Category: Uncategorized

OK, so roofing went like this: We got up there about noon on Thursday. The sky was gray, but in a way that only hinted at rain, didn’t shout it or anything, so we decided not to do the whole quarter-roof as we’d planned. Instead, we just tore off the shingles from the part of the roof that was obviously water damaged, (sagging in about three or four inches from the rest of the roof). Once we were under the three layers of shingles (plus a layer of shingle-like ice dam near the edge of the roof, so four layers for most of it, and one of the layers were those old wooden cedar shingles) we hit wood that was so wet and rotting that much of it felt and broke away like wet paper in you hands.

We cut out the offending paper-wood, and put in about three layers of plywood in its stead (to put it up to the same level as the rest of the roof). Then we put on some new shingles, using copious tar as we went, and that was it. I missed the TCUC parade I was suppose to be in that night, but we had everything cleaned up and had even eaten dinner by sundown (which was about nine oÂ’clock). I felt a hefty sense of accomplishment, and rewarded myself with some Baileys on the rocks and episode VIII of Cosmos, (which I almost stayed awake for).

That night it rained, but I’m not sure how much. There was no sign of drippage in the laundry room, but I’ll reserve judgment till after the next big rainstorm.

It was a good day. The next day, Friday, we were done with my roof, so my dad convinced me to go help him with his. There was no cloud cover, and the sun was scorching. He was lucky to have my brother and I up there (on this huge garage he put in at one of his rental properties) for about an hour and a half before we bailed. I took him to take his driver’s test, but we didn’t have a reservation, and only showed up about 2 minutes before they closed, so it was no dice.

Saturday, I have no idea where the day went, but KR and I were scheduled to perform at balls. She asked me to write this piece for her to dance to, and I think it turned out better than I thought it had immediately after writing it. We got lots of compliments, but she did invite her whole family, and a bunch of her friendsÂ… it was fun anyway. I’m excited to see the video that a friend of hers took with his professional setup.

Finally, we’re to today. I slept until 2:30 (balls goes ridiculously late, and I didnÂ’t get in bed till 4am). I played some Zelda: Wind Waker, and then we went to Fujiya for dinner. I still have a hint of wasabi in the back of my mouth somewhere, but maybe its just stuck in those stupid wisdom tooth holes.

So I fire up the ‘ol web browser to write a blog entry, and end up on memepool. Memepool is one of my favorite websites, but I hardly ever visit it because there is really no point. No point at all. OK, the real reason is that I just don’t often find myself thinking “What website should I visit now?”

Well, from memepool, I found myself at HowStuffWorks.com. And that, my friends, is where I spent the last hour. I learned a ton of stuff! My two favorites so far were How Power Grids Work, which taught me a bunch of stuff about electricity that I didn’t know, including what fuses are, and then How Hypnosis Works, which was mostly stuff I’d known or read various places, but seems very comprehensive and authoritative. The next time I have the “is hypnosis real” debate with someone, I’ll know where to point them!

One question I didn’t find the answer to (yet) is What is electricity? I’ve always wondered this. They talk about it in terms of volts and amps and waves, but what is a volt? What is an amp? And is electricity basically the same as sound, just smaller? My inquiring mind wants to know! (Of course, if I really wanted to know, google is less than a click away.)

Tomorrow I get to find out how to replace my roof! (This time my enthusiasm is faked.) It will be nice, however, not to have to put down pots and pans in our laundry room every time it rains. My dad is coming over to help me, and with any luck there’ll be a couple of other guys here as well. (If my loser brother doesn’t show up I’m going to have to kill him.) I’ve taken thursday and friday off, so this roofing gig will be full time for the next two or three days at least. Wish me luck!

Bitstream has finally decided they’re dumping all of their free services for those of us who used to work there. That means the old mailing list has had a flurry of “my new email address is…” messages.

When I called to straighten things out, I mentioned that one of my domains hasn’t worked for awhile, and they fixed that all up for me. They still had my old DSL in their system (although the tech confirmed I hadn’t logged into it for about 10 months). I may pay $5/month to keep the old email address, but I’m still debating that one.

As for where this site will live, I have a friend who has said he’ll “hook me up”. More details on that as/when it happens. With any luck, I’ll change the nameserver settings at godaddy, and then transfer over the files at the same time, and if everything works correctly, the move will be transparent. On the other hand, how often does everything work correctly the first time?

In response to Dr.Bombay’s post I’ll list all the hugo award winning novels I’ve read. Now, keep in mind, I actually had a goal to read them all at some point, (still do) so my average is no doubt a bit high.

I was surprised, actually, that I only had to look up one of them to see if I remembered it or not. I didn’t, but it was the 1980 winner, so I should have read it… maybe I just missed that one. (In case you can’t tell, I was trying to read them in order.)
Continue reading “he calls it geek homework”

My emotional/mental/physical status has been in roller coaster mode for what feels like weeks now. Fortunately, the sexual relationship turmoil issue has been completely taken care of. Laura and I are doing better than ever. She was extremely good to me after I had my wisdom teeth removed. (Hello Nurse!)

Mentally, mostly due (I think) to the drugs from my oral surgery, IÂ’ve been feeling not so fresh. My brain is like a pop-tart, hot and gooey inside, but all the sugar coating on the outside. I donÂ’t even know what thatÂ’s supposed to mean!

Physically, IÂ’m a wreck. One minute IÂ’m fine, then the next IÂ’m near tears until the ibuprofen kicks in. (I even resorted to the prescribed vicodin last night, which I hadnÂ’t thought I was going to do. I blame the donuts I really should NOT have thought I was well enough to chewÂ… but damnit, they were krispy kremes!)

The aforementioned vixen and I hung out last wednesday. She will probably be reading this soon. (Hello Vixen!) Things were great, the event was quite stimulating, but not in a physical way. The jury is still out on that one. We have been writing longish emails professing our love for one another. (Without ever actually using the word love, or any of its synonyms. Or even professing anything, really.)

[note of clarification: This is not to say I am in love with the vixen, or that the vixin is in love with me. Love is a sticky subject and was only used in this context for comedic impact.]

The last thing I remember was the doctor/dentist/surgeon telling me that I was going to be outnumbered in the room three-to-one, and that in a minute, I would know that they were winning. This was as he stuck the needle in my arm. I remember counting the syringes… there were at least three.

After that, I woke up in a room I hadn’t ever been in before. Except that I was far too gone to realize this until Laura described the room to me much later. The experience was probably akin to being abducted by aliens, except that they were all twenty-something female hotties, with the exception of the male doctor, who looked more like Ron Jeremy.

Speaking of porn, the first words out of my mouth to laura were “I want to have an orgy with all the nurses.” Actually this was after I apparently said “orgy” a couple of times until she could make it out. That’s actually the first thing I remember, but everything from then until about 12:30 or 1 this afternoon is like a movie in fast motion. I have a couple of snapshot moments before we got home, like telling Laura I should do more drugs, because I liked the way I felt, and then in the car wanting to go to funcoland. Then one more in the car saying I was glad we didn’t got to funcoland because I was staring to feel nauseous.

I have no memory of getting inside and getting into bed. I also don’t remember the first couple of times Laura put the ice packs on my cheeks.

For some reason, my lowwer right “hole” hurts more than all the other holes combined. (That’s also the tooth that hurt last weekend so badly that it prompted this whole endeavor.) So far I haven’t resorted to the perscription painkillers. A couple of ibuprofin has been enough. (Oh, and having sex with ice packs strapped to my head helped with some of the pain too.)

Next on the agenda, I’m going to tackle this fruit smoothie laura picked up at the wedge for me, and then maybe I’ll stumble downstairs to see about playing some mindless tetris. It’s already 4:30 in the afternoon, but it feels like maybe noon. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess.

[ps, I was going to title this entry “viva wisdomlessness”, but then I thought maybe I’d see how to translate wisdom into spanish, but sabiduria just doesn’t have the same ring to it. (and it’d have to be non sabiduria anyway.) But then on a whim I translated las vegas, and I was astounded how well that fit the subject at hand.]

Basically, the list is completely subjective and very rough draft. (I had about 60 at my initial posting.) The ratings are all based on my opinion, and some of them are not even all that informed, (as I frequently never finished playing the game in question). I know I am missing plenty, so help me out.

In some cases, mostly toward the top of the list, I’ve tried to rate games better based on plot and sci-fi content, but gameplay was always the foremost consideration. If a game isn’t fun to play, it shouldn’t really have appeared on this list at all.

There are so many games with sequels that in many cases I’ve combined the games into one listing. In some cases, a later version of the game is substantially better, and if that was the case I did try to split the games into two listings for the sake of their ratings.

Some games made the list that are probably only implied science fiction. The Myth series, for example. Usually this is because they are just too cool to leave out.

[Click “MORE…” to see the whole list.]
Continue reading “top 100 sci-fi video games”

So recently my friend Dr. Bombay posted a list of 100 best sci-fi films as decided by the Online Film Critics Society. It�s not a bad list, I mean, there are some great films on there. But there are also some notable absences, in my opinion. I started thinking about this when I realized that City of Lost Children makes the cut, while Jean-Pierre Jeunet�s earlier and more coherent masterpiece, Delicatessen, is nowhere to be found.

Ok, so that one can be explained away. It�s a relatively unknown french movie, and the english overdub version is known to be horrible. Not everybody likes subtitles. But far more disturbing in its absence is one of my favorite movies of all time, The Dark Crystal. That kind of negligence is criminal!

Also notably missing are humorous sci-fi movies. Toward the top of my list would be the parody Spaceballs. (Along with another great parody, Galaxy Quest.) Not to mention Mars Attacks!, which is hilarious and great.

I would like to have seen a list of all the submissions. I can think of a ton of other films that would maybe (probably) have made my cut, above some of the crap that was included in their list. (The x-men movie, Cocoon, Explorers, Final Fantasy, Ladyhawk, Legend, lawnmower man and David Lynch�s Dune, to name a few.)

Alright, so I haven�t thought much about the possibility that they were going for all sci-fi, and no fantasy. That would scratch the dark crystal, Ladyhawk and Legend off my list, I guess. But they include some that I would consider fantasy as well — Highlander (albeit low on the list), King Kong (which Nate pointed out was about as sci-fi as Jaws), Jacob’s Ladder, Pi and Donnie Darko. None of these movies were particularly sci-fi, for crying out loud!

My personal least favorite on the list is The Cell, although I know many people liked the movie, The Cell was barely sci-fi in my opinion. And while it was pretty to look at, the pathetic plot and poor acting would put the movie itself high on my list of worst movies of all time, lack of sci-fi not withstanding! I suppose it was technically more sci-fi than fantasy, however.

The list included Starman, (a shitty movie), but not The Last Starfighter! (Laura and Nate would also add Flight of the Navigator.)

More understandably, (especially if you were taking �how sci-fi were they� into account,) they included Superman, but not Batman (or Spider Man).

If we are including fantasy, a few more I would add to the list are Labyrinth, Willow, The Princess Bride, The NeverEnding Story, LOTR, and Harry Potter.

I am seriously thinking about making my own list. Almost as hard as putting them in order will be thinking of all of them. I wonder if that was the OFCS�s real problem. (I could make a separate list of top fantasy movies.)

Nate and I have been talking for a good hour now about what makes a movie sci-fi. I personally would rate movies that show the science above movies that are just conceptually sci-fi. Unfortunately, this leaves a lot of the older sci-fi classics right out of the picture, and also my original beef with the list, Delicatessen.

Anyway, this is a huge issue that I could probably think about until the end of the world.

OK, so here’s a story I haven’t told yet. My desk is the color of sunflowers, cans of lemon-scented-anything, non-gender-specific baby showers, and the sun. Yes, it’s yellow. But why is it yellow?! Because it’s covered in boxes of peeps!

You know what I’m talking about, I’ve posted about them before.

It’s no secret that I love these little marshmallow babies, but this was all made possible by someone I don’t even know (and his kids)!

I guess this guy at work won a year’s supply of peeps. You can see his kid’s winning easter basket submission here.

When he brought a box of 5 peeps for everyone in the building, I guess he had a lot left over, and since everyone knew I liked them, I got about 20 boxes on my desk before I got in that morning.

This was about a week ago, and my cube is still peepsville, Peep City, peep central.

Normally I would eat about a box a day, but for the past week (mostly due to this toothache) I haven’t eaten hardly any at all. Just now I ate about three of these succulent sugar-chicks, and suddenly I feel dizzy. Light headed even. I’m about to leave for the day, so lets hope I can make it home in one peep… I mean piece.

Well, I heard back from the vixen. No dice on the date night. Clark is right, it may be impossible to convince anyone to be part of my dating schemes. (See yesterday’s comments for a gargantuan exposition on non-monogamy.)

I feel really rejected. She was so clearly interested! She claims that she doesn’t feel “led on” or anything, she’s just not interested in being second, which is of course not the way I put things — but I can hardly argue the point.

Damn.

While pondering a subject line for this entry, it occurs to me that I could have saved telling her till after the date. I mean, did I do the right thing? If I’d been right there when she found out, would it have been better or worse? She made it clear that this was a tough decision for her to make… I still haven’t responded, and I’m liable to make a fool of myself trying to convince her there’s no harm in trying… Moot point now, but I think everything is probably better this way. No big surprises.

And now I have an appointment on Tuesday to have all my wisdom removed! How will I pick up chicks then!?!