currently 11:03pm Friday 5th September, 2008 (NYC, New York)
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October 2003 archives
The following are all the entries published for the month of October 2003. a weaselly holiday and a job interview.
Thursday 30 October, 2003 at 12:46AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (9) Yay weasels are escaping from NYC! This weekend we're heading up to Boston with Ice's parents to do some touring around and see whatever there is to see in Boston. Ice has a bunch of accrued leave to use up before the end of the year or she will lose it, so she booked another trip leaving next Thursday for the two of us to fly down to South Beach (Miami, Florida) for a few days! Very kewl. Apparently South Beach is the art-deco club party zone, so should be a good trip! Wonder if there's any surf there. Ice sure deserves a break. I have a job interview in New Jersey this afternoon. It's with a communications type company dealing in some pretty advanced data and voice business solutions. I know from past experience that what these guys are doing is definitely the way the majority of communications will be handled in the near future, so getting in with a market leader/innovator at this stage is probably a good thing. I won't say much more or get excited about it - past experience in NYC has taught me things are rarely what they seem. I had to do a bunch of online 'testing' this afternoon for it as well, no idea if I did well or not. I'll shut up now so I don't jinx it. I better go now and finish getting prepared for the interview and then get some sleep. Cya. health update
Tuesday 28 October, 2003 at 7:08PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (1) Ok so I went to the Doc yesterday to see what was going on, of course the appointment was for 1.30pm but I didn't get to actually see him until 3pm. In the interim I ran down the road and got a hair cut, as ya do. The prognosis is improvement, fortunately. Doc said I'm 75% recovered, but is keeping me on antibiotics, inhaler and expectorant for another week. He told me that my bronchitis had been so severe that I will probably have several recurrences over the next 6 months before it really comes right. Lovely. I'll take that with a grain of salt though, because years ago I broke my foot in three places and was given some pretty bad news - the doc told me I wouldn't be able to walk without a limp for 6 months and wouldn't be able to run for at least 18 months. Surfing and snow skiing (my two main sports) were of course out of the question. He also added that after the 18 months was up I may still require pins in my foot depending on how well it healed. I decided that wasn't good enough and used the mind over matter technique, which has worked successfully for me on more than a few occasions. Two months later I was snow skiing without a problem. I still had to use crutches at times if I was on my feet (standing) for long periods of time, but once I had my ski boots on it was like wearing a cast (all praise to the genius who invented rear-entry ski boots). I was back surfing shortly after that. That foot has never bothered me since. 18 months? pfft. psycho babies
Sunday 26 October, 2003 at 1:12AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0) An unusual article from sky.com I thought worth mentioning: a one-year-old boy who was bitten 30 times by a group of more than a dozen other babies at a nursery in Croatia. He was attacked after the class nanny stepped out of the room to change another baby's nappy. Dr Sime Vuckov, head of the hospital in Rijeka which treated the boy, said: "Biting between young children is not uncommon, but I have never seen anything like this." ..yeah, I'd imagine! Police have launched an inquiry into the biting frenzy but admit they are clueless as to the babies' reasons for attacking. How's that for bizarre? Why did all the other babies attack this one baby? And how did they know, at that age, to wait until the caregiver was out of the room? Mob mentality? Weirdness. the hand of god
Saturday 25 October, 2003 at 12:12AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (3) You may or may not have heard about the controversial film 'The Passion Of Christ' which is directed and co-written by actor Mel Gibson, focusing on the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus. The film is being recoded in Latin and Aramaic languages, and although it is not due for release until early next year, it has already hit headlines after Jewish figures in the US slated it for being 'dangerous' and portraying Jews in a negative way. Well I guess it's proving more dangerous than anyone could have predicted, particularly for actor Jim Caviezel who is playing the part of Jesus. Since filming started, he has (during filming) been hit by lightning not once, but twice. I heard strange things went on during the filming of The Exorcist, but being hit twice by lightning? Wow. Makes you wonder doesn't it... Source: BBC News. giving up smoking
Thursday 23 October, 2003 at 11:00AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (5)
addon: Thanks to Janet for posting this link on Ice's comments. It's the results for the Weasel Awards from dilbert.com. Here's the highlights: The second annual exuberantly non-scientific Weasel Poll results are in. 35,874 people voted. The winners are...
nice one. spammers finding new ways to be a nuisance
Thursday 16 October, 2003 at 2:52PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (18) A week or so ago I had a comment posted to an old archived entry about spyware and adware. The comment was phrased like this: here is a free tip: The person who posted it added their website link when signing it, and the link was to some commercial site. The name of the person was 'phentermine'. I was a little offended by that comment and replied to it basically giving them a free tip in return: fark off (these comments were all lost when I accidentally deleted this site a few days ago). Since then I have also been receiving multiple people signing the guestbook with spam links to commercial and/or porn sites, on both the old and the new version of the guestbook (the spam was one of the reasons I changed it, but to no avail it seems). I have since deleted all offending entries and placed permanent bans on the originating IPs concerned, and will continue to do so. What I found out today from David Raynes weblog is that many people have received the exact same message on their blogs, and this appears to be some sort of 'marker' to bootstrap some other planned bot deployment further down the line. David summed it up nicely: What the hell is this crap? Blatant advertising is one thing. Semi-blatant advertising while masquerading as a jerk is even worse. As a result of this, all comments on this weblog or the guestbook will require a name and valid email address in future. If there is a resultant link to your email address, although it may look like a standard email address on your browser, it will be encoded to stop spambots from harvesting it and then sending you email spam. The encoding is done using iso8859-1 character encoding to replace the usual symbols such as '@' and '.' in an email address. HTML is obviously disabled on all comments. I am also considering starting a list of IP's that are known for spamming comments and forums so people can add them to their own banned IP lists. The recent ones I have banned are as follows: 200.12.238.168 ..although as someone commented on David Rayne's blog, I would not be surprised if they are spoofed or IPs change with different ISP connections. Gotta start somewhere though. If the idea of an IP list of known spammers appeals to you, please let me know. If there's enough people interested I may start one. Update: This site has MT-Blacklist installed now. Note: As it turned out, this was the beginnings of the biggest scourge to hit the blogosphere - comment spamming. Fortunately there are some highly effective tools to combat this now, even so, I currently receive at least 500 comment or trackback spams every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, despite the fact that not a one of them ever gets through to published status. Personally I think those responsible should be thrown in jail and never allowed access to a computer again. Others would prefer they were just shot. sick weasel
Wednesday 15 October, 2003 at 10:02PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (7) Yup I'm sick. I've had a nasty cough for the last five days (like, really nasty) and today I finally stopped resisting the other Weasel's insisting that I go see a doctor, and I went. I try to avoid visiting the doctor except in extreme cases (or if work requires a certificate after three days off or whatever), but this cough wasn't going away, even after being bombarded with vitamin C, Robitussin cough syrup, penicillin (thanks Cat and Lemur), hot lemon and honey drinks (thanks Weasling) and even a hot foot bath (thanks again Weasling). The Lemur (IceQueen's Dad) came over earlier today and dropped off some more penicillin and some fruit for me (including mangos! yay!) nice huh? Ok so who do I usually avoid consulting doctors? Because if I've gone to see one when I'm feeling sick in the past, the result is nearly always the same series of events:
Ok ok, this is all way over the top but it was fun writing it. So I went to the doctor (yes I did have to wait over an hour after the appointment time to see him) and he checked me out. He's an Egyptian dude and seems like a fairly good guy. Apparently I have severe bronchitis and some throat infection to boot. Joy. I have to go back in 10 days and if there isn't any significant improvement, he will send me to a specialist and get my lungs x-rayed. Hrmm, that sounds serious. Anyway, he knew I didn't have medical insurance here, so rather than write a prescription which he said would've been very expensive, he gave me a 10 day supply made up of sample packs given to him by medical reps. Nice. Some fairly powerful antibiotics along with expectorant. I still had to pay US$55 for the consultation and get an inhaler as well (albuterol if you were wondering). When I went to the chemist, he asked if I had insurance. When I said no, he only charged me $12 even though the receipt was for over $30. ..I didn't question it. IceQueen has been awesome looking after me the past few days, really really awesome. Making hot drinks, buying cough syrup and lozenges from the chemist (or drug store as they call them here - never fails to crack me up), cooking food and so on. It makes me feel kinda guilty, like I shouldn't be letting someone else look after me, I should be doing it all myself. I also need to stop smoking, particularly while I'm sick like this. I have cut right back already; for example I've only had 1 cigarette today and it's 10pm now. IceQueen got me some NicoDerm to help as well. I figure if I cut right back like I have and then stop altogether, whenever I get a craving I'll slap a patch on and use them like that. No doubt I'm going to be a grumpy bastard while I go through the withdrawal period though, I've heard that happens to everyone trying to quit. That and putting on weight. Change of subject. Recently there has been the Jewish festival that marks the gathering of the Autumn harvest, called the Sukkot Festival (we live in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood). Last week I was walking to the post office and passed an empty lot with all these 'tents' and other stuff that are required to celebrate the festival. The big sign outside said "Sukkah Center". I giggled a bit when I read it in my mind as 'sucker center' ..heh, 'yeah come on in, we'll rip you off big time, sucker!' ..Then I figured it's probably pronounced as 'sue-cah'. I almost laughed out loud when I clicked that in Russian 'suka' basically translates to 'bitch' ..hehe ..Bitch Center? nahhh.. Hmm. Guess you had to be there. It was really windy last night and the tent things (for celebrating the festival) in the backyards of the houses behind our building were blown to pieces. When I looked later this morning, the one at the house directly behind us was half collapsed and looking very sad tangled up in the hedge on the border of their property. The one nextdoor to that was gone altogether. Ok that's about it for now. Cya. traffic spike
Sunday 5 October, 2003 at 11:16PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (0)
Definitely getting cooler here now in NYC, winter being just around the corner. Some 200 year old weather forecasting service here that makes seasonal predictions based on all sorts of things (including the moon etc) have said it's going to be a real cold one this year. I'm hoping this translates to heaps of snow. I like snow. I just do. |
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Giving up smoking is turning out to be pretty tough. I cut right back to one or two cigarettes a day maximum when I started getting bronchitis (I'm still not 100% well, although there is some improvement. I'll be going back to see the doctor tomorrow and take it from there), and two days ago (on Tuesday) was the last time I had a cigarette. A lot of the time it seems not as hard as I was led to believe, providing I keep myself occupied doing other things, but there are times when I really want a smoke. Probably the worst time is straight after dinner ..that and maybe the late afternoon 'take five and reflect on the day' smoke. There are no cigarettes in the apartment, so the temptation to light up is not present. I have yet to resort to wearing a NicoDerm patch although they're there if I really need to. I have a feeling the craving is going to get stronger before it lets up. This is actually a pretty major step as I've been smoking for many years up to about 15 ciggys a day ..then again, I used to go out and get hammered all the time too, yet the last time I got even slightly drunk was over two years ago (just before I left New Zealand). I'm evolving. Weee. Writing about it is actually making me want a smoke, so I'm going to sign off now.
Urban Scrawl has been receiving a major increase in traffic recently - this graph from