The site was offline all day yesterday. I think some lightning non-fatally confused my router-thingy. I power cycled it
this morning, but only after rebooting my machine and, thinking my ISP might be at fault, running a looping
try-to-connect-dammit script overnight. In rebooting, I forgot that I hadn't set up some key servers to start up
automatically, so things got a little fubarred around here.
Back to normal now, though.
Hm, the weather's been rather nice, so I haven't been extraordinarily driven to update lately. Ah, spring. Speaking of
which, a little more spring music:
I'm trying to look for a car at the moment. This is made difficult by my distaste for the whole car thing (nearly
getting run over by one yesterday didn't help, however much it was my fault. Signal, damn you!). Those little suckers
just inhale money, don't they? I'd really like to put this off for a couple years, but there's just too much stuff I'm
missing out on for lack of wheels. I kinda wanted to go to the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival on Saturday (despite the
rain), for example.
In other news, I found out today that the wedding ceremony for my best friend from high school will be family only,
which is fine and everything, but it's starting to look like the only wedding in which I'm going to be part of the
wedding party will be my own (knock wood). *sigh*
Oh gosh, I love spring. What a great day out there. I'm feeling so good about it, I don't even think I'll complain about
being couped up in the office. I'm just happy it's there.
And now for a little experiment. I was thinking of putting music up on the site, maybe as MP3 downloads or something.
The idea was that I toss up something to reflect my mood, or that just seemed cool at the time. But I don't want to be
an MP3 download site, so a streaming thingy might be the better choice.
Shoutcast is nifty, but it sucks up most of my limited bandwidth just for one listener. So
much for my Squirrel Radio idea. I don't know if I'll keep it up, but try this out anyway:
Oh, you need Winamp. But you've already got that, right?
I love that song. Lots and lots and lots. It's from the soundtrack
the The Hanging Garden, a good ol' drepressing Canadian movie. Great soundtrack.
Give it a try.
I was thinking about saying something about this. I'd come
across the Psycho Ex-Girlfriend site
through memepool.com last week sometime and thought... well, I'm not really sure what I
thought. But eventually I thought I'd get around to working it into my running, somewhat ironic "putting your life on
the Internet" theme. Especially since Psycho Boy has become some sort
of pop culture icon. But Tycho did a better job than I ever could,
evidentally having more of the sort of real life experience that makes one's opinions worthwhile.
Instead, I'm going to go with that old adage and write what I know.
There's this little Chinese food place just up the street from where I work. They have some lunch specials—rice or
noodles topped with meat, veggies and sauce—which were a bit more expensive than what I was used to in my past life a
couple blocks away, but not too bad, considering. I first ordered the Beef in Black Bean sauce ("mild," I said when
asked), which tasted fine, if a little dry, except that there were hard, rock-like bits of stuff in it which kind of
turned me off.
They also gave me a fork. This is understandable, racially speaking, but there's always a right way and a wrong way to
do things. Mind you, I've never asked for chopsticks and a spoon, so I have no real right to complain, but if I applied
that rule to everything, I'd never have anything to complain about.
I didn't go back for a while. With my alternate choices being pizza, subs, waiting in line at Tim Hortons and nothing (
the latter being what I was most proned to do for some time, having given up any hope of ever being organized enough to
prepare myself a bag lunch), within a month or so, I tried them out a gain. Beef and Black Bean (mild) again, and this
time, I was quite happy with it. I tried their Chow Mein, and it was quite passable. Then I tried their Chicken and
something.
Oh my freakin' Lord in Heaven. What the hell's with all the flaky bits of chili pepper?! I threw most of it out. Putting
aside that I can't eat it, call me crazy but I actually like to taste what I'm eating. You know, savour the subtle
flavours and textures. I can't do that when my mouth is on fire.
Figuring it was a fluke with the chicken thing, I tried the next item on the lunch special menu. Toss. Okay. The next
time I wised up a bit. Realizing that for the last two things, the lady at the counter didn't ask me if I wanted "hot"
or "mild" as she had for the Black Bean Beef, I decided to head her off at the pass for the next item on the list.
This time, it was actually edible. Barely. Those damn chili flakes again.
Something was up here. Today, I went back for the Black Bean thing, recalling that, when specifying mild, it wasn't
spicy at all. So it seemed like a safe bet. When prompted, I stated my "mild" preference. Get it back to work and ACK!
Not inedible, but those damnable chili flakes are everywhere. Toss.
Maybe I'll just give in and stock up on luncheon meats.