Month: August 2002

Well this is weird. According to my referrer logs, twenty-eight people apparently wanted to see what my weblog looked like through malfunction.org‘s Fulifier Error filter.

I haven’t come across the filter since (I discover after a little digging through archives and old e-mails) early October of last year. Weird to suddenly see twenty-eight links generated by it. Someone I know must have been really bored.

One of my least favorite work-related activities is taking documents that, for whatever reason, exist only as printed copies and scanning them into electronic files. This is a process that should be relatively simple, but which is rendered almost impossible by lousy text recognition software that can’t recognize certain characters, rearranges page format and layout, and transforms tables, equations, and figures into an incomprehensible mess that I then have to wade through and correct. This is both tedious and time-consuming, and, no matter how much I am able to finish, there is always more waiting for me.

In front of me now, I have page after page of equations — thirty pages left in all — which shouldn’t, but do, look like this:

J+1

J+l J+1 IN )i

Tia A & #64979; ggi

IE& #64979; tE 1 2 (A& #64979;6)

V

So I have to go through each page and correct the formatting, proofread for errors which are almost always there, and spend hours retyping equations that I do not understand, and which are often as difficult to read as they are to reproduce. I think I — and, by extension, my boss — will just have to accept that this is not something that can easily be finished in just one or two days. This is not a simple scan-and-save. This is an undertaking. And, frankly, it’s beginning to piss me off.

It occurs to me that I haven’t posted any photographs here in awhile and that somewhere along the way I may have inadvertently promised that there would be photographs at some point. For anyone who’s been waiting patiently this past month for me to deliver on that promise and get my act in gear, I offer both a heartfelt apology and, of course, these photographs.

The first photograph is of my old and, at the time, very empty apartment, while the six that follow it are of nothing in particular around the new place. Maybe next weekend I’ll wander around with the digital camera again and get some decent pictures. Perhaps some snapshots of security escorting me off of the nearby golf course. Sure, that’d be swell.

The next two photographs were taken as I crossed the George Washington Bridge on my trip home this weekend. “How did you take a picture while you were driving?” my sister asked. Traffic, I told her, was very slow. Apparently (and although there were no signs of it that I could see), a storm had hit New York City Friday afternoon and at least two major expressways were partially underwater from flooding. Thus, everyone was scrambling off onto other roads, including the one I was on, and my commute gained a couple of hours in the bargain.

But that’s okay. I’m glad I went home. Everyone seemed to enjoy the birthday party we held for my grandparents, and there are worse ways to spend the day than chatting with relatives you haven’t seen in years and may never see again. I just hope this doesn’t mean I’ll be expected to remember all of their names if I ever do see them again — like at my aunt’s wedding in October. I’m terrible with the names of people I see on a regular basis; the names of all of these third, fourth, and fifth cousins don’t stand a chance.

But I digress. The last three photographs, taken when traffic wasn’t particularly slow (but when it was sparse enough to let me risk the camera), are really just of different spots along I-80. I think that, for the time being at least, I’m not going to share the photographs I took at Saturday’s party. It’s not that I’m trying to keep any of you from knowing what my parents, grandparents or other relatives look like. It’s just, I don’t feel entirely comfortable putting up photographs of other people here without their permission. And explaining just what I need their permission for would entail telling them all about my weblog, which I’m not entirely sure I want to do.

Although maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe it doesn’t matter, or maybe they already know about the weblog. One of those twice-removed-or-whatever cousins at the party on Saturday came over to ask me about the Penn State Monty Python Society, having visited the website and, presumably, having seen my name attached. Maybe there are no secrets on the internet.

But still. You really don’t need to see the photo of my grandmother with a large bow atop her head. I think we can agree on that much.

Yesterday, I took a shorter lunch and worked late so that today I can leave early and drive to New York before five. I don’t really want to drive to New York — it’s a five to six hour trip over very boring roads and I just did it a month ago — but we’re celebrating my grandparents’ birthdays tomorrow, and I want to be there for that. So last night I packed a bag that’s right now sitting in the trunk of my car. I leave at one. Hopefully I can get back early enough on Sunday to finish some of this unpacking I know I should have finished at least a week ago.

How are you spending your weekend?