martone dot org

Finally.

2010-04-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

Is the Chuck Norris meme over yet?

this made me laugh

2009-04-01T13:16:00.001-07:00

NINE INCH NAILS: STROBE LIGHT - NEW ALBUM

Make sure to click the Submit button.

awesome

2009-03-31T21:51:00.000-07:00

perfectdrug:~ andy$ curl -I http://www.google.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:51:14 GMT
Expires: -1
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Server: Apache/0.8.4
Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=3a34f37d4054844b:TM=1238561474:LM=1238561474:S=0AwT6OMqw9jgEuhW; expires=Fri, 01-Apr-2011 04:51:14 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

so long, Blu-Ray

2008-11-20T07:13:00.000-08:00

I updated my Xbox 360 last night with the NXE update. One of the first things I did (after creating my avatar, of course) was set up Netflix streaming. So Allison and I sat down and watched an episode of Heroes. As it started buffering, the screen indicated that it was in HD.

We watched an episode. Streamed. In HD. I used my Logitech remote for playback controls.

HD on-demand streaming! Seriously, how cool is that? We had watched some previous episodes via Netflix streaming on my laptop, hooked up to the TV via a DVI cable, and the HD streaming looked much better. There is now no reason whatsoever for me to buy a Blu-Ray player.

Of course, Sony are being assholes about letting Netflix stream their content, but they haven't exactly been looking out for consumer rights lately.

The interface isn't perfect - we can only stream content from our main Netflix account, not the other profile we have set up on it. It's kind of a pain to have to open up a web browser to finangle with the queue to find something to watch for it to show up on the Xbox. But they'll eventually get those issues worked out, I'm sure the interface will improve. They have the delivery mechanism in place that makes the cable companies obsolete.

Oh, and I'm finding the third season of Heroes to be cheesy and disappointing, and I feel like I'm just watching it out of habit now.

PDT -> PST

2008-11-03T08:53:00.001-08:00

It was great to get an extra hour of sleep this weekend, after Halloween festivities on Friday and attending a beer tasting at the Rogue Ales Public House on Saturday. I was actually confused for about 5 seconds this morning as I walked out the door to catch the bus to work - it was light out! And on the flip side, that got me wondering just how super early that it's going start getting dark out.

I've also been wondering for a while how San Francisco's latitude compares to Washington DC's, and the time switch finally motivated me to find out. According to this, San Francisco is at 37° 47', and DC is only slightly more northern at 38° 53'. So, yeah, during December it looks like the sun sets before 5, but this should be pretty much what I'm used to.

Rock Band 2 awesomeness

2008-09-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

I picked up Rock Band 2 this week. It kind of snuck up on me, and I wasn't all that excited about its release date. I've started playing it a bit, and the thing that's stood out to me the most has been the new system calibration they've put in.

In the first Rock Band (and all the Guitar Heros, for that matter) I'd have trouble hitting a long string of successive notes. I know it probably has to do a lot with the fact that I have no rhythm and whatnot, but it was always a problem for me.

Somehow, Rock Band 2 has magically solved this with their calibration. Unlike the first Rock Band, they have both an audio and video calibration. When I went through the calibration process, it claimed that I had no video latency in my system, but I had 110 ms of audio latency. Hm. That's odd, I thought. But I went with it and started playing.

WOW. What a difference it made! I now actually feel like I'm hitting sequential notes when I strum them, and I'm able to hit long repeated sequences with way fewer problems than before. Thanks, Harmonix!

The calibration and the Rage Against The Machine song have totally validated my purchase!

not so famous, yet

2008-08-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

I'm on Google Maps!

3 whole Gs of iPhoneness

2008-08-04T08:34:00.000-07:00

We finally, finally, finally got iPhones on Saturday! We got down to the Apple Store in downtown San Francisco at about 10:30. We waited in line outside for about an hour, during which time an Apple Store employee went down the line and handed out cards to reserve the particular model you were interested in. (Allison got a white 16GB, I got a black 16GB.) Once we were ushered into the store, we waited in line for about 30 minutes inside. Then the whole purchase and number porting process took about half an hour or so. I didn't know my Verizon account number off the top of my head, but I was able to log in to my account on the 24" iMac right behind us.

Other than the wait, which I fully expected, I was really pleased with how smooth the whole process went. I had heard that people have had problems porting numbers to AT&T when their billing address was outside the area code of the number they were porting in, but we switched over our 703 numbers without any hassle. Additionally, it took only a couple of minutes for the number to actually become active on the new phones.

As far as the iPhone itself - I am still really excited to have one. I added a link to my home screen to the next Muni train at the stop near our apartment, so now I can check before we leave the apartment if we have to hurry to catch the next train or if we should wait a few more minutes. I've got two minor gripes (of course). First, AT&T cell coverage sucks inside our apartment. We get phone service towards the back, but not in the front. And second, the Google Maps native application doesn't do public transit directions - for that, I've got to open Safari, and punch in my current location manually.

Overall though, I'm not going to complain too much. :) I've been lusting after an iPhone for the last year, and my dreams have finally come true.

%s/Windows/Linux/g

2008-07-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm starting to warm up to editing in vim. I've been using the Windows-centric arrow keys/home/end/page up/page down for, well, forever it seems, and old habits die hard. Since there really aren't any good arrow key editors for Linux (I tried to get Notepad++ working under Wine, but that wasn't so successful), I bit the bullet and have been using vim as my primary editor for the past couple months.

And you know what? I kinda like it. I've been so used to ctrl-arrow key to move between words in a line. It's taken a while, but I finally have my muscle memory trained to w and b. I'm starting to get there with ctrl-f and ctrl-b for page up/page down. Hitting the period to repeat the last command rocks. And I'm dipping my toe into the water of regular expression search and replace, and it's quite powerful and not as scary as I thought.

I've got to say I'm glad I've had the opportunity to use Linux as my primary OS after a few months. It was super intimidating at first, but I'm starting to appreciate how awesome of a software engineering environment that it makes possible. Granted, the UI isn't all that impressive, and I wouldn't think of not using OS X at home, but I've never had a better development environment.

On another note, I figured out how to tunnel my X session over ssh and run X apps remotely on my Mac. So cool.

(My geekiness has increased by 1 point after this post.)

new version of X Resource Graph

2008-06-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

I just happened to see that there's a new version of X Resource Graph available. I love this little app. I keep it sitting in the lower left corner of my screen to keep an eye on my CPU load and network usage. Yes, I'm a nerd.

old houses

2008-06-17T18:26:00.000-07:00

I noticed that Google updated Street View last week to include Buffalo! So of course I had to go check out what my old houses look like now.

257 Fawn Trail (formerly Gay Drive). I lived here from when I was born until 1985. 23 years later, it looks a lot different. There used to be a huge tree in the front yard that I would climb as a kid. There was also a large tree to the right of the driveway whose trunk my dad carved my name into. The last time I went back to see it (maybe 5-6 years ago), the trees were still there. Also, the house wasn't yellow when I lived there, it was more of a greyish blue from what I remember.

8 Kristen Meadows. I lived here from 1985 until 1993. The horrible pink shutters are different, but the rest of the house looks about the same. There were two trees in the front yard where the little circular pink flower beds are now.

Browsing through my old neighborhoods is bringing back some memories, and it made me realize that I haven't lived there for fifteen years. It sounds and feels like a long time ago.

one benefit to Pacific time

2008-06-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

I've had a hard time adjusting to working and living in Pacific time and following sports back on the east coast. It's been really strange having NHL playoff games start at 4PM out here. (I imagine football at 10 AM will be even stranger.) Well, one benefit to being out here is that late games aren't that late. The Penguins just beat the Red Wings in 3 OTs, and it's not even 10 PM yet. Cool.

fixing Home and End keys on OS X

2008-05-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

Recently at home I've started plugging in a full-size keyboard to my MacBook Pro. The default behavior of the Home and End keys on OS X (go to the beginning/end of the document) is totally counter-intuitive to years and years of muscle memory built up on Windows (and now Linux), to go to the beginning or end of the current line.

I found KeyFixer today and installed it. It's been a lifesaver so far - now my Home and End keys work the way I expect. Now, I just need to figure out how to remap Ctrl-left arrow and Ctrl-right arrow to jump to the previous/next word, and I'll be all set!

the cake is a lie...

2008-04-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

So I finished Portal last night. What a cool game! It was a great change of pace from every other FPS I've played. With other games, I sometimes get frustrated or annoyed at the puzzles and then give up and just search for a walkthrough on the Internet. I didn't get that from Portal. I thought the puzzles were challenging enough to be fun, but not nearly as obtuse as those in other games.

Also, I was quite satisfied with the length of the game. As I get older and grumpier, I find I have less patience and less time in general to waste on video games. Portal was just the right length to keep me busy for a few nights, but not too long to feel like work.

Overall, it was a great game. And now my gaming plate is clean, just in time for GTA 4. :)

odd

2008-04-02T23:52:00.002-07:00

I was self-Googling tonight and I came across this. Odd but cool.

assimilation complete

2008-03-25T21:29:00.000-07:00

I'm at Google now. It's even cooler than I imagined.

Watch It Shred!

2008-02-20T11:22:00.001-08:00

Even better than Will It Blend? - Watch it Shred!

thanks, EA!

2008-02-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

I'm always quick to bitch about how terrible a company EA is, so I figure I should give them a little praise when they deserve it. My Rock Band guitar that I bought on launch day was defective. I submitted a request to replace it the next day. When it took them a couple weeks to actually get the replacement, they offered me a free game to apologize for it taking so long.

So my copy of NHL 08 showed up yesterday. I haven't played a hockey video game in while (I got blisters on my thumbs from playing NHL 98 in college), so this will be fun. Thanks, EA!

oh yeah, some big news

2008-01-31T05:22:00.000-08:00

http://sf-adventure.blogspot.com/

rm -rf /

2008-01-31T04:55:00.000-08:00

We have a table at work for older hardware and other electronics that's up for grabs. I've been getting rid of some old machines lately, and I wanted to donate one to the table. I didn't have anything particularly sensitive on it, but I wanted to wipe it for the next person.

I've always wanted to rm -rf / just to see if Linux really would delete pretty much everything. Well, it does. :)

Rock Band - I HAS IT

2007-11-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

I met Don this morning at Target, right after they opened up at 8. I walked right into the video game section, handed over my credit card, and waited along with about 10 other people for them to grab the stock out of the back. It turns out they had plenty of Rock Band bundles - after everyone got their bundle, they had probably 7 or 8 PS3 copies and 4 or 5 360 copies left.

Now, I just need to find myself a Falcon 360 and I'll be all set for Thanksgiving. :)

sigh

2007-10-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

I think that this is the most painful Bills loss in at least 10 years.

They're not going to make the playoffs this year. They're not going to finish close to .500. They've lost lots and lots of starters to injury.

But tonight - it looked like the stars aligned for the standard bearer for small market teams to knock off Jerry Jones and the big-money NFL. The Bills never trailed in the game, but they found a way to keep letting Dallas back in.

Until the end. One part of me kept thinking that with all the tough losses we've suffered over the years, that there's no possible way Dallas could pull off a win. I guess I was wrong.

On a positive note, it looks like this is Trent Edwards's team now. Gotta keep hoping for next year. :)

does Guitar Hero rock the 80s?

2007-07-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

I picked up Guitar Hero 80's Edition yesterday. Some thoughts:

The game is just the Guitar Hero 2 engine with some new songs and new outfits. There's one programmer listed in the credits, and the rest are art and music people.

There are a lot more 3-note chords in these songs. Also, I noticed a green-orange chord or two.

I've seen some framerate slowdown in Hard and Expert modes. WTF? Throttle the background graphics if you need to, but *don't* mess with the framerate!

Overall, the song selection is kind of meh - I've had more fun rocking out to songs in Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2. However, this song has been stuck in my head for the past two days.

So, I'd have to say that it's the weakest of the Guitar Hero series, but worth the $40 I paid for it. Bring on Rock Band!

what a game...

2007-05-04T20:20:00.000-07:00

I almost passed out when the Sabres won Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals tonight. After Chris Drury scored with 7 seconds to go to send the game to overtime, the camera panned over the euphoric crowd. I was stunned to see my cousin Evan screaming his head off cheering!

I've always kind of half paid attention to the crowd at Sabres games on TV, thinking I might recognize someone. Tonight I finally did!

enough already

2007-04-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

Dear Enterprise Rent-A-Car:

I appreciate the fact that you guys are advertising during the NHL playoffs on Versus. However, I must see the commercial where the 3 girls are throwing their scarves out of the back of the convertible anywhere from 5 to 10 times during *each* game. It's getting a little old.

Can you guys please run a new commercial? And maybe one that's targeted more towards the people watching hockey?

Thanks!

Firefox text size on OS X

2007-03-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

I've been using ctrl-scroll wheel in Firefox on Windows for ages to increase or decrease text size. Firefox 1.5 used cmd-scroll wheel on OS X to do the same thing. I was irritated when cmd-scroll wheel stopped working in Firefox 2.0, but never irritated enough to find out why.

Apparently they changed this in 2.0 to ctrl-scroll wheel, I guess to be more consistent with the Windows version. This collides with the default setting for OS X's zoom feature.

I've never been able to figure out the Firefox setting to change the text size shortcut, so tonight I finally reassigned the OS X zoom to cmd-scroll wheel.

Yay, now I can use ctrl-scroll wheel in Firefox to change text size!

I think I need one of these

2007-03-08T06:41:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure why, but I really would like a beer pouring robot. I'd prefer one that spoke its preprogrammed witty bartender phrases in English though.

Guitar Hero

2007-02-08T04:37:00.000-08:00

So, I got Guitar Hero II this past weekend as a wedding present. (Thanks, Don and HM!) Initially I thought, "hey, cool, I played this once before, it was pretty neat." It definitely wasn't something I'd go out and buy myself.

That was Sunday. As of Tuesday, I stopped by Hollywood Video GAMECRAZY (TM) OMG to pick up the first Guitar Hero.

I'm officially addicted. As in, early stages of WoW addiction. The past few days I've had Guitar Hero songs going through my head during most of the day, waiting until I get home to try to complete more songs on the next level.

Time to go sneak in a song or two before heading to work. :)

w00t!

2007-01-12T05:25:00.000-08:00

After probably doing more research on a new TV than I did on my new car, I finally pulled the trigger this morning. I ordered a 61" 1080p Samsung set from Amazon - free shipping and no tax! I so can't wait for the Super Bowl this year!

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

Having Christmas at our house this year is going to be a lot of fun... but it makes me feel all old and grown up.

I think I like Google Reader...

2006-12-07T17:02:00.000-08:00

I've been using SharpReader for about two years now to aggregate my RSS feeds. It works very well, and I like the mail client-like interface. However, I'm fed up with trying to sync my feeds on multiple machines.

Enter Google Reader. I had used it a while ago and I wasn't very happy with the interface - its model didn't quite fit my workflow. However, I had heard that Google revamped the interface, so I decided to give it another shot.

Wow. I'm pretty impressed. I like the overall look and feel. I like the option to show only the item titles - which is what I was used to with the fat client. And one feature that's all web 2.0-ish and I think is pretty slick is the Shared Items. I added their HTML snippet to the sidebar. Check it out!

bunch of savages in this office...

2006-11-16T16:57:00.000-08:00

I walked into work this morning and this is what my cube looked like. We recently uncovered a treasure trove of unused tradeshow swag - two boxes of magnetic clips with an old logo on it. Don and I built "Clamp Man" before I left yesterday - the donut-shaped thing on the far wall. I guess that inspired someone else to attach the rest of the two boxes to every magnetic surface in my cube.

Well played, sir. Well played.

Caps game

2006-11-09T04:25:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to score free tickets from work on Monday to go see the Caps host Ottawa. This shot is of Washington's playing 6 on 4 with a minute left to go in the game. Ovechkin tied it up, and the Caps scored in overtime to win. It was a really exciting game, and we got to see all the action up close from our seats!

leaves

2006-11-05T14:17:00.000-08:00

18 bags this weekend, and the trees aren't even close to being done dropping leaves!

mounting a Sirius antenna in a 2005 PT Cruiser Convertible

2006-10-30T18:21:00.000-08:00

So Allison got a Sirius radio for her car recently. The instructions said that for convertibles, the best place to mount the antenna is on the roof of the trunk. With the PT Cruiser's near-vertical trunk, the reception left something to be desired. We tried mounting it on the center of the dashboard, which was so-so but still not great.

I scoured the Intertron for any other stories of people in the same situation. I found one post that said that the signal *should* travel through cloth convertible roofs. So, this is what I came up with. I mounted the antenna with double-sided tape in the middle of the "roll bar" behind the driver and passenger seat. The results have been impressive so far. Satellite reception is great, even with the top up!

mmm... beer

2006-10-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

So this past summer at the Brickskeller I tried a Honey Basil Ale from Bison. It was scrumptious. I picked up some of their IPA from Total Beverage/Wine last week, and it's just as good.

Chalk me up as a fan.

walking on the streets of Bangkok

2006-09-26T17:09:00.001-07:00

This is a video we took on our honeymoon of us walking down a street in Bangkok. Words can't begin to describe how hectic and crazy the city is. Watching it now a year later is bringing back memories of how it smelled too. The food from the street vendors smelled wonderful, but that was soon mixed with the more, uh, unpleasant scents of Bangkok after a rainstorm. :)

wings

2006-09-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

Pictures of *real* wings we got at Brennan's in Buffalo.

Wings at Brennan's

Aug 23, 2006 - 5 Photos

football season!

2006-09-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

It totally snuck up on me, but I'm stoked for the season to start on Thursday. It will be nice not having a grad school class for this football season... maybe I can pay some actual attention to my fantasy teams this year.

I'm not so optimistic for the Bills this year. I'm thinking that they'll be lucky to go 6-10. Hopefully Losman learns on the job *this* year, and they'll be able to turn it around next season.

Hm... hockey season starts soon too. :)

pics online

2006-09-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

I started using Picasa Web Albums to throw up some pictures on the web. Check it out.

sweet!

2006-08-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

Allison is cool. A couple weeks ago, I kept talking about how cool the Nintendo DS was and how I wanted one. So, she went to Target to run some errands, and came back with not one, but 2 systems... so we could dork out together. Awesome.

Mario Kart DS is pretty slick. My only complaint so far... the DS doesn't support WPA, so I had to knock my wireless security back to WEP in order to get my ass kicked by 12 year olds at McDonalds on Mario Kart. Bleh. >:(

housewarming/anniversary party

2006-07-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

Pics are online here. Thanks to everyone for coming... we had a great time!

last.fm

2006-06-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

I signed up for last.fm recently. It's pretty interesting, although I'm still waiting for it to calculate my neighbors. Check out what I've been listening to at work here.

thank you Sabres!

2006-06-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

I was obviously disappointed to see them lose Thursday night, but they went further than anyone expected them to this year. They've given me more excitement in the playoffs this year than I've gotten from hockey in a *long* time.

The only thing that bugs me is losing to Carolina. Raleigh doesn't deserve a hockey team. There are a few rabid fans, but let's face it, hockey is a northern sport. They couldn't even sell out game 7 of the conference finals, while tickets in Buffalo to all 3 games sold out in 12 minutes!

2007 season is looking good for the Sabres as long as they can re-sign most of their free agents. They've got a good core of young players, they should do well next year.

crazy delicious

2006-04-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

So this past weekend in New York we hit up Magnolia and macked on some cupcakes. They were good, but maybe not worth the hype.

wow

2006-03-13T06:28:00.000-08:00

What an opening episode for the Sopranos... Tony's not dead. He can't be... not with 19 episodes left!

dirt

2006-03-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

While vacuuming today we decided to take off the floor registers. Whoah. Scary stuff. One of the registers had about two inches of dirt in the ductwork underneath. I also found rubber bands, cigar wrappers, washers, sticks, a piece of drywall, and a Lego spear.

Then we vacuumed under the fridge. Even scarier. The coils were enrobed in probably an inch or two of dust.

Did the previous owners just never clean anything?

posting from the Mac dashboard widget...

2006-03-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

OS X! OS X! OS X!

now what?

2006-03-02T21:16:00.000-08:00

So, I finished my master's degree. It will feel a lot more official once I get my diploma.

Should I go to graduation? It's a whole 2 months away... it seems it would be pretty anti-climactic.

done!

2006-01-30T18:13:00.000-08:00

http://home.comcast.net/~amartone/cs699/

Comcast sucks

2006-01-27T17:16:00.000-08:00

Ok, so we moved 2 weeks ago. The total distance from the old place to the new place as the crow flies is about a third of a mile. I brought my cable modem and Comcast-supplied cable box/DVR with me. They worked flawlessly at the old place, so I shouldn't have any problems, right?

Apparently not. My Internet connection constantly drops every 5 minutes or so, HBO and the on demand cable channels pixellate and skip around, and there is a lot of interference on the analog channels. Sounds like a bandwidth problem somewhere in the cabling, right?

I called on Monday, 1/16. The earliest they can send a tech out is Thursday, which seems like no big deal... we've still got a lot of unpacking to do. When the guy shows up, he finds some wear and tear on the cable coming in to the house, so he snips off that part, and removes some of the splitters running from the main cable input to the rest of the rooms to the house. After he does that, the interference on the analog channels, so I assume that everything else is working fine.

Later that night I watch HBO for the first time, and still see the pixellation. And my Internet connection is still constantly dropping. Problem not solved. >:(

So, I call them back. They send another guy out on Tuesday, 1/24. This guy was actually pretty competent, however after running a direct line from the cable tap (the green box in the backyard) into another cable box he had in his truck, we're still seeing pixellation on HBO. He says he needs to call the upstream network guys to come out, and they will be out Wednesday or Thursday.

Wednesday night I'm still having problems. Thursday night I come home and try to use the Internet connection, but lo and behold it's still dropping me every 5 minutes. So, I call them back, and sit on hold for a few minutes and listen to their commercials. (BTW, they want $40 for VOIP service??? What are they smoking? Do they realize Vonage is $25 a month???)

When I finally get through to someone, I ask if the main network guys have been out. He puts me on hold and tells me that they have. Ok... well... my Internet connection still sucks, how can we fix this? This is the third time that I've told someone that the exact same hardware I used in my old place is not working properly in the new one. The guy on the phone is pretty responsive, and apologizes, but he has to send ANOTHER tech out. Ok... it's not my equipment or cabling, it's YOUR NETWORK. So, he sent someone out to look at the cable tap today.

The tech calls me when he looks at it to inform me that it's a network problem, and he's called in the main network guys to do something about it. And it'll be 3-5 days before they get out to look at it.

Grr. Anger... rising. One other gem was that I received my first bill last night... the prorated charges for January and the bill for the entire month of February. When I asked the customer service rep about a possible refund, he said he couldn't do anything until the trouble ticket was closed. Ok, so I have to pay for unacceptable service... great.

I'm giving them one more shot. The next time I call it will be to check to see if it's been fixed in their records, and if I'm still getting dropped after that, it's time to sign up for DSL. I only wish there weren't trees all around blocking the sky so I could get a dish.

I hate Comcast. Verizon, please bring FiOS out to Reston soon. >:(

/rant

new house!

2006-01-02T09:39:00.000-08:00

Move-in date is January 13th! Now, back to packing...

news... big news

2005-12-08T19:55:00.000-08:00

We bought a house in Reston! More details to follow...

night owl

2005-09-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

Why am I always so productive late at night? I'm working on a presentation for my last grad class tomorrow. Trackerless BitTorrent is neat.

I'll be happy when I'm done with school. :)

married!

2005-08-25T19:37:00.000-07:00

We got back from our honeymoon in Thailand a couple weeks ago... we had an amazing time. The hotels we stayed at in Bangkok and Phuket were incredible.

new phone

2005-07-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

I picked up the Sony Ericsson S710a last night. I'm pretty impressed with it so far, although I can't seem to access my Gmail account through POP3.

I'm looking forward to checking out the Bluetooth connectivity once I pick up my Powerbook. :)

fireworks on the Mall

2005-07-06T20:57:00.000-07:00

Allison, Susie, and I trekked down to the mall on Monday to catch the fireworks. I'm glad we did! Getting through security (boy I feel safer) was much smoother than the chaos two years ago. And the fireworks were impressive.

stress level: low

2005-05-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

I'm done with my grad class... only one more to go!

Now it's time to stress about the wedding.

black helicopters

2005-05-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

So, I've been up late studying a lot recently... and quite a few nights recently I've heard a bunch of loud helicopters flying overheard. I heard 3 tonight. Something odd, or just 2AM paranoia?

I'm so looking forward to taking my final exam tomorrow and being done with class for the semester. Only one more to go after this!

martone dot org lives

2005-03-23T19:27:00.000-08:00

Since I'm not looking for a job anymore, welcome to the new redirect for martone.org. It would be nice if Yahoo Domains offered a masked forward without an ad frame, but oh well...

Class has been taking up quite a bit of my time since January. One more to go after this semester!

Allison and I have been playing around with Picasa and Hello recently. Well... mainly Allison. :) Cool programs though, check em out.

pics!

2004-11-16T19:39:00.000-08:00

I threw up a Gallery website hosted on one of my home machines. Check it out.

waiting...

2004-10-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

I'm still alive... I know it's been a while.

I found a job! I'm working at a small software company in Reston. I'm enjoying it so far... plus I can't complain about the 2 mile commute! :)

Grad school is fun. I'm waiting for a run of this to finish, so I can finish up my report. I've had a couple of late nights recently.

I've been cracked out on following the election and poll results lately. One more week to go...

unemployed

2004-06-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

I got laid off Wednesday. Being unemployed is like being on a stressful, boring vacation by yourself... not cool.

I managed to update my resume today. Any leads would be appreciated.

hello world

2004-06-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

I've heard about blogger.com for a long time... but never had the time or motivation to check it out. Here we go...