Month: April 2009

As of 4:00 PM last night, I am officially on vacation from work. I plan to do almost nothing but spend some time with Lindsey and not think about work.

I am, in fact, not thinking about work and spending time with Lindsey even as I type this. We’re sitting on a comfortable couch, each with our laptops (she an HP and me on my new sexy thing), drinking coffee and sharing funny things we find.

She just brought me coffee. ‘Cause she’s awesome like that.

At any rate, I may not be posting much ’round here until vacation is over. No promises.

I will probably be Tweeting, so feel free to catch up with me over there.

Lindsey and I had dinner at the Iron Horse Friday night with Hollie and Jeff. Hollie is Lindsey’s and my mutual friend; Jeff is Hollie’s boyfriend.

It was fun, especially because Hollie wasn’t entirely sure what Lindsey’s and my status is: friends, dating, what? She was surprised and happy for both of us when we confirmed that we are dating and “a couple”.

I will have much more to say about Lindsey in the future, but for now, it is sufficient to say that I am very happy that she and I met. Very happy.

Hollie was the spark that led to Lindsey and I meeting; she saw us spending a lot of time talking back and forth on Twitter and basically told us to get a room.

In another sense, it was Twitter that brought us to together, which makes us the first Twitter couple that we’re aware of. Hollie was impressed with that, too, Friday night at dinner.

But the highlight of the night for me was when we each took turns wearing the sombrero.

Hollie noticed the sombrero sitting in a corner. I mentioned always wanting to bring one back from Mexico but never having enough room. I forget who mentioned going to get it and wearing it but when Lindsey and Hollie wondered if Jeff or I would go get it, I replied “Oh, I’d just ask our waiter to bring it over.”

When Richard, our waiter, came over later to ask if he could bring us anything else, Hollie asked about the sombrero and at the same time I said, “Yes! Can you bring us the sombrero, please?”

Richard was confused for a moment until we pointed it out, on a shelf in the corner. He brought it over, and showed it to us. “I have been photographed wearing this while naked.” Suddenly I was a bit unsure about wearing it myself, but, hey, it was on his head, not… anywhere else.

It went first on Hollie’s head, and out came the camera phones. It went around the table, each of us mugging and taking pictures in turn.

Yes, there are pictures. No, you can’t see them.

OK, just mine:

After the topic turned to classic Star Trek episodes, Kevin and I sat around, remembering.

First we remembered the Star Trek fight song, as heard in “Amok Time”, also known as the “Spock gets horny” episode:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rl46Dpy-P4&hl=en&fs=1]

Kevin said, “When would they use that song?”

I replied, “Oh, that’s easy. Whenever they would fight Klingons.”

Kevin searched his memory. “But I don’t remember any specific episodes with Klingons.”

“Well,” I said, “there’s ‘Day of the Dove’.”

“What’s that episode about?”

“That’s the one where the Enterprise blows up a Klingon ship and takes all the Klingons aboard as prisoners. Then, unbeknownst to them, an energy being shows up and releases the Klingons from the brig, and makes everybody fight. Because it feeds off the anger and hatred from when they fight. Kirk figures it out and they have to try to drive off the creature with laughter and love.”¹

“Oh, right,” Kevin said. “I remember another episode where they were in a cafeteria-type setting, and there were Klingons on one side, and the Enterprise crew were on the other, and they had a fight.”

“That was in ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’! Universally acknowledged to be the funniest classic Star Trek episode.” I said, then added, “intentionally funny, I mean.”

“Ah, yes! That was a funny episode! And the one with the flying vomit things…” Kevin said.

“Right. ‘Operation – Annihilate’” I said. “It’s so funny how many of those old episodes’ titles I remember!”

“You. Are. Amazing!”

“Thanks! I have committed an awful lot of memory to classic Star Trek. It’s what I did when I was younger instead of making friends.”

“You know,” he said, “I’ve never see the Khaaaan! episode. The original one.”

“‘Space Seed’” I said, confidently.

Kevin laughed. “You could be telling me any random words and I would have to believe you. It’s not like I can check you.”

“Seriously, I really do remember a lot of them! I could write a blog post and link them all, and you’d see. C’mon, try to stump me.”

“OK, let’s see… There was one with a square robot thing… and he was doing something to the crew, looking for something…” Kevin held his hands up to indicate the shape and size of the robot thing.”

“Sure!” I said, “that was ‘The Changeling’. It was very similar to the first Star Trek movie, actually: a space probe gets damaged, and repaired by an advanced machine intelligence and sent back out. The probe finds the Enterprise, and is now artificially intelligent, and mistakes Kirk for his creator, Jackson Roykirk.”

“Ohhh, he got confused.”

“Right! Because his memory banks were damaged and they didn’t put him back together right.”

Kevin held his hands up, palms outward, fingers spread apart. “What about… the suction cups?”

“…suction cups?”

“The monster with the suction cups.” He was still wiggling his fingers and curling them like claws. Claws or suction cups.

“Ohhhhh… you mean the salt monster!” I knew the episode… but the title wasn’t coming to me.

Kevin watched me, his eyes getting wider. His smile grew, too. The pause in conversation lengthened as I said… nothing.

“Ah-ha!” Kevin stood up and thrust his hands in the air. “I win!”

“…annnnnnnnnd that’s how my blog post will end – with me getting bested.”²

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¹ I did that from memory last night. Here’s a summary; how did I do?
² By the way, the episode was ‘The Man Trap’.

When there was a lull in a team meeting today, while Ken was writing something on the white board, our Libertarian Co-Worker (LCW) decided to make a statement about how we, the people, could get out from under the “crushing debt” that our political leadership is imposing on us.

All the states should secede from the Union.

See, it’s perfect, because it sticks all the Beltway folk in the Federal District of Columbia with all the trillions of dollars of debt! And all the individual states could then carry on our merry way, free and clear and able to achieve our own, individual manifest destiny! SEE??

I replied, “Yes, because, obviously, everyone going their own separate way is how humanity has achieved so much in such a short amount of time, from science to social progress to art and literature and music. I mean, duh.”

He fum-fuhed in return, and sputtered out something about how Sen. Wyden and Rep. Wu had no authority to saddle him with this crushing debt. Before I could point out that whole “representative government” thing, LCW said, to my utter astonishment,

“Well, Ron Wyden or David Wu haven’t ever come and asked me my opinion about the things they’ve voted on. That gives them no authority in my eyes.”

…and he was apparently completely sincere when he said it.

So just because the Congressman hasn’t come to personally ask him which way to vote invalidates the votes they cast?

Whoa. That’s some major-grade crazy right there.

I don’t have a topic in mind for this blog post. I’m just writing, and hoping that something will happen.

Is something happening yet? No?

There’s a bunch of stuff happening, but nothing I’m ready to share with the entire world (or the small subset that reads my blog) yet. Because those things aren’t just about me. They’re my friends’ events, and as much as I have thought about them, I can’t figure out a way to just talk about my own feelings and not reveal things about my friends that is not my business to reveal.

So there’s me. What have I been doing lately? Not a lot that doesn’t involve my friends. I’ve been running, every other day, like normal. I ran in the Race for the Roses 5K last Sunday, and did OK (My chip time was 0:28:57, for an average mile pace of 9:19), nowhere near a PR but better than my training runs lately. And it was a beautiful day for a run!

In fact, the weather the past few days has been a mood-brightener for sure. I feel like it’s been years since I’ve been warm. Even today, with a temperature of 54° F, feels better than the cold that seems like it’s been here forever.

I just want to be warm.

Luckily, for the most part, I have been happy with life lately. I have good friends, I have my health (except for these stupid allergies), and things are warming up.

The “poster frame” of a video is the picture you see when the video hasn’t been played yet. It’s what you see when it’s not moving or playing. Sometimes it’s the first frame of the movie; sometimes it’s an image specifically chosen to represent the entire video.

If you go to KGW’s The Square page today before around 7:00 PM, the video embedded on the page has a most peculiar poster frame.

Yeah. It’s me!

Very fun to see my own face on TV last night. About 2.3 seconds after that segment aired, my dad called, laughing and asking me if I’d seen it. My dad normally watches MSNBC but had seen my earlier post and tuned in.

I had, in fact, watched the show last night to see how my quote turned out. I didn’t realize my voice sounded like that, but Steph assures me that I sounded great.

I’d love to embed the video here for all eternity but KGW (or more accurately, Belo, their corporate overlords) apparently do not allow such Web 2.0 shenanigans so here is a link to last night’s show (sorry there’s an ad before it).

It’s Spring and that means spring cleaning and a garage sale!

Sadly, my apartment has no garage but thankfully the internet can do anything, so I’m posting these things here to give my blog-friends and blog-snarkers alike a shot at these amazingly valuable items¹.

I’m not posting a price here since the idea is to get rid of them, and make some beer money. Any reasonable offer takes them (but keep in mind I have some idea what these go for on eBay or Craigslist, so don’t expect to get them for free).

I’ve linked the leather jacket to pictures of the actual jacket; all other items are linked to a product or specification page since I’m bein’ lazy. I’ll put more work into it if I have to actually post to Craigslist or eBay; like I said, y’all get the first shot at these so you also have to deal with my not wanting to take lots of pictures of all this crap – er, fine merchandise. 🙂

• M-Audio Keystation 61es This is a USB MIDI keyboard, perfect for use with Garageband or similar programs for making music. Sale pending on this item.
• Trailblazer (no-name) 18-Speed Mountain Bike (I don’t have a link for this because I can’t find this brand-name on the internets.) It’s a good first bike and comes equipped with the softest, most incredibly padded gel seat I have ever seen in my life.
• M. Julian (Wilson’s Leather) brown distressed leather coat, size XL
• Belkin Wireless G router A superfluous wireless router I no longer need.
• Irregular back issues of 2600 (A Hacker Quarterly), going back to Vol. 13 (Summer 1996) Re-live the early(er) days of the digital underground!
• Vintage Macintosh Portable (non-functioning, but includes power supply, all manuals and “carrying” case) Museum-quality! …if that means it doesn’t have to power up or, y’know, do anything. This has been sold.
• Star Wars trilogy Widescreen VHS Box Set – Own the ORIGINALS – before CGI and before Greedo shot first! This is the box set released in 1994.

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¹ Items’ value may vary depending on the individual.

After grabbing a bite to eat for lunch, I wandered over to Pioneer Courthouse Square, a.k.a., Portland’s living room, to grab some free cake. The Square is celebrating 25 years of existence today, but since brick public spaces don’t eat cake, there was plenty for everyone else.

Several people from Twitter said they were going to be there, so after posting a picture of my free cake (I got a corner piece! Score!), I wandered around looking for other Twitter-enabled folk.

And, of course, the Queen of Portland Twitter, Steph Stricklen, was there, so I stopped to say hi. We’d met last month, in person, anyway; we also know each other from Twitter. Steph is a force to be reckoned with, someone who has fallen in love with the connections that using Twitter can bring, and someone who treats everyone she meets as a long-lost friend. Which is nice!

But then she had her cameraman (whose name I did not get! I’m embarrassed) turn the lens on me for a question: what’s my favorite thing about the Square? That was her question for today’s Live @ 7 show. That’s less nice! I hadn’t shaved today and probably still had cake frosting on my face and my allergies are bugging me… All those thoughts went through my head while I thought up an answer.

I like peoplewatching at the Square, so my answer reflected that. I love seeing all the different kinds of people – people in business suits, punk rockers, everyday casual Portlanders, the evangelical Christians, the hacky-sack players… all of ’em, in one place, day in and day out.

Twitter has now gotten me an inside look at a TV station, an amazing new friend, and free cake. Which makes Twitter the best thing ever.

As we talked, and enjoyed each other’s company, in the open, crowded dining room of Andina, she and I each picked away at our fried yucca: tasty, a starchy potato-like plant fried and served with a mint salsa, in lieu of bread, as part of the restaurants’ gluten-free menu.

The two ladies at the table next to us had asked what they were, and Lindsey had explained. She was on a gluten-free diet, and I had ordered from the same menu so that we could share if we wanted to.

The yucca was delicious, but filling, and as our main course continued to not arrive, our towers of yucca sticks, stacked Jenga-like on our plates, grew shorter and shorter, until I said, “I should stop filling up on these.”

Lindsey pushed her plate away – and towards me. “I know, I need to stop eating them and save room for dinner.”

My plate had fewer total yucca sticks on it, but then I was running a 5K the next morning, so I rationalized it as gluten-free carbo-loading. Still, I didn’t need that many carbs.

“I wonder if those ladies would like to try them?” she had suggested, and I agreed. We piled all the remaining sticks onto one plate, and she called out, “Excuse me?”

The women looked startled at this protocol-breaching event, but quickly warmed up when it was clear Lindsey was offering food.

Sharing food with strangers made it feel even more like a communal dining experience.