chaz720.net - journal

May 01, 2001

Subject: counter-crap
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 00:05:03 +0200
From: "Johnny Sj�berg" rule_ultimate@hotmail.com
To: champu@chaz720.net

Make a new episode

I've recieved a number of letters about counter-crap and I think that this is possibly one of the funniest to date. The best part is is that the letter may not have gone completely in vain as I am teaching myself some more fun stuff with flash. you can see my little test movie that I made a couple days ago in order to test out user inputs. As I said before I hope to make something along the lines of a little game or something, haven't really decided what, and it may come sooner or later depending on how motivated I get to study for my finals :P

I made a pen and ink drawing the other day (the color was added in photoshop) and I have two people telling me that it looks exactly like a character from final fantasy VIII. And Kevin asked me why I drew this person. I have never played nor seen anything that had to do with final fantasy VIII so I had no idea what he was talking about. And when I saw pictures of the person he said it looked like I still was really not all the convinced. Oh well it's not worth arguing anymore.

The posting on the front page thing had best not become a chore to look after or I'm going to get real tired of it real quick. I would hope it's an isolated incodent or else I have to write code to add a banning function to that thing or, gulp, remove it altogether. Like I said, c'mon, people like my mom read this site, and she doesn't really need to read purely obscene material. I don't even care if you make colorful jokes, but man, that one comment even offended me.

Here come finals. Almost everything else has been finalized, and I have a pretty solid looking foothold in the A range for my classes, and none of my finals are forcast by me to be particularly difficult, so I think the next week should be pretty cooshie as finals weeks go. And I suppose that's pretty good as I start work at Motorola on the 14th of May which is the Monday right after I move back home. As Hans says, yeah it's inconvienient to have to jump into work like that, but a weeks salary is a lot of money to throw aside so you can sit on your ass for a week. When he puts it that way, you know, who can argue right?

I will buy the Stereotype A album by Cibo Matto.

When I get home I think I am actually going to put some time and/or effort into pursuing some form of broadband for my home. Sure it usually takes companies a while to get out there and do their thing, so I may not end up getting all that much personal benefit out of it, but with my sister Lauren going to be living there for a while I think it would be a good idea. I think I am probably going to build/find her a new computer because her laptop has about half the stats of my laptop and that isn't even my main computer. Maybe if my parents are feeling really nice or something I can hook her up with a nice shiney new laptop.

Speaking of laptops, Apple has come out with a new iBook that offers some interesting features, such as a nice amount of memory, built in ethernet and a modem, a drive that plays DVDs as well as burns CDs and a high-res screen. The only problem is that laptops like the Dell Inspiron 8000 series and the Sony VIAO FX series boast bigger screens, Faster CPUs, more memory, larger hard drives, newer video chipsets, and all the same ammenaties such as ethernet and firewire. And as far as style goes I think the Sony and the Dell are on par with, if not only negligably behind the iBook. And when you get all the machines fully loaded prices fall into a wash. Nice try apple, you got some good ideas, but other competitors beat you to it. With the different OSes, vaster software libraries, and superior hardware of the PCs, I don't see any reason to by a new iBook.

Now that I'm done playing the role of the hardware reviewer, it's time to throw some random video clips at you to the theme of cars.

comparison (7.2mb) - This is a race to give you an idea of just how fast grand prix cars are. They race a mercedes A-class, against a mercedes E-class, against a mercedes grand prix car on a two mile course, and they give the two road cars a 70 second head start over the grand prix car, watch and enjoy.
crash (6.0mb) - This is a video of a guy learning the hard way what overstear is, I hope he has a AAA card.
dragcrash (1.7mb) - Before you take up funny-car racing you might want to watch this video
ferrari (1.4mb) - I think all of have wanted to take a really nice italian car and drive it as hard as it possibly can go, this guy does it for a living
indycar_vs_f18 (2.7mb) - This is my favorite, it's short but it's, as the name suggests, a drag race between an f-18 and an indy car, very very close.

May 07, 2001

First I learned to crawl and then some other strokes. I can never remember any real good jokes. Do you feel like swimming? Yes right now. I know a way to swim all the way downtown. It's a lot like swimming the first time over your head. It gets easier when you move your arms and legs. And for air you lift your head why don't we try it right now? Yes right now. Well I know a way to swim all the way downtown. I know a way to swim all the way downtown. Well I know a way to swim all the way downtown. I know a way to swim all the way downtown. We'll go by way of the garden. Fat with tomatoes and beans on the vine. Sweet like the way it was. Like swimming for the very first time. Do you feel like swimming? Well I know a way to swim all the way downtown. I know a way to swim all the way downtown. Do you feel like swimming?

Do you feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel, like swimming?

Well I got my econ test back and I did okay on it. I have landed right on where I think the border for A-/B+ is so it's anyone's guess as to what I'm going to actually going to get. Although I think I remember him saying something at the begining of the year along the lines of, "if you do all the work all semester that will be smiled upon at the end of." Oh well I'll cross my fingers.

Well, regardless, I'd like to share my opinion on Economics and a few other classes right now. I think I know why I don't find Econ/History/Psych as easy as other classes that I enjoy like Ece, Calc, Physics, and Philosophy. The reason being that in econ and the lot, you have to do two things to do well on the exams. First you must do gobs and gobs of reading out of the text book, then you must recall about 70 lines of information from that book in multiple-choice form. It's kind of a "sampling the knowledge" way of testing you, and while I don't think that's outright invalid, I just seem to struggle a bit in that area. I have always been pretty bad at things like that and I'm wondering if it's just the way I'm wired or something. Whenever we read novels in Lit classes, and there would be quote-identification prolbems I would be, for the most part, lost if it wasn't a pretty important quote. Likewise, I am about as bad with names as it gets. I can't tell you the number of times I'll be at a party, and I'll be dancing, and I'll met a couple people and be talking and joking with them, and then when they are going to get a drink I ask them to get one for me to and for the love of everything holy I can't come up with their name to ask them politely even though I know they told me not 5 minutes ago. And yet I could tell you everything else I've learned about them in the preceding conversation. If this sounds like you as well please tell me and share some much needed consoling or some crap like that.

As I'm sure many of you do, I listen to lots and lots of music while at (and away from) my computer, and everyone has their own way of doing it. There are all kinds of different programs and modifications that you can get to listen to music at your computer, here are the ones I use.

Winamp - considered by most the staple of mp3 listening, winamp is clean, simple, and full feaured, what more could you want?
ClearAmp b/w - this is kinda my own personal skin that, joel will contest, I modified to my liking. The original graphics were done by, um, some other guy, but I went through the effort of removing the colors from it, as well as setting all the g-eq and playlist color settings to be more of my liking, now you can use it too.
Advanced Crossfader - This output plug-in will overlap the last few seconds of the current song with the first few seconds of the next song and fade them out and in respectively so that you get a nice clean transition between songs. You can set up all the times and fading speeds to your liking, and I love the effect you get.
Find It - This is a program that Hans stumbled upon that essentially replaces the "jump" feature built into winamp. This allows you to hit ctrl+down and type a word or two from the title/artist of the song and it will let you jump to that song easily. The catch being that you need to keep a very large playlist, which apparently is unacceptable for some people
The Songs - Kind of an integral part of listening to music being the music, that is my playlist as of about 30 seconds ago.
GeForce 2 - A long-time user of Geiss I know how hard it can be to change to a new visualization plug in, but I think that Geforce offers a larger variety of datafields and wave-patterns, so I'm going with it. A note though, in many cases on a bit slower machines, Geiss does run faster.
MusicMatch Jukebox - One of the fastest mp3 encoders out there, using the Xing codec, it allows me to rip mp3s from a cd digitally with full error-correction at around 12x all the way accross the disc, that's great in my book

So now I've just kinda been hanging out for a few days here doing a whole lot of nothing till it comes time to study for my next finals, Hans already moved back, he's just going to "stop by" later in the week to finish his finals, and things are just kinda dying down here. I'll be here until Sunday cause my parents will be here and my sister will be graduating. This will leave me with basically Sunday night to get all my stuff moved back in and start work Monday... =/ ...it's not too bad though, I'm still looking forward to Motorola. As I've said a million times before (ballpark estimate) just these three more finals...

May 10, 2001

3 finals down, one to go tonight. The toughest of them, ece and difeq, turned out to be very difficult and long (around 12 pages written answer each weighing it at a healthy three hours a piece) but I think I did well on them. If I didn't get damn near 100% on my ece final I'll be thouroughly shocked. The final I have tonight is phyisics 111 which should only require a much more brief study session, as physics is, or at least has been, my forte. And after that I get to move my stuff around until I go to work.

Joel and Bill are here cause they had nothing better to do this week. I think we got Joel hooked on SSX so he has finally seen the light. He stayed up playing it pretty late last night, pretty soon he will need a support group, it's only a matter of time. Bill was more into counter-strike on my computer which I think I have played once in the past month and a half. So it makes it weird for me to even watch someone play. Plus about three or four old fremd friends (corrine, derek, ) made cameos and it was a jolly, jolly good time... cheerio.

May 18, 2001

It felt like spring time on this February morning, In the courtyard birds were singing your praise. I'm still recalling things you said to make me feel alright. I carried them with me today. Now, As I lay me down to sleep, This I pray. That you will hold me dear, Though I'm far away. I'll whisper your name Into the sky, And I will wake up happy. I wonder why I feel so high. Though I am not above the sorrow, Heavy hearted, Till you call my name. And it sounds like church bells, Or the whistle of a train, On a summer evening. I'll run to meet you, Barefoot barely breathing. As I lay me down to sleep, This I pray. That you will hold me dear, Though I'm far away. I'll whisper your name into the sky. And I will wake up happy. It's not too near for me. Like a flower I need the rain. Though it's not clear to me. Every season has its change. And I will see you, When the sun comes out again.

There comes an inheirent problem with making anything easier to do for yourself. As with anything, once you get used to something becoming easier and easier (assuming it's something done long enough) it is really hard to bring yourself to do it if it gets any harder. Hence the reason I haven't updated my site in about a week. I have limited access to a crappy internet connection everywhere except at work, and I can't really write entries from there. If you look, this is the longest time I've gone without updating in over a year and a half, so it finally cought my attention tonight when I was thinking about it for some reason. Maybe it came up ina conversation I had today or something, but I figured I'd get back on things again, cause I don't know why... I don't know about you, but it feels weird to not have anything for you all to read on this site. As ammusing as the opening page is, the point of the site has always been the journal since it's induction, so anyway, back to your regularly scheduled program.

I met up with Molly, Joel, Marci, Hans, and Bill and we all watched My Cousin Vinny over at Hans's house. That movie never ceases to amuse me. It's good to be back with some old friends again. As much fun as college was becoming in the last couple months (it really was despite a less than stellar first semester), I think I'm probably closer to my friends here than there. Maybe it will change, maybe it won't, who knows, and until it happens, who cares.

I got home Sunday evening and began work on Monday morning. I've been at work all week during the day 8 to 5 so time has been rough to come up with for writing (essentially) silly entries. I haven't unpacked any of my stuff. My computer is set up simply to burn cds and listen to music. Other than that, it has no internet connection so I don't have much other use for it. My cloths are hanging out of boxes on my floor in my room, all the rest of my stuff from school is in those little milk crates in my basement. I probably won't unpack them until I move back in the fall. For some reason the whole thing still feels like a vacation so I don't feel the need to unpack anything. I just got here and there is a lot of talk already about plans for moving back. Maybe it's because I don't unpack that I don't feel at home... ...probably. Well, I'll see how I feel about everything in a week.

So, speaking of work, the job at motorola is actually looking to be both interesting and challenging. It took me a couple days for me to get situated, and for clarification as to what it was exactly that I was supposed to be doing there. But now I have a pretty good idea as to what I'm shooting for. I have to help set up machines to preform tests on a future device design. and I have to develop a system to store, orginize, and standardize the scripts that are to be written to perform these tests. And more importantly, to document all the changes and standards I decide on, as well as give a presentation to the team to let them know how it is all going to work. If there is time at the end of this whole thing, I will also help write some of the scripts to test help test certain parts of the device. It all sounds very interesting (at least to me, but I'm a engineer what do I know about "interesting" stuff) and I've spent the last couple days sitting in on meetings and getting to know the procedure for how things are done, and it all appears to be orchestrated rather well. But then maybe I haven't been there long enough :P

My sleep schedule is all out of whack. (side note, ironically, taking the time to write this is setting my schedule even further out of whack) I am not finding myself tired until very late at night (early morning) and then again in the afternoon around 2pm. This can be contributed directly to the fact that I just spent the last 3 months going to sleep twice a day at those exact same times. and I guess something inside me is wired to say, hey, get your ass in bed right around then and then. I have been working all day and yet going out to see friends every night, and if I am going to live to see my next year in college I think that I had better figure some way out around that. I was trying to make it a point to stay home last night and tonight as well, but I guess my phyisical well-being took a back-seat to "eh, I'm bored" on both accounts. So right now I am simply returning a portion of my salary at motorola back to the company in the form of coffee purchases on a very regular basis. Liquid sleep as some call it, but I still just assuem get my eight hours, I would like to have more energy during the day.

Speaking of wanting to have more energy during the day. Joel and I have decided that we are going to start a running program starting Monday. We are going to run x number of miles Monday Wednesday Friday, (where x >= 4) and then maybe lift on Tuesdays and Thursdays or something I don't know exactly, but definately something to get in shape and have more energy. Something I think just about everyone could stand to do a little more of. But right now an easier way to get more energy is to go to sleep.

hmm, I mention sleep or lack there of in almost half of the entries in my journal (c/o my wonderful search script :D) I wonder if that makes me an official insomniac.

May 22, 2001

Well, I've had a weekend off and I still haven't done anything along the lines of unpacking my stuff. I did play some golf and I felt a little bit more relaxed and broken-in. I think sometime this week after work I am going to finally sit down and at least put all my clothing away. Sometime this week... I'll just keep saying that to myself.

I oredered my sister her laptop yesterday and it should prove to be a much appreciated improvement over what she has now. Including things like a cd-burner, a dvd-rom drive, and a P-III 850, it starts to rival even my computer. I don't think that she should be needing a new one after this any time in the near future. Also something that I am going to look further into is getting another form of broadband such as a duplex-satellite system that, instead of the old way, uses the satellite to both send and recieve information, keeping throughput speeds synchronous, the way they should be :P. The only problem is that this setup might yet proove to be a bit cost prohibative. I need to re-find that company's webpage and get the pricing information. Any arguement I put toward it he can be assured is ernest cause it's not really even for me anyway.

Yesterday I put my old car stereo in my car, and I must say, it is acustically happy again. I still need to do some work to get the amp connected as the setup I had in my last car isn't quite working as well as it used to. The battery terminal bolt doesn't want to reconnect to the battery when I try to put the ring connector from the amp line =/. But I plan to mess with it more this evening and hopefully that will be fixed and my car will be all good and ready to go. It took me a while to come up with a dash-mounting kit for my car to put the new cd-player in. First I called best-buy, but they were completely re-doing everything and all the car-parts were packed and inaccessable. So then I call circuit city and they tell me that it's impossible to put an aftermarket deck in my car as my oil-pressure, and fuel-gauge information was sent through the same system as the stock deck. I then asked them what drugs they were smoking as those indicators are no where remotely close to the stereo. They assured me they were sober, but I still didn't believe them. So I called up Saturn and asked them what to do. They confirmed my hypothesis that the circuit city people were, in fact, on drugs, and told me that it was very possible to put an after-market stereo in my car, but that they didn't have any of the mounting hardware I'd need. I asked them, since I was talking to them anyway, how I went about taking the trim plate off the dash so that I could get to the deck to remove it. The responded, in their infinate wisdom, that the proper method was to, and I quote, "give it a good whack". Lo and behold, my dash did come off wence employing the "hit it really hard" philosophy, so I then went to plan D and called up Tweeter, a store not all too far from best buy or circuit city. They, again, confirmed my suspecions of substance abuse by said circuit city employees, and told me that they had the kit I need. I went over and bought the kit and found out that they were even planning to carry the headphones by sony that I was looking at (as soon as sony actually started selling them, a misconception developed after reading the phrase "now available" on sony's own website) And, in general, the people at Tweeter were really cool and straight-forward there so I think I will probably check with them in the future if I need anything else.

Visual Basic sucks

May 27, 2001

When you're on a holiday You can't find the words to say All the things that come to you And I wanna feel it too On an island in the sun We'll be playing and having fun And it makes me feel so fine I can't control my brain When you're on a golden sea You don't need no memory Just a place to call your own, As we grift into the zone On an island in the sun We'll be playing and having fun And it makes me feel so fine I can't control my brain We'll run away together We'll spend some time forever We'll never feel bad any more On an island in the sun We'll be playing and having fun And it makes me feel so fine I can't control my brain We'll run away together We'll spend some time forever We'll never feel bad any more

Friday night we got to go to a weezer concert care of Q101. It was free to get in, but the catch was that you had to figure out where to get the tickers, and there were only 600 people admitted. They gave out clues during the course of the week, and Hans, myself, and Rich spent some time friday morning trying to figure out where the tickets were. We then went out on our lunch with joel, marci and jinni to go get the tickets (successfully I might add if it's quite alright with you) The concert was great, and I got a t-shirt signed by the band members. Although I'm not a huge weezer fan, I love all their old classics. My favorite song of their's is Island in the Sun and when they played it I was singing along and having a great time.

As this summer is starting to sink in after a couple weeks, I find myself wishing I was back at school. Yeah, most of my old friends are here, yeah, I have a job that pays very well for the amount of work that is expected from me, yeah I just got a car and I am getting to drive it everywhere, yeah I have gotten to go to a free weezer concert, but something just isn't right and I can't seem to put my finger on it. Something like I'm not supposed to be here. I still haven't unpacked, and my stuff is all over the place. I feel like I can't put it all away, like my stuff has no room here. Just the other night I was at wendy's with joel and jinni and we were having this rediculous arguement the letter 'e' vs. the letter 'a' and I, in the usual retarded fashion that I do most of what I do, went to the employees of the place and asked them how they felt about the letters. And for some reason, rather than the kind of joking answers I would usually get when doing stuff like that (and I have before) no one thought it was funny... ...at all. Which makes me wonder if there is just this gap that has opened between U of I and the NW Chicago suburbs and I have yet to cross it. Other than for brief moments during the weezer concert, I really haven't seen people smiling the entire time I've been here. I don't know what everyone is so melancholy about but it depressing the hell out of me. One can only hope it's temporary.

I have been enjoying my job, however. I am actually learning and doing things there (despite the infamous Friday-Weezer-Concert-Hunt) that are of interest. The only reason I have been a bit big on time there is because of some problems motorola ran into with a system that had been implemented for the city of chicago. And it has monopolized a lot of the machines in the lab that I need to do work on so that I can continue my course of actions. A suprizing amount of what I do revolves around me doing my work in due time and then waiting for someone to get back to me about the next thing I have to do before I can go on. Meanwhile I have been helping hans with some of the scripts that he had been working on for someone. But those present new problems by the minute and work has been pretty slow with that. Still I get a good idea of the bevy of stuff that goes on even before a product is in development, so that makes the job very interesting.

Right now I still don't feel all that well in general. I know I don't want to be alone, but I don't know who I want to be with... ...alone.

May 29, 2001

You know this boogie is for real I used to put my faith in worship But then my chance to get to Heaven slipped I used to worry about the future But then I threw my caution to the wind I had no reason to be care free No no no, until I took a trip to the other side of town Yeah yeah yeah, you know I heard that boogie rhythm Hey - I had no choice but to get down down down down Dance, nothing left for me to do but dance Off these bad times I'm going through just dance Got canned heat in my heals tonight, baby I feel the thunder, see the lightning I know this anger's heaven sent So I've got to hang out all my hang-ups Because of the boogie I feel so hell bent, hey hey It's just an instant gut reaction, that I got I know I never ever felt like this before I don't know what to do But then that's nothing new Stuck between hell and high water I need a cure to make it through Hey dancing nothing left for me to do but dance Off these bad times I'm going through just dance Hey got canned heat in my heals tonight baby You know know know I'm gonna dance yeah Off the nasty things that people say Dance yeah but I'm gonna make it anyway Dance yeah got canned heat up my heels tonight baby You know I've got canned heat up my heels You know this boogie is for real Only the wind can blow the answer And she cries to me when I'm asleep She says you know that you can go much faster I know that peoples' talk can be so cheap I got this voodoo child inveined on me I'm gonna use my power to ascend You know I got these running heels to use Sometimes there's no way I lose I was born to run and built to last You've never seen my feet cause they move so fast Dance yeah, hey nothing left for me to do but dance Off these bad times I'm going through just dance, hey Got canned heat in my heals tonight baby Hey I've got to dance yeah Off the nasty things that people say Dance yeah, but I'm gonna make it anyway Dance yeah, got canned heat up my heels tonight baby Hey DJ let the music play Let the music play I'm gonna let this party live You know, you know this boogie is for real Got so much canned heat in my heels Gonna dance, gonna dance my blues away tonight

Once again, a good night's sleep, a shower a shave and a haircut make all the difference. The only problem I forsee, is that with the haircut I had my dad give me today, that if I get upset again and ask him to cut my hair any shorter than it is, that might actually start digging into the scalp =/

So, a few things new today. I actually put some more of my clothing away so my room is much less a mess than it was. I still have to wash some stuff before I go to bed here, but nothing too big. I think that once I get back in the mix of things I will feel better. shouldn't take too long, or, as I said, I hope not for my scalp's sake.

I ordered an iPass for my car today. (those of you not from Illinois, the iPass is a device you stick in your car and they have special lanes for it at toll plazas so you don't have to stop to pay the toll it just automatically deducts money from an account you set up) The reason I did this is because... ...why not. There is no progressive fee. It costs 10 bucks for the device, and they have a minimum opening balance of 40 bucks, after that it's the same cost as paying tolls and you don't have to keep all the extra change in your car. Actually, my mom claimed that they are going to be increasing the rate at the current toll plazas but iPass users will be able to continue using them at the lower rate. so I can save a whopping 5 cents woohoo! the only concern that my mom had was that she didn't want me to attach the thing to my window (as you're supposed to) as she felt that might encourage people to steal it... ...the problem I brought up with this arguement is that stealing said iPass would basically be like the theft of the change from my cup holder as all you can buy with it is admittance to a highway. Not something I'm willing to smash a window for, but maybe that's just me.

Speaking of me smashing things. I am currently in debt to hans's father for one corregated door that I kinda sorta put my foot through at his house the other day. He wasn't too happy, but I plan to take care of it quickly and presenting as little pain to him as possible. I hope he understands I didn't mean to destroy his house, and that i didn't realize that the door wasn't solid wood when I was going to kick it. I'm sure if you could see the look on my face as I removed my foot from the brand new hole in the door it would have been one of great surprize.

I talked to some people lately and I feel better about where I stand. I fell more relaxed than I have in the last couple weeks and I hope I can maintain it (hang in there scalpy ol' buddy) I'll be sure to mention how I feel as I go along, I think I may actually write in this thing on a more regular basis as I do enjoy it quite a bit, and getting feedback from people (notably my sister leandra in georgia, hi leandra, as well as some other people) and it makes me feel all special and blah blah blah

Jamiroquai owns j00

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