Naps, Gender and Too Much Information

I just woke up. Well, OK, a little less than an hour ago. I ate leftovers and they did not agree with me. So, I went to bed and ::poof:: fell asleep at about 6:30. At 9:45, I woke up with a start and well, here I am. I will be up all night.

I just found out my medical school brother and his wife are having a girl!! We’re so happy. Now mom has someone to dress in frilly things, and can stop giving Max that measuring look. I know she wants to put him in cute little dresses and make him courtsey. Now, that twisted desire can move to a new grandbaby, and we can breathe a little easier. Way to go little bro!

I dreamed last night that I got laid off. It woke me up, with a list of things I need to do to prepare for that eventuality. It was scarier than any other dream I’ve had in a long long time. For some reason, it was scarier than my “losing Max” series from last year. I blame Mike and our conversation the other day on the way out of the elevator. It wasn’t long, but we were joking about getting laid off, and he turned serious for a second and said, “You know, it happens to everyone sometime.” Mike, of course, could spend more time with his music and writing funny trip reports for his climbing excursions. Me? I think I’d be totally lost. I’ve worked there so long, my whole professional life, that I’m not sure what I’d do. Ok, that’s too much information… I’m going to stop now and watch Iron Chef.

Glory Gas

I went to Glory Days for lunch and I have the gas to prove it. I can not stop burping. I tried Tums to no avail. It’s been almost four hours, and I’m still stifling gigantic man-sized burps sitting here in my office at work. Of course, if I were at home, I’d let them fly because they make Max giggle. I’ll do almost anything to make Max giggle.

I’m going to try to stay away from the political for a while. I’m feeling a fit of zealotry coming on and that bothers me. I’m not a zealot. I’m trying to be reasoned and logical in my thinking, taking in both sides and deciding after weighing the facts. Unfortunately, the anger has taken over a bit and I’m losing sight of that a little. Time to take a break, watch a movie and remember there’s more to life than screaming at the hurricane.

Lunch

I’m going to Glory Days for lunch and you’re not. Oh, if you are, you can meet me there in 27 minutes. I’ll be the fat guy with his family eating a Beef on Weck. Really, I will. Oh, and I’ll probably be laughing.

Completely Selfish Thought Of The Day

Just my luck, GW is going to start a war on my birthday. It’s bad enough he’s spoiling St Patrick’s Day, the last holiday we have that means absolutely nothing. He’s going to go turn my birthday into a date that’s going to show up in trivia questions for the rest of eternity.

Worse than it being my birthday, if GW decides that March 20th is the day we go to war, he’ll be spoiling Mr. Rogers birthday as well, which really should be a national holiday, if you ask me. You can see who else’s birthday a March 20th war would mar, including Spike Lee, Holly Hunter, Bobby Orr, Hal Linden, Carl Reiner, Ozzie Nelson, Big Bird and Henrik Ibsen. Come on, President Bush, wait at least until the 21st, then you’re only ruining Bach, Mathew Broderick and Howard Cosell’s birthdays.

Dissent

Dissent Protects Democracy

Now there’s a protest sign I can get behind. The bomb with “Your Name Here” on it looks great, but doesn’t say what I want to say. The only things I can think of to sum up my feelings that would fit on a protest sign are (and feel free to use these on a poster if you want):

  • I Think George W. Bush Is A Big Fat Doody

  • Make Dip Not War (maybe that should be “Don’t Let Dips Start Wars”)

  • Just Cuz I Don’t Like President Bush Doesn’t Mean I Like Saddam

  • I Support Out Troops. I Don’t Support Inept, Corrupt Administrations

  • My Enemy’s Enemy Is Not My Friend, Mr. Bush

  • Since We Gave Him Those Weapons, Can’t We Just Recall Them?

  • What Else Did You Sell Him, Mr. Vice President?

  • Poor Colin Powell – It Doesn’t Look Like He Even Believes What’s Coming Out Of His Mouth (ok, maybe this won’t fit)

  • Why Is The Draft Dodger So Hip To Start This Thing?

  • Those Who Start Wars Have Rarely Fought In One

  • Mearde is ‘Freedom’ For BS

We had a little party for work tonight and we ended up talking about President Bush, the war and how ashamed we are of the President. It was enlightening how many people we got around the table who all felt the same way, and all on accident. It wasn’t a meeting of the Anti-Bush Superfriends of anything. Thankfully, we didn’t spend all night on Bush, Cheney and the Funky Bunch. I got some great lines in. My favorite of the night was, “Yeah, ‘concubine’ is my favorite word in the Bible. It sounds like a car… Coming this spring, the Chrysler Concubine! Of course, it’s a rental.” The rental part really got ’em. I’m a comedic genius.

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Max’s Happy Music

I decided that today was a good day to make Max a happy music CD of stuff he should like (should in that it would be wise for him to like it, not that I think he’ll like). It may end up being a multi-volume set. Today, volume one:

  1. If I Had A Boat – Lyle Lovett – Ok, this one’s a slam dunk. Max loves this song, as do I. We used to sing it every night before bed during our bedtime Story/Song/Prayer/Love you, goodnight ritual.

  2. Minimum Wage – They Might Be Giants – I loved TMBG, and they’re funny enough that Max probably will too. If he likes this one, I’m running out to get their album of kids’ songs.

  3. Let’s Go Crazy – Prince – Max is all about going crazy.

  4. Funky Music (Fatboy Slim Mix) – Hardy Hard – From the Essential Millenium album, this one just makes me wanna move. Max likes to move ,so logical move, no?

  5. The Time Warp – Dr. Frank N Furter – Who doesn’t love to do the Time Warp?

  6. Canary In A Coalmine – The Police – Early Police makes me shake my butt, and Max loves Ska. It was either this or Man In A Suitcase

  7. Back On The Train – Phish – This song has a great bouncy rhythm and is a lot of fun to sing along with. Max will sing Phish in the car if it’s on, so hey, why not this one?

  8. Cars Trucks Buses – Phish – This is a short instrumental from Billy Breathes that just screams happy. A little break from words to catch his breath before we move on to…

  9. Particle Man – THBG – If you went to high school in the early nineties, I know you know all the words to this song still.

  10. Raspberry Beret – Prince – This one is on here so Jen can tell her “Rags, baby, hooray” story to Max.

  11. Mr. Jones – Talking Heads – This song kicks some serious salsa ass. The horns alone are worth putting it on the disc.

  12. New Sensation – INXS – Power pop, Australian Eighties style. Tell me you don’t want to get up and dance in that floppy leather jacket Michael Hutchence way. You don’t? You’re a liar.

  13. Delirious – Prince – Yeah, there’s a lot of Prince on this one. I loved Prince when I was ten… no, not that way. His early stuff, especially the stuff on this disc just makes me happy, especially the synth riff at the beginning of this song.

  14. I Love Being Here With You – Six Feet Under Soundtrack – Goin’ Old School with this one. It’s jazzy. Gotta have a breather after Delirious

  15. Istanbul (Not Constantinople) – TMBG – If you had it, you’d put it on a mix CD for your kid too. Come on, admit it.

  16. Hey Baby – No Doubt – I think this is the first song after If I Had A Boat that Max learned the words to.

  17. Deeply Dippy – Right Said Fred – They’re not just I’m Too Sexy. This is an amazingly cute song from the same album. It just makes me smile.

  18. 1999 – Prince – Yes, we danced in 1999, even though Max was very little.

  19. Blind – Talking Heads – Rips almost as much as Mr. Jones. Plus, David Byrne is just funny.

  20. Le Flic Et La Fille – Arling & Cameron – More power horns and happy jumpin’ beats. A little break before…

  21. Turning Japanese – Skankin’ Pickle – How could I not put this song on the disc?

  22. Heavy Things – Phish – Another bouncy Phish song. Plus it’s about heavy things falling on people, which is automatically funny.

  23. It’s The End Of The World As We Know It – REM – How could I resist this challenge? If Max memorizes the words to this one, I’ll buy him a Corvette.

I hope Max likes it…

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A Microsoft Free World

The switch to OS X is going well. I finally downloaded and installed OpenOffice. Other than it taking a year to start up, and requiring X, it’s doing fine so far. I just opened up a gigantic Word doc and it handled it fine. It reads the fonts OK (although without anti-aliasing), and only slightly munges tables. I think I can live with it. For someone who uses Word or Excel all the time, it might not be a good solution, but I only open Word when I absolutely have to in order to read product requirement docs, and only open Excel when I get reports – which isn’t very often. I write all my docs in HTML.

The Powerbook is straining under the weight of the dual displays and all these open apps, but it’s not bad enough yet to consider moving to the big machine. I am loving having two monitors hooked up to one machine. It makes things so much nicer. I have an old SGI monitor with a digital input, so I may try hooking my Quiksilver up to that (it’s an 867 with a ton of RAM, so it should handle better than this, but then I’d have to install all the toys I’ve put on the Powerbook which could take days).

My computing environment is completely free of Microsoft’s influence now. I no longer worry about what info my computer is sending back to the “MotherShip”. This may not bother most people, and if it doesn’t bother you, then by all means, use XP. It bugs the living crap out of me. It’s my computer. It’s not Microsoft’s computer. I bought and used Microsoft’s software, but it’s still my machine. Microsoft has no business knowing what I have installed or how often I use those programs. What else does my computer tell Microsoft when I’m not looking? Does it send them the names of the documents on my computer? Does it send them the list of e-mail addresses I have in my address book? With them, there’s no way to know because everything is a black box. In OS X, it’s just BSD with a pretty face. If I wanted to, I could get under the covers and see exactly what’s going on. Not so with Microsoft products.

This is why Open Source will ultimately win. It’s not because it’s inherently better. It’s not because it’s geek friendly. We’re (ok, by we I mean me) tired of being lied to and manipulated. We’re tired of spyware. We’re tired of prohibitive licensing and insane software prices. We’re tired of being told with the products we’ve purchased. We’re tired of being treated like criminals. I don’t steal music or software. But, the software and music I buy, I want to be able to use as I see fit. I want to rip the cd’s so I can listen to them at work without having to bring the CD everywhere.

Whew… Ok, I’m done.

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Freedom Maids

House cafeterias change names for ‘french fries’ and ‘french toast’

And to think, we pay these guys’ salaries. Oh yeah, we voted them into office too. Does this mean they’re going to make the interns wear “Freedom” Maid outfits tonight? And you know what, let’s turn Germany into “Justice” and go get us a slice of Justice Chocolate Cake. Russia could be “Justified”. I think the members of the House had one too many nips of the Justified Vodka, don’t you?

You’d think with the economy in the toilet, our country on the brink of war and facing international disdain and distrust that the yokels in the House would have better things to do than change the names of things. Next thing you know, they’ll make Double Plus Good Cola and outlaw paper. Big Idiot is watching… be careful what you say, unless you use big words. Big words confound Big Idiot.

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The True Nonconformists

It’s confession time. I love Swatches. I’m not sure why I do, but I do. I own six or seven of them. Most of them have dead batteries and a couple have badly mangled bands. I found my first swatch the other day in a drawer. Other than a dead battery and some scratches, it looks fine.

There was a place in Tucson that sold used Swatches for \$20. They had the older, more collectible ones for more, but I only wanted the \$20 ones. I bought three or four there. Then, last week, I saw on our little employee site that we could get a selection of Swatches for \$15 a piece – all brand new. Of course, I went nuts, buying two before I remembered that my birthday is next Thursday and I should probably wait. Me, wait? Oh no. I got this one and this one (it’s not pink in person, all orange). They arrived yesterday and I couldn’t be happier.

And then, I went into a meeting today and someone said, “Hey, nice watch. Lose a bet?” No, no I didn’t lose a bet. You’re just old and don’t get it, man. Swatches are my youth reclaimed. They’re cheap, durable and keep good time. They’re interesting to look at and are more fun than your chrome hunk of metal that probably loses minutes every week. My watch is cool. My watch is orange as hell and has a picture of mountains on it. Oh, and it only cost \$15, which means I could go buy another one next week without even thinking about it.

Did I take too personally? Yeah, probably. But, as much as I tend towards conformity, there are times I just don’t do things like other people do. Ok, that’s complete BS. I’m a nonconformist. But, in saying it, I know you’re thinking of those goth babies with white faces or long-haired greasy guys in record stores railing against the system and the man. I’m not that kind of nonconformist. I’m a geek. I just don’t care what everyone else is doing. If I like something, I’ll do it. If I think something is stupid, I won’t do it.

I’m not sure how this turned from my new watches to a post on conformity, but hey, here I am. Let’s go all the way. Nerds and geeks are the only real noncomformists left. Most of the other noncornformists I’ve met or still know may not follow society’s norms, but they definitely conform to their own little group’s ideas. Take the goth babies for instance. They wear black, they wear makeup and pierce themselves. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen most of them. They listen to the same music, worship at the altar of the same authors, etc. Nerds and Geeks? If you’ve met one, you’ve met a truly unique individual. Their geekiness and nerdism surfaces in weird and wonderful mutations that change with the frequency of batcrap in Carlsbad. Embrace the Rainbow of Geekhood. We’re out there, weird as hell, and really don’t care what you think about it.

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