March 2003 Archives

Eye for an Eye

This weekend, we were watching a TV show about the evolution of modern cosmetic companies. Don't ask me why. But it was funny how unsophisticated those 1950s commercials were about pointing out everything that can be wrong with your face and how such-and-such product could fix it to perfection. Not that it isn't ten times worse today, but the marketing companies have honed their techniques to a much finer point. And so they were pointing out the regular stuff like blemishes (zits), and dark bags under the eyes, and such, but then the lady mentions 'other facial flaws' as she points to that little crease that runs from the corner of your nose to the corner of your mouth. And I thought, 'what the heck?' that's like saying your nostril is a 'facial flaw'...well okay, in my case, that may be true. I'm not saying that I actually use my thumb to pick my nose, but uh... Well still, calling that smile crease a flaw is so silly.

Anyway, that got me to thinking about a meeting I had with a couple people the other day about scripting actions into a database they were setting up. And the gal who was asking most of the questions turned out to have a couple of big hairy stitches in her bottom lip. And that was THE very first thing I noticed when we all sat down. It was like she was tentatively chewing on a black widow spider and the front legs were the only thing sticking out. And my eyes just wouldn't stop flickering down to them. Now I don't know whether I just developed this visual fixation problem in the past few years, or whether I've always had it, and only recently noticed it, but anyway, when I'm talking to somebody that has some sort of strange blemish on their face, like a huge mole, or a festering zit, or a hair-lip, or an ulcerated cornea, or a lazy eye, or an incredibly floppy combover, etc. etc., I find that my eyes just reflexively flicker to whatever the incongruity is as I'm talking to them. It's like that little psychological trick, where somebody tells you not to think about a Polar Bear, and no matter what you do, that Polar Bear is just popping up in your mind left and right, it's sitting on a bar stool, it's eating rice crispy treats, it's driving a car, it's wearing your underwear, etc., etc. Ah the uncontrollable mind.

I just felt so horrible the whole time we were talking, because I was concentrating so hard on NOT looking at it, but I...just...couldn't...stop...glancing...down. And I could tell she noticed my glances because she would bring her hand up and cover her mouth when she wasn't talking, or try to face the other way, or suck in her bottom lip--which must've hurt like the dickens. I don't know, I guess if I'm going to give somebody a complex, I prefer to do it on purpose. She probably went home an cried herself ta sleep on her wee medicated pillah.

Heh, Amanda and I were in the kitchen just now throwing some vittles on the stove, and Giselle just came up and asked what's for dinner. Amanda turned and said, "Tonight, it's the Shock and Awe dinner. You'll know it when you see it." bwahahahah. I love my family.

Vernal Equinox

This past weekend, I got off my dead butt, and went out into the brilliant sunlight illuminating my front yard. After much waffling, we've decided to keep the lawn one more year. Since the garage is going to absorb the majority of my outdoor escapades, I'm not going to have time to design & install a rockscape (yech) this season. So I did a nice scalping of the lawn and then rented a gimpy manual aerator and broke my back puncturing holes in the sublawn hardpan. It occurred to me later on, in a moment of lesser retardation, that somebody who knew what they were doing would have watered the lawn before rolling that contraption around. I might've only needed 50 lbs of weight on it instead of like 120. Well whatever. I topped it off by overseeding, scattering fertilizer, watering and hoping for the best. Oh boy, the crabgrass is going gangbusters in the flowerbeds too. I got about half of the marauders dug out. The rest have to wait for next weekend.

Beaten With An Ugly Stick

I really like the new U.S. Quarters. I'm not a systematic collector, but I can't help tossing each new state quarter I run across into a little stash I keep at my desk. Mississippi and Tennessee are my favorites so far, and Maryland wins the award for the most 'official' looking currency. But oh man, New Hampshire has the most butt ugly quarter design of the bunch.

(shameless scan of pocket contents)...

Yuck.

That little hummer is the first bit of change I dump into a vending machine, given the opportunity. I don't even like having it in my pocket. And sure, I don't know all the history and depth behind the "Old Man of the Mountain", but some things just aren't meant to be. Maybe it looked great in pen & ink, but that design just falls all apart on embossed metal. So I guess that's a big fat lesson to all the engraving artists in the rest of the states waiting their turn to get a quarter. Anthropomorphic rock globules stuck to the side of a disc like so much soiled laundry tumbling in the washer is bad news.

Tourette Syndrome

Well, I just embarrassed myself nearly to death.

I was just sitting here finishing up my lunch, when in a fit of carbonated disgorgement, I belched. A long, rackety, chunky sort of belch. And just as my epiglotis clicked shut, and I was feeling pretty satisfied, a nervous tingly feeling struck me, and I turned slowly to my right. Just across the hall from me, the conference room doors were wide open, the lights were turned down low, and a presentation was glowing on the slide screen. I believe I uttered a hasty "EXCUSE ME!" just as a silhouetted figure appeared and proceeded to shut the doors. As my head hit the desk, all the go-to-school-in-your-underwear dreams I ever had, flashed before me. Rob just shook his head--probably wondering how much of the blame he'd absorb for that.

The dynamics of this new space are confounding my bad habits. I really REALLY need to adapt.

They haven't adjourned the meeting yet. I'm not sure what to expect as people start filing out, staring in here. I printed out a sheet of paper with 'Sorry' on it and taped it next to our door...for whatever that's worth.

::shudder::

Life Signs

Being the geek that I am, I thought this was neat.

This is an AZ satellite image I pulled up a few minutes ago that really showed up all the jet contrails running across the clouds.

eeeeeeeeeee the chemtrails! the chemtrails!

Had to Be There

A doofy little Sonicª commercial just came on the radio advertising 'Pancake on a Stick!'
I must've heard that commercial like 20 times, and that's the first time I noticed the feature item. I was like, "What the? Pancake on a Stick?"...and then Rob starts in: "Yeah. Shows ya where people's heads are at I guess--Yeah, I don't have time to eat my pancakes with a fork for petessake." ::sudden breakdown of laughter:: "And I don't have time to put water in my Malt-o-Meal either!" ::sckkkrrrjjjjjj crunch crunch crunch:: ::more cackling:: "No wait! Fried egg on a stick! But how the heck do we get it to stay on there?" ::loss of bladder control::

Thank goodness for Rob and the radio. I was feeling major crabby all day.

Air Filters

I had Del Taco for lunch. I think I'm putting a serious hurting on Rob. He's great for understatement: "Okay bud, that'll be enough of that."

hahahah

Fortunately, I haven't smoked up the window too bad. Here's the snow, it's coming down pretty good...

Also, for posterity, my plants:

Let's see how good they look in another 3 or 4 weeks.

Class Distinctions

I am watching the cascading mist of snow outside my window. I am still having my window honeymoon, in case you didn't know. It will be a real bummer when they kick us out of these offices. I hate to be pessimistic, but I don't see how paeons like us can have it this good for too long.

Well, the latest news is that the kids apparently think I'm an unstoppable brownie-eating machine. I made some brownies a few nights ago, and I guess Giselle came up to Amanda and asked her to hide them from me before I ate them all. And I can just picture Harrison standing right there, "Yeah. Hide the brownies." Of course, I heard this all second-hand. I was probably occupied at the time, slumped in the living room easy chair, dark crumbles spilled down my shirt and chocolate smeared across my lips.

When in Rome?

Just got back from the john. And yeah, this is a new building to me and everything, but this was pretty strange. The available stall had a section of today's newspaper spread out right in front of the stool, like a big chatty welcome mat. And it just hit me strange. Is this the way they do things here? Gosh, it sure was in the perfect spot to just hunch right down and read while easing nature, but it just didn't seem right. And sure I could just leave it there, maybe read some boring city council news, but then the next person who walked in would see my shoes, and the paper all spread out and think 'jeez, make yourself at home why dontcha'. So I gingerly picked it up, folded it, and hung it like a towel from the handicap rail. Icky. I don't like manipulating items fresh off a public restroom floor, but I felt compelled.

Heh, that stall had a little label inside the door that said "Restroom uses low-flow plumbing. You may need to flush twice." and handwritten underneath in blue ink it said 'Jason, this means you." Hahah. I love that stuff. Somebody took it down a couple days ago. :-/

I bought some plants for the office yesterday. How long till I kill them, I keep asking myself.

Barbecued Declensions

Somebody is printing CD-Labels on my precious transparency stock. So many laserprinters, so many manual feed trays. It's hard to sort it all out. I can be a decent person sometimes. So I yanked out the transparencies, hunted down some CD labels and dropped them in. Now the CD labels are jamming. For whatever reason, the stock is rotated 180¡ every few sheets. Our little 9-year-old printer doesn't like surprises. It's like a game show, man. "Surprise Jam Round Mr. Perez!" "Come on! Big Prints! No Jammies!"

I was here until 10:30 last night trying to change "material" to "membrane" in 12 languages, in 30 places per language. I had other translated booklets to work with. And I've made simple trademark deletions/additions in the languages before. But you know what I learned? I can't do this, that's what I learned. The Finnish people, bless their hearts, conjugate their nouns. In a mysterious jumble of ways. Oh, it's not so clear as subject, object, indirect object. No sir. That noun will change endings depending on whether the sentence indicates that particular item has the potential to be tickled by fingers or feathers or painted with tempura egg paste. I have no idea. Ukrainian does that too. Oh and "material" is masculine while "membrane" is feminine in about 7 of those languages. I was this close to hammering out the Greek articles and adjectives to match, but I finally had to go outside and break cinder blocks with my bare head to clear my mind. By the time I got to Spanish, I felt like I was reading English. But it was too late. All I could do at that point was mark up all the crap that the TRANSLATION COMPANY is going to have to fix. Ahh, sweet failure. But sheesh: eets no my yob, maing!

Depreciation

oh man, I'm trying to improve my mood. I was up until 3 am working on one of those freelance projects. A big old 8 foot wide sign with a colorized architectural elevation on it. The rendering came from a CAD file, which meant when I converted it to an Illustrator EPS, it had a bazillion line segments, none of which were connected at logical points. What a mess. Colorizing it in Photoshop got really ugly around midnight when the file ballooned to 500 Mb and every edit was followed by a lengthy pause and panicky racket of hard drive activity. Man. My G4 was such a quick beast 2 years ago. And now, as I abuse it with files as big as a 1996 hard drive, its liver spots and osteitic hip joints start to manifest themselves. Argh.

::makes caffeine run::

Land Shark

An Outback Steakhouse commercial just came on the radio. Rob and I got to laughing about eating Koalas. And why should that be such a repulsive thought? Oh suuuure, they look all soft and cuddly. But shave off all that hair, and you've got yourselve a blackeyed, cranky, dagger-clawed, tree-devil. You've seen the talons on those suckers, right? We couldn't help turning Aussie* for a couple minutes:

Why, ets no worse thun aytin shahk!
Ohr a nahstey ol croc!
Yeeah, theh'r nuthun but buggahd tree crocs!
Rahyt! Jast tayk a big bayt outta theyah backsayd 'for thay get theh'r claws in ya.

*Rob's an Aussie, and I got his nod of approval, thankyouverymuch.

Data

hm'kay

I did a little check of the search referrals to the site just now. As usual, the number one search string for visitors was . Bah. Make one offhanded smartallecky comment in a rant, and you're branded for good. :P

Anyway, there were some interesting search referrals this time around:
1. "Jeremy Amanda Mission" {hmmmm}
2. "Kentucky cel phone school plan" {no}
3. "to be happy over others' misfortunes" {um...my site turned out to be number one on google for that phrase :-o }
4. "How to I fix busted Shins" {and I can't stop laughing about that one}

I Need My Own Digital Camera

Okay. I took a couple pictures:

The new office.

Rob sits behind me. He is very neat and tidy. I give it 2 months before he strings barbed wire to keep my crap off his side of the room.

View out the window

Bird Watching

Okay.

That token post was pretty painless.

See, the thing is I feel I need to make a big production out of each post. And I have all these journal entries outlined in my mind, but some require digital pictures, or screen captures, or a little touch of research, or an elusive punch line, etc. So I put them off. Then I never do them. So ptooey. I need to loosen up.

My new office has a window. A WINDOW! I think resentments may develop in our new building as the windowless folk pass by our newly claimed rooms. We're all trying to be gracious with our new neighbors. Hopefully that will help, because, as we all know, me + confrontation = panic sleep, and work just doesn't get done that way.

Man I've got a window!

Delivery trucks
Strafe the dappled parking lot
Testing reflexes

Token Post

Ah um. Yeah.

Sorry about post vacancies lately.

1. Freelance projects up the wazoo. Yikes. The crick was dry as a bone for months, and then allofasudden, wammo, the jobs came flying in last month. I might be able to afford to build the garage now.
2. Moved to a new office at work last week w/ ensuing overtime.
3. Kids contracting a new cold virus like every 2 weeks. Am considering a makeshift Lysol nasal drip IV for everyone.
4. Catching up on healthcare tabulations for 2002 taxes. Bleah.

Okay. Gotta go.