Random Access

Wednesday – 16 July 2008
Last night’s Scion game was good. We met a sphinx… were asked a riddle… and didn’t die. Helluva combination. We wrapped up the adventure that we’ve been on for the past couple of months and will start in on something new next week.

I had a couple of errands to run after the game, which took me in the opposite direction of the gym, so I went home without working out. I must have been far more tired than I thought, because shortly after talking with SaraRules, I nodded off while surfing the ‘tubes. When I regained nominal coherence, I decided that calling it a night was a good decision. I wish I knew what triggered them, but I had some BIZARRE dreams. I woke up from a couple of them trying to piece together what was real from what was heard/seen while dreaming.

I may be picking up a new (to me) iMac from SaraRules’ father this evening. At SaraRules’ suggestion, I’m getting the Graphite colored one. The reason behind that choice of color:

Hmmm. I have a pink macbook and a pink iMac. Since Rob has a black macbook I humbly request the graphite iMac for him. Just so that we can continue to match. 🙂

Works for me. I think that it may replace ‘Nine as my desktop/server, as it has never really recovered from its last OS installation.

I haven’t decided whether or not I want to pick up comics today or wait until tomorrow…

Stray Toasters

• By way of and CNN: Black in America
• July 16, 1945: Trinity Blast Opens Atomic Age
  
• Take the last train to Clarksville
  And I’ll meet you at the station
• Natalie Cole say she has hepatitis C
  When I read this, it reminded me of a story from either freshman or sophomore year at Purdue:

Jim, one of the guys in our group of then-usual suspects, was from a small town in Indiana. One Saturday, while some of the other guys were working on a project, we were hanging out watching MuchMusic (think “Canadian MTV”) when a Natalie Cole video came on. We watched it for a couple of minutes before Jim blurted out the following gem: “She’s pretty good looking for a black woman.”

I couldn’t have heard what I thought I heard: “What..?!”

“Natalie Cole. She’s pretty good looking… for a black woman.”

I now had confirmation that he had just said what I thought he said. *sigh* Jim, while rather intelligent, wasn’t the smartest guy. Had he been, he would have (possibly) remembered that it had taken Herculean self-control (and three of our friends) to keep me from trying to cave his head in a few months before when he had carelessly tossed a “less than socially acceptable” racial epithet in my direction. Before choosing to belatedly follow-up on that instinct, I decided that it might be prudent to find out what he meant with this new nugget of wisdom. So, I asked him.

His response: “Well, with white women, you get blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes…. blonde hair or brunette… or red. With black women, you just get dark hair and dark eyes.”

In his mind, his logic was flawless.
In my mind, I was trying to figure out places where I could hide his body that would take campus police weeks, if not months, to find.

Instead, I just got up and walked out of the room.
We never really talked much after that… for some reason.

• , if you happen to have a spare $25k lying around: Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s typewriter for sale
• Pope Benedict. Koalas. Eco-Disco.
  We shall not speak of these things, in conjuction, again.
• Hall and Oates. Yep, I like ’em.
• The art blog of Lauren Montgomery

Namaste.

Monday – 14 July 2008
It’s Bastille Day.

I don’t remember “what” they were, but I recall having a couple of odd dreams last night.

It’s 7:30 and I’m not exactly feeling rushed about getting to work. I should still be there between 8:00 and 8:30, but I’m really not pressed about it.

Stray Toasters

• Add something new to the Covet List: Aluminum LEGO brick keychains.
• For your Monday morning amusement, from In Living Color: The Wrath of Farrakhan:

• SciFi has information about 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails
• ‘Drunk’ referee shown red card
• The trailer for the upcoming NickToons Iron Man: Armored Adventures is online

Up, up and away!

Sunday – 13 July 2008
And on the first day, Rob worked.
Amen.

That’s right: I made like Kool Moe Dee and went to work. loonybin88 and I did a server upgrade today – we had to unrack, swap memory and hard drives and re-rack 18 servers. And like Big Daddy Kane, we got the job done.

After that, we headed to Olive Garden to have dinner.

And, when it’s all said and done, my work week is officially 20% done already.

Booyah.

Stray Toasters

• I found the following as the signature line to someone’s forum post:
  

  In Ulthar, no man may kill a cat. In Utah, no man may marry a cat. These rules were made because of the ramifications of them happening before.

  It amused me greatly.

• Steampunk Wallpaper. ‘Nuff said.
• By way of Wired: Is Sunday Morning the Best Wake-Up Tune Ever?
• By way of YouTube: Sunday Morning

• I need a steampunk icon.
  I don’t really need one, but I think that I want one.
• Microsoft cuts XBox price by $50, plans 60GB model
• 
• David Bowie: Underground

  I don’t know how much Aha’s Take On Me influenced Mr. Bowie’s decision to take the video for Underground in this direction, but take a look at the similarities:

• I’m a little… weirded out by the fact that I JUST noticed how similar Cool World and Take On Me are.
• The Cosby Show can still make me laugh.
• The classic Jonny Quest is on (not the 80s or 90s remakes). I think that if done properly (operative words: “if done properly”), it could make an interesting live-action TV show and/or movie. It could be done in the vein of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Or, it could even be told from the point of view of an older man recounting his globe-trotting adventures to his kids, grandkids or protege.
• d

Thursday – 10 July 2008
Last night, Dr. Z brought my XBox from the AF office up to SLC. Along with it, came the six games I had stored in the carrying case, including X-Men: Legends. Win-Win. I took them home and put Legends in the 360 and sat down to enjoy some comics-based gaming.

I had, however, neglected one very important factor into account: The 360’s poor backwards compatibility.

After some research, I found that I needed to download an emulator – to trick the 360 into thinking that it was an O.G. XBox.¹ (Yes, calling it “O.G.” just made me laugh.) And, even then, there’s no guarantee that the emulator will play Legends properly. *sigh* As the home network is mostly wireless, I looked to see if I had a long enough Cat-5 cable to run from the living room to the office. Nope. Next, I considered trying to cascade wireless routers, since I have SaraRules’ router for the time being. Then I decided that was more effort than I really felt like putting into it last night.

So, I opted for playing City of Heroes.

Which had a new patch release. So, I waited for it to download and then clicked to apply it. I was apparently so wiped from the poor sleep Tuesday night – possibly aided by the Shiraz I had with dinner – that I nodded off before the patch finished applying.

So I called it an early evening, relatively speaking.

This morning, I was up and ready to roll in just over 40 minutes, including the time it took to iron today’s outfit. Not too shabby. It would have been even better if I had remembered my cell phone before leaving the complex. *sigh* At least I have frozen mocha goodness to see me through the morning.

And it’s Comics and Sushi ‘Wednesday.’

Stray Toasters

• Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Sheila E. are performing Saturday. I’m a little torn about which show I’d rather go to… but leaning towards BBVD.
• The new season of Burn Notice starts tonight.
• The HeroClix Fantastic Four Starter Set should be in stores today.
• As bad as I’ve (re)discovered that Super Friends can be, this sounds like an interesting compliation.
• I haven’t played Second Life in probably a year. This is almost enough to get me to check it out again: New Babbage – A Steampunk City in Second Life:

• iPhone 3G meets the masses tomorrow.
• It looks as though the right reverend Jesse Jackson could use a good talking-to.
  But, he’s still my top choice for reading Green Eggs and Ham:

• I just introduced DaveW to Christopher Titus Apologizes. In return, he sent me back to my desk with a video from Lisa Lampenelli: Take It Like a Man

Namaste.

¹ – O.G. XBox – A conversation between a classic XBox and an XBox 360:

XBox 360: So what are you supposed to be?
XBox: Me? I’m O.G.
XBox 360: “O.G.?” Shit… you ain’t gangsta.
XBox: Gangsta? Naw, man… not gangsta. O.G. “Original Gamer.” Word.

Lunch time.  I should be going to the gym, but neither Wes nor Mark are in this office and I really dislike working out alone.

Stray Toasters

• Interviews with Matt Keeslar, The Middleman in… The Middleman
  • A Slice of Sci-Fi
  • iFMagazine
  • TV Guide
• The best video games of the year — so far
• Tyranist: You should click here.
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?” file: Teenager finds baby bat in her bra
• … and in a semi-related note: Die off of bats mystifies experts
• First Look: Wonder Woman DVD Movie
• NASA sets date for final shuttle mission in 2010
• Another from the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!” file: The World’s Weirdest Health Mascots
• MK vs. DCU screen shots: Now with more Catwoman

I should eat something.

I am apparently in need of a gaming session. I just went to look up part the lyrics to Manic Monday… but typed “Manic Monkday” instead. *blink blink*

Project: Rooftop has released their list of finalists from the “Superman: Man of Style” contest. I’m partial to entries #2 and #12.

Check out the DeviantArt gallery of Cat Stagg.
(, you’ll want to check out the middle of the right column on Page 5)

Doll on a Music Box/Truly Scrumptious

When did the term “jet lag” come into use?

Subnetting/Supernetting == *bleargh*

Monday – 07 July 2008
I hope that the holiday weekend was safe for everyone. As yet, I’ve heard no reports of anyone having to be
rushed to their local medical facility to have fireworks-related injuries treated. I take that as a good thing.

Aside from being slow on the uptake in figuring out that SaraRules had gotten into town early and Friday morning Leash doom, it was a rather good – and relaxing – weekend.

After SaraRules left for Aspen, I headed down to Kate and Perry’s to do a little tech support and to hang with the family. It also turns out that their youngest added +1 to his Crawl skill while they were on vacation. It also seems like he added +1 to his Stand (with support) skill, too.

When I got back home, I planted myself on the couch and watched a couple of episodes of Law & Order: SVU. I flipped over to watch a little bit of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi before deciding to play City of Heroes. I was invited to join a team fairly quickly; we ran a few missions against The Council and Tsoo… and a bank mission. Despite a few inglorious deaths, I was able to put on a couple of levels.

All-in-all, it was a good end to a good weekend.

Stray Toasters

• I am having Butterscotch Krimpets and coffee for breakfast. Not quite the so-called “Breakfast of Champions,” but good, nonetheless.
• July 7, 1936: Get a Grip – Phillips Screws Up the Toolbox
• Hulk vs. Wolverine

• The manual I’m reading just made an analogy between IP addresses and USPS addresses, that impressed me:
  

  “In the same way that a house address has two parts – a street address and a ZIP code (the city and state are not really used anymore – an IP address also has two parts…”

  The impressive part is that not many people outside the USPS really know (or at least think about the fact) that the City and State parts of an address are somewhat superfluous. As a rather high percentage of the mailstream is routed by automated systems, they can usually determine exactly where a mailpiece goes from just the ZIP Code and the street address.

• I’m going to a DCI show in Ogden on Thursday. I haven’t been to a drum corps show in… at least… 10 or 11 years. That should be fun.
• By way of the “You Can’t Do That on Television” file: Porn appears on rugby programme
  (The expression of the guy in the accompanying picture makes the whole thing for me)
• I am amused that this xkcd comic has had the following effect on the Wikipedia entry for “wood”

And… back to it.

Namaste.

Saturday – 05 July 2008
Yesterday was good and it was eventful – in a good way – too.

I didn’t wind up playing Ultimate Alliance, but that was cool.  We headed to SaraRules’ parents’ and hung out with her family for a while. Meliko and I talked comics again; I brought over House of M, because she had asked about it on Thursday. The lot of us then headed to Porcupine Pub for dinner. We came back to the house to watch Eddie Izzard: Definite Article. Until it started watching me and SaraRules.

We headed back to my place for a pre-fireworks nap… and almost slept through seeing them at all. We got up and headed up to Wasatch Boulevard, affording us a view of most of the fireworks displays across the valley. We wound up parking in Sugar House and watching their display.

Back home for some ice cream and unwinding… and then I found Blazing Saddles on TV Land! I watched about half of it before calling it a night.

Up early again this morning to head to the Downtown Farmer’s Market. I wasn’t expecting to run into anyone I know, but I did: Josh, from work. Not only did I see him, but we kept passing each other as we wandered through the park.

We’re going to see Hancock in a little while. After that… who knows?

*voop*

Thursday – 03 July 2008
Last day of the work week… sort of. I am keeping the Leash for an extra week, so a coworker can go camping with his family. The up side to this: I’m of pager duty for the next… 8 weeks, I think. That’s not a bad deal.

Last night, I watched Star Wars: A New Hope on Spike. Sure, it was the 90s remixed edition (you know… the one where Han doesn’t shoot first), but I was able to overlook that. For the most part.

I seem to recall Luke Skywalker being known as “the last survivor of the Death Star battle.” ( I just checked with , he remembers that, too.) I also remember this being somewhat retconned:

• Han Solo (and, ostensibly, Chewbacca) was there – he afforded Luke the opportunity to make the shot.
• Wedge Antilles survived – his X-Wing was damaged in the final run on the trench and Luke told him to wave off.

So, we have three (or four) survivors there. I realized something last night and I am not sure if it’s endemic to the updated version only or not: There is a Y-Wing bomber that also flies away from the exploding Death Star:

Let’s examine that picture…

• Millenium Falcon? Check.
• Red Two (Wedge’s X-Wing)? Check.
• Red Five (Luke’s X-Wing)? Check.
• Y-Wing bombe…. wait…. Y-Wing?! What’s that doing here?!

And so, my question is: Who was the mystery pilot?

I also spent some time in Paragon City. I got Kurigari to Security Level 20 a couple of nights ago, but didn’t feel like running his costume mission then. So, I did it last night. I had another character in Icon offer to help me out. Far be it from me to turn down a helping hand. A few minutes later, I was back in the tailor shop, getting hooked up with new threads. (And I STILL need to get a picture of this character…)

Four-Color Coverage
I picked up three (that’s right, “three”) books yesterday. It made for quick, but entertaining, reading:

• Astonishing X-Men #25 – Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi’s debut issue hits the stands. And, it’s good. The take seems to be a bit of The X-Men meets The X-Files – there is a definite sci-fi edge to the story, so far. The X-Men seem to be settling in to their new locale fairly well. They’re even on good terms with the local government. YeahbuhWHAT?! There’s even a visit from a certain wind-riding Queen of Wakanda. I must give Mr. Ellis a bit of credit for the way he handled the interaction between Ororo and Emma when Ororo asked about joining the team. If I have a problem with the book, it would be with Bianchi’s artwork… but, not for the reasons you might suspect. The art looks amazing, to be honest, but in a few cases it looks like he’s trying “too hard.” Yes, we know that the X-Men’s world is fantastic (wait, no, that’s the Four)… um… Uncanny? Extreme? New? Ultimate? Well, whatever the word is that you want to use, Bianchi seems to want to make it abundantly clear through the art. Their “car” looks like something that NASA could use for a shuttlecraft. The new X-Jet doesn’t look bad, though. Maybe his style just has to grow on me. Regardless, it was a good read and I look forward to seeing in what direction(s) Mr. Ellis takes the book.
• Legion of Super-Heroes #43 – The Legion is still facing lots of political red tape from the UP… even as they send a team to go save the newly-minted, UP-sponsored team of heroes that just had their collective recta handed to them. No rest for the weary, it seems. And who’s the kid talking with Brainiac 5 and what is his angle?
• Trinity #4 – This is DC’s latest weekly title, featuring “The Big Three,” Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman. The book is divided into two parts – the first, featuring the aforementioned trinity; the second focusing on subplots, occasionally featuring the heroes’ antagonists. Kurt Busiek presents a good take on the characters, but unless something picks up or changes in the next few issues, I may be dropping this one.

Stray Toasters

• Thank God, the angels and the Heavenly host for short work weeks.
• 33-ish
• How can you not love a webcomic that does things like this:
  • 
  • 
• Frozen mocha goodness!
• Google must divulge YouTube log
• Despite (or because of) that, I give you:

• Iron Sky. Check out the trailer.
• Inka dinka doo.

Mark, Wes and I headed to the gym at lunchtime. We repeated the routine that Wes and I did last week, for the most part:

• Bench Press: 3 sets/10 reps, 205 lbs.
• Flys (machine): 3 sets/10 reps, 100 lbs, with 10 sec. hold on the 10th rep
• Curls (standing, hammer): 3 sets/10 reps, 25 lbs.
• Lateral Raises (with forward extension): 3 sets/10 reps, 10 lbs.
• Tricep Extensions (standing, dumbbell): 3 sets/10 reps, 45 lbs.

Today’s post-workout weight: 175.3 lbs.

Overall, it felt good. We’re going to try to squeeze in another workout on Thursday, if possible. And, hopefully, we didn’t make Mark want to murder us… assuming that he’s able to lift his arms high enough to do so.

Stray Toasters

• Speeders to pay for police chases
• Thanks to Derek for this one: 35,310 LEGO Star Wars Clone Trooper Army Invades Earth
• By way of The Weekly Crisis
  • 10 Stories Essential to Understanding the Current Marvel Universe
  • 10 Stories Essential to Understanding the Current DC Universe
• From the “It shouldn’t be like this” file: Woman dies ignored on hospital waiting room floor
  

Back to it…

Until last night, I had forgotten that this is a short work week.  I apparently forgot it again this morning… until I started thinking about how I wanted to spread out my work hours – I was planning on working a bunch of 9- and 10-hour days and taking off early on Friday again, when it dawned on me that Friday is a freebie.  Had gone with my original plan of pulling 10-9-10, I would only have two hours of work on Thursday.  I may still do that.

Stray Toasters

• Michael Turner, artist and President of Aspen Comics, passed away Friday night.  He was 37.
• Wizard has a 6-page preview of Astonishing X-Men #25, Warren Ellis’ first issue on the title.  Page Four alone is reason enough to buy the book.
• Walk Score
• In the same vein as someecards comes WrongCards.  They even have an “In event of zombies” section.
• There are rumblings of Frank Miller working on some sort of sequel to 300.  I feel about this the way that I feel about The Dark Knight Strikes Again, his follow-up to The Dark Knight Returns:  You captured lighting in a bottle the first time around.  Don’t force it.  And, more importantly, why screw up a good thing?!
• Wizard, in their “Corps Curriculum” column, posted this picture… with the caption: “Yoda couldn’t have done it better.”  The funny thing is, you could actually overwrite Luke and Yoda’s X-Wing raising dialogue from SW:TESB on this page… and have it fit perfectly.

All that and a new episode of The Middleman tonight.

Huzzah!

Sunday: Coda
Well… after I managed to pry myself from the sofa and actually get moving, I had a fun evening.

I headed downtown to check out the Utah Arts Festival, as I mentioned earlier. I went with a little trepidation: Last year’s festival seemed dull and unexciting, with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band providing the event’s only saving grace. OnlyAly, and went Saturday afternoon and said that it was good, but still…

I got to Library Square a little after 6:00. There seemed to be a good mix of exhibitors in the area between the library and The Leonardo. That was a hopeful sign. I browsed through a number of the booths. I next checked out the ones on the southeast side of the City and County Building. Again, good selections. Checking the time, I found that I still had time to spare before Desert Gypsy went on…. so, I wandered through some of the booths set up along 2nd East. Some of the artists whose work caught my eye included:

• Kenny Tong
• Greg Gawlowski
• Julie Stutznegger
• Penelope Moore
• Brett Varney
• Daniel Ng
• Mason Fetze
• J.P. Jespersen
• Whit Bronaugh and
• Bruce Reinfeld

I headed back over to the City and County Building to watch Desert Gypsy; my friend, Georgia, dances in one of their troupes and I told her that I would come down and check out her performance. It was fun. You could tell that the dancers – and the audience – were enjoying themselves. When they were finished, I hung around for a few minutes to talk with Georgia before she went to get changed.

Next up, I checked out the Salt Lake Alternative Jazz Orchestra. They were fun. I missed out on seeing them last year. I’ll be on the lookout for them from now on, though. When they were done, I headed back over to Library Square, with the intent on checking out Samba Fogo. Unfortunately, the best spots had already been taken. So, I headed up to the walkway that overlooked the square. Not much better; I could only see the tops of the dancers’ heads. But, I was in a good spot to watch MASS Ensemble‘s performance… with their 700’-long “Earth Harp” – stretched between the library and the Amphitheatre Stage.

There is a marked difference between “watching” a performance and “hearing” it. Let me narrow that down a bit: I saw and heard Mass Ensemble; what I did not hear was the harp. Hopefully people who were sitting/standing directly under the strings could hear them. I did enjoy Mass Ensemble’s performance otherwise.

Another band kicked off at 10:00 on the Park Stage, so I wandered over that way. The band was Way Way East Bay, a funk band (with horns!) from Logan, UT. That’s right, I used the words “funk band” and “Logan” and “Utah” in the same sentence. They were pretty good. They did some covers (including Tower of Power’s Dont Change Horses (in the Middle of the Stream) and Delbert McClinton’s Standing on Shaky Ground) as well as some original songs. They were having a good time and they sounded good, too. The crowd wasn’t large (most were still watching the MASS Ensemble performance), but it was of a decent size and they seemed to enjoy the music.

Around 10:30, I’d had my fill of the festival and decided to call it a night. But, the overall experience far exceeded last year’s disappointment.

On the way home, I dropped in and chatted with for a bit.

Stray Toasters

• Ten months
• , I was sorry to hear about the fire/water damage, but glad to hear that you and the Mrs. are okay.
• This still makes me grin:



• , I think that you’ll like this. (Let me know if the link doesn’t work for you…)
• I need to allocate some time for watching Space: Above and Beyond.
• Earth-D
• Eridani Light Horse

Methinks, that’s good for now.

Sunday – 29 June 2008
It’s seems as though June just got here… and now it’s almost gone.

Playing ‘Clix with Chris last night was good. We played two games, a one-on-one game and one with Matt and me taking him on. Chris won both. (Yay for sporadically crappy dice rolls!) I also understand now why he hates the “Indoor: Prison” map from the Sinister set… although, I think that it would be an interesting map to play with non-powered figures (S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra, various law enforcement figures, A.I.M., Checkmate and/or thugs).

After gaming, I headed down to Sandy for breakfast. Not only was a small group, but we wound up leaving relatively early as everyone seemed to wind down from their week/day pretty quickly.

This morning, I managed to sleep in – I made it to the double-digits. Barely, but I did. I also woke up with a less-than-delightful headache. I assumed that it was lack-of-caffeine induced, but coffee has not as yet done anything, so I set two Aleve tablets on the job. Hopefully, they will do some good.

I’m trying to gear up to head downtown to visit the Utah Arts Festival. However, the whole “lazy” thing has had me firmly in its grip.

Stray Toasters

• This test is something of a test – I am trying to determine whether one WP-to-LJ cross-posting plugin is better than another.
• I finished the HeroClix character cards I was working on for Chris:
  • Logan
  • Magneto
  • Parallax
  • Superman
  • Wolverine
• Big haul of Crohn’s genes shows disease complexity
• 
• Checkmate
• Floyd Landis, winner of the 2007 Tour de Lance France, has been stripped of his win and had a two-year ban imposed on him.
• Teen killed by roller coaster
  While it’s sad to hear about this, I have to chalk this one up to the boy’s own lack of regard for the warning signs.
• 
• This place could almost be the USPS…

I should kick it into gear…

Namaste.

Thursday – 26 June 2008
Last night was a relaxed night. After work, I headed to Dr. Volt’s to pick up this week’s comics. Home. Dinner. City of Heroes. I was invited to join a team for some Tsoo missions and nearly tacked on two levels before logging off. And, in an unusual turn, I felt tired fairly early – so early that I was showered and in bed a little after 12:30.

When the alarm went off this morning, I wasn’t quite ready to roll out of bed and face the morning, so I laid in bed for a few minutes… which turned into me falling asleep again. I woke up when alarm 2.0 went off. After staring at the ceiling and walls for a few, I got up, got ready and got under way.

Of course, I didn’t notice that I had left The Leash at home until I got to the office. Fortunately, the monitoring/notification software that sends alerts to the pager has a web interface. So, really, I’m just cutting out the middle man, not to be confused with The Middleman.

I need to decide whether today is a sushi day or a workout day. Bah.

Stray Toasters

• I got another package from my father yesterday: The 47 currently released state quarters.
• SaraRules has updated the Aspen section of her site with a couple of recent goings-on.
• Dave Koz: You Make Me Smile

• MarknTyme: Fix your GoogleTalk settings – you keep bouncing on/off.
• By way of : Christopher Titus Apologizes

• The 10 Best Fan-Made Hip-Hop Videos with The Sims
• DNS & BIND == *bleh*
• Brothel bus makes last stop in Miami Beach
• 

It’s a sushi day.
Decision: Rendered.

Namaste.

Monday – 23 June 2008
Three hours’ sleep? Check.
Frozen caffeine? Check.
In the office just after 8:00? Check.

You would think that with a four-mile commute, my road monkey-to-miles ratio would be slim to nil. This morning proved that to be untrue. I even encountered one of them when I was parked. If my math is correct, I actually had a 1:1 ratio today. Four. Miles. Unglaublich!

Stray Toasters

• Shirley Bassey to miss Mandela concert in London
  And… just in case the name doesn’t ring a bell:
  • Diamonds Are Forever
  • History Repeating
• I find it odd, amusing (and a little scary) that I found these two articles within a couple minutes of each other:
  • Portable Karaoke Machine for Singing on the Fly
  • Brando’s Portable Disco Lights Do It Psychedelically with Lasers
• What do you get when you cross Fargo with snowglobes? Something along the lines of this, I’d guess.
• 750,000-brick Kennedy Space Center Is the Mother of All LEGO Models
• They’re… um… “rebooting” ReBoot. For more info, click here.

Let’s get this show on the road.