Saw Chris tonight, which was fun. We went to the friends' place, where I thought they were having a barbecue, but I guess I'd been too waffly with Liz on the phone, so they didn't think we were coming and they ate all the food. So we got some Calexico instead, and it was great. My stomach was bothering me a bit so I didn't eat it all at the time, but I pounded it down as soon as I got home. It was good to see Chris; sounds like he's going out west to do his Master's at UCLA, which is sort of too bad for me, and probably Razor Lopez, too.
I finally got my hands on a copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Mer and I both plowed through it in a couple of days. It's good, you know, but a little, I don't know, breezy. Now I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which is pretty goddamn scary. Finished Jade Empire; very satisfactory, except for one of those darn "choices" you make very near the end of the game basically swings your alignment completely in one direction, obliterating the results of all the choices you'd made earlier in the game. For me, the net result was that I turned into a pretty decent guy... and that's not so bad, I guess.
My new primary care physician sent me to a cardiologist and wants me to get an ultrasound, because I have, respectively, a heart murmur and a big fat varicose vein on one of my nuts. She said I really needed to start wearing something besides boxer shorts when I went running, so I bought a couple pairs of boxer briefs, which are not, you know, super-comfortable for me, but they stop the ol' oysters from hurting when I go 'round the park. So.
I think I may have found a place to donate my meagre comic book collection -- the Special Collections department of the VCU library system is apparently willing to receive any and all items I can send them. Even the Spawn / Underdog Christmas Special. I didn't think anyone wanted that one.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Friday, May 13, 2005
I Am Fucking Awesome
Well, hello there! I'm in a pretty great mood this morning, and I'll tell you why: First off, last night I got off the train at around 7:45 and it was still pretty light out, so I resolved to go for a run. I hadn't run last weekend -- I literally plain forgot to do it -- and I'd been feeling sheepish about that. Plus, I was feeling pretty full of energy despite having been stuck at my desk for the past 10 hours. So not only did I go for a run, but it was my best run ever! I only had to stop once, for only a few minutes, because my chest was getting pretty tight. But I ran up that last fucking hill like nobody's business. 3.4 miles, baby!
Also, just now, I finally got the CSS automatic table layout algorithm working in this rendering library I'm writing. Long story short, I'd gotten my renderer working passably a few months ago (jesus, 6 months ago?!), but there were some layout indiosyncrasies (like two elements only being able to get a few units away from each other before getting squished) that made me realize that I'd have to rewrite the whole thing to do layout according to the CSS algorithms. And that. took. a. long. time. The spec is worded in a pretty vague way, and a lot of times I had to spend a few days figuring out what it meant or even subject myself to the ridicule of people on IRC to get some help grokking it. At any rate, I fixed a trivial SIGSEGV just now and ran my test program, and what should I see but my three little test buttons layed out horizontally next to each other. Totally unexpected. I said, "Fuck yeah!" out loud as I used the TAB key to cycle the focus through each one, even though there's no one here to hear me except Kitty, and she's sick.
I got some books out of the Epiphany branch of the NYPL last week: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is really quite good, though it's got a completely different tone and focus from Blade Runner. The Darkest Part of the Woods I picked up on a whim while I was looking for a different book -- it's not bad; "pleasantly dull," might be the best way to describe it. Right now I'm reading The Road to San Giovanni by Italo Calvino.
Got into Jade Empire a whole bunch more. I still have the same complaint with it, though, which I also had with the Bioware Star Wars games, which is that the "choices" you get to make aren't terribly nuanced. That is, I don't really feel like I'm deciding between Way of the Closed Fist and Way of the Open Palm (or Dark vs. Light Side, as the case may be) as between rude and polite. I may subscribe to a Randian worldview (in the game, in the game), but I know how to say please, people.
UPDATE: It's Sunday now. As it happened, I had a kick-ass day at work on Friday, too, but I woke up at 2:00 AM Saturday with the shits and all this thick, unhorkable mucus in my chest. The worst part was, I was having a computer dream before I woke up and spent like 15 minutes half asleep trying to clear my throat by loading an Assembly in a custom AppDomain. Jesus. Tom dragged me out for a run, which did not go quite as well as the one on Thursday. Then I went to Ted's birthday party; I was the only attendee who didn't barf, apparently. This morning, Mer and I went to Cafe Steinhof; a fly died in my coffee, but the spaetzle was good. The humidity is making me irritable.
Also, just now, I finally got the CSS automatic table layout algorithm working in this rendering library I'm writing. Long story short, I'd gotten my renderer working passably a few months ago (jesus, 6 months ago?!), but there were some layout indiosyncrasies (like two elements only being able to get a few units away from each other before getting squished) that made me realize that I'd have to rewrite the whole thing to do layout according to the CSS algorithms. And that. took. a. long. time. The spec is worded in a pretty vague way, and a lot of times I had to spend a few days figuring out what it meant or even subject myself to the ridicule of people on IRC to get some help grokking it. At any rate, I fixed a trivial SIGSEGV just now and ran my test program, and what should I see but my three little test buttons layed out horizontally next to each other. Totally unexpected. I said, "Fuck yeah!" out loud as I used the TAB key to cycle the focus through each one, even though there's no one here to hear me except Kitty, and she's sick.
I got some books out of the Epiphany branch of the NYPL last week: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is really quite good, though it's got a completely different tone and focus from Blade Runner. The Darkest Part of the Woods I picked up on a whim while I was looking for a different book -- it's not bad; "pleasantly dull," might be the best way to describe it. Right now I'm reading The Road to San Giovanni by Italo Calvino.
Got into Jade Empire a whole bunch more. I still have the same complaint with it, though, which I also had with the Bioware Star Wars games, which is that the "choices" you get to make aren't terribly nuanced. That is, I don't really feel like I'm deciding between Way of the Closed Fist and Way of the Open Palm (or Dark vs. Light Side, as the case may be) as between rude and polite. I may subscribe to a Randian worldview (in the game, in the game), but I know how to say please, people.
UPDATE: It's Sunday now. As it happened, I had a kick-ass day at work on Friday, too, but I woke up at 2:00 AM Saturday with the shits and all this thick, unhorkable mucus in my chest. The worst part was, I was having a computer dream before I woke up and spent like 15 minutes half asleep trying to clear my throat by loading an Assembly in a custom AppDomain. Jesus. Tom dragged me out for a run, which did not go quite as well as the one on Thursday. Then I went to Ted's birthday party; I was the only attendee who didn't barf, apparently. This morning, Mer and I went to Cafe Steinhof; a fly died in my coffee, but the spaetzle was good. The humidity is making me irritable.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
It's Literally Just Like 'The Shining'
So on Thursday night my friend Seung had a painting in this art show and stopped by the opening after work -- it was at one of her friends' apartments on Broadway, right above Yellow Rat Bastard (how's that for location?). She basically had the best thing in the show (and the only painting -- on canvas at least). The rest of the stuff was pretty... bad. It was mostly so-called "mixed media" pieces, including, but not limited to, a plywood crate attached to a set of a drapes and hanging from the ceiling. You know, like, stupid stuff.
Anyway, by the time I'd left the show it had gotten pretty dark, which was sort of disorienting, since it was totally light when I'd gotten there. I thought I should head for either the Delancey St. or East Broadway F stops, so I headed off Eastward and walked for like 6 blocks before I realized I had know idea where either of those stops was in relation to where I was. That, plus the fact that I kept thinking that Mer would be waiting for me and I hadn't called her to let her know where I was, and hadn't yet realized how sick I was with this shitty cold I've got now, led me to basically freak the fuck out. Pretty embarrassing, considering I'm supposed to have grown up in this city. Well, Jake, it was Chinatown.
I eventually made it to East Broadway, which, no kidding, is pretty East, and thus home to B'klyn. But I was still all wound up by the time I got back to the apartment, so I thought I'd do a few chores to calm myself down. The overhead light in the kitchen had been getting a lot dimmer, so I decided to remove the fixture and replace the bulb. One thing we'd always noticed about the fixture, which was one of those simple, screw-on glass dish dealies, was that it had a big splotch on the interior of one side, which we'd always assumed was paint. Well, when I finally got it down, I noticed that not only was it full of bug carcasses, a bunch of which had rained down on me as I was unscrewing it, but that splotch was actually a wasp's nest! Holy shit! Mind you, it was clearly devoid of actual wasps, but it definitely had a little hole in it for a wasp or wasp-like critter. So that didn't calm me down at all.
Anyway, by the time I'd left the show it had gotten pretty dark, which was sort of disorienting, since it was totally light when I'd gotten there. I thought I should head for either the Delancey St. or East Broadway F stops, so I headed off Eastward and walked for like 6 blocks before I realized I had know idea where either of those stops was in relation to where I was. That, plus the fact that I kept thinking that Mer would be waiting for me and I hadn't called her to let her know where I was, and hadn't yet realized how sick I was with this shitty cold I've got now, led me to basically freak the fuck out. Pretty embarrassing, considering I'm supposed to have grown up in this city. Well, Jake, it was Chinatown.
I eventually made it to East Broadway, which, no kidding, is pretty East, and thus home to B'klyn. But I was still all wound up by the time I got back to the apartment, so I thought I'd do a few chores to calm myself down. The overhead light in the kitchen had been getting a lot dimmer, so I decided to remove the fixture and replace the bulb. One thing we'd always noticed about the fixture, which was one of those simple, screw-on glass dish dealies, was that it had a big splotch on the interior of one side, which we'd always assumed was paint. Well, when I finally got it down, I noticed that not only was it full of bug carcasses, a bunch of which had rained down on me as I was unscrewing it, but that splotch was actually a wasp's nest! Holy shit! Mind you, it was clearly devoid of actual wasps, but it definitely had a little hole in it for a wasp or wasp-like critter. So that didn't calm me down at all.
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