You know how sometimes people on your friends list post about stuff going on in their lives, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute! Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating THAT PERSON? Since when?" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! [Ed.: only if you want to.] Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-word answers seldom help anyone out.

( Who I am today and whatnot... )

Tags: life
Current Mood: accomplished

VoicePost 106K 0:36

“Who I managed to bike 18mi from the ___. I'll know it's possible but it takes me about 3 hours although I guess I got lost on various points. Anyways yeah just using my ___ voice posting message ___ I guess kinda of. I need to get 3 more inverse(?) voice processing. That be awesome. Alright. That's all. Then Over and out.” Auto-Transcribed Voice Post

I should be signing a lease this afternoon. And I'll have a 1 bedroom / 1 bathroom, instead of a studio, which means I'll have a sleeping area that's separate from my living area, so I can invite people over! And I get a balcony. Plus, I'll be paying about $75 less per month. The only downside: Work is probably 15-25 minutes away by bike, slightly more than my current apartment.

But I'm still within a mile of a caltrain station (San Antonio) and now I'm closer to Safeway and Walmart and Sears and a whole set of shops in the area. Plus, I'll be closer to Mountain view, so biking there isn't as much of a pain.

---

Also, I managed to replace my caged bearings with loose bearings for my front axle. Thus far, it seems to have been an improvement. But I had to install 12 bearings, instead of the 9 or 11 that I was told I was going to have to use. (Should have been 9, I think... I read it should be number of bearings in cage(7) + 2). Need to find time to talk to the bike shop guys. :(

Tags: apartment, life

Got a Termination of tenancy notice today, giving me 30 days (should be 60 days as I've been here for over a year, arguing with landlord about this) to leave. Reason: he's tearing down the place to upgrade it.

And what annoys me the most: I saw an awesome apartment for $25 cheaper, 0.3 miles from the next caltrain station and 3-4 blocks from work. But I didn't contact that landlord in time - someone else signed the lease before I could.

So now it's either a $1300 apartment that's across the street from the cheaper one... or a lot of hunting and increased amounts of praying for something good.

Annoyances. Rawr.

...I had a really, really odd, but vivid dream of alien technology invading the world. They were composed of small flying cubes, no more than a foot in any direction, with some sort of bigass mothership backing them up with large (unspecified) force.

But most importantly, they were armed with some sort of weapon that they could use to broadcast and wipe all of our hard drives. No, not just wipe - rewrite, so when our computers turned back on, they would boot up with the alien's OS, which would then report in about their owners. And the aliens would come and exterminate us.

A few survivors of the alien invasion managed to escape into the mountains or something, living off the land and avoiding technology and fire. Our history was lost, wiped by the alien's weapon technology. A lot of our technology was lost, as everything that could or would run was running the alien OS. But I woke up just as my dad happily told me to retrieve one of my wiped external hard drives, so we could bring it to some guy somewhere in a mountain (a hermit?). It was unknown whether this guy could help, or my dad had somehow turned to the dark side, and I was being turned over to the aliens...

This left much of my morning in a daze, contemplating one thing:
We need a permanent storage medium that can't get wiped out or destroyed. For some reason, my initial thought turned to storing the bits and bytes in carbon, with data encoded at the (sub?)atomic level...

Discover sent me 5 copies of the same pamphlet telling me how to activate my discover gift card.

Thanks. Couldn't you send 5 copies of the gift card instead? :) I really appreciate the $5 gift, but.. like... I didn't need 5 copies of the "how to use" when I only get one gift card. :)

http://www.brikwars.com/rules/2005/cover.htm

I need legos. And friends with legos. Anyone interested?

I do like tower defense games.

Defense Grid (Windows, XBOX) was decent. Not particularly innovated or creative in any real way. Runs slowly on MacOS X using CrossOver Games (playable, but not enjoyable). Real windows box recommended.

Tags: games

I got my XKCD book.

There's so many little puzzles and small things that I want to try to figure out.

But I don't want to spend the time. Because I'm pretty sure someone else has already done the job.

But if I don't spend the time, I don't get to feel that nice fuzzy feeling of having achieved something.

But there's so much else I want to spend time on. But I also want that fuzzy feeling.

Damnit, why can't I make a program that'll solve it for me? / Why don't I have more knowledge to fill in the missing bits and pieces?*

*Not really a serious complaint. Just whining for the sake of whining, really.

Tags: xkcd

Is definitely on my list of series to watch.

There's cats. That's it.


Also, I need a dreamwidth client. Ideally one that'll take care of crossposting elsewhere too.

Hell, I need a client that'll let me post updates to dreamwidth, crosspost to LJ (or rely on Dreamwidth to do the crosspost), then summarize it to a tweet with optional Facebook status updates.

Come now, I'm sure there's one somewhere... maybe an Adobe AIR application?

Tags: anime, dreamwidth

...front wheel is not as tight as it should be, so if I make sudden turns to the front wheel, there's a distant rattling sound. I need to take it off and tighten the nut a bit more, so the bearings are a tiny bit tighter. I wish I had a 13 (or 15?) mm box wrench...

And I can't use my lowest (or is that highest?) rear gear - doing so causes the chain to slip. Curious. Possibly the wrong number of links (two extra? Beats me.)

Also, Google Barcode! http://www.google.com/logos/barcode09.gif (What are we celebrating?)

Tags: bike, google

The weather's getting cold again. I've started to hide (happily and comfortably) under my thick blankets and piles of pillows.

I don't get much done after work. I need to rectify that. But for now, blankets + kindle = joy.

(Note to self: check the windows to see about patching up some of the cracks.)

Tags: life, weather

Attended the Castro Street Fair: http://www.castrostreetfair.org/.

It seemed oh so tame in comparison to the Folsom street fair, although this time, I didn't get hit on (:D Yay, it's nice to get hit on once in a while, especially when both sides are joking.) by the donation sticker dude. Although the question of "Where do you want me to stick it?" always comes up. Hehehehe.

Mmm, saw some cheerleading, dancing. Had a nice lunch made of maize bread, beans, pork, cheese, with a side of odd fries that weren't made of potato. Got yet another free condom and lube sample along with a straw hat (the hat I gave away to a street artist that had a sign out for donations, but no hat to put it in). Also got a container of jelly beans from gay.com. Mmmm. Oh, also saw people giving lessons on breaking boards. It was surprising that people could be taught to break boards without real training. I almost wonder if the black belts holding said board were exerting extra force on the boards to help them break? I don't know, I didn't try.

Also went to the CupcakeCamp: http://cupcakecamp.org/

It was, as the site put it, a delicious success. There were yummy cupcakes, I talked to people standing in line in front and behind me. Heard a story of an awesome April Fools joke of cupcakes being made out of meat (to look like chocolate cake) and potatoes dyed pink (as frosting). I shall have to do this myself, someday.

There were some awesome cupcakes too - I saw some baked into an ice cream waffle cup, an ice cream cone, ones that looked like cheeseburgers (seriously, I swear. I have pictures!), ones made from avocado (or with avocado), and ones with bacon.


Mmm, and tomorrow? Microsoft New Efficiency Live Launch. Need to get there at 7:30 AM. Urrrgh. Oh well, free copy of Windows 7.

Tags: san francisco

Today I managed to open up and regrease both front and rear bike axles. This means I've now opened up just about every single part on a bike and repair just about every issue one might run into.

To self:
Front axle uses bearing cages*. Rear axle uses loose bearings**. 9 of them, to be precise.

*bearing cages = ball bearings in a metal donut, pretty much.
**loose bearings = loose ball bearings.

I also replaced my chain. It might be two links too long though - I need to check tomorrow.

Tags: bike, diy

Does anyone remember downloading the mulan soundtrack from me, oh... 3 years ago? And still have it? Not the movie soundtrack released by Disney, but the Academy Promo one that contains the full soundtrack from the movie, including the Short Hair clip?

I've somehow deleted it and/or backed it up to a disc somewhere and lost track of where it went. :( Help?

Tags: disney, mulan, ost, soundtracks