I always thought the Bobs song "Helmet" was pretty hilarious. But now I see there are parents everywhere trying to turn their kids into the song's protagonist. Once the song becomes reality, it'll be less funny -- so really these folks are trying to make the world less funny, which is sad.

I like dice. I like d8's, I like d100's. Me? I'm a d12 apparently.

I like dice. The dice meme is bad for people like me. It sends me to places that sell dice. The three S's of dice: shiny, sparkly and splefty. Lotsa other things too. I rationalized it by saying that big orders have lower shipping charges per piece -- many pieces are en route to my door. :D :D

Amusing:
THE RULES:
Go to images.google.com and type in your answers to the following questions:
- Place you grew up
- Place you live now
- Your name
- Your grandmother's name
- Favorite food
- Favorite drink
- Favorite song
- Favorite smell
- Favorite shoes

Post the first postable image result for each.
( Here it is! )

Current Mood: content

There's drilling -- right outside my room window. I let it go on for a bit before I decided I really should look outside and see why someone was drilling into the side of the house at this hour. Some guy, bearded with a plaid shirt and a long orange extension cord was holding a drill and putting holes into ABL. Neat.

Hearing some noises upstairs, I went up to look for house mates. But no, no house mates, just folk wondering around on the roof. Interesting.

I'm hoping all these folk are associated with the white, unmarked heavy-duty pickup parked out front. I'm pretty sure the truck contains fixin's for a couple hundred watts worth of PV array. I can't remember if we opted for the snazzy inverters with more data output. We'll have to put up a real-time updating energy usage meter on the web site.

Time to take a shower.

Current Mood: excited

( [disclaimer/warning: this post is full of all kinds of computer geekery.] )

How did it come to this?



Maybe it was that bio hazard sticker that just looked so cool.... Maybe my love for RPN calculators *pets HP*.

The VNV Nation concert was decent. Ronin (lead singer) was off last night, but still full of energy, and had a reasonable level of interaction with the crowd. On the other hand, maybe he's just no good yelling into a mic on stage. His recorded stuff is much better. At the end of the night, with no musical accompaniment, he (along with the crowd) sung ( the chorus from Beloved. ) That went well, but maybe I'm just a sucker for sing-alongs and really sad songs.

Speaking of crowds, I think the San Francisco goth crowd is lame. Both at this concert and at Wolfsheim, large portions of the crowd just stood there and stared at the performers. Weirdos. It was hard to find a toe tapping or a head bobbing from more than half of the folk there (specially in the back). Wading to the front of the crowd yielded positive results, with a lot more people bouncing around, having a good time, and dancing. None the less, after spending some time bebopping to the phat beats, I found a nice dark corner in the back with lots of space for me to dance around without being crowded by my neighbors.

We finally left when Ronin started some monologue about new CDs, tours, etc etc etc. He can be very long winded, and we didn't quite make it to the end of his spiel (pun intended) before having to leave.

Current Mood: pleased

I wasn't really planning on going to the VNV Nation concert tonight -- well, until now that is. One of the various Carries from my past has emailed me saying she'll be there. In addition, I just got spam mail with the subject "Go out this evening ,. Someone is right here waiting for you." (Of course, if they were right here, why would I have to go out?) Anyway, I'm not one to resist purdy girls asking me out, so I'll be on my way to San Francisco tonight :D.  If you want to go, get a ticket from ticketmaster (yech, I know).  I'll be willing to give rides from the south-bay area. Doors open at 8, and the concert doesn't start 'til 9 -- so even choiceful can make it if she still wants to go (hint...).

Current Mood: bouncy

Smell: The underused sense.

I like smell. There was a time when I could identify friends by smell. It took some effort and concentration, but works out pretty well. It's also played an important role in choosing cuddling partners. It can even be used for finding bambi in the forrest (a human can smell deer, elk, etc from several hundred yards with the right wind).

A while back, I remember seeing a snippet of a PBS show (yes, I used to watch PBS when I had a TV) about picking mates via smell. The experiment went something like this:

• Guy sleeps in new white t-shirt for 2 nights, puts shirt in zip-lock.


• Girls sniff shirts, and rank them on several factors:
  
  
  
  • Who would make a good long-term family-making partner
  
  
  • Who would make a good fling
  
  
  • Some other stuff I don't remember.

Current Mood: sick

I have an unbearable desire for going club dancing, SOON. Can't stand it any more. I've even gone to the great lengths of cleaning enough of my floor to dance around on. Rather than annoying my housemates with music until all hours of the night, I need to get out. Anyone up for La Luna Rouge (Goth, Darkwave, EBM) or DieMaschinen (Industrial) (or both?) in SF tonight? I'll offer to drive the southbay contingent.

Current Mood: anxious

But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.

--Deuteronomy 7:5, 1611 version of Old Testament

You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God ...

--Exodus 20:4-5a (RSV)

choiceful

I hate them. I don't know WTF I was thinking. I've changed my name from auda_ibn_jad to audaibnjad -- but I don't expect this to impact anyone, other than making it even more difficult to pronounce when you don't realize it's 3 words.

Current Mood: listless

Last weekend, by all accounts, was stupenderific!

( More details follow... )
There was far too much in this already short weekend to compress even further into a couple paragraphs on LJ. So I'll skip a lot of details, and end this by saying I had a very enjoyable weekend.

Current Mood: ecstatic

One of the things I find incredibly beautiful is a person who is totally enraptured by their craft. There are lots of people who are good at what they do, some even great. Lots of people get wrapped up in work. But there's some combination of being good at something and really enjoying it that stands out.

I went out to see Sarah McLachlan last Friday night, and I have to say Sarah is amazingly beautiful. She's not a stereotypical pinup girl, not an overdone supermodel, and doesn't really come across as what most think of as "sexy" ('specially since she's no longer an available 20 something with no kids).
However, there was this glow surrounding her the entire night. She loved what she was doing, and it showed. Her presence and dedication made her music that much better, and made it totally worth going to see her live.

Normally, I don't get sucked in by such things. But, aparently some rumors are actually true:

Slander! silentmonster and tigresa used to live together but tigresa moved out when they saw silentmonster making out with riddoch! queen_of_wands has secret, sordid fantasies about coldtortuga! tigresa and iron_sky took twenty minutes to decide what to tell the paramedics and the RSPCA. ophelialost and sgailean do things behind riddoch's back that are illegal in most of the world. firdarrig knows *just* how long to hold them down for. coldtortuga, omnisti and audaibnjad are involved in a sordid love-triangle, with arcanepackrat totally unaware! Enter your username to dish the dirt on your friends!

Link to the ABL journal

Last weekend was an interesting amalgamation of lethargy, excitement, joy and sadness. A pretty good time, all in all. It was my first vacation in what must be at least two weeks (if you count the weekend warrior expeditions with alpinebutterfly denizens). I went to visit my previous life for a few days, and many of those who used to dwell in it.

( And now for the rest of the story )

Current Mood: content

I'm not really a journaling guy. But everyone else is doing it. I might as well join in, and let ya'll know what I've been up to since my last post.

I now have a new job! (There was much rejoicing.) I am yet again a Qualcomm employee -- which is kinda nice, since I get to keep my old employee number, the extra vacation time for having been an employee for over half a decade, and they also pay fairly well.
The job's OK. I'm now working on BlueTooth -- letting everyone be just one step closer to removing wires from their twisted and tangled lives. Or was that removing twisted and tangled wires from their lives? I can't remember.

In other news: I'm playing D&D again. I found a local group of folks who play. Their game-playing style and mine clash a little bit, but so far it's all working out. I'm rather militant about keeping focused on the game and forging ahead in the story -- that's why everyone got together to play, right? And some members of the group are all about the hanging out and re-telling stories of yore, going over the wonderful adventures they've had in the past, thereby preventing people from having a wonderful adventure right now.
Ok, perhaps that's a bit too cynical a description of the social time the other players are looking for.

I should be heading off for the Wolfsheim concert tonight, and maybe not alone! A couple of my housemates and my girlfriend may go. We'll see, I suppose. It's kinda late on a worknight for those working folk (like me! I've been trying to get to work by 9am at the latest). And it's in San Francisco, a full 45 minutes away. I suppose that's how long it took me to get to Denver from my last abode. But it just seems so much further here (or is that farther? I can never remember).

Work has just arrived at my desk. I guess it's time to go do what I'm paid for.....

Do your arms hang low? Do they sway to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot? Can you tie them in a bow?

My arms feel like jello. I'm sure jello arms can be tied in knots -- maybe even climbing knots. I've been getting back into indoor climing since arriving at the ABL (alpinebutterfly). ABLites patrissimo, choiceful and Dawn all climb fairly regularly, and my girlfriend Jenny wants to go more often too -- so I've been going out a lot.
Two days ago I got back to climbing 5.10s. While not a first achievement, it's pretty good progress for just starting up again two weeks ago after taking over a year off. Today, I made it half way up a 5.11 before deciding that it'd be more fun to take the indoor lead climbing test. For those who aren't into climbing, the lead climber spends most of his (or her) time with the belay rope below -- rather than above -- the climber. Again, it's something I've done before -- but it's been quite a while since I've had the option of falling up to 15 feet or so.

I'm quite happy getting back into climbing -- and living with a bunch of people who climb a lot. Can't wait to go back outdoors, though. Maybe we'll have to take a couple climbing trips to Boulder....

Do I really want a job? I suppose so -- it helps pay the bills.

So, my interview with Google didn't go so well. For future reference, don't take mind-numbing antihistamines before interviews. I really should have just called in sick and rescheduled the interview. Oops. Anyway, they finally got back to me saying there wasn't a fit right now for one of my level of expertese. Hmmm.

Today was an all day interview with Qualcomm -- 9 to 5. Ya think it would have been easier if they just transferred me from the Boulder office. But no. I suppose I would have been interviewed by the team I was moving to anyway, but this is a bit amusing to do it as a non-Qualcomm employee. Maybe I can convince them to give me a nice signing bonus and some stock options if they do extend an offer.

I expect to hear back from Rocket Mobile tomorrow. They're an interesting company of 25 people. It'd be exciting to work for such a small firm, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that level of excitement.

And then there's OpenWave. Looks like they might want to pay me the most of anyone -- since (if they do make an offer) I think it'll be for a principal engineer position. A several step up from my last job. Not sure I really want to work for them, either. I've not heard good things about them in general, and I don't think they do a good job of being nice to employees. Anyway, I have a full day interview with them tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

Current Mood: drained