B-cat attack

B likes to rampage arround with no traction on the tile. I got in his way and suffered the accidental consequenses :(
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A B in the closet

We have solved the mystery of how clean clothes somehow get cat hair on them while hanging in the closet! B apparently likes sleeping in there.  And yes, for those not in the know, our cats are named B and Z.
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New Job and Cool Knives

I accidently got a new job (ask me about it if you haven't heard, it's a funny story). It should be a fun new challenge.  I start the beginning of August.  It is at AmSafe Aviation, an aerospace seatbelt company.  They have a huge production facility here in Phoenix, and are the #1 supplier of aircraft seatbelts worldwide...start checking the back of your buckles when you fly!

Related to this by a distant tangent (stay with me), I've been looking to get a new pocket knife. I miss being without something sharp from my Boy Scout days, but the last time I bought a knife and tried to carry it, it was a cheap 'tactical' knife with huge blade, and I sliced my finger with it pretty badly from being out of practice (it left an interesting scar, I'll try to take a picture of it see below). I think I gave that knife to my dad with blood still on it.




Anyways, now that I'm not a teenager, I have no desire to carry a giant manly scary looking knife, so I was poking around on one of my forums (edcforums.com) for something more 'gentlemanly' and less likely to cause alarm.  I noticed a knife designer, Chad Los Banos, who designs knives for Boker, responding to people's comments.  This level of interaction was very impressive, and even more intriguing, his knives are available for sub-$30--skirting clost to impulse-buy prices (or easy birthday gift range...ahem ahem wink wink nudge nudge two weeks is plenty of time for ordering things online).

The two knives that interest me the most are the Boker SubClaw and ResCom.  They are both variants of the original Boker SubCom design.


The ResCom (bottom, if you couldn't figure out) is available with a red handle, which I'd love so I could easily distinguish them.  It has a 'blade' optimized for ripping seatbelts and other webbing (which I'll be working with on a daily basis--see, I told you it would tie back in), as well as a serated section for making short work of thicker ropes.  The SubClaw's 2" hawkbill-style blade is great for more conventional knifing duties, and at $26 each for the ResCom, and for the SubClaw at edcdepot.com, I'm going to have a hard time not daily carrying both of them.

Debbie's toad

Every night we go on a 2 mile walk, and every walk it is debbie's mission to find 'her' toad. We have seen him about four times, we have seen a baby toad twice, and today we saw this big fat guy....unless 'her' toad has been pigging out, probably not the same one.

It's funny because Debbie has taken over the flashlight (we are still walking) and is making sure every rock is not a toad
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Cross post from the Charlotte sector

[Cross posting this from tcs in case I didn't configure the post-by-email correctly over there]

We are sitting in the ob's office waiting for what is hopefully our last prenatal visit. I am getting so excited...I can't wait to hold Charlotte!

The worst part of this trimester for me has been the waiting. The hospital bag is ready, the car seat is, well I still need to do that....however, the nursery is ready, the blog is up, and we are ready to rock and roll! Charlotte sector, come on down!

I was almost intentionally late--the one time they got Debbie in as soon as she got here was the time I was ten minutes late...the whole appointment was over when I got there, whereas we have been here ten minutes already now.

This entry is a combination brain dump, nervous fidget, and test of the Charlotte broadcast system... If there is any news of progress you'll find it here (or tcs hehe) in about an hour!

Thanks for all the votes, it's great to know so many people are looking forward to meeting my daughter :-) I am at the top of that list!
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Baby blog is live! (for people who haven't seen it)

So, we've got thecharlottesector.blogspot.com online and ready for live announcements as Charlotte transitions from womb to world.  Feel free to go check it out!  There's still some time to get your birth time guesses in if you haven't already!  

Cell phone signal allowing, I'll be making live posts from the hospital to keep people up to date, so bookmark now!

http://thecharlottesector.blogspot.com/

Cats are weird

Do all cats use body pillows?
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The Cubicle Sector!

I actually cleaned up my desk today so I thought I should document it just to prove it has happened. My cubicle is about 50% the size it needs to be for all the stuff that is in it!



Edit: Ugh, the second one is horrible quality. I'll bring in a camera tomorrow.

Crazy avon lady

I want to believe she drives down the road with her hang tag strips flapping. It was so windy it looked like her catalogs were going to escape to Freedom.
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First post from the Nerdcycle!

I finally got my Nerdcycle up and running (and am currently sweating on it)

Problems i addressed:

-i built a full desktop computer out of spare parts for a drive unit
-i temporarly stacked some boxes to use for a mouse pad
- i remembered i had a tiny keyboard laying around. Good thing I am quick at texting!

-I loomed all my wires to make it a little neater.

Still to do:
-wire up the PVR capabilities (card already installed)
-fabriccate a mouse pad

Even with those changes needing to be made, i have burnt 200 cal making this post!  Yay fitness!

Mobile blog test

Off to get taco bell for dinner (did you know you can order anything that has ever been on their menu and they will make it for you?) and figured I'd test the blog by email capabilities while I wait for my order.

Don't mind the gratuitous image, I just want to see how it handles image attachments.

Also, please excuse the cookie-cutter format and too-big pictures. Both will be changing shortly, possibly also the clunky 'view more' workaround-it is functional, but not very elegant, and I'd prefer something that didn't preload images.

Ok, food is ready. Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for the unveiling of the Charlotte sector!

Toxic Experiment

On Thursday, my afternoon was all going to be computer work, so I decided to conduct an experiment. This is the journal I kept.

From the hours of 1 to 5, today, (barring any meetings that pull me away from my desk) I will be listening to Toxic on repeat. This will be 71 listenings. I will be journaling my thoughts.

1 listen: Toxic is a pretty OK song. Quite catchy, if a little over produced.
2: I wonder if those strings are real or synth? They don't sound quite right.
3: is that accoustic guitar in the opening? I never noticed that before, wow it's through the whole song!
4: Wow, through most of the heavily distorted vocals, an almost completely unmodified vocal mirror is audible faintly in the right earphone. It almost sounds like a real singer.
7: There's at least three different filter sets they apply to her vocals. That is, if they didn't have her re-track backup vocals/harmonies, and did it all digital. In at least three places it is obvious she did her own backup, as her vocal inflection and timing are different.
16: In the intro, very quietly there is some pseudo-far east sounding string instrument. Interesting. This song has a lot of layers.
17: The reverb/echo on 'spin me all around (round,roundround) seems really cheap compared to the rest of the vocal effects.

After one hour: I am fidgity. My body relaxes slightly in the brief pause when the track loops, and then tenses up again when the intro beat hits me with like a jolt.

20: Her pronunciation is starting to grate on me.
22: So i just tried to have a conversation with someone who had wandered by my cubicle, with only one of my two earphones moved, so i was still getting toxic piped in on one side...it almost broke my head.
31: I can still write, and I just tried to have another conversation. I realized the problem is that I am now subconsciously singing along with every loop, and expecting every beat, so forcing my brain to process other input (someone talking) and create words is difficult.

HALF TIME ANALYSIS:
The element of the song that is still annoying me most heavily right now is her inconsistent pronunciation. A lot of "ya" and "yer" instead of "you" and "your"...but not 100%. Somehow, having her say "you" and "your" makes it more obvious when she's fudging her pronunciation every other time.I'm starting to feel slightly nauseous. This may or may not be related to the song, I did have a small slice of Costco pizza and a cheese sandwich for lunch. At this point, for the first time, I really want to stop listening. Going to push through it! (You're toxic, I'm slippin' under...)

Also, there are still a couple points in the song where my verbal sing-along degrades into sounds instead of words, as I can't for the life of me pick any meaning out of what she's saying. I just concentrated for a loop and figured out one. "Ahgadayu" is probably "A guy like you [should wear a warning]" even though there isn't even a hint of the k or l. I now hear the 'correct' lyric each time instead of just the jumble of sounds it was before, to the point where I have tricked myself into hearing a hint of the 'k' in like.

I'm starting to get a little bit of a tension headache. I'm mentally fatiguing. The song is slowly being split into its component parts, and almost getting checked off as it goes through the song. "whiney strings, check, james bond-y electric guitar riff, check, 'bow wow' distortion synth, check"

Most of the mental fatigue is probably a result of the fact that it is such a stacatto song that it repeatedly demands priority from my nervous system. I can usually be doing something and thinking about something else. (daydreaming while modifying a cad model, or thinking about the rest of the email I'm in the process of writing) but having toxic blaring has reduced my brain to a single track. I can do and think exactly one thing, as all multi-tasking capability is being taken up by Toxic.

41: A new development. Every 's' and 't' sound now feels like little pinpricks into my brain, and she has a lot more 't' in her 'd' sounds than normal people do."Too high can' come Town" "I'm atticktet to you" etc

61: Since she's obviously not doing this live or continuously, it's very odd to see where where the mixer choose to insert breaths. Sometimes she'll start her phrases with a breath intake, sometimes she'll have a breath between phrases, but more often not. They're probably only there 20% of the time.

65: there's a ding in there that makes me think I have a new instant message, it's gotten me the last four playthroughs.

70: 1 more repetition! After what I calculate to be 70 repetitions, only having the one left is a delight. For the last three, I've had a strong desire to curl into the fetal position under my desk.

I am done! Woohoo!
Results: I am slightly disoriented, really have to pee, my fan is loud and so are my computer keypresses, and I don't have the song in my head, yet. I'll report back at end of day and let you know if i find myself humming it.

Further Results (8pm): I missed my freeway interchange driving home from work and didn't realize it for 5 miles. I've never done this. I'd say 4 hours of Toxic messes me up worse than missing two nights of sleep in a row...I still don't feel quite right.

The Shoe Sector

(clicky for biggie)


So I just got a new pair of dress shoes, and thought I'd document my whole shoe 'family':

Back Right, from L to R: Steel toe work boots, oil resistant sneakers for garage use, running shoes.

Middle row, Left to Right: Black Kenneth Cole Reactions and brown generic brand slip-ons--purchased to be Scottsdale 'clubbing' shoes (both in deserate need of shoe trees); Allen-Edmunds Delray (recently purchased); Brown, black, and more newer black Sketcher slip-ons; ahnu slip ons (omg comfy, and with mesh uppers--great for summer)

Front left: Brown leather Reef's on top of some generic brown flipflops, new black fabric strap Reefs on top of old blue fabric strap Reefs (wandered 15 miles through suburbia in those once, can't bear to part with them); Five Fingers, and slippers.

Not shown: Nike trail running shoes that I use for backpacking. They are in storage.

Yay shoes!