Well, they announced who's getting the Perl Foundation grants for this application period.

http://news.perlfoundation.org/2009/09/

As you can imagine, I'm positively ecstatic!

Yes, I'm one of the three who got their grants.  Now I've got to get a bank account to put the money in, and then look up what kind of computer I want to get with the first part of the money. (I'm aiming for $800.)

Well, finally got my project almost finished...

Right now, I'm running Devel::NYTProf over it so I can see if I can speed it up any. (It does take a while - 50 minutes+ per distribution made.)

Then it's time to write the tests for Perl::Dist::WiX and I'll be done, pretty much!

My new bishop (The prevoius bishop got released and he just got called 3 weeks ago) wants to see me tomorrow night... I wonder what about? Right now, I'm teaching elders quorum once a month at church - maybe he figures I have more time than that and I'm getting a different calling?

Well, one more computer job done. Last one should be finished up tomorrow.

RIP President Hinckley... He will be missed.

I heard about this on my friends list just as my family heard about it on TV! I was surprised, I figured it'd be another year or two before I heard about this happening!

Well, got a lot to say, so I'd better start saying it.

First off, last week, I saw this quote on a newspaper clipping:

Tobin asked professors at all kinds of colleges -- public and private, secular and religious, two-year and four-year -- to rate their feelings toward various religious groups, from very warm or favorable to very cool or unfavorable. He said he designed the question primarily to gauge anti-Semitism but found that professors expressed positive feelings toward Jews, Buddhists, Roman Catholics and most other religious groups.

The only groups that elicited highly negative responses were evangelical Christians and Mormons.

Not that I'm too surprised - the two groups of people that speak out the boldest about traditional families are punished for it... that seems to be the way this country is going, unfortunately.

In other news, I've been



Apparently, I'm in good company!

( My credentials... )

As for what's been happening with me lately, there's been a few interesting things.

Friday night, I went to a party for a friend that was leaving - it was very fun. Got to see an interesting movie - I didn't know my family had it, I'll have to watch it again soon (it's #2 on my list after this one - I've got the book on request at the library, too.)

Saturday was probably the most "blah" day so far.

Sunday I had to teach Elder's Quorum - wasn't all that bad, I had a good subject.

Monday morning I got a phone call from my district president to help someone secure their computer. The person we went to made their job easy - their antivirus program was already up to date and running regularly (some people's computers scare me in that regard...) After that, cookies were made, and a fun time was had by all.

Tuesday I was just tired most of the time - which is why I'm awake now!

Wednesday, I did a lot of programming and a few other things... Also got some car insurance stuff done so we can get the road tax paid Thursday!

Now it's time for me to take my pills and go to bed!

( A haiku... )

Well, it's me.

I'm back.

No, have NOT been in the hospital. Thank goodness! I'm actually off prednisone.

My laptop's been down - it's still down. Need to ship it to Toshiba in mainland Japan and get it fixed - I'll get my brother on the phone with them tomorrow

Christmas was as good as any day this last week was been - I've been very tired lately. Feeling depressed, too. But I'm climbing out of it now.

Will say more later.

From Mozambique to those Memphis nights
The Khyber Pass to Vancouver's lights...

Last time I tried to type this entry, the router died, and since I was doing X-windows forwarding, I lost what I had typed!

At any rate, I'll start with Saturday - as much of it as I can remember by this time!

That day, I had to be at my church office for about 4 hours. I got warned earlier in the week that another branch (the one my dad's a clerk for) would be sharing the office with me for 8 months while they were moved out of their building (a third branch was having their building renovated, so they moved to the building my dad's branch was meeting in, while my dad's branch moved to the building my office is in... and I got 5 days warning to get my office picked up and the shelf space split. Saturday was the first day I could get anyone to take me down there.)

Sunday I had to get up early because I had an early Church meeting - 7am! Good thing that meeting is only once a month. It isn't easy waking up just before 5! I went home and took a nap before heading back to help set up for the regular services at 2:00 (I get there at 12:30). Fast and testimony meeting was great, as usual! Or should I say even BETTER than usual??? We had sloppy joes afterwards.

Monday... what did we do Monday? Oh, yeah, laundry! Had 4 laundry loads to do (Sunday, Monday [I usually do 1 load a day, a white load every 3-4 days, and a towel load every 4-6 days], and two sleeping bags from my sister's girls camp!) plus a white load to dry and Saturday's to fold. Took from about noon until 9pm... (sometimes the dryer doesn't get the load dry in 80 minutes - it's just too humid here!)

Tuesday was BUSY! Mom and I had lots of errands to run, plus I had church work to do. I think we got out the door at 8am and didn't get back until 3pm. We went for breakfast, stopped and get the forms signed to get my family's official passports renewed, got visitor's passes for the Japanese kids that are visiting Friday, Monday, and Tuesday (Mom gets paid a little to show Japanese kids visiting from mainland Japan what American life is like - a "culture teaching" program, they call it. [Previous link in Japanese only - Babelfish translation here]) went to the thrift store, did my church work (most of it - I forgot one thing. Did do most of the cleaning up of my side of the office that I didn't do Saturday.), had lunch out [to go this time], picked up dry cleaning, paid the car insurance on one of the cars for 3 more months, and went home and did 3 loads of laundry [color, towel, and white]. Other than a little shopping, computer work, and the Japanese kids on Friday, neither Mom or I should have to get out of the house much until Sunday!

Wednesday, I ended up helping a friend copy her stuff to another computer, so I got a free lunch (well, free for me, at least!) at the Italian restauraunt on base... and then dinner was also free - because it was the Officer's Club membership night (a free all-you-can-eat meal - not that I have the stomach capacity, or the intestinal "processing rate" capacity, to dare to eat too much! Well, technically not free, the membership fee is $16 a month - but you try taking 5 people out to "all-you-can" eat on $16 and see how far you get!) Only one load today - we're all caught up on laundry for the rest of the week!

I'm scheduled to fix somebody's computer Saturday at 10 - and I've got to contact someone else (my sister's seminary teacher) to see when I can get together with her and buy a sound card for her computer so I can install it and get paid!

Right now, I just started up mprime - so I'm back on the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search! Mom and my sister just woke up to go to seminary, and then after she gets back, it'll be time for my walk.

[Monday]

Well, got the web page as done as it is going to get for now! It's at https://lap.curtisjewell.boldlygoingnowhere.org/ - I have a lot of my web-programming work there. (Yes, it's a self-signed SSL certificate - your browser is supposed to warn you about that. You're not putting in a credit card number, it's OK.)

Today was an "out and about" day with Mom had a bunch of stuff to do - pick up the mail, buy a book for my brother's college classes. Got to go out for lunch. I'll be home all day tomorrow, and Wednesday I'll have a doctor's appointment at mid-day. Thursday I'll be home again.

Sunday was fun, but tiring, as usual. The usual bunch of stuff to do - plus I had to arrange for a ride for somebody who just got here. (I ended up picking him up.)

Saturday night was a fun halloween activity - I helped out with the trunk or treat.

I've been working on a computer project for my Dad - I think I'm about 3/4 done with the first part of it after about a week.

That's what's been going on lately.

I've got a screen shot I should put up... I'll do that in a day or two.

[Tuesday]

Here's the screen shot. Got 20 pages done on that project. Now I'm at 45 out of 200... (the other pages are about 85% done, I just have to go back and massage the formatting and correct them... OCR software isn't perfect yet!)

( 1280x1024, 285 KB screenshot )

First things first: My GNUpg public key is here. Messages sent from the laptop will be signed using it...

Yes, I know it'll expire in a month - that's deliberate. I'll make a better key around Halloween and put it up.

[Sunday night 11:30am]

Well, got a paying job - we'll see how it goes.

One of these seconds I'm going to set up my "laptop web server", too. (I accidentally wiped out the index page I had.) Any of you more computer-expert people know of scripts that handle the caldav protocol that Evolution can use? Or am I going to have to write my own mod_perl module to add to Apache?

Looking into getting America: Freedom to Fascism - Looks interesting. It's on Google Video, as well as on a DVD. Wish I had a version of Flash Player that'd run well - oh, well.

Church today was good. Was a little too wiped out, however. Fell asleep during sacrament meeting. I don't do that often. Got up too early, apparently.

[Wednesday 10:55am]

Well, it's almost set up. I've got one more area to configure, then I start putting down the screws and securing it. (There are some areas I don't want EVERYBODY viewing.)

[Wednesday 12:45pm]

Called my friend - got our public keys each signed. (I'll make the phone call to get another public key signed if you'll do mine, by the way.)

Did about 80 pages of scanning for that paying job this morning - still got 150 to go, and then I have to OCR them and double-check them before the job is half done. (The other half is writing a program to USE all that data.)

Had a fun lesson for family home evening Monday, too.

Did find a script that can display .ics (iCalendar) files - and since Evolution can write iCalendar files, that works fine for now!

Yesterday I looked up the printer I want to buy. I wouldn't mind if it was at the exchange, but if not, I can order it. (I wanted a networkable, Linux/FreeBSD compatible printer. $180-200 is fine.)

I'll do more on the web server tonight/tomorrow. For now, gotta finish eating lunch, take my meds, and get back to work.

[14 October 11:09]

Well, this is day 2 of being in the hospital... I'm listening to X-Men 3 right now, so I'll come back to this later.

[11:32] (had to rebuild LogJam in order to have it do XMMS detection - didn't know I had to turn on a makefile flag. At least I keep all my distfiles.)

[17 October 20:57]

Well, day 5 now. I did get the voice post number, as you've noticed. Had to talk my brother through logging in to LJ Monday and to the FAQ entry with the numbers, but I did it. Talked him through one of his last two computer class assignments in return (he brought my Dad's laptop up here - I don't have Microsoft Office on this one, I have OpenOffice instead!)

First, why I'm here this time. About 3 weeks ago, I had a vomiting spell (and I should specify, I mean repetitive, every 30 minutes, up to and including stomach acid vomiting, even if I hadn't drank or ate anything) - I may have mentioned it to one or two of you, or maybe even publicly here. Can't check at the moment, no Internet access! It lasted about 4 hours, and then stopped, so I didn't worry too much about it. Last Thursday morning, I was feeling nauseous as soon as I had woke up, and by noon, another spell had started. Unfortunately, this one wouldn't stop, and since Dr. Shinoura has been trying to get me off prednisone, (I had seen him since that spell and mentioned it to him) he wanted me to call him if another one started. I did that at about 3 or so. He said if it didn't get better by 9, to come in to the ER, and he'd be on call tonight to get me admitted. It stopped for a little bit at 7, I drank some Gatorade at 8, and it all came up again at 9:30 - with it feeling like there was more to come. Mom got home 5 minutes later (she had taken my sister someplace - if I recall correctly, she had a choir concert) and I got a blessing, started packing (or should I say "finished"? I keep a hospital bag packed nowadays,) and got to the ER at 10:15. Threw up a little bit more while I was getting admitted, so they had me in a bed, with a catheter, a VERY fast IV (500ml/hr) and EKG leads on me before midnight, along with the usual blood testing. Got transferred up to the GI wing at about 3am Friday morning. After the steroid and antibiotic shots, no more vomiting - so I must have gotten here in time for it to be "not so serious".

This time, I actually have someone who actually speaks English - or is trying to - in my room for the past few days. Of course, she's 19, and VERY curious. I must have been introduced to everybody in her family by now, and I think she's wondering why I don't have any games on this computer! (I have a few, just not too many, and it's not as if I can get more while I'm here.)

Got done with both most of the stuff I actually CAN do with the laptop (other than DVD watching) the last few days. I've sent X-Men 3 back - I've seen both the commentaries on it now. Next will be Hoodwinked - and I'll watch it tomorrow. (I just finished a free film I downloaded called "The Boy Who Never Slept" - it was so-so. I'm not going to recommend it to anybody - the language was a little coarse for my taste. I thought the subject matter would be better than it was. The film was well done, however.) I've even got a little website on this computer (I had the DynDNS domain name set up before I went in, so I'm using it for this computer... I'll probably move a lot of the material from my Geocities website over here... that way I can keep it updated better. (Give me two days to bring it up - I just found out I'll have a 6-hour compile on ths system to do because of two major upgrades at once.)

I've got a list of ports (FreeBSD's equivalent to Linux's RPM packages to install software) to download and other stuff to do when I get home, of course.

After family home evening last night, many of the people who went came up to see me! That was quite fun. We ended up having to go to the floor lounge, as they got here just as visiting hours got over... talked for an hour.

I DO have good news! They're talking about me getting out FRIDAY because everything is going so well. That'll be quite nice. Only one week this time. Pray I don't catch the flu again, OK? That would be just downright MEAN.

Yes, that means I'm eating. Been back on liquids since Saturday, and been eating since Sunday afternoon. The stuff is decent for the most part, although I could only choke down a few bites of the cooked spinach they tried to serve as a vegetable at breakfast today. Mom should be bringing up more stuff tomorrow afternoon. (She's been sick herself - the stress from that may be part of the reason why I got so bad so fast. That and we tried something new that my system might have reacted to - but it shouldn't have reacted as bad as it did for as much of it as I had!) I'm also only on an IV port since Sunday night - I'm not hooked to an IV 24/7 at the moment, just 30 minutes every 6 hours for the antibiotic.

I'm back up on 30mg prednisone (I was down to 5mg when I went in.) I wanted to get off it! But if I'm stuck being on it, I'm stuck (at least until I can go stateside and see about whether Entocort will work for me!) - they started that instead of the shots this morning. I think I'll be starting the Pentasa and Imuran up again within the next few days, as well as some Elental, before I go home.

I will mention one thing - I can barely believe how much my weight is jumping! When I was admitted, I was down to 56.70 kg (125 lbs) - for obvious reasons. (I literally had a negative one gallon fluid intake Thursday, if you can believe that! I certainly can!) My weight Sunday morning was 61.something kg, and by Monday morning I was 64.20kg (141.5 lbs) again. (My weight's up a bit because I had the "ravenous appetite" side effect from the pred - one reason why I wanted to get off it!)

This also means I missed General Conference - and I haven't been able to watch it, either. I was too sick to think about copying it to the laptop (I have the WMV files for the general sessions downloaded at home, but I can't talk somebody through burning it for me), and nobody has the DVD disks yet that can get it to me easily.

It's almost 10pm, which means I've got to shut down for the night and get some sleep. I may voice-post tomorrow with the bit about Friday. Haven't decided yet.

[19 October 9:32 am]

Well, I just got told 45 minutes ago that it is TODAY I'm going home! That is great news. (I was figuring on having to rush Friday and Saturday to get all the stuff done before Sunday that I need/want to do! Now things will be MUCH easier!)

I'm now at 62.70kg (138 lb) by the way. Should try and work it down to 60kg (132 lb) safely - that's where I'd like to be.

Here's a picture of the laptop that I took a few days back!

( (320x238, 22K) )

I'm pretty close to done, now I've just got to set up the firewall and set up Pine on it, and that should be most everything I need. I'll probably get pine done first.

Everything else is going well for now... I got a nice break while everybody else was out running around to get caught up on my e-mail - hadn't read it for 4 days!

Just compiled and started gaim - looks like a dream come true for me (with messenger accounts on Yahoo, MSN, AIM, and the Jabber server here, I NEED a program like gaim that works well!)

Building OpenOffice 2.0.4rc3 right now - that'll take a few hours, so I am going to head to bed after this. Sound looks like the last major thing, and I'll try and figure that out in the morning...

(later) The Gimp is compiled - here's that screen shot!

( 109KB, 1024x768 screenshot. )

Well, I did it. Got FreeBSD installed on my laptop. (Well, 95% of the way. I don't have sound yet, and X Windows is in 320x240 mode, which makes the screen impossibly big!)

This is posted with Drivel, by the way (the GNOME lj client...) It reminds me enough of Semagic to be great.

[Tuesday] One of these days I need to figure out how to get Semagic to work with Media Player Classic like MSN Messenger does... I could probably code it and get back to them, I CAN do that much, they're both in C/C++! Maybe make that my next project?

[Wednesday] Not feeling well today - crampy, runny, tired all day, you get the picture. Usual small Crohn's flare. I'm going to go back down and rest. All I've been doing today is sleeping.

Well, it's my sister's first day of school today. Mom's out for a walk - I went with her earlier, but I'm not as fit as she is. I started walking again a few days ago (for fitness, I need to lose weight like I need a hole in the head at 5'4" and 123 pounds, even on a light frame!)

I've got a computer job - the last thing I've got to do is try and get a video card working on a Dell computer that I can't find how to turn the onboard video off on. (I can only switch which one the BIOS thinks is primary, I checked that.) It works UNTIL I get into Windows - XP's progress bar even shows up on the card, but when I get to the login screen, it switches back to the onboard video. I get a signal from it (the monitor's power switch does not start flashing) but it's black, and the other screen works! Got paid $30 for doing other computer stuff for them so far. Any of you computer people have any ideas?

I LIKE having my own computer now!

Mom's back - will be going to Burger King in a little bit.

(Monday) It's been a while since I posted - partly because whenever I DO get on the computer, I have projects to do!

To start with - I've uploaded an accessory module that I'm using in one of my projects to CPAN. http://search.cpan.org/~csjewell/ is where it's at.

Sunday was fun... but I'm getting tired, so will post this tomorrow.

(Thursday) Well, been working on other projects...

Looking through IMDB's now playing list - this one sounds interesting. It was one of my favorite books as a kid. February 2007! OUCH!

(Saturday) Well, I have 1 gig of memory on my computer now, and I've talked Mom into buying me Perl Best Practices by Damian Conway.

Will have to get off the computer... am tired. TTYL.

This week has just been busy. (and no, I got up two hours ago. I've been getting up in the middle of the night lately... I may go back down for another few hours in just a bit.)

My brother officially ends his mission in the next 5 hours! Dad is up there right now, and they plan to go visiting different places up there for the next few days. They'll be back down here Monday.

Mom has a talk in church on Sunday and so does my younger sister. I've got to help Mom out with hers - they know how shy my youngest sister is, they just asked her to read a scripture and bear her testimony.

Monday I was out with the missionaries - they asked my youngest brother for a ride, and since he didn't know how to get to their place. I ended up getting sunburned (Dad commented "It must have been like "Quick! He's outside! Color him up! He's too pale!") but not too badly.

Speaking of that youngest brother - he's been having a lot of back pain - enough to have to borrow MY pain pills! He has a prescription of 800mg Motrin (the same stuff as in Advil) but it hasn't been working for him the past few days. He gets in to see the doctor in about 4 hours. He says he now appreciates how much pain Mom and I have to go through!

I've been working on a Perl project - it's a unique idea, and might not go anywhere, but even if it doesn't, I'll have the framework code for it to use in other projects!

That and the usual Church stuff... It's looking like I may be doing some of the auditing for the district this time (they wanted me to do it last time, but I went in to the hospital for the March/April hospitalization before they got the paperwork and had to stay in too long.)

I'm doing fine healthwise, other than a case of the runs-like at the moment. [i.e. when I DO need to go, it acts like a case of the runs, but I don't have the NEED to go like I actually have that] I ate some chips and peppery cheese sauce last night, and I need to be careful just HOW much of that I eat.

( Quiz... )

I'm on the LiveJournal Jabber server!

To get on yourself:

1. Download and install Pandion (or iChat for Mac OS X, or gaim for Linux/FreeBSD/etc...)


2. Set your username to <LJ username>@livejournal.com and password to your LJ password...


3. Start chatting!

This is LJ-integrated, of course - mutual friends in LJ are mutual friends on the Jabber server, and it'll ask you next time you log in on the web if you want to befriend somebody you befriended on the Jabber server (but you won't have to).

You'll want to read the lj_dev post about it, of course!.

Well, my youngest brother gradulated last night... and got a $75 gift certificate for Wal-Mart at the party afterwards! Funny thing is, where's the nearest Wal-mart to where we're at???? [Well, we do have the computer!]

Today we're getting drowned - and no typhoons yet to provide an excuse for all this rain - it's just the rainy season here. I got out and got some books swapped finally, along with paying car insurance on one of the cars...

(and now I messed up my journal style. Oh, well. Can't fix it right now.

I've been customizing my journal layout a little bit... got quoting handled the way I wanted, among other things, plus now I have the song and feeling above my entries!

Big THANK YOU to the s2smoothsailing community!

Edited: Examples so you can see what I did:

Quoted (the <q> tag) should have quote marks around it (what I type in didn't. The tag should add them now.)

Blockquoted (the <blockquote> tag) should have an orange border to the left and right, as well as being indented.

Now I just have to remember to use them!

The problems with both Yahoo and LJ just went away! I don't know what happened, and I wish I did - Mom had been complaining about her mail since a few days after I went in, so it's been almost a month!

I didn't know I had 44 userpics now! (30 + 14) I've grabbed 4 (3 LDS and 1 Crohns one) and and am trying to figure out subjects for others. I have enough medical and LDS icons now, I think... I could use a few for my "computer", "politics" (I happen to be republican/libertarian), "books" (a few about reading?), and "vacation" (a few about travel?) entries. And yes, I just paid for another 2 months. It was too nice being able to voice-post my hospital entries.

I didn't end up getting to priesthood session - my brother didn't get back from his dentist appointment until 15 minutes before (our chapel takes 25 minutes to get to - and that's once he had changed into church clothes), and he also now has pinkeye! I HAVE to get to the Sunday morning session, however... I need to meet with my new branch president at 8am. (Yeah, I'm up early. Got lots of things to do. Want to type up the "last hospital entry", eat (or drink a nutritional drink type, I'm still deciding), get set up so I can eat or drink at church if I want, find my church bag, etc... all before 7:30 am!)

My flight schedule for my flight back to the States:

UA 9707 OKA-KIX 11:25am to 1:15pm April 16th (my tickets say 11:30, for whatever reason.)
(The flight is a codeshare - it's actually NH [All Nippon Airways] 1734)
UA 886 KIX-SFO 3:25pm to 9:03am April 16th
(yes, back in time. -17 hour change plus the date line. Gets lunch and breakfast.)
UA 789 SFO-SEA 10:15am to 12:16pm April 16th

Oh, by the way, happy birthday, varrin!

( Wikipedia Meme )

( Popularity meme )

Well, Mom told me she can't get to her e-mail at home... now LJ has stopped working for me! Other sites work fine. What could be the problem?

More specifics: Traceroute works fine. All browsers do not work. Need to get a laptop up here and check if it works. I can use a proxy site to get to LJ temporarily - it's just a pain. The problem is that my mom would like to get to Yahoo Mail, and I'd like to get to Geocities and to Yahoo Messenger (no yahoo site works for me...)

Well, technically, since I was born late in the day (8:10pm Mountain Daylight), my birthday wouldn't start until tomorrow at 11:10am... but since it's "August 12th" here, I won't quibble!

Installed Firefox 1.0.6 and Norton Antivirus 2005 on the family computer yesterday (it was 1.0.2 and the 2002 version that came with the computer) - I like what they did with NAV 2005 and having it find spyware!

Went out shopping for slacks (I fit in 30-inch-waist pants now! I NEED a new pair of slacks! Mine all want to fall down my ankles!) today, as well as out to lunch at Platters.

Dad will be making lasagna tomorrow (each of us kids gets to choose what's for dinner on our birthdays).

More later...

Been fighting my computer last night and this morning...

A few weeks ago we found out the floppy drive went out, and last week, the read-write CD drive stopped being able to burn, so last night we (Dad and I) took everything out and cleaned it... Floppy drive works fine now (I'm testing it to make sure again as I type this), the CD-RW worked and burned, but the DVD drive and ethernet card disappeared. I opened the case back up this morning, reseated both, they worked, but the RW drive disappeared! Opened it up AGAIN, reseated the cable on both the CD and DVD drives, they both worked, but I'm not absolutely sure of the quality of the burner. I did a "test run", and it came back with a buffer underrun error 2/3 of the way through (the errors were 30 seconds in, so that's an improvement), but when I actually had it record, it worked just fine. Who knows. All appears well now.

Sunday was a great day - it was fast and testimony meeting. I got up and bore my testimony pretty quick - there was only one real pause in the whole meeting. I mentioned my hospital visit and bore testimony of the power of the

Monday I was beating my head against the wall for a while getting some programming done for Dad. Long day.

I don't know quite how soon I'll be moving to Atsugi yet, but Dad's been in touch, and it may be quicker than planned!

Dad's been sick these past few days, I don't know if these chills are from what he has or if the Crohn's is just doing its thing. I feel hot (which is a little unusual), and the pain level is varying up to 1 out of 10) Sure wouldn't mind being normal.

I'm telling you, I saw the HAND... *giggles*

Dad's project is FINALLY done! I've got the last bugs I saw out of it tonight! (He had me add a bunch more stuff, and that introduced bugs... but hey, an additional $50 ain't too bad! I can use the spending money)

I've got a nice postcard to send out with a picture from Okinawa. I've got 2 I'll be sending later today (to aeolianafay and blush10ac, I bought 3, anybody else want me to send one to them? You'll have to e-mail me at csjewell at online dot ie (yes, that's correct... it's not yahoo or anything normal like that, but it works. They're a great mail service, and you can pick up mail using your mail program instead of having to use webmail.)

Oh, by the way... Happy birthday, a_tragic_beauty! (even though it may not be your birthday yet where you are!)

Right now the room is quaking because Dad's watching one of the Star Wars movies (I think Episode 1 - it's the pod race) and we have surround sound. He turns it up high. Luckily it's at the far end of the house from the neighbors. Problem for me is, the computer isn't!

Mom had a good dinner tonight. We ended up making hot dogs and baked beans (for 4 of us)

Fixed a few bugs in Dad's project.

Kids asre both home tomorrow, but I'm down from 175 pages bookmarked from the last 4 days off my friends list to 50 now! Will do the rest soon!

Well, Mom should be getting home in a week. Yes! (lots of smiles)

Trying out wxMusic - I like the simple look of it - and I've tried 5 or 6 different music programs! It's too buggy to use yet, however. (going back to WMP9 for now. I hate their visualizations!)

Cleaning up all my old 30-tab LJ bookmarks again... so don't be surprised at comments on old entries! :) (p.s. it's crashing on some of them!)

Doctor's appointment today... went well. We decided to decrease my meds - I'm now taking 2 Imuran and 9 Pentasa a day (instead of 3 and 12) :) (other than one episode - I've had no pain in 8 weeks!)

Church on Sunday was good, as usual... I'm caught up on almost everything!

That's everything for now... Who IS Malvolio, anyway?!?

Well, I've finally heard about what happened with Mom - apparently ANOTHER part of her intestines (not where the last operation was) decided to rupture - they would have caught it earlier if the painkillers and other drugs she was on from the previous surgery weren't masking things... She's currently in ICU, in critical condition (and will be for 48+ more hours - they told us if she lived through the next few days, she'll stay alive...), in a morphine fog, and looking like the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow woman from the steroids.

We gpt a router for our cable internet connection today, too... Dad got frustrated that he had to unplug and plug in the cable connection everytime we hooked up a new computer to it... (and so was I - but I was willing to wait a few days.) So all is happy in that department. Did all the other shopping until Thursday, too.

(Friday early afternoon)

Yes, I just watched this movie Thursday night - it's a good one - I watched it straight through! (normally, I'll walk away from movies 3 or 4 times - and that's the movies I watch all the way through!) But then, if I had to name a favorite movie other than the Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, Star Wars, or Star Trek series, it'd have to be Deep Impact - I DO like most disaster movies! This movie is up there with that one, however!

(for comparison, I started watching Agent Cody Banks last night, and I've paused it once already because I wanted to - and I'm only on Chapter 6 of its DVD. My parents have got a good collection of DVD movies, and I'm catching up while I'm here... and Mom has promised my little sister that she'll be going to Harry Potter 3 on July 3rd [her birthday] because it gets here to Kadena the day before)

I've watched Bend It Like Beckham, too. That one was Monday morning, and it was decent, just not great!

I know I haven't written much this week - things are hectic. Mom's in the hospital AGAIN. She went in Sunday night. We may have to move off Okinawa if her doctors aren't comfortable taking care of her and we can't find others who are.

Speaking of others, Tuesday I got picked up in the middle of the day because Dad wanted directions to Adventist Hospital here (one of the 2 places that are really comfortable treating Americans off-base) - It's about 20 km away. We went there and talked to a doctor there. He recommended that we go to the other one [Chubu Hospital] because of what mom (and I) have - back past where we live and 6 km farther. I tried guiding Dad to where I thought it was - and arrived at A hospital - it just happened to be the wrong one. It actually was a nursing home (despite being marked as a hospital on the map I had.) They guided us to the right place (which my map had printed over with something else so I didn't see it!) but by that time it was too late in the day to go in and see anybody (plus they had PAID parking and we didn't have any yen on us).

Wednesday I got a computer fixed for one of Dad's friends... That one was TOUGH! I had visited them once before, but the problem came back.

(Saturday morning)

Good news and bad news... Mom is being picked up from the hospital right now.... for a little while until she gets better enough to go into surgery again. One of my brothers is picking her up right now.

Friday afternoon, we found this nice beach on the second island out on "Okinawa 10" (third island is Ikei Island, for those who live there) that takes a good 4x4 to get into. Nice and quiet. I don't like most beaches, because I like my quiet. This one, I like.

Well, I'm back in Okinawa now, and will be for another 7 months or so. Hopefully I won't stop posting like I did the last time I was here.

(heading to download Semagic on this computer)

At any rate, I didn't do the hostel thing, because a friend of mine was in San Francisco and could put me up - and a good thing too, because all the jet lag hit then! I slept from 6pm to 4am!

The flight over the Pacific was GREAT - I'd like to be able to fly on United all the time! Ended up watching two movies out of the 6 they had available - Girl With A Pearl Earring (which I liked, but I was sleepy during) and Win A Date With Tad Hamilton! (which was as good as I expected it to be [high side of mediocre]). The flight out of Kansai airport was VERY bumpy. First time I've ever had a 757 bump like a turboprop plane! (to be forgiving, there WERE thunderstorms in the neighborhood!) The other flights weren't so memorable.

I'm doing all right so far. Parents have got a list of electronic items for me to fix (their printer, the remotes to their DVD player, etc...) More news later.

My music is not on this computer yet, so I'm going to put a title on this entry based on the music in my head...

Well, I'm counting down the hours. 39 hours until I leave this house and head to my parents. I'm tired (blasting my music at top volume) and getting the last things on my computer done before I get packed (including uploading my PINE configuration and some of my saved e-mail up to a place I can download it again...)

I'm almost completely packed...

Too wiped to say anything more!

( Warning Label )

Just talked to the (GI) doctor at noon... yes, start reducing my prednisone again (so I'll be on 30 starting Saturday, and then continue on the previous schedule), come in for the blood work on Monday - his clinic won't be open on Saturday for me to pick up the orders at, don't worry about the cough - that'll be part of life that I get them, yes, do everything else, and come in on March 18th and see him again...

I didn't mention one thing earlier - One of my friends (computer, but not LJ - she subscribes to my journal via e-mail) went into a coma with high fevers from a bad case of pneumonia last last week. She lives 200 miles away from here, so I can't go down there and sit at the hospital bed like I'd like to be able to do, and I've been worried about her.

I ended up getting some good news last night about the friend (one of her friends is letting me know what's going on) - she had woke up for a bit - and specifically asked the friend visiting to let me know what was going on. (she was already)

That's a good enough sign I was less worried - and I actually got 6 hours straight sleep last night, so worrying about her may have been a good part of the problem with sleeping lately, too!

So things are doing well.

One piece of bad news - Dad's March visit isn't gonna happen... They don't want to send him to a seminar right then. He says that's a good thing - one pair of trans-pacific plane flights a winter is enough!

( Visited States Map )

I've also signed up for the National Cyber Advisory System mailing lists.

I called my best friend from when I was young (12-16) yesterday. He says he has some pictures on his private web site from when I visited there in 2002 and we went up to Timpanogos Cave together.

He works for Verio, so has a VERY good internet connection to his house (3 static IPs in: one for his VoIP "pbx", one for his VoIP phone itself, and one for "general use" - goes through a NAT/Filter machine before going to the rest of his house network), with a 7-computer internal network running FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows. I wish I had a setup like his! (I've seen it!)

Maybe I can talk him into providing me with a SSL-secured SMTP connection. I don't have one right now, I just use webmail, and it's getting frustrating that my From address is locked in. I'd like to be able to use my @mission.net and @livejournal.com addresses outgoing.

[OK. Found the pictures. Non-obvious place. They were in the 2003 gallery. I'll download them and put them on photobucket (can't link direct to him, his site is on one of his 7 machines, so I'm not surprised it's passworded HTTPS), and they'll be in the next 2 entries or so!]

I'm gonna head to the library in a minute, stopping off at one place I'm going to apply to on the way, and then I'll figure out interview questions, also.

Well, I'll be busy all this next week with work... Monday through Saturday, 11-3 and 5-8, except for the Friday evening shift, where I'm going to St. Louis instead for a Church trip.

I'll be so busy... we'll, don't feel neglected until next Sunday, because that's when I'll have time for most of my friends list! It's just that I've got to work 7 hours, take a 2 hour break, get there by bus, usually (which adds one or two hours at the beginning and end), etc... It's a good busy, but I'm still too busy for the Internet. Paying jobs come first!

I'm even putting a lot of my e-mail lists on groups.yahoo.com to "no email" status, so I don't have to spend the time reading them!

(that and mission.net has some code that needs fixing when I do have Internet time in the evening!)

Thanks to meganmarie for this...

( LJ Barcode )

At any rate, the meat of the entry...

I got a disk from my friend yesterday with the full version of Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 I had given him (for the server computer, which has no access to the Internet - and for good reason (it ain't protected from Blaster yet!) - and it had a CRC error on it! *grrr* He made another one for me last night, and hopefully that one works!

Back to my time in Okinawa - I really can't believe how long I was able to stay. I was able to jump through the hoops at Japanese Immigration to keep it legal, since I was on 3 month visitors visas (which you can get without applying.) If I had known I was staying as long as I did, I would have jumped the hoops before I left and got a longer visa down at the Japanese consulate in Kansas City.

Living on a US military base overseas is certainly different! The exchange and commissary system is much like the stores and businesses back home - they even have Burger King and Baskin Robbins franchises on base! They give us the "taste of home" even in a foreign country.

I got to go to lots of fun places off base, however... Shuri Castle was really nice to see, so was Peace Memorial Park and the Churaumi Aquarium. Went other places, ate interesting food, too! [I'll point this entry to web sites for these soon, as well as describing them better!]

In March, in order to stay longer, I had to leave the country for at least one day, so Mom goes and buys me a plane ticket (Okinawa is an island, after all) to Seoul, Korea. I went to Incheon International Airport, which apparently just got built 2 years ago... it's quite nice. I got in mid-afternoon, and took a bus out to the Seoul Olympic Parktel where I was going to stay the night, (hey, 22,000 won ($20 US) is hard to beat for a nice place to stay the night - I'd do it again in a heartbeat! Had to get a Japan Youth Hostels membership before I left, however. That was another $25, but beats paying 100,000+ won for a hotel room!), called my family again (I had called from the airport, of course. Got an AT&T calling card before I left.) and watched AFN-Korea and slept.

Oh, and my room was shared with 3 other guys. One was from Germany, one from the Japanese "mainland", and one came directly from the States, I think. Was different talking to them.

Mom had sent me with a duffel bag to fill with a blanket and other stuff... Hey, if I'm having to go, I can shop for her, even if I can't MPS the stuff back like anybody else in my family can! I went to different places via the subway, shopping for different things. Itaewon neighborhood [right by Yongsan Garrison, one of the major US bases in Korea] is about the best place to shop, but it is TOURISTY... but you can get stuff pretty cheap. Sometimes even in US$ rather than won, because of the influence of the base nearby. Got to go to the LDS temple in Seoul, too. (more info on temples here if you need to know more) Had to rush a bit, could only go to one ordinance session - but it was a very nice cap to the trip. Had to pick up my stuff at the (2) different subway lockers I left it at across Seoul, get to the Central City Air Terminal to check in - and I had to rush to get there - (but it's lots better than the airport for checking in at! Not so busy!) and take a bus to the airport!

A little fun bit of trivia that I should explain here for those who don't know: anything shipped between two APO/FPO addresses/post offices is free to ship, as long as it is legal under US Postal Service and military command regulations. It's called MPS - for "military postal system" service. If I could have gotten on a base in Korea, I would have had no need for the extra duffel bag, but since my family didn't go with, I needed it. [they're the ones that have military ID cards, not me. I just had a visitor's pass that was only good for the Okinawa bases WITH somebody!]

My last week I was there, I went to the Japanese Underground Naval Headquarters. About 3000 people committed suicide there as the US soldiers advanced toward their position at the south end of Naha City... was a sad place, but not as sad as the Peace Memorial Park.

My brothers took me to a curry restraunt I liked the afternoon before I left, and they had apparently forgotten I said "MILD" when I ordered (I wondered if it was a little hot, but it didn't seem bad enough to say anything then)... and I ended up having a MISERABLE flight because of it. It ended up kicking me into a flare bad enough I needed to use the airsickness bag on the Taipei-Los Angeles segment of my flight. Right during the one good movie, too! (X-Men) I was hurting! Had to buy Tylenol (couldn't find mine) at a booth at LAX, as well as something to drink it with, and a phone card with a per-minute price this side of outrageous (the ones in the machines WERE! We're talking 50 cents a minute for calling the US! Prolly $1.50 for Japan). Called Mom there (calling in St. Louis would wake her up at 4am her time) and let her know what was going on. Also bought a McGriddle to eat in the morning at an airport McD's for an outrageous price, but then, this is LAX - see my entry last October for their prices! Had to force myself, but I knew I NEEDED to eat!

Should explain the times (should be pretty close - not exact) and stuff for my flight back: Left Naha International Airport (which has ONE international gate - their international terminal is literally like a small turboprop airport in the States, only with customs and immigration... Those who've gone through Columbia, MO Regional will know what I mean!) at 7:55pm. Got to Taipei (Chiang Kai-Shek airport - China Airlines' international hub) at 8:30pm their time (9:30pm Okinawa time) and went (across the airport) to the gate for my flight to LA. That left at 10:30pm and got to LA at 7:30pm (it got there 30 minutes early - scheduled time in was 8:00pm). This is all Thursday the 27th. I had to stay overnight in LA (had no choice in the matter, flights to St. Louis don't leave that late, and the morning China Air flight arrives 1 hour before the last flight out that can connect to one for St. Louis at a reasonable price in the afternoon, so I wouldn't have had any time to get through US Customs and Immigration AND check in for it, much less get through the gate!) and get on a flight at 7:00 am to Phoenix [America West's hub] at 8:00 or so, then get on a flight to St. Louis at 9:00 to get there at 2:15pm on August 28th.

By the time I was doing Phoenix-St. Louis, I was feeling up to eating things again without trouble. Even bought an Italian-flavor pretzel at Pretzelmania (one of the best things about going through Phoenix IMO - the airport has a good Pretzelmania!) and ate it. We were late getting out of Phoenix, but I expected that, so I told my friend 2:30pm to pick me up. It got there at 2:40! Fell asleep on the way home, but before I did, got a shake at Steak and Shake. Was as good as they usually are.

Will write more later! Gotta get off the computer.

Well, been back in Missouri for 11 days now. I've finally got my computers set up (I'm networking two of them together - one of them is running Windows 2000 Advanced Server now, so I can use it as storage space, and the other is running Windows XP Professional. My roommate is hooked in, as well.) and am copying stuff from one to the other. Got everything updated, too!

As the old sci-fi story story says, "It's Good to be Back!"... but things have changed a little. 6 friends of mine have gotten married, and so aren't in my ward now. But there are new people there - I'm talking to a few of them. I also got a warm welcome Sunday before last (31 Aug) at church from a few of my old friends. Records aren't here yet, however. Computer problem happened that Sunday, so they couldn't request them. Grrr....

One thing that didn't change - I'm living with the roommate I had before I left. Part of the reason is that his house is a few blocks from a bus stop - and another reason is that it IS a house, and not an apartment, and we like each other, and he knows what could happen with my health and how to deal with it.

I gotta go looking for work so I can pay the rent and my doctor and medication bills, as well as catch up on the old ones.
I've got to be optimistic, but it won't be easy, I think.

I'm chatting with a few of my old friends, too! I lost contact with the one who was supposed to pick me up 3 weeks before I got here, however... Really frustrating! Good thing my roommate was able to pick me up from the airport.

More about Okinawa later, but that's the "current events" at least.

Well, YAPC went very well. I can't believe that it's been over a week now since I went there! Had loads of fun, just didn't have time to update my journal, but lots has happened siince then.

Got my music finally all arranged and on disk yesterday, for one! Ended up finding some music I was scared I had deleted (which is a good thing, because I'm on a dialup now, so I can't download it so fast!)

Went to Independence and Liberty the Saturday before last (the 29th). Was a very fun trip. Wish I could have spent a day and a half in the Indepedence area instead of 3 hours!

OK, now the serious news - my health went down the tubes back in April and May, and so I (finally - I had to reschedule once) went to the doctor's. The doctor at Student Health sent me to the hospital for a few tests. The first one (the day before the YAPC entry) was a colonoscopy (you DON'T want to go through this, believe me. It's not the test itself, it's what you have to do to prepare for it that's downright miserable), and they ended up finding some inflammation in my small intestine - they are pretty darn sure that I have Crohn's disease based on that and my family history (my mother happens to have it). My family figures I have to have a pretty mild case or I would have been feeling much worse - but mild meaning it was still strong enough to make me anemic and debilitated enough to catch every 24 hour bug that walked by for 6 weeks there! They put me on (some EXPENSIVE) pills to try and knock it into remission - I hope it happens! I'll have this until they find a cure, unfortunately, but at least they can treat it.

I had a CAT scan the next Monday (had to drink a barium sulfate solution - not nearly as bad). I figure to both verify and determine the extent of it. They didn't tell me anything right then, but I have an appointment on the 18th with the doctor who did my colonoscopy. So I'll probably hear then for sure! I had a friend that took me - she was planning to leave and pick me back up, but she decided to stay. She even gave me a hug, "because your Mom can't be here to give you one". good friends to help me out here in Columbia (like the one mentioned earlier).

A few of my friends know people with this - so they know how miserable it can be. I figure I'm lucky so far that they caught it early.

About today - had a fast and testimony meeting at Church today. Was a good one. An old friend came back for a week from Utah and ended up bearing her testimony, while someone else mentioned how she wasn't afraid to cry. The main direction was about temple work and families, and while mine is far away, I have to know that they're rooting for me.

Best put this in before I forget about it...

Well, first things first. I'm not doing my normal "music thing" because I'm over in St. Louis at YAPC!

I've got other news to tell, but I'll do it in a normal entry.

Well, today, I'm half-dead, (I've had 4 hours sleep each of the past 2
days - Monday night from a medical test I took Tuesday morning, Tuesday
night from the Greyhound trip here).

I went to Larry Wall's speech (he talked about hero worship and did
comparisons to Lord Of The Rings) and Dan Sugalski's and Simon Cozens'
classes on Parrot so far.

Very good speeches, just wish I wasn't so tired.

Favorite quote I was able to put on paper so far: "I believe in the freedom of the Programmer." (said by Larry Wall, of course, in his keynote speech.)

Having lots of fun. More later.

Now about those 5 (whoops, actually 6) weeks I haven't been posting:

Week 1: (December 9th - 15th) I had to head down to my parents Thursday, the 13th so I could help them move. That meant that I had to reschedule one of my finals to Tuesday night. Since I already had one of my finals Tuesday morning and two on Monday morning, I had a scary finals week. but it didn't turn out all that bad. I apparently got good grades on the finals because I got good grades in the classes.

The first night I was back, I found my old University of Alaska Anchorage catalog... which I had been looking for because if I got it and they described the class right, I wouldn't have to take a 3rd upper-level gen-ed. (I'm having to take one this semester and one more before I graduate) It ended up describing my classes right, so I quickly packed it away.

Week 2: (December 16th - 22rd) Our Christmas was on the 16th. I ended up getting a new computer (no monitor for it - I'm just using my old computer's) plus a few other things. (some supplies) Had to help move during this week... because they were supposed to be on the plane the morning of the 22nd! We got a lot of things packed and thrown away and they scheduled the movers too tight! They got there at noon the 20th and didn't get done packing everything until 3AM on the 22nd when they were supposed to be done at 5pm on the 21st! Talk about cutting it close!

Week 3: (December 23rd - 29th) I was at my grandparent's in Ellsinore until the 27th (that way they didn't have to drive up around Christmas) - which ended up being a good thing - I ended up finding the Restore CD for this computer on Christmas when I cleaned up the place! Went to Lord of The Rings on the 28th - was AWFULLY cold walking to the theatre, but I got there.

Ended up bringing up 12 boxes of food, clothing, and other stuff to Columbia - but it was a case of "use it or lose it" and I figured why not use it?

Saw my advisor and brought the catalog information so that they could count the course appropriately... Also asked him what forms I need to do to graduate and he said "You need to make an appointment with (someone else) for that - do it in late January or early February before registration for summer and fall start"

Week 4: (December 30th - January 5th) Just a slow week at school this week... My roommate left for a conference in Orlando on the 4th. Got my grades: 2 A's, (Java and Statistics) a B+ (History of Russia), and a C+ (the writing intensive CS "Systems Analysis" class)

Week 5: (January 6th - 12th) Another slow week. Did a lot of programming and finished up what I needed to for my Dad. Got it done on the 12th. Other than that and visiting my girlfriend, I didn't do much. My parents are finally in Japan this week - they call Grandpa and Grandma and give them their phone number so I can call it (which I do)

Week 6: (December 13th - 19th) Finally! Things start picking up! I ended up getting the package sent out to them on the 14th - I couldn't believe I had to fill out a customs form for an FPO address, but I do. Everybody's moving back in starting Wednesday, one of the cafeterias opens up on Thursday (the rest open up Monday and Tuesday of next week) Roommate got back Saturday evening.

Yeaterday: Had a good potluck dinner at Church today... Turns out my best friend from when I was younger just had his second child last week - I talked to him last night after he e-mailed and told me. Fixed my web page also (has two problems with the journal part)

Now my web page can navigate through my whole journal while staying on http://www.curtisjewell.com/ - now to make it look not-so-much like a script page beyond the scenes when you call "back journal" pages... right now they are handled as http://www.curtisjewell.com/Journal.html?skip=10 and I want them to be handled as http:/www.curtisjewell.com/Journal.10.html - just for appearances sake! But I'll do that tonight, after my last classes for the semester. I may just post the code that generates my pages later on the site!

Later: OK. Now that's done - it was all of 2 minutes to make a RewriteRule in my .htaccess and another 2 minutes to make the translation in Curtis::LiveJournalCache use it!