zzz. zzz?

it is that boring week between christmas and new year's when no one is doing anything. and no one is in the office. i believe, if nothing else, i shall take a half-day on friday.

on the other hand, it's only boring here. halfway round the world, there are (at last count) probably 100,000 people dead or dying. that's an amazingly depressing number. of course, we can help, but donating a few dollars or some clothes still doesn't help your mind wrap itself around the whole thing.

i wonder if anyone has yet started a donation fund for creating a tracking system, similar to what the u.s., japan, australia and other maintain in the pacific ocean. we can help now, but even better, we can help stop it from happening again.

what the...?

as of 2:14pm, the NEXRAD at the NWS station in mount holly, nj, appears to be severely fucked up.

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/radar/latest/DS.p19r0/si.kdix.shtml

if it's not by the time you read this, well...i have a screencap of it

stop mocking me.

sick again. stupid viruses.

(and no, it's not "virii." if anything, it ought to be "viri" because it's "virus" not "virius." but "viri" is already the plural of "vir" which means "man" (c.f. virile). i don't think "virus" is a true latin word anyway, so the normal declension rules don't apply to it anyway. therefore, viruses :P ;)

coffee.

you know it's time to get up when you're dreaming about coffee *grin*

and merry christmas, everyone.

when life imitates art.

today is the last day the office is open for the week. it's starting to feel like i'm stuck in a dilbert cartoon.

we email our client: "if you combine this, this, and this subcommand, the processing is impossible."

client: "the end customer has promised not to do that."

apparently it escaped their attention that the code still needs to do something.

and somehow it escaped my attention that yesterday was the solstice. whee! soon i will not have to walk home in the dark.

brrrrrrrrr. again.

dammit. it's 12F outside with a windchill of -6F (that's -11 and -21 for you weird metric types). i haven't had to put up with weather like this since i left the university of hoth :P

oh well. they say it's supposed to warm up on wednesday and then rain. at least it snowed last night. bitter cold sucks, but bitter cold without snow just feels utterly pointless.

today is a big, floppy sweater day.

we had a party last night. i made too much food, but people ate it anyway. the spring rolls were an unexpected success, although most of the spinach-yoghurt dip went down the garbage disposal. but people ate, and drank, and enjoyed the fire which unaccountably smoked into the room before deciding to decorously use its flue (and yes, before you ask, it was open).

but today there are dishes to be done, and the house smells like smoke, and there's no sun at all because it's supposed to rain and then snow.

mmm...big, floppy sweaters.

awwww.

maybe it's because he's done it so often in his movies, but i don't find this at all hard to picture.

actually, it's kind of cute :) i mean, once you get over the whole life-in-danger thing.

keep running.

so we're having the company christmas lunch today at 11:30am. which, except for being dreadfully early for lunch, is not all that bad.

then my boss sticks his head into my office and says, "we're having a presentation before lunch." and i'm like...ok, a presentation. and then i hear someone say, "we're doing team-building today!"

>_<

it's that time of year again.

dammit.

went to the doctor last night, finally. "upper respiratory infection"; "pharyngitis, acute." oh well. antibiotics are incoming. in the meantime, i am continuing to inhale ibuprofin and cough drops.

fire.

we tried out our fireplace for the first time last night. mmm...fire. it works very nicely. the chimney draws properly, and the fireplace has a circulation vent around it to get more heat into the house. and fire is snuggly.

however, apprarently after it cools off, the cat likes climbing inside, finding pieces of not-burnt-to-powder wood (charcoal?), and hiding them around the house. now he's got soot all over his paws. and of course, the fur on his legs is white. stoopid cat.

comfort reading

Murder Must Advertise

it's a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery. and i'm sick and it's a good one. now if only the cat would stop chewing on it. or sitting on it. stupid cat.

well, that sucks.

i appear to be getting sick. i hate that getting-sick stage where gradually, over the course of several hours, you start feeling more and more like crap. i my body would just get sick and get it over with. phbt.

this is why i like cats.

i went to get my hair cut last night, and the owner of the salon has a dog. i think it's some kind of bulldog. anyway, it's one of those dogs whose face is so squished in it can't breathe properly. but he's very friendly. the owner has let him run around the salon since he was a puppy, so he's all used to seeing lots of people.

so he comes up to me, and i'm like, "aw, it's the dog." and i'm not sure what to do with it, so i try to pet it between the ears. and he must like that, because the next thing i know, my jeans are being drooled on. and it's not just dog slime, it's mixed with bits of food or something. *ahem* EW. they were very nice about it, and they gave me a towel to wipe my jeans off, but...ew. and it's on my jacket too.

i don't think my cat has ever slobbered on me. i've never had to stuff my clothes in the wash after i've met a cat, even for the first time (this wasn't the first time i'd met the dog, but when you only see an animal every 3 or 4 months, you don't really expect them to remember you). oh well. at least he didn't pee on me.

happy hannukah.

hanukkah. hanuka. channuka. chanukkah. and so forth. i can't remember how it's actually spelled in hebrew or that might help the transliteration.

anyway. it starts tonight. mmm...latkes.

current reading.

Sunshine

by Robin McKinley

recommended. vampires and cinnamon rolls *grin* also, Neil Gaiman apparently liked it, and while his taste is not entirely aligned with mine (*cough*PerdidoStreetStation*cough*) it's generally reliable.

information wants to be free!

in a seemingly rare instance given our current government, the NOAA has just adopted a policy of information dissemination that continues to preserve its excellent weather, environmental and research information being provided to the general public for free, and also using open-standards-based technology.

the NOAA had designated the first six months of this year as a period for public comment. and it appears they overwhelmingly received comments that supported their continued information distribution to the public. interestingly enough, there is a rumour going around in the /. threads that if you actually read through all 1649 comments, several were a form letter from accuweather employees which claims that the NOAA should distribute its information to commercial entities first. which is very, very interesting, because the NWS provides, for free, NEXRAD updates at 7-10 minute intervals on average, and closer to 5 minute intervals when the area is experiencing precipitation. accuweather.com makes you pay for any updates more frequently than 15 minutes. hmmmmmm.

i am extremely happy that the NOAA has chosen such a policy. not only am i completely addicted to their site (ya think? :) but i'm entirely relieved to see a federal agency under the bush administration choose explicit public good and public service over catering to business interests. not only that, but it's an agency which is actively engaged in environmental research, and we've all seen what the bush administration does with that.

muzak and real people.

i have had it proven to me once again that any amount of muzak (even christmas muzak) is worth it to talk to a Real Person.

i have a thursday-through-sunday subscription to one of philadelphia's major newspapers (because i want the sunday paper and thursday for the Food section, hehehe). i signed up for the subscription 2 weeks ago online. that week, i got all 4 papers. last week i only got the sunday paper. i thought, well, maybe because it was thanksgiving, you know? and i never woke up early enough to call them and complain. but then today, thursday, there was no paper again. so i called the complaint number within the deadline this time (10am), and went through the automated system and asked for a re-delivery.

then i thought, wait, what if their database screwed up, and i'm actually in the system as having a sunday-only subscription (they have several options). so i called back and listened through 10 minutes of distressing muzak until i got to talk to a real person. he confirmed that i had a thursday-through-sunday subscription, and not only that, he credited my account for the missed papers! woo, etc. sitting through that muzak assault was worth it.

more strange effects of technology.

i've started getting these phishing spam emails. so far they've been "Account Violate the User Agreement" (sic) and "Account Violate the User Agreement Second Notice" (sic). the body of the text is very threatening. it says if i don't update my user information, my account will be suspended and then terminated. and, while my account is under suspension, i'm not allowed to sign up with a new account.

now, you can just look a the subject line and go "pfft. spam." but i can see how people would read the body of the email, and go "ack!" and, of course, i'm paranoid, and i'm like, "did they somehow find something about me?" because like practically everyone else on the planet, i have, in the past, used ebay.

then, of course, i kick myself in the back of the head and say, "why do you care? you don't have an ebay account!" that's what very trusting friends are for ;)