Here comes the BOOM! this is yacht racing. All of a sudden I have an urge to be a racer. Nathan tells me I can get this sort of action in the Gulf of Mexico.
Yacht racing
Mar 7th, 2007 by bwann
Rental car woes
Mar 5th, 2007 by bwann
Bloody hell, I’m being nicked by Alamo for some scratches to my rental car in Amsterdam. I’m screwed on this one, I’m pretty certain the company won’t reimburse me for it. Bank of America says I can try to make a claim to Visa as part of the collision insurance on my credit card, but I won’t know if they’ll cover it until I send them a mountain of paperwork and it’s officially declined or not.
I’m “officially” studying French right now, but whenever it comes time to work on it, I always seem to drift over to Dutch. Watching movies with Dutch subtitles is a great way to pick up common phrases, but something tells me the finer part of cockney slang in Green Street Hooligans (Groene Straat Hooligans) is lost in translation.
I’m sick again with a sore throat and sinus congestion. I’m beginning to wonder if I actually have allergies for the first time in my life.
The rat farm gets tinyier
Feb 24th, 2007 by bwann
Today I’m officially a resident of a cube farm at work. I’m not happy about it at all. Letsee, I’ve gone from running my own show with my own offices, to working for somebody else while working in an office with a window, to working in a dark inner office, to working in a cubicle. I’ll keep the bug spray around in case I’m moved to storage. I’m about two steps away from joining the French Foreign Legion and living in a tin doghouse.
I disassembled half my cube today and rebuilt it just so I could have my monitors in the corner where I can at least see somebody coming in from the corner of my eye. I later noticed everyone else’s cubes in engineering was setup the same way. Regardless of if I’m actually doing/watching something scandalous, I don’t like being snuck up on. It’s likely to get a person elbowed or stabbed. I’m also not a big fan of being in a confined space all day. We’ll see how long it is before I’m in a corner in a fetal position. Burton and Philip are no longer within talking distance, which was really handy at times when we were working on something together.
The good news is, the move makes it easier to bicycle or run to work and I should be able to get lunch < 10 minute walk away.
Why do passengers take it?
Feb 19th, 2007 by bwann
Last week, a JetBlue airplane with passenger was parked on the tarmac for 10 hours because they couldn’t take off or return to their gate because of weather; other planes were in the same situation for 8-9 hours. A few months ago, a plane was parked on the tarmac here at Austin for 8 hours for bad weather. JetBlue flight staff reportedly opened up the doors to let in fresh air. In both of the extreme cases, passengers ran out of food, clean toilets, heating, and patience.
Why did the passengers tolerate this? Why would they put up with such miserable conditions trapped in an aluminum vessel for nearly half a day and not go anywhere? Are people truly that obedient? Were they that desperate to get to their destination that they didn’t want to risk “rocking the boat” by causing a ruckus?
The longest I’ve ever been parked was an hour a few years ago at DTW. Fortunately I was so worn out I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the flight was in the air. I often ponder what that experience would drive me to if I was stuck on a plane for > 8 hours. If I popped a door and released the emergency slide, what sort of laws would they say I broke? Is there such thing as mutiny on commercial flights?
I acquired my new TV yesterday. I had a certain price range in my head that I expected it to be, then was pleasantly surprised to find it was much lower at Fry’s when I was wandering around. I tried to buy it Friday night, but discovered my debit card has a daily spending limit. The medium-sized bank in Oklahoma I still use does not have 24-hour customer support I could call to re-adjust it. Saturday morning I got it approved and headed back to Fry’s. On the drive up, my salesman called me to let me know the TV was put on sale this weekend for a President’s Day sale — $500 off! Since the extended warranty was a function of the retail value, it too dropped $140. This tickled me to no end, I was going to be able to buy it for $1000 less than what I was saving up for.
The TV is amazing. It adds an order of magnitude of improvement to the whole brain rotting television watching experience. One end of my apartment is all glass doors and windows which projects a considerable amount of glare on any TV in the morning. While I was in the showroom I took my flashlight to see if I could get any nasty glare off this unit. I couldn’t there, and I don’t get any in my apartment.
From my apartment I can pick up at least 6 digital local broadcast channels: KLRU/PBS, KEYE/CBS, KXAN/NBC, KNVA/CW, KVUE/ABC, KTBC/FOX. Even though most of the programming is non-HD, digital reception of the stations is superior to the analog reception I watched before. A new antenna also lets me pick up other channels I didn’t before, mostly en Español
In addition to the image quality, there are several other things that are just flat out nice features. The unit takes my many inputs for DVD and game consoles, I no longer have to get up to flick a switchbox to change what I want to do. All audio now runs through the TV, so I can finally control volume remotely after 15 years. It also takes me down to one remote control for all my gadgets without buying some expensive universal remote. Mitsubishi has what they call “NetCommand IR”, which is a set of IR emitters you stick in front of your DVD player, VCR, and other gizmos. You program a mapping of remote control buttons into the TV, then you can control whatever device is selected on the input. For example, when the DVD input is selected, the play/stop/pause buttons work the DVD player; when the VCR input is selected, the same buttons work the VCR. You don’t even have to flip a switch on the remote. Brilliant!
I must toss my VCR though. VHS movies look absolutely horrible on the big screen. I need to get DVDs of my favorite VHS movies and get rid of the tapes.
Tuesday I flew to Virginia for work. Snow was dumped all over the northeast so I got diverted to Balitmore. While I was there, we got three inches of snow overnight which promptly froze. Fortunately I got back to BWI without any grief.
As I was passing through security at BWI, TSA pulled me aside and confiscated the 1 liter Mountain Dew in my bag. When I was on the plane, I discovered I had a screwdriver from the datacenter in my jacket pocket (which was passed through the x-ray machine). I feel safer, do you?
Nintendo Wii
Feb 12th, 2007 by bwann
So much Zelda. I stood in line Sunday morning at Target to buy a Wii. They had 68 units, at 7:30 AM there were about 35 people in line. I finally gots me one! I also bought Elebits and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (she gets around) while I was there. Every waking hour not at work has been playing. Sunday afternoon was a Wii and fried chicken router maintenance party at a colleague’s house. Much Wii Sports was played. Along with many “Damn the white devils” lines from Burton, my favorite quote was:
<burton> ha ha what kind of fat nerd do you have to be to actually get an injury from Wii?
1 hour later…
<burton> ow, I think I hurt my elbow with that weird backhand
The last Zelda I played was Link to the Past on SNES; I’m missing the experience of several games, but I’m really liking this one and don’t know if it can be topped. The graphics are awesome, I did the Tron-like effects of the twilight. It’s quite interactive, the gameplay is good, but gets confusing when there’s a lot of action at once. I’m fighting off some hawk and this housecat runs up to me wanting to talk, wtf? What’s up with Illa, she’s totally into Link and he ignores her. This is by far the darkest game I’ve ever played, not only visually and in storyline, they’ve definately got the creepy shadow music very well. It makes me wonder if this is what hell is like, if we’re suddenly turned to spirits damned to all eternity being haunted by black shadow monsters.
I also bought a Nintendo DS Lite. I decided I am not going to be on another 5+ hour plane flight without some sort of entertainment to keep me sane. For that I purchased Final Fantasy III and VI. I hear FF VI is the greatest FF ever, so I’m trying to validate that claim.
I’m now shopping for a new HD TV. Playing Wii is just not the same coming from a 65″ to a 21″. I’ve settled on a 57″ DLP, I’m told the Mitsubishi Diamond WD-57831 is the one I want to keep for all eternity. That puts me saving for another month or two, but it should be really sweet. The Mitsubishi and JVC I’ve looked at are amazingly crisp and don’t have any annoying glare.
I’m annoyed with television journalism again. Anna Nichole Smith died. She’s fucking dead. Get over it. I understand the whole story of her life thing, but I don’t know why we put her on such a high pedestal and cover it like Princess Di died. I’m annoyed in general that the US population cares so much about the personal lives of celebrities and actors. What has Smith done for us to garner so much attention other than provide countless hours of drama, much like any show on MTV these days? Today on CNN, “contents of Anna Nichole’s refrigerator”. Wha? We’re trying to figure out if Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents and we’re worred that her fridge had Methadone in it?
God help us all if Paris, Britney, or Lohan ever die. They’re in the media so much, it’s going to be a national week of mourning.
Tomorrow I’m off to Virginia again.
I hate Solaris
Feb 5th, 2007 by bwann
After 11 years I finally got around to figuring out en_US.UTF-8 locale on Solaris. Most Linux machines usually have UTF-8 enabled by default, but it took a few minutes of man page reading to get Solaris fixed up.
Which means, I can now easily write in different language sets from my shell!
よこそう
السلام عليك
Sort of, anyways.
Booted out of Canada
Feb 5th, 2007 by bwann
I have returned from Seattle. IAH->SEA was 5 hours, SEA->IAH was a little over 3 hours, what’s up with that? I would *love* train service between Austin and Houston airports. 15 minutes to board a plane, 30-40 until takeoff, another 30 minutes in the air, another 45 minutes spent taxiing and deboarding. It still beats the 3 hours of driving, but rail would be handy. I see AUS is implementing “express lane” credit card lanes for parking.
Thursday night was spent at Alex & Victoria’s introducing me to the world of Nintendo Wii and DS. I was skeptical at how motion control would work in a game, but after a few minutes of playing it became natural. I’m surprised at how sensitive the controls are, it allows for some very subtle actions. Wii Sports was fun, we played a few rounds of golf and tennis. I discovered Wii Boxing and got a sweaty workout in the process. I also played Zelda and Elebits; after a while I was cursing the stupid Elebits and kept playing.
We had the wild idea to drive up to Vancouver and visit, since I had never been to Canada. I didn’t bring my passport because I wasn’t expecting to leave the country. Starting last month, you need a US passport to leave/enter the US when flying, but you can still leave/enter Canada and Mexico by automobile with a drivers license. When we got to the border, my lack of passport or birth certificate caused us to get examined more closely. The immigration folks discovered Alex’s previous misdemeanor conviction in the US, which is a problem because there’s no direct equivalent in Canada and the “closest” violation carries a severe maximum sentence. In the past I hear it’s been a big hassle to explain (or they didn’t even look) but he was always admitted to the country. This time he was denied entry and required to “leave without delay”. I’m pretty sure because my document-less self was travelling with. The irony here is that he’s a Canadian citizen, but didn’t have the paperwork to prove it at the time.
Based on map estimates, I made it .36 miles into Canada. The houses, grass, trees, people, streets looked unsurprisingly like they did in the US. US Border Patrol was not happy at all that I didn’t have a passport or birth certificate for readmission to the US. Ultimately my drivers license and telling them my place of birth and nationality was all they needed.
Friday we went to Steven’s Pass for a day of snowboarding. They had lost a lot of snow over the past week, what was left was hard and fast. I spent an hour remembering how to get on the board and stay up. I never got the hang of riding heel-side without falling on my back every single time, I always felt more comfortable on toe-side. Eventually I was satisifed I could properly go kill myself on the green slopes. Victoria went up with me a few times to get the hang of things again. I wasn’t comfortable going fast (which was easy with the snow being what it was), so I wound up pretty much mastering snowflaking. I had a few spectacular end-over-end wipeouts, one knocking the wind out of me. I went up a few more times on my own. I gave up trying to learn moves and just did what felt fun and comfortable. Because I kept riding toe-side, my ankles and calves were exhausted and soon finished me.
I wore hip pads, but I was so sore afterwards from the beating. My calves, triceps, and back are screaming. I’m not in love with snowboarding, I said I’d go again, but the sheer soreness from the workout makes me want to go again soon.
Consumer rants!
Jan 30th, 2007 by bwann
Tonight I’m loaded with consumer-y tips and rants!
A while back Alex was telling me a story about how he got carded at a store to verify he was over 21. He hands over his drivers license which clearly has his age, but they refuse to use it because the license was expired.
What?
So the other night after dinner a friend is carded. He shows them his card, the guy hands it back and says “that’s expired, I can’t use it.” This is is so utterly asinine to me. The date of birth is right on the card! When the drivers license expires, do you suddenly lose 20 years of age? Is there a booming racket in fake identification cards with expired dates? If they’re trained to spot fake ID cards, then they should be able to figure out it was a legtimately produced card. I don’t buy the “it’s no longer a valid document” argument. You don’t exactly need a valid license for driving a car around in a restaurant. Besides, forging a drivers license is usually a felony anyways.
While in Amsterdam, I noticed that almost every mail/post slot had a black sticker that had a red “NEE” or green “JA” on it. Closer inspection revealed they were stickers advertising what kind of mail you wanted to receive or reject. One might say “NEE Géén ongeadresseerd reclamedrukwerk” or “NEE Ook géén irritante kutkinderen met lampionnen” which basically mean “Don’t give me any public fliers” and “Don’t give me any mail that’s not addressed to my address”. BRILLIANT! With the sheer number of people doing it, I assume it works. I would love if we had something like that here in the US. I think I’ll make my own sign to stick on my mail box to see if it actually works. I would LOVE to not have a mailbox stuffed with coupons, sale papers, missing kid fliers, and other saturation Simplified Addressing (“Postal Customer”) cruft.
I feel a measureable amount of smugness each time I walk out of Fry’s with a bag of purchased items and flat out ignore the guy who wants to check my receipt. So far I haven’t been chased down or banned from the store. “Sir, can I see your receipt?” “No, you may not.” This bugs me on principle.
Why are people so willing to consent to searches of their (now) personal, private property without probable cause? Fry’s automatically assume each and every person could be a shoplifter who’s hidden a little extra kit in their bag. All of the expensive small things like DRAM, CPUs is already locked behind the register counter or requires an employee escort to the register. Best Buy and CompUSA are two more places like this. (At Sam’s Club and other “membership stores” you’ve already signed some sort of membership agreement. I don’t have one, but it probably has language that entitles a search as a basis of membership.)
In this case, I don’t agree with a number of things:
- “Quit taking a power trip on the poor gnome making $7 an hour.” — I’m doing no such thing. I’m always nice when asked. In fact, I’m going out of my way to avoid dealing with them.
- “I hate life and retail and customers. You make my job harder.” — Good for you, I’m glad you actually have a job. Congratulations on having a job that doesn’t involve thinking or physical labor. Regardless, not my problem. Just as I can shop elsewhere, if you really hate retail and asshole customers, you can work somewhere else.
- “You’re being an asshole to people in line behind you.’ — Again, I’m going out of my way to avoid dealing with receipt checkers which would hold the line.
- “The store is doing this to check for dishonest cashiers.” — Not my problem. Watch your cashiers closer.
- “The store wants to check for overpricing.” — I have never had a receipt checker compare price stickers on items to my receipt. Do they know all the prices in the store by heart? You’ve already given them your money, it is completely against their best interests to make money by paying somebody to “protect you” against a $5 overcharge on a USB memory stick.
- “You’re just a yuppie asshole, submit to society, citizen!” — You still love me though. I’m sorry your mom is gay.
I suggest others object to the treatment as well. If you have reasonable cause I’ve stolen something, then detain me (that’ll be fun). If you haven’t, quit wasting both of our time and leave me the fuck alone.
Another fun tip of information. Page 29 of the Rules for Visa Merchants – Card Acceptance and Chargeback Management Guidelines:
When should you ask a cardholder for an official government ID?
Although Visa rules do not preclude merchants from asking for cardholder ID, merchants cannot make an ID a condition of acceptance. Therefore, merchants cannot refuse to complete a purchase transaction because a cardholder refuse to provide ID.
Something tells me this is like flying without presenting identification to a ticket agent or TSA. It’s completely within the realm of possibility to do, but it’s going to be a complete pain in the ass and make people hate you.
