nick's site

i spent my birthday at school; attending class and with the tutors working on physics and math.

amanda got me four cupcakes and card for my birthday.  it seems the temptation was too great.  when i got home, there were three cupcakes. 🙂

note: amanda’s never met a cupcake she didn’t like.  especially chocolate ones.  they’re her krypton, her weakness.  one of the many things that make her adorable.

25 things about me.  tag, you’re it.

1. i drive my second dodge neon, both second-hand
2. i don’t like getting up early, never have
3. i listen to public radio when i can.  marketplace(.org) is one of my favorite evening programs
4. my job is challenging in many ways
5. sushi is good
6. i quit drinking when i was 16
7. i hate going to the dentist
8. we have 3 “indoor” cats.  i hate the youngest one. if he got out, i wouldn’t chase him down
9. my brother and i got in many fights when we were kids.  i won once.
10. i hated playing baseball as a kid
11. i drink a lot of coffee
12. i procrastinate.  a lot
13. my arithmetic is horrid
14. most of the classes i have left to take are math
15. i barely graduated highschool
16. i have a dark sense of humor and am tempted to laugh at inappropriate times
17. many of my friends have moved away or died
18. grateful for friends, new and old
19. grateful for those who put up with me
20. i’ve never had anchovies on pizza but i’m not opposed to it
21. i don’t make enough time to play games
22. i hate law & order
23. i have everything i need and a lot of what i want
24. i like taking pictures. friends inspire me to try new things with different tools
25. i don’t have much to hide so ask if you want to know

thanks to tmbo (ITO) for pointing me to the idea

The best strategy I have seen banks do is to foreclose on the house, then rent it back to the borrowers with an option for them to buy it back at market value once they get back on their feet. The borrowers tend to take better care of it than just any renter, as the bank sits on the house for a couple of years to see if the market will come back. WIN/WIN.

supposedly sourced from a NPR story, i can’t find it now.

lol.

“professor a” wants to use their own book for class.  “professor a’s” book is out of print.  professor a provides a PDF copy of said textbook to students, encouraging them to print copies for themselves.

getting “copyshop usa” to print a bound and covered double-sided version proved to be a copyright challenge, citing copyright limitations.

violate copyrights?  doesn’t appear to.  since it’s used in the classroom realm, it gets fair-use status, which allows someone to copy part for the classroom.  since it’s out of print, that seems to open up the ability to print the whole book for class use.  also, it’s not being distributed for profit.

suppose i should get the copyright owner’s permission. 😛

ref 1, 2, 3, 4.

unlike centos, when you configure MD RAID 1 for booting on debian etch, it doesn’t install GRUB on all the drives in the set.  you can do this manually and it seems you’d have to do this every time you update the kernel.  (i found this out the hard way)

• edit /boot/grub/menu.lst
• find the line that says ‘root’ (maybe has (hd0,0) on it).  make note of the hdX,Y part
• determine what your “other” drives in the RAID set are, whether they’re /dev/sdb, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc, etc.
  (i usually cat /proc/mdstat and see which disks are part of each mdX device)
• run the following, replace hdX,Y with the one you found in menu.lst.  replace /dev/hdX with the device ID for your other drive.
  

  schitzo:~# grub
  grub> device (hd0) /dev/hdX
  grub> root (hdX,Y)
  grub> setup (hd0)
  grub> quit

if yours is RAID 1 like mine, you should only have to do this once.  it’s a higher level RAID, you’ll have to perform this on every drive

maybe they’ll fix this in lenny 🙂

(mostly for reference)

i started getting random IMs from *coho names on AIM.  turns out they’re part of an IM botnet who’s purpose is to annoy people, no other malicious actions.  it appears you can opt-out too.

(11:23:58 AM) HalvedCoho: Have you ever been to a circus where there was a seal?
(11:26:38 AM) nadams5755: i have a bucket
(11:26:38 AM) halvedcoho is now known as HalvedCoho.

(11:27:10 AM) HalvedCoho: who is this?
(11:27:22 AM) nadams5755: your mother.
(11:27:54 AM) HalvedCoho: thank you
(11:27:57 AM) HalvedCoho: good bye
(11:28:09 AM) nadams5755: no
(11:28:10 AM) nadams5755: stay
(11:28:13 AM) nadams5755: i love you
(11:28:25 AM) HalvedCoho: goodbye
(11:28:28 AM) nadams5755: no
(11:28:29 AM) nadams5755: stay
(11:28:36 AM) nadams5755: would you like to play a game?
(11:29:06 AM) HalvedCoho: no thank you
(11:29:16 AM) nadams5755: how about a nice fish?
(11:30:05 AM) nadams5755: $optout
(11:30:15 AM) HalvedCoho: OPERATOR: Are you sure you want to opt-out? If you do, you will *never* be contacted again on the account “nadams5755”. There is *no way* to opt back in and undo this.

If you are sure, type “$optout 2189”. Remember, this is permanent and irreversible!
(11:30:30 AM) nadams5755: $optout 2189
(11:30:34 AM) HalvedCoho: OPERATOR: You have opted out. The accout “nadams5755” will *never* be contacted again. Good bye!

Feel free to email [email protected] with feedback, comments, complaints, etc.

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
– Mark Twain