I did a number of chores & errands, and visited with some friends in the evening. MyTheir
new kitten is doing well, and has gained weight and clearly feels right
at home in their house. Being a kitten he was often invisible whilst
in-or-under something, but his position could be determined by a
triangulation using the other cats watchful gaze. They are not completely 'down' with the new intruder yet.
They had a DVD of 'Ugly Betty : Season 1'
and we watched four or five episodes. Not bad. I may Netflix it myself.
However when we sat down to watch everyone else picked up a laptop. I
opined that if I'd known it was a LAN party I would have brought my own
laptop, and a spare was found for me.
Friday
- not a lot to say, working away on things. The main accomplishment was figuring out a method to update some old GIS data.
The Ventura neighbors' cat, via a cellphone pic.
Thursday 24 September
2009
Thursday
- another day. Quieter, so I made progress on my primary assignment.
I ran across a quote on the internet, that: "Giving power and money to the government is like giving alcohol and the car keys to teenagers". So true.
My brother sent me this a few weeks ago. It's on Edwards AFB, at the
corner of Wolfe & Yeager it looks like. Maybe I should send it to
the failblog -
The next day the roads foreman blamed "the new guy".
Wednesday 23
September
2009
Wednesday
- another long day at work. I did get some work done on my primary
assignment, but acting as a stand-in for the big boss on a number of
projects is taking it's toll. My own project deadline is approaching
too fast for comfort, and all this eats into the time for that.
By coincidence I saw some
pictures from Bhutan, earlier this week. Interestingly these showed
a long road, winding upwards and lined with statuette's, which seems to
be the model for the winding road that Stephen Maturin climbs, to an Buddhist animal sanctuary, in The Nutmeg of Consolation.
It never occurred to me that it would be modeled on a real road. Bhutan
is of course, completely landlocked, bordering the Himalaya's, so
O'Brians conceit in assigning it to the middle of the Pacific is fairly subtle. Or perhaps the winding
roads with statues is a generic Buddhist thing, and not be really
remarked upon.
Tuesday 22 September 2009
Tuesday
- another day eaten by locusts at work.
The NCIS season premiere was on, and it was OK. Not much of a plot really, sort of an episodic flashback sort of thing.
There
was also an NCIS Los Angeles premiere, but it was a bit slow, so the
room mate and I watched some Dancing With The Stars stuff instead. Then
I went to bed early. Yeah, it was that uninspiring.
So, does this mean that the original NCIS is approaching the end-of-life stage? They are trying to prep a replacement?
Hmmm.
Looking at the Wikipedia page it seems that the show is actually
getting more popular as it ages, now starting it's seventh season it
apparently drew a a huge audience for the show last night. So, it looks
as though NCIS Los Angeles is just a spin off.
Fair enough - NCIS was, after all, a spin-off of JAG.
Monday 21 September 2009
Monday
- Back to work!
The fan in my room failed over the weekend. It's just a $14 Walmart
fan, and lasted about a year, then started going slower, and slower,
and slower...and finally stopping altogether this weekend, sometime on
Saturday night. Fortunately it seems to be cooling down - the marine
layer has been coming in and it was even foggy this morning, so it's
not an urgent replacement. One of these days.
I watched the House season opener. It was OK, one can see what the
writers were trying to do, I'm not sure that they convincingly pulled
it off. But they were in a pickle, their lead character had degenerated
to a cynical and manipulative psychotic. They attributed this to the
drugs, but I think it was so fun to write the episodes that the
character got away from them. Viewers love to hate him, but there isn't
much of anywhere for the show to go at that point. So now there is a
new plot line - will House become a 'better' person or backslide to the
supergenius-near-villain we all know and love hate?
Sunday 20 September_2009
Sunday
- I picked up my friends, and dropped them off at LAX with time to
spare. Traffic was light, even on the 405, at 5am on a Sunday.
Afterwards, planning on sailing, I went directly to the boat and took a
nap. When I awoke it was noon, it was foggy, warm, and windless. After
a couple of small chores I just went home and watched the Chargers eke
out a loss in the last few minutes. Phil Rivers is good, but he
couldn't overcome the lack of an offensive line and absence of any
running game.
Book #56 was
Hit or Myth, and #57
was Little Myth Marker,
both again by Robert Asprin. These are books #5 and #6 in the 'Skeeve'
'Myth' series. As I mentioned last week, short and not particularly impressive.
