Jesus christ in a chicken basket. Coachella has posted their final lineup list. I think I'm going to die from excitement. Here's a highlight of the acts that make me giddy like a schoolgirl (with an appropriate number of exclamation marks denoting just how much I'm going to wet my pants when they come on stage):
Beastie Boys
The Donnas
Gomez
Ladytron
Nightmares on Wax(!!)
Amon Tobin(!!!!!)
Ben Kweller(!)
Underworld
Thievery Corporation(!)
Sonic Youth(!!!!!!)
Tortoise(!!!!!)
Ben Folds
Mouse on Mars
Black Eyed Peas
I neglected to mention that a while ago Mr. Wood returned from the Alternative Press Expo with an autographed BtAF book for meeeee. I thought that I'd celebrate by posting the latest Bob strip, which I found delicious.
(PS - this image might break the page layout, but resizing it not an option Bob would approve of)
Impulse buys are the best. Within the last week I've bought entirely new gubbins for my computer (new m/b, cpu, ram, and case) and a bed. But not just any bed. This is the cadillac of beds. Simply touching it makes you feel all comfy and sleepy. Please enjoy the two pictures following this post. The first is of Dianna, who accidentally touched the bed and was sucked into its black hole of comfiness. The second is of something vitally important. UNDER the bed. As in, we have one. I lived with a mattress on the floor for so many years, I really appreciate a good underbed. Note the box (it's a dremel) to the right of the underbed. That's evidence of the stuff I've already begun to shove into the underbed. I *heart* underbed.
Plus, now that the bed's so high, Bella won't be able to dump root beer all over it.
Oh yeah. And life wouldn't be complete without a seemingly irrelevant picture.
I don't want to jinx it, but this is just too exciting to pass up mentioning. Doug Turnbull, of The A$$ Merchants and Fruit fame, may soon have a blog right here on Cement Horizon.
In other news, I just bought a whole new set of gubbins for my computer. After the various freebies they chucked my way, I ended up with precisely one gigahertz ("1.21 GIGAWATTS!?!?") more processing power than before. But somehow performance seems to have actually decreased.
Damn you, Windows XP. You are a fickle friend.
I'd like to wish Jason lots of luck in getting through this winter storm. My parents just sent me an update, and they were forced to shovel hip-deep snow just to get out the door, then shovel a larger area so that the dogs could make dog water.
Jason, If you can read this (assuming that the internet connection hasn't frozen solid), I recommend that you stave off cabin fever by talking to your uncle's dogs. But don't let them push you around. They can shovel their own damn potty-area.
AT&T online customer service representatives are the slowest typers EVER. Which is pretty odd, considering their job consists of nothing but typing things into a chat window all day. You'd think that after a few weeks they'd be up to at least 60wpm. But no...I've been "talking" to one guy about adding long distance to our two new lines for the last 30 minutes. The conversation amounts to me firing a line off to him, then switching to another window and browsing about for a few minutes. Every once in a while I check the chat window, see that he still hasn't replied, and go back to what I was doing.
Either he's talking to 10 people at once, or he's actually a yak. Yaks have hooves instead of hands, so it must be incredibly hard for him to type without mashing all the keys at once. I can almost see "Kasey B", the hyper-intelligent yak customer service representative, delicately using the very tip of his hooves to pick out each letter in his response to me.
Kasey B, I salute your perseverance. Some day you'll make it big in our frustrating finger-oriented human world.
Bus, we are now at war. I may not strike today. I may not strike tomorrow. But you'll get what's coming to you soon enough.
This morning I let Bella outside for the first time in six months. She stood on the doorstep for a good 30 seconds, poking her head this way and that, meowing faintly. She finally took a few steps outside and walked down the back stairs almost to the yard. But then turned right around and scratched at the door to get back inside.
I don't understand. She used to spend 10-12 hours a day outside, loving every second. Now she doesn't want to touch dirt with a ten foot pole. There's only one word for this....FRAIDYCAT.
Perhaps someone more expert can help me with this problem (Gene, I'm looking in your direction). I'm trying to get these huge text files (400k+) that contain protein structure data from a database. And on every computer other than my laptop it works just fine. But on the laptop (where I would like to do the scripting to analyze these files) I get WEIRD corruption. I put "weird" in all caps because the corruption isn't really corruption; it's actually other biology-related files getting shoved into the middle of the files. Sometimes it's just garbage, other times I see jpeg headers, other times I get recognizable HTML, and just now I got this:
ANISOU 1218 CA LEU 149 3023 1585 4175 660 -2490 -1142 C
ATOM 1219 C LEU 149 5.766 24.044 -4.775 1.00 19.66 C
ANISOU 1219 C LEU 149 2736 1390 3343 254 -2017 -701 C
ATOM 1220 O LEU 149 5.081 23.727 -3.800 1.00 23.03 O
ANISOU 1220 O LEU 149 2483 1525 4741 9 -1704 485 O
ATOM 1221 Cical interest, such as
G-Protein Coupled Receptors. These products and technologies can bring about
breakthrough improvements in the drug discovery process and drastically
reduce both cost and time outlay by optimizing target choice and lead
design.
We have the following career opportunities available:
Senior Research Scientist/Research Scientist Synthetic Organic Chemistry:
You will be responsible for the R&D efforts in synthetic organic chemistry,
and the management of the lab. You will interact clmone98 -8.183 1.00 35.64 C
ANISOU 1224 CD2 LEU 149 6442 1634 5463 655 376 374 C
ATOM 1225 N GLY 150 5.763 25.244 -5.290 1.00 16.01 N
ANISOU 1225 N GLY 150 1874 1481 2727 305 -1072 -688 N
ATOM 1226 CA GLY 150 4.887 26.307 -4.878 1.00 13.54 C
ANISOU 1226 CA GLY 150 1500 1444 2199 90 -661 -304 C
Everything except what's in bold is exactly right. But this weird shit keeps popping up, both on the work connection and here at home. But not with any other database/page I really want to use. I'm so confused. But mainly frustrated. This is the weirdest shit I've ever seen.
Oh yeah. The drummer for the Red Elvises left and now they're not coming to San Francisco. My sorrow knows no bounds. I'm currently crying into my beer (laptop) and listening to the Six String Samurai soundtrack.
I write to you now from the safety of my own home. No more only-at-work internet access for me. No, sir. Now I can be late for the bus every morning. Damn you, internet. Damn you to hell.
And now for the story of the moving-day fiasco.
But, of course, nothing ever works the way you want it to.
Actual Moving Fiasco
8:00 -- Pick up truck and start packing it.
12:00 -- Take a break from packing my apartment. While eating a snack, I glance at my rental contract. In small print it mentions that I only have the truck until 2:00.
12:05 -- There's no way we can make it. Freak out.
12:06 -- Call U-Haul to sort out this innocent misunderstanding. They let me know that I can keep the truck for as long as I want, but it will cost me $100 for every 2 hours it's past due.
12:07 -- It will take at least 3 hours to pack/unpack a minimal load of our stuff. Freak out.
12:10 -- Incredible packing frenzy. I somehow manage to manhandle my dresser and bookshelf into the back of the truck single-handedly.
12:30 -- Attempt to close up truck so that I can drive it (quickly) to Dianna's house. Loading ramp becomes stuck, refusing to go in or out. A quick look under the truck reveals that a weld has broken off the ramp, separating it from the wheeled dolly.
12:35 -- Now the truck will be 5 hours late. I'm going to be driven into the poorhouse. Freak out.
12:40 -- Jason calls and lets me know he can't come out and visit before his flight leaves. Now I'm both freaking out and very, very sad.
12:45 -- Call U-Haul's emergency breakdown line. They let me know that a mechanic will call me within an hour to let me know when he can come fix the truck.
12:50 -- A great peace falls over me. I realize that there is no way in hell that I will ever get the truck back in time. All need to worry has been lifted, because now there's nothing I can do at all. I'm still sad because I don't get to see Jason one last time.
1:00 -- A nasty series of calls to U-Haul puts them in their place. I convince the fuckfaces that their mechanic won't be out to fix the truck until 4:00, so they give me an extension until closing (7:00pm).
3:30 -- The most snaggle-toothed tow-truck driver I have ever seen shows up to fix the truck. He has me hand him a giant green crowbar. Things get bashed. I'm practically jumping up and down, hoping that he asks me to give the goddamn truck a few good thumps. Sadly, though, he fixes the ramp without breaking the truck's soul.
3:50 - 6:30 -- Moving continues uneventfully. The truck is returned on time.
7:00 - 9:00 -- Unpack. I notice that a herd of turtles seem to have taken residence under the skin of my upper back. No, those are muscle knots. My legs have large incipient bruises, making me look like the victim of a midget-beating. Blissful sleep.
Moving was a near-nightmare and now Jason's gone so I'm sad. But all's well that ends well (except for Jason being gone).
More on all of that later. Right now, I need to let everyone know that Interpol is playing at The Fillmore on Feb. 15th and 16th at 8pm for $17.50. I think the show on the 15th is sold out, but who wants to go on the 16th? Can you resist the awesome power of Interpol? I thought not.
