Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

What a day.
Work was a blur as we had a half day and I was trying to cram a day’s worth of effort into four hours. I left work around one and headed home.
I convinced the girls to go out geocaching with me. The cache was in nearby Lacy Park, but we were unsuccessful. I even had a travel bug to place.
We looked and looked, but the GPS unit was sketchy on pointing me on a consistent location. I couldn’t make sense of the clue. It was hot, the girls were complaining, so I decided to find it on another day.
We went to the library afterwards to drop off some books, and lo and behold, there was Fallen Dragon waiting for me on the New Releases shelf. I grabbed it and am currently on page 5.
Later in the afternoon, we took Zoe to her first soccer practice. It looks like she’ll have lots of fun. Eight 6 & 7 year old girls do make a lot of noise.
We went out to dinner with the family of one of the girls Zoe is on the team with and will be in first grade with, Ken & June and their kids Emma & Nate. We thought japanese food would be good, but by 8:30 the kids were swinging from the ceiling and we knew it was time to leave. I was amazed that Ken also is a fan of the band X. He even knows more about Tivos than me. I need to invite him out on the next guys night out.
Currently, it’s 11:15. Michele is crashed and I’m about to dive into Battelfield 1942. BTW, the contacts are getting more and more comfortable. Life is good.

After five months of trouble, I finally have some new lenses on my eyes. They don’t feel perfect, new lenses are a little different than old lenses so there is always a bit of time it takes to get used to them.
But I can deal. I can finally see out of both eyes. Woo-hoo!
I’ve got a few things to do tonight, so this update will be brief.
Battlefield 1942 continues to consume my game time. I am in it’s thrall.
There are a couple new weblogs on the scene. Jennifer now has Mrs. Diggs dot blog and Paul has Paulie-Log. Please go check them out and give them a little encouragement.
Chokersandwich is back in operation. In addition, Brad, Mike, and Matt have all been weblogging furiously as well. Pat and Travis have been weblogging even while on vacation.
Phew, that’s a lot of links.
On a humor angle, take a look at the transcript of President Bush discussing world matters with the Saudis.
Lastly, I need a new book. I’m thinking about Fallen Dragon. Any comments?

My IM conversation with my father today;
Session Start (MSN – Michael Pusateri:Dad): Wed Aug 28 13:41:19 2002
Dad: do you have time to do a check on the remoteassistance feature?
Michael Pusateri: I can’t do it from work. Only from home. I think…
Dad: OK
Michael Pusateri: Got a problem?
Dad: Only trying to the office to be able and can’t seem to make it work
Michael Pusateri: Huh?
*** Dad signed off at Wed Aug 28 13:52:15 2002
Session Close (Dad): Wed Aug 28 14:02:34 2002
Can anyone decode this?

It’s funny, because it’s true.
(Flash 6 page for the browser & bandwidth impaired)
Thanks to Brad for the link.

First of all here’s a picture I took on the way back from my parentss house.

These people are not clear on the idea of tying down a mattress correctly.
Yesterday, I went on a geocache with Zoe. We had a good time and as usual, I wrote up a short story about it. Enjoy.
The last bit of info is for those of you that are not squeamish. If you are squeamish, click away now. I’m serious.
OK, I warned you. On Saturday I lost a battle in my war against athlete’s foot. The toenail on my right foot had the fungus pretty badly and actually came off on Saturday after the hike. It didn’t hurt and a new nail is already growing underneath. I’m going to see the doctor this week to get the special, expensive anti-fungal medicine. For the truly gross at heart you can see a picture of the nail here.
You people are weird if you really just looked at my toenail…

Ok, so what’s been going on around here. It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting outside with one eye on the girls in the spa and one eye on this. I keep having to stop and help them put the face masks on for diving. I’m trying to get them used to swim gear early so they hopefully will get into snorkling and scuba diving when they get older. Zoe can snorkle already.
It’s my parents 39th anniversary today and we’ll be heading over to see them this afternoon. 39 years. That’s a long time. Happy anniversary Mom & Dad. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what to ge them. Over the last few years we’ve run the technological gamut with new TVs, DVD players, and even a Tivo. There’s nothing new to get them…
I’ve been doing a little more gaming recently, much to Michele’s chagrin. She went out on Friday night with Jenny and was suprised that when she got home post midnight I was still up ‘killing Nazis’. It was actually nice to have quiet chat at 1 AM. To bad we realized in 5 short hours the children would stir and one of us had to get up with them. Life is short, stay up late.
Last week I had spent some time downloading and patching Neocron. Yoshi at work suggested I give it a try. After downloading over 1 gig I booted the game it patched over night. The next day I tried to play and was completely clueless. It’s first person shooter style, but the controls use the arrow keys instead. After trying to understand what’s going on, I realized there was too steep of a learning curve. I read the FAQ and found out there was a single player tutorial version. After a quick 100 meg d/l, I was in tutorial mode and it all made sense. I went back and played a bit of the multiplayer and it appears to me that it’s kinda like Deus Ex online. Lots of running back and forth figuring out how to solve things. The combat is simple and unrewarding. It doesn’t appear that traditional FPS skills are of benefit in Neocron. It’s a lot of ‘aim in the general direction of the enemy and shoot with your biggest weapon’. I’m minimizing it a bit and I’m sure rabid Neocron fanboys would jump down my throat. The game does look cool as a MMORPG, but it’s not competitive with Quake & Unreal level FPS games. I’m sure a ton of people will play the game, but I’m not sure I want to spend a bunch of time in the resource gathering mode.
While I was on Fileplanet, saw a game called Battlefield 1942 as a demo download. I had seen mention of the game on the genmay.com message boards earlier but wasn’t sure what it was. I d/led and installed the game. All I can say is Wow! It’s a multiplayer team based FPS but in the tradition of Team Fortress and Wolfenstein, but this game takes it to a new level. Perhaps it could be called ‘WWII Online, done right’.
The game rocks because besides being able play the foot soliders gunning down the enemy with small arms, you can take over any gear in the game. Any gear. You can drive the aircraft carrier, the tanks, the APCs, aim and fire the gun emplacements, AA guns, landing craft, etc.
It’s a blast. It ships in 15 days on September 10th, and I’m all over it. Give it a try.
OK, I was going to try to update about geocaching and my toe nail, but I need to go do some work outside. More later as I find time.

I went out last night with Brad & Martin to have some beers. In my brilliance, I walked two blocks and bought some cigars for us to smoke out in the bar’s ‘garden’ section. Nicotine & alcohol. By the end of the night I was in full control of the jukebox and subject the bar to 7 songs from a Grateful Dead album, including Space. Finally, as our conversation dropped to a minimum and we all started staring into the distance and/or eyelids, it was time to go home.
This morning I’m a bit rough around the edges. I went to the supermarket to pick up a few thigns and could tell that most of the other shoppers had not been out late the night before. I was struggling with explicitly commanded my body. “Legs, MOVE. Arms, MOVE.” Others there were bright, cheery, and clean, discussing the merits of the various apples on display. I grabbed a cup of coffee, the needed items and headed out.
So while I have stories about geocaching, gaming, toenails, and what not, they will have to wait until I get my shit together.

It’s Friday morning here in lovely South Pasadena, and that can only mean one thing, It’s Trash Day. The town has decided that we are so upscale, that we do not bring our trash out to the curb like other reasonable communites. We pay extra so the trash hauling people drive onto our driveway and empty the barrels where they sit. I don’t agree, but the Keep South Pasadena Unsightly contingent is strong.
What this means to your hero is that every Friday morning I need to get up and move Michele’s truck out of the driveway before 7AM. 7AM is when the trash haulers begin to arrive. I also tend to uncover the barrels to make it a little easier on the guys.
Today I moved Michele’s truck and went open the barrels when I saw a big mess. Some woodland creature had pulled a bag out of the trash barrel ripped it open to get to the contents. As I walked up, I saw this:

It was the turkey sandwich I tossed out after leaving in my briefcase overnight. The creature, I suspect a raccoon, smelled the turkey and made a beeline to it to retrieve a midnight snack.
Michele’s eagle eyes spotted this other telltale clue:

Tracks! Tracks on the hot tub cover. Again, I suspect a raccoon. Why? I don’t know one kind of animal tracks from another, but it’s much cooler to talk aboiut raccoons in the yard than boring, commonplace possums or cats. Those aren’t cat tracks!
I must ponder how to deal with this situation. This is the second time the raccoon has gotten into our trash barrels. I must think. Suggestiosn welcome.

Rather than simple wait like corn in the field for my contacts to arrive, I decided to do something about it. I called CibaVision, makers of the special SoftPerm lenses I need to see. I called the general information number, determined to get the answers I needed.
Rather than use the tough, but effective, ‘man-who-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer‘ method, I opted for the ‘quiet-and-pleasant-but-persistant‘ method instead. After repeating the phrase, “Good afternoon, I’d like to speak to someone about your SoftPerm contact lenses.” to five different people and enduring lengthy wait times while on hold, I finally reached a woman who told me she could answer my questions. After explaining the situation and asking how long the contact lenses should take to make, she said words I have not heard in a while from a customer support person. She said, “Mr. Pusateri, let me try to help you out.” She asked the name and number of my eye doctor and called his office.
She called back and said that unfortunately my specific lens was unavailable anywhere in the world, but that there was a set of tolerance lenses in Canada. A tolerance lens is a lens that would fit my eye correct and be comfortable, but would not correct my vision entirely. It would be something that would let me look at a computer or find things in a room. She had requested them be shipped to my eye doctor and said they shoudl arrive mid-next week.
Viola! Ask and ye shall receive. I can only hope the new Rx for the the shape of these lenses works. More news as it happens.
Speaking of corn fields, here’s the scene from the backyard.

Another month or two and we’ll be eating California corn…

I had yet another appointment to see the eye doctor today. Still no new contacts. He assured me that my right eye was fine and that I could continue wearing a lens in it, even though it was causing me some pain.
In all the time I had trouble with my eyes, I’ve never asked what my vision is in the 20/xx style. I knew the power in diopters of my lenses, but not the more traditional rating. I asked abou this today. My left eye, the better one, has a vision greater than 20/2000. Yes, twenty – slash – two thousand. The doctor says it’s actually worse than that, but that is high as the quick measurement with a chart in an office goes. My right eye is worse than that.
Lovely…