31 January 1998: More Life Maintenance

Saturday, 31, date January 1998:

More Life Maintenance

I was glad it was Friday yesterday; this has been a not-enough-forward-progress kind of week at work, coupled with a not-enough-sleep habit at night. Time to get back on schedule.

A few folks moved offices at work to fill the two vacancies left by departing team members during the month. More than one person has already gone to the wrong door to look for someone! It will be a strange thing for a little while.

I'm continuing my efforts to get the few Marvel Masterworks hardcover comics collections that I want. I have a lead on one of the rarer ones - the second New X-Men volume - at an excellent price. I've also been checking out eBay for them, and have bids on a few more, which may result in a few more bargain deals - or at least paying cover price. I posted a request to rec.arts.comics.marketplace and have gotten some responses asking $50.00 per book (cover price typically was $35.00). I'm pretty sure I can do better than that; eventually I'm sure many of them will be available for well under cover price. Supply is low, but demand is also low.

The other volumes I want are the first three Fantastic Four books. I also would be happy to get the three original X-Men volumes if I can find them for less than cover price. I'm not interested enough otherwise.

Being a collector can be fun. I'd really forgotten how much fun it is to go around looking for things to complete a set; I rediscovered that pleasure last year, and I'm happy to indulge it.

Two annoying things happened yesterday: First, my credit card decided to discontinue their cash back program, which I'd been making great use of. Since this was the only reason I had this card, I think I will cancel it and start using one of my other cards. I never carry a balance (not since I paid off my grad school debt), so the APR doesn't matter to me.

Second, I turned on a light in my apartment and heard the bulb blow. I turned on some other lights and quickly found that half the lights in my apartment had stopped working! It turns out it had only tripped the circuit breaker, but this was my first experience with circuit breakers so I had trouble figuring out how to reset it (it turns out you have to turn it off and then on again; when it trips it goes to an intermediate state). Plus, the breakers themselves are cryptically labelled. The switch labelled "living room" controls most of the lights and electrical outlets in the living room, kitchen and hallways, while the one labelled "kitchen" only controls the refrigerator, oven and sink disposal. Gee.

I started reading a book on Java programming yesterday, as well as buying a book on CGI scripting. I'm sure I could figure out a lot of it myself, but I like having good reference material when I'm programming. Right now I'm skimming the sections on the basic Java language, mainly trying to refamiliarize myself with C-style programming and learn the differences between C and Java. But 70% of it is not new to me. I'm looking forward to the sections on user interface and network programming.

And today I went to 20th Century Books here in Madison. I picked up the 1998 Babylon 5 calendar, a collection of cartoons by Carol Lay, and the 1997 Post Bros annual. I'm also trying to figure out what to do with my 5-years-worth of Asimov's and Fantasy and Science Fiction magazines. I'd like to just give them to someone or to a store, but I suspect that demand is so low and supply is so high that I may just have them recycled - or thrown out. 20th Century wasn't interested.

Not much in the way of plans for the rest of the day. Tomorrow my friend Jim Rittenhouse and his wife Susan are coming to town to visit, which I'm looking forward to.

I suppose I should clean and vacuum before they arrive...

Michael Rawdon (Contact)