wonkablog

Last Saturday, my friend Jason and I made another trek to the Salt Flats in northwest Utah. It’s actually right on the border to Nevada, about 2 minutes away. The Salt Flats is an incredible place — there is just this huge plain of tightly packed salt that stretches for miles in every direction, and you get to go out there and drive as fast as you freaking want. It’s great.

It’s also where a lot of world-record speeds are set, though I didn’t do any myself. I only got up to 120 mph this year, getting slightly nervous after that and backing off. I think Jason got around to 143 mph or so. Interestingly, it’s actually a lot easier to go fast and you don’t notice it nearly as much if you’re racing someone rather than just going fast by yourself.

We had a great time, though. Last year when I went the salt was kicking up everywhere and I literally caked my car in the stuff. It was at least half an inch thick on the back of my car, it was so crazy, and it took a very long time to clean off. This year, it was totally different. They had a long 8.2 mile strip of raceway completely flattened. It was just like driving on asphalt, it was so sturdy.

We met up with a professional photographer who wanted to build his portfolio, so took a lot of video of Jason driving his Mustang. The videos turned out really well, you can check them out here.

I had a lot more fun this year as well. Last time we went, I had just bought my car, and I was still learning how to use a stick shift, and I burned out my engine quite a bit screwing things up. This time I only choked about twice. Once, we found along the raceway this one part in the middle that was a little more salty than normal, and when we would peel out the salt would just spit up and go everywhere. So we decided to do a drag race starting from there, and as I took off, I redlined in first in no time flat, kicked it in second and kept spinning. I was in third gear by the time I had actually gone about 20 feet, because we could barely move. It was hilarious.

After we finished driving around for a few hours, we decided to go exploring a bit before leaving. I wanted to drive off in the distance and try and reach some mountains. We headed off, but the plains got really bumpy and it made us both a little nervous, since we didn’t wanna get stuck out there. As we were driving along though, in the middle of nowhere, we found a port-a-potty out there. It was at least 12 miles away from any roads, and I couldn’t even see it until we got quite a ways from the track. That was another highlight of our visit. Random toilets in the wilderness.

Jason put together a video of our visit in a blog post. Just as a warning, the first four minutes is of him singing, so you may want to skip ahead.

Good times all around, can’t wait to go back next year.

I got this unexpected windfall this week (a check from an old job that I forgot about), and honestly, one of the first things I thought about when I got it was, “Oh, good, I can pay my rent early.”

Something has obviously gone horribly wrong.

I think I need to go buy a framed poster of Small Soldiers or something to make up for it.

I’m still dealing with, what I call, novelty overload — so much new stuff to setup and play with that my head is spinning wildly with the possibilities and I’m trying to absorb it all at once.  It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose.

I’ve got my Internet back again and now a phone line to, and Ive been trying to get Grand Central all hooked up and working right.  I still haven’t been able to verify that it’s actually ringing both phones at once — there might be some latency on the Comcast line or something.  My cell phone will always ring though.  Maybe I just set something up wrong, who knows.

Also, first impressions of the Comcast digital voice setup — it sucks.  I was gonna write a whole post about it, but I’ll probably not be that coherent enough anytime soon.  One thing I don’t like about it is that you can’t turn the voice mail option off at all.  That may be an odd request, but my opinion is that if you are going to add any feature, the first option should be to have it available.  In my case, I don’t care about any voice mails that go to my home phone, because I’m not giving out that number so anyone who calls there directly has either got the wrong number or is trying to sell something.

Their online interface is just really buggy.  To delete or view details about a voicemail, you have to listen to it first.  Even then, it will only delete the very last one in the list (there’s a bug), so if you want to delete all of them you have to do it from the bottom up.  Secondly, I went into the preferences menu (I forgot which one now, and this is totally anecdotal so feel free to ignore because of lack of details), changed two options which had nothing to do with each other, and got an error response.  Whoops.  One other thing that was weird was that in my account details it has my *old* address listed on the account.  Fail.  Finally, and this is the thing that I find kind of freaky, is it shows *all* incoming and outgoing calls made up to a month back.  Normally that would be cool — if I was the one making the calls.  It should have displayed the logs based on my activation date.  Plus I already got a voicemail of someone calling the old guy’s number and mentioning him by name, so if I really wanted to be evil I could go on a little identity theft digging spree based on the past call activity.  Not that I would, but being as paranoid when it comes to security as I am, the thought just naturally comes to me.

Despite all that, I’ll probably stick with it anyway — I still want to find a decent phone, and while this request may seem odd, I’d like to get one that at least has as the same basic features as my cell phone (minus playing games, of course).  I think stuff like hanging up on an incoming call but still letting it ring through, or changing call volume or simple stuff like that should be standard.  I dunno how much home phones have changed over the years, it’s been a long time since I bought one, and I just grabbed the first one that looked decent at Shop-Ko so I could have something.

As far as everything else in my life, it’s all been busy.  I’m going to be looking for a new job here in the next month, my family has been visiting recently (which is a rare occurrence which just happened to fall on the exact time I’m moving), and I’ve still got to move in and get all that crap done.

I *started* looking at Gentoo stuff finally this morning for the first time since who remembers when.  Between it being summer, skating, and getting a new PS3, it seriously cut into my time and desire to work on Gentoo stuff a lot, so I’ve been taking a bit of a long break.  What worries me though is that this is the first time that I’m getting the feeling that there’s too much to do and users are nagging on bugzilla to get their stuff done (contribute patches, people!  “me too!” comments on bugs totally suck), so I think I really need to scale back what I’ve taken on over the years and see where I really can and want to make a difference.  I’ve already stopped supporting or maintaining a lot of stuff in the tree that I used to take care of (little stuff, mostly) because of time constraints and lack of energy.  I dunno where I’m gonna refocus my efforts yet.  I dunno.  Too much going on right now to think about it anyway.

Well, that’s all the brain dump I can leak out right now.  I sure could use a week off of work right now just to get my life in order, but I’ll have to settle with doing what I can when I can.  It’s all good, I guess.  I’m just not accustomed to having so many things going on all at once.

My brother got me a Grand Central phone number tonight (thanks, man).  No, you can’t have my phone number.  I hate getting phone calls (which I’m sure will inspire at least one of you to track me down and call me up).

Since I don’t get cell phone coverage on my block, this is going to come in really handy.  I can have it ring both my home phone and cell phone all at once.  I’m most excited about freely giving out the # to businesses though so when they sell me out, I can mark their incoming calls as spam.  I don’t know why I get a kick out of that.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll get my Internets back tomorrow and another piece of the puzzle will be put back together.  My new place is really nice, I’m liking it.  I think the best way to describe it is it’s simple.  The layout is simple and nice, the rooms are nice and big and just well designed.  Plus, the walls are really thick so I can watch movies loudly without annoying anyone.  Tonight I popped in ‘Flight of the Navigator’.  What a great flick.  The soundtrack is pretty awesome, too.  I wonder if I could find a t-shirt or something.  Okay, I did find some black and white t-shirt but it’s not that great looking.  My TRON t-shirt really rocks.  I’ll post a pic sometime.

Well, I’m all moved in to my new place now, which is actually pretty nice.  I’ve gotten the bug now to do some home improvement this time around, because I really wanna get this place cleaned up and tweaked.  I want to do some electrical and plumbing work where I can, just gotta figure out how to do that without killing myself.

In the meantime, I’m just trying to get unpacked, and get a sense of normalcy and stability back in my life.  I don’t have an Internet connection yet, and Comcast is coming out this week.  I don’t have cell phone coverage in my house (or the whole street, even), so I’ve got to get a landline installed as well.  I’m gonna have them install that as well.  Strangely enough,  all my neighbors use Qwest / DirecTV, so I’m hoping the cable guy doesn’t come out here and surprise me with the fact that they can’t install anything at my place — partially because then I’ll have to wait two weeks to get anything else in there and be cut off from the world even longer, and also because I can’t stand Qwest.

On the plus side, Civilization for the PS3 is supposed to come out tomorrow, and I can’t wait for that.  I did get Overlord this weekend, and that’s been fun (though harder than I imagined).

Anyway, I can’t wait for life to get back to a normal routine.  At least I’m sleeping, though.  Half my life might be in boxes right now, but at least I get plenty of sleep at night.

Well, the delirium has calmed down from my weekend of heat trauma so I’ve been able to think calmly and rationally, and do what any normal person would do — get a new apartment.  Believe it or not, I already found one and I’ll be moving in within a few weeks.

I actually can’t believe I found something so fast, though I must say I was pretty inspired (and desperate) to get out.  Lucky for me, I found a place only four blocks away so I’m still close to the parks and I don’t have to move to an unfamiliar neighborhood.

Best of all, it has a new HVAC system put in just a few months ago.  When I went and saw it at noon, it was 66 degrees inside.  Man, it was nice.  I was ready to lie down and take a nap right then and there.  That wasn’t the only thing that won me over, though.  It’s on the lower level of a fourplex, has a huge living room and bedroom, and a very nice kitchen.  Did I mention it has air conditioning?

In the meantime, I’ve done the only sensible thing to do while waiting to get into my new place: I’ve moved my bedroom into the kitchen and quarantined the bedrooms.  It’s a nice 75 degrees in there and about 85 in the living room, so I think I can live with that.  As long as I get some sleep, I should be fine.

Man, I’m glad that’s resolved.  I never expected anything to happen so quickly.

My crap it’s hot in my apartment. About 89 degrees (Farenheit) right now, which is actually *good*. And it’s 10 at night. It’s usually about 95 degrees in here.

I got sick this weekend so I had to stay home and rest the whole time, but I seriously went delirious from the heat. I went to the doctor today to find out if it was that or just something else that’d been making me tired, and I’ll get the results from the blood test tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m looking for some practical ways to cool off my house.

This morning I went to the hardware store and spent about $200 on drapes that are designed to block out supposedly 99% of the sunlight. It’s so bright in my living room that it blocks out about 80% I’d say in my main front window, and that’s with a canopy already out front. I’m on the top floor in my complex, so the heat gets in all day, and then never leaves.

I just spent about three hours drawing this awesome picture of my setup while eating ice cream.

The annoying problem I have is that in the kitchen, there is an AC unit sitting in the window, which does a great job, but only keeps the kitchen cool. The circulation in this apartment is horrible (no central air), so only the kitchen stays cool. The bedroom gets hot, but I don’t mind so much because by the time I go to bed I just open the window and turn on the ceiling fan and that’s usually enough to get me through the night. Plus, I’m sensitive to noise so I can’t get an AC unit in there.

Probably the most practical thing to do is to get another window AC unit for the living room since that’s where I spend most of my time when I’m at home. I’ve just been stubborn and don’t want to spend the money or install it, but dying from heat tends to change your mind about things like that.

Either way I still have the problem with poor circulation. The office and the bedroom both have ceiling fans that are almost always on full blast, and while it cools off a little, no air is moving from room to room. So I’m not sure how to solve that one.

Anyway, I’m open to ideas. In the meantime, suddenly work is the most exciting place to be. Now that’s pathetic.

Just another update on what I’ve been poking at lately.

I’ve mostly been cleaning up really small stuff, small bugfixes that have been annoying me for a while.

GPNL / Packages

For the packages website, I finally fixed it so that you can search by just package name again. It’s still messed up where it searches way too much stuff by default, but that’ll be fixed soon. It was originally searching by atom and description, so stuff like package$ would break.

I did, however, put the basic search I want to add to the packages website into GPNL: search by atom, package, category, description or all. I need to add changelog to that list. It’s not much, I know, but it’s a start on the long road to getting an advanced search going. I also cleaned up the front page a bit, and added a link to the nightly database dumps.

I also cleaned up the bash script to import the data. It actually has the beginnings of some error checking now, so you shouldn’t be seeing blank pages anymore. And the database is vacuumed correctly, and on a regularly basis, so things should be slightly snappier. I’m also importing the entire portage tree 3x daily now instead of twice. The import script is actually a nice cleanup for me, because if something breaks, I can run parts of it partially, instead of having to manually fix it. It’s much nicer.

My next big thing is getting RDEPEND searchable.  In the database, it’s combined with the DEPEND variable, so I have to separate the two out.  Once that’s done, we can finally dynamically query the tree to see where ebuilds need to be fixed for binary packages.

MPlayer / Transcode

Looking better, closed like eight bugs the other day for mplayer. Finally fixed some asinine bugs of mine for transcode, have one more to go.

Took out the masked libdvdnav because it will conflict and break libdvdread. I already wrote about how I put it in my overlay so if someone wants to use it, they can.

Sword ebuilds

I finally got pretty much all the main ones in the tree that I wanted to get in. There’s still two LDS ones that I have to make myself. Shouldn’t be too hard. I hope. In all, there are 150 sword ebuilds in the tree. Freak. That reminds me of something else I fixed on the packages website: it lists the number of results. That’s something else that’s been annoying me for a while.

I still need to remove the old sword-modules ebuild and add a new virtual-type one that will pull in all of the ones based on which language they are written in. Not hard to do, just slightly tedious. Should be done soon.

lds-scriptures 3.0

Believe it or not, I’m actually planning on getting this finished this week. The actual data has been finished for a very, very long time… it’s writing the documentation that I am extremely particular about because I plan on this being the final release.

That’s about it for now, that I can remember.

Ever since my third bout in the hospital about a month ago for stomach problems, I’ve been even more strictly watching what I’ve been eating.  In that time, I’ve been noticing an interesting trend.   The cost to buy better food is marginally small compared to the healthy benefits that come with it.

I’m no economics master (nor do I have any interest in becoming one), but one thing seems pretty obvious to me.  If you’re going to pay $3 for a piece of crap lunch, chances are if you spend a little bit more, you can get something on a magnitude of 2 or 3 times better for you.

Here’s one specific example I’ll use.  At work, there’s a grocery store in the same area.  There’s a Subway a little bit down towards the end of the strip mall.  If I went there, I could get a crappy sandwich with nasty cheese and disgusting bread for about $5 after tax.  It’s not glamorous or great, but it’s cheap, right?  Well, if I go to the grocery store and order a custom made deli sandwich with really fresh meat and really good cheese, it cost’s me an extra $1.50.  Sure, it’s more money, but I’m not going to have to worry about having stomach problems.  And $1.50 extra is nothing in comparison to a $500 trip to the emergency room.

My take on the whole economics of it is, you’re already going to spend X amount of dollars for food.  Why not increase your budget by about 25% and get something *really* good for you.  Ever since I’ve started doing that, I have been feeling so much better.  Lots more energy, less tired, and just healthier in general.

A few other quick examples.  My sister who is a food guru, convinced me to switch from margarine and instead just buy real butter.  I was always, of course, put off by the higher food prices.  But then one day I looked at the ingredients of the margarine I was buying, which was basically nothing more than whipped plastic.  Looking at the one for the butter, it had one ingredient: whipped milk / cream.  That was pretty surprising, so I checked it out, and I loved it, and of course it’s nice to know that I’m eating less garbage.

Another thing little sis has warned me against is checking the ingredients for food where the first item listed is high fructose corn syrup.  Well, I’m a big fan of juice and everytime I go to the store I buy some weird combination of juice to try out, like Apple Cranberry (which is always my favorite).  I just barely looked at the ingredient list the other day and sure enough, the syrup of death was the first item on the list.  Ick.  So, I switched to buying 100% pure grape juice and apple cider instead of my regular stuff.  Again, it costs about 30% more than the old stuff, but I feel a lot better overall.  It’s been great.

Anyway, nothing major so far, but I’m making progress.  It’s pretty interesting how just quickly checking the ingredient list will turn you off of buying something.  I’m getting in the habit of spending slightly more for food, but I’m feeling better all the time.  And I’ve had a lot less stomach problems, too.  I tell you what.

I went to the doctor again a few days ago, this time just to a clinic, because I’d been having problems with my stomach since the past week. The whole scenario strikes me as really odd, since none of the symptoms that would cause problems have been present, which are usually stress and me eating crappy food. Ever since I was in the hospital three weeks ago for throwing up for four hours straight, I’ve been keeping a closer eye than ever on my intake. This just kind of came out of the blue, though, with some acid reflux showing up all of a sudden for a few days.

The only thing that I have any idea that might be causing it is that since it’s finally started to get warm over here, I’ve started up my nightly regimen of going skating every night that I can, usually for somewhere between 30 minutes to 3 hours. I imagine that the stress on my stomach muscles was probably unexpected and just kind of threw it for a loop.

It didn’t help much that the doctor at the clinic was pretty impatient, and I didn’t feel like he was really giving me proper attention. He gave me a prescription for Prilosec, which also kind of annoyed me since I could have gotten that myself. I tried it out and it made me really dizzy, so I’m not going with that one again.

I’m trying to setup an appointment with a specialist to figure out what the story is once and for all. I know that a few years ago I was diagnosed with *starting* to get a peptic ulcer, and in times of extreme stress and anxiety the same area in my stomach will start to flare up again and cause some general discomfort … or I’ll start throwing up. I haven’t had any major stress though, not since the hospital incident, but there is just some minor nagging down there. For now, I’ve just come to the conclusion that I have a sensitive stomach.

I’ve started looking at diets for people with acid reflux, and so far the lists seem kind of arbitrary of what you can and can’t eat, in the sense that none of them seem related. The idea of a restrictive diet always seemed normal to me, but I always assumed it would just be to stay away from anything strong or spicy. Not something random like mashed potatoes, butter cookies and ice cream. But, whatever. Hopefully I’ll get this thing figured out soon.