It’s been a somewhat quiet week at work (but that is relative to it’s normal crazy pace) with a lot of people on the road and at client sites. I’ve been able to get a decent amount of coding done which has been a nice break from the standard day to day.
Tonight I get to pick Rosa up from Girls’ Night Out on my way home once she makes her contractual appearance at a hip Mission Restaurant with Katie. I believe it is an Arinell’s pizza night for me. Yum.
For once my non-traditional last name has come in handy. I’m not sure what I’ll ever do with it, but I registered lusz.cz last week. This allows me to have a site whose URL reads http://jeff.lusz.cz .
I’ll probably put a forward in one of these days once I get some free time.
The new MAcBook Pro has been very nice his past week. The new button / trackpad system still takes a little getting used to and doesn’t always register my click as a click, but I think I am slowly being retrained.
VirtualBox has worked really well, and I have Ubuntu 8 running nicely. The funny thing is that I can run 3 or so virtual machines that all have more memory than the laptop I just moved away from.
The bottom edge of the laptop case is too sharp, I expect they will fix that in a revision.
Well the time has come for me to upgrade from my venerable Powerbook g4 to the new hotness the MacBook Pro (fall). My olderer powerbook had been starting to show its age with a one hour battery life, peeling apart sharp case and very dim screen. After a few months of complaining and checking the rumors sites I finally bought the new MacBook Pro yesterday.
I went down to the Apple Store at 4th and Market after buying a new diaper pail at the container store. It took longer to pick out a new diaper pail than it took to go in, confirm my thoughts and walk out of the store with the box.
I tried to pick up a Firewire 400 to Firewire 800 convertor but the Apple store was out. I had read that Migration Assistant also work over Ethernet so I resigned myself to that. It some ways it was a fortuitous event that the store was out of the convertors. Instead of using firewire target mode, I ended up using a direct Ethernet connection.
The Powerbook G4 also has gigabit ethernet which supposedly is faster than firewire 400. I’m not sure if Firewire 800 to Firewire 800 would have been faster, but this was fast enough.
I love the Migration Assisstent, since here I am a couple hours later typing on in my very familiar environment, except that my 3 year old laptop has been replaced with this years much faster model.
Pluses:
Much faster, much brighter screen. 4 GB of ram is a dream
Got VirtualBox and iPhone dev kit instead very quickly.
It doesn’t seem to be affected by the mysterious wifi dropouts that Katie’s newish MacBook suffers
The new bigger screen is a dream
Minuses:
I hatehatehate the glossy screen. I expect once this fad passes, Apple will go back to offering a Matte version.
The trackpad while nice is VERY loud when clicking. It may get better as time goes on. You do have the option of using a trackpad tap instead of a click, but I always find that too be too sensitive. It also doesn’t seem to work in the same way as a real button, I find it clicking but not performing and action too often. I’m sure I’ll learn it’s quirks shortly thought.
The VMWare Maemo application I have for doing Nokia n810 development doesn’t seem to work under VirtualBox, but it’s probably a quick fix once I figure it out.
I wish they made it slightly smaller instead of slightly bigger, as it is it’s almost impossible to use a 15″ machine on an airplane.
Rosa, Katie and I had a great time at Bill and Angela’s wedding last weekend in Napa.
Rosa was a hit and didn’t melt down until the car ride home.
Welcome to the world little Rosa!
Born 3 weeks ago, mom and baby are doing great.
I’m writing this right now with her strapped to my chest asleep in the carrier.
So cute.
Spent the last couple of hours performing my wordpress migration. The migration itself went pretty quickly, but cleaning up the remants of wordpress 2.0, the referal highjacking crap that was going around and cleaning up 90,000 comment spams via sql was a pain in the ass.
I’m getting a little annoyed with wordpress lately, especially on the security front. There is no mention on the wordpress.org front page or blog about the recent referral highjacking vulnerability and how to fix it. I actually had to go to some random guys web page to get the instructions on how to clean up the mess.
It should have been a script provided by the wordpress folks, or included in the upgrade process.
The other annoyance was having the run sql commands in the phpmyadmin console to kill spam comments. This should be a button in the wordpress interface.
As seen at http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20061207/4025/
there are some simple sql commands you can run to find the count of the unmoderated and spam comments you have waiting for you.
If you want to delete all unmoderated comments that spammers were able to inject in to your wordpress database, run the following command
That took care of my 90,000 comments instantly.
Ten years ago this week, plus or minus, I made the move from the south bay up to San
Francisco. A friend had recently cleaned out what is now a storage room but at the time was the perfect San
Francisco room. One queen size bed, plus one extra foot in each direction, affectionately known as “The Box”
People who have lived in the box over the years.
I lived there about six months before moving into a “big boys apartment” a half a block away.
San Francisco has treated me well over the past decade, except for the two El Nino years where I thought I would freeze.
Got out of the house today finally after a long weekend of being sick as the proverbial dog. K had to go to Flax today to pick up things for drawing. Took a walk up Valencia to ‘It’s Tops’ for breakfast. Yum yum yum. The walk home took me down some of the back alleys of the Mission. Came across this old house at Gough St and Colton St. In a middle of a sea on concrete they managed to keep this cute house and tree around.
My favorite is to sit 10 hours in the airport waiting for your plane to be cancelled.
Followed up by arriving at the hotel for 3 hours of sleep before you new flight leaves and getting waved in by the Chicago police officer assembling a shotgun in the back of his patrol car in the hotel parking lot. All the while an other officer with a police dog runs around with a flashlight.
The cop with a gun was very friendly and with a smile said “come on in” whe I asked if I could walk across the parking lot to the hotel or hang out until they were done.
It was -2 so I was happy to get waved in, criminal on the loose or not.
Didn’t help my cold though, still sitting on the couch here in SF coughing up a lung.
ugh
Back home now after a good, but sick, week on the road.
Had a good time before leaving town at Sarah and Deane’s Stateside engagement party. We won’t be able to make it to New Zealand for the wedding, but wished them well here on an amazingly warm February night at the Beach Chalet.
After the planned party, we all ambled up to the recently renovated Cliff House. I’m not a huge fan of the new one, since it seems a little soulless and human-unfriendly on the outside. Inside was nice, and they were able to accommodate a group of 20 or so without reservations for dessert and coffee.
We heard that if you had a hat and an instrument that there was to be an impromptu march band up in Dolores Park today. Having both a hat and instruments we made the long 1 block trek up to DP. An interesting mix of cardboard, kazoos, real instruments and bubbles made a summer day in February pretty fun.
Last Sunday, Katie and I made a far too rare trip out to Baker Beach near the golden gate for an hour or so to enjoy a beautiful warm January day. The waves were coming in from the north west and were surprisingly large, though I guess it’s not a surprise since it was the same weekend as Maverick’s. It was a great day, though I guess if you ask our neighbors on the beach after my shirt came off, you might get a different answer.
I actually wish I had brought my suit since the water temperature never changes I might has well gone in, at least just for the notch in my belt for swimming in San Francisco in January. More rational heads prevailed.
Today was spring cleaning day at Chez Luszcz. I’m still sneezing from the hours of sweeping, vacuuming and mopping. Judd went into the deepest cover ever and actually found a new hiding place behind the shoes. A hour of vacuuming will do that to a cat.
We suffer the american disease of too much crap, but continue in our task to get rid of most of it. The philosophy of “if someone broke in and stole it, would you even know it was gone” help us get rid of things today such as the velvet bag my wedding ring came in, the AUXILIARY box that came with the box that Katie’s wedding ring came in, and the cloth bag they all came in. Adios.
Java books and dirty underwear, sitting together on the sidewalk.
2007 Index
Number of countries visited: 2 (Canada and Denmark)
Number times luggage lost: 1
Luggage returned: 1
Age of bike in years: 13
Number of Bike Tires Stolen: 1
Number of Bike Chains Cut: 1
Age of Car: No Car!
Number of email accounts regularly checked: 5
Ratio of Spam to Real Mail: 100:1
Days spent swimming at Ocean Beach this summer (SF, CA): 1
Water temperature for that sunny California summer dip: 52 degrees
Number of LCD Picture Frames Available in Ct Christmas Eve: 1
Number of Making Dinner Shows missed this year: 2
Amazing sunset tonight
Just got back from a week back East, mostly in West Virginia. Cell phone (just barely), but no wifi. Not too much of a surprise.
You can buy fireworks, but not liquor, in the supermarket. I guess you have to pick just one, so they did.
Today was a purge day, ala 43folders which always feels good, especially in our smallish apartment. A stack of clothes for Community Thift, a couple of ties that didn’t survive the dress up test for Catherine’s wedding in Palo Alto last night. For someone who never really has to wear a suit, I have far too many ties.
A nice reception by the baylands, short but sweet, capping off a refreshing (and much needed) week of vacation.
The San Francisco fog cooperated on Thursday night to give us a view of the ISS Space Station and the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-117). The shuttle couldn’t make its landing in Florida so we had one extra night to try to see it. Wednesday night was fogged over.
Heavens Above gave us the times that the space station should be visible so we went out to see what we could see.
We managed to see the space station travel over, followed about the shuttle about 30 seconds in the sky behind it.
Here’s an 8 second exposure of the space station, it’s the streak above the building.
Well it’s 2007. Fruit flies like a banana and all that.
2006 Index
Number of countries visited: 4
Weeks without access to laptop while on vacation: 2
Number of times email checked those 2 weeks: 2
Ratio of spam to real email: >50:1
Number times luggage lost: 2
Luggage returned: 1
Age of bike in years: 12
Age of car in years: 16
Number of times car stolen this year: 1
Days before car returned: 3
Number of earthquake kits eaten by car theives: 1
Number of email accounts regularly checked: 5
Days spent swimming at Ocean Beach this summar (SF, CA): 1
Water temprature for that sunny California summer dip: 52 degrees
Water temprature in Southampton New York “Polar Bear” swim: 47
Number of ipods available on Eastern Long Island (Shinnicock Canal and west) Dec 24th: 1
After dinner last night a couple of us went up to the Castro and managed to not get shot.
We were a block away at Church and Market when we heard the shots ring out. bang bang bangbang bang bang.
It was pretty clear they weren’t fireworks and then maybe 15 seconds later there was the noise of the parade fencing coming down as the panic wave started.
There was a noticable reduction in checking at the gates this year (though we decided not to go in since it was already far too packed. We hung out a little outside and watched the costumes come in.
After a couple minutes things settled down, though you could tell something had just gone down since cops were streaming in from the outside area.
I’m sure this week there will be a lot of discusion of what to do about Halloween in the Castro. It is a great thing and a horrible thing at the same time. A lot of creativity, and drunken violence.
You could tell that the city cheaped out on things this year, no entertainment but more cops. It all added to a general bad vibe.
This guy had one of the better costumes I saw, he was a perfect Hasselhoff/Kitt combo. The red light in front even moved. He must be one of those guys that don’t work at a startup and have oddles of free time.
This year I was a combo “Abe Lincoln” / “Ape Lincoln” depending on the time.
Walking to work this morning, after getting off BART, I hear “Jeff, Jeff!” from across the street. It was Adam who noticed me walking in the opposite direction. One of things he noticed was my “old school” headphones, more in the style of knock off sony walkman circa 1986 with the foam puffy ear pieces. I lost my ipod headphones and these are the only ones I could find in the junk box. I checked myself in the window as I continued on, and man. _very_ dorky.
Off to Linuxworld in a bit. Palamida has a booth there today and I always like walking the floor.
Saw Nicole doing a bang up job at the EFF booth.
Just got off the phone with my wife who was driving with a friend to dinner. Then the earthquake started. It was the longest one I have felt (and the biggest one I’ve felt at home)
My neighbor is yelling at her hunsband to “turn the gas off”, though it didn’t seem nearly that big.
The USGS reports it as a 4.4 up near Santa Rosa.
The building shook _a lot_ for a decent amount of time.
Crazy.
