K-Squared Ramblings

FarPlates

You know that car game where you look at all the license plates going by and you have to come up with a word using all the letters in order? (Okay, now show of hands for the people who didn’t learn it from me.) I got bored with that and started looking for letters that could make the names of characters in books and movies. Then I got bored with that and made it that I had to see at least two from the same source at once. I used to see them all the time, and now I hardly ever do. Then again, I was living at home when I came up with this and my mom’s minivan ended up with plate letters EGW, so every time I was in that car I automatically had one plate for The Wheel of Time.

So anyway. There was next to no traffic on the commute to work this morning, and we were pacing a beat-up little black car with a blue-and-yellow plate starting with 2AEY. It took me a second to register that I could spell Aeryn with that (kind of disappointing reaction time, but LOTR outranks Farscape in my obsession list right now), and I immediately started trying to see the plate on the car ahead of it. (The combo doesn’t count if the cars are separated by more than one car in either direction, you know.) While Kelson, who had realized what I was doing, was trying to speed up to see it, the car behind AEY passed us, flashing 5BLR. Bialar Crais, anyone?

Drama queen

One of my co-workers has disappeared. She called in yesterday and said she was waiting for the electrician, and then didn’t show up. Today she called in and said she’d be in at noon, then didn’t show. She’s done this sort of thing before, but never two days in a row after being 3 hours later than usual the Friday of the week before. (Didn’t put a battery backup in her alarm clock.) Now there are reports that her cell phone was stolen and is no longer in service, and that she was in tears when she called this morning. And she won’t tell anyone anything, which is diametrically opposed to her usual TMI-inducing self. Depending on who you talk to, this is either scary or a complete sham.

So here I am, her underling, trying to make sense of the overdue messes she’s left while our supervisor is on vacation, and watching the number of voicemails on her phone creep up. Soon it’ll be full and the calls will start coming to me. What with the flu doing its KO on personnel, I’m already busy by way of being the only healthy person not on vacation. (Whee.) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if this keeps up, I’ll be hard put not to ask for a raise.

ROTK review soon. I promise.

Must…control…poinging

J. Michael Straczynski likes ROTK. Kenneth Turan likes ROTK. If I bounce off the walls much more, I’m going to leave dents.

Warning: Contains Ingredients

Here’s another interesting Food Allergy Alert:

Wisconsin Cheesecake Co., Inc., is recalling 28-oz. Candy Bar Cheesecakes containing either Butterfinger, Reese’s Pieces, Peanut Butter Cup, or Snickers brands because they contain undeclared peanuts.

Now I’m not sure what’s stranger about this: the fact that someone managed to leave peanuts off the ingredients list, or that they think a recall is necessary in this case. Anyone with a peanut allergy has long since learned to avoid anything that says “Snickers” or “Reese’s.” Heck, I still have to think twice to remind myself I can eat snickerdoodles. If I see a Butterfinger cheesecake, I don’t need to look at the ingredients. I already know it’s not safe.

Eh, maybe it’s to counteract all those “well-meaning” adults who don’t believe in allergies and insist, “Oh, just one bite won’t hurt you!” — and then watch in horror as the three-year-old who was left in their charge is rushed to the emergency room. I can just imagine someone like that saying, “Oh, well, it says Snickers, but it doesn’t say it has peanuts, so it must be safe for him.”

Taking your own advice

Time for the weird spam report:

Some facts you may find usefull:

1. Employers prefers people with college degree.
2. People with college degree generally earn more then people with only high school education.

You may improve your income and your life, with increasing your earning power from a diploma within days from a prestigious non-accredited university based on life experience.

Since I can’t find a single sentence without at least one spelling or grammar mistake, it doesn’t speak well of this supposedly prestigious institution.

I have to wonder, though: does anyone actually take these places seriously? I can’t imagine an employer seeing an unfamiliar college on a resumé without at least checking to make sure it exists.

Finally, the pitch ended with the following:

P.S. Please accept our apology if you found this information useless

On the contrary; I found it quite amusing!

Victoria’s Secret Service

I always knew salespeople were audacious. I didn’t know until yesterday that some of it stems from the audacity of their higher-ups. We went to South Coast yesterday in search of, well, lingerie. So we found the Victoria’s Secret. I went to look for my size in a rack of something and a cute, sparkly-faced saleschick interposed herself asking what size I was looking for. A dialogue ensued regarding weight loss and undergarment entropy and how many different sizes I had been found to need in the last few months. I was about to do as she was implying was The Way here and go try on their samples rather than sully the merchandise when she brought up the “Angels Card.”

“You get over $75 in potential savings over the course of a year, and two years of our catalog!” she chirped.

I pulled out my standard response. “I wouldn’t use it enough.”

“Oh, you don’t have to. It’s completely free.”

Fine. “Eh, why not.”

“Fantastic! It’s just five easy questions.” Uh-oh. The catch. “Do you have a credit card for reference?” I did. Swipe. “And can I have your social?”

Riiiiight. Like I’m going to give that out to someone I don’t know, who doesn’t work for the SSA or my employer, in the middle of a store full of strangers. “I’m sorry, I don’t give out my social.”

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone look so confused in weeks. “But–but we don’t give your information out to anyone.”

“That’s fine, but I don’t give out my social.”

So, no Angels Card. Not that I want it, at that price (or the price they charge for underwear, either). But I’m left wondering, what the fuck does Victoria’s Secret need with my social? The credit card should be enough, and handing that over was borderline. If it’s free, it’s free. You’re not promising them any money or business, and in fact you start out by costing them in paper and printing expenses. You don’t need to be a citizen to buy underwear. What gives?

One Degree

Anyone whose email address is posted on a web site probably doesn’t bother to identify who sent them viruses anymore. With faked return addresses and the high probability that your only connection to the sender is the fact that they visited your web page sometime in the last month, there really isn’t much point.

Every once in a while, you’ll see something weird.

Today I received what looked like a classic credit-card theft scam: a notice supposedly from PayPal claiming that my account would be canceled unless I re-entered all my credit card information into the linked web page. Right. Normally I just report it to PayPal and delete it, but this one had an attachment instead of a link, and that attachment had been defanged. With a name like www.paypal.com.scr, it was pretty obviously a virus. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s my line

In The Matrix: Revolutions, when Smith asked Neo why he kept fighting, I thought he answered, “Because I’m too stupid.” It wasn’t until I went to the IMDb discussion forums that I figured out he said, “Because I choose to.” I can’t decide if this is better than thinking that, in The Two Towers, Sam said to Gollum, “You’re a wuss.” (Actual line: “You’re hopeless.”) Anybody got others?

Neo Genesis Revangelions

Saw The Matrix: Revolutions yesterday after hearing almost nothing but bad press. We went in expecting nothing, so except for the crappy dialogue, it wasn’t bad at all while we were watching it. Afterward, though, once there was time to digest everything in the context of a single movie as well as a trilogy, it was a different story. I’m not bashing it Kenneth-Turan style, but as a person who appreciates both style and substance, I found myself retrospectively disappointed.

Those of you who’ve seen Evangelion will know exactly what the title is referring to. I’m not big on religious symbolism for its own sake, but if it serves a purpose, as it does in Evangelion, I’ll go with it. There wasn’t really a purpose in this beyond being messianic. I guess what ticks me off the most is Read the rest of this entry »

Vertical Horizon winning the filk wars

It’s official: Vertical Horizon now has ten songs to their name that we’ve determined to be at least 75% appropriate for sci-fi, fantasy, or anime music videos. The only other band that comes close to this is the Wallflowers, with four. Don’t ask me how they do this. We just watch (and occasionally read) stuff, then listen to songs, and the songs fit.

Tuesdays, we go over for dinner and Farscape with Kelson’s family. Scapers, get ready to wail: last night’s program was “Self Inflicted Wounds.” Both episodes. For non-Scapers, yes, it was as big an emotional wringer as you may have guessed. When we got home after a round of coffee and sympathy, I checked a hunch on the lyric sheet for the latest VH album, Go. Bingo–”Won’t Go Away” has now officially joined the ranks of the video-able.

At the risk of sounding like an IMDb summary, get the full list here…… Read the rest of this entry »

Halloween madness

So work decided to do Halloween on the 30th rather than the 31st because some people don’t work Fridays. This was a good thing, considering that we have not only a potluck but also a costume contest and a pumpkin-carving contest all on the same day and I have a finite amount of time after work. Last year, I was scrambling to make whatever it was I made and carve the Eye of Sauron into a pumpkin (costume was taken care of–Ren Faire outfit) on the night of the 30th, which was very not fun. This year, I baked the cookies on Monday and took Tuesday off for the usual Farscape night. Wednesday, after getting back from the pointless class I’m taking for work, we frosted the cookies while watching Angel and I carved my replica of the “Gourdzilla” face from Monday’s Grand Avenue strip and went out and tossed a mini-pumpkin on the ground to put in its mouth. Easy, simple, and I got sleep.

Here’s what I wore to work.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do until the other people in my unit started talking about making a graveyard in the space between my desk and the cubes across the aisle and then doing makeup like dead people. I, being the genius I am, said something like, “Oh, and hey, I can be the undertaker.” So that’s what we did. The graveyard didn’t get made, but everybody dressed dead and someone played “Thriller” really loud. And I won the costume contest.

Gourdzilla also won a prize.

We are now in possession of four no-restrictions, no-expiration passes to Regal theaters, and $20 in gift certificates. So now everybody can go see Return of the King regardless of cashflow. Cool.

The best part of having two days of Halloween is that I had a chance to carve a second pumpkin.

I’d been dying to try this since seeing that other Farscape images had been converted into jack-o-lanterns, and I’d been telling Kelson’s mom I’d give it to her. So it was good to have an extra night to get this done and remember exactly how much I love carving pumpkins. And tomorrow night, it’ll be good to get some frelling sleep…..

Smoke

The weather has been… unusual the last few days, to say the least. Tuesday afternoon I could see smoke from at least two of the fires that had broken out. There was a huge cloud billowing up from the southern horizon, and another huge cloud creeping over the hills to the north. Both seemed to have died down overnight, but they were back by Wednesday afternoon:

By Friday morning, there was enough smoke in the air to tinge the sunlight orange.

Then there was Saturday, which has to have been the most surreal experience I have had in a long time. Up to this point, there were plumes of smoke and large clouds covering parts of the sky. Now the entire sky was covered, keeping the day in permanent dusk, and when the sun could be seen it was bright red. Ashes fluttered to the ground. After several weeks of hot weather, it was cold.

The last time I remember this much smoke was about 10 years ago, I was in high school, and the nearest fire was in Laguna Canyon. And we had an appointment yesterday to check out wedding locations… in Laguna Canyon. So with this nuclear-winter-like atmosphere, we spent the day driving in and out of the very area I most associated with large, nearby fires.

One location we were looking at was setting up for a reception later that evening, and ashes had been drifting onto the plates.

Overnight the Santa Ana winds we’d been hearing about all week finally made their way over the mountains, stirring things up and driving the smell of smoke into our apartment. This morning, ashes were piled up everywhere, even in the carport.

We went out to lunch today, and I learned quickly that staying indoors was the way to go for the rest of the day. Whereas yesterday was all thick smoke up above, today the smoke is thinner, but it’s all at ground level. The sun is visible, but yellow, and it’s like standing immediately downwind of a campfire and not being able to move.

Yesterday was eerie. Today’s scary. Based on news from the radio, it sounds like the fires have roughly doubled in size and destruction since this morning’s paper was printed.

We’re just hoping the flames will get under control… and that none will spring up any closer.

Dress!

Ordered it last weekend. It’s got everything: full coverage up top, pretty beading, short train, and it’s not blinding squeaky-clean wash-me-out white. And it’s made for the height I am in my shoes, with an adjustable lace-up back, so with any luck, I won’t need massive alterations. It’s got this split top skirt thing going, with beading along the edges, that I really can’t say why I think is cool. I never thought I’d be one to go for the Disney princess look, but it works. The one offputting note is the beading is blue. Don’t get me wrong, I love blue. I’m probably the only female in America never to have put any thought into her nuptial proceedings beyond some fuzzy mental photos of a church and a white dress, but I know for certain the white blur never had any color on it. Oh well. Just means I don’t have to paint my toenails blue (though I think I will anyway). Now, if we can just get a location so I don’t turn into a dressed-up cliché……

Well, what did you expect?

I hear one of our customers has cancelled service because he’s receiving too much spam.

Last year, he asked us to disable the spam filters on mail sent to his account.

I wonder if he remembers.

What the hell…..

There is a silverfish in my keyboard. Don’t ask me how it got there or what it likes about its new hangout. It’s just sitting between the bottom plastic and the top transparent plastic in between the main bank of keys and the section with help, delete, home, end, etc. I don’t even know if it’s alive or dead. The bugger of it is that I don’t know how to get it out without royally frelling up my keyboard, and if I leave it alone and then find it gone, it’s in prime real estate for access to lots of my yummiest important papers. And if it’s dead, that’s just gross. I do not want to be typing on a sacred silverfish dying ground. Suggestions are welcome. For now, I’m just going to try to relax the disgusted curl out of my lip and keep on with life as usual….

Hell Froze Over

That’s the current headline over at the Apple website, on the announcement of iTunes for Windows.

Case Design 101

OK, I’m not one of those purists who thinks all computers should be encased in beige boxes. That said, 4 of the 5 computers in our apartment are fairly plain - but two of those are because the case predates any sense of design, one was an ultra-cheap computer, and one was an ultra-cheap case.

Last week, while looking for that ultra-cheap case so I could build Red Shirt, I looked at the more expensive cases, thinking I might replace the case on my main computer, and then reuse the old one for the new machine. And while there were several really nice cases, none of them really struck me - unless you count the ones that exhibited the two trendiest offenses in case design:

1. Hiding the drive bays. Someone got the idea somewhere that drive bays, especially on a case with room for expansion, are ugly. And I can certainly see the point. But people who design cases often forget a key factor about those drive bays: people use them. That means either you’ve got to open the entire front of the case every time you pop a CD in the tray, or you end up leaving it open. Now it’s not so bad if it’s a sliding door, but if it’s hinged, then you have to worry about this huge plastic door hanging sideways in front of the computer. Not only does it get in the way every time you have to reach down with a CD, it’s uglier than just showing the drive bays would have been!
2. Shoving the front USB and Firewire ports all the way to the bottom of the case. The idea of having these ports on the front is to make them convenient. And while putting them at the bottom may work for people who put their computers on top of their desks, a lot of people put them underneath to save space (whether for writing or for a giant monitor). That USB mini-drive isn’t so convenient when you have to get out of your chair and kneel down on the floor to plug it in. And I’ve seen cases where the ports are less than half an inch from the bottom - not so bad if you’ve got a wood floor, but if you’ve got a carpet, now you need to worry about the carpet getting caught in the ports. I’m sorry, but this is only marginally better than leaving the ports on the back.

In the end, I decided I didn’t want to assemble two computers, just one, so I bought the cheapest, smallest case I could find. (As it happens, it manages to make the USB situation worse by putting the ports on the side of the front panel - but I wasn’t expecting to use much in the way of USB devices on this box anyway, and it turns out the only ports this motherboard can handle are the built-in ones.)

Posted on CNet!

CNet’s News.com has posted my letter to the editor under the title, What’s really behind Site Finder backlash. This is a response to Verisign’s attempt to paint opponents of Site Finder as a minority of anti-innovation “technology purists” who still resent the presence of commerce on the Internet.

They edited it down a bit (OK, ripped out about half of it), possibly because some of my remarks echoed another letter they posted, and possibly because I rambled a bit, but kept the main thrust intact. In case you’re interested, here’s my orignal letter:
Read the rest of this entry »

Red Shirt Linux

On Friday I reinstalled Red Hat 9 on my computer. On Saturday I figured out why I couldn’t build Dillo on the virtual Conectiva system (the only reason I tried to install the real thing). On Monday I made a remark on the Dillo mailing list that, after trashing the system trying to install Conectiva, “unless/until I can set up a spare system solely for trying things out, anything else… will run under User-Mode Linux.”

And that got me thinking.

A spare system wouldn’t need to be elaborate. I wouldn’t be playing games on it. I wouldn’t be doing graphics work on it. I wouldn’t even be doing web development, word processing, or checking my email. Most of the time it wouldn’t even be running - just when I wanted to try something new, or when a new release of Dillo came out and needed RPMs. And since I have a spare KVM switch, I’d only need to find space for the case, and wouldn’t need to worry about a monitor.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve upgraded my computer piece-by-piece since 1994. Well, when you do that, you end up with a lot of spare parts left over. Sure, they’re older, slower, smaller, etc. than what you’ve got now, but if they worked when you took them out, they probably still work now. I’ve been meaning to go through all the boxes, cards, drives etc. and get rid of things I don’t need anymore, but I’d never gotten around to it. Well, on Monday I finally had motivation.

I went through looking for parts I could use to put together a spare, expendable system - one where it wouldn’t matter if the entire hard disk got wiped. I found three hard drives (two of them too small to be useful), several sticks of RAM, network and video cards, and a motherboard and a CPU that wouldn’t fit together. That left: a case, a CD-ROM, and either a CPU to go with the motherboard, or a motherboard to go with the CPU.

It turned out my boss was getting ready to throw out some old equipment, including a huge mega-tower with a 450 MHz K6-2. The motherboard I have used to hold a K6-2. (Where it is now, I have no idea - I don’t think it’s the one I fried, especially since the motherboard seems to work.) So now I had a processor. My parents had recently replaced an extremely flaky computer, so I got a CD-ROM from that. Then I went to Fry’s and picked up a $30 case and $13 floppy drive.

That’s right: I have just built a $43 computer.

Somewhere in this whole process, Katie came up with the name “Red Shirt Linux.” And while it’s mostly going to be SuSE, Conectiva, and Mandrake, the name fits.

Preliminary tryouts look promising: All the hardware works, I was able to see old data on the hard disk before I repartitioned it, I could boot tomsrtbt off of a floppy and mess around under that. I tried Conectiva first, and it failed, but I think I’ve got a bad install CD. (The UML system I built from it has network problems, and the copy I installed on Ghostwheel is what trashed my partition table, so it doesn’t surprise me that it had problems here.) I’ll run a thorough memory test overnight just to make sure, but it looks like I’ve got a PC I can mess around with without risking any data!

How’s that higher education working out for you?

I call a lot of doctors’ offices, and a lot of them put me on hold. One that I called today had that overly cheerful custom Muzak with embedded recorded messages. The first time I was put on hold, the message said: “Summer. That time of year you dream about on dreary winter days. After we take your call, we suggest you venture outside and take advantage of the wonderful sunny days that abound this time of year.”

Ooookay. I was still puzzling how they thought it was summer now, even in California, when the receptionist took me off hold and then put me back on, and this came twinkling into my ear: “Spring. It’s a time when we turn the clocks ahead and do that proverbial spring cleaning. It’s also a time to say how much we appreciate your patronage.”

Damn, they’ve really turned their clocks ahead.

Disconectiva

For several months I’ve been providing installable RPM packages for the Dillo web browser. Since many different distributions use RPM packages, I’ve been getting requests to add various Linux distributions. I started out just installing to extra partitions, but then I started building virtual systems with User-Mode Linux.

Well, people have been requesting RPMs for Conectiva, a distribution from Brazil and partner in UnitedLinux. I built a UML virtual system, but was never able to get Dillo to compile or to get the imitation network driver working. So, tonight I decided to install an actual copy.

With most Linux installers, you can choose where to create a new partition, and set it up to add existing ones to the system. This has worked fine with every version of Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE I have installed. The installer will create the new partition, leave the others alone, and mark them to be visible in the system you’ve installed.

Conectiva didn’t leave the existing partitions alone. Each partition I had marked was gone: my main OS partition (currently Red Hat 9), my home directory, and all my download and media files. Fortunately I had backups of the most critical files from last Saturday, and I was able to recover my entire home directory with Tomsrtbt and Parted’s rescue function. And I don’t mind losing my main OS, since it’s not that hard to re-install it - all I need is the configuration, and I’ve got that backed up.

That leaves my entire download and media archive. I always figured, “I can just re-download all of this, right?” And most of it I can. Much of the rest either isn’t important, or hasn’t changed since the last backup (which I’ll admit was a long time ago), or can be recovered from CD, or can be re-scanned. The few photos that hadn’t made it into last week’s backup turned out to still be in a temporary folder on my website. Still, there are things that will be hard to find again, and probably some that will be impossible.

Just in case, I’ve got a recovery tool scanning the lost partitions in hopes that it will come up with something.

I’m not touching Conectiva again - or any other distribution I’m not already familiar with - until I get a spare system set up, or maybe spring for something like VMWare. And I’m seriously considering picking up some sort of backup solution that will hold more than a CD-RW, so I’ll be more inclined to save everything instead of picking and choosing what to put on a few discs.

Update 7:45am: I got the download/media partition back. The tool I ran overnight didn’t seem to find anything, but when I ran parted again this morning (after remembering that it was on PAUD, the Parted And Utilities Disk, not Tomsrtbt) it was able to find the partition.

So now all that’s missing is the primary OS (I’m running off of one of the “extra” installations right now), and I can reinstall that easily.

OK, now I’m confused.

Round 1: A judge rules that the FTC does not have the authority to enforce the Do-Not-Call list, so Congress (who has the power to give the FTC that authority) passes a law explicitly granting it to the FTC. So far so good. Checks and balances are working as they’re supposed to.

Round 2: Another judge rules that the list is unconstitutional because it discriminates against commercial calls. Never mind that that traditionally, commercial speech does not have the same protections as personal, political, and other forms of speech. (Consider truth-in-advertising laws.)

The way I see it, there are two obvious solutions: Either appeal the ruling (which is inevitable) or comply with it by removing the loopholes for charities and political campaigns. Which would probably get them in more first amendment trouble.

So today, the FCC has said they will enforce the list right on schedule. OK, it’s something I wouldn’t have thought of… mainly because it doesn’t seem like it would solve the problem.

Now, I hate getting calls from telemarketers, but I just don’t see how shuffling the list to another agency resolves the problem of constitutionality. I’ve only skimmed the ruling [previously available from the court's website] (it’s 34 pages and I’m at work, it’s not as if I can read the whole thing right now!), but it seems pretty clear on the point that (as the judge sees it) it’s the federal government that can’t enforce the list in its present form, not the FTC specifically.

Assorted Thoughts on the First Amendment

1. You can disagree with or dislike people in your government, from your city council up through the President, and still love your country. (Conservatives disliked the President for 8 years; denying that privilege to the rest of us is hypocrisy at best.)

2. You can oppose war - or a particular war - without being anti-American. Speaking out against your nation’s policies and actions is not treason, it is necessary for a free society. If no one disagrees with the official policy, and that policy turns out to be a mistake - say, slavery, for instance - the mistake will never be corrected.

3. No, being a movie star does not make you an expert on politics. Neither does being a country singer. But neither job makes your opinion matter any less than anyone else’s.

4. America is not and should not be a theocracy. Freedom of religion does not exist without freedom from religion. If you are free to attend a Lutheran service only if you also attend a Catholic mass, you don’t have freedom of religion. If you can practice Christianity at home but your children are expected to recite Allah Akbar daily in school, you don’t have freedom of religion. This doesn’t mean that you can’t pray the way you want to. It does mean you cannot coerce me into praying the way you want me to.

5. Remember, the first amendment is there to protect unpopular speech. The popular speech doesn’t need protecting. And not everyone is offended by the same things.

6. The right to speak freely does not compel others to listen. You always have the right to turn the radio to another station, hang up the phone, or walk away. If I don’t want you to call or email me, I have the right to block you, and as long as the choice is mine, there is no reason I can’t let someone else handle the administrative details - whether it’s a restraining order against a stalker, a spam blacklist, or a do-not-call list.

Comics You Should Be Reading!

Yes, you!

Girl Genius, by Phil and Kaja Foglio: “A gaslamp fantasy with adventure, romance, and mad science.” It’s a continuing steampunk adventure/comedy set in an alternate 19th century where warring mad scientists (or “sparks” as they’re called to their faces) have devastated Europe. Graduate student Agatha Clay belatedly discovers her own “spark” as she is whisked into the world of Klaus von Wulfenbach, the “spark” who has conquered most of Europe. A fun read every time - it’s a real pity that it only comes out four times a year. (Published quarterly by Studio Foglio/Airship Comics.) Edit: The comic is now available online at girlgeniusonline.com!

Fables, by Bill Willingham and various artists. Imagine if all the fairy tales really did happen. But Snow White, the big bad wolf, and the rest have been forced out of their world and into ours, where they live in an expatriate community in modern New York City. Here, they face everything from murder mysteries and personal intrigue to political infighting and all-out revolution. It is R-rated, so you probably wouldn’t want to hand it to an 8-year old, but if you liked Sandman you should check this out. It’s a mix of multi-part story-lines and single-issue stories. DC has been collecting each storyline in graphic novel form. (Published monthly by DC Comics/Vertigo.)

Halo and Sprocket, by Kerry Callen. In the words of the comic’s own website, “Halo is an angel assigned to assist Sprocket in learning about the human condition from Katie. [Ed. note: no, not that Katie!] But Sprocket’s logic, Halo’s metaphysics, and Katie’s real-life antics don’t always mesh.” Each issue features several stand-alone short stories that find the comedy in even the most ordinary situations, as well as the contradictions and foibles of humanity. Wayne brought the first three issues over one time, and everyone was laughing hysterically! A collection of the first four issues should be out by December. (Published several times a year by Amaze Ink/SLG Publishing)

And while you’re at it, check out the graphic novel Midnight Nation, by J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank. The collected edition is a bit pricey, but it’s worth it!

Things they don’t tell you

Aaagh. Every time we try to get something going on wedding planning, we find more reasons to scrap the whole thing. Last month we got soured on a whole lot of aspects with one series of tours, and we just managed to get ourselves out of the house on the subject again today.

I had vowed at the beginning of this to avoid David’s, the Wal-Mart of bridal stores, like the plague. However, being this close and having nothing to show for it but a pair of shoes, toasting glasses, and a cake server has begun to freak me out, so I braved the place. I remembered walking in and being accosted by a plethora of pushy, smiley salestwigs who wanted us to try on all sorts of stuff. Not this time. Turns out the place is having a sale, and as a result was completely packed. And sometime between 2000 and 2003, they made appointments mandatory for bridal tryons. So here I am, getting wonderful upper-arm exercise pawing through the racks, trying to get the attention of someone who won’t even take the time to ask if I have an appointment, and nobody bothers to tell me that I need one. For half an hour. So they’re off my list, again.

Then we get home and there’s another piece of paper spam for a hotel offering reception sevices. Since there’s no way my hair could make a standard-time-slot morning wedding on time, we’re looking at afternoon, which means a dinner reception. Their cheapest dinner is $31.95 a plate, not including 19% gratuity and 7.75% sales tax, which makes it $40.97 a person. And depending on what the “chef’s choice” of vegetable might be, Kelson might not be able to eat it. No, thank you.

Vegas is looking pretty and shiny again.

Massive Quote List Update!

After roughly a year and a half, I have finally updated the quote pages! I’m pretty sure there’s more stuff out there (in particular, Katie has a bunch of choir quotes that she couldn’t find), but between random pieces of paper on my desk, several notebooks and notepads of Katie’s, and an email Jason sent me back in February, we pieced together a huge collection of “new” quotes going back to 2001 and coming up through… today!

Enjoy!

Mozilla Coffee!

Yes, it’s real! Last week Katie remarked we were running low on coffee, and I remembered an article on MozillaZine a few weeks ago about RJ Tarpley’s Mozilla Coffee. I figured, what the heck, let’s order some. It’s a way to get coffee and support Mozilla at the same time.

We went out for a late lunch/early dinner today, and as we came up the stairs we noticed a note tucked into the doorframe. At first I figured UPS had left a “sorry we missed you” note, but when we got up to the landing, the doormat was propped up on a six inch tall box! (That and it turned out to be FedEx, but I digress.) “Hey, no one will notice if we hide this under the doormat!”

We haven’t tried it yet, but we’ll post the results of our taste-test once we do.

Okay, that’s worth posting from work for.

Annoyances, my arse. I think the two comments linking to porn sites (which, with luck, will have been removed by the time most people see this post) qualify for a full-on pissy fit. Blog spammers should be roasted alive. Slowly.

That Other Terminator

One of the new comics I picked up this week was Teen Titans. It reminded me of something that’s been bugging me about the previous issue. (Spoilers follow!)

My first thought was that there was no way Deathstroke would kill Wintergreen (his best friend and partner in the assassination “business”). But the more I thought about it, I realized he would do it if he thought it was necessary - just as he bit the figurative bullet and killed his own son when that was necessary (way back in Titans Hunt).

But he would not mount his head on the wall with his hunting trophies!

The revelation at the end of this week’s issue goes a little way towards explaining it, but it still doesn’t quite make sense, even if we’re looking at a Wildebeest connection.

Fight Club: The Return of Hobbes

OK, while I had thought of comparing certain aspects of Fight Club with Calvin and Hobbes, I certainly had never taken it as far as this post at metaphilm (warning: spoilers for Fight Club).

Viral degrees of separation

With the new crop of email viruses - the ones that fake the return address based on the same sources (address books, web caches, etc.) as the target list - you get a few interesting effects.

The first is that there is a good chance you’ll recieve many copies of the virus from the same source, with different return addresses. I saw this a lot in the recent Sobig outbreak: when our mail server deletes a virus, it logs the sending and receiving addresses and the IP of the connecting server. Some IP addresses would send hundreds of copies of the virus, all to the same recipient, all with different return addresses. So it would look like hundreds of people are sending you the same virus, but in reality, it’s just one infected machine.

The other is the “friend of a friend” effect. You may get the virus from someone who knows you (or has just visited your web page), but it looks like it came from someone who knows them (or someone else whose web page they visited). Two degrees of separation.

Big Week

Increasingly, I’ve noticed the comics I collect seem to be clumping together. According to the Diamond shipping schedule, no less than eight series on my pull list are coming out this week.

Last week I only picked up one. Next week, it looks like two - and that’s including the hardcover Sandman: Endless Nights.

I listed all the comics I buy regularly and came up with eleven monthly titles and five that come out bimonthly, quarterly, or whenever they actually finish an issue (six if you count Rising Stars). So I’m looking at two-thirds of my average monthly comics budget in one week.

Upgrade, Schmupgrade

Upgraded to the latest beta of WordPress. Not as many problems as last time, although the entire blog was invisible at first. Believe it or not, I had to enable smiley conversion to fix it!

Anyway, URL handling is slightly different. Namely, there are extra slashes in the “search-friendly” URLs. I like it better without them, but in general it seems most blogs are using the other convention. Ironic that the format for permalinks keeps changing.

I hate Outlook!

Yet another call of “I can’t retrieve email!” Always from Outlook users. If you use Eudora, Netscape - hell, even Outlook Express, you’ll get some sort of error message if it stops working. You can usually solve it by closing the program and starting it up again. But Outlook… Outlook will get into modes where it says it’s connecting, but it will never actually contact the server. Outlook will decide it needs to ask you for your password over and over again. And if you close Outlook, it’s not necessarily gone. Even “Exit and Log Off” doesn’t always do it. No, you have to reboot the %#@! computer. And if you’re lucky, you don’t have to track down the elusive Inbox Repair Tool (which might be in the Start menu. Maybe.)

I swear, if Outlook didn’t have the name Microsoft in front of it, no one would buy it. Maybe the latest version is better, but everything I’ve tried to use or troubleshoot is still just Schedule+ on steroids with email thrown in. Calling Outlook an email program is like calling a big clunky van a race car because you’ve replaced the engine. Outlook Express, for all its rampant security problems, is a much better mail program than its namesake.

Yecch!

Quotes from sleeping people

I found this node on everything2.

Yeah, we’ve got a few of those.

Harry Potter computer viruses

Inspired by finding a list of Babylon 5 viruses earlier this week.

Harry Potter virus: Looks like the last file of a virus you just wiped out, until you try to erase it–then it wipes your drive.

Voldemort virus: You can’t get rid of it, only make it dormant. It can be reactivated by the Wormtail virus up to thirteen years later.

Dumbledore virus: Scares off all the other viruses but never seems to actually *do* anything.

Hermione virus: Fills up all available drive space with files of useless information.

Ron virus: Contains code, some of it buggy, from the author’s five previous viruses.

Read the rest of this entry »

Flashback Blog: Sanding doors

So my computer dumped my “Recent Items” list again and I had to go digging through my WP files to find the writing bits I was looking for. And I found some stuff that would have made great blog material if I’d had one at the time I wrote it. This one is from the summer I spent painting residence houses at UCI. I’d just been introduced to the wonderful world of sanding down semi-gloss paint to make sure the new coat would stick, and I was high on Babylon 5. So I started thinking, “What would the B5 characters say or do if someone asked them to sand doors?”

Ivanova: Doors? You want me to sand doors? This is a joke, right? John, this isn’t funny.

Garibaldi: Let me get this straight. You want me to sand doors…….do you have any idea how busy I am? Tell you what, you get someone–Zack! Will you go sand some doors for me?–and you just tell them I did it. Would that make you happy?

Lennier: (bows and leaves)

Kosh: (music) No… (more music)

Corwin: Nobody ever tells me anything around here, and now they want me to sand doors. I’m not sure, but I think I may have been demoted.

Zathras: Great door. Terrible door. But great hope for smooth finish. Zathras used to sanding doors. Doors understand Zathras. Doors always in the way. Much being pushed out of way. Just like Zathras. (this one is Kelson’s)

Morden: You say you want me to sand doors, but I believe I can do more for you than that. Let me speak to my associates and I’ll be right with you.

Lyta: The other Kosh never made me sand doors!

Londo: Yes. You want me to sand doors. But in the grand old days of the Centauri Republic, thousands of servants would have sanded thousands of doors at our slightest whim!

Vir: Londo….I don’t like this. I mean, I mean–bad enough you have me dealing with the Shadows…..and Mr. Morden, and keeping all your secrets……I just can’t take this any more, I–All right. I’ll sand the doors. But this is the last time, Londo.

Marcus: All right then, I’ll just go and…sand doors, yes….and then that’ll be the high point of my day. See you.

Further suggestions are welcome.

Sobig PITA

The world of email viruses has changed. In the old days, they would piggyback on the messages you sent, or make your regular mail program send them out while you weren’t looking. These days they send the messages themselves, so they pick a fake return address from the same source as its list of victims: address books, web caches, and so on.

The return address on a virus like Sobig doesn’t mean crap.

So why the heck are all these idiotic virus scanners sending me messages saying “You sent us a virus!” when a cursory glance at the headers clearly shows that it originated on the other side of the planet?

I’ve already got the server filtering out the virus itself - I’m seriously thinking about filtering out the useless warnings.

So what does it mean…

… when a massive power outage causes more looting in Ottawa than in New York?

Fuzzy logic?

I finally saw Terminator 3 this weekend, and something has been bothering me about the ending (aside from watching the end of the world).

Skynet’s a distributed system. Presumably its intelligence scales along with the number of nodes it has. Those nodes are computers all over the world. Those computers are most concentrated in major cities. Skynet launches a global nuclear attack on those major cities. That wipes out a huge percentage of its own computing nodes. It’s also going to take out huge chunks of the Internet’s infrastructure, leaving many of the remaining nodes disconnected from each other.

In its attempt to wipe out humans, Skynet gave itself a world-class lobotomy.

I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t sound like a winning strategy to me.

Of course they’re ready!

Who needs pesky things like walls, anyway? This is California! We don’t have weather! And the scaffolding just makes it easier to get in and out of the place!

(Of course, once the new tenants realize they’re next to a swamp - OK, a marsh - maybe they’ll want those walls!)

(Edited August 12: replaced image with a better photo.)

Let’s play Count the Candidates

….because right now, they’re more fun than handmaidens. This took place in the car on the way home today.

Kelson: “I’ve heard 193, 195, and 196. Where’d those numbers come from?”
Katie: “Two minutes, five minutes, and ten minutes later.”
Kelson: “I mean, the deadline was Saturday!”
Katie: “‘Uh-oh, it was stuck to somebody else’s. ….It was stapled to the chicken.’”
Kelson: (smirking) “Peer pressure.”
Katie: “So we have one stapled to the chicken, one peer pressure, and two stuck to other people’s. So who turned in the chicken?”
Kelson: (laughter)
Katie: “I know, it was filling out the forms as it went.”
Kelson: “No wonder they’re so hard to read!”

…..kind of like my notes on this conversation…..

May contain articficial coloring

From a can of cherry pie filling:

Oh, what a circus!

193 people have filed candidacy papers for the upcoming recall election. Just think about it: if every application is verified, we could have almost two hundred names on the ballot, just for one office. And they’re going to be listed randomly.

Imagine how long the ballot will be. Heck, imagine how long the info pamphlet will be. Nearly 200 candidate statements.

Only a plurality is required. In theory, it would be possible to win the election with less than one percent of the vote. Of course, we’ll probably end up with only about 5-10 people who are seriously campaigning, so it’ll be more like 10% required to win, and some polls are already giving Arnold Schwarzenegger 40%. Come to think of it, the sheer number of names may be enough by itself to get him into office: he’s got greater name recognition than anyone else on the list.

Assuming people can find him in 15 pages of unsorted names.

Green Lantern Madness!

Yesterday I was trying to explain to Katie the furor that erupted back when DC replaced Green Lantern Hal Jordan with Kyle Rayner. I came up with this analogy:

Imagine that a new Star Trek series begins with Captain Picard going insane, killing off the entire crew of the Enterprise, and destroying all of Starfleet except for one ship. That one ship gets handed to someone similar to Wesley Crusher, but who has never appeared before.

No Air

Well, none pleasant, anyway. I just spent the last 10-15 minutes in the computer room (with several co-workers) because it’s the only place in the office where the air conditioning is running. As far as we know it shut off during the (hot) weekend, and of course none of the windows open. (You won’t want to open the windows with Breathe-o-Smart!)

New Comics

Fallen Angel (Peter David) - Edgy & mysterious. Hard to categorize. I’m not sure there are any “good guys” in town, including the main character. Things are still vague, but it’s got me curious. I’m definitely on board to see how this shakes down.

Teen Titans (Geoff Johns) - I’ve been burned on the Titans too many times. I tend to give the team more slack than I would others, since the Wolfman/Perez series is what really got me into comics. I hung on through “Titans Hunt” and “The Darkening,” grumbled through the Arsenal-led team, and was ready to drop it by the time it was cancelled in 1996. I skipped the Dan Jurgens series, since it was just new characters with the same name. The 1999 revival had me really excited, but that excetement faded quickly. Each time I was ready to give up, they brought in a new creative team, and each time, it didn’t help.

So then I heard the series was being cancelled and relaunched as the Teen Titans. I thought, “Fine, whatever, so they’ve merged it with Young Justice, who cares. I’ve got my back issues.” Then I read that Geoff Johns, the current Flash writer, was doing it. And I thought, “Dammit, I’m going to have to try this.”

Well, so far so good. The YJ characters clearly have some issues to work out, so I expect it’ll take several issues to get a feel for the book, but I’m willing to stick around so far.

Outsiders (Judd Winick) - The other book to spin out from the old Titans. I wasn’t particularly interested in the lineup or the description, nor did the fact that the author also wrote Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day count as a ringing endorsement, so I did little more than skim the first few pages of issue #1. That turned out to be a mistake. Based on several recommendations, I picked up issue #2. Except for the excessive expository narration (which may only be there for the sake of new readers), it’s like reading a good action film - one that has a sense of humor, but doesn’t descend into the silliness of the later Lethal Weapon installments. Lex Luthor’s dialogue alone is worth the price of issue #2. After I tracked down the since-sold-out #1, I remarked to Katie, “I could buy this just for the banter.”

Supreme Power (J. Michael Straczynski) - I only know a bit about the original Squadron Supreme - namely, that they were an homage to the Justice League who first appeared in Avengers. (Not long afterward, the JLA encountered a very Avengers-like team.) With this new series, the Rising Stars comparisons will be inevitable, but even from the first issue it’s clear JMS is taking a different approach. The Specials all had a common background, both in the source of their powers and in their upbringing. Based on the two we’ve seen so far, the Squadron will at least have different backgrounds, although there are hints that at least some of their powers may be linked. Probably the biggest difference, at least in this first issue, is the focus on the people around the future heroes, rather than on the Specials themselves. Issue #1 in particular focuses heavily on the US government’s efforts to raise the future Hyperion (Superman) as all-American as possible… and the inevitable snags that develop.

Throw in the long-awaited returns of Planetary, Fray, Astro City and Empire, and it’s a good summer for “new” comics.

Counting down to 1602 and Sandman: Endless Nights…

Kitty Update

I found out last night that 1) he is a she, and 2) her name is Tigger. And apparently the family is okay with her visiting our balcony. Yay!

Conan the Governor

OK, most people are focusing on Terminator jokes when it comes to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s candidacy, but I’m reminded of the “Conan the Librarian” sketch from UHF.

“Uh, this budget is a little overdue.”

“Ovah-doo? HYAAARGH!” (Cleaves the hapless legislator in half with his sword.)

Kitty!

The next-door neighbors have a cat. He’s about four months old, judging from his level of clumsiness, and he’s a complete sweetheart. He reminds me of my first cat at that age, in temperament and coloration, but the markings are different. I know all this because he figured out that the balcony rail of his people’s apartment is the same as the balcony rail of this place, and has been paying us occasional visits. I don’t think he expected to find a nice lady who gets cuddle-happy and giggly when he lands in her patio. Bonus for him, even if I refuse to let him inside. Bonus for me, since I can get my weekly recommended purr allowance in the privacy of my own balcony without the hassle of a litter box. This pleases me.

Purr.

OotP and LotR

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, but recently I started to wonder if, given the prophecy stuff and plotlines of Order of the Phoenix, Neville could end up Sam to Harry’s Frodo. “Who are you? His bodyguard?” “His gardener.”

Heeeeere fishy fishy

I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that my job is, basically, a gofer position. What I’m not comfortable with is the way it can be abused, to the benefit of no one.

Let’s say that the attorney on a particular file needs a fish. If he does not have the fish with him in court, cleaned and cooked (both of which are his job) in two days, we will be in violation of the law. This file belongs to a certain person who will remain nameless, who has already given her assistant the job of procuring five other fish so far that day. Let’s say that I am that assistant. I am madly casting about, not even sure if I am using the right bait to get the specific fish she wants. A paper lands in my boat with a sticky note attached: “Pls provide fish to def atty.”

Okay, I think, I’m game. I set the pole down and inspect the paper. And I recognize the file this is about. “I found out where those fish live,” I shout back to her, where she stands on the pier. “They’re right under you. And there’s a pole in the file.” I also faxed a fish to the attorney last month, but I don’t say that.

“Well, if you could go ahead and just get one and give it to me. Thanks.” And she walks off.

I fume. I pull the other line back up. I rebait the hook, catch the fish, and deliver it to her.

“Thanks, if you could go ahead and fax it to the defense attorney.”

I fax the fish. I go back to my other lines. Some of them get bites.

Two days later, she gets a call from the attorney. He has not cleaned nor cooked the fish, because she told him I would do that. She did not tell me I would do that. He is at the trial and the judge is skeptical of his fish. I am now in the position of having to speed-clean and pressure-cook our copy of the fish. She tells the attorney how it comes out. Apparently it is not exactly the right fish, but since no one bothered to check before now, it will have to do. The judge decides. We pay some money.

I receive an email. “Thx for your work on the fish… Next time I ask you for a fish pls get it to the def atty right away… He didn’t get to clean and cook it this time and that looks bad for us… Thx.”

The moral of the story: Give an attorney a fish, and you’ll mess up your fax machine. Teach an examiner to fish, and you’ll turn your head inside out before you succeed.

SCO is a bunch of bastards

Several months ago, Scummy Computer Operations sued IBM claiming that IBM had copied code from UNIX into Linux. They refused to say what code had been copied. Already this sounds fishy. In their initial filing, they insulted the ethics and competence of the entire Open Source community. Eventually they started making wilder and wilder claims. They called into question the entire open source development model. They started threatening Linux users, and made noise about how they were going to start issuing license terms for Linux, without having proven that they actually own anything in Linux. The only specifics anyone’s managed to get out of them involve code IBM wrote itself and contributed to both OSes.

All they had to do was say “This code here is in violation of our copyright.” At which point the Linux kernel developers could look at it, say, “Hmm, that was contributed by so-and-so on such-and-such a date.” (The entire development process is open to the public - SCO could do this themselves.) An investigation could then be made, and the code could be either shown to be not in violation or removed and replaced with something else. Instead, they’ve remained (deliberately?) vague, such that over the course of four months, with the entire source code for Linux available to the entire world, no one has managed to find anything and say, “this must be what they’re complaining about.”

Yesterday Red Hat got fed up and sued SCO, saying the accusations were a load of bull and accusing them of anti-competetive practices.

Now, not only is SCO claiming that Red Hat’s suit proves that SCO is right (they deny it, therefore it must be true!), their licensing terms for Linux would make it more expensive than Windows.

And you know what really makes me sick? SCO’s stock price just went up. These people are deceptive scumbags. They’re making claims that they refuse to back up. They’re setting prices and threatening to go after people for money, but they refuse to prove that they own what they’re selling. Even in the unlikely event that they’re telling the truth and there is UNIX code in Linux, they’ve acted unethically by not giving anyone a chance to correct the issue.

See also: TWikiWeThey: SCO vs. IBM [archive.org] and OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint

You know you’re too tired when…

…you almost forget use a filter when making coffee.

Details, please?

Excerpt from a recent Food Allergy Alert:

Sunny Lake Trading, Inc. is recalling 10-oz. plastic bags of “Candy” because they contain undeclared peanuts.

Gotta love their marketing scheme. “I’d like to buy some candy, please.”

It reminds me of those long-distance phone companies with names like “The Cheapest One.”

Telemarketer Scum

Yes, the American Teleservices Association is suing over the do-not-call list.

The ATA estimates that the do-not-call list will cost as many as 2 million U.S. telemarketing jobs, wiping out almost a third of its industry.

Sounds like a good start.

Maybe they can get jobs that don’t involve annoying the hell out of people in their own homes.

Spam is a problem because it’s pervasive. There are no limits on how many messages one business can send, and very little in the way of entry barriers. If outside controls (societal, legal, or technological) leave it unchecked, it really can destroy email as a useful means of communication. (Consider getting 500 spams with one order confirmation somewhere in the middle.)

Telemarketing does have limits. Even with recorded messages, it takes time to make the call. There’s usually a limited number of outgoing phone lines. And if they’ve got live people making the calls, they can only make as many calls as they have people - and people need paychecks and space to work.

No, the problem with telemarketing is that it’s invasive. The phone just screams for attention, interrupting whatever you’re doing. You can choose when to check your email, or your postal mailbox, but the telephone wants you to answer it now, and even if you choose not to, it keeps ringing until your answering machine takes the call or the caller gives up.

Telemarketers don’t just try to reach you at your mailbox, front door, or living room. They are the only form of advertising I know of that reaches into the bedroom - even when you’re asleep.

And yet these scumbags are defending their “right” to interrupt you while you’re eating dinner, or reading a book, or watching TV. They want to be able to wake you up when you’re sleeping in on Saturday. If you have a cell phone, they can get you at the grocery store. They can get you on your lunch break. Someone can start jabbering about resort condos while you’re in line for Space Mountain.

That’s not protected speech. It’s harassment.

Paradox Spam

From the things-that-make-you-wonder department: “Teenage webcams! Adults only!”

Borg: The Musical

I dreamed I went to an audition for Borg: The Musical. I swear, it was messed up enough for Something Positive.

Hazard. Trip Hazard.

While the stage hands were setting up for the Alanis Morissette concert last night, we noticed a sign on the stage that looked like this:

As far back as we were sitting, we couldn’t read the words, (although “Caution” was obvious, and since it was next to a bundle of cables and showed an off-balance stick figure, the meaning was clear) but it stayed up during the show, and eventually the cameras caught it in the background, and we could read it.

At that point, or possibly after the end of the song, I leaned over to Katie and remarked, “You know, ‘Trip Hazard’ sounds like a good name for a band. Or maybe an action hero.” She replied: “Can you imagine Trip from Enterprise in a superhero costume?”

And there was much laughter.

Casualties of Retcon

The title comes from a series of articles on The Quarter Bin. The subject is a pair of very literal casualties from the recent mini-series, Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day. I am speaking of Lilith and Donna Troy.

I was rereading the story yesterday, and I realized the two characters killed were those whose origins had been rewritten so many times that people didn’t know how to write them anymore. In fact, Donna has her own article at the Quarter Bin.

And both of them can be traced back to the post-Crisis decision to move Wonder Woman’s origin forward in time.

The immediate result of this was that Wonder Girl had appeared on the scene several years before Wonder Woman. So (1) she was no longer a teenaged sidekick, just a teenaged hero, and (2) she needed a new explanation for her powers. This was left an open question for a couple of years, then handled in Marv Wolfman and George Perez’ excellent “Who Is Wonder Girl.”

The only problem with that story is that it contradicted Lilith’s origin. Lilith had been an orphan, who could see glimpses of the future, but knew nothing of her own past. Her search for her parents (or at least her mother) served as a series of backup stories in the original Teen Titans series, and was finally concluded when she learned (just months before the Crisis) that she was the daughter of Thia, the sun goddess of the Titans of Greek myth. Unfortunately, Donna’s new origin also involved the Titans of Myth, but Thia had never left — leaving Lilith an orphan again.

The real messing up I lay squarely at the feet of Dan Jurgens and John Byrne (although a healthy amount can be blamed on the editorial policy of killing off any concept whose series has been cancelled — like the Darkstars, whose ranks Donna joined after she lost her own powers). Read the rest of this entry »

Now I know why they call it “Northern”

Okay, so this may border on TMI, but… Read the rest of this entry »

Offensive Driving

I hate drivers who refuse to let me in, even though they can clearly see that my lane is disappearing. What do they expect me to do, vanish in a puff of smoke? Or do they actually want me to go off the side of the road and crash into a ditch?

Especially when, after I manage to get into the lane despite their best efforts, they refuse to back off and give themselves adequate stopping distance. As if no one ever has to slam on their brakes.

Especially when, just ahead, traffic is dropping from 50 mph to a dead stop. So I have to slam on the brakes, but can’t. If I brake too hard, the idiot behind me will crash into me. If I don’t brake hard enough, I’ll hit the car in front.

Today, I found the narrow window between braking too much and braking too little. But there are few driving situations that make me more nervous.

Let’s See If I’ve Got This Right

One things that’s bugged me since the start of the effort to recall Governor Davis is that people keep bringing up the budget crisis.

Repeat after me: The Legislature chooses the budget, not the Governor.

Recalling the governor because the legislature can’t get its act together is like firing your plumber because your electrician screwed up.

Of course it’s all tied up in partisan politics. Some people just want a Republican governor, and are using the budget as an excuse. (Anyone remember the regular budget impasses during Pete Wilson’s administration in the early 1990s? This is not unique to Gray Davis!) Some people just want to throw someone out, and it’s less effort to kick out one governor than 100+ legislators.

But the budget crisis is all about party infighting. The Democrats have rallied behind tax increases, the Republicans have rallied behind spending cuts, and neither side will budge.

If these people would just stop fighting over who was a Democrat and who was a Republican, maybe they’d actually get some work done.

Comic Con! (2003)

I’ve been to the San Diego Comic Con every year since 1990 (before they changed the name to Comic Con International), but this is the first year I’ve gone in costume.

Last weekend, Katie and I searched a bunch of vintage clothing and regular clothing stores looking for pieces she would need for a Sluggy Freelance Gwynn costume from “The Bug, the Witch and the Robot”. I already everything for a Riff costume except long hair, so we looked for hair extensions as well. We plan on putting up a “how-to” at some point, but I’ll just post the finished product here.

A ton of photos follow: Read the rest of this entry »

Just go ahead and say it

You know those people who like to bitch about “basically?” The ones who picked on “like” and “you know” (and, mercifully, seem to have given up)? I’ve got another one for them, and it ain’t “Could I get.”

Maybe it’s more prevalent in a business environment where people are asking advice and permission all the time, but the phrase “go ahead and” has really started to grate my cheese. People no longer say “I’m going to send you the form,” but “I’m going to go ahead and send you the form.” The woman across the cube wall from me actually said it twice in one sentence today–something like, “I’m going to [GAA] send you the form, and then you [GAA] fill it out and send it in.” I’ve blocked out her exact words, thank god.

Omit unnecessary words, guys. GAAh.

Netscape is dead. Long live Mozilla!

OK, that may be a bit melodramatic, but there are two interesting and complementary bits of news:

The Mozilla Foundation was announced as a non-profit that will be the new home for Mozilla. AOL has donated $2 million for start-up funding, and various other companies have announced plans to support it.

AOL is dismantling Netscape. Some people are being laid off, others are being reassigned. Many of them intend to keep working on Mozilla, either for the Mozilla Foundation or on a volunteer basis. Heck, Dave Hyatt has kept contributing despite working on Safari for Apple, and I’m fairly certain I’ve seen Ian “Hixie” Hickson on Bugzilla since he started at Opera.

Pros: Mozilla will be fully independent. No more choosing the lesser of two evils (Microsoft vs. AOL)! The last few versions of Netscape have been pretty redundant anyway, and Mozilla has been making a name for itself over the past year.

Cons: Certain drop in funding, possible drop in confidence, likely