So my mac had been crashing. Locking up solid, no way out save a forced reboot.

"Strange," I thought, "this machine has been quite reliable, and I have made no recent changes. Whatever could it be?"

I decide to run the disk util from the install cd. Kernal panic. Can't boot from the cd. Can't boot from the drive. More kernal panics. Varying startup issues. No problems booting into single user mode, I run fsck and it catches a couple things, so I think maybe that's it. [Repeat process from the beginning of this paragraph]

A hardware issue? I dig out the diagnostic cd and attempt another startup, holding down the option key. It freezes at the volume select screen. What the hell? I find that I am becoming frustrated. Okay, time to unplug everything and...

..then I notice it. The usb cable for my digital camera is plugged into the computer, as it always is, but instead of being draped around the handle of the G4, the baby male end, the end that sticks into the camera, has slipped and is resting against the side of my (metal) desk. I put it back up over the handle and all my startup and freezing problems are magically resolved.

The end.

11:03 PM | 1

I just bought four pounds of tapioca pudding. Four pounds, of tapioca pudding!

FOUR POUNDS!!

08:52 PM | 8

Wow, my life has become surprisingly dull lately.

Well, entertaining for me, but nothing really worth writing about. Maybe I should go do something exciting right now, just so I'll have material for a new update.

08:18 PM | 0

I love the rain, the sound as it hits the ground outside, interrupted by the occasional flash and boom of thunder. The smell in the air before and after. Maybe because it's a rare thing here, the rain. Maybe because it involves so many senses.

Back in the old days, the Charleston underpass would have flooded on a night like this, and we would be seeing videos of the drowned cars tomorrow.

03:52 AM | 1

This, a list of cats, outdoors, in the neighborhood.

1. white cat skulking under the pomegranate tree
2. baby white cat that ran under my car
3. baby grey cat that I have yet to see
4. small black cat resembling my roommate's small black cats
5. massive black and white cat sitting on the wall
6. calico cat (1 of 3)
7. calico cat (2 of 3)
8. calico cat (3 of 3)
9. tiger-striped cat that stares from the bushes

This, a list of cats, outdoors, in the neighborhood, translated into french and back again:

This, a list of cats, outside, in the vicinity.

1. white cat skulking under the grenade shaft
2. white cat of baby who functioned under my car
3. gray cat of baby whom I have to still see
4. black kitten resembling the black kittens of my companion of room
5. black and white cat massive resting on the wall
6. cat of banner (1 of 3)
7. cat of banner (2 of 3)
8. cat of banner (3 of 3)
9. tiger-barred cat which looks at bushes fixedly.

02:58 AM | 4

It's almost 8am and I'm watching My Fair Lady, picking pomegranates from the tree outside during commercial breaks. Breakfast at Tiffany's was on earlier. I wasn't picking pomegranates then.

Go rent Death to Smoochy. If anything, just for the chance to see Edward Norton dancing around like a loon in a rhino suit. Great great movie.

For me, it was E.T., although I don't really have much of the movie itself tied to the memory, just flashes of the setting. Hmm, maybe it was Empire Strikes Back. I remember family in the aisle, after the film. Plush maroon curtains next to me, along the wall. I think we're in the old Red Rock Theater... back before it closed, before the casino theaters took over, back when it was one of the nicest in town. My aunt being there. Cousins. Were we a large group?

What is your earliest memory of seeing a movie in the theater?

07:49 AM | 6

Ryan digs up the past(or here, once the current project falls off the main page). Well done.

02:28 AM | 3

One advantage of having a defective memory(aside from being able to reread books and retain the suspense): I'm unpacking the things I'd recently cleared from my old storage unit, and it's like freaking Christmas every time I open a box. I thought half this stuff was gone forever, and the other half I don't remember owning in the first place.

05:09 PM | 2

Miyazaki's Spirited Away, one of the highest grossing movies ever outside of the US, has finally made its way to Las Vegas. Friday night, after sating ourselves on Yebisu and noodles at Togoshi, we headed over to the Colonnade(one of only two local theaters showing it) and saw the film.

The imagination and creativity of the story blew me away, the animation was excellent and the voice dubbing, with credit to John Lasseter of Pixar and his team, was surprisingly good. I'm looking forward to seeing it again just to catch the subtleties I missed the first time around.

Highly recommended. If you have kids, take em with you. If not, borrow someone elses children and take them instead.

01:09 AM | 1

It seems the freezer has stopped freezing, so I ate the rest of the ice cream before it turned into soup. It was at that perfect point, not quite a solid not quite a liquid, the way ice cream is after sitting in the car, when you arrive home and set the groceries on on the counter, open the lid and spoon out the edges.

I'm also drinking plenty of water; the ice cubes won't hold out much longer.

I am reading How To Be An Artist, a graphic novel by Eddie Campbell. Most of you would like it, it's good. I am also finishing up book four of The Great War series, alternate history by Harry Turtledove. Some of you would like it, if you're into the whole history thing. Also, I am reading Touched with Fire, a study of manic-depressive illness and it's relation to the arts, with a focus on Byron, whose words I am a fan of. It's by Kay Redfield Jamison. A few of you I know would especially enjoy it.

10:37 PM | 2

So well she acted all and every part
    By turns -- with that vivacious versatility,
Which many people take for want of heart.
    They err -- 'tis merely what is called mobility,
A thing of temperament and not of art,
    Though seeming so, from its supposed facility;
And false -- though true; for surely they're sincerest
Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest.

This makes your actors, artists, and romancers,
    Heroes sometimes, though seldom -- sages never;
But speakers, bards, diplomatists, and dancers,
    Little that's great, but much of what is clever;
Most orators, but very few financiers,
    Though all Exchequer chancellors endeavour,
Of late years, to dispense with Cocker's rigours,
And grow quite figurative with their figures.

                        - Lord Byron, Don Juan

From his notes:
In French, "mobilitÈ. I am not sure that mobility is English; but it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates, though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions -- at the same time without losing the past; and is, though sometimes apparantly useful to the possessor, a most painful and unhappy attribute.

10:45 PM | 0

It's an odd thing to walk inside and see a 20 inch fish laying helpless on the floor, staring up at you. I'm not sure why he decided to make the leap, but eesh, that five foot dive from the top of the aquarium to the wooden floor below had to hurt. Maybe the five or six feeder fish got together and hurled him over the edge.

Aside from a bruised tail and injured pride, he seems to be doing fine.

12:54 AM | 3

Spike Jonze is a genius. [via andre]

03:03 AM | 0