Steve Gets A Life

more monkeying around

warning: webmonkey entry ahead

html, body {
    height: 100%;
}

technosavvy. kinda.

i don't know why i thought of this now, but there was this student i met the other day in a lab that was kinda "the computer guy" for his lab. he was talking about how he set up the wireless connection for the lab, etc. he went on to talk about how he did some WarDriving the other day, etc. pretty interesting stuff. i figure "ok, this architecture major is into computer stuff, right on."
he goes on to say how he built a Pringles© can WiFi antenna. so im a bit more impressed. thats some serious geekitude.
but then i ask him a few simple questions about the network setup and he has no idea what im talking about. later he asks me how he can add a printer to his computer and how to change the computer's hostname.
wtf? its like he and his technophobe identical twin switched places without me looking.

all CSS, all the time

cause no one likes you, monkey-boy

dammit. how is it that i am a web-monkey again? i took the "responsibility" of maintaining both the college and the department websites. both of which need some serious work.
like, serious work.
and now, im all into pure-css stuff, something i know nothing about. so its going kinda slow. and im relearning that the only victims in the browser wars were the web developers. stupid non-compliant razzle-frazzle...
[...sigh...]

elephants, zebras, bride-zillas, and The Best Ride Ever

with andria's brother and sister-in-law in town (my soon to be relatives, wow. now would she be my sister-in-law-in-law?) we decided to take a trip up north to san simeon to see the elephant seals and their new babies. pretty amazing. half of them looked dead on the beach, while little cubs worked their way around the mothers looking for milk.
the sounds were amazing. they really sounded like little kids yelling. then the males would stick their head out of the water in the shallow surf and belt out the lowest roar i've ever heard.
on the drive home, as we passed Hearst's Castle, we saw zebra off the highway. right next to cows. obviously the rare centralcaliforniacoastus zebrius. a pretty dang cool sight, and an awesome day to say the least.
the next day we hit up the local wedding fair. now this was just ridiculous. there were so many vendors (photographers, reception site reps, caterers, musicians, bakers, and a freaking magician). we ended up concentrating on photographers and reception sites, met some cool people, got lots of advice, and really got a feel into how huge the wedding industry really is. we should have pictures up soon, of course.
then... the ride. here are some pics. ive got to say, it started out so-so, but after we climbed this big peak, we came back down it (across really loose rocks, scary) and then took a dirt trail down to the beach. and that trail, oh man, the perfect set of jumps, etc. it was probably a 10% downhill grade, a little bit windy (just enough so you couldn't see the next jump) and every 10 yards was a railroad tie buried in earth. supposedly a step for horses, but worn to the point where it simply became a large speedbump. perfect for downhill.
still jazzed about it. want to go back.

word document security

1.) Open a protected document in MS Word
2.) Save as "Web Page (*.htm; *.html)", close Word
3.) Open html-document in any Text-Editor
4.) Search "" tag, the line reads something like 
    that: ABCDEF01
5.) keep the "password" in mind
6.) Open original document (.doc) with any hex-editor
7.) search for hex-values of the password (reverse order!)
8.) Overwrite all 4 double-bytes with 0x00, Save, Close
9.) Open document with MS Word, Select "Tools / Unprotect Document" 
    (password is blank)

why jesus hates macs

"If you are using a new Macintosh running OS X then you probably have these "daemons" on your computer, hardly something a good Christian would want! This clearly illustrates that not only is Macintosh based on Darwinism, but Darwinism is based on Satanism."

"Hypnotically encased iMacs trick unsuspecting computer users into accepting Darwinism"

"the new MacOS X contains another Satanic holdover from the "BSD Unix" OS mentioned above; to open up certain locked files one has to run a program much like the DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows and type in a secret code: "chmod 666". What other horrors lurk in this thing?"

"the "e" in "eMac" ostensibly stands for "education", although it should be obvious to readers by now that it's really a cryptic tipping of the hat to their true agenda: "Evolutionism". eMac is also a referrence to "Emacs", a program that is a standard-bearer for the Communistic Open Source movement mentioned above and whose mascot is some sort of effeminate-looking, horned devil-man. Is there no end to this tangled web of evil?"

"Although called "Switch", this campaign is actually "Bait and Switch", luring the average, unsuspecting person with the false promise of "compatibility" (both with normal computers and Christianity) only to later foist acceptance of Evolutionism and anti-Christian values on them via the techniques discussed above."

"an industry standard connection for peripherals is idiosyncratically retermed "FireWire" (or should we just be honest and call it "HellFireWire"?) while the familiar Recycle Bin is given its new cult name of "Trash Can". Any "Switcher" trying to purchase equipment for their new computer or get assistance will be forced by this linguistic ghettoization into dealing with the only people that can understand the strange argot: brainwashed Macintosh users. It is then that the process of unbuilding the "Mac Newbie" and reshaping him or her into an Evolutionist begins."

"I have been informed that the teenage girl in the "Switch" commercial was not on drugs at the time, as I had previously suggested. Apparently, her incoherent rambling was the result of something called a "reality distortion field" -- which, I'm assuming, is some sort of strong magnetic field generated by a device (similar to the one I reported on here,) that Apple Computers developed to assist in their mind control. My apologies to her and her family."

stupid at&t

dammit. gotta send back my camera phone. so lame.
apparently you cant get a good new phone if you're just extending your contract, only if you're a new customer.
also, they didnt bother to tell me all about this till now, 9 days before the 30-day trial period ends, after which they would have sent me a bill for the full price of the phones (about $450 total) and then charged me $200 per account (another $400) if i had ended my contract after that point (and i called them about something totally different, they just mentioned this little fact on the side).

ill be happy when this is all finished.
grumble grumble.

now what do i do with my bluetooth usb adapter? ebay here i come, i guess.

segway

saw my first segway in real life today. inside, even. tried to get it with my camera-phone, but alas, out of memory. damn you t616. time to clear out all the lame preinstalled images.
the guy was downstairs in the art/design dept (fartsy) here at Cal Poly, and seemed to be enjoying scaring people. he ran right into the door after i prompted him on how he opens doors. my question answered. i also noticed many large scrapes all over the fenders. apparently this guy is a hardcore user.

auto-iSync

tell application "iSync"
        if syncing is false then synchronize
end tell

mail.app and self-signed certs

if you use apple's mail.app and you get your email from a server with a self-signed certificate (because paying for a cert is a ripoff), check out this link that shows you how to download the crt file and add it to your keychain so mail.app never bothers you again. [note: this might only be for the latest mail.app which does not have a "do not show this message again" option]
here's the gist of it:

1. openssl s_client -connect mail.example.com:993 -showcerts
2. Copy the part of the output between (and including) -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- and-----END CERTIFICATE-----.
3. Press Control-C to exit openssl s_client. save to a file called servername.crt.
4. find that file in Finder and double click it.
5. add it to your X509 Anchors keychain.
   
   
   Posted by Steve on January 13, 2004 08:38 AM | Comments (2)

just for fun...

"The spacecraft has apparently been taken over - "conqured" if you will - by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves." - Kent Brockman

new site

in other news, i recently bought a new domain. it will be used for stuff related to the wedding, etc. inspired, of course, by andy and dorothy (dont bother clicking if you dont know the password).
its being hosted (of course) by lopaka. im glad to be back on readaccess, ive missed it so (ok, ive been there all along, just not officially).
things i plan to have on it:

• groom / bride blogs (dorky i know)
• a photo gallery
• bios on the wedding party
• directions, etc to the event
• out-of-towner stuff (what to do in SLO, etc)
• other stuff andria will probably come up with

literacy weekend

i read "The DaVinci Code" over the weekend. pretty good. a bit overrated though.
coming off of "Cryptonomicon," i suppose i was under-impressed (is that a word? err compound-word?) by the crypto/puzzles used in DaVinci. the puzzles were pretty good (mostly just anagrams) and often had several layers of meaning (all thoroughly explained, of course). the best parts of the book, in my opinion, were the insights into the real art, history, architecture, etc that the book covers. the bits about the prime meridian, the androgyny of Mona Lisa, etc were pretty neat. The whole idea of the goddess was interesting as well.
i think my dad put it well when he said that this was a good fiction book that might be taken as non-fiction. quite true. the idea of the secret societies, the knights' true quest, the meaning of the Grail were all very well thought out, and potentially quite based on real research. but im afraid people might take this as gospel (pun intended) and really start digging up cathedrals all over.
anyway, its a good, fast read. if you are planning a long plane ride, take it along. it had the holding power of a Harry Potter (for me, at least) without any real need to think too hard.
also, you can get it in softback for $8. not bad for a weekend's entertainment.
i have to gloat and say i called most of the surprises / puzzles in the book, but i have to admit that i didn't guess who the secret bad guy was. i guess im an idiot.

dell rules

ignoring the fact that they provide great support, superbly built/assembled hardware and offer some of the best options for hardware configurations, Dell still out-prices everybody.

gallery issues

if you use gallery (as i do with gallery.mcgheemail.com) and you run into disk space issues, check out the new version of gallery (1.4.1) which enforces maximum sized image uploads (so people can upload huge files straight from their camera and it will only store a reasonably sized copy on the web) and myresize.php (thanks to beckett)
this allowed me to take a 350M site (limit was 333M, whoops) and shrink it to 267M. not a huge difference, but enough, and now all the images are still quite big, but not ridiculous.

apple makes a bold move

x2

got xmen 2 on dvd yesterday (thanks to a xmas dvd return). its a good movie, i love the "bampf" effect of nightcrawler. it reminds me of a squid/octopus' ink after it jets away.
one gripe: from what i could tell, most of the "extended scenes" were totally worthless. in fact, i could have sworn they aren't extended at all, but its been a while since i saw it in theaters i guess. i couldn't even tell if the scenes were longer than in the feature on the DVD. strange.
the added scenes are pretty good. one with the professor and scott escaping really should have stayed in the film, while "kid gets sick after bampfing" was just kinda funny (very short though).
all in all, it was worth trading in "Chicago" :)

fiber optics, manual synchronization, and bluetooth

after a productive morning of troubleshooting a fiber-optic line on a web server (dont ask), a bit of scanner-driver installation, i delved into getting my numbers off my old phone. in the process i came across a few bluetooth wonders.
first: enabling bluetooth connection with Address Book. what does it do? now when someone calls me, i get a little popup on my screen basically saying "your pocket is vibrating, idiot. pick up your phone." useful? not really? cool factor? +3 (out of 5). but what about text messages? instead of just saying "your pocket is vibrating, idiot." it displays the message on the screen. usefulness goes up to +2, cool factor remains at +3.
second:a little program named romeo that lets you do a ton of stuff with your mac, controlled by your phone. again, initial grades come in with low usefulness, moderate coolness (albeit almost +4). if this were my home machine, the itunes and dvd control would be rad, and if i ever did presentations with a laptop, the powerpoint/keynote controller would be killer. that raises it up to a potential usefulness of +4 with a cool factor staying around +3.8.
and all of a sudden, its time to go home. what do ya know.

intro to web design