All posts by Mush

About Mush

I want to be a veterinarian because I love children.

Buying MP3s

Blurbs

I got India Cafe take-out for lunch today: dhal makhani, saag paneer, rice, kabli chana, naan, curried cabbage and peas, some potato salad thing, pakora. Yum. (And the boy that works the register? Still cute. Love those long-lashed big brown eyes.)

I spent some quality time playing with iTunes this morning, particularly the new Just For You section (which offers recommendations based on purchases, like Amazon.com) and their super amusing Celebrity Playlists.

Can I just say that Bill Maher is gay? I love him no matter who he sleeps with, but if he’s trying to out himself by putting the Bee Gee’s How Deep Is Your Love and Divinyls’ I Touch Myself on his playlist… well, that’s certainly one way to do it. Chick Corea’s first selection was a Bela Bartok concerto, which is so wonderfully dork I can barely stand it. My favorite celeb list, oddly enough, was David Duchovny’s, because I own or want or at least enjoy every track on the whole damn thing. I almost couldn’t relate to Ben Folds’ playlist at all, which made me feel like a dork, except for his brilliant inclusion of both Harry Nilsson and ELO.

The Just For You section recommended to me a whole lotta of stuff I adore but no longer own, and considering that yesterday was payday I almost went nuts and bought it all (can I point out that when you have a BIG FAT CONNECTION AT WORK BECAUSE YOU WORK AT THE INTERNET, you can download entire albums in MOMENTS?!?!) but I didn’t. Not yet, anyway. If I had any sense I’d boycot the Apple music store altogether. (Except all you have to do to break the DRM is burn the tracks to CD and then re-rip them, it’s not any more labor intensive than driving one’s ass to the music store and back.) But when you want a song and you’re me and you’re at work, damn but it’s easy to iTunes that fucker right into your iPod before you even notice you’ve done it. I did it yesterday, and it was so easy I almost neglected to put the debit into my checkbook register.

And at least when using iTunes one doesn’t have to fear Sony’s evil rootkit… yet.

Thanksgiving

Travel

In which I freak out with excitement about enjoying a holiday with people I’m actually related to by blood rather than marriage.

We’re taking a whole week and driving west. For Thanksgiving. Oh yeah.

Early this coming Saturday morning we’ll be loading ourselves, our dogs, and Truck into a vehicle and driving to Colorado, where we’ll invade Ron’s house and drink all his beer and sit in his hot tub and eat take-out from the kick ass little Italian restaurant down the mountain from his place.

After a few days of that, we’ll drive up to Laramie WY (sans Truck, who will stay in CO) where I will have Thanksgiving dinner with my own mother and brother for the first time in close to twenty years. It’ll be so awesome! I can’t express how geeked out I am at the prospect, and Jay-rob Jethro‘s so excited he’s called me about the whole thing at least three times.

The Saturday after turkey day, we’ll get back in the vehicle and drive home. (The house will probably have been invaded by rodents in our absence, and we’ll have to enter shooting.)

It's Starting to Stick

Weather

In which my body still wants it to be August.

It rained all day yesterday. When I stepped out of the data center at about twenty past five yesterday evening, it was snowing. Big, fat, fluffy flakes swirling down everywhere. Ugh. But it was too warm to accumulate, so it managed to be nothing more sinister than cold and damp.

This morning, the jeep was running on empty and I couldn’t find the gas can so I had to drive dirt roads to the Batavia BP for fuel. My kneecaps nearly froze off as I stood between the car and the pump, trying to find the little doohickie that keeps the nozzle flowing so I could get back in the car out of the wind. Nine gallons, $20.11.

This morning the bank clock told me it was twenty degrees when I drove past. Snow is sticking to the grass, and in the corners between street and curb.

I am so not ready for this. I am so, so not ready for this.

The Retards At US Cellular: Not So Retarded

Blurbs

In which a broken cell phone is miraculously resurrected.

So Mr. B came home after work last night and said the guy at the US Cellular kiosk had managed to make him feel like a total moron.

“How on earth did that happen?” I asked, chopping tomatoes for salad and thinking of all the times the humanoids in the cell phone kiosks at Wal*Mart had made me feel like a fucking brain surgeon: namely, every time I’ve ever had to deal with them.

“Welllll…” he said, “I took my phone in to get it fixed, right? I handed it to the guy, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t just turn the fucker on.”

“What?!?” I put the knife down and turned to my sheepishly grinning husband.

“He took it, opened it and looked at the battery, then he just… turned it on. It calls out, it accepts calls. It works fine. I felt like an idiot.”

“Dude, no way. I tried to turn that thing on all weekend! I even took the battery from my phone and put it in there, and it still wouldn’t work!”

“I guess he had the touch. Because the fucker sure as hell wouldn’t work for me, and now it works just fine. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so stupid.”

“Oh,” I said. “I have. Don’t worry about it, because it’ll definitely happen again. I mean, cell phones, dude.”

Sci-fi Catches Up

Reading

In which I give this one four out of five stars.

I received Down these Dark Spaceways as a SFBC selection not too long ago, and read it this weekend.

Yum.

It’s a collection of novellas in the mystery sci-fi genre, but instead of being your standard fare there was a theme of modern or reversed sex roles in it. I love my sci-fi, but it’s not always on the bleeding edge of social change, being as myopically involved in science as it is.

The first story was good, but not memorable. (So not memorable, in fact, that I can’t even write about it.)

The second story was the first time travel mystery story I’ve ever read with a gay spin to it – the protagonist worked for an agency and was looking for a killer, all typical, except that the victims were young twinks in the late 50’s and he ended up getting involved with one, which is totally unexpected if you know anything at all about the genre.

The third story was your typical military-guy-is-hired-to-rescue-a-kidnapped-princess story, except the military guy was a woman and the princess was a totally gorgeous prince being held by bad guys – er, bad girls – who were torturing him and doing nasty things to his royal virtue. Super fun read with fantastically nasty weaponry featured.

The last two stories were tight, but not surprising in any fashion.

All in all, a highly recommended anthology – not just for the craft, but for the twists.

Rainy Days and Email

Blurbs

It’s grey, rainy, chilly, and utterly shitty outside today.

I woke up this morning, peeled open an eyelid, and looked at the bedroom clock. It said it was 2:30. I got up, padded downstairs, and started making myself a latte before I noticed the stove clock said it was nine-thirty already.

Shit. Late to work. But it was so dark out I’d thought I’d been on time. Damn, damn, damn. So I went into the furnace room, opened the woodstove up (we’re heating with wood, yo), dug through my bag for my phone and called Buzzdoctor. Got his voicemail:

Me: Hey, it’s me. I slept through my alarm or something. I dunno. I’m gonna hop in the shower and I’ll be there… in a bit. Or so.

Then I finished making my latte, took a shower (without brushing my hair first so I’ve got something of a left coast dreaded hippy thing going on today but it’s all up in a scrunchie), dressed myself, stoked the stove, watered the pets, made sure that everything that was supposed to be off was and that everything that was supposed to be on was on, grabbed my bag and waddled fuzzily out the door to the jeep, which was chilly and damp.

I’m still not awake. This kind of weather makes me feel like my IQ is about 60.

~+~+~
When Keef moved goblinbox.com to this, its current server, he gave me the username ‘mush’ which makes sense ’cause that’s my name (don’t wear it out). However, I’ve been using that username in context with this particular domain for so long that it is on EVERY SPAM LIST IN KNOWN SPACE, which means that the non-deletable email box is FULL OF FUCKING SPAM.

Which is why, if you’ve tried to email me in the past week, your mail has been returned with an ‘edquota/target folder is full’ error.

I’m in the webmail interface right now, deleting spam. This project should take, oh, about TEN HOURS because I don’t have root on the box this site is on. Yes, I’ve enabled SpamAssasin to delete spam rather than putting it in my inbox. Ugh. Oh, wait, I guess I could just download it all using a mail client – that would get it off the server. Duh.

My job cracks me up

Work

Coworker: Did she seem satisfied when she left?
Me: Oh yeah, she’s fine.
Coworker: She’ll probably want me to stick it in. Is it hard?
Me: No, you just open the box and slide it in.
Coworker: That’s it?
Me: Yeah, just open the box, find a slot, and slide it in. Easy as pie.
Coworker: Oh, I can do that.

(Context: a customer had come in with a wireless PCI card she’d bought, wanting to show it to us to see if it would work. For some reason, all the vocab – hard, box, slot, etc. – suddenly struck me as being fucking hysterical.

Yes, you’re right. It’s late. I’m out.)