More architecture. Again, you don’t see this sort of thing on modern buildings.

Work was fairly unexciting on Wednesday. So after work, I went over to Steve’s, where we had spaghetti and garlic bread and played Rock Band 2. That was fun. Guitar on Hard is . . . hard. Oh well, I’ll figure it out eventually.

Been reading a collection of Mike Royko’s columns.  This collection spans his entire writing career.  I’ve only read about 2/3 of it, but the columns I’ve read have a large range. There are inspired scathing commentaries on how elected and appointed officials are not doing their jobs, commentaries which apparently lit some fires under some lazy bureaucrats and led to people actually being helped.  There are silly utopian diatribes about gun control.  There are portraits of ordinary people who lived and worked in Chicago.  There’s a story about a young couple and some cheap Christmas trees that’s either really well done or a pile of treacly Hallmark-esque sentimental glurge.

But as I get to the late 1980s and early 1990s, I’m sure I’ll remember reading some of the columns before.  The Chicago Tribune was the big-city newspaper that was most likely to be available when I was growing up (pre-Internet, hundreds of miles from any large city), so I read Mike Royko’s column pretty often, though none of his Chicago-specific columns ever made much sense to me.  Reading this collection, over 10 years since I read any of his columns, feels a bit like revisiting the past.

More old architecture. While balcony this looks nice, it’s awfully shallow, and was probably never used very much. And of course it was probably a total pain in the butt to clean this whole structure.

Trivia:  We were leading when I left.  Heard all about the various trivia tournaments everyone else attended last Saturday.  Also had to change the plans for taking care of Fuzzball some, but that should be all right.

At work on Tuesday, I got told about something that absolutely has to happen by next Monday. They’ve known about this for weeks, and could’ve given us a lot more lead time to get everything ready. Sigh. Then a co-worker said, “ARGH, this stupid thing isn’t working right! I’ve been fighting with this thing for the last hour and I need a break!” “Let me look at the error log . . . aha. It’s trying to include ../../stuff/junk on line 87, which is almost certainly not right, and if you change it to /include/junk, it’ll probably start working a lot better.” This actually fixed the problem, which made everyone involved much happier.

Another co-worker said she really likes the Twilight series. It’s surprising how much media attention that’s gotten. I suppose there has to be something to fill the void now that there won’t be any more Harry Potter books.

You just don’t see balconies, arches, high windows, and worked stone spires in modern buildings. It’s a shame; modern architecture is efficient, but almost all of it has the look of what P.J. O’Rourke called “the Brobdingnagian Lego Block”. I think most of it must be that human labor is comparatively much more expensive now. In 1900, a skilled stonemason was relatively cheap. Now, a skilled stonemason is relatively expensive, so instead of rococo ornaments, we get blank slabs of concrete.

I went to the library on Monday night, to stock up on new books. However, I was so enthused by all the books that I saw that I forgot to get the The Non-Born King, the third book in Julian May’s series about prehistoric Earth. Oh well. It’ll be there the next time I go to the library. Also, when I was leaving, a woman asked me, “Where’s the Pyle Center?” “The recreation center? I think it’s over there, to the northeast,” I said. I don’t mind giving directions, but it’s strange that I got asked for them twice in 3 days.  The number of places I know how to get to is not insanely large.

Saturday, as I was walking, a woman pulled over and asked me how to get to the IKEA store. “Oh yeah, you can’t get there from this street. Get to Priest, go south to Ruby, turn right on Ruby, go a half mile or so and you’ll get there.” I guess she hadn’t looked the place up on Google maps or something.

Just finished The Golden Torc, the second of Julian May’s sci-fi/fantasy series about a bunch of people who travel 6 million years into the past and find a set of aliens with psychic powers rattling around prehistoric Europe. It’s very entertaining; lots of fighting, lots of stuff blowing up, and some characters you can actually care about.  The author takes several scenes from ancient myth and reimagines them in ways that mostly make sense in the context of the story.  And there are at least 2 more books in the series that I haven’t read yet.  And I’ve now finished all my library books, and the library isn’t open, so it’ll be Monday night before I can get more stuff to read.

Penguins can be foolhardy critters.

I took the car in on Saturday to get it looked at. Nothing serious, just getting an oil change and fixing a broken taillight. I was surprised at how much the taillight was. There are apparently a ton of plastic parts that have to be removed to get to the bulb.

But while they were doing all that, I spent a lot of time walking around south Tempe. It’s not very pedestrian-friendly—nothing here, except possibly downtown and ASU, is—but I did it anyway. A sports bar that we used to go to every so often for lunch, the Full Moon Cafe, has changed its name to Payton’s Place, and possibly made other changes. A pizza place that we never went to had gone out of business. I wandered in to Costco and browsed around for an hour. They have a huge variety of stuff, more stuff than you find in Meijer. You can get a 72″ digital projection TV for the low, low price of $2100, members can get gas for about $0.10 cheaper than most gas stations, and so forth. I don’t know if paying $50 to be a member would really make financial sense though. There was some sort of “walk for charity” thing going on, so I saw a ton of people doing that.

Met Ed and Susan at Haru Sushi on Saturday night.  That was fun.  The place is a “conveyor belt” sushi joint, where the chefs place dishes on the belt and you pick up what looks tasty.  You’re charged by the number of empty plates you have and what color they are (yellow = $1, red = $1.50, blue = $2.)  It was a pretty good deal, too, as we got a large variety and quantity of sushi for about $17 each.

Also heard all the gossip about the old company, including an amusing story about a piece of paper that showed what everyone’s salary was.  This piece of paper should’ve been shredded, wasn’t, and a bunch of people saw it.  Hilarity ensued.  No, actually, a bunch of people got very annoyed.  Ed’s contract was extended, which is good news for him.  Not a whole lot else. . . .

If you have to travel, you should be resigned to situations like this.

The early-morning machine maintenance that I was supposed to do Friday was only partially successful. I’ll have to do the rest of it this weeked early in the morning so as not to interfere with things.

Anticipation can be funnier than action.  This comic shows it.

If all goes well, I’ll remember to bring the camera tomorrow, and possibly get a few pictures of a couple of older buildings in Phoenix’s downtown. The older buildings have stonework, arches, balconies, brickwork, and interesting architectural features. Just about everything built after 1950 seems to be a glass-and-steel box. I know why this is (cheaper to build, more efficient) but it looks . . . boring. Oh well, the people who pay the bills for buildings tend not to care as much about looks as much as they care about how much the monthly HVAC costs are.

From the Monks: “I have actually mowed my lawn with a sickle once. It was hard work.” “Made you want to get hammered afterwards, did it?” Groan.

And in other news, I have to get up really, really early and do various work things on Friday. Oh well. More work things need to be done really, really early on Monday, but I shouldn’t have to do those.

The Perry Bible Fellowship delivers the goods. Artists and writers haven’t really explored the idea that there are a large number of comic book super powers that are completely useless in the real world. Making coffee is not one of those. But it can be exploited for comic effect.

Wednesday night, more Rock Band at Steve’s. Contrary to what the game says, “Let There Be Rock” is harder than “Painkiller”, at least on Medium on the guitar. This surprised me. Steve was also persuaded to try playing guitar on Easy in “practice mode”, which he seemed to be picking up at least partially. I also saw something on PickyWeedia that was interesting: White people like Guitar Hero better. Black people like Madden 2008 Football better. I have no idea why that’s the case, but the study was published in Cultural Anthropology in April 2008 by Jamar Wilson.

There are just too many ways for translation to go wrong.

There were hardly any people on the bus on Tuesday. There were only 2 of us on the bus in, and I was the only rider on the bus back. So naturally, on the way back, the driver wanted to talk. He said that he didn’t have a heck of a lot of education, but did have a commercial driver’s license, so he ended up driving a bus even though it doesn’t pay very much and the benefits are practically nonexistent. Bus drivers are not municipal employees now; most cities have turned that over to contracting firms. He also said that too few people in this modern world have a good work ethic.  I’m not sure; modern people are bombarded with video showing people who are rewarded lavishly for not working very hard.

Well, it was Veteran’s Day, and I think most of the people who ride the bus actually work for the local or state government. There’s just no reason to get on the bus if you don’t have to work that day.

Trivia: We were trailing when I left, thanks to missing a number of questions.  Also, Trevor is trying to organize a tournament for this Saturday, which would be fun except that it’s all day long.  I dunno.  Some other people at the pub had a team name of “They’re going to tear down the Rose Garden and put in a watermelon patch”, which made everyone groan.

Sometimes, full knowledge of a device is not essential to getting what you want out of it.

The folks at Tesco sent me another $5 off coupon. So I went out and used it, since there are a few things there that are pretty good. There’s a frozen Indian dish, chicken makhani, that’s really good, though I’m sure that if you fed it to lab rats, the rats would all die of 12 different kinds of cancer.

Trying to arrange a get-together for Susan and Ed and everyone, and it looks like Saturday is the day that’ll work for all of us. We’ll probably go to one of those places where they have “conveyor belt sushi”. The chefs make various dishes, and put them on plates on a conveyor belt that goes around the whole dining area, and if you see something you like, you pick up the plate. You get billed depending on how many plates you have at the end of the meal, and what color they are. White plate = $2, green plate = $3, blue plate = $4, something like that. In Japan, these places are popular because they’re cheap and fairly informal.