Zombie HORROR!!

Yesterday, of course, was ‘blog like it’s the end of the world’ day. Several people I know were caught a bit off guard, especially when reading the better-written entries. I’m interested that most of the zombiepocalypse bloggers posted as if they expected to survive all this, and with convincing feeling rather than easy melodrama. Frankly, this was more fun than NaNoWriMo as far as I’m concerned.

But I wrote in mine about ‘going mad’ with the shock of what’s happening. I tried to imagine the other day a horrific event that would ‘drive me mad’. There’s not a lot I can imagine – I mean, I can imagine being terrified, sickened, appalled, but not driven insane by an event. The very sight of Cthulhu was supposed to do this, or the reading of his forbidden books; but I suspect that had more to do with the awful realization that such things could exist in a universe of which we’d pridefully assumed we were the supreme center.

Last week I read about a story involving a 100-foot-long house with a 110-foot-long hallway inside!!! For a while, i thought that might be my road – how would my scientific, skeptical mind embrace this physical impossibility? It might DRIVE ME MAD!

But maybe not. I have a built-in error-protection routine for these situations, which is to simply say “There’s something going on here that I don’t understand.” If I “know” that you can’t fit 110 feet of corridor in 100 feet of domicile, but I am forced by the evidence of my own measuring tape to concede that that’s what seems to be happening, I don’t need to shriek “That’s IMPOSSIBLE!” and run from the building, I need only admit that I can’t explain this, and start looking for answers.

A zombie can scare me, might consume me, but can’t make me admit there isn’t an explanation somewhere 🙂

Little Creek Station – deactivating

The house on Flowerfield looked distractingly weird last night. My steps echoed through the empty bedrooms. There was once again room to park a car in the garage. The chipped marble tile in the dining room was no longer covered with brightly-colored foam flooring.

I headed over there at 10am Sunday, to let a friend in who wanted the old futon. 14 hours of numbing, back-breaking work later, it’s all empty. The last piece of Lego, the last click-base figure, the last six-sided die all found temporary homes in corrugated cardboard.

Last night I was too desperately tired to feel anything. This morning, I’m not sure what I feel.

At least I’m done battling the oil heater.

Ancient weapons and hokey religions

Many moons ago, the noble rattrap gave me a gift of an upgraded Macintosh SE. 20MB hard drive. 1.44 MB floppy drive. 9″ black & white monitor. New, the thing sold for $3500 or so. I got some good creativity going on that puppy, and I’ve never forgotten Jerry’s generosity.

Soon, the SE was replaced, as all computers are fated to be. The LC III, then the Performa 6214, then the G4 “Sawtooth” (with later processor and video upgrades). But I never got rid of the SE – I hate to throw away functioning (if obsolete) hardware. It seems wasteful. So, the SE sat quietly on a shelf, not even plugged in once for almost 10 years.

For no particularly good reason, I plugged it in tonight. It booted up just fine, and loaded A Mess o’ Trouble. (Great game. Worth installing a System 6 emulator to play, if you’re inclined.) The monitor’s starting to flicker badly while the hard drive’s running, but other than that, it’s not doing poorly at all for a piece of hardware released 17 years ago.

I guess a sane person would give it away or just discard it. OTOH, I’ve rarely laid claim to any sanity.

And more Tech memoriams

There are about a half-dozen full-size LCD billboards scattered along Hampton Roads highways. Distracting things, let me tell you.

Today, they are flashing luminous messages of support for the Tech victims.

Throat, meet lump.

Thunderous quiet

NASA Langley is actually rather pretty in many spots… away from the streets of the base, you get tree-lined walks punctuated with sculpture, providing lotsa good places to sit and eat lunch when the weather’s good.

One of those areas was colored purple and orange for an hour today as the base held a small ceremony for the Tech victims. I’m no good at counting crowds, but easily a hundred of the people here came out for the memorial. I exchanged small talk with Lloyd Eldred, and saw many of my Desktop Support co-workers as well. Some disturbance floated over from the Air Force base, where Joint Strike Fighters were practicing for next week’s air show, but we forged ahead.

Forging ahead – that was my epiphany during the ceremony. To hell with Cho Seung-hui. If the best legacy he can leave the world is the death of some innocent bystanders – if all he ever wanted was to remembered as a homicidal cretin – then he’s got it. The rest of us will mourn, and hurt, and then get on with our lives despite him.

There are folks out there who are already turning his sickness into works of art; turning his ugliness into beauty, and togetherness, and hope. We can always defeat these random acts of destructiveness as long as we’re willing to take a deep breath, straighten our shoulders, and forge ahead.

The Dream Is Alive

Last night, I heard that Virgin Galactic will be testing their SpaceShipTwo prototype this year, and expects to start its public, commercial, sub-orbital flights before the end of 2008 (possibly early 2009, depending on which part of their website you’re looking at). They expect to take several hundred people up to 100km (official Astronaut altitude) within the first year of the company’s operation.

Even after the success of SpaceShipOne, the whole thing still seemed a bit pipe-dreamy. “Maybe we can do this as a business one day.” Now, somehow, it seems real, and I hear the sound of Richard Branson buying himself a major turning point in human history. Not that I mean to be too dismissive of the man: it’s a much healthier way to establish a presence in the textbooks than trying to establish a 1000-year Reich, for example.

I cannot help but look at their promotional materials and realize that my dream of going up is about to change from “realistically impossible” to “currently impractical”. Don’t let anyone say that’s not an enormous difference. There was a time in my early 20s when it was “currently impractical” for me to walk unassisted. “Impractical” is a lot easier to change.

Protected: Relationship regeneration

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Like, WoW. This is a bit of a pain…

As I mention many posts back, I’m playing World of Warcraft with some of my free time these days. I was thrilled with the execution of the game when I began playing it, and loved the way it sucked one in early on. The fact that it ran well on my older-but-upgraded Mac was a real plus, too.

I’m beginning to have a few problems with the game, however.

Whizzo Replicator Distribution

This one’s been on my mind for a few days. I blame the alignment of the planets.

Situation: you have a shiny-new Starfleet food replicator, the kind that takes molecular building blocks from storage and makes any kind of food you want based on patterns you’ve loaded or scanned in.

Poll cut to protect the squeamish

You don’t know the power of the geek side…

Eric Burns, of Websnark.com:

“I’d like to go into depth on the Jedi philosophy, on the core of Hubris that led to the Fall of the Jedi Order, on the nature of denial and of ossification, and on the ways that Qui Gon Jinn represented, thematically, a break from all that in his methodology which led step by step to the next three movies and the redemption of the Jedi in the Expanded Universe. I would. And I’d like to show how David Willis has highlighted this succinctly. I even accept that if I did so, I’d never, ever get laid again. Somehow, this thesis would cling to me like lack of hygiene and even geek grrls would pause upon seeing me, say “well, no. Not him,” and move on.”

Instead, he just points us to this “Shortpacked!” comic. Which is freaking hilarious.

Oh, and I’ve stumbled upon a site with more remixes of the Doctor Who theme than any sane soul would ever need.

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