Ruminatorial

Linear Algebra

"A" is for Algebra, and that's good enough for me!

posted by Jeff @ 1:50 PM 0 comments

The long dark night

That's no metaphor. After 5 1/2 hours of sleep I got up at 6am Friday to drive to Baltimore and run a fencing camp all day. I got home around 9pm, drank a beer, and started the final steps in upgrading to a new server (the very machine this website is hosted on). At 5:30am, after a long night of fiddling, cursing, disassembling and reassembling, I bagged it and went to bed. Less than 5 hours later I woke up again, made a light breakfast and got back to work. And, finally, Eureka! It works!

Now, if I can only get a little more sleep...

posted by Jeff @ 11:16 AM 0 comments

It works!

Two good things happening at the same time:

1) My graylist actually stopped 99% of the spam I was getting. Un-freakin believable! It's like nobody loves me any more. I no longer have to spend the first 10 minutes of every day deleting messages about viewing Julez Web Cam, or buying meds online.

2) My internet connection had been losing up to 75% of its packets. Reboot the cable modem, and voila! Back to 0% packet loss. Apparently 175 days is too long for a motorola modem to run without rebooting.

posted by Jeff @ 8:58 AM 0 comments

Spam Filtering

I spent a lot of time today (Wednesday) installing better spam filtering on my server. What a pain in the ass. Now I have pretty agressive policies in my sendmail, the very latest version of sendmail, a greylist, and as before baysian filtering. Still getting too much spam!

posted by Jeff @ 1:03 AM 0 comments

The sun rides low

I hate early mornings. Maybe 7:30am shouldn't seem "early", but it does. Driving to Waynesboro today to meet with the other officers of the Virginia Division. Pot luck brunch seemed like a good idea at 3pm, right now it seems like a pain in the...

I was up until 2am last night fixing the sitemaps for the virginia division website. Lots of changes to the site recently, more than in the past couple years combined I think. I've even leared how to use style sheets, only a few years behind the times.

posted by Jeff @ 7:48 AM 0 comments

The Web is in the Air

The Washington Post reports on Alexandria's new effort.

Alexandria VA is right alongside London England when it comes to providing free outdoor wireless internet. This will change the way I get ready for my Monday night practices there.

posted by Jeff @ 7:38 AM 0 comments

Nürburgring

So today I played Gran Turismo 4 some more. I had finally gotten a car capable of winning the last championship in Professional Events: an '01 Audi R8 Racecar. It doesn't have as high a power/weight ratio as the '88 Jaguar XJR-9 Racecar but overall it's way easier and faster to drive.

So I win all the races in the championship series except Hong Kong, and none of them was easy. I can finally savor the prize which is only unlocked after winning that series: Extreme Events. I go there, and it turns out there's a whole new license you need to earn before you can enter most of them: the S license. Geez-us! So I work my way through them one at a time, and none of them is easy. Only two or three of the 15 do I pass on the first try, and only one do I get better than a bronze. Then I get to the last of the 15 tests: One lap of Nürburgring Nordschleife. This track is insane enough with the normal lax rules of the game, but in testing mode you can't let all 4 wheels get into the grass or BZZZT! Try again!

On my second try I get 99% of the way around, breathe a sigh of relief, and drive off the track. G%*&S!S*&#@$IT! So I work at it a bit more, feeling frustrated. I eat lunch. Try some more. Turn off the lights so I can see the track better. Try some more. Hang a dark sheet over the window so I can see the track better. Try some more. Make some tea. Try some more. Eat some chocolate. Try some more. I'm literally sweating from the effort of trying to navigate this 22.8km circuit.

Eventually I do finish the circuit, 20 seconds faster than necessary to pass the test. Geeze. Maybe if I just slowed down and finished the damn thing I could have saved myself 3 hours...

posted by Jeff @ 10:21 PM 0 comments

Worse!

What's worse is that from Arlington or Springfield or Falls Church to Waynesboro goes down I81, or down US29, or down I95, with no apparent rhyme or reason. OMG! What kind of world are we living in!

posted by Jeff @ 10:06 PM 0 comments

Which Way? <---?--->

So the unthinkable is true. There is no fastest way to Charlottesville!




If you look closely at the two images, you will see that the route to Lynchburg goes down US 29 through Charlottesville and south from there; the route to Waynesboro goes down I95 through Charlottesville and west from there. The two routes cross... if the fastest way to Waynesboro is through Charlottesville, and the fastest way to Lynchburg is through Charlottesville, why do they use two different ways of getting to Charlottesville?

posted by Jeff @ 10:07 AM 0 comments

Sneakers

My Linear Algebra prof gave us an extra credit option: watch the movie Sneakers and write a report on it. I just finished watching it, and it's cute and shows basic snooping techniques, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do with Linear Algebra other than an empty passing reference to homomorphism. Lame, I tell you. Kill me if I ever become a mathematics professor.

posted by Jeff @ 12:40 AM 0 comments

Today's Exercise

After seeing Christina Salvatore's awesome piano recital, I came home and went for a jog. Dunno how far, but an avid person could measure it on this map:

Took me about 50 minutes, including lots of walking, looking for a way across that damn stream, and 10 minutes trying to dry my socks.

posted by Jeff @ 8:43 PM 0 comments

Barque Theatre

Last night's dream: I'm standing in line, one of three lines, to board an airplane. Joe Hoffman is also in line, but a different one of the three lines for the same plane. The lines are seperated by velvet ropes, the lighting is subdued, there is wood paneling. My line moves forward and I board, looking for seat 17-A. As I find it, I notice the plane is huge, at least 20 seats across. The lighting inside too is subdued, everything feels of quality, there is no annoying airline music playing. But my seat is right behind a bulkhead, so I don't have a clear view of the screen. The screen? This is a movie theatre! I'm going to look around for a better seat. (Can I do that?) I walk astern, and find the main body of the theater, with a balcony even. The screen is a full size modern movie theater screen. The seats are very comfortable bucket seats, with lap belts and plenty of legroom, and aren't lined up squarely to the front of the plane, instead facing the screen. And there are no overhead compartments.

I wake up. Was that the interior of the new Airbus (the thing that looks like a flying apartment building)?

posted by Jeff @ 11:53 AM 0 comments

A condensed catch-up

I took my first Linear Algebra quiz on Tuesday, and got the grade back Thursday: 100% !!!

I'm going to Northern Virginia Community College, taking one course in the summer. I hope (according to one possible future) to get back into George Mason University next year, after taking classes at the community college thus summer and fall, and perhaps the spring depending on how stringent GMU is.

It's been 13 years since my previous quiz in a college course. During the interval I drove my car into a tree, stopped going to quizzes, was dismissed, rode my bicycle to temp jobs, got a salaried job, learned a lot about writing software, found a hobby, made a lot of money, got laid off, turned my hobby into an obsession, spent all of my money and more on it, found a new job, got laid off, learned a lot about fencing, competed in the world championships, ran out of scratch, got old, turned bald, started teaching people to fence, filed chapter 7 bankruptcy, and went back to college. Voila, my whole life in one sentence!

Now I'm a fencing coach going to community college. I have a good handful of students, but I need about twice as many to really pay the bills. Eating pasta gets old real fast. What gets old even faster is having the IRS put a levy on your checking account.

So I need to develop some marketing skills, to grow my fencing business. And I need to keep on getting those 100% grades, so GMU will allow me to spend my money there next year.

posted by Jeff @ 11:07 AM 0 comments

Ruminatorial, est 2005

Well, it's a start. I know my adoring fans have been dying for me to get this thing started. Get out your favorite and most effective means of ressurection, my dear dead fans, 'cause here it is.

posted by Jeff @ 9:14 AM 0 comments