Saturday, May 24, 2003

What's Next

Assuming I don't give it a rest and go watch TV or get into a book or something, I think maybe I will complete my "Eleventy-One Things About Me" project, compile it all on one safe to permalink page, and work on link classification stuff and a perma page for the Blogrolling blogroll if I want to refer to it. If I'm still going, maybe I'll do some party work.

Meanwhile, I see that Jen is back, talking about some of the Virginia sights.

Eh, you know what? TV for a while. Even if it means popping in a video. Sorry blog reading public; I'll be Bach...

Another One Escapes

Tobacco Road Fogey was here but has moved to new digs. It looks like the old material will stay in place and be checked for comments periodically, but new posts will all be at the new location.

As they say, update your links accordingly.

Dungeon Tour

That's right! I decided it's time for another tour of the dungeon blogs. Those are one that show on the Ecosystem as having no or extremely few links. I'll look at some of them, and link the ones I find interesting - even if not (yet) permalinkworthy - here for your spelinking pleasure. (Heh that was supposed to be spelunking, but I like it as a new coinage.)

T.J. Griffin makes some interesting comments, including ones in support of Ashcroft having pretty much the power to do whatever.

Feces Flinging Monkey is not actually what I found in the dungeons. Rather, his blogroll is specially registered with the Ecosystem. Which has the good point that anyone listed on it will be credited with a link, but it will remain in the dungeon because people will presumably link to his main page. At any rate, good stuff on the new $20 bill and some history. Commentary about not being a libertarian, but the light dawning from reading The Future and Its Enemies and learning of dynamism. War stuff too. Seems pretty good.

Grumpicus Maximus I mentioned before, but he has some interesting comments, and this what kind of thinker are you quiz link. I took it and got dual results which you can see here. I did a screen shot and cropped it to the material in question, since this quiz doesn't give a results link that can be embedded. I came out as both a linguistic thinker (I always say I'm a cunning linguist!) and an interpersonal thinker. I can see why it might have given me the second one, but I don't "do" sales, so it's wrong on that career option.

Filchyboy Chronotope has interesting comments on the problem with dotcoms and the fallout now. It always aggravates me when companies don't care about the people who Know Things and will hire people who don't so readily.

The Wise Man Says picked the wrong time to startup a Blogger blog, so right from the outset many posts are about things not working. However, despite that and being brand new, this conservative-leaning blog looks like it will be thoughtful and worth checking.

Should I be linking someone who disagrees with something Hayek said? Leaderlog is a UK-based blog on accountancy and auditing, if you're into that sort of thing.

Cheap Apodicticism has "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" in the page title, and on the page there is an Irish Cream recipe. Instant appeal, no? There's also a wide variety of commentary on matters political.

And that about covers it. Now that the post is actually done, I'll "update" the half-finished version my "nimble" fingers caused to post prematurely.


Chat Report

We weren't a very lively bunch last night compared to last time, and Ith abandoned us to do things like sleep and eat. Then again, most of us walked away to cook or eat at some point. I was first in, then got up to make tacos. It's hard to type with a plate of tacos between you and the keyboard, and ingredients slobbering up your hands.

Ith was joined by Maripat in largely abandoning us. She seems to think the kids are important or something.

Participants otherwise were me, Lori from Right We Are! (no link; you can find them in the blogroll), Ninjababe from the Gaggle, Tammy the otterly evil non-blogging representative of the left, my friend Bob the not yet blogging entity (who might guest on Gaggle coming up in a month), Paul of Frozen in Montreal, Jajoobie, Melissa, and Mickey.

We also had a non-participant! Apparently we were too scary in our greetings when this Trojan Princess person wandered in. She stayed a couple moments, saying absolutely nothing, then fled after we'd all introduced ourselves. We don't bite Princess, really! We were very sad that she left.

What did we talk about? Glad you asked! In no particular order, we talked about:

Maripat's rats and Elvish name, the wisdom of giving coffee to rats, and whether it would make Jajoobie's rats more lively on the RatCam.

Ith's gigolo interest, and the difference between left and right wing porn. The objective was for Tam to demonstrate the difference.

Our geographical locations, and travel/vacation issues. Mickey has cool vacation pictures of Maine.

North Korea and Cuba; comparing and contrasting their handling, level of mind control, and travel to each. This was mostly Paul and I. He's quite knowledgable about both.

Noreascon, the Worldcon in Boston next year, and how everyone going to that would be much better than going to Vegas, 'cause who likes Vegas after all.

Mapchic's Geographica blog, and my hope she might join us. We 'lanched her blog in a small way when everyone went to check it out. And templates in general; people liked Mapchic's choice.

Acidman, Dean Esmay, Misha, and Rachel Lucas. Oh, and Michele.

IRC versus AIM et al.

The lack of most of doing anything exciting this weekend, and how being single seems to be connected to that state.

The Olsen Twins.

The Ecosystem, and why we were trying to build up some links to me these past couple days.

Bob's blogging potential, and the current lack of a "(+ One Guy)" component at the Gaggle.

The Iraq volume of "Girls Gone Wild."

Doggies! Oh, and cats. Plus otters, snakes, gerbils, mice, and the aforementioned rats.

Matrix movies, Movable Type, Hosting Matters and hype bias.

Blogger and Blogsplat problems.

Food that talks.

Drinking, including the new "brb drinking game."

Child literacy.

Linkage, and bookmarking blogs then never going back to them to confirm if you want to link them. Mea culpa and not alone in that.

Simpsons quotes and Reagan speeches.

TV shows, partly because Nin was watching a slew of them on tape and trying to chat at the same time.

What guys are good for.

Cars, and repair woes with same.

The cost of cable.

I amused people with homonym puns briefly.

Rick!!! *SQUEAL*

Frank's secret dislike of me.

Nin's fingers.

New York City, apartments and Bora Bora.

Shoe shopping with Imelda.

And that's about it. See what you missed by not joining?! Perhaps next time...


5000 Watch!

Current hit count is 4649, only 351 to go. At yesterday's rate of hits, that's about 2.5 days. Woohoo! At the recent average, that's about 4.2 days. At the recent low, that's about 5.75 days. If I get mentioned by Glenn, that's about an hour. Yeah, right.

I'm not going to hit 5000 in time for my 3 month Blogiversary. But hey, I was holding out for 4000 by the 3 month mark, so who cares! My first post was February 25th, so tomorrow's the day. It'd be funny if I got 351 hits in a day and a half, perhaps through Dean noticing his song, or my writing something clever like Bill. But I don't expect it.

In honor of the pending three month mark, here's my first post ever:

This is a lame, largely content-free first post for the sake of testing. I am known as verbose by some, but it's late and I am at a loss for something clever to say.

For now this blog has no particular theme; just whatever I feel like musing or commenting upon. Later it may become clear whether I can be called a thinker, a linker, or an unclassified mongrel.


I guess I'm still a mongrel. But that's okay; dogs are cool!

Mission Statement

Help me out folks! I am working on my mission statement as Secretary or Re-Education for the Slutertarians. I was just thinking it could be summed up as simply as:

Dedicated to the proposition that education is too important to leave to the government.


Thoughts?

Hey!

Stop linking to Right We Are!

Sheesh.

"Tread Softly"

In which Mrs. du Toit makes me cry with this post in honor of Rachel and her grandfather.

Blogspot Is Toast

That is the word from Kevin Aylward.

I think he could be right. It just seems funny to see big name bloggers who've defected listed, followed by me as "next up." I'm somebody! Kevin says so; it must be true.

He ends with some advice for Google/Blogger regarding credibility. Yes. It's flushing rapidly in recent days. It'll be dismal if you don't turn it around soon.

Friday, May 23, 2003

The chat is still happening folks...

If you're on AIM now, feel free to join us per the previous post. We're talking about rats, gerbils and snakes at the moment, and drinking as we type.

GaggleChat

It's happening, right this minute. If you'd like to join us in talking about nothing special, fire up AIM and click HERE.

A Reason Not to End the Embargo of Cuba

You can find that justification here. Heh.

Sorry, the Lyric Bug bit me again!

With apologies to Gene Chandler, to the tune of Duke of Earl I give you...

Dean Esmay

Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay
Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay
Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay

Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay
Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay
Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay
Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay

As he blogs on Dean's World
Nothing can stop that Dean Esmay
Rosemary, she is his girl
And no one can troll her, oh no
Yes, he's gonna blog for you
Come on read and comment
'Cause he is Dean Esmay

And when he links you
You will be linkage, linkage by Dean
You'll ping through all Blogdom
And his birthday you will share

Yes, oh, you
You're gonna love Dean
Nothing can stop him now
'Cause he is Dean Esmay

Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay
Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay
Dean, Dean, Dean Esmay

You're gonna love Dean
Nothing can stop him now
'Cause he is Dean Esmay

Weblogs in Business (plus a bonus on writing)

Rob at BusinessPundit has a post on blogs as a business tool, in which he links to this substantial article on the topic.

Of no particular relation to the previous topic, I also noticed this article on writing for the web, which is similar to other such things I've seen in the past. I read the way they say, and some blogs I find tedious when they don't fit that. The article is more oriented to business content, but you might get some ideas from it.

I like having posts clearly demarcated with titles, even if they aren't very meaningful. I like having adequate white space. I start to breeze on past if it feels like everything runs together or the first sentence or so makes it sound like it'll be boring. Not to mention font sizes being adequate and color contrast between font and background being reasonable. Anyway, good stuff at those marketingprofs.com links, and BusinessPundit is always one of my favorite reads.

Now I Feel Less Unique

Pejman Yousefzadeh of Pejmanesque has used a link classification system partially similar to the one I have cooking.

If You're a Buffy Watcher

Justin at The Weigh In has some great final Buffy thoughts; greatest moments, funniest moments, and greatest episodes.

Those Goofy Quizzes

Hey, it's been a while! I found this one via Mickey's Musings.


Green



You are a very calm and contemplative person. Others are drawn to your peaceful, nurturing nature.




Find out your color at Stvlive.com!




For what it's worth, I took this a second time with alternate choice answers, and was green both times.

Surveillance Right and Wrong

I found this post at Defense Tech to be a useful summation of right and wrong surveillance and privacy protection. As the post there says in summary:

Nutshell: (1) avoid mandatory databases (2) ensure 4th amendment protections even for public surveillance, and (3) avoid mixing public and private databases.


I found myself agreeing, and even e-mailed as much in response to the request for feedback.

What the hell?

Under a Blackened Sky, which incidentally is well worth an occasional visit, posts today about a scandalous award of a contract in Iraq to MCI (Worldcom). *whistles innocently* indeed!

Talkin Bout Spam Legislation

John Hawkins at RWN declares that we don't need government "help" fixing the spam problem. You know, he's probably right.

Gaggle Chat Tonight

The perpetual Gaggle AIM chat will actually be populated tonight, unless everyone decides they have a life, starting at 5 PM PST. I'll have to figure out what that is in real time and try not to forget about it. Unless I get a life between now and then.

Hosting

Everyone loves Hosting Matters, and indeed they appear to be awesome.

What about http://www.ehostpros.com? Does anyone besides Maripat have an opinion on them? They appear to be an even better deal than Hosting Matters, which I didn't think was possible.

Gloom

I am waaaaay too affected by the weather, and it gets annoying sometimes. A few days ago, we had a bright, sunny, gloriously perfect 86° day. I was almost bouncing off the walls manic with happiness.

Today, again, it's gloomy and damp. It's turned obscenely cold (compared to the perfect 86° temperature early in the week). It makes me feel so unmotivated and uninterested in doing anything or going anywhere. Blah.

This is one reason I didn't want to move to the Seattle area and work directly for Microsoft. I dreaded what the weather there would do to me. I should move to Florida or Arizona or something.

Grayden of The Hard Press Listens to Glenn Reynolds

Recently Glenn Reynolds wrote about A Hands-On Future, in which being a plumber or other hands-on skill would be of more value in this country than things like programming, doable anywhere.

It sounds like Grayden, Mapchic's blogson, is working on just that. Good for him! I'm sure there will be more and more MA plumbers as time goes by.

Well, at least this time it's plain dead, period

I'd almost rather see my blog suddenly go completely in accessible than have it kind of half load, or take forever but eventually load. Maybe. Not that it's good either way, but if, say, blogger is doing honest to goodness server work or migration, then yes my blog could be down, and completely. At least it's not half-assed as it's been for the most part off and on. And go figure; other sites on Blogsplat that weren't coming up are now. Almost like they're cycling through and making people take turns being down.

Off to bed, and it'll probably work again in the morning...

Memorial Day

Lori made a great post about the history of Memorial Day. She even - gasp! - credits the source. Note that the permalink seems to misdirect, so you may want to just go to Right We Are! and look for it near the top somewhere.

Fluffernutter Friday!

Over at wujiblog there's a post about Fluffernutters, which of course were a childhood staple. The comment I lest there is postworthy, so here is my piece about the (very locally) famous Fluffernutter Fridays:

Where I used to work, once in a while we would have "Fluffernutter Friday." People would bring in PB, Fluff, various bread, milk, and even jelly for the heretics. That was cool, and everyone got a kick out of it.

The guy who jokingly suggested it thought it was such a goofy idea that he evaded any credit for it, so everyone assumed it was my idea.


We also used to do international food days and milk & cookie days at random intervals. And pizza days of course; with money from pooling all our empty soda cans and turning them in. International food days were cool, especially when people brought in something corresponding to their ethnicity, like Greek and Jamaican. The only things that stand out as far as my contributions are the time I had my sister make mass quantities of baklava (which she does incredibly well), even though we're not Greek in the slightest, and the time I made Finnish pancakes. We're not Finnish at all either. As far as I know, I am of English, Scottish, French, Irish, German, Dutch and Wampanoag Indian, in roughly that order, with so much of it the first two that that rest hardly matters. More importantly, third generation American on two sides, about as many generation American as you can get on the other two sides. Which doesn't really lead to a distinctive ethnicity for me to show off in the form of food. But I digress. All these things were fun, and were the least we could do in such a stressful environment.

Hrrmmm... what next...

I think I'm going to finish the eleventy-one things tonight before I got to bed, as well as thinking about my platform statement as Slutertarian Secretary of Re-Edumacation.

Or not, since I just spent so much time surfing other people's blogs, mainly interesting links from Kate.

I figure if I get the 111 out of the way, it leaves me more open to write posts that pretend to be remotely Whittle-likeand attract attention. I was well into mentally composing one of those on the drive home, but once I inhaled supper and redirected all my energy to digestion, it vanished in a cloud of uninspiredness. That'll teach me to eat too much after being ravenous and attacking defenseless pistachios all day.

Thursday, May 22, 2003

Noooooooo

Hertical Ideas delivers terrible news about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Tim, stick with Batman or something!

Has anyone noticed this kind of crap?

This is an image of detail on a visitor in Site Meter. Note the entry and exit pages. It's a porn link site, with a popup page that comes up as well when you go there.

For those who pay no attention to these things, the entry page and exit page should always be somewhere on your site; usually the main page in both cases. The sure as hell shouldn't be spoofed to appear as someone else's site.

I'd never have noticed this, but sometimes I click the "who is on" link, and in there it shows entry pages. Then I clicked on detail and got the screenshot.

How annoying. Don't they get enough exposure through spam?

Interview With The Rightwinger

Andrew has a superb interview with John Hawkins. Go check it out!

Wizbang Has Moved!

Kevin Aylward just let me know that Wizbang has a new home, after having the same Blogspot frustrations as I and others have been. He reports that it's well worth it.

Be sure to update your links. Of course, in my case I'd meant to blogroll Wizbang, even thought I had, but I'd been remiss. That's taken care of now.

Sunny One So True

Virginia has an interesting post about depression and what the "real" person is. In part:

With all due respect to Ron, it is possible to have "a naturally sunny outlook on life" and nonetheless become "morbidly depressed." In fact, that's me. Would I have been a different person if I'd never been depressed? Sure. And I would have been a different person if I'd never been near-sighted or suffered from migraines or had a serious case of the mumps in first grade.

But as far as I'm concerned, the "real" me is the sunny one, not the depressed one, just as the "real" me is the one without a fever or blurred vision or a sharp pain through my left eye.


I agree. This is so much like how I am and how I feel that I relate completely.

Hang in there Rachel, it's almost over...

Rachel is having the college blues, made particularly worse by an intense "mini-mester."

I felt nearly like this toward the end of college, and I fully agree about the busy work and crap. I sometimes miss college, as I might have mentioned in one of my own post comments when asked if I was a grad student (apparently due to my description of what I'd eaten that day). But I hated what it took to get a degree. I went kicking and screaming through the watered down calculus I was required to take, for instance. If I computed only my major courses, I had something like a 3.6 or higher GPA in what mattered. Everything combined made it considerably lower.

I think it would be cool to go to school and take only the classes of interest. It would be eclectic, but much more invigorating than taking things just because I have no choice. Even if you're going for a degree, and there are legitimate reasons to take classes you might find unsavory, every student ought to have a certain amount of leeway to explore, and should take advantage of it.

Speaking of college, I always wonder if in 20 years college education will exist as we traditionally have known it.

On another note, I love how Rachel sums up lousing eating with "can't remember the last time I ate a vegetable." I seem to have drifted in the opposite direction. Yesterday I ate a bag of baby carrots for lunch. Then I had brocolli with supper, as well as lettuce, tomato and sauteed Vidalia onion on my burger. For lunch today, leftover brocolli. Yum!

The burger was eaten in honor of those new Canadian prions. Go ahead, I dare ya to try eating my brain.

Link Me

I need about a dozen or so new links to my blog. Permalinks are better, but any will do, so long as they will register in the Ecosystem. I'll explain why sometime in the near future. Any takers?

Argh, This is Not Pretty

The computer I have been transferring to was actually all installed several weeks ago with most of what I would need. Then when I went to actually use it, the registry was corrupted. Okay, so stuff happens. I installed Win2k to a new directory and set out transferring files that weren't already there and reinstalling stuff.

So today I tried installing one more thing and it tells me c: doesn't exist or is corrupt, run chkdisk. Doh! That's running now and finding all kinds of fun stuff to reindex, etc.

I can't help wondering... I didn't use the normal case and power supply due to shortages. I swear by Inwin. I used an Epox motherboard instead of Intel, because apart from having developed a positive impression of Epox in my limited experience with them, and in asking around, I was using an AMD CPU instead of Intel. I didn't need blazing speed, just better than the old P3 450, and it saved money. I'd used AMD and Epox for a couple other machines, which are running just fine. Different case though.

Probably should have fdisked when the corrupt registry happened, and installed fresh. It could be bad hardware. Certainly I'll keep wondering that. However, more likely it's just corruption that needed to be blown away. Now it's setting me back, and I'll have to do what I need to do on this old machine for now.

Argh!

That didn't last long!

Aw rats! I am a rodent again. Not only that, but well down the rodent list, between Paul Krugman and Possumblog. Mapchic may love my writing and cheer on my Ecosystem rocketry, but I haven't written anything lately to generate lots of new links, perma or otherwise. And I have been neglecting my Slutertarian duties to boot. Yikes!

Perhaps I should try some of Acidman's tricks. Naw. I'm too non-acidic for that. Usually. Instead of being irritable, grouchy, rabid or venomous all the time, I tend to be pleasant and mellow until I go nuclear.

BlogSplat

The past day or so, my site seems to be the only one on Blogspot that I can get to come up. That's strange. All I can figure is maybe it has some connection to resetting and republishing, which I've done every time lately that I could get to Blogger but not to my site. (Or when my site came up mangled.)

Beep Beep

Ah, there's nothing like the lovely sound of a pager going off to get one out of bed and off putting out fires in the morning.

Apocalypse Not

Misha has a great post on what it was like not only growing up during the cold war, but doing so, then being a young adult, in a frontline country where they could hope to do little more than die as hard as possible, slowing them down until the real forces came to bear.

In turn, he links to this post that is also excellent and inspired his. I hope Scott edits the name to be Reagan, not Regan, but the content is well written and heartfelt.

I well remember how terrifying it was, knowing what could be, and how you basically buried it in the back of your psyche. I'll never forget, and I know it affected me profoundly. I guess I have a longer memory and feel things more deeply than some.

I don't clearly remember having nuclear dreams when I was young. I was fascinated with the idea of bomb shelters and civil defense. I grew up envisioning an actual invasion or red takeover, and pictured myself going guerilla, joining or even leading the resistance, using my knowledge of the area. Funny, I always hated the idea of the draft, and had no interest in joining the military (which wouldn't have accepted me anyway under normal curcumstances), but I would be the first to jump in and make them know they shouldn't have messed with us. I suspect I had dreams about this sort of thing, but I don't remember them.

When I was older, perhaps 10 years ago, I had a funky end of the world dream. There was a big clock, in a brightly lit cityscape with a twilight feel. When it hit a certain time, boom, we were toast. I was riding around, observing how quiet things were, and how calmly people were taking it, trying to enjoy their last hours. I woke up before the end. I know I've had other dreams like it, even nuke dreams, but I don't remember them offhand.

In some ways I worry more now. The Soviets had a certain rationality to their behavior. Others don't, nukes exist, borders are porous things.

Anyway, both posts are worth reading for their reflections on the cold war, and the end of it, and Reagan's role.

Ping

I figured out today, from setting up w.bloggar on my new computer, that there is in w.bloggar a setting to have it ping weblogs.com automatically when it posts. For some reason that was turned off at home. Duh. So the posts I made from the office from the new machine were in part a test of that, and sure enough it seems to work. That makes life easier.

Terrorism Comes to Enterprise

Spoilerish comments may follow regarding the season finale of Enterprise. You have been warned.

The attack struck me as analogous to terrorism, whether it was their intention or not. It brought out the very thing I was expecting, I think; a recognition growing that they need more military capability. On the other hand, I was impressed with the firepower brought to bear on the Klingons near Earth. Just that I'd been equating the NX ships with fighting power and dismissing anything else that might exist. Even as I've been telling myself there has to be some significant basis for "Starfleet" to exist that predates the NX series. I wanted to see what happened with the presence of military people on the ship; whether it'd create any internal command conflict.

So they answered my question about whether another NX ship exists, and if not, when; 14 months. Depending how they flow their time versus ours and whether there's incentive to hurry, could be as early as almost the beginning of the next season that it's out there.

The time travel thing annoys me, and I can't imagine what the bad guy who'd been messing with things for humans in the past was doing trying to help them. There has to be an ulterior motive.

Glad to see T'pol has made such a big decision. That alone will "change everything," which is what the ads for the episode were saying about the events in the episode.

I really liked the Vulcan psychiatrist! He made me think of whassname from MASH. It was a sleazy move, but he was cool. It always surprises me when the doctor gets so imperiously firm with anyone, because he has such a pleasant, pushover air normally.

I'm pleased they got the Klingons out of the way. I thought they were a distraction in the episode, but that means there is probably a point to them, such as this will signal the start of war with the Klingons, and speed up formation of the Federation.

The ending wasn't a very scintillating cliffhanger. I want to see what's next, yet I'm not that concerned either. I know they'll get through it. They ended on a slow note; one modest threat down and a different challenge presumably on the way.

I think I see things coming together now for this crew and this incarnation of Trek. If they want, they can take it to great heights - within the limitations of the scenario they've set before themselves - in the next season or two. During this episode, and never previously, I could picture this as a mature crew, in a film after the series ends. Nothing short of a timeline reset will change the fact that this prequel series has so much discontinuity with the later series, but hey, it's a TV show. I'm happy to enjoy it, warts and all. But that doesn't make me less glad to see a liberal application of wart remover.

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Talkin Bout Two Generations

John, posting at Weekend Pundit, reflects on musical tastes between generations, and related things. I've long noticed the same sort of thing, though I was somewhat in touch with the music of my elders when I was a kid. It just seems more universal now.

Handicapped Parking, MS, and Doctoral Pathos

Mapchic has a nice rant and description of a wonderful thing she did in defense of handicapped parking spot preservation. I am getting errors refreshing her site right now, and probably the permalink wouldn't work anyway, but you'll see the post near the top, about her friend with MS.

My sister has MS too, and has started the serious hoop-jumping process the state makes you go through to get the handicapped parking tags. It's already painful to watch her walk, and she was only diagnosed several months ago. They caught it late; at the age of 45.

She'd have been diagnosed earlier had the doctor's office not been grossly negligent. One of the earlier, more obvious expressions of it was symptoms mimicking carpal tunnel syndrome. Instead of even making an appointment to see her about that, someone in the doctor's office listened to her description, said "it's carpal tunnel" dismissively; basically "deal with it, go away," and then several month later it turned out it was really MS, once she could barely walk.

That kind of crap from medical people really pisses me off. I have been through it myself, and it's part of why I avoid doctors whenever possible (besides that we were raised that way; going to doctors cost money, so you didn't unless it was dire); I simply don't trust them to care about what they're doing, even if they're reasonably competent. I consider it amazing and gratifying that my doctor when I was a baby admitted he didn't know what was wrong when I had meningitis, and in so doing, saved me.

The doctor I had through most of my childhood was a doddering old incompetent who would have said "aw, it's just a fever, plenty of fluids" or something like that. It's unfortunate I have no choice but to see a doctor at least a few times a year. At least I have a good one, who is in big demand and only took me as a patient because my biggest client is his best friend, and asked him to take me.

Didn't mean to get into such a rant. I do have another pet peeve about handicapped spots. They should be marked properly, and stay that way. Typically the wheelchair symbol gets painted on the asphalt on the reserved spot. In many cases, that's the only indicator. It wears out after a while people. Or sand and oil and crud obscure it. I can forgive anyone parking in a spot where you can't even tell; I've done it myself plenty of times. Then on leaving you see the little bit of white paint still visible and say "oops, sowwy..." to yourself.

Yale Explosion

When I saw this news almost my first thought was how they could work a reference to that into the Gilmore Girls storyline in September. How sad is that?

Best. Commencement Speech. Ever.

Michele has it over here.

Eleventy-One Things, Part Nine

I figured while I was waiting for things to install, instead of doing other useful things concurrently, I'd blog. May as well try to get another segment of this out of the way, especially if I can come up with 11 things as quickly as I did for part 8.

89
I never took the SAT test.

90
I took the PSAT, and from those scores the college admissions guy extrapolated that I'd have been in the 600's on each part of the SAT.

91
I started college three years out of high school, attending the local state college because it was cheap and I could afford to pay for it myself, I could easily get admitted, I could commute there, and one of my best friends went there.

92
I was motivated to go to college for a few reasons. I had advanced rapidly at the book bindery where I worked, but any further advancement and money would require a degree. I was jealous of my friends who were in college, and knew it was silly for me not to go too. Finally, I was in a bout of depression that made me want to escape my current situation, which felt too dead end.

93
After I read 1984 in late 1981, I started having nightmares - virtually unheard of for me - and was thrown into a state of depression, the same one mentioned in item 92. It was reading Atlas Shrugged that made me feel better.

94
I'm not prone to phobias or nightmares, but the one big thing that terrifies me and can give me nightmares is the idea of being accused of something I didn't do, or something that shouldn't be considered "wrong" and punishable. Guess I have oppression phobia. Thus my reaction to 1984.

95
The Atlas Shrugged character to whom I most closely relate is Hank Reardon.

96
When I started college, I was undeclared. I considered geology, as mentioned, as well as political science and computer science. When I tried to take a political science class to satisfy general requirements, I fled rapidly because I couldn't bear to have a commie professor pretending to be "balanced." In the short time I was in the class, we'd had to write a commentary on one of Reagan's state of the union speeches, which I did from an unabashedly libertarian perspective. Subsequently when I went to have the professor sign the withdrawal form, he seemed nervous to be around me, which thought was funny. But I digress.

I discovered there was a nascent Management Science program that started under the auspices of the Earth Sciences department. After one undeclared semester, that became my major. I considered minoring in economics when that became available, but decided I had enough to worry about.

97
Thus my degree ended up being a B.S. in Management Science, Finance and Accounting Concentration. I was torn between that and the marketing concentration, which people find weird because they see it as two different brain types.

98
In the early to mid eighties, for a few years, I was a card carrying member of the Massachusetts and national Libertarian parties. Literally card carrying; when I joined, they had membership cards, which were discontinued a couple years later. I attended the state party convention for a couple years. Rebecca Shipman is the only candidate for governor I've ever met personally, as a result. I meant to write a whole post about this sometime, so I'll stop now rather than expanding this to "could be its own post" length.

99
I'm not particularly fond of having my picture taken, and usually react with revulsion to seeing myself in a photo the way most people react to hearing their own voice on tape.

Talk about a lot of stuff on your desktop...

Continuing to migrate over to the new computer, I copied my desktop directory from old to new; a mere 1.53 GB worth. I'm a digital packrat!

Blogroll

Here's what I am trying:

Each link will be in a planetary/space classification, which I hope isn't too silly. I'm trying to keep it meaningful, but some of them may be arbitrary assignments of blog attributes to planets that don't have a particular connotation. Solarans are the bloggers I might tend to read first and foremost, checking daily or even many times a day, even if I can't tell if they've been updated until I get there. Terrans are the links that aren't blogs. Jovians are the funny ones. Martians are some of the warbloggers and military people.

This isn't all set in stone and everyone isn't assigned yet. I don't even know all my classifications yet; I may use some major moons, like Europa for European blogs. So the links you see at the lower left are my partial construction so far. Suggestions might amuse me, if nothing else.

Eventually the whole blogroll will be categorized, and the links on the main page will not be under Blogrolling. I'll create a page for the traditional Blogrolling blogroll, so it's available as an alternative. That's for my benefit more than anything, so I have a place where I can see the last updated tags when they're working, which they aren't reliably now for anyone. It's pretty bad when Instapundit's showing as last updated yesterday and he's posting away per usual. As of last night, even with a ping I wasn't showing as updated.

Eleventy-One Things, Part Eight

78
I wasn't brought up with any particular sense that I would someday have to establish a career, earn adequate money, and support myself, and that perhaps I ought to be thinking about and preparing toward such an eventuality significantly more than was the case prior to turning 18 and being abruptly faced with reality. If there's one thing I fault my parents for, this is it. Heck, I had some clue, but didn't grasp the scale of it or have a truly serious sense of things.

79
Somewhere along the line I was interested in astronomy.

80
Somewhere along the line I was interested in meteorology.

81
Somewhere along the line I was interested in geology. My sister and I, and one of my best friends in elementary school, were all into the rock hound thing. I considered geology as a major when I got to college. That and another earth science course were what I took for the science requirement, which was also good for the GPA. My geology professor used to make fun of sociology, saying all he learned in sociology was it's bad to be pooor, which he already knew. Heh.

82
Somewhere along the way, like most kids, I wanted to be a DJ.

83
I've been fascinated by electronics and gadgets as long as I can remember. In a more twisted aspect of that, I used to take a Lionel train transformer, touch the leads in different places in broken radios and walkie talkies, and see what happened or fry components. Got some cool squealing noises that way. I used to be jealous of my older brother, working on his guitar amplifier, going to radio shack for tubes and other parts with our cousin. In 1974 I sketched something I had in mind that now you'd recognize as a crude multimedia, communication center workstation, or a wish for something amounting to one. I wish I still had that!

84
I was always fascinated with business, and with the so-called robber barons. When I was a kid I would read their bios and completely relate to them. I guess I missed the part where I was supposed to think they were eeeeevil.

85
Somewhere along the line I was interested in farming, and more particularly horticulture of the more ornamental variety.

86
In my teens I had a lawn mowing and snow removal business. There really weren't jobs like there are now, so there weren't many options otherwise.

87
I was fascinated in my later teens with the idea of the mail order business before mail order became outrageously huge, but I didn't have a product to sell that way, or capital.

88
Circa 1977 - 1986 I was obsessed with the idea of starting or joining, or even simply encouraging others at, a commercial space launch venture, with the ultimate objective of terraforming Mars, or at least enabling that to begin.

Woohoo!

I am now a Marauding Marsupial, number 317 out of 2321 listed blogs. Barely though, so I could rejoin the rodentia if I don't watch out, and if half my posts continue to be about Blogger/Blogspot going infectiously insane. 30-Something more links and I could be a large mammal! Like that's going to happen real fast, eh?

On a couple other notes, it appears that many sites are now failing to show their most recent updatedness in my blogroll. Almost none do, so I investigated and the first two I checked were in fact updated more recently than the blogroll link says. What's up with that?

If am going to change to the grouping system I have in mind, I think I will have to include all or most links in my template, not Blogrolling. That will be mitigated by the fact I will have them organized in a way where the recently updated feature will matter less to me. The ones I would check constantly regardless will be together, and then I'll give the rest more equal attention. It's almost bad that I rely on the recently update flag, since I seldom click half or more of my links any more. When I do, often I find gems.

I am debating whether my next post should be a continuation of the Eleventy-One Things; items 78-88, or whether it should be a Dungeon Blog Tour. I noticed something odd the last time I clicked a bunch of the lowest blogs on the Ecosystem list. All the ones I clicked were lefty. Not that there's anything wrong with their being left-leaning blogs, or with those being the bottom barrel ones (heh), but it made me wonder if there's a "flood the zone" push going on. Probably a preposterous thought.

Hitler: Rise of Evil

I missed the first half of the second part of this tonight, except a couple minutes here and there. It was compelling enough at one point I almost stayed with it and relied on Smallville having been successfully taped.

Again, well acted Hitler. Fascinating and scary how easy it was for him to get into power, especially given how easy it would have been to stop him along the way. It's as if reasonable people expect they're dealing with someone stoppable through ordinary means, such as persuading the populace through the free press. Sometimes that just is not so. See my earlier "Doomsday Provision" post about the Second Amendment.

What's up with having a parlimentary system that is so easily disrupted, and a constitution that's so easy to suspend? Having all the reps from one party able to walk out, or act disruptively, and disable the functioning of the legislative body because things aren't going their way... that kind of thing could never happen in this country.

Fascinating. So much enabled by others around him.

Buffy

I channel switched enough to catch some glimpses and the ending, but have been promised loan of tapes of the last few episodes. I have to say, having seen the very end, I thought it was well done.

My Buffy-holic friend is in California right now, where they were going to have a finale watching party. It'll be interesting to see what she thinks when she gets back.

I have a weird relationship with Buffy. My sister has been a fan since it started, if not rabid like some people. I never let myself get sucked in, partly by not having a TV for the right years, and partly because I restrain myself well. I know enough to follow episodes if I catch them. I enjoy it. I can understand how people can be rabid fans. And I figure sooner or later I'll own all the seasons on DVD and be able to watch them all whenever I want.

Smallville

Bob has e-mailed me twice since the finale of Smallville ended, so he probably got the best of my comments about it. If I go into the same detail, this will be a spoilerish post. You have been warned...

I am really boggled as to where they will go with the overal show arc. They have to pull of another year of high school, if I am not mistaken, while he remains in Smallville and in an environment where everyone remains reasonably in the dark about him and the wrestling match with the Luthors, and fights with any other villains, remain low key enough not to blow the lid off completely. And that doesn't count if the show extends to college at all, subsequent seasons.

The thing that mitigates the Luthor challenge to Clark is the Luthors fighting with each other, which obviously escalated tonight in that plane. This could be the key event that sends Lex firmly over the edge, but it could also be merely a stepping stone, or something that sends him more vigorously against his father, without causing the expected eventual breach with Clark just yet. I wondered what the hell was going on when Lex and Helen got on a Luthorcorp plane. Not a Lexcorp plane. He still wants to be a good guy, but is drawn internally and pushed externally toward being a bad guy. Contrast Lionel, very much a well played, firmly set in his ways villain.

Destroying the ship, whatever disruption it caused in the near term, may make life easier in the longer term.

The red kryptonite almost seems to have a drug-like appeal to him, it struck me tonight.

Chloe goes over to the dark side... and yet, and yet... still questions why Lionel is so interested in Clark; a question I see defensively motivated by her long friendship as much as by general curiosity.

I did miss a couple minutes of this episode here and there, channel flipping, but not enough that I've yet reviewed on video what I missed.

So Lex is in the drink. Clark is in a tempestuous mental state, riding off toward Metropolis. Lana is baffled. His parents are upset. Chloe is seduced by the dark side. As was Helen, obviously, but there was always more going on with her than it seemed, I think.

How do they make an exciting first episode, airing on the worst possible night of course, which ends up with things more or less back to normal Smallville status quo with the intrigue merely raised a notch or two? Clark hits Metropolis, hijinks ensue. Does he encounter Lex; rescue him even? Does he encounter Lionel? A (super)villain to be named later? I am of course totally intrigued. By comparison, Gilmore Girls is just ordinary.

Gilmore Girls

Nothing seriously unexpected there. Decent episode, nice speech, and I liked Paris in this one better than I ever have in the past. The college financing went about as expected. The car scene was funny.

The part near the end when Luke was dreaming threw me for a moment, until it became clear it was a dream. Heh. They can't go ending the series prematurely, after all, but they have to tease the characters along so they get to the wedding day finale episode in a few years without having married someone else and ruined things in the meantime.

Emily is something else, but Lorelei can be just as bad in her own way. She just hasn't realized that yet and cut her mother some slack.

I assumed Lorelei would get an Inn with the help of Trixie. I don't entirely see how she'll do it herself, but then it's not totally out of the question either. Should make things interesting. As will college.

Good scene telling Jess off. He's such a whacko.

I may have mentioned before that Rory reminds me of my stepsister, except more bookish and intelligent. The person my stepsister especially resembled when they bother were younger is Valerie Bertinelli. Everyone would tell her that and she hated it. Which is weird, since it's complementary. But I digress.

Tuesday, May 20, 2003

Cruise Over to Carnival

It is up, this week at Cut On The Bias.

Doomsday Provision

Rachel makes yet another gun post today, in which she quotes at length the dissent by Judge Kozinski in the recent 9th Circuit Silveira v. Lockyer decision. I agree; brilliantly said, but this one part is what people all should instinctively "get" about the Second Amendment, and seem to be too sheeplike to comprehend:

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed?where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.



That sums up for me why I find it incomprehensible that anyone would do anything short of embrace the Second Amendment; what it clearly says and means, and the premise, the fear, that it is based upon. I automatically suspect anyone else of being a brain donor.

Presidential Quotes

John Hawkins has compiled a great list (and I say that without even being past the B section) of quotes from every U.S. President.

What a surprise!

Last night I left 11.7 gigabytes, almost 100,000 files, copying across the network from this machine's D drive to a directory on a machine I am migrating to. I "knew" it would barf part way through, but at least that would get part of it done and I could pick up from where it left off.

I'm pleasantly shocked that it actually all copied! That almost never happens.

Now I need to continue the process, and do some installing, before I can change anything on this machine that's already been copied. I've had Quickbooks sitting here, waiting to be implemented. It'll actually happen soon. Yay. Or not...

DNS

Hmmm... I switched the dialup connection to use the same DNS servers as the office, and it works, but I did have to hit refresh because it didn't come up initially.

These kinds of things are pretty lowly to be happening to a major outfit like Blogger.

DNS

I am getting a DNS error trying to reach my blog, blogger.com in general, and blogspot.com in general. And yet I can post using w.bloggar. Nothing has changed, but it appears to be a problem specific to Mindspring; one that several hour, rebooting, and changing from auto to specified DNS servers hasn't solved. Someone on attbi tested for me and it worked fine.

This is not amusing.

Frank is a Genus!

Perhaps Frank has been on to something all this time...

Planets Moving Into Alignment

I am working on a classification system for my links, which I started weeks ago, then abandoned temporarily. Stay tuned...

Monday, May 19, 2003

Movable Type

I had in mind to play with Movable Type locally to get to know it before attempting it with a real host. Maybe get a leg up on designing my new site.

Can I do this on my standalone Win2k machine at home, if it has the right stuff?

Can I do this at the office where I can use a separate machine as a web server? (Well, I could also bring one of my spare machines home, especially if I can throw Linux et al on an old P166 or P200 box and be adequate to play around.)

What things do I need to install, or configure just so, in preparation for this? Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl? Am I better off throwing the aforementioned stuff on a Linux box and making that the web server? For that matter, can I just test it using IIS if that's there already?

Thoughts?

Carnival

Susanna has a good discussion of Carnival of the Vanities, what it is, who should do it, and that people should pass along the word. Here's the word.

Intriguingly Scary

Depression and alzheimer's connected? Uh-oh...

Me Good, Store Bad

What kind of a supermarket runs out of hamburger?

I essentially went in there for hamburger, went around filling a cart with a bunch of other stuff first, then arrived at the meat case.

Bad store! Bad!

Meanwhile, I resisted temptation nicely, and even bought veggie matter. Go me!

Of course, then I arrived home to a rather crowded parking situation because there's some new tenant who hasn't learned not to be a jerk yet, and someone else with a guest... despite the fact that half the tenant cars are out on the street due to limited parking. And then... Monday night is when I most often do laundry, even though the last couple Mondays I didn't. This is one of those times when it's do laundry or have nothing to wear tomorrow, so guess what? Someone is using the machines. Possibly even someone's guest who's making the parking crowded. So instead of being on my 2nd load, I have yet to start washing.

Nobody ever does laundry on Monday nights but me. Go figure.

I'm about to do a bad thing...

Go to the supermarket on an empty stomach. Great way to spend excess money and be compelled to buy too much junk food. I haven't eaten yet today. Except some addictive Swedish Fish, and some M&M's, and a small piece of yummy coffee cake that made itself available at my client's coffee station.

Such a great diet, huh?

So I'm being good and getting groceries instead of takeout, even though I am being bad and going there on empty. I'll make a burger or something. Mine are way better than the ones from McDonald's, Burger King, Wendys, or even the new A&W down the street. Okay, making myself hungry, leaving now...

That's Much Better

Sheesh. Come on, Google owns you now guys, so it's about time to get with the program.

Actually, I rebuilt the archives as I would for the permalink issue, and that apparently brought everything back, so being back to normal is no thanks to Blogger.

What The F**K is F**king Blogger Thinking!?

I'm sorry, but all my posts shouldn't simply disappear, leaving only the blogroll column and blog title. Not even for a matter of minutes. Are the f**king inviting me to leave as fast as possible? Jeez...

Attack of Relativity

And then there were three.

Now my sister has called, on top of my brother and my mother calling earlier today. You'd think they planned it or something. Thus the previous post was interrupted most of the way through by most of an hour on the phone.

Unfortunately, it sounds like my sister's $1350/mo prescription for MS, which might help slow the progression of it, is making sure to hit her with all the side effects that might occur in some people. If they confirm as much, they'll have to try something else less advanced.

She was trying to pawn off my nephew on me for the first week of July. I said maybe, and suggested she could spend some quality time with him teaching her computer skills. Heh. My other nephew and my brother in law will be at Boy Scout camp that week, so she was thinking more along the lines of quality time alone. Can't blame her there.

Julie on Obscene Boxing

Julie made me laugh, which is always a good thing.

She claims her permalinks don't work because she's using Blogger, even though she has a real host, so I'll skip the permalinks. I notice the links have a bunch of spaces in the bookmark name (like "# 200313062"), and that can't be good.

Indeed, if you get past the obscene post mentioned above, and the post about fraudulent-looking radio personalities and creative wedding music, and the post about torture, you will see a post about the link breakage. She wonders what to do about fixing them. I wonder if it's as simple as following my instructions from several posts ago ("Blog Maintenance Tips for Rogues"), or if there's something deeper going on. I mean, spaces in the permalink URLs? What's up with that?

Out Long National Nightmare is Ended

Go congratulate Megan on her success in bringing this about.

Blargh

I get along pretty well with my mother, though perhaps it's telling that I have mentioned my father frequently here and my mother seldom. Of course, I keep more in touch with my father 4 hours away in Vermont than with my mother 30 minutes away in the same part of the same state. He uses a computer and e-mail. My mother has yet to use the computer I gave her three years ago, which annoys me because I could have put it to some use during that time, and because it's a fraction of what I would give her to use now. I did have an ulterior motive. She could scan all the old family pictures, saving me ever having to do so. She could computerize all the genealogy data, so I don't have to. And that's appropriate; where I am merely interested, she is atavistically zealous.

Anyway, she just called, wondering where a particular street is in Quincy. I knew it sounded familiar, and when I looked it up, remembered why. Trouble is, the map threw me because it's displayed erroneously. So I'm muttering about where it is on the map and where it really is, and trying to tell her how to get there, with a touch of inaccuracy because even though I could drive to the area, watch for it and turn at the appropriate spot, I can't say "get off at Furnace Brook, head toward the Armory and go left at the first light" or whatever. In the meantime, she's jumping in, suggesting where she thinks the street is, even though she called me because she didn't know, or suggesting where I really mean by what she thinks I'm saying, and confusing me by trying to jump off at landmarks that are miles away or routes that aren't ideal to get to the right area.

Then of course she started off on the topic of my brother and his pending ex, who could probably teach Acidman's BC how it's really done. As she gets more and more excited, I'm holding the phone farther and farther from my ear lest I suffer damage. I didn't have to do that when talking with my brother earlier, no doubt because he wasn't so shrill, and modulated due to being at work. All of us kids developed a tendency to talk loud, and to get gradually louder, from competing with each other. I control mine the best. That's probably why I have a speaking voice that projects well, even though I'm terrified of speaking in front of groups.

I never really thought about my mother having that same tendency to get louder and louder.

I guess that's my dose of family for the week, so I can be absolved of not seeing anyone lately. Heh.

Pathetic

I suspect that my traffic, and that of other BlogSplat-hosted sites, is pathetic today in no small part because our host is being so helpfully slow. And when it's not being merely slow, it is claiming sites can't be found, until you have refreshed at least once. It might help if I posted more new and exciting material, which I am kind of busy to do today, but I know there's way more to it than that since I myself have skipped reading some BlogSplat sites when they were slow to load or gave an error.

It was one thing to see this on the weekend and say "oh, they're doing server work, it sucks now but they're trying to make it better." It's entirely another to see it continue all day Monday as well.

Did you know that Hosting Matters answers basic questions e-mailed to them faster than any other host or ISP I have ever encountered? I'm sure impressed so far...

Spam

Spam is annoying. But you know what's even more annoying?

I am the admin contact for several domains. Eventually I created e-mail addresses specifically for that role; domains@ the client's domain and domains@ our primary domain. Previously I had used another account, and part of my reason for changing was because of e-mail address harvesting from (or selling by...?) the domain registrar.

For a long time it seemed to slow down, but lately the incidence of spam sent to the domain contact addresses has escalated dramatically. What's up with that?

I find that incredibly annoying, that I can't give an e-mail address to a domain registrar without it becoming a spam magnet.

Magic

Bill Whittle has a new essay up, Magic, which is well worth reading.

Contrasts

How's this for contrasts? Tonight I alternated watching Hitler: The Rise of Evil and Sleepless In Seattle.

The Hitler movie was fascinating, and the guy who played Hitler, Robert Carlyle, did an amazing job. It's unfortunate that it continues on Tuesday night, the big night of season finales this week.

The Hitler movie really brings to life how it all happened. I've always been sketchy on some of the details. Obviously he could easily have been stopped so many times along the way, or the slightest twist of fate could have changed everything.

Jena Malone is all grown up! I was impressed with Jena by her performance in Stepmom five years ago. I did a double take when I saw her name in the credits, and had to stop and grasp that, yeah, it's been that long.

I love Sleepless In Seattle. It was one of the first two videos I bought, before I had my own VCR. The other was Apollo 13. They were both on sale at Wal-Mart and I bought them on reputation, having missed them in the theater.

Kind of a weird contrast. I started one while I was going through books, not considering the fact I'd start looking at the books so much. Then I saw the Hitler thing was about to start one of the times I stopped the VCR, and started watching that, but continued the movie during some of the commercial breaks and after the broadcast was over.

Sunday, May 18, 2003

Packing Books

I'm packing up some of my books, in anticipation that I will move this year, and to economize on shelf space. I have three good sized bookcases, all full, including paperbacks two-deep, which I hate to do, on many shelves. I could really use a couple more at least, which really means I should buy some for the office and bring home the three I own that are there. I have a slightly small bookcase that's overflowing with videos too.

Anyway, it's tough taking books off the shelves and packing them, because I start looking at them, getting all excited over things I forgot were there. I even started looking through a math textbook! So I didn't get very far yet. Plus I am trying to be selective, not putting away things I might want. You never know, after all.

I've always wanted a house with a library room in it. That would be nice; not to have to move the books again, and to have plenty of room for them. Sigh...

Quantitative Blogosphere Analysis

Oscar Jr. has a really cool analysis of the value of links and categories of bloggers.

Hulk Blogs!

This is way funny, and Hulk is a far better writer than Puce was.

Number One Rodent

Today I am the top blog in the "Adorable Little Rodents" section of the Ecosystem. So close to being a Marauding Marsupial!

Things obviously rejiggered, too, as I am still at the same number of links and the same numerical rank as yesterday. One more link that the Ecosystem is capable of detecting and I'm there; a marsupial.

Andy Card

Well, I heard on TV earlier, when I turned it on thinking I might catch part of what Reagan called the "silly Sunday talk shows," that Andrew Card, who is a local boy, was at Stonehill, so anti-war protesters were setup there too for the event.

I wonder if I'll see any of that when I run down to my office, which means driving by Stonehill. My first thought was to hope they don't mess up traffic too much. Heh.

Enzymes can be catalysts too...

One of my friends started to call me an enzyme today after the movie, because I tend to provoke change. I told her I'm a catalyst, and what she says is exactly true. It's something I have long noticed. I seem to have an influence on the course of people's lives way out of proportion to what I'd expect, without even trying. Thus when I read The Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb, I could relate to Fitz in at least that major respect.

The Outer Limits

I love that show! It is almost without fail superlatively done. Much of the time I miss it, but I saw over half of it tonight. I should really program the VCR to record it, but it's not on reliably at midnight Saturday nights. It can be pushed to 12:30 or 1:00 some weeks.

It's also a prime example of what I mentioned in a post a few days back, about seeing the same episode repeated if you happen to catch a show seldom.