Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Hmm. Lemme toss in an anchor so y'all can conveniently skip right to the more positive part even if you're already behind the cut-tag(s) ... I figure there'll be some folks who do want to hear how my yesterday went just because you haven't heard much from me lately and want to hear some reassuring indication that I'm not dead, and folks who really don't need to wade through somebody else's "I did this and then I did that and then ..." nattering.

Ugh. Yesterday: power failure just before the start of rush hour. I had a lot of 'state', mostly in browser windows ... Opera has a 'resume where you left off' option on startup, so I got a lot of it back, but any NY Times articles I had open reverted to the login screen, and if any got old enough to fall behind the paywall, I'm SOL on those. Bleah. I don't think any of my editor sessions had unsaved stuff in them, but I still need to go find all the .swp files (i.e., get around to typing 'find / -name \*.swp -print' on, uh, at least three different computers; more of a not-gotten-'round-to-yet than a supreme PITA). And the machine I'd started from a Linux liveCD will require starting up again from the console downstairs so I can set an IP address by hand (and anything I had open on that one is just plain gone, but IIRC, all I had open there were search results for trying to find out how to get one of the Linux distros I have to recognize the RAID board in that box on install).

The power failure did last long enough for [the proverbial 'them'] to hang stop signs over the (rather many) dark intersections, though I'm not certain when they did that, nor how effective it was. As I Twittered, early acoustical evidence (horns and screeching) suggested that a great many drivers had forgotten the proper behaviour when approaching an intersection with a dark traffic light (treat it as a four-way stop sign). When I called BGE to report the outage, the computer-voice said it was expected to be repaired by 18:00, and I had stuff to do outside the house, so I opened the freezer long enough to grab a couple of plastic jugs full of ice, and threw those in a cooler so that I could keep groceries cold even if I got home before power was restored without opening the fridge again, and went off to pick up a few things I needed. Which was how I found out how far (in one direction anyhow) the blackout reached. And the honking behind me when I stopped at temporarily-uncontrolled intersections supported my earlier hypothesis regarding other drivers' long-term memory.

When I left the house, there was a helicopter circling low nearby, making me wonder whether someone had caused the outage by crashing into a substation or something, but I didn't see anything like that visible from the route I took, and didn't get a chance to watch the local television news to see whether the whole thing was large enough to be mention-worthy or not.

The big thing yesterday was getting out to Petsmart to buy cat food, which I was unfortunately doing in the early part of rush hour (whoops). Fortunately, just staying off of I695 and (as long as possible) US40 was enough to spare me the really annoying parts of that. I also needed some groceries for myself, and had a couple other too-long-procrastinated stops to make (it's been a really difficult week, pain-wise, and yesterday was the first day I managed to get out). So I tried to get as much done as I could in one trip, in case I didn't feel well enough later to handle whatever I left off. I'd had a hunch that I should take a longer lens than my current default walking-around lens, and sure enough, there were birds to shoot. I missed the buzzard (I think) that was lazily gliding over route 40, because I was moving at the time and it was gone before I could get into a parking lot, but I spent a while getting smaller birds lit by the not-quite-setting-yet sun. And, of course, by the time I got home (to find the previously mentioned temporary stop signs, and restored electricity), I'd tried to fit too much into one day and had thoroughly worn myself out.

By the way, I saw rather a lot of McCain/Palin yard signs in Catonsville. I've heard others mention seeing very few McCain bumper stickers in Maryland compared to the number of Bush stickers the last two times around (I'd seen a few), but I found this cluster of yard signs, with a single house in that neighbourhood sporting an Obama/Biden yard sign.

Anyhow, I stayed functional long enough to get the groceries put away, get back online (except for the liveCD-booted box) despite one of the scavenged UPS units failing to function, and got the VCRs re-programmed before the stuff I wanted to watch came on, before I collapsed.

Alas, yesterday's efforts took their toll. This morning I woke from a disturbing dream about being in a whole hell of a lot of pain and not being able to read because words and letters kept rearranging themselves whenever I looked at text, to find the pain excruciatingly real (but fortunately not the dancing-text problem), and the pain had woken me far too early, so I'm feelin' kinda fuzzy-brained right now. I have a vague recollection of there being something I wanted to get to this weekend (the pain-difficult week I had blurred some of my mental-notes, and I was not being organized enough to make real notes) ... If I manage to get an afternoon nap and get the pain under control, I'll peer through email and LJ for clues as to what it was I'd wanted to do. But a weekend in is more likely.

Oddly enough -- or not -- the main thing I have managed to do in the past week is mostly learn a new programming language (JavaScript, which I'd been putting off looking at for a long time, but now have a need for). Maybe that's not so odd, because I could do it in small bits during brief periods of feeling well enough to think straight; periods I knew would be too short to squeeze in anything that needed to be done in longer chunks. Anyhow, the language is not really what I'd expected it to be -- I think I'll actually enjoy working in it. (Now if only I could learn human languages as easily as I do computer languages ... *sigh*) Also, the most unsurprising (and pleasant) thing about this process: the relevant O'Reilly book justgus37 dropped in my lap is very good. (Flanagan, David; JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fifth Edition; O'Reilly Media, Inc.; Sebastopol, CA, US; ISBN 978-0-596-10199-2))

And, the itty bitty item that was the thing that actually provoked me to bother to write an entry today instead of just making a short "rough week" comment later when apologizing for not having written anything in so long: This bit of epistomological humour pleases me.

Yeah, I had something really short to say, but felt like I needed to post a bunch of other stuff first to make up for being so absent lately. Hmm. Yeah, I probably do need that nap.