"Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth.
 Draw the lace and black curtains and shut out the whole truth."
    Jethro Tull, Thick as a Brick

Tuesday: Earliest memories

The earliest memories I have are when we were renting a house in Maine just down the mountain from where we would eventually build one. I think it belonged to The Wilsons. My memories from this time are very fragmented. I remember my dad chasing a bat with a broom, I remember being terrified of the live lobsters my mother got for dinner one night, and a few rooms in the house.

I also remember the split-level apartment we lived in just before (or after?) that. It was way up the mountain: just below the ski resort. In the winter they were filled with vacationing skiers, but I guess in the summer they rent cheap to weirdos like us.

I have a lot of memories of the house that we built further down the mountain. I remember playing in the woods a lot, I remember out huge garden and our root cellar, our pets (Wiley, Amalgam, and Eugenol). I remember being a little older and having a best friend: David (his father built our house) and our class of nine or so students in pre-school, kindergarden, and first grade. The local public school had K-12 in one building.

That was twenty years ago.

"God only knows, God makes his plan
 The information's unavailable to the mortal man
 We're workin' our jobs, collect our pay
 Believe we're gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip sliding away."
    Paul Simon, Slip Sliding Away

Monday: My Fictitious Weekend

My weekend was extended for another day so I didn't have to be at work for 13 hours like I actually did today. Goodnight.

"Do you like good music?
 That sweet soul music.
 Just as long as it's swingin'
 Oh yeah, oh yeah..."
    Aurthur Conley, Sweet Soul Music

Its amazing how the right music can take the edge off of even the roughest of days. Not that today was all that hard, but good music is a nice chaser all the same. :-)

I spent seven hours today figuring out why my window wasn't recieving a WM_LBUTTONDOWN message. It was recieving WM_RBUTTONDOWN messages, and even WM_RBUTTONUP messages, but not WM_LBUTTONDOWN. The crummy part is that even though I did learn all about the sequence of mouse messages as they are handled by an application that was small comfort next to the frustration of losing seven hours on a one line fix. Grrrr...

I also spent three hours in security training (and I'll be spending three hours a day in this training for the rest of the week). Believe it or not Microsoft applications are not any less secure than other applications: they just present a larger surface area to attackers. Also, there is an incredible effort company wide to set a new standard for secure code. I'm not saying we won't see any more worms like Blaster or Slammer in the future, but they will be much more rare.

Enough propaganda. Good night.

"Indeed, this is the ideal condition under which all learning should take place - if you f*** up, get lazy, or lose points, you get socked or body-slammed by a muscular Japanses woman."
    From The Stranger's review of Gaea Girls

That quote is apropo of nothing. I just read it on the bus this morning and it cracked me up.

OK, I know most people who might be reading this blog are pretty paranoid when it comes to online privacy so you may not want to read the rest of this post. Why? Because ignorance is bliss.

So some of you may have heard the term SpyWare. If you haven't you can learn more about it here. Anyway, I don't really mind SpyWare, but last night I encountered something new: highjackware. This is (according to NetLingo.com: Slang for a plugin that automatically takes you from one Web site to a competitor's Web site, without your consent.

So I somehow got a piece of hijackware on my computer last night and spent a good hour figuring out how to get it off. How did I know it was on there? It changed my homepage and search engines and wouldn't let me change them back.

After I went thought the tedious process of getting it removed I decided to see what resources were available on the subject. I found a couple of good tools, one of the best was AdAware, by Lavasoft. If you are paranoid about this type of thing I would recommend this program (its free). However, there are some programs that install spyware that won't run if you remove the spyware like KaZaa or similar peer2peer programs.

Anyway, I really don't think spyware is such a terrible thing, but that hijackware is some serious bullshit. So that's my rant. Have a great weekend!

"I never understood a single word he said, but
 I helped him to drink his wine.
 And he always had some mighty fine wine"
    Three Dog Night, Joy To The World

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

"My Brain Hurts!"
    Monty Python

Ugh... rough day. I spent seven hours trying to fix a build issue that got the better of me. My brain feels like it was sat on by a flatulent hippo. I'm going to keep putting veggies, garlic, and butter into a skillet until I feel better. Hope your weeks are going better.

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
 Need a little bit more of what I’ve been missin’
 I don’t know where I’ll be crashin’
 But I’m arrivin’ on a sin wagon"
    Dixie Chicks, Sin Wagon

First: Happy belated birthday to Nick. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to call and I'm sorry you're losing you job, but I'm sure things will look up. HA Ha ha... nevermind.

Second: Did someone call me last night? I have a vague memory of speaking to someone on the phone, but I was sleeping with Prince Tylenol PM and my recollection of the coversation is kind of muzzy. My apologies to whomever it was (Angie?) for being incoherent.

Finally: I'm finally going to see Phantom of the Opera this weekend! This completes the list of Musicals I've Always Wanted to see. I'm sure there are people out there that will tell me I still need to see This One or That One, but I'm finding my instincts are pretty good about what muscials I'll like (RENT, The Producers) and which ones should be buried in a swamp (Cats, The Sound Of Music, Pirantes of Pissants, etc.)

"Dressing like your sister
 Living like a tart
 They don't know what you're doing
 Babe, it must be art
 You're a headache
 In a suitcase
 You're a star"
    U2, Hold me, Thrill me, Kiss me, Kill me

Whew. Its been a while. I guess you could say I've been basking in the combined warm glow of shipping and Cindy's company. Its been an enjoyable few weeks.

Aaaanyway, I learned last Thursday that Eddie Izzard was in town for a three-night stand at The Moore. How do I miss shows like this? I try everything I can to get tickets. In the end the only way we could have gone was to pay a scalper for the 50% markup. I was tempted...

Instead Cindy and I opted for an evening of my Econonmy-Class Airplane food cooking followed by a night of drinking and dancing at the Pampas Room. A fabulous evening. :-)

So the Seattle Summer has drawn to a close and the gray skies are back. Its actually kind of nice. I do love the sunshine, but it makes Seattle seem like a different city. Not really home. Sounds strange, I know, but I like drinking hot tea under blankets listening to the rain. Those days will be back soon.