Browsing Posts published in March, 2006
nothing i can do can make the pink line funnier, so i shan’t try.
Mar 28 21:19:23 qbert sendmail[23176]: k2SN1fN4023117: SYSERR(root): Error writing control file ./tfk2SN1fN4023177: I/O error
Mar 28 21:19:56 qbert scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/sd@0,0 (sd0):
Mar 28 21:19:56 qbert disk not responding to selection
Mar 28 21:19:56 qbert scsi: WARNING: /pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/sd@0,0 (sd0):
Mar 28 21:19:56 qbert disk not responding to selection
Mar 28 21:19:56 qbert ufs_log: WARNING: Error writing ufs log
Mar 28 21:19:56 qbert ufs_log: WARNING: ufs log for / changed state to Error
Mar 28 21:19:56 qbert ufs_log: WARNING: Please umount(1M) / and run fsck(1M)
[sld@qbert (SunOS)] /home/sld> df -k
ksh: df: not found
[sld@qbert (SunOS)] /home/sld> echo *
*
well, that’s not much of a good sign there. not that i expected one, but, y’know, stupid hope springs eternal.
[sld@qbert (SunOS)] /home/sld> cd /
ksh: /: bad directory
and that was about the part where i started laughing. my poor little computer! oh well. at least i saw it coming: it’d been making noises of vague unhappiness (even if not syslogging any actual errors) for like a month now, so i backed up the important bits to my other workstation. the only part i’m really bummed about is that since it blew up, well, everything, there’s no uptime to read the nonexistent utmp file so i could say what qbert’s uptime was at the time that it blew up. it was pushing two years, IIRC — it hadn’t cracked 700 yet, but it was probably up to the 690s. alas. poor little qbert. you were a good workstation.
okay, so. i drank the gmail kool-aid. i just set ziggurat.org as a hosted domain. we shall see if this frees me from the vast amount of spam that ziggurat.org receives on a daily basis, and makes it possible to use ‘viv’ again. i hope so. i always liked that address (which is why i registered the damn domain!).
also: this october will mark ten years of me polluting teh intarwebs with ziggurat.org. ziggurat.org has been hosted by four now-defunct (via acquisition) internet service providers (three of which were former employers), one site that i used because the hosting company was owned by a guy who wrote a software package i liked and rather than charging for it he suggested that if people liked the software they should use his web hosting service, one randomly-chosen web hosting provider, and one friend who let me mooch off his colo. here’s to ten more years of pollution!
# /bin/passwd root
New Password:
Re-enter new Password:
passwd: password successfully changed for root
y’all want to go download The Kleptones‘ new mashup album, a two-disc set, freely available from their web site, now.
i don’t know what my favorites are yet (although “1150 Closer to The Boxer” is pretty clever), but it’s very skillfully done and pretty swank. it has the niqui stamp of approval.
baby, don’t you drive around with Dr. Bernice.
she’s not a lady doctor at all,
she’s got hands like a man,
with hair on the back;
she’ll crush you with her embrace.
though the wind may whisper and moan sometimes,
we all need a kind place to live.
though the wind may whisper and howl at your door,
we all need the comfort of friends.
baby, don’t you drive around with Dr. Bernice;
that ain’t a real Cadillac:
it’s a Delta ‘88 spray-painted black,
with fake leather seats from Juarez.
though the wind may whisper and moan sometimes,
on a hot desert night it is still.
though the world may whisper and howl at your door,
you’re not obliged to let them all in.
baby, don’t you ride in that faux Cadillac.
if you must, please ride in the back.
if you sing while you ride you’ll be a siren tonight;
spare this poor sailor’s life from the rocks.
though the wind may whisper a melody now,
we can’t find a tune of our own.
though the world may whisper and blow in your face,
and tangle the hair on your head—
on a hot desert night we can drive down the road,
and the stars will spell out your name.
on a hot desert night with the windows down wide,
the sirens will sing me their song.
and the ghosts of the sailors who died on the rocks
feel not a twinge of regret;
though the wind may tangle the hair on your head,
you sing like a siren to me.
on a hot desert night, the caravan stops
at the oasis next to your heart.
the soundtrack is played by some aged British queen
on BBC Radio One.
though the wind may whisper an epic sometimes,
the cast must include Karen Black.
though the symphony strings shift with the sands,
you sing like a siren to me.
you sing like a siren to me.
you sing like a siren,
…to me.
but today was a good hair day! i wasn’t supposed to have to deal with security problems today!
*sulk*
a fine, fine evening with the lovely miss anne thrope buying sexy new shoes, drinking champagne, eating tiramisu (WITH FIRE!!! tiny candles, not just for birthdays anymore!), and watching a favorite film.
nobody steps on a church in my town!
(as noted elsewhere: not much beats two hot girls giggling, drinking champagne, and shouting out the lines to ghostbusters.)
lease an apartmentcall movers, pick a datetransfer electric servicetransfer phone servicecommisserate with Illinois Bell^W^WAmeritech^WSBC^WAT&T Illinois customer service rep about “what the hell is this company known as now???” confusion- grieve for my lost 312 area code, even though i never ever used that phone anyways and my stupid cell phone is still in 847
transfer DSL service- cope with oh my god up to two weeks without broadband!!
set up new gas service- enjoy being able to cook on a proper stove again, and actually use my wok worth a damn
my life:
$ cat user.pl #!/usr/bin/env perl -w $foo = 0; while ( 0 == 0 )
{
printf "No one loves me!\n";
if ( $foo == 5 )
{
printf "And Junkmail sucks too!\n";
$foo = 0;
}
$foo++;
sleep 2;
}
shadow mocks my code as inefficient. i say it’s legible. no one understands my pain.
lazing on a sunny afternoon, in the almost summertime.
fifty degrees outside; going on eighty inside. packing some shit up, pruned back the basil plant a little, putting off doing laundry, pondering maybe going to working bikes to look at the selection to see if they have anything more wrist-friendly than the santa bike has been these days, pondering going up to the brown elephant to drop off some stuff i’ve been collecting to donate. setting up an rsync job to back up my home directory to my external firewire disk, so i can delete some of the music i rarely listen to from the laptop and clear up a little more space. in short, just your everyday average weekend bullshit, with an extra side of thinking about what colors to paint my new apartment. a few good things that have happened lately:
- well, signed a lease, obviously. so the apartment search is over. that’s definitely a good thing.
- i have been missing discs one and four from my police message in a box boxed set since i moved here. i was growing ever more depressed over that. finally, last weekend i decided to go through every single one of my jewel boxes and look to see where i had (mis)placed those CDs. finally found them both tucked into the every breath you take: the singles jewel box. (naturally i went through the jewel boxes alphabetically, i didn’t, oh, say, start with the logical place to look first.) this now means that i’m missing the every breath you take CD, but i don’t actually care about that because i have message in a box back, and that’s everything. also i’m happy because discs one and four were my favorites from that set so i was going to be extra sad if they were lost forever.
- the weather’s been significantly less craptastic than projected. hooray for spring!
- i have a play date for later in this week with the lovely miss anne thrope, wherein we plan to drink wine, watch bad eighties movies, and play Dance Dance Revolution like nobody’s watching (and like my living room is not floor to ceiling boxes).
- have gotten to spend a pretty good amount of time with a bunch of friends lately. that’s always a good time. it makes me feel better about myself as a person if i can make m. laugh, even if b. [no, not that b., the other b.! curse this faux obfuscation! -- uhhh, okay, if y'all post comments with your actual name, from here on out i'm not doing the stupid initial-obfuscation thing.] bill refuses to be my friend anymore once i become a filthy northsider.
- amusingly: we have had two recent hires to upper level management that concern me. greg a., whom we stole from MIT, who is to become the senior director of the division of NSIT for which i toil; and bob z., the new president of the university. this means that my reporting structure from direct supervisor to the top now goes Bob, Bob, Greg, Greg, Bob. i find this very amusing. meet the new boss, same as the old boss!
- vanity alert: on the advice of my hairdresser, i started treating my hair a little better (in terms of shampoo and extra conditioner TLC) a couple of months ago, and i believe that i am now reaping the rewards, as the current dye job is at least like four weeks old and is still purty. also, i have SHAMPOO COMMERCIAL SHINY HAIR. it’s all i can do to not sit in the sunshine and admire how shiny and smooth and non-frizzy and non-split-endy my hair is. lesson: always listen to your hairdresser, especially if he gives you hair tips and recommendations of some music you need to pick up in the same visit!
- TWO WEEKS UNTIL OPENING DAY!!!
