chaz720.net - journal

August 13, 2001

Say, my love, I came to you with best intentions. You laid down and gave to me just what I'm seeking. Love, you drive me to distraction. Hey my love do you believe that we might last a thousand years? Or more if not for this, our flesh and blood, it ties you and me right up. Tie me down. Celebrate we will, because life is short but sweet for certain. We're climbing two by two, to be sure these days continue. These things we cannot change. Hey, my love, you came to me like wine comes to this mouth. Grown tired of water all the time. You quench my heart and you quench my mind. Celebrate we will, because life is short but sweet for certain. We're climbing two by two, to be sure these days continue. The things we cannot. Celebrate, you and me, climbing two by two, to be sure these days continue, things we cannot change. Oh, my love I came to you with best intentions. You laid down and gave to me just what I'm seeking. Celebrate we will, because life is short but sweet for certain. We're climbing two by two, to be sure these days continue. Things we cannot change... Things we cannot change.

Am I the only person who didn't over-listen to Dave Matthews and now I just really enjoy listening to it whilest I can control the frequency of it's playing? Sometimes it feels that way. I never really listened to the radio all that much in favor of always listening to CDs or mp3s (coincidentally usually where the cds came from) and so I was never really a victum of the "familiarity breeds contempt" effect for his music, or anyone elses for that matter. Joel has mentioned to me that radio is such a cool concept because you are listening to it along with a lot of other people and it seems almost social to listen to the radio even if it's by yourself. While I agree to an extent, I still can't feel anything but a bit of disappreciation for a medium that would play any song into the ground just to boost it's ratings for a month. But maybe that's just me. What do I know, I went to Billy Fremd High School where Dave Matthews didn't need outside hyping any more than Abercrombie & Fitch, Jeep Cherokees, and Tight Black Pants^TM did.

I feel like this site has been going on forever I mean for cripes sake, it took me a while to come up with a song that I wanted to post here, not because I didn't have 20 songs stuck in my head when I sat down to type this, but because I had to find one I didn't post yet. Given, on a couple of occasions I did post songs a second time, but I think they were both for good, acute reasons. I just don't want to get in the habit of posting the same song over and over, because that would lead me further still down the road of ultimate hypocracy.

Some interesting developments have been coming up as of late, for one, I am no longer a motorola employee- Well actually that's not entirely true. I am a motorola employee who is not being paid, and who is on-leave until further notice. Which, yeah is the same thing I suppose, but I'm still in the company directory, not that you have access to any of that information anyway. What the hell was I thinking when I started this paragraph, my god it's dreadfully boring, isn't it? To think, the first thing I said when I started this paragraph was get you all excited about interesting developments and here I go on and on droning about some miserable excuse for a paragraph. I guess what I was trying to say is that it feels nice not really having anything to do. I suppose I could be working on the new Penguins Can't Fly website like I said I was going to, but eh, I can do that later.

I have a confirmed and paid for parking space at my building for next year. My god is that a load off my mind. I thought I was going to have to park my car off in remote parking and essentially never use it during the year save to go home, but now with Fei and I having cars right at the building, the four of us shouldn't have any problems getting anywhere we want. Provided Fei and I don't turn into selfish pig-fucking assholes over the course of the next year because we are badgered day in and day out to "drive me here" and "drive me there", and, well, we'll see how it goes shall we. But I can tell you this now, My car will not be traveling to louisiana next year, at least not without me in it, and I know I'm not going to be up for that very often, so a certain couple better not get their hopes too high :P

Let's see, what else, what else... Ah American Pie 2, hilarious movie. I do recommend you see it, assuming you've seen the first one or else it won't make much sense. But if you have any interest in seeing the second one, you've probably seen the first one more than just a couple times. The second one is almost over the top. I found that it was able to keep me from being offended and yet I was laughing histarically through several scenes. Lot's of awkward situations that make you laugh for a second and then kinda shift in your chair to become comfortable again if you know what I mean. But as I've said, if you saw the first one and liked it, the seond certainly won't disappoint.

*Taps fingers thinking* I installed Mandrake Linux on my otherwise unpartitioned hard drive space. I had about 8 gigs free so I figured why not, I'd give it some of my time. I have it in dual boot mode now but I for the most part still use windows2000 simply because of the more friendly preferences when it comes to how I want it to run, what I want it to look like, and what I want icons for where. And then of course the, *nix users have to admit, rather convoluted layout of directories where system and program files are located. I don't really notice a performance difference, although I haven't used it much beyond web-browsing, aim, some file transfering over ftp. Mostly attempting to get it configured to my liking. I have it down for the most part, but I still see too many goofy aspects to really appreciate it. I guess for a multimedia workstation linux might not be the best choice. Win2k still has it beat in my book. Although I will admit, setting it up was not bad with pretty intuative decisions, and the distribution I used, Mandrake, came with all the drivers for my hardware right off the cd so I didn't have to do any hunting. And I really like the ability to jump between using a graphical interface and a command line interface at will. Because often times you will find yourself doing things that you could do easily with a command, and somethings you want to see what your doing. Something Microsoft should consider.

Joel took off Friday, and most of the rest of us will be heading on out in about a week back to the ol' assorted universities. The First summer after college has come and gone, and we are all dying to get back to "the place of greater learning".

Speaking of greater learning... So I my mom asks me when all my classes are, and I say, oh well I'm done at so and so a time on these days, and I start at so and so a time on these days. She says, well that's great when and where are your actually classes. Which I replied to with the dull stare of a dairy cow. So I go upstairs and go log into the direct registration thingy and select the "view/change classes" classes option. Where I recieve a notice that my schedule has had an "Advisment hold" placed on it, meaning my classes are still registered for and I can go to them, but I'm not allowed to change them... or look at them... So I call up my advisor's office and he's not going to be in for another couple of weeks. Really fucking convienient, I must say, as I have class next Wednesday. But then suddenly I remembered I could have my schedule e-mailed to myself so I choose that route, if you interested, my schedule can be seen aqui. So why did I have this tortuous hold placed on my account you may ask? The answer is simple, my advisor is a fuck-witted nin-com-poop. He was apparently devoid of the concept of prerequisites. And even graduation requirements seemed to baffle him beyond words. Telling me classes I later found were needed to graduate in my major were "unneccisary if I felt comfortable enough with the material". I should tell him, "Well I feel comfortable being called an electrical engineer, why don't you just give me the deploma now, and I can stop paying this school to put fucking advising holds on my account." Then I'll advise him to take that hold and jam it up his ass.

August 16, 2001

Reinventing GrandTurismo3...

So I was playing GT3 tonight, and I was racing in the part of the game called endurance races. As the name suggests these are long races (usually they take around 2 hours, give or take), and they usually put about half a million dollars in your pocket, as well as giving you the opportunity to win some very fast cars. We looked into what courses win you what cars, and found that each has four different cars you can win (presumably choosen at random) and in each there is one Formula1 champ car. Usually followed by one or two GT/LeMans race cars, and then what ever is left is filled in with scrap-metal. Well, after racing 4 of the ten endurance races (Brian has raced two as well) and having three of the cars I've won be slower than my saturn I decided I needed to retaliate on the game with a comperable level of insult. So, I went back to the very begining of the game, the first cup... the Sunday cup... Where you race all kinds of fun cars like Honda Civics and the like. And I brought with me my Pagani Zonda C12S (one of our quicker modes of transportation) I went into the cars settings and opened up the gear ratio as far as it would go... reverse gear that is... Adjusted the suspention and downforce appropriately and entered the race.

Red, Red, Red, Red, Yellow, Yellow, green

I spin my car around as fast as I can in a reverse 180 and then mash the throttle to the floor. And quicker than you can say, "What the fuck do you think you are doing?" my car was flying down the race track at just over 90 miles an hour... Backwards mind you... It did take a little getting used to turning the opposite direction you wanted, but it is kinda like driving a boat, and using the front tires as rudders. After thoroughly romping on the computer players in their piles I saved a couple of my triumphs and then turned off the game in disgust... Damn it I want my friggin formula one car!!!

Today was otherwise quite a bit of fun, I got some Krispe Kreme doughnuts and drove out to Geneva, IL to meet up with some friends from school. We had lunch, played miniture golf, and rented a paddle boat for a while, all in all a good time. Reminds me again of how much I want to go back to school. Speaking of which, we (hans and I) are considering moving back to school on Saturaday instead of Monday if we can, giving us both more time to get books and get settled before classes started. That, and I've already got an invite to go out club hopping on Monday night, so if I can get unpacked before that it would make things easier.

I got a message today that someone from motorola called, apparently they want their Cisco 3600 Series router back... no no, I joke, I am supposed to call to set up an interview sometime on friday to plan my internship for next summer. And it's even in the department I want, Field Engineering. This being where you talk to the customer and come up with an, often large scale, setup using products we manufacture. Basically the people that get the customers the products they need to accomplish their goal. A generally cool concept, and you get to see the finished implementation (always a bonus in my book), now just to get that interview out of the way...

August 18, 2001

I've been rather suddenly taken in with music by The Who I'll get some lyrics up here as soon as I get some more time.

Once again, my car is packed to the brim and I go to sleep for the last time in a while in my bed, getting ready to go back to college, this time, I'm probably just as excited as I was last year, it's just now I keep seeing tomorrow morning as a pain in the ass of a drive rather than a journey, I guess it's only a journey the first 8 times you drive it.

Had that interview over at Motorola today and I think it went pretty well, I'd really like to work in this new department as what they do sounds really cool. And I'd love to be able to work on a project, for a specific customer, and see it through start to fully operational finish. I like being able to see the whole thing develop and go into usage, and I like having the control over that many aspects of the project. Plus, once the whole project is done, you shake hands with the customer, and then you get a new project, different problems to deal with, different equipment to use, and different areas to look at. Plus, if I did choose to work in this field in the long run, you travel a few weeks out of the year to do site reliabilty testing, which I'm told is actually a ton of fun. So my fingers are crossed, and I should find out in a couple weeks whether it's on or not for next summer.

August 27, 2001

As he came into the window, it was the sound of a crescendo. He came into her apartment. He left the bloodstains on the carpet. She was sitting at the table. He could see she was unable. So she ran into the bedroom. She was struck down, it was her doom. Annie are you ok? You ok? You ok Annie? Annie are you ok? You ok? You ok Annie? Annie are you ok? You ok? You ok Annie? Annie are you ok? You ok? You ok Annie? Annie are you ok? Will you tell us That you're ok? There's a sign in the window. That he struck you - a crescendo Annie. He cam into your apartment. He left the bloodstains on the carpet. And then you ran into the bedroom. You were struck down, it was your doom. Annie are you ok? You ok? You ok Annie? Annie are you ok? You ok? You ok Annie? Annie are you ok? You ok? You ok Annie? You've been hit by, you've been struck by, a smooth criminal. So they came into the outway. It was sunday, what a black day. I could fell your salutation, sounding heartbeats, intimidations.

Well, I tried to write an entry yesterday, and it started out with "Let's all thank netzero for this update" rather ironically the service died and I was disconnected before I was able to post and the update never made it... What a burn.

Well Now I'm actually writting this from my machine so it feels a bit more normal anyway. So, a few things to cover now that I am essentially all moved in and ready to get on with it all.

Well, the apartment is about as awesome as we could have hoped it to be. Very nice furniture and other stuff was included, it even came with a paper towel holder under the sink... a paper towel holder... ...I damn near cried tears of joy. When you get an actual apartment for the first time (not one of those fake apartments that do everything for you) you start to realize just how much shit goes into having a place to live. Power, telephone, water/sewer, gas, cable, and internet all not only have a monthly fee which we had calculated out long before hand, but most have a jaw-dropping activation charge of some rediculous amount. But now that we have it behind us it feels like it wasn't too bad, mostly cause Hans handled most of the paper-work. But you know, if Hans can do it, well then, it can't possibly be that hard :P

Random stuff we've bought for use around the place

33-gallon garbage can
2 mats for infront of and just inside our front door
a webber charcoal grill
a mop and bucket

So far we've used the grill twice to cook hamburgers and brots, good eating if I've ever had it. and the garbage can is a precaution to avoid our last-year mess that always accumulated in the kitchen. The mats just seemed like a good idea as I walked by them at the local Lowes Hardware, and the mop and bucket... well, the mop and bucket is kinda an interesting story. So Hans sees that there is a bunch of dishes in the dishwasher and decides he wants to run a load of dishes. And with the best of intentions, he filled the two cups in the dishwasher with Joy (note: not automatic dishwashing detergent.) and the result, well, let's just say the back of the Joy bottle isn't kidding when it says "Makes lots of suds that last and last". The only problem is that it made lots of suds that lasted and lasted all over our kitchen. So Marci and I manned the emergency champu-mobile (my saturn) and went out and got a mop to quell the aqueous uprising. So um, yeah now we have a mop... ...hey at least it's a nice mop... ..."self wringing!!!"... ...oh forget it.

Oh yes and about the car, or more notibly, the garage in which it is parked. When I first got here, Hans was going to pull his car down into the garage along with me to unload, he stopped at the entrance ramp, got out of his car, took one look at the ramp and said, "oh hell no." I use the term "ramp" rather loosely as "cliff" would probably be more suitible. I had to drive my car down it as though I was on an ATV trying to cross a ravine. And I even gave Hans's mother a hand getting her Acura 3.2TL out of there after they were done unloading. Even when performing this gymnastic vehicular manuver correctly, one of the rear tires would usually leave the ground during descent. The general concensus of those who normally stood for things, was that this was not to be stood for. So a few days later they had a concrete working crew out and the ramp was reshappen to at least allow for the passage of cars without 4 feet of ground clearance to safely enter and exit the garage, and we could all once again stand.

Aside from the complete and utter lack of a garage door, for which I had to pay 35 dollars to obtain an opener to, and these fucking retarded locked doors that completely insult mine and everyone else's intelegence (I'll show you a picture of this tomorrow so you can see what I'm talking about) I think the garage is going pretty well. And I suppose it's pretty difficult to complain too profusely about having my car located just a few floors away.

Yeah, classes, so we're off to a good start, nothing sounds like it's going to be too much of a big deal and my hours are fab. My Math teacher has a bit of a Croatian accent, but she does very well to try and annunciate her words and choose them carfully. All things considered, I commend her efforts. I finally have all my books (the right ones this time, sigh, stupid different sections) and with the addition of an internet connection, and the conclusion of my first journal entry from said connection, I feel like I'm finally back at school... ...oh hell yeah!

August 29, 2001

You know, I think that there are weird situations that all of us will encounter in our lives. Ones where you mention something, and it may be rather casual, and then very shortly thereafter something randomly happens to change what you may have disliked (or liked very much for that matter, this is also known as "I had to open my damn mouth" syndrome.) Well anyway, I was getting all set and ready to show you pictures and, knowing me, go on at lengths about the supposed walls that "insult my intelegence" located in a couple of places in my building. And I swear I was getting all ready to go down and take a picture of the walls and they had crumbled. Concrete walls colapsed, door still standing as it was. I can't judge as to what knocked the wall down, but it appears as though a rhino had decided it really wanted to get down to that basement stairwell. If you don't believe me I suggest you have yourself a look at this. There, now that you have come to your senses and are back on the same track as I am, I suppose I will kidna explain these (former) monuments of whichever the hell diety compells us to build concrete walls in the middle of a stairwell... The day after we saw the wall had been knocked down a construction crew came in and cleared away the rubble to build a new wall, this time out of lumber. I was walking by and I guess I must have flashed an expression of "oh dear, not again" to the worker and he explained to me why the wall was there. Supposedly there is a fire code that requires you to have a door there to stop people, who might otherwise be confused by smoke, from going down to the basement whilst trying to egress. Why there was a lock on the door was, however, anybody's guess and the new door they are putting in won't have one.

In talking to crispy just now the whole browser compatibility issue kinda came into discussion (sneaking up on us and scaring us quite a bit) and I wish to issue a statement in regards to my site and browser compatibility. I have taken the steps to try and make this site as compatible as possible with the latest versions of a number of browsers. As for all you out there with netscape 4.0 let me outline for you the basic process of software distribution

A software company creates a new title
You download and enjoy the title, and fall in love
The Develpoer sees some issues that need addressing and they release an update to fix these issues
you fucking download and install the update

I don't see where nn4.0 users get lost, but apparently they see things differently from me, which is to say, obstructed by the inside of their ass. If I am to be thought less of for this well then, that's their problem because they probably don't read this because netscape 4 shits on all my god damned tables.

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