Geekery and Otherwise

Well, not a whole lot to report at work. Just plugging away with my testing. I've been making pretty good progress, finding some bugs, slowly working my way through a large chunk of my project a piece at a time, which I guess is the way to do it, huh?

Tuesday I had people over to watch baseball's All-Star Game, which meant I spent Monday night shopping for food, cleaning the apartment, and preparing for the next night.

Did I ever mention that I tried the white "crystal" cat litter which has recently hit the market? It's about 50% more expensive than the clumping stuff I buy, and is made of a hard white substance which absorbs moisture very efficiently. Ceej tried it for her cat shortly after she moved to her house. I gave it a try mainly because I hoped the larger pellets would not stick between my cats' toes and get tracked a few feet away from the litter box like the regular litter does.

More fool I: Not only was this not the case, but white pellets on a white floor are really hard to see! Plus, what color do you suppose the litter turns over time? Hint: It's a primary color which isn't red or blue. How lovely!

On top of this, Jefferson completely rejected the litter as a substance suitable to poop on, and just used the floor next to the pan instead. Which he does sometimes anyway to inform me that his litter needs changing.

So, this experiment was pretty much a dismal failure. I went back to clay litter Monday night, and swept and mopped the floor afterwards. Yes, those white-on-white pellets are really annoying. I eventually swept some of them onto the rug so I could vacuum them up with my spiffy new vacuum cleaner.

Beyond that, I vacuumed, pushed some papers around so they weren't covering all my tables, and generally tried to shape things up for guests. I also made my Mom's Hungarian cream recipe for dessert the next night.

Unfortunately, it turns out that nearly everyone I invited was unable to make it for one reason or another. It is somewhat annoying that the All-Star Game starts at 5 pm here on the left coast, since that means one must leave work relatively early to catch it. Not a big deal for me, but less likely for all my workaholic friends.

Anyway, it turns out that only two people showed up: Subrata came by during the first inning, and Trish showed up about midway through the game. So I was a little disappointed, I admit, but still I was glad someone showed up, and we had a good time anyway. Subrata and I totally geeked out about baseball players, stats and such (and I hauled out some of my prized baseball stuff - if you can call it that - to show him). He also raided my comic books, pulling out the first two volumes of Phil Foglio's Buck Godot, Zap Gun for Hire, which Trish ended up reading also, and seems to have found as hilarious as Subrata and I did. (It really is very funny and clever light science fiction stuff - highly recommended!)

Afterwards we went out to Max's to introduce Trish to the giant mounds of food which they serve (I had a corned beef and pastrami sandwich, which was better than I'd expected), and came back for creams afterwards. So all in all it turned out pretty well.

Last night, Subrata, Grant, Becky and I went to play Bridge at a local Bridge club. We were following the directions Becky had gotten off the Web, and I gradually realized - the club was in spitting distance of my apartment! Had I known, I could have driven by myself and saved myself a 14-mile round-trip afterwards. Oh, well. Funny, though!

It was not a banner night for us overall, though it was educational for me. I realized what "inverted minors" (which Subrata and I play) really means (how did we play 90 or so hands a week and a half ago without this ever coming up?), and one of the pairs we played against kept asking very detailed questions about our bidding conventions, which was somewhat annoying, but also useful in that it forced me to think specifically about what I (and Subrata) was doing. (I had a small victory there in that I made a good sacrifice bid preventing them from making their game contract, which turned out to be the difference in the match.)

My other good moment was making what Subrata pronounced an inspired lead in another contract, of my singleton club holding, which allowed us to take down the opponents' contract in fairly short order. That was fun. It actually seemed like an obvious lead to me, which suggests that I still need to learn why it seemed obvious, and figure out that principles which allow me to make good leads like that and not make good leads on other contracts.

But these inspired moments were as usual counterbalanced by less-than-stellar play at other times, so it ended up that we were marginally above average for the match. Not bad, but not what we'd hoped. We could have done better, I think. But, practice practice!

This week's comics included some interesting items: Will Eisner's new paperback, Last Day in Vietnam is out, but I haven't read it yet. Eisner's work for the last 30 years had mostly been reality-based material, and I'm pretty sure that this book's title is descriptive of its contents. Eisner (for those who don't know) is one of the most celebrated artists in comics history, particularly for his pulp hero character The Spirit. My favorite work of his (of what I've read so far) is: Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood, about the development of a street in New York City throughout the 20th century.

Also out was the hardcover collection of Alan Moore's Tom Strong series, which is quite good although not his best work. It's about a pulp-like hero named Tom Strong who has been defending Millennium City throughout the 20th century with his retro-futuristic technology. It's neat, but it often feels like there's stuff going on in the background which we're not privy to, which leaves the reader with a frustrated longing.

Then there's DC Two Thousand, which features the Justice League from the year 2000 trying to save the world of 1941 from tampering from another time traveller, and the Justice Society of the era is not certain whether they want to help or stop them. An intriguing premise, but the results are mixed: Val Semeiks' pencils are cartoony and not entirely satisfying. Tom Peyer's story is okay, but loosely plotted, and I loathed his characterizations of some of the JSA, particular Doctor Fate's colloquial expressions and The Spectre's holier-than-thou attitude. (The Spectre is a difficult character to write, but his obnoxious attitude here seemed completely out of keeping with his other JSA appearances, in which he is fundamentally benevolent and a good comrade to his human compatriots.) I did like his gosh-wow handling of the golden age Flash, though.

The third and final issue of Teri Sue Wood's Darklight Prologue is out, and it's very good and has me eagerly awaiting the regular series. (Her previous series, the science fictional Wandering Star, is also quite good.) Also I picked up the first issue of a series called Artesia Afield, about a woman who becomes the warrior-(not-quite-)queen of a nation in a fictional world. Features Roman-era technology, broad suggestions of magic, and an intricate and hard-to-follow setting and backstory. But writer/artist Mark Smylie is pretty good, and seems to know what he's doing, so I'll stick with it. Apparently there was an earlier series which I'll have to check out. (Both of these titles are published by Sirius Entertainment.)

Okay, enough geeking. The other news is that it appears I actually have a date next week! Gee.

But I will probably say no more about it until then (annoying as it may be to you, my readers [is that sarcasm? I'm not sure]). I mean, what more is there to say?