There's only one possible cure for a day like yesterday. One sure way to turn blah into hurrah.
Every have a day (or weekend) where nothing went right? Where nothing you did worked out? Where everything had a certain taint about it? I couldn't even get "sleep" done correctly. Blah.
Double blah.
I took the Queer Quiz. Here are my results:
You scored a 12. You are 16.4% queer. Unfortunately you are not very queer. You scored in the bottom 25th percentile in queerness. You are destined to be stuck in a life of bitchy girlfriends, child rearing, and cunnilingus. Enjoy!
Others in your queerness category: Hulk Hogan, Rosie O'Donnell, Mr. T.
From what I could tell from the guy's quiz, a person's "queerness" involves mostly a fashion sense. Which I don't have. So I'm not sure about the validity of the test, but anything that puts me in the company of Mr. T can't be all that bad (Rosie's presence notwithstanding). The girl's quiz seems like it'd be a pretty good barometer of queerness, however.
The last couple weeks, I've been thinking about getting a new vehicle. I love my Tacoma, and it runs like a champ. Sixty thousand miles and the only thing I've had to do to it is normal preventative maintenance. It's just getting a little old is all. And I honestly don't need a truck all that much. It's been handy to haul things, but I'd like to have an enclosed space instead of an open truck bed. I was going to get a shell for the truck, but they're pretty expensive. That got me thinking about my old Jeep Cherokee. I could fit a lot of stuff in it -- probably as much as I could in my truck if it had a shell.
I happened to see a Toyota 4Runner on the way to work one morning. Then that got me thinking about my old Jeep. I figure I can haul nearly as much in a 4Runner. And it's already enclosed. Plus, I can haul two more people if I need to. I won't be able to haul weird-sized stuff or stuff headed for the dump, but that's a trade-off I can live with. Leaves and junk I can put out with the trash and they recycle it. I have a Sawzall for anything else that won't fit into the dumpster.
I shelved the thought until I got a letter from a dealership here in town who wants late 90's Tacomas with six cylinder engines and four wheel drive. Which I have. I'm nearly positive that letter is nothing more than an enticement to get me into the dealership to buy (or lease) a new truck, but if they'll give me good cash, then I'm game.
So I went on the web and started looking around at Toyotas, just window shopping. I've been convincing myself that I don't really need a new car, but it never hurts to look. And then I saw one of the options the 4Runner comes with. Yeah: touch-screen GPS navigation. In the dash. It's K.I.T.T. fer cryin' out loud. How can you not like that?! I'm completely and totally hooked now.
I'm a bad, bad consumer. But I'm trying very hard to resist. But that isn't working too well. I'm conflicted. "It's only two throusand extra. You can swing that," says the little red guy on the left shoulder. "But you already have a nice Garmin GPS with a cig plug adapter (which also has a serial cable so you can plug it into your Thinkpad). And you have a portable dash mount for it. It works perfectly well," says the white guy on the right shoulder. To which the red guy replies, "That's a handheld model; it's a different animal altogether." "And what the hell do animals have to do with anything?!?" "You know, you little white angel dudes aren't supposed to swear. The Big Guy frowns on that shit. Knock it off or I'm telling." "Bah! Get bent..."
They've been at it for two days now:
Red: Lookee here, nizzle: the touch screen is undoubtably the shizzle. Yo.
White: Ok there, DJ Jazzy Wee. The handheld GPS unit you already own works just fine for what you need to do.
Red: My 'Nilla...
White: Ok, stop that.
Red: Bling bling.
White: Quit! You're far too white nerd for that gangsta business. Stop it before you embarass us any further.
Red: Uh huh, whatevah. So the handheld model you have. Does it by chance have a touch screen? Is it easy to see in the daylight? Is it voice-activated? Does it jiggle on that hinky dash mount or is it in-dash? Surrounded by buttons to fiddle with?
White: Well, no. But does it really need to be?
Red: It does if you want to be cool. Eric would think it's cool.
White: Cool?!? Eric's a medical doctor, he can afford cool! You're just a computer geek, and only want the touch screen because it's a gadget.
Red: Well no shit, Captain Obvious. Of course I want it because it's a gadget! Eric would get the DVD screen for sure.
White: I think you'd be a lot cooler if you were 2 large richer and dependant on a very fine handheld model GPS.
Red: But you make payments on that 2 grand. It's not like you have to walk down and buy it with cash from the ATM.
White: So you pay interest on it, huh? Smart...
Red: Sell some of that QCOM that's been laying around doing nothing.
White: You don't sell something that will likely appreciate over time for something that will depreciate immediately! That's dumb.
Red: What a wack-job. That stock was rainy-day money. It's non-necessary for daily living. It's play money. Put it to work. It's not like to have to sell all of your stock.
White: But it's peace of mind money, too. When you need a few thousand, it's there.
Red: It's stock. There's no guarantees that it'll be worth squat in two years. Sell it.
White: You'll regret it. You're already feeling small bits o' guilt about buying a new car when you don't really need one...
Red: Do the right thing: get the Limited. You're already spending a lot, why not a little more for that much more value? You'll get a better resale too.
White: You know the Sport model has that X-REAS suspension.
Red: Doh!
White: Heh heh. And you know you'll get use out of that.
Red: And if you check Toyota's options page you'll see that the kicking undercarriage is an option on the Limited, too.
White: Stop! Enough of this nonsense. You're talking about a $37,000 vehicle at this point. Get real, man! That's waaaay too much and you know it. Yeah, you could buy the car, and you could pay it off just fine, but do you really want $600 a month car payments on a 72 month loan? Nix the touch screen and Limited options, and as a concession get the Sport with a couple other toys. That's reasonable. And you also get built-in justifcation for Tess on the entire purchase.
Red: Damn you. Damn you straight to Hades you do-goody, no-account blankety-blank white shoulder dude.
White: Boo-yah. Who's your daddy? Punk-ass bitch...
So I'm thinking now that the Sport model would be fine. With the 10-way surround sound audio system and the retracting moonroof. And maybe the double-decker cargo deal that slides up out of the floor.
Well, from Japan, anyway. Same difference. This company called J-List sells "wacky" stuff (their term) from Japan, including t-shirts they concocted from various Japanese slogans and signs and whatnot. Some of them are pretty damn funny. I think I'm going to have to order one. I'm conflicted as to which one to get. There's an appealing concept behind the enjoy smoking and drinking after age 20, the no grab-ass on the subway one has a nice "conversation-starting" graphic, but the I'm a strange foreigner one is pretty accurate (and the shirt is a nice color, which would match my decidedly gaijinly eye color).
After thinking about it, however, I'd have to get the heno heno mo heji shirt I think, if only for the purely non-sequiturish value of it. You think I'm kidding? I've got my order placed and credit card out of my wallet, buster.
Oh, and I wouldn't go poking around on that site too awful much if you're browsing the web from like church or anything. There are some interesting items for sale.
A former co-worker named Chipman sent me a couple links in email just now. And if it's from Chippy, you know it's not run-of-the-mill nastiness. He always has the best nasty. I don't know where he finds some of his stuff. He makes Fark look pedestrian sometimes.
He sent me two links about Balut, a Filipino delicacy I had thankfully never heard about. The second link included eating directions (scroll down to the last paragraph).
Ahem.
I think that actually writing down any of the dozens of thoughts floating around in my head right now could, at very best, be considered an uncharitable commentary of the culture of our citizens from South Seas. Didn't mom always tell you, "If you don't have anything nice to say..."? She said that to me more than once. So instead of indicting myself further by prattling on about the weirdness other people of the world ingest, I'll leave you with just two words: "Balut Farts".
A long time ago my mom went to England and asked us all what sort of souvenirs we wanted. I asked for a dictionary. I thought it would be fun to be able to look up "English" words. This was before the interweb, after all, and looking something up meant using what was on your shelf or a trip to the library. So don't nobody give me no grief about asking my mom to haul dead trees around the globe. It was an analog world then.
Anyway, she did indeed nab me a dictionary, and I did indeed use it. But she also got me another reference book called "The Dictionary Of Slang". I still have it, in fact. It was published by Penguin Press, and was a couple hundred pages of British, Australian and American slang. I seriously doubt that my mom read through it at all before she bought it since there was no way she would have purchased it (much less actually held it in her hands or put it in her suitcase) if she had given the book even more than a couple minute's attention. It had some pretty raunchy stuff in it. The cover was rather benign, however.
The American slang entries were the funniest part, believe it or not. If I ever went back in time to, say, 1972 and found myself in, say, downtown Detroit, I'd have had the lingo down cold. I found myself using more than a prudent amount of those entries for a nerdy white kid in the 80s. But at the time, calling someone a wanker or a wally or whatever wasn't nearly as cool or useful as some of the other American slang terms (which people were more likely to know -- or at least have heard in popular American entertainment). I admit now, however, that I have actually gained more practical use out of recalling the British entries. For example, I've had several dodgy creations bollocks up my plans through the years. What am I'm on about, you ask?
That lack of dub-dub-dub I mentioned before? Predictably, technology has solved problems that weren't really in much need of a solution. You can get pretty much the same slang dictionary without having to ask your mother to tote it back from the Old Country for you. Sadly, it doesn't seem to include any of the U.S. enthnic or prison slang, but a couple strolls through there and you'll be an expert in the British language in no time. Just remember to always put a question at the end of every statement and you'll do fine.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go crimp off a length.
If you want to support out President and our country, don't bother with this nonsense. That has got to be one of the silliest things I've seen in a long time. I thought it was a joke, but I guess they're serious. If you want to help the US, just pay your taxes, vote during elections and try to be a good person. Citizenship makes no mystical requirements of its participants.
If someone really wanted to help the country, they'd figure out a way to keep jobs from leaving country. The US is going to have service industries and entertainment as its only domestic products before too long. In honor of this "momentum" I decided to play a little Ravi Shankar.
If you work on a multi-user Unix-ish system, try using this as your .bashrc file.
You're welcome.
Go take The Geek Test and see how you fare. I'm pretty much hopeless at "61.14398% - Extreme Geek". But I would have scored much higher if it gave out extra points for people who check the source of the page before filling it out to see if they have to enable JavaScript or not in order to complete the form.
Anyone in the state of California who has ever used a social security number as a primary key in a database now has a new and compelling reason to revisit their status as an ignoramus.
Any entity that retains "unencrypted" (SB1386 doesn't say anything about what counts as encryption) "personal" (another toss-up for the courts) information which gets compromised must report the incident to the people whose information was involved. Put simply: if you are using SSNs as a key (or anywhere) in your database and that database get lifted, the box gets hacked, a bug leaks information, whatever, then you have to let everyone in your DB know what went down. That's a shit sandwich of which I'd rather not bite.
Did people really need a reason to not use SSNs as DB keys? , even though it's a bone-headed thing to do. Folks can and do change their SSN. Then there's the fact that SSNs aren't really guaranteed to be unique. Intended, yes. Guaranteed? No. Besides, it's just not a good idea to use SSNs in databases. Nearly every RDBMS has a built-in feature to generate and use unique numbers and such for keys. People should use those features and stop colleting SSNs.
I'm not even going to get into the privacy implications of a person's SSN being bandied about willy-nilly. We have a law which will hopefully discourage such behavior now and as much as it pains me to admit it, I'm kind of in favor of SB1386 for that reason alone. Then again, I'm a freak. You should have seen my reaction at the DMV when I first got a California license to replace my Arizona one. The minion behind the cage bars flat out told me that unless I coughed up an SSN I wouldn't be issued a license. I damn near had kittens. She told me to tell it to the judge, and then called the next number. She was used to the complaining and would have none of it. I eventually knuckled under and went back to give it up, but not before I did some online research and found some "blank" SSNs that I might use. The little blurb about perjuring myself with false info caused me to begrudgingly use my real number.
Get ready to hear about SB1386 for some time to come. The SSN is persvasive, the cracker pernicious.
For the last month or so, my linux box (the one I use to get most of my work done) has been freezing up occassionally. I hadn't been able to discern exactly why. There's been no one thing that I've done which caused it to happen, so it's been hard to troubleshoot. To complicate matters, it started happening when I got my Shuttle hooked up and started using a mouse and keyboard via a USB KVM switch (which has been real nice; the KVM even does sound). There's a lot that's changed over the last couple months.
I'd never seen it hung after sitting idle, so I thought maybe it was something to do with the USB subsystem, my kernel/drivers, etc. It was frustrating me. Since it only happened "every once in a while" (i.e., I'd get a good one, two or four days uptime) I put it on my list of things to look at later. Hey, I put up with Windows for years. This was nothing new to me. I could handle Linux randomly dying on me for another month or two.
Today I noticed that less (1) froze, and became a defunct process. Then over the course of a half hour or so, a few other new commands I had tried to start began freezing. My Linux box was in the process of going titsup.tar.gz.
I managed to save everything I was working on (although I had to forcefully kill two apps) and even got X shut down. I played with the idea of syncing the filesystem buffers before I rebooted, but a thought struck me: "What if I have bad RAM? Do I want to access it prematurely by flushing the buffers?" I didn't, and opted for a normal reboot. The box crashed and burned about halfway through the shutdown. This is what it looked like. (I've only seen a kernel panic a couple times, so I thought it was worthy of a pic.)
When the machine came up again, I went looking through the system logs. I saw this:
Jun 4 13:34:45 lazlo shutdown: shutting down for system reboot
Jun 4 13:34:45 lazlo init: Switching to runlevel: 6
Jun 4 13:34:46 lazlo login(pam_unix)[2954]: session closed for user wee
Jun 4 13:34:47 lazlo rhnsd[2948]: Exiting
Jun 4 13:34:47 lazlo rhnsd: rhnsd shutdown succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:47 lazlo atd: atd shutdown succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:47 lazlo rc: Stopping keytable: succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:47 lazlo cups: cupsd shutdown succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:47 lazlo xfs[2920]: terminating
Jun 4 13:34:47 lazlo xfs: xfs shutdown succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:47 lazlo mysqld: Stopping MySQL: succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:47 lazlo bcrypt: Unmounting encrypted filesystems.
Jun 4 13:34:48 lazlo rc: Stopping bcrypt: succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:48 lazlo gpm: gpm shutdown succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:49 lazlo httpd: httpd shutdown succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:49 lazlo sshd: sshd -TERM succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:49 lazlo xinetd[2740]: Exiting...
Jun 4 13:34:49 lazlo xinetd: xinetd shutdown succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:50 lazlo crond: crond shutdown succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:50 lazlo apmd[2689]: Exiting
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo apmd: apmd shutdown succeeded
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: <1>Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 425d5b78
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: printing eip:
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: c0159748
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: *pde = 00000000
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: Oops: 0000
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: cmpci emu10k1 ac97_codec sound soundcore parport_pc lp parport
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: CPU: 0
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: EIP: 0060:[] Tainted: P
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: EFLAGS: 00010a87
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel:
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: EIP is at find_inode [kernel] 0x24 (2.4.20-8)
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: eax: 00000000 ebx: 425d5b50 ecx: 00007fff edx: c25c0000
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo init: no more processes left in this runlevel
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: esi: 00000000 edi: c25d5b50 ebp: 0017ee58 esp: dbf03e38
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: ds: 0068 es: 0068 ss: 0068
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: Process rc (pid: 7817, stackpage=dbf03000)
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: Stack: 00000000 dec3c640 c24db400 0017ee58 c25d5b50 0017ee58 c24db400 c0159a78
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: c24db400 0017ee58 c25d5b50 00000000 00000000 0017ee58 c7907a40 de64dd80
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: c7907a40 e0868d5c c24db400 0017ee58 00000000 00000000 de6162e4 fffffff4
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: Call Trace: [] iget4 [kernel] 0x54 (0xdbf03e54))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] ext3_lookup [ext3] 0x7c (0xdbf03e7c))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] real_lookup [kernel] 0xc3 (0xdbf03e9c))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] link_path_walk [kernel] 0x40f (0xdbf03eb8))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] __vfs_follow_link [kernel] 0x33 (0xdbf03ef8))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] update_atime [kernel] 0x6f (0xdbf03f04))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] link_path_walk [kernel] 0x52c (0xdbf03f14))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] path_lookup [kernel] 0x3d (0xdbf03f54))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] __user_walk [kernel] 0x49 (0xdbf03f64))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] sys_access [kernel] 0x7b (0xdbf03f80))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: [] system_call [kernel] 0x33 (0xdbf03fc0))
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel:
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel:
Jun 4 13:34:51 lazlo kernel: Code: 39 6b 28 89 de 75 f1 8b 44 24 20 39 83 94 00 00 00 75 e5 8b
The line highlighted in blue was interesting. Looking through the rest of my system logs, I found a similar line signaling the start of my troubles. I found it 27 times in fact. In all cases, the memory addresses (the hex number at the end of the line) were all very close to one another. So more evidence of a memory issue?
I went and got a copy of Memtest86. It does really thorough tests on you memory, and works independently of any operating system. You put the bootable image right on a floppy and reboot. I decided to put it in my grub.conf. Here's what I have now:
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-8.img
title Memtest86 Memory Tester
root (hd0,0)
kernel /memtest86.bin
On reboot, you select "Memtest86 Memory Tester" and it starts up and goes right into testing. It found a lot of errors, all in a small memory range like I figured. I took the first DIMM (I have two 256MB sticks) out and re-ran the tests again. No errors. Just for completeness' sake, I swapped them and re-ran the tests yet again. I got the same errors as before. Bad RAM it is then.
I've always bought memory from Crucial. Their prices aren't that much higher than anyone else, and they make great RAM. You also get a lifetime warranty and free shipping, so that's a bonus. And I love their memory selector. It knows about every motherboard in the world, and tells you exactly what memory you need. I called Crucial to see if this "lifetime" warranty really existed. I didn't have high hopes, but I figured it was worth a shot. Within 3 minutes of my first calling a guy answered and asked what sort of problem I had. I explained what was happening, what diagnostics I did, and what I thought the issue was. He listened and then told me that I'd be needing a new stick. Then he asked me, "This is the PC2100 DIMM from the Asus A7M266 motherboard, right?" He knew which brand of motherboard I had, what the serial number on the DIMM was, everything. It was sort of surreal, but saved me a lot of time.
He eventually transferred me to another department so they could get my return info. A lady came on and said that I'd be needing an RMA, right, and would I like to have them send me a replacement via FedEx 2nd day air (free of charge) while I send my bad RAM to them? I said I could wait, and that it would be fine if they sent the replacement when they got my defective memory. So then she says, "OK, is email good for you? I can send out return instructions and the RMA to you right now if you want." Is email good for me?! Like, yeah. She had my address and everything on file and ready to go. Before I hung up with her I had an email telling me exactly what I need to do.
I think I'll be buying all my memory from Crucial now, regardless of price. This is an example of exactly how customer service should work.
If you wondered wether or not June 2nd was a special day at all, wonder no longer. You'd be surprised at what all has occurred on this day:
1823 Ashley's fur trappers attacked by Indians, war begins
1886 Grover Cleveland first U.S. president married in White House
1896 Guglielmo Marconi patents the radio in Britain
1912 Universal Pictures founded
1920 Eugene O'Neill wins Pulitzer Prize for Beyond the Horizon
1924 Congress grants U.S. citizenship to all American Indians
1943 Actor Leslie Howard dies in plane crash
1944 United States begins "shuttle bombing" Germany in Operation Frantic
1953 Queen Elizabeth II crowned monarch of the United Kingdom
1954 McCarthy charges communists are in the CIA
1965 First Australian combat troops arrive in Viet Nam
1985 R.J. Reynolds and Nabisco merge
1987 General George Doriot dies
1993 Apple suit against MicroSoft dismissed
1993 Interactive television first tested
1997 Timothy McVeigh found guilty of Oklahoma City bombing
There's a humungous load of famous people who share today as their birthday. To wit:
1535 Pope Leo XI, Pope
1715 Herman-François Delange, Composer
1740 Marquis de Sade, French novelist
1806 Isaac Strauss, Composer
1835 Pope Pius X, Pope
1840 Thomas Hardy, English novelist/poet
1849 Paul-Albert Besnard, French painter
1857 Edward William Elgar, Composer
1864 Ransom Olds, Father of Oldsmobile
1875 Charles Stewart Mott, American philanthropist
1876 Hakon Borresen, Composer
1899 Royal Beal, Actor
1904 Johnny Weissmuller, Actor
1907 Dorothy West, Journalist/author, (Living is Easy)
1915 Walter Tetley, Cartoon vocalizer
1916 Betty Furness, Actress
1921 Alexander Salkind, Film producer
1929 Chuck Barris, TV game show producer/host, CIA operative?
1929 Frederic Devreese, Composer
1930 Charles Conrad, Jr., American astronaut
1937 Sally Kellerman, Actress
1940 Christopher Bernau, Actor
1941 Charlie Watts, Musician
1941 Stacy Keach, Actor
1942 Marie Cheatham, Actress
1942 Barry Levinson, Director
1944 Marvin Hamlisch, Composer
1945 Bob Benrit, Musician
1948 Jerry Mathers, The Beaver
1950 Toni Alessandrini, actress
1951 Steve Brookins, Musician
1954 Michael Steele, Musician
1960 Kyle Petty, Race car driver
1971 Tess, Teh Funny
1978 Nikki Cox, Actress
1982 Jewel Staite, Actress
If you're so inclined, you can find a much larger list of who fed and who ate it on June 2nd. The ones above are just the more common names. But still, it's not a bad haul for a birthday: two Popes, Tarzan, the Beav, more musicians than you can shake a stick at, and the creator of the Gong Show himself, Chuck Mothergrabbin' Barris. Yes, it was a good day.
Happy Birthday, Tess!