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December 2001

Randomly San Francisco

Randomly San Francisco:

  • I’m really glad the 12-Folsom bus now runs every ten minutes rather than every twenty. Otherwise, I might have had to wait an entire hour for one this morning rather than the half-hour I actually did wait…

  • Great headline on this article: “Fluffing up the Castro”. It would be damned difficult make it any fluffier, wouldn’t it? OK, so the article is about the seats in the Castro Theatre. But still…

  • I don’t think anyone who knows anything at all about the TV business didn’t see this coming…

  • San Francisco: where no idea is too stupid to spend thousands of dollars on…

OK, I’ll play too. 5695 excruciatingly long minutes to go, you pornographer you…

Randomly Sunday

God, I hate malls. I’d forgotten how much until last night when we ventured to Santa Clara to visit the new Apple store. It didn’t help that it was the Saturday before the Saturday before Christmas, of course, but my God, was it hellish…

For the past several years, my mall visits have been limited to the occasional Chick-fil-a run to Fairfield, and I like it that way. They’re just so scary and creepy and self-conscious, with all the annoying people, the screaming brats, the food courts from hell, and the thousands of square feet of cloyingly cute little overpriced shops filled with nothing I’d ever much want…

Except for the Apple store, of course. But next time, I’ll hit one which isn’t in a mall…

But we also went to Fry’s, where I picked up my new DVD player on sale. And had dessert in a pace which looked like it should have been in Nebraska, which was slightly comforting…

Afterward, I came home, where my email client crashed and obliterated a message from Mark and a Christmas card from Shane before I could even look at them…

So I went to bed…

And this morning, you should find that this site has propagated over to Pair Networks, while email asscociated with this domain hasn’t yet, for some reason. Which is not a problem, since I don’t currently use it anyway…

If at some point I become less embarrassed about it, I’ll talk about my little head-shaving mishap later…

129 hours and counting…

Christmastime Is (Almost) Here

Pizza with Jamie on Friday night, to the accompaniment of “The Grinch” (the original, thanks) and “A Christmas Carol” (the 1951 Alistair Sim version, thanks). I guess the holidays have really arrived, even though I still haven’t moved Rock & Roll Elmo out of the way to make room for the tree yet…

Then I had late-evening email from Mark which gave me the warm fuzzies before going to bed on the coldest night of the year so far. It’s gonna be a long 151 hours…

And today, I’m buying my Christmas present from Mom and Dad so I can cheat and have the whole weekend to play with it, even though my mom made me promise I’d wrap it and put it under the tree. I’ll do that on Monday, maybe…

Oops. I forgot. It’s not really Christmas until I upload this…

Randomly Friday

Signs and Fresno motels (not to mention motels in general). Thanks to Sarah for the former and to the site’s author for the latter two…

Top it of with my just-completed lunch date with Chef Boy-ar-dee, Safeway Select Diet Grapefruit Soda, and Andy Griffith on KICU, and you have most of the elements of how I’m avoiding work this afternoon…

So as two people have pointed out today, it seems Wil Wheaton has had a similar problem with spam victimization this week. Fortunately, mine hasn’t caused too many problems, and it’s sort of cute to realize that Wesley Crusher and I have to deal with some of the same issues, I guess…

Back to not working…

Note to Mark: hope your day was better than expected and FedEx confirms that your package has indeed arrived…

Rain

Damn. It’s pouring down rain and I didn’t even expect it. And for some reason, the rain is being accompanied by these creepy alien invasion sounding noises outside. They’re really strange…

For those who were concerned, I’m feeling much more human now, but I did miss Sarah‘s bash and I now owe her lunch over the weekend…

Great. Sirens. Maybe it really was aliens…

Pain

Only 191 hours now, and for those of you who are tired of hearing about this subject, well, c’mon. Allow me to be a little single-minded for a while. It’s not like it happens very often. I’m not quite sure how to react…

Right now, though, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. I think I overdid it today pulling cable and carrying around heavy fiber optic things, and now my heart, or my thyroid, or one of my medications, or what fucking ever, is not amused. I’m sure I’ll be fine tomorrow if I can just manage to sit and not do much tonight, but I’m pissed that it’s now threatening to keep me from hitting Sarah‘s MBA party in a couple of hours…

It’s been almost six months, and I’m ready for this shit to be over. Hopefully it will, sometime next month…

Anyone with a clue why a Christmas card from Fresno (180 miles away) and one from Reidsville NC (3000 miles away) both took six days to arrive at my house, based on the postmarks? Has the Postal Service gotten that unpredictable? Yeah, stupid question…

Guess I should mail mine soon, so they’ll arrive by Martin Luther King Day…

Verio Sucks, Part One

Until a couple of hours ago, I was in a relatively good mood. The two things happened at once…

First, I started getting bounce messages from a bit of email spam I didn’t send. Seems some asshole in Florida (aren’t they all in Florida?) may have used my primary email address as the return address for a mass mailing. I’m not sure what the implications of that may be. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see how bad it is…

When I started looking into that by checking my root account, I also realized I had a notification from my ISP that, within 30 days, my webhosting account will include hosting only (no dialup). And for the same price, yet. Imagine: half the service for the same great price…

Note that this is the same ISP which caused me much grief by migrating my sites to an entirely new (and basically half-assed) platform just a few months back, causing me a great deal of trouble in the process. Note to Verio: you fucking suck and you’re cordially invited to bite my hairy ass…

So now I’m scrambling to clean up double fallout, wondering what will happen with the spam and getting all my sites added to my Pair Networks account. It will actually be a better set-up, once I spend the holidays doing all the work. It will cost more, as I’ll have to have new dialup or DSL, but I’ll be well rid of Verio, destroyer of formerly-great ISPs…

Why?

I had a rather unsettling but not altogether unpleasant realization very late last night. Just wanted to share that…

Anyway, for those of you who care and are concerned, the visit is still going well, Mom is probably leaving on Tuesday, and I may actually start answering email again by Wednesday…

And I still secretly want the annoying kid from the Dell commercials to die a slow and painful death…

In short, there was damned little point to this journal entry…

Stockton

 

Quick thoughts on Saturday in Stockton with Mom and Mark:

  • The Denny’s at Charter Way and I-5 is in fact the Denny’s from hell. And our waitress was bad sitcom material.
  • Introducing Mom to a current accessory was amazingly drama-free, which speaks volumes about both of them.
  • I rarely find a lot of stuff in Stockton thrift stores, but when I do find something, it’s really fucking cool. Pictures to follow.
  • Sucking face in the men’s room was a wonderful thing, but it only served to make my current sexual frustration about ten times worse.
  • Wow. Who knew there were Simpsons cereals available?

I think I coughed up most of the remnants of my cold-allergy thing on Saturday morning, but there may be a little more on Sunday morning. Sorry for the vivid image; I’ll try to be more subtle if further updates are required…

Now, having forced Mom to sit through Harry and Tonto (I like it, Dan likes it, and that’s endorsement enough), I’m gonna have a wank and go to sleep. I probably won’t be fantasizing about Art Carney…

Mom’s Here

Mom’s here and comfortably asleep in the living room. I headed to SFO this afternoon expecting to find a madhouse of people standing in line being frisked and strip-searched. Instead, it was just plain creepy there. No one in line at the ticket counter, no one at the checkpoint, no trouble parking, and we spent about three minutes waiting for her suitcases at baggage claim. It was just plain weird; everyone was saying so…

Spiffy new redesign for Mark, who’s on Mom’s itinerary for Saturday. Later tonight will bring dinner with Dan, Jamie, and hopefully Sarah, maybe at The Dead Fish…

I think I’ll skip introducing her to my cardiologist at tomorrow’s appointment, though; I think there’s enough adventure on her plate for now…