yeah, yeah, i know, i just got back from a vacation from hawtlanta and all i’m doing is complaining about work…
i’ve figured out my problem. i will just add another 3GB of swap space. let’s see my code EAT ALL OF THAT RAM. stupid computers.
Mem:   775296k total,  293172k used,  482124k free,   17428k buffers
Swap: 4551544k total,   36360k used, 4515184k free,  209272k cached
Feb 28 12:01:52 localhost kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 8273 (php)
this isn’t meaningful to non-techies, but i uhhhh, killed my dev server and used up all of the memory on the machine. ALL OF THE MEMORY. oops.
i am a total sucker for a good deal. i also love pearl tea. the two may not seem like they would go hand in hand, but most pearl tea places offer some kind of free drink after x number (usually ten) of purchases. when a pearl tea place does not offer some kind of frequent buyer’s card, i am usually turned off by the place.
the closest decent pearl tea to my work doesn’t have a buy 10 get 1 free offer, instead they have this points redemption program. for each pearl tea drink you purchase, you get 1 point. they have different items that you can redeem for different point values.
an ipod mini is 500 points. a 20 ounce sports bottle is 20 points. you can then use the sports bottle to refill your drinks and get an extra 4 ounces free on every fill up.
i was really trying for the ipod mini, but with the nano out now, the mini doesn’t seem that exciting. i finally broke down and got a sports bottle. it’s actually not that bad, i may just keep getting them from here on out. 20 ounces is pretty small for a sports bottle, though.
on the suggestion of my boss, i decided to repartition my work laptop hard drive. i got this laptop from him and he had a linux partition on the laptop as well as a windows one. the linux partition (which i didn’t have access to) was taking up valuable porn work-related hard drive space and i needed to free up some memory.
the big download that i had been getting basically ate up all the free hard drive space so i needed to find more space. i have never resized a partition before AND kept the data intact, i always just reformatted, but because this was a work laptop, i decided to try to resize it without losing all of the data.
having never done it before, i did a little research and decided to use this linux boot disk and use a program called QtParted which is a free clone of partition magic.
it SEEMED straightforward enough. delete the linux partition, resize the windows partition, and you should be done…or so i thought.
when i rebooted, i was greeted by a “grub>” prompt. uh oh. i didn’t know exactly what that meant, but i knew that we weren’t in kansas anymore, toto.
i tried to set the active partition, i tried to do this and that, and i think it boiled down to the fact that the partition that had the info on how to boot the machine was just removed so the laptop didn’t know what to do.
i then had to sheepishly ask the IT department for a windows CD to try and fix things. the conversation went something like:
me: uhhh, hi, mr. IT guy. can i get a copy of the windows install CD?
IT guy: you need the windows CD?
me: uhhh…yeah.
IT guy: why do you need the windows CD?
me: oh, you know, i’ve always wanted to see what one looked like.
IT guy: well, let me see if i have one around…so i got it and i was trying to fix things when it asked for the Administrator password. uh oh. now i knew i was in trouble. i tried guessing what the password was and tried all these combinations but nothing worked. finally i had to fess up to the IT guy what kind of trouble i had gotten myself into.
1) i, uhhh, resized a partition on my laptop.
2) errr, without backing anything up.
3) and uhhh, i might have broken things, but i don’t think i did.
4) oh yeah, and i didn’t tell anyone what i was doing, but you know, it should be ok, right?so he goes and peers intently at the password prompt, ponders for a moment what it may be, and GET THIS, he hits the enter key.
let’s let that sink in for a second.
HE HIT THE *ENTER* key. no password. NO PASSWORD.
i’m not sure what was worse. me not thinking of that or there being no password for the admin account. either way it hurts my brain.
but everything is fixed and all is well.
yay.
i can work again.
err.. boo.
i just watched last week’s beauty and the geek. i really like this show. this week the geek’s had to pick a dress and lingerie for their beauties and do a photo shoot with them. i think it’s really interesting to watch the guys who have never really taken a picture before to now shoot full on shoots. they had assistants help with lighting and all, but still, it was pretty interesting to watch.
what i noticed was that the models all really had different ideas on what they felt comfortable doing and it really showed through in the pictures. it’s been a while since i taken a portrait of anyone, but i think that i will have to keep in mind that making sure the model is comfortable is the most important thing to a successful picture.
the beauties had to go to a bar with no make up wearing ugly clothes and try to get guys to buy drinks for them. i think that it was a great lesson learned for them to realize how hard it is for other people in similar situations.
but the best part of the show was when they made the beauties ask out the geeks. they were all nervous, they had anxiety about it, and they all were taken out of their comfort zone.
i’m waiting now for a data dump to finish downloading so i can get some work done. it’s a roughly 8GB transfer that i just started.
let’s see, the connection is a 1Mb/s connection, so that’s 1,000,000 bps * 1byte/8bit = 125kB/s. now there’s network latency and other people sharing this connection, so let’s say that i’m really transferring at about 100kB/s which i think is a little fast, but let’s pretend that’s correct. that’s 1MB every 10 seconds, or 6MB per minute. in an hour, i can transfer 360MB.
that means it’ll only take 22 hours before my download is done. hmmm, it’ll be done by end of day friday! i guess my work is done for the week. i should go home for the weekend.
i was talking to a friend and we were talking about valentine’s day. our conversation went something like this:
friend: are you doing anything for valentine’s day?
me: yeah, pretty mellow, but i’m going to try making one of her favorite dishes for dinner and i’ve bought a harder to find bottle of one of her favorite wines. how about you?
friend: yeah, i can’t cook, so we’re going to go out to dinner.
me: oh that’s cool.
friend: do you buy flowers? my girlfriend has been complaining lately that i haven’t bought her flowers recently.
me: oh yeah?
friend: yeah, i bought my mom flowers for her birthday and she complained about how it is such a waste of money to buy flowers. and i was just thinking to myself, “see, that’s how a woman is supposed to think!”
me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
friend: but yeah…
me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
my friend cracks me up.
i tried starbucks’ new drink, the marble mocha macchiato. at first the drink was quite bitter, but then i used the chocolate mixing stick provided by starbucks and this drink suddenly becomes a sweet chocolately delight. it could very well be my favorite drink there now.
this starbucks habit is starting to finally hit me. my day doesn’t quite feel like it has started until i’ve gotten my fix. this has got to be bad.
i went boarding over the weekend with greg, cheryl, and christi. we stayed up in sacramento at greg’s place there and went to sierra to do some boarding.
i don’t know how we did it, but we lost greg and cheryl on THE FIRST RUN. how do you lose people on the first run?? i don’t know, i guess we weren’t paying attention. we somehow managed to find ourselves on some closed run where there were all of these big jumps. there was a competition and when i got to the bottom of the run, an official asked me if i was a competitor. i told him no and he asked me not to come here again. nice, huh?
the snow was pretty good, a little icy in some parts, but the weather was gorgeous. it was warm and i think i got sunburned just a little bit.
i try really hard not to get sucked up into the inane, but i’ve started to watch the show. the basic premise is that the show gets a bunch of geeks and pairs them up with beautiful women. the women aren’t self-admittedly not very intelligent, but they thrive in social situations. the guys are all very intelligent, but to a fault, they lack any real social grace.
the combination of the two is to help each learn from the other. it’s a pretty interesting show and i can’t help watch it. maybe it is because it’s entertaining to see people really grow. maybe it is because it is just mind-boggling that some people are in such denial about certain things.