Jay McGavren’s Journal

Can anyone tell me why it costs me ten cents to send 160 bytes of data via my cell phone (for a text message), but 20 cents will let me send 6,250,000 times more (for a gigabyte of data via Amazon S3)? Why exactly should data be 3,125,000 times more expensive just because it’s wireless?

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail119.html

Or if that doesn’t load:

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html

Since I don’t really like laptop keyboards, I was using Remote Desktop to copy my config from Midori to Lappy 486. It occurred to me that I’d need a way control Midori from Lappy as well, so I set up VNC on Lappy and went to test it, forgetting that I was attempting to control to PC that was controlling Lappy…

You know the effect you get when you stand between two mirrors, how the reflections stretch away into infinity? Yeah, it was like that. I had to close Remote Desktop and break the loop to regain control.

-Image hard drive.
-Configure wireless.
-Install World of Warcraft (Diana will want to play right away).
-Install FireFox, Skype, iTunes, Photoshop.
-Install Subversion client.
-Check out scripts, non-installer-based apps, home directory.
-Check out our photos (that’s also Subversioned).
-Tw33k shit.
-De-install World of Warcraft.
-Re-image hard drive.
-Re-install World of Warcraft.

New laptop just arrived at home. I confirmed with Diana - it is in fact shiny.

Wow… Okami is… beautiful. I can’t believe we didn’t get it sooner.

Gameplay-wise, it’s an obvious attempt to eat some of Wind Waker’s market, but I don’t care. The presentation is just so fucking gorgeous.

OK, so I’m getting pretty involved with World of Warcraft. I know I won’t have a lot of time to devote to the game, though, so I’m probably only going to do 1 character (2 if I have to change servers for some reason). It looks like my Tauren Druid was a pretty good (lucky) choice.

I want my character to mesh well with other people’s in raids/parties/etc. So here’s my plan for talent growth:

• Max Mark of the Wild in Restoration tree: I’m told it’s the best buff in the game, and I can start upgrading it immediately at level 10.
• Max entire feral combat tree: From there, I’ll turn my attention solely to feral combat, with these goals:
• Boost my bear’s threat level, to hold the attention of monsters so I can serve as a tank.
• Boost my cat’s stealth, for quick kills while soloing.
• Get cat’s travel speed bonus, which is available 10 levels before the travel form, to get around the world faster (it’ll be a long time before I get a mount).
• Eventually earn Leader of the Pack, which will boost the entire party’s stats.
• Alchemist/herbalist: I’ve already gotten quite a few useful leather items from “jdredd5150″ and “mr_mooph”, so I’m hoping this will let me create some useful potions instead.

I hope I understand the pros/cons of these abilities right, ’cause it’s gonna take a long time to earn ‘em…

Diana left the garage door cracked last night, and both she and her mom were pretty sure no one could have squeezed under it. But this morning I found it standing wide open, and her car door ajar.

Looks like all they took were her music CDs; her stereo was still in place, as were all the other contents of the garage. Musta been some kid, because a junkie would’ve then gone into the house (through the unlocked inner door) and taken purses/electronics/lives/etc.

I told Diana not to bother with a police report. But hopefully she’ll start locking her car even when it’s in the garage, as I’ve been doing.

You know, if I had never gotten into ROM hacking, I might have made a good genetic researcher…

> MIT World » : DNA Mutation, Repair and the Environment

> Samson wants to figure out how to protect cells against
> carcinogenic effects in the environment, and whether a
> tumor cell will be susceptible to treatment. She has been
> painstakingly studying the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast
> organism, trying to identify all the factors that determine
> whether or not DNA damaging agents kill or mutate cells.
> She interrogated each of this organism’s 5,800 genes,
> “asking one by one, which of you is making a product that’s
> important to helping a cell recover from damage.” In what
> was a “huge surprise,” Samson learned that there are more
> than 2,000 gene products involved in helping a yeast cell
> repair itself, “from areas of the cell never suspected
> before for being important” in this way.

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/387/