I forgot to mention that it was, as always, The Best Christmas Ever. I really, really like Christmas.
Sometimes, because I’m generally a nut, people awkwardly pause, formulate the question so as to not offend me, and ask me if I celebrate Christmas. Gentle reader, rest assured I celebrate Christmas. (I hate to think I’m giving off the vibe that I’m a Christmas-hater)
I don’t really do the Santa Claus thing though, maybe that’s why people get the wrong idea. My main reason for this is that I’m going to have to tell my kids “heroin is bad for you” and I don’t want old lies lurking in the back of their skulls. Also, deep down, I think that Santa Claus is made up to include, and be non-offensive to foreigners and commie-freaks. “Look, you’re in America. It’s a Christian nation, get with the program.”
So Baby sees the Mall Santa and calls him “Christmas Tree Man”. Pretty funny. It’s not that we’re hiding the Santa Claus thing, we just don’t really think much about it. She’s a little young this year, for the Sinterklass story, but it’s a pretty good one. Better than the whole chimney-deal by a long shot.
There’s a wealth of information out there, but most of it’s in Dutch.
Anyway, Happy Christmas.
My Uncle the Spammer
I mentioned earlier that I had set Granny up with a shell at the house. She had a brand-new virgin email account and sent exactly one email. To her brother.
Well yesterday she comes in to see if she has a reply and her mbox is overflowing with crap!
Unamused, I was, as I checked into this aberration. You know sometimes at the bottom of a web page there’s a link that says something like “mail this page to a friend”? I always wondered a few things about that.
Does this actually send the page or just the url? What kind of goof would use this feature instead of just pasting the url into a regular email? Is it just a scam to reap email addresses to use for nefarious purposes?
The answers are:
It sends the whole freakin’ html-encoded page. Pictures, banners and all. My Great Uncle. Yes.
Bah!
T.F. Miles invited me to play a little guitar with him, The deek-ster and a certain ‘Lieutenant K’ at the South Sub Christmas Party. It amazes me that that kind of latent talent is just out there busting people’s heads for a living. Miles first saw a guitar about three weeks ago and plays like a madman. He’s really a great drummer, so he wasn’t totally new to the concept of playing music. It’s just that when someone can become that technically proficient in such a short time it makes me realize what a goof I really am.
Deke and the Lt. are great too, they’ve been playing for a while and it shows.
If you look at the picture, though, you might notice that all those South Sub guys have chairs and they forced me to stand. Some way to treat a guest! <g>
Four days and a wakeup call ’til Christmas and I think I have all my shopping done. Not bad. There is that thing I ordered for my lovely wife that I think won’t be here in time, but other than that I think I’ve got a new record. I’m pretty happy with my purchases overall, but of course Mrs. Bumper causes me the most grief every year. Yet another display of how we differ is that she’s very practical and I’m… Well, not. I would be happiest buying her something really useless every year, but I know she would pretend to like it but be disgusted inside. I want to buy her a piece of jewelry suitable for wearing about twice a year. She wants an air filter for her lawn mower. But my point is that she’s a little hard to buy for, and it’s always a compromise.
I’ve heard that people are having a hard time getting in the Christmas Spirit this year. I think it might be due to the short period between Thanksgiving and Christmas this time. Anyway I was having the same problem until Karl sent me this years card.
Yay! My Momma just had delivered to me an antique jewelry display case thingy. This is going to be the coolest desk ever; it has dozens of shallow drawers, is extra wide and, most importantly, isn’t actually a desk. Why is that last bit the most important thing to me? Well, I haven’t really thought about it ’till now (journals beget introspection). I guess it’s just the hack value. My Mom hacks furniture.
Now I have about two days of furniture rearranging to do here in the conservatory. It’s not the furniture so much as it is all those cables snaking all aver the place.
Thanks to everyone who made it out to my promotion ceremony and to those who thought about it but realized that they could be doing something else instead. I hate things like that and I would never expect anyone to show up, but it was pretty heart warming to see my boys from The Team had sneaked into the back row like the ninjas they are. I’m glad I didn’t see them before I went up to the stage or I might have been a little teary-eyed. Well except that I’m a man and I don’t cry.
Off to the White Hayride tonight and hope to catch some of the Geminid Meteor Shower and get my nuptial snuggle on.
My Granny was over here today sending her first email. I feel a little bad looking at my Granny as a science experiment, but it was interesting to watch a normal, intelligent person do something new. She somehow has escaped ever even using a typewriter.
I set her up with mozilla mail instead of the greatest MUA in the world because I thought it would be easier for a beginner, but the whole pointing-device paradigm is foreign to her, so I don’t know.
Mrs. Bumper took me out clothes shopping today. It was a pretty traumatic experience for me. I guess I’m just an institutional man, I’ve grown accustom to someone telling me what to wear every day. I decided on something and just wanted three of them, but that wasn’t going to satistfy the tailor. We ended up compromising and I got some things that are almost exactly the same, but in different weights. I really can’t see myself “mixing it up a bit” with a salmon shirt and Warhol-esque tie, so I just got black over white. I figure if it looks good on Monday, one just like it will look good on Tuesday.
This must be a manefestation of my sickness.
I usually don’t pay too much attention to what I’m wearing except: I cannot stand to be monochromatic. If I’m wearing black shorts I’ll wear a green t-shirt, if I’m wearing green shorts I’ll wear a black t-shirt. Other than that I don’t much care. Oh, I also don’t like t-shirts that came from the store. T-shirts should be commemorative. That’s my fashion advice.
The boys from my shift took me out for a nice dinner after work last night. I’ve become pretty enamored with them in the eleven or twelve days I’ve spent with them. I’m sure my record of showing up for work has made me less popular, but what can I do?
You’re all invited, as my personal guests, to my promotion ceremony. Friday, PromiseLand Holy-Roller Church, 1000hrs. I’ll understand if you can’t make it, but I wanted you to know you’re invited. I don’t know if there’s free food or not.
I have long sought to configure X to never-ever, no matter what, no consideration given to which sort of term I happen to be using, never, ever ring the terminal bell again. I know the obvious answer is to claw out the bell piezo with a fork, but on the laptop the terminal bell goes through the system speakers and as I mentioned the other day, I must be able to listen to IRC conversation.
I finally gave up and just asked and in about two seconds hoyhoy piped up with:
“if you’re running X, can’t you do a xset b 0 0 0”
I mean, it’s like he was just thinking about that. Weird, but it has made my life just a bit better. And maybe someday, someone will type “never ever ever ring terminal bell in X” in a search box and this’ll make his life just a bit better too.
I went and saw my prospective new work environs yesterday. It’s the area where all the detectives used to be when I was just a pup matriculating at Catalpa Community College.
It’s a little depressing, like Barney Miller, but with cubicles. The only thing that has me a little stressed though is the thought of wearing adult clothes. I can’t seem to get a handle on just how I would dress were I all grown up and zero-hour is fast approaching.
Mostly it’s the shoes that are bothering me. If I can find some suitable clothes that I can wear with my Fort Lewis Go-Devils I’ll probably live.
Finally, I made the cover of Command Magazine. Thanks Steve, not just for putting us on the cover, but for making our magazine the best looking association magazine out there.
I posted the tools and instructions I use for IRC -> speech synthesis. It’s a dirty kluge I cooked up so I could listen to IRC while I worked on an elegant solution, but it works well enough that I haven’t gotten around to figuring out the elegant solution yet.
