Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal. To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2005/01/First off, I have to put in my token complaint about the LiveJournal servers being down. While everyone else's journals were up and running, mine was still dead. I guess I am on the “MadCow” cluster of machines at LJ, so it took them an extra day to get me back up and running. I could see everyone else's journals, but could not log in, post, or see my own.
Is it me, or does the new iPod Shuffle seem like a flaming piece of poo–and by “flaming piece of poo,” I mean a nugget of excrement that has been set ablaze by an incendiary device. I mean, really? What does it take to take a commodity USB Flash keychain and slap on an MP3 decoder chip? No screen equals “what the fudge am I listening to????” in my book. Sure, the price point is lower and lots of teens that otherwise would not have been able to purchase an iPod of any sort can now listen to music on a lanyard, but it still seems rather lame in my not-so-humble opinion.
In other Apple news, my Mac Mini is scheduled to arrive by Friday. I got the video cable already.
Last week, my entire office had Ebola or Plague or some such thing. Wednesday, when I took a half-day, there were 16 people out sick. That is about 40% of the company! I took Thursday off as well as Friday and was feeling much better again by late afternoon Friday.
Saturday consisted of surviving the “wintery mix” we got, which started in the wee hours of the morning and continued throughout the day. I used to get the same weather in Boston and either it really was worse out there or I am simply much more used to it now. It was really kind of cool (in both senses of the word). Nobody was out on the streets and Kim and I had to go out to run errands. The streets really were not too bad, but I may be a little biased in the matter. Having an extremely lightweight car with a manual transmission and anti-lock breaks makes that sort of thing easier. Plus, having the experience of driving in Arrowhead, Big Bear, and Boston helps out a bit, too.
Saturday night was delightful. I got to use the kitchen device that looks like a D&D weapon to pound some chicken into submission. I then made us some Chicken Cordon Bleu, which was quite tasty but not as good as the Chicken Kiev from a few weeks ago. While the icy winds blew outside, we got to relax in front of the fireplace, sipping wine and eating good food. We also watched the first couple of episodes of Lost.
Sunday consisted of a Lost marathon. While I had watched all of the episodes during my sick days, it was not quite back-to-back. I would watch an episode or two, fall asleep in the middle of one, rewind a bit to where I fell asleep, watch a couple more, etc. Sunday we did the hardcore watch-it-'till-your-eyes-turn-to-sandpaper marathons. We are both quite hooked, which kind of sucks because now we are caught up with “real time.” There is no more back-to-back watching of episodes, we have to wait week after week while they dribble out each one. What makes it suck even more is that I do not really have a television as such. Although the show is aired on Wednesdays, I will not be able to obtain it until Thursday or Friday because of the nature of the internet, so people will be talking about the latest episode (potentially mentioning spoilers), which I will not have seen.
Also, that digital billboard that I mentioned with “Friends of Daria”… it turns out that it is just an advert for a weather girl on the local WB affiliate, thanks to an anonymous poster. This is the image (without the text) that pans around:
