Tag Archives: Personal Blather

Fun story from driving in the rain on Friday… I was heading in to pick my wife up from work and saw that there was water over Hogback road. I was slowing down to take a better look at things, which seemed to annoy the guy in the SUV behind me. When I stopped before the water’s edge he leaned on his horn and flashed his lights, so I rolled down the window and waved him past.
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So… A bit quiet around here, yes? I took a couple of use-it-or-lose-it days and rested. Did some work around the house and all. Not as much as I really ought to have, but the lawn is mowed and I’ve made a dent in the horde (that’s my wife’s term for dirty dishes).
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Did a doublecheck on my poster print / football field calculations from last time and it looks like I left the end zones off… Without the end zones, we’ve now printed enough posters to cover 1.2 football fields. With the end zones, we’ve got four more rolls of paper to go.

We’ve also used six 2 liter bottles of ink.

I seem to have hit a rhythm of posting in the evenings for the past few days. I’m probably going to stick with that for a while… It’s just easier given how hectic work has been for the past few weeks. There’s just no time during the day to try to put two coherent thoughts together, let alone think through writing something out. Plus, posting in the evening dovetails nicely with my heat and humidity induced insomnia. So that’s a nice bonus there.
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Summer has, I think, finally arrived. It’s been in the 80’s in the afternoons around here, and muggy in the fun Southeast Michigan “air like a wet washcloth” fashion. I’m really tempted to wash my car, just to cool off a bit.
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I’ve got a few seconds free between poster prints, so I thought I’d share a little wisdom from the office. All true rules have exceptions. This is how you know they are true rules. For example…

The rule: Avoid odd numbered versions of Adobe Illustrator and Star Trek movies.

The exceptions: Illustrator 9 and Star Trek III

The show is in about two hours, so I figured I’d write a quick little something… Can’t hurt, right?

Plus, I’ve got a song stuck in my head. I’m trying to drown it out by playing the Gilbert & Sullivan playlist on the powerbook. If that doesn’t work, the only option is to get other people humming it. Having a song stuck is like a virus that you can only get over once you pass it along to someone else. The song is “Addicted to Stress” by Jim’s Big Ego… If you want to share in the song addiction, you can watch the video on-line at bigego.com. Hopefully, if enough of you go watch it, it’ll get out of my head and into yours.

You know, sometimes I laugh when I hear people describe computer maintenance as voodoo. A friend recently forwarded me a great description of how to install Linux on a dead badger that brought it to mind. Obtuse instructions and mysterious sounding phrases are standard fare for techies, but they’re actually quite logical once you’ve gotten used to them.

On the other hand, I remember that when I was working in Tech Services, we had a rubber chicken on the pegboard next to the rest of the tools. When all attempts to fix a recalcitrant machine failed, we’d get that down and give the box a few whacks.

And the scary thing is, sometimes it’d work.
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Saturday was a big fundraiser / hockey game for the Cardiovascular center, and we were called in to videotape it. It was a lot of fun, especially with the penalties that were called… One player had a 2 minute penalty for “Being from Ohio” and a second 2 minute penalty for “Wearing silly looking pants.” I’ve got a goofy little movie that I did with the footage of the Zamboni… I’ll post it later. My Wife helped out, shooting still footage and crowd reaction shots with my camera. She did an excellent job, and quite a few of her shots are going to make it into the final production.
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I work with a lot of rather disgusting pictures. Just an hour or two ago I was finishing up a video edit and I freaked out the FedEx guy. He’d stopped by the office to drop off a package, glanced at my screen and did an abrupt about-face to keep from revisiting his breakfast. I guess I’m kind of acclimated to that sort of thing. But even so, I think this is a link not for the squeamish… Let’s say you’re a horror movie fan who enjoys cooking. What better way to celebrate Halloween than a pumpkin carving party with an artistic cake that looks like a partially disemboweled thorax?
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