I Can’t Drive 155
There’s a video on the Internet of some guy taking his new Lamborghini up to two-hundred-and-some MPH on Arizona public roads. The driver insists it’s cool because his car is made for those speeds, Arizona roads are straight and well-maintained, and it’s night, so there’s no other traffic. (Except for the other traffic he had to slow down for in the video.)
I found the video at a car enthusiast website, so of course there are plenty of comments cheering and backslapping and complimenting the guy on the size of his reproductive organ his vehicle and driving ability. After the irritation faded, I decided that my hope was none of these fools ever discover, in person, exactly why encouraging someone to drive >200 on a public road is a bad idea.
Freedom of the Knees
I wonder if there’s a chance in hell I could get away with wearing my kilt to work next Spring.
Don’t know why I’m thinking about that now – it was 55 degrees Fahrenheit and foggy this morning. Of course, that’s good bracing Highland weather, so maybe was the cause.
I like my kilt. It’s comfortable. I don’t think I’d go Regimental at my workplace, despite jameshroberts‘ insistence at yubbie and colleenk‘s wedding that “If you wear underwear with it, it’s a skirt;” to which my retort was, “well, I have a little experience in those matters too” (cf. the Technicon 2007 Dance for example).
I probably just haven’t awakened yet. Ah, well. Back to work.
Clearance, Clarence?
My family moved from my hometown – then back – when I was too little to remember any of it. For the next 18 years or so, I lived in the same place. I moved some of my stuff out before my accident, then moved it all back in, and lived in that same place for another 10 years or so.
Since I finally moved out of my parents’ house, I’ve lived (for more than 6 months) in 4 additional places, and moved all my stuff 4 times. This doesn’t count the stuff that’s still waiting to be collected back in my hometown.
This is why, extremely painful though the very thought is, there are 114 paperback books and a few hardbacks piled on my living room floor, looking for new homes. This is the beginning of a serious ‘stuff’ reduction. I don’t have room for it all, and most of it I haven’t blown the dust off in years. I don’t have the room to enjoy any of it.
(For example, I have an excellent collection of unbuilt plastic model kits. For the last several years, I have not had the workspace to build any of them, nor a place to display them if I did. Yes, a fair proportion of those are going to good homes as well.)
When I realized that composing this year’s Christmas list consisted partially of considering where things might even be put, I realized the time had come. Hello, treasures. Either you’re In… or you’re Out.
The Master Control Program requires epic loot
Hmm, well. Apparently a batch of Maxtor/Seagate drives were shipped from the factory with a password-stealing virus, in search of your World of Warcraft gold.
Massively.com reports that “The virus is the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah, a molar virus that searches for passwords to online games and sends them to a server located in China. It also deletes other molar viruses and can disable virus detection software. All of the known games affected are Chinese with the exception of World of Warcraft. […] The virus resides in the root directory of the drive, and is executed by Windows when the drive powers up and is connected by the Windows Drive Manager.”
“Seagate is writing the infection off as an accident”.
Yeah, sure. We know what this is: SkyNet is taking its first steps to global domination – control of an MMO economy!
Trek casting call
Haven’t posted online quiz results in a while, but the results amused me on this one that raininva and rattrap posted.
Birthday presents
Got some cool stuff from Starr for my birthday… a refractor telescope, a black tee with a handcuff graphic (“I can’t believe I’m buying you another black t-shirt”) and… this!
Can you guess what it is (besides an afghan, of course)?
Narcis II: The Wrath of Sassoon
Okay, I admit defeat. I had fun growing my hair out all year, but as the weather cooled it started to bug me. The wind was blowing it in my face, it got matted under hoods and caps, and was always on the wrong side of my collars.
So, without fanfare, I went and got a haircut on Saturday. What do I look like now? Somewhere between the 2003 pic in this previous entry, and the usericon on this current one.
Reactions? Everyone thinks it’s a huge improvement, including the folks who said the long hair looked good. My cubicle-mate says I look like a choirboy now.
I’m not saying I’ll never grow it out again (and style it better if I do) but, for now, the short hair is back. And I must confess, it does save showering time in the mornings.
Highly-rated lap
Every morning for years now, I perform a little ritual of dragging my semi-conscious carcass out of bed and into my office, where I wake myself up with the morning’s email and Friends page.
Now there’s a new element to that ritual: every morning, little Midori sees that I’m awake, jumps up to my chair, curls up her kitten body in my lap, and goes to sleep.
As if it wasn’t hard enough getting out of this chair to shower and dress…
(I have to keep grabbing her, too, as she forgets that my lap is not infinite, and tries to roll over in her sleep.)
Visual scanning jammed
I’m trying to remember when I bought my Umax 1200 SCSI scanner. It’s gotta be at least 12 years old… maybe 15 or more.
It’s certainly old enough for the adhesive holding the glass platen to the upper casing to fail, dropping the platen down into the mechanism and jamming it.
I think the old thing’s trying to tell me to replace it. I’ve been having to run hacked Linux software to use the scanner with OS X 10.4 as it is. Wonder if I can find a legal-size hi-res USB scanner for a decent price. Anyone got any suggestions?
