St. Valentine's Day

Those that know me probably also know that I've been fighting off a really strong infection of mononucleosis over the last 3+ weeks. I've had mono at least twice before, but this time was the worst of the three. Not only did it make me rather tired, but it also decided to make my tonsils and throat swell up to the point that I could hardly swallow my own spit. Thanks to a visit to the Student Health Center I was able to get a prescription of prednisone which, when combined with ibuprofen, was able to bring the swelling under control. So, I've spent the last 3 weeks tired and on steroids in order to be able to function. I had grown tired of this arrangement by about day 4.

I woke up on Saturday morning and my throat didn't hurt! There was still a small amount of swelling, but I could swallow and I felt like I had energy! I was really excited about this. Since the Heartless Siren has been recovering from her surgery and I was dealing with mono it was looking like Valentine's Day was going to be a bit underwhelming this year.

It still wasn't incredibly exciting, since I had had no energy to plan anything out ahead of time. I promised to cook dinner, figuring that would expend all my energy reserves. I also needed to do laundry. So the day started by me going shopping to buy ingredients for dinner. Then I swung by Campus Craft and Floral to pick up the roses I had ordered. I got to Heartless Siren's house and presented her with the flowers and then snuck off to the kitchen for a few minutes to put ingredients away for later. I also opened up a couple of boxes of Conversation Hearts and removed the white ones (HS thinks they're gross, but loves the other colors). After putting the meat in the fridge marinating I gave HS the bowl of conversation hearts and we headed back to my house so I could do laundry while we caught up on TV shows we had missed during January.

After enjoying episodes of Chuck, 30 Rock, and The Office my laundry was done and now it was time to head back to HS's house for dinner. I sent her to the living room to listen to music and read while I cooked dinner: New York cut steaks marinated for 6 hours in Italian dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli, freshly baked French bread rolls, 2 candles, and for dessert, hot-out-of-the-oven brownie pudding. I will congratulate myself on having all the food finish with perfect timing to put it on the table, and it tasted incredible, I was quite pleased.

Then I read a few chapters of Harry Potter to HS, and once my throat was dried out we watched Enchanted. Despite our recovering from surgery/illness it was a very nice day overall.

My New Toy, or N810 Unboxing

Now that The Heartless Siren is out of the hospital and recovering I have things to post about on this blog that I haven't already posted in my personal blog. Since I spent 2 of the last 5 weeks with The Heartless Siren in the hospital I didn't have much to say about anything, and the week before that was spent taking care of her at home, and the past 2 weeks have been spent being sick with Mono and taking care of her at home again.

During those 2 weeks I found a really good deal on a new toy that I decided I needed. The Nokia N810 Internet Tablet (4 different links there). I was able to get it shipped for $210.

Here are some of the highlights about why I wanted it:
- 800x480 resolution screen with automatic brightness adjust according to ambient light
- Full web browser with Javascript and Flash 9 support (based on Mozilla)
- Open Source architecture with lots of completely free applications available and active development community
- Built off of Debian Linux = rock solid stable performance
- Includes a Xterm with download of OpenSSH (Now I can login to my servers and fix problem from almost anywhere!)
- Wireless G Network, GPS, Mic, Camera, Expandable Memory, VOIP
- This one I don't use yet, but probably when I get a new phone and plan: Bluetooth phone tethering for internet access via phone from anywhere
- Small: the device is the size of an index card and about a centimeter thick


Now, like any good nerd I documented the unboxing:







After some theme customizing, let's find The Board:





I got the N810 on Thursday and so far have very few (and very minor) complaints:

1. The main thing is that some of the built-in functionality (chat, email) I've replaced with community applications which are better designed with better options, and (thus far) I haven't found a good way of either removing the built-in apps or remapping their quick-link buttons to the 3rd party apps.
2. The bundled GPS software (Wayfinder) wants you to buy a subscription with them in order to get on-the-fly Routing and turn-by-turn navigation: 1-month: ~$14, 12-month: ~$110, 36-month: ~$120. Now, if you get the 3-year then it's like $3.33 a month, not too bad for updates on maps and lots of types of points-of-interest, but still. No navigation out-of-the-box (you do get a 7-day trial)? Sadly the really nice free app Maemo-mapper does not currently support on-the-fly routing (you can download routes into it, but can't calculate new ones on-the-fly, w/o internet connection, the above mentioned Bluetooth phone link could make this a non-issue).
3. The included car cradle is not ready-to-go, you still need to buy a mount either for your dashboard, cupholder, or windshield.

Other than those 3 minor annoyance I absolutely love it. Now I just need to go drive around and play with the GPS sometime. The bundled Wayfinder's most serious flaw, in my opinion, is address entering: In order to look up the address say: 551 N 200 W, Provo, UT You have to enter the Street field as: N 200 W, then the House Number field as 551, and then the city as Provo, and state Utah. Why can't I just type "551 N 200 W, Provo, UT"?! Maemo-mapper allows me to enter addresses in this manner. And it took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to get addresses in Utah to work properly because of that silliness. But that gripe is squarely directed at Wayfinder.

Cereal

So... I browse through Snide Remarks every so often. I stumbled upon this hilarity today:
From Muckoo For Mocoa Muffs

Fruity Cheerios are little rings in several different colors. They look suspiciously familiar. The front of the box makes this declarative statement: "25% less sugar than the leading fruity cereal." And I'm thinking: Oh, SNAP, Froot Loops! They totally just called you out! What a passive-aggressive slogan! It's like, "We're not naming any names here, but, um, we have 25 percent less sugar than a certain other fruity cereal we could mention. We're just sayin'." And the people at Kellogg's are like, "B****es did NOT just diss us!" And General Mills is all, "Don't be hatin', we just keepin' it real," and Kellogg's is like, "Whateva. Maybe if you put MORE sugar if yo nasty-a** fruity cereal, people might be BUYIN' it," and then Post is totally on the floor laughing, and General Mills is like, "Whatchoo laughin' at, Fruity Pebbles? Ain't you got some Flintstones to go be watchin'?," and then Quaker Oats pulls out a gun.

In other news, Winter semester has begun. woo. Feel my lackluster enthusiasm there? Yah, me too. 6 more months and I'll be done though.

Programming Languages as Religions

I greatly enjoyed this article: If programming languages were religions...

If you're familiar with several program languages you'll probably enjoy it also. Here are some highlights:

"Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake."

"C# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it's the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it's controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it'd probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn't discriminate so much against you for following it."

"Python would be Humanism: It's simple, unrestrictive, and all you need to follow it is common sense. Many of the followers claim to feel relieved from all the burden imposed by other languages, and that they have rediscovered the joy of programming. There are some who say that it is a form of pseudo-code." -- It's so true! I love programming in Python, it just does what I want without making me jump through hoops!

Sometimes, I Hate Americans

Nintendo Slapped With Strap Lawsuit Once Again

It is completely outside my realm of comprehension how anyone can believe it is Nintendo's responsibility that morons LET GO of their Wii controller and break something. Honestly, can I sue a baseball bat manufacturer because I swung the bat really hard, let go, and it hit my window? It was nice of Nintendo to include wrist straps on the controllers and then to voluntarily make the wrist straps stronger. If you're letting go of the controller and then stressing the wrist strap enough to make it break then I have news for you and your playing skills: You're doing it wrong!

Denial of Service Attack

The interesting things happening with the Board just keep on growing. For anyone trying to use the Board today (Monday) around 5:30 you may have seen the Board start serving up "Technical Difficulties" pages for a bit, and then go down. The part where it went down completely was me, trying to keep the server alive while I did troubleshooting.

The immediate problem was an incredible number of apache processes chewing up all the database connections. The cause of the issue was a certain IP address requesting the main page about 3 times a second for an hour or so. The server didn't really like that too much. Once I discovered this I blocked the IP address and brought the server back up. After another 15 minutes of getting HTTP 403 errors sent back to them the IP address stopped requesting pages. Now, whether intentional or not the result of this process is known as a Denial of Service (DOS) attack. So named because, as you may have discovered, when it's occurring the legitimate users, such as yourself, cannot access the content of the website.

I'll keep an eye on the situation and continue to slave away to make sure the Board stays alive for your viewing pleasure.

My current hypothesis on the matter is that the attackers that accessed the server last month are retaliating for me locking them out. But that's just a theory.

I Feel Special

<sarcasm>I love personalized advertisements and junk mail. This one is particularly touching.</sarcasm>