Demoralizing

I was feeling really good about the 17 miles I’ve walked this month, until I looked up a reference in the Atlas of Middle-Earth.

In one month’s travel from Bag End to Rivendell, Frodo & Co. walked 450 miles!!!

Okay, they walked all day everyday, and were motivated by Black Riders on their tail. But still… I’m not quite so proud of myself.

Oh, yippie doodle.

Just got the niceset e-mail from Sony, offering to let me download Classic Everquest for free *and* throwing in a 30-day trial for the same low price.

Well, guess what, Sony, I am immune to your offer of EverCrack becuase you don’t feel the need to support my OS. So there.

Blizzard, on the other hand, is sending all my gamer friends to tell me how much they are loving Warcraft 3, and how I really won’t miss all my non-gamer friends that much…

On a Yahoo! mailing list I belong to, a couple people are being horrid and insulting to a woman because she won’t post topless or nude pictures of herself. Then another member leaps to her “defense”, telling her to ignore them ’cause they are obviously gay and that gay people just like to sit around harassing upstanding straight folk.

*sigh* Times like this, I just need to leve the computer and go watch something involving puppies, or kitties, or Hayao Miyazaki and childhood.

At work, they call me “The Oracle”

Hmmm… seconds ago I refreshed my friends page, and kittykatya had an entry up about her Sailor Senshi colors. Had to close the window before I could really read the entry… and now it’s gone.

Did the Matrix just glitch on me and I saw part of the simulation that won’t be up for a little while? Or am I just hallucinating again?

Not a happy post

Well…

I watched them put my cat to sleep today.

Okay, technically my mom’s cat, and an animal I’ve seen only occasionally since I moved out to be with Rain. But.

Pris was a friendly little animal who, throughout most of my twenties, kept me company, soothed bruised feelings, and generally offered unconditional support when I needed it. For a cat, she was very affectionate and open.

She became very very sick quickly, over a period of a few days. It was the vet’s opinion that medical treatment would just prolong her suffering, and to be honest, she got so much sicker over the short time I was there that I’m not sure she would have seen tomorrow anyway. We’re still not perfectly sure what was wrong.

So, anyway. I’m sure I’ll be over this shortly, but right now…

I watched them put my cat to sleep today.

Of some note…

Blizzard announced today that Warcraft 3 has gone “Gold Master” and should be on store shelves July 3rd. The packages will retail for $55-$60 and contain versions for Windows 98/ME/200/XP and MacOS 9/X on the same discs.

This is only of interest to one or two of the people on my friends list, but will explain why we stop hearing from them next month. 🙂

Dang, I dropped the Library of Congress again

Researchers at IBM have developed technology which uses dents in thin plastic film to store information. It’s a bit like the punch cards of computing history, except the dents are 10 nanometers in width. (A nanometer is one-millionth of the width of a piece of paper-clip wire.)

The researchers estimate that with this technology in practical use, a common multifunction digital wristwatch could contain 15 gigabytes of data… that’s about 23 CDs, or 2 or 3 DVD movie discs.

“I’ve backed up the ship’s computer core in this small MDM memory chip!” Brion Fields, Space Rogues

The more things change…

This train of thought began as I watched Adobe Photoshop go through a complicated scripting sequence without any assistance from me… I began thinking of Rick Deckard’s wonderful photo-processing “Esper” machine. (Yes, I want one.)

So, I’m thinking about Blade Runner and the fact that, in an unscientific poll of science-fiction fans, I’m one of the few viewers who prefer the theatrical release to the director’s cut. (Voiceover, less uncertain ending, and all).

I’m not going to debate the merits of the two versions here, though it has occurred to me that it is the theatrical release that made Blade Runner one of the classics of SF film (and made it possible to produce a director’s cut release, before DVDs made such releases common).

However, the discussion of the versions made me think about how we revise things in our heads. I watched hours of the old Robotech series last weekend, but used the remote to skip over the dull, boring, or actually painful parts. (Yes, I’m referring to Minmei.) The Internet produced the “Phantom Edit” version of Star Wars Episode I – in many opinions, a superior film. Douglas Adams himself wrote multiple variants of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – all official, and all contradictory.

Then, while looking up information on Apple’s “Final Cut Pro”, I found this web page that compares such revisions to the Bible itself, where the Gospels contradict each other and concentrate on the parts that the individual writers found interesting. And I realized that people have been arguing about this for nearly two thousand years.

So, the next time I go to a con and find an earnest discussion of how Enterprise has re-written the established history of the Star Trek universe, I’ll be less likely to jump in with both feet. If we’ve been revising our most sacred texts to personal taste for this long, Kirk and Picard don’t have much of a chance. *grin*

Protected: *sigh*

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The Basics

My LiveJournal “interpreted”:

Nothing like getting ready to Lisa and Vond’s Leaving for a whirlpool jacuzzis to avoid unnaturally repetitive motion And Halloween costumes to post my Borg parts I probably can probably hover walked two of my car, I miss costuming pics of my hip. Walked a location. Nothing like I’m going still under Gene Roddenberry’s inflexible hand, told me? The copies I already have to catch up with what I’d like some of.

Soon, I’ll be an air conditioned, level track to the combined Books.

(Try it yourself at: http://www.antispin.net/~martine/cgi-bin/insanity.cgi?mikailborg – you’ll probably want to replace my username with yours)

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