December/2003

I like the snow... I hate the ice. Nasty weather this morning as I stepped out my door. Forgot what scraping windshields was like.

I think I caught something yesterday. It hit me like a freight truck mid evening last night, fever, aches, the works. I never get sick, so when I do, I can be a real wuss about it. Back at ‘the grind' (har har) after a 6 day holiday despite feeling like ass, since everyone knows that the "day after vacation I'm sick" call is 99% bullshit. I've taken so much tylenol and sudafed this morning, I can see through time. Viva la drogas.

Went out to dinner last night with friends - old band mates, actually - some of which I haven't seen in two years or so (due to the fact that they live in New York now). Had a great time - went to Gustav's and ate fondue and had a stein of beer. I really like ordering a stein. I want the pint to be done away with, and replaced with steins everywhere.

Our old bassist, who isn't in NY but I haven't seen in about a year and a half, flaked on everyone. I haven't seen him -because- of his legendary flakiness, so that just solidified my opinion of him. I think that makes 4 times in a row now he had us/me waiting on him, then called 2-3 hours later and says "car trouble." Uh huh. Oh, your battery died again? Really? Oh, it was a flat this time? Wow, that's a crazy coincidence. You still use that car to make it to work every morning, though? Huh, wacky. You'll call me tomorrow though? You swear you will? Ok, sure. I'm sure I'll talk to you then.

<rant> Fuck that guy. Flakes suck, old friends or not. Especially ones that measure their life worth based on all the bad things that happen to them, and making sure everyone knows about it... though they can't figure out they are generating the majority of the negativity themselves. I don't want to hear again about how you had to move back in with the parents because you didn't pay your bills and were evicted. (3 times now? Learn a life lesson already. You're almost 30. Try and keep a job. It's not that hard.) Do I really need a to-the-day counter of the last time you had sex? No. Drama queens. That particular personality trait should expire sometime in early high school... if it doesn't, you're in a perma-negativity pit you'll never dig yourself out of... and people that used to be good friends will decide you aren't worth the maintenance required to keep the friendship going. </rant>

A few weeks ago a pretty new shirt of mine suddenly had a bunch of swiss cheesed holes in it. I was wearing the shirt when working on my motorcycle, so I assumed that I got battery acid on it or something.

Today, I'm wearing a -brand new- shirt, and it has the same swiss cheesed pattern on it. Pretty much ruined. I think the battery acid theory is gone... more likely I have moths or a mouse or something.

Shit.

Had some pals over for a late dinner last night. No one could decide on what to eat, so somehow it defaulted to KFC. I normally hate KFC, but I was so hungry I agreed. We ran out there to pick it up and come back - got a family sized tub of chicken with a coupon that included a bunch of sides and biscuits and other assorted crap.

I asked the drive through chick if she could split the total between two cards - she said "Yah" and took both cards. Got them back, the whole total was on only one card. She looked totally disoriented and confused, and they were closing in 10 minutes - so we didn't say anything... we were starving, and just wanted to get the food back home. She hands us the bag, says "Thank you" and closes the drive through window. We have no drinks. So we sit and wait for her to notice that we haven't driven away (another 5 mins to sort everything out) get the drinks, and get out of there.

Back home, start unpacking it all to eat, and we realize she didn't give us at least half of our chicken order, plus the biscuits are missing. Even with the coupon, enough food was missing that it warranted driving back and complaining. I get back into the car with my friend, now utterly dying of hunger, and drive back to KFC. The problem: now they are closed. We are banging outside the windows, and they can see and hear us, but they aren't opening the door because... well... they're closed, after all. So we walk around to the drive through window and start really making some noise. The manager comes up, we explain we're missing a LOT of food we paid for. She's very nice and apologetic, but she can't give us our order because that food has already been thrown out for the night, and she can't refund to my card because the credit line has been closed.

So I end up getting all the extra chicken in the building not yet thrown out, plus a coupon that gives another whole shitload of chicken/sides/biscuits and a large popcorn chicken for free, good anytime at that KFC. This ‘coupon' was nothing more than a comment card with the manager writing all of the above, and signing it.

I still don't like KFC chicken, but now I have enough of it to feed at least 12 people.

Moral of the story: always check your order before driving away.

Who wants some chicken?

Safari is really cool. (O'Reilly, not the OSX browser... though that is cool too.) 2 week trial period might be enough time for me to at least review some of the books on my list, and decide if I really want to buy them or not.

I still prefer actual books to reading online... though the searching features of safari are a big fat bonus. I don't know if searching is worth $20/mo. to me, though. O'Reilly gets my money either way, I guess.

Deena woke up sick today. Really, really sick. Flu or something. Woohoo. Working from home so I can take care of her and the kiddo. Deena's just sleeping, but every time I look up, Naia is halfway up the stairs. Good lord she is fast. I yell "WHERE ARE YOU GOING!?", and she laughs and goes even faster.

"Naia Smith" is an anagram for "Hi, I'm Satan."

No, that wasn't planned. But I'm starting to see it. She's learned a new noise this week - growling. Nice.

I really started playing with Panther last night. It's slick. I do all of my login stuff via NIS - one account to login to all windows, unix, and now mac machines. 10.3 finally got the NIS stuff right, and having the same Desktop and Trash between OSX and Gnome is tasty. My old blue and white was just about unusable under 10.2 - it is much quicker under 10.3. A pal also sent me an app that forces the L2 cache to fire up on my proc upgrade, so that definitely didn't hurt either.

Now that I'm using the mac again, my gadget wishlist just grew. I have an old mac serial Wacom that I loved - 12x18 - I just couldn't ever bear to part with it. Need to find some sort of usb to mac serial adapter. I've heard keyspan makes some, but according to wacom, they are incompatible with my tablet. Bleh.