Archive for March, 2004

Lethargy

Monday, March 29th, 2004

I have reached new heights of laziness. Instead of standing up, walking to the other end of the table (which is, ooo, a good 6 feet away) and changing the track on Winamp I used VNC to log into my other computer and changed the track that way.

I am so proud of myself.

Strange animals

Friday, March 26th, 2004

There are some very, very odd fish deep in the Tasman sea.

However, mad scientists (or possibly mad photoshoppers) haver created some even stranger animals (note that that site might have non-work-safe banner ads, if you're lucky).

We're going to see Claudine's play in Everett this evening. Should be fun.

Incidents & puzzles

Monday, March 22nd, 2004

If you liked watching "airline" you'll love this: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System incident reports. Fascinating stuff. Their monthly safety bulletin, Callback is also great reading (and more readable).

This weekend was the 7th quasi-annual Microsoft Puzzlehunt weekend. This time the theme was Lewis Caroll's "Alice" books. Our team ("The Badgers' Parade") came 36th out of 51. Not bad, but not as good as we had hoped. However, we did score a couple of good coups: we were the first team to solve a puzzle, and there were 3 puzzles that we were the first to solve (only the top 4 teams equalled or bettered that). I was pretty exhausted by the end - I only got 4 hours of sleep on Saturday night, and that was on a sofa in the atrium of building 18.

Birthday

Thursday, March 18th, 2004

Ah, a quarter century already.

I feel so old.

Dirty pleasure

Wednesday, March 17th, 2004

I have a new dirty pleasure. Oh don't look at me like that - it's not that sordid.

When I first received my MP3 player I didn't think I would have very much use for it - my computers at home and at work have speakers so I don't need it in any of those places, and listening to it in the car would be dangerous. However, it has found a niche in my life giving me music while I'm walking to and from work (on days when it isn't raining).

Generally, on the stretch of 156th Ave between my apartment and my office building, there really any people within earshot. There aren't many pedestrians around (I guess that's true of most of the East side in general), the buildings are all quite far away from the road and don't have openable windows, and for those in passing cars the engine/road noise and radio will drown out most external noises. It's kind of like I'm in my own private world, at least as far as sound is concerned.

So, I can sing my heart out to the tunes on my device without disturbing anyone or embarrasing myself. Usually. I did have the slightly unsettling experience the other day of a jogger coming up behind me and surprising me mid-song. If you were that jogger I would like to apologize for inflicting my singing voice on you.

Last night my musical selection was:
Tori Amos - 1,000 Oceans
Dar Williams - The Kid
Dire Straits - Romeo & Juliet
Awesome.

The play went great - we sold out all but one of the shows (and crammed quite a few more people in as well), and our performances just kept getting better and better as we experimented with how to say certain lines to get the most laughs out of them. It was nice to be the star and the center of attention for a while.