See if you can find him on the monitor
Oh, speaking of Freecycling, I’ve got a flatscreen TV in the apartment that neither Starr nor I want to carry downstairs, much less haul out to the house. It’s a 27″ (or 29″, I can’t remember) Philips HD television that handles 1080i (and I think 1080p). It’s got an HDMI input, S-Video and composite video on the side, and coaxial and 2 or 3 composite inputs in the back.
We bought it off the Philips website as a refurb for about $500. It came with a power board issue that would cause it to spontaneously turn off, but it could always be turned back on in 2 or 3 minutes or so, and the problem hasn’t recurred in about 6 to 8 months. It’s a flatscreen, not a flat panel, so it still has a nice heavy picture tube, and that’s why I’m not interested in moving the thing. We have Craigslisted it, but everyone interested so far has been a no-show.
Anyone willing to come over and haul it off can have it for $200. We have two nice flat panel TVs that Starr’s parents are leaving with us, and are planning to just buy our own flat panel when we move again.
Takers?
On The Move
It’s been a heck of a week, and I haven’t had much opportunity to post. Let’s see if I can catch up a bit.
As of Wednesday evening, Starr and I began sleeping at the new house. This was slightly impeded by the fact that our bed hadn’t been moved yet, and Starr’s parents had returned for some of their stuff, so we had to share a twin bed in a guest bedroom. Note: no matter how cuddly the other person is, tucking two people into a twin bed gets old quickly.
I’m now getting up at 5:30 every morning to get out of the house by 6:30. My efficiency’s improved, as it was taking me up to 90 minutes to get showered, dressed, and moving, but it means I have exactly enough coherence to drive safely and not a bit more. The commute’s indeed an hour; thank goodness for podcasts.
Each day last week, I stopped by the apartment on the way home to grab some more stuff. Slowly, all the vital necessities of life have been put in place at the house, such as transforming Macross toys and Lensman paperbacks. By this weekend, I expect to have the silly stuff moved like cooking gear and clean underwear. (Okay, I *am* kidding about the underwear; that was high-priority.)
Starr’s parents left on Friday – or was it Thursday? – but returned once more on Saturday for more stuff, and so we could take her little sister to Nekocon. We only stayed for a few hours Saturday afternoon and evening; I had no idea that the con was so HUGE. 3,000 people were claimed in one press release, and it sure looked like it. I could not believe the number and variety of hall costumes! (Of course, I forgot a camera.) Starr dressed as a loligoth, while her sister wore an InuYasha costume. Many pictures of them were taken, but I have seen none posted; me, I was grumpy that morning, and didn’t wear a costume. By the end of the evening I regretted the decision, but oh well.
Tuesday, I had the day off, and I headed back over to the apartment to collect more stuff. Our downstairs neighbors are both military, and were also home; when they found out what I was up to, they instantly volunteered their two pickups, and pitched in on the packing. Thanks to them, we’re about 70% done with the move, and should be able to finish this weekend; I had reason to appreciate our veterans even more that day! They were awesome folks.
We’re switching the house from Verizon to Cox for our internet and phone, and were surprised to learn the the cable junction box is across the street. Shortly after we learned this, we learned that the underground line to our house is bad, and they’ll have to bore a new conduit for us this week. The cable, phone, and Internet at the apartment was disabled on Wednesday, so communications have been impaired. Right now my cell phone and work Internet are my main connections to the world.
Midori has been introduced to Tigger and Precious, two cats we’re inheriting from Starr’s parents. They seem to be more amused than anything else by her hissing and posturing, and she seems to be slowly understanding the uselessness of making all the fuss. With any luck, they’ll civilize her a bit.
This Saturday, I hope to have everything out of the apartment that isn’t tucked in my office. Sunday, I’ll pack all the little figures and toys and books and such I have on display in my office, and move that over, and at that point the actual move should be about done. We can then spend a week or so cleaning up the place nice before we hand over the keys.
Then… maybe… perhaps… a rest. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable reward!
Ludicrous Speed
Yeager crewmembers: on this day, 61 years ago, Air Force Captain “Chuck” Yeager flew the Bell X-1 in the first verified supersonic flight. Decades later, there are no civilian aircraft in service that attain this speed in normal flight.
Little powdery people
In case you hadn’t heard, we have indeed invented the Star Trek replicator. Of course, it’s expensive, slow, and only works on solid objects, plus the results are a bit fragile. But, one step at a time, right?
A company known as FigurePrints is using this first-generation technology to sell gamers unique figurines of their World of Warcraft characters. The service is so popular that they’ve had to establish a lottery for accepting orders, even with round-the-clock production. Customers dress their characters in their favorite gear and submit the orders; the figure company retrieves (with permission) 3-D model information from Blizzard, then does a little touchup to cover gaps and clipping artifacts. In a bath of extremely fine powder, something much like an inkjet printer head sprays layers of colored glue, and after some hours, the figure is gently removed from the bath and cleaned up a bit. The result looks like the picture on the right (click it to embiggen).
So, if you play WoW, would you pay $130 for one of these? Does your character have the outfit you’d want to see it in? Would you get one if it were available for another game? Would you get one when the technology gets a little better? Expound!
Stand back, I’m doing… stuff.
Most weeks I wait impatiently for my Kingdom of Loathing turns to build up to a useful level. This week, I’ve been sitting at the max of 200 turns for days, but I don’t have time to mess with it. I guess it’s a sign I’m using my time well… KoL isn’t exactly productive… but on the other hand, you can’t be productive all the time. Makes Jack a dull boy, you know.
On that note, I am going to watch a movie this weekend. Either in the theater, or from my list of DVDs to watch or re-watch. I don’t remember sitting through an entire movie since we watched “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” together.
One of the two 400MHz CRT iMacs that have been sitting in my office gathering dust since I left Decipher has found a good home – it’s in the possession of Starr’s youngest sister. She’ll probably want to give it an external FireWire HD and/or a memory upgrade before long, it’s only got a 10GB drive and 256MB of memory. But it’ll do Word and Photoshop and play DVDs, and she seems thrilled with it, so happiness all around. I need to find some old games to pass along that don’t involve serious mayhem.
Speaking of productivity, I am attempting to do something personally productive at least once a day. Either spend at least an hour on a personal project, or sit and write something with some thought in it (thus the recent outbreak of philosophising every week or so in my LJ). It doesn’t come easy: I am a slacker and procrastinator. But time moves with or without me, and I’m not going to be left behind.
Need healz 4 Ares and Orion runs
Once again, here at Langley we have more work than we have people to perform it.
If you have at least a year of IT experience, and are interested in temporary work in Hampton, VA, you’re encouraged to drop me a note. We are slowly moving the whole base from their old subcontractor-owned Mac, Windows, and Linux machines to our own equipment, and we need people who work well with the public and can handle unexpected glitches in file transfer and account configuration.
General aerospace fanaticism not necessary, but makes the job cooler.
Exhausted Packet Elves
For whatever reason, it looks like mail sent to my elfie address is not getting through. I’ve already dropped John a note about it, but until that comes back up, the gmail account is where I can be contacted.
EDIT:Mail appears to be back again yay! Thank you John 🙂
Brief updates
- 17:28 @snidegrrl If only I had a turntable I could hook to the Mac, I would be happy to rip a copy of my Chess album for you. #
- 17:54 @snidegrrl It’s the original, 2-disc, “concept” vinyl album in a black sleeve. Sounded pretty good when I listened to it last (~20 yrs ago). #
Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter
The silhouette of a Martian machine
My “grown-up” moment for the week: not bidding on a Lego Mars Rover on eBay even though it came to $10 below retail. I just don’t need to be spending $85 on Lego right now. But I thought about it for a second.
Worked on a shell script today which will automate and streamline installation and troubleshooting of our backup services. I keep forgetting how much I love writing code, especially the bit where it executes and everything works properly and I feel like Dr. Frankenstein shouting “It’s alive!!” I caught the coding bug when the TRS-80s came out, and I’ve never gotten over it.
I headed in to work early today, to help install a glut of new monitors which arrived. Not my usual assignment, but I wanted to help out, and the monitors were the lightest of the equipment to be installed. On the other hand, that does mean a lot of crawling under desks, and even a 22-inch flatscreen isn’t that light after you’ve lifted the tenth one onto a desk. I’m a little tired.
Going to try to get in touch with Mom again tonight.
Interviewed by jazzfish
1) How’s life in Norfolk?
I really like it here. There’s more to do than I can possibly keep up with, lotsa good friends, and the scenery’s suprisingly good for a large metropolitan area. I do miss mountains, all the lovely folk in SWVA fandom, and not having to commute through a congested bridge-tunnel every day; and of course it would have been nice to be near my Mom when she got hurt. But otherwise, this is an excellent place to live.
2) What tech toy do you not own (and don’t plan on acquiring in the next three months) that you wish you did?
A GPS navigator for the Hyundai. I still do just enough convention driving and the like that it would come in handy.
3) What’s your favorite nonfiction book?
Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. It’s a brain-stretcher of a book, one that I’ve had to read many times to access most of the meaning, but one full of fascinating ideas and profound concepts involving music, art, literature, language, biology, and computers. I must be a graduate of the book by now, though, since I think his views on the future of Artificial Intelligence are quite pessimistic. OTOH, what do I know?
4) What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
Working the Copy Center counter at Staples. The work itself was fine, but I had such difficulty with abrasive customers and co-workers that it made my previous job of vacuuming and emptying trash cans for an office building look absolutely peaceful.
5) How fast do you type?
To my own great surprise, around 60-65 words a minute. Surprising, because I kind of two-finger type. An actual typewriter would kill me, because I hit the “delete” key a lot. Still, my old boss at Thrifty Nickel once said I was the fastest, most accurate bad typist he’d ever seen.
Der Ruleses:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very personal nature.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them 5 questions.
