Unifying Contradiction
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Unifying Contradiction" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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12:26 pm
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Sudden Need for a Lift
I've just learned that the person who was going to give Linda a lift home from the Airport today at 20:30, can't make it. So now I'm suddenly scrambling to find a way to get her home.
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08:56 am
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Replumbed
I am now very tired, but somewhat relieved. A plumber has come and gone and fixed the persistent leak we've been dealing with for weeks now. This is the second time we've used this plumbing company (Richard Leduc) and the second time I've been happy with the results. The guy was on time, was courteous and got to work quickly and efficiently. He even suggested he install a water cut-off valve for the toilet since he was working on it anyway. You have NO idea how many plumbers I've dealt with that have not wanted to do the extra work of installing a shut-off valve, despite how practical they are.
The final bill was quite cheap (it turns out I just need about $50 worth of new parts), but now we'll have to look into fixing the damage once everything dries out. That is going to take several days, as the water soaked a lot of wood, and plywood on its way from the upstairs bathroom to the downstairs dining room.
In related news, I had him look at the downstairs powder room, where we haven't been able to install a new toilet since the old one broke. The reason is that the drain is 11" from the finished wall, and a standard toilet needs 12". He thought it would be a LOT cheaper to get a special toilet than to move the drain, especially considering that a 1" difference can be made up by just getting a narrow tank on a standard toilet. It may even be possible to just buy a narrow tank to fit on the second-hand toilet we got for free when a neighbor renovated. Definitely something to look into. But, of course, before we can put a replacement toilet in, we need to finish the floor as it currently has no tiles on it. But that's a worry for another day.
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07:22 pm
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Bad News
My day was actually going fairly well until Linda phoned me to tell me that she'd just learned her Mother in California had died.
I didn't know my Mother-in-law terribly well, so I'm not nearly as shook up as Linda is. We had been expecting news like this for some time, as Linda's Mom was in really poor health, but she had seemed to be showing slight improvement lately.
So, now begins the mad scramble to get Linda to California to help her Sister deal with all of this. We're still working out exactly when she needs to go, and for how long.
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01:01 pm
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Dreams
Don't much remember my dreams from last night except that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) taxlady and I were somehow in business together. I don't remember quite what we were doing, just that we were having bunches of various meetings with folks about some external problem we'd been hired to solve.
So, I dreamed I was in boring meetings all night. I'm surprised I didn't fall asleep in my sleep.
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01:01 pm
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Hurling.
Just lettin' folks know that taxlady and I plan to make it to Hurley's today. I'm aiming to arrive around 17h00, traffic and whatnot allowing.
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03:11 pm
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Its All Lies
I had a great Thanksgiving party yesterday at sfries place, and slept like a log last night. I woke up feeling really good after a full nights sleep... and I still don't want to do the stuff that I had planned to do today. So much for positive attitude yada yada yada.
The dumb thing is, the stuff I was (and am, if I can motivate myself) planning to do is all FUN, game-related stuff.
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02:12 pm
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Tired of Headaches.
They're not migraines, but I've had bad headaches roughly every-other-day for the last two weeks, and its gotten very tiring. They seem to be sinus related but I can't tell if its related to anything in the air or not. There seems to be some small correlation between my headaches and fungal spores in the air, but I would expect rain to grant me relief then, and it hasn't been happening.
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02:52 am
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Context is Everything.
I just finished watching the third movie of the Bourne Trilogy. I finally got around to watching them. I had been told the movies were good, and I found them even better than I expected. I don't want to gush too much about them though, as I expect any actual CIA operatives would laugh themselves silly at some bits.
Still, there was one bit of writing that went above good, through excellent all the way up to brilliant. The second movie ends with an apparent throwaway scene. A phone conversation that takes place several weeks after the previous scene, and that ties up some loose ends and seems to indicate what the third movie is about.
Well, the third movie starts very shortly after the penultimate scene of the previous movie and shows you what happened during those weeks that were skipped over. The actual phone conversation is half way through the third movie and although the scene is absolutely identical, in context it is a completely different scene with what the two people saying having completely different meanings than one would have assumed after the second movie. Writing-wise I find something like that extremely difficult to pull off convincingly and in this case it was done perfectly.
Now, I'm off to watch an episode of "Modern Marvels" about medieval castles and dungeons. A use of the word "modern" with which I was previously unfamiliar.
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04:34 pm
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Blogging
I haven't really been writing much here lately. I've mostly been just posting little status updates on Facebook. I find if I don't have much to say, I post there instead, so this journal has been somewhat neglected.
I'm thinking I should do something to change that, and start posting a bit more here, even if its inconsequential. I sometimes find I have more to say than I though, once I get to writing.
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11:56 am
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Vicky Christina Barcelona
I watched "Vicky Christina Barcelona" last night with Sandy. It was a surprisingly good non-hollywood movie. By that I mean that it was merely a slice of the main characters lives, and many of the issues raised are never adequately resolved.
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11:39 pm
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Reposted because its cute.
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07:46 pm
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Reason Wins Out
I've been looking forward to going to see Invisible in concert for a couple of months now. The show is slated to start in a bit over an hour, and I'm not going to be there. I've finally admitted that this pounding headache that I've been fighting all day will only get much, much worse if I go to see a rock concert. So, much as I would love to see my friends play again, and as much as I love reconnecting with all the people I'll know in the audience, it doesn't look like its in the cards for me to be there tonight.
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05:21 pm
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Writing Bits.
"Oh, I see", he said meaningfully, while rotating his eyebrows in opposite directions.
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12:00 pm
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They Say
"They" say that, in order to regulate your sleeping, you should try to go to bed at the same time every night, and wake up the same time every morning, no matter what. This has never worked for me, but I've decided to try it, yet again, as I've run out of other ideas. So, for now, I'm going to try going to bed at Midnight every night, and waking up at 9:00 am.
So far, its not working so good. I got about 4 hours sleep last night, and I'm going to have to have a nap this afternoon if I'm to function at all, even a bit. If past experience is any gauge, I'll keep this up for a week or two until I'm so sleep deprived I'll be unable to hold a conversation and will be nodding off between words during the afternoon, and I STILL won't be able to fall asleep and wake up on a schedule.
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08:14 pm
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Eclipse Phase.
The new tabletop RPG Eclipse Phase takes place in a future altered by a Singularity 'Gone Wrong'. The only humans left were ones who escaped the cataclysm on Earth by scanning their brains and beaming them to other points in the Solar System. The resulting distopia is an attempt to do Hard-SF Horror in set in a situation that one can fear might actually come about.
There is a review by Anders Sandberg on his blog, and he seems quite enthusiastic about it, which is enough of an endorsement for me. I've collaborated (in a small way) with Anders on game stuff in the past, so I know that if he likes something, I am likely to like it too.
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06:18 pm
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Not Ready for Prime Time.
By that I mostly refer to me. You see, I have a number of pending invitation to go and do things with folks, and I've had to decline or postpone all of them, because I'm still not nearly 100%. Most of my cold symptoms are gone now except for a somewhat stuffy nose (which is hard to distinguish from my normal case of chronic rhinitis), but I have no energy. Doing the simplest things leaves me exhausted for ages afterward. So, I'm taking it real easy for the next few days, even though I'd love to be out and about and doing things.
The other thing I usually refer to by that title is Linux, but this time around I'm gonna have to opine that its about come even with Windows XP, which is a shame as XP is broken is SO many ways, so the bar isn't very high. My experiences with the two, now that I've spent a long time going back and forth is:
a) Windows 'just works' 99.9% of the time. You plug your hardware together, install windows, download and install the drivers, and you're DONE. Until, that is, everything breaks for no reason whatsoever and you find yourself reinstalling stuff that's already installed. Had to go through that again today when my XP box – which is doing nothing but being a TV – stopped listening to the remote. Its done that before. The only thing that works is completely uninstalling the software for my Remote Wonder II, and reinstalling it. Then everything is fine … for a few more months. Highly aggravating, but livable.
b) Linux, on the other hand, is rock steady. Generally speaking, you set things up, and they just continue to work. The problem is its often near-to impossible to set things up. Take X configuration as a great example. You used to have to write an xorg.conf file to describe your hardware setup, in terms you were unlikely to have the faintest idea how to describe. What's worse, if you read the manual there are sections that say "We don't know what this does. Maybe nobody does." Helpful. So, they've recently moved to autodetecting everything since the 'autodetect' code has been 'working' and 'stable' for ages. Huh. I HAVE NEVER HAD ANY LINUX DISTRO SUCCESSFULLY DETECT AND SET UP MY VIDEO FOR ME. Right now, I'd love to boot my TV machine into ubuntu (as the various bits of Linux TV software I looked at seem to favor it), and use it instead of windows. Only, I've never gotten it to recognize my remote. I haven't been able to figure out how to get it to recognize my keyboard (its a Microsoft International Canadian keyboard and Ubuntu has never heard of it and seems to have no map file for it) and it (to my amazement) correctly reads and interprets the EDID info from my monitor and then auto-chooses settings that are obviously out of spec. Oh, and even the mouse, a SIMPLE SERIAL MOUSE!, is not correctly handled out of the box. I have not found any way of getting Ubuntu to boot and recognize the mouse. So, in theory Linux would be far more stable, but I'm going to have to wait until I have a few hundred hours to spare in configuration attempts before I even get a distro that's working well enough to bother with.
And all I really want is a box able to play arbitrary video files on my monitor, and controlled by a remote.
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10:03 pm
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Dreamwidth
Its that time again. I have another 3 dreamwidth invites. If there's anyone reading this who is still interested in an invite code, let me know.
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03:25 pm
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Assorted Recoveries.
I woke up this 'morning' feeling somewhat better. I know that can be deceiving though, as I often feel best upon waking when I have a cold. This can make the 'should I go in to work' question even trickier than it normally is. No such quandary for me right now though, without a job to go to. Last week there was a plan to spam the world with CVs, but right now I feel too stupid to do even that. So, if this post rambles, you know why.
Still, I could breathe easily when I woke up, and still can, although I've been sneezing a lot, and my nose is still runny. I'm gonna tentatively call that a good thing. No let up on the brain fog though. So, maybe I'm starting to recover. We'll see.
In related news, I got a phone call from my Mom yesterday (who is now on Facebook too, as is my cousin Pat. Slowly my whole family will join, I'm suspecting). She also seems to have this cold that's going round. She said the doctor's waiting room in Cornwall was full of folks coughing and sniffling when she went in for a checkup, so it seems to making the rounds.
I asked about my younger brother, and it seems that the brain surgery has done him a world of good (although every reminder that my 'little brother' is over 40 makes me feel ancient). He's still recovering and undergoing various sorts of physio therapy to sort out issues that had been caused by the pressure on his brain. Knowing that he's had complaints (which we now realize) were related to his condition since we still lived together with our parents decades ago, you can imagine that it will take some time for him to fully adjust to the pressure being gone. I wish him the speediest of recoveries, but its hard to guess how long the process will actually take.
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03:33 am
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Steampunk Dress-Up.
It seems that taxlady and I have been invited to a steampunk event in mid-October at our favorite watering hole. The only problem is that we don't currently have any costume ideas. Does anyone have any ideas for things I could do that would be reasonably fast, reasonably cheap, and reasonably easy?
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08:47 pm
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Sudden Summer Cold
Not feeling my best today. I started feeling a bit off last night after getting home from a lovely outing at azrhey's place. I went from having a scratchy throat to having aching sinuses in the space of a few hours.
I woke up this morning with no appetite, my throat all sore, and my sinuses working overtime. I even have post-nasal drip, which is a symptom that I almost never get. On top of everything else my bad leg, which I managed to wrench last week while at a previous trip to azrhey's place, has decided to play up. Its now clicking on me, and hurting, and trying to bend the wrong way, and otherwise not behaving like a limb should.
My plan for both conditions is to get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids, and catch up on mindless TV. Oh, and on that last subject, I found, watched, and loved the cartoon series Freakazoid!, and managed to find and watch the first two episodes of Phoenix Five, which is the worst TV SF BAR NONE that I have ever seen.
Phoenix Five is so far beyond bad that its actually worse than Battlefield Earth. In fact, imagine that previous movie, without the rigorous attention to scientific accuracy, dummer script writers, and roughly a $2 budget for special effects. Its two saving graces are that its so bad its become (somewhat) watchable again and that each episode is only 20 minutes long.
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