Story Archive (04/2003)

On The Road Again (04/26/2003)

I got a new computer! I have made the magical switch from PC to Macintosh with my brand new PowerBook G4. Complete with a full gigabyte of RAM and a 17" monitor, this is as top of the line as laptop gets these days. People have been bugging me about why I wanted to make the switch to Macs and there are two simple reasons. Macs are pretty. Macs are Unix. What more could you want?

I'm proud to say I took photos with my digital camera an imported them into iPhoto. Then I used jEdit to update my website and Transmit to synchronize it over. I'm still getting used to all these new Mac programs, but it's all sweet. I've got all my Java development environments working great as well.

I'm shipping out for a couple weeks in Chicago on Monday to help with a project. They are on their final two weeks, and that means there's a hard limit on how long I'll be out there. Traveling towards the east is lame for me. I leave on a 6:30am flight (which means I wake up around 4am) only to get to the client site by around 2pm. So I lose almost a whole day traveling across the country. Plus I'm flying Southwest, and they treat you like cattle.

Easter (04/21/2003)

No update the sickness-level. I was home in Sacramento over the weekend and too busy keeping up with the friends and family to be keeping my standard scoring method. Though I did have a strange complication of getting inflamation in my knees. I went to a nice Urgent Care Clinic for advice and then called my specialist to get his advice. The two almost completely contradicted each other. One recommended upping my prednisone--the other said it was good I was reducing it. One prescribed me anti-inflamatories--the other said it was a bad idea. One suggested ice--the other suggested heat. Well, at least both suggested Codine. Still, it just goes to show that the medical community doesn't always know what it's doing.

Saturday I went of to my friend Paul's new house. It was pretty easy to recognize. It was the house with giant U.S. Marine Core and U.S. flag flying out front. I took a few pictures of the guys that were there.

Sunday was Easter! In the morning I headed over to the McClusky's with my father and went riding up and down the private road on their motocycle. I'm planning on getting my motocycle learners permit. I may even get around to getting my M-class license, but that would be some time off. The permit is pretty good. There are three restrictions. No passengers. No nighttime driving. No freeway driving. Well, the little motorcycle doesn't have a passenger seat and can't go freeway speed. Plus, I'm not stupid enough to drive a motocycle at night! Yeesh.

The father's family gathering was at my second-uncle (or cousin-once-removed) Dan's house in Sacramento. We had a pretty good showing of people and I made sure to snap a few pictures as always.

I've got a delayed Easter lunch scheduled with the Shaffrath grandparent's later this week.

Good Day! (04/12/2003)

Today was good! I got myself a nice new stereo. It was one of the cheaper stereo's out there, but it passed the requirements I had. It needed a a remote with a digital tuner I could change. My old stereo, which I had bought off my friend Tim for $20 many year ago, only had on/off on the remote. That meant I had walk almost ten feet every time I wanted to change the station! Plus the tuner was an analog dial! No longer need I waste such energy moving to change the station.

I've been playing with cool new Java technologies recently. I started work on a version of Risk (Global War) for J2EE, but I'm not sure how far I'm going to get. I already got the hang of the J2EE features I wanted to play with (EJB 2.0, Local CMP, CMR, etc). So the rest of the work on Global War probably will wait. I have some some enhancements to the Mail Bouncer and Jagg which will actually give me practical value.

I updated Bilbo to version 2.2.1 to fix some bugs and give everyone access the cool aggregate functionality. Plus I've added the anime archive list to ChaosServer.

Health-o-meter: Yellow (04/10/2003)

I'm making fast improvements this week. I went into the office twice for field trips.

Health-o-meter: Orange (04/05/2003)

Since the question everyone likes to ask me currently is "How is your health?" I have been hard at work with Tom Ridge to help give people a clear visual picture of the Current Sickness Level.

• Red - Severe Level of Sickness
• Orange - High Level of Sickness
• Yellow - Elevated Level of Sickness
• Blue - Gaurded Level of Sickness
• Green - Low Level of Sickness

This has been a good week over all. I finally (after well over a year) got around to updating [Chaos Server - Contact Manager] for all my friends who have accounts on it. The notify engine should be up and working again. That was the major missing piece of functionality for a long time. I think that cleans up most of my current computer projects. So I need to start waiting for some other technological curiosity to scratch an itch of mine.

Work trucks along well. We are at the final stages of open sourcing our new framework. I got another request to go traveling to Liberty City, Illinois, to help out one of my good friends on a project. If I weren't as sickly as I am I'd probably be on a plane on Monday. I'm amazed to say that I've actually got a bit a travel itch. It's only been a few months since I was last on a business trip, but I kind of miss them. As long as I can be home for Flicks on Sunday, they aren't so bad.

Flicks starts up with week with the Two Towers. I haven't been out of the apartment for more than an hour (or a couple miles away) in about three weeks. It's a good first step to re-exploring the lovely world.

I got another gift from around the world. My friend Maria, currently in Japan, sent me a "The Two Towers" pencil board. I had never heard of a pencil board before that moment. I quick look on the Internet shows me that most pencil boards have anime artwork on them, and therefore it must be a Japanese thing. You put them under you paper when writing with a pencil. We just use desks here in the US.

My grandfather has given me a subscription to Discover magazine on a whim. It goes along nicely with the subscription I have to Science News Weekly. They are great scientific magazines, but I have a hard time getting myself motivated to sit down and read the things. One of the nice things about when I commute to work on BART is the thirty minute ride where I can really take the time to read magazines, books and other good stuff without the various distractions around me.