Various and Sundry Items of Interest

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

I don't know if this embed will work, but this is kind of cute...

(nope, didn't work...)

Cats doing agility? Really?

A neat music video based on OSX.

A somewhat-blurry video of Alyssa trying to count to ten. She gets there. Eventually.

Last night after dinner, I realized Alyssa had a stinky diaper, so I changed it. It was warm in the living room, and she would be taking a bath in an hour, so I figured she could walk around without pants and the world wouldn't come to an end.

She got off the couch (I change her on the couch cos it's soft), walked to the middle of the room, and took off her diaper.

( you can stop here if you don't care about baby accomplishments )

So hilarious.



At least, it's funny to me.

I posted a whole passel of pictures and videos from last weekend's Florida trip over on the Flickr. Go forth and enjoy.

There's also a cute new one of Alyssa filling out a form at the bank.

A funny thing happened Friday night at Best Buy that I forgot to mention:

I was at the Best Buy returns counter and said to the cashier, "this thing doesn't work on my phone, so I'd like to return it, please." We chatted for a while, and then I said, "well, it'd probably work on my wife's phone."

She turned to Jenni and said "oh, what kind of phone do you have."

We both chuckled. "That's not my wife."

The cashier turned quite red at that.

Anyway, onward.

Woke up Saturday, watched an episode of "Californication" on my phone, then raided Jenni's kitchen to make her breakfast (and she didn't even have to sleep with me to get it... go figure!). She enjoyed it. I tried to fix her router and computer, but to no avail, and then met her brother's girlfriend (her friend), who is nice. We took some photos, then it was off to the toll roads to see laurachicken.

Of course, all the construction in Orlando meant I'd be bound to mess something up. They've changed the Conway Toll Plaza for the construction, so if you want to get off at 436, you go around the plaza and down a special ramp.

That doesn't have a change-provided lane.

Crap.

I only had 50 cents (needed 75). Since Florida allows three toll skips per month before you get ticketed, and since it was only May 3, odds were good that I won't get ticketed.

Here's hoping.

Got to Laura's, picked her up, and we went to Royal Thai, a great Thai restaurant we always used to go to with Jen and company. It was yummah.

We also went to the Orlando Fashion Square Mall like a couple of teenagers with nothing better to do. It's very different now; more lingerie stores and salons, and the Babbage's I used to work in is gone now (it's now a Gamestop in EB's old spot). I went in looking for the right headphones or connectors for my phone.

First kiosk? Nothing.

Second kiosk? Nothing.

Third kiosk (a Sprint store)? SUCCESS! He had an HTC plug and, when I plugged my headphones into the LG 3.5-to-2.5 converter and the converter into the plug, I got stereo Jet Li action (I had "The One" on my phone).

Of course, the LG converter wasn't for sale, so it was off to Radio Shack. Their converter turned out to not be stereo-capable.

Fortunately, the Sprint guy threw in the LG converter because he couldn't figure out how to sell it to me. Yay!

Then back to Laura's to meet her cats and sit on her couch and talk.

She's very pretty. Just so you know.

But all things must end, and at 4:00, it was time to go to Longwood and meet up with Louis and Adam in advance of Sethual Chocolate's Bachelor Party Extravaganza.

More on that later.

I just love the opening.

After a brief wait at the ground transportation area, a bus took me and 10 of my new closest friends to Thrifty rental cars, where we all waited in line for one of three associates to assign us vehicles.

My wild-card rate ($2 more than intermediate guarantees you an intermediate or better, which could include SUVs or convertibles) got me a Sebring four-door. Not a bad vehicle, but I've driven better. I did a microblog of it on my Twitter.

Took some pictures, just in case, and headed out to the Beeline (I will NEVER stoop so low as to call it the "Beachline").

$2.25 and eight miles later, I was on the Turnpike. 20 miles later, I got off at SR-50 West, where I found that the E-Pass (electronic toll) lane was on the RIGHT. Almost got creamed moving over, but I made it.

Jenni lives a LONG way out from the city. Once I got off the Turnpike, I had to go another 10 miles down 50 and 27 to get to her neighborhood -- the photos I took are likely to be titled "They Paved Paradise" or "And the Lord Said, 'Let There Be Planned Housing'". It's a nice development, but every house looks almost exactly the same.

Got there about the same time she did. Hugs were exchanged. I met her new dog, Henry, who is very jealous (more on that later) and we bummed around the house for about an hour and a half before going to the Citrus Tower for dinner.

Now, on the plane I had learned that my Bluetooth headphones don't work on planes. Jenni and I trooped off to Best Buy at the Winter Garden Village (used to be orange groves, as so much of west Orange county was once). Best Buy doesn't let you try things in sealed packages, so after walking around and looking at appliances and DVDs for half an hour, I paid, then opened the package.

No success.

So I returned it. Literally five minutes after I bought it.

Then we had ice cream -- Cold Stone, that is. Chocolate ice cream with cherry pie filling folded into it... yummah!

Got back to her house a little before 11 and changed into pajamas, then hung out on the couch, watching Comedy Central on her DVR.

Henry seemed afraid that I would be supplanting him.

He's a loving dog to begin with, and after some initial prickliness, he and I got on very well, but he was right between us the whole time, hanging on her, rolling on his back, letting us both rub his belly, but he kept pushing at me as if to say "you can't have her; she's mine!"

Someday she's going to get married, and Henry's going to have to learn that he can't always sleep in her bed.

Anyway, I started nodding off around midnight and went to bed. In the guest room, so don't anybody think I was up there to fool around. Besides, that ship sailed in 1997.

I produced this.

GTA IV Hits Stores.

I didn't shoot or edit, but I was the producer. That counts, right?

I haven't forgotten about writing about my trip. Just been too busy. Sorry.

If you've been following me on Twitter, you have already seen a ton of updates as I chronicled my trip to Florida. But since Jenni doesn't have wireless that I can get on (and all her neighbors have passwords), I'm writing this on my phone. Please pardon any misspellings and such.

THE FLIGHT

I'd thought that leaving home at 10 would give me plenty of time. I wouldn't say "plenty", in retrospect, but I got to the train only 10 minutes later than I'd planned.

Apparently MARTA (mass transit) has raised the cost of a single round trip by a dollar. Plus you now have to use a card, instead of tokens. Still worth it, though... parking was only $4 per day, instead of $7 or more for airport or off-site.

Used the ride to read the latest "Hub", the latest fiction from Futurismic (a thought-experiment: what will happen in China 20 or so years after the abort-the-girl-babies epidemic), and a short (and not exceptional but not bad) story by Debra Doyle, half the author team that writes the Mageworlds saga that I enjoy so much.

Except for the train spending a few extra minutes at Lindbergh, the ride was fine. At the airport, I joined the throng heading eastward to Security. The line moved pretty fast until I was actually directed to a screening machine. But even that wasn't unbearable.

What did worry me was that, although my ticket said Orlando, flight 233 was listed as going to Ft. Lauderdale. This especially worried me because of the fiasco I went through when booking the flight and somehow ending up on a nonstop to FLL, instead of the flight that stops in Orlando first.

There was no gate agent but a rather nice fellow traveler reassured me that yes, we would indeed be stopping in Orlando first.

A Burger King meal and bottled water later, and I was ready to board.

A brief aside: y'know who benefits most from the idiotic rules on liquids? Not the terrorists; the sundry shop owners. $2 for a bottle of water? At least it was a decent-sized one.

Anyway, as usual I ended up in the final boarding group. It doesn't matter how early I book my seat; I'm always at the end. But really, that's okay; these days, once I've sat down, because of my back I really can't stand up again.

By the way, Spirit gate agents ask you to rip your own ticket. Wonder who thought up that policy.

We took off more-or-less on time, and then the flight attendants came through with service. Literally everything had a price tag. Hence my bottle of water from the sundry shop.

Once permission was given, I booted up my phone and tried to watch something. But because my phone doesn't have a headphone port, and my Bluetooth headphones were blocked, I ended up listening to music and reading. The seats were too small to use my computer, and even if they weren't, it's not like my back would have allowed me to bend enough to get it.

It's too bad, too; I had planned to do at least a LITTLE writing this weekend. Didn't have enough pre-flight time to do it at the airport, though.

We landed on time, but plane tickets never seem to include taxiing time. When I flew out of JFK in 2003, I kid you not, it took more that 20 minutes to get from the gate to the runway. Atlanta is similar depending upon where you actually land. I got to the bus parking rather quickly, though when I passed the woefully-inadequate security area, I worried a bit about just how long it would take me on Sunday to get through.

Okay, I'm getting hungry now. More on this later...

Why am I posting this photo here? (Courtesy NBC News; full disclosure -- I work for an NBC affiliate.)

Because this woman just lost her full-time job, thanks to the "questionable" nature of her part-time job.

( Dude, What? )

I wonder if, during the bottle scene, Keith (the singer) had flashbacks of 14 years, to "Guys & Dolls" back in high school and the breakaway bottle that his female lead used to knock out (inadvertently) one of the co-stars in the Cuba scene.

This video just goes to show: you can get laid anytime, but a great dog only comes along once in a while.

The video is nicely absurdist. The song is interesting enough that I might shell out for the album. But it is kind of odd to know that I used to be derided by the lead singer, back in high school. Not maliciously, but still. *shrug*

We Are Scientists, "Chick Lit"

I love the absurd.

I dreamed about Rachel last night.

It was a good dream. A very good dream.

I wish Rachel was still with us so I could tell her about it.

I miss you.

serenader317 had a status message on her IM today that made me literally should "Oh my G-d!!!" across the newsroom.

Let me reproduce it for you here:

There are twins in me!!!!!

I knew she was pregnant, but... OMG!

We spent about five minutes yelling OMG back at each other via the computer before settling in for the day.

She has twins! OMG!



Anyway, I just had to share the good news.

Her first child is about 8.5 months old. I foresee my daughter (who is almost 22 months old) making a few bucks babysitting somewhere down the line. In about 12 years.

Hey, in this economy, you have to plan ahead... *grin*

There are a ton of new photos on the Flickr. Like this one. Go view them.

Y'know how, in every action-packed trailer, there's a quiet scene with a dramatic couple of lines? Well, this trailer has a pretty good one.