I've started strength-training again (after a hiatus of almost three years). Last week, a trainer at the gym showed me how to use the equipment and took me through a general program of lifting. Yesterday I went back and did most of the exercises on my sheet, but for a couple of them I couldn't remember what they were. I think they were both dumbbell exercises, but since I file my sheet at the gym, I can't tell you what they're called.
Yesterday I did some yardwork. I'm still not minding mowing the lawn. I planted some plants (which would have been a lot easier with a shovel instead of a little trowel). I hung up hooks for the hammock chairs. I enjoy working in the yard. I'm so glad I bought a house. The next big thing will be making a pond. I'll have to start making some sketches of landscaping plans.
I'm considering attending DefCon this year. The advantages are that it's inexpensive, over a weekend, and at a location to which airfares are relatively inexpensive, albeit not within driving distance.
New pictures taken today:
As you can see from the pictures, it's a beautiful day, so I'll try not to waste too much more of it writing here. On tap for the rest of the day: going to the gym to work out and going to a co-worker's Texas-style BBQ party.
On Friday, NPR's David Kestenbaum came to APL to talk about Bringing Science to the Public. It was a wonderful lecture. The auditorium was overflowing with people. His main points, at least the ones I can remember, were:
On Friday night, I went to Jillian's, dinner, and the new Spiderman movie, which I enjoyed. I went with Elisa from work and her roommate Liz, both of whom I've met before, and Don, Lori, and Josh, each of whom I just met then and each of whom has his or her own vanity domain, too. Cool people. This was all in Arundel Mills mall, which I'd never visited before, although it's only about a twenty minute drive away. It's quite the consumer paradise. The 24-screen stadium-seating movie theater, though, really takes the cake with its grandiose Egyptian theming.
On Saturday, I didn't do nearly as much as I'd planned to. Just laziness. The main event was picking up another foster cat, Simon, to take care of (sheesh, the second dangling participle in three sentences). His owner died, and none of the family would or could take him, so he went to the shelter. He isn't mean at all. He has been hiding under the bed a lot so far, although he comes out anytime I peek under the bed. He met Tornado Kitty once, and there was some hissing, so now he stays on the third floor, and she stays on the second floor as usual. I think they could be quite compatible. He's actually pretty similar to her; he's friendly and affectionate, a people cat. He just isn't a cat cat yet; I have the impression he's intimidated by Tornado Kitty.
This is the age of weddings:
And this is the age of people quitting their job to do something else:
Rob is lending me his learning German CDs and book, so I'm learning German. You're probably wondering what brought this on. Basically, they were just sitting there on the shelf in his trailer, and I thought I'd like to visit Germany some day, so I should learn some German. I'm at about the same point Rob is now: I know some phrases, but I wouldn't be able to get around easily in a German-speaking place yet. I definitely haven't mastered the "r" and "ch" sounds. So far, German seems similar to Spanish, with the genders (except there are three in German!) and formal you / informal you. Of course, German has a lot of cognates with English, too. Sometimes I think English is more trouble than it's worth, but at least is doesn't label rocks, trees, and tables with meaningless genders. One interesting similarity I noticed between German and Spanish is that both use one word to mean either morning or tomorrow (morgen and maņana).
I made a draft wedding page to keep everyone updated as to what the current plans are. Tomorrow, May 1, will be an important day because that's the first day when I can book rental space at Phipps. The first question out of the mouth of every caterer, musician, and photographer is, "What's your date?" Nailing that down is key to everything.
Some recent purchases:
Yesterday was my last class in this semester. (The class is Enterprise Security and Privacy.) It was very much an overview course, but I did learn from it.
My parents generously did some cleaning up around the first-floor bathroom that I painted, but there's plenty more paint to scrape off the floor. The light fixture looks great. The room is obviously darker than when it was all white with a stark light over the mirror, but I think it lends it more personality, more mood. I'll have to take some digital pictures of it.
I went to Rob's graduation this past weekend. On Friday night I flew down there, where Rob picked me up and dropped me off at the beachfront hotel. On Saturday, we went to the morning ceremony in the fieldhouse. They really had to pack people in to fit everybody in that place. Unlike at Penn State, ERAU calls each graduate up to the stage, announces their names, and gives them diploma folders (apparently the diplomas are mailed later). It was a long ceremony, and not one that I'd ever think of recording on video for later viewing. The event gave me an appreciation of how international ERAU's student body is: students from the UK, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Japan, Germany, Puerto Rico... After the graduation ceremony, we went to a small reception for the Aeronautical Science students and Rob showed us around the campus. We went out for a nice lunch, and then Rob's dad started his journey back home to Wyoming. Back to the hotel for a nap. Then Rob and I went go-kart racing and stopped at Cow Lick for homemade ice cream. The next morning, we went to the beach briefly and went out for breakfast. Then it was off to the airport and back up north.
For those of you who are following my decoration of the first-floor half bathroom, I finished the painting last night. It didn't go perfectly; I forgot to repaint the door until after I had rinsed out the rollers. So when I did apply a second coat of paint, it was all runny and drippy. Rinsing those rollers thoroughly seems impossible. Maybe I should just treat them as disposable. There still a lot of cleaning up of paint splatters to do, but I doubt I'll be able to get to that until next week. Other than that, all that's left is the light fixture, which my dad will helpfully install this weekend, while I'm down in Florida for Rob's graduation. Also last night, I went to the gym, ripped apart a bunch of cardboard boxes so they can be recycled, went to Home Depot for some potting soil and ferns, and planted a bunch of seeds and seedlings in my backyard. I can tell you two things about the soil in my backyard: it's very clay-like, and it's got plenty of worms.
Tornado Kitty actually used her kitty screen door on her own once last night! I was very proud of her. I'm not sure whether she really "got it," though; after using it once, she went back to meowing at me to open the door and pawing at other parts of the door. Hopefully, once the weather gets warmer and I can leave the sliding glass door open, she'll have more opportunities to get the hang of it.
My usual routine of cycling at the gym for thirty or forty minutes is getting old, even when I've got something to read or listen to. I'd like to get back into weight training, but I'll need some instruction on my gym's universal machines, because they aren't the stick-the-pin-in-a-stack-of-weights kind but rather the load-barbell-weights-onto-a-pole kind.
Tonight I'm going to dinner at my future mother-in-law's friend's house.
My weekend went fairly well. I crossed off everything from Friday's list that I did. I spent quite a bit of time shopping: for groceries, for silver shoes, for a wall-mountable spice rack, for sheer fabric with which to drape the walls of my first-floor half bathroom, and for fake plants with which to spruce up that bathroom. I took my wedding dress to the tailor to have it altered. I mowed the lawn, which isn't too much of a chore, considering that I'm still in the excited-new-homeowner stage of homeownership. I had bloodwork done, which wasn't the easiest thing after fasting for eight hours, but I got through it. I went out to dinner with Rob's dad, who was in the neighborhood, and I spent some quality time with Tornado Kitty. I did a couple of loads of laundry. I cooked my lunch for this week, interrupted part-way through by a hurried run to Target for a food processor after I found that a blender couldn't come close to doing the job. I exercised, although not as much as I would have liked (it's a good thing I didn't reward myself for enduring bloodwork by visiting Cinnabon). I pulled up all the dandelions I could find in my yard. And that was my weekend. I'll have to continue painting my bathroom tomorrow.
The weather is something to talk about these days. Earlier this week, it was unseasonably hot here, in the low 90s F. I'd gone from leaving my townhouse's windows closed because it was too cold out to leaving them closed because it was too hot out. I much prefer the in-between stage, which may be coming this weekend. Yesterday the much-needed rain came, with more possibly coming today. Maybe that will alleviate the drought enough to allow usage of it for things like car-washing, which my car could use, what with it being covered with pollen and dirt. The pollen count earlier this week in DC was an order of magnitude greater than what's normally considered "high."
Is the US too involved in other countries' business ("colonialist," "imperialist") or not involved enough in other countries' business ("isolationist," "unilaterialist")? This country seems to have a bad reputation everywhere, for one reason or another. It's frustrating.
My weekend plans:
Three of my self-assigned tasks have to do with weddings. I'm at That Age When Everyone Gets Married (or so it seems). I think the wedding industry is a scam. Not every corner of it -- I think many caterers, photographers, and musicians charge fair prices. But I think the bride's and attendants' apparel is a scam. And I think any insistence on having huge bouquets everywhere is a scam. I think the number one accomplice in this rip-off, though, is the bride. The bride as princess, the bride as dictator. All Hail the Bride.
An excerpt from a piece of spam I received today:
Note: Your email address was obtained from an opt-in list, Reference # 10023392. This email is not considered as a spam, since it was sent in compliance with all existing and proposed email legislation. Please know that we do not want to send you information regarding our special offers if you do not wish to receive it. If you feel that you have received this email in error, please please click hereI'm all for anti-spam legislation.
I painted my first-floor half bathroom yesterday evening. It went okay; never having painted a wall before, I learned a few things:
Another first for me this weekend was mowing my lawn (or mowing *any* lawn, for that matter). I used the old manual mower from Grandpa, and it works really well. It's so quiet compared to modern gas- and electric-powered mowers. I'll probably need to get some other kind of tool to trip the edges of the grass, near paved areas and flower beds.
Work on the first-floor bathroom is going slowly. I want to disconnect the appropriate circuit breaker before I remove the old light fixture. That will require 1) figuring out which circuit breakers go to what; and 2) finding another light source to use after I turn off the appropriate breaker.
My relations with my alarm clock have been particularly bad this week. Twice I've apparently turned off both alarms while not conscious enough to realize they mean I should get up. I blame daylight savings time.
I will be giving a presentation on firewall types on Monday for my Enterprise Security and Privacy class.
Like most people with full-time jobs, I spend a lot of time at work. You may wonder what I do there, what I think of it. If not, stop reading here. If so, continue.
What I do is engineer software for a spacecraft instrument. The spacecraft is MESSENGER, which will be launched on a mission to Mercury in 2004. The instrument is an x-ray spectrometer, which determines the elemental surface composition of Mercury by seeing how the surface interacts with the x-rays coming from the Sun. The software is going to be written in Forth, an elegant, fourth-generation, decidedly un-C-like language that uses postfix notation and a data stack. I say "going to be" because I'm finishing up writing the requirements now, a process that seems a lot like negotiating a legal contract. Next I'll do design. Then I'll actually write code. Then I'll test the code.
The people here are virtually all friendly and quite competent, at least in my branch (the Information Systems branch of the Space Department). Most have at least a Master's Degree, many from JHU Whiting School of Engineering's Part Time Programs in Science and Engineering, since APL is one of that program's campuses, the classes are at convenient times, and APL pays all tuition for its employees. I work from 8:00am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday. I share my window office with a quiet guy who manages ground software development for MESSENGER. I also share my office with
My building is your basic, painted-concrete-block-wall defense contractor building. This campus has dozens of buildings, ranging from shabby little trailers (or, euphemistically, "Modular Buildings") to shiny new multi-story office buildings whose hallways remind one of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Much -- perhaps most -- of the lab's work is done for the Navy. In my department, though, most of the work is for NASA.
The IT folks here are nice and helpful, in contrast with other IT departments I've heard about other places. One odd thing I've noticed is that almost all of our IT staff (meaning our branch's, a staff of about ten people) seems to smoke.
There's a Recent Graduates Network (RGN) here, for people just out of college to get to know each other and socialize. Most of the time, though, recent grads socialize with smaller cliques. I think the people who are newer tend to be more open to socializing with people they haven't met before. Many of the people I hang out with are involved in sports that don't leave much time for socializing with people from work.
Sometimes I'm busy, but I'd say most of the time I'm not. I spend more time than I'd like waiting for responses from people who are busier than me. When I have spare time, I attend one of the weekly colloquia held during the school year or do my homework for class.
I know a whole lot more about screen doors than I did two days ago. Yesterday, after I got home from work, I decided that my hole-ridden sliding screen door (onto the second-floor deck) was intolerable. So I went to Home Depot and bought a screen-door repair kit, which comes with screen fabric, a spline (that strip of rubber that fits into a grove around the edge of your screen door and holds the fabric in place), and a spline tool. While I was at it, I bought a cat screen door, a small door set into the larger screen door that a cat can go through. But when I tried to remove the existing spline in my old screen door, it wouldn't budge. The rubber was just so old and weathered and stuck that it wouldn't come out. So I bit the proverbial bullet, going back to Home Depot to buy a whole screen door; I had to rent their pickup truck to transport it back to my house. I've never treated a screen door so gingerly before as after I'd paid too much money for one. :) So I installed the cat door in it right away, which was surprisingly easy. What a deluxe door! Then came time to simply put it in its track. This is where I learned the pitfalls of haste. I hadn't test-fit the door before I put the cat door in. I spent about half an hour struggling in the pouring rain to force it into its track, and I couldn't understand why it wasn't just popping easily in. At times I wondered whether the noises I was making would be noticed by my police officer neighbor. Finally I realized that I was trying to put it in wrong; I had the outside of the door on the inside, and vice versa. This *would* have been a simple matter of flipping the door 180 degrees along a horizontal axis.... except that I'd already installed the cat door on it at cat height. What could I do? I could go back to the store and buy another cat door and install it at the right height. I could somehow attempt to return the screen door that I had already altered. I could move the cat screen door that was already installed and patch the hole left by my previous installation of it. I could reverse the orientation of the whole sliding door setup, so that it opens on the right instead of the left. Somehow deciding that last option was the most viable, I went to bed. It was then that it occured to me: I had just bought a screen door repair kit, so I had everything I needed to either rotate the existing screen or replace it with a new one, if the new door's spline could be removed. Fortunately for me, the new door's spline was easy to remove. I removed the spline, rotated the screen so that the cat door was in the right place, and put the spline back in. I have a little more work to do on that yet, but that's almost finished. Goes to show the good that stepping back from a problem can do. I hope this new screen door lasts a long, long time.
Well, we finished the deck this past weekend. It came out really nice. I got mom and dad's old propane grill, since they just got a spiffy new one with a side burner for blackening things. Tornado Kitty loves being out on the deck.
It's that time of year when the walkways outside APL reek of bark mulch, trees are starting to blossom, and we trade an hour of sunlight in the morning for an hour of sunlight in the evening. Happy Spring.
The latest wedding planning news is that I'm planning to have the ceremony and reception in one room, the Palm Court. A harpist will provide music for the ceremony, and either a Cafe Trio (a strolling accordion, violin, and bass) or a jazz ensemble will provide music for the reception. Having people sit down at tables to eat would be problematic because of the space that would be required (I'm planning on 80 guests attending), which would mean spending thousands of dollars more on multiple room rentals. By having a more casual reception with cocktails and hot hors d'oeuvres instead of a sit-down dinner, I'd also avoid the time-consuming process of getting people seated and back up for the rest of the reception, and I'll save some money on food. I'll still have plenty of chairs and some small tables in the Palm Court, though -- I don't expect everyone, particularly elderly relatives, to stand up for the whole three-hour event.
My current project is painting my first-floor half bathroom. I've bought the paint (latex eggshell in a Hidden Forest color), started masking off trim and fixtures, and removed what fixtures I could. After I paint it, I plan to replace the vanity light fixture, drape the walls with a sheer fabric, and add some fake greenery -- maybe vines hung from the ceiling or something. Of course, I prefer real greenery, but this bathroom has no windows.
I took pictures of a bunch of foster cats on Wednesday evening. This weekend Rob leaves for Florida to take his final class, and my parents come to help me finish my deck.
I went home to visit the folks this past weekend. While I was there, I did some shopping (mainly at Big Lots), discussed wedding plans, threw out a bunch of old school notebooks, and caught up on sleep. I had a midterm in Enterprise Security and Privacy class yesterday. I didn't really study enough, but it went okay. The encryption and decryption were the easy parts; for me, the hard parts were the essay questions about work-for-hire and the Effectiveness Principle and stuff like that that I'd not paid much attention to.
Here's one thing that bugs me: bad drivers. People who just hang out in the left lane, not going particularly fast, not passing anyone, and not getting into the right lane when they have an opportunity. People who, when you try to pass them, suddenly realize how slow they were going and decide they won't let you pass them. People who never use their turn signals. People who decide they'll get out of this traffic jam by using the shoulder as their own personal travel lane.
Here's another thing that bugs me: wedding vendors who only send information in MS Word format. Actually, anyone who only communicates in MS Word bugs me, but wedding vendors are a group that has caught my attention. Perhaps I should be thankful that they can use e-mail.
I've posted the deck pictures in the Photos section. It turns out there was some information the building permit office was supposed to send me but never did, and as a result, my deck may be out of code. Don't you just love county government?!
I've been making various wedding plans lately, or at least investigating options. It looks like the two most expensive parts of a wedding are the catering and the photography. There are various ways I've been cutting costs (on purpose or inadvertently), like getting a $90 dress, not having attendants, not needing a lot of decorations (the wedding will be at Phipps Conservatory), and having simple tastes in cakes and rings. Unfortunately for my budget, my tastes in photography and food run more expensive.
We had a LinuxChix DC meeting on Friday night. It went well -- we met at a Thai restaurant and talked about getting the "So, are you here with your boyfriend?" question at tech conferences, erosion of privacy rights, Linux vs. *BSD as a desktop platform, the stuff we got for being a registered Apress user group, our take on the Security Geeks DC mailing list, ... On the way home, we saw a car with the license plate "APT GET." Wow, huh?
I hear Sweetie/Kali is doing better at her new foster caretaker's place -- not hissing so much anymore.
My parents came to visit this weekend and help me work on the deck. Rob's dad visited too, which was a bonus. I'd say the deck is well past halfway done: all that's left is to let the concrete footings set and put up the railing. I'll have to take some pictures and post them. It's looking very nice.
Happy Birthday to Me!
Irony of the Day: in a certain unnamed cult, Kali is the goddess of death and destruction.
Sweetie has been transferred to another foster cat caretaker, who I think is more experienced with cats. Hopefully she'll be able to get Sweetie to show her nice side so that she's adoptable. I'm certainly glad to have my guest bedroom back, with my parents coming to visit (and help build the deck) this weekend. Apologies to Matt, who was kept out of the guest bedroom last weekend by the cat.
Two days 'til my birthday!
Maybe I should look into online grocery-shopping and delivery (like Peapod). We have Peapod service in our area. Now, Rob buys the groceries. But when he goes back to school and when he comes back and works full time, there won't be any homemakers in the house to shop for groceries, a task which I find annoying and time-consuming as a full-time programmer and part-time graduate student. I'll have to look into it.
"Sweetie" update: the foster cat coordinator says she'll come every day to feed "Sweetie" and take care of her litter box, so we don't have to risk life and limb doing so. Even better, today we're apparently going to swap Sweetie for another, friendlier foster cat who reputedly gets along with other cats (and with people!). I have no idea how they're going to get Sweetie into the carrier, but I'm glad she's moving out.
More news on Kali. We heard from Kali's former owner (the daughter) yesterday. She said the cat's real name is Sweetie. :) We're going to see if we can find another foster home for Sweetie that doesn't have any other cats around and where the caretaker is more experienced at helping cats relax and be happy. In the meantime, she's still in the guest bedroom. I gave her some canned food yesterday, and in return, she attacked me. Rob braved the cat room to take some pictures of her for the adoption web page, but the best he got was one of her crouched under the bed and one of her lashing out.
Want to send me encrypted e-mail? Here's my PGP public key.
Yesterday I took in a foster kitty. Perhaps Tornado Kitty, with her easy adaptability and disarming personality, had set my expectations for other foster cats too high. But this cat, Kali (a spayed, declawed female), does not seem to be adjusting well. Her owner had it passed on to him by his daughter, who moved across the country and has little kids now. But now the owner is moving, too, so he decided to give her up. We're keeping Kali in the guest bedroom, closed off, with her own food, water, and litter box. Every time we come in, she hisses at us continuously. She even lunged at Rob. She stays under the bed all the time, as far as we can tell. Needless to say, her reaction to Tornado Kitty wasn't great, either, although I'd been hoping for at least neutral. I'm working with the foster cat coordinator to see how we can encourage her to be less hostile and see about taking her off my hands. I hope she isn't passed on forever; the coordinator suspects that mistreatment has caused her behavioral problems.
On Saturday morning I read this story in the Washington Post about a local Russian bookstore going out of business and facing the possibility of its stock of books having to be burned. So, despite the fact that neither of us can read Russian (although Rob can recognize the characters), Rob and I went there on Saturday evening to see what we could find. It is a *big* bookstore, really kind of a warehouse ("largest collection of Russian books outside the USSR"). It was immediately apparent why the usual practice of putting a went-out-of-business's stock out on the sidewalk wasn't feasible (the newspaper stories note that there is a possibility of reprieve for the books, but it's unclear what's happening to them now). We bought Crime and Punishment (or at least we *hope* that's what it is :), a small children's book, some socialist propaganda (in English), some gifts, an aircraft encyclopedia, and another aircraft book. It was a frustrating experience to be illiterate. They had all kinds of books: reference books, military history, fiction, computer manuals (I even saw the Internet for Dummies in Russian), children's books, philosophy, math textbooks, German-Russian translation dictionaries (lots of those), fiction... you name it. I'm fairly confident that the publicity stirred up from the front-page Post article will generate some way to keep the books from going to the incinerator.
Today is Thursday. So it's almost Friday! Almost the weekend!
Tornado Kitty now has her own web page. I'll put some pictures up once I get the chance, including the pictures I have of her sitting up.
I'm now responsible for the LinuxChix Meet the Chix web pages, Chapter web pages, and Security course web pages. I'm enjoying it, actually. I like to see good organizations have a good face on the web.
It's nice to stay in town for a weekend sometimes. This weekend Rob and I went to our new gym, watched The Matrix, did some shopping (wedding dress, etagere, workbench stools, fire extinguishers, lumber for attic flooring).
On the gym: it's nice. Pool, weights, cardio machines, running/jogging track, jacuzzi, raquetball courts, towel service, all kinds of classes (but those cost extra)... We tried out some elliptical trainer machines for starters, before realizing just how out of shape we are. We toned it down to walking laps after that. Lessons learned: dress to sweat, a lot; take a towel; take your own water; take something to read, for using the cycles.
On the Matrix: I "got it" much more this time than the once time I saw it in a theatre. Not having to leave the room helps quite a bit. :) What a great movie. I will definitely have to see the sequel.
On shopping: First we went to a bridal boutique, where I browsed a little bit. But I didn't see any dresses I liked, and all the dresses seemed expensive and in huge sizes. Also, the salespeople were too involved, which wasn't entirely unexpected but was annoying nonetheless. Then we went to the mall, and I got my dress at Hot Topic for $90. ;) It's an ivory renn-fest kind of deal. When I remarked to the clerk that I was going to use it for a wedding dress, she said a lot of people do that with the dresses they stock. I also got a black cape to go with it, so I can wear it to actually renaissance festivals without looking too bridal. It was almost too easy. Of course, I will need to have some alterations done, mainly to bring up the hem and possibly to loosen the tight part of the sleeves.
I had an eye appointment the other day. Things are pretty good, no problems. But I just wanted to ask, am I the only one who can't decide whether lens number 2 is better or worse than lens number 1 half the time? In fact, most of the time, it's the same difference to me. Maybe I'm particularly insensitive to minute detail.
"Oversimplification is always good." - Rob
I think I've watched more movies in the last week than I did in the previous six months. At Sam and Julian's place, we saw Fight Club. It was an enjoyable movie: good soundtrack, lots of action, excellent plot twist. But in the end, I have to agree with Kenneth Turran of the L.A. Times in his comment about "whiny, infantile philosophizing." Boo hoo, our culture is emasculating. Let's deal with it by beating each other up. Last night I saw "Ghost World." I expected it to be something like the television show Daria, but it was surprisingly (to me) unlike that. The main character, Enid, wears makeup, pulls cruel jokes on others, drinks beer, has sex... definitely not Daria. Enid's pretty mainstream. At the same time, it's a good movie, for reasons I can't quite describe. I haven't seen many indie films, but seeing this one made me realize how unconsciously accustomed I've grown to the standard Hollywood formula.
"You either love it or you hate it." I read that phrase the other day. I hate it. Maybe there are some truly polarizing issues in this world, but not nearly as many as the number to which that phrase is applied. The color purple, for example. How do you feel about purple?
Rob and I just got back last night from visiting Sam and Julian in Arizona. Pictures from Taliesin West, a short hike, and Champlin Fighter Aircraft Museum are up on the photos page. It was a fun long weekend. I like being out there, with the sunshine and cacti, where the landscape is dominated by beige and dusty red. It's so different from out East here. Everything's sandy and horizontal.
More photos are up on our photos page. Tornado Kitty, hamsters, and Phipps Conservatory. On the way from J and Mara's apartment to Phipps, we stopped at a playground. It was great fun. I think they ought to have adult playgrounds, too. Same kind of equipment, just larger and sturdier.
Rob has mostly finished building a workbench for our hobby room. It's eight feet long and includes a panel that folds forward so you can use it as a drafting table, too. It will also include shelves at some point. That's one project down, who knows how many more to go. The attic needs flooring. There are plans for a humongo-multi-computer-desk-thingy, too.
A rocket-shaped lava lamp is the latest addition to my office decor. (Other elements include a futuristic-looking blue desk lamp, a big print of Annapolis City Dock, an almost-dead ivy plant, a vintage-travel-poster calendar, and a thriving but unidentified big plant.) But that's not even the end of it! I just bought a tiny fridge on eBay (to keep some Dew within easy reach) and a monitor rear-view-mirror (called c.h.i.m.p.) on thinkgeek. I'm on a regular office-decorating spree! I also seem to be on a hyphen-using spree! The fridge works using the Peltier effect, or thermo-electric cooling. I think it's neat that the spacecraft instrument on whose software I'm working has a thermo-electric cooler itself, so it's like I have this special bond with my instrument. :)
My desktop's back up! Yea!
Hey, grandpa's been published! He wrote an article on his experiences aboard a WWII seagoing hopper dredge.
I have learned one big lesson this weekend: don't drive in downtown DC.
On Friday night I went to the first meeting of the resurrected DC linuxchix. It was a good meeting. I ended up parked illegally, though. On Saturday Rob and I drove to Reagan National Airport to pick up Sam. Then we hung out with her and her friend Judith from Baltimore. She stayed over Saturday night, and then we dropped her off at the airport on Sunday afternoon. I've started to get familiar with New York Avenue. I really need a good DC street map.
Where does the time go? Working, sleeping, eating, cleaning, buying food...
I still haven't got the computer going quite right yet. It's quite frustrating. I know this sounds odd, but when either of my machines is in any way out of order, it's something that's on my mind all the time.
In an effort to revive the DC Linuxchix chapter, I and some other folks have planned our first meeting for tomorrow, at a saloon in DuPont Circle. Since I'm scared of driving in downtown DC, I'm driving to the nearest Metro stop, taking the Metro to downtown, and walking a couple blocks to the saloon. Hmm, maybe I should see if I can just find a nearby parking garage.
Today I started, and stopped, reading a book called Hacking Cyberspace by David J. Gunkel. I know that title sounds awful, but the book is better than that title would have you guess. It's basically a semiotic look at the concept of cyberspace. I just didn't realize quite *how* semiotic until I sat down and started reading. It's full of dense language and words like "deconstruction" and "hegemony." I'm not saying this book doesn't have good or valid ideas, but given how many other books are in my queue, this one's chewiness was too much for me. The odd thing is that I was just looking at Amazon.com to see what other people think of it, and there was one review, and a striking one it was: "This book helped me to understand some of the consequences for hacking into things.It also helped me to undertsand that hacking can really cause very serious damage. Hacking may seem harmless but it isn't. Buy this book if your wanting to know some tactics some hackers use. It can help you get prepared for a hack attack." That, my friends, is utter bullshit. I am positive that this is not a review of that book. Why would someone write a fake, misleading review? It's not as though someone couldn't tell what the book's actually about by looking at the editorial reviews right above this customer review. It's not as though the writer's being funny or wry. I just don't get it.
The weather here is back to cold. I like it that way, at least in the winter.
Speaking of cold :) , here are my pictures from Hawai'i. I'll give you an account of our vacation, fleshing out the various days as I get a chance:
I think this recent Dave Barry column is hilarious.
I read the screenplay of a movie called The Sweet Hereafter the other day. It's tragic but not too depressing. I'd put it in the drama/mystery category. I recommend it if you have some time on your hands.
My dying hard disk drive is occupying most of my thoughts lately. I can do e-mail from my server, but I don't think I can't stand it too much longer. Tonight I'm going to go buy a new hard drive and use PartitionMagic to copy as much as I can of my old drive's data to the new one. Hopefully. Got my fingers crossed.
Tornado Kitty is back home. She's just adorable. I'll take some digital pictures of her and post them, once I get the battery charger's transformer back from being repaired.
The weather for the past few days has been unseasonably warm. We're talking high 60's. Of course, I have done nothing, aside from eating lunch outdoors, to take advantage of the nice weather. I still have too much firewood left to burn.
I need to learn some better time management. I keep thinking that I should work out more (first I'll need to join a gym), read more, play the piano more, cook more, and practice yoga more.
I've been reading some interesting things in the book Bowling Alone and in Scientific American magazine about television addiction. Bowling Alone deals with increased television viewing as a possible reason why Americans don't participate more in community activities. An article I recently read in Scientific American dealt with what makes television addictive (it seems to be a natural human instinct called the orienting response that we have to television). I think this stuff is fascinating.
Rob and I are back from Hawai'i, and we're engaged!
Why do so many web sites want to be portals? I'm not talking about Yahoo here; I'm talking about my bank and my ISP. Both want to give me stock quotes, news, a search engine, sports, entertainment, local weather -- anything but information related to the organization whose web site I'm visiting!
Well, I'm back online after a half-day outage yesterday because I hadn't bothered to tell my router to use DHCP now instead of the old static IP address. I'm now using dyndns.org's Custom DNS service to update my DNS mappings with my dynamic IP address.
I've just spent a ridiculous amount of money on a canopy bed, matching nightstands, mattress, comforter, and 440-thread-count sheets. But hey, I'll sleep well.
Tornado Kitty is off to "grandma's" house temporarily while I'm on vacation. I really should take some digital pictures of her at some point.
I have submitted my deck plans to the homeowners' association architectural review committee and the county for approval. I plan to build in April.
In four days I leave for Hawai'i!
I tried one of those artificial firelogs the other day. It was ... definitely unlike real wood. The idea is that you put exactly one of these in your fireplace, wrapper and all, and light it. It takes right off, no problem at all. The biggest downside, in my opinion, is that they're much quieter than real wood logs, which crackle and pop in a way that I hadn't paid much attention to before, but it's eerie when you have a silent fire.
Jamie and Pat came to visit this weekend, and we went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. It was cool, but it's clear that this attraction is exceeding its capacity even in the off-season.
Today it started sleeting. I've stayed in the whole day, except to contemplate making a fire in the fireplace (that's when I realized I'd forgotten to bring my now-soaked box of kindling indoors). I have yet to take down my Christmas decorations.
Ideally, I'd get off my butt and adopt a routine one of these days that includes going to the gym, eating more fruit, reading more, playing the piano more, and watching television less every day.
My new bed should be delivered this week, finally!
I'm trying to re-start the DC Linuxchix chapter... Linuxchix is more of a set of mailing lists than an "organization", so this seems a little ambitious, but it might prove worthwhile. I think it'll be a herding-cats kind of challenge.
Tornado Kitty had a good time in Johnstown, what with all sorts of people petting her and giving her turkey ham. She didn't mind Fritz at all, even if he was sometimes a little mean. Now she's back in Columbia and I'm adopting her. I'll have to take some pictures of her and put them online soon.
I want to meet the crazy Japanese punk girl. Or be her. That would be fun too.
I've been agonizing over whether to take Tornado Kitty home to Johnstown (where she'd get more attention) or leave her at my house in Columbia, where a cat-sitter will visit her once a day (where she'd be less stressed out). At the moment I'm leaning towards leaving her, although that changes just about every hour.
Last week I saw a lost cat flyer at PETsMART where the description sounded like it matched Tornado Kitty. I called the phone number listed and left a voice mail. That was on Wednesday, and I haven't heard back yet.
Not too much is new. I went to a couple of Xmas parties this past weekend. My parents came up for a visit and helped me out with installing track lighting in my kitchen, putting up my new curtains and blinds, and other things that needed to be done. Now that they've met Tornado Kitty, suddenly they're a lot warmer to the idea of my bringing her home to Johnstown over the holiday break. :)
The planning for our Hawai'i vacation is coming along. On the other hand, plans for a "reunion" of my compsci buddies from Penn State aren't really going anywhere. Just keeping in contact with people from school is a challenge.
I was in the library at work on Friday and I ended up adding yet another book to my queue to read. This one has the unfortunate title of Hacking Cyberspace, but I'm going to give it a chance nonetheless. It's a pretty new book, so it stands out in that library, where they have books at least as old as 1950.
On Friday at work we saw a live video feed of TIMED being launched from California. TIMED is one of my department's spacecraft, and its launched has been delayed for about two years, so it was especially exciting to see it go up. I can't imagine how excited I'll be when MESSENGER, the spacecraft I'm on, launches in 2004.
Yesterday night I went out with some coworkers to the DC Improv comedy club. The headliner was Bobby Slayton, who we agreed was pretty awful. His jokes were misogynist, racist, and just offensive in a way that makes you cringe. Fortunately, the "feature" act -- basically the comic who opened the night -- was a lot better. I forget his name, but he was hilarious.
On a random note, I love the art deco style of the Chrysler Building in New York City. It will definitely be on my itinerary the next time I go, along with Blue Man Group and They Might Be Giants (in their usual lounge).
I always say it, but I have to work out more. I'd like to get back into strength training. I checked out the only gym that seems to be close by, and membership is $627/year for just me. That seems like so much money. So now I'm contemplating getting my own universal weight machine, even though I don't know where it'd fit.
Tornado Kitty's got the sniffles, so she didn't go to Adoption Day at PETsMART today. How convenient for me. :) Even though she's declawed, she still paws at the same place on the pink chair where Fritz liked to rip it up.
In the tradition of my online journal from last summer, when I was reporting from Cleveland, Ohio, I'm once again trying out an online journal. Hopefully it'll give those of you who want to know what's going on in my life an easier way to find out.
Thanks to J for the link to a series of addictive "laser" puzzles.
I've decided that one of my favorite smells is the smell of old electric appliances, like from the 1940s. It's the smell of that old, old electric mixer that makes the 60 cycle hum (remember when they use to say "cycle" instead of "Hertz"?). It's the smell of the Lionel train set and bulbous holiday lights -- wired in series, of course -- that no doubt fills my parents' memories of Christmas. I haven't found anything modern that produces that smell.
Tornado Kitty is still staying at my house, and she still loves licking plastic bags. The trick that really makes her irresistable, though, is when she sits up on her hind legs, like a begging dog. She goes outside in my backyard sometimes, even though she isn't really an outdoor cat, what with having been declawed in the front. It's interesting how she makes an effort to avoid walking on the grass.
I've seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer twice now. I'm surprised to find that I like it. It's a lot darker than I thought (all I knew about it before was its title).
I'd really like to go see the National Building Museum and the U.S. Botanic Garden sometime.
You know what pisses me off? Telemarketers and door-to-door salesmen are bad enough. But now I've noticed that they increasingly won't take no for an answer. You expect salesmen to be persistent, but lately I've found it impossible to gracefully end a conversation with them. I repeatedly, insistently tell them no thanks, but they never accept it with a "okay", "thanks for your time", "have a good evening", or anything like that. I literally must shut the door in their faces these days. What's the world coming to?
