Why can't I have a cool license plate like the Missouri one I saw today that said "414 WTF"? No, mine has to say "NOB" on it. :P I should get a personalized one. I'm taking votes on the following:

JDI KNGT ('cause JEDI, JDI MSTR, JEDI KNT and SITH are all taken already)
BITE ME
CTHULHU
RIVEN
IMMORTL
NICE GUY

Not mine. My friend Jennifer M. (I have to add the initial like we're in first grade because I have more than one friend named Jennifer) is celebrating today by . . . being sick. Which isn't much of a birthday. But it's better than . . . you know, I was going to come up with something worse, but with my luck just as soon as I said it she'd experience it and then she'd be mad at me, so just wish her a happy birthday and leave it at that. ;)

Labels: birthdays

Moved to the Essays section. :)

< science geek >

Woo! An entire galaxy made of dark matter.

< /science geek >

We return you now to your regular programming.

"Okay, can I go to the bathroom now?!"

-The girl at the drive-through window of Taco Bell tonight, overheard as I was pulling away after I noticed that she seemed really enthusiastic about finishing my order quickly.

Labels: overheard

Although still technically within the confines of my "Monday" (as I continue my protestations against the arbitrary solar schedule and my crusade for things nocturnal), I concede that it is, according to "official" time-keeping, just over the horizon into Tuesday, and thus I will "play nice" and title the post appropriately. At this point, however, I have yet to experience anything of note on Tuesday (unless one cares to note the fact that I had a light bulb in my garage door opener burn out for the *third* time in a month-and-a-half), so I'm forced to reminisce about the past, thus returning to Monday in a roundabout, synaptic way.

Working in roughly reverse chronological order (because, really, who says the arrow of time has to go forward; okay, who besides Einstein, Hawking and Greene?):

Work today was the busiest I've seen it in, well, awhile. Which is both good and bad. Job security and all that jazz.

I got my hair cut. About damn time.

Saturn, < sarcasm > that great bastion of automotive excellence < /sarcasm >, charged me $120 to tell me that they can't figure out why my engine is idling funny and to bring it back if it gets worse. I'm taking up a collection to buy myself a Prius.

I was remarkably unproductive over the weekend, although I did go to NFM to look for a dining room table that I've decided I can't afford right now, met a couple of new friends (*wave*) and bought a kick-ass rolling pin to replace the one I ruined in the dish washer. *happy baker's dance of joy*

I'm working on seizing the moment. :)

On tap on my computer today, 18 new Sarah Mclachlan songs (a live Afterglow album and three songs from other albums, including a rendition of "Rainbow Connection" - yes, the Kermit song) and the first season of MacGyver on DVD.

Sarah just goes without saying. One of my friends recently suggested Sarah's male fanbase may be slightly "cultish," but I ignored her because she didn't know the secret password. I should fly to LA and go to one of her concerts. We can do that on the way to Cancun.

As for MacGyver, he's my homeboy. (Okay, okay, I can't actually say that without looking like a dork.) The show came out when I was about 10 (I think) and I watched it every day after school (it was such a *perfect* show for me). Much to my mother's dismay. I'm sure she'd rather I not have tried "MacGyvering" things (yes, you can use that as a verb). Between the stitches because I tried to open a stuck bottle of cough syrup with a *pipe wrench* (it would have worked if the glass had been stronger) and the holes in my school clothes from the time I made hydrogen balloons using old zinc canning lids and battery acid (boy did *that* go over well), it's amazing my mother ever left me unsupervised. The thing, though, is that I was never intentionally destructive. I was just curious. I usually broke things trying to figure out how they worked. (Case in point: My dad was just a *little* unhappy when I discovered that a pinto bean will just exactly fit inside the inner die of a reloading press for rifle shells. Whoops.)


P.S. - It's *really* cool when you put an ice cube in an industrial deep-fat fryer. Trust me.

I read an interesting article today about living in the moment. It's actual quite technical (equations and variables and various abstracts), but the gist of it is that, in the author's opinion, optimally we should be spending 12.5% of our time in the past, 75% in the moment and 12.5% in the future. He says that we actually spend more like 47.5% in the past (dwelling on past mistakes, missed opportunities and losses and former triumphs) and 47.5% in the future (worrying and stressing about what is to happen and what will come), with only 5% in the moment. He thinks we need to use the past only to learn from example and remember pleasant times, and think about the future only to make plans and anticipate fun things to come. The rest of the time should be spent in the now.

I have an oil painting of the Milky Way Galaxy over my office chair. I tell them that this is a representation of our home galaxy, that there are estimated to be between 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and that our sun and our solar system with its nine planets would be in one of the outer arms of this painting. . . . I explain that it would take light traveling at 186,000 miles per second 100,000 years to get from one end of our galaxy to the other and that there are estimated to be one hundred billion galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each of them. To get a better understanding of what all these billions mean, astronomers tell us that there are more comets, planets, and stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on the earth. I explain: "So the next time you are at the beach, put your finger in the sand and then look at the grains on its tip. Let one of these grains represent the earth. Then brush it off and ask yourself, "Is this catastrophic?" Given this reality, is it really so awful that ketchup went up twenty-seven cents or that your lover did not call last night?"

. . .

Walt Whitman suggested the Latin phrase carpe diem ("seize the day") as a dictum to live by. Actually, a better dictum would be carpe momentum--"seize the moment." If you cannot enjoy the moment, right here, right now, then you probably cannot and won't enjoy life. . . . In an average lifetime of 75.5 years, you will have . . . approximately 2.4 billion seconds-and that's it! Use them well.

Kind of New Agey, I know, but it's something I need to practice more. :) There's not much point in life if you're not having fun. Who wants to go to Cancun with me?

Someone wants to buy this for me (yes they do). It's a hand-crafted lamp designed to look like an artifact from one of the Myst games, a floating, glowing crystal tethered to a piece of sandstone by a chain. It'd look great in my living room. Come on, I know you want to . . .

Since the grand event known to the masses as the purchase of my humble abode, I don't watch television anymore. This has more to do with the fact that my television is in my living room and my computer is in my bedroom (and I'd rather be on the computer than sitting in front of the television) than it does with any great plan of mine to reduce my idle hours. If I ever buy a small television to go in my bedroom next to the computer, I'll probably start watching again.

The sole exceptions to the above statement are the Friday night SciFi lineup (Stargate and Atlantis, and I've watched a couple of episodes of Battlestar Galactica), MythBusters and a show on the Discovery Channel called It Takes a Thief (all of which I tape and watch later). I've become hooked on the latter, to the point where Lisa starts laughing when I bring it up at work. Basically, it's a "reality" show starring two reformed burglars (Matt, the friendly one, who is now a school teacher, and Jon, the standoffish one, who is now a private detective). The two pick a house to target, then Matt talks to the owners to see if they'll let Jon try to break in. There's a quick walkthrough of the house to show its state of security and then the camera crew installs cameras bloody everywhere and the owners go with Matt to a van outside before Matt calls Jon and tells him "Go" (so Jon has no info about the house or the owners). Then the owners watch as Jon breaks into their house and steals pretty much whatever he wants (and it's a violent process; breaking things, ripping up mattresses, kicking in doors). They time it to show how long it takes, and after he leaves Matt and the owners go survey the damage (in the last one he got about $15,000 of stuff plus a BMW in the garage in under 10 minutes). Then Matt spends a week with some security contractors "burglar-proofing" the house (new locks, safes, advice to the owners, etc.) and at some random time in the next two weeks Jon tries to break in again (with Matt and a camera crew following him) to test it.

I don't know what the appeal is, but I find the show fascinating. And it has a dose of humor, too (mostly in the gamesmanship of the two, one trying to defend the house and the other trying to break in). In the first one I saw, after trying various windows and doors, Jon bet Matt $40 the front door was unlocked . . . and it was; the owner came home to find the two of them drinking his beer at his kitchen table. It's also pretty educational (real former thieves and security experts giving advice, etc.). In most of the cases, Jon manages to get in because the owners leave a door unlocked or a window open rather than through force, so the show stresses that the human component is as or more important than the hardware component. It's shown me some things I need to do, but you'll forgive me for not listing them on a public forum. ;)

Matt: Wow, this BMW is sweet. What is that, $30,000?
Owner: $36,000.
Matt: And let me guess, the keys for this are on a peg in the kitchen?
Owner: *embarrassed laugh* Yeah, there is a set there, but it's probably just easier to use the set that's in the ignition.

That's a tough decision.

To celebrate, hot of the presses (and out of the oven) comes a new recipe (this should make Tim happy). Enjoy.

In addition to being Valentine's Day, it's also V-Day, the main awareness day of the global movement to stop violence against women (and one of my charities). So go rent "The Vagina Monologues" and take a moment to reflect. (I may or may not post more on this later, depending on whether I think of something to say.)

I'm short a candle-lit dinner this year, so I'm celebrating Valentine's Day by giving blood instead (get it, Valentine's Day, hearts, blood . . . okay, bad pun, but good charity).

I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's Day. :)

It's raining. :) I actually like rain, so that's okay. Rain doesn't make drifts.

After sleeping 11 hours on Thursday night and 13 hours (?!) on Friday night, I'm feeling much better. It was really odd to go to bed when it was dark and wake up again when it was dark. I'm not used to waking up to a dark house. I think I'll be back to normal (whatever that is) tomorrow. :) Just in time to do my laundry. Yay.

I'm not feeling well. So if it seems like I'm ignoring you, well, I probably am. I'm just not feeling well while I'm doing it.

I needed to go to the grocery store on the way home tonight, which took me away from my normal route home and through a speed trap set up by the Omaha Police Department on Dodge in front of UNO. As I drove past I spotted two police cars with their lights off in a driveway to the north of UNO and farther ahead a third police car that had already pulled over a car. At the time I was doing roughly 38 (in a 35 zone), and as I drove past one of the two police cars pulled out, turned on its headlights and drove up behind me (the words I was using at the time aren't really suitable for printing here). Through a twist, however, I avoided a ticket. How, you may ask, with some degree of entitlement? The police car that drove up behind me then pulled around me, zoomed up ahead and pulled over the SUV in front of me that had, two stop lights previously, impatiently pulled around me and back into my lane, thereby driving through the speed trap first. Since we were going roughly the same speed, he likely saved me from a ticket.

I drove back through the trap on the way home from the grocery store (doing 3 mph below the speed limit) and they had another car pulled over, this time with the driver handcuffed behind his car (he probably shouldn't go buy a lottery ticket).

I need to take some photography lessons. This makes my stuff look really simple.

Bleh.

I finally saw Blade: Trinity tonight at the dollar theater (which is actually $2), and all I can say is that I'm glad I didn't spend $7 on it when it first came out. What a disappointment. And Mike and I have agreed that the next director who casts a professional wrestler in a movie needs to be shot. Granted they're actors, but they're not actor-actors. They left the ending open to a fourth movie, but honestly I think this franchise has run out of steam.

But only because I actually did things today (today being Saturday, even though the post is dated Sunday, since it's technically my "Saturday night" still - everyone would be so much happier if they went to my schedule, I'm telling you).

I actually made a post in my house blog (which pretty much speaks for itself).

I spent $70 on cheap bookshelves at Shopko today (and I need to go back and get one more to make a matching set in the spare room), so I have shelving like you wouldn't believe now. I guess I'll have to go buy some new books. Hopefully eventually I'll be able to afford nice bookshelves (that actually have some sort of real wood content in them), but for now I'll have to settle for particle board (which is like the soy of the wood world; just press it into whatever shape you want and color it like the real thing). I'll have to ventilate the room they're in for awhile, though (Lisa pointed out they give off icky fumes for awhile).

I did some impromptu tech support for my little sister's computer (although just for future reference, Hay, 11:30 a.m. for me is like 4 a.m. for you, and "I don't know if I have a network card" isn't an emergency). My family is finally getting DSL (yay!). After they get a USB adapter, anyway. Haley said the tech guy she talked to after she talked to me said that the DSL modem will hook up to the computer through USB at the same speed as it would through a network card, which seems kind of "iffy" to me (I wonder if he's not talking about USB 2.0 specifically and not USB 1.1, which is what my family has). I guess we'll see. If it's slower, I'll just install a network card the next time I'm around their computer.

In my ongoing quest to prove that I'm a genius, I added not one but two entries to the list tonight. First I cooked a frozen pizza in the oven without removing it from the cardboard disc from underneath it (and there's nothing quite so appealing as the smell of pizza and burning laminated cardboard). So that pizza went in the trash (the pizza itself ended up smelling like plastic). Then, while picking up after assembling my bookshelves, I picked up my radio, my hammer and a half-full glass of peach ice tea (with ice cubes), then tucked them under one arm while I bent down to pick up the cordless screwdriver. At that point I had a first-hand and very impressive demonstration of gravity and fluid dynamics as the peach tea decided to travel to a lower elevation. So I spent an unplanned twenty minutes mopping up tea and cleaning out the radio as best I could. I should have filmed it.

Is It Thursday Already?

Rapid fire here, people. Keep up.

I watched the State of the Union Address live (CSPAN broadcast it live on the Internet and I multitasked while at work; shame on me). I'll keep my summary short: bleh. To both sides. I was as unimpressed with the Democrats as I was with the President. Bleh (sorry, it bore repeating). 'Nuff said.

My computer is still irritating me. I need a sentient one that can fix itself. Except then it would probably make little "tsk"ing sounds and flash little frowny icons when I spent too much money on something or bought something of which it didn't approve. So maybe I'm better off with inanimate plastic. (I left myself way open with that last one, Cris. Go to town.)

I sprained my thumb at work today putting on a shoe. It can't even be something manly like holding open the elevator for someone or playing racquetball. No, I did it while putting on a shoe. Oddly enough, it doesn't hurt and I have full motion; it's just really swollen. I'm waiting for my healing factor to kick in. Any minute now . . . Really . . .

I flipped through iTunes' Valentine's Day albums (assembled by picking individual songs from various singers and putting them together in one album) tonight. They had two "Gay Pride" albums, one for Boys and one for Girls. I had one of the 25 songs on the Boys album ("You Spin Me 'Round (Like a Record)" by Dead or Alive). I had frelling eleven of the 25 on the Girls album (and only one of those was a Sarah song). The Indigo Girls, Diana Krall, Beth Orton, Bif Naked, Shawn Colvin. Cris is right, I was supposed to be a lesbian . . .

Something kind of bittersweet: here's a collection of phenomenal pictures taken by the Hubble. Unfortunately, it looks like Hubble is going to die in the next two years for lack of funding for a repair mission, and the next generation space telescope isn't set to be launched until 2011.

I saw a police car parked around the corner from my house on my way home. Unfortunately for him, the guy behind me didn't (those stop signs aren't suggestions, people). I hadn't even closed my garage door before the cop pulled him over in front of my house, then got out of his car and walked up to the guy's window to direct him to pull around the corner because you can't park in front of my house (no parking on either side of that street). I'm sure they did it all just to entertain me at 1 a.m. I wonder what the penalty is for running a stop sign.

Wednesday Wanderings

I updated my license today. I didn't renew it (because it doesn't expire for another 11 months), but I had to go update the address (technically I was supposed to do it within 60 days of moving, so I missed it by about a week). There must be something in the air at City buildings that just saps the strength of the employees who reside therein, 'cause I have yet to meet a cheerful employee at the DMV or the County Treasurer. I made an effort to be super friendly and the woman behind the counter still acted like a walking pre-recorded message. But, I managed to get one of the fancy new licenses without much trouble. Hopefully my voter registration will transfer smoothly. I was also happy to see the new licenses have a little heart on the front for organ donors (and an option to donate a buck to organ donation awareness on the form). This is a good thing.

< geek >
I watched "Alien vs. Predator" for the first time over the weekend. I bought it at Wal-Mart ('cause the package looked cool and because I haven't figured out where the nearest Blockbuster is yet), from the "1 for $14.95, 2 for $24.95" display (I'm not sure how successful that is; they're not like bananas or shoes - you really only need one). The movie itself was kind of . . . there. It wasn't horrible, and there were some good parts, but it was never gripping, I never really cared about the characters (my favorite character bit it pretty early on) and there were some plot holes and inconsistencies with the previous films. My biggest gripe, though, was how they completely ripped off Stargate. :P Let's see, we have some technologically advanced aliens who come to a "backwater" planet and teach humans how to build, then use them as cattle while pretending to be gods (and use the pyramids as landing pads for their space craft), then infest the humans with small reptilian creatures. Fast forward 6,000 years to when brilliant young archeologists discover alien technology embedded inside ancient pyramids. Bleh. The whole scene showing the ships landing on the pyramids while the Predators lorded over the humans would have fit right into Stargate. They even have scary masks and staff weapons like the Jaffa. Of course, the Jaffa don't bleed in luminescent green blood . . .
< /geek >

I'm being amused by the self-checkout lanes at Wal-Mart. I've figured out how to do fruits and vegetables on them, and it's actually kind of funny. You put the produce on the scanner, then push a button on the touch screen to bring up an alphabetized pictorial list of every fruit and vegetable the store sells. Then you push the picture of the item on the scanner. And then it talks to you. "Please enter the number of . . . kiwi . . . on the scanner." "Please put your . . . kiwi . . . in the bag." The actual item name was recorded separately from the rest of the sentence and the computer just splices them together, but it's jarring enough (and the woman's voice stresses the item so much) that it's comical. And the bloody thing is loud. It's probably a good thing it's only for produce. "Please put your . . . hemorrhoid cream . . . in the bag."

Weekend Update, Kind of Late

Direct from the request line, a post about . . . me. I haven't posted anything about me recently (a fact pointed out by more than one person), mostly because, well, I'm dull. :) I haven't been in any accidents, I haven't been laid off and, as far as I know, there aren't any outstanding warrants in my name. The house is pretty much the same (my enthusiasm goes way down when it's cold, and I've blocked off parts of the house in an attempt to keep the heating bills down). I've done a little unpacking and finally painted the trim in my spare bedroom, but other than that I've been remarkably unproductive. I actually purchased some insulation to go in my attic, but for some odd reason it hasn't installed itself yet, so it's still in a pile in the basement (the nerve!). Once it warms up again I need to paint the dining room and hallway and start hanging posters/pictures. I did buy some kick-ass switchplate covers that look pretty slick (yes, from a site called MyKnobs.com; insert your joke here).

Work is the same. I'd talk about a certain highest-ranking Executive Branch person visiting the area this week and the likely effect on traffic downtown, except that if I do I'll get a visit by a certain security agency, which is something not to be encouraged. :)

My mom e-mailed me over the weekend to point out that it's been a full year since I was diagnosed with epilepsy and congratulated me on adjusting to it well (at this point it's only a minor hassle to make sure I take my medication). I'd just as soon not have it, of course, but in the long run I'm not bad off.

I've had a couple of annoyances lately (I wouldn't call them problems, since I life in a first-world country and own my own house; I have very few actual problems). My computer has been having odd Internet problems. It will work fine for awhile, then start acting like it's having trouble connecting (pages load slow, connections drop, etc.). I thought it was the service, but Cox sent me a little program to measure upload/download speeds and it keeps saying the service is fine, so either the cable modem is going bad or the computer itself is having difficulty (although I've run every single diagnostic program I can think of without turning up any problems). Short of reinstalling Windows (and what a pain in the ass that is), I'm not sure what to do. I'd rather remove all the hair from my body with duct tape (that's one from the archives, just for Jamie).

I also got my very first letter from a collection agency today. :P Don't ask me why. Some agency in California is trying to collect $35 from me for someone (all it says is "Ebay," so I'm assuming it's an Ebay seller), although this is the first I've heard of it (no e-mails from sellers, no negative feedback, nada, and I went through all my eBay auctions for the past 60 days and I've paid them all). So I have to go through the hassle of writing them (they want all correspondence in writing) to request verification of the debt and the name of the collecting party just so I can figure out what, if anything, I didn't pay. I would not be surprised if it's a mistake (some eBay seller accidentally included my name on a list of nonpaying bidders), but whether it is or it isn't, it's going to be a huge hassle. And I'm going to be very pissed if it goes on my credit rating. :P

That's me. How are you? :)