Union Pacific's Great Excursion Adventure

“A job ain’t nuthin’ but work…”

comics and animation, cyberpunk/steampunk, dining and cuisine, everyday glory, games, movies and TV, music, office antics, science and technology 1 Comment »

Sunday – 13 July 2008
And on the first day, Rob worked.
Amen.

That’s right: I made like Kool Moe Dee and went to work. loonybin88 and I did a server upgrade today – we had to unrack, swap memory and hard drives and re-rack 18 servers. And like Big Daddy Kane, we got the job done.

After that, we headed to Olive Garden to have dinner.

And, when it’s all said and done, my work week is officially 20% done already.

Booyah.

Stray Toasters

  • I found the following as the signature line to someone’s forum post:

    In Ulthar, no man may kill a cat. In Utah, no man may marry a cat. These rules were made because of the ramifications of them happening before.

    It amused me greatly.

  • Steampunk Wallpaper. ‘Nuff said.
  • By way of Wired: Is Sunday Morning the Best Wake-Up Tune Ever?
  • By way of YouTube: Sunday Morning

  • I need a steampunk icon.
    I don’t really need one, but I think that I want one.
  • Microsoft cuts XBox price by $50, plans 60GB model
  • David Bowie: Underground

    I don’t know how much Aha’s Take On Me influenced Mr. Bowie’s decision to take the video for Underground in this direction, but take a look at the similarities:

  • I’m a little… weirded out by the fact that I JUST noticed how similar Cool World and Take On Me are.
  • The Cosby Show can still make me laugh.
  • The classic Jonny Quest is on (not the 80s or 90s remakes). I think that if done properly (operative words: “if done properly”), it could make an interesting live-action TV show and/or movie. It could be done in the vein of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Or, it could even be told from the point of view of an older man recounting his globe-trotting adventures to his kids, grandkids or protege.
  • d

“This is not The Greatest Song in the World. No, this is just a tribute.”

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Thursday – 10 July 2008
Last night, Dr. Z brought my XBox from the AF office up to SLC. Along with it, came the six games I had stored in the carrying case, including X-Men: Legends. Win-Win. I took them home and put Legends in the 360 and sat down to enjoy some comics-based gaming.

I had, however, neglected one very important factor into account: The 360’s poor backwards compatibility.

After some research, I found that I needed to download an emulator – to trick the 360 into thinking that it was an O.G. XBox.¹ (Yes, calling it “O.G.” just made me laugh.) And, even then, there’s no guarantee that the emulator will play Legends properly. *sigh* As the home network is mostly wireless, I looked to see if I had a long enough Cat-5 cable to run from the living room to the office. Nope. Next, I considered trying to cascade wireless routers, since I have SaraRules’ router for the time being. Then I decided that was more effort than I really felt like putting into it last night.

So, I opted for playing City of Heroes.

Which had a new patch release. So, I waited for it to download and then clicked to apply it. I was apparently so wiped from the poor sleep Tuesday night – possibly aided by the Shiraz I had with dinner – that I nodded off before the patch finished applying.

So I called it an early evening, relatively speaking.

This morning, I was up and ready to roll in just over 40 minutes, including the time it took to iron today’s outfit. Not too shabby. It would have been even better if I had remembered my cell phone before leaving the complex. *sigh* At least I have frozen mocha goodness to see me through the morning.

And it’s Comics and Sushi ‘Wednesday.’

Stray Toasters

  • Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Sheila E. are performing Saturday. I’m a little torn about which show I’d rather go to… but leaning towards BBVD.
  • The new season of Burn Notice starts tonight.
  • The HeroClix Fantastic Four Starter Set should be in stores today.
  • As bad as I’ve (re)discovered that Super Friends can be, this sounds like an interesting compliation.
  • I haven’t played Second Life in probably a year. This is almost enough to get me to check it out again: New Babbage – A Steampunk City in Second Life:

  • iPhone 3G meets the masses tomorrow.
  • It looks as though the right reverend Jesse Jackson could use a good talking-to.
    But, he’s still my top choice for reading Green Eggs and Ham:

  • I just introduced DaveW to Christopher Titus Apologizes. In return, he sent me back to my desk with a video from Lisa Lampenelli: Take It Like a Man

Namaste.

¹ – O.G. XBox – A conversation between a classic XBox and an XBox 360:

XBox 360: So what are you supposed to be?
XBox: Me? I’m O.G.
XBox 360: “O.G.?” Shit… you ain’t gangsta.
XBox: Gangsta? Naw, man… not gangsta. O.G. “Original Gamer.” Word.

“It’s time to wake up, check the clock… punch it. I go to work.”

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Wednesday – 09 July 2008
Today, after two weeks, I get to relinquish the Leash.
Not only that, but I don’t have to deal with it again for eight weeks, if my math is correct.

Last night, I got my hero on… big time. I had an urge to play X-Men: Legends. Only after I started looking for it did I remember that it is in my XBox carrying case…

…with my XBox…

…in American Fork.

So, I decided to devote more time to Marvel Ultimate Alliance. That was fun. I used the Fantastic Four and the X-Men to run missions. One thing I need to work on is keeping my tanks from dying when going up against bosses: I got Colossus killed the last time I played and got The Thing killed (only briefly!) while fighting M.O.D.O.K. last night. But, it was fun.

Next, I headed to Paragon City and joined a team for a couple of missions. On the whole, it was a decent team, in terms of powers/abilities. In terms of team dynamics, however… they left a little something to be desired. There were more than “a few” team deaths involved. Still, I put on about a half-level before logging out.

Before heading to bed, I toyed with the idea of getting up early and heading to the gym. If I hadn’t kept waking up every hour-and-a-half or so, I might have actually followed through with it. *grblsnrkx*

Still, it’s Wednesday.
And that ain’t bad at all.

Stray Toasters

  • On the way to work, Nomad slipped Kool Moe Dee’s I Go to Work into the mix. That made me chuckle.
  • sent a few new pics of Bit. This one is adorable:

  • Ten codes
  • Thanks to for pointing this out:
  • The artwork of Rob Ullman
  • I was talking with loonybin88 about his weekend and, in the course of conversation, he mentioned that one of his sons is taken with one of the girls in the neighborhood. I told him that he might want to start getting the fatherly advice ready… but not like this:

  • RedEye’s “Best Superhero” Tourney

Namaste.

“All the lights are on and the blinds are down…”

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Lunch time.  I should be going to the gym, but neither Wes nor Mark are in this office and I really dislike working out alone.

Stray Toasters

I should eat something.

Mid-afternoon Toasters

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I am apparently in need of a gaming session. I just went to look up part the lyrics to Manic Monday… but typed “Manic Monkday” instead. *blink blink*

Project: Rooftop has released their list of finalists from the “Superman: Man of Style” contest. I’m partial to entries #2 and #12.

Check out the DeviantArt gallery of Cat Stagg.
(, you’ll want to check out the middle of the right column on Page 5)

Doll on a Music Box/Truly Scrumptious

When did the term “jet lag” come into use?

Subnetting/Supernetting == *bleargh*

“Monday, Monday…”

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Monday – 07 July 2008
I hope that the holiday weekend was safe for everyone. As yet, I’ve heard no reports of anyone having to be
rushed to their local medical facility to have fireworks-related injuries treated. I take that as a good thing.

Aside from being slow on the uptake in figuring out that SaraRules had gotten into town early and Friday morning Leash doom, it was a rather good – and relaxing – weekend.

After SaraRules left for Aspen, I headed down to Kate and Perry’s to do a little tech support and to hang with the family. It also turns out that their youngest added +1 to his Crawl skill while they were on vacation. It also seems like he added +1 to his Stand (with support) skill, too.

When I got back home, I planted myself on the couch and watched a couple of episodes of Law & Order: SVU. I flipped over to watch a little bit of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi before deciding to play City of Heroes. I was invited to join a team fairly quickly; we ran a few missions against The Council and Tsoo… and a bank mission. Despite a few inglorious deaths, I was able to put on a couple of levels.

All-in-all, it was a good end to a good weekend.

Stray Toasters

  • I am having Butterscotch Krimpets and coffee for breakfast. Not quite the so-called “Breakfast of Champions,” but good, nonetheless.
  • July 7, 1936: Get a Grip – Phillips Screws Up the Toolbox
  • Hulk vs. Wolverine

  • The manual I’m reading just made an analogy between IP addresses and USPS addresses, that impressed me:

    “In the same way that a house address has two parts – a street address and a ZIP code (the city and state are not really used anymore – an IP address also has two parts…”

    The impressive part is that not many people outside the USPS really know (or at least think about the fact) that the City and State parts of an address are somewhat superfluous. As a rather high percentage of the mailstream is routed by automated systems, they can usually determine exactly where a mailpiece goes from just the ZIP Code and the street address.

  • I’m going to a DCI show in Ogden on Thursday. I haven’t been to a drum corps show in… at least… 10 or 11 years. That should be fun.
  • By way of the “You Can’t Do That on Television” file: Porn appears on rugby programme
    (The expression of the guy in the accompanying picture makes the whole thing for me)
  • I am amused that this xkcd comic has had the following effect on the Wikipedia entry for “wood”

And… back to it.

Namaste.

Late-afternoon digressions

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Today’s sushi was good. Tony even threw in a couple of extra nigiri for us to try; I had albacore. Not bad.

Before lunch, I finally picked up my guitar from Acoustic Music. I’m a bit anxious to play. And, speaking of play, I’ve realized something: I want to play some of my older XBox games. Just because. Like X-Men: Legends and X-Men: The Next Dimension… and even X2: Wolverine’s Revenge and Spider-Man.

Stray Toasters

  • For Derek:
  • Pop culture + bukkake + macaques = ???
    (And I’m not really sure that we really want to know, either.)
  • What Would Barack Obama Do Listen To? Wired took a few guesses… check out how they did.
  • The Artist Formerly Known As The Fresh Prince (not to be confused with “just” Prince) backs Barack, too. BBC News has the skinny. Will Smith has been on The Late Show and The Colbert Report over the past couple of days, both interviews were entertaining.
  • Mayor Mick’s bike returned
    (Did this kind of thing ever happen to Rocky Anderson? Richard Daley? Ed Koch?)
  • Orwell’s 1984 as a pulp novel

*voop*

“One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster…”

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Friday – 20 June 2008
The end of the work week is at hand. Thanks to putting in a few extra hours, I’m done and gone at 1:30 today. That’s worth skipping lunch for. I’m going to run a few errands and enjoy the early start to the weekend.

Last night, I watched Fear Itself, the new anthology horror/suspense summer series on NBC. Thirteen episodes, each done by different directors. Last night’s episode was “The Family Man.”

Family Man – A likeable family man switches bodies with a serial killer during a near-death experience. Now he must keep his loved ones from being added to the long list of the killer’s victims.

It wasn’t bad; it reminded me of a modern Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. I’m going to have to investigate the previous three episodes.

I also listened to the new Duffy CD, Rockferry. You may remember that I posted the video to Mercy a few weeks back:

The whole CD is good. It has a definite British soul feel, with a number of songs making nods to the 60s style of Brit soul/pop. I give it an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

Stray Toasters

  • I chatted with a little while ago, he has left Nepal and is currently enjoying a layover in Bangkok. He should be home tomorrow evening. More on his travel adventures below.
  • After sending her a link to zombie drawings on DrawerGeeks, I just typed “Zombees!” to SaraRules… which made me think “zombie bees.”
  • By way of BBC News: One tonne ‘Baby’ marks its birth
  • Drawn! (Which I had once again forgotten about…)
  • From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” file: The Baby Borrowers
  • Sailors fighting in the dance hall
    Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
    It’s the freakiest show
    Take a look at the Lawman
    Beating up the wrong guy
    Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know
    He’s in the best selling show
    Is there life ice on Mars?
  • I found this by way of DeviantArt:

  • (click for more work by DarkAngelDTB)

  • Auto Test Tracks Revealed From Above
  • Puzzle Calendar Is Not LEGO Compatible
  • …however, this is pretty cool: LEGO Employees Have Minifigs As Business Card
  • I think I’ll treat myself to either The Incredible Hulk or Get Smart after tomorrow’s ‘Clix game.

Quote of the Day

From this morning’s conversation with
He was telling me about an email that he sent to Bot and a couple of his brothers:

I had to go through multiple roadblocks, burning tires, and brick throwers to get to the airport this morning. Today’s asshole Kathmandu protest is brought to you by students, who are demanding that fuel prices come down. Took us 90 minutes to get to the airport.

At one intersection, the driver just hit the gas and drive around the tire. A dude threw a brick at us (missed by a mile) and called me “a mother beetches son.” Best insult EVER.

Anyway, I’m here, I’m in the Thai Airways lounge, and all is well. See you soon…

Then he added:

I almost went with the sesame street theme and said “today’s asshole kathmandu protest is brought to you by the letters AMF” but i think only andrew would’ve understood it

…where “AMF” stands for “Adios, motherfucker.”

I think that he should have added it.

And that’s a wrap.

Namaste.

No, that would be an ID-10-T error…

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sent me a link to an item on Not Always Right earlier:

When Nomenclature Goes Amok

Tech Support | USA

Tech Support: “All right…now double-click on the File Manager icon.”

Customer: “That’s why I hate this ‘Windows’–because of the icons–I’m a Protestant, and I don’t believe in icons.”

Tech Support: “Well, that’s just an industry term sir. I don’t believe it was meant to-”

Customer: “I don’t care about any ‘industry terms’. I don’t believe in icons.”

Tech Support: “Well…why don’t you click on the ‘little picture’ of a file cabinet…it’s a ‘little picture’, okay?”

Customer: *hangs up*

It amused me on many levels. Enough so that I started perusing the rest of the “Tech Support” section. As much as some of them made me laugh, I’ve had a couple of encounters that rivaled a few of the stories.

I’m almost afraid to look at the “Customer Service” section. Almost.

“You can twist perceptions, reality won’t budge…”

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Tuesday – 17 June 2008
I was awake before the alarm went off this morning. Which set me up to be nominally coherent when it did go off… enough to turn it off and roll over for Anotherloverholeinyahead another 20 minutes of sleep. I had an odd dream that involved me being back in middle or upper school. And getting to school. And snow. And living in Baltimore. Odd combination.

I was in the office at 8:00. Nice, as the office hasn’t really started to hum yet. I have a meeting today from 2:00 to 3:30, allegedly. At this point, I’m of the opinion that I’ll be taking Defiant into the meeting to find novel and creative ways of staying awake. Focused? Well, we’ll see how good the meeting is at holding my attention.

Stray Toasters

  • What’s ‘fair use’ in a blog?
  • ‘Teach the Controversy’ t-shirt designs


    (click image for more information)

  • I may wind up re-lobotomizing ‘Nine. The current installation of XP seems… to have issues.
  • By way of BBC News: 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate
  • Inventor of the Internet, Oscar winner and former Vice President Al Gore has thrown his weight support behind Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
  • Building Your Perfect Wardrobe: Spring/Summer ’08
  • After seeing LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Batman and Robin and LEGO Indiana Jones, I wouldn’t mind seeing a LEGO X-Men game. (And I won’t even mention that a LEGO Legion of Super-Heroes game would be an ‘automatic covet/buy…)

And, now, coffee cup in hand, it’s time to “…attack the day like birds of prey.”

Namaste.

“That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball!”

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The day has been pretty good. The highlight (at least so far) was heading to ‘s house with looneybin88 and JG to play a few games of Twilight Zone pinball at lunch. Other than that, it’s been a rather run-of-the-mill day in the neighborhood.
(…in the neighborhood…)
(…in the neigh-bor-hood.)

Not sure what trouble I plan on getting into this evening. Maybe a trip to Paragon City… or *gasp* even The Rogue Isles.

Stray Toasters

Quotes of the Day
Today’s gems both came at lunchtime and qualify as “Unintentional Porn Overheard While Playing Pinball”

  1. looneybin88 was on the machine… and doing quite well. He made a play that resulted in playing with three pinballs on the table. (You have no idea how many permutations that last sentence went through before I came up with something that wasn’t porn-tastic.) Someone commented on his making a good play and the rest of the conversation went down the proverbial chute:

    Me: Sun. Dog. Ass. (My usual ‘shorthand’ for “The sun shines on a dog’s ass, too…”)
    looneybin88: What can I say? I got skills!
    : You have skills… with a dog’s ass? I’m calling animal control.

    At that point, all three balls left the field of play as looneybin88 doubled-over, red-faced and laughing.

  2. All of us had a horrible third game… except JG. When he was coming to the table to play his second ball, he looked at our scores and said:

    Huh, all I have to do is beat myself.

    The rest of us looked at each other… and broke out in raucous laughter. JG, to his credit, stoically kept playing.

And now, to find some trouble to get into.

Namaste.

“Into the great wide open, under them skies of blue…”

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Sunday – 15 June 2008
Happy Father’s Day

This morning started lazily. SaraRules made sauteed spaghetti and coffee for breakfast. (By the way: Drew, I did get the recipe.) Rachel hung out through breakfast and then went out for a hike. Next up: Hygiene rituals and a spot of laundry.

I’ll be heading west again in a couple of hours. It has been a good (though brief) trip – it was nice to see SaraRules and some of the places that she has talked about for the past few weeks. I’m going to try and get back out here sometime next month, God willing and the creek don’t rise.

A couple of shots from the front porch of the condo:


(click for larger versions)

Stray Toasters

  • Last night, we watched Across the Universe again. We’ve been trying to see this for a couple of months. I love the arrangements of the songs… and I had forgotten how much I liked the arrangement of Let It Be. And the visuals are great, as well. If you have somehow not seen this movie, I strongly recommend renting it. Soon.
  • Congrats to and Team Chalk-o-Licious for winning “Best of Festival” at this year’s Chalk Art Festival.
  • The Things That Carried Him – This is a story that I first heard about on RadioWest a few months ago. It tells the story of a U.S. soldier’s final journey – the journey home to be buried. It’s a pretty amazing story. Hearing the interview with the author, Chris Jones, made me look forward to getting that issue of Esquire.
  • This American Hero Wins Machinima Contest
  • By way of BBC News: The United States of Advertising
  • What the iPhone 3G Is Still Missing
  • I’m not going to get my entry for “Superman: Man of Style” done in time to submit it to Project: Rooftop… but I’m going to keep working on it. Because I can. And because it’s been pretty fun.
  • William Katt: The Hero Guest Stars on Heroes

And that’s a wrap.

Namaste.

“Headfirst humanity, pause at a light, then flow through the streets of the city…”

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SaraRules and I headed into Aspen this afternoon.  We went to the Aspen Music Festival and School campus.  From there, it was into town to the Aspen Art Museum and to wander around; it reminded me a bit of Park City – a decent place to visit, but I don’t think I could live in either place. Next, we headed to the Aspen Music Festival concert grounds.  And then… back to Snowmass Village.  Jiggety-jig.

All that and pictures, too.

Stray Toasters

Zoom!

“We disengage, we turn the page…”

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Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Environment wasn’t really hitting on anything today.
Instead, I returned to DNS & BIND. And by “return,” I mean “started reading anew.” It’s been a while.
That worked out better.

Even though I’ve never been to the Aspen area, I wasn’t inclined to go out gallivanting today… for two reasons:

  1. SaraRules is at work… and, thus, not around to hang out
  2. I was “on the clock” and had work to do. (I have a work ethic, sue me.)

Today’s reading locations have included:

  • The dining room table… under the lamp of antlers.
  • The window nook
  • The front porch
  • The back porch
  • The kitchen counter

The view from the front porch isn’t awesome, but I wouldn’t mind catching a sunrise over it… if the sunrise wasn’t 5:41 AM. The back porch looks up the mountainside. It’s green and has a few trees. And, by the time I moved out there, it had the sun. Oh, the warm, joyous sun. (Not to be confused with the angry sun.) Aside from a butterfly, some birds and a few other assorted insects, I haven’t seen any of the local fauna.

Speaking of fauna: I saw some deer or antelope (hard to tell in traffic at 80 MPH) on the… dunes?… outside Green River yesterday. And, I saw my favorite not-sheep along Route 6, too.

Stray Toasters

  • The local wireless connection doesn’t like iChat, it seems. Other programs do just fine, but iChat craps out at random. I’ll have to test it with City later.
  • The Food & Wine Classic in Aspen starts today. Check out the ticket prices. Somehow, I think we’re going to skip this.
  • “Unboop”
  • I had iTunes on random and Rocket Man came on.
    Not Elton John.
    Nor Kate Bush.
    Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Interesting version. I checked All Music Guide and it seems as though it’s been on a LOT of albums/CDs.
  • Robert Cray’s Smoking Gun is still a great song.
  • So is Diamond in the Rough, by Shawn Colvin.
  • Thanks to for making sure that I saw Classics in LEGO
    …which, in turn, led me to this…
  • She bop -he bop – a we bop
    I bop -you bop – a-they bop
    Be bop – be bop – a-lu-bop,
    (I hope He will understand)
    She bop -he bop – a we bop
    I bop -you bop – a-they bop
    Be bop – be bop – a-lu-she bop

And that’s all for now.

“Rocky Mountain high (high… Colorado…)”

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13 June 2008
Greetings from Snowmass Village.

As it had been almost three weeks since I’d seen SaraRules, I decided that a trip was in order. I had originally planned on taking the train out here, but Amtrak apparently decided that this was the weekend to do track maintenance. So, no go. *blah* We looked at other methods of getting me here: Airplane. Bus. ICBM. We finally settled on me coming out next week. Okay, to say that “we” settled on it, isn’t exactly right. We said that it seemed as though it would be next week before I would be out here. In the back of my head, I was calculating the mileage and planning to just hop in the car and drive it. And that’s exactly what I did. Hello, surprise visit. The hard part, as usual, would be making sure that I – or anyone else who knew what I was planning – didn’t tip my hand.

Fortunately, as most of my work for the past few weeks has been training-related (i.e.: LOTS of reading) – and since books are rather portable – I was able to parlay that into working on the road. The drive out here was rather nice, despite a few construction zones in both Utah and Colorado.

I have driven through Colorado twice before – when I moved to Utah and again a couple of years ago – but, both of those trips were east-to-west. And, both of those trips were along I-70, so I’m… familiar… with the road. But, I noticed things heading eastbound that I hadn’t seen before. And, I also stopped in a different part of Grand Junction than usual.

Before last night, I had never seen more of Glenwood Springs than what you get from I-70. That’s a shame. The part of it that I drove through last night seemed nice… for a small town. And, from what SaraRules has told me, the cost of living here is still a little higher than SLC, but not quite as bad as in Aspen.

The drive into Snowmass Village wasn’t bad. Until I got “to” the condo complex where AMFS is lodging SaraRules for the summer. Apparently they don’t believe in putting street signs in locations where you can see them easily, especially at night. I drove right past the entrance. I continued all the way up to Snowmass Village Town Center, which I knew to be too far. *sigh* Turn around and drive back towards Aspen. Fortunately, I was able to see the sign for SaraRules’ complex this time. Turned in, found the building, parked.

The look of surprise on SaraRules’ face – a combination of “I’m glad to see you” and “What are YOU… doing HERE… NOW?!” – was worth the drive. We unpacked the car and I got to relax. I also met her roommate, Rachel. The condo itself is nice: 2BR/2BA, nice kitchen and living/dining areas. It’s roughly the size of my apartment, maybe a little bigger. And one of the owners has a thing for bears. Pictures. Figures. I am almost at the point of wondering if she’s a shaman and it’s her spirit guide.

Today’s biggest hurdle was getting Defiant (in Windows mode) to recognize that there really was a wireless connection, so I could connect to work’s network and do some morning housekeeping. In OSX mode, it found it immediately. A few button-pushes later and I was in like Flynn.

Stray Toasters

Two cups of coffee into the game, I can make like Tom Sawyer and get “…right on to the friction of the day.”

Namaste.