Abridged list of things I’ve been called in my life:

• “Ben”
• “Benjamin Charles Dyer” (when I was in trouble growing up)
• “Benjamin Dryer” (always an alarm bell on random phone calls)
• “Benji” (but no one ever said that a second time)
• “Ben-jammin’”
• “Ben D.” (my high school Spanish teacher called me this to differentiate me from “Ben L.”)
• All sorts of bad names I won’t republish here for various reasons
• “Bender”
• “Goon” (that’s what she calls me all the time)
• “Son”
• “Brother”
• “Boyfriend”
• “Fiancé”
• “Husband”

…

And now I can add to that list…”baby daddy.”

No! Wait! I mean, “father”…or perhaps “dad.”

Well, uh, huh. That was…a shock. Well, alright then. Uh, we’re having a baby.

RB: “I love you, but you’re a lunatic.”
KC: [laughs] “I love that you call me a lunatic!”
RB: [pause] “Well, alright then.”

KC: “You never quote me on your blog anymore!”
RB: “Well, you need to say something clever.”
KC: “Well, er…uh…”
RB: “Like this?”
KC: “Shut up!”
RB: [Moves to the laptop to blog this.]
KC: [Grabs my chair in a futile attempt to prevent me from blogging this.]

Ugh. I’ve caught the bug going around. It came from my brother-in-law’s family first, then Kelly got it, now I’ve got it.

I am seriously having a hard time recollecting the last time I’ve been this sick. Last night, I was doing unspeakable things to a toilet (I can hear my wife yelling my name in disgust already—sorry, hun, there’s no “clean” way to explain), and I swear I thought I was about to pass out. I started getting tunnel vision and I was having a hard time breathing. That was abundantly frightening. Never had anything like that happen before.

I consider myself a teetotaler and after last night, I really don’t understand the appeal of ending a hard night of drinking in that fashion.

Anyway, I got very little sleep last night either. I’m exhausted and yet I can’t fall asleep. In addition, I’m starving and yet I can’t eat. Haven’t eaten anything today (other than a small bowl of applesauce) and kept nothing down from yesterday. So, by my estimation, I (technically) haven’t eaten anything for somewhere on the order of about 40 hours now.

So, it’s daytime television and reading for me all day today. Any healthy thoughts and prayers directed my way would be most appreciated.

Okay, I realize that I’m running the risk of very quickly turning this blog into one of those crazy cat blogs, but this was just so choice:

Boo’s first bath was last night. Feel free to comment on our pitiful-looking cat.

Okay. Gotta say, I’m mostly unimpressed with Apple’s latest offerings in Mac OS X 10.5. That’s not saying much though. I was unimpressed with 10.4’s offerings and I was only impressed with 10.3 inasmuch as it was the first Mac OS X version to actually work well.

I’m mostly unimpressed with Apple’s new ways of finding and searching through files. I don’t know about you, but I know where the files I use are. If I’m looking for a file I created for a website done over three years ago, I know exactly where it is, because I’ve organized everything in such a way that I will always know where it is (”sites” directory and then each client gets a separate subdirectory). I don’t need a CoverFlow view to search through documents, because they’d be nothing but page after page of impossible-to-scan-text-at-this-distance ColdFusion, HTML and PHP files. I don’t need to scan through photos or music files or documents or such — everything, again, is organized in such a way that it’s unnecessary. All my photos are already in iPhoto, all my music is in iTunes (not to mention meticulously organized on a separate drive) and all my documents (of which there aren’t many) are exactly where I need them.

About the only thing I need help organizing is my desktop, and that’s always been a perennial source of disorganization that it doesn’t bother me much anymore. It tends to be nothing but endless streams of images I’ve uploaded/need to upload to Photobucket for later use, PDFs and other documents saved to the desktop that I don’t have any other place to put them (like the Authorize.Net PDF documentation I use occasionally for the project I’m working on), downloaded music files to be sorted through later and other miscellaneous crap that has nowhere to go, but will be used again someday.

Summary: everything that needs organizing is already organized except for the desktop which is a permanent lost cause. Oh sure, Leopard could put it in a 50-item stack for me, I guess, if I can ever be buggered to do so. Right now, I could take everything and drag it all to a drop box and, effectively, it would be out of the way as if it were in a stack. It would take me maybe 10 seconds, but I’m too lazy to do even that.

The only feature I have an interest in is Time Machine and there’s no way I have enough hard drive space to accomodate that. Either way, it still doesn’t cut it as a true backup system (which I still don’t have), so it’s not that much of a benefit.

New application features? Bah, don’t waste my time. I don’t use any of Apple’s regular-use programs. Safari is eschewed for Firefox (I won’t use the internet without ad blockers anymore), Mail and iCal have long since been dumped for Gmail and Google Calendar (I want my e-mail and events everywhere easily) and iChat…well, what do I need instant messaging for? About the only Apple program I use (other than iPhoto and iTunes, which aren’t counted towards the OS update) is Address Book and that’s only because Gmail’s address book feature is clunky and hard to use.

So, Apple is trying to fulfill needs that I don’t have (not to say that others may not have those needs, just not me) and wants me to pay $129 for it. As with all of the previous updates since 10.2, I’ll pass until I end up buying a new computer with it preinstalled (which will probably need to happen towards the end of the year anyway).

I guess what it boils down to is that I’m a crochety old man at the ripe age of 27: set in my ways and not really interested in changing. It’s nothing but whiz-bang shenanigans anyways. Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn! And where are my epsom salts?

I’ve got nothing for a long post, but here are some random “too long for Twitter” thoughts.

• First, in a followup to a story I’ve been following for some time now, Boo still mews when I poke her. In fact, the cat pretty much mews all the time now. To give a bonus Simpsons quotation: “You cry when you scrape your knee, you cry when they’re out of chocolate milk, you cry when you’re doing long division and you have a remainder left over.”
• I’ve started using a Moleskine notebook. It gives me that kind of indie clout when in fact I’m only using it to note that I need to pick up baking soda.
• Been playing Civ III again. I can’t believe how addictive that six-year-old game still is. Haven’t purchased Civ IV yet, but I’ll get that eventually.
• My Rangers still really, really suck. There are growing calls for owner Tom Hicks to sell the team. Of course, because the team really, really sucks, no one in town cares about baseball. So, imagine my indignation when he has the gall to complain about his stateside fans not measuring up to Liverpool F.C. fans (another team he shares ownership in). The same hooligan fans who have killed at least 135 people. (Reference 1 and 2) So, I apologize to Tom. Next time I’m at the ballpark, I’ll be sure to start a riot and lynch some Yankees fans, okay?
• I finished Harry Turtledove’s How Few Remain last week and thought it was really interesting. I’ve since started reading the second book in the lengthy franchise. It’s an interesting series so far, but we’ll see how long that goes on.
• My super-secret side project continues apace. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
• Still not completely used to the ring yet, but I’m getting there.

Boo and Pancake don’t quite get along yet. Well, Pancake is fine, but Boo is a little…perturbed about the situation.