December 2001 Archives

So, I guess I'm just a big idiot. I can't seem to figure out how the heck to get Radio to mirror to weblogger.

Plus, on Mac OS 9, it's dog slow. I know from a long time ago, it's always painful to run a webserver on a mac because connecting to localhost can take forever.

Well, John Robb said Radio would support Mac OS X, so I can only hope that it works better. I'm sure it will.

So I went to CompUSA this morning to buy a compact flash card for my new camera. Volker told me that they had 160 meg 8x cards for cheap, but the sale ended this weekend. So I trotted down there and foudn the card. It was locked in a glass case. So I tried to spot a employee to grab one for me. I couldn't see anybody that was free. So I waited. Then I spotted someone, but then they disappeared. I waited. Then I spotted a guy who looked at me, then looked away and kept going. So I waited some more. It was a really good deal. Or so I though...

I finally got a guy to get me one from the case. Then I headed to the checkout.

$192!!! No. I told the checkout person that there must be a mistake. She looked at the register and told me that must be the price. So I left, for good.

Goodbye CompUSA. You have passes Fry's as the worst place to get customer service in a techy store. I will never shop in your stores again.

Palm posts Beta version of Palm Desktop for OS X from MacSlash. What a hunk of junk. I bet they are wishing they had sold to Apple when Steve Jobs offered to buy it. Now they are dropping like a rock. Didn't they learn anything from Netscape's battle with Microsoft?

Obviously not.

I downloaded it. It worked...once. I even synched to my TiBook through IR (once). Then, it wouldn't open my datafile. What gives?

"It's only beta," you scream! "You have to send in feedback," you continue to yell at me.

Beta should mean feature complete with no show stopper bugs. I've spent plenty of time reporting bugs on software. I've sent in reports for Evolution from Ximian, a lot to bugzilla for mozilla and many others.

Helping out free software makes sense to me. Giving Palm a free test lab makes me grumble. I understand they can't test every condition before they release...but they should at least try and test as many as they can.

I guess if I can take the time here I can take the time to report it to Palm. grumble grumble grubmle...

No, not for Kat and I. Karim and Rebecca bought a house and have finally completed the mountain of paperwork, and handed over a mountain of money to get the keys (and the garage door opener) to their new house. Who do they call to help move? Well, yeah...everyone...but I'm in the set 'everyone'.

Helping people move can be okay as long as they are with it on the whole moving thing. I'm pretty confident that Rebecca has this all thought out in her head already and we are just going to load the old stuff up and she will tell us where to drop it.

Keep hope alive.

So since we are moving, it's raining of course. Not much you can do about that. Not like it would matter much since their new house is in the Twin Peaks area of SF. Fog, fog, and more fog is on their menu for the next 30 years. That is a bit pesimistic of me, it can be very nice there and I'm sure it isn't foggy every day. Just like it doesn't rain every day in Seattle ;-)

That's is the one thing about vacations that always screw me up. I eventually forget what day it is. Now, while some of you may think that is what is supposed to happen on vacations, it is very disconcerting to me. I like knowing what day it is.

Oh well. On list for today is to return Kat's Swatch and get her one she actually likes, put some shoes on, start writing my own awards system (much like "Dave" did for his Scripting Awards 2001). Of course, I'm going to use php+mysql because that's what I always use.

I'm still trying to remember the words I've been making up lately. I started a collection of "Pat Words" so I don't loose them.

Well, Team Gonzo has a streak going again. We stand currently at two weeks in a row, in the money. Next week will certainly be a challenge since Champ will be out. Yes, we have a person named Champ on our team.

We didn't come in 1st like last week, but we beat Dewey, Screwem, and Howe which is all that really matters ;-)

That isn't very nice. He is an okay kid. His movie wasn't that bad. Although, Lord of the Rings was better. (As an aside I hate it when people do that...the movies aren't even in the same area and thus shouldn't be compared. But it's their own fault for coming out so close together) Funny that I saw these back to back since I haven't read the books. No I haven't read the friggin' LOTR books. Stop looking at me like that... No I don't plan to either. I said stop that...

Anyways... Harry gets a matinee on my "Movie Ratings" scale.

A few bits: the FX reminded me of some of the redone effects for Star Wars...you know that cheesy bit with the land cruiser and C3-PO on the back. It looked like they filmed it with action figures. Well, some of the Potter FX looked like that.

To quote Kathleen, "Alan Rickman rocks!"

Okay, I'm done with "the holidays"...I can't do it anymore.  No more special food.  No more special house decorations.  No more.  Please?  Pretty please?  I need normalcy!

Oh well...not until after 1/1/2002 I'm sure.  Anyway, I've been stranded away from my fat pipe to the internet and I hate using a modem link because people like me make pages that suck to load over a modem.  But I thought I would post a quickie before we head back home today.

Finally picked up my Canon S110 digital camera.  I will have plenty of 1600x1200 pix for your consumption.  My poor 128k DSL upload limit is going to be feeling it soon.  Got Kat new tires for her Jetta.

More when I'm not hogging a phone line...

When you vote, make sure you vote for me!

That's right, "Vote Pat" is my announcement of my candidacy for President in 2008. Why 2008? Hit the link...

So I had my first problem with my Subaru. It has the stutters. I thought it might be cheap gas. It wasn't. So now it's the weekend before Christmas and nothing is going to be open until after Christmas. At least we still have Kat's car.

Being a guy I have to at least wager a guess at what is wrong. I'm guessing a fuel filter or the fuel pump. You see, Subarus have two fuel filters. At least, they used to. I found this out on my last Subaru. I think mine does.

I guess I will find out.

Finally got to see The Lord of the Rings. Wow. On the "Movie Ratings" scale it gets a full price. A lot of people have described it as "epic" and they are right. It can move a bit slow at times, but you have to remember...it is epic. It makes Gladiator epic look, well...not so epic.

Go see it. It's well worth it. Although...no large sodas. It's long.

Say congrats to the Winter 2001 Mayflower Trivia Champions! Team Gonzo placed first on the night that counted. Feels good. No insomnia tonight!

Christmas parties. Holiday parties. Whatever. Kat's company party was last night. No more until the real thing. Even then it's going to be crazy. Christmas Eve at my parents. Christmas Morning at Kat's parents. Christmas night at my aunt and uncle's place in Folsom. Yes, the Folsom with the Prison.

You can see the gaurd towers from their street. The one thing they have going for them, is that if anyone escapes they get away from Folsom as fast as they can. No reason to hang out around the prison...plus they usually escape through drainage pipes which take them miles away anyway.

I've never been a gun-ho Christmas guy. Let me re-phrase that. I've never been into all the stuff that Christmas is supposed to be about. I'm into gift giving and egg nog though. I feel kinda bad for participating in a totally hijacked holiday...and then I open some presents and get over it ;-)

"God I love the smell of commerce in the morning!" -- Broadie

So I finally got around to putting in the no-smart-tag-meta-tags in the weblog template.

In case you have been living under a rock, use this:

<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" />

Like anyone is really going to "re-write" the links in my weblog...oh well. Knowledge is power and I have just crushed Microsoft. In a very small and insignifigant way that they will never know about. Talk about covert ops!

Okay...try to sleep. It will help. ARGH! The Flying Elves™ are back! Run away! Run away!

Figures. It's not even the middle of hell week and I'm already having trouble sleeping. Who ever said that December is a slow month for advertising obviously never had our clients.

I've been reading a lot of weblogs lately. I follow a lot of links from "Dave" because he usually points out the cool stuff. Kinda like what "Slashdot" used to do.

Oh well, what better time than the present to make lots of shortcuts to put in my news items and read Manila documentation to make better use of those crazy macros.

Microsoft brought their "classic" version of IE up to par with what we have been playing with on Mac OS X for a while now. That's cool. It's fast and probably one of the most standards complaint browsers on the planet. I know it kicks ass over IE 6 on the PC. Mozilla is a close second, but since it's still a "moving target" they may take the #1 spot before they are done.

I know I've filled my bug reports. Have you?

So my company takes the week between Christamas and New Years off. While this may sound great, it really makes the week before suck because we have to have everything for the year done a week early basically. Sure nobody works on Christmas Day, but I'm sure a lot of people are back it the day after or the day after that. Not us. We do all our work ahead of time.

Bah humbug.

I guess I have conditioned myself so well that no matter how much X-Files sucks, I always change the channel to Fox Sunday night at 9pm.

The real problem is that I don't turn on something else, or even just turn the TV off. Well, Rebecca was over tonight and she still likes it, so I guess I have an excuse...for this week at least.

Why can't West Wing be on every night?

So it is now the Holiday Party Season. We had our office party Friday night. Kat and I both had co-worker parties last night and went to both. Steve is having some kind of German food-fest tonight.

Let's face it. I'm tired.

I crossed four bay area bridges yesterday. A new record for me. I crossed the Golden Gate on the way to Foster City to pick up Adam. Then we went over the HWY 92 bridge, the one that goes from Foster City to Hayward, on our way to Hayward amazingly enough. Of course, we were really on our way to Livermore but we had to stop and buy some stuff in Hayward first, because we are freaks. On the way home from Livermore I crossed the Richmond/San Rafael bridge. But wait you say, that's only three bridges. Well...I wasn't done yet... The two parties last night were in Berkeley and San Francisco. We went to the Berkeley party first, then took the Bay Bridge to SF.

Do not take the Bay Bridge into SF on Saturday night. Ever.

Then of course the SF party is in a place with no parking. So we parked in Union Square and took the cable car. Neither Kat or I have ever ridden the cable cars. It was exactly like I expected it to be. Lots of tourists on a creaky old cable car and all of us being amazing that the thing even moves.

Time to crash on the futon and watch some football.

Actually, the questions are getting easier and we are doing better. It's just that the other teams are doing better than us. Bastards.

We spelled accordion wrong tonight too. I guess Kathleen can't make fun of our public school education tonight since she is the one who proofed that question.

We also didn't know that the theme song to Boston Public, which I'm kinda proud of.

I finally put all the Vegas stuff into a story. "Vegas Baby!"

Welcome. This is my new weblog. It should be faster. It runs on the safe software, but it's a pay service so hopefully there aren't as many freeloaders sucking up bandwidth ;-)

Fixing applescript...testing

Whew. Back from Vegas. There is so much stuff that I'm trying to put it all down in a story.

Here is the short version: We didn't win any money.

Behind Enemy Lines...not that great. On the "Movie Ratings" scale it gets a rental. I went to get out of watching The Sound of Music on TV, but also because Owen Wilson usually does a pretty good job. He was okay...a bit too much like a Luke Skywalker character...not as in Jedi, but as in whiny brat.

All I know is that movies need to cost less.

Wow. A vacation. I think I'm finally ready to take some time off. It's seemed a little forced lately...and it was. I either had to start using vacation time or start loosing it. Anyway, Vegas here we come!

Staying at the Bellagio and we are going to see Cirque de Solei doing their "O" show. Whatever that is. People say it's good. We'll see. For what it cost for tickets it better be good.

More when I get back...