Percussive Maintenance
1) Need replacement VCR for occasional nostalgia and transfer of old tapes to digital.
2) Discover that no one sells VCRs at retail anymore.
3) Buy cheap used VCR off eBay. Possibly from Russia.
4) Wait for seller to ship. Seller is in no hurry.
5) VCR finally arrives. Will not accept tapes. Consider scathing eBay feedback.
6) Whack VCR a few times with heavy object. Suddenly, VCR works just fine, thank you.
7) Roll eyes, sigh, and enjoy old tapes.
Lonely Rolling Star
Bummer. New Katamari game coming out in less than a week, and it’s only for the XBox 360.
I don’t have a 360, or a PS3 (the PS3 version was cancelled, because Sony has forgotten how to market game consoles). If I bought a new console, which I’m not going to anytime soon, it would probably be a Wii.
The original designer wasn’t involved in this game, which is a small consolation. Maybe I could give it as a present to a local friend who does have a 360 in exchange for visitation rights.
No, I’m not awake yet.
Employment opportunity
If I know you, and you are interested in moving to Hampton Roads for a permanent position installing and troubleshooting Macs, Windows machines, and/or Linux boxen for NASA, NOW is the time to e-mail me your resume.
Demonstrable computer skills would be a good idea – either college education or practical experience. Polyplatformers who can handle two or all three OSes are especially encouraged.
“I need that in ‘captain-dummy’ talk.”
My Whedonite friends may be amused to know that last night, Mirandala received a valuable engineering schematic from the gnome K. Lee Smallfry.
It’s going to cost quite a few gold to build the “Zapthrottle Mote Extractor”, but I hear it’ll be worth the investment.
Rrrrrrradar!
This is one of the niftiest uses of Second Life I have yet seen.
Using (time-delayed) FAA data, a company has constructed an (almost) real-time model of the airspace over LAX airport.
That’s just keen. I’d love to see a BattleTech game played in a similar manner.
If you are a programmer, this may be funny
I read a dduane post, bounced through a couple of links, and found lolcode.com:
HAI CAN HAS STDIO? I HAS A VAR IM IN YR LOOP UP VAR!!1 VISIBLE VAR IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHXBYE IM OUTTA YR LOOP KTHXBYE
… I want a T-shirt. This is probably too big for one of trenn‘s buttons, sadly 🙁
Connectedness
I finished Harry Potter 7 on Monday. You’ll find no spoilers in this entry – I’ll just say I found the book satisfiying, and leave it at that.
Both the forums for World of Warcraft and my LiveJournal Friends had to declare spoiler bans, and I’ve had to politely interrupt friends and co-workers to avoid hearing too much. I still accidentally read a leak or two, though nothing to ruin my fun. (I had decided that even a complete spoil wouldn’t kill it for me – little of the book truly surprised me – I felt more curiosity about the journey than the destination, if you get my meaning.) Still, it took effort to avoid knowing more than I wanted. Somehow, my separate worlds of WoW, LJ, NASA, and my local friends circles all became united by this series finale, and there was Potter discussion in every direction.
As the days move forward, it seems to become harder and harder to keep separate all the little facets of my life. Without my involvement, my separate friends groups are merging, my interests are crossing over, my worlds are colliding. I think that the Borg used to be terrifying (pre-Voyager) because we know we are headed in that very direction; a race of minds linked instantly to each other, sometimes even when we’d prefer not to be; a race increasingly unable to escape our dependence on the tools we’ve created without drastic, unpleasant changes in who we are and who we want to be.
I’m not saying it has to be a horrible thing. It’s less stressful, in a lot of ways, to be able to avoid keeping up these compartments in my mind. As well, I’ve gained access to new opportunities and experiences this way. I don’t at all think that we must lose all we treasure about our humanity and become a race of blotchy drones with frickin’ laser beams on our heads; but still, every time I see someone reading e-mail on her Blackberry while talking into her Bluetooth earpiece, I wonder how close we are to the line at which Resistance Will Become Futile.
P.S. Wrote this up on the Newton, moved it to the laptop when I got home, then posted it to LJ. Beep.
Cheep cheep cheep
So, does anyone I know actually use this “Twitter” website? I thought I saw some folks mentioning it, but I don’t remember.
