This past weekend we celebrated New Years with a couple friends of ours who had come up to spend a few days at our house. I had Thursday and Friday off from work to entertain them while Michael worked.

Kevin brought up a couple growlers from his local brewery, Four Sons Brewery, filled with their Pale Ale and Amber Ale. Both were enjoyable and full of character, and contrary to my normal stance on Pale vs. Amber I enjoyed the Amber ale more. He left us one of the empty growlers to keep – woohoo!

While Michael was at work on Friday I took the guys out to Max & Ermas in Oaks. The food was good, but the service was lousy – very unusual for that location! The waiter started off fine, one of those jump-on-your-table-and-be-too-excited types, but then he turned horrible. He neglected to check on us after our food was delivered by someone else and I sat for almost 15 minutes with an empty soda glass. He pretty much ignored us while we were eating after I finally got my soda refilled. Then he brought the fresh cookies for dessert too early, before Kevin was finished with his meal. And then without asking if we wanted more he brought the check, which was our signal to get out rather than ordering a couple beers to round out the meal, fine! It was about 3 in the afternoon and there wasn’t a lack of available tables in the place, so he wasn’t trying to clear us out for other diners. He got a lousy tip, which is really a shame for him, since I’m a great tipper.

Unfortunately Michael started coming down with the flu Friday afternoon at work. Saturday he was not feeling well, but was feeling good enough to decline my offer to drive and drive us all himself to Victory Brewing Company for a late lunch and tour of the brewery! We met up with Bob and a couple friends of his at the Brewery and had a blast during the tour.

Throughout the weekend Kevin and I were plopped in front of the TV (or his laptop screen) watching I, Claudius, a 12 hour BBC mini-series from 1976. I am not sure what I was expecting from this – but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it! This wasn’t some lousy made-for-TV movie, this was a well-structured film with some notable actors: John Hurt as Caligula, Patrick Stewart as Sejanus, Sian Phillips (Rev. Mother in Dune) as Livia, John Rhys-Davies as Marco. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy watching the excess and absurdity of Caligula, as if I needed re-enforcement of the idea that I should name a cat after such a fellow (What? Cats are excessive and absurd!).

It was also interesting to be able to follow the historical accuracy of the film by referencing the I, Claudius Project:

The goal of the I, CLAVDIVS PROJECT is to create a web resource which provides source materials and analyses for the BBC production of I, Claudius. Each episode is documented to show what is supported by ancient evidence or by the Graves novels and what is not.

The project has been going on since 1998 and is still in progress, as is evident from the detail of the documentation in the earlier episodes in relation to the later ones. Still – what a fantastic resource!

We also got to watch the 4th season (and a few episodes of other seasons) of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! which was a nice bit of libertarian blabbering that I thoroughly enjoyed and mostly agreed with. Plus both Kevin and I are big Penn fans (he a bit more than I) and during a week without Penn Radio we needed some sort of Penn fix.

New Years Eve was spent enjoying growlers from Victory, various movies and shows on the MythTV box, and just hanging out together. Michael (still suffering from the flu) made pizzas for all of us, with me helping out chopping up things for the pizzas and running around doing little tasks so he wouldn’t have such a huge burden. The pizzas turned out great and we ended the evening with way too much leftover cheese and snacks.

New years day was spent “recovering” from the night before. Michael was finally starting to feel better (yay!) and we decided to head out to Sly Fox for some food around 5PM – but they were closed. I had called earlier to make sure they were open, and they had indicated that they would probably close earlier than the normal 9PM, but didn’t think they’d close before dinner. Sigh. We ended up just going home and having some veggie burgers, fries and leftover snacky foods. In retrospect this was probably the best plan of action, if we had ended up at Sly Fox I’m sure we would have brought home more beer, stayed up late and I would have been feeling miserable this morning. As it was, I was able to get to bed by 9 to read and was asleep by 10.

This morning the guys left and I went back to work.

…I have a MySpace account.

*insert obligatory excuse for signing up in the first place here*

I’ve had it for years, never used it unless someone added me, tried to delete it once and never got the confirm email. But then I let it slip that I actually had one in IRC and there was no turning back. I might as well admit it to everyone.

< ]HydE[> Rune…wanna see [pic of thing]?
<@RuneFrost> sure
<+pleia2007[1]> hey why don’t I get to see?
< ]HydE[> [myspace url]
< ]HydE[> log in to MySpace if you wanna
<+pleia2007> k
<@RuneFrost> pleia is on myspace? o.O
< ]HydE[> …..hey yeah…Leia, what’s your url?
<+pleia2007> oh crap, I don’t admit to being on myspace
< ]HydE[> TOO LATE! WE ALREADY KNOW1
<@RuneFrost> YOUR SECRET IS REVEALED

It’s not all bad, I’ve reconnected with people I knew back when I was growing up, a woman I used to work with at a store who I was close to before moving away, and other random people from the past that were accidentally neglected. I now have email addresses to contact them properly (no, email within MySpace is not proper contact). Since I did’t use it, these people found me mostly via searching for my name or through my school, and I want to be accessible to people who want to find me.

[1]my nick is pleia2007 on Xelium because I’m dressed up for New Years!

So I’m sitting in a F/OSS channel this morning and someone joins:

<nickChanged> hello dudes

Now it’s possible that this person just wanted to greet the men in the channel, so I asked:

<pleia2> What, no greeting for the ladies?

A quick exchange follows, in which the fellow apologizes and another fellow (who I know) pipes up and says “Well you’re not usually here!” …as if I’m the only female ever to enter that channel. In fact, however, one of the channel ops is female.

And then we get the fellow who pipes up and says: “No need to get into sexism”

I couldn’t resist.

<pleia2> sorry, I just feel left out when people join channels and say “hey dudes/gentlemen/fellas”

It’s the truth. The first F/OSS channel I was in regularly had this problem and I quickly became known as “that feminist who would always call people on it” – of course since I’m friendly with the main devs it was never something bad it was more of a “snicker, that guy just joined the channel and said ‘hello gentlemen’ – pleia2 is gonna get him!”

But I never much liked having that label, that’s what sticks even though I’ve made contributions to the project. But if I wasn’t going to pipe up and say something, who would? How else are we supposed to change this?

Of course I don’t think these men are intentionally saying “hey dudes/gentlemen/fellas” because they want women to feel excluded, they simply assume women aren’t in these channels. Indeed, many women who have survived in F/OSS IRC have doneso by taking gender-neutral nicks and not otherwise exposing their gender, and I don’t blame them, but this makes us much less visible.

I keep hoping that one of these days every tenth knucklehead joining a F/OSS channel won’t spew some masculine greeting, but until then I’ll still be “that feminist who calls people on it” from time to time.

My holiday weekend off ended up being nice and relaxing.

It began with being let out from work an hour early on Friday, always a nice treat. Saturday was my mother’s birthday and I ended up giving her a call and talking for a while, but otherwise spent the day reading and doing stuff around the house.

Christmas Eve we went over to have the traditional Seven Fish dinner:

The fish dinner tradition began hundreds of years ago when the Church required fasting (no meat) and purification as preparation for Christmas Day.

Italians, in response, created “spectacular” (but meatless!) meals that followed the letter of the law, but “successfully avoided the spirit,” Vincent Schiavelli wrote in his memoir of his Brooklyn childhood, Bruculinu, America (Houghton Mifflin 1998). Some Italians chose a dinner of seven fish courses (signifying – depending on your source – the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Virtues, the seven sacraments, the seven days in the week before Christmas). Others chose nine (a multiple of the Holy Trinity).

Ah Italians. Whatever the meaning, I love fish. The fish is gathered by some men in the family via the annual pilgrimage to the fish and cheese markets in Philly, and it’s all quite fresh and delicious – the eel is a personal favorite. We ended up spending the better part of the afternoon and into the evening there.

Monday, Christmas, we went over to my brother-in-law’s house for a turkey dinner and 24 hours of A Christmas Story. We exchanged gifts with my mother-in-law and scooted out after a couple hours to come home and relax.

Tuesday I also had off from work – yay! Michael had a fire going in the fireplace early in the day, so Caligula spent the entire day sleeping in front of it. In the middle of the day I headed out to do some errands. I was able to pick up some nice kitchen things we needed at Le Butler’s Pantry in Skippack. I also took advantage of the “Christmas present” from my mother – any family members can use her employee number to get a 20% off at Petco, sweet! Caligula got some of his favorite treets and a new pair of grooming gloves.

Wednesday I worked 10 hours so I could take off the rest of this week (a month ened week!) without too much guilt.

I took off the rest of this week so we could go to Maine for New Years, unfortunately circumstances changed and we aren’t able to make it up. Well I wasn’t going to let that take away from my days off!

Instead we have a couple of friends come up, Azi (who came up once with some Swedish friends) and who Michael invited yesterday. They just arrived a couple hours ago and had dinner.

Versus

Don’t worry, no one was hurt, Caligula is a merciful housecat with no claws.

Our house was built in 1945 as what we believe was a hunting shack with a single fireplace to heat it. Over the years bits were added to it, it was expanded out the front and back for a kitchen and bathroom and laundry room. The upstairs was finished, an addition was put off to the side for a couple more bedrooms.

The basement is an unfinished area were small animals from outdoors routinely sneak in, but we’d never had a wild animal get into the main portion of the house.

Until this morning.

Caligula was acting weird when we got up this morning, very jumpy and strangely obsessed with the underside of the living room radiator. Upon inspection Michael discovered the root of this fascination.

“THERE IS A MOUSE IN THE HOUSE!”

And the mouse promptly fled into the laundry room – perfect for catching it!

So Michael and Caligula spent the next 20 minutes locked in the room with the mouse (I stayed outside with the camera – have fun boys!).

Searching for the mouse

Searching more

It’s under the drier!

It ran behind the litter box!

I’ll get you!

Caligula was able to get his paws on the mouse at this point and chased it around a bit, Michael sat ready with a bucket to catch it in, but alas…

The mouse made an escape.

It found a hole in our wall at the juction of a doorway, we’d never even noticed the hole. From the draft coming up through the hole we’re pretty sure it leads down into the basement, which makes us believe that’s how the mouse got into our house as well. That will need to be patched.

Mouse hunting is hard work.

I haven’t written much lately, I’ve been a bit out of sorts, but it’s nothing a little time off of work won’t cure! My company gave us off Monday and Tuesday of next week, and I’m taking off Thursday and Friday, Monday we have off and I’m taking off Tuesday. Only one day of work interrupting what will be a nice chunk of time off.

Truth be told, I haven’t been up to much of anything interesting. I downloaded the second season of The Office (American version) and watched that with Michael throughout the week last week. It has its moments, and Steve Carell is a riot.

This past weekend I puttered around the house and on Sunday Michael and I had a late lunch at Max & Ermas before catching a 3:35 showing of The Departed. The Departed was enjoyable, even if it didn’t stand out as being anything spectacular or memorable. The only reason we decided to see it was because it is the highest rated movie playing at the local theater, which certainly says a lot about the movies this holiday season. Oh and there is no way we’re going to see Happy Feet on a Sunday afternoon.

…and what happened to matinees? Do they still exist? We paid $9.75/ticket for a 3:35 showing!

We’ve been keeping up with watching Torchwood, which is still mostly cheesy and delightful, but the last two episodes (9&10) certainly had their moments when we’d look at each other and say “Why are we watching this?” – I want more aliens! Less boring humany emotional stuff!

And I’ve been reading some. I hate to say it, but I’ve been reading the same book for almost a year (with only a few quick reads throughout the month to keep myself occupied). The book? The Great Book of Amber. I’m about 800 pages into this 1264 monstrosity, and I’m determined to finish it because I know it will just sit on my shelf and taunt me until I do. It’s not like 1264 pages is too big of a book, I read 10 of the Wheel of Time books in about a year and they’re from 700-1200 each, it’s just not a book that has sucked me in and held my attention. I think the story is just too complex conspiracy-wise and there isn’t enough action. It’s all a matter of taste though, apparently there are zillions of fans of Amber.

Finally, I got a new cellphone. Our 2 year contract had come up and Verizon was really pushing the Razr phones, so we each got one very cheap. I got the pink one (squee!), and after about 2 weeks of waiting it finally arrived. Unfortunately Verizon locks down pretty much all the features that this phone has so they can make money – you can’t access the storage space on the phone without some hacking (I’m not even sure that is possible anymore with the current software version). This means you can’t get the pictures off without paying Verizon $.25 each to email them to you, and you can’t put your own ringtones on it, you have to buy them from Verizon. The picture thing I’m opposed to simply out of principle, honestly 25 cents is quite a reasonable sum, but because that is my only option when I know the phone is capable of transfer via USB makes me crazy. The ringtone thing wouldn’t bother me either, but the ringtones they put on the phone by default are horrible! About a dozen “ding” rings (which I probably wouldn’t hear) and then a half dozen really annoying songs. I ended up picking one of the less annoying songs so I could actually hear it.

It’s an idea we’ve knocked around for a while, figuring Caligula could use a little sister, but we weren’t seriously looking into breeds and local breeders. Then a woman at work happened to mention that her mother-in-law breeds siamese – bingo!

I’ve known a few siamese, they have temperaments all over the board but they’ve always been lovely animals. After a bit of research into the breed, I was becoming more and more convinced that a siamese would be a good companion to Caligula.

So on Friday I called up my co-worker’s mother in law. She has two litters of kittens right now, born around Thanksgiving. One litter is blue point and the other is lavender point, both litters have females that aren’t spoken for! They will be ready for a home in mid-january, so the breeder is going to give me a call then so we can arrange a time for us to come up and pick out one. Yay!

…of course I wouldn’t agree to this without seeing pictures of them.

Kittens!

Kittens!

Cats!

:D!

Caligula has a zillion toys, so this year we just decided to get him one toy, some cat grass and a delicious tuna dinner.

Ooooh is that for me?

Yay new toy!

Attack!

Rawr!

Then Michael “prepared” a delicious plate of Eukanuba Morsels in Sauce with Select Tuna.

Hey food!

Eating!

Happy 3rd Birthday Caligula!

Just posting this as some notes as to getting abcde and lame setup on my machines.

/etc/abcde.conf

Uncomment:

# Paths of programs to use
LAME=lame

# MP3:
LAMEOPTS="--preset extreme --vbr-new --nohist -q 0 -V 0 -m s"

(options taken from the brain of Mischa, who regularly does releases for #gamemusic)

launch abcde: abcde -o mp3

I set this up on two of my machines, my primary desktop and the HP P3, both of them have been ripping this afternoon. Why? Because once upon a time we thought we thought it was a good idea to rip all our music as oggs to avoid all the patent issues and whatever with mp3s. Then we got mp3 players that don’t play oggs (we knew they didn’t play oggs, ogg playing mp3 players are rare and expensive!). Now we need mp3s, and our music better organized.

This is going to take weeks!