This post over on Dooce’s blog, reminded me of some of the crap joy I’ve had to deal with growing up. See, I’m about 6’5″ tall and not the least bit scrawny. So I always got the questions from Aunts & Uncles (e.g. “when are you going to join the basketball/football/whateverball team?”). Unfortunately for them, I spent my early formative years in North Carolina and what we played down there, back then, was soccer. Basketball was for older kids and football was maybe somthing that you could do in your backyard; if you couldn’t afford a soccer ball and some shin guards.

Then I moved form NC to Iowa and up here (back then) there really wasn’t any where to play soccer. You basically had your choice of basketball or football; neither of which I give a fig for. My favorite memory of this sort of thing was when I met the coach at my 2nd high school and told him that I had no interest in either basketball or football. I could just see the disappointment build in his eyes.

Then again, I probably shouldn’t relish that moment because he more than got his revenge on me in the next 3 years of PhysEd classes. *ugh*

But the main thing about dooce’s post that reminded me of my own experiences was volleyball. While having me on your team was no guarantee of winning1; it certainly helped. What really helped was my “backhanded beeeatch-slap return” (patent-pending); see I’d be standing next to the net waiting for the ball to come over. I’d have my hands clasped ready to bump the ball back up, but I’d get bored waiting for the it, look up for the ball, see it hanging there just over the next and with my back still to the next reach up and smack the ball with the back of my hand. This worked rather like a low-flying spike; except that the other team almost never saw it coming because I was facing the wrong way. Ah, those were the days. *grin*

Oh for the record, my other 2 favorite activities in PhysEd class were Archery (I read too many fantasy novels) and floor hockey. Gods, I loved playing that game. Simply because I can fondly recall the kids who I truly disliked running full-tilt at me with the puck; expecting me to either move aside or fall down. Let’s think about this a moment; I’m 6’5″ and I wasn’t a skinny little kid. Dude, in floor hockey, I was the WALL. I didn’t dodge and I didn’t fall down. That’s what the other kids had to do. Muhahahahaha! Okay, I really should be doing some work; so that’s enough writing for now.

1 I’ve absolutely no jumping ability whatsoever, which makes some hits difficult to counter and is one of the reasons I hated basketball.

We’re just returning to work after a 3 day week (hope everybody enjoyed their Memorial day) and it was sooo nice not to have to get up & come to work yesterday. Alas, I’ve to find anybody to sponsor me to live without working; so I’m back to work today. :p Not too much to report about the weekend; I slept late everyday and didn’t do very much other than that.

Friday night, Ariesna and I visited our friend Bryon (and Sekhmet and Baset and Toby-san and Cap’n Jack). We all went out to this sub-shop in Vinton that Ariesna & I had never been to and it was fabulous! They have a similar setup to the Quiznos chain, but they do a much better job. Then we went back to Bryon’s place and watched some anime. I can’t quite recall the title right now, but I’ll look it up later and add it in the comments or update this post. It was cool and I’ve bumped it higher on my playlist (at the moment, I’m watching PlanetES).

Saturday, we basically slept the day away and the same for most of Sunday. Monday, we only slept have the day away and then went out to do some shopping. I got some new shirts and a new toy, but I’m not talking about that yet because I’m going to surprise some of my co-workers with it first (and I know at least one of them reads this blog).

Muhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Back to reality and time for the reviews….

I finished reading The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint and while it wasn’t bad; there’s definitely a sense that I read this book out of order from the series it appears to be in. There were issues that somewhat came up that never got really explained and that annoyed me to some extent but they weren’t vital to the story; so it wasn’t too big of an issue. The other thing I noticed about this book is how different the writing style is from what I generally read.

Most authors that I like tend to dump massive amounts of detail on you with a shovel. Mr. de Lint didn’t do that; instead, he only gave a bare minimum of detail and spent the rest of the pages dealing with the emtions & personality of the characters. It took me a bit to get into the book; but once I really got going with it, I found it most enjoyable. Overall, I give it 3.75 out of 5 points.

Then I went ahead and read The Little Country also by Charles de Lint and found it to be a much better book. The story was much richer in detail and I found it easier to empathize with the characters in this book; as compared to the ones in The Onion Girl. It probably helps that this is set over in Cornwall and I’ve always wanted to visit the British Isles. 😀 Overall, I’d give this book 4.25 out of 5 points.

Oh and next up, I’ll be reading Elizabeth Peter’s Children of the Storm.

Mandolux
I heard via Mac Observer that Mandolux had some new images up took a look and really liked the one of the cat’s eye. Though I have to say the website needs some help; I mean really, dark grey text on a black background?. I then started playing around with the URL to see if Mandolux has any archives (because I’m pretty sure I got my previous wallpaper from the site) and much to my delight, I ended up finding them under this page. *happy, happy*

Update – 08 May 2004, 2:53 pm (-06:00 GMT): Well, I’ve pretty much gone through all the pics on Mandolux and didn’t find my current desktop image. *sigh* I was really hoping I would; so I could find something similar to it. But after looking at the file names, it became less likely that my old desktop image was from this site as they were completely different (e.g. mandolux-egypt-03-1280.jpg vs. 0D0T0900-2-1280.jpg).

This post is just for me to use a reference to any plugins that I am or will consider using with WP v1.2.

Lorem Ipsum isn’t actually a WP 1.2 plugin, but it’s still bloody useful.

Word/Image Count

OpenPGP signed comment plugin

Topic Icon

PictPress

Comment Preview for WordPress 1.2, thread on WP Support Forums

Convert Hacks to Plugins, thread on WP Support Forums

WP Backup/Restore new version, thread on WP Support Forums

WP & Gallery integration, thread on WP Support Forums

Making AMM work with WP 1.2, thread on WP Support Forums

WP Wiki page of WP v1.2 plugins

WP Comment and Post plugins

I was over at Kuro5hin and ran across an article titled How-To: Write your doctoral thesis. I’ve never felt a desire to go for a doctorate in anything, but I’ve had friends who have gone down that path of insanity, so I gave the article a quick look through and found it’s a rather funny piece. Here’s a sample:

HOKAY, SO: You’ve been a slave for untold years. You want to enter the glamorous world where you can be pretentious and have people call you doctor. You want to have a silly hat and a cape. But to reach these goals, you need to produce a doctoral thesis.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘doctoral thesis’ as: A completely worthless document that will not be read, but which is apparently important to someone, because it requires nearly impossible tasks to complete. This definition is spot on.

Another particularly good bit from near the end of the article:

It is a well known fact that the three body problem of celestial mechanics has no solution. For you, it is worse: you must get five professors to be in the same room, at the same time, and with as little animosity towards you as possible. Hint that free booze will be offered post-defense.