zen.org Communal Weblog

I had not logged into AIM in a long time. Over a year I think. I had no idea what my password was. I tried a few standards and nothing. So I jaunted over to aim.com and clicked on the Lost Password link. I actually had lost my username to, but Brendan remembered it. I entered it and it said that I had to wait 24 hours to request my password as I had login failures recently. The odd thing is a minuate later I got email with my password. No matter, just a bug I guess.

I called the heater company at about 07:00 EST, the lady on the phone says “somebody will be there between now and noon.” “Now,” thought I, I rushed to the window, but nobody was there. The lady on the phone continues, “remember that the roads are icy so it might take a little longer.” Nobody yet.

I was hopping to leave work a little early today to get to the market as the first snow storm is predicted to hit this area tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be a part of the Saturday morning mad rush. Last winter I went to the store once right when the snow started, the grocery market was empty, and the roads where still fine.

UPDATE: It must be getting cold in my house, the cat is cuddling with my laptop.

UPDATE 2: It’s just about noon and I have heat again!

I put Zoë in the car this morning, strapped her down to the car seat. There she sat with wisps of breath comming out of her due to the twenty degree Fahrenheit weather we are having. I had never seen her breath before. Not a complaint from her.

Just three days until the Huygens probe lands on Titan.

I just spent all day trying to get my Linux software RAID devices to work on Debian Sarge. Then I noticed, there hidden in the middle of a bunch of X upgrades was a mdadm upgrade. Debian mdadm version 1.7.0-2 worked fine, but 1.8.1-1 did not. I downgraded and pined the lower version. I dislike software RAID in the first place.

It took all day to figure out. Much check/file bug report tomorrow.

I remember way back to one of Brendan’s first ponstings about the OED word of the day. The article “Many English words have fascinating histories” reviews a book called Word Histories and Mysteries put out by American Heritage Dictionaries that Brendan might also enjoy.

The suffering of “filthy, faggot Swedes” in the South East Asia disaster was punishment from God for Sweden’s tolerant attitude toward homosexuality. This is how a website owned by an influential Christian extremist movement in Kansas has reported Swedes’ suffering in the tsunami disaster.

So says Swedish pastor disowns US hate site.

/. reports that Bill Gates thinks that `anyone who doesn’t support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as “communists”.’ United States Republican candidates often accuse Democrats of being liberal. There is an eerie relationship there I have not figured out yet.

December twenty-sixth at about 15:06 UTC there will be a full moon. Last full moon the skies where clear. Though outside of Philadelphia tomorrow night will be closer to a full moon tonight is clear as it was last month.

Didn’t get a small telescope for Christmas though I am thankful for the many gifts I did get. Maybe I’ll get one for Zoë next year, or the year after.

As 余艾蕾, Zoë and I are going to be spending most of Christmas Eve and day at my parents house we opened our presents after our Solstice Day dinner. Zoë got a LEGO® QUATRO™ Bucket, 余艾蕾 got a coffee grinder, and I got a Bose® Companion® 3 Multimedia Speaker System.

I plug my Bose® Companion® 3 Multimedia Speaker System in to my computer and start playing some Christmas tunes. The Wynton Marsalis Quintet playing “We Three Kings of Orient Are” sounded great, Dave Edmunds playing “Run Run Rudolph” was way cool. Then the woofer kicked in with Run D.M.C. doing there “Christmas In Hollis.” Wow! Maybe I need to get more Hip Hop songs.