Month: December 2001

Randomly Sunday

I’m a little tired, there’s not an unclogged artery in my body, I have this sort of goofy grin on my face, and there are random articles of clothing scattered about the living room. Good weekend, all in all. Y’know, after a really shitty year, I’m quite happy with the way the last few months of it seem to be playing out…

Yes, Mom. I really like this guy…

If I could just get rid of the lingering health problems and find a job which paid a little more and sucked a little less (or even better, more freelance), I’d be happy as a clam…

Random ponderings for a Sunday evening:

  • Just what the hell IS a tin woodsman? Were they all big old screaming queens like the one in The Wizard of Oz?
  • Has it really been 18 years since I last sat through the aforementioned movie, one drunk night in Greensboro?
  • How do certain plants sense that you’re just about to give up and throw them away and suddenly start putting out new growth?
  • Will there EVER be a normal schedule for first-run Simpsons episodes (and other Sunday night shows) on our local Fox affiliate in San Francisco? And will said station ever have a website with even the bare essentials (like actual program information) on it?

Found Money

I love it when I’m cleaning up the house and find money. And by that I mean actual paper money. It’s especially nice when it happens about half an hour after I paid lots of really nasty bills…

I may go spend it on ice cream and 7-Up at the corner store since I’m parked too well to risk driving anywhere better and losing my space…

I Can’t Even Think Straight

From the Chronicle:

Lindh noted that his son had been interviewed right after being pulled out of a flooded dungeon in a fort where he and others had been in a fiery standoff with US and Northern Alliance forces for days — and that anything he said at that point should be taken with a grain of salt.

“I don’t think he was thinking straight at that moment,” Lindh said. “I don’t think anyone could think straight at that moment.”

Maybe not, but you have to sort of wonder what the hell he was doing in that flooded dungeon in the first place. Following his dream, I guess…

Mom’s Coming

Mom‘s here tomorrow afternoon. Guess that means I should clean the bathroom tonight. It also means my email responses and exciting journal entries will be even less reliable than usual over the next few days. Try to conceal your disappointment; do some Christmas shopping perhaps…

While I’m at it, I should update that Wish List, just in case anyone cares…

Also on my mind on a cold Wednesday afternoon:

  • The potential of not engaging in any creative attempts at keeping warm for two and a half more weeks.
  • Where to stash the porn ’til Mom leaves.
  • My rumbling stomach from not eating lunch today.
  • The cold I have this nasty feeling I’m getting.
  • How much I secretly want that kid in the Dell Computer commercials to die a slow and painful death.

Mom’s Here

Mom’s here and comfortably asleep in the living room. I headed to SFO this afternoon expecting to find a madhouse of people standing in line being frisked and strip-searched. Instead, it was just plain creepy there. No one in line at the ticket counter, no one at the checkpoint, no trouble parking, and we spent about three minutes waiting for her suitcases at baggage claim. It was just plain weird; everyone was saying so…

Spiffy new redesign for Mark, who’s on Mom’s itinerary for Saturday. Later tonight will bring dinner with Dan, Jamie, and hopefully Sarah, maybe at The Dead Fish…

I think I’ll skip introducing her to my cardiologist at tomorrow’s appointment, though; I think there’s enough adventure on her plate for now…

Stockton

 

Quick thoughts on Saturday in Stockton with Mom and Mark:

  • The Denny’s at Charter Way and I-5 is in fact the Denny’s from hell. And our waitress was bad sitcom material.
  • Introducing Mom to a current accessory was amazingly drama-free, which speaks volumes about both of them.
  • I rarely find a lot of stuff in Stockton thrift stores, but when I do find something, it’s really fucking cool. Pictures to follow.
  • Sucking face in the men’s room was a wonderful thing, but it only served to make my current sexual frustration about ten times worse.
  • Wow. Who knew there were Simpsons cereals available?

I think I coughed up most of the remnants of my cold-allergy thing on Saturday morning, but there may be a little more on Sunday morning. Sorry for the vivid image; I’ll try to be more subtle if further updates are required…

Now, having forced Mom to sit through Harry and Tonto (I like it, Dan likes it, and that’s endorsement enough), I’m gonna have a wank and go to sleep. I probably won’t be fantasizing about Art Carney…

Why?

I had a rather unsettling but not altogether unpleasant realization very late last night. Just wanted to share that…

Anyway, for those of you who care and are concerned, the visit is still going well, Mom is probably leaving on Tuesday, and I may actually start answering email again by Wednesday…

And I still secretly want the annoying kid from the Dell commercials to die a slow and painful death…

In short, there was damned little point to this journal entry…

Verio Sucks, Part One

Until a couple of hours ago, I was in a relatively good mood. The two things happened at once…

First, I started getting bounce messages from a bit of email spam I didn’t send. Seems some asshole in Florida (aren’t they all in Florida?) may have used my primary email address as the return address for a mass mailing. I’m not sure what the implications of that may be. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see how bad it is…

When I started looking into that by checking my root account, I also realized I had a notification from my ISP that, within 30 days, my webhosting account will include hosting only (no dialup). And for the same price, yet. Imagine: half the service for the same great price…

Note that this is the same ISP which caused me much grief by migrating my sites to an entirely new (and basically half-assed) platform just a few months back, causing me a great deal of trouble in the process. Note to Verio: you fucking suck and you’re cordially invited to bite my hairy ass…

So now I’m scrambling to clean up double fallout, wondering what will happen with the spam and getting all my sites added to my Pair Networks account. It will actually be a better set-up, once I spend the holidays doing all the work. It will cost more, as I’ll have to have new dialup or DSL, but I’ll be well rid of Verio, destroyer of formerly-great ISPs…

Pain

Only 191 hours now, and for those of you who are tired of hearing about this subject, well, c’mon. Allow me to be a little single-minded for a while. It’s not like it happens very often. I’m not quite sure how to react…

Right now, though, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. I think I overdid it today pulling cable and carrying around heavy fiber optic things, and now my heart, or my thyroid, or one of my medications, or what fucking ever, is not amused. I’m sure I’ll be fine tomorrow if I can just manage to sit and not do much tonight, but I’m pissed that it’s now threatening to keep me from hitting Sarah‘s MBA party in a couple of hours…

It’s been almost six months, and I’m ready for this shit to be over. Hopefully it will, sometime next month…

Anyone with a clue why a Christmas card from Fresno (180 miles away) and one from Reidsville NC (3000 miles away) both took six days to arrive at my house, based on the postmarks? Has the Postal Service gotten that unpredictable? Yeah, stupid question…

Guess I should mail mine soon, so they’ll arrive by Martin Luther King Day…

Rain

Damn. It’s pouring down rain and I didn’t even expect it. And for some reason, the rain is being accompanied by these creepy alien invasion sounding noises outside. They’re really strange…

For those who were concerned, I’m feeling much more human now, but I did miss Sarah‘s bash and I now owe her lunch over the weekend…

Great. Sirens. Maybe it really was aliens…

Randomly Friday

Signs and Fresno motels (not to mention motels in general). Thanks to Sarah for the former and to the site’s author for the latter two…

Top it of with my just-completed lunch date with Chef Boy-ar-dee, Safeway Select Diet Grapefruit Soda, and Andy Griffith on KICU, and you have most of the elements of how I’m avoiding work this afternoon…

So as two people have pointed out today, it seems Wil Wheaton has had a similar problem with spam victimization this week. Fortunately, mine hasn’t caused too many problems, and it’s sort of cute to realize that Wesley Crusher and I have to deal with some of the same issues, I guess…

Back to not working…

Note to Mark: hope your day was better than expected and FedEx confirms that your package has indeed arrived…

Christmastime Is (Almost) Here

Pizza with Jamie on Friday night, to the accompaniment of “The Grinch” (the original, thanks) and “A Christmas Carol” (the 1951 Alistair Sim version, thanks). I guess the holidays have really arrived, even though I still haven’t moved Rock & Roll Elmo out of the way to make room for the tree yet…

Then I had late-evening email from Mark which gave me the warm fuzzies before going to bed on the coldest night of the year so far. It’s gonna be a long 151 hours…

And today, I’m buying my Christmas present from Mom and Dad so I can cheat and have the whole weekend to play with it, even though my mom made me promise I’d wrap it and put it under the tree. I’ll do that on Monday, maybe…

Oops. I forgot. It’s not really Christmas until I upload this…

Randomly Sunday

God, I hate malls. I’d forgotten how much until last night when we ventured to Santa Clara to visit the new Apple store. It didn’t help that it was the Saturday before the Saturday before Christmas, of course, but my God, was it hellish…

For the past several years, my mall visits have been limited to the occasional Chick-fil-a run to Fairfield, and I like it that way. They’re just so scary and creepy and self-conscious, with all the annoying people, the screaming brats, the food courts from hell, and the thousands of square feet of cloyingly cute little overpriced shops filled with nothing I’d ever much want…

Except for the Apple store, of course. But next time, I’ll hit one which isn’t in a mall…

But we also went to Fry’s, where I picked up my new DVD player on sale. And had dessert in a pace which looked like it should have been in Nebraska, which was slightly comforting…

Afterward, I came home, where my email client crashed and obliterated a message from Mark and a Christmas card from Shane before I could even look at them…

So I went to bed…

And this morning, you should find that this site has propagated over to Pair Networks, while email asscociated with this domain hasn’t yet, for some reason. Which is not a problem, since I don’t currently use it anyway…

If at some point I become less embarrassed about it, I’ll talk about my little head-shaving mishap later…

129 hours and counting…

Randomly San Francisco

Randomly San Francisco:

  • I’m really glad the 12-Folsom bus now runs every ten minutes rather than every twenty. Otherwise, I might have had to wait an entire hour for one this morning rather than the half-hour I actually did wait…

  • Great headline on this article: “Fluffing up the Castro”. It would be damned difficult make it any fluffier, wouldn’t it? OK, so the article is about the seats in the Castro Theatre. But still…

  • I don’t think anyone who knows anything at all about the TV business didn’t see this coming…

  • San Francisco: where no idea is too stupid to spend thousands of dollars on…

OK, I’ll play too. 5695 excruciatingly long minutes to go, you pornographer you…

Company’s A-Comin’

Amid all the amorous countdown messages (4356 minutes to blastoff, by the way), I’ve neglected to mention that I’m also pretty damned excited about the arrival of Duncan and Rick on Monday. And I’m also contemplating my Christmas Day meal. I imagine the menu will be pretty much straight from the double-wide. That’s just how I cook…

Today I also realized that my Christmas cards are probably not going to get mailed, and that my Mom and Dad will be having yet another Christmas by FedEx™. I’m very glad I have a very substantial discount…

Somebody who didn’t like something I’d written threatened to report me to the “web authorities” tonight. Anybody got their address so I can plead my case? I’m just terrified. Really…

Weird Voicemail

That was creepy. I just checked my voice mail. I had one message. But it wasn’t a message. It was a conversation between a telemarketer and a victim; apparently they were using one of those multiple dialers and my voice mail picked up at precisely the same moment as some woman named Rosalie.

Had she not promptly told the guy never to call again, and then hung up, I might have discovered all manner of personal information about her. Yet another reason never to give telemarketers any info about yourself: there may be unintended third- parties listening…

With Fifteen, You Get Several Eggrolls

The question is “how do I arrange an office Christmas party with about three hours notice?”. The answer, as it so often is, would be “Chinese takeaway”…

Most of my work for the year is done, although I have to do a bit of payroll and an inventory next week. I can now concentrate on starting my very minimal Christmas shopping, making my new DVD player do useful things, and (more pleasantly) where I’ll be and (even more pleasantly) who I’ll be with in 1460 minutes, not to mention who else will be here on Monday…

Maybe I’ll even buy an actual DVD this weekend. Or even start making one. Either way, it’s cinch I won’t be answering email, so don’t feel slighted…

Happy Pre-Holiday

I thought the rain would never end. I love rain, even cold, long-lasting rain. But this was one of those ill-timed storms which kept me from doing other things I needed to do, and it just went on and on like the Energizer bunny, fogging up my car windows, causing me to utter random profanities as my umbrella turned inside out, and generally keeping me from making so much as one holiday purchase…

But it’s bright and sunny out now, which is not generally my favorite weather, except when I have a 180-mile drive ahead of me. But in a mere 435 minutes, I’ll be in very close proximity to the most wonderful boy in the world…

Music swells. Video switches to mildly annoying slow motion effect. Cut to image of crashing ocean waves…

For those of you leaving your computers today, have a happy holiday of your choice…

I’m as Giddy as a Drunken Scrooge

Have you ever found yourself in one of those distrurbingly contented moods where you’re driving up Highway 99 at 85MPH, just sort of grinning this stupid grin and giddily singing along to the most insipid 1980s pop songs imaginable as they play on some Central Valley radio station?

I have. Thanks, by the way…

Christmas Eve

Christmas greetings all around…

Details about an amazing and wonderful pre-Christmas weekend with Mark will be coming soon. Also, Duncan and Rick are here, and I have a gang coming for lunch tomorrow. Right now, I’m gonna sleep…

It seems unlikely that Santa will be dropping by with an iBook or even an iPod, but I can dream, can’t I? Either way, I’m pretty well happy and contented this Christmas anyhow…

Pretty Pictures

 

Tired and busy. No witty and insightful commentary. Just pictures from Christmas week:

 

The joys of Biola: beautiful boy and beautiful green Fabuloso. I’ve never seen this color before…

 

A tree grows in Sanger…

 

Signs, signs, everywhere signs…

 

The stockings were hung by the AC with care…

 

Mark’s Cock…

 

Duncan and Rick arrived on Monday. We pretended we were Jewish and had Chinese food on Christmas Eve…

 

Then we ate a lot more on Christmas Day…

 

We continued eating through at least two more pictures…

 

Afterward, we visited the bay…

It was cold…

 

And dark…

 

Randomly Thursday After Christmas

Duncan and Rick are apparently in Oakland, it’s cold and rainy, I don’t have to be at work until Wednesday, Mark doesn’t arrive until tomorrow, and I actually have a few minutes to catch up, if not to answer that snowballing pile of email…

I’ll let yesterday’s big pile of pictures speak for themselves about the past week, except to add a few more notes:

  • Agreed. No more three-week absences.

  • Not Another Teen Movie is actually kind of funny.
  • An evening with The Sleepover Disaster is an entertaining evening indeed.
  • So is a nice evening by the Christmas tree.
  • Semi-lethargic snowball fights can be fun too, especially in the middle of long, stimulating drives through nowhere.
  • I make a mean squash and sausage casserole (recipe upon request), Duncan makes a mean macaroni and cheese, and Hormel makes a mean loin of pork.
  • Friends from North Carolina are among the best friends to watch Cops with.
  • Is it just me, or is the used stuff at Amoeba Records in Upper Haight really expensive?

I make no promises about more (or better) updates over the next couple of days, but I assure you that the cynicism, wry comments, and links to Zippy the Pinhead which you’ve come to expect in this space will return after the first of the year, once I have time to concentrate again. And breathe…