So… yeah. I’m slowly working on redoing this site, so a few weeks ago I wiped the machine clean and installed Fedora Core 4. Then I reinstalled all those linuxy things I needed, and upgraded to Mysql 4.1 (with its UTF8y goodness) and finally got mod_rewrite working, so you poor myspace and blogger teens don’t get to use my cd cover images anymore. [You bunch of savages]. So that was fun and exciting. Then I rewrote my search stuff, and now you can search the captions of images as well. Huzzah! I redid the whole highlighting thing on that page, and it works quite a bit better than it did before (i.e. it works at all). I’m off and on coding up a working function to get the search matches highlighted on the actual log pages. (working –> The opposite of “breaks all of the tags and images and could make the page hang forever”)

It would appear that my site is also becoming quite the home for Nintendo Fanboys. I couldn’t be more proud. The overwhelming consensus seems to be that people on the Internet do not understand punctuation, capitalization, or spelling.

I’m listening to the Jurassic Park audio book now (having finally finished listening through all the Douglas Adams books). I don’t think I need to tell you that it’s one of the greatest things ever. I’m a bit surprised by how much I remember (as in: word for word remember). It’s been at least 7ish years since I read that book, but I did read it many, many times before that. So yeah, Jurassic Park is awesome, and I really like dinosaurs.

Very loosely related, I’d like to build something… The R.C. Car thing was hella fun, and I used to make models, which were also quite fun. The problem is that things cost money. For example, I think making a Lego Star Destroyer would be awesome (3104 pieces!) But purchasing a $300 Lego Set would not be a wise move. I was looking at different dinosaur kits I could make (skeletons or models), but… um… I’m no longer 12 years old. Another idea was to build a large ship of some sort… like the Cutty Sark. Then there’s always the idea of trying to build a model of Wrigley.. but there are no kits, so I’d need to do it from scratch.. which means that it would suck and I’d throw it away. So anyone have any ideas? or.. who wants to buy me a Lego Star Destroyer?

We went bowling last night. I bowled a 180, 174, and a 172. I can say with a great deal of confidence that that adds up to 526.

Here’s some great news I read on the Internets just a few minutes ago. Fans of Futurama rejoice!:

HERE’S GREAT NEWS!
Here’s the official word on Futurama!! David X. phoned me about an hour ago and said that this Futurama project is a done deal! Here’s the word from DX—
There are 4 DVD movies that we’ll start recording at the end of July or August. Full feature length FUTURAMA movies. Everybody is excited to get back together–as I am!

Into the Future,
Billy [West (voice of Fry/Dr. Zoidberg/Professor Farnsworth/Captain Zapp Brannigan/etc..)]

I am overjoyed!

For those of you unaware, the Mario Kart out for the Nintendo DS allows you to draw a little logo/emblem for yourself, so when you play against other people they can quickly identify you by this emblem that appears on your kart, and is displayed above you when you’re nearby. Well, it took a little doing, but I’ve created myself this snazzy little logo:

I’ve talked before about Verizon’s complete incompetence, but they now warrant another post. Here is the situation: My sister wanted to get me a Black RAZR phone for Christmas (I know, my sister is very awesome.) She found an “unlocked” online claiming to be “for use with your existing GSM 850 MHz, GSM 1800 MHz, GSM 900 MHz or GSM 1900 MHz provider and SIM card.” Wanting to be sure that would work with Verizon, she emailed the Verizon people, including all of that information, and explaining that she wasn’t sure what all that meant, but wanted to be sure it would work. She got a reply saying once she got the Serial Number of the phone, they’d verify that it would work, and then explained the steps she would have to take after getting the phone in order to get it to work. In other words, my sister asked if this phone would work, and they said “when you buy it, we can find out.” Thanks, that’s not helpful at all.

My sister emailed again, explaining the situation (that we couldn’t get the Serial Number until the phone arrived, but we needed to know based on the information provided if it would work or not without having to buy the thing first.) Providing no new information, we got a new response, saying that they could be sure once we got the serial number, but based on the speeds, etc.. it looked like it should work. Okay, so it looks like it should work. This is good.

I sent out two emails, one to a specific Verizon rep, and another to the Verizon online contact form people (where the first two emails had gone.) Now, I had done some research online, and what I had learned was this:

• There were two main types of phone service “things”: GSM, and CDMA.
• GSM worked for things like TMobile, Cingular, etc.. and CDMA worked for Sprint and Verizon.
• You couldn’t get a GSM phone to work for a CDMA company, nor a CDMA to work on a GSM service.

Based on the “looks like it should work” email, my 2 emails said something along the lines of: This phone says it uses GSM, and you guys are CDMA, but your rep says based on the speeds, it looks like it should work… So
1.) GSM phones work with Verizon,
2.) Will rates/charges be different using GSM rather than CDMA
3.) What kind of SIMM card would I need if it works.

I got a reply back from the rep saying “I don’t think it will work, but I’m not sure. You can call these people to find out.” and provided the same phone number the website provides for contacting Verizon.

I then got a reply from the “contact us” website, saying that it definitely won’t work… that Verizon needs a CDMA phone, and so GSM won’t work on their network.

So by providing the exact same information to the same email address 3 times, we got:

• I don’t know, maybe it will work.
• I’m not sure, but it probably will work fine
• No, it won’t work.

Verizon, you get the finger.. and I hope you can see this because I’m doing it as hard as I can. You’ve got the shittiest phones of any company, which you further mangle by intentionally disabling features that the phone can do simply so you can charge people to use your services to do the exact same thing (only less efficiently and far uglier). Then forcing your hideous and almost unusable UI on on the crippled, ugly phones, and stamping your name on it wherever you can. You guys suck. But I guess if you’ve got a good network, you can just skip everything else, eh? Suck it.