Just had one of those joyous experiences where you decide to go out to dinner; drive to a restaurant; find that the restaurant's closed (as in forever); think of another nearby restaurant; drive around a parking garage; find that this restaurant has a 45-minute wait; and finally give up and go home and make quesadillas.

Fortunately the kids & I did not lose our tempers at each other, although there was definite grumpiness and non-apologetic "sorry!"-saying. It's all OK now.

My quesadilla had prosciutto and cherry tomatoes in it. Yummy.

It has been raining, and thundering and briefly hailing. I stayed home today and worked on some intricate watchmaker-y code — low-level stuff that twiddles bits on their way into and out of a database file. I'm making some benchmarks run three times faster, which is very gratifying.

The kids are here with me, on their spring break. They came into the office with me yesterday, but today I let them sleep in (poor Naomi was at a slumber party the night before and you can guess how little actual slumber she got) and tapped away at my keyboard in the quiet living room next to the big rainy windows.

achariya is back on LJ and there is much rejoicing. Well, enough to get me posting again. That, and my new girlfriend(!!) waltzingechidna (aka Michelle) is also here, although she's more active on tumblr where we post elliptically romantic photos and quotes aimed at each other. Sigh, young love.

I have new curtain rods, but not the curtains yet. Soon, by the grace of the FedEx courier. Once complete, they will cover my entire bedroom wall, replacing six fiddly blinds with two big swathes of paisley that I can sweep open to get much light, or shut to black it all out. Am I house-proud? Very well then.

Music: Mach V - Send In The Drones | Powered by Last.fm

Ground Fault Interrupt — Tangly and thorny prog/math/metal/hardcore ... a sequel to "Ground Hum". But I promise there are no Cookie Monster vocals.

Thanks to nomi for the cover photo!

Tags: mix, music

I'm baking banana bread! With some overripe bananas I froze a month ago for just such an occasion. I've never used frozen bananas before, but I let them thaw first and I figure they should be fine. Otherwise, at my funeral you can wail "Oh why did he use frozen bananas?! Why didn't we tell him?!"

I was going to ride my bike in a bit, but it's suddenly clouded over and almost looks like rain (tut tut). It really takes very little provocation to get me to not ride my bike, unfortunately. And the exer-bike in the garage broke :(

The kids have finished playing "Kingdoms Of Amalur" for the moment and have gone upstairs, so it's peaceful down here. Just me and the hissing oven, and soon the smell of banana bread.

Among the things that's happened since August is that I moved house. But only by about 20 feet: yes, literally next door.

I've always liked my bachelor pad, ever since I first sighted the neighborhood (ok, "complex") in early 2010. It has three floors, a great view of the park, and it's right around the corner from the train station. And though I was renting, I had the resources to buy it, so I even asked my landlord if he was interested in selling. He laughed and turned me down (in this economy, the houses are selling for about half of what he paid in 2006.)

So instead I installed the Zillow iPad app and cyberstalked the neighborhood. Various houses would light up as for sale, but they were on the side streets and their windows looked into another house, not the park. I stayed patient as a tiger.

Then! I saw a house on the park come up for sale! And when I looked closer, I saw that its address was almost like mine. I walked out the front door and looked to the right, and saw the telltale realtor's lock-box hung from the doorknob.

This is where it gets good. Did I go back home and say "Huh, that's pretty interesting, but buying a house is a big deal and I should think this over for a while", and then forget all about it for weeks until after someone else had snapped it up? NO! I totally went for the gusto and emailed the realtor. And then the next day I saw that there was an open house, so I ran over (with adorable photogenic daughter in tow) and chatted up the realtor and got a good tour of the place. But the next part is where it gets insane: I found a realtor of my own! Yes! I acted like an actual grown-up and took initiative and spoke to strangers and leaped into the void.

So I got the house. I just had to wait about 2 1/2 months while the sellers' bank dithered (it was a short-sale). Then I packed up my belongings, bought goodies at Trader Joe's, and invited friends over to help carry stuff. I also hired movers to carry the beds and upstairs sofa and washer/drier.

It was a bit surreal for the first day, since it's a 90%-identical floor-plan with a few differences like hardwood floors and bigger windows. (No, it's not a mirror image!) At one point during the move I forgot which house I was in and went the wrong direction down the sidewalk to the other house. But I got used to it quickly. Now I am happily settled in like a hermit crab in his new shell.

The End (?)

Tags: home

August? I think this is my longest lacuna ever. At some point I explicitly gave up and tried to make do with tumblr, where there are pretty pictures every day and several of my friends around to press the little heart button when I post stuff.

I still haven't found anything on any site that makes me feel the way LiveJournal used to, though, despite the ubiquity of friend-lists and "what have you been up to?" textareas. It would theoretically be possible to have an LJ style experience on tumblr, but when I've tried it hasn't worked. There's something about LJ ... and not just the clumsy Web-1.0 UI of the site (OK, they're up to 1.5 by now). It had more to do with the specifics of who was there and what they talked about, and the way the comment system encouraged discussion.

Most of my LJ friends are gone or dormant, or perhaps lurking. To satisfy my curiosity, if you're reading this, could you comment and let me know? I'm wondering if my friends still check in on their friend-page sometimes, or if strangers pass through and marvel at the crumbling decay of a once-mighty land.

It has been almost exactly ten years since I first joined LiveJournal.

I know my first post was in mid-July 2001, but I can't find it determine the exact date. the account doesn't exist anymore (the original 'snej', long deleted and then re-created from scratch). I used to have a back-up of all the posts in the form of a PDF, but I just tried to find it, and I can't.

So let's just assume it's the tenth anniversary.

A sorta-new mix I made last month as a birthday present for some friends, and am now opening to the public, just in time for summer — because it’s a good fun summery listen.

Tags: mix, music

The FAQ should give you an idea of what happened. I was fine after the 1PM blood donation; I've given blood many times before, although not for a year. After work I went over to Daniel & Renee's to play Mansions Of Madness, and they were serving mai tais, which I love, and I wasn't thinking about my lack of blood to dilute the dark rum with. I was OK after the first one, but the second one made me definitely unwell.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually fainted before. Pretty scary! I remember walking up the stairs toward the bathroom, and then I remember lying on the bathroom floor looking at the blood on my forearms while my friends asked me what happened. Thank god there was a nice soft bathmat on the floor so I didn’t hit the tiles.

The damage seems to be:
• Big bruise/scrape on my scalp just below the hairline (I suspect I got this from the sink on the way down)
• Cut on my nose
• Cut on my upper lip
• Bridge of my nose hurts when touched, or when I chew. Suspect it might be broken. (Anyone know how to tell for sure? Should probably see a doctor. What do they do for a broken nose anyway? They can't put a cast on it.)
• Minor bruise on left cheek
• Sore knuckle of right thumb
• Bruised/sore knees
• Ruined pair of glasses
• Blood stains on pants, hopefully washing out now in the sink
• Ruptured dignity, recovering

Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade always made getting sapped sound so easy. I may need to reconsider my plans to become a private investigator when I grow up.

Music: Deftones - One Weak | Powered by Last.fm

[emailed to the office today]

Q: Where’s Jens today?
A: Working from home, hiding in shame.

Q: Dude, what happened to your face?
A: It got attacked by the floor last night; thus the bump on the forehead and the cuts on the nose and upper lip.

Q: Your glasses look different too…?
A: These are my old backup pair. My normal glasses look so different now that they’re not functional anymore. Time to get new frames.

Q: How exactly does one get “attacked by a floor”?
A: In my case, by passing out while walking across it and landing face-down. I learned a very important lesson about why drinking and blood donations don’t mix.

Q: What important safety advice should I be aware of after donating blood?
A: Donating blood is a valuable civic duty and is very safe if you follow directions! In addition to the wise advice given to you over juice and cookies, you should also avoid drinking alcohol for the rest of the day, particularly Mai Tais, even if offered to you in good faith by friends. If you must consume two (2) Mai Tais, make sure to eat a good dinner beforehand, not just an energy bar scrounged from the drawer at work. And if feeling unwell for any reason, seek a downstairs bathroom, not one you have to climb stairs to get to, especially if it’s 90° or more upstairs.

Q: Do you really think you can hide out from everyone until your wounds heal?
A: Hey, rhetorical questions don’t count! No, but I should look better tomorrow than today.

Music: Deftones - Minus Blindfold | Powered by Last.fm