Category: General

“You confound me like a woman!”

Asteroid impact update:

The asteroid named 2004 MN4 is being tracked by NASA. Since my last post on the topic, the odds of impact have decreased from 1/300 to approximately 1/56000.

*phew!*

I can now delete the reminder from my calendar.

On this day one of the greatest philosophers of our time was born. A man of genius and intelligence, whose ideas shaped the world.

Celebrate with me the birth of Sir Isaac Newton, 362 years ago (more or less; his birthday is on 25 December by the Julian calendar in use at the time; in our calendar his birthday would fall on 4 January).

Even his strict adherence to a literal interpretation of the Bible can’t cloud his status as one of history’s greatest scientists. Newton invented calculus, codified the laws of optics and light, and stated his three laws of motion that remained the final word until the revolution of quantum mechanics in the 20th Century.

The family of a soldier killed in Iraq is fighting Yahoo! over access to the soldier’s email account.

Yahoo! claims that email accounts are not transferable, even after death.

Luckily I don’t put anything important into my Yahoo! email account. My important email is either on Caleb’s server, or archived on my own computers, or backed up somewhere remotely. I’ve got email saved that goes back to 1998…

In the event of my death, I’d want my survivors to see it. I mean, how else are my biographers going to piece together my life? A lot of important conversations in my life have happened in email. (quiet, you… email is part of my life!)

I guess if I ever get around to creating a will, I’ll have to include what to do with my email and other data…

See what happens as I approach 40? Sheesh. At least I’m not worried that no one will want to read it all. I’m sure that there will be a huge demand for it. Really.

New music is so cool.

Got to work this morning, turned on the computer, opened up iTunes, and KEXP was playing “Interstate 5” by The Wedding Present, this week’s new favorite song. I’ve heard it every day this week.

As great as it is having an iPod with nothing but my favorite songs on it, there’s still something magical about turning on the radio and hearing a good song. I guess it’s the difference between being in control and being surprised.

Surprises are good.

Just one week left for me as a “Thirty-something”.

Apologies for the brief downtime this morning of the site. Caleb’s working on the post mortem. Email was unaffected, it was only the web services that were down.

I had leftovers to bring to work today for lunch… but I ate them this morning. Mmm… cold chile verde for breakfast… almost as good as cold pizza.

No. Strike that. Better than cold pizza.

Dammit!

I got the replacement battery I ordered today. And tonight, I carefully pried it open (well, not very carefully; poor li’l DeadSexy will forever bear the scars of my prying it open), got the hard drive out (the connector on it it teeny-tiny)…

And it’s the wrong battery. Too big. After studying the pictures, it became obvious. They sold me the wrong battery. Or something. I don’t know, maybe, possibly, I made a mistake.

At any rate I’ll have to send it back next week and exchange it for the right one. Stupid mail-order.

Sometime late yesterday afternoon, someone in my building sent out an email saying that they had a two-person ticket to the preview of “Meet The Fockers” and they were available to the first person to respond.

I shot off an email, but the guy didn’t accept it; he replied back, “First person here gets it.”

I did a quick search and found that he was one floor below me, so I bolted out the door and down the stairs, and asked the receptionist where this guy was located. She pointed me in the direction of his cube. As I headed over, I heard a voice behind me, asking the receptionist “Oh, is he here to see [so-and-so]?” in a disappointed voice. I snagged the ticket, and when I turned around, I saw that the person behind me was Kara, the receptionist on my floor. We went back upstairs.

Then I called around to find someone who wanted to go to the movies with me, and after four calls and a half-hour, I couldn’t find someone who wasn’t busy that night and could go to a movie. Normally I don’t mind going to a movie by myself, but it was a two-person ticket, and Kara is a nice person and almost beat me to the ticket, and, y’know, holiday season and all that… so, seeing that I couldn’t find someone to go with me, I gave Kara the ticket. She took her husband.

And she brought me back a couple of posters for the movie! Coolio. I’ll put one up in my cube and one up in the computer room at home.

I win!

Don’t ask why. I just do.