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June 30, 2005 / Thursday
Muni Fucks
SoopahViv: ugh, muni
jessefantabulous It so fucks
jessefantabulous oops
SoopahViv: hahahahhaa
jessefantabulous sucks!
jessefantabulous :)
05:25 PM | | Comments (0)
Newsletter Looove
I receive a monthly newsletter from a software company whose product I admined a while back. These newsletters are sent from an employee e-mail account. In March of this year, a new employee took over their newletter duties.
1. The newsletters started coming as Outlook-displayable attachments.
2. The new newsletter sender's last name is Truelove.
Now when I receive their monthly newletter, I glance at the name and the attachment icon and the first thought that pops into my head is, "DON'T OPEN THAT, IT'S A pR0n v1Ru5!!!"
Thanks, company which will remain unnamed, for the monthly chuckle.
01:26 PM | | Comments (0)
Thursday Threesome
Someone at work just wished someone else a good weekend. I started to get excited because I thought it was Friday. I figured I'd do a Friday Fiver to celebrate.
But then the Friday Fiver loaded and I couldn't find any new questions.
Boo, it's only Thursday.
Not to be deterred, I found a Thursday Threesome to do instead.
Onesome - I'll be - What did you want to grow up to be when you were a child? If you aren't fulfilling your childhood dream, what made you change it?
I wanted to be an astronomer. I used to go to the library across the street and borrow books with pretty pictures of planets in them. The funny thing is, I was scared to death of the night sky. Something about the moon and the stars totally freaked me out. I'd run from the car into the house with my head down if we were out 'til dark. Then, when I got into the house, I'd run from window to window and pull down the shades, all while looking at nothing but the dark floor. Strange that I never thought to turn a light on during those panicked window runs.
The dream never changed; it just quietly faded away.
Twosome - Your shoulder - Who's your confidant? Who do you run to when you need emotional support?
My shoulder is sore, I don't have a confidant, and I don't run to anyone for emotional support. PT was no help, no one knows my deepest darkest secrets, and running hurts my knees -- I prefer to skate.
Threesome - When you cry - What makes you cry? The scent of flowers? Allergies? Or are you just super-sensitive to that sad song you always seem to hear on the radio lately?
Everything makes me cry. Movies, concussions, anger, onions, happy things, sad things, yawning, even my boss leaving the country. What *doesn't* make me cry?
Waah.
01:01 PM | Memes| Comments (5)
June 29, 2005 / Wednesday
Thumbnail Strip Improvements
I was unhappy with the slow-loading slide view thumbnails in Firefox, so I did a little recoding to make the page display individual thumbnails as they load, which is what I originally wanted. Hallelujah, it works!
But not in IE. Well, it mostly works in IE, except when you click on a thumbnail while others are still loading. That loads the desired slide and slide info, but it kills the remaining thumbnail loads. I could probably fix it, but not tonight. So, those of you using IE to view slides will still see the thumbnail load counter. I expect that to mean none of you, 'cause really, who actually looks at my pictures? On the offchance that some of you do, however, this is yet another reason to switch (hint hint).
Maybe you IE users should, you know, install Firefox, just to see what I'm writing about. ;)
10:43 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
How's This For Reasonable?
With regard to the possibility of plea bargain in the Wendy's chili finger case, the prosecutor said, "I have nothing to offer them at this time. If they want to accept responsibility for their conduct, I’m fine with that."
... to which one of the defense attorneys replied, "I don’t think that’s reasonable."
What?? It's not reasonable to expect people to accept responsibility for what they do?
I think judges should have "dumbshit" buttons at the bench, so that when a dumbshit lawyer says something like the above the judge can push the button and drop the floor out from under said lawyer.
I also think they should install a crocodile pit under the dumbshit floorboard.
04:53 PM | Rant/Whine| Comments (3)
At Least I Could Walk
Heard from Howitzer today that his teammate had to be carried off the ice for a groin pull this past weekend. With that in mind, sitting out for 3 weeks* doesn't seem long at all.
Oh, right, I was taking time off for my concussion.
*I hope it amounts to only 3 weeks. I'll find out at public skate tomorrow.
11:57 AM | Hockey:Injuries| Comments (4)
June 28, 2005 / Tuesday
Pit Bull Paranoia
What's up with all the Bay Area pit bulls wiggin' out this month?
I sure hope it doesn't have anything to do with natural disaster detection.
02:23 PM | | Comments (0)
Penguinmania
Yes, it's true, I'm obsessed with my new penguin friend.
My new penguin icon 
My other option was Stinkoman. 
I think I'm going to start carrying Mr. Penguin around so I can take pictures of him with random things. Nothing too big; I can't really get a good picture of him unless I'm in macro mode.
I guess that means no pictures with large landmarks. Perhaps we could do small pieces of large landmarks instead. Things like, "Mr. Penguin, posing with a paint chip at the Golden Gate Bridge."
He still needs a first name. Suggestions?
12:17 AM | Blog/Website| Comments (17)
June 27, 2005 / Monday
Ow, My Wrists
2 weeks of ibuprofen and not doing much --> happy wrists
1 session of upper body weight training --> aching wrists
:(
03:13 PM | Injuries| Comments (4)
Hallelujah! I Can See!
For the last couple weeks I've been worried that I may be going blind. The world's been far blurrier than is acceptable, despite the fact that it's been only a few months since my new prescription. This morning, I decided I'd had enough. I did the individual eye test, found that my left eye was blurry, worried that I was losing sight in that eye, cleaned out the contact lens to be sure, and put it back in.
Still blurry. I have the same prescription in both eyes, and although I never swap them 'cause I don't want to cross-contaminate, I decided it would be okay ... just this once.
So I swapped them, and all of a sudden I couldn't see clearly out of my right eye.
I've never been so happy to have a faulty contact lens before.
Fortunately, I had a spare pair at work, so now I can see again.
Yesh.
09:49 AM | | Comments (0)
June 26, 2005 / Sunday
Le Snack Game 8: Mudskippers
I've missed the last two games no thanks to a groin pull, but at least I managed to come cheer for this one (and do other goodly things like bringing the roster and pucks and finding subs). Le Snack, full of Les Subs, played a frenzied game at Fremont this afternoon, outshooting the other team 31-20 and finishing the game tied 5-5 after three periods of cheerworthy hockey.
Great game, Le Snack! Thanks for playing with us, Les Subs!
May the Snack be with you.
I don't know why I find that so funny.
09:18 PM | Le Snack| Comments (3)
Rated -M
My sister won't let mom read her collection of Sin City books because she doesn't think mom can handle all the nudity and violence depicted in them.
-M: Not for mom.
09:11 PM | Famidotes| Comments (0)
4 Month Ouch Cycle
Bah, I suck.
I'm good about not curbing my rims when I park, but I'm really bad about curb corners that stick out farther than I think they should.
Siiigh.
June 24, 2005 / Friday
Flickr'd For Real
Finally finished integrating everything with Flickr. No more serving up album images from soopahviv.net. No more embedded Flash album. No more semi-static thumbnails in the slide view. Hooray.
I had a hard time implementing the new slide view, though. I created a scrollable thumbnail area above the slide, and once again I ran into the dreaded flickering iframe problem in Firefox. As with the AdSense flicker, none of the possible fixes I found online worked. I wound up using my absolute positioning hack again. This time, however, I needed to have content display properly below the hack div. This hack add-on turned out to be easier than I thought; I just added a div right under it with the same height.
Sometimes, I don't love Firefox.
The other little hiccup I ran into was that it took forever to load the thumbnail strip in slides mode. I didn't recode it to load any faster, but at least now there's a nifty little load counter you can look at until the thumbnails are shown.
As always, if you find a bug, please report it!
06:48 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
June 23, 2005 / Thursday
Pic of the Day
2nd from left: Aww, man, I have so much babyfat I can't see my toes!
Far right: *flap flap flap* What are these for?
And let's not forget ...
Penguiiins!!!
June 22, 2005 / Wednesday
Crack Snickers
Why, oh why, must the vending machine at work sell such yummy Snickers bars? They're always freshly soft, and the caramel inside is always gooey. I can't not eat them. Even when I have no change and no small bills on me, I manage to scrounge up enough coins to get my fix. Our yummy Snickers situation is self-perpetuating, too, because everyone seems to be addicted to them, which means the vending folks are always replenishing the supply with fresher, softer, gooier bars.
Mmm ...
As If I Didn't Love Firefox Enough
I don't know why I didn't figure this out before, but middle clicking on a Firefox bookmarks folder will open all the links in that folder in tabs. Be careful, though; it's a mouse shortcut for "Open in Tabs", which means it will close the currently open tabs in your window and replace them with new tabs for each link in the clicked-on folder.
On a related note, middle clicking on a bookmark will open it in a fresh tab in the current window.
Failed Fusion Food
1 scoop of buttery mashed potatoes
1 scoop of Southwestern corn salad
2 tofu and shitake mushroom kabobs
That was today's lunch special.
Green Practice
Went to help out at the Green Practice today. Totally glad I went. I spent most of the session imparting bits of goalie knowledge (from what little I know!) to Susi, who suited up and tried the goalie thing out for the first time tonight. She did pretty well! It's fun teaching her things 'cause she listens and works hard to learn. Low frustration for the teacher, high reward for everyone. Woot.
Other events of note, in no particular order ...
Jennie made her return to Green Division tonight! Welcome back, Jennie! :)
Cheddah was there, too, and she gave me a present. A 6-sided mirror! No, wait, there was something inside. I opened up the shiny little box, and out came a penguin! Thanks, Cheddah! You rule. And rock.
I also got to meet Betty Shinka tonight. I kept trying to take pictures of the cool Shinka logo on the door, but it was too shiny and I couldn't manage a picture of the logo without a reflected background. Betty Shinka rocks. And rules.
The groin pull is still on the mend. There will be no hockey for me this coming weekend. Another three games missed. I was going to waah, but as Andrea reminded me earlier tonight, it's less time off from hockey than I'd have to take for a broken bone.
Good point.
12:31 AM | Hockey| Comments (8)
June 20, 2005 / Monday
They're Still Not Listening, La La La
Note to self: Do not tell family members you're injured, because no matter how many times you tell them that you skipped 4.5+ ice times last weekend, that you rested all last week, and that you intend to rest all this week, all they will say is, "You're injured, you should rest."
HELLO! DID YOU LISTEN TO A SINGLE WORD I SAID?
Actually, yes. Two words, even. They heard "pulled something".
My aunt at least can tell you what I pulled (and then tell you based on her own experience years ago that I should be on crutches, even though I can walk, heck, run, without pain). My dad, on the other hand, knows only that I "pulled something". Why doesn't he know more? Because that phrase automatically triggered 50 variations (okay, slight exaggeration) of "you should rest".
*grumble*
• • •
I know, I know, they only do it 'cause they care, but it'd be nice if they weren't so good at selective hearing.
08:27 PM | Famidotes:PSA/NTS| Comments (0)
I'm A Weakling
But at least I made it back to the gym.
The SM24hF has new equipment! I really miss going there. DC, Pac, and Ocean suck by comparison.
Good news: my wrists feel a little better. Only minor pain in the right wrist during my bicep curls. I'm thinking I should get weight training gloves with wrist support.
Not so good news: my left shoulder feels weird. It doesn't hurt, but it's not happy. Boo.
If I'm sufficiently motivated I might try to do adductor-free LB tomorrow. We'll see.
01:41 PM | Gym:Injuries| Comments (4)
Bye Bye, Muscle
I haven't done anything really active in over a week, but my legs are sore.
Maybe that's how muscles feel when they atrophy.
Yuck, An X (x4)
To do: Modify the latest photos code so we're not displaying 75x75 'X's when Flickr's down.
12:17 AM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
June 19, 2005 / Sunday
Flickr'd
I gave in. My random photos are now hosted on Flickr. It'll make the whole upload process easier for me, especially since I won't have to do any image resizing. I was going to write an upload tool to do all that on my host, but integrating with Flickr sounded more fun.
I also played with Python some and wrote a batch tool that can load my various albums with title and description information. I need to add another little piece that will let me create a set and add images to that set as I load each album.
The thumbnail and slides pages are in for a rewrite, too.
All this, so that in the end, you guys see pretty much what you already see now. That sounds like a lot of work for such a small return, but the hope is that it'll make things easier for me in the future.
06:13 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
June 17, 2005 / Friday
6r01n Pu1Lz R d4 5uX
My hockey schedule for this weekend, originally:
Thursday: clinic (goalie)
Friday: clinic
Saturday: clinic
Saturday: Ice Oasis
Sunday: Le Snack
My hockey schedule for this weekend, in reality:
Thursday: cancelled
Friday: 45 minutes of clinic
Saturday: cancelled
Saturday: cancelled
Sunday: cancelled
I don't know how I did it, but I pulled a groin muscle in the first period of last weekend's Le Snack game. I played hard on it the rest of the game, and spent the first half of this week limping. I thought I'd healed enough to skate 80% on it at the clinic tonight, but after a few drills I was hurting. A lot.
All I can do now is rest and hope to be back in action for next weekend.
At least I was able to dislodge an ice pack from the iceberg that is my freezer.
Yes, I'm icing my groin. Yes, that's pretty funny.
11:48 PM | Hockey:Injuries| Comments (6)
Cup-a-Rant
Rant 1: Cup a soup?!
I'm speechless. I want to rant, but I'm somehow unable to form anything coherent. I think the phrase "cup a soup" has actually managed to destroy grammar neurons in my brain.
Are they purposely butchering the English language, or do a bunch of dimwits run their marketing department?*
Rant 2: Nobody QAed their website on Firefox.
I'll admit, I don't always remember to QA my site on IE, but my site is not my job. I'm not being paid to make it perfect. Product website sloppiness, yuck.
*If someone writes to tell me that I may actually know the dimwit responsible for this perfect example of horrific grammar, I'm going to scream.
06:14 PM | Rant/Whine| Comments (6)
Exercise Plan For Auntie
My mom just called to ask about my aunt.
M: How is she?
V: She's doing all right.
M: She should exercise more. She should hula.
V: You think she wants to hula?
M: You can have her to hula with you.
V: How am I going to do that?
M: If you tell her you're better, she'll want to beat you.
V: You want me to start a hula hooping competition with her?
M: Yes, she's very competitive.
M: When I scored a perfect score on her karaoke machine she practiced until she matched it.
M: Just go upstairs and tell her you're learning.
M: Don't outhula her too much the first day.
M: Then, each day, hula a little longer so she has a challenge.
V: Mom, you're funny.
M: You think it's a bad idea?
V: No, I just think you're funny.
M: Well, that's the plan, okay?
V: Um, sure.
M: Bye.
04:08 PM | Famidotes| Comments (8)
Bring Back The Brush!
I used a bottle of Wite-Out today for the first time since ... high school (maaaybe college)? When I pulled the applicator out of the bottle, I stared at it for a few seconds, wondering what the white glob was at the end of the wand. Turns out they don't use brushes anymore; the mysterious white glob was an applicator sponge!
I thought the brush worked better.
• • •
In case you're wondering why that title sounds so strangely familar ...
I don't know about you, but I've been walking around the last few weeks randomly thinking, "Bring back the fluff!"
11:06 AM | | Comments (5)
Take That, Saboteur Mouse
I got a new keyboard at work today.
It doesn't have a power button.
Good.
10:50 AM | | Comments (2)
June 16, 2005 / Thursday
Cross-Browser Navigation Happiness
For the bargain price of 11 additional characters in the stylesheet, we now have a navigation menu that behaves the same way in both IE and Firefox.
Yaaay.
11:40 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
Goodbye, Random AdSense Placement Bug
I suspected that the AdSense banner placement randomly shifted up because of interactions with the loading/caching of the latest photos thumbnails above it. As a quick test, I cleared the browser cache before reloading the front page, and I was able to reproduce the problem every time.
The fix was a lot more obvious (and a lot less of a hack) than the one for the flicker: specify a size for the thumbnails so the browser allocates space for them even if the images themselves haven't loaded yet.
That did the trick.
07:17 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
Where's Tux?
cheddah: i'm defrosting the lab freezer today (ick)
cheddah: and keep hearing ice chunks fall
cheddah: sorta cool sounds!
SoopahViv: like icebergs breaking off?
cheddah: hahaha, close!
Blah blah blah ...
cheddah: okay, off to check on the icebergs
cheddah: :-D
SoopahViv: hahahaha
SoopahViv: bye :)
SoopahViv: may you find a penguin
cheddah: oooh, penguins!
Later, I received the following email ...
Subject: hey, guess what?
Body: when i cleaned out the freezer, lo and behold - look what i found!
How about that? Tux lives in a lab freezer at UCSC.
05:44 PM | | Comments (2)
Hello, Random AdSense Placement Bug
A side effect of my AdSense flicker fix is that Firefox will, rarely and randomly, place the AdSense banner just a little too high. A reload will almost always fix it, but it looks sloppy when it happens and I don't like it. A big bug fixed, a small bug created. Not a bad tradeoff, but I definitely want to fix the small bug too.
At least this way I don't have to worry about my website triggering epileptic seizures.
01:19 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
Bye Bye, AdSense Flicker!
To-do item #3 from Monday night's list is done. Different image views have been integrated into the rest of the site. Woop.
To-do item #1 from that same list is also done. The AdSense flicker is dead. WOOOOOT.
Most of you probably never even saw it. It was reproducible mostly in the image pages, mainly with the thumbnail display, and only on Firefox.
I saw it, though, and it drove me nuts. I've seen it for months now. I Googled adsense flicker and found a whole slew of pages detailing this very problem. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a different fix for each case. None of them worked for me.
I then searched for information on the Google AdSense site, thinking there might be something there to help the throngs of frustrated flickery site owners out there. Ironically, my search turned up nothing.
After having read more "solutions" to this problem than I can tally, I started to get a feel for what kind of CSS tweaks might tame the flickering. Most fixes involved a wrapper div, and something in the div style involving sizing and/or positioning. I tried sizing the wrapper div to the dimensions of the AdSense iframe, expanding the wrapper div to take up as much space as it could, changing the div's overflow value, its float value ...
And then, in a moment of CSS brilliance (not really, see below ...), I thought, "The problem seems to be that Firefox doesn't know where to put the AdSense iframe while it's loading the thumbnails. Why not try setting the div to use absolute positioning?"
Then I realized I wasn't so brilliant after all: absolute positioning requires absolute coordinates, which I couldn't supply, since the location of the AdSense banner depends on what gets displayed above it.
I was desperate, so I tried it anyway, sans coordinates.
Wouldn't ya know, it worked.
So, to add yet another thing to try to the world of Googleable AdSense flicker solutions, here's what worked for me:
<div style="position:absolute;"> [AdSense JavaScript blurb] </div>
Yes, it ended up being that simple. Figures.
• • •
Addendum: I believe this works only because the AdSense Banner is the last element on the page. If I had a subcategory for website hacks, this would definitely qualify.
12:15 AM | Blog/Website| Comments (4)
June 15, 2005 / Wednesday
San Francisco Sirens
They do exist! And here's a list!
Earlier today, in response to Marci's comment about air raid sirens in the Bay Area, I asked, "How do we know they still work if we never test them?"
It turns out we do test them, every Tuesday at noon.
I live 2 blocks from one of the sirens, but since I'm always at work when they test them, I've never heard it. Perhaps next Tuesday I'll come home for lunch so I can.
One Free Minute
This is kind of neat.
It appears to be something of a (temporary?) meatspace version of Anonyblog.
Still, I trust that even if one were to take the most precautionary of measures to remain anonymous, one could still, with the right words, earn a visit from the SS.
01:39 PM | Rant/Whine| Comments (6)
Chorizo Quesadilla
I love how the title sounds when read aloud.*
Flour tortilla, greasy chorizo, cheese, different cheese, sour cream, guacamole.
Rice and beans on the side.
My pants just got tighter.
*This likely holds true only for my not-exactly-a-gringo pronunciation of the word "chorizo".
Concussion Confirmation
Confirmation 1: Crying on the bench, but not really crying.
Confirmation 2: I've had one heck of a week at work, and it's not even half over! Everything throws me off. If you ask me a question, I get flustered, and my face turns beet red because I'm flustered. Now, I know it's not hard to get my face to turn red, but I'm talking Rudolph's Red Nose red. Of course, since I can't just say, "Sorry, my brain is broken this week, can you ask me next week?" I have to just ignore the fact that my head feels like it's about to ignite and answer the question.
Confirmation 3: My awesome boss announced on Monday morning that she's leaving the company (that's as much detail as you're ever going to hear from me here about work). When I talked to her about it that afternoon, I found myself sitting there, crying, wondering why I was being so emotional over something that I would normally handle with absolute calm. I was still calm enough to continue talking, but I couldn't stop the tears. My boss had to get me Kleenex from across the hall.
Hello, brain? Can you hear me? Are you done being pissed off at me for bruising you yet? Can you please fix yourself now?
09:59 AM | Injuries| Comments (10)
Picture Progress Update
To-do item #2 from yesterday's list is now done. No more unnecessary loading of the entire page. Huzzah.
Earlier today, I actually considered trashing a good chunk of what I've done on the pictures front thus far. After reading Liz's comment on yesterday's post I spent some time checking out Flickr.
Flickr pluses:
- Less bandwidth usage on this site.
- Multiple ways to upload.
- Automatic creation of different image sizes, including thumbnails.
- Easier maintenance of albums.
- An API that lets me get at everything I need for a full website integration.
Flickr minus:
- I can't create a custom thumbnail. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but I really like being able to zoom in on an interesting area of a photo for the thumbnail preview.
Perhaps I was looking for a minus so I wouldn't have to immediately throw away fresh work.
On the other hand, I'd really like an excuse to integrate Flickr pics into my site, so I'm rooting for the Flickr folks to implement that feature sooner rather than later.
12:10 AM | Blog/Website| Comments (5)
June 14, 2005 / Tuesday
Tsunami!
Okay, not quite a tsunami, but we had about an hour of tsunami warning tonight, between 7:50 and 8:50ish.
Of course, I didn't know about it until after 9 PM, when Andrea called to tell me that I was in imminent danger of being sucked out to sea, according to the message that interrupted tonight's broadcast of the John Tesh Radio Show.
What I would like to know is ...
- Why on earth is Andrea listening to John Tesh?
- What good is a tsunami warning if I don't find out about it until after it's over?
Seriously, it's not as if I live in a cave. I like to think that I do a fairly decent job of keeping up with the world. Perhaps what we need is a text message tsunami warning service.
Luckily for me, I get notifications from the Secret Weapon Tsunami Warning Service (SWTWS!).
Thanks, Andrea. :)
June 13, 2005 / Monday
Picture Progress
The new features:
- We now have a thumbnails view!
- We now have a generic way to switch between the three views: Bananalbum, PHPBanana, and Thumbnails. I'm pretty happy with it; it's a simple and clean example of PHP, JavaScript, and CSS working together.
The new to-do items resulting from the implementation of the new features:
- The Google AdSense flicker hasn't gone away, and it's particularly evident during thumbnail loading. I really need to fix that.
- Now that there's more code that gets excecuted per page load, there's a noticable second or so of blank screen when navigating through PHPBanana. I'm considering putting the album viewport in an iframe, which is actually how I integrated Bananalbum into my site.
- I need to migrate the new album code from the pictures area into the shared area so I can enable view selection for browsing photos in the Hockey and GTI areas of the site too.
Hrmm, it's getting late. Sleep, or code?
11:20 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (4)
June 12, 2005 / Sunday
User Error
Note to self: The SplashGuard works only if you don't tilt the bottle so far that the water level rises over the air hole on the other side.
What can I say, I'm a little overenthusiastic about the high-flow baby bottle thing. I realy do want to invert it and chug.
Waah.
11:58 PM | PSA/NTS| Comments (4)
Netminding For Red Rover
Played in net for Red Rover today. I think this is the first time all season I've played for this team. We faced Seeing Red, who, if I'm not mistaken, has won every game this season.
Red Rover started off the game playing very well. We scored first, and with most of the 1st period over, we were up 1-0.
Then, with 4 minutes left in the 1st, Kevin called a timeout. The game completely turned around after that. Bah.
At the end of the 1st period, Karen got a breakaway on me, and pulled some weird move where she faked her body entirely to her forehand, and yet managed to keep the puck on her backhand. It was a great deke, and a well deserved goal.
At the beginning of the 2nd period, Paula got kind of loose, came down to my left, and put the puck in through the little gap I left open between me and the post. That was dumb, dumb, dumb on my part. In retrospect, I realize I was not focused on the puck, but on her, and by squaring myself to the skater instead of the puck, I left enough of an opening for her to score. Dammit!
I say dammit partly because I hate giving up dumb goals, and partly because this was the difference between a tie and a loss. This could have and should have been a tie.
Final score: 1-2. Shot count: 9-30. I think most of those 9 came in the 1st period. Whatever Kevin said during that timeout, it worked.
One of my strap ends got loose during the game, and instead of throwing off my helmet and stopping play outright, I decided to wait until a whistle before fixing the strap. Whistles usually come every couple minutes in Red. I think I played almost 5 before we had a stop in play, due to a penalty on my team.
After that stop in play, the whistle blew, oh, every 10-15 seconds. I think we spent the entire penalty kill in our zone, and they just kept shooting.
No complaints here. It was good for my save percentage. ;) More importantly, I finally started to learn to deaden and freeze the puck. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of all the fatty rebounds I've been giving up. That would mean a lot less scrambling to get back into position all game.
Liz G, who was on my team today, sat on me in the crease during a mad scramble in the 3rd. I think it's payback for my hitting her in the head with the puck during Le Snack warmups last week. I think I got off easy.
11:37 PM | Red: S2005| Comments (4)
Le Snack Game 6: Brownies!
Um, I mean, Ice Chex!
*munches on brownie*
Played another super fun Le Snack game tonight. Everyone played *so* well. It was great to watch our team playing hard, skating fast, and having a good time.
We did have more penalties than usual. A couple trips and a hooking, maybe? I think our average this season is <1 per game, so tonight's count was not very Snacklike. Maybe it's 'cause we were all playing hard.
Penalties aside, playing hard paid off. We won!
Final score: 2-1. Malinda scored! Woot! I got an assist on it! Woot again! Lindsay scored our other goal, surprise surprise. ;)
I learned a couple things tonight.
Thing 1: Just keep skaaating. I've long known that I need to keep skating, and skating hard, to catch someone in front of me, but for some reason I've always slowed down as the distance between us decreased, resulting in my never catching them. I'm finally learning to consciously tell myself to keep skating during such chases, and, imagine that, it actually works! Watching it finally start to work is a great incentive to skate even harder, so I can someday see it work realy well (I hope!).
Thing 2: Stay away from Mary. Late in the 3rd period, a puck scooted loose to the edge of the rink. Mary and I went after it. As I was skating to the puck, I thought, "Mary's not going to back off, and I will arrive at the puck a split second before she does, so either I can back off, or I can brace for impact." I wasn't about to back off, even though I know Mary can send me across the ice. Unfortunately, she sent me straight into the boards, and I found myself lying there on my back, dazed and with the wind totally knocked out of me. I realized I was right next to my bench, so I somehow made myself get up and hop off. My head didn't hit anything, but I think I got a concussion via whiplash. My neck is starting to get sore. Ugh!
Le Snack of the night: brownies, separated into center and edge pieces and labeled as such. Awesome.
Before the game, Lorel gave me a maroon bandana, and that's why I got my first point of the season tonight. Thanks, Lorel!
10:46 PM | Injuries:Le Snack| Comments (2)
PHPBanana
Revamped the PHP album code so that it does a less kludgy job of parsing the Bananalbum XML. It works for all Bananalbum folders now, not just the photoblog.
*petselfonhead*
Links to toggle exist only for the photoblogs right now. Instead of adding toggle links to the headers of each album, I'd like to create a generic way to the view of all albums through either Bananalbum or PHPBanana.
I'll also be adding a thumbnails-only view at some point.
01:00 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
Wasting Away
I haven't been weight training, I've been eating more than I should, my pants aren't any looser, and I'm a few pounds lighter than I'd expect.
This can mean only one thing: I'm losing muscle mass.
*#&$(*&@)(!!!
I haven't been to the gym in so long that I dread going. I'm *really* going to hurt afterward.
E-mail Posting
If you're reading this, it worked.
If you're reading this, woot!
If you're reading this, hooray for MEOW.
01:46 AM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
June 11, 2005 / Saturday
All Blog And No Hockey
I missed my RWC game tonight. What? Me, miss a game?
Yup, but I finished my PHP album for my photoblog. I didn't have to change any of the existing files, so everything will still be viewable through Bananalbum.
UI stickler that I am, I made the PHP album look and function similar to its Flash counterpart. In addition to reading the Bananalbum XML file, it uses the existing Bananalbum JavaScript to display larger versions of the images.
The only noticable difference is the lack of dynamic thumbnail scrolling, but I added thumbnail pagination, which, given the reason I wanted a Flash alternative (for people who didn't want to or need to view the entire album), should suffice.
Latest Photos thumbnails in the blog sidebar now link to each thumbnail's respective slide in the PHP album ... as they should!
10:07 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
Mudskippin'
Subbed for the Mudskippers at Fremont tonight. We faced the Replacements, who had previously dominated games against this team.
It was different tonight. We did well! We had 27 (or was it 29?) shots to their 20, and that was with 10.5 skaters on big ice. Great job, Mudskippers!
Final score: 1-3. The Replacements had Tami in net. She was giving up a *few* more rebounds than usual, but stopping every first shot goes a long way.
I had a ton of fun (and a nice trip to the net on my first shift, woot!). Lots of great folks on this team. Hooray for fun teams!
Oh, and they really liked Le Snack, and would like to play us every game. :)
Go, Le Snack, go!
12:32 AM | Hockey| Comments (0)
I Heart Dynamic Archives
I knew that publishing speed would increase significantly after switching to dynamic archives, but I didn't realize how much I'd appreciate it until just now. That's good stuff!
Sorry, Nadsy. Pretend you didn't read the title.
12:29 AM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
X&Y
Picked up the new Coldplay album today.
It's awesome.
They just keep getting better and better.
They're also starting to sound less like oldish DMB and more like oldish U2.
I want more.
More!
12:26 AM | | Comments (2)
Me, At McD's?!
Stopped by McDonald's for a drink after EWH today. I ordered a large soda, $1.69 on their menu. The guy behind the counter asked if I'd like the Super Size soda on their Dollar Menu instead. I ended up with an extra large for $1.07. I don't understand fast food pricing sometimes. Nonetheless, thanks McD's counter guy!
The other nice thing about getting a drink at McDonald's is the fact that they carry Light Minute Maid Lemonade now, which means I can make calorie free teamonade. Oh, how I love teamonade. 32 ounces of it, no less!
Yes, I'm lovin' it.
12:19 AM | Drinks| Comments (0)
June 10, 2005 / Friday
EWH Blurb
Stopped by East West Hockey to get my skates sharpened today, and was met with what looked like a very empty store. Turns out they're in the midst of expanding. Go EWH!
While I waited for my skates, I browsed their goalie equipment, and saw, to my surprise, goalie jills! Finally, a shop in the area that stocks them! I already bought mine (in Canada, eh?), but this is great news. Go EWH again!
11:47 PM | Hockey| Comments (3)
More Website Tweaks
Made a change to the latest photos sidebar section. We're now sorting the images, most recent at top. Also, changed the # of days shown to 5, down from 7, to be consistent with blog posts.
Enabled scheduled future posting for MT, too. If you're reading this, it worked.
08:24 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
Crack Boba In My Hood
Eggettes, home of the only boba I like enough to consume (a.k.a. crack boba), is opening a new shop up the street from where I live.
1. I'm excited.
2. I'm scared.
3. I hope the slightly uphill walk to the shop will be enough to keep me from turning into a human boba.
Hrmm, I'd end up looking kind of like Stinkoman's hands in that banner up top.
09:48 AM | Drinks| Comments (9)
June 09, 2005 / Thursday
All Blog And No Play
No, wait, working on my website *is* play.
Not much new stuff I can show you. I've been working on pages in the admin area. I did, however, get a less grainy version of the hockey banner up, thanks to KarenB (again!). Oh, and Cheddah might like the new links banner. :)
11:34 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (2)
Scratch That
I decided the banners for the different site sections didn't all make sense at the top of the blog, so no more random banner. I'm keeping the Stinkoman banner, which was originally created for my links page. That one seems to work best. :)
12:34 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (8)
Random Banners!
Main blog banner now random. Woot again!
01:17 AM | Blog/Website| Comments (6)
June 08, 2005 / Wednesday
Dynamic Archives!
Dynamic archives are done! This doesn't mean much to you, but to me it means I can tweak my templates all I want without ever having to rebuild more than just the index files. This will save me a bit of server space, a lot of time, and, more importantly, a lot of headache. Woot!
11:27 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
Bear With Me
Switching site to use dynamic archives. Will have to temporarily break it ...
10:25 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (1)
Ooh, Banner!
I got sick of the boring grey rectangles and decided to spruce up the site a little. The goalie in the banner is, you guessed it, me! Thanks KarenB for taking the picture.
I also made a few small tweaks here and there.
All that, for a grand total of 1 new file and 1 modified file. Hooray for style sheets!
08:49 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
Think Some, Code Some
Aside from thinking, I've also been staying up late working on some admin pages for my website.
Go ahead, try it.
Sike!
03:42 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (8)
Still Here
Two days of blog silence. That's rare for me.
I've been spending a lot of time thinking.
About what? Without going into great detail ...
1. About me. Every couple years I become fairly introspective. I think it's partly because I fear stagnation, and partly because I want to make sure that I'm heading in the right direction. Thus, I spend a lot of time looking at who I am, where I am, what I'm doing, etc. This usually results in some sort of change. What exactly that change (or, more likely, those changes) will be remains to be seen.
2. About people. I've long tried to believe that, save for a few bad eggs, people are in general good and reasonable beings. Perhaps I've encountered an unusually high number of bad eggs lately, but I'm having a lot of trouble believing that these days. That's not to say I think most people are bad eggs, but there certainly seems to be more of them around than I thought. That makes me a little sad.
3. About my friends. The sudden emergence of so many bad eggs recently has made me realize how lucky I am to be surrounded by good eggs. That realization makes me more than a little happy, to say the least. Thanks, you guys.
4. About my family. Sure, family can be frustrating at times, but the more time I spend with my aunt here and with my folks back home, the more I start to understand where they're coming from. We may not see eye to eye, but we always have each other's best interests in mind. Besides, I wouldn't be here, if it weren't for them, and here is not such a bad place.
02:50 PM | | Comments (3)
June 05, 2005 / Sunday
Le Snack Game 5: Hooray, I'm Back!
I've missed my team! It's sooo good to be back! Le Snack played the Mudskippers tonight. It was a fast and very fun game all around. Even though we lost, I'm grinning from ear to ear.
Final score: 2-4.
The score shows only 2 goals, but we had 42 shots on net. Unfortunately for us, Tami was between the puck and the back of the net, and she was ON tonight. You can't get much past her when she's playing that well.
That's not to say I didn't try. I had 4 or 5 breakaways this game, and she stopped every one. On the upside, her ability to stop any direct shot forced me to deke to my backhand on the last of my breakaways. I've never done that before. I think I executed it pretty well for my first attempt. I didn't crash, and I didn't whiff. Woot! I didn't score, either, but I'll chalk that up to a great stacked pad slide on Tami's part.
I also spent a good amount of time with my ass parked in front of her face. "Get Viv's tooshie out of my face!" she yelled, but no one came shove me. I wiggled my tooshie in response. :)
Shooting, passing, cycling, screening, figure skating, laughing ... we did it all tonight. Can't ask for much more.
Oh, but wait, there *was* more! Team pictures and a fun dinner afterward, too!
I heart Le Snack.
11:02 PM | Le Snack| Comments (2)
Photoblog
Now that I've finally found an album I like for publishing photos to my site, I've started something of a random photo blog. I've added a "Latest Photos" section over on the right margin. It reads the contents of my random photos directory and shows thumbnails for images uploaded in the last 7 days.
Of course, having done this, I'm starting to realize I don't really like BananAlbum for photoblogging. It's great for entire sets of images, but for a photoblog, it doesn't make sense to load a Flash file plus all thumbnails on every visit.
Next on the to-do list: a way to display a photoblog-friendly album while maintaining BananAlbum's file and directory structure.
12:38 PM | Blog/Website| Comments (0)
June 04, 2005 / Saturday
Desert Tribe vs. Da Sphinx
Had a super fun outing at Ice Oasis tonight. Desert Tribe, 8 skaters strong, took on a 4+3or4subs grey team. We had an excellent game. Our D, our passing, our positioning, our goalie -- everything was on tonight.
Also excellent: everyone on the other team was super friendly. I love chatting with people on the other team as we're skating, jostling, etc. Cracks me up.
We rotated forwards, but I spent most of my shifts playing center tonight. I actually did pretty well! I didn't feel lost, and I managed to win all but one faceoff. Woot!
I got me a goal, too, on a breakaway. Woot again!
Final score: 2-0.
The thing I loved most about this game: Once we got on the scoreboard, we stopped running it up and shooting. Those of us who ran it up always looked to pass, and those of us still learning to shoot always managed to be in the right spot for a pass. I was so excited by how well everyone was doing that I started celebrating shots! Why wait for a goal when your teammate who couldn't skate at the beginning of the season almost just scored? :)
I practiced my backhand shots before the game. I'm lifting 80% of them now, and, oh goodness, they look *much* better than my still wobbly wrist shot.
I took a slapshot during the game. (1) I didn't whiff (2) I didn't fall (3) it lifted and (4) it got on net.
*grin*
I'm still ridiculously out of shape, but that's okay.
Ate dinner upstairs afterward and had a nice chat with Dan while we watched the next game below.
I heart Saturday night hockey.
11:07 PM | Desert Tribe| Comments (0)
Big Brother Is A Sith Lord
Am I missing something here? Elite Torrents gets shut down, and they slap a Homeland Security logo on the front page. What the hell does Homeland Security have to do with file sharing? Are terrorists communicating with each other via secret messages encoded in widely distributed movie files? Are our airliners in danger of being hijacked by brainwashed illegal download watchers? Are rogue copies of SWIII going to make our computers release anthrax spores into the air?
Speaking of SWIII, I read an editorial today that compared Homeland Security and the Bush administration to the Dark Side. I don't agree with everything it says, but I at least found the Dark Side comparison amusing.
When Senator Palpatine announces that the Republic should grant him emergency military powers, he justifies the transition to a politically repressive regime with references to "safety and security." Anyone who has ever watched a George W. Bush speech about sacrificing civil liberties for "security from terrorists" ...
Let me rephrase myself. I *initially* found the Dark Side comparison amusing.
Then I thought about what our government has done in the name of "security from terrorists" these last 3½ years, and it wasn't so amusing anymore.
Then I wrote a list of all the things I found not-so-amusing-anymore, complete with some very colorful (sarcastically, not profanely, so) modifiers.
Then I read my list, and decided against publishing it, because:
1. Free Speech doesn't really exist, but Big Brother really does.
2. There are a lot of boneheads on the internet.
12:09 AM | Rant/Whine| Comments (6)
June 03, 2005 / Friday
Cool Item
It's a flashlight! It's a keychain! It's a mini strut!
It's so rad!
Final Bite Of Friday Lunch
Ripe avocado, parmesean cheese, and caesar dressing, smeared on a greasy 1.25 x 1.25 x 0.75 inch seasoned crouton.
Yum.
Cool Product
I've seen SplashGuard for sale at REI for months now. On my last visit to REI, I saw a SplashGuard display by the register, and, you guessed it, I bought one.
Yes, it works as advertised, but that's not what makes it a cool product.
The SplashGuard actually changes the way you drink from the bottle. You're no longer simply drinking from an open container. Rather, you're pulling liquid out. Have you ever wanted to convert your Nalgene bottle into a high-flow adult-sized baby bottle? (No? Why not?!) Now you can.
How's that for a marketing schpiel?
For me, there's something really, really pleasing about drinking from my newly converted bottle. It's true: as we've suspected all along, I'm a big baby.
01:05 PM | | Comments (6)
Cool Site
Perhaps I should have titled this "Really Cool Site", since it combines two already cool sites, craigslist and Google Maps. It's fun to play with, even if you're not looking for housing. :)
Thanks Vinny for the link.
12:22 PM | | Comments (0)
Return of the Daily Latte
They started stocking soymilk in the fridge at work! Huzzah!
09:50 AM | Drinks| Comments (0)
June 02, 2005 / Thursday
Progress!
I'm sore and somewhat injured from my out of shape goalie game on Tuesday, but I wanted to test out a couple of Josepi's hockey tips, so I headed to the Belmont clinic tonight.
Not having skated in so long left me feeling uncomfortable on my skates. Turns out that was a good thing. When it came time to do our customary Russian circles, instead of doing what I usually do, which is fast and "comfortable" but not technically correct, I focused on doing things correctly, 'cause heck, everything felt funny tonight anyhow, and doing something a different way didn't feel any funnier.
After a couple trips up and down the ice, I finally found my outside edge. It took 3+ years, but damn that feels nice!
It turns out I've been putting weight on the wrong side of the edge. The enlightened me says to the pre-clinic me, "Duh!" Bye bye, outside edge unstableness, hello, world of outside edge fun!
I also spent some time working on my new backhand. I managed to lift about 40% of my shots, and they actually had some heat! Even the ones I didn't lift weren't wimpy like they used to be. Woot!
As for my wrist shot, I definitely have some bad habits to break. I did, however, see a glimmer of what it might become someday. There's hope yet!
Thanks, Josepi. :)
Played a little 4-on-4 at the end. I was beat! How long before I'm back in hockey shape?
11:27 PM | Hockey| Comments (6)
Perpetual Sore Throat
Since my return to California, my throat has been sore. It's nothing terrible, it doesn't change much, it doesn't get worse, and it doesn't go away.
Stupid allergies.
At least I know what it is now. I used to think allergies involved only sneezing, not low-grade sore throats. The first time this happened, I seriously thought I'd caught some tenacious superbug. I went to the doctor thinking I was going to die and she laughed at me.
06:46 PM | | Comments (0)
Toyota, We Wanna Be Just Like You!
Last week, on our way home from our electronics and sporting goods outing, dad said, "We're coming up on a whole lot of new Corollas!"
I wondered briefly if Toyota had done something new to their Corolla design.
Then we drove by a lot full of Jetta Vs.
Very funny, dad.
It's not just VW. Subaru's gone Toyota too. Check out the new Subaru Tribeca SUV. It looks like a big Matrix.
June 01, 2005 / Wednesday
Revisiting The FRFO
This may be of interest to the Burninators and Burninator fans (we love you, fans! :) who read (I love you, readers! :) my blog. We got a couple new comments on the Northern Lights game from one of the NL(W) players. If you want to go read them and/or respond, here are links to the posts:
Burninators FRFO Game 3: Northern Lights (White)
Logitech Hockey Is Mild By Comparison
Hey Red, any word on the video?
