Monday, January 22, 2007

Busy Sunday, Poor Car, Poor Animals

Happy Monday... or something. I actually had a pretty good weekend. Saturday was largely a lazy. Hung out with the fam, went out for a tasty lunch at Amy's favorite (Texas Roadhouse), etc. Nothing really of note. Contrast with Sunday, which actually wound up being pretty busy. Didn't go to church because of the horrible weather, but we did hang out with Amy's mom & cousin and watched X-Men 3 instead, so that was fun. After that I got to play beast of burden/photographer at Evie's first swim lesson . I had a blast watching and taking pictures - the class is all people we know (Evie, Allison, Katie, Audry, and Glenn), so that was funny too. Be sure to read Amy's writeup for all the details (and of course, pics).

After swim-time I shoveled the drive/walk (first snow of the year and it's ~3 inches + a bit o' ice!) and then watched some football. I was rooting for the Saints, so it's a bummer that they went down so hard to Chicago, but I don't really have a beef with the Bears. I mostly just can't believe how lopsided it was - LOTS of mistakes by the Saints. I think the poor weather (and poor field condition especially) definitely played a role. I was definitely very happy to see the Indy/New England game - it was a really well-played game, with a nicely orchestrated comeback on the Colts' part. Peyton finally gets over the hump by beating the nemesis Patriots and making it to the Super Bowl. Now can he win the big one? I guess we'll see in two weeks. I'm actually pretty bummed out that the Super Bowl's only two weeks away, because that means that two weeks from today begins the months-long sad span that is known as the football off-season. I just can't get into other sports at anywhere NEAR the same interest level.

In other news, been having some car issues lately. To begin with, I'm well overdue for an oil change and just need to make the time to get that done. Not easy with Evie around, but my laziness is also playing a role here too - I hate taking my car to the shop, even for an oil change, as something else always winds up being wrong. Last week/weekend during the endless downpour I noticed my speakers warbling a bit. They've been fine since, but I'm wondering if I got a wet wire somewhere which was causing things to not do well... And finally, this morning as I turned on the car I noticed that one of my headlights is out. Fun fun. So I guess I'll be taking it in sooner rather than later. (Oh, and of course my a/c is still broken, but it being winter that doesn't really matter at the moment). My poor car just needs some TLC.

Last but not least, I got a huge kick out of this this morning - check out this breed of goats that go stiff-legged when they get exited:



Then there's this poor dog with narcolepsy. I feel bad, but it's so funny it's hard not to laugh:



There's a longer video here about a different dog with narcolepsy (a news story about a poodle with the condition) - with the full story it's more sad than funny, but there are still some pretty entertaining zonk-out moments from the poor dog...

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Yeah Toast

Or maybe it should be "Yeah, Toasta". Check this out:


I need one of these! A ceramic toaster that pulls the bread through this little stand-up thingy and spits toast out onto a nice forked-catching rack on the other side. This design won first prize at a "Ceramics for Breakfast" competition over at DesignBoom. According to the designer, "This toaster is designed to engage the user, re-invigorating the social context of toasting by questioning everything about what we toast with today." Read more about it.

I really could've used one of those last week and earlier this week while in the grips of la grippe. I'm well on the road to recovery at this point, but I believe that was one of the worst colds I've had in recent memory - perhaps ever. Holy crap that was no good....

In other good news, I read on BoingBoing today that they're going to be turning one of my favorite books into a SciFi Channel Miniseries. George Clooney is executive producing a miniseries based on Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. (see SciFi news blurbs here).

The book is set in a pretty distant-future type setting with a society based around the wonders of nanotechnology. It's a big departure from my favorite Stephenson book (Snow Crash, which is a gritty pure-cyberpunk type book - in fact, IMO it's one of THE definitive cyberpunk stories. I'd LOVE to see an adaptation of that), but I still really enjoyed it. I'd say I'm definitely excited to see the miniseries here, but I'm also pretty skeptical on how well they can pull it off - all the nanotechnology effects in the book are going to make for some pretty hardcore special effects and CGI-work, and the book's immersive interactive storybook/illustrated primer (as mentioned in the subtitle) leads the book on some pretty odd tangents which, while interesting, could have a hard time translating to a TV audience. Since it was only just announced, it'll be a long time before it makes it on the air, and there's always the possibility it'll die on the production shelf and the project will never see the light of day... I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Is it Friday yet?


To say I'm having a bad week would be an understatement.

I started coming down with a cold sometime over the weekend. A coworker was showing symptoms on Thursday, so I suspect he's to blame for this particular infection. It started out slow enough that I thought I was going to get by without any major symptoms, but the decline continued and I hit condition critical last night. I'm NyQuil/DayQuilling through the day today - hopefully it's a short one.

Then there was the OSU football debacle Monday night. Yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say about that. At least it was a good time hanging out with everyone BEFORE the game massacre started. Chris has some pics up over at his site.

Unfortunately OSU sports let-downs weren't through yet, as last night the men's basketball team dropped a tough one to Wisconsin. This SHOULD'VE been a blowout as well, but the team managed a rally near the end... which fell a bit short. So far the basketball team has only beaten people we're "supposed" to beat. For a team sporting the supposed greatest college basketball player in all creation and even some fictional worlds, that's not that impressive. Hopefully as Oden continues to get healthy, they'll continue to refine the game around him and everyone will settle into the proper roles.

Coach Matta can't believe the week I'm having either!

So that brings us to last night - my cold is on full-bore and I can't get to sleep worth crap, so I take a shot of the good ol' big Fing Q, original green death flavor. It does it's job and I finally get to sleep - only to get woken up at ~1:50 or so by work. (I'm on call this week). I pursue the issue for the next hour or so and end up getting BACK to sleep shortly after 3. Alarm goes off at 5:30, I zombie-walk through the motions, discover WINTER HAS FINALLY ARRIVED (the first noticeable snow of the year on January 10th? Are you kidding me? Well, at least it looked thin enough to not bother shoveling the drive.

I've been fighting off dozing through the morning. Wish me luck.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

The Waters Are Hating



It seems like most of the best stuff on SNL in recent years comes in the animated & digital shorts. TV Funhouse (I can't believe they've been airing those for TEN YEARS now) stuff like this, plus the newer digital shorts (especially the Lonely Island stuff like "Lazy Sunday" and of course "A Special Christmas Box").

Anyway, so I caught this on the rerun tonight and it had me cracking up. Quality parody, especially with all the poor translations and nonsensical cameos.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Silent Star Wars

This is so well done - my only beef is that I wish it was longer! There's so much MORE he could've gotten into the concept. Maybe even keeping the same length, but breaking it into three separate parts (all about this length) rather than all rolled into one?

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

The Darkside: Not Quite So Dark?

Playing around with different blogger templates to try and find something a bit easier on the eyes (for folks out there who don't dig the white-on-black -- I know you're out there).

Hopefully this one works a little better. I wish there were an easier way to make it more...interesting... but their fancy new template-system doesn't play too nicely with major hackage. I'd really like to at least get an image up sharing the title bar or something - we'll see. I can't imagine getting a wealth of time to poke at it any time soon.

The Shadowbox Shindig was a blast. Amy & I were talking it out and we're pretty sure it was our 5th straight year, which is awesome. This year we had a table (from the Fireball) AND one extra, so a total of nine in the group! Amy & I both got all fancied-up for the night out:


I will say the difference between expectations here is a bit unfair. Me getting fancied up involves a t-shirt, jeans, and a non-tucked in dress shirt, combined with messing up my hair with some gel. Conversely, Amy spent quite some time mastering the look - and she looked good! See for yourself:



One fun side-effect of this look for me is how easily it slips into greaser-mode, as can be seen at the left. I don't know what the hell was going on in this pic - I think I was talking or something.

Anyway, we had a blast - BillWho? put on a great show, as always. Added bonuses this year were a complete lack of Christmas music (it's good and all, but by New Years especially it's time to move on), Carrie Lynn getting back into action, Gabe back in action, a few preview songs from the upcoming Sex, Lies and Shadowbox, and of course, favorites from the past couple years worth of shows. Mary doing "Space Truckin'" just owns.

For more recap of the night, including a great pic of me making good use of the party favors, see Laurie's recap. Inexplicably, she's also got a picture of Amy's abandoned uncomfy shoes (they made it about 20 mins in). Because hey, why not?

Hope everyone's having a great new year so far. Less than a week 'till the OSU-Florida National Championship Game (woot!) and the end of the college football season (un-woot :( ). Enjoy the games while you still can!