Month: June 2004

I know, I normally don’t do these, but this one was a bit more interesting. I’m all for the social networking stuff. I assume a “clique” is a group of people that all have each other listed as friends.

I am a member of 3 cliques of size 10

• hamusutaa, glue, kaien, shino6, eugmoon, meowa, leethomps, kken, danpa, receiver
• hamusutaa, meowa, kaien, shino6, eugmoon, leethomps, kken, danpa, receiver, mariarider
• hamusutaa, meowa, kaien, shino6, leethomps, kken, danpa, receiver, mariarider, lyricaldanichan

Find the largest clique containing:
(Enter your livejournal username here).

Two things: First, when I was removing the temporarily installed hard drive from my computer, I figured out why the on-board soundcard wasn’t working in my new case. I won’t go into details, but it all started with the following thought: “Hey, why isn’t this cable plugged in to anything?”

Secondly, the concept of inertia has once again kept me from leaving Yahoo!. Not only is my primary contract extended for a month because of loose ends that haven’t been tied up yet, but another full-time contract may be lined up after that. So, even though more and more people I know are leaving (including employee #8, the VP who originally hired me almost exactly six years ago), I just can’t leave this place… and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. (Even if all the drivers in the cars are morons.)

It’s Tuesday again, so you know what that means! That’s right! It’s time for Andy to realize that it’s been a week since he last posted and make one long post that has a bunch of stuff in it.

Saturday was a double movie day for me. First, we went to dim sum in Oakland to celebrate ‘s graduation from fashion school. After that, I followed home to get some stuff from her that she was borrowing. Ended up going to see Dodgeball with her, then hung out at Bay Street for a bit. I bought a used Game Boy Printer for ten bucks at the EBGames there, and a pair of the in-ear headphones at the Apple store. A woman there started going crazy when she saw my Warhamster T-shirt. Then had dinner at Rubio’s. Then drove over to SF to see The Terminal, and went home.

Sunday was “voluntarily descend into technology hell” day. On Friday, the new case and new 160GB hard drive I had ordered finally arrived, so I was all set. The only things I were transferring (or so I thought) were the processor, the memory and the video card. Well, while installing Windows 2000, I started getting page faults. A quick rant in IRC brought me the reply to try lowering my front-side bus speed from 133 to 100. That worked, so I reinstalled from scratch again, and it worked. After that, I installed the drivers for the video card, then discovered that the onboard sound wasn’t working.

I tried reinstalling the drivers… I tried flashing the BIOS. After flashing the BIOS, I was able to get a very small amount of sound, but it was obvious that it wasn’t working correctly. So I ended up taking my old Soundblaster Live! from my old case and putting it in the only PCI slot.

I should probably investigate why it wasn’t working, but I wanted to get FFXI working again and didn’t want to wait.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also got the $50 802.11b kit, which fit very nicely into the case without taking up a PCI slot. I then discovered there’s a $75 802.11g kit available as well, and I’m kicking myself for just figuring that out now, because I would have much rather had that for future use… and I might end up buying it anyway, wasting the $50. But not until I actually have a 802.11g AP, I guess.

[Alicia] (3:21:02 PM): so i guess you saw the email
(3:21:10 PM): or I’m just psychic
[Alicia] (3:21:12 PM): either that, or you’re psychic
[Alicia] (3:21:15 PM): hahahahaha
[Alicia] (3:21:20 PM): maybe you ARE psychic

(IM Handle withheld, just in case…)

Stupid SBC is having problems with its DSL. All of its DSL, it seems, as a lot of people are disconnecting at the same time as us.

I was in an FFXI party at the time, just as the battle started, of course. By the time I get back, I’m staring at the dead body of a teammate, and I discover that I wasn’t the only one on SBC DSL in the party… the other Red Mage was as well.

I’m surprised they managed to kill the monster at all…

So I haven’t made an update in a while, so you get a bunch of random paragraphs. Also, I typed this whole thing up once already, but the stupid client froze. Thankfully I was able to get a screenshot of everything other than the first paragraph, so I’m typing this again. What better way to start off than to follow up on my last real topic, how drivers here at work are morons. This morning, when I was driving in, I noticed that the infamous “Lot Full” sign was up. So of course, not one, but two cars ahead of me pulled into the garage anyway. “That can’t apply to me, they don’t mean full full, right?” or perhaps “I don’t believe them, I have to see for myself,” or maybe even “I’m just going to park in one of those spots that isn’t a spot anyway!”

But anyway, I bought one of these, and it arrived a few days ago, so one one bother buying me one as a gift. Ironically, the company I bought it from was a dealer at Fanime for a few years, I wonder if they recognized my name. It came with two optional hands, too! So, you can either have the normal hands, a drill or a claw! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. GIANT ROBOTIC HAMSTER!

Yesterday was a bit of a frustration. I don’t normally have things scheduled on Sundays, but I had two conflicting events yesterday. So, in keeping with tradition, I didn’t go to the Fanime Dead Dog… I don’t think I’ve made it to one yet for various reasons. Instead, I was at a housewarming where we played a ludicrous amount of Magic and poker.

As I was digging around on the iTunes Music Store a few days ago, I came across a song called Glow Worm, which sounded familiar. I knew I had a version of it, but it wasn’t in my iTunes library. I thought it was a Rockapella version of it, but I couldn’t find it. Well, I finally figured out it was a part of a medley… just the sort of thing that sticks in my head until I find a solution.

At Carl’s Jr. now (and at Hardee’s too, I assume, for you folks east of the Rockies) they have a double Six Dollar Burger, advertised as one whole pound of Angus beef. That’s a whole lotta beef.

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And another entry, kept separate so the comments don’t get mangled together.

People at work are morons. Well, at least when they get in to their cars. When driving home today, the first thing I noticed with amusement was that the “Lot Full” sign that I’ve mentioned a few times was not only knocked over, but appeared to have been run over a few times.

The second thing I noticed with dismay was an idiot in a minivan trying to pull out of a parking spot in front of me. He/she was stuck in the middle of what would probably end up being a 10-point turn, causing traffic to back up. And of course, I was stuck right there. So I’m sitting there for a good 10-15 seconds when I catch motion out of the corner of my eye, and I see a car pulling out… right in to the corner of my car!

We scrape corners… and I shout something out… then pull forward into an empty slot (the minivan is still doing its thing), and get out to assess the damage.

The guy gets out, he knows he was at fault, he’s already got his insurance information out. It’s not that bad, the right-rear light is scratched and the corner is dented in. I remain calm, because I know it could have been worse and the guy is no where near denying anything. I get his information, we exchange extensions, and I get back into my car.

And as I pull out, the car behind me (which was well behind me as I pulled out) honks their horn… as if to say “what are you doing, pulling out in front of me?! You just cost me 5 seconds of my life!” and then zooms off to the left as we get to an intersection in the parking lot.

Morons.

Once again, first things first. And forgive me if I jump around a bit, I’ve lost all sense of chronological order with this.

So, besides completely forgetting that I needed to take Friday off for this four day con, (which fortunately we were able to work around at work after a modicum of overtime on Thursday) things ran pretty smoothly. There were a few technical glitches, but I was actually able to fix most things as the weekend wore on. We spent more time waiting for Fanime tech staff to get the speakers and mics working than we did getting our stuff set up.

Friday and Saturday are a big blur, basically involving a lot of time in the karaoke room. I think Saturday was the first game show (ironically in the same room as karaoke), which was uneventful except for the christening of “Mop Head,” the adorable little 12 year old who wouldn’t ever leave the room. The second game show gave us the insanity that was the Big O cosplayers who completely dominated the board, guessing the anime character from only 1 or 2/16ths of the picture revealed. Sunday gave us the amusing story of Katie biting a random guy’s hand, which she tells fairly well over on her soapbox.

I managed to not ever partake in the complementary breakfast. That’s the problem with working until 4am, then working until 2am, then forgetting to set the alarm.

The Studio Proteus Back Issues folks were calling it quits due to reorganization, so they were having a closeout sale. I bought one of their 28-volume sets of Lone Wolf and Cub… which goes straight on to my reading list. (Currently very long right now.)

I was impressed with how dense the con actually was. Everything was awfully close together (except for Der Cosplay, which was across the street, but I didn’t go to anyway), but there was so much event space.

Fanime happened, or so I hear. I think I took pictures, too. I’m too tired to remember it now, and having to do work stuff. More later.