For those of you who are curious, the answer to the previous question (and I do thank you for your good advice, Nils) is not calling back. The situation ironed itself out in a rather startling way. One of the rules of good blogging (there is such a thing? I always think my ramblings here would bore anyone to tears - maybe they do) is to describe the situation or event to which one refers in complete detail. Unfortunately, I will have to take this particular event and violate a rule of good blogging by leaving everything frighteningly vague. When I figure out what is going on, I promise I will let you know.
One week from now, I will begin my summer chem class at the U. The class itself is not really a bother (though reading fifty straight pages of chem to ensure I placed into the class was harrowing at best), but what it represents is what has me spinning. As we have taken a harder and closer look at my next three years in undergraduate school, it has become more and more clear that electrical engineering and pre-dentistry just can not be combined in four years, no matter how many summer classes I take. The decision between the two has nearly been made. I simply want to be a dentist; I see myself practicing dentistry later in life. However, who can trash an entire field of interest, and take such a choice lightly? I could spend weeks inside a solid state receiver and derive immense satisfaction from fixing it. The problem is, the job duties of an EE career are much more vague than those of a dentistry job. Besides, who really wants to be searching for a new career path every ten years? That, though, is the structure of corporate America, where most EE jobs reside. Security, family time, flexibility, working close to home, are all hallmarks of dentistry. Thus, consciously side-stepping years of my life spent in rush hour traffic by choosing dentistry is almost irresistible.
With college comes great potential, and with that potential comes great responsibility. I hope, as I think all people my age do, that the life-shaping decisions I make now will work out for the best down the long road of life.
Did you know nice restaurants sometimes give you steamy cinnamon-scented towels with which to wipe your face when you have completed your dining experience? Neither did I. It was quite lovely, though; I felt full to bursting, yet refreshed.
The day after next (my stomach still asking to be relieved of the overtime it had done after Lake Elmo Inn), three of us took a run through the rain. It was a perfect rain: not too hard and not too cold - it both hydrated and cooled us - we felt like we could run forever. I was on the far right as we ran three abreast and noticed, as we approached a cross walk, a car coming toward the stop sign at our intersection. I did not think anything of it - we were fifteen feet from him - surely he saw us. We continued at our original speed - suddenly his hood was inches from me. Without even thinking twice, I leapt to the side and continued my pace, narrowly avoiding being struck by the vehicle. As we continued down the hill, the adrenaline from nearly being run down by a Jeep was put to good use. Apparently, the driver had been on a cell phone. Driver, if you are on the road, I just ask you avoid running into pedestrians who are in the freakin’ crosswalk. Thank you.
Today marks the first sunny day without rain in about twelve days. I promptly went outside, studied my chem, and burned myself on the sun. Rather, on the sunlight. One of these days I am going to venture outside and manage to avoid skin burning, near-death by car accident, and any other bodily harm. In the meantime, I hope to retain enough limbs to continue typing updates.
On an entirely different front, the “phone call” parts of this post do an excellent job at describing my earlier feelings today. One caveat: when you call a girl and realize that you forgot to leave your number (you called a cell phone from a cell phone) - which option is better: (a) assume the call and number have been logged under missed calls, and therefore she has your number or (b) admit your inability to effectively use telecommunication devices (and therefore admit your utter lack of intelligence) and call back offering her your number? Answer coming soon.
Sometime in the next month (give or take a month, for good measure), tumbledry will be moving to a new home. Service should be uninterrupted, but for those sharp-minded individuals who notice anything bizarre, unannounced, or supernatural occurring, please understand that this is a normal part of the moving process.
Justin bought (and is currently in the throws of configuring) a beast of a server, and it will live at a datacenter in the Twin Cities. This location is close (within a half hour of both of us), in the same time zone as us (good-bye, time correction PHP functions!), and also gives us the option to install whatever the heck we want are able to. This will, inevitably, lead to mod_rewrite usage (which makes all the links look pretty … no more ugly ?=’s). Mod_rewrite is what the scripts running tumbledry were designed to use all along (if you can call my scattered Kindergarten code ‘designed’). Which reminds me, we’re overdue for a rewrite of all that.
I just spent four days connecting my sister’s Dell computer running Windows 98 to the internet. I had the privilege of meeting the wonderful people at AT&T tech chat, and of learning far more than I wanted to ever know about modems.
Do Tell
Turns out her computer had been set up to log on to a network, which in turn somehow produced many extraneous TCP/IP entries in her “Network” settings. Weeding these out finally allowed the modem to talk to the outside world successfully. My shout of joy was an intense one when I finally dialed up and Google showed its friendly logo.
Shut Up
The whole process was not without other rewards. In fact, I found a wonderful little string of code to mute my modem’s unbelievably annoying dial-up noises. The modem’s screeching formerly came from the speakers, but now I can listen to music uninterrupted and still dial up (our area does not have DSL yet). As for the actual code, it’s simply “AT M0” entered in the correct box. That box is called “Extra initialization settings” in WinXP. It can be found via control panel > phone and modem options > modems tab > properties > advanced tab. Furthermore, if you still want to hear a dialing sound, but a quieter one, I believe you can change the “0” in the code to a “1,” etc.
Tech Support
My best advice for hook-up problems is as follows: for God’s sake use tech support. Furthermore, update your modem’s drivers, research your problem on the provider’s website, and most of all: do not give up.
Bottom Line
In the end, it is not the fact that the software was so difficult to configure, and supplied absolutely no hint of the problem. It was not that AT&T uses proprietary software that provides no added features and simply takes up room on the computer. The problem was that the solution took four days to find. I am tired of being tech support: connecting computers, disconnecting computers, backing up emails with Outlook’s unbelievably feature-anemic and obtuse email exporting feature, using HiJack this to clean off dirty spyware, and researching the um-teenth suspicious *.exe file that was found. As of now, I am officially retired from tech support. I will come out only for very short periods of time in desperate situations. Thank you.
Why hello. Welcome to tumbledry! Glad you could make it today. Ladies and gentleman, I am employed. Yup. I know. This job is perfect. Web-design for St. Thomas at $9.50 an hour, and I can work at home. Flexible hours, competitive pay, and more experience. It’s rather odd that I want to be a dentist but still persist at web-design. As for the internships, well those will come next summer.
I was not there, but Matthew and Nils convinced Steve to walk into a random party at someone’s house, and then go get a can of pop. It was all going well until Steve actually got to the cooler. He slowly opened it, and with that movement, heard the conversation of the entire party behind him die. Suddenly, a thousand eyes bored into his back, questioning his purpose and his identity. Slowly, he turned and attempted to climb the stairs as casually as possible.
“Dude, I think somebody just walked into your house and took a pop.”
Some of the girls had been rather freaked out - this is most likely due to Steve’s massive good looks. Thus, a short moment later, three men emerged from the house, armed with bats and looking for the perpetrator. Thankfully, Nils and Matthew knew the batted men and proclaimed good will and innocent intentions. Steve’s life was spared, and everyone went home happy. The kid has guts, he really does.
I salute you Steve; if I ever am driving around and need a pop from a random house, I know I can count on you, bats or no bats.
Some of you have come here looking for information on technology, on CSS, on design. That’s here, I promise, (in fact, skip down a few posts and you’ll find it), but sometimes I am willing to sacrifice visitors who are uninterested in my life. Now is one of those times, one of the times I feel that I should share what I am thinking, even if it is in a slightly vague manner. After all, I can not post everything I am thinking here; stream of consciousness is very hard to read, even in small doses. I ask only that you allow me the luxury of self-expression in the most organized way I can muster at this point in time.
I had a post in the making, saved in a text file called “Untitled,” which began what I thought I wanted to say:
Call me melodramatic, but the rapidity with which it all occurred reminded of something from Shakespeare. I will leave it up to you to decide the play to which I might be referring …
I left and went to watch the movie Love Actually; which changed how I was thinking. Afterwards, I realized I did not want to supply an account of what happened to me on Tuesday and Wednesday - the crazy move-out and the improbable rendezvous. No, I wanted to express the way I was affected by those events. To the few cough Caley cough who know the entire story back to front, inside out, and upside down, thanks for putting up with me. I still very very much have my head about me and I am never one to blow out of proportion or rush that which should not be rushed.
This paragraph marks my third time back to this post: I’ve weeded a lot out - that alone says something. I only edit my thoughts when I feel that I have something big to say. I realized, for attempt three, poetry is the best medium with which to describe the situation.
Unsuspecting, Tuesday brought knowledge of events unknown
Singing in the shower, semester’s end was near, I didn’t know something was beginning, too
Beginning as a distraction growing to reaction and forming into action
Thoughts swirled about in a slow motion tornado
Slip into high gear, pound the clutch, and turn on the strobe lights
Up and down five flights of stairs, gotta be ready
Computers, stereos, and old covered chairs
Singing again in the shower, a different tune
After “hello?” came “we’re on our way” and the nerves kicked in
Sweaty palms, don’t forget to smile
Crossed fingers behind my back as I opened the door
You really did? A white owl, a white wave
Swept me clean
A permanent grin took to my face
CapriSun really is refreshing
While arranging candy glass on glass
Thinking how lucky and blessed a person can be
Despite my best efforts, I remain confounded, trying to say what I am thinking. It’s the best feeling I’ve had in some time. I certainly would recommend it.
Permission to recount yesterday in its entirety? Permission denied? Hmm. Sorry, I guess I will have to risk court marshal on this one.
My sister’s commencement exercises, my birthday, and the Dashboard Confessional concert all happened to fall on the same day. In the morning, I dragged my sorry carcass out of bed and ran off to the gym to squeeze in a quick workout. Running down the stairs back to the car, I noticed I had shaved five (5!) minutes off of my usual hour and forty-five regimen. I sarcastically congratulated myself with an “Oh yay me” as I put some rubber down on the road.
“You have to unlock the computer, oh and Dan called,” Katy said, holding the door open as I dove for home. Safe. I ran up stairs, down stairs, (much like my move-out saga, a story which I still must share), and all around the house. Grab tickets, pack wallet, snag running shoes, cinch tie, snap pictures … I was hungry. Current record for preparing and consuming one full bowl of oatmeal (with sugar): 8 minutes. That’s efficiency, friends. Then we were on the road, bumping along for the arena. “Did you remember earplugs?” Oh, shatty. “No.” Stupid. Arrived on time at the arena, careened over to the hardware store, purchased ear protection. Scampered around the arena, found appropriate seating, planted our bottoms accordingly. I excused myself almost immediately, “Gotta run and figure out who can drive.” The cell phone signal was so bad, that my personal communication device became nothing more than a glorified address book slash paperweight. Jump the wall (is that security yelling behind me?), run to the campus center, dial 8 and then the number. “Nope, can’t drive,” said Dan in response for my request. A couple of more calls and the rides were lined up. Whew.
I zipped back to the arena in time for the commencement of … commencement. We cheered as Katy’s named was called, and suddenly the ceremony was over. We snapped a couple of pictures, and I went to change in the car. Things were going smoothly, I had my concert clothing on, and we grabbed a couple of more Kodak moments. I thought things would all work out: “I’ll just grab my wallet from the car, and then wait for my ride to come by.” We had decided to get all six of us to the concert in John’s car, which would have worked quite well if my wallet had not been lost. Oh what the crap, I just had it. John, Steve, SoftBreeze (Matt’s roommate who is, coincidentally, named Matt), Erin, and Dan were on their way, and I had no idea where my wallet was. Suddenly, the cell phone rang.
“Hi. Is this Alex Micek?”
“Yes, you wouldn’t by chance happen to have my wallet would you?”
Somebody found my wallet, and they were going to drive back and return it to me. Moments later, John pulled up, ready for me to hop in so we could be on our way. Any attempts to explain my current situation to the car full of people were thoroughly confounded by my inability to form coherent sentences. “Happy Birthday!” said Erin, rolling down the window to hand me a neon green envelope. There was a great gift taped to it: a tube of vanilla lip smackers. “My favorite! Thanks for remembering!” I exclaimed, as I opened it up to get a smell. Mmm, vanilla goodness.
Moments later, a red Accord coupe rolled across the parking lot. Seeing it approach elicited the greatest feeling of relief I have felt in a long time.
Once I finally walked onto the Target Center floor, I realized I finally had nothing left to worry about. We had made it, and made it on time. My muscles immediately began to relax, which was a good thing because I got pounded during the moshing. The whole idea of mosh’age immediately struck me as completely absurd, so I moved with our group away from the perimeter of the pit. Dan made an outstanding shield, solidly decking anybody who flew by. Slowly, the pit drifted away from us, and by the time Thrice was done playing, everyone was tired. The moshing had concluded for the evening. Later on, we did hoist and throw a couple of people up for crowd surfing, which worked poorly to moderately well - the crowd was just barely dense enough. Oh yeah, there was music playing, too. Dashboard’s performance was unreal-diculously fantastic. Audience participation was massive, and we sang the lyrics like there was nothing else in the world except the band, the crowd, and the stage. By the time the last chords of “Hands Down” echoed through the venue, I felt physically drained and emotionally exhausted: clean and free.
“Oreo cream pie!” shouted Dan with an exuberance none of us could mess with. So, we packed in and drove off to Baker’s Square. We ate, and we ate well. Erin got the last piece of Oreo cream pie in the establishment. The irony of this event did not fail to strike Dan, who became slightly disgruntled upon the realization that he would have to order a different flavor. I certainly can not blame him. As a surprise gift (a surprise to both of us, I think), Steve paid for my pie. What a great group!
I returned in the evening with Katy’s commencement celebrated, my wallet intact, my birthday enjoyed, and the concert heard. I hope summer in general is a tiny bit less stressful than this.
Wednesday was my fake birthday. Historically, my actual birthday occurs on the twenty-second of this month (each year), but we celebrated early because finals concluded and we all moved out by today. I received some absolutely great presents from literally all corners of the globe. I was blown away. Details will be forthcoming as I find more time to write about what happened.
I also have to find a way to say it in as vague a way as possible. It’s ok, you’ll find out soon enough.
Recently, I stumbled into an intriguing area of computing: skinning the Windows GUI. Now, I went nuts for a while, downloading every theme by KoL off of deviantART, grabbing StyleXP, evaluating if it really did use the same amount of system resources as the normal GUI, and generally having a field day. Actually, once I had selected a theme I liked, I chose to disable StyleXPService.exe in control panel > administrative tools > services in order to remove all remnants of the program running in the background. (Edit: Disabling StyleXPService.exe does save about 2 megs of background memory, but when you restart your computer, things are no longer skinned. I will live with it running in the background, then.) Now, I truly feel comfortable with the GUI skinning. After trying many themes, I eventually decided to skin the computer to look like a bit like OS X. This decision was not based on any conscious preference between the Apple and Windows operating system appearances, I simply liked the way that the “Smooth Stripes 4” scheme had been implemented. In fact, I liked it so much so that I moved the taskbar to the top of the screen, to match the style I saw in the screen shots of the skins.
For a while, it was good. The start menu was up top, I occasionally missed and hit the clock instead of the windows’ “x,” but things looked lovely. I realized something was missing. Where was my dock? How on earth could I emulate a dock on Windows?
Enter Y’z dock. Quick research yielded exactly the information I wanted. That is, Y’z dock so closely emulates the functionality of the Mac OS X dock, that the developer of the program was sent a cease and desist order by Apple. Thus, it took some work to track down this bit of software (and for legal reasons, I can not tell you whether I actually found it). Speaking hypothetically, then, Y’z dock is a fantastic program. Using the resources at dockEX, one can add weather and other great functions onto the dock. Therefore, one could theoretically clear off one’s entire desktop (and quicklaunch bar), move program shortcuts to the dock, and move the trash and my computer shortcuts as well. Once again, deviantART was an invaluable resources for the icon files, although I made my own AT&T globe icon using a vector version of the logo and saving it as a *.tiff file. You can make all of your own icons, if you want. Furthermore, the dock can live on the top, bottom, left, or right side of your screen. From left to right: AOLIM, Recycle Bin, weather, clock.
Hold on, there was one more thing to do. Look closely at the text on tumbledry right now. If you are on a Windows machine you will see jagged edges on fonts. See how the text is composed of hard, pixelated lines? Well, Microsoft and Apple did, too. Apple’s solution to this jagged text problem is on by default in their operating system, Microsoft’s solution is off by default. Try turning it on once: I dare you. Here’s how: right click on the desktop > properties > apperance tab > effects. Under the heading “Use the following method to smooth the edges of screen fonts,” select the “ClearType” option. Click OK and then Apply. Windows will pause for a moment, and then things will look different. Notice the edges of text. Take special note of fonts such as Times New Roman - try chatting on your favorite software, you’ll definitely notice a difference. Now, this ClearType method has not been perfected, but in the long run it is designed to make text easier to read. Do your eyes a favor and try it for a day. Trust me, it does take some getting used to, but once you do, the difference is amazing. Reading is easier, your eyes fatigue much more slowly, and things simply look cleaner.
Regardless, I sincerely hope I convinced you to try at least one thing: StyleXP, Y’z dock, or at least ClearType (if only for a little bit). It is a sin that so many people work on machines that look the exactly the same. Individuality and variety are the “spices of life,” and they should be present not only on our real workspaces, but also in our virtual ones.
How much do I have to plead with the college paper writers out there? How much do I have to explain about readability, fonts designed for the screen, and resolution to get my point across? Arial does not print well. Please, please, gets down and knees and continues please, please use a different font. Maybe it will be Times New Roman. That is fine - that font was inspired by a font used for printing. Arial is designed to look good at 72 pixels per inch (your friendly local computer monitor). On the other hand, the effective resolution for a printer is far higher - and thus printing opens up a whole other world of font possiblities.
Franklin Gothic is one of the most popular sans serif fonts ever produced. It was designed by the famous type designer Morris Fuller Benton in 1903. The font was named for Benjamin Franklin.
In spite of its long history, Franklin Gothic is still a standard choice for use in newspapers and advertising. It is also frequently seen in posters, placards, and any place with space restrictions.
Now, I could open up Pandora’s box and start in with a debate between the readability of serif and sans-serif fonts, but all I am saying is this: Arial is the son of a turbulent marriage between Franklin Gothic and the ugly Monitor.
Notice the gracefulness with which the parts of the letters are joined? To my untrained eye, Franklin Gothic Book simply looks better proportioned and easier on the eyes. So, given the choice, please choose wisely.
