bluegargantua

...today is Delayed Gratification Day.

(I mean, moreso than usual for stuff you buy)
Tom

"Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands."

-- Swamp King, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

That about sums up my feelings tonight.

later
Tom

[Confidential to asciikitty: Projeckt X-9 is go! Repeat: Projeckt X-9 is go! Dyepack has exploded and perp is in the poke! Movable type spearheads Renaissance! Eels are in the hovercraft and wriggling! Subject Predicate Object!]

Hey,

• Today I saw a pretty large turtle crossing the on-ramp to Rte. 2. It was a bit bigger than our cat. I have a fondness for turtles. They start with the letter T.


• If you have my EstateWorks email address, I don't work there no more and you should get a new email address from me. deadwinter, tisana I'm looking in your general direction specifically because that's where your email went.


• Last night I stole a cargo plane to fly to some other country where I stole an old Russian cargo plane so I could sneak into Russia for some secret mission. Mostly I just groused about how awful Russia was. On the way out (via comercial airline flight and not stolen air-conveyances), I ran into Sammy Davis Jr. and warned him about how crappy Russia was. He agreed but a gig was a gig. Classy guy, that Sammy, classy guy.


• My mom is flying out to Seattle (again, via commercial flight) to visit my sister and pick up my nephew to take him back to NE for the summer. She's travelling without my dad. But she's not going alone. She's going with my Aunt Jeanene. Pretty much a fate worse than death.


• My mom will also be travelling in the company of an as-yet undetermined quantity of frozen meat. This is the latest episode in my mom's constant (and constantly failed) attempts to ship food to places that...uh...have food. My bet is that whatever system she rigs up for carrying the meat will fail and she'll have to explain why her luggage is leaking blood to grim-faced security guards. If this happens, Aunt J. will probably have a brain aneurism right then and there.


• Finally, my first job here at work is on a Flash project. I haven't done very much Flash and I haven't done it in awhile. No one else around here has a huge amount of experience with it either. The docs are pretty much non-existent and the action script debugger...well, there isn't a debugger. If people know of some really solid places to get examples or if they know a lot about why scrollbars don't actually change when you change their properties, drop me a line. (OK, I've got a ton of questions besides scrollbars and most of them are more important, but scrollbars are visible and show progress, whereas namespace event handler extensions are invisible and show nothing.)
  

later
Tom

Hi,

"OK, so after playing skee-ball tonight we've got 40 tickets."

"What can we get for 40 tickets?"

*peruses display* "Not much...we can't even get a deck of playing cards..."

"We could save them for the next time we come here."

"I don't come here frequently enough to make that worthwhile. Besides, I don't want to devote my life to collecting enough skee-ball tickets to purchase a novelty oversized calculator or a mountain bike. No, let's just get cheap crap and be happy."

"So...what can we get?"

"Well, we can get a paddleball toy and a set of plastic vampire fangs."

"OK."

"You should get the Vampire fangs -- I like vampire girls."

"And you get the paddleball toy?"

"Yes, I'll be the hapless Englishman out in the dead of night playing paddleball and you can be the hot vampire girl who bites me on the neck."

*laugh* "I like this plan."

[faux British accent] "Good heavens! I hope a chap can just persue his innocent paddleball hobby in peace out here in Transylvania! I'd be ever so put out if a she-vampire were to fall upon me and bite my neck..."

*bite*

"Oh dear..."

Yup. That's what gets me hot. I'm the paddleball-playing Englishman and she's a vampire...who can't really enunciate with those stupid fangs in. mmmm...hot.

Power Dynamics? Goofy. Definately goofy.
Tom

Hi,

So, we really need some sort of deity (or perhaps patron saint), whose big function is that he stops you from saying something that would land you in hot water. Not that you were intentionally shooting off your mouth, but more like you put your foot in.

The other day I was about to make a crack but didn't and moments later I realized that it would pretty much be instantly taken as an insult by the person I was going to say it to. Now, if you're me, the inside voice/outside voice editor is pretty much asleep at the switch so to have actually aborted a statement is pretty incredible. Certainly not the work of my own mortal faculties. Clearly a Higher Power is involved.

I was thinking maybe his name is Faux Pas, but that seems wrong (unless I'm giving praise that he'd spared my humble ass). Unfortunately, if the Google translator is at all good, the opposite of faux pas is Vraie Pas, and that rolls off the tongue even less easierly.

Perhaps it should be Charlie Chaplin as he ate his own shoe and remained silent.

later
Tom

ungh,

Late night product release. Back again this morning. A little loopy. And now I've got this hymn stuck in my head...

Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,
Fill our hearts with joy and peace!
Let us each, Thy love possessing,
Triumph in redeeming grace,
O refresh us,
O refresh us,
Trav'lling thro' this wilderness.

2. Thanks we give and adoration
For Thy Gospel's joyful sound.
May the fruits of Thy salvation
In our hearts and lives abound:
May Thy presence,
May Thy presence,
With us evermore be found.

3. So, whene'er the signal's given
Us from earth to call away,
Borne on angels' wings to heaven,
Glad the summons to obey,
May we, ready,
May we, ready,
Rise and reign in endless day.

"Lord, Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing"
J. Fawcett, 1773.

For a Lutheran hymn the tune is actually pretty catchy. Also, as you might guess, this is a closing hymn so when you finished it, they let you out of church. Finally, it was a short, quick song which was good in the race.

See, during the closing hymn, the two acolytes would come up, put out the candles and then exit. I felt that if we finished the song before the acolytes had finished putting out the candles then we, as a congregation, had "won" and the poor acolytes who were forced to put out the candles in our scornful silence were the "losers". So this song (especially during advent or other candle-heavy time), gave you a good shot at beating the acolytes.

I'm also pretty sure that during my time as an acolyte I always won (I wasn't so obsessive as to actually keep score). Also, I'm pretty sure the last time I went to church (which was last time I was home) I was annoyed that the closing song wasn't a winner (it was some 4-verse, 2-page affair).

whee!
Tom

Huh,

I forgot my shaving kit in Western MA this weekend.

The kit contained the electric razor that I use to shave with.

So just now I shaved with a razor for the first time in my life.

Surprisingly, I do not not look like some sort of Dick Tracy villian best described as "Laceration Face".

Huh.
Tom

I have a stuffed Cthulhu doll. This isn't the plush Cthulhu you get down at the stores, this is a hand-made stuffed Cthulhu that was made one at a time by this woman in the Midwest somewhere. I ordered a bunch for my college sci-fi group many years ago and it took months to get them all in.

Mine is blue paisely. It has evil eyes that follow you around.

I also got one for my nephew.

I have a lap top. It is how I get on this here Intarweb. Being a laptop, it gets warm after some use. It sits on a low chest next to my bed.

The cat likes warm things. It likes to sit on them. It likes to sit on my laptop. This is no good.

"Shoo! Cat! Shoo!"

But the cat, her English is not so good and she merely stares at me.

It is then that I hit upon an idea. If I put the Cthulhu doll down on the laptop, the cat cannot rest upon dread Cthulhu's non-Euclidan topology.

So my laptop is now the basalt slab upon which dread Cthulhu lies.

Ia! Ia!
Tom

Right,

So, if I ever went to Burning Man, I'd always thought it'd be cool to have something like this:



Only now imagine that it's a wee bit bigger and there's a zeppelin docked at the top.

hee
Tom

My age is showing...

Takes a minute to download, but I think it's well worth it...

Damn you, Bargle!
Tom