Random Access

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.

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

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.

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

Tuesday – 08 April 2008
Some days you just wake up and feel like wearing a tie.
Just because you can.

Okay… maybe you don’t, but I do.

Today was one of those days for me. Of course, this meant breaking out the iron so that I could knock the rough edges off the shirt I’m wearing. I don’t mind ironing, so it wasn’t a big to-do.

Late-Morning Dance Break
Diamonds – Herb Alpert featuring Janet Jackson

Stray Toasters

• While I know and understand that English is a language that is constantly evolving, I still miss the adverb and/or “…to be…” in common usage:
  • “The dog needs walked” != “The dog needs to be walked.”
• Hypergrammar
• From Comic Foundry: 25 Most Influential Moments in the Past 25 Years
• , click here.
• , click here and here (third pic).
• Another item to be added to the Covet List: LEGO X-Wing Fighter
• Campbell’s Condensed Newspaper has crossword puzzles online! They have Sudoku, too.
• While I realize that it could come under the heading of “career-limiting moves,” yesterday I was dangerously close to telling someone up my chain-of-command to “GFY.” Multiple times. With something serrated.
• And speaking of serra…



• For those who don’t get the connection between the two ‘Toasters above: “serra” is Latin for “saw.”
• I think I just ruined part of Scott’s (coworker/boss) childhood. We were talking about the old school Battlestar Galactica, and I called it “Mormons in Space.” His reaction: “What?!” So, I went to Google and searched for “mormons in space” The first – FIRST – link it brought back “(a.k.a. Battlestar Galactica).” He said that he’s going to have to go back and watch the series and look for the signs.

Back to it.

Namaste.

Monday – 07 April 2008
Yesterday afternoon, SaraRules and I took a little time to play in the sunshine; we went for a walk along the trail in Ann J. Gardner Canyon Park (pictures). After we got back, we watched Superman: Doomsday. Fun film… even if it didn’t exactly follow “The Death of Superman” storyline perfectly.

After that, we realized that it was time to find something dinner-like. But, we had no idea “what.” Once we finally settled on it – grilled cheese sandwiches and soup – we hit the grocery store and came home.

Objectives:

1. Fix food
2. Eat
3. Watch Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

As Meat Loaf said: Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad: By the time we got back, Darrilyn and Kim had started watching Dirty Dancing, which Darrilyn hadn’t seen before. So… we watched Dirty Dancing. MST3K-style. Mr. Poitier and company will just have to wait until next weekend.

Today, I slept in a bit before making the journey back to the northlands. I pushed back my departure a bit because looneybin88 told me that the roads were a bit nasty thanks to… you guessed it: Snow. Fortunately, I-15 wasn’t bad, until I got a little north of Fillmore. Then, I hit some rain. It cleared up around Scipio. But, when I got a few miles south of Nephi, I ran into a wall of rain that turned into snow. And, as I left Nephi in the rear view mirror, I left the snow behind, too.

Workout
Eric waited for me to get in before heading to the gym. Today’s routine consisted of:

• Bench Press: 3 sets/8 reps, 225 lbs
• Curls (dumbbell, Hammer grip): 3 sets/10 reps, 30 lbs
• Flys (Nautilus): 3 sets/10 reps, 110 lbs
• Pull-downs (behind the head): 3 sets/10 reps, 120 lbs
• Rows (T-bar style, with a barbell): 3 sets/12 reps, 55 lbs
• Core: 3 sets at full-arm extension, 2 sets on elbows

Pre-workout weight: 176.8 lbs.

I wish that I could say that the weight gain is due to packing on the muscle… but I think that it would be more apt to say that the s’mores brownies that I made Thursday night – and ate all weekend – had more to do with it.

I also seem to have… um… “misplaced” my lock. Something that I didn’t discover until I was ready to secure the locker. So, unless it magically appears sometime this week, I’ll be using the Superman lock that gave me. That should get a few interesting looks around the locker room, I’m sure.

Stray Toasters

• I’m still just *a little* in shock that SaraRules actually posted on here yesterday. Just a ‘Toaster, but it still counts.
• I know that it’s just speculation at this point, but still… the idea that Apple may seriously upgrade/change the MacBook lines soon is good/bad news.
• Quinoa
• From xkcd.com: “Cheap GPS”



• There were a couple of interesting items on NPR today:
  • The Diane Rehm Show: FAA and Airline Safety Inspections
  • Talk of the Nation: After Death, a Soldier’s Journey Is Not Over

  The TotN piece was amazing. In it, Neal Conan interviewed Chris Jones, a writer for Esquire, who did a piece about a soldier’s “final journey,” from the Middle East to his burial in southern Indiana. I was pretty much rapt by the story; I can’t wait to read the actual article when the new issue of Esquire comes out.

• 
• 4/6 lfm tank and dd – The Jargon of Online Gaming
• By way of Wired.com: How College Courses Should Be Taught
• I should probably start giving some thought to what I want for dinner…
• Given the way things went yesterday, I should also start thinking about what I want to cook for dinner Sunday.

Namaste.

Sunday – 06 April 2008
Sunny, a little cooler than I’d like, but otherwise a rather nice day.

<< Rewind <<
This weekend’s SOAPFest featured four plays:

1. Elegy for a Lady, by Arthur Miller
2. When Shakespeare’s Ladies Meet, by Charles George
3. Laundry & Bourbon, by James McClure
4. Lone Star, by James McClure

Laundry & Bourbon and Lone Star are complimentary pieces – two of the characters in L&B are married to two of the characters in Lone Star. Of the four, I was most taken with Laundry and Bourbon. I thought that the performances and characterizations were pretty solid. My next favorite was Shakespeare’s Ladies, a rather tongue-in-cheek play with some of the Bard’s famous leading ladies stopping in to give young Juliet some sage words of advice about love. This play was just.. fun.

Post-SOAPFest, we came back and watched The Iron Giant (1, 2). I like the setting (1950s, Cold War/Red Scare-era America), the animation style, the soundtrack, the voice acting… the whole nine yards.
This is a fun film for me; I would probably have to list it in my Top Ten Movies (a list for which I should try to figure out the other eight movies…)

> Play >
I woke up and started the day after a few odd dreams made me realize that I was done with attempts at sleep. There wasn’t really a lot on TV this morning, either. So, I hopped on the nerd. Ah, the Interwebs… SaraRules woke up shortly and fixed a tasty breakfast. After breakfast – and observing the daily hygiene rituals – SaraRules started in on some homework; I decided to take on some of Paragon City’s worst criminals.

My heroic endeavours were not meant to be: I kept getting a “Can’t connect to DBServer” error. No matter which server I attempted to access. I tried disabling my firewall. I checked my network settings. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No go, Flight. I called Markin’ Time and Perry to see if they were experiencing the same problems (all of us usually play on the same server). Their connections were A-OK. Hrm. I even went to the NCSoft site to make sure that nothing was screwy with my account. Nope. Everything was peachy there, too. So, after a bit of digging, the best answer that I could find was that there seems to be a problem… somewhere… between the ISP that her complex uses and the CoX servers. So, no CoH/CoV for me this weekend.

Stray Toasters

• I talked with Adam for a bit this afternoon. Aside from it being cooler than he likes, all’s well in his neck of the woods.
• In today’s “Go, Boilermakers” news: Purdue’s 156-Step Burger Maker Wins Rube Goldberg Contest
• I think that this was a rather apt review of Action Comics #863.
• Tori Amos’ Comic Book Tattoo
• 
• went to Metropolis. I am slightly jealous; I haven’t been there in almost ten years.
• …speaking of which, I may watch Superman: Doomsday a little later.

Super-Special Stray Toaster from SaraRules

• I consider most soap operas to be boring, long-winded, vapid, and completely devoid of any plot whatsoever. The exception is the fabulous South American Telenovelas which entranced and entertained me in Georgia. I heard of a new one today, Sin Tetas, No Hay Paraíso, which translates to Without Tits, There is No Paradise. Now that is quality programming.

(Back to ShadoRunr)

I just realized that I am really quite hungry. I should probably do something about that. Immediately.

*vapor trail*

Thursday – 03 April 2008
I tacked one more bar onto Nefer-Tem’s experience. Six more to Level 50.

I woke up around 7:00 this morning, but decided that consciousness wasn’t for me. I think that the head cold I’m developing may have had something to do with the “No, I don’t want to get up yet” factor, too. Either way, 8:30 felt much better.

We had an hour-and-a-half long meeting to introduce one of our new robot overlords. (Did I say “overlords?” I meant “protectors.) Then, a group of us went to Taste of Punjab for lunch. I’ll be spending the rest of the day trying to get PHP and MySQL to play nicely together on Defiant so I can make some progress on this database. Wahoo.

Stray Toasters

• I bought Twix and Butterfingers at the store last night… but neglected to bring any with me to work this morning.
• Daily Caffeine Protects Your Brain
• : I couldn’t find a video for No!, but this will hopefully suffice…
• From the “Go, Boilermakers” file: Transparent Computer Monitors? Engineers Make First ‘Active Matrix’ Display Using Nanowires
• The other night, Markin’ Time and I were talking about different possible scenarios for Marvel’s “Secret Invasion.” One of the theories he threw into the ring was that they would basically pull a “Brand New Day” scenario, using the Batch SW6 method for replacing the heroes. He posed this because he saw it as the perfect way to piss off whatever remaining fans Marvel had following Civil War and/or One More Day/Brand New Day. Damned if he wasn’t right.
• 
• How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse
  (Good information, indeed, but I think I’ll also rely on the wits/skills of SaraRules, and Tyranist to see me through.)
• I am really liking WordPress 2.5
  (“Save” is still one of my favorite functions.)
• Five Myths about Drinking Water

Back to it.

Namaste.

Monday – 31 March 2008
And so, March comes to a close.

This morning, we woke to snow (SNOW!!!) in the valley. SaraRules made the executive decision to wait a few hours before getting on the road, in the hopes that UDoT would make sure that the roads were clear. (Good call on her part.) So, we had a lazy morning in. Yes, “we.” I mean, c’mon… if she was going to stick around for a while, I didn’t see much point in me dashing off to work early.

I got into the office, after a stop for a large, triple-shot-laden cup of frozen mocha goodness. I had some problems getting MySQL installed and running on Defiant. I had to get ‘s assistance on nailing down the problem.

SaraRules decided not to leave until 1:00-ish, so we decided to have lunch. Dask’s. Lamb gyros. Very good. After she dropped me off at work, she headed for the southlands. She messaged me a few times because she noted a particularly increased presence of UHP. I noted that it might be because it’s the end of the month. *shrug*

Reeling by on Celluloid
Last night, we saw Doomsday with Chris and Mary. The movie wasn’t as bad as we had feared. Far from it, in fact. And, I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of “names” in the film, too:

• Bob Hoskins (Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Hook, Unleashed)
• Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange, Caligula, ST: Generations)
• Alexander Siddig (ST: DS9, Kingdom of Heaven, Syriana, 24)

It was even… fun. Yes, there were a couple of plot holes, but on the whole, it wasn’t painful. (At least, not for us. Chris had a couple of things that he had a hard time getting past.) On the whole, it was a decent movie. I might even be picking this up on DVD when it comes out.

Stray Toasters

• I cleaned out a couple of my closets last night. Goodwill (or D.I. or some other charitable organization) is about to get a HEALTHY donation of clothes.
• said… something… that I wanted to quote the other night, but damned if I can remember what it was.
• Mrs. duckspeaker, on the other hand, also said something quote-worthy. But, as she knows where I live, I think that I shall refrain from reprinting it.
• Children must learn to fear Sinistar
• As a fan of (some) Saturday morning fare – and Cartoon Network/Boomerang – I see a number of commercials for toys/games/whatever targeted at kids. One such commercial is for dolls from High School Musical. In the umpteen viewings of said commercial, I have heard the voiceover announcer saying which dolls/characters were available and, the last one always made me wonder: “Did they just say “Shar Pei!?”Last night, after the movie, I had to stop at ShopKo to pick up a couple things I had neglected to get earlier in the day. Then I decided to stroll down the toy aisles. It turned out that the store had the High School Musical dolls. So, I looked for at the names…
  • Gabriella. Okay, no problem there.
  • Troy. Ditto

  And then I saw it: Sharpay.

  What in the Nine Hells? When they were coming up with the script for this, WHO thought it would be a good idea to name a character after a dog breed?! And why didn’t someone think,”Y’know… this might not be the greatest of names…” and edit it to something else? Something normal. (Yeah, yeah… I know, this coming from the guy who gets a perverse pleasure out of checking out the names on Utah Baby Namer.)

• LEGO Art on Display at Burlington Mall (in Burlington, Canada)
• Defaced presidents on Flickr
• 
• Circuit City Tries to Install Navigation System, Causes $12,119 Damage to Your Car
• “It’s Frahn-ken-steen!”



• Creepily lifelike CGI woman
• IBM banned from government contracts
• A Very Microscale Stargate

And that’s a wrap.

Namaste.

Friday – 28 March 2008
I don’t know what came over me, but I was completely wiped out by midnight last night. I think that I was actually in bed by 12:15 AM. And I didn’t wake up until 8:00 this morning. Egad!

At least it’s Friday, though.

After work, I made a few stops before heading home with the intent of watching CSI:… but once again, I forgot that we’re smack dab in the middle of March Madness. One of those stops was at a comic shop in West Valley. Chris had them hold a piece of plastic crack for me. A big piece of crack:

That’s right, True Believers, Galactus. 1800 points (and 19-clicks!) of world-devouring doom. I think that he’d make a nice counterpart for Phoenix. I mentioned it to Don; his comment:

“So if the regular ones are plastic crack, that one must be plastic Crystal Meth”

Yeah, I’d say that’s about right.

I also picked up Master Chief and Cortana figures from McFarlane Toys’ HALO 3 collection – as this seemed to be the only place in town that still had any of them. Not… that I’ve… looked. Much. Or anything like that.

Stray Toasters

• I baked corn muffins to go with dinner last night. I had two for breakfast this morning. They were just the right thing to kick off the day.
• SaraRules can solve a Rubik’s Cube. But, can she do it in 25 moves?
• Rock Band Rock-a-Thon – This sounds like a fun and entertaining way to raise money for the Fine Arts.
• For :

  

• Humans vs. Zombies
• Rob’s refrigerator != got milk
• BrikWars
• How to Acquire the Taste for Wine

Namaste.

Wednesday – 26 March 2008
Whew. It’s been a day. I’ve been fighting PHP and MySQL… and discovering the differences of installing MySQL on a Windows machine versus installing it on Defiant. I also got to wrestle with changes that my host made to their “create a new email” feature. Some would argue that it’s “easier” and/or “more simple.” To some degree, it is. But it wasn’t what I was expecting.

Sushi Wednesday is moving to Thursdays, it seems. Today, we went to Olive Garden. Almost all of us had the soup and salad with breaksticks special. I must say: It was a decent change of pace, both in the sense of not having sushi for lunch and in having something different than my usual fare at Olive Garden.

Last night, The Hand of Nefer-Tem hit Security Level 48.

Politics
I read this op-ed piece, Donna Brazile offers Hillary Clinton a reminder about Rev. Wright, yesterday. It was an interesting read. And, yes, it would be easy to jump on the bandwagon about Sen. Clinton’s… “creatively remembered” (or would that be “revisionist” or “retconned”) versions of events, but I’m not going to do that. This time.

Instead, I was more taken by one of the comments that I read. When I originally saw the article, there were only three (3) comments on it. When I returned to it a few hours later, there were three dozen or more. The particular comment that struck me was this one:

Obama is our Savior. Barak and Reverend Wright are Right, God D*** america. Now is the time to rally around Barak and Michelle and make them proud! And news flash america, Barak is right, your typical white american is a racist! Obama will apologize to our Muslim brothers for arrogant american policies of hate and slavery. Only Obama can forgive an evil nation founded slavery. REPARATIONS NOW!

 

Posted by: Obamamania

By the time I hit the third sentence, the following lines from Styx’ Mr. Roboto came to mind:

I’m not a hero, I’m not a saviour
Forget what you know.

…and that was almost immediately followed by these lines from Queen’s Flash’s Theme:

Just a man
With a man’s courage
You know he’s
Nothing but a man
And he can never fail
No one but the pure at heart
May find the Golden Grail

While becoming the President of the United States is a rather lofty goal, I’m not sure that I’d necessarily call it “the Golden Grail.” And, I won’t say that Senator Obama is without his failings. He’s human.

There have been those who have touted him as a hero. Or a possibly “a great Black leader.” Of course, there have also been those who have said that he’s “not Black enough,” or “just Black enough to not be ‘too scary’ to White voters.”

Another respondent to the piece pointed out something that I hadn’t considered: Obamamania’s comment was most likely a supporter of Senator McCain who was flaming the op-ed piece. After some thought, that seemed rather plausible.

How about this: At no time during this campaign have I heard Senator Obama claim to be anything other than a man who wants to make a difference and hopefully bring about some change. He has addressed issues of race with candor, but – in my opinion – has not attempted to use it as a soapbox or a crutch.

And I can – and do – respect that.

Stray Toasters

• I stopped in to visit Kate and Perry after work last night. They were watching American Idol. “When in Rome…” Apparently, this week’s challenge (or whatever they call it on Idol) was for the contestants to sing a song from the year they were born. There were some rather decent renditions of songs performed. Then, David Cook came onstage and performed a version of Billie Jean (yes, Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean), that I believe he arranged. It was pretty impressive.

After his performance, Perry suggested that I check out Cook’s arrangement of Lionel Richie’s Hello. I did. And I thought that it was rather good, as well…as was his Eleanor Rigby. He has good stage presence and seems to react/interact with his crowd well. He easily could become someone to watch – or listen – for on the radio in the not-too-distant future. (Listen to the judges’ comments on his performance, too.)
• Cartoonist sets out to take taboo out of swastika
• Endor Express offers up a look at upcoming Disney/Lucasfilm toys.
• I have no idea what I want for dinner.
• Dyscalculia
• Marvel has released the trailer for Next Avengers – their next direct-to-video animated feature
  …and…
  Entertainment Weekly has a 10-page preview of Marvel’s upcoming Secret Invasion limited series.
• Keith Giffen’s “Unfortunate Confluence of Words.”

  
  (click image to read the article)

• What if Clark Kent worked for Barry White instead of Perry White?
• Pilot’s gun fired during flight
• Correction: I now know what I’m having for dinner.

Namaste.

Monday – 24 March 2008
Monday, Monday (dah-dah… dah-dah-dah-dah…)

All-in-all, not a bad start to the week.

• Breakfast with SaraRules, before she headed back to the southlands.
• Blue skies.
• Warm weather.

<< Rewind <<
Yesterday, we went to Easter Mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. I believe that this year’s service was even more crowded than last year’s, but it was still a very nice service. It was SRO… and there wasn’t very much room for standing, at that. I was intermittently amused by a lady standing near me who gave just about everyone the fashion police once-over as they walked past; she wrinkled her nose at more than “a few” people.

After Mass, we ate a late breakfast at The Other Place. I hadn’t been there in many rains. Decent food at a good price. I’ll have to remember to keep it in mind when looking for places to eat downtown.

Back home for a quick change and then we were off to “…a land where the furniture folds to a much smaller size.” I’ve been wanting to do… something… different with the office for some time. There’s a lot of dead/wasted space in there. One of the biggest things that would help would be to replace my monstrous desk. So, it’s on the short list of things to be vaporized. In its place, I’m looking at a Vika Amon table top with a Galant frame and legs. And, with a couple of relatively minor adjustments, the room will be opened up nicely.

After stopping in to say “Hi” to Perry, Kate and their kids, we headed to SaraRules’ family’s house for dinner. Dinner which included Black-and-Tans to wash it down. We followed up dinner with Enchanted. After the movie, it was time to head home to unwind (and do some laundry) before calling it a night.

> Play >
After work, I did a little errand-running.  When I was done, I stopped into the local Best Buy.  I picked up copies of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Memento.  Not too bad.  I picked up a bite to eat and headed home.  I checked out the new Fox series New Amsterdam.  Kind of like Highlander… if Connor McLeod had been a police officer.  Connor, not Duncan.  ‘Nuff said.  But, I digress.  The show wasn’t too bad.

I followed it up with an episode of JLU that I hadn’t seen before: “Chaos at Earth’s Core,” featuring Travis Morgan – The Warlord.     I used to read The Warlord back in the 80s and this episode was a very nice nod to the Morgan and the lost world of Skartaris.

In the savage world of Skartaris,
life is a constant struggle for survival.
Here, beneath an unblinking orb of eternal
sunlight, one simple law prevails:
If you let down your guard for an instant you will soon be very dead.

They covered a lot of ground in twenty-two minutes… and it was good.  It made me smile.

Stray Toasters

• I have new pics of Bit, eyes open and all.  I may (re)post a few later.
• LEGO Futurama fan set, LEGO Noir and Mmm, zombies
• I heard Counting Crows’ Mr. Jones on the radio this evening.  When I hear it, it often reminds me of Heidi, an old coworker of mine.  Around the time that this song came out, Us3‘s Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) was also on the air.  Heidi and I would argue (friendly banter, really) about which group would stay in the charts/be more popular longer  – I chose Counting Crows, Heidi chose US3.  Looks like I was right… at least on this side of the Pond.
• Top 10 Software Easter Eggs
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?” file: Transgendered Man Is Pregnant
• Astro City.

  

  I’ve started collecting the trade paperbacks.  If you haven’t read it, give it a shot.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that SaraRules liked it.

• Slash-Proof Armored Tee Is Lightweight, Machine-Washable

That’s a wrap.

Namaste.

Saturday – 22 March 2008
Today has been good, so far.

The morning started with a new episode of Legion of Super Heroes. It did feature Dream Girl prominently, but didn’t even touch on her relationship with Star Boy. For that matter, the show has shied away from most of the relationships on the team, with the notable exception of Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy. Yes, we’ve seen a couple of… nods, maybe… to the Phantom Girl/Ultra Boy and Saturn Girl/Lightning Lad relationships, but other than that? Bupkis.

After The Spectacular Spider-Man and some not-so-spectacular channel hopping, we watched Kapow! Superhero Science on The Discovery Channel: Science

Celebrate the science behind the superpowers and gadgetry of comic book super heroes and heroines. Investigate real-life cases of super-strength, x-ray vision and speed, and discover the scientific feasibility of high-tech superpowers.

We rode over to Wheeler Farm for a stroll through the park and to look at the animals. (Pictures) From there, Jitterbug for a spot of lunch. (There was a young lady there who also had a BlacBook. Nice!) I stopped at Black Cat Comics to see if they had any of the HALO 3 figures. NO ONE seems to have any of them. Anywhere. *grblsnrkx* We drove up to The Tutoring Toy and then went up Emigration Canyon and back down Parley’s Canyon. (Pictures here.) If you look a couple inches above the peak in the last two images, you will see a small white crescent… it’s not the moon – it is a paraglider.

Stray Toasters

• I have been meaning to post this picture for for a couple of weeks.
• How much can Colossus press? About this much.
  What happens when Wolverine finds out? Something like this.
• Brikthulhu
• I am Ivory Soap sure that I wanted to add at last two other things… but I can’t recall what they were.

Namaste.