Monthly Archive for September, 1999

Just to Keep From Being Thrown To the Wolves

Published
by
Benjy
on Thursday September 30, 1999
in Berkeley: City, Kvetch, Transportation and Weather
. 1 Comment

Then Sunday afternoon was another Train ride, but this one REALLY sucked, because I was getting sick... I assumed it was just allergies, but by the time I got back to Berkeley and climbed the hill with my box of lego's, etc, I was pretty miserable...

And then came Monday, which was things really started to go downhill... I just kept feeling worse and worse. Plus, it got REALLY hot in Berkeley when I went home for the weekend.

And I got my Math midterm grade back. I... It's a damn good thing that if the grade I get on my final is better than my midterm grade that my final grade will replace the midterm grade. But, to put things in perspective, if I did WORSE on my final than I did on this midterm, the final grade would be so low that IT ALONE would make me fail the class... Hey, now I've got some motivation to study, eh?

Then, sick, hot and suffering, I had to crank out two papers Monday night. Monday night quickly became Tuesday morning, but it all got done in time. I would have done one of these papers Sunday night, but I was miserable then, too, and I was hoping I would get better...

I didn't.

And then when I left Tuesday morning, I discovered the elevator in my building had broke. It stayed that way for three days or so...

And then I can't remember anything between Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening. They Might Be Giants ROCKED. They play a great LIVE show... I loved it. I also found out that John Linnell will be playing State Songs in San Francisco in November...

I'm already wiggling my toes in Anticipation.

However, overall, I think the cons of this last week have FAR outweighed the pro's... So it goes.

Have I mentioned that my eyes keep hurting? It's really bizarre. But I have gotten over my cold, and it's getting cooler again, and the elevator works again...

Hang On Tighter

Published
by
Benjy
on Thursday September 30, 1999
in Busy, They Might Be Giants and Vocation
. Closed

So it's been about a week. A lot's happened, and I don't remember all the details. I'll post seperate reviews of TMBG and Weird Al later. In the mean time, here's the short version.

So, when last I wrote, I was patiently (ha!) awaiting word as to whether or not I got the job. I didn't.

The next day, I had a math midterm, which I DID NOT STUDY FOR. This was a bonafide stupid move on my part, but oh well. In retrospect, I don't know how much good studying would have done.

That night, I got on a train for 6 hours, and lucky me I ran into Chris Sullivan, who has been working in San Francisco, though his wife is still in the patch... So I had a pretty cool Train Ride talking to him.

As the Merri-Go-Round Spins Faster

Published
by
Benjy
on Thursday September 30, 1999
in Bakersfield and Music
. Closed

Friday I went to West to visit Galatea and Mrs. Jacobs and whoever else I might come across. Mrs. Jacobs was gone, so I visited other people... until Ms. Remington made me go get a visitor pass, at which point I *ahem* had to leave campus... I snuck back on during lunch, though. Expect a longer piece on this later, as this really irritated me.

While I was off campus, I went to Wherehouse and bought Nine Inch Nails new album, The Fragile. I like it better than the other NIN I've heard, but... It's still depressing as all hell. Expect a longer review later. Yeah, along with the 80 billion other things I've yet to review... Some Day!

So that Everyone Needs to Hang on Tighter

Published
by
Benjy
on Thursday September 30, 1999
in Bakersfield, Music and Role Playing
. Closed

Friday night, I went to The Great Kern County Fair to see Weird Al with Galatea and my brother, and after that I dropped my brother off, and Galatea and I went and listened to the band play the show post-game at west, then we went to Pizza Hut and hung out with various band people. I had a bunch of fun.

Weird Al's show was very well planned... It was a great live SHOW, and I enjoyed it, but I had to wonder where the planning stopped and the performance began.... Jedi Rock Band!

Saturday night I role-played with my cohorts.... It was cool, even if I had no clue about the deadlands setting or system. Oh well. It was still pretty cool.

Set List Of Second TMBG Concert

Published
by
Benjy
on Wednesday September 29, 1999
in Concerts and They Might Be Giants
. Closed

Drinking
Spider
James K. Polk
Edith Head
Mr. Klaw
Older
Twistin'
Radio TMBG
Cyclops Rock
"First Introduce the song, Then miss the countoff; Those are the rules." - Linnell
Spiralling Shape
She's Actual Size
"He wants to hear you scream, but there are two problems. He's playing the drums really loud, and he's wearing earplugs." -Flansburgh
It's So Loud In Here
Letterbox
"Open Air Mental Institution..." - Flansburgh
"I'll be getting my ass kicked by the band later." - Flansburgh
Narrow Your Eyes
Ana Ng
The Guitar
No One Knows My Plan
Glock intro
"We Need... A Volunteer.... From the Band." - Flansburgh
Shoehorn With Teeth
Shoehorn With Teeth CD Fast Forward Version
Particle Man
The Famous Polka
New York City
The Sun
She's An Angel
Dr. Worm (Flans played the solo on the keyboard with the head of his guitar)

First Encore:
Spy
Sorry I Fucked Up The Show
Counterfeit Faker
Birdhouse In Your Soul

Second Encore:
Maybe I Know
Istanbul

I loved the show. Better than last year. I'll write more about it later.

What’s Your Sign?

Published
by
Benjy
on Monday September 20, 1999
in Synchronicity and Trivia
. 5 Comments

One day I was in #blackbox on irc.debian.org, and the subject of astrology came up. Someone mentioned that Astrology was even more bogus than it obviously was because the earth wobbles, meaning the position of the planets relative to the months has moved slightly. Simple enough. Later that night, I was going out to do an appointment, and I walked past Seth in the hallway, who was talking to someone about how the Astrology signs were off from what they originally were...

The Full Empty Can

Published
by
Benjy
on Monday September 20, 1999
in Confused and Psychology
. Closed

So don't you hate it when you're tidying up, and you're picking up all the empty soda cans, and then suddenly you get to the NOT empty can, and the laws of gravity come into play? Yeah, I hate it too... At least in this instance there was a nearby desk, and it landed flat...

What I find amusing, though, is the Empty Full Can. This happens less often, but is always highly amusing as the can ceases to obey the laws of gravity as it flies from your hand... Always amusing, that. Keeps me laughing for hours.

Speaking of for hours... I found an Inverse Mouse cursor set for Windows which is totally cool. It'll keep me amused for hours... Jaw hanging slightly agape, thumb twitching slightly on the trackball, and eyes glazed as they watch the changing colors of the cursor...

The Status of the Job

Published
by
Benjy
on Monday September 20, 1999
in Kvetch and Vocation
. Closed

I found that Inverse Cursor set yesterday when I was waiting for them to call me about the job... They said they would call "Sunday Afternoon". Well, Sunday afternoon came and went, and then Sunday evening came and went... All without me doing any useful work, because I was waiting for a call...

And just as I started doing work at around 1030 pm, they called and told me that.... They had postponed the decision until Wednesday.

Oh. Thoughtful of them to tell me.

Tinkering

Published
by
Benjy
on Monday September 20, 1999
in Linux
. Closed

I've been tinkering with my Linux set up a lot the last couple of days... I tinkered pretty much all afternoon and evening today. That's one of the great things about linux. It's almost infinitely tinkerable. Even when you get your system working happilly, there are always more things you can change, or try to make better, and so on.

I found a site with some nifty *.deb's and installed a lot of new things. I played with KDE a lot... I'm liking a lot of the apps more and more, but the KDE Window Manager still bugs me. I finally got the newest and latest version of LICQ working, and it's much better and prettier than the version I was running before... And I also reset up my old bsicq theme, that makes licq look just the way I like. I installed the newest version of blackbox, which I'd been holding off on for no real reason... I cleaned up my /misc drive a lot, so I now have some breathing room again... I reformatted my Windows D:, and my Windows C: isn't far behind... I just have to back up the data off of it onto dorfl... I burned a couple of mp3 cd's, which freed up a lot of room all across the board... I played with various DockApps, and didn't really find any that I felt I needed to use, though found a couple of really amusing ones. I reread some of the Debian Policy manual and played with some init scripts here and there... I fine tuned my smb.conf... I just generally did a bunch of stuff.

So now I'm just sitting around... I don't have much to do either way. I could do homework, but it isn't urgent, so I'm not doing it now... I'll do it tomorrow night, when I need to. That always seems to be my M.O anyway. I'll just have to write a couple of papers on the Train on Thursday or Sunday. What a blast!

Boy, those new LICQ icons sure are purdy...

Wait. What the heck’s an Athlon???

Published
by
Benjy
on Sunday September 19, 1999
in Hardware
. Closed

Oh, right. Sorry. Thanks for stopping me. The Athlon is AMD's next generation processor. In fact, the Athlon is the first 7th generation x86 processor, while I'd put the Pentium III as about a 5th and a half generation processor. In other words, the Ahtlon is almost the latest and greatest processor that's come along. The only thing I'd rather be playing with than an Athlon is a G4. Next time one of my PC's is upgraded, however, I think it'd be a fair bet to expect that I'll be putting an Athlon or two under the hood.