Mikhail Gorbachev, Part 2 March 23, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Stuff... , add a commentI just got back from the Gorbachev lecture. It was very interesting and during the course of the lecture, several first happened to me. First of all, I got my ticket with a friend from Yearbook and went to my seat. I took out Mike’s camera and took a test shot. It looked great. Then an usher comes up to me and says I cannot take photos. I say I’m with the press and she say’s I’ll be right back. A few minutes later someone comes up to me and says I need to stand along the sides or back of the theater to take photos. That’s far from ideal (I don’t have much of a zoom lens), but ok, no problem. 5 minutes later the head of the theater comes up to me and says all photography needs to be taken from the lighting booth. So I follow her there and enter a tiny, cramped room full of six or so photographers. There’s a double-paned glass wall in front and hardly enough room for everyone to point their cameras at the action.
And of course, the podium is a tiny blurry dot on my screen. Oh well, at least the speech will be interesting. It turns out that Mikhail only speaks Russian so they had a translation talking at the same time as him. But in the room I was in, it was only a little louder than the Russian, so I could hardly understand a word. I could hear the running commentary of funny jokes from the press photographers and Barkley staff, though. I took 125 photos, but the camera just couldn’t handle it. Whenever I heard a steady stream of clicks from the other photographers, I knew it was time for me to take a photo too.
As I walked out of the building, a TV cameraman ambushed me and asked what I thought of the event. I was in the process of putting my jacket on so the collar was up and smashed. I said sure, but I choked up and didn’t really say anything of meaning. So I’m sure I looked like a fool. I don’t know what channel, but don’t watch the news tonight, please! 
(Much like the professor who first asks President Gorbachev a nasty question about communism, then later gets on the stage and officially presents him a sculpture from the UCI Peace Club made out of melted down guns. I heard on the staff radio “What’s that jackass doing on the stage. Get him off!”)
Mikhail Gorbachev March 18, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Stuff... , 1 comment so farYay! I get to see “Mikhail Gorbachev to speak at university and receive inaugural UCI Citizen Peacebuilding Award” as a “press photographer.”
No -devel in RedHat Enterprise! March 17, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Website , add a commentNow most people won’t care about this, but RedHat Linux has recently undergone some dramatic changes. First of all, it is no longer free, which is OK under the GPL because they give you the source code. You just got to compile everything yourself. Which is awkward, to say the least. My ISP provides it to me, so no worries there. But then the RedHat people removed all the development packages (RPMs ending in -devel). These are the packages you use to compile other software–something that needs to be done on even a stock system (need to get a PHP (website) accelerator working.) So now you not only must pay for Red Hat Linux, you can’t even run your own software on your spiffy new machine! Geez, some companies. You would think they want to go bankrupt.
Here’s a bug report about it: Bug 109697 - php-devel is missing from the unified build tree.
Speedy! March 10, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Stuff... , add a commentDownloaded a test file on the new server…
[root@fast root]# wget http://www.iconator.com/el
–06:43:41– http://www.iconator.com/el
=> `el’
Resolving www.iconator.com… done.
Connecting to www.iconator.com[66.98.194.98]:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 78,735,859 [text/plain]100%[=======================>] 78,735,859 4.08M/s ETA 00:00
06:43:59 (4.08 MB/s) - `el’ saved [78735859/78735859]
Speedy! Notice I named the server “fast”. My first server was “op-design.com”. The next “ehumorcentral.com”. The next I called “srv3″ (for server number 3). The next after that “dual”. Now finally fast. No creativity at all when it comes to naming the servers. That’s what I get for ordering them late at night.
The Simpsons March 10, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Stuff... , add a commentI just got back from a lecture by David Silverman, a producer on the Simpsons. We say lots of cut and unfinished clips, including some that the censors made them remove. It was a quite informative and interesting look into how the Simpsons are produced. It takes 9 months for an episode to be made from the time it is written until it is finished being colored in Korea. (In fact, he said that American animators are way ahead of the computer programmers in being outsourced.) Someone asked him how much longer the Simpsons would be around and he replied, “It helps when Fox doesn’t have any other good shows.” Pure gold. 
New Webserver! March 10, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Website , add a commentI got a new (loaded) webserver today for Iconator.com:
- Dual 2.8Ghz Intel Xeon Processors
- 2GB ECC Registered Ram
- Dual 80GB SATA HDD
- 2000 GB Bandwidth
- 100% SLA Guarantee
- RedHat Enterprise 3.0
- Urchin Statistics
- Veritas Tape Backup
- FloodGuard™ - DDOS mitigation
- RLX Total Control Management
- Gold Managed Services
Now if only my desktop was this fast.
Recent IM Conversation with my Mom March 9, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Life , 2commentsmom: owen - internet not working (so don’t know if you will get this!) - any suggestions??
BitSurfr2000: i got it
BitSurfr2000: so the internet must be working
mom: ah - any suggestion
BitSurfr2000: i’m putting this on my blog
The XIV Dalai Lama Presented by Ticketmaster March 9, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Life , add a commentI got a ticket to see “His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama” next month. He’s speaking about ethical leadership, which I guess is right up his alley. He’s actually giving two speeches in a row: one that’s free and one that costs $95 for a good seat. I’m not quite sure why the second speech is so expensive, but I decided that one is enough. It should be interesting, for sure. I’m told that we got some of the last tickets available. Right after I left, they put up a sold-out sign. It’s amazing that they sold out the basketball stadium in 1 day.
Bike Race, Part 2 March 8, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Fun , add a comment
Well the bike race was fun. The hotel was fine… I don’t know what people on the website were talking about. We leave our hotel at 5:00 AM to go to the start of the race at USC. Of course, we get dreadfully lost on the way there so we end up wandering the streets of unsafe neighborhoods at. But luck had it that we stumbled across a car that had bikes on the back so we followed them to USC and parked on the streets nearby. The ride turned out to be a piece of cake. I hardly sweated at all. Biking the marathon is a great way to go–all the fun and none of the work! It took us about 1:45 to bike the 22.6 miles, which is about the same as everyone else. We saw 3 collisions, but we were fortunate enough to avoid any ourselves.
After the race we leave to go back to the hotel to shower and leave LA, but the marathon course forms a circle ending where it started. Well, guess who parked inside the circle? It took us over an hour of driving down dead ends and through bad neighborhoods to drive 3 miles back to the hotel. However, it was fun and I had a great time. It’s definitely something I would like to do again next year.
Guess where we are staying? March 5, 2004
Posted by Owen in : Fun , add a commentLos Angeles: Best Western Mayfair: “Horrible Experience… Worst Hotel Ever…”
Date: May 22, 2003
Reviewer: A TripAdvisor User, Lafayette, LA
From start to Finish, this was the worst travel experience in my life. The rooms were horrible, the customer service was horrible, and the area that the hotel is located in was life threatening… I have never wasted money on a hotel like I did on this one. … But, the sleeping arrangements were GHETTO at best… Sleeping at the Metro Station would have been more sanitary than staying in the room that I had at this hotel. Book your reservations for the BATES MOTEL, or just pitch a tent, but, do not waste your time or resources on this TOURIST TRAP of a hotel…
And it costs almost the same as what we paid to stay in the Grand America in Salt Lake City:
Salt Lake City: Grand America Hotel: “Can’t go wrong with this hotel”
Date: September 4, 2003
Reviewer: A TripAdvisor User, Cordova, TN
I felt like a princess staying there. … They treated us like royalty and the room service was divine.The rooms are breathe taking and the pool is gorgeous!! I felt as if I was staying in Paris, it was that beautiful!! I definately recommend staying there to anyone!!