On the Edge of Cranky

This morning I sat on the closed toilet to brush my teeth in hopes that M'ow would jump up on my lap as he so often does. He did, what a sweetheart. Our kitties just tear us up sometimes. Anyway, I petted him for a while and then (as he also often does) he started getting a little testy about it. LG came in just then and we co-admired him for a moment. "But he's on the edge of cranky", I said, and she said "That'd be a good title for a movie or a TV show."

Not that I am flattering myself that this will be either frequent or periodic, let alone weekly. I'll be happy if I can merely exceed the length of my Totally Useless Information page, to which I've (very slowly) added stuff over several years.

I don't really consider myself an especially cranky person, or at least not inherently cranky like some people. But I have to admit to having pet peeves and sometimes being vocal about them. It pleases me that I can have "Principal Curmudgeon" on my actual business cards for my job as a software developer.

Unfortunately(?) for the title of this piece, nothing is really making me cranky today. I just got done wasting half an hour reading movie reviews by Mr. Cranky, which is enough to brighten anyone's day. But our web connection at work is flaky at best, and I've been brought back to reality by an inability to connect to anything in the outside universe. Made happy by Mr. Cranky, I can't even muster up a complaint about our building's crummy toilets. Maybe another time.

Working on Sunday again, as is my usual. LG works on Sunday afternoons at the library, so I work on Sunday afternoons, too. Here at KnowItAll I've felt compelled to work as much as possible, partly because I enjoy it so much and partly because we all want so much for this to be a success. At the same time, in recent months LG and I have learned to value more highly the time we spend together, so I have shifted my schedule in some places accordingly. In addition to taking advantage of the times when she works, I've been getting up and in to work very early (for me). Very rare for me to arrive later than 7:30am anymore.

As a consequence of all this, I see what people mean when they talk about "quality time". Often it's as simple as not turning on the TV. Somehow, even sitting for two hours without speaking while we each read books or putter around on the computer still feels more like time spent "together" than sitting beside each other on the same couch for two hours watching TV.

Today should be an interesting afternoon, if Baba shows up. We're going to try to install Windows 2000 on my personal PC, and try to get my two 10-ish GB hard drives both running. I have never managed any degree of stability myself with the two drives under Windows NT. But installing operating systems is always a pleasurable activity (sarcasm receptors should be firing now), sure to put me "on the edge of cranky".

Listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young at the moment, checking out a pile of songs I downloaded with Napster yesterday to make sure they are all complete and free of pops and crackles. Also ripping a little Beatles, Billy Joel, and B-52s to MP3, and to top it off, downloading a bunch of Boston. We have a shared MP3 collection here at the office that just exceeded 3000 files and 12GB.

Among other computer adventures, I downloaded a shareware app the other day that allows me to read Mac disks with a PC drive. Ultimately, this means I can finally make a CD out of a whole pile of old disks that contain email from 5-10 years ago. As a start and test case, I copied a bunch of email from about 1993-94. Among other interesting finds in there, I found a note from a friend sometime in 1993, where he told me he had found a great deal on a hard disk for his Mac: a 340MB drive for only $250. (Just one tiny datapoint in what has always been an interesting curve.)

All right, here's some cranky for ya. My poor little car (1986 Honda Civic, bought new, mileage now at 183,000) has been dying a slow, methodical death over the last couple years. The failure rate is not frightening yet, but it's noticeably higher than it always used to be. The latest problems have been with the A/C and the starter (I thought).

I've lived with the A/C out for quite some weeks now. It's damn hot here (average daily high temperature was 99.5 last month -- the whole month), but I go to work pretty early and come home late enough that it doesn't bother me all that much. But the starter was a little more troublesome. It went out only a week or two ago, and I've been push-starting it since then, once in the morning and once in the evening. Luckily our driveway has a very slight slope to it, and I get to work early enough to get the prime, sloped parking spot right out front.

But as a rule, one doesn't really want to have to push-start one's car. It makes errand-running problematic, and leads to worries about other things such as stalling in freeway traffic. So I finally made an appointment to have both the A/C and starter checked out. "Earliest we can see you is next Wednesday, and oh by the way, the diagnostics we do are $30 on the starter and $70 on the A/C...but if we find problems we'll apply that to the repairs." Hmph.

So I dropped off the car at Howdy Honda at 7am (as noted above, not terribly early by my current standards), and caught the courtesy van that departed at 7:15. By Murphy's Law we five deliverees needed to be scattered all over town. I managed to thwart the odds somewhat by being the third person dropped off, just a little after 8am. Not too bad, and the stories back and forth between the driver and his front seat passenger were entertaining. ("She ran like a scalded dog, but she shore didn't know how to pass no gas stations." -- the driver, to the passenger, about a Chevy Nova with a 350 engine that he owned about 30 years ago.)

About 1pm the service guy at Howdy Honda called with good news and bad news. The good news was that the starter and electrical system checked out just fine, the only problem was that I needed a new battery. (But the lights and radio, etc., still worked, I protested. They take much less amperage to operate than the starter does, he instructed me. Ok, I'll buy that.) The bad news (which I expected -- honestly, not just cynically speaking) was that the A/C compressor is dead, and mumble, mumble, total $1100. So I told the guy -- or I thought I told the guy -- to replace the battery but leave the A/C alone and I'll think about it.

About 5:30 I suddenly panicked when I realized that I had completely forgotten to go pick up the car. I called them and found out with relief that they were open till 7pm. About 6:15 Baba and Marcus and I headed down there. The plan was that they would drop me off to get the car, then we would meet out at the Salt Lick BBQ (as has been our weekly Wednesday tradition for several months now, but that's probably worth another entire story). Accordingly, they dropped me off at Howdy Honda, and off they went.

Warning Signal #1: The only charges on my bill were for the diagnostics. Irrational Rationalization: Maybe the battery was under warranty. Warning Signal #2: It took them an awful long time to bring my car around. Irrational Rationalization: Maybe the guy just got distracted somewhere back there. Warning Signal #3: But wait a minute, both the A/C and the starter sections of the bill have this note "NO WORK DONE". Wouldn't the battery replacement be mentioned, even if it was gratis? Irrational Rationalization: None this time. I left the car running, went back in, and asked what was up. The guy (different guy than I talked to earlier) said they didn't replace the battery because I told them not to do any work. Eh? Well, was there any way they could give me a new battery right now? Nope, the parts department was closed. Grumble, grumble.

Imagining myself now wasting my evening somewhere buying and installing a replacement battery myself, I called Marcus and Baba and told them not to expect me at the Salt Lick. Nonsense, they said, they'd turn around and come get me. I asked the guys at Howdy Honda if I could park my car there for a while and then come back and get it later. I didn't want to deal with push-starting it out at the Salt Lick (certainly not when stuffed to the gills with BBQ). Sure, they said, and they even scoped me out a nice sloped place where I could leave it for the still-necessary push-start. M&B arrived and we headed out for our BBQ.

The BBQ was satisfying as ever, but like I said before, that's worthy of an entirely different story. Afterwards Baba dropped me and Marcus off at Marcus's car (back here at work), because he (Baba) was going to meet his brother. Marcus drove me back to Howdy Honda.

Next Problem: The parking lot was gated and locked. They even parked some of their inventory of vehicles in front of the gates as further protection. (It's anyone's guess what protection the vehicles offered that the gates didn't already.)

So Marcus drove me home, which wasn't all that bad because he got to see my house for the first time.

Bright and early this morning, LG drove me down to Howdy Honda (I just love saying "Howdy Honda"). (She had her own little adventure on the way home, ending up accidentally on I-35, which she had fully intended to completely avoid as long as we lived in Austin.) The service guy I originally talked to yesterday came hurrying out to meet me, very apologetic about the non-replaced battery. He didn't realize that it was also their fault that my car had still been there this morning, and got even more apologetic when I explained that I was making yet another could-have-been-avoided trip down there. He offered me 10% off the A/C work, should I decide to do it (I think I will). He also asked if I wanted to leave the car now for the battery replacement, but since their parts department was not open yet, they couldn't do it immediately, and I really didn't want to do the courtesy van thing two days in a row.

Thus endeth the Howdy Honda portion of what has become an epic saga. Now a brief, strange interlude. On the way to work from there, I stopped for gas at a station that I knew had a slight sloped lot. After pumping gas, when I got in and turned the key in preparation for pushing, the car started! I guess when they charged the battery it had somehow managed to hold just enough charge for one start. (I hadn't tried it when I left Howdy Honda.)

Later this afternoon I went out to Wal-Mart and got myself a new battery. The car did not start with the turn of the key. I managed to navigate the Loop 1/Loop 360/ US 290 interchange successfully twice, change out the battery in the Wal-Mart parking lot, stop off at Rudy's for a soda, and still get back to the office in under 45 minutes. Not too bad.

Now I gotta remember to call tomorrow and set up an appointment to get that A/C work done before Howdy Honda forgets who I am.

I put up a ceiling fan yesterday -- and today. We had bought this fan because we thought (in the store) that it looked like the funky brick-reddish color would be a good match for the colors in our living room and kitchen. Putting it up was pretty easy because there was already a box in the ceiling where the fan was supposed to go. This was my fifth ceiling fan ever, but only the first where I didn't have to deal with mounting an electrical box in a pre-existing ceiling.

So it took me an hour or so to put up the fan. Around the time I got done and was checking it out, we decided it didn't match the colors so well. We pondered it while I continued testing. I noticed that the fan didn't wobble at any speed. Another first-out-of-five for me. Unfortunately we concluded that the fan just didn't go with our house. I probably would have lived with it, but LG felt strongly enough that I took the whole thing down and carefully repackaged it in its box. *Sigh*.

We had other home-related shopping to do (sheds, rugs, etc.), and were enjoying each other's company, so we made an afternoon of it. Drove all over town and visited three different home centers plus a Sears. Found another fan that we thought would work. After we got home I started in on the new fan. This one had a slightly different mounting bracket that -- unlike the first fan -- didn't come with the two screws that you use to screw it to the electrical box. I know I have screws like that, but there's no telling which box all my electrical stuff is packed in. I tried the neighborhood hardware store, which (at 6:30pm Saturday) was closed, and then gave up, reopened the first fan, and pilfered its two screws. The next step was to hang the fan on the handy hook while I connected up the wires. After that comes the most potentially annoying part of installing a fan, which is putting in those tiny little screws flush against the ceiling to attach the fan to the baseplate. This is the only part of the job that would really go better with three hands.

So there I am, balanced on a ladder, I've got two of the four tiny little bastard screws in place, and I'm easing the third one into position, my left hand and fingers contorted between the ceiling and the fan motor housing, while in my right hand I'm wielding my slightly-too-big-for-this-job cordless screwdriver. Did I mention the teensy little lock washers that go along with these screws, just to add an extra wrinkle? There I am easing, contorting, and wielding, I make a slight wiggle in the wrong direction, and CLINK!, the screw and lock washer fall out of my fingertips and right into the motor housing. Only possible solution: backtrack. Take out the first two tiny little bastard screws, disconnect the wires, and take the whole damn thing down and shake it upside down. Instead, this is where I swore loudly and quit for the night.

Today the fan came down, got shaken, and went back up without a problem. It matches our house. And it doesn't wobble, so I now have a 2/6 lifetime record. That's a major league batting average anyway.

By the way, all of the above notwithstanding, this was not a successful home project according to my usual criteria. I have said elsewhere that there are three requirements for a home project to be deemed successful:

I had a dream about my cat M'ow last night. It's the second time I've dreamed about him. More on the second (spookier) one later. Last night's was merely strange, like most dreams.

I pulled up to a restaurant in our car (our 1986 Honda Civic sedan). M'ow and Anne (one of our other cats) were with me, but not in carriers. [We always put them in carriers when we have them in the car.] I was at the restaurant to pick up my mom from work. [The last time my mom worked at a restaurant was about 20 years ago. This restaurant was not one she ever worked at...at least not one that I know of.] When I got out of the car, M'ow got out and ran into the restaurant. I followed him in, grabbed him, and carried him back to the car. I opened the passenger-side rear door to put him in, and Anne got out. I caught her quickly and put her back in. She hid under the front passenger seat. Then I couldn't see M'ow.

I leaned in through the rear passenger-side door while blocking its opening, and dug around in stuff on the back seat floor. There was our sunshade, and a jacket of Lisa's [her green Woolrich mountain parka that used to be mine about 12 years ago, which sometimes lives in the car for months at a time], and a jacket of mine [my newest one from Mountain Hardwear that I wear both skiing and as a rain jacket, which I would probably never leave in the car, and even if I did, it certainly wouldn't be jumbled up in a pile on the floor]. Still no M'ow.

Then I noticed that the driver's door was open. Figuring that M'ow had gotten out that way, I closed the door (it didn't close securely, so I had to bump it with my knee) and then went to the house next-door to the restaurant. It was a gigantic three-story house, with a layout kind of like what you find in 1900-era gigantic houses. Most of it was run down in that kind of way that houses get after years of being rented out to college students.

I went around the house looking for M'ow. On the third floor I saw a thirty-ish couple whom I had seen coming out of the restaurant earlier. They appeared to live there (on the third floor, I mean). There was no door or anything, and I just walked in and asked them if they had seen M'ow. They seemed a little surprised that I would be so bold as to just walk in like that. Or maybe I was just projecting how I thought I would feel. They had not seen M'ow, and I headed downstairs.

As I got to the top of the stairs, instead of descending normally, I jumped down about 10 steps to the landing. I landed softly considering the height I jumped, but still made a loud thump. I hoped that I wasn't disturbing the occupants of the house. Then I jumped down the second half of the flight and landed with a similar thump on the second floor. The floor was covered with highly-polished red cedar planking, laid diagonally across the rooms. There were about 1/4 or 5/8 inch gaps between the planks, which were about five or six inches wide. The rooms were empty, and M'ow was nowhere to be seen.

I wandered around the first floor. Mrs. Holk (mother of my friends Boyd and Gordon from high school) was there, in the kitchen, on the phone. Although I knew it was Mrs. Holk, she didn't look the way I remember her. My mom had followed me into the house, and I explained to her that this was Mrs. Holk, and that I recognized the house from having been there years before. [That's an in-dream memory. I don't recognize the house in the real world.] Some of the things that I recognized about the house were the kitchen cabinets and a long, skinny room along one side kind of like a porch that has been enclosed to make a room. I remembered that there was a tiny little bathroom-like room inside this porch-room, and sure enough, it was there.

I saw at least five or six other cats in the house, mostly on the first floor. Since I was so worried about finding M'ow, I didn't talk to any of them. [I usually do talk to strange cats, especially when they're out and about. This habit of being interested got me in trouble once, but that's another story.] One of the cats had a limp somewhat like M'ow's, and had kind of similar markings (he's a black and brown tabby), but it was not M'ow.

Then I woke up, and M'ow was sleeping peacefully at my feet, right where he usually is when we wake up in the morning.

Baba says dreams mean things. I've seen but never read books on the subject. I'm not quite interested enough to bother with it, but my other, spooky, dream about M'ow pushed me closer to bothering than I've been before. As background information, you need to know that M'ow used to live with my grandma for about 6 years. He arrived on her doorstop one day, injured from having been shot. He has nerve damage in his left hind leg which gives him a distinctive floppy limp. She named him M'ow because she asked him his name and that's what he said. (He's very talkative.) When she died, coming up on one year ago now, a couple of her friends both said that her wishes had been to have him put to sleep if she died, rather than going to a shelter. I couldn't bear that thought, and her friends agreed that she would be okay with M'ow going home with me.

A month or two after Grandma died, and M'ow came to live with us, I dreamed about her. She came to talk to me about M'ow. I told her that he was living with us now. She cried and said that she missed her kitty. I told her that he was happy, and told her about how he was getting along with Anne and Emma. She seemed happier after I told her that.

I woke up from that dream wondering if I had just actually talked to my grandma.

It's 8:44am, and I'm having some sort of weird confluential day. I feel like I'm inundated with Amanda Peet appearances.

Last night LG and I watched "The Whole Nine Yards". It was enjoyable. I found Amanda Peet (she played Matthew Perry's dental assistant) very attractive. Later in the evening, reading last week's Austin Chronicle, in the movie reviews I came across a note (but not a review) about the upcoming release of "Whipped", which stated that she had "practically stolen the show" or some such in TWNY.

Peet had a nude scene in TWNY. Remembering that I had seen vidcaps of that scene once upon a time while surfing Out There, I decided to see if I could find them now. So this morning when I came in to work, I went looking. It wasn't difficult: www.amandapeet.net. I learned that she's also in a TV show called "Jack and Jill". It might be on the WB network; I didn't pay too close attention.

Then I started going through my last couple days of email. Among other pieces of junk mail, I had one advertising "Amanda Peet pictures". (I did not go there. After all, I had just seen a site with hundreds.)

Then I came to a message from Dennis, in which he mentioned that this week's People magazine has a 37 factoid on the cover about Oprah Winfrey. I decided to go to People's website and see if there was anything there about it. And right there on the front page of their website, there was a feature article called "Today's Profile", about Amanda Peet. Now that's just too weird.

Wow, that was a quick two weeks. I was out of town for 4 days, maybe that screwed things up. More on that trip elsewhere, if i get around to it. Meanwhile, here's another pop story, this time without a happy ending. (Longtime readers of my home page may be familiar with the Pop Story With a Happy Ending.)

I was headed downstairs to get myself a snack, and I asked if I could get anyone else anything. Baba said he wanted Reese's Pieces and gave me 70 cents in change. Carl said he wanted Doritos and gave me a dollar bill. I had two dollar bills of my own (and no change).

So I got down to the vending area, and the first thing I did was drop a quarter (Baba's quarter) in the peanut machine so I could munch on peanuts while I was deciding what "real" snack I wanted.

Next, happily munching, I perused the chip selections for Carl. There weren't any regular Doritos, so I decided maybe Cool Ranch would be okay. Tried the dollar in the slot. Nothing. It wasn't being rejected, it just wasn't even trying. The slot was completely inert.

Faced with the undesirable option of returning upstairs not only snack-free, but also short on Baba's change, I decided to buy a pop with one of my dollars. This was annoying because we get pop for free - well, the company buys it - and there's plenty in our refrigerator. But I did it anyway, yielding 45 cents in change. (Side rant: our pop machine can't be fooled into giving change for a dollar. I've tried it before, and I tried it again this time, and if you put in a buck, you get 45 cents and a pop, period.)

Current status: 1 dollar (Carl), 70 cents (Baba), 1 dollar and 20 cents (me), 1 useless can of Coke (me).

Next I perused the candy selections for Baba. No Reese's Pieces, but I thought maybe Peanut M&M's would be okay, so I bought them. They were 65 cents. At first I thought they were 60, so I only put in 60 cents. When I pushed the selection button, the machine beeped at me, and blinked "65" on its little readout, so I put in another dime, and successfully managed to score the candy plus a nickel change.

Current status: 1 dollar (Carl), 5 cents and Peanut M&M's (Baba), 1 dollar and 20 cents (me), 1 useless can of Coke (me).

I was about to head back upstairs at this point when I remembered that the whole reason I came down in the first place was to get myself a snack. Plus I wasn't sure if I had done the right thing in getting Baba the Peanut M&M's. So I decided to get another pop, hence another 45 cents, and then get another candy item. That way I could give Baba a choice of snacks and still have one myself. The get-pop part of this cunning plan worked fine.

Current status: 1 dollar (Carl), 5 cents and M&M's (Baba), 65 cents and 2 useless Cokes (me).

Unfortunately the candy part of my cunning plan failed. I put in 65 cents and pressed the button for a Snickers. The machine beeped at me the same way it had when I short-changed it before. But this time it ate my credit!

Current status: 1 dollar (Carl), 5 cents and M&M's (Baba), 2 useless Cokes (me).

Television experiences to report this morning. I was up early eating breakfast, and I turned on the TV because the dining room table was too full to bother with. There is some strange TV on at 6:30 in the morning.

Talk Soup was on E!, with Beth Littleford as the guest host. I always dug her on The Daily Show. I've been on record for years as hating smugness on TV. This is deep, true, hatred I'm talking about. But somehow it just looks good on Beth Littleford.

I guess that's not so strange. In fact, I guess there wasn't really all that much that was strange at all, relative to the kind of stuff you see on TV any other time. That is, unless you count the two midgets doing an infomercial for some kind of real estate scam.

It's my sister's 34th birthday today. She's "finishing 34", as they say in some countries. I like that phrase; I wish we used it here. Anyway, Happy Birthday, VGN.

I spent the morning and much of yesterday continuing work on the bookshelves I'm finishing. LG and I bought two 36" wide, seven foot tall bookshelf units and a seven-foot corner shelf unit, all unfinished, from a local guy with a shop near our house. I've now spent parts of several weekends working on staining and finishing them. Today I put the second coat of polyurethane on one of the big ones. Normally I'd probably like to go with three coats, but if it's decent enough with this, I'll consider it done. We're really eager to get our office into shape soon.

My other accomplishment for the weekend was to replace a whole bunch of window locks. The windows in our house don't seem that old (I'd guess less than 5 years), but it appears that the locks have a short and remarkably consistent lifetime. We had about 10 locks break in the last few weeks. The metal just crumbles apart when you lock or unlock the window. You could have broken into a "locked" window by simply prying up on the lower sash. The locks would have given before the glass.

The other day I had an encounter with an unknown guy in our parking lot. It's still burning me, so I have to vent.

About 4:30 in the afternoon the Wednesday before last I left work with Carl; we were making an early day of it at the Salt Lick. Carl had some fancy schmancy beer he had ordered online that he needed to leave in his car. We put it in the back of my truck, which was parked near the front door in one of our company's precious, early-bird-only parking spaces. Parking at our building really stinks. Companies have a few numbered spaces in the general area of the building -- which is built on a hill -- but most people end up parking and trudging up from the un-numbered areas down at the bottom of the hill. (The parking situation is among the least of our complaints about the lovely Capital View Center. Ask me about toilets, power, management, or Gracy Title sometime.)

Anway, the bottom of the hill is where Carl was parked that day. When we got down to his car and he had transferred his beer, he had second thoughts and wanted to leave the beer inside the office instead. I told him I'd wait for him up by the door on the other side of the building, and he drove his car and beer back up the hill to park in our known-vacant company spot.

When I pulled up at the other door, all of the visitor parking spaces were full. Driving space is pretty tight at that part of our lot, so I backed into a B220 space (not our company's) to get out of the way. I left the motor running, and sat in the truck. A couple minutes later a guy in a green pickup pulled into the space beside me and went inside. I thought he kind of looked at me funny, like he was trying to recognize me, but I didn't think anything of it. I might even have imagined it.

A few minutes later Carl came out and said he had lost his cell phone. We looked around in the truck briefly, then talked for a moment about what to do. We could drive back down and retrace our steps, or we could figure that his cell phone was probably at home, since he couldn't remember using it all day anyway. While we were deciding, the green-pickup guy came back out. As he walked past Carl, who was standing outside my truck, he muttered something -- barely audible -- about "reserved parking space".

The nerve! But wait, it gets better. Carl and I drove around the building on the off chance that the phone would be there (of course it wasn't). When we finally pulled out of our parking lot onto 360, we saw the green-pickup guy executing an illegal U-turn at the crossover out in front of the fire station next door.

The next day I wrote a letter to put on the guy's windshield. Unfortunately the green pickup has never returned to those B220 spaces, and there are at least three different green pickups that park in the un-numbered spaces down the hill. I kinda think I know which one is his, but I'm not sure. So I've never been able to give it to him. Too bad, because I thought it was a good letter.

		28 September 2000
	Dear Sir, My name is Tom Magliery, and I work upstairs from you in B330 (KnowItAll, Inc.). (I am inferring that you work in suite B220, based on the experience I am about to relate.) I was the driver of the Jeep pickup that was briefly parked in the B220 space yesterday afternoon. I did not appreciate the remark you made under your breath as you walked past the truck. My passenger (a coworker of mine) says you muttered something about "restricted parking", just barely loud enough for him to hear. As a resident of this building, I am painfully aware of the limited close parking that is available. I paused in that space yesterday for a few minutes while my coworker went inside to take care of some quick business he had not done when we left. All of the visitor parking spaces were full at the time. There were two obvious clues that I was only in that space for a few minutes: 1) I had the motor running in the truck; 2) as the driver, I remained in the vehicle. If you needed the parking space, I would gladly have moved so you could have it. How difficult would it have been for you to ask me to my face? If this is a misunderstanding, I apologize. If not, I ask you please to treat others with a little more respect the next time you are in a similar situation.
		Sincerely, Tom Magliery
	P.S.: As we left the parking lot, we noticed you performing an illegal U-turn at the crossover in front of the fire station. Shame on you.