The Plentiful Vintage

We got a call today from a guy who works for a department of the Federal government. He was calling to get some information so that they could begin the investigation of a complaint we had lodged with them. We lodged the complaint in 1998.

Priming is done. I'll cut in the top coat tonight, and roll out the rest of it tomorrow night, lord willing and the Creek don't rise.

The Dodgers went from 4½ up to a half game back in under a week. Feh.

I took a look at the bulb bed this morning and there are shoots. The daffodils are about 3" high, the tulips are starting to poke through the surface, and the crocuses are already on the verge of blooming. Woo!

It was sunny and warm yesterday, the first real spring-like day of the year. Today it's back to the same old same old, gray and cold.

In today's computer follies, I spent entirely too much time trying to retrieve files from an old computer that has been massively invaded by adware. So tired of dealing with this crap.

The Dodgers are currently pounding Tampa Bay. David Ross finally got his first hit of the spring, and it was a home run.

It's been raining constantly since sometime last night. It's not been an especially heavy rain, and it's not even all that warm out (mid-forties), but it's been enough to clear most of the accumulated snow. Oh, the power of thermodynamics. Heat transfer is a wonderful thing. The downside to all this is that the ground is still frozen, so the water is pooling on the surface. A cold front is on the way, bringing heavy snow and temperatures in the teens, so all that water is going to freeze and then get covered with snow. Should be loads of fun.

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Our new Mac G5 keeps giving me agita. Today I discovered that the current iteration of OS X seems to have changed the way it handles font names, which may mean we'll have to go through all of our catalog files to rename the fonts so they match what OS X is calling them. I didn't have this problem with our old OS X system. I've tried Googling, but have come up empty. I'm sure it's something simple and stupid, but I'm damned if I can find it. (Which reminds me that earlier today I wasted a bunch of time searching through Outlook's menus trying to do something that was simple and stupid. It was simple, just incredibly well hidden.) I hate modern technology...

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I caved and bought the MLB audio package, which means I'm listening to the Dodgers-Marlins game as I type this. I love modern technology...

( More baseball notes... )

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And in what is possibly the weirdest story of the spring so far, ten minor leaguers from the Dominican have been banned from obtaining visas because they participated in a bizarre scheme to obtain fraudlent visas, and more are being investigated. From the story:

The scheme involved players being paid $5,000-$7,000 to get married, with the new wife receiving a visa. The newlyweds do not know each other and divorce soon after arriving on U.S. soil.

The woman would be left with a visa -- possibly to be sold again on the black market -- while the player was supposed to just go on with his life.

What a way to throw away a career.

It snowing like crazy outside, although the promised 60 mph gusts of wind have yet to arrive. I am snug and warmish in my home (more on the warmish part later), drinking hot chocolate (although I must say that those fancy gourmet hot chocolate packets are nowhere near as chocolatey as plain ol' Swiss Miss, much less honest-to-god cocoa), listening to a mix CD that arrived in the mail today from theodosia (thanks, Theo!), and occasionally glancing out at the snow flakes dancing about in the glow of the porch lights outside my window.

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( Drifting away... )

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( Panic in the streets... )

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( Bring on the heat... )

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( I'll huff, and I'll puff... )

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When I got home I started a batch of my famous maple-oatmeal bread in the bread machine. Since I was doing it during the day, rather than overnight, I decided to just use the machine to make the dough, and for the initial rising. When that was done, I transferred the dough to a regular bread pan, let it rise again, and then shoved it into the oven. It all seemed to be going pretty well. The second rising made a nice bread-shaped loaf. But as I moved it from where it had been rising over to the oven, it fell quite a bit. I wound up with a pan-high loaf - tasty, but denser than usual. Next time I'll just keep it in the machine.

After that, I spent most of the day reading back issues of Fables. I managed to get through all the ones I've downloaded. Now I just have to finish the last few I bought at Newbury. I also read the latest issue of Powers, which was great, as usual.

Every year our company sends out corporate Christmas cards, and towards the end of November a list of potential recipients gets passed around. The managers are supposed to go through it, and check off which cards we'd like to sign, as well as make any additions or corrections to the list. My pass at the list went like this:

Me: I think there's a mistake here. You've got the wrong company and address listed under [this guy]'s name. He doesn't work for [local lab]. He owns [local company].

C (my assistant): No, there are two guys with the same name. One works for [local lab], the other owns [local company].

Me: So, [this guy] gets a card, but [other this guy] doesn't?

C: Exactly.

P (the sales manager's assistant, taking list from me): Actually, he doesn't. He's dead. (Scratches name off the list.)

Me: He's dead?

P: Yep.

Me: So, there is only one [this guy].

P: Yep. And he's not getting a card.

Well, the muscle relaxants ran out days ago, and I'm easing back on the pain killers, and so far the stabby pains haven't returned to my lower back. It still hurts, but the pain is more achey than sharp. I'm still very stiff. Even so, yesterday I was able to trim the hedge on the north side of the house (it really needed it), inspect the brakes on the truck, do laundry, and haul some books down from the attic. Yeah, I overdid it a bit. Today I had to go into work for a few hours to continue getting ready for a lab quality system audit, then I came home and decided not to lift anything else. I did bake biscuits to go with dinner, though. Easy, mix-low-fat-Bisquick-with-skim-milk-and-roll-them-out ones. They turned out to be edible. Who knew? Now I have half a dozen left for breakfasts.

( The Ipcress File... )

Finally watched the first two hours of Lost tonight, and I'm just not feeling the love. ( Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip... )

The other new series I've tried are Clubhouse and Veronica Mars. Clubhouse has it's good points. One of them is that the kid is actually played by an actor of the same age, so he actually looks and talks like a kid. Dean Cain is an athlete, and looks good doing the baseball stunts. The adult casting is good. The big problem is that it looks like the theme of the show will be "Will the kid do the right thing this week?" To be fair, in the second show, he didn't, but I suspect that'll be an anomaly. To be honest, the biggest mystery to me in the first episode was what stadium they were filming it in. The ground level shots were clearly Dodger Stadium, but the overheads were of a stadium I didn't recognize at all. Turns out it was with good reason. The field in the wide shots is Long Beach State's college field, with the stands and backgrounds computer enhanced to make it look like a new generation major league park.

Veronica Mars has been good, although sometimes I roll my eyes. I'll keep watching it for awhile longer.

Although not quite as hot as yesterday, and even less humid. Did thirteen miles on the bike, and got the average mph for the ride up over 12 for the first time this summer. The knee was sore before I started, but really didn't bother me at all during the ride. It was really stiff right after, though.

Spent the day putting all the details about our SOPs and manuals into a database I wrote. Needs to be done, but yawn...

Found out today that a friend and his GF broke up. I'm always the last to find out. They seemed fine at Christmas time. He mentioned that this was a good thing, so I guess he's okay with it. She was nice, and I liked her, but she never quite seemed to know whether I was joking about something or not. Her sense of humor is sort of completely perpendicular to mine. Oh well.

Trying to decide whether or not to head to Jersey for the 4th. I need to look for a new vehicle, but on the other hand, I haven't seen the family since Christmas, and I'm running low on Yeungling lager. What to do, what to do...