You ever just have one of those days?
Last night, we all got sent home from work early (thank you very much, Slammer virus!). I didn't check my morning work schedule before going to bed like I normally do.
So, when I checked my stuff this morning (around 8:15am), I saw that I had an 8:30am meeting. It takes me about 35 minutes to get to work usually. So I get ready as quick as possible, and spill a mostly full cup of hot apple cider (now cold since it was left out since last night (by yours truly)). Clean that up. Rush to work, fully aware that I didn't pack a lunch (aware that I *promised* my lovely wife I would do).
On the way to work, remember that I didn't fill my car with gas last night, figuring I'd do it this morning. Contemplate running out of gas on the way to work, but make it.
It's not a big deal to be late to the meeting, which was good. Sit down with some work to do, and immediately get slammed from all directions from people with either a critical thing to do, or needing help with something, or asking my expert opinion on something else. Deal with shit until about 1pm.
Come home for lunch (remembering to stop on the way to get gas). At the gas station, while filling up, I decide to go get a drink (I haven't eaten all day and am pretty hungry). The line is long, and the guy is trying to figure out how to refill the register receipt tape. Put back drink and leave. Get home. Diana is sick and crashed out on the couch. Lunch is sitting on the table made for me. I love her so much. Not for making lunch, but for understanding me. Eat lunch. Stroke Diana's face lovingly while she sleeps. Back to work. High point of day.
Finally make some progress on fixing stuff. Play foos and lose (breaking my 5-game win streak). Now it's about 4:30pm, and I'm ready to go home, take a shower, and veg out, either playing poker online, or watching TV. Maybe I'll buy some beer. I deserve it.
PS: I played poker online last night (play money). I started with $1000. I left with $560,000. Not too shabby at all, if I may say.
2003/11/05
2003/11/03
Weekend roundup…
Let's see here…
On Friday during the day, I went over to have lunch with my mom. This wasn't as much of a thoughtful thing, but a way for me to weasel out of going out to a show they invited me to. Let me rewind a little…
*stereotypical "back in time" harp music*
The phone rang. It was my mom.
Mom: "Hi dear… Your dad and I would love to take you and Diana out for your birthday. We bought tickets, and have two extra ones, to go see…"
Adam: (at this point, I'm pretty excited! What are we going to see?! A play? A neat show like Stomp or Cirque de Soleil? A magician? Comedian?)
Mom: "… a live show of Garrison Kealor's 'A Prarie Home Companion'"
Adam: (Struggling to hide his life-long loathing of that infernal show) "Oh! Um… Let me talk to Diana. That's really nice of you to think of us!"
Now I was stuck. I call Diana, who's not feeling very well and in the middle of her own situations, who plants a square "I don't care one way or the other" on me. Tickets had already been purchased for me for perhaps the last show I'd actually pay money to see. To be fair, I actually haven't listened to *that* much PCH. But I've heard enough to know that there's probably a lot of people in the world who'd rather go than I would. And they're probably mostly over 50. It's kind of like inviting my mom, for her birthday, to go see the Red Hot Chili Peppers or go to a computer game center for an afternoon of Counterstrike.
I even get an opinion from Dr. Dave, who says that even he can't stand that show, and that since tickets were already purchased for me, that I "was hosed".
Ugh. My choices were to weasel out of going, risking seeming ingrateful and unappreciative of my parents, or to go to the show, waste a Friday evening, and probably suffer physical pain from Garrison Kealor's voice.
I decided to go for the former. As we all know, weaseling out of things is what seperates humans from the rest of the animals… (except the weasel).
I explained to my mother that the last thing I would want to do is seem ungrateful. However, the *second to last thing* I would want is to actually sit through that show, and maybe they could invite someone more appreciative than myself and Diana, and we could do something else instead. This was accepted and went over well. The rest of the conversation was about what great kids my brother and I are, what great parents my parents are, and what great parents my brother and I will be. So, no feelings hurt (I hope), only minor guilt on my end, and no going to the show. :)
Friday night was Halloween. We didn't have any plans, and neither did any of my friends, so we invited everyone over to sit at our house and not have plans together. I carved pumpkins. Everything showed up, and we grilled some food and hung out and chatted and watched "Scream", which was a lot of fun. I really feel lucky to have the friends that I do, and really enjoy hanging out with them all.
We only had like 4 trick-or-treaters come by, which means we have a lot of freakin' candy left over.
Saturday, Diana and I gathered up some clothes to donate to fire victims. I was called into work briefly, and then we headed downtown to donate the clothes. We then drove through a little bit of Scripps Ranch and looked at burned homes. Sad stuff, but at the same time, it was clear that the firemen did a HUGE job of saving the homes that they could. There were lots of signs thanking them posted in windows and whatnot, which was nice to see.
Saturday night we went over to Hbomb's new house, and hung out with her and Baditude. The evening was fun. Heather and her sister have a tiny new kitten, and let me tell you this: kittens and hardwood floors make for a hilarious evening. :)
Sunday, we had the sets of parents over for brunch, which was nice. Afterwards, I went and helped my dad out with their new computer. It made me eager to upgrade my own machine, which I've been wanting to do for a year now (which makes me realize how not-critical it is :)
That afternoon, I watched my taped game of the Chargers lose. Fuckers. We also watched more of the miniseries "Lonesome Dove", which we've been enjoying.
That's about it for now. Not a bad weekend 'tall.
Let's see here…
On Friday during the day, I went over to have lunch with my mom. This wasn't as much of a thoughtful thing, but a way for me to weasel out of going out to a show they invited me to. Let me rewind a little…
*stereotypical "back in time" harp music*
The phone rang. It was my mom.
Mom: "Hi dear… Your dad and I would love to take you and Diana out for your birthday. We bought tickets, and have two extra ones, to go see…"
Adam: (at this point, I'm pretty excited! What are we going to see?! A play? A neat show like Stomp or Cirque de Soleil? A magician? Comedian?)
Mom: "… a live show of Garrison Kealor's 'A Prarie Home Companion'"
Adam: (Struggling to hide his life-long loathing of that infernal show) "Oh! Um… Let me talk to Diana. That's really nice of you to think of us!"
Now I was stuck. I call Diana, who's not feeling very well and in the middle of her own situations, who plants a square "I don't care one way or the other" on me. Tickets had already been purchased for me for perhaps the last show I'd actually pay money to see. To be fair, I actually haven't listened to *that* much PCH. But I've heard enough to know that there's probably a lot of people in the world who'd rather go than I would. And they're probably mostly over 50. It's kind of like inviting my mom, for her birthday, to go see the Red Hot Chili Peppers or go to a computer game center for an afternoon of Counterstrike.
I even get an opinion from Dr. Dave, who says that even he can't stand that show, and that since tickets were already purchased for me, that I "was hosed".
Ugh. My choices were to weasel out of going, risking seeming ingrateful and unappreciative of my parents, or to go to the show, waste a Friday evening, and probably suffer physical pain from Garrison Kealor's voice.
I decided to go for the former. As we all know, weaseling out of things is what seperates humans from the rest of the animals… (except the weasel).
I explained to my mother that the last thing I would want to do is seem ungrateful. However, the *second to last thing* I would want is to actually sit through that show, and maybe they could invite someone more appreciative than myself and Diana, and we could do something else instead. This was accepted and went over well. The rest of the conversation was about what great kids my brother and I are, what great parents my parents are, and what great parents my brother and I will be. So, no feelings hurt (I hope), only minor guilt on my end, and no going to the show. :)
Friday night was Halloween. We didn't have any plans, and neither did any of my friends, so we invited everyone over to sit at our house and not have plans together. I carved pumpkins. Everything showed up, and we grilled some food and hung out and chatted and watched "Scream", which was a lot of fun. I really feel lucky to have the friends that I do, and really enjoy hanging out with them all.
We only had like 4 trick-or-treaters come by, which means we have a lot of freakin' candy left over.
Saturday, Diana and I gathered up some clothes to donate to fire victims. I was called into work briefly, and then we headed downtown to donate the clothes. We then drove through a little bit of Scripps Ranch and looked at burned homes. Sad stuff, but at the same time, it was clear that the firemen did a HUGE job of saving the homes that they could. There were lots of signs thanking them posted in windows and whatnot, which was nice to see.
Saturday night we went over to Hbomb's new house, and hung out with her and Baditude. The evening was fun. Heather and her sister have a tiny new kitten, and let me tell you this: kittens and hardwood floors make for a hilarious evening. :)
Sunday, we had the sets of parents over for brunch, which was nice. Afterwards, I went and helped my dad out with their new computer. It made me eager to upgrade my own machine, which I've been wanting to do for a year now (which makes me realize how not-critical it is :)
That afternoon, I watched my taped game of the Chargers lose. Fuckers. We also watched more of the miniseries "Lonesome Dove", which we've been enjoying.
That's about it for now. Not a bad weekend 'tall.
2003/10/30
Dreams
I had 5 dreams last night that I remember.
1) I dreamt something about a horse in our house. It was very person-like, and affectionate.
2) I dreamt I was in a classroom-like setting, with Jack Black in a teacher-like role. He was passing out DnD-type experience points while making fun of his students. He made some crack about me having one eye-brow. "You, with the eyebrow... 1000 experience points!" I was keeping track of this while writing on my jeans with a pen (light blue jeans, leaky dark blue pen) until my friend Eryn let me borrow a piece of paper (which has *his* experience points on it... I wondered how he was going to keep track).
3) I dreamt I was driving through a beach parking lot with my friends, and we were discussing how we'd just arrived in Vegas, and what we were going to do.
4) I dreamt I was driving on the freeway behind an old rusty VW bus. All of a sudden I noticed it was stopped, and I had the thought "Oh man I'm going to hit it!" and I woke up.
5) I used to remember #5, but now I don't. Oh well.
I had 5 dreams last night that I remember.
1) I dreamt something about a horse in our house. It was very person-like, and affectionate.
2) I dreamt I was in a classroom-like setting, with Jack Black in a teacher-like role. He was passing out DnD-type experience points while making fun of his students. He made some crack about me having one eye-brow. "You, with the eyebrow... 1000 experience points!" I was keeping track of this while writing on my jeans with a pen (light blue jeans, leaky dark blue pen) until my friend Eryn let me borrow a piece of paper (which has *his* experience points on it... I wondered how he was going to keep track).
3) I dreamt I was driving through a beach parking lot with my friends, and we were discussing how we'd just arrived in Vegas, and what we were going to do.
4) I dreamt I was driving on the freeway behind an old rusty VW bus. All of a sudden I noticed it was stopped, and I had the thought "Oh man I'm going to hit it!" and I woke up.
5) I used to remember #5, but now I don't. Oh well.
2003/10/29
Adman's hot and ready to pop!
Let's see what's going on in my world here.
This week has been a li'l crazy because of the fires. Work has been kind of slow as people have been in and out, and we've been let out early each day to get home before dark (for some reason). But it's getting back to normal now.
The weather is clearing up here on the coast as the fires are moving east and the smoke is being blown away. It's going to be nice to see a nice, clear day again.
Norman and I have been trying to connect to each other to play Diablo II, and that hasn't been going very well. I was able to recruit a third party off battle.net and he was able to connect to my computer, so I'm going to say that proves that the problem is on Norm's side. :) We're both at the same point in the game, independantly, and I'm really hoping we can try to play the rest of it through together. It's always hard to mesh schedules, though.
I've been making bits of progress on my little programming project. I found some frames of animation of a little cartoon lady running around, so I grabbed that. I wrote the maze-generation algorithm that will create the set of rooms, and can run around that (each square in the maze is a complete room). Now I need to write a little room-creation tool, and create a bunch of rooms, and I'll have reached Milestone 1! This is good.
A Vegas trip is being planned. I'm going to take a Friday off work (when Diana has a half-day anyways), and we're going to drive up and meet other friends up there. I think my boy Baditude is going to drive up with us, which will be fun. (Reminder to self: Get car checked up before trip!) I wish we could fly both ways, but it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense financially. The drive back on Sunday afternoon is a killer, though. Anyways, we should meet up with Iwan, maybe Little Buhr, and Dr. Mick and some of his boys. I haven't seen Doc Mick in a long time, so I'm looking forward to that.
We bought an air purifier last night. It's a sellers market on air purifiers around here, itellyouwhatbuddy. Luckily, we had a 20% off coupon from Linens 'n Things, so that was nice. And the purifier we got was some ionic deal that doesn't have a filter. Some of the other ones I saw at Home Depot were ones with filters that needed to be replaced at $50 a pop, so this should work out well.
That's about all the news from me. Nothing too mind boggling, but hey, slow and steady...
Let's see what's going on in my world here.
This week has been a li'l crazy because of the fires. Work has been kind of slow as people have been in and out, and we've been let out early each day to get home before dark (for some reason). But it's getting back to normal now.
The weather is clearing up here on the coast as the fires are moving east and the smoke is being blown away. It's going to be nice to see a nice, clear day again.
Norman and I have been trying to connect to each other to play Diablo II, and that hasn't been going very well. I was able to recruit a third party off battle.net and he was able to connect to my computer, so I'm going to say that proves that the problem is on Norm's side. :) We're both at the same point in the game, independantly, and I'm really hoping we can try to play the rest of it through together. It's always hard to mesh schedules, though.
I've been making bits of progress on my little programming project. I found some frames of animation of a little cartoon lady running around, so I grabbed that. I wrote the maze-generation algorithm that will create the set of rooms, and can run around that (each square in the maze is a complete room). Now I need to write a little room-creation tool, and create a bunch of rooms, and I'll have reached Milestone 1! This is good.
A Vegas trip is being planned. I'm going to take a Friday off work (when Diana has a half-day anyways), and we're going to drive up and meet other friends up there. I think my boy Baditude is going to drive up with us, which will be fun. (Reminder to self: Get car checked up before trip!) I wish we could fly both ways, but it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense financially. The drive back on Sunday afternoon is a killer, though. Anyways, we should meet up with Iwan, maybe Little Buhr, and Dr. Mick and some of his boys. I haven't seen Doc Mick in a long time, so I'm looking forward to that.
We bought an air purifier last night. It's a sellers market on air purifiers around here, itellyouwhatbuddy. Luckily, we had a 20% off coupon from Linens 'n Things, so that was nice. And the purifier we got was some ionic deal that doesn't have a filter. Some of the other ones I saw at Home Depot were ones with filters that needed to be replaced at $50 a pop, so this should work out well.
That's about all the news from me. Nothing too mind boggling, but hey, slow and steady...
2003/10/27
I don't understand God.
With this recent disaster in San Diego, people have been calling for prayers. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families", and "pray that the Santa Ana conditions let up", etc.
It seems to me, though, uneducated in these matters as I am, equally likely that God is punishing San Diego for it's wickedness (or something) than it is that he will help us through this. (Which is to say, both seem pretty unlikely to me, but equally so).
If the fire was God's will, then praying for help seems pretty silly, doesn't it?
If the fire was not God's will (is there such thing?) then it seems unlikely that He wouldn't know there was a fire going on, and that He would choose to help or not, whether or not we prayed. And sounds like he's not helping much.
Maybe I'm thinking of a too literal meaning of the term "prayer". If it's a metaphor for hoping everything gets better, then it makes a lot more sense to me.
Unless this is all a test to test mankinds faith, etc, etc, in which case, from a skeptical point of view, that's a pretty handy fail-safe answer for almost everything.
With this recent disaster in San Diego, people have been calling for prayers. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families", and "pray that the Santa Ana conditions let up", etc.
It seems to me, though, uneducated in these matters as I am, equally likely that God is punishing San Diego for it's wickedness (or something) than it is that he will help us through this. (Which is to say, both seem pretty unlikely to me, but equally so).
If the fire was God's will, then praying for help seems pretty silly, doesn't it?
If the fire was not God's will (is there such thing?) then it seems unlikely that He wouldn't know there was a fire going on, and that He would choose to help or not, whether or not we prayed. And sounds like he's not helping much.
Maybe I'm thinking of a too literal meaning of the term "prayer". If it's a metaphor for hoping everything gets better, then it makes a lot more sense to me.
Unless this is all a test to test mankinds faith, etc, etc, in which case, from a skeptical point of view, that's a pretty handy fail-safe answer for almost everything.
2003/10/26
San Diego burns...
Holy shit, it's bad news bears around here. Diana and I woke and could smell smoke from fires way far away. During the morning, we could see little bits of ash falling from the sky. The fire is pretty far south of here, but another little bit of it is easy of us, and potentially heading our way.
This is scary.
I think the chances are pretty slim, but they've talked a lot on the news about people having to leave their houses at the last minute. We figured better to be safe than sorry, and decided to pack up some non-replaceables.
That's a weird thing to do: actually walk around and decide what you could and could not live without. We grabbed wedding pictures, of course. A change of clothes. Diana packed up all her teaching lessons from all the years past. I grabbed a Shakespeare book that was my great-great-grandfathers, as well as a little trophy my grandfather won when he was a boy. That's about it. It's weird to think that we have a lot of stuff, but nothing that we couldn't replace or live without, if it really came down to it.
I hope and doubt the fire will come our way, but even the thought that it could is pretty chilling.
In other news, we bought a bed this weekend. It's NIIIIICE.
That is all, for now.
Holy shit, it's bad news bears around here. Diana and I woke and could smell smoke from fires way far away. During the morning, we could see little bits of ash falling from the sky. The fire is pretty far south of here, but another little bit of it is easy of us, and potentially heading our way.
This is scary.
I think the chances are pretty slim, but they've talked a lot on the news about people having to leave their houses at the last minute. We figured better to be safe than sorry, and decided to pack up some non-replaceables.
That's a weird thing to do: actually walk around and decide what you could and could not live without. We grabbed wedding pictures, of course. A change of clothes. Diana packed up all her teaching lessons from all the years past. I grabbed a Shakespeare book that was my great-great-grandfathers, as well as a little trophy my grandfather won when he was a boy. That's about it. It's weird to think that we have a lot of stuff, but nothing that we couldn't replace or live without, if it really came down to it.
I hope and doubt the fire will come our way, but even the thought that it could is pretty chilling.
In other news, we bought a bed this weekend. It's NIIIIICE.
That is all, for now.
2003/10/24
Ok...
So what's the deal with this grocery store strike? Actually, I take that back. I don't really care what the deal is with the grocery store strike. They want something, and the employers want something, and they'll have to find an agreement somewhere. Whatever.
What I do care about is that somehow we, the general public, are now involved in their fight. Willling or not, shoppers are being used as a pawn in the negotiations by the union workers against the stores, specifically by being encouraged (or bullied) at shopping elsewhere.
Is this fair? Or even appropriate? It just seems wrong to me that a lot of people who probably don't know or care about the specifics of the negotiations are now unwittingly on the side of the union strikers through their actions of shopping elsewhere.
Comments?
Yesterday, we had a "team building" event at a local mini-golf place. Contests were held in lazer-tag and mini-golf. My team won both (we had a good team). Yay us. It was a fun day. Beat working, at least.
So what's the deal with this grocery store strike? Actually, I take that back. I don't really care what the deal is with the grocery store strike. They want something, and the employers want something, and they'll have to find an agreement somewhere. Whatever.
What I do care about is that somehow we, the general public, are now involved in their fight. Willling or not, shoppers are being used as a pawn in the negotiations by the union workers against the stores, specifically by being encouraged (or bullied) at shopping elsewhere.
Is this fair? Or even appropriate? It just seems wrong to me that a lot of people who probably don't know or care about the specifics of the negotiations are now unwittingly on the side of the union strikers through their actions of shopping elsewhere.
Comments?
Yesterday, we had a "team building" event at a local mini-golf place. Contests were held in lazer-tag and mini-golf. My team won both (we had a good team). Yay us. It was a fun day. Beat working, at least.
2003/10/22
Are you ready, kids?
(Aye-aye, Captain!)
I can't HEEEAAAAR YOOUUUUU!
(AYE-AYE CAPTAIN!)
Nothing like a little stress to make being not-stressed a lot more fun. My work-boy and I wrote an internet game used by the marketing department when they go on tour and meet with existing and perspective clients. They were in Boston, and are now in NYC running the game. Apparently, while in Boston, they were having problems, and hoped that we could have those problems fixed up. It was a problem that was beyond me (re: hardware and configuration that I don't have access to), but I couldn't round anyone up to fix it. I left messages for relevant people, and eventually someone got back to me. The problem was fixed at around 12:30am, and the game ran smoothely this morning (in front of a lot of clients as well as the heads of our company!). This is good. *phew*
I thought I was getting sick last night. I wasn't feeling that hot, and my throat was starting to get sore. I feel pretty good today, though, so hopefully the sickness has been averted.
A couple weeks ago was my 10 year high school reunion. This process dredged up a lot of memories, and made me wonder about a lot of people that I haven't heard anything about since high school. Anyways, I was able to track down an email address to an old classmate of mine who I went to school with from early elementary school (kindergarten?) all the way though high school. She wrote me back a nice long email, and it was surprisingly good to hear from her. It's really neat for me, in some vague conceptual way, to know that all those people that had some part in shaping my life are all still out there, doing whatever they're doing.
The snowball of a Vegas trip is starting it's way down the mountain. Look out!
(Aye-aye, Captain!)
I can't HEEEAAAAR YOOUUUUU!
(AYE-AYE CAPTAIN!)
Nothing like a little stress to make being not-stressed a lot more fun. My work-boy and I wrote an internet game used by the marketing department when they go on tour and meet with existing and perspective clients. They were in Boston, and are now in NYC running the game. Apparently, while in Boston, they were having problems, and hoped that we could have those problems fixed up. It was a problem that was beyond me (re: hardware and configuration that I don't have access to), but I couldn't round anyone up to fix it. I left messages for relevant people, and eventually someone got back to me. The problem was fixed at around 12:30am, and the game ran smoothely this morning (in front of a lot of clients as well as the heads of our company!). This is good. *phew*
I thought I was getting sick last night. I wasn't feeling that hot, and my throat was starting to get sore. I feel pretty good today, though, so hopefully the sickness has been averted.
A couple weeks ago was my 10 year high school reunion. This process dredged up a lot of memories, and made me wonder about a lot of people that I haven't heard anything about since high school. Anyways, I was able to track down an email address to an old classmate of mine who I went to school with from early elementary school (kindergarten?) all the way though high school. She wrote me back a nice long email, and it was surprisingly good to hear from her. It's really neat for me, in some vague conceptual way, to know that all those people that had some part in shaping my life are all still out there, doing whatever they're doing.
The snowball of a Vegas trip is starting it's way down the mountain. Look out!
2003/10/20
I had a great weekend
Lots of quality time with my most favorite wife in the world. Got to hang out with friends on Friday night for H-Bomb's birthday, and see a fun band. Went to the Zoo and walked around for a bit. The Chargers won. Made lots of progress on my latest programming project.
Everything's coming up Adman!
Lots of quality time with my most favorite wife in the world. Got to hang out with friends on Friday night for H-Bomb's birthday, and see a fun band. Went to the Zoo and walked around for a bit. The Chargers won. Made lots of progress on my latest programming project.
Everything's coming up Adman!
2003/10/16
Sad.
A friend of mine at work just found out that her boyfriend was killed in a car accident. They'd been dating for a good bit of time now, and were pretty serious and going to move in together. (He was from England, and they were going to spend time in both countries to decide who was going to move where). And all of a sudden, this.
I feel really bad for her. It's terrible to hear about someone losing someone like that. The only natural thing to do is to put yourself in that person's situation, and come to the realization that, at any moment, any of your friends or loved ones, or even you, could be struck down and killed.
And that's a suck-ass thing to remember.
So, find someone you love and give 'em a hug.
A friend of mine at work just found out that her boyfriend was killed in a car accident. They'd been dating for a good bit of time now, and were pretty serious and going to move in together. (He was from England, and they were going to spend time in both countries to decide who was going to move where). And all of a sudden, this.
I feel really bad for her. It's terrible to hear about someone losing someone like that. The only natural thing to do is to put yourself in that person's situation, and come to the realization that, at any moment, any of your friends or loved ones, or even you, could be struck down and killed.
And that's a suck-ass thing to remember.
So, find someone you love and give 'em a hug.
2003/10/14
Two quick things to make the world a better place.
1) Elevators shall be LIFO. Last In, First Out. Women and children be damned. It's really annoying to watch people shuffle around to make sure the ladies get out first.
2) Do NOT drive on the freeway with your blinker on unless you are actually using it. It's not that hard, people. I know you're old, and it's harder to hear and see things, but if you can't SEE the FLASHING LIGHT, or HEAR the TICKING SOUND, you might not be road-worthy.
That is all.
1) Elevators shall be LIFO. Last In, First Out. Women and children be damned. It's really annoying to watch people shuffle around to make sure the ladies get out first.
2) Do NOT drive on the freeway with your blinker on unless you are actually using it. It's not that hard, people. I know you're old, and it's harder to hear and see things, but if you can't SEE the FLASHING LIGHT, or HEAR the TICKING SOUND, you might not be road-worthy.
That is all.
2003/10/12
Poker update... it's 1am, and the tournament is on break.
3050 players entered.
After 1 hour, 1126 are left.
I'm currently in 5th place. At one point I was in 2nd!
That is all.
Ugh.
I'm dealt KJo, and limp in.
Flop comes KJx. I go all in. One caller. We flip 'em, and he's got KK. I'm basically drawing dead...
Finish in 357th place.
3050 players entered.
After 1 hour, 1126 are left.
I'm currently in 5th place. At one point I was in 2nd!
That is all.
Ugh.
I'm dealt KJo, and limp in.
Flop comes KJx. I go all in. One caller. We flip 'em, and he's got KK. I'm basically drawing dead...
Finish in 357th place.
2003/10/11
The Theater.
Diana and I went to the theater tonight, and saw the play "Proof". It was a surprise for Diana. It turns out she'd seen the play before when she was in New York visiting her sister, but I didn't know this. Oh well. She was pleased to see it again, though.
I noticed a couple of things about the theater:
1) The ushers are almost invariable OLD! Why is this?
2) When we approached the usher at the door, our tickets were in my coat pocket, and my hands were full of programs. I figured I'd just tell the guy our seat numbers. That didn't really fly. I had to fuss around with people waiting behind us to get all my crap together and give him the tickets, just so he could walk us to our seats which we could have found very well on our own. Oh well.
The play was pretty good. Clearly the best part was that the lead was played by Danica McKellar, who's probably best known by most for playing Winnie Cooper on "The Wonder Years". I heard her on the radio on a local morning show talking about the play, being a child actor, being a math whiz, and so forth. It sounds like she's a really smart person, and the way she talked about math reminded me of Diana. She not only was so gifted, but was truly enthusiastic about it, which was fun to listen to. So I bought tickets that very same day.
Winnie Cooper (and therefore Ms. McKellar) was not an insignificant part of my childhood, I don't think. I was roughly the same age as young Kevin, and it was a crazy age where all of a sudden one starts to notice girls and get weird feeilngs in your stomach. Everything was so goddamn nerve-wracking, but in an exhilarating, semi-pubescent sexual-tension sort of way. I'd notice girls, and notice them notice me, but of course each side has to play it cool and not make it obvious that we're noticing each other. And Winnie, while not the literal object of devotion or anything, was the incarnation of every girl I'd ever noticed in That Sort of Way, and all the glorious nervous energy that went along with it.
It was only within the last year or so when I saw a commercial and saw that she was going to be on West Wing that I noticed (ha!) that she'd grown up to be a total babe. Combine that with hearing her on the radio, and hearing how smart she was, and how *wise* she was was very impressive. And I know this sounds cheeseball, and I don't mean it to, but she reminded me of Diana. I don't mean "reminded" like I'd forgotten anything. "Reinfoced" might be a better word. All the things that I was so impressed with about her I've already found in Diana. (Although Diana hasn't been on any critically acclaimed TV shows lately, but who's counting?)
And now, I'm tired. But I just registered for a free poker tournament starting at midnight, and I've discovered a great new computer game called "Savage", which I've been playing around with. It's a fusion of RTS and FPS, which is a really natural fit. Imagine Warcraft II or Age of Empires type RTS, but where the units you command are actual human players rather that NPCs. So, one commander plays the game from "on high", issuing commands to the rest of the team who plays in a FPS style. Pretty cool stuff.
Diana and I went to the theater tonight, and saw the play "Proof". It was a surprise for Diana. It turns out she'd seen the play before when she was in New York visiting her sister, but I didn't know this. Oh well. She was pleased to see it again, though.
I noticed a couple of things about the theater:
1) The ushers are almost invariable OLD! Why is this?
2) When we approached the usher at the door, our tickets were in my coat pocket, and my hands were full of programs. I figured I'd just tell the guy our seat numbers. That didn't really fly. I had to fuss around with people waiting behind us to get all my crap together and give him the tickets, just so he could walk us to our seats which we could have found very well on our own. Oh well.
The play was pretty good. Clearly the best part was that the lead was played by Danica McKellar, who's probably best known by most for playing Winnie Cooper on "The Wonder Years". I heard her on the radio on a local morning show talking about the play, being a child actor, being a math whiz, and so forth. It sounds like she's a really smart person, and the way she talked about math reminded me of Diana. She not only was so gifted, but was truly enthusiastic about it, which was fun to listen to. So I bought tickets that very same day.
Winnie Cooper (and therefore Ms. McKellar) was not an insignificant part of my childhood, I don't think. I was roughly the same age as young Kevin, and it was a crazy age where all of a sudden one starts to notice girls and get weird feeilngs in your stomach. Everything was so goddamn nerve-wracking, but in an exhilarating, semi-pubescent sexual-tension sort of way. I'd notice girls, and notice them notice me, but of course each side has to play it cool and not make it obvious that we're noticing each other. And Winnie, while not the literal object of devotion or anything, was the incarnation of every girl I'd ever noticed in That Sort of Way, and all the glorious nervous energy that went along with it.
It was only within the last year or so when I saw a commercial and saw that she was going to be on West Wing that I noticed (ha!) that she'd grown up to be a total babe. Combine that with hearing her on the radio, and hearing how smart she was, and how *wise* she was was very impressive. And I know this sounds cheeseball, and I don't mean it to, but she reminded me of Diana. I don't mean "reminded" like I'd forgotten anything. "Reinfoced" might be a better word. All the things that I was so impressed with about her I've already found in Diana. (Although Diana hasn't been on any critically acclaimed TV shows lately, but who's counting?)
And now, I'm tired. But I just registered for a free poker tournament starting at midnight, and I've discovered a great new computer game called "Savage", which I've been playing around with. It's a fusion of RTS and FPS, which is a really natural fit. Imagine Warcraft II or Age of Empires type RTS, but where the units you command are actual human players rather that NPCs. So, one commander plays the game from "on high", issuing commands to the rest of the team who plays in a FPS style. Pretty cool stuff.
2003/10/08
Quick recap... Friday night, Diana and I went and hung out with Norm and Teri and her parents at the beach house. I wasn't sure how hanging out with her parents was going to be, but it turned out to be really fun. They're both really nice, and it was good to sit and get to know them. It's always great to see Norm and Teri, and we had a good time just sitting around and chatting.
Saturday evening, Diana and Iwan and I headed to the home opener of the San Diego Sockers! The game was pretty low scoring and boring, but it's still fun to see live sporting events. The Sockers lost.
Sunday, Dad and I went out for his birthday present to Fry's. We bought a DVD player, and headed back to their house and got it all set up. He seemed happy to have it, and hopefully they'll enjoy it. I watched the first bit of the Charger game over there, and headed home to watch the rest. Poor, poor Chargers. The state of San Diego sports is really in the shitter right now.
We rented two movies recently: "Confidence" and Jackie Chan's "Drunken Master". The first was ok. A heist movie that tried to be "The Usual Suspects", but wasn't as catchy or clever or good. I was hoping the latter would be better, but it wasn't nearly as cool as some of Jackie's newer stuff. So, a couple of duds there. Bummer.
Last night, Diana, who usually has class from 5-10pm got a call as she was walking out the door that it was cancelled. We spent the evening enjoying the couch and watching trashy TV, which is fun while we're doing it, but afterwards can leave one with a feeling of having wasted an evening.
Saturday evening, Diana and Iwan and I headed to the home opener of the San Diego Sockers! The game was pretty low scoring and boring, but it's still fun to see live sporting events. The Sockers lost.
Sunday, Dad and I went out for his birthday present to Fry's. We bought a DVD player, and headed back to their house and got it all set up. He seemed happy to have it, and hopefully they'll enjoy it. I watched the first bit of the Charger game over there, and headed home to watch the rest. Poor, poor Chargers. The state of San Diego sports is really in the shitter right now.
We rented two movies recently: "Confidence" and Jackie Chan's "Drunken Master". The first was ok. A heist movie that tried to be "The Usual Suspects", but wasn't as catchy or clever or good. I was hoping the latter would be better, but it wasn't nearly as cool as some of Jackie's newer stuff. So, a couple of duds there. Bummer.
Last night, Diana, who usually has class from 5-10pm got a call as she was walking out the door that it was cancelled. We spent the evening enjoying the couch and watching trashy TV, which is fun while we're doing it, but afterwards can leave one with a feeling of having wasted an evening.
2003/10/01
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BLOG!
Wow... I just was checking out my archives, and found that the ol' blog is about a year old. Nice work, me!
Diana and I were in bed last night flipping the channels. "Leave it to Beaver" was on, and she didn't recognize what it was. It wasn't like it was a weird part or anything; Wally and the Beav were having a little heart to heart. When she heard the names "Wally" and "Beaver", she guessed "Beaver the Cleaver"? She's so cute and television-retarded at the same time. Seriously, I think we could count on one hand the cumulative number of episodes she's seen of Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, Happy Days, M*A*S*H, I Love Lucy, The Munsters, Gilligan's Island, and Leave It To Beaver. And we didn't talk about it, but I have doubts about The Love Boat, too.
I'm not saying I'm a TV god or anything, but these, to me, represent some serious classics, and shows that I grew up with (when my parents weren't home and I was allowed to watch as much glorious TV as I wanted!) Nor do I (of course) think anything worse of Diana at all. It just kind of astounds me, for some reason, as these shows strike me as sort of ubiquitous fundamentals. I vowed that I would gather a representitive sample of each of those shows and watch them with her, but I'm not sure how I could accomplish that.
I think I did good work today. There is really nasty task that we programmers have to do when we're done with out programs and submitting them to the testing group. We have to find component that our program depends on, and write them out in a list. Then we have to find every component that THOSE components depend on, and add those to the list. And so on, until you get to components that don't depend on others. I think I've just written a small tool that will do that (pain in the ass) job automatically. My boy Bruce had the idea, and we talked about doing it on a weekend or after hours or something, but I had some time today and was able to get a good start on it, and stayed late tonight while Diana was working to get it finished up. I hope he can test it tomorrow, and release it on the masses! I hope it goes well, as stuff like this can directly influence year-end reviews, raises, and bonuses and whatnot.
Wow... I just was checking out my archives, and found that the ol' blog is about a year old. Nice work, me!
Diana and I were in bed last night flipping the channels. "Leave it to Beaver" was on, and she didn't recognize what it was. It wasn't like it was a weird part or anything; Wally and the Beav were having a little heart to heart. When she heard the names "Wally" and "Beaver", she guessed "Beaver the Cleaver"? She's so cute and television-retarded at the same time. Seriously, I think we could count on one hand the cumulative number of episodes she's seen of Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, Happy Days, M*A*S*H, I Love Lucy, The Munsters, Gilligan's Island, and Leave It To Beaver. And we didn't talk about it, but I have doubts about The Love Boat, too.
I'm not saying I'm a TV god or anything, but these, to me, represent some serious classics, and shows that I grew up with (when my parents weren't home and I was allowed to watch as much glorious TV as I wanted!) Nor do I (of course) think anything worse of Diana at all. It just kind of astounds me, for some reason, as these shows strike me as sort of ubiquitous fundamentals. I vowed that I would gather a representitive sample of each of those shows and watch them with her, but I'm not sure how I could accomplish that.
I think I did good work today. There is really nasty task that we programmers have to do when we're done with out programs and submitting them to the testing group. We have to find component that our program depends on, and write them out in a list. Then we have to find every component that THOSE components depend on, and add those to the list. And so on, until you get to components that don't depend on others. I think I've just written a small tool that will do that (pain in the ass) job automatically. My boy Bruce had the idea, and we talked about doing it on a weekend or after hours or something, but I had some time today and was able to get a good start on it, and stayed late tonight while Diana was working to get it finished up. I hope he can test it tomorrow, and release it on the masses! I hope it goes well, as stuff like this can directly influence year-end reviews, raises, and bonuses and whatnot.
Man, I had such a good Nethack game going last night, then I got ruined.
DianaFury was a female elven Wizard (chaotic). She started off with the force bolt and magic missile spells. There was a pair of gloves in the room she started in, which her pet dutifully brought to her. Since they weren't cursed, she put 'em on, and watched her strength jump to 25. Gauntlets of Power in the first room. Sweet.
She made it down to minetown, where the altar was coaligned, and got some holy water. One of the shops sold a lamp for 75, and dropping it on the altar confirmed it was blessed. She rubbed the lamp, and a djinni appeared and granted her wish of Silver Dragon scale mail. Sweet.
She then went to find Sokoban, and completed it, but needed to break a bunch of boulders along the way, which reduced her luck a lot, I guess. In Sokoban, she found a stray kitten on the last level, which grew very quickly into a large cat in the treasure room. The treasure room yielded a bag of holding, which was very needed with the scrolls and rings and potions she had. She then went back to complete the mines, which wasn't much of a problem. A nice dwarf was kind enough to bring the luckstone right to her. A polymorph trap turned her large cat into a Gray Dragon. Sweet.
This is where the problems began. She headed back to minetown, to do some killing and sacrificing to try to improve her weapon and get more holy water. She drank from a fountain (the guards didn't scare her!), and it overflowed making a couple little pools. She then got all her useless potions out of the bag of holding, and put all her other stuff IN the bag of holding in preparation to drop it and jump in the pool (to dilute her potions to water).
All of a sudden, the bag (which was FULL of goodies) was gone. My only guess is that one of my unID'd wands was a wand of cancellation (putting a wand of cancellation into a bag of holding explodes it, losing everything). All I was left with was the armor I was wearing (still not bad) and a couple of gems. My god wasn't happy with me, and sacrificing wasn't helping (I think it was all the bad luck I'd incurred in Sokoban). I starved to death soon after. Bogus.
DianaFury was a female elven Wizard (chaotic). She started off with the force bolt and magic missile spells. There was a pair of gloves in the room she started in, which her pet dutifully brought to her. Since they weren't cursed, she put 'em on, and watched her strength jump to 25. Gauntlets of Power in the first room. Sweet.
She made it down to minetown, where the altar was coaligned, and got some holy water. One of the shops sold a lamp for 75, and dropping it on the altar confirmed it was blessed. She rubbed the lamp, and a djinni appeared and granted her wish of Silver Dragon scale mail. Sweet.
She then went to find Sokoban, and completed it, but needed to break a bunch of boulders along the way, which reduced her luck a lot, I guess. In Sokoban, she found a stray kitten on the last level, which grew very quickly into a large cat in the treasure room. The treasure room yielded a bag of holding, which was very needed with the scrolls and rings and potions she had. She then went back to complete the mines, which wasn't much of a problem. A nice dwarf was kind enough to bring the luckstone right to her. A polymorph trap turned her large cat into a Gray Dragon. Sweet.
This is where the problems began. She headed back to minetown, to do some killing and sacrificing to try to improve her weapon and get more holy water. She drank from a fountain (the guards didn't scare her!), and it overflowed making a couple little pools. She then got all her useless potions out of the bag of holding, and put all her other stuff IN the bag of holding in preparation to drop it and jump in the pool (to dilute her potions to water).
All of a sudden, the bag (which was FULL of goodies) was gone. My only guess is that one of my unID'd wands was a wand of cancellation (putting a wand of cancellation into a bag of holding explodes it, losing everything). All I was left with was the armor I was wearing (still not bad) and a couple of gems. My god wasn't happy with me, and sacrificing wasn't helping (I think it was all the bad luck I'd incurred in Sokoban). I starved to death soon after. Bogus.
2003/09/30
Magic.
I've been (doing?performing?practicing? I'm not sure what the right verb is) magic for the past 15 years or so, off and on. I always liked magic, and it started when I got a great book for Christmas (Mark Wilson's book, which might just be called "Magic", is a great book for beginners). I then took some classes at a local magic shop, and bought more books and practiced, practiced, practiced! I've probably spent hundreds of hours in front of a mirror practicing various slights and tricks and so forth. And when I'd get a new one down, I'd go and show my mom. This in itself was frusterating, because her skill at catching how a trick was done was exactly proportional to my skill as a magician. She politely humor me, which would only motivate me to practice it a little more. When I did fool her, I knew I was doing well.
The problem is that I hate performing magic tricks. I get nervous and full shaky-hands, which is bad enough. And after the trick is done, I don't know how to deal with the reactions people have. People want me to do it again (rule #3 of magicians is you don't repeat a trick). People want me to tell 'em how it's done (rule #1, natch). People are impressed and shower me with praise. All of which make me very uncomfortable.
I'm actually a lot better with a couple of drinks in me. Clears up the nervousness, loosens up the muscles a little bit.
I'm totally not a ham, or an actor, or a dramatist or whatever. I do have quite an ego, and love to impress people, (some people call it "showing off"), but I like to do so in a roundabout way, I guess. I'd rather be juggling off by myself somewhere, and have someone happen to see me and be impressed than to gather everyone around and say "Look at what I can do!" and perform. If that makes sense.
I love, however, the tricks themselves. I love doing 'moves'. I have some videos that I brought out the other day, and have been practicing my Classic Pass. A lot. I carry a deck of cards around with me at work, pass, pass, pass.
So. Such are the conundrums in my life.
I've been (doing?performing?practicing? I'm not sure what the right verb is) magic for the past 15 years or so, off and on. I always liked magic, and it started when I got a great book for Christmas (Mark Wilson's book, which might just be called "Magic", is a great book for beginners). I then took some classes at a local magic shop, and bought more books and practiced, practiced, practiced! I've probably spent hundreds of hours in front of a mirror practicing various slights and tricks and so forth. And when I'd get a new one down, I'd go and show my mom. This in itself was frusterating, because her skill at catching how a trick was done was exactly proportional to my skill as a magician. She politely humor me, which would only motivate me to practice it a little more. When I did fool her, I knew I was doing well.
The problem is that I hate performing magic tricks. I get nervous and full shaky-hands, which is bad enough. And after the trick is done, I don't know how to deal with the reactions people have. People want me to do it again (rule #3 of magicians is you don't repeat a trick). People want me to tell 'em how it's done (rule #1, natch). People are impressed and shower me with praise. All of which make me very uncomfortable.
I'm actually a lot better with a couple of drinks in me. Clears up the nervousness, loosens up the muscles a little bit.
I'm totally not a ham, or an actor, or a dramatist or whatever. I do have quite an ego, and love to impress people, (some people call it "showing off"), but I like to do so in a roundabout way, I guess. I'd rather be juggling off by myself somewhere, and have someone happen to see me and be impressed than to gather everyone around and say "Look at what I can do!" and perform. If that makes sense.
I love, however, the tricks themselves. I love doing 'moves'. I have some videos that I brought out the other day, and have been practicing my Classic Pass. A lot. I carry a deck of cards around with me at work, pass, pass, pass.
So. Such are the conundrums in my life.
2003/09/29
Weekend roundup
This weekend was pretty good!
Saturday morning, Iwan and I headed out to Viejas for a $12 limit Hold'em tournament. We played in a no-limit tournament a couple weeks ago, and this was quite a bit different. Not nearly as nerve-wracking, and we were able to play for quite a bit longer. Winning a hand is so exciting! I'm not sure which is more fun, having everyone fold to you, or having a showdown where you have the best hand. Either way, I was able to "drag some pots" (as they say), and play for a good bit of time. Eventually, though, the blinds got raised disproportionately to my stack, and I got married to my K-Q offsuit and lost. Iwan was simply bled to death shortly after that.
Not only is the actual poker fun, but we have about a 45 minute drive out there, where we talk strategy, and just generally catch up. Then we play. Then on the drive home, discuss hands and just be excited. The whole experience is just plain fun.
Shortly after that, we all met over at Baditudes dad's house (where he's housesitting) for a little pool party and BBQ for Iwan's birthday. That was a good time. Good food, good peeps, nice house. It was a good, friend-bonding day.
Sunday, Diana was up and out early to her golf class. I lazed in bed for a while, and got up to check email and news and whatnot. On PokerStars, a no-limit free money tournament was starting, so I entered that. I actually did really well (for me). For the majority of the game, I was in the top 100 (out of 3800), and ended up in 377th place or so. Anyways, at some point I went out to make some lunch, and saw big puddles in our courtyard. I thought it was raining, but discovered the sprinklers were on... since like 5am! I don't know why they didn't turn off, and they didn't turn off on my first attempts, but I eventually pushed enough buttons that they did. Weird. The water soaked in quickly enough, though, so I'm pretty sure no harm done.
Diana got home, and we watched the rest of the Charger game together, which was nice. Gannon and LT scored lots of points for the Mighty Birdmen. Too bad the Chargers lost, but they played well.
We went over to my parents house for dinner after that, which was nice. I'm giving my dad a trip to Fry's, a purchase of a DVD player, and help setting it up for his birthday, which will be a lot of fun. We came home early enough to make a fire and work on our mystery puzzle thing. I know it sounds lame, but sometimes it's just nice to sit with someone you love and work on a puzzle.
And now, back to work!
This weekend was pretty good!
Saturday morning, Iwan and I headed out to Viejas for a $12 limit Hold'em tournament. We played in a no-limit tournament a couple weeks ago, and this was quite a bit different. Not nearly as nerve-wracking, and we were able to play for quite a bit longer. Winning a hand is so exciting! I'm not sure which is more fun, having everyone fold to you, or having a showdown where you have the best hand. Either way, I was able to "drag some pots" (as they say), and play for a good bit of time. Eventually, though, the blinds got raised disproportionately to my stack, and I got married to my K-Q offsuit and lost. Iwan was simply bled to death shortly after that.
Not only is the actual poker fun, but we have about a 45 minute drive out there, where we talk strategy, and just generally catch up. Then we play. Then on the drive home, discuss hands and just be excited. The whole experience is just plain fun.
Shortly after that, we all met over at Baditudes dad's house (where he's housesitting) for a little pool party and BBQ for Iwan's birthday. That was a good time. Good food, good peeps, nice house. It was a good, friend-bonding day.
Sunday, Diana was up and out early to her golf class. I lazed in bed for a while, and got up to check email and news and whatnot. On PokerStars, a no-limit free money tournament was starting, so I entered that. I actually did really well (for me). For the majority of the game, I was in the top 100 (out of 3800), and ended up in 377th place or so. Anyways, at some point I went out to make some lunch, and saw big puddles in our courtyard. I thought it was raining, but discovered the sprinklers were on... since like 5am! I don't know why they didn't turn off, and they didn't turn off on my first attempts, but I eventually pushed enough buttons that they did. Weird. The water soaked in quickly enough, though, so I'm pretty sure no harm done.
Diana got home, and we watched the rest of the Charger game together, which was nice. Gannon and LT scored lots of points for the Mighty Birdmen. Too bad the Chargers lost, but they played well.
We went over to my parents house for dinner after that, which was nice. I'm giving my dad a trip to Fry's, a purchase of a DVD player, and help setting it up for his birthday, which will be a lot of fun. We came home early enough to make a fire and work on our mystery puzzle thing. I know it sounds lame, but sometimes it's just nice to sit with someone you love and work on a puzzle.
And now, back to work!
2003/09/24
Friendster.
In the same vein as below, an old friend found my email and invited me as a friend on friendster.com.
For those who have lived in a cave the last year or so, this is a six-degrees-of-seperation type of thing. You create a personal entry (hobbies, likes and dislikes and whatnot), and you invite friends. And all those friends invite their friends, and so on and so forth.
The real kicker, though, is that it keeps track of all these links. So I can look up random people, and see if/how they are connected to me. In my "personal network", there's over 76000 people, all of whom I'm connected to via friends and friends of friends, etc.
Pretty wacky.
The end result, of course, is people inviting people to be their "friends", simply so they can either get a higher count or access to more people. This is dumb, but that's the way it goes.
In the same vein as below, an old friend found my email and invited me as a friend on friendster.com.
For those who have lived in a cave the last year or so, this is a six-degrees-of-seperation type of thing. You create a personal entry (hobbies, likes and dislikes and whatnot), and you invite friends. And all those friends invite their friends, and so on and so forth.
The real kicker, though, is that it keeps track of all these links. So I can look up random people, and see if/how they are connected to me. In my "personal network", there's over 76000 people, all of whom I'm connected to via friends and friends of friends, etc.
Pretty wacky.
The end result, of course, is people inviting people to be their "friends", simply so they can either get a higher count or access to more people. This is dumb, but that's the way it goes.
Chatting.
So, on the radio on the drive home last night, I hear stories about online chatting, and how it can be dangerous for kids and whatnot. Being an investigative, curious sort of guy, I blow the dust of off Yahoo Chat and login.
It didn't make any difference where I went, or what I said or didn't say. Most people just entered and left the room without saying anything. If someone did actually say something, it was always something like "If you think (something) (is cool/sucks) type (some random digits)":
If you think Britney Spears sucks, type 123456!
If you think I'm cute, type 222!
If u think the Patriots r going to win the superbowl, type 99!
I didn't see a single response to any such plea, either.
If it wasn't that, it was seemingly random spoutings, mostly trying to get a rise out of someone else. People would just sort of voice their thoughts, but there wasn't much actual 2-way communication. Of course, with colors and various font-sizes, everything was all in day-glo letters, and HUGE ones at that. It didn't take me long to get bored and play Nethack.
I miss the days when the Internet was hard to use. It wasn't perfect, but filtering out people who were either too dumb or too impatient to actually find their way to a newsgroup or IRC chatroom greatly improved the so-called signal-to-noise ratio. Now, it's all spam, porn-ads, and 12 year olds (or those who act like 'em).
Now that I think more about it, I wonder if there's now a new sort of filter. Maybe the amount of trash that you need to wade through to find something meaningful (like, a chat room with a coherant conversation, or a newsgroup with actual discussions) is the thing that keeps people like me out. The immature newbs get stuck in the first layer, but to find real wealth takes some wading. Like pearl-diving in a septic tank.
Ugh.
So, on the radio on the drive home last night, I hear stories about online chatting, and how it can be dangerous for kids and whatnot. Being an investigative, curious sort of guy, I blow the dust of off Yahoo Chat and login.
It didn't make any difference where I went, or what I said or didn't say. Most people just entered and left the room without saying anything. If someone did actually say something, it was always something like "If you think (something) (is cool/sucks) type (some random digits)":
If you think Britney Spears sucks, type 123456!
If you think I'm cute, type 222!
If u think the Patriots r going to win the superbowl, type 99!
I didn't see a single response to any such plea, either.
If it wasn't that, it was seemingly random spoutings, mostly trying to get a rise out of someone else. People would just sort of voice their thoughts, but there wasn't much actual 2-way communication. Of course, with colors and various font-sizes, everything was all in day-glo letters, and HUGE ones at that. It didn't take me long to get bored and play Nethack.
I miss the days when the Internet was hard to use. It wasn't perfect, but filtering out people who were either too dumb or too impatient to actually find their way to a newsgroup or IRC chatroom greatly improved the so-called signal-to-noise ratio. Now, it's all spam, porn-ads, and 12 year olds (or those who act like 'em).
Now that I think more about it, I wonder if there's now a new sort of filter. Maybe the amount of trash that you need to wade through to find something meaningful (like, a chat room with a coherant conversation, or a newsgroup with actual discussions) is the thing that keeps people like me out. The immature newbs get stuck in the first layer, but to find real wealth takes some wading. Like pearl-diving in a septic tank.
Ugh.
2003/09/23
Sunday, Normie invited a couple people to the Charger game. It was tons of fun, and neat to sit in the front row seats. It's weird, though, that with footbal, I think I almost prefer to sit in the cheaper seats. Most of the time, actually, I think I prefer to watch it from home on TV. There's just so much going on at once that the closer you are, the harder it is to follow everything (like sitting in the front row of the movies). However, it's a very cool experience to sit where we were, especially when the plays happen right underneath you. Being that close, you do get a good sense of how big those guys are. So, thanks to Norm for the tix!
Tonight, Diana's got a late class. I have no plans. Maybe rent a movie or play Nethack or Diablo II. Or poker. At one point I was up around 200,000 in play money chips, and now it's all gone through a couple sessions of "I'm bored and will play crazy" play.
So... there it is.
Tonight, Diana's got a late class. I have no plans. Maybe rent a movie or play Nethack or Diablo II. Or poker. At one point I was up around 200,000 in play money chips, and now it's all gone through a couple sessions of "I'm bored and will play crazy" play.
So... there it is.
2003/09/21
So...
Last night was my 10 year high school reunion.
As noted previously, I was looking foward to it, but also not looking forward to getting stuck in situations making small talk with people that I really didn't care about. Luckily, that didn't happen much, and the evening was a good success.
First, Diana and I headed over to Eryn's, where we met up with him and Liz. We shared nervousness and wondered what the evening had in store for us. We headed over and arrived right when the thing was supposed to open it's doors, so we took the opportunity to hit the bar and partake in some, as Liz put it, liquid courage.
We soon went to the ballroom and claimed a table in the corner. With us, other people were filing in, and the reunion got under full swing.
*Focus-dissolve to high-school Adman*
I definitely wasn't in the popular crowd in high school, but I'd go out on a limb to say that I was relatively well known and reasonably liked. I didn't drink or do drugs, so I wasn't invited to many parties by the more, uh, outgoing students. But I feel I was respected athletically, academically, and socially. I was never bullied by anyone, and was generally friendly to people in different social strata. I was certainly geeky, though, and I had an unusual flair of self-confidence (some people said "egotistical". I'm not sure I can disagree, looking back). I didn't really care if people thought it was weird that I played Smashball at lunch. Smashball is fun, so bite me. So, if anyone thought I was a lame geek, they did so behind my back.
I had a solid group of maybe 10 really good friends, which was probably enough of an established group to be it's own niche in the high school ecosystem and we were affored the protection that gives. I affectionally think ofl us as The Misfits, although I don't think that's entirely accurate. We weren't Jocks, Drama Freaks, Nerds, Stoners, Skaters, or Surfers. Leftovers, maybe. Although I guess that could describe the majority of students.
*Fade back to last night*
So, last night, I was pleased to run into old friends (Bob and Dax, especially). Other folks I ran into ranged anywhere from "very nice to see and catch up with" to "muh, I really don't care about you". Some people who were annoying in high school seemed to have grown up a lot, and changed for the better. Some didn't. A couple people who would have never really talked to me in high school came up and seemed generally interested to hear what I was up to, which was nice. I'm afraid I can't name any names, though, which brings me to an important point.
A couple of people already knew that Diana and I were married, and sited this blog as a source of that information. This was somewhat terrifying, but another reinforcement to the lesson that I shouldn't badmouth anyone by name (unless, of course, I want them to find it). So, if you saw me at the reunion, and are trying to classify yourself with the above, you'll have to take your best guess at it. By the way, if you're reading this and you were at the reunion, go ahead and drop a comment! I'd love to take a poll of who's actually reading this thing (which is often said but rarely accomplished).
The best part, though, was that it was very easy to disengage from conversations. Just a quick "Well, it was good to see you again", and that was that. Only had to use it once or twice, but it worked like a charm.
Eric Cheng couldn't make it, unfortunately, but had a friend bring down a lifesize cardboard standup figure (like you'd see at a movie opening or something) of himself to stand up in the corner and have people sign. It was really creepy, actually, to catch out of the corner of your eye. Of course it wasn't long before someone drew fake genatalia (both sexes represented) and so forth. Bunch of savages in this town...
Rich showed up, and protested the entire event by not paying the $80 ticket fee (per person!) and hung out in the bar with his lovely wife Christa. He didn't miss anything by paying the rediculous amount, and eventually got into the ballroom anyways. For our $80, we got an airplane food meal (with inedibly bad cheesecake for desert), and a lame-ass "memory book". Dumb. Oh well.
Finally, I should note that it would have been not nearly as much fun to go without Eryn and Liz and, of course, Diana. Diana and I had so much fun sharing so many memories and predictions from our shared high school experience. Eryn was the source of a lot of humor over the night as he might have been the least known student at the whole school. I really don't know Liz very well at all, but the few times I've hung out with her, I've always found her refreshing real and down to earth, both funny, but not afraid to laugh with others, which are qualities that I look for in all my friends. My favorite part of the evening, by far, was just hanging out with those three before the event in the bar, joking around in nervous anticipation of what was to come.
After a couple hours, we'd seen the people we'd wanted to see, and talked to the people on our lists of people we'd wanted to talk to, it was time to vamoose. And like that (*poof*), we were gone.
Will I be at my 20 year high school reunion? It's hard to say, at this point. We'll see, I guess.
Oh yeah, one last thing.
Eryn took his video camera and shot some various footage through the event. At some points, when it was too dark in the room, he turned on his 'night vision' setting in his camera. This sets the mode of the camera to some sort of infrared setting or something, which allows vision in the dark, but skews colors and so forth. Skin tones turn a sickly green, and black pupils turn bright white. It's really eerie.
Another side effect is that, depending on the fabric, it can see through clothes. And not in a subtle sort of way. *Right through*. We only found this out afterwards when reviewing the footage the he'd shot. There's a shot of the dancefloor with people dancing, and everything looks generally normal except one girl looks like she's just wearing a bra and panties.
So, just thought I'd mention that li'l tidbit.
Last night was my 10 year high school reunion.
As noted previously, I was looking foward to it, but also not looking forward to getting stuck in situations making small talk with people that I really didn't care about. Luckily, that didn't happen much, and the evening was a good success.
First, Diana and I headed over to Eryn's, where we met up with him and Liz. We shared nervousness and wondered what the evening had in store for us. We headed over and arrived right when the thing was supposed to open it's doors, so we took the opportunity to hit the bar and partake in some, as Liz put it, liquid courage.
We soon went to the ballroom and claimed a table in the corner. With us, other people were filing in, and the reunion got under full swing.
*Focus-dissolve to high-school Adman*
I definitely wasn't in the popular crowd in high school, but I'd go out on a limb to say that I was relatively well known and reasonably liked. I didn't drink or do drugs, so I wasn't invited to many parties by the more, uh, outgoing students. But I feel I was respected athletically, academically, and socially. I was never bullied by anyone, and was generally friendly to people in different social strata. I was certainly geeky, though, and I had an unusual flair of self-confidence (some people said "egotistical". I'm not sure I can disagree, looking back). I didn't really care if people thought it was weird that I played Smashball at lunch. Smashball is fun, so bite me. So, if anyone thought I was a lame geek, they did so behind my back.
I had a solid group of maybe 10 really good friends, which was probably enough of an established group to be it's own niche in the high school ecosystem and we were affored the protection that gives. I affectionally think ofl us as The Misfits, although I don't think that's entirely accurate. We weren't Jocks, Drama Freaks, Nerds, Stoners, Skaters, or Surfers. Leftovers, maybe. Although I guess that could describe the majority of students.
*Fade back to last night*
So, last night, I was pleased to run into old friends (Bob and Dax, especially). Other folks I ran into ranged anywhere from "very nice to see and catch up with" to "muh, I really don't care about you". Some people who were annoying in high school seemed to have grown up a lot, and changed for the better. Some didn't. A couple people who would have never really talked to me in high school came up and seemed generally interested to hear what I was up to, which was nice. I'm afraid I can't name any names, though, which brings me to an important point.
A couple of people already knew that Diana and I were married, and sited this blog as a source of that information. This was somewhat terrifying, but another reinforcement to the lesson that I shouldn't badmouth anyone by name (unless, of course, I want them to find it). So, if you saw me at the reunion, and are trying to classify yourself with the above, you'll have to take your best guess at it. By the way, if you're reading this and you were at the reunion, go ahead and drop a comment! I'd love to take a poll of who's actually reading this thing (which is often said but rarely accomplished).
The best part, though, was that it was very easy to disengage from conversations. Just a quick "Well, it was good to see you again", and that was that. Only had to use it once or twice, but it worked like a charm.
Eric Cheng couldn't make it, unfortunately, but had a friend bring down a lifesize cardboard standup figure (like you'd see at a movie opening or something) of himself to stand up in the corner and have people sign. It was really creepy, actually, to catch out of the corner of your eye. Of course it wasn't long before someone drew fake genatalia (both sexes represented) and so forth. Bunch of savages in this town...
Rich showed up, and protested the entire event by not paying the $80 ticket fee (per person!) and hung out in the bar with his lovely wife Christa. He didn't miss anything by paying the rediculous amount, and eventually got into the ballroom anyways. For our $80, we got an airplane food meal (with inedibly bad cheesecake for desert), and a lame-ass "memory book". Dumb. Oh well.
Finally, I should note that it would have been not nearly as much fun to go without Eryn and Liz and, of course, Diana. Diana and I had so much fun sharing so many memories and predictions from our shared high school experience. Eryn was the source of a lot of humor over the night as he might have been the least known student at the whole school. I really don't know Liz very well at all, but the few times I've hung out with her, I've always found her refreshing real and down to earth, both funny, but not afraid to laugh with others, which are qualities that I look for in all my friends. My favorite part of the evening, by far, was just hanging out with those three before the event in the bar, joking around in nervous anticipation of what was to come.
After a couple hours, we'd seen the people we'd wanted to see, and talked to the people on our lists of people we'd wanted to talk to, it was time to vamoose. And like that (*poof*), we were gone.
Will I be at my 20 year high school reunion? It's hard to say, at this point. We'll see, I guess.
Oh yeah, one last thing.
Eryn took his video camera and shot some various footage through the event. At some points, when it was too dark in the room, he turned on his 'night vision' setting in his camera. This sets the mode of the camera to some sort of infrared setting or something, which allows vision in the dark, but skews colors and so forth. Skin tones turn a sickly green, and black pupils turn bright white. It's really eerie.
Another side effect is that, depending on the fabric, it can see through clothes. And not in a subtle sort of way. *Right through*. We only found this out afterwards when reviewing the footage the he'd shot. There's a shot of the dancefloor with people dancing, and everything looks generally normal except one girl looks like she's just wearing a bra and panties.
So, just thought I'd mention that li'l tidbit.
2003/09/19
Weekend activities of note...
So, tomorrow evening is my 10 year high school reunion.
I'm looking forward to going, in spite of the fact that I hate running into people from high school and having that forced "So, what are you up to these days?" conversation. However, some really good high school friends are going to be there that I don't keep in touch with anymore, and I'm looking forward to hearing from all them (Bob, Dax, Adrian, Jamie, Aileen, Sarah, Lea, Nicole...) Unfortunately, many of my high school friends that I'm still very good friends with can't or aren't going (Iwan, Marc, Mike, Norm), so that's kind of a bummer. But, Diana and Baditude will be there, so that will make it fun. Keep posted for how everything went.
I have really no idea what to expect, or what kind of images people are going to want to put across. I'm guessing that a lot of people will show up with a need to show others how they've "made it" in life. I guess I'm no different in that respect. But I think where I might differ is that I'm guessing "made it" to most people (especially at my hoity-toity high school) means "made a lot of money". But I feel that I've "made it" in that I'm genuinely happy in my modest life. So, we'll see, I guess.
One thing that makes me geniunely happy is that I have great friends. Friends who are really nice and caring and giving and invite me to things like Chargers games. Especially when those friends have connections for free tickets in the front row right over the end zone. This pleases me. I'm pleased.
If only the Chargers could win a game.....
So, tomorrow evening is my 10 year high school reunion.
I'm looking forward to going, in spite of the fact that I hate running into people from high school and having that forced "So, what are you up to these days?" conversation. However, some really good high school friends are going to be there that I don't keep in touch with anymore, and I'm looking forward to hearing from all them (Bob, Dax, Adrian, Jamie, Aileen, Sarah, Lea, Nicole...) Unfortunately, many of my high school friends that I'm still very good friends with can't or aren't going (Iwan, Marc, Mike, Norm), so that's kind of a bummer. But, Diana and Baditude will be there, so that will make it fun. Keep posted for how everything went.
I have really no idea what to expect, or what kind of images people are going to want to put across. I'm guessing that a lot of people will show up with a need to show others how they've "made it" in life. I guess I'm no different in that respect. But I think where I might differ is that I'm guessing "made it" to most people (especially at my hoity-toity high school) means "made a lot of money". But I feel that I've "made it" in that I'm genuinely happy in my modest life. So, we'll see, I guess.
One thing that makes me geniunely happy is that I have great friends. Friends who are really nice and caring and giving and invite me to things like Chargers games. Especially when those friends have connections for free tickets in the front row right over the end zone. This pleases me. I'm pleased.
If only the Chargers could win a game.....
2003/09/18
I thought this was pretty cool:
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht
oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist
and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you
can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not
raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
pettry amzanig huh?
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht
oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist
and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you
can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not
raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
pettry amzanig huh?
2003/09/16
Long time no blog!
A combination of working late and feeling sort of crappy has kept me otherwise occupied, but I'm now back and better than ever, so watch out!
This weekend, when I wasn't moping around, Diana and I finally received and put built our brand new entertainment center for our family room. It was pretty cheap, but looks really nice (better than we expected, I think). And unexpectedly, I really makes the room feel a lot more like a home rather than just a place to crash out, if that makes any sense at all. Anyways, we're very pleased.
Other news briefs:
My fantasy football boys, in spite of looking good, aren't playing very well. I'm 0-2. Oh well.
Diana's been working hard, out until 9 or 10 every night, which kind of sucks.
Lots of good TV this week! Newlyweds (Jessica Simpers and Nick Whats-his-butt), Survivor, World Poker Tour...
I've been playing more Diablo II, which is easily a top-5 PC game of all time.
Impromptu list time! Adam's top 5 all time favorite PC games, in no particular order:
1) Half Life / Counterstrike. Best FPS ever.
2) X-wing. I loved this game.
3) Warcraft II. The only RTS I've really enjoyed.
4) Diablo II. Best advancement type game.
5) Doom. I played this over and over and over.
I've noticed Diana has an unbelievably cute habit (well, I think so). She likes to ask me questions in the following form:
"If you were going to, would you rather or ?"
... where is something that I'd either never thought of doing, or wouldn't want to do. But in the asking of the question, it's assumed that I *would* want to do that thing, and then asks me to expound on it. I can do nothing but sit speechless, my mind reeling, until I finally just start laughing. I'll post a good example when I have one. What's so funny about it is that the question makes perfectly good sense to her, but throws me off so much when I first hear it.
Anyways, maybe it's just me.
Diana's coming home at 10pm tonight, so we've got a lunch date this afternoon! And then, when I get home from work, I'm going to play Diablo II until my eyes bleed. :)
A combination of working late and feeling sort of crappy has kept me otherwise occupied, but I'm now back and better than ever, so watch out!
This weekend, when I wasn't moping around, Diana and I finally received and put built our brand new entertainment center for our family room. It was pretty cheap, but looks really nice (better than we expected, I think). And unexpectedly, I really makes the room feel a lot more like a home rather than just a place to crash out, if that makes any sense at all. Anyways, we're very pleased.
Other news briefs:
My fantasy football boys, in spite of looking good, aren't playing very well. I'm 0-2. Oh well.
Diana's been working hard, out until 9 or 10 every night, which kind of sucks.
Lots of good TV this week! Newlyweds (Jessica Simpers and Nick Whats-his-butt), Survivor, World Poker Tour...
I've been playing more Diablo II, which is easily a top-5 PC game of all time.
Impromptu list time! Adam's top 5 all time favorite PC games, in no particular order:
1) Half Life / Counterstrike. Best FPS ever.
2) X-wing. I loved this game.
3) Warcraft II. The only RTS I've really enjoyed.
4) Diablo II. Best advancement type game.
5) Doom. I played this over and over and over.
I've noticed Diana has an unbelievably cute habit (well, I think so). She likes to ask me questions in the following form:
"If you were going to
... where
Anyways, maybe it's just me.
Diana's coming home at 10pm tonight, so we've got a lunch date this afternoon! And then, when I get home from work, I'm going to play Diablo II until my eyes bleed. :)
2003/09/08
All work and no play makes Adman something-something...
Worked all day and into the night on Friday. Most of the day on Saturday. All day Sunday. And now, here I am again. Bummer.
On Saturday, when I wasn't working, Diana and I joined up late to a beach BBQ/bonfire with Gabe and Rena and Iwan and the Redlands crew, which was a lot of fun. It was nice to see everyone, and great to see Rhiannon, who is quite noticeably preggos. She seemed healthy and happy and looking forward to being a mom. They seemed to be doing well. We made a big fire, which was irresponsibly fun. Hee!
On Sunday, when I wasn't working, I watched the Chargers get stomped on by the Chiefs. I'm not sure if we were bad or if they were good. But it was a little disheartening. But, "there's always next week".
Anyhoo, that's about it for now. My Fantasy Football team is about 10 points down with my only player left to play being "Philly Defense". Go boys!
Worked all day and into the night on Friday. Most of the day on Saturday. All day Sunday. And now, here I am again. Bummer.
On Saturday, when I wasn't working, Diana and I joined up late to a beach BBQ/bonfire with Gabe and Rena and Iwan and the Redlands crew, which was a lot of fun. It was nice to see everyone, and great to see Rhiannon, who is quite noticeably preggos. She seemed healthy and happy and looking forward to being a mom. They seemed to be doing well. We made a big fire, which was irresponsibly fun. Hee!
On Sunday, when I wasn't working, I watched the Chargers get stomped on by the Chiefs. I'm not sure if we were bad or if they were good. But it was a little disheartening. But, "there's always next week".
Anyhoo, that's about it for now. My Fantasy Football team is about 10 points down with my only player left to play being "Philly Defense". Go boys!
2003/09/02
What a weekend!
Let'see... a quick re-cap.
Friday night, we went to Baditudes house and watched Shanghai Knights. A fun movie, and fun to hang out with everyone.
Saturday morning, Diana hung out with a friend who was in town. I took the opportunity to work on part of her birthday pressie, which was a treasure-hunt type deal. In the afternoon, we went over to my parents house for dinner, and went to see "Much Ado About Nothing". It was good... not great, but still a lot of fun.
Sunday morning, I gave Diana a little note which was a clue to the first hiding spot, and watched her solve the clues. All the hiding spots were locations of signifiagance, like her wedding bouquet, the first curtains we put up, the place were the crow died, etc. Once she collected all the clues, they went together and formed a little puzzle, on the back of which was a coded message. The final clue also had the key to the code (Norm: I stole the idea from the web thing you sent me). Solving that gave the location of her present (which was one of those murder-mystery jigsaw puzzles... a little anti-climatic, I know, but we had one before that we had a lot of fun with, and gave us good couple-bonding time, so I think it isn't sub-par. I'm not a very good gift-giver.)
So, after all that, we went to my parents house for lunch (more birthday celebration for Diana and my mom), and then met up with Iwan and Sara and went to the races.
The races were a blast. We all made crazy bets. At one point, Iwan and agreed on our betting strategy, and put down two sets of identical bets. We won $56 each. Much of that was lost on subsequent races, but Diana and I walked out with $15 more than we came in with. So, that's a good day. We were all tuckered out, so we got some pizza and went back to our place and watched "Noises Off", which I think is hilarious. I'm not sure how they liked it, but oh well. Early to bed, because we had a big poker tournament the next morning!
Yeah, that's right. Monday morning we got up early (well, not too early, but earlier than normal for a holiday), and picked up Iwan, and headed to Viejas to participate in one of it's daily poker tournaments. The buying was $12, which bought us $1500 in tournament chips and a seat at the No-Limit Hold'Em tournament.
Long story short: Half an hour later, I was out. 15 minutes after that, Diana was out. 15 minutes after that, Iwan went out.
Long story medium: It was crazy to sit down at your seat, and see 10 chips in front of you. 2 x $500, 4 x $100, 4 x $25. Blinds start out at $25/$50, and doubled every 15 minutes. With that few chips, and with blinds increasing so fast, there's really not a lot of time to play tight and sit around waiting for good hands (which is what the three of us did). I also screwed up majorly: I thought there was one player behind me with a bet of $200. I said "raise 300", and threw out a pink ($500) chip, thinking I could scare him away. I didn't realize (or forgot) that there was a player between me and him who had ALREADY raised it to $500. So, when I said "raise $300", that meant I owed $300 on top of the $500 to call. The guy I wanted to fold orginially did so, leaving just me and the raiser (who was an old guy who seemed to know what he was doing).
I was on a semi-bluff with an open ended straight draw, so it wasn't a total catastrophe. The turn came up, making 3 to the flush on the board, and not helping my straight. I checked. The guy who had raised before looked me dead in the eye and said "I'm all in", and pushed his healthy stack out. I had to assume he made his flush, and I had zilch. I'm not sure if I should have called at that point or not, but I folded. That was the beginning of the end.
It seemed the more successful players played pretty crazy, seeing lots of flops and getting lucky with crap cards. Diana threw away what would have been 6 winning hands if she'd stayed in. She had a great hand where she had queen-ace and the board showed Q-3-9. Turn came another Q. She checked, the other guy bet, and she raised all-in over the top! The guy called, showing his Q-J. The river came a 9, giving them BOTH a full house, queens over 9's, so they ended up splitting the pot. A great hand, and really well played by D, but a heartbreak of a result. (Props to anyone who checks and then goes all in).
All in all, we all had a great time. It was a great $12 spent on entertainment (that's what we're calling it), and a very humbling experience. For those who like to worry about me, rest assured I have no plans to lose (or win, for that matter) any serious money via gambling. But $12 for an hour or two of fun, with the potential to win a lot more sounds like a good deal to me.
Afterwards, we stopped by Diana's parents for some more birthday celebration. Then I went to the beach with Iwan and Eryn and Heather, while Diana went home and got some work done. The group of us (minus Heather, plus Sara) ended up back at our place to BBQ and hang out. Iwan and I decided we needed steaks. So we bought 3 pounds of marinated tri-tip from Seaside Martketplace in Cardiff. This came highly reccomended to us from Papa Rosten, and when we were there, a woman said that it was the best thing she'd ever had in her life. So, we were all kinds of fired up. We got the grill going, and managed to not completely ruin the steaks. They were a little well done, but we considered it a dry-run for a future Monday Night Football extravaganza. Even though they were not perfect, the steaks were REALLY good. We all just kind of crashed out on the couch after that and hung out.
There you have it. A busy, fun weekend. Diana's back to school today (her birthday, by the way! Happy Birthday!), and starts her classes to night, so she's not going to be home until 10pm. :(
Hope everyone out there had a great weekend as well!
Let'see... a quick re-cap.
Friday night, we went to Baditudes house and watched Shanghai Knights. A fun movie, and fun to hang out with everyone.
Saturday morning, Diana hung out with a friend who was in town. I took the opportunity to work on part of her birthday pressie, which was a treasure-hunt type deal. In the afternoon, we went over to my parents house for dinner, and went to see "Much Ado About Nothing". It was good... not great, but still a lot of fun.
Sunday morning, I gave Diana a little note which was a clue to the first hiding spot, and watched her solve the clues. All the hiding spots were locations of signifiagance, like her wedding bouquet, the first curtains we put up, the place were the crow died, etc. Once she collected all the clues, they went together and formed a little puzzle, on the back of which was a coded message. The final clue also had the key to the code (Norm: I stole the idea from the web thing you sent me). Solving that gave the location of her present (which was one of those murder-mystery jigsaw puzzles... a little anti-climatic, I know, but we had one before that we had a lot of fun with, and gave us good couple-bonding time, so I think it isn't sub-par. I'm not a very good gift-giver.)
So, after all that, we went to my parents house for lunch (more birthday celebration for Diana and my mom), and then met up with Iwan and Sara and went to the races.
The races were a blast. We all made crazy bets. At one point, Iwan and agreed on our betting strategy, and put down two sets of identical bets. We won $56 each. Much of that was lost on subsequent races, but Diana and I walked out with $15 more than we came in with. So, that's a good day. We were all tuckered out, so we got some pizza and went back to our place and watched "Noises Off", which I think is hilarious. I'm not sure how they liked it, but oh well. Early to bed, because we had a big poker tournament the next morning!
Yeah, that's right. Monday morning we got up early (well, not too early, but earlier than normal for a holiday), and picked up Iwan, and headed to Viejas to participate in one of it's daily poker tournaments. The buying was $12, which bought us $1500 in tournament chips and a seat at the No-Limit Hold'Em tournament.
Long story short: Half an hour later, I was out. 15 minutes after that, Diana was out. 15 minutes after that, Iwan went out.
Long story medium: It was crazy to sit down at your seat, and see 10 chips in front of you. 2 x $500, 4 x $100, 4 x $25. Blinds start out at $25/$50, and doubled every 15 minutes. With that few chips, and with blinds increasing so fast, there's really not a lot of time to play tight and sit around waiting for good hands (which is what the three of us did). I also screwed up majorly: I thought there was one player behind me with a bet of $200. I said "raise 300", and threw out a pink ($500) chip, thinking I could scare him away. I didn't realize (or forgot) that there was a player between me and him who had ALREADY raised it to $500. So, when I said "raise $300", that meant I owed $300 on top of the $500 to call. The guy I wanted to fold orginially did so, leaving just me and the raiser (who was an old guy who seemed to know what he was doing).
I was on a semi-bluff with an open ended straight draw, so it wasn't a total catastrophe. The turn came up, making 3 to the flush on the board, and not helping my straight. I checked. The guy who had raised before looked me dead in the eye and said "I'm all in", and pushed his healthy stack out. I had to assume he made his flush, and I had zilch. I'm not sure if I should have called at that point or not, but I folded. That was the beginning of the end.
It seemed the more successful players played pretty crazy, seeing lots of flops and getting lucky with crap cards. Diana threw away what would have been 6 winning hands if she'd stayed in. She had a great hand where she had queen-ace and the board showed Q-3-9. Turn came another Q. She checked, the other guy bet, and she raised all-in over the top! The guy called, showing his Q-J. The river came a 9, giving them BOTH a full house, queens over 9's, so they ended up splitting the pot. A great hand, and really well played by D, but a heartbreak of a result. (Props to anyone who checks and then goes all in).
All in all, we all had a great time. It was a great $12 spent on entertainment (that's what we're calling it), and a very humbling experience. For those who like to worry about me, rest assured I have no plans to lose (or win, for that matter) any serious money via gambling. But $12 for an hour or two of fun, with the potential to win a lot more sounds like a good deal to me.
Afterwards, we stopped by Diana's parents for some more birthday celebration. Then I went to the beach with Iwan and Eryn and Heather, while Diana went home and got some work done. The group of us (minus Heather, plus Sara) ended up back at our place to BBQ and hang out. Iwan and I decided we needed steaks. So we bought 3 pounds of marinated tri-tip from Seaside Martketplace in Cardiff. This came highly reccomended to us from Papa Rosten, and when we were there, a woman said that it was the best thing she'd ever had in her life. So, we were all kinds of fired up. We got the grill going, and managed to not completely ruin the steaks. They were a little well done, but we considered it a dry-run for a future Monday Night Football extravaganza. Even though they were not perfect, the steaks were REALLY good. We all just kind of crashed out on the couch after that and hung out.
There you have it. A busy, fun weekend. Diana's back to school today (her birthday, by the way! Happy Birthday!), and starts her classes to night, so she's not going to be home until 10pm. :(
Hope everyone out there had a great weekend as well!
2003/08/31
What a fun weekend so far!
Today, Diana and I went over to my parents hours for lunch. Afterwards, we met up with Iwan and Sara, and hit up the ol' Del Mar Races. We had a lot of fun betting crazy bets. At one point, Iwan and I both bet the same thing, and it paid off, with each of us winning $56. So, that sponsered the rest of the afternoon, with some left over, so that was nice. Then they both came over for some dinner and a movie (Noises Off). I'm not sure how much they liked it, but I still thinks it's a hilariously funny movie. Maybe you have to be in the right mood.
Early night tonight, because me and Iwan and D are going to Viejas to play in our very first poker tournament! $12 buyin for some no-limit hold'em. Should be a whole lot of fun. I hope. We've never done this before, so it will be a total learning experience. But I think $12 is a deal for this kind of lesson. More news as it breaks.
Today, Diana and I went over to my parents hours for lunch. Afterwards, we met up with Iwan and Sara, and hit up the ol' Del Mar Races. We had a lot of fun betting crazy bets. At one point, Iwan and I both bet the same thing, and it paid off, with each of us winning $56. So, that sponsered the rest of the afternoon, with some left over, so that was nice. Then they both came over for some dinner and a movie (Noises Off). I'm not sure how much they liked it, but I still thinks it's a hilariously funny movie. Maybe you have to be in the right mood.
Early night tonight, because me and Iwan and D are going to Viejas to play in our very first poker tournament! $12 buyin for some no-limit hold'em. Should be a whole lot of fun. I hope. We've never done this before, so it will be a total learning experience. But I think $12 is a deal for this kind of lesson. More news as it breaks.
2003/08/28
How 'bout some Bloggin? O-tay!
Lessee... This week has just flown by!
Last night was another poker night. Iwan, M.Kyle, John, Gabe, me and Diana were players. It was a lot of fun. A lot better to have 6 people than 12. The only downside is that Kyle can get pretty grumpy for some reason, and it leaves the rest of us on eggshells. He had to leave early, and it was weird to see how the atmosphere of the room changed. Hopefully we can see some more smiles out of that kid the next time around. As promised, I'm keeping a running tally. I was up $20 on the night. Diana and I are keeping a combined running total, and we're at +$77. Not too shabby. We've agreed to use poker-winning money for something fun, which I think is a good idea. Gives a reward for good solid play (which, because it involves folding a lot of hands, isn't necessarily the most fun way to play). Anyways, I'm having a lot of fun with poker. It's definitely one of those activities (as I think I wrote before) that gets more interesting the more you learn about it. (I know my mom is probably freaking out right now that I'm going to turn into a gambler and lose lots of money. Please don't!)
I saw the aftermath of a motorcycle accident today. Not good stuff. On the way to work, a guy was riding between the 3 and 4 lanes. I saw him coming, and moved over to give him some room. He wasn't driving erratically or anything, and I barely noticed. However, 2 miles later, the traffic came to a big slowdown. As I got closer, I saw that 4 lanes were merging into the rightmost 2 because a lot of cars were stopped. I saw the motorcyclist on the ground with people gathered around him, and that was about it. He was in full leathers and a helmet, so hopefully it wasn't too bad. Still, I can't believe people actually ride those things. Yikes.
That's about it. Diana is getting in gear to head back to teaching, and is going to get busy. Tonight I played some Diablo II for old-time kicks while she was working. It's crazy how fast time flies playing that game. What a great game.
This weekend, we're going to see either "As You Like It" or "Much Ado about Nothing" (I don't remember which). That should be fun. Mom's birthday on the 1st, and Dsters on the 2nd, so I should probably, like, do some shopping or something! :)
Lessee... This week has just flown by!
Last night was another poker night. Iwan, M.Kyle, John, Gabe, me and Diana were players. It was a lot of fun. A lot better to have 6 people than 12. The only downside is that Kyle can get pretty grumpy for some reason, and it leaves the rest of us on eggshells. He had to leave early, and it was weird to see how the atmosphere of the room changed. Hopefully we can see some more smiles out of that kid the next time around. As promised, I'm keeping a running tally. I was up $20 on the night. Diana and I are keeping a combined running total, and we're at +$77. Not too shabby. We've agreed to use poker-winning money for something fun, which I think is a good idea. Gives a reward for good solid play (which, because it involves folding a lot of hands, isn't necessarily the most fun way to play). Anyways, I'm having a lot of fun with poker. It's definitely one of those activities (as I think I wrote before) that gets more interesting the more you learn about it. (I know my mom is probably freaking out right now that I'm going to turn into a gambler and lose lots of money. Please don't!)
I saw the aftermath of a motorcycle accident today. Not good stuff. On the way to work, a guy was riding between the 3 and 4 lanes. I saw him coming, and moved over to give him some room. He wasn't driving erratically or anything, and I barely noticed. However, 2 miles later, the traffic came to a big slowdown. As I got closer, I saw that 4 lanes were merging into the rightmost 2 because a lot of cars were stopped. I saw the motorcyclist on the ground with people gathered around him, and that was about it. He was in full leathers and a helmet, so hopefully it wasn't too bad. Still, I can't believe people actually ride those things. Yikes.
That's about it. Diana is getting in gear to head back to teaching, and is going to get busy. Tonight I played some Diablo II for old-time kicks while she was working. It's crazy how fast time flies playing that game. What a great game.
This weekend, we're going to see either "As You Like It" or "Much Ado about Nothing" (I don't remember which). That should be fun. Mom's birthday on the 1st, and Dsters on the 2nd, so I should probably, like, do some shopping or something! :)
2003/08/24
Surfs up!
Today is a momentous occasion. For the first time in my 28 years of living not more than 5 miles from the ocean, I tried surfing for the first time.
My buddy Baditude took myself and D'ster out. Just easy stuff, no big deal. I have to say that the jury is still out on whether I had fun or not, and if I'm going to try it again. I'll tell you one thing, though: I am exhausted. The combination of being out in the sun and using muscles that I've never used before has left me pretty banged up. I also hit my hipbone on the board pretty good, and have a nice little half-inch cut that stings a bit.
Surfing is tough. It doesn't look tough, but I was only really able to stand up like once, and that was on a teeny little fake wave. I didn't have any expectations of being a superstar or anything, but I'm not sure I like being out in the water enough to give it any sort of serious effort. At least at this point in time, I get cold too easily, and don't feel strong enough to paddle around and catch waves. When I did catch a wave, I simply felt too exhausted to do the little push-up jump move to get to standing up. Diana didn't have that much luck either, being far more comfortable without the board in her way.
I know that muscles build, skills improve, and wetsuits can be worn, but I think I might be happier just watching from the warm beach. In other words, even if I was good at it, I'm not sure it would be something I'd enjoy doing. We'll see, I guess. Time can change opinions like this. In any case, I appreciate Baditude's teaching and expertise. He's a very good teacher, and good at offering constructive criticism without making you feel like an ass. All his tips started off with "I remember my biggest problem was with. Maybe you should try ...?" rather than "You suck, dumbass! You're supposed to do !" Good man.
I still feel like I have water in my ears. Bleah.
Today is a momentous occasion. For the first time in my 28 years of living not more than 5 miles from the ocean, I tried surfing for the first time.
My buddy Baditude took myself and D'ster out. Just easy stuff, no big deal. I have to say that the jury is still out on whether I had fun or not, and if I'm going to try it again. I'll tell you one thing, though: I am exhausted. The combination of being out in the sun and using muscles that I've never used before has left me pretty banged up. I also hit my hipbone on the board pretty good, and have a nice little half-inch cut that stings a bit.
Surfing is tough. It doesn't look tough, but I was only really able to stand up like once, and that was on a teeny little fake wave. I didn't have any expectations of being a superstar or anything, but I'm not sure I like being out in the water enough to give it any sort of serious effort. At least at this point in time, I get cold too easily, and don't feel strong enough to paddle around and catch waves. When I did catch a wave, I simply felt too exhausted to do the little push-up jump move to get to standing up. Diana didn't have that much luck either, being far more comfortable without the board in her way.
I know that muscles build, skills improve, and wetsuits can be worn, but I think I might be happier just watching from the warm beach. In other words, even if I was good at it, I'm not sure it would be something I'd enjoy doing. We'll see, I guess. Time can change opinions like this. In any case, I appreciate Baditude's teaching and expertise. He's a very good teacher, and good at offering constructive criticism without making you feel like an ass. All his tips started off with "I remember my biggest problem was with
I still feel like I have water in my ears. Bleah.
2003/08/23
Well, Trendwest asked Diana when the last time we were there (apparently they're pretty good at keeping track of this sort of thing). When they learned it hadn't been a year yet, our invitation was revoked. Oh well.
Last night Diana and I saw "Step Into Liquid", which was awesome. I've never surfed before, but I love watching it. The footage was incredible and the whole narration of the surfer mentality was really touching. Good clean fun.
Today was the big fantasy football draft at Papa Rostons new pad. The place is nice. Plasma TVs as far as the eye can see. I'm pretty happy, I guess, at how my team worked out. I don't really know that much about football, but people didn't seem to be making fun of it afterwards, so it couldn't be all that bad. I come home afterwards, leaving what I thought was a pretty clear message that (Diana and) I wanted to hang out, and if something was going on to give us a call. Apparently that message didn't quite take, and people in fact did go out without us. Sweet. Not really that big a deal or anything, but I like hanging out with the group, and don't like feeling forgotten about. So that kind of sucked. Oh well. Luckily, my lovely wife and I had some good eats anyways, and watched "Spy Game". It was entertaining, in spite of the fact that I'm not really sure what happened.
I've been playing a lot of free money poker online. A few days ago, I started with $1000. Now I have about $150,000. I'm feeling quite proud of myself over this. Not enough to get me to invest real money, though. My friends are are getting pretty excited about playing real online poker. I'm still a little sketched out by it. Seems like it could be a slippery slope. Although you can play at ultra-low stakes (like $.01/$.02, and $.05/$.10 and so forth), so I guess it's all about self control. $20 could very well last a lot longer online than it does in our usual poker night. Anyways, we'll see what happens.
Poker-night itself is a little of a cluster, but I'll leave that for another time.
Last night Diana and I saw "Step Into Liquid", which was awesome. I've never surfed before, but I love watching it. The footage was incredible and the whole narration of the surfer mentality was really touching. Good clean fun.
Today was the big fantasy football draft at Papa Rostons new pad. The place is nice. Plasma TVs as far as the eye can see. I'm pretty happy, I guess, at how my team worked out. I don't really know that much about football, but people didn't seem to be making fun of it afterwards, so it couldn't be all that bad. I come home afterwards, leaving what I thought was a pretty clear message that (Diana and) I wanted to hang out, and if something was going on to give us a call. Apparently that message didn't quite take, and people in fact did go out without us. Sweet. Not really that big a deal or anything, but I like hanging out with the group, and don't like feeling forgotten about. So that kind of sucked. Oh well. Luckily, my lovely wife and I had some good eats anyways, and watched "Spy Game". It was entertaining, in spite of the fact that I'm not really sure what happened.
I've been playing a lot of free money poker online. A few days ago, I started with $1000. Now I have about $150,000. I'm feeling quite proud of myself over this. Not enough to get me to invest real money, though. My friends are are getting pretty excited about playing real online poker. I'm still a little sketched out by it. Seems like it could be a slippery slope. Although you can play at ultra-low stakes (like $.01/$.02, and $.05/$.10 and so forth), so I guess it's all about self control. $20 could very well last a lot longer online than it does in our usual poker night. Anyways, we'll see what happens.
Poker-night itself is a little of a cluster, but I'll leave that for another time.
2003/08/21
Unbelievable!
Diana's and my favorite company, TrendWest, has called us to invite us to another session. Faithful readers will recall my June 11th entry which recounts our most recent adventure with these high class and reputable salesmen of fine vacation homes around the world. Even more careful reader might remember that I asked if I could take information home with me, so I'd be prepared for the NEXT time I came back. The reply was a snotty "Well honestly, you probably won't be invited back." (At this point, I turned to Diana and said "Welp, looks like this well is tapped out!")
HA!
My girl Jessica called me and invited me back, offering lots of free gift certificates and so forth. I took their number and said I'd talk to my wife and give her a call back.
The last time we were there, the snotty lady told us how much it costs to have people come in, and how they probably wouldn't invite us back since we didn't show much interest. Suckers. Last time, they gave us $50 in gift certificates to Home Depot, and we went through those things like that. We also have some sort of trip which we STILL haven't used.
The edutainment would be in Mission Valley, which is a little out of the way. However, I think she said they had time on Friday (tomorrow?! Or next Friday?!) which wouldn't be bad; Diana and I could turn it into a happy-fun-date. Like go to the thing, read our books through the group talk, smile and nod through the one-on-one chat, get the freak out of Dodge, and go have a nice dinner and catch a movie or something.
Word.
Diana's and my favorite company, TrendWest, has called us to invite us to another session. Faithful readers will recall my June 11th entry which recounts our most recent adventure with these high class and reputable salesmen of fine vacation homes around the world. Even more careful reader might remember that I asked if I could take information home with me, so I'd be prepared for the NEXT time I came back. The reply was a snotty "Well honestly, you probably won't be invited back." (At this point, I turned to Diana and said "Welp, looks like this well is tapped out!")
HA!
My girl Jessica called me and invited me back, offering lots of free gift certificates and so forth. I took their number and said I'd talk to my wife and give her a call back.
The last time we were there, the snotty lady told us how much it costs to have people come in, and how they probably wouldn't invite us back since we didn't show much interest. Suckers. Last time, they gave us $50 in gift certificates to Home Depot, and we went through those things like that. We also have some sort of trip which we STILL haven't used.
The edutainment would be in Mission Valley, which is a little out of the way. However, I think she said they had time on Friday (tomorrow?! Or next Friday?!) which wouldn't be bad; Diana and I could turn it into a happy-fun-date. Like go to the thing, read our books through the group talk, smile and nod through the one-on-one chat, get the freak out of Dodge, and go have a nice dinner and catch a movie or something.
Word.
2003/08/19
This weekend was a lot of fun. On Friday, I left work a little early, and met up with D, Nuthin' Doin, Baditude, and H-Bomb, and we embarked up to Big Bear to stay with Norm and T-Bone (I like nicknames). We had a great weekend of BBQ'ing, game playing, and playing in and around the lake. There's really nothing like spending a really fun weekend with your besties and just bonding. Good times.
On Sunday, we drove home and crashed out for a while, and then went to D's parents house for dinner, which was nice.
Last night, we watched the latest Star Trek movie, which was somewhat laughable, but kind of fun at the same time. I've also rented "Ladyhawke" (I think that's it) from Norm. I've never heard of it, but look forward to watching it as I've heard good things.
This morning at 4am, I woke up a moment before D nudged me to wake me up. We heard a combination of very primal sounds right outside our window. The first sound was the kind of growl a dog would make while playing tug-o-war with it. The second was a piercing shriek from a small animal. They both didn't last very long, but were soon replaced by a new sound, which was a chewing and gnawing of bones. We peeked out the window, but didn't see anything. We turned on the lights, and I eventually went outside, but whatever it was was gone. No trace left this morning. Pretty neat.
I've had some recent Nethack luck, but no real progress made. I've had an insane amount of early game wishes, and some polymorhping fun (turning my little kitty into an ice troll on two seperate occasions), but always manage to screw it up. Oh well.
On Sunday, we drove home and crashed out for a while, and then went to D's parents house for dinner, which was nice.
Last night, we watched the latest Star Trek movie, which was somewhat laughable, but kind of fun at the same time. I've also rented "Ladyhawke" (I think that's it) from Norm. I've never heard of it, but look forward to watching it as I've heard good things.
This morning at 4am, I woke up a moment before D nudged me to wake me up. We heard a combination of very primal sounds right outside our window. The first sound was the kind of growl a dog would make while playing tug-o-war with it. The second was a piercing shriek from a small animal. They both didn't last very long, but were soon replaced by a new sound, which was a chewing and gnawing of bones. We peeked out the window, but didn't see anything. We turned on the lights, and I eventually went outside, but whatever it was was gone. No trace left this morning. Pretty neat.
I've had some recent Nethack luck, but no real progress made. I've had an insane amount of early game wishes, and some polymorhping fun (turning my little kitty into an ice troll on two seperate occasions), but always manage to screw it up. Oh well.
2003/08/15
Poker on Wednesday night went well. We eventually had 12 people show up, and divided into two tables of 6. While most people seemed to have a good time, I think a smaller, more intimate game with friends is vastly better than a bigger game. I'm not sure how to "uninvite" people, though. I'll cross that one when I get there. I lost $16 that night, and my running winnings are reduced to $21. (I have to announce this publically so I don't selectively remember). Diana's winnings are right around mine, plus or minus a couple dollars.
This weekend we're off to Big Bear, yet again imposing on the gracious hospitality of Norm and Teri. They have access to some really nice hanging out spots, so as long as they keep inviting, we'll keep showing up! They're both such great people, though, that we'd go visit 'em even if they lived in a hovel. Happy joy yay. Baditude and H-bomb are going, as well as Nuthin' Doin (no Sara, though). So, that'll be lots of fun.
I told some work friends about engrish.com. A pretty funny site if you haven't been there before. Check it out again for the first time.
Aaaaand... I'm out.
This weekend we're off to Big Bear, yet again imposing on the gracious hospitality of Norm and Teri. They have access to some really nice hanging out spots, so as long as they keep inviting, we'll keep showing up! They're both such great people, though, that we'd go visit 'em even if they lived in a hovel. Happy joy yay. Baditude and H-bomb are going, as well as Nuthin' Doin (no Sara, though). So, that'll be lots of fun.
I told some work friends about engrish.com. A pretty funny site if you haven't been there before. Check it out again for the first time.
Aaaaand... I'm out.
2003/08/12
My Popsy
So, my dad had surgery on his shoulder today. He's had some chronic shoulder pain for the last couple of years, and fell in Montana on a steep hillside and landed on it and hurt it more. So, under the knife he went.
Surgery was supposed to be around 1:30pm or so. Mom called at 4:30pm and said she hadn't heard anything, but they started a little late, and it was supposed to take 2.5 hours or so. She was a little stressed. I told her I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, and let me know when she hears something.
No word. I try her cell phone, but either I misdialed or something, but I can't get through and can't leave a message. I leave a couple messages at home. I figure no news is good news, but still. (Note to readers: I like to be more informed if a friend or loved one is going through surgery. Just for future reference.)
At 9:30pm, I get a call from a panicked Mom. Her voice is stressed and on the edge of tears. "There's some problems. Your dad has a corneal abrasion and is in quite a lot of pain. Can you come over and be here and help?"
My mind reels. "Corneal abrasion?! What the fuck is a corneal abrasion?!" I think to myself. Note that, while I'm no doctor, I'm pretty good at body parts and lingo and general scientific trivia. I know what a cornea is, and I know what an abrasion is. I've, in fact, abraded my own cornea at least twice. I just forgot at that moment.
I ask: "What's a corneal abrasion?" I'm hoping it doesn't have something to do with the brain or heart or something. Mom said that his eye was scratched, and he was pretty uncomfortable, and might need to go back to the hospital, and that she needed help, and could I come over.
Got dressed into clothes other than my comfs, and sped to the 'rents. All the while, I'm wondering how bad things could be.
By the time I get to my parents house, things are, I guess, calmer than they were when Mom called. Apparently Dad was in "10 out of 10" pain, but some anesthetic eye drops did the trick, and he was calm and relatively pain-free. A little loopy, but ok. He asked about what was going on, and I talked about surround sound and poker and whatever else I could think of to make some conversation. For all appearences, he was asleep, but he asked questions and seemed pretty with it. I said some friends were thinking about playing racquetball tomorrow, and did he want to join us? Ha.
Anyways, the drops started to wear off, so Mom put some more in, and after a brief bit of pain, he seemed ok again. I don't know well they'll make it through the night, but we'll see. I think things were pretty under control when I left.
Poor guy. :(
In any case, it sounded like the shoulder sugery went well. They were able to do it arthroscopically, and fix things up the way they wanted, so hopefully that's all good news.
Now, a little "iced cream", and to bed.
Big poker night tomorrow! Bring on the <'()()>< (That's supposed to be a fish)
So, my dad had surgery on his shoulder today. He's had some chronic shoulder pain for the last couple of years, and fell in Montana on a steep hillside and landed on it and hurt it more. So, under the knife he went.
Surgery was supposed to be around 1:30pm or so. Mom called at 4:30pm and said she hadn't heard anything, but they started a little late, and it was supposed to take 2.5 hours or so. She was a little stressed. I told her I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, and let me know when she hears something.
No word. I try her cell phone, but either I misdialed or something, but I can't get through and can't leave a message. I leave a couple messages at home. I figure no news is good news, but still. (Note to readers: I like to be more informed if a friend or loved one is going through surgery. Just for future reference.)
At 9:30pm, I get a call from a panicked Mom. Her voice is stressed and on the edge of tears. "There's some problems. Your dad has a corneal abrasion and is in quite a lot of pain. Can you come over and be here and help?"
My mind reels. "Corneal abrasion?! What the fuck is a corneal abrasion?!" I think to myself. Note that, while I'm no doctor, I'm pretty good at body parts and lingo and general scientific trivia. I know what a cornea is, and I know what an abrasion is. I've, in fact, abraded my own cornea at least twice. I just forgot at that moment.
I ask: "What's a corneal abrasion?" I'm hoping it doesn't have something to do with the brain or heart or something. Mom said that his eye was scratched, and he was pretty uncomfortable, and might need to go back to the hospital, and that she needed help, and could I come over.
Got dressed into clothes other than my comfs, and sped to the 'rents. All the while, I'm wondering how bad things could be.
By the time I get to my parents house, things are, I guess, calmer than they were when Mom called. Apparently Dad was in "10 out of 10" pain, but some anesthetic eye drops did the trick, and he was calm and relatively pain-free. A little loopy, but ok. He asked about what was going on, and I talked about surround sound and poker and whatever else I could think of to make some conversation. For all appearences, he was asleep, but he asked questions and seemed pretty with it. I said some friends were thinking about playing racquetball tomorrow, and did he want to join us? Ha.
Anyways, the drops started to wear off, so Mom put some more in, and after a brief bit of pain, he seemed ok again. I don't know well they'll make it through the night, but we'll see. I think things were pretty under control when I left.
Poor guy. :(
In any case, it sounded like the shoulder sugery went well. They were able to do it arthroscopically, and fix things up the way they wanted, so hopefully that's all good news.
Now, a little "iced cream", and to bed.
Big poker night tomorrow! Bring on the <'()()>< (That's supposed to be a fish)
2003/08/10
I've got T.A.T.U. on the brain.
Yeah, you heard me. ("All the things she said, things she said, running through my head, running through my head, all the things she said...")
This has been a pretty productive weekend! Diana had her day-long health class yesterday. It's funny to hear about the other brainiacs who want to be teachers. I think the state of the country would be a lot better if they actually required teachers to, like, be smart and stuff. Or at least prove that they can think for themselves. Anyways, while she was gone, I didn't some chores around the house, and bought some speaker mounts for the rear surround speakers. I promised to do no drilling or wiring while Diana was gone (I tend to get... over-enthusiastic :). And when she did come home, we did some serious drilling and screwing! *cough*
The surround sound is nice. I like it. I can't wait to play with it more with more movies! Anyways, we finished watching Aliens, which Diana had rented, and watched "Real Women Have Curves", which was ok. Could have been better, I think.
Today, we made our annual trek down to the beach! It's so sad that we live in actual sight of the ocean (well, if you go to the top of the hill), but go so rarely. We should go more often. It was packed down there, though. We played some b_____n (smashball), and cavorted in the ocean, which was fun. My sinuses hurt a little right now, and I think I'm putting two and two together. Anyways, the some shopping, and home for dinner and hanging out. I discovered that at PokerStars.com, (where I play free poker), they do tournaments, both for money and for free. So, I entered the only tournament going on, which was a 7 stud tournament. I don't know jack about 7 stud, but I was doing pretty well for a while. At best, I was in 36th place out of 1500 entrants. The min bets went up, and I wasn't really playing that seriously, and ended up out taking 537th place or something. So, I'm going to keep my eyes open for a free Hold'em tournament!
That's about it for now. Not ready for work... :P
Yeah, you heard me. ("All the things she said, things she said, running through my head, running through my head, all the things she said...")
This has been a pretty productive weekend! Diana had her day-long health class yesterday. It's funny to hear about the other brainiacs who want to be teachers. I think the state of the country would be a lot better if they actually required teachers to, like, be smart and stuff. Or at least prove that they can think for themselves. Anyways, while she was gone, I didn't some chores around the house, and bought some speaker mounts for the rear surround speakers. I promised to do no drilling or wiring while Diana was gone (I tend to get... over-enthusiastic :). And when she did come home, we did some serious drilling and screwing! *cough*
The surround sound is nice. I like it. I can't wait to play with it more with more movies! Anyways, we finished watching Aliens, which Diana had rented, and watched "Real Women Have Curves", which was ok. Could have been better, I think.
Today, we made our annual trek down to the beach! It's so sad that we live in actual sight of the ocean (well, if you go to the top of the hill), but go so rarely. We should go more often. It was packed down there, though. We played some b_____n (smashball), and cavorted in the ocean, which was fun. My sinuses hurt a little right now, and I think I'm putting two and two together. Anyways, the some shopping, and home for dinner and hanging out. I discovered that at PokerStars.com, (where I play free poker), they do tournaments, both for money and for free. So, I entered the only tournament going on, which was a 7 stud tournament. I don't know jack about 7 stud, but I was doing pretty well for a while. At best, I was in 36th place out of 1500 entrants. The min bets went up, and I wasn't really playing that seriously, and ended up out taking 537th place or something. So, I'm going to keep my eyes open for a free Hold'em tournament!
That's about it for now. Not ready for work... :P
2003/08/07
Long time no blog!
Diana and I have been either totally beat after work (Monday and Tuesday) or totally busy (yesterday and today). Diana's spearheading a curtain movement for the front room with me in an assisting role, while I spent most of the rest of my Christmas party money on a Sony home theater surround sound system! While our house looks like it's already pre-wired for surround sound, the back left channel didn't seem to work. We isolated the problem to the existing wiring. I didn't try the back right channel. yet. However, the front 3 channels and the subwoofer sound awesome. I'm totally stoked. Just need to do some more creative wiring, and it will be gravy.
We watched poker last night. I'm already waiting for Wednesday!
Not much other news to report, so I'm off to bed. G'night!
Diana and I have been either totally beat after work (Monday and Tuesday) or totally busy (yesterday and today). Diana's spearheading a curtain movement for the front room with me in an assisting role, while I spent most of the rest of my Christmas party money on a Sony home theater surround sound system! While our house looks like it's already pre-wired for surround sound, the back left channel didn't seem to work. We isolated the problem to the existing wiring. I didn't try the back right channel. yet. However, the front 3 channels and the subwoofer sound awesome. I'm totally stoked. Just need to do some more creative wiring, and it will be gravy.
We watched poker last night. I'm already waiting for Wednesday!
Not much other news to report, so I'm off to bed. G'night!
2003/08/03
Anniversary!
So... exactly a year ago, Diana and I were nervous wrecks. I don't know why I was so nervous. It certainly wasn't because I was getting married, because I was very much looking forward to marrying Diana. But obviously, it *was* because we were getting married... I mean, if it were any random old day, I wouldn't be nervous like I was.
But, somehow, it all worked out. I didn't faint. We got our vows out. Everyone clapped and said nice things. It was nice.
This last year has been really, really great. I think our relationship, while never really that trying in the first place, is smoother and better than it ever has been. We continue to grow closer and closer, and understand each other more and more as the days pass. And we still make each other laugh just as much as we used to.
It's been a great year, and I look forward to many more.
Diana finished her class on Saturday, so we've been doing some serious hanging out. Yesterday, we got our new big sectional couch for the front room. It's HUGE, and it rocks the hizzy (literally!). After that came, both Diana's and my parents came over for a visit. In the afternoon, we went to see Pirates, which was a lot of fun. That night, we went over and hung out with Batitude and H-Bomb and Li'l Mike, and had dinner and learned a card game, which was fun, too. Nice to hang out with those folks.
Today, we went to brunch at Rancho Valencia (where we got married a year ago). It was fun to watch another wedding going on, and remember back about how that was us. Brunch was awesome. That place rocks. Then, we came back and hung out here for a little, and went over to Home Expo to look around a little, and played 9 at Lake San Marcos. Ugh, we played HAR-ribly, especially me compared to my last outing. Oh well.
Now, time for a little grub, and a little cuddling on the big f'ing sofa and watching "Spirited Away" which I borrowed from B'tude. Huzzah.
Oh yeah. RIP Frodo the Thief, who got two wishes from two seperate water elementals freed on the first two levels of Nethack! I fell down a trapdoor and landed in the vault of the next level with no way to escape. The guard eventually came, and demanded I drop all my money. Not on my watch! Even with Mjollnir and blessed +3 grey dragon scale mail (my wish results) he smote me. :(
So... exactly a year ago, Diana and I were nervous wrecks. I don't know why I was so nervous. It certainly wasn't because I was getting married, because I was very much looking forward to marrying Diana. But obviously, it *was* because we were getting married... I mean, if it were any random old day, I wouldn't be nervous like I was.
But, somehow, it all worked out. I didn't faint. We got our vows out. Everyone clapped and said nice things. It was nice.
This last year has been really, really great. I think our relationship, while never really that trying in the first place, is smoother and better than it ever has been. We continue to grow closer and closer, and understand each other more and more as the days pass. And we still make each other laugh just as much as we used to.
It's been a great year, and I look forward to many more.
Diana finished her class on Saturday, so we've been doing some serious hanging out. Yesterday, we got our new big sectional couch for the front room. It's HUGE, and it rocks the hizzy (literally!). After that came, both Diana's and my parents came over for a visit. In the afternoon, we went to see Pirates, which was a lot of fun. That night, we went over and hung out with Batitude and H-Bomb and Li'l Mike, and had dinner and learned a card game, which was fun, too. Nice to hang out with those folks.
Today, we went to brunch at Rancho Valencia (where we got married a year ago). It was fun to watch another wedding going on, and remember back about how that was us. Brunch was awesome. That place rocks. Then, we came back and hung out here for a little, and went over to Home Expo to look around a little, and played 9 at Lake San Marcos. Ugh, we played HAR-ribly, especially me compared to my last outing. Oh well.
Now, time for a little grub, and a little cuddling on the big f'ing sofa and watching "Spirited Away" which I borrowed from B'tude. Huzzah.
Oh yeah. RIP Frodo the Thief, who got two wishes from two seperate water elementals freed on the first two levels of Nethack! I fell down a trapdoor and landed in the vault of the next level with no way to escape. The guard eventually came, and demanded I drop all my money. Not on my watch! Even with Mjollnir and blessed +3 grey dragon scale mail (my wish results) he smote me. :(
2003/08/01
Poker Night II
We gathered for the second time in our hopefully regular poker game. Baditude and H-Bomb were stuck in traffic and going to be late, so me, Miami Kyle, Miami John, and Iwan (who really needs a good nickname) decide to get a little warmed up. Everyone checks in for their $20 in chips, and we sit down to play.
I'm on the button, M.Kyle's SB, John is BB, Iwan is under the gun. I don't remember whether Iwan and I stayed in to see the flop or not. Regardless, flop comes like Kxx, two diamonds. Kyle and John get into a bet-raise-call match. Turn comes another diamond. More crazy betting and raising. A blank comes on the river. Kyle bets. John raises. Kyle (this is the first hand, mind you!) says "fuck it, I'm all in". John thinks for only a moment, and calls, flipping over his A-9 diamonds for the nut flush. Kyle flips over K-x for his pair of kings. *wince* Kyle hands over all his money to John on the very first hand. Craziness.
We played 3-handed for a little while before Eryn and Heather showed up. I overvalued my hands, I think, and ended up losing about $10 pretty quickly. Over the course of the night, I lost $20, bought in for $10 more, and won it all back to get a little ahead of even. Then lost a few more bucks to end up down $3. Running total: +$37
If I'm ever going to be a good poker player, I need to improve my memory. Not only good memory, but I need to be able to recall how someone acted at the beginning of the hand when the final cards are flipped over. That's not so easy to do. But that's why poker night is so fun! Lots of stuff to practice.
Diana's been really busy this week with schoolwork. This weekend is our 1 year anniversary (on Monday, actually). We don't have any big plans, really. But we're definitely looking foward to just spending some quality time together. Hopefully we can see at least one of Pirates, T3, or Tomb Raider. Take a walk. Stuff like that.
Our new big sectional is early! It's arriving sometime tomorrow. I'm pretty jazzed. I hope it's ok!
We gathered for the second time in our hopefully regular poker game. Baditude and H-Bomb were stuck in traffic and going to be late, so me, Miami Kyle, Miami John, and Iwan (who really needs a good nickname) decide to get a little warmed up. Everyone checks in for their $20 in chips, and we sit down to play.
I'm on the button, M.Kyle's SB, John is BB, Iwan is under the gun. I don't remember whether Iwan and I stayed in to see the flop or not. Regardless, flop comes like Kxx, two diamonds. Kyle and John get into a bet-raise-call match. Turn comes another diamond. More crazy betting and raising. A blank comes on the river. Kyle bets. John raises. Kyle (this is the first hand, mind you!) says "fuck it, I'm all in". John thinks for only a moment, and calls, flipping over his A-9 diamonds for the nut flush. Kyle flips over K-x for his pair of kings. *wince* Kyle hands over all his money to John on the very first hand. Craziness.
We played 3-handed for a little while before Eryn and Heather showed up. I overvalued my hands, I think, and ended up losing about $10 pretty quickly. Over the course of the night, I lost $20, bought in for $10 more, and won it all back to get a little ahead of even. Then lost a few more bucks to end up down $3. Running total: +$37
If I'm ever going to be a good poker player, I need to improve my memory. Not only good memory, but I need to be able to recall how someone acted at the beginning of the hand when the final cards are flipped over. That's not so easy to do. But that's why poker night is so fun! Lots of stuff to practice.
Diana's been really busy this week with schoolwork. This weekend is our 1 year anniversary (on Monday, actually). We don't have any big plans, really. But we're definitely looking foward to just spending some quality time together. Hopefully we can see at least one of Pirates, T3, or Tomb Raider. Take a walk. Stuff like that.
Our new big sectional is early! It's arriving sometime tomorrow. I'm pretty jazzed. I hope it's ok!
2003/07/29
Today at lunch, I went to the driving range. Maybe this is an obvious statement, but my skill level is directly proportional to the number club I'm using. In other words, I'm nails when chipping about 100 yards. I'm garbage with a driver. I gotta work on that if I'm ever going to be a Real Golfer.
Anyways, on the way to the range, I had my windows down and my radio turned pretty loud (to drown out the noise of the wind, see?) listening to some sports talk radio. I, of course, forgot this when getting back into my car. So, I put my clubs in the trunk, and hop in the driver seat. I start the car while pushing the buttons to roll down both front windows. The radio delays a little bit before coming on, letting the windows get all the way down before announcing "HAVING TROUBLE WITH MAINTAINING AN ERECTION?! PROBLEMS WITH PREMATURE EJAC...."
I slam the radio button, but just a little too late. A couple people in the parking lot are staring at me.
Ahh... good times.
Anyways, on the way to the range, I had my windows down and my radio turned pretty loud (to drown out the noise of the wind, see?) listening to some sports talk radio. I, of course, forgot this when getting back into my car. So, I put my clubs in the trunk, and hop in the driver seat. I start the car while pushing the buttons to roll down both front windows. The radio delays a little bit before coming on, letting the windows get all the way down before announcing "HAVING TROUBLE WITH MAINTAINING AN ERECTION?! PROBLEMS WITH PREMATURE EJAC...."
I slam the radio button, but just a little too late. A couple people in the parking lot are staring at me.
Ahh... good times.
Weekend roundup
Golf went really well on Saturday! I think it was the best round of my life, actually. We played at an executive course, with four par 4 holes and the rest par 3s. I shot 7 over on the front, with two birdies, and 4 over on the back. It's days like that that are really encouraging and fun. I was supposed to go to a work-boy party that night, but was pretty wiped out, and ended up just hanging around here.
Sunday... Have you ever had a day that you just wish you could erase from history? Sunday would be a good option. No serious catastrophes or anything, but a dawn-to-dusk series of minor inconveniences which weren't offset by anything good happening. Feh.
Today is Tuesday. My cold has moved from my throat to my nose and now is descending to my chest. Last night I started losing my voice, but I think it's back now. I debated not going to work today, but, well, here I go.
Fantasy Football has started. Poker night is on for Wednesday. Everything's coming up Adman!
Golf went really well on Saturday! I think it was the best round of my life, actually. We played at an executive course, with four par 4 holes and the rest par 3s. I shot 7 over on the front, with two birdies, and 4 over on the back. It's days like that that are really encouraging and fun. I was supposed to go to a work-boy party that night, but was pretty wiped out, and ended up just hanging around here.
Sunday... Have you ever had a day that you just wish you could erase from history? Sunday would be a good option. No serious catastrophes or anything, but a dawn-to-dusk series of minor inconveniences which weren't offset by anything good happening. Feh.
Today is Tuesday. My cold has moved from my throat to my nose and now is descending to my chest. Last night I started losing my voice, but I think it's back now. I debated not going to work today, but, well, here I go.
Fantasy Football has started. Poker night is on for Wednesday. Everything's coming up Adman!
2003/07/26
So...
Yesterday, some of my boys went to the Del Mar Races. I could have gone, but was feeling pretty beat from fighting this cold, and decided to sit it out. Iwan was nice enough to inform me that "Dirty Diana" was racing in the 7th. What a lock. I told him to bet $10 to win for me. When I got home from work, Diana and I gathered in front of the computer and watched live, as Dirty Diana broke from the gates, took an early commanding lead, and won the race by like 8 lengths. Adman wins $21. Fun fun fun.
After they left the races, I met up with the group at The Fish House in Solana Beach. Good food, good friends, good times. Iwan mentioned he doesn't like reading blogs. Makes him feel like he's reading someone else's journal, which, to a degree, is accurate. I told him that they are there to be read, which he understood, but still. Anyways, I like others reading it, I think. Saves me from having to keep track of what funny stories I've told to whom. :)
Today, we've got furniture people coming in the morning to try to fix some glue spots that came with the furniture. Diana's friends are coming into town sometime early this afternoon, staying for the weekend, so that will be fun. I'm going to go into work for a little bit today, I think, and hopefully get in some golf this afternoon. Woot.
Yesterday, some of my boys went to the Del Mar Races. I could have gone, but was feeling pretty beat from fighting this cold, and decided to sit it out. Iwan was nice enough to inform me that "Dirty Diana" was racing in the 7th. What a lock. I told him to bet $10 to win for me. When I got home from work, Diana and I gathered in front of the computer and watched live, as Dirty Diana broke from the gates, took an early commanding lead, and won the race by like 8 lengths. Adman wins $21. Fun fun fun.
After they left the races, I met up with the group at The Fish House in Solana Beach. Good food, good friends, good times. Iwan mentioned he doesn't like reading blogs. Makes him feel like he's reading someone else's journal, which, to a degree, is accurate. I told him that they are there to be read, which he understood, but still. Anyways, I like others reading it, I think. Saves me from having to keep track of what funny stories I've told to whom. :)
Today, we've got furniture people coming in the morning to try to fix some glue spots that came with the furniture. Diana's friends are coming into town sometime early this afternoon, staying for the weekend, so that will be fun. I'm going to go into work for a little bit today, I think, and hopefully get in some golf this afternoon. Woot.
2003/07/24
Uncle Adam!
That's right! My brother's wife is newly pregnant! Woo hoo! They're going to be great parents. My parents are going to be great grandparents. And I'm stoked to be Uncie Adam. Congratulations to the parents to be, and best of luck with everything!
Latest Proof that DJ's are NOT the smartest people in the world:
(Discussing how we'll be able to someday be able down download information into our brain, Matrix-style)
"Well, hey... computer hard drives are just ones and zeros. And our brains run on electricity. It's the same thing."
Uh, no.
Q.E.D.
I'm getting sick. Diana was sick with a gnarly sore throat and cough for the last couple days, and I tried hard to avoid it. But last night, I went to bed with a really bad sore throat on one side, and now the other side is hurting. I felt pretty ok today, though, so I'm hoping I can dodge the bullet. Or at least take it in a soft fleshy area.
I like the horizontal stripes. I want my comments back!
That's right! My brother's wife is newly pregnant! Woo hoo! They're going to be great parents. My parents are going to be great grandparents. And I'm stoked to be Uncie Adam. Congratulations to the parents to be, and best of luck with everything!
Latest Proof that DJ's are NOT the smartest people in the world:
(Discussing how we'll be able to someday be able down download information into our brain, Matrix-style)
"Well, hey... computer hard drives are just ones and zeros. And our brains run on electricity. It's the same thing."
Uh, no.
Q.E.D.
I'm getting sick. Diana was sick with a gnarly sore throat and cough for the last couple days, and I tried hard to avoid it. But last night, I went to bed with a really bad sore throat on one side, and now the other side is hurting. I felt pretty ok today, though, so I'm hoping I can dodge the bullet. Or at least take it in a soft fleshy area.
I like the horizontal stripes. I want my comments back!
2003/07/21
Random thoughts:
Advertisments.
Again, I'm awestruck by an ad I heard on the radio. This one is for a car dealer called Power Dodge or Power Toyota or somesuch:
"If you need a caaaar... truck or van...
Who ya gonna call? (Call Power!)"
The Ghostbusters theme?! That's your catchy hook? Are you freakin' kidding me? Don't get me wrong, Ghostbusters is a great movie, but it's 20 years old! By making this commercial, someone is telling me a round table of "ad wizards" couldn't come up with ANYTHING better than rehashing the Ghostbusters theme.
I weep for humanity. Or the subset that green-lights ideas for commercials.
The Great Ant Massacre of Aught-3
We're getting creamed by ants. Not really major trails, but lots of stragglers inside the house. So, yesterday evening, I set a decoy. I put some turkey lunch meat outside in the side yard. I checked back on it in the evening, and it was literally covered with ants. I thought it was a brown, dead leaf instead of a nice juicy piece of turkey. There was a nice big trail leading right back to their little hole, so I sprayed 'em with poison.
There were no survivors.
When I was a kid, and would step on ants, I used to picture an ant news report, with little ant families all gathered around watching, and hearing about the flood or flash of light from the giant magnifying glass in the sky or whatever. This was a black day in ant history, I tell you what.
Advertisments.
Again, I'm awestruck by an ad I heard on the radio. This one is for a car dealer called Power Dodge or Power Toyota or somesuch:
"If you need a caaaar... truck or van...
Who ya gonna call? (Call Power!)"
The Ghostbusters theme?! That's your catchy hook? Are you freakin' kidding me? Don't get me wrong, Ghostbusters is a great movie, but it's 20 years old! By making this commercial, someone is telling me a round table of "ad wizards" couldn't come up with ANYTHING better than rehashing the Ghostbusters theme.
I weep for humanity. Or the subset that green-lights ideas for commercials.
The Great Ant Massacre of Aught-3
We're getting creamed by ants. Not really major trails, but lots of stragglers inside the house. So, yesterday evening, I set a decoy. I put some turkey lunch meat outside in the side yard. I checked back on it in the evening, and it was literally covered with ants. I thought it was a brown, dead leaf instead of a nice juicy piece of turkey. There was a nice big trail leading right back to their little hole, so I sprayed 'em with poison.
There were no survivors.
When I was a kid, and would step on ants, I used to picture an ant news report, with little ant families all gathered around watching, and hearing about the flood or flash of light from the giant magnifying glass in the sky or whatever. This was a black day in ant history, I tell you what.
The weekend.
Letseee... what did I do this weekend? I hung out with Eryn. He showed me a game called "Combat Mission", which looks pretty neat. Basically a play-by-email WWII wargame. I gave him a brief rundown and demo of Nethack. It's really hard to show someone Nethack. In my opinion, the true appeal of the game really only presents itself after a couple hours of playing, and a lot of time pouring over the spoiler files, learning what happens when you eat a tengu corpse, or how to uncurse items, or why engraving with a wand is useful.
Saturday, Diana took her Big Math Test. Actually, 3 big math tests. Teachers who want to teach a particular subject need to prove their ability in that subject, either by passing a comprehensive set of tests, or waiving the test by meeting the requirements from their university. Since Diana's university is bass-ackwards, she couldn't waive it, and had to take the 3 tests. She's pretty sure she passed all three, and I couldn't be more proud. It sounded like a gnarly test, with calculus and statistics and proofs and number theory and other Hard Stuff. And when she was away taking this test, I was thinking to myself that while *I* think Diana's smart, I wondered if she really is as smart as I think she is. She called me after the test, and said that out of 90 multiple choice questions, and about a dozen short answer problems, she flat-out guessed on like 2 or 3. My doubt was quashed. Diana is that smart.
While she was gone, I worked on "the speaker problem". I want to put some speakers in the loft area above the living room, and run the wires down to my computer. I bought speakers (at the new Frys near my house. In-f'ing-credible!). I bought wire. I hooked the wire to my computer, and ran it into the wall and up into the crawlspace. The problem now is that I need to get the wire from the crawlspace above my office to the crawlspace next to the wall of the loft. That's about 25 feet through a hot, dusty, spiderweb-ridden, nails-poking-down-through-the-roof attic. One solution has be crawling up there, ubiqitous headlamp on, wire in my teeth. Crawling isn't even the right word, as there isn't even enough verticle space to crawl. More like an army style belly crawl. Dad and I came up with a better solution, involving a blowgun and double sided loops of duct tape (he was initially thinking peanut butter, which sounds cooler, but I think tape will work better).
Saturday night, me and D went out to dinner with Iwan and Baditude. In spite of waiting like an hour for a table, and the meal being pretty sub-par, I really had a great time. We didn't do anything but just sit around and talk, but it just really made me appreciate what good friends I have. Yay friends.
Sunday, me and D were going to see PotC, but it was sold out. So we went back to Frys for a little to return some extraneous stuff I'd bought, and look around. Then looked at furniture. Got some ice cream. Went to Home Depot to look for blowgun darts (!!!) among other things. D has had a really bad sore throat (and basically no speaking voice), which was too bad, so she came home, and I went to pick up my parents from the airport.
And that's the end of that!
Letseee... what did I do this weekend? I hung out with Eryn. He showed me a game called "Combat Mission", which looks pretty neat. Basically a play-by-email WWII wargame. I gave him a brief rundown and demo of Nethack. It's really hard to show someone Nethack. In my opinion, the true appeal of the game really only presents itself after a couple hours of playing, and a lot of time pouring over the spoiler files, learning what happens when you eat a tengu corpse, or how to uncurse items, or why engraving with a wand is useful.
Saturday, Diana took her Big Math Test. Actually, 3 big math tests. Teachers who want to teach a particular subject need to prove their ability in that subject, either by passing a comprehensive set of tests, or waiving the test by meeting the requirements from their university. Since Diana's university is bass-ackwards, she couldn't waive it, and had to take the 3 tests. She's pretty sure she passed all three, and I couldn't be more proud. It sounded like a gnarly test, with calculus and statistics and proofs and number theory and other Hard Stuff. And when she was away taking this test, I was thinking to myself that while *I* think Diana's smart, I wondered if she really is as smart as I think she is. She called me after the test, and said that out of 90 multiple choice questions, and about a dozen short answer problems, she flat-out guessed on like 2 or 3. My doubt was quashed. Diana is that smart.
While she was gone, I worked on "the speaker problem". I want to put some speakers in the loft area above the living room, and run the wires down to my computer. I bought speakers (at the new Frys near my house. In-f'ing-credible!). I bought wire. I hooked the wire to my computer, and ran it into the wall and up into the crawlspace. The problem now is that I need to get the wire from the crawlspace above my office to the crawlspace next to the wall of the loft. That's about 25 feet through a hot, dusty, spiderweb-ridden, nails-poking-down-through-the-roof attic. One solution has be crawling up there, ubiqitous headlamp on, wire in my teeth. Crawling isn't even the right word, as there isn't even enough verticle space to crawl. More like an army style belly crawl. Dad and I came up with a better solution, involving a blowgun and double sided loops of duct tape (he was initially thinking peanut butter, which sounds cooler, but I think tape will work better).
Saturday night, me and D went out to dinner with Iwan and Baditude. In spite of waiting like an hour for a table, and the meal being pretty sub-par, I really had a great time. We didn't do anything but just sit around and talk, but it just really made me appreciate what good friends I have. Yay friends.
Sunday, me and D were going to see PotC, but it was sold out. So we went back to Frys for a little to return some extraneous stuff I'd bought, and look around. Then looked at furniture. Got some ice cream. Went to Home Depot to look for blowgun darts (!!!) among other things. D has had a really bad sore throat (and basically no speaking voice), which was too bad, so she came home, and I went to pick up my parents from the airport.
And that's the end of that!
2003/07/18
Poker!
I'm beginning to really like poker. Like many other classic games (chess, CounterStrike, etc), it's very easy to learn, but there are a huge amount of subtleties that make it very difficult to master. And like those games, I think you get increasing enjoyment as you learn more and more about it.
Diana and I have been watching the World Poker Tour. It's gotten into the regular lineup, now, where we say "Oh, it's Wednesday night! WPT is on tonight!" and start watching from the beginning (as opposed to just flipping by it and watching for a little). It's fun, and I like that it's something that we both enjoy and are both about equally skilled at (debateable).
We played last night. Adman, Dster, M.Kyle, M.John, and Iwan. Buyin was $20. I think we'd all been watching poker a bit, and the game was a bit different than usual. Usually, pre-flop, everyone calls and sees the flop, and the game sort of starts from there. Last night, there was a lot more pre-flop raising and aggressive play going on, which made for some really exciting pots. One hand, the flop was KQA, and I had JT. Iwan bet, I raised all in, and he called. He also had JT, so we split it. But at times like those, man, my hands get all shaky and my heart starts pounding. It's really exciting.
The big hand for me of the night was as follows. M.John had gotten cleaned out and was dealing. I was dealt 66, and was in a late position. Iwan and Diana call to me, and I raise pretty big, hoping to just steal the pot right there. But Kyle calls, Iwan and Diana fold. Flops comes 644. I've got a huge full house. I bet really big, and Kyle calls. Turn comes 8. I'm getting sort of low on chips now, but bet even bigger. Kyle thinks for a moment, and says "I'm all in". At that point, the only thing he could have to beat me is a pair of 8's or a pair of 4's. I didn't think he had 'em, so I call his all in bet. He's got 55. Two pair against my full house, and nothing that comes on the river could help him. It was pretty lucky on my part, and bad luck on Kyle's that I happened to have that hand when he tried to bully me. He then went "on tilt" and starting going all in, seemingly wanting to either lose it all or double up and get back to even. Diana called him with an ace-high in her hand and an ace on the board, and he had nothing, and put him out of his misery.
Anyways, the night was tons of fun. I had my share of beats, but I ended up cashing out +$40, which was nice. I can't wait to play again!
I'm beginning to really like poker. Like many other classic games (chess, CounterStrike, etc), it's very easy to learn, but there are a huge amount of subtleties that make it very difficult to master. And like those games, I think you get increasing enjoyment as you learn more and more about it.
Diana and I have been watching the World Poker Tour. It's gotten into the regular lineup, now, where we say "Oh, it's Wednesday night! WPT is on tonight!" and start watching from the beginning (as opposed to just flipping by it and watching for a little). It's fun, and I like that it's something that we both enjoy and are both about equally skilled at (debateable).
We played last night. Adman, Dster, M.Kyle, M.John, and Iwan. Buyin was $20. I think we'd all been watching poker a bit, and the game was a bit different than usual. Usually, pre-flop, everyone calls and sees the flop, and the game sort of starts from there. Last night, there was a lot more pre-flop raising and aggressive play going on, which made for some really exciting pots. One hand, the flop was KQA, and I had JT. Iwan bet, I raised all in, and he called. He also had JT, so we split it. But at times like those, man, my hands get all shaky and my heart starts pounding. It's really exciting.
The big hand for me of the night was as follows. M.John had gotten cleaned out and was dealing. I was dealt 66, and was in a late position. Iwan and Diana call to me, and I raise pretty big, hoping to just steal the pot right there. But Kyle calls, Iwan and Diana fold. Flops comes 644. I've got a huge full house. I bet really big, and Kyle calls. Turn comes 8. I'm getting sort of low on chips now, but bet even bigger. Kyle thinks for a moment, and says "I'm all in". At that point, the only thing he could have to beat me is a pair of 8's or a pair of 4's. I didn't think he had 'em, so I call his all in bet. He's got 55. Two pair against my full house, and nothing that comes on the river could help him. It was pretty lucky on my part, and bad luck on Kyle's that I happened to have that hand when he tried to bully me. He then went "on tilt" and starting going all in, seemingly wanting to either lose it all or double up and get back to even. Diana called him with an ace-high in her hand and an ace on the board, and he had nothing, and put him out of his misery.
Anyways, the night was tons of fun. I had my share of beats, but I ended up cashing out +$40, which was nice. I can't wait to play again!
2003/07/15
I swear to God I should be a plumber.
I did some more reading on water hammer. There are little air pockets in the pipes that act as cushions (since air compresses) and dampen the shock when you turn the water off suddenly. These air spaces can fill with water over time, so they stop working. The solution to try is to turn off the water main, empty the whole house of water (thus recreating the air pockets), and turn the water back on again. I did this. And it worked. No more banging pipes.
I hate plumbers.
Ok, I'm done with that now. I did feel incredibly manly turning the hot water on and off, though, and listening to the not-sound of it all.
I did some more reading on water hammer. There are little air pockets in the pipes that act as cushions (since air compresses) and dampen the shock when you turn the water off suddenly. These air spaces can fill with water over time, so they stop working. The solution to try is to turn off the water main, empty the whole house of water (thus recreating the air pockets), and turn the water back on again. I did this. And it worked. No more banging pipes.
I hate plumbers.
Ok, I'm done with that now. I did feel incredibly manly turning the hot water on and off, though, and listening to the not-sound of it all.
The Plumber
I hate every plumber I've ever met. That's only like two, and one I only spoke to on the phone, but still.
Intrepid readers will remember that soon after we moved into our house, we had some interesting water issues. You might remember a struggle in the middle of the night when the hot water of the shower wouldn't turn off, and the handle was completely loose in its socket. I unscrewed the handle, and when it got loose, it shot out of the wall and hot water went spraying into the shower from where the handle used to be.
So, we contacted two plumbers. One of them wanted to sell me a $30 part for something like $100 and also, of course, get paid to installed it. The second plumber actually wanted to tear down the entire wall to replace the innards of the shower simply because he didn't have the right valve. In other words, imagine that you have a lightbulb that burned out. Normally, you'd unscrew the old one, and screw in the new one. And if you didn't have a new one that fit that socket, you'd go and buy it and then screw it in. This guy wanted to tear down the entire wall to replace the socket. I finally was able to coax out of him that all I really needed to do was find a replacement valve and I could probably replace it myself.
Fast forward to recent times, with the showerhead that broke off. We called the plumbers again (through our home insurance policy provided by the seller), and they sent out the same guy who wanted to tear down the wall. I opened the door, and said (in a very Jeff Spicoli type of way) "Heyyyy... I know you!". He remembered me, too, and made some crack about seeing if he can fix things without tearing down the wall or something. Anyways, he was able to remove the piece of pipe stuck in the socket, and install the new shower pipe (that we provided) and head. I noticed that he coated the threads of the pipe with some thick gray stuff which probably means that pipe is now permanently bonded in there. Or maybe it's just water tight goo.
Anyways, I was pleased with the job that he did, and he seemed pleased to be able to help. I mentioned to him that I was able to find a valve for the shower, and replace it myself. He gave a look of (I'm guessing feigned) mild shock, and didn't ask much more about it.
I asked him about the water hammer (the clunking in the pipes when the water is turned off suddenly). He didn't seem to know much about it (he's not, shall we say, outspoken), but thought it might be air trapped in the pipes. He suggested I turn on all the water in the house and that the air might work its way out. This sort of directly contradicts the cause (and solution, actually) that I read online, which is that there ISN'T any air in the pipes, and to drain the whole house of water to basically create a bubble in the hammer arrestor. I think we'll just be gentle with the handles for now.
*sigh*
I hate every plumber I've ever met. That's only like two, and one I only spoke to on the phone, but still.
Intrepid readers will remember that soon after we moved into our house, we had some interesting water issues. You might remember a struggle in the middle of the night when the hot water of the shower wouldn't turn off, and the handle was completely loose in its socket. I unscrewed the handle, and when it got loose, it shot out of the wall and hot water went spraying into the shower from where the handle used to be.
So, we contacted two plumbers. One of them wanted to sell me a $30 part for something like $100 and also, of course, get paid to installed it. The second plumber actually wanted to tear down the entire wall to replace the innards of the shower simply because he didn't have the right valve. In other words, imagine that you have a lightbulb that burned out. Normally, you'd unscrew the old one, and screw in the new one. And if you didn't have a new one that fit that socket, you'd go and buy it and then screw it in. This guy wanted to tear down the entire wall to replace the socket. I finally was able to coax out of him that all I really needed to do was find a replacement valve and I could probably replace it myself.
Fast forward to recent times, with the showerhead that broke off. We called the plumbers again (through our home insurance policy provided by the seller), and they sent out the same guy who wanted to tear down the wall. I opened the door, and said (in a very Jeff Spicoli type of way) "Heyyyy... I know you!". He remembered me, too, and made some crack about seeing if he can fix things without tearing down the wall or something. Anyways, he was able to remove the piece of pipe stuck in the socket, and install the new shower pipe (that we provided) and head. I noticed that he coated the threads of the pipe with some thick gray stuff which probably means that pipe is now permanently bonded in there. Or maybe it's just water tight goo.
Anyways, I was pleased with the job that he did, and he seemed pleased to be able to help. I mentioned to him that I was able to find a valve for the shower, and replace it myself. He gave a look of (I'm guessing feigned) mild shock, and didn't ask much more about it.
I asked him about the water hammer (the clunking in the pipes when the water is turned off suddenly). He didn't seem to know much about it (he's not, shall we say, outspoken), but thought it might be air trapped in the pipes. He suggested I turn on all the water in the house and that the air might work its way out. This sort of directly contradicts the cause (and solution, actually) that I read online, which is that there ISN'T any air in the pipes, and to drain the whole house of water to basically create a bubble in the hammer arrestor. I think we'll just be gentle with the handles for now.
*sigh*
2003/07/12
Montana rocks...
The travelling went well. We got in yesterday late afternoon, and were pretty beat. We hung around the house.
Today, we had some lunch and went fishing! I caught 5 fish. A couple little guys, and a couple bigger guys (two 6 and one 10 incher). Yay me.
Gotta scoot. Mom needs to use the phone. I'm posting over a phone line?! What is this, the dark ages?
The travelling went well. We got in yesterday late afternoon, and were pretty beat. We hung around the house.
Today, we had some lunch and went fishing! I caught 5 fish. A couple little guys, and a couple bigger guys (two 6 and one 10 incher). Yay me.
Gotta scoot. Mom needs to use the phone. I'm posting over a phone line?! What is this, the dark ages?
2003/07/11
2003/07/10
Well, it finally happened.
Someone I know (a work boy) found my blog on his very own, without me explicitly telling them about it.
It's not like this is a secret hidden page or anything. If you search for my name, I think it's the first link that comes up. When I've written stuff, I've left out juicy stuff that I wouldn't want the general public to know about. I haven't talked about anyone behind their back or anything.
And now, I'm feeling glad that I didn't. I'm not a real gossipy or vindictive person or anything, but it would be so easy to write a story about an ex-girlfriend, or mention a co-worker who did something dumb, or something like that. It would also be eay to write more personaly stuff here than I'd like the general world to know about. And when someone unexpected tells me they found this site, it just reinforces the fact that everything written here is totally public, and probably going to be cached for all time in the UberBrain that is Google. (If there is ever going to be a Terminator-esque "rise of the machines", it shall be Google at the forefront).
I learned this lesson a while ago when I posted some news about someone on what I THOUGHT was a private message board. I haven't forgotten the moment when I discovered that she'd found my post and angrily posted back, pissed that I'd aired her dirty laundry (she didn't SAY it was a secret...).
So, lesson reinforced.
(This all makes it sound like I would have written terrible things about my specific work boy that found the site, which isn't true at all. I'm talking about the general case here, people!)
Someone I know (a work boy) found my blog on his very own, without me explicitly telling them about it.
It's not like this is a secret hidden page or anything. If you search for my name, I think it's the first link that comes up. When I've written stuff, I've left out juicy stuff that I wouldn't want the general public to know about. I haven't talked about anyone behind their back or anything.
And now, I'm feeling glad that I didn't. I'm not a real gossipy or vindictive person or anything, but it would be so easy to write a story about an ex-girlfriend, or mention a co-worker who did something dumb, or something like that. It would also be eay to write more personaly stuff here than I'd like the general world to know about. And when someone unexpected tells me they found this site, it just reinforces the fact that everything written here is totally public, and probably going to be cached for all time in the UberBrain that is Google. (If there is ever going to be a Terminator-esque "rise of the machines", it shall be Google at the forefront).
I learned this lesson a while ago when I posted some news about someone on what I THOUGHT was a private message board. I haven't forgotten the moment when I discovered that she'd found my post and angrily posted back, pissed that I'd aired her dirty laundry (she didn't SAY it was a secret...).
So, lesson reinforced.
(This all makes it sound like I would have written terrible things about my specific work boy that found the site, which isn't true at all. I'm talking about the general case here, people!)
2003/07/09
Adman vs. The Cricket (aka "The Little Fucker" (yeah, that's right))
A play in 4 acts
Prologue:
I don't hate crickets. I frequently appreciate their melodic chirping and the images of nature and wilderness that they bring to mind. However, if I'm trying to sleep, and there is one too close to me and too loud, it can be pretty frusterating. In my old apartment, I remember coming out in the middle of the night to one merrily chirping about 3 inches from my dishwasher. Of course, when I came closer, it scurried underneath and wasn't to be seen until the next night. At that time, I pounced on it, and left it trapped under a glass to be dealt with the next morning. Next morning came, and he was extinguished with Windex (aka, 'Spragg's All Purpose Bug Spray')
Act I (a few nights ago):
I'm lying in bed. Diana's next to me. We've finished our evening discussion of the days events and whatnot, and are in the quiet falling asleep phase of the night. But right outside my window is a cricket. He's loud. Actually surprisingly loud. And rhythmic, and I just know I'm not going to be able to sleep. I announce with vigor that I'm going to go get him. Diana scoffs gently, saying I'd never catch him. We made a "gentleman's bet", and I donned my ubiqitous headlamp, and head out into the wilderness.
The hunt is on. I walk quietly. Any loud step, and he shuts up, and I have to stand statue still for a full couple minutes before he starts up again. I grow impatient, cold (I'm mostly naked out here!) and head back to the warm safety of bed (after shutting the window).
Act II (the next night):
Very much like Act I. Fully in bed and ready for sleep before making the decision to engage in The Hunt. However, this time, I'm able to creep up on the little guy close enough that by the time he hears me and shuts up, I can actually see him. He's face first into the stalks of some bushes, his little butt in the air, poised for sweet music. I go for him, but he quickly crawls down amongst the roots of the bush, and out of sight and grasp. I'm dissapointed and heartened at the same time: I didn't catch him, but I got closer. I run inside and related the details to Diana. She's mildly impressed.
Act III (the night following):
This time, I hear the little guy as I'm getting ready for bed. My ears are attuned to his chirp and location. I don the headlamp again, and set out. This time, I'm able to, with surprising accuracy, pinpoint his location. It's actually really impressive how our ears can detect the direction from which a sound is eminating. I pull back the cover of some brush, and there he his, frozen in my light! He looks up at me, knowing that the jig is up! I pounce (wondering if crickets bite, or if they have sharp things on them that will poke me). I get my hands over him, but he wriggles free, and jumps on me (which I can only assume was his way of showing off), and then away. Most non-triumphant. Again, I relate my story to Diana and receive adequate encouragement and comments about my cuteness.
Act IV (tonight):
Diana's doing homework. I'm vacuuming. I'm working on the bedroom, and I hear him. I swear to god he's taunting me. I finally give in, grab the headlamp, and head outside. The headlamp batteries are low. I can pinpoint his location, but when I sweep away the brush, I don't see him. The light seriously fades in like 3 seconds from semi-bright to empty at this point. Crap. I go inside and get the mini-mag light with fresh batteries. Aww yeah. By the time I get out there, he's starting a cautious chirp. I take small steps, so as not to lose my balance, and I'm able to get as close as I can without him stopping. This time, I brought a glass with me. I get close, sweep back the bush, and he's there! No time to think, and I trap him with the glass! I shine the light in there, and there he is! Pressing his little face against the glass, knowing that he's finally caught. It would be so easy at this point for him to wriggle out if I wasn't careful. I drag the glass towards me, and that gathers a layer of loose dirt inside the glass, which makes it easy to scoop my hand under.
I immediately run inside and show Diana (still doing homework on the computer). She's very impressed, and encourages me to let him go somewhere in the front yard. Which I do. When I let him go, I put him on my hand, sit down, and let him crawl on my leg. We share a moment, both of us reminiscing the cat-and-mouse game we each love to hate and hate to love. After a moment, he makes a break for it into the front yard bushes. I let him go.
Epilogue:
I learned some things over the past few nights. I don't like being kept awake when I want and need to sleep. Cricket chirps can be muffled with surprisingly few blanket covers over your ears. Human ears are surprisingly good at pinpointing an invisible sound source.
"Who's house? Run's house!
Who's house? Run's house!"
I'm out.
A play in 4 acts
Prologue:
I don't hate crickets. I frequently appreciate their melodic chirping and the images of nature and wilderness that they bring to mind. However, if I'm trying to sleep, and there is one too close to me and too loud, it can be pretty frusterating. In my old apartment, I remember coming out in the middle of the night to one merrily chirping about 3 inches from my dishwasher. Of course, when I came closer, it scurried underneath and wasn't to be seen until the next night. At that time, I pounced on it, and left it trapped under a glass to be dealt with the next morning. Next morning came, and he was extinguished with Windex (aka, 'Spragg's All Purpose Bug Spray')
Act I (a few nights ago):
I'm lying in bed. Diana's next to me. We've finished our evening discussion of the days events and whatnot, and are in the quiet falling asleep phase of the night. But right outside my window is a cricket. He's loud. Actually surprisingly loud. And rhythmic, and I just know I'm not going to be able to sleep. I announce with vigor that I'm going to go get him. Diana scoffs gently, saying I'd never catch him. We made a "gentleman's bet", and I donned my ubiqitous headlamp, and head out into the wilderness.
The hunt is on. I walk quietly. Any loud step, and he shuts up, and I have to stand statue still for a full couple minutes before he starts up again. I grow impatient, cold (I'm mostly naked out here!) and head back to the warm safety of bed (after shutting the window).
Act II (the next night):
Very much like Act I. Fully in bed and ready for sleep before making the decision to engage in The Hunt. However, this time, I'm able to creep up on the little guy close enough that by the time he hears me and shuts up, I can actually see him. He's face first into the stalks of some bushes, his little butt in the air, poised for sweet music. I go for him, but he quickly crawls down amongst the roots of the bush, and out of sight and grasp. I'm dissapointed and heartened at the same time: I didn't catch him, but I got closer. I run inside and related the details to Diana. She's mildly impressed.
Act III (the night following):
This time, I hear the little guy as I'm getting ready for bed. My ears are attuned to his chirp and location. I don the headlamp again, and set out. This time, I'm able to, with surprising accuracy, pinpoint his location. It's actually really impressive how our ears can detect the direction from which a sound is eminating. I pull back the cover of some brush, and there he his, frozen in my light! He looks up at me, knowing that the jig is up! I pounce (wondering if crickets bite, or if they have sharp things on them that will poke me). I get my hands over him, but he wriggles free, and jumps on me (which I can only assume was his way of showing off), and then away. Most non-triumphant. Again, I relate my story to Diana and receive adequate encouragement and comments about my cuteness.
Act IV (tonight):
Diana's doing homework. I'm vacuuming. I'm working on the bedroom, and I hear him. I swear to god he's taunting me. I finally give in, grab the headlamp, and head outside. The headlamp batteries are low. I can pinpoint his location, but when I sweep away the brush, I don't see him. The light seriously fades in like 3 seconds from semi-bright to empty at this point. Crap. I go inside and get the mini-mag light with fresh batteries. Aww yeah. By the time I get out there, he's starting a cautious chirp. I take small steps, so as not to lose my balance, and I'm able to get as close as I can without him stopping. This time, I brought a glass with me. I get close, sweep back the bush, and he's there! No time to think, and I trap him with the glass! I shine the light in there, and there he is! Pressing his little face against the glass, knowing that he's finally caught. It would be so easy at this point for him to wriggle out if I wasn't careful. I drag the glass towards me, and that gathers a layer of loose dirt inside the glass, which makes it easy to scoop my hand under.
I immediately run inside and show Diana (still doing homework on the computer). She's very impressed, and encourages me to let him go somewhere in the front yard. Which I do. When I let him go, I put him on my hand, sit down, and let him crawl on my leg. We share a moment, both of us reminiscing the cat-and-mouse game we each love to hate and hate to love. After a moment, he makes a break for it into the front yard bushes. I let him go.
Epilogue:
I learned some things over the past few nights. I don't like being kept awake when I want and need to sleep. Cricket chirps can be muffled with surprisingly few blanket covers over your ears. Human ears are surprisingly good at pinpointing an invisible sound source.
"Who's house? Run's house!
Who's house? Run's house!"
I'm out.
2003/07/08
When I was 13, I went to an all boys summer camp. One of the highlights of the summer was an afternoon social event with the girls camp. The activities ended with a dance in the evening. I have a very specific memory of The Fat Girl at the dance. When you're 13, it's not hard to pick out The Fat Girls in the crowd and avoid eye contact with her. I remember walking out of the dance and around the building a little bit to get some fresh air and cool down, and I walked near The Fat Girl and her friend (not fat). She was crying, clearly upset that she wasn't getting any boy attention. I vividly remember clearly hearing her plead "Just for one night, I wish I looked like Miss America... just once!" It was pretty heartbreaking, even for a shallow 13 year old. I looked away and kept walking.
I sometimes think back to that moment, and think about how I should have asked her to dance. I would have taken heat for it from my friends, that's for damn sure. But in the end, I think it might have been worth it.
I sometimes think back to that moment, and think about how I should have asked her to dance. I would have taken heat for it from my friends, that's for damn sure. But in the end, I think it might have been worth it.
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