Lots of stuff

I'm copying Erin's strategy of posting a bunch of stuff in one entry, to avoid the overhead of multiple posts. Downside of this is I don't get to come up with fun titles for each post. Actually I guess I can still do that.

1) To View Again
I got my Annual Review at work back last week. My personal policy is to not really discuss with other microsofties beyond a thumbs up/ thumbs down rating (The Result: thumbs up). But if you are someone else and curious I'll tell you how it went.

2) How to Invent Words.
Step 1: Pick an existing word, it should be a relatively new addition to the language. A good example is Metrosexual.
Step 2: Analyze the word - Scott and Robin and I discussed this word saturday while we were hanging out at Greenlake. It often takes on a negative connotation (excessive vanity). However, the complete opposite of a metrosexual is a total slob who cares nothing about his appearance.
Step 3: Alter the existing word to create a new word. In this case, we need a word to describe men who are interested in looking good but don't take it to an extreme. The new word is metro-curious (with or without hyphen). I will use it in a sentence for you: Lee is metrocurious. Try googling this word and you will see that I just invented it.

3) Oh give me a home...
I recommend you try buffalo burgers! They are every bit as delicious as beef but they are healthier. Yum. We had some on sunday. If you are looking for something a little more extravagent. Have a Kobe Beef burger. If you're around Seattle, you can get this at the SeaStar restaurant in Bellevue. Wow.

4) Dude, you're getting...
Sunday night I talked to Adele on the phone after Erin had the great idea to call her up. We all miss Adele, especially when we are playing poker and waiting for someone to go all-in just because they are tired and want to go home. Nowadays we have to wait for Erin to do it. Just kidding, Ladies.

5) How not to be in the club.
Here are some simple steps you can follow
- Go to a going-away party with a group of people at a restaurant in seattle.
- About an hour later, sneak of to a different party up the street.
- Plan to call the rest of your group when you get there if it is a good party.
- Do not actually call anyone and tell them where you went.

I don't know anyone who actually does this. I'im just saying.

6)The Roof
Scott's new apartment building has a roof deck with panoramic views of Seattle. Very nice. We hung out in Wallingford saturday afternoon. It is a cool neighborhood, I would consider moving there. However when I move out of here I am planning to buy my own place (hopefully), and I'm hesitant to make a commitment like that having not lived there before. The good thing would be I could effectively take the bus the work and get lots of reading time, something that has been a bit limited lately.

Linguistics Lesson

Those of you who have ever traveled outside of Boston realize that there are many people in this country (in fact, entire regions full of them) who just don't know how to speak properly.

Example:
There are two people on my team whose names Erin and Aaron. Occasionally I have heard people refer to the fact that there are "two Erins." This threw me off a bit, since as far as I knew there was only one. The problem of course, is that many people can't/don't distinguish between those two vowel sounds.

But they're different. Repeat after me:
"Bat"
"At"
"Aaron"

Those should all have the short "a" sound as in "Bat"

OK Now try this:

"Bet"
"Wet"
"Erin"

Again these should all the same vowel sound, it's sort of a short 'e' sound.

Get it? They're different. Practice if you don't believe me. You can do it.

OK Here's a little more advanced lesson. Repeat After Me:
"Mary"
"marry"
"merry"

Did those all sound the same to you? Wrong.
These words should have the same vowel sound. Say them aloud:
"Mare"
"Dare"
"airy"
"Mary"

Good. These should all have the broad a sound (as opposed to the long "a" in fate)

Now try these:
"cash"
"carry"
"Larry"
"marry"

These words have the short a sound, like @, and Aaron (see above)

Get it?
OK Last one, it's a tricky one so focus:
"wed"
"dead"
"shed"
"cherry"
"merry"

That one will take some practice.

If anyone is a linguistics expert, let me know why this peculiarity is a property of the Boston dialect. My hunch is that it is related to the softened or absent pronunciation of the letter R in cases where it follows a vowel. Perhaps the hard R sound somehow prevents a distinguishable pronunciation of the preceeding vowel sound in these words.
Anyways, hope you enjoyed today's lesson :)

Exciting Font

I was very excited to discover this font. Someone made it and published it on their website. It is based on a font used by Edward Gorey in many of his books. If you didn't know, I am a big fan of Edward Gorey. However my current collection of his works is very limited. I intend to grow my collection when i go to Portland.

If you would like to use this font and don't know how, here's what you do:
- Click This Link.
- Click "Open"
- Extract the zip file to c:\windows\fonts
- the password is "gashlycrumb"
done.
If you extract to somewhere else, you just need to copy the .ttf file you got into the c:\windows\fonts directory

Now run Word and this font will be available. Cool, huh?

But I'm leaving soon...

I bet you are wondering why I am work right now (friday night, 8:30). Three reasons. First, I'm supposed to finish something today. I'm just about done. Second, I went to an estate sale with Tony and Erin after lunch. That took a good hour+ out of my day. I bought a dartboard for $3. Second, I wanted to watch the Olympic Men's 10,000m final which was on NBC at 3:00. I had the brilliant idea to go the gym and watch it on the tv there while I got in my exercise for the day. That actually worked out pretty well, except the race didn't actually start until about 3:45, so I ended up not getting back to work until almost 5. So I'm still here finishing things up. But I'm leaving in a few minutes, and going to see a movie.

News is evil

I really don't like the fact that I can't do "normal" things like check the news on cnn.com right now. Why can't I do that you are wondering? Because The Olympics are tape delayed by a ridiculous number of hours, and every website in the world likes to post the results as soon as they are available. Well, except for NBCOlympics.com, since they actually want you to watch. What is the point of watching if you already know the result? Sometimes there is a point, but it is definitely less exciting.

Cool Olympic fact: They are holding the preliminaries of the shot put competition today at the site of the ancient olympic games. In fact, spectators will have to stand, since there were no seats at the original Olympic games venues. The guy on NBC last night claimed that our word stadium comes from a Greek word meaning 'to stand' for this very reason, but Merriam & Webster do not support this claim. Instead they say it comes from stadion, an ancient greek/roman unit of measurement, appx 185 meters. Hmm, that's really weird to name a building after it's length.

News is evil

I really don't like the fact that I can't do "normal" things like check the news on cnn.com right now. Why can't I do that you are wondering? Because The Olympics are tape delayed by a ridiculous number of hours, and every website in the world likes to post the results as soon as they are available. Well, except for NBCOlympics.com, since they actually want you to watch. What is the point of watching if you already know the result? Sometimes there is a point, but it is definitely less exciting.

Cool Olympic fact: They are holding the prelinaries of the shot put competition today at the site of the ancient olympic games. In fact, spectators will have to stand, since there were no seats at the original Olympic games venues. The guy on NBC last night claimed that our word stadium comes from a Greek word meaning 'to stand' for this very reason, but Merriam & Webster do not support this claim. Instead they say it comes from stadion, an ancient greek/roman unit of measurement, appx 185 meters. Hmm, that's really weird to name a building after it's length.

COL

According to this article which Lee sent me, Seattle is the most overpriced city in the country.

Not Cool.

Seinfeld!!

It's coming to DVD!

This actually made news a bit ago, but just thought I'd mention it again since it's actually for sale now.

Now, if anyone can tell me why it comes with a salt & pepper shaker, I'd be interested to hear that.

Propane

I bought a new gas tank for my grill yesterday. So if you have any raw meat, let me know and we can party.
We're rapidly approaching the end of summer, so I am looking forward to some grilling action in the near future.

costco

I went a little nuts at Costco today. Let me know if you need any potatoes or onions. Or cheese.

On the bright side:
- I have enough chicken cacciatore to feed me for a week.
- I will never have to buy dish soap, freezer bags, or glad fake tupperware again.
- I remember about the fruit cups i bought last time i was there.

luck maybe?

Some people just amaze me, and I wonder how they get by at all sometimes.

and people used to say I didn't have any common sense.

wow.


(comment, speculate, whatever. but don't expect clarification :) )

MRI

I had an MRI done on my back the other day which was really fun. By fun i mean you get to lie down in a tube for 20 mintues with the emergency broadcast system noise blaring in your ears.

Anyways, this is what a healthy spine should look like:

OK Those aren't exactly healthy, ignore the curvature. Note the gray ovalish shaped things between the white blocks. Those are your discs. The light gray color indicates a soft jelly-like center of the disc. The black line running vertical just to the right of the discs is your spinal cord, a big mess of nerves.

OK by weird coincidence, here's another image which looks eerily similar to my spine:


First of all it freaked me out that a picture so similar to what I had just seen popped up on a google images search. The guy who posted in describes his story, which bears some similarities to, but it much worse in some respects, than my own. You can read about it here .
There are two things to note in this image. First, the two lower discs that are visible (L4-L5 and L5-S1) are completely black (as compared to the discs above that have a white center. This indicates premature drying out of the soft center of the disc. Ouch. This is genetic. So if you are related to me and have back pain, this could be why.
The other thing is that the lowest disc (L5-S1) protrudes slightly into the spinal column. This causes more ouch as it aggravates the nerves in that region. This is a slightly herniated disc. Fortunately it's not obstructing them too greatly or I would be in a lot more pain, marked by radiating pain down the leg and muscle weakness (i.e. sciatica).

I also saw some horizontal cross section in this region which showed more clearly how the disc protrudes into an area where it shouldn't be, but I can't find anything like those online.

Diagnosis: My spine is "older than me" and isn't going to get any better. Stretching and strengthening exercises and limited load bearing is recommended. Anti-Inflammatories are helpful. My Dr. also recommended Glucosamine which he said is one of the few OTC dietary supplements with "some science behind it" and is supposed to be helpful for joints. Moreso load bearing joints, but he said it seemed to help out his neck even. I picked up some of this at Trader Joe's. Another option is something like a cortizone (sp?) shot directly to the affected area of the spine. Relatively low risk and could provide relief for 6-12 months. I don't feel like I'm so discomforted that I need that just yet. A last option is surgery to repair the hernaited disc, but that is not recommended by anyone unless much more severe pain is brought on and doesn't abate, and more conservative methods of treatment yield little results.

Though none of this was really surprising, it's nice to know more about what exactly is going on with my body.

wear yellow

Yesterday at the gym I found one of these:


Which you can read about here.

I thought it was pretty cool, so I'm wearing it today. I feel slightly bad about not having contributed the $1 for it, but not enough to go out and buy one, or send in the $1.

At least I'm raising awareness. I had to explain to some people at lunch today who Lance Armstrong was.

I think I might start wearing it really tight around my bicep, Ultimate Warrior style:

Travelocity Update

The wheels seem to be in motion for processing my refund for the overcharge when I booked my recent trip to Vegas. Thanks to Joanne and travelocity customer service in PA, and Gary at Sabre for taking care of it.

I just called to check on it since I hadn't seen the credit to my account yet. Unfortunately, while they can charge my same day for a purchase, processing a refund can take "up to two billing cycles." That stinks since now I actually have to pay for it since my cc bill will be likely be due before then. On the bright side, when it goes show up, I'll have a really cheap cc bill that month.

IKEA

Saturday I went to Ikea with Erin and Andrew to get some 'stuff' for our offices. If you haven't been to Ikea yet (possibly because your city's government and/or a certain task force is preventing one from being built just miles from your house) you are missing out. What's so special about Ikea? It's huge, and they sell *everything*. Also, it's massive. No, bigger than that.
There just aren't many other stores where, as Erin pointed out "you stop for lunch two hours into it". And at that point we were only halfway through the store.

Here is a list of things I bought
For my office:
- Two red chairs
- A small coffee table (1' by 3x)
- a green rug (2' by 4x) (it goes under the coffee table
- a red glass ball with bubbles in it.
- a miniature chair
- a wooden figure
the last three items are sitting on the coffee table.
My office is very cool now. Come check it out.

For my apartment
- new sheets (red! 200 thread count)
- 2 pack of flexible cutting boards
- a box grater (look out cheese, here I come)
- a ladle

bonus excitement: I actually changed my sheets

Vegas

I was in Vegas sunday night to tuesday morning (last week). Here's a very brief trip report.

I stayed at the NYNY Hotel. I was pretty happy with it and would recommend it. Great location central (though we had a car and never ventured south). It seemed pretty modern compared to the Flamingo where I stayed last time. In particular the bathroom was noticeably newer, which is one of my key evaluation points of hotel rooms. I am grossed out by slightly old or rusty bathroom fixtures. I remember at Flamingo the tub seemed a bit old to me.

Cheap Eats - Definitely one of my favorite places to grab a quick lunch in Vegas is the little sandwich shop in Paris right across from the buffet. It's about $6-7 for a sandwich, soup or salad and a drink. And the food is not bad at all. It also has an attached dessert shop with some gelatto, which I didn't get this time.
I finally got to the downtown area to see the Fremont Street Experience, which is pretty cool. Checked out the Golden Nugget, featured on Fox's tv series The Casino. We grabbed dinner at their coffeeshop type restaurant which again was reasonable and cheap. The Nugget is a lot nicer than the other downtown casinos (Binion's, 4 Queens, etc).

Bathtub - We were walking up the strip and saw Boardwalk advertising their $3 tables, so we stopped in to play some craps. They had what are known as mini craps tables, which is basically half the length of a regular craps tables. It's approximately the size of a big bathtub, so we called it rolling dice in a bathtub. That was pretty fun, we only lost a little bit of cash since it was a $3 table, and the dealers (croupiers?) were very amiable.

This was the first time I'd played poker in Vegas (2-4 texas hold'em). I did pretty well at that. Overall I was down a nice chunk of change by the end of the trip, but it was still fun. Next time, more blackjack & poker, less craps.

Rock The Vote

I finally got around to registering to vote. Well, I got the form at least, I just need to photocopy my license and send it in.

I was amused by one of the Frequently Asked Questions on the website:
Q. Are bars closed in my State on election day?

The answer is given as a big chart that shows polling place times, etc., by state. Turns out bars are closed in Deleware, Pennsylvania, Utah, South Carolina, Indiana, and Kentucky.
Who's responsible for these regulations, and are they really fearful that people will get drunk and waste their vote/forget to vote/vote for the "wrong" person/get violent when their candidate loses?