Good sidebar editor!
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(1)
10:25:13 AM,
Saturday 3 May 2003
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Author of Book of Virtue has a gambling problem. I was all ready to gloat, but by the time I got through the article I just felt sorry for him. Have I mentioned that I don't think having the government funded by selling gambling monopolies is a good idea?
via TPM
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(4)
01:57:05 PM,
Friday 2 May 2003
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Great song heard on John Peel: "Counting Backwards leads to Explosions" by Kea. You can't listen to it, but you can listen to other ones.
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08:46:04 PM,
Thursday 1 May 2003
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It looks like Apple's new service is pretty much what I've been saying I'd use if it existed, as a way of justifying my less legal activities.
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(13)
08:47:14 AM,
Thursday 1 May 2003
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I suspect a lot of the division over Buffy stems from whether people are primarily believers in the sitcom or the hourlong drama.
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05:35:17 PM,
Wednesday 30 April 2003
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Blog-based Panzi scheme
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(2)
02:33:59 PM,
Wednesday 30 April 2003
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Are there any christians who believe that Judgement Day already happened and we missed it?
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(1)
02:09:54 PM,
Wednesday 30 April 2003
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If I leave the screen door open, the wind occasionally catches it and slams it open, then closed, which scares the cat out of his wits. Once, he was lurking behind the open screen door while the actual door was closed, and the wind caught it, and it slammed shut, and he jumped, so I saw the screen door close and an extremely concerned cat pop into view. My solution today is to remove the lower screen on the screen door, so today the cat has been leaping in and out of the apartment. I had thought this would stop him climbing the screen, but no such luck. He just leapt over the now vacant lower half to grab onto what is left of the upper screen.
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09:33:14 PM,
Tuesday 29 April 2003
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The Diplomacy Pouch now has its own Diplomacy Judge with a web interface, something the world has needed for quite some time.
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06:48:12 PM,
Tuesday 29 April 2003
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Silliest idea I've seen in a while: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream the video game.
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(1)
09:55:17 PM,
Monday 28 April 2003
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I've just repotted all my seedlings so I can put them out. 30 pounds of potting soil doesn't go very far.
Long box on railing:
S. Alyssum S. Alyssum
Lavander Lavander
Violet Violet
Marigold Marigold
Marigold Marigold
Violet Violet
Lavander Lavander
S. Alyssum S. Alyssum
Corner Pot 1:
Verbena & Marigold
Corner Pot 2:
2 S. Alyssum & Violet
Tub 1:
------Peas------
------Peas------
----Violets-----
-----Thyme------
Tub 2:
Marigold ----Morning Glory----
Marigold Violet Violet
Marigold S. Alyssum S. Alyssum
I'm planning to get another tub to put the Alberta Spruce and the Heather in, along with a Bonsai mountain, and some moss if I can manage it.
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(2)
05:28:28 PM,
Saturday 26 April 2003
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Currently listening to Morey Piya, from the Bollywood Spectacular Devdas. The scene is this: the girls mother is invited over by the boys mother to discuss marriage, and she, a stunningly beautiful middle aged plump matron sort, comes dressed to the nines and does a traditional song & dance for them, but the crowd turns unpleasant, and it turns out they only invited her over to make fun of her, because she was a dancer in her youth and is lowly and unworthy of them. Towards the end there's this tabla-driven call and response bit about Krishna which I get uncontrollable cravings for.
Bollywood has made me realize that I like musical melodramas performed in foriegn languages and sung by professionals, and seeing H.M.S. Pinafore in London made me realize that there is some value in live, unamplified singing, which means I'm running out of excuses for not liking opera. All that's left is my distaste for the freak-show and high-culture aspects of it. Did you know that most of those agonizing, pointless high notes aren't in the score?
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(3)
06:31:18 PM,
Friday 25 April 2003
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I discovered, while thinking about Belle & Sebastian, and Scotland and France, that I resent the French attempts to prop up the Stuarts, and have a fondness for Cromwell. Why on earth do I care? I must have picked it up from a history book in my youth. Certainly I didn't get it from Jane Austen; her History of England is a delightful and unabashed example of the opposing bias.
As I am myself partial to the roman catholic religion, it is with infinite regret that I am obliged to blame the Behaviour of any Member of it: yet Truth being I think very excusable in an Historian, I am necessitated to say that in this reign the roman Catholics of England did not behave like Gentlemen to the protestants.
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(13)
03:03:54 PM,
Friday 25 April 2003
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Innovative PETA sillyness. I'm not sure how I feel about the legal questions it raises, but fun nonetheless. Make sure you read down until you get to the bit about Formula One.
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12:06:57 PM,
Friday 25 April 2003
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I didn't go to the interview, deciding that I'm cowardly and didn't want the job anyway. I was going to apply for another job this morning, one in Mansfield, Data Management for a business consulting company, which I think would be better than Medical data, certainly less depressing. I really don't like doing studies of people who chronically use ER rooms. Also better than identifying watch recipients, for pity's sake. I haven't yet, because I haven't done my actual work which I meant to do yesterday, but haven't because I don't have the most recent copy of the file, so have to redo some stuff, which irks me. Also, my eyes are watering like evil water-oozing things. I took a benedryl around this time yesterday, and was allergy-free but useless all afternoon, so I'm waiting until evening before taking one today. I'd buy a Claritin clone, but they're still $1 a pill and I'm not entirely convinced they work.
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(1)
12:00:14 PM,
Friday 25 April 2003
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I have been negligent in my plant-chronicling duties. My original potted lawn is dead and gone; the cat kept knocking it on the floor. However, the 8 inch lawn is doing very well. I keep trimming it instead of getting a haircut. The seedlings are are still in their pots because I lack the potting soil to plant them. One of the Alyssum seedlings has a tiny white flower. The marigolds are huge floppy things, no spine. The Phlox, which also badly needs repotting, has what may be flowers starting. Our outdoor pot of tall grass has shown no sign of life, but the new heather is flowering happily and the 6-inch spruce tree is looking greener. Also acquired a fern from my mother, which has several fiddleheads on the way. The african violet is healthy, but no sign of flowers for the last few months. I need to go buy bags and bags of potting soil and start moving stuff outside.
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(2)
11:51:39 AM,
Friday 25 April 2003
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Recently, I had forgotten why I thought I didn't like poetry. Then I listened to NPR read and discuss poetry, and it all came back. The worst offender was the poet laureate of San Francisco, but none of it is good. They also manage to be pretentious while simultaneously being completely and universally uncritical.
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03:42:44 PM,
Thursday 24 April 2003
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Is it just me, or is Tommy Franks trying to look like George C. Scott? Between playing Patton and Gen. Turgidson, he just seems to have defined Generality for all americans.
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(1)
06:24:36 PM,
Sunday 20 April 2003
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I've now recovered from my recent bout of considering being an accountant. Back to attempting to recover the Amulet as a tourist. I've taken to naming my pet Luggage.
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02:30:06 PM,
Sunday 20 April 2003
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See, the problem is there are basically two activities that require large amounts of data flying around that need managing; health care and accounting. I'm pretty sure I don't want to work in the Health Care side, but in order to get into the Accounting side you have to, well, be an Accountant. I can sort of get myself excited about it, the heroic new wave of ethical auditors going in and increasing transparancy and uncovering corruption, but I'm pretty sure I'm deluding myself. Then again, having decided against being an academic, I still want to be overeducated, which means being a professional. Being a Doctor is out, I want to avoid the health care system. Being a lawyer is out because I suffer from crippling writers block. Its significantly more common, which is why it hadn't occured to me before. And I bet most accountants are stupid and can't program computers, so it would fit well with my skill set while avoiding becoming an actual programmer, who are a little like sternographers, as near as I can tell. I would have to learn how to wear a tie, but if my brother can do it, so can I. Maybe I can get away with a bow tie.
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01:40:27 PM,
Sunday 20 April 2003
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How can I be so indifferent about Easter? I used to like it, lots of chocolate, rabbits, spring before the pollen gets me, general cheerfulness. But now I know what its about, that I've encountered Christianity, I don't see how I can still be tolerant. Either Jesus came back or not, either he's the son of God or not. The main thing I got from reading the Gospels was that if Jesus wasn't the Son of God, he was a complete and utter jerk, either delusional or mind-bogglingly cynical and crooked. This whole great teacher thing sounds nice, but it isn't actually true. If he didn't rise, then it is awful that so many people believe he did, the Church is the biggest scam in history. Why aren't I upset? Secularism isn't so much an intellectual position as a set of manners and morals, and we're all steeped in it. I'm just too polite to get angry at Christ, just as believers are too polite to try to save me from eternal damnation. It works, and I'm glad it works, but it really is odd.
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(6)
12:29:48 PM,
Sunday 20 April 2003
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I've never really managed to get that upset about the Chinese government, in a large part because of my strong distaste for the Tibetan Lamas and theocracy, and that they have always been the rallying point for getting upset about China. Also, with political things, there is always room for excuses and interpretation. But this fiasco with the attempt to simply deny the existence of SARS, the astonishing irresponsibility of it, really brings home to me that a government whose priorities are so completely divorced from the needs of the people is a Very Bad Thing. The incentives must be so screwed up for something like this to happen.
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(3)
12:23:15 PM,
Sunday 20 April 2003
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P.G. Wodehouse's main conceit is the reversal of standard notion of the master-servant relationship. Its a parody of something we don't see very much anymore, the idea of servents as well meaning, gentle hearted, helpless oafs who need the guiding hand of the educated class to save them from themselves. One place where the traditional idea of class characteristics can be seen is Frodo and Sam. In the films they didn't know what to do with it. The parallel notions in this country have been driven out as racist, so the films and the audience fall back on latent homosexuality to make sense of the bond.
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(1)
12:07:38 PM,
Sunday 20 April 2003
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I just learned that Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in getting CFCs banned worldwide. The general explanation seems to be that she was a chemistry major, so was able to distinguish good science, even though her ideological enemies believed it. Perhaps we need more scientists in political office. You'd think there would be more of them, both beg for money for a living, after all.
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10:38:19 AM,
Sunday 20 April 2003
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Today's word that I didn't know wasn't in the american vocabulary: pong. noun or verb, like stink, only less toxic and more humorous, and without the adjective form. I suspect I have higher walls between my public and private vocabularies than most people, and use my private vocabulary less, which contributes to my general air of stand-offishness. I definitely pronounce words differently depending how comfortable I am. Some of it is due to a particularly stupid 2nd grade teacher who regularly made fun of my accent. The 'been' incident is the one that sticks in my head. It's a problem sometimes if I get too relaxed at work and end up having to define a tranklement. It doesn't help that some of them, mither and werret for instance, aren't quite words. Its also why I've never understood peoples desire to expand their vocabularies; I have enough difficulty keeping mine in check.
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(2)
11:07:04 PM,
Saturday 19 April 2003
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Our cheese grater has vanished, entirely. I have looked everywhere, which has made me realize how many silly places there are for cheese graters. Erika and I have different approaches to lost items. She gives up fairly quickly, assuming that it has blinked out of existence and may or may not return, and limits her search to fairly rational places. I on the other hand believe that it is in the apartment, because how could it have left, but within that I believe it could be absolutely anywhere... under rugs, behind books, in containers that haven't been opened for months, anywhere. It nags me, haunts me. I will occasionally get up and loot because I thought of somewhere I hadn't checked. This is probably related to my habit to mindlessly pick stuff up, fiddle with it and carry it around, and deposit it somewhere random without having any memory of the sequence of events. This means that lost items make me feel guilty, because I never know whether I'm the one who lost it.
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09:15:49 PM,
Saturday 19 April 2003
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I think I'm applying for more jobs because I don't want the one handing out tacky watches.
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11:10:54 PM,
Friday 18 April 2003
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Add Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island to the list of jobs applied for.
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11:10:07 PM,
Friday 18 April 2003
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It isn't that cats don't learn. They learn extremely quickly, but selectively. Get up at 5am once, and the cat will learn that you are capable, if batted and purred towards correctly, of getting up at 5am.
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07:37:03 PM,
Friday 18 April 2003
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There is a distinction in science between the study of things we can know and the study of things we need to know. Discuss.
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(2)
07:33:22 PM,
Friday 18 April 2003
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"Knowledge of JD Edwards a plus". When I first read that in the job description, I thought it was particularly brazen bit of nepotism. Apparently I need to do some research.
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(1)
06:27:01 PM,
Friday 18 April 2003
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Ack! I've got an interview on Friday, with the Recognitions ane Rewards company! It's in Attleboro, which is a definite upgrade. Do I still own a tie? Does this call for a professional haircut, instead of my current practice of simply trimming it occasionally? I have some issues for working for a company in such an inane business (Yay non-googlable blog!) but then again, its better than the federal government. I work for the Government section of my current company, in theory to help states save money and manage their medicaid systems intelligently. Currently we are losing contracts left and right because the Governments can't afford to spend money, even if it will save them money in the long run. Balanced budget amendments are not clever. Kind of creepy, the phone rang, and i was expecting my departments director to be calling offering a job, but instead it was someone else.
My greatest fear is that a recognitions and rewards company might be terminally perky.
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06:13:22 PM,
Friday 18 April 2003
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This is a wierd company. They started life as a jeweller, and they are now a "Rewards and Recognitions" company... that is, they handle the giving of tacky crystal and watches. Another job I just applied for. You see, I'm in a snit. I am in this snit because my current employer is being lackidasical about acceding to my demand for a home office and permenent full-time employment, which clearly shows they don't really appreciate me. I've been less than serious in my job searching up to now because I thought, well, these people know me, they know what I'm worth, so I'm better off with them than starting over at a new company.
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01:42:43 PM,
Thursday 17 April 2003
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Is CVS evil? I just applied for a job with them, and am somewhat concerned they may be evil.
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01:03:56 PM,
Thursday 17 April 2003
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I have a terrible confession to make. I'm playing Yahoo Fantasy Baseball. It isn't that I like baseball, it bores me silly. But treated as a abstract game, with baseball games acting as the dice, Fantasy Baseball is actually pretty interesting, and the return on investment for researching the players seems to drop off rapidly, stopping it from turning into a trivia challenge. Of course, I may just think that because I'm winning.
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(1)
06:39:21 PM,
Tuesday 15 April 2003
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My lack of concern about the museum is simply visceral. I feel I should be concerned, but I feel animosity towards antiquities. I feel hostility towards the British Museum. I don't see why I should care about anything that is only interesting after I read the bit of paper. This is why the poetry anthology Erika has is so lovely; it tells you nothing except the name of the author and the date of publication. No footnotes, no endnotes, no commentary. I would have thought before reading it that the lack of such things couldn't add anything, but it really does. I used to think that poetry bored me silly, but I've learned that it's the poets that bore me, the poems themselves are often quite nice, when seperated from the biographical and critical clutter.
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08:46:12 AM,
Tuesday 15 April 2003
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