February 2004
Yawn
There are worse ways to nurse a mild hangover than by spending the afternoon dozing through Tank Girl and Trading Spaces (as weird a combination as they are). I don’t feel like I’ve ever really woken up today at all, but I figure it doesn’t matter too much since I’m just about to go back to bed anyway (which is distinguished from the state in which I spent the rest of the...
January 2004
Can't Talk
I’d tell you how my day was, but I’m too busy playing with my new best friend. Who knew it would show up in only three days with cheap-ass standard shipping? Not me, but I’m not complaining.
Wednesday Blues
I’m beginning to find Mondays and Wednesdays sort of depressing because they’re filled with anywhere from three to four and a half hours of computer science classes that I’m just not very enthusiastic about. One of them is a database class that I talked my way into depsite not having done the prerequisite - I thought it would be challenging, but it looks like it’s going to...
I Do Other Things, Too
I can always tell it’s the beginning of another semester when I’m reading for the millionth time either Descartes or the (very good) material on Jim Pryor’s site, or both (if it’s going to be one of those semesters). You, on the other hand, can always tell it’s the beginning of another semester when my posts get shorter and lighter on the content. It’s not my...
My New Best Friend
In what might be the best ever birthday present ever, several people made it possible for me to order my very own 40GB iPod today. It won’t be here for a few days, of course, but you can bet that until then I’ll be dreaming little iPod dreams. Chris and I recently combined our mp3 collections and we’ve got around 30GB so far - but I haven’t even bothered ripping around half...
Count The Gigs
I didn’t finish my unpacking, and Orkut’s now down (understandably so, given the security and scalability issues that have been showing up during the past day or so), and I’ve still got plenty of reading to finish for this week, but I did meet the friendliest deli cat in the world and gather the last of the cash monies needed for the Long Awaited iPod. Mmmm, iPod.
Orkut
Although I’d intended to spend most of today finishing up my unpacking, I got sucked into playing with Orkut - which is just as pointlessly entertaining as was Friendster, only with nowhere near the sheer volume of suck. Being able to look at my friends list without waiting half an hour between clicks is a strange and slightly alarming experience, but at least now I have another way to keep...
No More Bread For Them
The lingering birthday festivities officially ended tonight with one last celebratory dinner - MrTails and MrsTails took me and Chris to the Bread Bar at Tabla, where the food is far from traditionally Indian but is almost indescribably good. The strategy there (as opposed to at the more formal restaurant upstairs) is to order heaps of little appetizer plates and a couple of weird-sounding...
Thesis? What?
So, the first week of my last semester (knock on wood): I’m doing two philosophy courses, two computer science, and I’m TAing for Logic again. All of my classes seem like they’re going to be interesting, although I expect both of the philosophies will be harder than either of the computer sciences - Existentialism
Kierkegaard Kitty
Carrot Cake Is Better Than Warcraft
You know you’ve got the Best Grandma Ever when you come home from classes and find that she’s mailed you a homemade birthday cake (and it didn’t even get mangled in the mail, thanks to some truly impressive cake-packing technique). And you’ve probably got the Best Boyfriend Ever when (in addition to buying you badly-needed furniture for your birthday) he sneakily covers the...
I Would Have Liked To Stop At 21
Well, Warcraft III and continued unpacking in the wake of the Move From Hell have finally devoured the last of my winter break, and classes start bright and early tomorrow morning. Tomorrow also happens to be my birthday, so if you’d like to ease the suffering I’ll be in from having to get up ass-early and being another year older - well, you know what to do.
Pogue On Panther
As part of a review I’ve been writing on the new Panther edition of Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, I had the chance to get David Pogue to answer a couple of my questions on Panther in general and the book in particular. And here they are:
ES: What are a couple of your favorite new Panther features?
DP: I’m just nuts about the secret buried just-for-fun features: the secret graphing...
Caoineback
At the risk of having my site turn into AndySerkisBlog: Andy did an interview with Leonard Lopate on WNYC yesterday. The archived show will be up for streaming for a couple of weeks.
As for Panther: so far, I like it. I had to reinstall coreutils, wget, and all that good stuff since I chose to do a clean install, but I haven’t encountered any of the bugs people were bitching about when 10.3.0...
Recap
Number of boxes and/or bags moved: 37
Number of boxes and/or bags unpacked: 18
Number of disassembled furniture objects moved: 6
Number of reassembled furniture objects: 4
Number of times Emma has left the house since Sunday: shut up
Wednesday Already?
I wonder how long it’s possible to live out of big black contractor bags full of clean underwear and clothes? Because I’m totally going to find out, at this rate. It’s not even (entirely) that I’m being lazy about unpacking - I decided to leave my crappy, broken dresser at the old apartment and I haven’t bought a new one yet, so even if I wanted to put my clothes...
Unpacking Is For People Without New Operating...
I haven’t really done any unpacking yet, but I have installed Panther. I have to say, the dreaded Ass Metal isn’t quite as awful or pervasive as I’d expected – I still wish it would go away, of course, but it isn’t everywhere, and the Sidebar and Exposé make me happy enough that I’m even willing to forgive the metallic Finder. I’m still playing around with everything, but I’m pretty happy with it...
Andy Serkis In Union Square
Andy Serkis stopped by the Union Square Barnes & Noble tonight to discuss and sign copies of Gollum. Apart from getting our books signed, we were treated to a performance of that schizophrenic Gollum/Sméagol monologue (dialogue?) from The Two Towers. Hearing normal-sounding Andy switch to freaky-sounding Gollum and back again was fascinating, as was the rest of his discussion of the evolution...
At Last
Well, after two trips in my dad’s pickup, two calls to the police about the crazy lady (who, shitfaced drunk at 11am, came after us with a knife), and enough moving of boxes and furniture that even the muscles in my feet feel sore, I’m finally here. It took 32 boxes of various sizes and 5 heavy-duty contractor bags full of clothes and bedding, as well as miscellaneous milk crates and...
Admission
While Chris and I usually have a healthy disdain for tv in general and reality tv in particular, we started watching Queer Eye a few weeks ago and we actually like it, this past week’s slightly disappointing episode not withstanding. I admit that at least part of the fun for me is seeing how simple it is to sex up an apartment with a little paint and some stuff from IKEA. I’ve never...
Accomplishments For The Past Week
1. I’ve made no fewer than three posts in which I’ve bitched about how much fucking packing I have to do for the Move this weekend. (Four, if you count this one: I have so much fucking packing to do for the Move this weekend.)
2. I found out I managed an A- in that god-awful ancient philosophy course (which I’ve also bitched about more in more than one post) when I was...
A Warning
As you’ve no doubt gathered, it’s Moving Week for Emma - serious packing is now underway with the actual move taking place later this week, so expect spotty updates between now and, say, Sunday. On the plus side, it turns out that U-Haul’s boxes are surprisingly cheap and their sizes are plentiful - I’m working my way through a 25-box bundle of the size recommended for...
Save Me
Packing might just be the most completely boring thing I’ve done in recent memory - it’s entirely devoid of any entertainment value whatsoever. Positively soul-sucking. I haven’t even done that much yet, as Chris and I need to head to U-Haul for more and larger boxes tomorrow - I had a bunch of old Thinkgeek and Amazon boxes here that have been good for small and/or fragile...
Boxes
Things continue in a similar vein as we enter the very last week of my Brooklyn residency - knitting, sleeping, miscellaneous freelance, and some half-hearted packing. I’ve been falling asleep all day again, only now I’ve got a sore throat as well, so I wonder if maybe I’m not fighting off the cold I usually get at Christmas (and which I thought I’d escaped this year). I...
This Is Such A Good Movzzzzzzzzz
I watched Another Woman on PBS tonight - a weirdly unsettling Woody Allen flick, but it’s got Ian Holm and several other actors I like. Unfortunately, I kept falling asleep and eventually lost track of what was going on. I’ve been falling asleep since I woke up, actually. I don’t know whether I haven’t been getting enough sleep (or enough good sleep) or whether I’m...
The Five Best Things About 2004 (So Far)
Rather than come up with a Best Of list for the year that’s just ended, I’m going to follow my own lead and note some highlights from the first two days of 2004:
1. So far, the first week of 2004 is a lot like the first week of 2003 - I’ve been spending a lot of time with one of my Christmas presents from Chris, it’s just that this year it’s SSX 3 instead of Vice...
If Memory Serves Me Right
After all my talk yesterday about how I like staying home on New Year’s Eve, Chris and I actually decided to go out last night - but not to a party. We went to see Master and Commander again, thinking we’d have the theater more or less to ourselves, but as it turned out the place was completely packed with a very NPR sort of crowd. We were easily the youngest people there, but at least...