I had one of those made for the movies slow motion moments coming home tonight. The snow flurries had just started to fall making the roads a little wet but nothing too serious. I was biking home using my secondary route. My primary route is the one I commute on between Union Square and Harvard Square. My secondary route is the one that I take when I've crossed over the river into Boston. While I don't ride it as much it's a route that I'm very familiar with.
It seems RCN's out bound mail server died. Which means that all of my outbound mail since like 8am this morning have not been delivered... I called them a few hours ago and after being on hold for 25 minutes finally spoke to someone that said "the issue had been resolved". Well it still looks like no out bound email has gone out based on my own tests. Up to this point besides some static IP issues I had when I first got going RCN had been rock solid. Needless to say if you were expecting an email from me, it probably didn't get sent...
And for those that are curious I don't send email out directly from my box since many of the blacklists by default include all cable IPs. This caused problems with email being bounced in the past.
Maybe my glasses prescription needs to get updated but I've been having a hard time finding backgrounds or wallpapers related to the current Tour de France. I'm talking about 1600x1200 sized images of the Tour de France logo, a detailed image of this year's route, or even photos from the various stages. I would have thought from a promotional standpoint the official Tour de France would have a bunch, but my quick glances at that site have turned up nothing. I'm more than happy to have just missed something obvious on this one and if so please let me know.
I think inline skating is all but dead in Boston. During a recent night of heavy blading I managed to lose a couple of bolts holding my wheels on while out blading. Thankfully I didn't notice this until a couple of days later when I was rotating my wheels. I have no chance of retracing my route to find the missing bolts. My long time use of a hop-up kit saved me from having the wheel fall completely off.
Being without blades makes short little mid-day excursions a little more tedious so I went out in search of replacement parts. I've been blading around Boston since I got here. Things have changed since then. Eric Flaim's Motion Sports on Newbury used to be the place to go. Long since gone and replaced by a Blades Board and Skate. They even had a couple of locations around the city including Harvard Square. Alas they are also gone. A place I never went to but looked promising was Beacon Hill Skate Shop. A phone call to them and they seemed to have moved way south of the city.
True East Skate Shop in downtown Boston is for skateboarders only. Orchard Skateshop looks to be the same. Those are the specialty shops, either gone or not for inline.
There is always City Sports, but they are more about the simple gear not cross pull hop-up kits or a dozen plus wheel variations with different hardnesses, composites, and diameters. Even some of the online specialty shops I used to buy in bulk from when I was going through a set of wheels a month, seemed to have moved on. And forget the fact that I contemplated getting news blades. Maybe I'm old fashioned but Rollerblade's ABT system is still tops in my book for being able to break hard while in traffic, keep all your wheels on the ground, and not rip your wheels to shreds. Very few if any models out there offer anything like that. Maybe I could learn new techniques but too many years of certain habits are hard to break :)
Over the past couple of days my blog has been heavily hit with comment spam. In the last 10 hours I've gotten more than 100 spam message attempts posted to my blog. I moderate all comments so none of those messages saw the light of day but I still have to deal with them. I've never really tuned the comment spam features of MT and I still haven't. Instead I installed a CAPTCHA system. Previously I had required TypeKey in order to leave a comment but that felt a little to draconian. Not everyone has a TypeKey account or wants to create one. Email whitelists are another option but that still requires that I approve or junk email addresses when they are entered.
I'm all about not even having to look at the spam. While this may mean I automatically trash some important comment or email, I think most people are coming to realize that when 90% or more of all email is spam, people will take drastic measures and at some point a message will be lost. As such I'm now running the SCode plugin. The usability of CAPTCHAs is a concern but unless I go back to TypeKey only comments I don't have another good solution at this point. In fact the use of TypeKey on my system just means that your comment will automatically be posted but you still need to enter the security code in order to post.
With the holiday season is full swing I've been getting catalogs in the mail left and right. Today included one from Circuit City. I have a hard time just throwing a catalog like that away since it has all kinds of technology toys in it. As a was flipping through, I saw the new TiVo Series 3. I don't quite know when it got released but I know it didn't exist at least a year ago when I put my HD system together.
Circuit City is selling them for $799.99. That's even more than the PS3 (ignoring the eBay frenzy). The same catalog has decent computers that cost less. Never the less I consider just what such a purchase would mean. While I sometimes maybe impulsive, I'll at least make sure it fits into some reasonable disposable income level before just slapping down the plastic.
Tonight I had dinner at Aura which is the restaurant in the Seaport Hotel. It was the first of what I hope to be many enjoyable Boston Restaurant Week experiences. Unlike my last attempt.
One of the best parts of tonight, which contributed highly to the drunk part was they offered a wine pairing with each course for a reasonable additional fee. Not only did I get a great appetizer, main course, and dessert, I also got to have three very nice wines. I picked my courses to have a wide variety which was great since it provided great contrast. The meal started off with bread and sauces.
The appetizer was the Nesenkeag farm greens with lemon-basil vinaigrette, julienne cucumbers, and baby tomatoes paired with a 2003 Sauvignon Blanc, Chateau Ste. Michelle, ‘Horse Heaven’, Washington. Nothing too special about this course. The wine was very good but nothing in the dish stood out in my mind to really bring out the flavors of the wine.
For the main source I had Grilled beef tenderloin and chipotle glazed short rib with a Vidalia onion and new potato hash paired with 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon, Villa Mt. Eden 'Tall Trees', Napa, California. By far the best part of the meal. The tenderloin was a perfect medium rare and brought out the woody flavor in the wine. The short rib was also good but I think I would have been happy with just more of the tenderloin.
Lastly for dessert I got the Ricotta Crème Brulee with Honey thyme marinated raspberries and pecan sable cookie paired with Muscat Canelli, Icewine, Bonny Doon, Santa Cruz, California. The wine was very sweet, but not overpowering, and reminded me of pears. I didn't eat that much of the brulee as I was mostly full at this point. The raspberries were very yummy though.
Overall a wonderful meal and excellent service. As a side note the restaurant also validates parking which was an added bonus!
I finally got around to upgrading the version of SpamAssassin that I use. I was previously running 3.0.2 and am now running 3.1.4 I also spent a bunch of time installing a optional Perl modules to enable additional features of SpamAssassin. Boy am I glad that I did. Prior to upgrading I'd say at least 20 spams were getting through a day. In the last 24 hours I've only see one spam that didn't get flagged and it was as close as you can get to not being considered spam.
This makes me happy. I've never been that good with email to begin with but having to spend most of my email time filtering through my inbox only made matters worse. The few times that I've checked email since upgrading I've almost not known what to do. It's sad, but spam in my email has become so common I've almost forgot what it's like. This is a good problem to have to readjust to.
I do have to say that the documentation that I've come across so far for SpamAssassin has been pretty disorganized. I find this really odd since it seems to be under the Apache Software Foundation, which having used many of their other projects, I've usually been happy with the documentation. I suspect that the SpamAssassin wiki holds the knowledge I'm seeking but damned if I can find it. In any case, less spam is good and AFAIK no false-positives.
It's hot today. Last I looked it was about 90. It's also very humid. Currently running around 46% humidity. This past week I've also really gotten back into inline skating. I still have my very old blades. Going on about 10 years now. They show many signs of being that old. Scraps and nicks each with their own little story of how it came to pass. Unfortunately my blades are almost getting too old. The tongue on the inner shell has cracked in half on one and is all but cracked on the other. This doesn't affect the usage of the skates, just another sign that maybe they are past their prime. They don't really owe me anything. I spend most of college in then using them constantly. And I mean constantly. There were many days that a pair of blades was the only footwear I wore. I can safely say I feel very comfortable on a pair of inline skates. Hell, I was stupid enough to transport 21" monitors across campus a few times on a pair of blades.
Well not really. I've been doing daily updates to this blog since the beginning of this year. I don't really have enough to write about to really keep that up, so this blog will now return to its regular infrequent cycle.
This blog seems to have distinct moods to it. Sometimes it is much more of a helpful blog, but other times it is much more of a random crap that it coming out of my head blog (dare one might say something more like an online diary). Well sorry to disappoint anyone that might be looking for a helpful blog entry, I've just not had the time to put those together. A good helpful blog entry I find usually takes about an hour to write. From putting together examples, doing some proofreading, and in general trying to make it a little more polished than an more drivel oriented post like this one.
Why am I ranting today? I woke up with that back of the throat scratchy feeling. Unlike the symptoms from a few months ago which never really amounted to anything, this time I think its for real. I've already used up a third of a new box of tissues an on my second cold relief shot and have been going through cough drops like there is no tomorrow. I've drank half of the Nile today in fluids and have had pretty much nothing but mushy food (heavily soaked grape nuts for breakfast and soup for lunch and supper). Why do I mention all of this? Please refer to the earlier comment about drivel.
Since I've have a habit of writing about this every time it happens, since it annoys the hell out of me, I also get a record of its frequency. Maybe someday I'll look back on this and figure out what the root cause of these mostly mild cold like symptoms are. Also I also get mild hypochondria when I get sick like this and think I've got some bigger issue, because why should I be getting sick?
On June 1st I found out that I was the lucky winner of the first "Behind the Scenes at Blue Man Group" promotion. This was a contest which was part of the new BMG Boston's New Mobile Community. I got a back stage tour of what goes into making the show happen from the sound, light, and manager's perspectives. I also got to sit through the sound check and prepatory work before the show begins. During the show I got my name in lights and got to keep the spin art from the show. Overall an even more incredable experience than I've had seeing the Blue Man Group in the past. Sign up, I have a feeling that they will be doing other cool events like this in the future.
While most of the photos that I was allowed to take I can't put online, I do have a picture of me with the Blue Man Group and the spin art from the show.
It rained again today. Enough rain to get more water in our basement. This is getting, no this is already old. Time to figure out what can be done to prevent this from being an issue in the future...
Most of Gilman Manor along with some of our family went for hike up Mount Monadnock today. Since I had recently been up I didn't take as many pictures. We took a much more varied set of trails this time which I enjoyed a lot more. The 300 feet of gain over just under 0.2 miles on the Spellman Trail is a blast. The Red Spot Trail also made for a good descent even if longer than the white trails.
It was almost a great trip except I somehow managed to get some nasty sunburn on the back of my neck. I'm really pissed off about this since I know I put sunblock on, both at the base of the mountain and right after lunch, before the descent. Granted I didn't have a hat on, but no other part of me got sun as bad, and I don't remember a burn like this from biking where the back of neck is just as exposed. I can only think that I must have gotten some sun on the way up in the car, but even that wouldn't completely account for the extent of the burn. It's one thing when I know I'm being stupid and not using any protection and I get a burn. But when I'm taking reasonable precautions and it still happens that just pisses me off. Fair warning, I'll probably be bitchy the next few days until this burn passes.
I sent most of today out on a scavenger hunt. The hunt started in Harvard Square and ended up down in Quincy Market, with stops around Park Street. It was a combination of finding particular items (like green yarn), taking photos of various things (like different ice cream shops), and also having some group photos taken (like on the ducks at the Boston Common). The team that I was on placed second! Not bad for a heat of ten teams. The worst part was about two-thirds of the way through the battery in my camera died. This was right when I was trying to take a picture of a cop who had hand-cuffed my two teammates together. It wasn't until five minutes afterwards that we realized my other teammate had a camera phone we could have used.
While I've ranted about my phone in the past the fact that it couldn't even keep a charge for less than a hundred pictures is just sucky. The fact that I was also recently playing with a digital SLR kind of made me think more seriously about a new camera. I don't think I'd really be able to use all of the features of a high end SLR, but the flexibility you get with a camera like that is just awesome. Although considering I probably ran about three miles today, I don't know if I would really have wanted the bulk of an SLR camera. I'll also not recommend running that kind of distance in sandals. I think I got about three blisters on each foot.
How optimistic my words from last night seem now. The rain did come back, with a vengeance I might add. I woke up this morning to a basement that had about three times as much water as there was yesterday. Since the sump pump we picked up yesterday wasn't doing the trick (we later learned it really needs to be in four inches of water to prevent overheating) we got a wet/dry vac. It helped but given that you can only suck so much water out before needing to drain it after a half dozen trips out to the street we started looking for better options. I tried to rig up something to the drain on the wet/dry vac drum, but we quickly realized it needed a sealed container to get the suction going. In retrospect it makes sense but I can't say I've been thinking clearly the entire time.
After the three of us contemplated various ideas, I suggested using a hole we already had in the ground. We have this hole in the basement that used to be the foundation for an old school style ceramic furnace. It had since been filled in by the time we bought the house. I took a shovel and started digging. There was enough room to create a flat surface a few inches below the rest of the basement floor. I threw in a flat slab on concrete that had come lose from another part of the floor. This was deep enough for the sump pump to operate. Once on we shoveled the remaining water towards the hole and quickly got the water out. Some hand cleanup using the wet/dry vac got things mostly back to normal. Been a "fun" weekend.
Today the rain reached critical mass. It rained long enough and hard enough that the basement of Gilman Manor started to seep water. It was kind of cool to watch the little air bubbles pop as they came through the water that had already seeped through. All in all it wasn't that bad of a situation versus a friend who has been completely flooded out of his apartment. All we had to do was mop up the water and the problem has mostly not returned. We'll have to see what happens if the rain get really bad again.
I've recently been having issues sending mail to various domains from NeoPhi since it is currently on an RCN static IP. It seems various email blacklist sites have started adding cable modem IPs. RCN technical support was no help in trying to resolve the issues. In the end I decided to use RCN's mail server as my outgoing relay in the hopes that at least that RCN machine isn't blacklisted.
It looks like the FireFox 1.5.0.3 upgrade has broken submitting comments on Movable Type 3.2? I've opened a trouble ticket with Six Apart and I'll see what that gets me. In the meantime IE, Lynx, and pretty much anything else can submit comments fine.
It seems RCN has lost my static IP. As a result NeoPhi is off the net, so you can't read this. You can try if you happen to know the IP that it is currently listening to, but that seems to keep changing so that won't do either of us much good. Hopefully the problem will be fixed in the near future, but I don't have my hopes set very high, the people I talked to on the phone weren't really sure what was going on.
Over the past couple of years I've found Details to be a good magazine for various articles related to men's issues. The writing is mostly short pieces but well written and not very fluffy. Overall the magazine tends to speak to a different target audience then myself, especially when it comes to clothes and materialism. While I have spent money on a couple of nice pieces of clothing, the $300 jeans and $125 shirts routinely advertised and reviewed are just crazy amounts to be spending on clothes (IMHO).
I recently got an email asking to participate in a survey they are running. Most of the questions in the survey definitely speak to the intended target audience. This one in particular stood out:
At a glance, you measure a man's success MOST by his: _ Car _ Home _ Clothes _ Watch _ Footwear _ Date
There are very few companies that I've done business with for many years that haven't undergone a name change during that time. T-Mobile for awhile was Voicestream and before that, when I signed up with them back in June of 1998, they were called Omnipoint. In fact my GSM SIM card still says Omnipoint on it. E*Trade, well E*Trade Bank in particular, used to be called Telebank when I first started doing business with them back in Mar of 1999. If you haven't guessed, I'm also fairly loyal to companies, if they continue to offer the features I want at a reasonable value. I'm sure there are others but those come to mind first since my mobile phone is sitting on my desk next to a letter from E*Trade Financial/Bank.
It seems that the reason I signed up with Telebank many years ago, which was their killer super savings account which morphed into the SmartSaver Account, is being discontinued. At the time Telebank had some of the highest interest rates available, a cool online banking site, and a few months later, cool electronic bill payment if you also had a checking account with them. This was before ING Direct and other similar financial products had really broken into the mainstream, or in some cases even existed. Alas, E*Trade has decided to convert their SmartSaver accounts into Money Market Accounts. This might be one of those times to check and see if my loyalty to them has wavered.
I had to fill my car up last night. I had been running the tank to empty in anticipation of getting the fuel filler hose replaced as part of the recent recall. Turns out the tool initially created to handle the repair doesn't work. Nissan is in the process of redesigning the tool and it should be ready sometime in May. Let's hope my car doesn't catch fire :)
Since I had run my tank almost dry I needed a lot of fuel. I was unhappy that on pulling into the local gas station the premium fuel cost was back over $3. Even with how little I drive my car, or more importantly need to drive my car, $45 to fill up a tank is starting to get into the crazy territory. Unless I'm doing highway driving the Z doesn't get very good city mileage so that tank doesn't get me very far. I'll be curious to see how high it goes this time.
A friend got mugged tonight. She is fine. Be careful out there.
Since installing the Flash 8.5 Beta Firefox has been crashing on a fairly regular basis when my Mac is coming out of sleep mode. I'm going to try reverting back to Flash 8 and see if that makes the problem go away. I've also recently upgraded Firefox due to recent security issues and I'm fairly certain the latest round of Mac OS patches got pushed out also, so the blame may not be squarely on Flash but given that it's the only beta product in that mix I'm going to try that first.
Life is good right now. At work this week we managed to get enough plumbing put together to have a first front-to-back communication of the application. It's always nice to have something that is starting to hang together even if some pieces of it are stubbed out. After work today Gilman Manor had the third consecutive week of grilling. Yummy chicken this time. I also attempted some grilled potatoes, but my foil wasn't quite heavy duty enough so a few of the potatoes got a little burned. I also made a batch of corn bread that was good. Not 100%, but this was my first attempt at corn bread from scratch and it turned out much better than the potatoes (which was my second attempt). At least this time the potatoes were somewhat edible, unlike my first attempt. My grill is a little too hot sometimes. Gilman Manor residents also played a bunch of poker tonight which was cool. Lastly, I've got more Tour of Duty to watch :)
Tonight was Christmas for Gilman Manor. Well kind of. Matt gave us tickets to see Spamalot for Christmas and the tickets were for tonight's show.
Before the show we ate at Via Matta. While it was a little rushed since we had to get to the show, the meal was an at least an order of magnitude better than our last planned dinner experience. Very very yummy food. It would have been even better if we would have been able to stay for dessert, but I'm not sure if I could have eaten anything else at that point.
The show was wonderful. It started off fairly predictable but then branched out into new material and incorporated many other Monty Python elements. While I've not watched that much Python, even for the non die-hard fan, it is a funny show.
Now that I'm biking into work on a regular basis I'm becoming more intimate with the weather. My walk to the T, while about as long as my bike ride, never really felt like I was as exposed. That's probably since my walking pace is much slower than I bike. As a result on a morning like this with some snow flakes starting to fall during my ride in, the combination isn't that pleasing. This is aggravated by the fact that I don't have any fenders on my bike. Most of the snow that was falling this morning was melting almost immediately causing enough moisture to be on the ground to be annoying. Yesterday was worse with the constant rain, but in either case I'd be happy if the weather would just cooperate during my commute :)
Now that April 1st has passed I've come to realize that there is one feature of my last apartment that I miss. That is off street parking. With April 1st comes street cleaning. Somerville was kind enough to leave a helpful reminder on my car that street cleaning has started up again after the winter's break. Out of all of the places I've lived in Somerville 50% have had off street parking. If I consider how long I've owned a car and how long I lived at each place that did have off street parking, I've only had to worry about street cleaning 20% of the time.
Unlike Cambridge, Somerville won't actually tow your car if you leave it on the street during street cleaning, you just get a nice little ticket. Given that they use a 1st and 3rd and a 2nd and 4th odd versus even different days of the week pattern for when they clean, even during that 20% of the time I still managed to amass 3 or 4 tickets. At one point someone was running a site which would email you reminders about when to move your car, alas I can't find it right now. If you happen to know it, please let me know.
Don't know what it was but today I've just had one long non-stop headache. Blah....
I give up. I've now managed to accidently erase what I was trying to write not once, but twice. It must be a sign that I shouldn't post anything of value today.
Since I failed to get out on my bike during the 60 degree day we had a recently, I felt obliged to enjoy today's 56 degree weather. If the forecast I'm looking at comes true it will be back down to a high of 46 tomorrow and down to 37 by Friday. This was the first time I was out on my bike this year. I didn't ride that much last year mostly due to working at Ruckus over the summer to get ready for the fall launch of the second generation of the service. In fact the last time I did any serious riding was 2003 when I rode the Erie Canal. Let's just say time is a cruel companion.
While I've never had issues on a long ride like the Erie Canal, I've come very close to bonking enough times during training that I'm sometimes overly cautious. A first ride of the season helps me set the pace for just what kind of year its going to be. If I was smart and dedicated I'd have already spent three months racking up time on my trainer. Alas, my discipline hasn't been that good of late. I made an minimal effort during part of January but then fell off as quickly as I'd started. Which bring me to today's ride.
I spent too long Sunday unsuccessfully trying to buy some curtains. Since I've been spending a large amount of time at home recently, the sheets that I have tacked up in the den have started to look a little tacky. I figured that getting some curtains would be a nice leisurely Sunday activity and would help improve the room aesthetics. While I was at it I figured I'd finish off my bedroom curtains too. I have one window done up nicely but the other one still has a blanket over it.
I purchased the one curtain I have in my bedroom a few years ago when I was living on cross street. I took a sample of that so I could potentially match it when buying new curtains. I went to Target which is where I thought I had bought the curtains from. However, wandering around Target it didn't feel right and in the process I remembered that I had actually bought the curtains from Kmart. They were part of the Martha Stewart home collection or some such thing.
About an hour ago I got back from one of the worst meals that I have had at a restaurant in a few years. Friends and I went to Zephyr as part of the recent Restaurant Week in Boston. I booked our reservation later than I had hoped so Zephyr was one of the few spots left (that I had interest in going to) that still had space available. After tonight's meal I can see why they had space available.
I used to do a lot of business travel. I've eaten in a lot of hotel restaurants. Most of those restaurants are passable and the rest were exceptional (famous in their own right in fact). I now have to add a third category to hotel restaurants of which Zephyr is the first entry and that is horrible.
This season of 24 continues to heat up. I have to say it sometimes feel like a soap opera. I mean if you summarize some of the events from this season it sounds like a soap:
<spoiler>
Jack comes back from the dead. Tony is in an accident and is now in a coma. Now Tony's woken up only to learn that his wife is dead. Jack's daughter finds out that's he's alive but now she doesn't want anything to do with him since she thinks he abandoned her. The wussy president is being easily manipulated by anyone who can get his ear, etc., etc.
</spoiler>
Granted it's been about 14 years since I've watched a soap opera episode so maybe they've changed. If the soap opera guides in the checkout isle at the supermarket are any indication, I suspect soap operas haven't changed that much.
With that said, 24 has much more action than I remember from any soap opera and the production value is much higher. The use of multiple screen cinematography is also a departure from most daytime production or prime time for that matter. While the sheer number of events that they pack into 24 hours definitely requires suspension of disbelief (sometimes great leaps), it's still one of the best formats for an action packed drama I've seen.
Unlike most people I know, I don't mind laundry. Granted now that I have a washer and dryer in my basement I mind it even less. Part of the reason I never really minded laundry was that it was a simple two hour ordeal. Pack up my laundry and supplies, drive to the laundromat, wash, dry, fold, come home and put everything away. Two hours. And during that two hours I had plenty of time to read some of the more fluffy magazines I get and usually just let stack up.
Now that I do laundry at home the time taken is more variable since I can't be doing all of washing at once, but that is made up by the fact that I can just go downstairs. My issue today is that I still haven't figured out how to fold a fitted sheet. I usually end up with some lopsided monstrosity that has no chance of keeping the sheet in any decent wrinkle free format. I've tried folding them in all sorts of manners and none seems to do the job right. Flat sheets and pillow cases are easy, rectangles fold easy. Fitted sheets with the elastics and three dimensional pieces to fit around the mattress just make it too complicated. I'm almost tempted to go out and by another sheet set just to see how the manufacturer folds everything up into one of those little shrink wrapped plastic bags you buy them in.
I'm at the point that I really need to step back, take a deep breath, count to ten and then maybe I can put into words the last two hours. All I wanted to do was upgrade Gallery. Next thing I know I'm having to reboot my box and troubleshoot a MySQL that has started throwing errors that its perror utility says doesn't even exist! The worst part is I have no faith right now that the problem is even fixed or how long / bad the problem has been going on since it seems to have manifested in such subtle ways.
The gist was mysql throwing an error like this:
060221 1:21:47 /usr/local/libexec/mysqld: Can't find file: './test/test_test.frm' (errno: 9)
And the all helpful perror:
> perror 9
Illegal error code: 9
This thread had some ideas but I wasn't keen on rebooting again. I'd already pulled the Windows approach and rebooted since this guy had some success with it. No dice. Don't know where I ran across it, but a startup flag helped. Adding --open-files-limit worked for me. I did see somewhere else that someone thought that the OpenBSD 3.8 package mysql-server-4.0.24p1 was junk.
And to top it all off I still think (while probably all psychosomatic now) that this new monitor is just not working out. LCDs are not supposed to cause eye strain!
I'm going on like hour seven of a nasty headache. I just started round two of Tylenol and I'm hoping it kicks in enough for me to get a good night's sleep. I've even purposefully avoided using my new monitor today to make sure that didn't trigger/cause this headache. No dice. I think it might have been a little too much sake at lunch. We had a good-bye party for one of my coworkers.
The good news for today is that I accepted a new job that starts Mar 20th (more details in the future).
When did the broken meter limit change to be less than the meter limit? I got a parking ticket for a broken meter. It was a two hour meter, however, I've since come to learn that the broken meter limit was one hour!? Ignoring the fact that I was probably parked at the meter for three hours, I'm still unhappy about the discrepancy in allowed meter time.
I love long weekends. It seems that while a two day weekend is great, a three day weekend lets you enjoy life that much more. I often find my weekends are filled with projects, events, or domestic tasks (read laundry) and as such don't often get as much time as I'd like to just relax. With the extra day thrown in I got to enjoy a couple of movies, do some cooking and baking, read more than I usually would, and in general feel accomplished on many different levels. It is the scarcity of long weekends that make them treasured.
P.S. For those of you that didn't have today off, I hope you at least enjoyed a less hectic commute.
I really shouldn't own a sports car. My IQ seems to drop too many points when I'm in my car. This is not good since the 350Z has more than enough to easily get you into trouble. Which surprises me that I've not gotten into more trouble. I think I'm testing the patience of whatever guardian angel is looking over me.
Somerville seems to have a lot of skunks. At least once every couple of months on my walk home from the T, especially if it is later at night, I see a skunk. Thankfully it is usually on the other side of the street, but when my eye catches one I always stop dead in my tracks. They are a beautiful looking creature. The white strip down their backside and the long wispy fur has an inviting allure to it. Some claim that if de-scented they make wonderful pets. My problem is that the ones that I pass on my walk are not de-scented. In fact they are very potent. A skunk sprayed in the neighborhood this evening. The scent found its way into the room I was reading in. Nasty. I spent most of the rest of the night reading with a scented candle burning to combat the smell.