Maikeru Hasshin!
I filled in a quiz meme: “What if LiveJournal Were An Anime?” and got the following:
The performer of the opening theme: southernsinger
The magical girl: tango
The talking animal: nviiibrown
The lecherous old man: stephaniesmom
The teenager who uses ancient magic to win games: aylinn
The fifteen-year-old Japanese girl with blond hair and a D cup: rubinpdf
My only comment is that I really want to hear Keith compose and perform an anime soundtrack. I’d buy copies to give to my friends.
Still woefully behind on my anime watching: I’ve got all of Fullmetal Alchemist and Macross Frontier to get through. Sometimes I consider setting up a designated “anime half-hour” after work on weekdays, but that makes it a bit like a chore, and that’s no fun. I think I’m probably giving up on Chobits for now, I read the manga and that will have to do.
Y’know, my evenings are showing a tendency towards “recover from work, catch up on email, make dinner, do laundry / chores, cuddle with Starr, go to bed”. The Starr part is nice, but otherwise, it’s a bit of a rut. I need to look into this.
Here’s the whole quiz, if you want to do it yourself
Telperion’s Flower
Friday morning on the way to work, I listened to an Astronomy Cast show on dark skies: areas far from cities where one can still see an amazing number of stars plastered across the sky. My own most amazing dark sky experience occurred on a 1am drive from Roanoke to Bluefield: it happened to be a perfectly clear winter night, and as I looked up through the windshield for a second, I saw more stars in the sky than I’d seen in my entire life. Darn near wrecked the car, I was so transported by the sight.
At any rate, last night on the way home from an errand, I saw a brilliant, clear moon hanging in the sky over the house. Suburban Chesapeake is far too bright for many other stars, but I suddenly decided that this would be the perfect night to assemble and set up my Galileoscope. It went together easily, though I’m not 100% sure I assembled the optional Galilean eyepiece properly. I’ve since found a PDF with more detailed instructions, but the basic setup worked well enough.
As the instructions mentioned, we had to find a tripod: this is no spyglass. But once we got it focused and aimed, the moon was gorgeous. Starr and Celia and Chris and I all took turns looking through the eyepiece – a little tricky because the moon was quite high in the sky – and initial complaints about the setup time vanished. Even this simple observation with a basic ‘scope made the evening memorable as hell. I think that soon we’ll have to find a dark sky and a cool night and set up the Tasco Novice that Starr gave me a couple of years ago. Awesome stuff!
And then we went in the house and played Star Munchkin.
Company… march!
Yesterday, I had to take a replacement keyboard to a customer. The weather was great, so I figured I’d just walk the keyboard over. I ended up having to go back to the same building for another customer, and out of curiosity I checked the Google Maps Pedometer site; the round-trip was a half-mile walk, so I figured I’d gotten my mile in for the day.
Turned out I had to go back to that building 3 more times yesterday, and in a spirit of stubbornness, refused to drive for any of the trips. Ended up with 2.5 miles of walking, and was quite pleased with myself for being able to handle that with no issues. I hadn’t walked that far while keeping track in a long long time. Unfortunately, it really wiped me out, and I was dead for the rest of the day, going bed early on a Friday night.
So, now that I know I can do it, the next step is to get that much walking in without exhausting myself!
Writer’s Block: Life is a masquerade
I am, though I’m not yet sure what I’m going to wear. A lot of the costumes I’ve been wearing to cons lately just aren’t especially appropriate for work (though I got away with one of them at my last job, years ago). Last year I wore a Starfleet uniform to work, and it went over well, but I’d hate to repeat the theme.
If a costume has to be made, I plan four or five months in advance – the more lead time the better. If I’m planning to buy, more like a month. As I’ve sucessfully (if sloppily) constructed my first garment on a sewing machine, I have the option of making my own from now on, but it turns out that’s nearly as expensive as a commission or a purchase, these days – who knew!
I do like to surprise folks with my costume choices when I can. What can I say? It’s the thespian in me.
EDIT: Just noticed that Halloween’s on a Saturday this year, so the whole “dressing up for work” thing is moot. 🙂
Hurry up and wait
Back to the doctor again today, where they told me that I’d need another pair of CT scans – with and without contrast dye. On the other hand, the reason they want them is that the kidney surgeon has concluded that it’s a simple cyst, and if it has no cancerous tissue, he doesn’t think it should come out. It will need twice-yearly monitoring, but nothing more.
So, everyone please cross your fingers, or send good vibes, or do whatever else you do to encourage the Fates. The surgeon feels there’s a 40% chance it’s a harmless cyst, and a 60% it will have to come out. I’d like to fall in the 40. He does about fifty of these a year, so we’ll guess he knows what he’s doing.
Starr drilled him mercilessly on every technical detail. He commented, “You’ve done your homework. Want a job?” I said, “Y’all have already given her one,” and she confessed to being an oncology nurse with the same hospital chain.
And oh yeah, just because there’s not enough pain in our lives, we gave all three cats individual baths tonight.
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I linked this in Facebook, but I’m reposting the link here because Starr saw me watching the new episode and asked to see the whole series. Freeman’s Mind follows a playthrough of the legendary “Half-Life” videogame, with a narration track added to the silent main character. The narration is smart-assed, sarcastic, and slightly deranged; Starr laughed through the 15 episodes so far completed. Recommended. (I’d have embedded it, but that’s disabled for some reason.)
More Tales of the Plumbing
I’m startled to see that I didn’t post here about the surgery. Sometimes I have trouble remembering which sites have current updates and which ones don’t.
Anyway, I went in on Wednesday morning and sat in pre-op for about an hour, getting more and more nervous. Thankfully, they gave me a bit of anti-anxiety in my IV drip, which helped; we also had a medical student stop by to tell me that she’d be observing the procedure, which Starr said was a good sign; they usually assign students to observe the simple, straightforward, textbook cases.
I don’t even remember them starting the anaesthetic. All I remember is waking up in post-op, and feeling utterly lousy; soon, they put me in a private room, and Starr joined me. The surgery went like clockwork, and removing the organ clearly had been the right decision, as it was discolored and had unusually-placed stones.
They’d intended to keep me overnight for observation, but the cafeteria accidentally sent up a solid-food dinner instead of the intended liquid diet, and not knowing better, I ate it. When the doctor discovered that I’d kept down solid food, and that my wife was an RN, they decided there wasn’t any real reason to keep me, and home I went Wednesday night.
Thursday I spent weak and in pain, accomplishing nothing besides leveling Mirandala to level 74. Friday, while still tired and hurting, I was able to fold some clothes and move up and down the stairs a couple of times. Saturday, we’d intended to participate in an overnight camp-out with a couple dozen friends; after much debate, Starr and I attended, but on the condition that I sit on my ass (or optionally lie on it) the whole time. I accepted, and had a great time, but I was still utterly wiped out by Sunday afternoon.
Life doesn’t wait up, though. The fuel filter replacement I’d done on Tuesday hadn’t done the trick, and Sunday I prepared to grit my teeth and fork over the $300 for a new pump assembly – only to find that all the local parts stores could order the assembly, but they didn’t actually have one in stock. They did have the actual pump part of the pump assembly, though; so while I didn’t have the super-clear instructions I did for the filter, I nevertheless worked out how to replace the pump part, and with the help of a friend for the heavy labor, managed to do it. The Hyundai took me to work this morning without a hiccup; we’ll see how it does this afternoon, but I’m optimistic.
So today I’m here at work, and tomorrow I have the MRI for my upcoming kidney surgery. I’m sure glad I don’t have a boring life like some people.
Ahhwoooooo!
Here’s my little bit of happy for the evening, and it goes out to all my lichen lycan friends out there. It’s a WoW video, yes, but I suspect it works pretty well even if one’s not steeped in the lore of Azeroth.
Jargon and Gender
Serious question – I’m interested in your honest opinions.
We’re on the bridge of the Enterprise, in starship combat. Worf is injured, and collapses to the ground. Captain Picard orders, “Counselor Troi! Man the weapons console!”
Question:
Missed connection
Predictable, really. The fuel filter was delayed a day, and didn’t arrive until this afternoon. Guess whose car refused to start with any cajoling this morning? Guess who missed work?
Since the part was in, there was no point in waiting around. I unboxed the filter, got out my Chilton manual and my DIY pictorial from the Internet, and went to town. Getting the rear seat out was the hardest part; it took me a while to figure out that the front edge is held in with sliding tabs, and there was nothing to unbolt there – just pull hard. I had intentionally run the gas tank kinda low, and armed with warnings from the DIY, spilled almost no gasoline. The pump came apart easily, and the filter was about 20 minutes work to replace. I insist than anyone who’s ever taken something apart and put it together again can do this.
That’s when I noticed something. The electrical harness connection to the fuel pump showed signs of serious arcing. The wiring itself was good, nowhere corroded through, but the scorch marks on the plastic showed that something had clearly been loose. I bent a couple connectors to tighter positions, and replaced the harness and pump.
The car started right up, smoother than it has in months. I shut it off, and started it again – it started right up. I’ll do so again in 20 minutes as a further test.
Could the problem have never been the fuel filter or the pump itself, but simply a loose connection? Did the dealer even look? Were they about to charge me $550 for a bad connector in a wiring harness?
I’m not sorry I changed out the filter, that can’t hurt and may improve performance. But if that was the problem all along? Then I’m a little mad.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, speaking of pumps, our fridge died last night also. By an unusual coincidence, we have a backup fridge… but we now have to walk to the garage every time we want a soda.
