This is the item to explain just why it is that you're happy today. The standard accepted format is to say 'IHB...' That standing for I'm Happy Because. So go to it!673 responses total.
IHB today is my birthday.
Happy Birthday, Mary!
Happy birthday Mary! :-) IHB I finished the new Harry Potter novel today and it was good.
Happy Birthday Mary!! IHB- the roomie finished HER copy of HP #5 today, so now I can read it. :)
IAHB I've _almost_ finished _The_Order_of_the_Phoenix; I've about thirty pages to go.
Wow. That's quick.
As Dave Atell would say, "Get some sleep".
IHB I'm expected my Aunt and Unc from Indiana. They're the coolest reletives. Both are natural comedians and always have great stories to tell. And the best part is, you never know if they're true...until the end! IAHB Summer weather seems to be here to stay...YEAH! And I got another week of vacation.
IHB I"m about to leave on a random road trip with a friend... yay!
I suspect it's warm enough for a trip to Pickerel Lake one of these evenings.
I like spring weather. Summer weather is too hot. By 3 pm my living room where I work is like a furnace, and by 5 the sun hits my chair, and when I go anywhere I keep crossing the street to look for shade. At least it is dry.
On the last possible day, a new home for my cat Dave turned up. Friend of a friend of a friend, apparently.
thats good
My mom arrives today!
I'm glad he found a home.
IHB I got a Handspring Treo 180G on eBay, and it's working out really well for me. Now I don't have to carry around both a Palm and a cell phone.
#14 of 16: by Brooke Edmunds (edina) on Tue, Jun 24, 2003 (08:04): My mom arrives today! #15 of 16: by Joseph M Saul (jmsaul) on Tue, Jun 24, 2003 (08:14): I'm glad he found a home.
ditto #15
The house does seem a bit empty with no cats, though.
Wah, wah. Why don't you just, like, go to Norway or something? :)
I was going to make a snide remark about Norway being a dark and dreary place to go to cheer up, but then I realized it's probably sunny and mild there right now. Dammit.
Yes, sunny, a bit cooler than here. Although I won't be quite up to the arctic circle, it will still be rather bright at night.
resp:11 Spring is nice-- one reason why I miss Yakima (spring was a nice time to do picnics at the campsites and avoid the crowds). But I like winter best for the snow and lack of allergens.
IHB, got the phone installed today after much running after the local phone company. :) And scared shitless coz got a blood test done today. What if I am HIV+?????!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
IHB it's my burpday!
Happy birthday, then.
IHB I spent 2+ hours installing my air conditioner last night. Works like a charm--and just in time for predicted 90+ degree weather. not to mention whatshisname coming out to visit next week :)
IHB there's a beautiful piece of stained glass in my office.
I just lent my air conditioner to a friend to take to Cleveland for 10 days. He wants to work in an upstairs room of his mother's house while she recovers for surgery. I live downstairs and it rarely goes over 85 in here. I am happy because for the first time since I posted my resume (as a translator) someone has sent me a real translation job in the field I studied. Usually it is young men who want to impress women they know by writing them poetry in Albanian, or someone with a Russian gravestone, or a kid assigned two words of Serbian to translate.
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I 'certify' at the bank in front of a notary public that I am the one who did the translation, and I also write up a paragraph to the effect that I am a professional translator and did this to the best of my abilities.
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I have no license. I state that I have been a professional translator since 1972 and have studied the languages involved, and I give my name, address, phone number, email address, and website.
Made it to Norway with minimal complications. I got randomly upgraded to business class on the long flight, but that was balanced by forgetting my jacket in the Frankfurt airport. Wasn't a favorite jacket, anyway.
Tell us cool stories, Scott!
IHB I'm so in love it's disgusting. IAHB having a window air conditioner right above the bed is a beautiful thing. I'm not going to enjoy leaving this place. :-P
Had my first impromptu speech, and it was a hit! I should be stand up comedien
Sarah! You should *not* fall in love with your air conditioner! You will only be disapointed when they pull the plug! (I think Sarah is trying to preempt Scott's cool stories too.)
Robert Heinlein defined love as the condition in which someone else's happiness is essential to one's own. When my air conditioner isn't happy, it stops working, and I'm not happy. Apparently I'm in love with my air conditioner.
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A freak, perhaps, but based on his writings I'd say that Heinlein was about as libertarian as you can get, which isn't what I'd describe as possessive, really. Do you have a better definition?
I got my house down to 78 degrees by opening up last night.
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IHB I have managed to telnet to grex from a UIC library computer. IAHB I am in Chicago, with many options for things to do tonight, and the sunset is pretty from inside here.
78 is much nicer than 83, and it is fairly dry. The friend who borrowed my air conditioner reports that the combination aluminum storm/screens in his mothers house have immovable screens and only the storms move. I told him to push harder since they have probably never been moved before and corroded in place. 78 is quite pleasant. I find air conditioned buildings in the summer intolerably cold when I am adapted to the warm weather. I bring pants, socks, and a hooded sweatshirt to the library and don't stay long. They keep it around 72 in the summer and 76 in the winter.
The brand new aluminum storm windows in my house have immovable screens. I presume the idea is that if they don't move, it's easier to ensure there are no cracks for bugs to crawl through. Probably cheaper to make too.
resp:36 wax on, wax off? Having an A/C nearby is nice, but I still like central A/C best. I miss it; such is life when you move out and start a family.
Heinlein had his head screwed on straight about a lot of things. Love, IMO, was not one of them. IHB I met up with another old friend who I haven't seen in ages. She is doing well, and dating _yet another_ old friend of mine, who I also got a chance to catch up with. I'm not sure why all these people are coming out of the woodwork this summer, but I'm not complaining.
re #41: Libertarian? Or Libertine? ;)
Well, both, clearly.
Is it possible to remove, if not move, the screens? How would you change the screening? Can't the bugs get around the storm windows anyway?
IHB me mum is here!! We are having a grand time at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and have quality time in and around the Scotland area. We have seen Alasdair Fraser play 5 times, an amazing Shetland band called Fiddler's Bid 5 times, Dr. Ed MIller, Sheena Wellington, and lots of speaking from Fiona Ritchie, host of "Thistle and Shamrock". I'm getting lots of freckles and having fun.
IHB it's Friday and I'll be moved inot my new/old place soon (moving back in with old roommates), at the end of this weekend.
IHB the UIC gym (which I joined for a month starting today) has ellipticals, as well as a pool. However, the pool has funny rules. You aren't allowed in without a swim cap and you aren't allowed to wear goggles. i don't get it.
IHB after several years, I'm finally going to get to see Capitol Steps at the Power Ctr at Summer Festival on the Fourth of July.
Re: #54 - they've had accidents due to "goggle-vision" and they got sick of cleaning hair out of things.
So now they're going to have accidents because people are blinking irregularly or closing their eyes to avoid losing their contacts. Great solution. ;) My youngest sister unexpectedly came home late tonight, for her one free day between the camp weeks she works. The "middle" sister is already scheduled to arrive home Saturday evening, so we have the whole family together. It is not a common occurrance this summer. Tracy's available to visit, too.
Our son is home for a week, from school, out east. This means some heated political debates, French toast breakfasts, my computer's preferences morphing into non-preferences, gallons of pulp-free orange juice being purchased, some amazed moments when I have no idea what he and John are talking about, dinners at Shalimar, and my total amazement at how life moves along. My advice to myself is - hold on, loosely. ;-)
I'm (in the long run) Happy Because my wisdom teeth are finally out. I was still so sedated after I got home that I watched the entirety of the Truman Show and don't remember any of it. So I guess I'm also happy that I get two movies' worth of entertainment for the price of one -- I'll be watching it again this afternoon.
Did you get nitrous to help you with them nsty teeth?
My son and I spent the day at Lake Michigan. We were taking quite a chance, as wunderground.com was predicting rain and storms all day. However, we lucked out. We got some light sprinkles, but no storms, and we had a fabulous time.
IHB I had a fabulous week with the boy, and the weather has cooled down a bit. I return to K-Zoo tomorrow. I can't believe I've been away for a month. :-P
IHB the shelves appear to have come out nicely (or nicely enough to not require another pass). Up they go at the next opportunity.
I'm extremely happy because after being in Bulgaria for a week, I finally figured out that I could buy an internet card and connect from my hotel room for a very reasonable rate (40 plus hours for about $10). I've been doing email with my cell phone modem at $1.50/minute for only 9.6K, which is painfully slow when you know how much it's costing you to download spam. I'm also happy because I'm doing the best singing of my life, and people here are effusive in their praise. On the downside, I'm a little tired of Bulgarian restaurant food.
The Bulgarians have excellent white sheep's cheese, all sorts of fruit juices, and good bread. Maybe the tomatoes are ripe there now. Why eat in restaurants?
I got the nicest, loving letter today. I still can't believe I've finally found someone who treats me so well.
OFGS. Mom has left the area, after an incredibly successful trip here. We didnt' kill each other, and when things got a bit tense, we would just start laughing. Mary, you're right - hanging on loosely is the only way to travel.
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IHB weekend at home went reasonably well and I got to see my puppy. He's getting old, poor guy, but he was *so* happy to see me! Also, just three more days before I get my boy for the weekend. I thought I'd more or less adjusted to long-distance once-a-month situation, but the past month has been especially hard to take.
My jaw was hurting like nobody's business this morning. Dr. Fear's office
told me to just come right in, and they saw me almost right away. Sure
enough, it was dry socket ("it was dry sockets"? "they were dry sockets"?
"them sockets were dry"?), but he applied some sort of magical poultice to
my gums and I feel almost normal again. IHB this all took less than an hour,
and was pretty easy and painless.
IHB the first day of my summer class went well, and I really like my teacher. We're the same age. :-P
IHB i am going to my sisters place in westland for a few days tomorrow.
Not fair, Sarah. I am older than most of my instructors.
I'll be off GRex for about a week - about to go to Kongsberg to work the Jazzfestival there!
Suure...rub it in ;-)
I found a home for two of my three rescued kittens, one of which is blind. I still need a home for the third one, but he is the most 'adoptable,'so I am hopeful.
IHB I'm leaving for Caro after class tomorrow, and then it's four days at the cabin up north with the boy and his friends. Yay!!! :)
Found a new ISP that is MUCH cheaper and offers a little more.
All the grief I went through last night was worth the effort, and I just got my wall marked for the first shelf to go up (don't have the proper hardware yet or I'd be drilling away). Also found a neat article which pointed me to an extremely cool patent: 2,905,113. I like it when I find something new about Bucky Fuller.
A plywood dome? I think I must be missing something. What is innovative about it?
Ah. That's the patent that led to the name buckminsterfullerene: "buckyfalls".
I was just sitting there, talking on the phone to a friend and staring out the window at the black sky, and an Iridium flare happens right in front of my eyes. Neato-keen. Just happened to have everything I needed to get started with this idea for a model. Unusual when that happens.
I finished my index page for the NOAA radar loop java applets, and it is fully functional. It was a bit tricky getting the internal URLs to parse correctly so all the loops would work correctly no matter whether the page is on my local machine or served from a remote site.
(At the time, 'twas rather innovative. Who would think that a plywood structure could stand up to a hurricane as well as, or better, than a concrete structure? And yet, a plywood geodesic dome has, if I recall correctly.)
Even though I had to leave work yesterday (window replacements in our building), I had a nummy lunch then and found a neat book on Chinese opera. And the office is providing lunch today.
RE#84 Thanks, I did a little more research and I understand better now.
On the show, Extreme Homes (HGTV), there was a story about a house in Minnisota that uses a dome to fend off the winds of Winter. Cool looking place.
buckyBalls
It just occurred to me that everytime I saw the sound guys at the folklife fest last week (which was a lot, as I probably saw about 30 shows), I thought of Eric.
Thanks, cmcgee; I'd just noticed that typo.
Someone put up a plywood dome near where we used to live, in the country. I haven't looked at the patent to see if the design looks familiar. A friend of mine lives in a concrete "Key dome" in Georgia.
for an Ann Arbor dome, head over to the north side's Jones Dr. (btwn Broadway and Plymouth, about a quarter mile from the Broadway Shops and former Kroger/Arbor Drugs.) Built about five years ago, although it took several years. i think it's concrete, but i'm not sure.
The dome itself isn't concrete. I saw it periodically during construction, as I contract for an organization based almost across the street from that house.
ok. a lot of the rest of the house is, anyway. i was out of town for much of its construction, so i missed a lot of what went into/on it. . .
An old friend of mine has an uncle who lives in a dome. My friend helped build it, actually. If I remember right, it's 5/8 of an icosahedron, all wood, two stories. They filled some of the triangles with glass to make windows; the other ones, they covered with siding on the outside and insulation in the inside. It was quite cozy. Since visiting, I've been thinking I'd like to live in one myself someday.
<fakes a scowl> This is the happy item! Shall we start a geometry item? Oh wait, geometry does make me happy, never mind. :) IHB I'll be in Ann Arbor in 24 hours or so. Let that imply to no one that Chicago makes me unhappy... I am _quite_ happy to be in Chicago, but dcat is in Ann Arbor... IAHB I basically got a job offer today... the teacher in my classroom at Dunbar and I get along quite well and she is in charge of math teacher recruiting for the school. She wrote down my name/cellphone number/email address today and promised to give them to somewhat important. This after only teaching for about 10 minutes at the end of a period in her classroom! That said, I feel excited but so far somewhat clueless about working in my school... its on the south side of Chicago, 98% African American, and quite poor. I don't yet feel like I understand/relate to the kids at the school. I also know that this school, and many like it, has quite the difficult time finding good math teachers. Ms. Lemons (the head teacher in the classroom) has a button on her desk that says "Highly qualified math teachers, a HOT commodity", and I suspect that that is very much true in the place where I am at.
Re #80: It has no hexa-pent strut frame to brace it; the "struts" are created by bends in the flat shell panels themselves. All of the precise cutting and fancy brackets are eliminated, and the remaining pieces are just rectangular 4x8 sheets. Imagine an "efficiency house kit" that fits in the back of a pickup truck, and you'll begin to see why it's so cool.
Yeah, I'm there now, thanks. Lots of possibilities. :-)
IHB this evening, after the screening of "Wayne's World" at Top of the Park, a digital projection system was tested for the first time at TOP. IAHB the test was a grand success, with brightness and clarity exceeding expectations all around, and as a bonus, the cost of doing digital projection at TOP would be less than 16mm, and the selection of available films would likely be greater. The decision has not yet been made, but it looks as if the necessary groundwork has been laid for TOP movies to go digital next year. Extra bonus possibility: stereo sound!
(Cool. What media would you digitally project -- standard DVD, or something else?)
Probably DVD, but due to legal restrictions they would have to come from a distributor rather than the video store, and they might not be standard in all senses. I don't know about that end of things.
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Nice bike ride, nice sit by the pool, got the crossword almost done.
The speakers in the computer room are now hovering 7 feet up. Where'd all this floor come from?
IHB krj was hovering near the stage and quickly responded to my shouted request to other hovering people to clear the path between me and the sound shed by passing the message on in a very effective way.
I am happy because I'm mensa certified
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M E N S A
The High IQ Society
So you are good at taking tests?
And at telling others about it....
I'm a lifetime member of DENSA
One person in fifty (2% of the population) is Mensa-eligible. If you know 50 people it's very likely that you know at least one person who is eligible for Mensa. Given the self-selection on this system, I suspect that the percentage of Grex BBSers who are eligible for Mensa is greater than 50% of the active participants.
Given how low Mensa's standards apparently are, it's probably higher than that.
Now, now, Joe. Play nice. Leave the sledgehammer for the REALLY dense.
I'm over-qualified for Mensa.
I'm over-apathetic about whether or not I qualify.
Having been to a few of their "shindigs", I can share in your apathy.
I'm amazed how sturdy the model dome has become now that it is more than half enclosed. This concept has real possibilities.
ihb my brother and i took mom to greenfield village for her 35th birthday (and 50th celebration of same). mom was a guide at the villag for over a dozen years. lots has changed, mostly for the better, but the eshibits and the rides are the same or better. expecially the rides. ford has started to re-manfacture the model A/T <??> to the original specs with modern techniques. they picked up with the next serial number from the last model (X) that was built. rode in surry (w/fringe) adn automobile and carousel and several houses/exhibits. mom had a blast! the requisite roses were delivered just as we arrived back at her place. the world is lloking up, sort of. b-roll was shot also.
Grex (Agora, at least) seems to have a higher intelligence level than the 2-3 Mensa meetings I attended.
IHB I'm Grexing from Japan!
IHB I'm finally back at my brother's house, having survived the Kongsberg Jazzfestival.
Wow. You folks are just hopping all over the world!
About to head off to a party. Should be a fun afternoon.
re 119: What are you dong in Japan? re 118: You're telling me that entire items of "I'm number 100! Joy, wood, log!" are more intelligent than mensa meetings? oi.
I have to agree with Scott. The MENSA groups I've attended were full
of bright and hardworking (to the point of being boring) people, but very few
true geniuses.
I've never done anything with Mensa, but I suppose Mensa favors people
who are good at taking tests and who want to meet other people like them.
Good, but not a formula for an exciting evening. Grex also attracts
geeks, but on-line at least, it also selects for people who have a
certain ability to say something interesting, or at least type something
interesting. This gives the Grex a bit of an edge up. Not that big a
one. Grex gatherings aren't exactly the nations most sought after social
venue either. Probably the Mensa test should include an oral portion:
(1) You have three seconds to come up with a witty response to this
question.
(2) You have three seconds to come up with a charming compliment for this
member of the opposite sex.
(3) Go out in the street and engage a total stranger in conversation.
OK, I'd probably flunk that test too. Still, it would select for a set
of people who were more fun at parties. Maybe it could be an either/or
thing. People could get in based either on traditional IQ, or on
social IQ. Then at least you'd have a few people to lubricate gatherings.
(1) Just three seconds? This is MENSA, not sex.
(2) That's an incredibly attrctive IQ you have. No, really. It makes
me curious as to whether you're really intelligent as well.
(3) I hate it when that happens! Oh, dear, no, go 'way ...
While #1 is fairly well-covered, and I think that many GREXers would
be able to do it (it took me about ten, but then you'd have more than three
seconds in real life as it would take longer than three seconds just to say
you have three seconds to respond), I find it fascinating that #2 and #3 are
things that a lot of people know, but very, very few know consciously. Try
to find a written example of either in literature or a portrayal in scripted
television or movies that isn't awkward or completely unrealistic.
Fodder for another item if anyone else is interested in one of my
favourite rant topics.
People who show up to parties and leave feeling bored out of their minds are usually people who brought nothing to the party but the expectation they'd be entertained.
I'm ever so happy the power was on and the skies cleared in time for a gathering we had last night. Lots of wine and little candles, friends and family. They all brought along a sense of humor, their outrageous opinions, and thick skin. How wonderful.
Re. #125: 1) "Um, what was the question?" 2) "That's a very symetrical navel you have, my dear." 3) "'Scuse me, but you've got dog poop on your shoe." How'd I do?
Re #127:
While it's true that there are a lot of people out there who expect
to be entertained, and they usually have little to offer in the way of
entertainment themselves, you're more likely to run into them at a MENSA
"shindig" than at a non-MENSA party, in my experience.
The whole equasion is more complex than the reduction that you are
amused in porportion to the amusement you give. Even professional comics tire
of working to amuse others and give in to the urge to let someone else
entertain for part of the evening. It's best when there are several people
entertaining, and no one really has to work at it.
resp:125 #1: That seems to be a statement, not a question. #2: I admire your sense of style in those snappy clothes you're wearing today, and I'll bet you have the conversation to match it. Care to test my theory over a quiet dinner somewhere? #3: Good morning, wonderful weather we're having, aren't we? Perfect for a swim. I'm not sure what that was supposed to prove, but there you go. It was fun.
I dont know, you can be the most socially adept person in the world and still be bored at a party. Of couse a *really* socially skilled person would never let on that they were bored and would try to liven things up.
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What's "Dark Porter?"
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IHB I had a fantastic weekend with a few friends that I have no seen in 7 or so years. Wow.
IHB I just found out I'll be going camping this weekend in the Northern LP with my best buds and a bunch of other con-goers.
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Don't remember the name of the city. The campsite will be on private property. It's a yearly event the owners throw to celebrate their anniversary. It's about 100 miles from the UP.
IHB they fixed the AC in my dorm room (but not in this library, apparently).
Had a wonderful evening swimming with my son this evening.
When did dorm rooms start having air conditioners? My elementary school used to let the boys take their ties off when it got really hot.
IHB I had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend with the boy and his friends.
IB_ had a fun 4th with the Beau, the Roomie and a couple of the Roomie's friends from college. had a great view of the Lansing fireworks from their 7th floor apartment- also got to see all the illegal fireworks the surrounding neighbors had. The official (and unofficial) shows filled the majority of the sky. Was cool. The next day the beau and I went to visit my parents- and much fun was had. My dad was telling the beau about someproperty he and my mom used to own near Interlochen- that I only had a vague memory of and was quite happy to learn more about it (though I really wish they had kept the property, two lots on a lake). IAHB- I have the best roomie, yesterday was a rather bad day for me and she went all out to help make me feel better and take my mind off of what was worrying me.
re 142: Probably when people with respiratory problems who would need one in order to get ill started suing. MSU has one dorm with AC, and all other dorms you need special (usually health related) permission to bring in your own air conditioner. Chicago is strange that way. Several of their schools have air conditioning, even the poorer ones. Mine does not, which was annoying for a few days last week when it was actually 83 degrees at 7:45 am and only got hotter. I don't mind the heat, but the students really do, and life gets rougher for all of us if the students are cranky because its hot. on another note, IHB my "supervisor" came to observe me teach today and was impressed. I'm also starting to think about how hard it will be to go back and live in Michigan after having spent some time in a city as exciting as Chicago. Especially, living in Holt after having spent time in a city as exciting as Chicago. Just going back for the weekend felt strange in some ways. Ann Arbor just seemed so... small. Bordering on rural. Hey, Chicago even has neat grexers! :)
Well, do you have to go back to Michigan?
IHB I went to a lovely musical gathering tonight. Featured performers were Ever Will You Get There, Jacob Danziger, and Ben Bracken. The first two performances were outdoors, and when it started raining we all moved indoors. Popsicles and blueberry cake and brownies and juice were enjoyed by all.
I went to school with Jake Danziger. He was quite a good musician back in high school. Good to hear he's still at it.
Mmmmmm...Brownies! B-)
The name Jake Danziger sounds familiar... did he go to MYA or would I have seen him at Pioneer? Re 146: Yes, I have to go back to Michigan (Holt, in fact) for student teaching in the fall. I'm actually really excited about student teaching in Holt... they have a discussion based math program and only use the textbooks as rescources...
He might have gone to MYA. He went to Community, and he definitely hung out with a bunch of the old MYA kids there.
Mmmm... mostaccioli and a lovely letter from the boy. It's a good night.
I seem to remember Jake Danziger at Tappan ... but I could be wrong. (I also could be thinking of a brother?)
Found the brewpub here - the Oslo Mikrobryggeri. Great beer, especially the Weissen.
re resp:150: Some Holt sports history for you... in 1972, Holt went through their entire football season without having another team score a point.
We just found the perfect apartment, and it's unbelievably affordable. We still have a few more to look at, but we filled out an application before we left. :)
I'm happy cause I just got back from my awesome vacation. :)
IHBB my ex-wife is loaning me a monitor whilst mine is in the shop, waiting for exotic parts to arrive from China.
"Ex-wife"?? Is this an earlier marriage or are you suddenly single?
resp:157 : i'm not sure coming back from a vacation would make me happy, but whatever floats your boat. . . .
Went for a nice run this evening - down to the fjord shore, through some hilly woods much like Bird Hills.
Got a data dump running, and I should have my new box fully loaded with my old files shortly.
im happy cause i love my job at the health club. i get paid to work out everyday. and i love being a swim team coach. and i love being back in school. im gonna be a teacher. and i love my new house.
IHB after three weeks in California my parents are finally (probably) coming home on Tuesday.
I'm happy because my t-ball team did pretty well at tonight's scrimmage, and also (by the way) seemed to really enjoy themselves.
IHB my boy just said, "I love you," for the first time. :) (Attn: smartasses - not the first time EVER. The first time to ME. :-P )
IHB I may be going to see Radiohead in October if I can snatch up tickets... of course half the office may be going as well.
IAHB the lecture I really didn't want to give is in the past. I survived, and others seemed to learn something.
I know I did.
So, what is a snow, polytarp?
I didn't learn that part.
Now IHB Julie has graced us with her presence again. WB, Jules!
re 166: hmmm. You've unintentionally given me some food for thought there.:)
My 7 year old passed level 4 swimming classes in Tecumseh. This involves 25 yards of front crawl, 25 yards of back crawl, and a list of other tests. He took the class a previous time and didn't quite pass it; he took it again and passed. Way to go, Spud!
That's awesome! I am both bummed yet happy because I had a bitch of a fight with my ex-husband today, but we both calmed down enough to back off, let it lie for a while and were able to tell each other to have a nice weekend. Exhausting, but it's nice that we can both rise above.
IHB I feel optimistic. Hmm.
IHB it's *finally* Friday...and revisions are complete, pending supervisor approval. <sigh> I can't believe a simple communication--two pages inf JACS--can possibly take this much work.
tomorrow is my first full day off work since 6 or 7 june. yay!
IHB I'll be spending the next two weeks at the summer retreat program at the Zen temple. This came together literally at the last minute; I was pretty sure I'd gotten my application in too late, but they called this evening asking if I'd be able to come and start tomorrow morning. Time to go do laundry...
Today I got my hands on the forms I need to be included in the next edition of the Michigan Production Guide, a reference for filmmakers looking for crew in Michigan.
I had a very pleasant evening browsing cars downtown, eating dinner, and sitting in Borders reading with Tracy. It's nice just to sit and read with good company.
i just pulled out and pitched my tent for the first time in almost two years and it is happily unmoldy, weather-worthy and ready for use! :):)
>#159 I'm still in marriage number two. My ex-wife and I are still friends, but most of the email we exchange concerns our kids and a few odds and ends on the personal end, present and past. She told me to keep the loaner monitor: It was one of three orphans in her duplex and, she said, she was looking to reduce some of the clutter. Thus, IHBB my ex-wife is kind and generous and I have a spare monitor in my house now that my regular monitor has come back from the shop.
I'm happy because of fitz's answer. ;-)
IHB we went to the Saline Celtic Festival today.
IHB because STeve, Staci, and I worked communications for the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society's 27th annual One Helluva Ride. This was Staci's first public service event as a Ham Radio Operator. Fun was had by all, at least until...see the bummed item.
IHB, despite the Ann Arbor's News dire weather prediction for the day, it turned out to be a lovely sunny, breezy day at the Nature Conservancy's Erie Marsh Preserve, where we sounded the depth of the Great Sulphur Spring to be 16.9 meters.
Twit filters to the rescue...
IHB I had a fun night with Carson and Allida.... I was pleasantly suprised by Pirates of the Carribean being quite a good movie. McDonalds gave me a $6.50 off admission ticket to it for being an employee, which is the reasons I was suprised. This is the first time ever that McDonalds has given me something that wasn't shit.
Woke up somewhat early, made sourdough biscuits for the first time in many years. I'm still at my brother's and their daughter had gotten some sourdough starter as some kind of project.
IHB the SRI anonymous FTP server is back up.
Determined hunting at outlet malls paid off--I am now the proud owner of a lovely dinner service for four, in the dansk scandinavian clover pattern, for under $50. Conversing with boy later in evening, it was discovered that between us, we now have 4 sets of china (in possession or promised) between us. And therefore 1. he needs to pray that the set his aunt has earmarked for him doesn't have flowers on because the rest of them do and 2. when we get around to getting married and registering and stuff, we can go straight to registering for corvette tires--y'know, *useful* stuff. :)
IAHB the weekend at the sailing club was lovely, even though there was too little wind to sail yesterday. Pitched the tent Friday evening and came back yesterday. Sailed once, I think, after pitching the tent, taught a few lessons Saturday morning, hung around Saturday afternoon, enjoyed a pick-up barbecue, got (mostly) caught up on the club's books, played cards, made s'mores, sailed by the light of the moon, sailed Sunday morning before the powerboats made it impossible, and watched son-chan do some fiberglass work. A fun weekend.
Yesterday took a little old ferry boat from Sandvika to a small island in Oslofjord, hung out & swam for a couple hours with the family. Hope those photos turn out - beautiful day.
I'm happy because I finally got the new version of my web site online.
http://PoliticalGraveyard.com/
It's the first complete new version since August 2002. I have added
more than twelve thousand politicians, for a new total of 119,675.
Since Saturday I have been able to walk without my rib hurting (which it has been doing for a couple of months) and I just managed to sleep an hour because both upstairs neighbors are back to work. I may celebrate by walking along the river. Not much chance of swimming this year as I have to gain back 10 pounds before I will have the energy to travel that far. You get to appreciate the little things after a while.
IHB- in about an hour I leave to go spend the evening and tomorrow with the Beau. This after having a wonderful 'roomie weekend' Things are good.
IHB I've been spending more time in Caro than Kalamazoo. This makes the long-distance relationship tolerable. Since I tend to spend 4-5 days here and 2-3 in K-Zoo, it feels more like a weekend relationship with K-Zoo than Ken. :) IVHB Jessica and I are signing the lease on our dream apartment Wednesday. I can't get over how cool this place is. There's a long description of it at http://www.livejournal.com/users/saltatoria
IHB I got up on the right side of the bed today, I'm having a chinese for dinner, and GREX is up again. Also, GREX will soon be moving to new hardware! Yay! And yay!
IHB I'll be spending a loooong weekend at the Rocky Mountain Ragtime Festival in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. Lotsa great music and mountain scenery. (Bummed that I'll have to miss the Grex birthday picnic, though.)
(I hadn't realised you were a cannibal, twenex. Or is #199 just TMI?)
My son and I visited my parents who are camping west of Alpena, MI (Avery Lake, between Lewiston and Atlanta). While there, they took us on an "elk hunt". The area has several herds of elk and we went looking to see them. We spotted 9 elk; 3 females with 2 babies, then shortly later, 4 young males. Male elk and female elk run in different herds. An elk seems about 5 times bigger than a deer. I don't very often see wild animals that large. My son was fascinated by the elk, and refused to let his grandfather drive on until the elk had moved out of our range of vision.
IHB I got t go to the Saline Celtic Fest and we saw "Pirates of the Caribbean" and I get to go to Art Fair. Life is okay.
The tar file size and md5sum checks all pass. The Second Great Serial File Move is a success. Here's hoping it's the last. And NO SPAM IN MY MAILBOX TODAY!
Oh happy day. I had an interview with a school a month ago. Didn't get the job. So the principal of the school calls today and says the person they picked flaked out on them. I was their second choice, so am I still interested? Yikes! Will be signing the contract in the next week or so. I'm a teacher. Whoa.
Dude. Congrats... where will you be teaching?
Congratulations, bees.
Congratulations.
Congrats from me as well. Welcome to "the system".
Congrats, bees! IHB I managed to download a couple of Daria episodes that are not among the batch currently being shown on cable. They were everything I hoped they'd be. :)
Yah, beeswing! :)
Gracias! I'll be teaching at a Catholic school. The classes will be coed. Maybe they'll issue me a ruler too. While my beliefs aren't entirely in line with Catholic teachings, I can check my politics at the door from 8 to 3. This school doesn't seem to be too hardcore. I'll get to post a website on my classes too! Woot!
What subject(s) and ages will you be teaching?
Congratulations, bees! :)
The nuns at my Catholic school didn't need rulers, they had
their Rosary beads to whack kids with.
....taught me everything I needed to learn here in the 12th century.
IHB because I got a phone call last night from my friends Dermot and Angie. Other than the occasional email, I havent heard from them in years. We are going to go swimming on Friday. That is going to be totally FUN!
Way to go, Trisha! Hope this means everything starts looking up.
cool beans, bees.
8th grade English, 7th grade History, and one section of 8th Intro to Latin. The notion of a steady paycheck is very comforting, I must say.
I work at a Catholic school. But there aren't any nuns there.
oihb .. the atark raving madrigals are singing at fart aire' wednesday starting at 7pm-ish on the library steps on the diag. and . ... we will be sporting our new t-shrts (i had nothing t do with theese but they are kewl anyway - tom petiet did the art). oh, that is s/atark/stark .. from above. y'all come & listen.
fart aire?
Re #220: Question: How many nuns teach at your school? Answer: None. (The devil made me post this...)
Congratulations, beeswing. Remmers - "The System"? Remmers, the Master Control Prof. I'm sure I've seen "sark" login here sometime, too, or was that on The Other One? resp. #223 sounds like my sense of humour is rubbing off on you, remmers. Be afraid, ppl; be very, very afraid.
IHB I got my Trogdor t-shirt in the mail, and I'm signing my lease tonight. Yay. :)
re #224: Oh, no worries. Remmers' sense of humour is a well established phenomenon. All appropriate precautionary measures are already in place.
I'm back in Ann Arbor, after a very boring return trip from Norway.
snort. No nuns, though there is a church connected to the school.
resp:225 Trogdor? Wow, www.homestarrunner.com is getting around. That game is sweet. Burninate!
All kinds of stuff is falling together nicely.
We spent a few hours at art fair. Almost no smokers but the barbecue fumes were pretty bad. Nice and cool and breezy in the shade. Jim found two pairs of 'sandals' to wear outside instead of slippers, for $6 total. He wanted to look at baskets. We found ceramic baskets, wood baskets, various other turned wood products somewhat resembling baskets, and finally some ash baskets from Maine selling for as much as I have earned this year before taxes.
That's because they are ART, not just baskets.
This particular model used to be made by the native americans and sold for use picking potatoes.
But they crossed the Ann Arbor border...that changed them to ART.
IHB I just met a couple who are trying to buy the house next door. They seem really cool. They love dogs, dont mind barking, think creeping charlie is ok, and seem just like the mellow sort of people who will fit right into this neighborhood. They are grad students at UofM. They havent closed on the house yet and have some conditions that they need met before they do. Just little things like a furnace. Hopefully, the people who own it will get that stuff taken care of in time. If all goes well, they will be moving into it in 30 days.
I've seen Mister Zeh's baskets, but I always missed the demonstration of his labours. Yeah, when you start with a tree, a basket can get expensive. After a few hours at the Sailing Club booth on Liberty, I wandered the Art Fair on North U/Thayer/Washington/Ingalls Mall, catching part of pot-throwing demonstration. Good stuff.
the stark raving madrigal singers did their amazing performances tonight in front of four different crowds - and raised a whole *dollar* for the continuation of our scofflaw performances. doubles the treasury! had a real blast! then off to washtenaw dairy for ice cream repast. gotta luv it !
I'm still a bit jetlagged and therefore up before 6am, but I did discover that I'd thoughtfully left myself a day or two worth of the good tea. I was dreading trying to get down to the coop during Art Fair. And after about a month and a half I've actually got a place to myself for a bit. That's *really* nice.
Re #225: o/~ Burninating the countryside / Burninating the peasants... o/~ Heeheehee.
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Feeling much better after calling in sick yesterday. While I was not technically horking up my innards, I *was* asleep for about 26 of the past 30 hours, which leads me to conclude that there really was something wrong with me. (beyond the usual, that is! :) Oh--IHB my communication was accepted with no further do-si-doing :)
17" LCD monitor, yum. Plus we spent some time at the store trying to figure out whether it was wall-mountable, concluded that it didn't seem to be officially supported but physically possible. Then I leafed through the instruction book after getting home and found a couple pages of instructions for attaching the (optional) wall bracket. (The keyword, it turns out, is "VESA". Some kind of mounting standard)
VESA makes a lot of standards relating to monitors. There are VESA-standard video modes, as well.
Re #241 - sometimes, even if you aren't technically sick, your body will force mandatory rest so you DON'T get sick. After all that school and work, I'm sure your brain and body needed the rest. :) IHB I get to see my dad tomorrow, and we're going to pick up my new car. Shortly after he leaves, my boy will arrive for the weekend. I can't get much happier than this. :)
I've actually drawn rough plans for the major parts of the cargo carrier I'm designing for my bike. It will allow two minimally modified .50 caliber ammunition cans to be mounted securely (and locked at the same time) using only one small padlock. Now, I just need to design the additional module which will lock onto the back to secure my hiking pack and sleeping bag.
resp:225, resp:239 Strong Bad: "Swished you, peasantie." My only question: The website said that t-shirt was "coming soon"-- so how'd you get it?
Weird. I ordered it just a week ago. What size are you trying to get?
Met with the school president today. Was offered a higher salary than I'd anticipated. They will mail my contract to me. I saw my classroom. Small, but lots of windows. I can't wait to put in plants and posters and such. There's a big crucifix above the (dry erase!!) board, but I can handle that. I'll be meeting with the other jr high teachers on Monday, which will be cool. Now if I could stop being somewhat terrified....
Keeps you on your toes....
(Oh, yea, dry erase! When I used chalkboards I used to get covered in dust. I'd cut through the carpeted office on the way to my mail box after classes, and leave a trail of white chalk footprints behind me. With dry erase not only is it easier to teach in technicolor, but you get to get high on the fumes, which I think generally improved my teaching (there was generally plentiful room for improvement).) As a student I was always terrified to get in front of a class to talk, but even from my first day of teaching, I just loved it.
Chalk board is a lot more fun. You can't make those screeching noises with a dry-erase pen
Bees - it sounds wonderful. Dry erase boards rock for those of us with allergies and dark clothing. :)
There are some really smelly markers designed for these boards (the smell made me sick) and some others that don't smell at all (water-based?).
IHB I get to see Radiohead in October! Woohoo! RADIOHEAD! yeah! IAHB two of the three people who are acting as my references let me see them before they mailed them off, and I didn't ask. Sweet!
But breathing chalk dust is terrible.
resp:247 not ordering it yet-- on a budget. But did you see if they had XXL or 3XL? I'm also wary of white T-shirts...
I took the day off yesterday, intending to go to the Art Fair. However, when we talked about it, my son and I decided to go to Michigan's Adventure, an amusement park in Muskegon with roller coasters and a water park. We got there at 11 (opening) and stayed until closing (9). Oh, man! We had a *great* time. Michigan's Adventure is owned by the people who own Cedar Point. It doesn't have as many or as large of roller coasters as Cedar Point, but that was fine with me. I don't like them that much anyway. It does have several, including one called the Corkscrew which we didn't go on. It has a mile-long wooden coaster called Shivering Timbers; we didn't go on that one either. We went on the rest of them. We spent most of the day in the water park, playing in the several wave pools, riding on the many types of water slides, and generally having a great time. One ride I have to mention... it's called Ripcord. It's an extra cost item; $30 for one person, $20 each for two, $15 for three. It's a bungee drop from an enormous metal tower. It wasn't something I wanted to do, but each time someone else did it, I and everyone else stopped what they were doing to watch. For $16 extra you can buy a video of your plunge. Once we were inside Michigan's Adventure, I found my son is going to Cedar Point and Soak City with his mother for the weekend. So he's going to have a pretty exciting weekend all together.
Got myself a nice little shortwave, and right now I'm listening to some cool salsa-type music with Spanish announcements. From a quick Google it looks like I'm picking of Voice of America.
Congrats Trisha! IHB- I'm spending the weekend with the Beau, and shortly we're heading north to attend a wedding- and I'll get to hang out some more with his way cool daughter.
Jaklumen - go here - http://shop.store.yahoo.com/homestarrunner/trttrexla.h tml
IAHB a traffic light is being installed at Liberty and Wagner, replacing a four-way stop. I walked around that intersection this evening; the new roads look good. I hope they are finished soon.
Thanks, Sarah. I could really use a black tee, so I'll look into it.
IHB I had a fun trip home - and speaking of Cedar Point, the pilot on Thursday said, "We're passing over Sandusky, OH, to the left side of the plane". I was sitting on the left and started looking and was able to see Cedar Point from the air. Way cool!
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IHB I had lunch with my favorite boyfriend -- Griffin. He is such a joy to see during the week. (I have him on one weekend day, so seeing him during the week is a lovely extra.) He blew me a kiss while they were leaving. Such a sweetie.
IVHB they're re-designing one of the most dangerous intersections in Kalamazoo. Too bad it took 130 accidents and a car-train death to get around to it. :-P IAHB I think I did fairly well on my American Lit midterm.
IHB so far this semester I have an A in Earth Science and an A- in Calculus I. I will really have to blow it to lose A's in Composition and Interpersonal Communications. Now if I can just continue the roll when I get to EMU in September...
Finally settled down to calling some contacts I'd been given before vacation, and ended up spending about 20 minutes on the phone with one guy (another sound company in Cleveland). Got some pretty useful info on the state of the business, etc, also sounds like somebody I'd want to work with.
Got the DVD burner! Mandrake 9.1 installed very nicely, although I'm still trying to get the Nvidea network controller to work (weird driver situation). Going to try RedHat 9.0 first and see what that does.
Hmmm. Nothing like writing up a resume to give you a sense of accomplishment.
#261: I'm happy they're putting a light in that intersection as well. it needs it, badly. However, the traffic hangups it creates are a major pain for me, since it directly affects my travel to and from my (current) house. I'll get about a month or so with the new light until I leave town. Figures, everything improves as I leave. :) I had a great weekend in Toronto. My dad's family threw a party for Tracy and I, and we received all sorts of "slightly used" gifts we can use around the house, including a surprisingly large number of items from my deceased grandmother and great-grandmother. I'm the first person in the family to get married from my generation, and they're quite excited about it. It was nice for Tracy to get to know them a bit outside of the funeral setting, where she met most of them for the first time.
Saturday morning, rescued a rataan sofa (Hudson's/Marshall Field label) in pretty good shape that someone stuck by the dumpster, dropped it at Salvation Army. One less thing to wind up in the landfill.
Re 271: Married!???!! When did that come up?
IHB I have power and home phone service again. MAJOR storm this morning. They aren't calling it a tornado but it did just as much damage. I had no cell or land phone service OR power for 14 hours-- and I am lucky to get power back. All the traffic lights are blown out. Trees are uprooted everywhere. re: way back there... Yeah, I LOVE dry-erase. I'd previously taught with chalkboards. Was always covered in dust, but the worst part was how the chalk dried out my hands. No matter how much lotion I'd use, I'd end up with cracked, bloody cuticles. Ditto on the "I hated talking in front of class but loved it when I became a teacher" thing. Not sure how my students feel about my yammering in front of them, though. Watched 'Dead Poets Society' tonight. God, I love that movie.
... and Senna would be interested to know that the FedEx Forum-- the new Memphis Grizzlies arena that is under construction-- was heavily damaged. Part of the arena may collapse. The three 500-ft cranes are twisted and also may collapse, so Beale Street and downtown have been evacuated.
Yikes, glad you're OK.
Yep. I heard the storm rolling through but no tornado sirens, so I fell back asleep. Was around 5:00 AM or so. When I woke up again three hours later, the power was still gone. That's when I found out how bad it had been. The city is in a state of emergency. Driving sucks because most of the traffic lights are blown out. Or blown off. There's trees split in half or uprooted everywhere.
Got the binary-only NVidia network drivers to work on the new computer. I'm Grexing from it right now!
IHB I finally arrived at an answer to a nagging question: 68.8 degrees.
IHB the fundraiser I threw yesterday for the women's shelter that the secretarial group supports went over really well. Everyone liked the food, people brought TONS of stuff and everyone seeme to have fun.
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IHB- I actually have a job interview. Wow.
IHB I have cheap direct tickets to meet up with boy in Milwaukee in a couple of weeks. Plus, venue means a chance to see a friend I haven't seen in nearly a year--not to mention going shoe shopping with her! :)
Scott, I mentioned something about it in announcements a couple of months ago, I think. We never saw that much action on our cranes, by the way...
IAHB I've submitted my entry to the Observer's Fake Ad contest.
IHB today I got an auto-darkening welding helmet and a sleeping bag which compresses into a size small enough to fit comfortably into my saddlebag and still leave room for more stuff.
IAHB the pillar of smoke I saw from Maple Village was NOT the building grex is housed in.
IHB tomorrow is my last day in this house.
IHB it feels good.
Got a tedious job halfway done.
Went up to E. Lansing yesterday, hung out with a couple old college housemates, met their 3 kids and three new cats, and ate dinner at El Azteco.
We had our last t-ball game yesterday. My team was a great bunch of kids, with a great bunch of parents. They all improved a lot through the season, and I had a great time being their coach.
IHB my annual colony of sand wasps is up from last year. Go Sandwasps! Kill dem earwigs!
We got an email from someone we met in the Milan area last summer on a camping trip. Jim set her up with grex email which she is still using, but she says the 1987 computer he set her up on is now taking 5 minutes to boot and can he fix it? It has a built-in 2400 bps modem. Her brother also left her a newer computer but no keyboard for it so Jim will bike out there with a keyboard and lots of software and a camping mat and have a two-day summer vacation without me. Internal modem, external modem (2 each, 1400 bps), procomm plus, kermit. Maybe we can foist a printer on her. She now has 9 sheep and lots of colored chickens. A complete stranger who flagged us down and gave us his yard to sleep in, use of his hose, towels, and a very nice breakfast sent us to meet her. She is 'alternative'. We saw her neighbor's vegetable stand made from a silo.
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I don't know - probably at one time. She used to run sort of a commune there in some rather shoddily built structures, but her main interest now seems to be returning farmland to trees. Jim will have more to report in a week or two. (He is leaving the middle of next week open in case his daughter, who will be in town from England, has time to spend with him.)
Subgroup is over, marking end of hellish week.
IAHB I finally fixed a client's problem with Eudora hanging while opening on Win98 machine. It seems the problem was caused by an automatic update feature of RealOne player. I renamed the file "realsched", and Eudora started working again.
Jim made a nice batch of humus, with organic lemon rind. He also bought me an avocado. He is trying to help me gain weight.
IAHB Anthony's makes good pizza. More filling than I expected, too.
IHB a high school friend of mine made a day trip to Chicago to visit me today, with his 3 year old daughter. We had a really fun time walking around downtown just hanging out, and we went to some places I hadn't gone yet. I found a book in Borders that I'm excited about reading... its called "Four Colours Suffice", and its about the "proof" of the Four Colour Theorem, which I've always found interesting. Other people see a 3 year old girl and say "Oh, how cute!". I sit down at the table in the restaurant, take several coffee creamers, and ask "How many?", and after she counts, rearrange them and ask again. In spite of all the other fun stuff we did, I have to say that this game was the highlight of my day. We also took the orange line all the way until it ended and back, and had a good conversation whilst Lily slept. And we talked about both of our curious fascinations with the movie "1776", which our history teacher showed us in class many years ago and we now both own more than one copy of. Its a bad movie. We still love it. Thanks, Mrs. Dahl. :)
My son and I had a nice time at my maternal-side family reunion today in Harrison. The weather started out rainy but then turned beautiful. The worst of the drunks and low-lifes stayed away, and the rest of us had a wonderful time.
Got a friend moved quite successfully and relatively smoothly yesterday.
IHB we're all moved into our new apartment, and it already feels like home. IVHB I'm getting Gomez back from my friend today. They were keeping him during my month-long vacation and moving preparations.
Yikes, Sindi, please don't eat humus! Worms poop in there!
Hummus. Heh.
I went swimming in Lake Erie for the first time ever today, at Sterling State Park. Lake Ontario is now the only Great Lake in which I have not swam. Sterling made Lake Erie seem different than the others. For one thing, the bottom is covered with small shells and with an almost slimy sand. For another, I could see what I took to be the Fermi II nuclear power plant to the north, and a Ford factory to the south. I didn't like it nearly as much as I do the gorgeous sand beach found almost all the way around Lake Michigan. I used the opportunity of the two factories to explain to my son why there are so many factories near lakes and rivers. When I was a kid, I could watch factory waste being dumped into the Grand River several times per day, where it was assumed it would disappear without a trace and without harm. Except by then, anyone who could read was well aware that the waste was causing *great* damage and didn't disappear at all. Action to remedy this was a liberal triumph and I presented it to my son as one. Anyway, it was nice to have been in my 4th Great Lake.
I washed my hair for the first time in two weeks after washing a week's worth of dishes to empty the kitchen sink. The bathroom is still around 60 (ground temperature) and I did not want to heat it because the heat rises into the apartment which is about 80. It is really nice to have clean hair. Last time I showered I ran upstairs with teeth chattering to dry off.
/ducks as slynne and cyklone stampede
IHB my friend Linda had a birthday party yesterday, and we had three little ones there -- Katie, at three and a half, Griffin at 16 months (this week), and Miles at nearly five months (next week). It was much fun, even though it ended up segregating among gender lines after a while -- the men went to play Munchkin and the women stayed in the living room and watched babies and The Dark Crystal video.
Finally got the Linux recording app compiled and running - I've got a new toy to play with now! Plus I documented the whole installation, so next time it should be fairly straightforward.
Saw Bon Jovi in concert last night. When did Jon get so hot? It brought "Lay Your Hands On Me" to a whole new level.
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ihb i'm leaving town friday for the mt baker area to avoid nascar...er, i mean SEAFEST.
Are you going camping? That sounds fun :)
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wife rented a cabin for the weekend up off of hiway 20 going hiking, drinking beer watching the sky.
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ihb my parents discovered some savings bonds that my grandmother'd bought for me when i was a kid, so we might actually be able to afford to send me to college after all. . .
Dcat - that's wonderful! What do you plan to study? IHB the furniture arranging is going better than planned, and when I woke up I noticed that my roomie had unpacked and organized the entire kitchen. *boggle*
re318: have fun! me and the family were up there a cupple months ago...perty. then we wend to leavenworth...ugly. :)
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did you stick around for the rotisserie pork-hocks?
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IHB I'm sneaky. :) While most of the rest of the lab is meeting at 7:30 am Wednesday to drive down to our advisor's house on the Vineyard, my carload and I will be happily still asleep at my friend Emily's place in Woods Hole (just across from MV). I think we may be the only ones that are sort of looking forward to this party.
resp:312 Jon Bon Jovi looks much better with the cropped mane.
IHB the boy called me tonight. God I miss him...
IAHB sailing on Lake Erie was fun. We took a friend's Catalina 27 from Anchor Point to the Toledo Light and back. Saw some herons and other birds (including cormorants, possibly) on the light's island. A nice afternoon for a sail.
Re 326 I could not agree more on Jon Bon Jovi's hair.
I just mysteriously found a whisker that belonged to my cat that passed away. Sigh. Maybe one of those weird things that lets me know he's OK?
IAMH because I made minimum first bid on item on e-bay - and "won". Easy when no one else wants what you do (at asking price, at least).
What did you want? I am happy because I got ten hours sleep (7 before the garbage trucks started and three in the afternoon) despite messing up my rib again. And Jim made some really good ground-rice pudding. And it was cool enough at night to get my apartment down to 68. The basics.
Drove up to Frankenmuth and had dinner with clees.
Clees is in the states? Where and for how long?
Drove up to Frankenmuth and spent a couple of hours with clees before scott showed up. He's cycling across the USA (more or less: cutting across Canada from Michigan to New York, with at least one and I think he said two ferry trips, one across Lake Michigan and another across Lake Champlain). He's leaving Frankenmuth in the morning and continuing east.
resp:332 68 degrees would make me happy, too. The landlady's husband and a buddy came over with the new AC unit. Finally getting some relief...real relief...
The serpentine belt on my car broke. An odd selection for the happy item, perhaps, but: (1) Now I know what was causing the car's mysterious symptoms, and it's not likely to be an expensive repair. (2) It broke on the drive to the car repair shop; it was an exciting few minutes trying to finish the last few miles as the temperature needle crept upwards, and fighting with the power-less steering.
(handy car tip: turn the heater on full blast in that situation)
???
Keeps the engine cooler by removing much of the heat to the passenger compartment while the radiator fan is not being driven by the broken belt?
Eric, yes! And if you have the a/c on, the car has to work harder to cool the air to get to you.
IHB Yesterday was a Good Day First I went to work and fixed some hard problems. I always like that. It makes me feel all smart and stuff. In this case, someone turned a computer off by accident and tons of files became corrupted. I have been hunting them down like a lion after a herd of zebras. RAWR! Then I got to take off at 12:30 and head up to the lake. I had a blast even though no one could come with me since they all had to work *ha ha*. I swam for a while and threw the ball into the lake a hundred times just so I could watch my dog jump off the dock. I love doing that! Then, after the old dog got tired and went back to the house (where my mom let her in), I got out the kayak and took the young dog for a boat ride. There is a creek that goes off the lake and we went as far as we could before it got too shallow. It is nice because there are just woods on either side of the creek. I saw all kinds of wildlife. I almost caught a turtle!
Re #338 - I've performed that trick a few times. Unfortunately, my water pump died in the summer, so I had to drive to the repair shop with the heat on full blast during 90-degree weather. :-P IHB my roommate and I saw "Pirates of the Caribbean" last night. It was wonderful, despite some of the cheesy lines. :) IAHB I'm going to surprise my boy with a visit tonight. He doesn't think I'm coming until *next* weekend.
If the water pump isn't working, how is the water circulated to the heater to be cooled? I would think it would not do much good, then.
Re 343> Sometimes surprise visits turn out BAD!
I envy slynne. I wish I had a lake nearby.
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#346 - You live closer to the lake my parents live on than I do. I am just willing to drive my car up there. And isnt that the magic of the automobile? It changes ones perception of distance.
RE#346 -- I have never confirmed this, but in Michigan you're supposedly never more than 6 miles from a lake.
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r348: *chuckles*
I am 12 miles (at least) or 1 hour 45 minutes from the nearest swimming lake, unless you count Horseshoe Lake which is private, muddy, and really full of stinkboats. There was supposed to be some new county park 9 miles east of here but a couple of years ago we biked there and could not find anything. It is a very nice route. There are lakes at Stinchfield Woods and Botanic Garden, not swimmable.
What's a stinkboat?
344: convection currents...
Re #338: The "turn on the heat" trick works for an overheating car because the water pump circulates hot coolant through the heater core, from which the heater fan can extract heat and send cooler fluid back to the engine. This probably will not help if the serpentine belt is broken and the water pump is not turning. Click and Clack's rerun last weekend had a caller whose borrowed minivan flashed the oil pressure light, leading to recriminations. One of the things they said was that one CANNOT drive with the oil pressure warning light on; one should shut off the engine immediately. This is only slightly less applicable to a lack of water circulation through the engine. Ken may have toasted his engine. I just dodged that bullet. The bearings in my power steering pump were worn out and the pulley was wobbling. Had that gone to the point where it chewed up the serpentine belt... Re #340: Not an issue; the Taurus fan is electric. The issue of the fan motor draining the battery while the broken belt cannot turn the alternator is different. ;-)
(A fuel-to-noise converter, goose.)
Discovery has asked me to come and work on the new hardware which replaces the stuff that was stolen. I may have too much work to get out of town on schedule! (I might wish for problems like this...)
I'm happy because I picked up my first batch of michigan sweet corn today at ruligs farm....mmmmmm
A stinkboat is a water-borne noisemaker that smells like a power mower but much more intense. Sometimes they are known as jet skis. Other boats also stink but the ratio of stink to size is lower. At Independence Lake they go in endless large circles around the lake leaving the whole beach stinking and the water covered with oil. I hope the new park does not allow them.
i hate those things.
I've never noticed a smell associated with jet-skis. I like those things
I have ambivilent feelings for jet skis. On the one hand, they *are* fun. On the other hand, they are dangerous, make a lot of noise, pollute the lake and stink.
They now have four-stroke versions which are quieter, less stinky, and less polluting. They're not yet predominant.
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Mynx - he was happy I surprised him.
That's good. It wouldn't have worked out that happy in all circumstances.
IHB I had a great mini-roadtrip with labmates to advisor's house on Martha's Vineyard yesterday.
You drove to Martha's Vineyard? I didn't know they've built a bridge. 8^} (I've only sailed there.)
;P We drove down Tuesday night to Woods Hole and stayed with my friend there overnight, then took the ferry. Steve wanted us there by around noon, so most of the group met at MIT at 7:30 a.m. I *don't* do mornings; was most pleased to have an alternate plan that didn't involve getting up that early.
IHB I had a great date last night and I'm off for Phoenix for the weekend.
IHB- I actually have a job! Starting Monday I'll be working QA for a mortgage company. IAHB- I'm going to celebrate my new employment with my fabulous roomie later this weekend and celebrating tonight with my beau (after Ispend time with the kitties at Zimmer). :)
Congratulations, mooncat!
Home early, got manifold ready to re-install, have an excuse to buy a new tool to boot.
Jim is happy that he will never again wait around his house just because his
daughter is in town and said she would visit. A few times two weeks ago,
Tuesday evening and Wed. morning when she said she would be free ('free' meant
she had completely scheduled the day and wanted him to tour farmer's market
with her) and then 'Friday morning'. She is leaving by plane some time this
evening and in three hours or so he will have proved to everyone that she does
not want to visit him. She has not visited him (at his house) since she and
her mother moved out 20 years ago. He will never again hang around waiting
for her to show up when she said she would. She always calls and leaves
messages in mid-afternoon because she knows he is not there then. She never
calls the two numbers on his answering machine (well, almost never, just once
she called here when she wanted her baby carriage fixed in a hurry). Her
fiance said they would 'absolutely' visit to say goodbye. Maybe it will be
a 5 minute goodbye. In 3 hours Jim will be a liberated man. Some people's
parents do not teach them manners (or honesty). His son at least always
called ten minutes after he was due for supper to let us know his mother was
making frozen fish sticks so he could not come (or McDonalds).
Jim did at least get to see the kids at his sister's house in Warren (Detroit
area). He was given half an hour notice about the trip.
He has been cleaning his house up all week for the visit.
Well, I got my new insurance identification cards, and should be able to wave that portion of the ticket when I show it to the cashier at the courthouse. Now, perhaps about going to court...
Oh yes, almost forgot. Attended my first practice with the Tri- Cities, WA Guitar Society. It was a mixed bag; a lot of the pieces were a little hard for me to sight read straight up. But this will improve my playing.
Congrats Anne! Picked up my contract and iBook today for work. Inservices begin next week. Things are looking up.
Good news, Anne!
Oh yeah, and my birthday is Monday. Celebration began last night with Chinese food. Today is my nephew's birthday (three already-- sigh-- I remember announcing his birth on Grex) and his party is tonight. Cake and Thomas the Train, oy.
resp:374 describes pretty well my greatest fear in life; losing contact with my kids.
IHB the boy is at a LAN party, which means an entire day to sew my costume for his birthday party.
A LAN party? I hope they're doing some creative hacking.
Jim is happy that he got to spend 5 whole days waiting around his house and he got things a lot more organized (such as removing the thick layer of things all over the floor and bed and putting them in their proper places, putting flannel shirts in a box and getting out the short sleeved versions). You would not understand unless you saw Jim's house. Usually I do this for him. He is learning to put his own clothes away! Now you can actually walk into the room without stepping on a tent.
It's not "Thomas the Train", it's "Thomas the Tank Engine". You gotta get these things right, or every three or four year old in the country will know you are a poser. If you actually want to impress preschoolers, it helps to know what the heck a "Tank Engine" is. Or was. Larger steam engines pulled tenders, which contained the extra fuel (coal or wood or whatever) and water (to boil in the boiler and make steam) that they need to travel long distances. But the smaller engines, used on shorter hauls didn't have tenders. This makes them easier to manuever when switching freight cars around the yard. Instead, they'd have a small "bunker" at the back of the engine to carry coal in and a "tank" to carry water in. The water tank usually straddles the boiler, so the considerable weight of the water would be centered over the engine's wheels, giving it improved traction. So "Thomas the Tank Engine" has two box-like things on either side of his boiler while Percy has a larger cylinder enveloping the rear part of his boiler. These are their water tanks, from which they get the name "tank engine".
Yeah. I know Thomas, Clarabell and Percy. I know there's many more. I do know George Carlin narrates for the videos. He had Percy on his cake (done in icing). He requested Percy. When we started cutting the cake, he demanded that we "don't cut Percy!". So we ate around him. Percy was for the most part left intact.
Some are narrated by George Carlin, other by Ringo Starr.
Phoenix is beautiful. The sky is so *blue*. The stars are so bright. I've gotten some sun, done some swimming, made a birthday cake for my friend (in the shape and decor of his favorite Nascar driver's car, no less) and today I am spending the day with one of my best friends, seeing the sights.
My favorite "sight" in Phoenix is Camel Back Mt or whatever it is called. One time, when I was in Phoenix, some kids started a brush fire on it. We were at some place called 'The Phoenecian' so we were right by it. It looked cool.
Philly is pretty cool - it's been hot, humid, and rainy, but it's actually a pretty nice city. Sort of a cross between Boston and San Fransisco, and the people have been really nice.
Great music on The Listening Room this morning.
IHB I purchased a microbiology text book for $50 less, brand new, no taxes, and only $5.00 for shipping from New Zealand. I love the internet.
IAHB the CD conversions charcat did for me as part of the grex auction came out very well. I've been listening to stuff I've not heard in decades.
Happy Birthday in advance, Trisha... mine was today. Julie made me a lemon cake with yellow frosting and red icing, complete with 29 candles (plus one to 'shrink' on-- my wife's humor). My maternal grandparents sent a card and a check. (In case you wonder about my paternal ones, well, I'm sure they are wishing well from the other side.) My parents gave me more stuff they needed to get rid of for the move-- suitcases, towels, and an apron that hooks on a dress shirt button; plus a bread machine and a new vacuum that we were needing badly. Dinner was good; I asked for fajitas, so it was chicken fajitas. Chicken with red and green bell peppers, and a salad with red and yellow pear tomatoes, and red onions. Before we ate, I commented how wonderful the yellow pear tomatoes were-- they gave us some from their neighbors, and my parents informed me that I could call the Joneses (their neighbors) for more banana peppers that I had been enjoying as well, which was good news. They made for tasty salads and scrambled eggs, so I could always use more. Banana peppers are mild, which is too bad, but they are still tasty.
Re #382 - they played Urban Terror and Worms. :-P IHB I had a really nice weekend with the boy, his friends, and his family. Now I'm giving my kitty much-deserved snuggles.
I'm happy that gelinas is pleased with the cd =^o.o^=
re 393...Thanks! Birthday vibes to you too. 31 today. Oy. Low key day. I plan to eat whatever I want and in any amount I want. Gifts have included candles, picture frames, a mini battery powered TV and cold hard cash.
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Happy birthday, Trisha!
The fortuitous delivery of some equipment for WUOM's new studio to my home resulted in the possibility of more work in the fall.
I'm curious why WUOM equipment would be delivered to you. Care to share?
Merci, Sarah :)
maybe it was delivered FOT.
I reside in the apartment most recently formerly occupied by my friend Bob Skon, the chief engineer at WUOM. For some unknown reason, when UPS was unable to deliver the equipment to Argus, they delivered it here...
Happy birthday, Bees.
"Fortuitous," indeed. :)
I called for a doctor's appointment and was told there was a 3 week wait. I called back and asked if there was something sooner - yes, 2 weeks, in Brighton. There is not even a bus to Brighton. I called a couple of hours later and someone had just cancelled for tomorrow morning.
IHB today's my birthday. IAHB I now know that the ring the girl I have a crush on wears is not an engagement ring.
Just ask the girl if she wants to fuck. Don't be coy; you're not Japanese.
Thanks Scott. You say it's your birthday, vidar? It's my birthday too.
resp:396 What kind of candles? Happy birthday, vidar.
It's Gareth's birthday. He's twenty today.
Thanks to a suggestion from mdw and a few days of muddling through manuals and tutorials, I'm now beginning to develop scripting skills in Tcl. This is REALLY going to ease my transition to OS X. :):)
Re # 408: The ring's meaning is "You ain't putting that in there unless we're married." It's not like I'm some teenager who sees women as sex toys.
I returned today from 3 days at Cub Scout camp with my son. Among other things, he got his first pocket knife at camp.
The Whittling Chip! Yah.
(sudden flashback to the Simpsons "junior campers" episode)
re resp:415: I saw one kid (from another pack) throwing his knife at trees or the ground as he was walking along. I stopped him and reminded him he wasn't supposed to throw his knife. "But it's a lock blade knife," he told me. "It's a throwing knife." I whipped out an extra Whittling Chip card I had, and showed him where it says he agreed never to throw a knife. The rules allowed me to take a corner from his Whittling Chip card at that point, but I didn't. He wasn't throwing it near anyone else. He obviously didn't know he was doing anything wrong, and was surprised I'd spoken to him about it. Anyway, anyone who knows boys or has been one knows darn well the kid is going to throw his knife. You cannot be a boy with a knife and not throw it sometimes. It'd be like logging into the UNIX command line, but never using the rm "-f" option. It can't be done. But as an adult Cub Scout leader, you have to uphold the rules of the Cub Scouts, so I did that by talking to the boy. Probably after I talked to him, he at least hid his knife throwing a little better.
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what is the rm"-f" option?
<DRIFT> The Boy Scouts of America (which includes the Cub Scouts) do not accept gay leaders. I don't think gay Cub Scouts are an issue; they've probably not thought about it yet.
The "-f" option is 'force' and overrides the absence of 'write' permission under certain circumstances. </DRIFT>
From !man rm:
-f, --force
Ignore nonexistent files and never prompt the user.
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IHB today is my parents' 37th wedding anniversary. IHB I need to get an 83% or better on my final to keep my "A" in American Lit. I don't think it'll be a problem. :)
Yes, the Cub Scouts now accept male den leaders.
John's den leader for next year is a guy. I was a den leader for John's brother one year, but was awful at it.
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bruce, man pages are your friend.
No, man pages are a system of documentation installed on Unix machines to ensure that no one but those who understand it already learn anything about a particular Unix binary. My understanding is that it was not easy to install bear traps in software, to keep users from familiarizing themselves with the operating system, and so man pages had to be developed instead. With AIX (IBM Unix), they are part of the development kit like the C compiler, further establishing limits on who they are for.
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NPL?
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*way* too close to home
I just decanted my cherry whiskey, and it is good! unfortunately, it only made a fifth and a half.
Cherry Whiskey? Give me bourbon anyday!
Dropped a couple more pounds, it appears.
what do you thnk I use to make my charry whiskey? The cheapest bourbon I can find.
Some wiring work at a local video company (filling in for other -thanks, Eric!) went well, got asked if I was interested in rebuilding a mobile rack in the near future.
resp:436 Me too. I have a nifty little scale that measures fat percentage as well as weight, and I've been losing fat, too =)
which video company?
re #434: You mean three-tenths?
I have some really nice neighbors. While I was agonizingly making my way the block between my apartment and the house we are building, sitting down every 50 feet, one of them came and asked if she should call the doctor. I explained it was a pulled muscle. She got me a walker. Two neighbors from across the street came to see if they could make the walker taller. I said not to bother. Another neighbor stopped to see if he could make it taller, and showed me his poison ivy. Another neighbor stopped to see why I was lying on the ground. And Jim made me a nice microwavable heat pad so I could get more than 15 minutes sleep at a time. There is one position I can sleep in. Last time I pulled a similar muscle I had to sit up all night. Boy am I lucky. Back to bed.
Re #439: How do you get a scale to do that? I'd love to be able to distinguish water weight from fat. Had a great time last night, watching the sky for Perseids.
Enjoyed a day at the San Francisco zoo with our 4-year-old granddaughter today. We hadn't seen her since she was a few months old.
Last night's sailing was fun. We went out just after sunset. The winds had steadied down and were crossing the lake, so we could sail back and forth along its length on easy reaches. The wind was out of the north, and the moon was in the south. Quite beautiful and peaceful. The few powerboats on the lake were moving slowly, so even the wakes weren't bad. Fun. Fun. Fun. :)
The boy's birthday party was a wild success, and he got some nifty presents.
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Just got back from wonderful weekend in Milwaukee with boy :) Jet skiing, rollerblading, swimming, going to the zoo with my friend Nicole that I haven't seen in *forever*, and finished off laughing to tears at "american wedding." We have decided that we must acquire a jetski. :)
yes, Sindi, why were you lying on the ground? (You didn't say more, so...) resp:443 Tanita makes scales with electrodes on the platform that measure the body fat that way. Unsure how accurate it is, but along with the weight reading and some tape measurements, I think you'd have a better indicator of real improvement (well, besides getting cholesterol and triglycerides checked)
R. 442: Alcohol addiction.
Finally got some sort of fancy collar onto my fancy chainmail shirt. Ren Fest starts this coming weekend - www.michrenfest.com for details.
I MADE CHAINMAIL ONE TIME!!!
Re #451 - one of the boy's birthday presents was a chainmail cat-o-nine :)
DID YOU MAKE IT< SARAH Z?!
polytarp's chain mail was quite good, actually.
Still floating on a happy cloud of memories after 16 hours at the Great Lakes Folk Festival this weekend. Notes to be entered into the music conference as soon as I have some time.
Re #454 - No need to shout... No, I did not make it. His friend made it for him after he saw us drooling over the chainmail cat-o-nines at Silver Leaf.
I wasn't shouting.
REALLY?
YES OVAl REally.
oKAY THEN.
IHB I went to my first tryout (the second of three sessions for this organization's recruiting) and was pretty much guaranteed a spot on the team I wanted. :) Tryout was fun too, and now I have that pleasantly (e.g., very slightly!) sore feeling from a good workout.
Almost done with the medical tests . . .Woo hoo!!!
Re #458 - Using all-caps is like shouting, and you used all-caps.
How is it like shouting? Do you pronouce the first letter of every sentence, and often some after, louder than you do the rest of the letters? You know, louder enough to be a shout?
What a yutz. It's a precedent. When Pavel Xerox and what's-his-face were working on the DEFCON project, they decided that text in caps was an emote for shouting. It's held true for the rest of the Internet ever since then. You're pretending you didn't have an inkling of an idea, right?
Well, I think it's a dangerous precedent: Just because some kerl said so, everything in caps is shouting? Kerl.
IHB most of my bedroom is unpacked, and the apartment is starting to feel like home.
I don't believe you.
The friends I'm staying with in Maine got some good news shortly after I arrived. Their son's mother turned herself in to the police after the story about her kidnapping him was covered on the local evening news, and his dad should soon be home from going to pick him up.
That's awesome. I'm happy because I'm getting organized. I spent an hour and a half last night winding yarn into balls to get things more cleared out.
IHB I just got an email from the office that someone signed for my spot in the co-op! Now I only have to pay rent on one house this fall! IAHB I just had a nice lunch with a friend I've known since middle school.
Testing new modem that just got here today. Seems to work great.
IHB I got a root canal today.
I went to the Lenawee County Fair with my son this evening and we had a fabulous time. My son's favorite ride was shaped like a flying saucer and spun the riders around the inside rapidly enough that you'd slide to the top of the flying saucer. It also pulled pretty well on my cheeks. I don't know what kind of force it came to, but we were told 34 mph and the ride was about 11 feet in radius. All of the rides seemed pretty fast to me for rides at a county fair. I hoped they were properly assembled and not too rusty. For their part, they did have very firmly enforced height requirements for all of the rides. My son did not get to ride on a couple of rides requiring riders to be 52" tall. I guess they were reasonably safe.
IHB I was able to buy a $50 bottle of perfume for $13 because all they had left was the tester. IHB school is getting underway. Wish my life would calm down a bit. IHB a cool band is coming back to town in October.
IHB I'm staying in town this weekend. Yes, I'm extremely grateful that I get to see the boy as often as I do, but it really really really really sucks living out of a suitcase for two months and only spending about 2.5 days at home before driving 400 miles. :-P It'll be nice to rest and finish unpacking.
IHB I'm going to see Iggy and The Stooges tonight.
And *now* IHB I got a root canal yesterday.
re 474: ??? Must've been some effective painkillers they gave you? re 477: Can he come visit you? IHB work is going well and I have momentum and energy to get things done. I'm cautiously optimistic about meeting timeline goals I set for myself-- which will be key to finishing my thesis in a timely fashion.
A root canal isn't the world's most pleasant experience, but it was worth it, considering the monster toothache I had beforehand. IHB I'm rid of it. Procedure was almost painless thanks to the anesthetic, and there have been no painful aftereffects.
Newfangled painkillers (as well as anti-swelling drugs) are great things. I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled last year and really felt no pain or discomfort after the fact....or during since I was sleeping like a baby...a baby on anethesia. The painkiller the doctor gave me was Toradol, a NSAID that the doc told me was many tines the painkilling of Morphine with none of the addictive or 'stoned/spaced-out' effects. I got an IV loading dose while out and then took it for a few days after surgery. Cool stuff.
I'm happy to be home in the USA. Travel is great for expanding the mind, but 7 weeks is a long time to be away, and I was by myself for the last three weeks.
Re #475:
If those numbers are correct, your kid did slightly over seven gravities.
If the ride lasted two minutes, he withstood it long enough to have reached
orbit.
I'm happy to have power back - almost exactly 24 hours after it went out. I'm also happy Grex is back up.
Some kids appear to achieve orbit on little more than sugared cereal.
I'm happy to have not lost any food when the power went out. Also happy to be moved into my new apartment.
I am glad Grex is back up, and once I found out about the blackout, I figured the downtime was connected to it.
IHB grex is back up, and because I got some interesting results yesterday.
Lynne - he didn't have a reliable car until now, but he can't visit because he's busy every weekend through the end of September. :-P So it's on me until October. IHB I've had a nice weekend to myself. I've needed "me" time since May.
re resp:484: Thanks, Drew! 7 Gs for a ride at the fair? That seems like a *lot*. It didn't last any 2 minutes at that speed, but I'm sure either of us could easily have handled it for 2 minutes.
I had Friday off due to the energy emergency, and used it and my time this morning to do a lot of cleaning in my apartment. Despite taking it easy (due to the heat) I've gotten a lot done, and it looks better than it has for quite some time. If my enthusiasm (or call it boredom if you prefer) holds out through tomorrow, I'll be tackling my son's room and will have had one of my most productive weekends ever.
IHB I spent a lovely weekend at the Classic Ragtime Festival in Indianapolis. This year I was conscripted to be lobby pianist at the Saturday night concert.
I have a suit! :) It's Ann Taylor, black, nice wool weave, single breasted two-button pantsuit--and the pants are comfortable, which is difficult to accomplish. I think my waist is disproportionately large compared to the model that most clothes designers use.
Well it is Ann Taylor.
IHB I went to Detroit, and didnt get mugged/carjacked. Of course, with what I drive, no one wants to. I had plans of going to the Woodward Dream Cruise. I went, of course, but could find no place to park for less than $30 bucks. Being ever the cheapskate I decided a day at Metro Beach was more in line. I hit Meijer for some ice, and they were the only store with ice. Then I headed for the beach via my nephews house. While I was there, it began raining very hard. So much for the beach. I decided then and there that Canada was a better plan. On the way, I decided to help out with some weather spotting, so I pulled over, and found that I was a litte too far over. I wound up stuck in a ditch. My Canada plans seemed in jeopardy. I used my radio to rustle up some help, and I found 2 people with SUV's that were willing to come pull my Toyota out of the ditch. But before they could arrive, several passing motorists stopped and helped. I was rescuse from the jaws of the ditch and when I offered payment, they just said that they were there to help. No charge. I was impressed. I then proceeded to the tunnel. Remembering the last encounter with the Canada Customs, I had all my significant documentation ready, including birth cert, ham license, and note from my mommy. ;) Passing the border was very easy, unlike last time. I ate dinner at a very nice Italian place, Went to Wal Mart, and found some unusual canadian things, took some nice nite shots of the Detroit Skyline and returned to the US without a hassle. When the guard asked what I had bought in Canada, I produced my reciepts, and my docs. He complimented me for being efficient, and didnt mention that my car could use some tidying up. I'm almost up for another visit. I had a very nice weekend.
It's great that while it rains in Michigan it doesn't rain in Canada. 8^}
Getting broadband Internet on Friday. Hey, it's Comcast and it's cable - do I need to buy a cable modem? Would I save money if I bought my own?
Not really happy, but amused: the real-estate channel uses a Windows machine for the display. We know this, because it is currently low on virtual memory. :)
IHB I've just finished reading Learning Perl and school starts next week. An I heared the IT classes got all new equipment :))
A high school friend whom I hadn't seen all summer returned from a two-week vacation to find my email about leaving shortly, called me, & asked if i wanted to go for a drive. While I was waiting for her, got a call from Dan about our plans changing to give us an extra day in Ann Arbor, so we were able to really go all out -- we drove through Dixboro, then up past Whitmore Lake and through Pinkney to Hell, then down through Dexter past Ann Arbor and Saline almost to Bridgewater, then out almost to Manchester, then up 52 to Scio Church and back to Ann Arbor, over two and a half hours of bugs popping on the windshield. Had a couple close calls, but managed to avoid killing any mammals.
Re #498 - most people just rent their modem through the cable company. Kalamazoo falls under Charter's regime, and the modem rental is $5/month. I'm pretty sure Comcast charges similar rates. IHB my new dress is turning out beautifully. This vacation-at-home is doing wonders for my well-being. :)
Re resp:499 - Heh. I noticed that too.
Re 502: Thanks, and the Comcast web page say $3/mo. Seems about right given my long-term plans to leave. My dial-up account ran out yesterday, but after a bit of scraping around this morning I found a copy of "cu" so I could Grex.
Hmmm, my modem is free, however I hve to pay $5 a month for my cable box for my TV
I had to pay up front for my DSL modem.
YEah, when I had DSL I had to pay $299 for the DSL router/modem/whatever but I got a $299 credit for it a month later, and now we rent a cable modem for $3 or $3.95 a month, and I think that's a fair deal esp. since they've had to replace it a couple times.
My "birdcage web japanese" weave for the next chainmail shirt will actually work! <evil laughter>
HEY SCOTT DRAW US AN ASCII DIAGRAM
IHB- after a couple weeks of agonizing pain- I have finally had all four of my wisdom teeth extracted (procedure was completed about an hour ago). Just a bit of local and some nitrous and I was rather entertained by the process. It doesn't hurt yet... but I'm prepared for when it does. Also, IHB the beau is coming down later to take care of me, and my roomie and everyone is being really wonderful about this.
THER"S AN ITEM ABOUT NITROUS AT THE DENTIST.
Anney - Ice cream. Lots of ice cream. :)
Vodka and Percodan.
Hmmm. I just got some emails from a couple of guys I went to Germany with when I was 14. It was weird because I was just thinking about that trip recently. Anyhow, they are trying to get the whole group together which is pretty cool. Also, my friend Shannon called me last night to let me know she is going to be in town this weekend. What do you know!
Finally got to install some new jacks in the Ark's mixer, which should fix the flaky-channel problem that's been going on for the last few months.
Will have to get some ice cream.. though I'm not sure how many stores have fully restockd after the blackout. In any case- pudding is good. :)
I'm happy because my DSL has finally been hooked up. Also, had a fun day yesterday. My 13-year-old nephew is in town, along with his best friend, and my sister and I took the two of them out in the boat over to Bostwick Inlet on nearby Gravina Island. Along the way we came across a pod of whales, one of whom was bold enough to allow us to approach. After watching the whales for a while we continued to the inlet, where we put down a couple of crab pots, then went back to the mouth of the inlet and started trolling. Caught a nicely sized silver and had enough keepers in the crab pots that everyone had all the crab and salmon they could eat. I'm liking Alaska..
I DON"t THINK SCOTT WANTS TO TALK TO Me
resp:510 Hmmm... I had my wisdom teeth out when I was 16 or so. They gave me painkillers, but I skipped them. I dunno if this would work for you, as you had them out so much later, but what I did was changed the gauze when needed, and remembered to ice my cheeks frequently and on a rotating basis. Oh, you were just talking about food you could eat? The vodka suggestion threw me.
IHB I'm putting the final hand-stitching touches on my dress, and it fits perfectly. IAHB I'm excited about my classes this semester. I went and picked up the books today.
Finally I understand the rather nonintuitive "profile" system in the Red Hat Linux (as used in Yellow Dog Linux for Macintosh hardware) network stuff. Turns out you make have to make many copies of each device and the profile switching only chooses which ones are active.
Nine more days till our cross-country roadtrip. :)
Re #521: Is that how it's supposed to work? That seems kind of screwy. I've had problems because I have both a wired network card and a wireless card. I don't (and physically can't) insert them both at once. RedHat wants to call them both eth0 and gets confused.
Hmm... on one of the device pages it kept putting the wireless card back to eth0, when it should be eth1. Still haven't figured out what the screen is trying to accomplish, but anyway it works for me regardless.
Got some very important things done today, and found a major error in stuff at work (not mine).
I've been taking reasonable long bike rides (maybe an hour, at fast speeds and on hills) lately - maybe I need to find that old bike computer just to see what kind of mileage I'm getting. I'm definitely stronger than I was back in the spring.
I used to have a bike computer, but it broke. These days I just throw my GPS unit into my rack bag.
Bike computers are pretty cheap, though.
They are, but I already had the GPS. And I'm not so interested in my speed while I'm riding as I am the distance I travelled and my average speed when I'm done.
I want a bike computer that runs Linux...;-)
IHB I finally experimented with the new scanner/printer... and scanned, filed and emailed some pictures to munkey. May the fashion gods have pity on me...
IHB I skipped out of work yesterday and hit the beach. Mmmm. Swimming. :)
I have broadband! And I managed to get my wireless/router/firewall working, too.
IAHB I drove State Street from Washington to South U this afternoon. I wanted to drive North U to State Street, but I didn't have the time to go that far out of my way.
im the manager of a gym, and a bunch of my members brought me presents and balloons for my birthday!!!! that was so nice!
Not happy so much as amused, but I got my first bounce message from a SoBig today. Gee, what would the Internet be without Microsoft, to be the bad example for us all? ;-)
Your first one? How'd you get off so easily. I've received bunches of them.
Re. #530: Hey, why not? Linux is getting embedded in all kinds of stuff.
Got a really nice workout on my bike tonight.
Went to the in-laws fam reunion today-- went a little better than I thought. No swimming after all (it was too cold for the beach and the heated pool cost about $4), food was marginal, but the people were pretty cool and easy to warm up to. I'm rather reserved, and deep down, I'm still rather shy, so I wasn't looking forward to being introduced to a lot of strange people... especially as my wife has had a habit of abruptly doing so. (She's not terribly shy.)
I haven't gotten any bounced sobig messages yet. I feel left out! IHB I spent most of yesterday sleeping and feel *much* better.
My kneecap got an affectionate hug from a very young, little girl who recognized that I am Santa Claus. Her father was grateful that I played the part for her. She's a good girl, of course, and she will get lots of presents.
Took the poor bike light apart, and found that all its little spring contacts had been bent out of shape by the impact and weren't letting juice flow. Bent them back and it worked! The dings add character. ;-) Got some proper chain lube and it really made a difference too. Was tossing out the trash tonight and found a nearly-new set of off-road mountain bike tires in the dumpster. The mold lines were still visible! I can't believe what my neighbors pitch. They were the same type I used to have before, so I snagged 'em. At least my neighbors are recycling. Maybe it was the bottled water everyone was drinking, but I see overflowing recycle bins where they used to be empty. This is a good thing.
Re #543: Good for you. I've always been of the opinion that a broken item that's been creatively patched has more class than a new one. ;>
IHB I had a decent weekend watching the boy's band play at two shows, and I'm here through Labor Day. Yay.
Living in a frat house doesn't seem to be turning out as badly as I'd thought it might. There are about a dozen of us transfers that all got stuck on a floor of a fraternity (Delta Sigma Delta, a pre-dentistry majors' frat) together. the few of the others i've met are pretty cool. as far as i know, i haven't seen any of the frat guys yet, but there aren't very many of them. among the things we lack, however, are a lounge. our hall meeting tonight is on the plaza in front of the building, on the first day all week that it's actually cooler *inside* the building (which isn't air-conditioned) than outside. happy nevertheless.
Got our phone and thus our internet back tonight. Originally thought we were qa part of the general cable outage from the Broadway bridge cable cut, but a tech showed upa nd checked the line tonight and said it was fine, that it must be a brokeen wire in the house that would cost$100 to fix. But when we tried it it worked fine.
It's called wireless internet, D00D
No we do not have wireless. We're Luddites and still use a modem and a phone line. If I could, I'd go back to the days of text-only internet browsing that I did at home until maybe the year 2000. (I have never been a big fan of all the bells and whistles.) Happy happy that I have home internet access back! And that Dr. Krasnoff managed to fix my broken tooth w/out any major problems.
You can go text only - just log on to grex and use lynx
re 546:
There is a training video about frat house living out today
at most stores. It even features a Delta house.
I do in fact do that half the time. But at work I need to see other stuff. Grin.
(FWIW, our wireless access point went out with the power. As did our ISDN adapter. Both came back, of course, after the power was restored, but not as quickly as we would have liked; we had power for twelve to twenty-four hours before the ISDN line came back up.)
IHB I attended a rally here in nyc tonight for presidential candidate Howard Dean, a physician who was formerly governor of Vermont. I got to meet him afterwards and he comes across as a genuinely decent person. Dean's candor is refreshing, and he is unapologetic in his bashing of Bush and vowing to repeal Bush's tax cuts to pay for universal health care. The event, at Bryant Park behind the main branch of the New York public library, was well organized. There were tables all around the park with laptop computers linked to the campaign's homepage, so people attending the rally could sign up online. In fact, a fair number of people I talked to there said they found out about the rally via the homepage or email, not because of any local publicity. The Dean campaign seems to have come a long way via online organizing. There were several thousand people at the rally, and afterwards, when the event had ended, Dean hung around for a while and some of us got to talk to him before he left. He mentioned that he's a native of New York City, born and raised on the upper east side, just up the road from the site of the rally. I was also impressed because he made a point of having a local college student introduce him, a girl from Vermont who proudly proclaimed as to how she was raised by two mothers, i.e. she has lesbian parents, and she supports Dean because as governor of her home state, he signed the bill legalizing civil unions of gay couples. This gave formal sanction to her parents relationship, and Dean says he supports and will push for a national law conferring the legal benefits of marriage for gay couples. There was a lot of energy and enthusiasm evident for Dean. I'm undecided between him and Kerry, but I like everything I've seen of Dr. Dean so far, and he was candid with his answers to questions, seems to be an excellent public speaker, and has a firm handshake which is always a good sign.
I like Dean, but I think Kerry will be more likely to win if he's nominated. For one thing, he has a real military record that would stand up well against Bush's questionable record and Cheney's nonexistant one. That takes away one of the Republicans' strong issues.
CLARK.
Uh, repealing Bush's tax cuts will PAY for national health care? I don't think that's really what Dean is proposing, is it? It might help, but paying for national health care is a whole lot more expensive than that. Just a thought. Every time I start getting annoyed at how the media will overhype something like the DC sniper, Kobe Bryant, or the New York side of the blackout, I am reminded that almost anything is better than the incessant politics available as an alternative.
Re #556: Yeah, that'd be interesting.
I have said it once, I will say it a thousand times: Kerry can win because has the THE HAIR(tm) ;) Seriously though, I havent yet formed an opinion about which Dem I like. I think I prefer Dean over Kerry though.
IHB I'm back in love with the math deparment at Holt High School, where I am student teaching. Almost every high school math department has one or two really good teachers... smart teachers with strong content knowledge who really care about students and the way they teach them... this math department has several. My cooperating teacher is one of them. We line up philosophically much more than I did with my mentor teacher in Chicago, although she was certainly one of the better ones in the program. Today I had an interesting first. I put my last name up in bubble letters in a window next to the door of our new classroom. It was strange and invigorating. We get kids on Tuesday. Aieee!
I have to do some research on firewalling and such to be secure, but I should have real ISP service in use pretty soon.
Re #560 - good luck. That sounds exciting. I can't wait to teach. :) IHB the boy and I had something of a fight right before bed last night, but it was resolved this morning. Yay.
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Only 25.5 hours of Hell left before I get my vacation.
latest poll in new hampshire (zogby) released yesterday: Howard Dean 38% John Kerry 17% Dick Gephardt 6% Joe Lieberman 6% Dean is clearly the front runner now. Dark horse candidate may be entering though. Today's New York Times says four star general Wesley Clark is likely to enter in a couple of weeks. General Clark is an outspoken critic of Bush's foreign policy. It can't hurt the Democratic party to have a four star general in the debate bashing Bush '.
*crosses fingers*
In California, visiting my sister. And it's nice and cool here, at least in Berkely this morning.
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there are 3 e's in Berkeley
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IHB I spent the evening dying my friend's hair, grilling with her and other friends, and playing Soul Calibur II with the boy. IAHB I got to do laundry for free. This is a big deal to me. :) I HATE going to the laundromat.
I'm about halfway through the Halloween 9 paper, and I am finding the deconstruction of SCO's legalese very amusing.
IHB I will be taking a fair maiden to the Renassaince Faire later today.
Fair? For some reason, I'd guess a brunette.
with hirsute quality
IHB I had a quality Saturday night last night. Spent it across the river on the Jersey side, at Giants Stadium, watching Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform live. Bruce is of course New Jersey's favorite son, he lives right near the Meadowlands, so this was literally a home field show for him. Stadium shows are becoming a rarity in this day and age. These days you have acts who have to co- headline just to sell 12,000 seat arenas. Stadium shows are fast becoming something reserved for multi-act festivals. This was the 9th of 10 shows Bruce has done at Giants Stadium, a facility that seats 80,000, and all are sellouts. And not only was this not a co-headline tour, or a festival, but Bruce was as usual his own opening act. A three hour plus show, with no smoke or pyrotechnics, or video montages, or performers disappearing for long periods of time for costume changes. Just a good old fashioned rock and roll show, where the band comes to play, and do nothing BUT play. Pretty refreshing! Bruce played a lot of songs, both old and new, and showed the special chemistry he has with the E Street Band. Rare it is to see a band playing that knows each other so well. These days bands are too often artificially created, put together by PR flacks and talent agents sorting through head shots, with the songs written by professional pop "songwriters" hired by the studios. When Bruce was doing "Rosalita", with this big grin on his face, and jamming to Clarence Clemmons' sax solo, you see the affection they have for each other and can sense the fact that they were flashing back to days when they were playing in nearby Jersey bars years ago and nobody had ever heard of them. When you see Bruce and his band, you are seeing something real, and authentic, and sadly, you don't see that much anymore. The whole music business is corrupted now, and the artists are corrupted, and most of what you get is packaged and processed, and decidely IMO *not* real. This was a great concert. I have never seen a bad Bruce show, he is a hell of a live performer. He did great old hits like Glory Days (with Bruce and Little Steven VanZandt doing an extended guitar jam), Dancing in the Dark, Badlands, Rosalita, Candy's Room, and great new songs like The Rising, Waiting on a Sunny Day, Mary's Place, and others. A special thrill was when one of my favorite singers, Emmylou Harris, came on stage and a beautiful duet of Bruce's song "Across the Border" (which she also sings on her new album btw) Bruce also doesn't hide his political feelings, such as making pretty pointed negative comments about the Iraq war and our troops continued presence there. which he made to lead into the terrific song, "Land of Hope and Dreams" Also, as I've seen at virtually all Bruce's shows that I've been to, he had reprentatives of his favorite causes, the local homeless organizations and foodbanks, as well as Amnesty International, in and around the building collecting money, and he made pitches for them. A wonderful show, but when you left the building, you couldn't help but feel a little sadness mixed with the adrenalin high. Because, as I said, IMO rock and roll is losing its authenticity, the new performers are packaged and processed, and the music is given to them as opposed to being the product of authentic struggle and life experience. Bruce and his bandmates are in their fifties now. When they stop performing, and they will at some point probably not too far off, they won't be replaced. Acts don't grow that naturally anymore. Its all artificial now. So you think, ten or twenty years from now, will you or your kids be able to go to a rock and roll show and have the experience be as real as this was? Answer-- probably not. Bruce is a dinosaur now in the industry, the consummate rock performer. A dying breed, nearing extinction. So when you see him, or others like him, performing live, you have to savor the moment-- as I did-- knowing those moments are soon not to come again.
"authentic struggle and life experience"
Oh yea. Like learning to play the guitar.
You've got to give Bruce credit, he keeps
trying anyway.
Richard, sometimes I wonder if you missed your calling to work in PR. Half the time you write something, it comes off sounding like a press release or advertising copy. :)
RE#577 -- I've always had a dim view of Bruce's guitar playing, but on the recent VH1 special about Warren Zevon it showed him playing a guitar solo on the record and I have to say I was surprised and impressed. He really can play something interesting. I don't know if he could always do that, but se can now. ^^he
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Although it may seem odd, IHB I got rejected yesterday.
#577...Bruce is a terrific guitar player, he did some good solos at the concert. Granted he is not as good as Nils Lofgren, but who is. In fact Bruce first came to prominence in New Jersey clubs as a guitarist, not as a singer. He often sat in on club gigs backing up Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, the one time house band at the now famous Stone Pony club, and Bruce was before being "discovered", lead guitarist for several long forgotten Jersey bar bands...
Richard, that is sad. Of course, that's why I still dig folk music, where the performers/performances haven't yet gotten corrupted by being popular. :-) And I am glad to hear that you enjoyed the show.
Huh. I've never really heard a good Springsteen guitar solo - great arranged parts, but leads generally sucked.
re 576,
Hey ricard, how about re-entering that as an item in the music.cf?
Music could use a little something different. Not a bad idea.
re #519- actually, after the first day I was told not to use ice packs but to use heated things (my solution, putting a damp washcloth in the microwave for a few, then putting it in a Ziplock bag and putting that on my cheeks). This worked out really well. IHB- the beau and I have been together for almost a year (a year as of Oct 11)- and not only have we never had anything even resembling a fight (debates on ideas don't count) everything just keeps getting better and better. :) IAHB- while I'm a temp- I am employed. I like the people I work with and the work itself isn't bad. Not my dream job- but it will do until I figure out what my dream job is.
Wow, nice cool weather finally, although I missed a few cool days by being in California. Got a cool pair of comfortable shoes at an outlet mall, too.
IHB there is now a meeting of the electric sports car and the
lithium-ion battery: http://www.acpropulsion.com/ has details.
("Improvements in acceleration" in a car that already out-ran
a Ferrari! And upwards of 270 miles range!)
From the FAQ: "It will be priced between a Porsche and a Ferrari." Heh. It doesn't really matter; I'm not going to be in the market for an electric car until someone invents a wireless extension cord. I think my apartment complex would frown on me running a power wire off my balcony and across the parking lot.
I had a good birthday on Wed, and people are still doing birthday things. This is nice.
You could always buy a gasoline or diesel generator to park next to it. ;)
IAHB night sailing was (mostly) fun. Trying to beat to the dock wasn't so much fun, because the wind kept shifting and dying, but other than that 'twas quite nice.
IAH because it took me ONLY all day Saturday to upgrade an iMac from OS 8.6 to 9.2.2.
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Re #590:
Tesla was working on something of the sort...
In the apartment I was living in before I moved into a house, it would
have been possible to accommodate an electric car. The building was a
single-floor four unit type built on a corner in a neighborhood of mostly
single-family houses. A driveway ran from one street, behind the building,
to the other street, with four parallel parking spots marked one outside each
apartment's kitchen window. (And the other three tenants almost never used
that parking, preferring to park in the street so as to be right outside the
door.) It would be easy in that building to run an extension cord from a
vehicle into the kitchen window (might have to loosen a screen, maybe) to
whatever plug would be convenient, without the cord even being visible let
alone interfering with anything.
When I moved recently, I looked for such a place. But they seem not to
exist in the location I was after. About the only thing listed were apartments
in complexes of multi-story building with parking spaces some distance from
their respective apartments. I do have a docking port (and am satisifed with
its location after all), and they run power to it as at the middle of each
pair of spaces there is a lightbulb which comes on at night. I doubt one could
get away with tapping power, though. Maybe some day apartment carports will
feature electric car charging hookups...
Anyway I plan to start the next search a few months early.
Last time I lived in an apartment complex, one guy had an extension cable running out his window, off his 2nd story porch, and over to the nearest parking spot. It powered the trickle charger on his bass boat.
Montreal is the coolest city ever.
I got to see my friend Michael Black marry a really awesome woman named Raina on Saturday. It is really nice when someone you love marries someone who is wonderful.
I'm happy because I am nearly 3 weeks post-op from gastric bypass surgery and I'm feeling awesome. I haven't been sick, I haven't had any bad side-effects, and I'm starting to notice some significant weight loss. Now we really see just how like m-net grex is.
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I'm not going to say anything.
I'm home. Daily showers, choice of footwear, clean laundry, internet access whenever I feel like it. It's like a vacation from my vacation.
resp:600 that is good news. I had my sleep study scheduled, finally. I can't wait.
Speaking of sleep...got 14 hours last night. And only woke up because the phone ringer was set on "high" at 9 this morning.
IHB I really like my new doctor. He came into the room ten minutes before my scheduled appointment time, and he answered my questions in detail without patronizing me or talking down to me. He was really friendly, as well. I'm pleased.
Matt Watroba is going to open for me at Green Wood this Friday, and emcee.
re606: back in the old days you could have paid him with some food...like cat sausage or something.
Cool about Matt! Maybe I'll be able to come.
Re #608 - wow... that's so cool... you'd think that insult/joke would be getting old by now. Guess not.
nope! :P
IAHB Zingerman's Roadhouse will be opening RSN.
Started rebuilding my old reliable computer yesterday, and found a nice big hard disk inside. Old stuff, and I'd forgotten I had it. Still big enough for modern OS installs!
5.25" or 8"?
14Gb! Forgot I'd stashed that puppy in there in case I wanted to boot Win98 or Caldera 2.4, my previous main operating systems.
Katie, what time is your concert this Friday?
A love interest... though I'm not totally certain how I feel about him yet.
I found it on the Internet; Katie's concert is this Friday, September 12, 8:00 at Green Wood Coffee House.
IHB I'm feeling great, I am down 30lbs. from 3 weeks ago, my doctor is happy with my progress and the fatigue is starting to lessen. I'm extremely happy because I'm seeing the new man in two weeks.
Wow... that's great, Brooke! :) IHB I've been eating a lot better (read: the way I was raised), and I already have lots more energy, and the depression is lifting. This is way cool. I'm hoping to lose weight since I've also increased my activity, but right now I'm just happy to get rid of the lethargy and depression. :)
IHB I'm apparently not dead. (Comcast disconnected me briefly today due to "death of subscriber.") I have since been reconnected [resurrected?].
Eric, congratulations on your recovery. (-:
IHB- the Beau, Roomie and I are planning to go see Once Upon a Time in Mexico tomorrow (along with some other people possibly.) IAHB- the job is going well. Not much of a brain challenge, but it's all right, and I like my co-workers.
IHB I have a new hunny.
That's awesome, void!
I have a new client. :) More gig potential.
I just finished a letter to the American Civil Liberties Union chastising them. I included a nice check. (I told them to quit filling up my mailbox, they're preaching to the choir.)
Things are pretty much together, except that whole moving part. I have eight days to get that under some kind of control. I can tell it's going to be last minute. ;)
IHB I get a weekend of almost relaxation, a Wine Expo to enjoy on Thursday, and a Test the day after. IAHB I have rediscovered that 1. I still like to swim, 2. I still can swim, 3. swimming caps help prevent that shitzo dog look with the hair while you are performing the front crawl.
I got my touchpad disabled. Now my typing is faster and I don't have to keep moving my mouse around, and deleting stuff from where it's not supposed to be.
IHB after only a week of eating better and exercising thirty minutes per day, I feel exponentially better, and 75% of my depression is lifting. I talked to my psychiatrist about it, and she said that quite a few people who suffer from clinical depression can avoid mood drugs if they change their eating and exercise habits. :) IAHB at this rate, I'll be my old size (12) by Christmas. :)
IHB subgroup went smoothly and is now *over*. A couple good suggestions, new ideas, and the right to spend the evening at a bookstore with a large frothy coffee-based drink--all mine! :)
IHB today wasn't as shitty as yesterday was.
did you buy a plongeur?
maiwee
I'm happy because I am now on vacation. We leave for Washington DC tomorrow morning.
IAHB Michigan played well today. However, I do think Mr. Carr could have sent in the second team a bit earlier than he did.
Oh puh-leeze. Poor little ole ND got its butt whipped because they stank up the place, totally disgracefully, not because UM ran up the score.
Didn't say UM did run up the score. Had they wanted to, the score would have been MUCH higher. Still, the second team could have come out at least a series earlier than they did.
Actually, they couldn't. Notre Dame just came back from a 19-point shutout deficit in the second half last week, and the last series the major starters played started with Michigan up 24-0 in the third quarter. Northing wrong with making sure. Nothing wrong at all. I've seen comebacks a lot more shocking than that. Michigan goes to Oregon next week, and I won't be watching. I'll be busy. In fact, I'll be busy all week. It's nice, though.
That was the series I was thinking of, too. The excuse I made at the time was that that series started deep in UM territory. Glad ot know there was a better reason. Thanks, senna. :)
It was also only halfway through the third quarter at the time. Fortunately, the drive took more than a sixth of the entire game. :) I actually am quite happy that I've been able to make arrangements for a nice evening in Denver two weeks from yesterday. I'm really looking forward to being able to relax.
IHB I had a nice weekend, and I spent most of today watching football.
Happy, but a little shellshocked--one of my friends is expecting. In my ueber-career-oriented circles, this will be the first baby--assuming all goes well <fingers crossed>
I'm happy that I got my recording of my piano playing to work. Here's the first piece I recorded (and the only piece ) - http://www.themynx.com/morningmood.mid
IHB- the weekend was good, very hectic, but good. Didn't get to see the movie, but that's okay. Had much fun bumming around Barnes & Noble with the beau looking at all kinds of books and getting good ideas for future presents. Also, watched both U of M and MSU football, and was pleased by both results. <grins> I didn't know about U of M player Chris Perry, but I'm more than willing to adopt him as my cousin. :)
IHB I finally got the guestbook on my site up and running. Coded it in php after having to learn the language from scratch (The flow is not too different from ASP, so it wasn't too hard. A little more php programming, and I can put it on my resume ;)
FYI, if you already know PHP, Perl is easy to learn, and vice versa. The two languages are more alike than they are different.
I have been meaning to pick up Perl someday, maybe my next project.
If you do, put the extra work into understanding how hashes work, and make every effort to learn to use regex's. Those two features as implemented in Perl are well done and easy to use once you understand them. Well, perhaps I exaggerate how easy regexs are, but if you can figure it out it offers some amazing shortcuts.
IHB the jeans that were formerly tight enough to eviscerate me when attempting to tie my shoes are now much comfier. I don't even have to inhale to button them. :) Four sizes to go... heh...
In my continuing effort to learn php, i have coded the gallery pages of my site in php. Now I just have two pages irrespective of the number of pictures i have, unlike with plain html where I had already run up to 100+ pages for my pictures alone.
IHB my mother and I made it through another year. Yesterday was her 57th birthday, and today's my 27th. Not bad for a couple of feisty women. NOw, I have to jump on the slimming bandwagon and trim a few pounds. My size 10-12 clothing is feeling lonely.
Many happy returns! :)
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR, Matey!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday, syl!
re 655: shoot, that was today!
It's after midnight (actually, well after midnight). Thus, I'm getting married today. I'll be out of touch for a while. Things have gone smoothly, though.
<boggle>
So, who's going to be the wedding feast? ;)
IHB There are many attractive single females taking tango lessons with the Michigan Argentine Tango Club. Just wish I knew whom I wanted to get to know better.
You have to get to know somebody better to know if you want to get to know them better.
Or you can just base the decision on boob size
okay then.
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Congrats, Senna. :) Sarah, what are you doing to be shrinking like you say (not that I don't believe you; I just can't see you!). IHB things are going all right with the new guy, though there's some issues that may bar him from being a permanent thing. We'll see. IHB I got these cool new glasses. Very retro looking. So retro that they are almost like the ones my mom wore when she married my dad... in 1963. IHB I have a steady paycheck now and can pay my bills.
Oh, and IHB I got NEW Old Navy jeans at a thrift store for $5. And some shirts for $3 each. I love thrift stores!
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agreed - me too.
Re # 664: I'm well past that overabundant testosterone phase of life. Re # 666: Lose 1d% XP for grammatical error. :-)
Trish - I stopped eating like a pig 24 hours a day and started excersizing again.
re #666: I like tango more than salsa at the moment, mainly because I'm not that good a latin dancer. I do well enough at the slower-paced ones like rhumba and chacha where I have time to think and plan ahead, but I don't have the steps internalized enough to do them at salsa tempos. Tango and other smooth dances like waltz present a different kind of challenge, especially argentine tango styles, that I find more interesting.
You have several choices: