You know how old dudes have thosed weird eyebrow hairs that are like 20 times longer than the other ones in their brow? Usually the guys are 70 years or older, and their eyebrows are all white or gray, and then there’s those hairs that are a different color and “Whoa!”
Well guess what?
I got one.
Big, thick, black eyebrow hair sticking straight up out of the fine, thin, blonde hairs on my face.
Dang.
For those who grew up in my home town, that phrase needs no explanation, but for the rest of you, I probably need to define what I’m talking about. Uumiñaq means “to be irritating, annoying, frustrating.” When you use it as a noun, you are basically calling someone a pest.
But, there’s more to this word than meets the eye. Having a dad who is a linguist, and who spent many years studying this language, he can give me further insight into the word than just what I remember. The stem, uumi- actually comes from “hate.” And the affix, the -ñaq part of the word roughly translates to the English equivalent of “able.” Or, in short, an overly literal translation of the word cold be “hate-able.”
So, you ask, where the heck am I going with this?
Books are cool. I love books. Opening the spine of the book and smelling the ink and paper just brings out memories. But then, there’s something called e-books, and little technical dealios called e-readers. Despite my knowledge of computers and programming, etc, for some odd reason I still like the old-fashioned paper version of books.
Until now.
Now I carry a library of books around on my belt. There’s multiple e-readers for the Google Android operation system on phones, and the Kindle Application for Android works like a charm. Not to mention, it links in with all the e-books I can buy from Amazon.com
Still, the Kindle doesn’t read open format books like “epub” which is the format Google has decided to use for all the books it has scanned and made available to the world at Google Books. The Barnes & Noble Nook does, however. I’ve seriously started looking at buying one, because I can carry one small device that lets me read multiple different things all at once. No more lugging around 5 books because I want to read them all, bit by bit, on a vacation.
When I’m back in the green, I’ll buy one.
So, a couple posts ago I talked about how I’d managed to shed some pounds, and drop to an almost halfway point of my goal weight. Not bad. Except now, three weeks later, I’m still stuck at the same weight. I’ve hit the infamous plateau. Great. Now I have to come up with new ways of shocking my body into kicking off the weight. Most likely, it’ll have to be something involving large metal objects.
So, now that training is done at the gas station, I actually have a set schedule. No more of this working at 5am, only to work at 1pm or 5pm the next day, back to a 5am. None of that any more. Now I just have one schedule. Swing shift. 1p-9p. And, I work Friday and Saturday nights, so there goes my vibrant social life.
… oh wait…
In any case, today is a freebie. And I’m taking advantage of it.
Just thought I’d share a minor detail with you all about the path to thinitude. So far, since coming back from Africa, I’ve managed to lose 19 lbs. Six more, and I’ll be able to start singing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” which would seem appropriate for the halfway mark… and, of course, for various other reasons the song seems to touch on as well. My guitar is in hock, and I did used to at least live near the docks…
…
Fine. It has no bearing on the situation. But I like the song.
Finally took the plunge. I’ve installed Ubuntu Linux on all my computers now. The desktop is fully loaded, no windows anymore. The other two have dual-boot systems. The cool thing is that Linux runs really well on these older computers, much better than Windows. I’m not saying Windows is terrible, just that once the computers get older, and the updates keep adding more and more to the system, they tend to slow down. If I ever buy another new computer with great memory and processing speed, I’ll probably keep Windows on that one, and leave Ubuntu on the rest so that they’ll continue to be usable for a longer time.
So yesterday I came home to my little basement apartment and shut the door. Then I turned on the fan, and then the lights in the kitchen. And there he was, standing next to the counters in the kitchen, just staring at me like he owned the place.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. ”Get out of here now.”
When he didn’t move, I entered into war mode. Slowly and deliberately, I moved toward him, masking my movements in the shadows.
And then I pounced, my foot coming down hard. But he wasn’t there anymore. With alarming speed he had feigned left, narrowly escaping my well-timed boot to the head. There was no hiding in the shadows anymore; my tactic was clear now. So I lurched again, foot coming down hard one more time. But this time he bolted right, again narrowly missing my best effort, and jumped onto the rug. Of course I didn’t want to ruin the rug, so I stepped back a few paces and got into my best crouching tiger hidden dragon pose, awaiting his exit from the rug.
From my crouching pose, I timed a perfect roundhouse kick to take him to his maker. But alas, with with impossible speed he made a perfect 90 degree right hand turn and scampered behind the end table near the couch. The couch! There was no way I was going to let him hide from me. With the strength of twenty mice, I hurled the couch aside, where it crashed into the bed and the nightstand, almost knocking over the lamp.
There he was! scurrying along the crack where the concrete floor and wall meet. ”You can run, but you can’t hide, you little punk,” I hollered as I leapt after him, just in time to see him round the corner into the closet. ”Ha!” I thought, “I’ve got him now.” Taking another step to the closet, I turned on the light just in time to see L. C. come to a grinding halt. By the look on his face I could tell what he was thinking: “Oh crap, this is a dead end.”
But he wasn’t about to give up. He turned around, stood up on his hind legs, held out his top legs and did a little head bob that says, “You want a piece of this?”
“Bring it on,” I said, “Bring … it … on.”
He feigned left, bolted right. My foot missed with the toe, but in a moment of perfect clarity, I swiveled my ankle, and crushed him beneath my heel, his innards leaving a nice little yellow puddle of goop. Ha! Victory was mine.
Dead end in a dead end. Oh, the irony.
A few days old, but still news to me:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d2f3f04e-6ccf-11df-91c8-00144feab49a.html
Apparently Google is switching to either Mac or Linux only for desktop computers. I’m surprised that they weren’t on this before. There’s several international governments that have already switched. I’m about to phase out my final Windows PC and go to a full Linux operation in the near future.
“Operation” Sounds official doesn’t it? Ha!
Just yesterday I stopped off at one of the Redbox movie kiosks and rented “Rain Fall
The book was unbelievably tense, packed with action and intrigue, and I really couldn’t put it down once I picked it up. In fact, I couldn’t put down this book, or the two that followed it; I read them all one right after another. The main character “John Rain” is a great character, and the elements of the surrounding areas are described fantastically.
I remember thinking to myself how much I could not wait for someone to do a movie based on this character and how intense it would be. Well, now someone has…
Trouble is, they screwed it up.
This movie is a slow mover, only vaguely resembles the book, and drops out far too much of the things that made the book an excellent read. I recognize that it is sometimes difficult to go from a novel to a movie script, but the people who made the Bourne Identity from Robert Ludlum’s book did a great job of keeping the intensity going even if they didn’t stick entirely to the book. The only reason I stuck this movie out is because of my enjoyment of the books. I kept waiting for this movie to pick up the pace, and get to the real deal. Unfortunately, it never happened.
