Plaidophile

Today marked my one-year anniversary at Amazon. I'm still loving it. :D

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I just noticed that on Google Maps, most of the countries are labeled in their native language rather than the English one. It's woefully inconsistent, though; a few (like Suomi/Finland) are labeled with both, which is something which would be really useful for the others (like Germany/Deutschland which is only labeled as the latter), a few (like China) are still only labeled in English, and Japan is labeled in both but the native label is in Kanji rather than transliterated, making it fairly useless for Americans, and the individual cities are only labeled in Kanji (and the detail maps are also pure Kanji).

I really don't like the current chunk of songs which I'm so horribly late on due to my wrists anyway, at least not Been To China or A Thousand Swords. There's a couple of surprise ones I still want to do, though, and I guess I got a bit less shitty for Birds Of Our Own. Really there's not a lot of worthwhile songs left though.

So, when I'd made the appointment with the orthopedist for today, the office asked if I'd had any nerve conductivity tests for this issue. I said "no." They said a test would be necessary. I said "Okay."

When I got to the doctor's office on time today they had me fill out a bunch of paperwork. Much of it was questions about whether this was a work-related incident and who I was going to sue as a result of it (well, okay, whether I was working with an attorney on it, but still). Then I got to wait for an hour. Then the doctor saw me, and for 15 minutes asked a bunch of questions and did a few basic tests, which indicated to him that it was inconclusive and that I'd need to do a nerve conductivity test. I said "Okay."

Then I got to make an appointment to get the nerve conductivity test. In another two weeks. I got no indication as to whether I need to take some time off from work, do anything special other than what I've been doing for the last few years, or anything else. I was just told to keep on taking Advil or Aleve, as long as it didn't bother my stomach, and was sent on my way.

So, why couldn't they have set up the nerve conductivity test for before my appointment today?

Argh.

Meetings. Gourmet food. Health scare. Tripping at work.

(i told u i was hardcore)

I actually missed the +5 deadline for "Been To China." I have lots of ideas for it but can't work on it because it hurts too much. Meh.

Hopefully this Friday I'll get cortisone and then I'll be all better.

Flowbee: Good, bad, or ugly?

Justify.

Long-time readers will understand why I found this band name to be pretty funny, so I couldn't pass up getting the album when I saw it a few months ago. I'm finally listening to it. It's actually a really good album!

What the hell was I thinking?

I wonder if today's kids realize that the Flintstones are anything other than character mascots on children's vitamins.

DOCTOR 1: How old do you think he is?

DOCTOR 2: Oh, I'd say 35, 38

DOCTOR 1: [shakes head] He told me this morning, when I was examining him. He's 78.

DOCTOR 2: Well I don't believe it!

DOCTOR 1: Life expectancy's 130!

DOCTOR 2: Well how does he explain that?

DOCTOR 1: Says their medicine is that much more advanced. [Hands cigarette to DOCTOR 2.] He was very nice about it, but he made me feel like a third-class witch doctor.

[DOCTOR 1 and DOCTOR 2 light up and begin smoking]

Richard M. Stallman is considered to be a rabid idealogue.

He is also deathly afraid of water.

A fear of water is called "hydrophobia."

"Hydrophobia" is also an old term for rabies.

An animal infected with rabies quickly becomes rabid.

phpBB sucks an enormous donkey dick.

Nobody respects an altruist, neither in private life nor in international affairs. An altruist is a person who keeps sacrificing himself and his values, which means: sacrificing his friends to his enemies, his allies to his protagonists, his interests to any cry for help, his strength to anyone's weakness, his convictions to anyone's wishes, the truth to any lie, the good to any evil. — Ayn Rand

Discuss.

So, now that I've had a few hours to play around with my new phone, I'd might as well post a review. I'm pretty familiar with Sony Ericsson's phones already (having been quite happy with the R520m, T39m, and T610 in the past), so I don't need a lot of time to evaluate the Z520a.

In general, it feels like the T610 fell through a time warp to the year 2019 where it was lovingly caressed back to health by 7th-generation acolytes of Apple and polished towards perfect luster before it was sent back through the temporal rift. Only the future of 2019 was in the parallel universe of anime. It's not fundamentally different from the T610 (which really is just a more graphically-rich version of the R520/T39 UI), but the interface has been cleaned up in some places, and it runs a lot faster and smoother. The interface is full of smooth effects with subtle uses of elements zooming and fading, with some very nice alpha-blending and fading effects. I had assumed these would be annoying and get in the way but so far they've remained pleasant.

So far, I'm really happy with the new phone. not only does it do everything the t610 did, it does a lot more with both extreme style and grace. it also comes with two browsers, ericsson's and opera, both of which are quite solid.

oh yeah, and i'm posting this entry with it.

Because my wrists are teh sukc right now my superiors want me to just do non-typing analysis and demi-management stuff until I can get to the orthopedist, and the one who I was recommended to see doesn't have anything available until next Friday. So, no typing until then. Although I appreciate work not wanting me to kill my wrists, after just one day I've already taken care of all the management-type stuff I can foresee for the next week or so. And so now I'm being paid to basically sit around and not even twiddle my thumbs. And I've also been politely asked to not work on music in my spare time (so of course my sadistic muse has decided to fill my head with song ideas! and I'm just bursting at the seams with songs right now) and to keep my non-work typing to a minimum.

I really appreciate the concern for my physical well-being but I AM GOING CRAZY. And it's only been one day! (Two if you count being sent home on Friday.)

There's got to be something productive I can do without using my hands.

walk 5.5 miles. take 126 photos.

(Atypical Saturday.)

Since when does OSX's Finder allow resizing the columns in column view?

I guess I've been avoiding that mode because of that long-time problem and never noticed it was fixed. (I still prefer list view though. But column view has the preview pane which is so useful sometimes.)

last night i had the worst flareup of cts pain ever. hasn't really gone away. finally dragged myself into work today and told my manager of the problem and he told me to take the day off and we'll figure out what to do. gonna do as little as possible witih my hands this weekend also. later

So, as much as I like my T39m I'm still feeling a bit constrained by it, so I just ordered a Sony Ericsson Z520a, the idea being that it's basically a clamshell version of the T610 which was, aside from the flaky keypad, my favorite phone overall.

Maybe I should have just waited a couple months and switched to Cingular and gotten one for practically free, but then I'd have been stuck in a 2-year contract with a crappy phone provider which charges up the butt for data service (which I also don't use very much anymore). My current plan is to just switch to T-Mobile To Go when my current contract is up, since it's a much better deal with my usage patterns.

Another post to the internal for-sale mailing list, received to much critical acclaim. (I really wish I'd preserved my original one from a year ago.)

Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 11:02 AM
To: for-sale
Subject: The circle of boxes continues

Boxes to boxes, rust to rust. I'm finally unpacked from my last move, and so the black-market trade in used/abused moving boxes must continue. I have about 15 boxes, mostly small/medium size. Several of them have gotten quite beaten up from going through the rigors of for-sale multiple times. I'm tempted to just throw them all out, but then they look at me with their dewey eyes and say, "No! Surely we can be handed off on another Amazon employee yet again! We want to liiiiiiive!"

I feel so bad just throwing them out, especially since I also have some unused (albeit yellowed, and not very much) packing paper, also the result of a gradual process of attrition like the polishing of stones along a rocky beach.

Moving boxes have developed their own ecological niche, and so it would be cruel and inhumane to not keep their constructed biosphere alive, even if there's nothing inherently biological. It's more of an emergent property, really. Perhaps it is more like an economic model, or meta-life. In any case, its fate lies in your hands.

In any case, the boxes and paper and sense of godlike power can be picked up in Ballard.

It seems like every cooking show on Create involves a food processor, and I was getting envious of their ability to quickly throw together salsa, sofrito, and especially bread dough. (Toss in the dry ingredients, pour in the wet ingredients, add flour until it makes a nice ball, put in a bowl and let it rest for an hour.)

So, the intercom system in my condo is still broken, so most peoples' units can hear what's on the street but the street unit can't hear what the people say in the units. So people trying to ring the bell don't know if someone's on the other end and just have to talk to nothing until someone hears them and lets them in.

Somehow this leads everyone who comes here to just buzz every single fucking unit repeatedly until someone lets them in. So I'll be in the middle of, oh, I don't know, sleeping, or recording, or watching TV, or anything else that I do when I'm at home, and then someone will ring my unit without regard for whether I'm home or know who they are or whatever.

I had a good night's sleep, and an okay if unproductive day at work, and so I've settled down for now. Next up, heading to Mad Dog's 53rd birthday party. (Happy birthday, John!)

On my way home from work today, my path was blocked by a huge immigration-rights protest which had been planned for a while. This was a nice bit of icing after a stressful day after only getting two hours of sleep last night.

Just as I was getting through the mob scene, a whole bunch of sirens broke out, with ambulances and police rushing towards the mob.

I just found out that I barely missed someone driving a car through the mob trying to run people over.

Meh.