Latest book read: The Bug by Ellen Ullman. What am I doing reading a book called The Bug? Well, it isn't entymological (sp????), it's about a software bug. (Although the icon/motif thing to introduce a new chapter is an ascii insect, so people more phobic than me might be bothered).

It's a mystery/thriller about software testing and debugging, which works better than it sounds like. This book was particularly interesting to me because I can identify very strongly with both of the main characters. Each of them is about 75% me. The story works well and they incorporate a lot of actual code to explain the bug, but through the narration you can get a sufficient understanding of what's going on even if you can't read C.

However, I didn't like the way this book handled relationships/romance/sex. It simply did not contribute anything. Only one relationship had the slightest significance ever to the overall plot. It felt like the author was putting relationships in because she thought there should be relationship stuff in a book.

You know that big LCD board at Yonge & Eg? Today I saw some guys in a truck performing maintenance on it. And the licence plate on the truck was "PXLFXR"

Blerg. The wind is whistling outside and it makes me want to go back to bed. Just lie down under the covers in what the yoga lady on tv calls "sponge positions" (although I'm sure it must have a better name) and zone out for an indefinite period of time. And it's only Wednesday.

Fuck February.

Attention world: find your token or pass BEFORE entering the turnstile! Don't walk into the turnstile, stand right in front of the little bar, and THEN start rummaging through your purse!

Yesterday I was really tense and stressed, so I was happy when my body and mind reached a kind of meditative calm during my last dream of last night. The dream itself was very odd (it involved a shower on my balcony that worked only when certain TV shows were on, and it also involved the kids from Roseanne immigrating) but physically and mentally I was very very calm and happily floating along. So I was very disappointed when I woke up, because I wanted to stay asleep in happy floaty land.

Many years ago, when I was in grade 5, we had a snow day because of freezing rain. The freezing rain left a coat of ice over everything, strong enough that we could sometimes walk on top of it without crunching through into the underlying snow, and we passed a happy day sledding in our extra-slippery backyard. Ever since then, "freezing rain" has meant "snow day" to me, and whenever the weather seems mildly conducive to freezing rain, as it is right now, a part of me feels entitled to stay home in bed. But of course the world doesn't work that way, so I will have to wait until tonight to get back to my happy place.

My watch has a leather band. There's this one bit of the band where the leather is folded over, and this fold is instrumental in holding the buckle together. Originally it was probably glued together, but now it has come undone, which makes it difficult for me to do up my watch.

Anyone know what kind of glue can be used on a leather watchband and where you would acquire said glue?

Just finished Property by Valerie Martin. It's basically the story of an antebellum female slaveowner, whom the author manages to portray sympathetically, showing that she's a product of her environment rather than pure evil personified. I enjoy the author's understated writing style - this book could easily have been made sensationalistic and unpleasant. I don't think the story itself was anything particularly profound, but it was an easy enough world to be drawn into and I did find myself caring about the characters. I didn't have to force myself to read, but I could put the book down easily enough. I finished the 193 page book in two weekend days. Overall, worth reading but I don't know if I'll read it again.

My latest oenological foray is Hippo Creek Sauvignon Blanc. It's very light and friendly and unassuming. With the understanding that I have no knowledge of the proper adjectives with which to describe wine, I'd describe it as fresh and bright. It doesn't seem to clash with anything and has no aspects of unpleasantness that I noticed. The taste of alcohol is less noticeable than usual, so it's almost refreshing. The only problem is that it is very easy to drink much more quickly than you originally intend.

White coat bolts straight away, without making eye contact, and flees in horror to the embrace of the rest of her pack several metres away. Tan jacket stands her ground with the boys, a hostile look on her face. So what is it with teens today, they're asked.

Delivered by one of the boys, the brush-off is immediate and absolute. "We're kind of busy," he says, with a hard look on his face. Then he turns his back.

When Gordon Neufeld hears this story a few days later, he laughs. An experienced clinical psychologist in Vancouver, he recognizes the symptoms all too well. This is a sign of what he calls "peer-orientation" or "peer-attachment disorder," which he contends is a modern blight responsible for today's dangerous teen landscape and getting worse all the time.

So Dr. Neufeld, picture this: you're idly relaxing with your friends one Saturday on your usual stomping grounds, not bothering anyone, when some stranger you've never seen before in your life comes up to you out of nowhere and demands you justify your behaviour, adding that whatever response you happen to be able to think up on the spot will be published and used to judge your entire peer group.

WTF would you do?

So apparently Stelco might lay off everyone with under 25 years of seniority. I wonder if they've considered the fact that, after they do this, their entire remaining workforce will be eligible for retirement probably within 5 years, definitely within 10.

Or perhaps they don't intend to be around that long?

I had a dream where I was time travelling through ancient China (which is strange because IRL I know NOTHING about ancient China) and I was accompanied by this old woman whose mission was to teach me about the dangers of time travel.

I then had a dream where I was in middle school for some reason. I woke up, glad that I'm no longer in middle school because the feeling of perpetual confusion is gone. I never realized it before, but the greatest characteristic of middle school for me was a feeling of perpetual confusion.

Things you can't utter in the 21st century and still be taken seriously: "...through the magic of special effects."

Anyone know how to get voicemail on a residential phone line to tell you (by which I mean verbally since I don't have a display-capable phone) the name and/or phone number of whoever just called?

I know that the voicemail "knows" this information, because if you save a message and wait a week and then log back into your voicemail it will tell you "The following message will be deleted. Message from: [name or phone number], saved Tuesday at 11:43 a.m." But is there any way to get it to cough up this information when the message is new?

So I recently finished reading The Pythons, which, as you might guess, is an autobiography of Monty Python and the members thereof. I think they interviewed all the surviving Pythons (plus Graham Chapman's partner, brother, and sister-in-law, with blanks filled in by previous interviews with Graham) and just compiled the results. It's terribly interesting to see how their memories of various distant events differed! On the whole it's quite a good read, although it would probably be very dull for a non-Python-fan. They discussed in great detail the creation and development of their work, so there's a lot more insight to the process than in previous interviews and books. The book is also full of colour pictures, old letters, cartoons, etc.

The only problem is that the book is freaking HUGE! It's only 200-300 pages, but it's a large, full colour, coffee-table-sized book, about 10"x12"! So you can't read this on the train or at the dinner table! Because of its size and the fact that every page is full colour it is probably atrociously expensive, but it's worth getting from the library. Just bring your schoolbag to get it home in!

Enlightenment from the shower: My lack of confidence in my French is due to the way I speak English. Ideas in English never occur to me in simple language; they come to me fully formed with idioms and metaphors and circumlocuction and ironic understatement. Because I learned French as an academic subject with one-to-one equivalent vocabulary, my French isn't nearly as rich.

When I'm writing, I have time to think and reduce my English ideas to something simpler that I can render in French, but when I'm speaking I don't have time to do this. The result is a total lack of confidence in my French because I can't instantly render the unnecessarily complex English thoughts that pop into my head.

I had a dream where I had paid someone to drill a hole in a piece of wood for me, but they drilled three holes instead, thus ruining it. Then my father came along and started giving me this lecture about how spoiled and ungrateful I am because I got three holes for the price of one.

Lately I've been attempting to expand my reading horizons by reading books recommended by Salon. I'm doing this because I'm simply not going to read enough of a variety if I don't follow someone's recommendations, and the bestseller lists tell me what's most prominently placed in Indigo, not what I should be reading.

The only problem with Salon is it's American, so the books it recommends are rather centred in the American experience. I don't mind reading American per se, but I just looked at my "to read" pile, and I've got 4 books set in the US and one set in various places around the world (I also have 5 books to read in 3 weeks while working full-time, but I digress). That's a bit too highly concentrated.

So what I'm looking for is a book list similar to Salon's "What to read this month", but with either a Canadian or a global English-language perspective. Book reviews in the daily newspapers don't do it for me because they either review only potential bestsellers, or absolutely everything that's released that week. And I don't want something that pushes Canlit for the sake of pushing Canlit. Just a well-rounded, not completely US-centric list of the most interesting new books released during that week or month or whatever. Preferably with a number of books on the list that a person could reasonably read in that time period, but I can cull if necessary.

Suggestions?

If anyone cares, I'm working from home for the rest of the day. We got to go home early. YAY!

I can't see past the edge of my balcony. This is a sexy storm!

Networks don't swear for artistic integrity; they do it because it draws more paying customers.

Huh? With the exception of a few preteens, who watches TV because they contain profanity? And I'm sure preteens aren't their target audience since TV networks are always wetting themselves over the "18-49" market (another concept I've never understood - at one time that market segment contained both me and my parents). Anyone who is immature enough to watch a TV show just so they can hear a few swear words won't have any say over which channels their household subscribes to. I'm sure advertisers would prefer that the shows didn't swear - at any rate, they certainly wouldn't be more inclined to sponsor a show because it contains profanity. So who out there does the letter-writer suggest is paying money for the main purpose of hearing profanity?

Shows that contain profanity might draw more paying customers because they tend to be more willing to deal with adult or subversive topics than fluffy mainstream pablum network show are, but profanity isn't what makes people watch TV shows!