Chat Failure

I suppose I’ll have some explaining to do tomorrow. My Unix class had a chat tonight, but the chat wouldn’t start because of permission issues. Oh well.

Instead, Michelle and I played with Google Sets, and its quite scary how accurately it predicted Michelle’s music taste’s with just 4 sample artists. When I tried, I had less success, unless I stayed with 1 genre.

Rice Cakes

When I was in elementary school, these really cool pieces of styrofoam were repackaged as rice cakes. My sister and I loved them, and I used to make sandwiches with them. I think I only made them with peanut butter and jelly, but there are probably other worthy combinations. I had some rice cakes today. These ones were from the health food section, and they had flavor, something I don’t remember from the old Quaker brand.

I was eating one at work and the phone rang. I had just taken a big bite, and I tried to quickly crunch and separate it into my cheek pouches. I was worried I’d spit on the phone or something. I don’t remember what the call was about, but after I hung up, and started chewing again, I realized there was nothing to chew. It had dissolved in my mouth. Its the perfect cubicle/phone support food. A food for which chewing is optional….no wonder I’m out of shape.

Dog Therapy

Sorry for the delays. I’ve been busy at work upgrading WebCT and the Student Web Server. I didn’t feel much like being on computers. I had to post to Alan’s Blog because he’s gone, and I volunteered for a week or something.

Anyway, Barley had physical therapy today, which is the highlight of his week, because he gets to play how he used to. He’s in water, so there isn’t the same stress he’d feel otherwise. This was the first Saturday session, so I was able to go. It was such a blast. I took some pictures and video because it was such a spectacle. The therapist says Barley’s the most playful of the dogs. We expected that though.

Father’s Day

Yesterday Michelle, Barley, and I drove to Hood River to meet my parents for a picnic. It was really nice, and Barley got to swim in the Columbia a little. Afterwards, we toured the Full Sail Brewery. It was cool, and humbling. I can’t imagine how bad I’d feel if I scorched 650 barrels of beer, versus the 5 gallons I scorched on Saturday.

Right now I’m waiting for some insight as to how I can upgrade WebCT. A hastily changed cron job changed the apache error logs so only root can read, write, and execute them. This is bad, because it caused Apache to die, and I can’t start it until we change the owner back to WebCT. The sys admin is in Colorado on a bike ride for 2 weeks.

Air Condition

I’ve been working in my office all day, and I’m quite cold. I just got an e-mail from Michelle saying she was going to go swimming because it was 92F, and its expected to reach 100F tomorrow. I was quite startled at this news, because my fingers, hands, and arms were numb from chill. I promptly went outside and sat on the concrete, where I was quickly heated like a rattlesnake.

Now I’m sitting back down to work, and I can feel the cold the cold return as my warm clothes radiate their remaining heat. Everyone in the library had a small heater/fan because it was so cold, but the fire marshall said we had to turn them in. I guess warm hands are the devil’s workshop or whatever.

Forest Blvd

My mom is in Hastings, NE closing on my grandparent’s home. They are moving out to Yakima, WA today, with a brief stop in Estes Park, CO. I’m saddened by the sale of the house, because it is probably one of my favorite buildings ever. Here are pictures of the front and back.

The house is on a large city park with a small lake/resivoir that runs the length. There are plenty of resident animals, including squirells, ducks, rabbits, and lots of other birds. We even refer to these grandparents as “the ducks” because we associated them with the waterfowl as children.

I hope they enjoy the trip out, and hope they like Yakima. I’m going to miss the house, and the park, and such. anyway, best of luck to “the ducks.”

Wilderness area

Today was the Rose Parade. Its the grand floral parade for the Portland Rose Festival, which is one of Portland’s many “things”. Michelle is volunteering with Oregon Natural Resource Concil, and today we walked around before the parade and asked people to fill out postcards that will be sent to Sen. Smith and Sen. Wyden. asking them to re-designate Oregon lands as Wilderness. Since the roadless acts from the last adminnistration have had problems, ONRC and other groups have been trying to accomplish this themselves.

It was really hard for me, because I’m quite personal about my beliefs, and avoid forcing them upon strangers on their day off before a parade. I’m glad I went, because I should be more active as an evironmentalist. I’m also glad I went because Michelle filled out the most postcards, and won a $150 gift certificiate to Breitenbush Hot Springs. We get a free night. Cool.

The parade was pretty typical parade, but I really enjoyed being downtown, seeing the people and the buildings. I enjoyed watching the kids playing out in the streets, the people in their chairs, on fire escapes, and in apartment windows. Portland has a beautiful downtown.

cool dream

Barley woke us up early this morning. He had to go poo. He woke me from a really cool dream about programming and architecture and life. This is all pretty dorky stuff, so I’m going to use the extended option to decrease random viewer boredom.
Continue reading cool dream

bike close call

I started riding my bike to work more, and its a somewhat perilous ride. At least, its become one as of last night. On the way home, a honda tried to turn right at an intersection right while beside me. It was technically the closest I’ve come to hitting a car ( less than 3″ ), but wasn’t too big of a deal. The driver drove off, I rode off, and the lady at the bus stop said “Oh my goodness!” Thank you, Shimano, for V-brakes.

In Bellingham, I was riding home one night after school, downhill, going ~30mph, and a person in a car kicked their door open very suddenly, and I cleared it by over a foot, but it was much scarier than yesterday’s incident. It might have been the speed, it might have been the car behind me, or it might have just been the fear of hitting a car door at 30mph.

Invented the Remix

There’s a great tutorial on making PDFs with PHP on WebMonkey. There’s aslo an annoying doubleclick ad for P Diddy’s new alubm “We Invented the Remix”. It isn’t so much that Puff Daddy annoys me, well, actually it is… but, the idiot rapper is now claiming he invented the remix? The fact that phonies like this idiot can make it prove that there are problems with both capitalism and darwinism. I just hope he fades out quickly.

Also on a musical note, the PDF article had a link to Disc-Cover, which will look up an album on the freedb and create an album cover for you in PDF, or whatever. Pretty cool programming. I can’t wait to try and print covers for all those “cover’s I lost”, as the programmer says.