My Quiet Life

Amanda and I watched Donnie Darko, last night.

Some first impressions:

In general, I thought it was sortof a neat movie visually, and it was interesting. However, I thought it lacking in real substance and was a pretty cheap manipulation -- the ending was a total let down.

The casting of Noah Wyle and Drew Barrymore ah.. left something to be desired. I like Drew Barrymore better when she's doing what she does best -- and that is playing only characters that have no semblance of depth.

Anyways, all in all, it was an interesting and beautifully filmed movie, but the plot was tired and convoluted. I am tired of these science fiction/fantasy/whatever movies that build up these huge expectations of revelation only to wrap it up at the end with convoluted pop science babble that doesn't make any sense (a la A.I., my candidate for most disappointing ending ever) -- it's insulting to me, the viewer, and my intelligence.

Anyways, read the full story for discussion of the plot that contains spoilers. If you haven't seen it, don't peek!

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If you've ever gone on prednisone, which is an adrenocortical steroid used for anti-inflammation in various ways, you know that it can really screw with your system. Irregular sleep patterns, achey feelings, and speed-like surges of adrenalin and inability to sleep. This is my life.

However, as a result, I think I had one of the most productive weekends of my life..

This weekend, I have:

1) implemented bandwidth throttling on my network
2) set up a webpage interface for my winamp/icecast stream
3) changed my oil and oil filter
4) degreased my engine (pictures soon -- it looks like a brand new car!)
5) fixed my shower
6) fixed my toilet (okay, that overlaps into today)

I think that's it. My mom told me she had a friend that used to take prednisone in order to study for her finals -- I can see why, now.

It all started when I set up my FTP server, which was right around the time that I also installed AudioGalaxy for MP3 sharing. I started noticing that when people downloaded anything from my FTP server or from my Audiogalaxy client, my latency went through the roof -- 300+ ms.

Why? Because my upstream bandwidth is only 256kbps, and it was being maxed out by these transfers. I am all for sharing my files and all, but interrupting my IRCing and MUDding is simply inexcusable.

So, I recently discovered that OpenBSD supports ALTQ which stands for "ALTernate Queueing". Basically, it's a way to do bandwidth throttling.

This is my altq.conf. It's pretty self-explanatory ... Okay, not really.

Basically you just define classes that get certain percentages of your bandwidth. Then you apply filters to your traffic that lump them into certain classes. In my case, my config is pretty simple. I made a class called "fx_class", and configured it to get 60% of my 256k upstream bandwidth. Then, I made a bunch of filters to lump traffic from my FTP server (active and passive connections) and traffic from the Audiogalaxy client into that class.

Voila -- no more bandwidth choking. If I ever get time, I may write this up into a more comprehensive informal how-to so that other people interested in it can get some guidance.

I put up some pretty graphs on my network/firewall, using SmokePing, and Cricket.

Come on, now.. On three.. 1.. 2.. 3: OOOooo, Aaaaah.

I admit that I, as probably most everyone did, only first checked out Phantom Planet because their drummer, Jason Schwartzman, played the lead in one of my favorite movies, Rushmore. But, they surprised me by bringing some pretty solid pop rock songs with great production that would make Ric Ocasek proud.

Their first album, Phantom Planet Is Missing was a very obvious freshman effort, with many of the songs showing their lack of refinement, but despite this, the album was very listenable. The Guest offers a more refined Phantom Planet, without sacrificing any of their pop sensibility.

Among my favorite tracks are the opener, California, which is a pretty straightforward track that is very reminiscent of their first album; Lonely Day, which just plain rocks; and Turn Smile Shift Repeat, which is a very sophisticated, well-arranged song with a sort of Radiohead-ish haunting feel to it, without being too overbearing and pretentious.

All in all, I love this album. Presently, I can't stop listening to it. Check it out, if you know what's good for you.

This is where I want to be this summer. Cape San Blas, Florida. It's nice

If I ever got rich enough to spend the time and money to get my pilot's license, I'd love to own a Bellanca Super Viking.

Well, I've been having a real bitch of a time with the mileage on my car, as chronicled here.

Turns out it was the spark plug wires. I changed them, today.

Man, what a difference. I am up to 20-23 mpg, and that's pretty stop and start city driving.

Hooray! Now all I need to do is change the oil

Mike Tyson is not nuts?