So what’ve I been up to recently… I’ve been adventuring in the Kingdom… The Kingom of Loathing that is.
Monthly Archive for September, 2004
So, I’ve finally gotten around to working on a custom header image for my blog. Not sure that I’m quite happy with it yet, but I like the feel of it better than the default that came with Kubrick. One of the flowers Amanda painted for our wedding invitations was the inspiration… but I think it may be a bit too girly. Will have to see what I think after a bit more time.
Ran across SwitchProxy for Firefox. Looks pretty cool. Basically you can set it up to download a list of open anonymous proxy servers, and hop between them at a specified interval (ie every minute it looks like you’re surfing from a different IP). Good deal for anyone who’s a little concerned about anonymity.
So as of a few weeks ago, they finally got the parking deck close enough to “finished” to open it. By “finished”, I mean the bulk of the structure is there, but they’re still actively working on it. Like putting in the sidewalks around it, putting in the street to the south, actually building up the 1st floor interior (where all the “retail” is supposed to go). Oh, and of course installing the elevators. The elevators is a critical part, because students (such as myself) can only park on the top 2 floors (5th and 6th), and I’m lazy. Now they’ve got it to the point where 1-2 elevators work on the opposite side of the building from where I want to be, and appear to be very slowly working on the elevators on the side I want to use. At least they’ve got the sidewalks opened finally (used to have to walk a block down and back to get to the other side of the parking deck).
But hey. It’s there, and it’s open, and I’ve got a permit. So I can’t really complain too much (better than busing it, that’s for sure). Thing is the 5th floor of the deck is generally all parked up and I have to park on the top of the deck (which will almost certainly annoy me more in winter when I have to dig my car out at the end of the day). I had my suspicions before, but now I’m positive. 95+% of the students parking there live close on campus and are using this as their primary parking spot. Which basically translates to the 5th level of the deck generally being full because the cars only move on the weekends. Clincher is I got into work early this morning (and by early I mean I was walking in with the secretaries at 8AM). First 4 levels of the deck were largely deserted except for the handful of secretaries that have to be here at 8. 5th floor was still packed.
Whole thing seems kinda silly since professors and staff generally only park on the first couple of floors, leaving a couple more reserved and largely vacant while the students are all parking up on the top of the deck. Oh well, what do I know. At least parking is allowing some students to park there.
Yay! My Digital Rebel just got here!!
To recap, I finally decided to break down and get myself something fun for getting my thesis deposited. Decided last week that I’d get myself a Canon Digital Rebel EOS-300D if I could find it at a price I liked. Ended up getting it at a pretty decent price ($200-250 off what I could get it for locally). Looks like it should be a pretty sweet camera (Review, Another). Comes with an 18 – 55 mm EF-S lens (F3.5 – F5.6) and a battery that should be worth several hundred shots before a recharge.
I’d also been considering the Nikon D70, but it sounds like I’d get shots I was happier with out of the Canon with less tweaking on my part. I think the D70’s a little more powerful and flexible, but it also would appear to run me another $500 (was having trouble finding any respectable shops that discount them), and being the newbie that I am, I doubt I’d get that much more out of it. Since I don’t have an existing lens collection for either manufacturer, it ended up being a toss up, so I went with the cheaper option.
Now I just have to figure out how to make good use of it (and pick up a UV filter, carrying case, etc). Presumably at some point I’ll get some additional lenses (telephoto and macro being the most likely).
Got two rants today. First off, what is up with FedEx? I bought something online that was shipped via 3-day FedEx. Estimated delivery is for tomorrow (to hit the 3-day deadline). Well, turns out they had it sitting in their local office this morning before they pack up the trucks for the day’s deliveries. But since I had only paid for 3-day, they decided to leave it sitting on the dock to be delivered tomorrow so that I’d know what I was missing out on by not going with 2-day. Meanies.
And the vultures at Zorba’s were really pissing me off yesterday. I’m not talking about the staff (they’ve typically been great). I’m talking about the other customers. Jeff and I are sitting there trying to have lunch and this guy walks up, puts his bag and stuff in an empty seat at our table and asks if it’d be ok if he put his stuff down there. Ok, weird, but whatever. Then like 5-10 minutes later he gets his food and is like “mind if I join you guys.” Can’t he see we’re trying to have a conversation. How rude. Fortunately the people at the table behind me just happened to be leaving at that moment, so they offered it to him and he took it. Get this. A lady standing near our table waiting for her food (and nosily observing this exchange) proceeds to butt into our conversation with “you ARE leaving soon, right? not that you’re not welcome here…” Yeah. Not that we’re not welcome, but please get out now so she can sit there. How rude. Like the Seinfeld addendum “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Why won’t all of these people just piss off and let us enjoy our lunch in peace and go find another table. Or get their food to go and sit on the quad if they’re so concerned about where they’re going to sit.
I can’t wait! Season 3 of Alias will be released on DVD tomorrow. Think I’ll break down and pick up the first two seasons while I’m at it (only borrowed them from Richy previously). Probably need to go back and re-watch a bit of Season 2 to remember where things left off. Unfortunately, Season 4 won’t start until January. 
Spyware and Adware are really icky. At the moment, I’m using a three-pronged approach:
- Ad-Aware is designed to provide advanced protection from known Data-mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components. You fire it up and it scans your hard disk for nasty crap that has invited itself in. Been using this for a long time.
- Spybot Search & Destroy is pretty similar, but can catch some stuff that Ad-Aware misses (as Ad-Aware will catch some stuff that Spybot misses).
- SpywareBlaster takes a different approach. It’s actually a set of tweaks that prevent the installation of ActiveX-based spyware, adware, browser hijackers, dialers, and other potentially unwanted pests. It will also block spyware/tracking cookies in Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox and can restrict the actions of potentially dangerous sites in Internet Explorer. Idea being it’s better to prevent this crap from finding its way onto your hard drive than to clean it up after the fact.
I know this is not a complete solution, but all three appear to receive regular updates so there’s no reason that they’d be any worse than software I’d have to pay for. You never know. Seems that AVG Anti-Virus may actually be better than the Norton AV I’ve been using (caught some stuff that Norton missed immediately after I installed it). And the fact that it’s free is extra appealing in light of Norton’s current scheme of buying a new copy every year in order to get virus updates.
Anyone have any other software they’d like to recommend?
So I’ve decided to upgrade my blog software from b2 to what it evolved into, WordPress. For the moment, the old setup will continue to reside here, while the new version will reside here. This will be the last post to the old setup, to point people over to the new one. I figured while I was at it, I would revamp the style once again, since I was never 100% happy with the old one. I’ve decided to start with the Kubrick style, and see where it takes me.
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