A geek speaks
It is all about the Watermelon. I have eaten two in the last two weeks and am most of my way through a third. Cut it up, put it in Tupperware and stick in the fridge and voila, late night snacks and after meal dessert. At first I went for the wee ‘personal sized’ watermelons thinking they were more appropriate for a single man but I soon realized the full sized watermelon are sweeter and keep long enough to eat.
For the first time in years I managed to get sunburned today. If I know I will be out on the sun I (almost) always apply sun-block but today I found myself on a location-shoot with no sun-block in the car. I somehow thought the partial overcast together with the tan I got over summer would protect me but obviously I was wrong. The pain is a good reminder.
Friday, August 19, 2005, 7:50AM
Bainbridge Island, WA
I came out to Bainbridge Island yesterday evening to visit my friend Carl (who incidentally has the same birth date as I do) and spent the night at his place. It was wonderful to see Carl and catch up. He has been a friend since we met studying Aikido and then again in middle school in Seattle. As a wonderful bonus Carl’s very lovely sister Maria is back from her travels and staying with him. I not only got a chance to catch up a bit with Maria but also finally got the opportunity to see her art. Maria is a great painter and wonderful photographer; I am hoping she may have a showing in Seattle I can send people to.
I came to Seattle this weekend mostly to see my mom but also to spend a little time away. When I came into town mom asked me what I wanted (to do for my birthday celebration). The only answer I was inclined to give was ‘to sit by water’. At Bainbridge I got a chance to do just that, at the bay that Carl lives on. At first chatting with Maria but then just sitting and being. Not thinking, no, I do too much of that already, just being with the water. It feels great.
I was very happy to stumble across The Little Girl Who Was Forgotten, a beautiful macabre tale about the power of wishing upon a star.
As any regular visit has probably noticed the FilmRoar and GeekRoar (previously called The Lion’s Den) web sites have both gotten a new look. I am still playing around with the styles and presentation but am pretty happy with the look and function of both sites. The new pages load with different URLs (except for the home pages) so if you have any links you might want to update them. I left the old pages behind for the sake of not breaking old links but they will not allow comments any more. If you want to leave a comment just search for the same page on the new site.
Yes, today is my birthday and I am two to the fifth. That may seem insignificant to most, but hey I’m a geek here and we are kind of trained to think in Binary. Pretty cool, wont happen again for another 32 years either.
I was quite amused by this sophmoric little prank to get employees at Heathrow to make Airport announcements using faked names. The beauty is in how close to the mark the announcements sound. Gotta love phonetics.
The People With a Sense of Humor (PWASOH.com) web site is the first of my domains to move to its new home at Dreamhost.com. The site got a small feature upgrade and a bit of a make-over but more importantly it now has mailing list capabilities which means that, yes you guessed it, the PWASOH joke of the day may very well make it’s re-appearance for the first time since Yahoo killed it in March or 2004. Now my hope is that PWASOH and GeekRoar combined will not chew up my bandwidth allotment over at Dreamhost. My calculations say I should be fine, but I will be keeping an eye on things and am ready to throttle the site down if I get another sudeen rush in hits. GeekRoar.com will be moving soon and may get a bit of an enhancement as well though when it will move and how much it will change remains to be seen.
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On Tuesday 8/2 I was laid off my job at Xerox. The layoff caught me partially by surprise, I knew they were planning on cutting 2,600 jobs, I even knew there was going to be a re-org on Tuesday morning, I just did not know mine was one of the heads up for the axe. I spent Tuesday morning in a bit of disbelief (mixed with some disgust at how they handled the affair) and the rest of the day in quiet repose and reflection. By Thursday morning the feeling of unease had turned to one of contentment and ease. At first I thought I was in some state of denial, but the more time went by and the more I think about it, the more I realize this could actually be a very good thing. Let’s take stock:
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