obfuscated.org

This was the friendly greeting I received after taking the holidays off of work. I’m not one of the “I get 1,000 emails per hour” people, so this is more than a little terrifying. I wonder how troublesome the good old “select all, delete” would be ;)

There’s relatively little traffic between Monrovia and Pasadena at 5:30 in the A of M. Just thought I’d share.

For those of you playing along at home, my extra checks were in the box labeled “Office Double Misc.” I distinctly remember putting them in the “Al Qaeda” box, but I guess not.

Oh well.

Hola, Amigos. I’ve been periscope down in no-DSL-at-the-new-house land for the last few days. Rough to have to look in a phone book to get numbers, but it’s nice to be home.

The move, for the most part, went off without incident. Well, sort of, I guess. When I went to pick up the truck, I learned that U-Haul’s 26′ trucks are much more manual transmission than I thought they were. I drive a stick maybe once every six or seven years. Though I was due, I (wisely, IMO) decided against and called friends to beg. Thanks, Clancey, for the bail out, and thanks also to Tej for offering to do as much.

(Note: I’m at a coffee shop right now and they’re playing “Hey Ya” on the radio machine. I can’t think of a song that makes me want to smash the speakers with a bat more than this song does.)

Anyway, we got my place loaded up quickly enough. Sorry about the boxes of books. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody with those. Honest. Stephanie’s place also packed up smoothly enough. Which is braggable.

(Note #2: My text editor doesn’t believe that “braggable” is a real word. Silly text editor.)

(Whatever: It’s playing the Fugees now. A huge step up.)

So now we have the furniture moved in, the kid’s stuff is there, Stephanie and I each have a suitcase or so’s worth of clothing and what have you. Hopefully we’ll get the boxes in the garage unpacked before too long. I estimate that we’ll definitely be done by the end of 2007.

I can’t sufficiently thank the people who came out and schlepped our stuff around the SGV. The move would have been a nightmare without you. It’s comforting to have friends willing to spend a perfectly good Sunday in the back of a U-Haul in order to help out. You guys rock. You’re all welcome over for beers and deck sitting. The same goes for all of you who couldn’t make it on account of prior commitments. Except for Pat, who I know scheduled his family’s vacation months in advance, before I knew that we were going to buy the place even, just to get out of the move.

If the move wasn’t enough excitement, today was The Kid’s first day at his new school. It. Looks. Nice. When he walked in, the desks were all the way stocked with books and colored pencils and glue and what have you. The campus is beautiful, his teacher is cool, parents were swarming everywhere in a good way, and everybody seemed pretty happy to be there. All of these are good signs. One odd observation between this and his last school: there are a lot more parents in ironic t-shirts than before. I don’t know what this means.

(Which reminds me: I still need to call his old school district and let them know that he won’t be there. Crap.)

Anyway, it’s been busy times. The “WTF am I ever going to use this for?” Blackberry has been burning up the airwaves while I sit at home and wait for things to be delivered. Hooray for understanding bosses. We have 1,000,001 things going on again this weekend, but hopefully I’ll get to take another crack at some of the boxes. Who knows, we may be able to put our cars in the garage before the end of the year. ;)

Stephanie, The Kid and I got the keys to our new place today. (Photo Set) Needless to say, we’re both quite tickled about this. The house is in Monrovia, about three blocks from old town. We’re moving this weekend. Woo!

Hooray for books. Do I look forward to moving these? I do not.

I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun. Next up: Dishes!

Hey look, an amusing tool to visualize web sites as graphs. Here are a few sites that I am or have been ascoiated with in one way or another over the years.

Graphs are fun. Everybody likes graphs.

Stephanie pointed this out yesterday, but I can’t resist mentioning the MySpace profile for Corey Porter as well. Fun facts about Corey Porter:

• Corey Porter is from POUGHKEEPSIE, New Yorkl
• Corey Porter has recorded such hit tracks as “Foot Step in the Dark,” “What If” and “Forever Real.”
• Corey Porter is a mammal.
• Corey Porter has a fly Yankees hat. I have got to gets me one of those.

My sister Lindsey and her boyfriend Alex are parents! Young Master Barber was born some time before 2:30PM GMT — when my parents called and told me — today. Grandparents are very excited. Parents are just in to a new flat and hard to contact, so I’ve not talked to them just quite yet. Congratulations, Lindsey and Alex!

Here’s a brief selection of the events of April 15^th, my nephew’s birthday:

Events

• 1912 - The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks at about 2:20 a.m. after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic almost three hours earlier.
• 1923 - Insulin first became generally available for use by diabetics.
• 1947 - Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, breaking that sport’s color line.

Births

• 1452 - Leonardo da Vinci, Italian artist (d. 1519)
• 1707 - Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician (d. 1783)
• 1889 - Thomas Hart Benton, American muralist (d. 1975)

Deaths

• 2001 - Joey Ramone, American musician and singer (The Ramones) (b. 1951)

Observances

• In the United States, April 15 is the official deadline for filing tax returns.
• Father Damien Day — celebrated annually in Hawai’i.

This is a great excuse to celebrate, so if possible leave some time free next weekend for scotch and cigars (or similar). I’ll send out invites via other channels.

<sfx: kvetching about webmemes, doing them anyway>

So the Wikipedia Birthday meme: List (at least) three events, two births and one death from the page for your birthday on Wikipedia. Here’s mine for April 26^th:

Events

• 1933 - The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established.
• 1954 - The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea, begins.
• 1986 - In Ukraine, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant explodes, creating the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
• 1994 - South Africa holds its first multiracial elections.

Births

• 1564 (baptized) - William Shakespeare, English writer (d. 1616)
• 1711 - David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian (d. 1776)
• 1963 - Jet Li, Chinese martial artist and actor

Deaths

• 1865 - John Wilkes Booth, American actor and assassin (shot) (b. 1838)
• 1984 - Count Basie, American musician and composer (b. 1904)

Observances

• Intellectual property - World Intellectual Property Day (since 2001) (Ironic, isn’t it?)