Milestones

This blog has devolved a little too much into a "what dorky computer thing I did today" chronicle, so this post will be devoted to non-geeky things.

Yesterday I had my last Principles of Epidemiology class, so all I have left this semester is a take home exam. Overall I'd say the class was a good learning experience, both in teaching me about epi and teaching me about what I want out of a graduate program. I'm still totally conflicted about grad school and if I actually want to do an MPH or enter the public health field at all, but at least now I have somewhat of an idea of what I'm in for.

James graduates next Saturday with his Masters in Theater Studies. He's going to have a graduate degree! This degree was the whole point of our move to Tucson, and I'm really proud of his accomplishment and the great work he's done here. If anyone is looking for an expert on Albee, the American Dream, or any number of other esoteric theater topics, I've got the perfect candidate for you.

In other graduation news, Sarah is getting her BA in International Affairs from George Washington University in a few weeks. I officially feel old now that my little sister is graduating from college. I mean didn't I just start college about 5 minutes ago?

Finally, Jackie and Mason got married April 15th. Their wedding was absolutely beautiful - overlooking the ocean in San Diego. Later that night they had a Pirates vs. Ninjas party, which was fantastically fun. And I got to see all my peeps, which was awesome. We also went to the San Diego zoo, went out for some of the best Indian food I've had in a while, and swung by Chino to visit James' grandparents on the way home. I've attached a picture of me, Gracie and James at the party and a picture of Jackie and Mason looking all marital.

Morning Roundup

From the Interwebs this morning:

Actually cool - Yahoo Farechase. Now you don't have to search multiple discount airline sites. Yahoo Farchase does it for you. And has all kinds of other useless bells and whistles. I personally like that their "choose a departure time" feature actually works, so I can make sure my flights don't leave before 7 am.

And a hillarious parody of Web 2.0 featuring my all time favorite Internets innovation, the blink tag. Web 2.1 sever side blink tag

And in case you haven't read the hype on Web 2.0, here's a brief introduction. I think it's mostly a load of crap for those of us who still have traditional websites to run instead of chasing venture capital, but I'm willing to beg, borrow or steal any idea that might make my life easier or my site better. Thanks giant XML!

It's official

I'm obsessed with World of Warcraft. Like all I'm thinking about right now is going home to start some auctions and level up my tailoring. The only thing stopping me from doing it right now is that running WoW via Remote Desktop tanks the connection and generally messes everything up.

Three months or so into playing, I have a lvl 24 mage and a lvl 28 druid. But then I decided I hate my druid and don't enjoy playing the character. So I've started a new mage to be my main. Her name is Pamplemousse and she's way cute. I'll post a screen shot when I get a chance.

Just some stuff

It's 71 in Tucson right now, and only expected to hit 81 today. That's downright chilly for late April here. I'm going to do something after work to take advantage of the nice weather. Like, you know, play computer games.

I found this Wikipedia entry on "leetspeak". It's maybe the funniest thing I've ever read. Note the totally egregious misuse of the word sociological.

My doctor's office called me this morning at 7:40 to cancel an appointment. In what world is 7:40 a reasonable time to call me? The world where I leave for work at 8? Irrelevant I say! I wasn't planning on getting up until 8:05, so I got back into bed and slept until 9.

I'm an official freak about timezones. I used to not care, because no one who lives in the Eastern time zone needs to care. Everything is calibrated to the East Coast. But now I live in Mountain Standard Time. Always MST, because we don't observe daylight savings time. One of my top ten pet peeves is the misuse of "standard time" when one really means daylight time. Last week Blogger said they were going down at 4 pm PST. Which of course was a lie, because it's Daylight Time right now, and they went down at 4 pm PDT. So I wrote to them, being a timezone freak and all. And today their scheduled outage posting is for 4 pm PDT. I feel so vindicated.

Thoughts on Software

So yesterday I was signed in on a computer where I am not a local administrator, and I tried to use what I call the "calendar" in Windows that you can access by double clicking on the taskbar clock. I was confronted with the error message "You do not have sufficient privileges to change the system time." Huh? But I want to look at the calendar!

I thought it was kind of funny because it occurs to me that it really is the "control panel" to change the system time, and I doubt when they programmed it that anyone was thinking of it as "the calendar". But I use it that way all the time. So does one of my coworkers. I mean, if the developers were thinking of it this way, they would make it so you can still use the calendar features but not be able to commit any time changes.

This happens to me CONSTANTLY with software. In fact, now that I've realized there are "actual humans" programming these things, I often send in feature requests when I bump up against something in software that drives me crazy. For example, in Microsoft's FrontPage, you can't use their hyperlink tool from code view. Well, maybe I imagined that or am losing my mind, but I swear you used to not be able to, but I just did it a minute ago when I went to confirm it. Thunderbird doesn't have a "send this message at a certain future time" feature, and as far as I can tell, there's no extension that does it either. I can't find a single calendar app that does what I want it to do (easy to create events from email, multiple to-do lists, email reminders/confirmations, indexed search - I hope Google is listening since they have 3 of the 4 already). In fact, off the shelf products can be so infuriating sometimes, I totally understand the impulse to just come up with your own solution. But I'm not really up for writing a calendaring application, so I'll just sit here whining about it instead.

OMGWTFBBQ!

I'm so pissed off at Thunderbird right now. Its "adaptive spam filter" has been catching my Orbitz deal detector emails. So a week and a half ago, my plane ticket to Sarah's graduation would have been $214 - had I actually gotten the email and booked my flight. This week I bought my ticket for $286. How exactly is it $72 more to book a ticket this week than last week? Sigh. I really shouldn't complain. I'm flying out of Tucson and using a bizarre configuration of airports into and out of DC and don't have to fly in or out of BWI. But still, what exactly prompted my spam filter to catch that of all emails? It hates me, that's why.

A while ago I was talking to Sarah and she told me her New Year's Resolution was to "stop attaching excessive meaning to inanimate objects". I thought that was the funniest thing I've ever heard, but I guess if I'm pissed off at my email software, it wouldn't be a bad resolution for me either. Except I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions - apparently I was so vehement about it when James and I were first dating that he's been afraid to make resolutions and tell me about it ever since for fear of me thinking he is "feeble minded" or something like that.

Windows on Intel Macs

Ooh, two consecutive Apple posts.

I spend a decent amount of time at work doing Macintosh desktop support. I have this duty based on the fact that in college, I was a Mac user. So even though I used to love my Mac, I currently have a lot of disdain for Macs and their users. Especially since as tech support, I rarely encounter a Mac that is working correctly, leading me to believe that Apple is selling a bunch of permanently broken computers.

But the other day I had a Mac user ask me for a text only HTML editor, and I got to wax rhapsodic about BBEdit, which is hands down the single best piece of software I have ever used. It's SO GOOD, I've been thinking about moving all my web development work over to my Mac. The only thing stopping me is that my Mac is kinda sucky in comparison to my Windows machine and the PITA factor of working on two different operating systems constantly can't be overlooked. Oh, and my boss would mock me mercilessly. And all my database stuff is stranded on Windows, at least for the time being.

But now that Apple has announced that their Intel Macs will be natively dual bootable into Mac OS X and Windows, I think it's fair to say I'll be seriously considering a Mac as my next non-work computer. I'm not even sure I'd boot it into Windows that often.

Apple Store Adventure

A few weeks ago I decided that I just enjoy the mudane details of everyday life more than your average person. I think everything I do is just so interesting. I'd like to claim it's some sort of Buddhist "in the moment" sort of thing, but I think it really just comes down to me being easily amused and narcissistic.

Yesterday my iPod decided to take a vow of silence, apparently to protest my attempts to use it to transfer data from work to home. It stopped speaking Windows. Despite some gentle reassurances that I would let it go sit next to my iMac for companionship (Apple has made it quite clear that they only sell anthropomorphized electronics that have feelings and make sad faces instead of giving you those cold, impersonal error messages. So I thought some positive reinforcement and spending some time with another happy Mac might do it some good. I also considered trying to feed it some Prozac through the dock connector, but it appears that despite the iPod's tendency toward emotional instability, Apple has not yet added antidepressant capabilities to it.) it still insisted on crashing Windows Explorer and iTunes every time it was connected to the computer. So off to the Apple Store I went.

The Apple Store is not actually in Tucson, because your average resident of Tucson is not classy enough to be a Mac owner. I had to drive up into the foothills and arrived at an open air mall that had VALET PARKING. Do they have a shuttle bus to take you the 15 feet from Talbots to Crate and Barrel too? I don't see how valet parking could possibly be relevant in a mall situation. We're in the middle of a drought, but this place is covered in non-native (and therefore thirsty) plants and had fountains everywhere. Upscale retail is creepy. Anyway, I go to the Apple store and they replace my sick iPod with a new one. Mission accomplished.

Since I was halfway into the Santa Catalinas, I drove home on 1st Ave because it avoids having to drive down a twisty mountain road. On my drive down 1st Ave, I noticed all sorts of new things. I finally drove by the hideous apartments that were recently built and had only ridden past on my bike and now know they are at 1st and Wetmore. One of the pawn shops was bought out by SuperPawn and is proudly advertising that they are "Under New Management". Yeah, I'm sure that will really help clean up the pawn shop's image. I passed one of my favorite Tucson businesses, the House of Hubcaps. Seriously, that never gets old. I laugh every time. The Woods public library has some sort of neon sign I'd never noticed before, confirming my suspicions that 1st has special zoning regulations that require garish, hideous, and preferably glowing signage.

I drove back to work to put some files onto New iPod, and when I left the office my car barely started. I drove home and it died in the parking lot of our apartment complex. This is the third time the Trashmobile has died in the past two weeks, and it's beginning to get a little old. The first time there was something actually wrong with it, but the second and third times are because the DEALERSHIP BROKE MY CAR! Sigh. Hopefully they will fix it today.

An unusually mundane day

Can something be unusually mundane? By definition, no. So I guess I'm having an ordinarily mundane day. Oh, the mundanity!

The most exciting thing that has happened today is that I found the PHP function I've been looking for to finish writing a form processing script. I'm so excited I could fall asleep. Or maybe I'm just tired.

Now I'm going to go read a book about Javascript. The day is getting more and more exciting by the minute.

End of an era

Tonight Fox is airing the last four episodes of Arrested Development. I'm going to forgo the excitement that is the Winter Olympics opening ceremony to watch them. I then have an hour and a half blocked out for mourning the loss of my dear offbeat television comedy.

Ever since the beginning I've known it was too good to be true. Anything that I find as funny as Arrested Development can never last on network television. Seriously, I should be a one woman test audience to predict doomed shows. Apparently Showtime is in talks to pick up the show, but it's far from a done deal.

This is going to be a rough TV season end for me. I'm losing Arrested Development, Alias and The West Wing plus Six Feet Under earlier this year. Actually, now that I write that, it doesn't seem nearly as bad. The West Wing should have been cancelled when Aaron Sorkin left the show and has sucked since Season 5. Alias is past its prime, although I think a Spy Daddy spinoff would be fantastic. I miss Six Feet Under a lot, but at least HBO didn't let it drag on like they are with The Sopranos.

Things I hate

In no particular order, complete with ordinal numbers to confuse the matter:

1. web apps that don't tab correctly
2. the turn of the century
3. my new computer monitor
4. the overcrowded bike racks at my apartment complex
5. paranoia
6. pharmaceutical reformulation patents
7. websites that require registration
8. del.icio.us
9. decorative fruit trees
10. end-user license agreements
11. Mondays
12. IE specific Javascript
13. people who don't know how to drive safely near cyclists
    

New Glasses

I got new glasses yesterday. I'm back to plastic frames and I think they are pretty damn cute. But the part you look through is way smaller than my old glasses, so I'm getting used to that. I've also felt like everything has been about 2 inches closer than it really is, and I'm hoping that is me getting used to new glasses and not some sort of rift in the space-time continuum. I'll attach a picture when I get non-lazy enough to actually take one.

The eye doctor said I should take my glasses off when I'm working at the computer or reading to prevent me from getting more nearsighted. Uh....problem is I can't really see my computer screen that well without my glasses on. And then I forget to put them back on and walk down the hallway and someone says hi to me and I don't know who they are. So I might have to settle for the inevitability of my eyes getting worse. Apparently the human eye wasn't designed to spend 90% of its time focusing on something 18 inches away.

Material Girl

I used to be a little obsessed with the attainment of material goods, but as I've gotten old and wise, that has faded quite a bit. I still have a few obsessions (yarn, bike stuff, yoga dvds I have no intention of ever doing) but overall I just don't buy that much stuff anymore.

That being said, I occasionally have serious thing-lust. For example, I lust after all varients of iPods even though I already have a perfecty functional iPod. One of my latest lusts is t-shirts. I really want these t-shirts from threadless.com:

Actually, Threadless sells out of designs all the time, so I just ordered "The Communist Party". I'm taking a wild guess on fit, but I think it will probably work. $17 for a t-shirt pretty much blows my clothing budget for the next two months, but I'll probably survive. Too bad though, I also really want the "Hugs Not Drugs" t-shirt I saw at Target. That's the next in my t-shirt collection, although it is of lower priority because I can't wear it to work. I'm still deciding on the work appropriateness of the commies.

Update: She who hesitates is without a cool t-shirt. I put the shirt into my shopping cart and then had a huge debate with myself over ordering a second shirt. As I was falling asleep last night, I remembered I'd never placed the order and thought about getting up to do it. Alas, when I got to work this morning, "The Communist Party" was completely sold out. I requested a reprint, although I'm sure I'll be waiting a while.

Update again: I guess Threadless made some sort of inventory error, because I just checked again and they had it in stock! Hooray!

Hello, readers!

Well, the word is out. Hi peeps! I apparently have some readers now. I'm a fair-weather blogger, so don't be surprised if I don't update for months at a time. I mean I've only made 20 posts in a year. But I'm a little excited to have people reading. Cool!

Victor Garber

Victor Garber is the only celebrity who I have ever wanted to write a fan letter to. If I ever wrote that fan letter, it would read something like this:

Dear Victor Garber,
You make me happy to be alive.
Love, Heather

For those of you who don't know, he is best known currently for his role of Spy Daddy Jack Bristow on the television show Alias. The quotes are so mundane that I won't even bother to repeat them - his magic is all in the delivery. Rent the DVDs, especially the Pilot where Sydney's finacee calls Spy Daddy for his blessing. It's classic.

He also recieved an Emmy nomination this past year for his guest appearance on Will and Grace. Just picturing him saying "It's sinfully delicious" almost makes me die laughing.

James got me the best birthday gift ever this past year, which was an autographed Victor Garber Alias trading card. It's shiny and metallic, but more importantly, it has been touched by the One True Garber. I have it in a frame and briefly considered putting it on my desk at work (which is woefully underdecorated, with a Penny Arcade comic, a stolen social norms campaign poster, a poster of an Intel 386 processor with a real 386 processor stuck to it, and a birthday card from my coworkers) but then I decided that I would have a hard time expressing why a television show trading card was such a cherished posession. I mean without sounding creepy and obsessed. Because I am creepy and obsessed.

Things I learned today

I learned and did some cool things today! I feel smart!

First, I learned how to pass command line parameters to an application in Windows XP from the GUI. You make a shortcut, then go view the shortcut's properties. On the target line, after the actual target to execute (like C:\Heather\whatever.exe) you put a space and then add the parameters. So it looks like this: C:\Heather\whatever.exe -do -this.

When you combine this with the ability to add a keyboard command to a shortcut (also under Properties), you can pretty much conquer the world. Or at the very least launch and minimize your calendar to the system tray with a keyboard command. I already have keyboard commands for all my frequently used folders, which is a huge click saver.

Other computer related stuff: I upgraded to Thunderbird 1.5, which broke all my extensions but seems to be a big step in the right direction, especially the inline spell check and the ability to delete attachments from IMAP messages. I also installed the minimize to tray extension for Firefox and an app that minimizes Sunbird to the tray as well. Sunbird is actually a lot better than the old Thunderbird calendar extension, although I'm looking forward to an actual release of Lightning, an extension that will integrate the two.

A final Mozilla note: a quick check at my webpage stats at work reveal that Firefox is now up to 12.5% of our users. Even my parents are using it. If that's not a bad sign for Internet Explorer, I don't know what is.

Oh God....

I installed World of Warcraft on my computer. I fired up James' guest account. I created two characters. I played with James and later with Ted. I'm pretty sure life as I used to know it is over. I'm seriously considering buying the full game. I'm seriously considering spending $15 of my money per month to engage in this timesuck of an activity.

The folks at WoW are pretty smart. I know nothing about other MMORPGs, but there is a very big social component to the game. You can group and play with friends. You can chat in game with just your group, or with just your friends. Lately James has been playing with two of MY friends. He talks to my friend Jackie WAY more than I do, and I was beginning to feel left out. To them, the solution was obvious: I needed my own account.

Uh, no. I hate video games, especially 3D ones, because I always run into walls. The utter pointlessness of games is never lost on me, even 12 hours into playing SimCity when I'm fretting over the gravity of my traffic control problems and cursing my Sims for not taking the damn bus. It's just not my cup of tea.

Except that it is. After a few hours of running into cacti, I began to get the hang of it. I begin to like it. I begin to run AROUND things instead of into them. I make plans to upgrade some of my computer components (thanks Ted!). It's all over. I'm hooked.

Insomnia

I've been having a hell of a time sleeping at appropriate times lately. Being in the wrong time zone is exacerbating matters, meaning that I'm sitting here at 2:24 am typing on my lame blog, hoping the one person I know on Skype will sign on. I should go meditate or just try getting in bed, but lately intertia seems to take over around midnight. Oh well, it's only midnightish Tucson time.

We're in New England for Christmas, or the "holiday closure" as the U of A would say instead of saying they are forcing us to take vacation time this week. We spent most of Saturday travelling, then were at my parents' house in Massachusetts until this morning. Today we drove from their house to James' parents house in Maine. Friday evening we swing by Boston en route to NYC to see Sweeny Todd on Saturday. Saturday night we return to Massachusetts just long enough to turn around and go back to the airport to fly home Sunday morning. It's felt a little whirlwind so far, but it is fanastic to see our families.

While I was at my parents', my childhood friend Becca came to visit with her new baby Arianna. Well, Ari's actually been here for 10 months, but it was the first time I got to meet her. She is of decidedly above average cuteness, and at least for 6 hours yesterday was very well behaved and non-fussy. She's the kind of infant who could totally dupe an unsuspecting individual into thinking parenthood could be a good idea. Photographic cuteness evidence is attached.

El Tour Wrap Up

Saturday was my big charity bike ride, El Tour de Tucson. It's 109 miles around the perimeter of Tucson. I've ridden 104 miles before, but it took me something like nine and a half hours and involved things like sitting at picnic tables and eating turkey sandwiches. El Tour is THE big deal bike ride for cyclists in Tucson, and it's kind of the culmination of the season, even though you can pretty much ride year round in Tucson.

The start was seriously intimidating. Being me, I only managed to drag my sorry self to the start line with about 15 minutes to spare. James did some last minute number pinning and unloaded my bike while I kept myself busy by being confused and nervous. I lined up in the silver section and pretty soon we were off. The start went much more smoothly than I anticipated and everyone in my section gave everyone else lots of room.

I joined a paceline with some Team in Training folks from Central California. They were good riders and lots of fun to ride with. We planned to stop at the first rest stop, but somehow I missed it and lost them. The next 25 or so miles was spent looking for people to draft without much success. Finally I met up with a guy from Phoenix whose name I forgot within seconds of him telling me, and we rode together for a while.

The ride is great especially because the intersections are controlled and bikes pretty much get to go no matter what. The flip side is it's a really bad day to be driving in Tucson. James and I were supposed to meet in a parking lot at Oracle and Rancho Vistoso. I arrived within minutes of my planned arrival time and hung around for about 20 minutes. As it turns out, James was stuck in El Tour traffic at that very intersection that whole time. We missed each other, and poor James spent the whole day driving around looking for me and never finding me.

At this point I've totally given up on making it in 7 hours to get a girly gold award thing. I rode solo a while, rode and chatted with some people, and generally had a fun time. I had plenty of energy the whole time and generally was in less pain than I usually am on training rides. I'll chalk it up to adrenaline.

The best part of the ride was definitely the final push up my old nemesis, Silverbell. I stopped at a rest stop just after Rattlesnake pass to fill my bottles and take off my armwarmers. I had a bizarre conversation with a volunteer who tried to tell me that it was "all downhill from here" and that we were currently at a higher elevation than the start. I knew this wasn't true at all, and argued with him for a minute. But then I looked at my watch and realized I had a chance of making it in my original goal time of 7 hours. So I hopped back on my bike and was off. I was still looking for people to draft with me, and I asked this guy who had been with me for the past few miles if he wanted to pull each other in. He said sure, and I mentioned we could probably make it in 7 hours, and he got really excited about helping me meet my goal. So Val and his friend Warren from Durango Colorado hammered all the way up Silverbell letting me draft most of the way. I did a few short pulls, and we were really hustling. It's the fastest I've ever ridden that section of Silverbell. Heather 1, Silverbell 0. Alas, we got stopped at stoplights three times, and finished in 7 hours, 1 minute and 12 seconds. I'm pretty happy with that result. I was shocked that I made it that quickly, and now I'm excited to see how fast I can do it next year.

Jonathan finished in just under 6 hours, so he got gold and won the recumbent division.

Here's a picture of me at Rattlesnake Pass. I still have my armwarmers on, but it's probably 70 degrees.

Soy yogurt

I haven't eaten soy yogurt in six years. The reason I know this is because it roughly coincides with when I met James. Not that James got me to stop eating soy yogurt, but because I remember that when I met him, I was on a Jackiesque food kick involving soy yogurt, lemon-ginger echinacea juice, and baby carrots.

This morning I ate breakfast, which is notable in itself. But the real surprise of the morning came in how much soy yogurt (or "cultured soy" as it is apparently called) has improved in the past 6 years. Not once did I think I was eating cherry flavored tofu or rotten soymilk. It tasted like a less tangy yogurt. Damn, I might even go buy some more.