well, gee. i’m still not feeling in the mood to write up all of my exciting raid-5 exploits. for fear they may continue happening. let’s just say a lot of my free time the last couple of weeks has been occupied with raid recoveries. somehow, they’ve all been successful. at some point luck has to run out.
besides doing lots of tech support outside of working hours, i haven’t done too much. last wednesday (nov 7th) was the last fundraising edition of technology bytes for that drive. they had been installing a new board since the weekend, and because of the way we do the phones (differently than almost all other shows there) they had to let us use the new board. so i was the very first person at kpft to use the new board live on-air for a show. it was funny because they were working on it while the show was going on, so as the show progressed the buttons and dials necessary to make things happen were changing. fortunately it went alright. wednesday the new board was in a stable configuration and it performed wonderfully.
tuesday i used a coupon at border’s to get a few cds. i could get the discount on up to 3. for some reason, i had the most difficult time finding a 3rd cd. i must have spent an hour browsing the cds before i found something that felt right. even then it wasn’t an “oh yeah! i must have that!” i also picked up a 4th cd because it was $7, but they ended up giving me the discount on it too. bonus! here’s what i got:
- * elephant – the white stripes (third man)
- * get behind me satan – the white stripes (third man/v2)
- * from the muddy banks of the wishkah – nirvana (geffen)
- * vintage collections – hank thompson & his brazos valley boys (capitol)
speaking of music, i managed to rip all of my country and blues cds onto my mac. (well, except most of the compilations.) along with some other stuff that is also ripped, i’ve filled up the 20-gig ipod. i guess once i start ripping the rest of my music, i’ll have to exclude stuff from the ipod…or get a bigger ipod.
related to the ripping, last weekend i bought a memorex optifix plus cd cleaner and repairing thing. i had a cd that wasn’t ripping and it had scratches on it. i got the clean/repair tool home and opened it up, and there was a bottle with whatever stuff they use to clean and smooth out the cd surface. it said to put three drops on the cd, no more. i took the lid off and squeezed and nothing happened. wondering if it was supposed to be a watery liquid, i pulled the dropper top off to look in the bottle. it was a lotion-like material inside. so i figured maybe i just wasn’t squeezing hard enough to push the thicker liquid through the dropper. i put it back together and squeezed harder. suddenly pretty much all of the contents in the bottle had blown all over the cd, the cleaner apparatus, and me. *sigh* i cleaned it up and used some of the material a few times to clean/repair the cd. and, of course, the cd still wouldn’t rip correctly. good times.
i ordered and got a mac “power” icon t-shirt from panic.com. it’ll be interesting to see if i get more comments on it than my other computer-themed t-shirts.
this last weekend i did a heck of a lot of laundry. i also picked up some cool skull and bones halloween candles from target for around 90 percent off. and i went by microcenter and used a coupon they sent to get a free 2 gig usb flash thumb drive. i ate at sylvia’s enchilada, which was wonderful (i hadn’t eaten there in some time). i had the “el paso”, which is three cheese or beef (i had beef) stacked enchiladas. and yes, i got the fried egg on top. delicious! saturday evening i hung out with sue at the potts house and we watched junebug. i thought it was going to be more of a comedy. it’s actually a kind of slow-paced, altish-feeling sort of film. it’s got some funny stuff in it, but i don’t think i’d even call it a black comedy. it’s kind of got the feeling of dropping you into the middle of a situation, then pulling you back out without really explaining or resolving a lot of things. maybe it’s a little bit schizophrenic in style and delivery. but overall i liked it.
i’ve also failed to mention that a few weeks ago i watched 2046. it’s a foreign film (asian), a little bit of sci-fi but mostly sort of film noir. (it flips between the future and early to mid 20th century.) visually it is quite arresting. the story seemed kind of sad because the characters never seem to really figure things out, they just go with how they are and what they know. but i guess that’s like real life usually, so it’s not a bad thing to portray it that way.
after a long time away from my logitech harmony remote, i finally spent a bit of time over the weekend doing some updates. my initial experience was sort of long and frustrating, so once i got it working right i didn’t really feel like messing with it. well, this time the experience was much better. i added two things to it. one is the ability for it to (with one button) set up my stereo to play music streaming from itunes via my airport express. the second is a one-button setting that turns on the tv, dish, and stereo, then sets the channel to one of the sirius satellite channels. it’s basically a quick way for me to click one button to listen to satellite radio. i also changed the main music button so when i press it sirius starts (instead of it going to the cd player).
Speaking of Borders coupons…
I got one in the mail today for $10 off any season of Stargate SG-1. I have no use for it. Would you like it?
Three important comments (imho):
1. I add my Chinese name next to my English name, just to see if it ends up being readable from here.
2. No fair describing Mexican food in the blog. Unless the “i hadn’t eaten there in some time” equals “I haven’t had good mexican food in 1.5 years” (well.. actually a Dutch buddy of mine fixed some really good mexican food when I was in Holland over the summer. He lived in Austin for a few years– qualifications for making good mexican food. He’s also a theoretical physicist and now a professor at the University of Utrecht. He was doing his post-doc at U.T.) then no more describing delicious Tex-mex. Side note: you know why californian mexican food doesn’t get its own name? ‘Cause is sucks!.
3. 2046 & Wang-kar Wai. Wai is one of my favorite directors. Most of his movies come in pairs. The pair to 2046 is In the Mood For Love. Kinda of slow, but really cool story, amazing visuals and great music. My favorite movie by him is Fallen Angels (and its pair Chungking Express). This pair is much more fast paced, but once again, great visuals and music.
Here are a few comments: (hopefully they aren’t a repeat as my original comments got somehow destroyed by your site). 1. No fair causing unsuspecting ex-pats severe “mental anguish” by discussing tasty Tex Mex on your blog. 2. Wang Kar-wai & 2046. Wang Kar-wai is one of my favorite
directors (and not just because his movies usually have a lot of Cantonese, not to mention Shanghainese). His movies usually come in pairs. The pair to 2046 is “In the Mood for Love”. If you watch both, you’ll see the relationships between the two movies (hint: it’s not a linear one).
“Mood” is a great movie and has a great soundtrack.
My favorite pair is “Fallen Angels” and “Chungking Express”. Both are much faster paced than 2046 & Mood, but visually stunning (in a more of an acid trip way– at least what I would imagine one of those to be like). BTW, WKW’s stuff is “Hong Kong”-style. Quite a bit different from other “Asian” styles. The F.A. and C.E. pair of movies really do justice to the feel of being in HK. Such a fast paced city. 3. Originally I had 3 comments. However, one of them has been lost to the ether.
serena — if only i ever watched stargate sg-1. or any of the stargates. now, if you could make it be for _robot chicken_… 🙂
ash — 1) guess it works. i see chinese characters there. kind of funny it’s right after i changed the logo on the blog and used russian with cyrillic text. 2) Tex-mex is delicious and i can’t help but sing its praises. it’s not my fault other people decided to be trendy international jet-setters, globetrotting on adventures. while the rest of us sat here and feasted on delicious variations of traditional mexican dishes infused with Texas flair. in fact, just this evening i had a cheese enchilada dinner. (it wasn’t close to sylvia’s by a wide margin. nor as good as chuy’s. or lupe tortilla’s. ah, choices, choices! 3) i read this was the second of a pair, but it sounded like they were so loosely related you wouldn’t really miss anything by not seeing both near each other. having seen some hong kong stuff, as well as korean and japanese stuff…well, i think i prefer hong kong. although some of the korean stuff was really good too. the japanese stuff…eh. perhaps i should try to remember and categorize everything i’ve watched from those countries so i can have a clearer view of each one as a culture (well, from the limited perspective of the movies i’ve seen…i’d hate someone to judge the u.s. or Texas from movies. what? they do?)