Writing Wrongs

Despite the new BP meds, my readings are still way too high. I blame this house buying thing. Was just forced to sell another large chunk of mutual funds to pay for first & last at the mobile home park, and two years' up front taxes and insurance. Grrrr. That's on top of December and January rent on the apartment lease. Well, the part when I'm not living in the apartment from the second week of December till Jan 24. And unknown closing costs.

The good news is I get to hang onto the downpayment and closing costs until just before escrow closes, so another ~ 5 weeks.

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Lots of work at work today. More tomorrow. Mostly "push 'go' and wait"  tests. The waits are between 5 and 500 minutes. Automation guy figured out a way to do tests from my desk which normally would have to be done in our noisy, hot, under-construction lab.

Lunch was at the Round Table pizza buffet. 12:30 and the place was almost empty. Strange, they have an extensive salad bar and a good selection of pizza, including a lovely apple cobbler desert pizza.

Automation guy asked me about Obamacare for his mother, who has zero income for the last 7 years. I went to the CA web site, and it looks like even with no income she would be charged $8/month for minimal coverage.

No return call from the movers. I'll try again tomorrow. I still have the guy's email address. Hmmm.

Another BP raiser was in the mail, an envelope from the lender, which makes me nervous because the loan is still not finalized. Turns out it was just a form for me to sign to get a copy of the appraisal, an appraisal which I had paid $350 for. Of course I want a copy, idiots. You shouldn't even have asked, just send it. Probably required for them to do so by CA law.

Tivoed the Seahawks game, was so disgusted with how poorly they played that I shut it off halfway through the 3rd quarter. I see from the final score that they didn't make any points after that, and only won because the Rams were even more inept on offense. 14-9 in what should have been a total rout. Route? Look it up, howeird. Rout.

Caught the 9th inning of the World Series**. There is nothing in sports more boring to me than a pitcher's duel. I was glad to see Boston win, after they were robbed in that previous game. That guy coming into home was out. He never touched the bag. If there's a rule which says he was safe, that rule is asinine, wrong, bogus & un-American. I has spoken.

** okay, the 45th inning if you want to be technical. The 9th of tonight's game.

Saw a Best Buy Christmas commercial on the tube. Guess where I'm not buying anything until late January?

Oh wait. It's not a tube anymore. It's an LED panel. Or maybe an LCD panel. One or the other, I can't afford plasma.

Thinking seriously of giving Domino up for adoption. She still fights with Kaan, and she has never been affectionate toward me for more than 3 minutes at a time. But she likes other people, and is well behaved. She would make an excellent senior's companion. I think I'll talk to the humane society folks. The park lease is specific about only one cat per household.

Took a look around the kitchen counters with an eye to throwing things away. Three soda siphons which leak. A small stack of black plastic thin microwave containers from Costco refrigerated food packs. The electric fondue pot stays.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Start packing.
Check the dumpster - if it's empty make a donation or three.  

The quick-turnaround yesterday got me feeling like it was Friday today. But only for a few hours. I had a lot of work to do on automation, did not finish because I can't until they fix a bug. But I did make a lot of progress. And now I am told I need to create another suite of the same test for a 10-port machine (this one is for a 4-port model).

Lunch was at China Stix, which has really good beef chow fun, but just as I was getting ready to order the dim sum cart comes by, but it was mostly desserts. The nice man called out the steamed stuff cart for me, and he had all my usual favorites. Left him a nice tip.

Straight home after work, Thursday Night Football mostly with the sound off because the color commentator was so incredibly stupid. And they were all about trying to dig up dirt on the home team's manager and GM. Inappropriate for during the game, leave that crap for the tabloids. Channel surfing during the breaks I found Comcast replaying the Giants' parade, which made me happy because I only got to hear half of the mayor's speech and I wanted to catch the whole thing. It was about an hour and a half into the show, and they edited it out. The bastards. Maybe it's on youtube.

San Diego won the football game, n o thanks to their lame offense. Two interceptions for touchdowns mainly did it.

The timing was right to see the Giants pose for their photo op, and see Tony Bennett trotted out again.

Dinner was dolmathes and duck l'orange.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Stanford Theater for a showing of the original silent movie version of The Phantom of the Opera

As planned, this morning I watched football, then drove to Woodside which has a fairly new performing arts center, to see a friend play Maria in Sound of Music. She was wonderful. Flawless. The Abbess did an excellent job with Climb Every Mountain, in a clear voice, minimal vibrato, she did not make it sound pompous as so many of them do. The children were not adorable, They were 2 actors and 5 actresses who just happen to be relatively young. It was a joy to see a version where the children were intelligent, excellent singers, and did not act at all "cutesie". The youngest did have some of the wrong-way schtick, but she knew what she was doing. The nun's choir was a surprise because they all wore wireless mikes, and the audio system is 2D, so no matter where they were, offstage or onstage, they sounded like they were everywhere, which often did not match how they looked. They sang so well I thought it was a recording at first.

The Captain was young, and almost a dead ringer for Christopher Plummer, and that put me off at first because I prefer the captain to look (as the script describes him) like a weathered, experienced warship commander. Theodore Bikel played the role on Broadway, I preferred that look. But this fellow did okay.

The tech was outstanding, several fly-in sets, very quick set changes thanks to minimal on-stage pieces. Spotlight operator was off a lot, though.

Orchestra was in the pit, and never overpowered the singers. Once in a while they were at a different tempo.

Costumes were wrong in several places. The children's opening scene sailor suits were Nazi grey with black piping/ribbons. The Nazi uniforms were brown instead of grey. The Captain wore a tux to his wedding instead of a full dress uniform. The butler wore livery and the housekeeper wore whatever was on the costume rack in her size.

The show was brilliantly directed and choreographed. A lot of work went into it by the cast. One of the Producers for Anything Goes played a major supporting role, which explains why he was not around much to annoy us.

The standing O did not start until the children took their bows, and Maria got the hoots and hollers she deserved.

The pre-show curtain speech included an announcement that the show would be over half an hour before the World Series game was due to start. That got major cheers.

Home, switched on football, taking occasional peeks at the baseball game. Another torture game, the other guys got a lead for the first time in the series, and it was tied at the end. I didn't tune in again until Facebook posts sounded like the Giants won it, then I watched all the post game coverage.

I was happy to hear in interview after interview, all the players and the coaches said this was a team effort. Everyone on the roster made a significant contribution, and even The Panda, who hit three homers in the first game, series MVP, was not taking credit for himself.

While that was going on I recorded the videotape of my 1986 Wizard of Oz. Eventually all the postage stamp videos of scenes I was in will leave my web site and appear on youtube as viewable size.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work (9 am team meeting)
Football (49ers)

Ran out of tissues in the kitchen this morning, and when I went to get one from the cabinet under the sink in the small bathroom, I was hit by a cloud of moldy smell, and saw that all the TP and tissue boxes were soaked. A leak under the sink which I did not notice, maybe for a couple of weeks. I rarely need to look in that cabinet, and rarely use the sink. Went online this morning and placed a work order, but no one showed up today. Tomorrow, probably.

Work was work, a last minute snafu kept me there till almost 7.

Home, flipped between the football and baseball games. Football game was boring, for a change the baseball game was not. Giants were ahead 9-0 then it started pouring down rain harder then I've ever seen it at that ball park. With only half an inning to go (assuming the home team didn't blow a 9-run lead) the officials had them keep playing. It was a mess. They really should have stopped for an hour to let the field drain and the rain slacken. But the momentum was too high, fans were on their feet, and after one pitcher allowed two men on base, The Beard II was sent in to make the final out, which he did, pop fly to the infield, easy catch if it wasn't in a deluge. He made it, no worries.

I am thrilled that the Giants came back from near-elimination in two series in a row, and I was not even thinking that this meant a World Series is next. As far as I am concerned, no matter what happens they are The Little Team That Could™ and that's enough for me. I hope they win the series, but it would be best if they play their next four games like they played their last two, sans torture.

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Am furious about the Lance Armstrong witch hunt. He has hurt no one, and he has saved many lives. He made a spectacular recovery from cancer to become one of the best endurance athletes of all time, and that would have been true whether he won 7 Tour de Frances or just finished them. I think the latest findings are a crock, due process has not taken place, and the Tour president is a total asshole for saying Armstrong should be forgotten. If the allegations were true, and I don't think they are, it's the Tour which should be forgotten for its shoddy testing, and their president should resign in disgrace.

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Been coughing a lot. Dry cough, just a reflex, so this evening I broke out the flowering Jasmin tea. It helped a little, but not enough.

Last night I took 1/2 a vicodin, and it worked pretty well on the knee pain, and did not put me to sleep at work. The knee is not bothering me tonight so I'll skip it.

Yesterday I finally opened the tub of Tollhouse cookie dough and baked 2 1/2 dozen. I'd bought the tub originally planning to make the cookies for the Green Room for our final week, but there was a ton of food those three nights, so I never got around to it. Now I have munchies in the freezer. I like taking the frozen ones out and nuking them in the microwave for a few minutes

Now that my San Diego trip is done, I sat down with Word and put together my itinerary for Conflikt fil convention in Seattle at the end of January. I will be 62 by then, which gets me Amtrack's senior discount (better than the AAA discount) but not Hilton's, for which one has to be 65. When I thought I would be flying to the con, I booked just the weekend (Friday-Sunday) at the con hotel, but taking the train will add 2 days because it gets into SEA after 9 pm and the return trip starts at about 9 am. Awkward. Hilton has a pay-in-advance rate which is $1 less than the con rate, and when we get closer to the date and I am sure I'm taking all that time off, I'll cancel the con rate reservation and book the full Thurs-Mon at the pre-pay rate. It's a no-refund, no-changes rate. The regular rate is $15 a night more than the con rate.

Time now to get the shirts out of the dryer and hung in the closet.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

Busy busy at work. Lots of housekeeping around the new feature, and a lot of automation work. We have a program which does all the hard stuff, but it's still muchos workos to make it all behave the way I want it to.

Lunchtime I went to Kaiser to pick up the prescription which was supposed to have been available after 5 pm last night. After waiting in line for 20 minutes, they said it was not filled yet, they would have it done right away, and it would be ready in another 20 minutes. After 20 minutes I left. Too much to do at work to hang around a broken system. They have 10 cashier stations, only three were in use. I was only ab out 8th in line, it took 20 minutes to get to the head of the line. Their official policy is they have meds ready in 15 minutes, they were not even coming close to that.

Lunch was a PNB&J sandwich and celery with hummus both of which I'd brought from home just in case.

Home, picked up the box of kitty litter at the office (big WTF - it doesn't have to be signed for, and they could have left it at my door). At my door was another package, a 3TB network drive. Go figure.

Reading Jar Jar Must Die last night, there is one old film I am not sure I have ever seen, Things To Come based on a HG Wells book of a similar name. It mentioned how there are no good prints out there, so I bought two versions, one from BestBuy and one from Amazon. Whichever one I don't keep will probably sell for $1 at BASFA.

At 7 I went back to Kaiser, this time it only took 5 minutes in line to get the meds, but they had me waste 15 waiting for the consultant pharmacist to tell me less than I already knew about the stuff.

Then to Costco for bagels and pistachios, and some other things which were on the unwritten list. This time I managed not to buy anything I already had enough of.

Home again, sat on the patio while Domino went in and out. She decided after a while she liked sitting up on the side table next to my chair. She was a lot less interested in dogs being walked on the path in front of us than most cats would be.

After it was too dark, I tried setting up the new drive. I already have the 1TB version, it works pretty well. And that was a problem, because they designed this thing to be the only one on th network. I can log into its IP address and mess with the settings, but the PC can't find it as a shared network drive. Not even when I shut down the other one. The plan was to back up my photos to this one, and keep the original to backup the usual stuff on the PC (docs and stuff). I'm not finding an answer on Seagate's support page, I will have to open a trouble ticket.

In sports, Matt Cain pitched a no-hitter. It is being called a "perfect game" but it was far from perfect. The last three batters whacked the ball pretty good, and it was fielding which saved the day. Spectacular fielding in several cases. Cain threw 125 times, "only" 83 were strikes. He only struck out 14 of 27 batters - barely half. The Giants scored 10 runs, which I think is the more memorable feat, considering their past history. IMHO a perfect game for a pitcher is 81 strikes in a row. Accept no substitutes. I'm willing to go this far: The Giants as a team had a perfect defensive game. While it was an outstanding offensive game, it wasn't perfect, only 10 runs from 15 hits.

But I have to say it's a vast improvement to have the cardiologists on call with the tension of a no-hitter than the last minute 1-run wins (or losses) we've had lately.

One more item. One of my oldest and dearest friends used to be very close to someone who should be a lot more famous than he was. She would like to have a Google Doodle done in his honor. I knew him in Oregon, which is also where he passed away. Here's what she had to say:

6 August 2012, marks the 100th birthday of Graham Doar, and I think his birthday is worth a Google Doodle for "The Outer Limit" (published in the Saturday Evening Post in December, 1949). According to "Smoking Rockets : The Romance of Technology in American Film, Radio & Television, 1945-1962" the story had a very long life in that it kept reappearing in different formats/adaptations.

The Outer Limit may be the first Science Fiction that incorporates the concept of "missing time". "The Day The Earth Stood Still" has a marked resemblance to "The Outer Limit" especially in the theme of planetary quarantine. An unnamed editor at the SEPost changed the title from "Quarantine" to "The Outer Limit".

I notice there are no proper biographies or even birth/death dates for Graham - though he's now all over the web re: Outer Limit postings - possibly because very few people ever knew his actual first name (he disliked it) of Joseph. He died 13 November 1985 in the Portland area. He was a direct descendant of Daniel Boone (his mother was a Boone).

I suggested she write to proposals@google.com, but maybe I should find someone at Orycon or whatever Portland has for a sci-fi group and ask them to help make it go viral. Ideas on how to make this happen are welcome. 

Plans for tomorrow:
More work
YOTB