|1:27 PM|
HOT DAMN! I found my damn TOASTER. Score. I was cleaning up and I found a box I thought was full of clothes, and as I was emptying it out I found it had some glass bowls in there for safe keeping and my toaster! I am very happy. Now if I only had something to toast.
A really dorky joke that occurred to me a couple days after the roadtrip, while I was talking to Vorpal, was that Vorpal should have given Zusty and I a box to bring to the far off city of Phoenix. Once we got there, the box would "Automatically Opens" and spew fire with faces all over. For the less geeky in the reading audience, Cecil was the name of a character in Final Fantasy 2 (No, I didn't get my name from him). He is tricked at the very beginning into bringing a box full of bombs to a faraway city.
Well, this entry was crap anyway.
|10:49 AM|
From this Straight Dope Article I have now heard about the "Fish Face Cover. 'Slip it over the fish's head just prior to decapitation and avoid that reproachful stare.'" Though it is a joke item, I think that this device could perhaps be the "killer app" that the fresh fish industry has unknowingly been seeking. Of course, I've been asleep for more than 24 hours or so, with a brief break to check email. Why did I sleep so long? I don't know. At one point I woke up feeling quite ill, so it's possible I was sick. I also neglected to take Adderall much earlier, so it's possible it was a crash. I'm not certain. Either way, I'm doing a lot today to make up for it. I'm off to the bank right now to make some payments.
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Friday, November 23, 2001
|4:33 AM|
I received a couple of calls yesterday, all from people I really wanted to wish a Happy Thanksgiving, but they beat me to the draw. Quick-draw leather holsters under their metaphorical armpits had already been unclasped, the well aged hide of the pockets cracking only on the surface, allowing too fast an utterance of "Happy Thanksgiving". I was gunned down every time. I did send off many emails wishing people a good holiday. The feeling of contentment with all of the world when friends of mine emailed or called to wish me a good day has convinced me that I should send around greeting cards during December. The tough part is getting everyone's address. Well, I suppose it's the effort and the thought that counts.
I had a rather pleasant dinner with my family, I made the salad as all the baking had been already "dibbs'ed" by elder females in my clan. I did get back my cookbooks though, among them a collection of desert recipes that is sure to come in handy.
Normally my attitude at Thanksgiving is to spend only long enough to appear polite, as tradionally my family is a bit haggard and short fuse'd after a long day of preparations. Despite a small number of akward moments (the only notable one being a discussion of a possible African American ancestor, which drove my elderly southern grandmother from the room as she strongly argued against any such idea) it was an easily passable time.
|1:38 AM|
It's officially Thanksgiving Day. I am happy to be around. It's a good time to be alive and free to do whatever it is you want to do. Have a good day, if you are reading this.
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Wednesday, November 21, 2001
|4:06 PM|
We managed to get a digital camera into the office, and so here are the much delayed pictures of the Printer Golem. Unfortunately, the digital camera was jury rigged for capture, and installation on Win2K, so aiming was a bitch. Anyway, off center images of the Golem follow:
Golem Image 1 Front on View
Golem Image 3 The disgustingly huge power supply
Golem Image 2 The drive shaft I'd show the support structure for the giant internal motor (those forks are part of the engine mounts) but opening the top of the thing is dangerous, and I almost got zapped pretty bad when I was trying to repair the eyes. I had unplugged the power supply, but a wire fell out of my hand and completed a circuit with the capacitor *ZAP*. I've got quick reflexes or I might have caught a nasty little jolt. I took some random pictures around the office:
Whiteboard Our big list of shit to do. My note to my boss reminding him to use nine when faxing: "Sesame Fax is brought to you by the number '9' and the letter 'idiot'"
Thingy Jeff gestures at the ridiculous plastic "thingy". Our question, what part of our lives is made better by that object?
Company Logo Hard to see, but that is a photocopy of all of our swear fingers on the door. Also pictured is my supervisor Richard. Different from my kind-of boss Jeff
Feisty breaks that damn i before e rule. That sucks.
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|1:30 PM|
Happy Thanksgiving, if I don't happen to update over the next 36 hours.
A feisty young female was nice enough to wish me a swell day tommorow, and so I am moved to wish everyone I care about "a good time".
I saw this movie in a premiere I flipped through recently. From the images, it would appear that Helena Bonham-Carter is still grand champion of "unusual looking women that remain alluring", if I may use a blatant PR hack term.
|1:28 AM|
We need more of this immediately. Sure, I'm not exactly positive went wrong here, but how could something so good be completely wrong?
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Tuesday, November 20, 2001
|6:56 PM|
My paternal Grandmother is in town for Thanksgiving. She's gone a bit strange. She gets a little odder each year, and since I really only see her around Thanksgiving the change is very noticable.
My maternal grandmother was such an awful person that for years my parents told me she was dead. Even after I found out she wasn't, I never met her. Not once, and then she died. I still read bible passages over her grave. Maybe my family was afraid she'd pop out and come after us. Technically, this is the first joke I've made about my dead grandmother at this point. You know, the day I found out she was dead, I was talking to Triple-G on the phone. I was saying how my horrible grandfather had a lot of money, and now that I was refusing to take any of it unless he made amends, I wished he would keel over. That way, I might have a shot at being left some of it. As I was saying this, the call waiting beeped, and it was my folks telling me my grandmother was dead. How ghastly.
Okay! Now that we have that wonderful stuff out of the way, I'd like to announce a contest. I have to clear some things with Vorpal first, but it's going to be a great and fun contest. So start making sure you're elligible. Become over the age of eighteen if at all possible. Age quickly you little jailbaits! Next, collect as much butter as possible into large vats, but not too large, just fairly large. After you've started the butter process, be sure to practice shooting light rays out of your head. I promise this will all make sense once I announce the details for the contest. Vorpal, are you with me!?
|1:45 PM|
Edit: Bah, too much complaining. I have replaced this bitching with: "I may go to Laredo, but likely I will simply be trapped in Austin over the holidays which would suck."
Someone hooked me up with an HTML copy of the first Harry Potter book, and I read that yesterday and today. Well, I didn't have much time to read today but it was a short book so I still managed to finish it with time for a short nap at around 4:30. Ah, napping at my job is so fufilling now that the office is often empty after 2pm. I may go to see the Harry Potter movie with Vorpal, if I don't sleep for 12 hours like I did yesterday.
|1:07 PM|
I saved the day at work again. In order to train all of Dell on our newest printers, we needed a way to get easy to understand information to several thousand people in the space of a day. We kicked around a lot of concepts, until I piped up with the idea to film a video and make it available for download off of Dell's website. Dell often makes webcasts to the employees in regards to earnings and pep talks, it would seem to be a reasonable extension to use it for training. My boss couldn't have been happier with me unless I had installed a harem for him in one of the toner storage areas. Now all I have to do is make a video, compress it, and figure out how to publish it on Dell's website. After I do that I'll go capture the moon by putting a lid on a barrel full of water, since I distinctly saw the moon in it earlier.
In other more downloadable news, I took Mindless Self Indulgence's backmaskwarning! song and reversed it. All still available as long as KDI continues to not notice my invasion of my old webspace. Both are 2.77 megs each and are highly entertaining.
It has now become clear that negotiations with Dell have been on uncertain information and that the people involved have no clue what is actually involved in supporting Dell. I've got a bad feeling that we're going to wake up in 1 month and my co-workers and I are going to have big "The buck stops here" signs stuck on our backs. Then every motorized bladed dildo at Dell is going to be revving for our asses.
Good thing I'm in such a great mood, and I had free barbeque for lunch. I can't do a damned thing to stop all of this, so I'm just not going to worry about it until I need to find a new job.
|5:50 PM|
It was chilly outside today, after work. It was a welcome change to the office, my fan does not do the best job of cooling me off. I bring up something as mundane as the weather because the air felt different. When it's colder here in Texas you still know you're in Texas. I don't know if it's the humidity or the scent or the color of the sky, but it's different here. When I walked out today, however, the air had that snap, that feeling of Chicago. I shivered a little and grinned. I felt like I was back in Illinois, and the chilly air didn't even raise goosebumps. It couldn't have been all that cold, but the sky was the dim grey that the Chicago sky stays all during the winter. I left the windows to my car open, shivering but enjoying the feeling of being in my previous home.
In other news that bores people to death, I am still having increasingly peculiar dreams. They seem more abstract without a true sense of beginning or end or meaning.
My eye is twitching again. Now it's on the left hand side. I don't know what that signifies.
|10:39 AM| Monday is upon me again. How wonderful. I'm not alone, and I'm having to make small talk with my boss. This is a little daunting, we don't have a lot in common. I think we have less now that he's a father. His whole life has become his child, and very little new happens with his kid that is worth talking about to outsiders.
Criminy, I need caffiene. I watched an anime movie over the weekend called "Nausicaa of the valley of the wind". The title is a little unwieldly but I strongly suggest this particular bit of animation. I had seen a dubbed version when I was a young'in and it stuck with me for a very long time, and only recently did I find the title of it. The version I watched was a fan subbed, and it was far superior in terms of the plot and characters to the dubbed version that I saw so long ago. If happen to give a damn, the movie weighs in at 762 megs, so it's a bit hard to come by, but drop me an email and I'll see what I can do for you.
I've been reading news sites again, I had stopped reading more than the front page a couple weeks ago, and I'm not sure I like what I'm seeing. MSNBC says we might bomb Iraq for having chemical weapons. The US is trying to negotiate investigation rights into new biological warfare treaties. My arms are getting a little stronger, I'm happy about that. More pushups for me!
Being at work has made studying nearly impossible. I am actually not too suprised at this turn of events, but I am unhappy. Hopefully I will find a way to continue learning while at this job.
