Gibberish is My Native Language

This will be last post on LiveJournal -- the migration to my new site is good enough to get this thing going. I've written a welcome post just for you LJ readers, so please start there. Please readjust your RSS feeds, links, bookmarks, autospammers, and autobots to:

journal.drfaulken.com

LJ, we hardly knew ye ;)

Welp, with almost 250 entries under my belt, I am going to move away from LiveJournal and onto WordPress, which is the same software used by my buddy Stilts.

LiveJournal is great for community discussions -- like my friends badmagic and $sheWithMultipleLJIndentities, whose more public LJ I cannot seem to differentiate from her less-public LJ right now. Anyway, the nice thing about reading these journals is that they're more like "omg, I found this cool thing!" or "I had this weird idea, what do you think?" and then all sorts of folks come out of the woodwork to weigh in. It's like Ars, except on a much more intimate scale.

If you're into more of a Dear Diary approach, like my friend Fish Sprout, then Blogger (or LJ with the comments turned off) is a great choice. I've added some commentary to Fish Spout's blog a few times, but for the most part, it's her monologue about doing kind things, like doing another benefit run for cancer.

I, on the other hand, am not very successful at getting my readers involved. I tend to post reviews, or link and runs. I have quite a few motorcycle entries, but aside from that, my posts are more informative than conversational. As such, my LJ has turned into more of a content management tool instead of a diary -- and at this LJ is not the best. I was trying to find an article the other day for a buddy of mine, and I had to go through each month's archive in order to find it. Google's Blog Search is still a long way from indexing all of LJ. Google says that most blogs were indexed around this time last year, but most of my posts are not indexed. LJ's tag display system is lacking -- I had to cobble together the Show All Tags link, which most of you probably didn't even know was there. I would really prefer for these tags to be displayed via a dropdown select box, so that you could more easily navigate to whatever you were interested in. Alas, this is not an option.

So anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that starting Real Soon Now™ I will be migrating my content off of LJ to a new Web site of my own. I already have a wiki set up to house things like my AIM Encryption Instructions, and a gallery so that I don't have to upload things to ImageShack if I choose.

Hang tight, this should be a bumpy ride ;)

So, it's the end of my second group of sessions with my trainer. As such, it was time for a fat caliper test. I knew that I was still losing fat around my midsection, but I felt guilty for slacking on my cardio schedule and for eating more cheese than I have in awhile. I make a grilled chicken breast, ham, and jack cheese sammich that is too awesome to ignore. Anyway, I got pinched. My first test from mid-March was a little off due to a different person doing a different caliper test, so my trainer and I decided that my base fat percentage was about 21%.

My triceps, rib area, and quads either went down very slightly or stayed the same. I have very very little fat on my quads, and Steve Jr mostly got skin. I don't have OMG MUSCLES! popping out, but the days of chasing that squirrel is over. My chest went up this time, which was kind of interesting, but not a big deal. The big change was in my stomach, I went down about 30% from my last measurement. I guess my body is finally done storing those french fries and tater tots I gave up a month and a half ago. My overall bodyfat percentage is now 14.1%, or as Ms. Parr would put it, I am "cut."

Anyway, for those who give a shit, here are some stats for the day. In the last three months I have: had a total weight reduction of five pounds. I have gained ten pounds of muscle and lost about fifteen pounds of fat. If I can shed another 2% body fat, I'll be extremely happy and will consider my fat loss journey to be at an end. With some determination (and more cardio), I should hit my goal in time for my birthday.

Yes, I am about to write about chicken breasts.

I normally buy a brace of chicken breasts from Costco and bag them, two at a time, in small Ziploc bags. I freeze the little chicken bits until I need them for grilling, and then I put them in the fridge the night before. While not particularly wracked with hardship, I didn't like this system for a few reasons. The first reason was that the chicken breasts were a little too large to both be in one small back, but too small to be put in a larger back. I know this speaks terribly of some sort of container-compulsion issues I may have, but damn if I didn't get peeved by having to smash two chicken breasts into a small bag. Secondly, it sucks having to bag ten pairs of chicken breasts.
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I periodically go through my bookmarks and clean them up. I either delete them outright, or shove them in a folder called "Archives." Or, at least, there used to be a folder called Archives. I moused over the folder in Firefox and found that all (but one) of my archived bookmarks were gone.

I'm not sure how or why most of my archived bookmarks got deleted -- we did have a pretty nasty power outage today and my workstation died -- but if my bookmarks file was corrupted, I'd expect it to be a total loss, instead of a partial one.

[edit]
Luckily, the latest version of Firefox makes nightly backups of your bookmarks. I dug one out from the 5th, and my archives were complete. The file definitely changed yesterday (technically yesterday, the 6th). I've managed to get all of my bookmarks back thanks to the older version, but I am not happy to have lost my bookmarks in the first place. If FF didn't have the backup function, I would have been SOL.

Last weekend, Lady Jaye and I traveled up to Baltimore to see the Yankees beat the Orioles on Saturday. It was a great game and a real nail biter, as the game went into an extra 10th inning. We had a pre-game meal at the Wharf Rat, where we spent our first date. We were afraid it was going to rain, but the weather cleared right up. Saturday was perfect.

On Sunday, we visited the Chesterfield Berry Farm to pick some strawberries. It was powerfully hot last week, and I was afraid we wouldn't find too many good strawberries left. Quite the contrary, we picked about ten pounds before calling it a day and coming home. I froze 3/4 of it to use for smoothies later, and we have been slowly picking off the rest.

( Strawberries! )

I zipped out on my bike today to visit Lady Jaye, who was taking a break between shifts downtown. We wanted to grab a bite, so I motored up the highway to meet her in Super Suburbia™, where all of our favorite restaurants are. The temperature was about 86 when I left, with the heat index rounding us up to about 90 - 92. I wasn't particular nervous about the heat, having made a pilgrimage downtown in similar conditions last week in full leather. I put on my perforated leather pants, jacket, my riding boots, and my new textile-mesh-leather gloves. Underneath I wore "Wickers" brand wicking leggings and a compression-fit wicking long sleeve top from Old Navy, of all places.
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To embarrass myself into more cardio time, it's time for the monthly development shots.

( #include sasquatchWarning(); )

One of the things I was most excited about when I purchased my new E815 cell phone was acquiring a Bluetooth headset. At the time, I still had the potential of traveling up to Rockville every two weeks and out to California once a month. Having a handsfree kit was really attractive, and the thought of not having a corded headset was very appealing.

The problem with Bluetooth headsets, and my highest-priority criteria, is that it could not be the size and shape of a damn Star Trek phaser. It's the rage out here to wear big-ass Motorola ear pieces that flash blue every few seconds. HAY GUYS, I CAN'T MISS THIS EMPORTANTE CALL FRUM MAH WIFEY!!

The second criteria was range (the longer the better), then sound quality, and then price.
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Every once in awhile I will start browsing amazon.com or whatnot looking for recent albums by my favorite artists. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised and find a new album released just a few months ago, or whatever. And sometimes what I discover is a real shot in the nuts. Any time there's a long lapse between releases, I get nervous (Weekend Players, I'm thinking of you). So it was with great trepidation that I started researching the fate of Lamb, one of my favorite bands.

I found out that they have been split up since September of 2004. I don't know why this is such a big deal to me, since I obviously didn't follow the band closely enough to hear about their farewell live performance nearly two years ago. But for some reason, I feel particularly sad about the whole deal. Lou Rhodes, the female vocalist, started her own record label Infinite Bloom, and has a solo album out. By what I read on Amazon today, the electronica melodies present in Lamb aren't a part of her new musical endeavor. Oh well, nothing stays the same forever.

As I wrote last December, I go through cycles of reading new Web sites, or finding that I don't read old ones at all.

I was interested to see how many of the sites I was browsing in December are still on my "high traffic" list, and which ones have dropped off.
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I was busily backing up my DVD movies two days ago. I left my fileserver to encode and burn the DVD for me and went to take a shower. I came back about an hour later (the shower wasn't that long), and noticed that the DVD burner tray was open, but there was no disc in the tray.

I must have forgotten to load a disc, I thought to myself. I put in another dual-layer disc and tried to close the tray.

The tray went about halfway in and then spat the disc back out. Weird. I pushed the tray in again, out the disc came.

I squinted into the drive and noticed a piece of white foam was sticking up where it probably shouldn't be. Maybe the disc got too hot and got stuck in the drive? I grumbled and shut my fileserver off. I pulled the DVD burner out and unscrewed it, giggling at the "BREAKING SEAL VOIDS WARRANTY" sticker on the bottom.
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I have been using Anthony Logistics Shaving Cream for well over a year. As I wrote last August, I hate shaving, and the smooth, thin, slightly minty shaving cream from Anthony's helped make shaving tolerable.

I have gone through two bottles (one small, one large). Instead of ordering another $15 bottle from Mens Essentials, I decided to try a four pack of Edge Advanced Sensitive Skin with Aloe. Standing tall at 9.5oz per can, The entire four pack was $9.99 at Costco. If the Edge gel sucked, I would be out a meager amount, and maybe some of my buddies could use it on their less sensitive, less crazy-to-shave mugs.
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I read a magazine the other day that suggested singing "Happy Birthday to You" in your head while you wash your hands. Apparently it takes ~20 seconds to sing that song, and it was recommended that I spend at least that long washing my hands.

As such, I have been singing "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Dr.Faulken, happy birthday to you" more this week than I have in the last five years put together. I am beginning to wonder if I am going to develop some sort of disorder, wherein if I actually have to sing that song for its intended purpose I will feel the urge to wash my hands -- or worse yet -- will be unable to wash my hands without singing that song in my head 25 years from now.

Since I can't justify buying a Slim Devices Squeezebox, I started looking for cheaper alternatives. Cheaper meaning something I didn't have to buy and that I already had around the house. I considered putting my file server downstairs, but that also serves as my DVD and CD ripping station and that seemed like a bigger pain in the ass than it was worth. Plus, my file server is a full-sized tower and has roughly a hojillion fans in it. I started pricing out a Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) but to build one and configure it was upwards of $600+ easily, and I'd have to learn a bunch of new crap, like how to capture and encode TV programs on the fly.

Then I remembered my original Xbox, which was sitting downstairs. I hadn't used it since ... well, maybe since we moved to Richmond last year. I have been playing my GameCube and my PS2 a lot more. I knew that the Xbox could be modified to do all sorts of neat tricks, like run homebrew code, copy DVDs and games to the hard drive, and jump through hoops of flame. Well, maybe not the last part.

I dusted off the ol' black beast and went to work.
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Luckily this isn't me, but someone recently crashed into a deer on their FZ6. This is the same bike I ride, on the same type of roads I ride on. Hitting a deer, by far, is my greatest fear while riding my bike. Partly because they don't give you much time to react and approach from areas we're not accustomed to looking for hostiles (unlike an intersection), but also because hitting a deer on a windy country road means that I might be in a sparsely-traveled section of road, and if I was seriously hurt aid might be a long time coming.

This video is not safe for work, as the rider screams the F word at the end.

Deer vs FZ6

Sometimes my job is fantastic, as I often get in either at project conception and get to talk about strategy and potential features, or in the build phase, when we realize that all those potential features we liked some time ago were really dirty bitches in disguise. It's a great turn of events during a project's life, because some people buckle when the ship starts to sink. I like to think I'm one of the last folks to buckle, and that gives me a warm fuzzy.

However, typing in "Initial Image-less Check In" several dozen times as I update new online documentation is not one of my more technical finest moments. The reason I am posting this is that if I go on a kill-crazy rampage and lipstick "INITIAL IMAGE-LESS CHECK IN" on every victim's mirror then you'll know where it came from.

Sleep tight, gremlins ;)

Some folks have been doing a total conversion mod of the game Freespace 2 to incorporate Battlestar Galactica models. They released a trailer for their unofficial endeavor, and I've hosted it on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Apparently this demo movie has been around since this January, but it was reposted on Ars recently and therefore got my attention.

Lots of these free total conversion mods are in development, but normally the team releases a trailer, or a Web site with some screen shots, and then the word gets out and they are shut down by the content's parent company. In this case, it's Vivendi/Universal that could put down the hammer on the development team. There is especially a big bru-ha-ha if the parent company has their own video game title coming out. Many Star Wars TCs were squashed by the Hammer of Cease and Desist thanks to LucasArts.

I went up to Rockville today to visit some friends and do a little bit of work, in that order. I used to go up on Fridays, but with Lady Jaye working doubles these days, it's a bit more difficult to arrange for dogs sitters than it is for me to drive up on a different day.

I was reminded why I didn't like living up in the DC area. After a doctor's appointment, I thought I would swing by Costco to get some 2 pound bags of coffee beans from our favorite roastery, Mayorga. The parking lot was almost completely full, even at 2:30PM. The checkout line was six counters across and probably ten customers deep. The center two lines (always the longest), were backed up past the first two aisles of merchandise. I made a quick circle around the front part of the store and made my exit; I didn't feel like standing in line for 20 minutes like I used to when I lived here, and I had a meeting with The Captain at 3.

The real kicker was being held hostage by the rush hour traffic. Instead of coming home as soon as my work was done, I stayed in town until a little past 7. Luckily configuratrix and a_sleepy_panda were kind enough to keep me company and have coffee with me until it was relatively safe to leave town. Even then, traffic was still pretty heavy around 495 and 95 until I passed Fredericksburg. Still, I made it from RKV to the house in a little under 2 hours.

Oh well, I still had a nice trip, and now I'm glad to be home with the doggies!

Thanks to Lady Jaye's very Han Solo-like "I have a bad feeling about this" regarding my 2005 tax return, I asked my CPA friend from NoVA to take a look at my 2005 taxes. He said that I claimed my employee stock sale incorrectly, which is why I owed the .gov $1600 more than I planned for this year. Thanks to my soon-to-be-completed amended return, I should get about $2100 back from the Fed, and who knows if I'll get more back from VA and Maryland. Whew! With those taxes and other unplanned for expenses, money has been tighter than I like around here.