January 10, 2008

The latest entry from Kymm is a meme. A silly little game, if you will. You click on a few links that give you a random wikipedia entry, a random quote (you are supposed to use the last four words of the last quote on the page), and then a random picture (use the 3rd picture). You put them together to get the name of your band, the title of your latest album, and cover art for said album. I grabbed my random wiki article and the first thing was an entry from some alphabet I had no hope of repeating so ran it again and landed on Plus (supermarket) as the name of my band. Then, the random quote landed me on a quote that ended with "of silence to dissipate." The random photo landed me on this photo. So, I went ahead and generated my album cover:

It was a pretty photo. And, I had fun playing in Photoshop as I generated "my" album cover. It all fell together quite nicely, I thought. After that initial problem with the foreign alphabet, at any rate.

And, then I went back through the links so I could link to the source material. And, then I actually paid attention to the random quote (I'd just grabbed the last four words when I first looked at it without reading the rest of the quote or paying attention to the source) and it freaked me out just a little bit. It's a quote from Pamie! It wasn't a quote from Oscar Wilde or Oprah or Rodney Dangerfield (all featured on the same page). Nope, it was a quote from Pamie. I've actually exchanged a few email messages with her over the years. What do you suppose the chances are that the quote would be from someone whose web page I've been reading for 10 years? I mean, yeah...I know who Oscar Wilde was (I don't think I ever read any of his stuff) and I used to watch Oprah from time to time and, of course, I give Rodney no respect. But, I've never interacted with any of them in all my years. But Pamie? I checked out the FAQ and "about this site" pages on the quote page but could not find any info on exactly how many quotes they serve up but you know there have to be tens of thousands of entries. At a minimum.

That's kinda freaky, don't you think? Yep. Me too. Wow. If ever there's a time to cue the "Twilight Zone" theme, this might qualify. Either that or comment on it being a small world and all. One or the other.

November 8, 2007

Snippet of overheard conversation as I walked into the building today:

First student: Oh, good! I couldn't get the button to...

Second student (interrupting): I didn't do a button. I just made a shortcut...

And, that's all I heard. 'Made me smile.

UPDATE. Mom wrote to say:

Were those students talking about sewing? Would have been in the old days.

Heh. I think they were talking about a programming project. I think. I see I didn't mention originally that the students were of the male persuasion. Not that a couple of young men wouldn't be talking about sewing but...

September 18, 2007

December 2, 1926 - September 18, 2007

I took this photo last October.
Rest in peace, you dear sweet sweet man.

September 13, 2007

I was listening to my iPod at work. Like y'all know I am wont to do! And, "I Walk the Line" as covered by Dale Watson came on. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to the fact...I just kept working away. I enjoy the song. And, heck, just about anything by Dale Watson is bound to be good, right? But, like I said, it didn't really jump out me or anything. Until the next song came on: "I Walk the Line" as covered by Live. What? The same song? Two times in a row? Heh. The coverage is substantially different. And, that certainly caught my attention. I like both versions. I had to stop and check. Just how many versions of the song do I have? Answer: 5. The two already mentioned, two by Johnny (one live...recorded at San Quentin, apparently), and one by Shelby Lynne. I like all of them.

I don't think that's ever happened before. Two versions of the same song playing back-to-back. At least, it hasn't happened while I've been paying attention. I have plenty of songs covered by more than one singer or group. I've often thought I should make a playlist with multiple covers so I can listen to them back-to-back. But, I haven't ever done it. Now that it happened by accident, I'll have to re-visit that idea. The main problem, of course, is that I don't know of a way to automate the process. And, going through a list of 12,000+ songs, looking for repeated titles, can take a while. Heh.

. . . .

PS: Happy (slightly) belated birthday, Mom!

September 1, 2007

Back to the whole new car thing. I went to a couple of different Honda dealers and nobody seemed at all interested in selling me a Fit. Sigh. I wanted to buy a car with standard transmission and upgraded "everything else." Basically. But, when dealers order cars with standard transmissions, it seems that they tend to order base models. Which means there weren't any Fits in the pipe that fit my wants. And, it didn't appear that anyone wanted to "waste" time on ordering one for me.

So, as I wrote somewhere (I thought I wrote it here but apparently not; and now that I think about it a bit more, I think it was in an email message to Gail), I had to change what I wanted. I did a bit more research and decided the next best bet for me was the Toyota Matrix or Scion xD. I went to check them out last Saturday. They didn't have anything in stock that matched my wants. No surprise there. After looking them over, though, it turned out that I liked the xD better than the Matrix.

I asked how long it would take to get one if I ordered one. "Two to six weeks." That wasn't really inspiring but I knew I had to do something. So, I wrote 'em a deposit check for $500 and placed my order. That was 7 days ago. Two days ago, at about 3 in the afternoon, I got a call:

"Your car is in."

What??? That's not "two to six weeks." I hadn't even gone by the credit union yet to arrange financing. Yikes! I jumped online to check rates and saw a little "apply online now" button. I clicked on it and about 5 minutes later I'd been approved. And, I stopped by the credit union office to sign the papers and pick up a check on my way into the office yesterday.

And, today? Today, Jennie and I drove out there to pick up my new car:

I like it. I've reverted to gray mode. All three of my gray cars served me well. That blue Focus? Not so much. I was a little worried that it would be too dark (it looks a lot darker on Scion's "build it now" web page and they didn't have one to look at on the lot) but the color is just right. 'Wanna go for a ride? Heh.

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joanna@joanna.org
URL: http://www.joanna.org/archive/Sep2007-Jan2008.html
Last updated: January 19, 2008

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