Interpreting Traceroute Results is a good primer if you think you understand what tracert’s really doing but don’t: “When using ping or traceroute as troubleshooting tools, consider ping a good way to determine connectivity, traceroute a good way to determine path and connectivity but neither should be used as the final say in determining the cause or location of latency.”
Remember how I was waxing eloquent over those little samples of conditioner they put in hair color boxes? Well, my MIL hates that stuff and yesterday she gave me three packages of hair color conditioner! Yay!
Joe’s sitting at a green table under a sign that says ‘Spanish 21’. He’s smoking a cigarette, drinking a cocktail. His hair is slicked back and he’s wearing a very stylish shirt. Jason and I stand behind him and watch him play four hands against the dealer.
Brett approaches, seats himself, and places a chip in the little circle on the felt.
Joe’s hand ends, and he says to Don, “I don’t mind if you take a moment to give him,” and he tilts his head the tiniest amount to his right, “the spiel on how to play.”
People sitting at tables in casinos begin to comunicate in tiny little movements. Sometimes all that moves of them are their hands. They utterly cease to point. Dealers don’t need anything more than a token movement; Don turns to Brett. “Have you ever played this game before?” Brett shakes his head.
Joe organizes his chips, sips his drink. He moves his ashtray a few millimeters.
The dealer says, “Well, there are no tens.”
And Jason – quiet, reticent Jason – explodes. Into a single syllable he could not have held back if he’d wanted to:
“Ah!” he says.
In it was such relief, such understanding. I think I actually heard tumblers snick into place in his head! “Ah!” he says, but what he means is “I see! The missing detail! The game becomes clear!”
It was hysterical. Perhaps you had to be there. It was the funniest “Ah!” ever uttered, in the history of “Ah!”s. I think I laughed for five minutes.
“Ah!” I quoted, giggling, pleased with being witness to that moment, that ineffable sensation of suddenly getting it, of collecting a satisfying little piece of information from the world.
I adore that feeling.
“That was so funny!” I told him.
“One takes these small victories,” he said, grinning sideways at me, but but actually watching the table with that easy concentration of his, “whenever they come.”
An autumnal toast to us all: may it always be so fun to learn something new!
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I got up at nine this morning.
No, wait. That’s not true. Let me back up.
…
Brett woke me up at 4:30 or 5:00 this morning and was weird and passive-aggressive (it’s hard to explain, but when you’re with someone this long you can tell the intent behind the way they cross your ankle with theirs or move the blankets around or exhale or whatever, and I could tell he was feeling grumpy and passive-aggressive although probably no one else would have noticed) until I finally made him cuddle with me and stop being a freak. He responds well to cuddling and was soon purring like he normally does.
He said he was agro because he hasn’t been sleeping well (I think he’s actually experiencing a little light insomnia now that he’s 31). He complained about the bed and his back hurting, and I did too. Finally he got up to get ready for work around 7:30 and I was able to get some damn sleep.
…
I got up the second time at nine this morning.
I made coffee. I put the leftovers from Brett’s birthday dinner at Regina’s into the fridge (he’d left them on the counter all night). My cleaning schedule said today I’m supposed to clean the entryway and laundry room, so I did that – I swept, cleaned the window in the back door, organized the pile of garbage that needs to go out into the dump truck but which I ain’t haulin’ up there in the damn rain, thank you, and washed the dog bowls – and then I did the dishes.
It wasn’t even noon yet, and my official chore list was already done. I started some detail cleaning in the kitchen.
I washed the set of 6 Depression-ware cordial glasses that my grandma sent me a couple of years ago for Christmas, and I rearranged the knick-knacks on the windowsill above the sink so I have something nice to look at while washing the damn dishes every day for the rest of my life.
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Sunday I bought a new drier at Menard’s. We stopped for cocktails and sandwiches at the Tom-Tom Club. We went home and Brett installed the new appliance while I started a load of laundry.
We were surprized to discover that we never did have any kind of exhaust pipe or hose installed, not even when the old drier still worked. We’d both thought for sure we had that shit laying around.
But no mind! One load venting into the house – no biggie.
So when the wash was done I put it in the drier and it made the whole house smell like a laundromat and the clothes came out all warm and fluffy.
Not crunchy, like line-dried clothes.
Hooray! A drier that works! **snoopy dance**
Monday at lunch, Brett asked me if I’d dried anything yet that day. After lunch I did a load of whites and when they were done, transferred them into my new high-capacity drier…
…and it wouldn’t turn on.
I checked the fuse box, I unplugged it, plugged it back in, checked the Troubleshooting section of the manual. Everything. The thing won’t turn on.
So now I’m calling Menard’s to see if they’ll replace it. Meanwhile, my load of whites has been sitting wet for two days. Sheesh.
If you’ve got a few thousand CDs you don’t need – maybe AOL can’t seem to lose your address, or you’ve been getting MSDN updates since you worked in that one company eight years ago – you could build yourself a spiffy CD Entertainment Center too! Imagine – you’d the envy of annoying-CD recipients everywhere! CDs are pretty, in their own way. Kinda like Christmas trees.
Fossil Fuels Made without Fossils proclaims that the pressure of deep Earth has been found capable of creating hydrocarbons from inorganic matter. Which means that perhaps fossil fuels aren’t the rare resource we’ve always believed them to be. If they’re ubiquitous enough, they become almost meaningless. Can you imagine what would happen to the world if the bottom dropped out of the oil market?!
When you’re drinking day-old, reheated coffee, you can pour in a shot of Buttershots and some half and half. That makes it much better.
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I don’t check the mail very often, so it’s probably been sitting there for a few days, but I received my first two rolls of 127 film for the Brownie Reflex today!
I’ll be running around snapping (daylight) pics with my little vintage baby for the next couple of weeks… then I’ll have to find someone to develop the film for me.
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This is a picture I took in the cab of Joe’s truck as we drove to Rutledge recently:
I didn’t know until today, when I downloaded the image off of my digital camera, that my DH had stuck his tongue out! Silly stinker.
He’s really and truly the cutest thing in the world.
