Plaidophile

When I sold my previous car, I just signed the title over to the buyer, but since I don't actually hold the title (the lender does), I don't seem to have any means of doing this.

Or, more accurately, the default Firefox settings (e.g. where downloaded files are kept) are different than the IE settings they had to set by hand anyway, but they don't want to relearn how to configure a few basic settings.

Thanks for your work, you seem to have very good programming skills. Is it possible that I give you a call tomorrow Wednesday at 2pm EST? I will do a quick interview to know a little bit more about the projects you did and to give you a presentation of the company and the position.

The problems on it were just like the sorts on the ACM annual programming contest (which I've done very well at in the past), with the usual "it seems simple but there's a catch" bit to it. I completed all four in an hour and a half, with code which is fairly well-tested so I'm pretty sure I got the right solutions, though there's a couple where if I'd had more time to work on it I could have done some clever stuff to make it more efficient. Each of the puzzles has a subtle "gotcha" which makes the common clever solutions not work, however.

The problems are repeated inside (verbatim, all grammar weirdness and ambiguities being on the part of the interviewer) for anyone else who wants to take a crack at it. My solutions are also included in the page source in case you want to see them.

It didn't, however, say who Jody was. But I thought I had a pretty good idea who it might be, since I've only known a handful of Jodys.

(Invites to actually be provided at my discretion.)

Also, apparently, "I hate the people around here" isn't good enough of a reason for me wanting to leave, and when I do try to explain why I hate the people around here (being arrogant, manipulative, lying, cheating, opportunistic assholes), they just say, "Well, there's people like that everywhere." That may be true, but it's more or less the only type here. And apparently hating the climate isn't good enough a reason either.

This is only the second win I've been involved in.

I'm extremely tempted to pay Jesse and his car a visit right now though. Hm, Delphine has a pretty big cache of spray paint...

But, nearly every act made use of my better guitar, and everyone will definitely benefit from the work I've put in to recording the show (and hopefully people will appreciate how much work it'll be to mix and encode 12 hours of three channels of single-take audio into the individual songs).

Last night was great. Tonight should also be great.

Rather than try to write a nice long rambly thing, though, I'll let the recordings speak for themselves. Hopefully I'll have them mixed, assembled and posted within a week. (12+ hours is a lot of audio to parse through though.)

Meh.

Oh well. I'll be able to catch up with some friends I haven't seen in a few years and find out how awesome Austin really is (or isn't).

• 12-pack of Bawls ($18)
• 250GB Maxtor hard drive, 7200 RPM ($130)
• External USB2/Firewire enclosure ($50, came with all the cables too)

Oh, also, I participated in an Elvis In Space entry ("Elite Inner Echelon Blood-Circle," the name being a reference to it being three long-time Songfighters who were all born on June 14, the due date of the fight, though the name was come up with by Mr. Blue Lang).

So now I can see what the big privacy stink is all about. Yay me.

Like, yes, my resume says that I do graphics programming. It also says I do database programming, network programming, technical writing, and systems engineering. Whenever I've applied for a graphics job, those other skills have been an asset, because I had breadth.

Unfortunately, none of the fansites do it justice, since most of them seem to just talk about the first episode. But there are plenty of sources of fansubs, which is something which the creators of the series even anticipated — it's one of the meta-plotpoints in one of the recaps!

I approached, and shifted my weight uncomfortably, unsure if I would be able to do it again after so long. I removed my shoes, and braced myself for unknown pain.

I began to feel the rhythm burning in my veins, and knew this was my only chance for a while. I accepted the man's offer, and got ready.

I took a deep breath.

It's better than the Epson I have in storage!

One of those "improvements" appears to be the disabling of playback of (legally-acquired) m4p songs which were neutered using hymn — when I try playing a decrypted m4a file, it says that this computer "is not authorized to play this song," even though the original was purchased on this system.

So, it looks like Apple has added in a check to see if iTMS metadata is there but the DRM isn't. I guess the hymn folks will just have to start stripping that stuff out, which they purposefully left in to show that hymn was intended solely for fair use and not for piracy!

What's more, the stupid ad (for a Fox show I have absolutely no interest in) has a "close" button which is pretty well-hidden, and when you click it, the ad doesn't close — instead, it starts making obnoxious sound effects.

Ultramarine: A vivid or strong blue or purplish blue.

Today I bought an Apple DVI→ADC convertor, which is both smaller (though still rather large) and takes less power, is integrated into a single unit with a nice, long cable (unlike the DVIator which is a cable management nightmare), and the monitor hotplugging works beautifully. Plus, no USB grounding noise.

http://www.grillsexpress.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CUmbrella

Then the author of ProximitySync posted a message in my thread pointing out that ProximitySync was SOOO much better, listing every single feature it had (most of which were things which Clicker already provides).

In other news, my Mac-bashing brother has finally seen the light and is thinking of buying a Powerbook for his next system too. (Though not because of me, but because he was visiting our sister in France, and he got used to her 1998-vintage iMac and realized that even that system was much more pleasant to use than his beefy Win2K rig!)

(Of course, I'm not the only one trying this cheap trick, either.)

6/7/04 Actually, on second thought, I really like this name. I think I'll keep it.

(Spoilers below, for people who haven't read the book or seen the movie, and who care.)

On the Powerbook, the CPU takes so much more power that the time difference between eye-strain and readability is more like 4 and 4.5 hours (at half brightness, which I find more comfortable than full brightness anyway; full brightness gets about 3.75 hours according to the timer in the corner though).

Which, of course, explains why the battery in this thing contributes around 1/3 of the total weight. (Which makes it all the more amazing how light this is.)

And the day after that!

And probably all of next week too!

Just one little push is all it takes now.

Fortunately, I might not have to quit, 'coz he hasn't been paying his fluffy bill (and is past-due to the tune of around $10,000) so the staffing agency is going to pull me from the project on Friday anyway if they don't have a check in hand by then.