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Blog - March 2003 |
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This page stores my blog entries from March 2003. The entries are dated March 2, March 4, March 7, March 14, March 16, March 18, March 23, and March 30.
Roy Wins! / R.I.P. Mr. Rogers / Interview & Suit / Helmet Cases - Continued / Room and Dad's Truck Updates March 2, 2003 To start this month's blog off to a positive start, major congratulations to Roy Jones, Jr. for pounding that champion-in-name-only John Ruiz. I haven't always been the biggest supporter of Roy (especially with that cheap shot in his disqualification some years ago), but I really wanted him to win this one. To me, he's showing that he's trying what he can to prove that he's the best fighter pound-for-pound. Some people might say that it still isn't enough since Ruiz isn't a very good heavyweight, but remember that at least one fighter from a lower weight-class, when trying to fight a heavyweight, lost many, many teeth. ***** R.I.P. to Mr. Fred Rogers. A genuine caring soul who is fondly remembered by (non-molesting) priests and thugs at the same time. If only more people would think and feel like he did, the world would be a better place. He will be sorely missed. ***** I have another interview offer! I need to call the company this Monday to set one up. The problem: the suit I bought today will not be ready until Wednesday after 6pm. Hopefully I'll be able to set up an interview for Thursday. I bought a black suit with a blue tie from The Men's Wearhouse. Very cool place. A note to any of my classmates from my Senior year in high school: it's George Zimmer. Idiots. ***** My grandfather and I made progress on the samurai helmet cases. The time before last, we used a router to cut 1/8"-wide grooves into a piece of wood. The grooves are perfectly large enough for the plexiglas to fit in it. This past Friday, we used a different router bit to cut a decorative border on the base and cut grooves on the other side (to try to perfect the process of cutting the grooves to size). Then, using a different bit, we rounded the corners of the prototype post and, with yet a different bit, cut grooves into the sides of the post. The grooves run down most of the sides of the post, leaving a 1" section at the top and bottom. I wasn't sure whether I wanted one or two grooves, so I did one side with one and the other with two. Our next step will be to use dowels to attach the post to the base board. From there, we'll paint it black and have a finished prototype. Hopefully, from what we've done and seen, I'll be able to make the final decisions as to how I want this to look. ***** Room Update: Since I have my snare drum set up behind my desk chair, I decided to bring in my bass drum. Now I can annoy my parents with it at will. <grins> Dad's Truck Update: My dad has a rental car for now. The truck needs a good amount of work, but we don't know if the insurance will decide to total it or not; I don't think they will. I hope not. The guys at the auto body shop were looking at the report, looked at the truck, and wondered how the other driver drove off. It certainly took a lot of force to shove a parked truck (with parking brake on) some 20-30ft. and shove the bed up and against the back tire.
War: North Korea, and my Stance with Iraq / How to Fight Fairly March 4, 2003 Assuming I understood correctly, President Bush is sending 60,000 more troops into the Middle East. Seriously, I do not know any other reason for such a build-up than for war. The more time that passes, the more it looks inevitable for Bush to start the attack. As for North Korea, many people point their fingers there, saying that they are the bigger threat. Why? The news tells us that the nuclear facilities are capable of producing nuclear weapons. No mention of any existing weapons made from them. From what I've heard and seen, there hasn't been any mention of anything else that would imply that North Korea's intentions are to make nuclear weapons. The U.S. owns and runs nuclear facilities all across the country. I'm sure the world is well-aware that we own and will certainly use nuclear weapons when desired by the heads of the country. There isn't a single country out there who is questioning our owning and making ability for nuclear weapons. If there is something I'm missing in this discussion and argument, then that might be why I don't understand the attention to and desire to attack North Korea. FYI: I am anti-war with respect to Iraq. Why? It has nothing to do with oil, nothing to do with Bush, and nothing to do with Bush Sr. The fact that the strong majority of the nations in the U.N. and 40-60% of the U.S. are against the war is a sure sign that waging war is not a good solution. I think that national relations are like personal relations: sometimes a person gets too worked up for something that's really an overreaction to the situation. Taking note of how others feel is not a sign of weakness or letting others dictate how you make your decisions, but instead it is a measuring stick to see if you really are on the correct page. Again, there might be something that I'm missing in this, but given what I heard Colin Powell present to the U.N. about the U.S.' intelligence findings, there is no solid case for war. ***** While at home, I catch the occasional Dr. Phil show (call it the psychologist in me). On today's 1pm re-run, he brought out a pair of couples who had serious argument and fighting problems. Dr. Phil even said that one pair was addicted to arguing. Throughout the show, he listed different points on how to fight fairly within a relationship. If you're in a relationship or wonder how to make your relationships better, check that list out.
Rude Mailing List Members / Drip Candles! - Part I / Drumming Progress / Results of First Interview Friday, March 7, 2003 As I'm sure my readers know, I design and keep up the web site and e-mail list for the Sacramento Ballroom Dance Club at CSUS (which I call the CSUS Ballroom Dance Club). I've kept both since May 2001, with the e-mail list a bit afterwards. The club didn't have an e-mail list back then, so I had to compile one out of the old membership records and new records we had from that semester. It was a horrible pain, but it was done. I'm happy with the accomplishments I made for the club with that respect. Regardless, I do have my annoyances while fielding e-mails from people. One recent one surrounds the subject of the desire of being removed from a list. It's standard for a person to e-mail the entity if they do not want to receive e-mails from them. I put a line saying, "respond to this e-mail to be removed from the list". That should be very simple, and I never put someone on the list without their permission. Still, I get people e-mailing me who seem mad that they're still getting messages! Occasionally, I'll get a message from someone who is rather polite about it, but when I get messages that say, "STOP E-MAILING ME!", I get rather annoyed at the individual. It's a good thing that I maintain a professional manner with these people, or I'd write back and tell them that they need to respond more nicely (or, tell them how they should respond differently). Has common courtesy completely been removed from the masses, or do I just deal with socially- and courtesy-inept people? ***** Drip candles! I bought a bunch of drip candles during the massive sale by DiverseCity, and I'm just now getting around to using them on my bottles. I started on my Hennesy Cognac bottle (clear glass; a squat-shaped bottle) with some neon colors. The candles have a slanted top (cut at, maybe, a 60-degree angle) to facilitate dripping, and allegedly the wicks wind around in the candle like a corkscrew (rather than just going through the candle in a straight line). The corkscrew layout of the wick should allow an even dispersal of wax around the bottle, according to the box they set in. It didn't work very well; the first two dripped all in the same spot. I felt comfortable with this and set the third candle into the bottle, only to have it melt as the package said it would. So, naturally, I started spinning the candle around so that all the wax would collect on only one side of the bottle. It looks good so far, though I think I'll need more drip candles to truly create a nice bottle. I have two other bottles I want to use them on: a 1.5L merlot bottle that's a dark green, and a 750 mL white wine bottle that is made of blue glass (and apparently is a German product). ***** I concluded a few days ago that I should, at some point, take some drum lessons. Although, with some practice, I can get up to and exceed the skill I had with the snare drum, adding other drums to the equation seems to be complicating things very much. I have figured out how to control the bass drum pedal, though my dexterity with it isn't very good. It's improving, but I see it's going to take some time before I can drum along with my favorite Slayer or Dead Kennedys song. I may have to stick to the Doors and other slower stuff for a while. Of course, with the Doors, that's certainly not a complaint. <grins> ***** Well, I had my first formal interview yesterday. I'm very happy and proud with myself with it, since I felt very comfortable and natural. The most difficult part I had was to e-mail the person to let him know that I wasn't interested (an "I'm removing myself as a candidate" message; I phrased it the best I could). Although it seems to be a very cool place with some nice people, I felt it wasn't good for me on a few points. The most I was guaranteed if I completed the training segment was $10.50/h. I cannot see how I could move out and live on my own on that little, to be honest. The other part was its structure. They had a very loose dress code (basically, whatever I would normally wear in jeans and t-shirts would be fine), and I could basically set my own schedule. There are some very attractive things with that, but for some reason it didn't set well with me; I tend to like a little more formality with things. The last thing is that it felt entirely too similar to what I do now. Now, I do enjoy things at work rather much, but I certainly don't want to do that for the rest of my life. I can tell that this job hunt is going to be rather stressful and frustrating for me, but I know the right thing will come along.
Pre-Post note / CSUS BDC: Spring 2003 Fate / "Inch Worm" Traffic Phenomenon Friday, March 14, 2003 It's been a whole week since I last wrote in this. Of course, if you've been a regular reader of my blog, you'll notice that my posts to it are a bit erratic. I normally never write to it without a purpose or without anything to actually say. ***** The CSUS Ballroom Dance Club will be on hiatus this semester with intent to reform next Fall Semester. Our officers were only able to obtain our regular room for three nights, and they didn't learn this fact until after the much-needed DOC fund deadline had passed (DOC = Dollars for Organizations and Clubs). So, they decided to hold things off until next semester. My initial feeling was that we should hold off until the following Fall. Of course, when I voiced this to Andy, our former President, we had no officers whatsoever. Right now, the situation is a lot better, since we have a set of officers who would be around to get things jumpstarted for next Fall. ***** While driving home today, I started thinking about traffic patterns. Have you ever been on a freeway, tried to go from a seemingly slow-moving lane to one that seems to be faster, and ended up finding that the lane you moved into slowed up and seemed worse than the lane you just moved from? I thought about why this would be the case and what would cause it. Granted, the following thoughts are rather raw, and I'm sure I haven't thought of everything or am even correct. Long stretches of medium to heavy traffic move like inch-worms: a stopped car causes the ones behind it to stop; that first car starts up again, with the rear vehicles following; and that "spot" where the cars stop "moves" down the line of cars. That's what seems to be the all-too-familiar stop-start phenomenon on the roads and freeways. When the roads aren't overly packed, one sees this phenomenon but on a larger scale. That is, the distance the cars can travel before having to stop increases. This creates long stretches where a person can drive up to speed before having to stop. Let's say a person is slowing up in his lane and sees that the lane next to him is going a lot faster. That person would like to move over and go faster. If all lanes are suffering from the "inch-worm" phenomenon, then that "faster" lane will be more likely to slow down. Thus, when the aforementioned driver changes lanes, it's highly likely that the driver will end up slowing down once again with no gain from changing lanes. The driver would end up stopping, feeling that no matter which lane he's in, that he won't make any headway through the traffic. The above thoughts/explanations only apply if all lanes of a thoroughfare are affected by the "inch worm" phenomenon. If only two lanes (e.g. the two slower lanes) are affected, then one would only need to get to an unaffected lane to move around it. If all lanes are moving at the same time (e.g. during a major traffic jam or near an accident), then no benefits would be obtained by changing lanes (unless one desires to leave the thoroughfare, of course).
Quote of the Day / Operation Ivy compilation cover / Tomorrow March 16, 2003
***** This weekend was interesting. Actually, nothing special happened. I had fun creating a cover for an Operation Ivy compilation that I made for a co-worker:
It's only in black-and-white because I don't have any color cartridges for my printer (something I should get sometime). I rather like the design, though I'd lose the boxes around the text (I couldn't find any way to do that using Nero's Cover Creater). If I had color ink, I'd have the flag in its normal colors and the background in a military green. With that color for a background, I'd probably keep the boxes around the text in some fashion. ***** As most every person in the ol' USA knows, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day. Although I believe the amount of Irish in me is rather small, I'll still be doing a little here and there to enjoy the day. Expect an account of my first Black N' Tan after tomorrow.
Quote of the Day / Dream Bands Tuesday, March 18, 2003 In note of the upcoming war with Iraq:
Support the troops, not the cause. ***** When I was in high school, I thought about who I'd want in my dream band. For some reason it came to mind
today, and I started thinking about who I'd want in such a band. Due to my diverse taste in music, I realized
that I couldn't nicely fit who I'd want into one band. The following is a rough notion of who I'd currently
place into a dream band of the following genres:
Spiders in the Back Yard / Comcast / Norton Systemworks 2003 Pro Sunday, March 23, 2003 Our backyard is kind of small compared to what I grew up with. The lawn in the middle of things is surrounded by a brick border, and on the outside of the border we have rose bushes and assorted other plants, tree-bush type things, and different trees. We end up having a lot of leaves falling in back, and we leave the leaves for mulch. For some reason, our backyard attracts an unusual amount of spiders. I never really see them until early spring. All it takes is for me to walk up to the edge of the brick, and a large number of spiders will scurry away, hiding under other leaves and such. What makes it more interesting is that I can hear them skittering about more than I can see them. ***** Is anyone else out there being harassed by Comcast to switch to digital cable? My parents and I received something around 5 or 6 calls just this past week from them. I know I received two in one day once last week, and they called yet again the day after my parents told them we weren't interested. Allegedly, Comcast does not keep track of who they called, which leads to people being called multiple times for the same thing. What the hell is wrong with companies like this? ***** When I had my current computer built around March 2000, I bought Symantec's Norton Systemworks 2000. I had lacked many tools on my now-deceased first computer, so I bought this to help things out for myself on my then-new computer. I loved how it contained all sorts of stuff (including Norton Utilities and Norton CrashGuard), and at $49 student-price at UC Davis, how could I resist? The only expense I had afterwards was renewing the Norton Antivirus definitions. For the first two times, it really didn't cost much at all (around $3 for the year). My definitions subscription was going to run out on March 27th of this year, but I checked a few days ago to see how much it'd be. After going through the informational sections of the resubscribe routine, it came up with the cost: $24.95. Why in the world was it so much all of a sudden? I'm not sure where my thoughts went from there, but eventually they landed on the best possibility: buy Norton Systemworks 2003. I had seen in an ad that, with $50 worth of rebates (including the upgrade rebate), I could get Norton Systemworks 2003 Pro for $19.99. The in-store cost was $69.99 plus tax (7.75% here in Sacramento). So, after rebates and with tax, my total out-of-pocket cost would be $25.41. That would mean, for 46 cents more, not only would I get a new year's subscription of virus definitions, but I'd get all of the new versions of the programs. On top of that, I also have Norton Ghost, which I could use to do full-system back-ups of my hard drive (assuming I use it; I haven't checked it out yet). All of that for 46 cents more than it'd cost me to just get a new year's worth of virus definitions. I installed it March 22, and it's working wonderfully. I think the only things I need to do soon is redo my Rescue Disks and figure out how to do a complete install of Norton Ghost (for some reason, the complete install didn't install everything I apparently need). In scanning the first bits of the EULA, I ran across the following bit:
Now, at first I thought it meant that once you bought a newer version of their software that you had to destroy any previous versions. In my thinking, this would include the original discs, which would be completely ludicrous, let alone unenforceable. After thinking about it for a bit, I think what it means is that if Symantec were to send you a new or upgraded copy, then you cannot use the old copy that was meant to be replaced. This clause would prevent people from making fraudulent claims of missing CDs, asking for new CDs, and then either selling or giving away the initial CDs.
Curtis' Birthday Party / Family Vehicle Update / Al Jazeera? Sunday, March 30, 2003 Another good note was last night. I got together with some dance club/company friends for Curtis' birthday (an event staged by his lovely wife, Jeanine). Much fun, games, food, and alcohol were had by all (though some skipped the alcohol; they still had fun). We barbecued some hamburgers and hot dogs, chatted up a storm, played a lively game of Trivial Pursuit: Millennium Edition, and the final remnants of the party enjoyed "Toy Story 2" (actually it ended up being me and a solidly sleeping Curtis at the end). ***** A truck update: my dad should be getting it back this week. Apparently the repainting was not satisfactory to the repair company, so they redid it. On a different note, my car will be going in for repairs Monday. My power steering fluid has been leaking quite a bit, and last week I had to refill the reservoir three times. Hopefully it won't cost too much. ***** Today, I thought it'd be interesting to see what Aljazeera has been saying about the Iraqi war being waged by the U.S. and fellow countries. I can access the Arabic-language version, but the English-version is blocked. Why? Is the U.S. really that scared about what American and ally citizens might see and learn through their site? I find this move to block access to the site rather ridiculous, but not nearly as absurd and wasteful as the "freedom fries" bull that Congress is wasting our tax dollars on. |
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