Mostly Harmless

Serving as a warning to others since 1967.

Archives, Other weblogs: Neuki, SaltedWound

Sunday, September 16, 2001

I got my Wordtracker Top 500 report yesterday. In the Top 300 of the week there are only about 20 terms that aren't related to the WTC attack.

Here's the Red Cross National Disaster Relief Fund at Yahoo. It's gone up by at least $2 million in the last couple of days, and $30,000 in the last few minutes. I just sent $50.

As I write this (2:37pm CST), they've just reached 100,000 donations for a total of $11,686,455.00. Five minutes later: 100,103 for $11,703,710.00. Five more minutes: 100,203 for $11,714,420.00.

Good to see it moving along like that on a Sunday afternoon.

Side note: on a Macintosh if you select another keyboard layout (like Dvorak, for instance) the keyboard menu will show up in your menubar. If you leave it on "U.S." you get a little American Flag in your menubar.

Friday, September 14, 2001

Next year at the MN State Fair:

Osama bin Laden on a stick.

Sunday, September 9, 2001

The Aveda Story

The word Aveda (ah-vay-da) means "knowledge of nature" in Sanskrit, and also means "health" in ancient Greek. So says the company website which I will not link to because I don't want to, and I'm sure you could find it by yourself if you thought really hard about it for about a millisecond.

To continue... they neglect to mention that in Latin the word "aveda" means "expensive shampoo," or at least it should.

I went to the Aveda store at the Mall of America to pick up some of their "All Sensitive" shampoo & conditioner. The theory being that since they claim the shampoo is hypoallergenic and aroma free that it would be, ahem, hypoallergenic and aroma free.

This is not the case. Not by a long shot. At least as far as the aroma is concerned.

But why do I need an aroma free shampoo? Because some days, depending, apparently, on planetary alignment, local dust mite populations, prevailing winds and perhaps even mold, my shampoo causes varying degrees of allergic reactions, i.e. sneezing and runny nose. I tend to get that from toothpaste too, but not as severely, which I why I have 9 kinds of toothpaste in my bathroom.

(BTW, if it is mold it shouldn't be a problem tomorrow 'cuz I just nuked the shit out of the bathroom with diluted bleach and Lysol.)

So, anyway, this "aroma free" shampoo smells like a flower shop exploded because of all the damn natural floral extracts. This is worse than most of the other shampoos I've tried.

But what does it cost to have a flower shop explode in your own home? It ain't cheap.

The interesting bit is that the shampoo display rack at Aveda is loaded with two sizes of each of the two dozen (or more) kinds of shampoo and conditioners. Little bottle, big bottle. Underneath all of these are two prices: little price, big price. The two prices are $3.50 and $9.50. Looking at the big bottle you'd think that $9.50 is a lot for that much shampoo, but hey, this is a fancy hair care establishment.

I decided to live on the edge and get the big bottle of shampoo and big bottle of conditioner, since the MOA is not very convenient for future shampoo purchases (rumor has it that a local "spa" has Aveda products as well, I couldn't find 'em last time I looked).

So, one (1) bottle of shampoo and one (1) bottle of conditioner: $72 says the lady behind the counter, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to say. Yeah, maybe not. For $72 I can hire people to wash my hair for me.

Turns out that the big bottles cost $34. Each. No, really. It's a 1 liter bottle. $34.

I decided that maybe it'd be better to try a little bottle first and see if that improved the whole allergic reaction thing. So, only $22 for the two little bottles, which are actually the medium sized bottles. The little bottles ($3.50) are nowhere to be seen, as is the price tag for the big bottles. Some might call that deceptive on their part... :(

Suffice it to say that Aveda won't be seeing any more money from me anytime soon unless I win the lottery -- and then I'd just swing by the store and flash a wad of hundred dollar bills and shout "I won't be buying any of your lame ass shampoo with this money, you Sanskrit-spouting bastards!"

That'll show 'em.

Happy Anniversary!

Today is the 2nd Anniversary (so to speak) of my gluten intolerance diagnosis. In other words: "you're allergic to pizza and donuts, have a nice day."

It is also the 2nd Anniversary of the Dreamcast, which I picked up at the midnight launch festivities on 9/9/99.

I plan on celebrating both of these momentus, ahh, moments, by not eating wheat, and playing "Soul Calibur". Note that I will not be playing "Half-Life", because those fascist rat bastards dropped the Dreamcast port, much like they dropped the Mac port... both of which were essentially complete. Bastards.

Friday, September 7, 2001

Chair Quest, 2001

My P.O.S. computer chair that I bought far too many moons ago is on its last legs (wheels... whatever). I have added TEN steel mending plates to various structurally significant parts of the chair to keep it from disintegrating.

For future reference, you should avoid chairs that use the (plastic) arms as the means of attaching the back of the chair to the seat, especially if the seat is mainly plywood.

Some of these little "design features" aren't visible unless you rip off some fabric -- which may get you thrown out of the store... so just avoid all the chairs that don't have lots of visible metal and you should be fine. To save you some time, you can eliminate all the chairs at Office Max and Office Depot, because they all suck.

So, to the internet!

There are many expensive chairs to be had, but I'm not in the mood to spend $500-$1,800 for a chair just yet. Cutting to the chase, I think I'll end up with an M40 from PCchairs.com, which is about $250 fully loaded and appears to be solidly built (15 year warranty) and highly adjustable.

But, I'm sure you're wondering about the chairs that didn't quite make the cut: ladies and gentlemen, I give you... the Penis Chair!

If you're still in a chair shopping mood, check out dmoz.

Monday, September 3, 2001

All my gurus have forsaken me...

I was reading "Dr. Atkins Health Revolution" today and decided to do a little bit of online research.

Interestingly, just about every claim that the book makes is debunked at Quack Watch. (Including the whole low-carb diet thing.)

In this book he spends an awful lot of time (70+ pages) attempting to discredit "the establishment" before he launches into his various half-baked theories, which include: mercury amalgam toxicity, chelation therapy, Candidiasis, and such "useful" tests as hair analysis.

Oh well, at least everyone pretty much agrees that exercise is good for you. Perhaps I'll move up my Bowflex purchase.

Next Guru? Dean Ornish? At least he's not listed at QuackWatch.

Thursday, August 30, 2001

And now, the coolest thing since Google.com... images.google.com

Saturday, August 18, 2001

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a new record!

The record is for "Highest Dollar Amount of Food Contained Within a Single Handheld Grocery Basket (Not Counting Such Obvious Trickery As Loading Said Basket With Vitamins Or Smoked Salmon, etc.)."

The old record was about $97ish, I think. That record fell, and fell hard, because of the tremendous amount of protein-laden items purchased for my new high-protein, high-fat, low-carb diet (see here and here).

Partial list of items purchased: steak (prime rib, ribeye, New York Strip), pork chops, chicken thighs, chicken hot wings, sausage (4 kinds), hot dogs, turkey lunch meats, halibut, eggs, whole milk, heavy cream, bittersweet chocolate*, Spam, kippers, bananas, green beans, pistachios, and a protein bar.

I know what you're thinking, and you're right, bananas do have lots of carbs; I only bought a few. I need to pick up some of those green vegetable thingies too, once I figure out which ones are the good ones.

Yes, the basket was very heavy.

The new record is $117.91.

* The dairy products are for the pudding recipe here

Gee, thanks...

When I returned home after my record shopping spree (see above) there was a "we tried to deliver sumthin' to you but you wasn't in" notice from FedEx on my door.

Thinking it was something I had recently ordered I drove the 12 miles to the "local" FedEx office.

Lucky me, it was the Mac OS 10.1 beta (build 5G15)... that I had downloaded from the developer site four days ago... so, not as such, "useful" really. Thanks anyway, I guess!

Nice Pants

** Flash Warning **

This would be funny, if it weren't so sad.

Sunday, August 12, 2001

I had to get the fast computer...

I've been too busy playing Quake at relatively high frame rates (115 fps with sound off, 80 with sound on, vertex lighting) on the new Mac to update the web log. Let's just say it makes OS X much more livable; apps launch faster, the system is more responsive everywhere, and I'm surging ahead in the rankings on the distributed.net RC5-64 encryption challenge.

Two things will improve this even further: Mac OS 10.1, due in Sept. (earlier for me though, I'm a "developer"); and more RAM.

Avid readers of this web log will recall that I ordered a 512 meg DIMM ($75!) just after ordering the Mac. I got the RAM about a week before the computer... imagine my dismay when the RAM turned out to be incompatible. Grrrr. :(

So now I eagerly await my replacement DIMM, which they claim will be compatible, because playing Quake with only 128 megs of RAM is, in a word, sub-par. (Quake3 FPS tip: "/s_chunksize 4096", default is 1024, you need to restart Quake for that to take effect, it isn't bound correctly.)

Anywho, what are the downsides of a much faster computer with a much faster hard drive? Well, you can accidentally delete 5,000 files in a couple of seconds, for example. :(

There I was, minding my own business, writing a Perl program and needed to have the date in a variable which would then be used to create a directory (ala: somedir/08_2001/081201/). Having not written anything in Perl for, like, a couple of months, I made the rookie mistake: $d1 = `date +%m_%Y`; and neglected to chop my variables, thusly: chop $d1;.

What this means is that I ended up with a suspicious looking directory ("08_2001?") which had a linefeed and a "/" in the name. Attempting to delete it, recursively, of course failed to delete the offending directory but did, naturally, start slashing through the root dir ("/") like a tornado ripping through a trailer park. (I eventually deleted the parent directory to remove it.)

My reaction time wasn't quite as good as it should have been, since it was about 1:30 am, and I missed the Control key once or twice; which didn't help. The damage? Happily the system files are owned by root so I don't think I lost any of those (and that's what gave me a little clue that something was amiss). Unfortunately, the "/Applications" directory was not so lucky. (I would like to thank the 2,670 files and seven applications in "Apps by Stone Design" for taking one for the team). I lost all the apps from "A" to "L", which was at least 5,000 files in about 2 seconds. Yowsa!

I recovered quickly though because of the heavy redundancy (read: clutter) on my drives. I've got the same crap in about 4 places since I've been doing a lot of computer and drive swapping lately. So I am once again editing this in BBEdit 6.1, and listening to iTunes, and considering "chown root"ing everything in "/Applications."

Sunday, August 5, 2001

Erm... well I guess Snort is working. :)

I've seen no traces of the CodeRed worm on my Mac, other than a boatload of ARP requests. I'm tempted to turn on my webserver for a bit just to see if anything shows up. Since port 80 is currently dead to the world I don't think Snort will even see anything.

In any event, I loaded the new Snort rules on my Mac (Ha! OS X baby!). Specifically the CodeRed rules, and lo and behold I saw some alerts! Unfortunately, they were caused by viewing _this_ webpage, because of the code below... :( (that was before I hacked up the code a bit, it doesn't trigger anymore)

So, anywho, the ARP traffic, which is the source of Das Blinken Lights on the cable modem, is caused by the infected machines on my network trying to hit non-existent addresses, which causes the upstream router to send out an ARP request (according to some dude on Slashdot).

Sure getting a shitload of ARPs today. Not too much of a speed hit though (only about 1k/sec according to NetStatInDock.)

Help rid the net of the MickeySoft Menace!

It seems like we're well into Round 2 of the CodeRed worm. I've had 130 hits on one of my servers and this domain has had 123 unique hits. But, this server (which hosts 345 websites!) has had a total of 38,736 hits.

There are two strains now. One looks like this:

164.73.191.6 - - [20/Jul/2001:05:38:42 -0500] "GET /default.ida?NNNNNNNNNNNNN... (etc)...NNN%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801% u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u9090%u8190%u00c3%u0003%u8b00% u531b%u53ff%u0078%u0000%u00=a HTTP/1.0" 404 284

The new one looks like this:

61.43.209.44 - - [05/Aug/2001:01:14:09 -0500] "GET /default.ida?XXXXXXXXXXXXX... (etc)...XXX%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801% u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u9090%u8190%u00c3%u0003%u8b00% u531b%u53ff%u0078%u0000%u00=a HTTP/1.0" 404 284

You can now do cool things like this:

http://infected_system/scripts/root.exe?/c+dir+c:\

That will give you a directory of their C: drive; how quaint! Now are you going to patch your IIS server? Hmmmm?

You can do your part by sending in your logs. Of course, running Apache is a good way to avoid any problems as well.

Saturday, August 4, 2001

It's almost here! Wooooooooo!

Scan Activity Date/Time Comments
Arrived at FedEx Ramp MINNEAPOLIS MN 08/04/2001 06:07 Woohoo!

Wednesday, August 1, 2001

 Red Light Special... 

It has come to my attention that there will be a charity car wash next Thursday in St. Cloud from 11am to 1pm. The charity is currently unknown but I urge you to give your support to this worthy cause.

Location: Sugar Daddy's parking lot
Washers: topless strippers*

I knew I could count on your support. Thank you.

* Rumour has it that they are also looking for some additional women to volunteer at the event, so if you can possibly talk any hot chicks you know into washing cars topless please do so. Also, send them to my house. My car is very dirty, and has been a bad, bad boy.

Saturday, July 28, 2001

Welcome to the 20th freakin' century

Here goes nuthin'... yep, it worked. I just spent another $103.50; but what's neat about that is that I renewed my car registration in 5 minutes on a Saturday night at 11pm while listening to "Rock Me Amadeus" on the MP3 player. Sweet.

Momentarily I will send in my dentist bill, this wouldn't generally warrant a web post, not that anything here really does, but it's the amount that is important: $42.

Quite the little spending spree I'm on these last couple of days.

Paging Dr. Zauis, paging Dr. Zauis...

So I went to see The Ape Movie today. It was pretty good. Since you may not have seen it yet I'll try not to spoil the ending. (But ya probably have a good idea how it's gonna end anyway).

Stop me if you've heard this before...

"Two apes walk into a bar and sit down next to Marky Mark.

Ape #1 says to Ape #2: See that guy, he's the dumbest human I've ever seen.
Ape #2: What do you mean?
Ape #1: Well, he had a chance to shack-up with the hot blonde chick but he was too stupid
Marky Mark: Yeah, that was a monumentally dumb move."

(there's a chance that that will make more sense if you've see the movie)

Yikes!

Here it is the 28th of July already and I didn't mention Sandy B.'s birthday back on the 26th. Oh wait a minute, yes I did. Yeah. (edit, edit)

Friday, July 27, 2001

So that's where all my money goes!

This post was originally going to have a nice little table comparing my current Mac to my potential new Mac with a feature by feature rundown showing how much faster and neater the new Mac would be, but, since I've just agreed to sell my current Mac to my boss and have already placed my order for the new Mac at the Apple Store I guess I'll just give a quick overview.

I decided to skip on the combo DVD/CD-RW because: (a) I can play DVDs on my TV via the S-video out on the PowerBook, (2) for $150 I can buy a "real" DVD player, (c) the combo drive burns CDs at 8x, the CD-RW does 12x. I bumped the HD up to 60 gigs 'cuz the 40 gig was 5,400 RPM; the 60 is 7,200 RPM (so it's 50% bigger and 33% faster).

When everything's installed in the new Mac I'll have 640 megs of RAM and 87 gigs of drive space, the ability to turn the Mac into a wireless base station, much better video performance (with the ability to upgrade to a GeForce 3), gigabit ethernet (which wins me nuthin', basically, but it's there), and a CPU that's minimally twice as fast (maximally about 50x faster on AltiVec-type stuff) and on a faster bus.

To sum up: this afternoon I spent $2k online. I justify the expense thusly: I was going to spend $800 on the old machine anyway (upgrade + CD-RW), which would then be near the end of it's upgrade path; the new Mac will be 1/2 paid for within a week and completely paid for by other money coming in over the next month or two, not counting my paycheck; and, basically, I kinda wanted a new machine, so there.

Thursday, July 26, 2001

...and she _still_ won't return my calls... :)

Happy B-day Sandy!

Looking over that list of Ms. Bullock's TV shows and movies at IMDB I note that I have seen 28 of the 37 titles listed. Four of the top five listings are actually still in production, or haven't even started production yet, so that brings the total possible down to 33, which means I've seen about 85% of them. Add two out of three TV guest appearances and the percentage is 83%.

I reckon that three of those movies could be found easily at the video store, which would get me to 91.667%. The ones that are difficult to find are "Making Sandwiches", "Working Girl (TV)", and "Ruby Wax Meets...".

I have not seen: 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, 14, 32, and the "Ruby Wax" episode. I have 15 of those on DVD, or Laserdisc, or tape.

So: (a) Sandy Rules!, (b) I am a loser.

Tuesday, July 24, 2001

The Waffle King

I am seriously waffling on buying one of the new "Quicksilver" PowerMacs that were announced at MacWorld Expo last week. The thing that's pushing me near the edge is the trade-in program at PowerMax. That would allow me to quickly unload my current Mac (G3/350) for a bit less than eBay prices (with a lot less hassle) and buy a shiny new 733 or 867 MHz box.

I've sent my specs to PowerMax and I'm waiting for their quote. If it's sufficiently lame I may just spend my "tax relief" on a G4/500 upgrade and call it a day.

Sunday, July 22, 2001

No-unforseen-vehicle-maintenance-expenses: Day 12

If I recall correctly it was July 10th when I spent approximately $4 on some Professional Strength Rearview Mirror Adhesive and a Red Devil mini glass scraper.

I needed these things because, after spending $1,287.12 on my 90k mile maintenance (which normally wouldn't include the highly expensive timing belt replacement and "while we've got it apart how about a new water pump"), and then spending $296.88 on the rear brakes (which the dealer said would cost about $550, hmmm...), the rearview mirror just decided to fall off -- lest I get complacent, now that all my maintenance was up to date.

At this point, I have the glue. Now the instructions say to mark the glass on the outside, scrape off the old glue, clean the area with alcohol, apply the activator to the windshield, let dry for 2 minutes, apply the adhesive to the metal button (from the mirror), stick it to the windshield, hold firmly for one minute, allow to set for 15 minutes, and, finally, attach the mirror to the button.

This is all fine and dandy except for the fact that the aforementioned metal button on the mirror appears to require a special tool, should you wish to remove it, which I did.

Having read that reattaching these mirrors is sometimes a dicey affair I reckoned I should go by the book as much as possible and figure out how to remove the button, rather than be forced to hold the entire mirror assembly perfectly still for several minutes while the glue dried. (I'm betting the excitement of waiting for the glue to set would wan very quickly.)

In order to move the story along I'll skip over all the places where you can't find this tool... which is apparently everywhere. I suspect the Audi dealer may have one but they close at 1pm on Saturdays so screw 'em.

Anywho, my quest for The Tool lead me to one of the local auto glass repair shops. I figured they'd have this mystical tool, which I could borrow, and then I'd beat that damn button -- it was the principle of the thing.

Alas, it would appear that they (Harmon AutoGlass) don't have the tool either, but they have a nice way around it...

I walked into the office, mirror in hand, and indicated I was trying to take the sucker apart. The receptionist told me to drive around to the service bay. Not wanting them to actually do the attaching, I walked around, mirror in hand. The tech looked at the mirror and told me to drive around. I drove around...

I watched the technician mark the window and scrape off the old glue. When it became apparent that he wasn't going to remove the button from the mirror I wandered back to the waiting room. Not one minute later the tech came up front and told me it was done. The deuce you say!

So, to recap, I had spent a fair amount of time trying to remove this button, and another chunk of time looking for a tool to remove the button. In the end the technician just grabbed a glue dauber, gave the button a coat of glue and stuck it to the windshield. Elapsed time: approximately 3 minutes.

The kicker: apparently this didn't cost anything. I say apparently because (a) the receptionist just sent me back to the service bay, (b) the tech stuck the mirror on and said "you're done", (c) I drove off. Now, perhaps I was supposed to drive around front and ask "How much?", but it didn't seem that way to me.

I'm unconcerned though, because I had previously decided that whichever glass company helped me remove that damn button would get my business whenever I needed any sort of auto glass repair. Abra lost because their auto glass installers are all mobile. Harmon won because they have an actual shop and they just up and fixed it (for free, I think).

I do have a couple of minor rock chips in my windshield which I will get fixed at Harmon because of their good customer service... but I won't do it for at least another 18 days, because I'm trying to see what it's like to go 30 days without spending any money on the car (not counting gas, of course).

Curse you Reese Witherspoon!

It would sadden me that the best movie I've seen in about a month was Legally Blonde, if it wasn't such a damn good picture.

The Amazing Kreskin

Again, for the benefit of those not present, let me state that on Friday I predicted that I would spend "about $80 at Byerly's" on the way home from work.

The results are in: I spent $79.75; which, I think you'll agree, is "about $80."

Thank you.

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

See the Ball, Be the Ball

In case you missed it -- which you probably did -- it has now been established, without a shred of doubt, that the "King of the Company Picnic," was, in fact, me. Allow me to recap...

Of course, every silver lining has a cloud. That cloud is not the color of the Game Boy Advance, which I will get to in a minute, no, the cloud is the lack of a convenient backlight switch (or, for that matter, a backlight at all).

The color is fuschia -- more commonly known as pink.

* technically there were a couple of other prizes that were better. The owner of "most of the company" made up some prizes on the spot, e.g., a party for you and 10 friends on his boat, and (4) fourth-row, center court tickets to a Timberwolves game. Those things only last a day though; they don't compare to the long-lasting joy of your very own Game Boy.

Bad Houseguest!

It seems that somebody glossed over an important section of the Big Brother 2 rulebook. The somebody: common street thug Justin. The rule: don't hold a knife to another houseguest's throat and threaten to kill her.

The thug is now out of the house, once again walking the streets. (I am unconcerned 'cuz I can get stun guns and pepper spray cheap.)

Monday, July 9, 2001

Jiminy Christmas! An elusive Monday post...

This here is pretty entertaining... "like a shoal of Argument Fish being followed by a Truth Shark" -- nifty.

A clean remote is a happy remote

I finally got fed up with my universal remote the other day. The channel up and down buttons wouldn't work for shit unless you pressed 'em really hard; I had been tuning by number for many moons.

The proper solution for this is, of course, to take the remote apart and blast it with TV tuner cleaner, dry it off, and reassemble. The issue is usually some sort of build-up betwixt the buttons and the circuit board.

I was expecting, perhaps, some dust/powder on the circuit board, not "a shitload of goo" inside the remote. Near as I can figure this used to be some sort of glue which was used to hold the thing together, now it was covering just about the entire circuit board -- I was amazed that any buttons worked at all.

So anywho, blasting the circuit board with the tuner cleaner brought up another good point -- use the straight stuff, not the cleaner and lubricant. Otherwise you'll get a nice coating of oil over everything, but it will help dissolve the glue.

Not knowing where the good tuner cleaner was, I took the bull by the horns and grabbed the Dawn. And a toothbrush.

When cleaning your circuit boards with dishwashing liquid and a toothbrush always be sure to brush up and down, not side to side, and spend at least 30 seconds in each quadrant.

After brushing rinse throughly under warm running water, dry carefully, and reassemble.

It is, you see, all very simple. The remote now works like a champ.

The only problems I had were (a) getting the damn remote to snap back together correctly, and (b) losing a $1,000,000 bet (with myself) that I couldn't find the reprogramming codes on the internet in less than 5 minutes -- it took me less than 30 seconds.

Ooooooh! Trifecta!

More lists than you can shake a list at.

Saturday, July 7, 2001

Pesky Italians! (and movie news)

I think I've had quite enough of these people hitting the site every day checking up on MP3s here. Since I've just removed the Alyson Hannigan song I suspect it will only be a day or two before I drop out of their MP3 database. (Go here if you want the song.)

Speaking of Alyson Hannigan... American Pie 2 will hit the theatres on August 10th. I saw the new preview yesterday and it looks like it'll be a very cool movie (assuming you liked the first one, of course).

Speaking of Shannon Elizabeth, and Jason Biggs, and Seann Scott... they'll also be in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back opening on August 24th. I saw the preview for that yesterday too and it's fucking hilarious! Here are some (different) trailers and video clips.

Sunday, July 1, 2001

Brrrr!

It's a cool 76 degrees with 40% humidity inside the apartment today. This is the first time it's been below 80 in what seems like forever. I don't think it's been below 86 in the last week -- which means it's usually been 88-90.

Did this blast of arctic air come from a new air conditioner from the apartment manager? No... but I did get a different 25 year old A/C that doesn't work, much like the last one.

Did this cool breeze come from a new air conditioner that I purchased myself? No... but my heat tolerance is just about used up. I spent a bit of time searching for townhouses/cheap houses on the web yesterday -- houses with functional central air conditioning! This just convinced me that (a) buying a window A/C would be a lot cheaper, and (b) houses are more expensive than I want them to be. I've done quite a bit of A/C shopping online lately too.

So, how is it that I'm not the least bit concerned that I may spontaneously burst into flames today? It got cool outside, that's why.

My apartment is situated such that it gets no decent amount of airflow and a hell of a lot of sunlight. Adding insult to injury, the walls are brick and I'm pretty sure that they hold the heat overnight until the sun is ready to hit them again in the morning. I went to a late movie last night, got back at 12:30 and it was still 90 degrees in the apartment -- the windows were open and it was 70 outside.

Now I am prepared to spend actual cash for a new A/C, though not quite enough to get what the apartment really needs (20,000+ BTUs), but enough to make a serious dent in the temp and humidity. I haven't decided which one yet, but this is a good place to do some comparisons (if you can stand all the damn X-10 ads).

Sunday, June 24, 2001

More Wild Kingdom fun...

A few weeks ago I woke up and glanced over at the cup of water on my "nightstand" (aka cardboard box near the bed). As I watched, a disturbingly large black ant appeared and proceeded to make a few laps around the rim of the cup -- stopping occasionally to lick something apparently nutritious.

Eventually the ant tired of this and wandered off. I washed the cup, a lot.

This morning I woke up and found an ant floating in the cup. Again, I washed the cup thoroughly. (I generally don't drink from the cup in the morning anyway, which is probably a good thing.)

I believe I have devised a solution for this problem: "the Ant Moat".

The Ant Moat can be most easily constructed by filling a circular jello mold with water. Simply place your water glass in the center and rest easy.

If you find you have ants worthly of winning an Olympic swimming event, you may feel free to fill the moat with flaming kerosene; just don't come crying to me when you accidentally set your flannel PJs (and house) on fire.

"Showers With Mice" (the direct-to-video sequel of "Dances With Wolves")

I seems like it was a couple of weeks ago -- probably because it was -- that the wall of my shower unexpectedly caved in... although, on second thought, the fact that the soap dish spontaneously fell off the aforementioned wall about nine months ago should have been a clue that something wasn't quite right.

The wall of the shower was constructed of a rotten sheet of plywood (or similar pressboard type stuff), a layer of grout, and a bunch of six-inch square ceramic tiles.

Now, I don't know about you, but if you want to build a wall that's gonna last you don't make it out of wet, rotten wood.

There is also the theory that the wood became rotten from water seeping through cracks in the grout; but I wouldn't put anything past those construction companies.

The wall has now been rebuilt, but since I didn't watch the guy put in a fresh piece of plywood (or drywall, or whatever), I have no idea if he used the good stuff or the rotten stuff -- but it feels solid so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

So, back to the "cave-in event." I was taking a shower (duh!) and leaned against the side wall... much to my amusement a dozen tiles, and the wall, gave way and formed a "V" in the wall. Some tiles took that opportunity to fall off and into the tub. Other, more persistent, tiles, needed only minor coaxing to be removed (with my bare hands).

At this point I have a dozen tiles piled up in the back of the tub, and various bits of rotten wood clogging the drain. The water is rising ever so slightly.

I finish washing my hair and end the shower with water about ankle deep, trying not to step on too many ceramic tile fragments.

Surveying the damage later I notice a circular hole in the exposed wood and I guess, correctly, that it is the work of a mouse.

I know I'm correct because when the maintenance guy came to rip 11 square feet of tile off the wall (44 tiles) you could see the little mouse tunnels and nesting places in the insulation. Cool.

There were no mice actively in residence.

I also didn't see any mice over the week and a half that I spent taking showers with a big sheet of plastice over the wall (so it could dry out, and they could forget about it, and I could remind them, and they could come and fix it.)

As I said, the wall is now fixed -- ready for a new family of mice to set up housekeeping.

There are mice living in your walls too, by the way. Sleep well tonight.

Sunday, June 17, 2001

Going and stopping, stopping and going

For some reason unbeknownst to me a large number of people in front of me on the road today seemed to randomly have problems remembering that they were supposed to be hurtling down the highway at speeds slightly above the legal limit (like usual) and instead were slowing down and stopping for no fucking reason whatsoever.

At one point both lanes came to a complete stop for at least 5 minutes, when it cleared there was nothing there, no fender bender, no broken down vehicle... nothing!

Hey, I've got an idea! When the road is clear, let's just drive like the road is clear! I feel that this will go a long way toward improving traffic conditions. Thank you.

Saturday, June 16, 2001

Survivor "nuggets"

I saw two former Survivor non-Survivors gracing the covers of Mademoiselle and Stuff during my last trip to the store, where I picked up new sheets and new towels but stopped short of buying matching washcloths for fear of creating a dangerous precedent.

Colleen is cute as ever in Mademoiselle. Amber is much hotter than ever in Stuff. I couldn't bring myself to buy Stuff but I did flip through the relevant pages and can assure you that it'll be worth the download.

I didn't check out Mademoiselle 'cuz it's a chick mag. Besides, you can see Colleen walking, talking, and looking cute in The Animal -- where her stage direction was apparently "stand in front of the camera and look cute, occasionally we'll have you talk"; which she pulled off admirably.

With Survivor news out of the way you are now free to wait on the edge of your seat for Big Brother 2, starting July 5th.

Saturday, June 9, 2001

It's Physics, Jim!

In a heroic effort to save my own life this morning I dumped almost an entire bag of expired Dole Classic Iceberg Salad into the sink's garbage disposal. (This is in lieu of just letting it rot in the garbage and stink up the joint, or, apparently, just eating it before it expired.)

In my haste a bit too much salad (nee, lettuce) was rammed through the disposal and didn't get finely chopped (I'm guessing) and formed a fairly impressive clog in the drain pipe. Running the disposal after this only managed to force water from the left basin to the right basin. (Aha!)

After upwards of a minute of amusing myself pumping the water from one basin to the other and then watching it flow back and level out (see: Archimedes) I decided to harness the mighty hydraulic power at my disposal (ROTFLMAO!) to clear the drain.

For this trick you will need: (a) one sink drain plug or small plastic bowl, (2) a sink at least 1/2 full of water, and (c) one garbage disposal, properly installed.

As you will see, a large volume of water will move very quickly from Point A to Point B*. Point A is the basin that has the disposal, Point B is either the other sink basin, or the drain pipe, depending on how well you've sealed the opposite drain and the stubbornness of the clog. It may be necessary to shut off the disposal and let the waters recede (see: Noah) and give it another go.

So there you have it. (Well _I_ thought it was amusing.)

* This is called "bandwidth" and depends on the size of your "pipe."

Monday, June 4, 2001

There's a place for fun in your life...

Hoopy! Mall of America's future Apple store.

Sunday, June 3, 2001

e-commerce is where you find it

Here's more proof that you can find just about anything on the internet.

...and this* is what you'd get if you mixed Survivor and Big Brother together in a mansion with four porn stars and four lucky bastards off the street. There's $100,000 in prize money up for grabs. I don't know how much money the loser gets, but -- I'm pretty sure -- the money would be secondary: "so you're saying that you're going to put me in a mansion with four porn stars for three days... and I can have sex with them... and I may, or may not, win any money... where do I sign?"

That* is, unfortunately, very similar to my solution for fixing what was wrong with Big Brother in the first place, namely: no sex. My fix: 0-3 guys, 4-6 women, an ample supply of "toys" and cameras. Payout based on point standings. Points gained by variety, frequency, creativity and difficulty of various "acts." Now I feel that it would just be derivative.

There are a few other knockoffs as well.

* My webhost precludes me from linking to smut sites, but if you were to visit www (dot) pornstarsurvivor (dot) com on your own who am I to stop you?

Wednesday, May 30, 2001

I can see your house from here, 2K1

On my last visit to MapQuest I noticed that new little "Aerial Photo" tab on the map. I've been checking out the photos today and they're pretty damn spiffy.

It beats that Terraserver crap by a mile because (a) they're color pictures taken from airplanes (some of 'em, anyway) and, (b) it's really, really easy to find shit: just punch in the address.

They appear to have good coverage of the Twin Cities metro area but the outlying areas, like St. Cloud, are still black and white satellite photos.

Amazing but true!

Suddenly, and without warning, one -- nay, two -- of my CD racks have magically transformed into DVD racks!

This is fantastic! Now I can stop stacking them up by the computer. I feel like buying a DVD player to celebrate this wonderful news... and yet, I also feel like waiting a week to see how the ol' vehicle maintenance turns out.

Besides, It's more likely that I'll buy a CPU upgrade first, and keep watching DVDs on the computer.

Well now I'm concerned

Just got off the phone with the local Audi dealers. I had to call both of 'em because the first one is booked up 'til July 2nd and I felt I didn't really want to wait that long for my tuneup/maintenance -- for reasons which will be mentioned momentarily. The second dealer can get my car in next week, and will give me a loaner too!

So anywho, the deal is that my '95 90 (yes "90" is the actual model, if it was a '96 it'd be an "A4"), is due for its 90k mile maintenance. This will apparently cost about $350. This is not too bad, I'm fine with this, I am unconcerned. (This is par for the course when you call the dealer and ask for the service department and the receptionist says "Audi, Porsche, or Mercedes?")

But...

Since someone didn't bother to get the timing belt replaced back at 60k-75k I need to get that done (pronto). That'll be $650-$750ish. Waiting for it to break would cost, approximately, $3,800*. So I'm thinking "alright, let's change it, let's change it soon."

The good news is that the 90k maintenance is one of your bigger ($$) tuneups and it'll be 30k - 60k miles before the next biggy. There are smaller ones every 15k, and, of course, every 7.5k** you change oil (big whoop).

* According to dealer #1 who just rebuilt an engine with 91k miles on it after the belt broke. I was previously under the impression that it would cost me $750 and wouldn't result in engine damage -- that would be incorrect.
** This is in addition to the quart of oil added every 1k miles, naturally.

Monday, May 28, 2001

Doh!!

It would appear that I broke the link to the javascript countdown clock a few months ago when I was reorganizing the archives.

I apologize for the inconvenience. I suppose I should read the logs once in a while...

I've updated the clock to countdown to the opening of the new Hitchhiker's Guide movie. (According to countingdown.com, which has an ultra, ultra nifty Shockwave clock (note that the time will be wrong since I just lifted the link without any of the code around it (the 'now' and 'end' dates in the link are YYMMDDhhmmss, the 'event' needs to be all caps)) I'm just going to assume that they don't want me to steal the clock so I'm leaving that link pointing to their page. They've got a pretty good site, check it out.)

Man, that Java clock looks pretty lame compared to the shockwave clock! But I digress... Since I've got today off (and the next six as well) I'm now going to attempt to read The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide in one sitting.

OrionHQ.com