Ah, finished my chores… the bathroom is clean, my laundry is done. I don’t have much in the cupboard, but I’m not interested in heading out in the thick rain. The local delivery can take care of me for supper tonight. There’s a Cantonese place I haven’t tried yet, so we’ll see how China Yung is. It’s a stone’s throw away, right next to the museum f art. If it’s good, I’ll make a note of it as a place to visit with Danny, though he generally prefers Thai and Japanese food. I think that he’d be happy going out for sushi every time we get together.

I remembered to pick up a fresh tape to feed the VCR for today’s 4-hour “Egypt-a-thon” Starting at 3pm on TLC. They have a spiffy Ancient Egyptians activities page, too. I’m kind of disappointed that it ends at 7pm, but I guess they have to make way for the next prime time show.

Tic Tac quiz

First off, Saddam Hussein has been captured alive in Iraq. He was found in a farmhouse near Tikrit, in a “spider hole” (basically a small cellar). I wonder how long it’ll take before I start to hear conspiracy theorists tell me that he was caught months ago, and that they were waiting to see what Democrat was going to be Bush’s main competition before trotting out a wildcard.

The tree is up, it’s snowing outside and the news is full of reports of a rarely seen man with a beard and a bag full of loot.

Q: What’s the difference between Santa Claus and Saddam Hussein?
A: No one has to check Santa For lice.

Also, Santa never ordered 170 men be tied to posts and shot – body part by body part – after sealing thier mouths shut with glue so that they couldn’t cry out. (via suzette)

Well, I got two calls last night that was a wait to launch at 9am this morning. One was girl that went missing Wednesday night, but was last seen at school on Friday. The parents are giving the Miami police heck about “not doing enough,” even though the parents apparently couldn’t be bothered to know with any useful detail about the girls friends, boyfriend, or favorite hangouts. It’s hard to know where to look for someone if you don’t know very much about them… best we could do is get a description of what she was wearing, and the fact that her house and school are close enough together on the map to make for a little overlap map to seek her out.

Another call last night was looking for a deaf boy in Polk County… another late-nighter. wake-up and look calls at 11pm and again (after the dogs followed the trail north) at 2am over the trail further north. Busy evening… stuff started kicking after 10 pm. I need to remember to try and take a nap midday.. it seems that calls don’t seem to come in until before noon, and after 3pm.

My intuition has been spot on, lately. Gut instinct (or whatever intuition really is) has been very helpful in making decisions in regards to missing kids and dealing with other folks at the org.

Fairly Oddparents Christmas Special was pretty keen, especially the jazzy holiday “Mass Combat” music near the end.

*note to self*- Infinite space restricted to a finite area can be very unstable. Don’t let Newt at the Hypercube.

Chris Kattan as Gollum on SNL was cute, and the pilot for “A hard hobbit to break” sitcom was right on target.

juliabee pointed out Big Fish to me… How’d this sneak past my radar? I wonder if there’s a nearby theater with a pre-January release? Witches and giants are some of my favorite people.

Lists of collective nouns

Feral Children: collects information on socially stunted kids raised by wild animals or extremely cruel parents.

Nicole Kidman & Jude Law as the leads in the Cold Mountain movie? Kind of good looking for the way I envisioned the characters. I wonder if they’ll change the book’s ending in the movie? (I, like most folks, didn’t terribly care for it.)

Hmm… interesting marketing… Sony Pictures is promoting Spider-Man 2 by offering Blogger and Livejournal templates and icons.

First off, Saddam Hussein has been captured alive in Iraq. He was found in a farmhouse near Tikrit, in a “spider hole” (basically a small cellar). I wonder how long it’ll take before I start to hear conspiracy theorists tell me that he was caught months ago, and that they were waiting to see what Democrat was going to be Bush’s main competition before trotting out a wildcard.

The tree is up, it’s snowing outside and the news is full of reports of a rarely seen man with a beard and a bag full of loot.

Q: What’s the difference between Santa Claus and Saddam Hussein?
A: No one has to check Santa For lice.

Also, Santa never ordered 170 men be tied to posts and shot – body part by body part – after sealing thier mouths shut with glue so that they couldn’t cry out. (via suzette)

Well, I got two calls last night that was a wait to launch at 9am this morning. One was girl that went missing Wednesday night, but was last seen at school on Friday. The parents are giving the Miami police heck about “not doing enough,” even though the parents apparently couldn’t be bothered to know with any useful detail about the girls friends, boyfriend, or favorite hangouts. It’s hard to know where to look for someone if you don’t know very much about them… best we could do is get a description of what she was wearing, and the fact that her house and school are close enough together on the map to make for a little overlap map to seek her out.

Another call last night was looking for a deaf boy in Polk County… another late-nighter. wake-up and look calls at 11pm and again (after the dogs followed the trail north) at 2am over the trail further north. Busy evening… stuff started kicking after 10 pm. I need to remember to try and take a nap midday.. it seems that calls don’t seem to come in until before noon, and after 3pm.

My intuition has been spot on, lately. Gut instinct (or whatever intuition really is) has been very helpful in making decisions in regards to missing kids and dealing with other folks at the org.

Fairly Oddparents Christmas Special was pretty keen, especially the jazzy holiday “Mass Combat” music near the end.

*note to self*- Infinite space restricted to a finite area can be very unstable. Don’t let Newt at the Hypercube.

Chris Kattan as Gollum on SNL was cute, and the pilot for “A hard hobbit to break” sitcom was right on target.

juliabee pointed out Big Fish to me… How’d this sneak past my radar? I wonder if there’s a nearby theater with a pre-January release? Witches and giants are some of my favorite people.

Lists of collective nouns

Feral Children: collects information on socially stunted kids raised by wild animals or extremely cruel parents.

Nicole Kidman & Jude Law as the leads in the Cold Mountain movie? Kind of good looking for the way I envisioned the characters. I wonder if they’ll change the book’s ending in the movie? (I, like most folks, didn’t terribly care for it.)

Hmm… interesting marketing… Sony Pictures is promoting Spider-Man 2 by offering Blogger and Livejournal templates and icons.

They mulched a tree out back earlier, and ’twas loud as all get out. Newt was not happy with it, not a bit… he sat atop the counter doing what I would consider to be a scowl at the source of the sound.

Writing, and I’m not sure if I want to use the term preternatural or supernatural.

Brother is in a new place.. apparently he heard back and slid right in to the first place that called. I caught him in a couple of fibs, but didn’t bother calling him on them. He claims that Andy doesn’t know where he’s moving to, but I doubt that, and Mark knows where he’s at now… because he helped him to move some things to where he is.

That reminds me of a riddle: What do you call a man with no arms and no legs on your doorstep? Fair Warning.

CS said that yesterday was really busy, that he got a lot of calls (at 10pmish when the shift change came over) from Georgia last night. I wonder if tonight will be the same deal… there really haven’t been any calls all day. I actually had to test to make sure the phone was working properly once or twice, just in case. Now that RI is off to TX (presumably to tend to her elderly parents), I wonder if some of the team tensions will ease up?

The Dream of the Red Chamber is the Chinese Romeo and Juliet; a tragic, beautiful love-story in 5 lengthy volumes. The scene where Tai-yu (our lovely Juliet) first sees the man she has been so warned against, Pao-yu (the dashing Romeo), I just had to share:

“His face was like the full moon at mid-autumn; his complexion, like morning flowers in spring; the hair along his temples, as if chiseled with a knife; his eyebrows, as if penciled with ink; his nose like a suspended gallbladder; his eyes like vernal waves; his angry look even resembled a smile; his glance, even when stern, was full of sentiment.”

*giggles*
I fear something may have been lost in translation… (via Stelpa)

Misc nifty reference linkies –

• Equinox and Solstice: site on celebrations of these annual events.
• All About Snow.
• An Atlas of the Universe.
• Holiday Trends from Journalist’s Toolbox, has lots of links for retail/shopping stats and lots of other stuff (holiday movies, etc.)
• Facts about Christmas fun statistics from U.S. Census.
• WHOIS.sc, a really easy-to-use new WHOIS search, now gives you an image of the Web site of a domain, as well as good description.
• Web Watch from Governing.com, this site finds interesting government Web sites. Latest: a teacher monitoring database from Vermont.
• Google number searches You can search by number for things like tracking numbers, airplane registrations and patents.
• United States Counties: from NACO, National Assn of Counties, click on a map to get information on a county, including demographics and lists of officials, and a link to the Web site. More useful searches from NACO (includes finding county by city, finding coastal counties, population range searches, etc.).
• The Saudi Connection: huge investigative report by US News and World Report on how Saudi money financed terrorism.

Bad essays on weather

SmoothTeddy – quick 3d modelling and painting. (some cute sample models)

Well, I found my chair, around back. Apparently one of the guys working on the apartment liked it, and thought it was left behind by one of the other tenants. Still no word on my trash-bin, though. I wonder if they used it while gutting the cabinets in #1? I’ll ask one of the other workers about that tomorrow.

Interesting that more people didn’t notice the secret message in my last public entry. I was pleasantly surprised at the discovery of applying style-functions to the bold tag. If I have some really juicy gossip or extra-spoilsome spoilers, I’ll implement that hidey-text. (so that lj-cuts don’t hurt folk that might want to read bulkier reviews.

Brother visited by last night.. I’ll be interested in seeing what’s happening with him. apparently he’s moved out of the place where he was staying and is looking for another location, to stay at solo. Meanwhile, it’s back to the hostels for him. I hope that he finds a nice efficiency soon.

Danny stopped by shortly afterward, and we got sushi and a drink… and an opportunity to hang out and gab for a brief period. We talked about work, tropicon and observed the clouds obscuring the moon like a wolf or goat consuming the disk. The Sushi was ok, but I think that the place local to me is better. He had a good week but a tough day, whereas I had a tough week and a decent Friday.

Lizard lady of Akron stumped doctors – Young woman’s death in 1910 was strange news indeed, tough to stomach Continue reading 6353 – end of day yesterday, new day today. →

Sakes… I was just beat and tired yesterday night. It sort of bummed me out… I wanted to stay up and at ’em, but the juice just wasn’t there after the sun went down. I wonder if it’s because of the drop in temperature putting me in hibernation mode? I tried to hit the sack at a decent hour, but there was a recovery that cracked my slumber. I still ended up going to bed by 10:30, but I feel as if I could use more.

Archived a lot of stuff, backdated and marked private. (That’s why my post # ratcheted up so high.)

Newt’s playing paper-wad fetch this morning… I think the same weather that drowses me is charging him up.

Big Kahuna is back today… I wonder how the office will be?

I still haven’t picked up holiday cards… If I was smarter than the average bear, I’d have harvested addresses and prepared some nice cards when I was laid up… but I was lazy, and instead spent most of my bed-rest time surfing the net or reading.

Mugging caught on a audio lj entry!

Accidentally Kansas (lovely photos of natural disaster dioramas)

Virginia arrests two spammers under new anti-spam law

Epipelagic and Mesopelagic Animals… lovely!

A Brief History of Socks and Hand-knitted Footwear

This is a Secret message. Hi to those that see it!

Hmm.. invite codes are redeemable for paid time, and seemingly reasonable ideas to combat spammers / trolls

I was oh, so tired this morning, even after hitting the sack at a reasonable hour. .. I was plumb tuckered out but my morning got sharp, bright and lovely before lunch. RI seems to have cooled down a bit, and left the rest of the crew be for most of the day. ACIM opened up in Georgia officially today, and I’m on call tonight, so we’ll see how it goes with a bunch of new law enforcement breaking in. Newt’s full of beans tonight, running and jumping and being a spitfire in general.

This evening, I discovered that my comfy Adirondack chair went missing, along with the small rubbage bin (empty) and little table I had out front. I’m going to have to talk to the landlord and ask what became of them, because they weren’t junky or ugly, and were frequently used bits of my property. In their stead, there is a set of PVC chairs and a matching table… but I wasn’t asked or consulted in any way before the swap took place. The small bin wasn’t replaced at all, but now I have two chairs by the table rather than one.

I was thinking about the afterlife earlier, and wondered about all of the bugs that died violently… do they have ghosts too?I thought about all of the red ants that have been trod on in one way or another, intent on brining information back to the nest… would the be doomed forever to haunt the scent trail that they were on?

Cat banned for scaring residents Continue reading 6324 Ghost Bugs, Missing Chairs, News Stories about cats and physics. →

…

Morning again, the dawn of a new day. Tuesday. Howdy, Journal!

Sammy’s father came by, and emptied the rest of number two. I’m now alone in this collection of apartments… this is the last populated cell of a formerly busy little hive. I’ve seen people come and go in all of the homes in miniature here. It must’ve had some effect on my dreams last night… I thought Frankie was outside my door, talking loudly to some visitors.. they were waiting for a ride, and I guess that they gave his old home address for a pickup. It was like three in the morning, and I dreamt that I called the police on them for trespassing and disturbing the peace. The recurring theme of Newt getting out then I opened the door occurred, too, but he was retrieved quickly.

feel free to elaborate in the comments!

Random Newt Pic! The rarely-captured “fierce-look.”

A naked, samurai sword-wielding martial arts expert screaming, “I’m God! I’m immortal” hacked his wife to death yesterday in a blood-soaked Bronx rampage, police said. Continue reading 6320 – Yuletide toe-warmer poll, creepy news, Cute Newt Pic, Medicare. →

Not on call tonight.. I’m alternating every other day this week, and will probably assign the full week to a tech next. I look forward to a full night’s rest (and a Friday/Sunday combo, free of work interruption.)

I had a polite talk with CS & Rhode Island about organization and documentation. This was the calm before the storm. CS didn’t seem to grasp the need, but I think he understands that his grasp isn’t as important as the desire of his bosses to have it. We will have things documented, and documented well, or I fear, a fee spot in the technician pool. Mohna, a remarkably tall Muslim girl looks like she might make a good phone person, too (a full-time student)… freeing my creative thought/solution time up even more. Kahuna will be back from Vegas tomorrow, and it smells a bit like SD is leaving.. not to mention that JC is training her replacement bean-counter so that she can have her baby#2 and be a full time stay-at-home momma.

I’m a little drowsy tonight… I got a lot accomplished today… FDLE quarterly reports are totally automated now, configuration of a few different machines went well, and apache server is behaving well. It’s nice to know that when I’m home, here and now, I don’t have any job-tethers. If I was of a mind to, I could just walk down the beach, and not worry that the phone is going to ring. I can take a long hot shower, and not concern myself with the possibility that I might have to leap out without finishing properly. Hopefully, I’ll be able to spend an hour or two with Danny… maybe go out for a bite and a gab.

Not so chilly out tonight as it has been, lately. Is winter over?

Skinny cow “coffee” ice cream sandwiches are bleh. Stick with chocolate, mint or strawberry. This is just a waste of good chocolate wafers.

Newt loves tiny wooden Christmas ornaments. He’s knocked every one off of the tiny fake tree, and is chasing a well-gnawed snowman around the floor.

Rough Guide to Asha Bhosle, I just like the sound clips. 🙂 That’s the voice I think of when I think of Bollywood.

John Lennon died on this day, December 8, 1980. A beautiful memorial to John Lennon can be found in the “Strawberry Fields” section of Central Park, in the shadow of his home in the Dakota building. The original Strawberry Field(s) in actually in the Liverpool area.

Annoyingly spelled words du jour:

• womyn
• magick
• boi
• l33t
• w00t

Which Reminds me… you can find the most recently entered LJ entries here!

See also in the – possible changes in how the friends list works. Again, brad shows that he’s not very good with social or communication skills, but it’s easy enough to get the picture. A lot of people don’t understand the function of what he said, and will get upset, even though it’s not a big deal. I’ve always disliked the term friends for folks I read on LJ, because it’s too emotionally charged a word for a lot of people. It’s the cause of a lot of lj drama. I do think the ideas for change seem reasonable, all told, but I won’t personally use many of them… I use filters now and again, for my essentials / comics page/ whatnot and that’s about it. I agree with what flying_blind says here. While I’m nosy, and would like to know who reads my journal… I know full well that any public entry can be syndicated or bookmarked, or whatnot without my knowledge, and I’m fine with that. (plus, if you want to get tricky, you can always hide a sitemeter link in each of your entries, to see where hits come from on the net… maybe brad can implement usage statistics sometime, and make it that much simpler?)

Watched the Repo Men Show on TLC last night was interesting.. It may be another “Reality” one that I enjoy, like Cops or Animal Precinct. I prefer the stuff to be in the field, rather than bottled on an island or in a household.

I think I’ll set up my VCR to record the next airing of the Ancient Egyptians shows. They’re showing the whole series in a 4-hour block on Sunday the 14th, starting at 3pm, and running through 7pm. Makes it nice and easy to fit on a single tape.

My Fave comic book of the moment