Rotorglow

(With apologies and thanks to my favorite Inquirer sports columninst, Bill Lyon, for the title.)

Instead of dealing with "significant" stuff during my weekends, I've been dealing with "important" stuff. To wit:

A couple of weekends ago, I installed Veloce's boost gauge. Red, black and anodized aluminum. Settable peak LED (set at 7psi). Pix to come.

Speaking of Veloce, it turns 2 tomorrow today. It was built 5/12/04, I wrote the check on 9/30/04, and I drove it away on 10/2/04. After a mere 14041 miles, I am ruined for cars with fixed roofs.

Speaking of Mazdaspeed, it seems there's a car that might actually lure my father away from the WRX he's been considering for a couple years. He's awaiting the arrival of the (sublime, by all accounts) Mazdaspeed3, at least to give it a drive before he decides what to get.

Speaking of....red?, the Phillies were eliminated from the playoff chase on Saturday. They won, as they needed to, but they needed help from at least one of two other teams. And you can never count on that kind of help. Sure enough, they didn't get it. Wait till next year.

Speaking of wait till next year, the undergraduates have returned to Boston. Long since, it's true, but they're no longer traveling in packs of the same size as a month ago. Which means they're covering more territory, and are more "in the way."

Speaking of undergraduates (or, ahem, in the way), they look a lot better than they did when I was that age. There are exceptions¹, of course. But, jeeze.

Speaking of hot, my apartment was without hot water for about 12 hours this morning.

So that's the news, and some of the sudden thoughts.

1. Like the time I was walking over the 38th St. bridge and came up behind a young woman headed in the same direction and thought to myself, "Wow. Nice ass." Then I realized the ass belonged to the girl I'd just started dating.

My fever's currently at 102°. Is that a problem?

So, I've been laid low by something since Monday night. Came home early yesterday, stayed home today, and....don't feel much better. Mostly because I've been working from home instead of sleeping. Which sucks.

Also, it was 76 degrees today; a perfect time to be fevered.

Heavy business is going down at work, at just the time I'm least able to keep the train on the tracks. Or interested in doing so.

The one thing I can hold onto is that I'm not mixing my metaphors.

Settle down. It's not what you think.

It seems I've gotten pneumonia somehow. On the one hand this is reassuring, because it means I haven't been imagining all this. On the other hand, it feels somewhat less than....robust? virile? Dunno. If I'd been on Kilimanjaro it'd be one thing, but as far as I can tell, I've merely been working (a lot, but still...) and riding the T.

Ah! The T. A rolling petri dish. In the 5 months since I stopped driving to work, I've gotten one cold and one case of pneumonia. Terrific.

Anyway, I went to the doc today, had my lungs irradiated, got a scrip (for Zithromax! CLD represent!), was on the T next to "DJ Nitetrain" (who was festooned with portable CD players, carried a bunch of record bags and smelled like the inside of a garden hose) and now I'm lying around watching all sortsa TV (though not Laguna Beach): The Pink Panther, a little bit of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Tigers/Yankees (why can't Jim Leyland take over the Phillies?), The Out of Towners (the original, not the remake)....

Point is, I'm occupying myself, but I'd much rather driving around (the weather is amazing at the moment) or be carousing, or drinking these two chocolate stouts I bought at Cardullo's (while looking for mint tea).

But noooo....*cough*.

23-09-06_0045
Originally uploaded by rotorglow at 9 Oct '06, 9.38pm EDT.

Walking home from Daedalus, Friday, 22 Sep 2006

is everyone surprised that I don't know what you're "up to," or "doing," or where you are (with better than 1-borough precision)?

Oops...just discovered the D50's timer...
Originally uploaded by Clampants at 13 Oct '06, 7.07pm EDT.

Tim just shot the best picture of all time.

I'm in PA for a long weekend of hanging out with my parents. The trip down was dreadful, and from the east side of the Tappan Zee Bridge through the northern-most 40 miles of the Garden State Parkway was stop and go. But there were a couple of gems that were worth the trip.

But now it's good; we're kicking back, went to the Warhol/Wyeth/Basquiat exhibit at the Brandywine Museum, did some car-shopping....the usual stuff. Or something.

Back on the road Monday.

Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India, 1975
Originally uploaded by rotorglow at 29 Oct '06, 2.07pm EST.

On my recent trip to PA, my mom gave me some old pix I shot in 1974 or 1975 with a cheapo plastic-lens camera. I think it shot 120 roll film (roughly 2 inches square), my first encounter with medium format. But the plastic lens (with fixed focus, no less) didn't really do the big frame justice.

Anyway, here's another 12-frame mosaic, this time with actual people in it. More here.

IMG_5638.JPG
Originally uploaded by rotorglow at 30 Aug '06, 11.16pm EDT.

I just unloaded by beloved Zenith System 3 TV, with Computer Space Command. Had to give it away on on Craig's List, because apparently nobody appreciated the brilliance of its design, and $20 was too much to pay for such quality when I posted it a couple of months ago. Sheesh.

Anyway, it's a little bittersweet. It went to a nice grandmother from Medford, whose grandchildren will watch The Wiggles or Spongebob or whatever else when they come to visit. I will not detail how much of a contrast that is from some of the stuff I've watched on it....

But hey....I'm glad it's not taking up floor space. And further, the woman said she goes to church every day, and would pray for me. So, I figure I'm pretty much set.

Tim and I chatted about it today:


(15:47:54) Chris: my old TV is leaving me tonight.
(15:48:17) Tim: noooo, really?
(15:48:26) Tim: In what context is it leaving you?
(15:48:33) Tim: I imagine it is going into the future
(15:49:26) Chris: I put it on Craig's List again. For free this time. I guess $20 was too much the last time around.
(15:49:34) Chris: I got about 6 responses this time.
(15:49:36) Tim: cheapskates
(15:49:42) Tim: WILL U DELIVR
(15:51:45) Tim: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/83/2001-terminated.jpg/300px-2001-terminated.jpg
(15:53:08) Tim: http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/290000/images/_292313_odyssey300.jpg
(15:53:21) Tim: "So, it is free?"
(15:53:26) Tim: "Shh, not so loud"
(15:53:37) Tim: "Will U deliver?"
(15:53:50) Chris: shit. maybe I should keep it...
(15:53:58) Tim: I don't think you have a choice
(15:54:00) Chris: otherwise I be sent into the abyss.
(15:54:10) Tim: "Daiseeeeeee"
(15:54:30) Tim: sigh. that's sad
(15:54:37) Tim: Solid State
(15:55:23) Chris: I'll always have the pictures.... and the irradiated insides.
(15:56:19) Tim: One cold February morning you'll step outside and it will be sitting there
(15:56:25) Tim: and everyone else will be dead
(15:57:32) Chris: I'll always hear the *clunk* of the ZOOM in my dreams.

Boing Boing: eMusic bones subscribers with downgrade

Considering that I generally agree with him on most things, Cory Doctorow (unintentionally) finds a way to bug me surprisingly often.

The latest?

Seems that eMusic is changing their subscription plans, to give only 30 downloads for $9.95 a month. Down from 40 downloads/month. Down from unlimited, when the service started. Somehow, Cory thinks this is unfair to subscribers even though current subscribers are grandfathered in at the old download cap.

So eMusic is raising their prices. BFD. It's one of the things businesses do as they get successful (another is that they cut prices to go for market share). Even with the new prices, eMusic is still more free (as in beer) than iTunes, and (more critically to someone like Cory) more free (as in speech) than iTunes.

Go figure. You'd think someone who's so against DRM would be willing to pay more for DRM-free music.

I wish he'd calm down somtimes.

Happy Halloween, or something
Originally uploaded by rotorglow at 31 Oct '06, 6.31pm EST.

...was 2003. And this was it, such as "it" was.