Sauron Lurks

The St. Petersburg Times has a building in downtown Tampa just a block and a half south of my condominium. It is not a tall building or particularly distinguished, though I have over the years noted that the sixth floor of the building is lit most of the night. I assume that's the main editing floor of the paper, but of course newspapers now are put to bed early and I doubt there's any serious work being done over there after ten o'clock. The northwest corner of the sixth floor is occupied by an office that always has the blue glow of a television screen, but apparently only one screen. Whether there's a tv on in there or it's a security landing I have no idea.

On Saturday apparently somebody at the Times bought a new toy. What the toy is I have no idea but I've had friends purchase similar things before... they'll know what I'm talking about. It sits up in a high corner, possibly on top of a tall cabinet or something.

It has a blue light on it.

This is the brightest non-lasing blue light known to man, at least the brightest such that can be put in a newspaper office. It is brighter, by itself, than an entire four-story panel of blue LEDs. I know this because the north window of the Rivergate Tower cubes--the round "beer can" tower a few blocks south the Times building--had an entire array of blue LEDs for about a year as part of a display of light-related art in downtown. It was not this bright.

The light does not look that bright in this picture in part because it is daytime. But I was up last night at 3 and I came out into the living room, where the shade is up all night, and I saw that I was in fact casting a shadow against the front door--and the shadow was in a pool of blue light. When I went back into the bedroom I saw that the blue light is in fact visible through our blinds--and our blinds are no slouches at blocking light, especially when you consider how much light is out there in downtown needing to be blocked. I could almost--not quite, but almost--read by the ambient light of downtown last night in the living room without turning on a single light.


Why was I up last night at 3? Good question. Smittygirl will tell you that I am stressed about an upcoming exercise at work (and I don't mean pushups and situps), and she is almost certainly correct, as usual. But I am chalking at least part of it up to the nefarious effect of the Great Blue Eye. It has a way of capturing my attention when I'm not expecting it. It is always there, all day and all night, and it sees into every part of my house (except parts of the kitchen, and of course the bathrooms and closet). I don't know what it is, or why it is there. But it lurks. It sees. It searches.

Yes, it smells like a barbeque

The strangest thing about all this is knowing that the closest big fires are at least two counties away. It was like this all day.

Normally, in this direction, you can see all the way to the airport and beyond. Today... well, you can see that cell phone tower still. It's eerie, going out to your car to drive home from work and finding it blanketed in ash.

Pretty Blue Flower

I have this plant on the porch. Actually, I have several of them. It's called a Convolvulus, which is the genus name of morning glories. There are about eight of them in one pot and they've not done very well, probably because there are eight of them (I just couldn't bear to thin them). Occasionally I get a bloom, but they never last more than a day. Today I managed to get this photo, even though the bloom was half-closed, probably against the onslaught of smoke and ash. I think it's pretty.

Snow Crash

I hadn't read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash in quite some time so I decided to pick it up a while back and go through it again.
It took me longer to read this book this time around than it ever has before, by about a month. Shocking, really.

You might think that means I didn't enjoy it as much this time, but that could hardly be less true. I love this book. I truly do. It's one of the best I've ever read and it still holds up. In fact, I'm not even going to bother reviewing it because there's no way I could give it a neutral review, or even pretend to. If you haven't already read it, I'll lend you my copy. Actually, I'll just give you my copy since I need a new one anyway. This book turned me on to cyberpunk, and it's still the best of the genre as far as I'm concerned.

Snow Crash

I hadn't read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash in quite some time so I decided to pick it up a while back and go through it again.
It took me longer to read this book this time around than it ever has before, by about a month. Shocking, really.

You might think that means I didn't enjoy it as much this time, but that could hardly be less true. I love this book. I truly do. It's one of the best I've ever read and it still holds up. In fact, I'm not even going to bother reviewing it because there's no way I could give it a neutral review, or even pretend to. If you haven't already read it, I'll lend you my copy. Actually, I'll just give you my copy since I need a new one anyway. This book turned me on to cyberpunk, and it's still the best of the genre as far as I'm concerned.

What a Difference a Day Makes

The smoke in the atmosphere is currently so thick it almost blocks out the sun. At times today I've been able to look out the window directly at the sun without squinting—it's just a disc up there, not so bright. What little sunlight is getting through is orange; the light coming through the window and making patterns on the office floor today looks as if it were cast by the sodium lights on the building next door rather than by the sun.

Despite this the temperature outside is actually quite pleasant. Sort of a shame, really… but then, I'm not so upset about being cooped up in an office today given that it's to do anything outside.

Oh &@#!, It's Mr. Creosote!

It smelled like creosote outside my office window today. As an appreciator of the railroads, I actually kind of like the smell of creosote (it's the oil railroad ties are coated with to weatherproof them, a very characteristic smell). But still, there is not now nor has there ever been a railroad anywhere near my workplace. I understand they sometimes use creosote to coat phone poles with, but again, no new phone poles in my vicinity, either. Kind of a weird random smell in the middle of the day.

But it's nice to notice the smell at all. For the first day in two weeks it's actually pleasant outside. The last two weeks have been like early summer—highs close to 90, high humidity, and especially last week an absurd amount of smoke and haze in the air because most of Florida and large parts of Georgia are on fire. Bottom line, this is the first day in a couple weeks I've had the window open at work. It's as close as I can get to working outside.

Cinnamon Rolls

Smittygirl is making homemade cinnamon rolls.

I just wanted to make the rest of you jealous...

I just got up and left

The CEO of the company I work for came to town today. In preparation for his visit the place was cleaned up a little, which was nice. The boss should see that his facilities are being well maintained, which they are.

But I didn't know the phrase "cleaned up" went this far:
At 10:00 the networks went dead. No email, no internet, nothing. I could look at my own shared network drive, which I share with the other people in my building. But since my job requires me to use networks that exist in other places, in whole other states in many cases, I was stuck. There was nothing to do. The networks were down.
This, I was told later, was deliberate. I don't know why they did that, but apparently it was going to stay that way for a while.

Then I found out that they were going to lock everything down and keep everyone in one place for the rest of the afternoon. I guess that would cut down on traffic, which is a... well, I don't know. But nobody would be able to leave the workplace. And nobody could do any work at the workplace.

I'm pretty sure this sort of thing was not in my job description.

Birthday Surprise Part Deux

How could I forget to post this?! This is the cake Smittygirl made me for my birthday a while back. It's a carrot cake. Lots of carrots in there. It was really yummy! And it's a... well, I mean, you can see it's a chicken. It's a chicken!