LingoLook, class, fake babies, Nathan met me, and 120 Minutes…

An on-time, uneventful bus ride in this morning.

I did think, as I was listening to music on my iTouch, that I should be using this transit time to learn Chinese, which reminded me of a podcast called LingoLook China, which someone in our delegation had purchased.


This morning, I had a 9:00 class in the library, which is across the street from my building this morning, and on the way in. Since I had some time before heading over there, I searched iTunes for that podcast, and found it that it’s actually an iPhone/Touch app, and not a podcast. I purchased it for $4.99.

At first I found it a little confusing, as I thought it was a repeat and learn type of program, but what I eventually figured out, was that what it actually does is present an index of things, as well as a category view, and then has the thing explained on the left in English and on the right in Chinese. So, basically, if you get stuck, you can point to a picture/item on your PDA and the other person can read what it is in Chinese.


I really enjoyed the class. It was on an application called Remedy, which our organization uses as its problem/call management system. The instructor was excellent. I loved both his teaching style and his sense of humor. Bonus.

He used a phrase for “from beginning to end” that I loved, and can’t believe I’ve never heard before: “From womb to tomb.”


When I returned to the office after class, another person came over and made sure I was cool with how things “went down” yesterday, and later still, a manager in our area did the same thing. Good people.


Nathan e-mailed me to say that we’d missed one form in our haste in getting them all signed when I was there on Tuesday. He drove over to my office, and I walked the short distance to the FedEx/Kinkos on Hillsborough Street, where he parked, to meet him to take care of it.

The good news was that he hadn’t yet invested any of that money I gave him on Tuesday. That’s good news as the market has pretty much only continued to retreat since then.


Someone on Twitter tweeted about this:

Creepy! Fake babies!


I caught the 4:30 city bus to “get out of dodge” before they closed Hillsborough Street down for NC State’s Homecoming Parade.

Regarding that standard deviation from the mean, I nearly missed the bus. When I stepped outside my building, the bus was stopped right in front of me at the traffic light. Fortunately I had time to walk the about 200 feet that the stop is from the front of my building before the light turned green.


I met Joe at Flex at 10:00, where I didn’t realize it was 120 Minutes night. It turned out to be a decent night, though.

My straight neighbor, Jacob, and his wife, Heather were there, as they usually are. It was Jacob’s birthday, and the DJs (whom I think are pretty good friends with Jacob) had made a little mashup video with flashes of Jacob’s name in it along with “Happy Birthday.”

I asked Heather what he was drinking, which turned out to be a Guiness Draught in a bottle. Who knew? Evidently, nitrogen is somehow infused into the bottle.

I bought him a birthday drink.

Red Robin, some work meetings, eat-in lunch, meeting with Katja, and a little shopping…

I forget to capture this about yesterday: We had a luncheon for a colleague who is getting married in a couple of weeks. It was at Red Robin, a place that I’ve always wondered about, but had never been to. I didn’t realize that it was basically a burger place. Obviously, I’ve never noticed their tag line: “America’s Gourmet Burgers & Spirits.”

I got their “5 Alarm Burger,” the name of which they’ve taken the trouble of trademarking. Too bad they didn’t take as much care with their grammar. There should be a hyphen between the number 5 and the word alarm. But I digress…

Anyway, I loved it. Its description on the menu was as follows: “Crank up the heat with Pepper-Jack cheese, jalapeños, fresh tangy salsa, sliced tomato, crisp lettuce and Chipotle mayo.”

I saw several other things I’d like to try there including their Asian Chicken Salad and their Banzai Burger, which is described as: “Marinated in teriyaki and topped with grilled pineapple, Cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and mayo. Dude, you’ll be like, ready to ride the pipeline on O’ahu’s North Shore after you chomp on this.”


I attended two meetings today, fairly close together with a half hour break between them. The first was the OIT Web Core Team meeting, at which the topic of an—at times heated—discussion was a form that I created to be used in a process that is still being worked out. Lots of frustrations aired, but overall a good hashing and thrashing through issues that must be resolved in order to move forward.

I really appreciated that one person on the team, later in the day, dropped by to make sure that I understood that the discussion wasn’t any reflection on my work on the form. And while, I’m pretty clear on not taking things personally, I very much appreciated the humanity of the gesture.


I had a delicious ham sandwich, made by yours truly, for lunch, with a side order of fresh baby carrots dipped in a thousand island dressing combination of:

½      +     ½


I got to the bus stop at 4:55 to catch the bus that is supposed to stop at 5:00 at the stop two or three stops before my stop. By quarter after five, it still hadn’t come, leading to the conclusion that I must have missed it. It really is going to get annoying if the standard deviation of the bus arrival time is going to be large. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

And with that said, I caught the 5:30 bus instead.


I met with Katja in Durham about my grant writing and investigating work on the board. She is just an incredible person in so many ways, and after each interaction with her I leave feeling valued as a person as well as incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to get to know her a little bit better.


On the way home, I stopped at the outlet mall. It was a quick run in and out, as it was 8:50 and the mall closed at 9:00. That place was absolutely dead, and I made three quick stops:

  1. At the Samsonite Luggage place, where this incredibly helpful and knowledgeable person helped me with an adapter and converter decision for my China trip, and
  2. On a whim, after seeing the “75% Off Everything in the Store” window ad, I dropped into Geoffrey Beane, where I bought two pair of blue dress socks, and a 3-pack of t-shirts—one gray, one white, and one black.
  3. A discount bookstore to see if they had any small books, postcards, or anything else with local topics that I might bring to China as “host gifts.”

Just as I got back to my car to head back to Raleigh, the Vice Presidential debates came on public radio. I listened to the moderator ask the first question of Biden, listened to his two-minute answer, and then Palin’s first 60-seconds of her 90-second allowed response, of which the only thing I remember was, ‘If you were to ask a couple of moms at a soccer game what they think of our economy right now…” Click. Done with it.

According to a lot of the tweets on Twitter, the rest of her responses are pretty much summed up here:

Getting it together, porn moves to 2nd place on the Internet, no Russia for Sarah…

I managed to bring in a sandwich and some carrots today—slowly getting it all together and formulating a bus “routine.”

I had a meeting in the conference room in which I interviewed for this job on August 15th. Awww.


Blurbs—one funny, the other interesting:

A New York lawyer has failed in his effort to deduct from his taxes the $322,000 he spent on prostitutes, pornography, and sex toys. William Halby, 77, told a state tax court judge that he had used “sex therapy” to help battle depression, osteoarthritis, and erectile dysfunction, and the deductions were therefore legitimate medical expenses.

In his ruling, against Halby, Judge Brian Friedman noted that not only is prostitution in New York not recognized as a medical necessity, it’s a “violation of penal law.”

Halby says he’ll appeal.

“Americans are now more interested in social networks than pornography,” said Robert Cringely in Infoworld. “No, that is not a typo.” For as long as there has been a World Wide Web, eyeballing porn has been far and away the most popular activity on the Internet. No longer.  Read the whole story: Facebook and Twitter: The New Pornography.

—From The Week Magazine 10/03/08—


Speaking of twitter someone pointed to this article yesterday: CNN: Sarah Palin Has Never Seen Russia From Alaska. It seems that there’s only one place in all of Alaska from where you can see Russia, and a man on the 150-people remote island said no governor has ever visted there. LOL!


Dancing pretty much sucked tonight. I’m just going to leave it at that. Neither Carl, Bill, nor Geromy were there. Well, Geromy got there in the middle of Sordid Lives, for which we stopped dancing tonight, and almost everyone left shortly after it was over, at about 10:45.


At the site, Play Palin Bingo, there are some cards to use at your VP Debate Party tomorrow night. I love what they’ve done with the square that would normally be the “Free Space.” LOL!