The Soul For Getting Down
meiran posted this. It’s silly, it’s fanservice… and it’s joyously wonderful.
Interviewed by jazzfish
1) How’s life in Norfolk?
I really like it here. There’s more to do than I can possibly keep up with, lotsa good friends, and the scenery’s suprisingly good for a large metropolitan area. I do miss mountains, all the lovely folk in SWVA fandom, and not having to commute through a congested bridge-tunnel every day; and of course it would have been nice to be near my Mom when she got hurt. But otherwise, this is an excellent place to live.
2) What tech toy do you not own (and don’t plan on acquiring in the next three months) that you wish you did?
A GPS navigator for the Hyundai. I still do just enough convention driving and the like that it would come in handy.
3) What’s your favorite nonfiction book?
Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. It’s a brain-stretcher of a book, one that I’ve had to read many times to access most of the meaning, but one full of fascinating ideas and profound concepts involving music, art, literature, language, biology, and computers. I must be a graduate of the book by now, though, since I think his views on the future of Artificial Intelligence are quite pessimistic. OTOH, what do I know?
4) What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
Working the Copy Center counter at Staples. The work itself was fine, but I had such difficulty with abrasive customers and co-workers that it made my previous job of vacuuming and emptying trash cans for an office building look absolutely peaceful.
5) How fast do you type?
To my own great surprise, around 60-65 words a minute. Surprising, because I kind of two-finger type. An actual typewriter would kill me, because I hit the “delete” key a lot. Still, my old boss at Thrifty Nickel once said I was the fastest, most accurate bad typist he’d ever seen.
Der Ruleses:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very personal nature.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, ask them 5 questions.
“Where’s the override?”
Found Iron Chef Japan on the Fine Living Network. Now I need only suffer through the occasional Martha Stewart commercial to get my fix. Sadly, NBC / Universal came down on them about the Backdraft music, and the whole show’s been re-scored by someone who didn’t really get it; but it’s better than nothing.
There’s a tire fire in North Carolina this week, and the smoke’s traveled all the way up here. The air in Portsmouth is nasty. I feel like someone in a cyberpunk book who should be walking the city streets with a small respirator. Sucks, because otherwise the heat’s much more tolerable today.
Thank goodness for the Baen Free Library and the Baen CDs. Because of those resources, I didn’t pay any money for John Ringo’s The Hero. Now, I enjoyed his first “Posleen” books well enough, though the ending of the war was unsatisfying; but this book pretends to be one story for 100 pages (!) and then, without warning, changes its mind, abandons nearly everything, and becomes a completely different story.
Imagine you’re watching the second Trek movie, getting into the story, and the first face-off between Kirk and Khan has just ended. Suddenly, a renegade cadet from the Enterprise steals the Genesis Device plans, uses the prefix codes to cause warp core breaches and destroy both ships, and hides in the Mutara Nebula in a 72-hour survival spacesuit to wait for an arranged Romulan pickup. Unknown to him, one of Khan’s men got out in a similar spacesuit, and is hunting him down as the only chance for survival.
While the “hunting each other down” part of the movie might be gripping, I assume most people’s reaction would be, “WTF? What happened to the plot I was just watching? Who are these people? I don’t even like these people.” That was my reaction to this book. Ah, well, it’s not like I don’t have lots more to read, including In The Serpent’s Coils, Grave Peril, and Little Brother (yes, it’s a free download).
Oh, and while I’m reviewing things, have I mentioned that I am now quite the Steven Moffat fan? The ending of “Forest of the Dead” had me saying to myself, “Bit of a downer, but everything lined up properly, lotsa neat stuff, some good lines. Good episode.” Then: Non-specific Spoiler
Stay Cool
Wow. I was sick yesterday, and Starr’s sick today. Awesome. It might very well have been dehydration on both our parts, though I drink more water these days than I have in years.
I need to watch the latest Doctor Who very soon, it is apparently most excellent, and the net is bursting with spoilers that I am carefully avoiding. Stephen Moffat may be the best Who writer on the new show, responsible for The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, The Girl In the Fireplace, and Blink; I’m not displeased at all that he’s in charge of 2010’s Series Five. The “Everybody lives!!” line still gets me right ‘there’.
And now, this year’s zombie meme:
You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:
1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.
* Weapon can be real or fictional; you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.
1) Phaser II, set to “vaporise”. With endless ammo, I can just hold down the trigger and sweep.
2) Queen, “Flight of the Hawkmen” (starts at about 1:08 in the video)
3) Tim the Enchanter (I think his skills would be well matched to the situation.)
Starr’s list:
1) Sonic Screwdriver (“I’m sure it has a ‘defeat zombies’ setting.”)
2) Meredith Brooks, “Bitch”
3) Kal-El
Entropy loses a round
Hmph. The Microsoft Office 2008 icons are kinda ugly.
Listening to some Vangelis music at work this morning. “Alpha” is one of those tunes that sends tingles up my spine when I listen to it, and awakes wonder and potential in my mind. If only I could stay in that headspace for days at a time… it probably wouldn’t be good for me, but I feel that I’d get a lot done while I could stand it.
I wonder where the ‘tingles’ come from? It’s absolutely a physical sensation to me, but I have no idea what produces it.
Far more importantly, my mom is walking now without human assistance. She’s still using a walker or crutch, but given that she couldn’t even move the leg two weeks ago, this is an absolutely awesome development, and I joked that she’s making far better progress than I did. If any of my friends have ever wondered where my buried stubborn streak came from, this may provide a clue. I am thrilled for her – and while she’s there, they think they may be able to correct a nerve issue that’s pained her for about 20 years, so, silver lining!
And speaking of doctors, it took me a visit to Wikipedia to learn that the awfully-familiar looking archaeologist on Doctor Who this week was Dr. Corday on ER for seven seasons. Cool.
Molten Muppet Pollen Prediction
See, this is how you “rickroll” someone. Rather than just posting random stupid misdirected link, post YouTube video claiming to be Muppet bloopers which even a savvy person will want to click just in case; then, play skillfully re-edited video of Beaker and the Electric Mayhem singing “Never Gonna Give You Up”.
The funny thing about Blizzard’s “Molten Core” joke is that you can still find people writing games for the Atari 2600, though they’re almost always played on emulators. It’s quite the programming challenge to get a fun game tucked into less storage space than my LJ user icon requires.
Two days of warm weather have produced an explosion of plant sex here. My car’s turned an unhealthy yellow-green, the streets have pale stains, and there are drifts of powdered lemonade in the gutters. We’ll see if I can breathe by the end of the day!
This weekend, I found out what the “Age of Aquarius” actually means. The Earth’s axis wobbles a tiny bit (but does not fall down). Some astrologers define a “Great Year” as the time it takes the axis to perform a complete wobble, approximately 26,000 years. A Great Year is divided into 12 Ages. Astrology being the exact science that it is, the Age of Aquarius is to begin sometime between 2062 and 2680. Or maybe it began in 2000, though any way it’s supposed to take a while to get up to speed. But now I know! (Yeah, I like that song. It’s happy.)
Gonna try to finish Technicon posts today.
Sorry, Katemonster…
While I’m working on Saturday’s report, I forgot to post this little nugget from Friday’s dance: “The Internet Is For: PORN”
(For those who’ve never seen this: probably not work safe. Quite possibly in bad taste. If you think it’s silly watching World of Warcraft characters sing this, keep in mind that it’s originally sung by puppets in an award-winning Broadway show.)
EDIT: And, by a weird coincidence, tonight’s DVR’d “Ace of Cakes” showcased an Avenue Q cake. Huh.
Technicon 25 Pre-Show
I have driven to Orlando. I have driven to upstate New York. In neither of those cases was I responsible for the steering wheel the whole time, if at all; so, yes, a five-hour drive can absolutely wear me out!
Since NASA Langley is practically sitting on I-64, I packed the car on Wednesday night and headed right to Blacksburg from work Thursday. 64 and I-81 aren’t too unpleasant on a Thursday evening; my CD player may be broken, but the iPod plays through it nicely except for the pauses when it tries to eject nonexistent CDs.
Unfortunately, my transmission started throwing fits around Afton Mountain (who could blame it?) slipping and locking into third gear three times on the trip down. Pulling over for 10 minutes each time seemed to reset things, but that’s no way to run a railroad.
I made it safely to the Microtel, where I was informed that the wireless access was a bit spotty on my floor 🙁 Nevertheless, in an effort to adjust my sleep rhythms for the weekend, I stayed up for a couple hours unsuccessfully farming Primals in Zangarmarsh, only getting kicked off the server three times.
Friday I headed down to see my Mom (one of the main reasons for my Thursday travel), which was lovely. We traded Xmas presents and had good conversation over a mildly disappointing lunch. Interestingly, I’m still on a hot-rodded Mac G4 tower, and she’s got the latest and greatest iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, which she took great glee in showing me.
Went to the lube place, got the transmission flushed, and had them look at my rear tires, which were making unhappy growly noises. Yep, they needed replacing. Technicon was getting expensive already…
Killing the Radio Star
Okay, I think I’m totally turning into a Daft Punk fan. I saw this video on someone’s blog, and now the tune is firmly lodged in my head.
Start Me Up
Sometimes, people post things on the Internet that just plain make me feel glad to be living in a world where someone spent the time to make them up.
The “Lions In Kenya” and “Shirley Bassey Getting the Party Started” videos are two examples. Here’s another:
I successfully stayed up all night on Saturday night. We decided that our level 56-ers needed to hit 58 This Weekend, which we reached about 6 am. It was nice to know that I can still do that… a year of 10pm bedtimes had left me doubtful. Still, I had to down several Tums, as one of the tricks my body uses to try to get me to go to bed is surges of stomach acid. Also, I was kind of out of it the next day; so, I’ve learned from this that I can do it, but not easily.
Found a website that generates an automatically updated stat block I can use for my characters, like so…
Too bad that the servers are now far too overloaded with requests to actually function properly. (This one won’t update, it’s static.)
Local TV re-ran the Special Edition “Trouble With Tribbles” this weekend, so last night I dug out the “Trials And Tribble-ations” DS9 episode for Starr, who’d never seen it. Great fun! And then it hit me… there’s no way in heck that J.J. Abrams’ Lt. Uhura will be running around in that red minidress. Not in a 2008 feature film. I weep.
