Somehow I missed recording ALIAS this week. If someone has the premier on their DVRs/VCRs, can you hold on to a copy for me until I can watch it? Thanks.
[ Edit (Oct 3 8am): Eric had it on his DVR, so I watched it. You can delete it off the DVR if you were saving it for me. No spoilers, but what I expected was going to happen happened a lot sooner than I expected - without anything really being explained. There's more backstory in Lost. ]
The Rules:
Mine was good, but Deb’s was better.
I woke up this morning, lazy, snoozing, enjoying the pitter-patter of the rain outside my window. Too awake to sleep, but not ready to watch more sportscenter or jump in front of a computer yet again. I need to unplug.
So, over a bowl of marshmallowy shooting stars and clovers, I finished reading Fight Club. Just a grey sky morning, me and the dogeared corners of a recycled library paperback. The rain went tap tap tap tap tap outside the window. It was…peaceful.
I think I get too buried in technology sometimes, and this book was just what I needed. A little funny, a little dark, a little confusing and yet very much candy. I’m not reading it to critically analyze it, or figure out how it fits into anything I’ve ever read. I’m not ciphioning information out of a news website to recall later, getting a little spooked how behind with bloglines I am. I’m not watching the next-to-be-deleted thing from my DVRs, wondering what I’m getting next, and when I’ll be able to watch that. I feel almost like the doctor in A Beautiful Mind… Sometimes too much effort is spent finding connections between things, and fitting all the information we have into context. Mapping and evaluating every little piece of information we have into distinct memories, and then associating them with like thoughts. It’s hard work, and I’m not up to it this Sunday morning.
It’s raining harder now, and my gutters are overflowing. The systematic rhythm of the rain is drawn out by the overflow from the rooftops. I look out, and the street is filled with water. I think I even hear the sump pump kick on for the first time since living here, but when I check the crawlspace, it’s dry. (Maybe the noise was the icemaker.) It was nice to be able to hear and identify a new noise. No rush of the TV. Maybe living alone is teaching me solitude.
One candy book done, I go online to order the next one in my queue: High Fidelity. I think it’s interesting that Amazon has looked inside the book, and compared it to all the other books in its collections, and pulled information from it I might find useful. There’s a list of Capitalized Phrases, in case I’m searching for buzzwords. They found the Statistically Improbable Phrases, which of all the books they’ve scanned, really only repeatedly occur in this book. High Fidelity’s? Compilation tape and simultaneous orgasm. I wonder why ‘top five’ isn’t in that list.
I am Joe’s inquisitive Left Front Incisor.
The CPL has two copies of the book, but both are checked out. I login and request it. Oh, these are paperbacks. I wonder if there’s a hardcover. There is, in Urbana, on shelf. I request that too. I ponder driving over to pick it up.
The rain’s pretty much stopped now, and the TV is on. I was idly watching Sydney tell her fiance she works for the CIA and now I’m watching the Pack game. (They just made a nice TD play, and then missed the PAT. Who misses a PAT?) And now I’m reprogramming the new remote to control volume on the receiver. And the laundry is ready to be folded. And the email client is open. My physical inbox is overflowing, and I’ll need lunch soon.
I guess I can’t really escape being connected, as nicely as that sounds. But it was fun, at least, this morning.
Congratulations to the 2005 Saint Louis Cardinals for winning the National League Central Division, and advancing (again) to post-season play. Woot!
Since I heard about the Ambient Orbs (jealous of you, EJ,) I’ve been trying to figure out different ways to take everyday information and put it into discrete or abstract, digital or analog displays. I think that finding new ways of mapping/associating/displaying potentially disjoint information will be a part of my graduate studies/research.
In the meantime, I ran across this and was very impressed. Making Visible the Invisible display at the Seattle Public Library. I want to do something similar to that, at Siebel Center, on its display wall, with IT information from the department or campus.
Doing some back checking, I found out that Hurricane David came through in 1979 and the name was retired. How appropriate. So I’ll never be a hurricane again. You can see how bad I was.
I wish Orphelia would make up her mind. Tropical storm, then hurricane, then tropical storm. Then going to hit the NC/SC sea coast, then going back out to the ocean, then coming back stateside. No offense to any of the possible tropical depressions, but I think the US has had enough storm damage for 2005. Stay out east and brood and we’ll see you in 2006.
Oh, and if you didn’t get the reference in the title, it’s a funny line by a really, really bad weather man. There’s a video clip floating around on the Internet. I couldn’t find one to link in, but I bet my cow-orkers have it. (Tip: the titles always refer back to something somewhere in the post, even if it doesn’t appear to make sense or is the main point of the post. Blog post titles for me are like the exact opposite of what good email subjects should be. But, making you wonder why I chose that and how it links back is part of the fun of reading this. Or maybe it’s just fun for me.)
In other news, I’m 100% in my class right now after getting the first assignment back. Woot. I decided not to the reading response this week, although I wouldn’t mind having more discussions about Paul Otlet. Having a mailbox in the LIS building is kind of cool, until you realize you’re just a hanging Pendaflex folder in a big drawer of students. The CS grads have it better with an actual box in an actual room.
Insight was on site today at home looking at my cable modem problems. Turns out, as I expected and has happened before, the signal going to the outside tap at my house had dropped. They’re going to work on it, but that happens with a different crew and they don’t need me for that. The Internet works if I move the modem to the basement (one splitter closer to where it comes into the house,) so I’m still online. Just an annoyance.
I also called Insight to see if I could save money on my bill. I cancelled HBO, so I’ll just have to hang with Chuck or Nate if I want to watch the next season of the Sopranos. (And all the older seasons, if you can sit through them, are on DVD.) I decided that, for the first month or two, I didn’t want to give up the cable box/HD/DVR capabilities yet. In fact, I ordered an upgrade … The dual tuner model of their DVR is only a nickel more than the single tuner for the next 12 months (then it’s $3 more per month.) So that’s getting upgraded next week. In the meantime, I’ll just watch my pennies and if things get tight I’ll cut down to just the extended cable plan (gotta have my comedy central.)
But, with football starting, and ESPN and FOX in HD, I don’t really want to get rid of the HD pak yet. That, and then basketball starts I want to have a digital box so I can either see the games in HD if possible, or order the Full Court games/days I want.
The other choice is that I get a digital pak (meaning some select digital cable channels) for free. I’m currently getting the sports one, but I’m considering changing it to the family one. (That way, if mom ever visits, she can have her discovery health. *shudder* Oh God, it would even be on DVR, so it could be rewatched and rewound. Ew.) I’m a little annoyed that would mean missing the SciFi channel, but in reality I never watch any of these extended channels (sorry Josh, I just don’t get up to the golf channel,) so it doesn’t really matter (and it doesn’t save me money.) Here are the paks:
Movie Pak
502 WE: Women’s Entertainment
503 Independent Film Channel
504 Fox Movie Channel
505 Lifetime Movie Network
506 Sundance Channel
516 Encore Wam
517 Encore
519 Encore Love
521 Encore Mystery
523 Encore Westerns
527 Encore Drama
529 Encore Action
Sports & Lifestyle Pak
160 Sci-Fi Channel
161 GSN
163 SOAPnet
164 Fox Reality Channel
273 Bloomberg
274 History International
275 GAS
401 Fox Soccer Channel
402 ESPNEWS
403 ESPN Classic
404 Outdoor Life
405 Golf Channel, The
406 NFL Network
407 CSTV
409 Fuse
410 MTV Hits
Family Pak
120 Noggin
121 Discovery Kids
122 Biography Channel, The
123 Discovery Home
124 Discovery Times
125 Military Channel
127 Toon Disney
128 Nicktoons
130 DIY Network
131 Fine Living
162 BBC America
220 Discovery Health
272 Science Channel, The
276 VH1 Classic
277 VH1 Country
278 VH1 Soul
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