Monthly archives for November, 2006

The Return of J. Walter Weatherman

Nov30
2006 Written by Andrew

I decided not to run tonight as I figured I wouldn’t, and instead I went to the store, bought some food, and came home to eat, sample some beer, and watch my DVDs of “Arrested Development.”

One of the recurring gags in the show was that the father liked to teach his children a lesson by using a one-armed man who’s fake arm would inevitably get ripped off in the course of an elaborate stunt, at the end of which he’d confront the children and say “And that’s why you don’t !” That’s why you don’t yell, that’s why you always leave a note, that’s why you don’t teach your children a lesson (ironic as that was), etc. Something that would scare the kids into compliance.

As I was crossing the Morrison Bridge about a month ago, I passed a car wreck right in the middle of the bridge. A car had somehow spun around and jumped the curb of the bridge, crushing the wheel well and buckling the tire on the curb. It didn’t look like there were any injuries, but the car was pretty much totaled. As I passed the car, I mentally echoed the posted signs I see on the Portland bridges and thought to myself “And that’s why you don’t change lanes on the grating!” So inappropriate. So funny. I bust out laughing and couldn’t stop. I think I might have even been on the bus, and they must have thought I was some kind of psycho.

But still…bravo, Andrew.

Posted in Geekery, General

I get in trouble when I write while tired

Nov30
2006 Written by Andrew

I’m sitting here at work practically falling asleep. Granted, what I’m doing isn’t very attention-holding–watching a failed hard drive make a copy to the network–and I know it’s my own damn fault I’m so sleepy. Sometimes it’s because I haven’t slept well (which has been happening a lot lately anyway), but last night I was just up late.

After I got back from my usual Wednesday-night haunt at Barley Mill, I had a long IM talk with Heather D in which I brought her up to speed on what’s been going on in my life lately. She accused me of having an overall “grass is greener” type of mentality, which given the relationship I had with her is entirely possible, but since I can only recall that ever specifically happening once while I was dating her, I dismissed it. Or as I put it to her, “Twice in seven years doesn’t mean it’s a pattern.” We rehashed some of our less-than-stellar moments, too, and I was surprised to discover how much resentment she still has for parts of our relationship. It wasn’t a bad conversation in any way, but I was surprised at how chilly it got at times. Maybe she’s going through a hard time emotionally already, maybe she’s right to still carry around resentment for me after all these years.

Heather did just get back from Costa Rica, though. That was a bit frightening, since I’m finding a common thread of SE Asia, Costa Rica, and time in France among women I’ve been attracted to in the last few years. I freaked out when Heather said she was spending New Year’s in France until she confessed that she was kidding. Whew. She got me thinking, of course, which resulted in even less sleep than I was already in store for given how late I stayed up. Maybe I really do have a desire to sabotage myself and people around me? Nah, that can’t be it. This just has to be a fluke.

Still, I told her I’ve never regretted our relationship despite the problems we had. In fact, I credit her with making my relationship with Erika about the most adult and mature I’ve ever had with a woman. I acted like an adult 99% of the time, I treated Erika like an adult 99% of the time, and it resulted in a pretty good 18-month relationship. Probably the best relationship I’ve ever had.

Oh, did I mention I wrote Erika an email a couple of months ago? Nothing really special, just a “Hi, how’s it going, I’ve been thinking about you and what you’re up to,” kind of email, and I never got a response. It wasn’t fishing for any sort of attempt at reconciliation, it wasn’t inappropriate or emotional, just a friendly hello. I figured that she was probably still traveling or something until I had the good sense to check her LiveJournal recently and discovered she’s been back in town for a few months and is working and living at home. Classy, Erika, very classy. I’m glad to know that the time we spent together and the friendship we had isn’t even worth an email response. Frankly, I don’t really have the need to hear back from her to validate some sense of entitlement that I might feel about how she ended our relationship (e.g., “She does still think about me!”), but my biggest pet peeve has always been when people don’t write or call back.

Especially when I know that they’ve gotten my message and just decided to snub me. That I resent.

I’m so sleepy, I’m thinking of foregoing my post-work run across the street at Bally. I took all of last week off because I was too busy shopping and cooking, so I was looking forward to getting some running in, but my pants fit again (after a few days of discomfort on belt hole #4 following Thanksgiving) and I’m just so damned tired, I might skip it, go home, and go to the grocery store for some dinner. See, I have no clean plates or bowls, nothing but pasta in my apartment, and no desire to play “Let’s see what I can make from what’s in my cupboards” after doing the dishes.

The computer says it has another 25 minutes to go before it finishes copying, but I have another hour until I take off. That thing’s been going since around 11 AM this morning, though, and I’m hoping I can finish it before I go home tonight. Or go to the gym. The jury’s still out on that one.

Posted in Erika, Food, General, Running, Work

Post-Thanksgiving deconstruction

Nov25
2006 Written by Andrew

If there’s one holiday I enjoy more than any other, it’s Thanksgiving. Any holiday where it’s not only expected, but encouraged to eat as much as you can is all right in my book. I did eat as much as I could, fortunately, even though I felt a little sick afterwards. Sick and tired, though not in the “I can’t take it anymore” kind of way. Sick, having eaten too much, and tired from the sleepy trifecta of alcohol, lack of sleep, and tryptophan from the two helpings of turkey I had. Glad I joined a gym for the winter.

Actually, it’s not the eating of the holiday that I had object to, it’s the leftovers–like the 3/4 of an apple pie I ate in the last two days. And the dressing I took home. And the mashed potatoes. I feel bloated, but that might also be the beer.

Dinner, despite the gushing compliments from my Mom (thanks, Mom), didn’t come out anywhere near as well as I hoped. The turkey was dry and yet somehow undercooked, the stuffing was delayed, the gravy wasn’t started in time so I had to have my Dad improvise, and the mashed potatoes weren’t creamy. Yeah, they were all tasty, but nothing came out anywhere near as it should have. The words “unmitigated disaster” might be too strong of words to use, but things certainly weren’t as clean as they should have been. Hell, I didn’t even get to enjoy my own appetizers.

Dilemma with coworker? Addressed but still dilemmatic. Is that even a word? It’s is now. Anyway, problem not solved.

I’m going back to my “Scrubs”-a-thon I’m watching tonight and opening another beer.

Posted in Family, Food, General, Work

Insomnia

Nov22
2006 Written by Andrew

3:15 AM and I’m wide awake. I guess you could say I’ve had a lot on my mind in the last couple of weeks, though rarely has it interfered with my sleep cycle. Maybe it has something to do with relationships, maybe it has something to do with work, maybe it has something to do with the 17-pound turkey currently sitting in a brine of salt, sugar, water, and vegetable broth in a cooler outside my door and my worrying that it was at the right temperature and maybe needed to be flipped again.

Since no one in my family spoke up and made plans, I decided to take matters into my own hands this year and I ordered a free-range organic heirloom turkey. I’m also in charge of the cranberry sauce, the dressing, the mashed potatoes, an appetizer, and I’m bringing pie #3 to this Self family shindig. I’ll write more about what I make another time. If I tried to remember all the details now, I wouldn’t get very far. A lot of the stuff I bought is organic by the very nature (no pun intended) of where I shopped this year–the turkey, the broth, the potatoes, the cranberries, heck, even the flour of the bread I’m buying tomorrow (today) to chop up for the dressing.

It hasn’t been a lot of work yet, but it’s been expensive so far. No worries, though. Some meals are worth the extra costs involved.

I invited a friend of mine to come with me since she has nowhere else to be on Thursday–the unfortunate side effect of having one’s family across the country as well as being British and not really recognizing the holiday to begin with. She’s also a vegetarian for moral reasons, but she’s mentioned that well-kept animals are edible. Good thing I have an organic free-range heirloom turkey to share. Heather’s bringing a coworker of hers who likewise has nowhere to go, and with my Mom, Dad, and grandmother, Thanksgiving will round out with seven people. Not bad. I left the recipes in place since I was actually using recipes meant to serve 12 people, but I tripled the mashed potatoes quantities just to be on the safe side. I know I like my mashed potatoes, even though they’ll be a little different this year.

I’ve been grappling with some moral dilemmas lately with regards to a coworker of mine, though I would hope that’s not the reason I’m awake right now and not fast asleep like I should be. Personal problems can certainly affect one’s sleep cycle, but I’m leaning more towards the two bottles of beer I drank tonight in the course of dinner and after-dinner turkey brining being the root cause of my sleeplessness. Perhaps they’re all related. Regardless, tomorrow is going to be a very long day, and I’m going to be consuming enough caffeine to make an elephant buzzy. It’s going to require a lot of trips to the breakroom and at least one trip to Starbucks during the course of the day, and I’m sure by about 2 PM my stomach will be pretty upset. I hope to be home by then, anyway.

There’s a rumor that we’ll be let out of work early tomorrow, which would be well-timed to come home and get a start on the turkey broth and cranberry sauce–the broth alone takes four hours of some roasting and simmering, but if forms the basis of the dressing and gravy so I want to make sure it gets done. I also still need to find two fennel bulbs at a grocery store somewhere, so I’m going to make some calls later this morning. I’ve been to Freddy’s, New Seasons, and Zupan’s and I’ve come up empty-handed so far, but I still have three places I know of left to check.

How can I be yawning, feel tired, but lie in bed with my eyes open? Maybe I truly am my father’s son after all. Maybe I’ll play a game or something. I have to be up in a little more than two hours, so there’s not much sense in going back to sleep now.

Posted in Family, Food, General, Work

Bohemian like me

Nov16
2006 Written by Andrew

Seriously, where have I been? How come I never knew how much the Dandy Warhols rocked? Have I really been so far out of the new music scene since the Dandys entered ten years ago that I didn’t know that a band from my own hometown kicks ass?

I feel like an idiot. I feel like I just finally got the punchline of a joke I’ve heard for years, and let me tell you, I’m not laughing my head off–I’m listening to “Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia” for the third time in two days.

Next thing you know I’ll probably be discovering Sleater-Kinney. That reminds me–I should buy some Sleater-Kinney.

Posted in General

Tuesday

Nov14
2006 Written by Andrew

2500 messages moved, only 11,500 to go. Yeah, I still have a ways.

One good thing about moving my email from a dedicated email provider to the same company that hosts my website is that I can install my own webmail software, if I so choose. The software they use by default is stable, but not very good. There are some flashier and more interesting pieces of software I could install and use on my own, but they aren’t ready for prime time yet. I don’t know about you, but I feel more comfortable with something being version 1.4.6 rather than version 0.2-beta 2. My own bleeding edge mentality notwithstanding, ten years worth of email is a lot to gamble with, and short of nightly email backups somehow I don’t think I want to risk it. Yet. Some of the choices I have are pretty slick. I could always just use Gmail, but I have no way of moving my past messages onto the servers. I could also just keep my email on my PC, but after years of dealing with that I specifically moved away from that so that my email would be safe.

Of course, that was long before my email provider deleted 14,000 emails I had saved. Go figure.

I got home tonight fairly late after a post-work run at Bally, and I’m wiped. I was up until 11:30 last night, up at 6 AM like usual, and now I have a whole day and a 6.2 mile run under my belt. I think I might go to bed around…well, give me 15 minutes.

I’ve been feeling…odd…lately. I can’t think of a better word. Odd. Indecisive. Uncertain. Hesitant. I think what I need is a good push (or pull) forward; I’m just not certain where I want to be pushed, yet.

On that cryptic note, I shall retire and dream of more certain things.

…but one final note: rest in peace, Good Dog, Bad Dog. We hardly knew ye. If I’d known you’d be shuttering your doors permanently I would have stopped by for one final Magma Dog–face melter style. I shall speak of you for years to come to all who will listen, and remember the gastrointestinal distress you caused not quite as fondly as I will the food I ate. Thanks for the dogs and brews.

Posted in Food, Geekery, General, Running

Une catastrophe

Nov13
2006 Written by Andrew

Imagine my surprise when I discovered this morning that my password was no longer accepted by the company who I get my email through, neither through my email program nor through their web interface. After inquiring with their technical support (through my fortunately still-functioning Gmail account), it seems that due to some sort of glitch they deleted my entire account as well as the ten years worth of email I had stored on their servers. Fortunately, they had backups and were able to restore all my email–but it did nothing to eliminate that moment of “Erk!” when they told me what they’d done.

I already had one scare with them when all my email got deleted from my Sent folder and Inbox last year or so, and they had to restore it from backup then, too. But this was everything. Glad I got it back.

I’m already in the process of moving my email to another account, needless to say. I’d been getting a free account through them since 2000 or 2001, but I think they want me to start paying now. I can host my email through the same company that hosts my website, so it might work out for the best in the end. Unfortunately, that’s also 14,000 messages that I have to download from one server to my computer, and then upload to another server. It’s going to take me days to do it all, and I’ll have to not only watch closely to make sure that everything gets moved but also to sort through the 2,000 messages that they dumped into my Inbox thhat I don’t know if they’re duplicates or not.

Bah. Stupid computers.

My bread was yummy, at least. I have to be careful that I don’t eat the whole loaf when I eat it warm with honey or jam.

Posted in Food, Geekery, General

Lazy Sunday post

Nov12
2006 Written by Andrew

On Friday an email got sent out to the firm saying there was going to be an after-work Happy Hour, so I showed up and it turned out I was the only member of the support staff who went. Drinks with ten attorneys…yeek. I had a good time, but I felt out of place. I was friends with one of the attorneys already, but I hadn’t really gotten much of a chance to talk with the others outside of work, so it was a good start, at the very least.

After drinks, I rode the bus back into SE and got off at the corner of 12th and Hawthorne where I was greeted with a puddle of epic proportions at the curb. More like a lake, really. It was probably about three or four inches deep, it came up almost all the way to the sidewalk, and stretched out a good four or five feet from the curb. After looking at it and gaining some self-confidence from the beers I’d just consumed, I thought that I could probably take a running start and make it over the smallest portion of the puddle, so I backed up and took the long jump over the water. Now, had I not been holding my umbrella, I might have been able to make it to the edge and just splashed myself a bit. Had I also not tripped on the takeoff, I wouldn’t have landed in the middle of the puddle and soaked both my shoes and my pants legs halfway up. I went and had dinner at the Mexican place that’s right there, and then squished my way home with my tail between my legs. Of all the days to wear my canvas Converse shoes, too.

It could have been worse, I suppose. I might not have landed on my feet.

I joined Bally Total Fitness this week so that I can continue to run over the winter, though the idea of running indoors on a treadmill is far from exciting for me. I’ve never done well on treadmills because it’s too tempting to keep looking down at the numbers slowly ticking by. It just draws the whole process out a bit more than I care for. Regardless, I have three weeks or so of not running to make up for, but I’m starting back in relatively slowly. I discovered today that all the treadmills shut off automatically after an hour, so the furthest I’ll be able to go uninterrupted at my top speed is eight miles, give or take. So much for a winter of weekly half-marathons. I can always restart the machine or hop on another one, but I’d love to be able to do it without stopping like if I were actually running outside.

Still, I made it seven miles on the treadmill today before I got cut off, I did some leg presses, and then sat in the steam room for 15 minutes or so. All in all, a pretty good workout.

Yesterday my Dad drove out here and we went to lunch at the Alameda Brewhouse on NE 48th and Freemont. Neither of us had ever been out there, and I enjoyed three different beers as well as a homemade Gardenburger-esque veggie patty. I bought myself a pint glass to take home to add to my collection, and I also took home my first growler of beer. I’ve gotten jars of beer to go from McMenamins before, but I’ve never gotten one of the half-gallon sizes from anywhere. At least now I have my very own growler to take to breweries and get filled, should I so please. I shouldn’t make a habit of it, though–growlers take up a lot more room than pint glasses do, so I shouldn’t start a new collection. The Deschutes Brewery growlers are absolutely beautiful, though–next time I’m in Bend I want to pick one up, if I don’t mind spending the $30.

My new TV is still in the “it’s so neat” phase, though I had planned last night to settle in with a couple of hot dogs, some BBQ Kettle chips, and a couple of pints from my growler to watch my brand new copy of Batman Begins, but I discovered ten seconds in I’d mistakenly purchased the full screen version. Bah! Not only do I despise the full screen versions of movies to begin with because they chop off the sides of the picture, but now that I have an actual wide screen TV, they’re even more useless to me. I settled for something else, but I’d been looking forward to watching the Dark Knight kicking some ass.

I’m multitasking right now. I have laundry in the washer, I have bread dough rising, and I’m thinking of more things to write. I’m making a loaf of wheat bread because it’s been so long since I’ve baked, and being 50 degrees and fairly soggy out, I thought it a perfect time to make some bread. The idea of eating still-warm freshly-baked bread topped with some honey or homemade jam (not from my home, though) sounds like a perfect way to spend the afternoon.

Maybe I’ll go rake some leaves. I don’t think I can see pavement anymore in front of my house.

Posted in Beer, Family, Food, General, Running

It's like Christmas, but with fewer toys

Nov08
2006 Written by Andrew

Actually, I really only care that Rumsfeld resigned. A Democratic control of Congress doesn’t mean that anything I agree with will get done, mostly because the Democratic Party doesn’t support anything anymore, they’re just against things. At the very least, it’s will be the world’s largest oversight committee, and for now, that’s good enough for me. Kudos to those who were elected. I did my part and turned in my ballot Monday evening.

It’s been a long week, and the week’s only half over with.

Posted in General

"But this is HD TV. It's better than real life!"

Nov06
2006 Written by Andrew

Danger, geekspeak ahead.

Merry Christmas to me. After three years of waiting, prices dropping, sizes increasing, and money coming and going, I finally took the opportunity to buy myself a real television instead of continuing to use hand-me-downs. I’d been comparison shopping for the last few years, watching technology, reading reviews now and then, and generally trying to stay current on the technology. It got hard in the last year with the explosion of both high-definition video equipment as well as HDTV broadcasts, but that meant that my expected price point of $1000-$1500 for a new TV dropped dramatically and the size of TV I expected to buy increased substantially. To think, just two years ago I was willing to spend $1000 on a good 30-inch non-HDTV.

But after mulling it over and taking advantage of both a sale and a coupon, I’m now the proud owner of a 32″ Westinghouse LCD HDTV. It was a bit disheartening to discover that DVDs look like crap on a high-resolution HDTV like mine and that I have to buy a new DVD player just to get them to look OK, but hey, them’s the breaks of technology. On the bright side, I can basically do a swap on my current DVD changer for a new one and only spend around $50 after I subtract the sale price of my old changer, a gift certificate, etc, etc. I guess having to buy upgraded equipment is the price of admission to the age of high definition media. And before you ask “What’s the difference?”–trust me. It’s worth it. Once I got my rabbit ears hooked up to receive HD over-the-air broadcasts, I was literally jaw-droppingly amazed at how good HDTV looks. There was a program on the Monterrey Bay Aquarium on OPB HD, and everything looked so real. I just left my TV on OPB all day because everything that came on looked so good.

Later, I found myself yesterday thinking of ways I could take advantage of my new HDTV, including buying an Xbox 360 or an HD-DVD player, but neither sound particularly appealing since I don’t play console games and I don’t want to repurchase my DVD collection as the moves are rereleased. I guess I could always buy the Xbox 360 and the add-on HD-DVD player…but that would be a ways off. I’d have to think of games to play on the 360, first, plus it would go against my rule of always buying consoles one generation off. I’ve been thinking about buying a PlayStation 2 lately to play Final Fantasy XII–only five years later and eight days before the release of the PlayStation 3!

I just hope that my end of year bonus turns out to be the size I’m assuming it will be, otherwise I just took a chunk out of my savings without the repayment I’m planning on. Ho ho ho. Maybe I can think of something to ask for at Christmastime to supplement my new stuff.

Of course, part of the problem is that my venerable and cherished TiVo is now obsolete since it doesn’t support recording of HD broadcasts. I have four choices: I can watch HD broadcasts when I remember they’re on and let my TiVo continue to record analog programs, I can ditch my TiVo altogether and save myself $13/month, I can buy a $700 HD-capable TiVo unit, or I can build my own TiVo-like device. I’m actually leaning for choice #4. It’ll end up costing me about the same as if I bought a new unit from TiVo, I’ll have to spend a lot of time getting it up and running, but since it won’t have a monthly fee and I can upgrade it at will, it represents both a potential savings in the future as well as a challenge for me. Well, potential savings after the initial $700 investment, of course, but that’s only 4 more years of TiVo at the current rate! I definitely can’t go 4 more years with a TiVo unit that doesn’t record the stuff I want to watch.

TriMet switched all their buses to biodiesel and is now the largest consumer of biodiesel fuel in the state of Oregon. Cool. It’s stuff like that that makes me proud to be both a supporter of public transportation as well as live in Portland. It’s only a 5% blend of soy with the diesel fuel, but they’re forecasting next year or so moving to a 20% blend.Friday and Monday were two of the busiest days at work that I can remember in recent history. Continuing on our hiring streak, I had to set up five new employees or Friday, computers included. Today Marc and I had to train each of them on basic computer usage in the office and whatnot, so we were running around for a long time while people were waiting. It was a hell of a morning, and it didn’t help that I’d only gotten 3 hours of sleep. To round off the day, I discovered around 4 PM that all the work I’ve done in the last two work days I have to basically redo because I screwed up. I expected this to happen, though–the same thing happened last time I was doing this same project. Tomorrow I’m going to print out the directions that I made for myself and not risk having to redo everything again.

And since I only got three hours of sleep last night, I’m on the fence about whether I should try to stay up and watch “Heroes” and “Studio 60″ in HD, or go to bed and watch them tomorrow on my TiVo. I have about an hour to make up my mind, but that’s assuming I can make it another hour.

Posted in Geekery, General, Work

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