The bad new is that George fell down today and hit his head on a towel rack. I was vacuuming under my bed, something I hadn’t done in ten years and that meant moving around the mattress and box spring and the only open space blocked my exit. So when I heard the loud thud, it took me a couple of minutes to get out to see my dad getting up off the floor. He said he was OK, but he has a nasty bruise.
Now back to unimportant things (me). Either I’m now a big fat pig, or the food at BeWon has gone down in quantity. BeWon is a very nice Korean restaurant near my house and the first time I went with my buddy Il, I thought we were going to burst. And then when I went with my dad, I also thought I was going to burst. Today, not so much. There was quite a lot of food, but no bursting. The quality was still great, too.
Last night we were pretty worried and he even looked kind of jaundiced. We got him an appointment with the doctor and made him go. All the complaining made us think he was OK and his skin color looked better and better. The doc told us that he was a bit dehydrated, but OK otherwise. So far, so good!
So onto less important things. Today is the release day for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), but I preordered a copy from Amazon and it looks like it hasn’t shipped yet. MacMall, on the other hand, predelivered early this week by mistake. AARRRGH.
And, finally, I got a ways into Small Town Odds by Jason Headley and I’m 2/3 to 3/4 finished and so far I’d recommend it. It’s published by Chronicle Books and my sister says they often publish good books.
OK, so you might think it’s because my sister’s in town, or because Tiger is being released and I want to spend the day installing it, but the real reason is that my dad is feeling kinda puny and I have to see if I need to take him to the doctor. (Tiger’s not going to be in my hands for a few days anyway.)
Beyond that, I forgot what I was talking about. I was thinking something about the potluck at work making my stomach hurt, probably because I ate too much, but it all seems kinda unimportant until the doctor thing settles out.
UNTIL NOW! I’ve never been close to my 250 measly minutes (plus 1000 nighttime minutes) but this month I spent enough time talking to my buddy Greg to go over 107 minutes. That’s a lot of flapping my gums about ham radio, and I haven’t even been on the radio that much lately. 107 minutes is $48.15 extra, which, according to friends who know families with teenagers, is NOTHING. I guess $200 to $300 monthly cell phone bills are normal for kids in the ‘burbs.
In any case, going over $48.15 is pretty pathetic for a guy without a girlfriend, but it sure doesn’t match my old long distance bills. In Japan I’d pay about $200 per month for my phone including long distance and pay-per-minute local charges. But I did have a girlfriend for part of that time. Or so I thought.
The Dell 19″ monitor works with the Mac now. Just took a reboot. The colors aren’t nearly as nice as a Mac monitor, but it’s bigger and I can put more junk on my screen. Now if I only had a better display card and maybe more desk space, I could have all sorts of fun (for strictly defined definitions of “fun”).
I got my new 19″ Dell monitor and plugged it into my Mac but the old Mac’s display card doesn’t support anything better than 1024×768, which is what my 15″ Apple Display does. That means I can use the new monitor with my old Mac if I sit across the room and look at the giant letters on the screen. So now it’s time to try to get my other computer working with this fancy new monitor (or buy a new Mac, which may happen.)
My allergies are only kind of bothering me lately. When I’m sleeping my nose plugs up. I figured I’d try some Afrin decongestant but the pharmacist told me not to use it for very long: 3 days on, 3 days off. Sounded like too big a hassle, so I decided to try my Claritin again. But rather than harming my liver with the Claritin, I drank a beer instead.
Now that I think of it, that isn’t interesting either.
OK, so maybe not quite an elitist, but we went to a sports bar in Scappoose, Oregon, and swore the name of the place was “Cletus.” (It was really Cleats.) Left a 25% tip because it was either that or wait again for change. And leaving $1.75 didn’t seem very nice. The food was OK, but not as good as the Klondike in St. Helens. In any case, I’m not exactly having great luck at bars this weekend. And by luck, I just mean decent service.
So, after not seeing a Formula One car race since last year, I watched the San Marino Grand Prix twice today. The second time was to keep me from making Greg do any more work. We tore out some rotted boards out of his garage, which he blamed on his wife somehow, but is really because the prevailing winds drive the rain up against that side of his house.
Craptop battle more like it. First, I must say that the bar at Nocturnal was like being back in high school. I was standing there for five minutes while good looking people would come up and get immediate service. And it wasn’t even that crowded.
The actual laptop battle was eight geeks with preprogrammed tracks on their laptops pretending to play things. My friend made it past the first round where they went head-to-head two at a time. In the second round he lost to a guy playing ambient music which, to me, sounds like the crap they put on public radio at night to help people get to sleep. I left soon afterwards when this guy started mixing in noises from a cheap 80’s video game. Ah, well. It was fun hanging out with the kids. If I was judging it, the funkier stuff would have won and the whalesong crap would have gone back to the new age store. OK, so it wasn’t as bad as whale songs, but you get the idea.
This morning it looked like it would be wacko day, with all the people driving down the downtown streets like they were on the freeway, idiots tailgating moving vans so the vans couldn’t back up into driveways, idiot movers who didn’t help their drivers back up, etc. Lots of honking and a guy asking me for a buck for “a bag of maggots.” I had him repeat himself and he wanted “a buck for a bag of maggots.”
May head out later to a “laptop challenge” where a bunch of electronic music guys play their compositions. We’ll see how that goes.
So there’s a bunch of weird wackjobs who want to shut down anyone who supports Planned Parenthood. In fact, they sent a letter to the Portland Mercury who put it on their front page. Portland is a pretty liberal place, so people emailed the wackjobs asking to be put ON the boycott lists. Some of the wackjobs, however, retaliated by emailing ISPs and accusing the emailers of being spammers. Free speech is not supported by the anti-Planned Parenthood wackjobs.
That’s about it for now. Got my Morse code gadget and put it together. Now I’m waiting for an LCD display to hook up to it.
OK, so not only would I have to slack off at work, but I’d also have to find something to say in a midday post. Like much happens at work besides me listening to the simulated gay disco in my iPod or WOXY online.
A friend wanted to grab a grilled cheese and tomato bisque at Tully’s today, but they were OUT of tomato bisque. So we headed over to the downhill slide known as Pazzo’s (the mini-restaurant/bakery, not the main restaurant). We both had the grilled cheese panini and Vegan tomato soup that didn’t taste like soup or like tomatoes. Soup need stock! That means boiling bones! What’s vegan about that?
