Dr. Smack

That's Amore

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 07:31:11 GMT

Today was the wedding of Bourg (co-worker) and Miss Sarah Jane. The service was your standard service (i.e. not too long, yet boring) and the reception was fairly standard, as well. I have to say, the reception my brother had was by FAR the best style. My brother had the buffet thing that was ready when the guests arrived; there was no waiting on food, you could get food whenever you wanted, and return trips were encouraged. The bar was open and stocked (for those who like to partake in the sauce) and there was no assigned seating. Had Bourg's reception allowed for the free movement of guests, I wouldn't have been relegated to the table with the fucking stupid white trash. Our table had four of the smartest people in the room (four Rose grads) and three of the dumbest.

I did get to see one of the partners of my company after he had a few too many, which made for a humorous memory. All in all, the reception wasn't "bad," but those things just aren't my kind of scene.

MC Chris, What!

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 15:32:55 GMT

I just got a bunch of tickets to MC Chris for August 20th. If you want tickets and I didn't already get you, let me know. I'll get another batch soon-ish.

2 Days Late

Sun, 26 Jun 2005 05:25:17 GMT

I just noticed my last post was on May 24, thus meaning I have failed to meet my "post-once-a-month" standard. To catch you up on my goings on, all I can say is I've been working. A lot. I've had two days off in the last month. They were a Saturday and a Sunday. Man, those days were pretty sweet. I only worked 10 hours today, so I guess that's something. Something pretty fucking stupid, but it's something.
I installed my terabyte RAID server about a month or so ago. It's pretty sweet sitting in my closet. The whole WoW thing is still going well, I guess. I'm once again spending too much time in game. My phone has also lost the ability to judge battery life and possibly the ability to actually charge them. Luckily, I have an older phone which is similar to my current phone which can charge batteries and whose battery is similar enough to be used in my current phone. I should probably just replace my phone, but I'm a lazy bastard.

Day 4

Tue, 24 May 2005 15:57:00 GMT

Well, 24 Day 4 ended last night. It's probably some sad testament to my life that one of few posts I make is in response to a TV show ending for the season. I guess I can tie in some other things with this post.
For instance, last week, like many of you, I saw some Star Wars movie. You may have heard of it. Joel and I caught the midnight showing at our theatre and then caught the 5 o'clock showing after work with the coworkers. It was easily better than Eps I and II, but the writing was still atrocious.
Dave stopped by on Saturday and we watched Unleashed. It was... a movie. In all actuality, it wasn't bad, but I don't see it winning any awards. We then watched movies at my place, as is par for the course (I *Heart* Huckabees and First Blood).
Iver was up for the weekend so I met up with him and Joel for some Penn Station action, then stuff back at argen's place (since he was out of town).
Also, those assclowns zowch, argen, and TJ convinced me, through incessant begging, to come out of retirement and return to WoW. There, that should have been random enough.

The Weekend

Mon, 09 May 2005 17:50:13 GMT

After disassembling my PS2 on Friday, I went to the movie theatre with argen and Joel (to be later joined by zowch and tj9582). argen wanted to see Kingdom of Heaven which lived up to my expectations of being not good.
Saturday involved me heading out to the ol' Castleton Mall to meet up with folks from out of town. Kenny, Tiff, and Brogan were there along with Ben and Sharron and Kegs and Michelle. There was a fair amount of standing around and talking and we later headed for Uno's where more talking and some eating ensued. As a note, the sentence where I listed all of the people has the word "and" in quite a few places. I tried to arrange people with their respective groups which caused there to be a seemingly high number of uses. I say this so I don't appear some grammitical moron who just says "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5." I will now use parens to show how the groupings break down: (Kenny, Tiff, and Brogan) were there along with (Ben and Sharron) and (Kegs and Michelle). And now that that useless explaination has taken more text that that of the remainder of the post, I'll stop.

Hardware RAID Controllers and LiveCDs

Thu, 05 May 2005 15:00:18 GMT

I've beeen investigating small SAN solutions and have determined that it would be FAR cheaper to just build a barebones system and stick harddrives in it with a RAID controller than to buy a specific SAN solution. To this end, my thought was to just run some Linux distro via LiveCD so that I wouldn't be taking up any space on the array with an OS. So, does anyone know of any LiveCD that has good support for RAID cards and possibly any specific cards that with these distros? All I really want is a card that can do RAID 1 (0+1 works, too).

I Am Filled With an Undescribable Rage

Mon, 02 May 2005 18:01:52 GMT

This rage consumes me. I am liable to perform many violent acts. This rage has been brought upon by viewing H2G2. I implore all those considering seeing this movie to NOT see it. The parts of the movie that existed in the book are, at best, average. The parts of the movie that were not in the book and really have no bearing on the plot laid forth in the book are numerous and insipid. THE WHOLE MIDDLE OF THE MOVIE IS HORSESHIT! I realize that some things needed to be cut in order to fit the entire book into a movie, but you don't cut extra stuff, then fill those holes with contrived drivel! I am Jack's seething pituitary gland...

I Bested You!

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:53:07 GMT

So, after ~9 months of running dual monitors reversed (the monitor physically to my left was the right monitor), I finally fixed all of my issues allowing me to put them the right way. I had to write a little workaround for 2 issues in LiteStep (and upgrade a module). That allowed my taskbar and systray to appear at my mouse no matter where it was located. I also fixed the issue with cygwin's X server that would only allow windows to refresh on 1 monitor. Apparently there was a -multiplemonitors option I needed to pass to it at startup that I neglected to see before. This is all weird not having to move my mouse off the right edge of my right monitor to go to the left of my left monitor.

In Honor of Earth Day

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:31:59 GMT

Fuck you, Mother Nature. You and I have had it out in the past, but this is ridiculous. You knew damn well that none of my 4 UPSes had coax protection, thus leaving me with 1 vulnerability in my entire setup. So you had to go and create a lightning storm something fierce early in the AM today and fry my cable modem. I guess I'll have to procure a cheap surge protector just for my coax. Ass.

Annual Review Redux

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 16:44:23 GMT

Today was my annual review at work. It took the same format as my 6 month review, so it was like my second annual review. I didn't get fired, thus beating the odds. Also, for those of you who are calendar-centric, you may notice that I have not been working here for a year, yet. My company moved all reviews to right after tax time so they would more easily be able to analyze the past fiscal year and use that to decide raises and bonuses and whatnot. So, my annual review came just over 1 month early.

It's That Time Again

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 16:39:16 GMT

So, it's been about a month since my last update; ergo, it is time for another. We (argen, Joel, Mike and I) saw Sin City this weekend, and I must say the movie is badass. I will be seeing it again in the theatre. I bought a racquetball racket and some goggles so argen will quit bugging me to do so. I also procured a new pair of running shoes thus allowing Joel and myself to embark on a run last night. This was my first run since junior year of college and let me tell you, that was a long time ago. I'm acutally not sore at all. I just have some Texas sized blisters on my feet, which is to be expected. Hopefully they'll harden up soon and my feet will return to their former state of running prowess. I can only hope that I can increase my level of fitness back to where I used to be, which would also mean I would drop back down to my fighting weight, as it were.

Dangerous Minorities

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 16:02:55 GMT

The last week or so seems to have been filled with crime. As most of you know, argen's CD player was stolen a week or so ago (as seen here). As none of you know, one of our (my company's) clients had his laptop stolen out of his car when he stopped to get a drink at a CVS on Tuesday on his way to play poker with us after work.
Saturday night, argen, zowch, viersehen, tj9582, periwinklepatch, and I all went out to see The Jacket. zowch, viersehen, and I rode back from the theater together and parked at argen's place. We got out of the car and noticed a guy running away from the buildings, jump in his car and peel out without turning his lights on. He was parked far away from the buildings in a location that made no sense. We commented on how odd this was and I made a note of the car's body style and color. Fast forward to this morning as I walk out of my building and notice a posting on our bulletin board with red letters stating there is a criminal about. There was apparently an assault on Saturday night that coincided with the time that we were arriving home from the theater by a man whose description matched that of our mysterious midnight runner. So, I did my civic duty and called the appropriate sheriff's department, but I have yet to reach the proper persons. An officer took my name and number and will have the appropriate person call me back. I have a feeling nothing will come of this, but you never know.
What really has me thinking is had we arrived back at argen's 1 minute earlier, we probably would have heard the screams and could have subdued the guy until authorities arrived. On the bright side of all of this, my interpretation from the posting on the bulletin board is that the woman was not seriously harmed. She was able to get her cellphone and dial 911 which caused the assclown to bolt.

Phoebe Seems Like a Dumb Name

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 15:29:01 GMT

But I'm going to use it anyway (most likely). I have another computer on the way that will act as an application server to compliment (or remove 80% of the load from) Coeus, my main Gentoo box. As it will be a partner to this box, I felt Phoebe would be the appropriate name. Phoebe will raise the count of computers in my apartment to 7 (but only 5 of those are worth using). I also picked up an additional UPS for her, thus raising my count of UPSes to 4 (2 APC and 2 Belkin). It's not like 86% (or some other made up percent) of my electric bill is computer related or anything.

Poker Pays for Itself

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 17:11:09 GMT

We had Poker Night last night with some folks from work and one of our clients. We played 2 tournies. The first was a $5 tourny where the blinds upped at the crazy rate of every 8 minutes... Despite the craziness that went on, I ended up winning and pocketing a cool $18. We played a $10 tourny next with 20 minute blinds. I kept knocking people out early, but they could reup during the first three rounds of blinds. People reupped 4 times. 4 times. I ended up getting 4th (1 spot out of the money). But, I ended up $1 on the night ($2 for pizza), so I can't complain too much (I would have been up ~$40 had people not reupped). During the first match, I took some nice pots off the CEO, one off of a monster bluff. I'm not sure how smart that was in the long run (i.e. my career), but it was nice last night.

Guilty!

Mon, 31 Jan 2005 15:26:39 GMT

I was pre-selected for jury duty. This means I have to mail back a questionaire to make sure I still have blood in at least 1 arm. After that is done, I will be selected for jury duty. I have no problem with jury duty. It means I'll get paid for judging someone. I normally do such things pro bono, but now I'll be paid to do it. My main issue with the whole thing is I'll have to go downtown for it, and, even worse, find a parking place. I was instructed to mail the questionaire back via the included address and stamped envelope. This sounded like a sweet deal, but there was a small problem. There was no included envelope or address. Of course, if I didn't take it on myself to find this information, which it was their duty to provide, I would be served with a summons to appear, at my own expense, to fill the questionaire out downtown. The important thing to keep in mind here, which I will bring up when they are selecting the jury, is I make snap judgements on people and will decided within the first 15 to 20 minutes of the trial whether or not the defendant is guilty. I'm sure they'll pick me then.

Johnny Carson

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 14:55:08 GMT

Johnny Carson died yesterday morning: CNN's story. I was too young to watch him, but I understand the impact he had on our culture. Anyone who can give Bill Cosby, David Brenner, Jerry Seinfeld, George Carlin, Garry Shandling, and David Letterman good starts had to be an amazing man. I've seen reruns of his show and they were good even today.

On Average, People are Stupid

Sun, 23 Jan 2005 07:54:49 GMT

In what was described to me as a mid-life crisis, zowch and viersehen made the trip up to Indy to drag argen and myself to a "club." Really, it was zowch who did the dragging and viersehen just came along because he had nothing better to do today, I guess. We ended up at the Vogue where for the next few hours I came to learn a few things.

Men go to clubs to meet women. Women go to clubs to judge other women's clothing.
Take any 2 women in a club and add their IQs. That result will *maybe* top 75 (I'm not saying the men were any smarter, I just don't plan on spending my life with one).
Clubs are not where I need to be going to meet women. I need to find a Nobel Laureate convention or something.

It's not that the people at the club were exceptionally stupid, they just seemed of average intellect to me. I am starting to notice that I am taking an elitist attitude toward intelligence of Rose vs. The Rest of the Country but I think I'm well within my right to do so. As I looked across the club, I was able to pick out the people who would be bagging my groceries and those who were destined for a life filled with receptionist jobs (at firms with a simple phone system). I'm sure I have more to say but this entry bores me as I'm sure it does you.

Peer Pressure

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 16:43:10 GMT

So, I just read what seemed like a week's worth of friends' entries and now feel compelled to write something. I took the last 2 weeks of 2k4 off and it was grand. I spent a couple of days in the KY with the family. It was good to see my brother again, as I have not since... last Christmas maybe? Driving there (KY) was an adventure as I picked the worst day of the year to do it (Wednesday), what with the ice and snow piled high on the interstate. I came back on Monday to pick up argen at the airport. I did the New Year's thing with argen, viersehen, zowch, and gizmo88. tj9582 and periwinklepatch were there shortly, but had other obligations or something. We played poker and the others (save viersehen) had them some of the al-key-hall. This post blows so, uh... and then I stabbed him.

You Can Never Have Too Much Jack Bauer

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 19:13:18 GMT

I rolled out of bed Saturday morning at 8 following a client Christmas party (which was enjoyable) so I could head over to Matt's house and his wicked theater setup. Why would one want to watch something at 9 (eating+driving made it 9) in the AM on a Saturday? When the thing being watched is all 24 episodes of 24 Season 3, that's why. Three of us from work watched all 24 eps in one sitting. I have determined that is how 24 was intended to be watched. It's only on TV so the DVDs will sell better.

Updating is for Hookers and Fat People

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 14:25:30 GMT

Hmm... so what's been going on since my last post... I went back to the KY for Thanksgiving where much eating ensued. I think my USB Thumbdrive fell out of my pocket at the house of one set of Grandparents. I'll eventually get around to calling them about that. I've been playing this "WoW" thing a bit and I've been working extra hours due to an upcoming product release. That's it! That's the list!

The Trifecta

Mon, 15 Nov 2004 15:21:06 GMT

Apparently, the Woodford County High School class of 2000 has some issues involving this little thing we like to call "driving." Two years ago (right before Christmas), someone with whom I grew up was killed in a single car wreck. A couple of months ago, a friend was killed in another single car wreck (he was drunk, I think, maybe) (LJ Post here). Apparently, Saturday night, a third friend (who was also drunk) caused a 4 car chain-reaction wreck that resulted in the death of a 72 year-old man. He also put 3 people, including himself, in the hospital. He's apparently going to be (or already has been) charged with murder.

FOURCC and Codecs

Thu, 11 Nov 2004 06:00:29 GMT

Does anyone know of a way to associate/register a FOURCC code with a certain codec? For instance, let's say I decide that all videos I encode will have the FOURCC code of ABCD, but it is exactly the same as XVID, just with a different FOURCC code. Is there a way I could tell Windows/FFDShow/BSPlayer that whenever it sees the ABCD FOURCC code to use whatever codec the XVID code uses? I know with VirtualDub, you can tell it to do an advanced open from which you can override the FOURCC, but I'm looking for something that will work with BSPlayer more or less transparently. I also know I can hex edit the file and change the FOURCC code, but I'd rather just register ABCD to use a certain codec.

Depressing

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 17:56:45 GMT

It's somewhat depressing when the best thing you can do all day occurs in the shower in the morning with no one watching. I'm sure that sentence can be taken a million different ways, but I'll explain. I keep my soap in a separate soap dish due to the location, depth, and pitch of my "built-in" soap dish. At the end of my shower, I had the soap in the dish and was dumping out the water that had found its way into said dish. The soap slipped out and plummeted to the ground. In my other hand, I was holding the top to the soap dish, so I instinctivly stuck that hand out and caught the falling soap perfectly in the lid. It was pretty damn impressive, especially considering anything I do before noon normally occurs without any conscious action from myself. This is an overly pointless post, but, hey, it gives you something to read. Quit your bitching!

I Love Making Fun of Cripples

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 20:00:00 GMT

Guess who's not crippled. This guy. Now, go make fun of argen. You could also read his blog to further understand why I love making fun of cripples. In a way, today has been a good day, for a Monday. We had a longer than usual Monday meeting, which is good. If that happens, it means I don't have to fake working as much, plus the meetings have food. A co-worker brought in a wash-tub full of candy, due to a lower than average number of trick-or-treaters last night. I also got Chipotle for lunch. In the food vein, I ate a large Donato's pizza last night. I fail to see how that size could be classified as "large" when I could easily eat one without getting full. I still haven't decided what to do with my spare X10 Applience Module. The toaster oven idea was fairly good, but the thawing pizza problem seems to have thwarted that plan. I could go into all of the movies I saw on Saturday, but I won't. Suffice it to say, they were numerous and not-so-good. The one I will point out was Howling II. To give you an idea of this movie, it was also know as: "Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985) (USA) (preview title)" and in the UK as: "Stirba the Werewolf Bitch (1985) (UK)." Seriously, "Stirba the Werewolf Bitch?" What the hell kind of title is that? When you see a title of that nature, it tends to not bode well for the quality of the film.

Decisions, Decisions

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 19:12:03 GMT

Well, my X10 stuff came yesterday. I hooked up the new transceiver and set it to housecode B so I can use the new Idle Notification functionality I worte for bitlbee. I still have an extra appliance module that I'm not sure of how to use. I can't think of anything I need to control remotely. This confuses and angers me.
Another decision I have before me is that whole election thing. I've been reviewing information on local candidates, trying to determine the people whom I hate the least. We have a crazy, psycho running for Senate. I'm tempted to vote for him based on his displeasure of current copyright law and Orrin Hatch. His views on taxes worry me. I may vote for him just because I feel there's more chance of him affecting copyright law than there is of him affecting taxes. That and when whomever gets elected screws up, I can say, "Well I sure as hell didn't vote for that assclown," because this guy has no chance of being elected. It's like throwing my vote away without voting for Nader.
On a similar note, I enjoyed South Park last night. I mention this only because they do such a good job on conveying a message that pertains to today. Anytime you have a show dedicated to the decision of voting for either a Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich, it has to be a good one.
In closing, if anyone has any ideas for what I could do with my extra appliance module, let me know. I need ideas, no matter how stupid they are. If I feel they are stupid, I'll be sure and let you, along with the rest of the world, know.