8:35am: PSA: email lacuna
hey folks - due entirely to my own folly, i have wiped out my personal inbox (my vecna.org account). i'm working on restoring from backups, but in the worst case i'm looking at a loss of email stored in my inbox, not in folders, from early October 2013 until now :(
so if i ask you to resend me a particular email, that's why.
8:42am: to scul pilots
i know a few of you (to some extent), and i'm sure that some of you are fine individuals, but i feel sadness and distaste about the way your organization has treated lyonesse of late. please give some thought to how you, as a group, want to deal with interpersonal conflicts; from the outside, it looks like your process is really broken.
i used to run to the window or to the back porch and cheer when i heard you riding by; no longer.
after several months of surmounting various bureaucratic hurdles, i have finally passed the last one; yesterday i was sworn in as a Notary Public of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
please feel free to contact me if you require notarial service; i have a particular interest in being available to members of my community whose circumstances or schedules make it difficult for them to access other notaries (bank managers, attorneys etc.).
an update on my UPS moving project: paradoox and crew are meeting me at my workplace tomorrow (Wednesday, March 12) at 6:30 pm. we'll move the hardware, then i'm going to head over to Arisia storage with them to do some more work.
if you're going to be in the area around then (eclectician, perhaps?), please feel free to give me a call or stop by. if you would, please comment on this post to let me know what you plan.
again, my heartiest thanks to everyone who offered help. you inspire me.
last week i stopped by the Eye Care Center (adjacent to the Somerville Hospital) for an eye exam. i had been noticing that when driving around with chaiya, she generally seemed to be able to read street signs sooner that i could; couple this with my officemates observing that they can tell i'm working hard when i'm leaning increasingly closer to my monitors, and i wasn't particularly surprised to hear that ( the verdict is...Collapse )
in summary:
i'm mortified that i drove for as long as i did without getting my eyes tested; i'm fervently glad that i didn't screw up behind the wheel.
so, i spent much of yesterday in gentlescholar’s shop, engaged in my first (ever!) game of Advanced Civilization. it felt like somewhat of a gamer rite of passage, and i had an excellent time :) i was hurrying home late last night, feeling tired and a bit fretful (i was worried that i had stayed out excessively late, and i missed chaiya). when i came in through the back door i found her waiting for me, and there in the middle of the floor was… a Harvard Chair.
see, Harvard orders thousands of these bulky wooden vaguely-Windsor-style chairs (the “Classic Chair” from the page linked above) and uses them to furnish absolutely every room on campus that isn’t a) a lecture hall b) a church or c) a server room. dining halls? check. seminar rooms? check. undergraduate dorm rooms? check. faculty offices? check random hallways and elevator lobbies? check. every undergraduate is provided at the beginning of each year with one bed w/mattress, one bookcase, one desk, and one of these chairs. having been a humanities concentrator (major, rather), i spent quite a lot of time in this sort of chair.
Harvard will sell you a brand fancy new chair for (unsurprisingly) a shitload of money. this particular chair, however, is not one of those. shortly before the beginning of each academic year, Harvard holds a big yard sale to get rid of stuff that people have abandoned in their rooms and stuff that’s being replaced by new stuff, and apparently chaiya took this opportunity to pick up a genuine, well-used, kicked-around, undergraduate-ass-supporting institutional chair for me. much of the gold paint has worn off, and bare wood is showing in a few places, and one of the rungs had come loose (i reglued the joint this morning and whacked it back into place with a rubber mallet), but it’s still massive and reasonably sturdy and just wonderful.
you’re my companion, my life partner, my love.
you’re my ally when i’m overwhelmed, my support when i stumble.
you’re my playmate and my co-conspirator and my instigator.
sometimes you’re my conscience.
sometimes you’re my short-term memory.
again and again and again, you see me in a far better light than i can see myself, and then you tell me how i look.
i want another year with you, and then another after that, and another after that, and then some more.
i’m currently reading (and greatly enjoying) Freakonomics. a common theme in the book is the use of econometrics to evaluate common-sense ideas about how the world works; in this vein, i’ll share with you a poll, taken directly from the pages of chapter 5:
all in all, you folks did pretty well; it’s interesting to see how many people have faith in museums and distrust TV, though. don’t overlook the importance of PTA membership (which, i conjecture, is shorthand for “parents are involved with the child’s academic performance”).
so, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland is currently running an exhibition for which they solicit online submissions of amateur photography. i sent in a couple of my pictures, and, well, they came up in the rotation.
my understanding is that the images were chosen at random; still, it made my day to get the notice from the museum that my photos had been shown :) there is, apparently, also a chance that one or more of my pictures might get chosen to be printed on archival paper and permanently added to the museum’s collection!
at any rate, i heartily recommend to all my photographer friends (and, according to the exhibit’s organizers, you’re included in this group if you’ve got a camera in your cell phone) that you send in some pictures. i like the concept (and, so far, the execution) of this exhibit, and i hope it succeeds.
so, back in 2001 i bought a AAA-powered single-LED flashlight from a little company called Arc LLC. at the time, LED flashlight technology hadn’t been cheaply available to consumers for too long, and most of the LED flashlights i could find were dim and shoddy (or prohibitively expensive). ( but not Arc's!Collapse )
in a nutshell: if you want a keychain flashlight, buy one from Arc. their lights rock, and they’re really serious about the lifetime warranty. :)
hey, Asian-martial-arts practitioners! might any one be willing to lend me a white belt? i recently bought a gi, but was rushing to check out and didn’t realize that it didn’t include a belt, and i’m not sure when i’ll next have the opportunity to go to Chinatown.
such a belt would need to be on the long side, in order to make its way around my not inconsiderable circumference. i’d be happy to return it to you as soon as i’ve managed to procure my own, but i’m hoping to make use of it this week.
many thanks, and i hope you all were able to ring in the New Year as well as you might have liked.
FYI for vintage computer aficionados: there’s an Osborne 1 sitting on the sidewalk outside 139 Oxford St. in Cambridge. it’s missing its keyboard, the case is somewhat beat up, and it’s covered with dirt and cobwebs, but it didn’t look obviously broken.
an “enormous dork” (quote from my manager, apparently inspired by the photos of chaiya’s and my wedding)
it seems that based on these discoveries, they concluded that they had no choice but to invite me in for an interview, and, well, that worked out pretty well for all of us.
more to the point, the only reason why they ended up looking at my feeble website is because i listed as my primary means of contact an email address that wasn’t hosted at a big free email provider
frankly, hosting my own email is sometimes a pain in the ass; it consumes hardware, money, electricity, time, and energy that i might well be applying to other projects. on the other hand, though, i really like not having anyone else’s restrictions imposed on my mail service (ahem Comcast >:( ), and my current solution is one that suits my needs pretty well (though there’s always room for improvement).
apparently there are other intangible benefits as well. :)
“Hey! I just noticed there are a number of apparently free-for-the-taking CRT monitors in the 19", 21" range, reasonably good quality, that are down at the Graduate School of Design, down at the end of Cambridge Street. There's also one old laser printer (like an HP Laserjet 5 or some such?) ... so if anyone wants them, go grab them!”
update: they’re 17” and 19” monitors. however, both of the 19” i brought home last night worked fine; i suspect some lab just bought a bunch of flatscreens and are throwing out their old CRTs.