Reading

Entry tags:

Moderately Fantastic

We did a lot of cleaning in the family room today, assisted massively by the kids. Many things were dispatched to where they belonged, as opposed to where they were, which was mostly "in the way". This is a good thing.

This evening, Gretchen and I watched the new Fantastic Four movie. I did not like it as much as I did the new Superman movie, but I also didn't go to a theater and pay to see it, so these things average out. All things considered, it was better than I had expected. The bits online that had complained about Sue being the leader of the Fantastic Four were, in my opinion, wrong. She was leading the Future Foundation, but that's a diplomatic function as set up in the film and that's really not Reed's area of interest. And Sue's invisible force field has always been one heckuva weapon, so it was nice to see her making good use of it.

And the retro setup, with the FF being the only superheroes in the universe, was handled nicely. Obviously, this is going to stop being a thing (no pun intended) since they are coming back in "Avengers: Doomsday", but that seems to be a big cross-universe adventure. When it's over, I expect the MCU to be thoroughly mix-mastered with the Avengers, FF, and the X-Men all operating in the same universe.

But we'll see.

Entry tags:

This Seemed Like a Good Idea

Well, I had *planned* to take the Dealer Table to Capricon this year now that they have moved back to the suburbs. Then I got this email today:

"Sorry for this late request but all dealers are to have the following
requirements to be a Dealer at the Marriott.

Certificate of Insurance (COI) that shows:
1.1 Comprehensive general liability insurance, including contractual
liability and liability for personal injury, bodily injury, property damage
and $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 general aggregate.
1.2 Marriott Chicago O’Hare, Hotel Owner (Columbia Sussex Corp.), ENCORE,
and Hotel management, employees and agents named as Additional Insured.
1.3 Marriott Chicago O’Hare, Hotel Owner (Columbia Sussex Corp), ENCORE,
and Hotel management, employees and agents named as an Additional Loss
Payee.
1.4 The certificate must provide General Liability coverage.
1.5 Automobile liability insurance including all owned, non-owned, and
hired vehicles used in conjunction with the Vendor’s services for bodily
injury or property damage with a combined single limit of not less than
$1,000,000 each occurrence."

This was accompanied by two recommendations for event insurance. The first one won't sell me a general liability policy because I don't make any money. The second one will sell me a policy (maybe) for $99 for the weekend, which is simply one more expense than I can manage given the level of sales that I expect to make. The policy would be half that amount if Capricon were a three-day convention, but -- of course! -- it is not.

I am ticked off beyond belief.

Now I have to figure out what the family is going to be doing about the convention as a whole. At least I haven't reserved a hotel room yet.

ETA: Helen Montgomery has responded on Facebook to note that they are having a discussion with the hotel about this now. Thank you all for your feedback!

Entry tags:

Song Thirteen

This is Chris Conway's fault. Sort of.

Chris has been working on his new album and has been posting about the various things that he has been doing to "Song 13". I finally asked him if that was the title of the song, or its position in the track list, or what. It turns out that it's "what", in that it's the thirteenth track that he's been working on in succession for the project.

I had an ulterior motive when asking: it seemed like "Song 13" was sort of a good title for a song. I wasn't sure exactly what the song would end up being, but it was a good title for a song. :)

And now I have a song to attach to the title, which you will find just below. Some things just get numbers, I guess. For Love Potions, it's Number Nine. Or maybe Ten...
( Lyrics inside... )

Entry tags:

Christmas Break

Julie has officially finished high school. I am impressed.

Today was my last day of work before Christmas break. This made it a bad day to break anything, so I wrote a little utility method that should be useful for several projects that we're working on. Since nothing is using it yet, it could be checked in harmlessly. :) I'm not traveling, so I have promised to show up if anything that I changed recently *does* decide to die horribly in the lead up to Christmas.

Now, I just need to finish my Christmas shopping...

Entry tags:

Tick Tock

So apparently, Oracle is officially part of the consortium that is buying the U.S. operations of TikTok.

The market, at least, seemed impressed by this, as the stock went up $10 / share after hours. We'll see what it looks like in the morning. :)

Entry tags:

Floored

Gretchen and I watched the season finale of "The Floor" today. This is a fun little game show, because it combines knowledge and luck in interesting ways. Some of the categories I'm ok with and are places where I can do a lot of damage like, say, "Beatles Songs". Others, not so much... :)

And that's good. If it were too easy, it wouldn't be fun to watch.

Entry tags:

Cleaning Things Up

I think I have finished cleaning things up at work for a while and need to get some fresh things to work on. :)

Entry tags:

Paying the Big Bills

I moved a bunch of money around over the weekend. This meant that I could pay the property tax and K's latest tuition bill today.

The happy news is that the money was there. :)

Entry tags:

The Jealous Dog

We have been trying to improve Calvin's socialization and have been making some good progress. The problem is that he is convinced that my recliner chair with me in it is the perfect place to practice being a lap dog. This is barely tolerable with a 45 pound canine.

With 65 pound Ruby, it doesn't work at all. And Ruby is *very* jealous of the attention that Calvin has been getting. This is a bit of a strain on my system.

Both dogs ended up going to bed early tonight as a result.

We will find some better ways to reassure Ruby.

*sigh*

Entry tags:

Darned Cold

The outside temperature is in single digits and falling. Happily, the central heating is working nicely.

Today's major accomplishments were three loads of laundry and moving cash around so that I can pay my ginormous property tax bill on Monday. The Cook County property tax bills were *very* late this year. The good news is that the bill was ginormous, but it was not a lot larger than last year, which puts me in a happier position than a lot of people around here.

Entry tags:

Semester Break (Number One)

I picked up K down in Oak Brook today after she took the bus home from Ball State.

Julie still has a week of school to go.

Chaos will now begin. :)

Entry tags:

Dimensions

Today was the big Dimensions concert over at Maine West with the combined band, orchestra, and choirs putting together a complex musical performance. With Julie graduating at the semester, this was the last music event at the school that she'll be participating in, so I wanted to make sure to see it. (Gretchen's bad knees kept her at home.)

It was fun. The kids did a great job and it was a good way to go out.

And listening to live music is good for me. :)

Entry tags:

Efficiency Expert

I am going through some code, cleaning up old constructs before a major release that's coming up. This takes me into some interesting places.

Today, I realized that there is a whole species of things that can be simplified by cutting out a lot of intervening code that is building unnecessary objects and doing unneeded lookups. I've patched a couple of places and will continue looking at the problem tomorrow.

Some of the fun, of course, is that we've moved up to Java 8 since this code was originally written which opens up all *sorts* of possibilities for playing with Java Streams. The amount of things that you can now do with one (longish) line of code is really impressive. :)

Entry tags:

Catching Up

I am gradually catching up on things, both at home and at work.

The problem is that as I catch up on one thing, another thing comes careening down the track.

The good news is that we went out to dinner with friends tonight and had some good conversation. And the chance to talk to someone who is not one of my coworkers is a fine thing!