Bonus of the day:
Called into the courts to see if i needed to appear for jury duty. Don't have to show tomorrow, but i'm still on call for the rest of the month. Gotta check in next monday to see if i need to show next week.
I've also been video chatting a lot now with the isight. Jon and Jason both are on very good connections, and the image/sound quality is really good. Cheaper and easier than a phone call.
How do you get the message quickly from the courtroom to the cameras?
Well this was laughable. The cameras are focused on the court stairs. Suddenly a horde of people start running out on the stairs with various sheets of green and red paper. Between the various hand signals and what looked like morse code there was almost no intelligible message. The reporter on MSN NBC has a posterboard in front of him with a marker. As the message came across the street he attempted to mark which way each count had gone. Within 30 seconds he had actually marked EVERY box on the poster, correcting and re-correcting his work and then crossing out and changing and crossing out and changing. Meanwhile he's trying to keep eye contact with the camera, and then look across the street to keep up with the information being screamed at him. For 5 minutes TV was actually funny.
for all these dumbasses did today, they never thought it might just be simple enough to get a few people that knew sign language.
side note: when i took classes there in my high school days i remember the entire building just being black and white. I later learned in college that the design style that gave rise to the ALL of the design in the college was the "Swiss School" of design. Black and White and Helvetica. (usually in knockout (white)) So i always laugh during this one scene of Escape because they're just walking down some nondescript hallway. About halfway down the hallway there is a black box on the wall that contains a Fire Extinguisher. When i was walking to class one day there i noticed that someone had taken the time to strip the letters off ALL of the boxes and replace them PERFECTLY with letraset rub-on letters. For a couple months all the Fire Extinguishers on one entire side of the school read "SOUL EXTINGUISHER". So if you're sitting with me watching this movie.... now i won't have to explain when i start to laugh uncontrollably.
Now the even more interesting part is that the scenes of the ground floor of the world trade center are actually filmed in the main gallery of CalArts. Steve invited us up many a time for weekend parties at CalArts, and in most cases the set designers had gone all out making the gallery into some incredible designed set to have the party in. Its just funny that this main gallery space has been used for so many movies and TV shows over the years and John Carpenter just throws a bunch of trash in it, paints some graffiti on the walls, and puts a broken down car in the middle, and PRESTO... Its the world trade center.
So.... back to work.
Now off to C&O to DRINK and hang out with everybody.
The other day i walked into Staples and suddenly forgot to use my fuckin brain. I had a piece of paper in my hand with the EXACT ink cartridge numbers that i need. I'm looking for ink for the Epson Stylus C82. The girl behind the counter pulls out a 4 pack and hands it to me. Not the exact number, but the cartridge says it fits in the C82. Box looks about right. And the ink is MADE by epson. So $60 later i'm out the door.
Now where the fuck did i leave my brian. When did i start to think that some dipshit making minimum wage would be able to tell me what item i need. So i get the ink back home. Open it all up. Unfortunately for me it fits perfect in the printer. Same size and everything. I get all of it installed and open up the little utility for the ink levels. It spits back a rude little error message saying that i should only buy Epson produced inks. Then lists me off the numbers that i still have on a sheet of paper in my back pocket. So here is the deal. Epson makes ink for the C80 and the C82, and the cartridges are EXACTLY the same in size and shape. HOWEVER, they have a little microchip interface on them that identifies them and lets the printer read the ink level. This little microchip also ensures that Epson will continue to have you buying ONLY THEIR inks.
anyway, i needed inks. So i went back the next day, and ignored the guy behind the counter for a few minutes. During this time i identified exactly what i needed. He started to ask me what printer i needed ink for.... I just pointed to the three ink packs i needed. He asked me again... "what printer are these for?" At this point i politely explained that i had been there the day before. I let a employee get what she thought were the right inks for my printer, and she blew it. I pointed to the three packs again. "those are what i need".
So i got out the door with little help from the employees of Staples, but i finally got what i want.
BUT the quest for inks did afford me the excuse to visit the Apple Store. I used my self control. I didn't buy anything. I did however browse their bargain table.... it was really hard to pass up a few things.
Well more to come later. i always suck at catching up.
Anyway, i'll be back soon!
Heres the deal... Moveable Type cannot just be lifted off a server and moved. It may come as a surprise to you, but this is way too simple. The database files are tied into the directory structure of the server, so editing the mt.cfg file when you try to move doesn't do shit. I found this out the hard way. I moved will's MT directory to the new server and figured i'd be able to fire the bitch up with no problem. Nope. I eventually set my nameservers to my old ISP's and then logged into the the old server. Once in the MT interface on the old box i had to export everything. Then the data and comments end up in a big fuckin text file. Templates mostly are the HUGE pain in the ass cause you've gotta do them yourself one at a time. Then i popped back over to the new box and installed a clean new MT where i then imported all the data and templates.
All in all it was not fun, but then again, i didn't know what i was doing the first time around. The next few times should not be as much of a pain in the ass. (Especially cause i've got a mt.tar sitting waiting for everybody)
That's enough geek for today.
Steve-O house came close to fire yesterday. The pictures he sent everybody can be seen over on Jon's blog. I hope everything is ok up there and Steve's got a job to go to this weekend.
We first headed to the Marlin Club where we drank and played darks for about 3 hours. Then Barb said that she needed to go dance. So we wlaked a block to Club Chi, which is honestly the funniest place in all of Avalon. Its a little hole in the wall dance club in an upstairs space just off the boardwalk. Its lit almost entirely with black lights and disco ball spotlights. The crowd there is a mixture of all the locals that know barb, and the tourists trying to find some place to hang out. So we hung out there til last call. During this time i sat around with Vera watching all the people in the place. I also witnessed by own brother dancing in the GoGo cage.
Sunday was just laid back all day long. We had breakfast and headed back to Hamilton where we drank on the deck and sat by the Pool. Dinner at Armstongs on Sunday was great as always. Steve and Vera had just left on the 5:45 boat, so it was just my mom dad Jen and me for dinner. Barb got us a table right on the water and waited on us while we were there. I had to start off with a Catalina Ice Tea, but my second round had to include a shot of Petron. I just ordered two and told Barb the second one was for her. So she swoops in with the drink platter sets the shots down and a few seconds later she comes back with a dessert menu. She kneels down next to me like shes showing me something from the menu, and before i could blink she's slammed the shot glass back down on the table.
After dinner we headed down the block to Olaf's. So two HUGE waffle cones later, we're all stufed. We headed back to the place and crashed very nicely with all the food we'd eaten.
Today we went to breakfast at Joe's on the boardwalk because both the Casino Dock cafe and the Busy Bee were closed. Jen and I got on the 11:45 boat and headed up to In N Out for Lunch.
