May » 2005 » Untitled

tape drives

I’m currently in the market for backup tape drives – I’ve been getting worried about Hedwig‘s current bacup scheme. It’s been quite reliable for us, but I would like just a bit more security than we currently have:

- the machine generates tarballs of our mudlib, web sites, and databases

- it then saves these on a separate hard drive that is dedicated to the purpose of holding our backup data

- we keep the backups for the most recent week and those of the last day of every month

- our administrators are encouraged to set up automatic downloading of these backups for storage on their own machines

I’m not sure if anyone is downloading the tarballs right now. I am also not horribly confident in the structural integrity of the hard drive in question. It used to be our primary drive, but was decommissioned after a series of minor problems.

Thus, I have recently placed 5 bids on ebay for tape drives. So far, three of the auctions have ended with me winning one of the drives for $20. It’s a good one, one of the auctions I lost was for another of the same model that sold for over $50. My two remaining auctions are ending in under 30 hours. I am really hopeful for one of them (it is internal) and will be very pleasantly surprised if I won the other (my current bid is $1.75).

vicious recursion

Well, it looks like my wonderful morning has decided to come to a screeching halt.

I am back into the mode of standing on the edge of pukage and looking over. I really hope that this is a result of my medication and not of something else. I would also appreciate it if things normalized in my body. My brain is all but completely back to normal, so I know that the stuff is working as intended with respect to my general mental health. It is day 12; I was told that I should be noticing the full benefits of the medication at around the two week mark, so that is at least on schedule.

However, I am still experiencing major side effects. It’s a brutal cycle. My neck is sore and my throat keeps threatening to reach down into my stomach and fetch me a present. As a result of this, I am not eating much. I am sure that my mostly empty belly is harshening my reaction to the medication – which leads to more nausea and less eating – which leads to…

I had better be losing weight from this

So far, I have been able to force myself to eat about 2 ounces of a breakfast burrito and drink a bit of juice. I think today is going to be another adventure in the wacky world of clear fluids.

singing practice

Well. This has been an eventful morning so far. My little brother is currently seeking Java programming lessons from me in earnest. This is a good thing. I’ve been wanting to teach -one- of them to program, and since I’ve always joked that Dallin is “me minus ten years” it is fitting that he would be the one who finally showed an interest. And he is making remarkable progress.

I’ve given him the assignment of writing a little four function calculator application. So far, he’s got most of the gui options figured out, but I needed to give him a nudge. We’ll see how long it takes him Tonight I will probably be teaching him how to write the events that make the buttons do stuff.

I also looked up the lyrics to Phantom music (since I can’t find my sheet music right now). And I sung my brains out. I need practice so badly. It was a good experience, but wow… is my voice out of shape. These are songs I have practiced and performed hundreds of times, and I am having so much trouble with them.

My range has shrunk dramatically. I think I’ve lost about an octave on the top and half of one on the bottom. My falsetto is still basically fine, but since there’s no real overlap any more… the transitions are way more difficult now. I am going to force myself to sing something at full volume every morning until I’m back to tolerable again. Then, I browbeat Kyle into making some recordings with me.

Talked to Elijah for a few minutes. He seems to be doing better now, is going to work today.

Speaking of which, I need to finish up a few things real quick and head in myself. Maybe they will have a verdict for me this afternoon? I need this job.

仕事を探す

Well, I had my job interview today. I think it went well. In a nice improvement from previous this year I was lucid and, for the most part, fluent. It sounds like my boss at Park called my boss at ECE (whom I had listed as a reference). He says he answered her questions honestly but tried to cast me in as good a light as possible, so I’m thankful for that.

I really, really need this job. It answers so many problems we’re having in our lives right now. I honestly cannot think of a more perfect thing for us at the moment. I want kids. I want a house with walls I can paint and no downstairs neighbors. I want a patch of dirt of my own where I can plant flowers.

I was incredibly nauseated off and on for the majority of the day. I think in total, my diet consisted of something like 64oz soda, 2 gallons of water (mostly consumed in an effort to stave off puking), and half of a carne asada burrito. Oh! And a little thing of those baby blueberry muffins for breakfast. For the longest part of this evening, my arms (shoulders to hands) have been fading in and out of numbness. I attribute this to my lack of food and they do feel better after the burrito.

Penny is wanting to go out for milkshakes, but I am fairly confident that any lactic acid would not be welcomed by my system.

I wish I could write. It has been so long since I did anything creative; I was a better writer ten years ago than I am today. I guess it’s that way with a lot of things. If you don’t use skills, you lose them. I don’t sing as well as I used to, either. Oh well. I guess I just need to find the time to work on things again – whenever that is.

I need to spend some time with a good pianist and a stack of music, see just how far gone I am any more.

radio zen

I just heard an essay on NPR this evening as I drove home from work, grapefruit juice in hand. Be Cool to the Pizza Delivery Dude. It is the first part of a series that they are reviving from the 50′s radio program This I Believe, wherein listeners were presented with the condensed wisdom of celebrities, educators, and taxi cab drivers. NPR is accepting submissions for the new run of the program and I am vaguely intrigued.

However, what could I say that would get on the air? The most profound and important things I could present would likely be discarded on the grounds of their being too specifically religious. The most interesting things I could say would likely not be serious or polite enough to go on either. Oh well.

What do I believe?

I believe a lot of things. I believe that people are basically good, but that they are also basically selfish. They must short circuit their physical programming in order to act in the interest of others – it takes a good deal of emotional and mental strength in order to be selfless, even in small matters. But I also believe that people have the capacity to develop the strength required to make those good decisions, and that most of them have the desire to develop it.

I believe in gummi bears. But not gummi worms, eww.

I believe that racism is stupid and that it would just all go away if people stopped bringing it up all the time. I believe that it’s not worth getting worked up over most things, and that people should let stress wash over them w/o being affected by it. Not that it is easy, but it’s one of the only ways to stay sane at times.

blizzard is a bunch of fascists

(09:38:33) Tony: lol, where did that come from?
(09:38:36) Ammon: me
(09:38:38) Ammon:
(09:38:51) Ammon: i just tried to search the forums for my rant on the honor system…
(09:38:54) Ammon: they deleted the thread
(09:39:15) Tony: laff
(09:39:28) Ammon: ‘Huh?! No… everyone _loves_ the honor system!”
(09:39:38) Ammon: See? Not a single complaint anywhere…
(09:40:03) Tony: laff
(09:40:57) Tony: you sure it was actually deleted? cause I’ve seen plenty of honor system sucks rants
(09:41:10) Ammon: nod, well, i did a search for all posts by me
(09:41:34) Ammon: and only an old report on the artisan cooking bug showed up
(09:41:52) Tony: you sure it didn’t show up as an alt avatar since they seem to have problems with it reporting the right avatrars
(09:42:06) Ammon: hrm…
(09:42:55) Ammon: nod
(09:43:15) Ammon: whenever my normal char wasn’t available, i posted as my ‘allaryin’ alt on elune
(09:43:21) Ammon: i’ve never posted as anything else
(09:45:24) Tony: hmm, no idea then tho I’ve seen many a honor rants
(09:45:32) Ammon: nod
(09:45:38) Ammon: this was part of a huge thread
(09:45:45) Ammon: like 90 pages
(09:45:52) Ammon: it was one of the originals
(09:46:16) Ammon: i’m convinced the thread was blammed

Untitled

and still for good reason.

tape drives

vicious recursion

singing practice

仕事を探す

radio zen

blizzard is a bunch of fascists

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