oy with the poodles already's Journal

1:33AM

I have been in Florida since Saturday. The view is amazing. My dad took some pictures and I uploaded them here. The second picture is not pollution; it's the spray from the ocean (it took me a second to realize that, which is why I mention it). Those were all taken from the balcony of the condo (you can see the side of the building in the last shot). So I get up in the morning and look out the window and see the ocean. It's awe-inspiring.

What's almost more impressive than the view is the sound. I have never really been to the ocean. The sound is very soothing. I think the beach would be a perfect place to meditate.

We are far enough away from lights (especially on the ocean side) that you can actually see a lot of stars. I can see Orion in Dayton most of the time and occasionally in Cincinnati, but I hadn't seen the Pleiades in the longest time until I got here.

I still need to dip my toes in the ocean and pick up some post cards. I got keever's cookies on Monday. They are tasty and delicious.

More later.

11:22PM

I am in Knoxville, Tennessee in a Clarion Inn. We left Cincinnati around 3:30pm and got here at around 9pm. We were hoping to get to Atlanta today, but it's been very snowy and very slow going (often, less than 35mph on the highway). It's very frustrating to sit in the car for that long and be driving that slow, so we decided to fuck it for tonight and drive the rest of the way tomorrow. The weather is apparently really bad around here. People in the restaurant we ate dinner at were worried about getting home safely.

The non driving parts of the drive(the conversation, the music, etc) have been good, though. We listened to one disc of The Wall, some Allman Brothers disc (live at somewhere), and some other stuff that I forget. We also listened to Fresh Air, All Things Considered, Marketplace, and Comedy College (switching from 90.9 in Cincinnati to 91.3 when we got near Lexington).

Letterman will be on soon, so I will watch that. And maybe Bill "SHUT UP!" O'Reilly on Conan.

11:19PM

Next week I will be in Florida with my family. My dad and I are leaving on Friday and driving for a couple of days. My mom and brother are flying down on Wednesday. I'm not sure what we're going to do for a week in a strange state, but I'm sure we'll figure something out. The condo we're staying in is literally right on the water, so hopefully I'll get some good pictures or something. If nothing else, I'll have something pretty to look at while I'm hacking. :-) I've never really done the official go-somewhere-else kind of vacation, so I'm really looking forward to it. I've also never done a long road trip (more than 3 or 4 hours anyway). I'm not looking forward to that so much, but I don't think it will be too bad.

Anyone who wants a post card should leave a comment with your address (unless I've got it or it's in contact-info) or send a mail to paulv at livejournal dot com.

8:29PM

Once more, with hobbits: A Lord of the Rings/Buffy the Vampire Slayer adventure. You'll only understand if you've seen the musical episode of Buffy in season 6, of course. oggs available upon request. :-)

12:06AM

How an anarchist came to run the Kucinich campaign in Rhode Island, Part 1. David Grenier, as usual, writes well. I would be elated even if some of my writing was as coherent as his is. His stuff is definitely worth reading.

I'm pretty sure at this point that I'm going to vote for Kucinich in the Democratic Primary. Even though he doesn't realistically have a shot in hell, I think it's important to show the Democratic party that people like Lieberman shouldn't even run and that Dean isn't good enough.

9:21PM

I am in Cincinnati with my family celebrating my birthday. We had a tasty dinner and we are going to have cake later. I got Buffy season 5 and a George Foreman grill. It's pretty and blue. It looks just like an iMac. Except more useful.

Jason said he got me a birthday gift that "is going to generate an 'I hate you so much'". I wonder what it is.

It's all snowy and stuff outside. I love the winter.

My family insists on watching Survivor, so I am in the other room watching Buffy.

12:11AM

Watching "In The Shadow of Two Gunmen Part 1" on network TV. Donna kills me in this episode.

It looks like Bravo is starting season 4 on Monday, January 12, 2004.

6:19PM

I am drinking hot chocolate. Hot chocolate that anami stole from a bank. It is tasty and delicious. And warm.

4:25PM

I am becoming addicted to ask.metafilter.com. People ask questions that are interesting, but that I would never think about otherwise. Like, for example, I read this post about "Q" level security clearance. There was a link to this PDF about interviewing with the NSA. It's a pretty funny piece by this guy who interviewed for the NSA.

I watched "The Black Vera Wang", "We Killed Yamamoto", and "Posse Comitatus".

I am looking at unison to help synchronize mailboxes. I'd like to have some infrequently read mailboxes on my laptop so I can read them when I'm bored or w/o an internet connection.

9:47PM

I beat Final Fantasy X today.

I am feeling better. My sore throat is gone, but I'm more phlegmy.

I am watching hockey. Yay for hockey season. Detroit is losing, and that's a good thing.

Kragen is trying to convince me that I should vote for Howard Dean(or, really, any Democrat that is nominated, even Lieberman) instead of Ralph Nader. It isn't working.

1:27PM

Here's a cool interview of Joss Whedon. From whedonesque. There are likely spoilers for people who haven't seen all of Buffy or all of Angel, but no spoilers about new episodes of Angel.

It stands to reason that Whedon would follow the work of Aaron Sorkin, a master of dialogue, as Whedon is widely regarded as being as skilled in that area. Whedon's dialogue is very distinctive and has its roots in how Whedon himself talks.

1:05AM

See, jrbl, I do suck.

10:46PM

I am back from Bloomington. Sunday night I got sick. Monday I felt sick enough that I didn't think it would be a good idea to drive home. I thought it may have been because of the dog that Joe and Anami have, or because of the down pillow I used while I was there, so Monday night I slept at Brian's. My symptoms (sore throat, fatigue, puffy eyes) didn't really go away (though my eyes were less puffy) which means, to me, that the dog and pillow didn't really cause any of this and that I'm actually just getting sick or something. Anyway, I decided it wouldn't be good to drive today, either, and Joe had offered Monday to drive me in my car back here to Dayton and then get a ride with Jason back to Bloomington. Then Jason would drive back alone. So that's what we did.

My friends (everyone, not just Joe and Jason!) rock my fucking socks off. Thanks again.

In the few hours since I've been back, I've eaten with Jason and Joe before they left, talked to Brett, my mom, and Anami (hi Anami!) on the phone. Now I'm listening to ABWH's An Evening of Yes Music which I heard a while back but never owned. I found it used in Bloomington for $12. I'm also reading LJ backlog from Friday. I've got my comics page open from the past few days, too, and I haven't payed any attention to news. I know it snowed a lot in the Northeast. Anything I missed?

I'm also catching up on email which I haven't payed any real attention to since Friday. I have a bunch of work that needs to get scheduled before the 19th (among other things, I am spending the 19th-27th or so in Florida with my family. I should write more about that later). I'm trying to figure out how all of this can happen.

7:16PM

I am back in Dayton.

11:02PM

[11:00 PM] <paulv> the daily show got new pre-intro music
[11:00 PM] <paulv> the main theme is still the same
[11:00 PM] <paulv> but the date voice over music is different
[11:00 PM] <paulv> dammit
[11:00 PM] <paulv> i am a huge dork.

7:15PM

I got mail from Evansville University today. So far that brings the total to 1 piece of mail from Earlham, 1 piece of mail from Centre, 1 piece of mail from Antioch, and 8 pieces of mail from Indiana University. Yes, 8. Really. They sent me one that just had a map from 2001 in it. They sent me another, in the same size envelope(they are usually Manila with the metal seal thingie on the back), with some other stuff. They seem to be horribly inefficient with all this mailing stuff. In related news, I think my mailman hates me.

I taught a class today. We talked about backups(why dump is stupid, tar, cpio, rsync + cp -al, gzip, bzip2), job control(fg, bg, etc), shell redirection(>, <, 2&1, etc), what's new in 2.6, how nice(1) works, how hdparm(1) works, rcs, cvs, bash, screen, nmap, tcpdump, and, of course, emacs. I tried to give examples of all of them, but some were tricker than others.

I think they were sick of all the emacs stuff, though. They couldn't read the small font("fixed") that I use on my laptop when I plugged it in to the projector, so I made it bigger. Then I tried to do the same in Eterm but I didn't feel like messing with it, so I just started doing everything in emacs (ansi-term, man, info, outline-mode, etc). I managed to lock up ansi-term twice (I think I hit the wrong key), which sucked. I also talked, a bit, about RMS and Free Software and GNU.

I was really nervous before the class started. I know the material well, so I didn't even bother preparing most of it(other than noting it on my outline so I wouldn't forget) and even the stuff they sprung on me without a warning (the rcs and cvs stuff) wasn't a problem. I've taught before, but I think the big thing was that the room was full this time, and people paid a significant chunk to be there. Before, there have always been less than 5 people, or so, and today there were like 15-18. After I was there for about 5-10 minutes, everything was fine and I had a lot of fun. Singing along to Phish helped me relax a lot on the way over. The people there told me that I did well and thanked me for coming, which was pretty nice. One of the comments was "I learned more in the past 2 hours than I have in the previous 3 days". I believe that was in reference to the backup/job control/shell redirection stuff.

I am going to visit Anami and Joe tomorrow. I hope I can leave sooner rather than later. It's supposed to snow(1 inch, they say) and I'd rather be on the road when that hits than driving when it's already gotten bad. I'm also going west, which means it's possibly worse there. I do have to teach more, though, and I may just plow through the whole day again tomorrow and not get out of here until between 3-5pm.

I bought a bottle of wine today -- a Pinot Noir from Hangtime (which I guess is the vineyard?) from 2002. The guy at the store said that Joe's recommendation of a Cabernet Sauvignon was probably not the right choice for someone with as little experience with wine as me.

My throat is a little sore. I hope that's from talking all day rather than me getting sick.

9:13PM

keever wrote about Salon's series state of your unions about marriage. Some of the articles are pretty interesting. I think the wedding boyfriend phenomenon was in effect at anami and jrbl's wedding.

There are six (one two three four five six) reader stories. Some are good and some aren't, but they are all probably worth at least looking at.

(yes, you'll need a subscription or a day pass)

I think, when my brain lets me be, I'm a hopeless romantic.

10:59AM

Last night, before my laptop crashed, I wrote about security. I said I wouldn't be surprised if sourceforge, gentoo, kernel.org, or other important free software community machines were compromised over the next few days, weeks, or months.

Today, I saw GLSA: rsync.gentoo.org rotation server compromised (200312-01) on Full-Disclosure. This one doesn't seem so bad, so far, but still. What the fuck is going on?

1:53AM

Well, my laptop just crashed. I think it was X's fault. Anyway. I had a big (3000+ word) live journal post sitting in a ljupdate buffer, but that's all gone now (so much for auto-save and the save-desktop hooks I posted a few days ago -- neither of them work for buffers associated with no files). Here's the short version.

blah blah emacs is good and bad at the same time blah blah blah security sucks blah blah blah blah say you're not stupid, out loud blah blah poker-eval doesn't make a .so, only .o and .a files blah Texas hold 'em blah blah visiting Anami and Joe this weekend blah blah blah.

6:29PM - Music

I listened to "Physical Graffiti" for the first time in like 6 years the other day. Now I remember why I bought it; it was pretty good. It made me want to start playing guitar again which I guess makes sense --- I bought it when I was playing before. I wonder if I can find a decent inexpensive guitar around here somewhere...

I heard Sheryl Crow for the first time since that single about having fun came out which was over 10 years ago(!!). It felt wrong and dirty but I don't understand why. I heard it while I was in Kentucky, so I'll blame it on that.