April 2005 Archives

We have new curtains! Jakki and I have been laying awake at night because of the brilliant arc-lamp across the street. Today, we decided to make curtains to solve the problem. The blinds would have worked, but the cats tend to bend them trying to get a view out the window. So we went to the fabric store and picked out a neat flamingo and tree pattern. Then we came home and sewed them up-- actually Jakki did all the hard stuff, I just downloaded the sewing machine manual and measured things. Here are some pics of the end result (we are quite proud):

New blog features! Over on the right sidebar on the main page, you should see a place to subscribe (or unsub) from the Notify List. When you subscribe, newly trained monkeys will compose and send you an email with a link to follow to verify your subscription. By virtue of these gifted primates, you can't be subscribed by someone else, and you can't spam other people. Slick huh?

Just remember to send a few bananas the monkeys' way, and you will receive a handy dandy email when my blog is updated-- this will save you EONS of time, as I imagine you sit for hours in front of your computer with my site pulled up, fretfully stabbing your browser's Refresh button, as you await shiny new content. Now you have no excuse for not having a life!

This morning I upgraded my blog installation to MovableType 3.16. Also, it's now running on a MySQL DB instead of the old Berkeley file-based DB. The only thing you should notice is an increase in processing speed when you request dynamic content. Enjoy!

Yesterday afternoon, I accepted a position with Deaconness hospital as a web-based software developer. Yay! This was the job I really wanted-- the team is cool, the work sounds stimulating and it's a bit more altruistic than any of my other jobs. I start a week from today. The offices are up in what used to be the old birthing ward, so they each have their own tiny bathroom and a huge wide door for pushing a gurney through. Neat huh?

In other news, we have a new bird feeder which provides stimulation for us and the cats. I've also been out riding a bit and haven't had any more troubles with quadrupeds-- porcine or otherwise.

So today I had my first crash on my bike since I was about 11. I've been riding around the house for a little while now, my hope is to get in enough shape to go down to the park near the river. Today I went the full length of Wellesley, down past Freya to a steep windy hill that curves up past a run down farm. They had cattle, hogs and chickens. As I was slowly making my way up the hill, I rounded a bend and on the other side of the road stood a pig-- just out in the open, not in a pen or anything. He was about the size of a cocker spaniel. And he was looking right at me. I coasted to a stop and decided I'd gone far enough.

I began to turn around (this was a narrow one-lane road). Just then, the pig lowered his head and charged me, all the while making angry pig noises. I started turning around from uphill to downhill, and with panic rising, I began to ratchet the grip shifter to a faster gear. I was also running out of road. While trying to keep an eye on the rapidly closing swine, I got the front wheel off the road into the soft gravel and it started to skid. So I gracelessly folded the bike over to the left, nailing my knee, elbow and somehow grinding the knuckles on my right hand.

Now, for those of you who are related to me and have had enough of my health problems, stand down the armed forces: I'm totally fine. I repeat: I'm fine. Jakki put hydrogen peroxide on the scrapes and I took an Advil. Anyway, back to the story...

So there I was, laying on a road with my bike mostly on top of me, looking back at a charging pig. He abruptly stopped and held my gaze for a moment. Then he gave a derisive little snort and trotted back up the hill to survey his domain. For those keeping track with our home game, the scroe is: Pig one, me zero. So I got back up, examined the bike for damage and headed home, stopping to call Jakki to relate this story.

So how's that for a strange Saturday afternoon?