Category: tech

Ho-hum

I haven’t really been inspired to blog much lately.  Even my twittering has waned.  After getting yet another round of emails asking “are you ok?”  I figured I should at least post an update.

Nothing is really wrong, [1]well other than being a 2nd class citizen in the eyes of the law again. I’ve just been busy.  Work has been crazy.  My union duties are extremely busy right now.  The other day I had so much union related stuff going on, I only sat on channel for about 45mins the whole day.  I’m not complaining as I usually get results.  Plus, I am actively working to make my place of employment better. 

I’ve also been heavily involved in playing Gears of War 2.  I freaking love that game.  I beat the campaign level once already and am really enjoying the online play.  If you have an 360, you should try it even if you don’t normally go for FPS (first person shooter) games. 

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The Prop 8 scandal still smarts.  I will admit to being rather sad lately over the whole ordeal.  I’ve attended several rallies and sit-ins.  And while it feels good, I just feel like rallies don’t accomplish much after the fact.  Where were all these people when our rights got taken away?  I’ve also donated all I can at this point.  I’ve pushed my finances as far as I’m willing.  I’ve already forgone riding gear, my holiday overtime pay and money for personal holiday gifts this year.  I can’t afford to give anymore right now.  I know I sound pissy but I’ve done my part.  I’m certainly not giving up but we all have limits. 

I’m curious about the whole “amendment process”.  I’d love to start an amendment to ban divorce in California.  Or maybe we could ban marriage all-together.  Or how about we ban Mormons?  How very “christian” of you to force your beliefs on others. Don’t like the idea of marrying a gay person?  Well then don’t do it you ignorant hate-mongering fuckers!  That’s ok, you’ll get yours in the end.  I have no doubts in that. 

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I’ve been hitting the gym consistently.  I’m back up to a full routine.  Still haven’t hit my original limits but slow and steady.  I’ve been good at incorporating cardio into my routines and I’m getting used to it now. 

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I had a date last week.  It was a medic who was doing his Medic cert back when I was doing my EMT cert.  We used to run into each other at the hospitals and chatted often.  Anyway, long boring story short, it did not go well.  One, he was clearly husband shopping.  Two, he had some internalized homophobia.  Neither of which I am inclined to put up with.  The final straw was when he indicated the whole Prop 8 scandal had very little to do with him.

I think he was more disappointed than I was. heehee  His face fell several times in the course of our conversations.  It was clear he expected me to be of a similar mind-set since we worked in related fields.  I almost felt sorry for him.  Almost. 

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I’ve taken my daily journals private again as they aren’t very nice right now. 

References

References
↑1 well other than being a 2nd class citizen in the eyes of the law again.

Almost There

I fixed a few of the last remaining annoyances with WordPress upgrade. he Cocomment thing almost never worked right so it was first to go. And since they still haven’t upgraded it to work with Firefox 3, I just figured it is no longer worth it.

I also nixed the poll. I really like the poll and it will come back at some point. However, I need to find one that works w/my version of WP.

Lastly, I fixed the email link. Switching to a widgetized version of sidebars on my blog caused some unexpected errors w/link routing hence, the old email call function not working. It was actually pretty easy to correct and still protect my email from being harvested by bots. You’ll notice the link (lower left) is an image file of my actual email addy and clicking it auto-fills the To field on your email form.

Of course, for some odd reason the Title for the recent comments widget has gone bonkers. I am wondering if there is an errant piece of code throwing it off or just poorly written. Either way, it is a mild annoyance and I will fix it in time.

That is all. We now return you to your regularly schedule blog surfing…

Self Portrait

Rooster + Pork?

Recently, not one but two of my blog buddies sent me T-shirts in the mail.  This pic was sent by Large Tony.  I absolutely love it!  He was worried if I would wear it.  Hell, I’ve already worn it 3 times. lol  *Thanks T, I greatly appreciate it!*

Oddly enough, the 2nd shirt is also black and was sent by an anonymous source.  When I get time to wear it, I’ll snap off a pic. 

My weekend is fast coming to a close.  Friday, I spent about 3 hours doing continuing education for my Fire training.  I’ve mentioned before I’m a training Officer for the Fire civilianization project.  I previously went down to SFO to see Fire operations at the airport.  This time I got to drive all over the bay in one of the 2 fireboats owned by the Fire department.  It was awesome of course! 

The Phoenix - Full Shot

This trip is normally reserved for Supervisors and Managers.  There were a couple of snarky comments made in the background questioning whether I should be there.  I was happy to hear the Fire training manager silence them with a curt explanation. [1]Forgetting for a moment, I have more fire/medical training than most of them combined.  I don’t understand petty power trips at all . Anyway, you can click over to flickr for a full rundown on the pics.  I tried to take a few more this time even though some are pretty much the same picture. 

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Saturday was pretty low key.  The Latin came into town and we spent a good chunk of the day just hanging out.  I hadn’t seem him lately, we had fun.  We also decided to go see the Batman flick.  I’d been wanting to see it and he hadn’t seen it either so it worked out great.  The movie was exceptional!  Much better than I ever expected and way better than part I.  Keith Ledger turned in one of the best performances of his career.  Not to mention, the plot was very complex and constantly evolving. 

Latin & Moby

He took off to go bar hopping with some coworkers and I met up with Adam for Sushi for dinner.  Brad is at a conference so it was just the two of us.  We were caddy as usual.  Afterwards, we hung out at 440 Castro (aka the old Daddies bar) with Dan.  Ironically, we spent a good chunk of time watching the Olympics while there. lol  We watched this one chick slaughter the entire competition in a long distance run.  Even if we kept laughing at how emaciated and hungry she looked. 

I didn’t stay more than a couple hours. [2]I get bored in bars easily these days w/o some sort of carnal distraction.  hehehe.  I left the boys and came on home.   

So now, I’m just finished uploading pics to flickr, made myself a yummy egg/bacon bagle, caught up on Tivo, and replaying thru Gears of War.  GoW 2 is due out in November and I can’t wait! 

Not a bad weekend.  Not too terribly busy but still managed to be preoccupied. 

References

References
↑1 Forgetting for a moment, I have more fire/medical training than most of them combined.
↑2 I get bored in bars easily these days w/o some sort of carnal distraction.  hehehe.

Problem Solved

I can no longer recommend http://1and1.com as a good ISP.  While their services are cheap and easy their tech support is some of the worst I’ve ever encountered.  The (overseas) techs are often completely ignorant of anything but the most basic problems. 

After spending almost a week and half going round and round w/them, I fixed the problem myself.  They kept blaming WordPress and WordPress says it was  a standard they were ignoring.  Blah blah blah. 

Anyway, I wrote a script and then found an even simpler one that solved all the issues (so far).

The sub-domains

http://blog.mobius.name

Http://calendar.mobius.name

http://www.sfmoby.us

are all functioning correctly once again. 

i-whatever

Is anyone else tired of hearing about the iphone?  Whoopee, so what you are buying a 2nd generation phone that should have been a 1st generation phone.  I’ll grant you it’s ‘purdy.  It still only does half the shit my Wing does. [1]Shhhh, don’t tell Adam, they went out and got one each today.  I was absolutely shocked (read tickled pink) when I read today Apple deliberately limited sales thru shitty Cingular  ‘the new AT&T’ stores.  For a company that totes their iphone as "the best new invention of the millennium", they sure are going to a lot of effort.  One would think a product that good would sell itself.  I’m just sayin’.

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The 4-day weekend is coming to a close.  I didn’t do a thing.  Probably a good thing as I wasn’t overly chipper at wasting a long weekend.  Surprisingly, all of my other friends were busy. (Doesn’t it always work out that way? lol)

Friday was a blur.  I did get a few chores done.  Beyond that, most of the day was spent catching up on Tivo and playing Darkness on the 360. 

Saturday, I drug myself out of the house to go see Hellboy II.  Overall, I enjoyed it.  The CGI and cinematography was excellent.  I ended up running into roblog, Chuck and their friend Jeff.  They, like fools, sat with me.  The movie started late so we amused ourselves by geeking out and torturing Chuck in the process.  Anyway, if you liked the first one you’ll like this one.  The only part I didn’t like was the comedic banter.  They added a tad too much in my opinion.  It took away from the plot development. 

Today, I expected to wait around most of the day waiting on Comcast again. [2]They had to come back out to fix the problem they were supposed to fix last time. Imagine my surprise when they showed up on time.  I made it to the gym and got a good arm workout in.  The only other noteworthy occurrence was a hottie who normally ignores me said hello.  It was kinda odd.  The guy almost always seems to avoid me.  Of course, afterwards I wondered what exactly had changed.  Drove me nuts. 

Tomorrow, I’m supposed to meet w/the tattoo guy to talk about my new tattoo.  I’m almost finished with the design.  I need some ideas from him for filler hence, the meeting.  This guy is probably fed up with me by now but he hides it well. lol 

How was your weekend?

References

References
↑1 Shhhh, don’t tell Adam, they went out and got one each today.
↑2 They had to come back out to fix the problem they were supposed to fix last time.

Finally!

I finally finished back categorizing all my posts. [1]Well 1 or 2 might have slipped thru but I can’t be bothered to worry. I didn’t actually lose as many as I had thought in the last upgrade. I also discovered a few posts were saved but never published. If you are a subscriber and get weird emails from me for posts from years ago, feel free to ignore.

I think I figured out the problem w/my categories. Somehow I had not one but two database tables for categories. *closed eyes* I nixed one. *peeking thru one eye* So far so good.

So far I’m liking the newer version of WordPress. The user interface seems a tad faster. The layout is a bit different but overall nice. It does takes a little getting used to. After the drama I went thru during my last upgraded, I decided to wait a while before I trying again. I’d never had any trouble before and to be honest I think the error was on my part. Regardless, I’m back up to par.

I guess I get to keep my geek card now.

References

References
↑1 Well 1 or 2 might have slipped thru but I can’t be bothered to worry.

Geek Out

I had a chance to use the Amazon Kindle the other day and I was pleasantly surprised. [1]I was reminded after writing a commentary on one of the geek sites I follow  The "e-ink" or display was amazing.  It was better than reading print as the clarity was stunning.  There was no screen buzz or flicker that comes w/most electronic display devices, which often leads to eye strain.  The font size is adjustable too.  Surprisingly, there was no backlight feature either.  I sort of expect that however, after some thought, this makes sense.  A backlight can cause text to wash out at times for people w/poor eyesight.

Figuring out the features and function was pretty straight forward.  It was obvious considerable effort was put into usability.  However, the page forward/back buttons were a tad too convenient.  I kept bumping them every time I moved the device around.  I also found the overall feel of the device a bit clunky.  It was light but took some getting use to.  I expected the screen size to be bigger too.  The actual screen was probably about the same size as your average paperback. 

The biggest downer is the price.  It was ridiculously over-priced.  Being a geek, there are some devices that I just consider a "must have" and will rush right out and buy.  Not so in this case.  It is more of a convenience than anything else.  I also think the average user won’t be a technophile like myself.  Hence, the price will be a big turn off to the book worm crowd.  I know for myself it will need come down in price significantly before I make the switch.  For power readers, it might sense however, I only read on average about 5-7 books a year. 

I’m a big supporter of e-books as it will allow us to ween ourselves off our dependence on paper. [2]We are destroying our rainforests  Plus being able to carry 200 books around with you is pretty damn appealing.  Barring portability and flexibility issues on copies, I think overall the industry is off to a good start.

References

References
↑1 I was reminded after writing a commentary on one of the geek sites I follow
↑2 We are destroying our rainforests

Update II

So the update to the blog went semi-successful.  Once again, a huge chunk of my categories went missing.  I’m hoping after this update it won’t happen again.  The other problem is my subdomains are currently defaulting to my root folder.

If you are loading blog.mobius.name or sfmoby.us you get bounced to my home page url.  I’m waiting for my ISP to fix the problem.  In the meantime, the full blog link www.mobius.name/blog/ is on the home page or you can load it manually.

Sorry for the confusion. 

Update

I’m currently updating the blog. If it disappears for a bit, never fear, it will return.

Well, my FTP shell from my ISP is down so the update is on hold. I’ll try again later tonight.

Hack

Someone has repeatedly been trying to hack my calendar site.  I got a notice from my ISP a couple months back regarding an intrusion attempt on my calendar’s RSS feed.  I disabled that.  Today, I discovered a new ics file loaded into my calendar directory.  It was incorrectly formatted so the program wouldn’t run it.  However, a quick perusal of the base file showed a redirect command.  I googled the redirect site and it came back as a trojan.

Annoyed with the apparent software vulnerabilities, I nixed the entire program.  I did export my data file into Gcal (google’s version) beforehand.  As fates would have it, there is a nifty plug in for Thunderbird that lets me update and modify the Gcal version just as easily as I did my original.

Not than anyone really cares about my schedule…