I got a call from my doctor telling me I have to come in on Monday. Something about an elevated white cell count. If all goes well, it means I get to go in to find out I have a cold. And vigorous exercise is supposed to cause it as well.
I fell asleep in the middle of the day, and I’ve been feeling a little run-down. I’m guessing I not only have a bit of a cold, but my Sunday run may have been a bit too “vigorous.”
I just saw the movie Ringu
. It was creepy, but I have a hard time with movies any more. At first, all I could think was, “Why is that house so big?” Then all I could think was, “If watching a videotape was going to kill me in a week, would I watch it?” Well, maybe if it was porn, or if I was drunk.
The other thing I don’t get is that the movie is called, Ringu. I know it’s Japanese, but in Japan, it’s called which is a transliteration of “Ring.” So shouldn’t it go from Ring to back to Ring? I thought the same thing of Audition which was advertised as Audishon.
I keep thinking of a line from the movie Dead Man, “Stupid ****ing white man.”
In any case, the movie was worth watching.
We went to see the pulmonologist today for my ma’s cough. From what her primary physician said, they were going to shove a scope down her throat. Lucky for her, we just had to talk to him, and instead of getting the weird scope thingy, she’s just getting a CAT scan. And she’s feeling better already. Yay.
But I’m still feeling kinda puny. I tried to read more of an XML book I checked out from the library (Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days) and I fell asleep. I was actually in a car, and I didn’t even wake up for a stop that was made at the Hillsdale Bakery. It didn’t stop me from my usual Tuesday run. Funny thing is, I saw a lot of the people I usually see in the morning. Seems like everyone was late running today.
So, this Last Samurai looks incredibly stupid? Not only is Tom Cruise pretending — once again — to be straight, but he’s supposed to be a samurai? A white guy? Give me a frigging break.
I can speak about my lack of success in my job hunt, but how interesting is that? Checking the newspaper, web sites, calling friends, calling recruiters, etc., etc. Nothing.
However, I did get a bunch of Hellboy graphic novels from the Multnomah County Library. I got them after someone on the ‘net mentioned the movie trailer. The trailer looked good and so I thought I’d ruin the movie by reading the books first. So far, so good, though, the books look good, the trailer looks good, and all I can do is hope that the movie lives up to them.
My friend Greg was asking about the darn bugs that are all over his house. He described them to me, and I think they’re Box Elder Bugs. It took a while, but I finally found Oregon State University’s bug page again.
Those darn Box Elder Bugs spring up without fail on certain blocks in my neighborhood. I can’t walk down the street without having a couple land on me. Very often, they’re doing the bug-reproduction-mambo while they’re crawling on my leg. Ugh.
So I knew something was up when the inside of my head started to hurt. It was my neck and the back of my sinuses, and that sort of thing only happens when I get a cold. My stomach hurt a bit, just enough to give me nightmares all night. Some of them were interesting at the time, but I can’t remember them.
I confirmed my luck today by sleeping in and then having to take a 2 1/2 hour nap.
And more luck in the job hunt: a friend who thought he found a posting was told it was just a “place-holder” job description. And today I looked at a Deloitte and Touche web site and looked at the web sites of Oregon’s 29 top growing companies. Of those companies, only one had jobs I was slightly qualified for.
Well, so much for job kvetching. I think finishing a Master of Science degree made it clear to me that I am a screw-up and finding a job right now is even hard for the non-screw-ups. Time for another nap. I have to be in shape to watch all the football this weekend. If nothing else, having no girlfriend means not feeling guilty about sitting around watching sports.
I went to a ham radio club meeting tonight and it got me to think about club dynamics. Sometimes things go smoothly, but there’s often someone coming in and trying to change the power structure. They want more power, sometimes without knowing why they want it. I can describe a lot of things using the “club model,” including Open Source programming projects and politics.
I don’t know how this got me to think about this odd “Ivy League Plus” mailing list I bailed out of. They even have a disclaimer and refused to start the list until their lawyers looked over the disclaimer. I left after seeing too many people chastised for asking innocent questions. The final straw for me was when the list queen slapped some people down who wanted to meet to discuss politics. She demanded that the list not be used to make political statements, even when no one had made any statement other than what Chinese restaurant they were going to meet in. Come on. What a control freak.
Of course, when I left, I made a comment about how I, “enjoyed watching yuppies in their natural habitat, a list made by lawyers for lawyers,” and that really cheesed the yuppies off.
I didn’t think anything about the Ivy league freaks until I got an email from a guy who got kicked off the list. Someone asked for “Humane Rat Catchers” and he replied that rats usually got poison (describing the actions of Warfarin in less detail than my biochemistry teacher) and then described prairie dog hunting. Come on. Everyone west of the Mississippi knows about prairie dog hunting, don’t they? They kicked him off for being intolerant and disrespectful.
I’ve come to find that the guy who got kicked off the list is the President of a large, visible local company (and possibly a bit of a redneck). How can you live in Oregon without tolerating rednecks?
So I volunteered to try AxKit, and XML to web framework, for the Fink Project. I’ve now spent four weeks trying to get it to work. Here’s what I think I’ve figured out about installing AxKit:
AxKit can also be installed quite easily on FreeBSD 4.9 using the ports system IF YOU UPDATE FIRST However, it doesn’t seem to work well after it installs.
And that sums up a lot of what I’ve been doing for the past several weeks.
BTW, CPAN sucks, mainly because there’s a series of dependencies that can’t be resolved automatically when everyone is changing their packages all the time.
RedHat Fedora won’t install properly with CDs because of disk errors. I had to do a “linux net” boot from an http server using install floppies.
NetBSD and FreeBSD boot floppies don’t work, either. I had to move the hard drive to another computer to install FreeBSD.
I should have taken pictures. It was the “Bald for the Boob Benefit” for Megan at the White Eagle Tavern. Megan’s brother and mom got their heads shaved, Dale (a regular at the pub) shaved his beard for the first time in 30 years, and lots of friends were shorn as well.
Megan and her mom look fabulous, and Megan’s mom isn’t bothered at all about the lack of hair. The next day, at the McMenamin’s Tavern where Megan’s brother Craig works, a guy from George Morlan Plumbing donated $100 on the stipulation that Craig cut off his soul patch.
Craig, Megan, and their mom look quite alike. The biggest difference is that Craig has a giant melon and it frightens me.
Megan’s friends Marcie and Michelle came up with her from the Bay Area. The lovely Marcie takes care of Megan when the chemo has her down. It was fun to see them all again.
And, I suppose that’s all I can think of for now. I spent the whole day trying to get AxKit installed on a web server. Oh, how I hate it. I’m writing down notes so I can post them if I ever get it working.
I was supposed to go to a “speed dating” party today, but some of my old classmates from Portland State convinced me it it wasn’t a great idea. At best I’m not sure I can make a good impression in only a couple of minutes. At worst I could get more repeated rejections than I can handle.
Well, I suppose I’m a little tired from helping at the 2003 ACM Pacific Northwest Regional Programming Contest. It was enlightening seeing all the whining. Not from the teams, either, but from the coaches. I hope the link to the scores still works. You can also try this.
No one was willing to host the contest this year, so Jason Wilcox from Portland State arranged everything in a month and a half. Unfortunately, the largest computer lab at Portland State is nowhere close to a large classroom, and the contest needs a meeting area as well as access to computers. So the classrooms were in a different building than the lab.
I’m not sure if the coach from a state school was joking, but I’m not a big fan of their athletic programs, so I’m willing to think he was just a whiner. “Do you think they had to walk in the rain in Fresno?” If they were outside I’m pretty sure they did. The contestants ended up holding their group discussions in the hallway. Anyway, if it’s not good enough for the coach, he can host the contest at his school.
The worst loon was a coach from a local private school. I don’t want to go into excruciating detail, but the leading team was from University of British Columbia and were German exchange students. The lunatic coach ranted, “In Germany, you have to take a test to stay in high school or to go on, if you’re not good enough, you’re out. … Here, any drug dealer can get into college.” He really didn’t appreciate my comment that MIT and Caltech are highly rated (deservedly) in both undergraduate and graduate education, and if they didn’t win International Computer competitions, it probably meant the competitions don’t mean all that much. He also seemed to think the big competitive power came from Taiwan and Russia and I don’t see those countries at the forefront of Computer Science. Before I left, he spent some time bad-mouthing Portland State.
Oh, well. I’m not sure I agree, but as they say, “It takes all kinds.”
So what did I get out of this?
All in all, just another day in my life.
It’s my sister’s last day here, so she was trying to fit in a lot of crap into one day.
Unfortunately, she got a migraine headache just before dinner and had to sleep in the car instead of eating. Her dessert trip was also canceled.
After we got home, my father wandered around the house aimlessly, threatening to wake my sister to see if she was OK. So instead of going to my friend Darrell’s final birthday party (he’s decided that 29 is old enough) I had to stay home and run interference.
I hope she’s feeling better since she’s on a plane back for home tomorrow.
I guess my grandmother in Japan is now bedridden and has some form of inoperable cancer. Surgery is mainly not an option because she’s 98. Last year at this time, she was still taking care of her garden, even though she lost her sight years ago.
Now she doesn’t worry about much, but does still make requests for what she wants to eat. It doesn’t matter to my grandmother who comes or goes. She didn’t ask about my aunt, when my mother took over the caretaking duties for the two weeks she was there. But my grandmother still had food requests. I’m happy she still has something to look forward to.
I’m the last unmarried grandchild and it looks like that won’t change.
My mom got back from Japan and, with any luck, things are back to normal. Her chronic cough is getting worse and so it’s time to interrogate the doctor about it. I guess my grandmother is confined to bed but still has an appetite. My mom didn’t have a chance to do anything fun and just took care of my grandmother while she was there.
I know by my logs that there isn’t anyone reading this blog, but I’m going to pretend there is. And if that pretend person has been paying attention, he/she would have heard about how I thought my sister was getting a Sony digital camera while I was going to get a 500yen pen. Well, guess what? She got the camera, in orange (the only reason she wanted it was because it was “cute”) and I got a 480yen pen.
The label says 600yen, but she got it for 20% off.
Actually, she also got me a nice fountain pen with a big fat nib which was closer to 20,000yen, so I can’t complain too much (except I’d have to write in inch-high letters to use such a fat nib.)
And just in case someone is reading this blog, my sister and her friends have designed “t-shirts for our friend Megan, who is getting chemo for breast cancer. There’s also a benefit at the White Eagle in Portland on November 16th.