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I enjoy waiting rooms far too much.  Everyone sits around acting like they shouldn’t be in a doctor’s office but failing to realize that applies to everyone else as well.  The woman to my left sat fidgeting the whole time until someone she knew arrived.   The first woman simply referred to her condition as a “feminine condition” and said it in a really low voice, to which the second woman responded “doctors do that now?”.

After sitting around for 20 minutes the nurses started calling in the backlog of patients two at a time taking them as they made it to the door except in one case where a knuckle-dragging trollwoman yelled “make way, I’m gimpy” before hobbling in front of the other person.

I ended my visit with dicussing my weight with my doctor:
Doctor: So, how’s your exercise going?
Me: Fine, I suppose, I had to suspend my walking regiment when I messed up my back.
Doctor: Have you lost any weight since your last visit?
Me: …. I don’t know.  The nurse didn’t weigh me when I can in.
Doctor: *Incredulously* Well, do you feel lighter?

What kind of question is that?  They have 10 exam rooms each equiped with a balance and he asks me if I feel lighter? Gha…

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I received my tax refund/payback of interest-free loan to the government direct deposited this morning and within seconds hit “Checkout” on the Amazon shopping cart that held my new camera and lenses.  I chose “free shipping” and “box so my items get here faster” as even individually each item qualified for free shipping.

I checked the order page and saw that I could upgrade the shipping and for a mere $30, did so and sat satisfied knowing I’d get the camera in time for…nothing.  So I changed it back to FREE! and smiled knowing that by just waiting a few more days, I’d have enough extra money for a day of ribs.  But maybe I could split the difference with two day for a mere $10 and still have it in time for…. nothing.  Switched to two-day and then thought of that shipping as the equivalent of a lunch as a discount Chinese food buffet and after some more waffling I changed it back to FREE! and smirked at my bout of financial weakness.

The items shipped and I started compulsively tracking the packages and noticed something, the boxes with the lenses and the boxes with the camera were diverging.  During my waffling, the box with the lenses shipped as 2nd day air while the camera itself didn’t ship until after I went back to FREE! ground shipping.  Looks like I’m going to have a tea party with my lenses on my birthday as that’s about all I’ll be able do.

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I walked by the R&D Lab and saw someone standing in the lab without wearing goggles and ducked in to correct them.

It was a coworker who’d should have known better, but more damning than failing to wear goggles in an empty R&D lab was that he was rocking out to Super Tramp, head bobbing, singing a long and staring out the window longingly to “Take the Long Way Home”.  His taste wouldn’t have been a problem, if he weren’t otherwise a rock snob, chiding me for not properly identifying Klaatu’s “Attention Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” whom I thought was Paul McCartney many moons ago.

He turned his head around to the door closing, and stopped singing when he saw my grin.
Him: How much did you see?
Me: Enough, an incident like could ruin a man’s reputation.
Him: Name your terms.
Me: For now, nothing.  Next time I won’t be so generous.

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Note from Trial Against The Pirate Bay:

“When did you meet [fellow defendant Gottfrid] for the first time IRL?” asked the Prosecutor.
“We do not use the expression IRL,” said Peter, “we use AFK.”
“IRL?” questioned the judge.
“In Real Life,” the Prosecutor explained to the judge.
“We do not use that expression,” Peter noted. “Everything is in real life. We use AFK—Away From Keyboard.”
“Well,” said Roswall. “It seems I am a little bit out of date.”

While this may have been brought up as a way of building on the ignorances commonly shown by prosecutors against filesharers, I thought it was a poignant note about interactions on the web.

via Ars Technica

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We’re switching from Thunderbird to Outlook at work.  Why, I don’t know, probably because some executive accidentally installed it when using a Student copy of Office 2007 and was attracted to the bright color and total lack of functionality.

So, I had to take a two hour training on how to use Outlook going through such tricky things as how to open email, what the preview pain is, how to send email and using advanced options like changing from one poorly rendered font to another (I’m confident that I could remove all fonts except for Calibri, Comic Sans and Impact and no one woudl notice).   The rollout was supposed to come automatically but something didn’t work out.  I was confused when a man came around to “deploy it” simply by inserting a thumb drive into my machine and running a shortcut to a network location.  I’m not sure what’s more tragic, a rollout failing because people somehow failed to click a link and type their name into a prompt or that a Microsoft certified System Engineer had to come around to “fix” it.

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I’ve trying to get rid of the frames in the OSR Program and Leader Guide.  Frames make it hard to link to things so I’ve been working on a pure CSS menu system like they have at GRC.  They’re setup is full of wierd hacks to make Safari 7.9.1 work correctly and so on so I tried something stripped down and came up with this.  I think it looks nice and would go wonderfully under the OSR banner.  There’d be more links simplifying navigation and adding and removing links would be a snap, except it DOESN’T WORK AT ALL UNDER IE 6.  Every other browser from Mosaic 4.0 to Firefox’s Fennec mobile browser alpha to Ice Weasel renders it correctly except for IE 6.

Knowing IE 6 would figure heavily into the usage patterns of the proletariat leaders browsing the site leaving it there and letting users realize they’re the dalit of web users wasn’t an option.  So after learning a little javascript and a lot of Ctrl+U (view page source) and violating some IP laws I go this gem.  It’s the red-headed stepchild of menus replacing the absolutely lovely previous menu with a kludge that only properly renders in IE6.

Maybe I should just create two versions of the sites:  I was thinking this’d be a chore until I realized it may save me some work.  If someone’s still using IE 6 that version would direct the user to a form that’d go to me so I could send them a copy of the web page on stone tablets which is the appropriate level of support for someone who hates the World Wide Web enough to abuse it with their knuckle-dragging tech competence.  Or if they’re a little better than that, I’ll make one that’s just one giant page; the web equivalent of a double elephant folio.  I’ll even include the PDFs as images that way it could literally be the only page they have to visit for camp information. “Yes, ma’am.  The document you need is there.  Make sure your browser window is full screen then hit tab 214 times, and press print screen.”

For Knotgeek: I blame this on Opera.  By bringing up the whole concept of standards-compliant rendering they freed the dove of hope only to be struck by IE 6’s failboulder.

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I’ve used the three day weekend to clean out a lot of stuff.  I got rid of 20 lbs of computer cables, two computers, one sold, one for free and have started shedding books. I’ve accumulated about 80 pounds of RPG books with about 30 pounds of D&D, 35 pounds of Mage: the Ascension and 5 pounds of miscellaneous stuff.  I’ve only ever run one long-running campaign in each despite spending hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours crafting stories of such imaginative caliber that experiencing one would guarantee one a place in the afterlife (at least in my head).

I know some of these tomes are worth at least some money but the time involved to recoup pennies for dollars was constantly fighting my urge to simply reduce.  I started writing Craigslist posts but they sounded like I was giving away kittens or a child I couldn’t care for;  “free to a good home”, “condition: used but loved” and so on.  I didn’t have this difficulty with my textbooks when I simply ripped off the covers and threw the remains in Southampton’s Paper Retriever bin at 2 AM in the rain.

If I’m torn over this, there’s a much more painful choice in the future: Magic cards.  Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to have them stolen or possibly an electrical fire will wipe them out so I can collect on the Homeowner’s Insurance Policy rider before I ever have to decide how to get rid of them.

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I was running late to the bank today and decided on using the drive-thru to try and expedite my exchange.  Push button, over box, place check, place deposit slip, close box, push button…wait…wait…wait…voice from box, “How do you want your cash back?”, “hundreds”…wait…wait…wait…”are fifties ok?”, “yes” (should have said no or twos)…wait…wait…wait…”sir, your IDs expired, please send another”….wait…wait…wait….open tube, grab driver’s license that was misread, replace with school ID, press button….wait…wait…wait…see woman counting cash like 9 times through the exterior window (it’s 8 50s is that so hard?) receive tube…. “Ma’am, you didn’t include the receipt” “my mistake”… place box, press button, receive box, open box, get stuff return tube.

Four people walked in and out in the time my rather milquetoast was processed.  Next, time I walk inside.

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My brother’s moving out soonish and will migrate from my fat fiber pipe to “borrowing”  his neighbor’s DSL connection through flaws in WEP encryption.  He’s been torrenting like crazy so my daily ritual has been: come home, feed animals, turn on computer, play TF2, die because I have a ping of 300, turn off brother’s pr()n downloads, die because I suck despite having a ping of 47.  I decided to peek at what I was turning off.  Was it Dirty Nurses 17 or San Fernando Jones and the Temple of Poon? No.  Adobe Creative Suite 4? No.  Victory at Sea for my dad?  No.  It was the special features from the Thundercats DVD.  Really?  He’s officially gone from  “I should be safe and download all the optional updates for Windows XP” to “I must save Internet so man may have it after Ragnarok”.

If he starts downloading either back seasons of Doctor Who or Norton Internet Security 2007, I think I could get a Cease and Desist order for him abusing the Internet when coupled with his unabashed usage of Opera.

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Surgeon General Warning: This post is largely self-aggrandizing.  Skip to the previous post to hear about my brother’s pr()n habits.

I’ve windmill slammed my phone, again. Everything appeared fine until the alarm didn’t go off.  Well, it did but produced no sound.  I thought I may have just missed it so I set it for 10 minutes and slept for an extra two hours until the stroke of 10:30.  As a final check, I set the timer for 3 seconds and when done heard nothing.  Hm…  until I get it fixed, I’ll have to put it in my pocket with enough change so it’ll jingle.

I get to work in time to miss lunch with coworkers and discover that I have until the stroke of midnight to relearn the rules of Magic and pass the L2 Recertification exam.  I started scanning like it was my job, which it is, using the time while documents were going through the ADF to figure out the interaction of continuous effects and re-read the penalty guidelines while taking bathroom breaks.  Wizards.com, and most Magic sites are blocked at work as “games” so I prepared by repeatedly hitting the “random” button on magiccards.info.  I needed an 80% to pass, took a practice exam got a 67%, cried a little, and started the main exam.  119 minutes and 41 seconds into the 2 hour exam I hit the submit button. I got a 90%.  This is the statistical analog of a dog winning “The Weakest Link” because everyone just overlooked him or my brother passing a breathalyzer test because a muon arced some logic chip.  Ignoring the CONFIDENTIAL note at the top I printed it out and placed it proudly on fridge.  I celebrated with the materials on hand and liberally applied butter cream frosting to a freezer-burnt chocolate waffle.  It didn’t taste quite right so I washed it down with the last of the Sparkling Apple Cider left over from New Years.

I hear to get L3 I have to beat an existing L3 in ritual combat and consume their brain to gain their understanding of copying effects and 2HG rules.  I recognize this post is largely me congratulating myself but there was no one awake for me to scream to except the now very confused players on my Team Fortress 2 team.