MiniRiverGreen

so far behind

Whilst searching for an excuse, any excuse to not write the dozen or so blog posts that I have these notes scattered about my desk area for, I suddenly remember tumblr. Yay. That is all.

New word

In my ongoing efforts to procrastinate further on my finals, which are all due in just under sixty hours, I have invented a new word: txtvrsashun. It means a conversation had completely over text message, with text verse replacing regular English throughout.

Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Titans is currently being shown on BBC America. It is one of the greatest films ever. The first time I ever saw it was in the movie theater with my uncle. It was either South Hills Village or Dormont, but we got there by trolley (15-cent fare). Afterward we had malts at the drugstore.

I swear it was 1982.

Some kind of dinner stuff

Last night, I was inspired by a new kind of grinder herb mix for chicken that we got on our last grocery store trip. We have been using chicken tenders instead of breasts because they’re easier to manage and are more uniform in size. Anyway, I took the tenders, dumped them in a bowl with this new herb mix and some olive oil and let them sit while I prepared the grill fire.

The last time I put tenders on the grill, they got stuck to the rack and didn’t want to cook nicely. The same happened the very last time I grilled breasts. Even though I had previously disavowed the use of foil on a grill, I figured it was worth a shot. The smell of the cooking poultry was- in a word- divine.

By the time the potatoes and veggies were done, the tenders had a nice, golden brown sheen on both sides. It was so delicious, we decided to have the same thing again tonight for dinner. This time, we had a salad, since our guest was not a fan of green beans.

Success

With four different computers, each with their own operating system, everyone is talking to everyone else. Well, technically, my main machine- Win 7 isn’t talking to anyone except the XP Beast. I forgot that I set the Beast up like a personal assistant. Everything has to go through him first, then he can relay it to Win 7.

As nostalgic as it was seeing the old guy again, the OS is really very clunky and quite difficult to get started. It’s like a pair of oxen pulling a cart- it takes alot of work to get started and then it’s nothing but slow going from there. If put in a spot, I might be able to work with it again- to an extent. The battery doesn’t even work anymore, and the anti-virus I was using quit supporting that version with updates, but the newer version is not compatible with Win ME.

While we have come quite far over the last 10 years since I bought the old guy, and I can understand updates to the OS in terms of user friendliness, I can actually see using this machine again in the future. If for no other reason than to keep vigil for the UNIX 2038 problem, since I have APL and BASIC installed and both run separate from the main OS. If need be and there are no IBM 5100s around in 2038, I’ll pull the old guy out of mothballs and turn it over to the central bureaucracy for a small fee. Until then, it shall be cleaned of files and put away.

Procrastination- the other white meat

I’m trying to get my office under control while I’m still on break, but I ran across my very first laptop- a 550 Mhz HP running Windows ME. So, of course, everything came to a halt whilst I ensure my networking abilities are not rusted, by throwing the old guy onto the network to extract what files are left on him.

My current Win 7 machine is simply not interested at all in talking to him, and my XP beast is equally standoffish. At the risk of tripping a circuit, I shall now attempt to complete the bridge with my Windows 98 machine, since both the old guy and the beast have 98 in their list of networked drives.

If this doesn’t work, I’m not sure it’s worth it to keep trying. The old guy doesn’t have a fan anymore and I worry for his temperature.

Almost a Jerry Springer moment

After a morning out, I arrived home and decided to rest on our front porch. About a minute after I sat down, I heard a car door open and close, but did not hear a car pull up. Then, I noticed a kid of about 14 or 15 walking up my steps. My first thought was ‘oh good, i hope he’s selling hoagies.’

So he gets to the top of the steps and says “Hi.”

“Hi there, can I help you?” I replied.

“Yeah, umm… you’re my dad.”

My very first thought was that he has my eyes. My next thought was that I would have to get a paternity test, then I remember thinking that Marieke was going to have a cow.

After an eternity, and with my eyes about to pop from their sockets, I said “Excuse me?”

“Are you Raymond Cranick?”

“Uh… no…”

“Oh ok. Do you know what time he gets home?”

“Well, he hasn’t lived here for at least seven years.”

“Oh ok. Thanks.”

…and he walks right back down my front steps and gets into a car. I stood up to find a woman in the driver’s seat, to which I put my arms up in the what, the fuck pose.

She said, though I couldn’t hear her, but read her lips “Oh yeah, that’s not him.” And they drove away.

My heart is still pounding out of my chest.

Nobody can see me here

This is one of the few places where I can completely let loose without fear of someone seeing something I’ve written and offendedly state ‘HEY’ in my general direction. I had to give a piece of my uncensored mind to someone in class, since this is the last week. She constantly cited sources that were either blogs or personal websites. It was all going to be alright until she decided to point to my post in the discussion board and cry foul based on some two-bit moron who thinks that jebus was sent to us by aliens.

In my scathing reply, I asked my fellow student to please refrain from using non-academic sources when crafting a counter-argument for which there are established facts. I then directed her to our illustrious university’s academic policies that basically say everything that I told her already.

She wrote back that she was ‘frankly offended’. I then told her that I wasn’t trying to offend her, just directing her to the fact that her source was inadequate as a basis for refuting my argument.

We went back and forth a few more times and in her most recent post, has said that she is ‘over me’ and wished me success.

I really, really wish I could snap my fingers and have everyone in the entire world understand that facts are facts and opinions are not. Just a thought.

Who are ‘our children’?

In the constant debate over the deficit, debt ceiling, economic investment, light rail- whatever… the argument eventually boils down to the timeless chestnut of ‘how will our children pay for this’. Does it occur to anyone that with the right kind of investment, the country will become wealthier in the middle class and tax revenue from people who have jobs will pay for the debt? Just wondering.