» 2005 » December

Article posted on Dec 31

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 31, 2005, 7:59 pm

Yesterday, I was considering driving to the bay area for the weekend. I decided not to do it this morning, thinking "oh, probably too much snow on donner". As it turns out, mudslides, not snow. I80 is closed, as are all alternative routes, short of taking a detour through Oregon.

In other news, I now have Linux on my iPod nano. Most of the features of the original interface software are there (though you can dual-boot the iPod, so it's not like I had to give up anything for it), with a few quirks (not being able to exit out of the "now playing" menu without stopping playback, for example). However, the coolest feature is the ability to play video on the nano. (Though you have to convert it to native-sized 176x132, UNCOMPRESSED video and audio, so the files are huge... also, it drains battery rather quickly)

Now, for a Dear Lazyweb,

Can I just buy a Turion CPU and throw it in any cheap socket 754 motherboard? I know you can do it with Pentium M CPUs and 476 mobos.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Dec 30

The dirt! It's not coming off!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 30, 2005, 10:23 pm

I just wrote Microsoft ASP code.

<% Response.Redirect("http://company.com") %>

• 1 Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Dec 29

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 29, 2005, 9:01 pm

Today at work, I moved into my own private office...

...then tomorrow 2 other people will move in, thereby making it "not private". Oh well, I enjoyed my 5 hours of non-cubeland bliss.

• 2 Comments
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Dec 21

Best bot interaction ever.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 21, 2005, 10:26 pm

22:22 < fo0bar> if [ -z "$SUDO_USER" ]; then exec sudo $0 "$@"
22:22 < fo0bar> fi
22:22 < fo0bar> somehow that seems so wrong
22:22 < fo0bar> but it works
22:22 < Dumont> But it also eats babies.
22:23 < fo0bar> Dumont: that's bad
22:23 < Dumont> But it comes with a free frogurt!
22:23 < fo0bar> that's good!
22:23 < Dumont> The frogurt is also cursed.
22:23 < fo0bar> that's bad
22:23 < Dumont> But you get your choice of topping.
22:23 < fo0bar> that's good!
22:23 < Dumont> The toppings contain sodium benzoate.

It helps to know that Dumont is a bot, and the answers to "that's bad" and "that's good" are randomized, so it was pure luck I got the intended sequence.

• 3 Comments
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Dec 19

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 19, 2005, 12:27 am

The company christmas party on saturday (which comprised 8 hours, 4 bars, and one massive hangover the next morningafternoon) was nice. We had a "white elephant" gift exchange, and I ended up getting 2 cans of Olde English malt liquor and a calendar about bugs. Really. And after dinner, we all got 2GB iPod Nanos. I've been playing with mine for the last day, and here is what I've found:

* It's small.
* Nice interface, but the clickwheel takes a bit to get used to.
* Audio output from the device itself is quite nice.
* iTunes integration is decent.
* The earbuds suck. I've never liked earbuds, but these cut off the upper and lower ends of the range, unless they are REALLY jammed in your ear (to the point that you have to use you fingers to keep them pressed against your ear canal). I ditched them and started using the old standby.
* The interface/charging jack is jammed right next to headphone jack, and cannot be removed unless you first remove the headphone plug.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Dec 18

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 18, 2005, 10:26 pm

A couple weeks ago, I bought an Epson R220, because it was relatively cheap, and printed direcly on CDRs. It contains 7 ink cartridges (black, cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow, light yellow), and on the box, it said something to the effect of "comes with full ink cartridges, but some ink is needed to first prime the printer". As it turns out, "some" means over half of each cartridge. So, almost immediately after buying the printer, I looked into how much replacement ink would cost. "Genuine Epson" replacement ink for all 7 cartridges is $61. However, knockoff brand ink is available from supermediastore.com (who I've ordered from before for other various things) is $19. Now, I've heard about companies like lexmark locking out 3rd-party brands by putting an encrypted chip on the cartridge itself, and the epson cartridges have digital interfaces on them, but I figured for $19, it was worth a try (and the fact that they're selling them at all means it's likely it'll work).

Well, today black ran out, and I replaced it with the knockoff cartridge. It just took one prime before it worked, perfectly. The Epson drivers now warn me every time I print about the dangers of using 3rd-party cartridges (appearantly they will eat babies and spit fire), but it allows it to print. So at least Epson is somewhat fair in the grand scheme of things.

• 1 Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Dec 18

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 18, 2005, 5:13 pm

"When doing a breast self-exam, it is best to be playing with yourself while rubbing suds over your large fake breasts." (NSFW, though no actual naughty bits)

• 2 Comments
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Dec 17

fo0bar's adventures in doing normal things!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 17, 2005, 6:31 pm

Today I attached a button to a shirt using something called "needle and thread".

• 4 Comments
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Dec 16

Interesting nigerian spam variation

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 16, 2005, 12:32 pm

Read the rest of this entry »

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Dec 16

On fucked-up "authors" and FICO

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on December 16, 2005, 11:59 am

<kickaha> ha ha michelle malkin
<kickaha> malkin and she-man coulter should have babies
<kickaha> the could produce some seriously messed up kids
<fo0bar> coulter may have some feminine properties, but that's no excuse to put him down by calling him a "she-man"
<kickaha> true
<kickaha> ann: i'm sorry i impugned your manhood

On an unrelated note, god damn you, Fair Isaac. Big black box. In march, my FICO score was 764. Today it's 739. Nothing has changed in the last 9 months. No new accounts, no closed accounts, all my balances are roughly what they were (with the exception of the car loan which keeps going down). Yes, I know I shouldn't complain, as that's a decent score anyways (55th percentile), but still.

Also, it always seems to take me 20 tries to log in with various usernames and passwords, so for future reference: the username is my SSN and the password is the 14-character cascading password. (To all those l33t hax0rs out there, that really doesn't give you anything to work with.)

• 2 Comments
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.