The bigger they are, the lower the fly

In which our Hero is really craving a new toy but has a poutine instead

Just a follow up on the child discipline thing. Some interesting reactions. I should clarify that I’ve only seen maybe a total of 40 minutes of Cesar doggieface’s show, so what I saw that I liked may not be be an accurate view of him and his techniques. Dumb to cite him on so little awareness.

Went out of town to a visitation this weekend.

My agent’s mother passed away last week. Sudden, but not unexpected. And Hollywood and I have been trying to figure out what to do since we got the news.

On the one hand, I’m deeply private and would not want my coworkers even talking to me about my sorrows; having to make small talk with them as I was trying to grieve would be futile. If I could contain the information, I’d not even tell my clients, just declare vacation or a flu or something to buy me the time to deal with the immediate details.

On the other hand… He’s been signing my paychecks for the last three years. We’ve been acquaintenaces, colleagues and coworkers for over a decade.

On the other other hand, it was a ways out of town.

On the other other other hand, people whose judgement I respect said to go, or were also going.

On the….

In the end, despite deep discomfort, I opted to go. And I guess I’m glad I did. He thanked us (Hollywood came with me) a few times for coming all that way.

We only stayed a few minutes. And then we were on our way home. Hours of driving for a few minutes of token effect.

Poor guy.

I got home from the visitation, took off my suit jacket, and discovered that my barn door was wide open. I felt a brief moment of relief that I had worn my jacket for every moment I was out of the car. Hopefully, nobody had had a chance to notice.

Except as I attempted to correct the situation, I realized that I wasn’t flying low, but rather that my zipper had come apart. Which made me feel a little better, for not being absent minded, and also for the moment of brief amusement at the fact that my zipper could not withstand the epic scale of my manhood.

Although, my various other pants in the same size have never had an issue. Actually, as I thought about it, I’ve never actually had a zipper split like that on any pair of pants in my memory.

Which sucked because what bad luck for it to happen now. Partly because of the funeral, but mostly because the pants were less than 24 hours old at that point in time. I just bought that damn suit, and now, the most expensive pair of pants I currently own have a non-functional zipper, which necessarily would have developed sometime while I was either out in a shopping mall or in a formal situation.

I’m a little pissed off. I’m honestly inclined to return the pants. Except then what’s the point of the suit jaket?

I’m not yet certain just what I’d consider acceptable redress. But I suspect that whatever it is should at least keep my underwear private in social occasions.

Here is a thing that I tried to share elsewhere with no success. They’ve announced the actress who’ll be playing the Doctor’s next companion. And for all that she got coverage all over the trade sites, and was even in a movie I’d seen, I have no idea who she is.

I kind of hope she gets a chance to run into young Amelia Pond. I liked that kid.

Here’s a thing that I tried to share elsewhere with no success. Over lunch one day, a coworker described a programming assignment that a professor was giving his students. It’s on the advanced end of an “Intro to Computer Science” course kind of problem, but… the idea was electric.

I’m going to try to work it. I’ve got an idea for how to approach it that connects directly to a dangling thread in my head from third year engineering too, so I finally get to play with some fast fourier transforms. Or whatever technique has replaced them in the last 20 years.

Unfortunately, I can’t really share more than that here. Not that it’s a million dollar idea, I’d be surprised if I made even a dollar off it. But I’m feeling possessive.

My “aunt” is having computer trouble. These days I try not to get caught up in people’s computer problems, because otherwise I’d be reinstalling printer drivers for most of my days. When I do find myself in a situation where I feel compelled to assist, I generally require people to bring their computers to me because frankly that’s enough to make some folks decide it’s not worth it.

But my aunt has been a family friend since she and my mom were girls in school. And actually, the problem is one that I’ve only got a 50-50 shot of solving from here. But I don’t want to make a house call.

My dad brought me the problem and I was trying to diagnose based on what he’d been told, and when I said I couldn’t fix it here, he told me that’s okay, because he hadn’t said he was going to ask me, so he can tell them that I’m too busy.

Except… my mom consults with her kid who is a doctor. Just calls up to ask for medical advice because she can. So I told my dad I think I need to go over there. He asked me why.

“Someone has to pay the doctor’s bills, right?”

He started laughing. But I still have to head over there some time this week.

gah!