Thursday, February 28, 2002
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Well, I think the new site is up and running. Finally. Yay.
2/28/2002 12:42:00 AM

Wednesday, February 27, 2002
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The Winter 2002 London Expedition

See my separate page.
2/27/2002 02:01:00 AM

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Part of the delay in posting my trip summary has been caused by my repeated, failed attempts at setting up a new web hosting service. With Comcast @Home cutting off its customers this Friday, I have been hard pressed to find an alternate web space. I had hoped to host the site on my Compaq here at home, and in fact have had a domain name -- terradyme.com -- registered for some time. For various reasons, hosting at home won't work and I've signed up for a "proper" web hosting package with Cedant.com. The thing is, it takes 24-72 hours for that info to propagate throughout the net, so I'm cutting it close.

When it finally happens, my new email will be tim@terradyme.com, and the blog will be at www.terradyme.com. Hope you'll continue to visit and drop me a note once in awhile.
2/27/2002 01:46:00 AM

Saturday, February 23, 2002
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I'm back...

More news & a trip summary to come.

Ha! Ha!
2/23/2002 04:47:00 AM

Sunday, February 10, 2002
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Just back from a great evening out: great movie (Gosford Park), great food and great friends. Also showed Dad the run of things around here as he will be stopping by a few times while I'm gone to throw some food at the kids.

I'm just noticing something again that I'd meant to post about earlier: I don't have a single comfortable place to sit in this entire apartment. My sofabed is close to fifteen years old and the cushions are way past worn out, and the folding chair I've been using at my computer is flat and as hard as a rock (my fat ass is too big for the "computer" chair I have). It makes it difficult to sit and read or type for any length of time. I haven't bothered with getting a new, comfortable one, as I know I'm on my way out the door shortly.

On the good news front, I did manage to get a VCD burned that works on my comptuer, and found that my Panasonic DVD player probably won't ever play any VCD I burn; it doesn't read CD-Rs or CD-RWs. So I'll continue to make them with the view that I'll be getting a new DVD player in a few months anyway.
2/10/2002 05:06:00 AM

Saturday, February 09, 2002
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OK, I am, as of now, officially

ON VACATION

The day turned out more busy than I'd anticipated, as we had some Remedy Phase II project documents to review, and I decided last night to send in the Powerbook G4 I've been assigned back to Apple for repairs while I'm away, as the hard drive has become excessively whiny. Yes, that's the technical term. As a result, I had to make sure I'd backed everything up and found myself spending most of the afternoon massaging my MP3 collection to ensure a blissful iPod listening experience during the trip. Mission accomplished.

One of the nice things about my $1500 apartment is that I'm close enough to walk home for lunch, which I did today, and retrieve my mail. A lovely surprise for me was a letter from my Gran, noting how much she's looking forward to my visit next week. Also the latest Entertainment Weekly which will occupy me for 7% of the flight over. (I'm positive I won't be able to sleep on the plane). I also got a short but sweet email from my favourite Uncle, Dennis.
2/09/2002 03:00:00 AM

Friday, February 08, 2002
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I have a bad case of senioritus, which I guess should more accurately be called "vacationeritus": I am not wanting to do much of anything at work and in fact managed to coast through the day with a minimal amount of Mac Refresh project overview. Tomorrow there will be even less productivity, I'm afraid. If you want a pencil sharpened, I'm your man.

Had a lovely lunch with my sweetie darling friend Nicky, who wended her way from the urban Bank campus into the wilds of Virginia and met me at Clarendon for a burger at Hard Times Cafe. Very nice to see her, chat and catch up.

A slothful evening. I watched two episodes of Human Remains I'd recorded on Saturday, then watched the Matt Damon Will & Grace episode. Worthwhile.
2/08/2002 04:51:00 AM

Thursday, February 07, 2002
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I wasn't able to post most of today because I was having a strange problem; the text at the bottom of my blog was being cut off. I thought it had something to do with the fact that it is the one month anniversary of my starting the blog, and I archive every thirty days. I posted my question to blogger's discussion forums and had a few responses, which eventually pointed me in the right direction: the galleries I had posted over the weekend have caused me to bump up against the disk space limit I have for my web site. So I've trimmed a gallery or two, and will have to look at hosting the web site elsewhere.

Just back from an interesting evening at Chaos on 17th street: their Drag King show is every 1st Wednesday of the month. Jimmy and his friend Monica invited me out as they knew someone who was performing. It was my first Drag King show (for those who don't know, women dress up as men and lip-sync to songs, to a cheering crowd) and was a bit less polished than the drag queen shows I've seen. Actually, we left before the show was over, but I'd go back again (perhaps with a smaller crowd).

I'm up way past my bed time, so more tomorrow.
2/07/2002 06:01:00 AM

Wednesday, February 06, 2002
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Hey, no fair, now everyone wants to get in on it. In case you haven't seen, two major publications have recently published articles about blogging: Time Magazine's was, true to form, geared towards the masses, but John Dvorak's column in PC Magazine was surprisingly congenial.
2/06/2002 04:19:00 PM

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It's been movie week in Timothy's house: Monday I watched Mrs. Brown on DVD and thoroughly enjoyed Dame Judie's performance. Yesterday was Bridget Jones's Diary which was also entertaining. I'd rate Mrs. Brown a seven out of ten, and Bridget Jones a 6. I've just clicked over to the Internet Movie Database site and confirmed something that struck me odd while watching Bridget Jones: the guy who plays Mark Darcy in the film also played a "Mr. Darcy" in the other film I remembered him from: Pride and Prejudice. (In case you haven't visited IMDb, it is a wealth of information on films and TV shows, their actors, awards, goofs and other trivia. I almost always turn there when someone asks "who was that guy who starred in that movie with so and so about such and such.")

Since you asked, here's a rough draft of the top ten films I've enjoyed:

Amadeus
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Moulin Rouge
The Princess Bride
Contact
The Remains of the Day
The Shawshank Redemption
The Matrix
Notting Hill
Maurice

Bubbling just under the top 10 are Howard's End, Young Frankenstein, Memento and Legends of the Fall.
2/06/2002 04:01:00 PM

Tuesday, February 05, 2002
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In case you didn't see it last night, there was a horrific story presented on Sixty Minutes II: The Lost Children.

"It's a mind-boggling story, one that sounds more like a bad movie than reality. But it happened. In the two decades after World War II, 10,000 English children were sent to Australia, reports 60 Minutes II Correspondent Bob Simon. Many were mistreated and abused. All were lied to.

The story begins in Britain after World War II - a nation victorious but battered, broke, and burdened by overflowing children's homes. Many of the kids were put there by families too poor to raise them. What happened next is almost unfathomable in civilized countries or in modern times. The British government, in collaboration with churches and charities, developed a secret plan to clear out these children's homes; a plan which has only recently been uncovered. The kids were told that they would be adopted by loving families in Australia. And they were shipped off by the thousands. It was as simple as that."

You can read the transcript here.
2/05/2002 04:18:00 AM

Monday, February 04, 2002
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For those of you searching for them, I've bumbed up against a disk-space limitation on my web site, and can only offer the following galleries:

* My visit to Banbury in October '99 (despite the page's title)
* Snaps from my trip last Thanksgiving to visit Dan and Ains in Colorado.
* Mom's visit to DC in April 2000. We saw the White House and the Newseum.

Perhaps I'll rotate galleries as the days and weeks go by. Enjoy!
2/04/2002 05:17:00 PM

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Whoa, February already. To sum up so far:

* New England Patriots win the superbowl in last few seconds (yay underdogs!)
* Phil says: Six more weeks of winter!
* Eight-hour road trip to Philly magically increases my apartment's square footage!
* Recessions aren't such a bad thing!

I only caught the last quarter of the superbowl, as I had no interested, vested or other, in the outcome, but wanted to be able to at least appear to have some american red blood in me tomorrow during the obligatory and inevitable watercooler recap. From what I gather, it was a close match and the team that won shouldn't have.

I had been spending most of the evening creating and fine-tuning galleries to post here, but my FTP site is down at the moment so I can't upload crap. I'll try again during the day tomorrow.

I was over at the mall today and noticed Hecht's was having one of their "end of season" sales. Even though we're still in the thick of winter and in fact temperatures have dropped thirty degrees since Friday, Hecht's and the other major retailers want to get rid of all their heavy winter clothes so they can start pushing us to buy tennis shorts and polo shirts. I'm not ready. I did find two really nice fleece pullovers that will keep me toasty during my trip, for only $21 total. Can't beat that.

I decided last Thursday to rent a car over the weekend to drive up to Philly. I haven't been on a road trip in awhile and figured it would be nice to see how well the government has been using my tax money to Improve Our Nation's Highways. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a local rental agency that would allow me to rent for just a day, so I wound up taking Rob K's Honda CRV, loaded with Art's goodies, and met him up there around 5 yesterday. I didn't get to spend much time up there at all and will have to head back for a proper "holiday" but it was good to see Art & Tony.

Of course now that the page of my calendar has changed I am getting even more excited about the trip. Steve and I had even more emails back and forth, trying to decide whether we should book a out-of-town coach tour in advance. Also, I had found a site on Friday which indicated we might not have as bad luck as I thought we might if we visit the half-price ticket booth in Leicester Square.
2/04/2002 03:55:00 AM

Friday, February 01, 2002
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Would you believe, I was in bed by 8:30 last night. I was just completely wiped out at the end of the day, after having been up until 3am the night before. That used to not be a problem, hmm....

I've been playing around with iPhoto tonight, and have uploaded some galleries which I will have to include access to in a few days. iPhoto is Apple's fourth consumer digital media title, and Apple makes it so easy to organize, edit and share digital photos, even my Gran could do it. Actually, the last time I had my computer at my Gran's she showed a keen interest and a firm grasp of the "basics," at least. Not bad for a 93 year old.

Steve and I have had a series of email exchanges to discuss further our plans for the trip, and I think we've got a fairly good plan now. We'll be taking a number of guided walks, which I have always enjoyed in the past as they are cheap but led by (usually) very knowledgable guides and you get to see something of London that isn't a tourist trap. Cross fingers the weather cooperates.

I did catch Will & Grace tonight, the one with Rosie O'Donnell as a guest star. Can't recall if it was a repeat. This is one of only two or three shows that I will try to make a concious effort to sit down and watch. Next week's Very Special Episode has Matt Damon on ... :-)

My pounds arrived a day early. Also the second memory stick I ordered for the digital camera. Also my last W-2 statement. I very well may do my taxes at work tomorrow morning.
2/01/2002 04:02:00 AM