Wednesday, September 28, 2005
is it chico or what?
A couple weeks after we moved in to our new place, one of the girls in our complex got her faceplate off her stereo stolen. Yeah, I think, I know that feeling all too well. I now have a detachable faceplate on my new alpine deck, so I keep mine under the seat or take it in the house if I know the car won't be driven for a while. Like I said, I'm no stranger to having shit stolen from me. Last week, my bike - along with my roommates and my neighbors - was stolen (but that's another story). That's bike #2 for me. Not to mention the car last semester, the $700 worth of car stereo before that and my other bike.
Anyway, the insurance guy is coming to look at the damage to my car today, so I thought I'd clean it up a bit and get rid of the monthandahalfold in-n-out box in the back. First thing I notice as I approach my car is the glove box is hanging open. Second thing I notice is the trunk is popped. Third and final thing I notice is the door is slightly ajar as well as unlocked.
Not again.
I open the door and sit in the car. The faceplate is gone; then again, it is always detached. I feel under the seat and pull out ... the faceplate? Apparently the would-be burglar didn't find it. I scan through the glovebox. Everything is there from the spare light bulb to the brand new registration card to the pink slips to the car! Everything in the back was still there - a bunch of blank DVDs, an alternator, a lot of trash, a movie, even the car's spare key I still had in the side map pocket. Wow. I was amazed.
Then it hit me. My CDs. They were the only thing I couldn't find. My CDs which I haven't listened to in over a year since I got my iPod. These poor bastards didn't take the change off the seat, but they took my collection of CDs from high school. I hope they enjoy listening to burned copies of Five Iron Frenzy and Green Day and Dave Matthews Band. I'm not even reporting this to my insurance company.
A word of advice: If you live in Chico, lock your doors. Take it from me, I know.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
jimmy eat world
I just got back from an awsome Jimmy Eat World conert in which they totally rocked. Jimmy is one of those bands who are just so diverse; they can make the crowd sway with lighters and cell phones raised high or mosh and beat the crap out of each other. They did both suprisingly well.
It was a unique concert because only students at CSU, Chico or the local JC were allowed through the door, there was no general admission. It was a big crowd considering who was allowed in, but it was nothing like they are going to see tonight when they play with Green Day in front of 40,000 people at SBC Park in San Francisco. I really appreciate a band who will do something like that. A band as big as Jimmy who put up with our audience of a couple hundred, who let me in the door for just $18 to see them play just feet from the foot of the stage. That was the best part. Being right there screaming at the top of my lungs. Moshing barefoot but having the music "take my pain away". It was so much fun and so refreshing to see a band and be able to sing (scream?) along with every song (Sheryl, I wanted to call so bad when they sang Blister!) because that's what I've been doing with the CD since freshmen year of high school.
Actually, what I said about the moshing was kind of a lie. I did mosh barefoot, but it never got really all that intense. As far as I know, nobody broke any bones or needed stitches across their face or anything. I know I will have bruises tomorrow, but it was more of a mellow mosh, just jumping and screaming and pushing, not too much punching and kicking, etc... There was crowd surfing and all, but it was kind of lame as it usually is with smaller crowds. Anyway, here's a few pics I snapped with my cell phone:
Wish I had brought my camera, but I definately enjoyed myself in the pit more than I would have on the side snapping pictures.
All in all, it was one of the best concert experiences of my life; I can't wait until Fall Out Boy comes in November!
Friday, September 16, 2005
dual dual
I was at work this afternoon, just kind of a lazy day finishing up some projects for the week. Not much exciting was happening, until a delivery guy came with a big box with that infamous crooked E on the side. You know the one. A big box from dell.
He said it was for a staff person who I knew worked next door to me in the 3d lab, so I pointed him in the right direction, but then out of sheer curiosity, I followed him into the room. The staff person wasn't there, but a friend of mine was, so he signed for it. We both looked at it, and decided it was a shame to let whatever it was sit in the box, so we opened the box to find a fairly nondescript computer from Dell. We opened the computer and saw this:
The image quality is bad, but you get the idea. My friend took out the fact sheet from the box and read: "Two dual core 2.8Ghz Intel Xeon processors, 6 gigs of RAM, 1 Terabyte of SATA hard drive storage in a RAID array..."
You get the idea. This computer - one box running one OS - is theoretically capable of over 11 Ghz of 64 bit computing power. I've seen some pretty gnarly render farms and clusters in my day, but 11 Ghz in ONE COMPUTER? I nearly broke down and wept.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
blue box
Yes, to you it may just be a blue box, but to me it is so much more... it is my life's blood! This blue box connects me to the internet at approximately 4Mb/s If you haven't guessed it, the cable guys came today and put in our internet; the "free dsl" that comes with the rent is shared with EVERYONE in this complex and is slower than molasses in sub zero temperatures. So now we have comcast cable :)
Plus I fixed my old cell phone! I dropped it in water quite a while ago, and just recently ordered a screwdriver bit to take it apart and fix it. It was a learning experience. To see what I mean, look at these pictures. I found a helpful forum on the sprint users site with lots of cool people. Anyway, fun stuff.
And I have no desire whatsoever to do calculus tonight. I got a 3 out of 15 on my last assignment, and it took me several hours to do. That teacher is disheartening. Plus he looks JUST like the dad off of That '70s Show. Now that I have a cell phone camera again, I'm going to take a picture. It's scary.
iPod nano
When I heard that apple was discontinuing the iPod mini, I was furious, but then I saw why:
I just hate that compnay for making such good products for so much money. *sigh*
Monday, September 05, 2005
katrina
I just found out that my mom is on a red-eye to Detroit where she will board a plane to Waveland, Mississippi to help in the reliefe efforts of Hurricane Katrina. Waveland was recently in a CNN story with a headline of "Town Nearly Wiped Off the Map". Another article says "... The storm virtually wiped Waveland off the map, prompting state officials to say it took a harder hit from the wind and water than any other town along the coast ..."
My mother is going with a group of 8 from her church in Saratoga along with a couple other people I know well. There's not much danger now, but I can only imagine the sights she is going to be seeing over the next few days. Please, if you have a spare prayer (if you're into that sort of thing) or thought send them that way even though you probably already are. I don't know, I guess it just hits a bit closer to home when I find out my mom is going to be there :-/
crazy roommates
So I walked into my room about 10 mintues ago and jump on my computer to check my email, etc... I put on some music, just chillin when I get up to get my iPod out of my backpack for a sync. My backback is on the bed, so I sit down on my bed and open it and start rummaging through it when I turn and see this:
Scared the living sh*t out of me. It's my roommate's free roaming iguana. What does free roaming mean? It means that it doesn't have a cage; it just walks around the upstaris bedrooms and eats out of a tray Charlie set up on a bookcase. How it got in MY bed on MY pillow is beyond me, but I guess it's cool. Just scared the crap out of me and I had to tell someone :)