| other odds and ends |
[Jun. 2nd, 2009|10:49 am] |
As a wedding present from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) djedi I got a new monitor! Whereas my old one could fit 4 xterms without overlapping, the new one can fit 9 (and 12 with just a little overlap). This makes a huge difference when I'm programming - being able to see larger sections of the file I'm working on (and having more xterms open in different directories, etc.) lets me get distracted less by switching between virtual desktops, etc. Also, the screensaver of pictures looks much more impressive :-)
We saw "Up" on Saturday (in 3D, no less). It was sweet - the first five or so minutes were really really great. I hope I can be Ellie to David's Carl. Or something. Overall I liked it but less than Wall-E and The Incredibles.
Last night we put in 10 or so attempts on Hodir and got him down to 23% or so. It's pretty overwhelming at first - I have to find the fire and stand near it, avoid icicles, dispel frost novas, heal like crazy through the frozen blows, and not screw up the flash freeze. I got pretty good by the end except at the avoiding icicles while healing through frozen blows. Maybe next time...
If you installed .NET framework 3.5 SP1, you probably got an unwanted silent installation of a Firefox addon that makes it less safe - the link has directions on how to remove it. That kinda sucks.
This whole post is really just an excuse to post this short video which I won't spoil. Also: 100 movie lines in 200 seconds. |
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| life recap |
[Nov. 17th, 2008|09:51 am] |
World of Warcraft:
The second expansion to WoW, called "Wrath of the Lich King" (or WotLK) released Wednesday midnight. (the late midnight, not the early midnight) ( and we waited in line to get it! )
Having said that, the game is good and I got it to install on linux with the usual tweaking.
Math talk:
My math circle talk is Saturday, and it's coming along OK. I finished sketching out the talk and worked on my slides last night, although I then changed part of the talk to make a bit more sense. New theme: graph theory in computer science, with parts about register allocation and Huffman encoding. Still need to actually do the rest of the slides, then make up a worksheet, then practice it. I did get to pick out what sort of cookies would be served, though, so that's a plus :-)
Game night:
Sorry to those who I told we'd be hosting a game night this week, but between talk preparation stuff and djedi work crunch time we can't do it this week. Hopefully soon, though.
23andMe:
I think I'm going to take the plunge and get my DNA analyzed soon, maybe after the talk. Should be fun and exciting!
Wedding/Commitment ceremony planning:
We're actually starting to move forward on this - investigating locations, etc. More stress to come, I'm sure. |
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| why is my laptop crashing? |
[Aug. 19th, 2008|09:36 am] |
Executive summary: my laptop is now nigh-unusable for playing WoW.
( sooo much pain )
I'm getting to the point where I'd like to take it in for repair, but without knowing what needs to be repaired I doubt it would be fixed. And the laptop was quite expensive, and I only bought it a year ago so I really really really don't want to replace it or anything crazy like that. For now I patched WoW on my Linux box so that's at least a possibility.
It's frustrating because yes I'm aware that it's just a game, and a (gasp!) video one at that, but this is something djedi and I like to do together, and play and socialize with friends and such. |
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| first weekend is over |
[Aug. 6th, 2008|03:22 pm] |
As djedi mentioned, we survived the first weekend of shows. Friends and Family night went OK although I screwed up a part and was generally jittery - maybe because it had been two years or something? Anyway, I settled down into a pretty good rhythm about midway through Saturday and no major catastrophes. (one time I said "three minutes" twice instead of "two minutes", but in the grand scheme of things, not so bad)
Saturday was of course long - three shows and we had to do pictures between the first and second shows. You can see the ASMC pictures here (warning: spoilers!) They turned out well.
It was nice to get Saturday evening off and some sleep before the two Sunday shows, although I forgot that while two shows is a lot easier than three shows, it's still a lot harder than (say) no shows.
Days off are good, although what with NIWeek this week work has been tiring too. And tomorrow we have a short rehearsal and then back to shows again! Easier because I'll be better rested, harder because we're up until midnight Friday night with gala stuff.
Saw Batman in IMAX. It was awesome. The part where he jumps off the building looked even more incredible. Would see again.
Got my WoW account restored (at least all the important stuff). Pretty sure it's crashing because of memory, and if I run in windowed mode it doesn't seem to. At some point I need to actually fix the problem. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 23rd, 2008|10:14 am] |
Rehearsals are going pretty well, albeit a bit tiring. We're about to get into "oh crap the shows is really really soon and we all suck" mode (it's an annual occurrence), but once we buckle down I think all will be well.
After rehearsal last night, I arrived home to find a few "dude, did you steal all the stuff in the guild bank?" IMs. Not a good sign. Tried to log in to WoW and couldn't, so I reset the password online and discovered that I had, indeed, done so. The weird thing is that the thief took basically all 5000 of my gold, but didn't sell any of my soulbound gear, and cleared out most of my bank but not all of it. And didn't find the 8 Primal Mights and 450 gold on my auction house mule.
Anyway, I filed a petition to get my crap back, which I think they usually do, and presumably they'll restore the guild bank as well. Yet another way WoW is better than the real world :-)
This week I've been superproductive at work...let's see if that continues today.
This article about purity balls is kinda creepy. |
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| not the ideal situation for starting 3 solid weeks of rehearsals |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|01:33 pm] |
I've been unable to get to sleep the last two nights. Last night was particularly bad so eventually I got up and programmed some and played a little WoW. (won a close AB battleground on my 46 pally) Even then after returning to bed it took me a while to sleep. I had no sodas yesterday, which is the most common cause of insomnia for me. Hopefully it just kinda disappears. The alternative is that I get so tired that falling asleep is no problem, but I'd kinda like to avoid that :-)
White House, 2005: Setting the Record Straight: Democrats On An Artificial Timetable In IraqThe President Explains Why Timetables For Withdrawal Are Bad Strategy. PRES. BUSH: "Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would send a message across the world that America is a weak and an unreliable ally. Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would send a signal to our enemies - that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run and abandon its friends. And setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would vindicate the terrorists' tactics of beheadings and suicide bombings and mass murder - and invite new attacks on America." (President Bush, Remarks On The War On Terror, Annapolis, MD, 11/30/05)
Iraq, yesterday: Iraq Wants Withdrawal Timetable In U.S. PactIraq's national security adviser said Tuesday that his government would not sign an agreement governing the future role of U.S. troops in Iraq unless it includes a timetable for their withdrawal.
Unrelatedly: you can't protect your HTML source and it's a waste of time to try. |
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| post-WoW doldrums |
[May. 13th, 2008|10:09 am] |
seem nonexistent. (anyone know a good antonym for "doldrums"?) Last night we bought some exciting new books, I bought GTA IV, got a graduation present for my sister, and committed to working on my new project. (calculating the probability of satisfying target cards in the game of Target)
It seems that my computer is under attack from a botnet. I pretty frequently get ssh requests coming from wildly different IP addresses trying out a dictionary list of user names. I'm not too worried about them guessing a username/password combo but the fact that they're hitting my box in general is a little scary. I've started turning off ssh at night but I do use it occasionally during the day...
things younger than mccain
If you're in to electoral predictions (for the general election), fivethirtyeight.com is a godsend. Probabilities that each candidate will win each state, cartograms, graphs... |
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| short post |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|04:26 pm] |
Put some weekend pictures up.
We downed Gruul's Lair for the first time last night! Things went rather smoothly - the whole run took under two hours. Recruited a lot of new guildies too. |
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| Theorycrafting: upgrades from Zul'Aman |
[Apr. 18th, 2008|04:48 pm] |
Since I revamped the Frost mage DPS calculator to include Icy Veins and the Water Elemental, plus the fact that Zul'Aman is almost on farm status for us, time to look at what upgrades I would like!
For me right now, 1 point of sustained DPS = 13 int = 3.6 spell crit = 1.9 spell haste = 1.75 +damage = 1.45 +spell hit (still not capped out!)
Ah, that was heartening - there's more out of Zul'Aman for me than I thought! (although Wub's Cursed Hexblade isn't an upgrade, Mantle of Ill Intent may not be so great if I ever get my Heroic Magister's Terrace shoulders, and Mana Attuned Band is a drop out of the third timed chest which seems pretty hard to do) |
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| this has been a long week |
[Apr. 18th, 2008|10:59 am] |
mostly because I've been horribly unproductive at work. Luckily, the Productivity Fairy has waved his magic wand and yesterday and today have been much better.
Rolled out the new version of the Frost mage DPS calculator (hopefully soon to be arcane and fire as well) - here's the old version for comparsion. I think it looks a lot nicer now.
This story about a non-doctor having a breakthrough in curing cancer makes him sound like a crank, until you get to the part where his method is being tested in hospitals now, including M. D. Anderson. The late Dr. Smalley (that felt weird to type) helped out by providing some nanoparticles.
I'm hesitant to link this story about elevators because it discusses a guy who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. Make sure you're in a strong mental state before watching the sped up security camera footage of the ordeal. The piano music makes it even more tragic.
Last night's Zul'Aman run went well - we downed the Bear and Eagle bosses with 9 minutes (plenty of time!) before the sacrifice and killed Hex Lord Malacrass for the first time. Did a decent job on Zul'Jin - almost got through phase 3 before we called it a night. Unfortunately wowjutsu hasn't picked up our new loot yet because it's slow and unreliable. (I'll admit to being bitter I didn't think of the wowjutsu idea first...genius, I tell you!) |
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| weekend shenanigans |
[Apr. 14th, 2008|09:18 am] |
This weekend we ripped through Zul'Aman - first time for downing the bear boss in 20 minutes, downing the dragonhawk boss, downing the gauntlet and eagle boss (one-shot!), and downing the lynx boss. (I got a nice new chestpiece - now my frostbolts cast in 2.45 seconds!)
I've also been working on a new design for my frost mage DPS calculator - here's the new version versus the old version.
We also went to a few birthday parties and bought a new bed from Austin Discount Mattress, and took a very few pictures of said events. I'm going to take my camera places from now on instead of relying on my cameraphone - while it works in a pinch, the pictures are blurry and the color is always a bit off. I also learned that alcohol + hot tub is bad news for me, even after just one glass of wine. I got extremely woozy and lightheaded after a little while, and it all happened very fast. Anyway.
We need a Wikipedia for data - as an avid consumer of data, I heartily agree!
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People |
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| laptop debate |
[Feb. 4th, 2008|02:39 pm] |
The Mac continues to get better. Three days after spilling a ton of tea on it the screen is all better, the fan no longer spins crazily, and the battery charges normally. (which may have been happening all along but I was suspicious for a while) Unfortunately, the only problem is that the "v" key (and maybe the Control key) don't work at all. So I guess I'll have to take it in and see if they can fix it, which honestly is pretty doubtful.
Assuming it can't be fixed, I'm leaning towards not replacing it since we don't play WoW much anymore (we picked up Guild Wars over the weekend...we'll see if we continue playing or not) and I just bought the damn thing. I am getting back a big ol' tax refund since I deducted a bunch of moving expenses, although the Maryland state tax situation is a little more unclear. (if there online calculator is right, which I don't think it is, I owe $500 and will be very miffed)
The cover of a romance novel I saw at HEB - thanks, cameraphone!
A work friend has an imported version of Smash Bros and I get to play it tomorrow night. I am extremely excited.
Super Tuesday is tomorrow! Some polls look really good for Obama, others look less good, so who knows. Not sure how I'll keep up with results while playing Smash Bros tomorrow night, but I'll think of something! |
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| MacBook Pro: October 17, 2007 - ? |
[Jan. 31st, 2008|07:59 am] |
While kicking butt in Arathi Basin last night, I knocked a big ol' glass of tea right onto my $3000 laptop. A good chunk of it went in the keyboard (which made the laptop turn off which is probably a good thing given the alternatives), so djedi hurriedly mopped as much as we could off, disconnected it and moved it to higher ground. (it's currently sitting upside-down on our dining room table in the hopes that it will drain or something) I didn't have the heart to try to turn it on this morning - guess I'll see about that tonight. I did buy the AppleCare for it, although I don't know if that covers spills or not.
The weird thing was that I wasn't super panicked or angry or whatever. I was upset at myself, but I know that I'm prone to clumsiness when I'm tired. (like when I burned my thumb on the oven last week!) And if the laptop is unrecoverable, well, that would suck, but I could get by for iPod syncing and WoW playing and whatnot. It would be nice if it worked though.
Ironically, I was just yesterday reading about jwz's backup strategy and thinking it sounded like a good idea. Not that I had anything particularly interesting on the laptop data-wise (I always back up my iTunes database), but still...
Other than that, work has been going really really well this week. My mom visits next Wednesday, Friday we close on our house (!), and that weekend djedi's parents are coming to hopefully buy carpet for us and stuff, which will be quite helpful.
I'm going to miss campaigning in Florida, specifically hearing about Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani saying that English should be the national language, and then advertising in Spanish. That's some good hypocrisy, there. Via dailykos, an article in Rolling Stone about how Republican's immigrant-bashing is not going to help them, especially in the Southwest.
Finally, on the way home I heard this kinda-brutal story on NPR about how Giuliani should have taken his advice from his leadership book, complete with excerpts from the audiobook itself. (it's the story on top, not the longer story on the bottom) |
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| my head asplode |
[Dec. 14th, 2007|03:02 pm] |
House-hunting! Still no email from T-Mobile (36 hours and counting)! Applied to write for WoW Insider! Bought a PS3 yesterday! Christmas party tonight! Other things! |
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| Christmas is nigh |
[Dec. 10th, 2007|10:09 am] |
I finished my WoW arena rating graph. The neat part is being able to see statistics (we are much worse against teams with 1 mage than teams with no mages, etc.) and select criteria to get specific results.
I put some Christmas pictures up (getting the tree for my parents house and our tree), as well as a puzzle David and Miriam did. (penguins!)
Sunday we went Christmas shopping for 3.5 hours, hitting 8 stores plus the mall. It was crazy. I'm beginning to understand feeling overwhelmed at the holidays. We did get gifts for a good chunk of the people we need to, though.
I added an iTunes playlist containing the first song from every album. It turns out I rate the first song on each album an average of .4 higher (see the analysis - "First tracks" average rating is 3.86, "Music" average rating is 3.47), which I found interesting! |
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| i dunno, stuff and such |
[Nov. 27th, 2007|01:17 pm] |
Busy week! Last night was a WoW raid (more on that below), tonight is game night, Wed. is a church thing and Thurs. I'm probably going on a Rice recruiting dinner thing.
The past weekend at home was nice, albeit a bit busy. And I could have done without the rain. We did manage to assemble a new grill for my dad. I'm getting a little tired of the drive to Houston - if you count the renaissance festival last weekend (you drive all the way to Brenham and then some more) and if I drive on Thursday that will be 3 trips back and forth to/from Houston in less than three weeks. Oh well.
We're going to look at houses on Saturday! Exciting stuff.
I finally broke down and bought the Beach Boys's (that's the correct punctuation, right grammar folks?) album "Pet Sounds". (I say "broke down" because we have very few magazines in our bathroom and the one that's always open is mental_floss and it's always open to the article about Masterpiece #98, which is that album) I bought it from the Amazon MP3 store which I'm starting to love for convenience and pricing. ($8 for the whole album!) Anyway, it has some catchy songs but overall I'm not as impressed...maybe my expectations were high after reading it was #2 on Rolling Stone's top 500 albums of all time. It's growing on me a little as I listen, but not as much as I would have hoped. Also, I have 0 of the top 25 albums on that list (well, except for "Pet Sounds" now). Shameful? Maybe.
So the last (and first) time we went to Zul'Aman, we had to take a PuG offtank, and so we wiped many times on Nalorrak (the bear boss), and finally downed him after like 3 hours. Since we had our real offtank last night, we thought we'd try to do it in 20 minutes. (for "extra" loot, meaning two pieces instead of one) We engaged him within 20 minutes, barely, but apparently you have to kill him within 20 minutes to get the loot...since it takes us 8 minutes to kill him, that will be difficult.
Anyway, we went ahead and tried Halazzi (the lynx boss). We wiped probably 20+ times trying it...we did make some progress, getting him to 70% once, but no better. Pretty frustrating, all in all. We discussed some strategies at lunch (wings!) that will probably help, but we might just try Akil'zon (the eagle boss) instead, whom we thought we were headed towards last night. He's supposed to be easier. |
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| arena rating graph |
[Nov. 9th, 2007|02:51 pm] |
Went out to lunch today with WoW people and we talked about this neat idea for an Arena rating graph. So you start at a 1500 rating and every match you play you gain or lose 1-29 points, and it would be neat to see the progression of that as the season goes on. Also nice to see what composition of teams we're good against and which we're not, and the ratings of the teams we win or lose to. I'm having to try really hard not to just start writing down ideas here since it's not work-related :-)
My first thought was to do the graph in Flex, but I forgot that Flex Charting is a separate package that costs money. So I did some research and there are lots of options for this sort of thing (found this excellent article on interactive charts and graphs via del.icio.us). AmCharts looks like the best option, with FusionCharts Free close behind. I'll have to download and try them out at home; of course the hard part will be figuring out how to display all that data in a useful way.
Here's an excellent article on how Simon Fink's team got into the top 10 for the Netflix Prize - lots of juicy juicy math. Makes me want to get back into that sort of thing, which would make three active projects at once, which is too much. |
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distracted
calm
busy
frustrated
tired
excited
nerdy
confused
anxious
indescribable
bouncy