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Make it work

I get my 2007 bonus in two weeks (yeah, we get our bonus for the previous year in the last paycheck in February), and I’ve got my eyes on a new computer; one of those nifty Mac Pros would be awesome for me to do my photo editing, especially since my current computer (a 15″ PowerBook G4) is getting on in computer-years and barely runs Aperture any more. It’s at the low low low end of the system requirements and even then it barely works for photo-editing.

Unfortunately, it seems that the graphics card that I want for the Mac Pro would make the whole order take a week or two for it to actually arrive. I talked with one of the guys at the Apple store today and he said that they usually have a few in stock, but if I wanted it there then I’d be sold the stock machine (complete with stock graphics card) and the additional card would be an add-on that they’d put in for me, so I’d end up with two graphics cards instead of just replacing the original one with the new one. Same with the other bits and pieces like the hard drive. I’d be able to run four monitors instead of just two. That’s crazy, but it’d beat having to wait for my computer to arrive in the mail, especially if it wouldn’t cost much for the graphics card I’d want.

Apple now has a personal shopper program, so I requested one for next payday. I figure that I’ll see how much that paycheck will be, configure a list of the things that I need for my setup and the things that’d be nice to have, and take it in to the store after work to see what they can do. Basically get a one-on-one session where I can give them a list of the things that I want, tell them my budget, and pull a Tim Gunn:

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#4985 – the best kind of sick day

the best kind of sick day is the one you have to take in order to find out if you’re contagious or not.

my right eye was hurting me yesterday, and this morning it’s still hurting me and i noticed a slight discharge. it doesn’t seem any pinker, so i thought about it while i was in the shower: “should i call out? it doesn’t hurt that bad… but it might be contagious. but it doesn’t seem much pinker than the other. or does it? it’s hard for me to tell. go on, use a sick day, that’s what they’re there for. i dunno, seems kind of wimpy to use it for a situation where you may or may not be infected, and i already took tuesday off this week.” etc, etc.

so after the shower i looked at it again in the mirror and i still can’t tell anything other than it still hurts when i blink my right eye or when it looks around, so i figured to go ahead and take the sick day. (it’s always weird to take a sick day for something like this where i sound perfectly normal to whoever i reach on the callout line and yet i say “i’d like to… well, actually, i NEED to take a sick day”. it’s not like i got hassled about it, but it always feels weird to me to call out sick and not sound sick.)

now to figure out if my doctor is still my doctor or not. it’s been a few years since i last had reason to go see him.

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Master Ninja AppleScript II

Like any good thing (”Master Ninja I”), there’s always going to be a sequel (”Master Ninja II”). Take my Random MST3k AppleScript from a few days ago, for instance… now there’s Random MST3k v.2!

It’s now been improved so that, instead of making a list of all the movies and then trying to figure out which ones don’t have a label, it now makes a list of the movies from the get-go that aren’t labeled and then picks a random movie from that list. This should help speed up picking a movie at random: imagine having 100 movies, and you’ve already watched 99 — it’d have to keep trying random numbers until it’s picked that one that hasn’t been seen yet! (But if you’ve got only one movie left to watch, why would you even bother with this script? Huh?) Now, any movie it picks will be one that you haven’t yet seen, assuming you’ve been labeling the movies that you have already seen like you’re supposed to.

Yeah, I guess it’s a basic script, but it’s my basic script and I’ve never really coded anything in AppleScript before these, so nyah nyah, I’m proud of it.

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#4982 – it ain't easy being green

emphasis mine:

The Continuum Brass Quintet (http://continuumbrassquintet.com) with James Kent ’99 and musicians with DeMatha and University of Maryland ties, will be performing a free concert of thrilling brass music to benefit Ascension Lutheran Church’s Scholarship Fund on Sunday, February 10th at 6 PM. Ascension Lutheran is located at 7415 Buchanan Street in Landover Hills, and a free will offering will be accepted. The five musicians have performed with the Baltimore Symphony, Boston Symphony, National Symphony, Israeli Philharmonic and the US Navy Band, as well as with the O’Jays and Kermit the Frog.

hah, way to go dematha! performing with the best of them!