I just went to QFC for garbage bags, and there were nine people ahead of me in the checkout line. Nine!! This may not seem remarkable, except that it was 1:30 AM. Why are there so many people in QFC at this time of night? I think it has something to do with The Stranger recently running an article of cool places to hang out at night in Seattle, and one of the places they named was the QFC where I go to buy garbage bags. They claimed that everyone wandering the aisles at this time of night is on some sort of drugs. They probably just saw me and Brett pointing at the Waffle Cones and laughing. Anyway, now there are many people idling in the aisles, checking out each other in the checkout line, and standing around by the deli stand just talking. And people will come over and join their stupid conversation as if they were in a club and this were the bar. THANK YOU, THE STRANGER.

So, I do all my shopping from 1 to 2 am. Another thing that happens around this time of day is that I suddenly get a whole lot of email at once. Do people just like sending email at this time of day? Do the mail transfer agents suddenly wake up and start horfing queued mail? No, now is the time when the spammers are letting their spam-mailers run while they sleep. If you flag all messages received between 1 and 4 am, I'm betting you'll find that 95% turns out to be spam. I should try that, I'm always on the lookout for ways to prefilter my mailbox so I can prioritize mail more easily. If it has $$$ or !!! in the subject line, priority minus 5. If it has something to do with AEROSOL MILK, Priority doubleplus 5! If it arrived between 1 and 4 AM, priority minus 10. Let's see which ones did I just get... Ah. the "Penny a minute" calling card one and the "Home Based Business" one, in which you can have the desire to make at least 10,000 dollars a month. THIS IS NOT A GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEME, it says. I guess they don't think 10,000 dollars a month is quick. Or, they are acknowledging that no one who responds to this mail will ever actually get rich.

Only you could make this seem like such a bizarre event. -- Kris, watching me put condiments on a hot dog

I installed a new framebuffer ("video card") in my Sun U10, but don't have the right cable to hook it up to any of my monitors. The cable has a hilarious plug called a "13w3" with all sorts of crazy stuff in it. there's a bunch of little pins and three really big pin/plug things, all in a db-style package... whee! I got a convertor from my boss, but of course I got the wrong gender, since I had a hard time describing which parts were pins and which parts were sockets. Looks like I'm running in 640x480x8 bit mode for a little while more! (note: in this mode, all website graphics become hazy, grained masses of color, like a Navajo sand painting)

Now my neighbors have started up with some truly demented laughter. When I hear sporadic cheering from them, it usually means some sort of mainstream sports event is being televised. I don't know what hysterical laughter means. Something to do with TV, considering their track record. Speaking of track records! How about that big congregation of jocks in .australia? Fun or what? Does anyone care about their personal lives? When did the Olympics start having this humanitarian angle?