February 2005 Archives

What is it about Wilco that plucks the heartstrings so?

(I know I know! It's because I pwned yankee hotel foxtrot for all of a month and a half before it got lifted from me...aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!)

I am loving this webcast. Hope you saw the link on the sideblog this afternoon and are enjoying it as much as me...

Early mornin' snack at the Yezbick birdfeeder...

A family of deer -- not a herd -- hmmm -- what is the collective term for deer? Anyhow -- a family of deer came by this morning. These two and two more skittish fellers -- one brother, one sister...They've been coming around a lot recently...

First of all, a little update on the state of the mouth - since I've received a few inquiring emails relating to my somewhat alarming description: Splintered Jaw. The mouth has seemingly healed itself. I am no longer suffering any discomfort and am unable to locate with my prodding tongue even a hint at the squatter whose residence began the entire ordeal. Whether this is emblematic of a foreign object having ultimately dislodged itself, as was the initial diagnosis, or a natural healing process of the gums overtaking an overzealous jawbone - the final diagnosis - I can't say. After that post I made a conscious effort to avoid that side of my mouth - only going back to it in recent days due to the number of comments or emails or questions directed to me concerning it. No more pain - no pressing need to visit the oral surgeon.

Second -- I've been relatively busy of late. Alternating my time between studying and getting the front page in order. I'm pretty sure I can let that sit for a while.

Spent a wonderful 10 hours with family a few days back for my grandmother's birthday. We went to an all you can eat chinese buffet, topped that off with cake and i scream - and closed out the evening with a couple of rousing games of Scrabble - a much less physical match than Spoons. All the while, in the background, Grandma's computer was being deloused from the Klez virus and some other variant I can't remember now. When the machine was finally clean, Grandma bestowed upon me the dignified title of "favorite geek." Folks, Dreams have now been realized.

Also managed to make it down to Wayne State Wednesday for an interesting seminar on the pointlessness of discriminating between implicit and explicit knowledge. Basically it was an hour long interpretation of Wittgenstein's Language Games relating to Knowledge Management. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy philosophical discussions.

Other items -- watched Four Minutes About Podcasting - then downloaded iPodder, MT-Enclosures, and Blog Torrent. I've since watched podcasting get mentioned in just about every form of media -- followed closely by the Jeff Gannon story -- which hopefully will not be allowed to die. Something fishy 'bout all that.

So now that I have installed all those nifty little techno trinkets above - what does that mean? Well, basically, I'll be able to post bigger files on the website -- or, rather, links to the files -- which will still be on my computer. If I'm online - the files will unravel themselves across the internet -- and with each successive download -- will make themselves more reliable and more efficient. More movies - more music - more big media - less bandwidth usage on the servers. Podcasting? I doubt it. I'm not a big fan of my speaking voice -- but there may be a post here or there. (debugging currently going on)

That's it. Touching base, really. I'm not feeling a great flow in my words -- rather choppy moving from head to hands for some reason. I need to work on a coupla mixes for a coupla people that I've already written letters to...One's been sitting on my desk since 1/28. Waiting. Just waiting. I should really get on that.

Today while packing up and returning overdue books to their respective loaning libraries, I came across one that had a superstory -- in the same sense as superscript.

This particular book was due in early December. Phone calls to the patron went unanswered and a letter unheeded. All such attempts to contact the patron were recorded on the interloan paperwork.

Today I held that book in my hand and read over these notices until my finger slid over the last etching: Patron passed away. Cousin returned book.

It snapped a weird feeling throughout my body. Something you don't immediately think about when someone dies. Here I was, holding a book checked out by a deceased patron. A patron who had checked out the book, intended to finish it and return it on time, but instead fell on their last breath.

If you were expecting a Valentine from me -- I'm playing it safe -- this is for YOU:
You can click it and print it and give it to someone else and just pretend you gave one to me.

[thanks to jk for posting this a while back]

A company logo for SOKETI --our database project. Unnecessary - yet added some fun to the whole process. Feedback welcome.

Now if only we could construct a database.

Conversation 1 (6:05pm)

Male: So, I'll call you tonight.
Female: Yeah, well, you don't have to if you don't want to. I mean, I'm not one of those girls who is emotionally dependent on that kind of thing. I mean, I HATE that. My ex-boyfriend was like that. If I told him I'd call at 8:00 it'd be like 8:05 and he'd call and be all, like, (girl becomes baritone) "WHY DIDN'T YOU CALL?" I mean, I like, totally hate that!
Male: Uh, well, good.
Female: I mean, I'm not emotional like that. You'll probably get more worked up than me.
Male: Yeah, you're probably right.

Conversation 2 (6:10pm)

Girl on cellphone: (In low trembling voice) So, this relationship is, like, over?

As an added impetus to get out of bed before sunrise each weekday so that I may continue to fill my mind with certifiably geeky things, I have my alarm set to an horrific FM radio station. I also have the backup alarm set to go off 5 minutes later, which is two minutes before the snooze on the first alarm kicks in. This usually manages to get me out of bed after about 45 minutes. Which is why my clock is set an hour ahead. Makes sense, doesn't it?

This morning, after whipping off the sheets in exasperation and flipping off the alarm switch with a little extra flick of the forefinger than needed -- I began to think what having this alarm set to a crappy FM station could be doing for my mental health. I know I don't want to wake up to the buzzer setting; But am I any better off waking to the sounds of Limp Bizkit or whoever plays those other 5 songs in the rotation that sound like Limp Bizkit? Still, I'm worried about having anything too coaxing that could possibly lure me back into slumbers. So, I've avoided switching it to the classical station.

This morning I tried to find some sort of article that links waking to the blaring of an alarm with increased rates of stress. So far - I've come across:

• The Soleil Sun Alarm Clock
• The same BBC article in two different editions with the same picture photoshopped in the second article [1] [2]
• How Other Cultures Awaken - Alarm Clock Alternatives
• Engadget - Alarm Clock That Really Makes You Get Up
• Life: Constant Hunt for More Snooze Time
• Cortisol
• Understanding the Biological Clock

And the search could go on...But the gist of what I've gathered so far is, from the Wikipedia:

The amount of cortisol present in the serum undergoes diurnal variation, with the highest levels present in the early morning, and lower levels in the evening, several hours after the onset of sleep.[...]Changed patterns of the serum cortisol levels have been observed in connection with [...]clinical depression [and] psychological stress...

So - an unnatural interruption of your slumber leads to a disturbance in your cortisol levels which is a cause for psychological stress. It is especially stressful during the winter months, when there is less exposure to daylight. Willi suggested I get a light box a few weeks back -- and talked about SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder - but somehow things are more interesting when you stumble upon them unexpectedly. I mean, I'd intended to find out what kind of damage an alarm clock could reap and wound up ingesting a buncha new terms and experiments of light exposure.

This entry has lost a lot of momentum now -- undoubtedly due to the increase of melatonin in my system with the blanketing of night -- but I think that this may be one of those topics that haunts me. It's probably gonna cozy up in that fold of my brain that Billy Budd is tucked into. And well it should -- I've quoted these lines before and I'll do it again -- because they always seem to find a way to surface:

Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease these darbies at the wrist,
And roll me over fair!
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.

How can you not let the words Circadian Rhythm haunt you?

Finally got my tags working. For weeks I've had George's plugin placed inside the posted div underneath the entry body. For weeks my pings haven't been reaching technorati.

Tonight, after browsing through my newsreader (Sage), I noticed that peripathetic's tags show up in their feed. I thought to myself, My tags don't show up in my feed. Then I had a second thought.

I quickly moved the <$MTTechnoratiTags$> around in the atom feed -- until it finally found a home right after:
<$MTEntryBody encode_xml="1"$> as <$MTTechnoratiTags encode_xml="1"$> -- about 5 lines from the bottom. That did the trick! Technorati got its first horkheimer tag -- which may be gone now - as it was simply a throwaway post. We'll tag this puppy horkheimer as well -- just to make sure I ain't crazy.

At first - I wasn't sure it had picked up - so I went on and downloaded the perlscript plugin and followed these instructions -- taking george's <$MTTechnoratiTags$> out of the posted div, but leaving it in the feed.

A moment later I checked. Horkheimer. Tag functionality.
Geekdom acheived.

[of course -- I finally upgraded to MT3+ -- though I don't think that was the key...perhaps technorati is just slowly rolling out the recognition - like google and gmail. WHO REALLY KNOWS?]

For about three months now I've been dealing with an on again off again battle with gum pain. I just finished up a round of three dental appointments that saw me getting about five fillings -- after not being in the dentist's chair for over a decade. At the start of the second dentist's appointment I mentioned the pain that was emanating from the back of my mouth, up next to my molar, in a very difficult to reach area. The dentist said as much.

"Yes, you probably have some food trapped in between those teeth, not that it's your fault. That's a very weird angle back there. I'll just use the water pic and spray some antibiotics back there and we'll see if that helps."

Well. It didn't help. The next month was spent in increasing amounts of pain until I was popping two aspirin a day in the final week to overcome it. This last time I went back I brought up the subject again making sure that a simple once over wouldn't be the result.

"Well, it's more, like, under the tongue, on the jaw...Not really BETWEEN the teeth," I mapped out.

"MM-hmmm. Well I do barely see something white back there, let me see if I can reach it. Let me know if you can feel this," he said as his hands sank deeper into my mouth, the cold steel of some sort of dental tool prodding along my gummy gum gumpkins. Suddenly everything was red and yellow and my eyes nearly burst out of their sockets.

"Heh-Heh," he Simpson-Cosby laughed. "Guess that means you can feel that." I nodded with tears welled up in my eyes. "I'm gonna write you a referral for the oral surgeon. It looks like a tiny part of bone is sticking through your gum and he'll have to buff it down for you. Shouldn't be a problem."

Now, my gums on my incisors have receded slightly, so I'd thought that was all there was to this pain in the back of my mouth. To hear that bone was sticking through the gum was a little hard to believe. I thought perhaps he had misspoke or I had misunderstood and took the shot of novocaine and got my last few fillings. I still haven't set up that appointment with the oral surgeon as I'm not really in as much pain as I was a few weeks back (Of course, I've switched all my chewing to the right side of my mouth, which has been difficult, because I am TOTALLY a left side chewer). However, today while working on some Windows Server assignments in the lab I was chewing away on some minty fresh gum and felt a sharp sting. The gum had gotten hooked.

I proceeded to maneuver the gum off the hooky jaw bone jut and onto the right side of my mouth. Unfortunately, my tongue being the fervent explorer that it is, continued to journey back to the left side of my mouth in order to play with the little sliver of jaw. Each time I flicked at it a rush of pain would take over my body and I'd sit for a moment and enjoy the endorphins.

As I sit here writing this, I am constantly fighting the urge to flick the little toothpick that is jutting through the gums. I've been imagining what it must look like and what would happen if I were somehow to get some tweezers way back in the back of my mouth and pull at it. You know how when you pull at a splinter of wood or at a hangnail, for instance, the tiny protrusion rips away a bigger chunk at the base? The splintered wood often winds up snapping off entirely with a loud CRACK! while the hangnail just tears away until pulled completely off leaving a pool of blood in its place.

I have the feeling pulling on this toothpicky jutting bone splinter thing would likely more resemble the CRACK of the former.

I can't stop imagining it. It's horrible!

I'd just like to take this moment to welcome myself into the world of Movabletype 3.0+ land. It's great to be here. It'll be even jazzier when I can figure out why this server is constraining the dynamic archives...(The category and archive links will be on the fritz until...well -- I switched it back to static until my hosts tell me what I'm doing wrong.)

I need to milk this puppy for all it's worth.

One feature I've already fallen in love with is the rebuild button jumping up onto the top of the edit screen -- instead of needing to scroll down the page and clicky click it. One of the librarians was talking about how much the OCLC interface they'd been using aggravated her because there was information she needed to get at in order to route a requested interloan book on the bottom half of the screen -- and it must've taken an extra second or so to scroll -- but you do that for book upon book and you just gotta start to wonder, who built this thing?

So yeah. That button is nice. I may have to hack away at the default MT style sheet though. I'm still getting used to their new colours.

Good to see the buttons in here for html - that'll help seestore understand links and stuff -- and check one excuse off her list for not updating us on the progress of her zygote.

I've been busy. Busier than I thought -- and busier than I should be. I'm hoping to get all this hunky-dory by tomorrow afternoon - including styling up the new front page..

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy. W.S.