Andrei Zmievski

My friend Joachim is going on a trip around the world. He will travel through Europe (briefly), India (for two months), Southeast Asia (for a month), and will end up in San Francisco some time around the end of February. And he is blogging this experience. I can’t help but feel envious and also wonder at the same time whether I could leave behind a job, sell most of my property, and embark on such a trip. Best of luck to him.

So, after some googling – and I use that term just because it’s an accepted one – I am back to pre-SP4 speed. The solution involved tweaking one of the incredibly obscure registry keys, and to this point I don’t know what I did intially that could have made SP4 barf this way. But if you ever run into the same problem, edit this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Tcp1323Opts
and change the value from 0x3 to 0. People with nothing better to do can read this .

On Friday night I decided to install iTunes for Windows and see what all the hoopla is about. iTunes cried bloody murder that I was not running the latest Windows 2000 and demanded SP4 to be installed right away. Okay, I thought, no problem. Click Start / Windows Update… / SP4, wait, reboot, login.
Result: my internet connection is slower than what I had in 1992 with the 2400 baud modem. What the hell? After a bit of searching it is apparent that SP4 exhibits some “issues” on certain machines. I de- and re-installed the network adapter driver, rebooted a couple of times to be sure, but I might just as well have tried to move the moon with the power of my mind, for all the good it did. Next step is messing with MTU settings, I guess.
Any hints?

Last night I went to see the production of Jesus Christ Superstar at the San Francisco Orpheum theatre. Somehow I missed the movie, and have not seen the show performed live before – I just own the soundtrack. The set and lighting were very nice and imaginative. The cast performed admirably, but their singing seemed better than the acting ability. Lawrence Clayton and Natalie Toro were strong as Judas and Mary Magdalene, respectively. However, two of my favorite pieces – “Last Supper” and “Gethsemane” – were not quite up to my expectations. Maybe it was due to sound equipment or acoustics that felt muffled at certain points, but it might just as well be the evidence of the lack of raw emotion invested into the performance. A couple of years ago I attended a special that showcased some pieces from Webber’s career, including “Gethsemane” and I thought that one was particularly sublime, even better than the one on the soundtrack. Still, always good to see a live show infused with enthusiasm and this one definitely had that in abundance.

I had to fix up the link to the pictures in the previous entry: convert it from a relative to an absolute one. Someone has syndicated my feed on LiveJournal, and the relative URLs embedded in the entry text ended up pointing to the LJ server. I don’t like using absolute URLs unless I must, for a variety of reasons. Shouldn’t the syndication software take care of normalizing the links or do I need to pre-process my feed somehow?

So, as mentioned in the previous entry, I went kayaking with a few people on Sunday. We chose Kayak Connection in Moss Landing (Elkhorn Slough), which is about 20 miles from Santa Cruz. The cost was only $30 for up to 4 hours, and you get full gear (paddling jacket, life jacket, spray skirt, etc) with the rental. I kayaked only once before, on the Charles River in Boston, and this was more interesting due to larger waves and more open territory. We also arranged to have our lunch on the water. All in all, a great experience and I hope to repeat it again some time soon. Pictures here.

Over the weekend – in between helping Rasmus move to a new house and going on a kayaking trip – I upgraded my TiVo Series2 to have more recording capacity. Drive A is now a 160 GB Samsung and Drive B is the original WD 40 GB one. The process was fairly painless (at least for TiVo itself, since I managed to cut myself on sharp edges of the box twice), if a tad long – I wanted to preserve the recordings which involved mirroring the drive.
Still there were a couple of close calls: at one point I thought that mfsadd has corrupted the partitions, and the other one was getting a Green Screen of Death after assembling everything and turning it on. But now I have 195 hours of storage at Basic Quality level.. wait! no more Basic Quality! From now on, all the shows I record will be in High or Best quality, show content notwithstanding.

I, for one, welcome our new Terminator overlords from the distant future. [tongue in cheek, lest I be crucified by the vocal minority]

JR, brother, I can relate to your lament. I’ve had exact same problem for as long as I can remember. Just recently I went to get a new bike helmet, knowing in advance that it would most likely be an exercise in futility, and wouldn’t you know, the cheapest helmet that did not squeeze my cranium in vice grip was around $140. Maybe we big-headed people could unite and petition manufacturers to produce larger head gear, and if they don’t, sue them for discrimination?

Having enjoyed the pleasures of sangria during my trip to Europe this summer, I wanted to try and make it at home. The recipe below is probably the best one I have found so far. Since this was a trial run, I simply bought a jug of Gallo Cabernet Sauvignon, but you can and perhaps should substitute somewhat better wine. I also replaced the lemon with a ripe nectarine, and resulting beverage ended up quite tasty.
Ingredients
1.5L Dry Red Wine (Cabernet Sauvignon)
1 cup Sugar
3-4 oz plain Brandy
1 large Lemon, sliced
1 large Orange, sliced
1 large Apple, cut into thin sections.
Mixing instructions
Mix these altogether in a large container, stir, and let sit for 18-24 hours. Yes, I know that’s a LONG time, but it’s well worth the wait. A much more delightful sangria is produced when the fruit juice blends with the wine by osmosis than by stirring. (By the way, you should let it sit in the refridgerator during this long interim). When you are ready to drink it 18-24 hours later, stir it up again, and add sugar or brandy to taste, it should be fairly strong and fairly sweet, almost syrupy. Then, cut the mixture with some sort of bubbly water, orange or lemon flavored if possibly, but plain bubbly water is fine, until it seems to have a thinner, more wine like consistency. Drink and enjoy.