Uridium

I had never seen a demolition derby before. They are dangerous, and they pollute, but they are awesome. People lavishly decorate giant 70's and 80's cars, and then each participant smashes his car into other people's cars, until either (a) his car can't move or (b) no one else's car can move. In the first minute of the event we saw a car get flipped over. Later on two cars caught fire. (Everyone was fine!) I know, this is all immature, but I've never had a chance to grow out of it because I've never seen one before.

It was a great weekend overall. cavedwellers and I got to try out an OLPC! I was amazed when holding it that you could really feel just how much work has gone into it. Every square inch has been painstakingly designed, and nothing has been taken for granted. I don't know though... all that work feel like putting a lot of eggs in one basket, and the whole thing still feels like a Hail Mary pass. I'm satisfied with the way those analogies combined, are you?

Other highlights from this weekend include:
- MIT museum (where we stumbled onto the OLPC)
- Three-county fair (in Northampton, where we saw the derby)
- Petting a llama (soft)
- Improv ("My mother was the first female Rosa Parks!")
- Early Steven King book-on-tape ("No, don't go into the basement! Nooo, not the sub-basement!")

This has been a great summer in a lot of ways, too, sometime I should catch up and write about that...

We were in a crowd walking home from a Sox game at Fenway, and we stopped at an intersection to let an ambulance go by. The ambulance was in full-on emergency mode, its lights flashing and its siren beeping and whooping, as it stopped in the middle of the intersection so the driver could ask us who won the game.

1. You don't have any decorations.
2. You don't have a printed menu.
3. You don't have a sign.
4. The only drinks in the fridge were left there by the construction crew.
5. The employee who's there to scoop out the ice cream spends five minutes trying to scoop some for you, and can't.

The vegan "Wheeler's Frozen Desserts" has claimed responsibility for the opening, but there was nothing at the location to corroborate that and I suspect the claim could just be a stunt; the coconut and double-chocolate ice cream we had was really good, and certainly didn't taste like something that started out as soy. They're in a tough location (the upper plaza of a desolate tower at Mass Ave & Huntington), but I hope they do well, whoever they are.

I know, I'm a few years late for Fun Things To Do With Spam, but bear with me.

1. Get a couple weeks of spam in your spam filter (1200 messages in my case.)
2. Sort by subject, and find an area where all of them begin the same way.
3. Read aloud dramatically.

I've done the first two steps for you; click the picture on the right to see.


It kind of reminds me of Joe Brainard's I Remember. (I mention that to gratuitously point out that I read a book once.)

I've been a bit down today because my favorite band broke up. It happened in 1994.

I just found a comprehensive fansite for Tribe, the local band that rocked my little high-school world. Their music was energetic and melodic and dark, with tight arrangements and a mesmerizing singer. I always regretted that I didn't actually go see them play more than a couple times, but I was young and thought rock bands would live forever. Worst of all I got lost and arrived late at their farewell performance at the Orpheum, but now I can download and listen to the half of the show that I missed. Great stuff.

When they broke up I heard that some members "went into computer game music," which at the time I treated like a metaphor for death. It turns out they worked on some highly acclaimed games and are now at Harmonix (of Guitar Hero fame) where one is VP. This also means they have a day job with a member of my favorite not-broken-up band, Freezepop. That blows my mind. What do they talk about? Can there be peace between early-90's alternative and late-00's synthpop? If the Duke of Pannekoeken play-tests the Tribe song that's in Rock Band, does that count as one band covering the other? Heavy questions.

The moral, I guess, is that you should see all the shows you can, when you can. We saw Vast do a fantastic set at Harper's Ferry on Tuesday, but why aren't I doing that more often? I'm grabbing a couple tickets to Ladytron now (June 29th), and I'll grab Freezepop tickets as soon as they go on sale (March 7th.) Open invitation on each, of course. I'm determined to make a real effort to see more shows; I may be in a musical rut, but life is too short not to wallow in it.

Last night I fell asleep early, slept deeply for three hours, then woke up and couldn't fall back asleep. If I haven't slept well I'm usually a wreck; I'll try to get through work without incident today, but when showering just now I washed my hair with something that was not shampoo, so I better not get my hopes up.

EDIT: The fact that I found this so remarkable that I posted it immediately should be taken as another indication of my sleep-addled judgment.

Over the past couple weeks life has gradually decayed into being "what happens when you're waiting for the next KDice game to start." (It's an online board game similar to Risk.) I've played 34 games in the past two days. Today when I listened to "Truce" by the Dresden Dolls it reminded me of the time I eliminated the red and green players before blue and yellow, because red and green had started the game with a pre-game alliance which is generally considered an unfair advantage. THIS HAS TO STOP.

Mostly I'm posting this to force myself into action. You see, our dryer has a problem. A fire problem. It's not on fire, nor has it been on fire recently, but it smells like fire some of the time when it's running. It creates a sort of charcoal or kerosene smell that wanders around the apartment like it's looking for somewhere to sit.

I've had the dryer looked at by a certified dryer-person. He said it's fine and that it's not making the smell. The next place to turn one's attention to is the dryer vent, and this is where it gets harder. Partly because I can't get at the vent past where my dryer hose meets the ceiling. And partly because my downstairs neighbor just discovered that his dryer vent ends where his hose meets the ceiling. For years his dryer has been coating the gap between our floors with an extra layer of combined insulation and firestarter. I'd like to believe that my vent actually spits out the building somewhere like the units above mine, but I don't have any real reason to conclude such a thing.

It's been about a month since we ruled the dryer out as the problem, and in that month I haven't taken any action to look at the vent. After all, the reasoning goes, the building hasn't burned down yet. Maybe there's nothing to worry about. It's logic that feels fine when you're not looking straight at it, but looks suicide-stupid when you write it down and read it back to yourself. Which brings us to the promised life-saving power of Livejournal. I'm publicly stating for all to behold that tomorrow I am going to make an appointment with some contractor who specializes in ventilation to find out whether I have a real vent or a just a vent-shaped hole in the ceiling, and generally figure out what's generating a burning smell before it starts generating a burning building. Thank you, LJ, for helping me use peer pressure for the power of good.

Congratulations are in order to ndanukiwi, who recently explained that the reason she hasn't posted in two and a half months is that she's pregnant. Having not posted for four months, I now feel obligated to stick my head up and assure people that I am not, in fact, having twins.

I won't try to post somethings summarizing the past four months (it's that kind of thinking that keeps me from posting. That, and I'm lazy.) I will instead share with you a thought I had whilst scrubbing mold from the bathroom ceiling. I think this will illustrate why I shouldn't have thoughts very often, and the fact that this is from three months ago should illustrate the fact that I don't.

( Any time, Or anywhere, Just look over your shoulder Guess who'll be standing there )

Komodo dragons! Drama-hogging comedians! Ancient roman speculums! Ferris wheels! Midnight airport bulldozing! Poorly designated dance floors! All this, and a not-to-miss picture of the best rehearsal dinner ever in this Chicago wrap-up ( after the jump. )

For a while now I've been typing on a Dvorak Touchstream LP, a far-out, zero-contact mouse-keyboard substitute from now-defunct Fingerworks. I have a soft spot in my heart for the Touchstream, but the fact is that as my job becomes more technical and as I work with more tempermental software, the imprecision and stray input of the Touchstream is too much of a liability. I tried going back to a regular qwerty keyboard in my lap and a mouse on my desk, but after a few weeks of doing this intermittently I'm already getting some finger, wrist and elbow pain. Also, I hate it. The layout means I'm constantly reaching, and like most qwerty keyboards it's a spongy piece of junk.

That puts me in the market for a new kind of keyboard, but it's a market I'm lost in. I can't find any stores in the Boston area that specialize in ergonomic keyboards, so I can't try before I buy. I could order something blind online, but that's pretty daunting, because there's so much variety. I even tried going to an RSI support group for advice, but it turned out to be not a group as much as one person with an axe to grind.

So: anyone out there typing on something better than whatever came with their machine, or know someone who does? Anyone have any recommendations, or know of any good stores or other avenues to try?


PS: I'm sure I can learn to use a proper dvorak, but right now I'm totally used to the dvorak layout on a smooth surface and qwerty on keys. Isn't that weird?

( Spoiler-heavy for this week's episode (Maelstrom) )

Last night cavedwellers, D.K. and I went to see Breach at the General Cinemas AMC Regal Fenway 13. The movie was pretty good, but not great; it left me wanting to know more about what actually happened, and not in a good way. Anyway, in one of the most important scenes in the movie -- if you've seen it, I'm talking about the scene in the car at the end -- one of those "did you know?" trivia slides appeared onscreen on top of the film. And they kept it up, one colorful slide replacing another with elaborate wipes, for the whole scene. The slides may pacify an audience before a film, but they don't have that effect during the film; at first I couldn't hear the dialogue out of shock, then I couldn't hear it over the shouts of "refund!"

And refund they did, tearing courtesy tickets off a giant spool for any and all who lined up for them. But it got us to thinking: every time we've seen a theater screw-up it's been at Fenway. Just a couple weeks ago we saw Children of Men there, which was periodically out of focus, had the wrong trailers, and started out with bad vertical hold. It was also the Fenway where we saw the White Chicks trailer upside-down and backwards (which was, admittedly, fantastic). We have weirdly bad luck with audiences there, too; at one movie a child walked around talking to people the whole time, and at another a man physically threatened me because he wanted seats I was saving.

This is a 7-year-old celebrated theater with $10 tickets and $6 popcorn. Is it badly run? Does it have to start over after each time it changes chains? Or is it just us? Do other people have bad luck at the Fenway 13?

I may be the only person who thinks this, but I'll throw it out there: In a way I’m actually proud that Boston was the first city to respond to the danger of the invading Mooninites.

Yeah, I know that in retrospect these were obviously not bombs. But at first pass they were textbook suspicious packages: they had exposed wires and duct taped batteries, they were attached to things like bridge supports, and they had no explanation or contact information on them. (And you don’t discount a suspicious package just because it’s got a cute picture on it. For that matter, you don’t assume that the rest of them are safe just because the first one didn't kill you. Let’s give the terrorists a little credit here.)

Regardless of whether our response was proportional, I like the fact that we did have a response. If this was a real threat, nine cities would be scorched earth and only Boston would soldier on. Because we’re the most alert! Go team!

This morning I dreamed I was buying shuttle pilots' ovaries from the Russian mafia.

If you have any idea what that means, let me know.

I still don't know how I managed to bake a ziploc bag for 20 minutes at 400 degrees, but I'm now entering my second week of trying to scrape it off and I'm starting to wonder if using the oven again is really worth all this trouble.

Sorry I've been so mum. There's stuff to say, but whenever I have anything remotely interesting I put off writing it until I feel it'll be anticlimactic, then I wait to see if the problem will resolve itself. I'll write something soon, honest.

I had a dream that revolved around rearranging furniture.

Two nights in a row.

I don't usually get to say that I just went jogging in a T-shirt and shorts in the February sunshine.

(To be fair, I don't usually get to say I went jogging at all.)

We joined netflix. This is exciting, but it's introduced me into an internet-related anxiety I hadn't heard of before: The embarrassing feeling that one's queue is inadequate. On average the people on my netflix friendslist have 50 times as many movies as I do.* So if you have an account please let me know so we can become friends. Then I can steal all your movie rental ideas and have something lined up besides the first season of Lost.

* Admittedly, I only have two people on the list, one of whom has over 1,000 movies in his queue. Damn you, leather bad-ass Mike!

[Edit: I can't even tell the difference between the number of movies someone's rated the length of their queue because I'm such a n00b.]

You had a chance to be a gentleman, and instead you spat in Rebecca's face! Why, Randal? Why did you turn out to be such a jerk?

And when did reality television start affecting me on an emotional level?