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May 1st, 2008
09:14 am - Do you wanna make tea at the BBC?
And suddenly, just in the vein of work-related angst, opportunities have arisen on 3 fronts, all at once. I can't talk about any of them yet, although one is a matter of public record.
This could play out very interestingly, or I could be totally screwed. I'll share more when I can.
In a more mundane line of thought, next week I will finally get a look at the inside of the last area steel mill, something of an early birthday gift. One can only hope it won't rain.
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April 29th, 2008
05:02 pm - I work from nine to five; Hey, hell, I pay the price
More for ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) madrobin than others, but I alicelee might know...
When E-ZPass was adopted there'd been a proposal on the table for an anonymous version of electronic toll collection, which was rejected in favor of the Citibank-led non-anonymous proposal.
What (and who) was it?
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04:39 pm - And I was all out of luck
It's been a day. Between work and concalls, and letter-writing, I am toast. I found my old letters to Santorum earlier today telling him I thought he was crazy for his stands on certain things, and his replies where he talked around everything I said.
And Then I read this, and was amusing at the derision quotes around the outrage.
As I was driving back into the city from dealing with those errands, newly owning the car I drive so little anymore, radio piped in from Columbus told me Hillary was polled to have a better chance than Obama over McCain, but both were ahead. I can only hope for an Obama victory, but, hey. Who knows what will happen in the next 6 months. From the looks of things now, on so many fronts... "a lot".
So I cleaned out (redacted)'s freezer last night, and in it was one more piece of Soyrizo, in addition to a bounty of facon. And for various reasons I have bacon on the brain, so I think tonight maybe it's time to make these.
I'll tell you how they are.
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March 31st, 2008
12:52 pm - You never changed the world
See, I was right all along. PETA does kill puppies.
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March 10th, 2008
03:47 pm - Like a psychic radio
( If you don't care about phone/audio toys, you might as well skip this )
It seems that people who make bluetooth audio gear assume no one wants to both talk on the phone and listen to music.
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February 13th, 2008
11:51 am - I don't want any pushing, and I don't want any shoving.
Last Wednesday, I took the day off. After failing to get a bus to stop, I walked all 23 blocks to the Station Square subway station, then walked in a light rain from Wood St to the History Center, and did research.
When I ran out of pictures to look at, I walked out and got poured on as I caught a 54C to Oakland. Several more hours reading 1959 newspapers at the Carnegie Library, then a 54C to the South Side. Aside from my failure to bring an umbrella, not needing to drive worked out well. The next day I used a 54C to go to Geek Night (and a Zipcar at the end of the evening to go deliver someone's ebay winnings).
 Friday morning I got up, and noticed something weird. So I looked harder. This (well, sans the jersey barriers, which were added around 2pm, just before this was taken) is what I saw.
 By Monday night, this is what it looked like. The claim is in 2 weeks there will be something open again. I hope so. Heavy traffic plus crippled bus service in a season which is not overly bike-friendly is not much fun.
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October 14th, 2007
10:56 pm - Started out in church and finished with Angelica
The problem with getting pressed for time is it really throws me off. I know I need some time off, but I can't take it now. Apple has publicly stated that MacOS 10.5 will be released this month, and the software I work on is going to support it when it is.
Anyway, after hearing a sermon about counting your blessings, I walked out and realized, hey, I'm not dealing well... what the heck do I do about it?
Playing board games, drinking and cooking made for a decent day. Now, if only I had time and a way to do the "bike the whole Montour Trail" this week. Instead, perhaps eichin's pointer to some truly tiny trains will provide the kick to
 start building a model of the South Side.
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October 1st, 2007
11:24 pm - And one more special message to go And then I'm done, and I can go home
ma3d and frskychik got married in California on Saturday, in a ceremony which was beautiful, short and simple; I got to see several friends I haven't seen in a while.
I do have to say that getting there was quite the adventure, flying through DTW is apparently less delayish than flying through MSP, and that getting off a plane, getting the rental car, going full bore north, getting changed and arriving at the ceremony just as the music was about to start was definitely in the category of "priceless".
Also, if you find yourself in Santa Rosa, East West Cafe is a great place to grab breakfast... especially on a Sunday after you've completely failed to adjust from Eastern time.
Now I'm going to have to try to learn to make a walnut basil aioli.
Some train pictures in various interesting scenery may appear eventually.
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September 27th, 2007
11:38 pm - Maybe tomorrow is a lifetime away...
Wow.
From the Aznar/Bush conversation translation:
The Egyptians are talking to Saddam Hussein. It seems that he’s indicated that he’s willing to go into exile if they let him take 1 billion dollars with him, and all the information that he wants about the weapons of mass destruction.
I grabbed today's Post-Gazette off one of the other tables at the Beehive this morning. 42 billion dollars more for Iraq next year, or something like that.
Think 42 minus 1 is enough billion dollars to have rebuilt New Orleans? Maybe a couple bridges? Feed a couple hungry people?
This is what I get for reading news. I'll stop now.
Besides, I need to pack. ma3d is getting married on the left side of the country...
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September 25th, 2007
01:44 pm - 'Cause it's gone daddy gone
So um. I guess it's good I visited Bethlehem Steel when I did. Because a bunch of the things I saw aren't there anymore.
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September 16th, 2007
11:30 pm - I got a sight in mind
In between other things, I've gone off to take pictures, a welcome moment of sanity in the insanity of life.
Something else. In my quest for cupcakes a few nights ago, just before 8pm, I figured maybe it was worth a try to see if any of the places the Post-Gazette liked might have any. #1 and #2 were closed, but one of the tied for #3, well, of course it was open.
So I went, and I got some. Sort of a cop-out, but so it goes.
Anyway, when checking out, I encountered something odd. I was at the self-checkout closest to the doors. And it's omniscient. I pointed at the on-screen "button" I wanted to press, not touching it, and it registered anyway. I figured "must be a fluke" until it happened again. I keyed in my PIN without touching the screen either.
Just think, a touchscreen which knows what you're thinking! More seriously, though, how about one that stays free of those icky fingerprints?
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August 23rd, 2007
04:00 pm - The microphone explodes, shattering the molds
I guess they couldn't figure out how the shells worked.
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August 9th, 2007
04:00 pm - Cause it's just you, me and this wire, alright?
I'm so massively deliquent in posting it's not funny.
I have actually started to go backfill ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) shadow_concerts with short reviews of shows I've been to, though. And yesterday I visited the Frank Fairbanks Library for the second time (the first being when it was dedicated) for some research.
I really do need to find a good set of tools for putting together my South Side history project.
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June 8th, 2007
03:23 pm - The sun beams down on a brand new day
In the last couple days, Kinoma Player 4 has finally learned to cope with Softick Audio Gateway, and so the Scosche Universal Bluetooth Receiver I buried in my car finally lets me stream radio via bluetooth A2DP in the car.
There's the temptation to buy new headphones but I should resist, and pay debt.
( Resist... )
Of course all of this means a trip to WWDC had better end with no new toys, sadly.
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May 15th, 2007
01:38 pm - Your mother calls us misfits; It doesn't bother you one bit
I'll be back in CA for WWDC in June. My travel is booked.
Today, I looked at the Interpol tour schedule. They play Shoreline on 6/9. I arrive on 6/9... too late.
They're playing Chicago 6/3, which I could conceivably get to, except for the "sold out" and "I'm poor" parts.
So I guess you can add this to Arcade Fire, Snow Patrol, Muse/MCR (though I had a ticket for that, and they cancelled)...
I need to find a rich benefactor who takes me to shows. Or a similarly wealthy one with better timing than me (the Chicago show was $30 before it sold out)
*edit: I speculatively bought a $30 ticket to BFD 2007 at Shoreline, and if I can't manage to change my reservation I will try to fly standby that morning or change my reservation. Of course if I change it, I will need to figure out where I can stay Friday night, and if I fly standby, I have this problem of "where does my luggage go while I am at Shoreline"...
Sigh.
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March 27th, 2007
12:06 am
Double Wide Grill discriminates against indecisive people.
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March 21st, 2007
01:32 pm - Take me out of these walls
In my "spare time" I am trying to understand the history of Pittsburgh's South Side. There's a family connection to the area, so to speak, but it was also the hub of the steel industry in the city as well as interesting in various other ways.
After some initial trouble finding information I've been finding things in spurts, including:
- Various pictures of note which have shown up in the Pitt Digital Library.
- The South Side file in the photo archive at the Carnegie reappeared.
- A friend of mine told me his photos from when he worked in the steel mill are now at Pitt's Archives Service Center, and they're going to let me come peruse it in a week or so.
- Google Books actually has government reports scanned. I downloaded one and would pick up a couple more that matter, except, they're blocking it. What. The. F. It's a government document. They're not asserting copyright precluding me from seeing a digital copy of a document from 1950. Obviously you have a mechanism to allow books to be downloaded if they're in the public domain. It's a government document. Fix your metadata and let me have the damn book!
In any case, I'm learning. I wonder if someday this will be fodder to write a book, and if so, who the heck is going to read it?
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March 6th, 2007
11:29 am - Couldn't walk down that line
The curse of being in flyover territory. Bloc Party and Snow Patrol are both going to be touring the U.S. this month. Neither is coming close enough to be helpful and basically everything is sold out so even if I were able to take the time to go elsewhere I probably shouldn't because I'd have to get above face value tickets. I'm rather frustrated by it all.
When I'm not working I've been fighting with GIS tools. I'm trying to overlay a map of J&L Steel's Pittsburgh Works over some Pittsburgh maps; It'd be useful to do the same with the PennPilot pictures. It's been done but with tools that cost far too much for me; Probably the only answer is GRASS but it would be helpful to find a forum to talk about this sort of stuff. I guess the issue is isolation, and I feel a bit of that in other sectors of life at the moment, too.
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January 15th, 2007
04:55 pm - The road is gone, there's just one way to leave here
After so many months, I have finally started cleaning off my camera. Only a few hundred pictures to sort through. Somehow fitting, I guess then, that one of the newest is of a map-photo-collage I started working on to document for my own understanding the evolution of the South Side:
(The paper to its right is a large map of the J&L Steel Pittsburgh works which was scanned by a friend who works somewhere with a large document scanner; The maps and photos you see in the shot here are from the Pitt Digital Library, mostly.)
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January 11th, 2007
01:48 pm - The pavement's cold and empty
I had been in Virginia (Leesburg and Ashburn) for the company meeting the last few days. As I made my return I decided to test the "Sprint data roaming on Verizon" theory by going via Cumberland and Uniontown. It worked. However, I also decided to follow the railroad for a bit, and did so, going from Hancock to Paw Paw, WV the hard way. Yeah. I should in fact wash the car now.
Anyway, a sign about "entering redneck country" along the otherwise-desolate not-quite-road I used past the one occupied dwelling (it's mostly summer cottages) reminded me of the bleak view of the future presented by Children of Men, which I saw last weekend.
The music definitely fit the mood of the film, from the use of Mahler in the score to the Beatles at a point where they fit well, and Lennon during the credits. Also, as I watched, I realized something about myself, or, more notably, my beliefs.
( very mild spoilers )
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