Category / Misc

Yeah, so I decided to move to WordPress.. as you can see. September 23, 2008 at 10:13 pm

Had problems (again) after upgrading Movable Type, and wordpress has really matured in the last couple years, with tons of cool plugins.  So I’m giving it a try.

Got a fairly decent setup similar to what I had before FAR faster then it took to do the same with MT.

The only negatives I’ve seen about WP really, are periodic security issues, which isn’t exclusive to WP.  I’ll have to make sure to keep and eye on logs and such and keep up with any updates, that’s for sure.

Temporarily disabled comments May 28, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Not that I get all that many.. but I see odd entries in apache logs and see grumblings online about a possible exploit in mt-comments.cgi to send spam again.  Just to be safe I disabled comments until it looks like it’s ok.

The HD battle.. and why I would rather see Blu-Ray win December 17, 2007 at 8:58 pm

For those who don’t know.. or just haven’t paid attention, there’s a battle going on in the marketplace right now about which format should replace the current DVD one.. the 2 competing formats are HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (HD and BD from here on out).  If you really want more info, I suggest  this page at Wikipedia as a good starting point. They have a few pages there, with a really good chart comparing HD and BD with DVD for added info. You’ll note from the linked page that there are a few other competing ideas too, and there’s downloads, but these are the 2 big dogs. I pretty much discount downloads for Hi-Def content anyway, as the data sizes for storage and the required download times just won’t really work… today.

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Thank you sir, may I have another? November 16, 2007 at 5:19 pm

I was rear-ended today.  Gee was that fun.  Most people’s first thought is probably, “eh, people get rear-ended all the time.”  Yeah, but I was going about 60mph at the time, and the idiot still managed to ram into me.


I was on my way into work around 1:45pm (hey, I was up until after 1:30am working on urgent stuff).  I entered the 805 North from 52 West, and after I looked in my rear view, I saw a commercial truck (not a big-rig, but uhaul sized or so) coming up on me fast.   He came pretty close but slowed down and fell back.  He fell back enough that I didn’t keep track anymore.  About 2 miles later, as I was approaching Miramar Way.. I had to slow down a little (maybe down to 55) due to slower cars in front of me.  There wasn’t any real traffic to speak of, but I was going to be exiting soon and wasn’t in a hurry.  The car in front of me got into the “Exit only” lane to take Miramar, and I noticed the car in front of him was an old VW (or maybe Volvo) and it was the slow car.  I was catching up to him a bit (he was a couple hundred feet ahead) when he took the 2nd lane exit to Miramar.  At this point I started accelerating again to get back up to 65, and seconds later I checked behind me again.. . lo and behold, here came the same truck from before.  I started to think something along the lines of “here comes that jackass again,” but quickly realized he was going to hit me!  I couldn’t swerve either way (short curb for exit on right, car in lane behind me a bit to the left) so I just jammed down the gas to try to minimize the speed difference.  Then he nailed me.

I don’t think the speed differential was more then 10mph… but goddamn was the hit hard.   Luckily I didn’t lose control at all, and immediately we both pulled over and stopped.  I got out figuring the back end of my car was smashed to hell, but it turns out there was almost no damage whatsoever.  I was in that fairly angry, but really shaken up mode.. so while I did get his info, I completely spaced on getting his name.  I got the insurance info and wrote down the license plate too just in case.  I didn’t feel any ill effects, nor do I yet.  I’m pretty sure I put my head against the head rest to minimize any whiplash… still a tiny part of me worried about the horror stories you hear about people who feel fine then wake up the next day with their necks killing them… hoping nothing like that happens.

Some crazy things I noticed that gave some indication of the force of the hit:
– The moon roof in my car had opened up about 4 inches.
– I had a soda can in the center console cup holders, which barely had any soda in it.. and some of that splashed out onto the gearshift.

The only visible damage:  4 nut imprints in the bumper.  2 from the license plate, 2 from wider out on his front bumper.  That and a bit of the left side of the bumper had popped out of place a bit, but it snapped right back in when I pushed on it.   Took this shot as soon as I got to work… can see the 4 bolt spots.  Part of why I took it was for a date/time stamp just in case too.

071116_140322.jpg

All in all, it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse, of course.  It’s a good thing I didn’t swerve too, I’m pretty sure that would’ve pretty much guaranteed that he still would’ve hit me, but at an angle instead of flush, which would’ve made me fishtail and lose control I’m sure.  All the drivers training (that drove me nuts at the time) that my grandfather put me through likely helped me keep my cool and maintain control too.  Thanks for that gramps. 🙂  Kudos to Toyota for building a hell of a car too.

Going to call dealer tomorrow (would’ve today but I was still really busy) and set an appointment.  I have a couple things that already needed doing, but I figure it’d probably be a good idea to have them check out the car for any damage I can’t see.  Just in case.

The Wildfires… October 28, 2007 at 9:39 pm

Might as well make a quick entry about the wildfires since everyone else has.  Wasn’t directly effected by the fires myself, other then 3 days working at home because work decided to have us stay home.  Part of it was due to the amount of people effected, part was due to the horrible air quality.  I have a lot of relatives and friends that were evacuated, at least a couple of which either just barely got to go home today, and perhaps one that hasn’t yet.  


I was able to snag the periodic mpg file from the HPWREN cameras, on Lyons Peak… well, from their archives.  I used iMovie to stitch them together and basically have a full time lapse movie from approximately noon Monday until noon Friday.  Over Tue-Wed night the fires burn right up to the structures, and the next night, you can see little flashes where the fires continually flare up a bit then die out.  Impressive really.

I haven’t put them online yet because I want to get permission from the people at UCSD first just in case.  I didn’t see anything saying the files were copyrighted at all, but figure better safe then sorry.  Will likely put on Youtube if I can, then link from here then.

The Irony February 5, 2007 at 9:32 pm

I hate how invasive advertising is getting. It’s one thing when a few product placements are done in a show or movie, in the background. But it’s becoming more and more “in your face” these days. Now we have things like idiots paid to stand by the side of the road with a big sign, because I guess billboards weren’t enough.

I have a Tivo, so I tend to skip commercials, so they’re finding other ways to get the products shoved down our throats, like the above examples. But this is just going WAY to damn far. What’s ironic is that it was advertising Pacific Law Centers, looking to represent people who have been accused of DUIs and such. Ironic in that it’s massively distracting and might itself, cause an accident or two.. especially someone who’s driving under the influence and more prone to distractions from big shiny things on the road. Notice that the signage is brightly lit and it periodically changes between 2 different displays.

Apologies for the crappy quality… whipped out my cell phone and used its camera while keeping my attention on driving at the time.

HomeNet September 13, 2006 at 9:58 am

Decided to play with my new copy of OmniGiraffe last night… so I diagrammed my home network.


Yes, I’m a geek with a few too many toys…

Um.. ouch. August 6, 2006 at 1:55 pm

For those that don’t know me.. I did some serious work on the house in July. I had a complete central air (heat and A/C) installed (which included pulling out the crappy old wall heaters, new furnace/blower, AC, ducting, the works). Then, 2 weeks later, I had my cheesy old thin, aluminum windows replaced with nice new dual-pane, e-whatever coating to cut down on heat, etc. Even had the one tiny sliding glass door in the back room redone as a window (it was too small and rarely was used anyway.. figure this is better for keeping the house heated/cooled).

I just got my first SDG&E bill the other day and for the period of 6/27-7/27 the bill came to a whopping $327!! Ouch. Now, I know that this is a good bit higher then the AC will cost me under normal usage. I saw this because I was home a full 2 weeks during July while work was being done, so that was TV/Stereo/etc on all day. There were almost 2 weeks of using the AC with the old windows that weren’t very good. There were the 2 days of the windows being replaced where, while I turned off the AC as they worked, the house warmed way up into the 90s and the AC had to work hard to cool the house back down. Not to mention those couple of VERY hot days (100+ at least once) and the several times the family was over where the sliding glass door was opened and closed tons of times as people went in and out.

So here’s hoping that from here on out, the bills won’t be too high in the Summer.. maybe $250 max. Even that’s a lot, but I’ve actually had bills hit $200 before, hell my average bill is around $160-170 due to my server that’s online 24/7, 2 tivos, etc. I did bump up my settings a degree during the day and a couple at night too. The Trane system I got has a nice thermostat that you can program each day with a time when you wake up, leave for work, return home, and go to sleep.. so the system will let the temp go up (or down for heating) when you’re gone to save some money.

For those that are curious.. I went with Air + Mechanical for the central air, and The Window Factory for the windows and am very happy with the jobs both outfits did. I would definitely recommend them to anyone looking to get either job done (and already have at work).

What’s the deal with the Bandwidth theft pic? April 2, 2006 at 3:29 pm

For those that found their way here due to seeing the bandwidth theft pic…

I’ve put into place rules which will stop people form hotlinking into images on my site. Well, it’ll let them do it, but they’ll have the following image displayed instead:

The reason I’ve done this is because I’ve got several sites linking my images and leeching my bandwidth.. and want them to stop. If you wonder what I’m talking about, Here’s a pretty good explanation of what it means and why it’s basically rude to do so.

If I have an image you want to link to, just copy it and serve it off your site yourself. If it’s from my actual photo albums.. I ask that you ask first, but odds are I won’t care.

If you read a site that you’re seeing the pic on.. mail the owner and ask them to place a copy of the real pic in their own site to serve up from there.

Gentoo rocks.. March 26, 2006 at 2:02 pm

[ Viewing: “Babylon 5 – The Complete Fourth Season” (Tony Dow) ]

The more I use gentoo, the more I like it. I’ve yet to run into a single failed build, no dependency loops, nothing. I really like the little things too.

The latest little thing I like… when running an emerge, the process automatically updates the titlebar of the term it’s running in with info. Like so…
Emerge

Simple.. but helpful and very cool. 🙂