My dinner last night didn’t sit well, and I ended up having odd nightmares. The first one was a short, balding man in a turtleneck (George Costanza perhaps?) telling me that I was fired. The second had something to do with shooting guns at people. Or maybe zombies. I don’t know. It was about 10°F warmer as well. Ah, well, dinner at Ringside is worth it.
Gourmands unite.
I’m probably not the only one who overate tonight. My sister just celebrated her 8th wedding anniversary tonight at the Paris Restaurant.
What was my excuse? I was at work late (only 2-3 hours later than usual, thank goodness) reaching a minor milestone. Afterward, three of us headed out for dinner and I suggested the Ringside where they have a great deal on a three-course dinner before 5:30PM and after 9PM. Unfortunately, the menu changed a bit and I was unable to get my usual — Caesar salad, filet mignon, and creme brulee — for $25. The filet mignon is off of the specials menu but has been replaced by prime rib. Not a bad switch. My young co-workers had no trouble finishing the dinner, and we also had onion rings. The youngest used his 20-year-old’s appetite to finish off onion rings, a 24oz Porterhouse, and sorbet. That 24oz steak was impressive, and he had no trouble finishing it.
Well, that’s enough excitement for one night.
Time to update your gallery software!
Once again, I started upgrading some software after 10PM. And I ran into troubles. However, the problem is one that has been in the software for a while and I kind of knew what to look for. So Gallery has been upgraded and even has security updates but the developer didn’t think it was important to send out a notification. Or maybe the email was stuck due to a spam filter. Who knows?
A break in the rain so everyone is outside.
When the weather is nice in Oregon, everyone is outside. I saw several neighbors, some guys from high school (my sister’s high school anyway), and my friend Craig says Susan Anton was in his pub just across the street from the library. I mention the library because I was there today and was that close to celebrity! Instead of going back outside, I read a Jesse Stone (by Robert Parker) mystery today. I finished it in a couple of hours. Fluff mysteries are fun to read sometimes.
Happy Valentines Day!
The closest thing to a date I had last year was a trip to the Mt. Angel Oktoberfest with a neighbor. In fact, it was the closest thing I’ve had to a date since I broke up with my girlfriend the week before 9/11/2001. Today we went out to breakfast. Thus, I’ve made it halfway to my New Year’s resolution. If, of course, you count the breakfast as a date. I had to leave so I could help my friend John with his yacht. It turns out he just needed me to crawl under the fly bridge-thingy to disconnect some wires. It didn’t take very long.
I’m thinking of ordering some old CDs from BMG and I’d like somebody to give me some help. I mean, this is the third time I’ve mentioned Rob Swift because that’s the only cool CD I’ve bought in years. On BMG I’ve got the following CDs in my “Shopping Cart”:
| Artist | Album | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Various | Living in Oblivion 2-4 | 80’s cheese-music compilations |
| The Psychedelic Furs | Greatest Hits | |
| Pet Shop Boys | Alternative | a CD I lost |
| Duran Duran | Singles Boxset 1981-1985 | I miss the remixes of “Planet Earth” and “Rio” |
| Various Artists | Red Hot & Rio | I’ve lost TWO copies of this CD already |
| New Order | Retro | Just because I have all the other New Order CDs |
| Control Machete | Artiller&iaccent;a Pesada, Presenta | Just trying something new |
| Fountains of Wayne | Welcome Interstate Managers | A suggestion from my sister |
It may be lucky that the web site is broken and won’t allow me to buy these CDs rignt now.
Honestly, I finally have an iPod with 5091 songs (14.8 days worth) but I’ve been listening to Erasure‘s “Pop! The First 20 Hits” repeatedly. I think I should break out into something else, but not just The Pet Shop Boys. Maybe Journey.
Never start installing important software late at night.
I meant to go to sleep early last night but I saw that there was a new version of ip_filter (version 4.1) and foolishly decided to try installing it. Fortunately, I was able to uninstall it and had an older version of ip_filter sitting around. Unfortunately, there are a lot of versions of ip_filter that don’t run well on my SPARC. It’s all kind of iffy. Anyway, the version I had was broken and I was off the net from around 11:30PM until 7PM today. Not that big a deal except I get a fair amount of junk email and my sister’s web site gets a lot of hits.
So, there you go. Things are back to normal, or geek-normal anyway.
And I figured out why the Pet Shop Boys CDs were so cheap. They aren’t as good as I had hoped. DJ Rob Swift was a great find.
What’s with this shopping thing?
As a guy, I’m not into shopping. It’s not about the getting, it’s about having the toys. Well, I suppose there are lots of things I thought about buying for a long time before I actually bought them, but it’s not something that interests me for very long. So when I went to buy CDs today, I thought it would be easy. But then I found out that a used double CD was $16 at CD Warehouse. If it’s scratched, it’s $12. That’s a little more than I thought it would be. So I went to Music Millennium and bought new CDs. Two Pet Shop Boys CDs were $11 each and DJ Rob Swift — they were playing the CD while I was there — was $14. And all I wanted to do was buy one Pet Shop Boys CD.
I guess all the super-cheap internet CD prices are gone.
How early am I supposed to order my prescription refills?
I guess I’ll have to give them more than a couple of days. I called my prescription in on Friday and they called my home phone instead of my cell phone. I walked in expecting nothing and I got nothing. But they did tell me to come back on Monday. So today I went in and they’d called my home phone again. The pharmacy tech was a nice guy (as are most of them) and told me they didn’t have my cell phone on record. But I gave my cell phone number to the surly lab tech late last year. Well, I guess surly is as surly does.
I think I’ve decided not to keep trying to find the Pepsi with the iTunes caps. I saw the Pepsi delivery guy this morning and he hasn’t seen the caps, either. If he hasn’t seen them, I’m sure they’re not in town yet. Maybe they’re all in bigger markets. Well, I’ve been meaning to buy more CDs now that I have a job anyway.
Woo. I can’t blame these leg cramps on anything but laziness, can I?
I’ve had cramps in my thighs that interrupted my sleep, and Saturday morning I had a cramp in my calf. I’ve heard that my Gleevec can cause cramps, but I also get cramps if I quit running. I’ve been just walking 35-40 minutes to work or back or both. That doesn’t seem to be cutting it.
I had to get up early this morning to check out some property my friend Larry is thinking of buying. It’s way up in the hills above Woodland, Washington. Now why would anyone want to increase their commute to over an hour each way? For Larry it’s because it’s a good site for ham radio antennas, way up on a hilltop. I’d much rather let someone else buy the property and visit them to use the radio.
Oh, and on a bad note, my sister did NOT get a ‘flu shot and she either has the ‘flu or the stomach ‘flu. Either way, she’s feeling poorly. I hope she feels better soon.
My sister doesn’t match.
Well, my blood is overshooting the target range and my white blood cell and platelet counts are a little low. I guess this is expected. The bad news is that my sister isn’t a match for a bone marrow transplant. My doctor seems to think that the Gleevec is good enough that I don’t need to be worried. I hope he’s right!
More iTunes mess.
Today the whining of the guy who has too many songs on his hard disk consists of the complaint that there is no way of easily transferring songs from one computer to another. I suppose this is to keep you from stealing music, but sheesh. I just want to move everything to a new hard drive. How hard is this? Very hard.
Oh, well. I’m too sleepy to think about this much more today.
Ripping a whole bunch of bad CDs seems like a bad idea now
The joys of technology. I haven’t completely figured out my iPod yet and so that means I have to scroll through hundreds of CDs to find one that I can sort of tolerate. Funny, since I bought all these intolerable CDs in the first place.
And work has been keeping me from running, and instead of getting a Charley horse in my calves like I usually do when I suddenly stop running, I got one in my quadriceps. That kept me from sleeping well last night. The first time I got up was 4:04. If you recognize that number, you’re a web geek.
And, since someone asked, I’m working for Verinform doing database coding. It’s a small company and has a practical solution to an identified problem (see how vague I’m being) unlike some of the internet companies I’ve worked for.
And I’ve been hitting all the local convenience stores looking for the Pepsi bottles with the iTunes sweepstakes thing but I haven’t seen one of them yet. I’ll keep looking.