nano nuh-uh

Well, I feel like a complete and utter idiot this morning. Last night I was at the gym, and was running a little late getting back for WoW night. It seems in my haste to get in front of my PC on time, I left my gym bag in the back seat of my car, and forgot to lock the damn car to boot. Not surprisingly (which is really sad, when I think about it) when I remembered about it this morning, I discovered someone had cleaned up for me.

So, about $150 in workout gear and the bag (which I’m sure was tossed immediately), a Nano 4GB, a Speck Products sports strap for same, an iTrip Auto, and whatever change that was in the console are gone. I guess last night was both unproductive and expensive, but an important reminder in securing personal property. I think it’s maybe the second time I’ve forgotten my iPod in my car, but the odds and I aren’t exactly friends, which was reiterated for about the bazillionth time.

The worst part is it’s my own damn fault.

Happy hump day.

wow-whee!

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It seems that this is what you get from Blizzard for your $15/US per month more often than not these days. My favourite part is the “Okay” button. Dear Bliz, it’s been going on for months, and it’s not ok. I’ve been sitting on the fence about whether the game is worth it these days, and you are pushing me pretty convincingly over to the “no, it’s not” side. Nice work.

—

3848

Update: We did eventually get into the game, and we did the Tribute Run. I think I got a piece of Aquamarine and a couple gold coins worth of cash for the 3.5 hours we played. When we got to the boss at the end, I managed to snap a heal off and save Axe just before he died, but I took so much damage while delivering the heal that I went to that great cathedral in the sky immediately (and I mean immediately, the saving heal almost didn’t finish) thereafter. Because you can’t take it with you, I missed out on the boss loot, from which there was a pair of boots I definitely could have used. It was fun regardless, and there’s always next time. Tierney did try to resurrect me for the third time with Jumper Cables, but like the previous two attempts it failed. 0 for 3 – apparently using goblin jumper cables is about as successful as the Leaf’s power play.

I did get the pic of the five of us after we trapped the guard, though. 🙂

roundcube beta1

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The folks over at the Roundcube webmail project have released (8 weeks ago) the first beta of their web client, and it’s installed for all the friends and family to give a whirl. Unfortunately, a preview window didn’t make it into the beta release, although I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing from a performance/network utilisation perspective.

So far the only real bug I’ve seen has been the proper display of multibyte characters with both IE and Firefox. I’m not sure if that’s a config issue on the server or client, and I’ll look at it a little later. In the interim, stick to using English, as French looks blecchy. If you’re a deadsquid user, and don’t have the URL, drop me a line and I’ll send it to you. When logging in, you must use your full email address as the username.

It’s prettier than SquirrelMail, the default webmail client we use, but it doesn’t have as many extra features (like changing your password) yet. A good start, and it’ll be interesting to see if/how they implement plugins.

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Update: I know what the character encoding issue is. Yet more fun and games with webservers and UTF-8 encoding not being properly reported to the browser. It’s amazing how UTF-8 implementations can fuck things up – it caused me untold grief with the language police when I worked at that little telco. People using older versions of Outlook (Express) would always see mucked up French, and we’d get reported. But that’s another story. I’ll try and fix it later today, but make no guarantees/promises. 🙂

7 down, 43 to go

On one hand, it’s a depressing figure because I’ve got such a way to go. On the other hand, I’m just under 1/7th of the weigh (sic) there, which is a great start. I want to get down to my goal weight from a couple years ago, which I never quite made after tearing up my soleus (no rw, not that Soleus 🙂 ) playing Ultimate. As I’ve mentioned before, my Ultimate days are done (until maybe the fall) and the focus is getting back to my goal weight and maintaining a 35-40 mile week. I plan to hit both goals by the Civic Holiday.

I’ve been running regularly the last few weeks, and have re-introduced gym workouts into the mix as of last weekend. I’m sore, but not oh-god-I-broke-myself sore. I won’t call it a good sore just yet, but it’s getting there. Squats, lat pulldowns, deadlifts, leg and bench presses, and a variety of other exercises (including ab work, ugh) are back in the routine, and I can lift about half of what I could at the peak of when I was lifting seriously. But it’s coming back. That’s the important part; or at least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

The re-introduction’s been tough, doubly so because life has been a bit of a downer of late, and I’ve had zero motivation for anything. I’ve resorted to writing lists and posting them around the house, as well as keeping a reminder card in my wallet. Know what? It’s working for me. The rules are simple, and are as follows:

  • No fast food, and make sure there’s 5-7 servings of fruit and veggies a day
  • Know (and track) what goes in (count kcals), and follow the 40-30-30 zone guidelines
  • A maximum of 4 drinks with booze per week (although I’m happy to throw in a bender for a good reason once in a while… like when I find myself in Cranford or Vancouver)
  • Stretch every day for 20-30 minutes when I get up and before I go to sleep
  • Read something new for at least 30min a day (preferably 60)
  • Run 3 times a week, and cross-train at least once a week
  • Weights 3 times a week
  • One day of complete rest and recovery
  • Set daily, weekly, and monthly goals, and keep them posted front and center
  • Variances, in moderation, are ok

That’s it. It sounds kind of silly, but it’s working for me, and I’m seeing results that go well beyond shedding some pounds and getting back in shape. Hopefully I’ll have more to tell on that end in the very near future. We’ll see.

For now, it’s good enough for me to know I’m well on the road back, and that the last few weeks hasn’t been yet another false start.

patrolling the galaxy once again

/misccrap/blog/sttng_lives

So, after the fastest date in recent memory (87 minutes), I started working on my ST:TNG pin last night. I traced pretty much every wire, and repaired a number of solder joints while verifying continuity. I finished this afternoon, and when I figured it was all good, flipped the switch… and got a garbled display.

*sigh*

I broke out the schematics and re-traced all the ribon and jumper connections, hoping to find my error. Lo and behold, I had re-connected a ribbon cable inproperly and, after a quick switch, tried my luck again. As you can see, it lit up quite nicely.

No burned or stuck coils, only a couple burned bulbs (now replaced), and some minor adjustments to make it level. It plays perfectly. Many thanks to David in London across the pond for selling me the 8-driver board; it’s great to have the Captain and his crew back.

Now, onto the playfield restoration (after several hours of trying to beat my 22B point record, of course).

I

If stuff like this actually existed, I’d buy it in a second just on looks. I’m continually floored by the designs people come up with in guessing what Apple is going to lay on us, and sometimes wonder if it isn’t just a brilliant way to harvest ideas. This design has a whole lot of flaws, and it should never see the light of day, but the concept, ad, and music that goes with it are pretty awesome. And the white bars instead of black filling the space for 4:3 tv’s are a nice touch.

Oh, and a hot streaker scoring (nsfw, duh) is kinda cool too… I guess.

de lay of the land

Just once, I’d like US Airways to have their shit together such that the flight from PHL to YOW isn’t delayed. I don’t think it’s ever been on time the 10 or so times I’ve taken it in the last six months. I figured that because our planned departure was 2150, we’d avoid the delays typical of leaving during peak periods. I figured wrong.

That said, it beats the alternative of flying through Trudeau or Pearson.

yeah…. sooo… upgrades suck

My inline images are a wee bit broken right now, and IE doesn’t quite display things properly. I’ll be working on it sometime tomorrow eve, but for now, they stay broken.

I love “minor” upgrades that break a lot of things.

Update: yeah, I lied. it’s the 31st and I haven’t even looked at it. Surprise.

Update 2: Ok, I “fixed” it. Seems there were a couple big changes with style management with the latest release of WPG2. All better now, and I’m really glad I only started adding pics recently.

because they care

/misccrap/blog/smoking_is_bad

Sign in a Wawa here. Apparently there’s a problem with people buying more than 10 cartons of smokes per day. I’m sure it’s got something to do with keeping people from bootlegging smokes from NJ to PA, but it may be that Phillip Morris just cares about the health of Wawa patrons.

Also, this sign was affixed to the stuffed pretzel warming rack. Take a large pretzel, cover it with roughly 80-100 grams of salt, stuff it full of processed or cream cheese, and package it with dipping sauces. Consume, and listen to your arteries clog while your BP hits something close to 500PSI. Net result is something from Scanners. Healthy, and there is no fucking way that thing only had 590mg of sodium – it had a rock salt shell, fer crissakes.

cranford

I had the opportunity to take advantage of a work trip and visit some of my favourite people in the world. Despite their skepticism, I did make the journey up the NJ Turnpike from the Philadelphia area to Cranford, NJ to see Les Trottas and break some bread while we were at it.

Zoe was a little shy to begin with, but I talked to her dinsoaur for a little while and all was good. I also met the now-crawling-and-getting-into-trouble-if-he-could Jake, who is very clearly Walt and Lee’s offspring. “Determined” is the best word I can use to describe him, and he is a hella cute little guy.

Some friends from the Globix days joined us for dinner, and it was great to see Ed and Julie again. Despite Julie not drinking, we managed to kill of five (!) bottles of wine, and good portion of Walt’s bottled barley beverage stock. I also got to spend a little time cooking in the kitchen with Lee, which is always a huge plus. All in all, a great evening, and I can’t believe I forgot to take pics (ok, I can believe it, but it still bugs me).

The next morning came way, way, way too quickly – and it wasn’t only because Jake got up before 6 for the first feed of the day – and it was back to Philadelphia to link up with some colleagues and prepare for a course we we’re putting on this week. I’ll be back in a couple weeks, and I’m already looking forward to it.

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