Things to do in order to get my mortgage worked out with 1005 financing for the coming purchase of a place (rather than renting)… if not, 5% down is pretty standard.

Letters related to phone, power & cable, stating how long my accounts have been open, payment timeliness, and contact numbers for the people concerned and a list of my canceled rent checks for this and my prior place. Most of that’ll be dealt with on Monday.

Note to self, look into seller concession, where the seller pays 3% of the price to go to closing the deal. (That’s a good $3k-ish, right there!) It looks like a pretty good possibility, depending on the seller.

I’ve looked at too many bits of hacker-text. 2004 looks like the word “soup” to me.

Work News – Kahuna will be doing opening and trainings in Nevada next week, Newbie and DL are going to St. Augustine. That means it’s just me, CS, the bean counters and Rhodey in the office. I think MM is skipping next week… still waiting for clearance to do codeRED.

I helped with her practice training, and discovered that the big kahuna can’t say the words “telephony” or “liaison” properly.

Blimp over Fort Lauderdale today

More Gifties in the mail! First the tea, sage and the sandalwood prayer-beads yesterday, and now the astounding Fresca sent me some cool loot, too!

The Zombie Survival Guide : Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks (Mel’s Son) and Godzilla vs. Destoroyah/Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla (two movies on one double-sided DVD!) Two great flicks that I’ve wanted for a long time.

Thank you, very much!

Porno Bob is a big Tony Robbins fan, and he believes in a lot of other things things that I don’t buy into but he seems like a nice enough guy. This is the first job he’s had in a long where he wasn’t the boss, so we’ll see how he adapts.

CS woke me up in the middle of the night because he forgot his codeRED password while on call. it took me about 5 minutes to shake off the Alpha-state foolishness and get into alert mode at 1:30 in the morning. (When I’m on call, I snap to attention immediately.)

Newbie is suffering a lot, because of SD’s departure without notice. Not only is she having to do trainings, but now she’s got to go to St. Augustine with DL… both of them are fairly uninitiated in that department. What’s worse, there was talk about putting me in a tie, and having me teach the police how to use the system. Ouch. No, not unless it’s the most dire of circumstances. I’d rather do community meetings than a cop thing, if only due to the “I wanna be here” factor of civilians. Police are really busy, and if they’re made to go to a meeting for an hour or so out of their day… well, it can be a hard sell to get them to pay attention to the lesson plan.

A lot of therians got fired today, including probably the best quest maker, Josie2. I’m going to donate some there bucks to her cause, just to say thanks for her good work, and to mourn the loss of an awesome employee.

Tom Cruise as Iron man? hmm… that could work. Stilt-man, maybe? Heck, if Michael Keaton could be Batman, why not?

Chimpanzees struggling to survive amid the destruction of their forest habitat have begun snatching and killing children. Continue reading 6394 Mail call! →

Last night there was a lot of weirdness with the DSL modem disconnecting… I wonder if I need a new device? I imagine bellsouth will provide one if it turns out to be the case. (I do have the service plan, but was on hold for almost 45 min last night. Hopefully a day-call will yield better results.)

Hooray for surprise presents in the mail! I got a lovely care package from the KSA of sage , a yummy assortment of tea and a really nifty necklace made of wooden beads. Thank you so much to my pals in Dharan! Newt is crazy about all of it too.. he’s sniffing the sage, batting at the necklace I’m wearing, and I’m getting ready to prepare myself a nice cup of English Breakfast Tea. Yum!

Long as heck meeting yesterday… but at least we got the division of duties worked out. MM was very helpful in doing research for me, but she can’t go on call until codeRED gives her a login, for security and legal reasons.

My Scrabble© Score is: 14. What is your score? Get it here.

Cool Thing #12 about having a 2-monitor system with a nvidea card… I can work on my programming / documentation on one side, and still watch a movie at the same time “full screen”. Last Night’s Film – Casablanca. Tonight will either be Dune, The Medallion, Existenz, The Sinbad Cartoon or The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, depending on my mood.

PT shows a marked improvement…my flexibility is way up, and pain is way down. Laura gave me a tin of cookies for beaming her a ton of palmtop games and the Davinci code…The Merengues are especially tasty, and “melt-in-your-mouthy”, though I think my favorites are the sugar cookies with M&Ms in them. Something very basic and elementary school nostalgic about ’em. Calculating the point values was tricky, but I figure I can have 3 cookies a day and stay within quota, if I don’t fudge anything else.

Fleeting moments with my sweetheart make me smile. Schedules have been tricky as of late, but I foresee better things on the horizon.

Later today is sort of a Year’s End Overview and a planning session for the top of the New Year. I hope it doesn’t take too long, I’d rather be doing the actual work, rather than talking about it for hours, if it could be helped.

Cool Thing #12 about having a 2-monitor system with a nvidea card… I can work on my programming / documentation on one side, and still watch a movie at the same time “full screen”. Last Night’s Film – Casablanca. Tonight will either be Dune, The Medallion, Existenz, The Sinbad Cartoon or The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, depending on my mood.

PT shows a marked improvement…my flexibility is way up, and pain is way down. Laura gave me a tin of cookies for beaming her a ton of palmtop games and the Davinci code…The Merengues are especially tasty, and “melt-in-your-mouthy”, though I think my favorites are the sugar cookies with M&Ms in them. Something very basic and elementary school nostalgic about ’em. Calculating the point values was tricky, but I figure I can have 3 cookies a day and stay within quota, if I don’t fudge anything else.

Fleeting moments with my sweetheart make me smile. Schedules have been tricky as of late, but I foresee better things on the horizon.

Later today is sort of a Year’s End Overview and a planning session for the top of the New Year. I hope it doesn’t take too long, I’d rather be doing the actual work, rather than talking about it for hours, if it could be helped.

Tokyo Bowl delivered my supper last night … Veggie rolls and some seaweed salad. Healthy and yummy. Pretty much my fave lunch these days. I have been craving it since Friday night, and was willing to blow a little fun money on myself.

Wondering where Dennis, my new landlord has been. It’s well past the top of the month, and I’d like to give him my rent (hard to do, since I don’t have an address or phone number for him yet.)

Random Scotto Factoid – I don’t much care for martinis, but green olives stuffed with pimento are yummy.

Chomp Chomp Safari! – a fun bejeweled-type puzzle game.

Where Scotto has fun with image filters – a shot taken last night in the parking lot, and some manips. 5 images, about 350k total. 4 small, 1 wider

There were so many elements last night conspiring to give Danny a hard time, and he pulled through it like a trouper. I’m glad that there were a few positives in a mostly negative evening. I *have* to make a point of taking him out someplace solo and just having a grand time without those unhappy elements. Maybe give him what he actually was expecting for his b-day, a sushi dinner and a nice movie, my treat. Hopefully I can take him to see Peter Pan before it leaves theaters. He deserves some good view of mermaids and pirates (and maybe a little Mai-Kai) for showing his colossal restraint.

Spoke with Doug Wu briefly last night… it looks like he’s launching for Seattle next week, at last! I’m very happy for him.. he’s been trying to make the exodus for what seems like a dog’s age.

I’m glad that we have better security on LJ now. It was a minor concern of mine, but I never posted about it publicly.

Incredibly Bored? Want to see my current Work to-do list? (Gives an idea of what is on my plate right now.) Does anyone else use J’s to do functionality?

Handy way to search your livejournal for keywords in Google (for public, indexed messages only, of course) –

site:livejournal.com username keyword

For example, if I wanted to look for entries that have been updated via palm, preferably pics and doodles in them, I’d try –

site:livejournal.com scottobear palm

It’ll do until LJ gets a better internal search. Sorry, friend’s-only journalists!

I may’ve linked to this before, but MeFi reminded me –

BollyWhat. Making Bollywood accessible to all. Including such wonders as lyrics translations, newcomer’s guides and intriguing articles such as Masculinity, Bollywood-Ishtyle and a Hollywood FAQ for a different perspective. Explore and enjoy.

Upsides of tonight’s trip out with Danny –

• Good food, good chocolate milkshake.
• I saw Auntie Val and Rhonnie. (And a bunch of Rhonnie’s Swedish Volleyball teammates. Heh, that sounds *so* made up, but it’s true.)
• Cool fish-headed manikins on Las Olas.

I can’t believe my little cousin is 20 years old… what happened there? I remember quite vividly when she was born. I really need to spend more time with them, considering how close we are regionally. (They’re only as far as Boynton.)

Uncle Bobby and John Johnson got a 25 foot boat together, and I missed seeing Russ by a day or two.

I’m going to start carrying my digicam, and give up on the palm cam, I think. The quality is so much better with the good camera.

Today is Danny’s 42^nd birthday, and he, Janet, Dick and I will be hitting a sushi joint and seeing a movie to celebrate. I suspect we’ll catch Peter Pan. Interesting that it’s pretty much 50 years after the Disney version. I didn’t realize how old the cartoon was. My mother was six!

Dropload is a place for you to drop off files for someone else to pick up later. The recipients you specify are e-mailed instructions on downloading the files. All files are removed from the system after 48 hours, whether or not they have been picked up.

Dodgeit is a free, web-checkable e-mail address that also offers an RSS feed to let you know when new mail has arrived.

Engineers have developed a harness for a handgun that allows you to fire around a corner without exposing yourself to return fire. Continue reading 6386 Stream of links and thought, peppered with hr’s. →

Today is Danny’s 42^nd birthday, and he, Janet, Dick and I will be hitting a sushi joint and seeing a movie to celebrate. I suspect we’ll catch Peter Pan. Interesting that it’s pretty much 50 years after the Disney version. I didn’t realize how old the cartoon was. My mother was six!

Dropload is a place for you to drop off files for someone else to pick up later. The recipients you specify are e-mailed instructions on downloading the files. All files are removed from the system after 48 hours, whether or not they have been picked up.

Dodgeit is a free, web-checkable e-mail address that also offers an RSS feed to let you know when new mail has arrived.

Engineers have developed a harness for a handgun that allows you to fire around a corner without exposing yourself to return fire. Continue reading 6386 Stream of links and thought, peppered with hr's. →

Something I post at the top of every new year, and I appreciate the words more with every additional trip around the sun.

Love is
is not rude,
it is not self seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil
but rejoices in truth.
It always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres.

-1 Corinthians 13:5&6

New Ninja Turtles isn’t too bad, the art is akin to the MIB / heavy lines, simple colors, but detailed look. The origin episode tonight was cute.

Played FFXI with Sammy and D for a while tonight, stayed up later than my norm, because I can sleep in tomorrow. I still think that monthly fees for this sort of game are annoying, especially if it’s more than $5 a month. It seems to be a bit gouge-y. However, I did get my link-money today, which is $20 found, so I can put half of that into the game for a little while, anyhow. I’m liking the non-combat stuff… I want to learn fishing and woodworking, so I can sell my wares in the auction, and be virtually self-sufficient.(But not have it be so much work that it’s another “job”.

Found a lot of Kurosawa films for download via DC++. Six, if you count A Fistful of Dollars.

Newt’s aging pretty well, I think. He’s still a total babyhead at 4.

• Newt, Late 1999 (First Day, at IMT, 3 weeks old)
• Newt, Mid-2000 (At home, April/May or so, No-Nose’s Apartment, during a major cleanup)
• Newt, 2001 (At home, Pompano-place #2)
• Newt, 2002 (Same Place as above)
• Newt, 2003 (Current Location in Ft. Laud)
• Newt, 2004 – Taken at about 2am. More to come this year, I’m sure.

First Call of the New season, a 12 year old black male in Tallahassee. The kid already has a gang tattoo as an identifying mark. (JLP) He went missing at 7:30 last night, and has run away before, but isn’t considered habitual (yet?) So, some folks are getting an early morning wakeup after New Year’s eve festivities. I really hope that the kid turns out all right, and that he’s just out fooling around, and not up to anything really detrimental to himself or others. I’ve been up for about an hour or so, and will probably crawl back into bed for an hour or so soon.

[update- 10am] – Child returned home at 4:30 am, mom didn’t bother notifying the police to call off the search. Thanks, Ma!