Sat 03 Aug 2002

  • Movie: Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It’s an excellent, excellent movie. Definitely the most fun I’ve had with a movie this year.

  • Work: Wrote redhat-config-packages with Jeremy. Some screenshots are available at http://people.redhat.com/jrb/files/rcp/ It should be coming to a Red Hat Linux distribution near you.

  • Deals: Tomato Paste was on sale for 20 cents a can. I bought ten.

Mon 29 Jul 2002

  • Movie: Watched “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” with Owen last friday. It was a lot of fun. I watched the first fifteen minutes six years ago on a trip down to Duke with the fencing team. It was booed off of the bus — I was the only person other than Henning who wanted to keep watching. After a long delay, I finally get to see the ending.

Wed 05 Sep 2001

  • movie: Watched Dancers in the Dark. Really good, though not easy to watch at times. It was very very good, though. Unfortunately, the DVD only got 2/3 of the way through before it became unwatchable. I skipped ahead a few scenes to finish it, but feel a bit annoyed.

  • exercise: I went fencing for the first time in years today. I am in amazingly poor shape. I could barely hold my epee after the second bout. I have horrible blisters, too. Blah — need to get back in shape before thursday.

Mon 13 Aug 2001

  • movie (American History X): Wow. What a powerful movie. Easily the most impressive movie I’ve seen in a long time. I understand all the fuss about it when it first came out, and wish I had seen it then. I can’t wait to see Edward Norton’s next movie. I think he’s a tremendous actor, and has very impressive control of his body.

  • movie (Rush Hour 2): This was much better than the original. It had more goofiness, and fewer race-gags which I liked. Jackie Chan is certainly getting older, but he still has moments of fun.

  • irony: I spent all day wiring up my wireless connection. I originally got it so that I could work in the living room on my laptop. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the reception I wanted originally, so I strung a wire to the middle of the house, and mounted the wireless hub on the cieling. I now get a great connection, though I’m ~5 feet away from where I wired to.

  • drills: Here are the things I learned about drilling today: 1) You need a masonry drill bit to drill through stone. 2) If you are drilling through a slate floor, drill through the slate over the mortar. The mortar is tough as nails – the slate is not. 3) If you are drilling through carpet, drill really quickly so that you melt the carpet. If you drill slowly, you just rip it up and get stuck. 4) It’s a good things drills can go in reverse 5) When drilling through wood, an old, cheap, blunt drill bit covered with melted carpet works a lot better than a shiny new masonry bit. 6) I know nothing about drills.

  • house (crawlspace): I took a grand tour of the underside of my house while wiring today. Apparently I drove the dog nuts while singing and hammering under there. Wheeee!

  • dishwashers: Our 1972 vintage, bright green dishwasher is showing its age. I fear it is time to retire it…

Mon 30 Jul 2001

  • Movie (Elizabeth): Very cool movie. Very very good movie. Sir Francis Walsingham was very cool. Or maybe it’s just Geoffrey Rush.

  • Hacking: Nautilus is so cool.

  • Dinner: We went to an Indian restaurant for dinner. They were playing a version of the theme song from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” on the Sitar, with Indian lyrics. Very bizarre…

  • Denim: Went to the Middle Eastern deli yesterday for lunch. There was a woman there with a fairly short, denim mini-skirt. When she got up to leave, she bent over to pick up her bag, leisurely mooning the entire restuarant. It was extremely surreal.