Doomsday Book

It hasn't all been fun and games, though: I spent a good chunk of yesterday getting my ass kicked, round-robin style, by Windows NT, the new Windows InstallShield, and a configuration problem in our bug tracking system. Gah. And all to test what was basically a two-line fix. The "best" moment was getting an error message from Windows which said, as Tom snarkily put it, "You are not licensed to uninstall this program." Gah!

Well, as with all things Windows, the solution is to re-install Windows and build everything on a clean system, and darned if that didn't solve my problems. Everything I actually did went very smoothly, and I happily committed the fix. Woo-hoo!

Then I could get back to some real work.

The kitties have been unusually frisky lately. It might be because I've been playing with them more than usual, although it hasn't been a big change. But seeing Newton's tail puff out when I throw toys to him is pretty funny. And he loves playing on my bed. He's such a cutie!

It dawned on me tonight while watching the Giants that for the first time since I've really been following baseball (1993), I'm actually living near what may be the greatest team in baseball this year. The Giants have the best record in the National League, and are one game behind the White Sox for the best record in baseball. They've won their last eight games and have a tremendous lead over their competition.

While the Red Sox have had some good years in the last decade, they haven't had any truly great years, compared to their competition. And the Brewers, well, have been awful for nearly a decade now. But I look at the Giants, who have three good starters, a solid bullpen, and a terrific offense, and I think that maybe this is the year they'll go all the way. I'll live in (or, rather, near) a World Series Championship town. It would be cool. I'm sure CJ will pull out all the stops to get tickets to playoff games, and I might just be tempted to go with her to one or two...

One of my projects this week has been finishing reading Connie Willis' Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning novel Doomsday Book, which I enjoyed, but which seemed less rewarding than it could have been. I expected something cleverer in terms of a resolution. It reminded me in some ways of Kage Baker's In the Garden of Iden, in that I kept wanting to find out what was happening in the future and didn't enjoy the parts set in the past as much. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as her lesser-known novel Bellwether.

I still haven't phoned my health insurance or the dentist's billing group to find out why I supposedly owe them a bundle of money. (For one thing, I haven't received the bill for the big bundle yet.) I really hate doing that sort of business over the phone. I feel I'm not any good at it, I'm not firm enough. It's something I really dislike about myself. I did, at least, put some numbers into a spreadsheet and figure out that I don't think there's any way I can end up owing as much as the woman at the clinic said I did. Very strange.

I'm feeling kind of scatterbrained tonight. Don't really have a plan for what I wanted to say in this entry. So maybe I should go now and vacuum...