Blog came up on the task picker and I’m just not feeling it. But I must maintain at least a small illusion of discipline. All I need is at least one newspaper paragraph, 35 words.
In keeping with the title I would rather listen to Little Feat and re watch the fianl episode of Quantum Leap than create this blog post.
I listen to radio dramas to get to sleep. It started when I worked in Austin. Rooms there were cheaper than apartments and people didn’t run credit checks. If I didn’t want to bother my house-mates so I had to use headphones. I couldn’t find headphones comfortable enough to sleep in and long enough to get to the TV so I found radio shows over the internet.
I used to listen to old American detective dramas. I something that had a time limit so the sound wouldn’t go on all night. This led me to the BBC. They have 8 different bands. BBC 4 and BBC 7 had the dramas and comedies. BBC 7 is now BBC 4 Extra.
BBC4x has a scifi/terror hour at noon and midnight. (6 AM and 6 PM my time) The rest of the night is filled with crime dramas like Lord Peter Wimsey and Paul Temple. This month they are serializing Charles Dickens novels. I don’t listen to them because they are long and depressing.
I’m not as up on my Dickens as I thought. I started to listen to The Old Curiosity Shop Tuesday because I thought it was a short story. I listened almost the full hour and at the end I discovered that it was just starting a bunch of depressing plot lines.
We spent New Year’s Eve at Mike’s Place, a sports bar 4 miles from our house. SRO, our usual bar on Saturdays closed at 5 since the Auburn alumni association told them they wouldn’t be watching the game there.
Mike’s is outside the city limits so smoking is allowed inside. We go there when SRO is too crowded or charging for a fight. We play trivia and sing a couple of karaoke songs. We have known Donavan, the KJ, for over five years.
We got there a little before 7 and a waitress hit our table immediately. This was unusual because before the waitresses start at 8. When Donavan came on he said our waitress was also bartending. I think we were at the only bar that stayed open NYE but didn’t think they were going to be busy. The place didn’t fill up but there was enough people for another waitress/bartender. We left at 11:30 so we could watch 2012 roll in.
Yesterday one of cats,Slushball, died suddenly. He started howling and Brooke rushed him to the vet. He said it was infectious feline anemia. He called and said the cat needed a transfusion. We had the mother so she gathered her up and headed for the office. As she filling out the paperwork the vet tech said Slushball was gone.
Brooke went into the room to pet her one last time. She lifted the towel and the cat breathed. The doc said it was agonal breathing. Still Brooke was/is upset.
Writing came up on the task picker today. I wouldn’t call last night eventful but it gave me some material..
We went to OT and sat at the bar. We usually sit at a table but our area was taken over by David De La Garza, a guy who used to play for Santana.
Playback is a hour-long music trivia game. The first two rounds are regular questions, then comes 10 questions where you have to guess the next line in the song. Two rounds later is 10 questions dedicated to one subject; last night it was the Grateful Dead.
I had read the Wikipedia article about them so I was not happy. The dead have a lot of albums since there are recordings of all 2300 of their concerts. But my studying paid off; I missed only two. That got us ranked 15 out of over 4000.
After the game I went to the blind scotch taste test area. Apparently Dewar’s has released a 12-year-old version of their product. Their setup was pretty cool. They had wooden plates with areas carved out for three glasses and a cell phone or iPad touch. I couldn’t tell because it was dark and I didn’t have my glasses.
They used scotch snifters like the one below except the glasses had a shorter stem and a thicker base.
They used the electronics to get names and email addresses, tell us when to start, and record our preferences.
The glasses weren’t as full as this one. If they had a half ounce each I would be surprised. The marketer said we were tasting 12-year-old scotches.
Unfortunately C was the stuff they were trying to sell. A was Chivas Regal 12 and B was Johnnie Walker Black.
We went to a small bar in a strip center for some karaoke. There weren’t a lot of singers so we got to sing 4 songs each. I got the urge to sing Time After Time out of my system.
I watched the last 20 minutes of Lawrence of Arabia today. I’ve read the book but I’ve seen the the movie in bits and pieces. Alec Guinness is very cool as Prince Faisel. The two scenes I remember are his interview with an American reporter.
”With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.”
The other one I just saw today. It is negotiation time at the end of the war:
Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men. Courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace. And the vices of peace are the vices of old men. Mistrust and caution.
I started thinking about how little I know about Islam and its beginnings. It looks like it started in a desert rural setting as opposed to Christianity which I know started in coastal urban areas.
The Bible is written and in a somewhat chronological order. The Koran started in a verbal tradition and had been around for years before being written down. It seems Islam started as a religion of the poor and illiterate.
Linux came up on the Windows task picker and blog came up on the Linux task picker, hence the title.
I know the term contractual obligation because Monty Python put out an album to finish out a recording contract and named it such.
I tried a different way of bathing today. I used to put a small stool straddling the shower ledge and then took off the prosthesis. I then used a walker with a towel draped over it to get to the bathroom and sat on the stool. Today I kept the prosthesis on and just put the good leg in the shower. It felt more normal.
Bathing was one of my three tasks for today. Taking out the trash and going to the drug store for syringes rounds out the trio. I plan to combine them after my hair drys. It’s in the low 40s out there and I haven’t used a hair dryer since 2005,
I spent the first part of yesterday afternoon watching UH try to play football against Southern Mississippi. It was sad to watch. Receivers were in the clear and dropping passes. Their guy Langley had a great day. He was catching long passes, making long runs from scrimmage, and returning punts for lots of yardage. He even had 2 touchdowns.
The Coogs lost by 4 touchdowns. At least they won’t embarass themselves at a major bowl.
The rest of the afternoon was spent reading long Wikipedia articles about Prince, Duran Duran, and Genesis for Playback that night. When I studied for Playback before I just looked at the songs and albums of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That didn’t turn out too well so this time I read the entire article for each band, Unfortunately this time I should have gone the album/song route.
After a lousy game of music trivia, the sports bar put on a pay-per-view fight. I’ll stay within the title and save my opinion on boxing for another day.
I spent most of my work time exploring VBA class types. All I’ve found on the web is examples that look like they don’t do anything. It’s a lot like the beginning of my Thinking in Java book.
Yesterday my wife and I spent our mutual birthday with the Muppets, my family, and bar patrons. I could have had a better time at all three.
The Muppets movie had really stupid original songs and had a sad understory of past youth. We saw it at the new Sundance theatre downtown. I paid $9 to see a PG movie on my 52nd birthday. I remember paying the same amount in my 20s to see a porn double feature.
The family visit did not get off to a good start. I had forgotten which freeway to get to my brother’s house.
We saw all the improvements he had made and caught up on stuff since my nephew’s wedding. Mainly that I was walking again.
It was all pretty good until my nieces, nephews, and kids started coming in. I didn’t know the kid’s names and barely recognized my nieces and nephews.
Instead of being happy I’m walking again they quizzed me about not being computer certified and jobless. The food was great. They started dinner an hour late so we missed the main trivia game of the night.
We got to the bar where we met and nobody we knew was there. Their internet was flaky so I couldn’t use my iPad. I had to go through 3 game boxes before I found 2 that were good. Nobody we knew came in by 10 so we went home.
I did not find the day satisfying.
Worked on sorting a directory with php. I found a script that I could get to work but it didn’t show all the entries.
I poured some water in the Camry today. A few months ago we stopped driving it because it was overheating on the way home. Now that I’m able to walk funny without a stick I’m increasing my job hunt. That should lead to interviews in which I will want to drive my self.
It didn’t start so I will either have to jump it off the Focus or call AAA to give me a jump.
Java came up on the task picker spreadsheet today. I’m learning from Thinking In Java. I’m 4oo pages into the book and I have yet to read or write to a file. I suppose I could think in Java if I didn’t have to deal with the real world.
Most of the book seem to try to convert C programmers. If you are new to the world of object-oriented programming it’s like learning to swim in the area of the pool where you have to stand on your toes to keep your head above water.
For the last few sessions I’ve been working on the section covering interfaces and inner classes. I found a zip file of the code examples in the book. The fun part is it’s not the exact code from the edition I have. Still. it’s better than typing since the laptop in my room doesn’t have the key to the letter t. Thankbbs to the cats all I have is the rubber stem. I keep meaning to get some glue.
Java is hard going but I had messed with C before so I can deal with the similarities. All the OO languages(C++,C#, Python, javascript) look pretty much the same.