Zathras' Great Machine

The cleaning bug bites

Hmm. Well, first Denise has gotten me hooked on chai tea, now it appears I've picked up her cleaning perseveration as well. I've spent the last week or two going over this place and making it nice, neat, and clean. I'm not done yet, of course, but that's OK... I can take my time over the next month or so and do a thorough job of it. I've had little piles of minutia sitting around all over the house for who knows how long. Now, though, most of them are gone. There's only one big one left (the one in the side bedroom) and another smaller one in the master bedroom. I've also cleaned up the bookcases quite a bit -- it tears my heart out to throw away any books, but I did manage to do it with just a few the other day, convincing myself that there was no real loss in throwing out (for example) manuals for software that hasn't been published since the early to mid nineties.

I've even gone thru my closet and thrown out a bunch of old leftover stuff in there as well. The only major project in there is going thru the old boxes of stuff that I haven't gone thru since I left Brattleboro, which is itself an indication that it isn't exactly something that I can't live without. I know there are a few things left over in there that I want to salvage, but most of it will probably get the old heave-ho as well.

I feel a mite guilty at some of the things I'm tossing, such as flannel sheets for a full-size bed (I haven't had a full-size bed in years; the one I have now is a queen). I'd prefer to donate it to chairty or something like that, so I've temporarily put a hold on my plan to sort thru the old clothes that I don't wear anymore to see whehter it would be feasible to donate them. It probably won't be, since I don't have a car, but it's worth a look.

Funny finding old electronics in the closet, too, such as the answering machine and CD player that I bought back when I was in high school. :-) And as a matter of fact, those were both still in use up until I left Bratt, but when I got to Silver Spring, they were retired. I was listening to music CDs mostly on my notebook by then (and now, I have a component DVD player that plays music CDs, of course). And I didn't have a land line in the apartment until just a few months ago, at which time the new cordless phone I bought included a digital answering machine, so my nearly 20-year-old tape-based machine is going into the heap. I doubt if I could even give that thing away, let alone sell it on eBay. The CD player probably wouldn't be worth more than ten bucks, either, but I'll give it a quick look before I throw it out.

My birthday went quietly and nicely. Denise showered me with gifts, so much so that I felt a bit squeamish/guilty over it (but then, I guess, as the old saying goes, "sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander"). She gave me a Bab 5 DVD, a rather sizeable box of Godiva chocolates, a Bab 5 DVD, and the soundtrack from "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" on CD. She also sent a very nice floral arrangement. My mother also gave me a neat present: a round-trip ticket to San Francisco to see Denise. All in all, not a bad way to turn a year older. Shaw, much to his unnecessary embarrassment, did not know it was my birthday; he hastily sent me an Elvis e-greeting card when I mentioned it not long before going to bed. (You shouldn't have, Shaw. Really. I hate Elvis. ;-) That's OK, though -- it's the thought that counts).

Speaking of eBay, I'm having something of a hard time getting most of my old junk to go anywhere! I guess this is not a case of one man's junk being another man's treasure. I did sell the second season of Babylon 5 on VHS, but so far, nothing else has gone. Big project there is going to be sorting thru, photographing, and listing all my back issues of Playboy (I don't read it or subscribe anymore; I'd like to, but I just don't have the time these days. Maybe I will after I finish this big cleaning project and can actually relax enough to read). I've done some investigation, and it looks like a few of these actually are collectible, despite their relative newness. I've got one issue from just a few years ago, for example, that features Carmen Electra, and someone else sold the same issue last week for a pretty good chunk of change.

So I'll probably tackle that this weekend -- sort them all out, dust them off, throw away the ones that unfortunately got water-damaged and mildewed in the closet *grumble* and do the listings there.

I feel good about getting all of this done, but I'm definitely glad I don't have a yard to rake/mow/whatever like Denise does. I haven't done yard work in over twenty years (not having lived in a place since then that had a yard requiring my work), and I'm not sorry in the least. Yard work is probably the least favorite activity I've ever undertaken in my life, and that's no exaggeration.

Good thing I have tolerant friends

OK, so I let the blogging go again. You're right... get out the wet noodle. :-)

Past week or so has been relatively uneventful. After all that fretting about possibly being laid off, the company finally came to realize that they can't let me go because I'm irreplaceable. Well, not irreplaceable, exactly, but they can't eliminate my position. So that eliminates some short-term worries, but I'm still keeping up with the job hunt. Now that I've finally got some momentum going in tackling what is, admittedly, an extremely unpleasant task, I don't want to get complacent again. Besides which, even if they don't lay me off, there's still the very real possibility that the company will go broke. They've come to the brink more than once. I was telling Denise about this once: it's kind of like Russian Roulette. If you play Russian Roulette once, the chance of killing yourself is one in six (assuming you're using a six-shooter, of course). However, if you keep playing and playing and playing, eventually the gun will go off; it becomes a certainty (I saw a mathematician on the Today show explain that once in discussing nuclear weapons and the Cold War. I wish I could remember his name so I could give him credit). This company is playing permanent Russian Roulette. I think I'm the only one who knows that, though. Or at least the only one who's willing to openly admit it.

The big thing was on Friday, when a reporter from Newsweek interviewed me for an upcoming article on the autistic pride movement. I was a little hesitant about doing the interview, since I've only been involved in that movement for a little under a year, I'm still pretty much of a "newbie" to autism in general, and I'm not even formally diagnosed yet, but I did it anyway. I think it went pretty well, and I also referred to him a couple of other people, including Denise, whom I thought would be good for him to talk to (better than me, actually -- and I told him so). The issue with the article is coming out sometime in August, but I'm not sure when, or whether I'll be in it, but it's still pretty neat.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited about all this, so I sent an email to several friends and family members telling them about it. The response was very positive from everyone, with one exception. Janelle, unfortunately, decided to respond with a rip-roaring flame, basically blasting me on just about every aspect of my existence. I'm the type of person who takes that kind of thing very hard, even when (as in this instance) I'm fully aware that it's undeserved. It really ruined my weekend, or would have if Denise hadn't been there to give me some much-needed moral support. I remember reading that email from Janelle and just sitting there thinking to myself, "God... what did you have for breakfast this morning, Carnation Instant Bitch?"

The clash with Janelle continued thru Saturday evening, with her saying that I routinely "abuse my administrator privileges" in my job by randomly auditing the other employees' Internet activity. I delicately pointed out that I was under instruction from the COO to do that, that it was perfectly legal, there was nothing unethical about it, and that, in fact, it is meant to protect the company from lawsuits due to (for example) employees who use corporate Internet access inappropriately. Ultimately, she replied by saying that she refused to discuss the matter with me anymore, which I personally regard as her realizing that she's in the wrong and not wanting to admit it.

I had planned to go to a Mensa get-together on Saturday night, but the quarrel with Janelle completely ruined my mood, so I had to cancel. I didn't really think anything about cancelling -- I dropped a note to the host and apologized to her, saying only that "something very upsetting had come up". I thought that would be the end of it, but when I got to work this morning, I found that she had left me a voice mail, saying that she was sorry something had gone wrong, asking whether she could help, and even offering to just let me vent on her as a "disinterested third party". All this, in spite of the fact that I barely know her, I hadn't even spoken to her or written to her in about two years, and she has a reputation in the local Mensa chapter for being a nasty bitch. I really enjoy receiving indications that there are members of the human race that are actually worthwhile, mainly because I receive so few of them.

Anyway, I dropped her a line back thanking her for her concern and explained briefly what had happened, and it turns out that there's been some speculation that she's on the spectrum as well. Interesting... I wouldn't have suspected that of her, but then, I only started learning about the spectrum last Fall.

I'm not sure whether the clash had anything to do with it, but I ended up getting a fair amount of stuff done around the house this weekend. A lot of cleaning, organizing, straightening up, putting items on eBay and researching other items on eBay to see whether it's worth trying to sell them there. My place has always been reasonably neat and clean, but I do have various piles of bric-a-brac here and there that I want to get rid of, and it does feel good to finally be getting rid of some of it.

I think I've finally eliminated a bug with my iBook. My backup software, Retrospect Express by Dantz, kept getting to a certain point in the backup routine and then freezing (it didn't do it everytime, but it happened more often than not). After dealing with it for some time and attempting various workarounds, I finally discovered that the routine runs fine if I don't mount the backup media until the software actually asks for it. I've never heard of this problem before, so I suspect that it's actually a reflection of the fact that OS X -- or at least my iBook -- has problems with external USB mass storage devices.

And that's the news... if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take some photos of these Star Trek coffee mugs in preparation for putting them up for auction.

All done

Firewall's up and running, MAC filtering is in place, and WEP is now functioning as well. My new WiFi network is all set. The quirk with Apple's Airport is a fairly minor one: it's just that, when you connect to the router, you have to put a dollar sign in front of the password. I don't know why this is necessary, but since the password is saved in my keychain, it's something I only have to deal with whenever I change the password, not every time I reconnect.

All told, the setup of the WiFi router was quite smooth and painless, with WEP being the only real stumbling block... and at that, the stumbling was caused by a combination of Apple's quirky treatment of third-party WiFi routers and my lack of experience with WiFi in the first place. Considering that the main reason I did this was to get the experience, I can live with that.

Most problems solved

The firewall is up and running, and I've configured MAC filtering as well -- just need to test it on the Ethernet port to make sure it's working before I start messing around any further.

I did find out what the issue was with WEP. Turns out that Apple requires certain minor modifications to the WEP configuration in the router if it's a third-party router:
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/support/apple_wep.htm
So I'm going to take a stab at that later this evening after I've set up everything else and made sure it's working.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Denise's wireless NIC the next time she's here -- I don't know whether this "tweak" will be compatible with her NIC, so it's possible we'll have to turn WEP off while she's here.

Gone Wireless

Well, after messing around on eBay for awhile bidding on parts, I said the hell with it and went to the Apple Store for an Airport card for my iBook. After installing it and testing it at the Borders in Pentagon City, I then went over to Best Buy to get a WiFi router. Getting it installed and running took a bit of doing -- the cable modem apparently had some kind of a problem with the router's DHCP requests, and I had to spend a while on the phone with tech support tracking down an obscure problem (turned out to be something to do with WEP -- I'm still not sure what it is).

But it's all working fine, although I still need to do some security configuration. I'll set up the firewall and MAC filtering this evening, I think, then I need to investigate WEP a bit more. It may take a while to get that configured, but I'm not terribly worried about it for the moment.

The Airport card has a somewhat limited range compared to a lot of other WiFi NICs, but I'm still quite impressed. Everywhere in my apartment, I get about an 85-90% signal strength, and I even get about 40-50% strength in the basement of my building where the washers and dryers are. Outside, I can cross the street and almost get to the swimming pool before I lose the signal, and I'll bet I could get to the pool if I put the router in the window instead of along the far wall (where it is right now).

For anyone interested in looking up the specs on this router, it's the D-Link DI-614+. So far, I've been very pleased with it, except for the snafu with WEP.

I'm at the Silver Spring Starbucks right now, and I'm enjoying my T-Mobile "free trial". I still think wireless is a niche technology, and I probably always will, but I have to admit it's pretty neat. :-) I wonder when we'll have WiMAX...?

Washington Times Op-ed, with my reply

It's not terribly difficult to get printed in the Washington Times, so I don't feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment when it happens. (Getting printed in the Washington Post is far more difficult, and I've managed it three times -- that does give me a sense of accomplishment, but that's a separate entry.)

Anyway. The other day, the Times printed this editorial about how the Internet is killing romance. There's no way I could allow that to pass, of course, considering that I'm a hopeless romantic, and especially considering how I met Denise. So I sent in a reply, which you can read here. You'll need to scroll down the page a bit to see my letter; there's no link directly to it.

Denise said that she also plans to write to the Times on the subject... I hope her letter gets printed, too. :-)

Extremely weird voicemails

Well, this is a new one. I've got a voicemail on my office phone that sounds like it's being spoken by someone with a severe speech defect of some kind (the stereotypical "retarded" type of voice). I can't make out what he's saying very clearly, but I'm pretty sure the last word is "hamburgers", which is followed by also-stereotpyical stupid laughing noises. I'm going to try to get an MP3 of this and put it on the web for others to review.

This reminds me of the time a few years ago when I answered the phone at home once, and some guy on the other end of the line started slowly counting. "One... two... three... four..." There was some kind of office noise in the background, and I said hello again a couple more times, and he just kept counting. I asked him what the hell he was doing, and he kept on counting, regardless of whatever I was saying. I kept trying to get a response out of him and finally gave up when he got to about nineteen, I think it was. Damndest phone call I've ever had. And what gets me is, I could tell it wasn't a recording.

Well, this one certainly fits...

A computer wizard turns into an arms enthusiast and has a messiah complex... yeah, that's me. :-)

You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
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What kind of kisser are you? I am...

You have an entrancing kiss~ the kind that leaves
your partner bedazzled and maybe even feeling
he/she is dreaming. Quite effective; the kiss
that never lessens and always blows your
partner away like the first time.


What kind of kiss are you?
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Oops, I did it again!

Hmm, it appears I've allowed my blog to lapse again! Ugh, I hate when I do that...

Well, the ending of Denise's visit went fairly well. We had dinner at a murder mystery mansion, which was reasonably entertaining but not worth the cost (I'm glad we went, but I don't want to go back). We had dinner the next day at a Bethesda restaurant called Jaleo, which I've eaten at a few times in the past. The menu is Spanish tapas, and we had a good time sampling a wide variety of dishes -- including shark, which neither of us had ever had before and greatly enjoyed.

Denise then flew home on Monday evening, which was, unfortunately, an unpleasant affair for her due to the weather and some unpleasant seatmates. I also got a verybad scare when the phone rang at 2:15 in the morning and Denise's mother told me that Denise had not arrived at the airport, that the airline had said she never got on the plane, and that a plane on that route had crashed, but that she wasn't sure whether it was Denise's plane or not. Fortunately, after a couple more phone calls and a great deal of fretting, Denise did indeed show up, and I was able to get back to sleep.

The rest of the week went by rather uneventfully, except for a conference on Wednesday that even managed to make the subject of Mobile & Wireless Security boring. I saw two films yesterday, "Terminator 3" and "Pirates of the Caribbean". "T-3" is fairly good, "Pirates" is great.

No particular news yet on the job hunt... I'm doing all the usual stuff but have had only one bite so far from a company that wanted a NetWare expert with years of hands-on experience and wanted to pay only $35K per year, which is ridiculous. Even so, if I'd had the skills, I might have taken them up on the job just to get out of my current one and continue the search for a "real" position. Unfortunately, I don't know NetWare, so that option is out. (I don't know where this company thinks they're going to find a NetWare person for the kind of salary they're offering, either. $35K is what you pay an administrative assistant, not a systems administrator.)

A blog "first"

Well, in checking my tracker, I see that I've received my first genuine, bona fide "hit" -- that is as something other than someone clicking the link on Moggy's blog or a link that I put into one of my own emails. Someone searched Google for the keywords "chai machine", and my blog came up number 22 out of some thirty thousand or so. Have to admit this rather surprises me. My blog being what it is, I wouldn't have thought I'd ever get indexed anywhere at all, let alone this near the top of Google's results.

Well, whoever you are -- thank you for clicking my link, if you ever see this message. :-) Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to finding someplace for dinner this evening. Dinner last night was so-so... I'm glad we went, but it wasn't really worth it. Full report later.

The visit continues

Hello to all, and a happy Independence Day to everyone for whom that makes much of a difference (it doesn't to me, much... perhaps it would if I thought we lived in a country that truly had "liberty and justice for all". I don't, but that's a separate entry.)

Denise and I had dinner on Tuesday night with my mother at a small French restaurant in Old Town Alexandria, which is a neat place to visit but a tad on the pricey side... otoh, my mother was paying, so what they hey. :^) I wanted to have dinner at Bilbo Baggins, which is a really neat restaurant, but they were hosting some kind of huge event, so we had to give it a miss. The food was fantastic -- Denise and Annette both had the crab ravioli, and I had the lamb shanks, and of course we did the dancing forks thing. For dessert, I had the vanilla and chocolate mousse cake, Annette had the fruit crepes, and Denise had mango sorbet, which I just had to take a photo of when it came. If you look at the photo of Denise's dessert, you'll see why I had to immortalize it on film. Or, in this case, on a CCD.

All in all, it was a rather pleasant evening... Denise and Annette had another opportunity to get to know each other, the food was great, and Denise also got to learn some funny stories from my childhood, such as the time my idiot father cut down a tree in our yard and destroyed our neighbor's pool. :-) On the way back to the Metro, we saw some fireflies, which Denise had never seen before and found very intriguing. Annette also took this photo of me and Denise as part of the evening's festivities.

On Thursday afternoon, to celebrate the beginning of the three-day weekend, Denise and I met at Union Station around a quarter to five. We did some window shopping, had dinner at The Station Grill, dropped in the Discovery Channel Store and said hello to my old classmate Larry again, and did a bit more window shopping, stopping in at two of my favorite stores, Illuminations and Appalachian Spring (web site still under construction). We then went to see "Hulk", which was very good although not outstanding. In addition to the usual type of stuff you'd expect, there were some genuinely funny moments... one good one was where The Hulk destroys a tank, then breaks off its cannon and begins walking around with it as a club, lightly tapping it against one hand as he stalks the next tank. Stan Lee (the DC creator of "The Hulk") and Lou Ferrigno (who played "The Hulk" in the TV series back in the late Seventies) also have a brief cameo together as a little nod-and-wink to superhero enthusiasts.

The theater goers, as usual, were quite rude -- they always are at Union Station -- but they actually pretty much shut up about twenty minutes or so into the film after another theater goer loudly yelled, "Hey, quiet down, man! Please!" The crowd was much larger than I'd have thought it would be, too, even for a weekend night -- the movie's been out for a couple of weeks now, but it's still getting pretty solid attendance, and the opening of "Terminator 3" apparently hasn't detracted from that very much. Anyway, Denise and I got home at about 11, spent a little time checking our email and the like, then tumbled off to bed.

Today has been fairly uneventful so far. We diddled around the house for a while, then left for The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City to have lunch at Ruby Tuesday's. The food was mediocre, but that was to be expected at that kind of place. We had a good meal together, marred only briefly by the fact that we had a window seat, and two young children got it into their heads to come over to window and stand there watching us eat. I yelled at them to go away and waved them off, shooing them... they didn't seem to get the message at first, but eventually I got thru to them.

We then headed across the street to Border's to have some chai tea and continue our pontifications about everything and everything, including passing each other some notes on Denise's Clié. After finishing our tea, I picked up a tin to take home with us, and we spent a bit of time wandering around the store, both together and separately, before deciding to return to the peace and quiet of the apartment. On the 4th of July, the entire city becomes an absolute zoo, and it was already getting pretty nutso as we were on our way home at about 6 PM. Everyone seems to be wondering why Denise didn't want to go to downtown DC tonight to see the fireworks. Everyone except me and Annette, because we've both done it. *grin* Yes, the show is great, and the fireworks are nice, but the event is about as autie-unfriendly as any venue could possibly be.

I think the plan for the evening is to stay home for some peace and quiet and rest up. Denise and I are going to Blair Mansion tomorrow night for a murder mystery/dinner theater thing. I've never done that before, but it sounds like fun. Story to follow, along with photos if they allow photography.