Here are my 21 favorites, the rest to be posted when I finish work on my gallery software.

Follow link to Playa del Fuego Fall 2008 pictures on Flickr
No Comments | #6750

I keep checking the cell phone to see if perhaps the T-Mobile has changed its fog-addled range in the last 10 minutes or so. Alice curled up under my sleeping bag earlier this evening so I have to wake her up before I go to sleep. I'm not really tired, but this cold is making me want to curl up surrounded by my own warmth and just pass out until the sun comes up. This is most likely a very natural sleep cycle. Just across the road a couple of folks are spinning fire up on top of some sort of lumber structure, with a big construction barrel lit up in the middle. Dance music is playing somewhere as it has been since I got here at 8pm yesterday. Everything seems pretty right with the world.

1 Comments | #6749

1:22am

These are the things that keep me awake at night.

In March of this year I set on the path of overcoming the fear of (among other things) calamitous financial collapse in the United States and a Depression-era hoarding mentality that came with it. I feel like I have achieved that goal, having come to terms with a more sustainable lifestyle and released the need to hold onto every might-be-useful object in my home. The irony of having conquered these overly-pessimistic risk averse behaviors a few months before an undeniable major collapse of the United States markets, and just a few hours ago the precipitous fall of the Nikkei 225, is something of a bitter source of amusement for me.

Watching the fall of the markets has been a major source of distraction for me over the last few days. In the back of my head I feel like there is something that I could be doing to prepare more adequately for the coming storm. Do I have enough food in reserves? What happens if things start to collapse around me? What's important enough to take from my house and escape with if riots start to break out in the streets? Its the sort of chained anxiety I thought I had conquered and put behind me, but has suddenly returned to assert itself in an environment where all those things don't sound too far afield.

In the last few days nothing major has changed for me. Every routine is still pretty much the same as it was three weeks ago or three months ago. But there is this pervasive feeling I have that anything and everything has the potential to. Once our collective fantasy of money starts to break down, you wonder how many other unspoken collective deceptions are next. My entire industry is built around not actually building anything, simply changing one form of information to another and hopefully approximating knowledge along the way. Who cares about that when food is scarce? Suddenly the practicality of joining a roving band of philosopher-plumbers takes on a new significance. If only I knew anything about plumbing . . .

11:39am

As I drove to work the President was on the radio and the DJIA had dipped below 8,000 points.

1:10pm

Listening to This American Life show #365, called Another Frightening Show About the Economy. To quote Mark Peterson:

For those of you who have experienced an earthquake, some people call it a "soul wrenching" experience because you realize there's a power out there that's doing something that you have no control over whatsoever and it's massively moving everything and that's last week.

Anyone else feel that soul wrenching feeling?

2 Comments | #6748

Man vs. Pee Machine Scoop Away is awesome.

Finance Dow Jones IA below 9,000 points, currently at 8,877.

No Comments | #6747

CareFirst I mailed in an out-of-network claim to CareFirst on August 2. I called today and found that they never received and/or processed it. To their credit, I was able to fax it to the CSR in Owings Mills and start the processing immediately, but I'll still be waiting 15 days for it to get into the system.

No Comments | #6746

Debates Best part of the evening: Obama's tie and suit combination. Lavender tie and a black suit is a spectacularly played fashion statement, especially against McCain's classic Red(tie), White(shirt) and Blue(suit) combo. Worst part: Both campaigns negotiate the rules for the debate in advance. I understand that neither candidate was probably happy with the end result rules, but they agreed on them. Pushing them aside like they don't matter basically makes it look like neither one respects themselves or each other. It almost goes without saying that the disrespect to the moderator was pretty astounding, and he didn't take it either graciously or respond as aggressively as he should have. Why should I believe either candidate will have any more respect for the laws and people of the U.S. if they can't stay within a simple debate format? Obama's childish "But McCain is did it first" retorts were probably his worst moment.

1 Comments | #6745

Linus Torvalds has a blog.

Follow link to Linus' blog
No Comments | #6744

Magpie's blog.

Follow link to Birds Before The Storm
No Comments | #6743

This November, Laura Duncan is participating in a 3-Day 60 mile walk to raise funds to fight breast cancer. Please consider donating to support her. Proceeds go to the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the National Philanthropic Trust.

Follow link to Arizona Breast Cancer 3-Day
No Comments | #6742

Google Finance offers a broad range of information about stocks, mutual funds, public and private companies. In addition, Google Finance offers interactive charts, news and fundamental data.

Follow link to Google Finance
No Comments | #6741

Finance This is going to be an ugly day, financially. The DJIA is down to a little over 9,500.

Man vs. Pee Machine Switched from Tidy Cats to Scoop Away. Tomorrow will scoop before work. Progress will be noted here.

No Comments | #6740

Pure Data is a real-time graphical dataflow programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing.

Follow link to Pure Data
No Comments | #6739

PDF Art project with Justin, learning Pure Data.

No Comments | #6738

American Diabetes Association Walk Bike mobile.

Columbia Heights Festival Not exactly what we expected, but there was a camel.

Dinner with Mike Calderone Great to catch up.

Bowling with Emily They made me leave my bike helmet on a table outside.

No Comments | #6737

Michael Calderone writes on political media for Politico.

Follow link to Michael Calderone's Blog
No Comments | #6736

Wachovia Had a $22 overdraft on my checking account in spite of having asked to have my overdraft protection activated in April. Bank manager fixed everything in a ten minute conversation and refunded the overdraft fee. The check in question cleared without an issue.

Board Game Night Was awesome, more later.

No Comments | #6735

Geekery Ask me anything about Web Parts. Seriously. I haven't thought about anything else for the last 24 hours.

Dodgeball We got trounced, bad.

Nalgene I bought a new Nalgene bottle from REI to be sure I had one for tonight and discovered that they are now selling exclusively Bisphenol-A-free plastic versions in the old polycarbonate form factor. No idea if they are more or less the same sturdiness, but I'll find out over the next few weeks. Instead of polycarbonate they are using Eastman Tritan copolyester. No word on the availability of the old-style Nalgene bottles going forward. I think its very likely to depend on the durability of these new ones.

Thanks to Lauren for pointing out that there have always been non-polycarbonate bottles in the Nalgene brand line.

Man vs. Pee Machines Sparkling clean litter boxen seem to have eliminated most badness.

1 Comments | #6734

Man vs. Pee Machine This morning while I was getting ready for work, Dot peed in my laundry basket, thoroughly drenching my "Ehrlich for Governor" tee-shirt. While I can't argue with her taste, she's locked in the bathroom with a fresh box of litter, food and water. Any advice is appreciated.

2 Comments | #6733

Finance Strong opening to the stock market today, hopefully it holds to the end of the day and I get some of "my" money back. Unfortunately it seems that as a result of my spending this week I'll have to hit up savings for $101.32 to pay my bills this week. It's not a huge deal, but its a sign I need to tighten the belt a little tighter.

Sleep Schedule Was up and jumped out of bed and into the shower at 0700. Was at the office and seated at my desk a few minutes after 0800 with a large Caribou coffee and muffin in my hand. Success!

Man vs. Pee Machine All the aluminum foil was disturbed and there was pee on the plastic covering over the white couch. None appears to have penetrated below. I am slightly behind on litter box cleaning but not enough to matter. Leaning towards getting her a new friend, but not until after PDF when we would have time to bond for sure.

1 Comments | #6732

The weblog of Ray Blank.

Follow link to Achieving Legendary
No Comments | #6731

Finance Unless you've been living under a rock today, you know the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 777 points after the house failed to pass the bailout bill as written. Considering the last time we were graced with swift reactive governance we got the USA Patriot Act, I could stand to see a few more days of the markets down 7% if that's what the deliberative process of the republic requires. I know they're not going to get this right per se but at least they can get it less wrong than an unsupervised playground of 700 billion tax dollars for folks who have shown a remarkable lack of ability to grasp basic ledger sheets. Personally, I "lost" about $1,700 today in my retirement, but I have forty years to get it back so I'm not all that worried.

Birthday Today I took off from work for my birthday. My company gives it out as a recognized holiday. I slept until 14:30, then ate and surfed the web until it was time to enjoy a nice chicken and pasta dish and a brownie sundae down in Fells Point. I feel very relaxed after what was a pretty hectic weekend. Tomorrow I put my nose back down to the grindstone.

Kitten Blogging Dot loves apples and will run from whatever room she is in to where I am if she hears me bite into one. Then she'll sit on my lap until I bite her off a piece and then eat it out of my hand. I checked everywhere I could on the Internet and nobody says that they are bad for her, so finally we have something we can share. She also has no idea what a mirror is, and has been attacking her reflection in both my office and the bedroom with alarming regularity.

No Comments | #6730

The voices in my head are singing in harmony to an unwritten Stephen Sondheim song.

Man vs. Pee Machine The two chairs with no aluminum foil on them got peed on again, in spite of the fact that there's no way to smell the existing pee through the plastic. She must be doing this as a matter of habit. I added aluminum foil to both those chairs. The couches have not seen any pee since I added the foil to them. I'm making sure that the first thing I do when I get back into the house is to give the cat a good twenty minutes of attention, and that usually fends off any immediate retaliatory strikes for being out too late or too long. If things are still an issue the next weekend after Playa del Fuego I might consider getting another kitten from the Maryland SPCA. The other alternative would be to move all upholstered furniture from the ground floor (or the house entirely) in favor of the company of the kitten.

BSSC Dodgeball The first game of BSSC dodge ball with Tanza's team really did a number on my body, just like the first game of soccer. I think figuring out the right pre-game stretches and bringing enough water for myself will make a difference. I'm definitely looking forward to the next game and hopefully going to one of the pre- or post-game social events. This may be the way to get me through a few weeks of the winter and cold-weather cardiovascular exercise slump. There's no standing still in dodge-ball. Everyone had to pick a (super)villain name for the back of their official team tee-shirt. I chose Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs.

Rebecca and Phil's Wedding A resounding success. I can't wait to see some of the pictures that other folks took of the ceremony and afterwards because, a dozen people took the time to tell me how good I looked, and a different half dozen asked me if I were running for office. Hopefully once Phil is allowed to leave the marital bed he'll do his good geek duty of collecting all the digital photographs from wedding guests in one place so I can browse through give myself some new user icons and profile pictures. In spite of the fact that I don't wear them often, I wear a suit and tie quite well. My speech was well received. I didn't get any applause and people looked a little shell-shocked at the end, but a few folks came up and told me how nice it was. I'm sure there's video floating around that I will get to see and wince at.

Birthday A few people remembered it was my birthday. The one birthday card I got in the mail was from my office. I don't sweat it though. I'll make a huge fuss over my 30th, so I have no problem with the fact that my 29th was a very reserved occasion. I did get to spend all of the day with some great friends ? and give a speech, so I have no regrets. Also, I'm now 29, which feels not a day different than 28.

Sleep Schedule Currently anywhere from 3am to 11am or 4pm to noon or later. Hoping this morning will be the day I can actually leap out of bed at 7am and reset the schedule. It took a while to get this deep in the hole, so I'm not really optomistic about a quick change back.

House Cleaning In anticipation of Kathleen E. maybe needing a couch to crash on, I cleaned up both floors of the house and retrieved most of the camping gear from the basement. Found that one of the plastic storage boxes had either a crack in it or one of the towels wicked up a ton of water into the box. Luckily it was all non-important items that I'll attempt to bleach once in the washing machine and dispose of if that's not successful. Seven large bags of garbage are out on the curb, and a bunch more will join them next week.

Playa del Fuego With less than two weeks to go before the event, I have most of the parts for my art project either promised or secured. Once I make a quick trade with Justin for some hardware and fire gear, I'll only have a trip to Home Depot remaining and a few hours work in the backyard to nail everything together. I have a good feeling about this one. Plans for the Zelda's Inferno camp are continuing apace.

Personal Net Worth Ticker Certainly much more interesting than I expected it to be, and I got to learn enough of jpgraph to render everything on my home page.

Overall Fitness I've been really bad about eating right lately, but my weight is still up at a relatively solid 143.5 pounds. Need to keep the cardiovascular exercise in spite of the lowering temperatures, but I'm confident this season will be easier.

West Wing End of season two. A rain soaked President Bartlett just put his hands in his pockets and looked to the side. All three Netflix envelopes go out with the Monday mail, so I should have replacements for all three by Wednesday or Thursday. Nobody in conversation seems to understand who Sam Seaborn is, which is a shame because he's a perfect metaphor for the way I get when I'm knee deep into an important bit of writing.

2 Comments | #6729

What's new online.

Follow link to reddit
No Comments | #6728

Happy birthday to Steve K. and Gabe M. Many happy returns!

It is depressing to watch my net worth trickle lower over the course of two week on my nifty new graphs. I'm hoping I might have made a little investment money today, but I'm not exactly counting on it.

No Comments | #6727

• The McCain camp is terrified of the upcoming debates because they know Obama is going to look clued in and presidential, and the media have already picked up the narrative about the entire ticket being out of touch on the economy -- so anything he gets wrong will be immediately stacked up against the actual facts in print and TV commentary. As a result they're postponing their campaign because of the economic crisis. What a crock.
• David Letterman agrees with me.

2 Comments | #6726

A nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.

Follow link to Annenberg Political Fact Check
No Comments | #6725

Link to the weblog of Darrell Duane.

Follow link to Darrell Duane
No Comments | #6724

Tree hugging lunatic in New York City.

Follow link to No Impact Man
No Comments | #6723

• Barry had an extra stick of 1GB PC3200 so I replaced the 512MB stick in my Eee PC with it. So far I haven't noticed any real performance gain, but I'm sure I will once I have a dozen applications open again sometime this week.
• This morning there was a puddle of cat pee on the plastic cover over the white couch. When I got back from work there was a puddle of pee on the cover over the brown couch. It was easy enough to clean up the plastic but I'm at my wits end about this. If getting Dot another cat in the house doesn't solve things I'm not sure what will.
• I'm checking out these "Tattle Tale" pet trainers that supposedly let out a high pitch screech at the slightest vibration, so I can leave one on the couch I want to keep her off during the day and hopefully let Pavlovian response do the rest.

1 Comments | #6722

• Undulate is today's dictionary.com word of the day!
• I now have clocks on my iGoogle for the West Coast, Thailand, and Madagascar.
• I've lived within my means in an era of easy credit. Why didn't they?
• I'm turning into an old man right before my own eyes. They're for the cat, but they make my living room feel like a cold-case murder scene.

2 Comments | #6721

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