howeird | Entries tagged with tivo

Well, not really, just one, which happened yesterday and it was so epic I completely forgot to journal about it. When I got home from the mattress place by way of Kinko's, my body was trying very hard to believe I was already in the bathroom poised for victory. After draining the lizard, I felt that warm wet sensation which usually means someone was too quick on the trigger. I took my pants off, and the whole right rear side from the waist to the knee was wet. Water wet, not pee wet. Wet enough to empty the pockets, remove the belt and toss it into the dryer.

Totally puzzled, I could not think of how that happened. The driver's seat of the car was dry, so was the floor of the bathroom. I could not think of a water source which I could have encountered in the time frame, except for the remote possibility that one of the mattresses I sat on had a leak.
Hmmmmm.

Got to work early, thanks to being very nervous all night about the astronomical blood sugar reading. I woke up at 2 am and it was 190, which is too high for the insulin dosage, so I shot up another 6 units (equals 35 units of regular). But when I did my morning reading it was up by 8 points. The human body is not a precision instrument, but this is ridiculous. I'm gonna write my diabetes doc and tell him I want to go back to the last regimen, shooting up before each meal. As poorly as that was working, it was far better than this.

Main reasons to be at work early was twofold: I was going to leave at 11:30 to be home foe the noon-2 bed repair window, and boss had emailed me a very complicated test to run for Engineering and I needed to re-learn how my older model machine worked so I could send video and 4 audio channels to my new model machine. And then mess with which audio streams were sent and seeing how the new machine handled the changes. The bottom line is I couldn't fool the new machine into misbehaving. It played all the audio I sent it, and didn't miss a beat (literally) when I added a stream or pulled one or two, or completely replaced the 4 original streams with 5 new ones. That was a lot of work, I hope it's what engineering wanted, because the email from them was open to interpretation.

After that I continued to update the test database with setup requirements and steps. Got home by 11:45, and immediately got a call from the bed people that they would be there toward the end of the window. So I fired up the VPN and remote desktop, and continued to continue. Got about 5 done before the bed guys showed up at 1:45.

Domino wanted to help, after all it's her bed. I put her in the bathroom to get her out of the way. They did a quick job of taking off the mattress and lifting the frame up on its side, removing the legs from the frame, removing the wheels from the legs and screwing the wheels straight into the frame. Frame back on the ground, mattress back on the frame and it was all done in 15 minutes. Now the bed is just a tad lower than I like, but I can always raise the feet a little (adjustable frame) where before it was just way too high.

Domino yelled at me as I made the bed, and jumped onto it after I was done. It is now low enough for her to not need the pet steps, so she has her choice.

Back to work, completed the first feature set, and proceeded to plan the next one, which I can't really do without the actual machine. November, they say. This feature involves testing that the device sends alerts to designated PCs when certain events occur.

After work I took the copied script/music for Little Shop to the Mercado Starbucks, waited for a seat by a non-high-chair table opened up, and highlighted my lines and underlined my cues. Many of my cues are not underline-able, as they are ends of songs or scene shifts. It is a big part, and my character leads off most of the dialog. There is one tricky section where my lines alternate with music the plant is singing. One thing I discovered at the launch rehearsal is the guy playing the voice of the plant and I are from the same planet. This is often not the case with one's duet partner in community theater.

That all took about an hour, which was still early enough to throw some Costco spanikopita into the oven and watch the Tivoed Olympics. Some major crashes in the women's snowboard, and it was good to see the Jamaican bobsled team, out there again. There is also a Thai skier, but he didn't make the US broadcasts. I hate that they lump disparate sports into a single 3-hour broadcast. Tivo doesn't do a good job of skipping chunks of video, and figure skating just looks rude in 3x FF. And there are way too many fluff stories (making nested dolls has no place in a sports broadcast). And I can do without the tutorials by US team members.

I've been spending time on BBC.co.uk for coverage which makes more sense.

In other sports news, I subscribed to Sports Illustrated online, which will get me a year's print issues plus online access. And a Seahawks bonus package for free. Which I will send to Baltimore sister.

Looked at my online calendar and saw a big empty space where the London Worldcon should have been, so I poked in the flight and hotel info and marked which days are con days and one long mark for the entire vacation time. One thing I would like to do after the con is take a significant side trip. Ireland is high on the list, Paris is trying to win me over, a chunnel train ride is tempting. But I have cousins to visit as well. One in Brighton, a couple in Olney and a couple in Buckinghamshire. There are more, but I'm not surer where. Cousin Howard has always been an enigma. To the best of my knowledge he is not fannish like all the other cousins, and I have no real idea where he lives except "far from the rest".

Irish rail has some lovely looking London-Dublin rail/Ferry packages, which poetically start at London's Euston station and end at Dublin's Heuston station. And once in Dublin there are train tours to some very scenic places.

But first I need to survive Little Shop.

In mortgage news, I called the lender CU and they said Allstate was wrong, the refund check is to be sent to them to be put into my escrow account to cover the new insurance which they already paid. There will be an actual amount owed on my next CU statement, and I should use the enclosed envelope to mail it in.

Serendipitously, MetLife mailed me a card saying that the new company gets a 15% discount, so while waiting for the bed guys I phoned to find out what it would cost to move my auto insurance to them. The guy asked where I was located, and when I said CA he said Metlife wasn't licensed to sell auto insurance in CA but he will transfer me to someone who can. So I hung up. But now I'm thinking I may have misunderstood him, and he was saying he personally wasn't licensed in CA. I think I'll go online and try again.

Bought the other three Giver books on Kindle.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Start studying the words to my songs

Current Mood: crazy
Current Location: Furball Hall

Slept till 9, when my calendar alarm went off telling me to call my aunt in NYC. Noon her time. I decided to wait an hour, shower, shave, brush my teeth, take my meds, get dressed and find my Seahawks jersey first.

Called at 10, cousin's wife answered the phone (I knew she would because cousin posted she would be there). Had a nice chat with aunt, though the connection did not seem to be very good. I could hear her just fine, but she said I was fading in and out. She sounded good, and followed up with email which told me she didn't understand what I said about the cats, and suggesting phone was the best way to communicate with her.

Went to MV Goodwill looking for a tall (30") night table, did not find one but found exactly the microwave stand I have been hunting for. Could not find a price, so asked the nice lady, who looked around and grabbed this gorgeous marble cutting board, put it on top of the stand where it fit perfectly. $30. I bought the set and slid it into the back seat. Still wanting to find a nightstand, I pointed the car toward the Santa Clara branch. Stopped on the way to get a cat bed or two to put where Domino has been sleeping on the floor. Found exactly what I wanted for $12 each, bought two. Also bought three cans of different flavors of Fancy Feast to see if Domino likes any of them more than the classic Savory Salmon, which she seems to be eating less of lately.

On to the SC Goodwill, nothing fit what I wanted. I may have to punt and simply find a tub or something that's a foot tall to put the current night table on. The new bed is so high I can't see the clock or reach the light switch on the night table.

Thought about the one in Sunnyvale, but it was out of my way (it's off the main drags), they have almost no parking, and not much furniture.

There's a post office with a drive-through lane near there, I was able to mail sister's birthday card, but they changed the boxes so a calendar won't fit, and once you're in that lane there is no easy return to the main parking lot, which was full anyway. I went to the Sunnyvale PO and mailed it there. I don't think I wrote about this - one calendar came back "address unknown" which was sent to the same address last year. It's a woman I worked with in 1978 and dated and boinked after we no longer worked together. We have kept in touch, when I moved back to WA in 1997 she lived next door. Very strange coincidence - ( Read more... ) Anywho I went to Switchboard.com, found her correct address, printed a label, put the calendar in a new envelope, stamped it and return addressed it.

Home, watched the Seahawks try and fail to give away the game in the last 4 minutes, after beating up the Saints big-time. Wore my "HOWARD" Seahawks jersey, and kept it on. Broke out the chips and clam dip. It turned out great, and Domino was all over me for both - she loves dips and cheeses and she likes to lick the salt off of chips.

Tivo time, a rare episode of Shark Tank in which more than one supplicant was made multiple offers. Meanwhile, Domino sleep-tested the new bed in the office. It's a keeper.

At 6:30 headed out, paid $21 to see the Miss Santa Clara pageant because I thought several friends from the Anything Goes cast were competing. Turns out only one of them made it, and there were only 5 contestants. Sad but true, the person I went to see was not up to the level of the top 3. She won Miss Congeniality, which suits her. The girl they chose was also my choice, as was runner up. The new Miss Santa Clara is gorgeous, is a knockout in everything she wore, and while all of them chose dance as their talent, only the winner and runner-up impressed me. Ironic, because I know Miss Congeniality as a dancer, but as tap and not interpretive, and 10 or 15 lbs lighter.

Unfortunately, the row in front of me was occupied by the high school friends of the Miss contestants, and the girl in front of me screamed like she'd seen a murder every time one of their friends showed up. the boy next to her tried to scream, but it sounded like a bad transmission. It was a lot of horrible noise I could have done without.

Plans for tomorrow:
Since I won't have guests over, I'll probably watch the game with a half-hour head start, on Tivo and FF past the commercials.
Graduation party for a friend

Current Mood: mellow
Current Location: Furball Hall

Wet streets locally again this morning. Script writer made some changes, so I had stuff to test. UPS tracking said recliner was out for delivery, they usually show up around 3-5 pm, so I went home at 1 planning on working from home till it arrived, because it's 100lbs and would be a lot easier if the driver hauled it on his dolly up the stairs and onto the landing.

But when I got home the box was at the foot of the side stairs, which are too narrow to get it inside, so I had to get my dolly and roll the thing all the way down the driveway, out onto the street, to the opposite side of the house and up the front steps, and into the livingroom.

Got the box open and they had broken one of the four widgets at the bottom of the legs. Not crucial, but not good for the carpet.

Put it together, which is dead easy. The foot rest needs to be kicked back into place, so something probably also got bent slightly. Not enough to send it back but enough to complain to overstock.com. Domino was sitting across the top of it before I could even try it out. It's the guest chair.

The box was too big for recycle, so I chopped it up and set it outside.

Did some more work from home, got volunteered to give a demo of it Monday.

Caught up on online stuff, watched an episode of Restaurant Stakeout which was a little bit different than most, because the main issue wasn't the staff, it was the space, and the boss' penny pinching. He fixed it by doubling the staff and totally remodeling the place.

Watched the news, got bored and here I am. I think I'll boost the head of the bed and do some reading.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Put together that demo
Starbucks? I have a free drink coming and it's been a while.

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Furball Hall

Very quiet day today, I had just enough time to start a battle of wits with an unarmed person on Facebook when the alarm reminded me I was seeing the Hobbit 2 matinée 3D showing. Got there 10 minutes before the alleged start time, looked into the room and there were only about 12 seats occupied, so I got a hot dog and a pack of peanut M&Ms to stave off insulin shock, made a pit stop, and now right at start time magically the place was 1/3 full. Found a seat in the 2nd row for the back, but the view was partially blocked by the top of the seats in the last row before the aisle, so I went to that row and it was much better.

It's a long movie. Short review: Mostly boring, interrupted by too-long fight and flight sequences, no LOL moments, and too many plot lines taking too long to not quite converge. Just when it got good the lights came on and they rolled the credits.

Longer review ( behind the cut )

Bottom line: if you must see it, do it in 2D. Better to wait for the three to come out on DVD.

Starbucks, because it was not the warm sunny day which had been predicted, but heavily overcast and chilly. And for the eye candy. And to glom onto their wifi on my laptop and install Office 2013, aka 365, and update Norton virus definitions and Firefox. But the wifi was at a crawl, so I reluctantly closed up the machine and finished all that at home where I have 5GHz wireless.

Late lunch of something I can't remember. FFed through the Military Bowl because my nephew is a Terp. They lost - kind of packed up and went home with 5 minutes left to play. Sad, it was still winnable.

Dinner was Penang beef meatballs, from an old family recipe I made up as I went along. Excellent use of my new kafir lime tree's leaves. Basically it was just a dollop of Penang curry in a can's worth of coconut milk (the creamy kind) with the lime leaves chopped very fine. Simmer until the curry is mixed in, and add lean ground beef meatballs (made by hand). Simmer for 15 minutes, turn the heat way down for another 15. Probably could have stopped at 15.

Watched the start of the Kill Hunger Bowl which was in San Francisco, my alma mater crushed BYU on the scoreboard, but lost on every other stat except special teams. Wish I had known ab out it sooner, I might have gone. Alumni band is supposed to alert me, they failed. Maybe they were told no alumni band. like the Rose Bowl does. :-(

Paused at halftime because in the mail tonight was a notice from the home insurance company that they want $200 more by January 4 because I am not entitled to the Allstate preferred partner rate because there is no security system. That makes the insurance $150 more a year than what the lender offered, instead of $50 less. Also the lender's coverage is for the full price, which Allstate's partner's is not. So I fired up the scanner, made a PDF of the letter, emailed a "please help me" message to the loan arranger with copies to Allstate, the mfg rep, her assistant and the escrow officer.

What I want to have happen is for the lender to use their insurance, which will raise my monthly payment by about $5-10, give me full coverage and get rid of the bait-and-switch. This is more than a month after everything was supposed to be done, and I am pissed. Comcast's home security is $40 a month, $480 a year, not worth the Allstate insurance rate hike, which is no doubt part of the scam.

In other insurance news, yesterday Allstate gave me an estimate on earthquake insurance. Their lowest cost one is $1700/year and has a $15,000 deductible. That's a non-starter. I doubt that a quake would cause $17k in damage to this place.

What else?

Oh, the whale tour group I went with in the summer is showing amazing pics this week of dolphin pods and grey whales, so I'm going down there Sunday to bring them one of my calendars which has this as the cover:

and one month is a montage of 5 photos from my 3 outings. May, I think.

I finally got around to ordering a case of treats for Domino, changed the litterbox so need to order refills. One cat = 1 litterbox = 1/2 the order.

Plans for tomorrow:
Make a reservation for the Sunday afternoon whale watch
Get petrol
Maybe watch some football
If the sun comes out as they predict, go to the park and watch RC planes and drones.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Furball Hall

The first half of Plan A was to see American Hustle at 11:50 at the AMC, which is pretty close to home. Matinee senior price was $7. The second half was to see The Hobbit in IMAX at 2:20. But with 20 minutes of trailers, 138 minutes later was too late to do the second half, and the place was packed, so I went home. Met my next door neighbor in #6, she said she was widowed 3 years ago, she had company which saved me from a real conversation. She has a pretty thick accent, I think Philippines.

Was hungry, but it was too early for a meal. I made popcorn, but that wasn't enough so I cut up more sourdough batard and had a triangle of goat brie with that, as Domino stood on my lap trying to intercept the cheese as I spread it on the bread-ettes. I gave her a few fingertips worth.

Tivo had one episode of Restaurant Stakeout, which was another miracle success. This time Willy totally failed with most of the staff, and what finally saved the place was the owner doubling the staff, and the chef providing cheat sheets to the dumb as rocks android wait staff for the daily specials.

Elementary stepped into the future, I am thankful they resisted the pressure to make it a Christmas tree festooned episode. Instead they promoted the Christmas spirit by nailing the head of a Holocaust victims' fund for triple murder, money laundering and drug dealing.

Since I had time and a decent kitchen, dinner was a minor production number. Put some egg noodles (twisty) on the boil, sauteed two slices of onion and a tablespoon of crushed garlic in corn oil, added 1/4 lb of ground beef, a dash of sage and a dash of ginger, and when it was almost cooked poured in a few shots of Canadian whiskey.

Drained the noodles and put them on a plate, dumped the ground beef on top. Should have used a bowl, it got cold quickly. Domino loved the little bits of beef I gave her.

Afterward she got her Fancy Feast and I got my Breyers Thin Mint ice cream.

Watching high school football, a local school called De La Salle is very good. There are some college teams they could hold their own against.

Made a poor man's egg cream. Love my SodaStream because now I always have seltzer handy. Just fill a glass halfway with seltzer, top it off with chocolate milk. They make lactose free 2% now. Yummy.

Plans for tomorrow:
Post office, buy a lot of stamps and apply them to envelopes with calendars in them.
Maybe see The Hobbit, but not in IMAX.
Visit the office, request a larger garbage bin.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Furball Hall

A full day. Solved the mystery tunnel problem at work, and finished all the test cases on the to-do list. One of them I marked FAIL but it will probably never be fixed because (a) the person who wrote the code doesn't know how and (b) there are at least 3 easy work-arounds.

In an orgy of screen captures with lots of cropping in MS Paint, documented the tunneling process, and sent it to Automation Guy who is also the gatekeeper of the team's library of tips'n'tricks.

Lunch at Pollo Loco because I love their chicken and it has been a while. Their latest ~~scam~~ marketing deal is to offer rice and beans as the two sides with the combo plates, and charge extra if you want something edible instead. And they still don't understand "no tortilla, por favor".

It was chilly this morning, so I wore my Sharks jacket to work. It was still chilly at lunch time, so I wore it to lunch, but by the time lunch was over it was 72° outside and the sun was streaming in through the windows and I forgot my jacket on the back of the chair. Got to the last stoplight before work before I realized this, so wasted 10 minutes going back and grabbing it. Surprised it was still there, it's a nice jacket, $200 retail, XXL which means Gangsta size.

This morning I had put the 2nd baritone in the storage shed and hauled out the two sealed boxes which I was sure contained (box 1) 20x30 framed poster sized photos from the last Worldcon art show and (box 2) 18x12 sized ones. When I got back home after work, I opened them both, box 1 was what I knew it was, but box 2 had no photos, instead it was a 2/3 full box from USPS of non-flat-rate boxes (folded) sandwiched between two lazy Susans which I had given up for lost. I absolutely hate how movers pack things randomly. The boxes and photos are now in the dumpster, the lazy Susans are leaning up against the rack of shelves in the livingroom, next to the framed Thai temple rubbings and both will go into boxes later for the move.

On the Sunnyvale library for a NASA update on voyagers and Mars missions. Ames down the pike in Mountain View is the main site for coordinating the Mars program, among other things. Got there at 6:40, the door was still locked for the meeting room. Looked around the DVD collection, nothing caught my eye, wandered over to the audio books section and found Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things. checked it out, and saw the door was open. 10 minutes before the talk and only about 10 people were there. I grabbed a seat in the front row, put my camera and the Gaiman disk set on the chair to my right. Plenty of empty seats, no guilt. People kept arriving, but there were at least 20 empty seats throughout the talk. People, mostly kids, kept coming up, blocking my view, asking if they could sit there. Nope. Next time, come on time if you want a good seat. There are plenty of seats in the back, and plenty of standing room on the sides if you're short. Besides, this was announced as an adult talk, children not encouraged to attend. Of course there were 4x as many children as adults. I'm pretty sure this made the speaker dumb things down a bit.

There were a ton of questions, which cut into the 1-hour program considerably. Most were on topic, but also things which anyone interested int he subject ought to know. I learned one thing I had not known: Mars' atmosphere is too sparse to use for slowing down incoming craft, but dense enough that retro rockets might blow back and burn up the craft.

Home, ripped the Gaiman CDs to the iPod so can listen in the car. Also watched the latest Shark Tank and was happy to see Mr. Wonderful buy half interest in a scam business.Two Guidos from the brass knuckles collection company give small business loans in exchange for taking over the business' credit card processing, at a 26% payoff.

Deleted the Tivo of the Seahawks game, having heard how awful the ending was.

Caught the re-run of the last pitch of the World Series, kind of anti-climactic. Glad it's over in less than 7, and that the home team won it at Fenway after being nixed for 95 years. Meanwhile, the Giants need hitters. Enough already with pitchers. Pitchers don't score points. I don't care how many runs the other team scores, as long as we score more. More hits on both sides makes the game more exciting.

And speaking of sweeps, two of my FB friends this week have reported hilarious Roomba failures. I have too much stuff on the floors to make one practical. And they cost 3x more than a serviceable vacuum.

Got a note from mfg rep, nothing happening until about 11/20 or 21, when park lease gets signed and I hand over 2 months' rent. Scottrade shows the mutual fund sale to pay for this is now in my account, where it will stay until then.

1st choice Movers have not gotten back to me. Time to hit up #2

Plans for Halloween:
No costume. No candy
Work. I need to write some step-by-steps for test cases for the offshore automation folks
Movies straight after work. Or not. All the good stuff opens Friday. :-(

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Location: Home of the Lost

Morning: opened the PC to see why the USB 3.0 adapter is not making a data connection with anything. Thought it might be no power connection, but there was one, which had two bits which were not needed. Maybe it's the cable. Ordered a 3.0 compliant extension cable. May need to hit up Fry's for 3.0 compatible phone/camera cables.

Work: finished three scripts. Very tedious work. It looks like it will be months before I get to do audio/video again. :-(

Lunch with Automation Guy at the Sushi Ave place. Salmon somethingyaki was okay, a little dry, but better than cloyingly sweet terriyaki. Sashimi was good.

Straight home from work. Litterbox refills were at the door in a box 3x as large as they needed. WTF? Wag.com usually does their own packing, this was in a generic box, shipped by UPS.

After keeping the bedroom door closed for two days & nights, I left it open today. Kaan pooped in there again. :-(

Good thing I have a carpet steamer/scrubber.

Finished yesterday's pizza for dinner. Watched the last of 3 segments of the Tony awards. Many of the presenters were total WTFs. Felt cheated that they only showed the winners of most of the technical awards, shot previously, and only 10 seconds each. Did not really care who won, except Kinky Boots? Gag me.

Renewed my lease for another 6 months. Probably will move then - paying WAY too much rent with the $200 increase. Just not wise to move in July when current lease expires until I find out if work is moving. That's 3+ months away.

Registration for the new car arrived, but not the plates. I thought the dealership would be holding onto them for me to collect, but sales rep says no.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work. More tedious scripting
Manicure
Something after work. Don't know what

Current Mood: crappy
Current Location: Home of the Weird

Officially back to being a lazy bum couch potato on weekends. Yay!

Woke up around 9, caught up on Elementary and The Mentalist on Tivo. The former is a copycat of the latter, but shifted to NYC and using the sexy Lucy Liu as the sidekick to a totally non-sympathetic genius. There is no chemistry there. There is no chemistry anywhere in Elementary, though the writers keep trying to create sexual tension. This episode they bring in Lucy's character's mother, who gives the "It's easy to see you are in love with him" talk, which falls flat because there is no love there, at all.

The Mentalist's writers, on the other hand, have built in ginormous sexual tension between the too-cute-for-her-badge boss and the very sympathetic genius. And also between two of the other regulars. They even had some Bad Romance for a while between a badge and one of his slutty informers.

Played with both cats, did some stuff online, then at about 1 I got dressed, hit an ATM, and tried out a new massage place about a mile down the street I live on. It was pretty good. 80# Chinese waif tap danced on my back. Or at least it felt that way.

Back home, made some late lunch, then off to Palo Alto for an invitation-only party for Palo Alto Players supporters. Very little in the way of food, meager selection of drinks but they at least covered all the bases. Check-in gave away the plot - they handed me a pre-printed subscription form with my name on it. Legal size paper, when a postcard would have sufficed. I really should not be on their list - I perform there, I've never bought a season ticket.

They announced the next season in what could have been a very exciting way had they executed it well. They didn't. The format was this:
A lectern at the corner of stage right. A mike stand at the corner of stage left. a projection screen hanging in the center.

They started by projecting a high-def clip of a Latino dance number on the standard-def projector. For those who don't live and breathe video, this means the actors were very tall and very thin and it hurt my brain. After the clip they showed a hand-written black and white slide with the name and author(s)of the show.

For the first show, a musical, the person who will direct the show goes to the lectern and says a few words about the show. Then a young woman goes to the mike stand and sings/screeches a tune from the show, battling for all she is worth to sing in every possible key. She mostly succeeds. My brain hurts more. The show is In The Heights, which won a Tony because every show on Broadway which is set in NYC wins a Tony. The only thing the director had to say is the show is hot. Here is the clip they showed:
http://youtu.be/7PjplS0UwwA
They cut it off at 1 minute.

Next up was God of Carnage, which got some crayon drawings and stick figure drawings about children fighting, then the hand-drawn slide and the director's speech. I have heard good things about this show, and I know the director is good too. But it's a 4-person cast, sure to be boring for me.

The Heiress is hyped with some too-short clips from the 1949 movie with Olivia de Havilland, whom the director incorrectly identifies as a Palo Alto native. She was actually born in Japan, and raised in nearby Saratoga. She went to Mills College way on the other side of the Bay. Bad slide, director's pitch did not make me want to see this show.

Now comes the real WTF. We get a clip which starts with the theme from Les Miz, with some video and custom made (typed, this time) slides which sounded like teasers for LM, then all of a sudden Frau Blücher says her name, and then we get a bit of Igor and Dr. F., and then a snatch of Dr. F and the Monster in Putting on the Ritz. Ugly b&w slide again, director says how thrilled he is to be directing this masterpiece, Young Frankenstein, which is almost nothing like the movie. Executive Director Peter Bliznick steps up to the mike stand and launches into an impressive rendition of Putting on the Ritz, joined by The Monster. That was well done.

Now the screen shows a bunch of poorly edited moments from the ancient TV show I've Got a Secret and the mystery man is finally revealed as claiming he invented the TV. No ugly B&W slide this time, but a colorful one in the shape of a TV set which announces The Farnsworth Invention. No director for this yet, the Players' tech director gives the promo. Meh.

The lights come up in the audience for volunteers to pass out subscription sheets, these are green instead of the yellow pre-printed ones. Seems the pre-printed ones are good for tonight only. The green ones have the non-special prices. Lights go back down and we get three more short speeches encouraging donations and subscriptions.

When it seemed to all be over, the volunteer coordinator tells us there is one more thing, from Miss Saigon (opening on the 26th). Two young people step up to the mike stand and sing "Sun and Moon". Katherine Dela Cruz and Danny Gould. Ms. Dela Cruz totally knocked it out of the park. I am so seeing that show. She looks to be about 15, he looks about 20. He did okay, with a mike. She doesn't need one. The good news is as the piece progressed, he started to rise to her level.

All that only took till 7:10. Plenty of time, so I took the El Camino all the way home, a very long and slow trip but worth it to see all the new stuff. They have taken the covers off of San Antonio Center, and it looks very modern. Further down, my favorite Thai restaurant was on its last legs last time I went by, it is now a grand opening Chinese place. There are two new, smaller Thai places, Rice and Thai Lemongrass, down the road a piece. Lots more changes. I did a couple of U-turns to take closer looks.

Plans for tomorrow:
Drive to SJ with the new lens, have fun at the Songkran festival. I thought they were having it in one of the big parks, but it looks like it is in a not so big parkng lot not far from where I parked for Brigadoon. It is going to be interesting to see how they fit everything into that space.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

Up till almost 4 am, almost plotzed at work at 4 pm but was woken up by needing to do some brain-engaged writing.
Lunchtime, picked up a pair of Netgear plug-n-play wifi-N repeaters. Fast food for lunch because, well, time.
Home, installed the repeaters but they did not seem to be repeating. Open box units, probably were set up for someone else's network. Screw it, I needed to crash.

Tried to get to sleep, Domino did her spynx thing next to me. That was about 6:30, last look at the clock I remember was 7:30. Woke up at a little before 11. Got dressed, drove to Denny's for dinner. Excellent service for a change. No wi-fi there, so finished reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself and switched to Slave Girl of Gor when I was done.

Back home, found the setup guide for the repeaters which was missing from the boxes. One by one reset them, paired them with the router, fired up the Ultrabook because my main PC does not have wireless and setup needed a PC which would connect to the repeater by wireless. The wizard is a little out of order, but in about 15 minutes I had them both set up with unique SSID names, and the same login and password, and was able to connect to each of them. Tivo, unfortunately, at 1 am locked me out of network setup because there's a software upgrade coming at 2 am. Stupid, it only takes 5 minutes to change the network settings, and the update might fail with the current setup. I did get the blueray player set up, and played an Amazon Prime video, it was a much better connection. Put one in the bedroom, and hooked up the squeezebox radio to it. Much better signal, but it showed that the intermittent play from Thailand's Fung Fung Fung station is not due to my network. Bummer. I get other stations from Thailand which are more reliable, but they have too many loud commercials. One thing about Thai radio commercials is they either sound like ads for a relaxing spa treatment or they sound like ads for a monster truck rally. Often the ones which sound like ads for monster truck rallies are ads for a relaxing spa treatment. :-(

Spent a lot of $ today. Also bought a replacement connector for my camera's GPS unit (they have improved it by making a flex curled cord instead of the straight one which keeps popping out). Cord was $12, express shipping from HK $30. Non-express would take a month. Bought an iPod 6th gen on eBay, now that two 5th gens have crapped out intermittently on the car audio system. I'm blaming the battery. Also bought a battery replacement kit for the 5th gen. Both of those will probably go on eBay "for parts". Also plopped some change into my Discover card to keep me below the limit. It's a low limit, but 0% interest. If I keep rotating money through it, I get cash back. My Chase card started charging interest (it had a 0 balance but a late submission from Kaiser for $10 cost $11.09) so I put that card away.

Bought some Safeway Select 78% chocolate the other day, and it's pretty good. I'd say 7 out of 10.

Plans for later today:
Use my free Starbucks drink card, and take my netbook there for upgrades
Maybe hit Baycon. Maybe. I've had enough of Fanime, and just don't get steampunk so no clockwork alchemy
If I didn't have a concert Sunday I'd have taken the train to Sacto for the jazz.

Current Mood: limbo
Current Location: Home of the Weird

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howard stateman

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