The DEEPER meaning of life

Publicado em 12/05/1999, por Pedro Couto e Santos

0:17 GMT

The computer seems to be ok now… although – poor thing – it is running Windows 98.

So I went to the post office again and – sure enough – no new payment. We did get one already, last week, that I didn’t write about. Things are looking brighter now, but I’m not convinced yet. Then again I’m the realist, not the optimist (I think).

Apparentely I’m continuing my role as a computer teacher. There’ll be a meeting at the school next friday but it’s more or less understood that they want me back for another year of teaching design students about PhotoShop, Illustrator, FreeHand and Xpress.

It’ll be another whole year for me around iMacs, trying desperatly to understand why the reset button is actually a reset hole, inside a case, that you can only press with a thin rod or needle.

It’ll also be another year of steady extra income, which is very welcome. Here’s something that just occured to me: “I’d like to be rich, but I can’t, so I’m the next best thing: happy.”

Is it true? Is being happy the second best thing after being rich?

Could it be that it is true what I believe that money does help a whole lot to get hapiness… I mean, I have all sorts of nice thing in life, like family, friends, work, love and friendship… If I had money… get my drift?

I wouldn’t need a lot, but I’d do such cool stuff.

The thing I hate about people who actually have money is the fact that they seem to lack everything else I mentioned. So they go around stupidly trying to replace everything with money… and the taste! Man, the taste…

Oh well… who knows, maybe when I have more money I’ll also drive around in huge pathetic jeeps in the middle of the city, showing off my hair implants and bad shirts. Maybe money changes people… or maybe not.

Are money and bad taste connected?

stay tuned.

15:55 GMT – np: Senser – “Switch”

Victory! Windows is really really stupid!

I’d noticed that it was assigning my SB Live a different IRQ than my BIOS was. So when I booted up the BIOS would report a Multimedia Device on IRQ 10, and then Windows would happily report a SoundBlaster Live on IRQ 12.

Eventually I found my Via motherboard CD and installed the minport IRQ routing utility, forced Windows to read the IRQs supplied by the BIOS and… voilá! It now works.

I wonder when the reply from Creative support will arrive…. “Too late”, would be my guess.

22:01 GMT – np: my wife on piano

Red alert! Quake 3 test for PC is out now! I didn’t know yet!

Of course I’m downloading it.

I also downloaded Neoplanet today. I love it! It’s pretty cool although you must meet some pretty strict requirements, like haveing a PC running Windows and IE… check out Neoplanet’s Site. In case anyone’s wondering, Neoplanet is an Internet Browser.

Ok, so, here goes dinner: Cut the chicken breasts into small pieces and put aside. Chop the pinneaple into chunks and set aside also.

In a soup bowl, mix half a bottle of Ketchup or a pack of tomato pulp, two table spoons of vineagre, two tablespoons of water, four teaspoons of sugar, a cup of pinneapple juice and a tablespoon of corn flower (“Maizena”, for those of you at home). Set aside after mixing everything down pretty well.

Now, mix one egg and one tablespoon of corn flower, mix it in good until it’s smooth. Get a plate with ground bread (sim, pão ralado). I bet you guess what comes next… get the bits of chicken through the egg and flower mixture and then into the ground bread. Move it around a bit and you’re done.

Now… heat up a wok or large frying pan with a bit of peanut oil (two tablespoons should do it), let it heat up and throw in half of the chicken. Stir fry it.

Stir frying means you fry and you stir the whole time. Don’t stop frying! Don’t stop stirring!! Ok, it should take you around 3 minutes to get th pink colour out of the chicken. Take it out and do the same to the rest of it.

Cool down the frying pan (lower the fire and pass some cold water on the pan) and throw in the tomato mixture… let is start bubling, cook for about 3 minutes, stirring so it won’t burn.

OK, time to throw the chicken in there and the pinneapple chunks as well! Mix it all in, you want that meat and the pinneapple to get all involved in that yucky tomato mix… nice!!

Serve with some rice.

This can also take in all sorts of vegetables, which you stir fry after the chicken and then throw in at the end as well. Onions are nice and so are peas. It’s up to you, really…

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Uncle Bill

Publicado em 9/05/1999, por Pedro Couto e Santos

13:24 GMT – now playing: Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Funky Monks”

Yep, I had restarted the whole online diary business last wednesday… and then came Windows. Since wednesday night I’ve been battling my way through cross-linked files, lost clusters, bad directory entries and the ineffable bad long filenames…

In the middle of all this my Windows 95 stopped installing (no idea why), so I had to turn to 98, which I really didn’t want to. I spent hours trying to get the network to… well… work. They say Windows is very network-friendly, but the truth is that if I ran the diag prog that came with my network cards, they would communicate happily between each other… When I ran the windows net diag prog it would respond with a hardware error…

And then, those troubleshooters… “is your computer on?”, “verify that you actually have a cable”… they’re so lame! Anyway, I managed and after five days I got my network, zip drive and some software to work under windows98. Sadly, one of my favourite and latest pieces of hardware, the SoundBlaster Live, still has some pretty bizarre problems.

I just hate this, I seriously do. More and more I believe that Crowley from “Good Omens” came up with Windows in the first place.

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Back in business

Publicado em 5/05/1999, por Pedro Couto e Santos

13:24 GMT – now playing: Primus – “Jerry was a Racecar Driver”

Well, I took some time off to reconsider this whole diary weblog thing. I had my reservations about it… I suppose everyone doing this sort of thing will have the same doubts along the way. I think I’ve sorted them out and I’m ready to go on. I find it an interesting stress killing experience, at least.

19:30 GMT – np: Queen – “I’m Going Slightly Mad”

It’s the company’s first anniversary today. One whole year of legal activity. Hooray.

I just finished a neat little illustration for our site, made after a Beatles record cover. Specifically, it’s based on “With the Beatles”, the one with the famous black and white picture of John, George and Paul on the “top row” and Ringo on the bottom. It should be online later on, together with a simple text regarding the anniversary which I also wrote.

Well, it’s still cold and raining, which was not too bad for April (it’s not unusual), but it’s starting to get annoying for May. Not that I like heat, I hate it… but it’s a bit too depressing out there.

I went to the car shop a while ago to change a stop light. They changed it on the spot, which was nice. I always feel stupid around mechanics… It’s just like they know so much, and know exactly what to do with each different car. I couldn’t even remember to turn the electric system on before pressing the brake peal to check which light was broken.

The mechaninc had to tell me: “you have to turn the car on first…”

Cars are somewhat mystical aren’t they? They’re so… mechanical. Weird stuff.

I’m in stress mode. I feel I could chew the tires out of a LandCruiser, but I don’t exactly know why, where this pressure is coming from. I get like this a lot and usually end up breaking something the first time Windows crashes on me.

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