Brooklyn Botanic Garden

2 comments (closed), posted on april 30, 2004, tags: photos

Absolutely gorgeous day—tons of light and bright, clear, blue sky. I took a lot of photos, and this is a collection of some of the better ones. We'll definitely have to go back in late May when the cherry trees have fully blossomed.

Enjoy the photos while I'm away. I return on May 8.

I Am Immunized

8 comments (closed), posted on april 28, 2004, tags: me

Visited the doctor today to get a tetanus booster. I haven't had one in at least 15 years, so I figured now might be a good time. After all, if I hadn't done it I probably would have stepped off the plane in London and immediately snagged my elbow on a rusty nail and gotten lock-jaw. Speaking of flying, while at the doctor I also got a prescription for a few Xanax to ease my flying. It's funny how even the idea of not being on-edge about flying is making me less edgy.

On the way back to work I found a cell phone in my cab. I picked it up off the floor and took it with me, since I knew if I didn't the next person in the cab would probably take it for themselves with no plans to give it back. I looked in the phone's contacts and found an entry called "Home" and called it.

Bruce, the man on the other line, was ecstatic that I had found his phone and he arranged for a courier to come pick it up from my office. His voice oozed surprise and happiness, both of us knowing full-well that in New York City, the chances of someone getting their lost cell phone back are not good.

McCarren Park

4 comments (closed), posted on april 27, 2004, tags: photos

It was cloudy the day we went, two Sundays ago, and the photos show it. None the less, people were out and about, riding bikes and playing baseball. Click the photo for more.

Almost Time to Go

6 comments (closed), posted on april 27, 2004, tags: me

Getting ready to go on vacation. I'm really excited, even if I don't fancy the idea of flying at all. I haven't flown in a really long time and I'm on edge at the idea of being on a plane for 6+ hours each way (plus the short flights back and forth to Dublin). Aside from that, though, I'm really excited to go.

In preparation for the trip I bought two spare batteries for my digital camera (since the one battery only lasts about an hour of taking constant pictures) and the Belkin iPod Media Reader. Since I only have a 256MB flash card and since I take full-resolution photos (150 fit on the card), the reader was the cheapest way to remove storage limits. This way, I can fill the flash card, dump the photos to my iPod, and keep taking pictures. Since I have a 15GB iPod (with about 10GB free), I'll be able to take thousands of pictures with a single flash card. And because the Belkin reader was only $99, I saved money compared to the hundreds I would have had to spend to get enough space in flash media.

Speaking of photos, I've got about 100 that I've yet to upload to the site. About 30 from two weekends ago when we went to McCarren park and about 70 from last weekend when we went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. The latter set of pictures is especially lovely because it was a beautiful day and the flowers were all very colourful. Hopefully I can get around to it tonight, as I would like to have them up before I leave on Friday.

Oh, and if any of you have been to or live in either London or Dublin and know of anything we should see or do, feel free to post it here. I'd love to get some suggestions (especially for non-standard tourist things like "Go to Westminster Abbey").

Identification Cards and Such

4 comments (closed), posted on april 21, 2004, tags: me

I forgot to mention that I finally got my passport. After they requested and I sent in three additional proofs of identification. It took just over three weeks to receive and that was after paying to have it expedited (which was supposed to mean 14 days or less). I'm glad I paid to speed up the processes otherwise I might not have received the passport in time.

I also finally fixed my driver's license issue. After driving to southern New Jersey and paying two different fees and then sitting in the New York DMV for two hours I am once again a licensed driver. I haven't driven it almost a year and I'm anxious to get behind the wheel and drive really fast and recklessly (har har).

Other than solving those issues and continuing to work on this site's code-base, I've gotten back into the habit of seeing movies frequently. In the past few weeks I've managed to see Kill Bill Volume 2 (great), Starsky & Hutch (so-so), Hellboy (good) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (really good). It's been nice to see movies in a theater and not only via Netflix.

About the New System

3 comments (closed), posted on april 16, 2004, tags: site

It's ironic that the reason I haven't posted details the site's new back-end is because any time I've come near the site it's been to work on the new back-end. I've spent a lot of time on the new system. Between planning out the new data model, cleaning old entries, changing a few design elements and everything in between, I haven't spent much time lately actually putting content into the new container.

» Continue reading About the New System

Broken Video Card

6 comments (closed), posted on april 13, 2004, tags: tech

Update: So they didn't ship the card until today (04/14). I will have it tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the video card in my G5 has died. It started as the 'BSOD' problem (Black screen of death in this case), where the machine wouldn't send the display a video signal after starting up cold. But yesterday, it wouldn't come on at all, even after a few hours of warming up. I remoted into the machine to find that the video card wasn't even in the system profiler. I took the card out and re-seated it, but no luck. It's definitely dead.

I called Apple and after a little convincing (they didn't want to send me hardware, they wanted me to bring my G5 in—no way), they've overnighted me a replacement card which should arrive tomorrow.

Between this and work and Easter and getting my driver's license issue fixed (which it is—yay) and working on other projects, I haven't had much time to catch up here. Expect more tomorrow.

A New Beginning

17 comments (closed), posted on april 7, 2004, tags: site

If you're seeing this, the new DNS listing has resolved for you and you're seeing the "new" Maniacal Rage, hosted by Segment Publishing. You're also seeing a Maniacal Rage with a completely new back-end. Movable Type has been replaced with my own system based on XML and XSL. I'll give more details on the whole thing in the near future.

In the mean time, there are plenty of things broken right now. Don't be surprised to see missing images or strange text layout in some entries/pages. There are also some missing sections. I'm getting there, but it will probably take me another day or two.

You can resume emailing me at my default address.

End of an Era

posted on april 6, 2004, tags: site

Update: [04/06] I am changing over the server today, April 06. It might take up to 48 hours for the new server to resolve. During this time, please send all emails to garrettmurray at mac dot com if you need to reach me. See you on the other side!

After three years, I am finally moving hosts. HostRocket was great in the beginning, but over time they got too many clients and things started to get worse. Recently service has been stable, but there was a period for almost four months that my site would be down regularly and email would be completely screwed.

The good thing about HostRocket was how cheap they were. But I've come to the conclusion that paying a bit more for better service is most definitely worth it. So I bid farewell to HostRocket and say hello to Segment Publishing.

I'll be sure to rave in the near future about how great Jeremy Bogan has already been and how eager he is to make sure his customers are getting good service. For now, though, please be aware that the domain change-over will happen some time this evening.

Most of you will see this old site for a few days and then you'll resolve to the new site, which is driven by XML and XSL and all that good stuff. Goodbye HostRocket, goodbye Movable Type.