Spring

It’s spring in Arizona now, and I’m feeling a lot better than I was in the fall.  I’ve started hanging out with a few different people that like to be more normal and social than the average UAT student.  A few more people with cars, a few more people who like to go out to bars.  A night out drinking and socializing does wonders for relieving some stress.

bittersweet

I got an awesome new iPod Nano (4GB Silver) for Christmas, but I can’t for the life of me get it to work with anything on my Ubuntu.  I spent 3 hours today trying to figure it out.  Apparently, this generation has an additional form of database encryption/checking to prevent exactly what I’m trying to do.  I really don’t care what programs I use, I just want to use it on Linux.  If Apple would just release a *nix client, then I’d be perfectly happy.  I tried jumping through all kinds of hoops with glibpod2, Amarok, Gtkpod, Rhythmbox, and all kinds of fun tweaks and hacks, but the end result is the same as the beginning: no music playing on the iPod.  It’s definitely there on the device, but I can’t get it to recognize/play it.

Glorified USB stick.

Merry Christmas!

As I write this, it is officially Christmas Day in the Chicago suburbs. I just finished preparing some ingredients for a recipe my mom is making tomorrow. She had requested that I buy toasted slivered almonds to go along with green beans, but apparently I picked toasted whole almonds.

Apparently, those don’t work so well. Fret not! I took out a cutting board and laid the whole almonds on top of it, then mysteriously draped a dish towel over them all as I disappeared from the room. Bewildered mother and sister looked on in confusion. I quickly returned with a big frickin’ mallet, and smashed the shit out of those damn almonds until they were nice and crushed-like. Good enough for the recipe.

I’m upset with UPS. They still haven’t updated the tracking information for my Eee since Friday. I have no idea where it is; it’s been “In transit from Maumee, OH to Chicago, IL” for 4 days now. I understand that this is the busiest week of the year for the parcel delivery service, but SO DO THEY. UPS expects this high volume, and I expect them to provide the services that I paid them for. The package is “On Time” with an estimated delivery date of 12/27. For those of you who aren’t counting, that’s a full week after I ordered it. 3 day shipping what?

We did the traditional Christmas Eve with the paternal side of the family this afternoon. I got things that I really wanted–!

• American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
• The Earth is Flat
• Obsession by Calvin Klein
• Polo Blue

I gave my uncle a copy of Bringing Down the House from my personal library that I had purchased when I was visiting MIT a few years ago as a prospective student. He’s really into the whole Vegas/gambling thing, and he loved it.

I gave my grandma a Moleskine with written instructions on the first page to write down whatever stories, recipes, memories, etc that she believed were important, then pass the notebook on to another family member next Christmas. Hopefully this will be the start of a wonderful written history.

Grandpa gets coconut candy; he’s easy

I can’t wait to see the reactions to the gifts I’m giving tomorrow. I won’t post them here until after they’ve been opened, just on the minute, miniscule, infinitisemal chance that one of my random relatives will look at this.

I want my Eee

It’s alive!

I’m pretty excited–finally got NetBeans to work. Now it’s simply a matter of puzzling out the workflow features. It’d probably be a good idea to spend some quality time doing Java tutorials to refresh myself on how all of this stuff works.

Anyways, I wrote an actual working Java program that just does a bit of variable manipulation and outputting to screen. I’m satisfied with that for today.

Bears crushed the Packers earlier by riding defense and special teams to victory. Thankfully, Orton decided to pretend to be a competent quarterback today and didn’t throw away all the amazing opportunities given to him with a lead due to multiple punt blocks and interceptions.

Time to meet some friends for victory coffee!

Fire mage!

http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/12/chinese-teen-bu.html

Just saw this, and I had to throw this up here before I go to bed.

After losing a schoolyard fight, a 17-year-old boy in Beijing recently covered a classmate with gasoline and lit him on fire, claiming he “had lost himself in World of Warcraft and when he committed the crime he had transformed into a Fire Mage.”

Truly epic.

Am I the only one who finds things like these amusing, in a wry sort of way?

#2

So, I’ve been battling a bit with Linux today. I’m not 100% used to the whole idea of package managers, but feel that I’m learning things quickly. It’d be nice to have someone who can show me how simple stuff works, but I don’t think anyone that I know around here has used anything other than Windows or OSX. I can’t get NetBeans to run; I have it installed and everything, but whenever I try to start it, it loads a blank window titled License Agreement and I can’t get anywhere from there. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling the JRE and NetBeans, and nothing seems to work. Very frustrating.

I do have Eclipse working, but it’s not very intuitive for me. I can’t find a default “applet” template, which the tutorial book I’m using basically assumes that you have. I guess I’ll have to look that stuff up on the interwebs when I get a chance.

Why do I have to go through all this namby-pamby bullshit to set up everything when I just want to spit code? I swear this is the thing hurting my productivity the most. If I could actually get a development environment up and running, I’d be able to actually DO stuff.

In other news:

Played the new version of Crainium today. 600 new questions! Pretty epic. My team dominated the first round easily. After watching some Balls of Fury (and a few people checking out), we played another game with only 2 teams: Guys vs Girls (3v5) It came down to round 3 of sudden death mode in the middle before the she-folk were crowned victors. Want to know what we lost on? We were given a list of 5 girl names, and had to pick the 2 that weren’t characters in Little Women. Hella stupid. Yes, I say “hella”. Deal.

I made a bunch of sugar cookies, and we frosted and decorated them and consumed extraneous amounts of sugar. It was absolutely glorious.

UPS hasn’t updated my Eee shipment since the initial departure last night. Seriously guys, it’s only going from OH to Chicago. I really really really really really want it to be here before Christmas, because I’m pretty sure they don’t deliver on the 25th. Must have new gadget to show off!

Hello world!

Friday, December 21. The first day of my project to post updates here on a daily basis. We’ll see how long this lasts, but it should be easier with the little piece of sex technology I just ordered: an Asus Eee 4G. The shipping information that Best Buy sent me hasn’t updated in the UPS tracking utility yet, so I’m not sure where exactly my baby is.

For those of you wondering why I’d order from Best Buy: I had won a few hundred in gift cards to there for kicking scrub asses all over the place in San Diego at a World of Warcraft LAN. Winnings paid for a weekend at Hard Rock San Diego hotel, where the staff is quite crazy. My friend Erik and I asked the concierge if there was a liquor store or some other place near by (this is the heart of downtown San Diego’s nightlife/restaurant district, mind you) where we could pick up some drinks and cigarettes. Her reply: “Are you looking for, like, normal shit, or crazy shit?” I wasn’t expecting this at a hotel as nice as this one, but it was cool I guess. There were also vibrating cock rings in the drawers of our suite. ($65, for the curious)

I reformatted my old box today for my mom to use. I put Ubuntu on it, so we’ll see how she likes it. Surprisingly, this is my first hands-on Linux experience. It has some differences that are mostly due to the philosophy of the operating system (package managers vs. installers) that are actually refreshing. It gives me a new perspective on how I can make different things work. I’ve got Nas (Hip Hop Is Dead) playing in XMMS right now, but I think I’m going to explore VLC and mplayer because they’re supposedly easier on system resources–which will be a major consideration for me for the first time, due to my Eee.

I also installed the Eclipse IDE for Java and C++. Another project for me over winter break is to work my way through a Java game programming book that I picked up from a student leaving UAT for $5. By the time I head back to Phoenix in January, I should have a full-fledged custom clone of Asteroids that can run in a web page’s Java applet.

I’m supposed to be working on decorating the house right now with Christmas decorations. We’ll have 4 days to enjoy them before they start to feel old, tired, and out of season. I’m thinking of pulling a Tom Sawyer and recruiting a bunch of friends to do it for me, while I relax and drink egg nog and eat Jingles.

P.S. Follow me on Twitter. www.twitter.com/brullig