Canadian Yankee
Friday, October 10, 2003
Tigers and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
The past week or two has apparently been dedicated to proving that humans are not at the top of the food chain after all.
First there was the guy in New York City who had a pet tiger (I had no idea that any NYC apartments were large enough for a tiger, let alone a tiger and an alligator!) that bit his leg.
Then of course there was Roy of Sigfried and Roy who was mauled by one of the tigers in their act. I've read different things about this event - some people think that something scared the tiger and it was just trying to protect Roy by grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and dragging him to safety like a mother cat would do for its kitten; others think the tiger was going for a killing blow to the jugular.
Finally, we have the environmental activists who went to Alaska to live among the bears, but ended up being eaten by them instead.
Mother Nature can be one mean bitch.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
The Mark of the Geek
Today in email I almost used the phrase "meatspace coordinates" (to mean home mailing address). I stopped myself just in time - but still, that would seem to be a big warning sign of terminal geekitude. The only thing I could do to wash away this horrible stain was to go clothes shopping during lunch. Nothing cancels out geekery like a little bit of shallow physical narcissism. Now I not only feel a little less like a geek, but I also got a cute new pair of corduroy pants.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Okay, now it's been almost a month since my last post. I guess I'm going to have to make a pledge that I hoped wouldn't be necessary. I hereby promise to blog at least once every day, even if it's inane drivel. Hopefully, I can commit to this schedule, at least until this weekend when I leave for a three-day visit to New York City.
So, why haven't I been blogging? Here's the list:
- Work continues to be really crazy. We're now in the final few weeks before the release of a new version of software, which means I have the testing department sending me bug reports, which is very hard on the ego. I've tried to get them to say that my software is "differently functional" rather than "bug-ridden", but that phrase just hasn't caught on yet.
- Our network at work got hit pretty hard by a bunch of those nasty internet worms recently, so our connection to the outside world was somewhere between logy and non-existent for almost two weeks. Since I was spending most of my time at work anyway (see "differently functional software" above), that meant blogging was impossible.
- I could have blogged in my few free moments at home, except I spilled mango-plum yogurt smoothie all over my laptop keyboard. I had to take all the keys off, clean the thing out, and snap all the keys back on again. Fortunately, it seems to have excaped major damage. Some of the keys in the upper right corner are still a little sticky; and the key in the upper left corner keeps popping off (which is actually rather charming since it's the "Esc" key), but it's mostly back to normal.
But now I have a working computer at home, a working connection at work, and it's getting so close to our release date that only minor changes are being authorized on my project, so I'll have no excuses to avoid a daily entry here. Stay tuned.
