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You might like to read the on-line lesson for CGI@CLAM.
The picture up there is some Cat #2 sitting on the windowsill by my front door, June 3rd. He is a really sweet guy.
If you want, you can look at more pictures that I've been taking lately. These are all raw, photoshop fodder. I'll be using them to make some more interesting things, soon.
When I go to the meeting tonight about my porch I will pass around this picture of my door area and this other picture of my door area so they can see exactly the part I want to build on.
8/29/2001: Tomorrow at 7:30 I have a hearing before the city planning board to try and get a variance for my planned porch. Yep... turns out that this year they said I need one. Why, you ask? Well, because my house is too close to the street. There's some kinda rule about the building having to be at least 5 feet away from the property line. Now, of course I'm more than 5 feet from the street, but I don't own the sidewalk (nor apparently parts of my front garden - good thing I just built that baby without asking the city!). Thing IS, I'm not getting any CLOSER to the street. No, I'm just filling in a "notched" part of the house. If you look at this photo of my front door area you can see that the stoop is in a sort of dipped in corner. All I want to do is remove the stoop and instead make a bigger platform out to "fill in" that area, and then put a roof on it - actually put a roof over it and the front sunny room I'm sitting in right now, so it all blends together. So, I'm adding more stuff parallel to the street, but nothing is getting any closer to the street, and I'm not going outside the "smallest convex rectangle" that could currently contain my house footprint. According to Those In The Know, this should be granted with no problem. One can hope. If anything, the new roof should make the front room blend in better and look LESS like something oddball added on.
Anyway, I had to fill out paperwork saying how my addition won't degrade the neighborhood, and stuff. I told them hey, look, I'm trying to put on a very traditional looking front porch, like the vast majority of houses around here already have, so it should be MORE in character rather than less. The city then set up this hearing, and mailed the announcement to all the people owning property in some huge radius. There are quite a few absentee landlords around here when it comes to apartment buildings, 'cuz I saw the list and there are people in Connecticut who will be allowed to have their say in the matter of me building a porch. Wooo. For what it's worth, my immediate neighbors don't have a problem with it. So far the main peeve is just that construction couldn't happen this month 'cuz we had to wait for this hearing to happen. Hopefully I'll get this variance and can then build it. If not, I dunno what I'll do. I need a roof 'cuz my door swells up when rain blows directly on it and then it's hard to lock my door, not to mention the SNOW in the wintertime... anyways it seems that due to delays painting will not happen until spring. I want to get it done ASAP in spring so I can put up trellises.
I found the most amazing internet radio station thing on www.live365.com. Someone in Japan has put up a streaming station with nothing but 80's and early 90's music from Japan. Talk about your niche audience, but I am squarely in it. Other than that generally I've been listening to the NHK radio news every day in the morning and on the way home from work, I record it from the net on my walkman and then listen while I'm walking. Plus I can read the online version of the Asahi newspaper (I used to subscribe to the print version when I lived in Tokyo) whenever I want. Gotta love the internet.
8/28/2001: Today on my way into work it was rather cool (well, in comparison to the heat lately) and it really smelled like burning leaves in Japan, or like California when the hills are all burning (which reminded me of burning leaves in Japan!) and I was really enjoying the smell on the walk in. I had to run a few times to get upwind of smokers - leaves, ok, burning, ok, but not the right type. At all.
I got a new backpack today which is larger than the purple one with a hole in it and also has lots of individual compartments. Lately I've been carrying around a lot of small books or small oddly shaped detritus and the multiple compartments will help keep it all organized. The only peeve is it doesn't have a leather bottom - but none of the big ones with compartments did. You'd think those are the ones people would want to be durable, but noooo. Anyways, I don't find myself slamming my bag on the concrete so often these days, and it was on sale, so hopefully it works out. It's bright green. It says it's durable, and I guess it is, for the whole thing being "backpack nylon".
8/25/2001: Today is the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival downtown, and before that I was on "News from Neptune" with Mike L. this morning, then sat with the CLAM table at the corn fest, now it's time to par-tay.
Hey IMC-istas, here's a photoshop of a bad picture of a bad poem on Joe F.'s fridge for the latest issue.
8/23/2001: Last night there were some pretty severe thunderstorms, including some 2 inch hail but luckily the hail and true nastiness went a bit north of here. Last Saturday too we had big time thunderstorms, and Saturday the tornado sirens actually went off in town. After Saturday things got deliciously cool and almost autumnal, but then by yesterday things were back up into hot'n'humid summer territory again.
Last night I went out for the usual Wednesday beer drinkin' at the Embassy (which is across from the Urbana Free Library, maybe 6 streets north of my house, on my very own street) and didn't notice anything odd leaving the house. I came home around 11:30 and again, didn't notice anything odd, no one, say, MISSING... but then this morning, as usual, I woke up, put on clothes, started making breakfast... and noticed, finally, that my little roommate Kurosuke was not there demanding his share of tuna. Usually he is all OVER any situation with even the slightest possibility of involving tuna, so I knew something was up. I searched all over the house for him but finally realized he wasn't in, he must have slipped out the door the night before. Sure enough, I went out in the yard and whistled, and I heard this really really peeved sounding yowl coming from under the back stoop. Yep, there he was, curled up and really bristly on top of the cement blocks under the stoop. The stoop is not waterproof, and so he was utterly soaking wet, his fur sticking out all over. I hauled him into the house and he ate like it was going out of style. Kasumi was sniffing him all over since he was wet I guess. He took some time grooming himself, but was still all wet when I left for work. As I sit here now though he's back to his sleek furry self.
The students are back at UIUC as of this past Sunday. Classes actually started yesterday, and so every time I go out in the hall to use the bathroom, there are hordes and hordes of lost people. The building I work in is a maze. The first floor is at least all connected, so if in doubt you can walk around the entire ring (which will take some time, the building takes up an entire block!) but the upper floors aren't even contiguous, so if you take the wrong stairwell, You Can't Get There From Here. There are maps by the door at the end of the hallway closest to the street and it is surrounded by throngs of people, some of whom ask me for directions. Unfortunately for them, I know where MY own office is (on the first floor, luckily!) but I have no clue where various third floor rooms are.
8/9/2001: Good news today is, I got the job. Yep... yesterday I had the interview for the permanent version of the job I currently hold on a year to year contract. As it turns out the suit just wasn't gonna happen, partly because the suit is made of wool and it's in the upper 90's F with pit drippin' humidity, and partially 'cuz well, my butt has expanded of late. So, I ended up wearing this really femmy flowered dress that I got in Japan back in 1988 or thereabouts. Yep, Maiko in drag. Thing is, being a chick, only people who know me look at me strange...
Anyway, I've been working for this place for a year now, so they didn't bother asking me about my qualifications or skills, since they know about that stuff already. Instead, it was about things like how I think the office should be organized, what I think my own job should be, etc. I spoke my mind on the issue, and later was worrying a bit if I'd been too outspoken about things. But, as it turns out, I got the job and also a whopping $10K raise, which is a flabbergasting more than 20% increase. Yow. I can hardly believe it. But the main thing for me is, it's the holy grail of staff jobs, namely the permanent hard money contract. I've been waiting for this for QUITE some time. Best though is, it seems things will start moving in the direction I'd like, we had some good conversations about office organization, and there will be meetings about it. Nice. AND, on top of it ALL, there were other good candidates, and if the budget can swing it, we might be trying to woo one of them too, who sounds like an awesome guy, and we really need more people, so that'd be excellent. All in all, the best possible outcome. Uresii na...
I'm really happy all this went down before my annual day in Chicago, which happens this upcoming Wednesday, on August 15th. It should be quite the happy time... I found out that noodle house on the north side is one Penny's Noodle House at 3400 N. Sheffield. That's the bright yellow triangular all windows place with noodles from all over and really good gyoza. I will take the "L" up there for lunch and eat myself silly. I've already got the Amtrak tickets and the day off... should be a good thinkin' time.
This Sunday I am going to the Illinois State Fair in Springfield and then to the Magic Kitchen afterwards. We have to see the butter cow 'cuz this the last year for it. Gotta eat that one corn dog a year, too.
8/6/2001: Like, wow, I'm actually updating this page. Really. Mmm hmm. Sure.
It's true... as of today, I have two computers at home with full internet access (cable modem) and a window air conditioner. Yep, I can sit here at home and edit this page in luxury. Things have been slow, because I can't really spend time editing this page on the clock in the office, and yet the prospect of spending one extra minute in the windowless cinderblock cube that is my office is unappealing to say the least. Going in on the weekend is worse, and so on those occasions where I did manage to squeeze in updates, the editing was generally happening right at the end of a workday in a hurry when I wasn't in the best of moods and tired on top of it. The end result was, as you are quite familiar, mass slackage. Sitting at home, on the other hand, in my full of light front room, surrounded by greenery outside and in the dappled shadow of the trees arching over the roof of my house and down by the windows, is a whole 'nother thing. Computers AND sun! Amazing!
So what sort of computers are these, you ask? Two Dell precision 330s with way more bells and whistles than I have any business acquiring, hooked together into a local subnet with a router that then talks to cable. One machine runs windows 2K, and the other one runs Linux (redhat 7.1). They share a keyboard, mouse, and swanky flat panel display via a KVM switch, so they are always both up and I can switch from one to the other just by hitting a button. That means I can sit and listen to live Japanese NHK news while programming on the linux side, etc. Life is gooood. It's quite the upgrade from the WYSE 60, that's for certain! You might like to take a peek - meanwhile I'm going to bed...
tcp.com in
the /pub/maiko directory.