phik

More cvs hacking. I’m more or less done, aside from some unsolved questions about how to handle checkouts and conflicts.

I got Pedrum to help me move the last of my things from storage to home. My apartment is such a disaster.

Spent the entire day making my apartment a place that a human would want to live in. The two-hour flurry at the end, when I realized that I had to pick Peter up 4 hours early, was a sight to behold. I can really accomplish a lot, suitably motivated.

I picked Peter up at the airport, we ate some Indian food in Philadelphia, and then met up with Ric back in New Jersey.

I spent 4 hours on the phone this afternoon trying to resolve my laptop issues with Dell. It’s all very simple, really, and everyone that I speak to would love to help me, but there are some fundamental problems, like the fact that I bought it in Canada.

I spoke with no fewer than 5 different departments at Dell, and they each had a different address and phone number for me. They had addresses from Ottawa, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Ohio, and New Jersey, and, laughingly, wanted to use my address to verify my identity. At any rate, I think I may have almost sorted things out, and will perhaps even get my laptop fixed.

At times like these, when people gush “Oh just buy a Thinkpad, they’re so great” without remembering that I am a seasoned Thinkpad veteran, I find it appropriate to re-post the IBM Thinkpad Drinking Game:

• If the bios lies to you about the size of your hard disk, take a shot.
• Every time your machine hangs on suspend, take a shot.
• Every time your machine unsuspends correctly, but the keyboard doesn’t work, take a shot.
• Every time you hit F1 when you mean Esc, because they’re in the wrong places, take a shot.
• Every time you ponder the technological feats required to make two compatible battery bays, take a shot.
• Every time you remove one of the batteries expecting the other battery to keep the machine powered, finish the bottle.
• Every time you remove the battery expecting the AC power adapter to power your laptop and it shuts off, finish the bottle and have another.
• Every time your Thinkpad destroys a battery because it over-charges it, finish the bottle.
• If you ordered that replacement battery from the Accessories Department instead of the Parts Department, and were thus charged double the price, finish the bottle.

  And, no doubt Shaver’s favourite:

• If your hard drive dies because IBM is too cheap to use their own fucking disks, finish the bottle, break it on your desk, and slit your throat.

I was marvelling at some DOE numbers that put the US consumption of oil as of Q4 2000 at roughly 19,480,000 barrels per day. Ryan and I did a little math and approximated that the average American uses as much petroleum as would fit in 2,332,467 3.75 fluid ounce Vaseline jars in an average lifetime.

The future really is x-rated.

Flattery will get you nowhere, Deb. No, that’s a lie, never mind. You’re welcome, as always.

Last week’s Guardian Weekly never arrived. They’re going to get away with it too, because the only thing worse than receiving a newspaper that contains a whole week of news is receiving it a week late.

It is so Monday.

void free_ptr(void* ptr)
{
        if ( NULL != ptr ) {
                free(ptr);
                ptr=NULL;
        }
}

I am not using that CGI query parsing library.

I love the internet archive. I thought that the Moron of the Week award was lost forever. Not so!

Zach sent me this link. I want to make one of those for CIBC.

Zach introduced me to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, so I’ve been reading those books this week. They’re very fun.

Speaking of Zach, it is his birthday today. I don’t think I’ve been with Zach on his birthday since 1998, but we’ll do something suitably celebratory when I’m in Portland later this month.

I’ve made good InterSync progress this week. Maybe we’ll release 0.1 in a couple of days.

I am so sick. I have no idea what brought it on, but please, please make it stop.

Let’s just say that my intestinal tract is no longer playing a key role in digestive water absorption, and leave out the gross details.

I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but my illness cleared up after about 24 hours. I do not wish those 24 hours on anyone.

I ventured out and did a bunch of shopping, which reminds me that I should maybe buy some gifts for people. Christmas and all that.

Made a lot of pickled cucumbers, or perhaps more accurately, semi-dehydrated cucumber slices bathing in vinegar. I ate them right out of the vinegar bath, so they were really just a vehicle for ingesting vinegar at the highest concentration that my stomach can stand. Yum.

I remember when my friends Nat and Joe used to write in their activity logs. I miss those days, back when they still loved me.

I had a hard time getting motivated, and I also stood in a nearly hour-long lineup at the post office, so in the end I didn’t get much done today.

I nominate the spamassassin RPMs for the Worst RPM Spec File Ever. In accordance with Zach’s new zero-tolerance computer idiocy policy, I recommend that Craig Hughes be relocated immediately to a medical facility for sterilization, after which he should proceed to the nearest courthouse for his restraining order forbidding him from ever producing spec files again.

This might be the most broken spec file I’ve seen, and keep in mind that I saw spec files that came out of Zero-Knowledge…

Shopping for computer parts is annoying.

I woke up Very Early to fly to SFO. It’s a good thing that I did, too, because every one of the probably 10,000 parking spaces were occupied. I am not kidding. I had to invent a space of my own in the very furthest corner of the lot. I hope my car is still there when I return.

I had hoped to sleep, but I sorta ended up as the de-facto caretaker of a very well-behaved, articulate, 6-year-old boy who was travelling alone. He advised me to shave more often, and to clean my eyeglasses. Pretty sharp kid.

Chris met me at the airport, and we bought some scotch and ate in a horrible Fisherman’s Wharf diner. We both wanted breakfast food, and we didn’t want to get back in the car. We will not make that mistake next time.

We picked up Patrice at the house and visited her family, then went to see Lord of the Rings. I enjoyed it, but I was so out of it by that point, having been awake 22 hours, that I don’t remember a substantial portion of it.

We hosted Christmas Eve dinner for the family at Chris and Patrice’s house. Chris cooked the turkey and stuffing (note to future self: bacon bacon bacon), Patrice made the best cheesecake that I’ve ever had, and various bits of the family brought various additional bits.

Afterwards we went to mass at Mission Santa Clara. Our third trip to Santa Clara in three days! Woo hoo! We love to drive for hours and hours, yes sir.

Happy Boxing Day!

Zach called me (well, he called everyone but me, and left lots of “please get ahold of phil somehow and tell him to call me!” messages. I guess he didn’t know I had a mobile phone) before Chris, Patrice, and I left for the airport telling me that he’d be 10 hours late. Great.

It actually turned out much better than that, and they made it onto a standby flight that arrived 2 hours after me, so I ate lunch and killed time in the airport until then. No harm done, and it gave me a chance to finish 2001.

Gift exchange and yummy dinner near Zach’s apartment. Alice, bless her soul, gave me autographed Bob the Angry Flower books. How did she know?

I’m working at home after the new year, so I’m going to break down and get a land line, even though I really, really hate them. Verizon thinks that they’re getting my social security number. Ha ha ha.

Fedex appears confused about whether or not they have a signature waiver on file. They left one package but not the other three–which is the right thing, really, since the signature waiver mentioned on the first package is a total figment of their imagination. Maybe I should have a man-to-man with my local driver.

Zach and Alice are very sick, so I’ve been playing caretaker. I think the worst is over, since they’ve managed to fall asleep finally. Poor guys.

Zach seems to be all better, and Alice asymptotically approaching the concept of solid food. We gave up on the cocktail party, and all but one person got the cancellation notice. Not bad.

I played a lot of civ 3. It is not significantly different, which is probably why I like it at all. The UI has improved, but only marginally, and still basically sucks. Why couldn’t they just ship the game to Zach and me for a weekend before it goes gold? There are at least a dozen things that are immediately and horribly wrong that we noticed after 5 minutes of gameplay.

Oh well. As Zach pointed out, it just makes me want to write a game that much more.

I spent almost all of today flying back to Philadelphia. There was a medical emergency, apparently some really sick little girl, so we had to stop in Denver, which meant that I got to ring in the new year while waiting for my luggage. Oh well.

Stopped at Ric’s for an hour or so, but it was after 01h00 by that point, and I was really tired.