The Mandelbear's Musings

So ended up getting a new Samsung A687 phone instead of a go-phone (AT&T prepaid phone) that I could just swap into; it turns out that the go-phones take a different (older) SIM. :P Price turned out to be exactly a wash, and I got a better phone (plus an extension on my contract, of course). I was drawn to it immediately because it was purple, thinking Colleen might like it. But it turns out she doesn't want something with tiny keys, since she has no intension of using text on it.

Fortunately it's one I don't mind keeping.

A major bit of web paperwork I thought I was going to have to deal with at work turned out to have defaulted in the right direction. Would have been nice if they'd actually sent out a memo, though.

So not as bad a day as I was expecting. Pretty good, although the expedition to AT&T and Gryphon (for Alaska picks) left no time for a walk.

Links in the usual place under the cut.

A good day, even though it started out with the news that Liam Clancy had died. But I had a rare, good conversation with the YD on the way to her modeling class, and a great afternoon out shopping with Colleen. I got my exercise trying to walk fast enough to keep up with her scooter -- it's wonderfully different from the years when I had to slow down to stay with her.

A couple of good insights: Graham Leathers' song "Don't Swear at Machinery" is completely wrong for me. Swearing at machinery is safe -- it lets off steam, and lets me redirect the anger into an intense need to find the problem and fix it. (N pointed out that this isn't universally true; venting anger uses up spoons for her.) I usually find it counterproductive to vent anger at people; it could even be dangerous. (Although carefully-controlled anger can be useful at times.)

The other was noticing that, if social interaction is anything like a language (either programming or human), the only way to learn it is to get a lot of practice. Which, because I'm introverted and shy, I don't. It's another feedback loop: I feel awkward around people, so I avoid them, so I don't get the practice I need that would make me less awkward. :P

As for links, ysabetwordsmith posted about Role Models for Introverts. I'm finding her posts about loneliness and introversion very helpful.

(added 10:52) After noticing that Colleen was going through Amazon and Mobipocket looking for ebooks, I introduced her to Project Gutenberg". Happy Cat. *grins*

Again, a pretty good day. The highlight was a good hallway conversation at work about phone avoidance, which I've already posted about. A good, long walk, though I had a little pain in my hips coming back. What's with that?

The walk included Safeway, which is where I get my at-my-desk lunch munchies. I added some fish-oil softgels, in hopes that the omega-3 fatty acids will help with my triglycerides.

No, I don't think the "scrim" is entirely due to dirty glasses; I didn't wash them, but things still looked the way I've come to associate with getting out of a long down phase.

Cleared a couple of to-do items; signing up for the Conflikt brunch and buying Kat her membership have been on the list for a long time.

The day's hot links are a page devoted to the Moosylvania Jazz Festival - Jay Ward (from wcg: Meta-vignette 19: Moosylvania), and The Ferrett's Journal - Moments Of Finding Doom. The latter is about those moments when you look at a new technology and realize that it changes the game.

A good day. I felt very dragged out in the morning, and didn't do much in the way of journaling. It may have been mostly blood sugar, and I was ok by the time I got to work, A little while after that I got a happy, almost bubbly call from cflute that got the rest of the day off to a great start. We agreed that it was wonderful to have good things to talk about. The last year has been horrific for both our families; we're ready for Samhain to bring us a bright, shiny new one with good jobs for those who need them, good health for all of us, and homes filled with music, love and contentment.

I followed this with a walk around the pond; I took 10 minutes out for meditation, and another five or so to simply sit and watch the beautiful koi. I could feel my mood lighten. I returned to work and was contentedly productive for the rest of the afternoon, turning an ancient EeePC into an Unbuntu server that can be taken to Japan next week for a portable version of $DEMO.

There were too many conversations going on for me to sing, but I came out of my hole for some up-tempo noodling a couple of times.

Yeah; a good day. Let's have some more of them.

Yesterday was very calm and restful, but I ended up feeling rather disappointed with myself for having gotten so little done yesterday and Friday.

We blew off a block party two streets East because Colleen wasn't up for going out in the heat, and I wasn't up for making a salad for the potluck. I did go for a walk in the neighborhood later in the afternoon, taking a perverse pleasure in discovering that we weren't the only house with weeds and grass growing between the stones of our front-yard rock garden.

I also called pocketnaomi - she'd invited me to do so, just as I was heading out for walkies, but it's still unusual enough for me to call anyone that it's worth noting.

I did all the cooking; the beef paprikash came out particularly well. 3tsp sweet paprika, 1tsp hot, an onion, and half a bottle of red wine with about 1.5 pounds of beef boneless short ribs. Yum.

Got a little work done on steve.savitzky.net, adding a top-level style sheet that sets the background color to match the background in my Kelly Freas portrait -- basically a sort of very light brown. Lower-level pages still need the style link, and a lot of Makefiles still need fixing. But it's a tiny bit of progress in a time when doing anything beyond mere survival seems to be more than I can manage.

While puttering around in the office (mostly staring at things and not getting anything much done) I ran across my very first Logitech mouse -- it's roughly as old as Chaoswolf, and has a 25-pin serial-port connector. I'm saving it for nostalgic reasons, but decided there was no reason to keep the rest of the serial-port mice. Then I ran across a picture of a rather young Chaos with Colleen's mom, taken on a San Francisco Bay tour boat probably somewhere between 1992 and 1996. I started getting all sad and nostalgic, and tottered off to bed a little after midnight to collect some badly-needed snuggle.