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 So after hearing people like Fuzzy and Jess talk about it all the time, I decided I would sign up for the National Novel Writing Month challenge.That's right. In the month of November, I will be attempting to write a 50,000 word "novel". I have no idea for a story. I have no ideas for characters. But I need to practice writing. I figure I have a couple things on my side - one being that I have the entire week of Thanksgiving off as vacation, and no plans, so I should be able to hammer out a lot of stuff in that week. This is a little scary. Actually, I'll just be scared if I manage to finish it. I am good at starting things. Not so good at finishing them. Please, help keep me honest, guys. |
Now, on to the weekend recapping...
Friday was uneventful. Enjoyed lunch at Big Sandwich, and after eating a half of a Combo Favorite (pastrami and corned beef on rye with Russian dressing, cheese, and cole slaw), there was no way I was getting anything done in the office. So I came home early. Carrie brought home a chicken from Jewel (nowhere near as good as the Costco chicken), and we watched TV.
On Saturday we sallied-forth out to the suburbs, to the new home of Tracy and Brian, to assist in some madcap painting adventures. We brought Scout along, and he and Levee ran around in the backyard together for about five hours. No joke.
Today, Carrie and I rode our bikes to Heather's house, where I attempted to fix her PC by replacing the power supply. This did not do the trick. I think that it might just be the switch (the motherboard is getting power, but when you press the switch on the front of the case, nothing happens), but I'm not quite sure where to get a replacement switch for an E-Machines PC. So I am offering her the use of my spare PC (which I am, as we speak, installing XP onto) until she can figure out what new computer she wants to get (hers is kind of old anyway).
After our bike ride home, we picked up Scout, and met Nora and Kevin (and Levee) at the dog park for some more canine clowning. It was a long day. We're all very tired now, and for some reason I'm still awake.
I'm also freaking out a little bit, because I'm on-call this week (starting tomorrow morning). Which means that I have to work remotely all week (since you have to be online at a terminal within 15 minutes of being paged, they don't want you even commuting during your on-call week). Well, I just tried to log into the VPN from my laptop, and the remote gateway isn't responding. And the only place I know to find the number of the help desk it on our Intranet.
Which would require me to log on remotely.
Fun times.
Update - the VPN started working moments after I posted this.
Her laptop has been in BAD need of rebuilding for some time - spyware-ridden and slow as hell. It's taken some for me to be able to finally schedule with Jess to do the re-image, and even though it took about three hours, I think it was well worth it. I left her with a bookmark to the 512 MB DIMM on Crucial that her laptop will need (she's only got 256 MB in there now, so adding another 512 will make XP much nicer. Actually, I suggested she get two, since they're only about $70 each. $140 is a lot cheaper than buying a new laptop). She was definitely excited by the speed of her "new" computer. I can only imagine how happy she'll be once she's got a gig of RAM in there.
The picture I chose for this post is one of my favorite computers that I've ever owned - my old Mac IIfx. I obviously bought it used (it was something like $10,000 when new), but it was still a rocktastic machine. Stock, it ran a 030 chip at 40 MHz, but I had an accelerator board in it that let you juice it up as high as 70 - although running it that fast made it lock up after about an hour, and I went through three different logic boards. Good thing I was working for an Apple Authorized Repair shop at the time.
If I recall correctly, I had two hard drives in this machine - I think one was 40 MB and the other was 80. Coupled with the 16 MB of RAM and two (count them, TWO) video cards (not pictured here is my 21" SuperMac CRT) this was a tricked-out pony. Especially for 1996, which is when I had it.
What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?
Submitted by Megan.
See, the thing is, the first time you eat almost anything, it's "weird". But after that, it's unremarkable.
Take sushi, for example. When I first tried sushi, I could barely believe I was eating it. But now it's like peanut butter and jelly for me.
I'd say the strangest thing that comes to mind (although I may come back and edit this later if I think of something better) would be fried alligator. It tasted like a chewy pork chop. Not very exotic.
As I've discussed before in my LiveJournal (but not here, yet), Carrie and I are taking swing dancing lessons, in preparation for our wedding in May.
(For those of you new to the story, I have been swing dancing for a zillion years, but Carrie has not, so I am taking the lessons with her. It's a good refresher.)
It's been interesting, going through this class. First of all, I have a lot of bad habits. I mean a lot. Okay, well, really, only two that I have identified. One would be the bad habit of not going straight back on a rock-step, but crossing my left foot behind the right.
The other is that my steps are HUGE. I am all over the place. Julee actually gave me a good tip tonight - she said "Pretend you're back at Liquid on a super packed dance floor." Suddenly, my footwork got a lot tighter.
What's interesting is seeing the different levels in the followers in the class. There are a couple of girls in the class who have pretty good frame - luckily, Carrie is one of them. Most of the girls have major spaghetti arm. And with some of them, I just get the feeling that they have NO idea what we're doing.
I feel bad thinking these superior thoughts, knowing that the only reason I am nailing everything we're doing is that I learned it back in the last century. And I know that when I was taking Swing II for the first time, I was definitely one of the people that the other students were blogging about as being terrible - except that blogs hadn't been invented yet.
How many computers do you have in your house?
Submitted by Foomper.
Currently, there aren't quite as many computers around here as there used to be. I, personally, have three - my G4 Mac Mini, a Dell desktop, and my Compaq laptop (which actually belongs to work).
The other computer in the house is Carrie's Dell desktop.
To, to actually ANSWER the question - there are four computers in my house.
The picture I posted here shows off my "home office" being set up when we first moved into this apartment.
Let me get one thing straight right now - I did not run the marathon yesterday. But a bunch of my friends did.
Carrie and I went down to Old St. Pat's (which was also the halfway point for the race) to cheer on our friends Heather, Brittany, Brian, Trapper, Jason, Nora, and Kevin. Since it was the halfway point, we heard "Livin' On A Prayer" over, and over, and OVER again.
I had a good time making an attempt at sports photography. Some of the runners were just a little too fast for me to get really good action shots, but I did enjoy playing with the "panning" technique.
Also, this post is my first actual, factual, blog post on Vox. Like Marcelo said, I do like the integration with Flickr, but it's going to be tough to decide whether or not to abandon my Livejournal completely. I know my way around LJ. Vox is a new place. But, from what I hear, there aren't quite as many whiny emo kids around here.
