Area Thief Discovers Prowler In Home

• DHL must have the “sorting facility” from hell because my new Vonage router has been “transiting” it for roughly 8 hours. I’m picturing my little package zooming down miles of Oompah Loompah-strewn conveyor belts which loop madly through a byzantine complex of weirdness. More likely is it’s sitting in a heap of other crap, of course. I like Oompah Loompahs though.
• Julia is big into “bobos” and crying and announcing that she’s crying now. Everything that could possibly happen to an object is a “bobo.” Julia falls and scrapes her knee? “Bobo.” Mom has paint on her arm? Yup, “bobo.” The wall in the stairwell has a tiny flaw? Yessir, “bobo.” She’s 28 months old now and seems to be popping out more molars which means she says “no” a lot and typically cries at anything. She’ll then start leveling off the crying and announce in a heartrending voice “Julia cry.” This is valuable info we couldn’t have gleaned anywhere else.
• Because I’m all about the baby, I have to marvel at her ability to occupy herself for literally hours sorting things. Her current favorite is crayons. She’ll sit in her highchair for a literal hour playing with her crayons. And this isn’t drawing, this is emptying out the box and carefully putting them back in the box. All of them with tips up, of course. I’ll sit next to her and we’ll talk about the colors of the crayons and we’ll occasionally draw for a bit on drawing books but for the most part she just wants to sort. Of course, Over-Protective Parent Brain kicks in and starts whispering “great, she’s well along the path of OCD… nice work, ass” but then I read BabyCenter and everything is fluffy again.
• NHL2K6 is wonderfully glorious and partially flawed. I think it’s better than 2K5 but it’s not a knock out of the park. Some delightful new features and controls, some iffy AI decisions and some lingering bugs leave me once again saying “almost but not quite perfect.” If only I had the time and talent to write my own.

I haven’t been in a writing mood for some reason, so I’ll catch up on some things that I should have waxed rhapsodical about previously.

• Remember when I said Julia is not the most affectionate baby in the world? Since she got sick recently she’s done an about face. She wants to be held. She falls asleep on Cat in the rocker. She enjoys cuddling. Wandering gypsies have stolen my little anti-social child and replaced her with a separation-anxious koala, apparently. This we call “A Good Thing.”
• Got the posts listing functionality complete for the core-code version of the stuff that was in the enhanced views plugin. Working on comments and pages now. I’m curious whether this will be allowed into the core and, if so, when. According to Matt and Ryan the WordPress 1.5.1 release train is building up steam, and I doubt that they’ll want to throw something as drastic as this into it at this stage of the game. That kind of blows, but I’m sure there’ll be an “early adopter” link for those of you who want it .
• My first volleyball season in two years is going great. I had some of the best hits I’ve ever had as a middle-hitter this season. And me thinking that my best volleyball was behind me. Last night was no exception, though I didn’t get any real bombs in terms of hitting… couple of nice kills but nothing that knocked anyone over except in warm-ups . I think working kung fu and traditional Shaolin forms has helped me in my defense somehow, because I’m pulling up more balls that previously would have been down than ever before. I was honored to have my parents show up for the first match last night which was fortuitous because our second match was ugly and incohesive for some reason… we won it, but we likely shouldn’t have.
• I’m still having a blast with my GuitarPort when I get time to diddle with it. I went ahead and got the Metal Shop amp pack because I am a SUCKER and it’s got some nice new tones, including a credible Triple Rectifier which I’ve been waiting for. It’s a challenge to come up with matching tones for songs. I think I finally got a decent match for Nickelback’s Because Of You using the aforementioned Triple copy and an additional distortion pedal. Thank God I block the Floyd Rose, because otherwise dropping down to the Drop-C tuning (as an aside I’ll never forget some interview with Head and Munkey from Korn talking about their tunings and saying something like “All these guys brag about their Drop-D tunings and we’re like ‘Fuck you, we play in Drop-A‘… and they do, they play 7-string guitars with a low B string tuned down to A. Unreal.) required for that song would be utterly unthinkable without it. As it stands it’s just a few turns of the tuning pegs away. Yay!
• I suppose I should have expected it but the intonation on the old Ibanez is futzed. Normally that wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I don’t own the intonation adjustment tool for these things. That makes what should be a fairly simple operation markedly more complex. Maybe when I’m bored one day I’ll tackle it because right now it’s rather noticeable when playing along with tunes, unfortunately.

WASHINGTON, DC (AP) - Colin Powell beats a hasty retreat from the White House following his resignation as Secretary of State. Donald Rumsfeld said to be “disappointed.”

(Actually, ByTor sent me this picture. I have to get me some of those.)

Question: “Hey boss, we’re getting a lot of breakage during shipping and handling, what do we do?”

Answer:

That is just pure marketing zen to me. It’s not a problem, it’s a marketing opportunity. I fully expect to see “Doritos - Tiny Shards and Crumbs” on the shelves any day.