Monthly Archives: October 2004

As I’ve complained in the past, my cameraphone pictures oftentimes never make it to my moblog. I think the problem has to do with DNS and/or uptime, possibly (since my website is hosted over my cable modem connection at home, which can be a bit spotty at times).

Anyway, because of this I tend to resend pictures until they show up. Two particulary interesting ones just have (showed up, that is). Click the thumbnails for larger views, as well as a method for commenting on each specific image (if you like).

John Kerry Pumpkin
This is that pumpkin that Beth made, which I mentioned a while back. Unfortunately, it’s been so long between when the photo was taken and it arrived on the site that the actual pumpkin has gotten moldly (and hence been disposed of) since then.

Male pattern baldness in the 23rd Century
This is an image from my genetics textbook (pg. 104). The caption reads:

Figure 4.24 Male pattern baldness, a sex-influenced trait.
Apparently geneticists will not have therapies for male pattern baldness even by the twenty-third century.

I love it when textbooks have a sense of humour. Esp. when it’s a sci-fi related sens eof humour.

Anyway, there’s another one which should arrive at some point (hopefully) which involves a giraffe wearing a giraffe mask. I probably won’t blog that one too :)

After another 12 hour drive, Beth and I made it back to Ithaca. She’s said she doesn’t want to take this particular driving route again, and I don’t blame her. 24 hours in a car in a 60 hour period is a bit rough, to say the least.

We ended up getting back sometime around 3 AM, but instead of going to sleep like a reasonable person, I busied myself installing Hordes of the Underdark, which was waiting on my desk when I returned. I got it installed succesfully, and managed to only “test” it for a few minutes before finally going to sleep….

Only to wake up about 4 hours later. Suboptimal, to be sure, but it could be (and has been) worse.

Predictibly, this caused us to be slightly late to work in the first place, but then we had a Target adventure (wherein Beth needed Ibuprofen, and my car needed radiator fluid [the coolant light came on again]). Then I needed gas too. In the end, we managed to only be 1.25 hours late! :)

And then Beth forgot that Connecticut exists, and there was much rejoicing.

Today after breakfast there was more dress shopping. This place wouldn’t let me take pictures of the dresses. Bah. If it were up to me I’d boycott the place, but it’s not :)

Afterall, if they have pictures of the dresses available on their website (as we were told they do) why not allow people to get photographs of themselves in difference dresses to make their decision later on easier? It’s all just another ploy by an evil corporation to take control out of the hands of the consumer, to force their hand into making an important (and expensive) decision on the spot, without having the proper resources to logically think it out (and possibly shop around for better prices).

The place we went to yesterday was a locally owned business and really didn’t seem to care if we took pictures. They were also nicer. I would personally feel a lot better supporting them as a business, but as I said before, it’s not up to me :)

But then again, I’m enough of a hippy that stuff like this makes me a bit livid, and I doubt anyone else involved feels strongly at all about such things. Furthermore, my opinion doesn’t matter, as it’s not my wedding.

Yesterday involved lots of dress shopping, and today will involve even more. Really not up my alley, but being a bridesmaid and all means it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s up my alley :/

We also went to look at the tentative reception hall place, which is a castle.

I took lots of pictures of both activities, some of which are in normal format and some of which were accidentally shot in the mysterious “M’ (not movie) format that my camera has, that takes up a ginormous amount of space / picture. Eh, I’ll try and sort it out later (both getting the picutures and doing something with them, and figuring out what that mode does).

Beth has more about this in her blog (as you would hope, seeing that it is her wedding [which as she says is tentatively scheduled for July 16th]).

Other than that we went to hang out with Eve and watch movies, and meet her cat, Mako (which I also got a picture of [cutest cat EVER!]). We started to watch Atom Age Vampire, but that was too bad for some of us so we ended up watching The Gate instead (which was still too bad for some of us, apparently, though not too bad to Eve and myself [we have already seen and liked this movie]).

Eh… I guess that’s it. I’m only posting because when my alarm went off, someone else was using the bathroom (again).

Well, Beth, ctl, and I are finally in Pittsburgh (or close enough), after nearly 12 hours on the road.

First, we wasted 45 minutes waiting around for happicow, who didn’t tell us he wasn’t coming until after we had already waited. Grrr. We finally left a bit before 3, even though we had planned to leave at least a half hour before that.

Then we got stuck in traffic for over an hour before we even got to Route 81, so a length of the trip that should have taken 45 minutes took rearly 2 hours.

Then we ot stuck in more traffic, on Route 81 (PA side). My mad navigation skillz made this delay not as long as it could have been (and much more scenic!), but this still put us about another hour behind.

We finally reached Bethlehem around 8, though we had originally planned to get there by 6. Thankfully, we left quickly to start the next leg of the journey.

~3 rest stops and ~7 hours later, we finally reached our destination (~3:20). In case you were wondering, yes, this was the most convoluted trip from Ithaca to Pittsburgh ever:
At least I got to read a bunch during the trip :)

When we finally got here, instead of sleeping like a sane person (especially since I plan on getting up in less than 5 hours), I configured a wireless access point and played around on my computer, which I am still doing. How typically irresponsible of me.

I have the problem where I accidently reply off of list waay too often. So I want to make it physically impossible for me to continue doing this by making it so that replies to subscribed mailing lists in mutt automagically use list-reply. It seems that I am not the first person to want to do this.

My real problem is that when I try the solution mentioned in this mailing list post, it only works for regular (non-mailing list) messages. When I try to reply to a mailing list message, the To: field gets set as mailing-list@example.com<reply> (where mailing-list@example.com == the subscribed mailing list address).

Anyway, I see no reason why this solution should work for some people and not me besides possible mutt version inconsistencies. The post was from November 2003, and I am currently using mutt 1.5.6i (2004-02-01).

Does anyone have any suggestions or helpful hints to solve either of my problems?

Today Beth and I took an early lunch and ran around trying to get our passports (before thhey become much less appealing to carry around).

Predictably, I blinked when my photo was being taken and had to do it again (I always do that).

Then when we went to the courthouse to do the paperwork. I forgot to leave my Leatherman in the car, and had to check it (along with my camera phone and camera) at the front desk. The guy answered my question of “Can I leave this here?” with “No, you can’t take that in.” which only served to confuse me (I was worried that he would want to confiscate it permanently, and was only wondering if I could leave it and get it back later). Then I said I had gizmos in my satchel I wanted to take out, and he said it would be fine and to just put it through the scanner. Then he gave me a dirty look when he found my camera in there. Bah, I would have taken it out, if he had only given me a chance to remember that it was there! And then I went through the metal detector and beeped. I hate metal detectors. A lot.

Anyway, boring paperwork was filed (they wouldn’t let me use ‘Teri’ – I had to use ‘Theresa’ as my name [Bah!]) and largish checks were written, and I forfeited my photos and birth certificate (hopefully only for a few weeks for the latter of the two).

So that’s finally done, I hope. I’ve been meaning to do this for 8 months (at least), but I’m exceptionally good at procrastinating. I really hope that when my passport arrives, it is RFID-free.

The wifi card on my zarus has stopped letting me use wifi. Grrr.

Since the zaurus is slow, lacking battery life, and mostly useless anyway (especially since I only sync it via kludge), I’m debating just putting the stupid thing in a drawer and forgetting about it- at least then I wouldn’t have to lug its bulk about all the time :/

I should probably post more often, so that way I’d get to have fewer of these tedious ‘catching up’ posts.

On Saturday, Beth and I went to the local Linux/FSF meetup (the two combined). It has a pretty abysmally low turnout this time (maybe the Apple Festival that was going on at the same time in the commons had something to do with it), and Ark was nowhere to be seen so I didn’t get my GPG key signed, either (though I did print out a bunch of paper with my public fingerprint on it for when such things come up in the future). The meeting was at Autumn Leaves, which has to be one of the coolest bookstores in the planet^H^H^H^H^H^H Ithaca (Upstairs it has a café, game store, and the Bush Must Go! headquarters. Oh, and free wifi [which I couldn't get to work]. It probably has some other things, too.) The meeting was low-key, but enjoyable. ctl was supposed to come, but didn’t. The café had good espresso, but really bad Cream Soda. ….. I guess that’s all I have to say about that.

After the meeting, Beth and I met up with ctl and we went over to GreenStar to buy dinner fixings and such. This was my first time at the co-op, and I really liked the atmosphere. I think I’m going to try to buy as many groceries as I can in the future there.

Later on, ctl gave Beth her engagement ring, dinner was eaten, and ways were parted. The end (of Saturday).

On Sunday, Beth and I (mostly Beth) made pumpkin pies, and I had gnocchi for the first time (which I liked a bunch). I thought I was supposed to pick up Chris from the airport, but I was wrong- I stayed up late waiting for no reason and Chris stayed in L.A. drinking. Other stuff probably happened too, but the rest is a blur of Shadows of Undrentide.

Yesterday, I worked most of the day (which usually happens on workdays, unless of course I’m sick, which I’m thankfully not anymore). Beth and I went to the opening of the local PetSmart (I’ve decided that once I get my own room again, I’m getting a rat, and that I’m going to name him Copernicus). Beth carved a John Kerry pumpkin, and I beat Shadows of Undrentide. I successfully picked up Chris from the airport, but not his luggage because it didn’t successfully make it to the airport.

He didn’t get the scarf (which I’ve actually been able to wear because the weather has been cooperatively cold here in Ithaca), but then again most people don’t seem to. I’m so disappointed in everyone :)

Today I went to (and am at… Shhh!) work. I’m not going to talk about that anymore though, because I’d probably get in trouble.