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While I'm celebrating less than entirely pointful milestones, I should probably make brief mention of the more meaningful ones too. I was promoted this week, presumably on the grounds of my strongly exceeding people's expectations of my Guitar Hero prowess. There's only one sound to mark the occasion:

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Today is my eleventy-first twenty-fifth birthday. Alas twenty-five years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

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A few hours before Jonathan Coulton performed his very first gig in the UK ever (And the first outside the states, I believe), he bought a Tenori-on which is apparently only available over there.

This means we ended up being the first people to ever see him perform playing with a new geeky toy. It looked very much like this:

I also, briefly, met Aquarion.

We also ended up with covers of The Saturday Boy and “Do They Know It’s Christmas Time?” The latter of which doesn’t appear to have made it to YouTube yet. Most of the rest of the concert did, though

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I'm currently sporting a rather fetching accessory in the form of a stylish forehead lump. I acquired it as the runner-up prize in an embarrassingly brief tiff with what turned out to be a strategically more adept opponent.

Let me set the scene. I was innocently strolling the back straight of an until-then refreshing late night walk in the city. It was dark and mostly empty of people, but it's a nice enough area and I feel I cut an intimidating enough figure to discourage most potential aggressors. In my arrogance I flouted the darkness.

Seeking to score my walk with the appropriate soundtrack I took out my iPod and flicked through the available music. In retrospect I think this may have been what provoked the attack. I spotted a sudden movement in the shadows and then WHAM!

I was set upon by an ornery lamppost.

It hit me only once, landing a precision shot just above my left eye. Thankfully it didn't follow when I fled the scene. Perhaps it was just defending its territory, I don't know.

In any case I'll have to go to the Garda station tomorrow to file a report about the items I lost in the mugging. Luckily I recovered the iPod but my dignity was damaged at the scene.

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I love living in the future.

I plan to take part in Matthew Baldwin's NaNoReMo, so after work today I went to Eason's to pick up a copy of Catch-22. When I got there, to the despair of my inner quiz enthusiast, I couldn't remember who wrote the book. "Begins with a 'J'," I thought. Too bad the books are arranged alphabetically by author's surname.

Did I face the dreadful prospect of searching the entire fiction section of one of the city's biggest bookshops? Or, worse, admitting to the cute shop assistant that I didn't know who wrote one of last century's most influential novels?

Like hell I did. I whipped out my shiny new iPod—note that it's not possible to simply take out this device; it must be whipped out for proper effect—and let it sniff about for open wifi networks. With the satisfying tap of a few keys I was heading to 'H' to grab a copy of Joseph Heller's masterpiece.

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Or more accurately—and putting the Transformers soundtrack to the side for just a moment—I've got the touch. The iPod Touch that is. It arrived this morning. It's the greatest thing ever. Sample dialog from my phone conversation with the delivery man:

Him

Are you at home?

Me

No, but I can be there in five minutes. I'm just around the corner, on Barrow Street.

Him

Oh, are you in Google?

Me

Erm… yes.

Him

Great, I'll drop it off there then. I have some other things to deliver there too.

When I went to collect it from reception there was a big pile of identical little brown boxes sitting there. I'm not the only one playing with a new toy today.

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Two major developments last week:

I got lasik surgery on Tuesday, allowing me to see reasonably well for the first time in 13 years or so. By "reasonably well" I mean well enough to fly a plane. As I understand it, visual acuity is the only relevant qualification for flying a plane, so see you in the skies soon.

On Friday I reached the end of my apartment search and signed a contract for a one year lease in a cool place about 200m from my office. The walk from my bed to my desk is under 1000 paces, and that's if I take the stairs. I moved in on Saturday.

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I'm still in Mountain View. I realise I've been pretty woeful at keeping this blog up-to-date while I'm away, so I'm going to try to put that right.

Since my last post I have:

Gone to a chili cookoff and eaten chili made with tequila and chocolate,

Climbed to the top of the highest tower in San Francisco and sneered at the city from above,

Hit on a waitress in Hooters, having decided that, no, that's not too cheesy; that's what they're there for,

Watched the Sun set over the Pacific,

Gone on a weekend-long road trip to Las Vegas, Nevada and visited the (allegedly) world-famous Comedy Club in the Riviera,

Not bought a guitar for $10,000 despite the overwhelming, or at least whelming, urge to do so,

Stood inside a capsule that used to be a part of the International Space Station,

Come second in a scavenger hunt in Golden Gate park and followed it up with food and drinks in a beach-side bar, during work hours,

and Got my ticket to see Spider-Man 3 on Friday.

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My eyes hurt from spending the whole day with dilated pupils so I'll make this brief. In the words (possibly) of Charles Manson, bullets to the rescue:

• I was offered a job on Friday. I have accepted. I start in three weeks. There will soon be a disclaimer that the opinions expressed on Soylent Red are mine and not those of my new employer.
• I spent the weekend in Clare (the county, not a girl). It was fun.
• I have resolved to spend St Patrick's Day next year in New York. People appear to be interested in this idea.
• I had an examination at the Wellington Eye Clinic today. I'm an ideal candidate for LASIK. In fact, post surgery, I will have better eyesight than I could possibly get from corrective lenses because they can fix the asymmetry in my corneas as well as my myopia.
• I love Lamp.

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