Reaching Peak Deja Vu

For the past couple of weeks, I've had thoughts, that I think I've had. Tying into song lyrics. It's not something unusual, except for the things I've seen. I know, from an intellectual standpoint, that it's not something unexpected. The brain, and its perceptions, and how it perceives itself, is a strange thing. The strange thing, I know, is that the shape of things is weird. It ties into the cadence of things. The cadence of the flow. The thoughts that remind me of things. Of "Jetsons" quotes. The particular cadence of things. "It's later than I thought... it's later than I thought." I should probably stop here now. I've been drinking. And if everything is predetermined, that there's no point in things. But still... it's like "Punch-Out": Come on, stand up and fight. This post is subject to a disclaimer. And I have no illusion that I know what happens next.

On Turning 40 and Adjusting My Goals Downward

I turn 40 next Monday, and my still-somewhat-misnamed Actual 40th Birthday Commemoration is this Saturday (March 24, 9pm, Jimmy's Old Town Tavern in Herndon if you're interested).

Two weeks ago, I had in mind the goal of getting down from my current weight (about 142), to my driver's license weight (well, the weight that I was when I last renewed my license, 5 years ago), which was about 130... by my birthday.

The problem with that was, I'd last been on a weight gain workout cycle, followed by three months of not going to the gym.

Also, there was St. Patrick's Day. And after a week of fairly rigorous exercise and slightly careful eating, I dropped a whole half-pound. So that ended fairly quickly.

Of course, I may simply be replacing fat with muscle (my belt feels like it's slightly looser so far).

Up until this point, I've always been a hard gainer -- even up until fairly recently, I'd skip a lunch or two and lose a pound of real weight.

Anyway, my revised fitness goal is to not worry about it until later.

Bisnow's Single's Schmooze: Two Hours of

Bisnow's Singles Schmooze is Tuesday night. Billing itself as "Two hours of Cocktails, Hors D'Oeuvres & DC's Most-Eligible Professionals," I haven't been and don't plan to.

Here's the event invitation email, presented with an unfortunate truncation, a big red box, and no further comment:

I can't attest to the accuracy of either the tagline or the subject line. Register now.

The Dorkiest Thing I Did Today

...was install an Aliens-style Sentry Gun control interface program on my laptop, after reading about it online.

In order to do that, I first to install two separate programs -- an Amiga emulator (E-UAE), and a configuration editor (Hi-Toro) -- on my MacBook.

Anyway, it works (although the graphics get a little jittery when the program is running):

I still have to fiddle with the config to see if I can get the fluttering to stop.

When You Go to Electric Sunday, Go Early

On Sunday, I went to Electric Sunday, Fairfax County's monthly free electronics recycling day.

I was getting rid of a dead DVD player, an old CRT monitor, a few old cell phones and a bag full of peripherals (including my old SupraFax 28.8K modem).

Electric Sunday runs from 10am-3pm, usually at at the I-66 Transfer Station on West Ox Road in Fairfax. I got a late start, leaving around 2pm and getting there about 2:20pm.

There was a pretty substantial line on West Ox, taking up the turn lanes from either direction. And once you got inside, there was a Disney-esque switchback, which I hadn't encountered before.

The crowd was probably heavier because this was the first Electric Sunday since Christmas, with a lot of newly replaced TVs and computers.

I got through after about 20 minutes waiting and reading the paper. As I was leaving, I took a picture of the line to get in, just about 3pm:

I may have to go again next month. (I think I have an old mercury thermostat that needs to go into hazardous waste recycling, plus a few other things.) In which case, I'll try harder to get there early.

Exclusive: An Insider's Look at the FDA's Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) Meeting

Starting Wednesday, January 18, 2012, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee is having three days of meetings to discuss issues and recent findings around dissolvable tobacco products (which include items like tobacco orbs [similar to a breath mint], strips [similar to a breath freshening strip] and sticks [similar to a... well, it's a toothpick])

Here's info from RJ Reynolds tobacco on its dissolvable tobacco products, via Wikipedia (which as you might recall, is going dark for a day on January 18):

Click the image to enlarge.

The meetings will be webcast, and you can find the full details about the meeting, background materials, and webcast information at the TPSAC meeting announcement page.

An Insider's Look at the Meeting

Through a combination of tradecraft, persuasion and other techniques, and at great personal and professional risk, I've been able to obtain an exclusive video showing footage from the FDA's preparatory sessions:

It should be an interesting meeting.