For no good reason that I can think of, Gayatri brought me breakfast in bed this morning. Scrambled eggs, toast and orange juice. Yum.
After having managed to avoid Chinatown for the last 9 years, I somehow ended up going there for the second time in a month today. Sigh. Last time it was to take Gayatri's mum around. This time it was for her newly married cousin and her husband, who is in town on business.
Well, it's almost bedtime and I've just spent an unproductive couple of hours attempting to install Win98 under Bochs, so I can see what eMachineShop is like. First, Bochs refused to boot the Win98 CDROM because apparently it isn't bootable. When I finally blew the dust off of my win98 boot disk, it turned out to be dead - I haven't used it in years so no surprise there. So I decided to try the FreeDOS boot image that comes with Bochs and see if I could get to the CDROM from there. No joy - it doesn't come with a CDROM driver. So then I downloaded the FreeDOS bootable install CD and tried that. Suddenly Bochs was segfaulting on me. So I blew away the x86_64 Bochs I installed from the Fedora Extras project and tried the stock one from the Bochs web page instead. This actually booted the FreeDOS installation program and was quite nippy, too! I virtually ejected the Bochs CDROM image, stuck the Win98 one in instead and ran setup.exe. The setup program did a disk scan, which turned out OK (of course: after all, it's not a real disk), started the Windows install GUI and then crapped out saying that it needed at least 16MB of memory. This was annoying because I'd actually given the bloody thing 128MB of memory, but somehow it wasn't seeing it. At that point, I rpm -e'd everything, blew away my bochs directory and made myself a nice cup of tea.
I think I'll watch some Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy before I hit the sack.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Saturday, February 12, 2005
We don't want your money
Today, we went looking for a yoghurt maker at Macy's. They have a frozen yoghurt maker, but that assumes you already have yoghurt and just want to freeze it.
Afterwards, Gayatri and I went to Shivas restaurant in Mountain View to get some takeout. They told us they don't do takeout on Friday's and Saturday's. Considering that the restaurant was mostly empty at the time (around 5ish) and we would have given them a $25 order, this seems stupid and inflexible. Why are so many American companies so eager to not take your money? In any other part of the world, the owner would have leapt at the oportunity to make a little extra money without even having to seat us, serve us and clean our dishes, forks and table linens afterwards. I guess it comes down to a comforting following of the rules no matter what. We idly wondered afterwards what they would have done if we'd taken a seat, ordered some food and then immediately asked for a doggy-bag. We ended up getting takeout from Friendy Badal's instead. Yum.
Afterwards, Gayatri and I went to Shivas restaurant in Mountain View to get some takeout. They told us they don't do takeout on Friday's and Saturday's. Considering that the restaurant was mostly empty at the time (around 5ish) and we would have given them a $25 order, this seems stupid and inflexible. Why are so many American companies so eager to not take your money? In any other part of the world, the owner would have leapt at the oportunity to make a little extra money without even having to seat us, serve us and clean our dishes, forks and table linens afterwards. I guess it comes down to a comforting following of the rules no matter what. We idly wondered afterwards what they would have done if we'd taken a seat, ordered some food and then immediately asked for a doggy-bag. We ended up getting takeout from Friendy Badal's instead. Yum.
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
The Jerk
I had lunch with Bryan, Shannon and Cian today at Tavernas Gyros. I had the Lentil soup, which is really really nice. It's also really really filling. Unfortunately, I forgot about this fact and also ordered a Falafel Wrap, but could only finish half of it.
Gayatri made a nice French lentil salad for dinner. After dinner, we met Hari. He'd been up at the ISSCC '05 conference in San Francisco, and loaned me his copy of the proceedings. This was the conference where the technical details of the Cell processor were officially announced. It should be interesting to see if it all lives up to the hype.
We watched The Jerk tonight. Um, it wasn't as funny as I originally remembered it.
Gayatri made a nice French lentil salad for dinner. After dinner, we met Hari. He'd been up at the ISSCC '05 conference in San Francisco, and loaned me his copy of the proceedings. This was the conference where the technical details of the Cell processor were officially announced. It should be interesting to see if it all lives up to the hype.
We watched The Jerk tonight. Um, it wasn't as funny as I originally remembered it.
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
Bob, the Devil and God
We ate lunch at Tony and Alba's. Yummy pizza.
I was listening to Fresh Air on the way home. Terry Gross was interviewing Bill Maher, of "Real Time with Bill Maher" fame. His theory on the Iraq war was that it was a good thing because it lead to democracy in Iraq. That was his rather simple-minded justification for the whole debacle: the lies, the false intelligence, the ever-changing excuses, the massive Iraqi casualties, the US casualties, the ongoing quagmire.
I just noticed that "God, the Devil and Bob" is available on Netflix. Top of the queue with that!
I was listening to Fresh Air on the way home. Terry Gross was interviewing Bill Maher, of "Real Time with Bill Maher" fame. His theory on the Iraq war was that it was a good thing because it lead to democracy in Iraq. That was his rather simple-minded justification for the whole debacle: the lies, the false intelligence, the ever-changing excuses, the massive Iraqi casualties, the US casualties, the ongoing quagmire.
I just noticed that "God, the Devil and Bob" is available on Netflix. Top of the queue with that!
Monday, February 7, 2005
Microsoft Project. Nnngggh.
I woke late again, but this time because I ended up reading about a third of "West with the Night" last night. That's a really really good book.
Bryan and Mitko came by at lunch to play games. We played some Burnout 3 and some Katamari Damacy. Katamari Damacy is a weird but wonderful game with a great Japanese hip-hop jazzy soundtrack and a weird opening song that was just hummed by the music composer.
After lunch we had a scheduling meeting. There's only one thing worse than a scheduling meeting, and that's a scheduling meeting that centers around Microsoft Project. Can Microsoft do anything right? Well, I suppose they can make money. Project encourages you to categorize your thoughts and then makes it really difficult to tear them apart, group them differently, sort them sanely or do the other numerous small and large tasks that makes brainstorming a schedule possible.
While Bryan was searching around the task list for dependencies to hook onto milestones, I got so dizzy looking at the display that I asked him to print out the stuff instead and spent the rest of the meeting staring at the paper. The gantt chart was so web-like in it's complexity as to be useless. Of course, there's no obvious way of turning it off, so something useless takes a blob of real-estate.
When I got home, I phoned Gayatri and she reminded me that it was my turn to cook. I steamed some potatos and carrots, chopped up some spring onion and put them into a broth made from miso soup and vegtable stock. Oh, and I added some Udon noodles, too. When Gayatri got home, she hard-boiled an egg and dumped that into the mix, too. However, it turns out that I accidently put twice as much miso mix into the soup as I should have. It came out OK, although it was a little thick.
After dinner I watched one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation followed by three back-to-back episodes of Monk. Sharona's gone, but the replacement is actually pretty good, so I think it'll work out OK. The season got off to a great start - I'm glad it's not loosing it as the years go by.
This, was the most amount of TV I've watched in a long long time. I'm going to go to bed and read now, to cleanse my mind.
Bryan and Mitko came by at lunch to play games. We played some Burnout 3 and some Katamari Damacy. Katamari Damacy is a weird but wonderful game with a great Japanese hip-hop jazzy soundtrack and a weird opening song that was just hummed by the music composer.
After lunch we had a scheduling meeting. There's only one thing worse than a scheduling meeting, and that's a scheduling meeting that centers around Microsoft Project. Can Microsoft do anything right? Well, I suppose they can make money. Project encourages you to categorize your thoughts and then makes it really difficult to tear them apart, group them differently, sort them sanely or do the other numerous small and large tasks that makes brainstorming a schedule possible.
While Bryan was searching around the task list for dependencies to hook onto milestones, I got so dizzy looking at the display that I asked him to print out the stuff instead and spent the rest of the meeting staring at the paper. The gantt chart was so web-like in it's complexity as to be useless. Of course, there's no obvious way of turning it off, so something useless takes a blob of real-estate.
When I got home, I phoned Gayatri and she reminded me that it was my turn to cook. I steamed some potatos and carrots, chopped up some spring onion and put them into a broth made from miso soup and vegtable stock. Oh, and I added some Udon noodles, too. When Gayatri got home, she hard-boiled an egg and dumped that into the mix, too. However, it turns out that I accidently put twice as much miso mix into the soup as I should have. It came out OK, although it was a little thick.
After dinner I watched one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation followed by three back-to-back episodes of Monk. Sharona's gone, but the replacement is actually pretty good, so I think it'll work out OK. The season got off to a great start - I'm glad it's not loosing it as the years go by.
This, was the most amount of TV I've watched in a long long time. I'm going to go to bed and read now, to cleanse my mind.
Sunday, February 6, 2005
Busy day
I woke up late today. My excuse is that I spent more time than I really should have last night playing "Burnout 3 Takedown". For a game that's so simple (the more road carnage you cause, the higher your score) it's a LOT of fun.
I'm still amazed at how tiny the new PlayStation 2 is, BTW.
I finally filled and painted the holes in the doors where the door stops used to be.
Gayatri and I had the wonderful idea of going to the Stanford Mall while the superbowl was on, figuring that everybody would be staying home to watch. It turns out that there must not be that many football fans in the Bay Area and they all apparently had the same idea.
We went there to shop for a runner rug for the hallway. It turns out the nice one wasn't stocked by the store, so we had to order it online. So instead of buying a rug, we bought a set of wall mounting brackets for our Bose speakers. Bose stuff is expensive.
There's this bakery in the Stanford Mall that does yummy Swiss Cheese sandwiches. I had one of those for lunch. Gayatri doesn't like them because she's from India and these sandwiches pretty much go against the grain of everything she understands about food: the contain plain bread, a little butter, cheese and absolutely no chutney, herbs or spices whatsoever.
On the way back from the mall, I saw what appeared to be a frog-man wearing a headlamp riding a bicycle down Homestead Road. No, I have no explanation for this.
For dinner, Gayatri made this yummy black bean salad from her new Greens cook book. After dinner, we went to Ikea (to look at their rugs) and bought a new teapot. When we got back, I walked into the office and "Curtains" by Aphex Twin was playing on my PC. It sounded wonderful.
Started reading "West with the Night" by Beryl Markham. She's got a wonderful way with words.
I'm still amazed at how tiny the new PlayStation 2 is, BTW.
I finally filled and painted the holes in the doors where the door stops used to be.
Gayatri and I had the wonderful idea of going to the Stanford Mall while the superbowl was on, figuring that everybody would be staying home to watch. It turns out that there must not be that many football fans in the Bay Area and they all apparently had the same idea.
We went there to shop for a runner rug for the hallway. It turns out the nice one wasn't stocked by the store, so we had to order it online. So instead of buying a rug, we bought a set of wall mounting brackets for our Bose speakers. Bose stuff is expensive.
There's this bakery in the Stanford Mall that does yummy Swiss Cheese sandwiches. I had one of those for lunch. Gayatri doesn't like them because she's from India and these sandwiches pretty much go against the grain of everything she understands about food: the contain plain bread, a little butter, cheese and absolutely no chutney, herbs or spices whatsoever.
On the way back from the mall, I saw what appeared to be a frog-man wearing a headlamp riding a bicycle down Homestead Road. No, I have no explanation for this.
For dinner, Gayatri made this yummy black bean salad from her new Greens cook book. After dinner, we went to Ikea (to look at their rugs) and bought a new teapot. When we got back, I walked into the office and "Curtains" by Aphex Twin was playing on my PC. It sounded wonderful.
Started reading "West with the Night" by Beryl Markham. She's got a wonderful way with words.
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