Ups and downs continue, as does the search for work. But it was a nice day yesterday, and that makes up for an awful lot of downs. Hit 45 here according to my thermometer, and I took the opportunity to chip away at the last of the snow and ice on my sidewalks, hoping to keep from having a skating rink as the temp gets back to more normal levels today. I avoided making my back any worse in the process, too. Yay!
Today, beyond a bit of work to be done, and the continued search for new work, it’s time to head to Cub to buy grub for the party on Saturday. I’m planning to make up some fridge-pickles for snacks for the party (though I had to very carefully craft my query to get google to find Todd’s Über-Garlic Pickle recipe), and they need two or three days of sitting in the brine to be ready, so it’s time to get them started. I’ve also got lists of party-prep to do both tomorrow and Friday, and a ham to get started on Saturday morning for snacking later that evening, so today’s a good day to take the time to shop. If I’m smart, I’ll even remember to buy the cleaning supplies I’ll need once it’s all done.
There are also a couple projects I’d like to do. Utility programming for things that I would find useful, and this seems like a darned good time to get them done. I could maybe even make some shareware money on them from the three other people in the world who need these tools. I was hoping to slap one together yesterday, but discovered that while I probably could have done so using PowerPlant, I’m trying to learn Cocoa, and I just don’t know my way around the classes well enough yet. And when I asked a mailing list if there was a handy cross-reference so I could find things more quickly, the best suggestion I got was that I should put one together, and maybe sell it as a book. Very little in my life is quite as easy as I think it should be.
- From the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists comes this story of a 1960s government experiment to see if three nuclear
innocents
could build a working atomic bomb. - Joe Soucheray says So-called hockey lockout makes lemmings look savvy, and I think he’s right. The NHL isn’t so much losing fans, as teaching them they can live without hockey. And at something like $80/game, it isn’t too tough to find something else to do. I really wonder how many folks will be back when they start playing hockey again. [press-patch]
- John Perry Barlow recently discovered how Skype is making this an Intimate Planet, as he gets two random phone calls from Asia in a single evening. Makes getting set up on skype sound pretty attractive, except for the part of my brain that reminds me that I don’t exactly need more distractions right now. [boing boing]
- A San Francisco State student Photographer Puts Focus on Privacy Debate. Plus it sounds like he’s a hall of a photojournalist already. [holy schmoly]
- It’s not the kind of thing he usually points to, but Doc took the Which Funny Barbie Are You? and came out Exotic Dancer Barbie. Me? Let’s just say that I suspect the quiz could use some tweaking. [doc]