bryan wann :: binary fury

I finally broke down and went to see a doctor. She thinks I have a giardia infestation and prescribed a few days of nitazoxanide pills. Awesome to think I have those little suckers leeching off my intestinal tract; I’m my own petri dish. Nitazoxanide is supposed to be effective at killing them, but there’s a chance I could still carry them for a long time. If I’m not doing better in a few days, I go back for cultures and another type of treatment.

There’s been some recent advances in health care that I’ve not been aware of, or maybe it was the uppity clinic I went to in Westlake. In the lobby, not only did they have the usual hugeass saltwater tank, but also Gamecube, PS2, and N64 kiosks setup for the kids. In the exam room after the nurse recorded my information, she let me watch cable TV on the computer monitor as I waited for the doctor.

While at Walgreens I noticed they had a banner up advertising “flavoring” service for children’s medication. I chatted with the pharmacist about it, he said it’s been around for 2-3 years but not that many people know about it or take advantage of it. I guess by the time the parent gets home with the syrup, finds out the kid complains like a whiny bitch, it’s too late to get cherry flavoring added. Wish they had that 20 years ago when I had to choke down banana-flavored penacillin gunk.

I’ve come to the conclusion I picked up some bacterial hitchhikers from Seattle. Maybe some cryptosporidium. Don’t eat the snow! I don’t know this for certain, but it’s put me out of commission today. I had to leave work early Friday because my stomach was churning and Thursday night I didn’t get much sleep because I kept waking up in cold shivers. I’ve been chugging Pedialtye, and I just fed the parasites some pizza.

I figured out hemostats (surgical clamps) are perfect for fishing CDs out of my truck’s CD player which has a habit of not loading/unloading anymore.

Oh dear god almighty on a stick the first night of Krav Maga kicked my ass! I was dizzy and lightheaded after 30 minutes of warmup and pad work, had to sit out. “Coach, my partner is dead,” was the exact phrase my interium partner used — who I might add is under driving age and takes this stuff seriously. I thought I was in shape, but totally unprepared for this. I walked into this having no idea what I got myself into. There’s no “first” class that I’m aware of, it’s just a continuous thing. When I signed up they told me to just show up and be ready to go to work. Baptism by fire, learning my immersion, I’m used to this by working at Giganews right?

The very first thing we did when I got there was jump rope. I’ve never jumped rope in my life. Some guy took pity on me and gave me pointers on how to get started. Then pushups. Then situps. Then on the back for toe reaches. Then lunges. Then more situps. Then more jump rope. This was just the warmup. By now I was on fire and wondering if this was a really bad idea. Must be how boot camp feels like. I paid good money for this.

It’s one thing to be told “practice blows are delivered at full force,” it’s another to actually hold the pad and take the punches and kicks. Coach would get up front and show us palm strikes, we’d go out and practice. “You’re chopping, use palm!” “Relax!” “Hands by your face!” Then cycles of pushups+palm strikes. Then it was Muay Thai-style head locks+knee strikes to the chest. After a couple of rounds of this I was feeling pretty weak and light headed so I sat out. They went on to combo palm strikes+head locks, then how to counter a choke hold. After all this, it was lights out and random attacks on people.

But, I realize now you’re supposed to be sweating buckets and be dead tired. The whole point is to learn how to defend and fight under intense stress. You’re supposed to beat the snot out of the pads at full force and full speed. “This guy tried to drag you into the bushes and rape you. Punish him.” Some of these guys are really big and come off the floor when they take a knee to a chest pad. The girls are not to be trifled with either, they delivered very sharp, scary blows as well.

What have I gotten myself into? My arms are jelly at this point, they just sort of flop around. This is going to make me or break me. First thing I when I left was go to Academy and bought a jumprope. All the motion I did and saw tonight are finally sinking into my head now that I think about them.

I totally want to go back for more. Just not tomorrow night.

The rest of the time in Seattle was awesome. Friday we headed down toward Aberdeen and hit the beach. On the way back we went through Bremerton and rode the ferry back to Seattle. I’ve never been on a ferry; come to think of it I haven’t ever been on anything larger than a bass boat. Maybe a riverboat at Opryland, but that was like 20 years ago so does it really count? It was fun, reminded me of the river patrols we did back in ‘nam.

Saturday we hiked up to Kendall Katwalk. Note to self, bring own water bottles and/or CamelBack. I got to play in the snow! Eating it and putting some on my head was a great way to cool off. If I was smart, I would’ve filled my bottle with ice so I’d have water on the descent.

I don’t remember flying from SEA, the airport was totally foreign. Alaska Airline’s terminal at SJC sucked, it was some remote outpost. I had to leave it, ride back to the main American terminal, and go through security again. This was on top of being there for two hours. Getting back to Austin was a shock, I left 61 F Seattle and it was 97 F when I landed.

I have several rolls of film, and if they didn’t get nuked through the airport xray machines I should have some pictures this week.

Tonight I went and signed up for Krav Maga classes at the gym. Even got the t-shirt (why cotton instead of a technical fiber?) It was for a year contract which is a bit more than I wanted to commit. I’ll see how it goes. A month from now I’ll have to remember “I paid good money to have somebody yell and throw punches at me.”

What’s the point of Hell’s Kitchen? It’s all yelling (which is amusing). Do these people already know how to cook for a three star restaurant and now just need some lessons on pressure?

I reinstalled OS X today using the “Archive and Install” method. It basically moved my existing /Applications, /Developer, /Library, /system, /private directories to another place, installed a fresh copy of the OS, then restored my apps and accounts. Several things were broken afterwards like codecs, printer drivers, VPN, and some Adobe CS2 files. I was able to root through the files and restore most of the stuff.

One thing I was excited about was the promise of the built in OS X VPN client doing group authentication. It seems “L2TP over IPsec” is different than “IPsec”, which I need to connect to our Pixen. Short story is, I’m stuck using the existing Cisco VPN client.

However I am excited to find that Yahoo finally got around to releasing Messenger 3.0 beta. I’ve been stuck with 2.5.3 for a few years primarily because other y! clients like Fire don’t do cameras. The camera support in 2.5.3 is buggy, there’s been cases where the camera will crash my client and the person that was I was chatting with. Yahoo’s stance has always been “who uses macs? there’s not enough for us to care.” The new client looks iChat-ish and video seems promising.

Another stupid email from my apartment management, this time connecting freedoms of the United States to their services. Really, somebody is trying too hard to be clever.

Hi Bryan,

Let FREEDOM RING!!! Today we are celebrating our independence. We are grateful for the freedom we all experience as Americans. As a resident of our community you have many FREE services we provide. Feel FREE to call us if we can serve you!

We’re glad you’re a resident!

Sincerely,

Your Team at the AMLI at Lantana Hills

I caught the last few minutes of the Italy vs German soccer game in Chicago. That’s all I needed to watch. 0 to 0 in overtime, Italy scores two goals in a minute to win. woot!

I made it to Seattle! Wearing earplugs on the flights was the best idea I’ve ever had. Both had multiple babies that wouldn’t stop crying the whole flight (the parts I was awake for, anyways). Especially the four hour flight from Chicago, there was one two rows ahead of me that was really wailing non stop for hours.

The fireworks here were crazy last night. I didn’t see any of the professional shows, but there was plenty going off in the neighborhood. All around us people were launching artillery shell-style fireworks from their driveways. Not just a few people, it was about one launch per block. It was like driving into Bahgdad and seeing anti-aircraft fire. The smell of burned gunpowder was all over and the air was full of smoke. So awesome a sight and sound.

Last night I left my Oakley sunglasses on the bumper of my truck while I was working, then went out for dinner. Whoops. This morning I found them a few hundred feet away, they had been ran over by a car. Interestingly, the frames were scratched to hell but were intact. The lense and nosepiece were further away; the lense had a crease in it, but it wasn’t broken. That was awesome in itself, I was able to salvage them by buying new lenses. I really expected them to be shattered; says a lot for overpriced plastic.

I designed what I think are workable feet for the Rover rack. I tried cutting the sheet metal with a jigsaw+metal bit, but it was a horribly noisy ordeal. I had bought a 100′ extension cord, which reached perfectly out to the street. I worked on it out there thinking it’d quiet down some of the noise; I could hear the noise echoing off the buildings. I’m surprised somebody didn’t narq me out to the apartment fascists (even though I was on a public street). I went back over to Nathan’s and used his chopsaw to hack out the pieces. The’re a little rough, but nothing a grinder or file won’t fix up.

I made the journey up to Killeen and went to several Army surplus stores. Most of them had a bigger selection of stuff than I remember in stores I had visited before. Lots and lots of new/used clothes too. Army combat uniform (ACUs), battle dress uniform (BDUs), chemical suits, parkas, winter jackets, synthetic underwear, wool underwear, formalwear. Boots, lots of boots too. I like buying used military stuff for work clothes, it’s cheap and still durable.

The two stores that stood out to me were Surplus City and City Surplus. Surplus City was right off Ft Hood property and where I went first, the largest of the stores. They had a decent selection of used rope, netting and canvas that could be handy for Burning Man. Great deal on used hemostats, three for $5; at Fry’s they’re $7 each. Handy things to have for odd electronic projects. City Surplus was a small windowless building; I didn’t think much of it until I went inside. Floor to ceiling of clothes, it was packed! This is where I found and bought a traditional shemagh (keffiyeh).

Back in Austin, I went over to Nathan’s and started to work on the vise project. It took a couple of rods but I finally remembered how to SMAW weld. The comedy of the situation was that Nathan was working on fuel injectors on his fixer-up Subaru while I was welding and grinding a whole eight feet away. Drilling the 3/4″ holes for the pins was tricky. Whenever I’d try to sink the bit, it would wobble and try to walk all over the metal. We slowed the drill press down to 200 RPM, which helped some. The sheer amount of torque being applied was causing the entire drill table to vibrate. I had to ease the bit down while applying light pressure and either hold on to the work or the shelf to cut down on the vibration. It wallered out a huge chunk but eventually settled in a spot and drilled through.

I decided to weld in some bracing underneath the vise platform and make it removable. I figured having an upright piece would be useful somewhere down the line and keep my options open. This thing is solid and may be over-built. Its first test was bending the 1/2″ re-bar for the carrying handle. No welds broke, yay.

It needs to be disassembled and painted, but here’s the final product. I also need to round off the corners of the plate, I stabbed myself in the leg last night carrying it around. Outside of the Land Rover project I don’t know how much I’ll put it to use, but it sure makes for a great blog entry right?