Year: 2007

Lots and lots of catch-up blogging to do…

We’ve been really busy, lately. Lots of stuff appears all at once!

  • Sites
  1. xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe
  2. Sinfest: The Webcomic To End all Webcomics
  3. What Would Tyler Durden Do
  4. Top Posting and Bottom Posting
  5. Austin’s Got A Waterpark!
  6. Tomato Firmware | polarcloud.com
  7. The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager
  • Articles
  1. Care After Tonsillectomy and Adenoidectomy
  2. Rock, Paper, Scissors ^ 25
  3. Shopping cart applied geometry
  4. Pi Is Wrong! (even when it is not 3!)
  5. Mike Jones responds to Ted Haggard’s announcement of his heterosexuality
  6. New Study Finds Adoptive Parents More Invested in Their Children than Biological Parents
  7. 9 Signs the Online Job Market is Broken : Instigator Blog
  8. How to Leave Work at Work – Dumb Little Man
  9. Cocktail of additives found in child medicines | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
  10. A Note To Employers: 8 Things Intelligent People, Geeks and Nerds Need To Work Happily
  11. Bumps and bruises are ‘good for children’-Life & Style-Health-TimesOnline
  12. Polar Clock
  13. How to be a Great Dad – 12 Awesome Tips | zen habits
  14. Hand Me Downs – Men’s Health
  15. Golf to get ahead at work
  16. How to Tie the 10 Most Useful Knots
  17. Google Answers: whistling
  18. How To: Slipstream your XP installation – admin – Maximum PC
  19. AutoPatcher
  20. Gay bosses are better
  21. 5 mobile start pages – Mobile Minute – Download Squad
  22. How to Design Your Own Home – wikiHow
  23. TechEBlog » Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 (Wii) Video Review
  24. Fun Distraction: How To Escape Professional Handcuffs

Golf is back…

and I just played the best 9 holes I’ve ever played. Grace came with us, and had plenty of fun of her own.

My favorite improvement? Out of the 5 holes that caused me problems off the tee box, I only lost a ball on two of them — and I only lost one ball on each hole.

I’m now making good contact on about 35% of my swings — coming closer and closer to my goal of 90%. Not quite to my 60% I had with my previous bad stance, grip, and swing.

Cy is getting adamant that we both should go to Golfsmith and get our swings computer-analyzed. I think I’m now at a point where that could help me improve — even better than more lessons could at this point.

A once-in-a-lifetime kind of evening…

We went out to see stand-up comedy, spur of the moment. The headliner was Marc Maron.

Interestingly, between the opening act and the headliner were two acts — where there usually is just one.

What made it a once-in-a-lifetime thing? Every act was strong. Honestly, there was no weak material. I’ve never had that happen before in my life.

Oh, and it’s too late. They’ve moved on.

Oh, and we got in under the wire.  No, they didn’t sell out, no SRO here.  I’m pointing out that in a few weeks I could have had to sit through Craig Shoemaker again.

Kite practice worked beautifully.

We took Grace to the park.  She chose to get dressed in her soccer uniform, and we brought the soccer ball to the park with us.

She spent plenty of time running around, and played much soccer with Daddy Cy as goalie.

Before leaving, she chose plenty of time to climb on the playscape.  Each time I reminded her that we needed to leave soon, we got negotiation to extend the time.

I’m sure she will be a fantastic negotiator when she grows up.  Sigh.

Go fly a kite

Something to remember — this is important!

The Zilker Kite Festival is coming on the 4th of March. It’s supposed to be windy and warm today, so I may try to take G out to practice locally.

And just how often do I remember to blog about things that are upcoming? How often do I remember about the kite thing before it happens?

This must be a daddy thing.

Then again, you must also remember to not use razor-sharp string.

Finally got an eye exam.

I am aging, but still under 40.  That’s when I fully expect to go from “nearsighted” to “unable to read a menu in the same time zone”.

I’ve gone from -1.25/-1.5 to -1.5/-1.75, though for contacts, she prescribed both to be -1.5 — in anticipation of my turning 40.  No signs of gloucoma, no astigmatism.  They took baseline photos of my retina.

Everything was fine until she manually checked my peripheral vision with my pupils dilated.  Then, we stopped being friends.  For a few moments.  I’ve got a followup visit on the 6th to see how the contacts she gave me are working out.

I’ve been ill.

So, what have I been up to?

I took the spambait on they.com, and instead of learning each one as it comes in, I now batch them up, and learn the batches once per minute.  I also snag everything that imap users put into their imap spam folder, and add that to the learning batch.  I keep the non-spambait stuff, and learn from the latest 30 of those each minute.

Did you know that they.com is getting about one spam each second?

It’s amazing how much I can get done if I stop doing work-work for a day.

I also caught up on a lot of blogging.  I’ve been using foxmarks to have one set of bookmarks across every system, and I created a folder called “2blog”.  Anything I come across that I want to blog about, I add to that folder.  I cleared about half of it out yesterday.  The really fun thing is that I can do that from anywhere, now!

We finally got a new dryer.  We’ve gone gas, this time.  It used to take 2 hours to do a load of towels — more recently, because I had to stop and untangle everything after the last baffle came out completely — but now it takes barely longer than the washer. I’m now thinking that I may want to reverse my standard method of doing laundry, and switch from starting with the whites (since I always ended up waiting on the dryer) to starting with the things done in cold water.

Bleh.  I’m blogging about laundry.  Time to go back to the 2blog folder, eh?  Here we go…

Strength and lonliness

Normally, weekend nights when we are home, we watch PBS Britcoms.

Tonight, PBS Mystery — a Brittish adaptation of Dracula — ran long. Instead of britcoms, we were presented with a half-hour animated musing on lonliness called “A Room Nearby“.

Instead of feeling for these people, I felt smug. They are talking about how lonliness is isolating, and dwelling on the negative aspects thereof, whereas by the time I was 14, I relished my lonliness, and used every moment of it that I could grab to forge my own identity.

C’mon, folks. Lonliness is not an affliction. It is not a curse. It is not neccisarily rejection by society. Even if it were, so what if it is? Take this time to forge yourself stronger. I cannot deny the ability of wallowing insofar as it can be a tool to eventually strenghten oneself, as much of the time that I now realize has made me stronger involved nothing more involved than myself and a Rubik’s Cube — or less (but we won’t go there today, WILL WE!?!), and faced with the almost archival fact that nearly 1/3 of gay teens attempt suicide (isn’t that number lower yet?), I can understand the need for such — well, what is it? A Short Film? A TV show? A mini-series? I must not be the target demgraphic. I’ve always had soneone to talk to, no matter how young or old.

I keep saying that “I am nobody’s demographic.” Whenever I say that, I feel that I’m being disingenuious. Then I think about it — Aside from “Dexter”, what have I found in popular culture to attract me? Certainly not the Police performing tonight. I have a Simpson-esque attitude toward almost all awards shows — or is that Allen-esque? No matter, because both those terms imply a marketability, in the sense that “Pythonesque” is now in the OED, which has allegedly disappointed John Clesse as much as I presume I must also be disappointed.

I’m still not going to hold back about my concerns about weakness, which I think if one of my greatest strenghts. Combine the best of New York City — that is, the directness; the best of San Francisco (ummmm, no comment), and the laid-backness of Austin, and you’ve pretty much got me.

And that all said, I still get both 80’s film references, and Pynchon references.

Oh, and I’m one of the best unix geeks you’ll ever meet. I’ve learned from the best of the best of the cream of the crop. I can make perl and sh sing.

And PBS is still playing “Keeping up Appearnaces”. Sigh.

Not me!

We stayed in a hotel in downtown Chicago. This place, which I will not name, was not only non-smoking, but smoker-hostile and smug about it.

So, late in the cold, windy weather, I bundle up and go out front to smoke before I go to bed. Two gentlemen are there already, one smoking, one standing behind the valet podium. The man behind the podium had something that caused him to spasm regularly — perhaps ALS, perhaps MS, I thought it unkind to ask. Soon, this person asked the one already smoking for a light. It took them several tries, including one discarded cigarette, but they got the job done.

Then the other smoker finished up and went in.

Then, a car pulled up.

The driver and his wife got out. She went inside, while he gathered up things to take in, all the while watching the two of us smoke. I was standing off to the side, while our spasming friend was back behind the valet podium.

The driver then came up to me, and whispered:

Are you the valet?

The only thing I could do was to shake my head no, and smile an almost-evil smile.

Busy day in the cold, cold north…

Grace and I have been busy.

  • Snow angel (not re-creating selected scenes from Fargo)She made snow angels.
  • We had a snowball fight.Snowball fight
  • She went sledding.Sledding

It is now 14 below. We’re staying warm, watching the game, and eating chili.

Wow, it is cold.

We’re in Antigo, WI. It’s -40 with the wind chill. Do I need to point out that it doesn’t matter whether I say that in Fahrenheit or Celcius? If you don’t count the wind, it’s only 15 below (F).

Why am I here? My airline miles from all the travel I did starting in 2000 were about to expire. Grace hasn’t really seen snow. There was a super-saver fare, and Diane’s father’s 85th birthday is coming up.

Need I point out how painful 40 below is? We packed 5 bags for 3 of us for 4 days, and it’s not enough.

Grace was outstanding traveling. I’ve gotten to spend lots of time with her, and she’s behaving extraordinarily well! The worst part of it all was when the plane was landing, and her ears hurt. She didn’t believe that chewing gum would help, and wouldn’t try yawning for me.

While driving from Chicago to Clintonville, WI, we stopped for provisions. Grace got out of the car to stretch her legs, and walked over to the snow by the parking lot. I stopped her and zipped up her coat, then she walked into the snow and picked some up — without gloves. Presumably to try and make a snowball. That’s her big thing about this trip — she wants to have a snowball fight with me!

She only did that once, go figure! It’s so cold that the snow is really dry and powdery. I had her stomp her feet all the way back to the car, so that the snow she walked in wouldn’t melt and get her socks and shoes wet.

Last night, on the way from dinner in Clintonville to Antigo, we saw the non-wind-chill temperature drop to 19 belowDsc04938. I’m quite certain that that is the coldest I’ve ever experienced in my life, and I am more convinced than ever that I will never choose to do this kind of winter travel ever again, nor will I ever move further from the equator than I do now — about 4100 miles.