Omphaloskepsis  -

+ 2 - 5 | § ¶A return to normalcy

Tomorrow morning, I should be back at work. This is a good thing. . . (more)

+ 5 - 1 | § ¶Dynamic Tuesday

Tuesday was a rather dynamic day, from feeling horrible to feeling great and back again. . . (more)

+ 5 - 1 | § ¶West Wing Weekend

(It's really more of West Wing Day, but WWW is a better acronym, so I went with that. :-) )

When I woke up Sunday morning, I found that I had been having a dream about The West Wing... or at least about Jed Bartlett as a kid. I dreamt that he was trying to convince his mother about something school-related, and she wasn't buying it. I can't remember much more than that at this point.

Sunday afternoon, I found that a local station was airing WW repeats, specifically the last two episodes of the second season. As an interesting coincidence, these episodes featured flashbacks to Jed's youth, though the actor who played Young Jed didn't look at all like the one in my dream.

Sunday evening as I was chatting with Marty, I realized that Bravo had skipped two episodes from the fifth season, and was planning to skip one more this week, in their daily repeats. The three episodes are "Abu el Banat" (which might be a Christmas episode?), which should've been between "Shutdown" and "The Stormy Present"; "The Supremes" (about nominees for the Supreme Court), which should've aired before last week's documentaryesque "Access"; and this week's "No Exit" (which is about a contamination alert at the White House), which should air between "Talking Points" and "Gaza".

Now, for the Christmas episode (if that's what it is), I suppose I can understand holding that back for a more timely airing, but I wonder why the other two were removed from the lineup. It's not as though they needed to rush through them in order to get them all aired before the sixth season starts on NBC, since that won't be until October 20. Ah well.

davidh

+ 5 - 2 | § ¶My Upcoming Week, Sept. 27-Oct. 3

Monday

Work

7th Heaven

Everwood

CSI: Miami: "Pro Per"

The West Wing: "Talking Points"

Tuesday

Work

Phone call about Dad

(perhaps) NCIS: "See No Evil" (season premiere; new title)

(perhaps) Father of the Pride

(perhaps) The West Wing: "Gaza"

(perhaps) Psi Phi: Constitutional Reform Committee (on-line)

Wednesday

Work

(perhaps) Smallville: "Gone"

(perhaps) CSI: NY: "Creatures of the Night"

(perhaps) Psi Phi meeting

(perhaps) The West Wing: "Memorial Day"

Thursday

Work

Survivor

Presidential Debate on C-SPAN

(perhaps) The West Wing: "Isaac and Ishmael"

Friday

Work

Odyssey 5: "Begotten" and "Vanishing Point" (series resumes) (tape delay)

Joan of Arcadia: "Out of Sight"

JAG: "Corporate Raiders"

Saturday

Lost: First two episodes re-edited as TV movie (maybe tape delay)

Dinner with Ed, Chuck, and Nick

Sunday

Church

(perhaps?) Jack and Bobby

Boston Legal (series premiere) (Star Trek's William Shatner, Stargate's James Spader)

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davidh

+ 4 - 3 | § ¶Getting caught up

I got a bit behind on blogging the past few days. I had a lot of stuff to write about the Psi Phi Reunion, which took quite a while, since I didn't really have much time during the Reunion itself. The first two posts (about September 16 and 17) were posted on Monday, and the other two (about September 18 and 19) were posted on Wednesday. I backdated the entries to their respective days, though, so it looks like a slow week so far. Therefore, I'll catch up on what's been going on recently. . . (more)

+ 4 - 3 | § ¶My Surrounding Week, Sept. 20-26

Monday

Robert and Cat depart

Wake up

Peter to the airport

Work

(missed) 7th Heaven

Everwood

CSI: Miami: "Lost Son" (season premiere)

Joel F., Lyz, and Landon over

The West Wing: "An Khe" (on tape)

Tuesday

Work

Supper with Dad

(missed) Last Comic Standing

(saw part of) Father of the Pride

The West Wing: "Full Disclosure"

Wednesday

Work

Smallville: "Crusade" (season premiere)

CSI: NY: "Blink" (pilot episode)

Psi Phi meeting

The West Wing: "Eppur Si Muove" (on tape)

Thursday

Work

Survivor

CSI: CSI: "Viva Las Vegas" (season premiere)

The West Wing: "Access"

Friday

Work

Jeremiah: "Interregnum, Part I" and "Interregnum, Part II" (series finale) (tape delay)

Joan of Arcadia: "Only Connect" (season premiere)

JAG: "Going After Webb" (season premiere)

Saturday

No specific plans

Sunday

Church

(perhaps?) Jack and Bobby

Things that did not happen, things that will not happen, and things that may or may not happen are not included here.

davidh

+ 1 - 5 | § ¶Psi Phi Reunion: Day 3

Sunday morning, Peter and I went to my church. Unfortunately, rather than pastor preaching a message as usual, this week someone from the Illinois Baptist State Association came and basically gave a big advertisement for mission work, so Peter didn't really get the traditional Baptist experience. Alas.

Anyway, we got back around 12:30 and I called Jim (who's not a Psi Phi member) to let him know to meet us for the 1:35 showing of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow at the Rave Theater, then we went over to the Student Center Ballroom to see who else was coming, and who needed rides. Only seven people eventually decided to see the movie (me, Peter, Jon, Don, Ray, Kenny, and Joel O., IIRC), so we carpooled up there and got in a couple minutes before the movie started. There were a few previews (I remember one for the first Lemony Snicket movie; I don't recall the rest), then the movie got started. It was a very different movie, but I really, really liked it.

After the movie, I took everybody on a little detour to my place so I could search for some additional computer parts. (It turned out they were in the Psi Phi office the whole time, so the only practical outcome is that it took us a little longer to get back to campus, and I got beverages for everybody.)

Got back, put on some tunes (the soundtrack for Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone), and played my first game of Geekk. In the several games I played, I don't think I ever got my own card. But I did win one game, by playing four cards in a row... the first was the one that requires you to play all your cards (in whatever order you prefer) (a By-Law card); the second was "Joel" (a Geek card); the third was "Duel of the Joels" (a mission card); the last was the one that let me discard a player's Geek in play (a Report card). I initially discarded "Joel", which would've made Kenny win, but I corrected my mistake and discarded Kenny's "Anti-Joel" card... that put "Anti-Joel" into the discard pile, and I won with "Joel". Go me! (Well... Go me after fixing a silly mistake!, anyway.)

We watched a few MST3Kizations of bad movies, including one with Ernest Borgnine which I can only assume was made because somebody saw how successful The Princess Bride was, and thought "This movie obvious succeeded because it has a framing story about a grandfather telling a story to his grandson; let's make a movie with that same setup."

I also made an Avanti's run to pick up some lunch... got a large spaghetti, but I forgot to pick up any plasticware, so I had to borrow some silverware from the Student Center cafeteria. Also spent a little time just chatting with people. That was good.

After the Student Center closed, Peter and I returned home, and we watched the episode of Stargate: Atlantis from Friday night. Robert and Cat came back during the show, so they watched most of it. Peter went to bed and the rest of us watched Stargate: SG-1. We chatted for a while longer, then I went up to bed.

davidh

+ 3 - 3 | § ¶Psi Phi Reunion: Day 2

Saturday was the centerpiece (and centerday) of the entire Reunion. In total, there were 37 people there, with 8 having been out of the club for over one year, and 11 being new members this or last semester. . . (more)

+ 2 - 5 | § ¶Psi Phi Reunion: Day 1

On Friday, I went to work as usual, leaving Peter at my house. When I got home, it was still intact, as was he, so it seems this was not a mistake. :-)

Lyz picked up the Reunion T-shirts from A Cute Tee during the afternoon.

We went over to the Student Center at Bradley around 7pm, where Lyz was passing out nametags, so that people from different eras could identify one another. Also present among the out-of-towners were Robert and Cat, Kenny, Ray, Joel F. and Becky, and Gordo. We divided ourselves into the available cars and headed out to Steak 'n Shake (which I've been mispunctuating in my blog as "Steak 'n' Shake" for quite a while; Kristen pointed out that the middle letter has only a leading apostrophe, not a trailing one, so it doesn't actually stand for "Steak and Shake", but maybe something like "Steak in Shake"--but I digress).

We had a whole bunch of tables in a row and had a great time. Jeff showed up around, oh, maybe 8:30 or 9:00. Laura, Scott, and Laura's brother Andrew arrived a little before 10:00. Altogether, there were (IIRC) 23 people there at the end of the evening.

Peter, Robert, Cat, and I went back to my place, where we reminisced about old times, caught each other up on recent events (the hurricanes in Florida got a lot of attention, as Charlie and Frances both went through Polk County, where Robert and Cat live), and had a wild game of round-robin free association, which caused us to stay up entirely too late.

davidh

+ 4 - 3 | § ¶Psi Phi Reunion: Day 0

[This and the next four entries are all backdated, since I was too busy and/or tired during the Reunion itself to have much time for blogging. I actually wrote them Monday, September 20.]

Though the Psi Phi Reunion didn't officially start until Friday, my first real reunion was with Peter, whom I picked up at the airport around 10pm and took back to my place. While at the airport waiting for Peter to arrive, I unexpectedly ran into Colin, who actually visited a Psi Phi meeting once, but I didn't invite him to the Reunion because I don't think he would've really been that interested. Colin is working at the airport now.

We got home, got his laptop configured for the network (I never cancelled my second IP address when Joel moved out, thinking I might have a need for it at some point; turns out I did), and watched a couple episodes of Sealab 2021. We talked for a while, he went to bed, I confirmed plans with Robert Ray, and then I went to bed.

davidh

+ 2 - 5 | § ¶Tonight and the next few days...

My house is going to be rather full over the next few days. Tonight, I'll be picking Peter up at the airport. Tomorrow, Robert and Cat will arrive, driving in from O'Hare in Chicago.

Then the fun begins, starting with dinner at Steak 'n' Shake Friday night; continuing Saturday with lunch at Culver's, performances by Psi Phi alumni, and a dinner meeting; and concluding on Sunday with an away mission to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. There will also be much fun in between.

There will be several people there that I haven't seen in many years. In fact, I will probably be the only person who knows everybody there.

I'm really looking forward to this... I can hardly wait!

davidh

+ 5 - 3 | § ¶NCHS Class of 1994 Reunion

So I went to my second ten-year high school reunion of the year. This time, it was for the high school I actually graduated from, Normal Community High School. . . (more)

+ 4 - 4 | § ¶My Upcoming Week, Sept. 13-19

Monday

Work

(perhaps?) 7th Heaven -- season premiere

(perhaps?) Everwood -- season premiere

The West Wing: "The Stormy Present"

Tuesday

Work

Last Comic Standing

Father of the Pride

(perhaps?) Rated R: Republicans in Hollywood -- on AMC

The West Wing: "The Benign Prerogative"

Wednesday

Work

The West Wing: "Slow News Day"

Psi Phi meeting

Thursday

Work

Psi Phi Reunion T-shirts get picked up

Survivor -- season premiere

The West Wing: "The Warfare of Genghis Khan"

Pick Peter up at airport

Friday

Work

Jeremiah: "The Face in the Mirror" and "State of the Union" (tape delay)

Stargate: Atlantis: "The Storm" (last episode before hiatus) (tape delay)

Stargate SG-1: "End Game" (last episode before hiatus) (tape delay)

Robert and Cat arrive

Psi Phi Reunion: Dinner at Steak 'n' Shake

Saturday

No specific TV plans

Psi Phi Reunion: lunch at Culver's, other plans TBA, dinner meeting

Sunday

Church

Psi Phi Reunion: perhaps Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, other plans TBA

No specific TV plans

TV shows and events which did not RSVP by the deadline are not included in this list.

davidh

+ 4 - 3 | § ¶Three years ago...

...I had just gotten off the elevator at work and was on my way into the office, when Byron saw me and told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Not being that familiar with New York City landmarks (actually, I'm not even sure if I knew that the WTC was in NYC at that point in the day), the statement didn't have much of an impact on me (no pun intended).

I went in and sat down at my desk, checking E-mail and the news sites before I started my day. I found it rather odd that I couldn't connect to any of of the usual news sites, but it wasn't until I got an AIM from John Ordover, asking me to post at the Psi Phi boards that he and the other folks at Pocket Books were alright, that I thought of checking out the portals (which collect news, weather, sports, and other stuff, but which aren't usually a go-to place for news), and I was shocked at what I found. Two planes had hit the tallest buildings in the US. As I moved from one website to the next, more reports came in: One of the towers had collapsed; the Pentagon had been hit--The Pentagon!; the other one had collapsed... perhaps tens of thousands had perished in an instant. Different sites had conflicting information, and just to try to figure it all out, I started making a little chart about which sites gave which times and which flights. They grounded all planes, but reports came in about planes not responding, headed toward D.C. or New York or Chicago.

The president of the company called in from a conference in Florida, and he said that we could go home if we wanted to. I couldn't get any work done; paranoid as it might seem, I realized that I was sitting just a block away from the world headquarters of a major manufacturing company, and if whoever was behind this wanted to pick more economic and symbolic targets throughout the country, that might well be one of their options. I went outside and waited for the bus that came around 11:15... while waiting, I saw that there were a number of extra deputies and police around the federal courthouse. I got home around 11:45.

When I got home, I went downstairs, where Aaron already had the TV on the news. He was talking to Ed on the phone about what was going on. I sat on the couch and watched the TV, changing back and forth from CNN to ABC, Fox News to PBS, MSNBC to C-SPAN. The collapses of the two towers, smoke and dust rushing down the street, people running away and hiding, were probably the scenes that scared me the most. Shots of the aftermath, layers of dust over everything, car alarms the only thing breaking the silence, were the most eerie.

It was around 3:30 when Aaron suggested going to get something to eat. I don't think I'd had any breakfast that day, but I wasn't at all hungry. Still, I knew that I should get away from the television for a while. We went out to Hometown Buffet and got some lunch. It was fairly empty, but I remember overhearing someone at a nearby table mention that they saw gas stations raising their prices. On the way back home, I saw places selling it for $4.00 a gallon, with lines of cars stretching down the block.

I drove Aaron to work and kept his car (as I occasionally did those days), and I sat in one of those lines for thirty or forty-five minutes to get the gas tank filled up. It was only $1.999 a gallon there, but that was still about twenty-five bucks. I know, probably not the best idea, but if everyone else was making a run on the gas stations, I didn't want to be left without any when they ran out.

I spent a lot of time on the computer chatting with people. A few of the comments from the day (names removed):

me: I had to leave work around 11am today... I just couldn't concentrate on anything.
[person 1]: I had really wished I had a job today, just so I'd have something to do.
----
me: I doubt it would start a world war, but I suspect that in the next few days there will be a Middle East war.
----
[person 2]: Well, it doesn't feel right to wish you a good day. I am not sure what to say before I leave.
me: You can wish me peaceful rest. I don't know that I will be able to sleep but I will try.

davidh

+ 3 - 4 | § ¶Referer spam attack!

I'm getting pretty annoyed about the guy who's using various computers in Poland, Taiwan, France, Japan, and Chicago to attack my blog to make his pedophilic website show up in the referer list at the side of the page. I'm guessing that he is using ordinary people's PCs which have been compromised by viruses sent through E-mail to generate these attacks, since many of the IP names include "dsl" somewhere in them.

Fortunately, Pivot (the software that runs this blog) has the capability to filtering domains from ever being included there, so the site is never going to show up, but it just frustrates me that he keeps trying. Sometimes it's every few minutes; sometimes they're a couple hours apart, but they just keep coming.

davidh

+ 5 - 1 | § ¶Grab Bag

Here's what's been going on with me recently...

I was a lazy bum on Monday (Don't Labor Day), and I did practically nothing. That was nice. Tuesday I worked (training class). That was nice, too. Wednesday I worked (back at the office), then I did Psi Phi stuff. That was also nice. As you can see, I'm running out of synonyms. :-)

After the Psi Phi meeting, a few of us went up to the Psi Phi office to discuss the Reunion. I thought there were going to be more people there (several people expressed interest during the meeting that they would want to discuss it afterward), but there were only four people other than me. We made decisions about food and some other things.

After that meeting, I spent about an hour talking to "Roo", who had come to his first Psi Phi meeting that night. He was very interested in how I had the psiphi.org webserver set up, how he could set up his own webserver, whether PHP or Perl was "better", the differences between WinXP and Linux in terms of networking and process control, how DNS works, and various and sundry other computer-related topics. I didn't get home until nearly 1am, and then I chatted with Marty on-line for another couple hours about such mathematical subjects as the isomorphism of donuts as it relates to the Poincaré Conjecture. There was a whole lotta geeky talk going on last night. :-)

Oh, and I also got the Red vs. Blue season 2 DVD from Eric at the Reunion meeting; I'll probably watch that tonight (since the only other thing on that I'm planning to watch is The West Wing).

That's about it for now. More updates later.

davidh

+ 4 - 2 | § ¶Reunion Plans

Here's where the Psi Phi Reunion currently stands. . . [Last updated 9/16]

(more)

+ 4 - 3 | § ¶My Upcoming Week, Sept. 6-12

Monday

No work -- Don't Labor Day

The West Wing: "Constituency of One"

(perhaps?) The WB Insider -- A preview of this fall's returning and new series on the WB

Tuesday

Work

Last Comic Standing

Father of the Pride

The West Wing: "Disaster Relief"

Wednesday

Work

The West Wing: "Separation of Powers"

The Drew Carey Show -- two new episodes, incl. series finale

Psi Phi meeting

Thursday

Work

The West Wing: "Shutdown"

Friday

Work

Jeremiah: "The Question" and "The Past is Prologue"

Stargate: Atlantis: "Home"

Stargate SG-1: "Sacrifices"

Saturday

NCHS Class of 1994 Reunion at The Chateau (formerly Jumer's)

No specific TV plans

Sunday

Church

No specific TV plans

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davidh

+ 4 - 2 | § ¶Virtual Movement

Moving seems to be a theme this week. Yesterday, psiphi.org was moved from one machine to another, faster, hopefully more reliable server. I'm still going through Dave Galanter's ComicBoards.com, just with a different service provider. This means that "psiphi.org" E-mail should work more reliably now, and the site should respond more quickly as well.

Interestingly, although the shell server has Lynx installed, it is set o-rwx, so I can't run the installed version. It seems rather odd to have this on the machine but not usable... I'll have to check with Dave to see if that can be enabled. If not, I'll just have to download and compile my own version.

I know that one reply was lost in the move... it was posted yesterday afternoon, between the time the backup of the site was made and the time the change was made. I don't know who it was from or what topic it was about, though. Whoever you were, if you'd like to post whatever it was again, please do.

In other news...

We had a very successful Psi Phi New Member Meeting on Wednesday. There were a total of 33 people there: 15 new, 18 returning. One of the new people's cell phones rang during the meeting, but seeing as the ringtone was the theme from The X-Files, we forgave her. :-)

The training class is going well. The sessions are pretty much self-paced, and there are techies available for stuff that I don't understand (or that the documentation fails to explain clearly).

Jeremiah finally begins its final eight episodes tonight. Fortunately, the Stargates are in repeats this week, but next week, it'll be Jeremiah x 2, followed by Atlantis, then SG-1. When Joan of Arcadia and JAG start up September 24th, things are going to get even more complex, and then when Odyssey 5's last few episodes air on Showtime on Fridays throughout October and Enterprise starts on October 8th... well, I may just have to borrow several VCRs for a few weeks. :-)

After this long weekend (hooray for Don't Labor Day!), it'll be three weeks before my next open weekend. Next Saturday is the NCHS Class of 1994 Reunion in Normal, and the following weekend is the Psi Phi Reunion, which will have stuff going on from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Peter and Robert will both be staying at my place for the latter event.

davidh

+ 3 - 3 | § ¶Movin', movin', movin' / Plus some TV viewin' / Motives misconstruin' / Rawhide!

Last night, I assisted in getting Lyz and Landon moved into their new apartment. Several of us gathered at the Student Center around 9:30pm, and headed off to her place from there. When it was mentioned that we were going to be walking there, I thought, "Oh, cool, it's close to campus." I was wrong. It was probably a good ten or fifteen minute walk to get there, and I (not being in excessively good shape in the first place) was a little worn out by the time I got there.

Throughout the course of the evening, Psi Phi members Kristen, Elizabeth, Don, Joel O., and Julie, and a couple of non-Psi Phi'ers (Ryan and, hmm, I forget the other guy's name), carried a great many items up the stairs to their appropriate locations. Then, around 11:00, we had cake and ice cream. Yay! :-)

I had to leave before the moving was done, so I could get home, get showered off, and get to bed.

In other recent news and happenings:

I've started watching the repeats of The West Wing's fifth season on Bravo. Although I had caught the occasional episode in the past, the show was usually on opposite other things I enjoyed, so I never saw it regularly. Now that it's on at 6 and 10 each night, though, I'll try to get caught up on at least recent events. The season opener was rather quite good; it dealt with the Democratic President, having invoking the 25th Amendment in the previous season's finale (much as 24 had done earlier that same season, except that that invocation came from the Cabinet rather than the President himself), being temporarily replaced by the Republican Speaker of the House as Acting President. (Marty filled me in on the situation with the Vice President's absence, which was not really explained in, nor important to, the season premiere.)

It appeared for a while that the Republican characters were going to be portrayed as power-hungry opportunists, but it turned out that it was only the paranoia of certain Democratic characters which made them appear that way... the Republicans, like their Democratic counterparts, were just looking out for the best interests of the country at a difficult time.

Bravo will be showing the fifth season Monday through Thursday, at 6pm and 10pm (check local listings for other time zones), so it looks like they'll get through most or all of this season before the sixth season starts on NBC on October 20. If the quality stays high, I may have another regular show to add to my schedule.

I also watched Father of the Pride on NBC last night. A somewhat funny show... not great, but I think I'll keep it on my tentative list for now.

Last Comic Standing's third season began on Monday; it's nice to see the First Season folks again, but Ant is as annoying as ever.

davidh