Tag Archives: Personal Blather

I just finished doing the layout of an award certificate for a doctor whose name has the same number of letters as the degrees after it. Bin Hu, MD, PhD. It balances neatly on the comma in the middle.

Plus, I think it’s really cool that we’re giving an award to Doctor Hu.

We fly out this afternoon to do the Smithee show at Conbust in Northampton MA!

I’m mildly plagued by show-stress, as usual. It doesn’t matter how many shows I do, I’m always going to be a cranky wreck right up until I’m on stage. For this show, that’s going to be Friday night.

Hopefully. We’re not on the schedule on their rather spartan website, so it could turn into last minute guerilla theatre, exhibiting on a laptop in a hallway somewhere. And, sadly, if we were on their schedule, we’d conflict with the “Meet Jeph Jaques” event.

I’ve got more to write, I’m sure – or at least it seems that there should be more content to this post – but right now I’m juggling show prep stress for the Ann Arbor Smithees on top of the pre-show jitters for the Conbust show. And, of course, there’s general work related stress. Our biggest client has their biggest research conference on Tuesday, so there’s a lot of stuff that I’ve been busting my butt to have ready to go before I fly out.

I’m going to start designing mad science prototypes based on the subject lines of the spam I’ve been receiving.

Subject: Re: stun progenitor
From: ampcat@some damn spammer.com
Date: March 27, 2007 2:17:11 PM GMT-04:00

“You FOOLS! You may think you have the upper hand now, but you’re no match for my STUN PROGENITOR!!!”

The names they come up with are great too… I’m sure it’s just an automated routine that yanks words at random from a dictionary file, but they do sound like Bond villains. And it’s no wonder if they grew up with names like “Ampere Catalina” or “Feckless Delimiter.” I don’t picture a happy family life. And the schoolyard bullying? It’s no wonder they turned to a life of crime.

It’s nearly 80°F outside right now. Here in the office, it’s a stuffy 74°F up by the front desk and a sweltering 77°F in the back with all the servers and printers.

And me.

I’m not at the hospital office tomorrow, so I’m semi-seriously contemplating breaking out the utili-kilt, just for the sake of comfort. On the other hand, the weather widget seems to be indicating that today is the peak for the week, so the kilt might be too little, too late. Or too late, too little. It’s a nice comfy kilt – not a mini-skirt by any stretch of the imagination – but there are people who freak out at the sight of a guy not wearing pants…
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I guess I’m stressed.

Last night at dinner a nervous tic cropped up that I haven’t had for years. You see, I’ve got this odd little problem with knives. I don’t like having them pointed in my direction.
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It’s a homebrew! It’s a pioneer of stop-action animation!

It’s both!

Have a hearty glass of Hairy Hefeweizen, and thank the folks who came up with the Random Beer Name Generator

I think I used to have this job…

The book in this week’s comic is a woefully inaccurate translation from the original Latin manuscript. Sadly, that text was destroyed in a fire in the late 1880’s.

I’m vaguely ashamed of my first reaction on reading this news story:

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) — Two clowns were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman during their performance at a traveling circus in the eastern Colombian town of Cucuta, police said Wednesday.

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It looks like the Man in Japan is well on his way to losing his euphonious pseudonym. Heck, I may have to start calling him by his real name if I can’t figure out something that rhymes with New Zealand… On the other hand, it may be easier to take a more Nelsonic approach and slap “Formerly” in the middle of things.
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