You Can Bill Me

This may be the only time I would ever want to get my cable bill.

I need it so I can sign up for some rebates associated with my still-new broadband service.

Tongue Action

I must have bitten the side of my tongue a few days ago, as I am wont to do from time to time.

This is causing me to talk funny.

Also, it hurts. A lot.

A previous girlfriend used to like biting on my tongue.

Actually, it was more like biting and scraping, like a biological tongue scraper.

I quickly put a halt to that practice.

Almost...

Until just now, there was a better than average chance that I would have tried to go vote tomorrow morning.

Election Day is next Tuesday.

Those Who Will Not Hear

When destroying a pair of mostly-broken headphones in a fit of pique, it is prudent to ensure that you have a replacement pair on-hand first.

Stolen airline headphones with a 2.5 foot long cord don't count.

The headphones for the iPod shuffle which you (hopefully) left at home also don't count.

Subjectivity

When sending a mass e-mail that's already going to look a lot like spam because it has embedded URLs and a lot of people BCCed, it would help to include a subject line.

Photos of People I Like (or Photos I Like of People)

I was going through some of my albums (both online and not), and I put together an album of photos of people I like (or in some cases, photos I like of people).

The photos go back a couple of years (ignore the dates in the gallery, they're off). They're minimally processed, except for a few cases where I had to take out really bad redeye or forked tails.

There are also a few that I wanted to see in black and white; they're paired with their colored counterparts.

Free Digital Camera?

This is DHL's idea of a front porch delivery:



Inside was my new, yet already obsolete Canon SD200 3.2 megapixel Digital Elph.

I needed a new point and shoot to replace my S200, which has been giving me trouble with weird shutter lag, among other things. It's a cool camera, though.

The new one is teeny, with a bigger screen (that's apparently prone to cracking, though).

It got it for about the same price as I got the other one, just over $200, including a 1 gig SD card (yay, another new format), delivery pending.

I Think I Have a Squirrel

For the past couple of days, I've been awoken at 8am to noises coming from sorta outside.

It's like a scrabbling alarm clock.

If I had to guess, I would say that a squirrel or other rodent has gotten into my attic and hangs out by my soffet vents (where the eaves are).

Why 8am?

My thermostat is programmed to turn on the heat pump at 8am, to warm up my morning, so I think the noise or something related is disturbing the squirrel.

I took a half-hearted look this morning, dragging a ladder to the attic hatch and sticking my head through with one of my many flashlights (the 5-star (out of 5) rated 4AA Streamlight ProPolymer Luxeon, a very nice light for only $23 plus shipping), all the while thinking of that scene from Aliens when Hicks sticks his head up through the dropped ceiling and sees a horde of aliens crawling towards him.

Anyway, I think I will be hiring a professional to capture the intruder.

Why?

Perhaps you are not familiar with the Squirrel Cop story (Act Two) as heard on PRI's This American Life.

Even When The Left Hand Knows What the Right Is Doing

I went to the kitchenette this morning, with a bowl of uncooked grits in my left hand and my coffee mug in my right.

The coffee mug had some leftover water in it, so I moved to the sink and dumped it in.

However, in a sympathetic reaction, I also dumped the uncooked grits into the sink.

Breaking the Curse of the Cowboy Boots

I went out last night, even though I didn't really want to.

Wednesday is my usual Galaxy Hut night, but it was another late night at the office and I just wanted to go home.

But, I was wearing my cowboy boots.

They're not that cheesy; just basic black, with some dark blue arrows/devil tails.

Anyway, for some reason, they've been kind of a jinx: Whenever I wore them, I ended up not going out after work, even if I wanted to.

So, I went out just to break the curse.

Now, I'm not that superstitious...about the only thing I won't do is listen to The Donnas' Turn 21 in the car, because that's what I was listening to when I got my reckless driving ticket.

(Had I not mentioned that? It was about 2 years ago. I had a good lawyer, which is a good thing, because in Virginia, going 20 over the speed limit can be considered reckless driving, which is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.)

Where was I? Oh, so Galaxy Hut was okay. I always feel old in that place, though; I don't dress hipster (I don't have very much in my wardrobe that's ironic), and my 80s clothes don't fit any more.

Yes, I Managed to Lose My Keys (Digital Edition)

For some time, I've been unable to use my Mac to access some share drives at my place of employment.

So, whenever I needed to transfer files, I had to sneakernet them (albeit with a USB flash drive -- no walking involved).

I just had a big DUH moment.

I realized that I'd never updated the network passwords in Apple's somewhat easy-to-forget-about Keychain Access Utility.

I feel pretty dumb now.

Bowling Thing I Forgot to Mention

From yesterday -- while I had a crappy series, this guy Chris (I know him by e-mail) bowled a perfect game, 300.

That's 12 strikes in a row.

It was pretty cool.

Well, That Bites

Our second-round kickall playoff game got rained out today. (Shocking!)

Not only that, but the games aren't going to be rescheduled. It's End of Season, and the team who we were supposed to play, Kick Asphaults, will be going on to regionals.

Now, granted, they're undefeated, have the largest run differential in the league, beat us pretty bad the first time around AND have won the Founder's Cup, like, 40 years running, but still.

Bowled Over

Tonight was bowling league night. It was my first time since last season (I missed last week because I was traveling).

My back still hurts, so perhaps it wasn't the best thing to be swinging a bowling ball around (even an 11-pounder). Anyway, that's my prefabricated excuse for getting a 79 the first game.

I did better the second two games (140 and 144).

I could say it was my sneaky attempt to lowball my handicap, but I would be lying.

Actually, I Think They're Mouth Breathers

Looking at this Fark thread, which is purportedly a "lateral thinking puzzle" but is really just...well, dumb, a significant portion of folks still think that people (skydivers, in this case) can breathe through their skin.

Their source isn't the usual Goldfinger, but a section of the rec.skydiving FAQ.

Reading said section proves that the pro-skin breather community is not only misinformed and dumb, but humor-impaired as well.

Camera Shy

If one is going to install digital camera importing software on the laptop one brings home, with the intention of downloading images off said camera, one should endeavor to remember to have the proprietary connector cord at the same time.

Bright Light, Dim Bulb

I discovered on Friday that my front left headlamp had burned out.

I could have sworn I'd changed it less than a year ago.

Anyway, I went and got a 2-pack of replacement headlamps (since it's cheaper and where one has gone, so will the other).

Of course, I had waited until night, though it had at least stopped raining.

It gave me a chance to try out my new River Rock 2AAA LED headlamp, a pretty neat, cheap and good headlamp available for $14.99 at Target (check out the review - 4 of 5 stars)

Since I've done it before, knew what to expect: a half hour bent over the engine (just stop that right now), contorted around the coolant reservoir and tearing up my knuckles trying to get the retaining clip back on.

I pulled out the old bulb (which was very burnt out) and put the new one in.

Surprisingly, the retaining clip went on easily. Too easily, as I should have realized immediately.

I then went to plug the wires back in, which is usually easy. Instead, I wrestled with it for about 15 minutes, with no luck.

I then took another look, and realized why the retaining clip had gone on so easily.

The bulb fits into a base attachment, which then is clipped in to the headlamp as a unit; the wires attach to the base.

I had neglected to take the base off the old bulb, which is why the clip went in easy, but the wires didn't.

It took about 10 more minutes, but I finally got the bulb changed.

As Easy as Falling Off a Chair

Troy and Monica had a Halloween party on Saturday.

It was a pretty good party.

Towards the end of the night, I was sitting down.

On a chair.

Suddenly, I wasn't sitting on the chair any more.

Woke me up pretty good.

On an unrelated note, flight suits have a lot of pockets, but most of them are unsuitable for everyday use.

Boxed Out

There's a heavy bag in the gym at work. I've been meaning to get a pair of bag gloves for a while.

I went to Sports Authority; they were having a sale, plus I have a gift card that I need to redeem.

I got the gloves -- they're the Youth model, but I have small hands and very little pride when it comes to these sorts of things, especially since One Size Fits All rarely does.

I also got a pair of handwraps, though figuring out how to tie them is going to be an entirely different matter.

I also completely forgot about using the gift card.

Kludged Search

Okey, so I never heard back from a human at Blogger about my search bar problem, so in my ham-handed, knows-just-enough-to-get-into-trouble way, I manually fixed the Blogger navbar code, and pasted it into the template. So the search works now, and as a bonus, if I want to strip out the other functionality, I can do that pretty easily.

We'll have to see about that.

Search Me

Hrm.

I added the Blogger Navbar to this here blog, so I could have the search. You know, for kids.

For some reason, though, it's searching on blogurl:www.joelogon.comblog/

I'm not sure what a comblog is, but I don't think this is one.

Socks and Ribs

First round of kickball playoffs was last night. We won pretty handily, 15-0 or so. The game ended after the 4th inning on account of time (though the following game ended up as a forfeit because one of the teams, Simply Wireless, simply failed to show up.)

I can't complain about my own performance; went 2-for-2 (scoring twice) and didn't mess up in the field.

Also, I had to slide into second, and my long socks saved me from yet another raspberry on my left leg (well, the long socks and the existing scar tissue).

There were some wacky plays, too, including one where Heather D., running from second, made it to third and then used her ninja stealth moves to sneak behind the third baseman and score.

There was more wackiness at the hot corner as well; I was coaching third on another play and held John (I think it was John) at third base...except Bryan (I think it was Bryan), who was on second, decided to keep heading to third.

Somehow, in the ensuing confusion, the ball went wild into to the sideline, and both of them scored.

Afterwards, a few of us played a pickup game with team Last Call, the team that won because the other team failed to show up.

We were messing around; on my up, I booted it, and got to second, then not for nothing made an attempt to stretch it to third. I quickly determined that, even for a scrimmage, it was a Bad Idea, so I turned tail back for second.

I was dead meat, so I ended up diving for second. Got pegged by the ball for my trouble, plus landed pretty hard on my right side, so my ribs are pretty sore right now.

Blogging Is Gay?

I was up in NYC yesterday and today for the BlogOn 2005 Social Media Summit.

Last night, there was an afterparty at Lolita's on the LES (that's "Lower East Side" for the you provincials.)

I took the M5 bus down to Houston -- the Metrocard reader was broken, so it was a free ride. (Score! Then again, it was a legitimate business expense, so it would have been paid for anyway. Boo.)

I walked down Allen the rest of the way.

I guess I should clarify that Allen is a street.

I was disturbed to see a Starbucks on the corner of Delancey and Allen.

I'm hanging out at the bar, talking with some folks. I talk to a group of appropriately LES-looking natives, and one of them asked me what was going on.

Blogging conference, I said.

Oh, he said. I thought it was some sort of gay thing.

To be fair, there was an abundance of well-dressed men at the bar on a Monday night. And no Monday Night Football on the non-existant TV.

Maybe it's true that women bloggers are underrepresented at these sorts of things.

Anecdotal evidence supports it.

As chance would have it, there was at least one native blogger at the bar.




This is a Technorati tag: BlogOn2005

More Than You Needed to Know

Went to the gym tonight.

Unfortunately, my compression shorts didn't make it into my gym bag.

Plus, I seem to have lost yet another water bottle.

Anyway, I did my workout wearing my underwear, then showered and went home... commando.

Now, a commando workout sounds like it should be off one of those "Fitness Secrets of the Navy SEALs" videos, it's probably not a good idea, as it would inconsiderate to the other exercisers.

Not to mention immodest.

Those Drinks'll Cost Ya

So there I was at the Liz Phair show at the 9:30 Club. I was up right by the speakers at the left side of the stage, which is not something I recommend unless you're wearing earplugs. Which I was.

(And not just any earplugs: This was the first time I tried my new Etymotic Research ER-20 High-Fidelity Earplugs, which are supposed to cut the decibel level without muffling or distorting the sound. They worked pretty well -- they'd better, at 7 bucks a pop.)

Anyway, there were these two girls in front of me. They were joined by a guy who brought them drinks. I'm not sure if he'd known them from before or just met them.

All of a sudden, one of the bouncers, who'd been up posted to watch the stage door, comes over and asks the girls for ID.

It was then that I noticed that they didn't have hand stamps. The 9:30 Club is all ages, but you need a hand stamp to drink.

Keep in mind, that the stamp instantly turns into an amorphous black smear the second it hits your hand, so it's not like it's an insurmountable barrier to underage drinking.

I was reminded of my long-distant college days, when we would get into frat keg parties, then find an appropriately colored dry erase marker off one of the ubiquitous door message boards and draw the incredibly-hard-to-forge hand stamp (usually the Greek letters of the frat house we were in) ourselves.

Anyway, the girls didn't have ID, so they were asked to leave.

The gentleman who brought the drinks was also asked to leave.

Since I didn't know them, it was amusing to me, particularly since it was so avoidable.

Also, my sight line was much improved after they were gone.

Napkin Entry the Next: Hair Protocol

9:35pm, backbar, continued

I'm not positive, but I think I'm already well past my "Three ma'ams and a haircut" rule, which states that after being mistaken for a female three times, it's time to go get a haircut.

Let's see:

#1. Fellow at the bar last Friday.
#2. Cashier at the Trader Joe's checkout line on Sunday.
#3. Cafeteria orker behind the counter on Tuesday.

Yeah, that's three.

Be that as it may, though, I'm letting my hair grow and leaving my luxurious tresses, so fuck it.

Napkin Entry: Upstood Citizen

(Part of an occasional series of blog entries written on napkins and transcribed.)

10/12 - 9:25pm, Backbar (basement of the 9:30 Club)

Went to the 9:30 Club to see Liz Phair, as previously threatened.

Things being what they are and me being who I am, I bought a ticket when I was at the Mike Doughty show and planned on going by myself.

Events intervened, and for a two day period, I was under the impression that I would be going with someone. As in, like, a date.

I was pretty sure it wasn't going to sell out, but to avoid any unnecessary drama and suspense, I bought a ticket online, which added $8.75 in service fees on top of a $25 ticket.

Tuesday comes around, so I call and leave a message to figure out details (or "coordinate logistics", as I actually said in a previous conversation over drinks. I was still in work mode).

Don't hear back right away, but I'm not concerned.

Call Wednesday, leave a message. Get a call back..."Sorry, I can't make it...I sent you text message earlier."

I don't do text messages. At least, not right now, on the ghetto phone with the broken antenna glued-in battery.

Anyway, to make an unnecessarily long story medium-sized, I go, unload the ticket for $20, eating the rest.

This is why I buy single tickets to shows.

Don't be That Guy.

It Was Inevitable

The day I take delivery of a 250GB Western Digital USB 2.0/FireWire external drive ($165 + shipping after rebate), Buy.com has a 320GB Ion drive of similar specs for $164 shipped.

Should I return the WD and get the Ion? Get both? Neither?

Don't Shop While Hungry

There is a reason why there is a truism that says "Don't shop when you're hungry."

Normally (say in a typical supermarket), hunger doesn't affect what I buy (at least in any substantial way).

However, Trader Joe's is a different matter, especially since they don't do sales or specials, and they have so many small and tasty selections.

Liz Phair Is a Time Traveler. And She Wants Me

I've been listening to Liz Phair's 'Exile in Guyville,' which (as previously mentioned) I bought in preparation for my upcoming VH-1 reality series, (10 Years) Behind the Music.

After careful analysis of the lyrics, I'm now convinced that Liz Phair wrote "Flower" about me.

This implies that she is
A). Capable of traveling through time (or at least able to transmit information to her 1993-self.)
B.) Infatuated (perhaps even in love) with me

In the song, she is rhapsodizing about the object (unnamed) of her infatuation. Let's analyze the relevant lyrics:

Hair's too long and in your eyes (most definitely - I easily could do one of those stupid early-90s short ponytails/topknots if I so desired.)
Your lips a perfect suck-me size (debateable)
You act like you're 14 years old. (yup)
Everything you say is so
obnoxious (usually)
funny (nearly always)
true (mostly)
and mean (occasionally)
I want to be your blowjob queen (undetermined)
You're probably shy and introspective (definitely)

Et cetera.

Don't worry Liz, if you're super lucky, I'll be at your show at the 9:30 Club in next week.

Flotation Device

Floatation is an acceptable variant of flotation, my words to the flight attendant notwithstanding.

Drinking and Drugging for Science

Here are the some of the headlines from the 1/6th page ads on page 111 of the print version of the Baltimore City Paper (which I picked up at the previously-referenced festival):

Have you used Crystal Meth?

Alcohol and Sedative Users Needed

Have You Used Club Drugs?

Drink Alcohol?

Addicted to Narcotics?

4 of the 5 were for Johns Hopkins-affiliated studies.

The other (the alcohol-only study) was for NIH.

Guess we know who parties harder.

Pre-Moistened Workout Gear

I had a great idea today at the gym: Why not sell pre-moistened workout clothes? They could come in sealed plastic bags, and it would help out with evaporative cooling and...

Oh, wait. Apparently I didn't properly tighten the cap on my water bottle on Saturday.

That explains why my gym clothes stank even before my workout.

Dumb Things From Baltimore

Went up to Bawlmer today, mostly for the Fell's Point Festival (a group of us went two years ago, but didn't see much more than the beer garden), and also to stop by Atomic Books (which I haven't been to in a few years, since it moved).

I got off to a late start, which wasn't helped when I left the house without my keys and locked myself out.

Darn.

Fortunately, I had my wallet, so I was able to use my Wegmans card to jimmy the lock.

Unfortunately, I broke my Wegmans card doing it.

Getting to Bawlmer was fairly uneventful. Really nice day, too.

Picked up a Shifty doll (one of the Happy Tree Friends) for ten bucks, among other things.

Then headed over to the festival. Parked over by Patterson Park, which is one of the few areas of Baltimore I know fairly well, due to having been to the Kinetic Sculpture Race for a couple of years.

The festival was nice. I hope the pictures will be interesting.

Oh, and I also stopped by the Sound Garden and dropped 50 bucks on used CDs and DVDs.

Coming back, I was driving back on Fleet Street. Saw a woman helping guiding her fella out of tight parallel parking space, which was nice.

Of course, while she was doing this, she was standing between the back bumper of his car and the front bumper of the car behind her, which was exceptionally stupid, unless she was trying to flatten her thighs.

Later on, on 95 South, traffic was kind of slow leading up to the 495 interchange, probably due in some part to extra beltway traffic from the [Washington football team with the racially-insensitive name] game.

I was in the 2nd from left lane, and I needed to get over one more to get on the Outer Loop (it took me a couple of years from when I first moved down hear to figure out what they meant and which way the loops went. Outer = Counterclockwise). Traffic was slow, but it had started to move more freely in the far left lane.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but from what I heard and saw later in the rearview mirror, I think someone behind me tried to pull out from the line headed to the Outer Loop, and got clipped by a black pickup truck; I heard a plasticky-crunch and car pieces went flying by. I looked in the rear-view and saw a sedan askew across two lanes.

I'm not sure if the pickup truck stopped; I heard a traffic report on the radio later on of a single-car accident.

I would have stopped, but I wasn't involved, was already well past and the Beltway isn't exactly the best place to pull over.

Who Watches the Watchers?

A photo I used for an entry about burning my arm on an oven rack last year was used as raw material for an entry in a Fark photoshop contest on "When art and reality collide...":

Note the burn mark.

The entry took third. I believe it was due to the quality of the source material.

Hrm, apparently, this new template does not like photos larger than 400 pixels wide.