Posts by Berck

I’m really not much of one for thinking up subjects.

The box in which one types this says “Entry (This will go down on your permanent record)” Ooooh.. My permanent record. When I was much younger, I was lead to believe there was this “permanent record” on which all ones transgressions were reported. It never bothered me that there didn’t seem to be any such authority to keep track of such a record. The concept was frightening enough.

This was, of course, before I got old enough to care about things like civil liberties, and that such a permanent record would surely be in violation of them.

Much like Lowe’s tried to violate them today. I needed some CAT-V cable, and I wandered around Lowe’s not remembering quite where such things were stored. A very old man came up to me and asked if he could help me find something. I told him what I was looking for, and it turns out I had walked right past it. I was in the electrical section, and I was admiring the cable which was large enough it looked like it could carry all of the current to power a neighborhood. Or three. It probably was, but then I got carried away realizing how small it actually was in comparison to large transmission lines.

They sold CAT-V by the foot, and it appeared they had two different sorts. They were listed as “plenum” and “non-plenum”. One, of course, was substantially more expensive than the other. 19 cents a foot instead of 9 cents a foot or some such. The only thing that plenum conjured up in my brain is an evaluation of different sorts of intake manifolds.. The sort of intake manifold one finds in the good old cars from the good old days. A very large one which sits on top of 8 cylinders and supports a carburetor in a fasion not unlike a pedastel. Anyway, a plenum type manifold has a thin peice of metal which separates the manifold into different sections not far from where the carburetor joins. I’ve never really understood the point in a plenum even though I read a bit on the subject back when I drove a good old car. Some people seemed to think they were good things. Other people suggested filing them down. Others suggested removing them entirely. The intake on my car had one, and I figured that if Eidelbroch though it was a good idea, that he knew more about it than I, and I’d leave it alone.

Anyway, I imagined a thin sheet of metal dividing the twisted pairs in my cat-v briefly, then examined the two cables. One seemed to be a slightly different shade of blue than the other.

So I asked the rather old guy what the difference was, though not expecting much of an answer. He answered “Well, this one’s yur plenum. If yur gunna put it in yur livin room, you don’t need a conduit with the plenum. IF there’s a fire, and you got yur non-plenum, you’ll die from the vapors if you don’t have a conduit…” he went on for awhile, and nothing he said made any sense. In my mind, there’s cat-v. If it’s rated as such, it’ll do the job. There exterior and interior grade, and I can understand that okay. I picked the cheaper one, wondering what Eidelbroch would have picked.

He took the box of cable up to a little table with contraptions on it. He fed the cable through a tube and started winding a crank. A neat looking cable odometer starting counting. He wound until it read the request 100 feet I’d asked for. He cut the cable and wrapped it in electrical tape, then scribbled on a label and stuck it on the cable.

When I got to the check-out counter, the guy there seemed utterly unsure of what to do with either the cable or the sheets of metal I’d selected (in hopes to fix the armrest on the Exploder). After getting a manager who tried to explain it to him, he took me credit card and asked for my ID.

Which isn’t all that bad, but I found it rather frustrating as it was yet another step for them to go through, and was taking much longer for me to get my things.

And then Lowes, in typical capitalistic fashion, violated my rights. My god-given (well.. maybe not god-given) right to be free of unreasonable searches. I mean, there’s not a lot that I feel like I’ve got to be proud of in this country. And the bill of rights was a really bad idea, but I figured that I should at LEAST be granted the rights that someone decided specify a couple hundred years ago, even if that specification ran the risk of depriving me of other rights… The very polite woman a the door insisted upon searching me. And then comparing the results of her search with my receipt.

I never used to understand why this drove my father nuts, but I can understand now, the fuss he always made about it. If we don’t stand up for our rights at the beginnings of infringement, what will happen when it gets really important?

Our country is full of contradictions, and of late, I’ve been rather disgusted by them. This is a country where we seem to take so much pride in our “rights”, but here the very “right” to capitalism which we as Americans think is so important, leads directly to infringement of a much more important right, I think, our right to be free of unreasonable searches. It wasn’t my government searching me, it was LOWES… I got infuriated thinking about it as I was driving the exploder home. I essentially PAID them to search me.

Anyway, I’ll be shopping at Home Depot next time…

So I woke up rather late today, not feeling so great. A bit light in the head. I feel like I’m getting an inner ear infection… We’ll see what I feel like tomorrow.

I took a shower quite quickly and managed to get myself in the exploder fast enough to get to the mailbox by 1330. Since there was, in all likelihood a check in the mail for Dad that needed to be deposited, I needed to get that done by 1400. Not much of a problem, really. Sure enough, there were several envelopes that appeared to contain checks. I’m not sure why these envelopes are plainly different from the ones that contain bills, but I’ve yet to get it wrong. I tossed them on the floor of the exploder, and started driving to the bank, when I realized I didn’t have a deposit slip. Not much of a problem, I could always ask them for one… Except that I had NO IDEA what dad’s account number was. And, I didn’t know for sure if they’d give it to me. So rather than chancing it, I decided to go get the deposit slip, because I knew I’d still have enough time to get to the bank before 1400.

Fine, until I climbed out of the explorer and walked to the front door, and reached my hand in my pocket, and then the other. And then sighed and walked back to the exploder. Not finding my keys there either, I cursed. Then I thought about possible methods of entry to my house. Only possibly non-destructive one I could come up with was climbing a wall to the window I might have left open. Climbing at least 10 feet seemed unlikely and even more unlikely that I could accomplish such a task in time to get to the bank by 1400. So, back to the mailbox where I must have left my keys. Probably hanging out of the mailbox–I’d done that before. Never got farther than the door of my car before because the keys are all on one ring. But since I was driving the Exploder (because the front side of the Miata’s engine is in pieces) my keys were not tied to my current method of transportation.

I walked in, and my box was closed and locked. “Marrion, have you seen my keys?” She looked at me strangely, and said “Uhh.. no… you drove away, so didn’t you have them?”

“No, this isn’t my car…”

“I’ve noticed you’ve been in the big red thing instead of the small red thing.”

“yeah, rub it in, why don’t you.”

“Don’t like it?”

“No.”

“Guess it doesn’t go zoom-zoom,” she empathized. I sighed, thanked her, and left wondering if she knew my car was a mazda and associated it with the current mazda “zoom-zoom” ad campaign (which, by the way, I don’t much like), and decided that she had not, and it was a fitting coincidence. If you look for something, you’ll find it. Whether it’s there or not.

I subjected the passenger side floorboard to a detailed search, and finally found my keys under the passenger seat. I growled, and by now it was nearly 1400. I sighed, and realized there was no chance I was going to make the deposit on time.

I got home and desired to check my email. Since my bad IBM drive had finally munched through enough data that windows wouldn’t stay booted (immediate blue screen in kernel32.dll, never a good sign), that I would need to coerce linux into doing my bidding. A working (more or less) linux installation was sitting on a SCSI drive which was unaffected by the recent demise of my RAID array. After watching reassuring boot-up, I tried to configure my system to talk to Dad’s. Dad’s now possessed the DSL modem, as I hadn’t another win2k box to put it on. Dad’s system seemed quite unwilling to be a server, though it did relay a few pings, which was thoughtful of it.

Surprisngly enough, my wanna be router (linux box with lots of NICs) was graced by Dad’s computer forwarding just about anythign it wanted. So I climbed the many steps and cursed at Dad’s computer. (It helps… Me, not it)

After several trips up and down the stairs I finally realized that Dad’s computer was actually operating the firewall software I’d installed on it, even though the GUI for the service wasn’t active. So, after firing it up, and adding my system’s new IP to it’s list of acceptable associations, everything worked just fine.

I then convinced K-mail that talking to bellsouth was okay, and it provided me with 120 or so messages. The joys of mailing lists.

At least on my outlook express set up, the mailing list mail gets nicely sorted into appropriate folders so I need not manually sort through it in order to get to the important stuff. And, it’s much easier to read miata mailing list messages separate from Linux-ATM-development mailing list messages. It’s very frustrating for my brain when I read “Lately, I’ve noticed this smell of antifreeze after a hard run…” followed by, “I too have had problems with pppd, but under linux-2.4.15-pre2 with the following error codes, thanks to my serial console…” followed by, “I think my crank angle sensor is leaking oil…”

Among all this email, I found one from Dan Pedroza at Mazda South, with a subject of “Eeek!” I know what it was about, and was hopping it wouldn’t be there. Mazda South is a friendly Mazda dealter in Austin, TX from whom I order parts. They’ve been good to me, and I feel better about giving them my money than the local grubby dealers. (a visit to a local dealer involves a long, messy drive, followed by messy parking, and endless waiting in line to be told they don’t have the part, but can order it sometime next month if i’m nice and pay them $860.43 for the heck of it) Dan at Mazda South is typically there when I call, and gets my parts out to me soon, and usually the amount I save from buying from him makes up for shipping cost, and I don’t have to pay tax.

Anyway, I knew what it was about because my bank account currently has $6.21 in it, and I was hoping that ammount included my order from Dan, which I’d placed on Friday. (It seems the parts took awhile to get to dan, and since he hadn’t shipped them, he hadn’t billed my account yet.) So I tried to call him, but he wasn’t at his desk, and so I left a message with someone. Figures. And, since I was late with the deposit, who knows when Dad will be able to give me a little more money…

A few moments later the phone rang. I picked it up, expecting Dan. But it was Dad instead. “Was there any money in the mail?”

“Umm.. Yeah.. but.. the deposit didn’t go in for today.”

“Shit.”

“Sorry.”

“Okay…” (followed by a sigh).

I called Dan back a half hour later, and he’d already left for the day.

I’ve spent most of the day fighting with linux. KDE takes forever to compile, and it’s quite frustrating to be waiting for a compile only to have it terminate because it’s misisng a library, and then you download the library, and then it won’t compile…. Remind me again why I want to be a geek?

Note: The following entry and many following have been transferred from a Slashdot Journal. I figure I may as well put all journalish things in one place.

Thought I’d play with this. Maybe if I like it, I’ll even type at it with some dilligence. Unlikely.

Keeping a journal would tend to indicate that I do something worth journaling. In fact, in this case, it’s probably just the opposite. I’ve got lots of free time. Well, all my time is free. In the since that it’s mine. Not in the since that I’m bored, and desperately looking for things to do. But I, and my time, are, for the most part, free. I wonder if all those commas are legal.

Dad’s started a list of things for me to do when I get a chance, which is, I suppose, quite fair considering I don’t pay rent. On the list so far is:

* Rug Spots
* Deck
* Detail Explorer
* Put Tires on Toyota
* Fix Armrest

So, I did the first two things on the list. At least, I assume I did. “Rug Spots” probably indicated he wanted me to remove spots from the carpet, which I did. At least, if he wanted me to spot a rug, or carpet the cat, I misinterpreted. In addition, I cleaned off the deck, threw away all the dead annuals and gave the frog a bath.

I got invited to go on a Deal’s Gap run this coming weekend. Don’t think I’ll be able to attend, as my car won’t be fixed until then. This is a shame, I think a run at the gap might make me feel good.

A few more pictures online on my new attempt at a webserver. Not sure why I’m feeling this urge to start keeping something of a presence on the web, but why not…

I made dinner tonight… Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. It was okay, especially considering Dad was late, and I had to keep it warm in the oven for about an hour.

The bugs produce a ghastly, comforting sound that forces its way into my window, merging with the sounds of a ball bearing being hurled from one side to the other of a can of paint. The scruffy looking guy who lives next to my acquaintances is attempting to cover something hanging on his porch with a can of paint. I didn’t feel inclined to study the object in question long enough to identify it, for doing so might have inadvertadently made the man feel like he should be “friendly” and engage me in pointless trifling conversation. He, like most every one who lives near me is, I’m sure, incapable of conversation that I would find enjoyable. Occasionally when bullied into a conversation with some of them, I’ll remain in a state of observance for some eternity while my mouth responds without the aide of my brain on questions regarding the state of the weather and condition of the roads, though it doesn’t actually, that’s merely a phrase I’ve rather liked, stolen from Jane Austin in a somewhat indirect manner as I’ve never bothered to read anything she’s written. At some point, perhaps, the condition of the roads was as inspiring a conversation as the current state of the weather, but unless one is traveling, such a conversation is generally too penetrating to engage in, and the weather is left as the primary focus of those conversations where at least one, if not both parties, are uninterested in such conversation but feel that the other expects such an attempt.

I’d just returned from a rather exhilarating drive on this, one of our first summer nights. Despite it not being summer, Texas has only a few kinds of nights, and both spring and autumnal nights are rare. Tonight was only barely a summer night, there was still something crisp about the air swirling around the cockpit of my car at speed.

After taking a bath this afternoon, I collapsed on my bed with a terrible headache, awaiting the dulling powers of the little blue elliptical drugs I’d swallowed a few moments before. Not long thereafter the sounds of the birds chirping and kids playing lulled me to sleep. . . I awoke at six o’clock, reflecting that it was Sunday and that if I wanted to watch the television programmers which I occasionally enjoyed on the Christian Sabbath, my stubbornness would require that I wandered downstairs to the apartment of my acquaintances. I had finally gotten Peter to take the television out of the living room and into his room as he is perpetually watching it and I cannot tolerate the sounds of a television for very long. In doing so, I remarked that if I never saw another television show, I would not feel cheated in the least. This is true, but had the television still been in the living room I probably would have switched it on at 8pm. It was not, and so I wondered if Todd was home, and if so, if he’d eaten anything, and if not, if he’d be interested in going out to acquire victuals. Almost simultaneously, I realized that it was in fact not six pm, but that thanks to been Franklin’s annoying idea of shifting time around at this time of year, the society in which I live had pronounced the time as 7pm. I then thought about arguing with them and persisting in living in standard time. Measuring time is a somewhat restricting notion which though occasionally convenient, generally irks me. To make matters worse, we not only insist upon measuring time, but do it on a ridiculous scale based on 60 which is not a natural scale for anyone but the Sumerians who were obviously confused. Perhaps they had 60 digits on their hands. Even worse, twice a year, we’ve decided for no good reason to manipulate our manner of counting time. In any case, the television companies generally agree with society (or ARE society–i suppose the distinction is semantic) and as such, Todd would be sitting on a couch with a guitar in his hand engrossed in the Simpson’s, as is his way.

I fiddled with my computer, got it to set it’s clock precisely to the naval observatory clock in Colorado while compensating for time zones. I then reset my watch to match.

I had an odd taste in my mouth, and desired a Dr. Pepper, but there wasn’t any in my abode. I wondered once again whether the odd taste was a result of having been sick, or the antibiotics, or some combination of the two. I decided to go buy some, but as I headed toward my car, I realized that I didn’t want to go to the hell that is the Albertson’s near my apartment. It smells bad. I walked by Todd’s apartment on my way to my car, and noticed through the glass door that he was indeed on the couch with a guitar, but an acquaintance of his I detest was sitting on his couch. I kept walking and neither of them noticed me pass. I started driving north. I’m not sure why, but ever since I learned to drive, whenever I wanted to drive, I would head north. Usually because the southern side of any city I’ve been in tends to be inhabited by those with less money and the streets have more traffic lights, and my little car is out of place. I hate traversing poor areas of town in a shiny red car, as though I’m parading my wealth. Plus, overall, I desire to be further north than I am now. I’m not sure if I would like the north better if I grew up there, but as it is, I don’t much like the south. It has a depressing quality to me. I find heat oppressive and restricting. There is something liberating about cool, crisp air. Even if I like sweet tea.

As I headed north, near the area where I work, the places to spend money looked more clean, had brick facades… The cars tend to have upside down peace signs and pinwheels. I reflected that I would get a chicken sandwich and dr. pepper at chic-fil-a, but before I got there, I remembered that they pride themselves in their Christian orientation and close shop on Sundays. I continued north and saw Jason’s Deli, and it caught my fancy. I got the same thing I’ve always gotten there since I first saw a Jason’s Deli 6 years ago. I returned to my car and it had finally gotten dark, and the air had cooled off a bit more. I then thought I should probably get some dr. pepper from the store in can format so I’d be less tempted to spend money at restaurants. The first store I came across in that area (with which I’m not too familiar) was a Kroger. It was a very nice looking Kroger, complete with brick facade. I wandered in and looked at the shoppers. Female, mostly. Everyone I encountered was attractive, and I wondered if attractiveness was in some way related to the acquisition of money. Most everyone was young as well, young married couples, a few with young children. My car was parked between two German automobiles. I wandered about the isles and eventually found the Dr. Pepper. $7.98 for a 24 can pack. I sighed in disgust, and was somehow amazed that people will pay such a premium on clean floors in their grocery store. I headed a little farther north and found and Albertson’s, it too had a brick facade. Unlike any other Albertson’s I’d been in, this one was complete with a Starbuck’s coffee sign. I looked at it, remembered that I didn’t like Starbucks, so I sneered at it. I wondered why I didn’t like Starbucks, and couldn’t exactly remember. Something to do with being a large corporation with little interest in the human condition. This Albertson’s was a veritable paradise in comparison to the one I generally shop in. It smelled nice. The floors were clean. Everything was nicely arranged. The employees didn’t stink. I found the Dr. Pepper, it was on sale for $3.99 for a 24 can pack. I put one in each hand, paid for them, and filled the trunk of my car with them. As I started driving off, I decided that I’d like to see a movie. There was something forbidden about watching a movie on Sunday night, it seemed, and something odd about seeing a movie alone. I wondered why, because there is little one does during the watching of a movie in terms of interaction with another person. Something about the shared experience that made it worth while, something that makes us human. I headed even farther north to the movie theater I like and walked in. It was mostly empty, and a decent looking movie was showing in 2 minutes, at 7:15, according to the board outside. I walked in and the woman at the counter informed me that the time was 8:15. I looked at my watch and decided that it was, in fact, 7:15 and this woman had reset her watch twice. She insisted that the time had changed and that I hadn’t reset my watch. I sighed and told her I had. I had, really, I thought I had. But then, upon thinking about, I realized that she was right, because I left my house not long after 7, had since gotten dinner and dr. pepper, so there was no way it could be 7:15. I decided once again that maybe I really would boycott daylight savings time.