OK, I will be good. 

My old boss invited me to his birthday at the Brewery.  It did not occur to me until this morning on the way to work that there was a good chance The Sphincter might be there.  It's a long  story.  But I hadn't seen Old Boss since Feb of 2013 when I left NASA with a boatload of angst, embarked upon 7 months of retirement followed by re-employment at a place that is, essentially, European. 

I went to the event anyway.  At a brewery.  I was kind of hoping there was an attached restaurant so I could get a burger. Um. Nope. 

So, I threw all caution to the wind and ate pizza, which I should not, and drank beer, which I also should not.  Since these things used to cause me intense discomfort, sinus pain and arthritis like pain for about 36 hours.  Well, on the theory that this is all a result of leaky gut syndrome and the fact that I missed lunch today made me stu...er adventurous.

My sinuses are a little unhappy.  So far, not so bad.  Haven't eaten "regular" pizza since before 2000.  It wasn't that great, but hell.   If my gut has healed up sometime in the last 14 years maybe there's hope!  Not 100% sure it's  "gluten" issue - since the "gluten free" beer in Bavaria still killed me.

Tomorrow will tell.  Or maybe tonight, is this the incipient headache or is it just me being hypochondriac?  Will not even consider checking the blood sugar, there's naught to be done about it.

I said not a word to the Old Boss about the beer/pizza and only a few about how awesome the new workplace is.  He was happy when I mentioned I still use one of his metrics (it's OK to wait on the customer, it's NOT OK for the customer to wait on YOU), and that I selected the "pig" stein out of the pile of give-away steins, of which I did not take a photo.  And we have a deal to take the motorbikes to Richmond.  Soon.

So if I can avoid serious joint pain and sinus explosions in the near future, life will have gotten both easier and harder.  Easier to worry about finding a meal away from home and harder to avoid the temptation of the evil carbohydrate.

Yes, I'm working on revamping the design for One Post Wonder, with a goal of making the act of reading more joyous.  

I've made some good strides in test, but am also challenged by needing to do some home renos this week while the neighbour is away camping (so I can put a ladder up on the south side of the house).

Also there's the danger of RSI, which often happens to me when I type or mouse with too much "focus" for too much time. I felt a little of it yesterday and immediately walked away from the keyboard. 

Hopefully by Monday there should be some changes in production. I like the idea of OPW, and Tom's done some good work on building in functionality that makes it useful and usable.  So I guess my message right now is, bear with me, it will get better soon.  

Also keep posting, so I can have stuff to test against.

I try to go at least once a year.  For practice.

Last month I downloaded Davíd Garza's "A Strange Mess of Flowers" on eMusic.  As I sometimes struggle to use up all 90 of the tracks I'm paying for each month (which, as I mentioned, I'm getting a deal on), I actually leapt at the chance to download a 71-track "four-disc box set" or tracks, on the basis of a bunch of 30-second samples.  (I can't remember if I listened to all of them or not.  Because that's over half an hour right there.)

I was not a huge Davíd Garza fan, though I did like his "This Euphoria" album, which was at the top of my Amazon wishlist for some years, mostly because I happened to add it first after listening to it from the library, so it was mostly the convenience of not having to think as much about my eMusic downloads for the month.

But I'm getting tired of the album now, and ready to go on to someone else, even interspersed with bits of my other playlists as it's been.  The songs are okay, but few of them are standing out--well, I just heard one called "My Sister" that seemed interesting, but I can tell that I'm not retaining them in my head, and a week from now I won't get any snippets of remembered music when I look at the titles.

Ah, well, it's not the worst eMusic download I've done.  A few months ago I took a chance on a double album by a band named Science Fiction, which turned out to be basically AOR--occasionally quite bad AOR, with lyrics written by someone whose first language was not English.  (The best songs were thus the ones which they sang in their native language, because I couldn't tell how bad the lyrics were.)  I'd take Garza over that any day.

And, let's be honest, if I actually spent the time to listen to the album and get to know it, it may very well grow on me.  But who has the time to do that any more?

This morning I got a cappuccino at Balzac's, in downtown Kitchener, toward the beginning of my walk to work.

This, in and of itself, is probably not worth a post, given that I think "what I had for breakfast" is not really a one-post wonder. 

But there was this cute moment where both the patron next to me and I wanted to get lids for our drinks, and we both couldn't find them. 

"Where are the lids?"

"They're in that tub."

"It's empty."

"No, they're there."

"No, it's empty."  *pause*  "Oh!  They're dark-coloured, and in the shadows.  I'm really sorry."

"That's okay.  I probably should top them up.  And I make a rule not to expect much of people before they have had their coffee."

"That's very generous of you."

It was also a good cappuccino.

OK, that was really over the top.

I participated in a flash mob tonight.

Some band called World Town Sound System played Rittenhouse Square, and they put out a call for salsa dancers to show up.

I could see several problems as soon as I got there:

1. The song wasn't salsa, exactly

2. They'd restricted access to the front of the stage, where they wanted us to be

3. They had no idea how many of us there would be

But hey, what the hell. It worked out. I came across a salsera of my acquaintance who hadn't shown up with a partner and we managed to dance without harming ourselves or others in the tight space available.

The band ain't bad. Their songs kinda sound similar to one another for the most part, but the energy's great.

In One Post Wonder news: I've been offered help with the visual design of One Post Wonder, and Progress is being Made. Thanks to Sean Puckett for jumping in.

So I've eased up on my own changes to the look and feel to see what happens there. I'll be concentrating on the functionality in the meanwhile.

I'm really pretty glad nobody has been foolish enough to tag me for the Ice Bucket Challenge.  Aside from my general automatic resistance to coercive memes, what does the IBC offer anyone but a chance to be seen  - not being seen writing out a big check to a charity because that would be boring - but to seem to support a charity (by sending them a lot less money than you *could*) and maybe look a little bad-ass by inflicting icy discomfort upon yourself.

My charitable giving habits are not lavish, but they are also not driven by peer pressure and surely won't be mentioned on social media.  What causes I might support are my business and I regret that someone just might get offended when a challenge like this is brushed off.

I think that it's nice for the ALS charity to have a whole lotta cash come in that they would not have gotten, but what other charities are now not getting money they would have gotten and how many others are going to try and replicate ICB and generate windfall donations?

Maybe the net effect will be good, in the "awareness raising" kind of good and maybe in 4 months nobody will even remember it and countless attempted follow ons will have already faded from conscious memory.

Oh and YOU DAMN KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!

No screen shots this time Tom but the same kind of thing happens in Chrome that I posted about yesterday. The header text starts out with something that looks like a 36/48pt font and as I scroll (arrow - I'm a keyboard kind of guy) it gets smaller and smaller until it finds its nadirFont around 14/16pt. Related: nadirFont is a weird thing to say - anytime.

Right now I'm wondering what happens when I past in a URL? Can I make text into a hyper link such as: The Cutting-Edge Butter Knife of Your Dreams Is Finally Here. Holy Mackerel! I think it did it. If it didn't and you really are dreaming about butter knives, then I'll post this as just plain text: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/the-worlds-best-butterknife/?mbid=social_twitter

I'm off to go buy a knife I don't need but do so clearly NEED. See y'all on OPW tomorrow.

How's school, you ask? Since it's also work, that's two questions in one. Does that break the One Post Wonder rule? Hmm. 

Short answer: Pretty good. Although that may be because my first class doesn't meet until Monday. This is the Week Of All The Meetings In The World, coming on the heels of a three-day work retreat, and interspersed with All The Deadlines In The World, so it's pretty hectic. 

Or, it should be. I am lethargic and resistant and having to trick myself into doing tasks that must be completed. My current trick bait is playing Fallen London.

As a matter of fact, I think I'll go beat up some mysterious clay men or get drunk on honey for a while before I get back to writing this book chapter outline.

Took another kizomba class last night. The instructor said straight up that "Angolans don't dance kizomba like this, traditional kizomba has a little more distance, but 'kizomba feeling' is very close."

That fits with what I see when I watch kizomba videos on the interwebs. The people who invented the dance don't feel the need to be quite so far in each other's space. Interesting.

On the One Post Wonder front, here's what's new in the last couple of days:

• Counter for new posts, also for new comments and followers
• Page title also includes a count of notices and new posts waiting
• Added clearly labeled "Edit Profile Picture" button to "Me" page
• Started "signing" emails to keep them out of spam folders– maybe

Also, I've received a welcome offer of help with the visual design side of things, which is awesome, and we'll see where that leads.

In the near future I plan to add a nightly email digest, sent only if you haven't been on the site. This will be something you can shut off, of course.

A challenge for you: follow two new people today, and comment on two posts.