A good overview of Mac OS X intended to dispel certain misconceptions. The author assumes you have a good grounding in various operating systems, particularly UNIX or UNIX-like OSes.

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Jan 10

plodding onward

This entry was, for better or worse, inspired by today's entry on Incidental Findings (scroll down or browse the archives, as there are no permalinks.)

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Jan 10

more personality tests

How disturbing. This only further corroborates the notion that I am doomed. (It doesn't help than an ex-girlfriend once compared me to Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights)

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Jan 10

compiling gaim with ssl

in order for gaim to connect to MSN, you need to have some form of SSL compiled in. I hear that mozilla's headers contain what you need, but the instructions to compile gaim with ssl by mike styne (as recommended by the gaim maintainers) describe compiling it on OS X with gnutls. good luck, and may the source be with you. (sorry, I couldn't resist.)

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Jan 11

grease the wheels

"gotta grease the wheels of the economy to keep it running"
my communist sister declaimed sarcastically as she bought
that new outfit with money that she didn't have
earned from the job that she hadn't been offerred
the paycheck that she wasn't given for the 4 hours of work she did each day
putting it on in full view of the banner of che guevarra
hanging on her bedroom wall

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Jan 14

the otso-otso revisited

this meme just won't die, will it? as Ernie first pointed out, it seems to have been inspired by Beyonce Knowlés. there is a description by Manuel (as well as a stick-figure instructional animation), and political commentary on last days of the republic. and, incidentally, Angie unwittingly provides more evidence that the otso-otso was created by Beyoncé (watch the white guy carefully, and listen to Steve Harvey's commentary) and that the anti-copyright infringement ads they have on TFC are therefore ironic and a tad hypocritical. (P.S. copyright infringement is not stealing! Exaggerating only makes you lose credibility. I'm pretty sure no Filipino recording artist is living in a nipa hut or in a shanty on top of Smoky Mountain, or in Olongapo next to the toxic waste the U.S. left there.)

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Jan 14

quizilla, quizilla, quizilla

You are Dylan Thomas - a poet who lives to spite
the banal continuity of modern life. You are
the new word, the new voice. You will trample
on tradition, and breed a new school of poetry.

Which Dead Poet Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

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Jan 14

names (why i probably shouldn't be a father)

i can't help myself. whenever i get bored, my mind wanders. very far. so sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic (is there any other kind in SoCal?) where the 91 and the 5 intersect (before i had to dodge some rocks some punk kids were hurling from a pedestrian bridge before the imperial hwy exit), i looked up at the freeway signage and, unbidden, i thought that "artesia" would make a pretty name. while perhaps a little bizarre and unwieldy, it could easily be shortened to "tesia" (pronounced "tisha," i supposed.)

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Jan 15

you betta recognize

because I'm such a depressive motherfucker, I really need to keep track of these rare moments. let it be known, at this particular, specific moment, I am happy. (surely this is one of the signs of the apocalypse.)

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Jan 19

reflection — forwards and backwards

true to form, I have procrastinated thinking about the past year. I have also procrastinated thinking about the upcoming year. in short, I am, once again, ill-prepared for life.

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Jan 20

words like fallen leaves

now is the depth of winter
when the heart mourns for warmer days
when the sun hides behind the swirling clouds
and light plays games with the fog and the shadows
teasing with the bone-chilling brightness
and the darkness comes before you expect it
gaping like the black abyss
and the neverending fall

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Jan 20

unrelenting massive cock destroys innocent pussies

while postmodern literary critics (like critics of all media, genre, and timeperiod) can be full of shit, I really dig the creation of postmodern art (or is this post-post modern art? hey, art critics, I'm sorry for saying you're full of shit! can you please think of a proper name for this time period?)

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Jan 20

letting go

interestingly, though in various shapes and forms, some of the bloggers that I read almost daily have been discussing letting go. so whether it is material objects, relationships and situations in general, or specific self-destructive behaviors, well, I generally do the opposite.

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Jan 22

spirit

ever burning flame
searing rays of light
eastern sky afire
I turn and turn and turn
only the sun tells me where I stand
casting my shadow hither and thither

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Jan 24

wInter-im

I have been telling people how soft I'm getting with respect to the weather. Given that it has been roughly 70-75°F in L.A. for the past couple of weeks or so, I woke up Friday morning at the crack of dawn. Going outside, I felt the "cold" seep into me, and I was abashed when I discovered that the ambient temperature was actually 50°.

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Jan 24

to grok

clearly, I have too much time on my hands. or, more tragically, instead of doing things I need to do, I sit her mentally masturbating as usual. (notice the word mental.)

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Jan 27

fire and ice

flat lands, icy waste
curling smoke, steam rising
the city breathes in, breathes out
like a sleeping dragon

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Jan 28

wtf

I have no idea what I'm doing. The world just swirls and loops all around me, and I stand mesmerized, mouth agape, drool oozing from the corner of my mouth, all sense gone.

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Jan 29

cradle to grave

now I know I promised to stop being so pessimistic, but this sig I stole from someone made me laugh:

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Jan 29

the unix-haters handbook

I am reminded of something that Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote in his epilogue to The Scarlet Letter. To paraphrase: love and hate are not very different emotions. (A more diametric opposite to love would be apathy and indifference.) Both require intimate knowledge of one's object of desire/derision. Both seem to exhibit characteristics that our modern age has deemed to name co-dependent behavior. Just as it is seemly to care about what one's beloved thinks of them when one is in love, in parallel, one who exhibits hatred often does so because they care too much about what the other person thinks of him/her. To rephrase it in pseudo-psychiatric lingo, the other person starts becoming an obsession, an idee fixee, that impinges upon one's own personal identity (as much as I think Freud was a quack, I will use his term ego.)

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Jan 29

iBook logic board repair extension program

for all you unfortunate folk who purchased an iBook between May 2002 and April 2003, this program is for you.

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mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

Jan 2004