When the scary hook-handed pirate insists that you wash your hands before returning to work, by Davey Jones you’d better pay attention! I mean, look what happened to him:
I’ve been amused by this sticker on the bathroom door at work for years now, and finally I could no longer resist snapping a picture…
Searching through the archives here I see that I haven’t related the backstory behind a comment I make from time to time in conversation. I joke about setting my “thousand dollar alarm clock,” and most people shrug it off as just another weird thing Karel says.
But I’m not actually joking. My alarm clock cost $1000… after upgrades. I didn’t pay for it, of course.
The HP 620lx “palmtop” computer hit the market in 1998. I was the newly-appointed, albeit still-part-time, wrangler of all things computerized for Entercom Portland. We were just beginning a wave of hardware purchases and expansions that would see us, eventually, in a new building and three major expansions projects thereof. At the time, however, my boss decided that I should have a PDA of some sort. After a bit of research I settled on the 620lx. Color screen! PCMCIA slot! Infrared! Windows CE 2.0! (I didn’t realize at the time that banking on a nearly-new Microsoft OS is a foolhardy endeavor at the best of times. I was young and new to the gig; cut me some slack!) Price tag, with extra-life battery: $850.
A few months later HP released an upgrade to Windows CE 2.1 but you had to buy a ROM chip rig to get it. Another $150 later, and the machine was just a bit more useful than before… which is to say, sadly, still not all that much.
(My friend Ben got his hands on one of the successors to the 620lx a few months later. Known as the “Jornada” something-or-other, it featured a big touch screen but only a tiny bit more processing power and memory capacity. Neat toy, ultimately useless.)
Over time, the HP “palmtoy” simply didn’t work out for anything more useful than taking notes in meetings, scoring family Scrabble games (oddly enough, I did recently use it to score a game with the kids… Pocket Excel to the rescue, saving us all from my sloppy penmanship and questionable math skills…), and as an alarm clock. Here it is, shortly after once again performing its primary function over the past decade:
Hey, it has five programmable alarm options! This means that I can switch between my two different wake-up times (“Am I riding public transit or carpooling tomorrow?”) and have custom alarm times for special events.
Yes. I know. There’s another clock sitting right next to the really expensive one. The Totoro Clock is used for actual checking of the current time, not for alarms. Would you want to wake up every morning to a strident, chirpy rendition of the “My Neighbor Totoro” theme song?
I didn’t think so.
I was going to pout and moan about how depressing today is, given that it’s the third anniversary of the beginning of the end of the old job, the beginning of arguably the worst Spring season of my entire life.
“To hell with that,” I decided. “Let’s show off some more ducks instead.”
You’re thanking me for this stroke of wisdom and genius. I know you are.
And before anyone mentions it: Yes, they need dusting… perhaps a bath…
Only one post a week so far this month? I’ll have to see what I can do about that… aided by a birthday present from Dad: He gave me his “old” Pentax *ist DL camera! My “price” for this boon is that Dad wants pics of his grandkids and June wants pics of the cats I live with. I didn’t have working batteries by the time Erica visited Saturday afternoon and my attempts to snapshot the kitties didn’t turn out so well, but I did get one semi-decent photograph yesterday while trying to get the hang of using a “real” camera again.
Meet Rusty. I picked him up a few months ago at one of the local knick-knack shops on NE Broadway. I’m not sure why someone decided to make a bunch of cast-iron “rubber ducks,” but who am I to complain? He’ll probably figure prominently in the upcoming photography project since he’s unlikely to get blown out of frame by an errant breeze…
(I should go back and see if the shop has more of them, ’cause I wouldn’t be surprised if Wonderduck wants one. Heh.)
(Also: Pay no mind to the layer of dust upon my desk. Ahem.)
Right off the bat, please allow me a moment to thank everyone who commented, emailed or called with birthday wishes. You all helped make the day better!
Friday night, Lil’ and I went out to dinner at Kell’s, both of us choosing the lamb stew. Saturday morning, I slept in. Saturday afternoon, I played games with Alex. Saturday evening, Kyla and I went out to dinner at the Broadway Pub & Grill, our favorite “pub grub” dining spot.
On the “big day” itself, we played games until early afternoon and then visited Lil’ & Geoff’ & Anxiety for a while (the chocolate cake with maple flavored frosting was dee-lish), after which Kyla and I took off to go spend my birthday money gift card. (Lil’ will be chagrined to learn that her efforts resulted in expanding my anime collection. I’ll make it up to her somehow.) We dined at the Red Robin out at Cascade Station… and probably won’t do that again. The burgers were okay, but the “garlic & parmesan” fries… weren’t. Still, that cast only a slight shadow on an otherwise wonderful day. We went back to Kyla’s place to watch my cheesy $10 DVD purchase, Christian “Batman” Bale starring in the “1984 meets Metropolis meets The Matrix” flick, Equilibrium. I liked it, though I won’t claim it’s one of the finest acts of cinema ever produced.
My haul? Kyla bought me the CD of the “Peter Gabriel and friends” musical project, Big Blue Ball. (Some of you will be tempted to crack wise, here. Go ahead, but it’d better make me laugh…) I haven’t had the chance to listen to the whole thing, but what I’ve heard so far is quite good. As for the gift card purchase… well, turns out that Funimation has finally copped a clue and put out the collection of Fullmetal Alchemist anime DVDs in a semi-convenient two-box format for a not-wholly-astronomical price… that I still wouldn’t have paid my own money for unless I hit the jackpot, but I was delighted to pick up with the help of the gift card! 51 episodes making up one of the finest anime series I’ve ever seen? Huzzah!
The only downside, really? I had to go to bed earlier than I felt like doing because of the stupid Daylight Savings change… and it didn’t help with the massive jet-lag sensation I’m feeling today. Ah, well.
I’m not asking for or expecting anything in particular for my birthday this year. The economy’s a great big mess, and it’s not like I’ve been such a wonderful person over the last dozen months that I deserve fancy nice things. However… I’d prefer that a couple of items in the schedule for Sunday not take place…
First up, thanks to a lovely piece of idiocy a few years ago, this Sunday marks the changeover to Daylight Savings Time. That’s right: On my birthday, I lose an hour of sleep and get to fight a sense of jet-lag at work for most of the following week. Joy.
Then, the weather forecasters are suggesting that we may get a dusting of snow Sunday morning and/or evening. No. I do not want snow. I’ve seen plenty this year. I don’t think I’ve experienced a winter with this many snow events since I moved to Portland in 1989. Yes, I’ve seen more severe winter weather. This whole, “a bit of snow here, a bit of snow next week, a bit more snow a couple of weeks later” thing, though? Totally bizarre. And silly me, I figured that it being partway into March that we’d be done with the stuff.
Oh, well. I’ll try to enjoy the day anyway. So there, US Government. Take that, Mother Nature.
