Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.
If anyone in [My Fair Lady] was gay, it had to be Higgins and Pickering — you’re telling me two single men in their late fifties who live together and enjoy speaking properly and dressing Audrey Hepburn in fabulous outfits aren’t?
— from ‘Will and Grace’ (Thanks to Prairie for sending this to me!)
We’re back!
Sorry about the downtime. In the end, I have to admit that it all boils down to one simple thing — money matters aren’t my strong point.
I was facing a bit of a money crunch last month, so made the choice to let my phone bill slide a bit in order to pay rent. So, rent got paid, but the phone bill wasn’t right away. Normally, this isn’t a problem — when your bill goes late, Qwest does a ‘soft disconnect’ where you can receive calls but not place calls, which as a side affect allows a DSL connection to stay active. It’s only after being in the ‘soft disconnect’ state for a week or so that they’ll come out and do a physical disconnect of the wires, which takes all phone service (and DSL service) down.
I actually did get back to Qwest to pay the phone bill in an effort to keep things from going down — unfortunately, I got them paid the same day that the physical disconnect order went in, and everything was cut. Then, since it was a complete physical disconnect, I had to place an entirely new phone order, and wait for Qwest to get around to coming out and reconnecting the lines, which happened at some point before 10am Seattle time today.
On the upside, though, I was able to keep the same phone number, and the DSL connection came back up along with the phone line (which Speakeasy had actually indicated would not happen), so everything is all up, running, and hunky-dory again. Woohoo!
Now I get to try to catch up with the last week’s worth of happenings that I’ve missed. Ooh, that’ll be fun!
Something tells me that this isn’t an ad we’d see here in America. Not sure why? It’s kind of subtle. Look at his legs. Sure makes me wish I knew Russian, just so I knew what the ad copy was.
(From Vinay Venkatesh via NSLog();)
This is just something that’s been amusing me for a while now, ever since I started working on the Microsoft campus. Here I am, working at the single biggest software company in the world, packed to the brim with some of the brightest people in the tech industry (and no matter what I think of Microsoft’s software or practices, I can’t deny that they’ve got some pretty sharp people working for them) — and yet they need signs posted outlining a four-step process to get a free soda out of the vending machines.
Somehow, this is what I’m reminded of.
It looks like Dave Winer and John Teggatz have all the cold weather that Dad is complaining he’s missing in Anchorage.
Dad also mentioned a couple articles from the Anchorage Daily News about the warm weather up there.
But it will be a long time before people on both sides of the Alaska Range forget what for many has been the strangest winter in memory — especially over the first part of February, supposedly one of the coldest months of the year.
Days of rain. Massive overflow on rivers. Fairbanks drivers “playing car hockey” on roads glazed with black ice. People taking 10-minute flights to the next village because ground travel was nearly impossible. Potholes sprouting like pussy willows.
Thanks to a persistent southerly flow of air, Fischer said, Fairbanks experienced its warmest average daily mean temperature on record — 13.6 degrees — for the 133 days from Oct. 1 through Feb. 10.
South of the Alaska Range, the wacky winter has forced the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race to change its restart next month from Wasilla to Fairbanks.
“People are really starving for snow right now,” said John Wilbur, chief ranger for the Alaska State Parks Susitna/Denali ranger district. “In the Willow area, there’s no recreation at all.”
Meanwhile, here in Seattle, it’s cloudy and 41. Pretty average for this time of year, from what I understand. Yeah, I think I’ll be sticking around in the Pacific Northwest for a while.
(And on an entirely unrelated note: I really wish that Dave’s RSS feed had individual posts linked to their permalinks. Some link to the permalink on his page, some link to the first external link in the post, and some don’t have any link associated with them at all. It’s a pain in the butt. Just my opinion.)
My boss got back to me with Xerox’s employment offer. What did they use to try to entice me into the Xerox family?
A position as a Xerox temp (as opposed to a third-party temp contracted to Xerox) with an \$11/hr pay rate (I’m getting \$11.20 through the temp agency) with no holiday or vacation pay (which I get through the temp agency) and no medical benefits (which I’m eligible for through the temp agency).
Needless to say, I turned them down, and re-started another 18-month cycle as a temp contracting to Xerox. My boss is still optimistic about future possibilities, but he made it clear without actually saying so that he thought it would be in my best interest to do what I did and stick with the temp agency. So, for now, I’m still where I was before, with no real changes for better or for worse. Guess I’ll keep keeping my eyes open.
Anybody know of any Dream Job openings?
I found this on the SeaGoth Message Boards. Very wrong. But very funny.
For my last birthday, my parents sent me a t-shirt with the phrase, “I’m only wearing black until they make something darker.”
Well, according to New Scientist, researchers just did make something darker!
Researchers have created the blackest black ever made on Earth, by bubbling a shiny metal plate in nitric acid for a few seconds.
It reflects 10 to 20 times less light than the black paint currently used to reduce unwanted reflections in instruments. And this means the super-black coating may one day help improve the vision of the Hubble Space Telescope, says Nigel Fox, who heads the optics group at NPL.
Okay, so forget the telescopes. When can I start buying new clothing?
(Via Boing Boing)
Prairie: in this case, I think it (the profanity in my last post — Michael) was effective and justified, and pretty much exactly what I would like to say to dear old President Bush
Prairie: oh yeah
Prairie: ‘course, I probably wouldn’t get a chance to say it, because I would be being dragged away by the secret service, because if I could get close enough to talk to him I would more likely kick him in the shinMichael: it’d almost be worth it!
Prairie: it would totally be worth it… and if anyone asked, I’d just salute the flag, and say I slipped and hadn’t meant to kick him
Michael: sounds like a good alibi to me Michael: i’ll let you know next time Bush comes through town
Prairie: okay, cool
Prairie buys steel toed boots
Prairie: (and the people secretly monitoring internet conversations have just added me to the list of potential terrorist suspects)Michael: you and me both, I think
Prairie: oh well
Prairie: better a terrorist than a republican
Prairie: at least the terrorists are fighting for a real cause
\<xterm> The problem with America is stupidity. I’m not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don’t we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
— found on the bash.org Quote Database