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Monday, November 9th, 2009
mhaithaca
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11:53a
Best. Care package. Ever.
 I'm planning on buying some cases of decent coffee that can be brewed in our office coffee pots, to supplement the supply of crappy coffee CIT provides, and after twittering about some Community Coffee last week, I've been in touch with their sales folks about what they can sell in such forms. They kindly offered to send me some samples, and I named a few I'd like to try brewing for folks here. Look what just showed up!
The nice Community Coffee folks have said I'm welcome to share their holiday-season promo code with you. Enter "HOLIDAY" to get 20% off your order. Or, right now, use promo code "JINGLE" to get free shipping for orders of $28 or more that includes any of their holiday gift sets. (I'm guessing you can only use one code.)
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(3 comments | comment on this) Sunday, November 8th, 2009
mhaithaca
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6:32p
What time is it? (210.2)
It feels as though it should be much later in the evening than it is. Especially since I haven't been able to sleep late this weekend -- between needing to get moving for brunches with the hockey crew and needing to get the dog outside -- and thus have been up much longer than usual for a Sunday.
 I've watched several TV episodes, including two "Law & Orders," a "Good Wife," and a "Dexter," in addition to doing some raking (with Kaiya supervising) and getting some outdoor time (with her) on this improbably gorgeous Sunday afternoon. Kaiya has alternated hanging out with me watching TV and meandering off to chill on her doggie bed (which Catherine left with us for the weekend so she'd have something familiar) or at the top of the stairs. A few times she's come over and stared at me and barked, which I'm interpreting to mean "Why aren't you playing with the puppy?" I'm erring on the side of caution and taking her outside when she seems to be trying to get my attention, though she's obviously not always interested in doing so. Her way of saying she needs to go out is to pace, I'm told, and having seen it at Catherine's, I'm mostly convinced. :-)
Definitely getting hungry, though I'm not sure which leftovers I'll dive into for tonight's dinner. Also still need to come up with something for tomorrow's dinner.
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(1 comment | comment on this) Monday, November 2nd, 2009
mhaithaca
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5:56p
Dark
An awful lot of people are bitching this afternoon about the sun setting so early.
Wonder if some of them are the same folks who were insisting we should abolish Daylight Saving Time.
Maybe we should just make DST permanent. :-)
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(13 comments | comment on this) Sunday, November 1st, 2009
mhaithaca
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11:44p
Magimatic!
 While I was at my parents' house briefly this weekend, I poked through the drawers in my old room looking for something. I didn't find it, but I did find a bunch of old photos... and this camera! I'm not 100% certain it was my first, but odds are good. It was in a desk drawer, and the flash cube (!) was in a dresser drawer. I combined them for this photo. Yes, the flash cube was barely a half step above the pan of flash powder held above the photographer's head! They had four flashes, the camera rotated the cube, and when you'd flashed all four, you threw the cube out.
I brought the camera back to Ithaca, and might try finding some film for the silly thing. There was apparently a company making 126 cartridge film as recently as 2007, so I may be able to find some. I'd be astonished if I could find flash cubes, too. I had a much better film camera before I left for college, a Yashica with an electronic flash. Not sure when I got that, or, for that matter, where it is. I have a simpler 35mm camera around here somewhere, and have been playing with a friend's Mamiya. I should really finish that roll and get it back to her!
There's really a goofy number of pictures of Magimatic cameras (and maybe some pictures taken with them) on Flickr!
current music: "Brothers & Sisters"
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aethyrflux
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3:20p
wanna be a saint?
you can help me move into a new home, tonight &/or tomorrow night... i promise it will be lots of fun!
call me anytime @ 512-573-6470 for further details.
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(comment on this) Friday, October 30th, 2009
aethyrflux
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4:26p
*last minute warning*
for those of you fortunate enough to have acquired an rsvp before all 1200 were gone...
i will be playing with hipnautica @ the "Halloween at the Graveyard!" bday party for do512
if you really want to attend the party later, then show up at noon to help us setup!!!
:::afterwards, i'll be (you know where) with the rest of the underground crew:::
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mhaithaca
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1:32a
"You were great in Harry and the Hendersons!"
No, don't worry, that's not what I said when I talked to John Lithgow tonight. But I did welcome him back to town (I've known for a long time that he's got roots here and have seen him in Ithaca before) and thank him for his fantastic work on "Dexter" this season. We chatted briefly about that, and his face lit up about what a fun show it was.
I hadn't been planning to approach him, but he was looking around casually when his sister stepped away from the bar for a few minutes, and I figured that was as good a sign as any that he wouldn't mind my saying hi.
NorthStar House is off to a really good start after a few weeks, and obviously I'm glad we wandered over there tonight! I was enjoying some wine with friends who live a couple of blocks away, and we meandered to the pub for a round of drinks when Amy got a text from her friend Katie, whom I'd met there the first time we went.
I had a Bloody Mary, which was really tasty. It turns out that they roast their own tomatoes and onions, and then puree them, to make the base for their Bloody Mary. No wonder it was so delicious! I look forward to having more of those.
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(8 comments | comment on this) Thursday, October 29th, 2009
(1 comment | comment on this)
(4 comments | comment on this) Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
mhaithaca
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2:52p
Renewed for another year in the Book of Life, so to speak...
Had to get to campus two hours early this morning for my annual work-provided CPR recertification class. I was kind of alarmed to walk into the room at 8:01 and be the only one there for the 8:00 class! The instructor had been running late, had dropped all the stuff off, and had to go park, and it was ten minutes before any other students arrived. We ended up being seven out of the eight scheduled to be there.
Nothing's changed since last year, and in fact this is an instructor I've had at least once or twice before. He's engaging and funny and makes the day go smoothly, which is nice when you're crowded into a small room. Conveniently, it's our first rainy day in several; I'd have hated to sit inside and look at sunshine outside.
I was actually expecting a change; there's been lots of talk about eliminating rescue breaths from the layperson training, because they carry so much potential confusion and squeamishness that they cause significant delays. "Just do chest compressions" has been a common mantra; in reality, they should let the lungs bring enough air in that you'll get some more oxygen circulating without having to deliver the rescue breaths -- but if you can do the rescue breaths correctly and without slowing down the cycle, the patient will do better.
Having eaten breakfast two hours early, I was starving by 11:30, and had to wait another hour before we were finished and I could go for lunch. I grabbed an Italian sub at Mattin's in Duffield Hall on the way back to the office, and asked them to add cole slaw to it. I do like cole slaw on sandwiches, but it probably didn't belong on this one. That's OK.
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(comment on this) Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
mhaithaca
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8:51p
Trust me...
As impressed as I am with Windows 7, and as much as I think it's Microsoft's best OS in many years, I have to say this is one of Apple's best ads in ages, too. :-)
What's ironic is that a Mac is one of the best possible machines you can get to run Windows 7. I've run some of the pre-release versions, and we've been working with the release version for a few weeks, and Windows 7 on a Core 2 Duo or Quad Core Mac just flies. Microsoft is unlikely to say so, but they love selling full Windows licenses to Mac owners. That's far more profitable than selling a bundle edition of Windows to a cheapo computer manufacturer, or selling an upgrade to someone who owns a Dell.
The Mac camp is poking at Windows 7, but on a technological level, on a new machine, there's very little to poke at, in all honesty. It really is a decent OS, and if Windows is the way your brain works, it's a good choice. Certainly a far better idea than sticking with Vista. (If a Mac is the way your brain works, as mine is, stick with Macs and you'll still be happier.) Note that if your Windows box is old enough to have come with XP, it may not be suitable for Windows 7; if it's a year or two old, it should do fine.
Where the criticisms are valid is the nightmarish upgrade path, though. While Apple has one Mac OS X 10.6 package, at one price covering all the features in the OS, Microsoft has once again released a loony array of different editions. What's worse, whether you can smoothly install Windows 7 over your existing Windows computer setup depends both on which edition you had before and which edition you choose to buy now. If you had Windows Vista Ultimate and you choose Windows 7 Professional (or, just as likely, your IT department chooses it without asking you), you can't just install the upgrade. You have to back up your data, wipe your hard drive, install the new OS, restore all your data, and then individually reinstall all of your applications from the original CDs or downloads, and that's just nuts.
Glenn Fleishman had a good piece in TidBITS last week about the Windows 7 upgrade weirdnesses. It includes Walt Mossberg's crazy multi-column chart that shows what your upgrade path will look like.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
mhaithaca
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12:04p
MacVoices (209.0)
Chuck Joiner of the MacVoices podcast interviewed several TidBITS staff members yesterday to talk about the 1,000-issue milestone (which TidBITS reached last week) and the history of the publication. A few of the others are much more active than I am these days, but I'm the only staffer (other than Adam and Tonya) who goes back to the first few months.
Listen, download, or subscribe: MacVoices #9111.
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