Brian's Blog

My sister put this list up on her blog. I thought it was a fun exercise in self reflection. If you read this you'll probably hear more about me than you'll want to know and also realize just how boring I am.

Here's my version:

01. Bought everyone in the pub a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said "I love you" and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Done a striptease
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Stayed up all night long, and watched the sun rise
15. Seen the Northern Lights
16. Gone to a huge sports game
17. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
18. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
19. Touched an iceberg
20. Slept under the stars
21. Changed a baby's diaper
22. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
23. Watched a meteor shower
24. Gotten drunk on champagne
25. Given more than you can afford to charity
26. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
27. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
28. Had a food fight
29. Bet on a winning horse
30. Called in sick when you were not ill
31. Asked out a stranger
32. Had a snowball fight
33. Photocopied your bottom on the office photocopier
34. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
35. Held a lamb
36. Enacted a favorite fantasy
37. Taken a midnight skinny dip
38. Taken an ice cold bath
39. Had a meaningful conversation with a beggar
40. Seen a total eclipse
41. Ridden a roller coaster
42. Hit a home run
43. Fit three weeks miraculously into three days
44. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
45. Adopted an accent for an entire day
46. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
47. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
48. Had two hard drives for your computer
49. Visited all 50 states
50. Loved your job
51. Taken care of someone who was s***faced
52. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
53. Had amazing friends
54. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
55. Watched wild whales
56. Stolen a sign
57. Backpacked in Europe
58. Taken a road-trip
59. Rock climbing
60. Lied to foreign government's official in that country to avoid notice
61. Midnight walk on the beach
62. Sky diving
63. Visited Ireland
64. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
65. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them
66. Visited Japan
67. Bench pressed your own weight
68. Milked a cow
69. Alphabetized your records/books And labeled them
70. Pretended to be a superhero
71. Sung karaoke
72. Lounged around in bed all day
73. Posed nude in front of strangers
74. Scuba diving
75. Got it on to "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye
76. Kissed in the rain
77. Played in the mud
78. Played in the rain
79. Gone to a drive-in theater
80. Done something you should regret, but don't regret it
81. Visited the Great Wall of China
84. Started a business
85. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
86. Toured ancient sites
87. Taken a martial arts class.
88. Sword fought for the honor of a woman
89. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
90. Gotten married.
91. Been in a movie
92. Crashed a party
93. Loved someone you shouldn't have
94. Kissed someone so passionately it made them dizzy
96. Had sex at the office
97. Gone without food for 5 days
98. Made cookies from scratch
99. Won first prize in a costume contest
100. Ridden a gondola in Venice
101. Gotten a tattoo
102. Found that the texture of some materials can turn you on
103. Rafted the Snake River
104. Been on television news programs as an 'expert'
105. Got flowers for no reason
107. Got so drunk you don't remember anything
108. Been addicted to some form of illegal drug
109. Performed on stage
110. Been to Las Vegas
111. Recorded music
112. Eaten shark
113. Had a one-night stand
114. Gone to Thailand
115. Seen Siouxsie live
116. Bought a house
117. Been in a combat zone
118. Buried one/both of your parents
119. Shaved or waxed your pubic hair off
120. Been on a cruise ship
121. Spoken more than one language fluently
122. Gotten into a fight while attempting to defend someone
123. Bounced a check
124. Performed in Rocky Horror
125. Read - and understood - your credit report
126. Raised children
127. Recently bought and played with a favorite childhood toy
128. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
129. Created and named your own constellation of stars
130. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
131. Found out something significant that your ancestors did
132. Called or written your Congress person
133. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
134. ...more than once?
135. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
136. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
137. Had an abortion or your female partner did
138. Had plastic surgery. Reconstructive surgery, that is.
139. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived
140. Wrote articles for a large publication
141. Lost over 100 pounds
142. Held someone while they were having a flashback
143. Piloted an airplane
144. Petted a stingray
145. Broken someones heart
146. Helped an animal give birth
147. Been fired or laid off from a job
148. Won money on a T.V. game show
149. Broken a bone
150. Killed a human being
151. Gone on an African photo safari
152. Ridden a motorcycle.
153. Driven any land vehicle at a speed of greater than 100mph
154. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced.
155. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
156. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
157. Ridden a horse
158. Had major surgery
159. Had sex on a moving train
160. Had a snake as a pet
161. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
162. Slept through an entire flight: takeoff, flight, and landing
163. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
164. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
165. Visited all 7 continents
166. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
167. Eaten kangaroo meat
168. Fallen in love
169. Been a sperm or egg donor
170. Eaten sushi
171. Had your picture in the newspaper.
172. Had 2 (or more) healthy romantic relationships for over a year in your
lifetime
173. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about
174. Gotten someone fired for their actions
175. Gone back to school
176. Para sailed
177. Changed your name.
178. Petted a cockroach
179. Eaten fried green tomatoes
180. Read The Iliad And translated part of it.
181. Selected one 'important' author who you missed in school, and read
182. Dined in a restaurant and stolen silverware, plates, cups because your
apartment needed them
183. ...and gotten 86ed from the restaurant because you did it so many times,
they figured out it was you
184. Taught yourself an art from scratch
185. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
186. Apologized to someone years after inflicting the hurt
187. Skipped all your school reunions
188. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
189. Been elected to public office
190. Written your own computer language
191. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream
192. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
193. Built your own PC from parts
194. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you
195. Had a booth at a street fair
196. Dyed your hair
197. Been a DJ
198. Found out someone was going to dump you via the computer
199. Written your own role playing game paper-based, not computerized.
200. Been arrested
201. Shot someone
202. Sang a solo in public, while sober
203. Kissed a hummingbird
204. Given birth
205. Eaten some tree-bark
206. Baked your own bread, without a machine
207. Braided the bread
208. Foraged and eaten wild food, and/or used wild herbs as medicine
209. Climbed a waterfall
210. Walked in total darkness
211. Went snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef
212. Been mistaken as someone of the opposite sex, and they never realized it
213. Had a supernatural experience
214. Performed at a poetry reading
215. Been to a fetish party
216. Been strip searched
217. Gotten a lap dance at a strip club
218. Gotten hate mail from something of yours that had been published
219. Met someone in person who you first knew on-line
220. Cross-dressed
221. Been a resting-place for a butterfly
222. Had more than two novels published.

In my usual fashion of swinging between things in an almost extreme way I've once again gotten gaming on my mind. This time it's a Magic: The Gathering. For those who don't know, MTG is a collectible card game. As in it's a game where the game pieces have the potential to have value. In some rare cases, extreme value. For example, the single most valuable card ever printed is the Black Lotus which is going for $1000 to $2000 on ebay, depending on which edition it is. Way back when I was seriously into this stuff it was going for about $375 and I used to choke at that price for a piece of cardboard but now I wish I bought one or two of them. Unfortunately I just missed the last edition that this, and other expensive and powerful card were printed so I never had a chance to get one in a booster pack.

So, over the past couple of weeks I've been heading over to a local game shop called The Encounter. This is the kind of place you can walk in and generally find someone (usually kids) playing some sort of game. Unfortunately it's usually Yu-gi-oh but there are still many older MTG players there along with some Warhammer and I hear the occasional D&D. Watching those kids play I can say that the game has changed a lot over the past 5+ years that it's been since I looked at it. Actually, I'm not so sure I like the way the game is played now. It's almost too fast and relies on using cards in such a way as to be able to search through your library and pull out cards rather then using the luck of the draw and playing skill to win.

Tonight I'm heading over to an old friend that I haven't seen in years to play a little old school Magic for old time sake. It should be fun.

I've always wanted to figure out how to stream my music collection to wherever I happen to be but never really took time to research what I'd need. Then I came across an Newsforge article about Slimserver. In a nutshell Slimserver is a streaming server designed for the hardware players they have at Slimdevices but it happens to work with pretty much any other player able to handle streams. I've used it with xmms and winamp so far and it works nice.

I downloaded the .tar.gz for Linux but it's available in rpm and even has a Windows version. It was pretty easy to install on Slackware too. It wasn't as easy as running the exe on Windows but still pretty darn painless if you read the docs. Basically I just uncompressed it, stuck the resulting directory in my home directory, and ran build-perl-modules.pl to build some perl modules then ran slimserver.pl to start up the server. From that point it was a simple matter of accessing the web interface and configure it.

The only odd thing is that each player that you connect with has a separate playlist unless you use Softsqueeze with which it lets you synchronize the playlists between different Softsqueeze instances. Otherwise, if you use anything other than Softsqueeze you have to load the playlist for each one. Not a huge pain, especially since I imagine Slimserver isn't designed to be a multicast server.

The web interface is pretty slick too. You can browse your collection by Artist, Album, Artwork, Genre, Year, and folder. You can also save different playlists and browse by those. The playlists you create can be loaded by any player that is connected. The search function is powerfull too. In the advances search you can search on attributes like bitrate, file format, file length, in addition to the normal searches like Track, Artist, Album, etc. Or there is just the simple search that searches titles.

Of additional coolness is the Softsqueeze player is already integrated into the Slimserver and it written in Java. You can follow a link that will install it on your system or run it as a Java applet. Supposedly Softsqueeze is able to connect to your stream via an ssh tunnel without having to run putty or ssh on the command line to setup a tunnel. I haven't tried that part yet though.

Right now I have my collection streaming to me at work through an ssh tunnel established with Putty. It sounds darn good too. At least on my crappy laptop speakers. Speaking of quality there is a setting to limit the bitrate of the stream. So, if you limit your bitrate to 128k and the song itself is encoded at 320k it will convert it on the fly for you. Which is nice if you are on a slower connection.

This weekend the wife and I took the kids up to the Camp Biff cabin. We had a pretty good time except that Ellie seemed kind of "off" most of the weekend. She really didn't seem to want to do much of anything other than stay at the cabin and play games. In spite of her attitude we got her outside a bit to do nature thing. We went fishing for sunnies for a little but her attention span was short so we caught one fish off the boat launch at Pecks and then went back to the cabin. We got out for a walk down the Camp Biff trail which is usually very pretty. I was hoping the Mountain Laurel would still be in bloom but I must have just missed it's height. The trail is almost like waking in a fantasy world when the Laurel is in full bloom. The last time I was there at the right time the entire woods smelled sweet and there were flowers as far as you could see and big multicolored dragon flies going back and forth. That with the gurgling of the stream that runs along the trail makes for a pleasant walk. We did manage to get out on the boat a little and rowed around the lake. Angie slept through it and Ellie was cranky so we decided to head back in and got to the dock just before a thunderstorm hit. That was good timing.

The weekend wasn't the best one I've ever had at Biff with Ellie being cranky and not herself for some odd reason. She said she had a good time though and would go back again which is good. Even so though, it's better than being at work!

I'm going to be going back up again in about a week for some serious drink... Uhh, I mean fishing with the guys. I haven't really gotten any good fishing in yet this season. I'm looking forward to that.

The pictures of this weekend are in the gallery.

One of the guys (dstate I think) who frequents the LVLUG irc channel pointed out Shakeskin.com. The purpose of this site it seems is for you to shake your head round while keeping your face as limp as you can and taking a snapshot in mid shake. Makes for some funny facial expressions.

I must be tired, because this thing really cracked me up. Don't I look so purdy in my picture?

Time for bed before I hurt myself.

Ev3R w4n+ 2 +4lk l1k3 4n 3l1+3 h4ck3R? W3ll n0w yA c4n 4nd yA d0n'+ 3v3n n33d 2 R3dUc3 yA IQ.

That translated is:

Ever want to talk like an elite hacker? Well now you can and you don't even need to reduce your IQ.

This ever so useful but mildly amusing tool is at http://www.julian-bez.de/tools/. Kind of reminds me of the Ebonics Translator. Remember Ebonics? Now that was a joke.

Check this out from Blogthings.

Your Brain is 53.33% Female, 46.67% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

Mentally I'm more a woman than a man! Well, at least that doesn't carry over into the physical world.

Now, excuse me while I finish doing my nails...