Ever So Clever
This latest of weebl’s Flash animations is for shrewlet.
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/37/
It’s worse because one of my co-workers is named Trevor. I’ve made sure to send him the link 🙂
Lots and lots of blacktop
Feeling better this morning. Went to the pub last night with Tom and Donna and had a pretty good time.
Tom wants me to go up to the new National Air and Space Museum with him on October 10th. I like the idea – I’d hardly want to miss a chance to make a pilgrimage to the STS Enterprise – but October is loading up quick. The 22nd is a weekend trip to Salem for Rising Star, the weekend of the 29th includes a trip to Blacksburg for VTSFFC Halloween, and the weekend of 11/05 is another con I’ve always wanted to go to.
My poor car. The last months have been really hard on it.
My body needs a better firewall
Yesterday started good. I didn’t feel well when I got up in the morning, but I never feel well if I get up before 10am, so I didn’t think twice about it. In the first half of my work day, I completed the resurrection of a dead Titanium PowerBook with a broken hinge and sheared display wires, which was nice bit of ego-boost.
By lunchtime, I realized that my throat was super sore, and I was pretty dehydrated. I took a break and went to the tiny pharmacy a couple doors down, and came back to work. My nose had started running too, so I grabbed some tissues.
By mid-afternoon, there was no doubt that I was sick. I was coughing, blowing my nose, had a nice headache and serious nausea. Throw in some light-headedness and chills, and you know I was really enjoying myself by that time. I had to reassemble an iBook in that condition, too, which as I’ve mentioned has 50 screws in about 10 different sizes. Literally. I figure it was sinus brought on mostly by over-exerting myself over the weekend and the crappy weather on Saturday.
Finally, work was over, but there was an event I had to attend yesterday evening, to insure I’d be properly prepared for something else happening Saturday. I’d have blown it off, but that would have screwed up the next month’s worth of planning. Only problem? No one had sent me directions yet.
I drove to two places where this group had met before, but they weren’t at either place. In desperation, I did my first bit of intentional wardriving: cruising slowly around the residential neighborhood seeing if my iPaq would pick up an open wireless access point. I actually found one, and confirmed that no one had sent me e-mail, so I gave up and headed home.
The good side of that was that I really shouldn’t have been around all those other people when I was sick, and I was able to head to bed early. On top of that, I got home in time to catch a phone call from raininva before I dropped off, and we talked for a good long time, which cheered me up a lot. On the other hand, my upcoming plans are trashed.
I’m still not well, but I’m better than I was yesterday. I can function, and my throat and stomach are mostly okay. If my nose and head would follow suit, I’d be fine. I might even go down to see Tom at the pub tonight.
*snort*
All Virginia’s Parties
Quite a weekend! I burned myself out just a teeny bit, but I did have a lot of fun.
Friday morning, I decided I’d get right on the road after work, so I threw a weekend bag into the back seat. I even got to leave work a bit early to take care of an iMac repair at CompUSA. It was a good thing I did leave early, because there were 30-60 minute delays at every tunnel out of Norfolk, and if you’re heading north, you pretty much have to take a tunnel.
I’ll spare you the next in my ongoing series of traffic rants, because I still showed up at kittykatya‘s place just in time for lekythen and pulp_tarentino to return from an errand. Spent a couple hours catching up with J.J., whom I haven’t seen in 6 years. We’ve both grown up a bit, and I almost felt that we clicked better as reunited friends than we did when we were dating. So that was quite good.
Friday night and Saturday morning were spent catching up with Alex & Barb & Chris (look, alphabetical). Unfortunately, I had to head off before J.J. came back for her stuff, so I didn’t get a final goodbye. It was a good thing I left when I did, because the sky opened up as I left, and I lost another 90 minutes heading back down 95. Luckily, platypusgirl and krysturtle were willing to accept a soaked, bedraggled Borg into their home and I had a very good time at their party.
I met many people, some of whom I recognized from con meetings, but few of whom I can remember their names 🙂 The party was fun – lotsa people, good food, nervous kitties. We established that cat toys are far better for amusing small children than small-children toys are, and I have finally seen more than 50% of “The Goonies”.
Sunday, I napped a lot. I also tried to track down used copies of the “Riverworld” books – so far, no luck, but there are lots more places to look.
Phew.
I want ten 1-yard lengths of PVC pipe and don’t ask
Contractors are using heavy power tools less than 25 feet from me as some remodeling goes on. Noisy only begins to describe it; at one point they were using some kind of pneumatic punch which made me jump 18 inches evey time it went off. This has been going on for weeks.
Today, I’m prepared – I have headphones and iTunes. I can still hear them, of course, but I can ignore them much easier. I think they know that, too; today they’ve decided to set off the building alarm 3 or 4 times for my office enjoyment. Oy.
Forged in the fires of Home Depot: While I was snickering, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone still goes to “Toy Depot” to buy stuff for, you know, actual home improvement.
Finished “To Say Nothing of the Dog” last night. Often funny in a “heh” way, and an interesting look at a modern time-traveler stuck in Victorian England, but it was another example of characters dragged helplessly through the plot for a couple hundred pages. My own preference is for protagonists who get some kind of grip on things sooner or later.
Yay! Jerry’s not dead!
I’d like to join ranchonmars (who beat me to the punch, frellit) in wishing rattrap a very happy birthday!
“Your tail-light’s out, and, ah, you have no knees.”
Actually, it’s my headlight. I meant to get that taken care of last night, but I ran out of energy. I just don’t get much done in the evenings now – they’re so short. If I go out with friends, that takes care of the evening in one swoop, I go home and go to bed. And I really am having knee problems, I have been all week. Every time I go up a set of stairs is a bit painful, I don’t know what I did to myself but I’m ready for it to go away.
I miss getting home at 2 and 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Of course, I don’t miss staying at work until midnight, which is what gave me the early days the rest of the week, so I guess it all evens out.
It’s raining this morning, as it is over most of the mid-Atlantic states. I like it when it rains. Either a clear, sunny, warm, not too humid day, or a nice steady rain that means business but isn’t sheeting down in an effort to get people to build arks. None of this half-way gloom stuff.
Heading back to Salem tonight for the weekend. Thank goodness for audiobooks.
Switching to Fighter mode
There’s a cross-platform flight simulator called X-Plane which is quite competitive with the well known MS Flight Simulator. It’s extensively modifiable, playable over networks, and has an amazing amount of third-party material available.
Today I found the VF-1 Valkyrie file! Custom cockpit, swing wings, and even details like gear doors and vectored nozzles operating perfectly. It doesn’t transform, but that would be asking a lot. And you can even fly it over the deserts of Mars! There’s a nice movie of the fighter running in X-Plane too.
There’s also files for the Space Shuttle, the Marine Dropship from Aliens, and somewhere (haven’t found a link yet) Thunderbirds 2 and 3.
