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June 30, 2004

Question re: still-financed car sale ()

by fluffy at 09:33 PM
Hey, um, when I bought my car I always assumed that I'd just own it until it was no longer functional or until my needs outgrew it or whatever. But if I do end up going to NYC, I'll probably want to sell my car — but I still have a while left on my car loan, and as a result I don't have the actual title, just a warranty title.

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.

Just got off the phone with the UbiSoft guy ()

by fluffy at 01:25 PM
Yay, I'm being scheduled for an in-person interview!

Random thought ()

by fluffy at 02:29 AM
Is it just me, or does XAML really want to expand as "Christ, Another Markup Language?!"

June 29, 2004

Yes, every IE user should switch to Firefox ()

by fluffy at 06:48 PM
And yes, I have explained this to both of my parents at great length. Yet they still keep using IE, out of force of habit, and because Firefox "doesn't work right" in ways they can't seem to actually elaborate on.

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.

Friendly fondling (, )

by fluffy at 12:49 PM
A dream I had this morning. Maybe I've been getting too into this new comic style.

Yay! ()

by fluffy at 10:06 AM
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.
Yay!

June 28, 2004

Payoff, part 2 (, , )

by fluffy at 04:15 PM

Just finished the programming aptitude test (, )

by fluffy at 12:00 PM
The UbiSoft/Gameloft guy wanted me to take a test to assess my problem-solving skills as a programmer. This morning he finally sent it to me.

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.

The payoff, part 1 (, , )

by fluffy at 01:14 AM
Events from June 18th (before dinner with friends)...

June 27, 2004

Karate lessons, pt. 2 ()

by fluffy at 01:51 AM

June 26, 2004

The oddness of modern technology ()

by fluffy at 03:05 PM
So, while checking my spam filter for false positives, I noticed one from someone named David with a subject line of "Jody's memorial service." I read it, and it explained when and where the memorial service for Jody was (today, at a park in Dallas), and how people shouldn't dress up because "Jody always hated to dress up."

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.

Gmail invites ()

by fluffy at 10:42 AM
I have 6 gmail invites. If you want one, post a link to an interesting site I haven't seen before.

(Invites to actually be provided at my discretion.)

Karate lessons (, , )

by fluffy at 02:27 AM
So, Thursday night, a whole bunch of us Songfighters (about 20) went out for dinner together.

June 24, 2004

SWF ISO FTJ ()

by fluffy at 08:19 PM
I've accepted a position with UbiSoft New York, so this entry is no longer pertinent. Yay!

Blood pressure...rising... ()

by fluffy at 08:09 PM
Argh. My parents seem to think that I'm not doing enough to get a job, and that I should go with one of the various VB/Crystal Reports jobs which are all that the local tech agencies have available right now. They also know the right buttons to press to get me pissed off so that they can be all righteous about how I "can't handle the truth" or whatever, and when I tell them I'm sick of the conversation they say "Okay, we'll talk about something else," then 10 seconds later start up on the same goddamn thing again.

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.

June 23, 2004

A winner is us! ()

by fluffy at 11:25 PM
Elvis has left the planet.

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

How I spent my weekend (, )

by fluffy at 03:01 AM
Listen (more stuff will be posted as I finish parsing, encoding, tagging, and uploading it).

June 22, 2004

In Las Cruces ()

by fluffy at 01:15 AM
I decided to visit friends in Las Cruces instead of going straight home, so here I am, sitting in Delphine's guest bedroom. Earlier I went to dinner with Geof and his dad and stepmom, and then chatted with Geof into the wee hours of the morning before I blearily stumbled back here. So it's like nothing's changed, except that this is the first time I've slept at Delphine's house (what with, you know, not having a house of my own here anymore).

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...

June 20, 2004

sfhb was fun (, )

by fluffy at 02:21 AM
Though, once again I feel like I was excluded from a lot of things and slighted a bit, at least as far as the actual concert went. I need to get better about showing people that I am actually capable of performing on other peoples' music.

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).

June 19, 2004

SongFight Hot and Bothered ()

by fluffy at 01:57 PM
Right now I'm sitting in on Octothorpe's rehearsal before day two of Songfight Live: Hot and Bothered here in sunny Austin, TX.

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.)

Gnar, dumb spammers ()

by fluffy at 03:32 AM
Just got hit by a small but aggravating amount of comment spam (would have probably been more were it not for phpBB's rate throttling and so on, though dealing with it is still such a pain when I'm just on my slow cellphone connection especially since I've been, like, busy having fun all day). They all came from the same IP address, though, which in turn was from a country which has produced much comment spam but no legitimate comments, so I just disallowed all comments from said country.

Meh.

June 17, 2004

T-Zones GPRS Timeout Fix ()

by fluffy at 07:53 AM
I was having trouble with my GPRS connection "timing out" even though the connection was fine and data was being actively sent and received. It turns out that T-Zones (or at least the free version bundled with my phone) doesn't support LCP Echo (probably specifically to prevent people from staying connected). Just disabling LCP Echo from the respective PPP configuration fixes this.

Bad car-ma (, )

by fluffy at 12:59 AM

June 16, 2004

Modern amenities (, )

by fluffy at 03:31 PM
I'm at a truck stop in Middle Of Nowhere, Texas, and there's WiFi access. The mind boggles.

June 15, 2004

Argh ()

by fluffy at 11:12 PM
I was really stoked about this Austin trip until the guy organizing the concert posted a last-minute message to the forum, saying (paraphrased), "Oh yeah, we don't have any amps for the venue. Can anyone who's driving bring one?"

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).

Preparations for my roadtrip tomorrow (, , )

by fluffy at 03:08 PM
I bought only the essentials at CompUSA:
  • 12-pack of Bawls ($18)
  • 250GB Maxtor hard drive, 7200 RPM ($130)
  • External USB2/Firewire enclosure ($50, came with all the cables too)
I'm all set!

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).

June 14, 2004

I am nigritude ultramarine ()

by fluffy at 04:04 PM
Or at least, thanks to Terpia, gmail thinks I am. (Both "fluffy" and "magenta" were already taken.)

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

What's so special about graphics? (, )

by fluffy at 12:41 PM
Why is it that when I sent my resume to prospective non-graphics employers, the first thing they say is, "Sorry, we don't have any graphics jobs?"

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.

Special day ()

by fluffy at 12:00 AM
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday dear fluffy
Happy birthday to me

June 13, 2004

Why we will never have world peace ()

by fluffy at 08:22 PM
When something as simple as a chia pet can be such an incredibly divisive issue, you know that people are, as a species, fundamentally incapable of ending strife.

Best anime I've seen in a while ()

by fluffy at 07:48 PM
I just finished watching "Battle Programmer Shirase." It's wonderfully self-aware, and even the previous/next episode segments are full of great humor and lots of fun postmodernism (which even start to develop meta-plots of their own).

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!

June 11, 2004

I hadn't done it in way too long (, )

by fluffy at 09:49 PM
But there he was, calling out to me, capturing my attention from the periphery.

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.

ATTN: Pixel Artists ()

by fluffy at 09:12 AM
While poking around on UbiSoft's jobs page, I noticed that at the same studio which I may be interviewing at soon there is a job listing for pixel artist.

June 10, 2004

The free printer ()

by fluffy at 10:35 AM
My Powerbook came with a free printer, an HP Deskjet 5150. I finally just got around to setting it up.

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

"Other minor improvements" (, , )

by fluffy at 04:01 AM
Hm. iTunes 4.6 just installed, and its update text said that this version allows streaming to Airport Express, and "other minor improvements."

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!

More stuffs ()

by fluffy at 03:21 AM
Obviously I've been tweaking the new layout a bit. I've also finally done a bunch of things:

June 09, 2004

A great way to lose eyeballs ()

by fluffy at 09:08 PM
TV Guide has just decided that it's more important to have annoying full-page Flash ads pop up and totally block the content you're trying to read than it is to have people actually using their service.

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.

What is nigritude ultramarine? ()

by fluffy at 02:14 PM
Nigritude: blackness; the state of being black.

Ultramarine: A vivid or strong blue or purplish blue.

June 08, 2004

Cartoons ()

by fluffy at 06:31 PM

Apple DVI→ADC is WAY better than the DVIator ()

by fluffy at 04:05 PM
Remember the trouble I was having with monitor hotplugging and USB grounding noise on the DVIator?

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.

Glad I checked my spam filter! ()

by fluffy at 12:57 PM
'Coz trapped inside was a recent email from someone at UbiSoft who wants to interview me for a job at their new mobile gaming division!

June 07, 2004

The Dr. Cecil Saga ()

by fluffy at 08:49 PM
Okay, I've been putting this explanation off long enough, so here it is, the history of Dr. Cecil and why I now measure job stress levels in μCecils.

What's that sucking sound? ()

by fluffy at 05:10 PM
Why, it's John's universe collapsing all around him!

Wow, some people ()

by fluffy at 03:00 PM
Okay, so on the Salling Clicker Yahoo Group I posted that I'd updated my iSync Daily script to remove a few of the niggles.

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).

New color scheme ()

by fluffy at 01:39 PM
to match the new name.

June 06, 2004

Mac gaming ()

by fluffy at 09:46 PM
Wow. I finally got around to trying the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo, and I must say, it runs impressively well on this little machine. This little, low-power, pretty-quiet, ultra-portable laptop is easily at least as powerful (gaming-wise, at least) as my power-hungry, loud, obnoxious, not-at-all-portable Linux/WinXP graphics workstation.

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!)

June 05, 2004

Another weblog name change ()

by fluffy at 11:56 AM
But this one is temporary. Just as an experiment. :D

(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.

June 04, 2004

New Brave New World ()

by fluffy at 11:08 PM
Argh. I just saw the SciFi Channel production of Brave New World, or the second half of it anyway. And it was great until they ended it.

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

Limiting factors ()

by fluffy at 01:38 PM
On the old iBook, I always left the backlight at one notch below "off" when using it portably, since that made about a 50% difference in battery life (2 hours vs. 4 or so).

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.)

June 03, 2004

Orange peel chicken ()

by fluffy at 08:42 PM
I was experimenting with cooking with orange juice tonight. Here's the result, which came out rather well (my dad said it tasted really good, as opposed to most of my dishes which he's said were merely good.

Dear BBC ()

by fluffy at 11:14 AM
When writing an article which is posted on the Internet, it would be nice if you'd actually provide a link to the site you reference instead of making people hunt around the Internet for it.

Someone misses the point ()

by fluffy at 09:50 AM
In other news, Internet users are idiots and assholes.

Woohoo! ()

by fluffy at 12:44 AM
Day off tomorrow!

And the day after that!

And probably all of next week too!

June 02, 2004

990μCecils (, )

by fluffy at 11:17 AM
I'm working from home without his permission, because he was kind enough to actually let me know he wasn't going to be in the office this morning so I figured that there was no reason for me to be in either.

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.