth of labor had been docked from each weekly pay period. I approached my manager on September 10th (a Saturday) and asked her if she had ever deducted time from my time card. She assured me that "I would never take time from your time card. . ." and proceeded to explain that she only deducts time from my co-worker's time card when she feels that he hasn't put in that honest day's work. Interestingly however, I had tabulated my hours for the previous week's pay and noticed exactly a half hour's increment of time that was unaccounted for on my paycheck, which corresponded exactly with the time that was subtracted from my own time card. Wednesday, the 21st of September, I went into my manager's office and politely acknowledged that she had assured me less than two weeks earlier that she would "never take time from [my] time card", but that I would rest assured if I could contact the person in charge of recordkeeping to just check my cards for me and let me know if he noticed anything out of the ordinary. I proceeded to call this man on my break, and he informed me that he would check the cards and call me back to let me know if he saw anything. About an hour later, he called me back and said that it looked as though my cards had been docked time. He was quick to exit the phone conversation, saying that he would see to it that the issue was addressed, after which he hung up the phone.
Thursday, Sept. 22, I had the day off from work, and so, didn't come in that day. Friday, Sept. 23, I came in and worked a "regular" day of work. At the end of the day, my manager called me into her office where there was a folder on her desk with my name on it. In trembling speech and incomplete sentences, she indicated that I ought to read the contents of the folder. A memo in the folder briefly stated that my hours at this place of employment had been cut to zero until further notice, and that my services did not require my future scheduling at this time. So, as of yesterday, I am an employee with zero hours scheduled to work. Obviously I'm seeking out new employment, as I am not independently wealthy. I just feel that the close proximity of time between addressing the "skimming" of my time cards, and my being dropped to zero hours reflects an almost retaliatory reaction by my workplace. I'm at a loss as to what my options are, other than filing a formal wage claim with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.
So anyway, that's what's going on with me.
In other news, I've started seeing clients in the clinic at school, and everything in that arena is going very well.

2005-09-20T21:54:00.000-07:00

Curse you blogger, for loosing my whole last post. Curse me, for not doing my routine selectall-copy-to-prepare-for-a-failed-publishing-event!

2005-09-20T21:27:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile - I know. I'd be lying if I said I was too busy with school and work to blog. I just been doin', like, stuff. Class tonight was pretty awesome. *sidetrack* I noticed as I did my underUNDERgrad stuff, like the general ed, that I pretty much hated it. It was stupid, and it was just like high school, except lamer because I had to pay for it. Then I transferred to a "real" school - I finished my undergrad stuff with a certain amount of pride, because it meant that I was getting a tangible item that represented me having accomplished something significant: my bachelor's degree. Anyhow - I don't really remember where I was going with that, except that it illustrates that the undergrad stuff got better the further I went through with it.
So far, grad school has been the same way. I was only really excited about starting grad school because it helped explain away my lack of "real" job, and made me feel like I was being productive with my life. Now I actually feel productive.
School's like, more than halfway over - I think. Anyway, the more I go to school now, the more I see the end in sight, and I'm happy for that. 'till next time. . .

2005-08-31T01:12:00.000-07:00

So far school's awesome - I'm happy now :)

2005-08-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes everyone just needs to chip in and do their part towards achieving a common goal. Who's with me?

2005-08-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

Sigh. Another summer spent. School starts a week from today, and though I'm excited to see all my colleagues/homies again, there's just something that drags along when school starts. It's not the classes or whatever - I think it's the whole meeting deadlines and stuff like that. And thesis stuff - cheebus, I wish that stuff would just do itself. And I still gotta buy all my books and stuff. Blah. It took me half the summer working full/over time to finally break even on my finances. I was finally out of the hole, in the clear, turning a "profit". Then tuition. Then books. Parking ticket for a one hour meeting at Sac State. Recreation :) According to how much I *think* I'll be able to work during the semester, I'll just barely have broken even again before the semester finishes.
I had some serious thoughts saved up and everything too. All lost. All except the wandering thought of wondering where JannaBanana goes to school. Granny. Franceabroadpoliticalscienceinternatlawofficeliberalgirlciviluniondiscussionorphaned
childawwsosadslashcryshoulderfootinthedoorftwnexttime! Not incessantcallingpre-emptiveromanticstrikedesparatesoundingfollowuptofirstlunchdateftl!

2005-08-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

Awesome.

2005-08-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

So we're drivin'. . . drivin' to San Francisco, Granny and I - and what do we see?

Kind of a neat-looking advertisement, though hard trying to get the whole thing to fit into a single shot. Then we got to the concert (eventually). Here's a shot of Dave, from very far away, and in a very low light situation - I was amazed at how well my little camera shot this pic:

Though it's still blurry, it was way past dark, and we were in the uppermost section of SBC Park.
An' another one:

The lighting for the show was awesomefantastico - wish I was close enough to shoot a short movie of it, but it would have all been in vain at the distance we were at. But still - good things.

2005-08-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

So. . . yeah, I don't post much anymore, I know. School's going to be starting up again, so I'll have all that killing-time time to post on my blog and stuff! This weekend was awesome - Dave Matthews Band concert on Saturday: Awesome. Got pics, will post them soon (soon like in real life meaning, not in posting-once-a-month soon) Wakeboarding Sunday: Awesome. Totally awesome. Prolly the most funnest day of the entire summer for me, with DMB in a very close second. The little wave-runner that we had out was pimp-statusly sweet as well. My first time, and it felt like it did about 0-50mph in about 4 seconds! Pics soon!

2005-07-26T02:16:00.000-07:00

Hmm, so someone was sayin' somethin' about cookies on my blog. Well, here's a pic of Goldenone to ease the pain.

He would be the one on the right, I believe.

That's a picture of me and a kitten. I'm the one holding the small black animal.

That's my big kitty. She's a little bit big. . . but she's not fat!

Here's me and me lady (she's the one on the left, I'm the one with the goofy smile on my face) It's my birthday!

That's a pic that I took while I was in Hong Kong last summer - it's a pretty phatty picture.
So there ye have it - some random pics. Maybe this will warrant the naming of a chocolate-chip pastry in vent. . .

2005-07-16T23:28:00.000-07:00

I don't think I'll be able to watch War of the Worlds. I sorta really want to, but there's just some moral issues that I can't get past. . .

Did I *REALLY* need another reason to not like this guy? Geez - some things are just so stupid they're funny. . .

2005-07-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

I keep having these lyrics stuck in my head. . . "Can I hit it in the morning without givin' you half of my dough and even worse if I was broke, would you want me? If I couldn't get you finer things. . . " etc. It's just a fun song I s'pose - I'm not deep in thought contemplating the lyrics or anything :)
I had an interesting conversation the other night about the Meagan's Law website and the whole registration of sex offenders and all that. Without having the stamina to go into all of the details (or even highlights) of the discussion, I'll say that it was a little interestingblah. I did, however, have a very interesting conversation concerning the theoretical lift on all restrictions on foreign substances for of-age adults. I just couldn't submit to imagining the United States as being in a better place (financially or otherwise) were we to lift all laws banning the use of currently illicit substances. I can easily see givin' it up for the sweet sticky green, but I have issue with what some might call "the good stuff"
Anyhow - I felt like I ought to visit this old dustbowl and breath her up some new life. Expect pictures on here soon - and I'm talkin' about cute kittens and real life people!

2005-06-02T01:39:00.000-07:00

I got angry today. It was weird, because I rarely get angry. I was at work, and for whatever reason, one thing led to another and I found myself feeling angry.

2005-05-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

Read this now.

2005-05-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

As I'm coming down a little bit from my hypomania, thoughts have slowed down enough to be evaluated a little bit. As I sit here blasting any and all music I feel is appropriate for my paperwriting (neither roommate is home right now) I am drawn to thoughts of an incident that occured in class last week.
I brought my iPod to school, as I usually do, and a couple of my classmates were going through it to see all of the music that I had put into it. I don't know how most feel about it, but I think that knowing what all music that someone chooses to put on their MP3 player is sort of like getting to know someone without having to talk to them. Think of it like the question "if you were on a deserted island, and could choose 2 people to bring with you. . ." - that sort of thing.
Anyway, I have some relatively obscure music on my iPod. Strong Bad was goin' through the list when she commented "You have Todd Proctor on your iPod!?!" I was like "Yeah, it's one of my favorite songs. . ." It was like instabond - in a totally platonic way, of course. I would place it in more obscure a category than finding out that one of my female classmates played WoW on the same server as I did - like the figurative "million to one" odds that just gets you thinking. Well, so anyway, that's like the procrastinator's thought of the day, as I continue to pound down on this paper.

2005-05-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you why I'm the best. 6-9 pages, due tomorrow by 4:00PM. I have 4 lines of this paper done, and ya'll don't even know how hard I'm gonna pound this paper into the ground with a combination of my exacting verbosity and uber chat skillz FTW! Roger Rubenstein Brown, my little adopted chick for a day (and a half) is at the Wildlife Care Association, but before I let the little guy go, I took some phatty sweet pics - check it.

Little Rubenstein looking at me - I think he's almost getting ready to start his incessant chirping for some grub.

Just waking up from a little nap!

Lil' Rubenstein!

It's cold outside - Rubenstein chirped to me to let me know that he loved the little pimp house that I made for him!

Too small to eat those breadcrumbs that I put out on his front step. Sigh, more merciless slaughter of innocent redworms to eye-dropper into his tiny little beak.
I was amazed at lil' Rubenstein while I had him. He fell from the rooftop at my work onto the asphalt (where every other chick I've ever seen would have died; at least 3 this season alone). We took him into the store and put him on top of the audio amp to keep warm. I fed him a mix of sugar water and some sliced up worms that a customer brought in from the pet store. That night I took him home and put him on top of my CD player with vaccuum tube output to keep warm. Fed him about once every 20-45 mins with an eyedropper 'till about midnight, then resumed at about 5:45AM - lil' rascal! Took him to work the next day, then took him to the WCA at around 3:00PM. The interesting thing was that his tailfeathers had grown about a quarter of an inch since I first saw him. I'm sure his other feathers did too, but I had less of an ability to guage them. I hope lil' Roger Rubenstein Brown is doin' ok out there. And now, back to beating down that paper. . .

2005-05-07T18:32:00.000-07:00

So, it's been awhile - I know. School's been unrelenting, and at work we've recently let go of a full time employee. I have started the formal data collection on the project that is to become my thesis, so time has not been a-wastin'. School's down to it's last couple of weeks, and I'm excited to see summer's smiling face greeting me to picnics in the park, lazy days, and maybe even the fair.
Werd, it's a Saturday night and time's a tickin' - time to pick up on the bomb shiz activity scheduling!

2005-04-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

S&P 500, I hate you.

2005-04-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

So the midterm turned out to be 22 pages long by the time I was done. This was really an opportunity for me to make a gamble on the relative values of either: well cited examples/thorough research and review of the text and supplimental reading, or creative examples that demonstrate mastery without all of the extensive review time. I gambled on the latter. Some of my examples are practically screenplay worthy.
The second risk I took on the midterm was assuming total artistic freedom to modify the case study question as I saw fit. We had a quesion that outlined a family, and required that we take a family systems approach to therapy and outline our treatment plan. Well, I worked backward. . . I picked the treatment plan that I felt most comfortable with, and I reverse engineered the family to fit it. We'll see how that worked out when I get the midterm back.

2005-04-05T22:26:00.000-07:00

So I'm working on this long midterm. It's supposed to be like 13-15 pages long or some such, which is cool. The suxxorzz part about it is that it's 11 "short" answer questions that feel like little mini essays, which would possibly be cool, except they're all unrelated to each other. So it feels like I have to get that huge ball rolling 11 separate times. That's the hard stuff. I can get it rolling for one, and then it goes by really fast, but I spend more time thinking about starting, than I actually spend writing. Multiply that by 11. Yeah, it's dopey.

2005-03-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple of pics from Disneyland - the first is my high score on the Buzz Lightyear shoot-em-up ride. Check it:

This score might mean nothing to everybody, but let me put it into perspective. When my sister and I were viewing the high scores for the day (at approximately 6:30PM), the highest three scores were in the low 600,000 range; the highest being something like 630,000 - so had I bothered to stop by and claim my score with my initials, I'd have easily been top three, maybe top 2 for the entire day on that ride!
Um, anyway, you try and beat that and snap me a pic.
Here's a pretty sweet pic that I took of my sister's head reflected from my watch crystal.

Bonus point to anyone that leaves a comment describing which watch it was that I wore to Disneyland. Double bonus if you can tell me the brand name of the watch!

2005-03-28T02:31:00.000-08:00

Well, Disneyland was sweet - not just because of the place, but because of the vacation from school and work. Yeah, school's gettin' pretty fiesty on me. Preparing to start my thesis, I'm realizing that there isn't going to be anymore completely separate, modular pieces of my program. It used to be that semesters were pretty open/shut. You start one, you finish it, you start another one. Even within semesters it was the same way with projects. You start one, you finish it, you start another one. Now I've got this ongoing reponsability that will follow me through the rest of my time at school, and maybe beyond. It's like a new kind of stress - the kind that comes in waves, and never lets you breathe uninhibited inbetween the attacks!
Expect pics from Disneyland soon - it's getting late, so I'm outta here!

untitled

2005-03-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

I'm at Disneyland this week! If you, or anyone you know will be here this week, give me a ring!

Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

2005-03-16T00:40:00.000-08:00

It's been a little while. Well, the new house is pretty sweet - it looks like things are working out pretty good, minus the tree-droppings on the car. Our tree drops these little rancid mini-fruits that are wicked additions to the car's exterior. School's pretty busy, it's sort of ramped up full force in attempt to ruin my spring break - I'm only a little resentful of that. I'd write more, but I'm going to force myself to sleep early-ish. The ish shall be in dedication to a certain SB - and I'm not talkin' Strong Bad.

2005-02-27T20:30:00.000-08:00

Last Wed. I went to an AA meeting as part of a chemical dependancy seminar I was in for the last two Saturdays. It was actually pretty sweet - I met a classmate there and I had a really good experience.
My dresser (and most of my clothes) are at the new house, soon as I cool down this week a bit (Monday and Tuesdays assignments turned in) I'll work on getting my bed over there and staying there finally. Seeing most of the stuff there gets me all excited, but I don't want to jump the turkey and jeapordize these horrendously boring and tedious assignments that I have due this week.

2005-02-22T13:43:00.000-08:00

Damn the S&P 500 - a fool to buy high, but geeze, will the drops never end?

2005-02-17T10:51:00.000-08:00

I'm down for whatever Stooobie's down for this weekend - as long as it's not too expensive. I'd have tacked that on to the last comments section, but I'm limited to 5 with that feedback thing, and I'm too lazy to change it. School is pretty much full bore right now, so I'm off to finish some case study thing, then maybe a little more bloggo action. Stooobie, give me a call when you get in town (or before you do) we definitely need to do sumpin'. Get old Fantastic out of his cavern of patent law distraction!

2005-02-13T17:28:00.000-08:00

Well, we've got it. For sure for sure. The house is ours - 3 bedroom, 2 bath, huge kitchen. We've already begun the moving process (well, T has) and we're officially in starting the last week of this month. So if anyone has a truck, has access to a truck, has a friend who knows a friend who has a truck, lemme know - 'cuz I got a coupla mediumly largish things (like my bed) to move over there. Werd.

2005-02-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

Last post was just about some nonsense with silly people being silly. I'm NEVER silly :)
School's prolly gonna hit me ultra hard this semester. I may have gotten in further than the kids can manage - looks like I may be working on the beginnings of a project that might turn into my master's thesis. I'll find out more about it hopefully this Wednesday. . .
So it's 11 grad units, which, according to Sac State's awesome convoluted system, is equivilent to taking 16.5 units if I were an undergrad. On the bright side of the school stuff, and general life business, I got another financial aid check in the mail - just in time for me moving out!
Oh yeah, and I'm moving out. Checked out a 3 bedroom house today, and it seems pretty sweet. The location is pimp, and the house itself didn't seem so shabby. Definitely expect massive potluck action and some serious WoW goin' on soon. The house is on like a half-acre lot, so the parking has nearly no end. Bring all your friends, it's gonna be like one of them huge pig roasts that the natives have on all them islands in Hawaii!

2005-02-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

Well, it would seem that things are hellbent on getting out of control. Me? I'm very much in control.

2005-01-23T17:19:00.000-08:00

I learned a life lesson yesterday. It happened at work. I was talking to a guy who comes in regularly - he's an older guy, real sharp with a quick wit. He used to be a lawyer, retired about 9 years ago, but recently went back. We playfully call him a dirty old man because a lot of his humor revolves around sexual conquest, etc.
He was telling me a story about a man he defended years ago. The man allegedly exposed himself in a grocery store to a single woman. As the story was told, dirty old man tells of a man who takes the time to "share a magnificent erection" with the woman in the grocery store. Yes, he uses the word "magnificent." I ask him if this is how he describes it in court. He replied, "no, I preferred to use the word 'allegedly'" As the story unfolds, old dirty describes what a sleeze the exposer is and how absolutely certain he was that the man was guilty.
Now obviously this strikes a chord with some people, those who will say that this is exactly the reason why they say "lawyers are scum." To that I say "whatever." The lesson learned was that people do thier jobs. Sometimes the work gets dirty, sometimes you compromise one hand for the other. Ultimately it comes down to this: 1. You can never know something to an absolute certainty. You can observe something first hand, you can feel it in your gut, you can place it down to a 99.999bar% chance, but you can't KNOW it absolutely.
2. It's not your job to weigh the relative value of morals for anyone other than yourself.
So, keeping these highly controversial points in mind, we arrive at various solutions. Ongoing legal action taken in every arena of life to interpret what is "right", and to compensate for "wrongs" that have been committed. A number of coping mechanisms to ensure a secure sense of what is right (organized religeon, spiritual practices, cult, etc.), and of course, our favorite - war.

2005-01-19T17:34:00.000-08:00

I done did it. I got an iPod - the full sized 20gig one. It's pretty neato. I'm ripping CDs right now to put onto it. 20gigs is a lot of music. It's like, more than all the actual GOOD songs that I listen to. So, to help fill the space, when I have one song I want to put on, I just rip the entire album with a variable bit rate that does not dip below 192k - so far I have 3 gigs. More to come. . .