Moving Platform

Hi

2008-11-09T19:37:00.000-08:00

I'm sure by this time that even The Bat isn't watching this page.

It's been over 6 months. I stopped posting for a few reasons: I have nothing to say, I've been doing nothing interesting and my outlook has become increasingly gloomy. In case you haven't heard everything seems to be going down the tubes.

So what have I been doing? Well mostly playing video games, reading and watching DVDs. See. Nothing terribly exciting. Much to The Bat's annoyance I've been playing the hell out of Pokemon Diamond, Emerald and FireRed. I'm actually trying to catch them all, or at least all but one (I think it was only released in Japan). Right now I am at 73.4% caught (I created a handy spreadsheet to keep track). I've almost reached the upper limit of which ones I can capture on my own. Now I'll have to start to trade them online. It's a bit of an effort. So far I've only been able to trade one. Trying to coordinate times with some one in the UK is a bit of a pain.

I've also started watching Ken Burn's Jazz and started listening to jazz CDs from the library. I guess this really started with the credits of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian which had Susannah McCorkle's rendition of Jobim's Águas de Março. I enjoyed it so much that the next year was declared the Year of Bossa Nova. While I still enjoy Bossa Nova, I've started to branch out. Mostly into Cool Jazz (so not really all that far) with Dave Brubeck.

With some effort, I hope I can become a jazz tool and turn my nose up at all other music. Even jazz! I just have to make sure I don't fall into the Smooth Jazz trap, the most deadly and shameful of all jazz. I suppose I've already slid a bit down that slippery slope due to my like of Steely Dan.

Oh, I completely forgot about working a lot. We opened two new expansions at work that both took (and continue to take) a large chunk of my attention.

I'll leave you with this.

What I Miss

2008-04-18T15:09:00.001-07:00

Oh crap. I might be turning into Andy Rooney.
The other day I checked out a library book that had the little pocket in
the back to hold the card that they would stamp the due date on. I have
seen them in years; everything is barcodes now. At the first public
library I went to they would stamp the cards then photo graph them with
this huge machine. I can't imagine having to store all those film
canisters or even have to go back and find a book. I wonder if they had
to use them in some sort of torrid checkout dispute.
In junior high and high school, especially high school, I spent a lot of
time in the library. I'm pretty sure that I was the only one in jr high
that knew the school acutally had a library. I checked out quite a few
book, probably confusing the student assistants by forcing them to do
their jobs. I would always check the card and see how full it was, how
often the book had been check out or even when the last time someone had
it out. I felt particularly good if the book hadn't been check out in a
while. Maybe the book was lonely.
I remember reading lots of military airplane books and teen sci-fi
novels. I especially liked the reference books. They were special
somehow. You couldn't check them out so they had to be special right?
Anyway, the lack of checkout cards make me feel that I'm the first
person to crack that volume. that little weird link with readers that
have gone before is gone. Not a huge loss, but a loss none the less.
Ah crap, I forgot to make a witty,crumegonly joke at the expense of kids
these days.

Jobs With Hats

2008-04-03T19:26:00.003-07:00

Jobs that have hats associated with them:

Policemen - peaked caps
Rangers - campaign hats
Firemen - helmets
Construction workers - hard hats
Conductors conductor cap (which is like a peaked cap I suppose)
Chefs - toque
Cowboys - cowboy hat

You get the point. Some careers are known of their hats. The last time you thought of a matador a montera probably popped into your head. My career choice has no hat and that sucks. Though I can't imagine what it would be. A beret? No, too snooty. A straw boater? Neat, but no just doesn't make a lick of sense. A fedora is the most logical choice but also cliche. I think I'm stuck with a just baseball cap. . . sigh.

Hats let people you know business. They say "Hey, I know enough about the thing that this hat is related to that I wore the freaking hat!" They project authority. Think about airline pilots; their hats let you know they are in charge (of your life!) Heck, carry something career specific in your hand (say a red cape) and you can ask anyone to do anything. I have a few clipboards in my office for this very reason.

We have an active construction area were I work and I have to walk it frequently. That means I have to wear a hard hat ("Safety First") and I couldn't be happier. About 2 years ago we had our first construction project and we needed hard hats for the staff. I went down to Home Depot to score eight of them. They had a few different types but the average-Joe hard hat (the one with the visor in the front) was the cheapest. Personally I wanted one with the brim all the way around. It looked very 40's and looked a bit like a pith helmet. It was pretty awesome. But it was a bit more expensive and to purchase one different than everyone else's would be vanity. Also at the time it appeared that only supervisors had those kind of hats and I didn't want to upset the natural order of things (this isn't the case).

Thankfully they had only 7 with the peak so I would have to get one of the other styles. I was pretty happy about it. On the way back to work I was wondering if anyone would care or if they wanted the "special" hat. What if someone else coveted it too? I'd have to play it all cool and be like "Eva. It's just a stupid hard hat. Take it." In retrospect this was just dumb. Who the hell cares? No one with any sense.

When I got back I handed out the hats but kept my special hat for me. The one comment on the hat came from a coworker who made an off color joke dealing with a turtle's attraction to that kind of hard hat.

So for the next month or so I'll get to wear a job related hat. Hopfully I won't have to take advantage of all its features. That will mean something has fallen on my head.

Farewell Queek

2008-03-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sad to say that Queek the guinea pig passed away last night.

Two things were true about Queek: he loved the little fuzzy ends that came in his hay and he loved the ladies. He could much through those fuzzy ends like nobody's business. It was fun to watch how he sucked them down. I think he would judge a batch of hay on the number of fuzzies it had. Once he zipped through those, he was done with that batch and squeak for more.

Queek and I had an OK relationship; I fed him and gave him scratches (and the aforementioned fuzzies). We'd chat about stuff. He was so-so on his former pen mate Magnet. They never really quite got a long and each had to have their own pigloo. I think he didn't really care for us because we were guys; Queek was a ladies guinea pig. He would get very excited whenever The Bat, Barnelia or The Bat's Mom came in the room. He'd run to the front of his pen and tilt his head up just waiting for a pet (which they often gave him). He got so excited last time he saw Barnelia he nipped her (clearly out of love because he wasn't a mean spirited piggy).

The Bat and I said our goodbyes and buried him in the backyard next to the new flower bed. He'll get a sunflower when it comes time to plant.

Thank you everyone who took care of Queek and Magnet while The Bat and I were away.

Everything I Know I Learned from D&D

2008-03-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

or Rest Well Gary Gygax

As you probably have heard the creator of Dungeons & Dragons passed away. I can't think of many people that I never actually knew that had such an impact on my life. D&D and games in general have been my main hobby since I was a teen.

I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in sixth grade when I met a few kids in the gifted and talented classes who "played." I say it with quotes because they didn't really know any rules and they didn't have dice (just a Sucrets container with tiny slips of paper in it numbered from 1 to 20). They just told stories to each other in the guise of D&D. Not a bad thing mind you, just less structured. I begged my parents for the Red Box (it came with real dice! I still have my first well worn d20) and it took off from there to other RPGs, computer games, table top games, miniature games and card games. D&D was a gateway drug for me that led me into a world of nerds, dorks and other socially awkward creatures. I have spent more money and time on games than I care to think about. But I don't regret it.

I feel that D&D gave me a love of reading, the ability to understand complex systems, helped me explore creativity and imagination and allowed me to explore what was right and wrong, good and evil in a safe environment. D&D was my sandbox growing up. While most players probably built castles and pillaged villages, I remember that I played a time traveling monk (hardly D&D cannon) who spent most of his time building a museum, a very scholarly priest who spent most of his gold on building a huge library and inventing new inks to illuminate texts with or a rogue who sought to learn the funniest joke from the gods. I wouldn't be who I am, for better or worse, with out Gary Gygax's creation.

I grew out of some gaming; I just can't quite take RPGs as seriously as I used to and I don't have a group of friends to support a steady gaming habit. Now I mostly play World of Warcraft and other video games but I do miss those few years of Gaming Tuesdays before I left the Sunshine State.

Tonight, as Teodor (my Blood Elf Frost Mage in WoW) was flying to Gadgetzan I noticed all the mechanics that Gygax introduced to storytelling to transform it into a game. (Hit points, classes, levels, experriance points, etc.) What he started with D&D was everywhere and these stories are much more fun and engaging because of him. As soon as Teodor landed he poured out a mana potion in salute of the first GM's passing.

Airports and David Byrne

2008-01-18T14:53:00.000-08:00

I'm in the Cleveland airport traveling for business. It is a nice clean
terminal and I hva e a nice cup of coffee. We got here early so that
just added to long layover.
Right before I left got David Byrne's Grown Backwards but haven't
listened to it untill now. Its a good CD so far but better in an
airport. Both are terribly interesting and slightly absurd. Maybe it
is his voice that fits the venue. I don't know but I'm enjoying it.
Wonder if he has ever considered a concert in one. That would be cool.
If you timed it right you could get there and see it with out ever
leaving the security zone. Not exactly ecologically responsible but
very absurd.

The Year of Blame

2008-01-06T15:05:00.001-08:00

Just before the new year, The Bat and I were at a nicer seafood joint in a nicer part of town. We had been there before and ate a lovely meal of fried everything. We don't eat fried food that often, but this was a nice treat. Non-greasy fried food is hard to come by. The second time around was good, but not as good as the first.

The couple in an adjacent booth had ordered a bottle of wine and it came out in an ice bucket. This wine bucket was on a stand (I've never seen a table top model) in the aisle by their table. A woman who was leaving plowed into it, sending ice and wine all over the floor. Everyone just stared at it for a bit. The woman said "Well who put that there?" What the hell? That's where wine buckets go moron. The guy who was with the woman picked the bottle up and said, "Oh, there wasn't much in it." Sure, not after your water buffalo of a wife knocked it over. The couple then just shuffled out. After a minute the waiter came by to clean up and got them two glasses of replacement wine. So all ended well.

I was clearly (sarcasm) not her fault and even it was no big loss, it was empty anyway. They should have offered to replace the wine. Hell, they should have at least apologized.

This made me realize no one takes blame any more. Everything is some one else's fault or the situation is to blame or it is a flaw in the materials. Sure sometimes it is these things, but some times it is just YOU. Maybe you put yourself in that situation or you were using something out of spec.

So I ask you, in 2008, stop and consider that it might just be YOUR FAULT. If it is, be a decent human being and own it. Don't blame God or Fate or Luck or the Force.

Pobricita Hard Drive

2008-01-06T14:48:00.000-08:00

On Friday my hard drive of five-ish years crashed.

I think I had that reaction of everyone this happens to: I should have backed up. Ah well, shouldn't cry over spilled milk. I didn't loose that much and I still have yet to see if I might be able to get into it to see what I can recover. I think I will have lost some photos, documents (all my library stuff certainly) and a slew of half-played game saves.

But it's Sunday now and all is well. I've installed a new HD in this gracefully aging rig. Thankfully I was able to install all my drivers and software of the internet and I even uploaded all my music from my Vision:M. Warcraft took the most time to reinstall; that is one huge program. I'm going to try to use open source stuff instead of using various Adobe products, but I don't know how far I'll get with that. And I still have to work on my sound car; I can't seem to get back the same functionality I had before.

So I've resolved to move most of my data to Google Docs or Notebook. I'll need to get my del.icio.us account up to date to take my bookmarks. That way not much will be on my computer. But the stuff that is there, I'll back up. Promise.

Sci-Fi Sound quiz

2007-12-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

If I accomplish nothing else . . .

	I received 85 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 is

I'm sorry bees.

2007-12-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

Today The Bat and I let a horrible thing happen: we allowed an exterminator to kill the bee colony that took up residence in one of our walls.

They weren’t hurting us but our bitchy neighbor said their loud, shrill children were in danger. (Personally I would be happy if the little creeps would stay have to stay inside. Apparently screaming is a big part of their outside time.) So we called the landlord who called Orkin. I should have hired a bee keeper to come and remove the colony, even if the landlord wouldn’t spring for it. We both new better, bees worldwide aren’t doing to well. We’re not into heavy pesticides. We’re both are concerned about the environment. Yet we still let it happen.

I know The Bat isn’t fond of bees landing on her to say “hi” but she still likes them. I personally love bees. I love it when the land on me for a while. I love to see them out an about hovering from flower to flower. I love it when there is an observation hive at a museum or nature center (I always press my ear to it to listen for a hum). I don’t particularly love honey; I just love bees for being bees. One day I’d like to keep a small hive or a least have some plants they like (or have The Cat plant some plants they like).

I know they are just insects and probably aren’t going to put up Hitler-esque posters of me or spread the word on what an evil jerk I am. But I feel like I have violated their trust. I’m never afraid that one is going to sting me because I feel we have an understanding: I don’t freak out, they don’t sting me and we both have a pleasant time. I’ve always been on their side when ever other fearful clods want to hurt them for just being bees. But this time I wasn’t.

So why didn’t I do the right thing? I don’t know. It wasn’t the potential extra cost, I could have weathered that. Some if it was fear that the jerky neighbors were going to make a big deal out of it or that one of their brats would get stung. But mostly I think it was just laziness. I didn’t take the time to do something that I believed in. I feel horrible that I was too lazy to do the right thing for the bees.

Blueberry Yogurt Surprise

2007-09-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

How do you know when you are old? When this sounds like a great idea:

A few weeks ago I saw this Lifehacker post Eight Foods You Should Eat Every Day. So I thought "why not mix a few of those together?" And I did:

Blueberry Yogurt surprise
Put 1/4 cup walnut halves, 1/8 cup dried blueberries, and 1/3 container of plan yogurt in a bowl. Cover with Uncle Sam cereal . Then pour on the soy milk (the aforementioned "surprise"). Yum!

I've been eating it for breakfast most days and it's great! Though I can't get The Bat to go anywhere near this stuff. I think she is repulsed by bean milk touching cattle milk. And she probably should be. At least she'll eat Uncle Sam. She used to hate and scorn it.

I remember that my dad and I got some Uncle Sam from a grocery store while camping at Cape Canaveral. I'm hazy on the trip itself, but I remember the cereal and looking out over water to see the space shuttle on the pad. My love of space ships as a kid makes sense. My love of a flax based cereal before the age of 45 doesn't. Yet still I consume boxes of the stuff.

Uncle Sam Tip #1: Buy it from Central Market; it's cheap as air there.

Uncle Sam Tip #2: Rinse out your bowl after eating. Those damn flax seeds will literally glue themselves to what ever they touch when they dry.

Done and Done.

2007-09-03T21:29:00.000-07:00

I've decided to stop doing two things. The first is that I am not going to take any more library classes. Sure, I'm half done but I can't see it going anywhere. For the past couple of weeks I've been building stuff and solving techy problems at work. While it can be frustrating, it is also exciting and engaging. I don't have to spend all day at a desk but then again I don't have to spend all day on my feet either. It's a good mix of physical and mental and I really can see doing this type of thing for a while. What I can't see doing is working with just information all day. The best way I can put it is the work is just to "flat" to much shuffling paper and bytes. Besides, I'm sure that librarians should like to interact with the public on some level. I don't usually. Particularly when they are slightly dumb and angry (about 80% of all people). Ah well, live and learn.

I don't regret taking those courses. I learned a lot of neat stuff and became a bit more aware of my own information usage. At the very least I learned that Wikipedia isn't exactly the best place to get your facts.

The second thing I'm not doing any more of is watching Farscape. Why? Cause it's dumb. I started watching it on DVD on the recommendation of a coworker's husband. The special effects are pretty good, the puppetry is excellent and the characters are interesting. But the actors, for the most part, are sub par and the plots are very one dimensional (and usually somewhat sleazy). So no more Farscape, it just isn't worth the time.

Maybe I am spoiled on Lost, BSG and Doctor Who. These shows have hooked me on a running plot like instead of disjointed episodes (Doctor Who does some of this but there's a feeling of forward movement). I'm still looking for more good sci fi series; I have high hopes for Eureka after the first disk.

Asswinda

2007-08-19T11:00:00.001-07:00

We are currently being checked out at Target by a cashier named Asswinda. Seriously?!?!? Yup.
I can attest that she isn't a female Night Elf in WoW created by a 13 year-old male, who would think the name is a riot.
The Bat's (who caught wind of the name) only cogent response was "I just feel so sorry for her." I agree.

The Parade of Meat

2007-08-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

Tonight, to celebrate The Bat's 30th birthday we're heading to one of
those South American all-you-can-shovel meat places.
My sis and I hit one of these places when she was in HTown. It was
quite the event. There was so much meat. We kept joking that we should
order some sort of meat based desert. Maybe we enjoyed it so much
because we were raised in a fairly low red meat household.
While The Bat is forgoing quantities of meat that would shame a TRex, I
am going to go whole hog. I don't plan on having to unbutton my pants
but I will enjoy myself. I don't eat a huge amount of red meat
regurarly so this should all come out in the wash. One of my goals is
to photograph the whole affair one plate at a time. At least until meat
psychosis sets in.
I shall be the Grand Marshall of the Parade of Meat!

I want my damn sponge back.

2007-07-30T22:33:00.001-07:00

Recently The Bat has gone all Al Gore. We recycle a lot, drive small vehicles and aren't afraid of public transportation. We buy some organic and care where our meat comes from. We don't toss batteries and try not to by too much disposable crap (just ask her, I don't throw anything away). We even have switched to better-for-the-environment dishwasher detergent (hint: Don't get Earth from Randall's. That shit is like putting spackle in with the dishes). We buy wind-made energy. And my main Pokemon is Torterra. Can't get much more green than that.

But she has also banned dish sponges. I didn't think I would care, but I do. I hate using dish rags. They just don't cut it. I constantly feel like my fingers are going to get sliced off when I wash knives. And I can't get a nice soapy lather going, but that might be the new tree-huggy soap. Yes, I know sponges are made from oil and they will last forever, for better or worse, and are probably responsible for terrorism in some way. But I was raised in a sponge household and it's hard to switch.

She has also quoted some statistic about how sponges have 1 zillion million germs but I don't care. They were my friends. And I miss them.

Not Dead Yet

2007-07-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

Wow, I haven't posted in ages. I've slowly watched my hits grind down to nothing. Two weeks ago it hit rock bottom at 0. Granted I wasn't exactly drawing in the masses before. Most probably made their way here because of my one time use of the phrase "Japanese school girl." Pervs.

So what's been happening? Stuff. I shan't bore you with the details for details sake. I'm sure they'll come up sooner or later. But mostly (to ~~The Cat~~ The Bat's disappointment) I've been playing Pokemon and struggling through a few electronics projects.

One, the Pokemans, have been fairly successful. It satisfies my geeky impulse to collect. Hell, they tell you outright you got to catch them all. It's like a requirement. The bonus here is that they don't take up space and clutter my already cluttered life. I haven't finished the game yet (110 hours played and counting(!?)) but there is always a Pokemon that I'm on the hunt for. Right now it's Rotom. Geez, look at him, he is a-freaking-adorable. And fairly deadly from what I understand. . . oh sorry, not deadly. No one really dies in Pokemon they just pass out. Which is good since the whole premise sort of comes off as a bit cruel as is.

The other, electronics, has been a painful affair that will probably kill me. But I've decided that I am going to stick with it and try to be able to cobble little gizmos together both for work and personal amusement. And to stop wasting money on Make Magazine. I buy every issue and don't do anything with them; well it's time to start. I'm having some success with minor analog electronics projects, nothing too major. Every time I figure something it's great. I feel like I've invented the wheel and cured cancer all in one stroke. But all I've really done is made a simple light chase with LEDs. Ah well, I'll take my victories where I can get them. I'd like work my way up to using microcontrollers, but we shall see. For now I'd just like to built a simple circuit without inducing chest pains.

In High Loaf

2007-04-12T22:09:00.001-07:00

My current class is killing me. The class itself isn't difficult and
neither are the assignments. But I've found myself procrastinating like
never before. Tonight, when I coukd have easily completed my
assignment, was spent in high loaf: watched some TV with The Cat then
got on the Internet, but not to do my work. No, I just sat there
checking my RSS feeds over and over, reading miscellaneous articles,
checking pages that have nothing to do with the task at hand, hunting
down the name of a boardgame that I saw a few months back, convincing
myself that I need to try needle felting. I haven't made any progress
on Earthbound in days, a Lost disk from Netflix sits unwatched, WoW sits
unplayed, a shirt that I was embrodering a UFO on is half done, a Lego
robot that plays music doesn't work to my satisfaction and needs work,
my blog hasn't been moved over to the new Blogger, my tumblog remains
just a thought and, oh yeah, my project is still not finished. But I've
spent plenty of time thinking about doing these things (all of which are
leisure activities) but not actually doing them. I wish I could just
either do all this junk or forget about it.
I was able to outline my project so whipping it out should be no problem
tomorrow. I should be happy over that small victory, but I wish that I
didn't wait until the absolute last moment.
This will be the final project for this class. I'll spend some of the
time between classes to actually do some of that stuff. But I am sure
that I'll just get distracted by something else.

Old School in Onett

2007-03-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

After the high of beating two of the Forgotten Games I decided to target
others. I worked at The New Super Mario Bros for a while. I'm at the
last castle on World 8 and its damn hard. After I gave up on NSMB I got
out Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time for the DS. I really love Mario
RPGs and this one is no exception. The whole Baby Mario and Luigi thing
I could do without but it doesn't ruin the game. When I left it last I
assumed I was right at the end but that want the case so I had a bit
more to do. This series has had the toughest final bosses I've seen in
a long time. They demand your full attention and are almost physically
exhausting. But I beat it finally. Also took care of Kirby: Nightmare
in Dreamland. I could remember if I finished this or not so
"refinished" it for good measure.
Later that night I broke out the GameCube to finally beat Pikmin. I had
forogtten how much I like that game (I'm thinking that I should pick up
Pikmin 2 sometime). Beat the final boss after a few tries then moved on
to Viewtiful Joe, Monkey Ball and Super Mario Sunshine. Unfortunately
none of which grabbed me. Even with a walkthrough I have no idea what
to do in Viewtiful Joe, the SM Sunshine situation needs to be
reevaluated (I've completely lost my bearings) and I think Monkey Ball
might just be a loss. I don't have too many games for the GameCube so I
dragged out the DreamCast to give Space Channel 5 a whirl. I remember
sucking at it but I thought with my sucess with other rhythum games
(Guitar Hero II and Pump It Up) this time might be different. Alas no.
It's more like Simon than the other rhythum games. I could find Jet
Grind Radio so I moved on to the Holy Grail of unfinished games:
Earthbound, a modern RPG for the SNES.
I purchased this game in 1994 and played the heck out of it, maybe to
about 60% to 70% complete. It has been a while sonce the SNES was
hooked up (execpt for the time when The Cat and I made a run at SMB3,
something we'll have to finish) and even longer since I found the game
and the guide that came with it. Both were reunited after our trip to
the Sunshine State last year. It had been 12 years since I played this
game so I had lost the narrative. Lord knows how much time I put into
it but I made the decision to delete the save file and start over. So
that's where I am right now: all my other fancy shamancy games sit idle
as I plink away on a 13 year old, 16 bit game. It's still a great game
that's weird, funny and exciting. Some complained about the graphics
but now they are delightfully retro and the music has remained
top-notch.
I'm glad to be back fighting L'il UFOs, No Good Flies and Mad Ducks with
my T-Ball Bat and PSI powers.

Buckling Down

2007-03-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

I have this nasty habit of playing a game just shy of finishing it.
Sometimes I peter out at the last level, others it's right before the
last boss. I'l play the hell out of titles only to drift off without
wrapping things up. Pikmin has been sitting before the final battle for
5 years or so and Jet Grind Radio for about 8. I can't even remeber how
long it has been for Earthbound.
Its a really weird thing to do since I play games for the story. Some
want to complete the game perfectly. Some want to see all the game has
to offer or collect every item. Sometimes those are important to me but
mostly I want a completed narrative.
After seeing 300 I went home to finish up God of War, which had been
pushed aside by Okami, which was set aside by . . .ah hell, I can't
remember, the Wii maybe.
God of War was great (can't wait for II tp drop in price) and Okami was
good, it just over stayed its welcome (and got a bit off topic towards
the end). I'm gald I went back and finished them.
Initally I wanted to clear my slate in order to purchase Legend of
Zelda: Twilight Princess. But now I think I'll hold off and go back and
beat those games in limbo. First up some DS titles, Mario and Luigi
Partners in Time and The New Super Mario Bros., after that I might dig
out the DreamCast or Super Nintendo.

At Jury Duty

2007-03-21T07:42:00.000-07:00

I got the summons. It is like they are punishing you for voting. I
can't think of anyone who is interested in being a juror. Don't get me
wrong, I love to pass judgement on people, but on my own time.
I swear everyone here is a talker (loudly and concerning medical
issues), coughing (is there a TB epidemic that I don't know about?) or
yapping their cheeks off on a cell phone (no, no one wants to know about
you fax line being down).
I plan to go crazy pretty soon. Maybe that will get me booted. I did
wear a tshirt though and that might get me the boot: its not solomn
enough. Feh.

Our first Wiinjuries.

2007-03-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

Since I got the second Wiimote The Cat and I have been playing tennis
against each other. She usulay wins and we get a bit of a workout
(we're jummping around like its 'real'). It's fun all around. But
last night I accidentally thwacked The Cat on a backhand shot. She
retaliated by clipping my empty hand with her Wiimote.
Today my hand hurts like hell. But not bad enough to keem me from
playing the freshly downloaded Kid Icarus. Not to sound like a
curmudgeon, but games were harder back when I was a kid. None of this
battery save crap, you had to write down codes. No Internet with its
easy to find walkthroughs. All you had was a copy of Nintendo Power and
the Contra code memorized by heart.

New Mexico Adventure

2007-02-22T22:09:00.000-08:00

If you didn't get the link to our NM drop me an email. For privacy sake
I won't post either the link or my email.

Wii

2007-02-11T08:23:00.000-08:00

Finally.

After months of wait and sneering at PS3s sitting on shelves, I found a Wii at Target. There were about 8 in the store and 1 of them, besides mine, got sold while I was in the store. It is a bit shocking how fast they move. Part of me wants to check later on to see if there are more. I'm sure the employee is just sick of being asked about the Wii, talking about the Wii and the Wii in general, so I can excuse her soullessness in the face of my bliss.

As I promissed I have "touch no Wiimote before my Wiimote." I am Wii-pure. I shall try not to cry with joy. . .I feel like those Japanese guys just showed up and want to play.

Now I must go make my Mii.

Finally!

2007-02-06T21:55:00.000-08:00

No, no, I don't have a Wii.
I mean Heroes finally freaked my beans.
The Cat and I have been able to predict or at least anticipate most, if
not all, of the episode "shockers" so far. But last night was a genuine
"Holy Crap" moment that we didn't see coming. Bravo!
This has been my one complaint about Heroes; the lack of bean freakage.
Lost (I just finished season one on DVD), Battlestar Galactica and
Doctor Who all freak my beans several times an episode. (Hell, Lost
freaks 'em hard once every five minutes or so.)
Well I hope there is more to come from Heroes. It has the possiblity to
be a spectacular show but it needs to ge a move on.

Mario Party

2007-01-29T18:31:00.000-08:00

The Cat, Barnelia, Cecil and I used to play Mario Party 7. Until Barnelia claims I "ruined" it by discovering you get crap loads of stars by playing alone. It was great fun that usually ended with me accidentally socking some one with a controller. Usually Barnelia...hmmm.

At least our games never got this ugly.

Hopefully I have a Wii by Mario Party 8. I'm sure that no one will get whacked in the gob with all those Wiimotes waving around.

An Xmas Tale

2007-01-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

I should have posted this earlier but I ddint want to encourage the
whole holiday thing.

I have always seemed to be sick around Christmas. Typically its a
respratory thing (I suspect its the pine trees) but it can be any common
illness. Now that I think about it I can only remember being well for
the past two holidays. I'm sure there were less but being sick at Xmas
tends to stick in your mind.

Anyways, when I was a kid one sick Xmas stuck out. I can't remember how
many days before Xmas it was. I think it was pretty cold and I was just
loafing around feeling blah. One night all of a sudden my parents jump
up cause they heard something at the door. One of them went out to
check and came back in with a present for me. They said it was in these
giant bushes (which often harbored snakes) by the door. They reported
that they saw an elf darting off. I unwrapped the package and it was a
set of bright yellow Buck Rogers (or was it old school Battlestar
Galatica, nope I think it was Buck) long pjs. I have to say they were
pretty sweet. I guess my parents wanted me to dress a bit warmer so
they called in the elf for a special delivery. I remeber being very
excited and even forgot about being sick for a while.

Ties r dumb

2007-01-24T16:22:00.000-08:00

As I sit at work waiting for a semi-glitzy event to begin I wonder why
the hell I have to wear a tie. I can't think of a dumber piece of
clothing. It just doesn't seem like the best idea to willingly wear
clothing that can choke you.
Let me revise that a bit: they make other guys look nice and neat but
they just make me look like that kid who got forcibly scrubbed up to go
to church. I don't wear a tie for my day to day work so they are extra
uncomfortable. I constantly make strange neck movements because of the
consant pressure on my neck. I'm sure I appear off my meds.
My people are not a tie wearing people. At my graduation my dad wore a
tie for the ceremony but removed it with great to-do when we got
outside. He had even specially purchased it for the occasion because he
didn't have any. (It had William from the Met on it.)
I proudly carry on his tie-less example. I hope I never have to have a
job that requires a tie (i.e. Tie model). But the way the world is
becoming more casual I don't think I have to worry. Soon businessmen
will be going to work in cut-offs.

Wii Alert!!

2007-01-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

You've all been placed on Wii Alert.

I've been searching online and off since it came out. But I can't
manage to find one. There have been plenty of PS3s floating around and
mountains of 360s. But I am but one man, one man in a sea of others who
want a Wii for their 'children.' So I call on all of you to help. If
your in a Wii-vending (Target, Best Buy, WalMart, etc.) location, check
to see if they have any. If they do, snag one for me and you'll get
reimbursed. Just don't buy a bundle; they are overpriced and usually
only contain the lamest accessories and shotty games.
Now go forth and find Gameboy a Wii. Good luck troops.

Vacation Recap

2007-01-01T22:12:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I go back to work. I’ve been off since the 22^ndon vacation. For some reason I didn’t feel like blogging about it; mainly because I didn’t do a thing. Well nothing most people would associate with vacations. I mostly stayed around the house, watched DVDs and played video games. There was a bit of Xmas shopping in there and holiday duties thrown in but mostly it was a good hard loaf. For about 5 days I didn’t shave; The Cat was a little weirded out.

Here’s a summary of activities:

Watched The Venture Bros., season 1: Very funny stuff. I expected lots of infantile frat humor, but they threw enough intelligent jokes to keep me interested. I’d quote my favorite line, but kids might be watching this.
Watched some old Doctor Who from the Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker years: Wow. . . uh. . .Wow. The effects were hokey, the acting hammy and The Doctor (both versions) are major asses. But there were Daleks so I enjoyed them.
Watched the new Doctor Who Xmas Special. It was great! The TARDIS in a car chase was over the top in a good way. Ever episode makes me want to head to England and pick up a toy Sonic Screwdriver. I’d carry it around and people would get so annoyed by its buzzing.
Started watching Brisco County, Jr.: Man, I loved this series when it was on. It’s not as slick as more modern shows. But I love the Wild, Wild West like vibe and John Astin (who I thought was dead) was great as the Professor.
Read some Astro City graphic novels: Hopefully I’ll get my hands on the book where it tells the Silver Agent’s story. It’s driving me up the wall. Sure I can read a spoiler, but I’d rather just read the book (I’m looking at you Cecile).
Started and finished Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal: Playing this game was my only “real” goal for the vacation. It was great; could have been a wee bit harder but I had a ball playing it. Only one more game in the series left. I’m really going to miss playing these games. They might be one of the few games I’ll go back and replay.
Started Okami: It’s simply amazing. If you have a PS2, get this game. If you don’t, buy one and get this game. Sure it’s a lot like Nintendo 64 Zelda games, but the calligraphic art style is beautiful. The story is as compelling as the art. The one downside is that it has the scariest spider boss (one of the last pics in the gallery) I’ve ever seen in a video game. It took a lot for me to watch the screen as I beat the crap out of it. It looked evil and moved too realistically for my tastes. It has this one attack that jumps at the screen that made my skin crawl. I fully expect to wake up with spider nightmares tonight.
Played some Carcassonne: The City which I received for Xmas (thanks guys). It’s a nice variant of Carcassonne and I can’t wait to play more of it.
Purchased a copy of Niagara but have yet to play it.
Got my next leitmark in Perplex City thanks to some cards Mustard and Mayo got me for Xmas.
And finally read The Octonauts, which my Mom got me for Xmas. Thanks Mom. It was cuter than hell. We need a coffee table so that this book can live on it and when people can come over they can experience its cuteness.

Well that’s it.

I wanted to play Worlds of Warcraft but I plan to roll a new character when the expansion comes out in a few weeks. (No time like the present to start Cecile and The Cat). I can’t wait to stomp around as a Draenei, possibly a priest (unless I find out that they make crappy priests). In other MMORPG, I finally canceled my City of Heroes/Villains account. The game just wasn’t going anywhere and got to be repetitious. I’ll miss you Busy B and Control.

I’m sure that some other stuff went on but I can’t remember it. All I know is that I have to go to work tomorrow. Everyone will tell me about the stupid things they did in my absence and expect me to be proud of them. They will also ask many questions about my vacation. I wish they wouldn’t. Nothing that goes on outside of work is their business, but you can’t just go around work telling people to piss off (I’ve tried). They just laugh and say “No, really, blah blah, blah…” I’ll just keep my head down and my headphones handy.

Hot Chocolate

2006-12-21T20:59:00.000-08:00

Beware!
It sounded like a idea: a nice hot chocolate while we were out shopping
on a cold, rainy winter night. So I grabbed a cup from The Chocolate
Bar. There were signs around the register proclaiming that they were
serving the best hot chocolate in the city. I was just about to ask the
kid if he had any proof to back that up when I noticed him dispensing
the chocolate. It was coming out of its urn with the consistency of
used motor oil. I looked over and noticed a busboy throwing away an
almost full cup of the stuff. It didn't bode well.
I asked for marshmallows instead of whipped cream so he blanketed the
surface with a thick layer. It was $4, but in this Starbucks era I
didn't bat an eye. I really thought it was going to be the powdery
stuff one has at home.
Oh no. One sip (once you get through the marshmallow barrier) is like
eating a Hersey bar. This stuff was pure molten chocolate with just
enough other stuff to keep it from molding itself into the shape of the
cup. It was good but very strong. Who ever left that cup behind didn't
finish it cause it was bad, they just wussed out after hearing their
heart grinding to a hault. I couldn't tackle this by myself so I
offered some to The Cat. She had 4 sips before she gave up. Over the
course of an hour or so I finished it. Aside from feeling like I am
completely made from chocolate I don't feel bad at all. Hopefully I
won't have some sort of delayed effect tomorrow. If anything will give
you a chocolate hangover this will.
Oh God, I wonder how many calories that thing was. Probably like 4,000.

At the Galleria

2006-12-20T18:36:00.000-08:00

I bravely accompanied The Cat on a shopping expedition to the largest
mall I've ever seen. Lordy, Lord, Lord! It is crowded. Not really a
shocker but annoying none the less.
There seemed to be a large number of slow walkers. You know that family
of six that insists on walking abreast, clogging up the whole walkway.
It is like a rousing game of live-action Frogger just to get anywhere.
I really like retailers that set out a Guy Chair. Whoever put out the
first one was a saint and genius all in one. I bet Guy Chairs have
saved thousands of relationships. No woman in her right mind wants a
guy trolling after her. I just get punchy after a bit of shopping,
commenting on everything we walk by. It drives The Cat up the wall
though she occasionally hides it. She is an angel for putting up with
any of it. It even annoys me but I just can't stop. I need something
to keep me occupied and I can't surf on my SK3 while walking.
Oh, oh, the Santa was skanky. He had a scrawny beard that looked very
nicotine stained. Gross.

Game Night

2006-12-12T22:05:00.000-08:00

AHHHH, it’s almost like the “Good Ole Days.” Back in Cigar Town when I was a young pup in CC and working part-time, me and the guys (just 2, maybe 3) had Gaming Tuesday (or was it Thursdays?). We started out with Dungeon & Dragons but we got lazy and turned to board games. While it was the height of the collectable card game craze, the other guys weren’t really into playing and collecting (besides I suck at Magic: The Gathering). We played Dragon Dice (a collectable dice game, but I had all the dice), Cosmic Wimpout and lots of Robo Rally. One guy wanted to play Wooden Ships and Iron Men but we resisted. It has so many charts, forms and tiny, tiny ship tiles. I like bits and pieces but this was just too much. Games shouldn’t require more effort than taxes. We did play once, but it was horrible.

All my gaming stopped when I when to University (say it in your head with a British accent). My roommates didn’t play any games and neither did any of my friends. Though I did get a few people to play Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond. I went to the local game store for game day once and played Mississippi Queen, a great game of riverboat racing, but I never went back. It all seemed too dorky and for some reason I was determined to leave my gaming behind. I was at University now! I didn’t even play video games: I had sold my Nintendo 64 and my computer was to craptacular to play anything good.

While I’ve gotten back in to video games, I hadn’t started to game again. No one that I know seems to be up for RPGs, but more casual games are a different story.

A few weeks ago I picked up Carcassonne. I’m not to sure why I bought it. I think some blog mentioned it then I saw it in a store. I brought it home and begged The Cat to play with Cecil, Barnelia and myself, whom are open to board games. Everyone but The Cat loves it (it isn’t her bag) and we play a game most times we get together. We’ve even been able to rope some others into playing. I’m thrilled that C & B (especially Barnelia) enjoy playing. It’s great to be able to play some games again with people that are eager to play.

Carcassonne a quality game; great rules with a good balance of luck and skill and great construction (Meeples are just so cute). I love games that you can add to with expansions and Carcassonne has some great ones. So we’ve added to the game making a bit more complex, adversarial and fun. It’s the mark of a well designed game that you can add so much to it and it still remains the same game with out “breaking.”

I dug out my copy of Settlers of Catan and we liked that too. Well, we only played one game, but I think everyone is up for another. They are both medieval building games and are similar but not the same. I like Catan but prefer Carcassonne.

Almost any board game searches on the Internet lead you to boardgamegeek.com. I’ve been poking around looking for “the next game.” Both Catan and Carcassonne are German-style board games and winners of the Spiel des Jahres award. The 2005 winner, Niagara, looks just perfect: wooden canoes, a movable board, hot gem mining action and an expansion that involves a plastic beaver. Now that sounds like a fun game.

I don’t plan to buy as many games as I used to but a few couldn’t hurt. I no longer buy crap video games (read reviews before you buy kids) and have been happier for it. The same can hold true for board games.

Still Wii-less

2006-12-03T17:10:00.000-08:00

Ok.

Alright.

I get it.

I should have been outside Toys R Us huddled with all the other fanboys
waiting for the Wii to show up. But I didn't and now I must suffer.
I can't say I am totally desperate yet. But I would have purchased one
of those TRU bundles that only suckers buy. You know the ones with the
system, lame game(s) and accessory that no one in their right mind would
buy. Execpt this time the game was ok and the accessory was ok. I
wouldn't be ashamed to have either. But they were out. Out of
bundles? Insanity!

At this point I don't think there will be any Wiis had until after the
new year. Then all the parents should have all they need for their
little brats.

Wii were foolish.

2006-11-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

Well that didn't work at all. It's almost 2 pm and I am without a Wii.
Neither Target, Walmart or Toys R Us had any left. Duh. For some
reason I thought they would have a few extras sitting around after all
the fanboys got theirs. Then I could just breeze in pick one up and be
playing by Twilight Princess midafternoon.

I'm not really shocked. If I was serious about getting one I should
have preordered or sat on the cold, cold ground at midnight. But it is
ok. There will be zillions of them in a few weeks. Untill then I'll
keep rocking out with Guitar Hero II (special thanks to The Cat for
unlocking Freebird.)

PS3 & Wii at Target

2006-11-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

On the way home I stopped into Target just to see if they either had a
PS3 laying around or maybe they put their Wiis (is the plural of Wii
"Wiis" or "Wiii"?) out early. Not that I had delusions of either
happening but I drive right past so I figured what the hell. Maybe I'd
get a PS3 to unload on eBay for zillions. Or maybe I could score an
early Wii. Well neither happened, but they did have both displays out.
The Wii is a glowing plastic monolith that you can hardly look right at
cause of the glow. Its a cool LED blue that hurts the eyes. You
couldn't play it but it was showing some sort of cheesy promo video that
want your typical gamer fair. It seemed to be mostly soccer moms and
groups of giggling women playing WarioWare Smooth Moves; no pasty Zelda
fans in sight (though I didn't watch for long). Anyway, the plan is to
casually snag one this weekend with out waiting over night or killing
someone's ma.
The PS3 display was empty (duh) but they did jave a demo unit out. I
was eager to see the amazing graphics everyone is talking about but the
damn thing was frozen. Just as well, I don't need to start to lust over
a $600 console that you can't even find in the stores.

The Shat!?

2006-11-12T17:20:00.000-08:00

The ABC network is now referring to William Shatner as "The Shat." They should probably check their dictionaries before throwing that around.

According to Merriam-Webster its the past participle of shit. Lovely. Well, he was the shit in the past. Perhaps he will be one day again.

Good Luck Kinkster!

2006-11-10T02:24:00.000-08:00

I know it's a long shot but it would be great to have a governor called
Kinky. Sure his books are filled with drug references and his songs
should not be heard by the young or elderly but he looks great in
cornrows and a cowboy hat. Hell he might even leave the governor's
mansion reeking of cigars and cats!

*sniff*What's that? The smell of democracy!

My new stock phrase.

2006-11-10T01:09:00.000-08:00

Everyone else gets all the good stock phrases. All I can do is mooch
off the famous. I understand that "Git er done!" is quite popular with
the people these days. But its a little to lowbrow for the rarefied
circles I run in. It needs an upscale twist.

Therefore I propose "Please have that woman completed." Just picture
Uncle Pennybags or Mr. Peanut saying it. Ah, elegance.

Good Luck Kinkster!

2006-11-07T13:01:00.000-08:00

I know it's a long shot but it would be great to have a governor called Kinky. Sure his books are filled with drug references and his songs should not be heard by the young or elderly but he looks great in cornrows and a cowboy hat. Hell he might even leave the governor's mansion reeking of cigars and cats!

*sniff* What's that? The smell of democracy!

Science man was not meant to know.

2006-11-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

Scientists have recently resurrected a "fossilized" virus. Apparently this thing caused hell and havoc with our ancestors. But hey, now it’s back for round 2. Sure they point out that we've evolved immunity to it but don't viruses evolve too? And like really, really fast?

I am all for scientific progress. But sometimes you have to wonder if it is a good idea. Don't scientists watch/read any sci-fi? It seems like in every other Star Trek they would find a planet were the scientists discovered something that got out of hand. . .like an ancient virus or a rift in space or some sort of sentient robot that would then go about destroying the place, taking care to leave one survivor to pass on the cautionary tale.

Just cause we can might not mean we should. It’s only a matter of time before our Roombas rebel and start to nuke us, a la Cylons.

Convergence

2006-11-01T12:30:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I used the phrase "black hole" to describe some one at
work that doesn't respond to email. Then I started reading Ringworld by
Larry Niven. It discusses a massive super-duper nova that will spew
radiation all over the galaxy. Seemingly unrelated but then The Cat
turned on Nova last night. (Why? I have no idea. The Cat is a known
enemy of science in general and space in particular.) It was about a
black hole at the center of the Milkey Way. And it could end up spewing
matter all over the place. Similar to the book, but not like the
coworker (the only he spews is bullshit). (Freaker, as I type this
Rocket Man by Sir Elton is on the muzak. . . And a Shakira song but
that doesn't count.)
I don't know about you but this happens all the time; a string of
related concepts or incidences over the course of about a week or so.
Is it beacuse we are causing it to happen? Or are we just more attunded
to the concept at that particular time? Or is the universe just out to
tell us something. Probably not but I am going to throw together a
black hole shelter in the back yard. More than likely its just a case
of hypersensitivity or momentary interest.

Farscape

2006-10-31T21:30:00.000-08:00

Just finished season one of Farscape and I am still up in the air about it. On one hand the sets and makeup are pretty cool. Even the puppet Rygel comes off as beleivable. But on the other hand it is all just so overwrought. Almost every episode is "a very special Farscape" where the characters spend lots of time saying their good-byes because surely they are about to die. I understand the occasional one sappy one but every other one?

It reminds me of the original Star Trek: every episode was self-contained and no matter what happened, you were confident that the show's formula wouldn't really change. No matter what danger the crew (unless you happened to be wearing red that day) would be ok. I get that same comfort from Farscape. Farscape doesn't really innovate just carries on a tradition.

They seem to just keeping throwing stuff in off the cuff. Oh D'Argo can survive in space for a bit...uh sure. And uh did we mention Zhaan is a plant? Guess what-that the Peacekeepers can't get real warm. All these come up just in the nick of time. These type of hamfisted plotting just seems unsophisticated.

Maybe that is why BSG or Heroes is more satisfying. They still deliver a punch and a good story, but ask a bit more of the viewer. Though Heroes needs to pick up the pace a bit and show some action.

Will I start season 2 of Farscape? Yeah, they left Crichton and D'Argo are floating in space for crying out loud.

Birds and Bees 2.0

2006-10-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

I just received some spam that included the most eloquent "the birds and the bees" talk ever. If you don't understand, ask your parents.
---------------
Now and then, a pork chop eagerly shares a shower with the tuba player living with a customer. A plaintiff completely seeks a polar bear. A movie theater shares a shower with a chestnut. An eggplant gives a pink slip to the tuba player. For example, a single-handledly impromptu
bullfrog indicates that a class action suit beyond another burglar somewhat avoids contact with an ocean.

Hideous scallops.

2006-10-24T21:53:00.000-07:00

I concur those were some nasty scallops. Sure they looked good in Everyday Food and even sounded good. Nothing in the recipie indicated that they might could even possibly be gross. The Cat had some issues with them but it was their size and rubbery texture that got
me. These things were monsters, somewhere around the size of golf ball. The sauce didn't help either; it wasn't assertive enough to overcome the spring bland flavor.

I honestly don't know how The Cat ate her's. She was way braver than I. I didn't think the scallops were dangerous , just terribly unappealing.

I used to love seafood. I asked to go to Red Lobster for my birthday and I'd look forward to my mom's all seafood Xmas Eve dinner. But lately I haven't been a big fan. Well let me rephrase that I haven't been a big fan of non-piscine seafood. I've been weary of shrimp and
now scallops. I don't even want to try my chilhood favorite of squid pasta sauce (it has an Italian name that I can't even phonetically spell) because I might not like it any more.
My belly is still rumbling. The Cat has vowed never to touch another scallop, but I will try them again. But not for a while. And not that size.

Not well & loafing about.

2006-10-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

The morning after Barnelia's birthday debauchary (ah who am I kidding, we had to stop the outdoor movie for fear the neighbors heard the f-bomb going off) I fell ill. Nothing too serious just my usual head cold. The same damn cold I seem to get every month or so. The Cat suspects that it is tied to my allergy medicine. It might be. I need to get better about keeping my 'scrips up.

So I sat around all day catching up on BSG. It's some damn good stuff. I'm glad to see that the series still has that special something that keeps me coming back for more. I was a bit skeptical on how the series would flow now that New Caprica is in the picture, but everything is exciting as ever. And somethings never change: Tigh's wife has got to be the frakin' dumbest person ever, Baltar is still a spineless weiner and Adama is still a bad ass.

Day 2 of the SK3 experiment is going ok. It's a handy little gizmo to have around if you're loafing in bed. I was able to IM The Cat today and check some sites, which was neat-o but $30 a month neat-o? We shall see. I stil haven't been able to use Google Reader on it and that is a
big thing I wanted to do.

OMG SK3

2006-10-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

What do Paris Hilton, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Veronica Mars and I have in common? We all have Sidekick 3s of course. Today I finally gave in and purchased one (The Cat got sick of my whining and force a purchase). As I see it, the SK3 has the cheapest data plan out there. Every other one is just ruinous. I just can justify spending $60 a month for just playing around.

So I have 14 days to see if this phone suits my vacuous needs. So far so good. While the internet is a wee bit chuggy, I have high hopes for mobile optomized sites.

A few things to keep in mind:
My spelling is only going to get worse on this thing.
I will be posting lots of lame stuff as I moblog the heck out of H-town.

Whoops

2006-10-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize that Wolverine is actually in The Prestige. I thought it was some weird off the cuff comment. But I saw a Netflix envelope add for it this morning and there he was.

It seems like the movie is tracking ok on Rotten Tomatoes. The Cat requires that any movie that she might possibly think about considering seeing be classified as "Fresh" with special consideration given to "Cream of the Crop." I don't know if The Prestige is going to cut it, so if you want to see it let me know.

Batman <3 Wolverine

2006-10-18T08:33:00.000-07:00

I don't usually watch morning shows but The Cat had one of them on this morning. They were interviewing Christian "Batman" Bale for is new movie " The Prestige," which I hope is good. There was some discussion of his willingness to physically change for the role. The Cat and I noticed his weird vaguely British accent which came and went. Then out of no where Bale gives props to Hugh "Wolverine" Jackman for his acting, singing and dancing abilities. Whoa!

Picture it Batty and Wolvie in Fightin' Crime. I bet the dance off between the Joker and Magneto would something to see. Though it might be too much too soon. I guess they could always start slow by doing West Side Story with adamantium claws and batarangs.

Yoda

2006-10-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Remember when you first saw a Lego Yoda? And you were like, "Whoa, that completely freaks my bean." Sure his legs didn't bend and his head was all one color, but he was sweet as heck. Now add that to the feeling you got when you saw Yoda fight Count Dooku. (Personally I got tingles.)

Well that's what it's like when you get Yoda as a character in Lego Star Wars. He starts with his cane out and hobbles around. When he whips his lightsaber he springs and leaps. It's great to shred through a bunch of Clone Troopers and Droids with the occasional Force Push thrown in for flair.

Yeah it's a simple game but Lego Yoda kicks ass.

Stale all up in here.

2006-10-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

I really let this slip. Remember when I would post something stupid every day? Those were the days. It’s not like I don’t have something to spout. Those that know me know I love to hear myself talk; even better when other people listen.

So what have I been up to? Class is taking up some of my time but because it’s so boring the rest of my time has been spent avoiding reading for class. I mean seriously boring. It doesn’t make for engaging reading when most of the textbook is acronyms. Thankfully the instructors have well written lectures online. I hope that I can get most of my info from those.

In my effort to avoid reading I’ve been playing WoW, Star Wars Lego: The Video Game (PS2) and Drill Dozer (GBA). I hate to say it but WoW is getting a wee stale. None of my characters are in any guilds or have any regular adventuring buddies. And no one I know in RL plays, so it’s a bit lonely online. It is definitely my fault though; as in RL I don’t make a huge effort to befriend people.

I’m also “playing” Perplex City, a primarily collectable card based ARG. I had heard about it on the Internet but the cards were always a pain to mail order. Now Gamestop is carrying them. To play you buy cards with puzzles on them, some easy some brain-meltingly hard, and enter your answers online. Of course you might get duplicate cards but you can always trade them. The ultimate goal for the game is to find the Receda Cube taken from Perplex City. There area a few live-action events held overseas or in hipper US cities. So far I’ve solved 23 (out of 256) cards for a total of 462 points. I don’t pretend that I’ll find the Cube and win the RL cash prize, but it’s an interesting game with good design. The cards cost a little under a dollar a piece; a pretty good value for engaging puzzles. They have few online “cards” I’ll post them.

Another reason for blog laziness is the Google Reader “Check this out!” sidebar. It’s way easier to make something show up on there than it is to post about it. It’s the FWD:FWD:FWD school of blogging.

The Internet in My Pants

2006-09-25T23:08:00.000-07:00

For about a week now my goal has been to get the Internet in my pants. That is to say, I’d like a smart phone that lets me do Internet-y things like send e-mail, txt, get maps, read RSS, post photos to my Flickr account, blog a bit, etc. I don’t need it to be a media player or take videos. I’m not even sure that I want it to open Office docs.

Why do I need a smart phone? I have no idea. Not like I have any one calling me or texting me. Nor will I use it to conduct business. The Cat has suggested that it is a toy and she is mostly right. We don’t use our cell phones to communicate much (either her’s is out of juice or mine is MIA). I just feel like we are missing out on some sort of important technology. Like the people who said that the Internet was just a fad. I don’t want to be that old guy who can’t understand why you can only use your phone to pay for groceries come 2025.

It should be easy to pick out a phone, but it’s not. I tend to obsess over purchases, read reviews and comments and generally troll the Web looking for some one to endorse the product I’ve latched on to. Cell phone reviews lack consistency. If a reviewer loves a phone on one site, then another reviewer hates it on another site. Same for user reviews; they never match the sites review. And of course there are at least 2 users that said the phone didn’t work at all or broke with in seconds of turning it on.

All that being said, my quest goes on. I’m looking for a phone that:

Is more smart phone and not so much a PDA (I’m looking at you Treo).
Has a full QWERTY keyboard. None of that regular phone keypad crap. And it should slide out; I don’t care for the phones that open like a laptop.
Can surf the Internet. I realize that it’s not going to be everything on the Internet, but it should be close.
Has a camera. Nothing fancy, but most have 1.3 megapixel now.
Can handle to do some Web 2.0 stuff, so I guess Java or some such.

I’ve been looking at two phones. Both from T-Mobile: the MDA or the Sidekick 3. Both have the features I want but the MDA has a bit more and is slightly more adult. One interesting little gizmo is the Sony Mylo. It’s not quite a phone; you don’t pay for a service cause it runs on WiFi, which limits where you can actually use the thing. But it has Skype and Google Chat to offset its lack of anywhere phone service. The Cat and I played around with them at the Sony store. I was pretty impressed and if it was cheaper I probably would have picked one up. Everyone seems on fire about the Q; I’ll have to read about that one, though it doesn’t have the slide keyboard. People the hell out of the Blackberry Pearl also, but I don’t like the keypad.

One thing I don’t understand is the phone stores. They either don’t have any phones set up so you can actually use them or the phones are dummy shells. Doesn’t anyone test the things before they buy? I used an employee’s MDA at one store (his browser history had porn in it) and they couldn’t find a Sidekick for me to mess with. They should have had both fired up and ready to go to entice me. At the Sony store they didn’t even provide their little Mylo with a good WiFi signal. I used it on a weak signal that was just floating around.

If anyone can think of a phone that would satisfy my requirements just let me know.

By the way, Amazon has some pretty good phone deals.

Lovely Commute

2006-09-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

Ah, what a lovely spring day (Thanks Global Warming!). I’m not one for weather, but today was great.

My judge of a nice day is my scoot home. If it’s nice, then the day is nice. Today it was glove and jacket weather. Sure it took forever to go 3 miles but I didn’t care.

Bonus: I got to listen in on a guy in a Porsche S-something or other listen to Rico Suave by Gerardo. Seriously? He was some 'burban white guy and I think he had it on XM radio. Seriously?! He paid to have that beamed into his car from space. It completely freaked by beans.

As a public service if you are going to relive your frat days with bad music, please put the top down on your convertible.

BSG = WOW

2006-09-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

WOW! That’s all I can say. I’m not sure my frail body can take any more of Battlestar Galatica. I watched 4 episodes (one of which was part of the 2.0 release) and I think my mind was blown like 10 times. More than any other show BSG makes me gasp and shout exclamations at key moments.

In brief:

I did expect the Admiral to make some sort of exit, just not like that. I really thought her XO was going to mutiny or something.
Adama is a bad ass, as I knew before.
Roslin is also some what of a bad ass (I don’t think I will ever forget her blowing that Cylon out of the airlock).
Baltar is a jerkwad. Sure we all like smooching hot bio-robot chicks, but dude get a fraking grip and stop giving people nukes. Jeeze.
The whole cancer treatment thing was a little to deux ex machina . . . uh. . . hmmm. Well come to think of it that might have been very intentional.

I’ll binge on the other disks when I can ‘flix them.

Between BSG, Veronica Mars and Farscape I’ve got quite a few series in the air right now. It’s great watching shows like BSG and Veronica Mars a season at a time. Sure you have to wait a year for them to come out, but you don’t have to wait “until next week” for cliffhangers or arcs to resolve themselves. I don’t mind the suspense, but these stories are so grand and complex I prefer to view them over the course of a few weeks rather than a year. From what I hear about Lost season viewing would probably be best.

So if you haven’t started watching BSG do so. Same for Veronica Mars. And Doctor Who. You’ll be a better person for it.

You down with BSG?

2006-09-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

Yeah, you know me.

Right now, right at this very second (see the time stamp) I'm sitting down with disk 1 of Battlestar Galatica 2.5. I can finally find out what Barnelia and Cecil are whispering about all the time.

By the way, I can't stand the damn theme song.

Games of the Non-Video Kind

2006-09-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend The Cat and I had Barnelia and Cecil over for dinner and a Bad Movie. This time around it was The Wizard staring Super Mario 3, the Power Glove and Fred Savage. While it was amusing, it wasn’t the highlight of the evening for me.

No, I was thrilled that we all played Carcassonne which I bought earlier that day. I used to play lots of RPGs and board games with my friends in the Sunshine State. Unfortunately I don’t know anyone these days that wants to throw some d20s or calculate their berserker’s THAC0.

Carcassone is a neat little strategy game with a nice dose of luck thrown in. And while it was fairly complex you could carry on a conversation while playing. Personally I love tile laying games; something about building your own board every time that helps keep things fresh. It offers plenty of expansion sets (which I also love) to keep adding to the game. And the pieces are great; their called Meeples (miniature people), made out of wood and fun to stack when you are scheming. (If they are you meeples are they your meeps?)

I think everyone had a pretty good reaction to it. But Cecil was slightly dismayed at the game’s lack of violence. Perhaps one of the expansions will let him bully other player’s meeples around. If not I can drag out RoboRally, that’s usually pretty violent. The Cat, AKA “Board Game Hater”, even suffered through two games. And Barnelia demonstrated her inner vassal by schooling us in both games. I hope we can play again.

Terroists of Penzance

2006-09-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

Here I am shirking an assignment and my patriotic duty: to spend 9/11 not watching something about 9/11. Something that will make me hate terrorists, hate the administration, feel proud to be an American, hate America, salute NY’s emergency services, get angry that nothing has really changed, feel guilty for not being on one of those flights, salute those that died as heroes, make martyrs of them, get all giggly cause you think the Armageddon is a comin’ or feel sorry for yourself cause you live in such a screwed up world. Just take your pick; I’m sure you can find some media to reinforce it.

Me? I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. It’s a great movie. It has to be some sort of miracle to have made such a decent flick from a ride. I can’t wait until the second one comes out on DVD.

(Here is where I set aside my unused history degree; I don’t feel like beating down the particulars on this one.)

Standing at the nexus of terrorists and pirates makes me wonder if 400 years in the future will there be a movie romanticizing our current situation? I mean it must have royally sucked to live in the Caribbean in the 1600’s, pirates or not. Sure you had nice beach front property but you’d probably be a slave or have some disease or get killed by a pirate or never get enough to eat or whatever. But when Johnny Depp and Legolas get all swash and buckle, it looks grand. Who wouldn’t want to be a pirate? You get to hang out with Keira Knightly and wear great hats.

Not to mention the role reversal. Aren’t pirates supposed to be bad guys? Outside the law, stealing, raping and pillaging. Last time I checked that’s some pretty bad crap. But the British (who were no saints; who is really?) always look like jerks or worse. We root for the pirates to pull off derring-do, get the girl and have a moral code. I’m almost sure that only one of those really occurred in real life and it was probably less than moral.

It will be very interesting to see how the future deals with this time. Will our suffering and strife be a source of entertainment? I could imagine that in 400 years there will be a great hologram where you can play the part of the heroic hijacker. And just to keep it all “Hollywood,” before crashing the hijacker will be able to parachute out at the last minute yelling “Yippie-ki yea!,” land then kiss some girl in a burka.

Dude, this post probably put me on some sort of list.

Doctor Who:Radiophoa-tron

2006-09-06T05:22:00.000-07:00

Now you too can make your very own Doctor Who theme song. The Radiophona-tron has samples and loops from the previous Doctor’s theme songs. It’s very cool, but I just wish they didn’t put it in that weird hex layout.

This will come in handy when we film Cybersnakes on a TARDIS.

Daleks vs. Cybermen, OMG!

2006-09-05T22:06:00.000-07:00

**spoiler warning if you care about the second season finale Doctor Who**

I just finished the final episodes the second season of Doctor Who. Barnelia and Cecil saw it a few weeks ago, but they quietly keep their secrets to themselves.

I’m not that big of a classic Doctor Who fan so I can’t say that this is the first Dalek and Cybermen throw down; probably not given their reactions to each other. But I had thought about it when the Cybermen were reintroduced in season two. It was just pure geek fantasy, thinking about who would win between the two; sort of a British Aliens vs. Predator.

I was genuinely shocked that the Daleks popped out of the sphere (thanks for not spoiling Cecil). I didn’t see it coming and I couldn’t imagine the situation worse off than Cybermen invading the whole earth. Then out pop four Daleks not to mention the scads that would soon pour out of the Genesis Ark. I always marvel how menacing the new series’ Daleks are, they just sit there and stare.

My favorite part of the episode was the smack talk between the Daleks and Cybermen. In my mind these two foes are essentially the same (though some fanboys would beg to differ, maybe one will show up and comment the heck out of me):

Metal body, check
Organic parts, check
Really, really tough, check
Don’t care for the Doctor, check

But during the smack talk they really pick at each other. Personally I feel that the Daleks got the best lines and managed to carry them out; the Daleks mopped the floor with the Cybermen. The best one is when the black Dalek tells the Cybermen that it won’t be war, but pest control to beat the crap out of the Cybermen. Genius!

(I snagged those images from the Politically Incorrect Alphabet.)

Checked out.

2006-09-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

I think we’ve reached the threshold where I just get flat out bored. Or at least not engaged fully.

Most of the students are now just wheedling away at what is expected for assignments. Not concepts or moving their knowledge forward, just nitpicking over sentences or requirements.

Now my mind is just drifting off to Barnelia’s Baked Beans. I’m not a huge bean fan, but these were great. They were all molasses-y and yummy. The only weird thing is that, mixed in with the beans, was this meat looking substance . . . that Barnelia didn’t add. It was like the beans make their own meat much like things make their own sauce. Sure it was strange and disturbing but I don’t think it was meat at all but some broken down beans. Lord I hope so.

Best shirt I’ve seen in a while.

Still Slogging.

2006-09-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

Class is still some what boring or maybe it is the knowledge that I have to sit here all day. And I have a longish flight to look forward to on Tuesday. My rear end is doing plenty of sitting. At least on the plane I can watch some cartoons or Doctor Who or play some games. In class I have to pay attention or at least pretend too. I wonder what the instructor thinks of people using laptops. With a WiFi connection I could be doing anything in the world (like blogging). For all they know I could be playing Warcraft . . . wait a minute! If this was my laptop I’d have it on here.

I could be slaying crap right now. Damn.

The Worst Thing:

2006-09-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

Old people in a computer lab exercise. Geezus H Kittens! If you can’t use a computer don’t take an on-line class and don’t become a librarian. They use computers for crying out loud. Either they can’t read directions or they can’t navigate the OS or maybe they just don’t know how to use a mouse. Like Scotty in The Voyage Home.

The Best Part of Class

2006-09-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

Lunch. Sure it sounds “Jr. High,” but the restaurant in the hotel (where the class is held) is great. While other students bust ass over to the student union for sweaty burgers and oddly chemical food from Chili’s Too (“More Chilier!!”), I pop down to the restaurant. It’s a nice sit down place that has unique dishes, particularly for hotel food. No reubens or grill chicken sandwiches here nor is the menu drowning in ranch. Yesterday I had a cashew encrusted chicken with veggies and some sort of Creole/Cajun rice. The chicken was residing in a (tasteful) pool of spicy mango sauce. It was lovely and the salad dressing was to die for, a silky balsamic number. I almost pulled at The Cat (AKA “Spoon Licker”) and extracted every speck of dressing from that plate.

Today I sat down to a Latin Crab Cake salad. Now the crab cakes could have used more crab (it was primarily spuds) but it was otherwise very good. It came with a delicious papaya sauce. I’ll probably return for the remaining two days of the class.

I’d best get in some decent food before heading on a business trip to the north. . . way to the north.

Wow that was fast.

2006-09-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the annoyer is the same as yesterday. Other people are commenting, but it is mostly the annoyer that is interjecting with too many specific personal stories. It’s a different professor so he isn’t annoyed yet, but the students are starting to turn. Now every time the annoyer opens their mouths several people start to snicker and whisper to each other.

I swear I heard some one giggle which they quickly turn into a cough.

In other news, people love shitty hotel bagels. As soon as the break was declared, the vultures descended on the snack tray to pick it clean. I think I just saw some one eating a doily smeared with warm cream cheese. It’s amazing the kinds of shit people will put into their heads. These are the nasty as hell bagels that seem to expand as you chew them. Imagine what that little bastard is doing in your colon.

Oh and the chick next to me is overheating so much that she had to run a battery operated fan. Hint: Don’t wear a sweater. Fashion is a bitch.

Ha! Online!

2006-09-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

So I’m in class and the professor is telling us how much libraries are going down the tubes and how Google is taking over the field. Is this how they are selling their program? I don’t mind hearing about the challenges of libraries but every class ends up starting with this doom and gloom shit. It’s not exactly a pep rally.

Man this guy is angry. Hmmm….angry librarian, this is getting interesting. (Except his isn’t really, really angry. He is excusing is use of the word “crap.” If he was really angry he would drop the S and F bomb.) As everyone knows I love being angry. And nothing makes me angrier than loosing my job/career to a huge corporation. But is there really going to be a profession when all this is said and done?

There’s one in every class.

2006-09-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

(Back in class again.)

You know, that person that just has to ask the stupid question (No matter what you’ve heard there are in fact stupid questions). Usually this person also feels the need to constantly chime in with their personal stories or situation. And more than likely it’s to bitch or tell everyone how their situation breaks what ever truism or rule the professor is lecturing about.

There seems to be one of these people in every single college class. No more, no less. I think the registrar must specially arrange for them.

While these folks are annoying it is amusing to see when the professor gets exasperated with them. You can clearly see it in this simple formula:

Professor’s annoyance level = ((total number of stupid question/number of minutes since last stupid question )age of annoyer)annoying features of annoyer

It is always important to take special note of any annoying features of the annoyer. A grating voice or repetitive speech pattern can go along way to rattling up the professor.

It’s irrelevant how long, how good or how unflappable the professor is, the annoyer will always get to them. It just takes time and more questions.

I’ll spend the next few days trying to determine two things: 1) a humorous name for this type of student and 2) the annoyer remains the same for the length of the course. It has been my experience that they do I just haven’t focused on this aspect before. Usually I am rolling my eyes and sighing too much.

The Day the Fun Died

2006-08-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my fall text book came, it’s called “The Organization of Information.” Hardly grabs you from the get go. In fact the first two chapters failed to inspire (me to stay awake).

So it seems that the fun is over. No more watching DVDs, playing games and messing with Mindstorms (I’m not doing the all caps) or other fun. At least not in the quantity that I’ve been doing them; I’m sure that I can squeeze something in. Now much of my free time will be spent reading and writing about databases with people who care very much about databases.

I am currently debating the wisdom of spending my time on a library degree. It no longer makes as much sense as it 9 months ago. (Actually it’s a year ago when I first started down this trail.) Most of my mentors said that it was a futile move. Now I am starting to think they were right. What will all of this effort get me? Probably nothing. Was it a knee-jerk response to temporarily crappy work conditions? Most likely, but those times are over now and things are looking a bit more pleasant.

When I express concern that I might never use it, most people respond that I should just go ahead and finish it. But what for? It’s not going to help my current job or career path. All I will get is a few more student loans and a boatload of wasted free time. Time better spent learning more Flash or some sort of programming or electronics skills or reading literature in my current field.

After this semester I will be around half way done, so should I just might as well finish. There are some large things to do, but nothing insurmountable. I just have to answer the question “Why bother?” If the answer is amusing enough I will stick with it, if not then I can save my money and time. And certainly play more WoW.

More Work Stuff

2006-08-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

More Work Stuff.

True to form I was in a meeting today where “opportunity” and “flexibility” were used like crazy. I had to fight down the urge to smirk and snicker. Maybe one day I will call some one out on what they are actually saying. Probably right before I get fired.

More work strangeness: I was cruising the halls, probably getting my mail or something, when I passed to two office bees talking. Apparently one of them had been on vacation for a week or so and they were discussing the bee’s return to the hive. The bee actually said “It’s good to be back.” What?! Who the hell says that? What hideous thing happened to this poor woman on her vacation? Maybe she went to some sort of spa where they poke you with hedgehogs and insult you all day long.

When I told The Cat about what I had heard and she said “Well if you are on vacation with your kids at Disneyland then yeah, work is probably better. But if you are on a lovely romantic getaway, then you never want to go back.” (Or something to that effect; I wasn’t taking notes) I agree, though in theory only as I don’t have kids. But we did have a great time in Cigar Town and I didn’t want to return to work so she is probably right.

Next time the long over due Cigar Town recap! Even though The Cat has recapped and Flickred the heck out of it already.

Reassessing the Orange Paradigm

2006-08-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

As noted yesterday Barnelia has been telling tales of work. Not just any tales, but stories about bureaucratic management systems. This sort of stuff makes my blood boil. Check out the most recent Pretty Lab post for the discussion of “red box.” I want to know is it a verb, noun or adverb. It would be best, and most useful, if it were an actual red box. You know, for storage or maybe it has snacks in it.

Even after a graduate level management course I still can’t endorse any management system or method or whatever. I am extremely thrilled not to be in an extremely silly office environment. Sure it starts to weave into some obtuse crap, but we’ve avoided a management system . . . though we did have a close brush with “balance scorecards” a while back. I think everyone realized doing all the work for the scorecard would then become our primary task instead of our product.

What kills me is that it’s all fake or at least fake sounding. While we need some order there is no reason to slap a fantasy role-playing game on top of it all (“Meetings & Managers in my den this Saturday night!!”). Managers hide behind the game and use fake rules and words to sound purposeful.

I can’t tell you how many times I hear the word “flexible” in any giving meeting. What they are really saying is “I can’t make a decision!” or “I want it all!” Well guess what, there comes a time when everyone has to put on their big girl pants and make a decision. Most decisions close some doors and limit choices but that’s how you get things done. Not by dithering around and being flexible all the time, but by making a freaking decision. I really feel that some managers are unable to decide because they can’t own the fact that they will have to say no to an “opportunity” (more on that in a bit). To be honest, I’ve been in this position myself: you can’t make a decision so you waffle in the name of flexibility. I’ve had to push myself into making a decision and it was always for the best because we were able to move forward.

The other word that gets thrown around a lot is “opportunity” and its slutty cousin, “partnerships.” Both of these are great in the abstract; they are powerful ideas that let organizations grow and really do some great stuff. But only certain people should use them: disciplined people. For me these two words have become meaningless. They are used so much that everything is an opportunity and everyone is a partner. I realize that in order to be flexible (HA!) one must have this view, but it’s unrealistic. You can’t do everything all the time while partnered with everyone, so limits should be established to focus efforts.

At work I am often the “No Guy,” the guy in meetings that chimes in with a jigger of reality. While I am sure that I’m not perceived as a “team player,” I am often the one what has to execute the opportunity management and partners dream up. So I often have to burst a few bubbles. Maybe I am a jerk or just too stupid or red box in flexibility.

Wow, this wasn’t fun at all. Here. (I haven’t played it, but it seems promising).

Oh, I forgot about “strategic.” Grrrr.

Bits and Things

2006-08-21T23:03:00.000-07:00

I has been a while so I will dump some random stuff into one catch-all post (I'll have to save the Getaway to Cigar Town for another post unto itself).

Been playing lots of Worlds of Warcraft and watching season 2 of Doctor Who. I can't get enough of the new Doctor Who series. I'm about half way through and I've made the adjustment to the Tenth Doctor. It was slightly rough at first but its working out for the best. He certainly dresses more like The Doctor than the Ninth, who I always thought was a bit to fashionable. Ten seems to be channeling Rowan Atkinson on occasion, which is strange or very purposeful considering. I just finished the Cybermen episodes. While they looked pretty pokey, they didn't fail to creep me out. Same with the Daleks; pokey but pretty menacing.

Speaking of “ten,” I've also been watching Cartoon Network's Ben Ten. Sure it's formulaic and the titular Ben is a bit of a jerk, but it's got a lot going for it: cool gadget, cool aliens and a great theme song (A good theme song goes a long way. This one and Doctor Who's I listen to every time. I have to skip over BSG's warbling). And Grandpa Max, who I am sure is some sort of former MIB.

Last Saturday The Cat and I went to an antique mall; not sure why really, we were passing and figured what the hell. The last time we were in this particular mall I had such a horrific allergy attack from the dust and mold. This time nothing except yawning from the boredom.

It's not a very exciting place but I did manage to find a real treasure: Put 'n Take dice. Many of my father's NYC relatives played this simple dice game and I used to play it with them when I was young. It consists of 2 dice, one with P's and T's on it and the other numbered 1, 2, 3 and All. It's a gambling game so you need to have some pennies or matchsticks or tokens or whatever. To start, everyone antes up to the pot. The players take turns rolling the dice and doing what they say: either putting or taking 1, 2, 3 or All tokens from your pool or the pot. There might be other rules but I can't seem to remember any. I suppose when you are out of tokens your out of the game (which could happen with a simple “Put All” roll. Hey, life's rough). I have vague memories of playing with my parents and grandparents after dinner for hours.

Next time Barnelia and Cecil are around we will play and drink anisette and espresso. My pa and kin are of the Italian persuasion; I can't think of anything more Italian than anisette and espresso (involving tiny cups and tiny spoons) except perhaps downing cannolis and calling in a mob hit.

I'm not sure what happened to THE family set of Put 'n Take dice after my grandmother passed away. I sure hope my father saved them. I still need to snag a copy of Cosmic Wimpout (Check out the tournament poster, those cats look like they are having a blast!) Now there is another fun dice game.

The Cat continues to forward me attacks on Kristen Bell's fashion sense. I don't care what she wears in “real” life, just that season 2 of Veronica Mars is on DVD. While the first season was great, I am a bit skeptical on how the second will hold my attention since most of the major bits were resolved.

Damnit! I wanted to write a harangue about management stuff after hearing Barnelia's horrific, yet amusing, stories of work. Perhaps next time.

Oh and . . .

Watch the Skies!

ARGH! My Eyes!

2006-08-08T21:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight has not been a good night to be my eyes.

First I watched 2 episodes of Drawn Together (bunch of cartoon tropes {look it up} “live” in a house, reality show style). It’s an amusing premise but the show is wantonly stupid and unnecessarily nasty. I have no problem with either stupid or nasty but only when done with intelligence and discretion. The only moderately funny character is Ling Ling, a Pikachu-like Asian battling monster. He doesn’t speak English (maybe Japanese, but I doubt it is actually anything real) and the characters constantly misinterpret him. For some reason his subtitles are in Engrish, which is slightly amusing. The really funny part about him is he acts like you want Pikachu to act: constantly pissed and raring for a fight. It’s too bad the rest of the show is crap; I’m sure that Ling Ling is a riot.

This isn’t the first “adult” or “mature” (read “crappy” or “juvenile”) cartoon I’ve ‘flixed as of late. A few weeks ago I watched 2 episodes of Tripping the Rift. (I figure that if they can’t prove their worth in 2 episodes then they are a complete waste of time. . . beyond those two episodes that is) Boy, was I sorry. Everything was wretched about this cartoon. It’s really sad when the title sequence contains most of the jokes you’ll see in the episode. This wouldn’t be such a huge problem but it’s the same damn sequence for every show (except for the computer saying something stupid).

I should have listen to The Cat for both shows. She said they would suck and she was right.

The second threat to my vision tonight was sausage and peppers. The Cat purchased me some from Whole Foods and it was a bit shy on the pepper side. Just so happens that a coworker gave me some homegrown peppers just the other day, two red bell peppers and two long green ones. I decided to add in the two greens. For some reason I thought they would be mild like bells, after the first bite I knew I was mistaken. So I ate a bit more bread and everything was spicy but ok. After dinner and the above mentioned crapfest, I went to lie down for a second. I was snuggling in when I rubbed my eyes. HO SHIT! It burned! YOUCH! My left eye was on fire from a bit of capsaicin on my finger tip. Just the other day I read how you shouldn’t drink water on capsaicin because it is oil soluble; water just spreads it around. Bread or liquor is recommended to temper the heat. Both of those seemed really bad to rub on one’s eye so I just used cool water and ice. It went away, but not after some intense discomfort.

I must have had my idiot hat on not to realize they were hot peppers. Usually I wear rubber gloves when dealing in hot peppers to avoid searing my eyes out. I know next time I will go for the gloves when ever I am around peppers that clearly aren’t bells.

Thankfully the capsaicin washed out or dispersed; no lasting damage. But, as they say, you can’t unwatch something bad. I’ll have to live with the Drawn Together damage for a while.

Happy Birthday

2006-08-08T21:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to The Cat.

I’m sorry you were under the weather for it. We’re going to have such a blast in Cigar City and traveling around the Bikini State this weekend that you’ll forget all about it.

Keeping Busy

2006-08-03T23:29:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while. I suppose that some disinterest has set in; I’ve moved on to other pastures. I don’t have a harangue this time around just some notes on my furious media consumption over the past few weeks.

Right now I am loading up all my “second string” CDs on to my Zen Vision:M. It’s all that dusty crap that one once loved, but now you just scratch your head and wonder “why?” They are lovely CDs; some with just that super-nifty song or others with lots of goodness. Stuff like The Offspring’s Ixnay on the Hombre and Aqua’s Aquarium or Jimmy Buffett’s Barometer Soup. *cha-thunk* What was that? Oh that was The Cat leaving me for some one who has a music collection that doesn’t inspire shame. I’m sorry baby, I just don’t know no better. Now I just have find my De La Soul CD.

After finishing the cute and somewhat cuddly Sly 2: Band of Thieves I began God of War both on PS2. OMG: the violence, the blood, the nudity, the anti-hero who looks like a WWE actor, uh, wrestler. I didn’t realize it when I got it but it is rated M and certainly has earned it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game. Nothing like knocking a minotaur on his back so you can stick your sword up his nostril. The Cat doesn’t approve of this game and can’t say as I’d blame her. It’s everything that the parent’s groups are all freaked about (and again for good reason). But I am a big boy so I guess I get to play the games that let you rip medusa’s head off with your bare hands *pop*

Still reading some Manga to see what the fuss is all about. Full Metal Alchemist continues to be cool. But Fruits Basket is starting to loose me. It’s just too damn complex and all of the characters look the same. I also read a book called Comic Party. It was just bad; bad story, bad characters and bad art. It also contains some questionable art in the back, you know the kind parents don’t want in their teen’s books. I won’t be reading Comic Party 2 (which I am sure is as bad as House Party 2). I think I am back on “normal” comics for a while.

Stop reading this right now and go watch the pilot of The Amazing Screw-on Head. It is freaking amazing (just like the title says). It’s based on Mike “Hellboy” Mignola's book by the same name. I know some purists have pooed on it, but I was very satisfied. Great art and superior voice acting (Paul Giamatti and David Hyde Pierce) So go, watch and vote so that it will become a glorious series that I will have wait to see on DVD.

And finally, I’ve been spending lots of time with my new, shiny Lego Mindstorms set. So far I’ve built 3 of the 4 provided projects and two of my own. My first creation was Wakeybot: designed to go into the bedroom and slap The Cat’s side of the bed while saying “Good Morning.” It had a button on top that, when pressed, would stop the slapping and cause Wakeybot to retreat. My current project is a low to the ground bot that moves like a Roomba and plays music based on the color of the surface it is driving over. So far it plays a dirge, but it should be a perkier tune soon. Programming the little buggers isn’t that hard, but building them is a bugger. It’s those damn studless bricks. I understand why they went with them, but I do wish they were just normal Lego. Adjusting to the different building style has been frustrating.

I leave you with this. Holy Freaking Cow. I am going to need one of those. Not sure when and where I will use it, but it is just too amazing.

High Five Anxiety

2006-07-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

Bear with me; this is going to be a long setup.

As I was leaving today a coworker, Ms. X, referenced the Ghostbusters movie theme song (“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!”). I started to joke about what Ray Parker Jr. was doing right now (something to do with booze and lounge singing). Ms. X was shocked, SHOCKED!, that I knew who Ray was.

Woman please, my snotty group of 11 year old friends called ourselves the “Ghostbusters” at day camp. I probably still have the Ghostbusters painter’s cap that I wore. . . I faintly remember some sort of gray Ghostbusters shirt. . .was it sleeveless? I can’t remember.

Anyways, we were having a good laugh about the song and Ray when another coworker, Mr. Y, walked in. While Mr. Y probably has seen the movie and heard the song there was little chance that he remembered who performed the song. But when I told him that we were talking about Ray he responded (in a deep, “soulful” voice) “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!” WTF! Ms. X and I started freaking out and laughing. It was a riot until Ms. X offered up a High Five Opportunity (HFO). I was able to execute this one but just barely.

For some reason I just don’t get high fives. HFOs just make me nervous and slightly weirded out. Maybe it’s the overt camaraderie or the situations that I am in when HFOs occur. It’s usually work related; we’re not curing cancer, just celebrating some minor, lame made-up victory.

When ever a HFO occurs time seems to slow down for me as I stare at the hand. Lord, I hope time stands still and I’m not just standing there like an idiot. I usually miss the opportunity or miss their hand completely.

Those few beats are pretty intense for me. My brain is usually chugging away on four fronts during that pause: should I respond?, is this person cool enough to be offering a HFO?, trajectory and force of my potential response and a brief analysis of whether this HF is warranted. It’s the last one that gets me. I don’t really do anything with others that requires a HF; I’m not a team player, I don’t play sports and as mentioned above I haven’t cured cancer. HFs should be reserved for something truly momentous and I can’t get behind an unworthy HF.

I think some people can sense this. They usually learn after one awkward HFO with me. About a month ago I was third in a row of people and a passing person was high fiving the first two. Then he got to me and he ended up trying to shake my hand instead. Unfortunately I was already for the HF damnit. It just ended up being a weird moment involving both a HF and handshaking. It was like Richard Simmons and Oprah were freaking out about some fat-burning cheese cake.

I just hope that my successful HF (which I was slightly shocked to have actually done) today doesn’t get around. I can’t be expected to slap everyone’s damn hand just because we got in new PostIt notes.

Enneagrams

2006-07-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

One of my recent classes had me cranking out a lengthy paper on a management topic. While management isn’t my strong suit I did manage to find an interesting topic: personality testing. I’m normally pretty skeptical about these things. There are so many variables to a person that a simple assessment can’t pin them down. At my place of business we did one assessment a few years ago and, despite my skepticism, it seemed to do a pretty good job of describing me. But I still and a bit leery when it comes to them.

For my paper I did a survey of some of the standard ones. One that stuck out was more a system than a specific test. Enneagrams seem to be a mess of astrology, philosophy, mysticism, geometry and a lot of other hooha. But after taking a simple version of the test myself and asking others to do so, it seems to be able to describe people’s major tendencies.

One caution however, the first time I took it I was classed as an 8. About 2 weeks later I retook it and was a 5 and I scored another 5 just now. I feel that 5 reflects me pretty well (at least until they add “10-The Jerk”) particularly the diagram. These diagrams sum up each category in three ways (this one is for 5’s):

World View: The world is invasive and confusing. I need privacy to think.
Basic Desire: to understand the world
Basic Fear: of being overwhelmed by the world

Hmm. I’d say that this pretty much sums up what underlies most of the actions I take.

The Cat took it and a few people at work did. I’d say that all the assessments were pretty right on. So give it a whirl yourself here and read about the types at www.9types.com. If you could post your result and if you agree with it, I am curious to see what other people think.

Now I am not going to start to consume all the media associated with this stuff. I still doubt that a person’s personality and be reduced to a single number and apply for all instances over time. But so far Enneagrams seem to be pretty accurate and at the very least they provide one with the opportunity to step back and look at how they behave and react.

The Real Problem with MySpace

2006-07-18T23:04:00.000-07:00

The Cat recently started MySpace page in her quest to sniff out what her high school classmates are doing. I’ve been meaning to start one too to be familiar with this huge phenomenon. (I’m either one phenomenon ahead or one behind, never right on). I suppose it is interesting, but mostly it’s just slightly skeezmo. Even if a nun had a page, it would be instantly turned sketchy from all the nasty on MySpace.

The real problem with the whole damn mess isn’t the squadrons of perverts patrolling for dumb teens. Or the legions of news media scouring for the perverts. Or the moron teens that post every detail so that they can be found by the above. While these are certainly problems, mostly involving idiots, the real problem is ugly, obnoxious, grating, eye-melting pages.

Have you ever poked around on there? It’s like the end of the world or at least the end of the world for graphic artists. Is this what we invented the Internet for? Or this? Lord I hope that the information on this page is a joke (or some sort of complex cipher). Or this riot of color and sound. I vaguely knew this girl. She seemed like some one that could make good choices. Little did I know that she was operating without sense or decency.

Speaking of decency: parents, please, if you have kids on MySpace educate them. If you don’t know the technology, educate yourself then educate them. You don’t need to teach them HTML just common sense and how not to run off to another country with a tubby 40 year-old from Ohio. Anyway. . .

I’d waste time finding more, but you get the point. Maybe there is something elegant about 15 animated GIFs, music and a video all going as soon as you load the page, but it’s lost on me. It’s like we’ve regressed 10 years to really bad geocities homepages. I’m almost positive that the world doesn’t need another page with animated flame and that bunny that says I suck.

I am turning Japanese.

2006-07-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

Or at least the segment of the Japanese population that reads manga. I was originally going to say “I’m turning into a Japanese school girl” but The Cat would probably freak. Anyway, I’m really enjoying a couple of manga titles that I ran into in my recent class. Most happen to be targeted to girls; they happen to have better stories and don’t seem to exist to put blood on the page like the ones targeted at boys.

At the recommendation of a comic store employee I read Fushigi Yugi. A Japanese school girl gets sent back to ancient China and drama ensues. One that I ran into at the library is Full Metal Alchemist. It’s sort of steampunk, sort of technomagic; I don’t have a real good handle on it yet. Kids screw around with some alchemy to bring back their mom from the dead and action ensues. And while The Cat and I scoffed at Fruits Basket, it’s pretty good. Sure, it is run of the mill teen soap opera stuff, but a bunch of the characters turn into animals of the Chinese zodiac when hugged by a member of the opposite sex (and hilarity ensues). I’ve only read the first book of each of these, but plan to keep reading the series through the library. It would cost a fortune to buy them.

All of these are confusing as hell. Maybe that’s part of the appeal. Cecil graciously let me a heap-o graphic novels to read. I love DC books but they are a bit too familiar. I don’t have to try very hard to understand or get it. Not that the story isn’t good, it just isn’t challenge. Now these manga books are so different in terms of art, pacing, conventions and story (and the fact you have to read them “backwards”). It often takes a bit of mental work to simply ID the character because they change shape and hair color so often.

If you dig comics but think manga are just for pervs like The Cat does, you should really check out a couple of titles. It takes some poking around but there are plenty that are low in the creep factor. You could ease into it with a few Western manga titles like Scott Pilgrim or Neotopia.

I’m not giving up on standard superhero fare, but it’s nice to mix it up a bit.

Ultracrap

2006-07-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

Ultraviolet. . . why? Why were you so stupid? This movie started off good. Mila, check! Future, check! Automatic pistols, check! Swords, check! Vampires. . . uh, ok, check!

But it just can’t manage to become something more. It tries to have emotion when we just want to see another scene of Gun Kata, which I’ve decided is my new favorite thing. They should really offer classes in it at the Y, right after Pilates but before AA.

Maybe I was just being needlessly dense, but the movie just didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t the kid really dead? What the hell was going on in her head that makes it ok to kill a few hundred goons to protect one kid, er clone? She keeps saying “But he’s just a kid” right before she mows down some more black suited extras. How is she reconciling that? And what was up with those guys’ armor at the beginning? I think it was made of glass, bad I idea guys.

I’ve become spoiled with BSG and the new Doctor Who (of which the second disk is as good as the first). That stuff is quality. *gasp* could I actually want more than just senseless violence from my entertainment? I hope not.

Heading out

2006-07-10T00:09:00.000-07:00

Well my media binge didn’t really pan out. I only read one part of Rocketo and played some Sly 2 and Luxor. But not what I was hoping for.

On the upside, the new Doctor Who was great. They’ve managed to continue with the same formula while updating it considerably. The 9^th Doctor is super (if a bit too fashionable) and so is his companion. Sure the special effects are better but the overall pacing has improved a lot. The old story arcs I’ve seen took about 2.5 hours. It was just way to long to watch British folk run around hill and dale. The new ones are down to around an hour and that is just right.

I can’t want until the second disk. I’m really hoping that an ongoing story will begin to emerge to guide the series along. It has already been hinted at. I’m sure that Daleks or Cybermen or The Master have something to do with something or other.

I’m off to a city for some business (it begins with an R and rhymes with Snitchmond). I won’t have a laptop so no Internet connection! I hope I don’t get the shakes from withdrawal.

I will have my spanking new Creative Zen Vision:M media player. The Cat and I went to Best Buy on Saturday and picked one up. But it had a wee little hole in the screen so back it went. Thankfully it was a hassle free exchange.

So far I am very impressed. It’s easy to use, the screen is beautiful and it sounds great. But the real test will occur on my flights. I’ll let you know how it faired.

Back in the Slackle Again

2006-07-08T00:48:00.000-07:00

(Slackle – a portmanteau of slack and saddle)

Whew . . . well it’s all over but the grading. That is the last time I take 6 hours (two courses) during a 5 week summer course. While the comic and graphic novel one was great, the management class was a complete crapfest. I won’t say that I didn’t learn anything, but I will say that it was badly executed in almost every possible way.

I’ve only had one other class that was this bad. I walked out of that one after making a huge scene. Unfortunately I couldn’t storm out of an online class or really foment dissent as I am wont to do. But it is over and I hope I can avoid this professor for the rest of my degree program. I don’t think so as he teaches another course I probably should take.

To celebrate I will wallow in media this weekend. I’ve got a ton of graphic novels from the library (currently about 2/3 of the way through The Dark Knight Returns). Barnelia, Cecil and a very reluctant The Cat are going to watch the new Doctor Who (heezy geezy, that site is loud, but you can lay down a neat beat by scrolling over the Cybermen and then a Dalek). And to round out the weekend there will be game; definitely a little Sly 2 and perhaps some WoW. And sad to say, Luxor.

I’ve been saving Rocketo vol. 1 graphic novel I purchased about 2 weeks ago. I wanted to wait until all the classes are over and now is the time.

One thing that I want to make absolutely clear to the 4 people who actually check this blog: I could not have been as successful as I have been in my classes without The Cat’s mad editing skillz. I am the worst proofer; if Word doesn’t catch it chances are I won’t. She works very hard to keep me from sounding like an idiot. I really do appreciate it.

I am going to try to get back into posting crap regularly. It’s slightly amusing and I do love to hear my voice (which is in my head as I type).

Topics we’ll soon cover:

I’m turning Japanese
Enneagrams
Checking out graphic novels from the library
Rocket Red

One down

2006-06-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

one to go. I just finished one of the classes that has occupied most of my time over the past three weeks. It was pretty grueling but worth it.

It covered comics and graphic novels in libraries. When I get some more time, I'll post some of the great books we read for class and one's that I read on the side.

Until then, go read Bone. It's simply amazing. It has everything: great art, engaging story and great humor. I read the first volume and the second one should be here tomorrow. There are 9 volumes total, so it's a pretty beefy story. This is probably going to me my “Harry Potter” of graphic novels.

That and Rocketo volume 1. Cecil let me the first issue a while back. During the class I read it to decompress. Wow! Not since Kingdom Come was I blown away by the craftsmanship of a graphic novel. It is going to take every ounce of self-control to not by the monthly Rocketo. Cecil talked me out of buying monthies, so I will just have to “wait for the trade.” Besides the trades generally are a lot nicer looking.

I did read some crap too. Case in point: Sgt. Frog. I've seen this one at BN so I checked it out from the library. It's a bit creepy. I believe that the book is targeted at kids, but there are some pretty racy parts. I'll chalk it up to culture differences. I'm not sure yet if I like manga or not. I'll read a few more before I pass judgment. Heck, I might even read the nest Sgt. Frog book. I have to find out why the hell the mother in the series insists on wearing a latex bikini (honest).

Keep in mind that none of these three books for the course proper. I just picked them up when was between assignments or journal articles.

By the way, thanks for your help Cecil. You were a great resource during this class. It would have been a pain in the ass without you.

And I would be a complete soulless jerk not to mention The Cat's assistance in all my classes. She reads everything I turn in or post. It is a lot of stuff, but I really do appreciate her helping me not sound like a idiot. In contrast, she doesn't edit this blog. Which would probably explain iffy writing. Thanks again The Cat.

The easy way out.

2006-06-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

There are two techy-based ways of doing things that people (including myself) think are easier than the original ways: taking a web course (as opposed to face to face classes) and books-on-CD (as opposed to paper).

Everyone thinks web courses are easier since you don’t have to physically sit through class. . . Wrong. It just means that you have to put forth all the effort in organizing yourself, something that is normally done with weekly meetings. Sure you get to do your classes in your time, according to your schedule, but it does take some dedication. If I could, I’d take my library courses face to face. The online ones are great, but no matter how much support, how much chat or how much discussion the class entails you inevitably feel like you are a student body of one.

Or maybe that’s just my natural isolationist policies kicking in.

Yesterday I drove 5 hours to a place, did something for work and drove back. It was a nice trip and worth while. I brought Freakonomics on CD along for the ride. For some reason I thought it would be the easy way to “read” the book. . . Wrong again. It took considerable cognitive load to keep up. They weren’t dishing up very heavy information, but just to follow the story I needed to concentrate. On the open highway that’s fine, but when I needed to think about navigating or when traffic got heavy I found myself pausing it. It wasn’t safe to do both at the same time.

This was my first experience with an audio book and I found it very enjoyable. It was an engaging book and well read by one of the authors so I was glad that I brought it along. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth checking out. The parts about the triple-K (you know who I mean) and sumo wrestling were particularly good.

I will probably give others a try while traveling. I think they will be less of a hassle during air travel. I always spend forever putting books away, taking them out and finding my place again during the dance that is modern air travel.

Enjoy the silence

2006-06-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the summer semester. I have one class that lasts three weeks and one that lasts five. It might have been a mistake to enroll in two at once in such a short time. So everything is very condensed.

At this point I have no idea how I am going to do all the readings, finish all of the assignments, work and still find time to eat and bathe. We shall see.

If I am good at anything in life it’s being a student. Everything usually falls in to place; sure it can be rushed and hectic, but in the end I can end up with two nice shiny As.

All this to say: my experiment in blogging is the last thing on my mind. See you in early July.

This will roxxors

2006-06-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

Mark your calendars for 6/6/06. Why you ask? No, it’s not the day that every goth kid in America will put on extra eyeliner, giggle and say “Dude, it’s the Devil’s day.” (This reminds me, I’ve forgotten to bring perfectly normal brownies to work on April 20th for yet another year.) While that may happen, it’s also is the day that the Nerdcore Hip-Hop compilation CD’s will be released via Bittorrent.

It’s really grown from 10 or so songs to quite a list. While I haven’t heard half of them, there are a few in there that are less than spectacular. Some are needlessly foul or just plain unlistenable. I can only personally vouch for MC Frontalot, MC Hawking and YT Cracker.

I’ve been trying to train a Nerdcore Pandora station but it’s not going well. In case you haven’t used it yet I highly recommend Pandora (my stations are on the sidebar). It’s a free (for now) radio station where you can influence the playlist. You first pick an artist or song that you like. Pandora uses info from Music Genome Project to find songs that are similar to what you selected. Most of the time it does a good job but the more obscure your tastes, the sketchier the results. You can let Pandora know what you think of the song. The more info you give it, the better a picture it has of what you want. You can even create different stations for different types of music.

For example, I was able to establish a pretty good Bossa Nova station by starting with Jobim. Occasionally some easy listening or dippy light jazz creeps, but I just chase it off. Same thing with my White Guy station (it needs better name). I started with Nerf Herder, but I added Weezer to expand the range beyond Everclear or Blink 182. Aside from one Def Leppard song it has been pretty good.

But Nerdcore is a bit harder; I can’t even bring myself to name it “Nerdcore Radio,” for now it will remain “Yo Raps.” I keep getting West Coast rap and other junk. Some of it is old school-ish but other have to much nasty lyrics featuring hoes and such. I hope the compilation CD will help add other artist to the station to define it better.
--
OMG! The Dome Walker Robot from Stikfas. My head justa sploded.

The sound of whirring gears around the house

2006-05-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

Check this out: Honda’s humanoid robot development (I can’t help but thinking of the Rockettes when I look at that page). Thank God they weren’t commercially successful with the E5. Imagine that beast lurking around you house cleaning up and asking if you want some tea. While I love my Roomba (he does a bang up job) I am waiting for the PaPeRo to finally come out. It would take a cold, cold heart to not want one of those little guys trundling around the house. Most people would trade in their kids for one. I hope someone comes out with a cool household robot soon.

Deep down it doesn’t really matter what it does. Hell, if the Roomba just bounced around the room and returned to his home base for a charge I’d be thrilled. The vacuuming is just a bonus. I wouldn’t expect too much out of this first generation. I’ll settle for: come when I call it, wake me up, take the chicken out of the freezer (something The Cat and I can’t seem to pull off), feed the cats and guinea pig and remind me of things. Maybe make some bacon occasionally (on command of course, not spontaneously).

For now I’ll just build a bot featured in the current issue of Make. Maybe the cats will enjoy it. The last bot I tried to make from Make still is unassembled and a bit of a mess. I remember breadboarding it, but after I just stopped. Ah, but all the things I don’t make out of Make is a topic for another time.

So last year.

2006-05-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

I spend some of my Memorial Day making a duct tape wallet. It was surprisingly difficult. Getting duct tape to stick to duct tape (sticky sides together) smooth and straight is an acquired skill. I know it’s not “in” any more but my real wallet is starting to circle the drain. So now I have a shiny (literally) blue wallet. Not sure if I am actually going to use it. It is a pretty vivid blue and it could freak out small children and the clergy. It’s also a little wrinkly. I guess I can just slap some duct tape on my old one.

I do have this urge to draw a Bob-omb on it with a Sharpie. Maybe it is because . . .

I spent the rest of my days off reading the first 2 Scott Pilgrim books so I can enjoy volume 3. I would like to give a shout out to Cecil for finding me copies of the first 2 books. Volume 3 was pretty good. I had built it up in mind so much that it was bound to be a slight disappointment. I’m having trouble find Scott a sympathetic character; he’s a mooch, a two-timer and plays video games constantly. . .wait. . . uh, he also not very bright. He really didn’t even fight the last two of Ramona’s evil ex’s. Not technically anyway. Well, hopefully he will get it together for the 4th book.

I originally animated a moving platform graphic (it hovers around). But I can’t manage to place it in the template. While it is an animated GIF, Blogger uploads it as a PNG, which not only displays at the wrong size but also doesn’t budge an inch. This isn’t stationary platform after all. If anyone has any advice I would appreciate it. I would imagine it’s to prevent people from using those flame GIFs that were so popular on the early Internet.

Back on the horse

2006-05-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

Horse like heroin not the quadruped. After several months I fired up World of Warcraft for a serious session. Just like old times I managed to fritter away around 5 hours playing Karmm, my Tauren shaman. I knocked out a lot of quests and managed to find my way into at least one new area. It was good to play again, hopefully I can find some time to play regularly.

The only thing that could drive me away is the damn 12 year olds (or those that act like them) and their horrible chat skills and behavior. Would it kill them to form one complete sentence? Or maybe punctuate? I’m not asking for flowery prose when some Bloodsail Buccaneers are breathing down our necks, but it should resemble human speech. And Lord, please make them stop ending every sentence with “lol.” Not everything is lol.

12 yo: “aight lets attack, lol”
me: “I’m ready for battle. I’ll cover you with my magic.”
12 yo: “:D lol!”
me: “Pardon?

Lol has its place, as does rofl and omg. Just not in every sentence.

The only thing worse is leet speak. True I find it amusing outside of the game (I will occasionally harass The Cat with some leet e-mail), but it really is a drag on a RP (that’s “role-playing” for you nubs) server. Nothing breaks the mood like “dude that 3l/= r0><><0rs.” It just breaks my heart.

When I first started WoW I met two other players that really were fun to be around, Herrick and Shinobu. For about a month we quested together and traded materials. It was great fun. But all of a sudden they just drifted away from the game. I think at some point they came back, but I had a new guild and they were hanging out with other people.

One quality I enjoyed about those two was the fact that they rarely discussed the game itself. We never discussed game mechanics in detail. Sure, Shinobu used to cook me food but I never asked what her cooking skill was; the same thing with Herrick and his smithing. We always spent the time and thought to put a veneer on all this discussion. We placed it with in the context of the overall story and the characters we chose to play.

They weren’t too intense with their RP either. No lengthy emote chat fights (which I find very creepy) or involving the unwilling in their RP. It was a great balance.

I’ve never found anyone else like them. Most could give a damn about adding to the whole experience with a little bit of RP and a few others are paralyzed by their incessant RPing; they can’t actually play the game because they’ve layered a whole other system on top.

I’ll just have to keep playing with both styles of people and hopefully I can find some folks that want the same balance as I do.

La Vita Forte!

2006-05-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

Last night The Cat and I went out to Dolce Vita, hoity pizza restaurant in the “fashionable to be seen there” district. Before we delve into the place’s major faults I want to say that the food was great. We had:

Drinks: The Cat-red wine, me- blood orange proseccio (*giggle*)
Appetizers: shaved brussel sprouts with pecorino, beets with walnuts, cauliflower Sicilian style
Pizza: artichoke, sopressa, some kind of cheese
Dessert: The Cat-espresso and a dense chocolate dessert, me- coffee and cannoli

Everything was just so good. All the appetizers were just full of flavor and the cannolis were the best I’ve had in recent memory. They were so crisp and light with nice bits of orange rind in the filling.

Besides the food the place was comically annoying. First the crowd made me uncomfortable. Every guy was wearing a button up shirt (untucked), kakis and flip-flops or sandals. I was in a t-shirt, jeans and mocs. The Cat assured that me that I looked fine, but I felt like I was crashing a grown-up party. The place was full of too many of the pretty people.

We were shown to a nice table in about 10 minutes. First thing that we noticed was the place was LOUD. Not just like really-loud-restaurant loud but like soccer riot loud, arena rock loud, World War III loud. It was constant wall of socialite noise that you could almost taste. I’m sure that when I finally go insane that it will sound like this. Our only topic of conversation, which we had to shout, was the overwhelming noise.

Since the place was so crowded the service was spread kind of thin. And we weren’t bitchy socialites with their retinue of gay men and miscellaneous hangers-on so we didn’t really attract that much attention from the wait staff. The service we did get was good just few and far between.

We got there around 7 and left near 10. The Cat and I usually eat really fast then leave so this was a record for us. Though to be fair most of it was waiting for the pizza or service. Since we were there so long the crowd thinned out a bit. It was much more tolerable around 9 or so.

I think the plan is to hit Dolce Vita again, but on a less cool night and time.

A very Asian Evening

2006-05-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

Oh. . . Ugh. . .That hurt. I just finished Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I was so confused I think I passed out a few times. Not sure what I expected though, I haven’t touched a FF game since Final Fantasy on NES. They’ve come along way since then.

The movie was pretty dull for an outsider. All the story bits between fights were a bit silly and very melodramatic. But the fights were completely bad ass. Fighting on speeding motorcycles= bad ass; fighting while jumping around on steel superstructures = bad ass; using a really big sword=bad ass. One of these days I’ll have to pick up some Final Fantasy games and see if they are bad ass too.

Until then I picked up Pump It Up (think DDR from Korea with a more comfortable dance pad) for the PS2. I’m not big on exercising, or going outside or any activity for that matter. This is my attempt at leveraging my video game “habit” into something healthy. Your heart really gets going after a few songs, so it could do me some good. Let’s hope I don’t have Marfan Syndrome like I’ve always suspected; this would be a crappy way to find out.

I’ve played Pump It Up’s arcade version and the home version is just the same. It’s missing by two favorite songs (figures) but there is one by Earth, Wind and Fire and an Elvis remix on the home version I enjoy. One thing is the shifty dance pad. I’m sure that some one on the Internet has posted plans to make it durable and arcade-like. I’m sure The Cat will love that lurking in the living room.

Loot!

2006-05-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

Today was loot-a-rific: I finally received my newest Threadless shirt, Pessimistic or Optimistic, picked up the newest Scott Pilgrim book and ran across a Buckaroo Banzai comic. BB was like my most favorite movie ever (probably for about two weeks cause I was 9 when it came out). That movie had everything: science, aliens, gadgets, a dimension crossing vehicle, rock n’ roll, some 80’s Japan fascination and Jeff Goldblum in furry chaps (for some reason I wanted to be Goldblum’s character rather than BB himself). I remember this movie confusing the absolute hell out of me as a kid. I loved it, but it left my head spinning. It seemed to start in medias res, a concept that took me until my college freshman year to “get.” I wanted more back story; I wanted to know how BB became such a smooth bad ass.

At the end of the film the next BB movie was hinted at Buckaroo Banzai vs. The World Crime League. It never came out. I finally forgot about it until I saw the end of the movie again on DVD. I remembered how much I wanted that movie to come out. Ah well.

It says on IMDB that the script for the next movie ended up as Big Trouble in Little China! I love that movie too! The guns! The ladies! The wicker hats! The martial arts! The Kurt! One of these days I’ll have to watch them together with Condor Man in between (to cleanse the palate).

Aeon Flux

2006-05-23T20:41:00.000-07:00

I just finished the Aeon Flux movie. It was “eh”: not horrible, but I wasn’t on the edge of my seat either. The plot wasn’t what I had figured, so I was mildly surprised. I never saw the original MTV series so I didn’t have the emotional baggage that would cause me to whine how it wasn’t like the original.

That really irks me. Dorks, nerds and their ilk (or should I say “our ilk”) often bitch about something not following the book, comic or game. Maybe it is my high tolerance for bad movies (I recently ‘flixed Tank Girl), but it isn’t required that every movie match its predecessor. I’ve read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and seen the movie. Both are pretty good in their own right. There’s so much great detail and stuff going on in the background in the comic that it would have been overload to see it on the screen. And I understand adding in Tom Sawyer to the film version. I think it made the League a bit more active. They really aren’t very “take charge” in the comics.

So everyone should calm down and just try to enjoy movies on their own merits. But what would the Internet be with out all this kind of discussion? No where; it was created so we can all pick at continuity errors in our favorite summer fair.

Back to Aeon: it was good looking movie, particularly the sets/locations. They were so striking that I watched the extra about the location. Originally they were going to set it in Brasilia, which was sort of weird. I was surfing Wikipedia the other day and came across the article for Brazil’s capital. It seems just like EPCOT or something, minus Mickey and throwin a few cults that would make a great front for the villain in a James Bond flick.

Zoom Forever

2006-05-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

Just in case you missed it on BoingBoing: Spend a few hours wasting time with this. If you do it fast enough you feel like your falling. . . or just get motion sick like I did. Poke around for a really black spot to see a great pic of a black cat.

Hip Loot

2006-05-22T20:29:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we made a trip to Domy Books, sort of a Kidrobot style place. But I’m not sure that KidRobot is so damn pretentious. I’m sorry, the store itself isn’t really pretentious (it’s tastefully minimalist) just the insufferable hipsters that reside there. I won’t duplicate The Cat’s description of the hipsters here, but the clerk did try to drop a few names during our brief exchange. They were hosting a book signing of someone I guess I should care about. I just responded with my best selection of oh’s, uh-huh’s and cool’s.

I did manage to get a David Horvath 2 Faced Dunny (set 2), Gel 2.0 specifically. I love Horvath’s art and have one of his Ugly Dolls (Cinko). I might snag a few more of these Dunnys.

I also picked up a Nano Spore. It was the “Girl” one, which is exactly the one that I didn’t want. In the store it was one of their display model and I can remember thinking “Man, I hope I don’t get that one.” That always happens with me and vinyl. Or maybe they just weight the assortment towards the crappy ones. According to the clerk the Nano Spores are selling out around the world. I guess that makes me feel better; at least I got a lame-tastic one, many unfortunates won’t even have that pleasure.

I also purchased the Colorcalm: by Design DVD. A while back there was a DVD of colors that would cycle. You were supposed to put it on your flats screen for mood or light. This is some sort of art installation shtick set to music. I’ll let you know more when we watch it.

Overall I dropped quite a bit at the store, which makes me sad. The owner is a jerk (he owns a coffee shop that chases people off when they aren’t ordering constantly) and the clientele is grating. But I can’t think of anywhere else in town to find this stuff. Not that I need any of it, though when the mood strikes Domy will be there.

Who's Who

2006-05-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

Here's The Cat's naming conventions. Just in case you need to be refreshed.

Welcome back.

The first thing you should know is that I will not be using anyone's real name from now on. Here are your new names:

Mom=Mom
Dad=Dad
Boyfriend=Gameboy
Sister=Barnelia
Brother-in-law=Cecil (pronounced not "See-sill," but "Seh-sill")
Lady getting married this August=Mayo
Guy she's marrying=Mustard
Cat1=Fannie
Cat2=Juju

And, in the spirit of renaming, you will now be called Antonio Banderas, because you've always really liked him.

If you don't know the story behind all of this and you feel like you've missed a conversation and you'd like to know what you missed, email me.

Let's say this, though: if you have a blog and you're being fairly open about who you are, make damn sure that if anyone reads your blog, they won't find anything you wouldn't want them to read, all right? All right.

Anonymity, I embrace thee!

You'll have to adjust everything slightly. The Cat is my girlfriend and all the relations are her's. And they are her cats, as are the parents. And all that marriage has been finalized. But you get the drift. I reckon that I'll append this as necessary.

Welcome to Moving Platform.

2006-05-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

Let's establish some ground rules:

There will be the occasional misspelled word. This kind of thing happens. As a corollary, I might even make up a few as we go along.
There will be some moderate profanity. This also happens.
Profound personal insights, thoughtful revelations and general gushing will not be addressed. Things will be kept as vacuous as possible.
There will be some light bitching about all aspects of my life, and because of this. . .
Everyone will remain anonymous and I will follow the naming conventions established but The Cat from Spinning Tales. I'll dig up that post some time; I need a refreshed lest I refer to Barnellia as Mayo.
I will grow bored with this soon and it will all wither on the vine.

Now that we are all on the same page: Why blog?

Those that know me know that I have long been opposed to starting a blog. But recent events have convinced me otherwise. One is that all the kids are doing it. I am in constant fear of becoming one of those old people who fears every new technology that comes along. Almost everyday I see Web 2.0 technology slip by with out getting involved. Rather than shaking my cane, muttering how websites should never change, I am starting Moving Platform. And with all the Burb Paranoia over MySpace, now seems like a good time to jump in. One of these days I'll start a MySpace account to attempt to drum up some buddies to play Worlds of Warcraft or City of Heroes with. But that is another project for another time.

The second reason is that I've started working on my Master of Library Science degree. Libraries of all shapes and sizes are all hepped up on blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies. I'd rather find out by doing than have to take a graduate level class on blogs. It will just be filled with older students asking questions like "Is this e-mail?" and "Do you have to type in http?" That kind of stuff kills me.

The final reason is I think The Cat has had just about enough of my mopey, sighing that I don't have a blog. I haven't started a blog yet, because I have nothing of substance to say. But hell, no one else does either. Some might find it difficult to imagine not saying anything if you don't have something meaningful to say. Maybe something will develop; we shall see.

Well that's about it. Nothing complex or insightful here, just some crap. Enjoy.