walk, race, quantum

I went for a long walk on Saturday, about 4 miles or so.   No real purpose except to get out of the house.   I planned my route, adjusted the laces on my shoes, and headed out for Walmart.  

Not exactly an epic quest, but still a bit of an adventure.   I stopped at Home Deport to get some pricing on materials for a couple projects I have in mind and then over to Walmart to pick up Quantum of Solace.    

During my walks, I sent a text message and made a couple of calls.   I hit voice mail on a couple of those, but talked to my grandma for a bit.   She was headed out again in a bit, but we talked for a little while and I mentioned my swimming.  She offered to make a donation to the Swim for Diabetes and though I tried to talk her out of it, she was insistent.  I gave up quickly - I've seen grandma argue with people and she usually wins.    It was near the beginning of the conversation and she was planning on a nap before she went out - so, good chance she'll forget.  I appreciate the sentiment, but she's diabetic herself and it seems like you shouldn't have to donate to find a cure for a disease you have.   

Anyway, it was a good walk and I'm glad I went.   I got a response on the text message a few minutes after I got home.  No time for shower - just some additional deodorant and a clean shirt and I was out the door.   Went and saw Race to Witch Mountain - good flick.  The effects were good and it didn't take itself too seriously.   The kids from the original movies - now all grown up - had significant cameos in the movie and ended up moving the story along.   I thought they were great back when the first movies came out and it was cool to see them again.

Later in the evening, I watched Quantum of Solace on DVD.    Also a good flick.   Good story, intense action.     I think Daniel Craig is a great James Bond and Judi Dench plays an excellent M - but the interplay between the two characters is the best part.  

Today has been pretty quiet.   Did a lot of reading - just about to finish up the last of the Academy series of books by Jack McDevitt.     Watched some Eureka on DVD and I'm now listening to a little Ingid Michaelson on CD.    Might work on my personal website a bit.

Less than one week before I hit the pool for a long swim.   later...

36, taxes, games, twitter

I did 36 laps in the pool today - no problem.  I wasn't even winded when I got out.   Next Saturday's 2 miles should be a snap.  

I worked on my taxes the other evening.  The federal and state were okay - I used Turbo Tax  and breezed through those.   I haven't done the city one yet - those are always the worst.   The forms are almost deliberately complicated and I'm not looking forward to it.   I'm trying to decide if I should be a in good mood when I start - thereby only dragging me down to a middle level.  Or if I should wait until I'm already in a bad mood since it won't ruin a good mood.

I played a little Red Steel for the Wii.  It reminded me once again that I am no good at first-person shooters.  I barely made it through the first section of the first level before I died.  And with really long load times, eh, I don't think this game will spend much time in the fun category.

I also played a little Super Mario Galaxy last night and did pretty well until I got to a level where:

1. Mario is trapped in a essentially a Plexiglas box.

2. He has to run around and jump over obstacles.

3. The ceiling is coming down on him

4. He's upside down.

What is this?  A death trap from the old live action Batman series?  Who comes up with this?

The way out of this is to keep moving left and jump when appropriate.   Simple, right?   

Wrong.  "LEFT!   RUN LEFT, YOU IDIOT!   PAY ATTENTION!"

All the shouting at the TV did no good - just like when my room-mate yells at the TV during WVU football games.    The yelling turned into swearing and threats, but that didn't  help either.   I finally gave up for the evening and read a book.

Well, I signed up for twitter.   Ugh.   I realized I was missing things that were going on with my co-workers and friends - they kept referring to things that they had twitted and I was out of the loop.   Will I send my own twits?   Not until I get an unlimited cell phone texting plan.  So, you know, never.    

I've got a twitter account.   What the  hell happened to me?  I mean, just a year ago I was still on the "cell phones are dum"  bandwagon.    And now I've got a twitter account.  

(hangs head in shame)

I still don't have a blu-tooth-walking-down-the-street-talking-to-myself-like-a-crazy-person-headset   So,  there's still hope for me.

Starting to get a big of a headache - I think I need to take a break for a few minutes.  We still don't have a vending machine in the building, so I'll have to head over to the school of law to get a snack/drink.

later...

swim for diabetes

I've decided to do this year's Swim for Diabetes.   It's next Saturday at the pool on campus and I'm going to try and do 2 miles.   

http://www.swimfordiabetes.com

Should be good - but tiring.  I do a mile pretty frequently, but I've only done 2 miles once before.  I feel pretty confident that I can pull that off  - but I'm also pretty certain that I'll need to eat a pile of food when I'm done.

I'll add more later as I get ready for the big swim.

spring, project, head

I've gotten into the habit of glancing at the temperature gauge in the kitchen in the morning before I leave for work to determine what level of jacket I need for the day.   Or at least the start of the day - 'cause it's Ohio and it's really any one's guess as to what the weather will do.    It was in the 20's this morning, so I dressed accordingly and drove to work - noting the snowflakes in the air.

And today is the first day of spring - what a crock.

I got an idea for a project last evening with some stained glass - and I wanted to finish it last night. Fortunately, I could see the whole thing in my head and the steps I knew I needed to complete it.   Sadly, I generally suck at most of those steps.   The glass broke wrong - twice - and I had to adapt my design to accommodate the new shapes.   The copper foil tape wasn't sticking and the soldering iron Refused! To! Obey! Me!    

Very frustrating.  I also didn't have the right color of glass in my supply, so when I was all done, I had to paint the dang thing.  

The end result - is not what I had hoped for.   But it's not as bad as I had feared.  Also, no seriously injuries!   Yea!

I'll try and get some pictures and post them once the paint is completely dried. 

In other  news... my head  hurts.   It's going to be a long day here at work, staring at my computer screen(s).

That's it for now.   Later...

monitors, zelda

Finally got the dual monitors going - thanks to the help of our computer repair dude.   The computer board got replaced, the fan works quietly, and the monitors are in place and are awesome.  I also moved my computer to the floor to give more room on my desk - I think I could play ping pong here.    It is soooo nice.

At home, I've been playing Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and really enjoying the game.  There were a couple of needlessly complicated puzzles that I had to look up - but the most recent area was really clever and fun to figure out.    I could have played more last night, but I wanted to make the game last and savor it.

later...

laptop, walk, email

I'm on a laptop here this morning.  No word yet on how soon the replacement board will come in for my dual monitor machine, so, to avoid the wrath of my cube neighbors, I decided to borrow a laptop and work quietly.  Not a big deal - though I don't have admin access on this machine and ran into some flash-issues because I couldn't install it.

I also recently got the latest version of Adobe Creative Suite - but that's on the main and still very noisy machine.  I would have liked to take that for a spin today, but there's other work to be done anyway.

Over the weekend I went for a long walk.   My room-mate needed a prescription picked up and Rite Aid was within my effective range.   Took me about an hour round trip and though the weather was nice, there were two problems.

1. The trash.  I was amazed and dismayed at how much litter was along side the roads.   Beer bottles, plastic bags and wrappers and one very obviously used diaper.   Seriously, what kind of a person throws a used diaper out the window of a moving car?

2. I was wearing short socks and the left one kept sliding down.   By the end of my walk, my shoe had rubbed the back of my ankle raw and I was bleeding pretty good.   When I got home I put some alcohol on it, then swore with some powerful intensity, and put a band-aid on it.  

Finally, I got a very strange email over the weekend.  No subject line.  It was from:  MR. "Tony" [sdsaf.34634@gmail.com] and addresses to my alias email address at work.    The content of the message was this:

Hi,
     Give me a call right now.

Regards
Tony 

That was it.   Now, I know a couple of people named Tony and neither of them would have used an address like that - nor left such an obscure message.     I did a look up of the address and couldn't find it.

So, clearly spam - but weird spam none the less.    No links, no embedded email.   Just the request to call - and no phone number.  

And there's that reference to Tony - a name I have considered using, but never have.  Could the message be from me - from the future?  Some kind of recursive temporal request?  Tachyon bombardment of the email server?  Was I trying to warn myself of something that was going to happen Saturday morning?

...

Nah, it was probably spam.

That's it for now, back to work...

dual, fan, swim, watchmen

I've been trying to get dual monitors set up on my work machine for a few weeks now.  My first try was a cable splitter that "should" have done the job.   No luck.  Even the computer repair guy couldn't get it going.   He suggested a new splitter cable - which we ordered.  That was delayed in shipping and when it finally came in it didn't work either.   Next, he thought it might be the DVI-D cables and that didn't work either.  Finally, he tried a new video card - which finally worked, but caused a "CPU Fan failure".    So, now the fan runs all the time.  At full power.  It's actually a nice breeze, but in time this will kill the fan.  He tried another fan and that was no different.   So, a replacement motherboard is on order and should be here Monday.  In the meantime, it's quite loud here.   But the dual monitor is very very cool.

I bought some new square-cut speedos and goggles recently and tried them out in the pool today.  The anti-fog coating on the goggles really helped - they also were tinted which was nice.   The speedos covered up the bits that are supposed to be covered up and that's about all that one can expect of them. 

I've been trying to mix up my swimming workout a bit with a goal of doing more and more of the crawl, but with more variation so I don't get burned out.   Today I went though all the strokes I know - including butterfly - and really mixed it up.  The variation made it easier to get through my 30 laps.  Of course, this afternoon I'm eating a bag of Chilli-Cheese Fritos - so I'm not turning into some kind of fitness nut.

I went and saw "Watchmen" the other day.   Really good flick - well done and thought provoking. Good vs. evil, hero vs. villain - and the vast gray areas between.  Big ideas - and also big special effects.  I wasn't in full "fan-boy" mode, but I enjoyed it.

Looking forward to shutting this loud beast down for the weekend and going home.  No big plans for me, just some video gaming and maybe a hike if the weather holds.

Later...

30, butterfly, phil collins, work

I did 30 laps today in the pool - which is not too big of a deal, except for the kind of laps.  I did 5 crawl, then 5 back, then 5 more crawl, then 5 breaststroke, then 5 backstroke, then 4.5 laps of crawl.  The crawl is what I'm really trying to work on - but that last 1/2 lap I decided to step it up a notch since I was feeling pretty good.  So, the last length I did the butterfly stroke.  

Which I'm not really good at.  At my best, I was only able to do about a 1/2 a length before I would get that thought "Oh, I'm going to drown,"   and then I stop.

This time I got to that spot and thought, "Hey, I'm not drowning," and I just kept on going.    My form wasn't great and I wasn't very fast.    But I did it.   1 length of the pool.  Maybe next time I'll do more.

In other news... I was watching the Music Choice channel and Phil Collins came up.   In a fairly recent picture...  well, he looks like my dad.   Disturbingly so.  My room-mate thought so too.  But my room-mate also thinks my dad looks John Locke from the TV series Lost.   So, not sure about that.  But the Phil Collins thing was weird.

Finally, work has sucked.   Spectacular deadlines, massive stress.   It's actually messing with my sleep.  Which I didn't think was even possible. 

And it's about time for me to try to sleep again.  After a shower, I still smell like chlorine from the pool.  

later...

dentist, card, day, swim

I went to the dentist on Friday.  It had been a while - well, a long while - since I had gone and I was expecting the worst, including a lecture.    Instead, they said my teeth were in pretty good shape, all things considered.   The x-rays were not fun - I kept gagging on the plastic they put in my mouth.   The wait time was quiet long, but I had plenty of paper and kept myself busy.   I wasn't impressed with the actual dentist - his presence was sort of limited - but the rest of the staff were pretty good.

I headed into work after that and tried to get caught up - but had to go right into a meeting.   The content was mostly over my head - something I don't like to admit - but I tried to follow along.  After the meeting, it was back to work and the disasters of the day, including a major system going down.  It's still not fixed properly, but I don't have the access to even be properly worried about it.  

I got out of work late and headed to the pool for a late afternoon swim.   Got in 30 laps, but was a bit disappointed that so many of those were non-crawl.  I really have to work on that.

Finally, I managed to get an SD Micro card for my phone.  So that, along with a cable that finally works - means that my phone is now accessible by my computer.  I was able to download my phone's photos and upload a new wall paper.   Next is to try and customize my own ring tone.  Yes, I'm going down that path.   And yes, I'm scared.

That's it for now.  I'm going to try and get the ring tone working, then I've got to get out of the house before I go stir-crazy.

later...

donation, door, temp

I gave blood on Monday. Went pretty smoothly, though they changed the procedure a bit for the sign in. I felt fine after the donation and was only in the recovery area long enough to eat a small package of cookies and drink a can of juice before heading out with my new red cross first aid kit. I've really got to figure out a polite way to not get these things. The umbrella was nice, but the I think they are starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

I got really tired that evening - I guess swimming earlier in the day plus giving blood really took a lot out of me.

In other news, the garage door is messed up. It only goes down about 1/2 way and then goes right back up. So, I called the landlords office yesterday when I got home and they sent out their repair guy. The dude showed up, said he couldn't fix it, and promised to come back today - early this morning.

Well, in the meantime, it's been very annoying. The door is normally automatic and apparently the manufacturers didn't think it would ever go wrong since they didn't put a handle out the outside. (well, they must have figured something might happen since they put in the "ripcord" for the manual use of the door).

This morning, I had to manually open the from the inside, start up and pull out my car, go back into the garage to close the door, back through the apartment, then out the front door, then back in my car, restart it, and then I was on the road. I'm hoping they get it fixed today, otherwise I'm going to strongly consider installing my own handle on the outside of the door.

Finally, someone put a temperature gauge in the men's bathroom here at work. The bathroom is on the side of the building and is apparently unheated - and is on an outside wall. The gauge said it was 50 degrees in there this morning. Chilly.

I had a surprisingly good day on Monday. Tuesday kinda sucked and got worse over time. Today has been moderately crappy. I hope the Chipotle is good tomorrow and that the dental appointment goes well on Friday or I'm going to end up with terrible weekend if the current trend continues.

later...

cow, quarantine, tooth

Went to Chick-fil-a for dinner last night and from the balloons visible two blocks away it was evident that a childrens birth-day party was underway. Once in the restaurant, there weren't that many children present - it looked as though the party was over. After getting the food and sitting down, the children returned from the play area.

Now, I'm a big fan of polite, well-behaved children. I think they have neat ideas and an interesting perspective on the world. These children were neither. They got worse when asked to line up to to spin the prize wheel. And then worse again when... the cow showed up. Someone dressed as the Eat More Chikn cow lumbered in and photo ops abounded. I wondered if dressing up as the cow was a reward or a punishment.

Done with the meal, a quick exit away from the cow, and back into the cold - but peaceful - night air.

My room-mate and I watched Quarantine yesterday. It was essentially "cloverfield" + "28 days later" - suspense + bad acting. So, a not quite zombie plague with a camcorder. In a building. Fortunately, I had a good book started and read through most of it - and I don't think I missed much.

I also discovered, last evening, that I had somehow managed to chip a tooth. On what, I don't know. But while not really visable, it's easy to feel with my tongue and very annoying. Looks like I finally need to make an appointment with a dentist.

later...