Random Access

Thursday
A day. That’s about the best way to describe it: “It was ‘a day.'” We started having a problem with some shipping software yesterday. It basically told us all to “sod off” and then it basically ignored us and it’s server and just about everything else. So, I called the shipper’s tech support line today. I spent about a total of two hours on the phone, but got the problem resolved. Otherwise, the day was more or less uneventful. I even managed to slip out of work a little early.

Song of the Day

• Where Has Everybody Gone by the Pretenders
• Where’s My Thing by Rush
• …and of course, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego by Rockapella

NPR/PRI Stories
The only program that I got to listen to this afternoon was All Things Considered. There were a couple of rather interesting topics:

• Spending Bill Seeks to Limit the Pentagon’s TIA Plans
• Nebraska Senator Proposes a Bill to Pay College Football Players
  What in the Nine Hells?!? I listened to his argument and thought that he was a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

• And as if that wasn’t “interesting” enough, the next story was about cities and states levying a Jock Tax, which charges athletes from visiting teams a tax when they play in whatever place charges said tax. This one just about blew me away as much as the previous story.
• If you read the story at the link that I mention below (in Stray Toasters), you should also listen to the stories about A Jittery America Braces for Potential Attacks and Duct and Cover?

Stray Toasters

• Today was one of my sisters’ (the one in the Ukraine) 25th birthday. She turned 25. Wow. I can still remember seeing her at the hospital for the first time – she stuck her tongue out (I still find that amusing). And thus did the legendary relationship/rivalry begin…
• A hearty “Good try” goes out to and for attempting to guess the Jimmy Buffet song that I was thinking of last night. They both guessed Margaritaville, which was an admirable guess. But incorrect. The correct song was Boat Drinks.
• Jess and I surprised each other tonight: I came home early from work; she fixed a dinner with things from the local Honeybaked Ham store (and it was quite tasty).
• posted a link to this in her journal today. Interesting reading.
• I watched CSI for the second or third time tonight. I liked it; I may add it to my “Things to Watch” list. The fun thing was watching it “with” a friend of mine from home. I think that our airings were about 0:30 out of synch (since he’s two time zones away), but it was fun.

Tomorrow is Friday. Hallelujah. And maybe… just maybe… I won’t have to go in on Saturday. But, as the Sting song says: “Tomorrow, we’ll see…” For now, however, I am going to look up a few more things about setting up an Apache server on my Linux box and then call it a night.

Namaste.

Wednesday
Midweek and all’s well. There were a couple of minor “hiccups” tonight with a couple of the computers at work, but aside from that, it was a good day.

Song of the Day
How the Heard Behaves by Was (not Was), from “Are You Okay.”

Stray Toasters

• I’m not sure that it’s a good sign when you come home from work, ready for dinner… but have NO idea what you want to eat. When you look in the pantry, the cabinets and the refrigerator, nothing seems appealing. And the thought of going out for dinner – or even to the store for something to fix – seems equally out of the question.What to do? What to do? I opted for reheat’za. And, mercifully, it wasn’t bad.
• I got a message from , whom I haven’t seen since I left the USPS. The message wasn’t intended for me, but we did get to talk for a bit. It was a pleasant surprise.
• Watched both the Sisko and the Janeway/Barbie Borg Shows tonight. The former I had seen before; the latter I had not.
• I even got to chat with the maternal unit tonight, too. She’s heading out of town for one of my step-sibs’ wedding. She’ll be in the Caribbean for a week; meanwhile, I get to play in the high desert winter. Yay. You know, there’s a Jimmy Buffet song in there somewhere…

Trivia Question of the Day
I mentioned Jimmy Buffet above. There is a particular song that I have in mind. Anyone care to hazard a guess which one?

And now, off to get some sleep… perchance to dream.

Namaste.

Tuesday
Good day, all around. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Song of the Day

• Why by Annie Lennox, from the CD “Diva”
• Why Should I Cry For You by Sting, from “The Soul Cages”

Links of the Day

• This was from a friend whom I hadn’t spoken with in a while…
• Gridlock (Thanks to for this little distraction. Did I say “little distraction?” That was a gross understatement.)
• Be My Anti-Valentine (from Backwash.com).

Quote of the Day
From tonight’s Voyager episode:

Neelix: You sound like a travel brochure.
Tom Paris: Nah, just a native.

Stray Toasters

• Congratulations to on getting his foreign service assignment.
• For some reason, I have had the theme from The Streets of San Francisco running through my head today.
• It was warm today; in the 40s. It’s a pleasant break from the cold weather that we’ve been having.
• It’s pretty much official: Adam will be coming here for Spring Break.
• The Villa Theatre will be closing next week. I’ve never seen a film there, but friends of mine seem to have fond memories of seeing things there.
• Spike and Jet are getting a geek’s-eye history lesson about the history of VHS vs. Beta on ‘Bebop. Two-hundred-plus years (in the cartoon’s timeline) after they went the way of the dinosaur. Art imitates life. Amusing. Even more amusing: They had Ein introducing the preview for the next episode. Why is that funny? Ein is a dog.

That’s about it. I think that I’ll get some drawing in while Voyager is on.

Namaste.

Monday
One down, four or five to go. Today wasn’t bad, so I can’t complain. And any day that where work starts with Limelight (Rush) on the radio can’t be bad.

Song of the Day
What’s My Name by DMX, from the CD “And Then There Was X.”

Stray Toasters

• The Spirit of Radio: Greatest Hits hits the stores tomorrow. The Rush website had a banner at the bottom that read
  2.11.2003
  1 day until… Rush Day

• Holy shit. I know that “Adult Swim” is for… wait for it… adults, but I was a bit shocked while watching Yu Yu Hakusho. One of the characters just flipped another one off.
• had a link to this in one of her posts tonight. So… I followed the rabbit down the rabbit hole.
  • 
    

    The haxor handle of shadorunr is “B1n@ry P@riah“.

    What’s yours? Enter your name:
  • 
    

    The haxor handle of Rob is “Blue H@xxor“.

    What’s yours? Enter your name:
• The new “Berry Burst Cheerios” commercial. Funny… in a Partridge Family kind of way.
• ‘s newfound… fascination… with the Osmonds is curious, but amusing. In fact, here’s a snippet from tonight’s chat:
  

  [22:36] ZoolanderW: do they like Donny and Marie in Utah?
  [22:36] ZoolanderW: or is Peter Paul and Mary the latest craze?
  [22:37] ShadoRunr: You saw the closing of the Olympics, didn’t you?
  [22:37] ZoolanderW: no…. not really
  [22:37] ZoolanderW: i just saw the part about Torino Italy…
  [22:37] ShadoRunr: Hint: They were in it.
  [22:37] ZoolanderW: and the kids
  [22:37] ZoolanderW: oh.
  [22:37] ZoolanderW: aye C.

  “Do they like Donny and Marie in Utah,” indeed. He makes me laugh. Sometimes. (This just happened to be one of them.)

And that’s all I have to say about the day. For now.

Namaste.

Sunday
Today definitely came under the heading of “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” After sleeping in, I was quite lazy for the better part of the afternoon. I finally got in gear and headed to Borders for a while for some drawrin’ time. Then, it was off to The Gateway to see The Recruit. I liked it. Interesting twists, although a touch predictable in spots.

Stray Toasters

• Colin Farrell reminded me of Carson Daly.
• This is going to be Colin Farrell week, it seems. I’ll be seeing him again next Sunday in Daredevil as Bullseye.
• It seems as though there is going to be a movie based on the old TV show S.W.A.T. It seems as if it will feature Mr. Farrell (in the role played by Robert Urich in the series) and one Mr. Samuel L. Jackson. I remember S.W.A.T. being one of my favorite shows… and this was before my says as a fan of Robert Urich. In fact, I remember it being pretty popular with everyone in my then-Kindergarten and First Grade classes; we used to play S.W.A.T. during recess.
• And, while on the trip through yesteryear, let me just say that I enjoyed watching a couple of classic episodes of Johnny Quest and Fantastic Four this afternoon.
• …now if I could just rationalize my like of Stargate SG-1.
• Looks like my brother will be spending part of his Spring Break here. Which is cool. He said that he wants to go/learn how to snowboard. That’s fairly easy to arrange since a friend of mine is a snowboarding instructor.

Answer to Last Week’s Trivia Question
No one was able to discover the source of the quote that I used as last week’s TQotD. So, here it is: It was the opening line to a short-lived ABC series called Salvage-1. It was about a junkyard owner (Andy Griffith) who wanted to (and did) build a rocket and send it to the moon. The series also starred a pre-Silver Spoons Joel Higgins and a pre-Spenser for Hire Richard Jaeckel.

Tomorrow starts yet another work week. And, if I’m not mistaken this week also marks the end of Joe Millionaire. Thank God. I will admit that I there is a part of me that wants to watch this episode – I want to see the reaction of the “lucky lady” when she finds out that Mr. Millionaire is really Joe Average. Personally, I’m hoping for a knock-down, drag out, hair-pulling, name-calling smackdown. But, I’m fairly sure that whatever makes it to the airwaves will be pretty tame. Oh well.

Namaste.

Saturday
All-in-all, it was a pretty good day. It started slowly, but then I had coffee and then everything seemed to balance out. And, I even went on another field trip: Best Buy. More importantly, I managed to go in and get out with only the item that I needed for work. Only. This is not to say that I didn’t wander for a minute or two… because I did. However, I didn’t buy anything for myself. Who would have thought that this “willpower” thing could be so handy…?

Stray Toasters

I’m still trying to figure out what to see for Sunday Night at the Movies. So far, I’ve had suggestions for About Schmidt, Chicago, and The Recruit. Decisions, decisions…

I talked to one of my sisters, my mother and my uncle this afternoon. Kris and my uncle are well; Mom seems to be coming down with the flu. You know… I can’t really recall my mother being sick when I was younger. Or my father, for that matter. I think that’s part of the whole “Parents are a little more than human” mythos that kids have about their parents – nothing ever seemed to really slow them down or stop them.

I had dinner with Jess and Mary at Mimi’s Cafe tonight. There seemed to be more people dining out than usual. We had a :40 wait, but, it passed fairly quickly.

Bowling. I did pretty well. I had a couple of really good games (177 and 188) and a couple of mediocre ones. I just wish that someone would have taught the people on the lane to our right about the concept of “lane courtesy.”

Late night snack (no breakfast) at V.I.

…and then Home again. Home again. Jiggety-jig.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do to fill up the early hours of the day, but it will most likely involve heading to Borders and drawing for a while. But, I can deal with that sometime after the sun has risen.

Namaste.

Friday
Not a bad day. Not only was it Friday, but it was “Field Trip Day.” Brian (our resident technician) and I went to Ogden to meet Bryce and check out the Associated Food Stores’ warehouse and distribution center; we were looking at their inventory systems. Over 1.2 million cubic feet of space and they can track every item in there in real time. It was amazing and well worth the trip. Being away from work and getting paid for it didn’t hurt, either!

Song of the Day
Time to wrap up “Things That Go” Week. Today’s selection: Rocket Man by Elton John, from the CD “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Stray Toasters

• “Nice try” to for attempting to catch me in a musical miscue. She corrected me on yesterday’s SotD item Learning to Fly. I listed the Tom Petty version, of which she was apparently unaware; she had been thinking of the Pink Floyd version (which is a personal favorite, but not as obscure as the Petty one).
• About 1/3 of the way to work, I realized that I had left my phone at home. I’m an admitted digital kid, But I found that I only missed having it twice. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I intend to leave it here tomorrow.
• I’m watching Serial Experiments Lain on TechTV’s “Anime Unleashed.” It is… bizarre. Very much so. But, I guess that’s because I am watching the 12th of the 13 episodes or “layers.” I’ll have to rent the DVDs and watch it from the beginning. This is also making me want to watch Perfect Blue again.
• I made it to the comic shop tonight, after two weeks of failed attempts. Finally.
• A few nights ago, I mentioned that my other PC’s hard drive looked like it had kicked over. It seems that I was mistaken. Gladly mistaken.
• It’s amazing how cute cats can be… especially when they are not attempting to climb onto the windowsill above the bed while you’re trying to sleep.
• BWAHAHAHAH!!! Paul Shaffer was singing a James Brown song when the show came back from a commercial. He left his keyboard and walked over to a stand-alone mike and continued singing. In a patented James Brown move, he fell to his knees while singing. (Note: When James Brown did this, someone would come out from the wings of the stage, drape a cape over his shoulders and help him offstage.) Tonight, a man with a cape entered from stage left and put a cape on Paul’s shoulders. It was the “Number One Soul Brother,” “Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” that’s right: the Godfather of Soul himself: James Brown.

Tomorrow may be a short day at work. I’m not sure. I am sure, however, that I must take whatever measures are necessary to avoid ‘s extortion attempt.

Namaste.

Thursday
The day started with a cup of frozen mocha goodness. That was a good start. The rest of the day wasn’t too bad, either. And tomorrow is the field trip. Yeah, there’s hope for this whole “working for a living” thing after all, it seems.

Song of the Day

• Learning to Fly by Tom Petty
• Airplane by Indigo Girls
• A Plane Scraped Its Belly on a Sooty Yellow Moon by Soul Coughing and Roni Size

Stray Toasters

• I’m a little late with this, but… Welcome back to .
• I actually managed to watch tonight’s episode of the Sisko Show along with Voyager.
• I am enjoying the anime block that is airing on Adult Swim – the entire block from Inuyasha to Bebop. I haven’t seemed to be able to get into Lupin III, however. *shrug* Three out of four isn’t bad.
• A friend of mine sent me this link this evening. Interesting…
• This link is just amusing.
• And, so is this one.
• I miss the 50°+ weather that we had a couple of weeks ago. Damn that groundhog.

No one has gotten last night’s trivia question, although did give it a valiant effort. Is anyone else brave enough to hazard a guess?

Namaste.

Wednesday
I woke up, I went to work, I came home.
And, after that: Dinner at Outback.

Song of the Day
Big Yellow Taxi… and you can take your pick from the Counting Crows, Amy Grant or even the original (and classic) Joni Mitchell versions.

Stray Toasters

• We’re five days into February and I haven’t said anything about Black History Month. Yet. It is now time to rectify that situation. As I said last year: This is a good time to discover people and events in American history of which you may not have previously been aware.
• Thanks to and for pointing out the broken link in last night’s post. It has been corrected.
• The more that I watch Cowboy Bebop, the more that I like it.
• I was looking at a few fan sites about Cowboy Bebop and noted that there are soundtracks available for it. I started thinking about when soundtracks for television shows became en vogue. I know that TVT Records puts out the Television’s Greatest Hits CDs, but those are basically collections of various television program theme songs. There is also the Schoolhouse Rock 4-CD set, from Kid Rhino Records. But, an individual program spawning its own soundtrack (or even multiple soundtracks)…? Unglaublich! And, for the record, I a few TV soundtrack CDs: do it a cappella and Moonlighting: The Television Soundtrack Album…. along with the Schoolhouse Rock set, the do it a cappella soundtrack, and two (yes, two) Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego soundtracks.
• I even watched tonight’s episode of Voyager: “Bliss.” It started and ended with scenes that were obviously inspired by Moby Dick. They even threw in a reference to the book in the episode. The EMH even had a line which would have even made Dr. McCoy proud: “I’m a doctor, not a dragon slayer.”
  (and any other Trek fans): Look here for a list of ‘doctorisms.’

Trivia Question of the Day
This will not necessarily be a daily feature, but for some reason this item stuck in my head tonight and I wanted to see how many other people remembered (or had even heard of) it. What is the origin of the following?

“Once upon a time, a junkman had a dream: ‘I want to build a spaceship, go to the moon, salvage all the junk that’s up there, bring it back and sell it.'”

That should keep you busy for a minute or two.

And with that, it’s almost time for bed.

Namaste.

Tuesday
Note to self: Do not make posts about good days at work until TWO days later. We found another problem today. This one is more of a quality control issue than anything and, fortunately, I think that we will recover from this fairly quickly. We made headway in the right direction today. That’s a plus.

Song of the Day

• The Downeaster Alexa by Billy Joel, from the CD “Storm Front.”
• Sloop John B by the Beach Boys, from the CD “Pet Sounds”

Stray Toaster

• It snowed again tonight. Welcome to Winter.
• Talked to one of the parental units earlier this evening; I needed a morale booster to help get past the drek of the earlier part of the workday. It helped.
• Someone on IRC posted a link to this little gem. WTF?!?!
• Lori Petty was on tonight’s episode of ST: Voyager.

I think that about covers it for now. I’m going to find something to do while I wind down for bed. And maybe have a cup of tea. Yes, tea would be good. Plantation Mint, I think.

Namaste.

Monday
After the uber-restful Sunday that I had, I was still tired this morning. Worked. Pulled another 12 hour day… but on the whole, that’s a good thing – we got a lot done.

Song of the Day
The Metro by Berlin, from the CD “Pleasure Victim.” This might come under the heading of “guilty pleasure,” but I like the song.

Stray Toasters

• One of the items in our most recent shipment was a Rokenbok Monorail Start Set. I saw it when we unpacked the pallet that it was on. I went from “zero” to “covet” in about five seconds. It will be mine within the next week or two.
• It snowed again tonight. I stood and watched the flakes come down for a few moments when I walked out of work. Then, I remembered that I would have to clear snow off of my car before I could head home. That took a little of the “Oh, cool” factor out of watching the snow. But not too much.
• Sissy the Wonder Kitty is sitting next to my chair with her “I can wait for you to finish typing that to pet me… as long as it doesn’t take TOO long” look.
• I think that the hard drive in my other PC has spun its last revolution. While it’s not a world-ending problem, it does make the fact that I was getting back into Linux a little more difficult: It was the hard drive on my dual-boot PC. Oh well. I don’t think that there was anything irreplaceable on that drive. That makes it easier to deal with. And now, I don’t have to mess around with a dual-booting system, if I don’t want to.

I should probably give more than a passing thought to getting ready for bed. Actually, I’m sure that it would be a good idea. And with that… goodnight.

Namaste.

Sunday
Today was just about the perfect day off. I slept in. I watched TV. I napped. I watched more TV. I was unashamedly lazy. It’s been wonderful.

Stray Toasters

The East lost to the West in the NHL All-Star Game. But it was a good game. I haven’t been following hockey very much this season, so this was more of a filler until…

The AFC-NFC Pro Bowl is on (…at least, it’s on now). The AFC has been kickin’ the NFC’s collective ass. In fact, the way that this game has gone has been highly reminiscent of last week’s Super Bowl. I’m just glad to see a few Ravens get some post-season play, since this is it for the NFL for the next 7 months. *sigh*

X-fan that I am, I saw a link to this on Comics Continuum. It looks as though I will have an entire X-Men-related wall before too long. At this rate, it will be a Phoenix-related wall.

I talked to the paternal parental unit today. Just a general “what’s up” kind of thing. All is well with that side of the family.

I just remembered that today is Groundhog Day. Did anyone hear Phil’s prediction for Winter/Spring?

And, on a related note: It’s been snowing since around 1:00 AM this morning. I noted something last night while driving home from bowling last night: Driving home in the snow looked exactly like the “Starfield” screen saver (part of Micro$oft’s Windows OS). I don’t remember getting that impression from driving in the snow back home. I think that is due mostly to the fact that the snow here is “dry” and powder-like as opposed to the “wet” and sticky snow at home.

I’m going to get a in little Halo time before we head out for coffee.

Namaste.

Saturday
The day started off like any other workday: The alarm went off and I didn’t want to get up. Nothing major there. I observed the appropriate hygiene rituals, dressed and got ready to leave. I decided to check the computer for any overnight email and a quick scan of IRC before heading out. That’s when I saw it…

[08:55] (hetsaq) holy shit
[08:55] (hetsaq) space shuttle columbia blew up 8iiiiiii

I felt somewhat numb. Shocked, definitely, but numb.

On the way to work, it occurred to me that I had come very close to using a few lines from Rush’s Countdown as the subject of last night’s post. That song was written after the band had been invited to watch a shuttle launch. There’s even some chatter between Mission Control and Columbia used in the song. I also thought about July of 1996 when I was on vacation in Florida. We (my siblings, girlfriend-at-the-time and I) were driving to get breakfast. We saw… something… greyish-white in the distance. A thin column. As we watched, it grew longer and seemed to dissipate somewhat. It dawned on us that we were seeing the smoke from the exhaust of a shuttle launch. We talked for a while about how cool that was to see… even from that distance.

At work, I turned on NPR and listened to the coverage of the event. I heard President Bush address the nation. I listened to Talk of the Nation hosts Neal Conan and Ira Flatow interview people. But no one knew the “what” or “why” or “how.” There was speculation. There was theory. There were many questions. But no one knew.

I thought about where I was when I heard that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded. I was a junior in high school. I was walking down the hall from the administration offices past the library. A television had been rolled from the library into the hallway and there were people huddled around it. Peter Jennings was announcing the sad news. (It was also during this coverage that he made a remark that I found memorable for some reason: “We want to show you the footage of what happened. Well, we don’t want to show you, but we’re going to show you anyway…”) It seemed so… surreal.

Today felt like that, in some ways. Something happened to the orbiter. Seven lives were lost. That, alone, is sad. A historic event for the nation of Israel – the first mission of the first Israeli astronaut – ended on a dark chapter.

I came home and decided to do some drawing. I got my copy of Time: The Century Collection – The Greatest Events. This book is a collection of images and excerpts from the last century. I had forgotten that there was a section on the 1986 Challenger explosion. A quote from that spread:

The loss of the shuttle inflicted upon Americans the purest pain that they have collectively felt in years. It was pain uncomplicated by the divisions — political, racial, moral — that usually beset American tragedies. The crew, spectacularly democratic, was the best of us. The mission seemed symbolically immaculate, the farthest reach of a perfectly American ambition to cross frontiers. And it simply vanished in the air.
-Time, February 10, 1986

I have also had the line from Prince’s Sign of the Times playing in my head:

It’s silly, no? When a rocket ship explodes and everybody still wants to fly…

Although, I don’t think that it’s necessarily “silly.” I would say that it’s more attributable to “human nature.” I have heard people say that maybe we should give up or greatly reduce our quest for spaceflight. I don’t agree with this point of view. Yes, there are dangers involved, but there have also been discoveries that would not have been possible without the “What if…?” On a more basic note, we are an inquisitive race. Our history is full of people who challenged the established norms to discover what else lies just over that hill. Or that river. Or that ocean. Or that part of the sky… We do it because we question. We desire. We seek.

And we shall continue to do so.

May the spirits of those who dared to seek find rest and may those whom they left behind find comfort.

Namaste.

Friday
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man …very sleepy when the alarm goes off. “Early to bed” being a relative term. I went in at 7:00 this morning to be there when a shipment was dropped off. It showed up somewhere around 12:30. Oh, well. On the up side: I got to leave work early.

I also had something of a geek moment today: I made my first Cat 5 cable. We installed a few new computers in the warehouse and one of the cables needed to be replaced… so I had to make the new one. AND IT WORKED!!! There was an almost giddy sense of elation at finding that I had done it correctly without any help. Without anyone else’s help, that is; I looked up the proper wire configuration online. But… I did it!

::: Hoo-AH!!! :::
Song of the Day
We’ll wrap up a cappella Music Week with the original (and in my opinion, “the best”) version of Tom’s Diner, by Suzanne Vega. I like the DNA remix, but it’s better a cappella.

Stray Toasters

• The weather here has been more than unseasonably warm for the past couple of days. It’s the end of January and it was 60° here. Amazing.
• There’s some gothic-looking band on Last Call with Carson Daly doing a version of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Interesting…
• I missed Adult Swim tonight, but I did catch an interesting episode of ST: Voyager: Latent Image. It was one of the “moral dilemma” shows, but I liked it.
• I went out for coffee with my friend, Bryce, tonight. We went to the Saturday night traditional V.I. We were there for three (3) hours! Granted, it’s been a while since we’ve had the chance to sit down and talk… but three hours!!! One of the reasons that we were there for so long was because we started talking “shop.” He does (on a much larger scale) the same thing that I am not doing. It was nice to talk about what I do and get some feedback on things that we can do better or differently. We did also talk about other things: from sci-fi to gaming to football. I had a very good time.

I’d better call it a night now. I’m finally starting to wind down and it might be a good idea to actually get some sleep before going to work tomorning.

Namaste.