April 2005 Archives

Best quote from tonight's episode of Sheer Dallas....

We watched this show last week out of Sheer Curiosity and it is actually quite good, despite the bizarre promos. The two main characters (guys) are hairdressers, one straight and one gay, and each week they also weave in two or three other people's stories. I expected it to be very much a "look at these stooopid big-haired wanna-be-cowboy Texans" but they manage to portray even the Miss Dallas County contestant (last week) with some dignity.

The show is big on camp and silly situations and there are lots of laugh-out-loud lines and basically the stories are of the "feel good" variety so the whole thing is light-hearted and fun. So far, I love it.

When the MO is away, the Magpie will play. Usually this means watching a movie. (The MO hates movies. Consequently I am soooo far behind the cinematic times that it is usually very easy to find something to watch on the cable pay-per-view.) Last night I chose Bridget Jones. I vaguely remembered reading the book and thinking it was at least passably entertaining, and I like Colin Firth and Hugh Grant is dreamy, so it seemed like a safe choice. Oh. Well.

This is a spectacularly bad movie. Renee Zellweger's character is absolutely insufferable. I was ready to reach into the screen and throttle her. Apparently her entire acting directions were:

"Every five seconds assume a new facial expression chosen from this list:

• Simper
• Crinkle nose
• Moue
• Furrow brow (lightly!)
• Blank surprise

Oh, and walk like a duck, stick out your fanny and your tummy at the same time, and never display a particle of grace when wearing heels."

If those were her directions, she did a great job. The utter vacuousness and doormatness of the character was unbearable. I watched about fifteen minutes of it and gave up when I realized I was clenching the remote and hollering cuss words at the tv.

Back to the iControl menu. Second go-round I found DeLovely. And it was DeLightful (had to do that, doncha know). It felt uncomfortable at first, because it's quite a contrived presentation but I got into it fairly quickly. (You'd have to like musicals, certainly.)

I didn't really know anything about Cole Porter other than his music. Turns out he was rather a grade-a bastard in some ways, but I didn't hate his character the way I hated the Bridget character. (Does that mean I tolerate cruelty more willingly than stupidity? Hmmm.) My only real beef with the movie is that I just don't like it when they try to use makeup to age people. It doesn't work. I think I can handle the "willing suspension of disbelief" myself. Just slap a white wig on the guy and we'll get the idea.

Lots of housecleaning--today was absolutely gorgeous so we opened all the windows that do that trick and got some fresh air. The cats spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get out....

(Yes, the dumb-bell ended up in the garden when I closed the window. Must remember to go rescue it tomorrow....)

Washed draperies and shower curtains. Bleached the tub. MO did a major renovation on the big fishtank. I made a necklace in tribute ;-)

I know the picture is fuzzy, but the splitter and pendant are Gita sterling enameled pieces that I bought years ago. Finally figured out what to do with them!

I saw two things in the paper yesterday (the WSJ, no less) that made me curl my lip.

The first was a headline, something like "How Bush and Cheney Avoided the AMT". Well, duh, they did it the same way Mr. & Mrs. Oilman do it--they owe more under the "regular" rules. Last time I checked (although, hey, the man of the house does the taxes around here, so I could be wrong, but I DON'T THINK SO), you get to pay the greater of the AMT or the regular calculations, not the lesser. There's no "avoidance" involved. So what's up with the sensationalistic headline?

The second was a bit in an article about the new food pyramid. It might have been a quote, I don't remember, but I don't think it was. Anyhow, the sentence suggested that the new dietary guidelines were "putting the problem of obesity right back in the hands of the American people." Well, yeah, isn't that where the responsibility lies? What, you want the government to pop you on the wrist with a ruler when you eat that second donut? Heavens to betsy, people. Grow a spine and grow up.

The featured article on wikipedia today is the Krag-Jorgensen repeating bolt action rifle. Hmm.

WTF? I just saw a Kool-Aid commercial and... and.... Since when does Kool-Aid wear clothing?? This is what he's supposed to look like, okay? Pants. Really, now.

Stiction

A sticking valve caused by friction within the valve can seriously degrade control loop performance. This phenomenon is called valve stiction. The more your valve suffers from stiction, the more your loop will oscillate around the setpoint.

Wow. Who knew. My loops are all oscillatory just thinking about it. The things you learn in a day's work....

Or rather, lock the cash box. Kim once again extols the virtues of the Ruger Blackhawk .30 Carbine revolver.... I know this is high on MO's wish list, and he spent some time fondling one at the NRA show this weekend. Of course, he fondled a lot of other guns, too, so who knows what will be next.

The coolest thing I saw at the show wasn't actually a gun, since I'm feeling fairly satisfied in that department (MO does a very good job of keeping me armed--thank you sweetie :-) but rather was this cool gizmo. It's a "bullet" fitted with a laser light. You load this thing and when you dry fire, it zaps the laser and you can see exactly where you were aiming. At home, for instance.... Without going to the range, for example....

They have kits for various calibers of pistol, revolver, rifle and shotgun. MO sez the cost of the kit would buy a lot of ammo, but then, he's a pretty good natural shot already--some of us aren't. I love the idea of practicing at home without the bang, as it were. And count the range fees, not just the ammo, and the cost gets better. Plus, what FUN!

All things furry and fuzzy at the Carnival of the Cats (hosted by Watermark) and the Friday Ark (as always at the Modulator).

Too cute for words, really.

Shelley has a good post here that gives her answer to "why would anyone wanna be a programmer?" My answer is remarkably similar to hers. The part that really caught me was near the end:

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Never take a coder for granted.... In moments like this, we almost have all the power of the universe in our fingertips because we make things work.

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That's it--that feeling of YESSSSSSS! It's a control thing.
When I physically create something beautiful (a piece of jewelry or a book, for example) I am usually more stunned than proud. I have absolutely zero confidence that I will be able to make something that gorgeous again. It was probably a fluke, you know. I got lucky--didn't even know my hands could do that. I'm grateful more than anything else.
But when I get a piece of code working the way I want it to, I am intimately aware of every piece of the process that went into it. I remember the sticking points, and the leaps of logic that got me around them, and the Aha! moments that lead to something brilliant. I made it, I own it, I understand it. (Well, I may not understand it a couple of months from now, but we're talking about the immediate results.) I feel pride, definitely. I admire my brain for a little while, until the next insurmountable problem comes along.
This is one of the things that has kept me at my job through some pretty unpleasant times. Because as much as I admire my own brain ;-) I realize that my coworkers really know what they're doing.

PS - The MO is busy, too. I've heisted this entire entry from Lileks only because I'm not sure there is going to be a permalink when he reinstitutes the Bleat. MO assures me that Lileks is spot on....

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The following is copied from and presumably copyrighted by James Lileks, who is wonderful and someone I really really really would not want to piss off because I like his writing very much.

April 13 update: All work, no play, etc: I was sent a sign. In the middle of today"s huge print & edit session the doorbell rang. The dog barked. UPS. A box from Amazon, with all the movies I intend to watch after the book's done - and Doom 3. I'd promised myself I would play it when the book was done. Well . . .no. Stick to the goals.

But. By the end of the night I'd finished printing everything I could print. Sure, I could work on the last few pages, but I'd been going since the early AM, and the day"s work had included two columns for my day jobs. Surely it wouldn"t hurt to see what the game was like.

I know I've mentioned this before, ad nauseum, but one of the moments in gaming I'll never forget was in '94, when the first Doom came out. Second level. The warehouse. Flickering lights. Monsters panting in the darkness. If you played the game, you know what I mean. Compared to modern games it"s practically a Muybridge strip, but at the time it was pretty cool, and genuinely unnerving.

Well. This is worse. And by worse I mean better. It"s the same old story, those careless scientists opening up portals to Hell again. Will they ever learn? What"s the point? Do they think they can get monopolize the tourist traffic? It"s just like Half-Life, inasmuch as you spent the first part of the game walking deep down into the complex, then something goes Horribly Wrong, and you have to fight your way out. Been there fragged that. What sets it apart are the graphics, the claustrophobic design, the darkness, the audio. Pretty harrowing, if you"re in the mood to be harrowed.

And I was. I turned all the lights off. I put on the headphones. I was down in a dark corridor, hearing the screams of the Marines on the communications systems, the bangs on the wall, the groan of bending metal; I had my shotgun. I stepped towards the stairs, looking up at the shadows swinging on the wall, expecting to see some hellspawn feasting on the entrails of a scientist, when the door opened and out came the zombies. I fell back, crouched, pressed into a recess, waiting, waiting, waiting...

All the while, unbeknownst to me, Gnat had entered my room. She came up behind me and grabbed my headphones and ripped them off my head, and ladies and gentlemen: I jumped 20 feet and cried out the Name of Our Savior with such force that plaster wafted from the beams above.

So is Doom 3 scary?

Why yes. Yes, it is.

(PS: looks great on a stock Mac dual-processor G5. Decent frame rate with minor lag before you enter a new room; levels load reasonably fast. Audio is impressive, but you'll get a headache from the shotgun. Creature design is mortifying. It's taken many cues from "Aliens," which is a good thing. In that oh-my-god-no bad thing sort of way.)

I'm busy reading.

08:32 AM- crack: we are rock / cold as ice [silent fantasy] on the tigerbeat 6, 2003 label.
08:28 AM- de novo dahl / be your man [cats and kittens] on the theory 8 label.
08:24 AM- fiery furnaces, the / i'm leaving [sunday nights: the songs of junior kimbrough] on the fat possum label.

Ok. This was what I heard on the way to work this morning. The Fiery Furnaces things was weird funky blues with a disco whistle. De Novo Dahl is the band that Jet wishes they were. And the Crack cover of Foreigner's Cold as Ice has to be heard to be believed. I want all these records.

KTRU PLEASE DO NOT EVER GO AWAY!

In honor of the impending parental visit, MO started a batch of beer today. The recipe is "Pacific Northwest Red" but MO is drawing on industry knowledge for his names so this one will be "California Kern River".

but BatGrrl is movin' on up!!

I had some bats a-swingin' yesterday. But tomorrow I'll be sliding back down, because my pitching staff is Not So Hot and put up lousy numbers today. But I will always have this moment to fondly remember.

The first few weeks are the most fun because the numbers shift so wildly. After a few months, everybody gets settled in and it's harder to move around much. But for now, some good news to offset this stupid cold that's got me down.

We sat out on our back step for a while a few days ago, soaking in the beautiful weather. We saw lots of birds, and eventually spied this squirrel, zonked out on a tree limb. After a while, he woke up and started doing regular squirrel things, and we found out where all the green leaves on our driveway come from. (Squirrels are very messy eaters.) He even treated us to a few aerobatic displays.

We also enticed Lorax to come out and visit. She knows she's not supposed to go outside, so it took a bit of convincing. For the longest time, she kept her feet on the very edge of the porch and just streeeeeetched her neck out as far as possible.

She did finally come out on the top step, but she didn't stay for long. She probably figured it was all a trick and she was still going to get in trouble, but of course she didn't :-)

It was a wonderful way to spend an hour, basking in the sun, spotting birds (although we never did identify "the alarm clock bird"), taking pictures, and just enjoying our house and each other--some magic moments to tuck away and file under "happy things".

TxB joins the revolution :-)

Time to update the blogroll, which I've been meaning to do for a while anyhow. This is as good a reason as any....

So I somehow managed to volunteer myself to take over the website for my neighborhood association. Being the way I am, I couldn't just do something I already knew how to do. Oh no, much more fun to learn some new tool ;-) I had already been investigating drupal, thinking about using it for my own site (and I still am thinking that, but maybe not quite so soon) but I ended up with mambo, 'cause godaddy offers it installed, and that's where the site was parked, and the hosting is reasonable, so that's what I went with. Even with the cursory work that I've done, I can see that mambo is not as infinitely flexible as drupal, but thanks to my day job, I know a lot about the trade-offs that come with flexibility. (Can you say learning curve? Yeah, I thought you could.) I got this mambo thing set up with content in about six hours, and a lot of that was spent dicking around with the php mail command (which doesn't want to send to any other domain, even with that -f parameter, so I've disabled registration for now). End result, I'm fairly pleased with myself, and I really like the CMS concept. It's like having MT for your whole website. I'm now very curious to look closer at sixapart's new site and see if MT maybe could be used for my whole site. The main thing I want to do is incorporate a registration-based gallery (for future CATDIPs, my friends! The CATDIP will return!).

(Wow. I think this post sets some kind of record for links-to-words ratio.)

The Friday Ark is up at the Modulator and the Carnival of the Cats will be at CathColl.net this week. Go get your furry fix :-)

Company holiday today. Lorax says, "Go have a beer and leave me alone."