Handful of sliced pickles

This is my first somewhat food-related post...I was eating pickles nonstop today :)

I say somewhat cause I really am going to talk about the course I'm preparing...again :P.

1080p is really helpful for this kind of stuff :)

Now I'm working on some examples to show...next up, exercises :D. (Do NOT make fun of my Vim theme, I had a custom one but I didn't save it when I upgraded...so I'm using one that came with Vim for the time being :P)

Prepping up

As you may remember, Tenampa and a couple of his friends have a web development/design company.

Yesterday I went to one of their meetings cause I want to join too...after all, I AM a web developer. We talked a bit about the current state of the company, current projects and whatnot. And since I'm the most experienced web developer, we came to the conclusion that it'd be great if I gave them an intensive course on various topics, which I gladly accepted :).

I am preparing for the first course which will tentatively take place this next weekend (Fri-Sun). It will be about JavaScript, focused on jQuery.

These notes are just for me, I don't want to be painfully unprepared.

I have never done this, but I've been told by some people that I'm a good teacher, so I'm confident about this :)

Weird bug...again

But this is a real bug, not a computer bug, haha. Just there, sitting in Tenampa's shoulder like "it just don't care"....ok, that was lame...

We also went to see a tribute to The Beatles "concert", me, Tenampa, Michelle and her sister Marjorie. Some 5 bands played, and the first four were just not good. There was one where a girl sang a couple of songs, and she sang AWFUL!!! I think my ears were bleeding. The last one was kind of cool, though the "John" of the band didn't sing that good, but they played pretty nice...

This pic is from one the not so good bands, I wanted to take one of the cool one, but my phone's battery was dying and it didn't let me use the camera, haha.

Weird bug

I came across this weird bug on a Chrome extension when trying to subscribe to The Atheist Experience show feed (you can tell I had nothing else to talk about, haha):

Fail

I tried installing Ubuntu 11.10 on my laptop...and failed miserably.

I tried upgrading it first from 11.04, it took its sweet time and after it was done when I tried booting into Ubuntu but the screen just stayed black...

Ok, it's still an alpha release so I figured a clean install would do the trick...downloaded it, burnt it to a disc, installed it, and when I tried booting it, again, a black screen with just an OK...

[OK]...yeah, that helps me a lot...

But it's too late for me to try to figure out what's wrong right now, I'll leave it for tomorrow, or maybe I'll wait until September 1st when the first beta comes out...

Walking around school

Today I had a test, finished early and while waiting for my next class I went around school, listening to some music, and taking a couple of pics :)

This door NEVER opens, don't even know why it's there. Though this is true for all the building with two sets of doors, they only open one...

Audiovisual, there's a couple of these

Music building, if you go in there, there's a 75% chance you'll stumble upon somebody playing an instrument or singing

Weird sculpture

This is convenient, haha, parked right by the entrance (I saw at least 10 motorcycles)

Um...sure...(you can tell you're in the Arts part of the Institute when you see these things)

Two building united by a bridge thingy

A random hallway, cool "bench"

That's just so random

A building I didn't know existed till some months ago

This is what the wall look like in the Art side of school

That's an actual city street, the school is literally adjacent to houses

You would think there'd be some food around, but nope...nobody even comes here

Layout of my school

The subtle art of drinking frozen water

As you may remember from a previous post, I bring a bottle of frozen water to work everyday.

Well, I always try to drink it all, but I don't like to finish it too early. I also don't like it when the ice melts too early cause it warms up very quickly with the infernal heat.

After some 3 months of doing it I finally mastered it...

You can't leave the water level too high or the I've will melt to fast:

You can't leave it too low or it won't melt fast enough:

It needs to be balanced and you need to keep drinking constantly...

Of course I do it so that it takes almost exactly 8 hours to drink it all... if it was more or less time my "strategy" would have to be modified...I know it's a lame thing to master, but yeah, I don't care haha.

Keeping it light

I started listening to podcasts again today...well, just one so far, it's a tech news podcast called "This Week in Tech" or TWiT.

It's one of the very many podcasts I used to listen to a couple of years ago...

But I definitely don't want to listen to as many podcasts as back then (approx 20 a week), I was thinking something like 3 or 4, just to listen to while driving and while walking around school.

I listened to so many that I could even speed up the audio to like 3x and still be able to understand, I was a pro at it...but only cause I had a boring repetitive job (data entry operator), so I basically had 8 hours a day to listen to podcasts...I couldn't really do that right now or I wouldn't get any work done haha.

I took a pic of a building of my school...or I thought I did, I realized too late that I moved the phone before I took the picture and only the legs of a random person came out in the picture haha, so that's all you get

Now this is advertising

I guess advertisers didn't pay or something like that, cause I saw a lot of blank billboards

Carrier's BS

Another Sunday gone by with me mostly playing with my phone, installing apps, upgrading it and whatnot.

I love how almost every Google product has an application...with one exception, Google Talk...

There IS a Google Talk app, but my carrier apparently blocks it so that you have to use their crappy messenger...not cool, this is one of the things I was looking forward to the most...

Seems I'm going to have to root the phone cause to me this is unacceptable...

Anyway, here's another random picture:

New phone

I now finally have my new phone :).

And once again, I've spent a loooot of time just playing with it :P. And as you may have guessed I'm writing this from my phone.

This is just a random pic I took so the blog wasn't empty :)

Also, there was no internet last night, couldn't post :S

There's no 'r' in that???

Have you ever thought a word had one more letter than it actually has???

Not very long ago, for some reason, I thought Albuquerque had an 'r' before the first 'q', and always even pronounced it 'Alburquerque'...weird...

Same thing happened to me with subtract...I thought there was an 's' after the 'b'...don't even know why...

And the opposite happened to me with Marlboro, it took me years to realize there was an 'r' before the 'l', yup, always thought it was Malboro.

To be fair (and to try to excuse my stupidity), English is not my first language, and even though we do have Marlboro here in México, everybody pronounces it 'Malboro', so yeah...

I know I'm not the only one, my brothers had that too with the word Orchestra...but in Spanish. Since in English there's an 'r' after the 't', they thought in Spanish it was pronounced 'Orquestra' (which is wrong, it's 'Orquesta', with no 'r' after 't')

Ahh, memories...

Have you ever gone back to some of your old conversations? It's pretty funny what you talked about, or how you talked...

I did this today with my emails. This is the first email I ever wrote using my gmail account, a little over 5 and a half years ago (Jan 13th '06, don't know why I waited so long, I activated my account on Dec 19th '05).

Is it me, or have Angélica's insults gone softer with time?

lol, "what a dumbass", that one still hurts :P (I may have gone emo with time, hahaha).

Short lived

I'm returning Mari's cell to her, cause I already have a new one lined up, plus her current phone keeps acting weird, so she needs it...although I did a data reset on the phone so, yeah, good luck leaving it how it was Mari, haha.

I was supposed to get my new phone today, but one of my personal references didn't pick up the phone so they're going to take my application under investigation or something :P. No matter, cause they said my credit is pretty good that I don't have to make a down payment :), it's a contract, so the phone itself is actually "free". Now it's just a matter of days, in the meantime, I'll be using my mom's old one.

On a different topic, I was watching the Mexico game, but it wasn't in HD, probably cause it wasn't on a weekend haha. Ant it bothers me that I have to see two black bars on the sides of the screen



But it would bother me more having the image all out of aspect ratio, so yeah, could've been worse...

Wait there please

I went to ask for prices and look at phones...haha I know, I just "got" this one, but it's only temporary, and I want an Android phone :).

While waiting to get some answers I saw these very cute children there...that doesn't sound like me...but I still thought they were haha.



That little blonde girl was the youngest and she kept "giving" orders to her brothers (I think they were her brothers).

It was either this or me talking about the phone so...:P

Sphere building

There's this building shaped like sphere in one of the most transitted parts of the city (la curva de San Lorenzo).



For as long as I can remember, it's always been out of business. People only refer to it when giving directions or something. And for some time it has only been used for beer publicity like in the pic.

But it has become a landmark of this city.

Pics are back :)

Now that I have a phone (thanks again Mari :D), I figure I'll be taking pics again, at least for the blog :).



This is usually what a Sunday afternoon looks like, there's always a comouter that needs fixing, and it's great that the monitor has two inputs, cause while one computer is doing stuff I can just switch inputs and use the other computer.

I'm using an app I downloaded for writing blogs, cause yeah, I pretty much spent all day just playing around with the phone haha.

Hello mobile world!

Since my phone for no apparent reason died haha, Mari lent me her old phone while I buy a new phone.

I've never had a smart phone so this is a huge step up. I'm even writing this entry from the phone :D.

It was a cool day with the family, played some pool and took lots of pics, but Mari has those :P

Don't put that in your mouth!!!

I am talking of course about a cell phone...

I was just trying to see if it could fit...and it did :)

Why? I'm crazy, that's why.

And what's the consequence??? The cell phone just breaks!!!

Apparently all my saliva got inside or something (quite gross if you ask me). So, people...don't do it!!!

What's it say?

If I'm in a class and I'm allowed to use my laptop, I will use it. I keep all my notes in Google Docs, plus I write like 3 billion times faster on a computer keyboard than by hand.

For the last 3 semesters, I've been allowed to use my laptop in almost all of my classes, so I seldom have to take notes in my notebook....

...but then came Sociology...a lecture-based class, so I have to do lots of handwriting.

I am totally useless at this point at fast handwriting. And if I do manage to write fast enough to capture the point of the lecture, the result is complete gibberish. Well, it's not like it's very legible when at its best, after all I have the handwriting of a 5 year-old

This is my best handwriting, you don't want to see the worst one

Kaput!!!

Normal day at work...

I was testing locally the latest feature I added to the website I work at. Good, works nice and good, does what it's supposed to do, so I decided it was time to upload it to the server...

Didn't work...ugh, I hate it when that happens, and I had just crippled the ability to upload pics to the news stories, so it was kind of important that I fixed it, but also, it was important to make the new feature work, they were counting on it, so I couldn't just rollback the changes (unless I really, really had to)

After some 20 minutes looking at every possible angle I found the error, and the solution was to upgrade to a more recent version of PHP. I started the update, it finished, and...........

Kaput!!!!

I just kept thinking "Don't do this to me!!!! Stupid server, I trusted you!!!" 15 minutes before my shift was over, and the website was dead, ahhhhh!!!!!!

I had to review several error logs, rollback several changes, change several self-generated configuration files, of course all from the comfort of the terminal.

I ended up ditching my class cause I got off work one and a half hours after my shift...but oh well, I managed to fix it and got the feature I implemented to work :). Had that same thing happened to me a year ago, I'd probably be hung up to a ceiling right now.

But all in all, I enjoy those moments cause they really test me :D

Poke +1

Yes!!! I got it too :D:

This says more than a thousand words :)

Thanks guys :D!!!

Unreliable wireless...

Apparently my laptop can't be discovered by the local network in my house, and recently I found out that it was because it was connected via wireless. And the other computers can't see my laptop either, only wired connections work for some strange reason, probably our router is all stupid or something.

It's frustrating cause I can't watch whatever Ricky has in his laptop, or whatever is in the desktop computer from my laptop. And we don't like having duplicate media, so if I want to watch something, it has to be from the PS3, or the desktop.

Though it probably is only a simple setting or something...but I'm too lazy to look into it :P

Does your child know how to read?

No? Then do NOT bring them to see subbed movies, for the love of everything that's holy and mighty.

This is a problem you see more often here in México (and I would imagine any non English speaking country) than in English speaking countries, given how most films at the theater are Hollywood movies.

And even if your child or cousin or brother/sister or whatever that little kid sitting next to you is, knows how to read, if he can't read fast enough, do NOT bring him/her to a subbed movie.

It is annoying as hell having you explain to that little kid every 5 minutes what's going on in the movie, you take the joy out of watching a movie!!! I mean, they have dubbed versions for a reason!!!

.....aaaaaand the rant is over, back to being happy :D

Networking

Another one of my classes is Networks...not my favorite, but it'll have to do.

My school is associated with Cisco Networking Academy:

So all the material and tests are provided by Cisco. We are going to have a test each week, and throughout the semester two big projects. I like the reading material though, cause it's interactive and it's very well written :)

Rate Catholic hit...

I have absolutely no idea what that means, I just randomly picked 3 words in Wikipedia, and that's the title. That's how "Do The Do" came to be, a very successful controversial international 2 member band (Mari and me :P)...I'm too sleepy, so I'm copying Mari's blogging style for today :).

Never enough ice...

I like my drinks cold!!! No matter the drink, no matter the season (I don't like drinks that are usually served hot, like coffee or hot chocolate). The closest to freezing temperature, the better.

And if I'm eating, I almost always finish eating and THEN start drinking. So if my drink has no ice, it will warm up a little bit. If it has some ice, the top part will stay cold, but the bottom part will be warmer...if it's full of ice, it all stays cold and awesome!!!

I fill up my cup with ice, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way to the top, and then pour my drink. Yes, this has some disadvantages...mainly, as the ice starts melting, the drink will taste more watery, and the more ice in the cup, the less liquid you can put in there, but I can live with it. The only exception to this rule is coke, not soda in general, just coke. I don't like my coke with ice (and preferably straight out of the bottle/can), any other flavor...ice me.

But the temperature is not the only reason I do this...I love, and I mean LOVE eating ice cubes. Putting a couple of cubes in my mouth and just crush them to tiny bits. I like it so much, that sometimes I don't finish the drink, I just eat all the ice, then I refill the cup with more ice...yes, I'm that crazy. I also sometimes just go to the freezer, stick my hand in the ice cube compartment, grab a couple of them and in my mouth they go.

And as long as I can keep talking, or better said, before my lips and the inside of my cheeks get all numb from the cold, I can keep doing it. It takes about an hour before I start talking like a 4 year old.

Overnight download

One of my classes is Data Bases, and we're going to use Microsoft's SQL Server 2008...it's "only" 4 GB, so I have to leave it downloading overnight...

Dreamspark, we meet again

It says 2 hours left, but I just don't believe it :P

It's ok, I've got time...

In my school, classes are 2 hours each (sometimes just one hour, but mostly on Fri and Sat). You can know at what time do classes start in the engineering institute.

Classes start at 7am and every two hours till 1pm, there are no classes from 3pm to 4pm, then again starting at 4pm till 8pm, so the last class ends at 10pm...or at least that's how it used to be. Because of the insecurity in the city, for the last 4 or so semesters, so that people get out of school earlier, the last two classes of the day have been reduced to one and a half hours, so one is from 6pm to 7:30pm and the other is from 7:30pm to 9pm.

And when you're picking your classes they tell you it's either from 6 to 8, or from 8 to 10, but it's become sort of a mutual understanding that those last two only last 1.5 hours, even if the official schedules list them as being 2 hours long.

Well, today I didn't have my 6-7:30 class, teacher didn't go, and I was just hanging around the school till my next class started. Walked around the school, 6:30...went to the cafeteria for some chips, 6:50...bumped into a friend I hadn't seen in 2 years, 7:15...bumped into another friend who just had a children, 7:35...I say goodbye to him, I look at the time and think: "Ok, I still have 25 minutes, I might as well go walk around a bit more"............

I got to the class 30 minutes late...of course. Apparently my brain has not recorded the fact that those two last classes are shorter and that the last one actually starts at 7:30, why??? It's been like that for 2 years and I always think 8pm is time for the next class, and I'm not kidding, it has happened to me EVERY semester since they changed it.

First day of school

Yup, August 1st, I still remember when I started school on September, but oh well, as long as it ends mid-November it's no big deal :).

I don't get excited about first days of school like I used to. Before I thought about the first day since a couple of weeks before, bought a couple of notebooks, and stuff like that...today I forgot to even bring a pen to school. Good thing it was a CS class and I could use my laptop.

Tomorrow are the boring classes (don't even remember which ones), so my day will be slooooooooooow.

3rd time's the charm

Went to the movies with Tenampa and another friend to see Captain America.

The plan was to go to a 6:25 showing at Las Misiones mall, and I was going to pick up my friends some half an hour earlier to get there in time. I was late to pick them up (cause my dad had no gas in his van and I went to help him out). So, that showing was out of the question. I knew there was one at around 7:40 in the same theater but we would've gotten there too early if we drove there right away.

So we tried first at another theater (Gran Patio Zaragoza mall) to see if there was an earlier showing and if not, go to Las Misiones. There were...but all of them dubbed :(, so yeah, neither of us three likes seeing dubbed movies, so that theater was out of the question.

We got to Las Misiones at around 7:10, where there was one at 7:40, and it was sold out...and we noticed there was a 8:05 showing but in the VIP section (which is almost twice as expensive). Since we were already there, we thought "what the hell, let's do it" and so we go to the VIP section...sold out...wtf? since when do movies sell out almost 1 hour before on the VIP section???

After that we didn't want to spend all day just driving around so we chose a safe bet and ended up going to a theater that imo is inferior to the first two we tried (Galerías Tec), but because of that, less people go there and they never sell out :), but they sell Pepsi instead of Coke :S.

The movie itself was pretty cool :D