Requiem for a camera

I just got back last night from a conference in Baltimore. I like conferences: the living above my means on someone else's money, the hanging out that we call networking. By about the third day I was starting to miss my real life, though--interacting only with other people in my profession for that long had gotten a little intense. I also didn't want Rocky to go too crazy.

Then, yesterday afternoon, tragedy struck. I was walking around the Johns Hopkins undergrad campus and dropped my camera, and now it no longer turns on. Sure, I got the camera for free, but it came all the way from Australia which made it special, and it's very small and cute. How will I illustrate my blog without a digital camera?

Case in point: Shown here (in one of the very last pictures taken with the camera) is the inside of a bathroom at the conference hotel. I think we can all agree that a picture of a marble bathroom is worth at least 1,000 words.

Acid test

You are 58% of a Coloradan!

You live either in Colorado or a surrounding state! Or, you are from Colorado and you belong back in this state!!!

How Colorado are you?

Updates

I haven't been blog-inspired lately, but here are updates on a few things I've mentioned here recently:

• Blogging about my broken DVD player seems to revive it. It groans, it considers its options, but still it clings to life.
• I bought a new pair of glasses since the eye doctor told me I need to start wearing them more (my contacts are starving my corneas for oxygen). They're a pretty strong statement.
• It turns out I took the wrong online training at work, meaning I'll have to do it again at some point. I did pass the test for the wrong training, though, demonstrating my ability to... um...
• Chinese is hard. I don't know whether my grey matter has hardened noticably since the last time I took Mandarin (four and a half years ago), or whether it's just very hard to absorb a language when you only go to class once a week, but I need to hit the books harder if I ever want to learn a foreign language (and I do).

Friday afternoon at the office

I hope I'm not giving away any trade secrets, but here's a sample of what I'm "learning" in mandatory online training:

Time constraints determine which combination of validity periods are allowed among different infotype records for an organizational management object as it is created and maintained.

As an office worker, my eyes are glazing over. As a writer, I'm crying inside.

Another philosophical nugget:

A person is defined as an object that holds positions within the organizational structure.

Haircut

I got about five inches of hair cut off today. I'd been bored with my hair for awhile, and then I was watching Buffy Season 5 on DVD and thought I'd like something like Alyson Hannigan had. It's a little embarassing taking a promotional photo from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the hairdresser with you, but I got over it.

I like it, although it doesn't quite look like Willow's (even leaving aside the color). You can see what it looks like (in bad lighting but professionally styled) if you're one of my Flickr buddies.

The screen for my computer came in yesterday, so I've entered a whole new age of computing. I can download things without first erasing other things, and run more than three programs at once, and burn CDs--in short, the possibilities are endless.

Shenandoah

This weekend, on a whim, I rented a car and headed into rural Virginia. I stayed at a B&B south of Madison, drove around, looked at trees, and read the current book-club book. Sunday morning I went for a 4-mile hike in Shenandoah National Park.

It was really lovely. I realized that since my weekend in Western Maryland at the end of August I've only left DC to go to other cities--New York and Baltimore, to be exact--or the Maryland suburbs. I think I should make a point of taking advantage of my Zipcar membership at least once a month.

In other (not unrelated) news, my DVD player seems to have finally given up the ghost. Since I've blown my budget on a new computer, it will have to function as a DVD player until I feel ready for big electronic purchases again. And don't leave me comments about how DVD players cost $40--I want a non-crappy one this time.

Mac attack

Today I got my new Mac mini in the mail. This is a huge step up from the G3 from the last millenium that I'm using now. The bad news is that the monitor to accompany this beautiful machinery is still with the UPS somewhere in Utah. So the CPU will have to languish in the box for a week or so.

Overheard 2

I rode the metro this evening next to a small group of high schoolers. I was reading the Atlantic and they were chatting and giggling; I wasn't paying much attention to them. Then, just before I got off, they started saying things like,

"Oh, yeah, we could form an ad hoc committee, but anything could be an ad hoc committee!"
and,
"But I don't think we should follow Robert's Rules of Order."

Sure, maybe this could have happened anywhere. Maybe they were in the equivalent of Boys and Girls State, like we had in Colorado (do they have those in other states?). But I prefer to think that Washington is the kind of place where conversations about ad hoc committees can happen anytime, to anyone.

Hot tip: Greg's brain is now your brain. Yes, you can find out everything you need to know on his new blog. A bonus is that he's decided to show off his knowledge of HTML by making it all green and plant-y.

Questions and answers

Last night I finally figured out how to use the corkscrew on my Swiss Army knife. The approach I had been taking was to screw it in, then attempt to use brute strength to pull the cork out. This wasn't working, even though I've been doing my push-ups. Finally I figured out that the key is just to keep screwing. The cork gets destroyed in the process, as shown here, but you can't be worried about niceties like a few bits of cork in your wine when you're fighting for survival in the woods.

The reason I needed to break out the camping equipment is that NCSV accidentally broke my corkscrew when she was visiting. It wasn't much of a loss--I think I'd bought it for $.50 at a garage sale--but I missed it last night when I wanted to pour myself a glass of $3 Chuck and watch Death in Venice.

It turned out I was correct in assuming it was a movie best enjoyed with a glass of wine. It was made in 1971 and the pacing was pretty glacial. It tackled heady questions such as the relationship between art, purity, and beauty, but for me the questions raised were more along the lines of:

-Did people really dress like that in 1971?
-Why is the Polish family speaking French?
-So that guy was married before he was gay?
-Why is he bleeding from the head?
-What inspired me to get this movie, anyway?

The first question was answered when I watched the extras: the movie takes place in 1911. Whew. For the rest, I can only conclude that I was a little out of my depth with this masterpiece of Italian cinema.

The Science of Sleep

It's been rainy today, and cold. DC smells clean now but it was a sad reminder that I really need to start wearing shoes and probably long sleeves when I go out, because sandals just aren't cutting it anymore.

Schmer and I snuck out of work early today to go see The Science of Sleep. It's written and directed by Michel Gondry, who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and it's very, very strange. The strangeness could be summed up by saying that the main character's dream life is more important than his waking life, and the two frequently blend together. Highly recommended for those who like their arty films served up with a liberal sprinkling of belly laughs.

Wo shi xuesheng

Today I started a weekly Chinese class. I took two semesters worth of Chinese when I was in college, but promptly forgot all but a few words. Although it starts to come back to me when I watch Chinese movies, and was also looking familiar to me last night when I finally, guiltily, reviewed a little. I skipped the very beginning course, where they teach you things like the four tones and how to pronounce "cuo," and was wondering if I should have been more ambitious--i.e. gone for a higher course. But I think I made the right choice, given that I really don't remember the characters and that this school uses traditional characters (whereas I learned simplified before).