bryan wann :: binary fury

I never went to sleep last night. Drinking copious amounts of tea kept me wired all night long. This morning at 5:00 I drove downtown to wander around. The Republic of Texas bikers must’ve had one hell of a party, 6th street was covered in plates and cups and other trash. The street sweepers were out vacuuming it all up in huge swaths. I went to IHOP for breakfast, it’s been so long since I’ve had bacon and eggs. Pancakes too, for that matter.

It seems I have two winning solutions to iced tea. The teabag-in-cold water was a nice deep caramel color this morning and tasted nice. Apparently the trick is to let the stuff just sit for several hours. The slight bitterness of the hot brewed tea disappeared too. I’m not sure how I can improve upon these yet, these are certainly acceptable. They go nice on a warm day like today.

So far the winner is 1.5 liters of boiling water, 2 family-sized tea bags, seep for three minutes, then top off the pitcher with ice to chill it rapidly. It only has a hint of aftertaste, best batch so far!

I’ve drank too much during this process, I’m bouncing off the damn walls now.

I had this incredibly long, drawn out dream last night that my hometown was basically hit by LIT3 during a storm. I was up visiting, we drove back in to town and saw an old house engulfed in flames. We were wondering where the fire department was, went over the hill and saw several more houses engulfed in flames. Our house was intact, but we could see flames inside. I ran in and saw the breaker panel was on fire. Apparently the lightning storm had blown out people’s electric meters and panels, causing several of the fires (it’s a dream, ok?). The next morning the media had a helicopter fly over, showing it on television. There was a huge charred spot where the lightning hit. They said 14 people were killed, which in a small town is a lot. Weather radar picked it up too, as a bright red burst. Wild.

I’ve been reading Lee Iacocca’s new book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?. His rants about the lack of good American leadership, politics, healthcare, are primo angry old man. He lights a fire under every topic and doesn’t let up, but also offers some reasonable suggestions on how to fix things. Unfortunately, they’re going to take balls to implement and I’m too cynical to see anyone use them unless we have another American revolution. The book could only be more awesome if he had a chapter titled “Get off my lawn!”

7 weeks without a single drop of soda!

Well, House Bill 1815 which clarifies it’s legal to transport a handgun in a vehicle for protection without a CHL (provided you’re legal and not a thug, and the gun is hidden), is on its way to Perry.

Senate Bill 534, which would have allowed CHL holders to transport and store handguns in their vehicles on employers’ property, wasn’t picked up by the House so it basically died today. Since the calendar has ran out, it’ll have to be re-introduced in the next lege session.

PBS/KLRU was piping in a lot of BBC content tonight. One show about Queen Elizabeth II and her travels to the different Commonwealth Nations; one about Walter Cronkite revisiting Europe to see what effects both American and British journalism had on each respective country after WWII; and one about the first trans-atlantic telegraphy cables laid between Newfoundland and Ireland circa 1858-1866.

“Inductive reactance? We haven’t discovered that electrical engineering principle yet! Up the voltage to make up for the resistance so we can signal faster! …Hey, why did the cable short circuit and melt underwater?!”

I’m somewhat surprised, yet not, that it was 1955-1956 before we got around to laying TAT-1 between Scotland and Newfoundland to allow the first terrestrial (submarine) telephone calls to Great Britain. Whacky post-WWII Americans, first we want Airstreams, nylon, an interstate highway system, lunch underground, and then to be able to talk to the Brits on a reliable low latency communication link.

Alex says before we go to Panama we need to go to the Arctic Ocean. Austin, Texas to Deadhorse, Alaska : 4,640 miles. ha ha ha. About 200 miles from Barrow, but it’s the terminus of the Dalton Highway and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. That’s easily a seven-day, one-way drive from Texas for me. Coldfoot to Deadhorse, “No services 240 miles” — be sure to pack a couple of spare tires, a few cans of fuel, tools and cash for that trip.

After waking up and coughing so hard it made me throw up (eww) for the third time in eighteen hours, I headed back to the doctor. At first he didn’t think there was much we could do about it other than load up on anti-oxidants, then he examined me and changed his mind. He didn’t like the wheezing in my lungs he found nor the irritated throat, so they took a throat culture, prescribed Prednisone (a corticosteroid for inflammation) and generic Robitussin+codine to help me sleep. I’ve heard nasty, nasty things about the side effects of Prednisone, so hopefully this script is all I need. If the throat culture comes back with nasties, I’ve got a script for Cefdinir. weee!

Today I took care of my speeding ticket from the West Texas roadtrip. I couldn’t read the officer’s handwriting, my appearance date looked to be the 21st or 27th. Fortunately I called, found out it’s tomorrow, and as long as my paperwork was postmarked today it satisfied my apperance. Since I just found a great rate on insurance, I must go take defensive driving, no way I’m going to let this drive up the cost of my insurance again. Besides, defensive driving will knock 10% off my insurance premium. Had I planned better, I would’ve hired an attorney in Ozona to go fight the thing for me.

The good news is, Friday night I was playing Wii with friends until 3 AM. Saturday I went to a wedding reception, met new people, was surrounded by many [taken] attractive girls, had a good amount of fun.

The bad news is, I have reason to believe I’m allergic to cigarette smoke. I was almost 100% tip top again on Thursday and Friday, then I was around smoking friends this weekend. I was awoken this morning at 4 AM by my sinuses kicking my ass and now my throat is irritated and scratchy again. Fortunately, it’s not nearly as bad as last week. I really don’t want to empirically test this hypothesis, I just want to get better so I can get back on the bike. It’s been a couple of weeks now and I really need to get in the mileage.

I want to clear out my diningroom and get a rowing machine. I’m not a fan of using machines to exercise, instead preferring bodyweight, but rowing is more enjoyable and less impact on my wrists than pushups. Therefore the implication is I would stick with it.

Fuck me, have I bitched today at how much I hate fiddly SATA cable connectors and having to talk somebody step-by-step over the phone about how to repair a server?

Best quote of the day, from an article about artificial sweetners:

“Just because a synthesized molecule is similar to a natural sugar molecule doesn’t make it safe. Just a one- or two-atom change makes a big difference when ingesting water versus hydrogen peroxide, beer versus wood alcohol, or carbon dioxide versus carbon monoxide.”