I got a call from the new boss today, and they just ordered me a laptop. Cancelled the order at apple, and I won’t be putting in any other order. Now I just need to figure out if I still want to spend that money on something else nice for myself or not. We’ll see.
Ok, Apple now has 24 hours to make good, or I cancel and go with another laptop. Especially since Alienware now has an offer for the next 72 hours with $500 off their laptops. I don’t need any more incenting than that.
So Apple, if you’re listening … Get that shit in the mail, eh?
I was poking around at stuff, and found a page that gives “Clear Sky Predictions” for something like 2700 areas around the country. This is the one for where I’m at:
That looks like it gets cut off since its so wide. There is a smaller one that I’m going to try to include in the footer on pages now that looks like this:
Dig it.
I’m really in some strange way completely excited now. I’ve just finished all the eBay paperwork, and sealed the envelope contained my acceptance of the offer and all the associated reams of paperwork. This marks a transition to a new part of my life, and I suppose thats always going to be an exciting feeling.
Dig it.
So after a brief hiatus, I’ve reinstalled my Sony Clié back up to what I had before. Got my games back on there. All the software I had purchased or otherwise downloaded, etc. I had sincerely forgotten how much fun the damn thing was. So I’m going to do some more cleanup on, get ZLauncher back to being configured the way I like it again, etc.
A Decent Distraction
This is actually the prequel to The Davinci Code, which was also excellent. Having read my fair share of conspiracy theory books, including many surrounding the Illuminatus and the Masons, I was pleased to see that he maintained about as much historical accuracy to those organizations as one is probably capable of anymore.
The book was fast paced, almost too much so. It is perhaps my one critique of it, is that it flows almost too quickly. The Davinci Code was similar, seemingly having been written for the pacing of a two hour movie. It will be interesting to see if, when either or both of these hit the big screen, whether much had to be left out. Perhaps I am spoiled by the epic 2000 pagers, like Focault’s Pendulum, and desire more research and less action. But still, it was a pleasant read.
The characters are engrossing, believable and passionate. The plot, while quick-paced, was almost never predictable, right to the very end. I even had one point where I thought I had it all figured out, only to be proven wrong several pages later. Nicely done, Mr. Brown. I will certainly continue to read his books as I find them.
[xrr rating=6/10]
I have formally accepted the offer from eBay. I will putting in my notice with Sun Microsystems on Monday, and my first official day (crisis of some sort of another notwithstanding) with eBay will be March 28th.
I’m very very pleased. I could expound on this for some time, but I think the essence of how I’m feeling is already captured. This is all goodness.
For those of you who’ve played around the inner workings of Apache, or even just done some of the fairly standard stuff with it, you may have at some point stumbled across mod_rewrite. Its actually an incredibly flexible tool when it comes to web servers, allowing all kinds of back end functionality to ease administration, all completely invisible to the users and clients viewing the pages. Great stuff.
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As some of you know, I’ve been in the process of evaluating two job offers. One from my current employer, Sun, and the other from eBay. Its getting down to decision making time. At this point, all I’m waiting for is to have the respective offers on paper, in my hands before I formally make any announcements.
No matter what happens here, I will definitely say this: I’ve learned alot through this process. Its taught me what companies value in their employees, and what they are, and are not willing to do to retain that value. Furthermore, I’m now even more convinced that being completely upfront with everyone concerned in this has put me in a better position overall, and allowed me to maintain my professional and personal integrity in the process. I realize that doesn’t make any sense, but until they end of this decision making process (hopefully, within the next couple days), to say more would put one or both offers (and in the process, me) at risk. I should be able to post more here once this is all behind me, and I’ve made my selection.
With the idea of another machine incoming and a certain desire to remain firmly rooted in sanity, I decided to redo the wiring underneath my desk. In the past, say, 4 years, it achieved a certain Zen-like state of rat’s nest-edness. To unravel it would require the patience of a monk. Or, at least the flavor of one.
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So the laptop has registered ‘Order Received’ status on the order status page since I ordered it. That just isn’t going to cut it. Ideally, a webcam hovered over the workbench tracking the minutia of the Singaporean factory worker would be good. Otherwise, I’d like updates like “Processor fitted into slot” or “Assembler currently on coffee break”, updated every 10 minutes or so. Don’t they understand that I refresh that page every 30 seconds? Sheesh.
<update>
Sent apple an email. Seems to me I should have seen some progress on the order in the time since I submitted it.
</update>
What have I done. It appears that last night, in some fit of rage or mirth or some other rampant emotion, I actually went to the Apple.com Store and purchased a powerbook. The only excuse I have is …. SHINY. They’re so shiny. Just look at ’em. SHINY.
So this will end a very very long era of not having any significant Mac products in my household. No, iPods don’t count. It was about time. I’ve been wanting to see what all the fuss is about for years, and now that the core of the OS is at least a UNIX variant, I can feel better about myself.
Good heavens, what have I done.
I wanted to also try my hand at writing a WP plugin, and the results are the ‘Now Playing’ section over there on the right. Upsides: it has a control panel plugin, and you enter the values you want, and whammo, there you go. The one downside is that right now I’m abusing someone else’s server for the images. I need to either find a site that provides that as a service, or a way to download the images locally first, and then display them from there. I’ll keep working on it.
<edit – 2.21.2005/23:06>
Ok, so I took it down for now. It was pointed out to me that the site I was linking images to was intending for people to download images from, and (as I suspected), not link directly to them. So I need to come up with some code in the plugin that will download the images to your local site somehow, and then work from that instead. This may take a bit.
</edit>
So I wanted to try my hand at creating a CSS theme, and if you’ve switched to the Ice theme then you’re looking at it right now.
I’m really pleased with the way it turned out. I’d love to hear your feedback though, please leave me comments on this post!
So in the past few months, something has been whacking my server’s apache log files. I did some tracking down, and found some disappointing stuff. This is clearly someone attempting to exploit apache (or web servers in general), by sending invalid, and in fact, data designed to overflow the server process and grant some permissions.
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