May 4, 2000

Bleh. Haven't updated in a while. Sometimes it seems like there is so much stuff going on, and sometimes it seems like the same stuff over and over and over.

I am very much happy with my laptop these days. I finally got it to sync with my Palm over the IrDA after weeks of messing around with it. In the process, I had found a page which said how to get the sound card working in 8 bit mode. So now I can get my Mariah fix every once in a while.

I also finally got my battery after a month or so, so my laptop is much more usable now, even though it cost me an arm or two. It is very much heavier than the old one. I am still unsure whether the extra 64 MB of RAM is going to be worth it, since it is pretty costly. It is sad that my $1500 laptop is turning into a $3000 one :(

Since I didn't have sound working, I had been buying tons of CDs of stuff still. I now have 2 RHCP CDs, and I like them a lot. I also got "Stop Making Sense" the other day. It advertised "Seven previously unreleased tracks" and consequently there are seven tracks that I do not know and which suck. Oh well. I also bought Pictionary that day, since nobody here seems to have it and it is something I enjoyed playing with my friends back home.

Evolution is starting to kick some butt. It loaded up my 90 MB spool without crashing. It still has some memory / performance issues but the Primates are beginning to look into making it work a bit better.

So my icon hint patch went into gnome-libs today. I am really excited about the next round of GNOME releases... it is going to be much nicer for people using the tasklist. I got my patch drawing the icon on a window's iconized window, ie in fvwm, twm, or window maker when you iconify something. Also if you are using KWM the control center's icon changes depending on which capplet it is showing. Unfortunately, their scaling stuff isn't so beautiful so the icons look pretty crappy.

Speaking of KDE, it seems they are releasing a beta of KDE2. Seems logical to delay GNOME 1.2 a little after that, so now we are looking at around the 17th of May for "April" GNOME. It seems like it is going to be a pretty nice release, more tested than any other GNOME release thanks to the Monkey.

Today or yesterday I realized it has been like 30 months since my ex and I broke up. That seems like so long ago. I wish I would be less shy sometimes, but it is hard to find motivation.

posted by jacob around May 4, 2000

May 11, 2000

Spent all of yesterday building packages for the 1.1.90 release. Updated something like 17 packages on 5 distros. Fun Fun Fun! After these all got built, pushed the updates to axon.

Released 1.1.90 to the world. Made a tarball of all the sources, it was something like 32 MB. KDE released a beta of KDE 2, with a huge press release and stuff.

We got slashdotted again, because of the Evolution release. Fortunately we had been moved to the 100 MBit section, and the images were being served off of Akamai, so the web pages were pretty fast, I hope.

Announced the 1.1.90 Helix GNOME updates on the updates list. Unfortunately, at some point I messed up the libdb stuff again, but it is fixed now. We served ~13 GB from the ftp server today; dunno how much the web server did. But Nat hacked the installer and updater to get packages from Akamai, so things should be much better bandwidth wise. At least that is what we hope.

The other day I couldn't sleep so I hacked this.

It seems Sony isn't making the 64 MB RAM upgrade for my laptop anymore, or something. I was all set to spend some money, too.

posted by jacob around May 11, 2000

May 12, 2000

Fun Times with Matt Loper on the Mariott hotel garage's roof and what not.

posted by jacob around May 12, 2000

May 13, 2000

I don't really remember today.

posted by jacob around May 13, 2000

May 14, 2000

Very awesome day.

Office people decided to see "Gladiator" today. I talked to my mom for a little before we went; have to call her at work tomorrow.

Movie wasn't bad, although my bladder found it to be pretty long.

On the way back to the car, saw a lanky person running. Sure enough, it was Nat, running to his car before someone could steal his video camera. I ended up going to Cafe Algiers with him instead of going to the sweatshop. This is where my day began to get interesting.

Burned my tongue on some hot chocolate whilst at said cafe, with Taylor, Nat, and Abi.

Went back to the cave with nat, who started cleaning his apartment and stuff. Saw the end of "Three Kings" which Mig was watching on the couch.

Fixed a shelf in the Cave's cupboard.

Started watching "The 5^th Element". There have been like 5 times where I was about to see this movie but did not. This turned out to be time 6.

About 5 minutes into the movie, Nat said to me, "Do you want to go to Cape Cod?". I was like, "Ok", so we grabbed some Snacks (pickes, bread, coke, cookies) and Nat's camera and headed for the Sweatshop to get my CDs.

Did not convince anyone to come with us at the office, but did pick up my CD's.

Fun trip with Nat. Talked about life, girls, the Company, what not, etc. Did some filming of the trip, and am looking forward to seeing the tape.

Breakfast at some place in Cape Cod.

Car trip home was kind of long as there was traffic. Nat's phone started vibrating, and it was his dad, telling him that the Wall Street Journal article about us was really good. Unfortunately the bug-buddy demo did not wow them so much, as they didn't mention it.

Nat drove around honking and yelling out the window for a while on the way back to the office.

Waited for 8 AM PST so I could find out if the one place actually did have RAM for my laptop in stock. They had 17 left; now 16. Woo hoo! And it wasn't $400 either.

Also ordered a Sun USB keyboard for my laptop; not totally sure why.

I think I am going to start getting some model train stuff for my apartment.

Went to sleep.

posted by jacob around May 14, 2000

May 15, 2000

Woke up around 7 in the PM, I think it was too early.

Went to the office and started working on SuSE 6.4 foo.

Then went to some beverage place with miggie and chris lahey of chris lahey fame, and off to the Cave where i finally actually did see "The 5^th Element".

posted by jacob around May 15, 2000

May 16, 2000

So my RAM actually came in today. Next day air rules like all get-out. I quickly proceeded to void the warranty on bron-yr-aur and got the ram in. Spent a bit more time getting the suspend-to-disk partition working, but it wasn't all that hard.

I know that adding RAM to a machine is the best way to make it faster, but it still surprises me. So now I think my laptop probably might be faster overall than serendipity. Which is kinda sad, since I am neglecting that machine so much these days. And I used to love it so.

More 6.4 work.

I decided it'd be nice to have a nice hard drive in my laptop, but I didn't see any IBM laptop drives with 2 MB of cache, which is disappointing, since the IBM drive in serendipity is quite nice.

So it seems that the big memory "black hole" in the updater / installer only hapens on 2.3 kernels. Also, we can't do DNS lookups in the installer since there are some bin incompat changes (since the dns libs are dynamically loaded, even if you compile as static), so we are going to have to get around this some how for the Akamaized installer.

posted by jacob around May 16, 2000

May 17, 2000

Decided to fix some gnome-core bugs today, namely the mailcheck applet making the panel look bad.

Noticed my laptop is lots faster with the new RAM :)

When on a little outing with the panel and memprof. Found out that compiling stuff with -pipe screws up memprof a little bit.

Fixed said mailcheck crashing, and also some small memleaks. It is a good thing that miguel doesn't read that code these days. :)

Also fixed a couple of leaks, and had George fix one too.

posted by jacob around May 17, 2000

May 18, 2000

Woo. My keyboard came in today, so I quickly got USB keyboard / mouse working. I only had to read 2 web pages and one kernel doc to get it all set up, which seemed pretty good. Probably didn't need the web page if I had looked at the docs first...

Did some mad helix updating: gimp, dia, pan, sawfish

Decided to run the panel under purify, since I was not sure which memleaks / crashes were fixed in gnome-libs and which weren't. Found that lots of widgets were not gettinng freed, or were being accessed after they were freed. Not Good. Since I found them with Purify, I got George to actually fix them (ok, I did fix the easy one).

I decided it is very cool to have purify around after today's events. Tim also fixed some crashings in the desk-guide (which I think my commit of Anders' code broke, but I am not sure), so I am fairly confident that the panel is pretty much stable and ready to go for 1.2. Good news, since it is like coming up and what not?

Went to Cafe Algiers with Nat. I had not been there for a while. I guess since Saturday.

The Debian dudes released our debs to the world. Let there be rejoicing.

Went to McD's in the morning with Arik.

So I have been listening to this stupid pac man song over and over today. I don't know what is wrong with me.

posted by jacob around May 18, 2000

May 19, 2000

Sleeping during the day.

posted by jacob around May 19, 2000

May 20, 2000

Started working on 1.2 packages. Did a whole bunch of the ones which had tarballs (thanks to the hackers who had them early).

I think I again went to McDonald's for some sausage McMuffin w/ egg things.

Called Mig to see if he wanted to go to IHOP for breakfast. He said he'd call back later.

He called back, so i headed for the T.

There was a Red Sox game today, so the T was very crowded. I got on the wrong T (my intent was to get on the non-packed one. Turned out it was non-packed for a reason). So I spent like 1.5 hours and eventually made it to a miggie-less IHOP.

Found him at the Cave watching Friends. Watched some Friends with he and Nat.

Went to Newberry street. Ate at some Italian / Persian place where I had some shrimp things.

Went to a bookstore where I was treated like a criminal again. I think I was allergic to that place too.

Went to the office, where I fell asleep at my desk again. Convinced myself to go home and go to sleep. This was like 5 PM.

Evidently, people went out or something, while I slept. I think someone somewhere owes me a weekend, or something.

posted by jacob around May 20, 2000

May 21, 2000

Not a good day, wholistically. Maybe it was, actually.

Woke up around 2 AM, which was like 9 hours of sleep. I figured that was pretty good, so I'd do over to the office. Woke up again 6 hours later.

I have been trying to figure out why I have been sleeping so much, since before I used to go a long time without sleeping. I think it is because I used to drink a lot more coke, so I am going to start drinking more coke in the future.

Got to the office around 9, and started making 1.2.0 packages.

Realized the PPC machine had no partitions on it. Frantically ran around trying to find the LinuxPPC 2000 CD's. Could not find them.

Installed MacOS 9 on the machine. Installed the LinuxPPC 2000 beta we had. Didn't remember which partition root was so could not boot it.

Started building some packages.

Noticed Gnumeric was dynamically linking with libole2, which seemed like a Bad Thing^TM. Some slight panic action.

Around 11:15 I remembered I was supposed to pick up itp of iagno fame at the airport. His plane was supposed to arrive at 11:20. Some more of the panic.

Promptly ran out of the office.

Jor Orlando (our PR guy) was supposed to meet with Nat at 10:30, and he was outside waiting for someone to let him in. Let him in and gave him Nat's cell phone #.

Went to the airport and finally found an enraged Ian. I hope he can find it in his heart to forgive me, as I was having a panicked day.

Made it back to the office to find Joe had not called Nat (who had not yet arrived). Proceeded to call Nat, who continued to sleep.

Hacked bug-buddy.

Nat came by, so I went downstairs to work.

Finally fixed the stupid package entry crapiness that had been in bug-buddy.

Got Gnumeric to compile with a static libole2. Miggie and I had a stupid disagreement over this. I hope he doesn't stay upset at me over it for much longer.

I then got to package up AbiWord. Spent a couple of hours getting intimate with the abi build system, and finally popped out some working RPMs.

Found out jrb did not commit the patch I sent him, so no control-center 1.2.0 today.

At this point, I think i'd had like 8 cokes and a Mt. Dew today. I was feeling pretty awake.

IHOP.

Committed my gnomecc patch, and made final gnome-core, gnome-applets, and bug-buddy tarballs.

Sleep. That coke thing is working well, I think.

posted by jacob around May 21, 2000

May 24, 2000

Working on 1.2 all day.

posted by jacob around May 24, 2000

May 25, 2000

GNOME 1.2 came out and stuff.

posted by jacob around May 25, 2000

May 26, 2000

Move Night: MI2.

Verdict: sucked. Which was to be expected, but still... I don't think it was as bad as the first one, but all conditions weren't really equal. A positive note: the crowd was on Nat's side this time. I still took the precaution of not sitting very close to him so i wouldn't get hit by stuff again.

Hanging out at the office.

Started hacking something.

Went to McDonad's, came back, had morning disease, went home.

posted by jacob around May 26, 2000

May 27, 2000

Woke up at 7, went to the office.

Read mail for about an hour and a half.

Went to some place called the "Hong Kong" with Nat. Eventually ended up at some cafe or something, where I had some flan and hot chocolate.

Anna found us there, and we took a taxi to Man Ray.

Walked to the office from there. It is nice not getting lost.

Took the T to the cave; watched some Tom Green and Friends. Friends was kinda depressing so I went and listened to a Hendrix CD on Nat's steps.

I had this exciting plan for when Nat returned, but it did no come to fruition because of bathroom issues.

Watched some more friends, and then "The Day of the Jackal" which wasn't as bad as I had thought it was going to be from the first few minutes of it.

Walked home from Nat's. Actually the office. It is frightening how interchangable those words have become.

Tried to hack at the office but had more morning disease so went home.

posted by jacob around May 27, 2000

May 28, 2000

So basically my alarm clock is almost useless. Either it has learned how to un-set itself during the night, or I have completely mastered the art of turning it off without waking up. I do not remember the last time that it actually woke me up.

Anyway, woke up around 1 and was supposed to pick of Richard Hestilow of tvgm fame at 2.

I guess he gets in at 3:44. Time for a little gnome-breakout.

Blah blah blah. Funny dinner, ask me about it some time.

Here is a little skit:

Me: Are you dangerously sexual?
Aaron: I tried to be for some time.

Another:

Nat: So, yeah umm Greece.
Taylor: WHAT ABOUT IT?!??!?

I had a third one, but I think it would upset someone.

Walked home from Nat's again, this time via Harvard bridge. Took 45 minutes, vs. yesterday's hour. Woo hoo, 15 extra sleep minutes.

posted by jacob around May 28, 2000

May 29, 2000

Yeah so today mostly was not great.

For the first time that I can remember, I didn't look forward to going to work.

Since I haven't been able to get SuSE 6.4 to download completely yet, I walked to CompUSA and bought a copy. They didn't search my backpack this time, which is good for them.

So installing SuSE was fun. After installing a few packages, it reboots and then is supposed to startup the install program again and finish the install. Unfortunately, if you don't use their kernel this program segfaults, and you are left with like gnome-media. Which isn't really enough.

So I reinstalled again and had it run lilo (should have done it on a boot floppy but that is something I am going to leave out since it is embarassing). And it worked, mostly, but hangs at the end of the install. Weird.

So I did most of Helix for SuSE 6.4. The rest will get finished tomorrow.

Decided to get a 5 disc player for work. Unfortunately best buy closed early for memorial day. There is tomorrow...

Half the company went to Legal's. Half to Uno's. This half went to McDonald's. The thing I hate most about Boston is that there is like one Wendy's. I should write Dave Thomas a letter or something. That is one thing that CMU should advertise over MIT. I mean, come on. No Spicy's? Legal's is nice, but it just does not compare. Especially to the Super Wendy's in PGH. It is open 24-7, even on Easter. Granted the McDonald's around here is too, but they don't have Spicy's. My friend says that BK has a "spicy chicken", and that it is worse than their normal chicken. I wonder if it is worse than those tiny cnickens they had for a while; the $1 ones. Those were pretty bad. Sigh. I guess this is how Zucchi feels about American "beer"

Decided to listen to "In Utero" at some point today. Not as bad as I had comparatively thought it was back when I got it.

Went to sleep early so that tomorrow will get here more quicklierlike. I hope I will be able to sleep.

posted by jacob around May 29, 2000