Where am I again?

Before my hometown Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl in January, I asked my father to send me a complete copy of either of the two local papers, the Tampa Tribune or the St. Petersburg Times. As it turned out, the Bucs won, and he ended up sending both. (Tribune headline: "Yes!" Times headline: "Champs!")

The papers finally arrived today, and I was reading them while watching last night's episode of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" on my TiVo. Suddenly, while I was fast-forwarding through a commercial break, I became disoriented when a "Channel 4" logo popped up during a promo. "Wait a minute, that should be Channel 8," I said to myself.

Channel 8 is the NBC affiliate in Tampa, which I am currently several thousand miles away from.

Eventually, I convinced myself that despite the newspapers I was reading, I was in Los Angeles, and 4 was the correct channel number. (It helped that I was awakened by a minor earthquake at about 4:20 this morning.)

If I ever get newspapers sent to me from Tampa again, I may have to request that the TV listings aren't included, in order to not have this problem again.

More great moments in television

Here in L.A., there have been several incidents in the past couple of months of morons...sorry, I mean people...driving into the path of commuter trains. According to the promos I've been fast-forwarding through with my TiVo for the past couple of days, on the 11:00 news tonight, the NBC affiliate will be airing a report called "Dangerous Crossings: A Live Event." I can only assume that what they're hoping for is live footage of a car almost getting hit by a train, and what they're secretly hoping for is live footage of a car actually getting hit by a train.

Now, if only there were any trains running at 11:00 P.M., they'd really have something there.

Now that's what I call bunched up!

On my way to work this morning, I saw three buses on the same route waiting in the same left turn lane, with only one lonely, overwhelmed car between two of them.

Surely some stand-up comedian has made this joke already

Yesterday, my cat had a checkup at the vet, and was found to have an ear infection. So now I have to put drops in her ears every day for three weeks, a process she does not enjoy.

The sheet I got from the vet's office says that one of the possible side effects of the medicine is "drowsiness." She's a cat. How am I supposed to tell if she's suffering from drowsiness?

Another driving milestone

On Saturday night, in a parking lot in Santa Monica, I saw for the first time a California passenger car license plate that started with a 5. (5A, to be more specific. My license plate, which dates to June 1999, begins with 4F, and they're basically going in order.)

Words I can't believe became song titles in 1950s musicals

1. Shipoopi

I wished I'd had a camera

I don't have a photograph, so I'll have to describe the scene. Picture the posts holding up the streetlights in a small town in the United States. They'll probably have metal poles sticking out at a 90-degree angle so that banners or flags can be placed over them. Those banners will perhaps be advertising a tourist attraction, or an arts event, or making a civic boast.

In New Providence, New Jersey, when I was last there in the summer of 1998, the banners they had hanging read "New Providence Yields to Pedestrians."

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Sunday evening, my computer started making a loud buzzing sound. In the process of determining what was buzzing, a process which involved opening my computer up repeatedly, I managed to knock the monitor off its perch (a wooden filing cabinet thing that cost about $20 at Target and that doesn't quite fit together right) and onto the floor.

Once I got the monitor picked up, I noticed that it was displaying a beautiful rainbow of colors. Unfortunately, this meant that there were bands of incorrect color over much of the screen area. Repeated attempts to "degauss" were to no avail.

Meanwhile, I figured out that the buzzing noise was the fan inside the power supply. I figured this out by turning the computer on with the case open. Kids, don't try that at home.

However, the buzzing noise ended up stopping as mysteriously as it had started, although it couldn't have hurt that I got a lot of dust out from inside the computer, including the thick coating on the power supply's vent holes.

The monitor seemed to be a lost cause, so I had to replace it, by buying the cheapest monitor of the same size that I could get at CompUSA (well, it'll be the cheapest if I ever get the rebate back). Since it has a normal base, unlike my old monitor, the 17-inch CRT Apple Studio Display, it actually fits on my computer desk like it's supposed to.

So after nearly three years of looking to the left at my monitor, I'm once again looking straight ahead, and it's a little weird. It's in pretty much the same position as my monitor has been at work all along, so now I hope I don't accidentally start trying to closed-caption something at home.

Remaining blissfully ignorant

Clearly, I need to stop checking my e-mail right before I leave my apartment in the morning. It didn't help me much on September 11, 2001, and it didn't help me much this morning, either.