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February 2nd, 2009

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January 22nd, 2009

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April 30th, 2007

10:19 am - Life Choices Yerba Mate or green tea?  Ahh!!!  So hard to decide. Current Location: Basement Current Mood: confused Tags: tea

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April 27th, 2007

11:01 pm - Pens I've been looking to upgrade my main pen for a while.  My eye has been on a couple of specific pens for the past half year.  I finally worked up to heading into the local pen shop today.  I was disappointed to find that they only carry one of the two lines I am interested.  And the selection of the line that they do carry is very limited.  Frustrating since I try really hard to support local stores. The poor fellow working the floor made a valiant attempt to introduce me to some other pens.  On of the pens he recommended really was very nice.  Unlike many fountain pens on the market, it has a full metal construction.  I have never really bought into the "precious resin" argument, so this really caught my eye.  Unfortunately, it didn't write quite write for me.  Combining this with not being able to try out some specific pens left me a bit confused. At this point I can either buy a pen online that I have never seen in person and never written with, or restart my search for a new pen based on the inventory at my local pen store.  Life as a pen snob is so hard :-) Current Location: Gayley Ave. Current Mood: lazy Current Music: Barenaked Ladies - When You Dream Tags: pen

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April 8th, 2007

11:25 pm - Case Fans Three years ago I got a new computer at a local computer fair.  Great price for a pretty nice machine.  Only two problems have come up.  The CD-ROM tends has a bus error about once every 5 CD insertions.  This only bothers me when I am trying to rip a new CD which is rare, so not a big deal.  Much more frustrating are the case fans. Within a week of bringing the machine home one of the cases two fans started to rattle.  After a month it really rattled.  And by the end of the year it make a lot of noise.  But it ran.  Then this year the second fan started to make noise.  Turning on the computer this past month has sounded like starting a car.  This noise settles down to a nice level similar to sitting next to a dishwasher.  It sucked.  It was the final straw.  My lazy self finally found and installed two new ultra quite, long lasting, fancy schmancy , cheapest on the shelf at the store fans.  Let me say, "Wow."  My hard drive makes more noise than these fans.  I am happy and the apartment is once again quite. Current Location: Gayley Ave. Current Mood: happy Current Music: Hard drive Tags: computer

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April 6th, 2007

10:02 pm - Forward Then Backward Then A Bit More Forward... Ocaml is truly a mixed bag.  I love many of its features, but loathe others.  One very cool feature that I have come to depend on is the ability to run programs in the debugger both forwards and backwards.  Wow!  It makes breaking at the correct instance of a function call very easy.  Rumor on the street is that GDB is headed in this direction with the help of check points.  I hope so! Hmm...  Current Location: Basement Current Mood: happy Current Music: CPU Fan Tags: ocaml

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April 2nd, 2007

11:05 pm - Ultimate Frisbee Played a great pickup game of ultimate frisbee this evening.  I had almost forgotten how much fun a good game can be.  Yay! Current Location: Gayley Ave. Current Mood: happy

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April 1st, 2007

07:55 pm - Grateful Dead on Dating Every time I hear the opening to "High Time" by Grateful Dead I laugh: You told me good-bye, how was I to know you didn't mean good-bye, you meant please don't let me go? I laugh because there have been times where I thought the same thing myself :-) Current Location: Gayley Ave. Current Mood: giddy Current Music: Grateful Dead - Box of Rain Tags: grateful dead

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March 30th, 2007

12:08 am - Follow-Up To Kenilworth Estate OP Beautiful and finely rolled tea leaves from Kenilworth Estate. In other news, "An estimated 3,000 civilians have been killed since hostilities between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) resumed in 2006, Amnesty International, quoting the United Nations, has said in a report." Current Location: Gayley Ave. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Mozart - Quartet in G Minor Tags: tea

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March 28th, 2007

08:19 pm - I Like Flowers Current Location: Gayley Ave. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Chopin - Concerto in F minor, Op. 21 Tags: flowers

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March 25th, 2007

01:05 pm - Kenilworth Estate OP Traveling inland from Colombo takes you onto the western slopes of Sri Lanka's Central Highlands.  This journey takes you towards the Dimbulla and Kandy districts.  And it's here that you find the Kenilworth Estate located in Ginigathena at an elevation between 900 and 1200 meters. The Kenilworth Estate makes marvelous tea that I am happily sipping.  The OP tea I'm currently drinking has a pleasing mellow smell, a little sweet with just a hint of fruit undertones.  The brewed tea is moderately dark.  First tastes are almost wood with a hint of cedar.  These initial tastes are rapidly replaced by rich flavors as the tea moves through your mouth.  A little pungent, the tea leaves a sweet and dry lingering after taste. Current Location: Gayley Ave. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Nope. Tags: tea

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November 13th, 2005

11:40 pm - Blah Blah. I had a pretty good weekend. I managed to get through the lab on Friday just in time for the Friday beer bunch. A group of us head out for a pitcher at one of the local bars come 1PM and then head back to work. Great way to spend some time with lab mates. I spent the rest of the afternoon looking for parts to make an automated inventory tracking system for the lab. The basic idea is to use a card reader to access a lock box holding RFID'ed toys. Maybe this week I will work on getting a card reader. I am trying to figure out if I want to go with: the $100+ dollar reader that reads three tracks and outputs directly to a serial line for easy access on your PC or the $4 reader that only reads one line and outputs directly to TTL (thus needing a conversion to RS232 and a fair bit of other support circuitry). I do not need to foot the bill and am not great with EE, so the more expensive reader would probably be a better way to go. But I like to tinker so the latter would be a lot of fun. But this project may die if I do not keep pushing it forward, so maybe I should go with the first. Hmm... I guess I can ponder more in the morning. Current Mood: sleepy

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October 26th, 2005

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October 11th, 2005

04:46 pm - Setuid Question (Kind of) I am writing a script to collect data from users in a class. When the user is done running the script, I would like to copy the contents of a file into a secure location. In more detail: - User runs 'script' - 'script' contains the command 'cp foo /data/bar/' - the owner and group of '/data/bar' is bar Is there a good way to do this? I tried writing a minimal setuid script (ignoring a lot of security problems), but commands called from a setuid shell script do not inherit the setuid property. So the call to 'cp foo /data/bar' fails since the user is not a member of group bar. Any ideas? Current Mood: rushed Current Music: No

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September 28th, 2005

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September 27th, 2005

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September 16th, 2005

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September 1st, 2005

09:50 pm - Easily Confused or "The Descent" is not "The Cave" So a few weeks ago Morganlf posted a bit describing a very scary movie about a group of young women that go into a cave. The movie had already been released on the other side of the ocean and was headed here. Cora loves going to movies. Cora really likes canyoneering (related to caving). Cora has been looking at caving. I think hey, this could be a movie that Cora really likes. So a few days ago I am walking down the street and see that a new movie playing at the local theater. It is called "The Cave". Being a good graduate student I put two and two together and think, "Oh, this is the movie that Morganlf described, I should take Cora". So this evening I talk Cora into going to see a scary movie. I note that it had rave reviews from people (or at least a person) that I trust about movies. I warn her that it will be really scary. We get all psyched up and head in. Woha. I should have double checked the name of the movies. "The Descent" is not "The Cave". I am also guessing that it does not have lines such as, "Run! I'll cover you with the mapping gun." Regardless, I would recommend that any one looking for a good scary cave movie double check the name of the movie before going. If the name of the movie is "The Cave", you are probably off staying at home and watching bootleg Smurf episodes. Current Mood: disappointed

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August 31st, 2005

10:00 am - Best Music Around For you poor soles that have not yet discovered it yet, let me point you in the direction of Magnatune. This is a rather unique music store that I have fallen in love with. The store is based on some simple principles: try before you buy, you choose the price, artists get half of each purchase, and artists maintain all rights to the music. Wow. And when they say, "Try before you buy", the mean it. You can play any song, album, or genre in its entirety. On demand. At high quality. As much as you want. No pop ups / or adds. Magnatune simply asks that if you like the music you buy it. The selection is small but very high quality. I would say that Magnatune is strongest in their classical, world, and electronica / ambient selection. But I find that I like a number of their rock and jazz artists also. So what are you waiting for? Go check them out! And if you like them, pick up a CD or two. Current Mood: good Current Music: kyo rei - Tilopa

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August 25th, 2005

12:14 pm - Ants I spent the better part of my morning battling ants that decided to move into the new apartment. A week or so ago the little fellas took control of our kitchen counter. After that Cora and I have been very good about keeping the dishes clean and performed a fair bit of "duck tape caulking" to shoddy wood work. But last night around midnight I found a nice trail of ants going directly across the carpet to a box of honey puffed wheat sitting on some extra shelfs we use to store food. At least the ants have good taste! This morning I went after them with the vacuum and soapy water. I actually had a lot of fun tracing all of there little trails as best as I could. I am pretty sure that I found the entry point (a hole in the duct tape caulking mentioned above) and the trails from their (one big one with two developing side branches). After getting over the creep factor of having ants crawling all over me from standing on there path while looking for the same path, and putting guilt aside for killing hundreds of little creatures, I had a pretty fun morning! On a related note, I had noticed that our neighbors on both sides have had the their apartments sprayed. I am really not a big fan of spraying toxic chemicals all around a home to kill a tiny number of pests (most are in the nest) that will most probably come right back. Poisoned food is a bit better since the ants can take that back to the nest, but even that feels unsporting. The invasion in my apartment seems clear enough to me. I need to vacuum more often, keep my kitchen clean, keep an eye out for new trails, and stop entry holes. Current Mood: happy

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