weblogs
Weblogs are a funny thing.
You start one and are superb about keeping it updated for the first few weeks, and then all of a sudden it's not interesting any more and you start to slack off. Before you know it, it's been a year or more since your last entry.
Strange.
Posted 2003-01-30 16:01:58

Power Tools
Power tools rock. I've spent way too much money in the last week buying drills and dremel bits and holesaws and shopvacs and all sorts of small electronic parts.

You see, it starts with a desk.... A new computer desk to be precise. But this computer desk, while perfect in many ways, has a cabinet for the tower. A cabinet with one lonely hole for cables and ventilation, and not in an ideally located position. This hole must have friends so that my housewarming desktop machine does not cause the wood of the desk to catch fire and burn down the building. So I need to make holes. Holes big enough for a 3" fan. That's a 3" diameter hole. That calls for a holesaw. Which means a drill. And a vacuum to soak up the dust. And mounting gear for the fans, because a couple of holes obviously isn't geeky enough.

So I've been drilling holes in my new desk and wiring up a fan control system so that the three fans I've got can be turned on and off as need be, to keep the thing from being noisy when I sleep.

Soldering irons, and dremels and drills... Oh my.
Posted 2001-09-25 19:25:52

Real heroes

A politcal cartoon by Kevin Siers, and one that very exactly describes what a real hero is.
Posted 2001-09-15 02:52:49

The Musketeer
Finally got around to finishing my review of The Musketeer, which I saw on Monday. Great flick, if you don't go in expecting to see a faithful translation of the Dumas novel.
Posted 2001-09-12 21:25:54

Thoughts on the Attack
I first heard about the attack around 9am PST, several hours after the majority of it was over. My mom called, to tell me that my cousin Suzanne had been in the building, but that she had gotten out okay. I was confused. What building? Why was she not going to be okay? I'd just woken up, hadn't heard that as many as 50,000 people were potentially dead. What a way to start the day.

I spent all day online, watching reports go up on websites, following the reports from CNN by reading the subtitles on a chat channel (I don't have a TV with an antenna, let alone cable, one of the few times I've missed it). Topics among my friends ranged all over the place, from what would happen to airport security, to how the buildings should be replaced, to, of course, who did it and how we should respond.

The future is going to hold some interesting surprises, I think. I just hope they're more pleasant than the one I woke up to yesterday.
Posted 2001-09-12 17:16:31

Terrorists Attacks
Wow.

Wow.

I can't even think of what else to say. I don't know if there's anything to say.
Posted 2001-09-11 16:02:38

Hardware Lust
It's like penguin lust. But worse. I'm sitting an apartment stuffed to the gills with gadgets and doodads and thingamajiggers. But all it takes is a quick look at a new laptop or a new PDA and I'm drooling on the floor and writhing in need. I think I have a problem.

"Hi, I'm Dan, and I'm a hardware addict."
Posted 2001-09-08 17:39:58

Slow Day
I once read that boredom is addictive. You spend a period of time getting acclimated to it, during which you have all the typical boredom signs, like wanting to do something, anything, and feeling irritable and grouchy. And then... bang you're in it, and the time just sort of unwinds on the clock like a bad movie, with the hands spinning around, and before you know it, it's hours and hours later. You're not tired, or asleep, just sort of "zoned out", with the world drifting along in slow motion behind you.

Personally, I hate that. I feel like the time's been stolen from me. I could have been doing any number of useful (or even not so useful) things.
Posted 2001-09-06 02:18:26

Dice and unix
Unix is great. Where else can I spend 40 minutes whipping up a set of functions for a scriptable calculator that'll let me figure out the probabilities for rolling "at least one die showing an X or better when rolling N different dice"? Or "how likely is it when rolling 5 dice, that 3 of them will be the same"?

Took me longer to remember enough probability theory than to actually write up the functions to do it.
Posted 2001-09-05 03:04:43

Phone hate
I hate hate phones. Hate hate hate hate them. I always feel like such a fool when I'm talking to empty air with a piece of plastic stapled to the side of my head. And worse, I find I'm constantly stuttering or stammering, deprived of my normal use of body langauge to help convey my thoughts. I pace. Put a phone in my hand and I'll wander anywhere and everywhere, without thinking. How I long for conversational telepathy.

That said, the job hunt goes fairly well. Sent out a bunch of resumes and had a couple more conversations with various recruiters. Hopefully something will turn up soon.
Posted 2001-09-04 19:55:30

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