My excuse for being late to work today:

Note the hood is up. By the time I went downstairs to leave, a maintenance truck had pulled up behind it as well, blocking the remaining opening. Luckily he was almost ready to jump it when I was ready to go, so I only had to wait a few minutes for him to move his truck around to the front.

Some of you have heard, but now that it's mostly public... Most of you probably know my boss Brent, and that my team pretty much regards him as the best boss we could ever ask for. Unfortunately for us he's leaving to go take up software development again. It's a good thing for him, and we're happy about that, but if you see the rest of us from ITS wandering around stressed and with not so happy faces, that'd be why.

Free movie of the week was Star Wars III. It was the first time I'd seen it, and I'd have to agree it's the best of the first three. The story did better than I thought at connecting II and IV, although I note the stuff that everyone else rants about are still there, but I won't go into those. On the technical side I had mixed feelings. It seems in some cases they assumed poor quality sound systems on their mixing (the background noise sounds like it has an inverse noise gate off the dialog but with excessive padding). Then there's stuff that just seems to be left hanging at an odd spot rather than a smooth transition. Then there's the attention to detail on stuff like the holograms having high frequencies that sound like a flyback transformer (the ~15kHz whine of traditional TVs). Oh well, can't have it all. The Yoda thing is funny though.

Today was week 2 of Firefly theater. It was good, although Subway toasted my sub without asking me which wasn't so great. I guess it could have been worse. Scheduling has been iffy so far on this. If you want to show up (and are in the area), I think people would be open to moving it around as necessary.

I think nobody got the Niska/Crow thing. Anyways... Thursday I took a day off from work to go to a continuing ed class down in Eagan. Got to learn all about the effects of different levels of electrical power on the human body and what will have what effects such as killing a person and how fast. Also what's allowed, all the fun new regulations about not using ceiling tile supports, having to rip out abandoned cable, and how ground rods are no longer the preferred method of grounding. It was actually a pretty interesting day. Now I just need to buy stamps so I can mail in my license renewal. Unfortunately some things still don't allow completely electronic communication. :(

Nothing too eventful happened Friday. I did go to Qdoba though (my mom got another 2 for 1 email from them), and my little sister drove, which was interesting (I tried not to teach her any bad habits). Nor over the weekend. No movies, as I was too busy reading and analyzing stuff. Stumbled across an older but still funny/disturbing thing here (warning - is flash). Josh Lewis also posted a piece on email forwards and Bcc. I should keep that link around so I don't have to re-explain it so often. Also found a funny article in the strib about stuff discovered over 30 years ago. Apparently people some people hadn't heard about that before? I realize anyone older than about 40 probably didn't have it in school, but... Unfortunately I think the people who freak out the most about outbreaks won't even read an article like that. Oh well.

I'm reading up on phones and continually find it amazing how little the tech sites even understand about the tech. Came across one funny quote, "Unfortunately signal strength seems to bear no relation to call quality." Um, and that's news to who? I miss my old phone that reported strength in Ec/Io (energy of the correlated (desired) bits over total channel energy, basically the CDMA equivalent of S/N ratio since some signal counts as noise). Anyways, apparently they eliminated that because people didn't understand waves and interference patterns and were confused that inches could mean the difference between a fully usable signal and nothing. I say we need to push basic physics classes a bit more.

As for the reason I'm looking at phones is due to a combination of reasons. First is my phone has been technically working great (in the sense it holds a signal as well as ever), but the keypad and display are a little flaky after it went swimming with me in the St. Croix about 7 weeks back. The keypad had been slightly flaky before that, but it's shifted a key now, and it requires pushing hard to get it to see that key. Second is the signal quality thing at home. Within about a block north and about 3 blocks south of my house the quality is iffy. Everywhere else it's great. The signal strength is fine, and geography could mean a lot of reflections. Given that the whole move-your-head-6-inches thing usually helps, the problem persists across handsets from 3 manufacturers, is unidirectional (the other end doesn't usually notice it), and using the older IS-95b instead of 1xRTT as the air interface (combines I&Q subchannels - effectively halving the usable RF channels, but providing twice as much access to the data on the air) eliminates it, it's probably an issue with excessive reflections and interference and extracting the desired bits. So in short I want a phone with a better signal processor. Third is in a week I can upgrade for free (unless I choose some crazy very expensive phone).

So anyways, the one I'm currently looking at is the Motorola E815. Yea, unfortunately it's a flip, but it seems pretty much everything out there is. It also has a camera which sorta sucks, but again that seems to be standard these days (hopefully once more execs and government people start needing new phones that'll change). I don't care much for useless features, and pretty much just want a phone that does voice and basic text well, and hopefully has decent call management (can handle ignoring non-in-phonebook, etc.). This one supposedly is one of the only ones that can compare to my current 3589i on RF, so it's the preferred candidate for now. Stuff like a calculator and alarm clock can be nice, but not necessary. Has anyone had any personal experience with this phone, or can point me to direct information good or bad? I've already spent my time on sites a la hofo and phonescoop, so now it's just looking for personal references. Anyone?

Rather interesting reading on Waiter Rant today. Also found a funny Niska/Crow sticker.

In case anyone hasn't heard already, Austin is now famous (sorta).

Free movie of the week is Assault on Precinct 13, which was pretty decent but nothing special. It was one of the free things today, the other being using a little aluminum foil to get a free burrito at Chipotle. So a very good day there, although the cross-dressing nun was a little disconcerting (mostly because the giveaways besides the face looking familiar were pretty much just the voice and his hands).

Oh yea, if you haven't acquired your free movie rental code (good until November 14) due to not having an appropriate throwaway address to give the redbox and want one, let me know. That's another free thing. Netflix is also apparently unloading copies of Sin City for $6, which is a good deal but also not the same as free. Still worth considering though. And tomorrow is Firefly Theater. Should be good times.

Movies for the weekend were O, which was good. Second was Bourne Supremacy, which is definitely more upbeat. I've seen it a couple times before, but it seemed a bit different. I think it may have been the fact that things which made it interesting such as the shaky camera movement are things I didn't even notice anymore. It's also one of those that I managed to remember way too much of - it's more fun if the details are relearned. Oh well. Third movie was The Rainmaker, which while the court scenes were a little odd, was a good overall story. I wish certain things were covered a bit more such as the difference in motive between Rudy and Deck, but maybe that was just dropped to make the movie better. Still a good movie though.

I sorta caught up on sleep this weekend, which was nice. The extra hour helped a bit there. I'm still annoyed with having to manually reset clocks though. I think about a third of my clocks need to be reset, and because they mostly are off and it doesn't bother me since I just compensate without thinking, I think it may be a while until they get fixed. The only one I've changed so far is the thermostat so things stay comfortable.

Also made some site updates today. I went and did some cleanup, removed some lingering layout tables (not sure why they were still in there and not removed before - they didn't really do anything), and updated the css to handle those changes. Also built a sitemap generator for google and integrated it into the system. Now if any updates (posts or comments) are posted, within an hour the sitemap will automatically regenerate and google will be notified. We'll see if that brings a bit more search consistency. I did find that it wasn't possible to index everything through non-restricted links as well, so the missing sections should now be indexed again too.

I've posted this before (back in 2002), but in doing updates to my site stumbled across it again and decided it was worth a repost. RFC3271 - The Internet is for Everyone

On a more humourous note there's also Joel.

Work has been going reasonably well. Nothing's been blowing up, which is nice. However now it's what big things to start in what order, and making sure all the little interruptions are out of the way first. I need to take a few days off sometime. I do have one planned this week, but it's for class and not for relaxing, so I'm not sure that counts.

Anyways, last weekend Joe Buck and I went to see Serenity, which is an awesome movie. You should go see it if you haven't. For those who haven't seen Firefly and are in the area and pay attention to the lunch mailing list, L&O Theater will be Firefly Theater for a while. Hopefully we'll all fit. Other movies of the weekend were Texas Chainsaw Massacre which was horrible, Sideways which was decent but nothing special, and The Machinist which was weird. Free movie of the week was Unleashed, which was really really good.

Last weekend I also bought a bunch of insulation accessories and started poking around in my attic. It didn't go near as well as I had hoped, but maybe I'll get around to finishing that up sometime in the near future. Stupid low-pitched hip roof...

This week went decently well, with someone deciding that The O.C. would be good lunch material over L&O so there was a revolt and a watching of an episode of Upright Citizens Brigade. This is actually what inspired the whole Firefly thing BTW. We also decided to check out the new buffet at China Tiger, which was good and had lots of food. Also went to Chipotle, which is one of those places where I think I see people I know every time I go. Saw 3 people and ended up eating with Joe and brooke, which was cool. That's enough mundane details for now though. You should try China Tiger's buffet if you like Chinese food though.

Free movie of the week was Crash, which was definitely a good one-time watch. It brings up interesting points in an interesting way. It's not designed to entertain, thus the not being one to watch over and over. Other events of Monday involved taking apart the sub to figure out why it hasn't been working for the past several weeks. After taking out the 12 large screws holding the amp to the back of the box, I discover that it's also solidly glued on. I guess it makes sense, but a bit of a pain. So off to the other side and take out the ring of screws around the driver. Luckily I could reach in through there to the amp board, and found a fuse for each rail of the power supply that blew. After work on Tuesday I picked up replacements but of course forgot to check fast/slow, so got fast-blow to be safe. Turns out the originals look like slow-blow, and I blew two more during a buzz and rattle test before I had it set back down to sane levels. It did give me a good set point for the compressor so I'm unlikely to blow any more fuses, which is good. I also found one of my equalizers apparently is bad, which I'm suspecting may have been one of the causes (it was actually shorting out the signal on the entire sub/LFE chain). I need to track that down now and be sure it didn't do more damage, since the transducers don't seem to be acting quite right either but it wasn't noticable with the sub gone. Anyways, it's so nice to have it back, and since I had it out I moved it out of the corner which should help stuff too. There's so much with subtle low bass these days that you wonder how it didn't seem horribly wrong with it missing.

Anyways, I seem to have gotten half the office either annoyed at or wondering about the "smarter you are..." part of the Petals game. Such fun. :) I seem to also be shocking pictures with an old pic I pulled out, which is sorta funny. A coworker is also convinced that facebook is of the devil and/or no good can come of it, which only means that everyone is tormenting him about getting on it now. He doesn't seem to believe that I had nothing to do with that either for some reason. Question for you guys, should I start confirming the random friend requests I'm getting from random people who I don't know who look at my profile? I'm torn between laughing a them trying to figure out how it happened, and not wanting to deal with them complaining to me about it. Opinions? OK, enough of the semi-sadistic side - it's time for sleep.