Bird is the Word

Quick post before I forget this: the origin of the middle finger gesture. Is it true? I sort of doubt it. But it's semi-plausible, right?

Guess who's coming to breakfast

At the request of an anonymous reader, I am finally updating. ;) Actually, I just started feeling a little too lazy for even my own comfort, and decided it's time to put something here. Okay:

Lisbeth is back in town. Well, not at the moment, actually, she is in Kansas City tonight for an education conference. In fact, she's presenting on the educational use of blogs. She was on the news not too long ago being interviewed about her blogging, (the clip is available in .wmv format on her family blog,) and the footage is being used in the presentation (to her great dismay, as expressed to me yesterday, primarily because I taped, ripped, and posted the video, so it really is my fault this is happening. ;) I even put it on DVD for any members of her family who can't view the .wmv for whatever reason.)

But she's back from San Francisco, she returned to KCI a week ago last night. A week ago this morning, I went to her parents' house to meet the family and eat breakfast. To meet most of the family, anyway: the middle sister, Lindsay, couldn't be there. But I met her parents, David and Susan, her youngest sister, Annalise, and Grandpa Virgil. They were all great, very friendly people who made me feel at home with them, even during the four hours or so during which I tried to destroy their computer. David had asked about trying Linux, so I attempted to set up a dual-boot system for them. I've done this a few times before with fairly positive results. This time...dear God, this time I used...I used the HP recovery program. It's shameful to me to confess this. I've never used such a thing, and I hope never to again. It actually kicked in automatically, after I screwed a Debian install, a Fedora Core 3 install, and had just completed what appeared to be a successful RedHat 9 install. It wiped out what remained of Linux (or at least of LILO) and in the end there was once again a working XP machine, which I was starting to believe we wouldn't again see that evening. So in the end their PC was okay despite my efforts, and through it all they were very cool. It wasn't all failed attempts at computer butchery, we also had fun of the variety that didn't make me all sweaty and apologetic. We ate some great food. David makes killer biscuits, and Susan's roast beef is amazing. And the chocolate mushrooms weren't exactly hand-made, but they were very good. (Thanks, Lisbeth! [She brought them back from CA for me.])

So we came back to our respective homes and have more or less resumed our normal lives. I had a workshop yesterday in my fiction writing class. The story went over pretty well, but I was amazed to learn how much I had left out, and basically everyone noticed, because the parts I left out were pretty important to the story arc. Could have sworn I'd put most of those details in somewhere. Now I know that I should probably read my own stories before I give copies to the class. I've gone back through the story, and the missing elements truly are missing. It's no big deal, though, because I have until next week for the final draft, and I know now what is missing.

On a side note, I like tv, and I don't like having to remember to set my vcr, so I love bittorrent.

By the way, if you saw the comments on my last post, did any of you actually google Amanda Monti? I uttered a genuine gasp. I have nothing else to say on the subject.

Home Alone

This is going to be a short post, I just want to complain for a bit. I miss Lisbeth. I miss her alot. I just got off the phone with her, and I actually miss her more now that we've talked. Makes no sense. I can't wait until she gets back. I've tried the whole time she's been gone not to moan about it, and I thought I was going to make it, but I won't see her until Wednesday and I'm publicly whining on Sunday. Pitiful, isn't it?

Life, the Universe, and Everything (but not in that order.)

I forgot to mention before I left for the reading on of the best things I heard today. Scientists in New York may have created a black hole. In New York. Not out in space, where things can collapse into it. Though matter is falling into it. It's not as hazardous as I'm making it out to be, in fact the scientists don't believe it to be a threat at all. The idea is pretty cool, and I understand the desire to do something just for the sake of better understanding a phenomenon, so I'm not going to criticise them, especially since they apparently didn't intend to create a black hole, assuming that is what has actually happened. It could be some other occurence that exhibits black hole-like tendencies. In fact, it is possible that black holes do not exist, as they are still theory.

The reading was great. Ms. Nelson read an unpublished short story entitled Dick. Hopefully it will be published soon, I'd like to read it. It wasn't a particularly happy story, but I thoroughly enjoy her treatment of the differing psyches of her characters.

I was reading an article on the competition between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, and it mentioned something I don't recall hearing about before now: the Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD). I really like how this disc sounds. It is a little larger, physically, than a DVD (or Blu-Ray or HD-DVD,) but where DVD holds 4.43 gigs, Blu-Ray holds 25-50 gigs (more if 4 or 8 layer is achieved) and HD-DVD holds 30 gigs, HVD is a one terabyte disc. I can hardly fathom one terabyte of removable media. I don't have one TB of hard disk space. I have about 1/3 of that right now. I really hope this HVD format hits the market relatively quickly, not just for its direct effect of massive removable media, but because it will by necessity drive down further the costs of hard disks as well. And I can never have too much storage space.

I want to ride my bicycle

Okay, I'm a little more rested now (and past the excessive caffeine buzz from this morning--my second class met at the coffee shop across the street from campus,) and I still don't remember the point of my previous post. (Why did I just link to that--it's like two inches below this?) I do know, however, that it was not supposed to be anywhere near as whiny as it was. So Antonya Nelson came to my first class, and is giving a reading on campus in about 45 minutes. Her talk with my class was quite enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to the reading.

After waiting since the middle of December, I finally got my bike today. I'm super-stoked, and I already can't quite feel my legs, even though I brought it home at 6:00 this afternoon. Obviously, I haven't ridden in a while.

There's alot more, but I don't really have time to post it, I need to get to campus for the reading. I'm glad today has been so busy, because otherwise I would be very lonely right now (see previous post once again.) Fortunately, the next few days should be pretty busy for me, so maybe I won't have too much time to think about it.

Oh, but before I forget, I entered my first class to view a sea of green shirts.
"That's odd," thought I. I had forgotten it was St. Patrick's day, and worn a green shirt by accident, solely because as I was leaving my house, I noticed the shirt I was wearing smelled a bit off, as I had woken up with just enough time to brush my teeth and leave. It seems trivial now that I think about it, so nevermind.

Wake up, Bob

Long drives make me sleepy. Lisbeth left for San Francisco today, and the drive to KCI took 2 1/2 hours. Somehow, I managed to make the retuen trip take 5 hours. I made a couple of stops, and I guess they were longer than I thought. So I got home at 5:00pm, played with the dog for awhile, then about 6:30 I laid down for a nap. I set my alarm for 7:30, and apparently turned it off. It is now 1:30am, and I've been awake for an hour. I think when I started this post there was going to be a point, but I'm starting to get sleepy again, and I don't remember what it was.

Wild in the Streets

Sandy fancies herself a revolutionary of some sort. I received a call today from a number I didn't recognize. I don't typically answer if I don't know the number, but I did anyway.
"Hello," I said.
"Are you missing a couple of puppies?" the stranger answered.
Sandy spends most weekends with one of my brothers, John, and his wife, Maya. They live 15 or 20 minutes away, and they weren't home, and my puppy had led a jailbreak. She and her brother (John and Maya have the alpha male from the litter Sandy is from, his name is Samson,) had crawled under the fence. I know it was Sandy's idea, too, because Samson has never escaped the yard before, and Sandy has. I suppose I should have been mad at her, but I couldn't help being proud that no matter how many times we block her exits, she finds new ones. I did resist the urge to praise her for it, though.

Hello, Old Friend

It's amazing how quickly I forget some things. Like that I set up a blog. One post, then over a week of nothing. Fairly eventful week, though.

George Atkinson, the inventor of movie rental passed away this week. I have to wonder if he had any idea at the time how revolutionary his business plan was. It wasn't even his primary business, he sold video franchises out of his office bathroom, according to the NPR story. (I think that's what it said, I'd double check for myself, but the stream won't open for me right now because I'm posting this from a dial-up account. A 28.8kbps dial-up account. I'm at work, where there is no internet, and no computer, so I'm using a Pentium 1 laptop on a free Juno number.) $50 membership plus $10 per movie per day seems high by today's standards, but people jumped on it, proving to the movie industry that the vcr was not, in fact, the Boston Strangler.

Sandy decided this week that despite several weeks of evidence to the contrary, she is not yet house trained. She decided this several times.

I finally started understanding better this week some of what we're doing in my grammar class. We had a test on Friday, and I think I finally did okay this time. I still don't enjoy diagramming sentences, but I do know what a noun subject complement is now.

On a sad note, I found out today that one of the residents at one of the group homes at which I work is not in good health at all. We found out several months ago that he had MS, and now his health is rapidly declining. If I am told correctly, he won't be with us much longer. He really is a great young man. He made quite a few of my evenings much easier just by his presence. His housemates all love him dearly, and other residents from other homes in our program are also very fond of him. Here's hoping we can, if nothing else, at least help prepare his friends well. I'm told he is aware of his situation and is accepting it and dealing fairly well with it. His housemates (and he, and we staff) just watched another housemate go through this not so long ago, and it is certainly not easy for anyone involved.

Near the Beginning

I created this account three days ago, and I'm just now posting because I was anxious about how to start. I didn't want to do the typical (I assume) "So, first post...where to start," etc., etc. It seemed just as wrong, though, to just dive in with no exposition at all, nothing saying who I am. Oh well. I'm Seth, but if you're here you probably know that, and none of this is necessary. I'm dating an incredible young woman, she's intelligent, well read, skilled in web design, and is that most elusive breed for which so many young men like myself search fruitlessly, a nerd-girl. Yeah, that's right. We actually decided to start dating when I was installing Linux for her, because she decided she was tired of malware, and therefore of Windows. She had even researched in advance which distro she wanted, though it refused to run on her machine, and we had to switch. Twice. In the end, Fedora core 3 did the trick, and has continued to do so thus far, with the exception of Java, which I cannot seem to make functional under FC3 with Firefox 1.0. I'm using JRE 1.4.2, as per Mozilla's instructions, but it just isn't happening. (And yes, I know to make the symbolic link, and I did do that, and Firefox just wouldn't recognize it. I also tried a couple of older JREs, but they actually crashed Firefox, something I'm typically accustomed to only on my XP box, where Firefox crashes constantly if there are any extensions installed.)

I also have a puppy, Sandy, who's about 5 1/2 months, and was just vaccinated and fixed yesterday. It was pretty traumatic for her at the time, but she seems to be over it already, as she has resumed her destruction of my house, and the spreading of my bathroom trash throughout. She also had her nails trimmed, because she likes to touch people's faces and in doing so, scratches pretty badly. The trimming seems not to have helped much, but it's great to have her home again. The vet had me leave her overnight, and it felt pretty strange not having her trying to eat my socks while I read the news and do homework.

Okay, enough exposition now. This is about distractions and stuff, right? I got the new Jack Johnson album on Tuesday. No big surprises there, great music, subtlely high energy, I'm really diggin' it. Also picked up the new Open Hand a week or two ago. It's still growing on me. I do like it a lot, but I'm still enjoying the previous release a tad more. None the less a very good album. On the subject of music, does anyone (without looking it up) know who recorded the album for which this post is named? I'll give you some hints, their name is an oxymoron, and the album was released by Atco Records (a division of Atlantic Recordings) in 1969. I have no idea if it's available on CD, I only have a worn out old vinyl record of it.

This post is a lot longer than I intended, so I think I'm going to call it quits for now. BBL