Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing

I probably should ask before I just toss it...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:13:03 GMT

So, about a year and a half ago (don't remember exactly when), I bought a color laser printer -- an HP Color LaserJet 2605dn, to be precise. I'd lusted after one for a long time, and finally the price of that model (which had all the features I wanted) dropped to the point where I could afford one.

Only one problem -- I never got it to work as well as I wanted it to. It seemed to have chronic color-alignment issues that the calibration tools could never quite fix. Eventually, I lost my patience with it and bought a Dell 3130cn instead. It's been sitting unused for months, and I'm finally to the point where I'm tired of looking at it.

Does anyone have a use for it? I'm literally giving it away to anyone who wants -- the only catch is that you have to come get it in Millis, MA. (I suppose if I'm already planning to visit you in the next week or two, I could be talked into delivering it, but you'd better ask really nicely. It's a heavy beast. :)

If not, it's getting exiled to the land of misfit printers real soon now.

Signal boost: cats in need of a home

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:54:48 GMT

A friend of mine has two adorable cats who (heartbreakingly) can't stay with her anymore. She's trying to find a good home for them in the MA/RI/southern NH area. If you know anyone who might like a wonderful pair of kitties (or just want to know more so you can judge who might be interested), go look at http://simon-apricot.livejournal.com for details.

(And, yes, frozencapybara and I considered it. But there are logistical problems, and Taichou was Grumpy McSulkypants for a solid month when we adopted Hammond... I don't think he'd deal at all well with two additional interlopers.)

Regarding phones (cellular and otherwise)

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:24:11 GMT

So, in an attempt to improve the (so unreliable it might as well be nonexistent) cellphone reception at our house, today I set up a cellular repeater. I'm still playing around with placement of the unit, and the wiring is strung along the wall instead of through it, but early results seem encouraging.

As such... if any of you that have my and frozencapybara's cellphone numbers have reason to call us in the next week or so, try the cellphone first, to help me test this thing fully before I pay an electrician to run the cable from the attic to a wall plate. (If it doesn't work, call the land line as usual.)

(And for those of you with access to the Gweep Rolodex, our listings there are up to date.)

Do you suppose this even seemed like a good idea at the time?

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:01:47 GMT

Aside from the text on the post-it included in the scan, I have nothing to add.

Well, that was pretty boneheaded of me.

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 04:13:13 GMT

So, a few months back, one of my unix shell accounts underwent a server migration... and, apparently, I totally failed to reconfigure the mail-forwarding from it to my primary email. I only realized this a few minutes ago, when a friend informed me that they got a "this dude's mailbox is full" bounce message.

D'oh.

Since the mailspool in question had accumulated several thousand messages, 97% of which were spam, I just said "ah, screw it" and deleted all of them. So, if you've sent me email at a gweep.net account (any server) or my twilightsun.com address since October or so, I didn't see it. (If you sent it to a gmail account, you're fine.)

It's fixed now, so any address you have for me in your address books should be functional again.

Well, that was interesting.

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 03:46:57 GMT

If you've ever watched a NASCAR race*, you know how it works. Someone loses control, all hell breaks loose, and there are parts flying everywhere. Then, when they show the replay, something catches your eye. That guy, right there... right in the middle of it all, easily within six inches of getting walloped by two or three other vehicles as they careen past at odd angles, and yet... at the end of it all, possibly through no effort of his own, he's gotten through without a scratch. You watch another replay from a different angle, and you still can't figure out how he managed it.

Well, tonight, at about 6:45pm on I-495 north, between I-93 and Route 28 (I guess that'd put it in West Andover or thereabouts)... I was that guy.

I was headed up to visit my family in Maine (where I am now, safe and sound). There was no rain yet (I didn't hit that until New Hampshire), but it was Friday night at rush hour so traffic was being kind of stupid anyway. I'd gotten past the big backup at the Pike exit, and the smaller ones at Route 2 and I-93, and things seemed to be improving, flow-wise. I was in the far left-hand lane, and we were cruising along at about 65, maybe 70.

Then, abruptly, the white Chrysler 300 in front of me... uh, wasn't.

Even after the fact, I don't know what happened in front of him. I assume it was one of those standard oscillating traffic states, where everyone go fast for a bit, then everyone bunches up for a bit, then you get going again. But this was one of the most extreme cases I've ever seen. Luckily for me, there was a fair gap between me and the 300, so I had time to react -- kind of.

My first reaction is to ease onto the brakes. Uh, crap, comes my next thought, he's slowed down a LOT. Let's try heavy braking. Er, I'm STILL closing? Um. Ok, now it's serious pedal-to-the-floor time. I steal a glimpse at my rearview, and as I'd expected, the people behind me haven't been as attentive, as I catch the distinctive lurch of someone who's only just now realizing that the brake pedal is his best friend. That ceases to be my problem, though, as the driver spots -- or, alternately, blindly banks on the presence of -- an opening in the next lane over, and veers abruptly to the right. That's the end of my rearward glimpse, though, so I don't really know what happens to him after that. Eyes back forward, as I'm now madly working the brake pedal in an attempt to put myself as close as possible to the 300 without whacking him, hoping to give the next person every available inch to stop.

The next person turns out to be a woman in a big ol' SUV, and as I look up she's closing fast -- I'd put her speed somewhere around 20 mph. I don't see her for long, though, as she dives onto the grassy median to the left, and continuing completely past me.

Having now seen people swerve to both sides of me at speed, I cross "last-second evasion" off my mental list of options. We're in the left lane for the duration, now.

The convertible top is down, so I at least have good visibility for all of this. However, my stereo is blasting "Temple of Love (1992)" at very high volume, so it catches my attention when I hear a "crunch" behind me. I check the mirror... and I see a gold Toyota, sideways, with its hood utterly crushed, not six feet behind me.

In a moment of clarity, I think to myself huh, so this is what being in the middle of a massive highway pileup feels like right then. I was weirdly calm as I do it, too. I think I've resigned myself, on some level, that I'm going to get hit by something.

And then, it's over. Everyone pulls over into the median grass. Neither I nor the 300 have been touched (to our mutual amazement). The SUV has taken out one of those three-foot-tall PVC "BURIED FIBER" poles in the course of its off-road excursion, and has a bit of cosmetic damage. A black Honda, who may or may not have been the first car behind me, sits completely bumper-less in the right-hand breakdown lane, while his bumper cover (license plate still attached) blocks the center lane, and the underlying foam sits next to the rest of us in the median. (I challenge anyone to work out the logistics behind that.) The Toyota is a complete mess, and is emitting smoke that smells extremely unpleasant. Two other cars have bumper damage, though not enough to render the cars un-roadworthy.

I hang out until the cop shows up. He asks if I hit anything, I say no, and he sends me on my way.

Hastily-snapped phonepics (I didn't get the black Honda, it was too far away and I had a bad viewing angle):

Smashed Toyota is Smashed.

I hope that fiber wasn't important.

Owners of the less-damaged cars.

I'm hoping for a less eventful drive home on Monday.

* And if you haven't... don't you freakin' judge me! ;)

Well, that seems to have worked.

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:12:33 GMT

(And, why, yes, I am pretty much just copying frozencapybara's post verbatim. It's a good post, and I'm lazy. :)

As of today, we are officially homeowners.

Background: After a monumentally depressing few days involving another house that looked good on the first glance but fell off our list after a second visit, we pretty much stopped talking about the house hunt -- to anyone. This didn't change when frozencapybara attended a promising open house, or when we made an offer on the house the next day, or as we've been madly running around trying to finalize the deal since then. We didn't post about it in the first few weeks because a) we are masters of irrational paranoia and superstition, and b) if the deal did fall through, as we discovered with the first house we made an offer on, it's even more of a bitch to have to explain it to everyone later. And then we didn't post because, well, it'd been a week and why bother, and we'll post later, etc.

So, as of about 11:30 AM today, we have signed a whole lot of papers, are in a whole lot of debt (we're told it's "good debt" :), and are members of the landed gentry, so if this were 1794, I would be able to vote. Too bad the primary's already over.

(frozencapybara demands credit for that joke, which is only fair.)

Details we are willing to share over LJ:

The house is in Millis, MA, which you've probably never heard of.
Millis is a tiny little town southwest of Boston, about midway between 128 and 495. It is mostly rural, and despite being well within 495, has a much more rural feel than where we are now. As we are both originally from the middle of nowhere, we are very happy about this.
The house is a split-level built in the late 60s. It is mostly beige-colored with some brick on the front.
Pictures of the house, both interior and exterior, can be found here.
We're not posting the address on LJ. We plan to send out a "we've moved" email to people we think will care that we've moved by the end of May. If you want to know the address before that, drop me an email - we don't mind giving it out at this point, we're just not bothering with the mass email until it's more relevant. Similarly, if you want to know the address and haven't gotten an email by the end of May, let me know, and don't be offended, we're sure we'll forget a number of critical people.
Yes, we will need help with painting. Also, if you have an opinion on what color the living room should be, let me know. It is currently a horrible greyish pink. We're thinking a light bluish purple.

And now, off to celebrate with a bottle of the good booze. :)

[meme] Album cover meme

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:36:55 GMT

"lizzielizzie posted that," frozencapybara said, "and I thought, 'this meme is made for kviri.'"

Uh, yeah, given that by the time she said that, I'd already made five of them. :} So, as a sort of thematic followup to the meme I posted last month...

01. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

02. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

03. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

04. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together.

In the order in which I did them:

This, to me, says "Hi, I'm a modern rock band whose sound is pretty much indistinguishable from the other bands that are popular this month." If they're lucky, one of their songs will peak at #16, and they'll never be heard from again. Look for this in the bargain bin of your local HMV next month!

On the other hand, maybe that career path isn't so bad, compared to that of good old FIR. They paid to press this CD themselves, and got it stocked in all of the local Newbury Comics stores... which, as far as anyone can tell, have only sold the five copies purchased by the bands' four roommates and that one creepy dude who stands in the back at all their shows.

Next up on our program is this disc by local coffeeshop comedy-folkie John Wyre. He's not going to get famous, either, but at least he's getting a free meal every week or so. The album title is all about irony -- he's 5'4", wiry, and going bald.

We never seem to run out of painfully artsy bands fresh out of the Berklee College of Music, do we? Wooler Water draws well at shows, but mostly only because their electric viola player is a smokin' hot chick.

Which brings us to my fifth, and favorite, entry...

...or am I bluffing, and this is an actual album whose cover art I pulled off of CDBaby? (I mean, seriously. Tell me you haven't seen this cover before.)

It's election-ESQUE. Democrat-ISH, if you will.

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:40:15 GMT

Once in a while, I love CNN.

[meme] Musical Wiki

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:14:42 GMT

I've mostly stopped doing memes, but jetwolf pointed out this one in her own LJ, and it amused me more than any meme in a long time. So, here I go. :)

Go to the Wikipedia home page in your preferred language and click "random article." That is your band's name. Click "random article" again. That is your album name. Click "random article" 15 more times. Those are the tracks on your album.

Artist: Macrozamia Lomandroides
This, to me, screams "college band."

Album: Alexander Luria
"Famous Soviet neuropsychologist and developmental psychologist ... one of the founders of cultural-historical psychology and psychological activity theory." Ok, yeah. We're definitely a college band. One whose members are pretentious, overeducated, and undertalented. But our gig posters kick ass. (And they should, because we spend four times as long designing them as they do practicing our actual songs. :)

1. Mark Tushnet
"A professor at Harvard Law School and a prominent scholar of constitutional law and legal history." Aha! So, now we know which college we're from. "One of the more controversial figures in constitutional theory ... once stated in an article that, were he asked to decide actual cases as a judge, he would seek to reach results that would 'advance the cause of socialism'." Oh, yes. We're really playing to the People's Republic of Cambridge, here. Look at us! We're poitically relevant! (Never mind that we all failed Prof. Tushnet's class.) Pity we can't carry a tune to save our lives.

2. Evolution of an Idea
The whole song is one big crescendo. We start out nice and quiet and slow, then there's this bouncy melodic-pop section in the middle before everything starts to go haywire -- and it all ends in a cacophany of random noise that abruptly cuts off to the quiet "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep" of a flatlined electrocardiogram. Or an electroencephalogram. We're not entirely sure, because everything we know about medicine we learned from episodes of House, M.D.

3. New Line Learning
Oh, wow. I swear, I'm not picking and choosing these track titles. (I'm also not writing these knowing what titles come next.) This is clearly our "The American Educational System Is Corrupt, Worthless, and Full of Propaganda -- and We're Not Just Saying That Because We're About To Fail Out of College by Playing Too Much World of Warcraft, Really" song. It goes over great when we play it during finals week.

4. Stabilization (medical)
I told you we watched a lot of House. This is a song sung from the POV of someone dying of lupus.

5. Revolutionary Communist Group of Colombia
Geez, I don't even have to try, do I? :) That said, you should really check out the YouTube video our bassist put together for this track. The best part is the intercut footage of Andrés Escobar Saldarriaga, the guy who lost the 1994 World Cup game to the USA on an own goal, and was murdered 10 days later upon his return to Colombia.

6. Mister M
Well, you see... our drummer, Al, still reads Marvel Comics, and he really liked House of M. So we let him write one track for the CD, just to shut him up about it. Trust me, you don't want to listen to it.

7. Rohan Hours
Only our bassist has any idea what this song is about. It had something to do with Christ and French people, we think. But it's got a cool hook.

8. 2006 AIHL Season
A 45-second Instrumental track.

9. The Bugaboos
This is a cover of a song by some local Canadian band our lead vocalist listened to in high school. The lyrics are evocative, the harmonies are divine, the tone is spooky as hell, and we completely ruin it.

10. Laggers Point
This is a song about an Australian girl who goes down to the ocean shore every morning, and sits there for hours, longing for her love -- presumed dead at sea a year before -- to return. Really, though, it's all about our lead vocalist trying to get into the pants of this Aussie chick in his Chemistry class by coming across as all sensitive and crap.

11. Roker Park
Inane lyrics, repetitive tune, one chord -- this is our "crowd-pleaser" song. It gets played at parties a lot.

12. Cristoforo Caselli
This is another one by our bassist (who, believe it or not, plays violin on this track). It's sung entirely in Italian, which our lead vocalist doesn't speak.

13. Las Casas del Conde
We call this a Macrozamia Lomandroides song, but really it's some instrumental-synth-and-drum-machine noodling that our keyboard player did a year before we formed the band. We couldn't possibly play this live.

14. Augusto Boal
Woohoo! We're finally done with the artsy crap, and can get back to the political crap. Boal was "the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a political theatrical form originally used in radical popular education movements." That's right in our wheelhouse. This track is bombastic, and stuffed to the gills with as many theatre terms and forced references to South American fascists as we could cram into 3 minutes and 46 seconds. Which brings us to our concert finale...

15. Milton
Because, let me tell you, nothing ends a show like a 14-minute meandering adaptation of what our bassist was pretty sure that Paradise Lost was about. Mostly, it's about demons... and sex... and demons having sex... oh, and there's a mention of the Pope in the eighth verse that I've never quite understood.

Ah, those were the days. "Milton" got all of us permanently banned from the Holy Cross campus -- that was, I think, the height of our fame. We broke up a year and a half after we formed, when our bassist started dating the vocalist's ex -- you know, the Aussie chick.

I give thanks for...

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:54:24 GMT

...Thanksgiving weekend being freakin' over.

It started out promisingly enough. Plans were made for Anne and I to head up to Maine to visit my family (hers still being inconveniently located in Ohio), teinedreugan and lilairen agreed to take care of Tai while we were away, the weather looked pretty good for driving, and frozencapybara and I were generally in a good mood.

Then my back went out.

I can't even tell you how I did it. I had just hauled a small load of stuff to my car -- but it was nothing big, just a couple of small rolling suitcases, no heavy lifting -- and it was on the way back to the apartment door, mid-stride, that my tailbone said "um, no" and I kind of crumpled into a heap. This was followed by a couple of minutes of uncomfortable experimentation, as I tried to some means of getting back inside that didn't involve complex operations like "standing up" or "moving my back in any measurable manner".

We did make it up to Maine, though needless to say I didn't drive. The (extended) family dinner on turkey day itself was enjoyable, at least, even if I was barely ambulatory for it. The low point of the weekend was the emergency room trip (which didn't accomplish much, but did reassure me that I hadn't somehow broken anything), followed by the "ah, screw it" decision to just come back to Massachusetts a day early. Saturday was a bit better (thank heavens for the heating pad), and I rejoined the rest of my species by walking upright on Sunday. My back still isn't right, but it's (slowly, glacially) getting there.

But, hey, at least all this eliminated any possibility of a Black Friday shopping trip.

View from Place Vaquelin

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:58:51 GMT

View from Place Vaquelin
Originally uploaded by kviri

I finally uploaded my Montreal and Utah vacation photos.

Anne took better ones (and more of them), mind you. :) Hers are here and here.

Récits d'un couple heureux à Montréal: Quatrième partie

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:27:42 GMT

Not really all that much to say about dinner last night... it was fairly straightforward (for once). We took the Metro to Jean-Talon and went to a Lebanese place (Daou) that had caught Anne's eye in the guidebook and online. It was pricey but extremely good. (Mmmmmm... falafel.) The only hitch was that they didn't seem to grasp that the appetizer sampler was her entree, and the plate full o' meat was all mine, so the timing of the food's arrival was a bit off. Still, we worked it out, and it was yummy.

Well, we didn't draw good weather for our last full day in Montreal (not that we can complain much, it's been gorgeous on balance). It's been grey and damp and rainy and blustery and yuck. But, armed with our loaner umbrellas and a fair amount of stubbornness, we ventured out anyway. We made a return trip to Olive & Gourmando (where we spent waaaaay too much on outstanding pastries -- Anne's comment upon leaving was "I may never want to eat food again"), and then wandered over to the vicinity of Rues Laurier and St-Denis for a little window shopping.

It turns out that the "shopping districts" don't really cater to us, since we're not the sort to pop in and out of shops all day long -- well, unless they're geek stores (books, games, etc.), which these weren't. But we did make a couple of stops, and despite getting very damp indeed, we had quite a bit of fun traipsing about and avoiding the puddles. At about 3 o'clock, we decided to stop back at the hotel to dry off for a bit before venturing out again for dinner.

For the final dinner of our vacation, we ventured out to Namur station, and hit an Indian restaurant recommended to me by an ex-coworker from Montreal. (Tim Mackey, for you ex-Event Zero people.) Pushap Sweets is a little hole-in-the-wall next to autoroute 15 and not far from one of those sprawling shopping centers, with a Wal*Mart and several big box stores. (Actually, they've opened a couple of other locations, but this one's the original.) Inside, the decor is kind of a thrown-together mishmosh of Indian stuff -- nothing to write home about. Also, the experience can be a little confusing at first -- it wasn't clear whether we were supposed to seat ourselves, and we had to specifically ask for menus (I guess most of the regulars just know what they want).

But, oh lordy, the food.

Their specialty (and daily special) is a plate of two veggie curries (they're all-vegetarian) and accompanying raita and bread, but we decided to go for one of the combo plates that included appetizers, chai and dessert. The samosas were great, but the pakoras outshined them -- they were fluffy and tasty and by far the best I've ever had. The entrees were chana masala (I'm a sucker for that dish), veggie curry (which I wolfed down, odd since I don't usually go for that in restaurants), and a somewhat different take on shahi panir (the cheese was crumbled up and the flavor wasn't quite the usual Boston-suburb fare) that Anne was absolutely wild about. The poori and paratha were tasty, and the chai excellent. Dessert was included, and a moral imperative. (Pushap started out as an Indian dessert shop and expanded into full meal service, I'm told.) The only problem was that we had absolutely no idea what to order, so Anne told the waitress to surprise us. We ended up with two dishes. One was something sort of like Gulab Jamun, only split lengthwise and with some kind of cream/spread in the middle. The other was... it was...

It was green.

But it was good. (Anne was fairly certain there was coconut in there somewhere.)

Then came the embarrassing part. We realized too late that they didn't take credit cards, and we had under $5 in Canadian cash left (we've been trying to use it up). We took turns trying to locate the ATM that was allegedly next door, before we finally discovered to our chagrin that it was out of money. I ended up sheepishly asking if he'd take U.S. currency, and was told it was no problem (but I still felt pretty lame).

Oh, and for the record? I'd have been thrilled with the meal even if it had been expensive. The best part, though, is that each of our combo plates only cost $9 Canadian. We'll definitely be going back when we next step foot in this city.

Now, I'm off to start packing while we watch the Red Sox game. When next I post to LJ, we'll be back home.

This has been a most excellent trip. :)

Récits d'un couple heureux à Montréal: Troisième partie

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:08:55 GMT

It's naptime again, so it's blogtime again...

Wednesday night's dinner went surprisingly well, and surprisingly painlessly. I was in the mood for Mexican, of all things, and there was a well-regarded place in the guidebook, so we hopped on the Metro (love those weekly passes) and made our way over to The 3 Amigos. Anne was... more than a little dubious about eating at a Tex-Mex place in Quebec, founded by three guys from Ontario, with perhaps the tackiest decor I've ever seen. (And I've eaten at the Iguana Cantina in Waltham.) The brightly-lit, furiously-blinking plastic sign out front wasn't exactly encouraging, I'll admit. But the fajitas were great (and were only 7 bucks), so the skepticism passed.

After that, it was back to the hotel to watch the Sox pound the Rockies, and get some sleep.

Yesterday... hurt. In a good way, I suppose, but I haven't done that much walking all at once in a long while. First up was a jaunt back into Old Montreal, to attempt breakfast at Olive & Gourmando, a bakery that Anne said had gotten rave reviews. We ended up with a brioche apiece (chocolate for me, apple cinnamon for Anne) and a chocolate croissant to split between us, with hot beverages (hot chocolate for her, mocha for me) to wash them down.

Ah.

Mon.

Dieu.

I'm spoiled, forever, on brioche now. It was absolutely amazing. If you're ever in Montreal, go to this place. It's kind of cramped, but you totally won't care.

Next up was a side trip into extreme geekiness. Some of you know that Anne and I are Heroes fans. Without giving anything away to those of you who might someday watch the show but aren't right now... there was a key image in the last episode (which will probably become more key in the next one) that we wanted to see if we could reproduce via photography.

For those of you who are also Heroes fans, but are not currently in Montreal, I'd like to state the following: We've been totally lied to by our prime-time television shows.

You can, in fact, stand at the corner of St-Laurent and St-Jacques, look south-southeast, and see the Basilique Notre-Dame... if you have the power to see through other buildings. Otherwise, not so much. (Also, St-Jacques doesn't extend NNE past St-Laurent -- you'd have to knock down half of the Palais de Justice in order to make it a four-way intersection, and I think they'd object to that.) We went south a block to St-Jacques and Place-D'Armes, which is the only place where you can get a view more or less like that one, and took a couple of photos. It wasn't really the same, though. (And for the record, there's not a door at that corner, either. Which is probably good, because if there was one, it probably would have been vandalized with the "S" symbol by now. Damned sci-fi geeks. ;)

(One other, very short, Heroes aside. In our failed quest for wacky Canadian TV the other night, we did stumble across a French-language cooking show featuring a man who looked startlingly like Zachary Quinto. As you can imagine, "Cooking with Sylar" prompted a great many terrible jokes, most of which you can probably reproduce on your own.)

Ok, non-Heroes-obsessed people, you can start paying attention again. :)

Going from one Catholic structure to another, we hopped on the Metro and went to visit Saint Joseph's Oratory. I'm no Catholic (heck, I'm no Christian), but I have to say... they've constructed some gorgeous structures over the years, and the Oratory was no exception. I'll let the photos (which we'll upload when we get home) speak for themselves, except to say that I was pretty sure that the approximately 84,320 stairs were going to do me in.

After that, we decided to wander over to the Parc du Mont-Royal, which is extremely pretty.

["This park was designed by Olmstead. I'll admit, I'm a little tired of parks designed by Olmstead. He also designed Central Park and the Wellesley campus." "It's a little known fact that Olmstead designed the Earth, some time ago. Pangaea? That was his." --Anne and I.]

We couldn't have asked for a better day for walking... which is a good thing, because we did A LOT of walking. ("I think it's mostly downhill," said Anne, shortly before we spent the better part of an hour straight doing nothing but walk uphill.) I think I had it in my head that there was a Metro stop somewhere on the edge of the park -- uh, not so much. We ended up trudging our way back down to Rue Sherbrooke with shaky, aching legs and a slightly crazed look of hunger in our eyes. We practically fell into our seats on the train. Now all we had to do was...

...say it with me...

...figure out where we were going to eat.

We ended up over on Rue St-Denis, and by the time we got there we'd narrowed it down to two choices: Fondue and Greek food. Problem is, they were in opposite directions from the train station. We wandered down to the fondue place first, and glanced at the menu... and I was kind of noncommittal. Anne decided she was more in the mood for Greek, and I responded, "ok, but I'm not walking back down here -- if we decide against Greek, we'll find something up near there."

I don't think I really believed that when I said it.

When we got there, the Greek place's menu was French-only, and there was some question about whether or not it was particularly veggie-friendly. So, what the heck, we decided to go back to the fondue place. I was pretty much dead on my feet when we got back, and was absolutely starving... so, of course, it turned out that they didn't open for another half hour.

It is only because the Second Cup next door served me a mocha blanc and a poppyseed muffin that I'm alive to blog this now. :)

Once we got in, the fondue -- which I'd never had before, in any form -- was outstanding. We owe Elyse for that recommendation. (We'll add that to the huge and ever-growing pile of things that we owe her for.) Fonduementale is highly, highly recommended. We ended the excursion with a stop into Le Valet du Coeur (a gaming store that I'd ordered from online long ago -- we just happened to stumble across their storefront and I was curious), and returned to the hotel, where we watched the Sox beat the Rockies again. (I could get used to ending my nights that way.)

Today was declared a "minimal walking" day. I'm not sure we actually managed that, because so far we've walked to breakfast, then walked to (and within) the Contemporary Art Museum, then walked back to the hotel. But it was a nice idea.

I'm not really wired to appreciate art museums -- luckily, neither is Anne, so neither of us objected when the other wanted to skip parts of it. The Inuit art was interesting, and while the "e-art" (yes, really) exhibit was eminently mockable in spots, it did have a couple of very cool parts. (Notably, one modern sculpture piece you could walk through that felt like a set from some alien locale in Babylon 5, and some fascinating LED artwork that played with pattern recognition in funky ways.) The main draw, though, was "American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow", which was as cool as it (hopefully) sounds. rhysara, eat your heart out. There were countless art-deco chairs and at least a half-dozen toasters. ;)

The only down side was that I was once again reminded that I don't yet have the zeppelin or personal orbit jet that I was promised in the 1970s. Feh.

Once our feet finish resting, it'll be off to forage for food again.

Récits d'un couple heureux à Montréal: Deuxième partie

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:35:38 GMT

Continuing the trend of me updating my LJ while Anne takes her afternoon nap (I just woke up from mine)...

Monday's dinner ended up being an Italian restaurant on Rue Ste. Catherine. Actually, that's oversimplifying it. Monday's dinner ended up being a long walk ouest on Rue Ste. Catherine, followed by a shorter one nord on... some random side street with a lot of pubs, I forget which... with intermittent pauses and "hmm"s as we looked at posted menus. This concluded with us finally giving up and wandering back to the Italian place on Rue Ste. Catherine that would have been a short walk had we just gone there in the first place.

Anyway. They fed us. (Twice, if you count the leftovers. I never want to stay in a hotel room without at least a fridge and a microwave, if not a full kitchen, again.) We did not die of starvation.
Tuesday was kind of a crappy day, weather-wise. Very grey and rainy and wet and yuck. (It was also a bit too warm to comfortably wear a hat and coat, but too wet not to. I hate that.) So, we did the touristy thing and ducked into the underground city. It's basically a bunch of subterranean tunnels in the form of an impromptu mall, which isn't all that exciting -- though we did discover an excellent bakery in the midst of it all, and many tasty pastries were had. It didn't take us too long to hit People Overload down there, though, so we braved the Metro and the rain and went up to Marché Jean-Talon anyway.

Marché Jean-Talon is basically a big outdoor food market. Lots of boucheries and boulangeries and fromageries and other -eries.* Being a vegetarian, Anne wasn't all that into the butcher shops, but we assembled a sampler of six or eight interesting cheeses from the two shops (along with some tasty, tasty booze -- more on that sometime later) to take back to the hotel and eat with some crackers and the aforementioned pastry products. (Actually, we purchased the pastries after the cheese, but this is my memoir and I'll eschew chronological order if I want to. I'll also say "eschew" frequently, because it's a fun word.)

After navigating the Metro and the underground back to our hotel, we were feeling damp and sore and tired and decided that we'd save other activities for better weather. (At last check, Tuesday was supposed to be the only really bad-weather day of the trip.) So we holed up in our room and ate leftovers and cheese and pastries and watched a DVD** and then some random TV before calling it a night.

I'd like to take a moment, here, and complain. In past trips north of the U.S. border, I've been pretty reliably entertained by the utter weirdness and non-FCC-safe-ness of late-night Canadian television (in English and en Français alike). For the last two nights, though, I've been sorely disappointed. Are 24 and Tripping the Rift dubbed into French really the best you can offer, guys? If so, that's just sad. What happened to the Pimp Opera sketch? The dramatic, if somewhat befuddling, readings of Victorian erotica? The pinnacle of WTFery that could only be described by Anne as "dryad porn"?

This is insufficiently wacky, people. Get with the program. You have guests to entertain and/or confuse.

Ok, back to the travelogue. Today's morning excursion, after a stop back at the underground bakery for brunch (I think I may have a pastry addiction), was to the Botanical Gardens.

On the way, we stopped by the Stade Olympique, which I'd only seen in pictures... now, I can finally say I've mocked it in person. It's kind of sad, really. It positively screams "I am an innovative structure! I am the Stadium of the Future! Gaze upon me, lesser structures, and despair!" And yet, it's sitting largely derelict (the battered sign that clearly used to read "Expos" but is now blank is a testament to that), the grounds are a bit grungy, and there's still that whole "retractable roof that only worked three times" thing.

The gardens themselves were pretty and enjoyable, despite a few problems. First of all, a more grumpy sort could have griped about paying high-season admission only to discover that most of the flowering plants had been pruned for the winter season. (Me... eh, it was still a very pretty walk, and I'm happy to donate to keeping a chunk of the city green.) Second, it was apparently Take The Shrieking Banshees To The Garden day at one of the local elementary schools. We took some circuitous routes to avoid the loudest of the hordes as best we could, and mostly succeeded. (At one point, I noted, "well, at least they're not obnoxious teenagers." Half an hour later, guess what we encountered? I should keep my big yap shut.) Third, I hit a serious energy lull after brunch and didn't really come out of it until at least halfway through the walk -- at which point, Anne claims, I passed it on to her. We had considered a trip by the Biodome afterwards, but decided to cut things short and return to the hotel for a break.

(Oh, and fourth -- I have completely and utterly failed every time I've attempted to navigate, or help Anne navigate, somewhere today. My sense of direction has been even more catastrophically bad than usual. I'm lucky I figured out how to get out of the hotel elevator.)

Which brings us to now. And Anne just woke up, so we're probably back to "where do we eat?" again. Hopefully with less walking involved this time. My feet hurt.

* Ok, I confess, I don't remember what the French word for "produce shop" is. There were a bunch of those, too.
** I bet you were expecting some romantic movie. No, actually, it was Red vs. Blue Season Four.

Récits d'un couple heureux à Montréal: Première partie

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:48:44 GMT

(Mme. LaPlante would be ashamed of how long it took me to sort out that title. My French knowledge has atrophied to a tryly pitiful extent over the last 18 years.)

After a late start on Sunday (I think we left the house at about 1pm), we crossed through the customs checkpoint on I-91 without incident, and arrived at the hotel at 7:45pm or so. I think I even mostly managed to give Anne passable directions to our hotel, which came as something of a surprise to both of us. Checkin was uneventful, and upon arriving we decided to kick off the honeymoon in a truly romantic fashion...

...by ordering delivery pizza and watching the Red Sox game. Yes, really. And, yes, Anne was entirely on board with this plan. No one ever claimed that we were a normal couple. :)

After that was done with, we conked out, and we both got a night's sleep with absolutely no alarm for the first time since... the night of October 6, I think. It may not have been the most exciting start to a honeymoon, but I think uninterrupted, unstressed sleep was the best gift we could give ourselves.

Today, so far, has been a day of intentionally aimless wandering. First up was breakfast at Chez Cora's (we're kind of hooked on them, be it in Montréal, Toronto, or Fredericton), then meandered around the general vicinity of the Place des Arts, and eventually wound up in Old Montreal and perused the shops and galleries in Marché Bonsecours. Anne took quite a few pictures that will probably turn out well, and I took a handful that probably won't. Par for the course, really. :)

The most surreal moment of the day, to this point, was being serenaded by a passing vehicle blasting "Cum On Feel The Noize" at extreme volume... then looking at each other with matching expressions of "that really just happened, didn't it?" on our faces. I guess Quiet Riot is traditional Quebeçois music. Who knew?

We made our way back to the hotel, where Anne took a short nap, and now we're about to see if we can settle on somewhere to go for dinner.

Us.

Making a decision.

About dinner.

...yeah. Pray for us, will ya? ;)

Hey, guess what?

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 01:36:48 GMT

We made it.

Official Wedding Portrait
Originally uploaded by FrozenCapybara

(We also made it to Montreal safely. And yes, there will be more photos added later on.)

This just in: staralshain and syrusb rock. A lot.

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:11:31 GMT

So, um. Wow.

For my birthday and/or wedding present, frozencapybara decided to get devious. And as a result of her plotting with syrusb over the last few months (this started in July)... I now have this. And this, for good measure.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

clears throat

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 01:57:46 GMT

Well, if I'm ever going to use my LJ for anything, I should probably use it for this.

frozencapybara and I are engaged.

As of a bit over a week ago, actually -- we've been trying to track people down individually since then. To the people we managed to notify earlier, consider the gag order lifted. :)

(And just to head off the first question, no, we don't know when yet.)

[meme] Time for answers...

Tue, 02 May 2006 15:51:03 GMT

Solved:
1. Christina wants a habit that'll keep her occupied
--The Curtain Society, "Therapy" lizzielizzie

2. The holy girl is in our focus
--Information Society, "The Ridge 1.1" z_gryphon

3. Some will strut and some will fret
--Indigo Girls, "Virginia Woolf" kadnkadnk

4. Yesterday, I was thinking it's a good time to change
--Tribe, "Abort" (I thought lizzie might get this.)

5. What would you be if the waves set you free?
--Big Country, "Sailor" solipsistnation

6. I try to discover a little something to make me sweeter
--Erasure, A Little Respect solipsistnation

7. Spring is here, spring is here, life is skittles and life is beer
--Tom Lehrer, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" mazianni

8. Nothing in this world can touch the music that I heard when I woke up this morning
--New Order, "Dream Attack" solipsistnation

9. When I was young, my mind would always wander away
--Oingo Boingo, "Cinderella Undercover" solipsistnation

10. What got into you got into me too
--Wang Chung, "Praying to a New God" z_gryphon

11. It's just coincidence
--The Chameleons UK, "Tears" solipsistnation

12. What a dream I had, pressed in organdy
--Simon & Garfunkel, "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her" solipsistnation

13. How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
--Evanescence, "Bring Me To Life" mazianni

14. Is it too late? Nothing to salvage
--t.A.T.u., "Friend or Foe" (See, Doug? More potentially shameful than John Parr. ;)

15. There were 87 Advil in the bottle, now there's 30 left
--They Might Be Giants, "Till My Head Falls Off" mazianni

16. You gentlemen who think you have a mission to purge us of the seven deadly sins
--Pet Shop Boys (or Bertholt Brecht's Threepenny Opera), "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" solipsistnation

17. Growing up, you don't see the writing on the wall
--John Parr, "Man in Motion (St. Elmo's Fire)" trystero

18. Left home with a friend of mine
--Devo, "Going Under" solipsistnation

19. Maybe I've seen your face a long long time ago
--The Smithereens, "Beauty & Sadness"

20. Sleeping on a time bomb, staring into space
--Bad Religion, "Parallel" z_gryphon

[meme] Everyone else is doing it...

Mon, 01 May 2006 14:56:50 GMT

(If I said I was going to start making actual LJ posts that aren't zero-content meme posts, no one would believe me, right? Yeah. Ok, I won't say that. How about "I'll only post one meme for every three 'real' posts I make, at most?" Will that fly? :)

I wouldn't even do this one, but it's pegging my nostalgia meter. It reminds me of the USENET lyrics quizzes we used to respond to (and occasionally post) back at WPI.

The meme: Put your music collection on shuffle, and post the first line of the first 10 songs, and let people guess. I took a few liberties. I posted twenty instead of ten, I skipped songs that had the title in the first line, I only used one song per artist, and I skipped a few completely impossible ones. :)

Have fun! Or don't.

Solved:
1. Christina wants a habit that'll keep her occupied lizzielizzie
2. The holy girl is in our focus z_gryphon
3. Some will strut and some will fret kadnkadnk
5. What would you be if the waves set you free? solipsistnation
6. I try to discover a little something to make me sweeter solipsistnation
7. Spring is here, spring is here, life is skittles and life is beer mazianni
8. Nothing in this world can touch the music that I heard when I woke up this morning solipsistnation
9. When I was young, my mind would always wander away solipsistnation
10. What got into you got into me too z_gryphon
11. It's just coincidence solipsistnation
12. What a dream I had, pressed in organdy solipsistnation
13. How can you see into my eyes like open doors? mazianni
15. There were 87 Advil in the bottle, now there's 30 left mazianni
16. You gentlemen who think you have a mission to purge us of the seven deadly sins solipsistnation
17. Growing up, you don't see the writing on the wall trystero
18. Left home with a friend of mine solipsistnation
20. Sleeping on a time bomb, staring into space z_gryphon

Not yet solved:
4. Yesterday, I was thinking it's a good time to change
14. Is it too late? Nothing to salvage
19. Maybe I've seen your face a long long time ago

[meme] It's not my birthday, it's not today.

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 06:10:39 GMT

(I wasn't going to post this until I noticed what two of the events were...)

Stolen from lizzielizzie and fuzzichi. (And profesor can just steal my answers if he's feeling lazy. ;)

Go to Wikipedia, look up your birthday (sans year), and list 3 events, 2 births and 1 death (and list the years associated with each).

Events:
1773 - America's first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' in Virginia
1859 - Self-described "Emperor of the United States" Joshua A. Norton issues a decree dissolving the U.S. Congress
1998 - U.S. Congress passes Digital Millennium Copyright Act

(The third event proves that the second event was a good idea... pity it didn't take. Judging which of the other two events the first is most relevant to is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Births:
1537 - Jane Grey, Queen of England (d. 1554)
1968 - Hugh Jackman, Australian actor and singer

(Bode Miller is also listed. I feel so unclean.)

Death:
1997 - John Denver, American singer (b. 1943)

(As a New Order fan, I felt strangely compelled to list this one. ;)

In the Olympic spirit...

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 05:13:56 GMT

Somewhere in the darkness
There's a man they call the skipper, fast asleep
And dreaming of gold

He wakes before the sun does
Even though he'd rather stay in bed
He curses the cold in Minnesota
Why's it always so damn cold?
He's got a job to do
He does it for me and you
And the red and the white and the blue

Because he knows he's got to curl (Curl!)
(Come on, baby, put the rock in the house)
Because he knows he's got to curl (Curl!)
(Come on, baby, put the rock in the house)

His team is there and ready
Though the coffee's warm, their breath hangs in the air
They hit the ice

No one's there to see it
There's no press or paparazzi, that's OK
But it'd be nice if someone noticed
That they've all been working hard
Pushing these rocks around
Trying to gain some ground
Got to keep the Canadians down

And all they gotta do is curl (Curl!)
(Come on, baby, put the rock in the house)
Oh yeah, they know they got to curl (Curl!)
(Come on, baby, put the rock in the house)

Come on, baby, put the rock in the house
Come on, baby, put the rock in the house
Come on, baby, put the rock in the house

Their lives outside are waiting
But they give until they've given all they have
Dead on their feet

The skipper isn't certain
But he thinks that maybe this could be the year
When they defeat the world forever
And they bring that medal home
Now it seems years away
Just taking it day by day
When it comes, he'll be ready to play

Because he knows he's got to curl (Curl!)
(Come on, baby, put the rock in the house)
Because he knows he's got to curl (Curl!)
(Come on, baby, put the rock in the house)

Somewhere in the darkness
There's a man they call the skipper, fast asleep
And dreaming of gold

--Jonathan Coulton, Curl

GRAR.

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 22:48:57 GMT

Ok. A call for advice, here.

I recently purchased a new PC. Specifically, an HP Pavilion d4100e with an AMD Athlon 64x2 4200+ CPU. I've been using it for a few weeks, and I'm very happy with it -- but I've been a little concerned about the CPU temperatures. (I figure a little paranoia in this case can't hurt.) So, I picked up a Zalman CNPS9500 heatsink. It's HUGE, so I took the case/motherboard measurements it told me to take, and it looks like it'll fit.

Only one problem. I can't get the godforsaken STOCK heatsink off. Removing the retainer clip and the two exposed screws in the plastic base didn't do any good, so -- knowing that my hardware luck is the stuff of campfire horror stories -- I gave up on it for now. (An unusual display of sensibility, for me.)

It seems to me that this shouldn't be a big hassle, but it is one regardless. I'm loath to ask a friend to attempt it, because... well, if something went wrong, that would be VERY bad, and I don't want to deal with that on a personal level. But I don't know what, if any, other options I have. Professional repair shops might be an option, but I shudder to think what they'd charge me.

Argh. Grar.

Any ideas?

That's one heck of an off-by-one error, Bob.

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 21:35:15 GMT

For those of you who missed it... whoops!

(This one -- username and password "poenews" to view -- is a much better story, but the other one has the best headline. :)