Ultranormal

  • It’s Dead, Kev

    It is a sad day in LawverLand. Not only are Jen and Max still out of town, but my lovely Powerbook has died. It refuses to start up, and emits four tones before deciding not to do anything. According to Apple, it means the RAM or Boot ROM is dead…. which means I either get new RAM or a new Machine. Thankfully, work bought it, and there’s an outside chance I’ll get a brand new 867/Superdrive model instead of the 550 I currently have.

    The mortal wounds inflicted on the Powerbook (by an unseen force, because I didn’t do anything to it) mean no pictures for now. Hopefully, the hard drive’s OK and they can all be recovered. All applicable appendages are crossed.

    In other news, I’m still sick, but working anyway. It’s next to impossible to think clearly when my sinuses are swelling in all directions. Yum, yum, yum… post-nasal drip.

  • AH-CHOOO!!! Look, Picasso!

    I’m sick. I’ve decided that I don’t like travelling. I like my own house with its known and compensated for allergens, my pillow, my tv (and TiVo) and my couch. My ears, nose and sinuses are decompressing. They’ve been at 3500 feet for two weeks and being near sea level is driving them crazy. It feels like I have a cold, even though I’m pretty sure it’s just allergies.

    I’m going to TRY to finish up the photo stuff today. I spent some time on it yesterday and I just don’t like the design. I may launch it as is just to say I did it, but I’d really like to do it right.

  • ::sniffle:: ::sniifle:: Is That Blood? Is It Supposed to Be That Color?

    I’m home alone!!! AUGH!! Ok, sorry, I’m regretting that already. Here’s a little holiday travel tip: fly home the day after Thanksgiving. It was great. I was expecting long waits, planes full of cranky stuffed people and overworked and stressed out attendants. What I found was totally unexpected. The planes weren’t full. I had a seat open next two me on both flights. Everyone who worked in the airport was apparently happy that it wasn’t tomorrow or Sunday and the service was great. I’ve decided that I’m going to fly American from now on. They have more leg room than Delta and United and the service on all four of my flights was great.

    I was so early for my flight I made it halfway through this week’s Time before I boarded. For the day, I read all of Time, Newsweek and half of my book (Bitterroot by James Lee Burke) by the time I got home.

    I have tons of stuff to talk about and tell you, but I spent two weeks having my sinuses attacked by dog dander and 12 hours in planes and airports and want to recover a little bit before I go into everything (and I have to finish the new photoblog).

  • So Much to Say

    So much to say, so much to say, but there’s also a ton of stuff to do my last two days in Tucson. I’ll have a whole category of Tucson posts and a ton of pictures from our trips to the Desert Museum, the Zoo, the Pima Air Museum and other stuff.

    I get back on Friday… Jen and Max get back next Saturday. Expect pictures and posts on Sunday (like I’ll have anything better to do Saturday and Sunday).

  • Refried Beans and What?

    Another in the series of things I love about Tucson: Mexican restaurants out-number McDonalds almost two to one. There’s a drive-through Taco joint on almost every corner. It’s great!! I’ve gone to get breakfast almost every morning since we got here: huevos rancheros for me, steak ranchero for Jen and a gigantic quesadilla for Max (because he loves his cheese). It’s heavenly. If you’ve never tried them (and it sounds kind of nasty), there’s something wonderful about egg yolk and refried beans.

    We’re having a ball in 80 degree weather with abundant sunshine and no humidity. I’ll tell you all about it when we’re done having fun.

  • I’m Alive!!

    I swear I’m still here. I’m too busy eating good (read: real) Mexican food, chasing Max, getting my butt kicked in Pinochle (I don’t know why, but I still don’t get the whole stealth table talk language they have), recovering from TiVo withdrawal, and going to Zia for cheap music.

    I will leave you with the first of the big list I’m working on: Why I Love (and Hate) Tucson. The big number one is that it’s easy to be poor in Tucson. Housing is cheap; there’s always cheap fun stuff to do, pawn shops and used record stores. It’s great, and there’s no stigma attached to it. In Northern Virginia, it’s practically impossible to be poor. It was so much harder having no money in Virginia than it was in Tucson. Now that we’re not so fund-deprived, Tucson looks a little depressing, but the memory is still there.

  • AZ – Dry and Dry… Did I Already Say It’s Dry Here?

    I’m in Arizona and you’re not (or are you?). We’re here, it’s gorgeous and we’re having fun. I just made it through all 100+ e-mails in both of my inboxes and checked my Fantasy Football score (I’m down by ONE point. All his players are finished, and I still have my quarterback. I can smell a win).

    I guess there’s a lot to tell, but we’re gonna go get ribs now!! Aren’t you jealous?

  • Bang, Bang – Oh, We WEREN’T Supposed to Sell You That Gun?

    What do you do when you can’t trust your government? Not that this is a new problem. Maybe I’m just paying more attention, or listening to All Things Considered more. This report angers me to no end. To sum up, the Administration and Congress have decided that some civil liberties are OK to destroy and others, like the right to buy automatic weapons and provide terrorist organizations with all the firepower they need is OK. Why is it OK? Because they’ve all sold their souls to Charlton Heston and the gun freaks in the NRA. They’ve tightened airport security, can hold people without trial or even a hearing, can do all kinds of things they shouldn’t – and still, you don’t have to go through a background check to buy a gun, and can ship 900 automatic weapons to Columbian Guerillas without telling anyone, and that’s fine.

    I just don’t get it. Is it the money? Is it power? Is it the fact that the NRA provides a certain amount of votes for those folks every time they’re up for re-election? The people who like guns really can have it both ways. I don’t see the problem with registering a gun. You have to do several registrations, tests and inspections to drive a car, why not to own a firearm? It makes no sense. We can have logical and responsible gun control. Why don’t we? Who do we have to get out of office to get it? Who do I have to vote for?

  • Guilt, Failures and Triumph

    It’s been an insane week. I would tell you about it, but I really can’t. It’s all work stuff: top secret and stressful and aggravating. Something that was supposed to work doesn’t, and everything I did to work around it, hack it, massage it, tickle it, talk dirty to it, etc, failed. So, it’s not going to happen until things change or we figure out a workable hack.

    And tomorrow, we go to Arizona, on separate planes. Why? Poor planning, mostly. I didn’t know how much time I was going to be able to take off, and we just put it off until it was too late to get on the same flight. So, Jen gets to fly with Max all alone and spend four hours in Houston. I take off an hour after her and get to Tucson two hours before she does. Fun, huh? Poor poor Jen. Me? I get my Powerbook, two batteries, a working installation of Movable Type, games and a book (I haven’t decided what to bring, Java in a Nutshell or JavaServer Pages). It’s totally unfair and I feel really bad, but it’s too late to change it now. I just have to come up with some way to make it up to her.

    I told you the other day about my shell script discovery. Well, I made another related discovery today. I’m pretty sure this would apply to the Windows version as well, but I don’t have PhotoShop 7 for Windows. In PS 7 for the Mac, you can create new Web Gallery templates!! To verify it, I just duplicated the Simple theme’s directory as “MT Import” and it showed up in the list of Styles under File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery. So, another task for the plane is to mess with my new directory and see if I can get Photoshop to create the import files for me. I’ll post the instructions when/if I figure it out.

    I am such a geek…

  • Max: King of the TP

    Max has been on a creative tear lately. He’s been making up interesting games, songs, etc. He’s also been full of energy from dawn to dusk and not taking naps. I guess he’s really three now.

    Last night, I came home from work to find Max and Jen sitting on the sunroom floor building “sand castles” out of pieces of toilet paper. Apparently, while Jen was downstairs doing laundry, Max found our stash of TP and decided he could make sand out of it. He ripped up the entire roll in the sunroom and proceeded to build things with it. When Jen came up, he hastily pointed out, “It’s sand!! I building SAND CASTLES!!!” I think he was trying to tell Jen he wasn’t being naughty, but had a reason for mutilating the roll. Jen, of course, sat down with him and started playing. When I got home, I took over with the camera. Max thought it was really cool to pick up a bunch of pieces, throw them up into the air and walk under them. We had a TP fight, made some TP origami, wore TP hats and Max stuffed a bunch of it down my shirt. Who knew TP could be so much fun?