Not if you're me. The only thing I really miss about SoCal is the weather. I just looked outside and it's snowing. Bleh. I'll take my White Christmases safely inside the tv screen, thank you very much. Fortunately I don't really have to be out and about tomorrow...I'm still on vacation, and I was planning on beginning my ritual super-thorough New Year's cleaning of the house tomorrow anyway. Maybe I'll pop The Man Who Came To Dinner in the ole DVD player tomorrow, too. I was supposed to go pick up more prescription cat food tomorrow, but I've still got a little left if it turns out to be a bad idea. At the moment I can't tell whether it's going to pile up, or just be a dusting. I just checked and the prediction is less than an inch... I hope so.
Earlier this week I was afraid that my jukebox had died, since it was unable to power on, and displayed an alarming sounding message about a hardware failure. Since I knew that I really wanted to have music for the drive out to P-burgh and back (once you're out of range of my hometown stations, it's nothing but country), I thought that I might have to replace it with something, perhaps an iPod. The jukebox is bulky and slow to start, but as long as it worked it didn't seem worth replacing. But if it was toast... on the other hand, I didn't really want to shell out the money, or figure out how to deal with Apple's preferred format.
But I went to the website, looked at the FAQ, and there was the explanation: you get this message when the rechargable battery is dead. So, a quick trip to Nerd Shack and it was back in operation. So yay for FAQs, and boo for unfriendly error messages.
Ah, the magic of internet radio. Listening to KKJZ, the UC Long Beach Jazz station, which was KLON back when I was living there. The only time I ever switched from that station was during their pledge drives, when it seemed like the music/begging ratio was about 50-50. (I gave, but I didn't feel compelled to listen to them plead.)
200 fucking comment spams waiting for me when I got back. None of them were displayed even for a moment, thanks to MT Blacklist, so the spammers got nothing for their efforts, but it still took me four clicks per spam to clean them out of the database and delete the mail. To help me get through it I entertained bloody fantasies: a particular favorite was one lash of the cat-o-nine-tails for each piece of spam a spammer sent.
I just got back from visiting Job in P-burgh over Xmas. We had the traditional atheist Jewish Xmas: we went out for Chinese. I had a really great time, as usual, talking 'til the wee hours of the morning about all kinds of things: politics, philosophy, mathematics, personal gossip, watching magic DVDs and discussing theory and practice. Also as usual, his life is full of events in dizzying profusion. Basically, I suppose it boils down to his professional life is this amazing academic dream career that makes me feel like I've pretty much wasted mine, while his personal life and particularly health leave me with the strongest "there but for the Grace of God" feeling that this atheist has ever experienced. Also as usual, I came away with some really neat logical puzzles, which I'll blog about elsewhere.
Because I was leery of doing the six+ hour drive from P-burgh to my home on the day after Xmas, because of the traffic that I might encounter, I ended up starting out at about 1:30 AM (after a couple hour nap). I like driving at night, having gotten used to it because of my ridiculous commute in SoCal, and I've never ever seen the highway as empty as when cruising along at 3 AM December 26th. I stopped at more or less every other service plaza to stretch my legs, re-fuel or get something to drink, etc. and I was careful to keep shifting my focal point around to keep from getting hypnotized by the road. I had my little jukebox next to me, shuffling randomly through my entire collection of Rock. Good driving music: George Thoroughgood, Little Richard, The Who, The Kinks, up-tempo Robyn Hitchcock, Talking Heads, The Coasters. Bad driving music: David Bowie's Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold the World albums, down-tempo Robyn Hitchcock, the Beatles (nowadays I find the Beatles soporific even at the best of times).
I had one irritating moment, when I realized that the exit that my yahoo maps directions told me to get off at on the return trip no longer existed because of construction. If I had known that I could have gotten off an exit earlier and had no trouble, although it would have been a little longer. Luckily, I'm finally familiar enough with the highways around here to get off at the next exit and find my way home with only one clue from the tollbooth guy (I needed to know whether to head North or South on 476). It's only taken about 5 years. Of course, since I hardly ever take the highway, that's probably only been about 10 trips over that stretch of road.
I got home around 6:40 AM, and boy was my cat happy to see me. I took another nap, and now I'm here in Borders, sipping my chai and blogging away.
Well, here I am blogging from Borders, using the TMobile hotspot account that I got with my new cell phone, and it's pretty sweet. One thing, though, is that next time I've got to bring my headphones, so I don't have to listen to the pompous ass next to me declaiming to his aged companion about how the British royal family and the CIA assassinated Diana and Paul Wellstone. Every other sentence out of his mouth is "You understand, Tom. You know that." And the Zionists, can't forget the Zionists. Oy gevalt.
Can't get a satisfactory picture, but I haven't given up quite yet. I still haven't tried combining flash with lighting, more natural light (which means trying while I'm on vacation next week, since I'm not home while it's light out in the winter), or using a film camera instead of digital. I could also try a better digital camera, since mine is pretty old as digital cameras go and the equivalent model to the one I have now has a macro focus range of 2 inches (down from six). But I'm not planning on spending money on that until a) I run out of other options, and b) I figure out what's going on with my job after the holidays when they're supposed to have their big announcement about being bought out by Engulf and Devour. On the plus side, posing them has proved easier than I thought it would be, and if I could just get the pics less dim I'd be happy with the results.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to climb the learning curve of the photoshopette software and my graphics tablet. Progress is being made, but boy howdy this would be so much simpler if I wasn't such a perfectionist. I'd accomplish so much more, in just about everything really, if I were more willing to just slap it together and put it out there, then move on to the next thing. Don't look back. Instead, even when I work on it, I end up procrastinating in effect if not in effort, by doing it over and over...tweaking here, tweaking there. That's why I'm a bit surprised that I was able to pose the little buggers in a fashion that I thought was adequate. Of course, maybe if the lighting wasn't such a bugger, I'd suddenly discover/invent flaws in the arrangement...but I think I'd be able to bear what I've done.
Well, Chai Lattes for two, with A, a woman who answered my ad. She seems nice enough, but not a patch on jk as far as interests/general level of wittiness. Of course, unlike jk, she's definitely looking for companionship. jk is, maybe, at least she sent me a link to her yahoo personals ad, but she asked me for advice on it, which strikes me as a very bad sign unless she's just being coy. So I'm confused. Big surprise there.
I just swapped my cell-phone service. I now have fewer minutes per month (yet still about ten times what I ever used), but for the same price I was paying I get unlimited use of T-Mobile hotspots for wireless internet with my powerbook. Since almost all the local places that offer wireless do it via T-Mobile, I'm pretty happy. I expect to be hanging out in Borders even more on the weekends now. Hey, it gets me out of the house at least.
jk and I continue to find additional points of common interest, which is fun. My dad continues to be weird, which is less so. Apparently, because I hadn't actually mentioned talking to her to my dad the one time we talked in the past couple of days (a quick conversation about whether he had sent me a package that Fedex was telling me it couldn't deliver), he left a rambling message on jk's voicemail, worrying that I saw him as a rival for her attention. We both thought this was a really bizarre thing for him to say (another point in common!), and I promised her that I'd try and convince my dad that there isn't any problem. Well, at least convince him that isn't a problem; obviously he has some sort of problem, even if it's just him getting old and his self-censorship modules slipping their gears.
I hadn't noticed, but I went to lunch with my coworker and he did. I have no idea why...maybe the CPAP thing is starting to make a difference?
Can a song in my heart be far behind?
I just took the Yahoo Personals personality test, and part of it was reading exchanges (often arguments) between the man and the woman and rating the goodness/badness of the man's potential responses. According to them, I'm very good at this, almost always picking the response recommended by their "relationship experts". I do have a tendency, predictable to those that know me, to give in too quickly for the sake of harmony, but otherwise I'm way far out there at the end of the scale compared to most men. To bad this talent is of no practical application.
Now I know how Goethe felt. Except for the dying part.
It seems like no matter what I do, the shot are underlit. I've got bulbs practically touching the things--if I left them on, they's probably melt them into little puddles of plastic goo. But somehow once they're on the PC, they're dim and ugly. The focus is ok, though. I may have to experiment with manual settings....hm.
The sun has broken through, and suddenly, there's not a cloud in the sky. Or at least that tiny patch of sky visible from the coffee room.
I was woken up this morning by a horrible cramp in my calf. It probably only lasted a minute, but it felt like forever as I tried to a) breathe and b) somehow relax the stone-hard knot in the muscle. Eventually it stopped spasming on its own. It still aches a bit.
That does it, I've got to get back to the gym tonight, come Hell or high water. Actually, judging by the weather outside, it'll be high water.