For the time being. With 3 days left on my warranty, Acer went ahead and replaced the machine.

What a horrible, horrible company with which to deal. First, their online serial number lookup system said that the machine was out of warranty. I tried to call and discovered that there are separate 1-800 numbers for desktops/laptops, netbooks, and refurbs. It took me forever to find the right one. Luckily the refub department knew what I was talking about and agreed to replace it. However, it took them 3 days to ship out the replacement unit once they received mine. Man alive. To top it off, the warranty doesn’t restart, nor do I get a new 90 days on the replacement unit.

So I got the new one, installed Ubuntu and Zoneminder (the camera management package), all sorts of supporting software, then kind of monitored it for a few days.

Oh, and I can’t install Ubuntu 9.10 directly. I get an I/O error on the disk. I have to install 9.04, then use the update manager. That works fine.

Two days ago, the camera screen mysteriously went black in the middle of the morning. It turns out there was a permission issue which I think I solved last night, but I’m not sure. As far as I can tell, I really didn’t do anything.

Anyway, Acer sucks, and so does Ubuntu. It’s overrated. There, I said it.

So, anyway, here is the Cat Bed Cam.

Because Acer makes crappy products and they flat out don’t honor their warranties. Stay tuned.

…do as the Romans.

Check this out. First five bullets I ever shot in my life. Seven yards.

The whole thing was nothing like I expected. The experience was great. You hear people say they love the power of the gun – the kick, the noise, etc. Some of my more hippie friends admit that they never shot a gun because they’re afraid of liking the power. A “power trip” was the furthest thing I felt.

I don’t think anything has ever made me feel more present and more focused than shooting. From the loading of the clip, to aiming, to pulling the trigger, to walking away from the range, you need to be very much in the moment and aware of yourself and your surroundings. It led to a very strange but welcomed serenity. For me, golf is close, but if you fuck up in golf, chances are, you’re not going to kill or hurt someone or yourself. It was a completely zen experience. That’s what I loved about it.

From talking to people, that sounds like the typical shooting experience – calm, mellow, and focused. Anyone that reacts by spazzing out and being all giddy is the person you don’t want shooting.

The guns I used were a Glock 9mm and a .45. The 9mm had more kick than I expected, because of the polymer body, and the.45 had less kick, because of the metal body. I’m definitely going to buy one shortly. I see myself owning a .45 since it has greater stopping power and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I plan on starting off with a 9mm, though – probably the Glock or a Sig P260.

This is gonna take a long time
And I wonder what’s mine
Can’t take no more
Wonder if you’ll understand
It’s just the touch of your paw
Behind a closed door

After twelve years, I’m leaving MacNexus and the schow@macnexus.org email address.

Long story short, don’t skimp on hosting services if you are a business. Don’t go for the cheap services like GoDaddy and Bluehost. They’re crap. You get what you pay for. They don’t actually expect you to use it. Once you do, they’ll start crippling everything. If you do end up going with them, don’t act like you’re just following their orders. You’re their damn customer. Take your business elsewhere, and don’t screw your customers because you’ve made a mistake. And above all, don’t act like you know what you’re doing when you really don’t.

My new email address will be schow at alumni dot rutgers dot edu. This will reflect the refinement, knowledge, and character building I received at one of the oldest and most prestigious educational institutions in the world. Yup.

Since I’ve used schow@macnexus.org for about ten years, I thought it would be good to look back on my old email addresses.

1992-1996: chow@ccvax.ccs.csus.edu
This was my first email address. I still love it dearly. It was on the old VAX mainframe of CSUS. This was before email addresses were handed out to everyone. I had to petition the head of the Economics department to get it. Luckily he was also my advisor. I think I put “undergraduate research” as the reason. In reality, I used it to download games and fonts from ftp://archive.umich.edu and post on sports usenet groups. What’s awesome is if you search "ccvax.ccs.csus.edu" on Google this site is the first result.

1996-1997: chow@csus.edu
Around ‘95 or so, CSUS rolled out a new unix server, saclink, and gave everyone accounts on it. The VAX machine was getting locked down and you actually had to be in the CS department and have a good reason to be on it. The writing was on the wall for me. The actual user names were hideous. It was like sac12345@saclink.edu, but shortly after they rolled out, you can register for an alias much like Facebook’s landrush last month. Yes, it was exactly like it. I was given something like sac14193, but I quickly registered the alias “chow@csus.edu.” Still, I didn’t use it. I didn’t like the short “@csus.edu” nonsense. Saying “chow@ccvax.ccs.csus.edu” took effort. Four syllables, four syllables, three syllables, four syllables, and three syllables. It was rhythmic, poetic, and beautiful. In 1996, I was forced to use the saclink account when the CS department dragged me kicking and screaming off the VAX machine. I eventually appreciated the simplicity and balance of chow@csus.edu. Just look at it. So compact, so minimal.

1997-1999: shu_chow@bbs.macnexus.org
When I left CSUS, they eventually found out I was leaching dialup access and booted me. I had to find another provider. I was spoiled with the power and prestige of a .edu address. I vomited at the thought of using AOL, or CompuServe, or anything that would relegate me to a .com domain. I asked around. A friend and another Mac user introduced me to MacNexus, Sacramento’s Macintosh user group. They originally had a BBS with an email gateway and all the member accounts were on that machine.

1999-2009: schow@macnexus.org
About a couple of years after I joined, MacNexus got rid of their BBS machine and migrated everyone to a real server. I got transferred to this one, which was based on my user name. As technology marched forward, I dumped MacNexus dialup for DSL but stayed with them for email continuity. I truly envisioned using schow@macnexus.org for as long as they were around. Eventually, I got tired of getting dicked around by them and bluehost. All I wanted to do was to actually, you know, use email. Oh well.

2009+: schow at alumni dot rutgers dot edu
With this address, I finally return to the .edu domain. It’s actually just a forwarding address, so the email isn’t hosted at Rutgers. I have it forwarding to a gmail account. Since it’s forwarding, I’ll hopefully be inoculated against host mess ups, and be able to use this one forever.

Honorable mentions:
shu_chow@educaid.com: Educaid work email (1997-2001)
shuch@vsp.com: VSP work email (2001-2005). VSP uses the most ridiculous convention for their systems. First four letters of your first name followed by the first two letters of your last name. It’s nonsense and you feel silly when you go out and give your address to the public.
schow at eden dot rutgers dot edu: My current student account. I wonder how long it will be before they yank it.

I believe this commercial launched Volkswagon’s Drivers Wanted ad campaign in the mid/late 90’s.

This is probably one of my favorite commercials ever. I think I was in my third year in college. This brilliantly targeted my demographic – catchy music (forget the fact that it’s about Roman Polanski), anti-establishment visuals, motivating slogans. The next day, I asked my friend Nick, “Hey, have you seen the new VW commercial?” Of course he did. It had the same affect on him. “Yeah. I need to buy a Jetta,” he said.

So Giants closer Brian Wilson balls like an 8 year old girl after the game on Sunday because Dodgers 3rd Baseman and Official Team Badass Casey Blake mocked his arms-crossed showboating after Blake hit a home run off him. Wittle Bwian, who needed to be defended by his teammates, explains that the cross arm thing is a tribute to God and his late father, and that it has nothing to do with showboating.

Is that so?

No, it’s not. Brian Wilson crosses his arms to promote his damn clothing line. Very nice, Brian, you lying ass.

God, the whole Giants team is made up of emo crybabies. Except for Pablo Sandoval, who’s a walking diabetes bomb.

WMCX, Monmouth University’s radio station, is the only one worth listening to on the Jersey Shore. About 3 weeks ago, their transmitter went down. In my area, you’ll get a really weak signal from the College of Staten Island, which is also pretty good, but full of static. I emailed WMCX to ask what’s up because there’s no mention of anything on their site. This is the response I got back:

“Thank you for your concern. Our transmitter is down right now, so the
station you are hearing has the same call numbers as us (88.9) and is
coming over our air waves because we’re down. WMCX is only streaming
online for now at www.wmcx.com. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we
will be back on air.”

Phew. That’s a relief. Now hurry up, WMCX. There’s only so much sports talk I can take.

Daring Fireball is now blocking links from the much loathed DiggBar.

The DF post also explains how to block the DiggBar. Someone submitted it to Digg, and as of right now, the post has received 765 diggs. However, it never made the front page of Digg. In fact, it doesn’t even show up on searches for “DiggBar.”

So much for Digg’s idealistic notions of democracy and social media.

Shu Chow: He took the midnight train going anywhere.
Shu Chow: an-nee-wheeeerrreee
Jack: how the hell do u take the train to anywhere?
Shu Chow: With Journey, anything’s possible.