Category: Uncategorized

There is no way to convey how funny my evening has become. I can only encase it in an LJ cut

With as much time as I have to spend on the train this week, I will be back on schedule. No doubt. Here’s the first of three for this week, on Reality in the News.

The reason I’m on the train so much is that this GDMF server is crapping out, and it’s my problem. Whine whine.

Tired. Don’t know why.

Executed a daring midnight raid on redmeds office. Painted it. Primed yesterday, painted it today. For me, the high point was stage whispering “ACT CASUAL” as we strolled past security with a gallon each of primer and paint, a stepladder, and a home depot bag full of brushes, rollers, plastic, and paper. I think I lost a brain cell or two, but it’s a big improvement.

The haxxored corporate servers are nearly back online. Mail, web, and the support queue are now isolated on their own machines, each of which is running as a virtual machine on a big-momma server we’ve got. The good part of this is that we can take a snapshot of the servers on a regular basis, and back out to a previous configuration fairly easily.

On Friday, we went to another concert in the Boston Early Music Festival series. Something to do with recorders, proto-oboes, a soprano, raunchy lyrics in Italian (like, “yes, we get it, you’re sexually repressed, please move on” raunchy), and dancers. Woot.

I’ve been playing with myspace. The site looks like a graphic designer threw up on it. The interface is terrible, and the ads really, seriously, truly get on my nerves. I’m frankly stunned that it’s lived this long. However, I have a myspace page now. Wow. How cool is that. I’m, like, on the cutting edge.

I think I’m going to take a nap now.

Looks like our primary corporate server has been hacked. Mail, web, etc.

Plus, I can’t find my wallet.

And, my parent’s kitten got hit by a car.

Keep your head down, that’s all I’m saying.

Got all the plants (the ones that survived the Great Shelf Disaster) into 6 inch pots. Except, of course, for the peppers … because they’re still too freakishly tiny to bother moving. I’m thinking that maybe the marigolds will be in still larger containers by the time the peppers are ready to upgrade … because otherwise I’m going to need more 6 inch pots. How can 32 of anything be inadequate? Anyway, they’re all out on the porch, about to spend their first night outdoors. Wish them luck. It’s live or die time in plant-land.

Spent an unexpected hour outside talking with my nice but loquacious neighbor. Turns out that he’s been laid off his job of, like 32 years. He’s a jeweler, and has been making jewelry for the same company, owned by the same family, for his entire professional life. The man is 58 … and it sounds like the owners made some poor decisions and now they’re shutting down operations in Providence. It sucks. I have no idea what to tell him. Further, his wife works at the same place … and she’s been cut back to half time. There’s hope that they may retain her as part of a tiny core that will keep the Providence site open, just a little bit. He’s considering all options, including driving a truck for the city. “I’ve had enough stress to last two careers,” he told me, “it doesn’t seem like a step down, anymore, to punch a clock and take home the dollars.”

Mowed the lawn for the first time of the year, today. Also observed the entire complement of birds that we get, including: Chickadees, House finches, Gold finches, Cardinals (including the cutest baby cardinal ever), the Downey woodpecker, the Northern Flicker, Pigeons, Morning(sp?) doves, Tufted titmice, and Nuthatches. I’ve got a good birdfeeder these days.

New essay is up language, and its unimportance.

Posted from the geek lair of my friend Vinny. All hail.

I got a “peep egg” for easter. It’s a milk chocolate egg with a peep inside it.

I documented the carnage.

I’ve been putting the plant-shelf / mini-greenhouse out on the back porch during the day to start the hardening-off process for the seedlings. If you just up and put them outside in the soil all of a sudden, they die of the shock. So instead I bring them outside, covered for several days … bringing them in at evening. Then I start leaving them outside overnight, but uncover them during the day. Then finally, they live outside on the shelf for a few days. At the end of this, in the dirt they go.

I moved the shelf outside the morning, came in, and heard **CRASH**. Looked out on the porch, and the shelf had fallen flat on its face, dumping all the seedlings out of their peat pots into a jumbled pile of crushed and dead. A gust of wind pushed it over, apparently.

I was able to scrape about half of them back into peat pots, and those are back on the sun porch. The rest are compost. Too crimped, broken, or otherwise destroyed to bother.

Gah. Raise plants from seed and see what it gets you.