Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, PA

The Aaron Burr House

Pictures from my trip to New Hope, PA for my friends' wedding is up at my yahoo photos page.

For you Californians, this is what a river looks like:


It's the Delaware River, which separates Pennsylvania and New Jersey, go figure. This, btw, is the South Jersey shore of the Delaware.
No sign of Dr. Weird.

No More Wookie Defense

In this world, anyway. Johnnie Cochran has died of a brain tumor at 67. [article]

Loving new toy

Click to enlarge (warning this is a very large file).
Wow. The more I learn how to use this thing, the more I like it. The above image was taken at 800 ISO and is not very noisy (although it might be harder to tell that with the JPEG that I generated). So I can take better pictures indoors with crappy indoor light and no flash. Yay! No flash! The higher shutter speed is awesome too. I did a quick study of Puck washing himself (which I shall spare you) and got off several shots in a row that I never would have gotten with the point and shoot because it can't take pictures that fast (in single shot mode). And I still basically don't know what I'm doing, so the sky's the limit with this thing! Now to get back to the work that I should be doing.

The Second Coming

Of the ham, that is. Turned out pretty well, I guess. The glaze wasn't as satisfying (to me) as the last one. Folks seemed to enjoy it well enough, though, since about 2/3 of it disappeared in the course of the evening. I had a bunch of friends over, some of whom had never been to my place before. Hopefully they will return. As it was a potluck sort of affair I got to eat lots of other people's yummy food. Tummy is happy. We went through 4 bottles of wine, so I count it as a reasonably successful evening. :-) I have a few pictures up at yahoo photo in the Easter 2005 album for those who are interested. Most of the pictures were taken by other people, but I got a few in. I like the candle picture.

A New Era

Gentlemen, I give you: The EOS Digital Rebel XT. Eight megapixels of SLR goodness. Now I'll be able to get better wide angle and zoom shots. Hooray! Best of all (well, maybe not best) it uses the same CF cards and batteries that my Powershot does.

Scientists Find Soft Tissue In Dinosaur Bones

Ooh. Ah. That's how it starts. Then there's running. And screaming.

Scientists have found what they believe to be the soft tissues of a T. Rex inside a leg bone that was split open. This would be unprecedented for remains this old. And of course, now we can make a dinosaur theme park based on cloned dinosaurs. [article]

Lucifer Website

I was wondering around on Neil Gaiman's blog and I found a reference to the Lucifer website which is for one of the comics I like. I found out (among other things) that Mike Carey, the guy who writes for Lucifer and some of the Hellblazer comics is also doing comic adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Woot!

Back Again

So the next day I had breakfast at the B&B, then second breakfast with some friends from college in NJ. After I saw them off I hung out with Fred and Liza the rest of the day and got to see a little more of New Hope (which does, it turns out, possess a drug store and grocery store, which I was starting to wonder about) and Lambertville. After yet another splendid dinner, I headed back to the Aaron Burr house to pack up and get into bed for an early bedtime since my flight was at 7am in Philly (which is about an hour away). Didn't sleep well that night. Got up at 4am, cleaned up, and moved out. Had a nice drive through the rain in the early morning darkness. Flight back was reasonable, although I had a two hour layover in DFW (Bush country). Thanks to my friend Noelle, I had a ride home where the kitties seemed happy to see me and hadn't caused too much destruction. Crashed for a few hours to catch up on my sleep. It's been a much needed break to get out of town. I didn't really think about work for the past four days. Now I get to see what horrors await me there.

New Hope

I've just spent about 24 hours in beautiful New Hope,PA. It's right across the river from New Jersey. You can literally walk there from where I'm staying, The Aaron Burr House. It's a wonderful old victorian built on top of the remains of the colonial era house where Aaron Burr hid out in Pennsylvania when he was wanted for murder in New York and New Jersey. I've never stayed at a bed and breakfast before, but I would recommend this one. The innkeeper, EJ is very friendly and attentive. The room is nice and priced reasonably (about $115 a night). And you get breakfast in the morning! How cool is that? :-) New Hope is a pleasant little town with lots of antique shops, restaurants, and other touristy areas. Curiously enough, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are separated by the Delaware river. Go figure. There's lots of historical stuff to see in the area. Washington bivouacked there during the Revolutionary War with some of his troops and there's a spot down the road called Washington's Crossing. Yes, that Washington's Crossing. Lots of brick buildings from various architectural periods, which makes me happy. It has been cool, but not really cold out. Good spring weather. Oh, and there was that smell at night, which is really hard to describe if you've never lived in a cold weather area before. The air is cold and pregnant with moisture which has almost a sweet odor. I remember it from New England in the spring before the snow had melted away. I haven't smelled that in a long time.

<time passes> Well, Fred is married now. Actually, he was married before, but the "reenactment" is over with. Met his lovely bride Liza at long last, along with a zillion relatives, friends, and hangers on. The men in the wedding party wore kilts, which was kinda funny. The ceremony was nice and of a reasonable length. Met some other mutual friends whom I hadn't seen in a while. Oh! I won a prize, which was funny, because I don't usually think of weddings as places where one wins prizes. Fred wanted to make the wedding a little more fun. So on the back of the wedding invitation was a weird little jumble of characters,

tb gb jjj qbg ibepx qbg pbz fynfu jrqqvat fynfu ebg13 qbg ugzy
Hint: Caesar cipher

which turns out to be rot-13 of the url: http://www.vorck.com/wedding/rot13.html After a little sleuthing I guessed that the solution to the jumble was OHURGH, which of course meant nothing to me. Google cheerfully asked if I meant CHURCH, which seemed plausible (The box for the first letter turns out to be in the wrong place and my guess about the next to last letter was wrong.). After thinking about it and a couple visits to an anagram generator and google I figured out that the next clue was at Saint Andrews Episcopal church at 50 York Street in Lambertsville, NJ. So, before the pre-wedding luncheon (which was delicious, btw), I took a stroll over the bridge to Lambertsville and looked under the sign to find the code word: octothorpe. Turns out I was the first (only?) person to solve the puzzle and take the trip. So I got a gift card to Borders! Woo hoo! Anyway, it was an awesome day. I had a delicious lunch, a nice ramble through two towns, a beautiful wedding, an open wet bar, and a great party afterwards. Good times. Pictures later.

I knew it!

I read in the paper this morning that the genome in women differs from that of men by as much as 2%. This is the same as the difference between humans and their nearest animal relative: chimpanzees. This confirms what I have suspected: women are an entirely different species from men. Interestingly, women can differ genomically as much between themselves as they do from men. Which I guess is why women think all men are the same. :-)

O'Hare Again

So, here I am in O'Hare again. Unlike Jack, the airports of the world have not blended into one another for me. I'm in terminal H this time, which is a new thing. Found my way to one of the food courts, which is not unlike going to a mall. This terminal really sucks for power outlets, unfortunately. But if you need Starbucks, this is the place for you! Seems like they have one every 50 feet or so. Still tired from last night. The flight from SJ to Chicago was good, by which I mean that I slept about 3 hours on the plane. Hoping to get a few winks in on the way to Philadelphia.

Yay! Wererabbit!

Yay! Wallace and Gromit Movie! Yay! Coming out in October. Ah, there is some good in life!

The Dentist

So I went to the dentist for a routine cleaning and the hygienist who's cleaning my teeth notes that my gums are not looking so hot. So I get the lecture about how it's important to take care of my teeth, yadda, yadda, yadda. Then I had to stifle a laugh when she asked if I've been under any stress lately. Uh, yeah, a little. I don't think making me worry about my teeth is going to reduce my stress, though. Of course as soon as I got to work afterwards I already had a message asking me to look at some new problem and could I give a status report as soon as possible. Sigh.

William Orbit.com

So, I was watching the movie Heat on cable and I noticed that there are a couple of William Orbit songs in it, so I went to Amazon.com looking to see if maybe there are any new pieces. Then, on a whim, I went to williamorbit.com. OMG! I love this site. It makes me indescribably happy. And you can't underestimate how important that is to me right now. Check out the New/Unreleased music section! I can only hope that some of this makes its way out into the world.

NIN

Nine Inch Nails are playing the Warfield 4/27-28. Tickets go on sale this weekend.

Cool Video

I caught this video by The Bravery (WMP required) tonight and thought it was pretty cool. Seems to really want a lot of bandwidth on their website, though. Cool song, too. It is, as my friend Aki would say, in the style of Franz Ferdinand. Disco rythyms with sparse 80s guitar and synths seem to be popular again.

Slow Simmer

I must be getting more sleep because I have reached the state where I am starting to notice my surroundings again. This is unfortunate, because what I notice mostly is that any number of people in my immediate vicinity are filling me with the urge to screeeeeeeam: Dude! What are you thinking???? I just do not want to deal with people any more. I need a frickin vacation or something.

I don't want to go out.
I just want to stay in.