something i miss

i kind of enjoy writing. nowadays it seems mostly pointless, but i guess i'll keep doing it whenever the motivation comes.

in school i really enjoyed it when teachers would read my writings aloud. it wasn't that i cared what my classmates thought of it, but rather i enjoyed hearing it read with the right timing or rhythm. i wonder if others get that enjoyment.

i don't mean to brag or anything, but as a kid i read very well. in connecticut they had a system where you had a book level corresponding to each year as part of the curriculum. fortunately for me, they weren't stupid about it. if you finished the book you could move on to the next year. i was part of a group of maybe 5 kids who were at an 8th grade reading level in the 5th grade.

sadly, my interest in reading went to crap when i moved to texas. they moved me back to the lower levels...which i found boring. also, i would frequently get in trouble because i read faster than most and when it was my turn to read aloud...i'd usually be a few pages ahead and "lost" from where i was supposed to be.

anyway, the point was that i liked hearing my words read in the correct "rhythm".

i wrote something today (not on here), and it kind of required this "skill". i'd like to think someone out there read it right.

bad hair day.

well, it seems i'm full of all sorts of good news these days. i can only hope it's all some sort of "blessing in disguise".

i'm currently awaiting to hear if my car is a total loss or what. i had it towed to a repair shop that i'd heard was decent. they told me that i needed a new motor. at that point i called my insurance, and i don't know if they're re-evaluating or what. i guess i'll call for a status update tomorrow.

so in the meantime i'm borrowing my mom's daewoo nubira. its awefully nice of her, and i'm pretty grateful. today i got out of work and i was tired of being in air conditioning. i rolled down the windows and went to pick up my mom from my sister's house. when i got there, the passenger window did not roll up.

apparently it is a common issue, but its just the perfect timing of it that gets to me. it appears its going to be raining these next couple of days. grrr.

on the bright side of things, direct deposit might kick in tonight. if nothing else i'll pick up my check on saturday. its kind of strange getting paid every week. at least they are decent checks.

i'm settling into this routine and i'm not sure i like it. there is lots of idle time, and i feel i should do something with that. i thought that maybe i would start blogging from work. i could call it wogging! it turns out that i can read my blog, but i can't sign in because of the filter. booo! i guess if i ever decide to do that i can just save a text file or something.

i've been acting as sort of the dj at work. and umm..yeah. that's about it. had some interesting thoughts floating around yesterday, but i'd rather talk in person to someone someday instead of typing it all out and having it be misunderstood.

alrighty. goodnighty.

dias lentos

los ultimos dias se me han hecho muy largos.

ayer tome 3 llamadas en todo el dia. hoy tome mas, pero aun asi no pasaba rapido el tiempo.

hay veces que me pongo a jugar mi game boy micro.

hoy me puse a escribir a mano la letra de una cancion de los smashing pumpkins que me gusta...

dice:

Fool enough to almost be it
Cool enough to not quite see it
Doomed
Pick your pockets full of sorrow
And run away with me tomorrow
June

We'll try and ease the pain
But somehow we'll feel the same
Well, no one knows
Where our secrets go

I send a heart to all my dearies
When your life is so, so dreary
Dream
I'm rumored to the straight and narrow
While the harlots of my perils
Scream

And I fail
But when I can, I will
Try to understand
That when I can, I will

Mother weep the years I'm missing
All our time can't be given
Back
Shut my mouth and strike the demons
That cursed you and your reasons
Out of hand and out of season
Out of love and out of feeling
So bad

When I can, I will
Words defy the plans
When I can, I will

Fool enough to almost be it
And cool enough to not quite see it
And old enough to always feel this
Always old, I'll always feel this

No more promise no more sorrow
No longer will I follow
Can anybody hear me
I just want to be me
When I can, I will
Try to understand
That when I can, I will

sometimes i wonder...

...what it would be like to have chemicals dumped on me that made me spaz out before killing me.

it's not a totally random thought. i think it goes something like this...

global warming (or some other mystery) is giving us lots of rain after years of drought. the rain seems to be pushing cockroaches into our house (seriously!). you can kinda tell that they're outdoor roaches because of their large size. at any rate, more roaches in the house means more roaches to kill. sometimes a chancla is nearby and you can make em' go splat. other times it just feels better to grab the can of black flag.

the can of black flag has the words "kills on contact! (Las mata al instante!)" written on top. actually everything on the can is translated. but anyway, that's semi-false advertising. see, "kills on contact" should mean 0 seconds between spraying and death. what i've noticed is that there's always at least 30 seconds from the time you spray until the time they stop moving. many times they'll flip and keep moving their legs, but lots of times they don't flip and just run around bumping into things.

so i wonder...are they already dead in those last seconds of movement? is it a moot point?

technorati tags:death, of, a, cockroach

sooner or later...

how strange. i'm not really too excited about my new job. i'm focusing more on the 30 minute lunches and being in one spot, instead of the fact that i'm making more per hour and that i'm closer to home. i even got the schedule that's great for me!

today i signed up for my "corporate" cell phone discount; i'll pay 27% less just for working where i do. lucky for me it's the same cell phone company i already had - sprint. i like this setup much better than what i had at my other job. there i got a free phone, but a) it was cingular (which has horrible coverage) and b) i had to carry around a 2nd phone. now i get the company i like at a cheaper price! i guess that's kind of like a raise too...

hmm. blinking cursor. i must be falling into my new routine. i haven't had any problem waking up on time, and right now i'm not all that tired. i should sleep though.

la noticia del momento...

ze car

my car is out of commission for the moment. last thursday we had something like 4-6 inches of rain in just a few hours. of course, this creates lots of messes. quittin' time came around and i was ready to leave. i've lived through 2 major floods in recent times; i think one of those was hurricane mitch related. anyway, through these floods the highway gets pretty bad, but i don't think i've ever seen it closed until thursday. it was actually flooded over at my exit, something i blame on the reckless abuse of land from these "developers". i mean...its no surprise that the highway has huge amounts of water pouring onto it right where all the trees have been cut to make room for houses.

at any rate, i turned around and headed the other direction towards the small town where i used to live and work. i decided to stop in at the high school to wait things out, and also to chit chat with some of my old co-workers. unfortunately for me, there was quite a bit of water collected at the entrance. i went through it, and immediately afterwards my car shut off. i haven't been able to start it. so...i guess we'll see.

the wake

earlier today i went to a wake. my former neighbor passed away over the weekend. i actually ended up seeing a few people i hadn't seen in some time. i always figure that the circumstances are unfortunate. her dad was (is?) a homebuilder. they built the house we moved into when we came to texas, and actually we bought it from them. anyway, it's pretty crazy seeing as how she was only a few years older than me. it's always a little hard for me to continue "business as usual", even if i wasn't all that close.

i feel exhausted, and yet when i lay down...it's hard to sleep. i've been having strange dreams lately too. anywho, that's my news for the moment.

lo encontre!!!

i am organizing all my fotos. i started off with about 9,000 unorganized and duplicated files. so far i've cut that down by about 1,000.

anyway, i found this video of my nephew's first days. i hope someone can tell me what song is playing in the background, or who the artist is, or at least what he's saying so that I can try and find out!

estoy organizando mis fotos. empece con aproximadamente 9,000, pero esto incluye unas que estan duplicadas. hasta el momento he borrado como 1,000.

encontre este video de los primeros dias de mi sobrino, y espero que alguien me pueda decir la cancion, o el artista, o por lo menos lo que dice. si supiera lo que dice, puede ser que lo encuentre...

technorati tags:help

opensuse video issue on a G3 iMac

This past Saturday I purchased an old G3 iMac blueberry for REALLY cheap. The guy included os9 disks, and said he had wanted to put Linux but lost interest in the project. It sounded a little fishy to me, but after seeing that the cdrom worked and that the machine actually booted, i went ahead and bought it.

At first, I loaded OS9, and it was really really easy. The whole thing finished in about 20 minutes. The "problem" with OS9 is that its not a current operating system. For me, it meant that I couldn't install Firefox, my web browser of choice. So...i went ahead and downloaded the powerpc version of opensuse 10.2. Using bittorrent and a high speed connection, I had all 5 disks in about 2.5 hours. There is also a dvd version which simplifies things, but this only has a cdrom.

Anyway, while it was downloading, I upgraded the memory to 512mb (from 64mb) and changed the hard drive to 80gb (from 6gb). The install went great, but my problems started after the install.

For some reason, the screen was shifted to the left. This meant that a little of the left side of the screen was cut off, and on the right side of the screen there was a big black bar. Since my plan was to sell this machine, this would not do.

I searched google, and found this page explaining the issue and somewhat providing a fix. I tried variations of the numbers but could get nothing to work. Suddenly it hit me to try something else. I searched google for "iMac G3 modeline", and sure enough I found someone who had it working, but was having a different problem.

So anyway, here is a summarized version of what I did to get the damn thing centered.

1) open a command terminal
2) type "sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf" -theX11 is case sensitive.
3) type in your root password when prompted
4) scroll down to Section 'Monitor'. Hit Insert key. Set HorizSync to 29-61. Set VertRefresh to 59-78.
5) scroll down to Section 'Modes'. Comment out the current 1024x768 modeline by putting a # in front of it. If anything fails and you end up stuck in a command terminal, just uncomment and restart to go back to what it was.
6) copy and paste the following modeline in its place:

Modeline "1024x768" 78.525 1024 1049 1145 1312 768 769 772 800 +hsync +vsync

7) hit escape key to get out of insert mode.
8) type a colon (:) to enter command mode.
9) type wq to write changes and quit vi.
10) reboot and enjoy!

now of course there are just the setting that worked for me. it is a blueberry imac 350mhz. it is possible that newer or older ones use different timings, so i suggest google searching. i wrote this all out so that i'd have it for future reference. it took me 2 days, mainly because i'm a little rusty with my linux commands. luckily i had time. :o|

in the end it will be worth it. i have a buyer for the machine already, and they'll be that much closer to just using the machine instead of thinking its broken. i only hope they don't wipe it and go back to os9! but hey, even if they do, now i'll have the experience.

la orilla

no se que trae el dia de mañana. un amigo me invito a salir con otra amiga para unos tragos. la verdad es que la ultima ves que pude salir y medio disfrutar fue hace varios meses. he estado un poco preocupado con lo que va a pasar, y bueno...ahora estoy con que deberia de tener suficiente dinero para sustenerme hasta mi primer pago. es un poco raro estar con la preocupacion de no tener trabajo, y sin embargo sentirme suficiente libre como para ir a disfrutar un rato entre amigos.

y bueno, mucho cambia aunque nada cambia. solo puedo esperar de que mañana sea un dia mas libre, y un dia mas productivo.