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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

  • First Weekend Of May 2008

    Hey, it’s a weekend catch-up post! We haven’t done one of these in a while…

    Friday: Lil’ shouldn’t be allowed into Best Buy unsupervised. I don’t count, as I’m not a very good supervisor. Then again, I did get the BSG miniseries DVD out of it (since she doesn’t need it anymore). I’m also a couple of books into the Eric Flint “1632” franchise; it’s not too shabby, all things considered, though I imagine that my interest will wane after another massive volume or so.

    Saturday (daytime): Erica and I watched Alex do improv theater games in a park in the rain for an hour or so. Amusing it was, but eventually it got cold and we got bored so off to Burgerville we went. It’s appalling how much BV charges for a “large” cup of orange juice. Oy.

    Saturday (night IRON MAN): Kyla and I decided to do the dinner-and-a-movie thing. Oh, what an excellent movie! I’ll spare you the full review (since, let’s see, nearly everyone on the Internet has reviewed the thing already) but suffice to say that it’s a solid, entertaining, surprisingly restrained, well acted, beautifully produced superhero movie which benefits from a touch of gritty realism but without the bloody mayhem or out-of-place sex scenes (the only one in the movie is very short and played entirely for laughs). Even the scenery chewing is kept to reasonable limits. The funny bits were genuinely funny! I know, I’m as amazed as you are. Robert Downey, Jr completely owns the role of Tony Stark. The other actors range from “quite good” to “better than expected,” though it’s not a movie with a large main cast. I think the worst special effect in the movie is Jeff Bridges’ skullcap. (Turns out that it wasn’t a skullcap after all; his head somehow managed to look wrong nonetheless. Oh well, minor quibble.) In short: Unless you hate action movies, you should see Iron Man. (As for the “after-credits” thing… all I can say is, better Sam The Man than David Hasselhoff.)

    Saturday (late night): “Doctor Who,” end of the first two-parter in the 4th series of the “new Who.” We love Donna, we love Martha Version 2.0, we don’t necessarily love setting the atmosphere on fire, and the next-episode preview left me wondering what new kinds of drugs the “Who” producers have got their grubby hands on now. The love child of a Timelord and Baby Spice? Really, now.

    Sunday: Game day. Well, after we foraged for grub, anyway. In the “City Of” world, my lead villain dinged 40 and opened up her patron powers while my top Defender finally became a “real” Kin by acquiring Fulcrum Shift. Hellooooo, massive buff/debuff! Later, with “the boys,” I snuck in a win at Power Grid followed by a modest but respectable showing at Quiddler. Not bad for competing against five smart blokes, wot?

  • Nice try, scamming bastards.

    I suppose I was overdue for someone to try scamming me.

    I just got off the phone with a thickly-accented person who claimed to be from the “Domain Notification Service,” or the “Domain Registration Notification Service,” or something like that. (Phone number: 800-224-8606 for the record.) He wanted to update the contact information for one of my registered domains. My first tip-off is that he got the domain wrong, but that could’ve been a fluke. Unfortunately for the loser in question, I’m the sort of paranoid fellow who insists on getting full name and company identification from anyone who cold-calls me digging for information. I pointed out, in increasingly strong terms, that I will not divulge any information to someone who doesn’t sound even remotely like they’re associated with my domain registrar.

    He insisted that it was vital that I “update” the contact information through him. “No,” I said. My registrar provides services to do exactly that, in a reasonably secure online fashion no less. We went round and around through this pointless loop a couple of times before I wearied of the stupidity entirely and said, “You do not represent my domain registrar and we have nothing further to say to one another,” at which point I hung up… and headed straight for Google.

    It would seem that my instincts were spot-on: Scam Alert! Domain Registry Support. Had I continued the call and divulged any information, I’d probably find myself saddled with a .US domain and (of course) the associated bill. Thanks, but no thanks, you shady bastards.

    So, keep in mind always that if someone calls, faxes or mails you and claims to be acting on behalf of your domain registrar, do whatever it takes to establish their bona fides. Better safe than sorry, always.

  • This is eerily close to home for me.

    Remember when everything was “e-something,” and then it all became “i-something” except for a couple of holdouts like “e-commerce” and “e-cards”? I’ve never been the world’s biggest “e-card” fan, but in the last two weeks I’ve been introduced to a couple of sites which amuse me. (I hasten to warn my gentle readers that some of the cards include concepts and language which can best be described as “distinctly naughty.”)

    First came the surreal and occasionally amusing Wrongcards, a site that includes a substantial section devoted to zombies. I’m not making this up.

    Today I was led to someecards.com at which I immediately found a couple that I couldn’t resist sending to certain individuals. But here’s the one which made my eyes bug out a bit, in no small part because I happen to agree with it:

    someecards.com Genesis reunion tour card

    I mean, really now. How many Genesis fans are out there in the e-card manufacturing business, anyway?

    (In case my fellow Genesis fans are wondering: I purchased the 2007 reunion tour double-CD set, and I wasn’t particularly impressed. Phil sounds kind of terrible on a few songs, I’m afraid.)

  • Compy Swappy And Other Geeky Detritus

    Operating under the assumption that a change is as good as a rest, I’ve swapped the computers in my room. Now the computer I spend 99% of my time on is situated at the desk which features actual legroom. Oh, and the monitor is now much, much closer to my face so I’m not leaning across the desk all the time just so I can read.

    Mind you, I’ll still use the other desk when I have company over for computer gaming. This means, yes, that guests will now be enjoying the badass compy instead of the slightly gimpy “gaming” compy.

    I should have done this months ago.

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try out Unreal Tournament.

    Afterward I plan to work on a 3.5 gigabyte collection of my favorite songs so I can load up my Insignia Pilot portable player. This way I’ll be able to just switch it on, tell it to play everything, turn on “random” mode and hear a whole bunch of songs I like all the way to work and back. The previous plan (selecting some of my favorite albums and swapping them out from time to time because there isn’t enough room for all of them) left me agonizing over what to listen to each time I fired up the player, and skipping songs because very few albums are completely perfect, and hopping from album to album periodically, and… yeah. Screw it. Nothing but songs I love, as many as I can fit in, and I should be golden.

    First, though: UT. Yeah.

  • Wavatars in, Tags out

    Post tagged:

    Thanks to Gravatar’s new support for Shamus Young’s Wavatars, and thanks to the Easy Gravatar plugin, not only are Gravatars back but each commentator gets an auto-generated Wavatar (which they can, of course, replace by registering a user icon choice with Gravatar).

    I should whip up a colophon page listing all of the neat bits from hither and yon that go into making this journal work. Some day. Yep.

    In other news, the tags have all gone away because I got sick and tired of fiddling with them. I didn’t actually delete them but, other than in the handful of postings in which I used them, they won’t appear anywhere at all. (Even in those posts they’re barely noticeable.) (EDIT: Oh look, there’s a mass delete function for tags built into WordPress 2.5! They’re gone for good now!) It’s for the best, really: I went batty at times with trying to figure out what existing tags fit a given post and having to create new tags all the time because none of the existing tags fit. Forget it. If tags are what the cool kids are doing, I’m okay being uncool. The last thing I need is something else slowing down my posting output!

    Of course, crossposts to LJ continue to be automatically tagged… with the category from WordPress. Go figure.

  • Things I Am Not

    Every now and then I find myself bothered by the fact that I can’t connect with individuals from among the vast sea of humanity. I’m not talking about a particular kind of connection, rather about anything beyond the most fleeting and superficial minute or two of small talk in passing. My lack of common ground with almost everyone I meet forms the basis of the problem, undoubtedly. Allow me to collate, if not elucidate, via this incomplete yet extensive list:

    I am not (in no particular order) a drinker, smoker, taker of drugs, religious believer, fan of sitcoms or reality television or the evening news or sports, dedicated follower of fashion, fitness nut, vegetarian, vegan, organic foodie, artist, musician, home owner, licensed driver, owner of a vehicle, golfer, tattooed person, early adopter, member of a political party, activist, punk, rocker, goth, businessman, hippie, gun enthusiast, iPod owner, hacker, student, teacher, scholar, devotee of the classics in literature or music or film, indie snob, dom, sub, fetishist, or financial investor.

    That’s not to say I have anything against most of those categories (with some notable exceptions), merely that these are things I simply cannot relate to. Those people and I have nothing to talk about.

    Let’s be clear: I am some pretty damned cool things. I’m a father, for instance, which is among the best things in my life. I’m a boyfriend twice over, and I’d have to be a lunatic to gripe about that. I’m a skeptical free-thinking computer-techie grammar-geek animation-fan dilettante, and I like it that way. The problem lies in the fact that the masses see me as boring… and more often than not, the feeling is mutual.

    So be it, I suppose.

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