Problem

Running VMware server on linux, I edit virtual machine settings, open the CD-ROM device, select Use ISO image, and Browse. I navigate to my smbmount (actually a cifs mount line in my /etc/fstab), and VMware hangs for about three or four minutes before displaying the contents of the directory. The following lines are written to /var/log/syslog:

Mar 24 16:54:30 nine kernel:  CIFS VFS: server not responding
Mar 24 16:54:30 nine kernel:  CIFS VFS: No response to cmd 47 mid 16
Mar 24 16:54:30 nine kernel:  CIFS VFS: Write2 ret -11, written = 0
Mar 24 16:55:30 nine kernel:  CIFS VFS: server not responding
Mar 24 16:55:30 nine kernel:  CIFS VFS: No response to cmd 47 mid 28
Mar 24 16:55:30 nine kernel:  CIFS VFS: Write2 ret -11, written = 0

Tracking down the problem

I started by just googling these errors for a while, with no particular luck. The closest solution I found was someone getting errors like this, and eventually resolving them with a new NIC and/or switch … some network problem. I was hopeful this might be my problem, since I was connecting at 100/Half through an old hub (not switch) on all machines exhibiting the problem (though, they did have various types of NICs, so I didn’t think it was a driver bug). Unfortunately, even after I was able to get a switch instead of a hub, the problem persisted. The #samba IRC channel was no help, and I wasn’t ready to bother the developers.

I put the problem aside for a few days, and gave it another shot on a clean state of mind. This time, I used lsof to figure out which pid had an open handle on my smbmount. I then attached strace to the process and tried to open a directory, and was greeted with this little gem (comments added by me):

/* create .vmBigFileTest0 for LARGEFILE access */
open("/blah/blah/.vmBigFileTest0", O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_EXCL|O_LARGEFILE, 0600) = 36
 
/* override the regular signal handler for 'exceeds file size' with an
 * 'ignore signal' handler
 */
rt_sigaction(SIGXFSZ, {SIG_IGN}, {0x80c9f00, ~[KILL STOP RTMIN RT_1], SA_RESTART}, 8) = 0
 
/* set the read/write offset to 2 GiB */
_llseek(36, 2147483648, [2147483648], SEEK_SET) = 0
 
/* write a byte */
write(36, "\245", 1)                    = 1
 
/* close ... which also means flush buffers to 'disk.'
 * this call hangs for a long time
 */
close(36 <unfinished ...></unfinished>

Download this code: vmware-strace.c

To summarize: VMware apparently thinks it’s necessary to check if the underlying filesystem of its ISO mount location has a 2 GiB (or smaller, I suppose) filesize limitation. While this is a very legitimate concern when browsing for the path to create virtual disk files, it strikes me as pretty irrelevant for mounting an ISO, which should be a read-only operation. To make matters worse, it doesn’t do this by checking the filesystem type in /proc/mounts or something quick and easy like that … it does this by effectively writing 2 GiB of data. (In fairness, their way is more reliable and future-proof, but come on…)

Solution

Once I saw what was going on, the solution to this problem was pretty trivial. I remounted my smbmount to be read-only, rather than read-write, which prevents VMware from getting the chance to try to write 2 GiB of data. In case you really don’t want to do any more research yourself, this means either passing the -o ro option to the mount command, or adding ro to the comma-separated options list of the fstab entry (right after the fs type entry … i.e. cifs).

Today when I tried to go pay my bill, I logged in as I always do. However, instead of being greeted by my regular account overview page, today I was faced with a page instructing me that I was being required to create NEW account credentials. I tried to create my regular username, and was informed that I could not use any special characters (i.e. an underscore). Although this is a pretty dumb restriction already, I have run into this on various sites, so I was willing to accept this and go on with my life (and without any special characters in my username).

Here’s where the real stupidity began. A few keystrokes later, I had modified my username to eliminate any malicious characters like underscores, and was naturally proceeding to enter my password. Sprint had other plans. Apparently it’s not good enough to have a secure password any more–usernames must also meet complexity requirements. (If you’re not familiar with the term, this is the general name for all the crazy rules like Your password must be at least eight characters, but no more than nine, must contain three letters, two numbers, at least two special characters, and cannot contain a word or portion of a word.) What? Complexity requirements FOR MY USERNAME? I guess we should just have two password fields now. Or maybe three (more on that later). I briefly tried hacking their javascript, but was unsuccessful, so now my username can be described by the following formula:

[regular username] - [special characters] + 1

:sigh: (I guess I should just be thankful that my username at least [barely] met the length requirements.)

I started to enter my password, and was shocked to see the letters appearing as readable text on the screen! I guess the people designing this application have never used a computer with another person in the room, or they might have considered that was a bad idea. Don’t worry too much, though … once you click on the field, the password turns into asterisks. I guess it must have been fun with JavaScript day at the Sprint development office. :roll-eyes:

Lastly, there’s the PIN. As if the password-like requirements for the username, and the password itself weren’t enough, I’m now apparently required to create another PIN … even though I already had one. But this one must be more secure because it has to be stupidly long, unlike every other four-digit PIN since the beginning of time. I feel so safe knowing that I now have three SUPER SECURE identifiers for accessing my account … two of which were emailed to me (in cleartext, obviously) immediately following their creation.

THANKS SPRINT!!

Saturday

I left for Vegas on a completely full flight on Saturday. The flight was supposed to depart at 1930, but by 1935, they hadn’t even closed the door yet, since they were apparently waiting for a few stragglers. Eventually we took off; I passed on the option to buy a $5 snack box or miniature bottle of wine, and contented myself with a little cranberry juice before trying to sleep (with little success). The landing was slightly bumpy, but pretty tame compared to what it sounded like a few flights/landings were on Sunday. Due to the magic of flying west two time zones, the flight only took a bit more than an hour (that is, comparing local time to local time), so a stint in the crowded baggage claim and a $15 cab ride to the hotel later, and I was checked into The Flamingo. I proceeded to spend a couple hours trying to hack the hotel’s internet, rather than paying $12/day for it (after succeeding so effortlessly last spring on my trip to Los Angeles), only to eventually give up and use Sprint EVDO (’cellular’ internet) through my phone.

Sunday

I was able to sleep in a little on Sunday, much to my delight, and after showering and spending a kind of ridiculous amount of time deliberating about what to wear (I packed roughly 2x as many clothes as I needed), I indulged myself in a classy breakfast [wrap] at Subway in an adjacent hotel/casino. I was able to find my way to Subway and back without much issue, but the journey to follow was something of a different story. After running back up to my room to grab my briefcase (that is, a Swiss Army nylon shoulder laptop bag), I proceeded to walk around the Flamingo ground floor for about 10 minutes, attempting without success to locate the shuttle to the Rio about which I had read here. Eventually I was able to talk to the concierge, who informed me that the shuttle did not in fact pick up from the Flamingo, but was just one hotel down (Bally’s). While this may not sound like anything of consequence (it didn’t to me at the time), neighboring hotels in Vegas are not actually very close to one another. Furthermore, once I got to Bally’s (probably a six minute walk?), I was greeted by three hotel employees that didn’t know where the shuttle pick-up was. Great. I wandered around for a bit, and eventually found a sign directing me to one of the entrances. I made my way to this entrance, only to find a new sign indicating that I’d missed the shuttle pickup at this location by about a week; starting February 18, the shuttle to the Rio would pick up from the Paris hotel/casino. Arrgh! I followed some signs toward Paris (again, just one hotel away), and halfway there met a fork in the road. Two more hotel employees at an information desk at this juncture again lacked information about this shuttle, but made a guess as to where I should try to catch it, and pointed me on my way. I wove my way through yet another sea of slot machines and poker tables to yet another hotel entrance, and at long last, was immensely pleased to find signs for the shuttle I wanted! I still had to wait about ten minutes for the shuttle to actually arrive, but I was on my way!

A comparatively short (and relaxing) while later, I arrived at the entrance to the Rio hotel/casino, probably a little bit after 1100, but unfortunately, my sense of hope that I had arrived at my destination would soon prove to be premature. Although there were signs nice enough to direct me to the convention center almost starting from the entrance, these signs would continue to guide me for about a ten minute walk through a wide, winding corridor to they very opposite end of this apparently massive complex. Once there–finally–registration was painless, and I was handed a trendy neck lanyard/name badge and canvas bag with goodies like an XL t-shirt and squishable foam stress-ball-type sponsor-branded toy. I wasn’t thrilled to have to carry around a second bag all day, but I dealt with it. Although I had actually arrived later than I had in mind the day before, it turns out that was just fine, since the expo hall was still being set up, and no event had really started. As such, I took the opportunity to camp out on the floor by an outlet and break out my new Lenovo Thinkpad T61 (specs). Needless to say, after my failed attempts to hack the hotel internet the night before, I was immensely pleased to find a plethora of open WiFi access points set up for the conference (hey, I guess that $1500+ registration fee needs to pay for something, right?). Although it wasn’t the most comfortable seat, it served its purpose for almost an hour until the meet market officially opened and the expo hall started to fill up.

Meet Market

Now, depending on how well you know me (if at all), it may or may not surprise you to learn that I don’t consider myself the most naturally outgoing guy on the block. As such, a room full of several hundred people with whom I’m supposed to network, and kind of ’sell’ myself to, is somewhat daunting, but considering this was half of why I was here, I forged ahead. One of my first stops was a myvu/RealNetworks stand with a demo of the personal media viewer glasses featured on their web site. While a demo of a technology product at an expo is something that TechwareLabs (TWL) is very familiar with, it was really the only such booth at the Affiliate Summit … and was mainly being shown as it related to some RealNetwork/myvu affiliate program. Regardless of that last fact, I explained what TWL did, discussed the possibility of performing a review of the product on our site, performed the exchange of business cards that would become very familiar over the next couple days, and continued on my way.

Although I performed the business card shuffle a number of times that afternoon, I unfortunately only have a specific memory of three other booths. The first of these was RingCentral, a company whose primary product (as far as I recall) is a virtual PBX (service?). This may have stuck out in my mind because it was again technology-related, but also likely because it reminded me of the service Numbra (second to last paragraph) that was produced by my former employer. I know it’s not supposed to be amazingly difficult to set up something like Asterisk for little to no cost, but I definitely still feel there’s a place for [what my understanding of] products like RingCentral. Even personally, I’m getting to a point in my life where I’m less likely to tinker and spend a weekend playing with free solutions that require only a commitment of time, and instead pay for a product or service to do it for me, assuming such a thing exists for a reasonable fee and high degree of convenience (sad, I know).

The second of the remaining booths I remember was dgm-au. Although this wasn’t a terribly remarkable company of its own merits in my opinion (sorry, no offense), Australians have notable accents. I gave my increasingly rehearsed speech about what TWL does, and Dominic talked a little bit about what dgm-au does. He discussed the possibility of geo-targeted content for .au readers, which admittedly strikes me as an interesting idea, but probably a little too much work for what we’ve got on our plate right now. And last but not least, there was affSpy. I hate to admit it, but I was initially reeled in by one of the booth babes (p.s. the chick on the far right was wearing a ridiculously short skirt), who was able to repeat an obviously rehearsed introductory sentence or two about affSpy, but referred me to any of the guys once I asked a question about the service. Essentially, affSpy is like froogle (google product search) for affiliate marketing offers. It’s a neat idea, but from the results I saw, it’s probably not terribly well suited for use on TWL in its current state (at least, as long as we can avoid turning into a click portal for a freeipods.com / freecomputer.com type sites :P).

After weaving my way through most of the tables, I decided to take a seat at the back of the conference hall at one of the tables that were set up for general use and log a little bit more time on the open WiFi. Since I didn’t want to be totally antisocial, I propped up my big nametag and a business card against the back of my laptop, which apparently worked (a little). One lady, probably in her mid 40’s, approached me timidly, and after the customary exchange of cards and information, explained that she was currently a one-woman business, and was looking for a good way to find a developer to help her with some of the technical aspects of her plans. Since my company name contains the word Tech and ends in .com, I suppose I was as good of a candidate as anyone to ask such a question; unfortunately for her, we’ve done all of our development in-house, by Paul Uranium-235 Linebarger and myself, so I didn’t have much advice to give. Later, Eduardo Fenili of Revenue Magazine dropped by to kinda just chat in general. He does ad sales for the magazine, and seemed like a likable guy all around, so it was nice to chat, though I don’t think our businesses can do too much for each other.

There was a cocktail party at 18:00, but I skipped that in order to go back to my hotel and drop off my bags before heading to a private party at the Palms hotel starting at 19:00. Unfortunately, I apparently missed a shuttle back to my hotel (er, sorta) by a few minutes, and they were only running every ~30 minutes at that point. In hindsight, I really should have taken the shuttle to Caesar’s that was waiting right when I got outside, but instead I waited … and waited … and waited. When the shuttle finally did arrive, the driver said his shift had just ended, so we had to wait just a couple minutes for the next driver to arrive. As you might imagine, that actually took nearly ten minutes. I jogged from the shuttle to the hotel and back, to try to catch the next shuttle, but reached the pick-up right as it was pulling away. I was facing a potential ~30-minute wait, when a woman (Vidhu Sharma, as I later learned) came up to the stop and asked if I was waiting for the shuttle. She explained that she was supposed to be meeting people over at the Rio (i.e. the shuttle’s destination) in about ten minutes, so I proposed that we split cab fare over there. As we spoke on the ride over, I learned that she was here for the Affiliate Summit as well, and she worked for TrialPay, which is apparently and emphatically not like freeipods.com … except in the sense that you complete an offer to get something for free for which you would normally have to pay. But seriously, aside from getting really defensive about my freeipods comment to her, Vidhu was really nice, and I genuinely do like the idea of what her company does. The example she gave was that users can legally purchase WinZip by completing a single offer (not several offers, and no referrals, like freeipods requires); also unlike freeipods, the TrialPay customers are theoretically a bit more legitimate, genuine, and specifically targetable, so there’s probably a better chance of the users finding an offer in which they’re legitimately interested than users of freeipods, who are probably likely to cancel every single offer they complete (not like I did that, or anything).

The ShareASale Party

After reaching the Rio, I walked my way over to the Palms about a block and a half away, and gave John Chow (yeah, like he needs any more traffic :-p) a call, since I was meeting him at the party. He let me know what the deal was, and I checked in, got my wristband, and made my way up to the 32nd floor in a crowded elevator. I declined a complimentary photograph in front of a ShareASale sign, and made my way through the crowd to find John on the second floor of this penthouse suite. (As an aside, I always thought a penthouse suite had to be on the absolute top floor of the building, but Dictionary.com says it can be any specially designed apartment on an upper floor, esp. the top floor, of a building, and the suite was labeled as such, so I’ll concede.) Yes, I did say second floor, and yes, the suite had its own private glass elevator to reach the second floor, in case you were too lazy to take the stairs.

Before I continue to talk about the party, I need to stop for a minute to talk about this suite some more. And damn, was it sweet. As noted above, I went up to the second floor of the suite, where the two bedrooms resided, along with a dedicated massage room and exercise room. The first bedroom featured a fireplace, a pop-up plasma TV, a rotating bed, and was separated from its bathroom by a fancy-looking stainless steel bead curtain adjacent to the whirlpool bathtub. Admittedly this wasn’t really an entrance to the bathroom, but looked pretty snazzy, and I have to imagine could be pretty romantic with a bubble bath, or rose petals, candles, etc … if you’re into that kind of thing (and have a net worth well into the millions). (And don’t worry, there was still a separate door to grant some privacy for using the toilet.) This was only half of the bathroom, though. The second bathroom-room featured a glass-encircled shower stall with a massive shower head in the dead center of the ceiling, and then six more shower or steam heads protruding from about chest to knee height on opposite walls of the shower. Oh, and did I mention that even the bathrooms had amazing views? Moving over to the other side of the suite, the second bedroom was a little more conservative; it featured a traditional bed, fireplace, foot-board pop-up plasma TV, another truly amazing view, walk-in closets, and obviously its own private bathroom. This bathroom had a whirlpool tub, but when you turned on the faucet, a hole located in the ceiling above the tub dispenses the requisite stream of water to fill the tub–pretty neat.

Heading back downstairs, you can go to one wing containing a floor-to-ceiling rack of A/V equipment, three plasma TVs, massive wrap-around leather couches, and the chef preparing custom cheesecake concoctions for guests. Heading back out, the center of the room featured water pouring down the slate walls and underfoot, protected by a clear plastic/poly-something-or-other raised floor. A grand piano sat in the middle of the room, near the entrance to the balcony–which featured a hot tub jutting ~15′ out from the building and one of the two open bars in the suite. On the other side of the ‘main floor’ sat a couple more couches, another plasma TV on the wall, a massive [open] wet bar, and a sushi chef. John said that he had looked up the price of the suite, and found it cost around $20k per night, not counting the open bars, and various chefs … so I’ll just conclude by saying it was a pretty nice place.

Edit! I apologize for not having taken any pictures, but John Chow edited together a little video of some footage he took on his digital camera at the party, so you can check it out here on his site. If you look really closely, you can even see me at about 5:24 wearing a maroon shirt, holding a cup, and making some gestures with most of my upper body in what was an ongoing fight to communicate in the rather loud environment.

As for the party itself, it was good, albeit loud. I met a number of people, such as Chris Bloczynski (I think I may have taken that photo of him with John Chow), Christopher Rauschnot of All In Energy Drink, Ian Fernando, and probably the highlight of the evening, John Hasson. John was kind enough to approach me out of the blue as I was wandering around by myself and strike up a conversation; we both have software engineering backgrounds, and he’s super friendly, so we talked for a while before parting ways. By that point, my voice was starting to die from carrying on conversations at nearly a yelling volume, and I’m not used to being on my feet for 12+ hours a day, not to mention the two-hour time difference I was still feeling, so I decided to call it a night, and headed back to my hotel. A shuttle pulled up right as I was getting back to the Rio, so a short ride and walk later, I was at long last able to lay down and collapse for the night.

Check back for more news of Monday and Tuesday!

As some of you may know, I bought a refurbished IBM ThinkPad T41 (2373-5U2, iirc) during fall 2005, and have been dual booting it with Windows XP Professional and Ubuntu Linux. The hard drive is only 40 GB, which I partitioned as:

• 26.5 GB Windows (NTFS)
• 5 GB Ubuntu / (ext3)
• 1 GB swap
• 4 GB /home (ext3)
• 3.5 GB unusable/recovery partition

Windows and Visual Studio 2005 Professional managed to eat up about 8 GB, plus another 1.2 GB for the installers I left on the hard drive, and miscellaneous other crap put the Windows partition near its capacity, and I had nearly 1 GB free on the Ubuntu / partition, but when it came time to upgrade to Feisty, I was informed that I needed over 1.1 GiB free. Even after some housecleaning, I still came up short, so I decided to wipe / and perform a fresh Feisty (Ubuntu 7.04) install. I figured I was probably about due anyway, since I’d been dist-upgrading since at least Breezy. The installation went fine (I did it during a meeting here at work), but when I went to enable “Desktop Effects” (compiz), I got some odd results. Actually, immediately after enabling it, the right section of the screen was displaying odd banded/corrupt artifacts (leftovers, I presume, from switching video modes, etc). I disabled the effects for the time being, and went about my life.

Fixing Compiz Display

As I noted above, I had problems getting Compiz working from Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty on my ThinkPad T41 with an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]). One or two Ubuntu version ago, I had some OpenGL performance issues with xmoto (a game), which I kind of resolved by changing my xorg.conf file to explicitly use the ‘radeon’ driver instead of ‘ati’ and forcing AGPMode 2 (and maybe something else, I don’t remember for sure). I hoped that would solve my current problem, but alas, it did not. Perhaps resulting from my inability to accurately describe the results I was seeing, I was unable to immediately find any quick fixes to my problem. I guess that’s why it’s still beta, huh?

Update! I reinstalled Feisty (fresh) on my new laptop hard drive, and spent some time isolating the line that fixed the display rendering. It wasn’t the original line I thought, but rather:

Option "AGPSize" "32"

Fixing Compiz Performance

After getting compiz working, I was still getting weird performance hits, where I could hear my hard drive click, whirr, and see CPU spikes during really any display updates (even scrolling a man page in a gnome terminal window would spike the CPU). I thought this was somehow related to the new IDE device handling by the SCSI subsystem, and possibly not having the drive using DMA. I followed that hunch for a while, since it seemed that other people were indeed reporting issues of that nature in Feisty. The information I could glean from dmesg suggested that the drive was in fact in DMA mode, but during the course of the investigation, I noticed some questionable SMART values, so I decided that maybe my hard drive was just dying, and bought a replacement. However, I wasn’t entirely convinced that was the problem, so I kept poking around. I tried many combinations of options, but eventually found a winner. Again, I’m not 100% sure which line was the actual solution, but I think it may have been the following line in my Device section of xorg.conf:

Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Along the way I also modified my dric (/etc/dric or ~/.dric) to enable hyperz as follows (alternatively accomplished with the package driconf):

dric file »

<driconf>
    <device screen="0" driver="radeon">
        <application name="Default">
            <option name="force_s3tc_enable" value="false" />
            <option name="no_rast" value="false" />
            <option name="fthrottle_mode" value="2" />
            <option name="tcl_mode" value="1" />
            <option name="texture_depth" value="0" />
            <option name="def_max_anisotropy" value="1.0" />
            <option name="no_neg_lod_bias" value="false" />
            <option name="texture_units" value="3" />
            <option name="dither_mode" value="0" />
            <option name="hyperz" value="true" />
            <option name="round_mode" value="0" />
            <option name="color_reduction" value="1" />
            <option name="vblank_mode" value="1" />
            <option name="allow_large_textures" value="2" />
        </application>
    </device>
</driconf>

Full xorg.conf Devicesection:

Full xorg.conf Device section »

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]"
        Driver          "radeon"
        BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
#       Option          "DisableGLXRootClipping"        "True"
        Option          "DRI"                           "true"
#       Option          "ColorTiling"                   "on" #already the default
        Option          "EnablePageFlip"                "true"
#       Option          "AccelMethod"                   "EXA" #prevents mine from loading
        Option          "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
        Option          "AGPMode"                       "4"
        Option          "AGPFastWrite"                  "on"
        Option          "RenderAccel"                   "true"
#       Option          "UseInternalAGPGART"            "no"
#       Option          "EnableDepthMoves"              "true"
#       Option          "GARTSize"                      "64"
        Option          "AGPSize"                       "32"
#or "64"
#       Option          "backingstore"                  "on"
#driconf -> Enable HyperZ for big improvement
#power saving:
        Option          "DynamicClocks"                 "on"
EndSection

Yes, I realize that’s pretty much the most creative title ever to grace the internet. I’ll give you a minute to let it sink in.

…

Anyway … a fair amount of substantial, major life change sort of things have happened since my last post, so it’s probably kind of important for me to update this (well, as important as writing on this blog can be). As you probably know, I completed my BS in Computer Science in June, which made it fairly clear what I had to do for the rest of the summer: waste time by playing through Quake 2 again, eat frozen pizza, sleep until 3 PM every day, and then at the last minute get a job and find an apartment. If you’d like the executive summary: mission accomplished. Feel free to stop reading now.

Still here? Fiiiiine. I guess I can keep writing.

July

My first week of July is covered in fairly excruciating detail in the previous post, so I’ll summarize by saying that I went out to Wisconsin to visit Keefe and see Summerfest. I actually had one or two phone interviews while I was out there, too, so it wasn’t entirely unproductive (despite my best efforts). Unfortunately I wasn’t clever enough to try to schedule an in-person interview with the company from Madison that was courting me at the time; oh well. I had another phone interview with that Wisconsin company the week after returning from Wisconsin, which went well. I was speaking with one of the other software engineers there (similar position to that for which I was applying), who asked me A. what my favorite language was, and B. what my favorite type/aspect of programming was (C/networking/sockets/etc), and he randomly happened to have the same favorites/interests, which I felt was a lucky coincidence and connection. For better of for worse, that became kind of a moot point late the following week.

On Tuesday, July 18, at 15:18 CDT, I received a call from the Minnesota director of software engineering at Electronics for Imaging (EFI) informing me that he had been authorized to extend a job offer to me. We discussed some of the terms/benefits of the offer over the phone, but had the formal offer package FedEx’d to me overnight. The biggest caveat was that if I wanted to accept the job, my response (signed acceptance letter) needed to be faxed to their HR department by COB Monday. It doesn’t seem like about six full days should be a huge deal to make this decision, but I was still in the interview phase with at least three other companies at that point … AND I was leaving around 0600 that Friday for the BWCA, not to return until late Monday. That meant that I actually had to complete everything before I went to bed Thursday night … one day after actually receiving the offer package, employment contract, etc.

Within about 20 minutes of hanging up the phone about my job offer, though, I was already apartment hunting. I knew there was about a 90% chance I would be accepting the offer, which meant I would be able to afford an apartment after all. I probably looked at dozens of apartments online (HousingMaps.com is a very cool site) that evening, and scheduled three apartment showings over the next two days. Only shortly before this, I had learned that my friend Matt, whom I had met in Physics 1302 in the fall of 2004, was interested in rooming with me for the upcoming year. While this obviously meant my search should be restricted to two-bedroom apartments, it had the added side-effect of requiring me to extensively photograph any place I toured, in order to be able to get some degree of approval from Matt, who was gallivanting around Asia and the middle-east for the summer. Other considerations included: proximity to light rail (my transportation method to my potential job), proximity to campus (Matt is still attending), cost, and perhaps most importantly, ability to move in ASAP. The job would start on Monday, July 31, and I needed to be out of my current apartment by Monday, July 31 at 8 PM, and I took my first tour on July 18, so … you get the idea. Expeditiousness ftw.

I picked up a few housing applications on the tours I took, and then had to head to my parents’ house Thursday evening, since we would be leaving for the Boundary Waters very early Friday morning. I packed my small bag of gear for my four days in the wilderness in approximately 8 minutes, which probably wasn’t the best idea considering the degree of isolation, but whatever. (It turned out that the only thing I was really lacking was a long-sleeve shirt to wear around dusk (mosquitoes suck), but I survived.) I spent much of the rest of that evening pouring over pages and pages of the employment contract I was given, and then finally around 3 AM (I think?) signed and faxed my job offer acceptance and my housing application to the apartment I had decided was the best option. I understandably slept a fair amount on the ride up, but we arrived, got canoes, and hit the water. Friday was the only day I recall being able to even faintly smell smoke from the sizable forest fire going on at the time, but it really wasn’t bad at all. We were supposed to have a ~10-rod portage followed by a little canoing and then a ~40-rod portage, but it turned out that someone had decided that canoing was stupid, so the poor excuse for a trail on the 10-rod portage just bypassed the small lake and connected directly to the 40-rod portage … probably making something like a 100-rod portage (and very hilly). The campsites on the next lake weren’t spectacular, but we finally put in on the second or third one we passed, and set up our three tents in very close proximity to one another (due to space constraints). Dinner was brats and beans (over the stove of course … they’re not too keen on campfires when there’s a forest fire already going), though unfortunately we didn’t get everything finished before sunset, and the bugs got pretty bad.

Saturday was good. Canoed, portaged, had lunch (summer sausage, cheese, pitas), canoed, portaged. Our final portage of the day was quite long, and I was sweating considerably by the end, so I went for a quick swim, which was very refreshing. We made camp (and even had a sandy beach … a rarity up there), had chili, and slept. Sadly, Sunday was not nearly as sunny as self-described. It rained nearly all day, and we had a lot of portaging, including some very poor conditions. We went through a chain of lakes and portages that didn’t really connect to anything and had only one path through, so it would seem they were infrequently utilized (which leads to poor trail/entry/exit conditions). The added bonus was the low water level, making a few entries/exits particularly troublesome. At one point I was up to my thighs in swamp/mud (with a huge pack on, obviously), and I guess my uncle had the same pleasure at another location that same day. We didn’t take a lunch break that day either, so the jambalaya we had for dinner tasted pretty fantastic.

Monday was sunny and calm when we woke up, and had clouded over for a while during breakfast and such, but got sunny (and windy, unfortunately) by the time we hit the water. We didn’t have any portaging that day, but were on a pretty large lake (Homer), so were on the water for a while. I got slightly sun burned that day, but it wasn’t too bad. On the drive back, we passed through some severe weather, but the canoe stayed strapped onto the car :). I took a shower moments after getting home, and probably made a point of eating something delicious, and not prepared over a small camp stove (though I don’t recall specifically what it was).

I toured another couple apartments the next day. One of them looked great on paper, but wasn’t going to work out, and the other had a very friendly building manager, good value, good space, and good convenience for me, but not great convenience for Matt, and the biggest problem was that I couldn’t move in until September (if I wanted a 2-bedroom unit). I signed a lease on Wednesday, July 26 at the place for which I had faxed in the application before leaving for the BWCA, and started to move things in that evening. I had another couple phone interviews with other places that week (despite having signed a job offer acceptance letter), and continued to make about one car trip a day with friends to my new apartment to move things in. I was out of my old apartment by Sunday night, and started work Monday morning, July 31.

August

August was my first full month in my new apartment, and I spent most of it sleeping on a pad on the floor, as I did not own a bed. While my back may have been a little stiff in the mornings after waking up, it really wasn’t as awful as it sounds. Waking up at 0630 M-F for work, on the other hand, was a bigger issue for me. Remember, I was waking up around 3 PM most of the summer, so this is nearly half a day earlier. Anyway, my first week of work was … interesting. I spent a lot of time reading documentation, and generally just trying to figure out wtf was going on, and what I would be working on. Occasionally I could contribute in the capacity of general technical knowledge, such as re-ghosting machines, or reinstalling Windows, etc. to make a few new base ghost images, but I didn’t get much opportunity to touch any code. At the end of that week, I went up north to Upper Gull Lake near Nisswa, MN, USA to the cabin of my friend Nick Jacobs[’s parents], with whom I attended Kindergarten through High School. Nick, his girlfriend Courtney, his parents (including Jeff Jacobs, the mayor of Saint Louis Park), his two younger siblings, and Adrianne. It was nice to relax, swim a little, hang out, get some sun, etc. I don’t really remember anything else that happened in August, other than getting paid, and probably buying some furnishings from Ikea. After getting my first paycheck (er, direct deposit), I immediately went to Banana Republic to start my ridiculous spending habits.

September

I bought a bike from the Minneapolis police bike auction. It was more expensive than my bike that was stolen, but as Patrice (a former Trek Bike store employee) immediately pointed out [something along the lines of] well duh, it is a Trek. I did my best to get my money’s worth out of it yet that summer by riding to and from work (here is the route I take), which is over 11 miles each way. Fortunately, there’s a shower and [small] locker room at work, so I was able to just wake up, pack a bag, bike in, and shower and change clothes there, so I wasn’t sweaty and smelly all day. I loved the exercise, and also just generally like biking, so I think it was money well spent. I continued to get paid, and spend lots of money on my credit card at Ikea, H&M, and Banana Republic (and probably other places).

I’d say that pretty much wraps up my Fall 2006 update, considering I started writing this when it still was fall. Ooops. I have another couple updates in line (in my head), so there might be a little more activity in the upcoming month, too. I’m sure you’re all just dying with anticipation. Please … do hold your breath. (Let me know how that works out.)

Depending on how long you’ve known me (or whether or not you know me at all, I suppose), you may recall that I have a tradition of heading out to Wisconsin every summer, around the 4th of July, to visit a friend and business partner (Keefe) and see some concerts at Summerfest. I believe this was my fifth summer to head out there, and I hope to go back again next year. I left Minneapolis with a friend from school (Matt) around 4 PM on Friday, June 30 after having to get up at 0630 to make it out to Eagan for an 0830, 2.5-hour series of interviews with four different people, and we were lucky enough to hit absolutely awful traffic between Minneapolis and Saint Paul. When all was said and done, I think we made it past Saint Paul about 90 minutes after leaving Minneapolis … a trip that should take only about 15-20. Despite that somewhat sub-optimal start, we made pretty good time the rest of the way, and I think we made it to Milwaukee around 2230 (10:30 PM, for those of you unfamiliar with 24-hour time formats).

Although a few good bands were playing Summerfest that evening, the headliners usually start at 2200, so Keefe and I decided that less than an hour of a concert probably wasn’t worth $15 each, and walked around an office building in downtown Milwaukee for a while instead. The Wells Building, as I believe it was called, used to house the Techware Labs server, so Keefe had a key for after-hours entry. Among other things, we were able to get out onto the roof, which presented a good opportunity to take a few pictures, only a couple of which turned out well. (Sadly, I didn’t make any other good use of my camera during the trip, though maybe I’ll grab a few other pictures that Keefe took and put ‘em up later.) I generally enjoy going onto roofs of tall buildings, so that was a pretty decent way to pass the time for free, in lieu of half of a $15 concert. Later, Keefe’s girlfriend (Jenny) ended up calling from Summerfest for us to pick her up, which is no small feat, to navigate dozens of half-blocked one-way roads with thousands of people roaming around to find their cars. Among other things, we passed the same intersection no fewer than four times, and unnecessarily (unintentionally) drove ourselves to the back of a huge line of cars trying to exit a major parking lot. We never did end up finding Jenny near Summerfest, and instead ended up picking her up from a bar about 15 minutes away from downtown Milwaukee. It was somewhat unclear how she got there.

I don’t really remember everything I did for the rest of the week (until leaving the evening of Sunday, July 09), nor do I believe it would necessarily interest anyone to read it (much less me to write it), so I’ll just try to cover a few highlights.

• The Sunday before the 4th, Keefe and I headed over to John Chaillet’s house for a huge barbecue/grill/cookout extravaganza. I guess that many hours were spent preparing food before the hours of cooking could even commence, including making a few dozen hamburger patties with onions and peppers mixed into the meat. Needless to say, it was quite delicious. It was also cool to meet havoc (John) and chillywilly of irc.havoc.org #havoc in person, with whom I’ve been conversing on the internet for nearly half a decade. I played volleyball there, too, probably for the first time since 10th grade gym class. I dominated everyone :P.
• Monday, Keefe and I went to a client’s business to install a wireless internet subscriber module and wire it up to their network. This was a somewhat daunting task, as the antenna needed to be on top of the 2-story office building (with only ladder access to the roof), then have the cabling run to two wiring closets on the two floors, and then to nearly the opposite end of the building to reach the client’s router. It took several hours, involved a lot of time on ladders and awkward places in ceilings, etc, but we got the job done, and now Keefe gets to make some more money. I’m still unemployed :P.
• On Tuesday, I spent the day with Adrianne (my girlfriend) at Summerfest, and saw Punchline, Lucky Boys Confusion, and Bowling for Soup. Despite the fact that the bands weren’t necessarily a perfect match for my main musical tastes, the shows were very fun, the bands had good stage presence and high energy, and that was reflected by the atmosphere in the audience. It was also really nice to get to see Adrianne for the first time in a week, though it’s been almost another week again, which may not sound bad, but it feels like a long time (I guess that’s a good thing, hey?). We later met up with Matt at a coffee shop, and again the next day for lunch at the SafeHouse, which was a decently cool experience in and of itself.
• I had a job interview with Google (over the phone) on Thursday afternoon. It was somewhat brief, but they had already emailed me and I completed ~4 pages of problems/programs/etc. they had sent me the preceding week. The position is located in Mountain View, CA at their headquarters, so if they offered that to me and I took it, that would mean moving out to California.
• Keefe, Jenny and I went down to Summerfest on Friday and saw about half a dozen songs from Yellowcard, a little Cheap Trick, Train and Big Wu, and maybe another half dozen songs from Styx.
• We went to Jenny’s birthday party on Saturday, and then Keefe and I departed for Summerfest, only for his alternator (presumably) to fail along the way. We barely made it off the freeway, and with a little help of my pushing, we got Keefe’s truck onto a side street. After about a $150 tow back to Hartford, and much disappointment about not getting to see Panic! At the Disco (and my added disappointment for missing my friend Brian (of Savin Hill fame) and 30 Seconds to Mars), we headed to a local bar. Having turned 21 only the month before, this was my first time in a bar, and the Mike’s Ice Hard Lemonade I consumed was only the third alcoholic beverage of my life. I’m not an individual of particularly large build, and have no prior tolerance built, so the single bottle containing ~5.2% alcohol did affect me somewhat, but having no desire to actually get drunk, insistently refused Keefe’s attempts to buy me more drinks. Sorry Keefe, you don’t get any embarrassing stories to tell about me doing stupid drunk stuff. (No one shall have such an opportunity so far as I’m concerned.)
• I headed back home with Matt on Sunday evening. Aside from the massive storms around Milwaukee around the time of departure (of which I saw only a few minutes of a torrential downpour and a few pieces of hail slightly larger than peas), the trip went quite smoothly, and I think we got back to Minneapolis in about five hours (not counting the one stop we made).

Music

Among other things, one aspect of this yearly trip I make that sticks in my mind is the music I hear while out there. I don’t necessarily even mean the concerts I hear at Summerfest (although yes, those are typically very good), but rather just the music I hear on the radio while riding around rural Wisconsin. While this experience probably doesn’t translate well for others, I almost never listen to the radio throughout the rest of the year, so when I’m out in Wisconsin with Keefe for a week, and we do a fair amount of driving, I’m exposed to exponentially more radio than I am otherwise. Over the course of the week, there are, of course, various songs that receive a considerable amount of air-time, consequently impressing themselves in my memory in association with that week. While some years/songs leave a stronger impression than others, I figured that since I went to the effort of making a Music category for my posts, I might as well include some mention of some of these songs. If you’re not a radio-hermit like myself, have some other decent exposure to new music, or have convinced yourself that you’re too cool to like popular music, then the following brief list will be of no interest to you. It will basically just be a snapshot of some songs off the top-40 list for July 2006, but it might be fun [for myself?] to look back at this in a few years to remember what was happenin’ back then … er … now.

So, without further adieu, the list of songs (in no particular order) that I will henceforth associate with my trip to Wisconsin, 2006:

• Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California. I actually started listening to this a few weeks before heading out there, having already picked up the album at Keefe’s recommendation, but I enjoy the song, and it got its share of radio play. There are some sections of the song reminiscent of Tom Petty - Mary Jane’s Last Dance, which I also like.
• Angels And Airwaves - The Adventure. Apparently this band features the vocalist from Blink 182 (easily identifiable, to me, anyhow). It’s not the highest on my list of songs, but it’s worth remembering anyway.
• Raconteurs - Steady, As She Goes. I’ll admit this song is fairly repetitive, but that probably makes it all the more catchy (kind of like another song we know). I may have heard it once prior to the trip, but I probably heard it at least half a dozen times over the course of the week, and it stuck.
• Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down. This song will mainly stick in my head as a result of Keefe’s repeated attempts to sing the song as performed by someone with a severe speech impediment. Apparently there’s some parody on the internet to that effect, which I haven’t seen, but shall forever remember regardless. Thanks.
• Gnarls Barkley - Crazy. No, this isn’t like Britney Spears - Crazy (though I haven’t seen the video for this one yet, so you never know…). It has a little bit of an oldies feel to the vocal style, which I think maybe gives this song a unique appeal to a wider age range than most of these other songs. Also, with the name Gnarls, how can you go wrong?
• Panic! At The Disco - I Write Sins Not Tragedies. I’d never even heard of this band, much less this song, prior to heading out to WI, but I liked it enough to want to see them in concert by Friday. I’m particularly conflicted about liking this, though, as they’re listed under the emo genre, which I tend to despise on principle. Also, the radio edit of the song censors god out of the refrain’s phrase shutting the god damn door, which is where I originally heard the song. I actually kind of like the sense of syncopation / off-beat emphasis the gap in the lyrics provides, but will manage somehow with the studio/uncensored version. This will probably stick in my memory more than the rest.
• She Wants Revenge - These Things. The vocals in this song remind me somewhat of Depeche Mode, but to be honest, this song will just stick in my head because I heard the line from the song She’s in the bathroom; she pleasures herself. What more can I say?
• All American Rejects - Move Along

Top 32 Songs @ 102.1 FM Milwaukee - July 2006 »

1	Dani California	Red Hot Chili Peppers	lyrics
2	The Adventure	Angels And Airwaves	lyrics
3	Steady, As She Goes	Raconteurs	lyrics
4	Miss Murder	AFI	lyrics
5	Move Along	All American Rejects	lyrics
6	Animal I’ve Become	3 Days Grace	lyrics
7	Life Wasted	Pearl Jam	lyrics
8	Paralyzed	Rock Kills Kid	lyrics
9	Wings Of A Butterfly	Him	lyrics
10	These Things	She Wants Revenge	lyrics
11	Make Damn Sure	Taking Back Sunday	lyrics
12	Crazy	Gnarls Barkley	lyrics
13	I Dare You	Shinedown	lyrics
14	Vicarious	Tool	lyrics
15	I Write Sins Not Tragedies	Panic! At The Disco	lyrics
16	Don’t Wait	Dashboard Confessional	lyrics
17	Ready To Fall	Rise Against	lyrics
18	Rough Landing Holly	Yellowcard	lyrics
19	Woman	Wolfmother	lyrics
20	What If We Could	Blue October	lyrics
21	The Press Corpse	Anti-Flag	lyrics
22	Hands Open	Snow Patrol	lyrics
23	If You Talk Too Much	People In Planes	lyrics
24	Cubicle	Rinocerose
25	Out Here All Night	Damone	lyrics
26	Is It Any Wonder?	Keane	lyrics
27	Welcome Home	Coheed And Cambria	lyrics
28	The Gift	Seether	lyrics
29	How To Save A Life	Fray	lyrics
30	Oh Yeah	Subways	lyrics
31	Hard To Beat	Hard-Fi	lyrics
32	Youth	Matisyahu	lyrics
NEW	I Will Follow You Into The Dark	Death Cab For Cutie	lyrics
NEW	Rooftops	Lost Prophets	lyrics

If you’re really masochistic and check my blog every few days hoping for an update, you may have already noticed a few subtle changes to the right navigation bar on here. I hope that’s not the case, though, so I get to entertain you with a brief walk-through of these changes, and how they relate to my recent life.

The first, and most obvious change, is the addition of a little blurb about myself near the top right. Although I still did kind of like the setup over at p14nd4.blogspot.com a bit better, there isn’t a good interface in WordPress (the software that powers my blog) to show this information, so it’s just kind of hacked in there at the moment. I think I’ve heard of a plugin to do something similar, but again, sort of a hack anyway. Most of you probably already know the info I took about a minute to put up there, but I might be getting a few otherwise unfamiliar visitors in here soon (more on that later, if I have time), so I thought it might be nice. Yes? No? Feel free to comment.

Moving down the list, there’s a new section heading … Pages, which contains a new … er … page, Projects. As the page itself also explains, I wanted somewhere to put some of the things I’ve worked on over the past year (at least, I think that’s as far back as any of the projects go so far). I hope to expand this a bit at some point to possibly include some other projects that, while less interesting for the general reader, could be immensely helpful to a few select googlers in the future. Admittedly, this section is virtually useless right now to anyone who isn’t at least slightly interested in computer science / programming. Sorry.

Continuing on, I’ve added one more link to My Stuff: TheLittleMan.net. A very select few of you may remember back to late 1999 when Chris Bates registered this domain for his freelance web design service, which I joined for a period as well. More importantly, though, this was the home of what immediately became my primary email address, so when Chris dropped his web design service and didn’t care to keep the domain name, I quickly offered to pick it up. Since about 2003(?), I’ve owned the domain for the sole purpose of keeping my email address, which I host on my own server, but had no web page there. I finally decided to change that late one night this spring, by making it a nice-looking portal of sorts, and a good place to hold my résumé. In addition to a .doc and .pdf copy of the résumé, I coded up an xhtml+css version, was actually pretty fun to make, too. I doubt many of you are as into xhtml/css/standards as I am, but I’m pretty proud of the results of both of these pages. Particularly with the résumé, I organized pretty much everything just as unordered lists (<ul>), and did fun formatting with css — this is my understanding of how xhtml and css are supposed to be used … organize content using the semantic meaning of various elements/hierarchy, and do all display/rendering configuration only through css. P.S. using a <ul> for an inline, comma-separated list is awesome :). (And yes, I know I’m a dork.)

Last on the list (literally and figuratively) is a new option to choose between different site themes. To be honest, I mainly added this because the syntax highlighting on some terms in the projects section isn’t optimized for a black background. The Classic theme seems to be the best for reading the code, but you’re now welcome to use whatever theme you’d like — for the entire site. (It remembers your setting in a cookie.)

My Life

As you should know by now (having read my info at the top right), I have graduated. <Monty Python>yay…</Monty Python> I ended up really surprising myself by having the best grades of all of college during my last, and most intensive semester (I’m rather proud of myself … please excuse me while I commence a little bragging). I was taking 20 credits (6 classes) of all upper division computer science (well, and inet, which is part of the computer science and engineering associate program), including a graduate-level course in Data Mining (csci5523 … the co-professors of which also happened to be co-authors of the textbook) and three different internet / networking / programming courses, and I pulled off a 3.75, which put me on the Dean’s List =D. (I also took engc3029w during May term … a three week, three-credit course that met four days a week for about four hours … and got a very solid A in there.) It was a good way to go out.

Since then (well, and somewhat before that), it has been my sole purpose in life to find a real job. Of all the programming I’ve done, I think I’ve decided that I like network/socket/client-server programming best, and my language of choice is C. If I were to use those two criteria to limit my job search, though, my options would be pretty severely limited, but a man can dream… I’ve probably sent out nearly a dozen résumés and cover letters so far, including my Opera application (eeeee!), and while I’d love to take a break and just wait for a dozen high-paying job offers to come rolling in, I’m not sure that’s the most appropriate course of action. (My lack of income is starting to hurt, as my [newish] bike was recently stolen, my desktop computer died and needs some replacement parts, I had a dentist appointment without dental insurance, and I still have to pay rent through the rest of my lease (July 31) … not to mention a new apartment after this lease expires.) Regardless, I’m confident that something will pan out … even if it means taking some underpaid support position for which I’m well qualified, but doesn’t utilize my expensive education. Bottom line, though, I can’t move back to my parents’ house once my lease is up … so it’s anything vs. joining the ranks of the homeless =P.

Anyway, that about wraps up what’s been going on with my blog and the last month or two of my life, and I have to shower and be ready to go about five minutes ago, so for all of you anxious blog-checking fans out there … until next time, enjoy.

Before you start tearing into me for things like <whiny voice>But p111144nnnd4, you’re such a hypocrite for liking the band ‘blah,’ since you said you didn’t like ‘blah’ type of music!</whiny> or I can’t believe you like such crappy music like the band ‘blah,’ please, just bite your tongue, and lie to me if necessary, and tell me how impressed you are that I took the time to type these all up. I really don’t care if you don’t like any or all of these bands. I’m not going to get into big discussions about the quality or merit of their music, or the people themselves (believe me, I don’t know about any of the actual band members or artists, I’ve just heard their music). These are some of the things I like, and you don’t have to like them, but I wanted to give you a `base reading’ of some stuff I’m into.

Anyway, now that I’ve wasted most of my time with the preparation, the rest of this seems rather insubstantial in comparison :-/. I think I probably could have come up with more good music for these `songs I think are cool right now’ section if I hadn’t just wasted so much time with the first half of this post. Sorry. Hopefully I’ll remember this, and edit it as other songs occur to me.

• Howie Day - [Stop All the World Now #03] Collide [4:09]
  • Beginning with warm, clean acoustic guitar occasionally accented by light violin accompaniment, the song is soon joined by Howie’s mid-range vocals marked by a very slight/soft rasp (drawn out ‘h’ kind of) kind of characteristic of a ‘west coast’ voice, despite Day hailing from Maine. (I’d actually be kind of interested to hear an acoustic-only version of this song continuing in the style of the intro. That said…) The rest of the backup enters including a simple electric bass line, simple closed hi-hat/snare/bass, smooth mid-range violin moving harmony (and perhaps other elements of the 25-piece orchestra I’ve neglected to pinpoint), and admittedly kind of obnoxious ‘do-do-do-do’ backup vocals during the chorus, around 0:41. While the verses of the song (per normal) feature less intrusive background music, there are moments (such as the transition from a verse to the chorus) with either backup or over-dubbed vocal harmonizing as well as what I think is either harp or maybe steel guitar (1:57 and 2:00 respectively, for example). While the ‘do-do-do-do’ vocal background, a few of the prominent violin phrases, and some of the lyrics do give the song a little bit of a pop/big-studio feel, it remains a very catchy song featuring sections of simple acoustic guitar, full orchestral backing, and offers a sound that a variety of individuals should be able to appreciate.
• Brent Palmer - [Stabilize #02] Asleep In The Back [3:36]
  • This song also begins with an acoustic guitar intro, though with a slightly ‘rougher’ feel than `Collide,’ with clearly audible fret/chord transition slides on the strings. While I think there’s also a single continuous soft cello note accompanying the first few measures, it does carry a more prominent harmony throughout several other stanzas of the song. That said, these are the only two instruments featured in this song. Brent’s voice is very smooth, and is accented by what is either stereo microphones during recording, re-voicing over the track a second time with very good precision but dividing between left and right channels, or maybe just using a single mono voice channel, but just marginally time-skewing them between the left and right channels for a unique effect. The stereo mixing of this track is particularly good for both the instruments and vocals, in my opinion, adding credit to the song (do yourself a favor and listen on speakers first, then headphones, if you have the means). Overall, I feel this is a very simple, but elegant song that has the potential to appeal to anyone from teens to their parents. Plus, Palmer was kind enough to post the mp3 on his site, so you really have no excuse not to give it a try.
• Pink Floyd performed by The London Philharmonic Orchestra - [Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd #06] Money [6:46]
  • As you might have guessed by the name, this album consists of several Pink Floyd ‘hits’ being performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I’m amazed that someone came up with the idea, and took the time to so wonderfully translate these Floyd songs into full orchestral scores. The detail is really quite amazing. As a[n ex-]percussionist, I really appreciate the prominent bells and xylophone featured during the first half of the song, too. Don’t take my short description of this song to mean anything other than it’s 3 AM and I want to go to bed, so I’m cutting this short.

I missed my first (11:15 AM) class the next morning, but was on time to my 12:45 lecture, where I quickly went to work coding up the idea. The idea is by no means particularly complex, just efficient and elegant. With about six lines of xhtml constituting five objects, and maybe three css id’s, the layout worked perfectly in Opera and Firefox (both boasting W3C standards compliance), and the code was fully compliant to the xhtml 1.0 strict standard. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer was another story. (Duh.) Here was the original xhtml code:

<div id="title">
<h1>p14nd4.com</h1>
<a href="/resources/" title="resources">/resources</a>
<a href="/gallery2/" title="gallery">/gallery</a>
<a href="/blog/" title="blog">/blog</a>
</div>

And the CSS basically consisted of:

div#title { position: absolute; top: 40px; left: 40px; color/border stuff; }
div#title a { display: block; position: relative; bottom: 7px; right: 0px; float: right; margin-right: 15px; color/border stuff; }
div#title a:hover { color stuff; }

Internet Explorer didn’t render the <div id="title"> the correct height, aligned the h1 to the top instead of middle, and didn’t have the links in the correct place. I was able to fix the link placement with moderate ease, by enclosing them all inside another nested <div>, which had position: absolute; right: 0px; bottom: -9px; and then just did float: right; margin-right: 15px; for the <a> tags. I believe this fixed the main div’s vertical size rendering issue as well, in IE. Getting the <h1> to vertical-align: middle; within the main div was another story, though. I probably worked on that issue alone for another hour or more. I tried various combinations of nested elements and other css attributes without success, until I tried nesting the h1 inside a div, with a border enabled. I stumbled across this solution because I start putting borders on all my objects to debug where certain boxes are ending, beginning, hitting each other, etc. Regardless, I figured that just another nested div was the solution, so I immediately went to remove the testing borders, so the site would be suitable for public display (having half a dozen dashed red borders running through the header wasn’t particularly attractive). To my great confusion and horror, though, the h1 regressed to vertical-align: top after removing the borders. Sure enough, adding the border back onto the div re-fixed its alignment. I tried just setting a top border, so there wouldn’t be much visual evidence of this hack, but IE wouldn’t behave with just a top border; it needed all four. Eventually I conceded that it just wasn’t going to look quite right in IE, and moved on for the evening.

Today I finally got around to moving the new header to the main page, but again grew displeased with how it looked in IE. Another idea struck me, though, which managed to elude me yesterday evening. If you were to look at the code, you would again see an additional div containing only the <h1> element, with a style="border: 1px solid black; … which would normally result in an ugly visible border along the bottom of the header… I remedied this situation by overriding the border shorthand property immediately after declaring it, and eliminating the left, right, and bottom borders. In full, the code for that div tag reads as <div style="border: 1px solid black; border-bottom: 0; border-right: 0; border-left: 0;">. Don’t ask me why this happens to fix IE’s rendering, but I’ll live with it, I suppose.

Ok. Breathe. I’m cool now. If you haven’t figured it out by now, this post is basically going to be a rant about all the wonderful free services my university (and presumably many other universities … I can’t confirm that) is proud to offer its students. The most recent of these gracious gifts bestowed upon the student body by the ever-wise governing bodies was a school-wide subscription (partnership) with Ruckus (press release), a legal/licensed p2p download program. Normally this appears to cost $5.99 (USD) per month for an individual subscription to the service (a decent portion of which theoretically pays for the licensing agreements of the intellectual property (music, movies, etc.) available on the network for the given month), so using the press release’s figure, the starting bid for this service would be $305,490 per month, or $2,749,410 per academic year (9 months?). While I don’t doubt that a lower rate is offered to universities, since obviously not every student will use the service, I have no difficulty believing that the powers that be were willing to spend $2 million per year of my money for this. Mind you, this partnership comes alongside an announcement from the university’s Office of IT (OIT) that during the past year illegal music downloads appeared to decline at the University for the first time (Office of the General Counsel - Annual Report 2005 (pdf)). Would someone care to explain the logic behind spending two million dollars on a service that statistics indicate is of declining necessity?

The obvious counter-argument against this specific instance is: But p14nd4, you argue that it’s costing two million dollars, but that’s split up between 51,000 students! It only really costs you $39! Ignoring the larger picture for a moment, while perhaps this single instance is true, that’s still $39 that I would not have otherwise spent on Ruckus, and would very much enjoyed spending on four trips to Perkins, or nine orders of pizza, or 218 cans of Mountain Dew, or a birthday present for someone. I pay the university for an education, not for a download service. While the university may have saved a few dollars off the subscription fees that a handful of students would have paid on their own, it is not their place to do so, and simultaneously force the rest of us into paying for a service we don’t desire.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end with this $39 loss. You have no idea how glad I would be, if $39 was all I lost to paying for ridiculous services through the university. My previous favorite instance of this was the university’s announcement that it has reached an arrangement with Microsoft to offer Windows XP Professional (Upgrade) and Microsoft Office 2003 Professional for free to all students. That’s 51,000 Windows licenses, and 51,000 Office 2003 Professional licenses… Again, I don’t have specifics on how much money the university gave Microsoft for this free service,, but Windows XP Professional OEM sells for $139.95 on Newegg.com, and Office 2k3 Pro runs at $314.95. I’m sure the University paid less than these figures, but since they’re all we have for estimates, that figure (a ceiling, if you will) would run $7,137,450 for Windows, and $16,062,450, for a total of $23,199,900 spent by the university in order to offer this free service.

Anyway, I’m cutting this post short, in favor of getting some work done. If I get ambitious (annoyed) again, I hope to complete this post with some addition related areas I feel deserve some mention. These other topics I hope to cover in a later edit include:

1. Run-away / use-it-or-lose-it budgets
2. Get an auditor, dammit!
3. Eliminate half of the student employment positions
4. Bottom line: spend on my education (not elite research facilities, not stadiums, not $400 office chairs, not thousands of dollars towards rebranding a building)