» 2004 » August

Article posted on Aug 27

Yaaaa stupid wal-mart employees!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 27, 2004, 2:27 am

I decided to do a couple things now that I had planned on doing in the morning, namely deposit some paychecks, get cash, and fill the water jugs. I went to wal-mart to get water (they have a culligan machine); culligan water is nice, but I like that water place between virginia and holcomb better. I decided against that, though, because you have to press a button for each gallon you need (whereas at the culligan machine you just turn the water on and let it fill) and you either have to pay by coin for each gallon, or get like a $30 prepaid card.

Anyways, wal-mart. I walk in with 3 7-gallon jugs, go to the back, get my water ($0.33/gallon, this is important later), and roll them up to one of the 2 open checkout lanes (it was 2AM). I told the girl working the register, "21 gallons water". She looks at me, then the jugs, then at me, with a puzzled look. "But you only have 3 containers." "They're 7 gallons each." "But I have to ring it up by the quantity. Here." She punches in a code and the display comes up with $0.99.

I said, "No, the quantity is how many gallons I get. I have 21 gallons total." She responded with something that made no sense whatsoever; I think my mind is blocking me from recalling it. We went back and forth a few times on this issue. Yes, it seems odd, but I was arguing that I should be paying more.

Finally, I give up, and hand her a dollar. She gives me a penny and a receipt back. And then I leave, thinking that I just bought 21 GALLONS of water for the same price you could get 21 OUNCES of water for at a gas station.

Burners, if you would like to take advantage of this as well, go to the new Reno Wal-Mart off May Anne. Look for Lisa.

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Article posted on Aug 26

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 26, 2004, 11:59 pm

[insert standard "I leave for Burning Man tomorrow and still have a ton to do" post here]

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Article posted on Aug 25

No, I didn't post this from the bathroom...

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 25, 2004, 1:11 pm

(LiveJournal Poll #340905)

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Article posted on Aug 22

Saturday morning activities

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 22, 2004, 8:09 pm

*zzzzzzz*
*knock knock knock*
fo0bar: Wha? Oh, somebody's knocking on the door. What time is it? Ugh... "One second!" Where are my pants?
*crash*
fo0bar: Okay, those aren't pants. What fucking time is it? 6:30AM? That can't be right... Ahh, those look like pants.
*fo0bar opens door, sees a man, maybe mid-20s, in old jeans and a t-shirt*
fo0bar: "Yes?"
guy: "Sorry to disturb you; I've been trying to get ahold of your for the last couple days. Here you go."
*guy hands fo0bar a pink court paper*
guy: "You've been served." (I thought they just said it dramatically like that in the movies.)
fo0bar: "Huh?"
guy: "By some guy named Chris San..sa..ser..va....something."
fo0bar: "Okay..." *staring at the paper, trying to remember what my name is*
guy: "Well, have a nice day." *starts to walk off*
fo0bar: "Thank you?"

Here's the deal: Back in June, I got into an accident with another car. It's a tedious story, but in short... I was driving through an intersection (I had the green) in the right-hand lane. The woman in the other car was on the street to the right of me, and decided to turn right without stopping or looking in my direction. She started turning right before I was completely through the intersection, so technically I hit her, but it didn't matter since the cause of the accident was her running the red light.

Anyways, it's been an uphill battle since then. She was refusing to talk to anyone, and wanted everything to happen through her husband. And from what I've heard, he's been very difficult about everything. (I just paid my deductable and let the insurance company handle everything; after all, that's their job.)

I found out awhile ago that they didn't have collision insurance on their car, and had been trying to convince my insurance company that I was evil and my insurance company was supposed to pay them. Appearantly that didn't work because, well, they decided to sue me. In small claims court, for $3400, because "defendant damaged my automibile(SP) on 8TH Street in Reno, NV".

Oh well, I'm not too worried. I'll call my agent monday morning, and now instead of them having to deal with Progressive's adjusters, they'll have to deal with Progressive's lawyers.

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Article posted on Aug 18

Buy fo0bar a PDA so he can go shopping.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 18, 2004, 9:30 pm

I went to the grocery store for the main reason of getting toilet bowl cleaner. Here's what I walked out with:

Case of Diet Pepsi
Pint of 1% chocolate milk [0x01]
Apple cinnamon rice cakes
Multivitamin supplement [0x02]
Humidity absorber for the storage unit
409 cleaner
That "Glade Wisp" thing I keep seeing on TV [0x03]
Bleach toilet tabs
Round green processed hamster food [0x04]

None of which were toilet bowl cleaners. The toilet tabs come close, but they're meant to delay the eventual cleaning of the bowl, not reverse the existing damage. Oh well.

0x01: Why do you never see skim chocolate milk? Most of the chocolate milk in the fridge was whole, with a couple 1%, and no skim. Does the grocer think "well, if they want chocolate, they're won't care how much fat is in the milk." I'd be better off getting skim milk and putting hersheys chocolate sauce in it (which IIRC is actually fat free), but I'm lazy.
0x02: A discussion with pdx6 and logic about birth control eventually led me to remember that I was almost out of multivitamins. Don't ask.
0x03: Yes, I'm a consumer whore.
0x04: l33t will not eat seeds (except for sunflower seeds) or alfalfa pellets. Guess what most hamster food contains the most of! That's right, seeds and alfalfa pellets! Hopefully he'll like this, because I'm sick of throwing away 75% of his food every day.

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Article posted on Aug 16

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 16, 2004, 5:49 pm

Christopher Neitzert,

Earlier this year, you banned me from GIMPnet without explanation or reason. When I e-mailed you to question why you had done this, you firewalled me off from contacting your mail server. While I still do not understand why you are refusing to talk to a friend who you have known for over 10 years; someone who helped you move several times, attended parties with you, went out for beers occasionally, and worked beside you for about 1.5 years; I am willing to accept this.

However, there is one last matter to discuss. I would have preferred to email you about this, but your actions have made this impossible. When you became unemployed last year, I loaned you a 1U Dell server (650mhz, 256MB, 2x80GB, slimline CD+floppy) to help you with a home business attempt. This server was loaned to you with the understanding that it would be returned later, either is the business took off and could could buy proper server equipment, or when you became employed again. It has been over a year, and I would like it back.

Please don't interpret this as an act of spite; while I personally have nothing against you, you obviously have something against me now, and I am rather annoyed that you have chosen to ban me from GIMPnet and block any form of communication, rather than talk to me. That doesn't change the fact that I've been wanting the server back for awhile now (I mentioned this to you at the christmas party last year).

You have several options to contact me: 1) Remove your firewall entry and e-mail me, 2) Reply to this post, or 3) Give me a call, you know the number. Once I have the server, I will never contact you again if you wish so. But like I said, I would like to talk to you to see what exactly is on your mind. I look forward to your reply.

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Article posted on Aug 16

Whoah

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 16, 2004, 2:06 am

I just went to install xscreensaver 4.18 on another gentoo machine using a bumped ebuild Since 4.18 isn't in portage officially yet, it downloads directly from jwz.org. That 404'd out, which lead me to this.

Ummmm... Okay, even weirder, check out the whois information. Besides the obvious DNS server change, it doesn't TOTALLY look like a blatent domain theft. Most of the contact information is still intact, except the registrant is "Egregious Lossage", and the admin email is different.

So was this a theft, or did jwz let his domain lapse and somebody picked it up? Oh well, it did remind me that I had a domain expiring tomorrow (perlbastard.com), so I played it safe and renewed all domains expiring this year. Thanks jwz!

(Oh, and I just scp'd xscreensaver 4.18 from another machine I had installed on previously. If you're really itching for the new release, lemme know and I'll put it up somewhere.)

Update: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

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Article posted on Aug 14

No Mini-George, we do not gnaw on our kitty.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 14, 2004, 5:18 pm

(Sorry if I stole this from you... I have the attention span of a ferret, and cannot remember where I got this pic.)

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Article posted on Aug 12

Ha Ha Mr. Hunt

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 12, 2004, 9:28 am

I left my Yahoo messenger on last night, and received this:

t_datti76: HI MR HUNT
t_datti76: HOW IS THE DAY OVER THERE?

I had to scratch my head for a moment, until I realized that the name I used in my profile is "Mike Hunt".

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Article posted on Aug 10

I can taste the Java goodness.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on August 10, 2004, 11:35 pm

Here I am at work, baby-sitting a customer while they do a network upgrade (while the Redundant datacenter is still fully operational, it is no longer staffed 24/7), I decided to play with the Sun Java Desktop System LiveCD, which was given to me at LinuxWorld last week.

As far as I see, it's SuSE Linux Workstation, Gnome desktop, and the standard Linux toys. However, it's branded with Sun/Java everywhere. The desktop is a purple Sun-ish theme with the Java logo as the start button. The web browser is Netscape, but with the Java logo in the top right-hand corner. Email client is Evolution, again with a Java-branded splash screen. And of course the office suite is StarOffice. As far as I can tell, there are no enhancements over a normal SuSE desktop. And despite seeing "Java" everywhere, all that really is installed is Sun's JVM, and the java plugin for Mozilla.

Don't get me wrong, it's very pretty and easy to use, but I can't see paying for something like this over just doing SuSE Workstation. (The price for the full Java Desktop System distro is $100, or $50 before December). Put it this way: if it were free, I'd gladly throw it on a workstation at home. But I'm not about to pay $50/$100 for it. Now, if they had a sparc version, I would be more interested, but it looks like it's x86 only.

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