matthearn.com

I hope everyone is surviving this devastating blizzard and haven’t had a roof collapse under the weight of all this snow. </SARCASM> At least the Brandywine School District behaved a bit more rationally last night than they had yesterday morning; after dismissing all the schools at lunch time because of light flurries, they held off cancelling school today until this morning, and of course were able to have a regular school day as a result because we got no more white flakes on our driveway than I would get on my bedspread after brushing my cat. (Siamese produce much less dander than other breeds.)

The weather has made it difficult to get in my regularly scheduled workouts, which is frustrating and making me a bit depressed; I had to leave work at lunchtime yesterday to meet the kids at the bus stop, so I didn’t get to swim, and my general malaise has made me less likely to do my chinups, pushups, and planks; I haven’t done a plank since the middle of last week, and the last few days have failed to meet my daily 30-rep goal on the other two. At the same time, being trapped at home with my children has made me much more likely to drink delicious, calming liquor, as well as completely fall off the wagon food-wise.

My plan to try and shed fat by simply avoiding carbs most of the time isn’t going very well; after last week’s birthday-related debauchery, I haven’t dared step on a scale, and I’m still eating far too much sugar and crunchy snacks in the evenings. As much as it pains me, it’s probably time to start deliberately counting calories to try and stay under my daily limit, even on weight-training days. ‘Tis the season for seasonal depression, something that’s affected me in recent years, and it’s a bit of a death-spiral: I get sad because it’s cold and dismal, which makes me more likely to eat and drink things I shouldn’t, which makes me more sad and frustrated with myself, which makes me more likely to skip out on workouts, which makes me *more* sad and frustrated with myself, which makes me a rather crappy husband and father ’cause I just become a completely miserable jerk.

I’ve done better at staying out of my funks than I did last year (when a few times I think Sarah was going to simply put a pillow over my head to put me out of everyone’s misery), but the winter is yet young. Only 52 days until spring.

I must report a bit of sad news: despite my jury-rigging brilliance, the Hearn family’s venerable Playstation 2 appears to have met its sad but inevitable end.

It had been slowly dying for some time. A year or so ago I had to take most of it apart to clean the disc-reading laser and blow out 9 years of accumulated cat dander and other detritus. Earlier this year, the cooling fan built into it had gotten so noisy that I decided it was time to replace it, so I ordered a new one, popped the case open and put it in. Finally, last week, I noticed that it would occasionally turn itself off. I usually left it running all the time (I subscribe to a relatively-common theory among nerds that electrical devices prefer to actually have electricity flowing through them at all times, and that frequent power-off and -on shortens the life of the device) and I’d come into the room and notice that instead of the blue and green lights indicating the P2, as it was affectionately known, were off, and the red light was on, indicating that the power switch on the back was on, but the OS wasn’t running.

Then I noticed that when playing a game, the cooling fan wasn’t turning on. The poor thing was overheating and powering itself down to keep from melting. So, I took it to the kitchen table, popped it open, and started testing things. A long story short, I determined that the fan itself was fine, but that the system board wasn’t signalling it to turn on for some reason. I should probably have put the poor console out of its misery at that point, but instead I went online and ordered a cheap USB fan to stick to the front.

Then, I read a nerdy article about a fellow who took a similar fan, connected it to a USB cable, and used it to cool his enormous, sweaty forehead during extend sessions of Diablo 3. I realized that the P2 has USB ports on the front, and I have plenty of old USB cables lying about. So, I took the fan out, spliced it and a spare cable together, and plugged it in. Whirrrrrrr! Yay! I reinstalled the fan into the P2, with the fan wires going out and around to the USB connection on the front. Brilliant! Sure, the “boot OS” button didn’t work anymore. But you could simply turn the box off on the back and then press the CD load button to get things to come to life. Sadly, all I had done was delay the inevitable.

Just as I was planning another self-congratulatory post about my ability to hack anything and get it functioning again, I sat down for a few minutes of MLB: The Show last night. Powered the P2 up, inserted the disc, waited for David Wright to appear on my screen so that I could remind him that the Mets suck, and…nothing. Back to the red light. Hm. I ejected and reinserted the disc tray, which booted the OS, but again: down she went. O noes!

P2 came into our lives in January 2003, a highly-appreciated birthday present from Sarah to myself. Our first game together was Tiger Woods 2002. Over many years, we have spent many hours together playing many games of football, baseball, basketball; hundreds of rounds of golf; and slaughtered countless numbers of terrorists, Germans, rival gang members, and prostitutes. P2, we mourn you, and along with you all of the valuable saved games and customized athletes to which you gave life. Requiescat in pace.

Playstation 2, 2003-2012

The Big Picture has a rage-inducing set of photographs of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The most depressing:

A young heron sits dying amidst oil splattering underneath mangrove on an island impacted by oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Barataria Bay, along the the coast of Louisiana on Sunday, May 23, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Sure would have been nice to have that $500,000 remote turn-off device that BP didn’t bother with, huh? I hard that so far, this has cost BP $760,000,000. That’s about 1% of the fine that should be levied on them.

Beware: many of these pictures of the Haiti Earthquake are unpleasant, involving nasty injuries and dead bodies.

Have you donated to the Red Cross?

Andrew Sullivan’s filler-in-ers have been posting links to “depressing Christmas songs,” and of course how can you do that without Tom Waits?

You know why everyone hates the Yankees? Here’s an example, a text message I received from my buddy Courtney at midnight last night:

YANKS 4 LIFE BIATCH!!! THE CHAMPS ARE HERE!!!

That’s why. Dammit I’m depressed.

Stupid baseball, making me and the Phanatic all depressed.

(Photo: Melody Kramer.)

Noooooooo! Les Paul has died. He was exactly one day older than my paternal maternal grandfather, my oldest living relative. Damn.

Update: Apparently I don’t know what paternal means. At least I caught it before I got rude comments! (Not that I won’t still receive rude comments. Just that, you know, I fixed it first.)

John Hughes died yesterday. He was slightly older than my parents, which means he was too young. I am not qualified to comment on his life and work, so I point you to someone who is.

Pretty good article on the demise of the Three Little Bakers Dinner Theater. I’d seen a bunch of shows there, particularly with friends appearing therein. I knew it had gone out of business, but was surprised to find out they’ve actually knocked the theater down and are building some kind of medical complex there. Tough loss.