Rococo

All that snow last night? Melted by the time I got up.

Finally finished The Baroque Cycle, all three thousand-page volumes of it. It lives up to its name, with a plotline full of ornate and elaborate encrustations. Very broadly speaking, it's a fictionalized history of the Scientific Revolution in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, and philosophy. Newton, Liebnitz, Hooke, and Wren. The first steam engine and the first computer. But that's just the main plotline.

In the process, there's a fairly exhaustive tour of European history. We see the beheading of Charles I, the restoration of Charles II, the flight of James II, the invasion of William of Orange, and the death of Anne. We see the magnificence and insanity of Versailles under the Sun King, Louis XIV. We find out where the modern banking and monetary system came from. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Don't get me wrong, it can be pretty tedious reading if you don't have a head for this sort of thing. There's a lot of names and places to keep straight, and a cast of characters so large they have their own appendix at the end. But if you can get past that, it's pretty fascinating stuff. I know there's at least a few of you own there who'd be up to it.

On a related note, I realized tonight that I may have completely forgotten basic calculus. How do you integrate, again?

Purdy

It just started snowing here... big, heavy flakes, the sort of honest snow that we haven't had all winter. Gorgeous.

Iron Chef shout-out!

Another cool thing heard on NPR this morning: they were running a story on cutting edge cuisine in Spain. It was recorded at a "fusion" convention for chefs being held in Madrid. And who should they interview, as he made matsutake tapas? Why, Dr. Yukio Hattori, the know-it-all commentator who appears on every Iron Chef. It's good to know that he's alive and well and still cooking.

Half Full or Half Empty?

So I'm listening to NPR this morning and they do a lengthy piece on the upcoming elections in Iraq. First up is their correspondent interviewing a number of Iraqis. They all insist (among other things) that the most influential political/religious figure in the country, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has not endorsed any of the parties.

Immediately afterwards is another interview with a random American talking head, who repeatedly insists that Sistani is backing the favored party.

The news anchors themselves make no mention whatsoever of this glaring contradiction between two of their sources, within a minute's time no less. Now, were they a) asleep at the switchboard, or b) confident in their listeners to draw their own conclusions from the diverging accounts?

KC Bombers

Okay, so, roller derby. Wow. I'm just going to try to describe, on the assumption that most of you would be as unfamiliar with it as I was - cheesy '70s flicks notwithstanding.

Two teams of around a dozen girls, though only five each are on the rink at any given time. All of them have campy stage names: Estee Slaughter, Maiden Hell, Anna Conda, etc. They're also in outlandish outfits, lots of pink and black, short skirts, feather boas, etc. The whole thing is held in a particularly large (and old) roller rink not far from Cerner. Probably several hundred people in attendance.

The rules: at any given time, one girl from each team is the designated scorer, and this role rotates. She scores a point each time she manages to lap a member of the other team; and they, of course, are trying to block her or knock her out of bounds. Three fifteen-minute periods, with a short intermission between each.

During these intermissions, random entertainment. Tonight's was a local capoeira club, a Brazilian style of both dance and martial arts. Seriously cool stuff to watch.

Mood: high camp. All of the announcers and a few of the audience members are in costume; the music is retro '70s; drag queens circle the perimeter holding up signs just like a boxing match. A little like a Rocky Horror showing, if you've ever been to one. Yet everyone's taking it really seriously, and the competition is apparently quite real. Some sideline conversations reveal that they practice regularly, and a few girls I meet say they tried out but weren't good enough skaters.

The audience: astonishingly mixed. Preppies and goths. Gay and straight. Elderly couples and young children. Probably the most eclectic gathering of humanity I've been part of in a very long time. Would be worth the price of admission just for that fact.

Overall: a remarkably enjoyable, and completely random, way to spend an evening. Their matches are generally Saturday nights, so if you're done here one of those weekends, we'll go.

The names have been changed to protect the guilty

Me: "Ja wohl!"
Boss: "Huh?"
Me: "It's German for yes sir."
Boss: "I don't speak Sputnik."

Seventh and Eighth Chevrons Locked

New episodes of both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis resume Friday night at 7:00 on the SciFi Channel. If you're reading this, I insist you watch. They're simply some of the best shows on television. Slightly less important, but still cool, is that Food Network is showing new episodes of Iron Chef America on Sunday nights.

I think the Folgers plant is roasting something new, because the air tonight was filled with the most potent cinnamon odor I've ever smelled. Relatedly, I find it awesome that my local WalMart carries daikon radish, even if I'd never buy it.

So I forgot to mention that last weekend, my godfather showed me his rather vast collection of single malt Scotches. There was some truly amazing stuff in there. If you want any recommendations, I'm your man.

Oddities

[Writing this for the SECOND TIME since the site crashed...]

Thought inspired by a bathroom wall: if I went to a Husker game and shouted "GO GIVE HEAD!", would anyone notice? Or care?

Article of the day: a comprehensive history of Social Security. Long but educational. EDIT: No, that's now the secondary article of the day, because I just found out that an old friend of mine (the first one on this page) appears on the Van Helsing DVD commentary.

Finally finished The Minish Cap, the latest entry in the Zelda legend. It's a bit shorter and easier than the recent games, more of a throwback to Link to the Past. But it's also very original, with lots of new mechanics, weapons, and puzzles. And the world is quite a bit bigger than it first seems due to its constantly shifting nature, a bit like Chrono Trigger. Highly recommended if you're a fan of the series (and own a GameBoy Advance).

This Saturday, I'll be going on what might be my strangest date ever: to the Roller Derby. You heard me right. I'll try to write up an account afterwards, but I have a feeling that I might be at a loss for words.

Educate Yourself

Supreme Court justices very rarely debate anyone in public, much less one another. Which is why it's noteworthy that they did so just the other day at American University. It makes for lengthy but very interesting reading. And if you're Tom, mandatory.

I think I realized another reason why I dislike eating at fast food restaurants: the families. Almost without exception, parents tend to treat their children horribly, using names that I wouldn't even call an adult. It requires every ounce of self-control I have not to tell them off. Ugh. Maybe that should be my new definition for white trash: the chronically rude.

Oh, yes, and I ended up coming through Lincoln a bit earlier than expected. I'm sitting in Kauffman right now, actually.

Inflation

Even for an adult male, there's still something a little frightening when every light in the parking lot shuts off, for no apparent reason, while you're in the middle of it. A vast, frigid parking lot surrounded on two sides by forest, to be exact. It's like the lead-in to a scene from an action movie that you really don't want to star in.

The new carpet is in at my apartment; viewed from the wrong angle, it gives the rather disturbing illusion that the entire floor is undulating.

Fie on rising health care costs, even (especially) at a company that specializes in it. I switched to a plan this year that's significantly cheaper than my old one - at the 2005 rate schedule, that is. But I'm still paying noticeably more than I did last year, and it's that much less to take home. If I weren't single, frugal, and debt-free, I'd probably be even more peeved about it.

Going up north this weekend to see my dad for his birthday, and to see my godfather for some belated Christmas exchanges. Get the Marlon Brando impression out of your systems now. Done? Good. All this will be near Sioux City, but I'll pass through Lincoln on the way back Sunday night. If anyone wants to do dinner, give me a jingle that afternoon.

Environs

It's been a week of noticing random things:

• Smelled someone making toast in the break room, and realized it was the first time I'd so much as smelled it, much less eaten it, in over a year.
• Poster of the month, on lampposts/windows/elevators etc, is "ISO 9001". It's good that we're certified and all, but I'd have thought it more of an order qualifier than an order winner.
• There's a treadmill in a third floor conference room. Not for exercise, but as a sample of a medical equipment interface from a vendor. I doubt anyone's ever even used it.
• What looks like a snack bar or cafeteria annex is under construction in the lobby. Imagine how much time and productivity employees will save when they don't have to walk across the street.
• All the lights seemed brighter on the way home. First evening in a week without rain, snow, or fog.
• New carpet for the hallways in my apartment is stacked next to the elevator. Whole place smells like Nebraska Furniture Mart.
• Turns out my Linksys router knows how to update itself against DynDNS.org. Everyone else probably knew this, but I hadn't.
• The cap on my vanilla vodka wasn't tight when I put it back into my wine rack, so now my countertop is covered in sticky vanilla syrup.

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Found deep inside a logfile:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 13 minutes 11 seconds

"    ."".    ."",   "

"    |  |   /  /    "

"    |  |  /  /     "

"    |  | /  /      "

"    |  |/  ;-._    "

"    }  ` _/  / ;   "

"    |  /` ) /  /   "

"    | /  /_/\_/\   "

"    |/  /      |   "

"    (  ' \ '-  |   "

"     \    `.  /    "

"      |      |     "  

"      |      |     "

Wow... that was sweet.  You are done now.

A good time had by all

A rather busy weekend round here. Friday night was Stolee, Stack, Matt, Steven, and Steven's friend Chris. As you might imagine, drunken hilarity ensued. At least I made a dent in the absurd quantities of vodka I've had lying around.

Managed to not be paying attention when my car hit 100,000. Damn it all. I guess I'll have to wait for 200,000.

I spent most of Sunday running errands around town; only to discover when I returned that my keyboard had inexplicably died in my absence. I think there must have been a power surge of some sort, as my cable modem and router were in strange, invalid states as well. But of course, it meant another trip back to the store. I'm just grateful that keyboards are the single cheapest component of a computer.

I would never have thought of it before, but the biggest drawback to living alone is that there's no one to ask you how your day was when you get home. Or, perhaps more to the point, I never thought I'd so quickly reach the point in my life where I want someone to come home to.

Scraperhands

So we had a lovely little ice storm yesterday and today. I live along a sort of meteorological Mason-Dixon line now, neither North nor South, where ice and sleet seem to be far more common than either rain or snow. When I went outside, there was an inch-thick layer of ice cladding on every twig of every tree. And of course, on my windshield as well.

It takes a while to get through that much ice, even after quite a bit of melting from the defrost within. At one point I was wielding a scraper in each hand, and bits of ice were flying to the air at such a comic pace that I realized I was reenacting a certain scene from Edward Scissorhands. And I got to do the same thing after work, thanks to a lazy sort of sleet all day. Oh, in theory I could have worked from home - most did - but I've been performance testing lately, and the performance lab's network is isolated from the company and world. Not to mention the roads were just fine, so I really didn't have a choice. I'll take the next snow day off.

Gripe: my windows, though large, elegant, and well-lit, are nevertheless useless on days like this, because it's entirely impossible to see the ground. I have to get dressed and go outside to find out what's happened overnight. A pain in the ass, I tell you.

My car will be rolling over to 100,000 miles in the very near future. Wish I owned a camera.

Stolee's coming this weekend, with possible cameos by Katie, Stack, Matt, Steven, and Rusty. What should I mix with orange and vanilla vodka?

The Shining, part 2

Back in Kansas City. A relaxing weekend in Colorado: eating, sleeping, and reading. As for Kingstone, like all good haunted houses do, it cooks up a few new idiosyncrasies each year:

• You know those Christmas village things, the lighted ceramic houses? Well, though we visit at the same time every year, for the first time Kingstone had them. To be more precise, they've taken over. I counted well over a hundred of the houses alone, with accompanying accessories probably surpassing a thousand, on every available surface. It must have taken days to put them all up. I'm not sure whether to be impressed or frightened.
• The Parlor of Blood (tm) turns out, on closer inspection, to have knicknacks from numerous countries and periods, not just the Civil War. In one display case, I spotted a woman's necklace decorated with the Nazi swastika.
• The overall amount of artwork has increased dramatically, with many former walls now crowded with artwork. I think my favorite is a photograph of Mother Teresa, surrounded on all sides by mountain landscapes.
• Speaking of portraits, all of the paintings of Mr. King have moved to different locations around the house, just to keep you on your toes. One now glares down at the master bedroom. I'm not sure how my parents slept at night.
• And speaking of Mr. King, it turns out that many of his clothes are still stored in certain closets around the house. It'd almost be a crime for him not to haunt the place.

Made it most of the way through the Baroque Cycle, somehow. Expect a review once I finish them. Assorted people are wandering through town this week. Let me know if you want to party this weekend.