Category Archives: General

I’m a bad son.

I should say, Happy 88th Birthday Dad!

My sister got him these cute, well, I don’t know how to describe them so here’s the picture:

I got him a caramel shake and two antenna balls from Jack-In-The-Box. See if you can see them on his desk:

Or in front of his desk:

I think that’s a cheesy weenie in his hand. Here’s a picture of him surveying his desk:

Another funeral.

I went to a funeral for a family friend. The eldest son is my sister’s age and the funeral was for his mom. There were a lot of Asian-Americans there, a lot more than were even on the Hawaiian Cop show I saw on TV. I even think I saw a girl who kicked my ass when I was 12 or so. She still looked mean.

The funeral was in a church that was too small. I was in an overflow area in the basement. For those who couldn’t hear through the speakers, it was a long wait. They had a hard time getting the coffin down the stairs. But, in the end, we did get to say goodbye to a friend.

Hey, I forgot to post.

I still didn’t go to the sports club where I have the “free 2 weeks”, but I went to 24HR Fitness to see how much they cost. On the plus side, they’re a lot cheaper and they’re going to have a pool soon. On the minus side, the hotties were all at Mavericks. Also, the way to make 24HR Fitness cheap is to pay for a couple of years up front. It’s easier to pay monthly at Mavericks. Plus, Mavericks is closer to home.

Really, the biggie is that there were better looking women at Mavericks. All I ever do is look, so that makes it more important.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why MT-Blacklist was blacklisting someone on my sister’s blog. Turns out there was an errant entry in the default blacklist. Jay Allen was kind enough to help me track it down. Woo. A lot of time for one poster. I hope she appreciates it!

2 weeks minus 4 days.

So I’m supposed to be on my two-week free pass to the sports club in the neighborhood, Mavericks and I’ve already blown off 3 days. Plus, I thought I’d lost the little thingy they gave me to let me in. Whee.

My sunburn is definitely lopsided, and my boss told me that if I didn’t like Kill Bill Vol. 2 that I was fired. I found out that a friend’s mom had passed away, and another friend from high school is getting railroaded into federal (hopefully white-collar) prison. An odd day, to say the least.

At least I found out that the CEO’s husband is a ham, so we can talk geek when I see him again.

I’m a rock lobster.

I’m all crispy and pink from staying out in the sun for too long. I spent six hours talking to a visiting ham radio operator from Japan. He’s here for a month and he’s staying with a family that doesn’t speak Japanese, and no one there is a ham. So he spent 6 hours talking ham radio with me, and most of that time sitting out in the sun. Oh, well, he was an interesting guy.

Later (like after 9PM) my friend Aaron came by to pick up some old computer parts. And we talked for a while, keeping me up even later.

All I was planning to do today was:

  • See if Jennifer wanted to get coffee.
  • Get some php working.
  • See if the Slabs were doing the pizza get-together-thing.

What I did was miss dinner altogether.

So much for planning.

Kill Bill? Feh.

Happy May Day.

I just saw Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and decided that Tarantino doesn’t have an original thought in his head. The two main reasons I didn’t like it are:

The bad Japanese dialog. A friend asked me, “And it bothered you that much? More than Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, or Antonio Banderas speaking English?” The answer is yes. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Antonio Banderas can speak English. They just do it with accents. Uma, on the other hand, probably can’t speak more Japanese than she needs to put in her order at the sushi bar.

The derivative sword fighting. It was just like every samurai TV show I watched while in Japan. I have a friend who really liked the movie and doesn’t like violent movies much. I think the problem with Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is that it’s like a summary of samurai movie sword fighting shows. If you’ve seen the “real thing,” you’ll see that the movie is just a watered down version. If you’ve never seen the real thing, it looks fine.

Anyway, enough about that. I went to DEQ to have my car checked and breezed through. It’s the start of the month and it should have been busy!

I actually watched Tomb Raider.

And I kind of liked it. But if guys are shooting at Lara Croft, shouldn’t she shoot back? Yeesh. That’s why I liked Blade so much. Wesley Snipes got to take out a lot of vampires, and they just kind of disintegrated. I spent my Friday night watching TV and trying to get the ham radio club roster into a database. I’m still not close to finished.

Also went by the sports club to see how much a membership is. At least $59 and probably more, I think.

Dude!

There was something I had on my mind but I forgot. And it isn’t because of 420, either. I’m just getting forgetful. Plus, I spent a bunch of time trying to get some Fink packages updated.

So, thanks go out to Rae for the chocolate I received. I’m sure it isn’t all due to the “Vessel in the Fog”, but I’m feeling chubby lately. Maybe it’s time to start running again.

So what I was doing yesterday?

And what was I doing today? Things were broken on my Mac, and I was rebuilding things on the server. Very often I’m sitting around poking at the computer, trying to get things working. I also put up my mom’s vacation pictures. The pictures shouldn’t be interesting to most people, but I had to put them up for my sister.

For some reason, screwing with the computer and paying bills took a lot of time. I kept seeing the the TV shows finishing one after the other.

Now if I can only get phpBB working.

Sometimes bad movies seem intriguing.

Well, the rain was so miserable that I punted the ham radio meeting this month. Getting home was bad enough. I didn’t want to turn around and get in a nice rain-created traffic jam. I’m feeling a bit tired anyway, and I don’t want to miss the last few episodes of Friends nor any episode of CSI. Any shows that make science seem cool are high on my list.

So, I’ve been seeing previews for Secret Window, a movie that looks like a bad horror cheese-fest, but how it has Johnny Depp and John Turturro. John Turturro and Johnny Depp. No matter how you cut it, it still comes out cheese. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. No matter how you slice it, it comes up baloney. Neither does that.

Anyone who has seen the creepy Quizno’s commercials and hasn’t had enough should see this.

You really miss it when it’s gone.

I run NetBSD, and I’m one of the loons that updates his copy of the sources every day and rebuilds the complete operating system. I tell myself that I’m performing an important QA task, but it’s just due to being neurotic. It’s also not guaranteed to build on any given day. A couple days back, I rebuilt the everything and my SpamAssassin broke. Since then, my spam wasn’t filtered out and came directly to my inbox. Wow, what a huge volume of crap! I forgot how much I depend on SpamAssassin. Fortunately, one of the developers fixed the problem a couple of hours ago.

For those who don’t have access to SpamAssassin, or Apple’s Panther/Jaguar mail, I’d suggest Postini. I use all three in different places and they all work well.

Gourmands unite.

I’m probably not the only one who overate tonight. My sister just celebrated her 8th wedding anniversary tonight at the Paris Restaurant.

What was my excuse? I was at work late (only 2-3 hours later than usual, thank goodness) reaching a minor milestone. Afterward, three of us headed out for dinner and I suggested the Ringside where they have a great deal on a three-course dinner before 5:30PM and after 9PM. Unfortunately, the menu changed a bit and I was unable to get my usual — Caesar salad, filet mignon, and creme brulee — for $25. The filet mignon is off of the specials menu but has been replaced by prime rib. Not a bad switch. My young co-workers had no trouble finishing the dinner, and we also had onion rings. The youngest used his 20-year-old’s appetite to finish off onion rings, a 24oz Porterhouse, and sorbet. That 24oz steak was impressive, and he had no trouble finishing it.

Well, that’s enough excitement for one night.