Sorry about all the car posts recently. I'll cut this shit out ... eventually. But here is the promised picture with the fogs. Sweet. I mentioned before that it seemed kindof silly to have fog lamps that would work without the headlamps. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense to have...
I realize how much you people like pictures. Since I haven't posted anything visual for a number of entries, I went looking for something interesting. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything. But asians crack me up. DOWNFORCE!...
...is how you say "I'm cutting my hair" in a number of languages. We don't use ourselves the reflexive very much in English. It's at the point where my hair is borderline mullet, so it's time to get it taken care of. I've gotten a recommendation to go to a...
Well, the fog bulbs are done, as are the wipers. And I've removed the cracked license plate frame on the back. And more cleaning, of course. I've emptied the glove box of about a metric ton of unused napkins, and I'm still removing bits of tree shaz from the hood...
I left the house this morning, and my net connection was working. When I came home for lunch (because hey, driving) it was not. It turns out that one of my bastard cats actually managed to unplug just the power adapter for the wireless router, thereby rendering a connection to...
Once again, Jason brought up a point which I'd like to address. Specifically, I'd like to talk about the sweet sweet ass on my new car. When I was looking at the car (and when I bought it), the trunk was filled with ... shit, really. There was a truck...
As Jason was so kind to point out, there's a video of me shutting a car door. Now, there's a point to all of this. The E36 (and E46—although I'm unsure of the E90) 3-series is equipped with frameless windows. When you roll the window down and open the door,...
Say hello to the newest member of my family. In case you haven't been keeping up, I've just bought a 1993 BMW 325is. It's exquisite. As promised, I took it out earlier for a little photo shoot. It really wasn't the best spot for it (and black cars are difficult...
Well, not quite. But I did buy the 325iS. All done. I've got the car, I've got the keys. And I don't have any pictures yet. I'm going to go back to the office to work, but I'll post some as soon as I get home. Which may be a...
Mind you, that doesn't say, "bummed." Hot hot hot hot hot. If everything goes according to plan, I should own the car by tomorrow afternoon. We're all set on a price, and all that's in the way are formalities. So now I need recommendations for license plates. Apparantely CTRLALT is...
Wooo! Well, the BMW guy called me back and tonight I'm going to head all the way out to Burien to take a look at it. Supposedly he's had two other offers, but both had a bunch of oddities ("payment plan?") that he didn't want to deal with. The car...
I may have found a car. Yet Another Perk of working at Microsoft is access to the company ads. They have a car listing section with around 300 autos, and nearly all of them are exquisitely optioned. Lots of Acuras and BMWs and, brilliantly, almost no SUVs. One car, in...
I noticed this a while ago. Here are some screenshots. The first is from a Family Guy episode. And now, from Brazil. Admittedly, it's probably pretty difficult to make a futuristic robot samurai that doesn't look like either one of these....
Since I mentioned that I wasn't taking many photos, I've been making it a point to post the ones that I do. So here we go. Those boxes are filled with books. All of them. I haven't unpacked them yet because I've already filled my bookcases with things that aren't...
I've inserted a post in my May 2005 archive that allows you to jump directly to the time when I shut down /dev/null and started posting to /tmp and offline. The first posts are in May, and the rest are in June—I've got links to both to help you out....
I have two dish sponges on my countertop. They're there for cleaning dishes. Now note that the cats are not allowed on the countertop. That's a no-no. Now look at this. Son of a bitch. This happens a lot, actually. This time, I happened to wake up and notice that...
My workplace does not allow photographs to be taken on company property. This isn't too unreasonable these days—I'm at a loss to think of employers (besides universities, I suppose) who would encourage shots of their productive workers cranking away on secrets of trade. The problem is that it's seriously stunted...
For those of you who have been keeping up with /tmp, you can jump straight to the first post that hasn't been posted there. Click click...
I just noticed that I got my journal up and running exactly one month after I landed in Seattle. I've also managed to backfill the 30-someodd posts from /tmp into /dev/null, although I haven't moved the photos or fixed the links yet. That will probably take a few days to...
Holy shit, it finally works. What a mess. For now, I'm going to enjoy all the delicious horrors of my newly reinstated internet access. And we all know what that means: fixing my egregious phone bill. Seriously, though, I think I've got everything working the way it needs to be....
I'm back online. w00t. There is some weirdness surrounding my modem, though. It works more like a bridge than a router. Bummer. Later tonight I'll probably post all the stuff that I couldn't from the office. And probably try to get earl online. But I can't promise that I'll have...
Remember my first automotive design review? I'm sure you remember seeing it. Reading it was probably another question entirely. I just want to point out that I'm dying to do another one of these. I'm not even sure what I'd like to do it on, but I've got enough of...
Here's a screenshot of my wireless network browser thing. On a somewhat unrelated note, this dialog has reportedly been changed for SP2. I guess I'll have that all figured out in a day or two....
The movers stuck a bunch of little stickers on all of my stuff, presumably because their offices are staffed by 13-year-old girls. This sort of thing happens. This meant everything, really. All the boxes are tagged, and more importantly, everything that didn't go in a box was tagged, too. So...
I'm still tickled by Rob's network name suggestion. And admittedly, if zerocool didn't come up, something like your_pussy may just have made the cut. Not. So there we go. It seems I've already changed all the network names over, so now all I need to do is remember to set...
I just heard something like this—said in a very thick drawl—on the radio: Making a presidential bid from the seat of the senate majority leader is a very difficult thing to do. It's a tight-rope walk, and so far, Senator Frist has shown that he doesn't have the balance to...
It's 8:11am. The cats are quarantined in my room. I'm waiting for the fire alarm test crew (scheduled to be here at 9:00am) and the cable installation guy (scheduled to be here between 8am and noon, sharp). I get the feeling I'm going to be doing a lot of writing...
As a Microsoft employee, I get discounts on Microsoft swag. This is pretty common knowledge, and it gets mentioned an awful lot during things like campus recruitment visits. Today, I bought another copy of Windows XP and Office because I'm ... switching a machine over from Linux. Right. The problem...
I talked about kitties earlier but I didn't really have any new pictures then. So here we go. FiFo really likes to spread his ass out all over the place. In the above picture, both cats are lying on the trunk mat for my Camry, which isn't in the car...
Yesterday morning—before I heard about the phone mess—was really productive. Between 8:30AM and noon I:Changed my address at the DOL (Department of Licensing) after waiting in line for 30 minutes, despite showing up right at the opening time Tried to find the Comcast building in BFE, but couldn't because I...
MST3K Episode 0521: Santa Claus is on the TV. Weird as hell. Apparantely some film company in Mexico ended up cranking out this really really odd piece of work. The entire storyline (and a good number of the actors) are clearly native Anglophones, but there seem to be an awful...
I've mentioned Fred Meyer once before. Fred Meyer is a store that baffles me—and further than just the name...which is odd. What really got me the first time I walked into one was seeing a jewelery store right inside the front door. It turns out that it's a sortof upscale...
Remember my rant about how slowly Movable Type 3.15 generates pages? I didn't either, so I had to go search for it to make sure I had actually written about it. On March 30 (a bit under 90 days back), I had 202 posts. Oddly, I decided to run another...
Dammitalltohell. I'm back at the office, and the CD I've burned has yet again got the wrong data on it. I suspect that moai (my workstation at the apartment) is picking up a different session than the one here. Every time I burn it, it gives me the correct data...
Since I'm no longer really scraping for cash, I bought volumes 1 and 2 of the Family Guy boxed set. Volume one contains seasons 1 and 2, and volume two contains season 3. Not terribly straightforward, I realize. Great stuff, though. I've promptly deleted the old crapped-out realplayer files from...
The end is in sight. I went over to the cable company today and apparantely a badged and uniformed member of their service team will be arriving at my domicile on Tuesday morning (between the hours of 8 and 12) to install my goddamned cable. Sweet. P.S. I have a...
That was the number that came up on my phone bill for last month. Wow. It turns out there was a billing fuckup when I switched my plan. But wow. I have a screenshot that I'm going to post eventually. And all this time I thought I had signed up...
I'm renaming the section Aleph the farting cat to Two flatulent felines. I'd also like to point out that Aleph hasn't been gassy in months, and that FiFo hasn't let an audible fart out in a week or so. That's not to say that I haven't smelled anything, but it...
This is my fridge. Notice that despite being owned by a bachelor, it's surprisingly full of stuff. At least, I think it is. The thing is that it's really damned hard to get through stuff here. I've only recently started eating breakfast, and I'm usually so time-limited in the mornings...
Time for more pictures! Yay! Here's the apartment, now that I'm mostly settled. It's not clean, but it's functional. Ph00t! The glowing yellow thing at the left of the first picture is my network blinkie. And here are some kitties. Wooooo! Oh damn that's cool....
One of the advantages of having the long commute (rather, longish—20 minutes or so) from Kirkland to Redmond was that I got to spend a lot of time listening to the local radio stations. The rock around here is really only so-so (has Seattle even heard of grunge or alternative?...
I've heard two unexpected things said in the last two weeks:Last Monday, I heard an HR representative use "whack whack" to describe slashes in a URL, and this morning, I heard someone say "smarminess" in an NPR report on museums. Wow!...
When I mentioned that I thought my new DVD player was possible Chinese or Korean, I realized that I haven't really ever discussed the Koreans in great detail. I want to start off by saying that I'm not an economist. I've got hardly any economic training, and my idea of...
In a lot of ways, I'm something of an anti-nerd. It took me until April of 2004 to buy my first digital camera, for example. I still don't have an MP3 player, really. And I just bought my first DVD player. Technically, that's not true; I still have the 4x...
I'm sure most of you remember the awful racket that my room used to make in Socorro. In fact, ever since my first place in Fitch hall, I've had a ton of computers on 24/7—and most of them made terrible, terrible noises. Myjohnson wasn't much better. I know we've pulled...
There are six (6) speed bumps between the entrance to my apartment complex and my parking space. Six. Sechs. Neigh, hoof hoof hoof hoof hoof hoof. That last part is in Clydesdalese, for those of you who weren't paying attention in this morning's lecture. So anyway, yeah, six. I'm not...
I noticed something today at the Fred Meyer (that's a supermarket for those of you in New Mexico) today: they have one hell of a pricing scheme for aisle-display DVDs. It goes like this:If the movie is good, it costs $14.99. If the movie is new and sucks, it costs...
I noticed today that there's something of a flaw in that my bank's account number obscuring policy is inconsistent. I'm sure you've seen this kind of thing before: when printing a receipt, they replace, for example, the last 4 characters of your account number with Xs. This would then completely...
Because I'm a slacker, I didn't notice Mouser and Jason's comments on the post discussing my new cat. So yeah. FiFo. Awesome. The cat is named!...
I've had DSL, I've had wireless, I've had university ethernet, and hell, I've even had a 2400 baud dialup connection. 1200 when the 2400 modem was busy on the other end. And soon I'm about to embark on a voyage of unparalleled magnitude: cable internet access. I suppose it's unparalleled...
I never really realized the cost of health care. Rather, good healthcare. I can see now why it's important to people who don't have—or are about to lose—their fulltime employment. It's damned expensive, and I'm sure that any of you can figure out exactly how much by hitting google the...
Who the hell ever came up with the word for a zoo? It's weird. Yesterday Layla mentioned that she wanted to head over to the zoo sometime this weekend. And I also mentioned that I wanted to drive through the University of Washington campus to get a feel for things....
Have you ever heard of The Phantom Tollbooth? I suspect you have. I remember reading it a bunch of times when I was a kid. Rather, now that I've watched the movie, I certainly remember reading it. If you had asked me yesterday if I had ever read it, I...
I've shopped 'till I $TITLE. I mentioned earlier that I bought a coffee maker (and so forth) already. Honestly, I only took care of the really obvious things so that when I actually moved into my permanent housing, I wouldn't be immediately overwhelmed with things I needed to purchase. So...
I've relocated to my new apartment. Because of this, my computer is sitting in a pile in the corner. Oddly, it's in the corner of the old apartment, not the new one. I'm planning on moving it tomorrow. However, this all means that I'm back to writing in my journal...
I was thinking earlier, "would it be possible to cut a key just by knowing its profile and having a picture of the side of it?" And do camera phones make this any easier? I suppose something similar could be done by making a rubbing or something similar. I have...
I took Aleph and the other cat over to the new apartment so they could poke around while I unpacked things. It seems that ... the other cat has caught a cold. He's been sneezing for the last day or so, and I'm going to find a vet tomorrow. The...
Do you see that? It's a raisin. And it's on My Johnson....
The movers arrived today. Hurrah! It was sortof cool, actually. They pulled up in a covered truck, and apparantely all of my stuff was actually stored inside two bigass wooden crates. They popped the sides off the crates while still on the trucks, and unloaded them from there. Here you...
Today I heard a cellphone conversation started like this: Hey you, it's me. At that point, I imagined the person at the other end saying, "lies!" and then I giggled to myself....
I have some advice for those of you contemplating a hastily prepared automotive spray paint job. Perhaps you've been the victim of a freak hailstorm, or maybe a loved one has recently found you sleeping with her marginally attractive but easy sister, with whom you felt lucky after slamming six...
I really don't like the term, "business casual." Mostly because it's one of those overused business-speke terms that says so little that it's completely useless. It makes me think of words like, "integrated synergizing," which would be a fantastic name for a business-themed porno1. Like I said, it's got ridiculously...
Well, I feel oriented. The first day wasn't unreasonable (although not exactly what I was expecting). Tomorrow I get to attend Orientation II: The Return of Orientation. Once I was done earlier, though, I headed over to drop off the old battery from my replacement incident, and get my $8...
In about 30 minutes, I'm going to leave the house for the last time as a post-university time-advantaged claimable tax exception. You know, a slacker. I'm still not worked up at all about it, although I figure I might be when I arrive at orientation. I think. And yes, orientation!...
Boy, a whole bunch of little posts today. I've realized that I need to replace all the day-to-day crap that I had before when I lived with Ken and Mac, but which I didn't bring with me. And although I haven't moved out of my furnished housing yet, I am...
In my downtime, I've been going through the third season of Futurama. The third season was on after I really quit watching TV, and I finally downloaded it a few weeks ago. Behold, hilarity!...
I think I live next door to a pro baseball player. As I was pulling up into the parking lot today, I saw him getting some stuff out of the trunk of a car that's always around, and jumping into the passenger seat of another car, which is also usually...
I buy a lot of cat litter these days. I buy 25-lb. bags of Purina non-clumping litter for something like $6 a bag. Note that I say, "bag." Purina also sells 20-lb. plastic buckets of the same litter for $11. $5 for a tub? I don't get it. That's one...
I mentioned earlier that I found a new apartment. I'm pretty sure I covered most of the details in that post. Just to recap, it's a second-floor 1-bedroom place of 644 ft2 with a washer/dryer, dishwasher, and fireplace. I've got a bunch of pictures to show you. The thing about...
I spotted three cars yesterday that make me giggle. The first is owned by a guy in the apartment complex where my temporary housing is. It's a late-model VW Eurovan MV—an absolutely kickass minivan, but comparatively rare here in the US. Two pictures follow. Sorry for the shitty shot. I...
Fight! Because I didn't post about this when it happened, I'll give a rundown of how the two have reacted to each other. Thursday I stuck Aleph in his cage and let FeFe walk around. Aleph growled and hissed, FeFe ignored him. FeFe was pretty clearly investigating the apartment at...
A bit over ten weeks ago, I posted about how fantastic the Optio S is. I had just taken 5000 pictures. Well, I'm 1000 more in the hole. Here's picture 6000. It's Aleph again! And FeFe! I love my cats. Something that I forgot to mention in the last post...
Although getting the Camry back was pretty damned awesome, I noticed a serious problem after I drove it around a few times: it was very difficult to start sometimes. Seemingly at random, the starter would very slowly turn the motor over, indicating that there was a charging, connection, or stater...
I've seen two signs here in Kirkland that crack me up. Optical images? Unless they sell disk images, I suspect they would be optical. The next one is great, though. Oh damn that's great! I nearly peed myself when I read that the first time. Nutty chiropractors!...
It's sortof odd writing all this knowning that nobody is going to be reading for at least a few days. I know I'm crossposting to /tmp when I get the chance, but it's not really all that often. Being able to see all my posts as God himself intended (on...
Hah. This is the damage report filled in by the auto shippers. It's impressive that they noted all of the dents....
Dammit! Remember when I accidentally blew away a bunch of files with my scripts? Well, I accidentally blew away a directory of pictures of Aleph and ... the other cat, because I don't have delete confirmation enabled. This isn't a problem on my local drives because everything gets moved to...
My first GM rental car—that Pontiac from January—had a V6 in it. Because the thing torque-steered worse than a pissed-off bull, it was downright scary to drive. So, when I mashed the gas on my now-returned Chevrolet Classic and it tried to pull the steering wheel completely out of my...
I remember that the Wikipedia entry for Redmond notes that it used to be known as the town where one can't buy underpants. Redmond has traditionally had so little retail development that up until the fairly recent construction of the Redmond Town Center, it really was true. Redmond's neighbor to...
Aleph is a dirty little kitty. He got into something today, although I have no idea what. Behold, The Smudge&tm;. And FeFe is just plain filthy. His back, especially, is super oily, and all the fur around his front sticks together in little clumps. He's been in the shelter for...
I admit, I'm an idiot. But now, the State of Washington has declared that I'm enough of an idiot to pilot a jalopy down their beautiful asphalt. I passed the written test. All it took was a ~10-minute browse through the Driver's Guide to pick up on all the numbers...
I just saw a Boeing commercial which included a bunch of CG shots of new things they were developing—things like repair satellites and whatnot. When they showed a picture of the scramjet plane, though, the voiceover said, "at Boeing, we do things that other people think are impossible." I would...
Today I got a new cat. His (yes, his) name is FeFe. I originally was pronouncing it "feefee," but the more I think about it, the more I realize that nobody could have been that stupid—it's assuredly pronounced "fayfay." But nevertheless, the name is going. I solicit your suggestions hereinunder....
Besides aerodynamics, I can't imagine why his lamps are aimed like this. Perhaps illuminating the unspeakable acts occuring in apartment 212?...
Words cannot express how happy I am to see my Camry again. Mostly because I fucking hate this Chevrolet. The shippers were originally supposed to drop it off yesterday morning, but it conflicted with my rental tour, so I told them to dump it today. The brought it by right...
I try not to write about politics, but when I do, I try to keep it concise. Hopefully this will be quick and painless, and then we can all go back to reading about cat flatulence and the like. Consider, for a moment, an unfamiliar political group. For some of...
Aleph has been spazzing out today—although this is hardly unusual. And just now he was swinging his tail around when he managed to accidentally whip himself in the back of the head, and then promptly flipped out....
I'm not sure if I've mentioned the Housing Assistance yet. It's been Activated. No, really. The email I got was, "Housing Assistance Activated." With emails like that, you really can't go wrong. It sounds like a bad line from Knight Rider or something. Anyway, the Housing Search was pretty damned...
I have a really difficult time with things like driver's license tests. I tested for my New Mexico Defensive Driver Certificate1 sometime in September or so of last year so I could legally captain state vehicles to their assuredly undeserved destructions. The test was something like 50 or 100 questions...
