This is My Life.

Revenge Of The Nerds.

Otakon is in town this weekend. There has been a slow trickle of costumed virgins passing on the street below, but I think things will get weird the closer I get to the Harbor on my way home tonight.

Cats were eating man, 74, found dead with mom

Wow, after reading this story, I’m going to have to rethink our current animal situation: Cats were eating man, 74, found dead with mom.

…crews removed a dozen cats from the home on Tuesday. They also found four more dead cats and a dead dog in the residence.

Things No One Told Me.

Here’s your daily awesome: stuffnoonetoldme.blogspot.com. This is the kind of thing I see and I wish I’d been smart/motivated/talented enough to do.

New Adventures In Advertising.

My daily commute takes me past the Baltimore City Courthouse right around the time potential jurors need to queue up out front to go through the vetting process. Often, as I’m sitting at one of the lights in front, I’ll see buttoned-up lawyers dragging carts loaded with file boxes of papers, nervous-looking plaintiffs accompanied by family members, or news crews set up under the shadow of double-parked media vans. Today, however, I was amused by the sight of two young women in Daisy Dukes and tightly tied t-shirts advertising a bail bonds service, attempting to cross the street in platform heels. They clacked their way onto the sidewalk, up the stairs, and entered the courthouse, on their mission of mercy, trailing behind a conservatively dressed woman (who I assume is the one who hands out business cards).

Capitalism at its finest, no?

Assorted Wednesday.

I was up until 2 last night working on drawings for the 9-5 gig, so I’m dragging ass today.

So apparently the child bike seat we got for free is still usable, but there seems to be a conspiracy among manufacturers to make their installation as difficult as possible. I’ve been up to Loch Raven twice in the last two weeks to measure out the rack that goes along with the seat, but I left without it because I was under the mistaken impression it would not fit. It turns out I was orienting the rack backwards and not fastening it to the seat the right way. So I have to go back (none of the shops near my office our our house carry the rack) at some point over the weekend to try one last time.

Sounds like the stock market took a scary dip yesterday, based on fears that Spain is heading the way of Greece and Portugal may not be far behind. NPR did a great piece on the problems Spain is facing, which was an eye-opener, as well as the issues Italy is dealing with in order to prop up its own crumbly finances. My question is this: Does anyone in Europe (besides Germany) pay their income taxes? Fuck’s sake, people.

Jen’s potatoes seem to be growing out-of-control crazy, which meant I needed to hit the Home Depot for more vegetable dirt. While I was in the garden section, a young couple was very earnestly asking one of the employees if bees are harmful to plants.

I’ll repeat that.

They were asking if bees were harmful to plants. Apparently there were a lot of bees flying around their flowers, and they were concerned that something might be wrong.

It’s enough to make me want to move to a survivalist compound out in the midwest somewhere so that we can teach Finn what to do when our society of ignorant morons collapses around itself.

NPR Humor.

Who says National Public Radio has no sense of humor? The first music bumper on Marketplace this evening, after the lead story on the stock market hiccup, was “Wave of Mutilation” by the Pixies.

Random Thoughts.

I’m noticing a trend on The Facebook these days: the people who used to be the biggest trustafarian hippy wanna-be hardcore druggies at my college are now the ones spamming my news feed with right-wing links from FOX news, Glen Beck, and every Tea Party nutbag out there. Seriously, guys?

I’m slowly continuing to add content from the static archives into WordPress. I’m noticing that I used to write more back in the day.

I picked up a set of TORX bits in preparation to remove the sunroof from the Slattern sometime this week(end). Hopefully I can get it back down and into place without having to dismantle half the interior of the car. Hopefully. I also picked up a bag of locknuts for the Tuffy console in the Scout; it’ll take 5 minutes to get that bolted in permanently.

I stumbled upon this last week and found it too good not to share:

This is part one of six. Shane McGowan looks like an absolute mess (and this was filmed five years ago).

Police Seize Jason Chen’s Computers

This is getting funny. Police Seize Jason Chen’s Computers. To recap: this guy is an editor at Gizmodo, which bought a prototype iPhone that someone mistakenly left at a bar, from the original finder, who never really meant to did a piss-poor job of attempting to locate the original owner. These guys (Gizmodo) bitching about “invalid police procedure” is just humorous.

Chess Pieces.

I don’t know how to play chess, but I understand the basic concept—it’s the rules I never bothered to learn. It can be used as an allegory for many things in life. Like yesterday, for example. Jen had an early morning client meeting, which meant Finn needed daycare. Which meant I needed to get her there in the CR-V. But Jen had to be able to pick her up, so I had to get the CR-V back to the house and swap it for another vehicle.

Meanwhile, Pep Boys replaced the defective battery they’d sold me late last year, but I hadn’t had the time to drop it into the Slattern, so I was going to have to take the Scout on her inaugural test drive to work when I brought the CR-V back. Got all that? Good.

Jen made it to her meeting on time, Finn made it to daycare on time, and I made it to work about 30 minutes late, but the Scout did just fine. No leaks, no spitting coolant, and everything felt great.

During the day, I called Bank of America to replace my ATM card for our joint account, and after one abortive attempt I was able to get a CSR to order me a new card. before I hung up I asked her to verify the account she’d altered, and she gave me my primary checking account, not the joint account. (This, after punching in the joint account number and my soc in order to access the main menu, then repeating it to the CSR as soon as she got on the line. Isn’t technology amazing?) So I corrected her, verified she had the right account and verified she hadn’t cancelled my primary checking card. See where this is going?

On my way out the door from work, I called to order some kebabs for dinner, because Jen didn’t have time to get anything set up and because it was a LOST night. I turned the key in the Scout and got a lovely click-click-click from the battery, which had fired up just fine in the morning but decided to crap on itself sometime during the day. The guy downstairs in the booth, who couldn’t have been nicer, didn’t have a battery charger, and the garage was pretty deserted by the time I was there, so I reluctantly called Jen, who was in transit with Finn, to come and give me a jumpstart. She made it into the city  in record time, and after some fiddling with the jumper cables (they will be replaced next month) we got the Scout to fire up. Driving back to the ‘Ville, we separated so I could go pick up dinner, and I left it running while I ran inside. When the guy ran my ATM card—you guessed it—declined. The BoA lady had, indeed, cancelled my primary card. I made like I was going to run home and get cash, but the proprietor, who couldn’t have been nicer, told me to take the food and come back to pay when I could. So I will endorse Cafe Kebab on Frederick Road not only because their food is delicious, but because the owners are exceptionally nice people.

Returning home, Jen had food ready for Finn, and we all devoured our dinner a full hour past our usual schedule. I ran out to pay for our meal, and then hurried back to help Jen give Finn a bath (she had played outside for a good portion of the day, and thus was covered in sunblock). After putting her to bed, I had 15 minutes for my next mission:

1. Pull the good battery from the Jeep, which was parked across the street.
2. Drop the new battery in the Saturn.
3. Move the Saturn out of the driveway.
4. Drop the Jeep battery in the Scout.
5. Pull the Scout into the garage.
6. Pull the Saturn into the driveway.
7. Put the bad battery on the charger for one more test.

Thankfully, I made it inside just before the first commercial break of LOST. Which kicked ass, by the way.

Jen also informed me I’m not allowed to drive the CR-V, because she’s afraid I’m going to fuck it up somehow. Which, after all of this mechanical drama, is probably true.

Emeco’s 111 Navy Chair

This is a great idea, but with one fatal flaw. Emeco’s 111 Navy Chair is made from old Coke bottles, 111 of them to be precise. Of course, because it’s being sold at Design Within Reach, they want $250 for one.

For the record, I love the design of the Navy Chair. But there’s no way in hell I’d spend $250 for one made from soda bottles; $25 is more like it. (via)

I Missed This, Somehow.

We saw Brian Williams in the hall at NBC a few years ago visiting our friend S., and she tells us he is as cool and down-to-earth in person as you would hope he is.

MICA Affinity License Plates

Wow, for an art school, I can’t imagine designing an uglier custom license plate than my alma mater did. Does the URL need to be in all caps? Really?

Sore.

My physical therapist and I have a certain weekly routine, where he puts electrodes on my back and I lift weights and watch Harry Potter on my iPhone and try to ignore 120V of direct current that’s making my muscles tense into iron rods. Then he does ultrasound, which is like having a mostly relaxing massage with a warm curling iron. Next, he does manual massage, including a technique where he grabs my skull and attempts to pop it upwards off my spinal column like the head of a dandelion. Usually, that’s about the worst point; after that, I stand in front of a machine with a big crank and do six repetitions with each arm, and he slowly turns the resistance higher. The result is a slightly sore but satisfying ache in the muscle that usually leads to fitful sleep and an increase in mobility.

Last night the other therapist put the electrodes in the usual place and I made it to the end of the quiddich match in Half-Blood Prince, and then everything went to hell. She is a quiet lady with a thick European accent, and her timid demeanor hides a frightening ability to inflict pain for extended periods of time. She started with massage around my neck, and when she found the knot in my left shoulder, she said, “aha!’ in a quiet voice, just before she attempted to push it through the other side of my body and out the front of my chest using only the tip of her finger. After about five grueling minutes of deep-tissue torture, I was ready to confess to anything Dick Cheney could dream up in his worst paranoid fantasies. Then, she used a pair of iron-hard knuckles and about thirty foot pounds of pressure applied directly to the screaming muscle mass and told me to turn my head to the side five times, slowly. Once I’d gotten through that and fought off the urge to puke, she had me do it facing the other way.

After that, it was back to the old routine, but my enthusiasm for turning the big crank was gone. Especially after the front desk guy changed the music from classical to the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack, which made me feel even more foolish than I normally do. This afternoon, I’m sore and creaky and tired from tossing and turning all night, which hasn’t happened in a week or so. I know that often things have to get worse before they get better, but I think I want to go back to my original therapist next week, because I don’t know what I did to his partner to make her dislike me so much.

Junk in the Trunk.

I’m still here. I had PT on Monday, and the doc says it’s stress, bad posture (due to sitting in a chair all damn day) and no exercise that’s got my neck muscles wired tighter than a drum. Two Advil over breakfast seems to dull the pain to a mild ache which allows me to get through the day. Of course, the high-pressure system sitting overhead gives me a sinus headache, which means mornings are a challenge not to throw up or pass out until I get moving. All of this sucks because I can’t help Mama with Finn that much, I can’t do anything around the house, and I can’t sleep very well. I’m going in for more PT early next week, and hopefully I can start loosening everything up before spring passes us by.

HP’s License Plate Domain URLs

Strangely enough, I was wondering about this earlier today when doing a search for toner numbers: an explanation for HP’s ridiculous  ‘License Plate Domain’ URLs.

Conan, Leno, and NBC

Conan O’Brien Says He Won’t Host ‘Tonight Show’ Following Leno. I can’t think on anything more screwed up than the position NBC has put itself in, and I fail to understand how they haven’t fired their head of programming. To screw around with the traditional Late Night timeslot in order to accommodate Leno is sort of like chopping off your own foot because you think your knee might walk better; you’re never recovering from that. What a bunch of retards.

Dear Lazy FedEx Delivery Guy,

“Delivery” means you get your lazy ass out of the truck, walk the package up to the door, and ring the bell as a courtesy. It does not mean “leave the package leaning up against the car in the driveway where it can be taken by anyone walking down the street.” I shoveled the walk clean three days ago; there’s no ice on the cement.
Merry Fucking Christmas.

My Tax Dollars At Work.

Jen’s been wading through the process of filing for an MBE over the last few weeks, and asked me to take a look at some of the paperwork to help her make sense of some of it. We sat down on Sunday to review the state’s directions, which are about as helpful as a wetsuit in the Sahara. Looking for further clarification, I did some google searching and found a page of directions that were supposedly for the same set of applications we were holding, but were just different enough to cause a splitting headache.

What really made me laugh, though, was the online MBE application. I thought it might offer some more clues as to how she should fill out the paperwork. Once I’d selected one of the six inscrutable options offered (guessing it might possibly be the right choice), I landed on an .ASP page loading a Java applet, and from there things got even worse. I was presented with screen after screen of forms that looked just like this:

Seriously, what is that shit? I’ve seen better forms written by first-week HTML students. Even if I knew what I was supposed to be filling out, I wouldn’t know where to put it because half of the field descriptions are behind the field boxes.

For the uninitiated, the whole point of Java is to be able architecture neutral: that is, to “write once, run anywhere.” Therefore, the fact that I’m looking at this on Safari on a Mac should have no bearing whatsoever. The fact that it’s absolutely unintelligible, and that my tax dollars paid some hack to “develop” this fucked-up system makes me especially angry, as both a citizen of this state and as a web developer. This is the kind of crap work that gives my profession a bad reputation, and it’s also the reason small businesses like my wife’s get a shit deal instead of the tax breaks and coddling large corporations enjoy.

That’s just fucking embarassing.

We’re Home. Sort Of.

Anybody trying to call the Lockardugan Central Switchboard over the next couple of days will be greeted with the sound of ringing and ringing and ringing. It seems someone across town asked Verizon to forward their calls to a new number, and they decided to randomly pick ours instead. So our DSL is knocked out and we’re getting calls from people we don’t know (including the owner of the original number, who is understandably upset).

And now, the punchline: Verizon says we have to wait until Wednesday to get service back. If Comcast wasn’t teh suck, I’d really consider switching over to cable…