tastes like concrete

6:38am: because I think you all might appreciate this...
excerpts from HP Lovecrafts short stint as a Whittmans Sampler copywriter

To whet your appetite:

White Chocolate Truffle

What black arts could have stripped this chocolate of its natural hue? The horror of the unearthly, corpselike pallor of this truffle's complexion is only offset by its fiendish deliciousness.

3:35pm: if this dosent...
get you wanting to wander, to renew your passport, if it dosent tickle your brain, well... i don't know what would

(on you tube)
Where the Hell is Matt

Watch it in High Quality, makes it nice and clear.

8:42pm: 日本語 sillyness
listening to the track listed below, and i dont know if this is a small piece of deft lyricism or an completely unintentional, but as Mr Blistah is rapping towards the end he spits out:
何々 三 六 ０　(さん-ろく-まる)

which I found funny, cause he is all like 360 but he spelling out the numbers, he uses maru for the zero which also means circle, instead of something like 零 (れい). or just the 三百六十, which is a little more of a mouthful, or to cut it down, and be more... hip 三六十 would work too.

whee

7:27pm: sharing musical tidbits
a few instrumental bits I have been tweaking lately.
I really dig that first bit.
To listen, you may want to download first (right click, save as...).

fresh baked today, slow and kinda dirty feeling.

a bit older, twinking ambient drops.

5:40pm: a puzzle
years ago, when interviewing at MS i got asked the following question (paraphrased):

If you have a list of numbers from 1 to N, with no duplicates, but you know that there is one missing, how can you figure out which one is missing. The list is of arbitrary size, and can be to big for you to inspect element by element making a checklist.

You might after a while, remember that the sum of any list of numbers from 1 to N = N*(N+1)/2
you could then take the expected sum, sum the list up and the difference is your missing element.

So I hit a related problem today. Say you have a periodic list of numbers that loops around everytime if hits the top, say 1-10 or 1-52. These numbers are sequential, but could have started at any place in the series. So say for example the list might be:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,1,2,3
or
3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,1,2,3,4,5

In a pen and paper world, you can see the exact order of the list.
But imagine you cant rely upon looking at the list, or that the datapoints will be given to you in the right order. All you have are standard database aggregate tools (max, min, sum, count, group by, average).
#1 What is the first element of the list?
#2 What should the next element be?

( figured it out? dont want to bother )

2:04am: I coulden't sleep...
due to a uniquely geeky problem:
I had code on the brain.  I went to bed and tried to sleep, but my brain started racing with ideas for some code to help myself learn PHP, and accomplish something that ive been wanting to do for a while.

So I got back up.  And I started coding.  And after 3 hours, im starting to finally get bleary eyed, and I have 1 conclusion.  I want to kill the bureopukes who came up with XML.  I get the concept, I like the idea, I _think_ (thought?) I understand how its supposed to work.

It does wonderful things for organizing data, for keeping it (mostly) human readable.  But for some god forsaken reason, no one can seem to come up with a straight forward API to utilize it.  Or at least no API i have seen

How hard is it to give me an interface that a) lets me load an XML doc from a file, b) lets me browse to the depth I want, c) lets me iterate over the nodes at that depth, and d) from those iterated nodes, lets me browse the sub nodes.  Is that so hard?

I know, I could write my own XML tools, it isnt that hard, but dosent that defeat the purpose of XML, its too bloated for any one person, but if someone else could write some decent APIs for it, then its worth using as I don't have to re-invent the wheel.

4:57am: insomnia
can't sleep. body won't let me. think maybe i drank too much tea during the day. its been raining for a long while and the sump pump keeps kicking on, like clockwork.

i know im not dying, that while i am not in the best shape in the world, that i am not suffering a heart attack or other cardiac emergency, but i can't convince my irrational side of that and it keeps me up.

6:15pm: I should mention
Not that we will have that much free time, but Samy and I will be in washington (West Olympia to be exact) from tomorrow morning till monday morning. Cousin is getting married on sunday and I am in the wedding. Contact me if you are interested, or if I'm free Ill contact you.

8:20pm: birthday
So I just got home from a birthday dinner.  I am stuffed.  But I would like to announce my entry into the gaming 7th generation as Samy bought me a Wii for my birthday.  Is schweet  She gave it to me Sunday, I already have Wii elbow from playing tennis.  We also picked up Mario Party 8 for it for some minigame goodness.

Thats all.  sorrry I dont update more, Ill try honest...

2:02pm: puppies
sam and i got our puppies yesterday

they are cute, real cute.

malmute mixxed with something, we are thinking pit bull is the other half...

their names are freke and gere (left to right in the pic), they were the wolves of Odin wiki link



more pictures at my website

7:07pm: pc update
So, my powersupply fan was making noises like it was a bomber taking off to firebomb dresden...
after much dithering about purchasing a replacement, we stopped by the local chop shop and picked up a sleek new 430W model. my previous was 400W so not much of an upgrade

installation went flawless (except a few bruised knuckles, some power cords can be tough to pull out after a few years plugged in) and when I booted back up... ahh blissful silence. It was wonderful, and I left my machine on all night (I havent been doing that lately as its just too noisy)

Next morning when I go to load Titan Quest (3d diablo clone that Sam and I play) the graphics seemed twonky, all glitchy and pixely all over the place. I wondered if I had screwed up my video card in disconnecting the power (my vid card has a direct connection to the power supply, its own onboard fan and heatsinks on the GPU and all the memory) after twiddling with everything, nothing seems to work. I do notice that the silicon of the vid card and the heat sinks are rather hot. hot enough in terms of the heat sinks that I cant hold my hand on them for more than 10 seconds with out it being uncomfortably hot.

So Samy gets an _idea_ lets take a desk fan, point it into the case and see if that helps. So we take one of those clip on desk fans, clip it on the drive bay assembly, plug it in, switch it on and try it out.

The game runs perfectly, no flaws. and when I reach down, while the pc is running and touch the heat sinks they vary from room temerature to slightly warm to the touch.

So I have airflow/cooling issues. I will likely be putting in a 2 more case fans or so, but I was wondering if anyone has any other ideas. the vid card is a Radeon 9800 pro AGP 256mb. Questions in my mind:
1) Would the extra 30W allow the GPU to work so much harder that it overheats (the game worked fine before i swapped powersupplies)?
2) Think 2 case fans (1 front 1 back would be enough)? The case is a fairly standard ATX tower. It already has one case fan on the removeable side, but that seems unsufficent.
3) Shoul I worry about having one fan blow in and one out or what? right now the desk fan is pointing right at the card...
4) Any other suggestions (no liquid cooling, I am not going that far)?

7:18am: indiana jones
go on with your bad self harrison ford. dont let the man tell you what to do

10:18pm: As I join the landed gentry
So, after tedious negotiations, Sam and I have finally gotten an offer accepted on a house. I will _never_ recommend this realtor to anyone. the agent we dealt with was nice enough, but her boss, who was the sellers agent was a dipshit, if not wholly unethical (explained below cut)

we bought a nice little 2-3 bedroom single story corner lot here in duluth. assuming that everything goes thru (inspection and all) we will take posession in mid March. Our apartment lease expires on the 31st of March.

So I am making my second foray into the commercial lending market and this one is a doosy to the tune of almost 160,000. (my first foray by the way was my recent acquiescing to the credit card reality this winter, ie i got a damn credit card).

anyway i join the landed elite bourgeoisie class now, where is my membership card...

( for the interested in a short tale of jerkery )

11:01pm: silly meme
IF YOUR LIFE WERE A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...

( my life in music )

7:59am: thanksgiving
Samy and I are coming out over the holidays
we wont be out long, but here are the details:


Arrive Seattle 3.55pm on Wendsday
Depart Seattle at 2.55pm Saturday


so, when you count in lag time at the airport, and rest and recoup we'll have something like 1 day, and a couple of hours on travel days (thanksgiving is likely all spoken for)

if you want to hang out, or have time to hang out, i know its the holiday for yall too. let me know, here, email, IM, phone whatever.


sometime soon, i should have some pictures linked... snow suckers, I get it, you dont beeeeeeee-dah!

2:23pm: i did it now...
so i went and did it, im now, officially engaged.

proof positive
sorry for the blurryness, those who are arround can see it over thanksgiving when we are out for 3 days

im a might bit poorer for the time being...

6:46pm: geekery
so, i wrote my first multithreaded program today. i know, most of you non-programmers might not know what multi-threaded is. it involves forking code into multiple independant processes, i.e. its how you multitask... I was poking around in the copy of VS.NET 2003 that i got at work and stumbled across the threading interface. after reading for 30 minutes or so i tested myself on an app.

all it does is sums up large sequenial series of numbers ie 1-1,000,000,000 etc, but it does 3 at a time, independantly, and to really see what i can do, i can switch between them while they are running and display the running total for whichever thread i chose while they work...

well, it impresses me anyway.

1:00pm: new pictures
sam and i went to the state fair on friday.
we took pictures

they are here:

main index page

i am still not thumbnailing them, i am doing this by hand and am lazy.

if anyone has a good tool for brightening pics, many of these need it, and i dont have anything so let me know.

enjoy

6:33pm: took me a while
pics from samy and my trip to wa. the pics are up for a limited time as i dont recall my bandwidth and or space at sandwich

http://aeyyrch.sandwich.net/vacation/pics.html

enjoy

2:36pm: updates
updated entry on agenda while im in town

take a look, if you see issues, problems, conflicts or want to claim some time, let me know

8:04am: I'm coming to see you!
Thats right. If you had not already heard, Sam and I are flying out to WA on the 27th of _this_ month. thats less than 2 weeks away. We will be flying out on Aug 1st. for those that remember, this date span covers my birthday (july 31) and likely dinner will be had to celebrate that. I am thinking Rock for pizza?

other activites already booked: edited 7/21

• thursday is not spoken for, jared a beer? e9? maybe not?
  
• friday 7/28 6pm the plan is for a celebratory dinner at rock pasta, you read, you're invited and if you know others that should come, let them know (chris alcorn, jason, james, andrew et al). if you didnt know its my bday on the 31st, we're just celebrating early
  
• saturday not spoken for, you want some time, speak up. I may try and hit tutta bella.
  
• sunday we are going up to Mt Vernon to visit my grandmother. pete, do you want to come?
  
• monday not spoken for ~ maybe celebrate b-day with parents?
  
• tues, we fly out, have some time in mornin, early afternoon.
  
• reteraunts i want to hit: fujiya, rock (done), e9
  

thats it for now. if you can read this then likely i would love to see you out there. get ahold of me and let me know whats goin on.
activities will be added to this list as i think of them.

11:26am: say it aint so
im not in washingotn anymore so i missed this:
King 5 tv news article on l33t speak and its dangers for your children online

so yeah, L33t is bad as it leads to poor grammer, lack of communication and general stupidity, but come on, this sounds ridiculous.

I am so going to start using GYPO in conversaion...

GYPO, GYPO right now!

heh

2:02pm: Snagged from many people.

Look up the date of your birth minus the year in Wikipedia. List three facts, two births and one death.

For July 31rd.

Events:
781 - The oldest recorded eruption of Mt. Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: July 6, 781)
1790 - First U.S. patent issued; granted to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.
1975 - In Detroit, Michigan, Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing
and cause it is the exact date of birth:
1976 - NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1

Births:
1803 - John Ericsson, Swedish inventor and engineer (d. 1889) (engineered the monitor, one of the first ironclad ships)
1962 - Wesley Snipes, American actor
1965 - J. K. Rowling, English novelist
and oddly:
1980 - Harry Potter, fictional protagonist of J.K. Rowling's series Harry Potter

Deaths:
1556 - Ignatius Loyola, Spanish priest and founder of the Jesuits (i went to a jesuit high school, so i already knew this)

4:06pm: employment ahoy!
so i got a job. starting apr 10th (long enough for them to do a background check), i will be once again employed as a business analyst. this time on the other side working for a health insurance company. the bene's are decent and the salary is nice. Sam and I will be working in the same building, and kinda in the same department, so we will take that as it comes, but i am plain happy that i gots me a job again, no more loungin for me. in other news, got my pc back in working order again. we bought a new 160gb sata hdd and i spent a few days installing it and reinstalling windows. I was able to recover all of the important data off the old hdd, but as it is a fresh install, it is quicker and smoother than it was before. now i just need to get online to patch it all up and such. which i should be able to do soon thanks to the job situation. it is thawing out here, and ive been trying to get out more, saw some nice wilderness around our apartment (its in town, but not alot around it), and saw some pk potential downtown. still pretty cold and muddy out though. anyhow wish me luck as i re-enter corperate life again. lesse how long i last, maybe this time i can buy a permanent exit to something more fufilling.

9:35am: eric jumps off the cliff with the rest of the lemmings
johari personality window thing