Random Access

Wednesday – 06 February 2008
Jason called a little bit ago to ask how the roads on the way to the office looked.
Odd, but okay…
I told him that I thought that they were fine.

His “Uhhm…” gave me a little pause.

I went to the window.

It’s snowing.
Yet again.

Stray Toaster
For some reason, I had a couple of The Metric Marvels, NBC’s attempt to teach kids the metric system by way of a knock-off version of ABC’s Schoolhouse Rock!, running through my head this morning.

Namaste.

I’ve been tooling around the Topless Robot site for the past couple of days.  I’ve been highly amused by a few things, including:

• The 10 Most Disturbing Smurfs (and there are a plethoric buttload of them).
• The 10 Star Wars Toys That Unintentionally Look Like Celebrities
• They even have spaceships!
  • The 15 Greatest Spaceships of All Time
  • The 10 Worst Spaceships of All Time
• The Greatest Story Ever Told… in Manga
• Know Your Drunken Damage: Iron Man or Robert Downey, Jr.?

Yeah.  Madness.

Tuesday – 05 February 2008
So far, it’s been a rather decent day. Nothing really out of the ordinary to report… other than Deacon Derek brought me a tub of spun sugar confectionery goodness as recompense for letting him jump-seat to Cedar City with me this past weekend.

Workout
Today’s workout was… abbreviated, but still decent:

• Leg Raises: 3 sets/20 reps
• Pull-ups: 3 sets/10 reps (3rd set done with 80 lbs. assistance)
• Bench press: 3 sets/10 reps, 205 lbs.
• Lateral Raises (standing, dumbbell): 3 sets/10 reps, 10 lbs.
• Curls (standing, barbell): 3 sets/10 reps, 60 lbs.

Today’s weight: 169.6 lbs.
Stray Toasters

• I stumbled upon a new-to-me site today: Top Secret Recipes.
• The name – and buy-out – game!
  • MicroHoo!
  • Yahoogle or Goohoo!

  Round and round and round it goes! Where it stops… nobody knows!

• Sam Adams: Patriot. Brewer. Homeboy.
  Jackie Chan: Martial artist. Actor. Tea maker…? When did this happen?!
• …and, speaking of beer, as seen in Cedar City, UT this past weekend:

  
  That’s right… they are passing on that whole 1¢ savings on to YOU!
  (Don’t spend it all in one place!)

• History of conjoined twins
• I have replenished my stores of Twix and Butterfinger in the AF office!
• 
• Is the GameBoy the toughest product ever made?
• What is – or was – your favorite console gaming unit?
  I love my 360, but the Sega Genesis still has a warm place in my heart…
• “Honey, have you seen my super-suit itch-free pajamas?!”

And tonight: Scion.

Namaste.

This afternoon, John F. and I were talking about the naming of the new President of the LDS Church. It wasn’t Jesse Jackson. Or Al Sharpton. Or Reverend Ike. Or even Jimmy Swaggart. It was Thomas Monson. But, from our digression, we were led to wonder just what became of our good friend, The Reverend Jimmy Swaggart. A quick look on Wikipedia led to this article… which, in turn, pointed us to JSM.org. Oh, my. The good reverend is looking a little rough around the gills.

After work, I stopped at the store to get some milk and then home. I unpacked, started dinner and just… unwound. I flipped back and forth between Star Trek: Enterprise, a couple of the Law & Order shows and… something else. At 9:00, I flipped over to Boomerang to watch Justice League Unlimited. Tonight’s ep was “Double Date,” featuring Black Canary, Green Arrow, The Huntress and The Question. I hadn’t seen it before, so that was an added bonus. Damn fine episode. As the review said:

If I had to pick one episode of Justice League Unlimited to show to someone to try and get them into the show, this would be one of the high-ranking possibilities on the list. There’s an intense amount of action present, as well as great dialogue, character interaction and great animation to back it up.

None of the “big guns” were in the episode and it was still a solid story. That’s what I loved about that show. Too bad they took it off the air.

Next up, a trip to Paragon City. Security Level 40 or bust! It took a while to find a team, but I did. We ran assorted missions.

Stray Toasters

• Can a Lightsaber Cut Through Superman?
• , would you point ‘bot in the direction of this: The Truth Behind the V Franchise
• Top Five High-Tech Lairs of Evil Masterminds (OK, a Few Good Masterminds, too)
• For my various WoW-playing friends:

  

• Early 20th Century charts of biblical teachings

And guess who made it to Security Level 40.
Mm-hmm, that’s right.
Now, I just need to figure out what my new costume will be…

Namaste.

Monday – 04 February 2008
Another week begins…

…but it’s one daycloser to the 14th, which is not only Valentine’s Day (or Single Awareness Day, as some would say) but also the day that SaraRules and I head on another long weekend vacation.

Destination: Baltimore.

We’re heading home to see the miracle of the new little grey (or zebra-striped or polka-dotted) addition to the family. I’m still hoping that is able to convince Sib -1 that “Ercu Latte” is a good name for a baby.

The commute this morning wasn’t hellish. UDoT took care of most of I-15 with their usual aplomb. Of course, the areas just south and just north of Beaver were a little lacking in attention to detail, but them’s the breaks. For the most part, the other drivers were decent and courteous… although there were a couple of monkey-riffic ones, including a semi driver whom I had to fight my way past in Cove Fort.

SaraRules had mentioned something last weekend, while she was up here: About 6 miles south of Nephi, on the east side of the highway, is a sign for a Super 8 Motel. But… there’s a problem with the sign. See if you can figure out what it is:

For those of you who don’t see anything wrong, let me help you:

The name of the town is Nephi, pronounced “knee-fie.”
As spelled on that sign, it would be pronounced: “neh-pee” or “neh-pie.”

That sign had to go through, at least, two or three levels of quality control before it made it to the roadside. You would think that someone – the motel owners, the graphic designer or even the printer – would have caught the error before clearing the sign for use.

Oh, Schoolhouse Rock! , how we miss you…

Namaste.

Sunday – 03 February 2008
Last night, SaraRules, Tink, Vince, Steve and I went to see Steph dance in Sleeping Beauty. It was staged by the Cedar City Junior Ballet; Steph danced the lead role as Princess Aurora. It was held in the Heritage Theater, which was a rather nice venue. The production was very good… and it included some adorable kids (as in under 10 years old) in a few roles. Steph gave an amazing performance, as did the rest of the corps. Even the kids, I’m happy to report.

Last night’s sleep was horrible. Between 2 AM and 8:30 AM, I think that I was up at least five (5) times. At 8:30, I’d had enough and went into the living room to watch TV and nerd. Unfortunately, at that time of the morning, there isn’t much to see on TV and there wasn’t really anything on the Internet that held my interest for very long. So, around 9:30, I went back to bed. I was able to eke out another couple hours’ broken sleep, but it was sleep. The weird dreams I had, though… those I could have done without.

This afternoon, I played a little CoH with Corvus Nox. Members of my SG were on, playing their mid-level characters and invited me to join the team. Vazhilok. In the sewers. It was a good run and, by the time we had finished, I got Nox up to Security Level 18.

SaraRules and I headed to the grocery store to pick up a few things for tonight’s Super Bowl gathering. Aside from assorted snack stuff, I decided to pick up shrimp and some (relatively) cheap beer in which to cook the shrimp. It was, according to group consensus, tasty. SaraRules made a rather delicious queso dip and jalapeno poppers.

People started showing up around 4:00. It was a lot of fun. Equal measures of trash-talking and educating people about the game were parts of the conversation. The game was a LOT better than I expected it to be, as well, which made for a rather… boisterous… evening.

Congratulations to the New York Giants for their win.

Likewise, congratulations to the New England Patriots for their (otherwise) perfect season.

This year’s Super Bowl commercials were decent – the hands-down favorite of the night: Doritos Mouse Trap.

Tonight, we’re watching a movie; I’m not sure “what” yet.

Tomorrow, it’s the long commute. Hopefully, UDoT will have allocated sufficient resources to deal with today’s snow.

Namaste.

Saturday – 02 February 2008
Derek (visiting a friend here in Cedar) and I left work yesterday and headed south. On the way, I shared with him the thoughts about one of our coworkers reminding us of Homsar. He found it as amusing – and just about as fitting – as we did. The trip was fairly uneventful, even when we drove through a few areas where snow was falling. Oddly, Beaver was not one of those areas.

Upon arriving in Cedar City, I dropped Derek off and headed to SaraRules’ place. I was a little more tired than I thought, so I took a short nap. When I woke up, Tink told me that I had missed SaraRules mixing it up with Roomie #5’s boyfriend. *jawdrop* Apparently, the spat didn’t last long and Miss SaraRules handled business… but, I still wish that I had been awake for it. Steph came home from her performance – she is dancing the lead in a production of Sleeping Beauty. So the fight recap was told again….

…as it was when Kim got home
…as it was when Vince got here
…and as it was when a few friends of Steph and Tink’s got here.

It was just one of those stories that gets better with each retelling.

Vince and I played a bit of Magic: the Addiction Gathering last night.  He tuned a couple of decks; I played with three of my old decks.  My first deck (black-and-red) played slowly, Vince won that game.  I used my blue deck next.  Much better results.  After that game, I went to my black-and-green deck.  I lost that game, but it was a closer game.  Back to the blue deck.  I won the next couple of games.

Today has been a fairly typical Saturday: Toons, breakfast and coffee. Today’s Legion was (yet) another rerun; but, The Batman was new. After we got our weekly dose of toonage, we observed the necessary hygiene rituals. Next up, SaraRules took on some homework while I took on bad guys in Paragon City. I am still about 80,000 points from Security Level 40.  But, I’m getting closer.  I also retuned my black-and-red deck, to (hopefully) get it to play a little faster… y’know… just in case a game of Magic breaks out later tonight.

Tonight, we’re having dinner with Tink and Vince at Cafe Orleans and then seeing Sleeping Beauty.

After that?
Who knows.

Tomorrow: Super Bowl.
What are your predictions?
I’m not sure who I really want to win: I would be interested in seeing the Patriots having a complete perfect season, but it would be nice to see Eli Manning and company pull off an upset.  I guess we’ll see tomorrow.

Namaste.

Friday – 01 February 2008
Welcome to Black History Month.

(from http://pioneer.utah.gov)

Last night, I had dinner with Land at Biaggi’s. I haven’t eaten there in… over a year. I had the Chicken Marsala entree; it was quite good and very filling. I think that I saw the waiter who waited on us the first time that and I ate there… I think. But, I’m not sure. Fortunately, we had a different waiter and he was good – he was a little slow in bringing our drinks at first, but once he got going, he was rather attentive. After dinner, I ran a few errands then headed home.

I slept in a little this morning. Not much. Just enough. And it was good. A quick stop at the SLC office and then I was on my way to AF.

Things were fairly quiet in AF. Selah.
The lunchtime workout was a repeat of Tuesday’s workout.
I weighed in today at 172.0 pounds. (Wow.)

City of Heroes: The Hand of Nefer-Tem
I put in a couple of hours in Paragon City. Not quite enough to hit Security Level 40, but it got me a good portion of the way there. I should – hopefully – be able to get there by the end of the weekend.

Next weekend is another Double XP Weekend event. Double XP == good.

Stray Toasters

• I need to replenish the Twix and Butterfinger stores in my AF desk drawer o’ goodies.
• Eric and I just figured out who one of our coworkers reminds us of: Homsar.
• The Internet may (or may not) be a series of tubes, but this is.
• With John Edwards out of the race, commentators on this morning’s Diane Rehm Show speculated as to whether we could possibly see an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket in the Fall…
• Microsoft wants to buy the flagging Yahoo! Interesting.
• Microsoft is also doing a webcomic: Heroes Happen Here
• Frozen Grand Central – the latest prank from Improv Everywhere.
• 
• sent me a link to this. O.o

Time to make like the cast of The Wiz (Broadway) and Ease on Down the Road.

Namaste.

(11:40:24 AM) : Is this a potential addition to the crew?
(11:40:43 AM) : yeah. help desk. 🙂
(11:41:04 AM) : We can use a redshirt.
(11:41:35 AM) : http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/9722/

(3:37:08 PM) : *notes an list of prices for a requisitioned item*
(3:37:42 PM) : has to go through the mothership.
(3:37:50 PM) : Wait…
(3:38:09 PM) : George Clinton…. Dr. Funkenstein himself…works for [us]?!
(3:38:13 PM) : Holy shite.
(3:41:18 PM) : George Clinton – Found 0 entries. 🙁
(3:52:59 PM) : But… you said…. the mothership.
(3:53:06 PM) : yeah yeah.
(3:53:09 PM) : Make my funk the P-Funk.
(3:53:20 PM) : different mothership.
(3:53:26 PM) : *SIGH*
(3:53:27 PM) : Fine.
(3:55:23 PM) : think of it more as we are a small fighter craft and they are the giant independence day orbital mother ship.
(3:55:35 PM) : … and they want to wipe us out and take our resources.
(3:55:49 PM) : We have Macs.
(3:56:00 PM) : All we need now is The Fresh Prince and The Fly.
(3:57:12 PM) : better throw in Agent K just in case.

Thursday – 31 January 2008
After a few post-work errands, I holed up in the apartment and waited for the MythBusters “Plane on a Conveyor Belt” episode. It was good. They did a couple of other interesting experiments, including a test to see whether cockroaches would truly be able to survive a nuclear war.

After that, I logged into City of Heroes to see if anyone from the SG was on and to try and get closer to Security Level 40. I found one SG member on, but he was helping people with the Katie Hannon task force. I looked around for a while, but didn’t find anything else that looked promising, so I logged out.

I started reading some of yesterday’s four-color goodness. Even the “low priority” reads were good. When reading a week’s comic haul, I usually read books starting with the “little-to-waning interest” group and finishing up with the “warm, happy place” books. After all, why start off big only to work your way down to “Wow… that was completely craptacular,” when you can go the other way and (usually) end on a good note.

Somewhere in the middle of reading Fantastic Four, I konked out.
For the night.
On the sofa.
Again.

I woke up about ten minutes before my alarm was set to go off.

I prepped for work in a fairly leisurely manner, including taking the time to brew a pot of coffee and to enjoy a bowl of Honeycomb before heading off to face the day. And I remembered to bring my coffee to work this morning. Go, me.

The work day hasn’t been too bad. I discovered that I needed to reconfigure one of my MCSE test machines. Oh, well. I’ll probably wind up adding (yet) another machine to that group, so that I don’t have to keep reformating and installing an OS on the secondary box.

Stray Toasters

• I stumbled upon a new webcomic last night: Looking for Group. If you’re a gamer – and if you have an eye/ear for pop culture references – you might enjoy this one.
• VideoJug – Life Explained. On film.
• PHP. I need to get back into that.
• 20×200
• By way of : Election 2008 – Issues
• There is apparently a SWAT stand-off in Utah County. Not terribly far from the south office, as the crow flies, that is.
• 
• In addition to wanting to redo Queen videos with Disney movies, I am having the urge to make a “video” for Red Sector A using my X-Men MiniMates, some LEGO minifigs and my Sentinel.
• From Apple.com: Robert J. Lang – The Art and Science of Paper Folding

And stuff.

Namaste.

Five!

Wednesday – 30 January 2008
The morning started. I wish I had something more to say about it than that… but that’s what you get.

I did have a couple of things happen this morning that made me go Ô.õ though:

1. As I was getting ready for work, I had a random mash-up thought go through my head: “Welcome Back, Potter,” a cross between the 70’s TV show Welcome Back, Kotter and the Harry Potter stories, wherein Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts to teach remedial magic to “troubled” students… and hilarity ensues.
2. I made a small pot of coffee this morning, to bring to work. While it was brewing, I set out my travel cup and even put milk and sugar in it, so I’d be go to go when the coffee was done. As I was only making 4 cups of coffee, it finished brewing before I was done in the kitchen. I turned off the coffee maker and wandered out of the kitchen to finish getting ready.And I never went back into the kitchen before leaving for work.

   So, I have a lovely cup with milk and sugar and a pot of brewed Vanilla Bean coffee waiting for me.

   Unfortunately, I didn’t remember this until I got about halfway to work. Thus, I had to stop at the local Beans & Brews to acquire frozen mocha goodness to thin out the blood in my caffeinestream.

And that’s the morning, so far.

How’s your day?

Tuesday – 29 January 2008
Last night, after the ordeal of the afternoon commute – it took about 75 minutes to get from AF to SLC – thanks to post-storm, near-whiteout conditions – and finishing out my day I went home and watched the State of the Union address. I had a few things go through my mind as I was watching:

1. When GW turned his head a certain way, he reminded me of Johnny Carson.
2. I don’t get why the Peanut Gallery Congress feels the urge/need to give a standing ovation for some of the most mundane bullet point items in a speech. It reminded me more of a pep rally than a presidential speech when they did it… even though I’ve seen it many times before.
3. I wound up watching the C-Span broadcast, because I got tired of the way the networks would always try to find Senator X, Y or Z for a “reaction shot” whenever GW was applauded for a particular note – especially Senators Obama and Clinton.
4. I want to download a transcript of this speech and – over the course of the next year – see how many of the stated/proposed items come to fruition.

After the speech, I took the Hand of Nefer-Tem on a field trip to Paragon City. I hooked up with members of my SG and we took on The Council and the Circle of Thorns. Over the course of the next couple of hours, I not only racked up the points I needed to make Security Level 39, but got about… 4.2 bubbles on the way to Level 40.

I stopped playing a little before midnight. I stretched out on the couch with the intent of watching a little TV before calling it a night. I was out in less than ten minutes. I’d be willing to bet that it wasn’t even five minutes.

Next thing I know, it was 5:00 AM.
I stretched… and nodded off again.

Phone alarm. 6:15. Ignored.

I finally managed to leave the gates of The Dreaming at 8:00. I got up and started the day.

I headed to the SLC office to take care of a few things. Then on to the AF office… and the gym. Today’s workout was good (but a little short):

• Bench press: 3 sets/8 reps (2 sets @ 205 lbs; 1 set/7 reps @ 205 lbs, 3 reps @ 185 lbs)
• Rows (cable): 3 sets/12 reps @ 120 lbs
• Shoulder press (seated, dumbbell): 3 sets/12 reps @ 40 lbs
• Bent-over row: 3 sets/10 reps per arm @ 35 lbs
• Curls (cable): 3 sets/10 reps @ 50 lbs

And, when I did my weigh-out: 169.4 lbs, which is down from Thursday’s 169.8. I’m not necessarily trying to hit 170 lbs, but I won’t cry if I do.

The Best: I Heard It Through the Grapevine
Gladys Knight & The Pips vs. Marvin Gaye vs. Creedence Clearwater Revival vs. The California Raisins.

The song was originally performed by Gladys Knight and, shortly thereafter, by Marvin Gaye and in the nineties, it was used by the California Raisin Advisory Board (no, I didn’t make that up) to promote… well, if I really have to tell you what it was for, you should just turn off the computer now. Seriously.

In my book, it comes down like this:

1. Marvin Gaye
2. Gladys Knight & The Pips
3. The California Raisins
4. Creedence Clearwater Revival

I don’t really have anything against CCR, but I don’t particularly care for their cover of this song… hence, the Raisins knocking them out of the Number Three spot.
Stray Toasters

• I got a call from Land this afternoon. Turns out he’s still in town. We may do dinner this evening.
• Coworker DaveW mentioned The Power of Two: A Twin Triumph over Cystic Fibrosis to me this afternoon. Turns out that he grew up with the authors.
• Bug (be sure to hover over the image for “ALT” text)
• Sock Zombie: Like a Sock Monkey, but undeader
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” file: Apple Prohibits Movie Rentals on Recent iPods
• Eight promising games for ’08
• “the return of the revenge of the son of jones”

  

• Video Games Live is coming to Utah Symphony in March. I think that this would be a lot of fun. And, I want to go.
• “Wii the people, in order to form a more perfect union…”  (Sorry.  It slipped.)
• Casas’ ballpoint pen artwork

Namaste.

MythBusters will be taking on the “Plane on a Conveyor Belt” conundrum this Wednesday.

From BoingBoing:

Last night I spoke to Adam Savage, co-host of MythBusters. He’s in Alaska, where current temperatures range between 0 to 30 degrees below zero. He just finished a test on “cabin fever” (he wouldn’t say how long he lasted before murdering his cabin mates and running out into the frozen wilderness wearning nothing but longjohns and a sleeping cap) and is now working on another episode up in the 49th state.

But the real reason I talked to him was to find out about the next episode of MythBusters (airing this Wednesday). It tackles the famous “plane on a conveyor belt problem,” that has pitted brother against brother and friend against friend for years.

To get to the bottom of the thought-problem, Adam and Jamie used a real plane, in this case a 400-lb ultralight, and a large conveyor belt. Did the plane take off? You’ll have to wait until Wednesday to find out, but Adam said even the pilot guessed wrong.

MythBusters site

As I mentioned last night (and had noted to me this morning by Liz, and ): January 2008 marks the 50th Birthday of the LEGO Brick.

also pointed out the LEGO Brick 50th Anniversary Timeline.

If you can’t run right out and pick up a box of LEGO, you should download the LEGO Digital Designer (Mac and Windows flavors):

And, don’t forget The Mini-mizer, where you can make a LEGO minifigure of yourself.

Play!