The Educated Fool

Today I learned that an old college friend of mine is engaged (expected) and at Fermilab (unexpected).

Also, I have a 5:45 AM flight tomorrow to Ft. Myers. Visiting family for T-day.

It's been a day of ups and downs.

• Up: bought a Roomba. It may become the office pet. :P
• Down: Car battery died. Had to have AAA come out and replace it.
• Up: Sinfest plot arc with demon-girl falling in love with nerd is damn funny.
• Down: Didn't use quite enough water in the stew.
• Up: Still smells great.

So decent, but not spectacular day.

The Gathering Storm was awesome. Approximately 24 hours cover to cover, including time to sleep and boozing on Halloween night.

I've made travel plans to fly back to Michigan on November 12 and return to Kansas City on the 15th. Con Ja Nai, here I come!

Dear sweet root. What have I become?

I've been debating spending priorities. I want to go back to Michigan for Con Ja Nai. I'm also debating about buying furniture. Specifically, I need a new table and chairs, a new desk chair, and a new bed. Can't afford the new bed this month, and a really good desk chair (read: Aeron) would run me nearly $700, but I can probably do the table and chairs for $300-$400.

Thus is my bachelor lifestyle. At least I always have booze money. To wit

(11:44:36 PM) VRMN: your bachelor life confuses and disturbs me

So I was walking to my favorite hangout-with-booze last night. It was a bit chilly, nothing major. On the last street crossing before the warm refuge, I hear something from two random guys that I actually recognize. Noise falls away for an instant.

"Necronomicon."

I stop and just look at them for a second. Once more it sticks out of their conversation like an iceberg.

"Necronomicon."

I suppress a shudder, and beeline for the bar. Muttering about the Pnakotic Manuscripts.

It's a new level of weird for Westport.

I'd be up to see KMFDM.

Which is good, because they're at a club two blocks from my apartment tomorrow, and I've got a ticket.

Despite being sick Friday, I survived AWA, and had a blast. I even came back with some solid concepts and a will to edit.

Also, mirkdoll totally got taken out by a spy.

Parents in town. Not yet insane.

Parents land in a few hours. Good thing I cleaned.

Nail down AWA plans this week. Put in for time off, and then buy the goddamn plane tickets. Oh yeah, and then figure out hotel stuff. Important.

Reading Green Lantern comics. Batman is a dick.

That is all.

Apparently I get caffeine headaches if I don't get any coffee by 10 AM.

I own an espresso machine. This may prove to be hazardous to my sleep cycle.

That is all.

I've been fighting off a bizarre feeling all weekend. It's the feeling that there's something I should be doing, something I've forgotten.

I really don't know.

Anyway. Work is going well down here. I like my boss and my coworkers. Recently, I've been exploring the performance profiles of nginx and lighttpd versus apache in our use case. Despite what partisans will say, neither of them is measuring up to what mod_php can deliver.

Now I know why I don't like CGI or FCGI rigs. Too slow.

I do feel a little odd around here, sometimes. Like I'm shutting myself away. I haven't found a local hangout that I really like yet. I'm no form of barfly, and not really a clubgoer. Need to find something to do around here.

Learn something of a man by the way he wins,
And more by the way he loses.
Learn more by the way he plays,
And the most by the games he chooses.

Michael, from Witch Hunter Robin.







Because I figured it'd just draw hate if I said "God" :P

I can live with Colloquy, although I wish it had selective logging.

TextMate is decent for development.

I am slowly coming to loath Mail.app. Just too many things it doesn't do.

In other news, I probably worked 50 hour this week. Was there late three nights. Good humor on the subject wearing thin.

Two days ago, I bought a MacBook Pro. Mostly for work, but my personal laptop was due for replacement.

Does this mean I've joined the Cult of Mac?

Monday I had to myself. Spent much of it arranging things and getting my internet connected. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent almost entirely orientation. It's a good thing I'm not really expected to remember most of it, because there's no way I could. Spent Thursday doing something very unusual - reading documentation. Much of Friday was spent chasing the cause of a significant slowdown. It kept me at work about an hour and a half late.

Funny how it works when I work someplace that I actually like. Except for the bit where I started getting hungry, I actually didn't mind.

In other news, the lack of major pieces of furniture (couch, desk chair, a few other things) is getting annoying. I have some shopping to do once I get paid.