Random Crap

Well, right around now is my ten year getting-on-the-net anniversary. Wow, it feels like it was only yesterday, piggy-backing on the FIU-FAU LAT net and jacking into cybernet.cse.fau.edu, an open-access Internet BBS that existed at the time.

Some Internet related things that I dealt with back in the early days (1994-1996)...

• alt.tv.animaniacs (Hellooooooo Usenet!)
• alt.fan.lion-king (Hakuna Ma-what-a?)
• cybernet.cse.fau.edu, Cybernet BBS (Anyone got a WAFFLE-iron?)
• CyberGate, AIX (first UNIX system I ever use), that larry@gate.net account
• (305)348-1196 (old FIU 9600 baud dialin to a DECserver)
• TIN (who needs a GUI to read news???)
• Trying to convince my high school to get Internet access because it was "educational" (though I just wanted it so I could goof off on the net during lunch)
• wakko.gil.net (Jeff, thanks for the free access!)
• sarabi.gil.net (I had a real hostname when most people didn't even have real access!)
• FurryMUCK (still there! 10 years as of 4/7/2005!)
• Zorin the Squirrel
• CU-SeeMe (Hi Milva!)
• PointCast (How utterly useless. But I still had fun with it!)
• FurToonia (Hello Kaja, Selane, Shakeera, if you're still out there!)
• FluffMUCK (Hello Inkypaws, Rieshal, Paws, and others.. StH TinyPlot, Mban, Town Hall meetings, speaking staff, flying phonebooths, etc. etc. etc.)
• Windows 3.1 and Trumpet Winsock (shudder)
• EWAN (a telnet client for Windows... the only decent one at the time)
• Netscape 1.1N (Holy crap! HTML is COOL!)
• Linux (kernel 1.2.8 was the first I ever booted! Yeah I came in a bit late, SO WHAT? }:) )
• As a Linux newbie, figuring out how to get PPP to work under Linux (pulled an all-nighter, success was the greatest feeling in the world!)
• ICQ (5327238 -- nice small UIN!)
• My First Router (386DX/33 running Linux in 5MB of RAM off a 20MB MFM disk, fun!)
• Doing all of this at 14.4kbps
• solix.fiu.edu, serss0.fiu.edu, xlab1.fiu.edu, (305)348-3282, those darn SPARCClassics in PC-415, the cheap VT220 clones in the terminal lab, SERVAX...
• Running Linux on a Floppy on open student lab 486s so I could telnet out
• Getting a job at FIU, vixen.cs.fiu.edu, SCS, getting paid to be a geek, learning how this Internet stuff actually WORKS...
• Getting banned from the EIC lab (Engineering) at FIU for swiping an IP address so I could get on the Internet. The irony is I was hired for the SCS department only months later and ended up dismantling that lab since we took over the building. :)
• ...

Well, that's enough for now. I'll add more as I think of it over the next few days. It's been a good run, and here's hoping for another ten years of cool stuff!

This weekend I was in the Orlando/Kissimmee area, and decided to stop by Warbird Adventures. I flew a T-6 Texan with them last November, and it was awesome, so I wanted to take them up on their other offer, a 30 minute flight in a Bell 47 helicopter, the same kind that appeared in that old TV series M.A.S.H!

One thing for sure, flying a helicopter is NOT easy. There are three major controls: The collective, which controls motion straight up and down, the cyclic (or control stick), which controls motion forward, reverse, and side-to-side, and the foot pedals (tail rotor), which control rotation from left to right.

This sounds simple, but a helicopter is far from stable when it's hovering; you have to constantly apply control input on the collective, tail rotor, and stick just to stay in one place! In fact, there were a few times the instructor had to take over for me because otherwise I would have crashed the helicopter.

What's interesting is, in forward flight, a helicopter behaves a lot like an airplane; the control stick becomes your primary control, and the wind blowing past the chopper keeps it stable. But when you slow down to a hover, the torque from the main rotor takes over and you start to turn to the right; if you don't apply left force on the tail rotor, you crash, pure and simple.

It's such a nice rush to accelerate from hovering close to the ground to a nice brisk forward pace; the wind starts rushing past and the ground creeps away and suddenly you're cruising at a nice 80-90MPH. Such incredibly smooth control from a machine designed in the 1940s!

I made a few mistakes, but more or less managed to figure it out by the end. The instructor said I did better than most first-timers, but he probably tells everyone that to make them feel better. }:)

A fun experience, and well worth it. Feel free to check out photos a friend of mine took while I was flying!

This weekend was sorta fun.. I went to Sawgrass and then helped feed the property on Saturday and then went back to Sawgrass again on Sunday. They planned to bring Montana or Sierra out, but the weather was kind of iffy, so I didn't get to see them. Awww, I bet they're getting big!

On Friday I saw the movie Born Free for the first time ever. I felt it was odd for a cat person such as myself to not see this 1966 film until now, but it turns out lots of people haven't seen it. This must be corrected immediately; it's a must see, especially if you like lions, or big cats in general...

Speaking of movies, I slapped this together today. It basically shows Junior, doing what cats do best. }:)

Link: Saturday's Pictures

Not much has been happening lately, but there's a few minor things...

All Bellsouth DSL Extreme customers (like me!) are being moved from a 3008Kbps to 3552Kbps sync rate. This means another 500kbps of speedy goodness. Mine hasn't moved yet but it will soon, hopefully!

I've started going on bike rides after work. I hadn't ridden a bike in 10 years, and it's nice to be doing that again. Of course I'll probably get tired of it in a few weeks; you know how it goes...

Not much VSW stuff this past weekend.. I went to Sawgrass Saturday morning and then checked out a show that VSW put on at Bass Pro Shop, but the rest of the weekend was a loss because other stuff kept interrupting me. Darn other stuff!

So I've found .torrent files of the complete Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers TV series on gawkerweb.com, and have been downloading it over the past few days.

I was obsessed with this show when I was a kid, and it's been wonderful to re-live all the memories! Of course, it's also a reminder of how much TV animation has gone downhill since the mid-90's. You just don't see creative, well-animated shows like Rescue Rangers anymore.

So if you remember this old cartoon and want to re-live it, here it is, right near the top. Be sure to seed when your download completes, so that others can finish their transfers too! I hope this series is someday on DVD so I can own a legitimate copy.

Oh, and I still want my very own Ranger Wing.

Gadget: "That's the hover switch. It should turn the Ranger Wing into a helicopter."
Chip and Monty: "SHOULD!????!?"

So, in a technical discussion, I just randomly typed:

"You can kill off Apache children without hurting the master server, usually."

Of course, this refers to child processes of the Apache HTTP server daemon, not native Americans.

But I nearly cracked up laughing when I noticed how offensive that sentence could be out of context. };)

-Z

Cheetah movie!

Okay, I'm probably going to see this. In fact, I can't wait. It's about time cheetahs get good exposure in the theaters...

But... why would anyone call their company "Gaylord Films"? I mean, don't get me wrong, I have NOTHING against gays, but it sounds like a name like that would be bad for business. I mean, what teenager wouldn't at least giggle at that name? It just seems odd.

But the movie looks like it has potential. Gotta love the little cheetah-cub squeaks at the beginning of the trailer. }:)

Here's a classic SNL skit...

Da Tooncinator! (xvid/divx codec required)

Hmm, maybe he should run for Governor of California. }:) Toonces the driving cat!

A fun weekend, though nothing really ground-breaking happened. }:)

On Saturday a friend introduced me to this show on NBC called "LAX", and let me copy a bunch of episodes he had downloaded. An excellent program, I must say. It's basically a drama that's based at Los Angeles International Airport, where the main characters have to deal with lots of bizarre situations. I've already seen two episodes and plan to watch one a night until I've gone through the ones I have. Downloaded episodes are a wonderful way of catching up when you're introduced to a new show; too bad the network executives hate it so much. They just gained a viewer because of someone letting my copy the eps! Not to mention you folks who are probably reading this now and may want to check out the show as a result... [UPDATE: I found out LAX was cancelled. Dangit! Of course, this is partially NBC's fault... Why put a decent show opposite another VERY popular show (in this case, ABC's Lost)? Are they smoking something? Arrgh.]

Spent Sunday morning at Sawgrass and I helped feed the tigers and cougars at the VSW property in the afternoon. A few tour groups came through at Sawgrass, but there were some great quiet moments when I was able to interact with Junior. He was his usual sleepy-yet-purry self.

The meat of the day at the property was ribs and pork; Nicholas the big male tiger was extremely food-aggressive and wouldn't let Diana (his cagemate) eat, so I had to have another volunteer distract Nikky with food at the other end of the cage while I fed Di the pork!

Nikky's roar has to be heard to be believed. You can probably hear it a few blocks away, and it rattles right through you when you're near him. I'm sure glad that fence is seperating him from me when he's in that food-aggressive mood!

No pictures today; I wasn't really that up to it, having acquired a headache by the time I was done at the property. Just wanted to get some aspirin and go home...

Ahh well, back to work tomorrow.

I was gassing up my car today, and locked the handle as usual so I don't have to stand there with it the whole time. A bit later, I check and notice gasoline is spilling out of my car and onto the concrete!

The automatic shutoff on the pump, which is supposed to kill the flow when the gas reaches the tip of the nozzle, had failed. If I had gone in to get a snack and not noticed this in time, a LOT more gas would have spilled and it would have been an even MORE dangerous condition.

Luckily, it was only a little bit and I was able to wipe up the mess on the side of my car, but I've certainly learned my lesson:

Don't trust the automatic shutoff feature on gas pumps! Always stay with the nozzle when fueling!

And yes, I did report the problem and they decomissioned that pump by putting a plastic bag over it.