Home of the Autographed Cat

Gwnewch y pethau bychain

Month: August 2008

Reasons I Love My Wife, Number 1,432,202 in an ongoing series…

By

On August 29, 2008

In Blog

After watching Obama’s speech and The Daily Show last night, we had the following conversation:

kitanzi: Come to bed, silly.
autographedcat: Ok, I’ll come to bed. But I warn you, I want snuggles.
kitanzi: Can I sleep while you’re snuggling?
autographedcat: That’ll be hard. You’re the only person in the house to snuggle with.
kitanzi: We have two cats.
autographedcat: Yes, but they’re often very….particular about their snuggling.
kitanzi: Oh. Are you saying I’m easy then?
autographedcat: Nooooo.
kitanzi: Oh. So you’re saying I’m difficult?

…at which point we both collapsed into helpless giggles.

Later:

kitanzi: Do you love me?
autographedcat: I do! I do!
kitanzi: Do you love me more than ice cream?
autographedcat: I do.
kitanzi: Wow.
autographedcat: I love you more than carmel and chocolate ice cream.
kitanzi: That’s a lot.
autographedcat: I love you more than Coldstone Creamery ice cream with bits of fruit in.
kitanzi: Stop it. You’re making me hungry.
autographedcat: Sorry.
kitanzi: It’s ok. Not like I can get that at quarter-to-mindnight.
autographedcat: You could get Ben and Jerry’s. They sell that in the supermarket.
kitanzi: You realize you’re perilously close to being sent out for ice cream by your wife, right?
autographedcat: (silence)
kitanzi: Hah. That shut you up, didn’t it?
autographedcat: Would there be sex involved?
kitanzi: Not tonight, no, sorry.
autographedcat: (rolling over) Then go get your own damn ice cream.

…at which point I was (deservedly) hit by a pillow, but with more giggling.

We laugh a lot. It’s one of the ways I know we’re alright.

The Art of the Possible

By

On August 27, 2008

In Blog

I really haven’t talked about politics much in the last few years. I admit to being pretty dispirited about the subject, and getting too worked up about things I have no direct control over does bad things for my depression issues. Besides, other people are covering the politics much better than I would.

Also, honestly, I’m not as passionate about politics as many of my friends. I’m less a moderate than I am a pragmatist. I believe that politics is about compromise, and that both sides of most issues have at least some merit. This doesn’t tend to make for a very compelling position for debate, and generally only succeeds in getting both sides mad at me.

But it’s an election season, and I do have a strong interest in the outcome. So I’m starting to pay closer attention, now that the conventions are underway. Last night, Hilary Clinton gave her address to the Democratic convention, calling for unity in the party and throwing her full support to Barack Obama. Today, reading responses to her excellent speech, I’ve noticed a nearly universal sentiment being expressed.

“Boy, that really had to be hard for her.” “That must have really stuck in her craw.” “I can’t imagine how much it hurt for her to have to get up there and give that speech.” “Boy, she really managed to choke down her resentment and support the ticket.”

Do you have any idea how insulting that is to Hilary Clinton? To presume that everything she stands for, everything she ran on, every issue that she promoted in her campaign is ultimately secondary to her own personal ambition, that it must have been painful to her to support her party’s nominee? I’m sure she is disappointed she didn’t win the nomination. But to suggest that she would really rather thumb her nose at everyone but is instead putting on a brave face for the sake of expedience is to suggest that she’s really interested in nothing more than her own self-interest.

I have issues with the way Clinton ran her campaign. At one time, I’d have been happy with her as the nominee, even though she wasn’t my first choice, but by the end I was rather put out by her. But I don’t believe she is so shallow and superficial that she doesn’t have a strong interest in seeing Obama heading up the next administration. And you shouldn’t either, if you have even a bit of respect for her and what she’s accomplished in her career.

Not my cup of tea…

By

On August 27, 2008

In Blog

So this morning, having finished my first cup of tea and still feeling somewhat hung over, I shuffled into the kitchen for a second. There’s a ritual to this, more mundane than the Japanese ceremony variety, but a ritual none the less. Put the kettle on to boil, fetch a teabag from the PG Tips box and drop it into the cup. Pour the boiling water into the cup and let it steep for a few minutes. Take the cup over to the counter, two teaspoons. Milk. Start to walk back to my desk, sip…..

Choke.

I really don’t think that hot salted tea is going to be a taste sensation that is sweeping the country anytime soon. Good grief, I was really out of it this morning.

iPhone impressions

By

On August 22, 2008

In Blog

So I’ve now had my iPhone for about a week, so it’s time to start talking about it. Because that’s what you do when you buy Apple products, don’chano?

What I Like

  • Apple has always been the king of the user interface, and this is no exception. The navigation of the phone is extremely intuitive, and for the most part things are where you expect to find them. I probably spent the first hour just jumping from app to app and being really happy with how everything looks, how responsive it is, and how easy everything is to use.
  • The switching of my number from T-Mobile to AT&T was painless and quick. When we left the Apple Store, they told me I could make outbound calls right away, but it might take up to six hours before I could receive calls. We drove home to pick up Larissa’s mom and go to breakfast at J. Christopher’s. While we were placing our order, I got a text message from AT&T telling me that the port was complete. After the horror story that was eloren‘s iPhone adventure, this was a very pleasant surprise. (I admit I feel a little bit guilty, as T-mobile has offered me very good service over the years and I had no complaints with them to speak of. But that’s the nature of the exclusive hardware contracts, I suppose.)
  • There is a Pandora Radio app for the iPhone. This delights me.
  • It makes a perfect good iPod. Since my iPod recently took a swim in the washing machine and didn’t survive the experience, it was nice to have my podcasts back in the car.
  • The App Store is full of many free, if often pointless, little utilities. It also has some useful ones, like UrbanSpoon, which helps locate nearby restaurants, and Showtimes, which does something similar for nearby movie theatres.
  • I can continue my practice of having pictures of my sweeties as phone wallpaper, which makes me happy every time I turn it on.
  • The web browser looks *fantastic*. Easily the best implementation of a web browser on a phone I’ve ever used. Reading and posting to LJ is extremely easy.
  • The phone is very slim, but it has a nice heft to it. It feels like a substantial object, and not a tiny plastic toy.

What I Don’t Like

  • There is apparently a bug when the most recent version of the iPhone OS and Windows Outlook with syncing. (I had to actually buy a new copy of Outlook, as my previous copy was from 2000 and refused to talk to the phone at all.) If left to sit and peculate, it will eventually finish syncing, but it takes far far longer than it should. This is being widely discussed on the various forums, so it’s obviously a software side problem rather than simply a problem with my setup.
  • With all the apps that are out there, there’s nothing that can be used to cycle the wallpaper at set intervals between a set of defined photos. This seems like it would be pretty basic (I have such an application for my computers.
  • The camera interface is awkward. (This is, to me, a minor gripe, since I don’t particular need a good camera phone. But on the off chance I do use it, it’s a bit clunky.)
  • No IRC client. Really? I’m somewhat stunned by this, honestly. There’s a couple of apps in development that may be solving this soon, but for the moment…c’mon guys, it’s one of the oldest chat protocols on the net. There’s no excuse.
  • No backgrounding. An app is either on or its off. You can’t run, say, AOL Instant Messenger in the background and have it make noise at you when a message comes in. It appears that there’s going to be some mechanism to simulate this with the new “push” features, but for the moment, its either foreground or off.
  • I can’t get the SSH client I purchased to work properly.
  • It seems to be that if you have the headset plugged in, and the phone rings, it only rings in the headset. I find this somewhat peculiar behaviour, since it means I can’t just leave the heatset plugged in and the phone nearby on my desk, because I may not notice it vibrating. (Probably time to replace my bluetooth headset.)

All in all, I’m very pleased with the purchase. What I don’t like are mostly minor gripes, and several of them will probably be solved by future software releases.

Baaaa.

By

On August 17, 2008

In Blog

Following the herd into the Apple store, I have purchased myself an iPhone. So far, I’m loving it, but there’s always the slight frustration with a new phone of getting everything set up the way you want it. I managed to import most of my contact list, but in the process seem to have lost most of the postal addresses. So I started moving those over by hand, and realized that I don’t know how many of them are hopelessly out of date.

So…..please leave me a reply here with the following information, so I can make sure I’m all up to date:

Name
Address
Home Phone
Mobile Phone
Email
Birthday
Webpage
IM contact information

Along with anything else you think I should know. Comments are screened, but you can also send me e-mail if you’d prefer that route.

Thanks!!

Upcoming travel – Massachusetts in September

By

On August 5, 2008

In Blog

We’ve already told a few people about this, but in the interest of making sure that everyone who reads this space knows.

kitanzi and I will be visiting Massachusetts in September, specifically Sept 5-8. Our primary purpose for visiting is to visit some friends from outside our normal social circle and meet up with a group at the Ren Faire, but since we know a large number of you would likely hunt us down and do unpleasant bodily harm to us if we didn’t make some effort to see you, we plan on attending the MASSFILC meeting on Saturday.

So, if you’re inclined to be the sort of person who wants to see us, that’s the place to be. (It would have been great fun to just show up and surprise everyone, but I didn’t want to risk someone being disappointed afterwards because they didn’t end up going that month.)

Hope to see all you New England types there!

Movie Night

By

On August 4, 2008

In Blog

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and that means once again there will be movie night here at our place in Alpharetta. Hope you can come by for it!!

Where: autographedcat and kitanzi‘s apartment in Alpharetta
When: Wednesday, August 6
What: Movie!

As per usual, there will be snacks, conversation, and a film on the big screen See you there!

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén