Author: Kelson Vibber

Irony, Luck, and Coincidence

Irony: Walking through Trader Joe’s and hearing “It never rains in California” on a day that really soaked.

Luck: The rain and clouds cleared up in time for a great view of the lunar eclipse (when we weren’t in a store or eating dinner). Post-eclipse, it started up again.

Coincidence: Watching Lost for the first time (fully aware that Merry Brandybuck and Lt. Matheson/Gavin Park are both on the show), and at the first commercial break, Buffy’s mom pops onto the screen to talk about painkillers. Tons of genre connections surrounding an apparentely non-genre show.

Random thoughts

One of our bathroom sinks drains slowly. We’ve had maintenance out time and time again, but no matter what they do, it’s always just a bit slower than usual. Meanwhile, everytime they work on the faucet, its flow increases.

Last night I concluded it must be a water-saving drain. By draining slowly, it encourages you to not to turn the faucet up too far, or to run it too long, thus saving water. Sure, the same thing could be accomplished by just limiting the flow from the faucet, but that would be frustrating. This way you’re involved in the process, so it feels less like you’re being limited.

And on a less silly, but still plumbing-related note, a few nights ago I had an interesting old-habit experience. After loading the dishwasher, I lifted the door while opening the cabinet to get the box of soap. In my parents’ house, these are on a corner, so you can’t actually open the cabinet under the sink without lifting the dishwasher door out of the way. It’s been about 4½ years since I lived there, and countless loads of dishes… and yet the old habit resurfaced.

Current Mood: 🤔contemplative

Venting

Remember, when you’re tempted to say, “Great, now what?” — DON’T!

After watching the very intense Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, we came home, I flopped on the bed, and thought, “I’m tempted to stay here.” But no, I wanted to post a brief, spoiler-free review. Heh, heh, heh.

(Feel free to ignore this post — I just need to vent somewhere.)

#1. The Computer

Theater action! Too hot for radio!

In light of a recent expurgated version of “You Oughtta Know” played on the radio, alenxa wondered just what else Alanis Morissette might be singing about doing to someone in a theater.

I was originally going to do this as a write-in poll, but then I realized people would be limited to only one suggestion each.

So, fill in the blank: “Would she _______ on you in a theater?”

Be creative. If it doesn’t scan, that’s OK (it’s an Alanis Morissette song, after all), but stick to two beats if you can.

Post your ideas here!

Current Mood: 😉silly

Yeesh.

Around 10:00, one of my co-workers asked me about an error message he was seeing every time he booted Windows. It looked related to yesterday’s JPEG security fix (yes, you can now get hacked/infected/etc. just by looking at an image using Microsoft software), so I went to Windows Update.

And then the pop-up ads started. There should not be any advertisements on Windows Update. Clearly something was wrong.

I spent the next 1½ hours removing adware from his computer. Even after removing the obvious bits through the control panel (some of which left pieces behind), Norton found 21 different pieces of adware, including a program whose sole purpose is to surreptitiously download and install new adware while no-one’s looking, and several programs that claim to block pop-ups, but actually generate them.

Current Mood: 😡annoyed

Arachnid Intelligence(?)

Every morning last week, there was a spider web attached to the car. An active one, with a spider in the center, waiting for flies, moths, and possibly small rodents. It would anchor one side to the carport post, and the other side to the driver’s side rear door. This resulted in me walking around through another carport, tossing my stuff in the back from the front seat, then gleefully ripping the web apart as I drove out of the space.

This happened three or four mornings in a row.

You’d think the spider would tumble to the fact that “Hey, this giant metal thing moves every day! Maybe I should attach my web to something else!”

Eventually it did. On Friday, it stayed outside and used the post and the roof instead, and by Saturday it had gone somewhere else. But it seems to be a common failing in spiders: we went by my parents’ house one night last week and there was another one, stretched from the olive tree to the minivan.

The world keeps getting smaller

Given the lack of decent radio stations in the LA area (I swear, every frequency is filled, but they’re mostly crap), I find myself occasionally listening to a San Diego station that sometimes comes in clearly. (It’s a step above Star, at least.) It’s about 80-90 miles from here to SD. I was listening to them today, and when the song ended, the DJs came on and announced that they were broadcasting from Disneyland. About 10 miles away. In the other direction.

Current Music: Eh, it would just get stuck in your head.

Blast from the past

Wow. We just turned back on a website account for a customer whose domain was “hijacked” a year ago (IIRC he didn’t renew on time, and someone snatched it up). Apparently he gave up trying to get it back, because he asked us to set it up under a new domain name.

We hadn’t moved the files at all, so all we had to do was change the name in our config. (And fix an error in a CGI script that probably relates to a Perl upgrade, since it presumably worked before.) But the site…

Let me just say it was already old before he lost the domain name. It probably looked old in 1999. Everything’s centered, it’s got blink tags, animated GIFs, a clock and a Java-based music player.

But the thing that caught my attention was the “Netscape Now! 3.0” button.

(Netscape 3 came out in 1996. Windows 95 was still new, IE was barely usable at its own version 3, NCSA was still working on Mosaic and Netscape was still charging money for its browser.)

Current Mood: 🤔nostalgic

A ton of batteries

My boss and I just finished installing 1300 pounds of extra batteries for our server room’s UPS* units, more than doubling our previous backup coverage.

See, the power company has decided they need to cut power to our block for 8 hours tomorrow night in order to do work on the local grid. And here we were with only enough battery power for 2½-3 hours. (This was more than enough back in the era of rolling blackouts, since those only lasted an hour or so.) We can shut down everything on the inside network, no problem… but a five-hour outage for all the websites, email accounts, dialups, DSL accounts, etc. that we host is not something we want to be stuck with.

So we got more batteries.

We’ll still have to be here at least part of the time tomorrow night, keeping an eye on things, turning off internal systems to conserve power, etc. I can’t say I’m looking forward to that.

* That’s uninterruptable power supply, not united parcel service.

Lactic Acid: A Good Thing?

Heard a story on KCRW this morning. Apparently lactic acid might not be responsible for muscle fatigue after all (as my high school biology class taught). The connection was made because lactic acid was found in fatigued muscles, but recent research suggests that it may prevent muscle fatigue. It turns out that if lactic acid is removed from overworked muscle fibers, they actually stop working.

Of course, it is probably responsible for the burn you get while exerting.

(It’s kind of like when I learned that a fever was actually an immune system technique to fight infection, and not something the infection did itself.)

Current Mood: 😕curious

The things you see on LJ…

sclerotic_rings on prosthetics that don’t just mimic the body, specifically artificial heart pumps designed with the fact the important part isn’t the method by which the heart pumps blood, but the fact that it keeps it circulating. We have plenty of experience with simpler ways to pump fluids than by imitating heart movements, such as, in this case, a constantly rotating impeller. What’s interesting is that people with this pump have no pulse!.

Future Con

Hmmm… a co-worker has informed me that he just made hotel reservations for next year’s Comic Con (this year’s having ended yesterday)… and that some of the nearby hotels are already sold out!

alenxa and I pre-registered for next year’s convention yesterday (avoiding deadline issues and saving $50 over the at-the-door price for a full membership). It might be worth planning further ahead…

Current Mood: 🤔contemplative