journal/notes

Dr. Horrible

Act II - 7:18s

’nuff said.

I realize that random can mean ‘random’. I also realize that in some people’s books listening to Billy Joel makes me a type of criminal. However, I think ‘Uptown Girl’ 3 times in a row is just kinda wrong. huh?

Dad.

Originally uploaded by skvidal

About 36 minutes late but I wanted to write something about my dad for father’s day. I got him what he asked for as a present. What I always do. We have a pretty good relationship - no bullshit nor impossible expectations about presents and no having to chase around to find the “right gift” which never is. Just ask him what he wants or needs and acquire it.

I think a lot of people would probably be surprised to hear I talk to my dad about 2 or 3 times a day. He and I are not afraid of phones and are good with very short, very straightforward conversations and telling each other ‘gotta go’ when we do have to depart the conversation.

I’m glad I get to talk to him regularly. He’s been the source of some excellent and not-so-excellent advice over the years. He has a penchant for vinyl windows that I do not share but he is also perhaps the most well listened/read person in the world. (He listens to books on tape nearly all the time due to his job) and he has told me about a neverending stream of things I should read. His interest in reading is what got me reading and I’m quite pleased with that. He acquired for me my first computer(Timex Sinclair - which didn’t take) and my second computer (Dell 286 with 3M of ram - which did take) and that investment paid off well. He’s been a constant and influential part of my life since ever. And in the last 11 years or so since I moved out of the house he’s been a constant part of my phone bill, too.

Suffice it to say I love him and I hope he had a good father’s day despite having to paint in the new laundry room.

In amusement: The laptop I wrote about earlier is  now for sale, again, on lenovo’s website. Right down to the model number.

If you’d like to NOT purchase this laptop you can click here.

Staggering work of brokeness.

This is probably worth writing a letter to your representative to encourage:

House Resolution 6003 - summary here: http://beyonddc.com/log/?p=210

Given everything it seems like 10 years ago would have been a good time for this resolution but it’s better now than never.

The new planet configs from .planet files are now being used. Let me know if you have issues and/or questions about using it. I’ve emailed the 3 people who had problematic .planet files and told them how to fix them.

thanks

The girl picked up a wii fit yesterday rather impressively. We’ve been playing with it a fair bit. A few things to be fair:

1. the yoga and strength training will kick your ass

2. the skiing and snowboarding games are great

3. the hula hoop games makes me stomach burn - it’s good.

4. I do wish there was a macro mode so I could say “do the following 20 exercises one right after the other”. That would be useful. There’s a little too much ‘clicky’ than I’d like.

I can’t wait to see what kind of snowboard games come out for it or even surfing. It’s an impressive interface.

I have this idea, maybe someone has already implemented it.

I setup a database of email addresses with a score based on my experience of the value of the content of their emails. Not a spam score, a content score. So I can say that randomuser21@hotmail.com typically posts worthless crap. Then I score them negatively in my db/table of users. Then something reads in my mailbox and adds a score to the subject line of threads based on the scores assigned to the users involved.

Then I can see if a thread goes up or down content-wise based on who posts to it.

I’m pretty sure I can do this with procmail but I’m curious if it has already been done.

Here’s what I’ve seen that’s irked me in f9 thus far:

1. bug in yum which is now fixed upstream keeping yum from doing the right thing about conditionally installed pkgs in groups already being installed (silly). It’ll be in an update in testing tomorrow.

2. PK ignoring my preferences and annoying me about updates that I don’t care about.

3. _something_ makes firefox and liferea stall out for a long time. This may not be a bug - it may actually be my hard drive trying to die on me.

Things I’m quite happy with:

1. usb persistence may actually save my butt

2. pybackpack works still. (If you think this is not a big deal please see #3 in the above list)

3. We’re seeing some pretty phenomenal numbers of downloads and a lot of overall excitement about this release.

That’s what I have, thus far.

Customer: Do you have PBR?

Bartender: No, but if you’d like I can piss in a glass of water and sell you that for $4.