Archived news items from October 2005
Since this is old news, some links may be broken.
current news
newer old news from November 2005
The Kids Oasis (which is where our kids in grades 1-5 meet for Sunday morning church) used to be in a space in the same shopping center where "big church" is, but about five businesses down. At the time we moved in to our current shopping center, it was the closest available unit of the proper size.
As of this Sunday, the Oasis has moved to the now available, more convenient and slightly cheaper space immediately adjacent to the main church's space. So yesterday I and another guy from church spent about five hours on ladders, one hour at Fry's and one miscellaneous hour trying to move one of the network drops from the old space to the new space.
It wasn't hard work, though it took us forever to figure out which of the dozens of CAT-5 cables in the plenum space was ours and how to pull it back over four existing businesses to the new location. And if our punch-down tool hadn't walked away, we could have saved a trip to Fry's. It probably would have only taken us an hour or two total. In any case, the new drop is live and already being used.
That evening, one of my bass players had a Halloween costume party at her house. I wimped out and just went in my clown get-up, since it's easy and fairly comfortable. (I'd planned to go as a pimp, but the pimp clothes are hot and fairly unpleasant to wear for very long.) I made balloon animals by request, and managed to come up with something for some unusual queries. How does one make "breasts" with merely a single regulation twisting balloon, for example? Very carefully, it seems.
The bass player's other band was present, and they provided most of the musical entertainment, though they had a sort of an open mic, and so I did a couple of songs myself before leaving moderately early. And just in the nick of time, it would seem: shortly after I left one of the attendees removed her pants to demonstrate just how much attention to detail she'd paid in dressing up as a man. Further explanation is best left to the imagination of the reader.
That or I risk causing a certain word to appear on this page again.
I've listened to the new Jason Mraz CD one and a half times so far, and I like it. I've only listened to half of the David Crowder CD, so no verdict yet. And I still haven't done any more Dance Dance Revolution, though I did get in about a three-hour nap this afternoon. Priorities, you see.
Oh, and music was fantastic this morning. I think "My Glorious" is my favorite song to play right now, assuming I've got a lead guitar player. And I'm looking forward to next Sunday's "unplugged" set, too.
Actually late Thursday night....
So I just made an impulse purchase. Driving home from band practice, I decided to stop by Wal-Mart just to see if it was in stock there yet. (It had just been released on Tuesday.) It was.
I now own Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix. For the Nintendo Gamecube. It's okay to be alarmed.
Since it's late and I don't want to wake Monday by stomping around on the second floor, I've only played a single level: the easiest one at the easiest setting. There were only 25 arrows in the entire song, and so I ended the trial with a "25 combo". I scored merely a 'B', because stepping accurately and stepping quietly are sometimes at cross purposes.
I also picked up a couple of albums, David Crowder's A Collision and Jason Mraz's Mr. A-Z, but of course I haven't made time to listen to either.
And now I intend to sleep, for what that's worth. Just thought you'd like to know. I'm probably the first kid on the block to own DDR: Mario Mix.
This past week was a busy one for me socially. Thus this weekend has found me wanting to be as antisocial as possible.
Many of you know that I'm an introvert. There are a lot of ways to explain what this means, but the simplest is this: for an extrovert, being around others charges their emotional batteries; for an introvert, being around others drains their emotional batteries.
Last Saturday night, I had a party that ran late. Sunday was church. Monday night I had dinner at a friend's house. Tuesday night was band practice with the band formerly known as Carving Angels. Wednesday night I had a meeting for church. Thursday night was church band practice, and afterward I went out to dinner with an old friend. Friday night was small group. Saturday morning (yesterday) I helped a friend move. Sunday (this morning), of course, was church.
And as always my workdays are filled with students, most of whom enjoy hanging out in my room and just being around me, I guess.
Normally I can handle this load of sociability. But by Saturday afternoon, I was just emotionally drained. I wanted to just crawl into a dark hole and rest there, alone. So I took a four-hour nap.
Anyway, I'm about to shut off the machine for the night, turn on the electric blanket, and read for a few hours before I go to sleep. Hopefully next week I'll have more evenings with no social demands so I can get adequate alone time in.
If you don't understand this business of needing to be alone, then you're probably an extrovert. You should read this article from the Atlantic Monthly: Caring for Your Introvert.
Tonight I just finished recompiling the kernel on my Linux machine and getting the wireless networking drivers updated for the new kernel. I think something's wrong with my machine, because it's been running very hot and freezing up quite a bit. I'll dig into it later, I guess.
<insert poor excuse for not updating in nearly a month>
Believe it or not, I've still got a bit of a nagging cough. Ever since ACL. It's getting a little better each week, but I haven't been sleeping enough, lately, and that always slows the recovery process.
Let's see, what's happened in the past 3+ weeks? The theatre department put on their annual fund-raiser dessert theatre, this time performing Picasso at the Lapin Agile, written by none other than Steve Martin. It was very smart and well done as always.
The band at church got togther Jars of Clay's Like a Child together with just a couple of days' notice and did it this past Sunday. It went pretty well.
Chase and Lee and Tony and I have reformed "Carving Angels" (though our name is likely to change), a band from my college days. We're meeting on Tuesday nights and working on trying to remember how to play together and decide on songs at the moment. It's fun, though I'm getting less sleep because of it. I should point out that the band name was not taken from Michelangelo's quote: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." Though it should have been.
This website was down this morning. It didn't really bother me, but apparently was a meltdown of epic proportions for my web hosting provider. I feel proud of those guys, and a little sorry. Replacing a suddenly-failing $100,000 piece of equipment has got to be a stressful day.
I'm trying to hack together a script in AutoIT to automatically synchronize my grades from my own gradebook (does what I want) to the school's web-based gradebook (unweildy, but required). It'll be a gross hack, but oh, the glory if I get it working. The glory!
Finally, I'll pass on the recommendation of my brother for a web comic I'm digging right now: Dinosaur Comics. The writing is good and the issues surprisingly deep. And the art? Let's just say it's consistently good....
I don't even know how many days I've ridden my bike since the last update. Not many.
September 2005
archive index (for dates back to March 1998)
