ralphy boy
2002.12.28 2.30
It was 8 P.M. Thought I was hungry. Hopped into the Mitsubishi and drove to old reliable Whataburger on 290 and Jones. Reminisced about good times had there so many years ago. Ordered the #4 with a Diet Coke. Translation: Chicken sandwich on wheat, fries, and a drink. Ate up while I drove home. Yum yum. Decided to be lame again and not go out. Went to bed around 11 P.M. Said goodnight to Chew Chew and faded out. Time passed. Woke up suddenly at 1:10 A.M. Mind spinning. Brain racing. Had new voice in head. Voice said: ''Get your ass up! Sucka!'' My response: ''No, wait! Hold on!'' Voice replied: ''Shut your yap and get moving!'' Ran to the hallway bathroom after finding a t-shirt. Assumed the position. Ralph appeared, right on schedule. Voice said: ''See? I told you! Now do it some more, just to be sure.'' Ugh! 2001 had been a bad year with all of the near death experiences provided by Best Western Fort Washington's Indian Restaurant. Thought I was going to make it through 2002 without an incident. Wrong. Very wrong. Sipping water now. Hoping it's over. Praying. Bracing for unwanted return visit to porcelain alter. New Voice in Head seems to have left. Wondering if I should do some 409'ing before roommates return. Nah.i am the voice and you are the echo
2002.12.18 14.05
Looks like Queen Beth got the telepathic message I was sending out in my last entry. Kudos, Beth Deth. I am now reminded of a little story. In September 2000, I was unfortunately placed in a desk adjacent to our former IT guy. He had recently been toppled from power unceremoniously and re-assigned to programming work, or some variation thereof. However, he was still in charge of a few notable tasks including email administration. I was priviledged to hear him rant and rave the day he tried to get Queen Beth the SMTP email address of her choice -- bethdeth@[CompanyName].com. He espoused many IT related questions out loud as he was attempting the task, including, but not limited to, the following:- Why does she need that?
- Is this some kind of goth thing?
- Do our clients want to work with someone named Death? (He was quickly corrected in this regard by nearby IT guy #2)
- Wouldn't beth.deth or beth_deth be more appropriate?
- If we do this, isn't everyone going to want an easy to remember email address?
Upon my return, I was immediately required to install a long overdue light fixture over the sink. Oktober's graduation and reception was a mere 12 hours away and the gaping hole and wires hanging out of the ceiling were really detracting from the Cool Factor of the kitchen. After 15 minutes of breathing in blown insulation wool that dates back to 1978, I successfully conquered the installation and moved on to my next goal: sleeeeeeep.
I woke up the next morning at around 9:30 A.M. I did not have a car. The Mitsubishi had been stored at my secret storage (A.K.A. the Bat Cave), the Batmobile was in the Bat Shop, and the DeLorean... was not a viable transportation option since I would have to leave it parked on the street with full ''Back to the Future'' regalia in clear visible site. More on that later. So, I called Mom and got a ride to the Batmobile. I payed for the brake and exhaust repairs and headed downtown. No sooner had I pulled onto 290 did I noticed a strange drag on the car. I was accelerating, but the car didn't seem to gain much momentum. It wasn't until I got off the freeway and pulled onto Smith Street downtown that I realized the right rear brake was... well... braking. Whether I wanted it to or not. I struggled to get to the corner of San Antonio and Texas street and parked. The right rear brake was steaming, screaming and seething. I began a short jog to Minute Maid Park, site of the UHD graduation ceremony. I called up my ''friends'' at the Bat Shop and vented briefly. ''It's covered under warranty -- just bring it back.'' Fine. I left after attending the ceremony for around 45 minutes. I managed to work in a combination of a nice loud whistle and a few unacknowledged attempts to get Oktober's attention by yelling ''HEY!!!! HEYYYY!!!!!!'' I returned the Batmobile with right rear caliper in shreds. They assured me I would only have to pay for whatever broke it. Riiight. What broke it the last time? Wouldn't that have been a good place to start? The graduation reception at the the house was a great success. I somehow held off on saying things like, ''Isn't that light over the sink just awesome?''
Later that day, Oktober and her friend Steph somehow agreed to my suggestion that we see the latest Star Trek film ''Nemesis'' and then top it off with a visit to Katz' Deli. The movie was marginal at best. A few good ideas in there, but it seemed clunky and I didn't really feel any tension over the drama. And really, the bad guy's ship had some kind of super weapon on it that took over 8 minutes to deploy. What kind of idiot makes a weapon that takes 8 minutes to shoot? Picard even tried the old Auto Destruct card that I am sure we're all tired of. Luckily, Auto Destruct was not available. Go figure. I saw Wil Wheaton in an unexpected couple of shots thinking he'd been cut out entirely. It's the little things. Overall, I give the movie a C-. For 60 million dollars, you'd figure they could do more than design pretty sets.
That evening I got to briefly lament over the missed Christmas party that my company had thrown on the previous Thursday night. I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I really wish I could have attended. I have never won any of the door prizes they give the attendees, so it wasn't a matter of thinking I was going to miss out. It's all about the people. Oh, and the open bar. That too. But especially the people. Uhhh. Yeah.
The last notable item this past week occurred on Monday night. I took the DeLorean to Best Buy and made my case to J.W. These initials belong to the nameless general manager. No one there knows exactly what J.W. stands for. After talking to him, I suspect it is something along the lines of Just Working or Joe Worker. He had such a textbook demeanor about himself that I almost felt like I was talking to an automated phone system. Monotone voice, robotic responses with just enough customer care words thrown in to make me feel special. I seriously doubt he was interested in my proposed DeLorean Appearance for Store Credit swap, but at least I made the effort. When I came out of the store, some of the employees that were either A) on break or B) pretending to be on break, were hanging all over the car and taking pictures. I opened the door. Oooo. Ahhhh. I turned on the time circuits. Ooo. Ahhh. I pulled out my recently acquired JVC videocamera -- an exact duplicate of the one used by Marty in the mall scene -- Oooo. Ahhh. Anyway, Back to the Future was released on DVD for this first time the next day. We'll see who budges first. Okay, well, I guess they have to budge first. Whatever.
stew wart
2002.12.09 12.31
I am finding myself at a loss as of late for good blogs. I frequent Wil Wheaton's blog because he updates at least as often as I have tried to. I think he goes further with his entries, however, because a writer writes. I am a programmer, so a programmer programs. I like my other friends' sites, but they update very infrequently, and then again their updates are fairly short. On my daily agenda, as if I haven't mentioned this before somewhere in the past, are Dark Horizons and Ain't It Cool News. Google News and CNN are also faves throughout the day. My home page on this machine is a link to DeLoreans for sale on eBay. I know. I don't need any more automobile bling bling. Tell me something I don't already know.I am still trying to get a Word-like editor to do my bidding in Internet Explorer today, but I suspect I will soon have the problem tackled. The documentation on how to get Word to do it is fairly poor. Code samples are hard to find. There is an Active-X based editor called TX Text Control that I am making good progress with. The principal idea behind what I need to do is actually super simple, so maybe I'll figure this out eventually. I remember my very first programming issue to resolve was back in 1983. My friends had written a short crappy program that they intended to use as a Wargames type-dialer. We called them demon dialers back in the day. Their program could not disconnect the phone line after it found a computer, so it was basically useless. The hardware we all were using was Hayes 300. 300 measly bits per second with the original rudimentary AT command set. To put it into perspective, the 56K modems we are all familar with do 56,000+ bits per second. Sometimes more, sometimes less, all depending upon connection and compression algorythms that may be present. 300 bps was old school. No busy detection. Just dumb. Their program was actually OK dialing from number to number as long as it didn't find anything. The modem would respond with NO CARRIER in those instances. But like I said, if it did connect, you were stuck. By reading the documentation, something which had eluded my friends, I found that you can send three pluses to the modem in succession and it would then release control from what you'd connected to. This meant you could now send an ATH command and it would immediately hang it up. These old AT commands are actually still in use on modems today, but you never have to deal with them anymore now that dial-up networking wizards hide all of the dirty work. Disconnecting is easier today, as well. Our programming language of choice, TI Extended BASIC, didn't have access to all of the goodies on the RS232 port. The RS232 port is essentially the ''plug'' that connected your modem to your computer. You had to do this +++ thing I just talked about if you wanted to manually drop the carrier. The carrier, by the way, is that sound that you hear the modem make when it connects. These days you just talk to the modem directly and set the connection pin to false and it hangs up. So nice. I know, this is boring blog talk, but maybe someone will be mildly interested in the humble IT related beginnings of the super genius. The Six Million Dollar Man is also involved of course, but I digress.
fried
2002.12.06 6.34
My new work computer committed hardware suicide this past Wednesday night. They say it was the vent holes, but I think that machine just didn't have the will to live up to my high expectations. The carcass is missing this morning. I have mentally prepared myself for eventual razzing about the situation. I plan to make a sad face and say, ''Ohhhh, I'm so sorry!'' regardless of whatever is said. I used this similar plan, with limited success, at the condo's ''Get To Know Your Neighbor'' dinner last night. Instead of talking to anyone, I had planned to just nod and pretend I always had food in my mouth. Turns out I can't keep up the illusion of munching for two hours, so I relented and acknowledged my neighbors. There was also free beer, so everyone seemed to get nicer as the evening progressed. Batman was not violated this time around. It's the little things, right?Cold temperature has brought on a minor head cold, although I feel fine today. On Thursday, I was essentially snowed in, so I was only able to do about 4 hours of work researching how to make Microsoft Word do my bidding. I stopped to take a nap. Later, I thought I had it figured out, but then I woke up from the nap and realized the additional hours I'd spent were unusable. Why can't I dream about being a super hero or something? Oh. That's right. I am a super hero. Well, okay, then, how come I can't dream about being a pro basketball player. I know for *sure* I'm not one of those.
i wish you were queen just for today
2002.12.02 14.12
Listening to Marilyn Manson's ''Coma White'' and working on a payment screen for my awesome clients. In a great mood. Had a great holiday, although admittedly I got most of my errands done during the last eight hours before I left for the airport. I'll hit the highlights.Got into town on 11/22 and felt it was necessary to go to Number's dressed as Batman. Batman is popular when he goes to Number's. Batman met many interesting people there that evening. Batman lost count of the number of pretty girls who came up to him and gave him a smooch on the cowl. Batman wants to forget about the drunken couples who tend to approach him at the end of the evening thinking they can take Batman home. Batman doesn't want to go home with you. Batman has to go back to the Batcave and check back in with Alfred. Don't you people watch t.v. ? Condition of Batman's costume may necessitate getting in touch with The Brotherhood of the Bat. Batman can't talk about the brotherhood. Secret society. Forget I mentioned it. Shhhh.
Next day went to the mall with OktoberNight. Made no purchases, but didn't mind the human scenery that is typical of Willowbrook Mall patrons. Rest of the week after that is kind of a blur. Goofed off a lot. Got a new phone thanks to my awesome company. Old phone was trying to censor me by incessantly beeping whenever I answered or dialed out. I am only disappointed in that every single ring option on it blows. The vibrate option is looking very good, although there is this one option called BEEP which just beeps ONE TIME -- and very quietly at that. One beep isnt' enough to get my attention, however, so for the time being I am listening to Ring 9 which plays a musical octave up and down a couple of times. I've forgotten the term that means playing all of the notes, including sharps and flats. Dammit. I feel like it is something like chromatic scale, but that sounds wrong, kinda. I think I'm going to buy a decent trombone next year after I get past all of the holiday presents and taxes that I have to pay. Batman's 6th grade trombone does not pass muster.
Took the Corvette in for the yearly inspection only to be given the typical bad news. Calipers in the back are bad and my exhaust system sucks. I knew all along it would be something like that. Got off easy last year with only a missing emergency brake system, so it's the little things that count.
Speaking of the little things, saw ''The Osbournes'' last week and loved it. I heard Robin Quivers on Howard Stern say that it was not as funny as before, but truthfully I laughed my ass off. I am ready for the bad news that is coming tomorrow, so we'll see how they handle Sharon's cancer news and if they can maintain an air of humor about it. I'll bet they do. Oh, I forgot to mention this, but when Aimee Osbourne appeared on the Barbara Walters special ealier this year, she came off as a bratty jerk that didn't seem proud to be associated with her family. No wonder she won't appear on camera, she'd probably be the one person you hate on the show (right now there really is no one to hate as most everyone is likable). I don't know. I've had friends say ''Hey leave Aimee alone'' but really, she came off as so ''I'm better than them'' in the interview that I think I would have rather not ever seen it in the first place. Bleah.
Saw ''Die Another Day'' and loved it with the exception of a crappy miniature or two. Can't they use computer graphics to do that stuff? I can't believe they used the Predator "invisibility" trick on Bond's car. Finally. Given the timing it takes to adopt conventions from other cinema, I predict James Bond will be dodging bullets by 2014.
Thanksgiving was great. Dad bought a Luby's meal completely prepared in advance. Very interesting. I like the Luby's. I think we may have to avoid doing it again, however, as the bland quality does sort of detract from the interesting food the family normally prepares. Make that the food that my dad normally prepares. One year he smoked the turkey and that had to be the best dead turkey I ever had the pleasure of devouring. Mmmmm. Carnivorous thoughts passing through head.
