During our daily ten minute break time at work, I typically take my book into the men's room ( yes, I take a book with me pretty much everywhere I go.  Thanks to my warped sense of humor, I've come to actually relish the looks I get, of "You actually read?  What are you some kind of weirdo?" ).  This February, when I noticed it was getting a little difficult to see in there, I asked my supervisor to let maintenance know that four of the six fluorescent tubes were burnt out; perhaps they could consider replacing them?  ( This was right before my last vacation, the second week of February. )  About three weeks ago, seeing that nothing had been done yet, I asked if it was too soon to remind them about the problem, or if it would seem like "nagging", and he laughed and wrote it down again in the log.  Two weeks ago, another one burnt out, leaving one lone tube still burning; I pretty much gave up on trying to read in the bathroom.  Note that it has been nearly three months since I first mentioned it, and that was after more than half of them were already burned out.  I hadn't really been paying attention to the timing before that, but I'm sure that it had been at least a couple of months since the full complement were lit.

This morning when I got to work, however, everything was nicely bright.  Between the "box-line" ( my work area ), the office, and the men's room, ( and, for all I know, the women's room ) I think they replaced at least two dozen tubes.  It was such a drastic change that I wanted to make sure I wrote an entry about it, so six months from now I can see just how accurate my subject line is...

Craig Ferguson, host of "The Late, Late Show", was talking about the fact that the new Jackie Chan/Jet Li movie "The Forbidden Kingdom"
 involves time travel.  He pointed out that the first one to write about time travel was H. G. Wells, and said, "H. G. Wells was a great writer, but he wrote Science Fiction.  Science Fiction writers don't get any respect in the literary community.  A Science Fiction writer is like a talk show host:  There's no respect, there's no money, and they're always searching for intelligent life among the stars."

At work today, during our daily ten minute break the conversation happened to turn to ties.  One of our part-time supervisors then said that his father had recently borrowed a tie from his uncle to wear to a funeral.  As they were coming out, the uncle admitted that the tie he had loaned was something of a practical joke:  the little blue shapes in the pattern proved, upon closer examination, to be representations of Viagra pills. 

One day late in the summer of 1972, I was over in the next-door neighbor's yard playing in their kiddie pool ( I assume with the children in residence there, though after all this time I have no recollection of them whatsoever ).  I somehow slipped and fell against the outer edge at such a strange angle that I managed to open a gash about an inch and a half long in line with my lower left rib.  I ran home crying, then spent five minutes dripping blood on our back porch, calling for my Mom, because I had been scolded the day before for coming into the house wet from playing in the water.  As she was patching me up, Mom explained that, while following the rules is usually a good thing, there are times when it is appropriate to over-ride them.

Nearly thirty-six years later, I still have a visible scar there, although it's pretty faint. 
For some reason I have yet to fathom, it has been itching just at the thresh-hold of irritation for the last three days.
Weird.

I'm not really all that into the whole LOLCAT phenomenon, but this t-shirt cracked me up.

About a month ago, I splurged a little and bought myself a new printer, because I found a really good deal on one that was highly recommended by one of the computer magazines I read.  It is only a monochrome laser, but since I rarely print anything that really needs to be in color, I decided that I could just keep my old inkjet for those jobs; the main reason I wanted a laser printer was because the inkjet doesn't do that well printing text crisply.  Yesterday I happened to think that I hadn't compared the two, so I set my watch to "stopwatch" and printed out ten pages of the same file on each printer, and I was a bit startled at the result.

From the moment I clicked "print" to the last page falling into the out-tray was four minutes, twenty-seven seconds ( 4:27 ) on the inkjet.  The exact same ten pages for the laser printer:  thirty-seven seconds ( :37 ), almost nine times faster.  Quite an improvement.

Remember that Sesame Street segment "One of these things in not like the other?"


Baby duck  ==  duckling
Baby goose == gosling
Baby eagle == eaglet
Baby chicken == chick



Not terribly significant, I know, it just struck me as weird.

Buy two pairs.  ( I've also heard it said "Buy it in every color", but in this case they only come in one color, and for work boots I'm more interested in feel than looks. )  So I did.

I kind of have unusual feet, or maybe I'm just picky about different things than most shoe buyers, because I always have a tough time finding shoes that suit me as far as fit and function; looks I pretty much always have to compromise on, because my taste is far too minimalist to suit any company's marketing department.  I've learned the hard way to always check to make sure new shoes don't chafe the underside of my ankle bones ( about 2/3 of the ones I try on do ), and with steel-toe boots I also have to check the edges of the toe cap for rubbing against the outer sides of my toes.  Plus, I'm a hard-core cheap-skate, and even relatively inexpensive shoes usually provoke a fair amount of sticker shock .

When I first started working at UPS, I wore out a couple of pairs of just regular hiking boots, before I found a brand of steel-toe work boots that suited me.  These were manufactured by Wolverine, but carried the brand-name Stanley -- as in, the hand-tool company.  [ According to the show I saw on the History channel, Stanley started out making hinges ( they were the first to include the screws in the box, which was just the gimmick to make them out-sell every other brand ), then grew to be a huge company using the strategy now followed by Microsoft -- seek out small, underfunded companies with a good idea, buy them out, use your bigger company's market penetration to sell that good idea to a whole lot more customers, buy out more small companies with the resultant profit. ]  For about the next three years I just bought a new pair of these when the old ones wore out, and was pretty happy with them ( aside from the minor annoyance that they tended to develop a squeak in the insole ), but then they got discontinued. 

I then spent several months while the last pair of Stanleys gradually disintegrated around my feet looking for a suitable replacement, during which time I found out the hard way that high-top boots are definitely not for me, at least for work boots -- the skin on my feet usually develops calluses rather than blisters, but the same cannot be said for my lower calves, and having chafed-raw blisters six inches up my leg is not only painful it's just plain weird.  [ By the way, if anyone is interested in a pair of black, all-leather, steel-toe work boots, size 11W, only worn for about a week, I'll send them to you for the cost of shipping. ]  The ones I finally settled on were Skechers, and although they were clearly work shoes, I found it really hard to buy a brand whose other shoes are marketed almost exclusively to "sk8er boiz" ( Ironically, when I was in the store yesterday buying the boots which this post is about, Sk8er Boi was actually playing on their muzak. ).  Once I got past that, though, these proved to be pretty good shoes for the purpose, but, like the Stanleys, when it came time to buy a new pair they had been discontinued. 

There is a Doc Marten's warehouse near the UPS building where I work, and they usually have an invitation-only clearance sale in mid-November, with a limited number a tickets being passed out to UPS employees.  In the past I hadn't been interested in participating in this because my main perception of Doc Martens had been as "goth fashion accessory", but given my experience with the Skechers, I decided to give it a shot and went to the one in 2006.  I found a style that I liked, that didn't irritate any of my sensitive spots, and between the fact that my two previous choices weren't around any more, and this was, after all, a clearance sale, I bought two pairs ( $35/pair ), and would have bought more if there had been any more in my size.  I messed up the timing last November, and didn't make it to the last clearance sale, but because I had only been wearing one of those pairs for the past year ( still in pretty good shape ) and still had the other pair in pretty much brand new condition, I wasn't really all that concerned yet with looking for new ones. 

In fact, when I was in the store yesterday I was actually looking for a pair of dress shoes, with a 15% off coupon from last Sunday's paper, on top of several brands being on sale.  When I didn't have any luck on that front, I drifted down the aisle to the work boots while I was there, and found these Timberlands.  I think they are the first steel-toe boots I've found in which my toes can't even feel the edges of the toe-cap; even the Stanleys, Skechers, and Docs that I've liked have given me calluses on the side of my big toes where it rubs, and some pairs I've tried on and rejected have been really bad there.  The Timberland website lists them at $85, and my final price ended up only $59.50 ( each ), which is a pretty good price for  work boots, though of course still more than I really wanted to pay, but they are really comfortable.

For those who haven't encountered it, "How It's Made" is a sort of documentary TV series that shows, as the name implies, how things are made.  Each half-hour episode usually explains the manufacturing process of three or four diverse products, with peppy synthesizer background music and narration that tends toward groan-worthy word play/puns ( "groan-worthy" in this case being intended as a compliment ).  The third product in the episode I just finished watching was "change machines", which was the reason I tuned in to watch it at a time when I had been trying to catch up on friends-list/mailing-list stuff. 

[ It's probably revealing more about my bad habits than I should, but I usually keep one tab of my browser "tuned" to my excite.com page, because even several years after ditching the ISP that originally used it as a home page, it still has far better TV listings than any other web site I've ever located.  Most of the other ones people have recommended tend to have me frustrated-ly screaming obscenities at the computer in very short order. ]


As I was saying:  I was interested in watching the segment on change machines because I spent nearly ten years working at a video arcade, during which time I spent a lot of hours maintaining several of them ( empty bills/ fill quarters daily {sometimes more than once} ; trouble-shoot as necessary; disassemble-clean-reassemble quarterly ).  Although that was about eight years ago now, I would still say I know those things inside and out.  Imagine my surprise, then, to find that the company ( "Standard", I think ) that makes the brand profiled in this episode uses a coin transport method utterly unlike the one used by the brand with which I'm familiar ( Rowe ).  From what I could see on the program, I think the Rowe version would work better, both from point of view of the customer ( faster coin dispensing ) and business ( easier to clean, more adjustable ), but it's hard to compare a few minutes of video footage against my years of hands-on experience.

Friday:  $3.07/gallon

Monday:  $3.11/gallon

Tuesday:  $3.17/gallon

Wednesday:  $3.21/gallon

ETA -- Thursday: $3.23/gallon



I'm sensing a pattern here...

I bought a 4GB USB flash drive yesterday, on sale for $20, and I thought it was interesting that it is simultaneously the largest ( capacity ) and smallest ( physically ) I've ever had.  It is literally the same length and width as the first joint of my thumb, and just slightly thicker than two house keys.  I could easily clip it to my keychain, but there isn't much point as I don't access computers other than my own very often.
According to the Office Max ad in the Sunday paper, the regular price is $27.99, but the web site  still has them listed at $42.00, so you could say I got it for less than half price.     

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This is the first of seven pictures I took of one of Ford's Concept cars at the 2008 Portland International Auto Show, called "Reflex" -- clicking on the picture will take you to my Flickr page where you can see the other six.


Long, long ago, during my first year in college, I lived in a dorm that I had naively selected based on architecture, rather than reputation ( since this was before the advent of the internet, and I didn't know anyone already attending there, I didn't really have any way to research the reputation, and since I had no experience with college life, I probably wouldn't have thought to do so anyway ). Therefore, it wasn't until I was already committed for the year that I learned it had a rep as the "party" dorm. Since I am about as far from being a partier as it is humanly possible to be, this was a poor choice for me, but thing that bothered me most about living in that dorm was the fact that our next door neighbor apparently only owned two tapes. These were "Rio" and "Seven and the Ragged Tiger", both by Duran Duran -- which makes it pretty obvious just when I went to college -- and they played them loudly enough to be heard through the wall, over and over and Over and OVER. As a result, it was several years before I could hear anything by Duran Duran without my temper boiling over, but now I usually only feel a bit of '80s nostalgia.

What does this have to do with the picture of the car? One of the most recognizable of those incessantly replayed songs was "Reflex", so of course as soon as I saw the name on this car, I was stuck with that song playing in my head for the rest of the day.

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I took a whole lot of pictures at the 2008 Portland International Auto Show, which I will be posting more of once I get them sorted and edited, but I wanted to put this one up now. It ( obviously ) doesn't have anything to do with the Auto Show, it's just a plaque I saw on the wall of the Oregon Convention Center as I was leaving that I found really amusing.

In case you can't read it from the photo ( if you click on it, it will take you to the Flickr page with the full size version ), it says:

The Oregon Trail branched in Idaho, at Fort Hall. The route south to California was marked by a heap of gold quartz, the one north by a sign lettered "To Oregon." Those who could read came here.

--An Oregon Legend


Although I'm from Washington, at that time it was still part of the "Oregon Territory", so I consider it more or less the same thing.

I got a good laugh out of my Mom today at lunch. 

The menu for the restaurant we went to listed "Danish Baby-back Ribs", which she pointed out to me, saying "Danish?!", in a WTF tone of voice. ( Not that my Mom would actually say WTF, but you know what I mean. )

I replied, "You know:  round and flat, with cream cheese in the middle."

I think the dream I just woke up from may just be in the running for the most bizarre one I've ever had, and it's one that's almost impossible to avoid being Freudian about -- though I'm not really like that, I swear . 
I was taking a college-level art course ( not something I would be likely to do ) and the teacher was giving us a surprise assignment for the day. 
We were to use whatever materials she gave us ( no picking and choosing ) to produce a piece of abstract art that represented our own, um, genitals, and be prepared to give a speech during the next class period explaining in just what way it was representational.  The materials I was assigned primarily included a tube of cardboard and wire mesh screen... twelve feet long by ten inches in diameter.  ( See?  Try and make that not seem Freudian. ) ( I've been deleting the contents of my spam folder unread, honest... )
But it's not quite done being weird yet:  For some reason, in the dream it was very important that we were told that this assignment was sponsored by Snapple.  ( I'm not real sure where that fits with the "Freudian" angle )

Is there really any way to say that, while I'm comfortable enough with the size of my penis to have never been interested in all the spam about increasing it, I certainly don't think of it as "huge" -- without seeming to be in denial about this dream?

For my job at UPS what I do is load packages onto the cars in a specific order, so that as the drivers go through their day, the next package on the shelf should be the next address they'll come to on their route.  Since I've been doing this for several years, I can just look at most of the labels and know exactly where the package should go, but there are a handful of exceptions; addresses which get things so seldom that their sequence numbers don't stay fresh in my mind, and I have to look them up on my charts to remember where they should be loaded.  One of those which I usually still have to look up, because they hardly ever get deliveries except during the holiday season, is "Rainier Terrace", and part of the reason I have difficulty with it is I keep forgetting that there are two "i"s in "Rainier".  Thus, when I look it up on the ( alphabetically arranged ) chart, it isn't where I keep expecting it to be.


Yesterday, reminded by a recent spate of emails on the Bujold list talking about Library Thing, I dug out another box of books that I hadn't entered into my various book databases, and started cataloging them.  This box contained mainly cartoon collections ( Calvin and Hobbes, Foxtrot, Bloom County ) and the children's books that I have retained from my childhood ( a surprising number of which prove to be about cats ).  In addition, there were also a couple of folders of old school work, which I glanced through curiously -- and burst out laughing.  One of these was a report I did on "Washington State" in ( I think ) fourth or fifth grade, which is marked "A-".  I would have gotten an "A", except for my spelling:  I left out one of the "i"s in "Mt. Rainier".

My total for this year turned out higher than I expected, mostly because of the fact that I didn't read as many of the longer books on my to-be-read- shelves as I had planned; I just never seemed to be in the mood for any of them when I was trying to decide what to read next.  Still, given the number that were in excess of 500 pages, an average above a book every other day is respectable enough, I guess.



   
This year I'm going to try to get more reviews finished; if I can do one about every three weeks, by the end of the year I'll have nearly doubled the number I've posted so far.

12:34 pm -- At the sound of hail falling on the roof, I look outside and discover something I don't think I've ever seen before:  hail and snow falling at the same time.  It's very strange, because they fall at different velocities, with the hail stones streaking down rapidly while the snow flakes waft down at a much more leisurely pace.  I went outside on my balcony and took some pictures, but falling snow/hail never photographs well.

12:41 pm -- The hail stops, leaving something that see-saws unpredictably back and forth across the border between rain and snow, weighted slightly heavier toward the former.

1:07 pm -- The sun comes out from behind the clouds, melting any remaining white off the ground in a matter of minutes.

Finally got around to seeing the movie "Enchanted" today, and for the most part I really liked it.  What can I say, I actually like schmaltz, as long as there is sufficient humor to keep it from being too thick.  I did, however, have one technical quibble that I'm sure most people would consider minor ( if they even noticed it at all ), but which really bothered me.

In the scene at the King's and Queen's Ball, just after Edward, Giselle, Robert, and Nancy had introduced themselves around to one another, the conductor announces the King & Queen waltz. 
He then turns to the orchestra and strikes up a tune:

That

Is

NOT

a

Waltz!



C'mon, Disney, all you need for a "waltz" is something that's in 3/4 time; it's not that frelling difficult.  Sorry, end ( former ) musician's rant.