Dido – Take My Hand

I have been sneezing all morning, ick. I don’t know why I so often wake up feeling like I have a cold.. usually it goes away by noon.

We had some Chouffe last night.. we keep putting it in the fridge to drink in the evening, then deciding we don’t really want to drink and taking it out, but of course that is bad for the beer. So finally last night we decided to drink it. This was probably not the wisest thing to do, both Myk and I were exhausted because of the lousy night sleep monday night, and drinking beer when you are tired is baaad, especially when it’s only 7:30 pm. So what happened? By 8 pm we had had 2 beers each (remember, it’s 8% alcohol Chouffe) and we were in bed sleeping. Now I am sure I have mentioned this before, but I have a *terrible* time falling asleep at night when I take naps, especially when that nap is a few hours before my normal going to sleep time. I ended up waking up around 10, cursing myself for falling asleep. I left Myk sleeping, he ended up getting up around 11:30. During this this I was very awake… it seems that I am more alert and able to get work done when my sleep schedule is irregular, I don’t quite understand this because inevitably when I have an irregular sleep schedule I actually sleep LESS than I do when I sleep normally. Maybe I am just so much of a night person that I just can’t properly function during the day no matter how much sleep I get %) Eak I lost track of what I was talking about.

Uh… Right. So I got up around 9:30 last night after a short nap and was able to get the “How-To” written for binding those other keys in Linux. It was really just a revision and addition to a page I already have up… I bound my windows keys in Red Hat back when I was using that, so I had a little section on my page for that… I pretty much just added the Debian instructions and a “FAQ” section. You can check out the page here: http://www.princessleia.com/Windowsbind.html … Myk wanted to add it to the PLUG HowTo Archive but I dunno.. it seems pretty simple, I think Myk is just overly excited because I took the time to figure out something cool, without any help.

It feels really good to get sections revised on my site.. and even better when I found my site on google searches yet again when I was looking for stuff… the search: bind windows keys and: windows keys linux has my little howto site is the first hit … it’s the second hit for: linux bind keys That’s so leet %) Maybe someone will someday have use for my site! Not that they havent in the past, I certainly don’t give myself enough credit sometimes(like when I say that my site is “little” hehe).

I decided to go to bn.com and cancel the last book on my order. It’s really a pain that they havent shipped it yet. I can do without that book (it was sorta impulse anyway)… the whole point of ordering these books before I had finished all from the last shipment was so I’d have them BEFORE I went on vacation next week, so I dont have a box of books on my doorstep for days telling the whole neighborhood that we are not home. Luckily the rest of my order was shipped on Friday so I should get it before I leave.

So after that big weekend mess playing with my lan card we ended up reinstalling debian. I am using stable now instead of testing (testing does not get consitant security updates or something apparently…). Now this wouldnt bother me much, stable is good right? Well it’s a bit quirky, especially with it’s pasting methods. I cannot seem to paste from opera into a Gnome Terminal. Now this may not be a big thing for most people, but I use Gnome Terminals (don’t have experiance with eterm, maybe i should use it… and xterm just sucks) as my main x terminal… and Opera as my primary browser.. and so of course I am going to use both these together constantly. Bleh… I’ve been opening an xterm to paste between the two … ick.

Woohoo! I just got a knock on the door (freaking because I still have my pj’s on) and I looked outside, no one there… So I opened the door and there was my box of books, yay! This is the second time the UPS guy has just knocked on the door and run off before I could even see them, they are strange like that… Growing up they’d always wait at the door for like 5 minutes, I guess they just assume no one is home… but the first time this happened it scared me… I mean someone walking up to the door, knocking on the door and when I look outside no one is there? Isn’t that a way to gain entry into an apartment for bad things?! I’m really not a paranoid person… really.

Anyway, since I am still in my pajamas I should go get showered and dressed, since it’s almost noon, gah! *wanders off*

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/1709/ <--- ahhahahahaaa
http://zapatopi.net/belgium.html <--lmao %)

Peter Murphy – Things To Remember

cdtool rocks %) Myk showed this to me after I was puzzled when xmms crashed and my cd kept playing. Apparently a process is not created when playing from a cd… this is very interesting. This cdtool program simply tells the cd to play, stop, go forward, backward, change volume… by simple command line commands. It’s cool because unlike mpg123 and such it just goes off and plays on hardware and you dont need to use a screen, or take up a terminal or anything to keep it running. So this is the perfect program to bind those silly hotkeys to! I figured out the Debian way of binding keys this afternoon (it’s a bit different than redhat since redhat, and slackware apparently, both automatically look for an .Xmodmap file on starting x, while debian does not). It was pretty easy, but the results are very cool, yay hotkeys! They will be useless no longer! I am going to update my how-to bind windows keys thing on my website probably tomorrow (or this afternoon if I get a chance), and I’ll link here when it’s finished. Hehe… while I was at it I also bound Opera to the Windows keys again (just the winkey, not alt+winkey like I had on redhat). My system is coming back together nicely %)

So yesterday we just decided to go ahead and get the eye exam done for me. I made an appointment at a optomitrist’s next to a Lenscrafters in the local mall, so it should not be hard to find… the appointment is on Thursday at 5:30. Eye doctor’s appointments arent bad… nothing to dread like other doctor visits, and at the end you get to see better! I actually find myself excited by this, I am so sick of squinting at everything, it really has gotten bad. And this way I dont have to look foolish at the DMV… and I can get new frames.. I’ve had these ones for a very long time… since early high school anyway, that’s, what, 6 years at least… They show their age %)

Pepboys doesnt take appointments for oil changes. This is very strange to me… I mean I remember when my parents got oil changes they didnt usually get appointments (I assumed this was because they went to the cheapest place in Portland), it was first come first served, but ever since I moved to NY they really preferred if you got appointments. *shrugs* I guess Myk is going to head down to Pepboys after work to get the oil change… I guess it’s a little overdue, and we are taking a 6 hour drive up to Rochester, NY next week for thanksgiving.

CourtTV is not a bad channel. See lately I have been in a really weird mood and I’ve been watching tv more than normal. Under normal circumstances I watch Adult Swim on sunday night and The West Wing and Law and Order on wednesday night, but I’ve been watching tv for about an hour about every other day for the past week… Not because anything is on, just because I didn’t feel like doing anything else. So I found this interesting show on CourtTV called “Forensic Files” .. it’s quite good. (I am really into documentary type shows, and with our “free cable” (comcast screwed up, so we get a few channels we dont pay for) we dont get many of those good documentary channels). Yay () abuse.

I finished a couple books over the past couple days and have been too lazy until now to type up the reviews:

Coldfire Trilogy Book 1: Black Sun Rising, By C.S. Friedman, 568 pages
I bought this book on the recommendation of a friend of mine who had previously never let me down in his excellent choise of books. This book had a very intersting story, I really did enjoy reading it, but it doesn’t fall into the catagory of ‘excellent’. At times the characters didn’t feel real, and each time there was a deception it was painfully obvious, so much so that it was difficult to believe that these intelligent characters would fall for it. It was interesting how the narrative shifted between a few characters, but the balance of this narrative was strange. The story was quite original however, and the idea of the world they were on (a colony of people from earth that settled there) was very appealing to me. I guess in all it would be easy to stop with this book (as the first in the trilogy) but I really am interested as to where this story leads, I will continue reading this trilogy.

The Color Of Magic, By Terry Pratchett, 210 pages
This review is being written after my second time reading this book (the first time was a couple years ago). Amused by Pratchett’s excellenct use of satire in his work, I enjoyed this book again. I do however have to say that his later books definately show a more masterful storyteller in Pratchett. Moving along, this is the first book in the Discworld series. It is split into four consecutive adventures of the four-eyed tourist TwoFlower and his relucant failed wizard tour-guide Rincewind. They travel the disc meeting Gods, Heros, and countless magical creatures. This is the first of Pratchett’s books that I ever read, and it lured me into this wornderful series.

I hate ebooks. I am assuming that the trouble I am having locating an online copy of The Outline Of History by HG Wells (published in 1922.. so legally now public domain) is because Barnes and Noble just recently published an ebook version. Now a friend of mine (during my search yesterday) suggested I got into a warez ebook room on dalnet to find it… fuck that! Hehe… Breaking the law to get a silly history book, how much more geeky can you get? I can just see myself getting busted for trading a history ebook… not that it’d happen but the idea is humorous.

My craving for spicy food started friday morning when some guys in #goddess were talking about getting together to watch movies and stuff on saturday night.. they mentioned getting chips and salsa, mmm chips and salsa. So when we went to that little party on friday night I was quite happy that they had chips and salsa, but it obviously wasnt enough. Saturday it rained, all day, and it was very cold. So we decided just to stay in, but around 11 pm I started to get the munchies. So I went out to the 24 grocery store and picked up a bag of christmas colored tortilla chips and some natural salsa… as well as some Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream %d Then on sunday I realized I STILL wanted spicy food, but was reluctant to dive into the chips and salsa again so we gave in and bought Indian food, YUMMIE!

All this weekend was spent trying to get my onboard lan card to work in linux, since it’s sorta silly to have two nic cards if one will do… No luck. It was so insane, we ended up reinstalling debian, recompiling the kernal several times, installing different distros, and of course made sure the card worked by trying it in windows (it does work). So my computer was pretty much down all day sunday, which sorta sucked, but I did get online on Myk’s computer long enough to make the topic in #13thHour “happy birthday tsukiyo” (a fellow chatter) and make an ecard for her, and of course check my email %) So no luck with the nic card.. it’s very frustrating. See, the problem was that we had a pci nic card in there, but we started seeing collisions. Now there should not be collisions on our network! We found out that it probably was not software related (since I had the same setup on my old box, with no trouble, all that has changed is hardware), and it’s the same nic card we had before, so we suspected the trouble was that somewhere along the line having two nic cards, even though one was turned off by the bios AND didnt have drivers. We suspected this because there was no other logical explaination %) So there supposedly is a linux driver for this, we consulted the PLUG list to see if we could get help, but alas nothing seems to work. We are thinking that it’s possible the driver is looking in the wrong place for it or something, it’s just a big pain, and the weekend was too short. I am afraid of doing anything myself (not that i *could* screw up too much at this point…) so I have to wait for Myk… Hey I’ve only been using Linux for about 10 months (9 of those with Redhat), Debian for a month, I might be able to compile a kernal myself, but I’m still a bit of a n00b ;)

I am a bad person, I dont recycle. We don’t get paper newspapers so I dont have to worry about throwing those out, and we do use most of the junk mail we get as paper for the fireplace (oh joy in burning junkmail). But as for bottles and stuff, even soda bottles, we throw them out. I think this is entirely due to the lack of bottle deposit in PA. In New York and Maine, and all states with a bottle deposit, not only was it easy to recycle (just bring them to the grocery store) but you also got money back! Why don’t they have bottle deposit in all states? It’s a very good idea, I am the perfect example. I suppose I really should find a recycling dropoff place around here, recycling really is good, and it’s only inexcusable laziness that prevents me from taking part.

So I need to go get my driver’s license so I am considered a full resident of PA and all that. I know I am supposed to do that within 60 days of moving here, but I was reluctant to do that, mostly because I’d just have to get it reissued on my 21st birthday (they have a different style license if you are under 21. So I figured I’d wait til I turned 21… that was a month and a half ago. It’s very simple to transfer a license from another state to here, just go in with Social Security card, old license, birth certificate, and at least 2 things proving new residency here (utlitiy bills with my name, or lease, or tax stuff…), then fill out all sorts of terrible paperwork, and take an eye exam. None of this is hard except the eye exam. I haven’t been to the eye doctor in over 4 years, and the other day I noticed I was squinting at the television.. my vision has gotten pretty bad. So just go to the eye doctor and get new glasses right? Oh Catch 22! One of the biggest reasons for getting insurance is so we could pay for the eye exam and new glasses (we can afford it out of pocket, but it IS expensive, insurance would help)… but one of the things I need in order to get on Myk’s insurance is a driver’s license with my current PA address on it, that matches Myk’s, DOH! I suppose I could TRY to pass the eye exam at the DMV, as it shouldnt be too terrible.. *sigh* I suppose if I fail the eye exam there I could just go to the eye doctor and go back to the DMV after that, I shouldn’t worry about it too much.

Ok, I am gonna go reply to some emails and get some stuff done *wanders off*

Patrick Doyle – A Walk In The Park

Ah, I feel much better today %) The party last night was pretty nice. There were only 6 of us there, the couple having the birthday, a couple they are friends with, and Myk and I. We had snacky food and ice cream cake, it was fun %) I barely finished one glass of Chouffe as I was still recovering from my hangover, and drinking more beer was really the last thing I wanted to do. It was nice getting out though, Ian and Jessica (the couple who had the birthday) are really nice people, and their friends seemed nice too. I sometimes feel intimidated by their intelligence though, they both went to college and she is an electrical engineer while he is a KDE developer who telecommutes to his comfy software engineer job. I keep telling myself I shouldn’t feel intimidated by them, there is no way I could be as smart as they are, i’m younger than them, I never went to college, and my general experience in everything is much less then theirs. I shouldnt get depressed. I just feel so stupid when they tell some physics joke and I totally don’t understand it.

We didnt get lost getting to their house either! Yeah, if GPS was made for anyone it was made for people like Myk and me. We get lost with or without directions. I am by far the worst navigator ever. I was very happy that we did ok this time.

So we found out something interesting about Myk’s benefits from work yesterday. Turns out this his company, JDS Uniphase, has a “Domestic Parter” part of their benefits package. A domestic partner apparently can be covered by the medical insurance that Myk pays for! The conditions were things like living together for over 6 months, having some bills and such in both our names… and I can only imagine that the company is required to do this because of some “gay rights laws” but it works great for Myk and I! Previously he was told that the only way I could be covered under his benefits was if we were married, and neither of us are ready for that. So this is really good, I’ll finally have medical insurance! %)

It’s raining out, I like rain.

So I finally got my Books section of my website all done. It’s all linked up to barnes and noble so people can buy the books by clicking on links at my site. I get 5% commission if they buy %) and the best part about it is I can get commissions for even my purchases! Of course they dont send you a check until you get up to $25 in commissions… so $500 in total sales, but I figure I spend about $50 every 2 months on books, so in 20 months… plus if other people actually click on the links on my site, yay! Hehe. I also added product links up on wallaceandgromit.net for wallace and gromit related things at barnes and noble… yay capitalism.

Speaking of Barnes and Noble, sometimes they do really weird things. I clicked the option for free shipping, so all the books should have shipped together as they were available. But then yesterday I get ONE book shipped via UPS… The order sheet said the rest would be shipped separately. So I double-check to make sure I was not charged for shipping. Then go to the barnes and noble website to check on my order status to make sure it all was being shipped, and it says on my whole order that it was “no shipped” SO I go look at details, and most of the rest of my order (5 more of the 7 books) have been shipped the normal way, via US Postal Service. What of the last book? “The shipping date is unavailable at this time. Please check back shortly for updated information. We apologize for the inconvenience.” The hell? I have no idea what they are doing… I mean as long as I get the books eventually and I am not charged for shipping I guess it’s fine, but they are totally messed up.

Have I mentioned lately how much I like debian? The other day I wanted to install flash on Mozilla, apt-get install flashplugin … today I wanted to install java on netscape, apt-get install netscape-java-477 … on redhat this would have required many more steps, I am very happy %)

I think we are going to stay in the rest of this weekend, I have no want to leave… and I still have no desire to drink, which is probably a good thing. I do however have an intense craving for Indian food again, this is definitely a bad thing %) We are trying to save money! Hehe.

So Myk is still unsure about what’s going on with his job… supposedly they are supposed to find out next week who will be let go come March. We’re seriously considering moving out of this area if things don’t work out. Maybe north… or west. I miss New England a lot, if Myk could find a job up there I’d make sure he jumped on the opportunity. It’s really not because I have family there either… I’d be happy if I lived in Colorado too %) I just like snow, and the north, and happy trees, and I despise the city. We are too close to the city here. I mean I guess I could live and be happy here, but there are much better places…

I guess I am gonna go find something to eat noew *wanders off*

So did you really think that Myk could bring home a case of Chouffe and we wouldnt try it? Ahahaha. We decided to have “one bottle” which amounts to about four glasses of beer, so two each. After that I was pretty toasted. Toasted enough apparently to encourage the opening of a second bottle. Yep. Four glasses of Chouffe, considering even the strongest american beers only have about 4% alcohol.. and this Belgian stuff was 8%, that’s like drinking 8 normal beers… plus it would take longer to actually drink 8 beers, so like 8 beers in half the time it would usually take to drink that many. Uh can you tell I am hung over yet? LOL My head is killing me. I don’t even remember going to bed, or the movie we were watching ending. Myk said he woke up on the couch (doesnt remember falling asleep there), found my glasses in front of the TV and I was in bed. I probably turned off the VCR and took my glasses off to rub my eyes or something and started to fall asleep on the floor then decided I should go to bed. But that’s just a theory %)

I still feel sick too, I never actually threw up (at least I don’t remember throwing up and there are no signs that I did). I just need to not think about getting sick and I wont, yay happy thoughts.

Ugh I think I am going to be sick.

After Myk woke up on the couch he had trouble falling asleep. By the time he thought he should do something about this (take tylenol pm like he usually does) it was about 5:30 (around the time i got up to take some advil)… so he had barely any sleep and it was 3 hours before work, not to mention the monster hangover… Do I even need to say that at the moment he is in the bedroom sleeping? Hehe. Yeah, he called in sick. Which is ok since this is only the second time this year he has done so.

I think I am going to go lie down, hopefully I’ll feel all better by the time the party starts tonight %)

Mediaeval Baebes – Aria (with Delerium)

I changed the look of my site here, I wanted to make all my sites sorta look the same, this one looks much more like princessleia.com now.

Nut of the week? Well that award has to go to Mr. Charles K. Johnson he believes the world is flat:

The Flat-Out Truth

“Not the Bible but Johnson’s own common sense allowed him to see through the globe myth while he was still in grade school. He contends that sensible people all over the world, not just Bible believers, realize that the earth really is flat.” Yeah, he’s a christian. %)

French’s yellow mustard no icky crust cap is nice, but unfortunately it’s not perfect, doh.

I’ve been working on my Books page and it is all nice and arranged now so it is easy to navigate %) I have it set up so you can browse the reviews by author or title. I’ve been thinking lately about all the books I’ve read in the past few years and how sad it is that I do not have reviews, and I have tons of time to read so I think I am going to read a few books over again. i’d really nice to read the Homecoming series by Orson Scott Card again (unfortunately I don’t have book 1, doh!), and the first two discworld books… Anyway, this afternoon I am going to try to get the whole “gimmie money” part of the Books page done (Barnes and Noble Affiliate program). Yay for capitalism. What can I say, Barnes and Noble rocks, they have saved me lots of money, and they arent evil like Amazon %)

I did get a little work with PHP done yesterday. I thought about making an easy way to post updates to my site using php, but then remembered that that would mean I’d have to have a site on the web to edit my site.. which means unless very carefully password protected someone could easily find that page and mess with my site. That’d suck. So for now I will just do little php things. I already have the little counter on my page… and yesterday in the top part that has a quote I made it so each time you go to the page you get a different quote (well probably, there are 15 of them there currently and it randomly selects one when you go to the site).

I spoke to my Aunt Elaine last night. She called me on her cellphone because she gets free evening and weekend long distance on it… and of course she just happened to call right when I was sitting down to eat dinner %( I didn’t want to be rude, and I definately didn’t want to pay for a call back (I hate the phone as it is, I dont want to pay for it!) so I ended up talking to her and stuff while Myk ate dinner and mine got coldish (we had Boca Burgers). It’s always nice talking to her, she tells me all about all the current family gossip (ugh) and she’s just all around nice to talk to since we are so much alike. Apparently half the family is not talking to the other half about something, who knows the whole story but it’s just a big mess. In any event I’ll just stay with my Aunt Elaine while up there and try to stay out of the middle of everything %) It should be a fun trip, and we are planning to see Star Wars Episode 2 in the IMAX while we are up there, yay! Speaking of Episode 2, no, I don’t have the DVD yet, and yes, I know it came out this week, I’ll probably ask my ma to get it for my for christmas or something.

Tomorrow night we are going to a birthday party for a couple we know. They just got married a few weeks ago, and they have the same birthday, so they are celebrating with a double birthday party %) It should be fun, and Myk went out and picked up some La Chouffe (8% alcohol yay) .. a case of the huge magnum bottles (50.8 oz each), whee! %) Anyway it’ll be fun to go to a little party with some of our friends.

I am going to go take a walk now *wanders off*

-@Time- hmmm, if the aryan group had its own KDE program, would it be called KKKK

hehe

blue plastic wrap is leet … and the same price as clear plastic wrap (at least where i shop), yay!

Foo Fighters – Walking After You

So it has recently come to my attention that Eminem has a movie?! AND it was at the top of the box office this past weekend!? What is wrong with this world? Waaaay too many wiggers and posers out there, and I hate them all %) Including my little sis, arg! 13 years old, lives in MAINE, loves rap, and “talks like black girls talk” … I will never get over my disappointment. Yes, I live under a rock.

I don’t look 14 in that pic I have here do I? A person in #goddess said I did… I tend not to believe him, but I *did* get ID’ed for the last Rated R movie I went to. *shrugs* Then again I have seen some 14 year olds who look older than I am, gah.

Clockbot (the win2k print/scan server) is still off today. Apparently there was some sort of IDE error when Myk tried to boot him up the other night %s He hasnt had a chance to look at it. Last night he got home around 8ish (he had a dr’s appointment).. so we didnt eat til about 8:30, then of course we had barely any food in the house so I went grocery shopping. Finally I came home around 10ish and decided I wanted to monopolize Myk’s time by cuddling and watching a movie with him, so it wasnt til midnight that he was able to get on his computer (besides the time I spent grocery shopping). So hopefully tonight he will get clockbot running so I can mess around with printing again tomorrow. I think today I am gonna mess around a bit with PHP, it’d be really nice to utilize more php on my website, and since I stopped messing with it for about a month I’ve forgotton a bunch of what I knew, doh %( I should really stop messing around (like writing in my weblog and chatting, DOH!) and get more work done so all my time spent on the computer is not completely wasted.

I love Debian!

apt-get is the greatest things ever %)

Ok, going to get some work done noew *wanders off*

Peter Murphy – Cuts You Up

So this day was almost completely full of disappointments. For one it turns out that 21″ flatscreen monitor seems to have some problems with color… something that the PLUG post neglected to mention. The guy selling it said it could “probably be fixed with realignment or something” Heh, well I really don’t have $300 to spend on “probably” I am very demanding on my monitor, and there is no way I am paying for a monitor with messed up color.

I played with printer settings on my computer for almost 2 hours today, very frustrated that nothing was working. Then I wandered over to the printer computer. It wasn’t on. AHHH!!!! I guess it was my own stupid fault for not checking a problem that obvious, but it’s rare that clockbot is turned off %( I forgot that Myk removed a harddrive from it last night, he must just have left it off, doh!!! So I was frustrated again and quit that.

SO I decided “hey how about I install my apache server and php4 so I can get some work done with php” (I would do it on the webserver, but I dont like messing with things there, besides I dont have root access so I wouldnt be able to mess around with mysql there). So I install apache, then install php4. Then spend a little over an hour figuring out what I did wrong and why it wasnt working %) Eventually I found it was just I added something in the wrong place of the httpd.conf file, and it was all fixed. So now I have Apache and PHP running nicely on my system, and the best part is I can run apache and it doesnt hurt preformance! In fact, I can run TONS of stuff and it doesnt hurt too much, which of course is no help considering how absent-minded I am. I have 9 virtual desktops, and sometimes I *forget* about things I have running, at one point today I had gimp and idle xmms running as well as mpg123 and mozilla, and opera, and all my chat sessions…. you get the point %) Since these things dont slow down my system anymore I forget they are running. *Huggles her computer*

It’s only 4:30, I think I am going to do an overhaul of my Books.html on my website, it really needs it… I actually sent someone I sorta know from a chat room (the chat room where we chat with people IRL.. I am sorta shy so I dont often chat there), and he was interested in my reviews! Of course the page is a mess, and I felt bad. So since at least one person is interested in that page it’s worth fixing. I feel really good today, despite my failures I really did get a bit acomplished, if only everyday could be so sucessful %)