Hornby, Nick. A Long Way Down. Four people meet on New Year's Eve, on the roof of a building in London, because they've each independently decided to end their lives by jumping. What happens next is, well, the story. It reminded me a lot of About a Boy (the movie, not the book, I'm afraid to admit).
2006-02-10
2006-02-07
Some fives
Five software packages (not from Apple) that I use every day
Five RSS feeds I look forward to reading every day
Five websites that could be my only bookmarks
I won't even try to pass this off as yesterday's.
Right after I went to bed last night, I realized I hadn't posted for the 6th. I thought about getting up and either pre-dating a post, or claiming that I was still golden as long as it wasn't midnight on the International Date Line, but then I just went to sleep instead. It's not like I'm going to fire myself for not meeting an arbitrary deadline.
Somehow, we have become the TiVo Rescue Mission. Yesterday, someone posted on Freecycle a Series 1 with a blown modem. Since we already have one of those, I figured, why not make a matched set? This brings our total to four, only one of which is in fully working order. A second one, our original Series 1, we use as a glorified VCR. The other two are in various states of disrepair. One of these days, I need to break out the tools again.
2006-02-05
Quick Impressions from the First Half of Super Bowl XL, Minus the First Hour, As Filtered Through TiVo
- The Michelob Ultra commercial was good. Not great, but good.
- Seattle was robbed. I thought it was obvious that the ball did not break the plane of the goal line. However, the replay judge has to be sure beyond a reasonable doubt, which is why I suspect the ruling on the field was allowed to stand.
- How does GoDaddy.com figure that a lame-ass ad like that is going to generate enough US$1.99 domain registrations to pay for itself?
- The Sprint ad ("crime deterrent"), on the other hand, made me laugh out loud. I'm still giggling about it. I have four old cell phones sitting on my desk at the moment—now I know what to do with them.
- How does a placekick that appears to leave the ground straight, end up curving wide to the right? You're in a dome, so there's no wind. A kick that long is not easy, I'm sure, but damned if it didn't look good until, well, it didn't.
- Whoever thought of combining the words "The Rolling Stones" and "live" either should be shot, or commended for his/her sense of humor.
- The best ad was easily the promo for Lost. Somebody had a hell of a lot of fun editing that. The Sprint ad comes in second. The various ads for Desperate Housewives get honorable mention. Speaking of which, was someone being intentionally ironic in identifying Edie—who Angela describes as "the trampy one"—with Hef and his girlfriends?
2006-02-04
It's the fiscal day that counts
A friend of mine in high school came up with the term fiscal day. Just as some organizations (companies, governments) have fiscal years that don't correspond to calendar years, the fiscal day doesn't necessarily correspond to the clock day. If it's 4 AM, and you're still up, and you haven't gone to bed since yesterday, it's not today but still fiscal yesterday.
This is all an attempt to distract you from two tiny details:
- I backed up the timestamp on this post twelve hours.
- I missed posting yesterday.
2006-02-03
Week 5, Book 6: Blink
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcolm Gladwell may just about be my favorite non-fiction author—though he's neck-and-neck with Simon Winchester.
- Our daughter's insulin pump arrived today. I've been looking at pictures on their website and in their marketing materials, and got to see one in person a couple of weeks ago, and somehow I'm still amazed at how small this thing it. It's just about the same size as my new cell phone (a Samsung x495).
- Speaking of Abbey, we had a date night tonight. My wife had dinner with a friend of hers, so Abbey and I went out to Macaroni Grill. We spent the better part of dinner doing math problems on the paper tablecloth.
- I am finally starting to grok Eclipse. Having a laptop that is capable of running it helps. :-)
- I bought an ounce of Rishi jasmine white tea the last time I went to Whole Foods, and I have to say that I'm somewhat disappointed by white tea. I guess I'm used to the tannic kick of black tea—even green tea seems a little weak to me. Antioxidants, however, are a good thing, so I think I'm going to try blending in some oolong.
2006-02-02
Squeaking in under the wire
It's still Thursday. This still counts.
- I'm currently reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. I popped into the library on Wednesday to find something, anything to read this week, and was happy to see a book that I've actually been wanting to read on the limited loan shelf.
- We upgraded our cell phones last week or so to Samsung x495s. They come with a 168-page user's manual. One hundred and sixty-eight pages. Reading this should count toward my 52 books in 52 weeks.
2006-02-01
Nose to the grindstone, etc.
It's too late for resolutions for the whole year, so I'll have to think a little smaller. This month (February 2006) I will try to post every day, at least once a day, to this blog—even if I think I have nothing in particular to say. I suspect I will surprise myself.
2006-01-26
Week 4, Book 5: The City of Falling Angels
Berendt, John. The City of Falling Angels. I never read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but I did see the movie, and this book felt a lot like the movie of the first one. If that makes sense. John Berendt has a way of writing that says, "I'm just going to immerse myself in this environment and write down everything that happens, and we'll see what pops out the other side."
One side effect is that I so want to visit Venice now.
2006-01-20
Week 3, Book 4: Hard Revolution
Pelecanos, George. Hard Revolution. One of my favorite authors lately.
2006-01-16
Slight rule change for 52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2006 Edition
I decided to amend the third rule in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge, 2006 Edition. The original rule was:
- A book counts towards the total when I finish it.
The new rule is:
- A book counts towards the goal if I start it on or after Sunday of a given week and finish it on or before Saturday of the same week.
I think this tightens up the schedule a little, and forces me closer to the original goal: 52 books in 52 weeks.
One side effect is that now I need to strategize. I finished Rosalyn Story's More Than You Know late last Friday for the book for week 2. I'm going to be on the road at the end of this week, and busy most of the time, so I really need to finish this week's book by Wednesday night. I could have started my next book (Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos) on Saturday, but then it wouldn't have counted for this week. As a result, I had to (gasp!) not read until Sunday.
Fortunately, Google Earth is now available for Mac OS X, so I have something else to do with my time. (Rob, that's not a shout-out, but hello anyway. :-)
2006-01-14
Week 2, Book 3: More Than You Know
Story, Rosalyn. More Than You Know. I enjoyed this immensely. Any book in which Kansas City figures prominently earns points in my book. Mentions of lesser-known features (the Folger's plant downtown, the old Monarchs stadium) earn double points. Mentions of Arthur Bryant's earn triple points. :-)
2006-01-08
Week 2, Book 2: Into the Wild
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. I missed finishing this in week 1 by about 12 hours.
2006-01-07
Week 1, Book 1: S is for Silence
Grafton, Sue. S is for Silence. I actually finished this yesterday, and nearly forgot to blog about it until just now. I'm deep into Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, but I don't think I'll squeak it in this week.
2005-12-19
52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2006 Edition
I might as well go on the record now in accepting the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge again this year.
For those of you too apathetic or lazy to click on the link, I'll paste the rules to last year's challenge (because I'm too apathetic or lazy to type them from scratch):
- Only books read entirely in 2006 count. If I start a book on New Year's Eve, too bad—it doesn't count.
- Only books that I haven't read before will count. Sue Grafton's latest Kinsey Millhone novel (S is for Silence) is out, so I expect I'll be reading it some time in 2006. However, if I reread any of the previous 18 stories in the series, they won't count.
- A book counts towards the total when I finish it.
- The goal is not to finish 52 books in 2006, but to finish at least one each week, which ends on Saturday. If I complete more than one book in a single Sunday-to-Saturday period, I don't get to slack off the following week.
Now I just need to find that freakishly long list of book titles I left lying around the hard drive of my old laptop.
2005-10-23
Back in the saddle again
Well, I finally did it. I combined malt, water, and hops in a big pot and brought it to a boil.
Yes, for the first time in almost 6 months, there's beer in that thar fermenter. It's a Scottish ale, and while the target gravity didn't turn out where I thought it would (which is something of a surprise when you're brewing with malt extract instead of all-grain), it's still in the proper range for an export (80 shilling) ale.
That is, according to the BJCP. I should know, because as of this week I'm officially a Recognized BJCP beer judge. We took the test back in April, and have been waiting more-or-less patiently for the results. I'm happy to say that I scored high enough—but just barely—that with a little more judging experience under my belt I'll automatically qualify for a promotion in rank to Certified. To get any higher than that, though, I'll have to take the test again (and do better, of course). However, I'll also need more than ten times the amount of experience I already have, so I don't think this will be a concern any time soon.
2005-10-19
Figures.
I spend the better part of fifteen years tethered to a keyboard, and how do I finally end up with tendonitis in my right wrist? Applying stone veneer to the new columns on our front porch.
The worst part is that I'm not done, I want to be done in less than two weeks, and after four days my wrist still isn't back to normal. I'm not sure if I'm going to have to learn to apply mortar with my left hand, or just give up and find a stone-veneer-worthy epoxy to do the job.
2005-10-12
Remotely Possible
In all the hullabaloo about the new iMac, I'm surprised no one has mentioned that the remote looks remarkably like the iPod shuffle.
2005-09-19
Lightning does strike twice
I'm no longer talking like a pirate; instead, I'm now cursing like a sailor.
We took another lightning strike today. This time, the casualties are an Ethernet hub and possibly one port on an Ethernet switch.
Can anyone recommend a company to install a lightning rod on our house?
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