Nonsequittal Rumblings

Just couple months ago, I bought a new hard drive, along with a hard drive case, so I could make my own external hard drive unit. It works really well for me, with the combination of USB2 and firewire.

Yesterday evening, as I was driving back from dropping my daughter off with her mother, I noticed my windshield was filthy. It was covered with the dead insects. That hinted me with one fact – it’s going to rain soon. Some people knows that when the insects/bugs are flying low, it is going to rain soon.

And yes, it really did, and brought some thunder and stuff a long with it. That also meant that there is a great chance for power blackout or brownouts. And, no, I didn’t think about that when I was driving back last night.

Right before I went to bed, I started encoding Runaway Jury, using this external drive. There must have been a brownout over night.

The PC kept running, because it’s plugged in to the back up power supply. I like my UPS for this reason. But my external drive sort of failed, because it was not receiving the grace of the UPS. Well…. duh. Why didn’t I think of that before? Now I need to go back and figure out which power cord goes with which device, so I can plug this good, trusty drive into the power backup system. Oh, pain in the behind…

If you’ve ran any version of Windows, you’ve seen the message “Please reboot your PC” plenty of times. It happens mostly when you install a new software, or when you change some core windows settings. Windows XP requires fewer reboots, but you still get those. (On the other hand, Unix type of environment, you can make just about any changes to your system, and it won’t require a reboot. About the only time you need those are when you upgrade the kernel, or when you upgrade your hardware.) Or, when you call a tech support for your PC related stuff, I’m sure plenty of people got the same answer/question, “have you tried to reboot your PC?”
This morning, I had a bit of time to kill, and I decided to boot up my cell phone’s games. Lo and behold, I get the error message, “The application could not run.” ?!?!?!?! Why?! Well, I thought maybe these games were some shareware, and I had to register them somehow? So, I called Emily, who has the same phone, and got it at virtually in the same time period…. “It’s working fine for me.” …weird.
4 hours later, it just hit me. Maybe I need to reboot my phone. So I did. I turned it off, then turned it back on. Then tried the game. Well, what do you know, it’s working again. So, indeed, the modern cell phones are toned down computers. Scary… One of these days, we’ll receive a message “Fatal Error – phone unoperational” even while we’re just talking on the phone. Or even worse, blue screen of death on the cell phone…

Especially today, I believe that everyone is cursed one way or another. Have you ever screamed in frustration, “this ALWAYS happens to me!”? Yup, that’s what I’m talking about. We all have stuff that always goes wrong, and the history repeats itself within our own lives. Lovely, huh?
So, today’s story… My car broke down yesterday. Gary’s work PC broken down today. And… yup, we both have had these problems numerous times within the 3 years I’ve worked here.
Whenever Gary, my fellow programmer at my work, gets a new PC, we always hope that it would survive longer than last time. Sometimes it works. Hell, once, he fried his PC in 3 weeks. If the next PC doesn’t outlast that one, he’s really got issues with bad karma with new PCs at work. This time around, it wasn’t as severe. He received this PC in February of 2003, so it lasted whooping 13 months. Now, either harddrive had a really bad crash, or the BIOS can’t recognize the harddrive, and the PC just won’t boot. Ironically, he just brought his 512MB compact flash card today, so he can make some back ups of important files on his harddrive. Yup, he was 1 day too late. So, his lesson of the day: make back ups more frequently.
My problem with cars… it runs just as bad as his luck with the work PCs. Since I started working at Cessna, I’ve had Dodge Omni, Ford Aspire, Ford Tempo, and Saturn SL1. Yup, that’s way too many cars in 3 years. They just die one way or the other. I mean… This time around, I bought a 3-year-old used Saturn from a local Saturn dealer. The car only had less than 8000 miles on it! I thought I finally got a dependable car. Yes, it has been running dependablly until the day before yesterday. Now the transmission problem… it just won’t engage. I revv it up to 4000RPM, and it’d be running at 25 MPH. Damn automatic transmission. Damn General Motors. I swear, the next car I buy will be Japanese made. And if my bad-car luck still lingers, then I might just give up, and never get a new car, or sell the car before the warrenty expires. Thank goodness, I have a warrenty with this car, it should cover this repair.
At least I’ve learned the lesson a while back: some form of insurance is a good idea. In my case, it’s not the actual auto insurance. It’s things like buying extended warrenty with this car, and having AAA membership. Man, if I were to tow this car from my house to my dealer at the regular cost, it would have costed… who knows. I wouldn’t be surprised to see bills of over $100. But with AAA, tows up to 5 miles is free, and after that, it’s $1.50 per mile. I just gave the tow truck driver $6, and called it good. That’s cheap compared to $100. Yup, I love having this kind of insurance. And I’ve used these free towing service, etc, that AAA offers so many times that it more than made up for the membership fees I’ve been paying.

I love idiots. Corporate idiots are the best of the breed. They ensure my job security. They think they’re smart. They believe they’re doing a lot of constructive thinking. When they make the programming request, they think they’re making clear, thought-through request. Not so! They don’t know what they’re talking about. They are only submerged in the view points that they know of. They’re just…. argh.

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I think trying to write these entries while I’m at work is just putting more and more negative thoughts all the time. I see too much negative side of the stuff. At least I have a safe haven now. When I go home, I know there is at least one person who is not idiotic. She understands me. She understands my needs. She understands my language. Without her, I wonder what my life would have been by now…

1) I woke up this morning just a bit later than I really should have. 2) I hate meetings thare are scheduled before 9:00 AM on Mondays.
So, those 2 things combined… I left home a little rushed this morning. I did come into work on time, so that wasn’t too big of a deal. (A bit more on this matter later.) Because I was in rush, I forgot something: I forgot to grab the cell phone when I left home. That means I couldn’t talk with Emily all morning. Well, things happens sometimes, and it’s not toooooo big of a deal. I did call her once this morning using my work phone. I kept it short, and it’s all fine and dandy.
Problem arose when I went home for lunch. I told Emily that I came home, so I could talk to her. Which is the truth and all. Well, actually, I had 2 more reasons, but those are just side effects – One, I wanted to check on the status of file transfers I initiated this morning; two, I wanted to start seeding files on bittorrent.
So what did I do? I actually didn’t really get talk to her until the end of the lunch hour – I called her as I was leaving home again. Ack! Shame on me! I really should have called her earlier! I’m sorry, Emily!

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Back to the meeting…
This guy called a meeting. He sent out the meeting details over e-mail. A standard practice. All fine and dandy… except he didn’t specify the meeting location. He just said “TBD.” To be decided, right? So I just waited all last week for the update on the info, so I’d know where this meeting would be.
The update never came. The reason I came in to work slightly early this morning is so I could check my e-mail to see if he sent the update at the last minute… Nope. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch… I woke up early, rushed to leave home, forgot my cell phone, and all that stuff… for nothing?! *sigh*

For the first time in almost 3 months, I finally was able to bring my daughter, Evan, to my apartment. The last time I had her was the weekend after Thanksgiving. Phew. It was good to be able to spend a whole weekend with her, instead of just spending half a day with her, which is what I did during January. Things just didn’t work out in December, and I got sick in February. Meh.
I took her to the Exploration Place on Saturday. Evan gave me the annual membership for it as Christmas gift this year. I was hoping it would be lots of fun… We just couldn’t find ourselves with the kind of fun we were expecting. I just don’t know what went wrong… Hrm.
The return trip to take Evan back to her mom was interesting… we hit a few hail storms while we were on the turnpike. Riiight… it had to happen today. Sure. But it wasn’t too bad this time. The last time we hit the hail storm, the car actually got a few hail damages. Not this time. The hail never got really big. No bid deal. It was just a bit loud sometimes. That’s all…
Good news: she loves Emily!

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On the fansub side of my life… Yay! We had a Feb 29 release! We only get to do this once every 4 years. So that actually felt pretty cool. The new tracker is working good for us. Yup, I like hosting our own tracker. I can make tweaks and stuff to my stats page, etc. Yup. I like tweaking things.

This birthday felt quite a bit different from some recent ones. I got some birthday wishes on IRC and on some forums… those were nice. Thanks to those who sent me the happiness. But I’m not a total net resident, so that’s secondary. (No offense to those who sent me the happines…)
For one, I actually got a b-day card at work. That didn’t happen last year. I thought it wouls just pass quietly, unnoticed. What a surprise.
And of course, there’s that one person who is celebrating it with me (although from 900 miles away), and that makes a huge difference too.
No offence to anyone, but the biggest surprise was when her MOTHER called me to wish me a happy birthday. Now, that’s something I didn’t expect at all. It totally blew my mind. It was great. It was so sweet of her to do that. Whoa, it hasn’t been 3 months yet since I started dating Emily, and I’m already feeling like I have a 2nd family!

I was waken up from a nap yesterday with a few news. The final news that Emily told me on the phone was http://www.mircx.com/irc.html. I shook my head, tried to comprehend what I just heard, and I decided it’s something I should jump out of my bed for. Yup. Much chaos seems to be ruling the fansub community.
Froth Bite decided to move to Aniverse. It’s pretty stable, and it’s anime friendly network. Or it used to be at least. Aniverse suffered from large scale DDoS last year as well. So we weren’t too positive about this move. But what other choice do we have? We just didn’t know.
Well. What do you know? Aniverse is no longer big enough to support the large community of fansubbers anymore! Within couple hourse, aniverse went down from the overload. Whoa! So much for that idea! Onto a new home!
Xepheus told me, over MSN messenger, that there are fansubbers on EFnet, discussing what should be our new home. People listed EFnet and Undernet as possible candidates. Undernet got ditched pretty early on, then Rizon was brought to the table. Then, of course, much chaos still reigned the scene and all. Personally, I stayed out of the discussion, and proceeded to take care of dinner.
In the end, to me, EFnet was just too different from the environment we were used to. Rizon felt much more like home. It looked like a few groups were already starting to move to Rizon as well. So that’s where Froth Bite is sitting right now. The first day seems to be going well so far. We’ll see how good this network will hold us.
Of course, switching to new network brings whole new set of extra works – registering nicknames, registering channels, etc etc… Gee whiz, I hope we’ll never have to do this again. Seeing how big Rizon network is, it’s hard to imagine it would die so easily. Then again, once the giant network, DALnet almost died too. Anything can happen, I guess.

I just read the “about” section of Doom9. It talks about how the site came around to be. Just a simple reading. Mildly amusing. But, now I came to realization – you know, I have had my own struggles and discoveries and what not when it comes to my computer experience. That goes same for programming web sites and fansubbing, among others. If I had the patience to sit down and write down all those things I’ve found, and have in my head, and then publish it on the web, maybe some people can benefit from the tips I give out. Please, somebody, give me some patience and some time, so I can do that myself!
Actually, I once found some time to teach some people how to typeset. It was a lesson that was done over IRC. The log is still available. I want to do more of these types of guides. Of course, there are some questions to be answered at this point too. On the IRC network where fansubbing groups roam aruond, there are so many people who are skilled in such things as timing, typesetting, etc. Those functions are relatively easy to learn. Conversely, things like translating and encoding skills don’t come as easily. So there’s some inbalance of work force. And, even if the inbalance is taken care of, there are already abandunce of people out there! Why do we need more? Why do I need to teach people, so we’d create even more of these people?! I started subbing of Kita-he, thinking that it wouldn’t be as popular of a show as some other show of the season. Heh. Now look out there. There are 3 groups who are actively subbing it. Then why bother?
And that’s when I get really boggled. For me, it’s kinda fun. I’ve learned the fun of fansubbing. Translation is challenging. Other functions of fansubbing are fun too. The interactions are great. But… “Don’t fansub just because you want to be famous… Also, doing it to please the fans isnt a good reason either.” (http://atocha.mit.edu/nnl//t00t-01.html). Ah, great. How do we tell who falls under this category, and who don’t?
Then, back to my own dillemma. Who is to say my motivation isn’t get my famous? I don’t know… I just don’t know any more…
I just think… if people are more willing to go explore on their own, do their own homeworks, do the web search on their own, learn on their own, experiment, etc etc… all on their own, then the world would be a better place. I wouldn’t even need to write the guides and etc.

The taste of recovery is bittersweet. It’s good that I am feeling a lot better now. The fever is staying down, and I can actually eat food. I can walk around, and I can do stuff. I do feel somewhat exhausted still (since I still haven’t fully recovered), but it’s a lot better than being bound to bed.
And the bitter part – yes, I have to give up the freedom of staying home. As of today, I made back to work. Just for half day, but the taste of work is coming back to me. God, the stress is coming back to me. Ugh, how can anyone stand under such pressure and stress for long? No wonder I got sick.
I do enjoy the fact that I get to come home early, and spend the time as I wish. I need to relax and regain my energy as much as I can, while I can.