Or so I was called. Went up to the Scappoose Strawberry Festival and I stopped by Greg’s house to pick him up. Unfortunately, an old friend was there with his new girlfriend. Greg and the new girlfriend got into this horrible pro/anti gun argument and while I didn’t share all of Greg’s Libertarian sentiment, I also thought that the woman was a goofus who had no grasp of real human nature. There was a lot of “everyone get along” and other woo-woo crap that was truly annoying. And all her “we must teach peace” crap and “anyone can be like Martin Luther King, Jr.” nonsense just made me angry. I hope I never see her again. Later, I told Greg that and he told me I was an intolerant right-wing freak.

So, Il and I ditched them and went to the Strawberry Festival. I told Greg’s wife Keeley and also his daughter Bridget that I had to leave him because he was embroiled in a senseless argument about guns. Keeley just said, “Oh, no,” and laughed. Bridget said, “What gun argument are they having? Which gun to shoot?” AHAHAHA. Best quote ever!

Some of you (both of you reading this blog) could have seen my placeholder that said, “Nothing yet.” Well, after getting up at 5:30 AM, driving down to Seaside to the ham radio convention, checking in on the new Goose Hollow Inn down there, driving back to Scappoose, moving around trailers, etc, I thought it was more important to stay up late watching, I, Spy on WTBS than to do other things, including writing on this self-indulgent blog. You know how it is.

In any case, Seaside was unrecognizable yesterday because the overcast and fog were missing. It was BEAUTIFUL. We stayed much later than we were originally planning, talking to old friends about just about nothing.

On the way back I stopped at the new Goose Hollow Inn in Seaside which is still being renovated. (It’s on U Avenue, I think.) Saw old grade school friends there who are running it, and Jason and I talked about how our high school (Benson Polytechnic H.S.) was fairly anti-social. Jason’s dad’s alumni group still stays in touch, but we don’t even know what most of our classmates are doing and never see most of them. (Jason’s dad is former Portland Mayor Bud Clark.) I suppose that’s what you get for going to an all-male school.

So, there you have it. The post I should have made last night.

I keep trying to save money by buying used CDs from Amazon. I thought they’d be CDs used by regular people but so far I think 9 out of 10 have been cut-outs or “Promotional Copies.” I suppose either way there’s probably some RIAA law that says I have to be drawn and quartered at sunrise. In any case, I now have copies of 808 State, The Prodigy, and Gorillaz (the Gorillaz was a new CD.)

I found out that Patanol prices vary. At Fred Meyer, for example, (a Kroger company) I would have paid $94 if I didn’t have insurance. Central Drug downtown has it for $84! Either way it’s pretty spendy.

I’ve been sleepy lately so I think I better hit the hay “early” and maybe get seven hours of sleep.

Went to the eye doctor today, and I could have sworn I saw him last year. I guess it’s been TWO years since I’ve been in and I’m really supposed to go every year. However, every year they tell me something different so I’m not really surprised that I’m surprised. My contact prescription hasn’t changed, but I guess having CML means he needs to check my retinas every year. He also wrote me a prescription for Patanol, an incredibly expensive eye drop that make my eyes quit itching almost immediately. Finally, some form of hay fever relief! He said the only real problem with Patanol is that you have to rob a bank to get a refill. Anyway, I told them that my focus was getting bad and they told me to buy some reading glasses to wear with my contacts. Or don’t wear contacts when I’m looking at things close up. In either case, I’m just aging. Beats the alternative.

Nothing eventful at the gym. Just saying hello to people I recognize including the Asian lawyers (they’re either lawyers or architects and I’m guessing lawyers) and a neighbor who has been slacking lately. Oh, and sweat-boy’s lady friend who looks a little like Carolyn.

I was going to buy a new G5 Macintosh this year, but then Apple decided that the “superior” PowerPC architecture wasn’t superior enough and it was time to go with the company killing Intel. I mean, switching to Intel killed SGI, DEC, parts of HP, but I’m sure Apple will be fine (HAH). But in any case, if they’re changing things that much, why would I buy a Mac now when the world as we know it is about to end? But my hard drive(s) are filling up. I have one 40G and one 80G and the computer is shutting down because it’s full of SOMETHING. I decided to swap out the 40G with a spare 80G I had laying around and that means I got to waste a lot of time waiting for my computer to do something.

Actually, I’m still waiting.

Perhaps I should have bought a new computer.

Everybody has a certain amount of personal space they need to feel comfortable. That’s why Seinfeld had the episode about the close talker. Well, I think the comfortable distance necessary for my personal space is VASTLY INCREASED when there are WEIRD NAKED DUDES around. So, if I’m changing my clothes at the gym, and I just stood up from sitting on a stool and I’m taking my pants off, DO NOT PUT YOUR FOOT ON THE SAME STOOL AND START DRYING YOUR FOOT WITH A TOWEL. That would put YOUR HEAD VERY NEAR MY ASS and it would make me feel VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. ESPECIALLY NOT WHILE YOU’RE NAKED. OK? Got that you freakishly odd bicycle spin class dweeb?

Yeesh.

So I saw a woman I know from the gym getting into her car and I didn’t recognize her! It was the first time I saw with makeup on and from a distance she looked pretty different. Who is this woman waving at me? I thought it was her, but I couldn’t be sure. Oh, well. I finally talked to her and tried to guilt her into going to the gym. If only she didn’t have a huge rock on her left hand.

For some reason I turned on the computer in my bedroom that I use to log my ham radio contacts. Of course, since I hadn’t turned it on for a month or more, there were tons of updates. Do you know it took me a couple of hours just to get rid of a mystery partion on the disk? It didn’t help that the computer was slow. I did end up turning on my radio and talked to a guy in Brooklyn. Sure, it would have been easier to email him, but this is more fun for me somehow.

Anyway, yesterday was updating computers as well. In other words, nothing much interesting to discuss.

Oh, I remember the odd thing I did at the gym. They got new clocks. The one that I look at most often has the day of the week and date, and since they got it a couple of weeks ago it’s been wrong. It finally bothered me so much that I took it down and figured out how to adjust it. I sure hope it’s right when I go in next time, or I’ll have to take it down again. More proof that I’m an engineer.

My impression of the doctor: “Hello, $200 please. Wait, I have to touch you. $400 please.”

Anyway, no big deal.

I finally made it to the gym today, after a week away. Last time I was there was a week ago Wednesday. Anyway, it would have been uneventful. First off some weird sweaty guy was on the stair machine next to me and after he was through he just sort of left with newspapers and sweat all over the stairs. After five minutes of him walking back and forth I finally said, “Hey, it’s usually polite to wipe down the machine.” He wasn’t happy with me and left for a while longer to flirt with someone before he came back and made some cursory cleaning motions. Eh, there were less than a dozen people there, so it doesn’t really matter.

Not like there’s any organization there at Mavericks. Instructors keep leaving and the new person at the desk was off flirting with this buff dude who drives a Hummer H2 so people could wander in and out unimpeded. Ah, whatever. There was some point I was trying to make, but I’m not sure what it was. (It’s not like I take any classes or need someone to open the door.)

I got to work today, and no one was waiting for me with news of broken computers. It filled me with a sense of impending doom, but fortunately nothing happened. I had to leave in the middle of the day, so I ended up working from home in the evening. In other words, NOTHING INTERESTING HAPPENED. Just more work, and nothing where I can say, “Look at what I just did!”

I do remember having a couple of weird dreams since I haven’t been sleeping all that well. One was that I bought a Motorola Razr. I can’t remember what the other was. I do remember thinking that I should try to remember it.

Yay Intarweb! I’ve had these books from Sun (thanks again Sun!) as a birthday present and I never knew what order to read them in. They’re mysteries by Sarah Caudwell. Now I know! First is Thus Was Adonis Murdered!

So, while I got a good talking to at work, I am still employed. For now. I should thank my boss for being as understanding as he could be, but the repeated message was, “THIS CAN NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.” Sure, it can happen ONCE again, but I won’t be working there after that.

I’m still not feeling quite right, and neither are the computers at work. On my walk home I went straight past the gym and went home. Then I searched around for half an hour for the slip of paper with my new password.

Well, with any luck I’ll feel much better soon.

I thought it was going to rain today, but it was fairly nice out. 70°F and all sorts of people were out enjoying the brief sunshine that usually avoids Portland during the Rose Vegetable. True to form, however, it’s supposed to rain during the Grand Floral Parade. Beats sunstroke for those in the parade.

The sun woke me up around 5:30AM, just in time for me to get a spectacular charley horse in my right calf. I decided to go to the bathroom as long as I was awake, with no plans but going back to sleep until my alarm went off at 7AM. But as soon as I got up I noticed that my head was spinning and there was a rock where my stomach should be. OK, not a rock, since rocks probably don’t hurt. I was supposed to be in at work at 9AM but I slept in.

I did end of trying to do some work from home but, really, what I did was find out that there’s a lot of useless crap in the directory I was trying to download and we need to get rid of some of it before it’s useful to anyone.

Anyway, I waited most of the day for files to transfer. I think I must be feeling better because my head stopped feeling like it was full of helium around lunchtime and at 4PM I took a break from staring at the computer to clean the gutters. There was a huge downpour and I noticed that a lot of water was splashing onto the windows rather than down the downspout. You can imagine how much fun it is to clean out gutters that are filled with mud, leaves, and water.

I think not falling off the ladder was an accomplishment and proved to me that I must be feeling better.

Or maybe get fired. I don’t do well with micromanagement, or people with OCD telling me what to do over and over and over. And I don’t think I was feeling quite right this morning, either. (One of my co-workers was out sick Friday, and another was out sick today.) So I told off one of the managers at work. I warned her several times. I told her that if she didn’t leave me alone, I couldn’t fix the servers or the non-booting desktop (that shouldn’t be my responsibility). I told her that if she didn’t leave me alone, I’d just get up and go home. So she threatened me with, “I’ll tell your boss on you.” I used very unprofessional language to tell her what I thought of that.

My boss knew I wasn’t running on all cylinders and told me to go home early, probably at about 10:30 or so. I was working straight two-and-a-half hours later. I didn’t even get to see the Apple WWDC keynote “live” like a good Mac fanboy.

In any case, I came home early, ate lunch, took a nap, and realized that I didn’t feel so well. So I played computer for the rest of the day and didn’t make my Monday trip to the gym. Just ate dinner and watched TV. I’m going to be a big fat blimp.