Wednesday, November 23, 2005

No Day But Today

I'm probably more excited to see Rent today than a sane adult male should be. It's far-and-away my favorite musical (surpassing Phantom of the Opera right around when I saw RENT live for the first time). I seriously hope it's good. The movie version of Phantom was a good adaptation, so I'll hope for at least that level.

Not that I really feel like I need to, but if it makes you feel better about my manhood, how about a couple sports links?
In other news, there is snow on the ground outside. A good start to the season, I think.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Holiday Weeks Go Fast

Which is good, because I almost took this week off, and decided not to.

The weekend finished out pretty well. Sports-wise, in addition to OSU, the Browns won (amazingly), Steelers lost, Bengals lost, my fantasy teams look good. The Lightning won, and the Cavs won one on Saturday. Really can't complain at all there.

Work went pretty quickly today - lots of stuff needing done, and a three-day week to do them in. The downside to not taking the week off is that it means still no vacation to look forward to in the foreseeable future. We could still take off some time in December, but don't really have anything in particular to do for vacation, trying not to spend too much money, especially on top of the usual holiday gift-spending. We're open to suggestions, however, if you have any particularly stirring suggestions.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

A GOOD Heart Attack

OSU 25, Michigan 21.

Man, what a stressful game to watch. Haven't been too many of those close games this season, but this one definitely kept us on the edges of our seats. And when Anthony Gonzales came down with that pass on the 5 in the last minute, there was much rejoycing. Tressel goes 4-1 against big Blue, including two wins in the Big House. Awesome. Too bad Penn State won to keep the automatic berth and deny the outright championship - but on the other hand, good for JoePa bringing his team outta nowhere to a season like that. Also fun to watch last night was Georgia Tech knocking off #3 Miami. Should be good for us in getting one of the at-large BCS berths... UNLESS it means they don't win the ACC and steal one of the at-large bids.

Saw the new Harry Potter movie after the games last night. I still haven't read any of the books, but I must say the movies are very well made, with some very awesome scenery. Lots of oohs and aahs to be had.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Twice in one day?

Surely I must be crazy.

Well, that may be true, but there are a few things that I felt I had to share from Warren Ellis's page.
  • Apparently in India, the whole witch hunt thing still makes for a fun pasttime. I know it's India being talked about here, but seriously - what year is it? And they just passed this anti-witchcraft law in 1999?
  • Apparently it's against the law to be a revisionist historian in Austria. Laws against denying the Holocaust ever happened. Nutty.
  • He also passed along a status report on this season's new TV shows. Apparently I don't actually watch ANY of this season's new shows. I haven't even heard of a lot of those. Of the ones I can comment on:
    • Amy watches "Commander in Chief". I thought it was just OK. Not a big fan of political drama. (Yes, that means I never cared about "The West Wing" either).
    • Caught one episode of "Invasion" - it was confusing and boring. I'll pass.
    • Caught one episode of "Ghost Whisperer" - it was pretty decent, I'd watch it again. Has a very strong "Tru Calling" feel. Not really sold on Jennifer Love Hewitt in it (man she's not looking so great these days), but it works OK.
    • "Bones" - caught one episode. It was very uninspired, nothing there to set it apart from the scores of other crime dramas.
    • Caught part of "Prison Break", and Gary's constantly selling me on it. It looks pretty interesting, but at this point I don't want to jump-in midway. Guess I'll wait for the DVDs. Also, I'm not sure how this concept could be drug out for MORE than one season without getting annoying.
Ok, that's all for today. If you care, don't forget the other new entry...

Snow Long And Thanks For All The Fish

Snow this morning. Insane. None of it stuck, but there were still a LOT of good sized flakes coming down for a good length of time. On the news this morning, they'd somehow managed to build a tiny little snowman out of it (like maybe 2-3 inches tall). The temperature drop from yesterday to today is obscene, going from almost 70 to snow. Gotta love Ohio.

I finished Lullaby last night. Once I actually dedicated my attention to it, it was an insanely fast read. I love Palahniuk's style, and this book was a very entertaining read, but I think it falls a little short of his other stuff I've read. Still, like I said, I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I'd still recommend it to folks who are fans of his style. Invisible Monsters remains my favorite Palahniuk book so far. Starting on Choke soon, if not tonight.

Was reading an article on one of the most recent PETA stunts, and saw a link to this 7 Things You Don't Know about PETA article. I don't know how much (if any) of this is exaggerated or taken out of context, but crazy man, crazy. #2 seems to be the height of hipocracy, and #6 blew my mind. Holocaust On Your Plate!! You have got to be kidding me. No matter how loony-tunes, you've got to admire their guts to try and pull crap like that.

Check out this Fun little brain-excercise/shape matching game to kill some time.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Stalker.Net Strikes Again

I've mentioned it before, but it cracks me up how careless some folks are with their personal information on Facebook and the like. I guess they figure "hey, only people at my own university or people I've friended can see it, so it must be safe"... or more likley, they just don't think about it at all. Maybe getting busted for drinking will cause folks to think again... after all, if the university will exploit it, what about all those bad guys out there? I also got a kick from this article on how it's affected the whole Greek scene. (and on an unrelated note, I love that "Big Picture" story-web CNet's using these days)

While I get back to work, amuse yourselves with looking up significant events from ANYDAY Today-In-History, or check out "Brainy History" for today...

Monday, November 14, 2005

F Your Monday

A three day weekend doesn't make coming back to work any easier. Finally getting over the bird flu, but it's left me with this lingering cough which is bugging the crap out of me. It also left me achy and sore most of the weekend. Fun fun.

The weekend wasn't an entire wash. Friday Amy & I checked out the new Drexel Gateway Theater and saw Shopgirl. The theater itself is pretty cool. Set up a BIT strange, being all on the second story, with very steeply inclined theaters for some serious stadium-seating. Brand new, so that means nice and clean. Seems to be sticking to their guns so far and showing more indie/art-film leaning stuff. Amy & I both enjoyed the movie. It was a nice little story, well acted by Claire Danes and Steve Martin both. It's got me wondering about the book now... I may have to add it to the list of "to reads".

Football-wise, OSU won, the Browns lost, and I split another fantasy week between my two leagues. With Priest Holmes out for the season in KC, what was looking like a very strong team in my one league has completely disintegrated. Trent Green netted me a whopping -6 pts this week. ROCKIN.

Gotta get going... some linkage:

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

BLS, Football, Election Day, Linkage

The Black Label Society concert Friday night was a great time. It was at the Newport, and this was my first trip there post-smoking ban. Well, as you might expect, there were still a decent number of people smoking there anyway, including one chain smoker who was right below where we were on the rail, but even still, there was a noticable difference in the quality of the air. And people didn't really start smoking until the show started, so there was plenty of dead time before with smoke-free air and a remarkably clear view of the interior of the Newport. The show itself was a blast. Brand New Sin opened, and they were dead on. They were apparently filming for a live video or something, as they had a big ol camera, boom mic and the works, and were getting the crowd really jazzed up. A truly great response, especially considering they were they opening band. BLS took forever to get setup... I think there was a minimum of 45 minutes between sets, but probably more like an hour or more. It was pretty ridiculous, and the mega-long wait really took any "thrill" out of their big opening medley of recordings -- by that point I was like "get the hell out here and play already". They played a good long set, with lots of good stuff, but the mix was off pretty badly. From what I could hear the band was solid, but the mix was crappy and it made it hard to enjoy a number of the songs. Ah well... maybe next time.

This was a great weekend for football too. OSU won, which was pretty expected, but they really surprised me by actually covering the spread. They didn't look flawless, but it was a solid game, and hopefully they keep it up and run the table. Even winning out, I don't know that we'll get a BCS bowl-bid unless Penn State drops a game, but we should still be well-placed. Sunday was the true insanity, as the BROWNS WON! Didn't get to watch it on TV, of course (stupid Bengals), but Dad & I listened to it on the radio, and it was nice to see (hear) the Browns come through for once... especially after the disappointing loss to the then-winless Texans. As far as fantasy football goes, I split, winning one and losing the other, but still - the real thing's better than fantasy any day.

It's Election Day. Go out there and vote. I definitely plan on voting on my way home. In Ohio there are five big state issues, plus other important stuff like school levees and the like.

Some linkage on my way out:

Friday, November 04, 2005

Tonight

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Holy November! Alone Again

Yeah, so it's November. Only two months left in 2005. I guess when you get old, time really flies.

Amy's currently on her last big trip of the season/year, which means that I'm smack-dab in the middle of the latest episode of Max's Home Alone Adventure. I must admit that I have found myself wondering several times what I used to do with all my free time in the days before City of Heroes. I have found that I missed out on a lot of great console games while I was sucked-in, so this is giving me a good chance to catch-up. Currently, I'm playing a lot of Def Jam Fight for NY, the sequel to Def Jam Vendetta. I'm a big fan of wrestling-style fighting games, so it's a great time. And it's insane all the people they've got in it. That's some mega-license-action. Also probably going to have to get around to checking out "Destroy All Humans", the X-Men Legends series, Civ IV, and more.

In other mindless entertainment news, VH1's new show But Can They Sing? is HORRIBLE. It's got the now familiar D-level "celebrities" in an American Idol-esque singing competition, complete with viewer voting. But they're pretty much resoundly TERRIBLE. It's like watching a train wreck. And to make it worse, they get mostly POSITIVE feedback instead of the tear-downs that really ought to be coming.

Quick and links:
Also been playing with Wallop, Microsoft's experimental (beta, or whatever) social-networking-type-thing. Not quite sure where the need for yet another social network is, but it's got a really interesting flash interface, so it at least makes it kind of fun to play around with for an hour or two.