Carnie Fight Near Miss

So there's this house that's on my way to work. For the last week it's had a pile-o-stuff in it's front yard, near the sidewalk. Several boxes of CDs, twice that of piled books, a TV, a VCR, a broken bookcase, and 5 or six garbage bags. It basically looks like they've laid things out for the council to pick up, but have left them for the usual Newtown Removalist Group, ie passerby to pick up if they want. I've had my eye on the CDs section of this pile for a while. I pass it at least 4 times a day (to and from the gym, and to and from work).  Today, on the way back from the gym, I made my move. I began sorting through the CDs, crouching down to look through the boxes. I've been looking for about 5 minutes, when I hear the door open. There stands a pissed-off looking woman. The following conversation ensues, with her tone angry and insulted and my tone confused and wary:

Her: "What do you think you're doing?"

Me: "Oh, I was just having a look. Was I-"

"You could have knocked on the door! You've got a nerve just pawing through!"

"Uh, ok. I just thought, I mean this stuff's been here for a week, and I-"

"Well, you could have knocked!"

"Uh, ok, sorry, I mean, if this stuff not for the taking, I'll go. I'll just leave it-"

"IT'S JUST RUDE!"

"...Well-"

"These things ARE for the taking, but you should have knocked on the door!"

"Okay. I'm sorry."

"Well?"

"I said I'm sorry."

*she goes back inside*

 

So I grabbed the CDs I had picked out and went home. At first I was embarrassed, but as I got closer to home, I got angrier. I mean, if these things were so bloody precious to her, maybe she shouldn't have left them outside, when it's rained several times in the past week.  So I submitted the issue to several people at work. Marty thought that due to it being on her "verge", then I probably should have, but he agreed she overreacted.  Fair enough, but geez.

 

Sincerely, Internet's...

Lucas Brown

Now completely legal (in the states he's not banned)!

 

The Joy of Jonathan Coulton.

This isn't what i was going to blog about before, but it's something to talk about anyway. Jonathan Coulton is awesome. I first his song Code Monkey from the just-ok show of same name, then got the full version and found the song that most encapsulates how I feel about my workplace. After some iTunes digging, I also found songs of the following topics:
[-]Having an ex-boss try to negotiate his way through a door to eat your brains (because he's a zombie) framed as a performance management and development meeting.
[-]How customer-built-test-tube babies can lead to a doctor being hands-on with your missus
[-]How it's hard to celebrate the holidays when you've been banished to a barren asteroid by robot overlord, er, I mean protectors.
[-]And of course, how even though the girl you love broke your heart, it's ok, because it'll be the future soon and you can genetically engineer that stuff away. Plus robots and flying cars!

Oh, and for all you DIYers out there, Coulton makes all of his music copyright free if it's not used for profit. So TONS of machinanima and other videos have sprung up for his songs.

Most impressive, though, is the Thing-A-Week series (from the Wiki):

"Thing a Week" is the name that Coulton gave to a creative experiment which ran from 16 September 2005 to 30 September 2006. In this project, Coulton undertook to record 52 musical pieces in the course of a year, one each week. This target was mostly achieved, missing only a few weeks. The objectives were: (a) to push the artist's creative envelope by adopting what Coulton describes as a "forced-march approach to writing and recording"; (b) to prove to himself that he was capable of producing creative output to a deadline; and (c) to test the viability of the Internet and Creative Commons as a platform capable of supporting a professional artist financially. Early indications are that the experiment succeeded in generating a large number of high quality songs, boosting sales of music downloads, expanding Coulton's public presence and enlarging his fan base."

I look forward to forcing music upon you soon!

...

...I was going to blog about something this morning.

Really.

I was all mentally up-in-arms about something and I needed to speak on it.

But now I can't remember.

Fuck.

CRAIG! You need these!

Like, for serious.

Oh, and all of you need to hear "Korobeiniki" by Ozma. It's the friggin' Tetris theme. They had a Tetris arcade machine at the pizza place that was my first job. This theme haunted me.

Conversations after seeing Beowulf on DVD.

Me: "Hey Tanja... you know the British guy in the Indiana Jones movie?"
T: "Which one?"
Me: "The latest one."
T: "Oh, the CIA agent guy?"
Me: "Yeah, him. You know who that is?"
T: "No. Who?"
Me: "That's Ray Winstone." *beat* "From Beowulf."
T: "No way."
Me: "Yep."
T: "But he's o-o-o-o-old!"

Bwa ha ha.

Quoted from Gabe over at Penny Arcade:

Because I thought it was freakin' funny. :)

"I would love to know what sick bastard at Kellogs came up with this genius idea. I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you're telling him they taste like fucking strawberries. Thanks a lot assholes. Seriously, how in the hell did this ever get past their legal department. You can't tell me that this isn't a lawsuit just waiting to happen. I can only assume that their next product is fruit flavored thumbtacks."

You gotta be kidding me.

These idiots! Don't they know the original was an intentionally bad comedy?!?

Genuine People Hair! Made from Real People!

Got my hair trimmed at Noddy's On King this morning, and as usual, Ivana (the stylist) had one of the less-senior folks do the drying and straightening. However, this time, the girl didn't use straightening irons. She went through my whole mass of giant hair with a round brush and a hair dryer, a process that took 45 minutes or so (I have like 8 natural layers, my hair's thick). The result? Awesome. My hair looks about three inches longer than normal, and shiny and smooth and it moves and then goes back to where it was. Even Ted and Pete (self-confessed "guys" who don't notice that stuff) went "Whoa!"



On the health front, we've had ups and downs since last entry. Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday i was fine, but Wednesday my throat and voice went mental again, and remained so on and off all week. Today I got myself a big back-of-the-neck headache too. Stupid body.

Unreliably Immune

So it's now 7 full days that I've been sick. Not just "I feel a bit off" sick but more like "waking up at 3am coughing and chowing down on Strepsils like candy so I can go back to sleep" sick. In that time I've taken three days off work. Two more were taken by annual leave. Damnit, body, this is unacceptable. Sort your shit out! This is the longest time I've been sick since high school. Usually, I get a bit sniffly on day 1, am sick for day 2, then am fine by day 3 (although I've usually passed it to Tanja at this point, who stays sick for 2 weeks). It's the benefit of a good immune system. But that's seemingly not WORKing now!

Also, in that 7 days, I haven't gone to the gym at all in 6 days. I went the first day, but found I couldn't breathe right because of my throat. And as of today I feel like I've gone right back to as fat-feeling as I was 5 weeks ago. 5 weeks to get fitter, 1 week to ruin it. Go me.

God doesn't want me to have the wireless interwebs.

That must be it.

I got a laptop from my dad in February. It came with a little plug-in wireless reciever card for Wifi. He used it at his room to get the 'Net from the cafe across the street. I've never used it because no one has Wifi near our place, but I saw signs that Kelly's Pub and Cafe Anise in Newtown both offer free wireless broadband through uConnect.

So yesterday, when I went to get my medical certificate, I dragged along my laptop in my backpack. Went to the doc, picked up some groceries, then went to Kelly's. Ordered a drink sat down, located a powerpoint to plug in my laptop and realised I'd left the cord at home. Without the cord, I have a grand total of three minutes of battery life. D'oh. So I drink my drink and go home.

Today, I'm going to get Codril and some cold cuts and I think "Ok. I'm going to bring my laptop again, this time with cord handy. Got my Codril, get my cold cuts, go to Cafe Anise, the cafe where Dad used to use it./ Sit down, order a cup of T2 lemongrass and ginger tea, plug in my laptop. Which doesn't turn on. I check the powerpoint. As I'm doing so, a waiter goes by and says "Oh, that powerpoint's broken. And the other one has stuff plugged in. So we don't have any free. Here's your tea, by the way." I drink my tea. It's not great. I leave.

I go back to Kelly's. I plug in. I turn on my laptop. It works. I order a lemonade. I search for networks. I see uConnect. I hit "connect". Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. "Could not connect. Please check if network is available." I hit refresh to update my network list. UConnect is gone. Search again and again. Suddenly, I see another unsecured network, with a gibberish name. Any port in a storm, right? "Could not connect. Please check if network is available." Bugger. So I think "Meh. I can't get it. I'll drink my lemonade and read some Deadpool comics I've got on Cdisplay." So I read for a bit, finish the issue I was on, and, just on a whim, try to connect to GibberishNet again. "Acquiring IP address." What? Now? It's working? "Waiting for network." Holy crap! "Connected." Whaa!!! I open Explorer. "Cannot display page." What? I look back down at the connection. "Little or no connectivity. Signal may not allow internet access." Then, as I watched: "Disconnected. Acquiring IP address."

Repeat ad nauseum for another 10 minutes. It doesn't connect again.

So I'm blogging from home now.

Stupid technology.

Blech.

I've always thought that if you're sick on time you have off (like summer vacation when you're in school) you should get days in lieu. Of course, it doesn't work that way. After waking up on Saturday with what Ted insisted on calling a "golfball-haunted throat", I graduated into full-blown cold as of Sunday. It's now Monday and I took the day off sick. However, since I have Tuesday and Wednesday off, I need a doctorb's note. I just hope I'm better by tomorrow. I don't want to be sick on days off!

Adrian's off for NY, and he probably won't blog while he's there because frankly, he has no drive. probably a nihilist or something.

Ted, Pete, and I had The Good Practice on Saturday, throat notwithstanding. We learned a new White Stripes song. We're slowly building a nice little repertoire. Never going to update the MySpace again, though, unless we can record something. *glares at Ted*

Oh, and for the first time in my life, I'm drinking tea. Yesterday it was chamomile with honey and lemon, and then I went to T2 and purchased some Vanilla Slice loose tea. I swore I'd never go down this road, but coffee just dried out my throat too much.

*sniff*