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Several people have emailed me and expressed surprise that I have not had anything to say about The Yankees-Red Sox series. Truth is, I’m having a ball. I posted a brief blurb about how much fun this series was, and then I accidentally deleted it while culling some moronic attempts by a porn site spammer to fill the comments with links to some hot asian bisexual midget bestiality necrophilia voyeurs website. Oops.

Some of you may have gotten an email from a very concerned person at some website testing company today, issuing you a very concerned message that some links at www.rumblestrip.org were temporarily unavailable. Of course, this wonderful person offered her services—for a small monthly fee—to monitor my site and let you know if any links become unavailable.

Rare is the day where you get to live a dream. For me, today was one of those days. Today I drove to the airport, untied my plane, and went flying. The Great Experiment is underway.

Tonight, Brenda & I (and Hugh & Patty & Chris) all went to see Eddie Izzard perform at City Center. It’s interesting, because I now realize that blogs are invading my life. I came late to the party, only discovering Eddie Izzard’s comic genius after reading about him in several blogs I frequent. When you read a funny guy’s writings for a while, and then you see him giving mad props to someone else, you go and find out about this someone else. The someone else in this case was Eddie Izzard.

No matter I say it, no matter how calmly I try to fit this into conversation, it never fails to draw odd stares from the uninitiated, and wild congratulations from those who knew I was looking to do this:

Happy Birthday, Brenda!

Well, I’m back. I’m on the 8:13 express right now, crawling toward Manhattan. I got a seat, but the train was late. Yes, I’m complaining. Nothing like a morning commute to erase any positive vibe you may be riding on following a week away from the daily grind.

Wow, a whole week just flew by, and I learned a lot, met some new friends, saw some old ones. I finally met Dr. John Mardaljevec, and I can tell you that that was truly a pleasure. I visited Berkeley, CA for the first time, and that was fun, too. But alas, the Second Annual International Radiance Workshop drew to a close yesterday, and most of the attendees have already headed home. Airline pricing and schedules being what they are, it actually worked out better, price-wise, to stay an extra day on the left coast before heading home, so I checked out San Francisco today.

Well, I am in Berkeley, California right now, typing this in a comfy chair in the lobby of the Shattuck Plaza, also known as the local Howard Johnson’s. This is my first time visiting norcal, and it’s exciting to start by dipping my toe into the reactionary waters of Berkeley, rather than San Francisco. The depiction of this place as a teeming hotbed of liberal sixties culture is, well, understated. As I type this, a very high man, who was muttering to himself for the last five minutes while waiting for the hotel desk clerk to return from his break, is now shouting obscenities and railing against the Howard Johnson’s Corporation. This fit of rage was apparently triggered by the hotel desk clerk asking him if he preferred a smoking or non-smoking room. Too many rules for him, I guess. OK, he’s wandered off now, sweating and cursing, down Allston Place. I’m quite certain more exciting times lie in store for him. The very blond hotel clerk shook his head, barely perceptibly, and said a very understated “wow”.

My pal Mike sent me this very disturbing story:

It has come to my attention that the menu I recently added to my homepage does not display on Netscape. Dunno why, have no time to fix. Just lettin’ ya know. I’ll get around to it.

Robert L. Borosage said:

About nine months ago, my old web host (who, by the way, I heartily recommend you stay away from) crashed and burned when they destroyed their server (yes, as in the singular) doing a disk upgrade. I hastily moved to a new web host, and have been quite happy. In my haste, I simply got the blog back up and said I’d get all the static content back online “soon”.

Two weeks from today, I’m going to Berkeley, CA to attend the Second Annual Radiance Workshop”, where people from around the planet will convene for tutorials on using Radiance, and to share their experiences with the software. If you are into simulating light, then you are into Radiance (or you should be). So, gathering with some of the best Radiance minds in the world for a week will be educational, and tons of fun. I’m looking forward to it.

Ever since I started this blog thing, it’s been too easy to publish my own work. No editors to please, no particular audience or format. But when I DO get published, it feels really good. It’s nice to know other people are interested enough in your stuff to expose it to a wider audience. Today is the first time since I started this blog that I have had something published elsewhere, and I’m a little giddy about it.

As I was a student of the theatre, and long since a vigorous cataloguer of obscure and humorous movie references, I often like to engage my friends in a game of Name That Quote. I’ll say a line from a movie, and wait for my friends to id the movie/TV show, the character, and the scene. Well, I’m sitting here trying out some Radiance features and half watching a great movie that I haven’t seen in quite a while. One of the characters uttered a line, a truly classic line, and it was like I was hearing it for the very first time. I laughed very hard.

About six weeks ago I flew this, a North American T6 “Texan” (actually, it was the Navy version, the SNJ.):

Folks, I’m in unrequited love. Claudia Jennings, man. Awesome.

When you go through life living in the USA with a surname like Guglielmetti, you get a sense of the uniqueness of your lineage. Early on in life, I learned the most efficient way to spell my name for the Smiths, the Joneses, and the Browns of the world. Gee you gee, ell eye ee ell, em ee tee tee eye. All my life I have patiently repeated this litany for many, many people. Often, people get tripped up by the ell eye ee ell. They want to insert an N in there somewhere, for some unknown reason. Ahh, I don’t know, I guess it’s one of my crosses to bear, my surname. I kind of like it. It’s quirky and complicated. I’ve gone through a few Fedex guys, they just can’t handle it. Nick, the UPS guy, lets me type in my own name on the digital clipboard he carries when I sign for packages. It’s just easier that way.

dum Dum DUM… BLACKOUT TWO THOUSAND THREE!