kasia in a nutshell

In the spirit of my last entry I've been regressing in my maturity level and trying to get in touch with my inner teenager.. The result? This is what my belly looked like this morning this is what it looks like now.

Now, this wasn't a rush decision at all.. I've been thinking about doing something for ages.. Ideally I would like a tattoo, but since I'm a terrible, horrible wuss I settled for a little piercing instead. I did quite a bit of research online before making an appointment and one thing that scared me were the many pictures I've seen of heavy bruising around the area and blood.. so I asked my piercer (is that the proper term? I forgot to ask that..) and his response was essentially this..

"There should never be bruising from a piercing if done by a professional, little bleeding is fine, but not profusely at all".

In other words, before you get anything pierced, do your research and find a good professional!

I've received extensive verbal instructions plus a couple of leaflets on how to care for my new holes.. and for jewelry changes (this one is just a starter ring, I'll replace it with something cute and flowery once it's healed sufficiently for that -- 6-8 weeks) I should visit him and he'll do them at no charge.

Pain wasn't *nearly* as bad as I expected (a friend pierced hers before I so I got to see the whole procedure first).. everything was newly opened and sterilized in front of me and each step explained carefully. It felt just like getting a shot.. except over with a lot quicker!

The tshirt is cool, I know :) It's from Wales and credit goes to Lynne!

Posted by kasia at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (1)

My 30th birthday is coming up (way, way too quickly for my taste to be honest) and that terrifies me a little.. Thirty years is a really long time to be alive. I easily recall when 20 seemed like old age and these days I can remember what happened that many years ago! That's right, I'm afraid of growing old.. I use anti-wrinkle cream and won't leave the house without sunscreen -- erm, that's right, I don't want skin cancer.

I'm not the only one afraid of my own mortality, it seems our society as a whole has grown to hate aging. Magazines, movies, music videos -- youth sells and aging actors are only useful for viagra commercials.. "look at those poor suckers" -- and that's okay. I don't exactly look up to mass media for inspiration or life lessons so it doesn't bother me all that much.. There is something that bothers me a lot more about our society and that is the staggering amount of "retirement communities" popping up everywhere.. It's not just 'retirement homes' it's retirement communities with barber shops, hair salons, restaurants, bars, bingo centers, catholic services and anything else a person may need right on the spot. It seems we are very enamored with the idea of locking our older generation away in an enclosed community and forgetting they exist.. That saddens and frightens me..

I don't want to be old and forgotten and I'm pretty sure my mom does not either.. I refuse to allow that to happen.. Fine, my later years may not be as much fun if I have to drive my aging mother to the hair salon -- but heck at least I'll be with her while she's around. Even if it does mean listening to that story about me being on a diet at the age of 3 for the thousandth time..

Posted by kasia at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Oops, nevermind, turns out this was meant to be under wraps..

Posted by kasia at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's probably the coolest case around but man.. all that time!

Posted by kasia at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (2)

A long and interesting discussion in Jeremy's weblog about Google's pagerank and weblogs.. Make sure to read all the follow-ups in trackbacks.. (well, except this one, you already read that, hi!).

I tend to agree with Jeremy on most issues, but not on this one.. Sorry, I just don't think weblogs should be ranked high at all.. only when it's relevant and unfortunately the current trend (looks like they're fixing it, good) has not been following that..

I'm not the most important Kasia.. and for goodness' sake I'm not Yahoo messenger tech support either! Frankly I think that entry (the one linked in the previous sentence) is a perfect argument as to why the pagerank needs fixing...

Jeremy:

It has already happened. And the results are less than ideal. A Google search for "jeremy" now [sometimes] yields something far different than what it used to. Notice that Google now believes that my home page is more important than my blog. That is, for lack of a better term, retarded.

Wrong.. your webpage is about you.. your weblog is not... if person searches for "Jeremy Zawodny" they are most likely searching information about Jeremy Zawodny not what he thinks about various issues.. granted, I could be wrong.. but I don't think I am.

Posted by kasia at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (4)

Since from all of my E3 pictures the one with a nYKo booth-babe is most popular I thought I would add a picture nYKo sent me in an e-mail as well..

Enjoy!

Posted by kasia at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some time ago I wrote an entry about having problems with Yahoo Messenger. It's a simple I-had-a-problem-here's-how-I-solved-it-all-good-now type entry and should have really gone mostly unnoticed.. unfortunately (for my sanity) Google indexed it and, as we all know, Google loves weblogs.. so this entry for a while now has been the number one hit for this search..... which means I get a lot of hits on it and people keep posting comments.. daily. Actually, not comments, mostly cries for help.

Few problems here.

1. People obviously don't read before they post a comment. As far as I can tell I could have said "Leave your e-mail address and I'll sign you up for all known spam mailing lists" and they wouldn't care.


2. Google really ought to stop loving weblogs so bloody much. Some Yahoo Messenger FAQ site should have the glory of being the number one ranked hit for that search, not my old entry that is useless to anyone but an obscure group of linux users who happen to run into the same issue I did.


3. Weblog entries don't die. They come back to haunt you as "a comment was posted" e-mail in your inbox on daily basis.

Posted by kasia at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (1)

We all read and use forums in one way or another.. sometimes to only research an answer, sometimes to ask a question, communicate with friends or cultivate inner psychosis by moderating the content. Personally, I think all moderators are either masochists or in early stages of mental illness. Not that there aren't exceptions.. of course there are. Some moderators are in late stages of mental illness.

Forums are incredibly useful sometimes. Ask a question -- get a quick answer without the noise, spam and chatter of Usenet.. Unfortunately some really simple rules seem to escape many forum participants.. It's really quite easy. One wants an answer and some good soul wants to help. Wonderful.. here are easy to follow instructions on how to facilitate such exchange in the most inefficient manner possible..

• Let's start at the beginning: the subject, title, the first thing others will see of your desperate cry for help. It's desperate, no? It's a cry for help, right? Show that!

  Here are some fine examples:

  HELP ME!!!!
  Need Help NOW!@!@!@@@!!!!
  I HAVE A QUESTION!

  Note the fine use of extra !!! It shows emotion! How can anyone by-pass a post with such a title!?!?!?!?!!! Extra points for using ALL CAPS.. IT MAKES THE TOPIC JUMP RIGHT OUT!!!!

• The content: Give as little information as possible, after all this is The Internet and who knows what psycho is making notes out of your every post attempting to collect as much information as possible so he can hack your machine and use it to direct the next nuclear attack against Nairobi. You can never be too careful.. Furthermore, these people who answer are the experts, aren't they? They shouldn't need explicit details.. make them use their brains -- they like to do that, why else would they be answering questions in forums?

  Here's an example:
  

  My computer froze. I was working and then it froze. Nothing, like it just stopped. How do I fix this?

  Hah, let them try and deduce finer details about you out of this one!

• Signature: This is your calling card.. this is what people will remember you by.. there you can put all contact information, your seti stats, the picture of your dog and the entire lyrics from the last 5 Led Zeppelin albums just so everyone knows you're a fan. They won't mind, server space is cheap.
• Follow up: Let's say for some bizarre reason someone actually answers your query correctly and it fixes your problem do not, by any means let them know it was the case! It's considered very rude to say your problem was resolved. Someone with a similar problem could find your post and read it later and then they won't ask a question.. all those poor experts and helpers would be bored to death if that was the case. It's even worse if you thank someone.. that's for like, sissies.

What's worse than being a moderator? Whining about forum posts in your weblog..

Posted by kasia at 09:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

Posted on cnet:

According to a statement from Microsoft, the company will license SCO's Unix patents and the source code. That code is at the heart of a $1 billion lawsuit between SCO and IBM, which is aggressively pushing Linux as an alternative to Windows in corporate back shops.

Hm.. this will not end well.

Posted by kasia at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

As is evident from my pictures I just spent some time at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Exposition). It was definitely more fun than the conferences I'm used to.. most software or geek conferences don't include roomfuls of video games and fun toys. I'm not much of a game geek (sorry) so I won't be talking much about the games themselves (frankly before this conference I didn't know about the existence of 90% of these games) for that you're best of visiting another blog.. Matt has an entry about E3 that includes game-type-stuff. We hung out together for part of the conference and had lunch (pizza) in the horribly crowded cafeteria at the expo.. The lines to get anything other than wilty salads that have seen better days 10 years ago and semi-edible pizza were longer than I had time scheduled for the entire LA visit. Most fun (for me) game turned out to be Gran Turismo 4. Playstation had a contest setup where four players competed against each other.. Everyone received tshirts (huge t-shirts) and winner a baseball cap. It was fun to play and surprisingly enough I was 3rd, not last! Line wasn't too bad.. maybe 15-20 minutes waiting.. Considering how crowded the conference was that's not bad at all. I enjoyed the game so much I played it some more at the consoles not mobbed with cameras. Cameras were everywhere. Literally.. journalists, geeks, professional cameramen, webcams.. One couldn't sneeze without someone else snapping a picture of it. I spent some time playing with PS2 Eye Toy and had at least three cameras recording the spectacle. I think they were mostly excited to see a girl try it.. Females were very much in minority.. Although booth babes were plentiful. There was at least one booth surrounded by a mob of picture-snapping geeks.. we attempted to see what they were selling/producing/offering but all we could spot were two babes in underwear. Go figure.. don't need a product to be popular at E3! It's hard to believe, but the US government actually paid some army soldiers to come to the expo and present their "America's Army" game.. Don't we have better things to spend money on? They even had a black hawk demonstration outside.. how much did that cost, I wonder? Internet access was a little hard to get since the lines to the machines provided by Yahoo! Games were long (and painful, everyone seemed to have been writing novels).. then I realized I had a media pass (good to have friends!) and utilized the media newsroom which had a whole lab of machines and wireless access points.. Having the media pass was great.. I could get into all kinds of rooms I wasn't supposed to.. I won't tell anyone if you won't ;) In a nutshell.. I had lots of fun -- will go again next year given an opportunity!

Posted by kasia at 09:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Most are a bit blurry since it was dark inside the halls and using flash would have given an inaccurate view of the show floor.

Link.

E3 was a lot of fun, look for a more-detailed entry tonight!

Posted by kasia at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nope, I didn't disappear and die - just back in from California.. I have some entries to post.. will do that later.

I still hate flying.

Posted by kasia at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Scott is happily using linux on the desktop now... which is great. Everyone should do that.. Particularly those without any grey hair -- RedHat can take care of that problem quickly!

His entry from today brought out one of my minor linux-user-related pet-peeves. (One of very, very many, I assure you, but I don't really have the time nor the inclination to iterate through that list today.. not to mention I don't really mean to bore my readers to tears).

I'm sure everyone (really, I'm sure) who uses linux (unix, etc) on semi-regular or even occasional basis has used the

kill -9

.. command. You have? Stop it!

No, really.. it's bad. 9 is probably the most mis-used over-used and abused kill signal of them all.. Browser hangs? Kill -9 it, right! See? It's even a verb.

Why is it bad? Its translation into human language is essentially "kill with extreme prejudice".. which nine out of ten times is actually not necessary at all and a simple

kill -TERM

would suffice so the poor, abused application can do any post-processing it may need before moving into the underworld.. Using -TERM (or really just kill as it's the same thing) allows the program to do anything it needs before going away.. like cleaning up temporary files, removing stale file locks and other nastiness that can be avoided.

So repeat after me.. -9 bad.. TERM good.

Posted by kasia at 07:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (1)

Four months have passed but it still seems to me like I just came back from the west coast. I wonder if that's at all related to my general hatred of flying. No matter, tomorrow I'm off again -- this time to the lower parts of the west coast.. in other words LA.

Flying out of JFK this time around so when I get stuck for six hours again (and with my general luck I'm sure I will) it will be more entertaining than the glimpse of hell that is Bradley International Airport.

Posted by kasia at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

History of Internet with helpful pictures..

They missed one major event..

1994 - Kasia gets a 486 and a modem -- discovers there are other computer geeks out there..

Posted by kasia at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (3)

To put advertising in sqlplus quit message.

SQL> quit;
Disconnected from Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.1.0 - Production With the Partitioning, OLAP and Oracle Data Mining options JServer Release 9.2.0.1.0 - Production

I mean really.. we already bought it, we know what features it has, thanks though!

Posted by kasia at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

That's all that was wrong with my laptop.. a couple of screws on the back became loose and apparently that caused it to stop delivering current to the power supply.

Good thing there was no surge thanks to this.. discovered it as I was about to take it appart to take a look inside..

"hmm.. why are these loose.. let's tighten them and see.." doh.

Life is looking up :)

Posted by kasia at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This is just too funny! It may be worth the $60 a month it would cost me to get HBO just to watch Ali G.

YOUNG MAN: Isn't there a real danger that someone give a message over the radio to one of them fighter pilots, saying, `Bomb Ira——' and the geezer doesn't heard it properly and bombs Iran instead of Iraq?

Who says the British have no sense of humour.

Posted by kasia at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

It's just been such a bad last few days I haven't felt like writing anything.. not even a blog entry...
Appears to me that nothing is going well in my life lately.

• I ran out of checks a couple weeks ago, which is a little funny considering I placed a re-order (through my bank's website) nearly two months ago. Spent 15 minutes on the phone with someone explaining how considering I have received a confirmation e-mail for the order means that yes, I am pretty sure I pressed the 'submit' button not the 'cancel' one... I really didn't want to just say "Dude, I write this kind of crap for a living, it's not hard for me to use the Internet". Ah well.. "2-3 days" with express delivery in the meantime I paid my rent in cash since I didn't feel like buying a money order and my landlord doesn't take credit cards.
• Work -- don't get me started.. (hi boss)
• My laptop died. It won't turn on, the batteries are good, power won't go on at all. Great.
• Injured my poor calf muscles by exercising them way too much two days in the row now I have issues walking (or hobbling, that's more accurate).

Pardon the bitching.

Posted by kasia at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Who is Matt you ask? (I hope you're not asking what a weblog is, that would scare me).

Matt is a friend of mine (we went to school together, briefly) and a game developer. In other words fellow geek. He's bound to have something interesting to say.

ChasingCoffee.com -- cute domain.

Posted by kasia at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I suppose it's a little silly to miss a rock formation but.. it was a rather unique one after all.

I've pictures of it somewhere from my last visit to New Hampshire, glad I got to see it while it was there.

Posted by kasia at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The big, steep hill on my usual 5K course.. I managed to run up it today without having to walk after just to get my heart rate back to normal levels... No, really, it's very steep..

Didn't have a heart attack either.

Yay me.

Posted by kasia at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)