Stuff

We get the keys to our new place today and if the weather holds we’ll be moving in over the next week. I’ll post the address on here with a password, ‘cos i’m not so sure putting our address up for all to see was such a good idea with Koshland Av., although i’m fairly sure no one’s stolen my identity yet. People can’t do the accent for starters. Then there’s the teeth… but I digress.

The bunnies have been lolloping around the kitchen this morning because they’d been cooped up in their cage while the UCSC Stasi came round to inspect the state of the apartment. They’re looking forward to their new pasture. I’m going to miss the broadband we have here and am busily downloading everything I could possibly need. Like 5 gigabytes of Linux… Thanks for the tips, Jesse, I’ve partitioned the hard drive and am trying to follow the inscrutable instructions to install it all…

We went to the cinema to see “What the BLEEP do we know?” which has to be one of the worst films i’ve ever paid good money to see. I would have walked out before I fell asleep, but Sita wasn’t having it, by the time I woke up she agreed and we both left the cinema. I’m looking forward to reviewing it, watch the film review page in the next few days.

Never. Ever. Check your work email on a bank holiday. Just enjoy the day. You can’t do anything about it, and you’ll just worry about something you have no control over for 24 hours. No. Sit back, relax. Rent a DVD if it’s raining, have a beer or five, go outside, take photos of clouds, cook a new recipe, do a bit of gardening, or just hang out with rabbits. Just don’t, for any reason whatsover, ruin a potentially nice long, stress-free day by clicking “send and receive” on Outlook.

This public service announcement has been brought to your by the letter G and the number 12. November resolution is a production of the Children’s Television Workshop….

Oh and while i’m at it. Does anyone want to help me install Linux. XP has been nagging about activation since i installed a DVD burner. I had to phone a nice Indian man and tell him a 32 digit code to get things going again…

On the blessings counting side… me mum’s doing ok, just bored out of her mind, probl’y for the best she’s not stuck here with American TV. Stu and Anne are back unscathed with anecdotes aplenty. Sita’s cooking something with yams. And we’ve signed the contract to move house down the road, nearer safeway and blockbuster, and with a real fireplace. The landlords (landpeople) are a lovely couple from the Azores. We get the keys on saturday and once it looks homely enough there’ll be a virtual tour for all me mates, family and enterprising burglars…

That’s it from self-absorbtion central for today. love to my peeps, cheers, gwyn

I was gutted to find out me mum’s not coming out after all. She was going to come on Thursday for a few weeks to see us and chill with the Gaytans on Thanksgiving and all that. But it turns out the bout of ill health she’s having isn’t just a virus and so she’ll have to take it easy for a bit so she can get fully better. Mum’s her usual positive/stoical self about it all and the whole familiy’s sure she’s going to be grand once they make some changes in her assorted medicines. I’m still taking TGiving week off though as i’m pretty mentally exhausted and could really do with a break… so i’ll be able to manage a few long distance phone call back to blighty. Me mates Stu and Anne are back from travels round the Orient so it’ll be grand to hear their stories. and i’m wondering how bert‘s getting on with his ladyfriend. It’s all a bit much this week, Bush, new job, mum not coming… Eeh well, things’ll be back to normal soon.

In about 9 minutes, I’m being interviewed on a local radio station about PAPAS. My nerves are starting to go… I’ll blog whether I survived the experience later. Let the record show that 5-6 pm on a Friday afternoon is not my optimum mental functioning time. Hope the coffee kicks in…

Update: Saturday 10:30am
The coffee indeed kicked in and I found myself able to answer questions pretty completely on all kinds on father involvement topics. No one was around in the office, so I could pace around with the cordless phone as is my wont. All in all it took about 15 minutes and I remembered to give out the phone number and website. That said, the website hasn’t registered any more hits and I tried to find 1040am on my radio all the way home and couldn’t get anything on the car radio, which is a little odd. I’m fairly sure it’s not some elaborate practical joke and KNRY– Your Town has listeners somewhere… But still, you live and learn and the tangible sense of relief as I hung up lasted most of the rest of the evening…

Just checked the KNRY website- I had the wrong frequency by 200Khz. D’oh. Ah well…

Scott and Tanya came round after and we cooked several veggie dishes of varying quality and then played one of my worst games of Scrabble in living memory. My average score, 8, my average rack of letters, IIIIOOU.

Phoned me grandmothers this morning and they’re doing OK. Neither is enjoying the dark evenings and grotty weather, but Nanny was relieved that no one had come round trick or treating or penny for the guying. There are too many leaves falling though, apparently. Bless’em. Beth’n’ali weren’t about, and me mum’s in cardiff living it up with her friends from her Swansea school days.

Am quite tired indeed, hence the lack of imagination going into this month’s poll. Let’s see if we can have a record turn out and break the previous total 5 (five) voters… well, 4 if you don’t count me…

Vote or Die, as P.Diddy recently entreated us.

I wasn’t up to blogging yesterday. I can’t believe that that right-wing religious twunt has got himself another 4 years. I went to bed with a glimmer of hope, but checking in on the results at 6am the next day was like a punch to the gut. It stems from having lived in the most liberal towns in the most liberal states in the union, I suppose. It’s easy to forget that there’s a huge amount of fundamentalist zealotry between the two points, all too eager to get out and put in their intolerant tuppence on gay marriage, womens rights, and “god” knows what else. Such bigotry is hard to fathom. Exit polls showed the #1 concern of voters in the red states was “Moral Values”, and the Iraq war was #4. How is that possible? It makes Bush’s “crusade” all the more aptly named. Back to 16th-century family values for all.

I’ll put a new poll up on the front page soonish and link to it regarding the best place to flee to… Middle Earth for Kathy and Vance, Canada for Jesse…

To end on an up note, prop 63 passed in California. Where despite Arnie’s best efforts, millionaires get a new 1% tax to go toward mental health initiatives, and stem cell research gets a few billion federal dollars. It’s something to hang on to i s’pose.

More thoughts soon as the rage subsides. Gros bisoux, gwyn

and yet I fear to turn away… COME ON OHIO!

The BBC website’s all but ground to a halt… I think it’s because I keep hitting F5…

As a tourist in this continent with a delicate temporary immigration status they won’t be letting me vote tomorrow. Nor ever, since I have no plans to repatriate myself thank you very much. Despite four plus years of taxation, there’ll be no representation apparently. I’ll be voting in Taunton Deane Borough Council come election time in Blighty though. Oh yes. But the ramifications won’t be quite as dire as what could happen if Bush “wins” again. It feels like Christmas right now, as a child, and the tension’s killing me, I can’t wait for the results to come in. I have to reckon that Kerry’s going to win though by some razor-thin margin. The only thing in Bush’s favour is that (me mate) Jesse, for one, has vowed to move to Canada if he gets in. And it’d be nice to have a friend to visit in Vancouver…

So there we have it. My prediction is in… Hope springs eternal and all that. If I’m wrong and the Bush/Valdemort ticket wins after all, then there might well be a lengthy blog-silence as I shut myself off from the world and rock gently in the corner of my office pondering my options.

3.4 in Boulder Creek, just down the road… Went to see “what the bleep do we know” last night, but due to confusion over which cinema, we ended up seeing Napoleon Dynamite and falling asleep for last 20minutes. That’s always the danger with eating out and polishing off bottles of Malbec. Don’t think I snored too loudly, but it precludes me from reviewing it.

Am off to sort out Adrienne’s computer this morning, then we’re looking at a house which Sita has designs on. Still looking forward to goth night. Turns out its fancy dress- which doesn’t translate in America and sounds very quaint. Nope, they’re costumes over here, none of your fancy dressing, thank you.

Had a chat with me mum, she’s feeling a bit ill and is convalescing (sp?) for her trip out to CA on Veteran’s Day, less than 2 wks away. I’m taking a week off work to travel around a bit and show her the sights of Santa Cruz and surrounding areas in its famous rainy season.

I also rejigged the gallery page slightly this morning. Righty am off for computer first aid. Nos vemos, cheers, gwyn

Haven’t had time to sneeze all week, but thanks to some fairly heavily applied peer pressure I went with Sita, Tanya and Scott to see Courtney Love last night at the Catalyst (in downtown Santa Cruz). And contrary to all my expectations, she rocked. I’ll edit this entry later for a fuller review.

Other upcoming notable events are, going round scott’s tomorrow to dine and meet his mate then on to a party where there are going to be goths. Fixing computers tomorrow morning, seeing some kind of film tonight, and enjoying the sun on sunday… Not a riveting entry this one, sorry. Shall definitely update it later. Righty, thanks for calling by. Don’t be a stranger now…

Link of the day: www.fark.com which will in turn lead you to many more quality links. cheersy- Gwyn

We just had an 3.9 earthquake, centred about 15 miles away in Gilroy. That’s the first one I’ve noticed on me own. Yay…

It’s the 23rd of October. Hallowe’en approaches, and you can see this is reflected by the number of searches for Autumnal items that end up at GwynUnlimited. Well maybe not… Google’s the search engine of choice, with Yahoo a close second. Ask Jeeves has also put in an appearance, according to a friend of Sita’s friend, the #1 most popular search with Ask Jeeves is “Are you gay?” and they’ve got a customized answer for it. Which is at once depressing and amusing… Anyroad, here are the stats for this month so far… it’s a toss-up between rodents and molluscs.

1 16 18.60% bunnies
2 14 16.28% banana slugs
3 7 8.14% gwyn fisher
4 7 8.14% Sita gaytan
5 4 4.65% .gwynunlimited.com
6 4 4.65% slugs
7 3 3.49% gwynunlimited
8 3 3.49% klem lulu
9 3 3.49% Sita
10 2 2.33% bunnycam
11 2 2.33% lionel cantu
12 2 2.33% marie Sita gaytan
13 2 2.33% pictures of bunnies
14 2 2.33% scrabble blast online
15 2 2.33% sita and Sita
16 2 2.33% sitabunnies
17 1 1.16% baby gaytan
18 1 1.16% europop tabs trash and treasures
19 1 1.16% fotos de lulusita
20 1 1.16% herbivores

Also, Jesse from Ohio via Northampton, Mass emailed this morning, which was lovely. He says he doesn’t blog because even he finds his life uninteresting. Scroll down the page to see that you don’t need to have anything important to say to blog…

If you’ve yet to see Jon Stewart taking on the “Partisan Hackery” of CNN, click to enjoy 13 minutes of JS exposing the twunts on Crossfire

In other news, I’ve joined BritBlog.com. So if you’ve clicked through from there, then cheers. I have a guestbook you know… It’s been fun skimming through other UK peeps’ blogs.

And finally, I found a fantastic program online where you upload a photo, and it delivers you a rasterized version in as many sheets of paper as you want that you then assemble into a full size poster. Klem’s poster fell down, but pictured below is Sita in front of Lulu’s makeshift shrine:

Looks like autumn’s here. It’s been raining for nigh on 24hrs, I’m trying not to see it as an omen for my dental appointment. My first blog entry must have been 6 months ago, since that was the last time I had my teeth cleaned (by someone else…). So it’s an anniversary of sorts…

Sita’s off to San Jose tonight to see her mates from her undergraduate days at UCSC, so as long as there’s electricity I’ll be at home watching Family Guy or some such.

It was nice to see the Swedes have returned to this page, doubtless eager for more news on my teeth. Well, you’ll be happy to hear that i have another incipient filling and there’ll be more crown fun come February…

Me Mum mentioned about an item in the Guardian where well-intentioned Brits are writing to voters in a swing county in Ohio to get them to vote Bush out, the replies from the state range from offensive to downright obstreperous, have a butcher’s here of the Guardian article entitled Dear limey assholes.

and this weekend we bought tickets to see Courtney Love playing in the Catalyst in Santa Cruz next week. Probably read about it here…

I exchanged the video card at circuit city and am again revelling in dual-monitor-livin’-in-the-future type computing. Looking forward to being able to have music/radio/video while working on other apps, it ties up much less RAM so I can multitask more easily.

Other news… We have a guest at home, another world-renowned sociomolologist, arrived yesterday, leaving tomorrow. Had an impromptu barbecue in her honour. Bunnies are still well. Sita’s got all kinds of important grant applications finalised thanks to her incredible catholic work ethic. Me Mum’s coming over in November. New job’s learning curve appears to be lessening. That’s sort of it for now, might manage a review or two this weekend. I’m just finishing Al Franken’s “Why Not Me?”, another book which pays off after a slow start.

On Monday I bought meself a new graphics card and it was working lovely, I had one computer going with dual monitors, ie. you move the mouse off the side of one and it appears on the other, it was a wonder to behold……so when I came home on Tuesday and it had died on me I wasn’t best pleased and am back with the one computer-one monitor until I get a chance to go and argue my statutory rights at Circuit City.

Anyroad, more techie stuff, but I thoroughly recommend Picassa (Google’s image library program), it makes nice little web pages and is a really fun interface for sorting through yer pics. Here are some photos form last weekend, after the wedding, strolling along the beach with young Mrs. Gaytan. I might even put some other collections up, ‘cos it’s easy to do and i’ve got another 800meg webspace for GwynUnlimited…

Yes it is. I had my first 13 hour day yesterday and I have four meetings to attend today at the last count. Definitely won’t be many new book and film reviews for a while…

Pictures of the Wedding Ceremony here…
and increasingly blurred pictures of the Reception here…