You can't take the sky from me

Computers and screwing with people's heads

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 09:30:28 GMT

My sister has been bugging me when I've seen her about her computer, always when it's not there, usually when I'm about to do something else. And she said tried to call a single time, after saying she would each time.

Ignoring the annoyance of that, I had it done for a while, she had to pick it up. So she did yesterday. It'd been working fine for about 2 weeks. So I hear from her, and it's not working. So I go down and look at it.

The hard drive failed.

More specifically, it developed unreadable sectors very close to the front of the disk, so it's close to unusable. (And generally, a bad sign for how long it'll last after that even if you bypass those sectors.)

And the drives that were at the location, were also unusable. (In the case of one, a LALALALALA sound, and a picture of a BIOS with hands over it's ears appeared, and in the other, a picture of my sister's kitten, on photocopy paper.*)

So I'm now having to clear off one of my hard drives, so she can use it. Fortunately, I bought a half-'terabyte' hard drive a while ago for cheap.

And it appears that something went wrong with another computer.

It appears my chaos field is weakening.

*More specifically: Bios wouldn't see it, and the other drive also had unreadable sectors.

Different ways of looking at people.

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:34:38 GMT

I had lunch with my mother, and she remarked as a person was leaving that his head was out of proportion. I didn't see the person, so I don't know. She went on to say that someone is about 7 heads high, and I remarked that usually the leg bones were used to estimate that. She looked at me for a minute then realized why I'd thought and said it.

Her experience comes from being an artist, mine mostly from anthropology classes. (I have drawn a bit, but not much recently, and my proportions are fairly off.)

Of course, not even leg bones are hugely accurate, but they seem to be the majority standard, as while other standards exist, such as Fully's technique which measures most bones involved in stature (heel, leg bones, parts of the hip, spine, and part of the cranium) then attempts to correct for soft tissue in between them. However, that's thrown off, if parts of the skeleton are missing.

Hmmm, I need to organize all the pdfs of papers I've downloaded.

Life

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:17:31 GMT

Yesterday, My sister and I buried Calie. (or Callee, the spelling really doesn't matter to those of us who loved her).

Her name comes from me, as a kid, mispronouncing Calico, as Cadico, and it somehow changed to Calie eventually. She lived in our neighborhood and had kittens. However, she got shut into a garage for two weeks when one of our neighbors went on vacation. We took her in and took care of her. Nursing her back to health, and to a bit more than skin & bones, though she was always skinny after that, sometimes worryingly so.

She lived with us, and was regarded as my sister's cat, but she loved all of us and was equally loved. She was one of the nicest cats I've known. She was meticulous about being clean, and she'd clean up other kitties, if they didn't meet her standards.

On June 13, 1997, My sister was away at girl scout camp. I had fortunately fallen asleep upstairs, because there was a flood, and a jet of water the size of a basement window flew over my bunkbed, Dropping only about a foot. While I got upstairs after doors literally blew out at me. Calie didn't. We couldn't find her before we had to retreat due to the water. We heard her crying, as the flood both outside, and inside the basement came within a few millimeters of the main floor. Unfortunately, we couldn't get to her, and she stopped crying. We didn't hear her again that night.

In the morning, the water had drained a batch from the basement. We went downstairs, to see about everything, and to try & pick up the pieces. We looked around, but were afraid she was lost in the debris that had been the basement. However, after a while, I think it was early afternoon, we see her where she could have gotten above the ceiling. She is the most bedraggled, soaked, grungy, shivering mass of cat, you've ever seen. We wrapped her in a towel, and tried to dry her off, and eventually had to go back home, and help. We went to my grandmothers after we got done, and she'd managed to completely clean herself off, and was as beautiful as if the past 24 hours hadn't happened.

That was 10 years ago yesterday.

Eh

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 00:20:27 GMT

I haven't looked at LJ much... so a quick rap up:

School, friends, games, and projects.

Project I'm currently working on is a linux on USB key, where you can boot it up, then just save the whole thing to the disk, and then go to another computer, plug it in, boot, and the exact same stuff is up. If you are familiar with, suspend, suspend-to-disk, hibernate, etc, this is essentially what I'm working on, only you can move the whole system between computers.

I really should be working on other things, but I just had a really nifty idea on it.

Supreme commander

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 22:25:45 GMT

HELL YES and SHIT

GRAR! Feel my impotent wraith universe!

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 01:51:40 GMT

That headache that I had yesterday I still have. Or at least, I now have a sinus headache. (It was either a sinus headache in the back of my head, or it's a sinus headache that decided to move in. Oh happy day!)

Went back and checked on my friends page, posted several comments. Hopefully I'll be forgiven for my inode comment.

GRAR

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 07:50:48 GMT

I think I need an industrial strength whack upside the head. As this will either knock me the hell out, or it will cause whatever is wrong with my head to surrender.

Funniest Insult of the day

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 02:58:13 GMT

"You, you pop-culture engineer!" --Dan (and not the tall one)

Indecisiveness and niftyness

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 06:14:20 GMT

We'd known the Rolling Stones had been coming to Wichita for a while, however, tickets were not exactly the cheapest thing. Fast forward for anyone who knows me and my dad. Deciding at the last minute, is nothing new at all. So we were at Barnes and Noble, and somehow (I think I recall the linkages, but don't feel like repeating them) my dad was talking to someone we know who had been given 15 free tickets last night and mentioned not knowing if we were going to try and go or not. So, we got free tickets. Score!

The concert was pretty good. We were sitting in the far corner. (Football stadium, stage was in the south endzone area, we were in the north west portion, about 13 rows from the top.) I was impressed by the concert. The level of sound was not bad, and there was enough breeze blowing that I didn't have any major problems due to people smoking. (Until after) It took a while for the crowd to warm up.

An amusing thing was that on the large screen they had, start of (song whose name escapes me) they had short videos of a naked woman. (Nothing more than a nipple showing.) The reaction of some portions of the crowd was amusing. Ah, Wichita.

So, progress on things I had planned on was less than expected today. Sleep now, probably miss a class to finish up the Real Analysis which has been kicking my butt.

Though I did reject the urge to go make a sign suggested by a friend that said "Hitler's mom should have had an abortion" and go stand with some anti-abortion protesters, or drive by them, and have the car stall. (Very easy to have 'happen' if the driver isn't trying to prevent it.) Right on Rock in front of them. (The problem for this situation is of course, that that car always starts right back up.)

Half Week in Review

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 05:18:03 GMT

The weekend was useful, but royally sucked in some ways.

Sunday and Monday I worked on the homework for Real Analysis, for most of the day. Finally finishing up rewriting it this morning. I also had a report to write for Forensic Anthropology, which I put on the back burner, so I ended up writing it up over the course of Tuesday after Real, and doing not so great a job.

Today, I got started on the next case, which appears to be odd. I can't seem to find how much asymetric variation there is in the skeleton, based off of some quick googling. I found a few papers as a place to start though.

Speaking of google....
What the heck? Is it trying to become Yahoo or something?

Anyway, I've got to present some math problems I've not looked at enough, so it is time to sleep.

Musings on eyesight

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 17:22:05 GMT

The right earpiece on my glasses has broken, and fortunately it has not hampered teir use, aside from requiring more adjustment. In fact it seems that few people notice this immediately. Or even over the course of severall days. This has however gotten me thinking.

My natural eysigh has not changed significantly since I got glasses according to my eye doctor. This would make it something on the order o fa dozen years. (There was one very minor change in my lefft eye, as I recall) No astigmatism. However, when I now take my glasses off I am challenged to percieve particulars of objects at a distance. (In fact, I am typing upon this subject purely by touch, and attempting to observe the place I am at. I seem to recall a much better ability to identify paticular people and objects from a year or more after I got my glasses, and indded up to 4 years after. However,now, while then I could read a chalkboard from accross the room, now I am challenged to percieve my laptop screen reliably. This is more interesting in the fact that with glasses on, I have gotten better and better vision. (Better than 20/15 (or 15/20 if I misremember the whay it is rated) possibly as good as 20/10. When I got my glasses I had vision of approxamately 20/20 for the first few years. If the case is that my eyes have not changed, then it occurs to me that it is likely my brain which has adapted to them.

(Also interesting is the fact that I very eldom get annoyed by wavy monitors, yet flickering lights (especially florecent lights) annoy me. (Even some that other people cannot percieve the flicker in.)

I'm curious if this has happened to anyone else. I may investigate it later if I have time. As of now, I've spent too much time on lunch and should be getting back to doing what I need to do today.

Meh

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 23:59:02 GMT

Got tired of writing for the moment. Whee! Randomness! I could swear I'd taken this before, and gotten wildly different results. o_O

My Personality


Neuroticism	60
Extraversion	34
Openness To Experience	54
Agreeableness	54
Conscientiousness	31

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Grumble

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:46:32 GMT

We've got the anti-abortion protesters out in force on campus, complete with 4 or 5 meter high pictures. I don't mind the pictures. I'm tempted to ask if they like modern art, or something equally strange just to mess with them. I probably will if they are around after real analysis. Hehehehe, use my real analysis book, and have it be like a bible is supposed to be to sinners. AIIIEEEE! Math!

At least, they have the niceness to put "Warning: Graphic images ahead" ... well after you start seeing their pictures.

There are days that I'm sick and tired of Kansas... today is one.

I think, I'll print out one of the sinfest cartoons and attach it to my laptop bag.

Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 04:56:53 GMT

So, I managed to do little today. I looked at homework, and decided to procrastinate on some of it. (That was after I decided to procrastinate on waking up.)

Then I went and played soccer. My leg seems to be mostly fine. (I had to not be as aggressive as I usually am for fear of it causing problems, and thus played defense.) It was a lot of fun, there were elements of 3 intramural teams, so we (the generally less competent team) mixed up between the two teams for I think 10 vs 10. It rained a lot yesterday, so one of the areas in front of a goal still had standing water, so we had to use markers. (My back just finally popped out of the blue! Horray, I've been waiting for it to do that all bloody day, and it feels much better now! Anyway...) Fun was had by all.

Now, I'm kind of bored.

Ouch...

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 01:00:47 GMT

I pulled my inner thigh playing soccer. It absolutely sucks. Every time I walk it goes "Idiot, why did you not stop when you first thought it hurt." It's been many years since I've pulled something.

Now, I'm hot, I'm tired, and I'm grumpy.

Blah!

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:01:00 GMT

Well, I've been in all my classes so far.

Real Analysis looks to be interesting. Only 5 people in the class, I know all but 1 of the people in there. It's going to be difficult, and a lot of work.

Popular liturate seems to be interesting and other than reading novels, doesn't look to be much work. Interestingly, one of the people who showed up today is the now purple haired friend that went with my sister to Europe. (It took me a bit to be sure it was her. Silly people who like to have their hair be rainbow colored over time. :P)

Forensic Anthropology was mostly introduction to the class last night, and looks to be interesting. (If potentially very time consuming.)

Linguistics, I'm going to drop, because wow. I don't think I can recall a 300 level class where the professor is that distracted, comes in 15 minutes the first day, then spends the vast majority of the rest of the class telling stories about himself that don't relate to the class, in any way, I or the few other people I talked to can see. I just see 'trainwreck' written all over that class. I've never gotten the urge to just walk out and drop something before.

Monday Evenings to Thursday morning is going to be annoying this semester. I've got history Monday evening, which is followed Tuesday morning by Real Analysis, and I'm slightly rusty on some of it. Then Forensic Anthropology in the Evening. Wendsday is a modern English class, which seems to be the easiest of the semester, and the history class (the next easiest). Then Real on Thursday, and I suspect that the assignments will be difficult. In addition to refreshing, or relearning some math, and anthropology, the other classes have a lot of readings. Wendsday is going to be the bad day, given my habit of procrastination.

Last night sucked, because I didn't manage to get much sleep, which meant I took a nap in the afternoon rather than attacking the Real Analysis homework, which will have to wait until after History.

Last night, being bored, I wondered if some anthropologists would flee from the Real Analysis book, as they sort of have from other math books. They don't seem to. I'm unable to explain it other than lack of familiarity. Or they think I'm crazy, which might well be true.

My right hand is hurting when I try to write, or use a mouse, (but not typing for some reason) so I've been writing left-handed. (Thank goodness I decided to start practicing it a while ago. It's not as fast, but pain that I've got to expend effort to ignore, or slow writing... means I'll write slowly.)

/ramblings

I'll take the anthropologist...

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 17:42:41 GMT

I just saw the student group exhibition, which pretty much consisted of gay group, student health services, the rowing team, and a bunch of christian groups. I wondered around a bit, and bumped into a friend, chatted, and noticed a professor of anthropology, who was deep in discussion, and then wondered around a tiny bit, saying hi to a pair of masters students siting a bit away, who said they were just listening, I was confused for a second. I looked over and saw P (those who know the department can probably figure out who it is) in front of one of the christian booths, and heard "fossil record". Hmmm, I wonder what they are talking about. As one of them remarked, a dozen of them and one P... I'll take P. He was calmly explaining evolution to a bunch of christians, and answering all their questions.

P is probably one of the best people to explain evolution (specifically human evolution), being a physical/forensic anthropologist. I have to admire that, even to people who likely won't accept it, he was calmly explaining it.

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 01:43:33 GMT

I've been talking to someone from Linksys/Cisco for over an hour...

I knew at the beginning:
WEP enabled-No worky. (specifically it doesn't get an ip)
WEP disabled-It works.

A while ago... (paraphrased)
Me: And disabling it again, the g side works.
Help: That's great.
Me: ?
Help: That it works.
Me: I already knew it did with security disabled.

Finally after being disconnected, I gave up for the day.

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 08:01:50 GMT

Alright, I know a lot of you are artists & photographers, so if you wouldn't mind helping me out...

My current digital camera (HP Photosmart 315 or something like that) is getting so old. (2001, and it wasn't top end even then... 1.3 Megapixels... a fair number of phones have better than that now!) Not to mention I've partly melted it... Ooops. I didn't even take it on my trip, because it's also getting fussy about just plain working.

So, I'm looking at getting a new digital camera, however, I'm a poor college student (So if I did get one it'd be in the 100-200$ range). So do people have suggestions, on which brands they like? I've used a Cannon Powershot A60/80 (something like that) and like it for the most part. One thing I can't stand is digital zoom though.

----

Today I got most everything squared away for school (except one anthropology class, which is currently closed, but I talked to the professor, and I can sit in until it becomes open again.) Went to the library, and apparently had a couple of things, so I dealt with it: $2.80 fine... Checked out a few books (not as helpful as I would have liked so far) on airship design.

Then we went to Walmart... and in the space of getting some things for a small party. (The calc 3 students get a welcome back party, with soda, pizza, movies... and if they so chose tests! (Bwahahahahah! Yeah, right!)) I ran into two people who live at my apartment complex and are in anthropology. No overlapping classes this semester.) Then we ran into some other friends of mine, and arranged soccer and likely computer gaming for Friday and Sat (5:30pm, anyone interested send me an email/IM) Not to mention talked for quite a while. Then one of them (M) did a double take and spotted one of the Calc 3 students, who actually hadn't gotten the email, and talked to her for a while.

WHAT THE HELL WAS IT WITH WALMART TODAY?!

Something call out to the engineers and anthropologists to meet there?

Got home and started reading through the books on airship design, alternating with looking at the internet... and hell, It's 2 am! I sleep now!

10 Songs starting with O

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 05:02:41 GMT

Ten songs beginning with a letter named by someone else...
In this case mythos, for O
If you want a letter, then reply below

(A bit delayed, as this has been from listening and writing them down when they come up... Oh, and I also checked... Enya seems to be a lot of my music beginning with O.)
Only Time-Enya
Outlaw Blues-Pat Benatar
Orinoco Flow-Enya
Ophelia-The Band
One Vision-Queen
Once Upon a Time-The Smashing Pumpkins
One by One-Enya
Once you had Gold-Enya
Objects in the rear view mirror-Meatloaf
On my way home-Enya

Busy day...

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 02:53:24 GMT

I've been trying to listen to some new music the past few days just for variety...

One of my favorite things, is at lan parties to fire up pandora.com (It's one of the few good flash apps, so be warned) and get everyone one to name one or two songs or groups and then just have that play the music.

Today was rather busy, I'm getting squared away for my classes. Spent most of the day cleaning, and the apartment no longer looks like as much of a disaster area.

Went to the airport to pick up my sister from her 5-week vacation. She and her friend were rather glad to be at home. Had dinner at Bangkok with family and my sister's boyfriend.

Right now, I just finished reading sinfest. (All of you who have recommended it in the past, sorry I didn't take you up on it before now...
My favorite is probably this one. (Am I the only one who idily wonders which of (/a). or .(/a) (With the less than & greater than that LJ doesn't seem to like) is more proper?)

Tommarrow, I need to walk over and finish a few things before classes start on Thursday.

... I just noticed that my right hand is peeling. I got a minor sunburn coming back, but didn't expect it to peel or anything. Odd.

Oooh, look an update spree

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 06:29:35 GMT

I'm so not ready for classes, yet they start on Thursday. >_<

Amusing notes I wrote on my trip (I could swear I had more written down...):

Sign: "Welcome to Colorful Colorado" "I see the same colors as Kansas: Brown and Green"

Marking for the trip odometer, and "Obviously not made for our trips"

Total time out was 37:15, a distance of 1773.7 miles, back (Starting from Barstow) was ~27 hours, and a distance of ~1137 miles. Overall the trip was about 4100 miles.

My thumb still hurts a bit from where my cousin jammed it playing football.

...

Just looked at slashdot, and saw an article about the Perseid Meteor shower, and in the article mentions 'shooting star', and now I have a short bit of a song going through my head. I can't even remember most of the song right now. Driving me crazy.

It occurred to me today that I don't read nearly as many books as I used to. Most fall into two categories: Class related research, or fiction books. I used to read a lot of books about how things worked, and history. I haven't really noticed a decrease in reading of those things though, because I think I've moved most of it to the internet. I can sit and read about how practically anything works, and I know I have and do do it for hours sometimes.

Best and worst things

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 01:38:11 GMT

Couple of things I've thought of...
Worst road construction: New Mexico
Best road construction: California
Most boring: Nevada
Least boring: California
Worst Traffic: Denver
Best Traffic: None
Best Weather: California
Worst Weather: Arizona (though it was interesting the very localized storms they had.)

If only plans worked...

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:05:34 GMT

I was planning on being at Stanford today, after having hit Comic-con... however, that hasn't happened. We got the car fixed of everything we knew was wrong, and then as we were driving it around to make sure it was working pulled into QT (Quiktrip, a gas station chain, I seem to recall they are mostly East & South of here) and discovered transmission fluid dripping out at a rapid pace. That's being fixed... but it's seeming like we may be leaving in a day or two. (And if it fucks up again... we may end up taking the Festiva.)

So, suck, regarding that. Perhaps I'll be able to meet some of the people I've known on the internet for a while in person sometime later.

I recently got a laptop, it seems to be working great. It's widescreen, and a lot lower resolution than I'm used to, which I knew, but I'm slowly growing used to it. I pretty much have everything working in Linux & Windows the way I want it to. (Only things I don't are toys to play around with later.) It's not a space heater like all too many laptops, and seems to get around 3+ hours (I've honestly forgotten to time it, a few times.) It's Asus, (which means it's made by the same company that makes a lot of the 'Brand Name' laptops, just without having to deal with one of them.*)

*Alienware has recieved my latest ire...and will not recieve my business or anything but negative comments from me in the future... my mother bought a laptop from them, and has been getting 7 months of run around, and it's not working properly.

Anyway, end 9am rant.

Oh, look LJ is good for whining...

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:07:18 GMT

The last week or so, I've not been able to sleep for more than 3 hours in a row, excluding Tuesday night when I took something.

So, last night I didn't get much at all. I was laying down for many hours, but didn't get to sleep until something like 4:30. Then, I was awakened at 6:30. (Planned on getting up early... didn't just lay there for an hour.) Then went to class. (I did get a nap during the day on Wends.)

So I get home to finish something up, look at it, and realize that I did something completely wrong... and well, I'm kind of having a breakdown, because I can't do a simple thing I should be able to do in my sleep. And well, I think lack of sleep is the problem. The books I have aren't helping, being written in mathese. (Seriously, even simple statements, that if said from one person to another that are easily understandable, seem to be made to be difficult in math books.) Not that posting this is really doing any good, I really just need to calm down, and then look at the problem.

Amusing thing for the morning: I had taken out one of my notebooks for math classes, and someone sitting close looked over, pointed and said 'Evil' ... If they'd only known.