| Oh Hells Yes! |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|04:43 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  pleased | ] |
Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow in the upcoming Iron Man sequel. Note the wrist-stingers. This has definite quality potential. |
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| Fifteen For The Fifteenth |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|10:51 am] |
I haven't done this one in a while, but I saw it on Facebook today and I'm trying to stay awake, so what the hell.
Here's the rules:
1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies. 2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie. 3. Post them in a note for everyone to guess. 4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie. 5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDB search functions. That's cheating and it ruins the fun.
"Lightning. Fire. Power of God or something."![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) srhall
"Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? THAT'S where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the fucking last month's newspapers blowing *back* and *forth*. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - *I want ROOM SERVICE*! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."amanofhats"There was a white tree in a courtyard of stone. It was dead. The city was burning."srhall with an assist from burgundy- "Have you ever seen a woman shot in the stomach?"
"I just want you to feel you're doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed."srhall "It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes."djtheutii"I used to think I didn't need a family. I mean, I had the demons and the walking skeletons. But the difference between a walking skeleton and a kid is, a kid won't eat the soft parts of your face while you're sleeping."blinovitch"Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown."srhall
"You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different."burgundy"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."srhall
"You can check your anatomy all you want, and even though there may be normal variation, when it comes right down to it, this far inside the head it all looks the same. No, no, no, don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."head58
"Would you stop rubbing your body up against mine, because I can't concentrate when you do that."anaka"Now, just because someone sees, you know, two naked people asleep in bed together, it doesn't necessarily prove sex was involved. It does, however, make for a very strong case."burgundy"This scene didn't actually make it to the final cut. I'm sure it'll be on the DVD."b3zsgirl- "Oh, I'm sorry. We don't let any more mice in here. They've been exploding all over the place."
A couple are pretty easy. A few are intentionally obscure. Good luck. |
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| There's Not Enough Caffeine In The World Today |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|08:16 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  exhausted | ] |
I didn't get to sleep until well after 2 AM.
I've got a bunch of stuff to finish before end of day tomorrow (when my vacation starts).
It's going to be a bad one. |
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| Quote of the Day |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|10:46 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
I've kind of made it a policy this year to not talk too much about books I'm actively reading, as the whole point of keeping a reading log is to focus on finishing. But last night, I ran into a quote I had to share.
"To be a Westerner and call oneself a Muslim, or even a Hindu, makes some definite statement about your beliefs and perhaps your actions; calling yourself a Buddhist in the West, however, does not define your identity in any fixed way. Western Buddhism resembles Unitarianism without the harsh dogma."
From The Bloody White Baron, by James Palmer |
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| Apart From The Kindle |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|06:55 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  sore | ] |
It's been a couple of days of pure suck. Yesterday was spent babysitting a very difficult Blackberry Enterprise Server installation at work. Despite having the word Enterprise in the title, it has nothing to do with Star Trek. It had a lot to do with frustration and wiping and re-activating Blackberrys while our consultant shook his head a lot and talked to Tech Support (according to him, the first time in eight years of being a RIM Partner he's had to do so). Finally, at 5:30, we finally got my boss's and mine on the new service AND able to send and receive emails, so we thought we had the problem licked.
Hah.
Hah.
This morning, I tried activating one of my users. FAIL. Not a massive fail, but a fail nonetheless. Oh, and while he could receive emails, he couldn't send them. The next hour and a half was spent trying and failing again, then wiping the damned thing and rebuilding his old profile so he could still use it to do his job. This afternoon, we repeated the process with another user and got precisely the same result. So, the new BES install will extend into a third day, and probably next week as well. Joy.
Driving to lunch, I stepped down hard on the brake and something on the left side of my right ankle popped. Given that I had to do a lot of driving today, I'm in a fairly substantial bit of pain right now, though there's no obvious swelling or anything.
The one bright spot was lunch. Pizza buffet at Candelari's. A bit pricey and certainly not something I'd do every day, but how often do you find gorgonzola-prosciutto-arugula pizza on a buffet table? |
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| Kindle DX - First Impressions |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|09:44 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | awesomed! | ] |
OK, so I've had a few hours to play with it. I haven't even begun playing with the internet and wireless capacity, so this is just a review of the most important feature - the e-book reader.
In short, it's excellent. I'd heard some worrisome things about converted PDFs in the earlier versions of the Kindle, but the DX's native PDF support is pretty damned solid. I've found a few minor bugs based on how the PDFs are created, but I know enough about such things to get around these problems without jumping through too many hoops. Transferring files is as simple as plugging it to the computer with a USB cable and dragging them over.
I've taken a few pictures of the screen with my cell phone camera. They're not great, but I think they do show off the level of resolution.
First off, a shot of the screen in portrait mode. On display is a page from New Wave Requiem:
The text is entirely legible, even if it's not in the picture.
Next, the same page in landscape mode. The screen auto-orients itself:
This also gives a bit of a look at the keyboard. It's small, but it's not meant for much beyond some limited web browsing so it'll do.
Next, let's see some graphics. For this, I chose Freedom City for Mutants & Masterminds. How would the DX handle graphics-heavy pages?
Pretty. Damned. Good. That's how. Yeah, it may be black and white, but who cares?
Finally, a really heavy bit of graphics:
A detailed map from the same book. In Landscape mode, even the tiny text in the legend is legible.
I'm sure I'll find some things that bug me, but so far, it's made of pure win. |
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| Kindle EEEEEEEEE!!! |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|03:10 pm] |
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It's here! It's nifty. I will play with it tonight and post a proper review. |
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| Readings |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|10:02 am] |
I read the second of Carrie Vaughan's Kitty Norville books. Despite being pretty obvious supernatural chick-lit, I like the world-building. It's fluff, but it's quality fluff.
Also, due to lunch the other day, I've found myself suddenly interested in medieval things for the first time in a while. A few weeks ago, we found The Knight and the Squire, by Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame and illustrated by Michael Foreman. It's a young adult book about a boy who runs away from home in the mid-14th century and ends up having all sorts of adventures in the company of a rather unsavory knight and his squire. While bits of the story are a bit fantastical and the ending is a bit abrupt and contrived, so much of it is grounded in good history, I really didn't mind. Mr. Jones, of course, is a Cambridge-educated historian who's made the 14th century a bit of his bailiwick in recent years, and his copious knowledge of social history comes shining through without ever overwhelming the narrative. Any time a kids' book can teach me something about a period I know pretty damned well myself and do it in an entertaining fashion, I count that as a win.
Also, in typical Monty Python fashion, there's even a prominent character who's a cross-dresser. Win.
There's a sequel, The Lady and the Squire, which I'll probably pick up as well. |
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| It's That Time Again |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|11:54 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  like an utter anorack | ] |
The Fantasy EPL RPGnet Cup is now open for players. I'm posting this here because a couple of the players are more likely to see the news this way.
To join, go to http://fantasy.premierleague.com
If you've played in the past, you know the drill: Sign up for this season, then go to Leagues and enter the invite code.
This year, there's a new feature: a head-to-head league (The Tangency FA Cup) as well as the traditional format (The RPGnet Cup).
RPGnet Cup - 12687-4285
Tangency FA Cup - 12687-4297
Competition doesn't begin until August 15, so there's plenty of time to start agonizing over the merits of a 6.5 point Defender. |
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| Hoody! Also Hoo! |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|07:52 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | excited | ] |
Last night, I got an email from Amazon saying the Kindle DX Jane had me order for my birthday will be shipping out earlier than anticipated. So, rather than getting it sometime between July 31 and August 7, it will arrive either tomorrow or Thursday. |
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| Emo Superman Cries, Not For Me, But For The Hobby |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|08:33 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  blah | ] |
I don't think I've mentioned this, at least not directly.
I've given up comics. As in buying and reading them. At all. In any way, shape, or form, for the foreseeable future.
The tipping point was realizing that I had two weeks' worth of accumulated purchases sitting unread in the shopping bags from the store and no desire whatsoever to look at them. DC and Marvel have both lost me, and I don't buy that many books from outside of the big two. The only exception I might make is for "Artesia," and the re-start of that series is still at least a month away, if it comes out on time.
I'm sure there are some things I'll miss out on, but honestly, if I decide to scratch the itch again, I can always go buy trade paperback collections. In the meantime, I'm putting the extra thirty bucks or so a week into the GenCon fund. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|04:07 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | content | ] |
Had an lovely lunch today at the Hobbit Cafe with ellorac and the awesome M. Real friends are the folks you don't get to see for years on end, and when you do, it's like no time has passed. Much good SCA reminiscence followed immediately by a foray into the Houston heat, reminding me of why we don't do that anymore.
I'm now watching "Weapon Masters" where they're featuring the Scorpion, one of the coolest pieces of Roman engineering. |
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| Second Verse, Same As The First |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|09:08 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  cranky | ] |
We went out to dinner at 5:30. When we got back around 6:30, the power was out again. I sent Jane and C over to her Mom's and decided to wait things out for a while downstairs (because after last night, I have no desire to spend another on the in-laws' guest bed).
Things came back on at 7:55, so at least the outage wasn't as long as the last, but this is getting really old. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|07:47 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | exhausted | ] |
Last night, at about 9:30, the power went off for the entire block. We called it in and got an estimate of restoration by midnight. As yesterday featured triple digit temperatures, we decamped to spend the night at the in-laws. On the plus side, there was air conditioning, and C-Monster spent the night in the bunk bed they have for him over there. On the down side, in our haste to get out of the house in the dark, Jane didn't grab her sleep medication and I didn't think to remind her about it. The guest bed is small and kind of cramped and she and I pretty much kept waking each other up all night long.
We came home at 6:30, as C was awake and neither of us was going to get anymore sleep over there. According to the clocks, the power didn't actually come back until 2:30, so we certainly made the least worst decision in spending the night over there, but it doesn't feel like it right now.
Then, it only took about half an hour to get the computers in my study working properly again, thanks to a KVM switch that freaked out when the power dropped. Bleah. |
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| More Reading |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|03:12 pm] |
Having hit a few failures recently (I couldn't get through Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein) and feeling the need for some more urban fantasy trash, I picked up Carrie Vaughan's Kitty and the Midnight Hour. It's nothing deep, but a decent enough read, with a couple of good bits, especially the way the werewolf pack behavior wars with human nature, sometimes overriding it. It's not great literature, but I enjoyed it enough to grab the sequel. |
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| I'm Corpse Grinder, Baby |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|10:19 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | The Meteors - "Corpse Grinder Baby (Live)" | ] |
This morning has already provided its share of minor annoyances. Having cleaned up the messes (mostly), I'm now sitting in my office training a new Pandora station I call Hee-Haw Hell. Psychobilly and Cowpunk FTW!
EDIT: Here's a handy link. At least I think it is. Let me know if it works. |
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| A Quarter Century Of The Dead Channel Sky |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|04:26 pm] |
William Gibson's Neuromancer came out 25 years ago today.
October 20th will mark the 20th anniversary of the release of NIN's "Pretty Hate Machine"
I want the grotty future I was promised. |
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| w00t! |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|02:04 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | happy | ] |
I knew my review wasn't going to be terrible, but I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. Bossman did not mention the certification tests at all, focused on everything I had accomplished in their stead, relayed compliments about me from other senior staff people and generally told me "Good work, keep it up."
I felt completely justified in a celebratory sushi lunch. |
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| Awkward Dad-Fail Moment |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|04:34 pm] |
So, C-Monster is a bit of a timid soul when it comes to anything remotely scary. He also hates spicy foods, but that's a different matter. For now, we'll dwell on spooky things and scary things, which make it very hard to take him to a movie that features loud noises, cool explosions, or non-cartoony CGI monsters.
I've been on a bit of a mission lately to convince him that scary things can be fun, when administered in the proper dosage.
With Michael Jackson's recent death, the "Thriller" video has been front and center. I decided that the full version, with its lycanthropic transformation and dancing zombies might be a good introduction to a (very) mild scare-fest, so I brought it up on YouTube and sat him down.
The scares bugged him, but he weathered it OK. At one point, I said, "He sure could dance."
"Who?"
"Michael Jackson. Right there."
"Dad, that's a black guy!"
Which led to a rather awkward and feeble attempt at an explanation. |
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