Ryan J. Allen

There are so many updates, I don’t know where to start.

Perhaps first, and most obviously, I’ve decided to start keeping a bit of a moblog. For those who aren’t aware, a moblog is a mobile web log, which is a web log that is made up of pictures from one’s mobile phone. I’m not going to go hardcore moblog, but I will post a few pictures now and then, the first being today. What you see pictured left is a photo of a bellini. If you’ve read American Psycho you’ll understand. This photo was taken at Moxie’s Bar and Grill, which leads me to the first story.

I ate lunch with my step-brother, Andy, my brother, Adam, and SODA. We ate at Moxie’s Bar and Grill, which I had heard lots of good things about but had never investigated myself. We shared a delightful appetizer plater, featuring calamari, chicken wings, popcorn shrimp, garlic bread, vegetables, chicken, and more. For our entres, we all had some kind of steak. Two peppercorn New York steaks, one NY steak, and a Philly cheese steak sandwich. I think we were all delighted with our meal and the service was great. I believe the waitress’s tip was about 30%. Good job!

FreeBSD 4.10 was released yesterday. I installed it on my laptop today and will probably spend tomorrow doing some configuration with it. I installed the whole system; minus the “games”, plus the GNOME packages. Tomorrow will be a fun day.

I had four cheeseburgers. Terrible, I know.

Alex and I bought the Canada’s Wonderland tickets today from the Canex on CFB Kingston. $29 per person! I’m excited. The day looks like it’s going to be exciting, too (although, rain is expected). I get to pick up Adam from the auto shop and we’re going to make sandwiches!

As I was writing all of this I kept thinking “there’s something about the letter A that I’m supposed to write about in here.” It just came to mind: I received straight A’s this semester! This has opened up the possibility of a GPA of greater than 3.5, which would mean graduating with distinction. It depends, I think, on two classes last semester that I do not know my final grades for. I called today for a transcript but received no reply.

I think I’ve said enough for now. I could go on about shuffleboard, and the feastivas. Read Bleatbox if you’re interested in that.

I’ve upgraded ocip.recurse.org to be running OpenBSD 3.5. There’ll be some speed bumps but things should be back to normal shortly.

Just a quick note: a gentleman from Bell (I went to school with him, actually) re-strung the line from the pole to my house today. This will, hopefully, result in a reliable ADSL connection. We’ll see.

Also, I think I’m going to upgrade OpenBSD on the server. I’m pretty certain I’m going to stick to OpenBSD. This will probably happen this long weekend. I make no guarentees that information won’t be lost.

Spontaneous thought: it would not be fun to have a living moth in your mouth, stuck to your right cheek.
Thought inspiration: There’s a moth flying around in my room and it feels like something is on the inside of my right cheek.

I spoke to Bell this morning about my ADSL line problems. I convinced the phone guy that the problem was the physical wiring between my house and the RSLAM, so he dispatched someone to come to my house. RYAN IS STINKY!! Bell guy came to my house at 2 p.m., four hours early, and I convinced him that it was a problem between the demark and the RSLAM. He went, checked it out, and found a bird’s nest that incorporated some of my wiring. A temporary fix has been put in place with a more permanent fix due when Bell cabling comes and finishes the job.

Tomorrow I get my hair cut. My appointment is for noon with Laura at LuLu’s. For the cut I’m thinking about asking for something short and professional that doesn’t require any hair product be used. A part of me would like to continue growth of my hair but I figure it’s not safe with a job hunt (that should be) going on. I’ll try for a picture tomorrow, even if it’s just a snap with my mobile phone. And thanks Stephanie, for asking.

Continuing with the excitement of tomorrow, I do not have to wake up at 7:00 a.m. to get to work! I don’t work until after my hair appointment so I can sleep until 11 a.m., or so. Not that I will sleep that late (in fact, I’ll probably get up at 7:00 a.m. anyway), but I won’t be in quite the rush I normally am (which isn’t a rush, but it’s more rushed than tomorrow will be).

Stephanie told me that she checked out the McCafe today, with some friends. It comes highly recommended, receiving the McSeal of Approval. All I can say is, I plan on checking it out when I’m in Toronto in the next couple of weeks.

I’ve got quite the story about killing a bug, but now is not the time. If you’ve ever heard the story of Evan and I catching bugs while camping, this story is on a similar level. I’ll save the bug story for now, as it looks like I’ve written enough and I’d like to lay down for bed.

I finished Eats, Shoots & Leaves; good book. I am working on Microserfs, again. Here’s the list of books I’m going to buy this week:

• Between You and I by James Cochrane
• The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
• The Cripple And His Talismans by Anosh Irani

I know this doesn’t count as a book, but I think I’ll also buy the May issue of GQ, the UK edition.



Remember how I said I wasn’t going into work until Wednesday? I lied. I’ll be going in tomorrow (today?), which is Monday, for a few hours in the morning. It’s okay, though, because it’s for good (rather than evil). I’ll still have most of Monday and, currently, all of Tuesday to do nothing. The Tuesday thing might change, though.



Adam Januszkiewicz will be returning to Kingston this week, for a visit. I’m very excited, as it sounds like we’ll get a chance to have dinner, or something. He’s been in Toronto for a few weeks, and away from KOS for about four weeks. One could look at this in either of two ways: come on, he’s only been gone four weeks; or he’s been gone for four weeks?!



Okay, so, in all of talking to others I’ve managed to waste lots of time and energy. Now I am tired. So, off to bed. Hopefully more comments will be spurred from this than my last post. If it’s because of downtime I hope to have that resolved shortly. I have Bell investigating the trouble on my line.

I think I once asked Ryan Warner if he typed his posts before his title, or vice-versa. Well, if you didn’t know it about me already, last week I spilled the beans on my method; last week, there was no title.

If I would have noticed right away I would have fixed it, keeping my secret to myself; however, I didn’t notice until days later. Surely I still could have fixed it and claimed that any allegations that the title didn’t always exist were false (put onto people by the evil do-ers of the underworld). This is my way of manning-up to my mistake. This is my admittance speech.

Last night’s Frasier, the final episode, was good. I did enjoy it a good deal. I will surely miss Frasier and its high-brow comedy. Not suggesting that I’m high-brow, but it was refreshing to watch a television program that wasn’t…well…Drew Carey. (As an aside, I’m a big fan of the Drew Carey show, too.)

It’s a quarter after 8 p.m., Friday, May 14th. I have been here for over 12 hours–worked for 11. Tomorrow morning I will return here by 10:00 a.m. to work another seven hours. Aren’t I a dedicated employee?

This weekend should be nice, though. It would be an ideal weekend for me to go away somewhere, if only I had money. After work on Saturday there’s the night race at Richmond, VA. I have Mondays and Tuesdays off of work, so I’ll have three days with no commitment (which would be NASCAR), or responsibilities (which would be work). I just might have some of that Fudgesicle Fury ice cream. Oh, and I heard that there’s going to be some BLT dip on Sunday at dinner. Mmmmm!

I’m very excited for FreeBSD 4.10, for my laptop, and Mozilla 1.7, for everyone in the world. I think I’m going to install OpenBSD 3.5 on my home network server soon. I’m running a not-nearly-up-to-date OpenBSD 3.2 installation, which I think was a bit of a hacked upgrade from 3.1 (if I remember correctly). I’ve also got to deal with my ADSL connection issues (stupid Bell). Installing OpenBSD 3.5 would mean I would lose my 250+ days of uptime (since we moved in last year).

2030 and I’m still at work. *angry face* I can’t believe I lost to Eric twice in minesweeper today. Discouraging. I’ll have to get my game on.

Haircut this week. LuLu’s again. Laura, specifically.

I hope to finish Eats, Shoots & Leaves this weekend and refocus on Microserfs. I just can’t say no to grammar, including punctuation.

Have I lost my inspiration to blog?

Who thought the time after I’m done school would be busy? Crazy work, and mother’s day, and driving places. I’m going to try to utilize my time better this week. I did have some time off early this week, but that’s gone because of an emergency at work. That’s okay, though–I’m glad to help out.

Went to Costco today and bought Eats, Shoots & Leaves. I’ve read the first 25 pages or so and it looks like a good book. I consider myself someone who is considerate of his grammar, but I do expect to get something out of the book. I thought I was hardcore when it comes to correcting others’ English mistakes but Truss has me beat by one point six kilometers. I am also reading Microserfs by Coupland. I got this book for Christmas a few years back but I didn’t finish it. I’m becoming a bit of a reader! On deck: The Contortionist’s Handbook, which I bought last summer but didn’t read.

I’m going to wrap this up right here so I can say “Happy Mother’s Day” to all of my readers who are a mother (none? Ha). My belly is full from Chocolate milk now. I’ll try to blog tomorrow, and I’ll try to say something that anyone reading can comment on.

If you’re reading this then that means my phone has dial tone. I don’t know what’s been going on but I’ve lost dial tone a lot today. I’ve already called Bell and they’re going to send someone Tuesday. *sigh* This affects my Internet connection as well.

Went into work to correct an issue today. That was fun.

Saw the movie Envy last night with Alex. It was good.

Jeff won again. Good for him.

I’ve got a lot of work to do now. Time to focus.