remember that thing i mentioned the other day? the problem that’s been plaguing me since the beginning of december, that i’ve spent the past couple of weeks, basically all of my time at work (plus some good weekends and evenings, not to mention the two woulda-shoulda-couldabeen personal days), trying to figure out?
figured it out yesterday. HOORAY!!!Browsing Posts published in December, 2005
* niqui resorts to her all-time favorite fuck-you problem solver: find(1).
can’t find where something is being called? find -exec grep for it!
something pissing you off? find -exec rm it!
find(1) rocks!
find(1) is niqui’s friend!
find(1) would probably make coffee for niqui if only some short-sighted posix twit had declined to implement -brew!
* twork likes to imagine the syl(us|i) thrashing, thrashing, thrashing…
once in a while /me still runs across someone who thinks find(1) is only good for finding, and compares it disparagingly to locate(1). sooner or later, they get sent an Illustrative Example.
yeah, i often picture a little hard drive spinning, spinning, spinning as it does my bidding
oh, oh, *smite* them. locate(1) is not fit to lick find(1)’s boots.
i mean, not that i don’t like locate fine for stupid shit.
it’s just that it’s only good for doing stupid shit.
find(1) is good for doing *smart* shit. dare i say, *clever* shit, even.
it’s an accident of naming, really.
there’s no good four letter word for what find(1) really does. well, there may be but it was taken by the precursor to fsck(8).
find(1) should be named, like, fix(1)
or maybe swissarmyknife(1)
sak for short.
sak sounds like the name of a unix utility.
sak!
* twork likes sak(1) also for being named in a way that sets it up for misspelling subsequent to oral communication.
“dude, just use sak.” [...] “fuck, my system does not have sack!”
* twork also enjoys the thought of systems being disparaged for their lack of sack.
* niqui laughs and laughs.
“IRIX? some redeeming features but no real sak(1).”
…
find(1), find(1), you’re so fine,
you’re so fine you blow my mind!
hey find(1)!
hey find(1)!
okay, that sucked. let’s try this again.
trudging through layers of detritus
the sediment of years on a system
i think my wrists are getting arthritis
i bet i’m really gonna miss ‘em.
and you see, my memory’s shot;
the documentation, not so hot
i don’t know where to go
let’s see what find(1) will show find . -type f for a hint–
and an -exec grep pmx-list-cdb-rebuild {} \; wouldn’t disagree,
not to forget a -print
and a 2>/dev/null to drop the crap i don’t want to see
(i don’t care about permissions denied
or the read rights that i might lack;
that which you can’t open(2) you should just push aside,
and just keep your attention on track.) look at those lovely files:
the matching expressions so dear,
output arranged in columnar aisles
the situation is clear:
time for a command line a little more intervening
i think it’s time to draw a line
and this filesystem definitely needs a good cleaning—
!! -exec rm -f {} \; sounds just fine.
this problem? that i am working on? and have been for, like, three weeks now?
needs to be fixed. really needs to be fixed. NOW. or, honestly, i’d settle for a hint of where the cause is. i’m not being unreasonable here. fucking computers. and my dumb ass who made a career working with them.i like to take pictures of my desk every so often. i used to have a really nice desk arrangement back in the JFI, very neat and everything aligned just so. of course these days i don’t have a whole lot of time for making things neat as opposed to keeping things running. so it goes.
right after i get into work, before i get a chance to really make things messy:
i think i might have let the dye soak in a little long, today.
also, i definitely should have reinstated the skunk stripe. dang. although, at least virtually-black works better for me than blonde.friends + movie + chinese food = happy niqui.
turns out, i was accidentally invalidating my RSS syntax in the feed any time i used any &special; &html; &entities; like è or (a personal favorite) —. this results in things like my livejournal feed reporting my “Bio” to be “qu’il porte des oeillres,” which is not quite so charming as the correct version. — anyways, while the default blosxom rss wackiness was perfectly happy to & up my &s in the blog entries themselves, it was leaving my title and description untouched, which meant when i switched the title to french or used an em dash it barfed all over the place. i cheated; i just copied and pasted the appropriate lines to mess with my $blog_description. it was too much work to fix everything (it would have meant copying and pasting again!), and besides, i don’t plan to change the blog’s title to anything that requires &s anyways. i’m kind of fond of my silly blog title.
discovered that by accident while trying to figure out how to put a link to the comments page in the entry body itself. (which should now appear — for real this time! … an hour later, after LJ barfs all over the feed, uh, for real again this time, maybe?) in other news, i’m kinda getting a kick out of writing &. and &. and on and on and on! oh, the madness! &! &! try it; it’s fun!brokeback mountain is the saddest fucking movie i have seen in a damn long time. possibly ever.
it was excellent — but my god i am glad i brought kleenex. i don’t think i’m actually recovered from watching it yet. if i break out into random bursts of tears tomorrow … relax, everyone, i’m just having a flashback to the film.last night, the Corridor of Doom was host to a very special visitor: The Alcohol Fairy.
someone came in the night and dropped off delicious beverages for several of us. whoever it was did a good job in paying attention to our individual tastes, as everyone’s drink was customized. none of us has any fucking clue who it was. we spent, seriously, like 90 minutes in aggregate trying to figure it out. i actually have a long, annotated list of suspects on my whiteboard now. it is still a mystery.from today forward, i shall refer to wolin-levin as “the slumlords.”
the slumlords are incompetent fucktards, if by “incompetent” i mean “stunningly uncapable of even the most basic of higher brain function,” and by “fucktards” i mean “complete fucking morons.” the slumlords’ sins against niqui thus far include:- buying niqui’s apartment building, away from the not just always friendly and pleasant to deal with but downright competent waterstone management;
- threatening to terminate the leases of tenants such as niqui (while still holding said tenants liable for rent for the remainder of the term, naturally) for violating what they claimed was a “no-pet” policy in niqui’s building, when in fact it is a no-dog building and niqui (presumably as well as the other fine catowning tenants) paid a deposit and has a lease rider permitting cats — then actually arguing on the phone with niqui about the existence of said deposit and rider;
- lying flat-out to niqui’s face when she cornered the building assistant manager to ask if their intent was to turn the building into condos and terminate/not renew current lessees’ leases, by saying that that was just “a vicious lie some tenants are spreading”;
- (unconfirmed, but suspected with pretty good reason) illegally entering niqui’s apartment over the labor day weekend, while niqui was away, but of course having no paperwork showing that they would have had any reason to enter niqui’s unit;
- painted — PAINTED!!! — our gorgeous hardwood paneled lobby with this ridiculously tacky powder-blue/brown/silver color scheme;
- apparently ceased all non-critical cleaning operations such that our hallway carpeting is utterly filthy;
- apparently responded to at least one act of massive vandalism in the 640 tower and at least one act of breaking and entering by terminating our security patrols around and through the towers; and
- apparently illegally entered my unit a SECOND time, again without explanation (though i did not confront them this time, guessing i would receive exactly as much honesty as i have previously).
sunday we got notes shoved under our doors informing us that the slumlords would be entering our apartments this week to change furnace filters and smoke-alarm batteries. well, actually, i am fully capable of changing my own smoke-alarm battery and have done so a couple of times in the past, but whatever. at least the slumlords saw fit to notify me this time.
of course that meant that i came home today to find that they had not just left my door unlocked but actually LEFT THE KEY TO MY APARTMENT HANGING OUT OF THE LOCK. so, let’s see. they announced the acquisition of the building complex by the slumlords while i was on my roadtrip, which puts it at mid-july. that means that they are averaging 1.6 pissings-off of niqui per month. WAY TO GO, SLUMLORDS! i am so indescribably happy that i chose not to purchase my apartment unit. even if it means i have to go on an apartment hunt. i shall soon be free of the slumlords! within five months! i shall be freeeee!as have noted previously, am beginning to sink into the anxious part of “i have to move!”
my lease is not actually up until 30 april, but this being me, i want to have what i am doing figured out long before then. i keep browsing the reader and craigslist listings, which is ultimately an exercise in frustration because anything posted in mid-december is a posting for immediate or january occupancy, not april. but i think mostly what i’m after is not an apartment which is everything i want and for april occupancy, but an idea that i will be able to find something that i want, in my price range, in a neighborhood i either want or don’t mind. so far, here’s what i have figured out. don’t feel obliged to follow the jump; i’m just being obsessive and anxious, here.
kim, 
moominmolly, and the_xtina, this is for you.
okay, effective immediately, the following three things mean you owe me fifty bucks (per incident): saying “email is slow” and not providing any details, asking “is the email system down” and staring expectantly at me, and joking about the email system being slow.
fifty bucks. per incident!
i have to send my watch in for repairs. it’s a really beautiful citizen eco-drive watch that s. got for me, back when it was still pretty neat to have a solar-powered watch. i like it a whole lot. i’m really a little bit anxious about the idea of sending it away in a little box to have unknown people mess with it and maybe drop it on the floor or step on it and smash it into tiny tiny bits of ex-my pretty watch.
the problem with the watch, in case anyone cares, is that it’s about six or seven years old now and its little battery doesn’t hold a charge like it used to. i used to have it run down once in the winter and then i’d put it in a sunny window for a day (usually my windowsill at work, as i’d only realize it was stopped after i got to work), and then it’d run great until short-sleeved weather (and ample sunlight for the watch) arrived once more. these days, i charge it for a week in my home windows, and it stays charged for a few days. so, this is obviously sub-optimal. baby needs a new capacitor! i called up the local chicagoland citizen authorized service dealer today, some outfit in scumberg, figuring that if i went to them i could actually drive there and take the post office out of the potential-fuckuppery equation. except the woman i talked to on the phone was really rude, barely spoke english, and there was a baby crying in the background. no. accu-time shall not be getting my business. sketchiness is not a good selling point, especially if your customer is already convinced you’re going to brutally kill her beloved watch (and laugh while you do it). so i’m thinking, very seriously, about sending it off to the authorized blah-de-blah in atlanta. they at least have a website. and i haven’t called yet, but if they don’t have a baby crying in the background and don’t yell at me that i don’t know how to charge my watch, they’re the leading contender just as soon as i can convince myself to actually send the watch off for repairs. which will be any day now. real soon now. my poor little watch!
