The Story of my Life

No, I wasn’t raised on junk food; the exact opposite in fact. Junk food was virtually unheard of in my parents’ house. Chips were a two-or-three-times-a-year affair. Both my parents love vegetables of all kinds and we’d routinely have one or two vegetables with dinner every night.

And yet, I can’t stand most of them. It’s not like “eh I’d rather be eating something else,” it’s more like “oh god get this out of my face.” A whole rainbow of disgusting, bitter, acrid flavors fills my mouth and I wonder why anyone would want to inflict such a thing on their taste buds. I literally have to fight my gag reflex when eating some vegetables.

I thought this would change as I got older, and while many of my tastes have changed, my opinion of vegetables is the same as it was when I was ten.

Here’s a listing of vegetables I can’t stand:

• Asparagus
• Beets
• Sweet/Bell peppers (ruin everything they touch)
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Celery (ruins everything it touches)
• Collard greens
• Kale
• Legumes of any kind; beans, peas, whatever. Gag reflex time. Only exception is the beans in chili
• Mushrooms, all kinds
• Radishes
• Any kind of squash. Oh god gag reflex.
• Sweet potatoes, blugh
• Turnips
• Water chestnuts
• Zucchini

Vegetables that I’ll eat but I’m not gonna go out of my way to get:

• Eggplant, in certain preparations (just baba ganoush and eggplant parmesan, really)
• Onions (NOT red), in small amounts, in certain preparations — better cooked than raw, better as a flavoring than as a vegetable in itself
• Parsnips (mashed with potatoes, not baaad)

And lastly the very short list of vegetables that I actually *enjoy*:

• Artichokes
• Broccoli (mmm)
• Brussels sprouts (mmmm)
• Cabbage
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Green beans (mmm)
• Potatoes
• Spinach (fresh spinach salad oh god)
• Tomatoes (mmmmmmMMMMM)

I’ve yet to find a supermarket that carries tomatoes or spinach that are worth a damn. The quality of Brussels sprouts is hit or miss. Artichokes and corn on the cob are seasonal, though canned/frozen corn is alright. Cabbage is annoying to prepare. At any given time of the year, that leaves me with broccoli, corn, cucumbers, green beans, and potatoes.

It gets boring.

I want to eat more vegetables. But most of them taste like ass. Maybe they should stop doing that.

I use Dreamhost to host this site. It’s pretty cheap and for a web admin noob like me, it makes things simple. I have no idea what an Apache is, or any of that crap. I just.. put things here. And they appear.

One of the things Dreamhost has is a way to easily install some common software packages, such as Trac. I’ve used Trac for years over on Dsource and I’ve grown to like it. So I was happy to find out I could host my projects/wikis on my own site.

Well there’s a problem: the default one-click Trac install is .. messed up.

So when you do a Trac install on Dreamhost, it creates two directories: one in your home directory that contains the actual Trac source and CGI files, and another in the domain directory of your choice that holds the configuration, database, files etc. etc. etc. There’s a problem, though. It installs the source for Trac 0.11.4, but when you actually look at the newly-created page, you’ll notice this:

Notice that the welcome page says it’s 0.11.4, just like the source. But the page was generated by 0.11.1.

Why does this happen? Because despite installing the 0.11.4 source to your home directory, there is an installation of 0.11.1 in /usr/lib that it uses instead.

Wat.

I can’t fathom why this is. Why does this matter? Because when I tried to set up the Account Manager Trac plugin, I started getting strange errors like this: http://trac.edgewall.org/ticket/8684 Namely, when I logged in, I’d get a stack trace with the error “‘Environment’ object has no attribute ‘secure_cookies’.” This is caused when you try to use Account Manager with a version of Trac before 0.11.2, since secure_cookies was added in that release.

Okay, so how do you fix this? It’s actually not that hard. All you have to do is build/install 0.11.4 in your home directory, and modify your PYTHONPATH to point to it. Here’s what I did.

First, in your home directory, create a directory chain ~/lib/python2.5/site-packages. This is going to be where you install 0.11.4 to.

Second, change to ~/domain_com_tracname_trac (won’t be called that, it’ll use your domain name and the name of the Trac install you gave). This is the directory with the 0.11.4 source in it, and also where the cgi-bin directory resides (in which are the entry points for the CGI server). First open up setup.cfg in vim or something, and add the following:

[easy_install]

install_dir = /home/yourusername/lib/python2.5/site-packages

Save and exit. Now run “./setup.py build” followed by “./setup.py install”. It should install to that directory.

Okay, now you have 0.11.4 installed to the right place. Now you have to make Python see it. Change into your domain where you installed Trac (for me, it’s ~/jfbillingsley.com/tracname). There should be an index.fcgi file there, if you used FCGI during the install. Open it. Right after the “export TRAC_ENV” line, you’re going to add another export, for PYTHONPATH this time.

export PYTHONPATH=”/home/yourusername/lib/python2.5/site-packages”

Save and exit. One more thing before we try this out: there are some commandline tools like trac-admin which were installed by setup.py as well, but your PATH is still pointing to the server-wide 0.11.1 ones. So open up ~/.bash_profile and add this export:

export PATH=${HOME}/lib/python2.5/site-packages:$PATH

And then do a “source ~/.bash_profile”. A “which trac-admin” should now point to the one in your home directory.

Last, but not least, see if there’s already an FCGI process running for your Trac site. Do a “ps aux” and look for a “/usr/bin/python ..blahblah.. /cgi-bin/trac.fcgi”. Do a “kill -9 <thatprocess>”.

Now load up your Trac site. It should now say 0.11.4 at the bottom. Yaaaaay! And now Account Manager works, yaaaaaay!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.

What is our goal, as a species? Do we even have one?

I’m not talking about our “purpose” in a religious context. I’m talking about here, on Earth, what are we trying to do? With all our technology and our social structures, what is it we’re trying to accomplish?

I don’t think we really have a goal. We really aren’t all that different than we were 2,000, 4,000, 6,000 years ago. Most of us still just want to “settle down and have a family.” But to what end? So your children can settle down and have a family too? Ad infinitum? Boooriiiing. I want to go to space, goddammit.

It seems to me that we have nearly seven billion people on this planet, all with their own goals and all trying to make their own life. Most of these goals are selfish, in that people only want what’s best for them, instead of what’s best for everyone. Sometimes these goals are contradictory between people, and then conflict arises, and then we end up with poverty and slavery and war and all these other nasty things.

What if we just stopped doing this “me first” shit? I’m not saying “sacrifice personal freedom,” at least not entirely. But can you imagine what we as a species could accomplish if we had some goal? Look at what the USA did in the mobilization effort for WWII. That was just a single country in preparation for wartime. In a decade we went from the post-Depression era to the most prosperous period in our history. And all the technology and knowledge we had gleaned from that period is incredible. In that case, the motivator was war, though a seemingly much more clean-cut war than the kinds of wars we’ve been fighting ever since. What if we had another, better motivator?

I have no idea how we would even begin to set any of this in motion. How do you convince a planet full of people that some certain course of action is the best one?

blahblahblah

I built a new desktop and I have some ~3.5 year old desktop PC parts that I would be willing to part with for little or no money. I’d rather give them to people I know than send them to the recyclers, where they’ll end up god-knows-where (most likely back in the US as mercury, lead, cadmium etc. from Chinese-manufactured goods).

Keep in mind though that I built a new desktop cause my old one, well, died. I’m not sure what exactly caused the failures, or if it was just an incredible coincidence, but keep it in mind. I haaaaave~

• Motherboard: this one is the biggest gamble since, if three things failed in a row, it might well be the mobo. But you could be lucky! It’s a Gigabyte M61P-S3. It’s socket AM2 (Athlon 64 X2/FX). Got all the standard motherboardy stuff. Just one PCIe x16. Has an IDE channel, if you’ve got some old drives. May have a slightly quirky SATA controller, I’ve always been suspicious of it. Uses DDR2 800 RAM.
• CPU: Athlon 64 X2 4600+. Solid chip, I’ve always been pleased with its performance. Stock cooler. It’s still plugged into the mobo since I don’t wanna get the thermal goo all over everything. You can have the CPU and mobo together if you want, that’ll probably be easier.
• GPU: EDIT: OH SHIT I just noticed this has two burst caps on it. D: XFX GeForce 8600 GT. Good enough to run Fallout 3 at okay-ish settings at an acceptible framerate. SLI compatible. Dual DVI + S-Video (lol) out.
• PSU: Antec TruePower Trio 430W. This is the other part that might be a gamble — a faulty PSU can cause things to fail too. But it’s never made any sounds/smells/etc. and the outputs always looked fine in the BIOS. Give it a shot?
• Case fans: Both Cooler Master, one 120MM, one 80MM. Not particularly quiet but they do their job.

Yeah, I just wrote about this a few weeks ago.. I’m not really in the hardware loop and only build a PC every four years, so I really don’t know what’s good and what’s not.

I’m looking to build a PC for $1000 MAX (considerably less is welcome). Not a gaming rig but not an email machine either. Quiet is a big plus. Something with reasonable graphics performance (and dual-head is a MUST), a respectable CPU, and 4-8GB of memory. Don’t need a lot of storage, 500GB is probably more than I’ll ever need. Optical, sure, but probably don’t need bluray. Don’t really need a lot of expandability so a smaller case is preferred. I have an ATX case that I could use whose PSU and fans could probably stand to be replaced, but if you can find an awesome case that comes with those then that’s fine too.

I’m sure SOMEONE who’s reading this would love to put together a list of parts for something like this. Halp?

I’m gonna start with some seemingly unrelated things and then tie them together, so bear with me.

A few years ago, back when the PittGeeks forums still existed, someone asked what everyone had been doing during a school break. I responded that I had been working on MiniD. To that, someone else, who will go unnamed, said to me something along the lines of “why would you spend your time making another scripting language? It’s like drawing lines in the sand: it might be fun, but it’s not going to get you anywhere.” This enraged me. My long-delayed response to his question is the subject of another post.

In yet another post, I attempted to understand why I often avoid trying new things, and concluded that it’s my fear of failure that paralyzes me. I resolved to try things when I thought I would fail. Instead of taking my own advice, however, this past year has seen me sink to a new low in productivity and motivation. I have made virtually zero progress on any of my personal interests, and after two semesters and a summer of “research” in grad school, I’ve also given that up. I spend most of my time obsessively refreshing websites and chatting, and occasionally watching a TV series.

A few months ago I joined the Minecraft craze. I played obsessively for a week or two, building a house on a flat-topped mountain, spelunking enormous caverns for resources, building a little minecart system between my home base and my mining operation, smacking cows and pigs and chickens and sheep around.. and then I stopped. Being the pseudo-philosopher that I am, I somehow managed to turn a mindless game into some kind of existentialist investigation on the futility and pointlessness of existence, how the real world isn’t really any different from this sandbox with no goal, no winning condition. I had a pretty down week after that.

Tying it together. I shoot down every idea, every opportunity. It’s this “amazing” skill I have, and I have so many ways of justifying my inaction. The most insidious of these justifications is that we really are living in a sandbox with no goal, that everything we do is just drawing lines in the sand, and that ultimately nothing we do really matters. While it’s true, it’s an uncomfortably pessimistic viewpoint and it really depresses me. And that depression is what ultimately prevents me from doing anything. I have nothing to work towards since I know it’s all fake and put-on anyway. I find it difficult to enjoy things when I know they have no purpose, when they’re really no different than stacking blocks in a 3D computer simulation. I never really understood what “ignorance is bliss” was talking about until now.

This past year has been pretty joyless for me, aside from a few bright spots here and there. Well, I’m tired of being depressed. There’s no way I can ignore the truth about our lack of purpose in this universe, but I feel like that shouldn’t prevent me from living a happy life anyway.

One of the bright spots this year is that I’ve met someone whom I care about very much, and in discussing this with him last night, he told me that rather than doing things because they serve some purpose or because I feel like I should, that I should do things for myself. That’s exactly why I made MiniD, and, I think, exactly why I was able to stick with it for so long. The fact is that drawing lines in the sand is fun. There is no extrinsic reason to do anything, so instead, I’m going to start doing things for their intrinsic value. I’m going to stop caring about how well I do something. I’m going to stop caring whether or not someone else has done it already. I’m just going to jump in and do it, because it sounds fun.

Nihilism can be interpreted pessimistically or optimistically. For the past year, I’ve been nothing but pessimistic. But see, when nothing matters on its own, then you get to choose what matters or not. All that matters to me now is having fun with the time I have here, sharing that time with the people I love, and making them happy. And that’s what I’m going to do.

So my desktop of three and a half years decided that it was going to start failing piece by piece. First the optical drive started to be very picky about what it would read and when it would read it, usually ceasing to respond to requests and becoming unusable until a reboot. Then one of my DIMMs died after Thanksgiving, a completely unexpected random event. Finally my hard drive stopped working correctly, making my computer unbootable… although now that I’ve got it hooked up externally to my laptop and it’s working fine, I’m guessing it may not be the drive’s fault.

Three hardware failures in a couple months makes me think it’s something else, most likely the motherboard or maybe even the PSU. But since I have no way of determining which it is (or if it really IS all of those things failing independently), and since replacing them all would cost almost as much as buying a new computer entirely.. well.. I figure I may as well update sooner rather than later.

Well, I started looking at Newegg for parts (as if there’s any other option). I remember when this was a pretty enjoyable task, looking at all the shiny new things, putting together compatible bits and pieces to build a decent machine for a surprisingly low price. But it’s changed.

The first thing that strikes me is just how many choices I have now. I remember when choosing a video card was simple: pick ATi or nVidia, choose one of two or three models, and find a decent manufacturer. But now.. christ on a cracker. Which series of Radeon do I want? The HD 6000, HD 5000, HD 4000, HD 3000, HD 2000, 9, or X1K? How about nVidia? There’s the GeForce GTS400, GTX500, GTX400, GTS200, GTX200, G, GT, 9, 8, 7, 6, and FX. And each of these series has dozens of possibilities: manufacturer, size, SLI capability, memory size, memory speed, built-in cooling, dual-head capability, HDMI, etc. etc. etc.

I. Just. Want. A. Video card. I don’t want the subtask of choosing one to become just as complex as building a computer itself.

So that’s one problem, and only with one kind of part; don’t even get me started on the CPUs. The other problem is that despite a selection of parts that has grown almost comically large in the last few years, it doesn’t seem like anything has cropped up to help consumers decide what parts to get. How do I know this video card, or drive, or memory, or CPU will play nicely with the motherboard chipset or with each other? How do I know how big of a power supply to get? Is the BIOS on this mobo good? Does part X support feature Y, and how well? Which is better, the “nVidia GeForce GTXSXTX 48253028 x2 XXX” or the “nVidia GeForce GTXSXTXXXXX 48253880 x6 XXYXX”?  (By the way, manufacturers, I believe you’re more than milked the letter X for it’s “cool” factor. It’s getting to the point where you’re just obfuscating things now. I’m looking at you in particular, XFX.)

The only site I know of that comes close is Tom’s Hardware, and don’t get me wrong, they do a great service by trying to make this stuff at least somewhat manageable. But looking at TH more recently, I can’t help but get the impression that even they are now overwhelmed by the number of parts there are. A search for “core i5″ brings up over 14,000 results. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Granted, most of those are forum posts, but even restricting the search to reviews leaves me with 661 articles. That’s still far too much information to grok. TH also seems to have a gamer-oriented view on a lot of things, which is fine considering most of the people who care about this stuff are gamers, but what about those of us with a more practical goal in mind?

So, tl;dr: there are FAR too many choices in hardware, and virtually no useful resources seem to exist to help with this monumental task. I’m actually beginning to welcome the idea of pre-built computers, a view that I have found untenable for years. But don’t get me wrong; I’m still going to build this sumbitch.

I’m now moved into my new apartment! Many thanks to everyone who helped, directly or not — Brett, Steve, Maria, Joanna, Amy, Jackie, Dave, Marylou, and Sean. I’m sorry for having so many things.

Anyway here are some pictures. Click for bigger images.

I love Pizza Hut. Or maybe I don’t, anymore. I’m not sure.

So I’m staying at my friend’s for the week while I’m between apartments, and I’ve just been ordering dinner out. Tonight I just had a hankering for a stuffed crust pizza, so I went and ordered a large from Pizza Hut with pepperoni and extra cheese.

This is what I got (with three more slices, of course).

For one, I can’t tell that there’s any more cheese on here than there would be on a normal pizza. In fact, if there were any less cheese, you’d probably be able to see the sauce through holes in it. It is probably the least-cheesy pizza I’ve had in recent memory.

For two, the toppings are overcooked and dry, whereas the crust is paradoxically undercooked. It tastes doughy. The cheese stuffing in the crust isn’t even melty or chewy. It’s just kinda warm.

For three, the flavor is.. utterly unremarkable. It’s perfectly bland. It’s maybe a step above freezer pizza.

And I paid, tax and two-dollar delivery charge included, $14 for this.

This isn’t the Pizza Hut I’m used to. I’m used to gut-wrenchingly greasy but divinely delicious. I’m used to splurging for a pricey pizza and getting what I paid for. I’m not used to letting a slice sit on my plate for 10 minutes because I don’t want to finish it.

WTF happened, Pizza Hut?

Click for a bigger view.

I never put all of my stuff into one place before. I… I have too many things.

Not pictured: bed, desk, desk chair, desktop PC, dresser, small TV stand.

I could really stand to get rid of about half of this.