LifeBox

Well, shit. I had a whole bunch of stuff here about my birthday dinner at Aziza, John and Mary’s baby shower in Golden Gate Park, Scott’s birthday party over at their house, and a bunch of rambly stuff. Then I hit the wrong button on the browser and it all went away. Teach me to use a form field when I should be using emacs. Dammit.

Maybe I’ll recap later. Probably not.

Have I mentioned how cool Twisted Metal: Black is? Real cool. Phil came over after work today, and we played some multiplayer, and it was real cool too. (Well, okay, we both work from home now, but it was after your standard work hours.) I’m two psychos away from finishing the whole story mode, then there’s a bunch more I haven’t even looked at - challenge mode, endurance mode, all sorts of shooting stuff and making stuff explode modes. Sick, sick, sick.

After Bernie got home from her real job at a real office, she and Phil and I went out to have dinner at our new favorite Ethiopian restaurant across the park. Well, I suppose it’s actually Eritrean, but I really don’t know enough about the politics and history of that area to know what the difference really is - there was some annexation and civil war thing going on, and I suppose that I really should know about stuff like that, but, you know, who can keep track of all the strife in the world? All I know is that the food is damn tasty and the staff is attractive and friendly. After stuffing ourselves full of spicy meat and spongy bread and honey wine, we walked over to Toy Boat for coffee and olallieberry pie. So full.

So, we rolled home, and Bernie brought out a toolbox full of birthday presents for me. Lots of nice things that I actually need. Hex wrenches and ratchet sets and electric drill-drivers and a really swell over-engineered hammer. Plus, a really cool little notebook and a new sake set. I reckon a good chunk of tomorrow is going to be spent hunting down all the random tools I have lying around the house in little boxes and bags and getting them all together in their proper place, now that they have a proper place to be gotten into.

In other news, our Austin offensive is moving along. I’m going to head down there for a week or two to secure a landing pad for the first of the month, so as to remove as much moving stress as possible. I’ll pick up some tickets for a flight down there on the 15th or 16th next month, and see how loosely I can arrange the return trip. Should be enough time to fix it up. Also, I have to give a holler to my grandmother down there, and my cousin Nick, to give the family types a heads up. We’re very excited.

So, a day or two ago, I came across this new browser as a replacement for IE on Windows. It’s cool. And by cool, I mean totally sweet. It’s got all the goodness that IE gives you, plus a ton of nice features like tabbed windows and popup blocking. I’m still finding all the bits and pieces, but I’ve been using it as my default browser since I installed it, and a half dozen of the noisier kids are loving it, too. Werd.

Man, I got nothing done yesterday. Not even unproductive stuff, like watching movies or playing games. Oh, well. I did get out last night. A bunch of us met up at Edinburgh Castle for drinks and fish’n'chips - me, Bernie, Phil, Huff, and Jay. Drinking and bitching, and abusing Jay. Always fun.

Sometimes, I’m envious of my associates’ websites. I know, like, smart people and stuff. And, apparently, they get stuff done while I miss days at a time. Most recent example: Dave’s Flog - a Flash blog aggregator, with email updates and RSS support and stuff. Pretty badass. Dave just recently (for some value of “recently”) picked up Perl, and he’s loving it. Really digs the whole “suck stuff down from the web and do cool stuff with it” thing. And, you know, rock on.

Not much interesting today. Worked on work some, gearing up to do some fun XML stuff, had lunch with Phil at King of Thai #2 and got the update from his trip to Japan, played a little Twisted Metal: Black, socialized with the chick (who is recovering nicely) a little bit.

So, in lieu of other news, it’s time for us to have The Talk.
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Man, I got nothing done this weekend.

On Friday, I did a little bit of work - writing some unit tests in anticipation of code - and then took Bernie to the dentist’s office to have her wisdom teeth out. We got there around 2pm, and all four were supposed to take about two hours. Well, there were complications - her upper popped right out, but her lower left tooth had gnarled its roots around the jawbone so badly that the denist gave up after a couple of hours, put a sedated Bernie in a wheelchair, and took her down to an oral surgeon’s office to finish the job. Things went fine, though - the surgeon pulled out some bone fragments and junk and we finally got her home, only a couple of hours late. So, Bernie’s been recuperating with the aid of vicodin and ice cream, and I’ve been keeping her company and making sure that she doesn’t run out of either. She was pretty swollen and uncomfortable for the first 24 hours or so, but the swelling has gone down, and she’s off the dope and doing fine. A few more days, and she’ll be back to her normal non-chipmunk self.

Our living room entertainment for the weekend consisted of a few movies and a new game. We finished watching Whoops Apocalypse (the television series, with Barry Morse and John Cleese, not the movie which came after, and which I know little about), Claire’s Knee (which sucked - French, what do you expect?), All About My Mother (Spanish comedy/drama, which I paid little attention to), It Happened One Night (a “screwball comedy”, starring Claudette Colbert, who resembles Bernie a little bit, and Clark Gable, who does not resemble me at all), and The Thirteenth Floor (a little bit of Dark City, and a little bit of Matrix - flawed, but didn’t suck). The rest of the time, I was either preparing cold or warm mushy food, or playing Twisted Metal: Black - which is probably one of the best twenty bucks I’ve ever spent on a game. Terribly fun, playable for short bursts or hours at a time, and now in the “Greatest Hits” collection, which means that it’s cheap. Joe Bob says check it out.

Next up, more work, and some sleep. Maybe.
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So, I learned some important things today. 1) Ben-Hur is a long-ass movie with only one or two good scenes over the course of four hours. 2) Hello Kitty Dream Cakes are the most disgusting snack food ever invented. 3) Every once in a while, Walgreens decides to give you stuff for free. 4) I am allergic to cats, dogs, dust mites, and three kinds of ragweed.

I went to my appointment at the allergist that my sister Katie works for. He said that the itchy bumps I’ve been getting are just some random allergen-and-dryness-induced eczema or something, and gave me some cream to make it not itch so much until it goes away by iteself. Then my sister stabbed me in the back with sixty-three sharp little pieces of plastic coated with various toxins. Man, that itched. But, at least I know I’m fine - I don’t have skin cancer or anything, and I’m not allergic to girls or anything tragic like that. My doctor last week told me that I have the most boring medical history she’s ever heard, and I think I’m just fine with that. I think I already said that. Well, I’m pretty boring, too.

Oh, I get to drive down to Menlo Park for some face time with my clients. Boy, do I miss that commute down 101. A month or so ago, when I was doing that every day, I described the 101 as “a giant conveyor belt in an asshole factory”. There’s just something about driving down there that really makes me lose hope for humanity. Pricks in their SUVs and Lexuses on their cell phones. Yeah, yeah, whatever, you’ve heard it all before. At least I can find some small joy in rush hour; if you’re tooling down the freeway in your luxury sedan, making some big deal on your Nokia, and some dipshit gets in front of you doing the speed limit in the fast lane, that’s me. Ass. I love that game.

Speaking of which, I’ve been playing with some Flash stuff again, trying to get back to this game engine that I keep not working on, and I ran across a couple of nice pages. One on general isometric game stuff, and one by the guy who used to do jailbitch.com - which was badass - but now just has a bunch of tutorials and demos on it. Still pretty badass. Puts me to shame.

Been downloading and watching a lot of Six Feet Under, too. My sister hasn’t seen a lot of the second season, and I haven’t seen any of it, so I’m gonna try to get ‘em all and burn some discs for her. People have been raving about it to me for a while - it’s not bad. Better than I expected. Sort of like the Sopranos, only no Tony, and most of the people are already dead. And one of the guys looks sort of like a young Charlton Heston. Sort of. Anyway, it’s watchable. Sometimes, I miss television. Then I look at my stack of unwatched DVDs and the 430 backed up on my Netflix queue, and I don’t miss it so much. Oh, yeah, and the hundreds of hours of video games I still have waiting to be played. Plus, you know, work. And doing stuff outside of work. And… well, yeah, you get the picture.

Monday, back to slogging crappy Perl code for money. I think I overdosed on antihistimines this weekend - I’ve been getting hives and rashes and itchiness for the last month or two, and I have no idea what they’re from. Over-the-counter allergy medicine seems to make them go away temporarily, but I want them to go away permanently, and the antihistimines make me really, really tired, and nothing gets done. Luckily, my sister is working at some doctor’s office downtown, and they’re on my insurance, so I’m going down there tomorrow for some allergy tests. Finally, she will be able to fulfill her lifelong dream of scratching me up and injecting all sorts of nasty things into me to see if I puff up or not. Yay.

On saturday, we went to see the final midnight mass at the Bridge theater here; that screen classic, Mommie Dearest. The show was great, as usual, with mother/daughter drag queen wrestling and a tearful farewell lip-sync performance by Peaches herself. Bernie had never seen the movie before, and everyone was hootin’ and hollerin’ so much that nobody could really make out any of the dialog, so I picked up the DVD for her yesterday, so that we could bask in the glow of Ms. Dunaway as Ms. Crawford in the comfort of our own home. And bask we did.

Also picked up a few other movies while I was out, including Flash Gordon and LotR:tFotR. Something I’ve noticed about stores like, say the Wherehouse - they tend to be staffed by stoner college slackers who could give a shit about movies and such, so they’re pretty cavalier about pricing used DVDs. Example: Flash Gordon, which is out of print, and sells for $50-$60 anywhere that bothers to check the price, was sitting in the used bin at Wherehouse for sixteen bucks. Uh, score. I’ll have to take a closer look around there next time for stuff I’m having trouble getting my hands on at more respectable establishments. I mean, I love places like Green Apple, and I’m all about supporting local businesses, but forty bucks is forty bucks, man.

Well, the folks are on their way back home. Took them off to the airport a few hours ago, and got to straightening up the place. Plus, lunch.

My sister came back over to hang out yesterday. Bernie had to work, so the rest of us went over to the park to bum around the botanical gardens and the japanese tea garden. Grabbed lunch at Einstein’s Sandwiches on 9th Ave, which was super good, came back home for a bit, went out and had a few beers at O’Rourke’s, came back home for a bit. Bernie came home from work, and we walked down to Gaspare’s for dinner. We had to wait for a while for a table, so Gaspare himself came out and brought us a bottle of wine to drink outside while we were waiting. Nice. Plus, really good food.

We were going to go down to the Drift for some drinks with the guys, but wound up lolling around the apartment and going to bed early. Which worked out just fine, since we were late, and people went to hang out on the patio at Zeitgeist instead. Then, this morning, wake up, get coffee, get them packed, and get them off to SFO. All in all, a pretty fun visit. Good to see the folks again. Got to get together with my sister some more before we go to Austin.

Now is the time for checking a week’s worth of work email, catch up on my webernet reading, and start figuring out what needs to get done next week. I can’t wait to slack off and rest this weekend. Starting…. now.

<dave> I’m starting to feel like the Danny Glover character in the Lethal Weapon series.
<jorm> when do we get to have you strip down to your underwear and attack a flame-thrower weilding lunatic?
<dave> well, marc gets here in two months.

So, my day consisted of waking up, getting coffee, and sitting down with my dad and finishing Max Payne. Good little game. Very cinematic, lots of shooting and sploding. Bernie and Jane went out shopping for fabric or something while we stayed home and wrought vengeance on the underbelly of the crime world. Bernie gave us a call around one or two in the afternoon to see if we were bored and wanted to get lunch. Heh. Girls are funny.

<dad> Allright! I’ve got me a gun and some bullets! What more could a man ask for?
<me> Something to shoot at! Over there! *bang*bang*bang*

Eventually they came home, and we went to Mel’s Drive-In for dinner after fiddling on the computer a bit more. Came back, watched Evil Dead 2, then bed. Tomorrow, more fun. Plus, drinking.

I’m pretty freakin’ tired, but I feel like I should write, so here.

Yesterday morning, I had a doctor’s appointment for a checkup. The doctor was on vacation, so my checkup was performed by the nurse practicioner instead. Holy crap she was cute. Made the nut-squeezing part less unpleasant. Anyway, itt went pretty smoothly - everything is in order, and she said that I had the most boring medical history she’d ever heard, which seems good. She also asked what I did for exercise, and I told her that I placed Dance Dance Revolution a lot, and she got a kick out of that, and we talked about how those little punk kids are so good and it and stuff.

Afterwards, I stopped for a minute outside to watch some old Chinese guys practicing t’ai chi and kung fu in the park across the street. Very neat. One guy was doing some kata with a fan that I haven’t seen before. Fun. I should go back and watch more one of these days.

So, later on that evening, my sister picked up my dad and stepmom from the airport and brought them over here. They’re in town from Rochester, NY for a few days, and they’re staying with us. We went over to our favorite ethiopian restaurant over here, New Ertria, and met my sister’s girlfriend Kat for dinner over there. Damn, that’s some tasty stuff.

Today, the girls went shopping downtown, and I went over to the San Francisco Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park. Checked out the Powers of Ten exhibit, the dinosaur stuff, the aquarium, the usual. Afterwards, we walked over to Clement for lunch at King of Thai, and stopped into Green Apple to look at books and stuff. I wound up getting a couple of new (to me) Alfred Bester books, and a couple of used video games - Red Faction for PS2, and Max Payne for the PC. Came home and wound up playing Max Payne for several hours until the chicks got back, then went to some crappy yuppie restaurant (Park Chow) that my sister likes. Hung out a bit, drove my sister home in Berkeley. Sleepy now.

I was going to go down to Jackson Arms to shoot some with dad, but he tore some ligaments in his arm a few weeks back, and didn’t think it would be such a good idea this time around. Maybe next time. Also, didn’t make it out to the Drift tonight. Maybe tomorrow, if I can round up a few of my degenerate friends to come out and drink with us.

Speaking of which, our friend Mel (of the Austin Dave and Mel) is well on her way to joining a roller derby team down there. Crazy. More details on her site.

More later.