Solonor's Inkwell

As it turns out, I have fabulous access to the internets here in Pittsbrrrrrrrrgh. Not only that, but I have been dealing with happy Yinzers. In fact, they’ve pretty much left me to my own devices, as most of them have wandered off to some big party downtown. (I think they said one of their sports teams won a bowl of soup or something.)

Anyway, I’m perusing my e-mail, and found that Google has introduced something I never realized I never wanted. They will now give you the opportunity to log all of your Google Chat conversations inside Gmail. Just what I need… a permanent record of the number of bad puns and 12-year-old blather I engage in with Bran, Busy Mom, Dawn, Kevin, my brother and my daughter.

We’ll be turning that sucker off faster than you can say, “ayt?”.

Oh, and I guess we’ll be in the market for a new car. As I was heading out the door, yesterday, I learned that my wife and kids were in a car crash. Everyone is fine (other than some air bag bruises). The worst part is not being there for the Mrs, so she can let her guard down. She goes into “Super Mom” mode instantly in a crisis (I think she should have been an EMT). Hopefully, she’s had a chance to turn it off and get some rest. But I doubt it.

So, everyone give Mrs. R a virtual hug, please.

And if you want to toss in an extra one for Whiny the Elder… poor guy was sleeping with his head on the dash when the air bag went off in his face. Ow.

Well, I’m about to embark on a couple of weeks of road trippin’. First stop is Pittsburgh for a week. That’s right, I’m going to be in Pittsburgh the day after the Super Bowl.

I’m so screwed. Either the clients I’m visiting will be too hung overdeliriously happy from celebrating a victory to concentrate on work, or they will be too hung overpissed off from the loss that everything I say will set them off. (My boss should, please, note that this is an exaggeration for comedic effect. I am not accusing our clients of being drunkards.)

Then, I go to Knoxville the following week, and from there, I fly straight to Oklahoma City for the weekend. Anyone know any fun stuff to do in OKC on a Saturday?

At least, I might get to spend an evening with Busy Mom (assuming we both feel like driving to a half-way spot between Knoxville and Nashville).

In preparation for the arrival of the 9th Doctor in March, I was discussing Doctor Who with Whiny the Elder. He remembered watching the series on PBS when he was very little, but pretty much the only things that stuck were the theme music and the Daleks (“EXTERMINATE!”). So, when I mentioned that to Sgt. Grump, out he trots with two boxes of VHS tapes.

Yep. We now have every episode of Doctor Who up through the made-for-tv movie.

We gots us some TV watchin’ to do…

UPDATE: The plan now is to try and watch the first and last episode of each Doctor, plus the “best” one from each incarnation per the Outpost Gallifrey 2003 Reader Poll.

We are missing quite a few episodes from the the first two Doctors, including the last one of the first Doctor (The Tenth Planet) and the first one of the second Doctor (The Power of the Daleks). Plus, we don’t have the first Doctor’s best (The Daleks Master Plan) or the second one’s (The Evil of the Daleks). However, we did watch the first two stories in the series (An Unearthly Child and The Daleks), and Whiny thought they were very good. I had a hard time convincing him to skip ahead to the second Doctor! We made do with The Tomb of the Cybermen before I zonked out.

This is the coolest thing since we sat down and tried to watch all of the episodes of The Prisoner.

Hey, you define “cool” your way, and I’ll define it mine.

We had a problem recently with an animal of some sort knocking over our trash cans and spreading garbage all over the place. The solution: put dead power supplies on the trash can lids. Hey, it works…

Of course, my daughter is like: “You have old power supplies just hanging around in the back? This is the geek version of cars on blocks!”

Well, more like 2 or 3 hours in sunny Knoxville. I’m headed up there for a meeting, but I have to go through Charlotte, NC, to get there. So, I’ll be spending about 12 hours traveling to and fro, and about 3 hours meeting.

In the meantime, here’s another reason why I love the internets… one red paperclip

This guy put a red paperclip on his blog and traded it for a pen. Then, he traded the pen for a doorknob. The doorknob was traded for a coleman stove, which was traded for a generator. After that, the trades went from a beer keg party to a snowmobile and a trip to Yahk, Canada. He’s currently up to a cube van and is hoping to eventually get a house. Put this together with the kid who sold a million pixels on his web page for $1 each, and I feel sure that there are enough get-rich-quick schemes in the universe that I will accidentally fall into one someday.

Dude… maybe it’s the cold meds again, but I was listening to the Miss ‘murrica host guy read off comments from the other contestants about the one they named Miss Congeniality… and I swear I heard him say that one of them thought she had a great “vindictive smile”….