Category: General

My fortune cookie on Tuesday said, “In a few days, you will come out ahead.”

I don’t think this is what I had in mind when I read that.

I was very lucky. No one was hurt (my wrist is sore but nothing broken and no blood), no other cars were involved, and the kindly Oregon State Trooper did not cite me. Plenty of people stopped to help me, my sister and brother-in-law were only 15 minutes away and came to my rescue, and even American Express is going to cover the accident (at least it appears so at this point, cross your fingers).

Note to self: always use American Express for car rentals. Y’know… just in case.

I’ll post more details later but I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m safe and I did end up having a happy Thanksgiving after all.

All in all… I think, in retrospect, that I did come out ahead, after all.

I’m so glad my work day and work week are done. It’s been a slog.

I was picked up tonight by Edgar from Enterprise, and after some small talk (sales guys are so talk-talk) and some paperwork, I was handed the keys to a 2006 Pontiac G6.

Tonight I eat a modest dinner, finish up my laundry, and pack.

Tomorrow morning I get up early, run the ORRC Turkey Trot 4 Miler up at the Oregon Zoo, then shower and change and drive to the City called “Lincoln” situated on the shore by the gentle waves of the Pacific Ocean, there to meet with my family, eat massive amounts of food, bicker lovingly over the tiniest of trivia, and drink liver-damaging amounts of alcohol.

I may or may not stay all weekend. If I find myself over-eating on the day after Thanksgiving, I will come back, because I still want to be sexy and skinny on the beaches of Cancún in December. Or at least not too much un-skinny-er.

I may or may not post. I think there’s wireless down at the family beach house but I’m not 100%. I have a post ready for Saturday’s “Did You See..?” so at least, you’ll see that.

Before I head off, though, I wanted to offer my thanks for this year. I am thankful for:

• My surprisingly healthy body;
• my inquisitive, skeptical, and amusing brain;
• the roof over my head and the bed in which I sleep;
• my loyal, honest, loving friends;
• my caring, passionate, deep-thinking and -feeling family;
• the wonders of science and engineering that allow me to communicate with and learn about the world;
• and strip clubs, filled with the most amazing, beautiful, intelligent, and passionate women.

And thanks very much to all of you out in InternetLand, who come here to read my words. I am humbled and delighted by your readership. Without it, this blog would be a lonely place, indeed.

On my way to lunch with friends, I texted Tracy:

I want to sing loud punk songs @ karaoke.

…and right after that, 94.7 FM played The Sex Pistol’s “Anarchy in the U.K.” Awesome! I sang along, loudly.

Then I got to have lunch with my friends. Awesomer!

Then, driving back to my office, I flipped the radio over to 101.1… and they played The Dead Kennedy’s “California Über Alles” and followed it up with The Sex Pistol’s “Anarchy in the U.K.” again! Awesomest! More singing loudly in the car!

I guess things aren’t so doom-and-gloom all the time.

Stuff I’ve done lately that I’m proud of:

Fixing my webstats thingie to run automagically at midnight.

Getting my old couch into my second bedroom. Man, if you only knew…

Um… I’m sure there’s more. Give me a second…

Echoing The One True b!x, I feel broken, too.

I’m paying my bills, and I’ve got a job, and my apartment may or may not be cleaner than b!x’s, I’m taking my vitamins…

…but I can’t concentrate, I can’t sleep, I have very little energy to do anything but sleep all day, everything feels like a big gray nothin’.

Maybe it’s just my brain that’s broken?

And it feels like it’s felt like this forever.

But… that can’t be true. Can it?

I accidentally didn’t run my planned 9-mile run tonight.

I accidentally didn’t eat dinner, either.

And all because I accidentally took a nap.

Now it’s almost 7 PM and I’m just awake enough to realize how tired I still am.

Oops.

This is a really technical, geek-y post and is probably of interest to very few of my readers, but over the weekend I finally figured out how to use Apple’s launchd to run my web stats program on a nightly basis.

Up to this point I’ve been ssh-ing into my server and running it manually. Kind of a pain. I’m more like a power user than a full-fledged server admin, though, and I hadn’t sat down and taken the time to figure out what needs to go where to get the process to run automagically on its own.

There are plenty of tutorials out there for using cron to run something. But I knew a couple of things:

1. I was going to be using Mac OS X to run my server,
2. Apple had come up with a nifty, Mac OS X-based tool called launchd,
3. launchd was the primary method for scheduling, starting, and maintaining ongoing processes in Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)

…so it was a good thing to learn how to use the tool I was given, rather than rely on older tools.

Here’s a quick summary of the steps to take:

1. Set up the script or program you want to run – I wrote a simple shell script to run webalizer.
2. Write a text file in XML format that:
   • names the process;
   • gives the command for running the script (with the full path to the script);
   • names the time and frequency of when it should run.
3. Save the XML file as a .plist into the proper directory – I put mine in /Library/LaunchDaemons/;
4. use launchctl to load the plist as a process.

If you’re scared or unfamiliar with the command line, there are some GUI tools that help with this. The biggest help to me in getting started is a free program called Lingon. Lingon may be all that most users need; I needed to use the command line on my webserver, but I’m now also using Lingon on my laptop and home Mac.

Hmmm… I really meant this originally as a “yay, me!” post but I can see me turning this into a “How-to” post for anyone out there who might want to learn this, too. I’ll do that later, maybe. This is not a How-to.

For now, I’ve got the key to running programs on a regular basis on any Mac running 10.4 or newer… like finally automating that backup process I use from time to time. Or emailing my servers’ logs to me. Or… well, the sky’s the limit. launchd not only is able to run something on a periodic basis, it can watch a directory/folder and take action when the directory changes, or watch a continuously-running process and keep it up and running if it stops or crashes (lots of people use it to keep Quicksilver running).

Who says I can’t have chocolate cake for breakfast? Huh? Who?

No one, that’s who.

Sleep. Sleep is much like not being. Oh, except for the dreams.

I sleep and might not wake up until I must – which means either work on Monday morning or ahem hydraulic pressure.

Sorry for the late-afternoon edition. Been out running around ‘n’ stuff.

• These are perfect pearls of story.
• I’ve got an interest (obsession?) with the Moon. These high-def pictures of the Earth from the Moon, from a Japanese moon probe, are amazing, and are now part of my wallpaper rotation. (Via Boing Boing)
• Yes, please. Please shorten your voice mail greeting as much as possible. Anymore, I don’t even leave a message. I figure that anyone I’m calling will have Caller ID, see that I called, and will call me back if they want to know why I called in the first place.
• Who knew memory was so widely variable and unreliable? Try to tell that to anyone, though. Our brains trick us into feeling/thinking things for which we have no basis. I could tell ya stories…
• A “Ghostbusters” sequel that includes all the original cast members and is written by Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis? Wait, it’s gonna be a videogame? Oh, please – don’t suck! I want this to be good. Even if I have to buy a freakin’ XBox to see it.
• Is it just me, or do Hayden Pepperspray and Kristin Bell look terrified beyond belief?
• Wow, Multnomah County managers making financial decisions based on personal relationships (allegedly)? That’s… that’s just nuts. Oh, sidenote: I need to ask my bosses about all that CA-supplied ITIL training they’ve been taking for the past year or so.
• Somehow, somewhere, someone will make the argument that this proves God exists. Sure. Have it both ways! Why not?
• Speaking of creationism, John Scalzi toured the Creation Museum and was unimpressed. It was a scathingly funny read to me. And then it made me sad because there’s folks out there who buy into this. People I love. But, I’m heartened by the knowledge that there’s a difference between Christians and Creationists; one doesn’t have to mean the other.
  

  “Will these folks find the arguments they find at the Creation Museum convincing? Again, you got me. I certainly hope not, but more to the point I would hope that these folks don’t come away feeling that their love of Christ obliges them to swallow heaping mounds of horseshit from people who are phobic about metaphor. I really don’t think Jesus would care if you think that you and a monkey have a common ancestor; I think he would care more that you think you and your neighbor have a common weal.”

  And many folks chime in on the comments to echo the sentiments. Yes, please. More like this.

• Lastly, via the kids at the Mercury, this slow-starting but entertaining Duran Duran video that answers the question of what happened to all those Girls on Film, anyway?
  [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LPiPOm-Xdw&rel=1&border=0]