Gerbils by Paul Paradise
Posted in General on Jun 2nd, 2008
I have a Google Alert set up on my own name, to see if anyone writes anything about me. Today, I learned that I’m a published author.
Category Archive for 'General'
UNIX shell tricks: find the escape sequence a keypress
Posted in General on Mar 2nd, 2008
If you ever need to figure out what escape code is generated when you press Ctrl-Left Arrow on a random terminal process, try the following:
cat > /dev/null
<press your random key sequence here, followed by enter>
You’ll end up with the escape sequence being printed directly to the terminal window. This is useful when you’re setting up [...]
Leopard upgrade: BSOD
Posted in General on Nov 2nd, 2007
Last night I upgraded my iMac to Leopard. Some notes about the process:
I spent the evening before the upgrade running SuperDuper to backup my entire hard drive to an external disk. Especially given this was the first OS upgrade I’d ever done of a Mac, I wanted to be extra-sure I had good recovery options. [...]
Life at blist, 6 months in
Posted in General on Nov 1st, 2007
I haven’t been blogging much lately, because I’ve been heads down in my work at blist. (You can also see me blogging on the blist blog - I’m due for another post there sometime soon, I think…) Halloween marked my 6-month work anniversary, which technically means I’ve now had the same manager at blist [...]
I have resume speaking with the world again…
Posted in General on Jul 31st, 2007
…since I finished reading Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows last night.
Happily, nobody spoiled the ending for me. (And I promise not to spoil it for you, so I’ll leave it at that!)
San Diego just got farther away
Posted in General on Jul 2nd, 2007
For as long as I can remember flying between Seattle and San Diego, Alaska Airlines has considered the flight to be 1,050 miles.
My next flight to San Diego is listed as 1,051 miles. Did somebody move San Diego farther away while I wasn’t watching?
Nose (re)injury
Posted in General on Apr 4th, 2007
When I was much younger, I managed to hurt my nose pretty badly in a stupid athletic way.
My swim club at the time reserved one day of practice to be a “fun day” in which we held a mock swimming meet against our parents. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the kids could soundly [...]
Google’s customized homepage URL
Posted in General on Mar 20th, 2007
Dear Lazyweb,
Google recently updated their customized homepage to include themes. This reminded me of a long-nagging question I’ve had about this service: why is the URL for it http://www.google.com/ig? I don’t know what “ig” stands for in this context, other than being short, easy-to-type, and hard-to-remember.
Other similar services all have similarly short but easier-to-remember URLs: [...]
My USB Key is Well-Travelled
Posted in General on Mar 6th, 2007
Last week, I took a few days off work and went down to San Diego to visit my parents. When I got back, I noticed that my USB key was missing, but wasn’t too concerned - I’ve misplaced it before, and it’s even survived at least one trip through the washing machine with no ill [...]
I went home for a three-day weekend in San Diego, taking advantage of a “work optional” day in my group at Microsoft. It’s been a long time since I’d been down in San Diego; the combination of sunny weather in Seattle during the summer and having Margot in town for her internship gave me much [...]
I’m back, with new blogging software!
I’m Spoiled Rotten
Posted in General on Nov 23rd, 2003
My car arrived.
Moving a Car, The Hard Way
Posted in General on Nov 17th, 2003
As my old car technically belongs to my parents and I’m getting a new one, my parents sold my car to some family friends in San Diego and paid to have it shipped back south.
On Friday, I got a call to pick it up, and arranged for the towtruck to pick it up on Saturday [...]
Matrix: Revolutions
Posted in General on Nov 4th, 2003
Without giving away anything to everyone who haven’t seen it yet, I was underwhelmed. At least I got free nachos, drinks, and they gave me real change back on the fake money for concessions.
Matrix: Revolutions
Posted in General on Oct 27th, 2003
I get to the the Matrix: Revolutions.
For free.
During business hours.
A day before it’s released to the public.
That is all.
Trekkie Sex
Posted in General on Oct 3rd, 2003
Ladies, here’s a lesson in what not to ever do.
Bank of America’s Music on Hold
Posted in General on Sep 23rd, 2003
So I’ve sitting on hold with Bank of America (36 minutes and counting!), and listening to the muzak they’re playing in the background. As is typical of music on hold, they have someone saying “Thank you for your patience, you will be assisted momentarily. Please, stay on the line.” That’s all fine and dandy - [...]
Di-do, Di-do, Di-do…
Posted in General on Sep 23rd, 2003
Don’t you hate that beep when you battery dies on your cellphone?
Weekend Update
Posted in General on Sep 8th, 2003
So I’ve skipped a huge swath of my life in this blog (most of moving, getting an apartment, moving in, getting furniture, etc.) but for the time being I don’t feel like taking the time to write all of those details out. So instead, you get a jump to present day, with a good summary [...]
The Latest Buzz
Posted in General on Aug 10th, 2003
For some reason, Nick and I have been finding a bunch of dead bees on the floor of our kitchen for the past 2 days, about 5 total so far. They appear to be crawling out from under the fridge, and barely able to fly. The one live one I’ve found so far I had [...]