Kingfox

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It’s odd when you hear about an earthquake from your guildies, and amusing when they mention it casually while urging people to get moving with their duties faster. Hope everyone and everything’s ok.

Glad there’s others on the wait list, so I can catch up on more BSG while working on my fishing skill and doing French homework.

jedimentat picked up some absinthe she had been reading about, and got the idea to dress up as a green absinthe fairy for a party in the city this past Saturday. Wracking my brain for costume ideas, I bounced a lot of ideas off people but still came up short. kikibird liked the idea of me dressing up as Lucius Malfoy, but graye thought I’d be better as Kael’thas Sunstrider, though glowing magical green balls were hard to find. Going the coupley route, graye suggested a famous absinthe drinker, which led me to August Strindberg, possibly with a pink balloon. jedimentat convinced me to do the more recognizable and Halloween-ey Van Gogh instead.

On Friday windexcowboy, shmivejournal, jedimentat, and I went to Arthur’s in Morris Plains for steaks. Saturday, during the day, jedimentat and I went to an awesome costume store in downtown Somerville where we purchased the finishing touches for my costume, then we had some Lebanese food nearby. Swinging by her parents’ place on the way home, we made use of her mother’s art supplies to paint up an old pair of pants and shirt. We headed back to Hoboken, where we got ready.

First she turned into the Green Fairy.

While looking up which ear I had to bloody, we found out that the lady of the night who he gave his ear to has the same first name as jedimentat. Funny.

She wrote up the note, I got dressed up, and I got bloody.

Rest of the weekend under the cut.

Monday morning blackbytes yelled at me for ruining her life by introducing her to Woot, John yelled at me for ruining his life by introducing him to Brick Testament, and Verna quietly noted that I hadn’t ruined her life with a website… yet.

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Monday night I was wearing, well, girlie fish socks. Don’t ask. They were sharks, at least. petemagyar wanted to get delivery from the local hippie joint, and was busy talking on the phone in his room when it showed up. The delivery guy gave me the most mocking expression possible from a person still attempting to get a tip. At least he didn’t know they matched my boxers.

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Last weekend I watched some high school football with feffthekidd in Hoboken, which was quite an experience. On Saturday a bunch of us went for a tour of Lyndhurst and the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery up in aaronkligerland. Pictures from the weekend under the cut.

Holy jeez I haven’t posted in over a week. I’ve been busy.

French class is going well. Today I was leading a small group through translating a few simple paragraphs, and I’ve been getting better grades than I’m used to from French. While my written assignments are no things of beauty, I’m pleased with how comfortably I’ve slipped back into many specifics of the language that frustrated me so much almost a decade ago. The semester’s half gone, surprisingly enough. Handout seems like only yesterday.

Still need to go over the presentations I saw during my recent trip to Orlando with blackbytes. Work’s calming down as we get more students trained and on the schedule. We started the semester with very few student employees and having full time staff on the desk schedule. While we’re weaning ourselves off of the schedule as nubs finally fall into place, it kind of has been nice working at least a shift a week. There’s a presentation I attended at a past SIGUCCS from one university that had every technology employee, from the top to the bottom of the totem pole, working at least one helpdesk shift a month. While such an extreme might not be necessary, it is a useful perspective. How things actually get done. What practices and solutions are really being used, and what ways things can be improved. What applications of policy, technology, etc. can be brought in to make desk shifts easier for those working more than an hour or two a week.

I’ve also been busy spending an insane amount of time with jedimentat. From late September on, we’ve been spending every weekend together and mid-week visits as well, except this past week. We went to Blood Manor with maidoftheshore, kikibird, and runstaverun last weekend, and enjoyed a great hike around Matthew Drinkwater’s execution site. While driving around and going through her CDs, I found out that she’s known Amy Siegel for ages. Small inbred little world. So very random.

From dickardo, Anthony Bourdain on 1977.

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I’ve got a Darth Maul lunch sack full of whole grain parmesan cracker bread and oatey granola snack mix, and a thermos full of coffee. My girlfriend > you.

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Facebook take 1, Facebook take 2.

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EDIT: Holy cow, I haven’t played WoW since the night redvector and girlfriend came over. Between social plans, SIGUCCS, etc. it’s been a solid week. I’m shocked that I’m not getting the shakes.

Checked out of the hotel, luggage in the rental car (it was a Caliber, by being the economy option they couldn’t afford the EX), just one last speech about technology before we get the hell out of here.

Didn’t do this poll before flying out, maybe because it got me into trouble recently. But why let that get in the way of what’s usually some interesting answers? Confess what you will before I take flight.

Still trying to figure out my Halloween costume for this year. Got a few ideas, but nothing that’s blown me away yet.

Ross from CS just IMed me asking for code help.

(12:12:32 AM) kingfox: Tell them that kingfox says $gang‘s parent $group should be re-coded to have .leader be a list instead of an object, as it should have been when incognito______ first coded it but both of us were too lazy to re-do it. Tell them that in 8 years they should have gotten around to fixing that.

I get random IMs all the time from current CS administrators and players. Usually, it’s when the server’s having issues, as I’m one of the few people who can smack it around a bit. The second most common topic of these messages from out of the blue are requests for me to step in and wield an iron fist to discipline a perceived cheater or right some other sort of wrong. I direct those requests to Doughboy. The third most frequent contact is when the $taskmanager’s having problems, and I just give those people ogun‘s cell phone number.

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SIGUCCS is almost over. Session chaired for the first time today, and all three presentations that made up the session were excellent. As usual, I’ve met some smart people with great ideas doing cool things, and have a pile of notes. Of course, while at Pleasure Island for the gala event, the campus suffers a power outage. Leaving an event for university IT staff to deal with a university IT issue? Go figure. Tomorrow windexcowboy and I fly back to Jersey, where jedimentat will be giving us a ride back to drewuniversity.

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You’re replacing the water in the fish tanks with the bass tracks! You’re making ramen noodles out of Skwisgaar’s solo!

Tonight, walking past the helpdesk on my way home, a certain desk attendant noticed I was carrying Metalocalypse and chicken. “Looks like you have a good evening planned.”

He wasn’t far from the truth. But he left out French homework, attempts on Solarian, breaking in my new robot maid, a surprise visit from redvector and girlfriend for a few hours, and a long chat with maidoftheshore.

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Tomorrow night I’m off to see BODIES… The Exhibition with jedimentat. Sunday I fly down to Orlando with windexcowboy for SIGUCCS. This means I’ll end up drinking at both Disneyland and Disneyworld over the course of two months, yet being in town for completely different reasons each time. That’s kind of amusing.