Category: general

1) Here is some sheet music for Super Mario Bros. and its sequels!

2) Gabe at Penny Arcade has grown a rapier wit.

So I guess G4-TechTV is dropping the TechTV part of their name. Apparently they thought it gave them undeserved credibility.

And finally, I’d like to note that after 3 or so days of avoiding it, I’ve finally plowed through my feeds at Bloglines. The News Aggregates alone had almost reached 100 unread posts…

“What’s that it says in Revelations?” Wanda asked today at work. “‘You will be unable to tell the difference in the seasons’?”

So yeah, it’s like, 80°.

In January.

Apparently that’s strange even for Augusta.

Weirdness is occurring elsewhere, too…it’s so warm in Russia that bears aren’t even hibernating properly, while Venice’s waterways are too dry for boating.

While I’m sure this has more to do with global climate change than it does with the tsunami-inflicting earthquakes, it has been calculated that the quakes changed the Earth’s orbit. Of course,

Dr. Richard Gross of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., said all earthquakes have some affect on Earth’s rotation. It’s just they are usually barely noticeable.

“Any worldly event that involves the movement of mass affects the Earth’s rotation, from seasonal weather down to driving a car,” Chao said.

The world’s pretty resilient, in other words. (The more important question is whether or not humans are.)

…yeah, I guess I can eat something else.

Yes, I went to R. Gabriel’s after work. I got paid today, so I went by the bank to deposit my check, and the R. Gabriel’s is right next door, so I figured, what the heck?

(By the way, it’s fun to go to an ATM on a bicycle. Fun, I tell you! I actually tried to go inside, but they didn’t seem to have an ATM in there…)

So here I am, blogging from a coffeehouse. The only thing wrong with this picture is that I should be using my own laptop, and I should also be leeching power from all the outlets for my cell phone and the iPod I don’t own. Alas, I’m not quite on the digital edge.

I biked a little ways down Martinez Boulevard to get here, then had to cut across crazy early afternoon Washington Road traffic. That wasn’t supremely bright on my part; next time I’ll just go with my instincts and cross at Baston to the sidewalk. :>

Now I’m trying to decide if I want to consider this smoothie my lunch, or if I want to beg the baristas to make me a sandwich. At $6.50, it’s not an extraordinarily appealing choice…plus I’m already paying to use this laptop! So I will probably hold off until I get home and have a chance to evaluate my calories. I presume this smoothie has something like 170 calories in it, which means I could eat something else, but to be honest I’m not sure. I should ask the baristas.

By the way, I love the word “barista”…

Oh, and also by the way, I figured out why the comments aren’t displaying the date of the post, just the time. It’s because my blog posts are set to display the time only, and no other information. I did that for stylistic reasons; I thought it would look stupid to have the date right above the date. But you know, having the dates displayed on the comments would be worth it.

Of course, I may be shifting to WordPress anyway, so all this could be moot!

I like it here at R. Gabriel’s. I’m sitting at one of the tall tables at the window. My legs are about a foot and a half off the floor. I’m short!

Sometime, I should come here with my laptop and sit on one of those nice leather couches…

I just noticed that they have one of the 2go-Box “Win $500” racks, and they cut out three of the “Win $500” parts from the cards and taped them to the front :D Good advertising! I wonder if anyone has taken the bait.

The sun is right on me. It feels nice, though it’s making this LCD screen difficult to see.

Speaking of this laptop, I was told that it belonged to the owner, and one day he got mad at it and threw it across the room. This explains why the screen decides to go completely bonkers every now and then. To make it work again, you have to hit it.

Very hardcore.

;>

Berry Berry Smoothies are teh yum.

I’m beginning to realize that I really have nothing to say. I think I feel self-conscious because I’m blogging from a coffeeshop.

I always used to think it would be cool to come down here to work on writing. Curled up in one of those couches, or hunched over a table, a smoothie (or hot cocoa, or something) at my side. Somehow, I felt like that would add legitimacy to what I was doing.

I wonder. All it seems to be doing right now is making me ramble.

Ack, brain freeze…!

I biked this morning too. It seemed that my mind was convinced that there was no other option. In fact, I woke up at 5 till 5, looked at the clock, and was about to get automatically out of bed when Sean stirred and snuggled into me. I decided to give him those five minutes, and got up when the alarm jolted me out of the pleasant snooze.

Using a backpack really helps, and I can bring so much stuff with me. Today I brought a package that I need to ship; I haven’t decided if I’m going to bike over to the post office, or just let it go out with the company mail. There really aren’t any shoulders on Martinez that I can think of, so I might not want to chance it. Besides, if I don’t feel like backtracking to Baston, I’d have to go up Bobby Jones to get home, and I don’t know if I’m quite that brave yet :>

In any case, the weather was great–I didn’t need a jacket, and it wasn’t foggy like yesterday, so I was very comfortable and had good visibility even in the dark. I was expecting to have a tough time, given the workouts my legs have been getting all week, but surprisingly the trip didn’t bother me really. I’m getting adept at shifting gears to make it easier on myself, which helps, but I think I’m also benefiting from the fact that I’ve been biking for awhile. Hopefully this continued bike commute will build up my cardiovascular system!

I ended up leaving a little later than I have been, at something like 6:30, so I got here at 6:55. Just on time! I’m not sure I want to cut it that close in the future.

The reason I was late in getting started is that I started writing a post that will go up a little later today (hopefully) about the adventure I had yesterday trying to export these Blogger posts into WordPress. I’ve hit quite a snag with it, but I think I can figure out how to solve it, assuming I can modify some php code. (High school Pascal, don’t fail me now!) Anyway, wait for that post with baited breath, because it’s going to be awesome :>

From Luke’s mini-blog:

Shakespeare had syphilis, said immunologists who, for some reason, weren’t working on curing HIV, Hanta, or one of the other thousands of here-to-fore incurable things that slay people daily, but rather speculating about a 500-year-old case of VD.

I biked to work again today. It wasn’t as cold today (~54°) as it was yesterday (~49°), so I was able to wear the jacket Grandma gave me instead of my big Land’s End coat. I also got smart this time and brought my backpack; my dinky purse and camera bag are swallowed by the thing, so I was easily able to include my breakfast (bowl, spoon, and Apple & Cinammon oatmeal) as well. When I head home in a few hours, I can stuff my jacket in there too, as it’s supposed to get to like 75° today.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep doing it every day from now on; that’s a big adjustment. But I didn’t feel exhausted when I got here, which is promising. There’s one point on Pleasant Home that is annoyingly uphill, but it doesn’t last too long, and it’s much better on the way home. I think I can really keep this up; I just don’t want to burn myself out right at the beginning.

Yesterday I ate leftover pizza for lunch and then had Chinese food for dinner (Hunan Cafe rules, although the crab rangoon was overcooked). This bumped my weight up by 2.5 pounds this morning, but as long as I’m good from now on that should only be temporary. (The number could be off anyway, as I was unable to, er, properly use the restroom this morning. Maybe I’ll take Cheryl’s advice and start eating pineapple before bed.)

(Side note: I just revised two ellipses out of my last paragraph. Down with the ellipsis!)

Anyway, biking to work is a good thing. I’m glad I’m doing it. It guarantees that I will get at least some exercise every workday!

From Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough:

An expensive MRI machine at Virginia Mason Medical Center sustained at least $200,000 in damage when a metal floor buffer was mistakenly placed nearby and was sucked in by the machine’s powerful magnets, a television station reports.

That would have been something to watch.

This very funny parody mashup of BoingBoing and Clerks brightened my day. (This also helped.)

I decided to bike to work today, because when you’re upset about something it’s great to try new things and risk being killed in a traffic accident. It wasn’t that bad. I had sidewalks to retreat to when necessary, and it only took about half an hour. It was cold, so I wore my coat. Pedaling up and down hills and avoiding cars in the cold gave my mind something to focus on other than the thought that woke me up in tears this morning.

Last night when I called to tell Dad Happy Birthday, he said, “I guess you know about Gaila.”

I didn’t, not specifically. But she’s my dog. To not know would indicate a lack of personal responsibility. “About the thing on her lip?” I guessed.

“Yeah. It’s just gotten so big, and she’s slow and uncomfortable, and we hear her whimpering every now and then, so I guess we’re gonna put her down soon. Put her out of her misery.”

I had no response to this, other than a belated, “Oh.”

He went on like that for a minute, explaining the reasons. I asked if the thing couldn’t just be taken out, and Dad said, “No, not without removing half her face.” Dad sounded like he was about to cry.

I managed to say, “Well, if you’re going to put her down, let me know when so I can come.”

“Okay,” Dad said, sounding a little surprised. “Mom said you probably wouldn’t want to.”

“She’s my dog,” I said. “I want to be with her.”

“Okay,” Dad repeated, and went on to suggest that maybe it’d be better if I decide when I’m able to come, and we put her down then. “Best to do it on a Friday,” he suggested, as though we were arranging a luncheon. “I don’t know if vets are open on Saturdays. And then you’ll have the weekend and you can get home before Monday.”

“Okay,” I said.

Even after we had things decided, he kept talking about why it was best to put her down. He was trying to convince himself, and me. I believe him. There isn’t a person alive who hates the suffering of animals more than my father.

He kept repeating the phrase “put her out of her misery”, and he brought up other dogs–a stray near Pat and Wolf’s that had been run over by a backhoe, its rear leg hanging by a scrap of flesh, screaming in pain as Wolf shot it and unfortunately missed the first time; Misho, and how he was put down at 14, when he was unable to move or take care of himself or even get outside to relieve himself. I think Dad was crying at this point, or at least he was unable to hold it in as well.

“But it’s my birthday,” he said suddenly, sniffling. “We shouldn’t be talking about all this depressing stuff. I’m sixty years old!”

“Are you really?” I said. I think my voice reflected admiration; that’s what I was going for, at least, but what I was thinking was, Dad is old, and someday he’s going to die, too.

We didn’t manage to get off the subject of Gaila, in the end, so I wrapped up the conversation as quickly as I could, and we hung up. Sean came home. I told him that I was going, and that Mom didn’t think I would want to go. He said, “I wouldn’t think you’d want to go, either. It’s less painful not to.”

Mom called a little later.

“I was just wondering what you and Dad talked about, because he said you were coming up here, and I would love to see you, but I wanted to make sure that was really what you wanted to do.”

“She’s my dog,” I said, stubbornly. “I’m going to be there with her.”

“I was going to tell you,” Mom said. “I just didn’t know how long we wanted to wait before we did it.”

I’m not angry that neither my mother nor my husband thought I would want to be with my dog in her final moments. I am hurt and confused.

I wasn’t there for her when she ran into that piece of rebar. I didn’t pick her up and take her to the vet. I was there at the first vet, who refused to even do a simple X-ray. The second vet was out of town and I didn’t go, and it was Mom and AJ who decided her leg should be amputated. All I did was arrive after the procedure and watch her hop pathetically, painfully towards me and the van.

Even before that I gave up on her. I stopped trying to train her, I stopped keeping her in my room. And then I left her behind when I moved away.

But she never gave up on me. She always knew that she was my dog.

And so I’m going to be there. I’m going to sit with her, let her lie in my lap. I’m going to stroke her and tell her that everything is fine, and that she should just relax and go to sleep. I’m going to stay with her and feel her heart slow to a stop, hear her last sigh of breath.

She’s my dog.

Many writers, like the author of the goofy dog article I mentioned yesterday, try to hit that snarky, intelligent-next-door-neighbor-y, snide, clever tone that will have readers laughing out loud.

And some writers actually manage to do it. Check out this bit from Matt Feeney’s article “Beauty and the Beast: Why are fat sitcom husbands paired with great-looking wives?“:

It’s not that there aren’t handsome or sexually desirable men on sitcoms, but these men are typically marked as terminal bachelors, like Ted Danson on Cheers. To the extent they have anything to do with family life, they tend to skulk around its outer margins like coyotes. On Two and Half Men (CBS, Mondays, 9:30 p.m. ET), Charlie (Charlie Sheen) is handsome, successful, and wedded to promiscuous bachelorhood, but he gets to enjoy some nourishing familial scraps since his loser brother (Jon Cryer) and scampy nephew moved themselves into his pad. (In keeping with the Maxim ethos of these shows, the brother was abandoned by a woman who thinks she might be a lesbian. It would be emasculating for male viewers to see a man dumped for being completely undesirable, and, besides, lesbians are so hot.)

I may not agree with all of this guy’s points, but damn is he funny, and sharp as a tack.

Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing links today to “Rats Can Tell Human Languages Apart, Study Shows” over at Yahoo! News: Science.

David Beaver over at Language Log weighs in on the subject:

The researchers, Juan M. Toro, Josep B. Trobalon, and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, are sensible people, and do not take a Dolittlian inter-species communication or new age conclusion from this. Rather, they think it is evidence that in the development of human language, features already present in the mammalian auditory system were co-opted.

I am intrigued by the study, and I have the impression it was carried out carefully and effectively. But personally, I never had any doubt whatsoever that in the development of human language, features already present in the mammalian auditory system were co-opted. Moreover, I’m skeptical that Toro et al‘s study shows this. The problem is that Toro et al don’t actually know which features of Japanese and Dutch were the ones that mattered, the relevant differences between the two languages that are more easily extracted forwards than backwards.

That was (essentially) my reaction (though mine was a more gut instinct response, and not nearly as eloquent as Beaver’s). Obviously, languages are different. They have different rules and patterns. They sound different. Just like you can train an animal to respond to verbal commands or sounds, you can train them to recognize the patterns in language. That’s all that happened here (though, as Beaver suggests, we really don’t know “why” yet).

Doctorow, on the other hand, is interested in the possible applications:

Rats can be trained to differentiate between Dutch and Japanese speech. If this is perfected and the black plague comes back, warring linguistic groups could use this to deploy targeted biowar vectors. I’m sure there are other applications as well, of course. But: Dutch-seeking plague-rats — w00t!

Those poor Dutch, they just can’t catch a break. ;>

Apparently in Nara, they burn down all the grass on Mt. Wakakusa once a year. From Mainichi:

About 130,000 spectators were enchanted to watch the annual grass burning on Mount Wakakusa here on Sunday night.

Officials in Nara set off some 200 fireworks at about 6 p.m., and then set fire to dead grass remaining on the face of Mount Wakakusa.

Check out that picture! I’d like to go see this someday.

From Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough:

Britain’s Ascension Island has been without post since October because the Royal Mail has been sending its mail to South America.

Poor bastards!

I’m reading this silly article on Slate, “Grandpa Got a Dog…Oh, no!” by Emily Yoffe, and I’m noticing quite a few interesting turns of phrase. This one, however, really caught my attention:

When he [the beloved dog] died my mother pulled down the shades and went into a state of mourning. For years she wore a locket around her neck that was bursting with his coarse hairs, a piece of jewelry that looked like it was fashioned at Hogwarts.

I must say that I’m more delighted at finding a reference to Harry Potter in a Slate article than I am at the success of the metaphor. Because first of all, jewelry isn’t fashioned at Hogwarts–Hogwarts is a school. And secondly, assuming someone at Hogwarts did make jewelry, I have no idea what it would look like. The metaphor fails!