Steve Ballmer IS Bob Rohrman

Matt and I were blathering randomly earlier tonight and we have decided that not only is Steve Ballmer a joke of a CEO, but that deep in his heart, in his core personality, he is a used car salesman. Think about that for a bit.

Stupid oranges

I wanted to have an orange with dinner, but my last orange was rotten. Fine, orange, I hate you too. I'll have an apple instead.

A night full of WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS THAT

Had a conversation with a friend. We said stupid stuff. The end.

Behold, the power of cheese

Mmm, quesadillas are so good. I finally got the temperature of the frying pan right: hot enough to melt the cheese and cook the onions, but not so hot that the tortilla burns. These quesadillas are filled with pepper jack, cheddar, chicken, onion, and tomato and are topped with sour cream and chili powder. I'm probably taking in about 500,000% of my daily allotment of cholesterol with all that cheese and sour cream.

Random musings

Saw a minorly epic fail today. Big truck, probably gets around 3 mpg. Surrounded by litter (cups, paper, whatever). Has an "Environment" license plate.

Some random person on the street greeted me with "What's up, playboy?" All I could manage was to mutter lol wut under my breath.

Long time no see

After a month of no posting, I finally have enough news to bother with reporting it. First, the dining court made me shave. Their maximum length for facial hair is 1/4 inch. I can do nothing with that length, so the entire beard had to go. Second, I'm annoyed with my downstairs neighbors. They partied on Wednesday and Thursday nights, but not last night. Good job keeping me awake only on the nights I actually have to sleep, fools.

This Old House

I've moved out of Williamsburg and into a multi-unit house on South Grant St. Matt's done with Purdue, and I still have two years to go, and Williamsburg's single-person apartments were too expensive. This place is small, old, and not in great shape, but it's cheap and it's close to campus.

I am insane when I sleep

Hokay, another dream post. This is only a fragment of the dream; I don't remember any more than this.

I was trespassing in someone's house while they were away, using their computer. I started to get worried that they'd come back and find me, so I left... and right as I got to the door, the family that lived there got back. I said, "Oh, hi," and held the door for them as they entered the house, then ran like mad. It was winter, and snow covered everything. I ran through the town while small children threw snowballs at me. In my dreams, the universe doesn't work right, so some of the children were quite easily throwing snowballs twice the diameter of a basketball. All this time I was worrying that I'd get arrested. I saw my parents' house across the street, but woke up before I got inside. I was so freaked out by the dream that I had to tell myself "I don't have to worry. That didn't happen."

Flip-flops will injure your feet

I've once again changed my desktop environment of choice. I'm using Gnome again because, while KDE4 is flashy, Gnome is just a more cohesive environment. There is a wider variety of applications, and the applications work together nicely. KDE is very stiff and unyielding. Sometimes, even though KDE is more configurable than Gnome, I just can't tolerate KDE's way of doing things. Maybe it's because I've spent so much time in Gnome over the past few months, but Gnome feels like home.

New blogging tool

I wrote out a rather long and detailed post using a new tool, KBlogger, but due to the fact that it's beta software, I couldn't use it to upload the post. When I quit and restarted the program, I lost the text that I'd copied. So, thanks to KBlogger's bugs and my forgetting to put the text in a file or something, you will never know exactly what I'd written. Trying again this time, and I'm copying the text into a file just in case this upload bombs.
[EDIT] Looks like it worked, since I'm adding this text at the Blogger web interface.

It wasn't much, just a statement that Blogger was broken for me for a while but now is letting me in again, and mentioning that my main Gmail address has been inaccessible pretty often in the last few months, and that mail clients often lose the connection to the server. However, my secondary Gmail address NEVER has any problems. C'mon Google, I know these are free services you're providing, but get it in gear.

Also, I'd mentioned that I've returned to the land of KDE after spending months using Gnome. With the release of KDE 4.1 beta 2, I think the KDE4 series is finally feature-full and useable. 4.0 really was a joke end-user-wise; it really was just a development preview. But I'm liking the 4.1 beta. Slick look, all the old KDE apps I used to use, etc.

Still bored

Yeah, so it's been a month since I last posted. So sue me, I've been so bored my imagination has been stifled. No new work yet. ITaP and some person in a Math computer lab haven't responded, and Housing & Food Services have only sent an automatic response about keeping my resume on file. Also, I'm done with the fake not-really-necessary work I've been doing at the webmaster job. In between infrequent job postings to be put on the intranet site, I have nothing to do.

Bored bored bored

I can barely bring myself to type this. I'm so bored, I'm beyond wanting to do something. I'm in that bored-beyond-comprehension-so-I-stop-comprehending state. Krannert PhD programs has NOTHING for me to do. I don't have an account in Krannert's PhD website, so I just sit at my laptop, browsing the site and recording changes I want to make. That was done yesterday. It'll be a real shock to my system when I actually have work to do.

Now, we in the office are just babbling about coffee. Yeah... At least I have a deluxe chair, with raising, rotating armrests, tilting back and seat, padding on everything, and full raise and swivel base with wheels

Webmaster, Master of All Webs

I got the Webmaster job I mentioned in previous posts. I'll only be working 10-15 hours per week, at $9-9.50 per hour, so it really doesn't pay squat. I'll be looking for additional work, perhaps work-study.

Went to Asahi tonight for a celebration of the graduation of a few of my friends. They're all running away and leaving me behind in West Lafayette, where I'll rot for two more years.

Working Man Part 2

Well, Delphi didn't take me. Said their summer positions were all filled. I'm not giving up hope yet, though, because Monday morning I have an appointment with a friend to observe his webmaster work and see if it'd be a good fit for me. Time to get with the emailing of the resumes.

Working Man

This afternoon I had an interview with Delphi Delco, which does parts testing for the main Delphi plant in Kokomo. They want a programmer, but their available positions are constantly in flux, so if I can get my foot in the door and start coding, maybe something more interesting will become available.

In case Delphi won't take me on, I plan to submit resumes to ITaP, TCN, and ECN on campus. They probably have everyone they need, but it's worth a shot. If that doesn't work, there's always uninteresting, lower-paying work like Jimmy John's or Walmart. I really don't want to have to go back to McDonald's, that really sucked.

Dictionary Fail

On the Internet, one may find sites full of images of horrible disasters, embarrassing moments, and sheer what-the-crap. These are often tagged as "FAIL" or "You're doing it wrong." I here add my own to the mix. It comes from my idiot dictionary that was issued by the Department of Redundancies Department. Observe its powers of explanation:

I fail at food

Yesterday, I wanted a Choco Taco. So, I put my $1.50 into the vending machine. The mechanism turned... not enough, my tasty treat was still on the shelf, and no amount of shoving the machine would budge it. Because I'm a fool, I decided that a waffle cone shell filled with ice cream, chocolate, and peanuts was worth $3.00 to me, and so put in another $1.50. Now I had TWO huge helpings of fat and sugar fall to the tray below. Nobody was around to give one to, so I ate both of those deliciously decadent delicacies.

I'd seen the ΑΦΩ blood drive in the Union, but I decided I was too lazy to bother donating. When I settled down in a lounge with my confections and my laptop, I got an email from the Indiana Blood Center urging me to donate. "All right, all right, I'm going," and so I did. But my lazy side rebelled all the way. It was nice to share the fun of blood full of sugar and caffeine. Hope some heart patient or diabetic doesn't get mine.

I hate those bright neon-colored bandages they have afterwards; the only colors are bright baby blue, purple, pink, and lime green. They just scream "Look at me, I gave blood. Aren't I special?" ... as I reflect on the hypocrisy of announcing to the Internet at large, where nobody cares, that I gave blood and want to tell people about it. Anyways, I would've been perfectly happy with an ordinary Ace bandage, but nooooooo, the sorority girls would complain that it's "not fashionable."

Ok, did I OD on shrooms or something?

Had weird dreams last night, which I will recount here to the best of my ability.

The earliest I remember, I was in some sort of barn where farmers used to keep their machinery. Later, I was walking around the dorm section of Purdue's campus. There was snow on the ground. This was the earliest part of my dream, so many more things happened, but I can't recall them very clearly. Something about a bus.

Next, I was exploring some weird house that's kind've like my parents' house, but much larger and emptier, but filled with dust and had a half-dozen porches attached. Somebody was with me, but I don't know who. Might've been Kiff, the green guy from Futurama who's always being belittled by Zap Brannigan.

I went to McDonald's with my dad and youngest brother, where I drank sake despite the fact I don't like alcohol. When we were finished with our meal, we went outside to our truck (which we don't actually have) to find that I'd accidentally locked the keys inside. Harry had the bright idea of rolling down the window (don't ask how he did it from outside) and hitting the unlock control, and my dad silenced the resulting alarm.

Later, I was abducted by some sort of crazy demon Santa Clause and wife, who planned to keep me prisoner. They chased me all over their weirdly-laid out house, and when they catch me, they take my normal clothes and give me some weird uniform to wear. I told them that their magic powers were freaky and I'd have to take a while to get used to them.

Scene shifts to some weird anime where winged youths guide dragons in battle against some sort of evil overlord who's trying to take their lands. One of the younger kids sends his dragon against the evil guy's huge helicopter sky-battleship, but all is in vain. The dragon-guiders are captured and their village is destroyed. Apparently, the evil people are in league with the demon Santa.

Somehow I've escaped, so I make my way to a roadside where there's a burrow in the snow. This is a supposedly secret hideout, but the evil people have already been here and raided it. There's instructions here that somebody needs an Ubuntu livecd customized for their network, not just files with information on how to connect to the network. I look across the forest and see my parents' compost pit, then look closer to the burrow and see a raccoon. "Huh, a ray-coon", I mutter. There's a strange taste in my mouth, so I grab a nearby chunk of ice and eat it.

As a final note, I woke up with "Santa Baby" stuck in my head.

The pieces are falling into place

I've arranged for next year's apartment. A studio (one room) two and a half blocks from campus, pretty cheap. My parents have suggested that they sell me the family's spare car. All I need to do now is obtain a job for next semester (and possibly over summer break) and I'll be done... except for Purdue, who wants more documents than ever before for financial aid purposes.

Life's been pretty empty and boring lately. Going to class, wasting time on the Internet, etc. Got Sam's Xbox hooked up to my new server, a Duron 1.2 GHz I got from a friend, and the framerate's a lot better, good enough to play Halo and Halo 2 for hours at a time.

I miss you, Fable

Wow, can't believe it's been two weeks since my desktop died. Last night, I couldn't take it anymore -- I HAD to play Fable RIGHT NOW. I tried to put a TV tuner card in my server to hook my brother's Xbox into, but... there was already one there. I do not remember putting it there. But it is there.

Anyways, it works, sort of. Video is choppy, but what do I expect from a 333 Mhz PII? It's playable through the choppiness, though if I hook up one of Matt's large 1680x1050 20" screens, it'll probably be worse.

Computer's Dead

My desktop is dead. Died right in the middle of a Fable session, too. Blank screen, no keyboard LEDs, won't boot. Yes, I've tried removing add-on cards, swapping RAM, etc. Dead. And I don't have money for a new one, and I don't want to put money into repairing this one, so my laptop's my only computer now, ignoring my PII fileserver.

Digital Slimfast

Today I did some housecleaning: reduced my local wallpaper collection from 922.1 MB down to 409.8 MB. I also added a bunch of new wallpapers, all made by the artist Taner at Gnome-Look.org. I'm currently using the result of a joint effort between him and TheRob: the Slickness application theme by TheRob with a bundled wallpaper made by Taner for that theme.

Flipping Wabash

Well, my building hasn't flooded yet, but the Wabash is higher than a college student on spring break in Amsterdam. Have some photos: (note: my building is not pictured, the buildings you see are home to some more unfortunate people)

Prime beachfront property!


Oh noes, you can't take out your garbage?


LOL try to go play tennis now!


These two show the area next to the road that my building is on. Not quite into the road, but very close. If the water level were a mere foot higher, the lot would be wet. Another foot or two beyond that, and it'd be at the ground floor entrance to my building.



These people are very trusting. "Oh, don't worry, it'll stop just inches away."


Download the entire set here.

Right, left, right, left, left, straight ahead, left, right

It's been foggy all day here in the Lafayette area. This morning, as I crossed River Road, it was empty. I saw an empty road disappearing into nothingness. Even later during the day, fog was blowing off the areas of snow that haven't melted yet. And now that it's night, the fog is downright blinding.

Andy Selman and I tried to go to Wal-Mart tonight. First we ate some tasty Chinese food, then we went to Big Lots to pick up some caffeine, and then we got sucked into the Twilight Zone. Seriously, Andy commented that this was like the Lost Woods in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. If only Saria had been playing her music, we might've gotten through ok following the sound. We could not see more that 20 feet in front of the car at times. While trying to get to the southmost Wal-Mart, because it's closet to Big Lots, we became trapped in a housing edition that took us on circles, figure 8's, and who knows what other patterns. I wish we'd been GPS-recording our path for playback later.

We finally got out, got back on familiar roads... and wound up going in exactly the wrong direction. We gave up and went to the West Lafayette Wal-Mart because we actually knew how to get there.

The story of Greg

I was afraid, when I started this blog, that I wouldn't be able to keep it going. I feared I'd run out of content. So now, I'll just make up stories now and then if nothing noteworthy has happened. I don't even know if anybody reads this, and it doesn't really matter. I'll just write anyways. Without further ado, here's the first short story in a collection of entirely unrelated ramblings.

Greg is an ordinary fellow. He enjoys hanging out with friends, playing video games, and surfing the web. He has a secret, though, a painful and embarrassing fact unknown by even the closest of his friends. Sure, some people find his fondness for stir-fried bamboo to be a bit peculiar, and his fondness for attacking cucumbers with his feet is a well-known eccentricity. He prefers to be alone, and has little drive for mating. If you haven't figured it out yet, Greg is a panda in disguise.

You might wonder why a panda would want to infiltrate human society. What reason does a big fuzzy creature like a panda have to impersonate a person, to spy on humanity from the inside? The pandas keep to themselves in the forests of Asia, and as long as poachers don't inflict painful bullet wounds on them, the pandas would stay there forever, eating bamboo.

Greg is the first in a series of waves. The pandas are invading. We will soon be exiled to the forests, forced to live on grasses and shrubs. The pandas will take all of our civilization and make it their own. We don't have much time. Check everyone you meet very closely, even your best friends and your family. Are they absurdly large? Are they covered in black and white hair? Do they eat bamboo?

When you find a panda spy, report them immediately. I will be here, barricaded in my room, coordinating the counter-offensive. As a last resort, I have developed a biological weapon capable of eradicating all bamboo ever. I hesitate to use it, though, because I'm fond of bamboo stir-fried with mushrooms.... oh no. They've gotten to me. It's too late for me, but you can still save yourself!

Remote Control

Today I decided to try out a little utility called x2x. What it does, essentially, is it allows the control of two X displays with one keyboard and mouse. A little script later, I'm using my laptop's keyboard and touchpad to control my desktop. It's nice, since I'm using one of Matt's large 20" widescreens on my desktop. If I bump up the font sizes, this could work very nicely for watching movies or playing games from afar. Whenever I get around to setting up a Media Center PC, I'll do this same sort of thing: keep no input devices attached to the MCPC, but instead control it from a laptop. Or, while I'm dreaming, from a smartphone, since I don't have the cash for either a Media Center or a smartphone.

Today's fish is: Trout a la creme

Oh noes, more food. I promise that this is not a cooking blog. Nevertheless, I've found I love grilled salmon. As long as I don't do something stupid like put teriyaki sauce on it while it's cooking and so burn the sauce. Also, sardines are good on crackers with mustard, and anchovies are good on pizza. Fish is obviously not brain food: I stuff myself with it and seriously, look at me :P

My desktop keeps being mostly dead. Its latest problem is a worrying noise like a fan is brushing against something. I'd open it up and rearrange stuff, but I've been too lazy. I almost can't wait for it to fail completely so I can have more justification to build a new one. I'm thinking of building a nearly-exclusively-Asus-based machine, just because I've seen a lot of Asus's motherboards and graphics cards, and I'm impressed with their quality. Their cases, both barebone and empty, aren't too bad-looking, either. Yes, I love tweaking and customizing, and yet those silver-and-black iMacs are so tempting... want. Dell's all-in-one XPS machine would be attractive if it were more customizable, but it's almost Jobsian in its stylish looks and lack of options.

Laptop's being great, except for a worrying occasional loud click from the hard drive. I think this weekend I'll try to gather the time to back up all my 1.2 kilolocats and other files, and organize them on my server that currently holds at least three separate backup sessions.

A Day of Linux

Andy Selman, one of my friends here at Purdue, asked me over to his place so we could mess around with installing Linux on his computer. Everything worked fine on the Live CD test except graphics, and we were able to install the proper driver after installing Ubuntu 7.10 to his hard drive.

Then we headed into unfamiliar territory: virtualization. Andy had the idea that he could, using Xen, boot Windows Vista while running Linux. Sure, it's possible, but we didn't get it figured out this afternoon. Instead, he served mint cocoa and venison sausage, and also some four-year-old über-sharp cheddar.

We noticed, after installing Xen, that we couldn't select which OS to load on boot: his wireless keyboard was not working before booting. He figured that Xen had somehow messed stuff up; I don't know if maybe it did, but the problem was USB keyboard support had gotten turned off in his BIOS. Maybe Xen did that during its installation, because the keyboard worked before installation and after reenabling USB keyboard support.

I was going to stop by Einstein Bros. afterwards for some bagels and salmon cream cheese, but no, I'm not allowed to do that. They would be closed, wouldn't they?

Dinner and a show

Matt went home for the weekend, so I dined solo. Dinner consisted of chicken gumbo with Louisiana Hot Sauce, some Whole Grain Fig Newtons, and two pork egg rolls with garlic hoisin sauce. Go ahead and make a face all you want, but I rather liked it.

Went to see the Crazy Monkeys, an improv comedy troupe here at Purdue. They performed at the Village Coffee House on State St. I ordered my usual caffeinated drink, a double espresso with a shot of soymilk. This was the first time I'd had frothed soymilk in a drink; most places just pour it in. The frothing gave it an interesting texture that I think I like better than the usual. They gave me a very tiny cup to drink out of, which made me feel silly and pretentious.

The Monkeys were good as usual, though I miss the first group I ever saw. Only one of them remains, yet after all these years he still has the same sense of timing and randomness that made that first group such a success. A few of the new people aren't too shabby either. Crap, I'm only 22, I shouldn't feel nostalgic about anything newer than Lego or the original Power Rangers.