So anyway I found out an old friend from way, way back, who ended up being my best friend from the age of 13-16 or so died on Saturday.

I had been meaning to catch up with him. 🙁

Usually I try to live my life so that I never have to regret not doing something, but this was a notable exception.

I wish I could have gotten more sleep last night. I felt like a stuffed up, sore and tired zombie at his visitation today.

What frustrates me about it is that he spent his last year of highschool in Detroit, 180 miles away from where we lived.

Wait, isn't that where I live now?

Yes.

I've spent 8 years within probably 30 miles of him and couldn't find him. Admittedly, I wasn't tearing the city apart looking, but I expended a reasonable amount of effort doing so. I mean, I could have ran into him at a gas station, or passed him on a freeway, and not known. That's what I hate about big cities. Where i grew up, it was by no means a 1 horse town, but I knew the cars of my friends and I just don't think it would have been possible to not run into someone after all that time where I grew up. I don't know. I like where I live and all, it's just frustrating.

The crazy part is how he died. I mean, you'd expect maybe someone around my age might die for a number of reasons, mostly stupid. If it were that, I could probably deal.

The real story is downright terrifying. (and it's second hand and my memory sucks, so the details might be a bit off) He was having shoulder pain. He thought it was a broken bone or something. He went to see a doctor, who told him to go straight to the hospital. At the hospital, they found out it was a large tumor, and admitted him. This was on valentines day, I think. Then they did various things. He ended up dying from the tumor on Saturday. He went in on valentines day with shoulder pain, and NEVER CAME BACK OUT. If that doesn't seem particularly terrifying, nothing will. I mean, how do you deal with that? Shit. Makes you wonder if a pain you have is really as benign as it seems.

Anyway, that's what I've been dealing with in my mind since Sunday when I found out.

Rest in peace, Michael Chamberlain.

Applay with in
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

Guys!

telnet psyduck.timminstechnologies.com

🙂

If you don't know how to use telnet, just dial 248-434-5508 for instructions

This is (part of) what caused my transmission to require repair recently.

The first thing on the left is what one of the bearings was supposed to look like, more or less.

The middle thing is what one of the bearings did look like. This bearing went between two critical gears (not that there are extra, unnecessary gears or anything, but these ones were large and .. well, monstrously fucked by this bearing failing, among other things.)

The gear on the right is as you can clearly see, missing a few teeth. In this blurry picture you can see another gear assembly with lots of missing teeth here.

Anyway so that's the story. They had a whole box of fucked up gears, these are the ones I decided to take because they were the most obviously fucked.

I'm pretty impressed by the way machines destroy themselves if left unchecked. Things like this facinate me and I don't know why. 🙂

Here's video I took the other day of the monkeys line (248-228-3273) with a real TDD so it shows that the TDD stuff says EXACTLY what you would expect it to. 🙂

Two access points on roof now
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

Glad we got this up before the snow hit…

we erected my wireless network APs on the roof tonight. 500mw @ 15db gain, 33 degree sector antennas.

They have penetration into a livingroom in a house 1100 feet away by air. The only reason their card can't connect is because it's transmitter stage is too weak.

There is now an approximately 1/4 mile radius around my house with free intarwebs if they want it, with native ipv6 connectivity.

I think my neighbors might just barely start to get an inkling of what is up when they eventually see those. When they see the other two APs and the dual polarized 2 meter beams I'm putting up later this spring/summer they're going to know for sure what's up.

But hammerdrill met my masonry and my house is now officially broken in with it's first major mod, at least if you don't count the nearly two grand I sunk into an electrician last year to basically overhaul this place.

Also another Paul Timmins first:

I did warroofing, which is using roof mounted access points to search for nearby open wireless networks. I found 38 of them from the site survey app on the two panel antennas mounted on my roof.

EPIC WIN
Originally uploaded by Paul Timmins.

points out that there is now graphics to go with my post from 2002 regarding ludacris' "Area codes".( http://noweb4u.livejournal.com/152559.html ).

The graphic is here:

Hoes in various area codes
(I did not create this graphic)

Anyway, I just wanted to bring that to your attention. Still no commentary or affirmative defense from ludacris.

I'll be impressed when he has hoes in at least every state (and multiples in 801 don't count to the total, because that's commonplace there)