Random Access

The Rule of Two:

“Always two there are; no more, no less: a master and an apprentice.” –Yoda ^[1]

“Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it.” –Darth Bane ^[2]

Tuesday – 15 April 2008
Today is the day that taxes are due in the U.S.

Ostensibly, that should make the Song of the Day Taxman, by The Beatles.
Screw that.

Today’s song: Knowledge Is King, by Kool Moe Dee

Lost in the sauce
And praising the dollar
Whether your faith is
Christ or Allah
The knowledge of God
Will teach one thing
The dollar is moot
Knowledge is king

Yeah. That’s about right.

I have spent the first half of my morning tracking down what happened to my primary machine in the SLC office over the weekend. Either Windows or my hard drive (or both) decided to go tits-up. So, I opted to throw a new drive in the machine. Of course, that meant the obligatory reinstallation of XP. Wahoo. But, needs must be done.

Ravens Update
That’s right.. it’s April and I’m talking football. Why? The Ravens released their 2008 schedule. Of particular note:

• 26 October: Oakland Raiders (in Baltimore)
• 21 September and 02 November: Cleveland Browns

Speaking of which: I figured out what was going in display case 2… to some degree. At least on the top shelf:

(click for larger size)

Stray Toasters

• Install. Reboot.
  Install something else. Reboot.
  Lather, rinse, repeat.
  Ah, the joys of reinstalling a Windows operating system.
• – Here you go: a Java version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Enjoy.
• ‘Ashamed’ Pope vows no more pedophile priests
• I’m adding this to the Covet List. In fact, I’m adding to the short list.
  (For those who aren’t sure what it is: It’s a cityscape for miniature gaming, on card stock)
• Dreamworks to make a live-action Ghost in the Shell in 3-D
• 
• Greatest Time Travel Duels of All Time(lines)

/lunch

Namaste.

Monday – 14 April 2008
Another week begins.

Alarm clocks are a necessary evil. That said, the day started with me hitting snooze more times than I had intended. After the hygiene rituals were observed and the car was packed, I began my journey back to north-central Utah. The drive was uneventful. And there weren’t any monkeys to speak of.

I got into the office and checked my email. Among them was one from Friday morning, asking me to submit my time card. *blink blink* Then, I checked the timestamp on the email: It was sent roughly two minutes before I submitted my time card, which means that I was already on the system and preparing to submit it before the email was sent. *sigh*

<< Rewind <<
Yesterday afternoon, SaraRules and I headed to the MFA house so that she could do some work… and I could use the connection there to make my way to Paragon City. We were both successful in our endeavors. Nefer-Tem is now a little less than 2 bars away from Level 50.

Steph and Kim decided to have a Taco Fiesta for dinner last night. Chicken and beef. Hard and soft shells. When dinner was done, we played Buzzword: The Not 5s (the roommates) vs. The 6-7-8s (honorary roommates). The 6-7-8s won. Barely.

Mark and Lish came over a little later. Mark asked our opinions about the Ballroom Dance Concert (he’s the director of that program); we gave him feedback. Then… it was time to play 3-way Slayer HALO. Selah. (Mark pwned both of us. Repeatedly. I need to practice.)

I showed Steph how to make the s’mores brownies. Lish said that he might try making them himself… and that he wanted to get a chef’s torch, so that he could toast the marshmallows. Ah, pyromania. A little later, Darillyn and Lish played shot glass checkers:

Lish won both games. However, Darillyn came up with a number of “Unintentional Porn Overheard in…” quotes.

> Play >
I found out that I need to add some more systems to my db and tweak the UI to be able to select from any/all systems.

Workout
Back in the saddle again:

• Leg Raises: 3 sets – 1 set, full extension; 2 sets, bent leg (lowered to only 45°)
• Bench Press (dumbbell): 3 sets/12 reps, 60 lbs
• Pull-downs: 3 sets/15 reps, 130 lbs
• Rows (T-bar style, with a barbell): 3 sets/12 reps, 55 lbs
• Tricep Press: 3 sets/12 reps, 120 lbs
• Core: 4 sets – 2 sets/full extension, 45 secs.; 2 sets/elbows, 30 secs.

Pre-workout weight: 175.6 lbs.

Stray Toasters

• There was an interesting discussion about Emperor Popetine Pope Benedict’s visit to the U.S. on The Diane Rehm Show this morning.
• Secret Invasion: Who do you trust?
• 
• Conductor Hero?: Touring game rocks concert halls
• 
  While I’m not overly taken by most of the figures, the Warrior Isis figure is nice.
• Microsoft: Vista feature designed to ‘annoy users’
• Scotty Doesn’t Know
• …and I don’t know what I want for dinner. *blah*
• Sillof’s Workshop

Quotes of the Day
As I mentioned above, Darillyn made some special “Unintentional Porn Overheard in…” quotes while playing checkers with Lish:

• “I can’t reach that with my face”
• “I was so waiting to jump you there.”
• “You get confused about a lot of things, but I’m not going to point them out.”
• “Hold on, I can’t get him out – he’s sticky.”
• “I got it out this time.”
• “You just jumped me. It’s my turn.”

Checkers and alcohol. Who knew?!

Namaste.

Sunday – 13 April 2008
The Ballroom Dance Concert, Swing, Swing, Swing!, was fun. More fun than I expected it to be.

After the concert, we came back to the apartment and watched The Last Man on Earth, the first adaptation of Richard Matheon’s I Am Legend, starring Vincent Price. Granted, it was… dated… but it was a much closer take on the story than the recent Will Smith.

Today’s been quiet and lazy. We caught the last part of Silverado… which I have never seen. Next up was Die Hard: With a Vengeance – not the greatest movie, but it has one of my favorite dialouges:

Zeus: Why do you keep calling me Jésus? Do I look Puerto Rican to you?
John McClane: Guy back there called you Jésus.
Zeus: He didn’t say Jésus. He said, “Hey, Zeus!” My name is Zeus.
John McClane: Zeus?
Zeus: Yeah, Zeus! As in, father of Apollo? Mt. Olympus? Don’t fuck with me or I’ll shove a lightning bolt up your ass? Zeus! You got a problem with that?
John McClane: No, I don’t have a problem with that.

Then the power went out. At first, we thought that it was just in the complex. Turns out that it hit a good portion of town. SaraRules, Tyler and I suspect zombie polygamist aliens as being behind it. Of course, that didn’t stop us from going to Dairy Queen for chocolate dipped cones and an Arctic Rush.

Stray Toasters

• Tonight, I’m teaching Steph how to make s’mores brownies.
• sent new pictures of Bit. You can see a few of them here.
• Charlie Daniels apparently has… an issue… with the way The Devil Went Down to Georgia is used in Guitar Hero III.
• By way of Intelligent Gamer: African Americans and the video game industry.
• Intellivision

Now, it’s time to see if I can find a workaround for getting to Paragon City.

Namaste.

Saturday – 12 April 2008
Today has been a lazy day, for the most part. Sleeping in. Breakfast. Reading the best Batman stories… that aren’t Batman stories: Confession, an Astro City trade paperback.

The stories were told from the perspective of Brian Kinney, a small-town boy who sought something more out of life than his hometown could give him. The story starts with him hopping a bus to Astro City… and the adventure takes off from there.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book also contained “The Nearness of You,” possibly my favorite Astro City story. I have a 1/2 issue with this story in it, but to find it collected in this TPB was a great bonus.

Later in the day, SaraRules and I popped out for an ice cream cone at the local DQ. After that, I hit the driving range with Lish. The range had a ton of gophers down near the distance markers. You’d see them exit their holes, run a few feet or yards and then… disappear into another hole. While I didn’t have many excellent drives, I did manage to hit the ball retrieval cart once. Post-driving range, Lish and I played on the XBox for a bit.

Stray Toasters

• I discovered that access to a number of sites is being blocked, either by the local ISP (doubtful) or the management at SaraRules’ complex. Not adult sites. Nor anything controversial. I can’t find rhyme or reason to explain why these sites are blocked. (And I still don’t have access to CoX from here. Good thing I brought my XBox.)
• Last night, I asked what did the item in this picture remind people of:

All answers agreed: A bat’leth.

• By way of :



• Thanks to for a link to Superman as a Scion.
• Will DC lose Superman?

Tonight’s fare: Ballroom Dance concert… maybe. We shall see.

Namaste.

Markin’ Time showed me this picture earlier and asked me what I thought it looked like:

Keep in mind that this is a “rifle” prop for color guard.

I told him what I thought it looked like.  We thought it looked like the same thing.  I showed it to Josh; he came up with the same answer.  I’ll post our answer(s) on Saturday.

What do you think that it looks like?

Friday – 11 April 2008
Greetings from southern Utah. I got special dispensation to work from home today… so I decided that since I had everything that I needed for today’s work on Defiant, I would beat Friday afternoon/evening traffic by leaving Thursday night. It seemed to work pretty well.

Today, I’ve been working on my database front end and I found a/the error in coding that’s kept one section from working properly. One small, simple thing. It’s been dancing at the edge of my awareness for the past day or so – I’ve been tinkering with things around it, but not that one item – but I finally found it, changed it, and now it’s working. Now I can move on to the next piece of the puzzle. This whole project – warts and all – has been a fun challenge.

I went to the gym before going to lunch. Details below.

SaraRules got in from work, picked me up and we met some of the other MFAs – and Matt, director of their program – for lunch at a place called “Grumpy Joes.” The restaurant is a small, very unassuming place in a little strip of shops. If you blinked while driving by it, you’d miss it. Literally. We did, in fact.

It’s run by an older couple; the gentleman, known only by his (last) name: Farina, is a riot. Seriously. He was taking our orders and would stop to tell a story or a joke/funny comment. And did he ever take a shine to SaraRules. She walked in the door and he walked over and hugged her. She also got special attention from him throughout the meal.

The food was pretty good. It wasn’t Spago or Tavern on the Green, but neither did it purport itself as such. It was more like home-cooking. I think that we’ll have to go there again before SaraRules leaves Cedar.

Workout
A little before lunch, I headed to the Gold’s Gym to get in a workout. I needed it; I’ve been slacking a bit on my exercising. The Gold’s here is kind of… small. But, it’s a gym. And I was able to get in a decent workout:

• Recumbent Bike: 1.6 miles, ~100 rpm (roughly 7 minutes)
• Decline Bench Press: 3 sets/10 reps, 155 lbs
• Curls (dumbbell, Hammer grip): 3 sets/10 reps, 30 lbs
• Lateral Raises (forward rotation): 3 sets/10 reps, 10 lbs
• Rows: 3 sets/10 reps, 120 lbs
• Tricep Extension (dumbbell, overhead, standing): 3 sets/10 reps, 45 lbs
• Tricep Press: 3 sets/10 reps, 80 lbs
• Core: 4 sets – 2 sets/full extension, 45 secs.; 2 sets/elbows, 30 secs.

Post-workout weight: 171.0 lbs

I forgot to weigh myself at the gym. In fact, I completely spaced it off until I was just about to step in to the shower. So, today’s weight, while accurate, doesn’t reflect the added weight of gym clothes.

Stray Toasters

• I am beginning to grok:
  • CSS layout > HTML tables

  …and how to implement them.

• After seeing Kevin Cronin on Don’t Forget the Lyrics a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been more apt to listen to the various and sundry REO Speedwagon selections in my iTunes folder.
• Firefox Logo Spied in Deep Space
• Someone in SaraRules’ apartment has a copy of the April 2008 issue of Cosmpolitan. In it is an article entitled: “21 Things Every Guy Wants to Hear” Laughing, SaraRules pointed out the following, saying that she saw it and thought of me:
  

  #19: “A man wearing anything dressier than jeans and a tee shirt is trying too hard.

  *blink blink*

  Fortunately, I also know her sense of style and fashion, so I know that she doesn’t agree with this. For laughs, I read the other twenty items. Given that Rocky is her favorite movie, I told her the following reminded me of her:

  #21: “I want to march down the aisle to the theme from Rocky.”

  …to which she retorted: “The theme? Can you see me marching down the aisle to that? No. Now, the slow, romantic theme, maybe. But not really.”

• For :



• Discuss among yourselves: Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone
• Coldfinger….
  She’s the girl, the girl with the polar touch
  A penguin’s touch
  Such a cold finger
  Beckons you to enter her cave, frozen
  But don’t go in….
• 
• Mother saw warning signs in son who planned shooting spree
• tomarrow != tomorrow
• Murdered Pregnant Women: The Racial Divide
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” file: Mom Brings Baby Along to Candy Store Robbery

Time to get on with the weekend… in the words of .

Namaste.

Also by way of : Mr. Rogers, keepin’ it real in the ‘hood…

: Opinion poll: What goes better with chocolate cake – raspberry or strawberry?
Me: Vanilla ice cream, of course!
Me: Wait.
Me: That was my Kobiyashi Maru answer.
Me: Um… I’m not really a pressed/cooked fruit fan, so I might not be the best person to ask.
Me: But, possibly raspberry.
: Not even fruit roll ups?
Me: Those are different.
:those are boiled and then pressed and then dried…
Me: Well, I like the roasted pineapple @ Rodizio, so it’s not a “complete” generalization.
: heh..okay…so when it’s basted with rum, that’s a different story?
Me: But, I don’t care for fruit pies
Me: Or pineapple on pizza
Me: Or jams/preserves.
: I don’t know if I should feel sad for you…I make a mean berry syrup
Me: Don’t cry for me, Argentina.
:Did you know her body was kidnapped by the mafia and traded around the world for 14 years?
Me: O.o No I didn’t.
:Yeah…little known fact…she was also preserved in glycerine
Me: Okay… that’s more than “a little” bizarre.
:oh it gets better
:When Juan finally got her body back, he had dinner with Eva’s body and his new wife
:and then buried her…again.
Me: …
: Yep…fun stuff. 🙂

sent me a link to this video. It is chock full of awesome.

Incredible! from kwest on Vimeo.

Groove on, children. Groove on.

Thursday – 10 April 2008
I was up later than I planned to be last night.
But I have s’mores brownies to show for it.

I woke up later than I planned today
*meh*

So far, the work day hasn’t been bad.

And, it’s Thursday.

Stray Toaster

• SaraRules and/or : Have either of you heard that Prince is playing at Coachella this year?
• US shamed by Mandela terror link

Back to the grind.

Namaste.

Wednesday: Coda
Lunch with the guys was good… even if our server wasn’t so hot. In the forty or so minutes that we were there, I think he hit our table twice – possibly three times – after bringing our drinks. “Unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks?” Not so much today. I had to actually keep myself from leaving the tip that I had originally estimated leaving.

It snowed, intermittently, this afternoon. Code Monkey and I went out for our afternoon constitutional. We made it around the campus as the stormfront rolled in. It started coming down just as we got back to the building.

After work, I headed to Dr. Volt’s. I picked up this week’s four-color crack when I noticed something on the wall: New packs of Crisis boosters. Before I checked out, I gave in and decided to get a box. Ever since seeing Dave do his “weigh the box” trick that scored me Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy, I’ve been using it to pick out which boosters I want to buy. I picked up five boxes, felt the way they balanced and picked Box #2. After paying for it, I opened the box. Guess who was waiting inside:

That’s right: Earth-2 Superman. Super-Rare. Unique. I was shocked. Very happy, but shocked. (I was even more shocked when I looked it up on eBay.) Or, as put it, when I told him about the figure and its going rate on eBay:

: blink
Me: I will remind you that this is a piece of plastic. Less than 3″ tall.
: For…The…MOTHERFUCKING…Win.

Feeling jazzed by my pick, I decided to get another box. Two decent figures in this one: Monarch and The Spectre. Neither of them was quite the catch that Superman was, but they are still good pulls.

Home. Laundry. Puttering about. Reading of this week’s four-color haul… and a lot of the books were good, solid slug-fests. Hero, meet Villain. Villain, Hero. FIGHT!

Stray Toasters

• By way of NPR: Old-fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills
• I talked with Markin’ Time for a bit this evening. I think we’ve talked more in the past two weeks than we have in the past six months! (Not that I’m complaining, by any stretch of the imagination.) He pointed me in the direction of InstaPundit.
  • He specifically mentioned that I should check out his item on Gaming while Color-Blind
• also pointed out a video on the disassembly of an iPhone
• The Gray Lady had an interesting article about willpower: Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind.
  (I wonder if the Guardians and/or Kilowog know about this one?)
• As a part of “CustomCon,” someone made – MADE – Steampunk Star Wars figures

I think that I should track down something dessert-like.

Namaste.

– knowing my affinity for big, giant, smashy robots (and cool toys, in general) – sent me a link to: Roboticist plans real-world Gundam replica. Here is the conversation that followed:

Me: *click*
Me: I saw that last night.
Me: Spendy!
Me: “Everyone knows it’s spendy…!”
: yeah
Me:

Who’s building robots, with giant price tags?
Stomping on every city he sees…
Who’s got a pipe dream, fueled by anime?
Everyone knows it’s spendy! ¹

: and this?: Zip Zip LEGO USB Drives Get Updated to 4GB
Me: Whoa.
Me: Those are new.
Me: Nice!

¹ – For those unfamiliar with the tune:

Lovely little sister that she is, sent me a link to Broke Trek:

I had to share/spread the joy/pain. So, I shall add the following:

Star Trek: Closer

…and…

Star Trek: Sexyback

Wednesday – 09 April 2008
After getting to bed FAR later than I had planned, I slept rather fitfully. Odd and somewhat disturbing dreams, including one that owed quite a bit to the Species series of movies, had me waking up every so often. The alarm was both a blessing and a curse this morning. I did my best to ignore it, but was still up at a decent time… albeit slowly and groggily.

Today is another tie day. I also decided to wear my glasses and to add a vest into the day’s apparel for a bit of a throwback look:

I topped it off with my double-breasted trench coat and my fedora. I even picked up a copy of The Gray Lady at the coffee shop, completing the retro ensemble.

There were also a couple of bits of good fortune to top off the morning’s start:

1. This morning’s cup of frozen mocha goodness was free; I only had to foot the bill for the extra shots.
2. I got The NYT for free as well.

Such a start to the day. For lunch, I’ll be meeting and Perry at one of the local Olive Gardens. And, I will most likely be making a trek to Dr. Volt’s to feed my four-color addiction, which will be a fine way to end the day.

Namaste.