existential fashion disaster

hacked… something about world writable folders, lots of accounts, not just mine. I didn’t even know I had any world writable ones. I had to go through and change them all and then test things to make sure everything still worked. I’m still doing it now, actually. After I post this, I gotta see if it worked and see if all the logs worked and then experiment with posting from the phone again. It took a lot of time and effort because my backup wouldn’t quite restore correctly. Had to kinda build a place for the site from scratch and then import it in piece by piece. Anyway, I think it’s all back now.

Thankfully this happened early Saturday morning, so I was completely distracted by the fact that I was going to see They Might Be Giants. It was a great show and brought back a lot of memories of some good times. Unfortunately, driving to a show in Chicago is worse than driving to a show in Boston. We learned our lesson though (took an hour to find parking). Next time, we’ll take the train in from O’Hare or go out early and make a day-long event out of it. They almost wouldn’t let Sarah in because she had her Diana camera with her. But she convinced them that it wasn’t going to take any high quality videos of the band, that it was basically a toy, and they let her in. The venue was cool, nice balcony seats and a few benches throughout the floor area. We were there a little too late to snag a seat for ourselves… again, lesson learned. It was a real treat to see them with the horn section. I do kinda miss the Eric and Graham/Hal days, but the Dans are good, there’s no denying it. The banter was as witty as ever.

Enjoying my day off, so far. The tentative plan was to catch up on all the TV shows we’re behind on. We’ll see what really happens once Sarah gets up and we get motivated (or don’t ). Got another Adventure Ed overnight this week (and next week). There’s pictures from last week’s trip on the gallery (mostly taken by the kids). There’s more staff lined up for this week, so I should be able to take more myself.

Last night, after a little issue with the scanner and a reinstallation of some drivers, a couple of my programs were acting weird, so I rebooted, and right after logging in, my screen went black. It seemed like the system was running. I managed to blind reboot it once. I couldn’t log in via VNC, though, so I knew the video drivers weren’t running correctly. I tried reloading the original Dell drivers, but it made no difference… still went black. Removed the video drivers and I could log in just fine… though I can only deal with giant chunky 800×600 for so long. At some point I found out that the user account I set up for Sarah could log in just fine with the Dell video drivers loaded… so that led me to believe there was some sort of software/driver thing going on. I couldn’t figure out what was causing it, though. I tried disabling everything I could think of, and it still went black on my username. So I refocused on the video drivers, tried a couple different ones and a couple methods of completely removing the old drivers… but still no luck. Finally, I tried these Omega drivers and they seemed to do the trick. I dunno how well hooking the laptop up to the TV is going to go, the next time we want to watch something I downloaded on the big screen, but at least I’m not computerless anymore. There’s a bit more fear, as time goes on, that this laptop will just plain die, one day soon… regardless of the transplant/replacement of most of its innards.

There was also a threat of canceling the Adventure Ed overnight for one of the schools because of some new electronic filing system that all trips have to go through and some CPS paperwork and legal department bull… but I guess they finally worked it all out today. We got the go ahead this afternoon. We were on the verge of coming up with some sort of concelation day for all the kids who had signed up. They were still signed out of their classes and stuff, so they were technically ours for the day, but we probably would’ve been restricted to school property. I’m glad that didn’t end up happening. The high ropes experience is really a key element in my mind.

Psyched that I got the mophoblogging going again. I was doing that stuff back in early 2005 (via Livejournal). I’m pretty sure moblogs and that term existed then, but I wonder if I could’ve coined mophoblogging, or snagged a related domain name or something.

Since the Flickr integration went so well, I decided to try the Wordpress upgrade, too. I’m not terribly attached to tags, but the tag integration isn’t as cool as the tag plugin I was using… I really miss the click the tag to add it thing on the post writing page. I have yet to go through all the old posts that linked to images on the Gallery2 pages. I’ll get to that soon enough. Maybe I’ll even add some more photos… I’ve got some from Adventure Ed class days. I totally didn’t break out my camera during the day trip… I don’t think it even made it out of my car. I’ll be sure to get pictures at the overnight trips. Those are coming right up, too. The first one is next week! This season flew by. I feel like we missed out on a lot of great activities, but it hasn’t been a bad season.

Feeling a little hungry, I think… waiting for Sarah to come home. Maybe I’ll watch TV.

I was late for work this morning. My Emerson “SmartSet” alarm clock still believes that this is the weekend that we change the clocks… as does this computer, here at work, along with about half of the electronics of the members here at the YMCA that I’ve talked to. This automagical technology starts to lose its charm when it’s just plain wrong. Added a new clock to my amazon wishlist.

I want to start writing more. I used to use this as a journal, of sorts, and I kind of miss writing in a journal, but don’t want to actually carry one around with me. So there may be a whole lot more entries, here. And there may be some really short ones… which I may or may not try to designate as more of a note than an entry.

I’m also considering phasing out the existing photo gallery and going completely Flickr. I’ll have to move a few photos over, but I hesitate to move any that I don’t actually have the original, full-sized files for… or maybe I’ll put them in a special set - “Lost Originals” or something like that. Here’s my first attempt at flickr integration . There were a couple more snazzy plugins, but the server needs libcurl installed to use them, and apparently, it’s not installed.

In one week, Sarah and I are going to see Serenity in the theater. Every year there is a charity event called Can’t Stop The Serenity, and we’ve got tickets for the Chicagoland show. In preparation, we’ll probably be watching Firefly - The Complete Series. We were also waiting for the Serenity (Collector’s Edition) DVD to come out, and now we’ve got it pre-ordered at Amazon. I’ve learned to love Amazon. I used to boycott them, when they were still trying to enforce their patent on cookies (via the one-click shopping patent). Hopefully they won’t abuse the new patent they were just awarded. I’d hate to give up my Amazon fix.

Phase One of this week’s computer upgrade project is complete. I gutted the old Gateway that Frank, Sarah’s little brother, had been using and put in a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and hard drive. It took a little more work than I expected, due to the fact that gateway’s choice of case didn’t have all the right holes on the back for the motherboard ports… so some creative sawing was necessary. All that’s really left to do on that machine is add some front audio ports so frank can plug in his headset for his games.

Phase Two involves all the hardware we pulled out of the Gateway and a fish tank full of mineral oil. I’m following the specs detailed by Puget Custom Computers on this page. Fish tank and oil and random parts are all ordered and on their way. I’ll have to go to Home Depot to get the sheet of acrylic and all the necessary sealant. Wish me luck!

I love it when science says I’m right… or in the right… or at least not all that abnormal. The study that one of today’s ars technica stories talks about seems to mesh well with the way I operate and have always operated. Both consciously and subconsciously, I always try to finish what I’m doing before letting anything distract me, because I know that letting those distractions in will make whatever I’m working on fail, or at least become half-assed, in comparison to what it could have been. I’m extremist, obviously, in that I purposefully avoid such distractions and/or put off things that might be important when I’ve prioritized something that may be less important [in someone else's eyes]. While reading the article, I couldn’t help but think about the tests I took at UMASS, and my ADHD diagnosis (based on the fact that I prioritized the classes I liked to the point of ignoring the ones I didn’t, because they were distractions). I also thought of the brilliant Crimethinc poster about ADD.

This is the week that employment starts to shape up. Tomorrow, I go to one of the Ys that’s not too far to fil out some paperwork and get the scoop on whether some of the departments beyond the front desk could fit me in for some additional hours. Friday, I think we’ll start some of the paperwork for the adventure education job, and then head over to a training, allegedly with Karl Rohnke, games and ropes course guru, founder of Project Adventure. Exciting!

Wednesday, the HD DVR gets installed downstairs. That one day of HD service in Woonsocket was really good. It left an impression on me and now I really want to see a nice HD signal on that super TV again. I’ll have to get into the listings and see if any of my favorite shows are on in HD. I seem to remember Universal HD having some Sci-Fi program, like Battlestar Galactica, in HD, or something. And I know I found plenty to keep me interested on my one day with it.

The wii continues to be fun. There is that trap that comes with all video game consoles, of course… that you need to buy or rent new games to renew your interest and get your money’s worth. The new game this week has been Elebits. I was skeptical, at first, since it looked far too cute to be fun, but it turns out to be one of the greatest new games that I’ve played on the wii. It really makes good use of the Wii-mote and doesn’t ramp up and get to difficult for at least 6 or 7 levels, depending on how awake I am. I even re-played a bunch of levels on the second Wii, downstairs, and it was still fun… so good re-play value.

The webserver got a processor upgrade. I noticed that this site and Wormtown.org were moving a little faster (most noticable on Wormtown.org), so I asked. I figured since that would make backups and such a little faster, I’d upgrade the code for the site. It was a little tedious, but it wasn’t terrible. More new features and code tweaks than I expected between versions 2.0.3 and 2.1, but no really big complaints.

I have officially been offered a position doing adventure education with high school freshmen in Chicago. It seems like a good position at a good company with some steady hours until May … and there’s a position opening at their ropes course, too. I’m excited. It’ll be good to be working again and I’m glad I found some work in my favorite field. The position might require some new clothes, since most of it is in the schools. Now that I’ll have some income, I’d like to reward myself by getting HD service for the HDTV. We think there might be some sort of sale starting tomorrow, so we’ll make the call then, I think.

February is upon us; I dunno what I want for my birthday. The Dell laptop is getting less and less reliable/usable, and I think I’d like to replace it in the Spring with a MacBook Pro (when OS X 10.5 comes out)… so, Apple Gift Cards would be more than welcome, and there’s always the old Amazon wish lists (books, DVDs and games & tech/toys/expensive stuff). I’ve also been thinking about getting a real razor, but I’m sort of afraid of using a real blade and have no experience with anything beyond beard and mustache trimmers (Remington MB-300 Precision Titanium Mustache & Beard Trimmer). I like the idea of the self-cleaning ones, I guess. Anyway, that’s just sort of an afterthought, the apple gift cards and wish lists are always safe bets. If I think of anything else, I’ll try to add it to the Amazon list(s).

Speaking of Amazon, and Buy.com and Google… you may have noticed (unless you have Adblock, which you should) that there are some ads over in the sidebar [of the pages that have one]. While I do have a job, now, there’s no income yet; officially start work in a couple weeks. So, this is my silly attempt to make some money back from all the various webhosting costs over the years. Most of them are referral based, so if you’d like to help a friend out and you’re going to make a purchase through Amazon or Buy.com, anyway, I’d love it if you used my links to get to the site. The google links are pay-per-click, but I’m not allowed to ask people to click them… so, uhh, pretend I didn’t say anything about them.

listening to: Wincing the Night Away Artist: The Shins

Last chance for cheap tees at threadless. I think the sale ends at midnight tomorrow… or thereabouts. They’ve released some pretty awesome prints over the last 30 days and a slew of great reprints, too. There’s a nice selection of hoodies and a few long sleeve shirts, too. Go check it out and buy some last minute gifts for yourself… or other people, I guess.

I’ve got my car almost packed for the drive west. I’m taking care of some trash from the apartment, and then I’ll come by to get a few things tomorrow morning, before work. Luckily, it’s not too cold, so it shouldn’t be too bad taking the walk to the dumpster.

Okie. Break’s over… back to work.

Doing lots of cleaning and packing this week. Gonna pack up the mac and zombie (which now has a legal copy of Windows on it, due to a find while cleaning a closet) as well as a couple basses, and at least the top half of my bass amp. Those things plus most of my clothes and maybe all my movies/books/etc. will come in the car with me, out to Chicago, and stay out there. I’ll come back after Thanksgiving and clean out everything else that’s here. Looks like that means everything, too, cause nothing seems to be happening on the sublet front. I got an extra day to clean due to a day of work being rained out. It’s decreased the pressure of the whole cleaning/packing situation, and made it seem a lot easier to accomplish. It’s been pretty easy so far, but there’s definitely a lot to be done.

Hey look! My girlfriend’s a model (perks of working for Threadless, I guess):

I’m very excited about being with Sarah, and the job hunting, and the trip to Florida for Thanksgiving… should I try to contact my brother and see him while we’re there? Or my uncle? or both? I’m not sure.. brother Ernie is not really good at keeping in touch. It could prove to be more trouble than it’s worth. I’ll give it an honest attempt.

listening to: Gimme Fiction Artist: Spoon