March 2004
April 29, 2004
Note to Self
I am in training for work all this week, taking classes on Linux at the Red Hat world headquarters in Raleigh, NC. Today just after class started my pen gave out and wouldn't write. The instructor didn't have any extra writing utensils so I had to figure out a way to still take notes. The computers we were working on had Internet access so I pulled up my web email account, created a new email message to myself and typed up the notes. When I was finished I mailed them to myself. Number One Son, very clever!
April 06, 2004
Oh See Dee
I've been seeing a lot about OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) lately. The TV show “Monk” about a San Francisco private eye with OCD and all his charming quirks has been on a lot. Billy Bob Thornton was interviewed "On the Record with Bob Costas" Friday and talked a little about how he is affected by OCD. He gets weirded out by 18th century French furniture and Benjamin Disraeli's hair. So it seems like a good time to admit my own, ever so slight affliction by this disease.I don't care much for sock feet. People walking around with just socks on their feet distrub me. Socks themselves I do not mind as objects. I feel no discomfort in opening my top dresser drawer. But I don't like to see people walking around in just socks. Bare feet are fine. Shoes in the house are fine. I just don't want to see socks on your feet. They really bother me. I myself don't like to walk around the house in socks. Occasionally I may but if I think about it I will take them them off. I will wear shoes, put on my comfy moccasins or go barefoot. Socks with sandals? Bad. Cover them up. I really don't like going to someone's home where they request I remove my shoes at the door. Germans do this often. At least the Japanese will have often have house slippers for guests to wear though I doubt they have them big enough for most western visitors.Not sure why I have this aversion. I do have certain memories of being a child and seeing the commercial for the game Twister. People would play in socks. I believe I thought that one had to have different colored socks to play the game. Red sock on blue dot, green sock on yellow or something. All I had were white socks for everyday and Sunday church-going black socks. Maybe I reject socks because I felt left out. I also seem to recall striped socks on the TV shows "Zoom" or "Romper Room". Striped socks I hate the most. They are very weird. Who knows what went on in the crazy 70s sock crazes! Oh yes, I now remember a babysitter when I was little who had striped socks with little toes for each toe. Freaky! I think she may have worn toe rings over her socks. Then there was a neighbor kid who ran around outside all the time in long white knee-high socks with green stripes like he played for the Celtics. The bottoms of his socks turned a permanent dirt color that really bothered me. Oh, how the young mind is scared and scarred.Also sock related: I like my socks folded, down the middle, like when you buy them. When I was a kid we were visiting my aunt and uncle for a while and I guess we were there long enough that someone had to do laundry. My aunt rolled my socks in a ball and put them in the dresser. Really bugged me. I had never seen this sock balling before and did not like the ball of sock one bit. Where did she learn this? My mom, her sister, didn't do it that way. She folded them like they should be. "They don't get lost this way," my aunt defended. My mother never lost a sock either. Fold them together and you're all set. The sock ball I think is related to my other sock quirk. I hate sock monkeys. I don't like to see them or know they are around. I hate the socks that sock monkeys are made from. Who would wear such ugly puke oatmeal socks? No one, I guess which is why there are so many around to make monkeys. They don't even look like monkeys. They are like those anthropomorphic stuffed banana dolls at the fair. Stuffed monkeys that look like monkeys and are made from something other than socks I think are great. Go get yourself a plush monkey.I have a few other obsessions/compulsions but I'll save them for another day.Now would you please put on some shoes.