Best viewed at 1024x768 under light of the July full moon as Mercury is in Leo

Things I have learned today:

1) Penicillin, when given in sufficient dosage to help destroy a jaw infection, is far more than the blood stream can accomodate.
2) Kidneys are excellent filters, and remove chemicals from the blood when necessary.
3) Penicillin has a somewhat distinctive odor.
4) Women don't talk to each other when standing at a urinal.

#4 comes courtesy of elfgirl, who was rather surprised that men have no problem talking about any old thing that wafts up and assaults their noses while in the bathroom, especially if it is unexpected. She related this to me after I told her about my day.

I've reached the age where I go into a holding pattern. Yes, I've got grey hair, and I've quit worrying about it, but I'm not about to keep counting down to death when I'm not done living yet.

I had to drag da elf out to get cake today, but we skipped the candles thing. Nice dinner in a different place, and lots of driving around and talking. Not bad.

Got up early to get the munchkin to summer school. Best we could figure it out, she'd be going for five weeks, from 8-10 or 10-12.

Not so.

Apparently, she's in a lab class, and has class for five weeks, from 8am to 3pm. Daily. For material she knows, but couldn't be bothered to do the homework for, and thus failed even with a 90 on the exit exam. Kills my summer, and is putting quite the kink in my work schedule (I think I'll be taking da firfey to work a couple days each week, to deal with the scheduling problems).

So, I'm at home, working on both the computer and the back garden (the tiller is fixed! yay!), making sandwiches for da firfey, and finding a snake.

What kind am I?

Yes, relocated into a safer place in the yard away from evil tiller blades. If I can get out to get some stakes, I'll re-pot the tomatoes tonight.

am still elf-less. Not sick this time, though. I did have to deal with having a technician come out and scare my satelite receiver into playing nice (I need to get the specialist screwdriver to use as a talisman to frighten future repair actions), which ate my entire day as he wasn't able to get his schedule fixed and couldn't give me a good time except "probably before 5pm".

Kids have been helping do chores, and we've sorted lots of laundry. Gotten the kitchen a little more straight, and I've run the "huh-duh-duh" over the floor to scatter the paper in different directions in a previously under-appreciated arrangement, as I don't want to fool with the actual vaccuum.

I am amused today -- The British authorities can't figure out how to deal with a reverse graffiti artist. Seems instead of spraying gunk on the walls, he takes cleaner and removes some of it, leaving his message, but not defacing anything. That's just rich!

Eleven is not twelve, either.

I have managed to miscount my classes. I am one class short for graduation in the fall, so now I have to bust my butt and take one more to get out on time. With thesis as part of this, I'm going to be struggling to get through. Had I taken the extra class this past semester, I'd not be having student loan issues.

I am so SMRT.

::sigh::

My laptop has been built, tested, and shipped. They set it up to ship last night for overnight delivery. Alas, they missed the last pickup, and it was acquired today, for next day....

....next day is TUESDAY, since we have this holiday, and all.

::grump::

- Describe your username meaning.
- Tag as many people as there are letters in your name.

Tagged by lasarigue, who apparently is playing dead right now....

Dwivian comes from two sources.

First, is working on a mainframe project in college. I worked in Department W (agriculture economics, in association with a project in the USDA:Forest Service to do statistical analysis). So, all our IDs were D for Departmental ID, W for group W. Student IDs started with ST, for "STudent". Nice theme. I had an administrative ID, so it had a zero for the third digit. The fourth was a sequential digit, and I had #4, so my ID was DW04.

My student ID was STBC that year. On a chat program you could pick 'handles', so I decided to be Doctor Who (geek! geek!), only to discover there was a "Dr. Who" already. I was thinking of a new handle, something unique, when I noticed I was DW-#4, which reminded me of Doctor Who #4 Tom Baker, and that lead me to use the handle "Doctor Who IV" to differentiate myself from the other guy (who, it turned out, had graduated or otherwise gone on and thus there was no real conflict of IDs).

To abbreviate things on my message posts, I signed them D.W.IV or DWIV.

In the chat program I noticed my ID kept reflecting STBC000. I asked about those last three characters, and was told they were "user setable subcode values that aren't used by the system." So, I started logging in as STBCWHO, to be silly. I then wrote some programs that could detect the subcode, so I could log in with various characters and impact my startup process. I'd log in to my admin account as DW04IAN when I wanted it to do things like I had them by default in my student account, as the IAN suffix meant 'in the manner of dwiv'.

Later, when I got to create unix accounts for the first time, I decided dwivian would be "like dwiv" on those systems. Eventually I gave up the mainframe system in favor of the unix systems, and I've been Dwivian ever since. Pretty much since 1986.

Tagged:
kamiandrews (I'm guessing your stage name isn't your real name?)
cavalaxis
deessedusoleil (are you still out there?)
synisterchyck
ann_mcn
relevantpink
exipolar

So, after overwhelming reasoning by my friends list, I have decided to purchase a new laptop and retire the old one to be the front of a minor file server in the basement. I went to several laptop manufacturer's web sites, and checked with service companies and general ratings boards before I decided to stick with a Dell. I almost went with the Lenovo/Thinkpad, but the extra cost just wasn't worth it.

I'm glad I picked Dell, as my company has an employee purchase plan deal that, with the Dell anniversary sales, gave me over $1000 in discounts. Woo! So...

Intel Core Duo with 1GB Ram, 256MB ATI Radeon, 60 GB SATA/7200, with the 15" display (smaller I can't see, bigger is not a laptop), DVD+/-RW, and builtin WiFi/BT. It'll be interesting, that's for sure.

Now, for the waiting.....

Just wrote a second cheque for nearly $10,000. Yes, we have new windows. Da elf is VERY happy with her new windows, and the new door.

Me, I'm happy that when they removed the front door they revealed some rotting that we didn't know about. They removed it, and now my house is just that much less likely to fall over this year.

If I just had $15,000 to do the drainage work the yard needs.....

So.... with the interviews, again.....

Ask five questions. I'll answer, then ask five back. You answer in your LJ, and open for more, and we take over all of LJ in a massive wave of viral journalism....

You start: