Dance, monkey!! DANCE!!!

I’ve noted the drain in mental capacity just from sitting at this desk in recent days, so the first thing I did when I got to work was make a list of stuff to get done today. Without the list, I can guarantee that the Internets would just devour my day without reason or hesitation. Just so that you’re aware, this blogging IS on the list…

I tried to upgrade my Ubuntu desktop machine last week to the latest version, which turned out to be a critical error. At a certain point, the installation hung, couldn’t recover, and I had to do a clean installation. *shrugs* I guess this was as good a time as any to move some computers around in the house.

Joe had the inside track on some hardware that was being trashed at work, and I actually wound up scavenging a new desktop machine out of the deal. I’ll relegate ol’ Red-Five? to either TV or server duty. Prolly TV. I haven’t decided for sure yet. That thing sure is loud, though. I think it’s probably the gigantic 400-watt power supply. I don’t know what possessed me to get a 400-watt power supply back in Montana. It’s not like I need to run 4 harddrives and dual graphics cards in that thing.

Right, so anyway, I’ve gotta set up that Ubuntu workstation again, and I guess the biggest pain is to re-install all the packages to play DVDs, Flash, java, other proprietary formats, etc. Granted, relative to some other distro’s I’ve worked with, this is SUPER-easy, but it’s just annoying when you had it all done once before, y’know? I should probably image this installation once I get it all finished, so if I break it again, no big deal.

Sorry for the excessive geekitude in this post.

But speaking of that, Joe helped me upgrade tikiwiki (the software that runs this site) over the weekend, too. I’m still messing around w/ the administrator stuff to see what all has changed, but one notable thing that we agreed was pretty sweet: it now has a built-in “mobile version” module. So, y’know, when you’re bored and only have your phone or PDA handy for browsing, you can point it at soloshootsmobile (this link also on the main page).

Other things I did over the weekend:
– went to a birthday party on Friday, I sent a few pics from my phone, so check the Flickr.
– got nearly all my Christmas shopping done from the cozy confines of Nice Ash and the webs.
– watched some of the Packer game. Do not be deceived: the Pack is not back, the San Fran’s were that bad… One fact that you can state about Green Bay, though– they’ve now won more games than last year, so technically I suppose that constitutes “improvement.”

I’m gonna go VNC into my computer @ home now (snort-snort).

Harry, you should’ve stayed late to get that shot! It’s only the second day of filming, and we’re already two weeks behind!

Another week nearly down, and the shopping season is now in full swing. I am going to try to knock all the shopping out over the weekend. Most of mine will occur on the Internets (i.e., the man’s way to shop), and the rest can probably be accomplished in or around Milwaukee.

I’m headed down tonight after work to meet Michelle and then go to a birthday shindig @ Sarah & Brian’s apartment. It occurs to me that I know a LOT of people who were born in Decmember… or maybe that’s just one of those things where you notice that everyone else on the road is driving your car (?). Not sure.

Joe’s gonna do some computer/server crap with me on Saturday, but I have to be careful not to monopolize too much of his time, cuz he’s got a lot of writing to do.

I should do some writing. Christ.

Last night, I watched Lucky Number Slevin while I was doing some work on a laptop for somebody at work. Dell told her that changing out a hard drive would fix a clearly broken LCD panel. So I changed the drive, anyway, but after she called the support folks back again today, they said they would send someone over to actually fix the mother.

Oh, and that ‘Slevin’ flick wasn’t bad. It was sort of Get Shorty meets Payback on the set of a less complicated Usual Suspects. I think I would have liked it better if they would’ve stuck with the funny and Bruce Willis’s character was more believable. But Josh Hartnett was a smartass, and I laughed. Lucy Liu was cute. I don’t think she can help it.

Oh, then I also wanted to try out the webs via phone, OK? Previous phones that I’ve had weren’t really conducive to the web browsing, but the marketing that all the cell phone companies have on for buying their extra services are working on me, I guess. I wanted to play with some of the Google mobile toys, too.

Well, don’t be fooled, it’s pretty much useless. The Google Maps thing was kind of cool, but I don’t see it being useful enough to justify blowing 5 bucks a month. I guess the nice thing is, if you ever had some sort of dire emergency where you absolutely needed a map immediately and no one could help you over the phone or in person, and you had a digital signal on your phone (this scenario seems extremely unlikely), you can ‘subscribe’ at any time from the handset.

But I paid the 5 bucks so I’ll at least try it out for a month.

Yep.

I started writing this at 9 this morning, and now it’s ten after 4. I guess I had “things going on” today.

Have a good weekend if I don’t see ya. Watch my Flickr link for pics from party, etc., if you’re interested…

Just realized that I never blogged anything on Monday about the weekend…

Michelle came up early(er) on Friday, because she had half a snow day @ work. At this point, I could rant about people getting over anxious about the first major snowfall of the season (roads were clear, and so was the sky by Friday afternoon, but whatever).

I had to go to the doctor on Friday at 3, so I left work a little early, too. We talked about the results of my blood work from earlier in the week. Blood glucose? Goooood. Kidneys? Goooood. Liver? Gooood. Pretty much everything he said was “really great” with the exception of cholesterol, where my total was a bit high (246). My good cholesterol was through the roof, though, I guess – 71 (?). The bad was something like “borderline high” or whatever.

So the doc wants me to watch what I’m eating, exercise more, and come back for blood work again in 4 months. At my request, he also wrote me a prescription for zyrtec.

So after I got back from the doctor, we contemplated going out or something, but we wound up just staying in and actually did some cleaning around the house and stuff. I wasn’t anticipating that Michelle would be in Oshkosh as early as she was, so I had some messes around the place. She also got a call from her friend, Mihn, who is teaching in Japan right now.

On Saturday, I made waffles for breakfast, and we got set to decorate the house. Michelle also had a hair appointment in the afternoon, so while she did that, I went to the laundromat. I ended up saying to myself once again, “dammit, I hate going to the laundromat, but the clothes sure get clean fast…” I did 8 loads of wash (I had let it go for a while) and still got out in 90 minutes.

Our tree dec’ing didn’t go off without a *single* hitch– we were short on lights (one usually ends up being down a string or two a year), so I said we should just head over to Family Dollar on our way to Pick n Save, grab an extra set or 3. I was dismayed to find that the selection of decorations at the ol’ Family buck store this year was shoddy at best. They had oodles and oodles of strings of 20 lights. Who the hell is going to use only 20 lights, anywhere?

We ended up trekking out to Wally World instead, which I dislike just in general. But we did get the grocery shopping done at the same time, so I guess that was a good thing.

Back home, we started on the lights again, and got the three new strings strung, plugged ’em in and one of them didn’t work. Well, it only worked halfway. So we changed the fuse, and that didn’t help, and we changed the other one, still nothing, and I was sort of pissed, since we just bought these, and decided we would need to take them all back in the morning.

In the meantime, the lights still weren’t finished, so we went to Fleet Farm instead.

The Fleety lights worked a lot better, and I think Michelle has been shown the glory of the double-F’s– she said (I swear to God she said this) that she wants to come back and look at clothes at Fleet Farm.* I love her a lot.

We watched White Christmas while hanging the ornaments, as is the tradition. It was a pretty nice little Saturday.

Sunday included less chasing-around drama, but it was also a nice day… Michelle got all sorts of baking done, and I think one thing in particular that was awesome was how we got stuff done during the day, ate dinner at a regular-ish sort of time, and still had the energy and initiative to watch a movie afterwards.**

Look in the ‘Day-to-Day Digital’ in the next 6-12 hours for pictures of our tree (although we won’t be standing next to it; I couldn’t find my camera sitting in plain sight on Sunday). I’m looking forward to the rest of the holiday season, and I’m really glad Michelle and I have each other to do the fun stuff (or even not-as-fun stuff) with…

* – In case you’re not logged in, please note Michelle’s comment: I said I wanted to look at COATS at F&F not Clothes….I did not say clothes! I don’t want people thinking that I am interested in wearing blaze orange for heaven’s sakes!!! -jb

** – We watched Meet Me in St. Louis, which, while entertaining, didn’t seem to have much of a point. So, they don’t wanna move to New York? And then… they don’t? OK, whatever. Judy Garland had funny-looking bangs. But she must’ve been hot back in the day. Can you imagine Judy Garland, circa 1941, comes to the present dressed like Lindsay Lohan? Oh, she’d get work, make no mistake…

Wikipedia entry for “han shot first”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_shot_first

Wikipedia entry for “give me liberty or give me death”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty_or_give_me_death

Last night was my first day played basketball in a Fond du Lac rec league. Kevin asked me to be on a team a few months ago, and I thought it might be fun to play an organized sport again.

Our game was at 7:30 at Theisen Middle School. We got in there and the last game was close to over. It was between a team of 20-somethings (or so) and a team of 40-somethings (or so). The younger men were up by almost 30 points.

I leaned over to Kevin and said, “I just hope we don’t lose by 30.” He shrugged and said, “We might.”

The rest of our team arrived shortly, and we moved over to the opposite end of the bench to get ready. The gym reminded me a lot of my own middle school gym—the building was about 35 years old. When I was a freshman in high school (the last time I played an organized game of basketball), the middle school was our home floor (this was because the JV team played at the same time over at the high school).

Our uniforms wouldn’t be ready until next week, so Kevin brought some black masking tape to paste numbers on. It’s funny because you end up with the easy numbers: 1. 11. 7. 17. I was 9. I almost asked to be 5, just to be an ass.

Our opponent for the evening apparently had a number of Kevin and Dan’s (another teammate) former students on the team. That put their ages anywhere from 10-18 years younger than all of us. (At one point late in the game, I pointed at my shirt and said to Amanda, “‘Nelson Hall, 98-99.’ Most of these kids were in grade school in 98-99…”) I figured it would make for an interesting contest.

My team had never played together before, and a number of us had never met. Well, at least *I* had never met any of them besides Kevin. We definitely hadn’t played together before, and for the most part, it showed. I could tell that we have a number of guys who are smart and know how to play, but it’s a matter of getting in a rhythm and learning how to use each other’s skills.

We wisely played a 2-3 zone defense throughout the game. The kids were a lot quicker than us, but they could not shoot from outside the lane. In the first half, we got beat off the dribble a lot, but down the stretch we settled in on defense, and continued to chip away at the lead early in the second. I think we got it down to six at one point, with about 10 or 12 minutes to go.

Yeah, I guess I could offer my prescriptions for future success. Naturally, we all need to be in better shape. As the game wore on, we wore down and got sloppy at the offensive end. The kids never hit a single outside shot, so I think we held our own defensively. I think that for next week, we need to be able to draw up some simple plays, get into an offensive set, and try our best to execute. We’re gonna have to try to space the floor and give out big guys some room to work around the basket. We’ve got a number of players that are smaller guys and can probably shoot it OK, so just getting a plan together at the offensive end is going to make a big difference.

Individually, I thought I played a pretty poor game. I saved a ball on its way out of bounds at one point, and that was probably my biggest highlight. I did foul a guy on his way to the hoop off a break, but the damn thing went in anyway. I didn’t take a shot, and I had an in-bound pass picked off (although I didn’t let the thief score).

I played around 10 or 12 minutes in the first half, and 6 or so in the second. By the end of the night, I was sucking wind. I came out with around 6 minutes or so to go, and didn’t get back in. It got down to “garbage time” pretty quickly there, and no one needed to come out. I had started, but again, only because we were so disorganized out of the gate.

That reminded me a lot of high school. I started the majority of the games for my freshman team, but really only because Schenkenburg dogged it every day in practice. Then I got sick for a week during the season, and I was pretty much relegated to the bench after that…

And I know it’s just a rec league for old(er) guys, but in your mind you can’t help but make the comparisons to when you were young. I’m going to try to keep the things in mind that completely evaded me when I was in high school: I signed up to do this; it is, after all, a game; and I’ve just got to have fun and do my best. *Shrugs* It’s a long season. We’ll see how it goes.

One of the student workers here in the office was just talking to someone about going home for the holidays and being really bored @ mom & dad’s house.

I resisted the urge to say, “Yeah, y’know how I dealt with that? Just got drunk EVERY DAY.”

… So I have to go to the doctor again today, I’ll let you know how many prescriptions I end up with.

I had the misfortune of stopping out to Wal-Mart? this evening. I noticed that there is now a play @ home version of the (mysteriously) popular primetime gameshow, Deal or No Deal.

…

So I was wondering: no actual money, no magic phone, no big board… why not just play Joey Tribiani’s “how many fingers behind my back?” game? Cheaper. Just as entertaining.

I read this story today, and the whole war situation continues to vex the holy living shit out of me.

I don’t claim to have as enlightened and well thought-out a view of things as some people, but here’s a simplified interpretation, as I see it.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you really boil it down, the only reason the American gov’t gives a shit about Iraq is because of the oil. An unstable Iraq = American energy crisis which we are in no way, shape, or form equipped to deal with. So the soldiers keep patrolling, the cars keep exploding, and everybody (military, civilian or otherwise) keeps dying.

Let’s pretend, for a second, that storming into another country based on the justification of a long series of lies can be wiped away with a “whoops.”

Forceably removing Saddam from power might be OK if the people you were going to leave in his wake gave you the least bit of confidence that they could actually
A) get along with each other, or
B) behave like adults
Did you catch this line: The 30 lawmakers and five Cabinet ministers loyal to al-Sadr had threatened to quit the government and parliament if al-Maliki went ahead with the summit, which aimed at halting Iraq’s escalating sectarian violence and paving the way for a reduction of U.S. troops.

This is the equivalent of your 4-year-old friend getting pissed at the way your 4-year-old self is playing the game and just taking his ball back home.

How are you supposed to reason with people like this? You can’t ask me to believe for a second that if this country was, say, shit—I dunno—Poland, for example (Poland doesn’t have any rare natural resource that drives our economy, do they?), that we wouldn’t have said, quite a long time ago, “Y’know what, fuck you guys. We are sooo outta here. Tell your mom to call us when you grow up.”

But instead, we sit across the table from a toddler who’s pointing a .45 in our collective face, all the while we’re handing them bullets and saying, “OK, don’t shoot it, though. No—no..! Don’t shoot it! Here, here’s another one…”

I really hate this stupid war, but I hate the circumstances and the people that dragged us into it so much more…

I crossed Jackson Street and there was a young woman walking in front of me. She was walking kind of slow, but it was like she was also swaying back and forth like a drunk—she’s taking her half of the walk out of the middle, and flailing her arms to make sure none can pass. I had to knock her over (almost).

Around Reeve, I caught up with the Pajama Twins. Often, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I pass these two girls that ALWAYS wear their jammies to class at 8. I can’t fricking stand that shit. I have always said, and will continue to say: if you’re too tired put on some jeans and a sweatshirt, then just go back to bed, because you’re going to be completely useless in class anyway.

Finally, as I passed the back door of Albee, a couple young women were talking about their holiday plans. One of them mentioned she would be in MKE for the New Year, because a couple people that they know “are gonna be up from the Army.” I chuckled to myself at the notion of being “up from” the Army—as if ‘Army’ is a city just south of Chicago.

“These are my medals from ARMY, Mother.”

Oh, and if you’re looking for Lorch’s gross finger, please check the public gallery.

I noticed this morning, as I continued my quest to do virtually nothing each day, that such an endeavor is, in a way, its own worst enemy. The justification for this is twofold.
Fold 1:
You get so lazy that you let stuff that would really only take a minute or two of your time to fester and rot much longer than necessary. Rather than appearing that you’re still working on stuff and getting everything done, you end up looking like a lazy sack.

Fold 2:
Eventually, since so much of your “non-day” is actually spent trying to look as if you’re not having a “non-day”, that nothing—not even thinking about stuff—is accomplished, and you more or less stare at a computer monitor for 40 hours a week. This will ABSOLUTELY turn your brains into puréed bananas, and when the time comes that you have to start doing stuff again, you’re pretty much screwed.

An uninteresting example of this from my morning is when I spent no fewer than 6 minutes beating my head against the wall saying, “dammit—this process always works! Why is this breaking now!?!?” before I came to the realization, “oh wait, it won’t let me FTP an empty file, nm.”

I wonder if the best solution to this would be more work, more interesting work, a more consistent workflow, or an employer that lets you freely bring and do your own stuff at your desk. I have a stack of mail from home that I brought in I could go through. I also have a LOT of books that I want to read on my shelves (and I think when you work at a university, that’s the thing they’d have the hardest time arguing against).

Meanwhile, I had to reschedule my blood work for today, because I forgot about the “12 hours of fasting”* that needed to precede the blood draw. So, I have to go back tomorrow. I guess this will still work out OK with my scheduled visit back to the doc on Friday.

That reminds me that I should go to the dentist, too. I still have next week to beat Michelle there. Otherwise, she’s gonna kill me (please email her to find out why).

Speaking of doctors, though, Lorch has to go for surgery on Thursday to fix his finger. Ray, if you could please comment the story into this post or something, that would be awesome. The short version is, he almost lost a finger. The gross version is available in pictures on this site.

Finally, as I get myself pumped up for the holiday shopping season, I thought I would put my list out there for the interested parties. It is adequate but not exhaustive. I don’t really want anything for my birthday, so if you’re in the market for that, either consult this list or don’t worry about it.**

*Here’s a little side comment on that—I wanted to set myself a reminder so I wouldn’t forget again, and I thought “on my phone” would be the best place. My calendar thinger has the T9Word? dictionary for quick inputs, but it has no profanity in it. Which sucks. I wanted to type, “stop eating fatass,” but when I got to “fatass,” the T9-erator said “datasp”. What the shit is that?

**For whatever reason, I have tried on occasion in the last couple years to get upset that there’s not a greater distinction between Christmas and my birthday, to no avail. No matter what I do, I can’t get it to upset me. It’s the only way I’ve ever had it, so… What I *have* been able to do, though, is find some pity for you chumps whose birthday isn’t on a more notable holiday. Your birthday is some random Tuesday in July? Who gives a crap? Mine is New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year, EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Suck it.