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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
John's LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 | | 6:15 pm |
| | Friday, November 20th, 2009 | | 3:59 pm |
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but one or two little cores appear to breed fruit flies. As I have discovered after an apple eating experiment in my office, which somehow ended up with a core or two in one of the debris drifts in the corner. I noticed a small group of fruit flies around it last week, and a fairly large one this morning. This never happens with chocolate chip bags or tortilla chip sacks from Costco. Hmmm. While my first instinct was to perform a full population count, wait another week, and survey again to find the growth rate r of Hawthorne fruit flies, my scientific instinct was overwhelmed by my introverted dislike of sharing an office so I went ahead and cleaned out the trash. Four garbage bags, three cereal boxes, 4 tortilla bags, and a few socks later, my office is trash free. (Er, trash reduced.)(In one corner.) My reward for such virtuous behavior? Now the stupid fruit flies are swarming all over the entire house in a tiny diffuse horde like Ron Paul advocates in online forums, wafting between me and my computer and eliciting snarky comments from the wife about all the little crawling specks on the bathroom mirror. I'm recording this as a concrete example of Why I Don't Clean My Office, an excellent supporting argument to Don't Eat Fruit, and a potential rebuttal point to any future spousal exhortations of When Am I Not Nice To You? | | Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | | 7:12 pm |
I fully support child labor. | | Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 | | 10:15 am |
Anyone on Google Wave?
If you are, let me know (surpheon@livejournal.com) - I want to start a Wave on what to use Google Wave for. Current Mood:  Waving | | Friday, September 25th, 2009 | | 10:38 am |
Cunning plan... thinking through...
With two hours to kill in a Target while my car gets oiled, I bought Helen a slinky - the cool, metal one (not those imposter plastic... things). In other news, we've almost taught Helen that our too-steep hardwood stairs can be dangerous and she should never play on them. Hmm. | | Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 | | 1:21 pm |
In the "huh, it wasn't just me" file: "MINUTE 30 OF GMAIL OUTAGE THE CITIES ARE IN FLAMES AND PEOPLE EATING PETS TO SURVIVE. TO FUTURE GENERATIONS: WE MEANT WELL" Twitter, about 21 hours ago from scalzi I didn't turn to eating pets, but I did dig lightly into my desk and found a Nestle milk chocolate chip bag with a few left, a Sacajawea dollar, a blank Chicago postcard, and a FedEx receipt from exactly two years ago (Sept 1). I feared what would happen if I was too greedy and dug too deep, so I stopped at the 2 year strata (about halfway down). The last thing my office needs is a desk Balrog. (Although soon I'll need to stripmine the accumulation down a bit; it could fall on my laptop and damage it. Or me. Maybe if I shift some of it under my laptop and raise my chair... Hmm. If I toss in a retaining structure of some sort on the back I could even open the window again without fear of loosing binders out it... that just may work.) Helen continues to get more talkative. She has recently taken up shrieking too. Apparently, she and a daycare friend can locate each other by high pitched shrieks across the play room. It quite likely also works for the 3 miles between their houses. I'm sure our neighbors think we're brutally torturing a dolphin at times (can you waterboard a dolphin?); if you hear of an anomalous pod of dolphins in the Hudson looking angrily for vengeance they probably think so too. Just off a work bender where I worked 4 solid 50-60 hour weeks. Blech. Need time off. Errands are not getting done the past month (folding laundry, getting a suit, bathing). In other random news, we've moved to the upstairs so Helen now has her own room. Even frequently sleeps in it. We're off to Atlanta this weekend for DragonCon on Kris's whim to see an author she likes. Should be interesting - Helen likes pointing at my anime convention t-shirts and shouting bAEbee heeehehee! (babies know faces, and big eyes with a little nose does means baby)- I wonder if that will extend to cosplay folks? My next four trips in the coming 45 days will be: Atlanta, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Oakland (fun convention, work, conference, work and Cheeseboard pizza). My dopplr carbon footprint makes me sad :( The sight of the interior of a 737, or lord help me any suicide tube by Canadair, makes me sadder :( :( And for the trifecta of sadness, my accountant did not approve the purchase of $300 of play pit balls to fill the empty-for-summer hot tub; I shall resubmit next year, when I hope Helen will support me with a more compelling endorsement than eeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EECk - err, gotta go. I think I hear a soggy pitchfork thwack, thwack, thwacking at my door. Current Mood: recumbentCurrent Music: The General - Dispatch | | Monday, August 17th, 2009 | | 12:00 pm |
A quick update
Clothes shopping: Advantage Brooks Brothers. Nordstroms did not have anyone around to help me, Brooks Brothers did. Bonus for Brook Brothers: Shopping consisted of picking colors and getting the right size (my legs apparently are not an even number length, so hemming is required, and the flat-front trousers I got apparently run small since I needed to get an inch larger waist). They had one pair of basic trousers, and one type of basic shirt. I picked two trousers and three shirts. On the way out, I did grab a nice pair of khakis from Nordstroms. I think I'll have a suit made in Manhattan and call it good enough for now. In other clothes news, I found a box of summer clothes put away up in the attic two or three years ago. I was excited to find I had a couple more pairs of shorts. Unfortunately, due to the humidity and heat in the attic I wager, they seem to have shrunk and are just a bit too tight in the waist. I think I'll have to store such stuff in the (just de-molded - had to wipe down the walls due to a dehumidifier failure) basement in future. Newest Helen news: She HATES the water at the beach. It is not OK. Sand is petty cool though. | | Friday, August 7th, 2009 | | 11:13 am |
Clothes shopping sucks
I HATE clothes shopping with a passion usually only reserved for things like talk radio hosts or a chilled water plant design that utilizes a tertiary pumping scheme (ARG!), but after three+ years of working at home it's time to get some work clothes. Lacking imagination as much as I lack a sense of fashion, I am going to pit two bland chains against each other in a winner takes all (er, 69.2%) of my budget competition. I will go to a Nordstroms and a Brooks Brothers on Monday during the day (hopefully a slow time). I will give whoever helps me at each store 30.7% of my budget and the directive to get me as much business attire as possible for that amount (I frown upon jackets, no more than one tie outfit, and I'm keeping my current shoes - they're always under a table or podium anyhow). I will also tell them that I'm comparing what I get from them versus x to decide where to go to finish my shopping. I will then have the results judged, and go back to whoever did best with the remainder of my budget to finish. I am not getting a suit at this time - I do need a good one, but I need 3-5 lower dress level business outfits more (and a good suit would be the same as my current entire budget, both in terms of money, time, and ability to endure a clothes store). To reward the dogged readers who have dug to the drooping tail of this post, a poll! Poll #1440988 Nordstrom's versus Brooks Brothers
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10 Which store will do better? Should I post photos of the result to my journal with voting to determine the victor, or allow Helen to judge? | | Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 | | 7:44 pm |
Quiz: Name a sci-fi character that has platinum blond hair. We're looking for something to dress our 2-year-old Helen up as for a sci-fi convention we're going to. So far, the only idea we have is to dress her up like six from Battlestar Galactica. | | Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | | 3:29 pm |
There goes my credit card number larking about on it's own again. But what I find more disturbing is that I received a call asking if my card was stolen this morning not from my bank nor credit card company, but from a website that noticed a large order was not going to my usual address. Tip for credit card thieves: Good luck finding a website that doesn't already know me, my well worn card, and that my shipping address is NOT in Texas. A grand total of one charge might have made it through, so the biggest annoyance is having to memorize another credit card number - 12+3 digits worth, since BECU apparently ran out of 4428 6800 xxxx xxxx numbers a while back. Coming on the heals of a trip to CA, I'm wondering if my card number didn't get nicked in person somewhere on the way. | | Monday, June 1st, 2009 | | 10:28 am |
Not as nice I had thought
Trapped on a plane again. But on this flight I actually have internet connectivity. After the first bout of freedom, and a brief abusive adolescent phase (A video report about NYC Bees! Lets pop out a hulu window while I surf flicker for pictures of brown bats!), I matured to find it is a lot like having the internet at home - but crammed into a little window seat with an apparently nice lady who keeps bringing me bottled water. Of course, what this means is that I can work for the next three hours. This is definitely falling off my cool list quickly. With work yapping at my heels like a well trained incontinent Shih Tzu, out of desperation I am going to make my somewhat delayed New Year's Resolutions post (not too delayed though - "New Year's" is clearly a binary value, and if you take the fraction of the year currently past and round to the nearest value you'll find it is 0.41 ==> 0 = NEW YEARS!)(by much the same logic, the typical American is expected to live to 78 so if you are younger than 39 you are a newborn). Anyhow, back to the resolving. My main resolution for this year has been making resolutions that I will likely keep. 1. Continue to hinder my dear daughter's determined efforts to kill, maim or disfigure herself. Perform a similar service for at least half of our domesticated plants that she wants to love and hug and call George. To death. 2. Cut our house energy use by 10% versus last year. This should not be too tough. We've started hang drying some laundry (I try for the 4 heaviest items from each washload - takes almost no time and significantly reduces that 0.3 kWh/lb cost), there are good targets to install some motion/photo/time light switches, and this summer I'm going to break down and spend some money on house insulating. 3. Evict the carpenter bees from around our mud room. Their crunching is somewhat soothing white noise, but they have become prone to face buzzing bravado while I am at the close line. Bad neighbors get evicted. Work out an appropriate lease arrangement with the chipmunk who have, despite my best efforts to ignore and deny it, dug a subdivision under one of my blueberries. 4. Establish one more fruiting biological somewhere in our yard. 5. Begin a moderate exercise program: Walk a minimum of 300 feet every single day, do 4 Helen tosses a week, and 500 pushups this year. 6. Do not toss Helen into the ceiling fan. 7. Complete patching the existing undesired holes in my house's walls. Replace with desired holes. OK, I think that's just about ambitious enough and as the well-known parable of the deaf, mute brown bat with three noses so tragically sho- Oh yeah, one more: 8. Complete feasibility study on putting up a bat house. Make decision on implementation and to The Committee (subtask: Form The Committee for Bat House Recommendation Assessment). There we go, I think that's a nice round number. I was going to throw something about working on improving my focus or something on there, but I am trying to keep 'em feasible. Watch this space for upd- Wait - one more to close out! 9 is only 75% as round as 8, but I'll settle: 9. Drink less water when trapped in a window seat regardless of the implicit endorsement of overconsumption by apparently nice ladies bearing bottled water. (And no, I'm not going to cut down my use of parentheses this year; consider my use of them poetic license - and those of you who already do, please quit writing the board asking to have my Poetry certification, if not my entire Punctuation Practitioner license, revoked due to abuse: That's just mean. Thanks.) Poll #1409290
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8 <> Current Mood:  apathetic | | Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 | | 9:36 pm |
Too lazy to post anything of merit...
But it wasn't a lazy day. Today was spent cramming out some last work before the final Fedex of the weekend and then a short walk in a park (spent herding Helen who insisted on pulling - slowly - the wagon she was meant to ride in)(sigh). I'm doing design review for a partially underground lab for a major tech university and trying hard to resist the urge to layout the sprinkler piping to make the Halflife video game logo in plan view; I doubt anyone would notice and I would be greatly amused. HVAC design is sorely in need of more Easter Eggs. In the world of HVAC, our downstairs AC has gone out. I am torn between moving upstairs (that unit still works) and never speaking of the downstairs again, or going on a $10k rampage to install a zero-energy seasonal thermal storage passive phase change (ice/snow slush) pit system. Anyhow, a traditional close of a handful of photos ( behind the cut ) | | Thursday, May 14th, 2009 | | 11:40 am |
Shoot, my internet connection appeared to be broken. I tried a couple browsers, did a computer reboot (quite a time investment with Vista and a Thinkpad's bloatware), cycled power to all my routers (which required a bit of digging that released an enormous wasp I had to shoo out out the window - there's a reason I really don't want to clean my office), and waded onto my smartphone's browser. The problem? Well, apparently my internet connection is fine but google.com was down so I just assumed the internet was broken. My faith in the Google now shaken, I shall have to test to a couple different sites in future before extreme measures are taken. (Update: The problem may not have been with Google, but somewhere upstream between here and there. Now Google is back and working as well as the rest of the internet.) | | Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | | 4:10 pm |
Just a quick heads up that I'll be in the Bay Area next week, working and sheepishly driving an SUV about. The SUV was $100 CHEAPER to rent than any smaller car - and I could have gotten a really huge one for only $5 more. I really hope they don't 'upgrade' me to Valdez class. ( Nothing else to say, so here's a picture of my baby chewing her shoe. ) | | Thursday, February 26th, 2009 | | 2:36 pm |
Random
Our diaper service just went out of business. The really, really amazing thing about this is that I actually read the email notification; I'm surprised google let an email titled "urgent please read" from Vicki through the spam filters, and more amazed it made it through my mental spam filter. I forwarded the notice to Helen's gmail account. Maybe it will encourage her to potty train faster.  Potty train now - trust me, the washer is less fun. (Caption is best read in a bad German accent)(On the bright side, I have a deep and personal animosity towards our washing machine and going to home-laundering of diapers appeals somewhat to my passive aggressive side.) Current Music: Friendly Goodbye - Bowling for Soup | | Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 | | 1:26 pm |
Wow.
The full spelling of 'Wednesday' is wacky. How many silent d's do we have hiding in our language? At least in handkerchief it's obvious that the d is just hanging out with its good friend han. And personally, I swear I hear a touch of d in handsome. But Wednesday? What language do I have to blame for needing spell check on the rare occasions I don't just slum it with an abbreviation? | | Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | | 12:43 pm |
President Obama
All done. Despite fears of terror attack, the only major assault I noticed was that poetry after the main event. I tuned out while she was talking about lettuce or something. It was kinda neat to go to whitehouse.gov at 11:58am (I was scrambling for a feed) and see Bushville, then refresh at 12:02pm to see Obamamania. (I did find a postage-stamp-o-vision feed from CNBC just in time to see Roberts get stepped on by Obama and flub the oath; hulu.com was bigger but too jerky for my tastes.) This was the first full speech I've seen of him and - meh. Far far better than Bush, but strikes me as typical politician speaking skills (which are good, but no King or even Clinton for that matter). Just looks amazing in comparison... Now the speechifying is done we finally have a few months to see how he really does. | | Thursday, January 15th, 2009 | | 4:20 pm |
Supercooled cream soda?
Since it's been a bit chilly we've been storing drinks in our unheated mudroom (a little entry room at the back door). I just grabbed a cream soda from there in a clear bottle - a nice, clear amber fluid (Virgil's makes good stuff). Cracked it open, but no bubbles. Rather than bubbling it is forming ice flakes. It's gone from entirely liquid to having an inch of slushy on top. Sorta cool. Very cool, actually, in a punny way. It feels a little fizzy in the mouth, but in the bottle the fizz seems to result in instant formation of ice flakes. Outside actually felt a bit warm a moment ago - it's up from the 12F of my last hot tub dip to a balmy 18F. I'm thinking of staying up a bit tonight so I can hottub in 2F weather, the only problem being that when it's cold my hottub heater gets a bit over enthusiastic. But maybe 108F is about right when it's 2F out. Rather than bouncing off on yet another tangent no one cares about (our house furnace is unsurprisingly oversized), I think I'll get back to work. | | Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 | | 10:31 am |
T minus 2 hours
Huh, branch libraries in Manhattan suck. Who knew. Downtown ho I goes. | | 10:14 am |
Stoopid time zones
I made my 9:30 AM meeting just a couple minutes late due to an elevator traffic jam. And found my meeting is at 9:30 AM *Pacific* time. So now I'm a homeless nomad in Manhattan 'till noonish. Since I typically work using my laptop to access a remote terminal in Oakland, this is not really a big deal and actually is probably a quite similar experience to the normal go into the office and work sort of thing. I'll finish my Starbucks coffee and set up shop in the local library. But it is still annoying - I'll miss my morning hot tub break and the ability to do a bit of random housetiding, which is oddly satisfying at times. |
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surpheon's journal
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