I reckon I’ll have a Killian’s or two tonight… cheers!

Well… Danny’ll be off starting on Tuesday… I hope to get a good weekday or two in with him while it’s summertime. This week is out, though, considering doctor’s visits, work, and the fumigation.

Off the top of my head-

things that made me smile recently

• thoughts of her
• health of loved ones
• running water
• weather balloons
• martial arts on trampolines
• hide and seek with Newtie
• white go-go boots
• knowing the Lone Ranger wouldn’t have much werewolf trouble
• tattoo scabs
• the fruitiness of cricket (the “sport”)
• choco-chip cookies
• a beer glass that has “you have just been poisoned” printed on the inside bottom

I’ve never been to an actual “Tunnel of Love” at a carnival… only seen them on 60s TV shows. Do they still exist? Did they ever, outside of TV?

Well, I’m back, even earlier than I suspected. No meal with the movie, but Dave did bring some tasty chocolate chip cookies. (No funny stuff, just cookies…)

The movie wasn’t bad… it certainly held my focus for two hours. It’s weird seeing a pre-Hunt for Red October Jack Ryan… Played by Alec Baldwin there and also Harrison Ford a couple of times. I wonder how much it varied from the book… Since Tom Clancy is from Maryland, there was a lot of MD stuff happening, some of it quite distressing, as I have loved ones living there. (Speaking of Which… there’s supposed to be rain all next week there, according to my sources at Yahoo and Valhalla.)

I look forward to spending a little quality time tonight with my sweetie, if all goes to plan. I’m awake, though my eyes look tired. I was going to order out, but now, I think I’ll work on some of the food I have in the pantry. A nice supper of veggies and rice should do the trick nicely.

a year ago today… the SWAT team visited my apartment, prompting me to move.

two years ago today – Newt is recovering from Fritz’s parasite, and I discover imood.com.

More inconsiderate BS… apparently they’re going to fumigate the house on Thursday morning… the first I’ve heard about it is today, via the neighbors. I went out to restock on food, and he couldn’t bother to leave a note for me? Sakes, what is wrong with these people? Both the new and old landlords need to get their collective stuff together… as it stands now, I’m going to be spending Thursday night at a hotel, and I’m trying to figure what the best plan of action to take with Newt is… Either board him at the vet, (which I’d prefer not to do)…Sneak him into a hotel with me overnight (Most preferred) or keep him in the private office at work overnight (better than boarding him… he’s familiar with the place, anyhow.) Option #2 is most likely. I *really really* dislike it when there’s a deadline for something coming up, and people don’t let me know, or notify me at the last minute…. All it takes is leaving a note or a voice mail… not hard.

Heaven help ’em if I’d have come home Thursday night to a tented apartment with Newt inside. Just thinking about it gives me a fit. Now I have a cupboard full of food, that has to be packaged up, too… I’d have gotten by on what I had, and polished it off if I’d known. That reminds me… take the Newt food with on Thursday to the hotel… don’t want him eating any more pesticide than usual. I’d sooner donate what’s on my shelves to a food bank than take it all out and double bag it… I have all kinds of rice and noodles, dried beans and teas that are subject to getting fumed.

Dave should be by inside the next thirty minutes or so… I’m just glad that I’m social with my neighbors.

okie doke… change of plans. going to go see the matinee (4pm) Sum of All Fears with Dave this afternoon. I reckon I’ll be home by 7 at the latest.

Good news, the bro won his ticket case, the cop didn’t even show up, and risk management is certainly going to take care of his damaged body and bike. Ideally, they’ll take care of his lost wages, too.

someone’s pointing to Newtcam via a private entry. I hope they’re saying nice things about him!

I looked briefly at an apartment on my street, but it wasn’t my thing. It was nice, except for the bathroom… the tub needed to be replaced, and I was sort of weirded out that the last tenant had put a deadbolt on the door to the john. I wonder what caused that? It was a double-key lock…no manual latch on either side did he lock himself in, and other people out? Worse, my imagination went off on a tangent about locking other people in there. It gave me heebie-jeebies enough to make me decide to pass on the place. I paid the landlord for the month of June yesterday, and verified that he did indeed have a full month’s rent as a deposit, should I decide to vacate with less than a month’s notice, it could go towards my last month’s rent.

The insidious VCR Threat of 1982

Read carefully. Then substitute the word “Internet” for every instance of “VCR”, and you’ll have Jack Valenti’s assessment of our current “crisis”

Sony Music Lobbies for Ban on Markers
Following up on a story on how markers can be used to defeat music CD copy protection:

Washington DC – Ralph Hughes of Sony Music testified in the Senate today urging lawmakers to enact legislation which would ban felt tip markers. “These innocuous looking writing instruments are the scourge of our society,” he said holding up a Sharpie. “Not only can this black stick of death be used to violate the DMCA, but it could also be used to write the instructions to incubate the anthrax virus.”

Remember: it’s only a joke until they do it for real.

Reading my “friendsfriends” list… interesting…found the world’s smallest website. very cute.

Got an anonymous flame last night… I suspect it was a random surfer, and I don’t think he’ll be back again. Random abuse is just alien to me… I’m not angry or upset, just befuddled. …

Drinking tea…. 4 scoops of loose tea, this time around I picked it up at the grove. A blend of oolong, keeman, asaam, and ceylon…. one for me, one for thee, one for the pot, and one for luck. I like it a bit strong.

I may opt for a nap later… It’s a good day for it, and I have my chores done…Maybe not… sakes, it’s 6pm already. The day has flown by. I may or may not get to se bro tomorrow…he’s going to call me in the morning and let me know what’s up.

Ahhh… I scavenged the 17″ monitor from the production Mac that Dave gave me a number of months ago… it works *much* better as a 2nd screen than the four year old 15 incher. (which will find its way to my brother, seeing as his current one is blinking yellow on occasion. I’ll bring it to him tomorrow… we have tentative plans to hang out and goof off for a little while then. He can enjoy poser and paint shop more effectively if the screen has all RG&B working on the same frequency.

The text on the 17 incher is still a trifle blurry, but much nicer than before. strange that the DVD window is still choppy on screen two.

Well, off to shower and get Newt some food before he decides to forage on me…I would prefer to keep all my fingers and toes.

Until later, dear journal.

drat.. the apartment behind me has been rented, and I forgot to pick up Newtie-food tonight. Ah well, tomorrow morning, then.

Hmm… little brother isn’t home from our meeting this evening… I’m going to ring the house up in an hour… I’m hoping he only got slowed down a bit. [update – 10:43, he just called… got stuck on an hourly bus. ]

sending loving and healing vibes to my sweetie… *vibevibevibe*

and now, the Friday five –

1. Laying on your back and facing the ceiling, which side of the bed do you sleep on?
middle, but a little more to the left.

2. Do you have to have covers on at all costs, no matter the weather?
Yup, at least a leetle sheet

3. Sleep nekkid or no? Why?
Usually Nekkid, unless I collapse totally wiped! I’m comfy that way!

4. What’s under your bed?
assorted Newt-toys, some dust bunnies, and a couple of reference books… right now, it’s GURPS Places of Mystery, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Prometheus Rising by RA Wilson

5. If you have pets, do you let them sleep with you? Why or why not?
Yup, Newt’s slept with me every night I’ve slept at home since I brought him home…. Why? because I dig snuggles, man! Being cuddled to sleep is the way to go.

Yet another reason to save your work:

I left my last revision to the LRsetup program floating on my system last night… I come in to work today, and the machine is sitting at the login screen. Sometime between 8pm and noon, about an hour’s worth of work was lost, but no problem… my scratchpad still had the saved code in it, and all I had to do. Why, oh why, dear journal, can the developer’s kit for visual studio not implement an “auto-save” feature like my simplest of word processing programs?

doing outsourced data twiddling for a mailing to Peru… has first name, middle, father’s last, mother’s last… I need to do research on how they like to have things formatted “Peruvian Style”. I was happy when I get that ironed out, and could get back to real programming today. I got to ask Lourdes or Chupa about it, because The Rock is out on an extended lunch
today… possibly never to return.

Dealt with the pokey folks at the home office today…, and still no data for the laser room. I really didn’t want to stay late tonight… between them and telemedia playing at lead-butt, It’s a wonder anything will be done before the weekend. The C and X processes have been run for the first, but I can’t go anywhere near the third yet. Ugh… I’m usually well done with this part. At least it’s automated now, if still slow. I like the new format for the x process. fortunately I got to leave at a reasonable hour.

hiding text from search engines: can you guess the word?

I really like making prezzies for my sweetheart. She already knows sort of what one of ’em is, but will be surprised by the others. That reminds me… “Hey Thor! Where’s mah sweetie’s rain, man? I’ve got mine… where’s hers? huh? huh? Speak up, bub!” Silly thunder god.

I forgot to mention last night… the neighbor kid tore up the majority of my plants… only catgrass and sweet alyssum remain… so I gave Newt the catgrass to gnaw on… to make up for his mad from yesterday morn. I never did get around to supper, so now I’m huuuuuunnnnngeeerrrrryyyyy.

…

Stupid.com always delivers. This time ’round… the Sigmund Freud action figure.

Edible note paper! What was I saying about fortune-food?

But most of all… I *really* *really* want this. I may buy it as a treat for myself and Newt.

Newtie didn’t like me leaving for work this morning…blocked the door as I was leaving, in fact… but was more than happy to have me back tonight. His current toy – a Halloween plastic spider-ring. perfect combination of lightweight, looks like prey, and is easily batted around and fetched.

The things I daydream about at work… my sweetheart and I enjoying a day at the beach, with the loch ness monster (Nessie is the one in sunglasses.)… worked a little bit on a stick figure “flip book” animation, too, but didn’t finish it. I discovered that I’m not limited to screen-size in teal paint, but I can only see about 160 x 160 pixels at a time. Hopefully 576 isn’t too wide for my reader’s friend’s lists… if it is, I’ll put it behind LJ cut.

I found out that the apartments behind mine are going for about what mine is now… actually a little less, because the cable is free. I’m pondering a move because of the new landlord, and I’ve heard good things about that one. I don’t want to have to hole up in a hotel while they tent this place, or do renovations.. plus, the buyer has little respect for personal space.

I made a phone call to Thor, the thunder god… there will be rain where requested tomorrow.

Thinking that there should be fortune animal crackers, and other fortune foods… maybe printed on the side of corn chips in vegetable dye? Written in colored cheese on pizza… connected letters in alpha-bits, like magnetic poetry you can eat.

Am I psychic, or just observant? Sometimes I think it’s a little of both. I like the word “Delve”. I consider myself a Delver. I like to think I see things that are hidden from most eyes. (I sometimes see things that aren’t there at all, except in my mind, too.)

Which Peanuts Character Are You Quiz

Hmm… let’s see what’s for supper… something easy. tomato ramen and a can of veggies, methinks.

The “Sunshine State” indeed… how about the “rumbling gray-skied rain that makes Scotto want to nap state”?

from pserv –

The linguistic equivalent of an ecological disaster is looming, say researchers, who warn that 90 per cent of the world’s languages are likely to disappear by 2050.

*waves bye bye to British Romani, Tofi…. I hope good records are maintained, anyhow. Sort of reminds me of yesterday’s thoughts on how we look.

Just to play the devil’s advocate… is this such a bad thing, really? Is common ground for thought an acceptable substitute for diversity? Sort of like preserving an endangered species…the heart might be in the right place, but perhaps there’s a reason for it to be dying out, too… Making way for the bigger, stronger, or more adaptable things. Besides, we have people creating new languages, too… Not that I really want to hang with the folks who speak Elvish or Klingon, but Esperanto is a noble-enough calling. How’s that old gag go? “People who speak three or more languages are multilingual, two languages are bilingual, and one language are American.

Wouldn’t one common, unifying tongue be more beneficial, overall?

Tornado warning in Miami?

Wha? Don’t they know that this is typhoon country? Stay indoors, ci !
weather report