digitalrust

I'm declaring LJ bankruptcy.

This means I'm not going to try to read the 4-6 week backlog of flist messages.

Sorry. I love you all, but not that much.

So if there are any engagements, elopements or conceptions I should know about, give a shout.

So, my internet connection thru Cox has been really bad lately. Everything works fine for a while, then the connection just drops. The modem lights look fine, but I can't ping anyone. ipconfig /release and /renew works eventually.

I'll stop being technical now.

I'm sure this is Cox's problem, not mine. But they won't do anything further until I erase and reinstall my system. Bummer.

Chrystine quit smoking when she went to the hospital last Monday. Robyn wanted to quit but kept bumming off of me. Seems like a good time for me to quit. This is attempt #4.

I'm finishing off my third day and things are going mostly ok. I haven't cheated, and I'm getting used to the incessant headaches. Those patches do itch, though.

Interestingly, I've had some amusing dreams. Like the one where I was a retired Russian athlete with a mostly plastic body who wanders around an empty modernistic city inhabited by nothing but myself and a few dogs but wait the city turns into a live-action version of Toon Town and I'm locked in a diner with Columbo who I'm helping investigate a double murder and I think Columbo suspects me but he plays the bumbling fool so well that I can't tell and maybe I did murder these two people but I wake up before I find out if I'm guilty or not.

Or the one where I'm CJ from GTA:San Andreas trying to escape from prison and go around vaporizing people's heads with a minigun but I get killed by guards every time.

Dammit, why can't I have any *dirty* dreams when I'm on this stuff? Tonight I'll probably dream of moderating a debate on post-modern architecture between Dubya and a unicorn.

I've also found a couple of "milestone" programs for the 'puter, one of which sez:

Russell - Free and Healing for Two Days, 22 Hours and 49 Minutes, while extending my life expectancy 4 Hours, by avoiding the use of 59 nicotine delivery devices that would have cost me $16.23.

Thanks to everyone for the kind words about my father's death. The service was lovely, and the gathering afterwards was nice. There were a few people I missed seeing, but that's ok. Since I haven't heard back from my boss, I'm assuming it's ok for me to stay here through Thanksgiving.

My father died on Wednesday morning. It was not a big shock, as he had been ill for some time. I'm in Macon now, and will attend the memorial service on Monday. I am hoping to stay through Thanksgiving, assuming my boss will let me.

After almost two years, my iPod Shuffle finally died and went to iHeaven. I knew this would eventually happen, since flash RAM will eventually die. So for those of you keeping irreplaceable documents on your USB flash drive, backup often.

So now I have a new 30gig iPod, black of course. Since my CD collection only fills about 20% of the drive, I'm slowly converting DVDs to save on said iPod.

Wondermark by David Malki ! - 119: In which a Cat has a Blog

Since everyone else is doing it,



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Happy belated birthday to dbaxdevilsfan. I'm glad you had a good one.

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Check out this video. (Flash required, 10 min download on dialup.)

According to snopes, there's no camera trickery; it's a "real" magic trick.

I saw this in a spam message I got. It seems all so poetickal.



one side trees trees end, gym within motor wish, commit allowed effect.
favour not why allow near news.
next slow forty desire meant oh. reply some fancy action however. here situation bridge.
surely gotten chance approach luck morning, few fire whom corner, planning profession purpose getting tying.
given cant king. friend within sale ridge.

Forwarded from my Mom.

( Cut for your protection )

My big brother pointed out that www.neilyoung.com is streaming his new album, due out Monday. With songs like "Living with War" and "Let's Impeach the President", I don't think it will sell well in red states like Arizona. The choral arrangement of "America the Beautiful" is... beautiful.

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Got a call from our landlord's realtor. She wants us to move out (with six months left on our lease) so she can sell the house. She's willing to "help" with moving expenses. Since we don't want to move, such "help" better include some up-front cash.

Our lease gives the owner "reasonable access" to the property with notice. Does this mean the realtor can bring buyers to see the place? Do I have to keep the doggies from killing them?

Go by Ben & Jerry's Tuesday for free ice cream!

I finally got my birthday present from my folks...

( a new camera )

I spent my Wal-Mart gift cards on a new DVD drive for my computer. I'm rapidly gonna run out of hard drive space as I, er, backup movies that I like. (I've started with Firefly)

My goal was to buy a video iPod around the end of this month, but there are credible rumors that a new video iPod will come out sometime in April.

I'll be so pissed if I wait two months and the thing fails to appear.

I'm gonna stop complaining about the busses around here. Complaining in Philly gets you thrown into traffic.

btw, thanks dbaxdevilsfan for the b'day card. I'm officially middle aged on the 21st.

Well, Christmas was lots of fun. I got to see the family, and on New Years Day we all went to the brand new Georgia Aquarium. website my photos That was simply amazing. Most of my pictures didn't come out very well, so I only posted a few. It's the largest aquarium in the world, and it was funded by a 200 million dollar gift from Bernie Marcus, one of the Home Depot founders.

For Christmas Loot, I got a new leather jacket, a sweater and some gift cards. My nephew got a video iPod. I must remember to write that boy out of the will.

MediaPlay was having a going out of business sale, so I bought City of Villains, SW:KOTOR2 and (on a whim) Icewind Dale. They were pretty much cleaned out of good movies, and the CD's looked like someone had randomized them.

I could bitch about work, but you've heard it all before. But I've got to unload this one... I was working on a Sunday a couple of weeks ago, and I got a call from our customer service hotline. It seems the other store in our cluster failed to open on time, and people were complaining. I gave the CS person the phone number of our manager. I asked my boss about it later, wondering if he would discipline the Asst. Mgr. who didn't show up, and he said, "don't worry, it's taken care of." Fast forward a couple of weeks, and it's announced that that same AM is coming to work permanently at our store! I swear, I think my boss only hires good people by accident.

After seeing a post on Boing Boing, I've been downloading podcasts from zoeradio.com for listening to on the bus.

I am a member of 1 clique of size 4

digitalrust, bullpenbrat22, zoeybug, dbaxdevilsfan

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dbaxdevilsfan used to tell me that I whine too much. "I'm tired. I'm hungry."

Apparently I whined to the right person. A few weeks ago, my boss's boss was in the store for a meeting (we have a big conference room) and he asked if I had a good Thanksgiving. I explained that I didn't get to go home for TG and probably wouldn't get Christmas off either. "Why is that?" he asked. "Because holiday vacations are pretty much forbidden during the peak shipping season," I replied. I went on to explain that I missed Christmas last year for the same reason, and that this would be the first time in my life that I hadn't been home for the holidays. He said that he would talk to his boss, who has to approve all vacation requests during the holidays. It helped that I make black & white copies (which are not in demand) instead of color copies or shipping (which are).

So in about seven hours, I'll be flying home for two weeks. And I didn't have to mention my parents' ill health, that they needed someone to program their VCR/computer/phone, or that I have to return home once a year to be protected from Lord Voldemort.

Forgot to mention that I saw Goblet of Fire last week with the 'mates. I liked the movie, but missed alot of stuff that they had to cut out. Didn't help that I finished the book a couple of days before I saw the movie. They should have cut short the Yule Ball scenes, maybe; but there was no way they could have fit all the important stuff from the book into a single movie.

Still haven't seen Serenity.

Freeze warning tonight.