<p>I don&#8217;t have many (any?) pics of how long my hair had gotten &#8212; found this at the gallery for Aaron and Kathy&#8217;s wedding. Now I want to grow it out again :)</p>

<p>Ring&#8230;<br />

Ring…

me: “Helpdesk, this is Grant…”

user: “i’m working from home on my laptop and it said it was going into hibernation and then it turned off.”

me: erm you battery died

<p><span class="imred">user</span>: Well, I need a new battery then.<br />

user: Order me a new battery.

me: Can’t you plug it in?

user: I don’t know my husband set all this up.

me: Is there no power outlet nearby?

user: I don’t know, can’t I just get another battery? How long would it take?

me: I could put a quote in for one… could take a week or two.

user: What do you mean ‘quote’?! A week? I’m going on vacation!

me: Is the power chord plugged into the back left corner of the laptop?

me: Can you follow that back to the black box?

user: hold on… ok… yes it is plugged in!.. and I see the black box, it says “Dell” on it…

me: Is the green light on?

user: What green light?

me: On the black box.

user: No, the green light is not on. What does that mean?

me: It means that it is not getting power.

me: Can you follow that back to the wall and verify that the other end is plugged into a power outlet?

user: Hold on, let me put the phone down.

noise

sounds of stuff moving around

user: Yes, it is plugged in! I need a new battery!

me: Is there a switch on that outlet that needs to be turned on for the outlet to be live?

user: What do you mean live, there is no switch.

me: Was it a power strip or a wall outlet.

user: uhmm… a power strip.

me: …

user: Oh wait, I plugged it into the wall now… ok the green light is on!!

user: What does that mean?

me: It means it is getting power.

user: So do you think I should get a battery?

<p>etc etc&#8230;</p>

<p>That was as close to a word-for-word transcription as memory would allow. Good times! We debated the usefulness of a new battery for a bit, and I explained exactly what &#8220;being plugged in&#8221; would do for the battery, then walked her through logging back into the machine which was &#8220;locked&#8221; but that&#8217;s boring&#8230;</p>

<p>William Gibson has posted a transcript of a recent talk he gave. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_05_01_archive.asp#200322370" >Good reading</a> if you have the time.</p>

<p>William Gibson is an SF author often credited as the &#8216;father of cyberpunk&#8217;. I read shitloads of SF but <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0425190455/qid=1053568075/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-2849343-4622421?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">Idoru</a>  is the only Gibson novel I&#8217;ve finished&#8230; that was in high school and after reading the blog post I&#8217;m thinking I should re-examine his works.</p>

<p>Not because I completely buy his vision of the future but because I am now perhaps a bit more capable of digesting the format in which he depicts it. </p>

<p>I generally cringe, knowing I should not, when pundits describe the internet as an &#8220;unprecedented driver of change&#8221;. </p>

<p>I don&#8217;t know if it is exactly incorrect but it certainly reeks of &#8220;we are at the cusp of a new age&#8221; thinking which every generation has likely been guilty of in some way&#8230;</p>

<p>Thoughts?</p>

<p>There are seven of us that should be meeting up at the <a href="http://www.funkymeters.com" title="The Funky Meters">Funky Meters</a> show at the <a href="http://www.930club.com" title="930 at 815 V">9:30 club</a> tonight. I&#8217;ll be metro&#8217;ing over with Amanda, Ben and Aaron. Erk, Jake and Sam will be meetings us there. </p>

<p>Ben isn&#8217;t talking to me right now becuase I refuse to say &#8220;Harrrr&#8221; over IM so if anyone has heard anything from him about a change of plans, let me know.</p>

<p><span class="imBlue">grant</span>: why do i have this strange notion that I need to write long e-mail messages thinking anyone will read it?<br />

Ben: i’ve absolutely no freaking idea

grant: does it kill people and make them put me in their spam filter rules?

Ben: i plead the fifth

—SNIP—

<p><span class="imBlue">grant</span>: about to send a stupid message<br />

grant: stop me

grant: now’s your chance

Ben: its lame dont bother

Ben: you just look like an opinionated hippie w/ that haircut and your proving it

grant: there ya go

Ben: going limp

grant: ARRRRRRRR

Ben: do you want everyone to think your a damn zealot? cmon man THINK

grant: so if i get a haircut I can start ranting again?

grant: i’ll just send it to you

Ben: no. because then your a hypocrit

grant: hrmm. how so?

Ben: your pretending to be someone you arent!

grant: this sounds like a total trap

Ben: hmm it could be

grant: when? now or if I got a haircut

Ben: hahaha your jedi mind tricks do not work on me

grant: I’m so confused

Ben: you know how jacks boss was pissed when jack kept sending lil hiaku’s to everyone in the company? SAME THING

Ben: (everything i’ve learned from life i’ve learned from hollywood)

Grant:

worker bees can leave
even drones can fly away
the queen is their slave

Ben: well at least your not leaving linux sourcecode in the copy machine

Ben is at my wed/thurs client. Justin is one of the people we support there.

Biehl is my boss.

Ben: justin just stopped by and asked for a mouse pad
Ben: then "so wheres the hippy?"
Ben: rofl
grant: rotfl
grant: tell him i'm not a hippy!!
grant: was biehl there?
Ben: no way both me and jeff laughed
Ben: ;)
grant: LOL

The ashtrays in front of the building I’m in on Wed/Thurs in downtown DC are no where to be seen today.

This is troubling - they only remove them in expectation of ‘something going down’.

Anyone have any word on any planned protests this morning in DC of an abnormal magnitude? Searching around is a trap because there are protests somewhere in DC nearly every day.

Yesterday I saw roughly 60 people picketting some building on Vermont Ave… all had posterboards on sticks saying something about healthcare and some were playing the bongo’s, because that’s what healthcare is all about.

The AP (on a few of the floors in the aforementioned downtown DC office building) has had foreign reporters in front of the building delivering ENG (Electronic News Gathering) head-shot reports with nice K St. backdrops every day for the past few months. Today a reporter I did not recognize appeared to be stopping willing passer-by’s to get man-on-the-street questions answered. You wouldn’t (ok you probably would) believe the nut-jobs stopping and trying to get in line to voice their opinion, people purposely standing in-frame behind the reporter, people walking by throwing / peace signs (ok it’s really brittish semaphor for ND, Nuclear Disarmament - hush up Stephen King fans) or just being silly.

What a show.

I just dropped a paycheck on a new digital camera + bag + 128MB memmory stick + gamepad.

Ok, the gamepad is for playing snes on my laptop and was cheap but I bought it at the same time at the same place.

Anyway, here are two pictures that I got today playing with f-stops and the flash. The darts one shows the limitations of a flash placed behind the lense but otherwise they came out ok.

Yes, I will be dragging this to every party and getting candid shots. The memmory stick, I just learned, holds 51 pictures at extremely high quality and approximately 900 at 640×480. Prepare to have your picture taken drunkasses.

😃

Watching Mister Rogers was at one point in time the highlight of my day. I thought everyone came home, changed into their house slippers and put on a sweater. I thought anyone could just go up to a crayon factory or a firehouse and ‘ask for a tour’. I thought the mailman was wierd.

=/

It error’s like hell in the console - have to tweak that a bit…

First time I’ve ever done any actual editing of open source source code (or real code at all for that matter)…

Ok ok you got me, it wasn’t editing, it was just commenting lines out that looked like they were the culprits for shit I didn’t like. Namely the toolbars that gaim draws in the chat screen.

As if we all clickety-clack away typing in what we want to say to someone, then reach for the mouse and click “send”… I know what ctrl-b does, I know what ctrl-i does, I know what escape does…

Now to clean up the button state updates it’s trying to process every time i hit a letter key.