weekend

Today's email included spam for a product that will "thicken [my] penis". I think I'll pass. That's even weirder than the Viagra spam and the spam addressed to African-American women (in which category I do not fit).

Today was the Great Race, which starts pretty much in front of our house. I can live with the necessary sound, once a year, of a few thousand people getting set up to run a race. However, blasting music for more than an hour (starting at 8am) at volume levels that would get me cited for disorderly conduct if they came from my house is inappropriate. I wonder who the correct body is to complain to. (City council?)

I guess this race just has bad karma for me or something. In 1999, the first year we lived here, Dani and I got tickets (and threat of towing; someone rang the bell at 7am) for being parked on the street. The "no parking" signs were apparently invisible that year in our block. Dani paid the ticket; I went to traffic court and the judge dismissed it. (After: "And how long have you lived in Squirrel Hill?" "We moved into the house 10 days before this happened." "Ok, dismissed. Just so you know, they do this every year and they're not real good about signs." I didn't ask if there was something the courts could do about that deficiency.)

( Simchat Torah )

( Coronation )

We picked up a different universal remote today. It claims to support a Sampo DVD player. I successfully configured it for the TV and two brands of VCR. I configured it for the DVD player using the provided code (which matches the one we found via google and that didn't work for the other remote), and it didn't work. I wonder if there's something wrong with the player -- its own remote works fine, though, so probably not. With the first remote, the "try all codes" feature didn't turn it up either. I haven't tried it with the second yet. (The second is the better remote in many other ways, though, so I know that's the one we're keeping.)