I'm finally on the internet!

Or more accurately, I finally own my own domain on the internet. Yep, took me about 10 more years than it should have, but I finally own my own domain, at least for the next year. Whether I actually ever put it to any use is a different question entirely.

All this due to 3 things:

1. It being an outstanding TODO for the last decade.
2. A few conversations at Thanksgiving dinner last night (most specifically with Folky's cousin Lev (aka Dr Evil) and Kristen's dad) which helped me realize just how precious time is and how quickly we should be acting towards our goals.
3. My school's email server (which I've meant to stop using for a while now, because it's so undependable) stopping to work for the last 2 days, resulting in missed communications, leading me to miss out on a post-Thanksgiving weekend trip party to a Tahoe cabin with a bunch of friends.

At some point you may be privileged enough to hear me disclose what domain it is.

- me

Greatest Pandora station yet

I've found a few cool indie Pandora stations (Watch Me Sustain The Early Days Radio, Crooked Teeth Radio, My Own Good Radio, Radiohead Radio, Razorblade Radio, Pavement Radio, Built to Spill Radio), but after a while they start cycling the same mix of music over again. And more annoyingly, all the stations start sounding the same as my votes make them verge closer and closer to each other.

The latest station I've discovered -- The Decemberists Radio -- is my favorite to date, and I'm hoping it doesn't get cursed like the others. I've been rocking out to it for four days straight and it's still giving me new selections left and right that I dig.

Nuncle Caca

My last post was two years ago. (In a nutshell it's been a busy couple years: new job, new apartment, new g/f, new groups of friends, etc...)

But it took a huge event to cause me to decide to post again... Nuncle has always been one of my favorite words, and now I am one. Mazel Tov Ken & Yuliya!

Y went into labor five days earlier than expected, and it lasted a little longer than expected, but mother and son are both doing well. Ken called me around 6:30pm to announce the good news and lmk that my services of picking up Yuliya's mom at the airport that night wouldn't be needed any more.

They're keeping me in suspense as to the boy's name, but I'm seriously looking forward to meeting him - whatever the crazy moniker may be.

Congrats again K&Y!

new words

Usually I'm one to create new words which serve the purpose of describing ideas I frequently use but which don't already have discrete words to describe them. And usually these words are hybrids of other words.

Just thought I'd note that over the last two weeks, I've been using a couple of them that I myself didn't invent but that are pretty relevant to me.

• flickle

• That state where your movie-going habits start to conflict with your inherent indecisiveness. Specifically, when you're not even sure you want to watch the movies that you yourself ordered with your Netflix account...
• bazy
• Both busy and lazy. (Attributed to Debby in her email to me on 9/27/2005)

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Also, just thought I'd post along this crazy etymology for the word shambles (courtesy of MW Word of the Day):

The Word of the Day for September 23 is:

shambles \SHAM-bulz\ noun

1 : a place of mass slaughter or bloodshed

*2 : a scene or state of great destruction : wreckage

3 : a scene or state of great disorder or confusion : mess

Example sentence:

The tornado ripped through the picnic ground, leaving the place a shambles -- strewn with fallen trees, splintered tables, and other debris.

Did you know?

How does a word meaning "footstool" turn into a word meaning "mess"? Start with the Latin "scamillum," meaning "little bench." Modify the spelling and you get the Old English "sceamol," meaning "a footstool" or "a table used for counting money or exhibiting goods." Alter again to the Middle English "shamele," and the meaning can easily become more specific: "a table for the exhibition of meat for sale." Pluralize and you have the base of the 15th-century term "shambles," meaning "meat market." A century takes "shambles" from "meat market" to "slaughterhouse," then to figurative use referring to a place of terrible slaughter or bloodshed (say, a battlefield). The scene of a slaughter can get messy, so it's logical for the word to pick up the modern sense "mess" or "state of great confusion." Transition accomplished.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Coyote Point

Our whole company (including the from-out-of-town sales folks) went on a company-sponsored team building day at Coyote Point yesterday. It lasted from noon to around 5pm. Definitely a sweet little area.

It was pretty fun -- definitely beat working. Not to mention that our prez prohibited working when we got back. Only downside to the whole thing was that they didn't tell us where we were going until we got there (after getting into three chartered busses and driving over). As a result, nobody put on sunscreen. Let's just say that there's definitely a lot of red skin showing at the office today.

Decent lunch

I just came back from a dev-sponsored lunch to celebrate our new co-worker Nathan. We went to the Primo Patio Cafe, which was decently cool. Though it got good reviews, I only found the food to be mediocre. (And I got the salmon, which is hard to mess up.)

Last night I caught a screening of Hustle & Flow with Folky, Nate and Ravi. It was pretty sweet. Work is also sponsoring a Giants game tonight, but I'm likely skipping out on it for some other shit.

OK, back to work on a full stomach.

End of 4th of July

The 4th of July weekend is sadly over, but not before I was able to finally knock off two (of my hundreds) of long-standing TODOs.

1. I've been meaning to buy a digital camera for the past two and a half years. I now have a Canon Elph 500. Now I just need to get a memory card that's not ridiculous enough to only hold 32MB.
2. I finally bottled the beer I've been brewing that I was supposed to bottle 4 months ago. We'll see in a couple weeks if it's any good. Then again, I call it Caca Pale Ale - so how good can it be?

Time to get a little programming in, and then perhaps some sleep. Oh wait, that's what tomorrow morning's meetings are for.

Caca