Update: The repair guy they sent this time isn't exactly what you'd call "articulate." He just wandered through my living room and said something along the lines of "ahbeleete module gwetijh ahnf." I just nodded -- it sounded like furnace-fixin talk to me...

Cold house update: Gas logs in fireplace have provided some heat, and repair guy is now poking around in the furnace. Am temporarily holding off mailing box of spiders to landlord.

It's very cold in my house. Am comtemplating torturous deaths for my landlord.

Random Snippets

The small college town where I just spent the week had a number of cable access channels -- including two for local high schools, one for the college, one for the city, one for the county, etc. One was apparently the "Error reading drive A" channel. This error message on screen for the entire week. I watched it for a while, figuring that something had to happen eventually. I probably doubled their audience.

I was apparently outside of the coverage area for both my pager and my cell phone. Which was great until my office fedexed me a replacement phone on Wednesday. So much for escaping the leash.

Took an unplanned side trip to the quilt museum in Paducah, Ky. Which I have to say was pretty incredible, despite what you might think. Quilting is apparently big business there -- not only do they have the museum, but they have quilting magazines, quilting suppliers, and an internationally-known quilting show. Also got to see the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, and got a quick look at the nifty historical murals on the flood walls along the river.

Got home to find my heat broken again, for the third time this fall. My landlord is not my favorite person right now.

It's cold and rainy. The guy at the little health food market seemed amazed that I had left the house -- apparently he heard a rumor of a possible snowflake this weekend. In Tennessee, it's customary to hole up for a week whenever someone uses the "S" word. Once again, I'm just not fitting in...

An old friend from high school pointed out this great site.

Ugh. 8:00 AM classes were bad enough in college. And back then I could always stagger in at 8:05 and settle in the back with an emergency coffee ration!

Now they're expecting me to get up and talk coherently to dozens of students at that hour. It's inhuman, I tell ya!

People keep googling me looking for "pictures of kumquats." Here.

Now leave me alone, already!

I confess to getting sucked into the Harry Potter books after constant harassment by a friend. But in Harry Potter Pampered jock, patsy, fraud, Chris Suellentrop debunks the cult of Potter, claiming that the young wizard is just another quidditch jock skating by on his parents' money and reputation. hehe.

The most amusing thing is how seriously some of the people commenting on the article are taking it.

Pulled an all-nighter on Friday fighting with a brand new $20,000+ Dell Linux server that kept freezing up. It has now gone 22 hours under load without keeling over, so hopefully I'm done with the danged thing. On the other hand, the $1000 Linux server sitting under my desk hasn't gone down since I installed it in July. The IT gods can be a fickle bunch.

I'm going to be out of town this coming week -- I've been recruited to speak to college students about my job 'n stuff. Should be an interesting change, but it's also a bit intimidating. (Like all of a sudden I'm some sort of role model or something!)

Right now I'm busy straightening up the house -- don't want the catsitter to know what a slob I really am...