Random Access

Friday
End of the work week. And, even if it wasn’t I think that I would have to make it the last day of my work week. Today was… not pleasant, on the whole. One thing on top of another. When I left work yesterday, I emailed a file home so that I could work on it last night. That made an odd, logical sense. It didn’t show up… until this morning.

::: braincramp :::
That was too late for me to really do anything about it here… so, I went to work early. One benefit (and possibly the only one) was that I could play mp3s as loudly as I wanted without having to worry about irritating/offending anyone else. I worked on the file for about an hour before I had to deal with anyone else. To that point, the day was fine. I finished the file, after a few interruptions, with time to spare. However, it didn’t get reviewed until about :05 before it was needed.
::: braincramp :::
That was not auspicious. I had to drag into my office (and away from her work) to go over one section that needed to correlate to another one. It took us about :45 to figure out the discrepancies. And, I got static for “taking too long” to get it done. Rather than say or do something rather untoward, I stood up, left the room…and then the office area… and the building. I took a brisk and somewhat calming walk. Actually, I was a little stressed out a couple of times during the day… and both items were related to this file. I think that I actually scared at one point. (Sorry about that!) I shall handle that situation after the weekend, when I’ve had time to calm down and (hopefully) discuss the matter calmly and rationally.

…they can afford to move so fucking slow, man, they’ll wait years and years. Give you a whole life, just so you’ll have more to lose when they come and take it away. Patient like a spider. Zen spiders.
-from Neuromancer by William Gibson

After work, my day got significantly better. Imagine that! Had dinner at Guru’s with Jess and then went to Borders; joined us there. We harassed Jonahs, sat around and talked, I did a few figure sketches and bought this:

This was one of the – if not the – best story lines in that title in the early 80s – buying this book was like seeing an old friend after a long time apart. I’ve been a Legion fan since the late 70s; if I remember correctly, it was the first book that I collected regularly. I’ve waxed and waned in my collecting habits, but (along with X-Men) I’ve been pretty good about trying to keep up with the Legion books.

NPR Stories
Morning Edition: The Hipster Handbook

Song of the Day
Darkness Looming Overhead by SnagLoopDog

Stray Toasters

• Mjolnir II.
• I listened to a bit of The Salmon of Doubt today. Unfortunately, I kept getting distracted, so I had to stop after too short a while.
• “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment… I need to find a quiet room in which to practice an ancient Martian meditation technique… It’s called screaming.”
  -J’onn J’onzz (The Martian Manhunter), Justice League International #8

• Amateur Radio Field Day
• Got an invitation to play Ultimate tomorrow morning, since the afternoon group seems to have petered out. Unfortunately, I intend to be in the middle of my tour of The Dreaming at that time.
• National “Do Not Call” Registry
• Jonahs was humming “Strangers in the Night” while he was working. Now that’s stuck in my head.

Namaste.

Thursday
A good day.
Work was good. I managed to wrangle my form into doing 95% of what it’s supposed to do. I might have gotten it finished if I didn’t have two other things fall into my lap in the late afternoon.

After work, we were invited to and ‘s house for dinner. Dan, Scott and Jack were there, too. We cooked out and sat around and talked. It was a good way to spend the evening.

NPR Stories

• Talk of the Nation: Supreme Court Overturns Texas Sodomy Law
• Talk of the Nation: Arab Comics
• All Things Considered: High Court Ends Session with Key Rulings
• All Things Considered: Gay Rights
• All Things Considered: Conservative Reaction to Texas Sodomy Law Ruling
• All Things Considered: Summer Reading List

Song of the Day

• Stay by Oingo Boingo
• Should I Stay or Should I Go? by The Clash
• Don’t Go by Yaz

Stray Toasters

• left a URL on a Post-It® note on my computer this afternoon. I entered it and nearly doubled over from laughter. Snoop Dogg Shizzolator. I tested it out on a number of sites, including (but not limited to): Slashdot, US Postal Service, the LDS Church website (Irreverent: Yes. Funny: VERY MUCH SO.), Southern Baptist Convention (I can poke fun at my faith, too.) And, if you want a really good one, put your LJ (or your friends list) through it.
• Krispy Kreme® doughnuts. ‘Nuff said.
• Had Halle Berry not been cast as Storm in the X-Men movies, who would have been a good choice? My vote goes either to Iman or Angela Bassett. Agree, disagree or “write in” someone different.
• I Bet You They Won’t Play This Song on the Radio

Namaste.

I saw what I think is one of the coolest/funniest license plates a little while ago: STFU. and I have been trying to figure out how they slipped that one past Utah DMV… and applauded them for doing so.

I’ve had a song running through my head for the past half-hour or so. I remembered that it was from a video game on the Commodore 64, but I couldn’t remember the name of the game. So, I did the next logical thing: I searched for it… and found it. It was this game.

Our office building is a few miles from Salt Lake International Airport and an U.S. National Guard air base. We are just east of the flight path for them. One of the things that I like about my office is that my window faces the flight path; I can watch planes on final approach or just after they have taken off. The ones that I find the most interesting are the large military transports. One took off a little while ago and I thought: “That thing just doesn’t look like it should be able to leave the ground.” I watched it as it disappeared on a Nevada-ward path.

Wednesday
Over the hump, it’s all downhill from here.

I found out that I have been making the program that I’ve been working on for the past few days more difficult than I needed to. The colloquial reference would be “Going around your ass to scratch your nose.” Oh well. I went back and changed a few of the problem areas and I have a good plan of attack for tomorrow.

After work, I discovered that one of my tires was going flat. Doing what I deemed “the logical thing,” I headed to the nearest gas station to the office. No air pump. Okay, that happens. On to Station #2. I pull up, find the pump… and see that someone has written “Out of order” on a large piece of masking tape. *twitch* On to Station #3. They have a pump. So far, so good… No masking tape. Another good sign… And, it worked!

From there, I drove to meet the coffee/beer group for dinner. We went to the Bohemian Brewery & Grill. It was my first time there. Their beers were rather good – tonight’s choice was the Cherny Bock. Tasty. I had sips of the Viennese Lager and the Bavarian Weiss; they weren’t bad, either. Our waitress/server (what IS the politically correct term?) was very good. The gentleman whom I take to be either the owner or manager was very… “up.” Lots of charisma.

Home to unwind. After a VERY LONG hiatus, I decided to fire up EverCrack EverQuest. Nothing like a good game to help wind down the evening. I installed it on this computer; my original installation is on my dual-boot PC which is currently running Linux. After getting the new patches, I logged in. Characters were still where I’d left them. Of course, I didn’t remember exactly where that was, so I was wandering around to try and get my bearings.

And then it happened: I received an out-of-game message.

In itself, that’s not a bad thing. The fact that it superceded the EQ window made it a “not good” thing. By the time that I recovered the game window, my character had managed to find his way into an underground pool/spring/body of water… and was getting attacked by… something. I don’t remember what. And then, he died. GRRR. I’m not sure exactly “where” he died; all that I know is the zone. This means that I have to track down some of my former party members and see if one of them has a character who can help me recover the items from my corpse. And, I’m not sure how much time I have to do this. I am not happy.

Song of the Day
Jump in the Water by emmet swimming, from “Wake”

Stray Toasters
Check back tomorrow.

Namaste.

Tuesday
The day of the ever-changing weather. This morning started off overcast. And cold… or at least “cool.” It progressed from partly sunny to overcast to hail to sunny to sunny-with-hail to dark, cloudy and LOTS of hail…. and back to sunny. And, there’s new snow on the mountains. Bizarre.

Work was. There were a number of little things that popped up and distracted me from what I was trying to do. This isn’t to say that the day wasn’t productive, but I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped. *shrug* Tomorrow.

After work was dinner with , and . We went to a place called “The Pizza Factory.” I had Fettucini Alfredo with chicken. (Yes, in a pizza place. Deal with it.) It was good. They also had a good raspberry lemonade – with real raspberries in it. *nod* Quite good.

Song of the Day

• The theme from Route 66 (Television show)
• Route 66 as done by Nat King Cole

Stray Toasters

• Congratulations to for her successful stand-up routine!
• My friend Matt showed me these items (1, 2) items on Cafepress. I laughed quite a bit at them.
• Ex-Micro$oft employee arrested for… wait… just read it yourself. What in the Nine Hells was this guy thinking?! If ANY company could track down what its employees do, shouldn’t it register somewhere that this would be among the top five, if not number one? Idiotstick.
• Does anyone remember Mail Order Monsters from Electronic Arts? What about Hard Hat Mack? Or Racing Destruction Set? Or PHM Pegasus?
• I watched part of The Wire on HBO this evening. I’ve heard a little about it, but this was my first time seeing it. It’s a police drama. It’s set in Baltimore (which automatically gives it points in my book). Aspects of it reminded me of Oz. It was like a grittier version of Homicide: Life on the Streets (also set in B’more) of which I was also a fan. I’ll have to add this to my list of shows to keep an eye on.
• Kwick22a has returned to the DCG. Here is his latest toon.
• Commodore 64/128 emulators GOOOD! ::: GESTURE :::
  (And less space-consuming than trying to set up a C-64 or 128!)

• The mage’s eyes were gold with hourglass-shaped pupils…
• From Slashdot: “More Cheap Linux PCs”
• And, speaking of Linux, “What Is Open Source?”
• If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. This gives an entirely different spin on the term “potty humor.” Bathroom Mania!

Quote of the Day
I commented on a post that made earlier this evening. I was pleasantly surprised by an instant message a few minutes later…

[00:07] : I [heart] you, Rob…don’t ever change. 🙂
[00:07] : 🙂
[00:08] : I’ll try not to.

Now, it’s time to roam the borders of The Dreaming.

Namaste.

Monday
Not only was it a Monday, but it was a rainy day, as well. My first message to was: “I’m in the middle of a Carpenter’s song (Rainy Days and Mondays), so I will probably be a little late.” I wasn’t down… just tired. It seems as though the late-night Saturday furniture moving finally caught up to me last night.

Work was good. I’m just about finished with the form that I started on Friday afternoon. I just need to have it insert a few pieces of data into different tables and output the results. Anything beyond that will be to make it look nice.

Tonight was Gamenight. Word of note: Botching spells is not good for your (character’s) health. In trying to cause another player’s character to have a slight problem with bladder control, I had it backfire HORRIBLY and my character wound up voiding himself from all available orifices. Needless to say, he became the butt of many jokes. (Pun intended.) In the game world, it wasn’t very pretty…. but as the gamer, I found it rather amusing. And, it was a great way to enjoy a little self-deprecating humor.

NPR Stories
One of the local stations has warmed up the political bandwagon and is doing interview shows with the mayoral candidates for Salt Lake City. Today’s featured candidate: Molonai Hola. He’s a business man with no political training. Some of the callers today lambasted him on this point; I thought that he acquitted himself well and I enjoyed listening to his ideas.

Song of the Day
The Rain by Oran ‘Juice’ Jones

Stray Toasters

• I think that today’s high temperature was 55° (possibly 57°). HIGH temperature. It’s the end of June!!! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!? Not only that… there is fresh snow on the tops of the mountains.
• “MTV News.” That just seems like the epitome of an ‘oxymoron.’
• Dinner with Jess and : Fun and funny.
• : It may be safer to stop playing “Devil’s Advocate,” but that would be nowhere near as much fun.

And now, I’m off to perform an inner eyelid study.

Namaste.

Saturday and Sunday
I slept in Saturday morning. Did a bit of sporadic cleaning… and it was sporadic because I kept allowing myself to get distracted by all sorts of more interesting things. I did have a nice conversation with . Three hours and some change. Aside from “Hi” or “Bye,” in passing, I haven’t had a chance to talk to her in months.

Around 9:00, I got the urge to rearrange the furniture in the living room. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have been too bad. However, as it was 00:40 before time to go bowling… *shrug* Let’s just say that the room was left in a serious state of disarray when 9:45 rolled around. Bowling and post-bowling dinner, as usual. I came back home to: Furniture Wars – Episode VI: The Return of the Entertainment Center. I finished (more or less) around 6:00 this morning.

I woke up around 10:00. This was not good. Well, “waking up” was good. It was the “10:00” part that wasn’t so hot. So, I did the second thing that came to mind – I turned over and went back to sleep. (The first thing was: “Why am I up this early?!?”) 11:45 seemed a little more appropriate, so I got up, showered, got dressed and headed to Borders for more drawing time. I also woke up with a headache that seemed to go away about a half-hour after awakening.

I went to Borders. I had cheesecake and a Cafe Mocha. I drew. Life was good… until the headache decided to return. And I didn’t have anything to take for it. BAH! I suffered through it until I got home. Then, I put two Aleve tablets to work. They seemed to do the trick.

Tonight, we saw Hulk. I’ll start off by saying that I liked it. Yes, there were a couple of plot and continuity holes, but… it was a comic book-inspired movie. In that regard (and just in my opinion), it did a good job. No, it wasn’t X-Men or Spider-Man or Batman or Superman. It wasn’t meant to be. (…and it’s probably good, as none of their names were in the title of this movie.) I’m not sure if people were more disappointed by:

• The changes in the origin story. Saying that Banner was caught “…in a gamma bomb explosion…” worked in the Cold War-era 60s… but it’s not going to fly as well today. Tying it to genetic manipulation is more modern. AND, it also ties into the “new” origin that Marvel created for it’s Ultimate universe: Banner was trying to recreate the Super-Soldier formula that created Captain America, wound up testing it on himself… and the results were not good.
• The CGI Hulk. As much as I liked the TV series when I was younger, I think that using CGI as opposed to an actor painted green was a good idea. And, I don’t think that it was too “cartoony.” Also, they tied something else from the comic book in here: “The angrier Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets.” It made sense for the adrenaline surges to trigger further mutations in the creature, i.e.: adding strength and mass, resulting in a bigger Hulk.
• Too much drama. *sigh* Cry me a river. When you have a character who goes from average guy on the street to raging force of nature, it helps to know “why.” I think that Ang Lee did a good job of exploring the underlying reasons for Banner’s rage/frustration.

I liked it. It was a good reinventing of the character for the modern day. I’ll even buy it when it comes out on DVD.

After the movie, we headed to V.I. for dinner. This was good… even with Shelley dropping half of our orders. The dinner conversation was good, too. We also saw someone who looked like the spitting image of Bruce Davison (Senator Kelly from X-Men and X2: X-Men United).

And with that, I take my leave.

Namaste.

HULK SMASH!!!!

Um…. sorry.
Let’s try this again.

Hola!
Okay, much better. Here is the info for tonight’s movie:

• What: Hulk (duh)
• Where: Jordan Commons
• When: 7:30 PM

Pre-movie: Nothing as yet has blipped on the radar, so we’ll do a free-for-all for pre-movie.
Post-movie: Village Inn @ South Towne Mall.

If you have any questions, comments, or letters to the editor… you know how to reach me.

As if sleeping in wasn’t enough…
Or getting a phone call from Joe…

Enter the Dragon is on AMC.

Bruce Lee.
With Jim Kelly and Bolo Yeung.
Appearances by Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Keye Luke, Chuck Norris.

Original music by Lalo Schifrin (The man who wrote the theme to Mission: Impossible)

Definitely a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Friday
As in: “Thank God it’s…”

The end of another work week. Today went better than the past few days, as far as CF coding went. Starting on a new form seemed to get me out of the rut that I was in. I made a basic flowchart of what I needed and then started coding. Phase One went well. Next I have to include some nested looping… I actually might work on that this weekend.

We also saw the aftermath a near-accident this afternoon, too. Our office is the intersection (with NO traffic light) of two streets that are rather busy with industrial/commercial traffic. Not to mention that on-/off-ramps for the Belt Route lie about 300 yards from this intersection. (Translation: Lots and lots of cars and trucks going by… and we could damn well use a traffic light there!) Today, someone towing a boat made a left turn from the smaller of the two streets onto the busier one. Right in front of an oncoming pickup truck. All that we heard was screeching tires. By the time we got to the windows, traffic was stopped. The boat-tower had pulled to the side of the road – I think that this was to verify that all of his parts were where he remembered them and to see whether or not he was wet or soiled. The truck that he pulled in front of had skidded to a stop about three (3) feet from a couple of large landscaping rocks. The driver of this truck, once he was certain that he and his vehicle were out of harm’s way, continued on his way.

After work, it was off to Borders to meet Jess, Scott and for drawing, coffee and chat. Despite all of the coverage that it’s been getting, I completely spaced off the fact that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was being released tonight. Add to that the fact that it was also “Dress in Harry Potter Costume Night.” Shake well. Serve chilled. I don’t think that I have ever seen it that crowded there. We thought that Jonas’ head might go all ‘splodey because of some of the people there. We escaped before the madness got to be “too much.” And, this was what I drew (no reference):

NPR and PRI Goodies

• Wind Power (…as referenced in my earlier post)
• Women in Space
• Falling Wine Prices Mean Deals for Consumers
• Study: Childhood Temperament Lasts into Adulthood
• Study Tracks Public View of the Mentally Disabled
• Do you Know the Way to… Maui?

Stray Toasters

• Let’s get the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” item out of the way first. Chrissy Caviar I don’t grok, but if you look at Item #2 under “Personal Profile,” I think that it explains a lot.
• Case mods. Mini-ITX mods, in particular. Check out the Atari 800, C-64 and Dreamcast mods.
• “Nizlee.” “Jelly.” I’m not sure which one amuses me more.
• Neverwinter Nights… for Linux
• Nanotech Pinball and Miniature Engines
• Is it just me or does Democratic presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton look like an older version of Morris Day from The Time? I wonder if he’d do a couple of verses of Jungle Love or The Bird if someone donated enough to his campaign fund…
• Iraq: the Computer Game…?
• Halo. If you have an XBox, I don’t need to say anything more. If you don’t, I’m sorry. What if, in a Sliders-like alternate reality, Halo as we know it didn’t exist? What if it was… a RTS game? (For those of you unfamiliar with the acronym: “real-time strategy.”) It almost happened. Check out IGN’s article on it.
• Do you like to draw? Were you (or are you still) a fan of G.I. Joe? Would you like the chance to see your artwork in print? If you just said “yes” three times, you might want to check out this competition from Devil’s Due Publishing.

Quote of the Day
Actually, there are two… Two…. TWO quotes today. Both of them came from while we were at Borders:

While looking at a picture of a full-body tattoo in a magazine: Paint my ass with pain…

About a co-worker who may (or may not) have cleaned up Scott’s cubicle after a third co-worker wrecked it… but before Scott saw it: No one else is stupid enough to clean up after a practical joke.

And, that’s it for tonight.

Namaste.

I was listening to NPR’s Talk of the Nation – Science Friday and the first segment was about ‘Wind Power.’ Someone made a comment about wind turbines being “…giant Cuisinarts for birds.” The comment struck me as a little odd, but I could see their point. It also made me wonder would these same people say that we should stop air travel since birds are killed when they are sucked into jet turbines or smack off the airplane’s body.

This also sparked off a conversation between , and myself. We talked about birds and bats. Making a point about bats’ take-off limitations, a tongue-tied said:

Flats can’t take-off from bat ground.

We all got a good laugh out of it.

Thursday
Juneteenth.

Today was pretty good. Work was… a little slow, but not hellishly so. Having run into a bit of a brick wall with the form that I’ve been working on, I put it on the back burner and started on a new one. I’ll come back to the old one next week.

After work, Jess, Mary and I went out for dinner. We introduced her to the concept of and reason for drinking beer through a straw; she had never heard of it. We decided to run across the parking lot and have coffee/dessert at the Village Inn…. and ran into and . Nox made a comment that we shouldn’t have been so surprised to see them as that V.I. has become our “Cheers.” He’s right, it has.

Returned home and faced another round of driver/program installations on Jess’ computer. Most everything seems to be in place now. There are a few apps that have to go on, but things are looking good.

NPR Stories

• Gay Marriage in Canada
• U.S./Canadian Cultural Differences
• The Science of Superheroes This segment made the comic geek in me very happy. And, the guests were not only well-versed in the sciences; they were funny.
• The First Civil Rights Bus Boycott
• Company Announces Space Mission for Tourists
• Baseball Pioneer Larry Doby Dies

Stray Toasters

• We’ll lead off with something that was sent to me by Kate (one of our regular servers at Village Inn):
  

• Scientists Grow Decaffeinated Coffee Beans WHY?!? Coffee without caffeine is like Burns without Allen. Like yin without yang. Like Maddie Hayes without David Addison. Like… like…. Alcohol without the hangover. O_o Okay, that one isn’t such a good example, but you get the idea.
• Clockwise: Beast, Gambit (possibly Wolverine), The White Queen, undecided and undecided. I’ll leave the last two for the others to determine.
• Holy Knight Rider, Batman! Honda Motor Company has devised a new collision-detection system. Apparently it starts working before the driver responds. Read about it here.
• The U.K. government has been “urged… not to commission open-source software, and particularly not software covered by the General Public License.” Who is behind this? A group backed by Micro$oft, IBM, and Intel, among others.
• Using slingshot power to hurl objects into space…
• A couple of days ago, I posted a link about Sen. Orrin Hatch wanting to destroy computers that had pirated/unlicensed software on them. According to this, the good senator has a skeleton in his closet… or his hard drive, as the case may be.
• From comes: The Incomplete Worlds of Billy Shakespeare

“…and that’s all I have to say about that.”

Namaste.

The following are taken from an email forwarded to me by :

• Friends don’t let friends take home ugly men.
  Women’s restroom at Starboard, Dewey Beach, DE

• Beauty is only a light switch away.
  Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, NC

• If life is a waste of time,
  and time is a waste of life,
  then let’s all get wasted together
  and have the time of our lives.
  Armand’s Pizza, Washington, DC

• Remember, it’s not,”How high are you?”
  It’s: “Hi, how are you?”
  Rest stop off Route 81, West Virginia

• No matter how good she looks,
  some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her crap.
  Men’s Room, Linda’s Bar and Grill, Chapel Hill, NC

• To do is to be. – Descartes
  To be is to do. – Voltaire
  Do be do be do. – Frank Sinatra
  Men’s restroom, Greasewood Flats, Scottsdale, AZ

• At the feast of ego, everyone leaves hungry.
  Bentley’s House of Coffee and Tea, Tucson, AZ

• It’s hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere.
  Written in the dust on the back of a bus, Wickenburg, AZ

• Make love, not war.
  Hell, do both…
  GET MARRIED!
  Women’s restroom, The Filling Station, Bozeman, MO

• If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
  Revolution Books, New York, New York.

• A Woman’s Rule of Thumb:
  If it has tires or testicles,
  you’re going to have trouble with it.
  Women’s restroom, Dick’s Last Resort, Dallas, TX

• Express Lane: Five beers or less.
  Sign over one of the urinals, Ed Debevic’s, Phoenix, AZ

• You’re too good for him.
  Sign over mirror in Women’s restroom, Ed Debevic’s, Beverly Hills,CA.

• No wonder you always go home alone.
  Sign over mirror in Men’s restroom, Ed Debevic’s, Beverly Hills,CA

Wednesday
Work wasn’t bad… for the most part. I’m still getting hung-up on one part of the form that I’m coding. That is more than slightly annoying. And frustrating. I’ll get past it, but until then all that I can do is hack and slash at the code. Or burn it. Or immerse it in sulfuric or hydrochloric acid… or… or… *sigh* …or I could just fix the damned code.

I had a rather pleasant chat with this afternoon. My inner comics geek… (No, it’s not really an “inner” geek. It’s a pretty well-established fact that I’m a comic book fiend…) *shrug* We talked comics for a bit. And coffee shops. And David Bowie, including Absolute Beginners (both the movie and the song). It was rather cool.

I had lunch with . (Don’t forget to look for/read those books!)

I came home and got to reinstall the OS on one of the computers. And transfer files. And find drivers. And go back-and-forth between the two desks while I waited for things to install/load/configure. Whoop-de-fuck. But, it’s mostly done now. Just a few apps to install and then we can sprinkle it with dehydrated Holy Water.

NPR Stories

• 50th Anniversary of the Rosenberg Executions – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the first civilians to be executed for espionage in U.S. history.
• What are you listening to?
• Commentary: Stage sets vs. Apartments
• NASA’s Mercury 13 Program for Women

Stray Toasters

• I wasn’t aware – until the past day or two – that SCO, the company suing IBM over Linux/Unix licensing rights, was based in Lindon, Utah (about 25 or 30 miles from Salt Lake City).
• Analysis of Y-Chromosome Yields Many Surprises
• Que Saree Saree… (No, those are not typos.)
• Tiger, Tiger burning not-so-bright…
• It seems that Cuban President Fidel Castro found himself victim of a prank played by DJs at a Miami radio station. Do you really want to play games with the man who had his finger on the Cuban equivalent of “The Button” during the Cuban Missile Crisis? I would tend to think not.
• And then there’s this little nugget of joy, courtesy of .
• “I’d say ‘bunnies,’ Raist…”
• Are you a gamer who’s grown up but still has a fondness for the old-school consoles? Were you a fan of the Nintendo Entertainment System? Do you like computer case mods? If you answered “yes” to at least one of these questions, one of these might be the computer for you.

And that’s the end… for now.

Namaste.

Tuesday
I went to the optometrist for an overdue eye exam and to get my new contact lenses. They had to order ones for my left eye. On the plus side, the doctor said that the change in my prescription since my last exam (two years ago) was very minor.

On to work. Nothing much to report there.

I returned home and edited an essay for . messaged me and asked if I wanted to go out for ice cream. I did. So did Jess. And so, we went. The Baskin-Robbins was full, inside and outside, of junior high and high school aged kids. And, something that I hadn’t seen before (other than on Main Street in the Disney theme parks): People were sitting on the curb, eating ice cream and watching the traffic go past. *boggle* We came back here after the B-R closed and sat around and talked.

Song of the Day

• I Can See for Miles by The Who
• Paperback Writer by The Beatles

Stray Toasters

• From comes The Boy Who Cried Iraq.
• As some of you may recall, one of my Christmas presents from 2001 was this. I have given it a home atop my monitor at work. I looked at it this afternoon as it was back lit by my office window and the first thing that came to mind was: “What would Sisko do…?” From there, it was a quick Google search for “What would ______ do?” Some of the ones that I tried were: Kirk, Picard, and… Uncle Jesse (at the suggestion of ). It was a little scary.
• It’s a great big universe and we’re all really puny
  We’re just tiny little specks, about the size of Mickey Rooney…
  And in a related note, a group in Maine has created a scale model of the solar system. The scale is 1 mile : 93 million miles… it’s roughly 40 miles long.

• : Take a look at this. Note the fourth and fifth items, in particular.
• Justice League Cards. Based on the cartoon. Like I need another thing to collect…
• Making ice cream. Nothing new there. Making Ice Cream with Liquid Nitrogen. That’s a little different.
• In “Another Reason to Be Proud to Live in Utah” news: It seems that Senator Orrin Hatch is investigating a technology that makes it possible to “remotely destroy computers.” You can read more about it here. It even became a fleeting topic of conversation:
  

  [01:52] http://www.hatchmusic.com/
  [01:52] *boggle*
  [01:57] [Iso9] feindish plan… clever fucker is going to upload his own music and burn the fuckin soundcard right out of your computer.

• Shot Burglar To Sue. WHAT?!?!?! “Burglar… to… sue.” *shakes head*
• I had another person ask me what language the word “namaste” comes from and what does it mean. I gave him the rough translation and informed him that it was a Sanskrit word. If you would be interested in finding out more about it, click here.

And with that, I shall call it a night. Maybe.

Namaste.