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Article posted on Sep 28

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 28, 2001, 10:36 pm

I got a letter from Household Bank today. They're raising my credit limit, again. That's the fourth time in the 6 months or so that I've had the card. And it's not like I deserve it. The wildest thing I did with that card was buy $1500 worth of server gear and pay it off in about 3 months. And even then, they had already raised my limit twice before I made that purchase. For some odd reason, Household Bank treats my like royalty. Capital One on the other hand... I can't get even get the time of day from them, let alone a human. I would cancel the piddly $300 Visa card if it weren't for the fact that that card is the longest account on my credit history.

Speaking of credit history, I bought a 1-year 4 pack of Equifax credit history reports (they had a buy 3, get one free), plus FICA assesments. I had to correct a typo on my current address, but that was it. Those guys at Equifax are sneaky though. The verification question was something like, "In May 1998 you received a home equity loan through which bank?", and listed 4 bank choices. Now, 1) I had virtually no credit history in 1998, and 2) I have neither a home, nor equity in said home, nor a loan against said equity. There was a "none of the above" option though.

I am currently downloading a VCD set of the first episode of Enterprise. Since I have no VCR besides TiVo, VCD is kind of a replacement. Now to get a DVD player to play VCD's on a real TV...

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Article posted on Sep 27

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 27, 2001, 10:30 am

My car insurance provider sent me a bill yesterday. It was strange because A) this company plans to drop all non-business customers at the end of their terms, B) the bill was for this 6-month period (May through November, which I have already paid), and C) it says it is due 2 months ago. I'll have to call them to find out what the hell is going on.

The reporter from SourceForge called me this morning. I think it went rather well...

BART was weird today. The train that is normally 10 cars only had 4 today. Packed like a sardine can... And the train stopped several times in weird places, including coming to a jerking stop in the middle of the transbay tube.

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Article posted on Sep 27

... and the rest of life

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 27, 2001, 12:04 am

Speaking of TiVo, I got an email from them today... I got accepted into the beta program! On one hand, I will get to test the new features (some sound pretty cool). On the other hand, I won't be able to talk about it until it's "officially" released. Oh well...

xenophile is hooking me up with a guy who's brokering a 2 bedroom apartment in Belmont. Price should be around $1000. Woohoo! Anything to get me out of this dump in Richmond.

I put a code freeze on kmMail... so unless something catastrophic is discovered, 1.0 is code-complete for Monday! Speaking of which, I need to get up early tomorrow (this?) morning. I've got a follow-up phone interview with a guy at NewsForge at 7AM.

Oh, and on the topic of kmMail... jas0n might be able to get a decent military contract for building a web-based mail system for about 10,000 users. kmMail could work well there.

Thawte is making it as hard as possible for me to get a SSL certificate in my own name (rightfully so, I guess).

Friday: "Fax us a certified copy of your driver's license and a copy of a recent bank statement with all financial information except your name and address."
Tuesday: "Why did you blank out all the financial information from the bank statement? Re-fax it with account numbers visible."
Wednesday: "Great, now that we have all required information from you (and have already spent your money), all you have to do is fax a copy of your phone bill to us."

For people who basically embody secure internet communications, they don't like the concept of sending documents as small PDF attachments. IMHO, fax machines are dead.

Okay, I'm tired. Goodnight.

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Article posted on Sep 26

Enterprise

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 26, 2001, 11:43 pm

I just finished watching Enterprise on TiVo. Was I the only one who liked it? Some thoughts:

I think this series has some potential. This doesn't have the "clean room" qualities of the other series. It's the little things, like the shuttle pod scene:

TNG: "Let's not get too close to the hull.. guffaw!"
Enterprise: "You knicked the paint job!"

I particularly liked the idea of the captain having a dog. Again, it's the little things that give it the feeling of "not so distant future".

It was weird with the establishing relationships... All the semi-repressed hatred towards Vulcans, and they actually hit it off with the Klingons! Well, they weren't killed by the Klingons, that's close enough to "hitting it off". I wonder how the war with them begins...

I was disappointed at the lack of "series glue" for this pilot. See, each pilot since TNG had one character from the previous series. TNG had McCoy. DS9 had Picard. VOY had Quark. The closest thing Enterprise (ENT?) had to a tie-in was Zefram Cochrane, though I can hardly count 2 seconds of archive footage a cameo. Though I must admit, it's kind of hard carrying on the tradition when it's a prequel. Archer could have at least cut the hand off one of the aliens. Oh, wait, wrong sci-fi tradition. I have a bad feeling about this. ;)

T'Pol was interesting, she seems like the classic girl you love to hate. The gel scene was interesting. There they are, lubing each other up, complaining to each other... Any other drama, and they would be fucking like rabbits within 30 seconds. But no, Tucker keeps on going south slightly on T'Pol, arguing all the way. It was amusing.

BTW, T'Pol has very nice, pointy... umm, ears.

Anyways, I liked this pilot. Enterprise has potential.

I'll continue on with real life in the next post.

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Article posted on Sep 25

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 25, 2001, 7:16 pm

Oh god, I'm becoming a journal whore.

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Article posted on Sep 25

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• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 25, 2001, 6:28 pm

So, umm, welcome to my new journal. What I guess I'll do is just start writing, and fill in the gaps where you say "huh? what is this guy talking about?".

So, it rained last night. And there was a little lightning. But since the bay area has a law against any weather whatsoever, this was a major event. 50,000 homes without power. Accidents galore due to the fact that nobody realizes that water can slow response times when braking. Morons. I wish I was back in Wisconsin; it's raining or snowing all the time, and we were used to it.

It was eerie as the BART train left the Berkeley tunnel and entered El Cerrito last night. It was complete darkness. Except for the difference in sound from leaving the tunnel, you could barely tell you were outside. There were no lights whatsoever from the power outages. El Cerrito Plaza station was closed because it had no power, El Cerrito Del Norte had power, but strangely, it was in a square of about 5x5 city blocks; everything else was without power in that area.

I drove to my house in Richmond, almost getting creamed by an asshole who seemed to think that a lack of a red light for him meant he didn't have to stop. Amazingly, my house was in another square of about 10x5 city blocks that still had power.

The power grid is funny.

Today was alright at work. My boss made time to make updates for an adserver which I was originally slated to do, which means I won't have to learn TCL on a moment's notice. (I've learned more languages here than anywhere else :)

One of our clients delayed their launch date... again. I can't tell you who it is, but it's a really big "Bank" that has a lot of offices all across "America".

An editor for NewsForge just sent me some questions for an interview they're going to to for kmMail's 6 months anniversary/1.0 release. Fuck, I suppose I'll have to actually finish the release by Monday then.

It's hard to see the floor in my home. I should probably clean up.

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• Current mood: mellow