Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Christmas List
November 27, 2002

In spite of the fact that the date on the Christmas list says the December 24th, I have posted the list to the site today.  You should be able to find a link to the list at least until Christmas Eve in the Don't Read bar on the left side of the home page.

I have gone to great lengths to provide a couple of places to shop for the items listed.  I am not quite done with the list, though.  I think I will need to add a few more things in the $1-$20 range to round things out.  Everything on the list is so expensive this year.

Harry Hibachi
November 25, 2002

Last night, Mom watched Abby while Berta and I went out to dinner and a movie.  We tried the new Hibachi across the street and went to see Harry Potter and the Chanber of Secrets.

The new Hibachi restaurant rocks.  Apart from the great food that you usually get at a Japanese steak house, the atmosphere was such an improvement over all of the other places we go for Hibachi.  The place has a large waterfall garden with a bridge in the lobby, and the hallways to get to the many hibachi rooms are lit with futuristic samurai neon green circles of etched glass.  There were a ton of tables, and even a room with a raised floor to give the appearance of traditional floor sitting.  Our chef, a white guy from Colorado, was perhaps the best hibachi chef I've ever had the pleasure of cooking for me.  He did all of the tricks, including the Mt. Fuji onion volcano and the "fire in the hole" trick, where, when the chef for the next table over appears, he lights his hand on fire and sticks it near the other guy's rear end.  (The other chef was oriental, and not very emotional.  Our chef said after doing the trick, "They've got to get used to me eventually.") 

A Few Notes
November 22, 2002

We moved our bed and Abby's bed up onto the second floor of the house last weekend.  It's a little strange sleeping in the new room, even though I did sleep there for seven or eight years.  The bed is in a different place, and the room is a different color now.  The whole house sounds different these days.

Anyway, I think the thing that I miss most about not sleeping downstairs is that I would roll over in the morning while Berta was in the shower, and look over at Abby's bed, and occasionally she would be awake.  She would sit up in bed and smile at me, and pick up each stuffed creature in turn and say things like, "This [is Mr.] Bunny" or "This [is a] bear."  I would tell her to bring one of them over, so she would climb out of bed and walk over where I'd lift her into our bed.  Then she would point at my nose and say "This [is a] nose", and eyes and hair, etc.  And then I would ask her if she wanted to go see Mommy, and she would ask, "Where's Mommy?"  And we'd climb out of bed and go find Berta, who was usually in the kitchen maintaining the cats.  Yeah, I miss all that.

Hating Linux Permissions
November 18, 2002

Does this permission scheme make sense to anyone else?  Please explain it to me, because I just don't get it.

I can assign an owner.  I can set permissions for the owner, a group, and others.  For some reason, I cannot get the permissions configured to allow for both FTP access and writability via PHP.  It's one or the other, which is very inconvenient.  In fact, it's not just that, but if I turn on the ability to FTP, I can no longer read files with a web browser.  Oh, the humanity!