rickvs

So, I nearly blinded myself today. Later, I called a Pizza Hut six hundred miles away and ordered a large mushroom stuffed-crust.

( Like this... )

Happy birthday to my sister, Kristy. Now if I can just get her on the phone :>

I will be impaled by a frozen urine spike expelled from a jetliner



How will you die? Take the Exotic Cause of Death Test

Yes, folks, I shall meet my demise on the tip of an icy B.M.

Had a couple of interesting computer anamolies crop up at work. First, while I had tech support on the phone for a different problem, they walked me through a procedure I would loved to have known about -- oh, a year ago. The software my company uses to lay out its artwork requires that a security dongle be plugged into each machine, else the software won't work. The procedure I was taught narrows the security check to the single USB port on which the dongle resides -- until today, my computer had been running its little confirmation routine on *every* port available, *each time* a key was pressed or the mouse was used. This, as you may have guessed, caused my machine to run rather slowly ... but I never knew it was supposed to run any faster. Ignorance is bliss.

The second anamoly involves the timekeeping software we have installed on most of our machines. At preset intervals, it sallies forth on the net, adjusting itself to match any of several atomic clock servers. A couple of my co-workers have been complaining that some mornings when they arrive, their clocks have been slow -- by over three years. Turns out that some of the time servers think it's still 1999, which causes all sorts of havoc with our accounting programs ...but the servers with the misleading dates have now been deleted from the go-to list.

Had fun frisbee golfing Sunday, although this was only the second time I'd been to this disc-eating course, so I played badly while losing my second frisbee in two weeks. It was colder than any of us had thought it would be, and Larry hadn't dressed for it. Since he's still shaving his head, he dumps heat faster than the rest of us -- I lent him a zippered vest, and someone else had a purple headband for him to wear, so we sang Olivia Newton-John songs at him for the rest of the day.

It's been a looooong time since I threw three double-bogeys in a row, but I managed it on this course. On the good side, once I'd lost my last Eagle-brand disc in the lake, I discovered that the orange Cyclone I'd had in my bag for a while actually falls to the right when I throw it. This is a good thing; one of the weaknesses of my game is that *everything* I throw falls to the left, which leaves me quite hosed on some courses.

What are your catchphrases? (aka, What five things come out of your mouth more often than they should?)

5. "I'd rather stick a ruler up my nose."

I stole this phrase from a former boss. He had many catchphrases, and this is one of the few not intended to belittle the person he was addressing.

4. "Pretty sure..."

This line must be delivered with the same inflection that Harrision Ford used in _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_, after Elsa asks Indy if he's sure that glyph on the wall represents the Ark of the Covenant.

3. "Pardon?"

I think I got this one from Jordan, the female lead in _Real Genius_. I'm afraid I use it more often than she did.

2. "Lemme spell that for you..."

This phrase can usually be heard after I introduce myself. If I'm feeling very goosey, I'll suggest a mnemonic for them to remember my name: Erick the Red Meat.

1. "But that would be ... wrong."

Oddly enough, I didn't steal this from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", but from _Kentucky Fried Movie_.

(I'm not sure how well this meme will play in a text medium. But to those people in my real life, I'll try to cut down on these phrases; I'm getting sort of tired of heaing them from myself, even).

I stayed up too late last night watching Ohio State beat Miami in the Fiesta Bowl ...which my parents were attending, being Buckeyes from long back.

Geez, what a boring game :>

Gotta give credit to both teams; they fought hard all the way through two overtimes. And it seemed that the Buckeye defense pulled their fat out of the fire the same way the Dallas Cowboys' defense used to when they were good.

My mom's down to one cat, now. The tortoiseshell that I acquired when I was a teenager had been going downhill, lately -- wasn't eating, gone blind, skin and bones. Mom waited till the holidays to schedule her last vet appointment so that we could say goodbye.

( Details follow )

Man, this is like coming up with a hundred punchlines, and letting the audience reconstruct the stories. But here goes...

( Fifty the First )

For starters (thanks to gridlore), there's a "What Science Fiction Author Are You?" test here:

http://gning.org/skiffy.html ...According to it, I am Robert A. Heinlein.

Quelle surprise.

I've only read, oh, 99.9 percent of his stuff :)

We played a different who-am-I game at my company party last night. As you walked in the door, a sticky label was placed on your back, where you couldn't see it unless you were flexible enough to lick your own genitalia, in which case why would you be wasting your time at a party?

Each label had a character's name on it (E.T., John Lennon, James Bond, Jackie O, etc...). You had to determine who you were by asking your fellows a series of yes-no questions.

Correctly guessing my first one (Einstein) wasn't difficult, as I'd typed up the labels that afternoon, and could see everyone else's. So they made up a second one just for me (Count Dracula), which I managed to get with ten questions. This game was more fun than I expected it to be when first explained; I recommend it at your next party.

After that, since we decided not to play Pictionary, I took my Christmas bonus (a poinsettia) and went home.

Not a bad party, although somewhat stiffer than last year's.