Recently in Amused/Annoyed Category

I'm pretty swamped with my freelance project and don't have much to report. Work at work, work at home, sleep, repeat. I'm looking forward to the weekend. Even though I'll still be working on the freelance project, there should be time in there for a run, a bike ride, a breakfast with friends, and hopefully a few other fun activities.

For today though, enjoy this email from a few days ago. It's from Jose's friend Meryl. She grew up in Unalakleet, Alaska, a small town on the west coast that is one of the checkpoints along the Iditarod route. This year's race was won on March 16 after just under 9 days on the trail.

The Iditarod dog race is going on right now, and I've been keeping track of the news on it. Today I read about what the mushers are eating along the trail. Some are eating lasagna prepared by their wives, moose chimichangas, caribou stroganoff, chicken alfredo...pretty normal stuff in Alaska. But one guy is eating this:

"Iditarod veteran Paul Gebhardt of Kasilof is packing McDonald's quarter-pounders with cheese. He's also bringing breakfast burritos his wife makes with bacon, eggs, hash browns and salsa, as well as his own concoction: french bread sandwiches with grape jelly spread on one half, Miracle Whip on the other, then heaped with roast pork and ketchup."

Sounds delish. He also eats Twinkies along the trail. He explains why, "It's fascinating to school kids because Twinkies don't freeze -- ever," he said. "At 65 below a Twinkie is still soft."

Aren't Twinkies amazing? Just thought I'd give you all something to be hungry for when it comes time to lunch today.

The day after Christmas, my family traveled up to Chapel Hill and Durham for the day to have a nice lunch with my aunt, cousin, and grandmother. Grandmother is 95 years old and though she's lived in a retirement for several years now, she still complains about "all these old people" that can't carry on a good conversation at dinner. (That always makes me laugh. Age is just a number, right?)

Anyway, the past year has been a little rough for Grandmother and she has more trouble getting around than she used to. She's had to start using a walker since her knee has become susceptible to giving out at any moment, and early in 2009 she had to move from an independent living facility into assisted living. This past fall, she got a power chair.

So of course Jose and I had to test it out. You know, for safety.

Turns out those things are pretty zippy when you crank the power all the way up. :)

I got this postcard in the mail from my parents yesterday. They were in DC over the weekend visiting my brother and went to the International Spy Museum. I've heard that one is pretty cool, so I'll have to check it out the next time I'm in DC. Except I'll remember -- you gotta watch out for those inquisitive women. Spies, I tell you! Spies!

I just bought one of these for my bike. If I can figure out how to attach it to my tri bike, I'm totally bringing it along for my next race. Hmm. Though it might not be legal for a race. We'll see.

I really, really do not understand people who do not check who their email is being sent to. Case in point: I am on a distribution list for a project I do not work on anymore. I get a few emails per day. Today, someone replied asking to be removed from the list. Then another. And another. And another. Obviously the list has not been cleaned up in quite some time. All of these emails are being sent to the entire list, because when you click "reply," the reply-to address has been configured (in some misguided attempt at communication, I'm sure) such that the list address appears in the "To" field. To reply to a single person, you must remove the list address and then type in the address of the person you wish to email.

Now, this is horribly designed. It makes it far too easy for lazy people who do not check the "To" field of their email before hitting "Send" to accidentally reply to the whole list. So today, this is what I've gotten to read:

"Please remove me from this list."
"Ok, I will remove you when I get back to my office."
"Please remove me as well."
"And me."
"Yes, remove me."
"Stop replying to all!"
"Remove me from the list also."
"PLEASE STOP REPLYING TO ALL!"
"Take me off the list."
"I don't want to be on the list anymore."
"Remove me please."
"To be removed, you must email so-and-so. Stop replying to the whole list."
"Remove me from the list please."

And on. And on. AND ON.

At least there was this response to make me laugh:

"I like being on this list. I've never gotten so many great emails! Are there any more lists like this you can put me on?"

For a bunch of rocket scientists, we sure can be stupid sometimes.

I saw this real-time on NASA TV on Sunday morning. I'd glanced away from the TV for a minute, and almost yelped out loud when I turned back to the screen.

Giant spider' attacks space shuttle
Metro (U.K.)

When Nasa abruptly scrubbed the planned launch of the space shuttle Atlantis on Sunday, postponing any launch until January at the earliest, the official line blamed a recurring fault in the fuel sensors as the reason for the cancellation.

However, footage of that day - from Nasa's own cameras - reveals the real reason the launch has been delayed. It's because the shuttle has been attacked by a giant alien spider beast.

No Nasa spokesperson has yet commented on the massive intergalactic arachnid's attempt to eat Atlantis - but experts viewing the footage suggest that it is a clear indicator that the Earth is about to be plunged into an all-out space war with a race of 150ft-long demonic spiders who live on rocket fuel.

The spider attack lasted a little over a minute on December 9, as the shuttle stood helpless on the launchpad while the eldritch horror, vast beyond imagining, nibbled on it.

Then, in a display of supreme indifference and terrifying arrogance, the monster got bored and wandered off...

Last night I was lying in bed watching the end of the Rockies-Diamondbacks game. I was looking forward to seeing the Rockies sweep, and watching them celebrate as their crazy winning streak continues.

It was just a minute or two past midnight according to the clock next to my bed, and the Diamondbacks were about to bat in the top of the 8th inning, when a loud "SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH" sound began eminating from the TV and the picture turned to static.

What the hell?!

A quick check showed that TBS was the only channel that had gone static. Everything else was still playing normally. I flipped channels frantically. Suddenly, TBS was back. Only it wasn't TBS anymore. Channel 31 had turned from TBS into FX and was now showing the end of "The Stepford Wives" with Nicole Kidman.

What the hell?!?

Next thing I knew, channel 32 had gone static. When it reappeared, it had morphed from Spike TV into the Golf Channel. Now I began to suspect Comcast, who took over from Time Warner a few months ago. To my untrained eye, it appeared more than coincidence that the issues began at midnight. It looked suspiciously like a channel realignment. But I never got anything in the mail, and the Comcast website showed no changes.

I flipped up and down through 60+ channels, searching for any sign of baseball. All the other channels stayed the same. ESPN was still 33 and 34. Comedy Central was still 59. HGTV was still 47.

I gave up, fuming, and went to bed. This morning, TBS was still gone.

I checked my mail on my way to work, since I didn't check it yesterday afternoon. In my mailbox was a card from Comcast announcing a new channel lineup. Sure enough, FX was 31. The Golf Channel was 32. TBS moved to 51, though I never found it there last night. Though their brochure clearly states "changes effective October 23," apparently they decided to move it up a week.

I checked their website again this morning. It's updated. They updated it sometime since midnight last night.

Comcast owes me. They made me miss the end of the NLCS. Bastards.

You may remember that I backed into a concrete pole at the gym about 6 weeks ago, resulting in a pole-sized dent in my rear bumper. Not being able to open the back hatch was getting really old, so yesterday morning I finally dropped my car off at the body shop to get a new bumper.

To get me through the next couple days without renting a car, Debbie offered me her roommate's car. He works in Russia at least nine months per year, and his car ends up sitting in the garage for weeks on end with only the occasional drive around the block to make sure it still runs. Perfect! I needed a car, and Steve's car needed to be driven.

My first outing in my borrowed car was the drive to UHCL last night for my weekly class. It wasn't until I pulled into the parking lot that I realized I'd left my parking permit in my Xterra. "Crap," I thought, "I hope I don't get a ticket." Not knowing what else to do, I parked and went to class. When I came out at 10:00, there was a lovely pink slip of paper under the windshield.

I got a ticket.

For those keeping score at home, the past five days have featured a stolen iPhone, the miraculous return of the stolen iPhone (though after I bought a new one, meaning no matter what I'm out the $40 restocking fee), putting my car in the body shop to the tune of $500, and now getting a parking ticket in a borrowed car.

Oh yeah, and the softball glove I need for our game tonight? Also still in my Xterra.

Is it Friday yet?

Apple announced that they're giving a $100 credit to anyone who bought the iPhone before the price drop. To me, that is more than fair and makes me very happy, as I'd expected to get nothing.

So I'm in a good mood. Hopefully this will end my string of bummed out, whiny blog posts.

So Apple had their big announcement today. Every iPod has been revamped, and they introduced the iPod Touch -- like an iPhone without the phone. They also dropped the price on an 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399. And I have to say, I'm a little annoyed.

I knew that prices would drop. But a $200 drop -- 33% -- after only two months on the market? This says two things to me:

1) They want to sell more, and realize that the price was an obstacle.
2) They could've offered it for $399 two months ago.

I bought mine one month ago. If I'd known a $200 price drop was coming, obviously I would have waited. Alternately, if they'd offered it for $399 from the get-go, I'd have bought one even earlier.

I think Apple owes me $200.

I'm not actually that upset about it. I wish I had known the huge price drop was coming, but I made my decision based on what I knew at the time, and I was satisfied with my decision at the time. And I do love my iPhone.

But it's still a little annoying.

Last night was the second week of class at UHCL. As I mentioned last week, this semester I'm taking a lecture class -- the first class I've taken there that doesn't involve design projects and lots of computer work. Instead, the homework is almost entirely reading and then reporting on the reading.

It is an odd class. The first hour is a "viewing" of something related to communication technology, and the rest of the class is lecture time. Last night's viewing was a PBS special called Transistorized that covered the invention of the transistor and how it changed the world. It was very interesting. The lecture discussed digital and cable television, since those are the chapters we will be reading for next week. It was also very interesting.

However, the class is nearly ruined by incessant quizzes and busywork that make me feel as if the professor thinks I'm about five years old. We have not one, but two quizzes per class. We have one quiz when we walk in the door, which covers the reading we were assigned the previous week. Ok, fine. He quizzes us to make sure we did the reading. But then halfway through class we have another quiz, this time covering whatever viewing we just had. So last night we had a quiz about the PBS special -- which we had just watched. The professor was there and saw us all sitting there watching the special. Is a quiz really necessary? All it does is prove how well you can take notes -- or how good your short term memory is.

Our weekly assignment (in addition to reading) isn't much better. We have to find an article about that week's topic. Once we find a few, we have to email the professor with the headlines so that he can pick which single article we should continue working with. (That's the part that bugs me the most -- that we have to get approval from him on our article.) It has to be an 800+ word article, which we then have to summarize in 400-500 words. That sounds to me like I will be basically rewording the article with a lot of edits. Then we have to report on it in class. Sigh.

Maybe I was especially annoyed because I wasn't feeling very well last night. But it is so frustrating to me that a class with good content is being strangled by pointless (and endless) quizzes and 5th grade book reports. I know I'm going to sound like an educational snob again here, but I feel like I'm above all that. I have been to college. I have done the whole pop quiz thing. I have done the whole book report thing. I don't want to do busywork anymore, I want to be treated like an adult. This is a graduate level class. Is it too much to ask that he treat us like graduate students? That he trust us to read the material, and grade us on a couple tests and overall class participation?

Anyway. The good content means that I will suck it up and put up with the pointless busywork for the semester, but it doesn't mean I won't be frustrated every week. Rant over.

I am feeling a bit under the weather. Sore throat, slight congestion, general achiness. It is another of my typical "functionally sick" periods, it seems. I rarely get so sick that I can't continue with life -- working, going to class, etc. It just means that I spend a few days doing all my normal things but feeling really icky. It's no fun. And it popped up fast. I did speedwork on Tuesday night and felt fine. Later that night at the Astros game, my throat started hurting. And now here I am.