Month: June 2000

Busy busy busy. Also, busy.

My stupid CD-ROM drive at work now refuses to detect any audio CD I put in it, so no more ripping MP3s for me. Crap. I’ve gotta figure it out.

Had to call the university to get them to send me my marks today. Dumbasses.

Problems with my POP3 server.

Man sitting next to me on the subway reading a book on marijuana cultivation.

This morning my bus only had 10 people on it. This was extremely bizzare since usually buses on the Sheppard East bus in the morning are packed. But this morning was awesome, I relaxed on the bus, listened to my house tape and read Kafka.

For about the past month I’ve been reading Kafka’s Diaries. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it right now. I’ve read most of his other works, but this is something totally different. It’s almost like spying on someone else’s life. It’s also very interesting to read because his own thoughts, reflections, and experiences are mixed in with fragments of prose and other things. Of course, unless you’re interested in Kafka you’re not going to want to read this. But whatever. Here’s a quote:

The trees have been growing here for twenty years, how small should a person become under them. And all these nights, you know, in all the houses. Now you lie against this, now against that wall, so that the window keeps moving around you. And these mornings, you look out of the window, move the chair away from the bed and sit down to coffee. And these evenings, you prop up your arm and hold your ear in your hand. Yes, if only that weren’t all!

I am listening to Esthero – That Girl on repeat for about the past two hours.

Somehow I’m not tired. I’m actually getting good work done today, which should not be possible on my current level of sleep.

For those of you who weren’t aware, last night I went to the UTS Formal. It was fun. I must kick myself into going to formals at university next year. I actually enjoy doing that every now and then.

All morning I’ve been beating my head over this one stupid perl script. It is now so messed up that I can’t look at it anymore. My brain feels like mush. Why am I drinking water and not coffee? Why does this script return the correct results on the command line but not when I run it as a CGI? Am I going to make it to work tomorrow morning?

Questions abound.

I started taking my CDs to work and encoding them to MP3 so I don’t have to carry my CDs around anymore.

Song: Esthero – That Girl
And I’ll try to catch my own vibe
Leave behind the countryside
Who I’ll be?
What I’ll be, ’cause it’s my right to love design…

I finally remembered why I like working at a small company: no office politics.

As if I needed another reason to fly off to Japan, there’s this wacky page with just pictures of Japanese vending machines. I always knew that you could get weird stuff out of vending machines in Japan (like beer) but I had no clue that there’s one vending machine for every six people in Japan (or so this page claims).

Finished my crazy hardware swap-around yesterday. Just updated my Hardware page.

Installed 128MB of memory and a SB PCI128 last night. Rockin’ out hard. I didn’t get all of my hardware moved around yet though. That’s for tonight. Then hopefully I’ll get around to doing NewtDump.

I’ve been listening to this song ever since I got involved in this contest. I think I’m going to have to buy the album.

my god, I’m tired this morning. Alarm went off at 6:30, I turned it off and then fell back, saying “I’ll just lie in be for a few minutes…” Woke up again at 7:10. I guess it didn’t help that I got home at 1 and stayed up until 2.

Looks like this afternoon I’m gonna pick up 128MB of RAM and a new soundcard for my machine. Mmm, ‘lectronics.

Until last night I totally forgot that I have to get a corsage for the formal next week. Crap.

Plan for tonight:

• Buy memory and soundcard with Calum before catching the GO train
  • Memory – 128MB PC100 DIMM from Sonnam
  • Soundcard – Probably a SB PCI 128 OEM from wherever.

• Go Home and install new hardware – reshuffle CD-ROM drives etc.
• Work on NewtDump – tonight I want to implement:
• do the 8-bit character translation thing using the code from Steve Weyer
• Automatic filename generation
• Add more stuff to prefs – default download directories?