Category: Maria Barnes

July 11, 2004 /

On Friday I left work early and went to the lab where Maria is working for the summer, in order to get my brain mapped. Brain mapping means they put a lot of very wet sponges all over your head with rubber bands, so they can go in the room behind you (with a one-way mirror window) and laugh at you until they pee themselves.

It’s a pretty neat process, if not very comfortable. They do some really interesting work there, although Maria apparently disagrees with me on that. I got to be one of the first participants in a new experiment one of Maria’s coworkers has designed. I can’t tell you what it was about, but I might be able to get a printout of my session; apparently my data was “very clean.” That’s nice to know. I should be out of Re-Education And Happiness Camp any day now!

June 26, 2004 /

Ever since the (pretty good) PC speakers which came with my computer started misbehaving to death about two and a half years ago, I’ve been dealing with a nonincreasingly satisfying series of compromises on audio: first, spotty PC speakers; then my dad’s old ancient RCA stereo receiver and its equally-ancient-but-durable monolith speakers; then some bookshelf speakers (kindly lent me by Maria) with the same receiver, which has now begun its own gentle decline into inevitable doom.

Today that same Maria finally compelled me to do what I’ve wanted to do forever, which is buy a freaking decent pair of PC speakers that will sound good and last. I picked them up at Circuit City and installed them just now; only 2.1, but they’re Altec Lansing and THX and I can probably add them into any surround system I eventually build.

Really, really nice speakers. Really, really nice to be able to hear both sides of music again.

May 30, 2004 /

(This entry is posted as dated in my pocket notebook.)

I’ve passed the Waddy Peytona exit probably a hundred times. For the first time in my life, I’m actually in Waddy, at a somewhat sleazy Citgo truck stop, in a back room with no windows. Ian is asleep on one end of the beaten couch; I’m writing at the other. By all accounts, we’re within a few miles of a tornado.

There’s a scattered copy of The Trucker, a half-sheet format free newspaper, on the floor. It appears to be largely concerned with rising diesel prices. Maria called two minutes ago to say that the heart of the storm should be where we are in about three minutes. The rain just slacked off a bit; it sounds like there’s hail mixed with it now. There’s a thick skylight over our heads, which makes me nervous, but it beats the big window-walls out front.

There’s a large TV back here, which is turned off, and a smaller cycling-ads set which is on. It’s connected to some kind of truck load monitor with four large buttons. Every ten minutes or so it shows “local weather,” by which it means the highs, lows and actual temperatures in five parts of Kentucky. Amusingly, it shows nothing related to storm or tornado status.

Maria just called again. Apparently the funnel clouds have dissipated just before reaching Waddy. It should be safe to drive in ten minutes or so.

May 17, 2004 /

Ken, Maria and I rolled down to l’Centre on Saturday to coo over Lisa’s senior show, which was all very massive color-gradient glass pieces, and awesome. I can’t really describe them to you–she has a couple pics up, but seeing them in three dimensions and with more light was much better.

The next day, Maria and I argued over whether or not I am indie–something for which I vaguely hope, but never considered myself cool enough to achieve. She pointed out that in addition to my mild but distinguished collection of obscure t-shirts, I do know two glassblowers, and that’s some solid cred there. I should have known that in the indie world, friends are primarily status symbols and tools to an end. (And for the record, Maria used to date a rock star, so I’m pretty much never going to be indier than she is.)

May 9, 2004 /

Maria and I were discussing the increasingly esoteric and convoluted nature of spam, just now, including the fact that much of bulk email no longer serves a discernible purpose. I frequently receive spam from nonsense names, advertising nothing, free of hyperlinks or parsible sentences.

I pointed out that one reason it’s gotten so complicated is the constant, high-speed arms race between spammer and anti-spam software vendor; as new regular expressions are devised and new efforts made to beat them, whole fields of technique can be created and discarded in a week. And then Maria said something that chilled me to my very bones.

“What if,” she said, “the vendors are putting spam out there just to keep selling their software?”

I’m terrified, now, that she might be right.

Anyway, read Spam As Folk Art.

Maria is responsible for basically all of this

May 3, 2004 /

I got four Hellboys, two Supermans, a tombstone, a whoopee cushion and Graeter’s Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cake. I had a gonzo adventure with my friends and we drove off a cliff. I ate two orders of the best ribs in the universe. I won eighteen zillion games of Crimson Skies.

I have to invent a final project from thin air tonight and turn it in tomorrow, but I had a very good birthday.

April 28, 2004 /

Worked hard all day today on a big Internet Applications project (my very first servlet!) and have it practically done, which is pretty neat. In celebration, Maria and I are watching X-Mans on my new (used) DVD. Starting at 2320 hrs. I have to get up at 0630 hrs. This is gonna be awesome.

None of this, of course, applies on Tuesdays

April 22, 2004 /

We’ve developed a pretty good collective work ethic, really. Maria and I both get home around 6, lounge for a bit to recover from the stress of the day, and probably change clothes. I’ll hit my RSS feed, friends page and email. We decide what we’re having for dinner (almost always pizza, beans and rice, or leftovers of the above) and heat it in some fashion. We sit at the table and eat while watching an X-Files episode (into Season Three and going strong). We dump the dishes in the sink.

This is the point where we discuss getting some work done, and I usually go in and at least sit at the computer, where I do the email / friends / rss dance again. We talk for a while about how we should be studying, and sometimes Maria will actually study. I basically just talk about it. I brush my face and wash my teeth while Maria takes a shower. Most days we read aloud–we finished Small Gods a little while ago, and have started on Neuromancer. We bring up the subject of homework; Maria, because she is diligent and responsible, actually does some. As for me, you know, by now it’s past 2200 hrs and I have to get up early, is it really even worth starting at this point? I usually get a phone call or call somebody around then, and Maria talks to Graham, Bee, Michelle or somebody via phone or IM. We’ve both likely crashed by midnight.

Like I said, it’s a pretty good work ethic. Except for my work.

Incidentally, Wario Ware is pretty great

April 15, 2004 /

For at least seven years, I’ve had a chronic leg pain that would only ever occur in one leg at a time (but not always the same leg), and only after a night in which I’d stayed up too late and not slept enough. It was fairly rare, never lasted more than a day, and didn’t feel like a sharp pain, so I mostly ignored it. My basic theory on it was that I had suffered some kind of stress fracture in the past; it only hurt, after all, when I was too tired for my muscles to support me properly (keep in mind here that my grasp of anatomy is fairly medieval).

I stayed up forever late the other night, playing Wario Ware Inc and Illuminati with the Tuesday Night Ballers, and yesterday I had my first recurrence of the problem since moving in with Maria in August. It was also worse than usual, probably because I’d sprinted for (and missed) the bus in the afternoon. I planned on ignoring it and treating it with sleep, as usual.

Maria, not a person who is lightly put off a train of thought, decided to treat me with forced couch rest, Advil and an insulated hot towel around my ankle–even though the pain extends through my entire calf. I humored her, and then to my surprise, her doctoring completely worked inside an hour. The pain was completely gone. It was pretty magical; I’ve never had my leg feel better so fast before. Maria is my hero!

Anyway, she says this means the problem is mostly (if not all) mild tendonitis. Interesting. I always wondered when I’d get my first chronic stress injury, but then I also figured it’d be carpal tunnel.

It’s getting to be less “luck” and more “frightening skill”

April 13, 2004 /

Maria won Illuminati again. Sean and I (we were playing teams) were one card away from victory, playing as the Bermuda Triangle and with the Orbital Mind Control Lasers already in our grasp, and we rolled an 11 and she won. I hate the stupid Discordians.

It was still pretty much the best power structure, and the fastest, I’ve ever built. We probably committed the classic error of looking too dangerous early on. Also, Maria wants me to tell you that her brother Michael was her partner, but we all know it was her heathen luck that carried the day.