repak shawahb
green-staind funeral bizkit 41 for my slipkorn of a chemical park against the puddle of hoobacus mudvaynescence for soup 182

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Fri, 30 Sep 2005

entertainment and sports weekend

A couple interesting things:

I saw my uncle, Peter Bonventre, on ESPN this morning at the gym. That was cool. It also reminded me that I have to call him and say hi.

On Sunday, because Katrina killed the Superdome, the Saints are playing a "home" game in San Antonio against Buffalo. Tickets were plentiful and cheap, so Mike, Matt, and I picked some up. An especially exciting aspect of this game is that I'm starting Willis McGahee and Ernie Conwell in my fantasy league this week. This means they'll actually have a chance of hearing me yelling at them to get me some more fucking points. (To be honest, I'd be yelling even if I were watching them on TV...)


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literary acquisitions

I forgot to mention that Marissa and I hit Barnes and Noble the other night and I was sucked right into the sale rack. I was thinking "I should get a Chuck Palahniuk book," and Choke was sitting right there in front of me on the buy-N-get-M free rack. It was a sign.

Also in my sights that night were Breakfast of Champions, The Big Sleep, and American Psycho. Unfortunately, since it was buy 2 get 1 free, Chandler failed to get the nod. I'll get some Sleep later.


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hippo wrote

yeah you will
if the book version of the big sleep is half as boring as the movie.

Choke is a pretty good book though... but once you've read one Palahniuk novel you've read them all.

Sherv wrote

eat five dicks
Hippo, damn you to hell. The Big Sleep is seminal noir, and anybody who loves The Big Lebowski -- a film just about as derivative of Chandler's story as can be -- should at least fuckin' respect it.

hippo wrote


I respect it; and it has some key lines:
"she tried to sit on my lap while I was still standin' up"

but you got to admit it is long winded. thats what happens when faulkner writes the screenplay.

Sherv wrote

fux
I'm talking about the book. I don't really care either way about the movie, although I think it's significantly more enjoyable than you do.

Thu, 29 Sep 2005

a STi-mulating birthday present (to myself)

Even as we speak, my plan to reduce the number of vehicles I own is progressing. Unfortunately, before taking a step forward, one must often take two steps back.

To that end, I've purchased a 2006 Subaru Impreza WRX STi (and in that color, too). Any comments about the rear wing (no, it's not optional, and yes, it's functional), how many miles it can drive on a pound of Uncle Ben's Long Grain, or how many illegal immigrants I can hide in the hood scoop will probably be, umm, right on target. I defy you to find a car more fun to drive, though. This thing is a fucking ROCKET.

Up next: divest myself of the Celica and the Camaro. Yes, I've only had the Camaro for 9ish months, but I've realized in that time that as a form of transportation it's not terribly practical, and I have neither the time nor the shop space to keep it as a tinkering car at the moment. On the upside, I should be able to get out of it more than I put into it. As far as the Celica is concerned, hell, I've saved enough money on gas driving that piece of shit that any money I get out of it is just gravy—or perhaps remunerations for my suffering (and that of my passengers).

That will bring me down to the truck, the STi, the Ducati, and the V-Rod. I have a sneaking suspicion that my father really wants my truck (my first clue was when he said "I want your truck!"), so I might dip into single-car territory before the year's end.

What is the world coming to?


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Sherv wrote

Hm.
A single car sounds awesome.

When you say that you bought the car "in that color," does that include the gaudy gold rims? I keep feeling "Windowlicker" coming on...

repak wrote


Yes, the rims are gold, but no, they don't look particularly gaudy. They are anodized with a gold tint, not like shiny and bling and whoa.

Regarding Windowlicker: while I appreciate the sentiment, May has already picked my car's theme song, and it's Ignition by R. Kelly. Sorry, bro.

Now she just needs a name. I was thinking of naming her after the Asian dominatrix from Payback (played by Lucy Liu), except her name is Pearl, and that kind of sucks.

Suggestions?

May wrote


Why not just Dom? If you really wanted to please her, it'd be Mistress Dom.

repak wrote

I was kinda thinking...
...Dagny. Like, Dagny Taggart, or Gabrielle Anwar's character from Things to Do in Denver When I'm Dead.

-repak

hat trick

I'm officially 24.

Yes, this makes two birthday blog entries in a row where I've made reference to that cartoon. So what? Wanna fight about it?


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May wrote


HAPPY BIRTHDAY WAHBY!!!

cw wrote


Oh helllllllz no! Happy birthday! :)

JW Holloway wrote

Happy bday
Ya bastard. Only 24? I wish I was a year or two younger so I could do what needs to get done. You lucky SOB.

Shoot anything interesting lately?

-JW

Sherv wrote

are you shrinking?
"Don't you wanna stay and cuddle for a while?"

Tee hee. In any case, how can you be older when you've grown so much smaller?

Sherv wrote

f00p
oh, and happy birthday and all that rot

repak wrote

thanks all!
...and a bona fide LOL at imagining Christine saying "aww hellllllz no!"

:-P

hippo wrote


happy belated birthday man

Wed, 28 Sep 2005

Spartacus outdoes himself

At lunch today, Powell busted out with this one for the scrapbooks:

"I'm not committed to the idea that women are stupider than men; I'm just committed to the idea that they're stupider than me."


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new music

I've recently grabbed a few new albums from the aether. While I haven't listened to any of them enough to form an opinion yet, I thought I'd mention it just in case one of y'all wanted to grab them. They include a couple each by My Chemical Romance (I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love and Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge) and The Mars Volta (De-Loused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute), Out of Exile by Audioslave, Lullabies to Paralyze by Queens of the Stone Age, Pressure Chief by Cake, and To the Teeth by Nine Inch Nails. I'll report on them as I form opinions.


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gwax wrote

Legion of Boom
Have you heard The Crystal Method's most recent album, Legion of Boom? I highly recommend it and expect it's the sort of thing you'd like.

repak wrote


Yeah, I got LoB from Brittany a while back, and listened to it for a while. It's good, but, IMHO, not as good as Vegas---though I'll admit that Vegas is a pretty high standard.

woz wrote

about time
that you got your hands on the Mars Volta. you are in texas, son. the new pornographers are also good, but they may be a little too electro-pop for your tastes. and i hear good things about The Books.

repak wrote

TOO electro-pop?
You say that to a guy who requests Gary Newman's "Cars" every Sunday at Elysium?

I shall endeavour to, ahem, acquire some of their music post-haste.

Mon, 26 Sep 2005

drunken postscript

Oh yeah, another thing that came of Saturday's party is a firm definition of the Armadillo Sunrise: (diet) Mountain Dew, Tequila, and a splash of Grenadine. I can't speak to how good it is, because I was already somewhat toasted by the time I decided to make it, but anecdotal reports from others on the scene indicate that it might not actually be fit for human consumption.


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Sherv wrote

yuk
It's unfit for human comprehension, as well. EW.

Scott wrote


I thought you were going to say that you code in Postscript
when you're drunk. Ha! showpage

repak wrote

well, there's a first time for everything
if/when I do code PS while drunk, you'll be the first to know.

party on, Wayne

Saturday's Hurricane Party was a success. Decent music, ping-pong (I'm not bad at all when I'm drunk, except that I can't for the life of me hit the forehand with any accuracy), several drinking games (quarters, up and down the river, &c), and even a round of Settlers of Catan (which I managed to win by taking longest road and then getting largest army on a gamble) numbered among the festivities.

Yesterday consisted of football, chicken wings, and dancing. I decided to ride Rosalyn on over to Mike's house to watch the games. In retrospect, it wasn't the greatest decision, considering that it hit 105 degF in the afternoon. Today it's only supposed to get up to 102, and by the end of the week we should have fallen all the way to the high 80s on account of a cold front coming through. Here's hoping for good golf weather next weekend.


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May wrote


Holy shit, you play Settlers now? My parents are going to demand that you visit me before I move out. They're hopelessly addicted to Settlers, Cities and Knights, and Seafarers. Justin carved them a wooden frame for our set...that's why they let him date me. So yeah...get your busy ass up here before I finally get a real job! We've got a hot tub.

Thu, 22 Sep 2005

hurricane fever

As I write this, traffic along I10 in Houston is moving at a whopping 2 miles per hour, and has been doing so for the last 14 hours or thereabouts. Better yet, every gas station in Houston is out of gas, and many people on the road are starting to run low. Pop quiz, hotshot: what exactly do you do when you have 5000 cars on an interstate all of which have run out of gas?

On a lighter note, I'm encouraging Mike to have a Hurricane Party this Saturday (when it should be hitting us, more or less). It's gonna rule.


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May wrote


TG you're in Austin.

Sherv wrote

but but but
Throbbing Gristle are from England.

Tue, 20 Sep 2005

tri-force... in da hood?

At Elysium the other night I saw a dude wearing a shirt that said "Don't Make Me Go Zelda On Your Ass" and had a bunch of the power-up graphics from the original Nintendo game (potion, shield, sword, boomerang, bomb, &c). I was utterly compelled to walk up and pay him a compliment, at which point he informed me that he's an aspiring DJ who remixes video game music. Some samples of his work, he told me, can be found at his MySpace site.

Wow! You do that for science?


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Thu, 15 Sep 2005

back in the saddle

This is what's called convergence.

First, I went back to my gym-in-the-morning schedule. It makes me 1000% happier. Anyone who doesn't get up at 6a is a heathen.

Next (actually, I've known this since last week, but didn't blog about it), the Monitor ADC works. That was one of the first circuits to be in an known working state once we figured out that there was a PLL problem at powerup (and FIBbed some parts to fix it). It's also completely badass, because that fucker was complex as shit and I was worried that somewhere along the line I'd failed to specify some aspect of the digital controller properly with some catastrophic failure (think: powering the chip up causes a tsunami) as the result. Fortunately, no Pacific Islanders were harmed in the testing of revA silicon—as far as I know...

Third, it appears that as of last night we're confident that the other ADCs are doing their thing. I haven't gotten to testing them just yet (I want to run the piss out of the MADC first), but Ion reported that he was able to get it working in a mode that requires several blocks, the DC ADC included, to work. Hua.

Fourth, I'm spending all my time in the lab now. Damn does it make me happy. I'm an engineer again! I'm soldering shit, poking at stuff with meters and scopes, controlling the thing via USB... OK, scratch that last one (all real engineers—in the Roberge sense—despise USB instinctively).

...and finally, I think I'm becoming convinced that I can actually control the neon JUST FRIENDS sign that apparently floats overtop my head whenever women are around. Who'd'a thunk it?


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Cyrus wrote

Now you're a man! A mann-manny man!
Then turn that fuggin sign off and get in there and fuck, or you'll be sleepin with the fishes, see!

JW Holloway wrote

Indeed!
"Anyone who doesn't get up at 6a is a heathen." I couldn't agree more, ya lazy SOBs. As for your gyming it, here's to a limitied range of motion!

Congrats on the silicon. Pretty badass.

I don't know what to comment on the womens...

-JW

i wrote

Dude
Dude -- I learned today that engineers are highly skeptical and extremely like whoa about biologists. haha Good thing I'm becoming an engineer, I guess... otherwise, ya'll would never take me seriously. =b

Btw, where's the RSS feed for your blog? I'm trying to add it to my bloglines list, but...

Sherv wrote

no man named for the great cyrus
... should be using the word "fug."

Also, if you are convinced that you are becoming attractive, there are two possibilities (as I saw it when I felt the same conviction bloom):

1. You actually are getting some interesting vibes off the ladies. You will be checking their oil soon.

2. You have become so enmeshed in your devil-may-care worldview and studied nonchalance regarding matters of the heart that you no longer understand that you aren't attractive. A vicious cycle of narcissism lies ahead, with your subsequent transformation into the Gorgeous Gerjes blossom merely a footnote to the self-induced pining.

Proceed with caution!

Lubs,
Julian the Apostate

i wrote

Dude
Dude -- I learned today that engineers are highly skeptical and extremely like whoa about biologists. haha Good thing I'm becoming an engineer, I guess... otherwise, ya'll would never take me seriously. =b

Btw, where's the RSS feed for your blog? I'm trying to add it to my bloglines list, but...

Sherv wrote

Buh?
How did you *not* know that, Issel?

repak wrote

why...
...did you never before come up with Gorgeous Gerjes? I shall start using that epithet post-haste.

repak wrote

rss10
http://blog.jfet.org/index.rss10

Sherv wrote

I really don't know...
... why I never came up with Gorgeous Gerjes. I just saw Gorgeous George the other day on Something Awful, though, which gave me the inspiration.

May wrote


That whole friends sign...it only turns on if you neglect to hit on a woman within the window of opportunity when first meeting her. Meet one, hit on her, and you'll be golden. I promise. *Oh, and don't forget to knock her socks off with reasons why she should let you check her oil.*

Come to think of it, it's kinda like a job interview.

Sherv wrote

The dipstick, the oil, the Pentagon soil.
Ahahaha! May, you're the best. Thanks for using my coinage (and I'm not talking about my rock-solid penny roll). Rowr!

I think that you can definitely luck out and have the sign turn off on its own, even if you've not hit on her within whatever narrow window. Witness Leslie deciding that I was the bee's knees months after we met!

woz wrote


down with sherv: sure, you could pick 'em up at a career fair, but maybe there exists the opportunity to woo them again at a trade show. never underestimate the power of connections and information.

silicon is hot.

hippo wrote


sherv, checkin her oil is not your coinage---my lame high school friends said it all the time.


Sherv wrote

THANK YOU CAPITAN DELICIOSO
Fair enough. Maybe I should've said "turn of phrase," since that's more akin to what I meant, in any case.

Tue, 13 Sep 2005

mod_proxy + openssl s_client

At the gym today, I was ruminating on how to run both an HTTPS and an SSH server on port 443 of a machine so as to allow it to both serve secure content and function as the outside endpoint for proxy tunnels which exploit open HTTPS access and/or HTTPS CONNECT tunnels.

Until earlier today, I'd completely forgotten about Apache's mod_proxy, a cute little module that provides basic proxy functionality from Apache. Clearly, this little honey is exactly what we want, though: a proxy server which supports CONNECT and runs in parallel with your HTTP server.

Setup is extremely easy on the server side. For you debian users, make the appropriate symblinks in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled and edit /etc/apache2/mods-available/proxy.conf as appropriate.

You can telnet to port 80 and verify that CONNECT works as expected. Now, give it a whirl using the OpenSSL binary (openssl s_client -connect yourserver:443 -nbio -quiet is a good start) and you'll be disappointed. Yup, there's a bug in mod_proxy_connect that makes it bypass HTTPS and just dump unencrypted data directly on the socket once the CONNECT session starts. Never fear, however, for that same link has the patch you'll need to fix it. apt-get build-dep apache2, apt-get source apache2, cd into upstream/tarballs, untar it, apply the patch, tar it back up, and dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b.

Now, armed with your hot new Apache build, you're ready to take on the world. The only thing left is a daemon for the client side. Mine is called sprox.pl. I decided to use a wrapper around the openssl binary because I found that IO::Socket::SSL is substantially slower.


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Thu, 08 Sep 2005

silicon cherry

Today our first silicon came back. At the moment they're going over a bunch of digital stuff, but the first thing they tested was one of my circuits—the digital regulator. After some initial reports of brokenness, it was discovered that the sockets we were using, putting it mildly, sucked ass.

One hundred soldered pins later, the Vdd18 regulator comes up and happily runs.

Hooray for my first silicon circuit.


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gwax wrote


Good work Weebles.

Sherv wrote


Did the circuit bleed?

woz wrote


hot.




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