Random Crap

Well, it's been a week since the hurricane hit; there's still no power at home. I'm back at work now, and it sure is nice to have power here without the constant drone of a generator!

Speaking of the generator, it just got its second oil change this morning. The unit needs an oil change every 40 to 50 hours of use, and it's gotten very heavy use this past week. The engine is running nicely, and still purring like a kitten though! Actually, purring like a very, very LOUD, very big kitten!

I've settled into life with self-generated power. I have extension cords running to my office and have various lights, the DSL modem, the laptop, and a TV plugged into it. Another extension runs over to the minifridge, and the last one runs to another power cluster where I charge my celphone, use the toaster, and other miscellaneous things. I haven't plugged the main computer into it, as the UPS doesn't work on the generator and I don't trust the generator that much; it may stop suddenly and corrupt data. My laptop has a battery to prevent that problem.

It's already starting to become routine. Wake up, drag out generator, check oil level, gas it up, start it, plug things in. Then the mid-afternoon shutdown and refuel, then the shutdown and drag it back inside before going to sleep. Needless to say, a pain in the arse.

I can't wait for mains power to return.

Still no power here. I *LOVE* my generator and am going to go gas hunting shortly, as I'm down to about four gallons total remaining.

Phone and DSL service has been spotty; Bellsouth has had trouble keeping the generator at the RT fueled. I'm on dialup at the moment, and let me tell you; once you've been on DSL and ISDN for years, dialup is practically unbearable.

I spent Wednesday on campus getting all critical services (including sarabi/Zorin.org };) ) back up and running. Now that Zorin.org is up, I'm going to go ahead and copy in the various Livejournal posts I made before this one.

Tuesday 10/25

So, the power is still out here. Luckily I have enough fuel to run the generator for a few more days.

The phone service died early this morning, due to the batteries running out at the equipment vault (Remote Terminal) that feeds my line. On a whim, I picked up the phone about an hour ago, and there was dialtone again! Apparently bellsouth wheeled a generator trailer out to my RT and plugged it in, lighting up all the phone lines in the area gain. Kudos to Bellsouth for doing this; there's hundreds of RTs all over the city! They must have a lot of generators.

Spent the day cleaning up most of the mess outside; things are looking a bit more normal now. I'll have some photos of the damage around here up once power returns and I get high-speed internet again. At least the phone service is back, so some of the boredom is abated...

Monday 10/24:

Well, I'm getting tired of hurricanes, and I'm sure everyone else in FL is too!

After shuttering up it took a while for the brunt of it to get here. Surprisingly, the power actually managed to stay on until well into the storm! Gusts really started up around 3AM, and the power stayed on until 5:30AM or so. Pretty impressive.

Damage is extensive, but nothing structural, thankfully. Lots of fences, trees, and signs down, and debris everywhere. I'm not looking forward to going to work and seeing the damage there. :(

So here I sit, running my Powerbook off its battery and using dial-up. I'm probably going to relocate to where the generator is for extended runtime; luckily the weather is nice and cool so no suffering in the heat for now...

Well, I haven't updated in a while. Been distracted and all. Extremely distracted.

I got a new toy last weekend, a PalmOne Treo 650 phone. Or PDA. Or both. It does lots of things; to just call it a "celphone" is somewhat unfair. It's basically a Palm PDA with a celphone built in. With Sprint PCS service, it can do lots of neat things, like make and take calls, get on the Internet for web surfing, AIM, SSH (to log into those UNIX systems), E-mail, and more. I'm now well-connected wherever I go! I'm not sure if this is a curse or a blessing; we'll have to see. Luckily, it has an "off" switch, so I can still get away from it all if need-be.

On Saturday I went with Rieshal and Kitwickliff (who just moved here a couple of weeks ago) to Sawgrass Recreational Park. I haven't been there in a long time, and it was wonderful to see Monty the panther for the first time in about five months. He's gotten so big; you can see pictures here. Kit is really into photography and I lent her the Rebel for most of the trip; she seemed to like it. (Kit, I'm going to convert you to digital yet! bwahahahahaaa..) We also went on an airboat ride through the everglades, which was pretty neat. I was surprised to find the airboats are powered by two bog-standard big-block V8s normally used in Cadillacs. They are EXTREMELY noisy and hearing protection is pretty much required on the ride.

The rest of the day involved dinner at an Italian place and later on watching a weird cat anime and then the movie Brazil. Overall a fun day, and I got to meet someone new. }:)

Went out with some friends to see Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride" last night. It was actually a fun flick; it's nice to see some production houses still using traditional animation methods, as opposed to insisting on using computer animation for everything. Regardless of the animation method, though, it's the story and characters that make a film.

I don't plan to see "Chicken Little" in the theaters. It is my personal protest against the rape of Walt Disney Feature Animation, a division that created some of my favorite movies ever. For those who aren't aware, Eisner basically dismantled feature animation, firing most of the artists and keeping only a paltry few who were transferred to the 3-D computer animation department.

Disney is trying to be Pixar. Sorry, it's not going to work. The reason Pixar films are so successful is because of good storyline and characters, not because it's "3-D". The artists should be the ones in charge, not managers whose only training is an MBA. Until the company realizes this, they are going continue their current mediocrity.

You just gotta read this...

Well, it's been a while since I've updated. Probably because nothing much too exciting has been going on, outside work and the usual beginning of semester craziness.

I got a tile floor installed in my room/office/mad scientist lab at home. There was moisture coming up from the concrete slab which was causing the carpet to smell funny, and I'd had enough. The new floor looks and feels great, despite the room being a little louder since the carpet isn't there to absorb sound from equipment anymore. There's always a downside to everything!

Lynxie seems to like the floor too. He can slip under the wall unit much more easily now, and it's funny to watch him slip when he runs into the room too fast and tries to stop. Silly kitty!

This was also a great chance to re-do all the cabling behind my desk. It was an utter snakepit before, and now it looks pretty good! Though I'm sure in a few years, it will be a big mess again as I hastly add and remove things withoug caring so much about neatness...

Oh, and this has got to be the coolest "cracked by" screen on any pirated game in the history of the universe. (Beyond Castle Wolfenstein)

On another note, I'd like to wish EVERYONE who lives/lived in the New Orleans area a speedy recovery. It's not going to be easy, and you guys don't deserve this misery. If you haven't found it yet, this blog is written by someone keeping an ISP up on generators right in the middle of all the chaos. A fascinating, if sad and a bit scary, read.

Well, Hurricane Katrina just blew through here, causing all kinds of chaos. Total damages here? Not much, actually; a few missing roofing tiles and some landscape damage, but both should be easily fixable. Insurance is a good thing!

Others in the South Florida area were not so lucky. Many low lying areas were flooded, with people having up to a foot of water in their homes. Some folks may have to wait many days to get their power restored, and as of the last time I heard, four people have lost their lives.

I guess this is a lesson to all of us; do not underestimate hurricanes, even if they're only a "category 1". I've been lax in preparing for this one, and things could have been a lot worse had a window blown out!

The power and phone just came back, but the DSL is still down. It's been about twenty minutes; a DSLAM shouldn't take this long to reboot! There's probably connectivity issues somewhere. If it doesn't come back by tomorrow, I'll have to call. Unfortunately, DSL is probably a low priority for Bellsouth at this moment...

Okay, I'm not kidding, this has got to be the coolest optical illusion ever.

Make sure GIF animation is turned on, and click here.

Stare at the cross in the center for a bit.

Isn't that cool? The ring of purple dots sorta fades, and you just seen a green dot going around!

But there's no actual green in the image! Look directly at the purple dots and you can see the complete lack of green. But the animation still fools your mind into thinking its there...

Spiffy, eh?

Not too much has been happening lately. Work has been busy; I've spent this week upgrading miscellaneous daemons and services for security reasons, and brought our new backup server online, officially. It's been working well, backing up all the department disks at lightning speed.

The weather has been so hot and muggy outside during the day lately that I just haven't been motivated to do anything outdoors, Vanishing Species or otherwise. I've spent the weekends lazing around at home, going to the mall, and in the case of July 4th weekend, blowing stuff up with friends.

Yup, about $80 worth of fireworks went up in smoke on the 4th. Mostly bottle rockets, firecrackers, and mortars. It's always fun to set off the things yourself; those people who tell you to play it safe and just go watch the professional shows just don't understand the fun of playing with fireworks. Ignore them. }:)

I rearranged my desk at home, and retired the second monitor for now. It was simply getting too cluttered, especially with the HP 1150C multifunction scanner/printer they let me take home from work.

So this has been a slow weekend. A combination of feeling a bit cruddy and the blistering heat outside has discouraged me from venturing outdoors, so I've caught up on some valuable goofing-off time.

I've really enjoyed the "Father of the Pride" DVD set, which has the entire series on a single RSDL DVD. The image quality of the DVD is a sight to behold; Dreamworks really did an amazing job on this series and it saddens me that it didn't become popular enough to sustain itself. It had pretty good ratings numbers, but the show was too expensive to survive with those numbers. {:(

I've taken a good number of screencaps from the DVD; basically the top half of thumbnails, up to the one with the two tiger cubs, are from the DVD, the rest were lifted from the Dreamworks Fansite. A fun show; if you pick up the DVD set, be sure to watch "The Lost Episode"; NBC pulled the plug so suddenly that they were halfway through production of an episode (recorded, but not animated) when it happened, and they ended up with a storyboard-only episode!

On the geeky side, I'm trying to find a video card, preferably Nvidia, that will drive dual DVI and TV-out at the same time. No luck yet; the only card I've found that'll do that costs $600; for that much I can build a whole other computer to handle the video! I'm also considering building a gaming system, which would of course run.. *shudder*.. Windows XP. I suppose if I only play games on it, I'll be mostly safe from the insecurity of Windows, but it'll still feel icky to run it. I haven't owned a Windows system since 2002!