Journal entries for July, 2005

Yesterday I received an unexpected call from Mairym; she was on the island for a week and wanted to hang out. Awesome. Today I woke up, showered, and headed over there. I got lost in the mountains trying to find her house (as usual), but it was pretty, so I figured as long as I'm here I might as well stop and take some pictures.

Finally I found her house and picked her up. We got food and headed to El Morro to eat lunch on the wall of the fort overlooking the old cemetery. Then it was time to return to her house because she needed to babysit some cute kids. We watched The Lion King and I got high fives from the kids (well, one of them would only give me high-fives with her foot).

[Entry Continues...]

Today after work I headed to the movie theater to watch Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. As I was nearly there, I saw a kitten playing in the middle of the road. I slowed down and pondered stopping and running out and getting it, but couldn't decide. What would I do with it? I can't take care of a kitten; I'm at work all day. I imagine there are pounds or something I could take it to, but I wasn't sure it was a good idea to pick it up and figure that out later. What if it had rabies? Do cats get rabies? I wasn't sure. Regardless, he might have some disease, and could I bring a possibly diseased cat into the house where my little sister lives? By the time all these thoughts had gone through my head, I was several hundred feet down the one-way road, and finally decided to continue on. When I got to the movie theater, I sat in the parking lot for several minutes debating whether to drive back over there and look for him.

[Entry Continues...]

I just walked into Old Navy, wearing a polo shirt, and bought six more polo shirts. What an uninteresting person I must have seemed to that cashier.

I read with relief today that we've returned to space. Let's hope this and the next few shuttle missions go well, so that they can then tackle the decision about whether or not to deorbit the Hubble. If we run into more trouble with the shuttle, then repairing the Hubble obviously won't even be an option. I'm hoping they choose to repair it, of course. How else will we be able to keep an eye on the Dark Lord Sauron?

Today I awoke with the urge to make something other than cereal or oatmeal. Maybe even something involving... a griddle! *dramatic chord*

[Entry Continues...]

I think the best thing I've ever seen is Jamie from MythBusters in chain mail on the bottom of the ocean punching sharks for science. I wish I could carry a video of that around with me so that any time I got sad or angry I could watch that video and my troubles would be forgotten.

Think what it'd be like to live on Saturn, where the rings often cast their own shadows on the surface of the planet. What an interesting dynamic it'd be, to have the day go dim and look up to see the sunlight filtering through those impressive rings. Of course, when you imagine this, I guess you also have to imagine that Saturn actually has a solid surface, instead of just being a big ball of gas.

Heh, there is panic in PR right now because the truckers are on strike, demanding higher rates and refusing to deliver things, including gasoline to the gas stations and food to the grocers. There are a bunch of containers sitting on the docks with food that is going bad. But foremost in everybody's mind is the fuel thing. Yesterday as word spread about this strike, everyone rushed to the gas stations to fill up their tanks before the gas ran out, like it was a hurricane or something. Lines grew miles long, with hour-long waits, and within a few hours most gas stations were out of gas and closed. Today in the paper I saw that the governor has cut off negotiations with the truckers' union and has called out the National Guard.

[Entry Continues...]

Two of my favorite features of The Compound were Bart and Thad. Bart was left behind by Jeff when he moved out of The Compound, and Reno found Thad on the side of the road one day and thought to himself, "Dan would like this." What an excellent thing for someone to think about me.

When I moved out, I had no good way to get them down to PR, so I had to leave them with friends. I learned yesterday the tragic news: Thad and Bart are no more. I was greatly saddened by this tragic loss, so I made this small film (Flash w/sound) in their tribute.

When my grandparents arrived at my house to pick up my dad and I to go eat lunch today, I hadn't yet put gel in my hair or anything. When my grandmother saw my mushroomy hair, she asked, "What's this hairstyle you have now? I like it, you look like Harry Potter!"

It might be time to break out the trimmer.

OK, I think it's great that Crazy Bird Lady still gets up every morning at 6am to go feed the birds. But I think she needs to think this through a little better. Why would you scatter the birdseed in the middle of the road? You know, the place where all the big, lethal chunks of metal rumble past all the time? That'd be like arranging a big pile of toys alluringly in the middle of the highway in front of a preschool.

[Entry Continues...]

This set of photos on flickr makes me happy. There's some real-life roleplayers who stage mock medieval battles every Sunday, and these guys assembled a horde of zombies to attack them one day. The roleplayers stood up to the assault and fended off the zombies. I especially like this guy, dubbed 'The Dude' by those in attendance. He makes me wish I'd spent the $95 on that set of real chain mail they were selling at the flea market in Anderson the last time I went.

How awesome would it be to be out there having your typical ho-hum battle with the same adversaries you see every week, when suddenly you are assaulted by hordes of zombies! Suddenly, you must fight for your very life and soul! That would be the best day ever. It kind of reminds me of Improv Everywhere's "Best Gig Ever" mission, where they picked some small unknown rock band and got a bunch of people to learn all their songs and attend one of their shows and sing along and act like huge fans. Some people viewed that mission as an attempt at ridicule, but I think it'd be awesome that someone put in the effort to do that. Likewise with this zombie mission.

So I learned today that the windows in the bathroom at work are apparently only held up by small daubs of caulk. Well, one of them is, anyway.

The bathroom smelled terrible (not really a poop smell, more of a dead animal smell), so I opened up a window and then entered the stall. A few minutes later, I suddenly heard a ridiculously loud, rending crash, and shards of glass skidded under the walls of my stall and bounced off the legs of my jeans. Then I got to spend the next half hour cleaning up broken glass.

When I related the experience to Rob, he said, "It's a good thing you were already sitting on the toilet when it fell, because that would have scared the sh*t out of me."

I just realized I have absolutely no idea what my horn sounds like. Thinking back, I can't remember a single time I've ever used it in the year that I've owned this car. For all I know, it could not even work. I think I tapped it once back when I first bought the car, and was curious whether it had that annoying, effeminate little beepy horn that newer cars all seem to have (I think it did). I don't know if that says that I'm a courteous driver, or that I'm timid and ineffectual.

I came across the Delete Me! group on Flickr, where you post a photo to the group and the other group members criticize every aspect of it. Members vote either deleteme or saveme, and if you accumulate 10 deleteme votes, your photo is deleted from the group. If you accumulate 10 saveme votes (very rare), your photo gets to stay forever.

[Entry Continues...]

A week or two ago, I mentioned to Jing-Ta that I had been thinking about how it'd be kind of cool to get compensated for my photography in some way, like doing weddings or something. He suggested I try submitting photos to a stock photography site like iStockPhoto as a way to start out. They sell photos for $1-3 each, and you get 20% of that, so it's definitely not a way to get rich quick. In fact, since they don't send out a check until you accumulate $100, I kind of doubt I'd ever see any money at all. But it seemed kind of fun, so I filled out the application and submitted some sample photos for consideration.

[Entry Continues...]

Yesterday I took Natalia MP3 player shopping. She's been dutifully saving her allowance for five or six months, and she had finally saved up around $150. It was past my 10am bedtime, but she was really excited about going to get it, so I agreed to take her to buy it. We discussed what features she wanted, and at first it sounded like the iPod Shuffle would be an acceptable compromise, so we headed to CompUSA, the only store that had the Shuffle in stock. When we got the store and she saw it in person, though, she decided she wanted a player with a screen. I was impressed that she was mature enough to make that decision, even though that probably meant we'd have to mail-order it instead of taking it home that day (there isn't much selection in PR, since there's no Best Buys or Circuit Cities).

[Entry Continues...]

Sigh, it turns out I left my $700 EF 70-200mm f/4L lens on a park bench by the side of the road in St. Thomas where we stopped to take pictures on the way to the airport. I'm still paying off the credit card debt I incurred when buying it, and already it's gone. Bah. My clumsy absentmindedness is amusing when I accidentally sit on things, but less so when I lose expensive things.

The weekend in St. Thomas turned out to be awesome. I worked all night Saturday night (10pm-11am), then headed straight to the airport from work on Sunday morning. The plane was a small Cessna 402 which seats about seven. I was hoping I'd get to sit in the copilot seat, but that spot was given to an attractive blonde girl (go figure). I did end up sitting just behind her though, so I got to check out all the instrumentation and everything.

[Entry Continues...]

When I was on the phone buying my plane ticket for the trip to St. Thomas, the woman taking my order offered to email me a copy of the itinerary, and I gave her my e-mail address. While spelling it out for her, we had an exchange I've had far too many times:

"dan-underscore-mccormack-at-binrock — that's B as in Bravo — .net."
"dan_mccormack@binrock.com, got it."
"No, it's .net."
"Oh, OK."

The www.*.com thing is so wired into people's heads by now that people tend to assume your website ends in .com, and I often have to carefully point out that mine is different.

[Entry Continues...]

I've been trying to put together a small trip to St. Thomas to go see Rose for a few months now, but we've had trouble working it out. The original idea was to go when Andrés was here too, but time was short and conditions unfavorable. Finally this weekend I'll be able to make it over there. I have to work tonight (Saturday), but in exchange I get Monday off. I'm flying out tomorrow around noon (heading straight to the airport once I get out of work), and I return on Tuesday evening, just in time to come right back to work.

[Entry Continues...]

A large part of the space in my room is taken up by a large armoire. We've been planning to move it out of my room and into the laundry room adjascent to it in order to free up that space. This morning when I got home from work, I decided I really wanted it out of there, but it was 6am on a Saturday, and I didn't want to have to wait until my parents got up hours later to enlist their help.

[Entry Continues...]