The Mono

It amuses me how iconic and instantly recognizeable certain video game sounds are to the majority of my generation. This came about because I heard a familiar "bwoop bwoop" from one of the little runabouts used to carry Athletics cheer squad members around to hype up their games -- it reminded me of Pac-Man. A few seconds later I heard it emit the intro music to, yes, Pac-Man.

Just hum the intro bar to Super Mario in a room full of grad students (dadada duhda DA... dum). Only the exchange students won't automatically get the theme running through their heads. Some of them will, too.

I found what is, supposedly, the secret code to make a Prius run the engine while stopped. Not having one myself, I have no way to see whether that's what it does.*

Has anybody been having trouble with getting Prii smogged, or are the California computers smart enough to recognize a hybrid and waive the idle-speed measurements?



*If it does, even if there's no need for it... it's so cool being able to hack your car like you used to hack old Capcom games. :D

I was thinking last night, "I need to pay for my lj account, it's expiring soon." Forgot about it until just now, when the expiration message hit my inbox. Sigh. At least they didn't nuke my icons.


I'm going to take a while to get used to seeing the old "Lucky's" logo everywhere. Usually, when stores get bought, they move in a name you've never heard of (see Pac Bell->SBC) or a contemporary. To see one resurrected from the dead after a couple of decades is just.... odd.


I'd totally forgotten that there's a medley of "Carmen" that was irreverently mangled performed by Spike Jones. That shows what happens when I pull out old CDs.


I need to go up and paint the floor... I got a paint chip from Ace Hardware, and when we went into the store to ask for a gallon of floor paint in the color we had selected, it took the two ladies subbing for the paint guy almost fifteen minutes to determine that they couldn't make it for us. Neither could the Pleasant Hill Sherwin-Williams store. The Concord Sherwin-Williams almost yawned and gave it to us... for $68/gallon. Ouch. Apparently floor-grade latex in a custom color is a rarity.

Not going to be ready to move in this weekend, obviously. I'll start it next week.

Today did not go as expected. That's okay.

"V for Vendetta" is a good movie. Glad I've finally seen it. A pity Alan Moore is still such a dick that he can't enjoy it.

The apple crisp can wait until tomorrow to be made... though tomorrow is a day where I don't even have expectations, just hopes. And so it goes...

I am feeling very much less unattractive at the moment. Dunno how long that's going to last, but I'll enjoy it in the meantime. Mmmm... :)



I'm just praying this isn't a harbinger of more complication in my life.

While I was driving out to the bike shop today, I was playing "spot the B box". These are the ubiquitous large metal cabinets next to the street, which are painted unassuming colors of grey, beige, or green, and which blend into their surroundings so well that they're functionally invisible. There's one every few blocks to serve the local area's telephone distribution needs... I managed to find almost all of the ones along my route across town, but with a couple of them I suddenly realized that the reason I couldn't see it was that I was staring directly at it. Thus, the game to spot the invisible.

( Bicycle chatter )

Watching CSI on my laptop while pitting dark red cherries with a knife, the juice running down my fingers and staining my hands...

I hope I don't dream too vividly tonight. :)

...pronounce "Suisun".

(I expect the locals to get it, but I'm curious about what some of the people who didn't grow up in the Bay Area/Sacramento area have to offer.)

I'm really thinking about making a car sticker/sign that says Axial tilt is the reason for the season.

Tired now. Lots of stuff to post about, haven't had any time to. I may catch up on that on Sunday.

My god, it's content.

I was watching Bullshit! last night, and it's had me thinking. Penn went on a big long rant about how easily offended people are, and how it's started limiting free speech. While I agree with him that people are awfully thin-skinned, I'm not sure I'm totally with him.

Society has started to assume that we have a right not to be offended, not to be uncomfortable. Unfortunately, that's in direct opposition to the First Amendment -- the more free speech is, the less we can protect ourselves from offense. You can't have it both ways; you can't have both as full rights.

There's also the problem of what the line is between offense and abuse. Where does harassment shade from simple irritation or discomfort to actual injury? Workplaces make for such hairy problems, but schools do too. Where do you go from saying "get over it" and start punishing the one doing harm? Who determines whether harm is being done?

I'm still mulling all this over. Comments welcome.

If you're going to be reprehensible, at least be competent.

I just wanted to express gratitude for the existence of an online English-Greek dictionary. If I want French derivatives for fictional names, I have an ancient hardbacked copy of Larousse, but we don't generally keep a Greek dictionary on hand, let alone one that does Roman alphabet.

Maybe I should do more Greek-derived person/place names, now... I had hunted it down for use in making disease names, but some of these words look too cool not to use.

I read an article a little while back about why street trees no longer grow huge and magnificent -- they get to a certain size and stay there, and you don't get the look of the old streets in Chicago and England and Paris. The brief rundown is this: the way houses are built these days, all the dirt is bulldozed off the top, the rest is packed into almost concrete, then a thin layer of topsoil is spread over everything after the houses are built. Four to six inches of imported dirt, then hardpan -- no roots can easily penetrate that packed earth, and water has trouble.

Trees need at least a foot of soil to really root well, and biiiiiig trees need to be able to put taproots down twenty feet and feeder roots down about a yard. So what do you do when all you have is six inches, max? You plant trees that are okay with that. This explains why every city I see plants loads of London Plane, which is otherwise a hideously-behaved street tree (it gets aphids which rain honeydew on cars, it lifts sidewalks and pavement like mad, and it litters the ground constantly with huge leaves, to name a few problems). The reason being, London Plane can thrive in a foot or less of depth.

So the thought I had today was...

1) There's a layer of hardpan a few inches down
2) Very few roots can penetrate the hardpan
3) London Plane trees still do very well in those conditions
4) Doing "very well" equates to becoming relatively large trees
5) which have roots only going six inches down
6) Big trees are heavy, with lots of wind resistance...

How many of these trees are going to topple straight over as soon as an unusually strong storm comes through?

What a nasty thought.

House once said of Wilson: "You love everybody. That's your pathology."

I can sympathize.




Now I need a Wilson icon.

I'm waiting for someone on lily to ask me "why is your blurb set to 'Anung un Rama'? What does that mean?"

Some of the people in -comicbooks might get it. :)

I was wandering this morning through halls that all look alike, in a cavelike place full of strange creatures and the occasional treasure. I was hungry. But I was carrying a mango.

Not many people get the reference, I realize that. But I found it amusing.

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Reality is neither always generous nor attractive.

Not the best of companions, to be sure... but then, who of us manages both all the time?

The blessing of physical landmines is they can go off only once, and are rendered harmless in the process. Emotional landmines have no such simplicity.

Glitches happen, I know, but apparently my Friends list didn't like a particular phone post. Refreshing it doesn't seem to help, so I guess I'll have to either report it... or go do my homework and see whether it gets resolved. :)

( It's kind of an amusing glitch, though. )

I seem to have been included in the Phone Circle of Happiness today. (No, I will not call it a "phone ring".)

I called eyeofcanaan, who was happy to hear from me. Then I got a call from Salim, just to chat. That was really good.

I wonder who else was in the chain.

Every facet, every department of your mind is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.

Courtesy of The Crystal Method. (No, I don't know where the sample comes from.)