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Tuesday, December 31, 2002

 
9:10 AM: [#] [0]

so another update about the last three days. i've decided i rather enjoy the 3-day drive, as it forces me to decompress and doesn't ever allow me to do work and rarely even think about work. except for the person waiting at the end of that day's drive, there's nothing tieing me to anything except the road and my music and the book on tape i am listening to (fwiw, i probably could have gone with wuthering heights instead of jane eyre, as i am still not finished with it, though i did find a quote i want to record). and i see the most beautiful landscapes.

12.28.02
rob & i stopped somewhere between raton & santa fe to look at the stars, which were thicker and better than either of us had expected. new mexico really benefits from a lack of light at night; you could clearly distinguish the milky way in the sharp air, and we listened to radiohead's "pyramid song" while we drank it in. i even saw a star fall, and while i didn't know what to wish for then, i do now.

12.29.02
after appeasing the onset of hypoglycemia by eating at the owl cafe (new mexico ruben: yum!) on my way to arizona i stopped to see the peak of a gorgeous sunset. the whole sky was on fire.

12.30.02
highway 78 between blythe & julian is my second-favorite drive of all time. it's full of dips and hills, your car rising and falling as if it's breathing. the air smells like hay and farms. and i adore driving through glamis, which is like a settlement in a post-apocalyptic mad-max movie: fires and tattered tents and trailers and atvs and vendors and smoke and dust. sometimes fireworks explode over the dunes. behind me, east, the blue rose from the mountains to swallow the reddenning sky. i feel i can drive west forever. before me, the clouds glowed bright pink, faded to blush, brick, smoke, dark grey, luminous blue, and finally collapsed the whole sky to glittering black. i stopped in the anza desert, where i was so far from anything the silence rang in my ears, and knelt in the cold sand, surrounded by stars.

i got a little carsick after julian, though. it turns out penguins (or any mints, i suspect) are a fairly effective antidote. upon returning home, i discover amelia has not been a cup of tea for poor jennifer.

this trip has been brought to you by the following soundtrack: jane eyre; throwing muses: university; kevin trudeau: tapes 5 & 6 of mega memory; rem: out of time; the amelie soundtrack; 10,000 maniacs: love among the ruins; paul simon: the rhythm of the saints; a mix tape rob made for ilena; veda hille: spine; christmas eve, a mix playlist; lisa loeb: firecracker; hot club of cowtown: dev'lish mary; enya: the celts; tori amos: the choirgirl hotel; pj harvey: is this desire?. surprisingly, i brought an entire bag of music i didn't listen to.

happy new year's eve! tonight, a new year's eve party. today, a list of resolutions & accomplishments.

Friday, December 27, 2002

 
11:55 AM: [#] [0]

so i burned my xmas cd and a couple of cds my parents had. now my parents want me to burn all the tapes they have onto cd. :) i've been bouncing back & forth between audion (to arrange the tunes and modify their id3 tags) and itunes (to import a cd or burn). neither of them does exactly what i want, but together, it's been a lot of fun.

 
1:20 AM: [#] [0]

okay, i am officially impressed with at least one aspect of itunes: the "burn cd" function is both intuitive and usable.

Thursday, December 26, 2002

 
11:42 AM: [#] [0]

i've lost my trenchcoat. :( it's actually fairly warm now, so moving between one place & another isn't so bad, but i wanted to explore. and besides, i really like that coat.

Wednesday, December 25, 2002

 
10:51 PM: [#] [0]

some narration about the trip so far:

12.21.02
packed at the last minute and left late again, and the time zone change really throws me for a loop. fortunately, my grandmother stays up late.

12.22.02
julie & janis stopped by before i left and we ate what my grandmother calls brunch and would ordinarily be breakfast for everyone else but none of us are early risers.

the superstition highway is my favorite drive of all time. the scenery is tremendous, you pass the Very Large Array, and for very long stretches you are the only car on the road, in arizona, in the world. i found myself unable to follow the posted speed limit (60 mph) because i wanted to fly, and i can't imagine riding through this landscape in a carriage for days. earlier in the day, while i was still in arizona, i got snow, which was made even more charming by watching it dance with the amelie soundtrack.

i arrived in albuquerque almost 1.5 hours sooner than i expected. i drove around a bit and pick up something to eat. there were lots of things rob & i didn't discuss (not for his lack of trying) and this was one of them, so when i finally couldn't stand it anymore, i knocked on rob's door (and not long after, we left to eat). i was relieved to discover rob was absolutely right about donna being a sweetheart and someone who is easy to be with. she calls the prius "the jetson's car" and hums the theme song.

12.23.02
the drive to colorado was uneventful, though rob and i had a hard time getting through morning routines after we had been up till 4 a.m. we finally made it out of albuquerque at 2 p.m. or so. the mountains were shrouded in writhing mist and all the weather warnings had been dire, so i expected some pretty hairy situations similar to the ones rob bowman and i had faced when driving to portland. but it was really a piece of cake. we reached raton pass at dusk, where snow shone through the purple twilight and the air in the darkening mountains was crisp and sweet.

12.24.02
i can't believe how winded i am. how achingly thirsty. how thinking makes me dizzy. and then i suddenly remember these are signs of altitude sickness, which i have never had to think about before. it must mean i really have become a californian. constantly drinking water and napping helps, though i am depressed to realize that by the time i will feel normal again, it will be time for me to leave.

i had a brilliant idea for xmas cards.

and finally, today:
no matter how much water i drink, my lips are still seriously chapped and i am still easily out of breath. nobody seems to know i do calligraphy, and so my sdfc sweatshirt and the gift to my parents is a source of surprise. my dad took me to see the blackened remains of the fire that almost reached woodland park over the summer. it suddenly occurs to me how little time i have left before i leave again: is tomorrow the 26th already? geesh! i wonder how amelia's doing.

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

 
11:58 PM: [#] [0]

i dropped two pieces off at the gallery to be framed; i won't see them again until the poway opening jan. 18. the last artist's way was tonight. :( i'm trying very hard not to be sick.

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

 
3:17 PM: [#] [0]

wow: my gladiola just blew right over the edge of balcony!

i received a funny message from an instructor who had filled out the "plan to teach w/ online components" form. i had written him a brief message which basically said thanks & asked if he needed anything else. "who are you?" he wrote in return. bwah!

 
11:39 AM: [#] [0]

it's raining again! i'm home to enjoy it because i feel "the sickness" becky & dierdre had coming on and i want to minimize it, if i can. i don't want to be sick this xmas! pleeeeaaasseee!

Monday, December 16, 2002

 
10:31 PM: [#] [0]

i just had the most tremendous drive through elfin forest on my way home. it rained hard tonight (i got soaked just running to my car) and so i rolled down all the windows, turned on the heater, turned up the music, and let my hair fall. it was a rush of sound and sensation, a furious river of warm and cool currents, with my hair wild and the air full of spice and rain.

and when i got home, i had an xmas package from amazon waiting for me! bonus: brian said if i got him a piece for the poway show by tomorrow or wednesday, he could have it ready by friday.

 
1:27 PM: [#] [0]

doh! ben's 20-questions character was gilly the perky goth from dork tower! all the clues make sense now!

 
12:47 PM: [#] [0]

oh, my god! jennifer was gone for three days last week for a job interview at csu monterey bay! i'll bet it was the media learning complex support specialist position, but she didn't tell me, so i don't know. i hear from others that she thinks she did extremely well. i am sad and hopeless and frustrated and angry and happy for her all at once. i have no idea how to talk to her about any of this.

 
1:51 AM: [#] [0]

how can people who have such gorgeous calligraphy have such an awful website?

 
12:37 AM: [#] [0]

hey, did you know jakob nielsen is on google's technical advisory council? neither did i! and they have a job opening for a "creative maximizer". too bad it's not available anywhere i want to move.

Sunday, December 15, 2002

 
11:32 PM: [#] [0]

aaaaaaaaha! i think my nefarious troubles were related to a corrupt font! when i reviewed my notes from the previous episode, i did a search for info about the ATSServer, which i finally learned is the Apple Type Solution Server (a user process responsible for managing the available fonts and making them available to applications). not that most of my symptoms looked like they had anything to do with fonts, mind you, but reading that reminded me that i had just added a bunch of fonts to ~/Library/Fonts/, so i took them out and rebooted. poof! everything works again! michael verified that when he had consistent crashing & wake from sleep problems several months ago, it was also due to a corrupt font.

geesh, if i had known that earlier i would have saved myself 2.5 days of work. there's not enough info on os x troubleshooting yet. :P

 
10:18 PM: [#] [0]

nefarious is back up, but is beginning to exhibit the same behaviours as it did when i wiped it just a couple of weeks ago. i'm very nervous. i don't want to go through that again, especially if i'm trying to create something i want people to use & possible rely on. so i'm backing up using carbon copy cloner so that this time, at least, i won't lose all the hidden files & root-owned files.

i finished my xmas shopping today. whew! i also shopped for frames, none of which i'm really happy with and now wish i hadn't missed the framing date. oh, well. i keep telling myself the first step is to just get stuff out there....

 
12:31 PM: [#] [0]

i didn't end up going to the scrapbooking party at tammie's. i was going to be way late for a 3:30 party, anyway, when i found out it began at 3. i did end up way late for the sdfc party, where i exchanged a copy of the complete idiot's guide to calligraphy for an inkstick, a grinding stone, and a bitty sumi brush.

it just hit me that the drop-off date for the poway show is friday, which means i missed the framing date. damnit. not that i've actually created a piece yet, but i means i have to go find a frame first and write to the frame instead of the other way 'round.

i haven't begun xmas shopping yet. sheesh.

nefarious is down. :( i wish i could figure out why. i can't realy use php/mysql as a solution if i never know if it's going to go down. at least if it paged me i could bring it up a little faster....

Saturday, December 14, 2002

 
1:00 PM: [#] [0]

oh, sure, everyone talks about the money and the medals and the honour and what all when one is awarded a nobel prize, but what about the stunning nobel diplomas? it makes me want to move to sweden just to qualify for the commission!

Friday, December 13, 2002

 
3:47 PM: [#] [0]

jeff has pictures up from the death valley half marathon. better him than me, i say.

 
12:16 PM: [#] [0]

the joy of tech embraces my holiday:


a merry x-mas to all, and to all a good mac. :)

 
11:54 AM: [#] [0]

i already have instructors emailing me: "I am incredibly frustrated already with Garrett's 'support' of my classes" and "This doesn't seem to bode well for the future." etc. though i asked what we should do with forms that come in while he's gone, he didn't respond, so as much as it pains me, i will do nothing. of course, i realized today that i ought to have asked about the backups and didn't. i guess i either do them myself, which will make him mad, or wait, which will make me mad. moo-ha-ha-ha! guess which one i'll pick? :D

the north county calligraphy guild's holiday party was small but sweet. at the exchange, i got an older book of shakespearean sonnets "written in the Sweet Roman Hand" and an unusual, heavy ink pot. i think the person who got my christmas fairy was less than happy and i am reconsidering giving that gift at the san diego fellow calligraphers' party. :(

a representative from plaza pen & art was at the party and i walked away with a flat waterbrush and pebeo. i will probably give the flat waterbrush to terrilynn: i have no innate ability to create chisel-edge letters with a flat brush (i'm just barely able to do it with a pointed brush). i like frisket and masks and everyone raves about the consistency of pebeo so i thought i'd try it. i almost got sucked in by the rollabind system, which i had seen ads for and thought was pretty useless. but then i saw how they worked and then edna demonstrated how you could mix & match sizes (very useful!) and punch placemats as covers, but at $60 for the binding and then extra for the disks, i passed.

Thursday, December 12, 2002

 
5:09 PM: [#] [0]

i just passed another gretchin/garrett test. garrett emailed an instructor about a cross-listed course (ltwr & comm) and said, "the way I see it, I get you." after my initial internal, "oh, no, you don't! i've been working on that course for 2 years!" i instead said, "yes, i think you should get any questionable courses." good for me. broad and vague at the same time.

the best news? "I fly to Paris in the morning... so will not be responding till January." *breathes sigh of relief*

 
4:20 PM: [#] [0]

i don't know what happened today: i was up really late last night and today i stayed home. cracked & roasted macadamia nuts. finished harry potter and the sorceror's stone (sorry, michael!). made the xmas exchange gift for the north county calligraphy guild tonight. read tim o'reilly's "piracy is progressive taxation".

Wednesday, December 11, 2002

 
2:40 PM: [#] [0]

laura sent me a link to cruelty, a flash poem. it's really quite good. michael's going to the tori amos concert tonight! lucky boy.

my upstairs neighbor can't find her key & since i have a copy of it, i'm going to run home before i go to terrilynn's to work on calendars. i finished painting all of june last night, but we're going to just work on assemblage (and then i will go home and work on painting november).

i think my theme song is "lily," by kate bush.

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

 
10:20 AM: [#] [0]

i'm staying home today. and i'm looking for a theme song!

Monday, December 09, 2002

 
12:52 PM: [#] [0]

i removed the comments option because i think i lost ths script when i updated nefarious and w/o numbers, it was too hard to know whether to check them or not (i would just check them on the server :).

 
12:40 PM: [#] [0]

the gray household just had a baby girl: madison kaya asheray gray! i didn't even know they were pregnant!

Sunday, December 08, 2002

 
4:31 PM: [#] [0]

holy cripes! amazon has an arts& crafts catalog service and a restaurant menu service now! i had a flash of insight as i realized the next big ebattle will be between google & amazon's various search services, and between google's strengths in indexing & minimal user interface, and amazon's strengths in interlinking and user analysis, they could do some really amazing things if they partnered together.

 
4:23 PM: [#] [0]

i had to send my grandmother & parents an xmas list. i hate that. i feel all mercenary. i figure if you really don't know what to get someone, you don't know them very well. and to be honest, i much prefer presents on my birthday.

but this is what i sent them:

general all-purpose anytime gifts:
barrettes/hair jewelry
body shop vanilla products
fountain pens (no ballpoints, no rollerballs)
beads/embellishments
cool paper
anything by or featuring edward gorey
anything off the amazon wishlist
page points/book darts
blank & lined journals

specific this holiday:
subscription to somerset studio
poetry dog tags
thirstballs/plant waterers
pants (16/18, depending. jeans, dockers, courderoy, drawstrings, whatever)
socks (wide range of colors; soft socks=bonus.)

expensive:
a year of flowers or fruit
memory cards
20gb ipod

tastes:
swirls & stars
functional art
warm rich colors & fabrics
details & embellishments
shiny and/or contrasting but not gaudy
delicate but usable
comfortable!
recycled, reused or otherwise green
learning, kits
things w/ stories, things that mean something
things w/ words, things w/ letters, things in different languages
the unexpected. things which are not as they seem
the insides of things (translucent/transparent)

otherwise, it's been very quiet. no work on php yet today: i paid bills, called my parents, tried to catch up on correspondence, and did some art-related stuff. i'll probably do some php before the night is over, however. big fun instructional development meeting tomorrow.

 
5:02 AM: [#] [0]

yay! i've got info from the form posting to the database! yay! of course, there's so much more still to go, but i'm pretty darn proud of myself. go me!

(i can't help it. still todo: finalize database tables; figure out how to send checkbox info; figure how i want to handle the admin interface; remove unnecessary comments from html output; figure out courses index & helpdesk pages.)

i was busy today! i went to the art connection lecture about copyright and the visual artists rights act. naomi & jacqueline were there. then i went to work for a few hours, then went back to the gallery for the "summations" opening because gerrie had a piece there, and it turns out jacqueline had an honorable-mention piece in the show! and then i headed over to terrilynn's to help her with calendars till about midnight (which was a minor miracle; terrilynn's usual bedtime is 9 or 10 p.m. :). terrilynn had an interesting idea io hope i have the chance to follow up on. then i came home to work on php. (go, me!)

now i'm going to sleep.

Saturday, December 07, 2002

 
3:22 PM: [#] [0]

i think it would be funny if we began asking for exceptions to silly rules. of course, you don't see me picking up a phone. i'd be on hold forever and i can't even find the time to call my dad.

Friday, December 06, 2002

 
11:24 AM: [#] [0]

i forgot about my fortune cookie yesterday:

don't give up. the best is yet to come.

a fortune cookie has never made me cry before.

Thursday, December 05, 2002

 
8:30 PM: [#] [0]

and then... it wasn't! i fiddled and twiddled until i thought it would be better to uninstall. i thought reinstalling would be easier the second time around, and while it was, it wasn't by a whole lot. (the third time's the charm, i think; tess will be all good to go by the time i get to her).

 
1:40 PM: [#] [0]

and now, for whatever reason, mysql works now. go figure! and classic isn't having issues, either. nefarious must be feeling better.

 
1:18 PM: [#] [0]

marc liyanage was kind enough to reply to my 4 a.m. cry for help, and he pointed out i had used the 10.1 mysql package instead of the 10.2 package. doh!

but now i'm having issues with "ERROR 2002: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)", which everyone says is related to not actually starting the database, but i checked and i think it -is- running! argh!

 
3:21 AM: [#] [0]

augh! mysql:

dyld: ./bin/mysql Undefined symbols:
./bin/mysql undefined reference to _BC expected to be defined in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
./bin/mysql undefined reference to _PC expected to be defined in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
./bin/mysql undefined reference to _UP expected to be defined in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
Trace/BPT trap
[nefarious:/usr/local/mysql] gretchin% mysqladmin -u root password mysqladmin
[nefarious:/usr/local/mysql] gretchin% mysql test
dyld: ./bin/mysql Undefined symbols:
./bin/mysql undefined reference to _BC expected to be defined in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
./bin/mysql undefined reference to _PC expected to be defined in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
./bin/mysql undefined reference to _UP expected to be defined in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
Trace/BPT trap

good night. michael will be calling ever so early this morning....

 
2:54 AM: [#] [0]

finally! i was plagued by "parse error, expecting `T_STRING' or `T_VARIABLE' or `T_NUM_STRING' " and found the answer on the zend list: remove the single and/or double quotes i had in $_REQUEST['email'], even though php.net specifies this syntax and the quotes work elsewhere in the script (no quotes works elsewhere in the script, too, so... bye-bye, quotes!)

 
2:27 AM: [#] [0]

i don't understand. this was so much easier the last time. now i can't get it to send an email to a variable. and in general, i'm finding myself having to re-write scripts that worked this weekend. :P

 
1:39 AM: [#] [0]

so i'm trying to just get back to the way php was working before i had to nuke nefarious, and i thought i'd go ahead and use marc liyanage's php module for darwin and repeat all my former steps. oh, i am so naive.

first, it turns out nefarious didn't have m4 or gm4; i had to copy it over from tess (and it turns out it was from the developer cd, damnit). then it turns out pine doesn't work (same undefined symbols pico had. argh!). then, marc's php module follows the new way to call variables, which meant that all the little scripts i had created with the previous (apple) version were broken. i guess i should be glad this didn't happen when i was in production, but i want to show something on friday and it took me a few hours to get over this stuff. blech.

it will all be better now. right? :D (though i still need a good copy of pine, please.)

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

 
8:10 PM: [#] [0]

i'm going to go pick up some cat food for amelia and then another box of calendars from terrilynn. i'm not feeling very optomistic about the japanese scroll thing. damn.

 
7:47 PM: [#] [0]

dan has two urls for your viewing pleasure this evening: a story about refrigerators cooled by sound, and the impressive, if cpu-intensive, text arc!

 
4:46 PM: [#] [0]

testing the "blogthis!" function i found on the Unofficial Blogger Pro FAQ.

 
3:09 PM: [#] [0]

jeff sent me a great switch ad parody. see? i still like the star wars concept, if not the execution... :)

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

 
10:13 PM: [#] [0]

nefarious is finally in working order, though there's still some gentrification to be done. i learned some valuable lessons, though i'm still not sure what its problem was. :(

 
8:00 PM: [#] [0]

why choose the lesser lego? bow before cthulu, puny legos!

 
10:17 AM: [#] [0]

baaaaaaaaad gretchin! next time, log in as root before attempting the backup! the stupid finder didn't copy anything i didn't have "permission" to copy, which included, among other things, all my apache mods, including the icons, etc. *sigh* i don't have nefarious back yet, anyway, so i'm not bothering going in to work until i do.

but it'll be several hours of my life i'll never get back during a time i'd rather be pounding on php. :( and blogger's having template issues again. why do i like technology, again?

Monday, December 02, 2002

 
11:11 PM: [#] [0]

grrrrrr! i decided i was just going to reinstall nefarious and be done with it. but the jaguar disks wouldn't let me choose nefarious as the target disk because i had a newer version of os x on it (because i've been a good girl and kept up with my updates). so how the hell are you supposed to downgrade or reinstall? aaarrggghhhhhggghhhh! *incomprehensible, gutteral sounds* so i dragged nefarious up to the helpdesk and asked them to wipe it and restore os x. which means when i get nefarious back, i'll get to go through the "update all my apps & preferences" waltz. whee!

grrr.

i attended the macromedia contribute demo at sdsu; it wasn't as cool as i had hoped. but it might still be interesting, and i managed to win a copy of macromedia studio. :D