Month: December 2003

I’m very antsy these days waiting for my coming break (Unigene shuts down for the week between Christmas and New Year’s 😀 ) as it will give me a lot of free time to work on projects sitting idle in my mind. Re-installing my server on the Linux distro of my choice will be primary, as well as a total (or near total) redesign of my website. Along with those comes the edition of some real content to this blog involving far more writing than I have “put to paper” in years. I have a desire to improve my writing and the only way to do that is to force myself to write more.

Early last month “photo” Matt made a resolution to write 1000 words a day. While I’m certainly not keeping up with that pace, it has begun to inspire me. I am beginning to feel this need to post as frequently as possible in an effort to make it more natural. I can already feel the effects of the last two weeks where I’ve been creating longer entries and posting them more frequently. If I can add in some articles or full-fledged reviews, well, who knows where that could lead…

Oh yes, and I too would like to have more links in my entrees. *looks up at single link in current entry and shrugs*

Okay, normally I’m opposed to skipping version numbers, but in the case of Winamp it seems like the right decision. I’ve used Winamp since the early days of MP3s (and for you n00bs that’s the 90s, not 2001 😉 ), but I was very disappointed with version 3. I went back to the previous rev since they were still supporting it, but I began to look for a new media player. Well, I have to say that my search ended right were I started it. There are just so many things they did right here I can’t even list them all. Bringing back the old Playlist Editor and making a far more sophisticated Media Library are major points. I’ve never been one to have my apps organize anything for me. I put my files where I want them to be, but this library is very simple to use, and I’ve actually started to use it.

Along with the libray, they’ve also really streamlined the whole Internet Radio/TV thing. I was more than pleasantly surprised to double-click on a link and find myself watching a stream of REM @ Sessions. Now I’m sitting at working listening to an 80’s station broadcast from God knows where. This morning I tried the ripping features and had a CD done in about 6 minutes. That’s good enough for me.

To put it another way, I’ve actually purchased the Pro version. I rarely pay for software, so that’s gotta say something. Now I just have to get around to buying a 200 GB hard drive for my server to rip my entire music collection 🙂 .

Okay, here’s a quick rundown of the weekend. Big campany holiday party on Friday. Had a great time with a little overdose on beef, beer, wine, and dancing – more on that later. Had to fight traffic to pick up Lisa from her company party in JC. She won a digital camera! Yesterday it took the two of us and Joseph almost 3 hours to get to Steve and Sandy’s thanks to “emergency” road work. Unfortunately allergies drove us away early. Now Lisa and I are about to battle traffic to get to the mall, then her aunt’s place in Long Island. Joy to the world, these holidays can be such a mess.

Maybe two weeks ago I did something stupid. Okay, it’s not like I haven’t done anything stupid since then, it’s just that was the last truly noteworthy stupidity. I’m regularly moving files around my server and it’s been a dream of mine for the past year or so to actually have a completely organized photo hierarchy that makes it easy for me to not only locate pictures, but also back them up. Of course this means that I haven’t been regularly backing up my (rather large) photo collection. This is a problem, because I often don’t bother thinking before I delete directories. That would be the primary reason that I’ve lost my “about me” page 3 times and have become an expert at rebuilding this blog in under 5 minutes. Deletion issues become further compounded when you add symbolic links into the mix. There’s such an added sense of panic when you realize you don’t even know what you just deleted 😛 .

So the other day (I forget when exactly) I was moving photos all around and deleting bad shots and duplicates from the server. There are some key facts about this simple task to take note of:

1. Deleting files over the network skips the Recycle Bin making recovery rather difficult.
2. I use ReiserFS for my data drives on the server which includes no form of undelete making recovery downright impossible.
3. Microsoft Windows likes to randomly select which window will be activated after you close something like its picture viewer making accidental deletion almost unavoidable.

I was being very careful not to say OK to just any delete command, but it was a doomed process. Eventually I said OK and rather than simply seeing the one file go away, a long list of files rapidly flashed across the dialogue box. That’s when the panic kicks in. It turns out that Windows had decided to switch to the folder panel this time, and that one item I deleted was my “Misc” directory. It could have been worse (considering how much is under “Local Music” or “Friends”), but I was rather inconsolable and desperately tried to locate another backup. Fortunately many of the pictures in the directory were already up on the website, or had already been moved to another location. Today I found the last major groups as I had just copied the various pictures I had taken with Lisa around Hoboken, in Central Park, and when we tried to go Apple Picking onto her laptop. Basically that means that I lost a lot of screenshots of Vice City and Perfect Dark and some random shots I took of a candle that had melted in a “really cool” way. I can live with that, but I will certainly focus on backing everything up from now on. Whew!

While meandering across the vast wasteland of the Internet, I stumbled across a sports parody/humor site. The best comment came regarding an “incident” from last year between Carolina punter Todd Sauerbrun and the Flying Gramaticas:

Kicker and Punter Feud about to Explode
Carolina punter Todd Sauerbrun and the brothers/kickers Gramatica [Martin (Bucs) and Bill (Cards)] has escalated following post FG celebrations and now post game tauntings after their recent losses to the Bucs. Bucs Gramatica had to be restrained by his teammates from going after Sauerbrun following the game. When reached for comment, Sauerbrun said “He had everyone holding him back to make it look good. I don’t know who this kid thinks he’s playing with but I’m not the most mild-tempered guy. If he would have said the wrong thing to me there’s no telling what I might have done.”

Whatever it would have been, I’m not sure you should be scared of the punter, well, I guess, unless you’re a kicker.

It’s kinda like a fight breaking out between two golfers, and everybody else just turns back to the 19th Hole to knock back a couple G&T’s.

That’s what those wonderful election-stealing, trigger-happy Republicans would have you believe. Of course some of us think for ourselves and don’t despise those in the world that are different. Certainly I can’t complain about the capture of such an awful human being as Hussein, but that still does not legitimize a war based upon lies. I’ve decided to lay off the whole conspiracy theory route questioning how one of the most elusive dictators managed to be meekly captured as Herr Bush II begins his re-election campaign, but I do see that right-wingers are already slapping each other on the back for asking rather pointless and vapid questions in an attempt to trip up those darn “American haters”. NZ Bear is attempting to solicit a clear cut case of hypocrisy from liberals by challenging their anti-war stance with a question that lacks any relevance to the issues at hand. Of course his fellow right-wingers fail to recognize this flaw as it would shatter the supposed support this statement should create. Before I go any further let me emphatically state that I was against the war, I am against our current involvement in Iraq, and I absolutely do not want Saddam Hussein to return to power.
Continue reading “So the ends DO justify the means”

The other night I actually watched a new episode of Scrubs on TV. The odd thing was that I had already downloaded and watched it on my computer. The whole world is just screwy when I can no longer count on the speed of TV programming to keep up with the demands of Internet piracy. It was a good episode, however, but it has left a disturbing aftertaste. I speak of the rather reckless use of an eighties song that is now embezzled firmly in my mind. In an attempt to frustrate an already frustrated Turk, the infamous janitor (Sir Plunge-a-Lot to the nurses) blasted Jermaine Stewart’s ode to platonic relationship “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off.” And I haven’t stopped singing it since. Thanks to Kazaa I can now listen to it at my leisure, so now I shall force the lyrics upon you unsuspecting Netizens:
Continue reading “Who drinks cherry wine?”

Every so often you still find something on the Internet that makes you laugh. It’s a little flash animation that definitely put me in a good mood to start the day. You have to listen to it, so beware of sound, and enjoy 😀 .

I’ve got a bunch of posts waiting in the wings until I have time to finish them. In the meantime I’d like to point out that all of that horrible snow has been replaced by miserable rain. Today’s driving was faster, but not a whole lot better than Friday. For the first time in many years I’m actually wishing global warming would speed up so we’d have a warmer winter and get to Spring faster.

It’s snowing here. Freakin’ hard, I might add. And it’s actually sticking. I might try to get out of here soon. I’d rather spend the afternoon playing video games next to my fireplace then sitting around here accomplishing nothing. Uh, that’s all.