the lease at jimbo’s is going to be end on 30 september, and the owner says it will not be renewed. (Crain’s Chicago Business, Tribune.)
to quote a certain eighties film: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! YOU BASTARDS!“
Browsing Posts published in August, 2006
find(1) is the third gear of unix.
it deserves a poem. perhaps later, when i’m not quite so swamped that i’m resorting to using find a lot.
<twork> well, /me is white trash.
<niqui> are you? but i don’t think i’ve ever even seen you with a beer can in a cosy.
* twork is *totally* white trash, though /me tries to cover it up.
<twork> you can take the boy out of the trailer park…
* niqui, on the other hand, *has* drunk bad domestic beer out of a can in a beat-up foam cosy while fishing illegally.
<niqui>that’s your image for today.
<niqui> oh, i was probably also smoking at the time.
<twork> niqui wins today’s white trash derby!
<niqui> i had sandals on, though. (no fishhooks, please.)
jose contreras, you are in VERY BIG TROUBLE for saturday.
noro kureyon yarn is really nice.
</commenting on a wip that i’m not photographing, nyah>
why the hell can we take good teams to school, but we really, really stink against bad teams?
seriously, there is no excuse for two losses in a row against the royals. none! they’re the worst team in baseball. and they’re embarassing us because certain starting pitchers can’t concentrate after they give up a run? please. mcfly, you’re a slacker! there is a little kid in our break room at work right now wearing a podsednik jersey. (i approve of that parenting. start ‘em off right!) mark buehrle, if you slack, you could make that little kid cry today! you wouldn’t want to do that, would you? i can’t believe i’m even asking this question but — based on the last three games, you want to pitch more like freddy than like jose, don’t you? YES YOU DO. at least alex cintron and a couple other guys apparently showed up to play baseball last night.
the setting:
everyone standing around my cube as we stare in deep contemplation at a Corner Bakery menu, planning what we’re going to order for lunch.
the players:
niqui, a sox fan
C, a cubs fan
E, wisely remaining silent on baseball allegiances
E: look at this guy! (points to my Ozzie rookie card, now thumbtacked up — in its little protective plastic sleeve, natch — on my cube wall) i’ve got an accent, but this guy! his is bad!
C: and he’s been here like twenty years!
E: now how’d she (nodding at niqui) get to be a sox fan?
C: (laughs)
niqui: (looks up from menu) that’s good taste and breeding, my friend!
C: yeah, yeah!
niqui: (encouragingly) hey, you guys didn’t do too badly last night, zambrano got the win.
C: see, she sounds condescending though!
E: well, she’s got the champions… you’ve got the cubs.
i have had it up to here with AT&T Cingular AT&T (again) and the amazing badness that has resulted from my attempting to have them consolidate my cell phone bill in with my landline phone bill. i am going to switch providers because i just cannot cope anymore.
so: who do you use as your cell phone provider, do you like them, and why or why not?
dude, i totally scored on sale yarns lately!
so it turns out that there’s a yarn store in my old neighborhood. we only overlapped in neighborliness very briefly, so i never knew they were there. it’s probably just as well: they have a niiiice
shop. so i collected today’s purchases along with some other things i’ve gotten lately, grabbed the camera, and here’s yarn porn!
(click to see larger
images, you yarn lusters-after!)
from upper left corner, clockwise:
- Jo-Ann’s Sensations Rainbow Boucle — on clearance for five bucks! 853
yards, oh em gee,
Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles, by Cat Bordhi,- three skeins each ON SALE FOR A DOLLAR APIECE of Smart
Superwash yarn, for socky goodness, in blue and purple, - three skeins of Gerifil India in 106 on sale for 40% off, to make a
scarf and possibly hat to match my grass green winter coat, - four skeins of TLC Amore in garnet, on clearance for $3 a skein, to
make a lap blanket of some sort, - some absolutely beautiful rose merino/silk (80/20%) roving and a
drop spindle since i’ve wanted one for a while, - the summer 2006 issue of Interweave
Knits, since it has several things in it i was thinking i might want
to make, - two skeins of some gorgeous soft Blue Sky Alpaca Brushed Suri (67%
baby suri, 22% merino, 11% bamboo), in Fudgesicle, because i wanted to
make a lightweight scarf and i thought this would be good for something
lacey yet warm, - two skeins of Mango Moon recycled sari silk, because i’ve been
wanting to try knitting with that stuff for ages and ages and finally
i just decided to go for it, - three skeins of Cascade Pearl in Italian Ices, also ON SALE
FOR A DOLLAR APIECE, - and finally, another skein of Jo-Ann’s Sensations Rainbow Boucle, in
a different blue colorway, this one full price (sniff!) at $8 for a
ginormous skein. seriously, those two skeins are, like, each larger than my
cat kiyoshi.
and speaking of kiyoshi… check out this photo of a couple of
recent FOs:
look closely at the right-hand edge of that photo.
FOs and WIPs, from left to right:
- in-progress “Light and Lovely Boucle Wrap,” Jo-Ann’s free store
pattern for the rainbow boucle. basically knit a row, knit a row with a
yo on each stitch, knit a row and drop the extra loops, knit a row, repeat
ad nauseum. really, it’s stupid easy. i think i got all that much done
in probably three hours — and i wasn’t really paying attention all that
much. great tv-watching knitting project. i may end up taking this
shawl to work because i’m always freaking freezing in my office. - my new red
bike water bottle! my shiny new bike, being of a mature
vintage (ahem), does not have standard water bottle clip mounts. i was
trying to figure out how i could attach a water-carrying device when i
thought, hey, i could just knit something up. and i happened to have this
red heart super-saver acrylic just lying there… it’s a neat stitch,
i was looking for simple lace patterns. cast on a multiple of three plus
a couple more for however wide you want the edges to be, *k1, yo, k2tog,
repeat to edge, knit back, *k2, yo, k2tog, repeat until 2 sts remain, k2,
knit across. i have a stockinette base and top of the bottle bag for
stability, then once it was sewn into a tube i picked up stitches on the
base and used DPNs to knit a bottom into it. then i co 50 sts and
garter stitched (three rows, i think?) two straps, then sewed them on.
i was going to use icord, but frankly, i HATE making icord, so i got about
three rows into it and frogged it in disgust. besides, my straps are
fine. and i like my swanky knitted water bottle holder! - this scarf, made with Jo-Ann’s yarn over the course of a weekend.
probably took me all of about seven or eight quality tv-watching hours to
do. woohoo big needles! - and a sock! this is actually the start of a second sock in a pair.
not that the first sock is finished… oh, no, that would make too much
sense. maybe i should have photographed both socks…
but anyways, if you click that and enlarge it, you will notice the very
tiny trespass of a cat into my knitting photo studio — kiyoshi no doubt
got curious what was so neat up there on the bed, as he decided to
investigate:
“what’s this?”
“ooooh… a blankie, for me!”
“but you messed it up… here, i’ll fix it.”
it was at this point that the future catblogging photograph session was
cut short in favor of rescuing the knitting from uncaring, if blunt,
claws.
as it turns out, freddy garcia wasn’t the one who needed a warning. garcia did very well. after i killed my voice screaming at neal cotts that “i will come beat you stupid!” my guys must have collectively realized that the midol had worn off and it was time to give me some nice pacifying chocolate, or at least a white sox winner. bobby jenks was amazing as per usual, and my guys paulie and joe did some good work, not to mention that nice fellow in the number twenty-three jersey who had a little something to say about the notion of heading into a twelfth inning. the umpires, however. the umpires made what i felt were several questionable calls. the umpires were not only not niqui’s friends tonight, the umpires were niqui’s mortal enemies. no chocolate for the umpires!
… i kvetch, of course (it is what i do!), but it was actually a very good game (minus neal cotts’ performance, which just confirmed his position on my shit list) and i had a great time (although they had me worried a couple times there). it was an absolutely gorgeous night out. i think i prefer night games to day games. there’s something about looking out on the baseball diamond and having it all lit up in brilliant white light that’s really neat. and, of course, the home run fireworks show up a lot better!
if you suck tonight i’m going to come down to the mound myself and beat you stupid.
(or at least i’m going to be hollering really stinging insults at you from section 528.) you are duly forewarned!
i have grown fond of the opening and closing bell ringings on CNBC. it’s a bunch of grown people standing around applauding themselves. i call it the “hooray! we all came to work today!” festivities.
hooray!! everyone made it to work today! and it’s a monday so it was extra hard!! hooray!!!!! ding ding ding ding ding!!! … in other news, i just invested like ten minutes in getting this working:
s/\(\/usr\(\/local\)\?\|\/opt\)\?\(\/bin\)\/\(.\+sh\)/\4/g
I LOVE SED AND ITS BACKSLASHY AWESOMENESS!
(but now my brain hurts.)
so yesterday, all day, i was doing the next best thing to actually stalking a meterologist from the national weather service: i was obsessively checking the forecast and, especially, the radar. because, you see, they had said it was going to rain… and that the rain would be a part of thunderstorms, caused by a cold front moving in and colliding with the OH MY GOD IT’S HOT weather conditions that were torturing us all since last week. so “rain” meant “cool,” and so you can see why i was obsessed.
i carried my umbrella to work, because, by god, the national weather service said it was going to be storming by 4PM and if i was ever an optimist about anything i was definitely going to be an optimist about it raining yesterday. i wanted that rain. so all day at work i was checking the weather every hour (more frequently as we grew closer to the predicted storm-time, and i grew more and more frustrated by the clear blue skies outside and the clean radar inside) and cheering the storm front on. after work me and my miscreant cohorts were sitting on IRC urging each little yellow- or red-colored blob on the radar to grow and be strong. i cheered out loud when it finally started raining and laughed at my cats when they ran like hell the first time we got a good thunderclap. of course, that was when i was delivered the just desserts of sitting around demanding to know why i had not yet been granted the “SEVERE!” thunderstorm we had been promised: i was in the middle of watching a CSI: Miami rerun and THUNDER! scared the cats out of the room, which is always great fun because kiyoshi has never figured out that claws do not help him run faster on hardwood flooring. so i paused the tivo and wandered over to the bedroom to try and console the cats that the world was not, in fact, ending. lightning continued flashing and thunder continued crashing and while tiger was willing to be petted and calmed (so long as you came to him, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to you) kiyoshi was under the bed and staying there, and so eventually i decided the cats were as well consoled as they were gonna get, so i fetched a glass of water and went back out to finish watching the show. (it was just at the part where the internal affairs weenie was busting Delko for smoking weed, and Mr. Wolfe (rowr) was looking guilty, and David Caruso was being all David Caruso with the sunglasses and did i mention i really just watch this show for all the terribly, terribly pretty people? because i do!), and so you can see how it was right in the middle of something and i wanted to see how it ended because i haven’t seen this episode before…) i hit the ‘pause’ button and the video playback resumed… with no sound. what? no, there was a little bit of sound. i turned the stereo up. and up and up and up and up. and up and up some more. i could hear the faintest little bit of audio, as the pretty people bickered, no doubt frustrated by their inability to make themselves heard. i figured it was the tivo — after all, my other tivo lost its ability to output sound, and i was not pleased at the idea that my other one had too, but it was at least the most likely suspect — and rebooted it. when it came back up … no dice. i tried the other inputs on the receiver: phono, tape deck, dvd player… all the same: only the faintest of sound at very high volumes. i stepped back to think (and, okay, maybe sulk just a little bit). and then i … thought i heard talking. with the (broken) audio input set to a turned-off component, it couldn’t be the stereo receiver. or could it? it turns out that not only does the stereo receiver not output sound cleanly, or at normal amplification anymore … it no longer distinguishes between the audio input channels. what is the sound of “cacophony”? it’s the sound of what happens when sabrina is given a broken stereo receiver and in the name of testing to see exactly how broken it is, plays back an episode of “House” from the TiVo, a movie from the DVD player, an INXS cassette from the tape deck, and a Who record on the phonograph simultaneously through the same speakers, turned up loud and with ample loud bursts of static. (i could have turned on the CD player as well, but crossing the room to fetch a disc and load it into the changer was far more effort than i was willing to make, as i was slowly coming to the unhappy realization that the price of all this audio-channel-congruence entertainment was the fact that my only-three-years-old!! rather nice (and not particularly cheap, though not terribly expensive either) stereo receiver was fried and i didn’t then and still don’t particularly want to go out and drop four or five hundred bucks on a new one at the moment, and so really i just could not be arsed to try and add the CD player to the noise.) oh, and at the same time, my laptop — shiny, my three+ year old 17″ powerbook — overheated and shut itself off before it melted down, because its dying fan apparently finally died. so not only was my stereo receiver hosed, meaning i couldn’t listen to any music or finish watching the damn CSI: Miami i was still in the middle of, but i couldn’t even go online and bitch about it all on IRC because my laptop was so damned hot it refused to turn on. so unfair! so, i decided to go shopping. (nowhere fun, i’m afraid. i just made a run to the petsmart for cat food; i just liked the “oh my god, you’re such a giiiiirl” implications of saying i went shopping. and hey, with a dead stereo system and no way to blog about it, i have to take my entertainment where i can.) now, i’m just sending emails around to various places trying to investigate having the stereo repaired. i hate being without it! it sucks! fortunately, i do still have my ancient sansui receiver which i can use to hook up the phono and mac, and i can rewire the tivos and dvd player to go directly to the television, so i’m not completely hosed. and the weather’s actually cooled off enough so i won’t mind scrunching down behind all my gear (as it exhausts hot air into my face) to work on doing all of that!
i take back everything and anything i have ever said in the past about not minding the heat. i was wrong. i was deceiving myself and i was deceiving whoever the hell i was blathering at. i fucking do mind. this hundred and five heat index shit is … it’s not for the birds, the birds are probably fucking dead from heat stroke, aren’t they?!
GODDAMN. i know i’m whining. i know i’m kinda being a broken record on the “this heat wave sucks” front. but christ. i cannot go to work without feeling like i need to take another shower as soon as i get there. it’s disgusting out there. it’s like walking through a fog bank. a thick fog bank. a thick hot fog bank. it’s foul out there. you almost certainly know that already (unless you’re a niquiblog reader who happens to live in, say, new zealand and it’s winter, you lucky bastard), but oh my god it’s just plain bad out there. this shit had better break soon. i’ve got sox versus yankees tickets for next week and i don’t want to die of heat stroke in section 528.
but i am also an idealistic environmentalist idiot.
(i’ve been reading about a lot of different futures trading stuff lately for work. i think i almost know what calls and puts are now.) anyawys, i stumbled across this during my googlewanderings. i like the idea of personal carbon trading, and not just because i naively underestimate my own personal usage of energy and thus my contribution to pollution-related ugliness. though i do raelly like the idea of riding my bike to work not just saving me money on my car or on cta, but also giving me some sort of commodity i can trade away for extra cash. because really, i am a capitalist pig american just like the rest of y’all. though, you know, i do try and turn off the lights when i leave the room, and i’ve only been running my a/c units when it’s hotter than hell outside (like, you know, since last thursday because i couldn’t cope anymore). so i’d like to think i would be able to recoup some money. at least enough for that shiny new front basket i’ve been eyeing for my shiny new bike.
