donnunn.com

Oh good, now I know where I am

Thank heavens for technology. Otherwise I’d be lost.

Yay bendy!

I never get the flexible straw!

Long light, time for a rest

He looks up every 15–20 seconds to check if the signal has changed.

 

 

Froggy

Darkness and fog, two great tastes that taste great together.

Today’s earworm, and its source

Set the Way-Back Machine to today, 06:50ish.

I’m waiting at the 4th & Pike bus stop for the Sound Transit 545 to Redmond. I’m holding my freshly prepared (and still a smidge too hot to drink) small skinny vanilla latte from the Seattle’s Best down the street, watching the traffic roll past.

A good many vehicles pass that location in the usually five or six minutes I have to wait for the 545. Fair number of buses, many private vehicles and business trucks/vans/whatever.

One truck catches my eye. Smallish tanker truck, it looks like the type that might deliver heating oil in the suburbs. The company name emblazoned on its side:

BAKER COMMODITIES INC.

In no way remarkable, no idea why it catches my eye.

So then my brain goes into overdrive in something like the following sequence of thoughts, which probably requires all of 10 seconds start to finish:

1. I wonder what they sell.
2. I should look them up when I get to work.¹
3. Commodities. Oil, grain, coal, copper, ....
4. “Commodity” and “commode” are similar words. Same root? I should check that.²
5. “Commode”—toilet.
6. Toilet—potty.
7. “Get off the pot” hee hee.
8. BAM earworm of “Beauty School Dropout” from Grease.

Dammit!

---

1. No idea why I didn’t just whip out my iPhone right at that moment. ↩
2. Yes. ↩

There is too a spoon

Crazy bald kid didn’t know WTF he was talking about!

(Clearly I am rapturously attentive in this meeting)

What kind of day has it been

An indicator of how this Monday will likely go:

I required five attempts to leave the house successfully. I believe this is a personal best.

First try: Realized I had forgotten my work badge (and, by extension, my transit card since they’re in the same badge holder).

Second try: Forgot Netflix DVDs for return mail.

Third try: Turned to lock door, determined this would be difficult since keys were still on the shelf inside my apartment.

Fourth try: Halfway down the stairs, remembered my wallet was still on my desk in the living room.

Fifth try: Half a block away, noticed my phone’s charge level was only 63%. Considered returning for the wall charger, remembered I have a USB charge cable on my desk at work.

So then. How’s your Monday?

A treat waiting for me

Stepped away for a lunch break, returned to find a little sweet perched atop my notepad courtesy my coworker Jeremy. :-)

Too soon?

Text exchange just now.

David: What should I be for Halloween?
Me: A Chilean miner. You can phone it in.

WHAT

John the Baptist with his pets, or something, at Seattle Art Museum.

I hate this type of bullshit marketing

Got home today, retrieved the mail.

Found this vaguely alarming-looking item:

I am a Consumer Reports subscriber, but online only. I prefer to keep the paper out of my house, and it’s easier to search for ratings and product info online than by rooting through old magazines.

One of those rip-off-the-edges types of things. So rip off I did, and I found this:

It doesn’t say what the benefits on my account are, so I went to the site and found....

It’s an offer to subscribe to the print magazine for a year, a buck an issue.

Seems skeezy for a consumer organization like Consumer Reports to resort to this type of marketing in an attempt to maintain or increase their print subscriber base.

But it’s nice they admonish me to recycle the notice, even as they’re asking me to contribute to paper waste by subscribing to their print magazine when I’m already an electronic subscriber.

RUN AWAY

Created by Oatmeal

And what if it’s a chick bear?

The problem of Zooey Deschanel

I’m watching (500) Days of Summer and liking it, a lot.

I put it in my Netflix queue because it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whom I first saw in “3rd Rock from the Sun” (and good Lord, that show ended NINE YEARS AGO?), and a bit later in 10 Things I Hate About You, which I loved. Still do—it was one of the first DVDs I owned, in fact.

Recently I heard about this little indie film, (500) Days of Summer, about a guy who falls in love with a girl who doesn’t. And oh by the way it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whom I like. Into the Netflix queue it goes.

Only then do I realize: It also stars Zooey Deschanel, whom I dislike.

Now if you ask my family about times in the past when I’ve expressed disdain for actors or actresses, it’s very likely they’ll tell you about the time I declared my utter undying HATRED for Steve Martin. How I went on for a good while about how he’d never been in any good movies, never would be. A useless pile of flesh who somehow managed to be cast in movies and by his very presence contaminated them.

The problem with this declaration of utter undying HATRED was, however, that I actually like Steve Martin. I like several movies he’s been in, among them Parenthood and Roxanne and All of Me, and I’ve enjoyed his comedy bits and his TV appearances and his banjo-playing and many of his essays and other writings, even. It's the damnedest thing, then, that at some point in my life I spent a minimum of 20 minutes describing in vivid detail my absolute contempt for Steve Martin, until Katharine reminded me about Parenthood and All of Me and what about Roxanne and oh, yeah, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and L.A. Story? And I said, hey, the first two times I saw L.A. Story, I did hate it, well at least didn’t like it much, but now it’s grown on me a bit, and really it turns out I don’t hate Steve Martin at all. I just don’t like a couple movies he was in.

Ever since then, when I’ve said I didn’t like an actor, I’ve been reminded of my Steve Martin declaration and its utter insanity.

My dislike of Zooey Deschanel is based mainly on one astoundingly lame turn, her appearance in a SciFi (I can’t bring myself to type that channel’s lame new spelling of its name and since the show I’m going to talk about was before the branding change anyway, puh hah) miniseries called “Tin Man”, a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz for the video-game and text-message era. Zooey Deschanel played DG, the updated Dorothy, with perfect vapidity and a strange detachment that made it seem like she was rotoscoped into the scenes after the fact.

And she was in Eulogy, where multiple generations of a family get together for the patriarch’s funeral and all the secrets come out of the woodwork, and it was like she was channeling her DG self several years in the future.

But now she’s playing Summer in this movie (500) Days of Summer and I find myself thinking, goddammit. She’s good in this. I’m liking her in spite of myself, and it annoys me, because I’m not just liking the character, I’m specifically liking her portrayal of the character.

So.

Who can recommend me a Zooey Deschanel flick that will re-validate my hostility?

The year in IM status messages, 2009 edition

A quieter year compared to previous lists (see 2006, 2007, 2008). There would probably be far more than previous years if I included mobile chat status messages, but there’s no reliable way to record those for posterity, so I just ignore ’em.

The “available” messages first, in creation order:

• 2009???
• around
• householdery
• on-call duty kinda bloze
• on call, may be away
• minimally attentive
• oops, I fell off
• A general indicator of my state of mind as I left work this afternoon http://bit.ly/4pwgdg
• oh the coughing
• STUPID LUNGS
• taxes done, earliest ever
• actually watching the Oscars, someone please shake me into reality
• President Obama’s address on C-SPAN
• President Obama’s address on http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/
• killing time before the damned conference call
• just please kill me now
• talking to a dozen Apus
• is a cluster of Apus a “convenience”?
• is a cluster of Apus a “convenience”? a “squishee”?
• hello India!
• India fell off
• since I can’t log in to work... domesticity reigns
• meh
• can’t get away from the workin’, dammit
• waiting for my potato
• dinner time, of sorts
• well past zonk time
• organizing my media library
• Sunday night.
• goddamned phone!
• went sailing today, much fun
• happy movie night: Rachel Getting Married
• Bottle Shock, about California vintners’ triumph over France
• thinks we have Sync Success, knock on wood
• waiting for my chicken to thaw
• finally, dinner
• slummin’
• windy, bah
• damnable winds!
• doesn’t play one on TV
• rain, again
• damn, almost June already
• {S out with it
• media files go boom, argh
• media files back, woo!
• ahhh, temp down 10° in 19 minutes
• Yakima, baby
• WWDC keynotin’
• probably should go to bed
• tonight went by FAST
• battery dying, poof soon
• DVD: Smart People
• ho hum.
• BØRD
• DVD rippin’
• newly intolerant of shitfaced assholes
• who says “barf” anymore?
• working from home
• pondering a grilled cheez.
• that was a good grilled cheez.
• 85.7° in the living room
• 85.6°, woo!
• {S 32dohs}
• ::swelter::
• travel prep
• Hawai‘i, baby!
• chillin’
• Studyin’ (not me) and sippin’ (me) and cookin’ (also me)
• Football!
• DVD: The Wire: Season 1: Disc 1
• hi.
• back from the beach, goddammit
• why so serious?
• goddammit
• yay HSI
• ahhh rain
• got subpoenaed today http://bit.ly/74fCpL

And now the “away” messages—looks like I wasn’t away very often:

• snüz
• out for a bit
• inattentive
• out.
• errand(s)
• cookin’
• on the phone
• out, try phone
• stabbing in apt next door, yargh
• cops are here
• encoding DVDs
• since I can’t log in to work... domesticity reigns
• shower time
• damned conference call
• bath time!
• time, methinks, for a cool shower
• travel prep
• dinner time
• taxi service
• media-library sorting, etc.
• getting the laundry

Wherein Don gets hot chocolate solely to warm his hands

It’s not cold in this room. I know this for two reasons.

First, I have photographic proof:

And second, I don’t feel cold.

But my hands do not know this.

My hands! They feel frozen and have for most of the day, dammit!

So, having achieved fluid equilibrium a few hours ago, that state where I must expel fluids at roughly the same rate I am consuming them, I went down the hallway a bit ago for a refresh of my beverage. And I thought:

Ah ha! Hot chocolate!

Which I am now not drinking but am hugging closely to my person, in an attempt (so far vain, because I have taken my hands off the warm cup so I can type this post) to warm my poor frozen hands.

Also, earlier (and unrelated), I sneezed five times in a row. Best sneezes EVER.

So how’s your Friday?

Sign of apocalypse No. 319

IHOP NFL-themed stuffed French toast, oh dear God
(Click image for full-size 1280x1024)IHOP’s newest thing: Football-shaped stuffed French toast for the new NFL season. Strawberries for AFC, blueberries for NFC.

Today’s Wikipedia safari

I saw a brief reference to the 1987 stock-market crash online, so I looked up the Wikipedia article to refresh my memory about the event and BAM off I went into wikiwandering.

After the jump, in the order I clicked the links, and with each article’s first full paragraph (minus links within it) included for context:

Monday, by the numbers

Today was even more Monday than most of the Mondays I’ve experienced. In no particular order:

• 9: Hours worked
• 11: Times Outlook crashed
• 23: Maximum number of IM windows open at one time
• 519: Emails received, oh dear God
• 2: iPhone users in my three-person carpool
• 7: Sneezes in the shower

I thought of more items when I was riding home in the carpool, but of course now I can’t remember them. I need a notebook or something, but I can’t read my own handwriting, so that probably wouldn’t help me much.

Insomnia blows

I worked late on Wednesday and I have to go in early Thursday. These two simple facts have turned my brain against me and I’m lying here in the soft glow of my phone’s screen, typing a mobile post about how I’m not sleeping right now.

This is a crazy world.

2008 in status messages

Continuing an annual trend, my available and away status messages from iChat in 2008.

Previously: 2006 status messages; 2007 messages.

Lists in order I entered the status messages.

Good to know.

I could survive for 1 minute, 25 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptorCreated by Bunk Beds.net

See also Katharine’s result, Julie Anne’s result.

Via beancounter

This was the seven thousandth

And rather a succinct summary of the weekend apart from the Thanksgiving holiday itself:

Twitter / Don Nunn: didn’t plan to spend the day off at work, goddammit (http://bkite.com/02FcQ)
13:37 Nov 28, 2008

But I ended up working much of the weekend, the luck of the on-call draw combined with a healthy dose of insanity from my teammates’ status updates on their ongoing projects and blah blah blah.

Long weekends that turn into extended periods of off-hours work just blow.

Who goes there?

It’s a little blustery tonight.

Across the street is a tree that moves in the breeze across the line of sight between my balcony and the security light on the building directly south of mine.

The tree’s crossing the light keeps making me think there is someone walking across my balcony. In the last few minutes I’ve had several WTF moments.

Time, methinks, for bed. Have a nice Sunday night. :-)

Benny Beaver

Benny Beaver
Flickr: Don NunnIn his happier sailor days, before he got angry for the new Oregon State University mascot logo

“simply smart”?

“simply smart”?
Flickr: Don NunnHoliday Inn Express, what does that even mean?

Today’s kinda sucking suddenly

Okay day at work, a bit busy this morning and then the day DRAGGED for the roughly 27 years between 09:30 and 12:15, and then it was a bit busy again in the afternoon to finish things out.

So home I went, normal commute with not much traffic (score!), couple quick errands on the way and when I walked in the door, I fell over a stack of recyclables and two cats because I forgot to take them (the recyclables) down to the bins this morning—actually didn’t forget at all, I chose not to take them down because I hate making noise at weird hours and I leave my house for work at 05:30, no one wants to be awakened by the sound of glass bottles clacking in their hideous high-pitched manner into the goddamned recycling bin—and when I stood up, I had a slight sore throat and a mild post-nasal drip.

Damned cold coming on! I think it’s actually the cold I thought I was getting a couple weeks ago, but that one never went anywhere, just camped out in my sinuses and/or lungs until it could spring on me as I lay prone with cracker boxes and Diet Coke cans and unread weekly advertisement-mail wads scattered about me and two cats fleeing in terror down the entry corridor. Its moment spotted, that dormant little cold pounced like 12 ninjas and now I am sniffling and my throat’s slightly scratchy and I’m out of night-time cold meds, but my head isn’t actually stuffed up, so I’m not going to the 24-hour Bartell Drugs nearby, it’ll wait until tomorrow.

The whole point of this was to mention that part of what I planned to do tonight was try to rescue my phone from yet another of its roughly quarterly calendar crashes, where my 10-year, 20,000-item-plus calendar gets eaten by a sync that fails because the computer crashes or the phone resets or the gods, enraged by my successful daily syncs over the previous 88 days, jealously wreak their vengeance and force the sync to fail, and the phone will never sync again after that. So I have to reset everything, set the phone to be overwritten in its entirety, a process that takes roughly 13 weeks and works maybe a third of the time.

Today it took only 90 minutes and worked on the first try. Possibly sympathy for the scratchy throat, but I have my doubts. I think it’s trying to gaslight me by making me think it’s on my side again, and three months down the line it’ll crash again, or next week it will burst into flame unprovoked, probably right as I’m trying to look up what movie I saw on Jun 11, 2003, after we had been at Tap House Grill and had probably more than a few beers before we saw... what movie was that again?

Here, I’ll look it up.

Care to answer a plumbing-vs.-behavior question?

When they designed the automatic-shut-off valves for the faucets in public restrooms, did they survey how long most people leave a faucet turned on to rinse the soap off their hands, and then design the valve to shut off a second or two SOONER than that?

Always—ALWAYS, I SAY—I have to trigger the stupid automatic faucets at least twice to rinse my hands fully, and I’m maybe 2 seconds from a full rinse when the things shut off.

Damned engineers!

On Vox: QotD: Broken Bones

I’ve only broken one bone in my life, my left pinky during a game of fly’s-up in grade school. 4th or 5th grade, I think, but I don’t remember exactly when.

I had a hell of a time convincing anyone it was actually broken—it was only a hairline fracture and didn’t really hurt, it was just this strange sensation of warmth and a slight numbness for a week or so after it happened.

Some months later my pinky had developed a misshapen lump over the knuckle. Turns out bone had grown over the break while it healed, so my left pinky is lopsided now.

Answering:

Have you ever broken a bone? If so, how?

Originally posted on donnunn.vox.com

So I was standing at the urinal just now

And I was thinking, hey dude in the stall by the sinks, you should turn your phone to its “silent” mode if you’re going to press a lot of buttons while you’re doing your natural business in there, because it sounds like you’re emitting an oddly staccato but low-pitched grunt otherwise.

Then I thought: Speaking of phones, I just put my phone in my pocket. Did I lock the keys?

Next thought: Wait. That sounds a lot like my phone.

Final thought, as somehow I managed to maintain my aim while I dug my phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen to see the short stack of random calendar events created by the keyboard presses the phone had endured in my pocket: Dammit, I really need to dig out my phone belt clip again. And stop, in the silences of my mind, giving other people shit about their weird bathroom habits.

While I was in the shower this morning, I had a Profound Thought

Star Trek: First Contact would have been a TOTALLY DIFFERENT MOVIE if the Vulcans had first visited Earth based on our creation of striped toothpaste.