My New Mac...

...sits dark on the desk in my home office, waiting patiently for me to connect it to the Cube so it can suck all the good stuff out of the little lucite borg collective and become my new main Mac. (I'm on the laptop right now, sitting in bed.) That's a project that takes a few hours and I just haven't had it. 12 hour work days, stress and classes... tomorrow is this laborious tagged inventory followed by this damned reception -- which fortunately I get ouf early. And it turns out that the new mounting guy is manic-depressive. Oh whyyy am I not surprised? Especially about the manic part.

I'm going to bed.

Ohhh

The classic Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is gonna be released on DVD! So is Time Tunnel, but that show was even cheesier.

The Triangle

So what's this new miniseries about?

It's from Dean 'Moon 44' Devlin and Bryan "X-men" Singer. Now, Singer is openly gay, and Dean... well if you ever saw Moon 44 and of course the original Stargate movie... I'd be guessing... gay.

Just a thought.

Why does...

this make me think of The Andromeda Strain?

*SNIFFFFFF*

Nothing like new computer smell to a Mac Geek. My got that 20" screen is huge, and so bright compared to my old 17" crt. I had noticed that my new flat screen at work was brighter too, and that's unexpected. I think I'll watch a little movie before i take the firewire plunge and start doing the bg ugly update...

Damn this thing is pretty... ok the remote is fun too

I did it.

I bought the 20" iMac.

Apple was having a sale today, $100 off. That more than offset not paying tax if I ordered from ClubMac, plus I could take the thing home and not hassle with it being delivered to work. I got it with an extra gig of RAM too. It's still sitting in the box right now. I'm a little scared of it. And scared of the fact that I just dropped almost 2 grand. Probably tomorrow I'll do the Setup. And I have to stop by the office tomorrow to check on the grunts, so I'll pick up Sims 2.

I'm just hoping I don't have any sudden unanticipated expenses...

NPR : Bob Edwards' Thanksgiving Fantasy Feast

It's time to remember this classic Thanksgiving special!NPR : Bob Edwards' Thanksgiving Fantasy Feast

Thank Xena (Well, she's as good as anyone)...

...that the longest freebie holiday our company gives us has arrived. The last few months have been very stressful (just last night I had nightmares about whether I had printed out this 1700 page Excel file in a way that the client would find acceptable, even under the rush circumstances and their minimal input. Nightmares about Excel? I think that's sick. But that's they way they treat us: guilt.

So here I am on the eve of Thanksgiving, when I should give thanks. And yes, as far as physical health and corporeal belongings, I should be grateful. Despite some bad health habits (fatty food, a liking for wine) and a defective heart valve but perhaps partly because of my crrazed obsession with excercise (teaching 5 classes a week on top of my own cardio) I am apparently in great shape... physically. But, despite 20 years of therapy and a couple of unpleasant encounters with antidepressants, my mental health is not so good.

My dog, who really had become an important companion over his last few years since I moved to VA in 1996, died around this time four years ago. I remember being just numb for weeks afterwards. I had already signed up to buy a new car -- a mini Honda SUV partly because I wanted space for him -- and I was like a robot finishing that transaction. Now 4 years later I am paying it off finally, and I am thankful to have that money freed to pay off other things. But while I was relieved that Nanuk died quickly and supposedly painlessly (heart attack or stroke), I miss him still, and the thought of the responsibility of another pet is too much for me to bear.

I am thankful for the confluence of factors that allowed my old employer ICE to pay me my back salary when I could use it to purchase a nice little condo in Arlington before the crazy housing bubble. Though there are times when I miss the Dupont ghetto, I know that I am way too old for that world.

As part of that I suppose I am thankful to actually be able to walk into an Apple Store, throw down a piece of plastic, and buy a new G5 iMac with extra RAM and drive home with it, the least of my worres being whether the syncing software would work right the first time (but I still haven't actually bought one). Meanwhile children are starving in Africa, people are losing their jobs in America, nd helpless animals everywhere are being klled by man's incursions.

Yet, I still ask some questions: are they spiritual? I don't believe in the 'spirit' much less a 'god.' But the questions need answers. And they were phrased pretty well by someone else. "Is this all that I am? Is there nothing more?"

I think I felt love before, but it has been many years since I have felt anything even close. Has it been burned out of me? Why do I distance myself emotionally from everyone now, when just a dozen years ago I came to DC open and ready to embrace it? Could being burned a few times have really shut me down? Argh.

Ok, I'll stop whining now. Thankful for computer, warm condo, coffee, chardonnay, 50" tv, dvds... and in fact, I still have some Season One Xena DVD eps from my old friend Andreas (don't get me started or I'll really get sappy) sent me last year...

"Say or press 'one'..."

On NPR's Morning Edition this am, they had an interview with a guy who has a web site with a guide on how to get past automated phone systems on a long list of merchants, banks, and the government.

As one who just dealt with one of those infuriating voice non-recognition systems the other day, I found the story enjoyable. THough why didn't they call Dell instead of Apple?

After all the NPR talk...

... about the 40th anniversary, I was delighted to find that I already owned a cd of the movie soundtrack to The Sound of Music.

How gay am I? I was disappointed to find that it didn't include some of the great instrumentals, like the scary part towards the end where the family is hiding from the Nazis, and the So Long, Farewell song goes into this frenetic, sinister minor key. (and remember the great scene where the nuns say "Reverend Mother, we have sinned.")

Still, it's lots of Julie Andrews, and you can't go wrong there.

Who served?

With all the name calling and smearing, let's just review who actually served their country in the military, shall we?

Does that picture make me look fat?

I'm not! In fact I'm down to 162 lbs! (I'm 5'11"). Maybe I need a new picture...

Oh, and I actually have abs now! Go me!

Thursday Morning

Another one of those weeks, lots of high-pressure crap going on. Fortunately our new mounting guy started this week, which is a load off of me. And thank 'god' because last night this hellish... oh never mind. It's been stressful. I did take yesterday morning off to run some errands, including the Costco, getting the car washed (first time in about 6 months) and going over to the Java Shack for a skim latte and some writing. Why do I love the Java Shack (besides the fact that it is gay-owned?) They support a Cycling Team, and the outside area frequently has a gaggle of guys in bike shorts lounging about. Yum.

Tomorrow I have the day off! What to do with myself? What will I do with myself?

1. 8-10: Wait for the furnace guy to come do the seasonl checkup; while doing this, clean up the place and do laundry.
2. Java Shack and writing!
3. Hmm. Harry Potter? I have passes for the Georgetown theater. Though my previous attempts go go see a movie in a nearly empty theater have been disasters: for Fellowship of the Ring, there were ten people in the theatre,a and two old ladies sat right behind me and one explained the entire movie to the other in a running commentary -- that is until I turned around about a half hour into it and asked them very nicely to please stop talking. For Revenge of the Sith, there were about as many people, and some guy brought his toddler that talked and cried the entire time.

How do I Hate AOL?

Let me count the ways

I joined America Online back in the early days of the internet, in the late 80's and early 90's when people didn't even understand what the web was. AOL guys came to us at our booth at GenCon and gave us a floppy disk and practically begged us to join, for free, as a game company who would host a part of the gaming area online. (BTW, it was a Macintosh disk of course)

No one else at ICE was interested so I took it and became the gaming guy from ICE on AOL. Ah, I remember those days. The rep from Wizards of the coast was one guy who said he was the janitor. Later they bought TSR.

AOL and the web grew... we lost our free mambership and the whole gaming area kind of folded.

Fast forward to today, I still have the same AOL screen names from over a decade ago. For the last few months, I have been unable to edit my own AOL profiles. Why? Because of AOL updates making it incompatible with the Mac. On the third tech support phone call today (after an infuriating exchange with one of those voice-nonrecognition systems), a supervisor finally admitted to me that yes indeed it did not work and there was no fix in sight and that AOL didn't really seem to care, and was unwilling to offer any kind of credit for this failure. They blamed Apple.

I have screen names that I am loathe to lose, but AOL is making it ridiculous for me to go on. Sure I could log on from a PC at work but that is not the point. I am a Mac user -- there must be a million of us out there statistically -- and AOL is ignoring us.

Other Mac users out there, speak!

Time After Time

So is this a blog or an online journal or what?

I think I do write this mainly for me, to have a handy place to jot down my feelings and observations. It is so cool to be able to search back a couple years and see what I was whining about then (same old).

But I do enjoy the fact that others -- people I know anyway as well as those I have only met through the magic of the internet -- can read my synaptic spew if they choose and even be nice enough to comment.

(New Topic!)
So! Tomorrow I am actually going to a little party. Roberto generously hosts fun gatherings periodically, which I am invited to since meeting Enviroboi some time back (at a semi-date? National Gallery of art visit). Always an interesting and eclectic group, and one of the few times I actually socialize. Isn't that sad? I suppose it should be.

Suddenly I was taken back to my visits here when I was still living in Charlottesville and coming up to DC to look for a job, and staying with friends from U.Va. who already lived here. I'm sure I talked about it before, but I was really naive then, and when they talked about places like Badlands and the Frat House I swear with their tone of voice they made it sould as sleazy as they could. Well, I did find out later under their tutelage that the Frat House was pretty... naughty. There was this area called the 'car wash'... well. Never mind.

And we would have big sleepovers, not only me but guys from alll around, and Sunday mornings we would all struggle to get up to do brunch. It was all so exciting and exotic for me back then, waking up in a living room with like ten guys after partying at Badlands or Tracks. Maybe 4 of us in the fold-out bed (no messing around -- really!)

One morning a guy put on this CD by the Beloved, (and I had to go dig it out just now because of course I bought it; it was 1990) and it is forever stuck in my head as a carefree memory of that time, when DC seemed like the gay Xanadu, an escape from small-town Charlottesville. If only it was that simple.

Invisible Man

Another awful week over. At least the dentist had good news: gums look ok and no cavities, though I have an old filling he'd like to replace. Not surprising considering the huge number I had back as a teen. I wonder why that was; it wasn't as if we drank a lot of sugary colas or ate sweets. And I have hardly had a cavity in decades.

Anyway, I'm nice and warm in bed with a glass of wine, but when deciding on what to eat (don't ask) I happened to open the freezer and saw the stack of frozen dinners (Lean Cuisine® or something like that) and it occurred to me how lonely the whole concept was. Dinner for one, ready to microwave. It reminded me of that episode fromSix Feet Under about the woman who died and no one knew her. She died, of course, choking on a piece of food from her microwave dinner that she was eating from its compartmented plastic tray.

Where is this going? I'm not sure. but though I have never been a Beatles fan, there is one song I liked, and for some reason, looking at the dinners-for-one, I thought of it...

Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice
in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face
that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for

(chorus)

Father McKenzie, writing the words
of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, darning his socks
in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care

(chorus)

Eleanor Rigby, died in the church
and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt
from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

Chorus:
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

Spin fanatics

This morning I got to the gym (at 6:15 for my 6:30 spin class) and it was locked. This club is located in the top level of Georgetown Park Mall (an upscale kind of mall, always pretty dead -- and of course closed at 6 am) There were a bunch of people standing around, but one woman (who is in my spin class) was in a tizzy about it and figured out that if you took the elevator instead of the escalator, rode the elevator to the basement THEN all the way to the top, we could get in. She was like "I will not miss my spin class!"

Whew. Someone finally showed up around 7 and turned all the lights on; we were already well into spin class. I bet someone's gonna get fired. Though I remember when this would happen all the time at the Bally's downtown on Sunday morning; the staff person was NEVER there at 8:00 for opening.

Another weekend...

...almost done.

I got through classes (almost full Saturday, only 2 people (!?) Sunday) and the library. Tried not to ogle the hot guy who works in the multimedia dept too much while shelving the new books.

I've started re-reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, which I haven't touched in years, though I'm sure I've read it a few times. Published in the 50's it is really dated in some ways of course (people use paper, and the Encyclopedia Galactica was going to actually be printed) but this was an era before real computers much less the internet (and yet this guy gave us robots and the famous "Three Laws of Robotics" which they referenced in ST:TNG). It's still a fun read.

Tonight I think I'll watch Revenge of the Sith on the big TV (though I should be catching up on the shows choking the poor TiVo on the bedroom TV or the shows choking the DVR on the big TV. Ugh.)

What else is new? I've been updating my Shadow World Home page, which still could use a lot of work stylistically. It's kind of a mishmash of different style pages, mainly because that's the way it evolved. I finally moved over the whole gallery section to my Mac server space (1 gb) from the tiny bit of space they give you on AOL (I think it's still 2 megabytes per screen name -- shameful).

Early to bed, got to get in to work early -- another busy day coming.

Yikes

Off with their thumbs!

In a more civilized arena, I heard a
wonderful interview with Jimmy Carter (the Steve Inskeep one) this morning on NPR. The talks about the fact that though he is a conservative Christian, he completely disagrees with the current Southern Baptists Fundamentalist cabal. And he says that 'creation science' and 'intelligent design' have no place in the classroom.

Who was more powerful?

Samantha or Jeannie? Weigh in!

Oof!

On Commander in Chief, Geena is in FL to survey hurricane damage. She is in a shelter, reading a book to a group of children, when her Chief of Staff leans in and whispers that there is an urgent matter needing her attention. Does she sit paralyzed for 7 minutes? No! She immediately tells the kids she has to go, and asks who wants to finish the book for the others.

Tell me that wasn't pointed.

The First Son shirtless!

(Well, at least the son of CiC Geena Davis' tv president.) In his last role, he was a hunkling on that cheesy BRAVO show.

It's Fall...

...So it must be time for T. Kevin to begin sinking back into the full-blown depression. Things seem overwhelming; I left work yesterday at 3 (not wanting to get involved in the Halloween junk and inevitable sugar high/crach, I volunteered to man customer service while everyone else went up and goofed around) and crawled into bed. I did catch up on some TV though.

I reeally need to drop one of my classes.

I really want a new Mac too, though I don't really need one, except to run Poser and Bryce and *cough*Sims2*cough*

Apple & Dell financial news

Poor Dell: Macworld: News: Apple fortunes rise as Dell misses Q3 financial targets

Why oh why didn't I buy Apple stock back in the early 90's when Steve Jobs returned and I told everyone I knew that he would save the company. Back then the stock was around $20 a share; today it's at $57 after a stock split? (Oh right, I had no money!)

Maybe Dell needs to give that cutie Ben Curtis (the former Dell Dude) a call.

Subscribe!

Blurb in the 'What to Watch' TV preview section of this week's issue of Entertainment Weekly (italics theirs):

9-10:01 PM
Commander in Chief ABC, TV-PG
Mac battles a hurricane in Florida with her bare hands.

I laughed out loud.

In a related topic, I subscribe to a fair number of magazines. I've had subscriptions to Entertainment Weekly and Discover (a fairly serious -- though not "Scientific American" serious -- science magazine not related to the Discovery Channel) since they began and Discover goes back to the early 80's. I also get TIME, Popular Science, MacWorld, MacAddict, and I also get the Washington Post.

While I feel a little guilty about killing all those trees, I just feel like reading things online is no replacement for the serendipity you get when reading a publication filled with a wide variety of things, some of which might not interest me, but some that might that I wouldn't think to look for. And I recycle: I bring my mags into work when I'm done with them and put them in reception, where my fellow employees can read them.