By the time I woke up, Strata had caught her flight back home.

I got up, ate a Luna bar, then headed to the Field Museum for two things: to see Sue and to see the Pompeii exhibit.

When I first walked in the building, I’d started to pass one of the dinosaurs before I looked up, realizing what an incredibly long neck it had. How long? I was unable to get the neck completely in my camera’s view (I didn’t think to try from the upper level, darn it).

Even though I’d arrived just in time for my Pompeii exhibit, I decided that Sue was a bigger priority. I went over to see her, stunned both by how large (and how small) she was. Her pelvis bone was much larger than I’d expected — it had also suffered some damage, including a missing tip. One of the museum staff was there answering questions about Sue, and generally joking.

“We’ve been going out for seven years,” he said. “I like older women.”

When I asked him about the pubic bone, he said that the leading theory about why the bone a) was so large and b) had suffered so much wear and tear was likely due to the fact that a T. Rex, like a chicken, slept in a squatting position, resting on the pubic bone.

The image that went through my head went something like: Chicken Run, only with T. Rexes. Hrm.

I was also surprised at how much characteristics one could see in the bone, including breaks and mends, as well as some of the attachment points. In all, Sue is an extremely well-preserved (and prepared) skeleton.

After visiting with Sue, I went to have my morning coffee and some soup, then headed over to the Pompeii exhibit, where I had to wait in line. Frankly, it was a much bigger exhibit than I was expecting. While there was the usual jewelry, and so on, I was quite stunned to see entire frescoed walls (three walls of one room, actually) and the variety of goods displayed.

I also felt quite humbled to see a statue believed to be from Julius Caesar’s father-in-law’s place in Herculaneum. Quite amazing.

There were precious few places to sit; the place was also quite packed. By the end, my feet were quite sore, but I managed. After that, I bought a t-shirt (for Rick) and an Octopus plate for myself.

I rested for a bit, then re-visited Sue again before going upstairs to see Sue’s real head (the real head is too heavy for the model of the body, thus it’s upstairs with a replica on Sue’s skeleton).

I wandered around through several other exhibits, including one about Tibet and another about the Southwest Pacific before heading back to my hotel.

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Friday was the 37 Signals “Getting Real” workshop, which was a lot of fun. There were ways the company approached getting projects done that (quite frankly) hadn’t occurred to me, in part because I hadn’t worked with that sort of team before.

I still haven’t decompressed, so I haven’t really thought about what I learned. What I can say, though, is that my fingers were really arthritic afterwards from all the typing. A few good yoga stretches (and a nap) helped with that, though.

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I arrived in Chicago for the 37 Signals “Getting Real” workshop Thursday night. Boss lady Strata Chalup and I decided to go out for Brazilian food, where they bring slabs o’ meat to your table. We’d both been feeling a bit protein-starved, and I’d never had Brazilian cuisine before.

OMG, it was fabulous. They kept bringing by pieces of meat prepared different ways to the table. While I’m not usually a beef person, I liked their rump roast the best, though absolutely none of it was bad. They also brought side dishes of fried bananas (yumm!), mashed potatoes and fried polenta in french fry shapes.

As Strata put it, “This is the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory of meat on a stick.”

If you’re ever in Chicago, highly recommended.

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I’m frustrated.

I haven’t been able to create (and save) new charts in Chartsmith for months. Blacksmith’s tech support wasn’t helpful.

Now, another of my old charts won’t open, and I really relied on that one. Yes, I have backups, but that’s not the point, really.

I’m really peeved.

Thing is, I’ve never found anything I like as much, but maybe something’s come out that I didn’t know about.

Help?

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Today we got an emergency call from mom, who told us that aanother of our favorite stores in Menlo Park was closing: Northern Lights, purveyors of fine Scandinavian goods. Worse, they were closing for good in an hour. Rick donned his lutefisk t-shirt, and we went in Getaway Car 2.0 to downtown Menlo Park.

Rick looked at a Dale of Norway cardigan, then went over to find a pullover. By the time he decided he wanted a cardigan, it was gone. The only other cardigan in his size was in pastels with a white background, so he passed on that one.

However, later, we were in luck, because the lady who was coveting it thought it might be the wrong size, so she gave it to Rick. He bought both a cardigan and a pullover (the pullover was one of the Salt Lake City Olympic sweaters). We also got a three-candle candelabra, some candles, some flatbread, and a beautiful serving set, all at an extremely reasonable price.

Except, of course, when one loses a local store, the cost is too much.

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It’s that time of year to whine about that bit of shopping we desperately need to have — but don’t.

I’ve been asking retailers for years to be able to enter an item, then find which of the stores near me happens to have that item in stock.

Is it really so hard?

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Trips taken: 7
Seattle, Calgary, Glasgow, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Diego.

Airlines flown: 5
United, Air Canada, British Airways, American, Southwest

Traveler’s Century Club countries visited: 4
United States (Continental), Canada, England, Scotland (none new)

Conventions where I was a speaker: 3
Further Confusion, BayCon, Loscon (I had to cancel Conjecture, alas, because I was coming to San Diego the following week for RubyConf)

Conventions/Conferences where I was a volunteer (either for that convention or representing another): 7
Further Confusion, San Francisco Writer’s Conference, Norwescon, BayCon, Westercon, Loscon, LISA.

Obsure music found and acquired: 3
Boney M (German import), Florian Zabach (old vinyl, yeah), Blancmange (UK import)

Artists whose tunes I bought off iTunes: 76
Backstreet Boys, Guided by Voices, Marcy Playground, White Stripes, Daft Punk, Caesars, Tears for Fears, Dorothy Hall, Faith No More, Gary Hoey, The Gypsy Hombres, Mojo Nixon, Marie Osmond, The Stranglers, Erasure, Beck, 4 to the Bar, Yaz, Thurle Ravenscroft, Dublin City Ramblers, Toni Basil, Devo, The Nylons, M, Boney M, Lenny Kravitz, The Rubinoos, Duffy, Rockpile, The Monkees, Billy Connolly, The Real McKenzies, The Presidents of the USA, U2, David Lee Roth, Buggles, Scritti Politti, Sparks, Weezer, Jack Costanzo, Jack Johnson, The J. Geils Band, Miriam Makeba, Die Lollipops, No Doubt, Harry Belafonte, Cake, Enya, Daler Mehndi, Donny and Marie Osmond, Puffy AmiYumi, REM, Split Enz, The Wallflowers, American Bread, Bay City Rollers, Bowling for Soup, Martin Mull, Mocedades, The Dandy Warhols, Osibisa, El General, David, Wes Montgomery, Thalia, Madness, Jonathan Butler, ABC, Jean Knight, Tom Jones, Wild Cherry, Asleep at the Wheel, Bob Wills, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, The Weavers

Favorite Guilty Pleasure bought off iTunes:
Die Lollipops, Pata Pata (Safari-Song)

Movies seen in theatre: 1
Serenity, which I loved.

Programming Languages Learned: 1
Ruby, of course. You knew that.

Ruby on Rails projects shipped: 3

Rails projects in progress: 5, maybe 6 as of later today….

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Back when there was the virus/viri/virii/viruses/virus and octopus/octopi/octopodes/octopuses debate on the Rails list, somehow I missed this article on my husband’s web site. In short, in classical Latin usage, virus was an uncountable noun, thus its lack of a definitive plural. It is only the change in usage that renders a plural necessary.

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I do love it when software companies stop shipping software, y’know?

Additionally, as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac will no longer be available for download from Mactopia. It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple’s Safari.

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Enroute to San Diego for the third time in two months.

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Ruby on Rails 1.0 is out, along with the new and improved web site. One of the things I like most is the featuring of Why the Lucky Stiff’s Poignant Guide.

Chunky bacon!

sudo gem update rails –include-dependencies

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This is a first for me. I’m sitting in my hotel room, listening to a rather rhythmic sound, when I realize it’s not as perfectly synchronized as I first thought. It’s a tap group, upstairs. How many times have you had tap dancers upstairs? They’ve obviously practiced the piece, but as it gets harder, there’s some loss of synchronization. At least five people, perhaps as many as 15, are tapping the night away. I can barely hear the music.

Kind of makes me miss tap class, actually. I had a very demented tap teacher once upon a time. She’d do things like choreograph waltzes (Blue Danube). There are some pieces I still can’t see without seeing (and hearing) a room full of people doing a bunch of tap moves.

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So, this morning I did an ‘svn up’ on a project before I went to breakfast, then went off onto the other side of the hotel property to do some work and schmooze.

Later, I got this error:

$ svn up<br></br>svn: REPORT request failed on '/svn/reposname/!svn/vcc/default'<br></br>svn: REPORT of '/svn/reposname/!svn/vcc/default': 400 Bad Request (http://domain.com)<br></br>

See, I hadn’t changed anything, and svn up on some other domains worked — which made the problem significantly harder to debug, actually.

Ultimately, the problem was simply a blocked port. Thanks to Daniel for figuring it out while I still had some hair remaining.

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I realized I haven’t been writing too much about Ruby on Rails lately, but there’s been a grand flurry of activity.

At one point, I had nine Ruby on Rails projects in the air, which was driving me crazy because I can’t wrap my brain around that many projects (four really is about my limit).

Recently, two were finished, one is in a limited deployment until I get the next feature set going, one was deemed irrelevant, and two others were combined into a single application.

Currently, I’ve got six, including the one in limited deployment, including a new small job from a client.

So, if you haven’t heard from me and think I don’t love you, that’s not it. I’m just slammed.

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The other day, someone pointed out that they’d never seen a picture of Scruffy. Well, I have to admit that he generally posts them on his own weblog, so I typically don’t bother posting them here.

For those of you who haven’t seen him, here’s the Scruffmeister guarding his catnip:

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