Messages from the Ether

Where was I?

Fighting a cold all weekend (and doing things that only aggravated it). Thursday was relaxin' with Prokofiev sonatas after work until Lisa & I decided to get some take-out from Noodle. Woody Allen's Match Point and silly TV with dinner and not much else.

Friday was relaxin' on Juniper and 7th watching for Lisa in the mass of runners. She must've run right by me, but I missed her for watching all of the crazily-dressed runners. My niece Caroline's assessment when told by Bob that Lisa was running the Peachtree: Aunt Lisa? Aunt, Lisa?! You mean makeup and high heels aunt Lisa?!? We were non-plussed. Afternoon/evening up at Liz and Matt's pool.

Saturday evening up at my brotherandsisterinlaw's place for family birthday and anniversary get-together. Bob's old friend Chris was there (hadn't seen him in a loooong time) along with his cool parents Amy and Mike.

Sunday was going to be hangin' out at the Gay Pride Parade, then we decided we were way too worn out to go, then we heard the absolute insanity as the rain poured down and we knew it was a not-to-be-missed situation. Highlights were: seeing Baton Bob just as we walked out of our building, Wet Bar's Navy ship with confetti canons (!), and the tshirt that said "fagulous" on the back. The rest of the day was at The Vortex watching, alternately, Wimbledon, Ninja Warrior, Extreme Rodeo, King of Kong, and some nature show where people were camping in -40 weather.

Peachtree

Lisa finished the Peachtree in 1:05. Even BIFF agrees:

         +---------+
         | L15A  |
         | R00LZ!! |
       o +---------+
      o/|  .~    ~.
  |\__/|  .~    ~.
 /o=o'`./      .'
{o__,   \    {\ 
  / .  . )    \} 
  `-` '-' \    }     
 .(   _(   )_.' 
'---.~_ _ _|

It's rant time again

Websites, stop putting your copious JavaScript ad embeds at the top of the page so that delays in the crappy ad site stops the page from loading. You want me to not use adblock when I look at your content? Well, stop having your ads block the content.

Search engines, now I know who to blame for my Apache server crashing every few days from overloaded requests. Yahoo! Slurp is virtually a DoS engine for small sites. You suck.

Creationists, you, along with flat-earthers and climate change denialists (although I feel that I'm insulting flat-earthers), need to crawl into a hole. Stealing from the recent Lenski imbroglio on Conservapedia: Why do people who believe in something with no evidence require so much evidence for evolution? Mason read the talk page for the article; I couldn't stomach more than a few entries. After such railings against science itself those people shouldn't be allowed to use a computer or to benefit from modern medicine. Make that any post-Enlightenment medicine. The god of the gaps has become angry and small. If you thought people who updated the Wikipedia pages on ancient Jedi and video games were losers, introduce yourself to the dementia of Conservapedia's entries.

Where was I?

Dinner at Parish on Friday with Tedra and Bill. Food was just OK, good-not-great, but the decor and ambiance was perfect and the staff was friendly and entertaining. Very much worth a trip. Aaaand, Alicia and Dan had dinner at some Mediterranean restaurant down the street and stopped by our table afterwards. Downstairs Parish has coffee, wine, and a variety of desserts with various brick-a-brack for sale a la Cracker Barrel (though not so hayseed). We bought a Doodle All Year coloring book for one of the nieces; it has drawings of various people with the scenes missing ("where is this car going?" or "draw someone who likes cold weather and someone who doesn't..." amidst breezy trees). Neat-o.

Saturday was a failed attempt to de-clog the dryer vents (professionals are coming this Wednesday) and a successful attempt to replace the kitchen faucet. The latter included cleaning out from the water trap the most disgusting congealment of protein goo I ever had the horror to gag over. I don't know how it got there, or what it was made of, I'm just glad it's gone.

Late lunch at The Vortex where we got sucked in to Women of Ninja Warrior on G4 along with a majority of the bar. Guilty pleasure (check out Ayako Miyake kicking Ninja ass). Home, clean up and off to The Seen gallery for a wine tasting and some Pete The Cat artwork that we originally saw at Summerfest. As a bonus, they had some crazy robot art by Travis Smith. No purchases were made. Post art wine at Palate right next door before going to dinner at Wisteria. Excellent eats; only the second time we've been there.

Lazy Sunday (for me) until the afternoon when we went to a cookout at Danice and Mason's. We braved the heat, ate too much food, and then stopped at Pint and Plate after we got home for late night drinks and (oh god why?) more food.

Where was I?

Friday over at Mollie and Hugh's celebrating her new job and just doin' that Friday hang out thing. Shouldn't have moved from wine to vodka. I'm sure there's some saying that rhymes and tells you not to do such combinations, but I can think of nothing that rhymes with vodka, so there you have it.

Saturday was Lisa & I & Alicia & Dan first stopping off at a studio show at our neighbor's art studio near the Mattress Factory lofts. Around 20 artists were available with their works and works-in-progress. We all pitied the 2nd floor artists who had to suffer 110+ degree temperatures in their studio (making ice sculpture a desirable yet impractical medium). Odd coincidence of the year: after we left the gallery, we realized that not only had we all worked with Todd's brother (who was at the show) but also had drank with them several times after work. I'd been talking to him for months and we never made the connection. Weird. Eventually continued on to the 7:00 PM Braves game. We had tickets to the 755 Club and seats behind the Braves dugout, but ended up staying the whole game at an outside table at 755. Post-game bars consisted of The Shed, Depot, then Top Flr, where we were the Worst Friends Ever and made Alicia and Dan call for a taxi to get home.

Sunday was the Virginia Highlands Summerfest. We missed hanging out with the brother, sister-in-law, and niece at the Summerfest on Saturday, and missed the Murphy's wine sale, but made up for it on Sunday with the purchase of some new artwork!

A collograph by Linda Gourley titled The Red Baron: Study I. Her work was various mixed-media-type printing with crazy animals doing crazy things. Ducks riding a wiener dog was a must-purchase item. There's another version of the print on her site, but the colors and details don't appear as interesting as the one we purchased. The frame she made fit it nicely and it works well above our Asian-influenced China cabinet (Peking Ducks!). After an hour or so of hellish heat, we abandoned the fest for a late lunch at Atkins Park, then went our separate ways. The sun absolutely drained us, so it was lazy pizza dinner at home with the not-quite-as-bad-as-it-could-have-been Lucy Liu movie Rise: Blood Hunter.

Where was I?

Friday we got to leave work early, so I got some piano in before meeting the wife and brother-in-law at the Cypress Street Pint and Plate for a few drinks ... who am I kidding? We were there until an undetermined time when somehow we walked the two blocks back home and scarfed on a take-out box of their delicious meatball sliders.

Saturday was exercise and coding, and then an evening of crawfish at Tedra and Bill's XXth annual Crawfish Boil. Sunday was a cookout at Alicia and Dan's (delicious lamb burgers filled with feta and spinach), then to Eddie's Attic with A & D & Jonelle & Theresa for a fun set of music by The Bonaventure Quartet (with Amy Pike of the long defunct Lost Continentals).

We cut out just before midnight to get Lisa home and rested for her Monday morning 10k at North Point Mall where I hung out at the only Starbucks in the world that doesn't offer wifi, free or otherwise. OTP is barbaric. We kicked back until noon and then headed up to Liz and Matt's to relax around the pool. For the rest of the day. Drinks and snacks that we really didn't need at the Vortex after we got home, resisting the end of the long weekend.

Two days out in the sun and no sunburn. A first, and a good omen for summer.

Twitter down art collection via Dembot

I've only seen a few of these. Staring into nothingness now, although how often can you say you've been 552ed? Weird ...

My favorite:

Greetings from the Columbia River Gorge!

Where was I?

Lisa and I were in Portland for the Indie Wine Festival Thursday April 30th through Monday May 5th. Wineries, book store, lots of amazing restaurants and bars, and some great hiking. All documented in Twitter but not easily linkable. Photo entry and highlights to come.

[ updated 1 July 2008 ]

Photos posted here (somewhat slow) and a few random artifacts from the trip. The flight there:

And back:

The access card from the Hotel Deluxe (a classic movie themed hotel):

And the card from a small shop in Dundee called The Dapper Frog. We picked up a couple of wine toppers when we were there for the Willamette Valley wineries:

Went to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at The Shakespeare Tavern last Thursday (runs through June 1st). One of my favorite movies and the play was outstanding. Much more bawdy than I remember from the movie, and I caught more of Stoppard's wordplay in this version, sometimes clever and sometimes vaudevillian.

Friday was Iron Man (3/5) at Atlantic Station. Without Downey and Paltrow, the movie would have only been a minor effects-vehicle. They were electric throughout (he getting most of the screentime, of course). I had difficulty getting past the silly science that seemed to stretch the bounds of even comic-book-science. Radical direction changes in a metal suit (whether in the air or hitting the ground) would be catastrophic to the body. And when Paltrow reached into the metal tube that went into his heart in order to pull out some faulty wire, well ... just silly. All-in-all a fun ride though.

Saturday was my niece Sarah's ballet recital. There were some very good dancers there and (at times overly) complex choreography. One senior was Absolutely Amazing showing off such grace and flow throughout her whole body that she can only be moving on to professional dance. I noticed the greatest sense of flow in how she used her hands and wrists in relation to the rest of her movements. Seeing such art helps you more clearly differentiate mere skill.

The most fucked-up things I've heard recently (short, enumerated rant)

• Even if the debates don't ask important questions, I still watch them to judge the candidates on how they react. (co-worker) - Media corporations have a unique and potentially rich access to our presidential candidates. Joe Blow can't gather the candidates together at his home and compare their answers to (hopefully) pithy questions. Our country's fucked up if not only do media corps cheapen their access by asking what's-your-favorite-color questions but viewers actually appreciate that they get such little information and are happy to base their vote on the resulting banalities.
• You people need to understand how completely biased Frontline is. (co-worker) - Ignoring the truism that any statement is biased, how the fuck does someone even come to this conclusion? The show's had a few questionable episodes. Considering they've been on since 1983, and considering you practically can't watch a single episode of a show on Fox News without running into deep factual and ethical infelicities, Frontline has an outstanding record. Again, what the fuck?!?
• Schools should teach religion and ID in science classes because evolution can't explain the origins of life. (Bill O'Reilly interviewing Ben Stein) - Where to begin with this eyesore of logical thinking and basic intelligence? First fuck up: the misunderstanding that evolution has anything to say about abiogenesis. Second: the idea that the lack of complete success discredits a theory's partial success. Third: that religion and ID even qualify as a science and should be placed next to rigorous theories instead of next to philosophy. Why the fuck isn't architecture taught in English class?!? Fuckhead.

Where was I?

Last week was festive: Wednesday with the bloggers at P'cheen; Thursday with friends at Stats where, upon leaving, Lisa and I got lost in the Omni hotel until I braved a trail through its secret, authorized-personnel-only passageways to exit right in front of our parking garage. I rule. The parking garage itself had a strange, om-nom-nom-nom creature guarding access.

Friday, fun night at Cuerno with co-workers and spouses. Lisa had the monk fish, I had the lamb, the paella looked awesome but that'll be for another trip. A little bit noisy and we had some too-long delays with the waiter, but overall good.

Saturday, fourth year going to the Atlanta Steeplechase with friends (third year attending). I was the 2nd-place winner this year (by a nose!) and brought home a cool ten-bucks, four of which was used as tip for our Sunday pizza guy. Made it back in town after getting lost in north Georgia (yipes!), then hung out at Alicia and Dan's.

Sunday was lazy morning on the couch until I somehow twisted my back simply getting up for a snack. Lean forward, twist, stand up, and then a loud POP POP POP at the vertebrae of my lower back. I'm barely mobile the rest of the day, but got 50% back on Monday and and almost completely restored today. There's no way I'm going to miss Climb Atlanta this Saturday...

Om nom nom nom

Found on a gate in a parking deck near the Omni...

Power out in Peachtree Lofts

Let's see how long my UPSs are really rated for... 15 minutes?! What was I thinking when I bought that thing?!?

Marathon woman

Or, at least, 5k woman. Lisa finished 290th out of 1188 in the Knoxville 5k. w00t.

Climb

On Saturday the 19th, Lisa and I will be jogging up the 1,378 steps of the Bank of America building to help the American Lung Association. The BofA building is the 27th tallest building in the world. It is also the tallest building in the United States outside of Chicago and New York City, and the tallest building in any U.S. state capital. If you want to donate, go to their donation page and look up either my or Lisa's name to offer up a few Shekels. I started training up and down the eight floors of our humble Peachtree Lofts building today. Hrm.

[ Updated 6 May 2008 ]

Finished in 12:39. Lisa never got her time.

Daisy hearts Lisa

This possibly needs a gilded frame...

whoa

Crazy, although it really didn't sink in until my mom called us. We were watching TiVoed episodes of Jerico and eating Friday night pasta and only sort of noticed the lightning going on. Impressive vertical lightning AND THEN impressive horizontal lightning right above our building. Very neat, but no photos. I'm sure you all lived through it anyway. We canceled our reservations for Cuerno because we were out drinking late last night, but now it seems like a wise decision (canceling, not necessarily drinking) (although it would've been fun to be out in it....).

Oh, and my server is still up, so I rock.

Where was I?

Wednesday: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ] (4/5) at Landmark. Like Maria Full of Grace, less painful to watch than I had feared yet still moving. Otilia's expression in the last couple of seconds of the film was agonizing and perfect. Except for the time period, it is almost a Dogme film and that served the story and locale. How did this film get ignored by the Oscars? Fucking hacks. I just wish now that I would've gone to see another overlooked film, The Band's Visit, when Landmark had it. Next week, In Bruges; after that, Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park (note to anyone: rent his film Elephant, stunning).

Last night: Diva [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ] (4/5) at Landmark. This was a favorite of mine in college, and it was great to see it again, anew. Funny and frantic with the style-over-substance approach failing in only a couple scenes. Labeled as French New New Wave (no Wikipedia entry for that style, but many refs from a Google search), it almost made the 80s look cool. Afterwards was dinner at Steele and drinks at a new bar next door to Steele called Amore. Wow! The interior--at least from my drunken memories--was like an ornate Italian opera house, with small tables throughout, alcoves, an interior balcony, and warm lighting. Definitely go for dinner.

Happy 0th birthday, Lulu

Diane and Brad, in all of their Pennsylvanian glory, had thier first kiddo this past Friday the 22nd. Her name is Lila but for reasons we'll have to ask about later they're calling her Lulu. Seeing as how she was only 6 lbs 4 oz., maybe they're thinking "Little Lulu." Ha.

[ update 26 Feb 2008 ]

And a photo!

Where was I?

Last Friday dinner at the Corner Tavern in Little Five Points then The Howlies et al. at The Star Bar. Saturday dinner at Paul's in Buckhead. I give it a medium recommendation: good food, service, and atmosphere, but nothing wow. We had later reservations and so got a table in the main area; I'd like to go back and see what the upstairs looks like.

Tuesday I received my Asus EEE 4G laptop. I had been thinking about getting the Nokia N800 for travel, wifi hotspots, and to use as a portable internet radio machine but then ran across recommendations for the Asus whilst browsing Amazon. The Asus is less handheld but more powerful, so I went with it. Specs: 2 lbs, 7-inch screen, 802.11b/g, 512 MB memory, 4 GB flash drive, 3 USB ports, web cam, Linux Xandros with KDE, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc. I've heard that you can put Java and Eclipse on there, but I'll have to get over my Linux-ignorance first. First impressions are positive. It's fast, typing is easy enough (my mitts are not beefy), and the screen is bright and roomy enough. We'll see what happens with Eclipse...

Lunar eclipse dinner and drinks at Eclipse di Sol (wha-huh?). We had a perfect view of the event from the patio, and the clouds cleared out completely around halfway through. That little sliver in the photo above is the moon taken from my crappy camera phone. First, animated fun at Landmark with The Academy Award Nominated Animated Short Films. Best was Peter and the Wolf [ Wikipedia | IMDB ], an inventive telling of the standard story and without the narration. Peter's duck and bird friends were a-dorable and this version has a noble twist at the end. Descriptions of all five shorts below stolen from the Landmark web site:

Don't miss this rare opportunity to see all 5 of the short films nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2007 Academy Awards. Program includes: I Met the Walrus (Canada), an animated documentary about 14-year-old Jerry Levitan, who snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in 1969 and persuaded him to do an interview; Madame Tutli-Putli (Canada), in which a timid woman boards a mysterious night train and has a series of frightening experiences; Meme Les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven) (France), about a priest who tries to sell an old man a machine that he promises will transport him to heaven; Moya Lyubov (My Love) (Russia), in which a teenage boy in search of love in 19th century Russia is drawn to two very different women; and Peter & The Wolf (UK & Poland), Prokofiev's classical music drama of a young boy and his animal friends who face a hungry wolf.

Things to do/purchase

Get the Daydream Nation reissue. I hate reissues because they usually tack on B-sides and alternate versions immediately after the original tracks. So you're going along nicely, listening to the familiar track order, and BAM! Some weird alternate tracks appear and fuck your head up. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the extras, but I just don't want them to make the original all topsy-turvy.

The reissue of John Coletrane's A Love Supreme (purchased at the record store in Asheville a few years back) is a good example of how-to-do-reissues-right. First disc is the original album, remastered; second disc is a bunch of alternate takes.

SY also has a rarities album called The Destroyed Room. Release at the end of 2006; how did I miss that?!? It includes a 25+ minute long version of "The Diamond Sea" if the 19+ minute long version on Washing Machine was too terse for you.

Get the two Onion books: Our Dumb World and Our Dumb Century. Reddit was on a tear recently with some Onion posts, and the comments brought these up. Should be hi-fucking-larious.

Dave Sim of Cerebus fame has been active on the internets recently. Well, as active as you can be by proxy. He's got a bunch of interviews and dissertations on religion on YouTube and is coming out with a new comic called glamourpuss. I remember in one of the phone books where he was drawing a lot of women from fashion magazines (from the Woody Allen story-line?), he commented in the back that he'd love to spend all his time drawing from fashion magazine photos after Cerebus was complete. I really have to look that quote up, because that's what glamourpuss looks like. I don't have high hopes, but I'll still pick it up. Notable links: The Man himself taking a rare online moment to anounce the first issue, and again, and again, an early review of glamourpuss.

Where was I?

Ninth anniversary at Aquaknox in Buckhead. Awesome food and nice view. It was our first meal there and we scored. I had the mussels for an appetizer (a little meaty but fresh and great flavor in the white wine sauce and with enough crusty bread to appreciate the sauce) and filet mignon for the main course (with mashed potatoes and broccoli and a single teenytiny sliced carrot). Despite the meat-and-potatoes quotidian sound of the meal, the flavors were rich and telling. Afterwards was another experiment, this one not so successful, at Beluga. Lisa's comment, now iconic, was simply: "one drink and we get out of here before someone asks us to drop our keys in a bowl." And no, I'm not put off that no one did.

Cathy's wedding at the Episcopal church in the Highlands (Episcopal priests got my money for stand up comedy) and a fun and swankified reception at The Peachtree Club a couple of blocks up (and walk-homeable).

Watching Cowboy Bebop. I got the full 26 episode on 3 CDs for thirty-bucks. When I first watched one episode I was not impressed. Then, I gave it another chance and got sucked in to the nonsense/sincerity. It has the standard mawkishness of all Asian cinema, but with a clowning nature and some well-placed and vague plot points to hook you in.

Listening to Yoko Kanno (although I've been over-listening and am ready to move on). She creates such an unbelievable variety of style that her skill scares me. Simply put: I'm jealous that I'm not her. I'll share the wacky photo that everyone else has:

My vote cownts

Overseen at the exit polls: (90% going to Obama) I say: oh my ..., Pollster replies: yeah! ...

I'm so fucked up that Clinton's winning right now. I'm even more fucked up that Huckabee won GA. OK. So maybe it's something I could expect (winning the "I'll vote for 'religious' over 'honest'") but still could not accept.

Where was I?

Spent the first two weeks of January doing Scott's Patented Slash and Burn Diet. Monday through Thursday only 1000 calories per day; weekends do whatever I want (within reason, no setting hobos on fire). I was in a sad fatty fatty fatso state from the holidays and needed to take control. Success!

Beginning of January was spent caulking and puddying the molding my brother helped me put in in December (250 feet around the entire condo). We threw away my college bookshelves and just purchased new bookshelves from The Container Store but there are still continents of books distributed throughout.

Last weekend at a cabin in Blairsville with A & D and S & R. Hell ride up through Friday traffic down 85, over 285, then up 75 to pick up Lisa and get supplies for the gang at Total Wine on Barrett Parkway. Quick 2-hour trip once we got out of rush hour traffic and we were rewarded with a meal of lamb, couscous, and asparagus. And wine. Saturday was wandering around outside (I forded a Major Waterway), extended session of Oh Hell (re-dubbed "I'm Fucked"), dancing, Cabin Fever, etc. Sunday was another session of Oh Hell and considerable denial drinking. Great weekend and now Lisa & I are on the hunt for some North Georgia land on which to build a cabin.

Tomorrow night is our 9th anniversary at Aquaknox and Saturday is Cathy and Steve's 0th anniversary. No other big plans AFAIK.

new

Our various New Year's celebrations (how come I can't remember more?!?):

• 1998 (?) - Dinner with Lisa and my brother and his wife at South of France (closed)
• 1999 - Millenium fun at Pricci, private room with around 15 friends
• 2000 (?) - Romantic dinner at home
• 2001 (?) - in New Orleans for a bowl game and craziness on the streets
• 2002
• 2003 - Big party at the Georgia Tech Conference Center with multiple DJs and craziness
• 2004 - Big party at our pad
• 2005 - Dinner at Nakato with friends
• 2006 - Party at Stacey and Alby's
• 2007 - Charleston, SC, dinner at Cyprus with Lisa

Xmas!

Our tree decorated with my niece Sarah's ornament:

949

Valet ticket:

Last Christmas

Lisa and I spent last Christmas in NYC and I never posted about it. I found tickets, the only artefacts of the trip, as I was cleaning up my desk:

And, the plane tickets! There:

And back:

Admission

OK, I am officially a 12-year-old girl. I teared up at the end of GitS:2ndGIG. I have a soft spot for AIs.

Where was I?

Thanksgiving Eve drinks at Northside Tavern where I saw the funniest/most offensive graffiti joke about Cabbagetown, crack whores, and the relative cleanliness of the NST men's bathroom, in between watching episodes of Jerry Springer and Maury Povich. After that, an early-ish dinner at Marlow's and an early evening home.

Thanksgiving was just Lisa and me and my parent here at Peachtree Lofts Central. I cooked up the Rosemary and Thyme Roasted Cornish Game Hens (aka "Midtown yardbird") and Lisa slaved over garlic mashed potatoes, green beans and prosciutto, and the best cornbread chorizo and mushroom stuffing ever. Everything turned out surprisingly well.

Friday, Lisa suffered through an LSU loss after three overtimes, then we went to the ASO to watch The Wizard of Oz with full orchestral accompaniment. They need to do this with more movies (although, I'm not sure which would benefit most). It may have been The Live Affect, but the WoO soundtrack seemed to have so many more ideas than the orchestral soundtracks I hear today. I think the contrast is similar to, say, a Mahler or Wagner compared to a Copland or Diamond. Not necessarily better.

Sat nite was drinks and chicanery over at Alicia and Dan's then late nite appetizers at Milltown Arms (you know, because we'd been starving ourselves most of the weekend...).

Lazy Sunday in front of the TV catching up with Heroes and Dexter.

Offensive/stupid sidewalk grafitti on 10th St.

When I looked down and noticed this, it reminded me of the hang gliding scene at the end of Harold and Kumar:

Where was I?

Catching up on the past couple of months, for Future-Scott:

• Lisa out-of-town a lot, so I got to watch a bunch of anime. Kite was very very very dark with hardcore sex that mistreated its protagonists. Bleak ending. Mezzo Forte was very fun, but also had hardcore sex that mistreated its protagonists. There's a contract that a writer has with their audience that says that any transgression will help the character or the story. These were very borderline. Mezzo Forte was good in that the transgressions actually "didn't happen" to the heroes, but they were a little extreme for western sensibilities. Still, I recommend Mezzo Forte (if you're OK w/ the 5 min. of hardcore porn). The Cowboy Bebop movie was completely G/PG and very entertaining. Except for the standard genre idiosyncracies, it was a classic action flick. If you have no problem with the animation/japaniquirks/slapstick, this is highly recommended.
• Company dinner at Buco di Beppo (sp? later) where the spouses met the spouses. We were in "the Vatican Room" where a crude visage of The Pope sat upon a lazy Susan (lazy Lilith?). Bland wine and very bland food except for a few good dishes. Great to finally get the better halves together.
• Went to see Resident Evil: Extinction [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ] at the Starlight Drive-in. Been a while since we went to the drive-in and this was the perfect movie for that. It was Milla Jovolicious. Prior to that was a light dinner at Haas in East Atlanta. Nice bar, nice food, recommended.
• This past week was a $25 5-course dinner at Food Studio. Excellent. The next night was dinner at Houston's then drinks at Eno top flight night. Barbarescos that Lisa liked but I thought were average.

Software utilities for my parents

My parents recently got a nasty trojan called Troj/Dloadr-AQG that installed ldcore.dll and attached it to all (?) running processes. Even after following the otherwise excellent advice of Coding Horror and using Sysinternals invaluable tools, it was too much for me and they had to go to professionals. The fact that the professionals had a tough time cleaning it up made me feel a little better. But not much. Serendipitously, Titus had recently set up a page on his blog aggregating links to software he uses on a new system, so I thought it'd be a good idea to set this page up for my parents.

• Firefox web browser

  Disable cookies - Select Tools > Options from the menu, in the Options dialog click the Privacy icon, uncheck "Accept cookies from sites". This stops any web page from leaving a cookie on your computer.

  Enable cookies for a specific site - Select Tools > Options from the menu, in the Options dialog click the Privacy icon, click the Exceptions button, under "Address of web site" enter the name of the site (e.g. www.mybank.com).

• ZoneAlarm firewall, direct download here

  Once installed, this will display a yellow popup for each application that tries to access the internet. This will be annoying for the first day or so, but eventually it learns all of your applications and blocks the spurious ones.

  For example, in the popup shown below, "Opera Internet Browser" is trying to access the internet. Because I know that's safe, I would check "Remember this setting" and click the Allow button. For anything you're unsure of, click the Deny button.

  

Unless someone recommends otherwise, I say don't bother with anti-virus software (the anti-virus software you had didn't stop this ldcore.dll infection...). Two anti-virus application I've seen people use are avast! and AVG. With a more security-minded browser and firewall, you shouldn't need them. The same goes for anti-spyware software such as Ad-Aware or Hijack This. These are useful utilities for cleanup but not for stopping an attack.

Jury duty!

Sitting in Justice Center Tower waiting to see if I get called for state jury duty (group 47 is the best, pick us!). What could be better than jury duty on Halloween? Freddy v. Jason?! Frankenstein v. Wolfman?!? This better not let me down...

pobeB yobwoC

So I decided to give Cowboy Bebop a chance. I'm hooked on the GitS series and am getting itchy for more Anime. weird. Anyway, first up on the TiVo season pass is an episode called "The Real Folk Blues (Part 2)". It ends very dramatically, and I think the main character dies?! Next up, "Asteroid Blues," episode 1. Yes, I accidentally caught the series in a loop, and I now know how it ends. Oh well.

Where was I?

Dinner at my brother's Friday night to celebrate Sarah and Jack's birthdays. Also saw their painfully cute new dog, Roxy. She had as much sass as her name.

Ivy and Jason's wedding on Saturday at the Galleria with: the start of the LSU game at Jocks and Jills beforehand, my first Jewish wedding (Eric later enlightening me that a Saturday wedding is kosher as long as it's after sunset), the rest of the LSU game at a bar afterwards (3 overtimes with not-the-best outcome), cocktail hour, a great dinner, some unfortunate dancing by me, and finally back to the hotel room.

Sunday we weren't feeling socian so it was brunch at Garrison's in Vinings. The ride home we spotted a DORCUS license plate (why?!?). After we caught up on TiVo, it was a walk through Piedmont Park (crowded with the final day of the 3-day breast cancer walk), then drinks at Einstein's (next to a couple who made out the whole time, only to take a "break" for 15-minutes in the bathroom I shit-you-not).

Monday was a surprise visit from Debbie and Kevin with dinner at Baraonda. And finally, last night was the first blogger get-together in months (years?) at Fox Bros. BBBQ.

Cursed contraptions!

The dryer that gives money so freely has been dying for the past few months. Shuts off automatically every few minutes and rarely makes it through an entire cycle. Alas, we missed the no-tax-appliance day! Yesterday, the iron died unexpectedly (although it had been dropped on the floor several times...). And last night Lisa's car threatened to not "beep" with the security fob, thus restricting its use to anything but starting the engine. This morning, it carried through on the threat.

If you have a pacemaker, avoid us at all cost.

Dryer money!

Sign you're going to have a good day: 10 Dryer Bucks appear in your last batch of laundry!

Scott, ca. 1985, with $1421.67 in his account

Found this acting as a bookmark in an old comic book:

That was my first quarter of college, so the money was probably burned through pretty quicky by tuition and books. And beer.

Ether Shostakovich visits the Metaverse

I'm officially a dweeb.

Almost finished with Snow Crash and then watched a Dr. Dobb's webinar where Grady Booch pointed out that IBM owns 50+ islands in Second Life and uses them for training, meetings, etc. So I tuned in to Ghost in the Shell radio and dived in...

I haven't spotted any unicorn sex yet though.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away; From fields where glory does not stay,

Passport photos from 10 years ago (left) and from yesterday (right):

I can't travel, so why don't you!

Our plans for a weekend in London at the end of the month fell through at the lastlastminute. We had Travelocitied our flight+hotel for a very decent price and had high hopes for seeing Wicked and the LotR musical (!?), when we decided to verify the fact that didn't need to be verified, that is, that my passport expires the same month (October) that Lisa's expires, only to find that--fingers hovering over the BuyNow! button--mine in fact expired last month.

bugger

So, we rolled with it and went to Plan B: Portland, OR! I had wanted to visit that nice place for a while and now seemed a good a time as any since we had an empty slot in our collection of travel slots. This too was not meant to be as we discovered that, in the eyes of the airlines, going to Portland = going to London. Monetary-wise, that is. I've said it before and I'll say it again: meh.

Plan C: London for Thanksgiving! We need to get goin' on new passports so it's a haircut and passport photo for me tomorrow. It's my work-at-home day, so I'll be able to hit the nearby places. Lisa's beat the travel bug even as we speak by visiting Manhattan for work (and for spotting Dennis Farina in a Duane Reade). There till Thursday-or-probably-Friday. (At which time she may kill me for forgetting to pick up the tickets for the Friday nite movie that I just remembered I needed to do and didn't...)

Where was I?

Long week.

Last Wednesday, I got the itch to go to my newfavoritesushiplace Fune. We fell in love with their salted squid appetizer the first time we went, but every time since it has gone downhill. Still, there is much good to enjoy. Drinks at The Vortex after where we saw our long-lost bartender Artie.

Thursday was the downtown dinner week evening with friends at Pacific Kitchen. Outstanding food; we'll definitely be going again for the full menu. And to top it off, we walked to a new(ish?) bar just down the street called The Albert. Tin ceiling, gothic arch liquor shelves behind the bar, and a friendly bartender.

Friday was a vacation day for me. Call it an atheist holiday: Friday is our sabbath. I got caught up on things I needed to get caught up on, and then we went to Enoteca with Codermonkey and his wife before they went to see Kathy Griffin (a surprise that I pretty much spoiled with my big mouth). We got the lowdown on their honeymoon in Europe: Paris was spent on jet lag and bad weather, London was much better with musicals and late-night chicanery. Lisa & I are now talking about doing a London weekend and catch Wicked or maybe even Lord of the Rings (I didn't even know they made it into a musical!). Lisa & I continued on to Avra for drinks and gabbin' with the bartender and ourfavoritewaitress, then more drinks at The Vortex while we played the pornographic video games. Rearrange puzzle-pieces to reveal naked ladies from the 70s! Awesome!!

Saturday we went to see Paris, je t'aime (3/5) [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ]. A quirky, varied, and satisfying collection of 18 short stories about love in Paree. For all of the variety contained, it held together. A hot walk up Highland for pre-dinner wine at Murphy's then tapas afterwards at Noche. I ended up snagging two bottles of Syrah at Murphy's wine shop: a Rosenblum and an Australian Molly Dooker. The walk back to the car off of Ponce was much cooler after dinner. Ended at McCray's.

Sunday was low-key with drinks at The Grape before watching the 7:50 show of Superbad (4/5) [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ] at Atlantic Station. We had intended to see the 6:30 show, but everybody in Atlanta was in line to see a movie that night. I don't need to add to the praise, but Seth's "drawing affliction" was ridiculously funny. Home after and The Asphalt Jungle (4/5) [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ] from my film noir collection.

I need a break...

Test

(please ignore, this is to correct a screwed-up account ... Technorati Profile)

Where was I?

Drinks and pizza over at Alicia and Dan's on Friday. Low-key in preparation for Cathy's b-day dinner at Shaun's on Saturday. Items of note: We accidentally yelled "surprise!" to a Cathy look-alike who, after the initial shock wore off, handled it well. Cathy arrived later in all black while her look-alike was in all white. Odd. Our end of the long-table-of-16-people lamented the horribleness of the movie Battlefield Earth. Lisa & I caught the last half earlier in the day and so the scars were still fresh. Alicia's had long healed over. Fun fact: one of BE's record-setting eight Razzies is Worst Screen Couple for Travolta and "anyone sharing the screen with him." For dinner I was the winner with the beef tartar appetizer and grilled trout with corn risotto entre. Both excellent. Post-dinner was drinks and dancing by everyonebutme at The Warren. Possibly going to see Stardust tonight and get 1/2-priced bottles of wine after at Avra.

It never pays to avoid conflict, a short play

Coworker (in front of me and 2nd coworker): My daughter saw several Muslims the other day and got concerned. I told her she was probably safe. I don't know, what do you guys think?

Me (with comedically incredulous look): That's enough for me. I'm going to get some coffee. (leaves)

... I return, only me and 2nd coworker ...

2nd coworker: You're so politically correct.

(End scene. Strike the set. Call for a rewrite...)

Happy mechanic story

So, my car has (1) it's check engine light on and (2) it's seatbelt light on. I need to get the check engine thing checked in order to get my emissions test in order to get my tag renewed, and there's some pressure since my b-day was two weeks ago, so I need to go to the mechanic. My nievete got the best of me and I was shocked at the $750 needed for (1), in the form of a new catalytic converter, and the $250 needed for (2), seatbelt sensor. Multiple estimates for the converter thing all hover around $750 even though I find the very thing I need online for $300.

I asked Catherine's if I could bring in my own parts and that took their price down to $175. Nice. Even better: they called me back after the estimate and said that if my car is < 8-years-old and has < 80,000 miles, the catalytic converter is under warrenty. It is, it is, and after calling the dealer I found out that yes, it is. Lisa had a good experience with Catherine's before, but this experience benefitted me so it's more meaningful. YMMV.

FS: 80-hour TiVo Series2 Dual Tuner DVR

Along with the DVR itself, this includes the 2 years remaining on the 3-year subscription (expires September 2009) and a wireless network adapter ($60 from TiVo, $40 from Amazon, possibly less expensive elsewhere). If I'm reading their current offer correctly, you would pay $100 (TiVo) + $300 (3yr service) + $40 (wireless), and I am selling it all for $200 (2yr service). That seems fair, yes?

Interesting trades considered. Honest Scott's Blog Sale won't be undersold!!

Following recommendations from the FAQ "What Should I Do If I Sell or Give Away My DVR?"," I will be clearing out the contents and we will need to contact TiVo customer service to transfer the service. Currently, that DVR shows up on my account page. That will probably need to change.

I'm selling it because I just purchased a new one (same model) after they offered a deal to transfer my original lifetime subscription from my long-defunct series 1 model. I've had no problems whatsoever, and it still has all of its TiVoey goodness intact. I'll also be posting elsewhere but will update this page as soon as a deal is made.

Where was I?

Vacation day on Friday just for the hell of it. Lots of piano and reading. Braves that evening with Ivy and Jason. Front row by the dugout! It was cool but disorienting.

Saturday was Shelby's b-day with a VIP table at Opera (née 1150 on Crescent) where I executed possibly my best drunk signature ever:

Sunday was a simple b-day dinner at Baraonda. Their halibut special was superb. No photo available.

Where was I?

Codermonkey's wedding two Saturdays ago (June 30th). They shuttled off to Gay Paree soon after, then to London, and they're probably back home (although his blog is still curiously quiet).

The fourth was spent at Stacy and Alby's joint where I was slightly more anti-social than usual when I saw that someone had brought a deluxe DVD of The Kids are Alright (purchased soon after). Then drinks on Ecco's back patio w/ Shelby and Kabao and a very slow-to-recover day at work the next day.

Friday was my brother's b-day dinner at Rathbun's Steakhouse. Mixed reviews from friends but we had a great meal (despite the two bottles of port that were accidentally added to the bill). Drinks afterwards at Ecco (see a pattern?) and then I--and I am not fucking you about this--logged in to work to help with a midnight upgrade. In bed by 5.

Saturday afternoon was all piano. I went through Bach's French Suite #4, the Stravinsky I've been working on (the last two pages are the killer), and variation #29 from the Goldberg Variations. 29 has like the most oblique rhythms of all of those. I had avoided it because of that but I'm now completely warmed up to it. Saturday evening was Allison's b-day and drinks afterwards at the Old Towne Bistro and The Catch, OTP.

Sunday was that crazy Russian movie Daywatch at The Plaza on Ponce with Scott and LC. The four of us had watched Nightwatch a year or so ago, so this was the long-delayed part two. Very visually creative. The plot is a mishmash but worth the ride. I recommend hunting it down. Dinner at Manuel's.

Apache

Back up on Apache.

Birds

Birds have come back to nest in our dryer vent. I didn't realize this was going to be a multi-generational thing.

Rare

I am so ready to try out Rare on Piedmont near North across from the Publix. Tapas with a southern flair (crawfish, grits, chicken and waffles...). Beware their need-I-say-annoying Flash site. A co-worker went there and from his description and the photos it sounds like Bazzaar near the Fox. That area of Piedmont has been cursed by its location. We used to go to the average-but-pleasant Tin Roof Cantina (until it turned into some other, more average, bar) and enjoyed the seedy Brit-pub down the street (now closed). It's an odd area for an upscale joint, but we'll do our best to support the effort.

If only for the nice wine menu.

Where was I?

Friday nite at Slice in Glenwood Park with friends. Glenwood Park has a small neighborhood with walkable streets but only just a few restaurants so far (Slice, Vickery's, and Vino Libro). Friday was perfect for some patio food and wine.

Saturday was the Symphony with the Beethoven Pastoral Symphony and the world premiere of Michael Gandolfi's Garden of Cosmic Speculation based on Charles Jencks garden in Scotland. First time I'd heard the Pastoral live, and it was a very lively performance with the separate sections of the orchestra really standing out. The Gandolfi was, in places, phenomenal. He has MP3s of the work at his site, and I can only assume they are from the ASO's performances this past week. Movements I-V were outstanding with a mix of Messiaen, Reich, and a little Persichetti yet still original and at times very rock and roll. Good use of polyrhythms throughout. He lost the crowd with his Baroque pastiche in the sixth movement suite. Although well done, it didn't fit with the rest of the work. The remianing movements got back on track and the final movement, "The Nonsense," provided a spectacular ending. During the intermission, before his work was performed, we actually saw him mingling in the lobby. I had the chance to go say something, but what? After the performance I realized that an invitation to free drinks at The Vortex would have been appropriate. Maybe next time.

Afterwards was a late dinner at Trois. Nice atmosphere and great food. I had: Alaskan Halibut with pea fricassee, tender onions, and tomato confit. Lisa had: Braised Beef Oxtail with roasted scallops, butternut squash, thumbelina carrots, and pecorino. Both were outstanding. Chatted with an older couple having their last meal in Atlanta before their return home to Manhattan.

Sunday was, of course, poolside drinks and chatter up at Liz and Matt's. Many arguments were had; I got scraped in odd places while swimmin' around with the dogs; and I got schooled on various human rights issues by Matt's friend and his friend's g-friend (whose name I forget but who is in school for international studies).

Movies were: The Killing of Satan, which would be a good challenge for Joel and the robots; The Narrow Margin, an outstanding protect-a-mob-informant cop drama from 1952, smarter than most coming out today; the 1933 King Kong, which I can't believe I've never seen; and the first 3rd of Clash by Night with Barbara Stanwyck, Marilyn Monroe, and directed by noneotherthan Fritz Lang.

birds

As of yesterday, the dryer-vent birds have gone. Hopefully, they won't remember me as the guy who just had to dry his jeans when it was 90-degrees out, but instead as the guy who put two dryer-sheets in to help fluff up their feathers.

Birds!

Our dryer-vent baby birds are starting to fly around. One was just perched on our window all fluffy and out of breath.

Where was I?

Saturday nite was 28 Weeks Later (70/82 on Rotten Tomatoes). When it's violent, it's much much much more gorey than the original. The opening chase is perfect and nerve-racking. There are several points where you question the logic (although you're grimacing at the same time). And the daughter in the film is distractingly gorgeous. Not as good as the first movie--simply based on originality--but still good and it had me creeped out for the rest of the evening.

Got caught up on Lost (4 episodes) and Heroes (3 episodes) this weekend. Lost finally got to the we're-actually-dead theme, which was probably the major theory out there. Heroes had their wonderfully tragic future episode, "5 Years Gone," where everyone dies and evil wins, hopefully setting us up with key information to defeat said evil.

Drinks Sunday night celebrating non-mother's day for Lisa.

Work out

So, since I haven't been able to jog, I've had to find a new Vehicle for Physical Health. I heard some co-workers talking about jogging the other day and it got me really depressed. A little while back I dreamt of jogging, and it was nice like the iconic signature of Peter Krause's character in Six Feet Under with his periodic jogging routine.

So anyway, I had been doing the step machine in the workout room at the condos here, but then I recently started sit-ups (crunches etc.). I kinda like it. I miss the real outside aerobic stuff, but this is something I've been needing to do (I have no abdominal muscles). It's a change.

Awww

Our dryer-vent bird just had her babies. Awww.

A plea from another blogger

A Perfectly Cromulent Blog has sent out a plea to any Texas residents to speak out to their state legislature on their dubious and heartless amendment removing financial support for autistic children ages 3-5. His post is informative, eloquent, and unfortunately personal. Read it and pass it on to those you know who may be able to help. We do what we can.

Happy birthday (name TBD)!

I wished your younger brother a happy birthday almost two years ago, so it's only fair that you get equal billing. Born at 10:01 AM, you're now ... an hour and 34 minutes old. Woot!

Where was I?

Inman Park Festival on Saturday. Where I: (1) saw a great monkey clock for a mere 39-bucks, (2) saw some outstanding lithographs from an artist whose name I forget, and (3) slacked off and purchased neither. (2) is showing in a gallery somewhere around the Inman Park area, so there's hope in finding it again. (1) is probably lost forever. Also, throughout the day there was (1) an emotional meltdown, (2) an alcohol-related gustatorial meltdown, and (3) neither were me. Which is somehow surprising.

Sunday was a wine dinner with Tedra and Bill at Sugo. Good food and a couple of very good wines from the Antinori Winery. Get the Tormaresca Rosso and the Villa Antinori Toscana Rosso (which I learned is a super Tuscan).

Server woes

First, my DNS updater utility (which I actually paid for) craps out and refuses to update DynDNS whenever my IP changes. I reverted back to an older utility and am back up. Then, Mindspring/Earthlink decides that I don't want to even be provided with an IP and my DSL modem just sits and stares into space. Blinking. Honestly, that has happened once before and appeared to be fixed with restarting the modem and router, but last night I was on-and-off-and-usually-more-off for several hours. Finally, once back on, for the first time in the ~1 year since I added my hillbilly captcha to comments, I got comment spam (spom). Theres only been 10 so far on a single entry, but that's how it always starts...

Bird, again

So during one of my snooze cycles this morning, I heard the bird again and thought that maybe it's my alarm that's waking her up. What's weird is that I swear she mimicked the tone and repetition of my alarm after it went off. Although, maybe I was just still asleep.

Bird

Around a week ago, we realized that a bird had taken up home in our dryer vent. The outlet is right out our bedroom window, so every morning (right about ... now) the sound of her floppin' her wings and tweetin' resonates through the metal pipe. It was creepy at first ("what the hell is that?!?"), but now it's kinda nice.

Where was I?

Not blogging, that's where.

The past week has been a knock-down-drag-out with my JSP hosting service. Their reliability has been spotty these past few months, and now they're blaming me for one of their servers going down. I doubt my sites get that many hits. What I've learned: I have a new-found mistrust of the Resin app server, MySQL 4.1 chokes on non-ASCII chars, JProfiler kicks more ass than I thought it kicks. If you're a Java developer, stop being a jackass and get JProfiler. Possibly even a legal copy.

Fun stuff:

Friday was the (crappy) Braves game, prefaced by a couple of bars--including Fune--and ending with a wild ride back to Cabbage Town with the Cabbie Who Knows All Shortcuts and dinner/drinks at Caroll Street Cafe then crashing at Alicia and Dan's. Saturday was Mollie and Hugh's housewarming. Great house! And a nice, small yard. Sunday was Easter with the extended family up in Alpharetta.

Wednesday was Tears of the Black Tiger (3/5). Highly recommended Thai western that's more over-the-top than you can possibly conceive. A few jumbled scenes, but so creative overall that it must be watched.

Where was I?

Last Sunday tried the new sushi restaurant on 7th called Fune. Excellent sushi-on-a-conveyor-belt and good wines. I'm not hip enough, but they'll just have to get used to me.

Friday was The Crazies! on TiVo--I like me some B-movie--and then re-watched Eternal Sunshine. That's definitely in my top 10, and re-watching brought back some swell but forgotten details that I won't spoil here. I had recently passed it around to co-workers, and from our discussions I got the itch to see it again.

Saturday was goofin' off over at Alicia and Dan's after they and the wife and others drank all day watching some sort of sporting event that was happening in Atlanta. We ended the evening with the Borat movie. 3/5 with many laughs. I don't know how he survived some of those skits. Not the least of which the naked wrestling, although I heard that the rodeo was a narrow escape.

Lisa's in Tulsa till Tuesday (hey, it's a Nora Ephron novel!) so I'll be bachelorin' it and will probably be quite stir crazy by then.

Food and drink

Many times, during the weekend, we will order delivery from Chico & Chang's simply because they offer six-packs of diet Coke (whcih we're usually out of). Today is one of those times.

Here's a thought

If the bitches at Earthlink would stop resetting my IP, maybe I could get some work done without having to reset my office VPN connection every 5 minutes.

Idea

Whenever I get in the job market again, I'm going to redesign my resume to be in landscape so that I can turn my work history into a timeline with call-outs containing accomplishments from each job. I would completely hire someone if they came in with something like that.

Happy!

Happy .MAS!

[ via Studio 360 ]

Where was I?

Enoteca Carbonari (the best new Italian restaurant in Midtown) last night and had a perfect meal. A rare thing indeed. Get the mushroom and teleggio crostini appetizer and pair it with the Salsiccia (homemade sausage of the day). Last night's was buffalo with andouille. Complemented nicely with a tempranillo.

Off

Off for the rest of the year. Rock. And. Roll.

First NYC this weekend, then X-mas with the 'rents, then kicking it for a week waiting for plans to form for New Year's. January is going to suck, but I'll just have to revel in what I gots now.

Nutcracker

Went to see the younger niece in her school's production of The Nutcracker. The music was canned, like that in The Fox's production, but tickets were more reasonably priced.

Afterwards, I learned of both nieces' elf dolls and how they come to life at night to eat crackers and drink sugar-water (their favorite drink). Every morning the neices have been waking up to find their elves in wacky places (hanging from the ceiling fan, etc.) with crumbs and empty glasses of sugar-water scattered about. They were wide-eyed about what might happen next. Hilarious.

My car

New tires, oil change (overdue, of course), a minor mishap a week before with one of the concrete poles in our parking deck, and this morning at the physical therapist's office I walk back to my car to see that (1) the door is unlocked and (2) the casing around the lock is pulled-out-but-not-broken. My retirement fund of toll booth money was untouched, as were my box of Wet Naps in the glove box. Did I forget to lock the car? Even if I forgot that, I'm sure I would remember trying to tear off the door lock casing. Everything still locks and unlocks (unlike when someone tried unsuccessfully to break into my blue Sundance and I was left with an unopening driver's door for a year or so), so no real etc. done. Still, I'm realizing that Atlanta Medical Center is the Badlands.

Roomba

The first recruit for my robot army has arrived.

The Roomba was to have taken three hours to charge but was up robotin' around in less than and hour. It cleaned for maybe two hours, covered probably 90% of our nasty floors including the area rugs and the kitchen tile, then struggled to find its home base and died only a few feet away. It's been slowly recharging for the past few hours, so hopefully it will be back on its wheels in the morning. This thing's just too cool to have to return it.

Our floors were really dirty.

Anyway, it kind of wanders around with an apparent aimlessness and hums through its tasks. The humming's louder than you expect, but nice. The floor looks muuuuch better. Lots of hair and stuff gunked up the brushes--better them than my socks. I figure a few more passes and it'll be less of a shock to the Roomba's system, and finally I'll be able to justify the not sweeping that I do anyway.

And it's just really cool.

Where was I?

In Knoxville last weekend getting more drunk than you.

The mom-in-law put together the 5th Annual Boat Party for Lisa and Mason's b-day (skipped last year for a wedding) and so there were generous amounts of shaking our booties down on the dock. Videos exist, but if they end up on YouTube I'll have to file a DMCA complaint so that my copyrighted image isn't compromised. We have a lifetime supply of leftover food, mostly bar-b-q, that thankfully a co-worker pointed out can be frozen. I've about reached my limit on pork sandwiches.

Voting on Tuesday morning with the rest of Midtown. No real problems, but I did see another sign of how we've traded privacy for convenience: instead of curtained booths, we vote on bright screens that are tilted for anyone behind you to read. An enclosed booth would make it too likely that those feeble-locked Diebold machines would get molested.

Doctor's appointment today at Atlanta Medical Center, for my leg, that ended up being a whole-day ordeal. First to the neurologist where I was attacked by rubber mallots then by electroshock doo-hingeys. The shocks were disturbing and not really painful but kinda so, then one of the female doctors seemed flabbergasted that I wasn't showing more serious symptoms. The only thing worse that expecting bad news is being treated like you're overreacting. Ultimately, however, they were all very nice and I was quickly whisked away to get an MRI in Dekalb. A nice 30-minute nap while I listened on headphones to the president blab on WABE about the Democrat's non-win, and then back to AMC with a CD of spinal images:

Third one down, that's the fucker. So the doctor says that I need to go through 20 sessions of IDD physical therapy to try to fix a herniated disc. Yay. All in all a successful day, and I do have to say that the doctors and assistants were all very helpful.

Where was I?

Focused on programming at home all last week, then: late Friday night at the Vortex waiting for Lisa to get back from some Haunted House in Newnan (man, I hope that I closed out my tab), and Saturday at Vinyl for the Kabao show. Great show and there were even three other bands to add to the mayhem. Some crazy kids from LA who apparently just learned to swear and be angry at the world, and some hardcore techno guys with some scary/fun hardcore fans who started a five-person mosh pit. See, angry can be fun too.

Not looking forward to this week, but what are you gonna do.

(mental note)

Start noticing things you don't notice. Like putting the key in the garage door. I don't know why, but it seems like an important idea.

My leg injury, part 3

Early this week (no, last week?) I had a milestone where I started sleeping through the night without waking up because of my leg. But then, two nights ago I had a charley horse (or a corkie) in my calf and it's still sore today. It's meaningless, but it's like when you're sick and every little symptom is over-important.

And blogged about.

Flight

Watching Lisa's flight's path via Google Maps on Delta's web site (check here for your flight number and then click the Track link). Depart LaGuardia at 2 PM yesterday, you could see a decidedly circuitous path avoiding the island of Manhattan. East then north then west then finally south over Jersey. The Delta map showed both the scheduled flight path (directly south) and the contrasting actual path.

My leg injury, part 2

So much for the magic of self-diagnosis. After some poking and prodding (more poking than prodding), the doctor says that compartment syndrome is unlikely because of the complete lack of swelling. Instead, she thinks my foot drop may be caused by some nerve issue of some sort. Appt. with the neurologist in a month, then maybe I'll get my face on a plastic jug at the local 7/11: "Help little Scotty find a cure for his embarrassing FOOT DROP..."

My leg injury

According to my web-diagnosis, I have chronic compartment syndrome affecting my tibialis anterior (while standing, I cannot pivot my left foot up from the heel and have nonspecific numbness). Google was kind enough to add to Wikipedia's entries by categorizing treatment, symptoms, etc. The good news is that I just received a complimentary physical therapy consultation at Body Mechanics Physical Therapy. Coincidence? Like anti-virus companies, they may have been the ones to inflict me with this pain.

Vacation (very long)

Back from California.

Instead of a trip to Italy (flights too expensive), Lisa & I went to CA to celebrate her 40th trading Chianti for Zinfandel. The itinerary took us from San Francisco to a few days in Sonoma, then travelling down the PCH making two day stops each in Carmel and Santa Barbara and finally ending up in LA to visit the sister-in-law-in-law and family. Lisa gets all the credit for one of the best-planned vacations yet, and I recommend anyone take the same or similar route. References were the Lonely Planet Napa & Sonoma Wine Country and California Highway 1 guides.

(Our ticket number at Fresh to Order the night before leaving. Coincidence?!?)

[ San Francisco ] [ Sonoma ] [ Carmel ] [ Santa Barbara ] [ Los Angeles ]

San Francisco

On the flight over, I sat next to an FBI agent who was reading Fiasco. He was returning to his home office in San Francisco to check in and attend a friend's wedding in Santa Barbara. We had a nice talk and he gave us a few good recommendations for Carmel. Our rental car was a convertible PT Cruiser. Lisa had hoped for a Mustang, but the luggage and purchased wine would've never fit, so we were lucky.

Fri 22

This was probably the most culinary trip we've ever taken, with excellent meals to be had from start to LA. Our arrival dinner in San Francisco was at 9:45 Friday night at The Slanted Door near The Embarcadero. Expensive, hip, Asian, yet very good. We split appetizers and uncharacteristicly laid low on the wine in order to mitigate the time zone. Breakfast the next morning was at Sears Fine Food. Unless you want to do some heavy-duty breakfast eatin', keep your skinny fucking ass away. Lisa had wanted to go on our last SF trip, but the place was under renovation. We wisely returned by accident after a wrong turn and were not disappointed.

Sonoma

This was our second trip to “wine country.” The first was with the brother, sister-in-law, her sister, and her husband eight years back for a few days in Napa. Very fond memories. This trip to Sonoma, we stayed at the Sonoma Valley Inn: free wifi and an inviting pool that we somehow never made time for.

Sat 23

First wine tastings at Sebastiani: their Pinot was, as always, great as were their two dessert wines. Not overly sweet. The Eye of the Swan white pinot noir, a blend of pinot noir and chardonnay, tasted to me like a horrible horrible mistake. The grapes did not blend at all. The servers were friendly and were easy to crack wise with. The first one we had actually lived in Midtown off of Monroe 10 or so years ago. We also saw the preparations for what looked like two weddings on the front grounds. Aww. Gundlach Bundschu had nice wines but we ended up with a less-than-friendly hostess. Although she did have an interesting history: her