September 2001 Archives

Well, I actually have a good excuse...sorta.  Kat is running the Bridge to Bridge run.  Those are the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge incase you were wondering.  So the race starts at 9am, but she had to be there at 8am, it will take her about an hour from the starting line, it will take about 15 minutes for her to get to the starting line I'm sure.

It also happens that we switched T1 providers at work.  So even though things were well planned, somethings didn't go as smooth as we would have liked.  But it was done Friday afternoon so as not to mess with anyone in too bad.  Our mail server outside the firewall didn't want to relay mail from the new firewall IP and some of the cgi programs on the new web server weren't executable.  I fixed those two things since I have, oh...two hours to blow here in the city with nobody I know awake...

Later today I drive down to Menlow Park to pick up some gear for piratehaven.org from Kuch and of course, meet up with a bunch of stinky linux hippies...err..friends.

I can't believe I'm missing football for all this...

No song this weekend either.

MTV sucks. It's been said many times before, I know. But damn...does it have to suck as bad as it does? Carson Daily...what's that all about?

No song of the day today either. Bands of the moment. Deltron, Automator, Handsome Boys Modelling School. Rap is my flava du jour. I need to get back into electronica and heavy rock ;-)

Well...so far so good...nothing disasterous yet.  Of course, I did just hear that non of the "high level executives" have seen the damn thing.  So, when they do I'm sure the shit will hit the fan and we will have to start all over from the begining and have it done in two days ;-)

Yeah...right.

Talk about a downward spiral...

Last week was one worse day after another. Finally the weekend came. Now Monday was worse than Friday.

You never want to hear, "We had a bit of a miscommunication," on Monday morning. Of course, you never really want to hear it, unless it was about getting shorted some cash or something...

I can't wait for this project to be over.

Josh "got" to stay late tonight and finish up some loose ends. I think they were afraid to ask me to stay. I almost feel bad for not offering, but this project has already sucked about 70 hours a week out of me for the last two weeks.

My work/life balance is unbalanced. I'm a bit unbalanced, but that is besides the point.

No song of the day today.

So I've maxed out my vacation time. I am unable to acrue vacation time at this point. So, basically every pay period I am loosing money.

This, in a word, blows.

It is mostly my fault for not managing it properly and letting it get to this point. But now I need to prety much take a day a week off from now until the point where I don't work at Freestyle anymore.

I can deal with 4 day work weeks. I don't know if Freestyle can though. Of course, some might say I have an over-inflated sense of self importance with regard to my work at Freestyle. Life goes on without me...cuz I ain't got nobody... (You see, that from 'Just a Jigalo' from David Lee Roth...it's funny...almost)

So, if you have any ideas of a way I could blow some vacation time, let me know.

Today was good. A nice relaxing Sunday is perfect for a hang over. Somehow a bottle of 14 year old scotch get emptied last night. I was smart and got a ride home (thanks again py) and kat took me back to get my car today.

I feel kinda bad, as I wanted to help Steve out with his move...but man I didn't really want to get out of bed until about 9:30 this morning, and even then I wasn't too perky. My arms were sore from arm wrestling. I'm sure a lot of the women there looked at it as some "male bonding" thing. I don't buy it. But of course, I'm male, so my perspective may be scewed. Who knows.

Did okay on the football pool. Starting to climb out of my first week hole.

Song of the day time! They Might Be Giants have a new album out and this is my favorite track, so far: Man It's So Loud In Here [mp3]. The album is called Mink Car [amazon].

Okay, so first off, it's the song of the day. Don't Stop [mp3] by atb from the album Movin' Melodies [amazon].

The last song of the day, Alive from P.O.D., took me a while to fully understand. But I get it now. It's about God. Okay, so I'm slow. I tend to focus on the music before the lyrics. But after I started going through the lyrics it just kinda hit me.

I feel so alive
For the very first time
I can't deny you
...
Now that I see you
I could never look away

I guess I just never expect that type of music from heavy rock.

I also got stopped in the Safeway parking lot today. The lady in the other car asked me if I knew where the cluster of stars on the front of my car came from. I own a Subaru, so I knew it was a constellation and told her that. But the Subaru.com FAQ has a bit more information: "SUBARU" is a Japanese word meaning "unite," as well as a term identifying a cluster of six stars, which the Greeks called the Pleiades - part of the Taurus constellation. According to Greek mythology, Atlas' daughters turned into the group of stars. In 1953, five Japanese companies merged to form Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. The new corporation adopted the "Subaru"
cluster of stars as the offical logo for its line of automobiles.

She said it was the "southern cross". I had no idea what she meant by that. There are a number of references to 'southern cross', one being the Confederate flag. Somehow I think she was thinking about something else. But as soon as I said, "yeah, it's a constellation," she left me alone. So, that works for me.

Things didn't go so well today.  I should say they started out really, really bad and got better.

Today's song is Alive by P.O.D.

I feel so alive.  For the very first time. I can't deny you.

Tomorrow I hang out with Kar and drink all day.  I'm definately looking forward to that! I'm not an alcoholic, I'm just hungry. What you call the disease, I call the remedy.

Nothing to see her. Carry on.

This editorial is the scariest thing I have read in a while.

I hope people come to their senses when it comes to giving away your freedoms for nothing. They say it is for your safety. Yet, nothing they take away from us will stop terrorists.

We have laws in place. We have security standards that were in place. These precautions were not being utilized.

Asking the general public about back doors in cryptography...what the hell is that all about. You might as well run a poll about quantum mechanics while you are at it. 91% of Americans believe that the speed of light should lowered.

So "the project" is fairly close to either being done, or being done over. The "final" version is up on their staging server to check out. We'll see what they say. I already know some of the issue they will have, but we can't do anything till we actually hear them.

There will undoubtedly be a number of internal meetings to try and figure out what it was so hellish. We all know why, but don't want to say the reason: money.

It feel pretty good to get so much done though. Of course it would have been nicer to have a schedule that didn't need 70 hours a week from me to get it done. But that's just me not being a "team player" ;-)

Today's song is P.O.D. - Southtown. It got me through today.

So since I've run out of interesting things to write, I will steal the Song of the Day idea from Dave.

Today's song is Madness [mp3] from the Deltron album 3030 [amazon.com].

It's not about seperation, it's about the population.

Even if you don't like rap, the haunting chorus sample will strike a chord.

I'm caught in the city madness.

weblog posts about my life seem a bit silly right now. Maybe it's also because I don't really have anything going on.

I worked all weekend on the "the project" and even though it's Monday, it feels like Thursday. Man, Wednesday will really suck.

I found out my grandma got in a minor car accident. She's fine, but her car door got all bent to hell.

I've been really bad about calling my mom. I don't want to just call up and complain about stuff though. If I don't have any news for mom, why would I have any for here?

Anyway, hope everyone is okay...

Mark Morford writes for the SF Chronicle.  He write in an odd, rambling fashion.  Of course I love his writing.  He wrote a story that I think everyone should read:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2001/09/14/notes091401.DTL

I just a report that the CNN footage of celebrations in the West Bank were actually from 1991.  I saw that there are telemarketing scams to target people willing to make donations.  I hope one of those fuckers call me.  There are also email scams going around.  Again, bring it this way scumbags.

Of course, in a nation of over 300 million people there are bound to be a tiny portion who would do shit like this.

The gub'ment wants backdoors built into encryption.  Whatever.  Hopefully someone will point out the million other ways people can transfer information securely.  In the book Crytponomicon, and if you haven't go read it right now, there is an "encryption" algorithm that you use a deck of cards for.  I challenge the gub'ment to put a backdoor on that.

Note to Congress:  Why don't you jackasses focus on the tast at hand and worry about all your anti-civil liberties actions later, when they can be viewed for the crap that they are?  You are playing into the hands of terrorists.

I can hear a jet going by overhead. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but since all the airports around the country are closed I guess it is a big deal. Probably either something going back to NY or the F-16s that are patrolling all the major cities on the west coast.

Anyway, Kat is off at dog class tonight. I hope it gave her a chance to not think about all the horrible crap that has gone on. If only for a little bit. One can only go on so long seeing the horrid images before you just can't take it anymore.

I hit that point tonight. I just started crying while watching the news. It just got to the point where it was too much for me to take anymore. Hearing about the people on the flight who probably took the plane back from the hijackers. Jeez. I can only hope I would be able to do something like that in a similar situation.

My break tonight was to turn off the TV and go read JoelOnSoftware. It's a great site with tons of great articles to read, plus a weblog.

Lately I have been bitching about how bad I thought I had it. The knot of stress that was sitting in my stomach has vanished. Replacing it is shock. Complete and utter shock.

I'm watching Bush on TV right now. As expected he pretty much called open season on anyone who has ever had anything to do with terrorism. What out Afghanistan, you've got bigger problems than the mujahadeen to deal with now.

The worst attack on the United States happened this morning.  For the first time in my life I know that this is a day that I will remember for the rest of my life. The loss of life is unknown, yet sure to be staggering.

Whoever did this will pay, and pay dearly.  Whoever helped these people will pay, and pay dearly.  This was not an act of terrorism, this was an act of war and I would be shocked if we didn't respond in kind.

This is a very dark day and there is only more bloodshed to come.

So this weekend has come and gone. As I look back, a lot actually happened. Kat's parents came down and took us out to dinner for kat's birthday, which is on Monday. We played two softball playoff games today. We won the first, and lost the second (too bitter to write about that yet). We saw the San Francisco Grand Prix with Lance "I'm on my bike 6 hours a day" Armstrong. We watched a lot of football. I fucked up both my hands (softball again, why do I even play?). I'm doing lousy in the football pool. Of course it's only the first week, but still...

I get to look forward to client feedback on "the project" I'm working on. That should go over well. Yes, that was indeed sarcasm. We still need to go see The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. I was going to try and finish my writing for Kim's webzine but I would have no motivation and the only writing I do anymore is here because it doesn't matter as much if the quality is low. Which it is ;-)

I certainly do complain a lot for someone in a pretty good position. At least I don't like in a 6th alley...I'll quit bitching now.

Why the hell is a Work story going up on Saturday? Because I'm not working this weekend and that sure was good news to me. "The Project" went "beta" on Friday. It was end of day so there will be no major fallout until Monday. So I can relax a bit. Finally.

Of course, this is just the calm before the storm. I anticipate major non-happiness when we finally get feedback. But that's just because I'm an optimist.

Here's to a relaxing weekend.

You know you're playlist is a bit odd when you go from Skinny Puppy to Wang Chung. What's next? Oh, Def Leppard...great. What the hell is wrong with me?

This has nothing at all to do with South Park. It is the only title I could think up though. I'm so brain dead right now I'm amazed I can type. Although Py is here and I'm sure he can hear me repeatedly going to the delete key way too often. That doesn't seem like a grammatically correct sentence. Oh well.

Trivia night. Champ was out with a summer flu...and we, or should I say I, choked. I talked Kat into coming and then I didn't listen to her enough. Although it was give and take...I didn't listen to her on one and we got it right. But then there were others where...let's just say I will need to buy flowers again real soon. This is also why I hate being the person to write down the answers. But, I can deal with it, so I don't care that much. We were only 4 points out of the money tonight. Not bad for having our ringer out.

I'm also pretty brain dead from "the project" I'm working on. Everyone has pretty much checked out. Quality is a non-issue. I've talked about this before, but it is still a big part of my everyday existence, so I will continue to write about it. I also decided I'm not a bitchy trouble maker. Everyone else of the project bitches just as much as I do. So at least I'm not alone.

It sucks not being able to be able to do what you know how to do well. That's be you. Be what you're like. And I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be doing what I'm good at...or something like that. But how do you tell someone that they are wrong when they owe you money?

That, I don't know...

So I was using some of the new Netscape 6 sidebars for CSS and HTML 4.01. Cool stuff. I figured with all the xml-rpc/soap stuff built into manila it should be cake to get my site into a sidebar.

Well...even though I found a site that Dave linked to that would build the sidebar for you, I couldn't get it to work. It simply crashes my version of Mozilla running on MacOS X. Bummer.

Maybe I'll play with it on linux and windows tomorrow.

I did do a bunch of work on that one project tonight instead of going to the Giants game. They lost 7-2. Sucks.

Is a piece of crap. A big dung heap. Sure, it was good back in the day...but that day is gone. Yet I'm still stuck having to support it because it has over 5% market share. Big deal. It's not like people using Netscape 4.x are used to things actually working!

Mozilla/Netscape 6.1 is pretty good. At least it supports most of CSS1/2/P and has sweet Javascript 1.5 built-in. I took a look at this site today in Netscape 4.7 for the first time. Wow. Suck city! I could tune down a bit on the theme here and there...but I like this theme...so screw Netscape 4.x. Not like I'm selling sock puppets in this site...

Oh, and if any of this came as a revelation to you...I'm sorry.

Ha! You though this would be a rant, with a title like that what else could it be!?!? Just a line from the James song, Sit Down.

Grab some crazy old tunes of theirs, kick back and enjoy.

The audio quality isn't that amazing, but hey, what do you want for free.

I'll save the real bad stuff for a late night rant...

The Die Hard DVD Box Set rocks. I went through all three movies in the last two days. Die Hard 3 (with a vengance) is the best of the bunch. Bruce with Samuel is a great combo.

The big pile of work that Yapp sent me continues to stare at me. I've picked at it like a kid picks at his dinner plate when there is something nasty that he doesn't want to eat on it.

The more I work on it the more frustrated I am because it is so broken. Everytime I have to test a new page I get to see first hand how broken it is.

The upside is I am getting a handle on effectively using CSS. You can use CSS very easily, but I think to use it effectively takes planning, just like anything else...

There is still one thing I can't get right though. I want to set the body margin to 0px. There are CSS hacks to get Netscape 4.x to do this, but it breaks Netscape 6.x. Imagine that. Netscape 4.x hasn't stood the test of time very well. It was developed at the crossroads of web development, so I guess it is pretty easy to see how they could have huge gapping holes in their implementation of some standards. Oh well. Soon we will be able to forget Netscape 4.

Everytime I see my buddy Dave (and his lovely wife bekki, and their adorable daughter Zoe) I usually come home with a big stack of CDs. You see, Dave works for ADA Music, which is owned by AOL/Time Warner. His job is sales. He goes to the shops in his area and lets them know what's new, what they should buy, and how much. He is really good at his job and everyone likes him. Part of his job is giving away promo CDs. They are the CDs that you buy at used music stores that have a punch through their bar code. I could tell you why, but it is too involved for this item.

Anyway, I came home with a big stack. The new Orbital CD, The Altogether, which is slated to hit US stores September 4, is awesome. It is a double disc, just to piss off all the Orbital junkies who shelled out $20+ for the import CD (read: me). If you like Orbital, you will like this.

The new Bis cd, Return to Central, is really, really good. It doesn't sound like their first album. I don't really remember their first album that much, but I know I didn't like it that much. This is really good. Even kat liked it.

Other things you might check out: Gorillaz, the new James (still an import), and the Planet of the Apes soundtrack.

Geez, it's only Saturday night and I already have a ton or work to do. Thanks Yapp.

Was gone most of the day, but I did pick up the Die Hard Trilogy DVD box set at Costco. Got through Die Hard tonight.

Also got a stack of new CDs from my buddy Dave, whose daughter just turned one. Happy birthday Zoe!

I know it's bad when I don't know if something goes in the Rant category or the Work category. I'm getting tired of ranting about work, but there if I don't let it out it get stinky really quick...and then kat starts to wonder what the smell is, and we really don't want to go there do we?

Clients will always be clients. That is the nature of clients. They will always want more than they are supposed to get for less than what they paid, and get it quicker than they were supposed to get it. When you like the client, none of these things are big problems. When you don't like the client, they become morale smashers.

When you think that the way to work is to have a strict process where every schedule is approved and every single thing signed off, that there should be none of the problems that we just discussed. When they happen anyways, things really start to fall apart.

You see, it's one thing to know that something is going to be hard and unpleasant. You know it is something that has to be done and you "buckle down" and get it done. When you think that things will be easy because of "process" and they end of being hard because of the client simply being a client, you don't feel so hot. This causes a complete lack of respect for the client, and then the work for said client suffers as a result.

C'est la vie, n'est pas?