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September 30, 2002

Currently playing: Prodigy - Firestarter

Currently playing: Prodigy - Firestarter
Holy crap. There's scum, and there's stupid scum, and there's professional scum... and then there are retard pieces of scum.

And yes, I have classes to take spring quarter. Frickin' L&S... I'm going to go see if I can fix that, or at least appeal my Geography 5 class not being used as a GE. (I was never going to be a Physical Geography major, so why did I take that class again if it wasn't as a GE!??!?!)

Posted by brian at 11:20 PM | Comments (1)

September 26, 2002

Currently playing: Depeche Mode -

Currently playing: Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
Umm. So, Geography 2 and Geography 5 both fill UCLA L&S Life Science GE requirements... they're also "preparation for major" classes for me.

My DPR shows them only as "preparation for major" classes for me. It doesn't show them filling any GE's at all. Crap! Better go talk to a counselor...

Worst-case scenario though, this means instead of zero actual necessary classes come spring quarter, I actually have to take 2 classes. =þ

Posted by brian at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

Currently playing: Pet Shop Boys

Currently playing: Pet Shop Boys - A Different Point of View
Today's observations...

  1. Westwood is pretty much the same, but what happened to Tower Records? It's now Pugz? WTF is that? And we have an Office Depot now, which is cool... but, it's a tiny Office Depot!
  2. UCLA is mostly the same. Not a bad thing, mind you... but the core of my old group of friends to hang out with has graduated, so that'll be a little weird. Plenty of friends still around, but the guys (and girls) who I could call up anytime, anywhere on campus and go hang out, even if only for 2 minutes between clases... that old group is gone. So sad. =( (but they all graduated, so they left for a good reason! =) )
  3. Where'd the nice weather go? It had been degrading over the last few days, but today on campus was very cool for a Los Angeles summer day!
  4. Verizon. Service isn't as god-like as Barry likes to think, but it's a hell of alot better than Cingular, Sprint, or AT&T. (makes me wish for Europe again. That was kick*ss first-class service everywhere I went. Makes the US cell providers feel like small backwater cesspools...)
  5. Verizon prices. Got a really, really good deal yesterday in Monterey Park. (thanks Barry and Nicole for the haggling) Today on campus, I opened the Daily Bruin... a shop 5 minutes from my apartment is doing v60i's for free. Crap.
  6. Motorola v60c. I don't know what's so great about this phone. It's a little smaller than my old T28World, but not appreciably so. User interface isn't as good as Ericsson or Nokia; partially is because of the additional features, additional complexity is need. It's still retarded, though..
  7. Cingular. Turns out they have a policy to lure existing customers back. I've got a 30-day credit on my account now. I can switch back to Cingular anytime within 30 days and they'll pay my Verizon early termination fee. Great policy! (now if Cingular's signal was only a tiny little bit better in my apartment. Unfortunately, it ISN'T! *sigh*)
  8. Books. Ouch. That was expensive.

Blah. Things are actually going pretty good, they're just a little boring right now. I'm sure it'll pick up once I learn everyone else's schedules and stuff, so we can start hanging out...

Posted by brian at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2002

Currently playing: Depeche Mode -

Currently playing: Depeche Mode - Waiting for the Night
Finally stuck my head into Westwood tonight.

1) Dave's roommates have a pretty bitchin' home theatre setup. 57" Sony HDTV, Rotel 1066 preamp, and a load of Snell Acoustics and MK Sound stuff. Pretty f'ing incredible. Even most rich people I know don't have setups that nice! Sheesh!
2) Dorm move-in was this past weekend. I'm just glad I came down on Monday, not on Sunday... or... man, traffic would have sucked! Westwood is slowly getting more crowded, and the weather is still nice. MMMmmmm... ;-)

Oh, yeah. It seems I came back to a Los Angeles which is a flaming wreckage of emotions for some way too many of my friends. Ick. This summer evidently wasn't kind was brutal to relationships around here. *sigh* Things will work themselves out, I'm confident in that, but it's stuff like this which sometimes makes me wish I was in kindergarden again and didn't have to deal with crap like this.

Posted by brian at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2002

Currently playing: Depeche Mode -

Currently playing: Depeche Mode - In Your Room
Moved in to my apartment. Hooray!

Still have to figure out phone service, though... might just switch over entirely to my cell, as $20~25/month for my own line probably isn't worth it. I pay $40/month for my cell right now, so $60/month would mean a pretty friggin' nice cell plan... and you ask, how am I publishing this right now without a phone line? Simple answer, my landlady has her own line, and we split the DSL cost. Woohoo.

Posted by brian at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2002

Currently playing: Pet Shop Boys

Currently playing: Pet Shop Boys - Love Comes Quickly
Umm.

Oops.

I wasn't planning to stay up until 6am, but it was about 11:30pm, I figured that since I need to drop my old case in the mail tomorrow (today), I'd do a quick case switch. Pull all my old stuff from the old case and stick it into the new one... (I can hear the laughter now)

The new case didn't have holes for casters. Drilling those took about 90 seconds, but cleaning up the metal shavings took another 10 minutes. Then I started transfering the fans and drives from my old case to my new case, getting dust all over myself. That wouldn't do, so I cleaned every fan as I moved it over... then I cleaned out the power supply for good measure... and dusted off the drives... and... well... it turned into my usual full-blown obsessively-detailed wiring job as I installed and wired everything up.

And here we are.

The best news, though, is that the new case seems flawless, the new heatsink is much more quiet (3300rpm fan vs. 6000rpm fan), and it seems to WORK FLAWLESSLY. That's right... even at 6am I didn't monkey anything up. Hooray!

Posted by brian at 06:13 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2002

Currently playing: Information Society -

Currently playing: Information Society - Repitition
The Ars System Guide has been updated again. Woohoo! (and no, I didn't lose too much sleep trying to get it out on time...)

Also, I just got back from Los Angeles today. I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning driving to LA, moving stuff into my apartment, hanging out, sleeping, and then driving back. I got in to Los Angeles around 8:50pm last night, and I was back on the road by 7:30am in the morning. Not exactly recommended... I was pretty sacked out all day today. The insufficient amount of sleep, the 5 hours driving home (including a nice stop in Kettleman City), then running errands for the next couple hours, really stretched my ability to be useful the rest of the day.

Posted by brian at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2002

Currently playing: Erasure - You

Currently playing: Erasure - You Surround Me
Two quick things:
1) Pricegrabber is a pain in the butt to link to.

2) Do not walk into a Ford dealer wearing a OneLapSupra.com t-shirt. I was browsing the SVT products they had there (two SVT Focus'es for $3k above MSRP, SVT Lightning, one SVT Cobr for $6k above MSRP) as well as the Roush products (Roush stage 3 Mustang, 360hp, $52k... or more than a `03 SVT Cobra with 390hp!)... and man, I didn't get a single person to help me out. The fact that I had a free gift certificate in my hand didn't help either.

But yeah... I got some funny looks. 650rwhp Supra on the back of my shirt, browsing 390hp Mustangs... hee hee...

Posted by brian at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2002

Currently playing: New Order -

Currently playing: New Order - Here To Stay
Well, I'm getting caught up with my photo albums. Remember those books full of paper photos? Pictures there are almost all sorted. Digital ones will come next to the website, although 500 of them will make picking/choosing/editing a very tedious job for me. I've got some other stuff on my list that I need to do tomorrow, so don't expect a website update before Monday.

Speaking of website updates, Pearl just switched over to moveabletype for daily updates. It supports comments and a whole lot more of other stuff. Sounds pretty good to me. When I first read about it a few weeks ago, it seemed neat, but how much more of these features did I think I'd actually use? Turns out that it does look pretty good, though... Maybe this possible change will get my CSS conversion off the ground, too... The problem now is time, or rather the lack of it, since my life is going to be put in cardboard boxes in 8 days and 8 days just isn't enough time for me to add in a complete website conversion to my list.

update: she added comments, but not via moveabletype. Turns out she's still using blogger, only she added enetation for comments support for each post.

Posted by brian at 04:02 AM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2002

Currently playing: Erasure - True

Currently playing: Erasure - True Love Wars
Pssst! You know who you are! Go to bed! sleeping

Posted by brian at 02:16 AM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2002

Yes, we remember. ... worldwide.

Yes, we remember.

... worldwide.
(picture from last year... EU Parliament...)
EU parliament
Initial reactions.
(worldwide) Thank-you thread...
Ars Technica picture collection.

Posted by brian at 02:42 AM | Comments (0)

Currently playing: The Other Two

Currently playing: The Other Two - Movin' On
I hate rebates. I think I have enough money waiting to come back to me in rebates to pay off my credit card bill this month. *sigh* Then there's hoping they'll actually process your rebate, which is a known problem with some less-than-reputable companies. Almost as bad... the rebates that take three months to come. Waiting 6-8 weeks is bad enough, but coming home at Christmas to rebate checks is (while pleasing) a little unsettling.

I guess the upside is that you do save money. The 5 or 10 or however many 50-packs of Fujifilm (Taiyo Yuden) CD-R's I bought? I paid between $3 and $8 for them, I think. =) My new harddisk? The new CD-RW for my dad? heh heh...

Posted by brian at 02:31 AM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2002

Currently playing: Depeche Mode -

Currently playing: Depeche Mode - People Are People
Well, it turns out Windows file copy just crashed. ARGH!

Posted by brian at 03:44 AM | Comments (0)

Currently playing: Depeche Mode -

Currently playing: Depeche Mode - Stripped
So... I think I broke Windows file copy. It's said anywhere between 4 minutes remaining to 42 minutes remaining, and it's been copying for the last three hours. I know my harddisks have a theoretical average sustained transfer rate of around 30~35MB/sec on this particular machine, which means this shouldn't take more than 20 minutes, tops. Now, I know harddisk performance can drop drastically as Windows verifies files as it copies them, plus on small files efficiency drops drastically... but this is getting ridiculous. A test-copy in PC-DOS revealed a ~4.25MB/sec transfer rate. It feels like Windows is worse than that. Ouch.

Posted by brian at 03:29 AM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2002

Currently playing: Erasure - Rescue

Currently playing: Erasure - Rescue Me
It's been a busy week.

First, I'm no longer homeless. (those of you taking bets, sorry to disappoint you all. =) ) Hooray!
Second, Erik's room at home is finally wired. And the CAT5 cable is no longer on the floor. (aka I got fed up about his parents bitching at him, so I nailed it to the wall myself).
Third, I finally have a working CD player in my car now. Hooray! Thanks, Dave! (Maxima guys know him as maximadave)
Fourth, my secondary box at home is finally put back together. Phew!
Fifth, Erik and I got a heck of a deal today. =)

Lots more, but that's the stuff I feel like mentioning.

Posted by brian at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2002

Happy Labor Day from Los

Happy Labor Day from Los Angeles!

Posted by brian at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)