You are cordially invited
What: Michael & Rain Moving
Where : (from Salem Wood Apartments) 100 Kimball Ave Apt G84 Salem, VA
When: Saturday September 25th show up anytime after 9:00am
Who: Any and all who would like to help
Directions – From 81 take exit 140 and turn right at the stop sign at the bottom of the exit ramp. Follow this road for about 1.5 miles. You will go through a light at Main Street, continue forward. You will go through another light, continue forward. The first street you can turn at after the second light you will make a Left (there is no light or stop sign here). It is Colorado Street. Stay on this street for about a mile or so. You will go through a stop light where the Salem Donut shop is on your right hand side. Continue forward. You will go up and over a small bridge. When you see another stop light coming, there will be a stop sign to the right of the stop light. You need to go forward to the stop sign and not the stop light (There is an Apple Mart on the corner). This is still Colorado Street. Go forward along the sharp turn in the road. There will be a parking lot on your left hand side, right after that is Salem Wood Apartments, turn left into them. We are the very first building on your right hand side, building G.
Things to know – our apartment is on the 3rd floor so stairs are involved. It is 1.5 flights of stairs (one of those set ups a half flight down is the first floor, a half flight up is the second.) We will have tons of drinks for everyone, ice tea, pop, whatever people want. We will also be providing food.
If you could drop us a line if you think you could make it that would be great.
Thanx everyone!!
Review: Starship Exeter
If you don’t have any interest in the original TV Star Trek, or low-budget film-making, you can skip this. A couple months ago, I was reading a back issue of Star Trek Communicator and I found a link to a Trek fan film called Starship Exeter. rattrap posted a similar link not long afterward, and this weekend I got around to downloading and watching this 2002 production.
Let’s start with what they did wrong. The script has a few “well why didn’t the characters do X?” moments. The aliens are a bit oddly acted in places, and the production crew admits to regretting a certain monster model.
That’s all. Everything else is freaking perfect. The costumes are right. The sets are right. The props are right, the sound effects are right, the characters are right out of 2270’s Starfleet. They even made their gorgeous CGI Constitution-class starship wobble at the same place the Enterprise used to wobble in certain shots. I was completely transported (no pun intended) back to a time when a determined humanity was making its mark in the Trek universe, whether alien races liked it or not.
This brings me to another point. Say all you want about certain cheesy aspects of classic Trek, it was one of the most high-budget TV shows of the 60’s – nobody did anything with better production values back then. Starship Exeter is so well-done that if it was showing on cable right now, it could fool you for a moment into thinking that you were watching another Roddenberry spin-off pilot. Low-budget film-making is catching up to Hollywood faster and faster – one reviewer stated that he’d rather watch Exeter than Nemesis.
This was a joy to watch, not just for the nostalgia overload, but as the herald of what’s to come for those of us with DV cameras and a few thousand bucks. I highly recommend it.
Gentlethings, start your engines
While browsing through the list of announced GenCom games, I hit Cthulhu 500, the game that combines Lovecraft with NASCAR.
“Mythos Motor Sports Madness: The Cthulhu 500 card game puts you in the driver’s seat for a frenzied race that mixes the madness of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and the insanity of motor sports. Rev up your Satanic Pushcart’s Engine Of The Damned, mount your Radials From Beyond Space And Time, and take a Dreamlands Shortcut to win the race for The Sponsor That Must Not Be Named. The driver in the lead when the Checkered Flag card is drawn celebrates victory by devouring his opponents! 3 to 8 players – Ages 8 and up – 30 to 60 minutes”
Why does this sound like it was target-marketed right at some of the people I game with?
Ever So Clever
This latest of weebl’s Flash animations is for shrewlet.
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/37/
It’s worse because one of my co-workers is named Trevor. I’ve made sure to send him the link 🙂
Lots and lots of blacktop
Feeling better this morning. Went to the pub last night with Tom and Donna and had a pretty good time.
Tom wants me to go up to the new National Air and Space Museum with him on October 10th. I like the idea – I’d hardly want to miss a chance to make a pilgrimage to the STS Enterprise – but October is loading up quick. The 22nd is a weekend trip to Salem for Rising Star, the weekend of the 29th includes a trip to Blacksburg for VTSFFC Halloween, and the weekend of 11/05 is another con I’ve always wanted to go to.
My poor car. The last months have been really hard on it.
My body needs a better firewall
Yesterday started good. I didn’t feel well when I got up in the morning, but I never feel well if I get up before 10am, so I didn’t think twice about it. In the first half of my work day, I completed the resurrection of a dead Titanium PowerBook with a broken hinge and sheared display wires, which was nice bit of ego-boost.
By lunchtime, I realized that my throat was super sore, and I was pretty dehydrated. I took a break and went to the tiny pharmacy a couple doors down, and came back to work. My nose had started running too, so I grabbed some tissues.
By mid-afternoon, there was no doubt that I was sick. I was coughing, blowing my nose, had a nice headache and serious nausea. Throw in some light-headedness and chills, and you know I was really enjoying myself by that time. I had to reassemble an iBook in that condition, too, which as I’ve mentioned has 50 screws in about 10 different sizes. Literally. I figure it was sinus brought on mostly by over-exerting myself over the weekend and the crappy weather on Saturday.
Finally, work was over, but there was an event I had to attend yesterday evening, to insure I’d be properly prepared for something else happening Saturday. I’d have blown it off, but that would have screwed up the next month’s worth of planning. Only problem? No one had sent me directions yet.
I drove to two places where this group had met before, but they weren’t at either place. In desperation, I did my first bit of intentional wardriving: cruising slowly around the residential neighborhood seeing if my iPaq would pick up an open wireless access point. I actually found one, and confirmed that no one had sent me e-mail, so I gave up and headed home.
The good side of that was that I really shouldn’t have been around all those other people when I was sick, and I was able to head to bed early. On top of that, I got home in time to catch a phone call from raininva before I dropped off, and we talked for a good long time, which cheered me up a lot. On the other hand, my upcoming plans are trashed.
I’m still not well, but I’m better than I was yesterday. I can function, and my throat and stomach are mostly okay. If my nose and head would follow suit, I’d be fine. I might even go down to see Tom at the pub tonight.
*snort*
All Virginia’s Parties
Quite a weekend! I burned myself out just a teeny bit, but I did have a lot of fun.
Friday morning, I decided I’d get right on the road after work, so I threw a weekend bag into the back seat. I even got to leave work a bit early to take care of an iMac repair at CompUSA. It was a good thing I did leave early, because there were 30-60 minute delays at every tunnel out of Norfolk, and if you’re heading north, you pretty much have to take a tunnel.
I’ll spare you the next in my ongoing series of traffic rants, because I still showed up at kittykatya‘s place just in time for lekythen and pulp_tarentino to return from an errand. Spent a couple hours catching up with J.J., whom I haven’t seen in 6 years. We’ve both grown up a bit, and I almost felt that we clicked better as reunited friends than we did when we were dating. So that was quite good.
Friday night and Saturday morning were spent catching up with Alex & Barb & Chris (look, alphabetical). Unfortunately, I had to head off before J.J. came back for her stuff, so I didn’t get a final goodbye. It was a good thing I left when I did, because the sky opened up as I left, and I lost another 90 minutes heading back down 95. Luckily, platypusgirl and krysturtle were willing to accept a soaked, bedraggled Borg into their home and I had a very good time at their party.
I met many people, some of whom I recognized from con meetings, but few of whom I can remember their names 🙂 The party was fun – lotsa people, good food, nervous kitties. We established that cat toys are far better for amusing small children than small-children toys are, and I have finally seen more than 50% of “The Goonies”.
Sunday, I napped a lot. I also tried to track down used copies of the “Riverworld” books – so far, no luck, but there are lots more places to look.
Phew.
I want ten 1-yard lengths of PVC pipe and don’t ask
Contractors are using heavy power tools less than 25 feet from me as some remodeling goes on. Noisy only begins to describe it; at one point they were using some kind of pneumatic punch which made me jump 18 inches evey time it went off. This has been going on for weeks.
Today, I’m prepared – I have headphones and iTunes. I can still hear them, of course, but I can ignore them much easier. I think they know that, too; today they’ve decided to set off the building alarm 3 or 4 times for my office enjoyment. Oy.
Forged in the fires of Home Depot: While I was snickering, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone still goes to “Toy Depot” to buy stuff for, you know, actual home improvement.
Finished “To Say Nothing of the Dog” last night. Often funny in a “heh” way, and an interesting look at a modern time-traveler stuck in Victorian England, but it was another example of characters dragged helplessly through the plot for a couple hundred pages. My own preference is for protagonists who get some kind of grip on things sooner or later.
