June 2003 Archives

Wow, a blast from the past! I received an email from my old high-school buddy, Ben Powell, this weekend. I haven't heard from him in years! Unfortunately, I don't think he'll be at the reunion this year. Something about twins. Anyway, not much to report-- I'm having to rebuild my machine at home yet again. Stupid Windows XP. This time I'm doing a dual boot WinME (for games) and Win2000 (for work and development) environment. Plus I'll add a big fat FAT32 (heh heh) to share between the two installs. If I have room left over, I might put Debian on or something. May Bill Gates grow warts on his tongue...

In my many travels through internet-space, I've come across all manner of pop-up ads and banners. This is my new favorite:

Well, I rolled over 10,000 miles on Fujin, my Subaru Impreza WRX, yesterday. And about 30 days shy of owning it one year. When I drove it off the lot last July 27th, it had 7 miles on it. So far so good, it's been running great and has been a very enjoyable car to own.

Well, I just got done kegging up the beer. The search is still on for a suitably cheap refrigerator to store it in. My final specific gravity (corrected for temperature) is: 1.01158. So with an original gravity of 1.052 this means that the yeast made enough alcohol to make it 5.294% by volume. Right where I wanted it to be! I had a few sips of it, chilled but uncarbonated. It's pretty good-- not much hop character, but a rich maltiness punctuated with some dryness from the adjunct grains I used. The mouthfeel is pretty crisp, but a little chewy (probably because it's unfiltered). When the roommate wakes up, I'll have to get his take on it. Besides, carbonation will add a little bit of a bite. Much thanks to Lee's Brewery and their beer math calculator.

I just got an email from my mom-- they are going to have to put down Bernie, our 17 year old Cocker Spaniel (119 in dog years). Apparently his Alzheimers has gotten really bad, and he's mostly deaf. This has been a bad month for pets! Bernie has been a great dog, my parents got him a couple of years before I left for Ithaca. That dog has been across the country, sprayed by skunks, eaten kleenex, and chased mice. Out where my folks live, he's probably had the best life a dog could imagine-- no fences, no cars and lots of room to roam. I'm sure his version of doggie heaven will be similar, but the mice will move slower and there will be trees that grow porterhouse steaks. Good boy, Bernie!

This weekend I went up to Branson, MO to see my friend Clyde. I drove up Friday afternoon (about 4 hours) and dined on all sorts of smoked meats. Clyde smoked up three kinds of ribs, bologna, and chicken wings. All were outstanding! Saturday night, we went and saw Walter Trout, a bluesman, at Southtown, a little club in Hollister, about 15 minutes south of Branson. It was a great show, after they worked out some bugs with the power. We invented a new term: "bantrum" is any sort of tantrum perpetrated by a band, usually by the front man, when faced with adversity. Clyde has some great songs in the works, and I helped him flesh a couple out in the bass department. The Branson strip, is kinda trashy, but I managed to stay away from it (except for a wrong turn that forced me to drive the entire length of it on Friday night).

I just found out today that my aunt and uncle's cat Binzer passed on. She has been with us for 18 years-- more than my adult life. It's amazing how we humans can love another species so fully, and deeply feel that love is returned.

An Ode To Binzer

Kitty smiles, when your ears are skritched.
Kitty purrs, when your back is scratched.
Kitty poise, the best in show.
Kitty yawn, it's time to nap.
 
Kitty pounce, on strings and bugs.
Kitty chitter, go get those birds!
Kitty stretch, leaves warm laps.
Kitty loves, and is loved back.
 
Farewell Binzer, may you always be with us, betwixt our legs.

-Kelly Adams

The Urban Dictionary, cosmic meta-encyclopedia of all, has finally got a listing for fhqwhgads. KTHXBYE!

I just added a button to Homestarrunner.com so you can all keep current with Strongbad's emails. What a great way to kill a few brain cells. Can't find it? It's down below the Powered By stuff, silly!

I had no idea such a thing existed. Basically, geocaching is high tech orienteering. Using the lat/long coordinates of a particular site, you use your hand-held GPS unit to navigate to the "cache". The cache usually is a waterproof container filled with strange trinkets and a log book. Etiquette requires that you "take something, leave something, sign the book". It's hard to imagine that such a thing would actually work in this day and age, but apparently it's flourishing. www.geocaching.com now purports to know about caches in 174 countries. I was surprised at the number of locations just within central Arkansas. In addition the caches, dropping a travel bug is now common practice. A travel bug is a barcoded set of dog tags that lets people track the movement of items from geocache to geocache. Some of these items have been around the world several times through thousands of hands! So, need some exercise and a little outdoor activity? Log on, look up some coords, grab your GPS (now as cheap as $90) and head for a new cache.

I'm sure these links are securing me a nice hot place right near the Dark Lord's backyard, but I feel I would be remiss in my duties as a blogger to not include these.

Evil link #1: The Tard Blog - written by a learning professional dealing with a special needs class.

Evil Link #2: Blingbay - don't know what to get that mack-daddy pimp gansta in your life? Blingbay to the rescue!

Finally found an answer to the question about a the cde screensaver I posted a few days ago...

Get these two files:
runme.sh
dtwmcmd

Installation
You'll need to create a new directory that contains these two files, open a terminal window and change to that directory, and execute the runme.sh file from within that directory (./runme.sh OR ./runme.sh &). My two files are currently located in a /opt/switcher directory, but the exact location doesn't matter.

When you execute the runme.sh file, it calls the dtwmcmd file every 15 seconds and switches to the next CDE workspace. This time interval can be changed by editing the sleep command in the runme.sh file. It's best to setup the workspaces before you start switching, but you can still make quick changes to each workspace while it is switching (< 15 seconds).

Have fun with this... I know I will!

Ever see any ASCII art? You know, people using basic text to represent a picture. Well, that has grown into ASCII animation and here is a website in New Zealand that has created most of the original Star Wars movie animated in ASCII. Check it out!

With a good bit of help from my roommate, I installed a new faucet set in the kitchen. It only took two trips to Home Depot! It's one of those nice American Standard's where the sprayer is the main faucet as well. I had one in my old loft, but this one has a segmented stainless steel line so it can't kink (which was a vexing problem with my old one). Plus it came in bone, and is a very good match with the existing counters and sink tubs. Who says weekends aren't productive?