I meant to go to sleep early last night but I saw that there was a new version of ip_filter (version 4.1) and foolishly decided to try installing it. Fortunately, I was able to uninstall it and had an older version of ip_filter sitting around. Unfortunately, there are a lot of versions of ip_filter that don’t run well on my SPARC. It’s all kind of iffy. Anyway, the version I had was broken and I was off the net from around 11:30PM until 7PM today. Not that big a deal except I get a fair amount of junk email and my sister’s web site gets a lot of hits.
So, there you go. Things are back to normal, or geek-normal anyway.
And I figured out why the Pet Shop Boys CDs were so cheap. They aren’t as good as I had hoped. DJ Rob Swift was a great find.
As a guy, I’m not into shopping. It’s not about the getting, it’s about having the toys. Well, I suppose there are lots of things I thought about buying for a long time before I actually bought them, but it’s not something that interests me for very long. So when I went to buy CDs today, I thought it would be easy. But then I found out that a used double CD was $16 at CD Warehouse. If it’s scratched, it’s $12. That’s a little more than I thought it would be. So I went to Music Millennium and bought new CDs. Two Pet Shop Boys CDs were $11 each and DJ Rob Swift — they were playing the CD while I was there — was $14. And all I wanted to do was buy one Pet Shop Boys CD.
I guess all the super-cheap internet CD prices are gone.
I guess I’ll have to give them more than a couple of days. I called my prescription in on Friday and they called my home phone instead of my cell phone. I walked in expecting nothing and I got nothing. But they did tell me to come back on Monday. So today I went in and they’d called my home phone again. The pharmacy tech was a nice guy (as are most of them) and told me they didn’t have my cell phone on record. But I gave my cell phone number to the surly lab tech late last year. Well, I guess surly is as surly does.
I think I’ve decided not to keep trying to find the Pepsi with the iTunes caps. I saw the Pepsi delivery guy this morning and he hasn’t seen the caps, either. If he hasn’t seen them, I’m sure they’re not in town yet. Maybe they’re all in bigger markets. Well, I’ve been meaning to buy more CDs now that I have a job anyway.
I’ve had cramps in my thighs that interrupted my sleep, and Saturday morning I had a cramp in my calf. I’ve heard that my Gleevec can cause cramps, but I also get cramps if I quit running. I’ve been just walking 35-40 minutes to work or back or both. That doesn’t seem to be cutting it.
I had to get up early this morning to check out some property my friend Larry is thinking of buying. It’s way up in the hills above Woodland, Washington. Now why would anyone want to increase their commute to over an hour each way? For Larry it’s because it’s a good site for ham radio antennas, way up on a hilltop. I’d much rather let someone else buy the property and visit them to use the radio.
Oh, and on a bad note, my sister did NOT get a ‘flu shot and she either has the ‘flu or the stomach ‘flu. Either way, she’s feeling poorly. I hope she feels better soon.
Well, my blood is overshooting the target range and my white blood cell and platelet counts are a little low. I guess this is expected. The bad news is that my sister isn’t a match for a bone marrow transplant. My doctor seems to think that the Gleevec is good enough that I don’t need to be worried. I hope he’s right!
Today the whining of the guy who has too many songs on his hard disk consists of the complaint that there is no way of easily transferring songs from one computer to another. I suppose this is to keep you from stealing music, but sheesh. I just want to move everything to a new hard drive. How hard is this? Very hard.
Oh, well. I’m too sleepy to think about this much more today.
The joys of technology. I haven’t completely figured out my iPod yet and so that means I have to scroll through hundreds of CDs to find one that I can sort of tolerate. Funny, since I bought all these intolerable CDs in the first place.
And work has been keeping me from running, and instead of getting a Charley horse in my calves like I usually do when I suddenly stop running, I got one in my quadriceps. That kept me from sleeping well last night. The first time I got up was 4:04. If you recognize that number, you’re a web geek.
And, since someone asked, I’m working for Verinform doing database coding. It’s a small company and has a practical solution to an identified problem (see how vague I’m being) unlike some of the internet companies I’ve worked for.
And I’ve been hitting all the local convenience stores looking for the Pepsi bottles with the iTunes sweepstakes thing but I haven’t seen one of them yet. I’ll keep looking.
Not having all that free time to screw around is pretty harsh. 🙂 So far, I’m kind of confused and getting less confused all the time about what the job is about, but I think the ramp-up time will be lots shorter than larger companies with more distributed workloads and more places to, well, hide.
Got my iPod today, and I can use it on my pitifully short commute. I’ve taken the bus twice and I’ve walked once and I’ve found the following:
Day
To Work
From Work
2/2
Got a ride
Walk – 35 min
2/3
Bus – 40 min
Bus – 35 min
So far, it takes longer to wait for the bus than to just get off my fat duff and start hiking. Which doesn’t seem to make any sense, because the times I’ve walked back I’ve always been passed by the bus. I guess I’ll have to try to catch the bus closer to peak commuting times when they come more often. I’m sure it’s a little quicker to ride than to walk, but there’s not that much difference.
I’ve decided the first song I listen to has to be “Oh, Sherry” by Steve Perry. Now to win some songs from the iTunes store by buying Pepsi…
So I was going to see my friend Craig sing on Friday night, but I blew it off since I was tired, lazy, and not supposed to drink. Anyway, I went home and kept quiet instead of going out, and I feel pretty lame.
Well, the drought broke today and I had one whole beer today. It didn’t bother my stomach and it helped me make it through the tedious first quarter of the SuperBowl. But there were some interesting commercials and a better football game than many were expecting. Some of the best ads were from Portland. The Trunk Monkey rocks. Too bad they don’t have the latest commercial.
The best part is that they’re shorter than the Ian Rankin book my ex-girlfriend lent me. Both are good, but at least with comic books I don’t have to think about who is doing the death and dismemberment for days on end. In the comic books I get to see in in vivid color, and it’s some villain who is going to see the bottom of Batman’s boot. Well, I’m almost finished reading all the books I have, so it’s time to find some more.
I guess we found out this morning just how long my dad has to stand in the shower to empty the hot water heater. A 20-minute shower is about as much as our new 50-gallon hot water heater can handle. We used to have an 80-gallon hot water heater but the salesman at the plumbing supply convinced me we didn’t need one so large. Serves me right for trusting him.
My blood counts look back to normal and I can stop taking that darn allopurinol. That means I can probably start drinking again, but the doc wasn’t too happy when I asked if I could start back up. Don’t know if that’s because of my leukemia or because drinking is linked to cancer in general.
I guess I can lay off if I have to. So much for living a normal life, though.
Well, I won’t say that much about the company, since I haven’t signed the offer letter, but it’s a development job in downtown Portland. Yay! And I got the job because of a recommendation from my friend who works there already. Double yay!
I already ordered an iPod (the 40GB iPod is on sale at Buy.com, and it’s almost never on sale). I was planning on buying it to celebrate: finishing my Master of Science in Computer Science, getting close to 40, and getting a job. Now the third part of the triptych is complete!
