Asymptomatic

This graph shows the time distribution of how I spend my day. In case you wondered.

I went out for lunch and shopping with my mom yesterday. We stopped at Best Buy in my quest to find a new amplifier for my computer speakers, which has still gone unresolved.

However, I did find a new DVD player for the family room, an updated version of our old DVD player, which I will move to the kid’s TV in the playroom. The new one is DivX Ultra, and actually plays some of the TV shows from the current season that I was having trouble with. It also has a USB port to play files directly from a USB keychain or hard drive. All that with HDMI upsampling to 1080i for under $100, and I was totally sold.

Nana is on vacation this week, so Berta is home with the kids and sleeping in late. This means I can sleep in a little, but it has caused some issues with our alarm clock. The most aggravating thing with our alarm clock in the new house is that it seems very loud. Combined with the size of our new bedroom, and the "across the room" philosophy of forcing someone to get out of bed to turn off the alarm, I'm sure that the neighbors hear our alarm for a good 20 seconds before someone turns it off.

Our current alarm actually has two separate alarm times. Each of the alarms has a different chirp pattern and pitch. This is interesting because at the old house we had always used one alarm for Berta and one for me, and although Berta's alarm went off before mine, I wouldn't wake up for it. I suspect that's due to me becoming conditioned to respond to only one of the two alarm sounds. I've read a bit about alarms that gradually get louder when they go off, instead of creating an ear drum-piercing siren at the onset. And perhaps instead of a chirping siren, the alarm should use music or some other noise to gently wake us us. Maybe this is also the solution to the neighbors being affected by our alarm.

But while I'm thinking about improving my alarm clock, let's go completely high-tech.

I was thinking a bit about the meetups that have been going on in Philadelphia and in New York City. We don’t really have a format for our discussions. Not that I was thinking of changing that, but I was curious:

If you could have someone who knows something about WordPress talk about one thing with you, what would it be?

I told Berta that I was pleased with the business of the weekend, but I’m not sure she understood what I was talking about. After all, we’ve been busy every weekend almost nonstop since Spring, so why would being busy this weekend please me? Because it wasn’t all work.

Saturday, out of the blue, Bob called. He says they’ve found a buyer for his house, and he’s got to move out by Tuesday. He had called Dave and Jenn a month ago about taking his roleplaying stuff so he wouldn’t have to haul it to Idaho or Utah or some sadly distant and obscure mountain state. Of course, Jenn grabbed the miniatures and then they were never heard from about the books. So he called me.

I had a ton of boxes left over from our move, and was glad to pass them on to someone who could use them. Bob and I packed up the roleplaying books into some filing boxes I brought, and tossed them into the van with the long table that we used to play on in Bob’s basement.

The best part, apart from talking to Bob again after so long, was that he found my Warhammer Quest set! All of the tiles and books and miniatures were in the case, all labeled and ready to play. I was pretty upset about having lost that thing, and was equally glad to have recovered it. Seriously, that box represents a $200-$300 investment in cash, and the painting job that Berta and I did on those minis isn’t something I would want to have to do over again. I’ll have to take pictures of them to post, because they’re awesome.