Bars w/o Pants
January 26, 2008
Most of you live ’round here, so know what yesterday’s weather was like. For the rest of you, and for posterity, it was gross. Temp in the lower 40′s, with a RealFeel in the upper 20′s, according to AccuWeather.com. Varying levels rain from misting to not-quite-downpour.
I left my office at Lee Circle and rode up to my friends house by Jefferson and Magazine in a nice 13 minute trip. Not quite drenched, she let me in to cool down (was overheated – one top layer too many).
On the way back, my rear tire was feeling a bit low, so I stopped at another friends house (dripping again) to borrow his bike pump. In the process of trying to improve my setup, I inadvertently made it worse. While pumping up the front tire, the presta valve broke. Laaaaame. Turns out, my little repair bag was all but empty. Laaaaamer.
So, Scott (the friend), gives me his car keys. While he is a blossoming bike nerd, his gear is limited to mountain bikes. No 700c tubes for this monkey. I drive down to GNO and pick up some super-hot 80mm smooth presta valve tubes, return to Scott’s, change it out, and hit the pavement.
And the rain! Oy such rain! Whatever uptown krewe was scheduled to roll stayed safe and dry in their buses on Napoleon. I rode by them weaving across lanes like a little kid – access by car to the street had been blocked of for the parade and its staging area.
In retrospect, riding down Tchoupitoulas isn’t usually the best idea, especially when it is cold and dark, and I was wearing (rain darkened) green shorts, a black bag, black jacket, and forgot my rear light. However, I’m me, so I don’t usually care.
I did however have the presence of mind to pull over at Tchoup and Jackson to pull over and watch the high-speed police car parade.
By the time I reached the CCC overpass, my jacket had gained a good bit of weight, but I was still comfy. Unfortunately, I flatted. Still with an incomplete repair kit, I had two options: 1) get a ride and drip all over everywhere or b) cry about it and walk.
Me being me, I now have a sore right shoulder/collarbone. I walked to the bike shop on Frenchmen. While the shop was closed and the gates locked, I had the (relatively, at that point) good fortune of hollerin’ in to the guys staying late. After shedding most of my layers, I had a few sips of Jameson’s and changed out my tube. Tim had ordered me an awesome new Surly Karate Monkey t-shirt and it was gratefully added to my bag.
Some of the guys and I rode around the corner to the R Bar, where the title of this now epic (in length only) post comes in to play.
Jeremy was working, and I asked a favor of him. Since the R Bar is a bed and beverage, they have a washer/dryer on site, and a plethora of soft, fluffy towels. He let me in to the back, where I promptly put my soaked shorts, socks and beloved SIDIs into the dryer. I returned to the bar wearing nothing my shirt, hat, boxers, and a towel.
One thing I will always hold dear about this city is that you can walk into a bar, see a guy in a bath towel drinking a beer, and think nothing of it.
Anyways, while I didn’t go all-out, I put an old-style stink on it last night. Whiskey, beer, Dirty Guatemalans. R Bar, Molly’s, the Abbey, the Dervish.
I was lucky enough to spend time with friends that no longer live here, and Alita of Brooklyn Bike Gang fame.
All in all, a good night. And it is oh-so-nice to be dry.
That Damnable Windows Key
January 25, 2008
On a related note on my less-than-heralded return to gaming, I rediscovered something that really puts my panties in a bunch: the left-side Windows key.
You know what I’m talking about. You’re in the middle of a map, and your pinky hits it, leaving your character dead in the water until your ALT+TAB fu kicks in and you switch back to the game.
Well, there is a solution: the registry.
You can create a new a new binary value in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout named “Scancode Map” with a value of 00000000000000000200000000005BE000000000, or you can download and run this registry patch.
NOTE: this only disables the LEFT Windows Key.
Either way, you need to reboot to see the difference. Happy fraggin’ y’all.
Orangelo Rising
January 25, 2008
Now, at any given point in my life will I be considered a great gamer, but I’m not half-bad. I have fun, and that’s all that counts.
Lately (since I’ve gotten my new computer), I’ve been hopping back into gaming. I was logging a bunch of hours a while ago when beta-testing for GameFlood, but it went live and I had other work to do.
I was perusing GameFlood recently and came across this Half-Life 2 mod called Follow Freeman (their site | GameFlood), a co-operative game where the players must work together to clear the level. If you’re lucky, you simply have to kill all the aliens (before they kill you) and figure a) where the end of the map is and b) get there. Sometimes, you have to protect a non-playing character from the aliens while doing the previous.
It’s really quite fun, and I recommend you try it. If y’all want to play any of those (HL/HL2) games, let me know – my steam handle is Orangelo.
Cordial Invite to Ramble
January 23, 2008
You are cordially invited to join the St. Anthony Ramblers on Mardi Gras Day, the Fifth of February, 2008. Should you grace us with your presence as we walk the streets of the Neighborhoods Treme, French Quarter, and Faubourg Marigny, we shall revel together and spread much merriment with the music of Panorama Brass Band.
Ironically, I didn’t cry
January 22, 2008
Last night at NOLA Tattoo, my friend Roxan got to ink her 3rd victim, and I got my second tattoo: a tear on my right index finger.
When I got home, I had forgotten to get some lotion/moisturizer. I was waiting for Bea to tell me that perhaps I should cry about/on it, but that moment never came. :(
LOLstache
January 21, 2008
Let’s see yours! Getcha new LOLs! Join the flickr pool!
Sorry for crunchy image, hosted by flickr and the available resolutions aren’t many.
Snakes on a Face Campaign, ’08
January 17, 2008
Prompted by Sonny’s progress and picture, I reckoned that an update on my end was needed.
So, the current status of the snake on my face:
What is snakes on a face? It was a contest in 2006 between me, Sonny, William (the then-roommates boyfriend), and Jeremy. The whole point was to see who could annoy their girlfriend the most grow the best mustache.
This year, it seems to be only Sonny and myself, although two or three of the members of Section 630, Row 8 are supposed to be involved.
We shall see who the victor is, come Mardi Gras Day.
Dr. McNinja and PHP/CSS
January 15, 2008
I’ve been noticing how on one of my favorite webcomics, Dr. McNinja, the page that displayed each comic was loading pretty slow.
Before:
<td valign=top><table border="0">
<tr><td align=center width="175"px><a href="page.php?pageNum=1&issue=10"> <img src="/graphics/1.gif" border=0> </a> </td></tr>
<tr><td align=center width="175"px><a href="page.php?pageNum=2&issue=10"> <img src="/graphics/2.gif" border=0> </a> </td></tr>
<tr><td align=center width="175"px><a href="page.php?pageNum=3&issue=10"> <img src="/graphics/3.gif" border=0> </a> </td></tr>
<tr><td align=center width="175"px><a href="page.php?pageNum=4&issue=10"> <img src="/graphics/4.gif" border=0> </a> </td></tr>
<tr><td align=center width="175"px><a href="page.php?pageNum=5&issue=10"> <img src="/graphics/5.gif" border=0> </a> </td></tr>
After:
<td valign=top id="pages">
<a href="/page.php?pageNum=1&issue=10">1</a>
<a href="/page.php?pageNum=2&issue=10">2</a>
<a href="/page.php?pageNum=3&issue=10">3</a>
<a href="/page.php?pageNum=4&issue=10">4</a>
<a href="/page.php?pageNum=5&issue=10">5</a>
CSS:
#pages a { font-weight: bold; color: #FFFFFF; background-color: #000000; display: block; text-align: center; width: 25px; margin-bottom: 3px; text-decoration: none; }
PHP (with NEW current page highlight! oooohhhhhh!):
for($p = 1; $p <= $pages; $p++) {
unset($style); if($p == $page) { $style = ‘ style="color: #CCCCCC;" ‘; }
echo ‘<a href="/page.php?pageNum=’.$p.’&issue=’.$issue.’"’.$style.’>’.$p.’</a>’."\n";
}
For some reason unbeknownst to me (and I emailed the tech girl, Zoe (who apparently offers help on websites, WTF?)), it was deployed so the output is as such:
<td valign=top id="pages"><table border="0"> <tr> <td align=\"center\" width=\"175\"px> <a href="/page.php?pageNum=1&issue=10">1</a> </td> </tr><tr> <td align=\"center\" width=\"175\"px> <a href="/page.php?pageNum=2&issue=10">2</a> </td> </tr><tr> <td align=\"center\" width=\"175\"px> <a href="/page.php?pageNum=3&issue=10">3</a> </td> </tr>
Yanno, you try to help some people, and they just don’t really listen. And yes, those slashes before the double-quotes are in the output HTML.
The page load is still much faster after dropping all those img calls, but meh. Why the extra table? Why????
We coulda had a baby by now
January 14, 2008
Don’t take that title too seriously, please.
Yesterday was our 9 month anniversary thingy. Please allow me to show you my romanticles in this fancy, bulleted list of yesterday’s events (in chronological order):
- Something ridiculous like 6am: Bea gets up to skate for 3 hours. I sleep for two and a half more hours and watch Monk.
- Look at house for sale. Disappointing. Two doors down from Hubig’s bakery.
- Breakfast/Lunch at La Peniche. Not-yet-ripened blueberries on my waffle manage not to ruin the meal.
- Loafing, working (me), napping (Bea)
- Errands. Barstool shopping.
- Dinner at Kyoto 2. Ice cream to follow.
- Cleaning, dishwashing, organizing, mounting pictures / mirrors at Bea’s.
- 1/2 hour of watching Boogie Nights.
- Sleep.
Now ladies (and some of you fellas), try and stay back or you just may swoon. For serious.
It’s been an easy and comfortable 9 months. Nothing really has felt forced, just moving at its own natural pace. And I’m oddly at peace at staying in more / becoming more domesticated. I think it mostly independent of her, but I can’t be a good judge of that.
I’m not objecting to the domestication, mind you. It is weird though.
Office, 2008
January 9, 2008
So, my new bookshelf came in today. Looks good, but methinks I should have gotten a wider one. Meh.
Well, here’s some pics of my new bookshelf and the current state of my home office. Click on the images for flickr-y extras.
