5.4

We had a 5.4 earthquake in California today. It was my very first earthquake - this is similar to "baby's first steps" or "Brett Favre's first retirement" - a big deal. Stuff shook. It was a bit unnerving, but no damage.

Saw Stone Temple Pilots on Sunday. Scott Weiland (age 40) is the archetype for lanky and possibly also for heroin addict. His rants made little to no sense; his dancing: Mick Jagger-esque; his smoking on stage: downright ballsy. Scott and STP still have it. They crank out hit after hit, and leave you a bit winded. The only downside? The several "jam sessions" the band tried out. Mr. Weiland blathered on about James Brown inventing funk while DeLeo (the bassist not the guitarist) played a funk riff. It struck me as beatnick poetry, a role Weiland doesn't fit into.

I had a lunch 'n learn today (free lunch). The takeaway? Work to live, not the other way around. I also scored free dinner at En Fuego in Del Mar, which is great for drinks and dinner. Also, according to one intern 'Linux makes you 10x more productive'. The intern should read "No Silver Bullett."

I finally uncovered the bottleneck in my JMS testing as well: Tibco's EMS server locks out clients when the server can't handle the transaction rate. So far this has only been confirmed for persistent (durable) and non-persistent point-to-point messages. It only took me weeks, but I did it.

I got Chop Shop via Netflix. Probably worth a watch if the first 5 minutes are any indication.


Currently Listening To:
Stone Temple Pilots - Plush

Essential Utilities

Here's a list of essential utilities for Windows. I use ALL of these at one time or another.
Firefox 3 - Internet Browser
Here are a list of my installed extensions:

• -DownThemAll - download manager
• Del.icio.us toolbar - bookmark manager
• AdBlock - popup blocker
• Aging Tabs - shows you which tabs you've used recently
• Viamatic Foxpose - for showing you all the tabs you have open at once
• Forecast fox - Get the weather
• Adblock Filterset updater - keeps your adblock stuff up to date
• Download status bar - replaces the normal firefox download manager
• Remember the milk for gmail - integrates RTM with Gmail
• BookBurro - book comparison utility
• Better YouTube - allows you to download YouTube videos
• Better GMail 2 - adds ssl, other capabilities to GMail
  
• Greasemonkey
  
• Installed Greasemonkey Scripts:
• OinkPlus - torrent stuff
  
• Modified Gmail Macros - for quickly dispensing my e-mail messages

• Essential Programs:
• WinPatrol - Helps control my startup & associations
• Taskbar Shuffle - Allows me to reorder my taskbar
• Launchy - Launch applications, web sites, navigate file system
• Google Web Accelerator - speed up my surfing
• Google Desktop Search - index my files
• UltraMon - Adds extra functionality for dual monitor setups
• Enso - Application launching, calculator capabilities, TeX integration, and more
• Picasa - For Managing photos
• Last.fm - for scrobbling my musical selections to facebook
• Mozy - Backs up my documents to an online store
• uTorrent - For Bit Torrent
• DeskSpace - Compiz-like virtual desktops
• Cygwin - To have a unix shell so I can sed, grep, awk, etc.
• Console - For having multiple tabbed shells open with copy & paste capability
• UltraEdit - a fantastic text editor
• Pidgin / AIM - for IM
• DVD Shrink - for backing up DVD's
• AutoHotkey - for creating wicked hotkey macros
• ITunes Folder Watch - updates my Itunes library as I download more mp3's
• CutePDF - for converting any document to a PDF
• CrossLoop - for doing VNC connections to remote computers
• Exact Audio Copy - for ripping CD's -> MP3
  
• Expresso - for writing those hard to reach regular expressions
• GMail Notifier - for letting me know when I have e-mail associating my gmail with mailto: links
• LAME - MP3 encoder
  
• mIRC - IRC
• Mojo - for sharing my iTunes library
• Paint.net - free photoshop alternative
  
• Python - for quick & dirty programming
• Peerguardian 2 - safeguards torrent & web browsing
• Putty - sshing into unix systems
• RescueTime - Charts my time usage on my computer
  
• Safari - when Firefox's rendering engine doesn't work. (I hate IE)
• Stellar Phoenix - the best data recovery program I've ever used
  
• Media Player Classic - Plays movies better than Windows Media Player
• Weezo - remote access of your files from anywhere
• Winzip & WinRar - for .zip & .Rar files
• WinISO - for modifying .ISO files
• WinSCP3 - file transfers from windows ->unix & vice versa
  

Currently Listening To:
Feeder - Silent Cry