Elizabeth was very kind and made pancakes this morning for breakfast. And she made a special one for easter.

Happy Bunny Day everyone!

I can’t believe it has been almost 6 months since I last posted an update. Our vacation to Atlanta does not seem that it was that long ago, but such is life when you are having fun or when you loose time through the frustration of banging your head against a wall repeatedly. So lets cover the major topics, shall we?

School. School is good. I am taking Advanced Compiler Construction this semester which is no really as exciting as it sounds. I know, sounds thrilling, something that you would think would be on the top of everyone’s list of “must take” courses. It is no way a bad class; the professor is one of the more senior members of the department and has a great attitude towards the class. He knows exactly what he wants to talk about each day and if it takes 80 minutes, fine; but if it only takes, 40, well he is done. Being a seasoned CS guy, he intersperses many amusing anecdotes within his lectures that keep things amusing (for me at least).

Work. This has eaten up more mental energy than I thought possible. Much I could say, but I won’t. Progress still seems to be being made, but much is left to be done. Change is harder for some people than others. It amazes me that the human spirit attaches so much fondness to the comfortable, the known that it is unable to let go of outdated information or processes even with overwhelming evidence that they are detrimental to their own survival. I realize that this is somewhat ironic coming from me and my tendency to avoid change in the mundane items of my life, but I like to think my love of consistency in simple things does not impact my ability to be flexible based on persuasive argument.

Life. You mean there is something outside school and work? Right. Elizabeth, with the help of others who shall not be name (KT, Justin, and I’m sure others), convinced me to start playing World of Warcraft, and as I expected, I am now hooked. I won’t start talking about it here; you probably don’t care. It has been a rough couple of months for me as the work items have not stayed as contained in the work “box” as much as I would like. Lots of stress is never good and requires that one be flexible and open to change in one’s life to smooth things back out. Elizabeth has been great especially given that she has taken on a lot more responsibility at the office too.

So that is the quick and dirty update. At the rate I’ve been posting, another will be September. Until next time.

Elizabeth and I took a long weekend down to Atlanta, Georgia and despite the dampness had a great time. We went to the Zoo, the Natural History Museum, and the Botantical Gardens. And yes, we took pictures (her more than me). Linkee below.

Atlanta

from the Washington Post:

A federal appeals court ruled today that the president can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil in the absence of criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital to protect the nation from terrorist attacks.

Net result:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

It is a cool thing to share a birthday with Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer. Seems appropriate somehow. Not sure how this being the aniversary of the Watts riot fits in though…

As always, Elizabeth has done a great job with Birthday Week. Thanks sweety! This has been a more exciting week as my mother has been in town as well as my uncle Bob and his gamily. Tonight we are having a big dinner at the Blue Talon. And in a two weeks we will be having a big get together as a combined birthday party for Elizabeth and I for friends (also known as the “It averages out to 29” party). Wow, being social, who would have guessed.

Upgraded Apache on bree from the 1.3 series to the 2.0 series. Everything seems to be working. Used the Fedora RPMs for the install instead of building it myself. Somehow the enjoyment of rolling my own applications has lost some of it’s luster. And using the RPMs should help in the upgrade to Fedora Core 4 which I need to do sometime soon.

I like podcasts; I like KCRW; I really like Morning Becomes Eclectic. So when I saw the title “Morning Becomes Eclectic now available as podcast” I was really excited. Then I read that it would only be selected segments only including unsigned artists. That is still cool,but so far from the full potential. Oh well, maybe the record companies will finally remove their heads from their asses at some point (or not).

I will just have to continue to listen to the show live via iTunes or get back to working out a good way to rip the streams directly.

43 Folders: Morning Becomes Eclectic now available as podcast

Hey all, I really am still here. The new work thing has sucked away both time and energy (not to mention we didn’t have internet access at the office for 3 months). But we have internet access at work (long story) and I wanted to post a quick bit. So here goes the movie talk

E and I decided that we had exhausted the selection of movies at the local rental-mart and were often going there, looking for a movie and leaving empty handed. So based on the positive reactions of bunches of people, we signed up for Netflix. Unlike Matt, I am not going to diligently list everything in my queue. (I find it cool that Matt does this, I just don’t have the patience or inclination.)

Unlike when we rented movies from the rent-o-joint, I am finding that E and I are watching far more movies. However we are both exploring movies that we want to see individually and haven’t really increased our joint movie watching much over the old way. This is nice in that we can get movies without worrying if the other will like them (or getting movies we know the other won’t like). This isn’t to say we don’t watch movies together, just we have a new avenue for watching stuff.

Although I won’t catalog all the movies I have gotten, I will mention a few notable ones. The first is Primer, a Sundance festical winner. It clearly demonstrates that one does not need to have a big budget, big set, and a huge number of actors to tell a great story. The story is quite intellectual and a bit convoluted, but quite gripping. I’m not going to try to give a synopsis as I don’t want to give anything away, just go watch it.

I am a big fan of the original Matrix movie (and the subsequent two to slightly lesser degrees only because they lost the element of surprise). My appreciation of the movies is due largely to the writing and direction by the Wachowski brothers (and Carrie-Anne Moss didn’t hurt either). People look at me funny when I make oohing noises about films and when they ask what, I talk about the camera angle, or a great piece of lighting; this is what comes of being raised by a producer. I was very interested to see their original work, Bound. It is very obvious that it was written/directed by the same guys who did the Matrix, the camera work, audio, and even the physical characteristics of the actors clearly show the Wachowski brother’s style. Their next movie, V for Vendetta looks to be good as well. I watched the trailer this morning (and I would like to mention that being able to watch a full screen HD 1920x1080 video is just amazing) and it looks like a wonderfully relevant movie today. Very dark and reminiscent of 1984. Can’t wait.

OK, that’s all for now. I’ll try to post again before another 2 months pass.

Update: Although I said above I would not list all the items in my Netflix Queue, I was looking at my queue I was thinking to myself that it would be cool if you could get an RSS feed of your queue. Then I looked at the bottom of the page and there it was. So I added a plugin to Wordpress that would allow me to put an RSS feed on the site, so now on the right side of this page, you can see the next five items in my queue. Enjoy!

So, the online New York Times is going to be offering a subscription service. (Press Release) I am sometimes dubious of charging for content on websites, but in this case I like the idea. They are going to be keeping most of their existing news content for free, but offer extra services (advance content, archives, etc.) as part of the fee service.

For many years I received the print edition but recently canceled it as I was reading everything online. I felt bad about doing this as I wanted to support the New York Times as I think they do very good work. However it wasn’t worth nearly $300 a year. So this new option offers me a service for a reasonable cost ($50/year) with nice added features and allows me to support what I believe is a quality institution. I think they have struck a good balance between serving the public good and running a business.

I for one will be signing up.