A pretty girl is like a pretty girl
Today Stumptown's baristas have selected The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs. "The Book of Love" is on right now. I love this song! And this whole album, really.
Yesterday I got my car smogged. In Oregon this is not a simple matter of going to the gas station. No, you have to take your car to a DEQ station. There are a whopping six of these in the greater Portland area, including one within Portland proper, a couple in the 'burbs, and one way the hell out in Scappoose. For a metro area of like a million people! (At a wild guess. I found out yesterday that Portland city's population is just over half a million. Tiny, and corroborates my sense of the place as small and cozy.) The DEQ station for Portland is way up in Northeast. I went by McMenamins Kennedy School* on the way, so now I know where that is. At the DEQ you sit in line in your car in one of several lanes. When you get to the front of the line, you get out of the car and stand in an enclosed waiting area while your car gets rolled onto the testing platform and very quickly goes through the testing process. It takes maybe five minutes. You pay your $21 and off you go.
While I was idling in line, I called Seth to ask about a Latin license plate idea. He confirmed that "Ubi sum?" means "Where am I?" Of course, I can't get a question mark on the end. I suppose "SUM IBI" means "I am here," which is a very Portland hippie "Be Here Now" sort of sentiment. But over lunch today, I thought, well, why not German instead of Latin? I speak German, I don't speak Latin, and I drive a German car. I thought of "GEH WEG," which means "Go away," but decided that was too unfriendly. Most German words are very long, so it's hard to fit much of a message into 6 characters. Aha, but you can use numbers in German as in English: I hit on "8UNG" ("Achtung!"). It looks like "BUNG" though, so maybe I'll put a space or a dash in there. And maybe get a plate frame that just says "BABY" at the bottom.
2600 last night was all right. I was the only girl there. Maybe eight other people showed up, largely college-age or even younger, surprisingly. One gray-haired dude from Intel, a couple twenty- or thirtysomething guys, but the rest quite young. However, two of those present were Dean and Brandon, who gave a talk at Defcon this year. They remembered thewronghands's talk at the biweekly C.R.I.M.E. meeting, which apparently is coming up this Wednesday. At 10 AM. At the zoo. (Well, at a conference room at the zoo.) Most bizarre hacker meeting time and place evar. Brandon, who's a cool guy and seemed to be the de facto leader of the meeting, gave me a lift home. His license plate is "1337." And he's 20, so he's only had it for four or five years max. I guess it is much easier to get geek vanity plates in Oregon than in California, where all the good ones got taken long long ago by geeks who hang onto them like grim death until they perish or move out of state. (Linus is up here now! I'd forgotten that.)
Lovecraft Film Festival this weekend. Ia! Ia!
*I just realized yesterday that the Barley Mill Pub right by my building is a McMenamins. Went there for lunch today. McMenamins are everywhere! My suspicious mind assumes that McMenamins must be somehow evil for being such a successful local (and statewide) presence, like if I dig through the archives of the Mercury, I'll find screeds against the Great Satan McMenamins. But maybe not.
Yesterday I got my car smogged. In Oregon this is not a simple matter of going to the gas station. No, you have to take your car to a DEQ station. There are a whopping six of these in the greater Portland area, including one within Portland proper, a couple in the 'burbs, and one way the hell out in Scappoose. For a metro area of like a million people! (At a wild guess. I found out yesterday that Portland city's population is just over half a million. Tiny, and corroborates my sense of the place as small and cozy.) The DEQ station for Portland is way up in Northeast. I went by McMenamins Kennedy School* on the way, so now I know where that is. At the DEQ you sit in line in your car in one of several lanes. When you get to the front of the line, you get out of the car and stand in an enclosed waiting area while your car gets rolled onto the testing platform and very quickly goes through the testing process. It takes maybe five minutes. You pay your $21 and off you go.
While I was idling in line, I called Seth to ask about a Latin license plate idea. He confirmed that "Ubi sum?" means "Where am I?" Of course, I can't get a question mark on the end. I suppose "SUM IBI" means "I am here," which is a very Portland hippie "Be Here Now" sort of sentiment. But over lunch today, I thought, well, why not German instead of Latin? I speak German, I don't speak Latin, and I drive a German car. I thought of "GEH WEG," which means "Go away," but decided that was too unfriendly. Most German words are very long, so it's hard to fit much of a message into 6 characters. Aha, but you can use numbers in German as in English: I hit on "8UNG" ("Achtung!"). It looks like "BUNG" though, so maybe I'll put a space or a dash in there. And maybe get a plate frame that just says "BABY" at the bottom.
2600 last night was all right. I was the only girl there. Maybe eight other people showed up, largely college-age or even younger, surprisingly. One gray-haired dude from Intel, a couple twenty- or thirtysomething guys, but the rest quite young. However, two of those present were Dean and Brandon, who gave a talk at Defcon this year. They remembered thewronghands's talk at the biweekly C.R.I.M.E. meeting, which apparently is coming up this Wednesday. At 10 AM. At the zoo. (Well, at a conference room at the zoo.) Most bizarre hacker meeting time and place evar. Brandon, who's a cool guy and seemed to be the de facto leader of the meeting, gave me a lift home. His license plate is "1337." And he's 20, so he's only had it for four or five years max. I guess it is much easier to get geek vanity plates in Oregon than in California, where all the good ones got taken long long ago by geeks who hang onto them like grim death until they perish or move out of state. (Linus is up here now! I'd forgotten that.)
Lovecraft Film Festival this weekend. Ia! Ia!
*I just realized yesterday that the Barley Mill Pub right by my building is a McMenamins. Went there for lunch today. McMenamins are everywhere! My suspicious mind assumes that McMenamins must be somehow evil for being such a successful local (and statewide) presence, like if I dig through the archives of the Mercury, I'll find screeds against the Great Satan McMenamins. But maybe not.