[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends]
Below are 20 journal entries, after skipping by the 20 most recent ones recorded in
CassyLee's Blurty:
| Monday, January 26th, 2009 | |
| 4:51 pm | Kneel before Zod!  I actually expected it to be quite a bit lower, since my comic book reading really tapered off after college, but I guess there was enough remnants to last a lifetime ;-). |
| Sunday, January 25th, 2009 | |
| 6:55 pm | The audience reaction might be different in Berkeley Mom and I went to see one of the Oscar nominated flicks this afternoon. Somehow I'm guessing the audience sympathy & reaction to Frost/Nixon was probably atypical, considering we were in a movie theater that is no more than 4 miles from the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library & Birthplace. There were a number of audience members who were quite vocal in the approval & support of Nixon's zingers & rants. |
| Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | |
| 10:10 am | Hah! I beat the talking heads... I've been flipping the channels watching the inauguration coverage & currently I have MSNBC on. They were showing various politicians talking to each other & they got to Jimmy Carter & Chris Matthews asked "Who is Carter talking to?" I immediately said to myself "Robert Byrd". The talking heads weren't sure & were settling on Rachel Maddows answer of "Someone with awesome hair". Eventually they got the word that the answer was actually "Robert Byrd." And hear I was thinking I was politically ignorant ;-). In other inauguration news - it was just as Obama was taking the oath of office that an operator in India pinged me about a customer problem. Which would have been understandable since I'm on-call, but she was pinging me about a small customer problem that had been open since November. Once I found out that (a) it wasn't a system-wide problem, but just a single customer who had lost a disk, and (b) the customer had lost the disk back in November, I told the operator to wait a bit so I could at least listen to the speech ;-). |
| Friday, January 16th, 2009 | |
| 3:18 pm | This is being created on a new computer! Woohoo! New computer arrived Wednesday & I've been slowly loading up all my essential software & migrating files over. I managed to find an automatic backup of my firefox bookmarks & my IE bookmarks, so I even have all the bookmarks I was afraid were lost to me forever (or at least until I got around to annoying people for their blog urls.) Currently the new computer is on a card table I set up in the computer room, but this weekend I might move it to the desk & move the old computer to the table, where it will sit until I get around to figuring out where I want to keep it permanently (and get around to getting a copy of Linux to load onto it.) Anyhow, it's pretty & fast & I'm very happy right now. I'll be less happy next month when I have to pay the credit card bill for it, but right now I'm as pleased as punch. |
| 10:12 am | Pay It Forward/Free Stuff for Freeloaders Meme. Stolen from BigEvil & oslowe’s LJs & Soupy's blog… The first five people who comment here will get something I make. Could be knitted. Could be origami. Depends on what I think you will like and my inspirations. (Note, it’s going to be something I think you will like. Actual liking not guarenteed!) The only real rule is that you have to make this offer in your own journal. |
| Saturday, January 10th, 2009 | |
| 11:26 pm | Apparently all my stories lately involve my mother... After knitting today, I went to nearby shopping complex to go to the movies. I wanted to use a prepaid ticket I had & therefore I wanted to go to an evening show (somehow this made sense when I was planning it), so I had quite a bit of time between parking in the parking garage at 4:30 and the movie starting at 7:15, so I did the following: - went to the box office & got a ticket for the 7:15 show of Slumdog Millionaire - walked over to nearby Barnes & Noble to look at magazines for a while. - Realized that I should have taken the book I had in the car so I'd have something to read while I had dinner before the movie. - decided to buy a trashy romcom about a vampire queen to read at dinner rather than walk back to the car & pick up The Kite Runner, which was in it. - walked over to California Pizza Kitchen & had dinner. - realized there was still about 90 minutes to kill before the movie & considered going back to the car to knit a while, since I had my knitting in the car. - decided to go back to B&N and spend some more time looking at books. - headed towards the theaters & stopped at Peets for a cup of coffee since I still had 45 minutes before the movie. Stayed there & read for a while. - went to the theaters & wandered into theater two, which was empty, but obviously hadn't been cleaned yet. - went to the bathroom (mostly to give the cleaners a chance to get in and clean.) - went back to theater 2, saw other people had settled in (even though it still hadn't been cleaned), and decided to go ahead & sit down in what is the perfect movie viewing spot for me (about third row of stadium seating up, center aisle.) - was pleasantly surprised to watch the theater fill up. One seat next to me remained empty, but the rest of my row filled up. In the row in front of me, there was a couple that was between the only two empty seats in that row. - watched as a couple, who were searching the stadium rows for two seats together asked if the couple in the row in front of me would mind moving one seat over so the two empty seats would be together & the couple searching for seats could sit together. The couple in front of me refused to move. - as the searching couple started to go up to see if they could find any seats together in the upper rows, I called out & volunteered to move to one of the seats beside the sitting couple, so the searching couple could use my seat & the empty seat next to me. They happily took me up on my offer. - Watched & thoroughly enjoyed the movie (I heartily recommend it) while feeling a bit of that happy feeling you get when you do some teensy favor for a stranger. - As I left the theater, I opened the purse pocket where I keep my car keys. And couldn't find them. - Went back to the theater, check the floors of the two rows I'd sat in for the keys. Checked the bathroom. Asked at guest services if anyone had turned in keys. Still no keys. - As frequently happens when I'm confronted by any kind of crisis - reverted to 6 years old & called my mommy. Told her that I might have a huge favor to ask of her as I might need her to go to my place & pick up my spare car keys & bring them up to me, but that first I was going to check the restaurant to see if I'd left them there & then I was going to check the garage to see if my car was still there. She said she'd change in the meantime & await my call. - Went to California Pizza Kitchen, Barnes & Noble, and Peets (all the while regretting the shoes I was in.) No keys had been turned in at any of those places - well, no keys of mine at any rate. On the plus side, when I went to the garage, my car was still there - but there weren't any keys lying on the ground by the car & I couldn't see much of anything inside the car. Called Mom to report that I would indeed need the keys from home. - Mom suggested that she come pick me up & take me to my place & then take me back to the car. I agreed (after all, she was the one doing me the huge favor, so however she wanted to do it was fine with me.) As she was driving me back to my place, I told her that I thought I deserved better karma than lost car keys since I'd given up my perfect movie viewing seat. I also thanked her profusely for picking me up & apologized for the fact that I didn't even think about the fact that I belong to AAA specifically for incidents like these until after she was on her way to pick me up. She said that it was okay & AAA wouldn't have been much help for me anyhow, since I'd lost my keys. - We picked up my keys, went back to the parking garage & I opened my car door. The interior light turned on & I immediately saw my keys, lying on the floor of the car. So AAA would have been able to help - and if I'd only gone back to the car to pick up The Kite Runner while it was still light out, I probably would have seen the keys on the floor & managed to call them without panicking & immediately calling Mom. Anyhow, I've decided that maybe what all this has reminded me of is that I am blessed with an absolutely wonderful mother who goes out of her way to help me, so the least I can do to even the score with the universe is occasionally give up my perfect movie seat for a stranger ;-). |
| Thursday, January 8th, 2009 | |
| 7:35 am | Maybe I can charge the parents hotel room rates... Mom called yesterday to say they've got termites & need to tent their house. So she & Dad & two of their three cats will be staying with me while their place is fumigated. The third cat, who is Gizmo's brother, will (hopefully) be boarded at the vet's, recovering from fixin' surgery. Skitter makes Gizmo look like an outgoing, social butterfly - the only time he lets Mom touch him is late at night when she's in bed. So the big trick of this venture will be somehow trapping Skitter so he won't be in the house when it's tented. And once they've somehow caged & removed him, Mom will take him to the vet so he can have some long overdue surgery & shots & he'll stay there until they can go back into their place. Also, yesterday I took my car in for servicing & ended up charging a shade under a thousand bucks to my credit card. My credit card bill is going to look a little fat with this on top of the new PC (which is still in production, dammit!) - which is what made me contemplate my subject line ;-). Oh, finally, in other parent-related news that I meant to mention earlier: I was talking on the phone with my mother on the 30th of December, commisserating over the cold we'd both caught from Mike. Mom mentioned she planned to finish off a couple more books she was in the midst of reading because she'd done a count & she'd read 118 books in 2008 by that point, and she thought 120 for the year was a nice round figure to attain since it would average out to 10 a month. I'm not sure I managed to read 10 books in all of 2008. Re-read sure, but read 10 books for the first time? So anyhow, I'm not making a real resolution out of it, but for 2009, I'm going to try to read more books & not fall into the habit of re-reading J.D. Robb & Janet Evanovich over & over again (not sure why those are the two I always fall back on when I want some light reading, but they are.) In 2009, I'd like to be able to hear about my mother's prodigious reading habits without turning green with envy ;-). |
| Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | |
| 5:48 pm | It's not perfect, but it's exactly right For a few years now, I've talked about taking two of my mother's records & giving them to a friend (Melanie) who has the capability of converting records into cds. The records are two Ed Ames' Christmas records, and it used to be (back in the days of records) that the Christmas season didn't truly begin in the Bevers' household until we'd all sung along with Ed's rich baritone singing "The Ballad of the Christmas Donkey." But these are two albums that have never been released on CD & so as record players bit the dust, the albums have been gathering same & we've been making do without Ed. Well, a couple weeks before Christmas I finally got the albums to Melanie, and last night she gave me a 'beta-test' version cd. She mentioned that she'd played with the sound levels & other things to reduce the occasional pops & hiss, but she hadn't conquered them all & she was willing to work on it some more. I played it today & was immediately thrown back in time to decorating the tree in Groton, Connecticut when I was 9 or 10. The pops & hiss were audible, but comforting - we just about played those records into the ground & I'm not sure the songs would sound right to me if they played with pristine clarity. I think listening to that cd had me feeling the most Christmas spirit I felt all season long. Melanie is definitely the star of my day. Well, her & Ed Ames ;-). |
| Monday, January 5th, 2009 | |
| 5:07 pm | Anxiously awaiting the 20th-23rd I think I forgot to mention a few weeks ago that my desktop has increased its deterioration rate. I've been getting increasingly frustrated with how fucking slow the damn thing is - but I didn't know what frustration was until both IE & Firefox started crashing on me. Anytime I try to start either browser, after a long delay where nothing happens, I get a crash report & an offer to restart them (which just causes another crash.) Then my favorite games stopped working - well actually they just never start up. I probably shouldn't admit it since I'm an IT professional, but I hate debugging my desktop. I know tricks to debugging mainframe problems & I just could never be bothered with learning the PC end of things. And I've been salivating over new PCs for a couple of years now. And the economy needs the jolt that a new PC purchase could provide, right ;-)? So I've ordered a new PC (and completely disregarded my sworn intention of buying a basic servicable PC since I don't really need a mega-powered home PC), and it's supposed to ship on the 20th. In the meantime, a sensible person would pick through their current PC, backing up everything they want to port over, so it's all ready when the new PC arrives. Or researching Linux on PCs (I'm planning on wiping the old PC & making it my Linux learning station). But I haven't really done more than contemplate doing either of those things ;-). While I wait for my new PC, I'm reduced to using the work laptop to surf the web - which means I'm mostly going to be keeping a low profile on blogs & such for a while - partly because I'm not sure how much tracking work does of such things, but mostly because this laptop doesn't have all my bookmarks so I'm relying on my piss-poor memory to get to some of the blogs. |
| Monday, December 29th, 2008 | |
| 7:39 pm | I apologize to all I came into contact with on Boxing Day.... I'm feeling much better today - but my mother is now sick & reports that Gillian is sick too. We figure we've all come down with the cold that my brother-in-law had on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day. Since that means Boxing Day was in incubation day & probably the one where I was the most contagious, I'll take the blame for any & all who become sick after coming into contact with me at Annika & Will's party. On the plus side, this seems to be a pretty fast moving cold - I've been feeling pretty good today - not perfect, but well enough that I'm pretty sure I'll be up to going down to San Diego to go to the Holiday Bowl with patient zero (well, Mike's patient zero as far as I'm concerned anyway ;-). Anyhow, since I slept so much yesterday, I've mostly been awake all day today - and I've spent it watching a Project Runway season 4 marathon. |
| Sunday, December 28th, 2008 | |
| 4:03 pm | The problem with early morning sniffles I have always had morning sniffles, so whenever I go walking with my mother & Yvonne on Saturday morning & one of them asks if I'm coming down with something because I'm sniffling & sneezing, I dismiss their concerns. But sometimes I shouldn't ignore morning sniffles, because I've felt like crap for the last 24 hours. |
| Monday, December 15th, 2008 | |
| 9:34 am | Oops, I knew there was something I forgot to do... I did a lot of stuff over the weekend - shopping, dining, knitting, dining, visiting friends, dining, watching movies, dining.... but I never got around to getting a space heater like Cindy & Bradi suggested. No big deal - after all, as long as I put a down comforter on the bed, I figured I could get along with a functional heat source for a few days. Then it started raining last night. And not rain from the pineapple express (when we get warm-ish weather by way of Hawaii) - oh no, it's Alaskan rain with icy (well, icy for SoCal) winds that whip through what is laughingly regarded as adequate insulation in Southern California. So I did a minimal amount of google research & called a heating service company. They're coming out a little later this morning (which is both good and bad - good in the prospect of a quick repair, bad in the sense that maybe they aren't very good if they have so many openings in their schedule that they can come out so quickly.) |
| Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 | |
| 8:15 am | I'd like to report an annoying car alarm For the last fifteen minutes, a car alarm has been going off someplace in my neighborhood. Now it's not one of those annoying multi-toned ones like Lily & Robin endured, but it is really getting on my nerves. Surely there is some kind of law that would allow me to call the police & demand that they come tow the car away? Or at last some kind of special dispensation that would waive the three-day waiting period & allow me to purchase a handgun immediately so I can find the car & put it out of it's misery? I promise I wouldn't shoot the owner - just the car. In other news - I have a beautiful, functional new garage door & opener. I suspect this news may be exciting to only one person (hi Annika!) besides myself, but it's a great relief to my back, so I feel the need to report it. In less great news, I decided to turn on the central air heating yesterday (the first time since about March), and nothing happened. The fan didn't kick in & no heat emerged. I don't know if the pilot light is out (although I would think that wouldn't affect the fan) or what, but I figure I'll have to do something about that sometime soon, as it's getting chilly in the mornings & I haven't made any fingerless gloves yet. I'm resisting dealing with it because I'm lazy & because I really don't want another big household expense (which might happen if it turns out the whole heater needs replacing) right before Christmas. I guess I should just be happy that I live where I live & I can get away with doing things like like in a house with no heating in December ;-). |
| Monday, December 8th, 2008 | |
| 11:50 am | Fiasco in the making My boss delegated a meeting to me this morning. The meeting was for a customer who is planning to shutdown their data center for electrical maintenance & this was the kickoff meeting to discuss the planning, the schedule, and the support. Now this site has multiple mainframe systems, several Unix & other midrange systems, and tons of various servers. They need to worry about interrupting backups for multitudes of systems, schedule databases & various applications to be shut down cleanly before the shutdown of the systems, and they need to make sure the coordination of the network shutdowns is precise. They want at least four names/numbers of support people for each area involved so they can have contact people immediately if they run into problems. Basically it's a huge, complicated affair & this meeting has probably at least 70 people on the call - including the customer (which inhibits some of the discussion as you don't want to make other IBMers look incompetent in front of the customer - even if they might be.) The system I support is a small one in comparison to others - but it hasn't been brought down in 2 years because of various difficulties.) I don't have access to the procedures for bringing it down or up, so I'm a little afraid of it getting lost in the shuffle. Now here's the kicker: a sensible person would assume that this kick-off meeting today is for an outage (that is 15 years overdue!) that is scheduled to occur in May or June, given all the complexities & personnel involved and the fact that they want us to line up so many layers of backup and support. Nope. They want to do this on Dec. 27. Heck, we only have three people who have access to this fool system & one of them is already on vacation & won't be back until Jan 5. You know work-wise, December is always this odd mixture of absolute quiet because most customers don't want any downtime during December & people are cancelling meetings left & right because of low attendance and absolute frenzy of activity from customers who suddenly realize they really want something done before year-end close and they think they can realistically expect 1000 hours of work done in the last two weeks of the year. |
| Thursday, December 4th, 2008 | |
| 4:11 pm | Not quite bah humbug, because I'm physically incapable of being that un-Christmasy I'm afraid I'm not feeling the joy of the season very much this year. I can't seem to get the energy together to do Christmas cards and I haven't thought of any gifts for anyone. Hell, I haven't even come up with a wish list for myself - and I usually have that by Halloween ;-). I haven't put up Christmas decorations & I don't intend to this year (which is a radical departure for the girl who has 8 crates of Christmas decorations stored in her garage.) Heck - Mom & I have only done ONE christmas jigsaw puzzle so far - and usually we've done about 10 by Dec 1st (when you have about 70 between the two houses, you have to start them in November to have a hope of making a dent in them before Christmas Day ;-). I think there's several things contributing to my Christmas malaise. The biggest one is Sabrina. I'm not sure why, but everytime I think about Christmas I start missing Sabrina. It's not like that cat particularly enjoyed Christmas or the decorations or anything - she was pretty immune to the whole splendor of the season. But still, I've been missing her more the last few days than I did most of November. Another thing is the economy. On the one hand, I suppose I should be out spending money & doing my bit for capitalism since I'm moderately sure that my job is secure for at least another year. On the other hand, my 401K & IRA have taken a massive beating & I think maybe I should try bulking up my traditional savings account & not do the standard Christmas spluge. Another cause of my Christmas doldrums is how late Thanksgiving was this year. I liked last year when there was almost 5 full weeks between Thanksgiving & Christmas. This year it's only four and it sucks (particularly since I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet.) The final nail in my Christmas coffin happened today (although it actually started Tuesday - or even 3 or 4 years ago). I have a houseguest who arrived on Tuesday & when we closed the garage door there were a couple of strange noises & we first worried that maybe she hadn't pulled her car in far enough. But there was lots of space between her bumper & the door, so we didn't bother with any further investigation & went inside. The next morning when she had to leave for some appointments, the door wouldn't open. It turned out the noises we heard were two screws that secure the main shaft that runs from the automatic door opener motor drive to the wall above the garage door had come out & the shaft was now resting uneasily on top of the shaft that connects to the door itself. We opened the door manually & got her out, and I played briefly with the idea of fixing the fool thing myself & quickly disabused myself of that notion. Dedicated, obsessive readers of my blurty might recall that I've talked a time or two in the past 3-4 years about my desire to replace the garage door. I called up someone that comes highly recommended & had him come out today. He told me what he suggested & I gave him a down payment. He'll be installing the new door on Monday - and that'll be 1400 dollars I won't be spending on Christmas [doh] (and yeah, I strongly suspect I could have spent a lot less, but I really like the product & the work this guy has done on other garages in the complex, so I'm okay with the cost of it.) |
| Monday, November 24th, 2008 | |
| 4:27 pm | Knitting related updates I've finished four projects this weekend. Well, to be honest, I actually finished one thing & finally got around to blocking three things that I finished between one & two months ago. But still, it's four projects that have been sitting in my knitting bags for ages, so I'm feeling very accomplished. Unfortunately, what it currently leaves in my 'in progress' pile is one thing I'm starting to realize I probably don't have enough yarn for, one thing I really should frog & start over from scratch, one thing I need needles for (! I find it utterly impossible to believe that I don't have any size 3 circular needles, but I can't find any in all my needle stashes), and two things I haven't touched in years & have lost all affection for. I really should decide what to do with some of the yarn that's taking over my computer room and start something new :-). In semi-related news, I was in a grocery store today & took a look at their magazine stand to see if they happened to have any knitting magazines. They didn't. Now I could accept that - they didn't have a huge selection of magazines after all. But when I noticed that they had the latest issue of Log Home Design I had to shake my head. I find it hard to believe that there is more interest in the latest in log home designs in Orange County, CA than there is in the latest knitting patterns. |
| Friday, November 21st, 2008 | |
| 7:02 am | Kids can kill you Gillian had an appointment yesterday with my hair stylist, which meant I had the distaff family members at my place. Mom took care of Malina while Gillian was at the stylist. They spent most of the time watching Monsters, Inc., which Mom had never seen. Afterwards, Malina went through the pile of books Mom had brought for her (to Malina's mind: Grandma=books.) & they read Pog, which made a fitting companion piece to the movie. When Gillian got back, we all chatted for a while. Malina is at that age where every answer to a question needs further explanation - why is her favorite word right now. So Gillian had to explain in excruciating detail exactly why she'd been away for so long. Once Malina finally felt she'd gotten to the root cause of her mother's absence, she decided Gillian needed to go upstairs with her. Since Gillian was getting ready to go, she was reluctant & asked why they needed to go upstairs. Malina said she wanted to see Sabrina. Listening to Gillian answer 'why' before Malina was satisfied with the answer wasn't nearly as enjoyable that time around. |
| Saturday, November 15th, 2008 | |
| 4:16 pm | Taking a break from obsessing over political news So there's fires across Southern California again. I've been glued to the news coverage since Mom called to tell me about it, because one of the fires is relatively close to the folks' house. The fire has been named the 'freeway complex fire' and it sounds like it's really 4 different fires - and actually more than that as the winds are pushing embers so the fires are jumping all over the place. So here's some of the locations of the freeway complex fire: 1. Corona - which is where it started and is about 20 miles east of the parents. 2. Anaheim Hills - one of the locations where fire has broken out is about 6 miles SE of the parents. 3. Yorba Linda - the nearest Costco to the parents - about 4 miles due east is in danger. 4. Brea - our favorite Souplantation (about 6 miles NW of the parents) is right next to a school that's in danger. Besides worrying about my parents, there's also quite a few folks from our Tuesday dance class who are close to the fires & a couple of folks who used to be in the knitting group who also seem to be very close to danger areas. I've extended invitations to the parents & Marion (one of the dancers who is 84 years old and lives alone near the Brea fire) to come here if they feel the need to evacuate. Here's hoping the forecasts of the winds kicking up as the sun goes down turns out to be wrong and the firefighters get a fighting chance to contain things.... |
| Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 | |
| 4:01 pm | Stocking up on the -quils What sucks about being sick today is that I've spread my germs all around & I feel a little guilty about it. See, months ago I'd scheduled today as a vacation day so I could attend a lunch reunion of old coworkers from my first company (McDonnell Douglas Aerospace Information Services - MDAIS - for those keeping score at hom.) These folks get together once a year to reminisce about old times & I've never gone because work has gotten in the way. So I scheduled today off so I could go & catch up. So even though the only reason why I could breathe was because of the existence of DayQuil (and I'd only managed sleeping the night before because of the wonders of NyQuil), I was determined to go & see folks I haven't seen in 5-20 years. It was lovely seeing folks from days gone by. There were a lot of people I didn't recognize & some names that only stirred vague memories. It was definitely odd in the sense that I was one of the 'youngsters' at the event - most folks there had retired more than 10 years ago. I just hope I didn't spread anything too viral amongst all those slightly aged immune systems ;-). Anyhow, I think I'll get off the computer soon & impatiently wait until 6pm (when I can take my next dose of 'quil) & then take some Nyquil & collapse in bed. |
| Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | |
| 8:03 am | Mostly for Callie, but others too So while Helen was here & I was showing her the www.fivethirtyeight.com map, she was first concerned by how very red it looked. I explained that that it really wasn't as red as it looked since so many of the big red states were sparsely populated. She said it would be nice if the map were distorted a bit to show the states proportionally by population. I think we found one, but I don't think it looked as nice as this one (which looks like it was based on projections and not from the actual results): boy is the Northeast HUGE map. |