She’s strong and tall/but scared to fall/her roots unknown…

Short weeks are strange, particularly when you skip Monday. I’m left not knowing what the hell day it is.

As much as I’d dearly love to hide under the bed and sleep this weekend, we’re heading down to my parnts’ place in glorious Anderson, South Carolina. At least we don’t have to do any late-night driving; instead, we’re going to get up early on Saturday morning and drive the five hours down there. As much as I love my family (and I know they’re reading this 🙂 I’m in social overload right now, so I might not be at my best. Ah well, maybe if I go to bed early tonight and tomorrow night I’ll feel better come the weekend. (And by the way, lamb will be fine for dinner, Mom. Mmmm, lamb…)

Not much going on at work today. We have the monthly department meeting, which usually pretty much makes a complete hash of the day. I need to devise some viscosity tests for the dozens of coatings I’ve made over the last few weeks and I’ll probably run those this afternoon. It’ll be fun to run – the viscometer is attached to a computer where the software is so old it has to run on Windows 3.11. It’s always a joy to use because I have to refamiliarize myself with the interface. Microsoft is an evil, soulless behemoth, but at least they’ve improved their interface over the years.

Next weekend we have nothing planned. I wonder how long we can keep it that way. About the only thing I can think that we want to do between now and then is catch the stage performance of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” at one of the local gay clubs before it ends its run on July 27. Maybe one day next week – I’ll have to talk to Takaza and see what he’d like to do.

All right, I’d better start writing this up or I’ll forget all the good stuff (well as good as the good stuff gets).

My goodness, this is a long travelogue!

Finally, someone finally got around to inventing a Tivo-like device that works for radio (plus a whole bunch of other neat stuff). It’s only first-generation, but I see the beginnings of great things – plus This American Life whenever I want it!*

(NY Times autoregistration thingy courtesy of Marc Majcher)

*(Yes, I know I can get This American Life off the web, but I refuse to deal with RealAudio. Ick.)

Well, it was a mad scramble, but we got everything packed last night. I don’t know why I stress so much about this stuff – it’s not brain surgery, if we forget something it will All Be OK – no one is going to die if I forget to pack the charger for my MP3 player. Still, I was cranky and irritable last night – I hope Dan didn’t get too ticked off at me. Anyway, we got everything in the car and ready to go for this morning and got to bed a bit late – 10:30.

Naturally, I didn’t sleep very well. I never do the night before a big trip. I’ll be a basket case tonight after about 10 PM, but that’s why Dan is doing the latter half of the driving instead of me. I’m terrible at driving at night anyway – I get blinded by the oncoming headlights and mesmerized by the white lines in the dark. Unfortunately for poor Dan, this means he has the joy of driving through DC and Baltimore. Sorry, love – I’ll take that stretch on the drive home, I promise! At least it’ll be after rush hour…I hope.

So now there’s nothing left but to sit at work until 3:30 PM rolls around. Funny, my concentration is just crappy this morning. I got revisions to one project plan off, and now I need to start writing the materials handling document so I can send it to the team for review before our meeting Tuesday afternoon. How do you stretch “Don’t eat it, drink, it, get it on you, or even look at it!” into an extended QS-900-compliant document? Guess I’m going to find out.

Man, I need a nap.

Today’s word of the day is:
chamfron ‘sham-fren noun [ME shamfron, fr. MF chanfrein] (15c) Armor used to protect the front of a war horse’s head in medieval times

Usage example: “And the audience was later stunned to learn that Lynne Cheney was not, in fact, wearing some sort of hideous rusty chamfron on her head during a speech that made the souls of children wince, but was merely roughly 47 layers of shellack and makeup she must apply every morning to better cover the scales and the fissures.”

(From Mark Morford, of course. Who else?)

Well, looking over my Friends Page it looks like lots of folks are packing up and getting ready for Anthrocon. We’d be doing the same except that we’re working with limited vacation this year and too many conventions, so it’s going to a few days off here, a few days there. For Anthrocon we’re only taking off Friday and Monday, so we’ll miss out on whatever festivities there might be on Thursday – oh well. Four days is one day too many for me at a con, anyway.

This week has alternately been creeping and flying past, depending on how much I’m worrying about Anthrocon. Work has been a bit of an adventure, with project status meetings, and the surprise announcement of the fact that I have to make a one-hour presentation on material handling to the department as part of the annual safety training – and I have three weeks to prepare. Dandy. On top of that, I was given responsibility of the department storage room, a 60′ x 40′ room which has become essentially a junkyard for unwanted or unused equipment, pipes, wires, and who knows what else. Naturally, we just received a safety citation since two-thirds of it is pretty much just heaped on the floor. It’ll be my job to sort through it, see who owns what, put in a shelving system, and generally bring order to chaos. At least I have a few months to work on this. Of course, somewhere along the line I also need to do my lab work. Bleah.

So, Anthrocon: Our plans right now have us leaving at 4 PM on Thursday – I’ll be picking up takaza from his work and then we’ll hit the road. We’re only going part way, though – we could make it to Philadelphia Thursday night, but that would mean rolling in sometime after midnight and paying for the more-expensive hotel room. Instead, we’re stopping in Edgewood, Maryland. This is nice because it will let us get up in the morning, make a last-minute store run for this all-important in-room munchies and sodas (though how often we’ll be able to get by the room is an open question). We should arrive at Anthrocon before noon on Friday and we’ll work on checking in as soon as we get there (I doubt we’ll have much luck, though).

As I mentioned before, we’re on Operations staff – one side-benefit of this is that we can bypass the lines at registration and pick up our badges and supersponsor packets at Operations. Yay! Anyway, both Dan and I are scheduled to work in Artists Alley from 5-6 PM on Friday, 3-6 PM on Saturday and 1-3 PM and 4-5 PM on Sunday (I think I have those hours right…) I’ll probably be helping out elsewhere, too – perhaps at the Volunteers Table, or wherever else I’m needed.

You Midwest-Furfest-types that are going to be there: we’re probably going to get together in our room Friday evening (after dinner most likely, since I don’t see us finishing up all the Artists Alley stuff until 7 PM or so, really) with aureth and possibly rustitobuck and mirkowuff. Any staff members who’s like to stop by and discuss constuff (particularly anything related to registration of publications) is welcome to join us. If you don’t see us and can’t find our room number, Dan and my cell phone numbers are in the staff directory on the Furfest website. And yes, since we’re complete geeks, we’ll be checking e-mail throughout the convention as well. Who knows, there might even be some LJ updates, too 🙂

Dig my new LJ icon – ain’t it cute? That’s me in the foreground, and Dan behind me.

Here’s a daredevil thing for me to do: trying to update my journal before coffee. Yeah, I’m just a wild man.

For some reason I thought I’d written here since Monday, but evidently I was mistaken. Well, let’s talk about the week past, and plans for the coming week of travel and conventioning…

This is gonna be a long one

As I was saying last night before I was so rudely interrupted by sleep…

Well, it’s going to be a busy week for me, even though it’s only three days at work. Today and tomorrow, at least, and probably Wednesday, I’m making three batches of coating per day. At two-and-a-half hours each, and trying to slip in testing of previous batches during the hour hold time I get in each process, it’s going to be pretty hoppin’. Fortunately, that should finish off all the batches I have to make and next week can be devoted to testing and writing up all this mess.

“So,” you’re asking yourself (because you talk to yourself. Weirdo.) “What are you doing for the Fourth of July, Duncan?” Well, not a whole hell of a lot, and I’m loving it. Rob and Janet (and Ian) are hosting their annual house party, whereby they invite a few dozen friends to crash at their place for a long weekend, consume interesting alcohol, eat lots of grilled food, and stay up far too late. The theme alcohols for this year are gin and vodka (only the good stuff, if you please). For last year’s Cinco de Mayo party, tequila was the theme and that was where I learned there’s some excellent tequilas out there that aren’t expensive at all. I’m not much of a gin fan, but I’ll try some if only to remind myself why I don’t like it. The Grey Goose vodka I’ve had was excellent, as was the Belvedere – I’m interested to see what else Rob comes up with. The nice part about this is that we’ll probably only stop by for a few days out of the long weekend, and relax the rest of the time. The one fly in the ointment is that takaza has to work on Friday while I have the day off. That kind of sucks but we’ll work around it.

Next week, of course, we’re off to Anthrocon. We’re driving out on Thursday and stopping at a hotel in Aberdeen, MD for the night, then arriving around noon on Friday. We’ll be rooming with rustitobuck and mirkowuff (By the way guys, Dan inflated the air mattress and checked it for leaks last night – he says it’s nice and comfy). Both Takaza and I have volunteered for Operations staff (they recognized the big red “S” on our foreheads, you see) which as near as I can tell means we’ll be assisting with the cash registers at the Con Store and in Artists’ Alley, though I’m happy to help out wherever I’m needed. I’ve come to the conclusion that working at cons keeps me from getting bored, and this is a Good Thing.

The week after that we’ll be heading down to South Carolina to visit my parents’ place and see my sister and my two nephews. That should be a lot of fun, too.

The last weekend in July is, tentatively, unclaimed. I somehow doubt it will stay that way, but we’ll see.

As an aside, howdy to Tango (vt_komainu) who thought he could sneak onto my friends list without me noticing 🙂

Well, back to the lab. Laters!

You know, for a weekend where we set out to do very little, it turned out that we actually accomplished a good bit.

Courtesy cut for those who don’t want to hear about our *fabulous* weekend

Brophey had it right:

“It’s okay now, my dog found the chainsaw.”

Bwahahaha!

A very fun little movie – not particularly deep, but the kind of summer fodder I enjoy. Of the $7.75 we paid, I’d say with was worth $6.75 so I don’t feel ripped off or anything.

It’s a link-o-licious kind of day!

First off, we have, that bane of our society: Kinder Eggs! Who knew such evil was among us?

This is worth reading if only for the headline: Today’s recipe: Grilled Martha

Apparently hen parties invading gay clubs is a rising problem over in the UK. Somehow I just don’t see that happening on this side of the pond…

Did you know that there’s a Dog News weblog? Isn’t that just cool?

Morons on Parade #291

Meaningless meme propagation

So we headed down to Emerald Isle last Friday.

Read all about our weekend at the beach!

Damn, I’m feeling good! Why? Well, a couple of reasons.

First of, it’s Friday. yay, Friday!

Second, in just a few hours, we’re heading down to the beach. Surf and sun (well, surf anyway) await!

Third, I just got back from the gym, where I had my quarterly body composition testing. The short version: All that exercising is really making a difference!

Here’s the long version

This week is taking forever…

Tomorrow after work, takaza and I are going to be heading down to Emerald Isle, North Carolina, located on the Bogue Banks. Our friends Donald and Janelle invited us as well as Thomas and Sherry (Sherry’s cool, of course, because she has Cliff, the Inexhaustable Husky) down for the weekend to a condo that they’ve rented for the last week. I’m not sure what we’re going to be doing down there, but I reckon we’re going to do some swimming (without any unfortunate incidents, I hope), vegetating, and generally enjoying the company of our friends. We’ll even be {gasp!} out of email contact!

All of that is, of course, assuming we can get through today. Bleah. Still have some material tests to run and some online training to go through (yay), then to the gym. Tonight’s looking like pork chops on the grill. Oh, and laundry, so we’ll have something to wear to work next week when we get back from the beach.

Oh, something that amused me from elynne‘s journal (although apparently the meme is spreading): Things on my interest list that aren’t shared by anyone else
Clearwater Hot Tubs – A little place that has hot tub suites, located outside of Chicago. Lovely, just lovely.
Halsted Street – The Main Street of Boystown, the gay ghetto of Chicago
Pat Cassidy – A man with a great radio voice, he woke me up every morning on the late, lamented WMAQ-AM. He’s now holding a similar position with former rival WBBM-AM.

Wow, out of 84 listed interests, only three singletons.

Well, back to work…

Y’know, I thought the new toothphone mentioned in this article is a pretty spiffy new gadget.

It becomes quite funny, though, to anyone who’s ever seen the deleted scenes on the Hedwig and the Angry Inch DVD.

Everybody Loves Nude Swedish Farmers!

A calendar featuring nude farmers armed with pitchforks, shovels and wheelbarrows is creating a stir in Swedish agriculture circles. A national farming organization, which presented a similar, hugely successful, calendar last year, is worried that the new version made by a local group of farmers could defeat the purpose of the original calendar. “They’re surfing on our wave of success,” said Ann Linden, one of the creators of the 2002 calendar. Linden said the first version, featuring waist-up, black-and-white photographs of nude, young farmers in farm settings, was designed to change the image of Swedish farmers as “grumpy old men with hats.” The new version, featuring glossy pictures of tight clusters of completely naked heavily drugged blissed-out grumpy old men with hats completely doused in Swedish meatball gravy and plying each other with large fresh garden cucumbers while body-painting the message “Swedish farmers do it with lutefisk” in body glitter on each others’ shaved chests, is just plain weird. “And what’s with this hot pink donkey right here?” Linden might’ve asked, pointing to the July photo. “What the hell are they doing to it with that salad spinner?”
(Story here, Read more stuff by Mark Morford)

That’s funny, I thought I’d updated my LJ over the weekend. I guess I planned to do it, even constructed the entry in my head, just neglected to actually sit down and write it. How very odd…

So anyway, picking up the narrative from where we left off, we wound up heading over to Boston Market for dinner on Friday. The ambience leaves a lot to be desired, but their chicken is quite tasty, and it’s a fast-food place where the food is even slightly good for you. Though the steamed vegetables had been steamed into submission. I think I’ll skip those next time. After that, it was back to the house to relax and geek out on Furrymuck. I haven’t been on Furrymuck lately, and it was nice to chat with some of the good folks there.

Saturday was a bunch of errands, which takaza has already described so I won’t bore you except to say that the wine shop is quite nice, if a bit sparse in inventory right now, and the Italian store has a truly fabulous selection of goodies (which you can order over the net, too!). Dinner was indeed decadent, as I made a tasty carbonara sauce.

Carbonara sauce recipe here

(Hooper X: “‘What’s a Nubian?’ Bitch, you almost made me laugh.”)

Glorious Friday!

Not much on the agenda for the weekend, and this is a Good Thing. Got the daily gym trip after work, then dinner, which will likely be supplied by one of our fine local eateries since we don’t really have jack in the house to cook – heck, it’s been almost two weeks since we went to the store. On the one hand, that’s good because it keeps the bills down. On the other, the choices start to get a bit lean by the end of the second week. So a trip to the grocery store is on the agenda for Sunday.

Also this weekend, I need to take back the shirt I picked up at Kohl’s last week. I don’t know what they define a XXL as, but it fit more like a large on me. Sheesh. It’s a bummer, too, because I like the pattern. Guess I’ll have to keep shopping. I’ve found I like some of the tropical-type print shirts that I’ve seen. And y’all can just keep your Big Gay Al comments to yourselves, thankyouverymuch.

Other stuff for the weekend: teach myself PHP. No problem, right? Actually, it’s a side-project I’m kicking around as an experiment with web forms. We’ll see if I can figure it out or not. Probably poke at some Midwest Furfest stuff too, and see where we stand on a couple of items (like sponsor goodies). Tomorrow (June 15) is a big deadline for some things, and I’m interested to see if that deadline has been met.

Well, off to the gym. Y’all have a great weekend!

So, where would I like to live? Well, here’s what FindYourSpot says (link courtesy of J’s Notes):

I want to live where?

Dreary week, and having problems finding my motivation. I thought I left it in the top left drawer of my desk, but no luck.

What kind of week am I having? On Tuesday I had to make a batch of conductive adhesive (adhesive with metal powder dispersed into it). The mixer I was using shook a screw loose. The screw dropped into the pot while it was mixing and it got knocked around in there for a couple of hours. By the way the pot is Teflon-coated. Er, was Teflon-coated. Oh and by the way, all that Teflon had to go somewhere – into the adhesive. Teflon is not a good conductor. Into the trash goes that batch – a full day’s work wasted. With any luck it’ll be up and running tomorrow, but I’m not holding my breath.

Yesterday I was trying to assemble the machinery I need to start testing some UV-curable coatings. Pretty simple – air-powered mixer, mixing shaft, dispersion impeller. Easy, right? First it appears that all the mixers are in use. I find one squirreled away in one of the labs and grab it. Then all of the chucks are either in use or don’t fit the available mixers. I go to Home Depot – none of the chucks they stock will work. I come back and take the one chuck I can find to the model shop and have them drill it out so it will fit on the mixer shaft. Now I need to go hunting for a suitable mixing shaft and dispersion blade. Part of the problem is that the six or eight technicians we have all guard their equipment jealously, and stuff gets hidden away so no one can find it…and then they forget where they put it. Or they won’t tell anyone where the stuff is. It’s like working with a bunch of third-graders, I swear.

OK, rant over. The good news is that I found out that a bunch of my old SCA friends are keeping online diaries, just not on LiveJournal. They’re all over at DiaryLand, where they’ve created a nice little network of folks. Keeping up with friends seems a bit more difficult using DiaryLand’s system – you have to load each page individually, rather than have everything dumped into a Friends page like on LiveJournal. But now I can see what’s going on with Jen, Jason, Wendy, Mel, and Genie. Fortunately, Genie has seen the light and also has a LiveJournal (geniealisa, to be specific)- hi Genie! Why am I so happy to have found these folks’ diaries? Because they post wonderfully cracked entries like this.

Well, that was fun.

The past few days’ silence was due mostly to our trip to Columbia, Maryland for Jen and Alan’s wedding. Jen is a dear friend from my days back at Virginia Tech and in the SCA, and someone I don’t get to see nearly often enough anymore. It was a fun occasion and I got to see many old friends I hadn’t seen in years. It’s always fun chatting with Tracie (and her boyfriend Chris is both cute and a fun guy to talk to – a big improvement over past…uh, never mind). With any luck, we’ll be meeting them in Charlotte sometime in August for a weekend at Carowinds. Yay!

After the wedding (which was around noon) we grabbed a small bite at Boston Market (surprisingly tasty, actually), then went back to the hotel and napped a bit. And stuff 😉 After a few hours, brophey and rasslor came by and we went to a local Mongolian BBQ for dinner, then hung out at Best Buy. Next we went to a small laser tag place that had Dance Dance Revolution and I determined once again that I may be gay but I have neither the rhythm nor the coordination that’s supposed to come with my orientation. Hey! I got gypped! 🙂 After that we crashed back at the hotel and watched part of the Canes/Red Wings game (then 2nd of three overtimes) before Brophey and Rasslor headed home and we went to bed.

Sunday we got a surprisingly early start and were even able to get a good breakfast at a little coffee shop around the corner from the hotel (which beat the heck out of the $10 buffet the hotel was serving – ugh, cold bacon and rubbery scrambled eggs, no thanks). Brophey and Rasslor met us there and we drove the two hours down to Kings Dominion. We rode roller coasters, enjoyed the beautiful weather, and then headed home. Lots of driving for a short weekend, but we had fun so it was worth it.

Today was pretty nondescript – getting back into the swing of things and wondering why I was so darned tired. Ah well, I reckon I’ll get some good sleep in tonight and tomorrow won’t be so bad. I hope.

OK, now this is just downright cool. Using a ruler, Scotch tape, some rather strong magnets, and nine steel balls, you can build your own Gauss Rifle.

(The magnetorheological fluids are pretty keen, too – in fact, my employer has a division that makes them!)

Well, I’ve finally gotten off my butt and started the process of revamping my website. This is a much cleaner design than I had before, and is also my first venture into cascading style sheets (CSS).

I still need to re-do my furry page (woefully out of date!) and my Mage page, but the home page, biography page, and coming out page have all been done. I’m open to any comments on style, colors, design, or whatever y’all might have!

MEN DO TALK ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS – You Just Have to Know How to Listen

Mmmm…Mike Piazza… 🙂

Y’know, RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a truly nifty thing – it takes your site’s content and publishes into XML. What does this mean? It means that if you have the right client, you can gather the content of several different sites into one place – pretty cool, if you read a lot of weblogs or that sort of thing. I mention this because LiveJournal recently turned its RSS feeds back on, so you can combine people’s journals into the mix. A very cool concept.

The fly in the ointment? I haven’t found a Windows client that I like yet. The user interfaces leave a lot to be desired. I’ve tried Amphetadesk, FeedReader, Headline Viewer, and HotSheet – either they’re too slow, too clunky, or don’t display the results properly (granted, that last one could also be the fault of the sites supplying the XML). I have yet to work my way through the web apps – maybe the answer I’m looking for is there. I really like the concept, and I’m hoping I can find an implementation that suits my needs.

And speaking of fun geek stuff, here’s a link especially for rustitobuck that probably represents a good synthesis of both of our views:
TiVo: Why I hate the company–but love the product.

Some cool/amusing things:
1. Last week LiveJournal founder and Supreme Leader bradfitz asked for any questions LJ users might have about the service. Today he answered them. Quite amusing and informative.

2. Interested in setting up a wireless network, but didn’t want to spend too much money? Boing Boing has pointers to $35 PCMCIA WiFi cards and $53 WiFi access points (after mail-in rebate).

3. Morford strikes again!

Onward, Armies Of Happy Sequined Darkness
With music blaring from more than 20 sound trucks, hundreds of thousands of people danced and marched through Sao Paulo Sunday in what was billed Latin America’s biggest gay pride parade. Police estimated the number of people at 400,000, twice as many that took part in last year’s parade. Waving rainbow flags and dancing to the sound of disco and techno beats, the multitude of gay men, lesbians, transvestites and drag queens marched some three miles for show at the Praca da Republica, a downtown square that is home to many gay bars and clubs. “Holy sh-t on a rope with a dangling Jesus, they have gay people in Brazil?” puled Pauly Pomentori of the Buena Vista trailer park and Homemade Leather Belt Depot in Woonsocket, South Dakota, fluffing the fur on his taxidermied mongoose named Red while simultaneously kicking the cat off from dry-humping his shin. “I feel all closed in and surrounded by the debauchery and immorality, by all the sin and transgression against the Almighty, so many happy flamboyant colorful fun-looking crazy gender-whacked sexed-up people out there, and I can’t even steal the Spice channel. World’s going to hell, I tell you.”

How do you write a big wrap-up when you didn’t do much? Ah well, we liked it anyway.

Courtesy cut for those who don’t want to read the minutiae of our weekend

Wow, this week has flown by. I need more four-day work weeks 🙂

We’re slowly getting used to not having a whole houseful of people. Last night was pleasant – takaza and I each taking some quiet time on our computers, then eating dinner (yummy burritos!) while watching our newest addiction, then a relatively early bedtime.

This weekend we’re kicking around possibly joining the furry outing at Paramount King’s Dominion in Richmond, but given that it’s going to be hot and cworded, plus Hypersoic XLC is reportedly still down, we’ll probably take a pass.

Another possibility is that Madstone Theaters is opening up a six-screen theater which will feature “art-house” and independent movies, and they’re showing a bunch of free movies all weekend. I’m leaning towards “The Man Who Wasn’t There” because it’s by the Coen brothers and I love their stuff. They also have “Brazil” (brilliant movie, but rather depressing) and “The Piano” (lots of naked Harvey Keitel, but pretty dull otherwise), among others. Madstone has opened theaters in Cleveland and Denver and the reviews seem to be pretty positive, so if they have a good thing going I’d go so far as to buy an annual membership to support it.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to being able to sleep in some this weekend (well, at least until 8 AM. Hey, that’s sleeping in for me!) and relaxing a bit. We’ll see how good I am at it 🙂

Well, it’s a boring afternoon at work, and instead of doing something useful I think I’m going to pass along some nifty links!

The Google Glossary is a fun new toy. Hey, they even have a good definition of furry. (link courtesy of Scripting News)

Spider senses tingling? You might be in trouble! (link courtesy of diveintomark)

Just the thing for the fire and brimstone sermons! Amaze your parishoners! (link courtesy of Boing Boing)

How bored are you? If you’ve got the LiveJournal bug and want to read more, but your friends just don’t update their journal often enough, why not check out their friends? Here’s mine – just replace the username as desired: http://www.livejournal.com/users/duncandahusky/friendsfriends

OK, back to work for me…

So we dispatched the last of our guests this morning: hartree and datahawk to the airport, brophey driving back to Baltimore. Incidentally, Hartree’s bit of excitement last night even made the newspaper. We picked him up at the airport after they officially cancelled his flight and went over to Outback for some big slabs of dead cow. Yum! The food was excellent, as was the company. After that we headed back to the house and hung out and watched part of the Canes game.

At last word, everyone seems to have gotten out OK, so tonight it’s just me and Takaza, for the first time since last Tuesday. I’m being bad and skipping the gym one final day today because I just want to get home and relax after work. No Tivo tonight, and heck, we’re probably going to even be sitting in separate rooms most of the night, Dan in his office and me in mine. We both need our “alone-time” and as wonderful as this last week has been, “alone-time” has been a missing commodity.

There’s a furry group going to Paramount King’s Dominion this weekend, and if it were any other weekend I’d be all for it. After all, it’s only four hours’ drive away. But as things stand right now we’re going to pass, due to exhaustion. I like the idea of getting up on Saturday morning and having a few hours to myself to read the paper, drink coffee, and surf the net. And what the heck, I’d be glad to do it again on Sunday morning – yes, I’m willing to make that sacrifice (“Oh please, don’t throw me in that briar patch…”) There’s also a new art-house theater opening this weekend in Cary which we might check out if we’re up to it, but right now I’m not making any plans.

Finally, if y’all will excuse me for pointing to Mark Morford once again, I just want to say that I love his column today, “Utterly Naked Men, The Movie”

There is probably no way to put this delicately or maybe there is but I am hereby electing to ignore that rather untitillating approach so let’s just come right out and say it: There are not enough penises in the movies.

So by now you’ve read all of the various accounts of the events of the past weekend (plus a few more entries). What do we learn from all this? All of our friends are geeks 🙂 That’s OK, we love them anyway.

A common theme in a lot of those entries is inertia, but I think that’s maybe a misnomer. What we really had was a great enjoyment of spending time with one another, and something of a reluctance to shorten that time in any way. datahawk likened the party to a small convention, and in a lot of ways that is exactly what it was. My biggest complaint about conventions, though, is that there’s always so much going on that you don’t have time to spend with the folks you don’t get to see much, the ones that live halfway across the country. Well, I guess this was our own selfish way of getting around that 🙂 Thank you all for coming, and for making this a truly memorable and enjoyable weekend. Will we be doing this again? You better believe it. Hey, I hear that NC Pride is on September 28 this year. Wouldn’t it be a hoot to have folks down for that?

Meanwhile, back at the Memorial Day shindig…

When last we left our intrepid heroes, we were about to head out on Saturday. Partran and Linnaeus have written up our exploits of that day. The homemade Mongolian barbeque worked surprisingly well – Brophey, Hartree, and Partran helped with cooking, bless their hearts, and everyone was well-fed by a decent hour, even. We’ll definitely be doing that again.

On Sunday, we didn’t go to see Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron as planned – inertia was too strong, and interest didn’t seem too strong. Instead, a portion of the group took off to the White Rabbit Bookstore in Raleigh while another part stayed close to home, except for a quick trip to the store. Much fun was had at White Rabbit and I’m sure we amused the people there as well 🙂 We returned and we fired up the grill, making a big ol’ pile of hamburgers, hot dogs, and sausages. After that we entertained ourselves with several rounds of Ultimate Outburst and general socializing. Not a whole lot got accomplished, but we really enjoyed ourselves.

And then we have today. Folks started waking up at around 10 or 11, and Partran and I made up some bacon and eggs for everyone. Since then we’ve been kinda hanging out, watching goodies on the Tivo (“So Graham Norton” is a hoot!), and wondering what we’re going to do. Another attempt at Spirit was suggested, but then we started watching the Nightline town hall on being gay in America and it’s been very interesting, even listening to the differing opinions even here in the living room.

So what’s up from here? Maybe some swimming, maybe just enjoying the company some more. Pork chops on the grill tonight, though we need to figure out what we’re having with them.

P.S. – Rashomon was a 1950 film by Akira Kurosawa in which one event is told from multiple points of view 🙂

And, with the exception of partran and rustitobuck, everyone else is still asleep. Hopefully, that’ll change soon, since we need to hit Dallas’ Restaurant for yummy chicken biscuits for brunch, then at 1 PM we have a tour of Carolina Brewing Company. From there, it’s over to the State Farmer’s Market for some fresh veggies, and then we’ll come back home and do our own homemade Mongolian Barbeque.

Last night was entertaining, though not quite what we had planned. The trip to Ultrazone never happened, since inertia was never overcome. We were having too much fun just hanging out an enjoying the company. Pop’s closed their grill an hour early so when we went for burgers, they had none to give us. Bummer. We’ll have to go back there later this weekend for milkshakes, at least (and I might have a chat with the owner and explain to him how his employees turned away easily over $100 worth of business). In a quick search for alternate options for dinner, I chose poorly: Waffle House. The less said about this experience the better, except to say that there’s a reason that Waffle House only seems good after 3 AM.

Well, off to make more coffee for the slugabeds starting to stir upstairs…

I’m sitting at home, all alone right now. The hoard is out at Southpoint Mall, then heading over to the airport to pick up mirkowuff, then heading back here, to arrive around 5:30 or so. As I look around the living room, I see no less than three iBooks, numerous plushies, and the sundry remnants of people relaxing and having a good time.

Life is good.

By the way, for a great Rashomon-esque view of what’s going on this weekend, be sure to take a look at the other LiveJournals of the folks attending this weekend’s party. (Or you can just read my Friends Page). It’s a very cool thing.

I also want to say, here and now, that I take back any snarky remarks I ever might have made about our Mormon neighbors, here or anywhere else. Yeah, they stopped by during the snowstorm last January with a loaf of fresh-baked bread, but I figured that was kind of a fluke. When I got home today, though…well, first some background:

While I was out driving yesterday with partran, my Low Tire Pressure light came on. It’s done this from time to time, and usually it didn’t take more than a quick topping-up at the air pump to fix the problem. We were a bit rushed last night, so I figured takaza could stop by a gas station on his way out today. Well, he pulled out of the garage and realized that the back left tire was flat. They went ahead and took other party-folks’ cars, and I figured I’d come home, grab the tire, and run up to the local tire store to have it patched, barely squeaking in before their 5 PM closing time.

So I pulled up and walked over to take a look at the tire. As I was figuring out where to put it to jack it up, our neighbor (I really should know his name, but I’m bad about that) walked over and said he noticed we had a flat – would we like some help? I described my plans to have it patched and volunteered to help me out. I figured he had a can of Fix-A-Flat or something, but he rolls over his air compressor and pulls out a tire patch kit. Between the two of us, we jacked up the tire and pulled a sharp metal fragment, about 3/4″ long, out of the tire. He patched it right up and reinflated the tire, mentioning that someone had helped him similarly a while back, and he was just passing it on. He accepted my profuse thanks and headed back over to his house.

Wow. How cool is that? As Dan suggested, we definitely need to drop by and give them a nice loaf of banana bread or something sometime very soon.

Well, that settles it. I want to bear Mark Morford‘s children.

Wow, what a day of mixed emotions.

First, the bad news. I was out of work yesterday, and in my absence word came down from the salesman that the product that I’ve been working frantically for the last two months to get out the door is no going to be provided to the customer by one of our competitors instead. This was immediately followed, of course, by the salesman pointing fingers and determining blame. Guess who’s getting caught in the crossfire? While we do share some of the blame for this one, there’s plenty to go around. Still makes me feel like someone pissed in my cornflakes. I’ve got another week’s worth of wrap-up to do on this one (since we’re technically “back-up/contingency” suppliers, meaning we might need to re-activate the product if needed), then I can wash my hands of it. Just one more reason I really don’t want to be here today.

On the bright side, we now have a house full of people! partran came in Wednesday night and I enjoyed hanging out with him yesterday (we also found a truly amazing French bakery right in Raleigh – the pain au chocolat are to die for!). Datahawk and hartree rolled in around 5:30 PM (after only getting a little lost). rustitobuckarrived at around 7:30 (after getting bumped from one flight and desperately trying to get bumped from another – those travel vouchers really add up!). linnaeus and Brophey came in around 10:30 PM (I think, I went to bed at 10 since I had to get up for work in the morning). takaza came to bed at 2:30 AM, and he said everyone was just heading to bed then. I’d guess that half the house is still asleep as I write this at 10:30 AM 🙂 I think the itinerary today is pretty low-key – a stop by local Apple Store and cruising Retail Hell. Just got a voice mail that mirkowuff, who was supposed to arrive around 1:30 this afternoon took a voluntary bump from American Airlines, thereby picking up a nice voucher from them, I’m sure. So he’ll be in at around 5 PM today.

This evening will consist of deliciously greasy burgers and milkshakes to die for at Pop’s, a local fast-food joint, we’re taking the group over to Ultrazone (which, according to the surfer dude on their answering machine, is now called “Battle Zone, the ultimate laser adventure”) for a fun night of laser tag and group bonding by shooting one another – yay!

So that’s what’s up right now. I’d say the good is outweighing the bad, and that’s a big help. I’m looking forward to the weekend and spending time with our friends here. I’m sure I’ll be exhausted when it’s all over, but it’ll be worth it!

So, as Takaza and I were sitting around on Sunday, he noticed that the marks in the living room ceiling where it had been repaired were quite noticeable. I took a closer look, and saw that the paint was flaking off around the joint in the drywall, and cracking along the edge of the patch. Oh, that’s just bloody terrific. After another visit this morning from the guy who did the repair, it appears that the shower leak that I thought I’d fixed wasn’t quite as fixed after all. When he ran his finger down the joint, the joint compound was somewhat pasty, not dry and crumbly like it should have been. So I slowed the leak, but didn’t stop it. Crap.

This evening, I’ll have to pull the drain again and reseal it with silicone caulk, using copious amounts this time. We’ll give it about a month or so to dry out and be certain that the leak is fixed, then he’ll come back out again to pull the old patch and put in a new one (for another couple hundred bucks. Ouch). Unfortunately, this means that when it comes time to show off our pretty new house this weekend, it’ll have a big, fugly crack in the living room ceiling. Not much to do for it, I reckon. This is a bit of a reality check for me, though – I need to remember that people aren’t coming to see the house, they’re coming to see us and each other. This helps me de-stress a little bit, and in a strange way, will probably make the weekend more enjoyable for me. Go fig. Plus, it keeps Dan from wanting to kill me for being stressed and annoying, and that’s always a good thing 🙂

Well, let’s see if I can get some work done today…

Apparently, this little poem has been around since at least 1990, but this is the first time I’ve come across it. First, the written version:

! * ‘ ‘ #
^ ” ` $ $ –
! * = @ $ _
% * ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , SYSTEM HALTED

Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Now, if you realize that angle brackets, according to readers of InFocus magazine, are pronounced “waka” and an exclamation point is often called a bang, well then you get this wonderful version when read aloud:

waka waka bang splat tick tick hash
caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash
bang splat equal at dollar under-score
percent splat waka waka tilde number four
ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash
vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma crash

Yeah, it’s geek humor, but I love it.
(Link and poem courtesy of Diveintomark)

Another quiet Sunday morning. Got my coffee, my Sunday paper, some nice mellow music playing…and my laptop. It’s geeky goodness!

Last week was pretty uneventful. Although I’d hoped to get a jump on cleaning and preparations for the upcoming party, Dan wasn’t feeling well at all and I was too tired after coming home from work to really do much of anything. We did at least get some lists put together of what to do and what we’ll be cooking, so that’s a start.

The weekend has been pretty interesting so far, though. On Friday, we had dinner with friends at Panera Bread (yummy Frontega chicken sandwich!), then marched off dutifully to see the new Star Wars flick

You really should read the review linked above, by the way. It has such choice comments as:

Like “The Phantom Menace,” “Attack of the Clones” reeks of a Lucas script that George kept under wraps because he didn’t want any of it exposed to criticism. Lucas reminds me of the conceited elementary school kid who doesn’t want anybody to read his poetry. When the mysterious words are finally dragged into the light, breathless anticipation turns into peals of laughter, then uncontrollable vomiting. Unfortunately, nobody wants to tell George that his skills as a screenwriter rival Anna Nicole Smith’s.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up my opinion of the movie. It sure looks pretty, but the love scenes and any scene requiring emotional expression by Hayden Christensen are laughable at best and nauseatingly cloying at worst. (And see if you don’t find yourself wanting to burst into song at a certain point in the movie: “The hills are alive with the sound of music!”)

So, that was Friday. On Saturday, we had an interesting change of pace. Dan’s company was sponsoring a golf outing down in Sanford and they needed someone to perform an all-important task to support the event: beer cart drivers. Well, that’s where we came in. In spite of the fact that it was pouring down rain, the temperature was dropping, and the wind was blowing hard, we were there at 8:30 AM to drvie that bloody cart around the course for the better part of four and a half hours, making sure the forty golfers were well-supplied with beverages. Dan even got to be a bit of a hero when we added hot chocolate to the repertoire once things started to get really chilly. We got soaked, of course, but the rain did finally let up around noon. It was quite a different way to spend the day, but fun in its own way. I didn’t even get into the beer, though – they gave us about eight different brands, and the fanciest of the lot was Michelob Light. Um, no thanks. We stuck to soda and hot chocolate 🙂

So today we’ve got a long list of stuff to do, mainly cleaning the upstairs, mowing the lawn, and doing the shopping for the week. I’m not sure if we’re going to start shopping for the party just yet – we’ll need to work that out. We’re going to be preparing six meals for around twelve people over the course of five days. Wow, that’s a lot of food. Time to go make some more lists…

Found this on Slashdot, in an article about Cingular censoring pr0n for those who use their wireless web access:
“It’s always been a problem of people talking while driving in a car…now I’m going to have to worry about people accessing porn in the car?! People! You have to keep at least one hand on the wheel at all times! Is even that too much to ask?!”

Heh.

This should cheer you up for sure/See, I’ve got your old ID/And you’re all dressed up like The Cure

So anyway…

Life is good. We finally solved the roadblock on the project at work that’s been annoying me. This will allow the project to proceed apace and will keep people from other departments from sending me nasty e-mails and such. This always makes me happy 🙂 This also means that I’ll probably be up in the Erie, PA vicinity in the first or second week of June. It’s Erie-sistable! Ah well, summer in Erie is actually quite nice – The Peninsula (aka Presque Isle State Park) is lovely, and now that I know some nice bookstores and coffeehouses up there, I’ll be set. I’ll still commute the 25-or-so miles to Saegertown from Erie, though. After all, if I’m going to stay up there, I prefer to stay near civilization.

Had some fun storms come through last night – no real damage, though the power flickered a bit. We got about an inch of rain in about 45 minutes, then it just stopped. That sucks, because right now we’re pretty much in drought conditions (unlike you lucky[?] folks in the Midwest). Our lawn is looking a wee bit brown, but on the bright side I don’t have to mow it as often. I suppose I should think about watering it, but that’s tedious, plus it gets expensive. If we go much longer without rain, though, I won’t have much choice.

Takaza and I are kicking back and forth a list of stuff we need to do in the next eight days. No problem, as long as we don’t actually sleep or anything silly like that. I know none of our guests will mind much, but it matters to me that the house is nice and clean.

What a week, and I’m not ready for the next week to begin.

As I said in my last entry, last week was quite busy. Between the pace at work really heating up and takaza recuperating from surgery, that didn’t leave much time for luxuries like Livejournal entries. This coming week should improve somewhat, at least on the latter front.

Dan has recovered well from his sinus surgery. His sense of smell is coming back, he can breathe much more freely, and life is good except for the occasional Waterpik torture (let’s put it this way, you have to have some way to flush all the clots and stuff out. Ouch). He’ll be at home one more week to fully recover and relax, though if absolutely necessary he could have gone back this week. Better he recover fully, though, I say, and so does the doctor.

This weekend has been pretty busy. Following Dan’s trip to the doctor on Friday, we hit Target, Build-a-Bear (had to get a graduation present for someone) and World Market for some kitchen items. On Saturday, following a surprisingly early wake-up for us both, we really hit the shopping trail: Grand Asia Market for some good jalapenos and cilantro and some tasty Japanese soda for Dan, United Restaurant Supply for some obscure kitchen items (gotta have that 20-quart brining bucket), the State Farmers Market for fresh tomatoes and apples (and, surprisingly, some excellent local goat cheese), Sam’s Club for those household staples, purchased by the pallet full, Barbeques Galore to pick up a little item that we’re going to have fun with at our Memorial Day party, and finally Whole Foods Market to top up our spice rack. Whew! To top things off, we came home and Dan whipped up some delicious homemade pizzas that we shared with Donald and Janelle.

Today we enjoyed the usual lazy Sunday morning (coffee and newspaper, oh yeah), then went out to see Spider-man (yay Sam Raimi!), then joined Donald and Janelle again for steaks on the grill at their place. A lovely day, all in all.

Well, that’s enough recap – off to bed, now!

I’m still alive, just having a very busy week. More on current events soon, but in the meantime: work is fine, Dan is healing well, and I’m planning our next home improvement project.

While you wait for more details, be sure to check out this story on a cool new feature offered by Google.

Yeah, yeah, it’s 9 AM and I haven’t even made coffee yet. I’m allowed to be unmotivated on weekends.

Courtesy cut for those who aren’t interested in every little detail of our day

The short version: The surgery went well, and Dan is resting comfortably.

Click here for the long version

Aren’t you glad people have started putting tests behind LJ-cut tags? Don’t you wish everyone did? {snicker}

So it seems that all of the plans I made for this week, which depended on some raw materials arriving here Monday or Tuesday, are pretty much shot since they haven’t arrived yet. Oh well. Yesterday was spent in the back (“back” meaning the manufacturing area in the back of the building) showing some folks how to use our PD-10 mixer and then how to tear it down and clean it. I hate doing that – it involves a few gallons of solvent, lots and lots of shop rags, some sandblasting, and not a little heavy lifting to get to all the parts to be cleaned. We wrapped that up just in time for me to go home. I skipped the gym and instead got my workout mowing the lawn, which I figure works out to roughly the same amount of cardiovascular exercise.

Today I started off with a meeting with my boss, as a follow up to my job review two months ago. Good news this time – he’s hapopy with my progress, and so am I. I think the biggest factor is that I’ve been swamped with this new project, and it’s kept me quite busy. I’m terrible at making myself look busy – I’d rather be busy. It doesn’t hurt that I now know how to read him better (for instance, when he makes a “suggestion” on how to do something with the project, if I don’t do it I’ll hear about it later). Anyway, it’s all good.

I plan to take a short lunch today so I can leave early for the gym. After I get in my workout there it’s straight home, just in time for people to start arriving for another Gang gathering – Pizza and Gaming this time around. The featured games are Outburst and UpWords, though games of Fluxx or Chez Geek may break out as well.

Today is a Friday of sorts for me, though maybe not the best way to accomplish it. Tomorrow I take Dan in for his surgery. Atthis point, it’ll be a Good Thing just to get it over with – the anticipation is awful. I’m hoping that having folks over tonight will take his mind off things. While he’s in their care (from 10:30 AM until 4 or 5 PM, I can’t leave the building, per their policy. I sure hope they have a cafeteria, but if not I can cope. Guess I’ll load up with my laptop and stuff to read. Anyway, on Friday we go to the doctor at 8 AM and have his packing removed and then it’s back to the house where he can relax. Theoretically I’m supposed to do everything I can to get back into work on Friuday, but that is absolutely NOT HAPPENING. My place is at my partner’s side, helping where I can, and work can go get stuffed.

Well, off to make more phone calls, yay…