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[pwhodges]

Dijkstra's book on Algol-60 headed the chapter on procedures and parameters with "All jokes are better when applied to bishops".  The definition of the language Algol-68 had a quote from Winnie the Pooh over the section on I/O - it was from the story where Eeyore gets a burst balloon and an empty honey pot for his birthday and ends up happily putting the balloon in the pot and taking it out again "look, he said, it goes in and out like anything!"

[Zingoleb]

I just shaved half my head.

[Patrick]

Looks fucking awesome, by the way.

[Zingoleb]

thanks! it was my second time using clippers but definitely not my first time drastically altering my appearance on a whim

[Patrick]

I just found out that my stockroom manager, whose heavy handed, passive-aggressive approach is completely useless at managing actual human beings, may well be getting fired soon. Literally everyone in the store except for one person (who got the job because of her recommendation, and is a complete darling) has complained about her. The person most likely to replace her has been not only delightful company and a good friend since day one, but instrumental in improving my work attitude and performance.

If this rumor turns out to be true, I guarantee that the next shift after I find out, I'm making my family's fried chicken recipe in bulk and bringing it to work so we can all celebrate. I will also barely try not to get caught whistling "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead" gleefully throughout the store.

[Papersatan]

Just finished my last assignment for one of my classes.  Now I just have a presentation, a group paper, a personal reflection, an essay, and two finals left! 

6 more deliverables, 10 more days

That's not so bad.  I am going to go put up some Christmas lights before tackling this next paper.

[Zingoleb]

Tonight I'm getting on a bus and will be spending three days going across country.

Ughhhhhh.

[Thrillho]

thanks! it was my second time using clippers but definitely not my first time drastically altering my appearance on a whim

I shaved my whole head as a kind of 'clean break from marriage' thing. Didn't know you had Facebook, add me! I'm on Patrick's friends list.

Also, I have flu or some shit. I ache all over, want to throw up, I'm light-headed and I have a bitch of a fever.

[Zingoleb]

Done! (Also, I used to live near where you live.)

[Thrillho]

Whereabooooots?

[Zingoleb]

Runcorn.

I don't really remember it being much of anything special, other than the fact my family lived there.

[Thrillho]

You'd be right. This whole area of the country is ho hum. Oxford has a uni in it, and that's it.

[Papersatan]

I shaved my whole head as a kind of 'clean break from marriage' thing.

I think hair cutting is actually pretty common after a break up. My best friend used to grow it out in relationships and chop it off when they ended, and with each break up it got shorter.  Which was fine, cause she can rock short hair. 


Gonna need more Christmas lights, that string only went half way.

[pwhodges]

Runcorn.

Um, Runcorn ain't near where Gareth and I live...  like they're nearly 150 miles apart, which is quite a lot here.

[Zingoleb]

What's the difference between an American and a Brit?

The American thinks 150 years is a long time, the Brit thinks 150 miles is a long distance. 

[Lines]

Well, to be fair...Great Britain is like...2% of the size of the U.S. So our perspectives of distance are a bit warped, yeah?

[Welu]

I'd be willing to make a short flight for a UK QC meet. 

[Thrillho]

A QC meet would be fucking bitchin'!

[Zingoleb]

how unprecedented!

[Akima]

The American thinks 150 years is a long time, the Brit thinks 150 miles is a long distance. 

An American thinks 500 miles is a short distance; a Chinese thinks 500 years is a short time.

[jwhouk]

I'd beg to differ on the 500 miles being a "short distance", given that 500 miles is a good 8-10 hour drive.

And in some parts of the US, that could mean not seeing anything of importance in that time frame.

[pwhodges]

I've heard lots of people expressing themselves about how bad the new iTunes interface is.  Now that mine has updated itself, I can say that in my view it is just as bad as it was before, but different.  No worse (and no better), I'd say - apart from the added bugs.

For something that must be considered a major application (given the number of iDevices there are out there), it was, and remains, appallingly bad.

[jwhouk]

It took me a while to figure out how to get it back to something resembling how I had it before (you now have to "Show Sidebar" to get the list of libraries, devices and playlists).

I don't care much for it.

[Bluesummers]

I'd beg to differ on the 500 miles being a "short distance", given that 500 miles is a good 8-10 hour drive.

I remember several years ago, when I had a little more cash and a lot more free time, my wife and I would go on "day trips" to New Hampshire, NW Massachusetts/Mohawk Trail, occasionally to Mitsuwa Japanese Marketplace in Edgewater NJ...various other places with 250 miles of CT. Now that I travel the state for work, ironically I find less and less time (and more financial demands) for leisurely traveling. But I remember our week-long trip driving to Niagara Falls...I think I've gotta do that again.

TL;DR: I view miles much more casually than my parents, who would say that a 20-mile ride equates to a "day trip."

♫ Day tripper....day tripper, yeah.... ♫

[valley_parade]

Oh hey, I live on the Mohawk Trail!

[Akima]

I've heard lots of people expressing themselves about how bad the new iTunes interface is.

When I updated, I wondered what all the fuss was about. There's a lot of "chrome" that adds nothing useful, as far as I am concerned. My playlists, scripts etc. all seem to work OK as before. I don't especially like it, but I never liked the old interface either. Meh...

[pwhodges]

When I plug my iPhone in and look at the TV programs, for about half of them the interface shows no episodes, and for some just a random selection of them.  Just the most obvious new bug I hit in a single use of the program.

Having to poke around at random marks on the screen to find the main menu was just a pointless waste of time; I don't understand this current obsession with hiding the controls of programs (all the browsers do the same now, by default).  What kind of lives do the designers have that they think it's improved by spending the time doing that?

[Akima]

You plug an Apple device into Apple software and immediately encounter obvious bugs? Stellar testing Apple-guys...

[Barmymoo]

[...] Julia Roberts DVDs. [...]

This was a most Notting Hillish post anyway, so I asume that was on the menu? Please? For the sake of my mental image?

I apologise - it was actually Erin Brockovich. But I do love Notting Hill, and ought to get it on DVD.

Choir week finished yesterday, and by a coincidence of forgetfulness (on the part of my employers, not me), my afternoon babysitting was rescheduled so I spent several hours in the pub for the birthday of one of the basses. Then the Boy and I went to pack up his room - mostly I just sat on the bed looking decorative and sneezing from the dust, but I helped out whenever there were jobs that didn't involve making decisions about where to put things or reaching high cupboards.

He left this morning, and I went off to meet a friend for a leisurely breakfast. She got married five months ago and I hadn't seen her since, so we had a lot of catching up to do. I came back intending to tidy my room but it is so horrifyingly messy that I feel defeated by the idea. I'm going to have to go though - I can't actually see my bed.

[BeoPuppy]

Order a bigger bed.

Snow, ladies and gentleman. Snow is falling. Flakeage, if you will, has been achieved.

For some strange reason this is the day I decided to clean the deep-fryer and fix my bike.
 

[Lines]

I really hate waiting for grades. It's been a week and a project I turned in still doesn't have a grade. I know this is a huge online class that I'm waiting on, but the instructors have also been a little behind grading minor stuff and we still have a paper that is due during finals week. The university doesn't give much time for grading finals and I need this effing class to graduate and I don't want to wake up the day of graduation with a, "Surprise! You can't actually graduate!" UGH. I don't know what's worse - the stress of dealing with school or the stress of waiting for grades to come out. I am so freaking tired of school.

[Barmymoo]

A bigger bed would be so appreciated. My bed isn't even a full-sized single, so we don't even try to sleep in it. The Boy's bed is a full single, but the bed base is narrower than the mattress (and UK single beds are smaller than US single beds anyway) and I sleep on the open side, so I sometimes find myself rolling off the bed base and only just not falling off the mattress. It's really sweet though, because the Boy sleep-rescues me without any memory of doing so the next morning.

[BeoPuppy]

That may be the cutest thing I ever read. You should probably have written it in pink.

[Redball]

Ah, the very small bed! May may heard this story on her visit here, but a search on the forum suggests I never wrote about it:
In the Peace Corps in India, my first wife and I were assigned to a municipal tenement in Bombay, about 300 square feet with a kitchen, livingroom/bedroom, closet size toilet and closet size washroom. So it seemed like a good idea at the moment to have a trundle bed built for us. She slept on the upper, I on the lower. Our marriage of three years or so didn't have nearly enough sex, and the bed further discouraged intimacy. I had some correspondence with the first wife last summer, friendly but reserved. She reminded me about the bedbug infestation that struck a few weeks after our arrival. She said she told me one night she was being attacked by the bugs and could she move down onto my bed. I told her, she recalled, that I didn't think there was room. She told me she realized the marriage was over at that point, that I would never make room for her. She evidently kept her thoughts to herself; I didn't realize the marriage was over for at least another year and a half.

[Carl-E]

Yeah, definitely The Wrong Answer. 

[Barmymoo]

Although I do sort of agree, in that I would have felt a bit peeved if I'd been told there wasn't room for me in my husband's bed, I have to say that ending a marriage over it sounds very poetic and all, but is also really just a bit stupid. It's a lovely metaphor, but that can't really be the reason she decided it was over.

[Carl-E]

Clearly there was a buildup before this event.  I imagine her point of view was that it was the proverbial straw...

[Papersatan]

I think there are lots of situations in life, or in a relationship when one event can be the trigger that gains meaning for you and pushes you to think about your relationship, or whatever, in new terms.

Back in 2003 or so Stephen and I shared a townhouse with my best friend.  My best friend had this little cat, Jade. One day Jade got stick and curled up in a corner and refused to eat. We knew something was really wrong, because our cat, Sam, who never got along with her, started being nice, and grooming her.  We took her to the vet and they told us she was anemic and before they could even figure out what was wrong, they had to give her a blood transfusion, which was going to cost $1,500.  This was about what the three of us, combined, made in a month, and was therefor well out of our price range. We took her home and started gathering money to have her put down.  My friend arranged an appointment, and on the day the three of us were all going to go together.  She was going straight from work, so I drove home to pick up Stephen and Jade.  When I walked in Stephen was asleep on the sofa with Jade perched on his chest.  I got the carrier and woke him up, and he told me he needed to shower first.  I was frustrated, because we didn't have a lot of time, and he knew when the appointment was, and then he explained.  Apparently, she had started crying and holding her made her stop.  She was super weak at this point, and while laying on him had peed on him.  He didn't want to disturb her when she was finally napping peacefully so he just lay there, soaked in cooling cat pee, and waited for me to get home to comfort her. 

That is when I knew I wanted to marry him.  Even though we didn't talk about marriage for another 2 or 3 years, I knew that day. 

It can be difficult to express how you feel about someone until something happens which you can use as a metaphor to process with.  If Redball's wife felt there was no room for her in his life, she had felt like that or sometime, but this even may have provided the concrete example she needed to process or articulate those feelings.  That said, if she decided that night the relationship was over, instead of sharing how his refusal made her feel, the relationship was doomed for sure.  Once one person decides a relationship is doomed, it always is. 

The space in which a relationship exists is almost a shared delusion.  The boundaries are created as the understanding of the two (or more) parties push against each other and create some thing that the relationship is.  Like two people able to stand straight up from the ground by leaning against each other's back.  If one stops trying, there is no way for the other to keep them both up. 

[Redball]

What a great story, Kat! You worried a few days ago you write too much. But you write so thoughtfully and readably, I don't notice the length.
First wife and I didn't communicate very well, and whatever was going on then demonstrated that. Did much better in the second marriage. But then we'd met in group therapy, where I'd gone as soon as the first marriage ended.

[Barmymoo]

I agree, Kat you write beautifully and almost everything you post makes me think carefully and educates me (I have to admit I make an exception for some of the things you post in the drunk thread).

[Papersatan]

Thanks guys.

[Lines]

Way to make me all teary eyed.

[Patrick]

Matt and I had a girls' day out yesterday. By that I mean we went shopping and got out hair cut together, and then went out to the bar.

At the bar, a group of people showed up all dressed in cheesy Christmas clothes, and as I was ordering a beer I complimented them as a group. Soon enough, a really cute girl split from them and we started talking. We got to talking, I got her number, we barhopped together a little bit, and now despite my hangover I can't stop thinking about how cute she is.

After the night's festivities came to a close, Matt and I were both drunk, so we hitched a ride with the bartender Scotty (a dear friend of mine and my Wednesday boss). I was quite pleased to see them getting along so well.

I'm quite the chipper little guy today, guys, even though my head's fucking pounding.

[Thrillho]

Jesus Christ Pat you are like a girl processing machine

[Redball]

Shits, giggles and 80 Euros or more? Sounds worthwhile to me. Your tolerance reminds me of the concluding novel of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy.

[idontunderstand]

Try a new career

[Zingoleb]

I'm back in NY. Greyhound lost my duffel of clothes, and I've had a migraine for three days - two of which I was on a bus.

I'm pretty miserable, all around.

Edit: I've been talking to this person (Kit - she's got the whole 'multiple personality' thing going on as well, so we ended up getting close as I turned to her for help) in England, and we're sort of vaguely partners in a long distance relationship, though she's in this sort of relationship with several other people and I'm fairly sure I rank fairly low in terms of priority. Anyhow - she's come to Amerika and she's traveling around to see her partners/friends, and one person she's seeing lives in Jamestown, NY - where I used to live! So I talk to her, figuring that we might know each other.

Turns out, no, we don't - but she knows my ex, and she lives in my old apartment.

FUCKING WEIRD.

But, no, it gets stranger - right now, Kit's in Boston, staying with someone named Tuttle. I recognise that name - my ex Amelia was close friends with someone named Tuttle in Boston. Is he the same person? Turns out, yes.

My life is so weird.

[Thrillho]

I think my head just exploded, dude.

[Papersatan]

Writing up my part of a group report for a group project in which I did most of the work.  Getting more and more bitter each time I write "we" and really mean "I".

[Welu]

I know that feel all too well.

~ ~

I supervised alone for the first time last night. It went okay I think. The shop didn't burn down overnight and I haven't got any texts or calls saying I screwed up yet. Didn't hit me until I was locking up that I was actually in a position of responsibility.
Went to the staff do after. Was really fun, best of the bunch I've been too even though I missed the dinner. People played in the fountain. I didn't but I watched them while I realized barely drinking for a year has really lowered my tolerance.