Waking up

Waking in the middle of the night to find a warm black fuzzy drooling purring cat nestled in my armpit was both disorienting and comforting. • 6:31 AM 1 comments

Bus stories

A week ago I was a minute late for the bus, but as I approached the stop, from the front of the bus, in clear view of the driver, I could tell that he was waiting at the stop for a minute. I started to run to catch him before he pulled away. But he pulled away, drove right past me, and turned the corner and just kept going.

The older couple who get on that same bus with me everyday saw me that night and commiserated with me. "How could he do that?" they asked me. I shrugged and thanked them for the sympathy.

This morning the lady half of the couple was at the stop but her husband wasn't. As she got on, she told the driver (SAME DRIVER) that her husband was running late.

"OK," he said, "if I see him, I'll stop for him."

I was standing right behind her. I stopped and stared at him. "AND YOU WOULDN'T STOP FOR ME?!" came out of my mouth before I could hold back.

While the other lady laughed nerviously and said, "Oh, yeah...", I stomped off to my seat and rolled my eyes and muttered bad words under my breath. I hope he got the message.

Yeah, I was pissed. But, what're you gonna do? And getting angry at the drivers only makes them less likely to stop in the future. I just couldn't help myself, though... • 4:08 PM 0 comments

Beautiful freckled intern

Yes, I'll admit it. I was checking you out. How could I not? You had long red hair, the cutest freckles across your nose, and when you turned to look at me I could have sworn I saw a flash of humor in your green eyes. Your work badge marked "INTERN". What were you listening to on your iPod, I wondered?

My day had been pretty crappy but you were a bright spot. So what did I do? I had used up my courage so instead of talking to you I TEXTED MY FRIEND ABOUT YOU, asking for advice. And, yes, I tried to get a picture. I didn't take one, though - felt too obvious. That's when you looked at me. Those green eyes...

My bus came and I figured I'd never see you again. Untill I noticed you standing behind me waiting for that bus, too? I found enough grace to wave you ahead of me, for admittedly selfish reasons. Your smile then is still in my mind's eye.

The whole thing became even more surreal when, on the bus, you pulled out a book. I was facing your way, took a peek, and was floored when I saw that it was a book by Albert Camus - IN THE ORIGINAL FRENCH. Beautiful, lives in my neighborhood, and inteligent, too? Surely, I thought, someone, somewhere, is fucking with me.

I thought I'd slipped into some twilight world, where drunken gods set challenges before me when I didn't have the strength of will to accept and overcome them.

And as I approached my stop I was again crushed by my own inaction. Until, incredibly, you pulled the bell. OK, now, now, I see that the drunken gods were indeed laughing at me.

I stepped off the bus behind you, you turned to cross the street, I walked on to my dingy dismal empty home, wishing for another chance, knowing I'd blown about a billion chances already.

Do I deserve another chance? Maybe not, but we don't get 100% of what we don't ask for. Or something like that.

This continues to fascinate me - the seeming difficulty for people (mainly, me) to strike up conversations with random people. I've done it before but not often. Most of the time I feel like I'm trapped inside my body while it just goes and doesn't talk to someone I'd like to at least say "hi" to.

Reading the Willy Week today, their cover story is about the crowd reaction when an apparent bike theft is happening. They sent out an intern to seven different locations about Portland, and made him "steal" a bike that they had prepared ahead of time. He tried to be obvious, carrying a huge set of bolt cutters and hacking away at the chains on the bikes. They filmed him.

And no one tried to stop him, or accused him. Nor did they discreetly call the cops. Nothin'.

The author of the piece contrasted this with several recent incidents where a crime is foiled by quick action from an individual

The article ties this behavior to a kind of social pressure - the more people that are around, the more the "guilt" of not doing anything is shared and diluted to the point where no one feels enough guilt to actually do something. On the other hand, if someone feels that they're the only one who is witnessing a crime in progress they have the whole burden of the guilt if the perp gets away with it - and it jolts them into action.

And the author warns that one shouldn't feel all smug that they'd be any better - observations prove otherwise. We are all social creatures.

I think that a similar thing is happening with me. No, not with witnessing crime.

I feel a social pressure when I notice the crowd around me. I imagine them judging me if I try to step out of the "waiting at the bus stop" role. I see them around me, staring blankly ahead and not talking to each other, and it gets harder for me to act contrarily.

If lots of people are talking around me, I can step in and add to the conversation. But I'm rarely the one to get the talk started.

Likewise, in situations where talking to each other is socially permitted and even encouraged, I do fine. Like shop clerks or waitresses... or even other patrons when I'm standing in line, say, for a movie.

Have you ever tried to talk to someone in an elevator? Elevators are the worst - the social pressure to conform and be silent is gianormous. The few times I've talked to strangers in an elevator it's been just me and the other person, or maybe me, a friend, and someone else. And in the last instance I started by talking to my friend, not the stranger. Don't believe me? Next several times you ride in an elevator, face the back and don't look at the floor indicator. It's hard enough to stand sideways in an elevator, let alone face the completely opposite direction.

I see two experiments I'd like to try with myself to break through this self-imposed social barrier. First, if I can somehow tune out the other people around me and try to imagine that it's just me and the other person, just the two of us... that might help me speak up.

The other route, which may not be as successful or as useful, is to try to "de-socialize" myself to the point where I feel like, well, like an outcast. A misfit. That's the mental space I imagine those punk kids are in when they shout out on the sidewalks or turn their music up loudly on the bus. They feel they already don't belong in society so they feel OK to break the social codes. Of course, I'm not going to start wearing a Mohawk or color my hair blue or green. Probably. But maybe I can mentally work my self image until I can see me as being outside of the rules for a short while... • 6:27 PM 1 comments

After I locked myself out

It takes a particularly bad and lazy landlord slum lord to not even lift a finger to help me get back into my apartment, telling me "You'll have to call a locksmith for all I care," after I've locked myself out.

It takes a pretty good neighbor to offer me a beer and listen to me bitch about our bad and lazy landlord slum lord after I've locked myself out.

It takes a pretty kick-ass sister to drive all the way across town on the off chance that she might have a key to my apartment among the myriad keys she's got on her many keychains, risking the possibility of missing "Rockstar:Supernova", after I locked myself out.

But it takes an awesome friend to drive all the way from freakin' Canby to pick me up, drive me downtown, let me use her badge to get into my office building after hours, and drive me back home, all to retrieve my spare key, which, obviously, I couldn't get to without my own employee badge, all after 8:30 PM, after I've locked myself out.

Each of these people will be getting what they deserve. I promise. • 12:43 PM 2 comments

A series of texts

A series of texts from me to my friend. Her responses are in italic:

• I've got Lindsay Lohan standing next to me.
  
  OK, it's actually a girl that looks just like her. Only not so... used up.
  
  
• Oh, and not as much up top. That's not a bad thing, though.
  
  
• bad for whom? =)
  
  
• I have no idea how to answer that.
  
  
• I keep trying to get a picture but it's too obvious.
  
  She's got green eyes, too. Damn.
  
  
• She's getting on my bus. She lives in my neighborhood?
  
  See, this is why I don't believe in a loving god. Cary's drunken gods seem more likely.
  
  
• HOLY FUCK. SHE'S READING ALBERT CAMUS.
  
  IN THE ORIGINAL FRENCH.
  
  
• The pages are covered in notes! SHE WRITES IN HER BOOKS.
  
  I'm in love. And still... paralyzed.
  
  
• Oh, I completely forgot to mention the iPod. I'm dying to know what she's listening to.
  
  
• I lost you, didn't I? :-(
  
  
• if you tell me you she got off (or you did) without saying anything to her, I'm going to kick your butt!
  
  
• You're going to have to kick my butt, then.
  
  She EVEN GOT OUT AT MY STOP.
  
  
• Stop that shit. =)
  
  
• I KNOW!
  
  I'm laughing at myself so hard right now.
  
  
• I'm not so much with the laughing and more with the butt-kicking.

...does that tell enough of the story? • 10:21 PM 1 comments

Overheard

Heard this weekend in a coffee shop.

50-ish man in running gear covered in sweat: You gotta get up pretty early in the summer to go running, to beat the heat.

Other 50-ish man in running gear covered in sweat: I like running in the heat. I don't have to work as hard.

• 8:19 PM 0 comments

"Snakes On A Plane" review (spoiler free)

It's good to see that Dr. Forrester is still tormenting Joel and the 'bots, trapped on the Satellite of Love.


...oh, and Mike, too. Or, I mean, Mike instead of Joel. If that's your thing.



I'm more partial to Joel, myself, though Mike grew on me. Not literally, dork. That'd be gross.

Where was I? Oh, right.

Y'see... there's some snakes... on a plane... And it's exactly what you expect. There are no hidden tricks here, and there's only the flimsiest bit of exposition to sit through.

Snakes attack people, people attack snakes, and it all starts right away and it all pretty much happens on a plane.

It doesn't take itself seriously, and yet, it's the most awesomest movie of all time.

Even the nitpicks I have about it only serve to make it more perfect, much like thorns make a rose smell that much better. Or something. • 12:12 PM 0 comments

Sidewalk

Found on a sidewalk in Sellwood:
• 6:40 AM 2 comments

Jealous

I wish I was popular enough to get hate mail.

Maybe someday.

It would make blogging easy-peasy. I have more than enough snark to share. • 4:41 PM 0 comments

Rockstar:Supernova update

Well, Storm is safe for this week. I'd worried that after the band trashed her last night that she might slip into the bottom three for elimination night. Luckily, that didn't happen.

And... I've only been watching since week 4, I think, but this is the second time I've heard Radiohead's "Creep" performed. And... why? Why do they do it? They don't do it justice!

Magni, baby, you've got the whole bald Icelander thing going for you, sure, but you're way way too clean and non-angsty to be doing "Creep". You're a freakin' family man, for Elvis' sake!

I'm blogging this at 8:48 PM. The band hasn't announced who is going to be eliminated yet. After seeing the performances, I'm betting Zayra goes. Patrice impressed the band with her version of "Celebrity Skin" and they already said that Magni didn't deserve to be in the bottom three, so they're going to overlook Magni's sedated version of Radiohead.

UPDATE

I was right. Zayra was, honestly, way too original for the bunch of has-beens that make up Supernova.

Ooh... did I type that with my out-loud fingers? • 8:48 PM 1 comments

Lost in theory

When do new episodes of "Lost" start?

And will we ever find out why people call Hugo "Hurley"?

1. It's a brand of clothing skaters favor (also a brand owned by Nike) - did he used to skate?
   
2. When he was crazy, he threw things. A lot.
   
3. When he was crazy, he vomitted. A lot.

Those are my guesses, in order from least to most likely.

I think that's the most important mystery the writers can answer this season.

Well... that and the polar bear. Are they ever going to tell us how the polar bear got there? Did it have anything to do with the two guys speaking Portuguese in a shack in the middle of a snowstorm at the end of Season 2? • 6:54 AM 0 comments

Spell check

Walking past the shoe store at SW 4th and Morrison yesterday morning, I noticed that it was nearly empty. Several copies of a sign hung in the window:
Click to go to larger, uncropped version

"Are downtown location"?

Hey, but I'll bet it passed spell-check. • 6:35 AM 2 comments

Sounds tempting, but...

Friday night, 11:30 PM. Another wonderful day (yes, that's sarcasm). I'm pretty much done for the day. Planned to get up early on Saturday, before the heat kicked in, and go for a nice long run, at least 8 miles' worth. Plus, work had taken its toll and I didn't see much percentage in staying up any longer, so I'm climbing into bed.

Phone rings. It's my friend, KC. He's married, with two kids, one fairly new (less than a year old) the other just into the Terrible Twos. I can't imagine why he's calling me on a Friday night. He lives at least 20 miles away in the rapidly-expanding suburbs of Vancouver, Washington.

I pick up. "Hey." The background sounds I'm hearing... that couldn't be music and bar noise? Could it?

"Hey," KC says. He's talking very loudly. "I'm gonna ask you a question, and I hope it's not gonna sound weird."

"O...K," I said and waited.

"BESIDES the Acropolis, what's the best strip club in Portland?"

"..." I start to answer, stop myself, listening to the music and the sounds of a crowd having fun, and try to put this together with my knowledge of my friend. Yes, before the kids were born, we'd had some good times hanging out in smoky bars. Hell, his wife had come along sometimes. But not in the last couple of years... "Where ARE you?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm out with some guys on a bachellor party! We're... um... we're somewhere in Old Town."

"Oh." My mind races. "Magic Garden?"

"Yeah, it's pretty magical, all right! Let me tell you, there's a serious hottie up right now... Oh, man." He pauses, the phone sounds like he's shifting to his other ear, then he's back. "They've got a limo and everything!" His voice dropped an octave. "I've had a couple of beers."

"No kidding. Um... BESIDES the Acropolis? I don't know... I haven't really hung out in any others recently. Not sure what to tell you. The Acrop is kinda like home now for me." I guess now I'm the official information line for strip clubs in Portland.

"I'm trying to get them to -- WHOA! -- I'm trying to talk them into going to the Acrop. Want me to call you when -- IF -- we get there?"

I think about it. If they're already at a place downtown, they won't be getting to my end of town any time soon, probably. But KC's pretty persuasive. And the Acrop is legendary. Plus... it's Friday night. Sharai and Aine are probably both dancing tonight and it's been a while since I've seen them. And I might gain some social proof if I showed up with friends, instead of the loner I usually am. "Sure, give me a call."

"OK, man, catch ya later!" He hangs up.

I spend maybe two and a half minutes wondering if I should get up, put my contacts back in, get dressed, and surf and wait. I finally decide against it, figuring that the Acrop is close enough that I could still get dressed quickly enough and get down there shortly after their call.

Damn. I'd need some cash, though. The fucking ATM fees at the club are usurious. Oh, well. The price we pay for entertainment...

I fall back into bed. I fall asleep. I wake up approximately six and a half hours later.

I check my phone. SEVEN missed calls from KC's cell. Phone was on silent. I also have four voice mails.

First VM was left at 12:47 AM - "Dude, we are goin' to the Acrop! Meet us there! WHOOO!"

Second VM, at 12:58 AM - "We! Are! Here! I hope you're here somewhere... Oh, man!"

Third VM, at 1:12 AM - "Dude, get off yer azz and get zome clothz onnnnn... and get down here. You. Are. Seriously. Missing. Out."

Fourth VM, 1:21 AM - "Duuuuuuuuuude... duuuuuuuuude... Soooooo... hot... Dayam!" It continued on in that vein for at least another couple of minutes before finally cutting off.

I'm laughing my ass off. I remember now that I HATE bachellor parties, and the goofy antics of drunk guys who don't go out very often. Still... KC's pretty amusing when he's drunk. I'm half thankful I wasn't there, and half regretful that I wasn't there. Oh, well, next time...

POSTSCRIPT:

When I came back from my run, I had another VM from my friend. Sounding a bit embarassed, he said, "Hey. It's KC. Um, I hope your phone was off last night or something. Sorry I called so many times. Hope I didn't wake you up, or interrupt anything, or... Yeah. I had a few beers. But, um, damn, the Acropolis is... is a very friendly place, if you catch my meaning. Unfortunately, we didn't get to stay too long. But, um, I'll catch you later or update you on Monday. Have a good weekend!" • 8:29 PM 2 comments

Food kick

My appetite tends to run in cycles. Lately, for instance, if it weren't for Mike's Drive-in cheeseburgers or Pizza Schmizza's slice-and-salad lunch specials, I'd be... um... very very hungry. • 3:59 PM 0 comments

Stymied

I stopped by my Apple Store (Pioneer Place Mall, Portland OR) on my lunch break to see if they had any new Mac Pros (the desktops Apple announced and shipped this week) in I could pop open and take a look at.

There's a discussion on one of the tech boards I read about the Mac Pros. I wanted to see if I could resolve the issue with a visit to the store to see one in person.

They have built-in hard drive sleds that don't use cables - just slide the drive in and it plugs into a card in the back of the drive bay. Cool, but that means you're stuck with the bus they provide. What if you wanted to put in an internal RAID of SCSI cards? Or had some older non-SATA drives to use?

The discussion was based off pictures posted on the web. Some folk were saying that the plugs for the drives was on the motherboard and that there'd be no room to get alternate cables in there.

Others thought that the plugs were on separate riser cards that could be removed without taking a Dremel to the mobo.

I wanted to provide some actual observational data to the discussion. Plus, ogle the sexy hardware.

...sadly, that was not to be. It was a busy lunchtime, and for some reason there was only one sales person the floor. The sales girl (not a Genius - there's only a few of those in the store and they were all busy behind the bar) started to pop the only floor model they had open (a 2.66 GHz), realized it didn't have the protective plastic cover like the G5s did, and then closed it back up because she didn't want to run it while it was open.

She then pulled up the web page for the Mac Pro and pointed to the pretty pictures.

"Um, I've seen the web page. I just need to take a look inside" I said.

"Oh, well, we can't do that without shutting it down" she said. I was kinda frustrated. She was cute - a redhead. My weakness. But I didn't want to flirt with her, I wanted to see the sexy computer.

"Well, why don't we shut it down?" The look on her face told me that she was looking for an appropriately customer-service-y way to say "no".

"You can't shut it down?" I asked one last time.

"...not really" she said.

So, sorry I have nothing to report. As a side note, is there some actual technical reason they can't shut down the floor computers? Like they're configured to automatically power back up or something? Wouldn't that be easy enough to disable in System Prefs? • 12:54 PM 0 comments

Potentially good news

Since my run-in (literally) with a poseur fixie-rider, I've discovered that there was, indeed, damage to the screen of my new sexy thing.

When viewing darker images, there's a thin whitish line, directly in line with the shallow dent on the outside casing. It's not visible all the time but it's there.

And it's similar to a problem I had on my iBook. I have a pretty good idea what it is - there's a white backing material on an LCD screen that helps the backlighting reflect evenly. I imagine that the bicycle impact caused the backing material to bunch up or wrinkle and press against the actual LCD part from behind, reflecting more of the backlight, and causing this visible "line".

You may or may not have an idea how incredibly sad this makes me.

Especially so because Apple's warranty excludes accidental damage entirely. If a tech suspects abuse or accidental damage they will deny warranty repairs and charge me. And you can only imagine what replacing an entire LCD screen can cost - it might be almost as much as I paid for the whole laptop.

And in my worst fears, I can see a stubborn Apple tech refusing other, non-screen-related problems, on the grounds that I've abused the laptop and caused those other problems.

I've only had the thing since the end of February. My credit card isn't paid off yet. And now I'm looking at having wasted the extra money I spent on AppleCare, extending the warranty.

I am kicking myself for not getting the name and contact info on the biker that hit me. Fucker.

But... I was thinking about it, and I remembered that sometimes credit cards include things like warranty extensions on items purchsed on that card. I decided to contact BofA, the issuer of the card I used to buy the new sexy thing.

And as it turns out, yes, my card includes something called Warranty Manager Service.

In reading over the terms, they don't specifically exclude accidental damage. I do have to contact them within 60 days of the "product failure" but I don't think that's gonna be a problem here. Heh.

I'll update after I've gotten off the phone with them...

Update

Damn, the terms of the warranty extension only cover the same things as the original manufacturers' warranty. Fuck. • 4:28 PM 0 comments

Anti-authoritarianism

Spotted downtown last night:



First, the two signs on this door contradict each other. Be careful opening the door - but don't open the door!

Second, obviously some anti-authoritarian has disobeyed both signs at once. Not only is it open, but there's no one else around to take the special care that this door apparently needs when it is, in fact, open.

Third... isn't a door that is never supposed to be open... not "a door" any more?! I think that it's forfeited the right to be called a door at that point. Might as well be a wall or something.

Lastly, I think that last point clarifies the top sign in relation to the bottom one. "Be careful when opening this door... because it's not actually a door." See? Just a reasonable application of logic and rational thinking can resolve almost anything. • 6:35 AM 2 comments

Fixies

Last night was a nice night for a walk along the river. A little warm and humid but not too bad.

I had borrowed my brother-in-law's GPS unit, and was planning to mark off sections of the Springwater Corridor Trail to help me determine distance for my various favorite running loops. Many of the landmarks I use don't show up on Google Earth (the trail is only about 2 years old and many of the images in Google Earth are a little older than that) so I thought having exact latitude and longitude would suffice.

Quick question: why are the boxes they sell for getting GPS coordinates always called "units"? "GPS unit". My laptop isn't a unit. My iPod isn't a unit. My cell phone's not a unit.

I was near the north head of the trail, heading south, looking at the GPS... thing. A lady and an older guy were on bikes, single-file, going the other direction.

Suddenly something smacked me in the back and I went down. A guy flew by me, followed by his bike.

I was stunned a moment, and my elbows hurt. My first thought - "Is my new sexy thing OK?!"

It had been in my messenger bag, slung across my back. It had taken the brunt of the impact. I pulled it out of the bag and the padded sleeve I keep it in, with visions of the beautiful screen being cracked, shattered.

As I did that, the lady and older guy had stopped and was asking first the fixie-rider, then me, if we were OK.

For the uninitiated, a "fixie" is a fixed-gear bike, and the subject of some recent controversy in Portland. A judge ruled last week that a city ordinance requiring brakes on bikes does, in fact, require a separate friction brake on bicycles. A bike messenger had recieved a ticket, and was fighting it on the grounds that her legs were good enough. The judge ruled otherwise.

Yes, the guy who hit me was riding a fixie, with no brake.

As I was examining my laptop (screen was fine, although there is now a barely-visible dent in the top case just to the left of the Apple logo, and it woke from sleep normally) I looked at the fixie-rider laying on the ground. "Is that a fixie?" I asked him. He groaned a reply. "Those are illegal, you know."

Even stunned and injured, I'm a smartass.

The older couple fussed over us a bit, offerred us water (why? Did they think we were dehydrated?) and finally let us go on. The guy offerred his apologies and admitted he had been going too fast, and that the accident was his fault. I was just glad my laptop seemed fine, but if I ever get turned down for service from Apple because of that small dent I'm going to be beyond angry...

I didn't have an opinion on the whole "fixie" controversy before last night. And maybe I shouldn't blame the bikes for what happened to me... in fact, I don't blame the bikes. But I do blame the whole elitist mystique that seems to surround fixie riders for their cavalier attitude for pedestrians.

Look, fixie poseurs, if you're riding on a sidewalk or a trail or in a park, where there are pedestrians, you need to be going pedestrian speeds. Save your racing for the streets or a bike track. • 6:32 AM 1 comments

Lovin' it

I swear I'm in a good mood today. Had a good run this morning, weekend is almost here, weather is beautiful...

So why are people (from Tracy, to my sister, to the counterlady at SubWay where I had lunch, all telling me otherwise?

How can there be such a large gulf between my internal state and my external cues?

...it can't be because I might, somehow, like being in a bad mood. Because I'm not in a bad mood. I'm in a good mood.

Maybe I just don't like giving away my internal states? Defensive, much? Heh. • 12:58 PM 1 comments

Love her

Storm turned in a masterful, subdued, powerful, honest performance last night on "Rockstar: Supernova". I'm not sure the audience is going to appreciate that, considering the other contenders just belt out the songs and play it up, but hopefully for those who have been paying attention they'll see that Storm knows when to rock and when to hold back.

Other performers? There were other performers? Heh. OK, watching the bald kid sing "Home, home, where I wanted to be" (from (still-not-as-good-as-Radiohead) Coldplay's "Clocks"), knowing he's missing his baby's first steps back in the old country, was a sentimental moment. And it's nice that the boys are flying his family out to be with him. Demonstrates that rock stars take care of their own, y'know?

And... what's the deal with Jill? I didn't think she was that bad. Did she piss off the boys or something? Not sleep with them? Sleep with them wrong, or something? It was actually painful to watch her face go from "Happy to have performed well" to "Smiling even though they're tearing her apart". And she had to maintain that zombie-fied smile while Brooke Burke hugged her and talked until they went to commercial. I felt really bad for her.

...still voted for Storm, though. Duh. Love her. • 6:20 AM 0 comments

Note to self: Music

I need more:

• Moby
  
• Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
  
• Nada Surf
  
• Leonard Cohen
  
• Blondie
  
• Morphine
  
• Eminem

• 6:54 AM 2 comments