shinyPlasticBag

Hello, world. Here’s an update on my life, in point form, since that’s the easiest way to get it out of my head. And by “update on my life”, I mean “completely random ramblings” (“randomlings”).

- I watched (most of) The Labyrinth with Nathalie last night. We holed up inside a genuine couch-n-blanket fort in the middle of my living room, drank wine, and ate crackers. It was amazing.
- Nathalie is amazing.
- I got hit in the forehead with a shower-head at high velocity last week (this has nothing to do with the previous point). It really, really hurt! I was at the gym, happily showering post-workout, when *blam*, shower-head. That’s not a great time for heavy metal objects to hit you. It hit me about two inches above my right eye. If I was two inches taller, it could’ve blinded me! Or if I was three inches taller and standing an inch to the right, it could’ve broken my nose! Or five inches taller, teeth! I’m really lucky I wasn’t significantly hurt, although it did cut my hand on its way down. Speaking of weight (“way”), it weighed 2.6 pounds. INSANITY. I’m still holding a bit of a grudge against Gold’s Gym, to be honest.
- I was going to come home for a visit in February, for our 27th birthdays, but various things have led to me pushing it back by a month or so. Instead, my birthday will be the tail-end of a four day birthday roadtrip extravaganza with my lovely lady. Adventures await.
- There are a few words I consistently mistype. “Extravaganza” is one of them — I’ve Twittered about that particular issue before — and “furnance” is another. Brains are weird, especially those that are typing as fast as humanly possible and are generally writing code, rather than English.
- Speaking of code, work has been pretty decent lately. Since the recent shake-up, the company has really gone back into startup mode. I was originally pretty stressed out, but I’m really enjoying wearing lots of hats and just working hard on getting things done. It’s nice to branch out into things I never would’ve been doing before. This week, that means designing and implementing a new over-arching navigation interface for workspaces, and next week, it means helping run an honest-to-god usability test. Work just got a lot more interesting.
- Back on the subject of adventures, I drove down to Los Angeles this weekend and met up with Andrew Shell to see the new Pee Wee Herman stage show. It was pretty wonderful — I’m very glad I went. I really hope his comeback is a success, if not with Paul Reubens at the helm, then with someone else (although it must be said that he was fantastic). Pee Wee Herman is a great character and really needs to be brought back into the spotlight. (If you’ve never watched Pee Wee Herman as an adult, you really owe it to yourself to do so. Some of the humour is delightfully gauche.)
- Driving from Redwood City to Los Angeles on a Saturday, and then back again on a Sunday, sucks. It’s about 650 km each way, or about 6 hours of driving time. I took I5 down, which means nothing but farmland and the occasional vineyard to look at as you zip through the Central Valley. On the bright side, I did get to watch a tumbleweed roll across the highway on my way back[1], just moments before the heavens opened up and it started to rain. It’s raining pretty much everywhere in the state[2] right now, and that’s quite an impressive thing when you think of how large California is. The weather has been quite weird; for about 45 seconds today, it hailed like there was no tomorrow. Big, loud, plentiful hail, too — the pellets were probably 5mm across. Good thing my car has a covered parking spot.
- In an effort to cultivate some sort of non-computer form of creativity, I’ve started sketching. Not very much, not very frequently, not very reliably, but Mom got me a sketch pad and some lovely pens for Christmas, so I’m using those from time to time. The end goal isn’t really the cultivation of any sort of skill so much as it is to have a new pattern for my brain to think about for a while. It’s good to breed mental diversity, I think.
- I also tried yoga, but I’m uncoordinated and easily confused, so it was a mild disaster. It was fun, though.
- Speaking of points[3], I really liked outliners. Remember outliners? OmniOutliner is the only current one I can think of, and “current” might not really be the best term for it, since one of the big “ZOMG use this please” quotes refers to a Powerbook, and that dates things back about 4 years. I do love retro Macintosh software, however.
- Retro Macintosh software makes me think of the old school, late-nineties iBook G3 (blueberry!) that Lynn gave me. All that bad boy needs is a new power inverter for its backlight and it’s good to roll. Of course, what I would do with it if I was working is still up for debate. The unused Macintosh SE on my nightstand is still patiently waiting a task.
- The idea of retro computing is much more interesting than actual retro computing.

[1] “Holy crap, I live in California” was a bit of a mental catch phrase for me when I first moved here — geez, nearly two years ago — but occasionally still pops into my head. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the shock and wonder of living here.
[2] “Pretty much everywhere” meaning all of the places I have in the weather app on my iPhone. At the very least, the Bay Area and Los Angeles are getting rained on until at least Friday.
[3] “Speaking of points” was triggered by the opening paragraph, not the preceding point. It seemed silly to open with a barrage of text about software.