Interesting things this morning...

A film critic and hi-tech theater geek boy wrote a column for MSN listing the top ten movies to watch on DVD. A number of discs I own already are among the films listed, such as "Fight Club," "The Matrix" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day."

Stopping by the tower's cafe this morning with a coworker I discovered they have begun stocking individually-wrapped, mint-flavored toothpicks. I felt compelled to grab a handful of them and now they're sitting in a coffee mug on my desk. I figure since I never used the mug for coffee I might as well give it a purpose.

On the drive up and down IL-83 to the office I pass through a section of road where the neighborhood has had "sound barriers" erected along the highway to help control the car noise. On my way in today I happened to glance to one side while I was driving through that stretch and I saw a near-full bottle of Diet Pepsi sitting on one of the concrete barriers that serves as the base of the wooden sound barrier. Why would there be a two-liter bottle of soda set on a concrete barrier? Who would leave such a thing there?

I'm downloading the latest "release" version of FreeBSD (urocyon would be proud) and will attempt to install it on my laptop later this afternoon. I'm tired of the hyper-twitchy Linux installation that is on there and want to try something different in its place that will hopefully not make me want to stab my eyes out with the toothpicks from the coffee mug. The fun part about this download is that I could see how many people at any given time were in the office simply by looking at the transfer rate I was acheiving. For example: at 7:45 I had two downloads running at 215KB per second. At 8:00 that rate was reduced to 178KB per second for each of the downloads. At 08:30 that rate was 150KB per second for just ONE download (the other had completed) and then at 09:10 that single download was getting a regrettable 124KB per second. According to our bandwidth reports even though my download is complete the lines are still fully saturated on the incoming channels -- our production day has gone into full swing and Internet bandwidth has once again become a precious commodity.

I was informed that mail services for chebutykin are broken again and I'm not pleased. I will have to go spelunking through the log files to see what's going on and try to resolve this issue, but I'm starting to wonder if glue records in the TLD servers aren't partially to blame -- I know they accounted for some of the foolishness I had to troubleshoot yesterday for a different user.

I've decided that yotogi is going to come to MFF this year if I have to extract the teeth of every man, woman and child between his place and Chicago to make it happen.

My usual cup of coffee this morning was graced by an eyelash. Strange as it may sound I am fervently hoping that it was my eyelash because the alternative is a little too unsettling to consider.

Interesting things this morning...

A film critic and hi-tech theater geek boy wrote a column for MSN listing the top ten movies to watch on DVD. A number of discs I own already are among the films listed, such as "Fight Club," "The Matrix" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day."

Stopping by the tower's cafe this morning with a coworker I discovered they have begun stocking individually-wrapped, mint-flavored toothpicks. I felt compelled to grab a handful of them and now they're sitting in a coffee mug on my desk. I figure since I never used the mug for coffee I might as well give it a purpose.

On the drive up and down IL-83 to the office I pass through a section of road where the neighborhood has had "sound barriers" erected along the highway to help control the car noise. On my way in today I happened to glance to one side while I was driving through that stretch and I saw a near-full bottle of Diet Pepsi sitting on one of the concrete barriers that serves as the base of the wooden sound barrier. Why would there be a two-liter bottle of soda set on a concrete barrier? Who would leave such a thing there?

I'm downloading the latest "release" version of FreeBSD (urocyon would be proud) and will attempt to install it on my laptop later this afternoon. I'm tired of the hyper-twitchy Linux installation that is on there and want to try something different in its place that will hopefully not make me want to stab my eyes out with the toothpicks from the coffee mug. The fun part about this download is that I could see how many people at any given time were in the office simply by looking at the transfer rate I was acheiving. For example: at 7:45 I had two downloads running at 215KB per second. At 8:00 that rate was reduced to 178KB per second for each of the downloads. At 08:30 that rate was 150KB per second for just ONE download (the other had completed) and then at 09:10 that single download was getting a regrettable 124KB per second. According to our bandwidth reports even though my download is complete the lines are still fully saturated on the incoming channels -- our production day has gone into full swing and Internet bandwidth has once again become a precious commodity.

I was informed that mail services for chebutykin are broken again and I'm not pleased. I will have to go spelunking through the log files to see what's going on and try to resolve this issue, but I'm starting to wonder if glue records in the TLD servers aren't partially to blame -- I know they accounted for some of the foolishness I had to troubleshoot yesterday for a different user.

I've decided that yotogi is going to come to MFF this year if I have to extract the teeth of every man, woman and child between his place and Chicago to make it happen.

My usual cup of coffee this morning was graced by an eyelash. Strange as it may sound I am fervently hoping that it was my eyelash because the alternative is a little too unsettling to consider.

Operation "Have A Happy Halloween Dammit" now commences...

Phase one has been completed: the pumpkins have been achieved.

With the first stage of operations closed it is almost time for phase two to commence. If you are not familiar with phase two, it is not the "Warm Liquid Goo" phase that was popularized in Austin Powers. No, phase two is much more insidious -- kestral has been placed into a sweatshop and is being forced to draw designs onto the pumpkins with a Sharpie marker for the amusement of roho, Cailet, Ra, Marcus and myself.

Phase three will begin not long after and will be incredibly messy. Why is it pumpkin guts are never simple to remove? I know why they make the cuts on your hands sting, but why must stringy innards be so damned hard to work with?

Once we have some finished results I'll break out the digital camera and see if I can't get some pictures taken!

Operation "Have A Happy Halloween Dammit" now commences...

Phase one has been completed: the pumpkins have been achieved.

With the first stage of operations closed it is almost time for phase two to commence. If you are not familiar with phase two, it is not the "Warm Liquid Goo" phase that was popularized in Austin Powers. No, phase two is much more insidious -- kestral has been placed into a sweatshop and is being forced to draw designs onto the pumpkins with a Sharpie marker for the amusement of roho, Cailet, Ra, Marcus and myself.

Phase three will begin not long after and will be incredibly messy. Why is it pumpkin guts are never simple to remove? I know why they make the cuts on your hands sting, but why must stringy innards be so damned hard to work with?

Once we have some finished results I'll break out the digital camera and see if I can't get some pictures taken!

Carving is done!

It took us some time and effort but the three big pumpkins have all been been carved and made ready. Our porch is now graced by a stylized snake, cheetah and panther that all look pretty cool when the candles are lit and it's dark. All we need to be ready tomorrow night is to load in the votive candles, light them and turn the porch light on. Idly I find myself worrying if we have enough candy for the kids, but I relly don't know how many will show up -- our neighborhood isn't exactly overrun with children.

When I get home tomorrow evening I will set out the three small pumpkins (one for each cat in the household) as well, although I don't think anybody plans to try to carve them -- that would be quite a bit of effort for very little return as these pumpkins are tiny. Maybe we can just decorate with some Sharpie markers.

Still, this is the best $32 I've spent in quite some time.

This evening has been quite a treat, it's 69 degrees F right now and the wind is gusting only lightly... it's absolutely gorgeous weather. I wish I had spent more of my evening sitting on the porch sipping a drink and reading, but I had other chores that needed attending to. If we can just hold this current trend for a few more days I'll consider it even for the lack of a summer that we had.

Paddles cut the water

Carving is done!

It took us some time and effort but the three big pumpkins have all been been carved and made ready. Our porch is now graced by a stylized snake, cheetah and panther that all look pretty cool when the candles are lit and it's dark. All we need to be ready tomorrow night is to load in the votive candles, light them and turn the porch light on. Idly I find myself worrying if we have enough candy for the kids, but I relly don't know how many will show up -- our neighborhood isn't exactly overrun with children.

When I get home tomorrow evening I will set out the three small pumpkins (one for each cat in the household) as well, although I don't think anybody plans to try to carve them -- that would be quite a bit of effort for very little return as these pumpkins are tiny. Maybe we can just decorate with some Sharpie markers.

Still, this is the best $32 I've spent in quite some time.

This evening has been quite a treat, it's 69 degrees F right now and the wind is gusting only lightly... it's absolutely gorgeous weather. I wish I had spent more of my evening sitting on the porch sipping a drink and reading, but I had other chores that needed attending to. If we can just hold this current trend for a few more days I'll consider it even for the lack of a summer that we had.

Paddles cut the water