Steve Gets A Life

googled

so. big news. i got a job. like a real one. like one that actually pays well and uses the skills i learned in school.
and its at one of the best companies to work for in the world. google.

ho lee cow. still trying to wrap my head around it.

so tomorrow i think im gonna go buy a car. cause i dont have one. and i need a way to get to work on monday.

oh ya, and about monday.. 9am i show up to orientation. that evening (dont know when exactly) everybody (including me) leaves for a conference in SF. till thursday. hotel rooms, dinners out, the whole deal.

thursday morning do we go back to work? no, we all pile onto a bus (the whole company "we") and go to tahoe. the annual company ski trip.

will be quite a first week.

(more pics of google strangeness im starting to unravel)

xmas list

ive been reminded by andria that i am the hardest person to shop for. mostly because i dont like people buying things for me. partly because im picky, partly because i dont like being the object of attention. .. but anyways, here goes: (unordered list)

• Park bike tools: chain cleaning kit and chain tool, pedal wrench, etc. or some kind of starter kit?
• DVDs:
  • Star Wars Trilogy
  • New Harry Potter
  • Indiana Jones Trilogy
• dress shirts. like white/pinstripe ones that go with a suit.
• anything ipod
• gamecube: metroid prime 2, anything starwars
• Books: books about travel, outdoors, etc. or crypto.
• a 4runner and a job :)

holy busy "weekend"

Nothing quite like a 5-day weekend.

1. Friday: Fly to Richmond, VA by way of LAX and O'Hare for BB race.
2. Saturday: Work all day. Potentially get pounded by remnants of hurricane du jour.
3. Sunday: Work all day, repeat potential pounding. Fly back home (again by way of O'Hare and LAX), arrive at 11:35pm
4. Monday: Drive to San Francisco, get there by noon. Drive home that evening, dinner in SLO with Andria, stay night in SB.
5. Tuesday: Drive to Los Angeles, drive home that afternoon. Sleep.

but it should be worth it. make some money, maybe make some decisions about the future. other vague issues.

back in the ussr... err usa

just got back from a monthlong vacation in europe. very very awesome.

• 4 countries (5 if you count taking a train through Switzerland)
• 1 roman convent
• 1 tuscan villa
• 1 french winery
• 1 scottish church
• 12 family members
• 6 digital cameras (err.. make that 4)
• 1700 digital pictures

there is so much to remember. going to have to sit down and figure out what to write about. gotta finish my journal (paper and ink, can you believe it?) and maybe ill have a better idea of how to break it all down.

at least i have plenty of british candy to get me through it all.

off to see the wizard

after a hectic week of moving into a smaller (but better) apartment, causing the need to sort and donate older clothes and furniture, then attempting to pack a subset of the remaining, scattered clothes into tiny, travel-sized suitcases, and a final drive down to redlands for a few final californian days, we're finally ready to go.

we're leaving today at 5pm (thats 1700 hours on the itinerary, of course) and will land in london at noon tomorrow (london time). after that we're going to rome, then train to tuscany to stay for 2 weeks. then is a train ride to paris, then to nimes (france), then a flight back to london, another train ride up to scotland and back again, then we're back on the 27th or so of july. gonna be awesome.

yesterday, andria and i went to barnes & nobles to get a journal, we ended up getting several small journals (moleskine style) and way too many paperbacks. we should be set when it comes to reading material. (note: b&n sells classic novels for way cheap. like $5 per paperback).

ill try to post from time to time during the trip, maybe even put up some pics. but for now, it looks like everything is going in the journal. maybe ill summarize it for an online writeup.

holy euros

im going to europe on monday. which means this is my last day of work for a month. which is awesome.

i'll try to post from over there, maybe even post some pics. maybe.

while my wisdom remains

i thought i should make a post today, the day before i have my wisdom (teeth) removed.

should i come out of this procedure a blubbering idiot, point me to this blog entry so i can drool and not understand what a computer is.

or just give me ice cream

horses horses horses

went horseback riding on sunday for an extended birthday present for andria. it was a pretty mellow 90-minute ride from Los Osos out past the sand dunes, onto the beach. We just cantered or trotted or whatever you call slow-walking until we got to the beach. then we got to "give 'em a kick" and go a bit faster. i never got to galloping, but went pretty quick a few times.
it was a lot of fun. i'd really love to do it again soon. this time i'd be more confident and try to really let loose. i felt really comfortable on a horse. im pretty sure i was a cowboy in a past life. ...or maybe a ninja. but that's unrelated.

new server

mcgheemail.com has changed to a new server. we are now hosted by the always-fun, sb-based, wicked-fast, T1-in-a-condo, readaccess.com.
all the blogs and photos, etc are back up (they were probably down for about an hour or two while i figured things out). so everything should be back how it was. the main page is undergoing some reshuffling based on the fact that nobody used it before because of its unnecessary complexity. it will soon be just the discussion forum, as that was the only popular part of the old site.
lets hope this gets posted ok...

---

on iTunes: Losing a Whole Year from the album "Third Eye Blind" by Third Eye Blind

newcastle, beach bonfires, and turkey-calling.

mike came down this weekend.
i showed him around SLO town a bit, checked out Montana de Oro (state park), a bit of downtown (woodstocks, the mission, etc), the reception site in pismo, and the oceano dunes. then we went for a quick mountain bike ride in Poly Canyon.
we met some of andria's friends for a bonfire at the oceano dunes and had the Best Burgers Ever, s'mores, more newcastle, and plenty of fun.

am steve?

when did i become a morning person? i seem to be making the transformation. last night i accidentally set the alarm an hour early (actually, i set the time an hour ahead) and ended up showered and in the middle of breakfast by 6 am. whoops. decided to take advantage and got into work at 7:15 am to give me time to make sure all the labs i updated over the weekend didn't wind up totally broken. fixed a few minor things and by the time i was back in my office, it was 8 am.
right on time, nothing to do.

anime eyes

i cant even read what im typing right now.
just went tot he eye doctor.
my pupils are as big as plates. now i know how gollum must feel.

back to training

i ran yesterday for the first time in probably six months. i think the last time i ran was the SB Triathlon and i can't even remember when that was, but i know it felt like summer.
i strapped on the HRM, donned my trusted running shoes with those wacky elastic laces, stepped out the door into what might have been the best running weather possible. not cold, not warm, somewhere in between. it was about 6pm on the first hot day of the year and it just started cooling off. i trotted down the hill towards the high school. instead of stopping at the red light, i turned up Monterey, towards the hotels. as soon as there were no cars, i jay-ran and then cut back towards my initial destination. When i arrived at the high school, i decided to run to the back, through The Perfect Neighborhood. I found myself crawling through a hole in the fence onto school property when my watch said i was about 6 minutes into my run. a perfect time to stop and stretch out, now that i had warmed up.
i started back up within a minute or so and went straight uphill to the "S L" on the hill overlooking the high school. i discovered that running on loose, bumpy soil wasn't the easiest with elastic laces. running along the side of the hill, i practically rolled my shoes around my feet several times. i reached the "S L" quickly and took a breather (uphill running is pretty tough even if it isn't your first time back out). the view was incredible. i could see most of downtown SLO, the mountains, almost to the ocean. i could even see my house from there.
i took a longer way home, through the school, around the track once (in 1:35, pathetic), and back onto the street. i did an even out-and-back, with a good 5 minutes of walking at the end to cool down. a good re-entry into training, i think.

return of the sun

im wearing shorts right now. i rode my bike to work. i want to get back outside and off this computer.
after months of so-so weather and some downright cruddy weather, california's central coast brings back the goods.
andria and i went down to SB for the first annual ucsb triathlon. it went extremely well, very smooth. i helped manage the timing and some general coordination, but didn't have any actual responsibilities. which was nice. we couldn't have asked for better weather. the day was perfect for a ocean swim, a bike ride around goleta, and a run around the UCSB lagoon. big mike sevier won the race (of course), cause he's the man.
next weekend the parents are coming in from around the state for a round-table on the whole wedding thing. cal poly will be hosting the cal poly triathlon that weekend as well, and there is a century in solvang. it looks like spring has sprung and things are starting to happen again 'round these parts. finally.
oh, we (intentionally) bumped into my sister kathleen while in SB, she and her friends were in town revisiting their glory days in IV. had some woodstocks and compared sunburns, then we were off to SLO, showed them around a bit and finally got home for some well-deserved rest.

productivity spike

i definitely notice trends in my productivity. i think im on a two-week cycle. all of a sudden, im busting out scripts to automate lab imaging, fixing things that aren't my problem, volunteering to go to meetings (well its security-related stuff, which i dig, woulda done that any day of the week).
shoot, even my non-work-related activities are getting more productive. i noticed a new course offered by my old prof that looks appealing, so i set up a wget session to get all the docs, etc. also figured out a way to find good music: iTunes Music Store. before you say "duh" i mean, i go there to find out what's "hot" these days, then i look for that music elsewhere. (in a physical store, of course, right?) i always find myself pouring through all this music saying "now what was that band i heard recently? that one tobin likes? or maybe it was bud.. or maybe i just saw them on mtv..."
shoot.. maybe ill even start training again. hmm.

life on the coast

i really haven't taken advantage of living on the california coast too much in quite a while. when i first moved here, i surfed all the time and regularly went to the beach, but not anymore.
last night we did a very costal thing, we joined andria's sister-in-law Ellen and some of her coworkers at a bonfire at the beach. it was one of those beaches you can drive up on (near Pismo) and just park on the sand and light a fire.
we mostly just sat around, eating awesome clam chowder (in breadbowls, plus i had a corndog, yum) from the Splash Cafe in Pismo. we rolled into a few games kinda similar to "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" and kept it rockin with some Marley and even a bit of A Tribe Called Quest.
very mellow, very cool time.

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.

the camera phone cometh

maybe i should add a new section for images from the new phone. so lets get started.

first off is andria at my desk at home. your standard "hey i got a new camera phone and i want to try it out" kinda picture

next up is the front steps of our apartment. for those of you who haven't seen it. its nice and 70's ugly/boring.

new phone

its almost done. maybe ill write up a little bit on what ive gone through with at&t trying to get this phone deal done.
anyways, andria and i have new phones (1, 2) now. now that i've got my bluetooth phone, ive realized that my g5 doesn't have a bluetooth module. aaaaagh! then why does it have a bluetooth antenna? dammit. i knew i should have checked on that..
so ya, gonna try to get one from the bookstore, if they're even open on new year's eve.
soooo cloooooose to techno greatness.
update!
got it working. so awesome.
went to the bookstore and got an external bluetooth adapter (only $30!). one stupid complaint: nowhere on the device does it say "bluetooth," not even the little logo (see picture), so it could get confused with a storage USB stick. but ignoring that, its awesome. i can bring it home and sync on my PC too. schweet.

shakin

whoa. haven't experienced an earthquake since loma prieta back in '89.
so that was fun.

dr steve ?

if i really want to get into security, do i need a PhD?
should i go back to school? i had an offer to enter the program when i left with my MS. it seems like it might be the best way to really enter the security world, but what about everything else?
can i handle the entrance exams? i mean, i just squeaked by my undergrad on purpose, avoiding things like compiler design and programming languages (well, i took the courses, just conveniently forgot everything in them)
and how long would it take? can i really put myself through 6 more years of school? of course, i'd be in santa barbara, so it couldn't be that bad i guess. but damn it would be expensive. and i can tell you, grad students do not make the big bucks. maybe andria would be my schoolteacher sugar mama ;)
reading about recent events at my old stomping grounds makes me feel like im missing out on cool stuff. a distributed CTF game? awesome. and UCSB kicked ass. right on.
anyways. just feeling directionless as usual.

perl does my bidding

wrote a pretty cool perl script today.
not going to go into it, as its part of a larger project im working on right now, but it used DBI and XMLRPC together. pretty cool.
so, this is just for my own reference, pretty much.
carry on.

relaxation

awesome weekend of nothing.
the most stress i had this weekend was deciding which commentary to listen to my new Two Towers DVD.
did some sleeping in, plenty of lounging, andria gave me a haircut, we went shopping briefly, etc. very mellow, very nice.

turkey day coming up. more food, more travel, hopefully just as much relaxation, unfortunately more smog, though.
but first, two more days of work.

still haven't worked on any side projects. damn job.

getting by on 4 hours

... of sleep. in one weekend. yup, thats how my weekend went.

• got into Santa Monica on thursday night
• worked friday from 8am - 8pm. basic stuff, not bad.
• got up at 4am saturday for race start, got awesome breakfast at IHOP on way back to site. felt bad seeing matt with one donut.
• worked till about 2am sunday. usually can swap shifts with assistant (matt) and take sleep breaks, but this event was so packed and so damn large, we were both on, both swamped the entire time.
• slept on a creaky cot, totally freezing for 3 or 4 hours. then spent 15 minutes by heater in medical tent thawing my toes.
• got back up, worked from 6am(ish) to 3pm, super high stress levels at points.
• drove to SB, hung out a bit, worked more till 7pm finishing up stupid data entry.
• drove to SLO, had a wonderful dinner, passed the F out at about 10pm.
• up this morning at 6:45am.

its an interesting job. pays well, and i get all the balance bars i want. and some other random junk.

---

on iTunes: It's The End Of The World by Rem

been a while...

haven't blogged much this week. i guess ive been busy. work is going well, getting used to the hours (still tired when i wake up at 6:30 though). the only thing that kinda sucks is that i dont feel like i can make that much of an impact yet. like, the biggest thing i do is to make sure the printers work, replacing toner/ink, installing drivers, etc. while that may seem lame (ok it is), its pretty important to this group as all they care about is their printed out works, whether they are plotted or hand-drawn or ink-jet printed. so thats gratifying, slightly. there are bigger computing issues id like to tackle, but im swamped by these pesky day-to-day things and, frankly, its not in my job description. i would like to transfer to some other department that has more to do with infrastructure, but who knows how long id have to wait for that. i like my job for now. plenty of room to dork around with stuff, blog, etc.

"my first friend's wedding"

get it? like the movie? or not..

anyways, this weekend we went to andy and dorothy's wedding. it was a blast. it was the first wedding ive ever been to that wasn't a relative's. i sense a trend approaching...

like i said, it was a great time. i guess its time for a breakdown:

• picked up wes on the way to SB. he hadn't slept in over 24 hours, would proceed to stay up another 12 at least.
• dropped off andria with the girlies so she could play with makeup or do whatever it is they do in that room before a wedding.
• (wes and i) got picked up by andy and paka, had some krispy kreme, sushi for lunch.
• check in to the hotel to shower/change. wes somehow gets free drink coupon just for being military.
• use free drink coupon (well, i had to pay).
• back to site, find the bar there, order 16 kamikazis (sp?), 15 minutes before go-time.
• got andy to have a drink, about 2 minutes before he got hitched. mission accomplished.
• wedding ceremony. beauty. the ring bearer was awesome. buck toothed.
• reception. aww yea. paka busts moves all over the place.
• randall makes his entrance.
• rock on all night.
• next morning, informal breakfast. slept in and got the end of the food. nice.
• ice skating in the 'nard. very fun. its been a while, but got my legs back pretty quick. still cant hockey stop. never could.
• in-n-out.
• super monkey ball 2 at jen's house in SB. and popcorn. and crunch bars. and hot cocoa. rad.
• Elf. so funny. "franciscooo thats fun to say."
• back in SLO to discover our roof leaked. kinda lame, but couldnt spoil such a great weekend. nothing damaged too bad at all, dont worry.

so that was the schedule. i hope to blog more about favorite moments, etc. but its all still jumbled.

congrats, mr. and mrs. satomi. if you're reading this, it had better be at least December, cause no internet allowed on a honeymoon.

my first iMovie

check it out..

special thanks to Ken Burns and his effect.
(photos taken from a recent visit to Zodo's in Santa Barbara (ok, Goleta) )

im an idiot

i hosed my G5 today. well kinda.

while trying to install way too many fink packages at once, i managed to install users like mysql, pgsql, etc, but at the same time wipe out users like stevem and root from NetInfo. basically i locked myself out of my computer. for some reason, i logged out and had no way back in.

but i got my stuff back:

• booted into single user mode (hold s when booting)
  
• now that you're root, all you have is a read-only filesystem, fix that:# mount -uw /
  
• # cd Users/stevem
  
• # tar zcvf stevem.tgz Desktop Documents Library [whatever else...]
  
• boot off the OSX installation CD (im using 10.3)
  
• dont over-install (i did the first time, it doesnt help), but use the change password utility to set the password of one of the useless accounts currently on your system (i used mysql)
  
• quit out of the installer and reboot off the hard disk. log in as mysql or whatever you chose in the last step
  
• copy stevem.tgz to a remote server. notice that you can't access the rest of the Users/stevem/ directory, so you couldn't have just copied them directly. well maybe if you had chown'd them or something. anyways...
  
• reinstall OSX
  

so, not the ideal solution, but it works and nothing important was lost.

lesson learned: don't go crazy with fink's dselect. I think the biggest problem was that i didnt have the X11 SDK installed (its on the 10.3 devtools CD that was downstairs i found out later), but i did have the X11-User installed, so i was "half installed" which confused fink. because of this, anything that required X11 failed. several attempts to install non-X11 stuff later i ended up hosing NetInfo. all the users that needed to be added to NetInfo for those packages were added, but all the old ones were deleted. hence the difficulty.

and now its time for bed.

Fires

Check out this picture of the fires. pretty crazy.
also, check out sean's recent photograph sized just right to be your new desktop.
[note: this is my first post using kung-log.. not bad.]

My Desk

Since I haven't used my digital camera in a while and I've been looking for an excuse to blog a bit, I decided to take a snapshot of the sate of me, this my last weekday without a job.
So here goes from top to bottom, right to left: (click on picture for big version)

• andria's schedule. that crazy girl is always doing something.
  
• todo list. lots of random web/programming projects. note the inclusion of Zelda and Metroid. very important.
  
• paper heart, card. the card text says "you're always on the right side of that fine line between cool and dorky." from andria, of course.
  
• monitor draped with paper ribbon-ey stuff. from my birthday recently.
  
• (on the desk now) cups of pens, change, a slinky, etc. nothing exciting here.
  
• charger, extra memory for camera (8x speed, yeehaw)
  
• edgeware receipt. for andy's gift. hope you're not reading this before saturday, andy.
  
• envelope under receipt - offer letter from Cal Poly. first real job ever, i guess. crazy.
  
• books, etc:
  • mac os x hacks. - for the new job
    
  • programming perl - for the stupid perl thing i ranted about this morning
    
  • quick fix italian grammar - going to italy next summer. still havent opened this really.
    
  • learn latin - for some reason im learning latin before italian
    
  • notebook - notes from latin book. actually doing the excersizes. strange, eh?
    
  • cryptonomicon- pretty good geek fiction, by Neal Stephenson.
• gorge games hat - i sometimes work for octagon marketing, one of their events is the gorge games. err. it was..
  
• pile o' discs, a bunch of software. Gentoo linux live cd on top. (note stupid USB hub above and to left that doesnt work with linux, bah)
  
• palm m505, nokia 8390, usb2 hub, external hard drive (200GB, w00t!)
  
• yepp 700H 128MB mp3 player. havent used it in a month or so. good little toy though.
  
• smith slider sunglasses. the shizno.
  
• polar s710 and USB interface. for training. which i haven't done in months :-/
  
• cool speakers
  

i guess thats it. so now you know what i look at all day. and now you can too.

Finances

so ive never been that good at keeping track of my finances. i mean, ive never gotten in any trouble because of it, but ive never really felt the need to really get on top of it all. So now that ive got some sort of dependable income coming my way (note to self, call up poly, make sure you still have job) maybe i should get on it.

Enter Quicken.
Ive used quicken before, but only a little. Basically tried it out to see how it worked then ignored it. Now im actually saving my receipts (even the trip to Scolari's this morning for milk and cereal) and entering them into Quicken. Its kinda interesting i guess.
in order to enter some credit card stuff, i check my online account. it seems my amex credit limit was bumped up from $3,000 to $10,000. um. ok. so i stop working for 3 months, charge everything, make minimum payments (need that cash for rent) and you reward me with more credit? sure dude.

anyways, i hope to keep this up. im going to enter my paycheck amount, etc. and see if i can use it to get out of this credit card whole i dug myself into these last few months. maybe even if i tell it how much i want saved up, by when, it will tell me how often im allowed to go watch the cubs lose at woodstocks per month. or maybe not.

tuesday in SLO

i guess i should make a real entry. here goes.

today was pretty boring, until andria came home. basically i stayed at home and played zelda all day. i was planning on calling up Dave Keller (dude from high school/college that i randomly ran into at SLO barnes and noble) to go mountain bike riding, but i uh, i was getting really far in zelda, alright? i guess i dont really feel the urge to go riding these days. partly due to the lack of health insurance.

.. but i digress.

so when andria came home, we decided to walk down to woodstocks and watch the baseball game. im so glad she likes baseball, so rad. anyways, it was a good game. the cubs shoulda won, but this fan caught a ball that a player would have caught, letting the marlins start an 8-run streak. all in one inning. yes, an 8-run inning. the score went from 0-3 to 8-3 all cause of some jerk. or at least thats what the chicago papers are gonna say tomorrow.
anyways it was a blast. had good pizza with some DP and Newcastle, good environment, great company.

we walked dowtown to woodstocks, walked home. great temperature, short distance, perfect. ive never lived somewhere like this, where home and downtown are so close that its totally feasable to say "lets go watch the game at a pizza place" on a whim.

i love this town.

Blog explanation

basically im at a crossroads in my life right now. well, for the last 3 months ive been standing at the crossroads, but now im actually on them. i recently got my first "real job" (the sysadmin for the student labs in Cal Poly's landscape architecture and architecture departments). basically it feels like im starting "real life" now, so i thought id document it.

i must admit, i was a bit influenced after reading tobin's and alex's blogs. so there you go :)

My first actual blog

so .planning has lasted for hm, 5 years now on and off, but i think its time to make the switch to blogging. As silly as it sounds, i know this is a better format. While it might be hard without dfi (ignore this if you're confused) for now, i predict that will change. Maybe thanks to me, maybe tobin ;)

So anyways, i will attempt to update this from now on and hopefully will be able to import my old .plans into this with a lot of help from my friend perl.

so thats all i've got right now.