April 2004 Archives

This courtesy of the lovely and talented Di, a really cool flash drawing thingie. While away the hours and then send it to someone to amaze.

Reading to Ellen, who can NOT get enough about Disney World (we're going Saturday), we read about EPCOT. I read something about the Japanese pavillion and she says, wisely, "The people from there are Japanish, right?"

Er...close...

Karen thinks it's a better mix of Japanese and Spanish than, say, Spanese, which makes them sound like types of bouncing dogs...

I'm feeling what might be the onset of yet another bout of diverticulitus, and I am truly sick of dealing with this. It's a frustrating, annoying illness, especially for someone my age to have to deal with, but I guess it could be worse.

There, it could be worse. Now I feel better.

Not.

OK, so there are only 2 entries here, but they're both cool and silly, so I think it counts as a round up!

First, courtesy of Neil Gaiman's blog, the iDuck. It's more important for non-volatile RAM to be a good bathtub toy than to be small anyway.

Second, courtesy of Gizmodo, the wonderful gadget blog, this throughly bizarre totem flash drive.

Here's a thought, kiddies. Just because you CAN stick 256 MB of RAM into something, doesn't mean you should...

The other day, my wife and I are standing in front of my 6 year old's room, talking to each other.

Me: What's that word..It means "everywhere" or "all over the place"? It's like ubik...ubik...
Ellen, from her room, lying on her bed idly: Ubiquitous?

My wife and I both stop, turn to look at her, and look at each other, and just shake our heads.

The kid is SCARY.

There's this cool faxing "project" that I read about in Neil Gaiman's blog that allows you to fax by sending an email for free. It's a very cool concept, because it can be used for a number of other things as well. For example:

--getting a print out of something when there's no printer nearby (like a hotel) but you CAN receive a fax.
--faxing from your email-enabled phone (I have the Treo 600)
--spooking out someone that you're sitting in the same room with near a fax machine on a laptop with wifi...;)

I'm sure there are better ideas, but I'm gonna try the last one later. "DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU!!", that sort of thing.

I am SUCH a child. *shrug*

When I was a kid, there was a wonderfully entertaining and equally educational show called The Electric Company. For some sad reason, it never survived but here, for those of you starved for Spiderman, Letterman, and The Plumber, come bit and pieces of the show in mp3 and quicktime format.

And I can't believe that it was joan rivers doing the Letterman intro!?

Thanks to Boing Boing for this walk down memory lane.

Actually, it's not true, but sometimes I wish I did. Today, I finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods, a thoroughly brilliant and wonderful read. And as a result, I'm very sad. Not because the book had a sad ending, but because it's no longer available to me in the same way, ever again, unless I develop Alzheimers.

Even moreso than movies, books become a friend to me. If I find one I just adore, I spend weeks with it, reading it, getting involved in the characters, the storyline, etc. I can picture the people, the settings, the world of a book like American Gods so clearly and so well that to finish it is to lose friends. Of course, I can always reread it, but the players no longer do new things...they lose the life that they had when it was fresh.

A double edged sword, to be sure, but regardless, I'd recommend the book to anyone. It was wonderful.

Thanks, Neil!

Sitting at the table tonight, after the fiasco in the car:

Me: Katie, eat slower. Your stomach might still be a little funny
Ellen (age-6): I don't want my Katie to die!
Katie (age 3): I'm not gonna die. Only grown ups die sometimes!

What do you say to that? I said "shh and eat your dinner."

So it's Easter. Rah Rah. I hate to be cynical, and for disclosure purposes, I'm Jewish (although just barely that, in any case), but like many religious holidays, this has become a "What did you buy me?" holiday, only instead of a fat old man, it's a furry bunny. Bizarre, actually.

My wife is really into this holiday stuff, and we did the egg thing and hid them, and then gave the kids baskets FULL of crap, and she has (HAD!) a rule that on halloween and Easter, the kids can just eat whatever they want.

Well...that rule is changing after Katie vomited chocolate ALL over herself and the back seat of the car to cap off a 3 hour trip from upstate. What a lovely welcome home. On her blanket, her lap, my hand (when, as a good dad, I tried to catch it or some other such bizarre reflex), the back seat, her toys...

And it smells like chocolate that's gone bad...It's impossible to describe. Like EVIL chocolate. Chocolate with an undercurrent of hate or something unwholesome.

Buh.

AOL for broadband. You'd think that if someone was going to put a cable modem connection in a house, it would be a cable connection, across which you'd use AOL. Nope. AOL for broadband means ONLY AOL across that big, fat pipe. No AOL, no access.

I'm lost in the wastelands of upstate new york (sorry di...) with no cel access, no internet access on my Mac thanks to AOL for fucking broadband, and I'm religated to doing the "wipe the cache and history" dance from my brother-in-law's laptop in order to do any damn thing.

Yay for AOL. Someone should explain to them that it's a community thing. Play nice.

So there is this subservient chicken, right? And he's supposed to do whatever I tell him. And he's sponsored by Burger King, right? So why can't I get him to deep fry himself and lay across a bun? You'd think that was a natural...

Ok, this scary article is courtesy of the wonderful Neil Gaiman's blog, to which I am totally addicted. Apparently, the Easter Bunny has been getting a hard time...

From Neil Gaiman's blog, the Geek Chart.

I think I'm in the first line...I'm a Heinlien fan...

I know someone who paints the little figurines...where does he fall on this? ;)

So, what I'm reading now is the absolutely wonderful American Gods by the equally wonderful Neil Gaiman. It's a story about what happens to the gods (small "g") that came over in the belief system of early American settlers after those settlers, and their belief systems, died off.

The book won a slew of awards, including the Hugo, and is just a great read so far. I'm halfway through and I'll let you know, inquiring readers, how it goes.

We have this car. It's a lovely, red, Saab 9-5 sportswagon. it's LOVELY. And now, it's DENTED.

Someone, not ME, got into an accident with it...not a bad one, but it's hurt. Wounded. Sad.

Here's the photo. We'll make it better. Of this, I swear!

At the Bronx Zoo!. Spent the day there today and it's just the coolest place. We were feet from Bengal tigers, Burmese pythons, and all sorts of other wonderful creatures. I LOVE that place! It was cold here today, and threatening rain, so as a result, the zoo was EMPTY. No lines at all, no crowds. Very cool way to see the place.

The only down note was that the gorillas were inside because of the cold (<55 degrees). The congo exhibit is the best gorilla exhibit I've ever seen. Incredible.

I've gotten used to buying something electronically and having it available immediately. It's the defacto way to get small pieces of software these days, tools that do this or that. Last night, I desperately needed a tool from officerecovery.com that would recover a dead powerpoint document for a client. I purchased it online and it shunted me to a site called digibuy.com to do the purchase, which I did. Fullfillment was supposed to come through an email. It's been about 12 hours and no email.

Am I being too hypersensitive? Expectations too high? I mean, their site did say "within 5 or 10 minutes, 24 X7", but is this too much to expect, even these days?

Anyway, my clients powerpoint file is languishing without it and I had to email digibuy's support for answers. I don't expect THAT answer any sooner...

I seem to have these in the "late" morning hours, especially if I've had to get up and use the bathroom or something. When I go back to sleep, I slip into these crazy dreams...

I had to have surgery. Something like a muscle tear or something. So I go into the hospital and they just wave this light over the muscle and it's done, but I'm very tired so I have to stay in bed. And when I wake up, two of my coworkers are there, with a friend/client who is also in the hospital for some reason. The friend is having something done, perhaps some surgery too, and I walk over from my hospital bed expecting some sympathy from my coworkers, with whom I'm also good friends. Instead, I get ignored so I start whining and one of my coworkers calls me an asshole. I respond with a string of expletives that would make a sailor blush and storm off.

I spend the next little bit of dream time stalking the halls of the hospital, acting like I'm very ill and woozy from the operation, but I think I was just trying to prove how hurt I still was. Anyway, I'm walking through the nursery and look over to see a baby with an iPod. Weird.

So then I collapse into the recovery bed they gave me, which is in an operating room. When I awaken, I AM very very tired. All cottony, hard to think. And I look over and there, on the operating table, is my wife! She's hooked to an IV-type cord and I try to call out but it just comes out muffled. Eventually I am able to ask what's wrong and she's very calm, saying that she cut herself on a wire fence and needs a transfusion. As she gets her new blood and remains calm, I'm becoming hysterical, but eventually I guess I calmed down.

Then I woke up. WTF?

Ok, I've just come from Neil Gaiman's blog and I LOVE it. He's got to be one of my new favorite writers. I'm listening to the reading of "American Gods" and it's fantastic.

Coincidentally, I've recently been on a kick to check out other blogs by authors I've enjoyed, namely, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, and the one and only Douglas Adams.

Rating the blogs from top to bottom of these wonderful authors, I'd have to put Mr. Gaiman on top as he is still very active and his blog is alive and flourishing, followed by Adams, Gibson, who stopped his blog about a year ago, and then Stephenson. Considering that Adams is deceased, his blog isn't bad...and I don't think I've ever read quite as openly hostile a weblog as my dear Mr. Stephenson's. Good fences make good neighbors, I guess...

Regardless of the blogs, though, I'd like to thank these wonderful authors for giving me and countless others hours, days and weeks of enjoyment.

Douglas, we miss you.

UPDATE:

I just went back to Neal Stephenson's blog and someone JUST RECENTLY must have decided that a single page of "go away!" text was not what looked good for a brilliant author. It's been changed to a fancy flash site with the "go away!" text now in cute little boxes. Now THAT'S a "piss off!" I can deal with--as long as there are cute little boxes!

Well, here's my first entry with this newfangled bloggie thing. It's pretty, yes, and it's at my home URL, yes, but is it art? I guess that will depend on what I put in it.

OK, Greg's hurrying me along, so I'll keep this short.