Month: July 2003

Sandy made a surprise visit at Unigene today after seeing her pediatrician. I was lucky enough to be around (almost took a lunch break) and actually get to see Caitlin. She’s sooooo adorable. I’m serious – and I’m not your typical gush all over every baby I see kinda person. It was really nice seeing them both, but I’m pissed that I took my camera out of my bag this morning!

Anywho, I really need to post more often as I’m going to have to start backtracking to hit Lisa’s gig last night and the debut of Crewman No. 6’s singer on Tuesday… I am way too neglectful of this site.

So there’s this older woman at work named Margaret. By older, I mean pure white hair and not really up on the times. She’s a real sweet woman, and takes care of the lab. We started talking this morning over a piece of cake (leftovers from the party yesterday 🙂 ) and she asked me if I knew the names of a lot of rock bands. I confessed that I did, so she told me about how she met this group of musicians at the laundromat and they were going to play in NYC. I figured it was probably a local group, but then she said the name was something like Buckwheat. Turns out it was Buckwheat Zydeco, a really awesome zydeco band (zydeco is a highly energetic form of New Orleans Jazz based on the accordian). It was very cool, because I’m probably the only person in the building she could have said that to and would know who she was talking about. I used to see them every year at the Jambalaya Jam down in Philly. She said they were really nice guys and even helped her out to her car with her laundry!

Hoboken has changed drastically in such a short time period. But I must say that it’s a change for the better. This summer will become a dividing point in the history of this little city separating the earlier days (or B.P.) from the latter days (or A.P.). Those abbreviations obviously reference the times Before and After Panera. I had my doubts about this bakery revolutionary. They were taking months to renovate one of the largest storefronts on the main stretch and for what purpose? To proffer bread-based goodies upon the yuppy crowd? Needless to say, they swung wide their doors despite (or quite possibly in spite of) my outcries of over-production for such a simply task. And what can I say – they won me over. The bread is delectable, the sandwiches are works of art, the soups are sophisticated bowls of warmth, and the salads are mixed like none other. Seriously, it’s wonderful.

So todayI decided to try lunch at one of the locations near me (they have a bakery-cafe locator, although Hoboken is not listed yet) in Wayne. While the directions were adequate, the actual sign was not. Alas, after 15 minutes of driving around I spotted the shopping center in which the destination of my epicurean delight was located. Alas, I had just switched into the middle lane due to the painfully slow advancement of the people in the right. And thus, I had a rather mediocre helping of teriyaki chicken at the Willowbrook Mall solidifying my resolve that I will begin to bring lunch on a regular basis. My stomach would thank me more if only I had started a day sooner…

And no, I’m not talking about the good kind. For some dumbass reason I downloaded and proceeded to watch Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses. Ok, I didn’t make it thru the entire movie. No it wasn’t because I was too scared – I was alone in my bedroom with the lights turned out and it still managed to bore me. I can’t believe anybody thought this movie was good in anyway shape or form. Sure, Sheri Moon is hot and all (way to go Rob), but she’s honestly the only part of the movie that was worth watching – and her acting was pretty bad. I still have like half an hour left and I can’t decide if it’s worth finishing. The entire film is a bad knock-off of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but relies completely on gore and horrible editing to try to scare the viewer. Watching some guy get his hand hacked off or scalped may be disgusting, but the image doesn’t haunt me or make me shiver. Even bad horror movies will leave me with some sort of remnant anxiety that makes me apprehensive of walking in the woods, or turning the lights off. The Blair Witch Project – which I mainly laughed at – kept running through my mind when the lights went out and I had to go to the circuit breakers in the pitch black basement. Yet somehow Baby Firefly dragging a razor across some guy’s face, the police finding the one girl naked and mutilated in the trunk, and Dr. Satan taking FIVE MINUTES to finally shoot the idiot cop in the head provoke absolutely no emotional response.

Rob Zombie managed to make an absolute mess of a film using all sorts of hackneyed editing techniques of splicing in random images and useless back stories that his mindless drones of fanboys will pointlessly praise and call “a cult classic.” I guess I’ll just wait for the US release of The Eye.

P.S.(Not much to do here at work today, so I have this feeling that I’ll be making a record number of posts!)

How stupid can I be? Why do I refuse to do backups of my webpage?!?! Let’s see, there’s a security problem with WordPress 0.71, so they recommend that you go to 0.711. Ok, no problem. Let me just delete everything aside from my layout and upload the latest files. That’s funny, where’s my right menu? Oh yeah, I made that a seperate file so that I could have a consistent look throughout my website. Ok, not a big deal, I basically fixed it. So now why doesn’t the About Me page come up anymore? That’s right, because I deleted it! Brilliant, right after I just bothered to write some real stuff in it. I guess it’s back to the drawing board – I’ll be tweaking the layout, adding more content, and backing it all up! Hopefully by Monday this page will be sparkling!

Stories are coming out all over the place about the lies that Bush and his cohorts told us in order to start the war. It’s become painfully obvious that they wanted Hussein out, and were willing to take any and all steps necessary to convince us that it was right. Sure, they could have simply said what a lousy leader he was and how much his people suffered under his rule, but then there would be another 20 or 30 countries waiting in line to be freed from oppressive governments. Now they’re going back even further, and all of the little conspiracy theorists (myself included) will be happy to see that newspapers are calling the government out for having ignored information that could have prevented 9/11.
Continue reading “Is the reign soon to end?”

Yeehaa – all my toys came in at work. Thank you Cyberguys! Now I have a crimper, punchdown tool, toner, cable tester, and lots of other network supplies. In other words, I can actually fix things that break now. Unfortunately I also now have 150 3′ patch cables, 250′ of CAT 5E cable, and the patch panels and mounting brackets themselves under my desk as I have no real office yet. It makes for a somewhat uncomfortable situation – even if I am excited.

Well, this page has finally reached search engines. I think suggesting it to Yahoo! got me in theirs and Google’s. On top of that, I am currently the only indieb0i to pop up in a search. Those also happen to be my comments on WordPress and CBS Sportsline as well as my Movie Hangman score.

Of course, the only problem is that indieb0i is not my real name. That’s why I’ve just added stuff to the About Me section that actually says Thom Slattery so that search engines will eventually pick that up (I even surreptitiously mention the alternate spelling of Tom Slattery so that it too will be on the page 🙂 ).

Last night Ivy said something to the effect of “Since her boobs are fake, they naturally stand up.” Something about that really struck me as funny. I guess it’s like an oxymoron, although at this point I think I’m beginning to forget what those various literary terms actually mean as so many people misuse them. I just looked up ironic, to affirm it’s definition in my mind. Dictionary.com (whose address is oddly – but not ironically – dictionary.reference.com) has a very interesting usage note:

The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply .coincidental. or .improbable,. in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York. Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market, where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency.

I was going to propose that we use a new word that described coincidental situations that everybody thought were ironic but actually weren’t. I thought the word ironical would be good. Turns out that it’s already a real word. Is that ironic or what?

Either they got bigger cups, or the coffee machine is getting stingy with me. The funny thing is that I’m not even all that tired, yet I still need my caffeine fix. Amazing how quickly that addiction sets in. I went without for a whole day, and now on Friday I’m using the excuse that I should be tired so that I can have my precious mochaccino. And let’s face it, I should be tired. We didn’t get back until almost 4 am, and I still left for work earlier than yesterday. Let’s go thru a quick recount of last night’s activities:

I met up with Mike at Virgin MegaStore (the one in Union Square). They’ve got this whole $10 deal on hundreds of DVDs and CDs. After a good 40 minutes or so of looking and debating we both made our purchasing decisions. Then I changed my mind again and actually bought everything anyway 🙂 . Overall I think I did rather well. This morning I got to listen to the remastered Off the Wall (by Michael Jackson – DUH!), and on my way home it will be either Cat Stevens or Bob Marley’s Greatest Hits. As for movies, that took a lot more effort to keep it minimal. I ended up with Darkman (Sam Raimi directs like no one else), Blood Simple (incredible thriller by the Two-Headed Director), Killing Zoe (a violent indie flick that appeals to me for some strange reason), ¡Three Amigos! (too many quotes to list), Benny & Joon (hey, I love Johnny Depp), Romancing the Stone (classic 80’s fun), The Apartment (simply one of the greated films of all time), and Some Like It Hot (possibly the best comedy ever). Maybe I’ll go more into them later.
Continue reading “What time is it?”