I've been getting in late the last two nights, so I've zonked out before managing to write an entry. Wednesday pulled together a small passing practice with two of our passers. Also got a chance to solidify my assessments of where we were to these guys, so we could focus on the more relevant things first. Thursday, we won our first volleyball match of the season! Excellent.
Finished up work on the update system, incorporating an ad-hoc persistent database and a commit scheme that can be triggered via email. The idea is to allow for a sanity check on submissions that requires little manual hassle. After committing, a static version of the page is also autogenerated from the dynamic version of the page. Rolled it out (minus the virtuser/procmail trigger) late Thursday. Pretty sweet.
Under the dubious value category, I also finished Halo in solo Legendary mode. It was actually the first time I've ever played in solo mode (normally I've played in cooperative mode for fun), encouraged to "certify" myself by our resident devil/gamemaster Roy. I finished it on Tuesday or Wednesday, but Jet turned off the box before the credits rolled out so it didn't fully "save". So I went ahead and replayed the last two levels Thursday night after volleyball, to "fix" the record. Heh.
Gene is visiting tonight! Jen is coming by again tomorrow! I hear mini-golf is on the horizon. I'm looking forward towards a fun weekend. Woo!
Now, off to our regularly scheduled pickup volleyball...
Welcome to my new domain! (Ok, really I've had the domain for a while, but I finally migrated the blog over to it last night.) Hopefully this signals a new era of golden content and life prosperity, emboldened by new directions and archetypes! ;) At least the new URL is easier to type in...
Tonight I did a little more work on the contact info system -- I added auto-generation/dynamic-generation of contact status lists, and set up a two-stage review mechanism (so submitted info could be sanity-checked by a pair of eyes, but still have the automated process resume easily). The only thing between it and production is going over it with Jet, a setuid glitch (yes, this is a temporary hack), and hooking it into a mail handler.
Hmm, speaking of... anyone know offhand why a setuid script wouldn't be taking on the (non-root) userid? Did something change with how setuid works, or are there security checks in linux to prevent this (silently) under certain conditions? I may never end up needing to know the answer, but it kind of irks me that it didn't work as I remember it used to working. *shrug*
Oops, I missed yesterday. I celebrated a birthday with someone, played some Halo (like an idiot) until late, came home to sleep. Also got my tire rim fixed today, played volleyball yesterday, didn't have band practice this week (Ben is in Vegas), and bought a watch battery. Also realized that my rear tires are coming near the end of their advertised life, though upon inspection there's still a decent amount of tread left. This is not something I really want to deal with now. Damn.
Oh, I decided to start wearing a watch again. Not sure why... it's been several years since I've worn it, and I thought the change might be interesting. It's not as if I really need it (I always have my cell phone with me), but I felt like trying it out. When I'm still I can hear it tick. Fascinating. [07:48]
Finished up compiling analyses today. Not much else, except some vegging. Jen left this morning but I was out cold. Ran across some interesting links, but I'll post them later (unless I decide they really aren't all that interesting after all) because I'm thinking sleep right now would be good. [10:03]
The project I undertook the other day has moved past first hack, to feedback and requirements re-evaluation, and now on to initial rollout. It's still in its nascent stages, as we're figuring out what next steps to take. If you're wondering, it's the contact update system for our upcoming reunion this year. It's nice when you can whip something workable out, even when you're not sure going in what you're up against.
Also, I spent some of today aggregating up stats I've taken recently off the game tape. This has led to some interesting discoveries, but in particular general confirmation of what I've been largely coming to the conclusion of over the past several games. This is good, because I started down that road Friday -- and I'm determined to be honest and smart about improving our team, and holding each other accountable for what we need to do.
Jen is still here. We chatted a bit in the late afternoon, then met up with Jet and Roy for some wings and some hanging out over dinner. Roy seemed more sociable than usual, which was cool. Oh yeah, we watched Jen's 101 Dalmations direct-to-video (DVD, whatever) sequel which she got as a gift from her mother afterwards. Barry Bostwick... wacky. Then was home and then a bit of hacking and hashing things out with Jet over the contact stuff. Oh yeah, fit in some bookstore wandering in there and that's pretty much my day. Overall, pretty satisfying I'd have to say.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention -- Jen brought me some fantastic toffee chip cookies. Back when she lived in C-U I had some she made and thought they were delectable, so she baked a big bag of them and gave them to me. Yum! [06:12]
Jen's over tonight. The day is winding down.
Played our usual pickup game. Afterwards I talked with our outside hitters on the team about what I think we need to address to start winning games consistently. Got into a disagreement with one of them about a separate issue, but that's good -- the more open things are the better.
Also went to see How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, which was a silly movie. It did trigger some thinking about romantic relationships though, oddly enough. I probably should attribute it more to tangential mental wandering than anything brought up by the movie itself.
Ok, hopefully I haven't been boring people silly lately. Oh yeah, in other news, apparently my brother has put his stuff in storage and is now slumming it in NYC for a few months. The dude won't return my phone calls though, so I don't know exactly how things are going. This could get interesting... [04:27]
Well, lost the game today (not a good streak heh). I guess bringing in new hands wasn't a panacea. I'm not sure what it'll take -- I just know we play a lot better scrimmaging at IMPE than playing the league games at the park district courts. *shrug*
On the other hand though, I got a quick-and-dirty hack done for the contact update web form for our reunion site (which has finally come up in rough form). I wasn't consigned to do it (though Jet did ask me), but recent events have intrigued me into exploring and hacking on this -- despite the fact that this is/will be more or less new territory for me.
Anyway, one failure, one triumph. Not an unreasonable day. At least there's a porterhouse marinating in the fridge for tomorrow... Oh yeah, I got a top result playing bridge today, so make that TWO (smallish) triumphs ;). Heh. [05:11]
Wiped the floors today for my living room and hallway. There's something viscerally satisfying about just cleaned hardwood floors. Went ahead and reorganized my desk a bit as well. Excellent.
Another thing that rocks about getting my desktop working again is that it unstalls a couple other things. I'm toying around with starting another project as well... I'll do a little research first though.
On a slightly sadder note, my godfather's cancer has taken a significant turn for the worse (his recovery had been remarkably good the past several months) a few days ago. He's started a two-week stint of some pretty harsh medicine. I had dinner with them as usual today, which was quite good (also as usual). I could tell he was quite weak though (comparable to right after his first and second sessions of chemo many moons ago). I'm keeping my fingers crossed for things to improve in a couple weeks.
Ok, I think I'll look over some game tape and then head off to bed. [04:28]
Sweet! I finally obtained a replacement motherboard for my poor desktop, which has been out of commission for months now. I didn't want to spend a chunk buying a new one, unless I upgraded -- but that would have meant also upgrading the processor and memory. I really wasn't keen on spending that much money at the moment, so that left looking for a PIII board on the cheap. Finally won one off of ebay for a satisfactory price, and just picked it up today on my way to band practice in Chicago.
Got back late, spent time talking paranoia/conspiracy theory (ok, not quite) with Jet, got home, dropped in the mobo, and now my desktop is happy again! While I was at it, I dropped some extra DIMMs in. My desk is no longer strewn with computer parts either, heehee. I am happy.
In other news, the band is coming along nicely with our new bassist Lina. We had some fun dicking around with old AC/DC tunes in between running through all our songs. I think we'll be ready to play a show after 1 or 2 more practices. This is also excellent.
Thursday I play our fourth league volleyball game. Laura is going to be there, so I will (gladly) hand over setting duties to her and have some fun banging balls at Opposite. The team is still young, but we're making progress. This next game should be fun though. Now it's time to catch a little shut-eye though. [08:15]