Wook's Place

It would seem that my bellybutton is to far away from my spine. But I knew this already. It's why I joined the damn gym in the first place.

I found this out at a gym across the street that my friend Nat goes to. One of the conditions of my moving to Brooklyn was I go to this gym. Since I finally have a handle on all the broken and otherwise non-functional parts of me medically, I had a personal session with a trainer. Her name was Megan, and she was nice in a professionally distant way one would expect in an overly personal situation like fitness training.

Megan decided that ultimately what I need for what I want to accomplish is a whole bunch of stuff from a whole bunch of different disciplines, but to start off with I need basic pilates just to get to the point where I can do any of the other stuff without killing myself.

Sometime in the next few days, once UPS gets it delivered to NYC, my entertainment system will join the modern age. It will be very "this century". In short, I'm upgrading nearly all of it now. Gone will be the Sony DVD player that has also been my CD player. Gone will be the Marantz AV-500 AV preamp, Dolby Pro-Logic I will not miss you. The jury is still out on the Marantz MA-700 monoblock amps I'm currently using to drive the Dunlavy SC-IVa speakers. (The Dunlavy speakers are staying, more on that in the extended entry.)

I stopped into my stereo store, also now my video store, Audio-Video Logic (AVL from here on out). I bought an AV receiver and blu-ray player from Denon, and suround speakers from Era. Cables from AudioQuest. (No, I didn't spend more on cables than on the gear itself.) I don't know that I have enough room in my apartment for all this, but that has never stopped me before.

DemiCon 19 photos are up at my Smugmug site.

Enjoy.

DemiCon 19 is over and done. A good time was had by all. I got to Fanboy at Steven Barnes, who is an author I've liked, though I haven't really kept up with him lately. Steven is an intense kinda dude, and he spent a fair amount of time talking to people in the con suite all weekend. I like that in a ProGoH.

The photography I did will show up at my DemiCon Gallery on Smugmug.

My photography habit was hindered by my shoulder problem. (Rotator cuff strain or something.) I did no event photography, just the costume shoots and TICC performances. My friend Robert was cool enough to do the camera work for the hall costume shoot, which is the longer session.

The first Blu-Ray disks I own showed up in the mail from Amazon today.

Some day soon, I'll decide on a Blu-Ray player, and be able to watch them on my TV.

Okay, so 5 hours ago the TV arrived here. I spent about an hour figuring out what to do with it.

The executive summary: It looks damn nice, even on standard def sources, once you figure out what some assorted options do. Still no HD sources yet.

I ordered the TV Sunday, and I've been trying to work out all the assorted things that go with it. I'll probably want cable TV, even though there is no way it's worth as much as they charge for it. I have a bad attitude about satellite, due to the number of times weather has made it not work so well at Al and Diane's when I've stayed there. I need to line up a Blu-Ray Player of some sort. I need to work out how to get video from my computers to the TV. I'm thinking either a Mac Mini, or an Apple TV, but I don't really understand what the Apple TV is all about and how it fits into an entertainment system. I need to pay some attention to the audio part, since my stereo system has fallen about as far behind the times as my old TV had. None of the inputs on my trusty old Marantz AV-500 are named after anything I currently have plugged into it, which isn't a problem, except I'd really prefer to be optical inputs. I need furniture to put the TV on, and need to figure out how to arrange the room.

Yesterday I hadn't really gotten farther than knowing I needed to think about all this, when the delivery company called to say they could deliver the TV any time during the next 4 days.

I must have mis-heard the nice lady I talked to when ordering the TV. I could have sworn she said allow up to 4 weeks for delivery. I ordered the TV Sunday morning-ish. Today is Thursday, and it is now sitting in my living room. Total time to deliver: 4 days.

Who the hell delivers something this big and expensive 4 days later? I am totally unprepared for this, I thought I had another week or two.

When I moved here to DUMBO, I didn't bring my 20-year-old TV with me. Several people noted that with-it dudes don't own clapped-out 20-year-old TVs. Chicks that hang out in bars every night of the week and live in 4 different guy's places own clapped-out 20-year-old TVs that they got from a family member or a boyfriend that they killed and ate somewhere in their past. With-it dudes own 46" LCD or plasma panels. So I left the piece of crap behind.

It is therefore with pride, that I announce that I'm going to re-join the mindless millions of couch potatoes. I used 507,000 American Express membership awards points to secure a SONY Bravia XBR LCD 1080p monitor and stand. It should arrive in the next 4 weeks.

I was in San Antonio this last week. On the flight home, the plane out of San Antonio (SAT) turned around and headed back to the airport. Us passengers didn't notice anything until the landing gear came down, only 10 mins after it had been raised. If we'd been paying attention, we might have noticed that we didn't get above about 10,000 feet. But I was deeply engrossed in a book.

We didn't know what the deal was, the pilots and cabin crew didn't announce anything. After landing, and being escorted back to the gate by fire trucks and police cars, they finally told us what the deal was. A false fire alarm on the auxiliary power unit (APU).

A story from the BBC about the Hitchhiker's radio show turning 30. The story mostly goes into the puzzle of the "Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything", which is "42". I will never forget Deep Thought telling the gathered masses "You aren't going to like it."

My favorite part of the whole thing was in the books. It was God's last message to His creation: "Sorry for the inconvenience."

The ankle is getting much better. I'm walking around on it at nearly my old fast walking pace, and I don't limp so much any more. At times, usually when I'm not thinking about it and first thing in the morning, I don't notice myself limping at all. It also depends on what I'm walking on. Going up hill and up stairs is still much easier than going down. In the evening when I've walked a ways, it gets sore and stiffens up still, and can slow me down quite a bit. But I go farther and farther each day.

Words can't describe how funny Garfield Minus Garfield is. Who knew the big problem with Garfield was actually the damn cat.

"The chief cause of problems is solutions."
Eric Sevareid, 1970

I ask this, because I'll be on an airplane for pretty much the entire time the game is on. I won't know, until I get where I'm flying. The pilots may announce the winner on the plane, I suppose. Maybe I won't know until tomorrow morning.

Why did I opt to fly during the time the game will be on? Short answer: Because I just can't find it in me to give a shit about it.

I ran into someone today at Kansas City International airport, who insisted that the airport code for this airport is "KCI". This is, after all, what's printed on all the road signs leading here. Denver International Airport is called DIA on all the road signs leading up to the airport too. In North Carolina, when I was in Winston-Salem, the closest airport, just outside of Greensboro, was thought by many to be airport code "PTI", for "Piedmont Triad International".

I'm glad these people aren't travel agents. If you check the Airport Code Website you find out that there are not airports with codes of DIA or KCI. There is an airport with code PTI, it is Port Douglas, Australia. In reality, Kansas City is "MCI", Denver is "DEN", and Greensboro is "GSO".

It still looks like this:

But it is getting better. Just not damn fast enough.

The automatic ice maker in the freezer of the fridge.

It's broken, badly but "everything is where it should be". I am to wear the "boot", the giant velcro thing to keep my foot immobilized. I go back for xrays in 4 weeks, after which I probably get an air cast.

Almost two weeks ago now, actually two Mondays ago now, I fell down on my way to the subway to go have dinner with some friends who were in town from London. I hit an uneven crack in the sidewalk, and rolled my left ankle. I sat there for a second, looking at the three people who saw my fall, feeling embarrassed, then hopped up, and started to walk to the subway again. Then feeling the wind on my right leg, I noticed that the fall had skinned my right knee badly, and nearly torn my pant leg off. So I walked home to wash my knee off and change pants.

Once home, I called my friends, and while I was explaining this, I realized that my ankle was swelling up in my shoe. I could feel it happening. So I told them to have fun without me, washed the skinned knee as best I could, and then put ice on my ankle.

I walked around on it, refusing to not be able to walk on a sprained ankle. The following Friday, in fact, I went over to my old apartment to sort thru books I wanted to keep, and catch a few things I missed when the movers had been there. Saturday, a friend with a car and I went over to the old place, and we carried those boxes down to the car, and put them in a storage area in the new building here.

Some time over that weekend, I developed bruising on my foot. Incredible, bed-sore purple bruising, on my toes and foot. Sunday I flew to Winston-Salem for work. Monday I worked, and I just couldn't get comfortable. That monday night, my foot started getting numb, and tingling.

So I figured I would stop being macho about it, and go have it looked at.

If you are like me, and I'm sure you are, you probably walk around all day wondering "What kind of commie-pinko corporation would make a refrigerator that magnets won't stick to?"

I now have an answer to this dilemma, and that answer is: General Electric. I have one of their "Profile" fridges in my new place, and refrigerator magnets won't stick to it.