The Major

Author: FourMajor

  • My New Super-Secret Blog

    I realized some time ago that there are a lot of things that I needed to write down, and that I wasn’t doing it. I wasn’t doing it mostly because they were things that I didn’t necessarily want my whole Twitter feed reading.

    So, I started a new blog and Twitter feed that will probably get a lot more posts than this one. But, of course, I’m not telling y’all what they are, because that would defeat the whole purpose.

    And, seeing as how I am a geek, I wanted to provide anonymity for myself on a technical level as well. To this end, I am using the Tor Project to anonymize my IP address. I am using a completely different browser just for using Tor. I didn’t want to share my regular browser (Firefox at the time, Chrome now) for my regular browsing and my anonymous browsing because there was the risk of not using Tor when I meant to, the risk of my anonymous browser visits getting logged in my browser history unintentionally, the annoyance of possibly having cookies get mixed up, and also the annoyance of having Tor possibly slowing down things that I didn’t need or want to use Tor for. It was much easier to just relegate Tor to its own browser.

    Unfortunately, a couple of browsers on OS X use system-wide proxy settings. I didn’t want to use Tor for my whole system, just one browser! I settled on Opera as my Tor browser because it allows you to set the proxy settings that only affect it and not the whole OS. Also, Opera for OS X is a pretty nice browser, even if Opera Mini for the iPhone has awful privacy implications (please, please don’t use Opera Mini).

    Anyway, I don’t know if my new blog means that I’ll be blogging here less. Probably not, seeing as how I only post on here about once every month or so. But the ten or so posts that I have made on the new blog have been really helpful for me so far. It is really good to get thoughts and feelings down in writing sometimes to help myself really understand them.

    I did tell one lucky person about the blog – Mags. I wanted to make sure there was nothing hidden, and be completely open with her. On the flip side, she said that she decided not to read it unless I showed it to her, as to respect my need for a private outlet. One thing I thought of, though, is that I’ll need to show her how to use Tor if she is to view my blog from her computer, because my paranoid side knows that combing the visitor logs would reveal her IP address… which is also my IP address. And my anonymity would be potentially blown 🙂

    I had been thinking for years of starting an anonymous blog. I am not sure what took me so long to do it. One thought of mine has been – if I want the blog to be anonymous, why go through all the trouble to put it on the web at all? An encrypted text file would do just fine. And I am not really sure how to answer this question completely. But I guess my vanity demands the potential for some readers, which I have had zero of so far 🙂 Also, with the potential for other people reading what I am writing, I am motivated to make my writing more coherent more thoughtful and complete, which helps to further the purpose of the blog to begin with.

    OK, it is time to make another post on my super-secret paranoid anonymous blog!

  • Who Wants to Go Camping?

    Mags and I want to go camping, and I had a fresh desire to do so just this morning. I really want to see the stars clearly, snuggle up in my sleeping bag, sit by the fire, go hiking, you know, all that good stuff. Anyone want to join?

  • Ruby on Rails and databases

    I’ve decided to start messing around with Ruby on Rails a little bit recently. I am reading Learning Rails from O’Reilly Press. I like this quote (page 178):

    Because Rails works hard at staying independent of any given database implementation, migrations also offer you a convenient technique for creating your application using one database for development or testing and yet another for deployment.

    Fun stuff so far. I haven’t written anything besides Perl for a long time, and even when I have written Perl it has been small systems administration scripts.

  • My Picks for the Western Conference All-Star Team

    In a just world, this would be the Western Conference All-Star team:
    Deron Williams
    Brandon Roy
    Kevin Durant
    Carmelo Anthony
    Dirk Nowitzki
    Tim Duncan
    Kobe Bryant
    Steve Nash
    Pau Gasol
    Chris Paul
    Tyreke Evans
    Amare Stoudemire

    The Western Conference was much harder to pick than the Eastern Conference. The following players really deserve to play in the All-Star game as well:
    Chris Kaman
    Monta Ellis
    Zach Randolph
    Andrew Bynum

  • My Picks for the Eastern Conference All-Stars

    In a just world, here is who would be selected for the Eastern Conference All-Star team:
    Dwight Howard
    Lebron James
    Chris Bosh
    Dwayne Wade
    Joe Johnson
    Antawn Jamison
    Rajon Rondo
    Gerald Wallace
    Danny Granger
    Derrick Rose
    Brook Lopez
    David Lee

  • Still Waiting for Video on the Web to Work

    It is 2010 and video on the web is in a sorry state.
    – It is choppy on all OS X web browsers, no matter the video source. It is better on Chrome and Safari, worse on Firefox, but definitely choppy on all three.
    – It doesn’t work on the iPhone.
    – There is too much buffering on all platforms. Really, software developers, set it so it buffer enough before it starts playing so playback isn’t interrupted.

    Sometimes, a lot of the time, modern technology seems like it is in one giant beta test. Being a sysadmin, I see hardware and software fail to do really basic things all the time. Things like:
    – servers locking up with no useful error logging to let me know why
    – Apple’s Mail.app crashing, with no error messages
    – my new keyboard, of all things, needing to be unplugged and replugged at least once per day to work correctly

    And with video, well that is supposed to be the new hotness on the web, but I for one still find it remarkably frustrating.

  • Honeymoon Update!

    We’re going to Copenhagen in September or October, for about ten days!

    Yeah, it’s a long way away, but we’ve got to save up our paid time off 🙂 Immediately after the wedding, we’ll go to a bed and breakfast for two or three nights.

    I’m getting pretty excited. Things are moving along pretty smoothly. Invites will start to go out tomorrow night.

  • Honeymoon

    I decided recently to start blogging more in lieu of certain posts on Twitter. I find that, whodathunkit, it is hard to fully contain a thought in 140 characters sometimes.

    Mags and I talked tonight and it seems like it will probably make the most sense to have a short two- or three-day honeymoon immediately after the wedding, with the full honeymoon coming some months later. The short honeymoon will probably be at a nice bed and breakfast. Here are some ideas for the longer honeymoon – maybe about ten days in length…

    Copenhagen. Cute, European city from what I hear. The most appealing thing, though, for both of us I think, is the huge bicycle culture here.

    Tokyo. I’ve always wanted to go to Tokyo. Seems like there would be endless partying and world-class food here.

    Mixed trip: Napa Valley and a cabin in the woods somewhere. This would probably be the most relaxed, peaceful option. The days would be filled with wine tastings, hikes in the woods, and lazy days in small towns.

    Obligatory island somewhere. This option obviously has to be explored.

    That’s all I can think of for now. I am sure we will come up with more ideas. I’d love to hear your ideas, too!

  • Project Tuxedo!

    So as y’all probably know via word-of-mouth, email, Twitter, Facebook, or otherwise, Mags and I are getting married. I’ve decided to buy a tuxedo for the occasion rather than rent one. And I’d like to lose some weight for the wedding. So if I want to buy the tuxedo sooner rather than later, I’d better start losing weight now.

    The goal is to lose ten pounds. I am at 161 this morning. Two pounds per week will put me at 151 on November 12.

    I can certainly do it. I’ll be alternating running and biking along with push-ups, chin/pull-ups, and ab workouts. Of course I am going to try to improve my diet as well. I’ll go with my previous strategy of cutting something out of my diet if I get off track.

    Wish me luck!

  • Worst Motorist Intimidation So Far

    After more than a year of using a bicycle as my primary means of transportation, today I experienced the worst yet dangerous confrontation on the road.

    As I was going down the hill on the 200 block of Chenery St, one block from my home, I heard a car behind me trying to pass in the oncoming lane. There was a car in front of me already, a stop sign coming up, and I was already going fast, as I was going down a hill. So I put my left hand out, palm facing the passing motorist, to tell her to “stop.”

    Indeed, she did stop trying to pass me, and also yelled out a few things like “Move! Move!” and “Hurry up!”

    Keep in mind that this is a residential street. Also keep in mind that on this downhill, bikes go faster than cars.

    Of course, I point out all of this to you, my logical reader. Unfortunately logic literally does not enter into the decision-making process of many people. Moving on with my story…

    So I am still in front of her, and I come to a complete stop at the stop sign. I turn around and ask “Just how fast do you think you’re going to go on this street?” She only responded, “Move! Shut the fuck up!” She then went around me at the stop sign, almost hitting me.

    I am glad I am not a naturally violent person, because I did have a strong urge to kick out her tail light, but obviously I didn’t do that. You can probably guess that I easily caught up with her again, showing that in this case cars slow bikes down, bikes don’t slow cars down. I pulled up alongside her car at the next stop sign and said, “Did you happen to notice that I am going as fast as you are?” to which she responded (using her immense powers of logical argument) “Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!” She then sped off.

    This is the worst confrontation I have had yet with a motorist. Mags and I did have another person yell at us on Chenery a few weeks ago, though. This time, we were going up the hill. I was hauling 60 pounds of bagged compost on my trailer, and Mags was riding alongside me. A car behind us gave two light beeps. Mags motioned for her to go around us. For some reason this really pissed the motorist off, and she passed us, cursing up a storm as she did so. She was an elderly woman, acting this way. A nice pedestrian on the sidewalk remarked, “You just can’t win, can you?”

    Oh, but we can win, and we will. It is incidents like this that show the continued need for Critical Mass, which just so happens to be tonight! And, as long as it is taking, we are getting better bicycle infrastructure in the city, starting soon.

    Bikers are pissed, organized, and we’re going to stand up for ourselves. Motorists don’t have that going for them, that’s for sure.