Get the hell off my TV!

• I got my espresso maker today and so far I am very pleased. Now I can drink all the lattes I want and not break the bank! Espresso grind seems a little too fine and Melitta a little too coarse, so I'll have to do some experimentation. Also, when I put in the maximum amount of water the coffee is overextracted and gives a somewhat burnt flavor.

• I signed up for a film class at Southwestern Community College in Chula Vista. It's only 5 miles from the border, so the majority of the student population is Hispanic. In the admissions office I noticed that everyone else was speaking Spanish. I was surprised to find that they were speaking slowly enough so that I could understand most of what they were saying. I took 5 years of Spanish in middle school and high school, but it's been a long time. Hopefully this will be an interesting experience.

• It's been a while since I've played any computer games, so I decided this weekend to download a bunch of demos and try them out.
  • Divine Divinity- pretty cool game. It's an RPG with real-time combat. The skill system is the coolest I've seen in an RPG; very similar to that of Diablo II, but the navigation seems to be kind of buggy- perhaps it was fixed in the final version. I may buy it if I can't find any other good games.
  • Siege of Avalon- This looked like a great game, but it doesn't seem to work more than about 5 minutes on my computer. They claim not to support NT, so does that mean it won't work with Win2K/XP? The navigation is simple, but I didn't get to any combat. I may try it again if I'm forced to go back to Win98 for some reason.
  • Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2- I was very disappointed with this game. It doesn't look all that much better than Hot Pursuit 1, and it absolutely kills my system, going into slideshow mode if there are more than 4 cars on the screen even with all the graphics settings turned down to the lowest level. The cops are too fast, the opponents to slow, and police helicopters drop exploding barrels (WTF?). I really wanted to enjoy this game since Need for Speed 2 was the reason I bought a Voodoo 2. But alas, it is not to be. If I want a good racing game, I'll just go back to Hot Pursuit 1.
  • This week I'll try a couple more if I have time. Any recommendations?

• I need to buy a computer chair. Lately I've been using one of my lawn chairs, but today my back is stiff, probably because of all the time I spent at the computer yesterday. I've been looking around, but I haven't been able to find one I like for a decent price.

• I haven't had caffeine in a while so the espresso is quite a shock to my system. I'm going to be up all night :/ Then again, that isn't so bad- I hate sleeping because I often confuse dreams (or is it the other way around?)
  • 
    A Dream Within a Dream

    Take this kiss upon the brow!
    And, in parting from you now,
    Thus much let me avow-
    You are not wrong, who deem
    That my days have been a dream;
    Yet if hope has flown away
    In a night, or in a day,
    In a vision, or in none,
    Is it therefore the less gone?
    All that we see or seem
    Is but a dream within a dream.

    I stand amid the roar
    Of a surf-tormented shore,
    And I hold within my hand
    Grains of the golden sand-
    How few! yet how they creep
    Through my fingers to the deep,
    While I weep- while I weep!
    O God! can I not grasp
    Them with a tighter clasp?
    O God! can I not save
    One from the pitiless wave?
    Is all that we see or seem
    But a dream within a dream?

    -E.A.P.

• CDex is a very useful piece of software. I've finally gotten around to encoding my newer CD's into MP3, and it makes it so much easier than it used to be. Lately I've been listening to more classical/opera because of my new headphones. I was surprised to find I still had a copy of the MP3's I'd made from my dad's 10 CD set of Beethoven piano sonatas. Sonata #14 is just about the most beautiful piano piece ever composed.

• I should probably stop adding useless information to this already lengthy list. Damn you Backspace , damn you!

The Miramar Marine Base is putting on an air show this weekend. I live only about three miles away from the base (La Jolla), so I was annoyed all morning by the noise.

I may end up going tommorrow, but it's $8 a person and I can see just as much if I just go somewhere closer to the base.

The coolest part was turning on the TV to find the show broadcast and my sound system being overwhelmed by the noise outside.

Now if only the sun would come out. It hasn't been out here in over almost a week. :(

My driver's license has been missing since Sunday. I know I had it at the airport, otherwise they wouldn't let me on the plane. So the only places it could be were the plane, the car of the friend who gave me the ride home, or my condo. I turned up every square inch of the place and it obviously wasn't here. I couldn't get in touch with my friend. So I was about to give up and assume someone had taken it and was using my identity for nefarious purposes when my friend called and told me she had found my ID in her car. Very good fortune indeed. I was getting sick of walking around with my passport and getting strange looks from CSR's.

On a somewhat related note, I'm annoyed by the inconsistency in the display of date. My passport says it expires on 03 Jan 09. Would that be Jan 9 2003 or Jan 3 2009? You'd think after Y2K they would at least use a four digit year. Anyway, I have another six years before I really have to worry about that again, so oh well.

Well, I really haven't tried that yet but it sounds like such a cool idea.

Turned 21 this weekend so now I am legally allowed to buy alcohol (w00t!) as well as do other cool things.

I tried giving myself a haircut this weekend- I'm pretty sure it was a decision that was independent from my recent birthday- and it seems to have turned out pretty well but I'll see if I get laughed at when I go out. At the very least, I saved $7 that can be used to buy other things. Hopefully I can make a habit of this.

Suck up my bandwidth!

Probably won't be too hard- but I'm just happy that RR got their act together and now I can get close to the speed at which they cap my upstream. Should be a max of between 30 and 50 KB/s. Sweet!

Enjoy my pictures taken with a crappy 35mm camera but scanned at absurdly high resolutions to put some stress on my upstream.

Tommorrow will be better.

I was awake from 11AM Thursday to 3PM Sunday.
An interesting experience to say the least. My only regret is that there were only the slightest of hallucinations. Of course now I am fucked because I've been awake since midnight...

In other news, there are many things I wish to buy but have better things to spend money on. Topping the list- a 32" Sony WEGA, the most beautiful TV I've ever had the pleasure to lay my eyes on. The $899 price tag is a bit excessive, but some luxuries are worth it. But I will be keeping my eyes on the Enron auction for the 50" Pioneer plasma monitors of which there appear to be around 50 with a minimum bid of $200.

I also decided it was around the proper tiem to upgrade my computer. I got around to calculating the cost and realized it would be around $500, which is definitely more than I'm willing to spend. I'll still have to buy a new video card if I want to play UT2003, but if Trident's XP4 T3 is as good as they say it is I'll be the first in line to buy one when they're released. Something so appealing to me about passive cooling.

So the only major purchase I feel I'll be making in the near future is of a new cable modem. The one I'm stuck with seems to be screwed up. The max upload is between 4 and 5 KB/s sustained and I'm told replacing it should work in getting the 48KB/s up I'm promised.

19:00 GMT Thurs 19 Sept
Everything went dark but not
a beauty in the moonlight
this is not the beginning nor the end
I know what I've seen
I'm nowhere standing next to me
broken down, pushed away
I wish I could make it stay
what have I become
what have I done
what have I become
what have I done?

I tried making onion rings today. Only had half an onion though, so I ended up battering some mushrooms and tofu too.

Tasted kinda funky and now I don't feel so good :[

I just finished watching The Simpsons Season 2 Box Set. Best quote of the season was by Homer in Lisa's Substitue- "It's not that I don't understand, it's just that I don't care."

No word yet on when Fox will release the season 3 set. I'm looking forward to season 4, by far the best with Marge vs the Monorail (written by Conan O'brien) and Last Exit To Springfield (by far the best episode ever).

I'm also looking forward to seasons 8, 9, and 12, but it's likely I'll end up buying all of them.

I made apple cinnamon biscotti today. They still turned out a lot better than I thought they would, but next time I'll add more flavor. I was going to make regular, but it turned out I didn't have any almonds or anise. Ended up using vanilla extract and powdered spiced apple cider mix for flavor.

I should start writing down recipes on things other than the backs of envelopes and napkins, but anything else just seems, well, unmanly. Already ran into problems like using a head of garlic rather than a clove- not a pretty sight.

Wanted to buy a breadmaker, but saw the price tag and decided no way. It really isn't so hard by hand, just time consuming. Since I discovered the joy of homemade pizza I've been having it about 3 nights a week. It's so cheap (about $3 for a medium size) and the fresh ingredients make a big difference.

And how did a journal entry about the Simpsons drft on to the topic of food? Some sort of strange Pavlovian response I imagine.

So the other day I concluded that my DVD drive was dead, so I went to Fry's to buy a new one. I have to say, it's a completely different experience from the Sunnyvale store I would typically go to. I'm used to the employees' thick accents from a multitude of regions making it difficult to understand what they're saying. I'm used passing by the memory section and seeing that the manager's name is a Mr. Ram. I'm used to laughing to myself while exiting the store after dealing with cashiers who find cash to be a quite unappealing method for monetary transactions.

And I have to say, I do miss that diversity. The San Diego Fry's employee base is almost entirely white and Hispanic. It just felt strange to me.

Anyway, for me, the thing about Fry's is that I go there to buy one thing I usually end up buying more. I bought a cheap DVD drive ($34.99) and then I thought, I could throw this into my headless router that's not in use, add the Radeon video card I just found, and all I had to do to make it a complete system was buy a USB keyboard.

This, of course, was no easy task, as most of the USB keyboards were in the $40 range with tons of unnecessary features. I finally found one for $25 distributed by Microsoft, but it's pretty cool. It's got a USB hub built into it, which I don't really need but is nifty nonetheless. And once again I have way too many computers.

And watching DVD's on my system, ahhh, it is just beautiful. My TV sucks but at least I have the sound! I bought some speaker stands from IKEA last week that I just finished setting up and I have to say they make a huge difference in the sound. I also upgraded to WinAmp 3.0 for the built-in Ogg Vorbis support and was surprised by another feature. It uses Windows' sound settings for default playback, and for me that ended up being sort of a pseudo-ProLogic 4.1 sort of thing. Much better than the ProLogic built into my receiver, it actually sounds great with CD audio.

It looks like the THX, DTS, Dolby demos have downloaded so I will wrap this up so I can move my computer and enjoy them.

Looks like search.pl has been replaced (temporarily?) with Google. Makes it a bit harder to browse through random people's journals.

I've discovered a new favorite drink.
For a while I loved a good martini, but I ran out of vermouth so that was the end of that. Then I switched to the gin and tonic, but without fresh lemons it really isn't the same. I now have vermouth, but no more gin.
Tonight I read about the Manhattan, and it is very very very good. I didn't have any cherries so I used strawberry jam (is that bad?), but here it is:

3 oz Crown Royal
1.5 oz Dry vermouth
1/2 tsp Smuckers Strawberry Jam
3 ice cubes

Shake in mixer, strain into chilled glass
Expect some interesting journal entries to follow if I end up making another.

It looks my criticism of Blockbuster was premature. Of course they still suck, but maybe not so much now.

I just got The Simpsons DVD box set, so I decided to watch a few episodes. Since I don't have a DVD player, I just use my DVD drive in my computer and use the video out to TV. In the past it's worked very well, and I even bought a 5.1 channel sound card that sounds awesome on my home theater system. But I was hit with the familiar sound: drive spins up, click, drive spins up, click. Exactly the same problem as the one I had with the Blockbuster DVD!

I took it upon myself to do some experimenting. I have a reasonably sized DVD collection, so I started pulling them out and trying them in the drive. Out of the ones I had bought more than 6 months ago, 15 out of 15 worked. Out of the ones I had bought within the past 6 months, 0/8 discs worked. All of these, except the Simpsons DVD I just bought, worked before.

So I decided to try to repair the drive on my own. I upgraded the drive firmware to the latest version, and despite the fact that it fixed a few other annoying bugs, it did nothing about the DVD's I am unable to play. Of course my next step was to take the drive out and take it apart. But as soon as I got the top off of the drive casing, I realized that I didn't know what the hell I was doing and put it back together hoping I hadn't destroyed it completely.

Long story short: I'm going to Fry's today to hopefully by a (cheap) new DVD drive.

And another reason why I hate Blockbuster:
One of the first times I stepped into Blockbuster was a few years back. It was the weekend, so the lines were long. I picked out a movie I wanted, then waited in line around 15 or 20 minutes. I stepped up to the counter and realized I didn't have my card, so the guy asked for my driver's license. I didn't have that either. He then told me that I couldn't rent the movie, even if I gave him the name and telephone number the account was under. I left empty handed after giving over a quarter of an hour of my life to that store and vowed that I would never return.

It wasn't long before Blockbuster had driven all the other video stores in my area out of business, so if I wanted to rent movies I was forced to return to that horrible place. I've had a few minor problems with them since, but none that I would get homicidal over.

Then, last weekend, I had the incident with the DVD, which turned out not to be their problem. The next night, I rented another movie, but this time from another Blockbuster in the area. I was with a friend, and as it turned out, neither of us had or Blockbuster cards. So I gave the guy my name, and it turns out my family doesn't have an account at that particular location. So we guessed about 4 last names until we hit one that had an account there, then went through 4 or 5 first names until we got it right. Turned out to be the brother of my friend that had the account. The funny thing is, the guy complained about the account having an invalid credit card , but then he let us rent the movie. I was shocked. As we were leaving, he said "Be sure you return this or the owner of the account will have to pay the $103 replacement charge. Err, actually if they pay the charge what do I care? As long as I get the money."