Be still my beating heart: FontXChange converts fonts to OpenType, TrueType or PS Type 1 format. And it works, too! This means I can retire my copy of FontMonger for good, and with it, any legacy need for OS 9. Sweet.
Tuesday morning, I got stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the back way into the city simply by trying to avoid another clog on the main route; Apparently something happened somewhere and the entire Beltway slowed to a crawl. Inching forward, somewhere around Oriole Park, I started to smell hot antifreeze, and I knew something wasn’t right somewhere, but I hoped it wasn’t me. As I got onto Pratt Street and edged closer to the Convention Center, I noticed steam coming from under my hood, and pulled the Saturn off into a bus pickup lane to cool off. After a half hour had passed and traffic had cleared up, I hypermiled the last half mile to work, parking on the street so I could refill the reservoir with water. Not once did I hear the fan cycle on, which leads me to believe the thermostat has gone dead (and possibly the EGR valve as well).
In the meantime, my mother’s Subaru, which was just in the shop for a major head gasket overhaul, blew up on her yesterday morning for reasons as yet unknown.
And concurrently, my sister’s Subaru, also coming off some major repairs, decided it would shed a wheel after the bearings gave out.
Now, none of these cars are new—our family has a tradition of driving and maintaining our cars well into the hundreds of thousands of miles, and no person in my nuclear family owns a car under ten years old. It’s just strange that all three cars would decide to get sick on the same morning. What have we done to offend you, mighty Piston, God of Thunder? Have we not made the proper sacrifices, wise Gasket, Bringer of Coolant and Oil?
To the douchebag in the BMW who cut me off yesterday:
This is the second time in about two months that you’ve decided, when you were sitting at a stopsign perpendicular to the lane I was already sitting in, that you’d just pull out in front of my car without looking, even though I had the right-of-way. I recognized you yesterday because of the suit you were wearing, the shiny silver BMW you were driving, and the look of disgust you shot at me after I called you a douchebag loudly out my window. The first time, you even shot me the finger, as if I’d inconvenienced you somehow. Let’s be honest here: had you waved and asked, I would gladly have let you in. I do it all the time. But the fact that you never looked really irritates me.
I’m going to make an assumption here and guess you’re either a banker or a lawyer, given the neighborhood we both work in; the street you were on only holds parking garages. Somehow I doubt you’re a caseworker at the Goodwill headquarters across the street or a dishwasher at the diner downstairs. No, by your obvious sense of entitlement and inconsiderate manners, I’m guessing you make four times my salary, you bought that car new off the lot, and you’re used to people letting you do whatever you want. While I know for a fact that many BMW drivers are nice, upstanding people who rescue kittens and donate time to charity organizations, you seem to think that hand-sewn leather and a twelve speaker stereo entitle you to drive wherever the fuck you want at any time.
I really hope I never see you again, and that this will be the last time I think of you. Because if you try the same thing when I’m behind the wheel of my Scout, I’m not going to stop when you pull out in front of me without asking.
This morning, I dragged my road bike out of the basement, dusted off the valves, aired up the tires, and dug my kryptonite lock out of the “bike stuff” milk carton. I have to return a parking pass to the office across town—which is a quick bike ride but a long walk. It felt good to ride the 1/2 block from my new garage to the office.
My sister’s birthday is today. Hooray!
The weather has been magnificent this week. 85° and sunny, little to no humidity. Thank you, Sky Pilot.
I drove the Scout into work this morning (see the bike item above; I doubt it would fit in the Saturn comfortably) with no throttle problems whatsoever.
Mama dressed Finn in a pretty outfit this morning, and we laughed and played in the jumper while I woke up over coffee and sang with some of her musical toys. Her smile, like that of her mother, is one of the best things in the world.
Addendum, 11:06 AM: My boss suddenly and inexplicably got the overwhelming urge for pie. So he went across the street and got some, and shared it with us.
Pour a little out on the curb for my homie: Adobe discontinues Macromedia HomeSite 5.5. It’s funny—Adobe hasn’t done shit with it in five years, and they’re finally killing it now. I still use this program today; it’s one of the main reasons I have an XP install on my MacBook Pro. (via)
This is good stuff: The Odd Lies of Sarah Palin. All the “misstatements” collected in one place. On a related note: Sarah Palin Is Not Stupid. I used to make the mistake of saying she is a crazy, stupid woman; I am in fact afraid of the idea that people take her seriously, but it’s better to respectfully disagree with almost everything that comes out of her mouth than call her names.
The Auteurs Films: A site that streams high-quality arthouse films, with a better selection than Hulu (The Seven Samurai, Breathless, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, etc.)
Monday night we spent a little time with some friends in the industry, trading gossip, war stories, and news, and it left me feeling a little sick to my stomach. I know that times are tough out there, but the more bad news I hear, the more discouraged I get. This business is cyclical in nature, and having lasted through three recessions since joining the full-time workforce (exiting college right in the middle of one, no less) I know that this will be the way of things until I retire or give up and go sell insurance.
This one has me more worried than the last two, and that’s probably because I’m wired into the scene a lot better than I was in ’93 or ’01, and a lot more knowledgeable about the economy, our country, and my insignificant place on the edge of the whole mess. Work is scarce, jobs are even harder to find, and the money that people are spending is net 120 at best, so I’m holding on to what I’ve got for dear life and hoping we can ride this one out.
Compounding my worry was a rough time I was having with a project at work, which seemed to be dragging onward with no resolution. I’d sketched and sketched and between fifteen or so pages I had three distinct approaches, but I was having a hell of a time getting them to flesh out onscreen. At times like this it’s easy to get into an “I suck” mentality, which becomes self-defeating (and self-prophesying), but I’ve learned the hard way over the years that time and a little perspective can be an ally. I came home, helped give the baby a bath, watered the garden, spent some time with Jen, and then took another look at what I’d done. Within an hour or so I felt the quiet, pleasurable shift of things starting to fall into place, and soon I had had one solution finished, the second on its way, and the elements of the third sorted out for the next morning.
I guess the upshot of all this rambling is that even though my chosen profession doesn’t have the stability of, say, law, banking (ha), or civil service, it’s more rewarding than anything else I can think of. That feeling of the gears meshing and elements clicking together is one of the best things in the world—I’d be hard-pressed to find something else so rewarding that I could get paid to do, even when it seems like the industry is groaning and creaking and imploding around me.