Monday, July 28, 2008

Braindead

Some things I did in the last month:

  • Saw my parents on a week-long vacation
  • Watched the entire run of The Office, US
  • Saw a herd of giraffes at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo
  • Ran Alex through a fountain and a pool at the public park
  • Bought a bag full of books and CDs with my dad for a grand total of $8. Most of the list:
    • Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
    • The Green Mile by Stephen King
    • A Tolkien Treasury (various)
    • The Spy Who Came in From The Cold by John le Carre
    • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
    • Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by John Steinbeck
    • A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
    • In Search of Schrodinger's Cat (by somebody)
    • America: The Book by the Daily Show crew
    • Building Big by David Macaulay
    • Among Schoolchildren by Tracy Kidder
    • Five Major Plays by Anton Chekhov
    • The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
    • Asterix el Legionario
    • and albums by G Love, Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Live, and The Jayhawks.

  • Bought a bottle of Leninade
  • Finished main development on my first professional software project
  • Read most of the extant novels of Charles Stross (still left: Accelerando, Glasshouse, Saturn's Children)
  • Watched the mountain stages of the Tour de France, including the magical Alpe d'Huez
  • Rode bikes with Mom and Dad before breakfast, causing much wheezing
  • Sold our 2000 Corolla to a truly desperate college graduate sister, who is moving to San Antonio for a year
  • Bought a shiny Ruby Red mid-size sedan: a 2007 Kia Optima
  • Found an oil leak in the shiny new Optima
  • Took the Optima to the Kia dealer, who services our 5 year/60000 mile factory warranty
  • Paid the Kia dealer for service anyway, because our car salesmen neglected to replace the oil drain plug when they changed the oil as a standard practice before resale, causing the leak and requiring a new oil change, which is not covered under the warranty
  • Called the car salesmen, who offered to change our oil next time around
  • Played Zombie Fluxx, a card game with constantly changing rules and zombies
  • Ate several kinds of exotic cheese
  • Ate my dad's delicious cooking for a decadent week
  • Sampled several Wii games new to me, like the awesome new Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the lame and difficult Winter Sports, the neato Marvel Ultimate Alliance, the hilarious Excite Truck, and the exciting and difficult Guitar Hero: Aerosmith edition
  • Played a few games online with my brother
  • Called 1-800-GOOG-411 at every possible opportunity, to get phone numbers, store hours, and addresses
  • Visited the Tattered Cover and got a bunch of titles to check out
  • Started programming the internet in HTML, Perl/CGI, Javascript, CSS, etc etc etc at http://msg.nfshost.com (still under construction)
My best to you and yours. More to come soon.