Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • I aspire to be OpenBrackets

    I aspire to be OpenBrackets (not female living in France, just that good a writer). In my little world of rapid-fire technical e-mails and instant messages, I’ve forgotten how to take my time and write well. I write quickly, with the sole purpose of getting whoever it is I’m answering to leave me alone (well, mostly – not you, sweetie). Here, I want to write differently. I want to take my time and write things that can be savored, or at least read with more interest than an e-mail that will be read and then discarded to the inbox dustbin.

    I’m not there, and it will take a lot of practice to get there. I’m just starting to remember that I have a voice that comes out when I write. I’d forgotten all about it. Wish me luck…

  • This one’s for the grandparents:

    This one’s for the grandparents: Something else to list in the con column of being allergic to hair-bearing animals – Max LOVES dogs. The kid isn’t even two, and he’s in love with them. I took him outside for a romp (I swear that’s what he does. He doesn’t walk, he romps) after dinner. In the space between our collection of townhouses and the next, there’s a large grassy hill that Max likes to play in. He’ll roll down it, or drop small rocks through the holes in the storm drain to listen to them hit the bottom. Once he hears the clink of the pebble on the bottom, he looks up with a smile on his face and waves his cute reverse “bye-bye” wave.

    Oh, wait, we were talking about the dogs. Dog , a black lab, was in his fenced backyard in the next section of townhomes. Max saw him and went toddling over to take a peek. He would stare through the slats of the fence trying to get a better look. When the dog would bark, he’d jump back and giggle like he’d just made a new friend. When the owner came and took the dog inside, Max looked around the fence for the dog, kept waving his poor little bye-bye wave, and looking up at me, asking me to bring the dog back to play. When I couldn’t, he got, well, pissed.

    After he calmed down and we were back to romping up and down the sidewalk came dog number 2, a pretty golden retriever that belongs to the couple one townhouse down from us. Max intercepted them on the way back from their walk and circled that poor dog mercilessly until Max got close enough for the dog to lick Max’s fingers. Max was in toddler heaven. He had way too much fun playing with, petting and just looking at that dog. It makes me feel bad that the kid probably won’t get one… so there.

  • Went to the doctor this

    Went to the doctor this morning. Sinus infection is gone, but I’m still fat. Yup, it’s official. I got a chart and everything. It’s time to get less fat. Why? Because I made a startling realization the other day: You don’t see a lot of fat old guys. No, really, they all die before they get old. I don’t want to do that, so I’m going to lose weight. It sucks, but it’s got to be done. So, look out for “how less fat is Kevin than he was when he started” updates periodically (for the two people who read this thing).

  • Kevin is disgruntled today. Why?

    Kevin is disgruntled today. Why? No good reason. Thursdays are just good days to be disgruntled on. I want good Chinese food and bad reality tv. I want competent people working with me, and projects that mean something. I want people to RTFM and stop using me as a first option when it comes to questions. You will learn much more and appreciate it more if you find it yourself, no really. I mean it. No kidding.

    I’m apparently not the only person suffering from dreams.

  • I had the weirdest dream

    I had the weirdest dream last night. It was a “this could have been your life” thing. What if I hadn’t been married when I moved to Virginia? What would things be like? It was odd, and in the end, I ended up married to Jen, and Max was there too, which is nice, but it was still very odd. I don’t normally have vivid and memorable dreams. I usually don’t remember them at all.

    After yesterday’s geekFeat, I’m not up to really doing anything today. I’m just bored. I’m tired of “helping” people by answering questions all day about things they could have figured out on their own (man COMMAND – try it).

    Hopefully it’s just because I’m tired. I stayed up last night to watch the new South Park, and then couldn’t go to bed with that image stuck in my head, so I stayed up to watch Jiminy Glick. It’s such an uneven show. The filler around the interviews sucks mightily. And, I’d have no desire to watch the show except for the interviews. They’re great. The Eugene Levy bit was very funny, especially when Dave Thomas came out as Bob Hope (does anyone else see an SNL/SCTV reunion theme here?). Hopefully, they’ll pull together the rest of the show… but I doubt it. It seems Martin Short’s career has been built on uneven stuff. He’s usually pretty funny, but he has his moments where things just don’t work.

  • Almost forgot. My pal Jon

    Almost forgot. My pal Jon posted his ideas for a redone Star Trek. I contributed the revamped Scotty. Check it out.

  • Geek Alert: I just installed

    Geek Alert: I just installed Red Hat, Ximian GNOME (for Red Carpet), PostgreSQL, a Sybase Client, AOLserver, and got all of them happy, stable and working in less than two hours. How is THAT for cool? Now, that three hours doesn’t count the two it took to format, but still, how sweet is that? I feel so smart.

    WHICH means it’s time to go to Lowe’s, and buy some home repair stuff. That’ll learn me. I’ll get home completely broken by the vast array of home desctruction options available to me in the concrete-floored, metal-shelved aisles of the home “improvement” store.

    Give me computers any day of the week….

  • This one’s for the football fans

    The Redskins are going to suck this year. You can’t lose almost half your starters, including your quarterback and half your offensive line and expect to win it all. It just doesn’t work that way!!!

    They have Jeff “All About Me” George leading an offense who’s only weapon is recovering from knee .

    They have an almost completely new Defensive Line.

    They have a coach who’s never won a Super Bowl, and who’s not real popular with players. How many years back do you have to go to find one of his KC teams that impressed anyone?

    I don’t know what’s going to happen this year, but they’ll be lucky to go 8-8, and then Dan will yank Marty faster than they fired Richard Pettibone.

  • Ok, it’s still a pain

    Ok, it’s still a pain in the butt, but I’ve finally gotten CSS Positioning figured out (well, somewhat – did you know that if you put an unordered list inside an absolute positioned div, it blows it out and loses all positioning and with in IE5 on the Mac?). So, here you go – the new Lawver.net with no tables of any kind. Is that cool, or what?

  • Six Feet Under scared the

    Six Feet Under scared the (insert appropriate expletive) out of me. For the uninitiated, the show started out with the accidental death of a six year old boy who finds a gun under his mother’s bed. They dealt with it without the sentimentality of a Lifetime movie or a Touched by an Angel soft-focus lovefest. It rocked me. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose Max. I don’t want to either… If you have kids, give them a big hug and stop being such a bastard.