An archive of my old LiveJournal
It’s amazing how the human mind can hold contradictory ideas in its head at the same time. For instance, I somehow got it into my head this morning that today was Microsoft Patch Tuesday. Despite it being Thursday. Despite me knowing it was Thursday, and planning things accordingly. Eventually I got to the point where I thought, “Hey, wait a minute! Today isn’t the second Tuesday of the month, it’s the first.. Oh, wait… it’s not even Tuesday.”
That simplifies my lunch hour immensely.
Since I came into work on Sunday afternoon, I’ve been feeling one day off all week. Monday felt like Tuesday, Tuesday felt like Wednesday, and Wednesday felt like Thursday.
Today I’ve evidently internalized three days’ worth of “No, it’s a day earlier than that!” because I keep thinking it’s Wednesday.
Drove out to Foothill Ranch yesterday on my lunch hour just to explore a bit and get pictures of the nearby hills where you can actually see what color they are. It’s been hazy enough that from my usual vantage points, they look faded grayish yellow-brown, instead of yellow-brown. (Though by this time of year they should look green. Yay drought.)
In other news, earlier this week I watched someone zip around a truck to pass it on the one-lane uphill cloverleaf section of the Ramp of Doom. Oddly enough, car and truck made it through unscathed.
Off to UCI tonight with alenxa to see The Lark, a play about Joan of Arc by the author of Becket.
In other other news, today’s Forgotten English phrase is “crotch-trolling.” No, it doesn’t mean what you think it does.
There’s an ice cream truck driving past playing Tetris music.
After reading sekl’s post on an overly-broad Michigan law, I thought I’d take a look at a list of local(ish) bizarre laws. I ended up at dumblaws.com (beware pop-ups), a site which I last recall reading when I was still living with my parents. Given that it only dates to 1998, that narrows it down to summer 1999-summer 2000.
As I looked through the list of laws on the books in various California cities, I was pleased to see that they’d started to cite sources for some of the laws. But some of the actual laws didn’t match what they were describing.
SECTION 8-133.2. DISPLAY OF AEROSOL SPRAY PAINT CONTAINERS AND MARKER PENS. It shall be unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation doing business within the City of Fresno to store, stock, keep or display for sale or transfer any aerosol spray paint container, or any indelible ink marker pen with a tip exceeding four millimeters in width, in an area other than a place that is locked and secure or is otherwise made unavailable to the public and which is accessible only to employees of such businesses. (Added Ord. 93-13, § 1, 3-26-93).
In other words: there’s no law against selling fine-tipped markers. And there’s no law against selling permanent markers as long as they’re locked up where they can’t be shoplifted.
Another one that jumped out at me was a Walnut law that “Kites may not be flown above 10 feet over the ground.” Again, not exactly:
17-1 Kite flying restricted.
It shall be unlawful for any person to fly, above an altitude of ten feet above the ground, or near any electrical conductive public utility wires or facilities, any kite or balloon which has a body or any parts, tail, string or ribbon made of any metallic or electrical conductive material.
(Code 1959, §§ 4211, 4211.1; Ord. No. 501, § 1)
If your kite is entirely wood, string and paper/plastic, you can fly it as high as the wind will let you.
Now if only they had provided a reference to the Chico law that “Detonating a nuclear device within the city limits results in a $500 fine.” (How exactly do they expect to collect?)
Heh, forgot I’d started this post over a week ago…
Shopping, two days before Christmas.
Heard a dance mix of “The Christmas Song” (yes, the one about chestnuts roasting on an open fire).
Saw a “Sci-Fi” display in Borders that consisted entirely of incarnations of Firefly – the TV show DVDs, the Serenity DVD, and the graphic novel.
Saw a kid wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, “I’m allergic to my brother.”
Heard (on Indie 103.1, not in the mall) songs proclaiming “*bleep* no, there’s no Santa Claus!” and “Father Christmas, give us some money.”
Asked about a book at Borders. The clerk looked it up, they were out of stock, but he offered to call another store and have them hold the book for me. Five hours later, when I got to the front of the line at the other Borders, the clerk I ended up with (one of four on duty at the time) said she had been the one on the other end of the phone.
It’s 82° outside. That, in itself, is not terribly bizarre for SoCal in January. What’s bizarre is the fact that it’s 15 degrees cooler inside.
Around 11:00 this morning I was seriously considering turning on the heater, until I decided to check the temperature outside. It was 65° in the living room and 78° on the balcony. So I opened all the windows I could. The living room has warmed up, but due to our floorplan, the back room with all the computers hasn’t much.
What makes absolutely no sense is the fact that our apartment has lousy insulation. We would never get this effect on a summer day that reached 78° by 11:00 and 82° by 2:00 when we might actually want it. (Although 65° is a bit extreme.)
Apparently, live plants conduct electricity well enough that you can shock yourself when touching them.
The office is switching to a new payroll company and direct deposit hasn’t kicked in yet, so I stopped at the bank at lunch to deposit my paycheck. I actually ended up at a different branch from the one I intended to visit, since I missed the freeway exit but there was another branch near the next one.
The greeter asked me what they could help me with or something customer service-y sounding, I said I just wanted to make a deposit, and she said, “Would you like to fill out a deposit slip?” while gesturing to the small stand with three different kinds of deposit slips. It was clearly meant as “Deposit slips are over here, fill one out before you get in line.”
But the phrasing — who do they think they’re kidding? And what’s wrong with a simple, “Please fill out a deposit slip.”
By the time I left, I’d lost count of the number of “Have a nice day,” “Have a wonderful afternoon,” etc. types of comments, and I was beginning to feel like I’d been banking in Stepford. It was seriously creepy.
Oh, and the teller thanked me for filling out the deposit slip.
It’s one of those things you just don’t expect to have to do.
I cleaned out large chunks of the refrigerator today. Among the things I threw out were the remnants of a 4-pack of Murphy’s Stout that I bought for St. Patrick’s Day and never finished. Now, if stout isn’t chilled, it’ll foam out and overflow the can. Apparently 5-month-old stout overflows even if it is chilled, because when I opened the cans over the sink, they sprayed foam onto the wall.
So I wiped the beer of the wall, then went back to cleaning stuff out. Then I noticed that there were brown spots a bit farther away, so I wiped those off. Then I noticed that it was all over the side of the coffee maker, five feet away from where I was opening the cans. Then I noticed it was on the wall on the other side of the coffee maker!
The moral of the story: Finish your stout on March 17.
I went to Sav-on on Saturday to pick up more NyQuil and DayQuil equivalents. The shelf was practically empty. All sizes of the name-brand boxes (I get the capsules, since I can’t stand taking cough syrup) were completely out.
Yes, they were out of NyQuil and DayQuil.
As for the store brand, which I know from experience works well, they were down to their last few boxes unless you picked up the 40-packs. I think there were two 20-packs of the daytime version, and only the giant boxes for the nighttime.
If anything says “cold season has hit,” it’s a shortage of over-the-counter cold medication!