overt.org

Yesterday at the climbing gym I fell a bit funny off a boulder problem and twisted my ankle. It’s not severe, but it sure does make it a pain to walk. Immediately after I hit the ground and felt my ankle going all wonky, I tried to crumple up into a ball to minimize the injury. I think it worked. After hopping flamboyantly over to the front desk to get some ice to put on it, i lay down on my back for a good 10 minutes holding my ankle up in the air, contemplating the fate of the impending long weekend. I checked out my ankle and didn’t notice too much swelling, so I went, kangaroo-amputee style, to my car for a dangerous drive home, using my heel on the brake and gas, praying that I wouldn’t be called upon for any sort of evasive maneuvers. And I’ve been trying to keep it above my heart and iced ever since. This is, believe it or not, the most serious injury I’ve ever had climbing, in the 11 years or so I’ve been at it.

So, needless to say, with my 8 remaining sick days and 3 weeks of work to use them in, I’m at home today resting. My plan is to try to tackle the CSS for the new site, and (who knows?) maybe try to get it up today. I wont bore you with the geeky minutiae. Suffice it to say that my web programming knowledge is crusty and old fashioned, and all the kids today with their divs and their stylesheets are starting to make me look bad. Like a pathetic middle-aged man tinkering on an ‘82 firebird parked conspicuously far out on his driveway, trying to recapture the mechanical wizardry of his youth, I will force upon my readers yet another revision of overt in an effort to prove that I still have The Right Stuff. Look out.

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Comments

clare — 2004-07-04 11:26:56

again, woot css.

I’m working on putting together a reasonable stylesheet for WordPress. Once I do, I’m going to try to get all my content migrated over from postnuke, which has proven to be unwieldy in the end. Hopefully I’ll gain some flexibility and simplicity with the move.

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Comments

Susan — 2004-07-02 06:27:59

I don't understand any of this.  what does it mean?  Will it make my life better?

bryan — 2004-07-02 10:08:30

it relates to my website. just like leslie and cameron use something called “blogger,” I use something called “postnuke” to do my site. I’m switching from this to something called “WordPress.” And it will change the way you think about the world. Or, at least, it will change the way my web page looks.

Another gentleman is having the heads cut off in Iraq where the terrors are in such an uproar. Osama Ben Laden captured a South Korean robot fixer and then put him to the tests on the wrong side of a knife. There is defenselessness and the video is released onto the Internets and the sad story is seen by all. This sort of rudos behavior is making the blood boil not just in my hearts but in the hearts of many who see the bold spirit of Korea being attacked by terrors. South Korea declared attacks “not good” and the United Nations of America sent a letter to the terrors base in Saddy Arabia that “this is not the way to do business ladies”. Terrors say that they are making to cut off heads to get America to quit the big Iraq job but then American President Bush says “think again buster”.

For the sake of your sanity, please read today’s SomethingAwful update. It helps put everything in perspective.

That’s us. Leslie just got her eyes lasered yesterday and she’s already posting at 20/20. I tried to get her to go in for the 3X optical zoom and memory upgrade, but she was too cheap.

My week thus far has involved a trip up to Pleasonton on Sunday with Phil to eat with some of his friends at a place called “Stacey’s Cafe” that’s co-owned by Scott Adams (who Phil told me is picky about his food). I got something called “Scott’s favorite pasta.” It was pretty good–walnuts and capellini and tomatos in a pesto sauce. It had clearly suffered under a heatlamp for a good 15 minutes, which didn’t help.

Monday I lazed away playing UT2004 and reading Dune. You might call it “getting in touch with my inner geek,” except my geek is not hiding on the inside. I had a great day at the climbing gym on Tuesday, first climbing a couple of hundred feet on the computerized “treadwall” that makes for a great warm-up, then spending a couple of hours bouldering with a nice guy I met there named Al. We even swapped phone numbers so that we can meet up at Castle Rock in the future.

Yesterday George joined me for dinner and I cooked up the classic spinach-mascarpone stuffed salmon. We didn’t have any breadcrumbs so I improvised by throwing a couple slices of ciabatta into the oven to crisp and then flogging them with the cuisinart. The result was some supremely tasty bread/butter/parmesan coating for the fish, and only a few more dishes to clean.

Today’s not over, but I think it’s big event will be the ticket I got on the way to work this morning. There’s a very long light that you have to wait at to make a left turn. As an alternative, you can go straight through the light, pull a U, then turn right. You can only do this if you studiously ignore the giant “no U turn” sign. Anyway, I got nailed. Just like my one previous ticketing experience, I didn’t even bother trying to argue about it. Him: “Did you see the no U turn sign, Sir?” Me: “Yeah.” The upside of the encounter was that he pointed out that I still had a blob of toothpaste on my face.

I’m going to see if I can take care of the ticket without ever interacting with a human. The courthouse has a call-in line where you can pay the fine and sign up for defensive driving (or “traffic school” as the hippies here call it), and I assume that DefensiveDriving.com can help me out like they did last time.

This morning I went out climbing with Phil and George. Phil had never been before, but he made a valiant showing. He needs to get some climbing shoes. We intended to go with Jeff and his friend Doantam, but I think that wires got crossed some how, since this week he’s in Texas.

Work has been good since I settled the score on Berkeley. Everything feels much more comfortably finite now, and I’m trying to tie up loose ends and put some sort of reasonable cap on the projects I’m working on. I think my big problem with working in general is that if I work harder, and get more done, that just means that I’ll be given more work to do. In school, if I worked hard, I could actually “finish” early, and relax. I’m sure that after some incomprehensibly long time like a year or so, working hard could pay off and I could move up to better pay or a better position or something. But that’s all abstract to me. Plus, it seems to stretch out interminably 40 years into the future. I just don’t work on those timescales yet.

I picked up “Unreal Tournament 2004” at the store a couple of days ago and I’ve been enjoying the heck out of it. Most fun I’ve had with a shooter since Half Life. All of you out there with the inclination should blow the $30 and come play with me online.

Leslie’s about to head out for her week-long trip to Texas. I’m excited for her–she’s getting her eyes lasered! I don’t think either of us has taken a trip that long alone since we moved into this place. Kind of odd, what having a job will do to you.

I’ve been thinking about changing the format of the website to something different, something simpler. I’m planning on using WordPress. What does my readership think? I want to improve the static content (like my resume, things I’ve written, etc), maybe integrate gallery into this site, put up a few new pages. I haven’t worked up the gumption yet to figure out all the CSS to make it pretty, but I’ve a feeling I’ll have a lot of spare time this week to do so should I feel the urge.

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Comments

Ali — 2004-06-24 09:31:10

I’ll try to stop on the way to the climbing gym today… a mouse and unreal tournament please….

bryan — 2004-06-24 12:20:50

that’s the spirit!

clare — 2004-06-25 00:14:51

yay CSS!