yaleman.org

Well, I’m still surviving so far, the patches give me the incentive and the power not to put more tar in my lungs. I seem to be trying to cough all the tar that’s already in there up at the moment - yay for a hacking cough that hurts like I’m on fire when it happens. I’m nearly through both the week-long packets that I bought, and I went a couple of days without a patch, and I survived fine. I don’t think I could go a day at work without them, it’s a high-stress environment, and I can’t deal with it at the moment without a patch. There was a day that I forgot, and I nearly tore a workmate’s head off after a frustrating call from a customer.

Seems that the amp that I bought (the Blaupunkt PA2100) is rather unique. The connectors that it has on it aren’t the standard connectors, so it’s probably one from a factory-installed stereo in a prestige car of some sort. Click on the images below to see the amp/connectors on it - if you can work out what they are, please tell me, and if you know where to get them, give me the info!

Wow, I really should have listened to the person at the chemist’s counter when I bought the nicotine patches. She made a passing comment about the fact that if you wear them during sleep, it can have some effect on your dreams. They most definitely did - two dreams so far (normally I don’t dream at all unless I’m quite sick) The first one was explainable from dream analysis and recent events, but the one that I had last night was downright weird. I can’t remember any of it (should get up and write them down as soon as I wake) but all I remember is an intense feeling of foreboding when I woke up. I think I’ll leave them off for the next couple of nights, see how they go.

Tips for installing the Nokia Developer’s Suite for J2ME™ on Gentoo Linux. I’m trying to do my development in Linux, since I use it as my main desktop machine, and I hate using Windows development tools for some reason. I’m sure there will be other snags - I still have to get it working with Eclipse, and then work out how to program in Java. Yay for my ability to pick up new programming languages as I use them - thanks to the high school teacher that taught the theory of programming rather than just how to do it.

There’s a great article on Links to Free Music that area completely legal. MichaelCrawford is a great poster on one of my favourite “thinking” News/Article/Information sites Kuro5hin.org. His two sites have terribly ugly layouts, but they are very well written from what I’ve seen, and I think you should read the article that I linked to in my first sentence, if not only for the information, but the way that he writes. I admire him as someone that actually puts some effort into his writing, and then gives it away - then there’s the fact that he has some serious mental issues (can’t remember the name, but it’s an amazing story of living through some strange things that happen to people’s brains.)

As you may have noticed, I’m going rather crazy with my new toy. Rather than sitting at work reading my current novel or something like that, I was rather busily investigating the Nokia Developer’s Forum for information on what I can do with the Series 40 platform and its associated Java goodness. I’m going to try and get Eclipse working later, hopefully it’ll be my IDE of choice, since I’d prefer to code in Linux rather than having to rely on Windows.

Well, I finally got the data cable working properly - since it’s a non-genuine part, it works in non-normal ways. Rather than being a USB cable, it detects as a “Nokia 5140 connected through Serial Cable.” Which is why it wasn’t working, because the software that is included with the normal PC Suite doesn’t include serial drivers and so forth.

I’ve been reading things on Nokia’s Discussion Boards with regards to what I can and can’t do with the phone, software updates and things that are to be played with, and it looks like the Series 40 OS is pretty simple, which means I can’t do much with it. I guess I’ll just have to get into programming for the phone in Java and see what I can do 🙂

Well, I bought a new mobile phone today, since I was out of contract with Telstra for the old one… my two years was up, the call rates sucked, and so did the other available services. So their luck ran out when it came to me. Virgin and Vodafone don’t have the coverage that I’m looking for (lots of out-of-city is what I need) so they were off the list to start with.

Was driving around with Bob, looking for things for the van, and tools and stuff - he was looking for a home audio amp because he needs tunes at home. We ended up buying a pair of amps from Crime Converters - me a 2×100 Blaupunkt and Bob got a 4×100 of the same brand. Now I’m on the search for the power/signal cables for the amp, because as usual, they don’t use the normal screw in connectors and things like that. It’ll probably cost me more for the wiring than for the amp, but then again, it’s a nice small amp, does 2×100 RMS and have a nice shiny setup for the subs that I’m planning to put into the van. Yay me!

Well, herein begins the stopping smoking crusade… The feeling of blood clots are coming back to my arms and legs, making me think that the whole smoking idea is a bit sucky. I’ve bought a patch product called “QuitX Step 1”, which is about 24mg across a 24 hour period - about what I have been smoking recently. They seem to be working - I’ve only got a minimal amount of cravings, mostly from the habit that smoking is, rather than the addiction. Wish me luck! I hope I can do this, since I do like living, and dying from something stupid like this seems like a really bad idea.