February 27, 2007

Today I didn't even have to use my A.K.

Today was not a very good day. I woke up later than i wanted. The inertia to get ready to go to the beach was overwhelming. My plan was to go surfing because I don't know when my next day off will be and I really wanted to catch another wave, after my first one.
So I rose at 10. I ate breakfast and played TW, until about 11:30. I finally assembled my gear and was ready to leave and it started to rain. As it started to clear up, my brother called. We spoke for half an hour and then Jessie called. At that point I thought the universe was telling me to stay home. She persuaded me to actually get out of the house, which I really needed. The sky was still overcast as it has been since she left last week.

I finally left the house at 1:30 and biked to Honoli'i Beach. I was hoping because it was a Monday it would be fairly deserted, nope. There were probably about 30 surfers present doing some amazing things. I decided to swim off to the side so that I didn't get in any one's way while I am still learning. I ended up so far off to the side that I put myself in a fairly dangerous position, the waves were pretty big and they were pushing me towards the rocks. I spent most of my time swimming away from the rocks, like every other time. I was so tired by the time I made it back to safety that I decided to call it quits because I still had to bike home. After showering and changing clothes I got on my bike and the sun came out. In my eyes, another instance telling me to go home.

I made it home, ordered a pizza and watched a terrible movie. My neighbor's dog ran into the house and ate a slice while I was outside. I would've starting drinking but it was 4 o'clock. Now I have an indeterminate number of days of work in front of me.

February 22, 2007

She's gone

I caught my first tube today... Sir.

Today was my 4th time out in the water with my fancy boogie board and I finally caught my first wave. It was incredible, though I had my eyes closed for most of it. I heard myself yelling "Wooooooh" right past a snorkler. I spent the next 45 minutes paddling back to find another wave. I didn't catch another but my feelings on how to do it next time are right place, right time.

One day I'll do something like this:

February 17, 2007

Public computers

If you use a public computer at a school or net cafe, please please delete your data when you're done. Sign out of every webpage and IM client you logged in to. Make sure there are no footprints of yours left. Firefox has an option in the Tools menu to Clear Private Data, use it!

I work at an interent cafe, I find resumes, love letters, family / vacation / naughty pictures, contact lists, privately produced music, boarding passes and itiniraries, credit card numbers. Basically I find enough information to completely assume your identity and stalk your family. I'm a white hat for people. You're lucky if you leave your stuff and I find it, all I do is copy it to my vault and remove it from the public.

I guess people in Hawaii are more laid back about this kind of stuff, but all it takes is one person bent on chaos with enough smarts to realize what they've come across to make your life way more difficult.

Network

I miss my network. That sounds geeky enough but 2 years ago I had 5 machines running and another 3 not online but functional and another 2 or so worth of parts.

My desktop should be on the way soon which will be nice to have as a server and gaming machine. I just don't feel good about running my laptop for so many hours at a time.

I do have an ftp server running at my brother's house, which is nice because I don't have to do any of the hardware support. It serves as a backup for me and I can access the data almost anywhere in the world.

My old network consisted of a server that had almost 1 TB RAID5 and attached printer shared to the network. I had a gaming machine with plenty of ram and a nice video card. I had a laptop for blogging on the couch on the porch. My router had better firmware. Numerous USB devices attached to a powered up. Now it's just my laptop and pda.

Jay and I talked at one point about reducing clutter and stuff that has many other costs such as time and effort required for maintaining so many machines. He's right, it does require a lot more work to support 2 machines than 1, but I miss having a wide network. If there is a problem with the machine you're working on and you don't have time to fix it there is always another machine that you can finish your work on. Spilled something on your keyboard?, there's 3 spares. I had extras of everything and it was nice.

I could offset the load onto another machine. This was really handy when I ripped my entire CD collection. Every time I walked by the server I just exchanged CDs and walked away, it ripped automagically. Mydocs were stored on the server, accessible from any machine on the network.
Running a domain was fun but troublesome. Same with the DNS.

While most people looked at it as excessive to run all this equipment and services I found it thrilling. This is a learning experience for me. It's good to have upgraded the firmware on my pda, it didn't need it, but now I know how. It makes me more valuable in my job as a Tech.

When I finally own my own house, I plan on doing all my own structured cabling. There will be two phone, two data, 2 coax, and speaker to every room in the house, including bathrooms and kitchen. There will of course be wireless to stream all of those, but there is never a substitute for a wire.

Yeah I lie awake at night thinking about this stuff.

Music

Aphex Twin - Windowlicker is my favorite song. I know this, I've loved it for a number of years, I've never grown tired of it, it always makes me feel better. Tool has a similar effect for a lot of people, they listen to it when they're tired and upset or lonely.

Pinback is some of the best music I've ever heard. Usually suited for slow times in the evenings, but it's one of the few bands that can actually bring tears to my eyes with the sounds that they make. I used to listen to it in rva when I was drinking or when I came home from work in the morning and was not feeling right.

Mindless self indulgence always makes me a little more energetic and often makes me laugh 'cause of their silly lyrics. They're one of the more original bands that I know of.

NIN is also an all time favorite and has been since my brother made me watch my first video of his (Why are so many youtube videos such low quality?). Iif you haven't caught the new nin tracks they're called: My Violent Heart and Survivalism. YearZero due out in April.

We rented a car this week while the fiance is here and it has a radio. It's difficult to listen to the radio any other time so this is a treat. Hawaii has a ton of radio stations that Sublime, Brother Iz, and other typical island music. Today I heard a song called Hilo Rain. It's neat hearing a song written about the place you live in. Sure there are many of them about NY, San Francisco, LA and Miami, but I've never lived in them. No one ever sang about Blacksburg or Lund, I'm sure rva has been mentioned in some rhymes but nothing I've ever heard of.

Primus did a song called You Can't Kill Michael Malloy, read Micael Malloy's Wikipus, interesting stuff.

Finally, I've been playing this browser based game called Tribal Wars, if you feel like joining I'm playing on World 4. Happy to give an invite.

February 5, 2007

Do or Do Not. There is also Try.

Last week I bought a boogie board and flippers. Today Kev and I headed to Richardson's Beach.
It was the longest bike ride I think I've made here, yes I know it's only 6 miles; but I'm a big dude.

We arrived and Kev went to study, I decided I needed to try out my new board. I guessed at how to wax it and I guessed again on how to attach the tether.

This is no shock to anyone: I don't know how to boogie board. I spent about 45 minutes paddling around trying to figure out how the other boarders seemed so weightless on the waves. Most of my time was spent swimming away from rocks and other boarders so as not to encroach on their space / waves. My ankles are not strong enough yet to effectively use flippers.

"Maybe you're too big to boogie board." From someone close to me and it took away the rest of my confidence for the afternoon. The rest of the afternoon I napped and worked on my tan.