gl.

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Friday, February 28, 2003

 
7:03 PM: [#] [0]

carlos says the department actually pays for a buyback computer, and it remains a state computer even when the faculty or staff member takes it home. damn. things look bleak for tess & nefarious.

 
1:20 PM: [#] [0]

from the "In A Post-Apocalyptic World, Who Would You Be?" quiz:



like this is a surprise. but i would never, ever look like that. i always imagined michael would be a librarian in a post-apocalyptic world. possibly the only one.
but of course, in this quiz, michael turned out to be a cyberpunk, too. i'll bet he wouldn't look like this picture, either. hey, now. no cheating.

Thursday, February 27, 2003

 
6:05 PM: [#] [0]

since i am comment-less here on blogspot, rob deconstructed my three rules of blogging over at his place.

 
4:10 PM: [#] [0]

funny nefarious refererer today: i'm the first hit when looking for "smoking poems" in google canada.
http://www.google.ca/search?q=Smoking+Poems&hl=
en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=50&sa=N

 
3:43 PM: [#] [0]

the dentist is very disappointed with me. i thought i was going in for a checkup & cleaning, but instead we just did a checkup and she's decided in order to give me a thorough cleaning, we'll have to do it in quadrants. and i have to rinse twice a day with peridex (with a "pleasant herbal mint taste [to ensure] patient compliance") before i come back so i don't bleed all over the place.

after the cleaning there will be fillings! and refillings! then she's referring me to an oral surgeon to get my wisdom teeth removed. *sighs* better do this now before i am dentist-less in portland. spend the money while i still have it.

rob appreciates the reminder: "aaaaaahhhhh! I'm insured RIGHT NOW and I need to go to a dentist and I need to get a general physical and--

 
9:43 AM: [#] [0]

off-campus internet is mostly inaccessible again. but in the meantime, you should visit palindromelist.

off to the dentist now.

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

 
7:28 PM: [#] [0]

from the logs: webcollage has finally found me. god, i loved haworth.

okay, i swear i'm going home now.

 
5:13 PM: [#] [0]

kudos to alex for sending a link now on my top-10 list of "things i didn't expect to see today": felidae cat skulls from skulls unlimited.

 
4:31 PM: [#] [0]

internet access has been spotty today. i guess it forces me to work on... work. :)

 
2:22 PM: [#] [0]

faelead reminds me that geocaching seems like something i could really get into, and in fact, would probably be the only reason i'd ever want a gps receiver. i don't need another hobby which requires an expensive piece of equipment, though, especially while i'm planning to move. :(

but it might be something michael & i could do together to get us out & about. :)

 
1:21 PM: [#] [0]

opera, who i had thought of as odd little ducks after their public tiff about safari, came up with a pretty good poke at microbork. still, perversion tracker is probably right about them, anyway.

 
1:01 PM: [#] [0]

cocktail is a little aqua interface "for many [unix] tasks including file prebinding, enabling/disabling journaling, manually running cron scripts, repairing file and folder permissions" etc.

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

 
12:27 PM: [#] [0]

it's been raining today but i have snö running, pretending it's actually snowing (even if it does chew up all my cpu). i'm so desperate.

Monday, February 24, 2003

 
9:25 PM: [#] [0]

oooooo! rob's teeeessssty! :) "some of you ... are not doing your part to question, challenge, think, rethink, unthink, understand, overstand, overturn, inside out, provoke, prod, protest and unsettle."

i love rob. i admire what he's trying to do here and i often live vicariously through his moral indignation. i apparently like blogs for different reasons than he does, though, so here are "gl.'s three rules of blogging (tm)":

rule #1: know your audience. i read my access logs; i know i can count my regular readers on the fingers of one hand, the addition of random readers on the fingers of both hands, and still wish for a sparkly ring for the last finger. this space is mostly for me & the three other people who care about me. more importantly, i think blogging is a tremendous way for me to organize my brain: it's what high fidelity refers to as "autobiographical" organization. even if nobody else read it, i'd still keep a blog.

rule #2: know your voice. if you hadn't guessed, i am scattered, with half of me devoted to art, half of me devoted to os x, and another half of me devoted to hopeless introspection, often about my job. (i know that adds up to more than a whole. if you wanted to talk to a rocket scientist, talk to brian.) i write poetry in part because i don't have the attention span to write stories. the blog format, small interjections which may or may not be relevant, suits my personality well. speaking of which....

rule #3: know your medium. blogs seem designed for fewer, smaller posts. the size of the input field is a big clue. they're timestamped for a reason. they're meant to be informal; they're meant to transmit the essence of the moment. blog posts are like izone polaroids, or photo booth strips, rather than carefully crafted national geographic photo essays. if you want a lecture format, i guess you could set up a discussion group and set it to moderate posts. or start your own zine.

i didn't even know i had these rules. i guess rob's call to action worked, though i suspect he meant it for larger, more important issues than this. ;)

[update: argh. this made a lot more sense before rob deleted the original post. i'm hoping he brings it back.]
[update part deux: he brought it back!]

 
4:58 PM: [#] [0]

damn. scp & other ssh utilities fail if you have echo in your .[shell]rc file. is there a way to determine "remote connection: do not echo"? 'cause locally, i'd like to print out my todo list when i open a terminal screen. and hey, color me dumb, but i didn't know ssh could remotely execute a command without actually logging into the machine. this is kind of fun. :)

in the other-random-os-x-utilities department: hey, jot's kind of cute. i could have used that at usc.

 
4:27 PM: [#] [0]

eee! if i can't have a 17-inch powerbook, i'd settle for this! if only it was mac osx-able. :(

 
4:08 PM: [#] [0]

why doesn't blogger support sftp? :(

 
2:47 PM: [#] [0]

rob's involved with a staged reading of lysistrata as part of the lysistrata project, an international protest against the war. have you ever read lysistrata? it's an excellent, if over-the-top, play, but if you're at all prudish (and under certain circumstances i've triggered that trait myself), just be glad it's a stage reading. i've seen the costumes, which are often outrageous.

i'm also glad to see there are some san diego performances; as a place with big ties to the military, i wasn't sure if we would.

 
11:00 AM: [#] [0]

hey, i forgot to mention that i finally got the frekvens wall in the art space up on saturday. yes, i know the picture is terrible and the overhead light sucks. but it hangs papers, which is what i wanted it to do. there's another frekvens wire at the entrance to the kitchen so i can hang stuff while it's drying. i'd definitely do it again in another apartment; now that i've done it at least 8 times, i've gotten really good at setting it up. :)

Sunday, February 23, 2003

 
5:05 PM: [#] [0]

rob asks, "have I inspired you by moving for love, change of scenery and sheer heck of it?" and i'm like, duh! and it doesn't hurt that i was probably looking for a way out, anyway. but it's weird: i don't know how to be un-or-under-employed anymore. michael doesn't help when he says oregon has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, and my self-confidence at the moment is about the size of a paper clip, so i'm worried i can't compete.

which is, of course, ironic, because then rob asks, "if so, do you think that someday you could inspire me in return to get a decent job?" and i laugh. out loud. fortunately, i'm at home, and only amelia is here to shoot me a dirty look. do i have a decent job? in many respects, yes, but in the same senses that rob's current job is decent: nothing too strenuous, lots of free high-speed internet access. i wouldn't really call that inspiring. i find it fairly disappointing, actually, because it could have been so much more. i feel as if i ordered a quiche and have instead gotten an egg mcmuffin. at least rob probably knew what he was getting into.

 
1:44 PM: [#] [0]

i've stumbled across a freaking phenomenal pbs show: the shakespeare sessions (shame on pbs for not actually having any info! the meager descriptions google is finding are all dry and underwhelming). in an informal workshop setting, perfectly accomplished actors perform dialogues & monologues and then this old grizzled man stops them and helps them re-interpret the lines for clarity or rhythm or motivation. it's a remarkable behind-the-scenes look at how acting happens, all entangled in analysis and instinct.

 
12:04 PM: [#] [0]

michael's been gone barely a week, and i've already devoured his dark materials; i haven't liked a trilogy so much since i read the hound and the falcon 10 years ago. heck, i probably haven't enjoyed any book that much since michael read me stardust.

Saturday, February 22, 2003

 
2:38 PM: [#] [0]

weird nefarious referer of the day:
someone in the library training room looked through almost everything nefarious had yesterday. they began with this google search:
http://www.google.com/u/csusm?q=LTWR+department+cuts,
which oddly links to a jpg i recovered when i lost a bunch of calligraphy files. then they specifically typed nefarious.csusm.edu into the google university search and spent another 20 minutes poking around. hmmmmm...

 
1:10 PM: [#] [0]

hey, i think the 10.2.4 update installed a command-line version of system profiler (/usr/sbin/system_profiler). very cool!

 
12:38 PM: [#] [0]

one of the unexpected adavantages of darwin using a bsd base is that google has a special bsd search. :)

Friday, February 21, 2003

 
10:21 PM: [#] [0]

yay! finally, a bold prompt!
~/.tcshrc: set prompt="%B[%m:%.3] %n% %b"

that's been on my todo list for months. :) i also finally did a diff between my old httpd.conf and the one apple tried to replace mine with in the 10.2.4 update, and i finally reconfigured nefarious' apache IndexOptions, among other minor modifications.

 
6:55 PM: [#] [0]

minimum wage in oregon is $6.90/hour. at a full-time job, that's about $1100/month, or $13,000/year. how does anyone live on that? but the federal minimum wage is still $5.15. what are they thinking?

wow: michael says i'm eligible for domestic partner fee-waiver benefits at psu if we live together for 6 months.

 
5:57 PM: [#] [0]

god's blog.

 
1:32 PM: [#] [0]

sandy attended a peace rally in colorado springs, which she says "became very surreal at the end when the police broke out the tear gas."
rob says, "between that and the shock troops at the denver superbowl celebrations a few years ago, i hope that colorado is not becoming a model for dealing with public expression."

 
12:21 PM: [#] [0]

brian broke off a chunk of one his molars! send him good wishes at the dentist.

today's odd nefarious referer:
http://auto.search.msn.com/results.asp?FORM=AS14&v=1&RS=CHECKED&
srch=4&q=pictures+of+people+with+strawberry+blonde+hair

the interesting bit is the description & the link:

the hair and now: bald people who shouldn't be bald
a woman documents the decision to shave her head and its sociological and personal consequences.
nefarious.csusm.edu/hairandnow/baldnots

so who wrote that description? and why does the link point to the "pictures of bald people who, in bill's opinion, shouldn't be bald" page rather than the actual main page?

Thursday, February 20, 2003

 
4:24 PM: [#] [0]

news of microsoft buying virtual pc makes me both nervous & hopeful at the same time.

 
2:46 PM: [#] [0]

today's odd nefarious referer: http://www.google.com/search?q=advantages+and+disadvantages+of+
the+participative+way+of+working

 
2:40 PM: [#] [0]

livejournal is down today, which is a shame, because rob has a big idea & i'd love to see him expand upon it. (did you just click those links even though i told you they were down? sheesh! :)

update: livejournal is back up again (look, michael! a pirate reference!). rob's news made me check into the "how much money am i selling my soul for?" question i asked myself a couple of days ago. in other words, how much money would i lose if i left csusm today? and the answer is, surprisingly, none! the campus contribution doesn't kick in until retirement. but more importantly, the 5-year vesting limit doesn't mean 5 consecutive years, and if i come back to any csu at some point for even a low-paying job for a year and a half, i can retire at 50 with a schedule from my highest-paying job! unlike tiaa-cref (which is what i had at usc), there's not a direct corellation between what i & my employer put in and what i get out.

so.... help me find a job in portland! i'll figure out the "go back for a year and a half" thing later. i could do instructional development again (even without a master's degree, thank you very much, psu), but i'm very open to other things. :)

other questions to ask: even if i vested now, would i have to come back to work at a csu for a set amount of time before i can apply for retirement (in which case, i might as well leave now and come back to finish vesting)? do sick/vacation credits apply to vesting time? would i have to return to a permanent position or just any benefited position (some temp jobs have benefits, right)? what about foundation/extended studies positions?

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

 
3:57 PM: [#] [0]

blogger's been down all day. give me a bit.

my notes from today:
* spencer buck allen was born today! stats: born at 12:20 this morning; 6 lbs 14 oz; 21" long. a lot of brown hair. congratulations chuck & susan!

* safari makes tooltips appear in the freaking status bar instead of hovering over the link. blech. for a long time i thought they just didn't show up at all. since tooltips are supposed to add more info to the link, it's difficult for your eyes to bounce back & forth from the link to the status bar. hrmph.

* today's nefarious referer of note:
did you know the pictures we took of mount st. helens end up as the first link when doing a yahoo search, even before the actual official site?
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=MountSt.Helens
weird.

* has this been me? "Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder." it kind of feels like my time here.

* brian might be amused to know that my apartment complex just taped another parking reminder on our doors. lots of all-caps & exclamation marks and underlining. i'm guessing people other than me are having problems w/ the new policy, too.

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

 
12:42 PM: [#] [0]

last night was fairly dramatic: a friendly pit bull puppy w/ no collar was loose and terrorizing chata. upstairs jennifer thought it belonged to the hip-hop apartment, so after 15 minutes of attempting to coral the puppy, we took it over there. the girl grabbed the puppy by the scruff of the neck, apologized profusely, said a friend had left it there, and they were getting rid of it tomorrow. after the door closed i heard a little yelp and i yelled, "hey! it's not the dog's fault! don't hit the dog!" and then it was quiet. we'll see what happens tomorrow.

 
11:32 AM: [#] [0]

"I think I'm going to reassign the tasks back to you because I do not have time to work on them." yeah, as if i didn't see that one coming. this is why i don't delegate, ladies & gentleman; thank you and goodnight.

 
9:53 AM: [#] [0]

damnit! stupid software update! i was just trying to choose safari & it turns out i also chose the mac os x update. there's no way to cancel a software update while in progress, and now it wants me to restart. it won't let me launch any other programs until i do. i was planning on backing up beforehand, but i didn't bring tess today. now what do i do? :(
update: apparently i do nothing. by the time the update was installed, it had already done what damage it was going to do. all that's left is to reconfigure everything. sigh.

Monday, February 17, 2003

 
7:47 PM: [#] [0]

as if the world needs "yet another webmail app" (yawa), along comes oddpost, which seems spiffy & has a most entertaining faq. but really, what is actually making me consider getting a subscription after i just complained about mac.com is the fact that oddpost "donates 10% of your subscriber fee to the non-profit of your choice, where 'choice' is defined as a selection from one of seven organizations listed when you sign up," and i am all for supporting entities which make social consumerism easier (which is why i own a prius, use working assets as my long distance carrier and my primary credit card, and shop at the body shop & trader joe's, among other things. and before you get all weird on me, yes, i am very much cognizant of local businesses and prefer to patronize them when i can. i also try to support places which support art. what was the question, again?) and i've come to realize i really appreciate businesses which have a strong personal presence, so oddpost meets both requirements.

 
6:40 PM: [#] [0]

i was just about to go home, and then....!



no way! no WAY! you are making that UP! get OUT of here! you're KIDDING! nuh-uh! nuh-UH! google really bought pyra labs (makers of our friend blogger)? evhead mentions it on his blog but the announcement's not on blogger as far as i can tell.

i'm trying hard not to have an blindingly rapturous reaction (google good, four-legs bad!). new term: bloogle. i think it's interesting that both companies have become synonyms for the services they offer. does that mean we'll now get stories about how blogger is changing society, when the story is actually talking about how blogging is changing society? (this is my pet peeve about google stories.) and let me take this moment to again reiterate that if mac.com offered a blogging service, i would actually pay for their whole "digital life" package. i certainly can't afford to pay for both blogger & mac.com.

ev's post, more than any other "i'm moving to google!" post i've seen, really makes me think that working for google is what working for microsoft once was: the excitment, the cachet, the buying out of little companies to build a sudden empire......

 
5:59 PM: [#] [0]

eeeeeeee! why didn't i know about the "what horrible edward gorey death will you die?" quiz before?




"you will be smothered under a rug. you're a little anti-social, and may want to start gaining new social skills by making prank phone calls."
thanks, mel! (who is also george)
michael says he's quentin.
[update 12.09.03: leopoldo would also be smothered under a rug.]

 
4:00 PM: [#] [0]

litterbox's second single, bag of bones, is out: now with wider mouths and a head-banging drummer!
thanks, fleming!

 
11:52 AM: [#] [0]

apparently it was the latter scenario: michael finally returned home after 1 a.m. (ouch!) then he was scheduled for the reference desk at 8 a.m. (double ouch!)
michael says this gave him an excuse to go home early.

rob reports being back safely, if reluctantly, from his visit with mel.

i'm back at work after calling sbc about my phone weirdness. they said the earliest they can get someone to look at it is tomorrow, at which point they'll determine if it's my problem or their problem. the difference is $45.

i also made a quick trip to finally replace the staff i.d. i lost in canada (gri, here i come!). it's been quiet (w/ a "i don't want to talk to you" vibe), and i think i just received an email which indicated some sort of meltdown while i was gone.

Sunday, February 16, 2003

 
7:27 PM: [#] [0]

poor michael's plane was late, so he wasn't sure he'd make his connection. so either he's happily on his way to portland, or sadly on his way to san francisco to catch a different plane to portland.

 
10:28 AM: [#] [0]

yesterday: we hung more art, which has been the theme of this trip. i finally received susan's piece last night & hung it by the door. we also got michael's dad's stained glass hanging in the kitchen window after several comic attempts to first remove, then replace, the blind structure.

then we drove to the getty, which michael has never seen at night. we spent three hours there and only really looked at two exhibits: bill viola's "the passions" and "500 years of manuscripts". god, i love the getty. it would be on my top-5 "best things about southern california" list. next time we hope to get into the getty research institute. afterwards, we had dinner at stanley's w/ my pseudo-cousin nicki & her husband, randy.

today: maybe home depot to grab wire cutters to install the frekvens. i bought two: one to hold all the paper i create instead of hiding it in a big black portfolio; another to serve as a drying line for wet pieces. but michael leaves today at 4:30, so we'll see where the day takes us.

Friday, February 14, 2003

 
11:40 PM: [#] [0]

briefly: rain only in the morning before waking up; more ants in odd places; leaving before noon; kinko's; turning around for fresh homemade tamales; sunshine; a green glass barrette from the art village; balboa park; cheesecake factory; apple store; the fastest trip into and out of ikea; sdfc meeting (the role of the modern calligrapher: making conscious choices about words; activism; deliberately blurring art & craft); searching for zangos; settling for churros.

Thursday, February 13, 2003

 
9:49 PM: [#] [0]

so we visited two art galleries today, a little ice cream place on valley parkway, and the beach. but more importantly, we saw dolphins! yes! they were as close as the surfers were, ducking and leaping between the swells, chasing each other, arcing singly and in pairs. we probably watched them for 45 minutes before they stopped resurfacing. it was freaking phenomenal. michael called it "the best beach visit ever" and with the storm clouds, i think i'd have to agree with him, even taking fitzroy island into account. *sighs happily*

then we came back so i could work on the membership nametags for tomorrow's meeting (which michael swears he wants to attend, so, okay).

 
9:21 PM: [#] [0]

guess what?

it's

still

raining

!

 
9:01 PM: [#] [0]

hee. i changed nefarious' 404 error message.

 
11:31 AM: [#] [0]

bah. apple's safari won't work w/ o'reilly's safari bookshelf. :( it keeps asking me to log in and then tells me, "Sorry, you have NaN slot(s) available on your bookshelf." nan? isn't that a kind of indian bread? grrr.
brian, my handy geek & pet rocket scientist, says, "NaN is short for "not a number." It's usually generated...when some piece of code tries to divide by zero." which explains a lot, because now that i've used explorer to add an item to my bookshelf, safari shows me as having 0 items in my library, which looks to me to believe it might be an n-1 issue. i've submitted a big report.

anyway, i was trying to figure out how to make tr turn \n to \n\n from a piped file (access_log, if you must know). is that possible? all possible permutations of [pipedinput] | tr "\n" "\n\n" are failing (yes, i've tried octal codes. yes, i've tried brackets. yes, i've tried single quotes.) at best, i get it to come out exactly the same. can you replace string 1 with more than one character? no matter what, it seems to only replace it with the first character of string 2. am i going to have to use sed? this should be a ridiculously easy thing.

 
10:08 AM: [#] [0]

stupid ants! we hates them! forever!

big ant invasion in the kitchen, possibly due to all this rain. now michael & i jump every time we sense a fleeting touch.

 
9:41 AM: [#] [0]

it's..... STILL ....... raining........! *is stunned*

yesterday we finally made it out the door at 3:30 to mail some packages and eat linner at nucci's. then we went to joann's fabric, a place neither of us has willingly entered before, to get dozens of fabric samples for the north county calligraphy guild's "the fabulous hand-lettered book" workshop in march. now i have a whole lot of fabric and a deep fear i still won't know what to do after the workshop.

then we watched an angel/us episode that may have turned the whole season around for me. *crosses fingers hopefully*

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

 
1:06 PM: [#] [0]

hey, there's a new version of the safari beta out today!

 
11:53 AM: [#] [0]

power law, weblogs, and inequality.

 
9:37 AM: [#] [0]

it's..... still...... raining.........! what's up with that?

yesterday we went to killer pizza from mars and then to borders: we were looking for some urban fantasy for me to escape into, a book of stained glass patterns to express my appreciation for michael's dad, and other yann tiersen cds (no luck on that one). we also snagged some blank cds & jewel cases, since i used the last of mine burning the christmas eve CarDs.

then we went home & rearranged all the art, since i finally got the poway pieces back. i haven't found a good way to hang the "manu forti" stained glass piece: all our suction cups kept slipping down the window. friday i'm hoping to get the fireflies scroll i bought from susan, and i'll need to figure out where to hang that.

then we watched one of the better buffy episodes i've seen in a while (though that's not saying much). and then completely on accident, i found that weaving together the scrap bits of the pieces that didn't make it into the poway show produces an incredible piece when lit from behind, full of depth and complexity. it makes me all glowy. but how to frame it?

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

 
9:29 AM: [#] [0]

we went to lunch at the brewery & then went to see shanghai knights (jackie chan! ee!).

last night we walked around discovery lake and laid back on the dock. soon it began to sprinkle and we continued to lay there, letting the drops fall on us. very sweet.

but michael's brought his weather with him: it's been raining hard all morning. i thought we might go to the beach, but i'm guessing not now.

Monday, February 10, 2003

 
10:09 AM: [#] [0]

michael has arrived, and after a relaxing shiatsu massage for us both (thanks, gerrie!) we went grocery shopping, ate, and collapsed into bed. today -is- another day. what shall we do?

Saturday, February 08, 2003

 
5:36 PM: [#] [0]

sad but true: i just tried to program my microwave's cooking time by using my voicemail password. *sighs*

 
4:34 PM: [#] [0]

another cover story about the potential impacts of having our lives easily accessible on the web, which, as usual, is framed as a story about google. the best quote: "It's the collapse of inconvenience," says Siva Vaidhyanathan, assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University. "It turns out inconvenience was a really important part of our lives, and we didn't realize it."

 
4:05 PM: [#] [0]

cindy is starting a small business focusing on socially responsible and non-profit organization communications. i'm so proud of her! i wish more people paid attention to those sectors. wish her luck!

 
3:04 PM: [#] [0]

i just watched panic room, thanks to my upstairs neighbor. it wasn't awful, but there's two hours of my life i'll never get back. today's surprise: sandy called me this morning at an unfortunately early hour, but she left a message.

Friday, February 07, 2003

 
11:50 AM: [#] [0]

at the idea workshop now. i had such a nice time yesterday that it's a shame i'm doing work stuff, but at least this isn't quite like going back to work. and then michael comes in 2 days! i don't know yet whether i'll attend margo's pre-portal attitude adjustment party tonight; it may depend on the traffic coming back. since i'm up in long beach, i asked jan if she wanted to hang out, but i never heard back from her. nothing from dan, either.

Thursday, February 06, 2003

 
4:06 PM: [#] [0]

michael says, "we got the bill for nenya yesterday. we normally get the bill a couple of days before shipping, so kay thinks she'll come next week. while i'm gone."

noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!! *sobs*
michael says this is "a bit of an overreaction." easy for him to say: he'll have a 17" powerbook when he gets back to portland! :P
rob says, "you think i'm obsessive, and you're upset that you're not going to get to meet a 17-inch powerbook called nenya?"

 
2:02 PM: [#] [0]

i told myself i wouldn't get online, and in fact thought it might be impossible or prohibitive. but look, high-speed access, right here in brian's room! now if i had only brought the airport....

i've had a lovely time so far today: my palm pilot alarm went off twice and i thought, "heh. that's a meeting i don't have to go to." a deliciously slow day in an amazingly cool hotel full of mazes and levels and ramps and trails and courtyards. poor brian, otoh, is trapped amongst other boeing engineers. moo-ha-ha-ha!

it took me three hours to find this place last night. i checked yahoo maps and the time estimate seemed valid, so off i went. by the time i called brian ("ummmm..... wasn't i supposed to hit 101 at some point?"), i was very far north of newport beach. and then i followed brian's instructions, and got even more lost ("hey, you didn't say macarthur turned into talbot..."). by the time i arrived, it was almost 11 p.m. and i was starving. we went to the cheesecake factory, which i have never eaten at before but would certainly do so the next chance i get (hey, michael, there's one near the apple store... :).

Wednesday, February 05, 2003

 
6:33 PM: [#] [0]

well, i'm about as ready as i'll ever get for vacation: i only have two things in my "spring03 todo" folder, and they can wait. *sigh of relief*

 
1:35 PM: [#] [0]

teresa gave me tickets to the san diego wild animal park. she had given me tickets when i first came here to consult but when i went to the gate, they noticed the tickets were expired. i'm not normally a zoo person, but maybe michael & i will go when he's out.

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

 
8:01 PM: [#] [0]

did i mention jennifer & garrett went out to dinner tonight?

 
4:06 PM: [#] [0]

eeeeee! michael got me an annual subscription to o'reilly's safari bookshelf for my unbirthday! thank you, michael!! he actually had to call me and ask about it, though, because when i saw the email subject:

[Tracker #149800] Safari Annual account 98843/121229 Gretchin@csusm.edu

i thought it was spam & deleted it. :D

 
3:24 PM: [#] [0]

oh, and it gets worse! it turns out the $135 and 8 combined wasted hours of our lives was entirely my fault. :( my complex does have a rule about no guest parking after 11 p.m. without a guest permit. worse, i signed the piece of paper that said that. stupid, stupid gretchin! i didn't have a copy of that paper before, but now i do!

 
11:35 AM: [#] [0]

brian's car was towed! nothing, of course, was open till 8 a.m., and we spent this morning trying to get it back. arrggghhhhhhh. he took it really well, considering he missed half of the first day of the conference he's supposed to be attending.

last night, another cat found its way inside the apartment. i awoke to amelia growling under the bed and a little jingling echoing in the room. she has a toy with a bell that sounds just like that, so in my sleep stupor, i thought she was just playing overly enthusiastically. once i figured out what was happening i leapt out of bed and startled a sleek tabby who ran out the cat door & leapt onto the patio railing until, after much clapping, s/he finally scampered off. maybe i need to put something on the porch railing. the plants used to discourage that until the complex made me take them off.

oh, yes, and it's my unbirthday today. michael remembered! :D

Monday, February 03, 2003

 
6:12 PM: [#] [0]

well, that could have been worse. i don't really know what we accomplished, but it wasn't acrimonious with both chuck & teresa in the room. garrett smiled and said, "i didn't prepare for this meeting at all;" even so, i almost didn't get a chance to speak. but we stayed late and i asked about the server redirect. garrett's face went hard and he said he had fixed it, but thought i didn't need to know about it. when i said -i- had done the server redirect he said we must have been editing the file at the same time. i find this difficult to believe on so many levels: he emails idteam when he edits a link on the index, but won't email me when he fixes the server redirect? he & i were editing the file & bumped the server at the exact same time without overwriting each other? and i didn't annotate the change, like i ought to have, so i can't prove it. ergh. but it's too reminiscent of when we were struggling over the helpdesk logs script.

on the other hand, i discovered garrett has been adding students to courses one at a time (rather than batch uploading them per course, like i do). hee. he tried to flatter me (you're so much more organized than i am; i'm trying to be more linear, like you). gack. teresa said, almost off-hand, that she wondered why the communication issues were always with garrett rather than me or jenn.

 
12:23 PM: [#] [0]

serendipitous discovery: command-clicking a dock item causes it to open a finder window with the item selected. ee!

 
12:19 PM: [#] [0]

"Today's meeting will be in Norm's old office. Goals for the meeting are to work on some methods of conflict resolution. Please think about what things you need to do your job so that you can express them. Think also bring recent issues that have come up so that we can discuss them."

 
10:30 AM: [#] [0]

redesigning a course is really a fascinating process, almost more so than designing one from scratch, because you have to figure out what the instructor was thinking. right now i have materials for one course spread across two different sites and no idea why.

 
8:04 AM: [#] [0]

audion's choking on some of the tori files michael sent me for christmas. :(

Sunday, February 02, 2003

 
1:30 PM: [#] [0]

in the "what OS are you?" quiz, i ended up


could have been worse, i guess.
michael says he came out gnu-hurd, which is also what you get when you don't answer any of the questions. :)

 
1:12 PM: [#] [0]

i'm having issues w/ both (!) of my phones: michael says he's been calling me but only hears one ring and then static. i don't even hear the one ring.

todd dominey has comments about his newly arrived 12-inch powerbook (does this mean the 17-inchers aren't far behind?).
michael says, "it bodes well for the 17" model. i think i'll have to wait a while for it, though. they said february, and i assume that means the end of the month."

Saturday, February 01, 2003

 
9:13 PM: [#] [0]

this is why i had a self-imposed moratorium on going to home depot: i just adopted some more jasmine & gardenias, decided to give cilantro another go, and decided to try my hand at raising strawberries. i also replenished brick supplies: another tarp, more latex gloves, and three small wire brushes.

you'd think i'd have the same problem at michael's arts & crafts, but they rarely have what i want (often they don't even have what they stock!) and when i try to ask for it, the employess look at me like i'm crazy. i mean, really, raise your hand if you haven't heard of a non-repro blue pencil. uh huh. i didn't think so. i walked away tonight with a small jar of cobalt blue embossing powder (michael will be so pleased i'm finally using the heat gun! :).

 
7:01 PM: [#] [0]

why does anyone continue to use hiptop with a user agreement that allows them unlimited license to use your content for their benefit? sheesh!

 
6:54 PM: [#] [0]

guh! i just learned about safari's "activity" function, which lists every link & graphic on the windows you have open. it's nifty, but where the heck have i been?

 
6:08 PM: [#] [0]

well, good news from leeann, who says "the steve" considers her project high priority. she says she's even in the process of hiring a couple of minions. dean, unfortunately, is still unemployed.

 
3:42 PM: [#] [0]

oo! maybe i'll be able to participate in an aaron swartz project!

 
12:12 PM: [#] [0]

i know this is available off dave's site, but space.com has a discussion board thread about the columbia from launch to disintegration. it's fascinating; i had no idea people followed missions from start to finish.

 
11:20 AM: [#] [0]

someone on our local news just called christa mcauliffe "sharon" mcauliffe. *sighs* it turns out the san diego aerospace museum had a challenger memorial exhibit running, though the head of the museum says, "we can't make a memorial of every aviation disaster or it would be kind of depressing." hee.

 
10:05 AM: [#] [0]

welcome to february. happy chinese new year. i guess i'm glad brian didn't get to be an astronaut, after all. or me, for that matter, though i made that decision after the challenger exploded.

others who care about the columbia: poynter || dave || wikipedia || google
(and just to keep things in perspective, other events of feb. 1)