slightly less complex - part i

i have great plans for this post. this is said while feeling absolutely nothing. i'm spiritually asleep, emotionally exhausted in spite of having gotten a great (and long!) night's sleep after an intense end to a long week that was only relatively less trying than the one before.

and now i have to re-digitize all the minidiscs i've already spent so much time on, because i used the wrong jack and both the quality and the volume are too low. suck. all i want to do is play computer games and - AAAAAAAAARGH! the battery metre on my minidisc lies! it LIES!!! and now i have to find a new set :S

[okay, that worked to my advantage - using line out is even worse because it cuts off the bass. i'll just stick to the crappy boosting provided by kanssoftware's "sound normalizer"]

---wednesday:

ubuntu automatically located our office network printer. with one or two clicks, the appropriate drivers were downloaded and installed. with another click, i printed the pdf. i walked to the printer, and retrieved the output. it was a garbled mess. after examining it for a few seconds, i took it to the boss who told me he'd look into it.

about two minutes later he was crouched next to the printer, perplexed, holding a fat stack of repeat garbled prints. thank you, ubuntu. [isn't the background music inappropriate?]

...

our secretary and i don't seem to communicate on the same level - just in case i hadn't mentioned that before... i cannot fathom what would make her prance up to my desk and ask me my opinion on her toenail polish. there's harassment in there - not sexual, just... just cultural harassment.

we had lunch at avazi's, stuffing ourselves on the pre-lunch spread and being unable to get through even half of the main meal.

our secretary introduced me to a service that allows one to disconnect from companies like cable and internet without the stress of dealing with their horrific customer "service" lines and without their insane penalties.

no more netvision! no more hot! the fact that we require such a service is shameful.

on the way to the other office, mmf introduced me to the songify app for the iphone. i can't decided if it's really cool or simply amusing...

---the poetry world is very strange subcategory of the literature one, and i can't figure out how things work. i took an extremely presumptuous step by posting first on an attempt at a collaborative poem targeted at EVERYONE, and was expecting to be lambasted for being a nobody. until the first response came in - a continuation of my beginning - my temperature rose. dramatically.

---work was hard and fast, and i made such a complex series of changes that i couldn't leave it half-finished. i left much later than i'd planned to meet pg at the movies, and of course there were *no* buses for the next twenty minutes...

... but we walked in in time for the 3D trailers. you know what blows me away? tool - forty six & 2 on the captain america soundtrack.

---pg had made my day when she'd called in the afternoon to ask if i wanted to see transformers in the evening.
"what else is on?" i asked, being unable to remember what other cool films are on circuit.
"nothing."
and then i smiled, remembering that she really likes transformers.

...

so the new movie is great! it's a lot of fun, beautifully done, and the plot and characters work really well. except for one thing. two things.

1. the new girlfriend is a little weird. a little strained. i don't know how much is because of bad acting and how much because of a bad script.

2. if there's one thing i've learned from joss whedon: someone important needs to die when there's that much action and danger. the movie contained no reality checks; the people who died were barely introduced and when a lot of people died, that wasn't what the cameras were looking at. i found this to be a terrible flaw, and it substantially detracted from my overall enthusiasm.
*SPOILER ALERT*
(select text to view)
especially when megatron doesn't kill the girlfriend. WTF?!?!
and apparently all of the wing-suits that survived until the release point made it all the way to the happy reunion at the end, in spite of the ridiculously dangerous building collapse. and with all those falls... not even a sprained ankle? nothing?
*END SPOILER*
---on the way back from the cinema, we ran into pg's ex and his girlfriend. i didn't find out who he was until we'd parted company, but the encounter had a weirdness all its own even without that information.

i don't like him. he borrowed money from pg before they broke up, and he still hasn't repaid it. this wouldn't be such a big deal if he simply didn't have the money to return - but it is a big deal when he's chosen to invest the money. it's a textbook example of the current vs future value of money that we learned about in finance studies, and in my book it's precisely the definition of theft.

---thursday:

after a brief sleep, i hurried to the bank to sort out a standing order for the university.
"wanna loan?" the man asked.
"why is it that when i need a loan it's hard to get one and the conditions suck, but now when i don't you make it attractive?"
"sorry, what?" he replied, confused.
"never mind."

the bus stops for the lines heading south from ibn gvirol have been switched. that was confusing. i stepped onto the bus and stood behind a woman playing solitaire on her ipad, which i found pathetically amusing. of all the apps - my phone rang. it was the guy from my neighbourhood that i used to serve with, and i couldn't figure out why he'd call me so early in the morning until i answered and he told me that he was keeping me a seat at the back of the bus :P
we rehashed our usual conversation about studies and professional satisfaction, and i'm pleased to hear that he's not only found a job but that it's one where they're happy to let him study when he decides that the time is right. good for him!

my first civilian dentist in seven years is very sweet, and she surprised me by informing me that all's well. i was shocked, however, to discover afterwards that regular, run-of-the-mill x-rays cost me NIS 50, more than a quarter of the price of panoramic ones. i would have thought that my insurance would cover the basics :/

the woman flossing unabashedly in the waiting room made me shake my head in wonder.

modx drove me completely nuts the entire day. after a raging success with the first installation, the second one has hit every bump and twist, failing and breaking non-stop. i didn't realize that i had sudo permissions on the dev server until the afternoon, but even that wouldn't have helped me because i suspect that the primary problem was with the vhosts file that i couldn't physically locate. my boss informed me later that i hadn't looked in the standard location - thank you, helpful internet forums, you tried.

combined with extremely loud persian / arabic inter-office relations in a small space with no partitions, i spent my day pretty tense. my boss had given me a job to do and i ended the day no closer to finishing it than when i'd started - the sad thing is that the only thing that disappointed my boss was my getting stressed by it all. as he said that, i realized that he was right and i left the office quite embarrassed.

i played angry birds while those inter-office relations continued in the smaller space of the car throughout the drive back to tel aviv - i was in need of a stiff drink by the time i got home. and a shower - it was hot outside. i was *just* about to commence chilling when pg called me to let me know that she and her parents hadn't yet left for the "opera in the park", so i scrambled to join them.

---the opera was wonderful, the atmosphere was great and we were in time to pick a good spot. pg's mom is right - it's far more comfortable to sit for a long time on the grass than it is on plastic chairs. the only problem is that i was tired and holding myself up was a bit tough, so occasionally i leaned back and just listened.

1. thank you, mosquitoes, for driving us all nuts.
2. i should have brought my glasses. and binoculars.
3. are they called "subtitles" if they're live and displayed above the stage? i'm fairly certain i'd have been happier if they were in english.
4. no beer?! dammit!

all in all, i'm really glad i went. i *did* like the music, and the set was absolutely incredible. they projected the backdrops onto the stage screen, and combined with the excellent lighting the effects were gorgeous. i really appreciate good stage design.

---we watched i love you phillip morris when we got home - i didn't realize until the end that it's based on a true story. that's... that's pretty insane. and it's the second "serious" movie with jim carrey that i've enjoyed.

...

damn you, ben & jerry's. damn you.

---friday:

quote of the day: "stairs out of order, please take the elevator"
no, seriously. when i went to visit wr the stairs were cordoned off. were they broken?!

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