Well It *was* Monday Just a Little While Ago

Woke up 10 minutes after my 5:45 alarm was supposed to go off, which turned out to be just enough time to fire up the PC, launch NASA TV and watch the final minute and a half countdown to shuttle launch. NASA TV rotated views at all the wrong times, so I waited half an hour for the replays of each single-camera view. I am so glad they have finally decided to retire the fleet, something which should have been done 15 years ago. I am also deeply touched by the love story of Mark Kelly and Gabrielle Giffords, and Mark's twin brother Scott who played astronaut tag team the past month.

Back to sleep after the successful launch.

Was woken up by a call from the nephrologist's office asking if I could come in at 11:30 am instead of 4:30 pm. Yes, sure. No other plans.

It was raining and blowing hard, and I was in no mood to walk to the end of the carport to see if PG&E were blocking the dumpster. They pack it in by 6 pm, I figured I would haul the garbage out then.

Checked the job postings, nothing doing there. Usually isn't on a Monday. No recruiter calls either, which is odd. The usual smattering of email from people with Indian names for jobs way out of my area, usually for positions I'm not qualified for or interested in. A former co-worker shot me two possibles, but one was too far to commute to, the other was more managerial than I want to be.

Saw the doctor, he made a small adjustment to my meds, will go back in a month.

Parked at the Starbucks near Borders (Borders was a nice experiment, but the café staff is often nowhere to be found, and I was low on cash anyway).  Pretty busy at noon, I was there till about 3.  While there I loaded up Chrome and Safari to see if they would do as replacements for Firefox 4.  Nope. Chrome is missing some key features, and has a bad habit of not connecting on the first try with links in email. Safari would not load my cookies, passwords and toolbar links from Firefox or MSIE, and it was painfully slow bringing up pages. So, back to Firefox. MSIE is so hosed after the last update...

Went home by way of an ATM. Cuddled with Pumpkin, with Domino curled up in the cat bed on the sofa next to me. Read a bit of Mark Twain on the Kindle. Watched a little TV, napped a little. Mini weird day dream: As I dozed off, I dreamed a little elf or sprite or nymph or something like Tinkerbell was hovering like a hummingbird in front of my face. She said "Aha! He's in there! " and pried open my left eye. IRL my left eye opened and I was awake.

Opened another jar of pickles and sampled the slices from the top. Good stuff. Now that they have set for a week, they are as strong as I like them, and nice and crunchy. Maybe a little more vinegar next time.

Off to BASFA a little after 7. Lots of puns in me tonight, got a few groans. Did not win any auction items, but most were books, and I am pretty much addicted to the e-readers. I'm looking for one which can be read in sunlight or no light. The Kindle is great if there is light, but without light it is a FAIL. I have a little lamp for it, but who wants to carry something like that around?

Home, still lousy weather. Dumpster run delayed.

Plans for tomorrow:
Morning appointment for the car recall which they did not have the part of last week.  It will be ugly weather, so I'll wait in the dealership while they work on it.
No other plans. How boring.

Time To Maim

This morning I had an appointment to have the electronic control module in the car replaced (recall notice said dire things might happen if it was not taken care of) and I expected it to take maybe half an hour, tops. It took more than two hours. I think the massive number of customers with earlier appointments is what messed that plan up. I waited at the dealership because it was cloudy and cold and looking like rain, and they are a mile from the apartment. There is a bus, it only runs once an hour. There is a free shuttle, but I thought it would be nice to sit outside under the awning on the park bench in front of the waiting room (which was SRO) and read some more Mark Twain.

One of the things I despise about Kindle is most of the free books are unformatted. No TOC, no page breaks at chapters, sometimes page numbers from the original paper book are embedded in the text with no line breaks. What I am reading is billed as the entire collection of his works, but there are no title pages, and I had to look on my favorite search engine to figure out that the first book in the collection is The Innocents Abroad because the text begins with the first page of the book, no foreword, no title page, no TOC, no nothing. Chapters are marked with an extra line space and the chapter numeral. There is no way to search for a chapter. Or a book. Sucksville.

The book, however, is very entertaining, both because of his humorous way with words and how different the world was in his day, and yet a lot the same.

Auto tech said the car will shake while idling today, as the ECM learns what all is in the circuitry, and it should be gone tomorrow. I drove straight home, there was some minor shaking, but I had no plans to go out into the Seattle-like weather again and it has remained parked there.

Whiled away the time online, found a couple of job postings to reply to. There's a good one in San Ramon. It is billed as a long-term contract. There is no way I would commute there from Mountain View on a long term basis, but the way things have been going I'd move to the other side of the bay if I got the job. The carpets in this place need replacing anyway. Of course in the back of my mind is the fact that I may only be doing this for the practice, and may not actually land the job. And there are several dozen reasons to not move.

Bought tickets to see plays which friends are in for Friday & Saturday. I have missed a couple of others on purpose - one show which is too Nazi for me, and another which I tried out for but was not called back, let alone cast in, and I am frankly miffed. The soundtrack did not impress me, either.

Hunted for and found the photos I took at the model train show in Roseville. I never posted them on my web site or on Flickr. I thought they were more recent than they were - 2007 - which is before I was using Flickr much, and was being lazy about updating my web site.

Finally popped in the first DVD (3 2-part episodes) or season three of the Sarah Jane Adventures. These are the last of Elisabeth Sladen's performances, and she is noticeably aged since season 2. All three episodes have a "present friends" ending, and I cried at all of them.  One more DVD to go. David Tennant is brilliant as The Doctor, much more energetic than in the main show, if you can imagine that. I guess they told him it was a YA series, and to be over the top.

It was still slightly light out at 8:15 pm, and the rain had stopped, so I made the dumpster run, which took care of the old microwave, the box the new one came in, and assorted used kitty litter.

Plans for tomorrow:
You tell me.