K-Squared Ramblings

Command-shift-BLAMMO

I just caught myself repeatedly pressing control-V and wondering why nothing was pasting. As I’m a lifelong Mac user, this is a personal sign of the plural of apocalypse. Somebody shoot me before I attract any horsemen.

No hablo nada

I swear, I cannot win with people anymore. I used to have a good, unloseable Spanish accent when saying people’s names. I started losing it on purpose when I royally frelled up speaking to someone who outranked me at the Dungeons & Demons job, and it’s pretty much gone. I wince when I hear myself say “manual” for “Manuel,” but at least I don’t confuse the person on the other end of the line.

Like today. I called a place for info on the file of someone whose last name I’ll say is Rivera. Like a good little white girl, I said it rih-VAIR-a.

“Oh, Mr. ree-VEH-ra?” asked the receptionist, and I conceded. The place called me back later and asked for a return call, and when I got the receptionist again I asked for the person who’d called, on the file of Mr. ree-VEH-ra.

“Sorry, what was the last name?”

*sigh* “rih-VAIR-a.”

“Oh, ree-VEH-ra. Let me transfer you.”

Like I said. No winning.

Pitchers of Choo-Choo

On the trip to Ikea to get the patio furniture, we had a Choo-Choo Bear sighting in the parking lot–an auspicious beginning to any shopping spree, if you ask me.

Me: “For $1.99, you want to get one and paint eyes on it?”

Kelson: “For $1.99, why not?!”

Murr!

Apocalyptic Timing

While surfing around, I stumbled across a March 6 post on the rompe blog linking to Ghost Town, a truly fascinating account of a Russian(?) woman who likes to ride her motorcycle through the Chernobyl dead zone. The site is full of photographs of the wilderness, of abandoned buildings, and the few people who still live in the area. Apparently radiation levels have fallen enough that it’s safe if you stick to the roadways and avoid dust - and of course bring a radiation meter along! At one point she goes into the town nearest the power plant, and looks at a dilapidated park, looted shops (people didn’t bother with banks or jewelry stores in the evacuation, but the motorcycle shop was ransacked!), and apartments with family photos still sitting on the shelves. She likens it to Pompeii, in terms of how the whole town is frozen in time. In some ways it’s more like Roanoke, with the exception that we know where the people of Chernobyl went.

A bit later, I started on my usual rounds, and discovered that Neil Gaiman remarked on the same site just a few hours ago.

Get Folked?

On the way home tonight, we saw this billboard advertising Queer as Folk:

(Sorry about the image quality - there’s not much time to compose a shot when you’re trying to pull out the camera while driving by at 40 mph!)

Silver lining

Sometimes you just get lucky.

On Saturday, I took the car in for maintenance. There was a snafu involving a mislabeled box from a parts supplier that closed earlier than the shop, and I was left with a complimentary rental car for the weekend.

On Sunday, an Ikea catalog arrived with the paper, and Katie spotted some nice, reasonably-priced patio furniture. So we descended upon the tiny rental car (a Hyundai Accent) with a tape measure, and a few hours later our balcony actually looked like someone lived in the apartment.

After I got the car back on Monday, I lowered the back seats to see just how big the opening to the trunk was. And despite the fact that it’s a larger car (a Nissan Sentra), there’s no way we could ever have fit the box in there.

A nice day for a swim

Today it was bright, sunny and warm - the perfect day to go swimming.

Well, so much for that idea.

I just don’t get it

OK, one of my pet peeves is people who refuse to walk 50 feet out of their way to a crosswalk, instead dashing across a busy street where cars are more likely to hit them (or swerve and hit other cars, buildings, etc.)

But the number of people who jaywalk from the courthouse to the Starbucks across the street just amazes me. Especially since the courthouse is at the corner. The point where people cross the street is close enough to the intersection that the left turn lane has already opened up.

I mean, talk about a triumph of laziness over self-preservation. Saving ten seconds vs. risking life and limb? And flagrantly violating traffic laws in front of the courthouse?

I just don’t get it.

Things we’re not registering for

I got this ad a few years ago in my Science Fiction Book Club mailer and kept it for the fall-on-your-ass-laughing value. What with the picking out of china patterns that goes along with modern weddings, it seemed perfect to trot out now.

I’ve tried to find out if it’s possible to get just a set of mugs, which it wasn’t at the time. Maybe I should start hunting around on eBay……

Meditations for dirty minds

Ever feel like the universe is screwing you over?

I think they’re trying to tell us something

I don’t get what it’s saying. Maybe there’s a hidden message on it.

This is why you plan ahead

It seems that Benton County, Oregon, has decided to stop issuing any marriage licenses until the state makes up its mind who can and can’t get married. For now, straight couples in the area will have to go to the next county over to get married.

The rationale, of course, is that they “need to treat everyone in our county equally” — even if it’s not clear whether they’re allowed to let one class of people marry.

So I suppose gay marriage can negatively impact straight marriage after all: (1) Longer lines at the courthouse might deter spur-of-the-moment weddings. (2) Confuse the clerks enough, and they’ll just throw up their hands and say “Come back tomorrow!”

Not that either is likely to happen here in über-conservative OC, but I am glad we’ve already picked up our license.

Silly Censors

A few weeks ago I was looking at the website error logs and noticed some attempts to access images with names like /flash/images/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20ans3.jpg. I got around to looking at it today, and all of them are the same name, all of them from browsers looking at my profile of the Teen Titans, which includes an image called teentitans3.jpg.

I finally realized what’s going on. Some moronic filter has broken up the name not as “teen titans” but as “teen tit ans,” decided it must be porn, and replaced the “offending” words with spaces (%20 is the code for a space in a URL).

It really makes me wonder how badly mangled the page looks to these people, especially if it turns out that every instance of the team’s name gets pointlessly erased.

Further reading: The Censorware Project, Peacefire, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Stout-Hearted

Decided to try Murphy’s instead of Guinness this year. I much prefer Murphy’s.

Apartment snobbery

We got home tonight, after a good round of beer therapy and poking fun at the evil that is casual dinnerware, and found that we now live in Aliso Springs. They didn’t change the city name, mind you, just the name of our apartment “village.” We’d been wondering how they were going to handle having painted over the metal number plates affixed to our doors. Now we know: artsy little ceramic number plates affixed to the stucco, using slightly eastern script for the “Aliso Springs” and that much-too-popular raggedy calligraphy one for the numbers.

Gag me. These people need to get a clue. This place was never high-class and it’s never going to be. And, considering how frelling expensive it is to live in the kind of place they want to turn this into, it shouldn’t be, not in this area.

I think I need more beer therapy.

Registry

For those who are wondering, we’re still in the process of registering. We’ve got a partial registry at Target so far, and by the end of the week, we’ll also be registered at Robinsons-May.

(It’s been kind of tricky, since we already have a lot of the things people tend to register for. You know, toasters and stuff. So we’re trying to choose things we haven’t gotten around to picking up, or things that are worth replacing with newer/better equivalents.)

We keep talking about registering at Fry’s, but we’re not sure they’d even have a wedding registry!

LOTR caption madness

For those of you who haven’t seen these yet:

Feel free to copy and distribute/re-post these so long as I get the credit.

Songs Not to Play at a Wedding

Remember the song “How’s it Gonna Be” by Third Eye Blind? When it was new, a lot of high schools apparently chose it for the prom theme, proving that teenagers don’t actually listen to the lyrics (it’s a breakup song), which should mitigate parental concerns about explicit lyrics.

Anyway, Katie and I were talking about this the other day and started tossing around titles of songs that would be just plain wrong to play at a wedding reception.

• You Oughta Know (Alanis Morissette)
• Paradise by the Dashboard Light (Meat Loaf)
• Song for the Dumped (Ben Folds)
• Closer (Nine Inch Nails)
• Brick (Ben Folds Five)
• Playboy Mommy (Tori Amos)
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Deep Blue Something)
• Anything But Down (Sheryl Crow)
• Back to Good (Matchbox 20)
• Me and a Gun (Tori Amos)
• Anything by Liz Phair
• Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning) (Vertical Horizon)
• Guys Like Me (Aimee Mann)
• Anything by Evanescence or Linkin Park
• Melanie (”Weird Al” Yankovic)
• Almost anything by They Might Be Giants
• Don’t Stand So Close to Me (The Police)
• Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles)
• I Touch Myself (The Divinyls)
• Anything by Rammstein
• Gollum’s Song
• Anything by the Chipmunks
• I Don’t Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats)
• Anything by Nirvana
• I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying (Sting)
• King of Pain (The Police)
• I’m Still Remembering (Cranberries)
• One More Minute (”Weird Al” Yankovic)
• If I Were Brave (Shawn Colvin)
• Jumper (Third Eye Blind)
• Yesterday (The Beatles)
• Roxanne (The Police)
• I’ll Never Tell (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling)
• Anything by Garbage
• Positively Fourth Street (Bob Dylan)
• Torn (Natalie Imbruglia)
• Taxi (Harry Chapin)
• The Freshmen (Verve Pipe)
• Power of Goodbye (Madonna)
• Waitress (Tori Amos)
• Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie Tyler)
• Uninvited (Alanis Morissette)
• Unsent (Alanis Morissette)

We’re not sure about The Highwayman and Lady of Shalott (Loreena McKennit), since the subject matter is wrong, but they’re quiet and unobtrusive.

This is an open list - feel free to add your suggestions! The idea is not just to get something that isn’t appropriate, but something that’s especially inappropriate (breakup songs, twisted relationships, put-down songs, etc.)

Caution! Stairs!

You know, I think I would have gotten the idea from the plywood barricade.

Dead men shell no snails…

…but live ones sometimes paint them!

In case you couldn’t tell…

Yes, that really is laundry in there, folks! See how important labels are!

(Speaking of which, I would have posted this earlier, but I just spent 35 ^%$!@ minutes waiting for someone to show up and empty out one of the eight driers that were finished. And they’re double-stacked, so you can’t just pull the clothes out and set them on top. Grrr…)

Things you don’t hear on the radio

Well, not often, anyway. But occasionally, twice in one night.

Last night, Indie 103.1 (yes, they’re still on the air) played a listener request for “Bohemian Rhapsody” - and then didn’t play the song.

Later on, they played a string of people calling in and saying things like “You guys suck!” and “Why don’t you play a little trance and techno while you’re at it!”

At least they’ve got an attitude.

Eeeww! (EvilML)

I just caught a reference to Arve Bersvendsen’s EvilML file. What is it? It’s an HTML document designed to make use of the fact that HTML is, technically, SGML, which has all kinds of strange shortcuts you can use. Of course, no one has ever bothered to make a web browser that actually handles all these shortcuts.

It’s hard to describe it. The code is barely readable. The first line of text looks like this: <body<h1<em>Emphasized</> in &lt;h1&gt;</>. No browser in existence is likely to display it correctly, and yet — amazingly enough — it validates…

I already thought that moving to the more rigidly-defined XHTML was a good idea, but suddenly it makes a lot more sense!

Apple Operating Systems

I found this article on OSNews: A History of Apple’s Operating Systems. The article
starts with the Apple II and works its way up to Mac OS X, touching all the various branches in between - as well as Apple OSes that never quite made it out the door, and other OSes - like NeXtStep (whatever the capitalization is) - that influenced it on its way. Hey, where else are you going to find screenshots of the Apple I and Macintosh System 1?

It’s a fascinating read. I suspect the site will be due for another Slashdotting soon…

You’re not helping

I am honestly in complete confusion as to why all wedding vendors and personnel seem to feel it’s necessary to rebuke us for not arranging everything a year in advance. Sure, we procrastinated like nobody’s business, but we were already getting this at T minus 6 months. What do they do with people who have 6-month engagements, tell them they’re really getting off to a bad start planning their lives together? It’s not like we can say, “Oops, my bad, we’ll remember that for next time.” This is a field where what everyone says doesn’t always go, and the 10% who don’t follow the rules seem to have the best time and come out the least scathed. So it’s natural that I, as one of the 10% in most other arenas, would attempt to bull my way through this. In retrospect, that was a bad move, if only for the flood tide of social censure I’m enduring just because bouncy people make me nuts and I like to avoid them.

But anyway. Do these people not talk to each other? Do cake decorators never speak with dress shop attendants and find out that all their wedding planners give people the same advice? More importantly, do they think this is in any way endearing to the customer, or that it’ll make them want to recommend the facility to someone with better planning skills? Especially when the customer is sick to death of being told how insufficient she is and just wants the thing around the corner to knock her cold when it comes at her out of the promised nowhere so she can wake up after the wedding and go on with her life.

Learning the hard way

Advice to the world at large: do not watch “A Hole in the World” one night, “Shells” the next, and then go listen to the Evanescence album. You will not like what it does to you. Trust me on this.

More when I’m coherent again. *snivel*whimper*

Far-Flung Finances

In CNN’s report on the discovery that Mars once had liquid water - and thus may have once been hospitable to life - it mentions that the Spirit and Opportunity missions cost about $820 million. The IMDB estimates the budget for Spider-Man 2 at $200 million.

In other words, each mission cost two big-budget summer movies.

Maybe we should get Hollywood to finance space exploration. It might help placate the “We’re wasting too much money in space!” crowd without abandoning the pursuit of knowledge.

More IE bugs

Now that’s interesting. Katie discovered yesterday that when you start typing a comment in Internet Explorer 5, the comment box springs to the full width of the page, hiding the right side below the sidebar.

I just checked IE 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0 - it turns out that this is still present in MSIE 6.0! Read the rest of this entry »

Thunderous Thought

A loud clap of thunder sent half the office to the windows about 20 minutes ago, and prompted cries of “Save now!” That got me thinking. In theory, we’re supposed to have e-voting in today’s election. Are the voting machines on UPSes? If the polling place loses power, is there any kind of backup to (a) let people vote during the blackout, and (b) make sure none of the already-collected votes are lost?

Assuming the polling place does have power when I get there, I’ll have to ask.

Coffee Emergency!

When I got into work this morning, our receptionist remarked to me, “Sorry, no coffee.” I assumed she meant “No coffee yet,” so I went back to my desk, read email, etc. Then I went back up to the lunch room for some coffee.

That’s when I discovered she really meant, “No coffee.” Apparently the maintenance guy didn’t hook it back up right yesterday, because the first person to walk into the room this morning discovered a medium-sized lake on the floor.

This after staying up late last night stuffing envelopes… I’m drinking cola with breakfast. And I’m seriously considering taking a cue from another coworker who went downstairs to the café on the first floor.

Invitations Away!

90% of the invitations are in the mail!

Now if we can just track down the rest of the addresses and spellings…