atrus

My weekend has certainly been interesting. I didn't read fun books, as planned, but I did do other fun things.

Friday night, I spent a while chatting with igrokme and paganconspiracy at Town Hall (a bar) and then Plato's Diner. It was good and interesting.

Last night, I went to a shadow cast performance thingy of <i>The Rocky Horror Picture Show</i> for the first time. Actually, it was my first time seeing the movie, period. My parents own the DVD; all of my friends have seen it, but I'd never sat down and watched it. It was a bit weird, but fun. I don't think it's something I can describe briefly it seems to be one of things "you just need to experience" ... which I suppose is another way of saying "I'm not sure how to write about it; so I'm going to make that seem rrrrreally challenging to write about. That way, you might not blame me for sucking."

Actually, I sat outside of the theater for thirty minutes because I was too anxious to go in. There were too many people I didn't know ... We (the random collection of people I was with) were supposed to go in early or something, but the theater people wouldn't let us; we eventually got moved to just outside the doors, where I sat. It just scared the crap out of me.

I can deal with breaking rules, but it frightens me when I don't know what the rules are and I break them accidentally and people start raising their voices ...

Anywho, things were good fun overall. I also watched a bunch of X-Files episodes with friends at my apartment. I'm strangely unaware of how the series started. I've seen all of seasons 4-7 (inclusive), but almost none of 1-3. It's interesting to see how Mulder and Scully got to know each other and how different the characters are. It's obvious they didn't have a clue what they were planning to do in the long-term. I bet they were just hoping to make it to a second season.

I wonder if after a few installments (seasons of tv, books in a series, etc) you become secure in having as much time as you need; it seems more sensible to stretch out plots forever, stringing viewers/readers along as much as you can.

In other random news, I bought a sewing machine on e-bay last weekend $5.50. It was missing a power cord and foot pedal (the two are one unit), but I can get that from sears for $8. Shipping puts a damper on my excitement .. I think if I take that into account it comes to $40 total. Still, that's not a bad price for a $100 sewing machine. Now hopefully it will actually work ...

I spent some time debugging RXTX today. I've hunted down the problem and now I "just" need to fix it. The problem's in RXTXPort(open), defined in SerialImp.c. Now I'm starting to learn about JNI, the "Java Native Interface" (read "C plugin API") as a result. Heh, at the same time I have to do a silly project

The end of my contract with Cingular is finally approaching. I can't wait for it to end. I just get crappy reception with them and I really want a new phone. I'm in the rather awkward position of needing a phone that doesn't have a camera. Cameras are just not allowed at the Naval Research Lab (one of the places I work). I also want bluetooth and be able to use it as a GPS receiver.

Hopefully I can secure it against this crap. Basically, Blutooth is supposed to be secure and it isn't. More technical information can be found here. There's also the Bluebug site and bluejackQ.

I'm really irritated by this. I invested an extra $50 in my wireless keyboard and mouse to get Bluetooth because it was supposed to be secure. There are a lot of devices that benefit use Bluetooth. It seems like a nice standard that's threatened by stupid security issues. It's the sort of thing that makes me want to do more work on computer security.

I also have this desire to poke at the rules and figure out how to get around them, just for the heck of it ...