December 2002

With the return from my grandparents house, all of the traditional Christmas activities has now drawn to a close. A short list of these activities:

1. Christmas Eve Church
2. Opening gifts on Christmas Eve
3. Visiting with my mom's folks
4. Visiting my Dad's parents, and his sister's family (aka aunt, uncle, counsins)
5. Opening presents a 2nd time with whichever set of grandparents we weren't with Christmas Eve
6. Cutting wood

I forgot to tell this story earlier, but I think its very me. This is back on the day I got home, a week ago. I dropped Al off at his houes and headed home, around 4:30 AM. Everyone of course was asleep, given the early morning hour. So I figured I'd go in thru the garage like normal, and try not to wake anybody up. One slight problem, this approach would only work if I could get into the garage. We have a keypad outside the garage to open the garage doors, but I didn't remember the code. I checked the side door to see if my parents had anticipated my arrival and left it unlocked... no dice. I tried several of the codes I did remember, and of course none of them worked either. I got back in my car and thought for a second. I had my cell phone, I could call my dad's PCS phone and hope nobody else woke up. Yea, that'd work, except he kept it in the Den, not very close to where he slept and it was unlikely that he would hear it. I didn't want to call the houes phone, since that'd wake everyone up, and I just as well ring the doorbell. Wait. I have my laptop with me, with all my email on it. I'm sure my mom emailed me the code the last time she changed it, so I could write it down or whatever. I pull out the laptop and start a search on the folder with her emails, and after a few moments and finding the most recent email viola! There was the code. I repeat it to myself 2 or 3 times so that I'm not walking up to the house with a laptop in hand, after all, that'd look all to suspicious :). I punch in the code and hit enter. Nothing. Arg!! I walk back to the car, and double check the code. Yup, that was the last email. I go back and try it again. This time it works, I must've hit one of the buttons wrong. And I'm in. I bring in the necessary items for sleeping: my laptop and camera, and toilitry (sp?) bag. Of course the necessary email checking and whatnot occurs, and I hit the hay.

The sun just set, and we just got back and finished cleaning up from a day of wood splitting. We got 3 pickup beds full today. I woke up this morning with an upset stomach, but after making my way to the bathroom I was feeling better. We all got dressed and by the time we got everything around it was a bit before 11:00. We headed over to the timber (aka the woods across the way), and worked until 12:30. I spent most all my time on the splitter. We filled 2 beds full (that's pickup beds, to be clar), and headed back. I walked back with my bro, which was entertaining since we had to get across the creek. By the time I got back I was again not feeling so well, and opted to skip out on lunch. I slept until 2 of my cousins were about to leave, and we took the obligatory group photos. I was feeling better again. After that we headed back over to do some more firewood gathering. This time we were working on a big heavy oak tree. We had quite the time getting those big old logs lifed up on the splitter. We finally got a setup to work, and filled the pickup with a nice load of oak wood. The sun was setting as we came home, it was a very beautiful sunset.

Yesterday we had our Christmas celebration with grandparents & aunt/uncle and cousins on my dad's side. We had prime rib for dinner. Somehow I ended up with the largest piece. After dinner we all sat around and watched the KSU / ASU football game. I proudly wore my ASU t-shirt amnongst a crowd of K-State fans. I have to admit, I would've rather seen KSU win - they were in fact ranked much higher, and should've had no problems. The game was close, and ASU played very very good defence. It was a very good, close exciting game. I had gotten the largest knot in my shoulder that I've ever had from sleeping the night before, I think I slept funny on it and this knot was about the size of a half dollar, definitly larger than a quarter. I took some aleave (or whatever its called), which helped relax it a little, but between that and all the meat I'd eaten, I think made my stomach a little upset.

Last night / this morning was very fun.. For the first time in...well, I dunno how long Al, Mark, Michael & I were able to hang out together. We watched a MST3K: The Castle of Fu Manchu, and Tomb Raider. Both were great fun. My favorite was in the mst3k when we were all confused about the 15 plots all going on at the same time, and we were commenting on that when I think it was crow who said something to the effect of "who are these people and what are they doing and what does it matter". I'll have to get the exact quote later. And then on Tomb Raider, Michael made the comment "Rule #1: When you are going to open the door and you have a gun and are naked" - Mark: "Don't".

Today was a day full of hopes. It all started with my alarm going off at 8:30 AM, and me promptly falling back asleep. I woke again at 11:00 and realized I had switched the alarm to radio mode instead of buzzing mode when I snoozed it at 8:30. I think the radio is still on, I never got around to turning it off. I quickly got out of bed since I knew Al was going to be coming over to take pictures of the S2000. His stepdad is selling it to buy either a G35 or an Accord. I had just enough time to get dressed before he got here. We took pictures, loaded them off the camera and then went out to drive it around. It's pretty insane. Very fast, and it sounds like a motorcycle at 8500 RPM :). Yes, that's still below redline. Let's just say that you're going highway speeds in 3rd gear (out of 6).

We ate lunch, and then Al left and I headed to the Honda dealer. I got a new oil filter, they didn't have a fuel filter in stock so I decided I'd stop at an auto parts store on my way home. I headed back down the interstate and got to the exit at 95th street, which was backed up about a quarter mile on the highway. I decided to skip going to the parts store and just head home. After some more thought, I decided that it would work well. I changed the oil, it went so smoothly that I wondered what I forgot to do. No, no, I didn't forget anything, that's just an expression. After finishing that process, I loaded up the old oil in my car and went over to Napa that was not near any malls (oops, forgot to mention that 95th street is insane because of the mall). I dropped off the oil and picked up a fuel filter, but the phone lines for the credit card verification wasn't working well. I waited about 10 minutes as it tried and retried, and finally gave up and payed cash.

I'm home. For those of you I emailed, you already know this. For those I didn't, well, I just picked a few names of people I thought would be the most concerned with my safe arrival, and it was after I'd been awake for 20+ hours.

As far as the trip goes, it was almost non-eventful. We did have fun trying to figure out what was making my car shake upon occasion, we tried oil treatment, and fuel treatment that we picked up on Wal-Mart along the way. The fuel treatment seemed to help, but it still came and went. We also had a fairly close call on 54 while passing, the lanes weren't marked well and it shouldn't have been a passing zone. There was also the nice Oklahoma Police that we got to meet along the way too. They're nice folk.

My poor car is so salty from Arizona, I'm going to try to wash it next. I've gotten all my clothes and stuff put away, and my laptop is working, however I need to make a few adjustments for it to play nicer on the network. I'm still waiting on the delivery of my present for my brother and parents, I'm crossing my fingers they get here tomorrow.

What a last couple days. Let's see, starting with yesterday, after classes finally ended at 8:35, 5 minutes late no less... I went to the airport with Laruen, Erik, Jason and Dan to pickup Peggy from her semester abroad in Quito, Equador. (song of the capitols of south american countries now going thru my head...). We decided to come back to my apartment, but first had to stop at Lauren & Erik's. Also, I first needed to pickup things from Jenny that she wanted stored in our fridge over break, and she ended up coming over to hang out too. Peggy & Lauren stayed until midnight, we just had some fun chatting and catching up a bit. Peggy finally crashed so they left, and Jason started playing some Mario All Stars, playing a few levels of each. We did some chatting and whatnot too. After everyone else left, I spent too much time working up proper IPCHAINS settings for my linux box, so as to avoid another visit from the FBI. Finally around 4:00 after becoming tired enough I went to bed.

Today, more work on the server... forgot about DHCP. Dhclient isn't reading its config file in properly, so I'll have to either find a way to deal with that, or give up on it and let it get a new IP. Either case, typhoon will be up and down intermitently until I leave, and hopefully after that it stays up. If not, well, then my website will be moved back to www.public.asu.edu, but I'll forward things so nobody will ever know the difference, so long as you are loading up david.thetyphoon.net it'll always work.

Also, I went up to the scottsdale skate park with Lauren & Peggy. Peggy's been without rollerblades for the past 4 months, and was having minor withdrawl. We went from McDowell to Chaparrel, and Peggy went a mile beyond that, wherever that takes you to. That's the furthest I've ever gone, and am surprised my cheap-o blades held up. See, I wanted cheap ones to leave in my car, they're my emergency transporation in the event I have issues with my car. Haven't had to use them yet for that purpose. Oh, so I wanted cheap ones after the two incidents of breaking into to dave's car last year, this way I have no worries... at least, I won't mind too terribly much if they walk off.

After that, we went back to the Manor where Coti was preparing dinner, and Peggy made cookies. Almost everybody who was still in town (that is, people I know) stopped by, including Dewey, Jason & Dan. Then Al, who is such an awesome guy, brought all of Peggy's stuff back that he had been storing for her. That '81 pontiac bonneville sure can hold a lot of stuff, even had a little room to spare!

On another note, I'm stuck in the month of October. For those of you who read my last journal, it had the wrong date on it. I know some of you were operating on nearly 0 sleep, so I'm not too surprised that ya didn't notice. Not only was it dated wrong, but I started to date this entry in october as well. And it's happened before too. I don't quite understand it. Maybe in my mind October was a really good month or something and I want to go back there, I dunno.

Rambling on... I went to fry's to buy drinks for the trip. It's so much cheaper to buy them at a grocery store than convenience store. I got a 6 pack of coke, sprite, lemonade, and water... all the nice screw-top lids and whatnot, each 2 for $5. I also picked up a 6 pack of "orange juice" in the event that caffeine is needed. I suspect its use will be reserved for after sleeping and needing to re-awaken for driving, and not for driving on pure caffeine - which is unsafe, particularly when the roads aren't in good shape. Al & I leave tomorrow morning, as soon as I can get around. With that said, I will now start getting things ready to pack up and hit the hay. Here's to hoping the server stays up for the next month!

Here are some of the things I've learned this semester, in no particular order (with the exception of groupings that go together). I may update/edit/append this list later, as I have more time to think about it.

1. I make up new "english" words upon occasion
2. It's pronounced CREAM cheese
3. German is poorly translated via online translation tools
4. Eldest children are often much to hard on themselves
5. Logical people can loose sight of the correct logic when burried in a situation
6. It's easy to see what's logical when you're a 3rd party
7. 3rd parties can miss / be unaware of important details
8. Hugs have an illogical power
9. Not everybody should be trusted with the truth
10. Lack of communication can drives people nuts
11. Things aren't always as simple as they first appear
12. People make assumptions based upon appearances, and that which is convenient to them
13. Staying up late really messes up your sleeping pattern
14. It's usually worth it
15. Not having class until after 10 allows you to stay up late
16. Sometimes change is good, but going home is always soothing
17. God works through our strugles too
18. If someone gives you a stuffed animal to hold on to for a while, sitting it on top of a computer monitor is a good place to not lose it
19. Little red straight bladed screw drivers have a tendency to dissappear
20. Business students think differently
21. It's not always worse than an Engineer's mindset, but almost always slower
22. Being the first person to leave an exam feels good
23. I'd go insane without other techy friends
24. People who can break the tension deserve much more recognition
25. Graduate school is not as much different than I thought
26. I like it that way
27. Finding a flexible job is key to succeeding at school
28. Jobs are very hard to get
29. What my cross country coach always said was true... one of the keys to success is to surround yourself with great people
30. You're constantly surrounded with the people you live with
31. When you move to a new location and switch phone numbers, don't forget to tell your Grandmother your new phone number, otherwise she'll end up having a nice chat with a complete stranger instead
32. Katie, whoever she is, used to have our phone number
33. Katie oftentimes has overdue rentals
34. People will keep calling for Katie for months upon end
35. None of Katie's cute friends call me looking for her
36. UPS Packages can magically dissappear
37. Alarm clocks were not meant to go off at 15.00
38. Highway entrance ramps demand respect
39. If your car alarm has 10+ false alarms per day there's something wrong
40. When you're underneath a car, the concepts of clockwise and counterclockwise are easily confused
41. One can drive Tim nuts via 80's music, or singing off key
42. Garbage Disposals aren't perfect devices
43. It is possible to sing the wrong melody to a christmas carol and not realize it until halfway through the song

In the true spirit of finals, I've had a lot of fun procrastinating last night and today. Last night was music night, had lots of fun finding music that I thought both my rommates would like. We came up with quite a bit of good stuff, things like Nirvana, Weezer, Tonic, Linkin Park, Jimmy Eat World, Everclear, and the like. I also introduced Jenny to what I think is one of the best Space Ghost episodes, "Chambraigne". Some of my favorie quotes:

"Finally a product for me. I believe every word that man just said, because it's exactly what I wanted to hear."
"I'm already smart enough to know this is working."
"Chambraigne is an Intellihancer."
"Is this product for everyone? No no no, this product is not for everyone, only for those who buy and choose to use this product."
"He's trying to lure you into a sports deathtrap!"
"Bob smells like a chili dog, and his hair is huge!"
"How much hair do you have spaceghost?" "Oh, I dunno, 9"
"Moltar's heating my skull to 450 degrees. It's like getting a scalp massage from lucifer."
"Bob, as a carbon based sex machine..."
"It's not advisable when doing a football game in Green Bay in December..." "Everybody knows Green Bay is not in December."
"Put that in your pipe and smoke it... with your burned lips."
"I don't need large brains to fit in... Shampoo will play you for the fool!"

In other fun news, in an attempt to not wake up my roommate, I took this picture of him without a flash. See, I learned last year when taking a similar picture, which is known as the bent neck picture or something to that effect, I learned that camera flashes wake Tim up. So, I setup a little device for camera stabilization and succeeded in getting an updated sleeping tim photo. This proved to also be a successful procrastinatory challenge. But enough of that, I now should actually get my homework done. Especially since it's taken me almost half an hour to create this entry.

Today has been quite fun. There's so much I could write about, but some of it would violate my laws of online journaling, which is why I don't refer to this as a journal on my webpage and rather current events. See the entry on 2002-08-03 for more information about my feelings on online journals. A little addition to that, journals are great places to get out your feelings and stuff. But I choose to do that via other channels than an online journal, which is why this is current events.

Early early this morning I went to see Star Trek: Nemesis. I wasn't planning on going, but since there was a good group of peoples going I couldn't resist. Besides, I hadn't been to a movie at the theater since summer. Note to self: don't ever see a movie in theater 9 at Harkins Centerpoint. Say what you want about the movie, I won't say anything in case you haven't seen it. But that theater, my goodness... I walked out with a headache, the treble was set so disproportiontly loud. The S's were so sharp, and the phaser guns were aweful.

I was up *far* to late, and didn't wake up until 11:15 AM today, and even at that I was slightly tired. I got around and went to Arby's by myself for lunch. I was in an alone sorta mood. I stopped by the auto parts store on my way home to pickup car waxing supplies. A bit after I got home the three of us (Andy Tim & I) all headed to Al's house. We had a little car washing party (well, nothing about it made it a party). I waxed my car afterwards. My oh my, it was in serious need of that. After the incident there was some spots that really needed the wax job to get it buffed out. I hadn't washed it since then either. It's all clean and super purty. Yea, so I really like my car and will be sad to sell it.

Andy & Tim left after they got their cars done and we talked a bit. After they left Al & I chatted some, talked with his neighbors a bit who offered to take any extra junk to the junkyard, they had a trailer load. Since my muffler was still at Al's house we had them take it, saving me a trip. I really should have taken care of it sooner, but this worked well. Sorry Al for leaving it there! We had some sandwich for dinner and wached "Ice Age". Gotta love Al's speakers. So much better than Harkins Centerpoint Theater #9. I like how they're setup very well, and he has some good plans for impovement that should work very well. My favorite is the idea of hanging the speakers from the ceiling. Very cool.

I'm home now, haven't done anything done towards homework today at all, I might just go to bed instead of trying and deal with it tomorrow and Monday.

Brrr... It's almost gone and gotten chili outside, and I'm not talking about the food.

The other observation has to do with men. I ought to be fair right? Ok, guys. Wash your hands. It's sick and disgusting the number of guys I see walking out of the bathroom without washing their hands. Some don't do anything, others think that a little sprinkle of water is sufficient. And I'm not just talking about those crude guys who smash beer cans on their heads, I mean the average guy who many women would classify as handsome perhaps. All ages too, its a phenominon I've noticed not only at ASU bathrooms but also at Sprint, and other public rest rooms too.

I better eat now since I have class in 22 minutes.

ARG!!! I'm so bad. I just woke up a few minutes ago. I really don't need to be sleeping that much! I did have a really odd dream sometime between when tim left and when I woke up for good. I was back in KC, and a bunch of people from my grad program where there too. We were at Worlds of Fun (amusement park), and we were riding on this roller coaster, not one that exists at the park... probably modeled slightly after "timber wolf", as it was named "black wolf" and it was all painted black. Some reason during the ride I had ended up talking with the "owner" of the roller coaster, who reminded me of a rock radio station DJ. Oh, I was talking with him on my cell phone for some reason. It was then that he explained to me that if you stay on the roller coaster inbetween where people normall get off and where the coaster picks new people up, and if it was a Friday and you were the first to do it you win $5,000. See, this was one of those coasters that had a different spot fr dropping off and picking up. The only problem was today was Thursday, but he was going to do it for me anyway. So I did, and through the whole deal you end up hanging onto the car as you're hanging upside-down from it, and somehow water was involved too, like it went down under water for a bit. So when I got off I had a backpack, 'cause it just doesn't seem right sometimes to be walking around without one, and I walked back through the line which was empty now, and talked with the 'owner' dude that seems like a DJ. We chatted for a bit about how its fairly rare that anybody wins, but once after a guy won he made an extra $150,000 because of all the people who wanted to ride the coaster that day. Btw, that doesn't make any sense since you don't have to pay to ride the coaster, but alas. I told him I'd try to spread the word so more people in this town would want to try for the $5,000.

This weekend has been pretty successful, I actually got a number of things done off my list from the last entry. I'm feeling pretty good about that. So yesterday I treated myself to the Christmas Concert at Gammage. Tim was playing handbells in one of the songs, and Keith was of course on the Piano, as well as the Celeste, moving back and forth as the song required. Clearly the most memorable piece was "A Musicological Journy through the Twelve Days of Christmas" by Craig Courtney, with musical styles ranging from 6th Century Rome, to 19th Century Italy to 19th Century USA. It was rather amusing. Besides that, "Hark the Herald" arranged by Wilberg was probably the most enjoyable musically. I mean, who doesn't like a really big pipe organ that caused at least one little flake of paint from the ceiling to fall?

Time for me to do something productive, like eating and showering and things of that nature.

That's right campers, 13 more days before break officially begins. For me that means 4 days of class remaining. So, what's left in that amount of time for me to do? Something like this:

1. Read 3 more cases
2. One more case write-up
3. Edit one more case write-up
4. 2 more Java projects
5. 1 Research Paper
6. 1 Live Case / Research Paper
7. 2 or 3 Midterms

I also learned that I'm still paid over Christmas Break, so I should be finding some way to do my 10 hours/week minus of course the University holidays. This, and my Java class he said he was going to give us a project to work on over break, I don't think he was kidding... I guess I could check his website and see if there's any indications on that... Yup, looks like there is one due the week we get back. There's also a lot and lot of scanning I'd like to do of pictures and stuff over break. So I'm wondering how I should occupy myself for break, if I should go to CASI or not, how long to stay in KS, etc...

On another note, I have this theory that people from phoenix who traveled home for Thanksgiving, where home is someplace not in the valley, got sick when they returned. I'm sure there's one or two exceptions to this rule, but since there's only a couplse 4 or 5 million people in the Valley I doubt the rate of error is all that high. So far, I have 3 people who fit this theory, and that count is growing higher and higher.

Last night was great fun. Actually all day yesterday was rather fun. I drove to UPS to figure out where my book was that I ordered a month ago from Amazon. It turns out somehow along the line my address got messed up, and it had the wrong apartment number. After careful analysis, I don't know how it got messed up. Might've been me, might have been amazon's system. Either way, I have my book now so I have much less excuses on not being prepared for class.

I got back shortly after 5, and Tim had his German group over to work on their German project, which was a video of a cooking show, you guessed it, in German. I left shortly after 6ish, and they were still scripting. Arrived at the Rancho, and to my pleasure dinner was excellent. Ham & pineapple, and other good stuff. After eating I received a phone call from Tim, inquiring if Dewey was there and if they could use his camera. Apparently it was meant to be, as Dewey had the camera in his car with him, tripod and all. So I left shortly after that with Shelly Berardi who wanted to see our place. I got back, and got they got the camera going, and Shelly & I chatted for a little while until somebody along with a few accomplices started bombarding our apartment with water baloons. It was great fun, all the girls for the German group were freaking out...and all of us who lived here were like "eh". It was very humerous. Andy left for campus and took Shelly back too, and the German group girls left. We chatted for a bit, then Jenny, Sadhana, and Stephanie left and I helped Tim get started on video editing. What a night!

It was *very* hard going back to classes today after a week off... I can't imagine what it'll be like after Christmas break.

Turn off your alarm! It's the middle of the afternoon for crying out loud! Why is it the sound of an alarm can so easily penetrate walls? We should re-engineer the sound waves to be absorbed by drywall.

It should be for better, but we'll find out for sure. Last night Typhoon was acting up. It decided not to talk on the network anymore. It's done this before, and after tinkering with it long enough it started working again. So tonight I started along that path, but after feeling the low volume of air coming out of the power supply fan I got worried. I opened up the computer and it wasn't too hot inside, but still rather warm. So I went and set a fan right in front of it blowing lots and lots of air in. After a minute or two, I gave it another whirl. Nice try, but no cigar. I was about to give up when the dangling ethernet chord that was hanging out on my desk, because I hadn't put it away from pluggin my mom's laptop in, cried out to me "try me!" So I pulled the cord down and plugged it in. Viola! It started working. Me thinks: Ah, it's just been a bad cord, fritzing out sometimes. Wrong! I restrung the cord to plug into the same spot on the same switch as the old cord and it again quit working. Conclusion: Either a) the port on the switch is bad (most likely) or b) the cable has too much interference traveling to that switch. So anyway, the Typhoon *should* be acting a little better now. And considering it's stupidness in not responding, it makes much more sense becase the switch would get a request and say "I don't know anybody with this MAC address!" and have to re-poll for it, taking time, especially if the port isn't working right... and thus losing the request to load the webpage. So, let me know if the server is still acting up (with the exception of loading slow... that's nothing I can fix).

I have no motivation to do any homework, so here's a rundown on recent events. Update on last entry:
I managed to find some nice free stuff from OfficeMax, got a nice collection of blank CDR's for more MST3K burning to occur. I also acquired some slim jewel cases, since jewel cases seem to be hard to come by. It was much fun. I seem to be missing one of the $5 mail-in rebates for the jewel cases, but besides that everything only cost me the tax.

Yesterday was a recovery day. I slept late, and did practically nothing all day. I did get back into doing coding for work, and made some progress on that front.

Today went to church, then went to eat lunch with the 'rents and wired up a light switch at my brother's house. I then dropped my parents off at the airport (recent airport trip counter is now at 4). Between that and driving back and forth to my bro's house in Phoenix I've driven around 200 miles around this town in the past few days. I love driving. When I was little I wanted to be a truck driver. No kidding, as my parents. I also finally ordered a new desk chair, my parents are paying for it as a slightly early christmas gift. Yea for officemax.com having it $10 cheaper and free shipping than the store, which was sold out.

Additionally, for those of you who always yell at me for driving from PHX to KC in one shot, without stopping, all by myself, which considering I'm done in no more than 18 hours, and the hours of the early morning many of you all stay up until. I know, that's not a complete sentence. Drives ya nuts right? Ok, so to continue, you can be happy that I won't be doing it anymore this year. At least the likelyhood is very low. Instead, I won't be going home for Christmas this year. I've decided that I'd rather be in Phoenix with everybody else gone and out of town, sorta like Thanksgiving only worse. Psych. Let's try ending number 2:
At least the likelyhood is very low. Instead, since my car is getting old I'm going to pay the $350 and fly round trip. I'm tired of driving so far, and I don't really need a car while I'm home anyway. Ok, that's a little more believeable, but I dislike the whole flying process so much, and being without my car is somewhat painful. So, 3rd time's the charm?
At least the likelyhood is very low. Remember Al? Yea, thought you did. Well, at least those of you who know him. Those of you who don't probably at least know of him. So, he's going to be riding back with me. So not until next year (aka sometime in January) will I be doing the 18 hours drive by yourself, for this year I'll have a companion to share the driving time. So you can rest easier, at least for a bit :).

So I'm debating about keeping my site on this server. I know it can be a pain in the behind, sometimes you have to ask it 2 or 3 times for something before it replies. It's not it's fault, has to do with the network setup and whatnot... things I have no control over. So there's the option of moving it back to ASU, but for now I think I'll just deal with it as it is, because ASU's servers can be a pain in the butt sometime, although they've been pretty good this year. It's just very handy to have it right at my fingertips, very easy to access...makes updating stuff very convenient.