moof.

So yeah, I haven't made a real entry is forever again. Seems a pattern. And not going to try and update everything right now either. However, I will post the bountiful loot I received this holiday season. :P And so, without further ado, consumer materials harvested...

DVDs...
Thundercats Season 1, Volume 1
Futurama Season 3
Howl's Moving Castle
Whisper of the Heart

Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Proctor Silex 1 liter Electric Kettle
Panettone Bread from the Whole Foods Market
A new Leatherman Micra
4 bags/a pound of beef jerky

Gift Cards...
$140 to GameStop for DS Lite!
$50 Wal-Mart
$50 Cash
$30 Outback Steakhouse
$20 Best Buy
$10 Barnes & Noble

And various candy.

I also bought myself a cool dark blue and green wide plaid scarf last week, and a 25-pk of CD-R's for $4 :)

The $50 cash plus $45 of the $60 I got the other day for some PC work are going towards the new hard drive I just ordered.

Sadly, I think my 40G Maxtor/Quantum Fireball I got for x-mas 2001 is dying, and it's my system/personal data drive. Thursday night my brother was watching a video off my computer over the network when the video stopped. I came downstairs to find a not so happy BSOD stop error of KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR with status 0xC000000E which is "0xC000000E, or STATUS_NO_SUCH_DEVICE: the drive went unavailable, possibly a bad hard drive, disk array, and/or controller card." So I rebooted. Upon reboot, the drive wasn't detected. So I rebooted again, and this time it was fine. I left the system up like that with nothing running while I went x-mas shopping. When I came back, it was still up but I needed to reboot for something else, so I did. Upon reboot, it seemed fine so I started up all my usual apps. After a bit, it made a bad cachunk sound, and went to a bluescreen that only said "Unknown Hard Error" with some memory addresses. So I turned off my desktop Thursday night and have been using my old laptop since. Friday night, I started a download of Frenzy, a FreeBSD LiveCD that seems pretty cool. Saturday, I disconnected power to my 40G drive, and booted off the LiveCD so I can access my three 80G drives over the network at least. It's been like that since.

And so, I need more disk space anyway, so I ordered the 320G, and when it gets here, I'll hook the 40G and new 320G up, and disconnect everything else, and see if I can get one good transfer off it to the new drive.

And that's all for now. Move along, nothing to see here!

Edit: Added Hagakure and Beef Jerky which I previously forgot.

That was rather a annoying.  A recent post on my friends page completely broke my S2 style.  After the post itself, it was inserting a bunch of protected entry icons, and then refusing to print the rest of the page.  After some digging, I found out that my line print $e.text; which prints an entry's text was at fault... so I head on over to the S2 documentation... and find jack shit to explain it.  So I look at the source of the LJ public style Clean and Simple, and I find they're using $e->print_text();.  Apparently, back in March, they made a change.  There's even a howto that I only found thanks to Google.  Perhaps someone should actually update the S2 documention since this is now 5 months old?  Just a thought.

In other news, did some chores at my grandparents' to help them out early in the week.  Two hours Monday to put new mower blades on my grandpa's riding mower and clean out the mower deck, and another three hours on Tuesday weed-whacking and ripping out morning glory vines gone crazy. Wednesday I don't call what I did. I think it was supposed to rain, and my grandpa had a doctor's appointment anyway, so I didn't do much.

Went biking on Thursday afternoon with Tony, Wes, and Ben.  Went back to Burchfield again.  Was a little wet from rain earlier in the day but not bad.  After we'd been there for a while it started sprinkiling again, but not enough to stop us.  Until it started coming down even harder.  The overcast was making it very dark under the tree canopy, and when it started coming down harder we called it a day.  On the way back, my rear tire slipped sideways coming off a wooden bridge, and I went down in the dirt, scraped my leg up decently, mostly on the backside of my knee... who knows how.  Bruised my other knee as well which made walking painful on Friday.  Got back to the Jeep muddy but we'd ridden almost 8 miles, so not bad.  Back to my house, dropped my bike off and I changed, then to Wes' church where he changed, and to Ben's to hang out and eat pizza.

Friday the dog was acting funny so I took him to the vet, he had a yeast infection in his ear?  And got treated for fleas again.  Gas prices have been low so filled up gas cans for the mowers, and filled up the Jeep from driving it Monday through Thursday.  It rained Thursday night, and was really wet Friday still, so I didn't go mow my grandparents yard.  Ours needs it too.

And today, Saturday, went to the Michigan Renaissance Festival with Wes, Ben, and Kayle.  Was fun, I always like the Highland Fling weekend with the Highland Games.  Got to see Liz for the first time since October 2004 at Matt and Jacqui's wedding.  Was cool as always though.  I bought her a drink because she's injured and I'm just that nice, and then she handed me over to Mother Superior for rough treatment.  :|  I lived though!  :P  And of course, RESUPPLY OF HONEY STICKS!  :D

Some recent pictures:

• Wes and I went up to band camp.
• Pictures of the moon.
• Caber toss at the ren fest.

And I think that mostly covers it for now.

Seriously, I do.  The idiocy level of so many of the users pretty much outweighs any possible benefit you might get from it.  Though it is useful for finding people you wwent to high school or college with since so many people make profiles, and it's free unlike classmates.com

But anyway, I got a "bulletin" from someone on my friends list that royally pisses me off.  Not just normal annoyance at how people use bulletins not as brief public notices, but instead as a massive dumping ground for every survey and chain letter they get sent, but actually pissed off.  The "bulletin" is as follows:

When you were 15, she came home late from work, looking for a hug. You thanked her by having your bedroom door locked.  When you were 16, she taught you how to drive her car. You thanked her by taking it every chance you could.  When you were 17, she was expecting an important call. You thanked her by being on the phone all night.  When you were 18, she cried at your high school graduation. You thanked her by staying out partying until dawn.  When you were 19, she paid for your college tuition, drove you to campus carried your bags. You thanked her by saying good-bye outside the dorm so you wouldn't be embarrassed in front of your friends.  When you were 25, she helped to pay for your wedding, and she cried and told you how deeply she loved you. You thanked her by moving halfway across the country. When you were 50, she fell ill and needed you to take care of her. You thanked her by reading about the burden parents become to their children.  And then, one day, she quietly died. And everything you never did came crashing down like thunder on YOUR HEART.  If you love your MOM, repost this bulletin saying ''i'm pissed''  if you don't... then you obviosly don't care if your mom dies.

WTF?  Seriously, wtf is wrong with these people?

When I was 15, we didn't have locks on our bedroom doors, because A) it was my parents' house, they owned it, and paid for it, and they can go in any room they please, and B) because our family operated on mutual respect.  A closed door at all means knock and wait for answer before entering.  No need for a lock, the doors generally never close at all.  Not to mention, when my mom got home, we were doing family chores because they were supposed to be done before she got home, but we usually ran over a bit.  And on top of that, we usually say hello when someone gets home.

When I was 16, my dad taught me to drive our 13 year old 3-speed pickup.  I wasn't allowed to just take it any time I wanted.  I had to ask permission for anything other than taking myself and my siblings to school.  If I wanted to go to my girlfriend's house, I'd ask... "Can I borrow the truck to go over to...?"  Or if they were home, they might let me use the van, but either way, I had to ask.  A year later in 1997 when my sister could drive as well, they helped us pay for our *own* vehicles... I got a used 1989 Ford Probe GT with 107k miles on it, and paid for half of it myself.  Because I'd had a summer job for the previous 5 years.

When I was 17, I used the phone when I wanted to, but if my parents needed it, I GOT OFF IT.  It's their phone, they pay for it.  They'd give us leeway as in, "I need the phone."  "Can you wait on a minute or two?"  "Sure, just let me know when you're off."  There was no sitting on it, especially if my parents were expecting an important call.  If they were expecting any call for that matter... you stayed off the phone, which also meant staying offline.  Again, if you wanted to sit on the phone... you could pay for your own phone line.

When I was 18, I didn't stay out partying till dawn.  I didn't party at all really.  And if I was out, it was because I had already let them know I would be, and asked if they minded or had different plans.  And if I was going to out later than a decent hour, I called to let them know.  For this reason, I had no real curfew, as long as they knew where I was and when I planned to be home.

When I was 19, I applied for financial aid and my parents took out loans for me to go out of state to a private college.  They probably *did* drive me the 5 hours down there, but my entire family went.  And we all helped move me in.  My entire family packed into my dorm room with me.  And stayed in a motel overnight even to tour the area, and make sure I was settled.

When I was 25... I'm wasn't married, but if I was, the bride's family generally pays for the wedding.  And my mom tells me she loves me numerous times a week, sometimes numerous times a day!  And though I have no plans to move out of the area where all my family are, if I did, my family would happily see me off, and then be happy to come visit as an excuse for a vacation.  They constantly suggest I should move to Colorado, Alaska, or other countries so they can come visit me there.  :D

When I'm 50, I'll do what I need to, to take care of my parents, who will be 75.  I'll treat them with the same amount of love and respect I give them now.  "You thanked her by reading about the burden parents become to their children."  What kind of shallow, and downright uncaring person wrote this?

And then, one day, my mom will die, like everyone else.  And there will be no "crashing down" of regrets, there will be sadness at losing a loving mother who always had faith in her kids, and was always proud of our accomplishments big or small, and accepting of our mistakes, because we all make them.

"If you love your MOM, repost this bulletin saying ''i'm pissed''  if you don't... then you obviosly don't care if your mom dies."

And to this I replied something along the lines of...

How about, if you love your mom (parents), you don't do those things to her (them) in the first place?  How about you tell them you love and appreciate them and all they do, and treat them with respect instead of passing along a MySpace bulletin they'll never read which accomplishes nothing?

Seriously, do people out there actually get a sense of worth and accomplishment by passing on garbage like this?  Do they actually somehow think passing along a MySpace bulletin actually makes up for being horrible children and treating their parents like shit?

And yes, I know lots of people have bad parents, but then they wouldn't be passing this thing on anyway.

It just boggles my mind.  And reinforces my dislike for a large majority of the population.

So with all the hubbub about AOL releasing users' search query data, it got me wondering what my own Google search queries said about me.  But I have almost 1500 saved search queries in Firefox for Google.  There was no way I was going to copy and paste them all out, and I wasn't sure of a better way to do it.  I found formhistory.dat in my profile dir was where it was stored, but it's stored in Mork format, which if you Google around, is like a bastard red-headed step-child that needs to be beaten.  Apologies to bastard red-headed step-children.  :D  So anyway, looked at Mozilla's docs on the Mork format.  Found that jwz had written an old perl script to decode Mork for history.db along with some others who wrote python scripts for history.db parsing of the Mork format.  None of which seemed to work on formhistory.dat.  And so, I wrote quick and probably badly written and inefficient perl script to rip my Google search queries out of formhistory.dat

http://www.medlir.com/code/fhdump.pl

More specifically, reads in the file, removes all the pointless $00's from the data, and cleans it up in general.  Then finds the (x=q) line since Google's textbox is named "q" and records the value for x while also saving all the (id=data) lines to a hash, then searches all the index lines for that x value which tells which of the data lines have values for "q", and transfers all the corresponding data from the hash to an array, which gets sorted and dumped to fhdump.txt in the current directory.

Other forms could easily contain a textbox named "q" as well, so the results could contain values from other forms, but it was good enough for my curiosity.  As expected, my saved search queries contained various search terms that could be considered bizarre or incriminating when taken out of context much like a lot of the AOL search queries.  Grain of salt is definitely needed.  :P  Names, addresses, etc all included.  Especially because it contains search terms from Google Maps, driving directions, and more.  So yeah, just a little tidbit created out of boredom.  :P

To see how like me you are:
http://likebetter.com/likeness/Medlir

To see how well you know me:
http://likebetter.com/doyouknow/Medlir

I don't seem to be making time to write an epic post to catch up on everything for the last several months, so instead, I'll just update for right now, and fill in later.  Been doing biking with Tony, Wes, Ben, and sometimes Jason and Nate.  As well as various trips to the driving range this summer, and one actual round of golf.  A couple nights of sitting around the fire here at the lake with everyone.

Last Saturday night, Wes and I met Kayle and his girlfriend at Eaton Theater to see Pirates of Caribbean 2, was good stuff, though waiting for the next one is annoying.

Last Sunday, Tony, Ben, and I went to Fort Custer and rode the green and yellow trail loops.  It was also 90+ degrees out not counting heat index.  We went through a lot of water.  The green loop is 8 miles, and thrashed us pretty good.  We're waiting for a cooler day to tackle the harder red loop.  Was a good 1.5-2 hours of the trails.  Then we left the recreation area and went to the National Cemetary and wandered around.  Some pics of these events can be found here.

This week... it became obvious over the weekend that all three cats had fleas pretty badly.  Who knows from where as they're all indoors.  But I bought flea shampoo, and carpet powder Monday, and gave them all a bath Monday night to varying degrees of success.

Wes came over Tuesday and went with me to take my cat Moofur and Blackjack to the vet.  Moofur needed to be dewormed since he hadn't yet since he came inside a couple months ago.  He had round worms, so he got a flea/wormer topical combo put on him and scheduled him for a snip-snip on the 31st.  Blackjack had scratched hair off because of the fleas presumably, and had been hacking/nasal discharge, so he got flea gel, and some cold medicine.  And got flea gel from the vet for Clyde as well.  Then Wes and I went to Tony's house and we all went to Battle Creek to drop Wes' bike off at Team Active for it's 30 day tune-up.  Then went to Barnes & Noble so Wes could get Terry Brooks' new Sword of Truth novel, "Phantom" and we wandered around Wal-Mart a bit in Battle Creek as well.

Wednesday, I went into Charlotte to buy groceries, and then made a carrot cake from scratch for my grandpa's birthday, and we were over there for the evening.

Thursday... Wes finished Phantom that afternoon, and came over and let me borrow it.  We were hungry, so we went to the Chinese Buffet in Charlotte.  Mmm.  That's about it I think.

Friday... Dad got the motorhome out of the one barn so hima nd mom can get ready to go to Nova Scotia next week.  Tony, Wes, and Ben came over, and we talked Dad and Nate into going to the driving range with us as well.  Hit quite a few balls.  Dad pretty much pwned us all and showed us how it's done, as we're all pretty bad otherwise, and he gave us all tips on how to improve our swings.  We were there for probably an hour to an hour and a half from 8PM on.  Nate and Dad came home, and the rest of us went to Meijer to help get stuff for at Tony's house for Saturday... hot dogs, burger, buns, chips, lots of Mountain Dew, etc.

Saturday... the big softball game at 4PM.  Last one we got together was back on May 20th.  Had 18 or so people confirmed and other unconfirmed, but ended up with 14 instead, which worked out okay, we've played with less with only 3 infielders counting the pitcher.  :D  Of course, we never start at 4PM, usually ends up more like 5PM.  Wes had his big PA speakers from his church again with Tony's laptop for music.  Andy's team was Dan, Kara (Tad's daughter), myself, Tad (works with Tony and Andy), Chris, Jason, and Andy (Tony's brother).  Tony's team was Nate (my brother), Nicole (my sister), Ben, Dustin (Tony's brother), Tim (Tony/Andy/Dustin's Dad), Wes, and Tony.  We kicked ass right off the bat, then kind of lost our mojo towards the middle, but picked it back up at the end.  Ben refused to catch or go after any balls, and Jason ended up being Ben's shadow and playing for Tony's team when he wasn't at bat or on base for our team.  We lost Chris from our team when he had to leave towards the 6th inning or so but we held on.  Beginning of the 8th had us still ahead by 9, and during the 8th Tony's team got 10 runs and mercy limit for the inning went into effect even though that only put them 1 ahead of us.  Which was too bad because in the bottom of the 8th we followed them right up with 10 runs of our own.  In the 9th, Tony's team got 3 runs, which wasn't enough to catch back up again, so we called it 28-22 and we didn't go to bat at all in the bottom of the 9th.  Overall, I thought it was a fun game though.  Got done around 7 like usual, hunted for four softballs that had been home run balls (we play on the girl's softball field at the high school, so several of us are capable of hitting it over the and rolling them into the weeds/woods), three of them we found, as well as a golf ball, and a very old baseball with no leather on it any more from who knows when.  Took the PA speakers and equipment back to Wes' church.  Then to Tony's house!  Food, gaming, fire, and more!  All of which can be seen here.  Amanda took pictures of the game using Tony's camera (over 200!), so I don't have pics of that yet, will later this week hopefully.  Left Tony's around 12:30AM I think.  Tony had been up since 4AM or so Saturday morning for work, so he was whipped.

And here I am!

Upcoming stuff... going to Silverleaf Renaissance Festival with Wes and Ben tomorrow probably.  Probably riding a few times this week, though Wes has to work every evening from 4-7 except Wednesday when he has youth group instead.  So we might just ride in town after 7, or else go without Wes somewhere else.  Wes missed Fort Custer last Sunday, so kind of want to plan the next trip there when he can go.  Tony and Andy have a band camp chaperone meeting tomorrow.  This week is otherwise open I think, but the Olivet Firemen's Festival is next Saturday and my parents leave for two weeks to Nova Scotia Saturday as well.  Ben's birthday is Sunday, and Andy and Tony leave for band camp with the high school band Sunday at noon and are gone all week.  Wes and I might go up there Thursday for the day to bug the band.  Everyone comes back Friday evening.  So maybe some riding that weekend.  Then Tony works his ass off Monday and Tuesday, because he has hernia surgery on Wednesday and will be out of commission for two weeks after that.  Which only leaves half a week to a week before Ben moves back to UMich for the school year.  Kind of sucks how few days we all have free and are capable of riding.  Maybe biking in Ann Arbor once or twice laster this fall would be in order.

So yeah, this kind of became an EpicPost™ just covering this week and upcoming events.  Probably why I haven't tried to cover everything else before that yet... just so much to remember and write down.

Onwards Patsy!

There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are now controlling the transmission.

I've been meaning to do a big update of all the randomstuff lately, as it's been like 18+ weeks since I last updated, but feh.  I had this open for the last week and didn't get to it.  So instead, here's a meme.  A highly edited meme with no table or tons of data cells anymore, where the checkmarked and underlined items are now plain black text, and the blue x's are now greyed out text, which cut the size down by about 16K.

I miss somebody right now.
I don't watch much TV these days.
I own lots of books.
I wear glasses or contact lenses.
I love to play video games.
I've tried marijuana.
I've watched porn movies.
I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.
I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
I curse sometimes.
I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.
I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.
( Collapse )

Fill it out yourself here.

Why not...

http://kevan.org/johari?view=Medlir

http://kevan.org/nohari?name=Medlir

If you do fill these out, and want me to do the same for you, feel free to leave a comment with your link(s).

There's something to be said for temporary insanity.  I know I was certainly acting crazy for about 24 hours up until last night.  And what's worse, is when you can clearly see how crazy you were acting in hindsight, and can also see how you could have handled it much differently, and probably much less detrimentally as well.  I apologize for that.  In the words of a wise individual, "such wasted insanity".  So yeah, this is a very generic idea that almost everyone can understand, while at the same time a really specific apology to one person.  Whether that person will actually read it here or not, I don't know, but I'll be repeating it directly to them when I get a chance, and probably more than once.

Two nights ago towards the beginning of the 24-hour crazy period, I was thrown for a loop by more than one person all at once, and as is often the case, my own cleverness (stupidity?) was my downfall.  I've always disliked the phrase "Ignorance is bliss.", but I think that's because I've always seen it as advocating willful ignorance and stupidity as an excuse.  And to be honest, I didn't plan on writing any of this until just now, but something I said last night early in the evening just came to me... "Being half in the dark is much worse than being entirely in the dark."  And really, that's an application of ignorance is bliss... compared to agonizing half-knowledge, being ignorant did seem like it would be bliss by comparison.  Of course, being more fully in the light is better still than being half or completely in the dark.

With that said, I'm in an amazingly better frame of mind today being more fully in the light than I was 12-24 hours ago.

Last night, the weather here decided to go a bit crazy as well.  Reached up to 57 degrees around 7:15PM... around 9:00PM it was still 52 degrees, and the thunderstorm (this is Michigan in February, wtf?) had subsided, so I got my bike out and took a ride.  Only rode a few miles to the other side of the lake and back, but it was good.  Relaxing, mind-clearing, etc.  Got back, wind picked up, temp dropped intot he mid-20's... which is where it sits now (11F counting wind chill), with a forecast of a high of 14 tomorrow... whoo!  weather.com in their infinite wisdom, loaded my local weather very slowly due to the fact they were also loading an insanely useless "Interactive Golf Guide"!  Dear weather.com, this is Michigan in February, I don't need to click any little flags to know that the golf courses are all closed, and likely to stay that way for probably severel months still.  You could have saved both yourself and I the bandwidth by simply replacing the "Interactive Golf Guide" with two words of text, "They're closed."

I actually didn't get as much sleep last night as I wanted.  Around 2:30AM I laid down, and put in Firefly Disc One to rewatch, but I don't remember much past the beginning of Serenity after the first salvage job when they land on Persephone, so I was out pretty fast.  Then, for no apparent reason (maybe, see below) I woke up at 5AM.  Nate had asked me if I was awake at 6AM to make sure he got up for work.  I laid back down, and dozed for another hour, and woke up just before 6 by chance.  Figured since I was awake, might as well make sure he got up, and let the dog out as well.  And then while I was upstairs, figured I might as well make breakfast, so I had some of the Thomas Oatmeal/Raisin/Brown Sugar bread I bought earlier in the week, some black cherry yogurt, and then made a four egg sweet onion omelette.  By this time it was about 7AM, and I gave Nate the other half of the omelette.

I came back down here around 7:30 finally, and it was about 15 minutes later that I noticed a pile of glass outside my one window.  Apparently, at some point during the night/morning (maybe what woke me around 5AM?), this retro corner wood/glass display case that I had moved outside under the porch earlier this week, decided to push a metal porch chair out of the way and topple over on the cement thereby breaking the glass enclosure on it.  Or rather, 2 sides of the triangular enclosure... one side, and the triangular hinged top seem to have survived.  On the one hand, it's a shame, as it's pretty cool stand/case, that no one can seem to find a use for.  On the other hand... eh, no one had a use for it anyway, and it can still be used as a corner stand... just no hinged glass enclosure on top now.  Good news, it was safety glass at least, so when i do go out to clean it up, it's in nice little sweepable chunks instead of nasty little slivers to haunt me barefoot in the summer.

A bit ago, I watched Gattaca again.  I really like it, the end in particular always gets me.  Thought maybe I'd fall back asleep since I'm actually really short on it right now, but didn't.  Went upstairs to think about making lunch, but I'm really hankering (what a great word) for the spiral mac and cheese that I bought.  No milk though, or even evaporated milk to fake it.  And I know I can fake it using half water/half more margerine int he place of the milk, as I've done it before, and it didn't end horribly... but eh, I want better than that.  Nate, who works in grocery, gets out at 2 though, so I figured I could hold off till he brings milk home after that.  Cheese slices and baby carrots will sustain me until then!

Also, wow, this was never meant to be an actual update.  Originally, the idea behind the first paragraph was all I had in mind, and was all I was going to post.... but look now!  Multiple somewhat (eerily) uniform paragraphs on multiple subjects and various (though boring) events!  Amazing.  I really do want to get back in the habit of updating.  I noticed I only updated like 17 times throughout all of last year... and many of those weren't real updates, wwhich I think is sad.  The problem is that I take so long to actually write an update... I've probably spent a good hour or more on just this.  We'll see.

Now though, I am pretty tired, so I think I'll put in another movie, and try to take a nap until milk gets here and I can make my spiral mac... mmm, spirals.