I've been invited to a New Year's Eve party on Friday night. I found it to be the perfect opportunity to build a gingerbread structure. I was apparently so excited about it that I spent 5 hours designing the structure in my head. So excited that I couldn't sleep for 5 hours.

Although my readership is limited, I shall refrain nevertheless from divulging any significant details of my project in case the people at the party, for whom this is supposed to be a surprise, should be in my readership. I will say, however, that one of the pieces will be a gingerbread strcture, and it will be spectacular!

UPDATE (30 Dec 2004, 8:50pm): I've been working on the gingerbread structure since noon today. It's about half done. I have all the gingerbread pieces, which are hardening as we speak, then tomorrow I'll dress and assemble the whole structure. Last night I did the prep work for the internal engineering of the structure (I don't think it would be transportable if it were free-standing). I'm making it a point to take pictures as I go, and I'll post them when it's all finished.


¶ 9:51 AM 0 comments

The Cubes™ "Finally, the drudgery of corporate life has been captured in a play set for adults! Bob, Joe, Ted, and Ann spend eight hours a day, five days a week, at tiny desks in tiny cubicles in a giant room packed with countless similar cubicles in a giant building filled with countless similar rooms."

This looks really fun, especially for people who have ever done hard time in a real cube farm (that includes me).


¶ 10:19 AM 0 comments

I sprained my ankle today. I'm effectively disabled. I'm getting tired of hopping around on one foot. I might end up going to the hospital tomorrow to get it looked at, or at least to pick up some crutches. I've never had a sprain that hurt this much. This totally sucks.

UPDATE (21 Dec 2004, 9:51am): After sleeping on it and taking some ibuprofen, I think I don't need a trip to the hospital. I'm able to put some weight on it this morning, though not a lot, but it's definitely an improvement from last night when I went to bed. I'm going to see if I can round up a cane or crutch with some help from a friend, and stock up on food for the next few days. I'm still going to try to see my family this weekend, but I'm not sure yet how that's going to work. Hopefully by Friday I'll be able to drive again (I really don't want to make my parents come pick me up). And thankfully it's my right ankle that's sprained, not my left. This is good because I drive a stick-shift.

UPDATE (21 Dec 2004, 12:43pm): One of my bestest friends, John, was gracious enough to take me to the store to get food and a cane. Having the cane is a huge improvement, being mobile again without having to worry about killing myself. I'm also thinking that having hobbled around a supermarket, a pharmacy and a Wal-Mart has greatly improved the condition of my ankle, so I may be able to drive to my parents' place on Friday. Canes are nice.

UPDATE (27 Dec 2004, 9:57am): It's been about a week now, and my ankle is mostly healed. There's still a hint of a bruise, but I can mostly turn my ankle any which way. This bodes well for me since it's unlikely now that I've seriously broken anything. On the other hand, the ankle is much weaker now, so I'll have to be more prudent with my kiteflying antics. (Yes, that's right, I sprained my ankle flying a kite!)


¶ 11:46 PM 0 comments

No, it's not a new concoction that I'm cooking up. Though it would be interesting to consider that it might look like. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Actually, my wireless access point at home is toast. I think it might end up a prime candidate for the Dead Equipment Disposal Protocol, i.e. the "Beat It With a Large Sledgehammer Until It Gives Up Its Spirit" Procedure. Maybe I should ask for a new access point for Christmas....

The thing is, I tried upgrading the firmware, but it won't take it. Maybe I have to connect to it via a cross-over Ethernet cable, rather than through the switch. If I can find my cross-over, then I'll try that next. Otherwise, I may be shopping for a new access point before long.

I'm hungry. I haven't eaten anything yet all day. I've been messing with this stupid piece-of-crap access point.


¶ 2:15 PM 0 comments

I think I'm rethinking graduate school. Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, my morale went up a bit, then as soon as I got back to work, it went back to zero, and I think is pushing negative now.

So the question now is: do I want to stay, endure another year and go to graduate school part-time; or do I want to just up and go? The turn-over rate here is starting to rise. It seems I have some serious soul-searching to do....


¶ 10:56 AM 3 comments

I'm going to try to build a gingerbread house this week. I'll try to remember to take pictures.


¶ 8:30 PM 0 comments

Well, I did cook dinner (broccoli and beef in spicy brown sauce), and I did make my special spiral cookies, but then I couldn't decide on a pot luck dish, so I picked up a tub of potato salad. Oh well.

The spiral cookies took only 1.5 hours, and I think I've found some ways to increase efficiency in the production line. The last time I made them, they took almost 3 hours. The very first time I made them the batch only made about a dozen cookies.


¶ 10:35 AM 0 comments

It seems I'll be cooking pretty much all night tonight.

1. I have to cook dinner for myself. 1 hour.
2. I'm making a batch of my special spiral cookies for a Christmas party tomorrow night. 3 hours.
3. I have to find a recipe for, and make, something for a Holiday Pot Luck Lunch tomorrow. 2 hours.

And that's not counting any time I have to spend at the store getting ingredients. Should be fun though. I put up a Christmas tree last night, and I'll have some music playing while I cook.


¶ 2:53 PM 0 comments

Hotmail seems to have "upgraded" their SPAM filter. I'm getting a lot more SPAM in my inbox than I was before, and I'm getting a little annoyed. Not too long ago, the Hotmail SPAM filters were actually really good, and for a long time, I never saw a single piece of SPAM in my inbox. Now I get a few a day, but it still manages to catch the majority of them.


¶ 2:46 PM 0 comments

Everything tastes weird today. Maybe it's the place I got my lunch from? Maybe it's the new paint and carpet?

In case you're wondering, I'm at work, and I have absolutely nothing to do. I asked if there was anything I could help with, and they said, "Nope." So I'm sitting here blogging the day away because I have nothing better to do.

Maybe I'll invent something....


¶ 1:03 PM 0 comments

I'm in the parking lot, down at the end, where there is a row of spaces against a curb, and two rows back to back. There are two parking spaces in the single row with two parked cars in between. Immediately across from those two open spaces in the single row are two spaces on both sides of the double row, so one could pull through both spaces from either side.

I watched a car try to back into one of the spaces in the single row. The driver isn't very good (in fact, he's down-right horrible), and he has to try a few times, but never gets into the space. So he pulls straight through the double row, and around through the other double space (effectively making a U-turn) to try at the other space in the single row. A three-point turn later, he's trying to back into the other space in the single row.

Then, as he's pulling out to try again, another car comes down the aisle and pulls into the parking spot. The first driver is furious, so he tries again at the first space, but only after pulling through the double row and coming around through the other space in the double row.

And just as he's about to try again at the first space, another car comes down the aisle and pulls into the first space just before the first driver gets there.

As I'm relaying this to a friend, he doesn't believe me that someone could actually drive like that. I say, "You can't make this stuff up!"

Then I wake up and realize that it was all just a dream.


¶ 10:13 AM 0 comments

At least that's what they tell us.

My company hired an interior designer to redecorate the buildings in an effort to improve morale. I'm not so sure it's working.

Each floor of my building is a different color. 6th floor is purple, 4th floor is blue, 3rd floor is red. My floor, 5th, is green. Of course, color doesn't make an ounce of difference with the harsh flourescent lighting that washes out all traces of color in anything exposed to the intense rays. It's like ionizing radiation for colors. It strips hue instead of electrons.

The green is not so bad, though it can really only be described as hospital scrub green. It kind of reminds me of being in the hospital, complete with back pain, but alas, no morphine.

Somehow, we paid someone big bucks to come up with this new design, and I'm not convinced we got our money's worth. And don't get me started on the new optical illusion carpet. I get a headache just thinking about it. It's worse when you're trying to walk on it....

¶ 1:24 PM 0 comments

This is my new official randomness blog. I'm still debating whether I should migrate my old blog posts over here.... There's a lot of blog posts to migrate (56, to be exact). I'm also not sure why I felt led to start a new blog on blogger.com. I guess I like the services they offer, and I'm either too lazy, too tired, or both, to implement them in my old blog (seeing as how I wrote that system myself from scratch). I've also been impressed with how well my creative writing blog has been operating so far. It's a pretty good blog service, I think.


¶ 11:51 PM 0 comments