Today I was driving around south-east Baltimore along some busy-ish highway (695?) (97?) when the two lanes of traffic I was in went down to one due to construction. The signs said that the right lane was closed in 1/2 mile, merge left. I was already in the left lane, so in good shape. As other drivers heeded the warning and worked their way left, the left lane became more crowded and slower. The right lane emptier, and therefore quicker.
For those that don’t know, Google’s now offering a webmail service. The “advantage” to google’s mail is that you get a gig of storage, and you get google’s search interface to your stuff. The idea being — why bother to trash stuff or sort/organize it. Just archive it all and search for what you need. Maybe that’ll work. I dunno.
But, since “gmail” is still in “beta”, it’s by invitation only. Either that, or they are trying to drive demand by scarcity and a sense of “elite”ness. Only now, just about every mailing list I’m on has messages of the sort “I’ve got gmail invites available”. What was once geek cred is now just so much commodity. How do I know? I finally asked for and received an invite. From someone I didn’t even know. I used to be plugged in. I wouldn’t have been in the “real” beta of this sort of thing, but I’d certainly have been an early adopter. But as I’ve fallen from the active part of the workforce, so have I been removed from the cutting edge. But now, I have a gmail account.
I had written something like this earlier, but it disappeared into the ether with a 500 Error from blogger.com. What follows is a re-creation, doubtless somewhat more organized, but less impassioned than the original.)
I don’t like folding laundry. And I don’t understand folding proteins. But, thanks to Folding@Home I’m now doing my part toward their goal to understand protein folding, protein aggregation, and related diseases. But, it’s not the hidden-bio-geek in me that’s enjoying this. (I doubt even the presence of a hidden-bio-geek in me.) No, it’s the gamer.
I’d been getting a bit weary of the perpetual gray of a dusky-overcast Altoona. It snowed yesterday, and it’s sunny today. It may be freakin’ cold out, but at least it’s a much prettier view out the office window today.
(There, I did it. I hate reading other people’s long blog entries. What have they got to say that can’t be said in a paragraph or two, and why would I want to read all that? It’s been disappointing that my earlier entries have been so long-winded. I’m not naturally long-winded. Or at least I wasn’t. I used to be terse. I remember having to write a 20 page paper in college and thinking how could I possibly come up with that much content. Even if I squeeze in the margins and up the font size. Oh, wait there I go again. Stopping now. Really. I promise.)
OK, I kinda meant to have complained, or at least thought (in the blog) about money, job, life etc. But that just hasn’t come up as strongly as it could have in the past few days. I’m sure one will come soon though.
But today I want to rant. I guess this is kind of a rant about job because if I were in an office with other geeks, especially other linux admin/java geeks, I might just get answers to my problems instead of having to google them (with limited success.)
I just finished a book by Norma Jean Almodovar entitled Cop to Call Girl describing aspects of her two careers — first as a traffic cop with the LAPD and subsequently as a call girl. And, to a lesser extent her activism concerning the decriminalization of consensual sex laws. I borrowed it from bk partly because I’m moderately fascinated by sex work and those that do it and partly because it did seem like an unusual transition.
OK, not really much hope — hope and fear being opposite sides of the same coin. I guess I do fear that I will not continue to blog. I’ve tried journaling several times in my life, without much success. Fortunately, as there is not much hope, there is also not much fear. If I don’t continue to blog, then I’m exactly as out of touch with people as I already am. I’ve lost nothing that I already have.
Day 12
The moulding went down pretty quickly, the carpet edges were a bit more trouble, but I decided to use what we had rather than wait for stuff that fit better. I still have clean up to do, but I’m done. bk helped me move the sleeper sofa and the dining room table back in. I’m done. I’ve gotta clean up, but I’m done. I can’t believe it. And what’s more, I think it looks nice. As I think I mentioned earlier in the journal and on the phone to Carolyn today, there are things that I’m really proud of that I’m sure no one will see, and things I am dissapointed about that I’m sure no one will see. Phew! It was time consuming (relative to other home projects I’ve done) and expensive, but it’s done. And I did most of it with my own hands (often guided by the experience of others, but still!).
Day 11:
As predicted, I needed to get up early to return the various rentals. So, I got up at 7:00 (after setting the alarm for 6:30) and made it to United Rentals out Avon Extd. with 10 minutes to spare. I dropped off the floor machine and told them what a mess I’d left the brush in. They thanked me for my honesty and said “Don’t worry about it.” I was thrilled. That was the best response I’d thought possible. I came back to return the wet/dry vac to Sunbelt (up 29N) also with no difficulty. Then I went back and started to do other clean up/prep. I called Joe at 9:00 who came by immediately. We went and picked up some tools at his house and went to Lowes to get the shoe molding, carpet borders and a “reducer” for the parquet. In talking to the people there, we decided it would be best to go to Eways Fine Floors across the way. But we needed to pick up a new floor outlet because we were going to break one of them when we tried to lower it. We went to Eways, and they had the right size carpet border, but in the wrong color. Their shoe molding was too expensive, but we got the reducer there. ($50! for 2 6-foot strips) So, we went back to Lowes and got 8 10-foot strips of shoe molding ($47) and then headed back home. That’s right, we forgot the carpet edging.
Day 10. The waxing day.
So today is the day I most dreaded. Much of this process was new and scary to me, but for most of it I had some sense of what I should do. Some guide, some hint of the right thing to do. Well, I guess I had a hint about the waxing, but much less than any other part. The video wasn’t that helpful, and the voiceover guy in the video turned out to have been reading almost exactly word for word the instructions on the wax can. So, I got no new information there.
