Wiping beer off the kitchen wall

It’s one of those things you just don’t expect to have to do.

I cleaned out large chunks of the refrigerator today. Among the things I threw out were the remnants of a 4-pack of Murphy’s Stout that I bought for St. Patrick’s Day and never finished. Now, if stout isn’t chilled, it’ll foam out and overflow the can. Apparently 5-month-old stout overflows even if it is chilled, because when I opened the cans over the sink, they sprayed foam onto the wall.

So I wiped the beer of the wall, then went back to cleaning stuff out. Then I noticed that there were brown spots a bit farther away, so I wiped those off. Then I noticed that it was all over the side of the coffee maker, five feet away from where I was opening the cans. Then I noticed it was on the wall on the other side of the coffee maker!

The moral of the story: Finish your stout on March 17.

What Goes Around

I went to Sav-on on Saturday to pick up more NyQuil and DayQuil equivalents. The shelf was practically empty. All sizes of the name-brand boxes (I get the capsules, since I can’t stand taking cough syrup) were completely out.

Yes, they were out of NyQuil and DayQuil.

As for the store brand, which I know from experience works well, they were down to their last few boxes unless you picked up the 40-packs. I think there were two 20-packs of the daytime version, and only the giant boxes for the nighttime.

If anything says “cold season has hit,” it’s a shortage of over-the-counter cold medication!

Current Mood: 🤒sick

Sweet poison

Woke up with a sore throat this morning, almost certainly the same thing Katie’s been fighting all week, so I’ve been drinking tea today. Our lunch room at work has a basket of sugar, Sweet-n-low, and Equal packets which someone has thoughtfully arranged in three wide stripes, making it look oddly like the French tricolor.

When the receptionist cleans the coffee maker, she puts a post-it note on the urn labeled “Poison,” often with a skull and crossbones, to make sure that no one absent-mindedly pours himself a cup of cleaning fluid. (And face it, if you really need the coffee, you won’t notice!)

Disturbingly, someone had set that post-it note on top of the sugar packets.

Now, I’m sure you can find nutritionists, dietitians, and the occasional conspiracy theorist who will agree with that assessment—and throw in aspartame and saccharin as well—but it’s not a label you want to see on something you’re about to put in your own drink. Even when you know it’s safe!

Whoa! That’s real far!

I walked to lunch at the Irvine Spectrum today. On my way back, while waiting at a red light, a 20-ish guy with headphones and a student-sized backpack asked me for directions to UCI — on foot. As it happened, the directions were simple: Take Barranca to Jeffrey, turn left, and keep going.

But 7 miles is a long way to walk!

He did ask if there were any buses that went there. I said there were, but I didn’t know where the stops were for that route.

If he kept walking, he might be just arriving around now.

Weekend of Movies

alenxa and I don’t go to movies very often. Usually we just don’t get around to it until whatever film it was isn’t in theaters anymore (unless it’s something one or both of us really wants to see). Sometime last year we started making a list of movies we’d missed, movies one of us wanted to show the other, and movies we wanted to see again. We watched a few, and then the list got buried on my desk, and then I had to clean off my desk and it got buried in a pile on the floor in front of a shelf.

After we rented Underworld a few weeks ago (a film which takes itself waaay too seriously, and which gets misfiled in Horror instead of Action because it has vampires and werewolves in it), I tracked down the list and we started working through it. We don’t watch enough to justify paying for Netflix (though I keep meaning to check out their selection, which would be the tipping point), but we can get a 2-for-1 deal at Blockbuster if we rent early in the week. It makes it easier to rent movies that we know are going to be MSTK fodder in a couple of decades, since we can get them free with a better film.

Anyway, to this weekend. On Thursday, I went with wayens to see a showing of Ghostbusters in an actual movie theater. It really holds up. The jokes are still funny, the story still works, and even the effects hold up pretty well. (The main exception would be the stop-motion version of the terror dogs, which is probably a combination of compositing and lack of motion blur). One thing I noticed was that the story itself is treated 100% seriously. The humor is in the characters, the dialogue, the attitude. The Stay-Puft Marshmallow man, for instance, is incredibly silly — but because there’s a logical in-sroty reason for it, and the characters treat it as a real threat, it works. Wayne was remarking about how tightly the movie is put together. It goes from their breakthrough, to their first case, to the main plot, with montages serving to fill in the gaps.

Saturday I finally watched From Hell while Katie was blockading. Since it’s been over a year since I read the book, and I knew to expect a historical drama/horror rather than a documentary, I actually thought it was a fairly decent Jack the Ripper film (if there is such a thing). Unfortunately they ripped out some of the key parts of the book — all the symbolism in London’s architecture, for instance, wouldn’t have fit onscreen anyway, but I rather liked the flash-forwards to the 20th century during his psychotic break after the final murder. One of the main points was that this version of Jack believed he was ushering in the future. They kept the line, but left out everything that supported it.

Then last night we watched Ben-Hur. I hadn’t seen it before, but Katie had, and she recommended it especially for the chariot race. Now I knew that the pod race in The Phantom Menace was full of homages to this, but I hadn’t realized it was practically a blow-by-blow remake… even down to the music!

Finally, today we went out to the nearby second-run theater to watch Madagascar. The last time we went there, we were surprised that the theater was in better condition than it had been back when it showed first-run films. They were charging something like $2 for matinees and $4 for evenings. There were maybe 10-20 people in the theater with us. Now, they’ve lowered their prices. Matinees are only $1. I have no idea how they plan on staying in business…but you know what, the theater was almost full. Lower prices + more customers = more revenue (if the coefficients are right). Fun movie, nothing I’d want to rush out and see again, though I was amazed how much of the music was chosen as in-jokes. Who in their target audience is going to recognize Chariots of Fire?

So, has anyone seen The Brothers Grimm? Is it any good?

I, I.T.

The best laid plans…

I arrived at work early today in order to do minor maintenance on a pair of servers. The plan was that it would be done by the time people started showing up at 9:00.

It’s 11:40, and I just finished.

Server A: Install latest patches and reboot. Problem: Server decided to hang on login. Solution: reboot again. Simple, but annoying.

Server B: Shut down, install RAM, reboot. Problem 1: Server would not take any of the new memory that, according to the manual (downloaded as a PDF from Dell), it should have accepted. Problem 2: After re-installing the old RAM, Microsoft Exchange refused to start, offering only a 10-digit error code as explanation. Solution: Lots of Google and MS Knowledge Base searches suggesting database problems turned out to be completely irrelevant upon finding another set of logs that mentioned a nonexistent drive F. Opened up the computer, reattached the loose SCSI cable, and everything ran fine.

Current Mood: 😡frustrated

Mirror Madness

Remember when the rear-view mirror in my car fell off? I picked up some appropriate glue that evening and stuck it back on, but what I didn’t realize until the next morning was that I hadn’t gotten it in exactly the right place. The driver’s-side sun visor would hit the corner of the mirror every time I moved it. So I grabbed a new tube of the adhesive, then put off actually removing and reattaching the mirror for a week and a half. (The mirror was in place, and I could aim it properly, I just had to be careful about moving the visor around.)

Today I decided I was finally going to fix it, so I pulled the mirror off the mounting button and tried to remove it from the windshield with a razor. No luck. I pulled out the package, looking for removal directions, and discovered that when they said “permanent,” they meant it. Directions for fixing a botched job were to mount a second button on top of the first.

So, back to the auto parts store looking for an extra button. It turns out they’re not standardized, so I have to get one for this particular mirror. Not likely to be at a generic auto parts store. And if I go to the Nissan dealer, it’ll probably cost as much as a new mirror. (Buying OEM parts is annoyingly expensive. I spent upwards of $40 for a replacement wheel cover because I wanted it to match the other three.) I did not want to buy a new mirror just because I glued the original one a quarter-inch out of place!

They did have a mounting arm on its own, so I went back out to see if my mirror would hook up to it. I pulled it off of the button, and noticed something about the arm: It had ball-and-socket joints at both ends.

Problem solved! I just swiveled the arm out to the right so that it clears the visor, and I can still position it correctly using the other socket.

Current Mood: accomplished

Geometric reading

I was fixing tags on recent LJ entries (every other web app I’ve used tags with makes them space-separated, not comma-separated) and noticed that I’d mentioned where I was in HBP several times. It got me thinking:

Tuesday I read to page 50.
Wednesday I read to page 200.
Thursday I finished the book, which is about 650 pages.

That’s roughly 50 pages on day one, 150 on day two, and 450 on day three. Fortunately that was enough to finish the book, since I don’t think I would’ve had time to read 1350 pages on Friday!

Sunset

Since about 7:15 (barring a break to bring in laundry), I’ve been out on the balcony with the laptop, doing Net stuff I’ve been meaning to catch up on. It’s been quite nice outside today, except in direct sunlight, but there’s been a light cloud cover most of the afternoon. But we just can’t seem to get the apartment cleared out.

There was a dicey moment when I was watering the plants, though, and somehow managed to overwater the plant that hangs above our patio table. So it immediately started dripping on the table and splashing the laptop and small stack of books next to it. It was closed, at least, so no harm was done, and the day was so dry that by the time I finished with the other plants the table was already drying out.

We don’t have a view of the horizon — there are too many trees and buildings in the way — but the high cloud cover meant a very nice sunset, and the parts of the sky I could see turned fantastically gold, orange, and finally pink before fading.

Now it’s dark, and while I don’t need to see to type (and the screen casts plenty of light for that anyway), one of the things I was doing was typing in the quotes we collected at Comic Con. The balcony light really doesn’t cast enough to read at this end, so I’ll probably have to either go over to the bench by the light, where there’s nowhere to put the notebook, or go back inside, where it’s still uncomfortably warm.

On the other hand, I won’t be able to hear my neighbor hocking loogies on his patio. He started about halfway through this post, and I hope he’s finished. Blech.

Current Mood: 🤔contemplative

No Looking Back

I got in the car to go to lunch today, and noticed something sitting on the cup holder in front of the dashboard: the rear-view mirror.

I tried to stick it back to the window, but wasn’t confident that it would stay. Rather than risk it falling off in the middle of driving, I pulled it off again (too easily) and set it on the chair.

On another note, I was standing in line at Robeks when someone behind me asked, “What part are you at?” I said something eloquent like, “Huh?” and he repeated the question, at which point I realized he was referring to HBP, which I was holding in my left hand… without the dust jacket, and with the spine facing downward. He had to have recognized it solely by its size and the color of the cover.

Secondhand Rows

Finally got out to see The Kingdom of Heaven at one of the local second-run theaters. Once upon a time it was Edwards Woodbridge. Never a flagship theater, it was getting pretty run down by the time they sold it off. I think the last movie I saw there was Star Wars: Episode I three or four months after it came out.

The real shock was that the theater was in great shape. Certainly much better shape than last time, back when the carpet was ragged and stained, some of the seats were ready to fall apart, etc. One of the new owners (there’ve been at least three, I think) put in new carpet, new tiles, new paint, fixed the seats… and is still offering $2 matinees. Even the film was in decent shape. The focus was a bit off on the right side of the screen, but it wasn’t nearly as scratched as I’d expect it to be after 2 1/2 months.

Looopy!

Last week I spent every day rushing to get through various projects at work. (For various reasons, I’m trying to catch up on a bunch of back-burner projects, including some server upgrades/replacements.)Twice I had servers crash in the evening. Monday afternoon I started upgrading one system, figuring I could stay a bit late and finish it while alenxa was in class. It didn’t quite work out that way. The upgrade took longer than expected, Katie’s class got out earlier, and most of the critical services stopped working partway though. I ended up leaving to pick her up, grabbed Taco Bell, dropped her off at home, and came back… and was stuck at work until 10:00 while I got things running again.

The big project for the rest of the week was getting a new mail server set up. We’d been planning this for a while, as the previous server was kind of flaky, but it looked like it was heading for a serious meltdown. Not surprisingly, it took until Friday afternoon before it was ready to take over. There’s an old adage about not makng major changes before leaving for a vacation or holiday weekend. I decided that the old box was so close to meltdown that it would be worth the effort. Silly me… Once again it not only took longer than expected to move the mail over, but I got stuck again when I accidentally rebooted the wrong server and it wouldn’t come up again. Katie’s already told that story. I still ended up making more changes after we got home, and doing troubleshooting for the next two days.

So after a week of high-stress running around and not enough sleep, my immune system must have been trashed, because I started noticing a sore throat Friday evening. On Saturday it turned into congestion and a cough, on Sunday my voice dropped steadily to a low croak, and on Monday I could barely speak at all. Katie picked it up from me on Sunday, and we both ended up staying home yesterday. I spent most of the day either in bed or on the couch, and I drank a ton of orange juice/Sprite blend (because after a while, I couldn’t bring myself to drink straight orange juice, but I was tired of just water).

We did at least get to see the local fireworks display on Monday, even if half of me wanted to just stay home and lie down.

We’re both back at work today, but I’m not entirely sure I should be. I had a very mild fever yesterday — less than half a degree — but I still feel really loopy today. I’m sure waking up at 3:30 am and not being able to get to sleep again until 5:00 didn’t help, but overall I probably ended up getting as much sleep as I usually do. The last NyQuil has long since worn off, and DayQuil has never caused me problems.

As far as I know there are no driving-while-feverish statutes, though I hope I’ll be in better shape by the time I’m ready to go home.

Current Mood: 🤒sick

Fighting fatigue and frustration

I’m the only one here today. I at least thought my boss was coming in, but I haven’t seen him yet. Still, he keeps odd hours, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he showed up at 3:00 and stayed into the evening.

Busy trying to get a new mail server set up. Using Mandrake instead of Red Hat due to driver issues. And while things that are built in work great, things that I’ve had to configure manually have been problematic. Right now I’m fighting a PAM/LDAP bug that I hope is limited to SSH, or else the server’s going to be unusable for any sort of authentication. Beginning to wonder whether it will be ready before the current server melts down under the load.

Staying up way too late. I was the first one in this morning, and started some coffee, figuring I’d need more than the one travel mug from home. Didn’t go back for a while. Co-worker showed up a bit later: “Did you make coffee this morning?” “Uh, yeah.” “Did you get enough sleep last night?” “Uh, no… why?” I ran through my memory of the morning and while I could remember getting the filter, the filter basket, and the coffee grounds, and I could remember turning the coffee maker on, I couldn’t actually remember putting the coffee pot under the spout. Guess why.

On Monday, the uberboss talked with me, my boss, and two other co-workers about a reorganization plan. It’s a bit complicated, and involves the fact that someone from a copmany we do development for is coming out to work with us on-site for 8 months, but basically I need to pick up skills I haven’t used in about 7 years instead of doing (a) what I’m good at and (b) what they hired me for. So I’m trying to take care of various back-burner projects before I have to focus on programming.

One of those back-burner projects was a server upgrade that went wrong and kept me at work until 10pm on Monday, and took up a big chunk of Tuesday morning trying to resolve the remaining issues. I’ve still got one web project I need to finish, and just picked up a new one. And there’s the melting mail server. And we’re coming up on a 3-day weekend of which two days are already planned with various sets of relatives. Vacation? Yeah, right!

Lunchtime observations

All the “meadows” (i.e. weed fields) I noted a while back have been mowed down and just look like dead brown grass. The one where I stopped and watched birds and butterfies has a few flowers that have popped up since then, but is otherwise pretty much dead.

Speaking of dead grass, the traffic island where I took the picture of the Grass Under Renovation sign is almost completely dead now.

Jamba Juice gets really loud when they’re making lots of smoothies.

A green tea boost turns mango smoothies green. I’d hate to see what it does to a berry smoothie. With luck it’ll look sort of like a mocha… but it sure won’t taste like one!

I suspect the local schools are out, since there were a lot more teenagers than I’m used to seeing on a weekday. That’s part of why Jamba Juice was so busy.

As I was leaving with my smoothie, a pair of girls waiting to pick theirs up suddenly hugged each other and started dancing in circles for no apparent reason.

Many of the trees along the path from the building where I work to the Spectrum shopping center are purely decorative. The sidewalk along Irvine Center Drive is lined by trees on both sides, but only a few shadows managed to touch the sidewalk. As for shade for someone walking at high noon? Not a chance. Maybe in a few more years they’ll be useful. Or maybe if the city doesn’t trim them back so far next year.

This lack of shade may be connected to the lack of pedestrians. Today, for instance, I encountered no one on the way to lunch until I reached the office building across the street from the center. On the way back there was one guy carrying a soda and a bag from fye, and a woman jogging with an iPod. And they were both on the first block out, before the first signal.

Speaking of that first signal (second if you count the one crossing the street from the Spectrum itself)…drivers don’t expect pedestrians there either. A truck was turning right in front of me as the light changed, and another car zoomed right behind it despite me stepping forward into the street. By the time I got three steps in, the “don’t walk” signal was already flashing… and this is nine lanes worth of street.

Random Restroom Rants

The restrooms where I work have automatic sinks. In theory, motion detectors determine that your hands are below the faucet and turn on the water, then shut the water off when you pull your hands away. In practice, you tend to wave your hand around trying to get its attention, give up and move to the next sink over…at which point the first sink starts running. I keep meaning to draw up a 4-panel cartoon to illustrate this, but I’m not sure my limited drawing skills are up to the task.

I have actually washed my hands, gone over to the towel dispenser, dried my hands, opened the door, and walked out…with the sink still running (and no way to turn it off).

These sinks have been made worse in recent weeks. You see, someone decided they needed to turn up the water pressure. The faucets are angled slightly outward. Placing your hands under the faucets provides a surface for the water to bounce off of, and it splashes forward… over the edge of the sink… landing just below the belt.

Then, of course, there’s dealing with people who don’t wash their hands. It’s easy enough to use an extra paper towel on the handle, but what do you do when there are no paper towels? The place I went for lunch today had an air dryer, complete with the usual blurb about how much more environmentally sound and sanitary air dryers are compared to paper towels (which I think is mainly there to give you something to read while you wait for it to actually dry your hands), but the restroom door opens inward, with a handle on the inside. I walked in and there was a guy standing next to the sink, as near as I can tell waiting for someone to open the door so he wouldn’t have to touch the handle!

Account of the bank

At lunch I stopped by the bank to pick up some rolls of quarters for laundry. (The next time we move, a washer/dryer hookup will be part of our criteria.) For some reason, the teller was acting really nervous. When I asked to withdraw two rolls of quarters, she stammered that I should swipe my card while she went to get them.

This in turn made me nervous. I watched her talking to one of the other tellers, wondering what was going on. Did I have a doppelganger on the FBI most wanted list? Was I acting suspiciously without knowing it? Was I just really jittery from all the coffee I drank this morning? Is there some unwritten rule about how many rolls of coins one may reasonably withdraw at a time? Was I going to spend 20 minutes talking to the security guards before they were satisfied that all I wanted to do was withdraw some cash from my own account?

She came back with the quarters, I evidently managed to mistype my PIN, but I got it right on the second try, and the transaction went fine (except for her pronouncing my name wrong)—though I decided to keep my hands in plain sight, just in case. All told, it was an odd experience.

Current Mood: 😕confused