Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to fairyshaman and bluesmancd!!!! Have a great one!!

Done day before yesterday (20090827)

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Not a very productive day, but a pretty good one on the whole. Lots of yummy links, which I'll get to shortly.

I noted that the YD has been getting up on her own, this first week of school. Not always early enough to make me coffee, but at least I haven't had to go upstairs to rouse her. Go, girl!

I managed a medium-length walk, with 15 minutes of meditation, so that was good.

Colleen told me that in her opinion I had a low-grade virus; the fact that both my nasal congestion and muscle aches have mostly gone away over the last two days is supporting evidence.

The major insight of the day was realizing that PE in junior high and high school was nothing but continuous humiliation for me. It could hardly have been otherwise, for someone with neither interest nor ability.

We ended the day with our "date night" dinner at El Torrito -- tasty and much less expensive than some of the places we've been going -- and went to bed early. Snuggle. Yay for snuggle.

Link sausage for the day.

a computer, a CD drive, a short shell script, and a piece of string rocking a baby to sleep. Silly, and terribly sweet.

Calibre, an open-source, cross-platform e-book library organizer. I definitely intend to take a look at this for the Kindle.

Giz explains how to actually make coffee using a variety of pots.

Some nice-looking hardware: the Touchbook tablet/netbook ($399, available for pre-order), and two articles about Nokia's N900 Maemo (Linux) phone. Gadget lust.

The No-To-SQL anti-database movement. Most of the time you don't need one.

A Newsweek article on polyamory, and Woody Guthrie's song Philadelphia Lawyer round out the day's collection.

I rather like this method of clearing my tabs.

Done yesterday (20090828)

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Mostly a work-from-home day, though I was able to squeeze in a very productive couple of hours at the lab between taking my car in for service and Colleen's follow-up appointment with her surgeon. At the former, I found out that my warranty will save me roughly a grand on repair to the windows, but that the parts aren't in stock. I think maybe I'll leave the car there, since the warranty expires in 500 miles. At the latter, we found that Colleen needs to see a gyneco-urologist to evaluate her bladder problems, which means more delay.

The big breakthrough came on the drive home from Kaiser, when I caught myself saying "I'm sorry" in a context where I could figure out what it meant. It meant "I'm sorry I can't pay attention to you right now; I need to concentrate on what I'm doing." In other words, an attempt to forestall interruptions at a time when they would have been dangerous. Of course, it didn't mean that to Colleen; I'm going to have to come up with a different protocol. Possibly something like "Concentrating now...OK".

I use "I'm sorry" in far too many different contexts. Drives Colleen nuts, and with good reason. More protocol development needed.

I also realized that my habit of repeating short commands multiple times comes from dealing with the kids when they were younger. I'd say "stopstopstop!" for example, starting when I notice a problem and repeating until the kid actually stopped doing it.

I am having a lot of trouble explaining some things to Colleen, and it made for some friction yesterday. One is the idea of making a 90-degree turn while backing up her scooter. I think I may finally have gotten through to her on that one. The other is the reason why I ask questions multiple times. Mostly it happens when I can't usefully interpret the first answer. Often that's because I didn't finish asking the question, so I need to make very sure she understands what I intended to ask. It's stressful. Grump.

Colleen spent most of the evening being understandably unhappy about the lack of a quick fix from her Kaiser appointment, and I ended up feeling unhappy and distressed as well. "Contact low?"

I also noticed that I'd eaten too much, but still felt "hungry" in the sense of wanting to eat. I didn't; I brushed my teeth instead. But it may mean that there's something in my diet that I'm not getting enough of. Just have to figure out what.

SQUEEEE!

The 2009 Pegasus Awards Final Ballot is up, and I'm on it! In the "best writer/composer" category.

Just being nominated is a big honor, of course. But if you want to evaluate my credentials as a songwriter, go to the song index on my website.

(Added 11:33) My congratulations to my fellow nominees, of course. And I just want to add that if I'm the only filker you know on that ballot, or if you have no idea what filk is, you shouldn't vote.