Recent Accomplishments

Did God create the flu to punish the wicked? Or did He just want to make sure that all his earthly servants, even the teetotallers, would understand what a crushing hangover feels like?

Woke up Saturday morning feeling awful. Feeling somewhat better Sunday and today, but not good enough to hike into work and spread around the germs. I hear the flu generally knocks people out of commission for a week, so maybe I didn't have the flu, just a bad cold. Or maybe one helpful factor in my rapid recovery was having Mom and Dad and Little Sis swing by with chicken soup and tea and old WWII movie DVDs. If you have a Mom and Dad and Little Sis in your area, I strongly recommend you add them to your treatment regimen.

Anyway, aside from sleeping a lot, I've accomplished quite a bit, I think.

Watched the aforementioned WWII DVDs, including Guadalcanal Diary and Halls of Montezuma. Twentieth Century Fox helpfully ships each DVD with a yellow "Support Our Troops" magnet. Since I don't own an SUV, I've decided to put the magnet on my refrigerator instead.
Read Dru's collection of Russian fairy tales. Maybe it's the fever, but man, even by European folk tale standards, the Russian stuff is downright nonlinear.
Finished Njal's Saga. Now the Icelandic sagas, at least, are coherent stories. They're populated with authentic medieval people, true, but you can at least understand WTF is going on most of the time. Maybe the Icelanders didn't have access to the same drugs the Russians had.
Read the entire His Dark Materials trilogy. Some of the best YA I've ever read.
Paid some bills. Despaired at the disorganized state of my office. Halfheartedly picked up some papers.
Fixed a broken spatula with Krazy Glue. Krazy Glue and duct tape will get you far in life.
Nearly sent my broken window fan back to the manufacturer. The fan had mysteriously stopped working a few months ago, and I'd been waffling about whether to toss it or get them to send a replacement under warranty. I bet they didn't plan on anyone in this throwaway consumer culture taking them up on their "five year warranty", ha! But then I discovered the fan was... mysteriously working again. Righteous high dudgeon faded, just as mysteriously.
Catalogued some recent books in Delicious Library. Looked at books that I have loaned out to other people. "Oh yeah, she's the one who has my Feynman book. Guess I'm not seeing that one again."
Dropped my 24 Hour Fitness membership -- something I should have done a year and a half ago. With the corporate gym, there's just no reason to be a member of a separate gym. Of course if you have the flu, there's just no reason to be a member of any gym. Slim that waistline -- results guaranteed!

Comments

I hadn’t heard of Delicious Library before, but now I want it! Further temptation to buy a Mac. Eventually Vista-rejection may push me over the edge, but I can’t justify it yet.

I would say that open, desolate spaces drove the Russians crazy, but it doesn’t seem to have had that effect on the Midwesterners. Maybe beets are hallucinogenic.

Re duct tape and crazy glue: add WD-40 to your list, and you’re set. So to speak.

Posted by Bart on Jan. 30, 2007 at 9:46 AM [#]
Re: His Dark Materials — I thought the first volume was fantastic, the second was good, and the third was execrable. It seemed that by the third book, Pulman expected me to have forgotten that Lord Asriel was an amoral monster (who literally murders children for his experiments), and have unquestioning sympathy for him as a heroic character.

Posted by Auros on Jan. 30, 2007 at 4:45 PM [#]
Oh, also, I seriously need to look at getting Delicious Library with a barcode scanner. That’s the only way I’m ever going to manage to catalog my books. The DVDs and CDs, happily, I cataloged in Excel as I acquired them…

Posted by Auros on Jan. 30, 2007 at 4:47 PM [#]
| I would say that open, desolate spaces drove | the Russians crazy, but it doesn’t seem to have | had that effect on the Midwesterners. Maybe | beets are hallucinogenic.

I dunno, in my experience Midwesterners are just as crazy as the rest of us. They just don’t express their craziness quite as externally as we Southern / East coast / West coast types.

Delicious Library is pretty awesome. If you’re particularly obsessive compulsive, you can even specify which shelf each book is on.

| It seemed that by the third book, Pulman | expected me to have forgotten that Lord Asriel | was an amoral monster (who literally murders | children for his experiments), and have | unquestioning sympathy for him as a heroic | character.

Oh, and lets not forget, in that same experiment he manages to flood another world with Specters, just as a side effect.

But I didn’t think we were supposed to have unquestioning sympathy for him as a heroic character. I think it was pretty clear that even though Lyra and Will were (sort of) on his side, Lord Asriel was arrogant and vile all along. A guy with adamantine towers and massive burning furnaces supplying a mighty war engine, I mean the dude is basically Sauron. I saw the end scene with him and Mrs. Coulter and Metatron as, good riddance to bad rubbish, all.

It did seem that Pullman was trying to rehabilitate Mrs. Coulter in the end there — she wasn’t all bad, see, because deep down she really looooved Lyra and wished she had been a better mother. I agree, feh to that.

Posted by Evan on Jan. 30, 2007 at 6:07 PM [#]
Or maybe Saruman. Anyway.

Posted by Evan on Jan. 30, 2007 at 6:08 PM [#]
Wow, Delicious Library looks really cool. And the iSight camera obviates the need for a barcode scanner. It would be nice to know what books I own. Right now I can never remember what I’ve kept vs. sold/given away.

By the way, if you think flu is bad, you should try having a kid. I never used to get sick beyond a minor cold. During Ella’s first winter in daycare, I got knocked on my butt for > 1 week each by three different bugs. Totally different stuff than I ever experienced before. I think that kids trade viruses at daycare that never get passed around at the office. I assume this is because most of us do not kiss our coworkers, whereas kids do the equivalent by licking and slobbering on everything. Some viruses must require this more direct form of transfer.

End result: you get exposed to lots of stuff that your immune system is not used to. So far this year has been better! I guess I have been sufficiently hardened.

Posted by Dinesh on Jan. 30, 2007 at 9:36 PM [#]
That’s the main practical feature of Delicious Library, helping you track items you’ve lent out. Most of the other features are just “cool”.

I’m exactly like you in that I rarely get sick. Coworkers get knocked out by whatever bug is circulating — I get a minor cold or nothing at all. I think the last time I had a real flu was back at Mudd. So hmmmmm… kids. Something to look forward to.

You know, if I did have kids, I have to admit that on Saturday I would have been totally incapable of taking care of them. I just can’t imagine how single parents do it.

Posted by Evan on Jan. 31, 2007 at 9:12 AM [#]
The idea of single parenthood scares me. Ella was sick a few weekends ago when Karen was out of town. We did fine, but there is no way we could carry on that way in steady-state. One would need to seriously simplify life in order to get by as a single parent with a toddler. I am happy to not be in that situation!

Posted by Dinesh on Jan. 31, 2007 at 9:29 PM [#]

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