b.rox

Xy usually grades papers downstairs, but for Hallowe’en she wanted to be by the front door to meet trick-or-treaters. (Yes, our front door is upstairs. It’s a New Orleans thing.) She set up a little table for her schoolwork, which I thought was sufficiently adorable to warrant a picture. She’s got her portable TV rigged [...]

I think I’m going to participate in the National Novel Writing Month. I’m going to try to write a novel in thirty days. I don’t know if I can, but I like reading novels, so I’d like to try writing one.
I started writing a novel back during the summer of 2001. The working title was [...]

Two days until the election. I know a lot of people are sick of the hype. If you’re sick of it, please read no further. I just want to record my thoughts on the election before it goes down, for my own sake at least.
I predicted a Bush victory six months ago, and I’m sticking [...]

My big project for today was installing a new ceiling fan in our bedroom.
First I had to buy one. Instead of going out to a Home Depot in the suburbs, I went to Armstrong’s which is only a few blocks from our house in Mid-City. I had to wait my turn, but it was well [...]

I went running today for the first time since I scraped myself up. My knee was a little stiff, but not too bad. All my other scabs have fallen off, except the one on my elbow, and it’s ready to go at any moment. The big one on my knee is starting to pull away [...]

Tonight we went to Tyler’s again. Oysters have gone up to 25 cents because of Ivan.
The jukebox was playing Run-DMC and assorted hip-hop and R&B jams; Purple Rain was on the video; everybody was feeling good and having fun. Then a Billy Joel song came on. “Big Shot.”
I looked around the bar. There were maybe [...]

I recently became aware of a challenge to one of our main claims to fame, namely that ROX was the first TV series on the Internet.
When I was preparing for my talk at NOFCPUG I did a Web search that turned up a number of references to the Computer Chronicles as the first show on [...]

Best damn lunar eclipse I’ve ever seen.

The scab is slowly shrinking. No flakage yet.

Today I was sneezing so bad I couldn’t think straight. I drank lots of coffee and took an antihistamine. Nothing helped. I went home for lunch and almost didn’t go back to work. Then, just after I sent an e-mail to my boss telling him to put me down for half a sick-day, I stopped [...]

Here’s a picture of Melvin for no particular reason. I was demonstrating the camera a couple months ago and took this picture almost by accident.

Melvin works in Media Services. His office is one floor down from mine. His cousin is my barber.

It’s looking more and more like a piece of beef jerky.
I predict serious flakage to begin in the next 48 hours.

Today our local news daily, the Times-Picayune, weighed in on the presidential race. They are endorsing… nobody.

…we cannot recommend either George W. Bush or John Kerry with confidence….
We take the endorsement process seriously and would like to be able to offer voters our advice in this race, as we have in so many others. But [...]

Just in the last few days I’ve been getting a bunch of Rolex spam. It’s the electronic equivalent of a guy in the alley who says, “Psst, wanna buy a Rolex, cheap?” Apparently I’m not the only one. Seems to have started on October 17th, and it’s hitting worldwide. I wonder if, in the future, [...]

It’s hard and crusty. Here’s a close-up especially for my friend Bill:

The Times-Picayune reports that a record producer named John Fischbach had his drivers license temporarily confiscated for speeding in a school zone, just like Xy a couple weeks ago. He got pissed off about it, and he is challenging the constitutionality of the law. Xy will be happy to hear about this.

Man, I thought the political rhetoric was pretty shrill this season, but last night I got an earful of some conservative AM radio that made my toes curl. This dude called the Democrats “vermin” and said the choice was between “Bush or death.” He also said the American people “fear” Teresa Heinz Kerry. I was [...]

One of our exterior doors fell apart earlier this year. It had been deteriorating for a while, and finally I dismantled it. Fortunately it doesn’t open directly into our house, only into a little enclosed porch on the lower level. We don’t absolutely require a door there, but it would be nice.
I didn’t want to [...]

I gave a thirty-minute presentation about ROX tonight to the New Orleans Final Cut Pro Users Group. I was a little nervous ahead of time, but it went smoothly. I managed to tell the story without major omissions or blunders. There were only eight people there, but the real downer was that Brian Gary, who [...]

Wow. Mark Pilgrim seems to be giving up the blogging life. The final terse post came yesterday, and today his Atom feed returns a 410 Gone.
Mark’s blog, dive into mark, was the first blog I ever made a habit of reading. He displayed an acerbic wit even when addressing to dry topics like character encoding [...]