Archive for July, 2006
Back to Old Habits
The lack of updates, anyway.
So yesterday my car needed to be brought in for its regular service checkup and whatnot. My appointment was, for some reason, at 8:00 AM, but I managed to get there a few minutes after 8.
And then the waiting began. Now, a simple oil change is not a particularly time-intensive procedure. But I, the diligent individual, sat around in Honda’s waiting room (doing Spanish summer homework, no less) as other people were called to be informed that their work was finished, and new people came in to wait, and those new people were also informed that their work was finished. It became a bit confusing to say the least.
So I asked my “service advisor” or whatever he’s called what was up. He assured me they were still working on it. A second time I went to ask him about my status, attempting to show him that my vehicle was sitting outside, waiting to be picked up by myself, he assured me he would have me out in “a few minutes,” as soon as he got my paperwork.
Useless. I did, eventually, talk to the cashier and another person who had been handling several customers whose work had been completed, and eventually I was cleared to go. I was, at least, assured that the manager would be notified, and that the particular representative I had dealt with had been causing problems. Never mind the fact that it was about 11:30, my car had been ready to go before 9 (so I was told), and I still had to get to an appointment with the oral surgeon that I had made for 10:30 (even though that was an hour later than I thought it needed to be).
But, uh, at least I got some Spanish homework done.
Various Updates
My mouth is still sore. Really. And the swelling is actually worse than it was yesterday, so hopefully at some point things will start getting better.
I mentioned a program called Wax in my last entry. It’s basically a neat little program that I’ve been using for some limited video editing, in lieu of that copy of Final Cut Pro that’ll be sitting on the school’s TV editing laptop (when I get it, whenever that ends up being).
Unfortunately it also exposes the flaws in the “rely on what’s free” approach: it’s horribly buggy, crashes frequently, isn’t the most user-friendly application around, and for some inexplicable reason doesn’t seem to support alpha channels in .AVIs even though there’s an option for it. Such will make it difficult to import this movie into FCP when it comes time to get to work on next year’s programming (I have ideas, and I want a head start).
Also: my computer is crashing randomly, has a tendency to download pages incompletely, won’t play a simple video smoothly, and when I went to upgrade my nVidia drivers it made all of my icons, windows, and widgets scatter about my screen randomly.
All in all, not a great night. Let’s see what improvements tomorrow holds.
I need a decent RSS reader
Despite the prevalence of sites utilizing RSS technology, and the apparent simplicity involved in subscribing to a given site rather than compulsively returning to it every thirty minutes, it would seem logical for one who monitors more sites than can fit on one hand to watch them via an RSS feed.
But still, I’ve yet to join the boat on this one. There are a number of reasons I haven’t quite bothered, yet:
- I really prefer going to “the source” for information, though in truth this is a weak excuse overall and doesn’t weigh in heavily to my resistance.
- I’ve yet to find (and am too lazy to continue looking) for a reader that meets my needs, and fear that if I ever do at a later date it’ll be far too much a pain to export and import my work (which means I’d have to do it all manually, which isn’t cool).
- I’ve yet to figure out the “ideal” scenario for my RSS reading. I figure the web-based method has some benefits, since it’ll update everything regardless of where you are, but the level of control one has on a desktop is more reassuring to me (though in all, web-based probably wins out). I’d also really like it if there were a way that I could read my feeds even if I’m not online (minus one for the web-based approach), and it would be really nice if my Pocket PC could sync up and store some number of recent feeds for me to catch up on when I have a spare moment away from a computer.
- Oh, yeah, it has to be free. I don’t really care to pay for software (instead I find free alternatives, e.g. The GIMP, Wax, BitPim, Thunderbird, etc.)
So I guess in truth I’d like to see some sort of hybrid web-desktop reader that fetches from the web and downloads on to the PC. Export functions are great. Pocket PC synchronization would probably be some sort of holy grail of awesomeness. And it needs to be free.
So what do you all use, and what can you recommend for me?
Losing Wisdom
So yesterday it was off to the oral surgeon to discuss the topic of wisdom teeth. I was going kind of under the impression that this wasn’t an immediate thing, and I’d have some amount of time before I really had to worry about anything.
Not the case.
So today I had my wisdom teeth removed. Truth be told, having twice gone in for other teeth-pulling (once for braces, the other time for some infection thing), I was expecting to be sitting around in a chair inhaling nitrous oxide, mildly aware that there was a drill shredding my wisdom teeth and then a vacuum sucking them away (as the process was described to me).
Also not the case. The IV sedative went in and had me out before the novocaine even went in. “Out” in that I don’t remember anything, but not “out” in that I was unresponsive. I only remember waking up after all was done, shaking somewhat uncontrollably, thinking only semi-rationally (but aware of such), and for some reason tearing up in my eyes. That said, it’s a horrible feeling to know all of that while having no way of stopping it. But eventually I felt a bit more normal (albeit physically weak).
So now I sit here with gauze in my mouth, painkillers doing their thing, and holding ice packs to my cheeks (at least as long as I’m not typing). Truthfully an exciting experience.
And hopefully by tomorrow I’ll have something slightly less boring to post.
Welcome to Pseudo-Journal
Welcome to Pseudo-Journal, a new blog that I expect to cover a variety of issues of interest (to me).
A bit (but only a bit) of an introduction is in order, I believe. In February 2003 I started a blog at this very domain, wherein I routinely posted about my life. In May I closed the blog to the general public in order to fend off abusers.
Then in February 2005 I started a new blog in a different place, called off.Root. That blog had a bit of a slant toward technology, but saw few updates after the first few weeks.
So now, my collective blogging efforts have combined to create this, which will presumably encompass all of the above, and just maybe a bit more.
As they say, enjoy the ride.
Post-script: If you insist on reading this site in Internet Explorer, you may be disappointed. It’s not like I didn’t try, though.
