Happy Birthday to Me

I can't sleep, so instead I'm blogging. It's not quite my birthday yet, but it will be by the time I finish this, hence the title. We're heading over to my parents' winter place in Zephyrhills in the morning to spend a couple days with them. No real big plans other than dinner at either Carrabba's or Charlies Steakhouse and maybe a movie or two. We're taking Chicken Little and Up! with us, so it certainly won't be an intellectual weekend, but at the very least, we'll get out of the house.

The library job continues. Not really anything else to report other than I don't think I've ever worked a job where the managers seem so terrified to tell me what to do. It's usually obvious what needs doing, but I always ask in case some other part of the library is short-handed and needs some help. The answer is nearly always the same: "Whatever you want to do." Huh? But other than that little quirk, it remains the perfect job; no stress and no responsibility other than just showing up. Sweet.

I stumbled across a couple videos shot from the International Space Station. The first is a series of time-lapse videos taken from August to October when the Northern Lights were really going at it. If you thought the view from the ground was impressive, well...



Unfortunately, you have to go to Vimeo to view it in HD. You'll want to do that. And view it full screen of course.

The second video is older and doesn't have any Northern Lights, but there are a couple very impressive thunderstorms that can be seen:



It continues to be relatively quiet for us just keeping our heads down, working, and (in my case) getting ready for my second SEE exam currently scheduled for November 29th. I don't feel like I'm prepared, but maybe a serious cram session over the Thanksgiving weekend will fix that. I'll be really pissed if I just end up wasting $100.

Duqu, the bastard son of Stuxnet, is still out there floating around the internet. Who is behind it and to what purpose is still not known, but Microsoft is putting defenses in place to stop it. Yet another means for people to break things. As if one more were needed.

Occupy Wall Street has been cleared out with surprisingly few arrests and no real violence. The eviction was only to be expected, especially once diseases started sweeping through various Occupy camps as a result of people living in close quarters and crapping on the ground. I'm unclear why a movement with a half-million dollars in the bank couldn't use a bit of it for porta-johns. I guess I don't understand modern protest movements. With winter on the way, the camp was likely to be breaking up anyway. What happens in the spring could be interesting, especially when some police departments seem to be spoiling for an all-out fight in the streets. What other reason could there be for an Oakland cop to shoot a photographer with a rubber bullet seemingly for kicks? If you want a possible preview of 2012, check out a timeline of 1968.

Enough. Maybe I can get some sleep now that it's after 1 am.