It's just an ordinary day - Recent Entries

Just to pay appropriate note to the various and sundry other things that have been going on in my life:

Jam Reports. There have not been Jam Reports for the last couple of Jams, and I apologize in advance, but there will probably not be. I just haven't been focused enough to get proper Jam Reports written. However, it is worth noting that there is much promise with GBS' "Chemical Worker's Song" with the current set of voices. cflute in particular has some very impressive harmonies coming together for that, and kendaer is feeling some potential for rumbling out the lead on this on days when mamishka isn't available.

On a related note, solarbird and I went to go visit stealthcello this past Friday night, which was made entirely of Win. She and her family have a lovely home full of lovely large Maine Coon cats as well as six two-week-old kittens, with whom we visited as well and ZOMG TINY KITTENS. Dara shared some of the music she's been working on, and Betsy answered with some of hers, and me, I was impressed by Betsy's shiny new black carbon-body guitar.

One giggleworthy moment of the evening: Dara hitting a chord on the mandolin and announcing that that sounded like "ass minor". Betsy's daughter lost it laughing, and Betsy herself pondered the question of what precisely "ass" sounds like. Dara's response, entirely inevitably: "Here, pull my finger!"

I will also not be doing review posts for the most recent BSG and Doctor, again because short on general levels of cope. I will however say that the most recent BSG was quite solid. We actually haven't watched the most recent Doctor yet, but will hopefully be getting that in soon.

Current book on the queue: desperance's Bridge of Dreams, which I have scarcely begun, but already I am impressed by the liquid rhythm of the prose.

And because I could, I went and got RAM upgrades for both my MacBook and Dara's. Now Winnowill and Kiliandra both are at 2 GB, though I have observed that I'm still taxing the CPU a bit if I try to do too many things at once. Less so than before, granted, but the problem hasn't entirely gone away.

Working on listening to s00j's Sirens, to be followed up by vixyish and tfabris's Thirteen. I have however also squeezed in Capercaillie's shiny brand new album Roses and Tears, as well as Nickel Creek's first album, since I've been meaning to listen to them for ages. This marks the first official time I have ever purchased an album calling itself country. However, listening to it, I find it definitely upholds the Alexander James Adams Principle of Celtic and Country Music, to wit: same music, different whiskey. ;)

Dara and I are planning our assault on Folklife this weekend and we are for once actually looking at doing three of the four days. We definitely want to hit the Celtic Band Scramble on Saturday, but there are things that interest us quite a bit on Sunday and Monday as well. I'm thinkin', a great big (not to be confused with Great Big) glorious burst of Folklife just before surgery should be a good way to get ready.

And, it has occurred to me that as I am about to be lying flat on my ass for two weeks, I can finally read Deathly Hallows.

And have another Movie Suckoff. Because there will be another Movie Suckoff, oh my yes.

Last but most definitely not least: tomorrow night, JONES. Meeting casirafics and mamishka for the midnight show at the Cinerama, and there will be much fangirling. What can I say. There are only a few people in the world that can really get me to fangirl, but Harrison Ford is one of them.

And, just because I haven't done this in ages, here's an exercise update as well. I am now on my way back to Hobbiton!

Miles since April 5th: 107.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2863.8
Miles out of Minas Tirith: 26.8
Miles to Hobbiton: 1598.2

ETA 10:42pm: Oh yes, I forgot to mention: my Ubuntu VM problem has been solved thanks to help from blargh. The issue seemed to be that VMWare was confused by my machine's having both a CD-ROM and DVD drive, and when I changed the VM settings to tell it not to auto-detect a drive, it started behaving. So now I have a functional Ubuntu VM to use as a test platform at work. Go me! And thanks, Traest. :)

On a different but also work-related note, for giggles and grins, I've tried to set up a VMWare virtual machine install of Ubuntu's latest build. This is for two reasons: 1) we occasionally get user-reported issues about pages being broken when viewed in Linux, and it's nice to have a way to test these, and 2) I just wanted to look at Ubuntu anyway because I never had before.

So I borrowed a Live CD of the latest build, Hardy Heron, from one of our engineers and set the thing up. Followed the expected install process, got it all up and running...

Only now, the VM won't load unless the Live CD is still in the drive. If I try to run the VM without it, it hangs VMWare hardcore and I can't kill it. I wind up having to reboot the box.

I've Googled around a bit and have seen pages that talk about issues getting Hardy Heron up and running as a Virtual PC VM. However, the advice I saw giving for fixing those issues didn't seem pertinent to my install, possibly because it's a different VM system.

Anybody got any experience with getting Ubuntu running as a VMWare VM and know what sort of problem I may be having here, and if so how to fix it? Thanks in advance.

Hey folks,

We're getting Webmaster emails at work about users having issues printing off the two crossword puzzles we're running on our Comics & Games page--the New York Times crossword as well as the Newsday one. We've had one user report that when he tries to print the NY Times one, he gets a dialog asking what he wants to print, and when he makes his selection and clicks okay, nothing happens. Another user is having issues where when he tries to print the puzzles, they come out as garbage characters along half the page.

I can't repro either of these issues on our internal LAN. Can anybody out there repro them? Here's what you need to do:

1. You have to have Java running on your system to load the puzzle applets to begin with.
   
2. You need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to print the puzzles.
   
3. Go here and click on either of the puzzles partway down the page.
   
4. Once the puzzle loads, you should see a little toolbar running across the top of the puzzle. One of the buttons on it is a button to print the puzzle. Click that.
   
5. A dialog should pop up asking you exactly what you want to print, a blank grid, a solution with clues, etc. Make a selection and click OK.
   
6. An Adobe Acrobat Reader window should load with the thing you're going to print. You need to print said thing from within Reader.
   

If this process doesn't work for you, sing out, and please to let me know what puzzle you tried, what browser you're using, what OS, and what version of Acrobat Reader. Thanks in advance, all. :)

I am researching whether it's possible to run multiple versions of Safari on OS X, side by side on the same system, for purposes of being able to broaden the base of browsers we can use to investigate user-reported problems. A quick Google of "multiple versions of Safari" nets me this link; anyone got any experience with the doctored-up versions of Safari hosted there? Alternately, does anyone have any clever suggestions for how I might, say, plunk Safari 2.x down next to Safari 3.x on my test machine and not break anything?

As always, thanks in advance.

I just skimmed over the last 300 entries on my Friends list, because I haven't been able to pay much attention at all to Livejournal over the last several days. Between being eaten by the Great Mail Migration of 2008, work being absolutely batshit, and radiation fatigue, I haven't had much leftover brain for reading the Intarwebz.

However, I will extend big ol' albeit belated congratulations to mizkit for her shiny new comic book contract!

I will also express general appreciation for good music to listen to. I've recently purchased Choice Language by Capercaillie, since they'd come recommended to me--and kathrynt has loaned me another album of theirs, and technoshaman and cflute loaned me a third. I definitely like these folks; I'll be buying more of their albums.

Same notation for the Waifs. I'd been wanting to buy something by them for a while, since they were an opening act for GBS once, and I liked them at that show. So I've picked up their album Up All Night, which was the album they'd had out at the time of that show. A decent listen, somewhere between folk and rock and country, and it's fun hearing that sort of music sung with a strong Aussie accent. I'll be looking for more of their stuff too.

technoshaman and cflute loaned me several other things to listen to as well, but I'm still working my way through those. However, I've gotten to enough of that music to know that I need me some more Captain Tractor, too.

Also, outtakes of series 2 of new Doctor FTW! The annoyance of having to work today was lessened considerably by playing the first three episodes of Tennant's first season, along with the various extras on the first disc. I'll need to take my time watching the rest, I want to pace myself. <3

I have to work again tomorrow, writing test cases, which is also annoying. But more Doctor Who is likely! So not much LJ likely for me tomorrow either. Anybody got anything they'd like to share with me, fling a comment my direction!

You would just know that the week I start feeling the effects of the radiation treatment is the week that a) my boss is on vacation, and b) everything goes completely haywire at work.

Today was arguably the most difficult work day I've experienced in some time. I got in, emailed my boss and uberboss to warn them that I'm starting to experience that fatigue I warned them about... and shortly thereafter, managed to spill my diet Mountain Dew right into the keyboard of my Mac machine.

Since my boss was on vacation, my uberboss said that if I was not feeling well I should take a sick day. Which was all very well and good, except that we had two major projects that were due by EOD today and I'd been banging on the other all week, finding several crunchy bugs in the process. I roped our two temps into banging on the other one today, only to find that they wouldn't be able to finish up in time.

So I had to check again with the uberboss and ask her if she was okay with us rolling over into Monday. Which she wasn't. We agreed on the plan that the temps would get as far as they could today, and I'd finish off whatever they didn't finish up over the weekend.

Which means I have to work this weekend on top of everything else. Joy.

We'll have to see how my energy is holding out. I've been pretty draggy all week, and I'm definitely starting to show the sunburn-like reaction they told me I'd get. I'm hoping that if I get a decent night's sleep and go to the chiropractor as scheduled, I'll actually have enough energy to cope with work stuff tomorrow. I can't give them Sunday too. Especially since there's supposed to be music. I have got to have a chance to rest.

Trying to repro a problem with our site--the Autos part of it, specifically. Anybody got Firefox handy and want to pop over to here and tell me if the various drop down controls are grayed out for you? If you can repro the problem, drop a comment and let me know 1) what time of day you're checking, 2) what version of Firefox you're running, and 3) what OS. Thanks in advance for any help, folks!

ETA 1:48pm: Actually, turns out a user's reproed the problem on IE 6 as well. So let me know if you can repro it on any browser.

ETA 2:12pm: To be clearer, the specific issue is that some users are seeing all the drop down controls grayed out, not only on the main page but also on the Find a Vehicle page. So they can't do a search of any kind for vehicles.

My favorite phrase of the evening: "HOLY FUCKING SHITDAMNNING CRAPMONKEYS IN A FUCKBARREL." This is courtesy of the fine ladies over at smartbitches, summing up their reaction to having landed a book deal to get their snarky take on the romance genre into print. I am all about the sympathy for their reaction, as that exact phrase seems entirely appropriate for the landing of a book deal. I expect to utter something along those lines myself if I ever have the opportunity.

On a related note, it is worth observing that I have now passed the nine-month mark with Faerie Blood in the e-queue at Baen Books. I realize that it's still likely I will get a rejection letter, but nevertheless, now I'm at least finally in the proper time frame to start expecting a reply of some sort--since their website does still, as of when I last checked, say 9-12 months' turnaround time for handling manuscripts. So resume crossing your fingers for me in that regard, y'all. Meanwhile, I need to get my ass in gear and get Queen of Souls finished, and take one more look at Lament of the Dove to doublecheck whether there are any last-minute tweaks I'm desperate to do to it before I get it back out the door.

It is also worth noting that I have now passed that one-year mark for being employed at the Times. Yay, job. ^_^

This week has been a long week and I am glad the weekend has come. I have to go have a physical, go over 401K stuff (see previous commentary re: one-year anniversary on this job, which means I'm finally eligible for that), finish up downloading Debian CDs for the overall master plan of having install CDs available in case a meteor falls on our server closet, and hopefully, writing something. I haven't written a damn word all week and the muse is starting to get cranky about that.

Miles since the 19th: 12.3
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2107.8
Miles out of Isengard: 314.8
Miles to Minas Tirith: 471.2

So, well, aside from the whole agent turning my novel down thing, the tail end of this week has really been quite good. Quite a bit of this has involved adventures in lunch. ^_^

Wednesday spazzkat and I went to lunch at Todai in Westlake to celebrate his one-year mark at the Times. Mine is coming up real soon now. It's a comforting feeling to be hitting a year mark on a job and not having to worry about having to look for another position in the immediate future. Here's hoping we'll still have this same job this time next year.

Thursday I met up with casirafics to fork over the ticket I'd bought her for the July 29th GBS show, and that was highly enjoyable. We had tasty World Wrapps food and there was much fangirling over Doctor Who, and then a visit to the Dilettante cafe for hot chocolate and truffles. I didn't expect to get the latter--my compatriot in Tennant-ogling wanted the cocoa, I was going in to accompany her--but one look at the truffle counter was enough to make me heave a resigned sigh and make my peace with the fact that I wasn't getting out of there without truffles. Because, I mean, c'mon people, truffles. Those of you who are local and/or who have had Dilettante truffles will know exactly what I'm talking about here. Two words: Dark Ephemere. Mmmm.

Friday, back to spazzkat as we finally tracked down Blue Moon Burgers, this place near the Times at which I've so far managed to miss at least two team lunches and we wanted to see if it was tasty, darn it. Verdict: not bad, though Kidd Valley really has 'em beat on the garlic fries and on the milkshakes. We spotted a couple other places that might be worth checking out as well on the days when we need a break from Whole Foods.

The tail end of this week has also involved adventures in books. I wound up picking up four from Third Place on Thursday: two Eighth Doctor novels, the latest Victoria Thompson mystery, and Witch Fire by Anya Bast, since I'd seen seimaisin squeeing about that coming out over on her journal. And just because I could, I went to the Baen Free Library and yoinked down several ebooks to read on my frob. I'm starting to really dig this whole ebook idea--very nice way to get around the whole shelf space problem, and it saves paper too. (Though I can see one reason to have a physical book--book signings. Hee. I can't exactly see coming up to an author at a signing and going, "Hi! I have a copy of your ebook that I bought off of ebooks.com, will you sign my computer?")

Tonight we're all going over to a housewarming at sksouth's new house, and there should be barbecued things, and they will likely be tasty. And there will be cool people and chatting and generally hanging out. Yay!

Meanwhile I sent out another e-query on Lament, just to keep another one out there until I get a printed partial together for it to fire off to Tor. And it's worth noting that I'm finally closing in on the nine-month mark with Faerie Blood in the e-queue at Baen; hopefully sometime soon I'll hear back on that one way or another.

Miles since the 3rd: 23.9
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2067.2
Miles out of Isengard: 274.2
Miles to Minas Tirith: 511.8

I have done something annoying to my knee. I don't know exactly what; my best guess is that I twisted it up somehow. It's started to hurt when I walk. So I wound up having my chiropractor x-ray it on Tuesday, working from home on Wednesday (and getting a brace for the knee when I went down to the shops for lunch), and walking very carefully ever since. The brace is helping. And the x-ray said nothing bone-related was screwed up, which seems to support the idea that I just twisted it up. Chiropractor sez to use the brace for about a week and keep icing it off and on, so hopefully that will make things better.

I didn't get around to posting that this past Monday wound up being Folklife Day for solarbird and me, the only day we wound up getting to go. But the day was full of sun and music and was in general highly enjoyable. We saw Seattle Kokon Taiko, always a pleasure, and a group of Irish pipers that did a bunch of jigs and reels and such. The pipers were pleasant, though I noted that I am clearly spoiled by Great Big Sea; I told Dara on our way out that I kept wanting them to gun up the tempo some more. Hee. Also notably, we saw a duo with bagpipes and a drumkit and DANCING ROBOTS which were very, very cute.

But the biggest giggle was when the steel drum band next to those guys started playing "Take On Me". Yes, the song by a-ha. I literally about spit out the shishkaberry I was eating, much to Dara's amusement, and then we bounced around and giggled and sang parts of the lyrics along with the performance.

We also wound up spending the obligatory dawdle by the fountain, watching all the children run in and out of the spray and try to get to the center part so they could touch it and run back. As soon as I was done with my food and we were walking away, I announced "RIGHT THEN" and took off my hat and jacket and backpack, set them all down, and dove into the spray myself. It seemed like the right thing to do. Dara approved. ^_^

Work has been blessedly quiet, a relief after getting the latest Project From Hell finally done and dealt with (with the exception of the post-project cleanup). The weather's been a little warmer than I like, but I certainly can't complain about the sunshine; I went out today for the sake of getting some of that sunshine and fresh air, and it was pleasant indeed to walk the Burke-Gilman trail past the lake.

Well, okay, I also went out for the sake of taking some of my books down to Third Place too. I'm running out of shelf space, so I conducted a sweep through the shelves with the question at hand being "Okay, am I ever honestly going to read this again?" Any book that failed that test went into the bag. And I wound up getting eighteen dollars in store credit, which I then promptly turned around and spent on Hal Duncan's Vellum (highly recommended a while back by alg), Tanya Huff's Smoke and Shadows (the first of her trilogy about Tony, the gay side character from the Vicki Nelson books, which I kept meaning to get), and an impulse buy that sounded interesting, involving supernatural detective-type fantasy stuff. More on these as it happens!

I have nothing particularly clever to say about the Great Strikethrough 2007 Brouhaha that's been going on this past week on LJ, aside from expressing my sympathies to those of you on my Friends list who were affected, or connected with those who were. I have no plans to leave LJ any time soon, but I will certainly understand if any of you folks choose to do so.

Snugs to all. And pie. I think pie would do much to improve this past week, eh?

Miles since the 27th: 22.3
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2043.3
Miles out of Isengard: 250.3
Miles to Minas Tirith: 535.7

There were actually other things I did besides editing like a mad editing thing this weekend, which is pretty much why I'm starting this new week off short on sleep and probably already having had too much caffeine. All things considered, though, the weekend was good indeed.

Saturday night solarbird and I went up to Avatar Gaming & Gifts in Everett to see Alexander James, the Heir to the Heatherlands, perform. Boy continues to have some fine pipes, and he's got a loverly new dark-wooded guitar and a new song about Beltaine fire, too. There was happy word that finally, finally, the Heather Alexander songbook should be shipping out some time this week. I've still been twitchy about getting my copy. While at the concert we saw a few familiar faces from Norwescon as well as technoshaman, so that was cool.

A good chunk of Sunday morning and afternoon went to Dara and me meeting up with mamishka for Street Fair, which turned out to be nine kinds of fun--and even aside from the enjoyment of meeting up with the Meems, we all wound up spending way more money at the Street Fair than we have in years. Egged on by Mimi, we got some super-cute clothes: a cute top and a multi-colored jacket thing for Dara, a neat brown jacket for me and a multi-shades-of-blue lighter jacket thing (like Dara's but only blue) and a new hat for me. We also picked up our yearly supply of nifty soaps and some nice-smelling stuff for my dry skin, and we saw a few familiar folks and said hi (notably, our friend Danny!).

And there were KITTENS. Did I mention the kittens? There was this booth run by an organization called Purrfect Pals, and they had a cage full of kittens that they were letting people come in and swoon over. They weren't adopting them out, but the lady running the booth said that they were her "marketing staff". Snicker. mamishka reports that they are in fact the organization through whom she got one of her current cats, so we'll have to keep this in mind for potential New Kitties at the Murkworks mileage.

There was also working on the current Project From Hell over the weekend as well, which is now targeted for shipping on Wednesday at oh-god-no-thirty in the morning. We're going to have to see if we'll make it. If we do, I may actually get Friday off by way of a thank you from my boss, which would fail to suck.

And now there will be further working on said Project From Hell, but also some Doctor Who, because Meems is about to come over and watch with me. Yay!

Anybody out there running Firefox on Linux (preferably Red Hat, but I'll take whatever I can get) want to take a crack at checking out an old bug for me?

We had an old report that this page had its content shifting over to the right when viewed in Firefox on Red Hat. I don't know what version of Firefox or what version of Red Hat, for that matter; that data's not in the bug. (It was opened by somebody who wasn't me, three months before I showed up.)

The bug has been marked as Fixed, and I just want to make sure it's okay. I have no Linux box for QA purposes, so I can't check it out easily myself.

Sing out if you can help, and thanks in advance!

risu is a goddess. Since she wasn't able to get prezzies for us over the holidays, and right now she can, she's been buying things for the household! I came home tonight to find a copy of the shiny new Tolkien release The Children of Hurin waiting for me, and, and!, the super-shiny deluxe 3-CD Complete Recordings edition of the Two Towers soundtrack!

I shall be enjoying these immensely. I have already hugged her and thanked her in person, but I will put out a big ol' THANK YOU here as well. With the awful events earlier this week, on which I have little to say that hasn't already been said eloquently in other venues, I needed this pick-me-up quite a bit.

Meanwhile, also in the Thankful Thursday things, some things I'm happy for in no particular order:

• The weather is delightful right now.
  
• I'm just about over the Bug From Hell--in fact, I've only got a bit of a lingering cough, and I slept better last night than I have in days.
  
• I get to downshift from three chiro visits a week to two, and my back is feeling better than it has in literally years.
  
• With the return of my brain, the writing is improving--or at least right now, the editing, since I'm editing the hell out of the third draft of Lament of the Dove. Closing in on the halfway point with that, so yay!
  
• Work has been peaceful and quiet for the last couple of weeks, which has been a welcome relief from the Crazy earlier in the year. Things are about to ramp up again, but I'm enjoying the laid-back state while it lasts.
  
• We have a new contractor who's working out well.
  
• I haven't been posting about it the last couple of weeks, but I've really liked the last several episodes of The Dresden Files. Also, I finally got around to listening to the last Butcher Block podcast, and noted with surprise that the show's actually been rating higher than BSG! Since BSG has been renewed for a fourth season, this bodes well for our chances of a Dresden Season 2. Fingers crossed.
  
• The last episode of Blood Ties also was quite surprising, and got to a point that I hadn't expected for a while yet. It'll be real interesting to see how that two-parter gets resolved this weekend.
  
• There was also a new Great Big Sea podcast, continuing the vein of Séan and Bob commenting on bands who have opened for them. The highlights of this were their comments on Leahy, who I've been eying anyway since they've been showing up on my Amazon Recommendations, and their comments on La Bottine Souriante!
  
• Robin McKinley has a new book coming out this year!

And just to get caught up on the exercise numbers, as long as I'm all a-squee about the Tolkien:

Miles since the 2nd: 42.3
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1922.7
Miles out of Isengard: 129.7
Miles to Minas Tirith: 656.3

I just went back 100 posts on the Friends list and as I am still recovering from the Bug From Hell, I think that's about all I can handle at the moment. If there's anything that happened on my Friends list over the last few days that I missed and that I should see, y'all feel free to drop a comment on this post.

Meanwhile, as a general PSA: I fell completely off the planet in regards to handing out tapes of the premiere of Blood Ties. I succeeded in, I believe, making three copies. firni, wrog, and lyricae, if you still want these, let me know? If you got to see the premiere in some other fashion, that's cool too.

Went back to work today and was promptly eaten by a week-long email backlog and everybody flinging QA projects at me at once. Plus, I got to meet the new contractor who actually started last week while I was out. Mostly I spent the day playing catchup, though. And tomorrow, as I am still cough-ridden and low on energy even though I am ambulatory, I shall be taking solarbird and spazzkat up on their sage advice and calling my doctor about maybe another round of antibiotic tomorrow.

More as I continue coming back online. Hope y'all are well and that those of you who celebrate Easter had a good 'un.

I have a new thing to add to my checklist of ways to tell I'm a superhero. There I was dropping a dollar coin in the cup at the kwikkiemart, which is what we call the snack table and fridge in the break room at work, since I wanted to get a soda and a bottle of water. I leaned down to open up the fridge, a small white floor model, to get my drinks...

... and the top hinge of the door popped loose. I was left standing there staring bemusedly down at the door hanging crookedly off the fridge, and then bemusedly trying to figure out how to fix it.

"You must have had your Wheaties today!" joked a coworker. It occurred to me that I had not actually ever checked my box of Special K to see if it causes superpowers. Then it occurred to me that a) I am mild-mannered and b) I work for a major metropolitan newspaper. Things began to look suspicious then. I informed solarbird and ysabel that I was pretty sure I had not recently been struck by lightning or bitten by any radioactive spiders, nor had I fallen into any vats of toxic waste. I surmised that perhaps it was my Mountain Dew. ysabel and solarbird wisely pointed out that it could have been irradiated, and I'd never know! This seemed a plausible theory, on the grounds that the convenience store where I purchased said diet Dew is in fact selling it on sale. What's a little radiation with your soda, if you're getting it fifty cents cheaper?

kisanthe said I should have asked for the afternoon off to fight crime. Should I show any signs of flight, x-ray vision, or superspeed, I may take her up on her suggestion.

Also, if I develop superspeed, I should get to Minas Tirith a lot faster.

Miles since the 13th: 22.8
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1856.3
Miles out of Isengard: 63.3
Miles to Minas Tirith: 722.7

Okay folks, this is a weird one.

We've got a user with Win98 and IE 6 reporting issues accessing pages on our Autos site. The behavior she's seeing is that when she's just navigating around the site in general, she's getting a lot of occurrences of our standard "page not found" page, which is branded with NWClassifieds text. An ad she tried to place, in particular, is coming up not found. She says this has been going on for her for months.

I've got a Win98 virtual machine here at work, and it's got IE 6 on it, but I can't repro the problem. I'm trying to figure out if it might be a question of her ISP being wacky, or something.

Anybody out there still on Win98 with IE 6? If you are and you can repro this problem, let me know! Thanks in advance.

Okay folks, this one has me stumped.

We're getting user reports of people visiting our our site and having Internet Explorer up and die on them for no apparent reason. So far this has gotten reported on a couple different flavors of IE 6--the one that shipped with XP (which is version 6.0.2600) and the one that went out with XP SP2 (6.0.2900). I've got 2900 on my box here at work and I cannot repro this problem. At all.

The symptom is simply trying to visit article pages on our site and having Internet Explorer throw up the standard message about encountering a problem and needing to close. That's all I know.

Anybody out there able to consistently repro this? If so, wing me a comment so I can pick your brains.

I've seen this all over my Friends list this week already, but nevertheless, YAY Dresden Files this weekend! Please oh please oh please, TV gods, don't let the Dresden Files suck. I will be most put out if the Skiffy Channel does not do our Harry justice!

Also, as a general PSA to the Battlestar fans on my Friends list, don't forget that BSG now lives on Sunday nights and will follow Harry, so we all have to adjust our schedules accordingly. Note to Self: must also go back and watch "Unfinished Business", since I never did get caught up on that episode. I hear tell I missed quite a bit.

Work-wise, the week's been entirely strange. I did actually make it in to work on Tuesday despite the exciting weather, though there were some souls who didn't. And then we all stayed up until oh-god-no-thirty Tuesday night to try to finish up the Vampire Project That Would Not Die--we did actually push it live, though it had some problems still. I wound up falling into bed when I usually get up, which roused solarbird to remark that that was entirely Stupid. I agreed. And then promptly slept until noon, stumbled off to catch the bus and missed it, and so grumpily went over to Lake Forest Park Town Center to snag a bite to eat before catching the next one. I made it to work by 2:30, and pretty much hung out for an hour until I had to turn right around again and go to the dentist to have the appointment that I'd had to cancel over and over and over. My lead-type actually offered me a day off, but I had to regretfully turn it down since there's just too much to do. The Vampire Project keeps turning up things that went wrong in the deployment, all of which need addressing. And we've got newer projects about to ramp up, too.

But at least this weekend there will be new Battlestar. And Harry. Please oh please oh please don't let the Dresden Files suck!

Tuesday through Friday miles: 12.4
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1699.3
Miles out of Rauros Falls: 390.3
Miles to Isengard: 93.7

Whoops. I appear to have fallen off the face of LJ for the last week or so. Have I missed much?

To summarize the last several days: quite a bit of cold. Not much going on at work other than trying to gear up to take another stab at getting the Important Project finished up (in theory, we're supposed to take another stab at doing this tomorrow night). Highly entertaining belated birthday Wii-bowling for spazzkat on Saturday, with sksouth, mamishka, llachglin, kathrynt, baby Lillian, and our off-LJ friend Danny all coming over to enjoy playing with our shiny new Wii console system. A few flurries on Saturday, though no further accumulation in Kenmore. Many errands run today, including having to go down to MurkSouth to retrieve the big stone slab that unknown asshats decided to rip off the side of the porch and leave in front of the house next door, and encounters with the Full Triumvirate of Bothell Babies. (I had not before laid eyes upon little William, son of wrog and emmacrew. William was a cutie, and very interested in trying to a) eat my hair, and b) put his entire hand in my mouth.)

And tonight, according to weather.com, we're on for a Heavy Snow Warning. This was upgraded from Snow Advisory a little while ago, and it makes me just stunned. This will make our third major snow event so far this winter--and yeah, I know, the November storm wasn't technically in winter yet. It snowed. That counts in my book as winter. ;) Personally, I begin to think our Important Project is cursed. Every single time we've tried to get this thing finished up, the weather goes completely bonkers.

Place your bets on whether I get to head to work tomorrow!

Miles from last week: 13.2
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1686.9
Miles out of Rauros Falls: 377.9
Miles to Isengard: 106.1

Please send Alan Doyle to pick it up. Tell him to bring a shovel. 'Cause I mean, damn.

Last night we got a lot less snow than was anticipated--just a few sputtering flurries in Kenmore. It did get quite cold, though, as I observed when I was up until 6am dealing with the project I posted about before. Which, I might add, did not actually get shipped. Marf. Assorted things went wrong and we finally had to decide to back out and try again next week. In theory we are supposed to have a meeting tomorrow morning about what went wrong and how we can fix it for the next try, but I have my doubts that it's actually going to happen.

I slept about five and a half hours and was functional when I got up around 11:30, so I went ahead and came on into work. There were a few sputtering flakes about then, but otherwise everything was clear. And it stayed that way until about 3:30 or so, when solarbird called me on her way home from class to tell me that it was crazy-talk snowing. I was going to go to my dental appointment at 5pm--the same damn appointment I've had to cancel twice before--but wound up calling them instead to warn that the weather was beginning to suck. They thanked me, since the hygienist chick actually had to commute northward too. So I've been punted to next week. Place your bets on whether this appointment will actually hold. ;)

Anyway, on the way to my downtown bus stop we started getting these little icy hail-y bits downtown, and that turned into genuine snow once I got onto the bus and onto the freeway north. It kept up pretty well until we got to the exit into Lake City, at which point it sputtered out and stopped. The traffic continued to suck, though--a good hour and a half from downtown to the first bus stop on Lake City Way. Once I actually got to my bus stop, the flakes were starting up again--not much at the bottom of the hill, but as I came up to the house, stronger.

And now, it's coming down hard. Guess I'm going to give those Yaktrax a try tomorrow, unless the Times calls an Inclement Weather Day. And I will not be surprised if they do exactly that, since it's also supposed to get super cold tonight. All this slush on the roads is going to freeze over, and make tomorrow's commute a thing of joy for all!

risu asked to watch the Courage & Patience & Grit DVD again tonight, which I was quite happy to accommodate (oh darn, however will I manage having to watch my B'ys again?). Perhaps I should just stay home tomorrow and ogle Newfoundlanders.