I am home for the summer.  I love it here.  I love being near my family -- not just mom & dad and Nick and Maria, who live here, but also Rolly, Brian, and Tasha and their families, who are now "within range" instead of 3+ hours away.  I don’t know how I manage, being be so far away for 2/3 of the year.

Today my dad took my mom and my grandmom out to lunch (plus me, Nick, and Maria... heh), at the Coventry Tea Room.  This is a quaint dining room that’s used mainly for formal occasions; for example, Brian and Heidi had their wedding rehearsal dinner there.  Anyway they cook some amazing meat... at the rehearsal dinner, I had a filet, and today I had prime rib, and man... was it ever delicious.  And when we asked for it medium-rare, they cooked it that way, to perfection I might add, which most nearly every restaurant manages to get completely wrong.  Even my dad, who is the least tolerant of us all when it comes to meat cooked to order, agreed it was good.

I’ve been getting along with my parents amazingly well for the past couple years.  It’s been that way pretty much forever with my mom, but my dad just seemed to have trouble connecting to us or talking to us at all when we were teenagers.  He’s pretty tough on the outside, unapproachable to some extent, and at least in the past, was a lot more grumpy than not.  But more and more I’m starting to believe that’s just a thin candy shell, and he’s all gooey chocolate on the inside.  No, seriously, I guess since all of his kids (well except Maria) are adults now, it’s just easier to get along with and talk to him.  He’s always been hilarious in a really dry, sarcastic kind of way (which I’m sure is where I get my sarcasm...), and he’s still the always-right, my way or the highway type... but lately he’s been getting more and more friendly it seems.

So anyway... I’m really really glad to be home, away from school, starting work tomorrow, and standing on the edge of summer.

Oh, and in unrelated news, this messageboard now has spell-check.  Enjoy.  Oh wait, that would require ACTUALLY POSTING messages.  Honestly people, if it weren’t for my mom, Rolly, Steev, and Joseph, I’d swear I’m talking to myself sometimes.... not that there’s anything wrong with that, right?  Right.  But still.

hey all, really weird request here... or at least, it is to me... but i’ll try it anyways, i ummm, finally went to church tonight, was nice, i enjoyed it alot, and think im going to start going every thursday night (its a college group type thing)  and well, I want a bible, and due to the fact that I have a lack of a vehicular mode of transportation, I am wondering if anyone knows a good website to buy a bible at, that maybe uses paypal for payments (not a requirement though), and if so, if you have done any purchasing from there, and any recommendations basically.  thanks

Mercury is a lot smaller than the sun.

My 2-year contract with Cingular is about to expire, so I need a new contract.  I’m thinking of moving away from Cingular to a different provider, for a couple reasons: 1) they require a 2-year contract, which means you’re locked in for a long time, and it also means they have little incentive to improve their service (since there’s no chance of people switching to another provider after a year).  For example, you can get AIM Wireless with every major provider except Cingular.  2) Cingular has such a small selection of phones and they’re all boring.  3) I’ve been with Cingular for either 2 or 4 years now, I can’t even remember it’s been so long, and I know I’ve had countless frustrations with them that I can’t even recall right now.  So I just want to try something different.

However, Cingular does now have free rollover minutes, and the "nights" in the "free nights and weekends" recently began starting at 7pm instead of 9pm.  So...

Anyway, if you have a cell phone, with Cingular or anyone else, post a reply and let me know if you’re happy with your service.  And also where you’re at.

Hideho, people.  I just got back from the Agape Festival in Greenville, Illinois.  It was awesome.  We got there a little late, considering it’s a three hour drive for us, and got there just in time to see Pax 217.  After them Five Iron Frenzy played.  They rock so much they rocked my socks off.  (They did the song "Pootermobile" from the Cheeses of Nazerath C.D.) They have such a great stage presence.  They kept screwing up, but they didn’t care and neither did the crowd.  In fact, the lead singer (I forget his name) even said, before they started one song that he forgot the lyrics to half of it.  But, in true Five Iron fashion, they played it anyway.

We met some other guys there.  They brought a couch with them and we set it out in the middle of the field, cut a hole in it, and shoved an umbrella in it for shade.  Then we took some golf clubs and elastic bands and made a little lean-to.  It was pretty cool. 

The Elms, By The Tree, The Benjiman Gate, Superchic[k], Skillet, and Jars of Clay played the next day.  I’m sorry, but even though they are not my favorite band, Superchic[k] still rocks.  And maybe I like them for all the wrong reasons.  Maybe it’s because Trica and Melissa are just as cute as they are.  I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a thing for Trica.  I talked to her a little bit (don’t know if she knew I was hitting on her or not) and found out that she is actually younger then Melissa.  I always thought she was the big sister.  She’s 23 while Melissa is 26.  They all initialed my shoe and signed my C.D.  Max said I needed to work on the smell of my shoe.  It wasn’t the smell of a man, apperently. 

I’m actually grounded right now, because I got home at 2:41 A.M.  My friend Jimmy wanted to stay until Jars was completly done.  They just never seemed to get done.  They even left the stage, waited and came back to play a few more songs.  It was funny, because they played a slow, melancholy version of "Girls just wanna have fun"  Yes, they really did that.  None of us could believe it, but we loved it anyway.

Skillet did a pretty cool altar call, but it almost got ruined by some guy "touched by the spirt" who kept yelling out things.  Skillet told him that they appriciete his passion (you need spell check on this thing), but he was ruining their altar call, yet he still kept going.  It got annoying, but still a few people went up and ’got saved’.  Let’s hope it’s true for all of them and not just a show which some people do, unfortunatly.

Well, all in all, it was a great concert/festival.  Made some friends, heard good music, hit on Trica from Superchic[k], and had some fun.  I’m hoping to go again next year.  Also, it was nice that I got in for free. (It’s good to know a D.J.)

I’m starting to be tired earlier, and am getting back to a normal sleeping schedule.  Go me.  (And yes, it is 1am... anything before 2am is early for me.)

Thursday, apparently a hard disk died in the server that my site lives on, so my site was inaccessible for a while.  Actually it was 8 hours.  From ~3pm to ~11pm.  There is no way a hard disk failure should cause 8 hours of downtime.  With mirroring RAID-arrays, there are 2 independent copies of all data, and a dead disk can just be replaced and re-mirrored.  Depending on the RAID subsystem, the disk can even be hot-swapped.  I was under the impression that all hosts used such a setup, but I’d venture a guess that mine does not.  If their servers weren’t so fast, and they didn’t give me free SSH access, I’d be looking for a new host right now.

Friday I had someone from the treas.gov domain -- that’s the US Department of the Treasury -- on my site, downloading Submerge songs.  It’s pretty unusual for me to get hits from government computers; in all of last year there were only about 30 out of some 20,000 visitors.  You gotta expect that the government frowns upon use of public machines for downloading mp3s.

Also on Friday, the bassist from Freemartin IMed me.  He came across my site site by searching for info on a show that his band played.  Anyway Freemartin is an up-and-coming band that I stumbled upon about 6 months ago, and I really like them.  But they only have one CD, and I haven’t been able to find it anywhere, so I just have mp3s.  Well this guy IMs me and tells me they have a new EP coming out, and he wants to send me a free copy, along with the old album, and a t-shirt!  All because I have his band listed on my music page, saying how much I like them.  See, it pays to have a cool website  : )  So the bass player (he has a name, it’s Shawn, why don’t I call him that from now on....), Shawn, was really nice and we chatted for a while.  If you’re into indie/punk/emo definitely check Freemartin out.

I just put up some photos of my room.  They’re fun.  Go see.

Let’s end with something ridiculous from Bob Whittaker’s site:

In this [comic], the guy who sends messages by throwing them into the ocean wrote:

"We have a new Department of Homeland Security to protect us.  I recommend it to you."

The reply said, "We don’t need it.  We just enforce our immigration laws."

Entirely true and entirely ridiculous.  Bob also points out how ridiculous it is that Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum is being called anti-gay for his recent comment on privacy laws.  He may well believe that homosexuality is wrong, but #1 there’s nothing wrong with believing that, and #2 that’s not what he said.  What he said was that if a "right to privacy" exists such that the law cannot interfere with people’s actions behind closed doors (in this case, sodomy), then such a right would by definition prohibit the same interference by the law in cases of any number of other things, like incest.  Which is, of course, undeniably true by simple logical implication; however liberals cannot be troubled by such things as "truth" when sacred Political Correctness is at stake.  Free speech is becoming such a joke in this country.  No one is allowed to say these things that everyone knows are true.

As Tool so hopefully put it, I have a suggestion to keep you all occupied: learn to swim.  If only.

We make an agreement with North Korea, in which they promise to dismantle nuclear weapons programs in exchange for five hundred thousand tons of oil per year from us, tons of food aid, and for the world’s help in building 2 "safe" nuclear power plants.  A few years later they reinstate those weapons programs (sounds familiar by the way), so we naturally stop giving them $100 million worth of free oil.  This throws the already-hopelessly-failed country into a crisis.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il then proceeds to blame us for their development of nuclear weapons:

North Korea has since said the crisis spawned over the admission could be settled if the United States were to back off from its "hostile policy" toward the country.

And not only is it our fault that they violated the agreement, but in fact, we declared "nuclear war" on them:

"This is a declaration of war, a nuclear war against the DPRK. Therefore, the U.S. openly violated and destroyed the DPRK-U.S. agreed framework and nullified the North-South joint declaration on denuclearization," the Rodong Sinmun said.

North Korea huffed and puffed for months in an attempt to wring concessions out of Bush.  They threatened that New York, Washington, and Chicago would be "aflame" and there would be "nuclear war" if we took out their nuclear facilities.  Despite these lunatic ravings, and the lunatic ravings of some Americans saying that we shouldn’t attack Iraq because we weren’t attacking NK, Bush quietly refused to humor the dictator’s demands.  Presumably, he believed that Kim Jong-Il was all hype.  A few months later, without any actual substance behind all their big talk, we can only conclude that Bush handled that situation pretty well.

Now here’s the funny part.  After breaking their agreement with us, losing the benefits of that agreement, and showering us with empty threats, they want us to do it again -- but this time, they’ll only hold up their end after we’ve satisfied a long list of demands:

Administration officials said that during talks in Beijing last week North Korea had asked for a step-by-step package under which it would receive oil shipments, food aid, security guarantees, energy assistance, and economic benefits, among other requests. In return, they said, North Korea had offered to dismantle its nuclear weapons, but only at the end of the process.

Ok Kim, let me get this straight.  You lied to us once, so we should not only trust you again, but trust you even more, to the point that we don’t ask anything of you until we’ve already delivered our half of the deal?  Right.  I think you’ve been talking to Carter too long.  President Bush is no Jimmy Carter (thank God, honestly), and he understands that appeasing a tyrant is not an acceptable solution.

I am constantly impressed by my roommates.

Monday morning, our plumbing backed up.  When my roommates’ dad bought this house last August, the basement wasn’t finished; in fact, it was a damp mildewy mess, with some walls made of mdf-ish wood, some made of just wood paneling, with a drop ceiling, a thin wet carpet, and just altogether gross.  The plan was to finish the basement and put a full bathroom into it, so that the basement could become my bedroom.

They did that, working every weekend for a couple months, and the result is amazing.  They conquered this basement and I love living in it.  But while working on installing the bathroom, they discovered that the plumbing in the house was done all wrong.  Instead of the main sewage pipe sloping down 1 inch every 4 feet, it’s nearly level through the whole basement floor.  Which means that... um... the stuff doesn’t drain so well.

Which wasn’t a huge deal, until they put this shower in down here.  Because now when stuff backs up, the lowest opening in the system is the drain in my shower -- as opposed to the sinks on the first floor, which would never be in danger because any back-up would never climb an entire story.

So, Monday, it backed up, and there was about a half-inch of yucky water in the bottom of my shower.  Not really nasty gross yuckiness, but pretty gross, and it did smell.  So plan A was to get a plunger and try to force the obstruction through the pipe and out where it belongs.  Plan A didn’t work.  So Konstantin went out and got a sewer tape (sometimes called a sewer snake), opened the clean-out on the main sewer pipe (which is in my closet, incidentally), and started running the tape into there.  In case you don’t know (as I didn’t), a sewer tape is a flat, stiff band of metal, about a half-inch wide and 25 or 30 or 40 feet long, rolled up into a circle.  The end of it is much like the end of a fancy arrow, like a four-pointed 3D triangle.  So when your stuff gets clogged, you feed this tape into the pipe and hope that it breaks through the obstruction enough that you can flush it away with a toilet.

That took a decent amount of effort on Konstantin’s part, and after about 15 minutes of battle, he prevailed.  And I spent the next 2 hours cleaning my bathroom.

I think I’m a fairly handy person.  My dad is a roofing / siding / window contractor, and he’s one of those people who can build and fix just about anything... and I have learned a lot from him growing up, both around the house, and working with him during the summers for a couple years.  But we’ve never had any plumbing problems at my house that I can recall, so I don’t have much experience there.  And Konstantin and Dimitry spent 5 years (re)building their entire house with their dad, literally 5 years, every day after school and on weekends.  And then they did a lot of re-doing on this house here.  Between the two of them, if there’s a problem they can’t solve, I’ve yet to see it.

Okay, I’ve decided to srape the abstinence thing.  It’s putting me really far behind, but I’ve decided to talk about the existince of God.  I have found such an awesome site about it! Check out www.doesgodexist.org.  It’s a completely scientific veiw about the existence of God and the truth of the Bible.  The guy that wrote the papers used to be an atheist and tried to scientificly disprove God.  Instead, he became a believer.  Praise God!  He actually came to the local college and did a debt on the existence of God a while ago.  I, unfortunetly, missed it and now am regretting it even more.  But, thanks for trying to help me before, Anthony and his mom.

I just found something awesome.  A really cool band has a song on a really cool movie.  I’m not talking about Evenescence on the Daredevil soundtrack.  (That was only a decent movie.  I’m a comic book fan, so I catch all the little things wrong with the flick and blow up at it, so it wasn’t as good as it could have been)  I’m talking one of the ’best movies of all time’s’ sequel.  P.O.D has a new song on the ’Matrix Reloaded’ soundtrack.  I know most of you don’t see this as big news, but remember, I’m a geeky fan-boy, so shut up.  :p

Two of my good friends are changing their majors, both from computer engineering.  One is going to comp sci (which is like comp eng, except a lot more programming and a lot less hardware), and the other to something business-related.

I’ve been thinking of switching from comp eng to comp sci for a while now myself.  Mainly because judging from the fact that I program so much in my spare time, it’s probably a safe bet that I’d enjoy doing that professionally.  Another big draw of being a programmer is that thanks to the internet, there is often no need for a programmer to "go" to work.  These sorts of people often work from home a few days a week, or even most of the time.  And that would be fantastic.  Fanstatic is a funny way to misspell fantastic, by the way.

Anyway I love to program, as is evident from things like this entire website, my blogger script, and my musicbox.  I do enjoy engineering though too; the hardware side of things is very interesting to me.  But lately I’ve been wondering if pure programming interests me more.

Argh.  Well in any event, this summer -- in two weeks, in fact -- I have an amazing job as a computer engineer, the same one I had last summer at Unisys.  It pays incredibly well and it’s fun and the people there are super.  So for the time being I’m going to just focus on that.  After the summer, I need to just focus on graduating at all, whether it be compsci or compeng or whatever.  I’ve been spinning my wheels for 2 years here at UP and I’m so frustrated and tired of not doing well.  This semester is the 4th and last of this slump; I didn’t do much better than the last 3, but towards the middle/end I finally managed to get a little more disciplined and to study, so I’m confident about next fall.  I also realized that if you don’t come out full-force in the first 2 or 3 weeks of the semester, it’s incredibly hard to catch up.  Before, it always seemed like "eh, first couple weeks, no big deal...", but that period really sets the pace for you for the rest of the semester.  Konstantin said that to me a couple months ago and I realize now that it’s completely true.

Anthony, once again, the site looks awesome, I still haven’t gotten mine to "emulate" yours, however, if you want to track the progress, I am doing it on my webserver here locally, which can be found at http://steev.is-a-geek.net - and as a lil added treat, im testing out this pretty cool blog type system, was considering going to just a blog, but then, I dunno... but it can be found at http://steev.is-a-geek.net/denial/  Both e107 and denial are fairly interesting, and as my "coding skills" aren’t quite up to par, I have to go with what I know, and since I know these guys, I can just ask them if there is a problem or I want something, they can always steer me in the direction.  Keep up the great site, I definately enjoy your musings.

Hey, I have to do a speech about something debatable and I choose celibacy.  I’d like some arguments for and against if you could give me some.  And also some testimonies on why you believe the way you do.  I know most people here will probably go the religious route, but I also need some reasons not to.  (The one’s I’ve found have been misleading and dumb, so please help.)

Bob Whitaker is right on the money, as usual:

When I was in Africa, a white government still ruled in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.  We said that the minute the Communist guerrillas took over the government there, the big tribe would slaughter the smaller tribe.  Liberals said no such slaughter would take place.  As soon as black rule arrived, the majority tribe slaughtered the minority tribe.

In every African country tribes hate each other or kill each other.  Liberals and respectable conservatives say that what is needed is Marxism or Social Progress or Christianity to make tribes stop killing each other.  Let me ask an unrespectable question.  Why are those tribes that hate each other jammed together in the same country?

The reason was stated by General Wesley Clark, “There is no room in today’s Europe for ethnically pure countries.”  As a liberal, Clark demands that American troops be used to force different people to live under the same government.

Russia is already destitute, but it is spending what little money it has forcing the Moslem country of Chechnya to stay within Russia.  It took Tito, an absolute tyrant, to hold the gaggle of peoples called Yugoslavia together.  Once Tito died Yugoslavia fell apart.  Now independent Croatia is at peace because it is made up of Croatians.

You just can’t argue with facts and history.  Which is why you see a lot of people ignoring facts and history.

Here’s some more:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Operation Iraqi Freedom could not be justified because it freed the Iraqis from oppression.  Putin said that if America could invade countries to free them from oppression, she would have to invade most of the world.

That makes Putin a Nazi.

In the Old West a wagon train is crossing the plains.  As night falls the wagon train forms a circle, and a campfire is lit in the middle.  After everyone has gone to sleep two lone cavalry officers stand watch over the camp.

After several hours of quiet, they hear war drums starting from a nearby Indian village they had passed during the day.  The drums get louder and louder.

Finally one soldier turns to the other and says, "I don’t like the sound of those drums."

Suddenly, they hear a cry come from the Indian camp:  "IT’S NOT OUR REGULAR DRUMMER."

-- from the motd (message of the day) on my slackware linux system

The power just went out.  Which means I have about 20 minutes till my UPS dies and my computer shuts off.

Oh, and in case I don’t see you... good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight!

What is going on with today?

In Red Lion PA, about 2 hours from me, a junior high school kid shot his principal and then himself, killing both.  Late last night / early this morning, a guy in Virginia killed his 3 kids -- 9, 7, and 5 years old -- before killing himself.  This morning, there was a car chase in LA, ending when the driver crashed her stolen truck into a tree.  And now, there’s a car chase in Missouri where someone driving a white van is flying down freeways and side streets evading police.  Apparently this person made homicidal threats to police officers, and did injure/kill one officer.  I was watching it on FoxNews and they had a chopper video feed on it, but the van entered a parking garage.  That was just a second ago.

Wo, it’s post-o-rama tonight.  Anyway.  Colin Powell said something really cool in regards to Earth Day on Tuesday:

In today’s globalizing world it has never been more true that the well-being of the American people depends on the well being of all others on the globe.  And whether we live in countries large or small, developed or developing, all of our futures fundamentally depend upon the well being of our shared habitat: This wonderful planet that has been entrusted to our care by a generous God.

Not that I’m an environmentalist by any means, nor that I think Earth Day is cool, but it’s encouraging to see someone in a position of power credit the Creator with creation.  You know, rather than endorsing the religion of evolution / the big bang, which says there was nothing, and then it exploded, and that created the planets, and life too.  Sure, all the evidence (and our best attempts at it) show that you can’t just make non-living matter come alive.  But perhaps if we invent a "fossil record" where the ages of the fossils prove the ages of the rocks, and naturally the ages of the rocks prove the ages of the fossils... and perhaps if we convince people that these ages add up to millions of years... perhaps then people will understand that although physically impossible, things can come alive given enough time.

Right.

Oh and speaking of car commercials, the new Hummer "Metal" spot is really rad.  First of all, they have a bright yellow H2 which is of course a beautiful machine.  They show it driving around a city, with flashy lights and all, and have some catchy techno-ish music moving things along.  And they have a really pretty girl driving the thing, but here’s the cool part: she’s apparently not half-naked, and they pretty much just show her face.  It’s not everyday that you see a cool commercial with a pretty girl where they’re not using her body to sell the product.  The tagline is the best: "Slip into something a little more... Metal."  Heh.  And at the end, they zoom way out into space for a neat effect.

Saw Thursday at the Crowbar tonight.  Man I love that band.  But I need to rant first.

I hate the Crowbar.  It is so crusty and gross.  Not only is it gross because it’s a bar, and because it’s smoky, but because it’s tiny.  The standing room to watch concerts is maybe 25’ x 25’ with one corner shaved off because that’s where the stage is.  On the two edges opposite the stage, there’s an upper level where the bar is.

So you have, I dunno, maybe 150 people packed into that 25x25 area.  150 sweaty people all pressed right up against you.  That in itself isn’t as bad as it may seem.  But at a ~hardcore show, it’s pretty bad.  Let me explain the crowd dynamics of a hardcore show for anyone who’s never been to one.  CHAOS.  That’s all.  Pure chaos.  In a 25x25 square.  Pretty much the entire thing becomes a mosh pit.  Everyone is slamming against you on all sides, pushing and pulling you so you need to struggle just to stay on your feet.  Obviously I’m not anywhere near cool enough to appreciate how truly enjoyable that is, because I was preoccupied with trying to watch the band and sing/scream along.  I knew I should have gone up to the bar and sat or stood up there.

I’m more of the bouncing/rocking in place kind of concertgoer.  Music like Thursday moves me very much... when they played Cross Out The Eyes it was just... I thought I would spontaneously combust.  There is just so much emotion in that song.  And I can appreciate the fact that people get into it, because I do too.  But for me anyway, it’s just not fun when you can’t sing along because you’re trying to catch your breath because you’re getting slammed all over the place.

So that’s ridiculous factor #1.  Number two is the smoking.  I’m not even going to get into it.  Smoking is simultaneously the most idiotic and inconsiderate thing anyone could do, and the whole place was just full of idiotic, inconsiderate people who think that it’s a good idea.

In spite of all that, I’m glad I went.  Because I just love Thursday that much.  I don’t love the fact that Jonah’s Onelinedrawing played about 20 songs before Thursday, and then Thursday played all of 9 songs... that was total crap.  I don’t like Onelinedrawing; it’s sort of the same idea as Dashboard Confessional, except not good.  But whatever, you go to a show and you have to sit through bands you don’t like, but the thing is he felt the need to stop and say a bunch of perverted nonsense in between his 20 songs.  So that was annoying.

One really cool thing about Thursday’s fans is not only do they know all the words, but they sing them all -- loudly -- so loudly at times that they drown out the vocalist.  That’s really incredible to experience.  And at a show, you can really scream the screamed parts.  I only recently started to do this when I sing along to music; screaming is fundamentally different from singing, it’s not just "singing loudly," and it’s actually quite scary in solitude.  But at a show, it just fits because all the energy is there.

I never noticed before how much the vocalist (Geoff) looks like my cousin Micah.  In person tonight, it was quite striking; the resemblance isn’t nearly as strong in photos of him.  And on the new songs that they played tonight, I thought he sounded a bunch like Nathan Gray of BoySetsFire.  Weird.

So the show let out around 12:30 and me, Jeremy, Kris, and Andy went to Jimmy John’s for subs.  Mmmm good subs at Jimmy John’s.  All in all it was a rather rocking night.

My brother Nick hooked me up with this, check it out.  Which reminds me, I saw a Honda Element the other week.  That is one..... different looking car, but I think I really like it.

So Scott Peterson is going to be charged tomorrow with a double-murder for killing his wife Laci Peterson and their unborn child.  Now let me get this straight.  He kills an unborn child, so he’s a murderer.  But if he had been a "doctor" then we’d call it "health care" and "a choice" and even "a right"?  This makes me so angry.  There’s no way that any honest person can call it anything but murder when someone kills a baby.

You know, it’s not that I think all these actors and comedians are dumb.  It’s just that I’m going to trust the guys that do politics and are briefed constantly on the world’s current situation for a living more.

So I picked up a purple lizard map of the Rothrock State Forest a few weeks ago, and I’m finally going to go bike some of it.  No one’s around though, so I’m going alone, so I’m just going to do a short ride... probably the Shingletown Trail.  Should be fun.  But yeah, since I’m going alone, I wanted to post a message saying send help if I don’t reply to this within 10 hours or so.

Anyway this state forest is huge, with over a hundred miles of trails according to some of the maps I’ve seen, so hopefully I’ll be spending some time there now that the weather’s nice.

If you’ve ever clicked on the site stats link, you might have noticed that it takes a really long time to load -- as in 30 or 40 seconds -- or that it doesn’t load at all.  In that script, the code loops through a log file that keeps track of who’s browsing what.  But once it finds the current visitor in that logfile, there’s no reason to loop through the rest of it -- it should exit the loop and move on.  That’s accomplished with the keyword "last" in Perl, but apparently I used "break" instead, which is the C/C++ keyword for that function.  For some reason, that didn’t give any errors and the code ran OK, even though it didn’t do what it was supposed to.

Anyway back when I wrote that script, a year and a half ago, I wasn’t getting 200 visitors per day.  So it didn’t matter that the script was needlessly looping through the rest of the log, because the log was small.  Now, however, the log is big, and all that extra looping was causing the page to take forever to load.  But now I’ve fixed that bug -- it now says last instead of break -- and it loads normally.

In the security-news department, I discovered that someone was linking directly to a Thursday song on my server from their webpage.  In other words, I put up a server with a bunch of music, and create a webpage containing links to that music.  Then this kid, instead of linking to my music page, links directly to the songs on my server, bypassing my website completely.  That’s bandwidth theft and it’s dishonest and it’s inconsiderate.  So I learned how to use mod_rewrite and now that’s in place to prevent this kind of thing.  I knew I’d have to do that sooner or later.