Journal entries for June, 2005

I just opened one of the 21 boxes of stuff that I shipped to myself when I moved down here last year. It turns out it's got all of my favorite T-shirts in it (Chroma Key, Habit Forming, Tourniquet, Gwar, Lost In Thought, Strapping Young Lad, &c). Most of my clothes came down here via Parcel Post, since they weren't fragile or anything, but I shipped this smaller box via Priority Mail, because it was the stuff I knew I wouldn't want to wait two to four weeks to have; I'd want it right away.

Funny, then, that it sat unnoticed next to my room for over a year before I thought to open it. It really highlights the way my choice of clothes has evolved since I started working full-time.

The unfortunate part, though, is that these clothes were dirty when I shipped them down here.

This morning I was eating a pack of Cottage Doubles, and it tasted a little weird. I thought of checking the expiration date, but it didn't really taste that odd — it could have been all in my head — and I knew that if I checked, and it was even a single day past its expiration date, I wouldn't be able to finish it, even though I knew in my head it was perfectly fine. So I kept my eyes fixed straight on the TV until I had finished eating it, and then turned it over to check. It turns out it expired about two weeks ago. Hmm. Curdled Milk 1, Dan 0.

While writing to a friend overseas
I looked up rhymes for the word 'cheese'
I discovered the fact
That one can contract
Maple syrup urine disease

Today as I was getting out of the shower, I pulled the towel off the rack and was surprised when something leaped onto my body, then fell down into the water and started swimming. After shrieking like a girl, I looked down and saw that it was a lizard, who had just stopped swimming and was now floating. I pulled it out of the water and it sat on my hand catching its breath. This put me in a quandary, because I wanted to take it out to the backyard to let it go, but I wasn't the most dressed I've ever been. As I tried to wrangle my towel around me with one hand, he jumped off my hand and into the sink. He then waited patiently, eyeing me warily while I finished drying off and donned my bathrobe. Finally I scooped him into a plastic cup that happened to be there, and took him outside. But first I stopped by my room and took pictures of him. That's the fee you pay for me giving you a ride. Just like all the girls I pick up with my car late at night.

My 250gb hard drive has been having problems for a few months now. It works fine for the most part, but when I try to access certain files or folders, my computer freezes completely and I have to do a hard reboot. While troubleshooting, I discovered that back when I replaced the stupid glowing fan in my computer with a sensible black one, I apparently installed it backwards, so it was blowing air AWAY from the hard drives instead of onto them. Oops. I don't know if that was a big enough issue to cause it to overheat, but it's possible it was related.

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Sorry for the outage. BinRock was inaccessible for the weekend. It went down on Friday morning, but I didn't realize it until I woke up Friday evening, just after Bryan had gone home for the day. As a result, he couldn't take a look at it until he got into work today. A weekend without BinRock! Oh, agony.

If you're curious, the problem was that it somehow lost the part of its network configuration that told it how to get out onto the internet, so it was alive and well, it just didn't know how to talk to us. The poor little guy must have been so frustrated.

Ugh, the one night I was too lazy to bring food to work, it turns out it's Noche De San Juan and the streets are completely clogged with cars. It took me an hour to get to work, whereas normally it takes about 10 minutes. If I go out to get food, I might be gone for hours.

And dammit do I hate those little scooter motorcycles that have gotten so popular all of a sudden. These people are kind of like the motorcycling equivalent of the "new rich," who suddenly suddenly find themselves on a motorcycle and havent had time to learn how to use one. They just know that when they are in a car they always see motorcycles driving between the stopped cars at stoplights, so they've decided that now that they have a motorcycle they never have to wait in line.

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Arr, living in my room is like a neverending game of Tetris on level 9, except I don't get the cool music to listen to. Things keep piling up all over the floor/desk/chair/bed and it's a constant race to find places to accomodate them and free up space. But my efforts are in vain, because more stuff soon fills the gap that I just opened up. I need to get back in a multi-room house like the Compound where I can "advance to the next level" by moving all the accumulated stuff to one of the empty rooms and sigh in satisfaction at my newfound space. Yes, that'd be a good long-term strategy.

Meej and I are making a movie. It's kind of like The Last Temptation Of Christ, except with linguini and spandex. The script is still being written, but I've volunteered Andrés for the part of the spandex-wearing Jesus. Anyone else who is interested in taking part in this epic should speak up now. I'm not sure how many characters there will be, but I'm sure the parts will fill up fast. Don't miss your chance.

For the last month or two I've had a growing interest in sailing. I think it was Life Aquatic that kind of crystalized these vague desires. I might have a bit of a romanticized concept of it, but I just like the idea of being out at sea, doing complex things with ropes to make the boat do what you want, etc. I also really like gracefulness of it. Sailing holds some of the same appeal as flying does; it's an activity where you get to see pretty sights and enjoy the world, but you don't need those things to enjoy it; the act itself is enjoyable on its own. But unlike flying, sailing manages to slip past that promise I made to my grandfather when I was a kid. :)

So I might look into taking some lessons. It's too bad it's such a yuppie sport. At least here in PR it might not feel like that quite so much, since the atmosphere is much more beach- and ocean-oriented. But sigh, it's yet another hobby where I will meet nothing but middle-aged men. Why do all my interests fall in line with that age group?

I like the latest Nissan XTerra ads I've been seeing on TV; the ones with the math equations that take care to point out that the XTerra doesn't come with leather seats or "bling bling". Back when I was in Clemson, a guy in the car club who worked at CarMax used to tell me about how the XTerra was one of the only SUVs that was actually built like the truck it was supposed to be. It offers heavy duty 4WD differentials, etc., and is built on frame rails, rather than the unibody design of most cars (and modern SUVs). However, he lamented that people tended to ignore those features, and the most popular model by far was the 2WD model without all the offroad equipment. It's nice to see that Nissan also disapproves of this misguided interest, and is trying to restate the truck's real purpose.

I'm so responsible! I had planned to watch one of my NetFlix movies today before work, but I woke up around 7pm and watching a movie would have meant not having time to go running. After a brief deliberation, I went running instead of watching the movie.

This time I made it about 3/4 of a mile before I had to stop and walk. It's nice to continue seeing improvement, but I know eventually it will level off.

When I'm really out of breath after running as long as I possibly can, I open my mouth wide to allow as much air as possible to get into and out of my system. It is effective, but I'm sure it looks stupid as hell. Today when I slowed to a walk I did that, and was walking with my mouth wide open, and then suddenly realized there was an attractive girl jogging past me in the opposite direction. I quickly closed my mouth, but I had just taken a deep breath, so I tried to exhale through my nose. However, I have a cold, so the result of this was that I blew a snot bubble for her. Awesome.

Tonight's excursion ran the gamut from relaxing to exciting. Inspired by a photographer I came across on Flickr, I set out tonight to find a dark beach to take photos illuminated by the nearly full moon. The problem is that on this crime-infested island, the adjectives 'dark' and 'desolate' pretty much by definition bring 'dangerous' in tow. I debated with myself whether someplace deserted far away from the city would be more or less safe than a beach in a more populated area ("Why would anyone with ill intent waste their time walking around on a beach far away from civilization," I reasoned). In the end, I opted for the former, and headed out to the long, dark road that runs along the beach on the way to Dorado.

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The weekend with Courtney was great. Although I only took two days off (Friday and Monday nights), it felt like a more substantial vacation. The weather was uncooperative though, so I didn't get to show her many of the cool things available here.

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Today I discovered the slides for an interesting talk given back in 1997 by Nathan Myhrvold (CTO of Microsoft at the time) titled "The Next Fifty Years of Software". He makes some intriguing assertions, such as "Nathan's First Law of Software:" Software is a gas, that expands to fill its container. This in turn drives hardware development, and is what makes Moore's Law possible.

The part I really liked, though, was where he starts talking about the storage requirements of the human genome, etc. For example, the stuff that makes you genetically unique fits on a 3.5" floppy disk.

From there he proceeds to discuss the "ultimate computer," the human brain. He brings up something I've pondered as well: once computers reach a complexity comparable to the human brain, will it even be possible to program them directly as we do modern computers? Or will we have to devote time to teaching them, like we do with people? As he says, human takes 20 years to boot up.

When Andrés got down here last Monday, he finally convinced me to start running, and we've gone running around the neighborhood nearly every day since he arrived. There is a one-mile-long loop around my block, so for now we've just been doing one lap of that each day. I'm already noticing a difference; the first day, I ended up walking most of the way, and it took us something like 15-20 minutes to make it around the block. Yesterday, we jogged nearly all of it, stopping only twice to walk and catch our breaths, and it only took about 9 minutes. It's a challenge to overcome my aversion every day and force myself to go running, but it feels good later to know that you've done something worthwhile, and it's satisfying to see the improvement in ability. It has helped a lot to have Andrés pushing me each day when I resist, and by now I think I've got the momentum required, so it should be no problem to keep it up once he leaves on Friday. Perhaps I should wire something up so that you can give me an electric shock by clicking a button on my website, so people can punish me if I start to slack off in the future :)

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I have yet to have an easy, straightforward oil changing experience with my dealer. A previous entry discusses my last attempt to get my oil changed, requiring a total of three visits before they finally accepted my car. It seems each time you go, they give you one more small bit of information, and little by little you try to piece together all the clues that theoretically should eventually enable you to achieve a straightforward transaction. There is always such a rift between theory and practice, though.

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Searching eBay for the string "NTSA" apparently turns up all the forbidden stuff confiscated from air travellers by the TSA at airports; mostly pocket knives and scissors. Interesting that this is how they get rid of it.

So, is it true that one can survive on Guinness alone? Now we know for sure. I won't ruin the ending. Read bottom to top to preserve the suspense, or just read the two topmost posts if you're that kind of person. Is it troubling that, reading his graphic descriptions of the debilitating hunger he suffered while forcing down another Guinness, all I felt was an insidiously growing longing for a pint? :)

Last night I had made plans to hang out with Michelle, but my parents needed me to watch Natalia for a few hours, so we looked for ideas for things we could both do. Natalia mentioned that she still wanted to see Hitchiker's Guide, which I wholeheartedly support. However, the website was out of date, and it turned out that the only theater listed that was supposedly still showing it in fact wasn't. Instead, Natalia suggested we go to the little amusement park next to Montehiedra (shows who is really in charge of the evening). Michelle was all for the idea, so she came over and we headed off.

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I don't understand it when people drive faster than me. I drive a sports car with above-average handling and braking ability, and I drive as fast as I feel comfortable. It troubles me when a large SUV passes me going at least 10-15 mph faster.

As I drove up, the bird waited until the last minute before finally taking off in flight, and then pooping on my hood for good measure. At first I was mad, but then I realized it must have been a fear poop. Imagining myself in his situation, I decided it would probably be really uncomfortable to poop while running away from someone who has just scared me. So I felt we were kind of even.

What the hell? Interfaces? Reflection? Parameter Covariance and Contravariance? Mixins? I thought I knew how to program. Who made up all of these words all of a sudden?

With the resolutions of my last post in mind, I stopped and took pictures a few places on my way home from work this morning. Even though neither of them was particularly breathtaking, I figured, why not stop? I wasn't in any particular rush to get home. The first was some construction equipment across the street from the gas station where I stopped to get gas, and the second was clouds of flowers falling from the trees in my neighborhood as I drove past. It's much more feasible to stop and take a few pictures when I'm coming home at 8:30am. Back when I was getting off of work at 6am, my drive home took place mostly in darkness, which presents a twofold obstacle to picture-taking diversions; nothing to take pictures of, and interesting people to encounter.

I really need to pick up this book. Based on the excerpts on that page, it seems like the book speaks precisely about the hangups I've been having lately with wanting to produce music or photography but feeling like I just can't.

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My first NetFlix DVDs arrived today. That wasn't too bad; about three or four days. A little longer than it'd probably have taken if I were in the US, but it's something I can deal with.

The first one I watched was Run Lola Run. Oddly enough, I never knew it was in German. I knew almost nothing about it; I just added it to the queue because everyone always talks about how good it is, and Jeff had that bigass movie poster in his room. I did enjoy it. Now we'll just have to see how long it takes from when I return this one until I get the next DVD.

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