I just couldn't sleep tonight, so I took care of a project that I've been putting off for about a month or so, which is getting my Belkin USB wireless thingy to work with Linux (CentOS 4.4 running on a Dell Inspiron 2650). The project received a bit higher priority due to my Lombard Powerbook finally starting to completely flake out (now it will only boot once in a blue moon.) I think the ole' PowerBook's PMU battery is shot.

I had the QA inspection for the new house today. Here are some pictures of the new place. The loan is effectively done and approved; now I'm waiting for closing date (which is Nov. 20) to hurry up and get here so that I can start the move in! I think I'm going to move in sooner than what I originally thought, and then break my lease.

Enjoying some time off, I headed south past Santa Cruz to the little coastal town of La Selva Beach to visit my friend Austin. I arrived just in time for his grandmother's 80'th birthday party, which ended sitting around an outdoor fireplace sampling a few too many bottles of fine wine. Come Halloween day, we were both nursing hangover's and decided to jump in the car for a road trip, heading south down Highway 1 along some of the most breathtaking and beautiful coasts I've ever traveled. We drove past Big Sur along the Santa Lucia Range, stopping frequently to take in the sights.

The next day I had planned to take I-5 to LA, but decided instead to take a slower but immeasurably more scenic highway 1 the whole way down the coast. The most breathtaking parts are those Austin and I visited the day before, but the drive continues to be nothing short of spectacular. A little north of San Simeon I got out to stretch my legs and enjoyed watching hundreds of Elephant Seals sunning themselves on the beaches.

Don't know why the Reagan quote came to me, but it seemed as good as any to start this off.

I'm buying a house! Ok, actually a condo; it's half of a twin home. Brand new, in Gilbert. 1187 sq. ft, two car garage. Three stories. My bedroom window has an awesome view of the Superstition mountains.

I'm excited. The process has been confusing at times and arduous at others, but it's time I actually owned my own home.

发信人: pin (八大呆人), 信区: pku
标 题: 晕倒，北大的赛艇沉了
发信站: 大话西游站 (Tue Oct 24 13:10:06 2006)

北大首次派出赛艇队参加Boston的Head of Charles划船比赛，结果教练和舵手签证没过，
只好从mit临时找了个mm来当舵手。结果好像和另一艘船碰了一下，在离终点只有600米的
地方居然沉了-_-|||，他们还很搞笑的继续划，象动画片一样，直到船完全沉没。

I've tried like 37 times in the last month to blog something...it seems like everything and nothing is happening at once. Here's a few brief updates:

• With the help of Neil K, I finally got the ignition troubles of the El Camino licked. The short story is that it involved a new (rebuilt) distributor body, and I ran a new wire, straight from the fusebox, for the 12v supply to the HEI, because I didn't trust what was there.
• The motor numbers on the El Camino are V0817TBC. I'm assuming that since this engine has an HEI, and doesn't seem to suffer from unleaded gas, it's probably a 1979 LS9 (no, Motortrend fanbois, not the new LS9; remember, GM re-uses RPO codes) out of a truck. Which would explain some of the lack of emission controls on it.
• I put a new Clarion stereo in the El Camino because the POS JVC stereo I bought at Wal-Mart went to hell (go figure).
• Work is staying busy. Taught myself how to create packages for Solaris; working on learning how to build lpps for AIX.
• The last show my band did was awesome. We even had a lady from a local management company show up. You can see pics here.

I bought Husker Du's album "New Day Rising" today. Damn, it's really good. "The Girl who lives on Heaven Hill" pretty well rocks, and most of the other songs are really good too. The first Husker Du album I bought was "Zen Arcade" about two years ago, which took a little bit of getting used to, but I grew to enjoy. I bought "Flip Your Wig" a few months ago, which I don't care for at all, but this album pretty well rocks from the start. I also bought Jawbreaker's "24 Hour Revenge Therapy," which I'm ambivalent about, and "Black City" by The Division of Laura Lee, which is pretty good so far.

Another week in San Francisco, hard at work most of the time but this weekend I got to do a couple of hikes with Kieran and Denise. It was very enjoyable Saturday to drive north of the city into the hills (I guess they call them mountains?) and look around. Unfortunately there was some incredibly thick fog so while we were well above it our ocean view hike only gave us a view of an ocean of fog. It was still very pretty, and worth getting out. That made my third and fourth times driving across the Golden Gate bridge without actually seeing it, leaving me to believe it's perpetually lost in the fog.

Today, Sunday, we got up earlier and parked near the Golden Gate in time to watch the fog melt away in what's been typical sunny weather since I got here. It was our urban hiking day, we walked across the bridge and up the hill on the other side for some nice views. It was fun to do once, but with all the traffic I'd not make a regular event of it given that there are many other hiking trails yet to do in the area.

No set plans for when I'll be getting out of California and heading north again. Things are progressing slower than I'd expected with work, but we're making progress. Furthermore, the sale of my house was supposed to close Friday, but some last minute issues raised by the lender has delayed things until next week. I'm extending the contract a few days to get these issues resolved, mostly just annoyed that they chose to wait until the last minute to notice what seem like obvious things. Hopefully come Tuesday it will all be said and done, ending my attachments to Florida and opening up exciting new options.

I nearly pissed myself when I read this article on how much the US Navy Rocks. It occurred to me that I should probably share it.

So what's up? Here comes my typical unordered list format blog entry:

• My band, The Andys just got our real CD's in. They're real replicated CD's (not CD-R's). It's a five song EP called "Hammer It." If you want a copy of it, email me and I'll send you one as long as I've still got postage stamps.
• Kari and I are going to Minneapolis this weekend for a wedding. I haven't even left the ground yet and already the tickets have gotten jacked up. I hate flying. It's not the flying itself, it's just the pain the arse that airports, security, and all the other stuff is.
• Two weeks ago, after listening to XM in Kari's car for ahile, I bought a Pioneer Inno to listen to while at work. Fungus 53 (the punk station) rocks. They have a show on Tuesdays that features nothing but punk covers of various popular songs. It pretty well rocked today. Unlike Sirius's crappy "Faction" channel, which would play mostly rap, nu-metal, and the occasional punk rock song, Fungus plays actually cool music like the New Bomb Turks, and even The Casualties (just for Christina.)
• Learning a lot about Solaris....and Veritas Storage Foundation.

Five years since the bombings. It's gone very quickly for me. I think for my generation, recollections of the bombings will be similar to "where were you when JFK was shot?" type questions were relevant to our parents' generation.

I remember waking up and hearing something weird on the radio about a plane crash. Later, I remember flipping on the TV just in time to see the second airliner crash. Like most big items, I remember being a little bit numb to the act at first, but I grasped right away that it would have big repercussions. I finished my cereal and sped off to work.

I'm in a super happy and mellow mood; it's like a runner's high, but I don't feel like I've done a ton of excercise or anything. But it was a good day. After six and a half years of putting it off, I've finally decided that it's time to learn a bit of perl. I wrote a couple of scripts today to help me out with some stuff I'm doing at work.

I met up with Neil P. today and hung out for a bit, then I went to practice, and from the very first note I played, I just felt like it was going to be an awesome practice, which it was. I swear my bass amp sounds different from day to day ( maybe line voltage was higher today since the outside temp was cooler, and air conditioning demands are lower).

Ok, so my little experiment didn't really work out. Mostly, I just didn't care to write at the end of the day, and really, my days aren't that interesting. Maybe they are, but I didn't want to clog this up with completely mundane crap.

Kari and I have been on-again, off-again. Two and a half weeks ago, we agreed to split up. The following Tuesday, she came over and we talked some more, and since then, it's been as if Sunday never happened. My main complaint about Kari is that she's got a real battered-woman's attitude about her job. She works her butt off for the place she's working, and she gets continually crapped on. Her subordinates make more money than she does, and they probably work fewer hours. I get the fact that she's a workaholic, but what I don't understand is why she won't put time into finding an employer that will at least respect her? It drives me crazy because sometimes I feel like I should be charging her employer for psychotherapy or something. Anyway, it's just annoying because I feel like she defines herself by her job; she puts it ahead of anything else in her life, even herself, and in the process, makes some very bad judgement calls of what to prioritize her time with. It's difficult, and while I love Kari, I also know that this is a personality trait that is not likely to go away, and I basically have to figure out if I can deal with that.

We slept in, got a slow late start on day four. We found a park on a big lake a little ways off the freeway and took a couple hours break to stretch our legs, ride bikes, go for walks, nap, and try to forget just briefly our little wheeled prison. We also tried to not think about the evacuation signs peppering the park which was just down river from a nuclear power plant.

We drove through Arkansas into Oklahoma. After a late dinner in Oklahoma City, we found a motel in Elk City, vowing to get up early and push through to New Mexico or even Colorado tomorrow.

Our third day of driving, all five animals in the car began to realize how small a space we are sharing. Each of us focused a little too much on the faults of the four others sharing the space, with various random growls and complaints. We left Georgia behind, passed through Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, finding a motel in Arkansas. Not a lot of photo taking.

Five hours of driving the first day, felt like a lifetime. I guess it'll take us a while to get into the routine. We stopped in Jacksonville with my friends Alex and Elaina. Alex, from Russia, immediately brought out the Vodka, claiming it's good luck before any big trip. Sure enough, I'm feeling lucky today.

We're still figuring out our course for the rest of the trip. I-40 is sounding good at the moment.