checking in

I had things to say, interesting articles to point you to, clever quips, long and thought-provoking essays ... but that was last week and now I forget what they are. And I was just kidding about the clever quips and thought-provoking essays. But I know I read something that I thought would be neat to blog about. Was it the cat who ... did ... um ... whatever the cat did that was cool? Saved somebody? Maybe it was a dog. The chihuahua that saved his owners' grandson from being bitten by a rattlesnake by rushing in and taking the bites himself? That might be it. That was some dog. He survived, too. You can read about it here. Or here, where you can also find a link to a story about a dog breaking Paula Abdul's nose. You can also read about a rent-a-pet service. Cool.

Harry Potter people!

Go here and listen to Becky P's Harry Potter songs!

Of course, one of my two readers is Becky P, but the other one (Jenny!) should go to that there link and listen to her songs. They're good! And Becky's band (Knockturn Alley) has a gig tomorrow night at a Harry Potter party! Yay! Good luck, Becky!!! oops, I mean, break a guitar string and all sorts of other horrible things. yeah.

And while you all wait for your book, do NOT read the paper or even talk to your friends, because (1) there are REVIEWS of the book in the papers (they got advance copies, the bastards), and (2) your friends will tell you the upshot of the review, thereby telling you something about the book, even as you yell at them to SHUT THE FUCK UP because you don't want to know ANYTHING about the book until you, yourself, have had a chance to read it. Yes, my friend (more like a coworker, the git) told me the upshot of the Seattle Times' review, and I want to hurt him. He wouldn't stop, even thought I told him to stop telling me about it. He kept saying, "I'm not telling you anything," and then he told me things. It makes me wonder about him. Usually a good guy, but gee. He thinks that he told me nothing about the book, but now I have somebody's value judgment about it, so now I know something about it, and I HATE THAT! I don't want anybody else's judgment about books or movies or songs or anything before I experience them myself, especially the eagerly anticipated ones like this one. If it is something that I have never heard of before, that's okay. Like someone saying, "Have you heard of "FTBWBWUUUBSBZZZZZZZ"? No? Go read it! It's the best thing EVER!!!") That would be okay. Other friends lend me books and tell me at the same time, "It was pretty good. Kind of soupy. The end was bad. But here you go, you can have it!!!" Gee, thanks. So, no comments on HP of any sort, not even the sort that say, "Hey, did you know it's a book?" Yes, I did. "Did you know that someone scanned some pages online?" Yes, I did. They are bastards. The media are bastards. My friend had a moment of bastardity this morning, and I am the one to pay.

funny YouTube video

Here is a funny video: here, go here

ghost gas - is it there or not?

Did you hear about ghost gas? Apparently, if you pump gas when it is really got out, you get less gas for your money because the hot temperature makes the gas expand. You can pump the same volume but get less overall, because it contracts again when the weather cools down. So you should buy gas when it is cool out, like at night or early in the morning, to save yourself some money. I did not know this. Here is a story on NPR about it.

Here are some questions for you, in case you want to ponder something and are at a loss: Which is more important, liberty or equality? And which makes a person good or bad, their intentions or their actions? Or does that question completely miss the point?

Marsha

Marsha was the flight attendant on my flight from Pasco to Seattle this afternoon. She made the security announcements fun, as in, "Your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device. Hold it to your chest, wrap your arms about it, lean over it, and kick, folks, because you're in a bad situation." I'd say so. Fortunately, we did not have to do any of those things.

I wonder if I have a spider on me.

Shakespeare came today!! All 38 volumes. I promptly ripped a page of "Twelfth Night," because I was so excited that I wrenched it open, and the nice little blue ribbon that was stuck in two pages tore one of the pages. So now it's mine. Unpaid for, but mine.

Two Things

Thing One: My classical education has been lacking, so only now am I reading King Lear, and only now am I discovering the source of "Bury my body" and "Sit you down, Father," in "I am the Walrus." I guess there's a lot more of that scene in that song, but those are the lines that I notice. Everyone else already knows. I knew as soon as I got to "bury my body" in Act IV; the line spoke itself in the voice in the song, which was not the voice I had been using for Oswald until that time. Weird. Also, while looking that up on the Web (because I forgot what song the lines appear in), I read about the Paul-Is-Dead thing, which, yes, I did already know about. I know about it, and don't believe it, but man. It's spooky! And all I really know (or think I know) is that the man who has "been" Paul McCartney my entire life appears to be one of the two remaining Beatles. Maybe he really isn't. Maybe he's just really good at pretending to be Paul McCartney. For decades. With a wife (2! but no longer) and children (several!). And he's the right age. Even if he weren't Paul McCartney originally, isn't he Paul McCartney now? It's weird.

Thing Two: Also kind of weird, in a spooky and pathetic sort of way, because of what it says about what really matters to me right now. I was eating my lunch today, slowing getting through a sandwich which I didn't much like. It had chicken lunch meat on it, and the lunch meat had been in my fridge for awhile now, but it seemed okay. No green spots, and didn't smell bad. It tasted okay. I think my fridge is too cold, though I keep turning it up (or down, depending on how you look at it, and if you understand anything about temperature). Anyway, I was about 2/3 of the way through my not-so-yummy sandwich when I suddenly felt really sick to my stomach. So much that I thought I might have nasty, embarrassing sick-type problems involving the waste basket. I was glad that I did not have those problems, but I still felt nauseated. I wondered if it were the sandwich, and so threw it in the waste basket. But it didn't seem like a food-borne (bourn? bourne? born?) illness. I wondered if something horrible had happened to my family, and if I should call them and find out if they were all okay. But I didn't, because I know that's silly. After a few minutes, I felt better.

Then, Peter came in. He came in with bad news about the program we use to convert raw tagging data to the data format we need for the other program, which we use to do the analyses that we have been doing and redoing since last fall. Over and over and over again as we discover more and more and more errors in the data and in the converting program. We finally paused in our analysis and re-analysis fun some time in January, and did a bang-up beta test of the converting program, and spent a lot of time making it just right, and checking and rechecking it. And then we re-ran the data in it, and then spent about 3 weeks reanalyzing the re-run data, and fixing up everything, and getting the results on the web, and I'm supposed to be doing the report if I ever get time. And I really just want it all to END. I'm tired of it. And so is my boss, who would be really, really upset if we had to do it all over again. Really, seriously upset. So Peter's news was BAD. Potentially, anyway. It turned out that the error applies only to data that we haven't run, so our version of the data should be okay, at least as far as this is concerned. WHEW. Yay. That is a good thing. After we realized that it was a false alarm, I asked Peter when he had discovered this error. And when was that? At the same time that I had suddenly felt ill, right out of the blue! Yes. It's true. He was so freaked out about this potentially horrible development, and I am so attuned to any problem with these freakin' data, that he must have sent out shock waves, shock waves that I received. It's almost enough to make me doubt Paul.