2008 Jan 13, 11:07
Sarah and I got an exercise bike on sale and when attempting to put it together found that it was missing a bag of about ten different screws. The manufacturer website said we could order
a replacement bag for thirty dollars (!!) but since the instructions listed the various kinds of screws we needed I figured we could just go to a hardware store and buy them.
We started at Home Depot because I didn't know better. The screws are all listed in metric sizes which is apparently uncommon and a helpful senior worker forwarded us to McLendons whose stock was better but we were again redirected this time to Tacoma Screw Products.
Tacoma Screw Products is great! See them for your hardware needs first! The store has a back area with every kind of screw ever. I felt a little out of place as as all the customers looked like
contractors. The employee who helped me explained the various options I had in screws as the bike instructions weren't as explicit as they could have been. In the end I bought all my screws for
only one dollar (much better than $30!) and they all fit correctly.
screw bike personal tacoma screw products nontechnical 2007 Dec 31, 1:18A short short story titled 'The Riddle of the Universe and Its Solution' by CHRISTOPHER CHERNIAK. A classic (apparently) from the early 80s. No spoilers here. If you liked Snow Crash just read it.
read scifi story literature free fiction short-story rainbow 2007 Dec 23, 11:18
Sarah and I went down to California at the end of last month for a Thanksgiving visit with my parents. We visited the famous
Monterey Bay Aquarium (fun fact: the aquarium scenes in Star Trek IV were filmed here) and saw many jelly fish. We wandered around Capitola where we visited many local
shops and ate on the wharf. We shopped in Carmel and ate at the
Forge in the Forest (fun fact: Clint Eastwood was the mayor of this city in the late
80s). We visited the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk which was very cold and closed.
My parents took us out to dinner on the first night and the rest of the nights we ate dinner at their house. They had the Shelton's over and I got
to see Chris and Alison. It was fun to talk with them and catch up since its been quite a while since I'd seen them.
We stayed in the lovely beach house of our family friend's the Goodwins.
My parents have been helping them fix it up and decorate it and it looks great. It was quite a treat staying in a house right on the ocean. Also of note, this was the first trip on which I was old
enough to rent the car and accordingly I did all of the driving. This trip was very fun and relaxing.
aquarium friends parents personal beach california vacation 2007 Nov 4, 11:20This weekend Sarah and I went to Tariq's house warming party in Issaquah and then to Seattle for Jon's going away party at Pike's Pub. On the drive over, just after getting through traffic on I-5
South, I saw emergency vehicles lights on the North bound side and suddenly found my lane stopped. I found out why when a man ran from the left most lane to my lane the right most, then darted left
one lane and back right again. Cars started leaving my lane and I could see the man now lounging on the pavement in front of a jeep. Apparently not hurt, he got up and started walking down the
highway. He didn't appear to be in his right mind and after walking by our car Sarah reported it to 911. The rest of the night went on as normal and I had fun with Jon and his friends. It'll be sad
to see him go next week.
nontechnical 2007 Oct 12, 3:20And now to fit in better with the rest of the emo kids on LJ, in no particular order here are some reasons why I feel old:
- I've attended friends weddings sorted chronologically by when I met them: Lucas from high school, followed by Carissa from college,
and then Palak from Microsoft.
- I rarely get carded for alcohol.
- Jon's moving to Germany soon -- this time permanently. He's already started the process of getting rid of possessions he's not taking with him like his car and TV. However, after doing so he
couldn't maintain his smug "I don't even own a TV" attitude and ended up trading me my small CRT TV
(as mentioned previously) for his DDR pads and games. A good trade for both since we were each looking to dump these items. So far I've
only convinced Sarah to try DDR once with me. Somehow I've gotten much worse at something I wasn't that great at to begin with.
- I have business cards.
- I still have semi-monthly nightmares in which I'm taking a Linear Algebra course for which I haven't studied or done homework in years. This differs from the more frequent nightmares I had
immediately after finishing that series of classes in which I was taking the final and it was all on the one topic I didn't study. In reality, the prof. had done his PhD work on this one topic and
I, correctly betting it wouldn't appear on the final, didn't study it. Apparently this was a traumatic bet for me to make given the wake of destruction left on my dreams.
- I have to remind myself that 2005 was two years ago.
personal nontechnical 2007 Oct 9, 4:41Notes on using XSLT on FOAF XML files. Apparently its not super simple due to the various equivalent ways of representing the same RDF in XML.
xml foaf xslt xsl reference rdf semanticweb 2007 Jul 15, 5:08This previous weekend Sarah and I went to Canada for my friends Palak and Meghal's wedding. Our five day stay took us on
the route from Toronto, to Burlington (for the wedding), and then Niagra.
In Toronto we visited the
CN Tower, the
ROM, and the
Bata Shoe Museum. We generally acted like tourists walking around taking photos of things, putting on sun block, and not saying 'eh'. But we could have been worse
like the drunk American college students in front of us in line for the CN Tower asking the guide if the CN Tower is taller than the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. We stumbled upon the
Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit which was really interesting. Sarah in particular recalls the cute stuffed animal
monsters.
After Toronto we drove to Burlington where Palak and Meghal's wedding would take place. We got up early and made it on time to the wedding which was
lovely. I hadn't attended an Indian wedding previously so it was a new experience for me. During the ceremony the child in front of me kept peeking over her parent's shoulder and staring at me. It
lasted all day with a break after lunch during which we drove around and experienced small town Ontario. After the break cousins performed dances for Palak and Meghal and then we all danced the night
away until the wee hours.
In Niagra we stayed in a hotel room with a falls view which was lovely. We went on the
Maid of the Mist tour that takes tourists
right up to the falls in a boat and drenches them. We also went on the
Behind the Falls tour which was not as fun. In both we are
given rain coats which are essentially glorified plstic trash bags. For dinner we ate in the hotel restaurant which had a lovely view of the falls. At night the falls are lit up in various colors
with gigantic lights.
niagra wedding personal toronto nontechnical 2007 Jun 13, 1:44Is this real? How could parents hate their children so much as to name them Winner and Loser?
article blog humor name 2007 Jun 11, 3:36This past weekend I was invited to two BBQs. Consequently, the weather took a break from the heat to drizzle.
The first was a lunch BBQ in celebration of Sarah's mom getting her Masters degree. Sarah and I went to her sister's house on the East-side where we had traditional foods you might associate with a
BBQ including some enjoyable sausage. There was a bit of Wii to be had and Sarah's mom killed at bowling. Sarah seemed a bit dismayed at this. I guess Sarah didn't expect it since she's had more
experience compared to her mom who was playing for the first time.
For dinner we drove over to Seattle to have a BBQ at Jeannie's house. Jeannie's family and my family became friends through our church when I was born and Jeannie even babysat me. The second bit
about the babysitting is how Jeannie would introduce me at the BBQ. I met her boyfriend who seems like a cool guy. He works for Microsoft as a consultant and has traveled to various countries for his
job. Guests had been instructed to bring side dishes and so there was quite a spread which was eclectic as well. We brought red potatoes, humus, and pita bread. As it turns out, one of the other
guests had produced humus in bulk as a supplier and apparently had a grudge against the big humus chains. We played it cool and she didn't say anything so we can only assume she didn't know it was
us. Jeannie was a great hostess and I had a fun time.
bbq washington personal nontechnical 2007 Jun 7, 5:29The other day I had the best idea for my Wii remote. Clearly I should use it to control the rotation of Tetris pieces in my
N-dimensional
Tetris game Polytope Tetris. One of the
issues I described with Polytope Tetris is user input. Given a Wii remote the
user could rotate a piece through 3 dimensions in a manner that's much easier to adjust to than particular keys on the keyboard.
Anyway, I did a little
research into how this might work. I knew that the Wii remote used infrared for absolute positioning and
Bluetooth for everything else (LEDs, speaker, accels.) I bought a
Bluetooth adapter for my PC after realizing that none of my
computers had one already. I used
GlovePIE to ensure that my Wii remote could connect and successfully communicate with my computer.
GlovePIE is actually pretty cool -- it provides a simple script layer over the Wii remote to control things like your mouse.
Since Polytope Tetris is in Java I looked for and found a
Java library for operating with the Wii remote and a long
forum thread discussing its use. I then read up on
Bluetooth in Java. Apparently JSR 82 is the name of the standard that describes the API a Bluetooth stack should expose
in Java. That is, to get Bluetooth working in Java one needs an additional package for Java that actually implements the Bluetooth Java API. This package would depend on the system so I suppose I
can't fault Sun for not including it... Where to find such a package? I found a
comparison list of implementations and tried the ones
that support javax.bluetooth.
None of them worked for me because none can address USB devices it seems or they cost money and I couldn't get the trial version working. I also tried
bluesock (not listed on the previous list) which seemed promising and could produce an address for my Wii remote as a connected device but couldn't use
that address.
And I thought that after I found the Wii remote Java library it would be easy... Oh well...
java bluetooth wii technical remote jsr82 tetris polytopetetris wiimote 2007 May 17, 5:16Previously I created some
resource tools and then I used them to
overwrite msxml3's
XML source view. In this update I've added support for the XPointer Framework.
This time around I've started to add support for the
XPointer Framework to my
XML source view and
I've added
installation instructions. The framework consists of a series of pointer segments each of which has a scheme name followed
by data in parenthesis. For example 'scheme1(data1)scheme2(data2)scheme3(data3)'. A pointer segment resolves to a portion of the XML document based on the data and the scheme name. The whole pointer
resolves to the first segment that successfully resolves. That is, from the example, if scheme1 resolves to nothing and scheme2 resolves to something then that's used and scheme3 is ignored. In
addition to the framework I've added support for the
xmlns scheme which binds namespace prefixes to a namespace URI and the
element scheme which is a simple way to resolve to particular elements in an XML. I also have limited support for the
xpointer scheme the content of which is resolved as an
XPath with some extra functions (which I don't support --
hence the limited). I've also thrown in schemes for the two
SelectionLanguage values supported by msxml3.
Next time I might try to support the xpointer functions that aren't in xpath using
msxml script. But I think I'm losing steam on
this project... we'll see.
resource technical xml xpointer res xpath xslt 2007 May 13, 7:30My parents blog on their new motorhome exploits.|Parents
motorhome blog friend family 2007 May 13, 12:16My parents and grandmother came to visit the weekend before this current weekend, starting Friday May 4th. They arrived via their new motor-home which is quite the machine. Of course its my parents
motor-home so its very well decorated inside including drapes and mini-chandelier. I didn't have a memory card for my camera at the time but I'm sure my parents will put up photos on their
new blog dedicated to their motor-home at some point in the future.
At any rate, they parked the motor-home in an
RV park in Issaquah so that Friday night I drove over to them and we ate at the conveniently
closely located
Pogachas. The next day they came over and I showed them the various cool looking things my computer connected to my flat
screen TV can do. This includes
Vista Media Center showing my photos from recent trips and
Google Earth mapping out our respective homes and my recent trips (and Paris). Additionally, we played Wii which, unsurprisingly based on anecdotal evidence
from varied sources across the Internet, was a seeming hit. Mom broke records playing bowling with my dad and I, Dad did an excellent job fishing, and Grandma's slow but steady win's the race
approach to cow racing worked very well.
The next day I drove them to Seattle and we walked around Pike's Place. My parents made dinner that night at my place which was very good and made my apartment actually smell like cooked food. Also,
we exchanged Christmas gifts. For the past two years I've flown back to my parents' house for Christmas and ended up with gifts I couldn't take with me in both directions. Those I left at their house
they drove up and I was able to give them the ones I left at my place. They started the drive back the next day. I really enjoyed seeing them here.
motorhome family personal nontechnical 2007 May 11, 7:48
After
Carissa and Elijah's wedding Sarah and I went to San Francisco. We drove in, well Sarah drove anyway, still in
the PT Cruiser Sunday morning and checked into our hotel,
Hotel Diva. I was originally concerned that I wouldn't fit in as I don't really consider myself a
diva, however the hotel was cool. They have Internet rooms setup in various themes, the front desk is always staffed, our room had a very modern look, and when we entered the flat-screen over the
front desk was playing an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
We walked around a bit before going to the
SF Museum of Modern Art. There was a Picasso exhibit at the time
which we could see for only $3 more. It felt kind of wrong like my ticket was super-sized. I think the most memorable piece I saw was
three white
panels which consisted of three blank panels. Art. Sure. After that Sarah wanted to see the giant Hello Kitty store she had heard of from her sister. We ended up going to the Westfield Shopping
center which has a disappointingly average sized Hello Kitty store. Apparently the giant one is gone. That night we went to
First Crush for dinner. I had a
flight of wine which consists of three one-third sized glasses of various but complimentary wines. It was a great restaurant in terms of food, drink, atmosphere and service.
The next morning we were even more the tourists when we went down to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. We visited the famous wax museum and purchased multiple
pounds of taffy. On the way back to the Oakland airport we got to experience a little traffic as part of
the
580 freeway had collapsed the morning we arrived and was still under repair on our way out. We survived of course and I think the trip went rather well.
sanfrancisco personal california sfmoma nontechnical 2007 May 2, 1:00Apparently there's something called OS-tan in which Windows OSes are represented as anime styled characters. Very odd.
article os-tan humor images weird anime 2007 Apr 15, 4:06For the past several months I've seen various articles suggesting why bees are disappearing. At first I thought this was another crackpot's article that somehow made it onto digg.com. But they keep
coming and sometimes from credible sources. After the article I saw tonight I thought I should go back and put together the various articles I've read on this topic. Bees may be disappearing due to
pesticides,
new organic pathogens,
genetically modified crops,
mobile
phones, or
climate change. Apparently,
the US hasn't been keeping accurate counts of its
bees so we don't know the extent of the situation. There's an
interview with Maryann Frazier, M.S., of the Dept.
of Etymology at Penn State and a
congressional hearing on the matter.
I know this is all very serious and could signal the end of our ecosystem as we know it, but I can't help throwing in the following links as well. The bees could be
hiding in this Florida couple's kitchen. Or perhaps they're laying low while being
trained by the government to fight terrorism. Or
they're hiding in extra dimensions that we mere humans can't perceive (I'm fairly certain that's what this
article is suggesting. Really. Read it. Seriously. Its awesome.)
roundup personal bees nontechnical 2007 Apr 8, 3:46This weekend was fun. Sarah and I went out for Jane's Birthday. We ate at a little Italian restaurant where our group was almost too large for the place and afterwards went to the
Viceroy lounge. The website apparently isn't very representative because although I looked at it before going out and I'd been to the place previously, I didn't
realize it was the same location until we got there.
I got several games for my Wii through Sarah's connections including
Wii Play and
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. We played both of them and I thought
Find Mii was especially fun.
Sarah's bunny is getting pretty big. Its been biting through wires now includig part way through the power cord to the cable box. You'd think after getting to the copper that it would learn to stop.
At any rate, it didn't hide any eggs. I don't have any new photos but you can see
the old bunny photos via my Vizicious
tool.
personal nontechnical seatle wii 2007 Apr 1, 11:00Security issue report concerning the ability to see sensitive information through transparent windows (April Fools Day).
humor security windows 2007 Mar 30, 3:29Apparently there's a dance form named 'spam'. From the link: "The term originated in the underground scene from Ontario, Canada. It was lifted from the video game and technological meanings of spam,
relating the concepts of rapid speed and randomness."
spam dance 2004 Aug 19, 2:52I received an email from verification@citibank.com the other day with the subject "Fraud Check Verification". Or at least that's what someone at the jumphk2.net domain would have me believe. The
whole official looking email was very convincing at first glance. There's the Citibank logo image up in the left corner, the reassuring TrustE image in the opposite corner, and just the right amount
of legal-ese on the bottom. The text requested me to follow a link in the email to update and verify my information. At closer examination however it becomes apparent that this is a scam. Little
things start to catch your eye. The TrustE image is hosted on ebay and the Citibank logo is hosted at 65.108.92.50. Both images one might expect to be hosted on Citibank's site. The link in the email
looks like its taking you to https://www.citibank.com/saw-cgi/citibankISAPI.dll?PlaceCCInfo but in fact its taking you to a page hosted at 65.108.92.50 again. The following sentence appears in the
email:
If your account information is not updated within 48 hours then your ability to sell or bid on Citibank will become restricted.
Oh shit! My bid on Citibank might not go through! Seriously, they might have gone to a little more effort than just copying and pasting a scam letter meant for EBay. And the number one fact
revealing the email for what it is -- I don't have a Citibank account. I had received an email exactly like this several months ago and just deleted it, but for some reason, perhaps I was in a foul
mood, I decided to do something this time around. I emailed abuse at my domain, the ISP controlling their IP address, and Citibank. My domain told me there was nothing they could do. Citibank has yet
to respond. As for their ISP, the following day I received an email from Leon at Alabanza's Abuse department informing me:
This account has been locked down and is now on schedule for deletion. If we can further assist you please let us know.
Fuck yeah! This was a lot better than anything I had expected. I anticipated no response from any of the letters I sent. The page is gone now. Leon rocks!
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