Karmic whiplash

This is the day I have been waiting for for weeks—nay! Months!! I have been scouring the 'net for the latest rumors and following every gadget blog I could track down and finally MacWorld2007 has arrived. Today at 9 AM, the grand event began. Alas, since I live in the time zone, my workday directly conflicted with Mr. Jobs' taking of the stage.

I resisted the urge to cancel my classes so I could watch the Keynote address live. I was a responsible adult and a role model for my students (only they may not know it). When 2 PM finally came around, I shut off the lights in the classroom, walked—ha! who am I kidding?—skipped/ran back to my office to commence the Keynote watching and ... found my computer to be ... uh ... not on. Hmmm, I guess the flickering of lights in the classroom when the stormfront came through hit the whole campus. I'll just restart my computer and settle in for the show.

Hmmm, the start-up icon is still spinning. That's odd. I'll just drop in the system dvd and show the system some lovin'.

... time passes ...

Hmmm, the utility can neither repair the hard drive nor install a new system folder. My Mac is toasted, or at least a little crispy around the edges of its hard drive.

Is anyone wallowing in the agony now as I was when I lived through this the first time? I have had this date circled on every calender in the house since my four-and-one-half-years-old 2nd-generation iPod started dying late in the summer and when finally I am going to be introduced to its replacement my Mac is dead!!

I'm home now. Nirvana (my home G5) is running fine (never even lost power, apparently) and my brand-spanking new for-audiobooks-only iFlea is charging even as I type (a blog topic for another day). I'm off to ogle at Steve and whatever he pulls out of his pockets.

Listen to those voices in your head

Since the quarter started last week, I have managed to walk a mile up the hill to school every day. It's a nice walk. It's not a bad hill. The elevation gain is a little under 300 feet (according to my trusty gps unit and the satellites o'erhead). Near the top of the hill, there is an S-curve that is not-so-safe for us pedestrians. I'll never quite understand how a sidewalk can blink in and out of existence along a stretch of road but that is exactly what happens along this S-curve.

Rather than play chicken with some non-caffeinated commuter who momentarily forgets that the brake pedal is their friend, I more often than not avoid the whole situation by veering left before the S-curve and taking an alternate street up the hill that lacks any curves whatsoever. Alas, it still has the not-so-gentle rise that I feel in the backs of my calves. It also adds about 3-5 minutes to the walk because it is not quite as direct a route. That three or five minutes mean a lot when the book-on-pod is a good one.

For some reason, this morning, I was debating whether to hoof it through the S-curve or trip on down the longer-yet-safer side road. For the life of me I have no idea why I was even debating this. The book-on-pod has gotten really good after starting slow (got that, Papa Ra?) and it wasn't raining and I was on time. No reason to shave the 3 minutes off my hike and stare down drivers coming at me through the S. This is when the voices in my head got really, really, really loud.

WHY ARE YOU HESITATING TURN LEFT NOW NOW NOW NOW

It was the proverbial hammer to the (inside) back of the head. If someone was watching me at this moment when the voices chimed in, they would have seen me do some sort of bizarre moonwalker spin-o-lurch to the left. It wasn't pretty but it quieted the voices. I put it out of my mind because the human race is suffering from the manifestation of some strange retro-virus buried in our DNA that is resulting in a leap in evolution rather than a gradual change and riots are breaking out in China ... oh ... that was happening in the book, Darwin's Radio. Did I mention that it has gotten much better since the author, Greg Bear, got past the trite character development and got on with the sci in the fi (are you listening, Papa Ra?) Anyway, I put the left turn lurch out of my mind and kept walking.

That's when the gang came out of the mist. They looked familiar so no introductions were necessary. Some of them in better shape than others, some of them looking a little worn, some sporting a new color scheme, some in the old-school monotone, all sporting their serial numbers and looking mighty damp from being out in the rain for who knows how long. We continued up the hill together. They hung out in my office while I went about my school doodies ... er ... duties.

After school, the voices chimed in again and this time I needed no hammer. Never ever not even once before have I walked down the hill via the non-S side street but I did today. And sure enough, more of the gang members were at the bottom of the hill, looking really damp and lonely and wondering where their compadres had gone off to. Needless to say, we all continued down the hill together.

When we got to my house, I invited the gang in and offered them the chance to rinse off the grime from being out in the rain. I tucked them in to help them dry out a little while I ate dinner. Then I ironed them all to dry them out the rest of the way.

The gang totals $469, all denominations from $1 to $100. I have no idea what I am going to do with them. I'm a little wigged out and wondering if cameras were rolling or if someone is not going to be able to make their rent or buy their kid new shoes or doesn't even miss the boys since they flew out of the pocket of their leather coat as they sped down the hill in their Rolls Royce. Were the boys kidnapped and then accidently dropped as their captors fled? What were they doing hanging out on that corner, pretty spread out and mixed in amongst the debris of the wind and rain?

I have no idea what I am going to do with them. They are warm and dry and tucked away in a safe spot. And I will listen to the voices in my head the next time they make a suggestion.

Feeling like a centipede

I have always been the type to own enough shoes to keep my feet comfortable. That old joke about the difference between men and women and their shoes? Well, I would land squarely in the man camp.

• When a woman says she needs a pair of shoes that go with every outfit she means she needs as many pairs of shoes as she has outfits.

• When a man says he needs a pair of shoes that go with every outfit he means he needs only one pair of shoes.

I was so happy with just my Air Jesus sandals, workboots, sneakers and a pair of dress shoes. The pile wasn't that deep to dig through. The closet floor stayed relatively hazard free. And I had so few decisions to make when I got dressed.

Query: Is it clean?
If yes, commence dressing.
Else, commence scrounging.

When I got down to my feet, the routine became
Query: Is it raining?
If yes, avoid sandals.
Else, are shoes visible?
If yes, consider shoes
Else, put on sneakers.

Not a lot of thought necessary and my feet were happy campers.

Alas, I have been sucked into some horrible vortex of footwear. In the last week I have acquired abother pair of shoes and another pair of sneakers. Now I have to decide between the sneakers with blue highlights versus the red ones. With shoes, the decision is between the brown slip-ons and the brown lace-ups. I may have to change the time my alarm goes off in the morning. I may have to start going to bed earlier. {sigh} Life was so simple a mere three days ago.

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One way to organize your shoes. I hope this only a display and nobody actually owns the shoes like this shows.

Again with the 50 pairs of shoes all the same except for location on spectrum. Please don't let this obsession ever happen to me.

Wear shoes, get laughed at—but fail to hear it because the built-in music player is cranked up so loud.

Another sneaker-iPod cross-breeding experiment gone wrong.

Blog Transmogrification

I've been thinking a lot about this blog lately. Perhaps some of that time could have been spent actually posting to it but I couldn't post while thinking.

I started blogging because the geek in me wanted yet another reason to play with my computer. That has been accomplished just fine. The form this blog has taken is also OK—to a point. I've found a lot of other blogs based in education and gadgets and time wasting and blog accessorizing (see right-hand column). While these are all interests of mine, I often want to pose questions or make comments about my job as a math teacher without my personality impacting the way people who know me read them. I want the issue to be at the forefront, not me. Most of you readers know who I am; there are very few who don't (I do not think you, Rainbow Hemp, are responsible for any more than, oh, 500 of the hits to this blog).

Therefore, I think I am going to start another blog for the sole purpose of talking about education topics. I've been following KFluff's blog for a while and appreciate her posts about using blogs with her students and other topics surrounding academic blogs in general. For a myriad of reasons, I think the edu-blog should best be done anonymously. I'm sure I'll be making comments about my classes and campus-life here once in a while but those instances and occurrences that get stuck between my teeth will probably be addressed elsewhere. I think separating Me the Geek from Dr. Me the Prof will allow me to think about my postings differently. Hey, this whole thing (blogging, living day-to-day, etc.) is an experiment in bending reality to suit our needs anyhow, right? I'm just bending it a little more.

So Mostly Filler will remain mostly as is. The only change will be the thinning of the links on the right. I'm taking the education-based blogs and going elsewhere. The hard part is going to be coming up with a name for this new blog. Hopefully I'll see you there, wherever that is.

Get in the queue

Then did he raise on high the Holy Queue of Netflix, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst veg on the couch and eat popcorn, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the junk food and onion dip and jello and trail mix and pork rinds and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou signest up on the website. Then thou must click at least three titles. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be at least three. Four shalt thou not receive immediately, neither shalt thou choose only two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out, until two titles have been returned. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then clickest thou the submit button and begin to wait for the mailman, who, being worthy in my sight, shall deliver it." (many apologies to Monty Python)

If you could not discern from the passage above, we've fallen off the edge and into the Netflix abyss. Our lives, from which television has been absent for 2 years, 4 months and 28 days, have just drastically changed. Let the vegging out begin anew!

This is going to be interesting. When the tv fast first began, 2years4months28days ago, myself and The T wondered how anything had ever been accomplished previous to the banishment of the idiot box. We did not suddenly find ourselves awash in extra time to be spent bettering mankind. Rather, we were perplexed at the notion that anything had ever been accomplished at all. The tasks at hand swelled to fill the vacuum no longer occupied by commercials and SportsCenter and made for tv movies and the Star Wars Holiday Special.

When it came to adding titles to the queue, the decision paralysis which struck initially very quickly became click-o-rama! The poor trackpad had hot spots from The T's fingers moving so fast. With all the mouse clicking going on, the living room sounded like that old commercial for the game Trouble with the pop-o-matic.

We haven't even gotten our first title yet and I'm already making tv references. Stay tuned, Bat fans.

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Since I mentioned junk food:

What happens to your body if you drink a Coke right now?

Other wacky uses for Coke

You don't like what I said? I'll just change the translation. From Wikipedia: " 'Bite the wax tadpole' is a rough translation for one of the names previously used by Coca-Cola to translate the name of their product into Chinese. The original Chinese is kǒukē-kǒulà (口蝌口蜡), which does approximate the sound of "Coca-Cola" quite closely, and which might more literally be translated as "mouth tadpole, mouth wax". When it was discovered that this name had an unappetizing sound, Coca-Cola changed their translation to kěkǒu-kělè (可口可乐), meaning roughly "tasty and fun", after which the beverage became increasingly popular in China."

Breathe, just breathe

Do you hear that? It's quiet.
And my eardrums say aaaaaah.

This is not to say I wasn't happy to see the house fill up with folks who have not seen each other in 15 years. I was thrilled to be able to host such a reunion. The house (including bathrooms) got cleaned. The fridge got cleaned and then refilled. The guest room got built and furnished in time to be warm and comfortable and slept in.

But I cannot find the words that describe how nice it is to have the house returned to the day-to-day occupants. The Paw Posse wholeheartedly agrees. They are once again purring in unison and gourging themselves on bowls of vittles.

I'm going to go enjoy the lack of reverb of voices not my own and continue reading a very, very good book: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (the power behind Dykes to Watch Out For). If you feel unfulfilled by this post and need more of something, perhaps one or some of these links will fill the void:

It's recycling and decorating! What a deal. A Mountain Dew holiday tree—with lights and everything.
One more thing to do with your thumb.

Evolution of plasticware you can write on. Move your wares over, Mr. Tupper, the gadgets that can count have arrived. Oh, if I'd only had these before I put the mystery meat stew in the fridge and thus begin it's slide over to the Dark Side.

Tis the Seasoning

In preparation for the familial infestation ... er ... visitation, I've been cleaning everything in sight. The cats have no idea what is going on and they are less than happy. They are in full defensive mode while both the Roomba and the vacuum have been running for the last two days. Well, if the grrllzz would stop shedding and hit the boxes a little more consistency and not drop crumbs in a six-foot radius around the dish when they eat and stop giving the food back in chewed form just because they're a little rumbly in the tummy maybe this cleaning thing wouldn't be quite so traumatic for all of us.

But I should stop dissing the furballs. I am only slightly more fastidious than they are. In fact, the only difference between them and myself is that I don't vomit in random places around the house. Yesterday I cleaned out the fridge in anticipation of and preparation for the influx of fresh food and new leftovers to fill the cavernous space. In order to fill the space, one must first find the space. This is scary. I've seen things come out of my fridge that would make tough guys cry. That old line about "set it free; if it returns to you it is yours" doesn't apply when UWOs (unidentified walking objects) drop off the second shelf and stroll away under their own power. It is best to just let 'em go.

I now know what evolution holds for carrots and other root vegetables. It isn't pretty. Nor does it involve these items remaining firm. The future is similarly depressing for green peppers and cucumbers. These thrown-away-more-than-eaten items are the sublimators of the vegetable world. Just like dry ice bypasses a liquid stage on its way from frozen to gas, as peppers and cukes break down, they turn directly from a solid into a liquid, bypassing the mushy stage. And the transformation is pretty much instantaneous. I buy the veggies. I put the veggies in the fridge. I go to bed. I wake up to a green puddle in the crisper drawer. I swear to zeus that the guy who lives in the fridge and turns the light on and off goes at the veggies with a sledge hammer when I close the door.

So the chiller is clean and waiting for the food cycle to begin anew. Yesterday we played What's That Smell? as I cleaned out plastic containers and dumped the contents. Today as I was stacking the plastic containers, the skunk-like smell hit me full in the face again. Whatever was in the container had embedded itself in the molecular structure of the plastic and wasn't coming out. As much as I hate contributing more plastic to the local landfill, there was no way I could keep that container. Later today we'll be playing Guess What Meat Dish Devolves Into Skunk? and removing that recipe from the kitchen rolodex.

What's the question?

The answer is: Holey rubber!

Your choices for the correct question are:
a) what did Mary say to Joseph when the pee strip turned blue?
b) what did Robin say to the Batman in episode #42, The Eraser Meets the Sharp Pointy Thing?
c) what I exclaimed to The T when we were cruising along at 55 miles-per-hour and a front tire on the Subaru blew out?

If you chose (c), you'd be correct. Man, nothing like a flat tire to help you focus on what's important. It didn't matter that we were on our way to Slum Depot to drop another good chunk of change to outfit our new guest room. Nor did it matter that we had found two really cool bedside tables in an "antique" store, aka: ongoing junk swap, and they were now getting a bit damp in the evening mist as they sat on the side of the road while we dug out the spare.

No, what truly mattered in this whole experience was that the very first time we needed the lug wrench to change the flat tire we found it wasn't there! We've owned this car for 10 years now and did we ever think to check for the lug wrench? No. Why would we look for it when we didn't need it?

So we called our hero Joe the Electron (not his real name) and his trusty sidekick, Rainbow Hemp (could be her real name), and they came right out to the east of the middle of nowhere to aid us in our time of need of wrench-lessness. And in the true spirit of brotherhood and plain old getting-along-edness, the lug wrench from the German Audi would have nothing to do with the lug nuts on the Japanese Subaru. Have we learned nothing from the messages of the season? Can't we all just get it on together?

So Electron and The T cruised back to Electron's abode to find his collection of wrenches while Hemp and I communed with the cows. We were the highlight of the cows' day, I swear. The just stood there and stared and chewed and stared and chewed ... and you get the idea. Thirty minutes later, we bid the cows adieu and we were rolling along on our donut-wheel. We got to the 'Pot, bought our goods and returned home safely. The room is now tricked out quite nattily and the invasion of relatives not my own begins soon.

All's well that end's well.

And then there were 5

Oh man was I looking forward to Thanksgiving break. The preceding Sunday, I was dragged from bed (drug from?) while I was in a weird spot in my sleep cycle and I never recovered. I was a total zombie until I could nap on pre-Thanksgiving Eve. If I kept moving, I was fine. The moment I was stationary, I collapsed.

So thank the cranberries the break showed up when it did. A nap, a guilt-free sleep-in the next morning and I was good to go.

The problem now is there is no go happening. We have had three consecutive snow days. Day One was a pleasant treat. Day the Second was also OK. I managed to finally get through all the papers that needed to be graded. After one day off, I may have had an out but after two days of no classes, the students would have been throwing pencils at me (except that one guy who seems to avoid pencils like he's afraid of 'em).

So this morning, I sprang from bed—no problem with the sleep cycle now—showered, had a little breakie, pet the cats ... and heard The T call from the other room. The message that was not posted at 6:01 A.M. was now there at 6:30 A.M.: All classes at the main campus cancelled.

And so I blog. The other events planned for today are flossing, making a wallet from some cool foil tape, cleaning the fridge, comic book organizing, laundry, wandering around the house bemoaning the drafts in this ol' house, snacking, etc. You get the idea. Maybe I will also do some work activities related to my classes. I do have a lovely stack of books and journals I've been meaning to plow through. Since I am not in the mood to shovel, perhaps I will plow the pages.

For those of you who have some time to kill, read on. I will now amaze and astound with some tidbytes from the web.


My name in hieroglyphics. The second and third characters look like they could be on a waterbed warning label. If you do "squiggly" the bed will stay intact. When the Eye of Mordor opens, the bed drains and your feet stick up. Maybe that third character is actually the ancient symbol for "napping". Get your own here. It's mainly in French but you can figure it out.



Design + Child's game = Commercialism. These shelves are cool looking but I wonder how you claim any sort of copyright on such a thing.



If the Web were a city, it would look like this. Link.



That reminds me of the map of Springfield, USA, home of the SImpsons. Be sure to check out the interactive version.



Here's what you get with a little stick-to-it-ive-ness. About 20 years worth of photo attempts finally resulted in this shot of London. How much film is that?



Got a tune in your head that you can't get out? Want one? Click on the people to get a little piece of harmony going. you can record your masterpiece. It's very buy the world a coke-ish.



The highest scoring Scrabble game ever. Check out this board. Don't you love the irony of using "bleep" as a word? The most I ever got on one word was 96 points for trembles, starting in the top-left corner. I remember it like it was yesterday and it was almost 20 years ago.
Any idea what a "vrow" is? It's in this game not once but twice (!!) and I can't find it in a dictionary.



Call the ASPCA right now!!! This doggie-bag is wrong on so many levels. Resist the urge to click and see more ... er ... styles. Don't click on the link. Just send me your $75 and we'll call it even. The pictures below are of the red faux fur model and the faux brain model.



That's enough for now. After that last one, I need to go wash.

Nothing but someone else's words

Apparently I have nothing original to say and will amuse you with other pieces of the internet.

Listen as Obi Wan Canoli tells Cuke Skywalker of the threat of Darth Tater and the dark side of the store. Only if he harnesses the power of the Farm will Cuke successfully rescue Princess Lettuce, a captive on the Death Melon. Of course, Cuke can't do it alone. He gets a little help from Ham Solo, Chewbroccoli, C3-Peanuts, and Tofu-D2, of course. Check out the adventure... and the sax playing butternut squash in the cantina scene.

Timewaster Alert!!
More fun than you've ever had with eggs.


Resistance is futile.

Apple Computer Inc. said on Tuesday six major airlines will let passengers play video and music from their iPod digital devices on in-flight entertainment systems beginning in mid-2007.

Air France, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Emirates, KLM, and United Airlines will begin offering their passengers iPod seat connections, which power and charge iPods during flight and allow the video content on the devices to be viewed on seat-back displays.

And another entry for the Never Thought You Read Those Words in That Order category: Eco-friendly bra doubles as shopping bag I couldn't be that funny if I had a word randomizer helping me type this. Here's proof:

Faux bonsai. Need to reconnect with the earth? This is not the plant to get.



Yes, this is what you think it is: a chocolate covered Mac Classic.




What you can make with a slab of wood, a scroll saw and an hour or two. Or you can just buy this one.