fast and slow time
My first week at the new job went well, I think, although it’s hard to say. It’s been so long since I had a first week that I don’t remember how they’re supposed to go. I felt much less out of it on Friday, though, than on Monday. A lot of stupid little things conspired to make me feel weirder than usual, like emacs showing up all over the place as a default editor, or strange default bindings in zsh. I need to make my CVS’d zshrc more explicit!
During the week’s commutes, I read Fletch, Too and Awake at Work. Awake at Work was worth the two or three hours, but it wouldn’t have been worth much more. It was amusing to read, because it kept making me think of ways to apply its suggestions to my old job. Oops!
Fletch, Too was the best of the Fletch books so far, I think. I realize it’s the last one written, though, so I know it might just end up being the best. I’m reading them in the order of the story, though, not of publication, so I have quite a few left.
I tried to pick up Loop, this week, but it wasn’t out yet. Unfortuantely, the Moravian Book Store could only tell me that they had no record of any impending release (or even that the title existed), despite the fact that they’d said, earlier this year, that they would order it when it came out.
Last night I went out with my old friend Beck, from Liberty. We went to Golden Gate and just sort of hung out for three or four hours, talking about Life, the Universe, and Everything. (We both majored in philosophy, and were happy to have the chance to try to put our otherwise useless education to some use in discussion.) We also both felt like we weren’t writing enough (especially since I don’t really write at all, anymore), and we traded some movie suggestions. Beck seems a good bit more movie-savvy than I, but I did have the pleasure of suggesting Man on the Train, an excellent French movie about male camaraderie.
Today, my parents came by and we watched some of the things I’d TiVo’d while they were in Europe: an episode of 24 (meh) and a short documentary about the Carter Family (the country singers). The latter was alright, although it left of fairly early.
Finally, I am always impressed by the Zippo lighter. I have one that must be at least ten or fifteen years old, and occasional refills and flint replacements have kept it going flawlessly. Today, though, I’ve begun having problems with it. It lights, but then quickly burns down. I thought, at first, that it was the wick. Google found a nice movie demonstrating how to replace a wick, and I instead just cut off the exposed part of the wick and fed out an unburned length. This doesn’t seem to have helped, though. I wonder if I just didn’t use enough fluid the last time I filled it… oh well. It’s not as if I ever need to burn anything.