Time to go mold the minds of young people.

Please, stop screaming at the CRT. It doesn’t like that.

Man, I started the day in Connecticut, waking at 0230 Huntsville time. I slept a couple hours on the plane and a couple hours here this afternoon, and now I’m going to go try to stay up all night at a youth lock-in.

I’d claim insanity, but we’ve had that diagnosis for a while …

And not just here, either. I commented on Slashdot for the first time in nearly 15 months. Egad.

I’ve got some plans to have the site re-org done by the first of the year, but … we’ll see.

Been busy with work and such. Fly out to Connecticut eaaaaaaaaaarly in the morning. Be back Tuesday. Might post while I’m gone.

Well, yeah, I’ve ignored the site for a bit. Others have excuses–I have my reasons why:

1) Work’s been busy, and when I get home at night, the last thing that I really want to do is sit with the laptop in my lap.

2) This week has been Server Hell. The folks at the data center that hosts PF have been complete idiots all week long, screwing things up royally. For the geeks around, when the load average goes up above 30 after a hardware swap, you’d think that the hardware was to blame … but they certainly thought that nothing was wrong!

3) I’ve been in a writing funk. You can deal.

Of course, I’m sitting here writing to get awake–have church stuff to finish so I can get on the road towards there in 90 minutes or so–and just generally goofing off. That, and listening to Nickel Creek play in my head, since I had to allude to them in the first paragraph … yeah, okay, this is lacking sense. *post*

I’ve seen Caedmon’s Call perform twice: the first was at The University of North Alabama a few years back. Because I was traveling with friends [namely, Jess and Karina] and, for some forgotten reason, we had to be back to Huntsville for early things the next day, I didn’t get to meet the band then.

A couple years ago, the band played Big Spring Jam. Well, that’s not entirely accurate–at the time, Danielle Young had just had complications with her first pregnancy, so she and Cliff, who form two-thirds of CC’s vocal triumvirate, were in the hospital waiting for Danielle’s pregnancy to settle down.

I never will forget Derek coming out center-stage and saying, “It’s weird to be standing here. I’m usually over there,” nodding to his usual spot on the side of the stage. “How many of you have heard Caedmon’s Call on the radio?” he then asked. The crowd hooted. “Good,” he said. “Well, I do a lot of the songs that don’t make it on the radio, so I hope that you’ll enjoy it.”

(more…)

Ever since I saw this on Jeremy’s site [and I hope that I'm not going to die for linking to his site, heh], I decided that I wanted to learn more.

So, I Googled.

I found this mailing list message that does a pretty good job of describing what can be done.

[Linked as much for me as for you, since I might lose it.]

I got bored and decided to follow a couple links on the Mozilla Web site.

I found the Pre-fetching FAQ.

I’m sitting here and trying to think: “What use could a personal site have for something like this?”

Got ideas? I’m mulling it myself, but my brain is pooped from work. Something’s sitting in the back of my head … but just what, I’m not sure.

I say this in my best Kenny Mayne voice: “Doug Morris: He’s old.”

Happy 30th, bro.

That’s the first productive telecon I’ve had with the group of people involved on the other end of the phone in … the entire time I’ve worked with them.

I don’t know if it’s my smooth talking improving, their knowledge of our challenges improving, or what … but if it keeps up, that’s cool by me.

Dude.

Well, got home from Connecticut around midnight last night, and I pretty much proceeded to hop into bed. The laptop is still packed in the travel bag, if that tells you anything.

Second night was … unbelievable. I want to see a finalized box–I’m betting there were 160+ penalty minutes. I’ve never, ever seen a game that ugly. UAH was on the power play for the last 12-ish minutes of the game and scored just once–every shot being from the perimeter with no one going down low for the puck. Two reasons for that: 1) UAH was up 5-2 when that debacle started, and there was no reason to run up the score, and 2) the SHU players were upset and coming very close to the “intent to injure” line, so our guys were staying out from in front of the net.

Shoot, one of the few times a Charger did go up to the net, he got nailed, as Gerald Overton got checked from behind into the post. [The offending Pioneer got a major and a misconduct.]

Wild night. 6-2 win, and the game went half-an-hour longer than most games do.

Well, there is a certain class of jackasses that, for whatever reason, decided to see if they can exploit any little hole in any program. I imagine that they get their jollies off of it, and it’s probably because they get tired of looking for porn on the net. [The snide part of me must ask, "Is excessive masturbation the cause of repetitive stress injuries for a lot of geekish males? They probably get to write it off as carpal tunnel and other injuries of its ilk, but when the problems only show up in one extremity, I bet the doctors have a good laugh over a post-work brewski."]

Anyhow, when one of the lamers tried to hit a site of mine that’s been innoculated against the attack, I decided to see how he found his victims. Turns out that our dear hacker, who goes by the eternally sexy name of “AReK_5bY”, was Googling for “00000031.php“. Now, I don’t know what this guy’s got against the number 31–must have been the jersey number of the last rugby player to use his face for a mop or something.
(more…)

Well, the schnozz isn’t too bad. It still looks like I took an elbow to the face, but hey … I’m going to broadcast hockey. I’ll fit right in.

Now, to finish the mad packing job …

Well, turns out that, for once, Doug has better news on Mom than I do.

I didn’t get to talk to Mom and Dad for very long last night. They had to get off after about five minutes, for whatever reason.

Boy, I feel better now.

Oh man, does it suck.

Yesterday, I had what appeared to be acne on the bridge of my nose. Now, I’m not so sure. Why? I woke up this morning with my left eye mostly swollen shut. I waited until the work traffic died down and drove to the ER. The doctor cleaned it out [ewwwwwwwwwww is all I have to say], gave me a prescription for an antibiotic, and sent me home with instructions to follow the prescription and use a warm compress to reduce the swelling.

I look like Joel Bresciani [UAH's biggest bruiser] caught me with an elbow. The area under my eye has mostly gone down, but my nose still looks like it’s been broken or something.

I’d take photos, but I don’t want future evidence of this.

Time to warm up the compress again and crawl back in bed. I need more heat.

Say it with me: “MY ONE EYE!”

It’s nice to know that, a couple of years after starting to dink with CSS, I finally figured out the damn box model.

If I had something solid to bang my head on, I would do so repeatedly.

I am a moron! Sing with me: “Geof is a moron!”

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.

Oh … and if you’ve not gotten yourself some Nickel Creek, and you like folksy, bluegrassy stuff, you are doing your ears a disservice. Not bad coding music. Not bad … anything music.

I gotta say that one of the worst things in business is someone lying to you, knowing that they’re lying, talking to them as they’re lying, and not being able to say:

“You’re lying.”

Gah.

I left my cell phone at home this morning.

I realized it about, oh, halfway to work.

So … Mike and I can’t play text-message tag today, and if my folks call, well, I’ll worry about that later.

I’ll check in on the voice mail every once in a while because of that. Mom is supposed to get out of the hospital today. Hopefully so. Still curious to hear from pathology.

Well, my dad’s mother just called … Mom is out of surgery and resting in a hotel^Whospital room. That 1) it wasn’t Dad calling me and 2) Sugar said, “Your dad said he’d call you tonight.” really alleviates my fears a lot.

Pardon me while I deflate for just a wee bit, eh?

[Note: I am a moron for saying that Mom is in a hotel room. Now if Mom will hold up to our agreement to have her buzz the Nurse's Station every 20 minutes, we'll be cool. :p (I'm kidding.)]

This makes twice in a year. First Amy, now Indigo … both have lost their fathers. That’s just about where the similarities end, though: Amy’s dad did decline pretty quickly, but they knew it was coming; Indigo’s father died quite suddenly, shockingly. I’ve sat many a times at Amy’s dinner table; I didn’t bother to look to see how close I was to Indigo’s when I was in Hagerstown back in October on my way to Jersey.

But still, I’m at a loss for words. For someone as patently verbose [and ramblingly so] as I, that’s an odd place to be.

Guess my job is to listen, again.

:sigh: