Quick Hits

After more than 2 months, I finally started traveling again. This week it is Pittsburgh. I'll be in Pittsburgh or NYC for the forseeable future. At least there is snow here, as opposed to balmy Baltimore.

After a 3 month wait I finally got to see a specialist for my knee. First of all, I have never had a Doctor take a personal call while talking to me (not even an apology) but he took two different personal calls right in front of me with no remorse. Ugh. If it didn't take so long I would want to switch Doctors. I'll be having knee surgery in mid-March so that will keep me home for a few days.

In the water aerobics class, older citizens seem to love to use the same pool lanes as the water aerobics class to float around. Usually they are very courteous and move out of the way if they are in the deep end and the class moves down there for example. But not one rather large gentleman who refused to move. When I reminded him that there was a class in session he told me to "get your faggot ass back to the other end". All manner of hilarity ensued after that including the lifeguard, management, the gentleman insisting that he was a part of the class (which made the teacher laugh) and him insisting he never actually called me a faggot and how could I prove it. A tiny bit of investigation revealed that he is mean to pretty much anyone and unfortunately his language is status quo for him. I've only been back to one class since the incident so we'll see how that goes.

Skip is still out from his car accident and still not feeling much better after almost four months.

My current work assignment has a new Project Manager and lead architect and both are turning out to be very capable and easy to work with in the face of a challenging client. Fun work.

Two new songs I am liking this week - So Much Betta by Janet from Discipline and Backwoods Barbie (a true Dolly classic) from Backwoods Barbie by Dolly Parton.

Now I'm on a roll but my Project Manager likes to have team breakfast at 7 am so it's time to hit the shower...

A Sad Day, A Happy Day, A Broadway Day

What's sad...

Today is the last day for The Color Purple on Broadway. Loyal readers will know I have had a hate/love relationship with this musical and I have no idea how it is now that Fantasia is gone but I am still sad to see it go.

What's happy...

Kristin Chenoweth is performing at the Oscars tonight!

Well I thought I was pretty smart. But...

I got tired of managing multiple backups due to multiple partitioned drives, etc. so I decided to move my Mac install to a 1 TB drive and the Boot Camp partition to it's own 250 G drive. Not so hard, use SuperDuper to backup the Mac and then to restore it to another drive. Used WinClone to clone the boot camp partition and then move it to another drive. Then early this am before the gym I was wiping the old drives so I wouldn't have to worry about accessing old data and of course I delete the Windows partition. So with no backup of my Windows data I start the install process and now I'm mostly done except that I have a c: drive with almost nothing on it and a d: drive with most everything on it.

When I was a kid... Super Mario Galaxy edition

Remember the SNES? It was popular when I was in high school/college. I remember playing games on it with two kids I babysat in college. Some nerd (I mean that in a good sense) has put up a video on how Super Mario Galaxy would have looked like on the SNES. Incredible! You can see it here.

Bunnies and Cupcakes

I can't believe I watched an entire Microsoft ad. Wait, wait, don't go away. It has Amy Sedaris and bunnies and cupcakes!

Much Better

A new video for Paula Abdul's song "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow" has been released and it's much better than what they put together for the Super Bowl. While watching it I couldn't help but think about how much more I would have liked it if I didn't know what I now know about crazy Paula. I like my stars to be mysterious.

RIP Madge

Emily Perry, who played Dame Edna's sidekick Madge Alsop has died at age 100. She never spoke but was always so funny. I especially like how Dame Edna fleshed out her character in her megaselling book My Gorgeous Life: An Adventure.

RIP HD-DVD

Yay it's over. Not that Blu-Ray is that impressive. I watch Blu-Ray if netflix sends it in that format, but as I buy almost any DVDs as it is, I can't imagine when I'd buy anything on Blu-Ray.

If you were unfortunate enough to buy a HD-DVD player, perhaps you need to know the Top ten things to do with your now-defunct HD DVD player.

I wasn't going to watch the Oscars...

but now that Kristin Chenoweth is performing, I shall have to make an exception.
I also just found out that she's six months older than me (to the day)!

Valentine Love

I have not laughed out loud at a video in a long time. Get freaky!

Of course he did!

A beagle won Westminster!

Thank you Apple!

Even though we technically can't use them in my Digital Photography class, I am very much into RAW camera files since they are the largest you can get (for large scale printing) and are totally unprocessed. So if I purposely oversaturate a picture and don't like it, it doesn't matter since when the picture is taken, I have the camera save a jpeg (saturated) and a RAW (unprocessed) copy. RAW is a fairly new format and hasn't been supported for my Nikon camera until today's 10.5.2 update from Apple. Now even iPhoto can handle my RAW files. Thanks, Apple!

This is what a rough night of bingo will do to you

Do Not Mess With Me

How is it that the sweetest cat in the world can look like such a thug in almost every picture I ever take of her? Right now she is curled up asleep in my lap while I read the Sunday paper online.

Splish Splash

Some of you know that I have been battling some knee problems for a while now, to the point where I basically had to stop doing cardio in September. Last week I decided that I would do water aerobics (low impact) but of the three weekly classes I could take at Bally's, I can only go to the Wednesady night class. And that assumes that I'm actually home during the week that shouldn't last much longer. I joined another gym that has more than 15 classes a week and have taken six(?) in the last week. Being an Aquarius, I love, love, love me some water and the classes are a lot of fun. At Bally's I am one of six or so guys, but at the new gym I'm always the only guy. C'est la vie!

Don't want to pay your library fine?

If you belong to a certain Massachusetts library, you can play Dance, Dance Revolution to work off your fine!

Syrupent

For Sarah's wonderful Mexican fiesta last night, Skip made a great Viva Pinata cake of the snake Syrupent. It's a huge cake. At the end of the party only a part of the tail was gone. Now it has gone to a better place in the land of Deb and Keith. You can see more of Skip's cakes here.

RIP

Nurse Amy! Nurse Amy Vining from General Hospital has died of renal failure. She was always so fun. Whenever someone said something juicy she was just around a corner, behind the door, etc. ready and willing to spread that gossip. I used to be so addicted to General Hospital for a few years when Anna Devane came along.