Penny Hero (dot) Net

So I have my new mp3 player.

The thing is bad ass. Not very pretty, but it’s awesome. I transfered all the music from my windows machine as soon as I got it, because I was too lazy and too busy to learn how to get it working in linux. which was fine.

But get this. I went to Gavin’s to study, and he plugged mine into his dock, messed with the network settings and transfered files to my player. pretty neat. He’s running Gentoo, and it took him barely 3 minutes to do this. looked pretty easy.

I got home today, did some googling, and learned how to install Java on ubuntu so that I could install the Rio Music Manager java app to get it working in linux. That part wasn’t so hard (I had help.)

Here’s the wierd part though. I set the player’s IP, open the music manager and log into the device. It downloads the database fine, and I can browse the contents of my player. I just can’t modify anything. It gives me this error like “Unable to synchronize with the current device. Failed to synchronize with device. The contents of the player have been modified outside this application.” wtf mate.

So I google some more. can’t find shit. I try the Rio Taxi app, which lets you transfer non music files onto the device for storage (I assume. although, this doesn’t make sense because you can’t get them back off onto a different machine. still trying to figure that out). The Taxi transfers files perfectly, but of course, they’re useless because it doesn’t update the database with new music entries. gah. So I mess around in the Music Manager some more, just getting the same error.

At one point, I notice that the USB cable is still plugged in from when I was using it in windows, so I pull that out, and just for good measure, I restart the device.

I open Rio Music Manager again, log in, and to my utter disbelief, it works. I could transfer files, yadda yadda. it was great.

That’s when I noticed that I had accidentally opened two instances of the music manager. I laugh at myself, and close one.

The second one promptly breaks, and gives me that error message again.

*boggles*

I close everything and try again. One instance == one annoying error. So I’m like “Fine! I’ll open two!” and whadaya know… the second one works.

What the hell. ha ha. So, I guess it’s a bug of some kind. It works consistently so far, but only when I have two instances of the manager open, and I use the second one to transfer music.

Gavin’s seems to work fine the way it’s supposed to. Maybe it’s an ubuntu problem. Not enough people use this though for there to be any support forums, or even any documentation on this java application. Which is, in part, why I’m writing this entry so that someone might google it and find it helpful someday.

Edit: Had my first lockup, and had to kill it. after which it has started working normally, with just one instance of the music manager openned.

Go figure.

So I have my new mp3 player.

The thing is bad ass. Not very pretty, but it’s awesome. I transfered all the music from my windows machine as soon as I got it, because I was too lazy and too busy to learn how to get it working in linux. which was fine.

But get this. I went to Gavin’s to study, and he plugged mine into his dock, messed with the network settings and transfered files to my player. pretty neat. He’s running Gentoo, and it took him barely 3 minutes to do this. looked pretty easy.

I got home today, did some googling, and learned how to install Java on ubuntu so that I could install the Rio Music Manager java app to get it working in linux. That part wasn’t so hard (I had help.)

Here’s the wierd part though. I set the player’s IP, open the music manager and log into the device. It downloads the database fine, and I can browse the contents of my player. I just can’t modify anything. It gives me this error like “Unable to synchronize with the current device. Failed to synchronize with device. The contents of the player have been modified outside this application.” wtf mate.

So I google some more. can’t find shit. I try the Rio Taxi app, which lets you transfer non music files onto the device for storage (I assume. although, this doesn’t make sense because you can’t get them back off onto a different machine. still trying to figure that out). The Taxi transfers files perfectly, but of course, they’re useless because it doesn’t update the database with new music entries. gah. So I mess around in the Music Manager some more, just getting the same error.

At one point, I notice that the USB cable is still plugged in from when I was using it in windows, so I pull that out, and just for good measure, I restart the device.

I open Rio Music Manager again, log in, and to my utter disbelief, it works. I could transfer files, yadda yadda. it was great.

That’s when I noticed that I had accidentally opened two instances of the music manager. I laugh at myself, and close one.

The second one promptly breaks, and gives me that error message again.

*boggles*

I close everything and try again. One instance == one annoying error. So I’m like “Fine! I’ll open two!” and whadaya know… the second one works.

What the hell. ha ha. So, I guess it’s a bug of some kind. It works consistently so far, but only when I have two instances of the manager open, and I use the second one to transfer music.

Gavin’s seems to work fine the way it’s supposed to. Maybe it’s an ubuntu problem. Not enough people use this though for there to be any support forums, or even any documentation on this java application. Which is, in part, why I’m writing this entry so that someone might google it and find it helpful someday.

I discovered by accident today that I can cook soup from scratch. Here’s how it happened:

I wanted a bacon-egg-ranch sandwich, but I didn’t want to clean up a frying pan full of grease, so I decided to try boiling the bacon and poaching the eggs (for fun. plus boiled stuff is less fatty than fried, right?). So, I threw pieces of bacon in boiling water in our wok and watched it shyabu-shyabu to yumminess. Then I pulled them all out, and let them drain. I threw in an egg and watched to my initial dismay that the egg kind of flew apart in the boiling water and was breaking into chunks too small to go into a sandwich. Luckily I saved enough for my lunch, but the water was still filled with whispy bits of egg… much like *drumroll please* EGG FLOUR SOUP.

So that was my inspiration moment. I figured the water already tasted like bacon, and had soupy egg stuff in it… so I decided to run with this and see where it went. I added more water and chopped up and added a yellow onion, black pepper, garlic and basil. Brought it to a boil again. Tasted it, and decided it was pretty bland. So I added two red chili peppers and this black-sesame/salt seasoning I have. (mostly for the salt. I was pleased to discover that the sesame seeds floated to the top and made the soup look complex and pretty). I tasted it again, and found the peppers weren’t adding much… so I pulled them out and chopped them up into small bits. (later discovered this was a mistake) After letting it bubble for a while, I tasted it again. All the flavors were coming out really nicely, but it was still pretty bland. too herby… not enough salt. So I added plain salt. Finally it started to taste really really yummy. I added a little corn-starch to thicken it up and let it boil down slightly.

It was sooo yummy. Had this super cool kinda complex flavor of basil, onion, garlic, and bacon with quite a bit of heat from the peppers. I ate it with my sandwich.

All afternoon I thought about how to improve it. I’ve decided mushrooms and potatoes would be really good, as would some actual bacon–and not just bacon-flavored water. I even thought about adding sour-cream like Val’s mom does with soup, and thought using bullion cubes instead of table salt would probably be yummier.

At dinner I ate the leftovers with coffee and english muffins… which was when I discovered that chopping up the peppers was a big mistake. All the time it had been sitting in the fridge, the peppers were still adding their spicy hawtness to the soup… I added quite a bit of milk, but it was still really hot. Next time I’ll add whole peppers earlier in the cooking process, and pull them out before it’s finished.

I’ve got two other ways of cooking stuff I want to mess around with. I helped Ethan cook for Ina once or twice… chinese stuff. and i wrote down what he used.

where the fuck did this “fun with cooking” stuff come from? I’m a horrible cook. But I went through a period like this after Tomo and I broke up… I stole all his pasta recipes from memory and started cooking pasta all the time. Now I’m cooking soup from scratch! odd. odd odd girl I am.

I just bought this. Kicks ipod in the BALLS. Ogg and flac support… ethernet connectivity. super-human flexibility and the power of hawtness. It’s 20GBs of hawtness.

yes baby yes.

Quote of the Day:

Gav (7:53): I am complex like a centipede–many, many redundant simple parts.

*sigh* Trying to write a stupid paper… gawd. this is hard. Ridiculous how difficult it is to write a paper that I am actually interested in. Or… maybe I’m interested in it because it’s challenging. Maybe both. Whatever. It’s still due tomorrow and I don’t have time to be fucking around not writing it. Go read about naturalized epistemology. I dare you. I double-dog dare you.

In Other News: I just breezed through a midterm and got pissed off about it. I didn’t slack off all weekend and then FREAK OUT and CRAM SINCE 5am this morning so that the midterm would be CAKE. bloody hell.

And the Holy Shit Quote of the Day is:

“To naturalize epistemology is to acknoledge that we need to study how actual people actually know (and) one thing we ought to know about actual people is that they inhabit a world of systematic inequality…” (Naomi Scheman, 1993. Quoted in Clough, Hypatia… issue no. ??)

Whoo hoo!

If that makes no sense to you, suck it. :) For me, it means that I’ve finally found a way to enter the boring world of western epistemology, and this class won’t just be for bacc core anymore… I can let it inform the rest of my studies and the rest of the stuff I want to do with my life.

weee.

In Other News: maps.google.com is awesome. Click here to see where I used to live! Dead center, there is a little L-curve street on Paradise Dr. I lived on that corner. You can zoom in. :)

I cringe every time I read an email between my friends on our mutual club-related listserv when it reads something like “Thanks Jim. It looks very complete. I look forward to talking with you about it on Wednesday!”

Gahh! It just sounds so … I don’t know. so keigo. So, over-polite. so.. so much like what I’d expect in some anal-retentive office, or written between 40 year old business people who are trying to pretend to be “casual” the way “Casual Friday” is casual. But this is just A STUDENT ORGANIZATION. and we’re all good friends! what the hell!

It’s just so ick. And up until now, I’ve stuck with my less formal-polite tone and corresponded with them more like human beings. All my writing OUTSIDE the group has been very very formal, though. don’t get me wrong.

gah. I just wish they’d stop. Wish they’d write normally with us. (SAVE KEIGO FOR THE OUT-GROUP!!)

On the other hand, maybe I should be writing more like that too… and I just don’t know it… :(

Shit, i’m going to be late for work.

I love arya. yes I do.

he helped me fix fink and helped me figure out python version problems. :) and now in 40 minutes or so, I’ll discover if Zope will FINALLY be happy with me and bloody install.

*hugs arya*

and then we spent about 5 minutes doing this:

arya (9:58):

へ　へ
　し
 ーー
me (9:59): that's so cute!
hahahaha

へ　へ
　し
 ーー
me (10:00): tee hee 

arya (10:00):
　へ　へ
　　も
　　ー 

me (10:00): hahaha 

へ　へ
　し
  ロ

arya (10:01):
　の　の
　　も
　　～ 

me (10:02): hahaha i'm seriously laughing

arya (10:02): ：） 

　へ　へ
　の　の　　－猫だよ！
　　ー
omg this is way more fun than my homework
actually it could be some sort of gremlin type thing

arya (10:05):
　　 へ  へ
 　（の　の）
 　　  ーノ 

Arya rules!

In Other News “Explosions in the Sky” is spiffy. almost as spiffy as Sparklehorse.