Oddities of the Week

Spent the weekend at and around the Lake of the Ozarks, first camping, then at a resort. Turns out that no tent is waterproof after four inches of rain in three hours. Go figure.

Toured Bridal Cave, one of many in the area. Adam pointed out something odd about the tour guide's script that I entirely overlooked: his only statement about the age of the caves was "nobody knows". Which is pure poppycock, of course, as there are any number of ways of estimating it. Not least the rate at which stalagmites form, which he did mention. Leaving two obvious possibilities: either he himself is a creationist, or many of his visitors are, and he wanted to be politic. One of those moments when I realize that I'm just slightly closer to the Bible Belt than I used to be.

The resort, Tan-tar-a, was a treasure trove of little oddities. Only one of the five buildings has an elevator at all - holy ADA grandfathering, Batman! And then there was a system of skywalks that did a dubious job of knitting together the wildly different architectural styles. We actually got lost more than once just walking back from the pool: a choice of three paths split again into six, and all of them were dead ends! I don't easily get lost indoors, so I suspect a Rose Red of constantly shifting floor plans.

Random story for a few weeks back: I ask for a Liquid Cocaine at a bar. The bartender has to ask a colleague what's in it, which should have warned me. Usually it's some combination of vodka, amaretto, Southern Comfort, and pineapple juice. This one also had Jaegermeister. Possibly the most undrinkable thing I've ever been handed.

Been having really good luck at antique stores and used book sales lately: I've almost finished assembling the seven-volume Death's Gate cycle in hardback. If there are any Dragonlance fans out there, you should check it out: it's by Weis and Hickman.

Too bad everything else Tolkien wrote besides LOTR and the Hobbit remains near-unreadable.

I rarely pay attention to all things sports, but congratulations to Nebraska for making it to the College World Series. Looks like I'll be seeing them play this weekend.

The Unbearable Lightness of Best Buy

So I was shopping, briefly, at Best Buy last night. And in those few minutes, it managed to remind me why I rarely shop there:

I noticed a preorder slip on the shelf for the next Legend of Zelda game, Twilight Princess. The release date listed was 8/1, much sooner than the 10/3 I'd seen listed elsewhere. Intrigued, I accosted the nearest salesperson. The following is approximately the conversation that transpired:

Me: "Hey, could you double-check the release date on this game?"
BB: "Sure!"
(a few minutes pass)
BB: "I'm sorry, but this game doesn't seem to be in our system yet." [which is untrue]
Me: "What? I mean, it's on the shelf."
BB: "Sure is."
Me: "Doesn't that strike you as odd?"
BB: "Yep, it's pretty weird."
Me: "What would happen if I took this preorder slip to the register?"
BB: "That's an excellent question."

And so forth. The poor boy had a total lack of curiosity, problem solving skills, and in general, conscious thought. It was rather like talking to Eliza. I wish I could blame him, but I suspect that working there does that to a person.

Misery

So, I was awoken at 5:30 AM yesterday by the pain of the worst earache I think I've ever had in my life. Went to the doctor, middle ear infection, antibiotics, threw up a few times, wanted to die, blah blah blah. Not a good day.

Also yesterday, received the fortune: "A carrot a day may keep cancer away." Emphasis mine. Why am I the only person who gets evil fortunes of death?

Storms coming through right now. Makes me happy but Adam paranoid. It's a good thing his phobias are endearing.

Show of the Week

Been watching Firefly, Joss Whedon's aborted masterpiece. For quite a few of my loyal readers, I can best describe it as a live-action version of Cowboy Bebop. The setting, the characters, the situations are all highly reminiscent. With a little bit of Trigun thrown in for good measure: every planet they visit looks like the Old West, and the soundtrack is all violins and guitars. Pretty good so far; if I continue to think so to the end, I'll probably have to go see the movie that's coming out.

Edit: I almost forgot the most awesome thing. The characters all speak English, except when they swear, which is always in Mandarin. Hee.

My apartment building has an old shopping cart residents' use living under the stairs. Yeah, it's ghetto, but it was also handy when you had a carload full of stuff to haul upstairs. Couldn't have moved in without it. So imagine my horror today when I saw that it was broken. Wheel snapped off; now it sits crippled in the corner. How the heck do you break a shopping cart? The things are damn near indestructable; they're not popular with the homeless set for nothing.

Movies that suck, but only for me

In the past month or two I've gotten around to seeing a pair of films that my friends have been after me to see for ages. I didn't particularly care for either. And this is a sufficiently unusual occurence that I thought I'd blog about it.

The first was Garden State. On all the usual technical levels, it was a perfectly decent film. True, I didn't flip over the soundtrack, probably because I wasn't previously familiar with the bands involved. But that's a minor quibble. Mostly, it just didn't resonate. I couldn't empathize with the main character, couldn't imagine myself ever doing or feeling any of the things he did.

He comes home to discover that all his friends are basically the same even though he's drastically different. Meanwhile I've found that it's usually quite the opposite - my friends have changed even more than I have. He exhibits a near-total, and understandable, inability to function in normal society - and simultaneously an uncanny insight into people. The hell? As far as I'm concerned it's basically the same skill. I thought I was a disaffected loner at one point in my life. But it apparently doesn't hold a candle to some of you, dear readers, if you saw yourself in this catatonic idiot.

And then there was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I've loved all of Charlie Kaufman's previous works, and like all the rest, it was endlessly inventive, both visually and narratively. And yet.

It suffered from what Roger Ebert calls the "idiot plot": the plot won't function unless otherwise seemingly intelligent people make unbelievably stupid decisions. I cannot for a moment believe that any rational adult would make the choice that the two main characters do in this film. It goes way past the point of comic farce and lands somewhere near disgusting psychopathy. It strains my suspension of disbelief way past the breaking point.

I also took away a very different impression of the ending. Most reviews I've seen say that it's hopeful: even knowing how it ended the first time, the couple decides to try their relationship again. Yet the whole message of the film, repeated over and over in the secondary characters, is that those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it. I don't have the slightest doubt that their relationship will end the same way the second (third?) time. It's Romeo and Juliet on a tape loop.

So yeah. Two critically acclaimed films that didn't win me over in the slightest, because I couldn't for a moment picture myself in the characters' shoes. Yeah, that's not the only way to make a good movie, but it's an important one...

May the Force be with you

(I'm going to try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, in that curious sort of way that Episode III dictates: you already know perfectly well what's going to happen, just not how it will happen.)

Overall? Relax. Exhale. It's pretty darn good, almost up to the standard of the original trilogy. Even in those moments when it richly deserved some MST3King, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen long enough to snark to my neighbor. And by the end, I felt myself sighing with relief as we arrived back on familiar ground.

The bad? Everything you've heard about the awfulness of the dialogue, and the acting in general, is true and then some. It's way beyond Lucas just not knowing how to direct; it's as if he sucked the life and talent out of otherwise excellent actors. Suddenly they're on stage for the first time in their lives. It's hideous. The audience laughed at a number of points where they clearly weren't meant to.

And the writing itself... well, it's hard to explain. The overall script has been trimmed down to the barest essentials; every line serves to advance the plot. And yet there's still too much talking. A lot of things are said with words when a simple look would have surficed. I was reminded of something I learned in my first journalism class: never tell when you can show.

Random musings and ponderings follow. These are NOT meant to be rhetorical: I'm hoping for feedback.

• My, but Lucas is in love with his CG. Was the (helmetless) Clone Army general a computer creation, or was it just me? Wouldn't putting the actor in a costume have been cheaper and more convincing?
• I did notice the scene that people were saying was heavy-handed political commentary by Lucas. It's hard not to. But if you think carefully about who represents who and who's saying what, it's all so scrambled that it's useless as metaphor.
• Yoda's final words to Obi-Wan: the hell? Where did that come from, and how does it relate to anything in Episodes IV-VI? A friend suggests that it might help explain the non-vanishing of dead Jedi Masters in this film, but I'm not sure if that theory holds up in all cases.
• If you've ever seen the behind-the-scenes footage of Empire, you'll know about a certain lie that was told to the cast. Ponder the degree to which it wasn't a lie at all.
• Interesting choice of stories for Palpatine to tell Anakin; remarkably truthful in fact. Too bad he didn't pay attention to it himself.
• I'd often wondered what, in particular, they would have as the temptation that drove Anakin to the dark side. Luke's presumably parallel story offered several choices, but Lucas picked the saddest and most tragic of them all. Episodes I-III in general seem to suggest that whatever hope and idealism Lucas had in his youth is long gone.
• Did you notice what Obi-Wan took away from his final battle? It's extremely important later on.
• As a purely political and strategic matter, do Palpatine's orders to the droid army make the slightest bit of sense? I'm not sure how the places he sent them or the things he had them do advanced his agenda in the slightest.
• It seems as though for the Jedi and Sith alike, there is a difficult and very personal trial to go through before one can become a Master. It's just a bit more disfiguring for the Sith.
• Who was Darth Sidious's master, anyway? Now that the movies are done, will LUcas open the Extended Universe to books that are set before Episode I?
• It's cute and all to have distantly related characters turn out to know one another in Episodes I-III, but it's also distracting. It means that certain people should have commented on it in Episodes IV-VI, but didn't. Not to mention that certain cases of random chance become unbelievable coincidences.
• Prophesy and foresight are the most horrifically misleading things imaginable in these films; I swear that it was almost a nod to Dune.

Good triumphs over evil, 2X

What are the odds? For the second season in a row, a team I actually like won the Amazing Race on Tuesday night, instead of the assholeish team that had already won a million dollars on Survivor. Karma's a bitch. On a related note, Alex & Lynn are getting married! Yay.

Finally made it through the first season of Alias. It's been strange watching the show "inwards", forward from the first season and backward from the current (fourth). I dunno if anyone else reading this watches the show, but I'd like to make a speculation that'll be a SPOILER if you aren't up to date: the mysterious boss who everyone seems to work for? Milo Rambaldi himself. Just wait.

Watching all this TV is exhausting stuff; I have no idea how James and Stolee watch season after season of Stargate end to end. Firefly next, I guess, and if it's good enough I'll go see Serenity.

FLASH: Woohoo! A federal court finally saw fit to overturn the ridiculous Initiative 416 that Nebraskans saw fit to pass a few years back. Here's hoping it holds up.

Just another weekend in paradise

Drove back to Kansas City through pouring rain for the second time in a row. Curse? Oh, and a highlight: the second pair of giant glowing pillars on the way into town is now active. Still don't know who built them or what they mean.

As amusing as Family Guy is, it's even funnier when accompanied by Lincoln DeMaris's insane, terrifying scream of a laugh. I Heart You, Lincoln.

Bob's heading to Colorado, which is sad. Jesse's almost done with another batch of beer, which is happy. Rusty's heading to Phoenix, which is sad. I'm head-over-heels in love, which is very happy. Life's always a mixed bag, I guess.

Haven't posted any long philosophical rants here in a while, unlike my better half. I will eventually, I promise, I just need to get up the right head of steam.

Artistic Linkorgy

Random encounter of the weekend: some two thousand members of "United Notions", banqueting in Union Station's great hall. Apparently some sort of arts and crafts organization. Wonder who won Doily of the Year?

Ever since I got here, people have been loaning me TV show boxsets, and now I'm totally backlogged. In the near future, in no particular order, I need to make it through Tales of the City, Alias, and Firefly. That's a lot of hours of DVD.

My other expedition this weekend was to the Brookside Annual, a rather huge outdoor art fair. I didn't have nearly the time or money to buy much of anything, but I did manage to grab business cards from the booths that interested me. I'm sure to lose them soon enough, so for my own future reference this is a linkorgy of all the cool ones. Might make for interesting browsing if you're really, really bored.

• Audrey Heller Photography


• Chris Dahlquist: Photographic Mixed Media


• Chris Honeysett, Photographer


• Damian Velasquez: Modern Handcrafted Furniture


• Jeffrey Zachmann: Kinetic Sculptures


• Kelvin Schartz: Celestial Ironworks


• Kevin Sink Photography: Designs from Nature


• Kyle Osvog: Ceramic Sculpture


• Michael Bryant: Transfers with Prose


• Michael D'Andrea Studios


• Mike McMullen: Black & White Fine Art Photography


• Mitch Yung Ceramic Design


• R. Henry Design


• Susan & Kelly Nolan: Impostors
  

Animals are people too

So, Cerner trumpets its "people-oriented" architecture, and it's true: the Person table is the central item in our database, to which all other tables are connected. I was, therefore, incredibly amused the first time I noticed there was a column devoted to species. Someone finally clued me in to our veterinary clientele. At Cerner, it's literally true: animals are people too.

I swear it hasn't been this long since I posted last. I think maybe Blogger ate an essay or two. I've been living a relatively uneventful life. Went to the Mid America Freedom Band's concert last weekend, and tomorrow I'm off to my very first Royals game with my entire department in tow. And spending a lot of time with someone I don't have to mention here. :)

I hear UNL's getting out in just another week or two here, and people are scattering to the four winds. If you're going to be anywhere near the midwest this summer, my door (and couch) are always open.

Internet Archaeology

I've spent the past few days trying to locate and get in touch with a variety of people: roommates from college, friends from high school, and a few from even further back. Google's been invaluable in this respect, of course, and it's good to stretch my information mining muscles. But you know what's been even more useful? ICQ.

Anyone younger than me is probably literally too young to remember it, but it was the ur-IM, predating AIM, Yahoo, and MSN. And it was way ahead of them in a lot of functionality, notably and handily, the auto-archiving of all messages. Very few people I know use it today, but it was and is very popular in Europe, and with a slightly older generation of Net users.

So I've been perusing through my hundreds of old contacts, looking for email addresses, scribbled notes, clues in message logs, and the like. Already found one roommate, now working at a hotel... in Beijing. (If you're reading this, hola, jefe.) Another search has taken me through the organizational remnants of the Howard Dean campaign. Not to mention the National Forestry Service, the english department at the University of Chicago, and a food company in Tulsa, OK.

It's been a lot of fun, actually. I'm tempted to say I need to lose people more often, just so I can have the pleasure of finding them again.

Holy Matrimony

(Yeah, yeah, I know I haven't been posting often enough. Just been busy and happy lately, I guess.)

Spent the weekend in Lincoln, mainly for Adam Brehm's wedding. And a lovely wedding it was too, but then, I'm a sucker for them. The church was just a block from my parents' house, and packed fuller than I've ever seen it. Almost standing room only. I'm pretty sure their entire fraternity, sorority, and every living relative was there.

Oh, and it was a big old JDE reunion, too. Saw Mark and April, Mike, John, Cody, Dan, and a dozen more. It's so relaxing to run into people you've know for years - easy to slip into all the old patterns. And it turns out that Black is living in Kansas City now, too. I know you're not reading this, but I'll be giving you a call soon.

Stevenson will be pissy at me if I don't mention that it was his birthday, too. Decadent dinner at the Oven. And he got a bottle of amarula. Unusual stuff; if you've never had it, hit him up for it.

Much as I might love spring and thunderstorms, driving home through a torrential downpour for three hours sucks. So does being so far off the ground that you can't hear the rain from your bedroom. Being downtown is nice, but I need to get back to somewhere green eventually.

Spring in the air

So apparently half the trees in Kansas City are pear trees, because they're all blooming in brilliant white just now. I've been informed, repeatedly and emphatically, that they're Bradford pears, though no one seems to know what the distinction is. I do: the pear trees back home smelled nice in the spring, but these things smell like urine. Wikipedia suggests either rotting crab meat, or a cross between jasmine and dog vomit.

They've been building these strange concrete columns across from my apartment, where you coem off the bridge into downtown. They're finally finished, and it turns out they they're covered with these banks of lights that flow and shift colors in complex patterns. I have no idea what they're for, but they're sure hypnotic to watch.

Went to a choral concert tonight, the Heartland Men's Chorus to be exact. It was all religious music, with narration by special guest Rev. Mel White. Really good music, and they had some sharp words about the gay marriage amendment that's up for vote in Kansas on Tuesday. Their next concert, in June, features the music of Kander & Ebb - Cabaret and Chicago, most famously. Turns out that John Kander is a KC native, and will be in attendence. Cool stuff.

I have an SUV

No, seriously, I do. It's like this: my car's in the shop this week, so my insurance company gave me a rental. But they had run out of the car I was supposed to have. So, they gave me the next smallest thing in stock at no additional charge: a Mitsubishi Endeavor. And true to form, it's enormous.

Seriously, I feel ridiculous just driving around in it. It's not even fun, reminding me of nothing so much as my parents' old minivan. Worst of all, it behooves me to gas it before I return it, and that's going to be a pretty penny. I'd like to think I evened things out by riding to lunch in a friend's new hybrid Honda Accord. But still. Ugh.

Stargate Atlantis: Season Two

The following are my wild speculations about things that will occur during the second season of Stargate Atlantis. As long as you've seen everything up until the season finale, there shouldn't be any spoilers:

• We'll find out much more about the creation of the Wraith. The team has speculated, but their guesses don't feel right. In particular, how much were the Ancients involved, and was it really an accident?
• Why did the Ancients have a nanite virus lying around that kills humans but leaves Ancients alone?
• Are the Wraith only able to feed on humans (and no other species)? If so, is this a nod to their origins?
• It's been hinted at, but to what extent exactly are the Wraith able to read the minds of their victims while they feed? Did they all wake up en masse because they'd found out about Earth?
• Do the Wraith have a hive mind? How do they breed?
• We know the Atlantis stargate wouldn't do the Wraith much good; it's hardly a practical way of transporting their entire population. So if they got their hands on the city itself, or otherwise determined the location of Earth, how long would it take them to get there? How would Earth's defenses stand up?
• To produce their seemingly endless supply of ships, the Wraith must have factory worlds, a la the Death Star; we might get to see these bases.
• If the team is able to get their hands on a fully-charged ZPM, not only will the shield be up, but we might just get to see the city fly.
• And here's the most outlandish one of all: remember the episode with the spider-like cousin of the Wraith? Remember how it didn't much like salt water? Well, maybe the Ancients submerged their city for a particular reason. What a world, what a world...

For the record, I cheated a bit and watched the season finale already. It rocks. Don't miss.

Random explorations

Another weekend of wandering the town at random, poking into obscure corners. Discovered an unmarked but very pretty little park just where the Kansas and Missouri Rivers join, and then that there's a pedestrian footbridge hidden underneath the I-70 bridge. Rather a lot of natural beauty right in the middle of the city around here, you just have to go looking.

Also went to the Kemper, KC's premier modern art museum. Saw lots of things I liked, but the most stunning was Editing in the Dark, a series of movies that loop continuously, with a plot but no beginning or end. Melancholy stuff, too, yet there's no dialogue. Couldn't stop thinking about it for hours afterward.

Finally saw Finding Neverland. Excellent stuff, quite a bit of the audience was sniffling by the end. It must have been a really good year in movies for it to get next to nothing in the way of Oscar considerations. Mr. Johnny Depp might be in danger of overexposure, though, with at least three more films that I know about coming out this year: Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Willy Wonka, and... Corpse Bride?!

Random observation on Wednesday: the equinox is almost here, because the sun was setting just slightly south of true west.

Things that are obvious in hindsight: one of my down-the-hall neighbors moved out today, and I should have seen it coming. Why? Because there's been an abandoned box of Macaroni & Cheese sitting in the hall for days, which frighteningly enough, is absolutely the first even mildly unusual thing that's happened at my apartment since I moved here.

Well, except for that Apple Studio Display I saw in the dumpster the other day. Presumably busted, but I still almost dived after it on pure instinct.

A wierd one

I really don't dream that often, maybe once every week or two at most. And when I do, they often tend to be extremely mundane. So last night's was unusually fun: the dream was more or less a pilot episode for WKRP in Cincinatti. It bore little resemblance to the original, except that they were auditioning hilariously incompetent staff. The really odd part was that the tycoon who owned the station was named Leopold Senghor, who's a famous African poet from Senegal. Except in the dream, I was convinced he was the grandson of a famous Impressionist painter. So what, precisely, is this supposed to say about my subconscious?

Strangely enough

I hear a lot of scuttlebutt at work, of course, but today's was the oddest in a while. Apparently the Oklahoma State basketball team was practicing in our company gym today, ahead of the Big 12 Tournament. And our CEO was seen giving a chancellor-type the grand tour - turns out he's an alumnus. Small world.

More explorations

As I was reminded, there was more to my weekend ramblings. I'd assumed there must be some way to get to the river itself from the River Market, and indeed there is. From a back corner of the neighborhood, a newish and well-lit pedestrian bridge leads over the train tracks to an observation deck some fifty feet above the river. That alone would be pleasant enough, but stairs lead down to the waterfront itself and a very singular scene.

On the one hand, there's a brand-new trail extending in either direction. Signs and empty concrete slabs announce a planned restaurant, entertainment wharf, interpretive center, and ecological restoration station. Sidewalk markers in the River Market lead you to the area, and the trail connects at either end to the existing network.

And yet. There's garbage - and worse - everwhere. A number of homeless men are plainly inhabiting the area. There are empty shells of collapsed buildings, and the remains of a ruined overpass leading nowhere. Plastic fences are trampled, and concrete barriers suddenly give up, allowing unfettered access to the trainyard.

In essence, it's urban renewal in a very early stage, started but far from finished. I've never seen an area quite like it before. Like a lot of places in Kansas City, pleasant enough in the daytime, but probably a bit dodgy at night. More information is available at the - ha! - Kansas City Port Authority.

An embarassment, also of riches

As many of you know, I live near Kansas City's River Market, much like Nebraska's Haymarket or Old Market. Yet I must sheepishly admit that I've never actually been there, despite living here nearly six months now. The only lame excuse I can offer is that it's been cold, rainy, or otherwise unpleasant nearly every weekend this entire time. Today was the first Saturday I actually felt like walking around a historic district shopping.

The verdict? Wow. What took me so long? I'm surrounded by an orgy of unusual and interesting stores, nearly all of which I'd actually consider buying something in (normally about one in ten in the larger world). I plan on spending my weekends doing things like this a lot more often now. Highlights included:

* The River Market Antique Mall, all 30,000 square feet of it in one building. I staggered out with a sort of nauseous capitalism overdose, convinced I'd seen one of every good produced in the 20th century.

* The Planters Company, four contiguous storefronts devoted to every possible outdoor/gardening good imaginable, like a compressed Earl May. And on top of that, an entire room devoted to freshly ground spices. I almost wet myself just smelling it.

* An Italian import/gourmet grocery, an organic food store, a wine shop, multiple coffeehouses, and weekly farmer's market (in the morning...) that I just missed.

* A used bookstore with two cats, as all good bookstores should have. Though, for some reason, neither of them had tails...

* Oggi Modern Furnishings, an orgy of unapologetic (and overpriced) modernism that's probably Kansas City's closest stab at those places they go on Queer Eye. Good for getting ideas, then finding them cheaper somewhere else.

Just in general, an envigorating sort of day. I'd nearly forgotten that I actually enjoy shopping - in the right kind of store.

Should have read my horoscope

Yesterday was not a good day. Overslept. Woke up and used the bathroom, and then noticed that the toilet was backed up. And I didn't have a plunger. Then I checked my email and discovered my solution manager had called a meeting on short notice, which was actually starting just as I read the message - at home. It's a wonder I didn't steer the car right off the bridge.

Petty Identity Theft

So I got a letter today from my bank, stating that I had been turned down for a loan. Funny thing is, I never applied for one. In the modern day and age, that's a rather scary thing.

I had a nice little chat with corporate headquarters, and eventually determined that my local branch had rather badly fucked up some paperwork for overdraft protection. So, false alarm. But still. Stopped my heart for a minute there.

My Funny Androgyne

So last night, I was treated (or perhaps subjected) to the Late Night Theatre, an apparent Kansas City legend. They're a troupe of actors who do musical parodies of the best and worst movies ever made. The nearest analogy I could make might be to a Rocky Horror cast with broader horizons. Their home is a tiny, grungy shoebox of a theatre downtown that only holds a few dozen people. As a result, it's a very intimate evening of entertainment.

The show? Purple Rain. Now, it's been a long time since I've seen it, and I've never been the biggest Prince fan, but the show was absolutely hysterical all the same. I'm told the casts are usually all-male with lots of drag, but this particular show was all-female with lots of drag. Which, if you're playing Prince, isn't all that much of a stretch. It's pretty risque, too, with some full-frontal nudity, and I hear there's been worse. Not for the faint of heart or ear.

Shows for the remainder of the year include: Rockula (The Hair Band Vampire Musical), The Bad Seedling, Supermodels in Space (The Wrath of Madeline Kahn), and The Valley of the Dolls. There's a show going on nearly every weekend, so add this to the list of things I'm more than happy to do with my guests.

It begins...

I was wondering how long it would take for the people I went to school with to start getting married - in mass quantities, at least. Just got a wedding invitation from Adam Brehm & Ashli Eickman, who I can recall pestering about their inevitable nuptuals for years. And it's a block away from my parents' house to boot. Congratulations, guys.

Poor Design

I finally had the distinct pleasure of visiting Manhattan, KS, and the distinct misfortune of visiting its one and only movie theatre. I'd heard the stories, but it's even worse than I thought:

* It only shows the most generic, commercial blockbusters. Of the numerous Oscar nominees currently in wide release, not one was showing.

* Despite (or perhaps because of) Manhattan's status as a college town, there are no student discounts whatsoever. Cash only, too.

* Nothing at the concession stand is priced in $0.25 increments, so there are nickels and dimes everywhere.

* The aspect ratio of the individual theatres is off; they're too long. Despite having fairly standard screen sizes and stadium seating, everything's too far away from the screen. From the topmost row, which would be an excellent seat in many theatres, you would hardly be able to see a thing.

* I was informed that some of the older/unrenovated rooms have completely flat floors, rendering any row but the first few useless. This may have something to do with their previous existance as gymnasiums.

* There is only one exit leading out of the theatre, one exit from the building, and a single driveway leading out of the parking lot. It's one bottleneck after another (not to mention a fire hazard).

Just craptastic all around. And Constantine is as ho-hum a movie as I'd predicted. Oh well. It's always nice seeing Matt and Steven. Happy Birthday!

Word of the Day

Coulrophobia

Reviews

Saw a couple things this weekend. First was Sideways, the latest from Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt). It's up for about a zillion Oscars. And on top of all that, it's pretty damn good. One of those very, very rare romantic comedies that actually feels like it could happen. Highly recommended. Rusty, if you're reading this, I can see the two of us reenacting it someday - I'll let you decide which of us is which character.

Also watched all fifty-one episodes of Full Metal Alchemist, thanks to a kind donation from Mr. Stolee. Reminiscent of Evangelion in a lot of ways, including the sudden left turn and plunge over the abyss near the end. Catch it on Adult Swim some evening, and if you like it, hit up Derrick-san.

Burned some bread in the microwave tonight, sending a huge plume of smoke into my apartment before I noticed it. Neither the sprinklers nor the smoke detector went off. Which is lucky in a way, but also a bit disturbing. What would set them off?

Random musing: is there a metaphor to be had in the fact that the time on most clocks can only be adjusted forwards?

Last but not least, Blogger has a new comment interface, so now you anonymous people can leave your names (hint, hint).

One for you, nineteen for me

So it turns out I'll be getting my first tax refund ever this year. $523 from the feds, $171 from the state of Missouri. Not a fortune, and it'll all go straight to various bills, but better than a kick in the groin.

Amazing!

Last night's finale for the Amazing Race was really good (of course), but they dropped the real stunner at the end of the show: "Stay tuned for scenes from our next season... Three weeks from tonight, eleven new teams will begin a race around the world..."

What an embarassment of riches. It's almost unheard of for a reality show, or any show for that matter, to start a season so soon on the heels of the last. Among other things, it means that CBS will be betting its spring sweeps on the show. Guess all those Emmy awards and climbing ratings are finally paying off, eh?

Finale

It's always nice to get sent home early from work due to a blizzard, isn't it? (No, Tom, that was not sarcasm.) Due to the weather, the friends I was going to have over to watch the Amazing Race season finale won't be able to come. But I'm going to watch it anyway, as should you. 8:00 Central on CBS.

I'm used to getting junk mail from a wide variety of sources, but it still burns me when I get it directly from my bank. They want me to sign up for their credit monitoring service - only $9.99 a month! They seem to have conveniently forgotten that in three weeks everyone in Missouri will be able to get a free credit report from all three of the majors, by law. I hope no poor schmucks sign up for this thing.

Read the rest of Close Range and, if it's possible, I'm even more gobsmacked than before. The characters in all of the stories are ultimately melancholy, hollow, futile, but they manage to be fascinating in the process. It makes you want to either move to Wyoming, blow it off the face of the earth, or both. Consider it on my must-read recommendation list, if you're the sort who reads.

Where the Buffalo Roam

Working a full day on a Saturday: not cool, but bound to happen eventually. At least everything went well, and there were donuts.

Didn't manage to find a Super Bowl party. Still enjoyed the commercials, though. This is my favorite; I personally call it "Oh Brave New World". You'll see why.

Picked up some Annie Proulx at the library, specifically Close Range: Wyoming Stories. You might have heard of her most famous book, The Shipping News. I got this particular book because one of the stories in it, "Brokeback Mountain", is currently being adapted into a film. Her writing style is just amazing. Dense, complex, visual, a lot like how I would write myself if I ever got up the courage to attempt fiction. As for the story itself... I haven't been able to get it out of my mind for days. It pops back into my head at idle moments, and every time I feel a strong need to cry. If the movie is even halfway decent, I'll be bawling. It's not that it's tragic or depressing exactly, just extraordinarily sad. As one reviewer put it, you need a hug afterwards. I suppose it's probably fair use to quote a brief excerpt:

"Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking about getting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there too, in a cartoon shape with lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and relief; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it."

Reinvented Wheel

For years now, I've been putting Italian salad dressing on white rice. I assumed this was just another of my bizarre food preferences, kinda like putting ketchup on scrambled eggs.

I've also never had sushi, since I have a strong dislike for seafood of all kinds. Perhaps if I'd ever tried it, I would have realized long ago that sushi means literally vinegared rice, and I'd accidentally recreated a Western version of it. As it is, it took Iron Chef for me to figure it out.

Just Two Sentences

"Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be redefined by activist judges. For the good of families, children and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage."

A little lukewarm? We can only hope. I'm sure y'all know my feelings on the matter, but a few rhetorical questions all the same: What business does the government have calling anything sacred? Who does have the authority to redefine it? Which is more often dangerous to society, activist judges or political majorities? If the amendment is for the good of, are its opponents for the evil of?

Here's a nice summary of same.

Rococo

All that snow last night? Melted by the time I got up.

Finally finished The Baroque Cycle, all three thousand-page volumes of it. It lives up to its name, with a plotline full of ornate and elaborate encrustations. Very broadly speaking, it's a fictionalized history of the Scientific Revolution in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, and philosophy. Newton, Liebnitz, Hooke, and Wren. The first steam engine and the first computer. But that's just the main plotline.

In the process, there's a fairly exhaustive tour of European history. We see the beheading of Charles I, the restoration of Charles II, the flight of James II, the invasion of William of Orange, and the death of Anne. We see the magnificence and insanity of Versailles under the Sun King, Louis XIV. We find out where the modern banking and monetary system came from. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Don't get me wrong, it can be pretty tedious reading if you don't have a head for this sort of thing. There's a lot of names and places to keep straight, and a cast of characters so large they have their own appendix at the end. But if you can get past that, it's pretty fascinating stuff. I know there's at least a few of you own there who'd be up to it.

On a related note, I realized tonight that I may have completely forgotten basic calculus. How do you integrate, again?

Purdy

It just started snowing here... big, heavy flakes, the sort of honest snow that we haven't had all winter. Gorgeous.

Iron Chef shout-out!

Another cool thing heard on NPR this morning: they were running a story on cutting edge cuisine in Spain. It was recorded at a "fusion" convention for chefs being held in Madrid. And who should they interview, as he made matsutake tapas? Why, Dr. Yukio Hattori, the know-it-all commentator who appears on every Iron Chef. It's good to know that he's alive and well and still cooking.

Half Full or Half Empty?

So I'm listening to NPR this morning and they do a lengthy piece on the upcoming elections in Iraq. First up is their correspondent interviewing a number of Iraqis. They all insist (among other things) that the most influential political/religious figure in the country, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has not endorsed any of the parties.

Immediately afterwards is another interview with a random American talking head, who repeatedly insists that Sistani is backing the favored party.

The news anchors themselves make no mention whatsoever of this glaring contradiction between two of their sources, within a minute's time no less. Now, were they a) asleep at the switchboard, or b) confident in their listeners to draw their own conclusions from the diverging accounts?

KC Bombers

Okay, so, roller derby. Wow. I'm just going to try to describe, on the assumption that most of you would be as unfamiliar with it as I was - cheesy '70s flicks notwithstanding.

Two teams of around a dozen girls, though only five each are on the rink at any given time. All of them have campy stage names: Estee Slaughter, Maiden Hell, Anna Conda, etc. They're also in outlandish outfits, lots of pink and black, short skirts, feather boas, etc. The whole thing is held in a particularly large (and old) roller rink not far from Cerner. Probably several hundred people in attendance.

The rules: at any given time, one girl from each team is the designated scorer, and this role rotates. She scores a point each time she manages to lap a member of the other team; and they, of course, are trying to block her or knock her out of bounds. Three fifteen-minute periods, with a short intermission between each.

During these intermissions, random entertainment. Tonight's was a local capoeira club, a Brazilian style of both dance and martial arts. Seriously cool stuff to watch.

Mood: high camp. All of the announcers and a few of the audience members are in costume; the music is retro '70s; drag queens circle the perimeter holding up signs just like a boxing match. A little like a Rocky Horror showing, if you've ever been to one. Yet everyone's taking it really seriously, and the competition is apparently quite real. Some sideline conversations reveal that they practice regularly, and a few girls I meet say they tried out but weren't good enough skaters.

The audience: astonishingly mixed. Preppies and goths. Gay and straight. Elderly couples and young children. Probably the most eclectic gathering of humanity I've been part of in a very long time. Would be worth the price of admission just for that fact.

Overall: a remarkably enjoyable, and completely random, way to spend an evening. Their matches are generally Saturday nights, so if you're done here one of those weekends, we'll go.

The names have been changed to protect the guilty

Me: "Ja wohl!"
Boss: "Huh?"
Me: "It's German for yes sir."
Boss: "I don't speak Sputnik."

Seventh and Eighth Chevrons Locked

New episodes of both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis resume Friday night at 7:00 on the SciFi Channel. If you're reading this, I insist you watch. They're simply some of the best shows on television. Slightly less important, but still cool, is that Food Network is showing new episodes of Iron Chef America on Sunday nights.

I think the Folgers plant is roasting something new, because the air tonight was filled with the most potent cinnamon odor I've ever smelled. Relatedly, I find it awesome that my local WalMart carries daikon radish, even if I'd never buy it.

So I forgot to mention that last weekend, my godfather showed me his rather vast collection of single malt Scotches. There was some truly amazing stuff in there. If you want any recommendations, I'm your man.

Oddities

[Writing this for the SECOND TIME since the site crashed...]

Thought inspired by a bathroom wall: if I went to a Husker game and shouted "GO GIVE HEAD!", would anyone notice? Or care?

Article of the day: a comprehensive history of Social Security. Long but educational. EDIT: No, that's now the secondary article of the day, because I just found out that an old friend of mine (the first one on this page) appears on the Van Helsing DVD commentary.

Finally finished The Minish Cap, the latest entry in the Zelda legend. It's a bit shorter and easier than the recent games, more of a throwback to Link to the Past. But it's also very original, with lots of new mechanics, weapons, and puzzles. And the world is quite a bit bigger than it first seems due to its constantly shifting nature, a bit like Chrono Trigger. Highly recommended if you're a fan of the series (and own a GameBoy Advance).

This Saturday, I'll be going on what might be my strangest date ever: to the Roller Derby. You heard me right. I'll try to write up an account afterwards, but I have a feeling that I might be at a loss for words.

Educate Yourself

Supreme Court justices very rarely debate anyone in public, much less one another. Which is why it's noteworthy that they did so just the other day at American University. It makes for lengthy but very interesting reading. And if you're Tom, mandatory.

I think I realized another reason why I dislike eating at fast food restaurants: the families. Almost without exception, parents tend to treat their children horribly, using names that I wouldn't even call an adult. It requires every ounce of self-control I have not to tell them off. Ugh. Maybe that should be my new definition for white trash: the chronically rude.

Oh, yes, and I ended up coming through Lincoln a bit earlier than expected. I'm sitting in Kauffman right now, actually.

Inflation

Even for an adult male, there's still something a little frightening when every light in the parking lot shuts off, for no apparent reason, while you're in the middle of it. A vast, frigid parking lot surrounded on two sides by forest, to be exact. It's like the lead-in to a scene from an action movie that you really don't want to star in.

The new carpet is in at my apartment; viewed from the wrong angle, it gives the rather disturbing illusion that the entire floor is undulating.

Fie on rising health care costs, even (especially) at a company that specializes in it. I switched to a plan this year that's significantly cheaper than my old one - at the 2005 rate schedule, that is. But I'm still paying noticeably more than I did last year, and it's that much less to take home. If I weren't single, frugal, and debt-free, I'd probably be even more peeved about it.

Going up north this weekend to see my dad for his birthday, and to see my godfather for some belated Christmas exchanges. Get the Marlon Brando impression out of your systems now. Done? Good. All this will be near Sioux City, but I'll pass through Lincoln on the way back Sunday night. If anyone wants to do dinner, give me a jingle that afternoon.

Environs

It's been a week of noticing random things:

• Smelled someone making toast in the break room, and realized it was the first time I'd so much as smelled it, much less eaten it, in over a year.
• Poster of the month, on lampposts/windows/elevators etc, is "ISO 9001". It's good that we're certified and all, but I'd have thought it more of an order qualifier than an order winner.
• There's a treadmill in a third floor conference room. Not for exercise, but as a sample of a medical equipment interface from a vendor. I doubt anyone's ever even used it.
• What looks like a snack bar or cafeteria annex is under construction in the lobby. Imagine how much time and productivity employees will save when they don't have to walk across the street.
• All the lights seemed brighter on the way home. First evening in a week without rain, snow, or fog.
• New carpet for the hallways in my apartment is stacked next to the elevator. Whole place smells like Nebraska Furniture Mart.
• Turns out my Linksys router knows how to update itself against DynDNS.org. Everyone else probably knew this, but I hadn't.
• The cap on my vanilla vodka wasn't tight when I put it back into my wine rack, so now my countertop is covered in sticky vanilla syrup.

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Found deep inside a logfile:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 13 minutes 11 seconds

"    ."".    ."",   "

"    |  |   /  /    "

"    |  |  /  /     "

"    |  | /  /      "

"    |  |/  ;-._    "

"    }  ` _/  / ;   "

"    |  /` ) /  /   "

"    | /  /_/\_/\   "

"    |/  /      |   "

"    (  ' \ '-  |   "

"     \    `.  /    "

"      |      |     "  

"      |      |     "

Wow... that was sweet.  You are done now.

A good time had by all

A rather busy weekend round here. Friday night was Stolee, Stack, Matt, Steven, and Steven's friend Chris. As you might imagine, drunken hilarity ensued. At least I made a dent in the absurd quantities of vodka I've had lying around.

Managed to not be paying attention when my car hit 100,000. Damn it all. I guess I'll have to wait for 200,000.

I spent most of Sunday running errands around town; only to discover when I returned that my keyboard had inexplicably died in my absence. I think there must have been a power surge of some sort, as my cable modem and router were in strange, invalid states as well. But of course, it meant another trip back to the store. I'm just grateful that keyboards are the single cheapest component of a computer.

I would never have thought of it before, but the biggest drawback to living alone is that there's no one to ask you how your day was when you get home. Or, perhaps more to the point, I never thought I'd so quickly reach the point in my life where I want someone to come home to.

Scraperhands

So we had a lovely little ice storm yesterday and today. I live along a sort of meteorological Mason-Dixon line now, neither North nor South, where ice and sleet seem to be far more common than either rain or snow. When I went outside, there was an inch-thick layer of ice cladding on every twig of every tree. And of course, on my windshield as well.

It takes a while to get through that much ice, even after quite a bit of melting from the defrost within. At one point I was wielding a scraper in each hand, and bits of ice were flying to the air at such a comic pace that I realized I was reenacting a certain scene from Edward Scissorhands. And I got to do the same thing after work, thanks to a lazy sort of sleet all day. Oh, in theory I could have worked from home - most did - but I've been performance testing lately, and the performance lab's network is isolated from the company and world. Not to mention the roads were just fine, so I really didn't have a choice. I'll take the next snow day off.

Gripe: my windows, though large, elegant, and well-lit, are nevertheless useless on days like this, because it's entirely impossible to see the ground. I have to get dressed and go outside to find out what's happened overnight. A pain in the ass, I tell you.

My car will be rolling over to 100,000 miles in the very near future. Wish I owned a camera.

Stolee's coming this weekend, with possible cameos by Katie, Stack, Matt, Steven, and Rusty. What should I mix with orange and vanilla vodka?

The Shining, part 2

Back in Kansas City. A relaxing weekend in Colorado: eating, sleeping, and reading. As for Kingstone, like all good haunted houses do, it cooks up a few new idiosyncrasies each year:

• You know those Christmas village things, the lighted ceramic houses? Well, though we visit at the same time every year, for the first time Kingstone had them. To be more precise, they've taken over. I counted well over a hundred of the houses alone, with accompanying accessories probably surpassing a thousand, on every available surface. It must have taken days to put them all up. I'm not sure whether to be impressed or frightened.
• The Parlor of Blood (tm) turns out, on closer inspection, to have knicknacks from numerous countries and periods, not just the Civil War. In one display case, I spotted a woman's necklace decorated with the Nazi swastika.
• The overall amount of artwork has increased dramatically, with many former walls now crowded with artwork. I think my favorite is a photograph of Mother Teresa, surrounded on all sides by mountain landscapes.
• Speaking of portraits, all of the paintings of Mr. King have moved to different locations around the house, just to keep you on your toes. One now glares down at the master bedroom. I'm not sure how my parents slept at night.
• And speaking of Mr. King, it turns out that many of his clothes are still stored in certain closets around the house. It'd almost be a crime for him not to haunt the place.

Made it most of the way through the Baroque Cycle, somehow. Expect a review once I finish them. Assorted people are wandering through town this week. Let me know if you want to party this weekend.

The Shining

While we're in Colorado, we'll be staying at a house called Kingstone, just above Estes Park. It was the mountain retreat of one Kenneth King, Denver industrialist and man-about-town. Since his death, it's been used for retreats, meetings, reunions, and so forth. That's the normal part. Now for the rabbit hole.

For all I know, Mr. King was a very nice man in person, but as an architect, he was insane. No two rooms are built in the same style. Log cabin alongside Southern plantation house alongside '50s ranch style alongside Victorian parlor. One room has blood-red carpeting and walls covered with Civil War memorabilia. Another has all the woodwork minutely carved with the insignia of King's college fraternity. Still another has a boulder coming through the wall.

All of that would be bad enough, but it also feels like Mr. King is still there. Despite being in heavy public use for fifteen-plus years, nearly everything is pretty much where he left it. There are things in the back of the pantry older than I am. I swear I found his yearbooks sitting on a shelf. And of course, several larger-than-life portraits of the man stare down at you from unexpected corners. It's as close as I'll ever get to staying in the Winchester Mystery House: it's like he couldn't stop building, without any plan, until the day he died.

I took a few pictures on our last trip; they don't really capture the full horror, just details here and there. But look at them all, then remind yourself that they're all in the same house. Oh, and lest I forget: this place is just a few blocks from the real-life hotel that inspired "The Shining". Isn't that nice?

Go west, young man

I'll be in Colorado over the New Year's weekend, chilling out mostly. Boredom might strike when I least expect it, so feel free to give me a jingle.

I was hoping to read a few books while I was there. Specifically, the Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World, all by one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson. Come to find out that there are precisely four copies each in the entire Kansas City public library system, and they're all checked out. Meanwhile Lincoln, a city one sixth the size, has twice as many copies. Shameful. I also feel vaguely dirty having to ask my brother to check out books for me...

Random shout out to Will Norton and his acapella group, whose CD I'm listening to right now. It's good stuff.

Loot, Part 2

Cool stuff that I received from other people:

• From my parents: A sort of granite candle
• From my brother: A modernist fountain
• From Bob: two bottles of Van Gogh Vodka
• From Matt: Pit
• From many sources, but particularly my parents: a stunning amount of alcoholiana, including wine, wine glasses, wine charms, coasters, shot glasses, corkscrews, bottle openers, and so on. I swear, my friends and family are trying to turn me into a wino.

Loot, Part 1

Cool Christmas gift stuff (in my opinion) that I found for other people:

• Mom: Balsamic vinegar, imported from Modena and aged twelve years
• Dad: Diet root beer from Historic Williamsburg
• Brother: Olympus D-540 digital camera
• Bob: True Love Waits, a CD of classical Radiohead covers
• Derrick: The Mill's coffee-of-the-month club
• James: Gabe's Pac-Man shirt in Penny Arcade
• Jesse: All the necessary ingredients to make spiced ale
• Justin: A replica of Sting, Frodo's sword in The Lord of the Rings
• Matt: Hermione's Time-Turner from the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Rusty: An ocarina, along with a songbook of Zelda tunes
• Tom: The Presumption of Liberty: Restoring the Lost Constitution

Note to self: don't repeat these next year, and if possible, top them...

Eureka!

I think I've finally figured out why my father is conservative (and possibly incidentally, Republican):

1) He is incapable of cynicism. I can't recall him ever finding something trite, saccharine, sentimental, overdone, insincere, or otherwise unworthy of being taken seriously.

2) He is unaware of the passage of time. He consistently behaves as if consumer prices, social attitudes, even musical styles have changed not at all since he was in his early teens. I know plenty of people who don't like the way things have changed since their youth, but few who simply ignore them.

3) He is incapable of becoming bored with things. The same dish tastes just as good the tenth time; the same joke just as funny the hundredth. The usual rules of operant conditioning fall apart; behavioral extinction never occurs.

Put them all together and I believe you have the perfect conservative. He will always be perfectly happy with whatever the status quo is; and he will always act to preserve it, because for him, it has never and could never change. But how do you talk to a person like that?

Stille Nacht

Ah, Christmas Eve. In my family this entails, roughly in chronological order: delivering gifts all over town, having Valentino's carry-out for dinner, going to church, and opening most but not all of our gifts. A bit curious, but it works for us.

I don't know if it was a good year for retailers in general, but things were certainly busy over at Walmart. Busier than I've ever seen it, in fact. A useful tidbit of information: 4x6 prints of digital photos are $0.19 there, but 5x7 prints are $1.47. That's an expensive inch, that is.

The service for the evening was "A Festival of Lessons and Carols", a format first popularized (and now broadcast worldwide) by King's College in Cambridge, I do believe. Bible readings alternating with Christmas carols and that's about it. It's an enjoyable way to spend an evening even if you aren't the slightest bit religious. It also reconfirmed my belief that Greensleeves is the best song ever written. But original lyrics please, none of that "What Child Is This?" nonsense. Silent Night would be a close second.

Home for the holidays

Finally broke down and bought the Zelda Collector's Edition for GameCube, which includes the Legend of Zelda, the Adventure of Link, the Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask. Probably one of the best investments I've ever made. They're all just so infinitely replayable, I'm not sure I'll ever get tired of them.

For reasons unknown, my apartment complex has been frantically remodeling of late - first a few hundred new lighting fixtures, and just recently, a stone tile floor for the previously linoleum lobby. Which forced me to use what I like to call the "decoy" door: it looks like it ought to be the main entrance, and gives the building its address, but there's no way to buzz visitors in. If you ever stop by, don't be deceived!

The parents passed through on Tuesday, with my brother in tow and - surprise! - a kitten that they managed to buy during their twenty-four hours in St Louis. A Maine Coon, to be exact. It's an adorable little thing, that wandered my apartment and ripped up my carpet while we went to dinner. I hope she manages to make friends with the cat we already have...

Last night, saw the Phantom of the Opera with Matt, Steven, Rusty, and Stack. I thoroughly enjoyed it; but then, I'm also a big fan of the musical it's based on. It's really more like an opera, as the name suggest: nearly everything is sung, with little flat dialogue. But if you don't mind that, and you like Andrew Lloyd Webber's music, then I would highly recommend it.

I've gotten an astonishing number of Christmas cards and letters, considering I didn't think that many people had my new address. If one of them was from you, gentle reader, my sincerest thanks. I'm headed back to Lincoln after work this afternoon, and will be there for most of the following week, so give me a jingle.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

There are many sounds one might expect to hear in a Kmart parking lot, on a frigid December day, in the middle of Kansas. The sound of gulls is not one of them. Yet there they were, circling overhead. Eyeing the corpse of a fallen Christmas shopper, no doubt. A curiosity: how did I recognize, immediately and without looking, a sound that ought to be very unfamiliar to me?

I saw Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events today; the rest of this post concerns it, with relatively mild spoilers. Overall, I guess I'd say I liked it and recommend it, but in a bewildered sort of way, with reservations. The opening monologue by the "author" warns us that this will not be a happy film; but it's played for laughs and the audience obliges. By the end I realized how serious he was. It isn't a dark comedy, it's just dark. I'm not sure I would let children see it.

For example: it's easy to laugh at a melodramatic villain and his bumbling attempts at murder, particularly when that villain is Jim Carrey. But it becomes much harder to keep laughing when the villain is entirely and cold-bloodedly successful at some of those murders. You're just left cold after that. An added insult is that, though there's nothing wrong with leaving yourself open for a sequel, Unfortunate Events makes less of an attempt to tie up any of its storylines and mysteries than any film I can recall. Cinematic blue balls, if you will.

On the other hand, the whole film really is a delight to behold, on a par with any of Tim Burton's films. Quirky details are tumbling out of every corner. The closing credits are particularly stunning, and should be watched in their entirety. Possibly under the influence of your favorite mild-altering substance.

I guess that's really all I have to say. It is a good movie, but on the whole, the trailers have deceived you. It's a romp through the macabre, an exercise in how many tragedies you can bear to watch befall perfectly good people. If that's your cup of tea, go for it.

Pseudo Otaku

It's a strange thing to be a fan of a particular artist's music for years without realizing it. But such is the case with Yoko Kanno. She's written the music for a number of different anime series, including Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, and Escaflowne, all of which I love and have downloaded in large chunks. She's like my personal Japanese John Williams.

In unrelated news, I've put my older-than-the-hills personal webpage back up on my home computer, at least until I think of somewhere better. I really need to start over with it, but in the meantime, it lets me link people to various things (notably photo albums). Online whenever I am.

The perils of independence

I got one of those DVD cases in the mail today, and did a double-take when I realized it was an installation disc, not for AOL, but for Netscape. Granted, it's a wholly owned subsidiary and all, but still a nice change of pace. Purely out of habit, I went to zap the disc in the microwave. Then I realized that I'm living in my own apartment now, and it's my own microwave I'd be stinking up. I'm obviously still getting used to this...

Speaking of which, I pulled up the satellite photograph of my neighborhood today. Check it out if you find such things cool.

Flotsam

Bob and Sean were in town for a concert last night, and we went out to the bars afterwards. A nice evening all around. But, we were out until 3:30, so I sorta took the morning off work. It was well worth it. Come back any time.

Funny things today:

* On my way to work, I saw what appeared at first to be a police cruiser. But then I saw the side: "Kansas City Missouri School Districts", and below that, "TRUANCY". I found it extremely amusing, for reasons I can't fully explain. I mean, I knew such things existed in some cities, but the idea of a cop devoted to dragging kids back to school...

* A few rows down from me, there was an avalanche of hundreds of balloons, completely blocking the aisle. Someone's birthday apparently, but still, wow.

Less funny things today:

* I was calling around to used video game stores today, looking for a particular item. Now, there are several chains of them in town, each with several locations. But none of them, including GameStop/Babbages, had the ability to search the inventories at other locations. I'm sorry, but in this day and age, that's just inexcusable.

* Someone thought it'd be fun to call in a prank bomb threat, thereby cutting Cerner's large, lavish, company-wide Christmas party a good hour short. A disgruntled former (or current) employee, I can only guess, but it's still a pretty shitty thing to do.

Belated tolerance

On the Travel Channel tonight, I finally saw the United Church of Christ commercial that NBC and CBS both refused to air. I think that it expresses an attitude that Christians - and organized Christianity - ought to adopt far more often then they do. Check it out.

An article I read on the controversy had some wise words: "Though it has more than 1.3 million members in about 6,000 congregations across the country, the UCC, headquartered in Cleveland, is widely unknown. Focus group testing revealed that only a small handful of participants said they knew something about the denomination. Random testing also uncovered strong negative feelings about churches in general, regardless of denomination. A large percentage of respondents said they held churches responsible for past hurts in their lives, and many traced their feelings of inadequacy to negative church experiences. Many congregations, they said, left them feeling unwelcome, financially inadequate and inappropriately dressed. The television ad is geared toward those people who, for whatever reason, have not felt welcomed or comfortable in a church."

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm a little biased. First Plymouth in Lincoln is part of the UCC, and it's also my mother's church, so I've been exposed to it more than most. Nevertheless, I have to admire their stances on certain important social issues.

EE

Finally got to see The Return of the King: Extended Edition with a couple of coworkers last night. We kept our mouths shut for the new scenes (which are mostly pretty excellent), but for much of the rest of the film, we MST3k'ed it. Which is to say, we made fun of the characters and their cliches, made sexual innuendos, told vaguely related stories, and generally took the movie to pieces.

That might horrify a few of my friends, but we had all seen it several times before, and it is excessively solemn and self-important sometimes. It's a sign of love, really. Also, the folks at New Line won me over by offering the box for the set separately, for those of us who've already bought all the films, at a mere $3. Frankly, it's something I wish more studios did more often.

My landlord has been slowly but surely replacing all of the hallway light fixtures in my building with much, much brighter versions. I'm not sure I care for it. Previously, they had that almost-but-not-quite dim ambiance of a hotel, or even Kauffman. But now it's like being in an interrogation room. Not much fun for my poor eyes in the morning.

A final tidbit for my friends from the Kansas City area: this spring, they're closing the I-35 river bridge. For up to nine months. Guess how I get to work in the morning? Gah...

The most wonderful time of the year

I've spent a small mint on Christmas gifts this year, and much of that online. I'm sure the Internet retailers are pleased, but really, I'd just as soon do my shopping in person if I could. It's just that I tend to be in the market for more obscure or unusual items, and it's hard to find them in local stores at a decent price, if at all. In other words, I'm addicted to obscene variety.

I have noticed an disturbing trend in the not-quite-top-tier sites, the ones that SlickDeals and Froogle send you to because you can get a deal. When you place an order, they require you to call in and "confirm" the order before they start processing it. Ostensibly a security measure, the only real purpose is to give them a chance to sell you additional items beyond the ones you actually bought. Upsells. It's probably been happening for years, of course, but it seems like it's becoming more widespread. And it sucks.

Unrelated:

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."
- William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence"

Employ

Some ironies grow richer with age, like a fine wine. For example: quite a few of my friends from college ended up working at General Dynamics, a military contractor. Meanwhile, I ended up at Cerner, a health care company. Killing people at one extreme, saving them at the other. I honestly don't mean that as a judgement, it's just what I think about sometimes.

Fire alarm at work today, the same hideously annoying variety that Kauffman has. I was amused at the number of managers who just closed their conference room doors and continued with their meetings. And even more amused at the good 15 minutes it took a fire trunk to arrive, long after the false alarm had been canceled and everyone had gone back to work. Makes you feel safe, doesn't it?

I'm going to be so poor by the end of the month, between Christmas presents, my remaining furniture, and the sales tax on my car. Donations welcome.

Ugh

I was awoken an hour early this morning by a particularly horrific sound: my next-door neighbor, screaming at the top of her lungs. Just on the other side of the wall from my bedroom, not ten feet away. Needless to say, it's the sort of sound that we're hardwired to respond to.

I was able to pick out the tone of her voice first. She wasn't in any trouble, and since no one else was speaking, she wasn't having an argument. Next I started making out words, but I though I could hear them perfectly clearly, I couldn't string them together into meaning because I had no context for what she was talking about.

By the time I was awake enough to try to understand what was going on, she'd been interrupted by a neighbor who came running down the hall to pound on the door and ask if she was okay. She probably managed to wake the entire floor. I only retain the faint, almost dreamlike impression that she was cheering at something, like a sporting event or a game show, and somehow managed to forget that she was in her own @#$% apartment at 6:00 AM.

My neuropsychology-inclined friends will take note that the sequence of understanding I just mentioned exactly parallels the brain's actual processing of language: sounds, then words, then meanings. If I were a little smarter, I could probably make some fascinating insight out of the fact that they seemed to become active in order. Oh well.

Strangeness: On my way to work I saw a car whose license plate read, simply, "4". A few blocks later I saw a car with the plate "7". It was like being in an episode of The Prisoner.

Look into it

A few of the questions I ask myself actually have empirical answers, like this one: what is the degree of correlation between the length of a word, and the frequency of its occurence? You'd want to measure both the number of letters and number of syllables. And get big samples of text in various styles: formal, casual, oral, writen, etc. But overall, I suspect that the coefficient would be quite high.

I can count on one hand the number of sunny days in the past two months. But today, by some one-in-a-million conjunction of atmospheric conditions and solar geometry, there was sunlight on my cubicle. For about five minutes, but still startling. I didn't even know what many of my neighbors looked like in natural light. I'll have to mark this date on my calendar for next year.

Wierd: I got a text message from a number I don't recognize in Tampa. An empty text message. Huh?...

Roots

Lately I've found myself (re)discovering an interest in genealogy. It combines my love of researching things with a potentially endless project scope if I so choose. But it's also been reminding me of some of the odder aspects of my family tree:

My mother's parents both died before I was born, and she never discusses them. As a result, I don't really know what year they died, where they're buried, what killed them, or even their first names. It seems strange, even to me, but my maternal line just stops.

I know a whole lot more about my father's line, since both my grandparents survived into my teens. They were both German immigrants, so I can trace my family immediately back to Germany. That's half the fun, in my mind - I was able to find the village they came from, and someday, I hope I get the chance to visit it. The odds are pretty good that I still have some close relatives in the area.

Actually, come to think of it, I already know of at least one relative in Germany: Christa Hermann, who I stayed with when I visited Munich. I think her father and my grandfather were brothers, which would make us first cousins, once removed. I should double-check that...

Bah, this is all extremely boring to other people anyway. We'll leave today's moral at: if digging up information turns your crank, genealogy is good stuff, and you'd best get a start on it now before your relatives start dropping like flies.

Yin and Yang

Things are so much simpler when one person Knows and the other Does Not. My mentor at work is a far more experienced programmer than myself, and knows a lot of things about Cerner's systems that I don't. But I knew at least one thing he didn't: in Java, the default constructor of a superclass is always called from any constructor of a subclass. In my case, this was causing a circular call stack that eventually caused the JVM to die, suddenly, quietly, and without exception. But since we both had pieces of the puzzle without the knowledge of the other, we wasted a good hour of unnecessary debugging. Alas.

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but Holiday Spice Pepsi is really, really good. Cinnamon and ginger. Yum. Give it a try; I'm going to stock up while it's still available.

If it's late enough and not too icy, like tonight, driving home through the snow is awesome.

Finally

Oh the weather outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful
And since we've no place to go
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Headed back to Lincoln this evening for Thanksgiving; I'll be there til Sunday. I know a lot of you will be out of town yourselves, but if you make it back in time, look me up.

When Themes Attack

And I thought that Selleck's holiday meals were crazy. I glanced at the company cafeteria's menu for the day, and they've reached a new high (or perhaps low): chipotle turkey, teriyaki turkey, turkey fettucini alfredo, turkey croissants, and... sweet jesus, pumpkin bisque. I might have to make someone a wager to try it. Couldn't be worse than Fireworks' carrot jalapeno bisque...

Gekko

I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico.

No, seriously, I did. Their rates were way lower for me than anyone else I could find. In fact, somewhere around here I have a sheepish email from a local Allstate representative, admitting and suggesting that I should I go to Geico, while he proceeds to give me a quote that's three times higher.

Also? It's the only company I've ever dealt with where there's no voice menuing system. It doesn't even ring; call their number and you're connected to a human being instantaneously. Why aren't more companies like that?

Da Bruckheimer Code

So I saw National Treasure tonight. I'm forced to admit that it wasn't nearly as wretched as I'd feared. In fact, it was pretty darn decent, saved in no small part by the fact that it's hilarious. And like all good conspiracy theories, it paid meticulous attention to historical facts while it wove a totally implausible tale around then. Keep an eye out for the word-for-word, shot-for-shot homage to Indiana Jones, too.

Speaking of history, I've always thought that the ancestral home of the Whiddens ought to look a lot like Gormenghast.

Need to find myself something to do for the weekend. Is a drinking buddy really so much to ask for?

Miscellany, as usual

Still enjoying Third Age. Helm's Deep is brutally exhausting, as it should be. Facing four Fell Beasts in a row without a save point is cruel; facing the Witch-King of Angmar alone is scary; and summoning Gwaihir is just plain sexy.

The skill point thing really is ridiculous, tho. I'm going to reach the end without unlocking half the skills available to me. I figured out it would take well over a thousand turns, per character (you can only use three of the six at a time), and there aren't enough battles in the game. I refuse to level for leveling's sake. Maybe I'll get lucky and there's a New Game+ where I get to keep the stats.

I'm still searching for Kansas City's version of, as a friend once termed them, the Nexus of All Worlds. Where dimensions cross and the unlikely becomes likely. Lincoln's was the Mill, where the probability approached 100% that you'd run into someone you know but didn't expect to see. I've read accounts of such places in other cities, so there's got to be one here somewhere.

Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis have both been renewed, for their ninth(!) and second seasons respectively. New episodes for the current season resume in January. Very nice.

Cans of brake fluid bear a disturbing resemblance to Liquid Schwartz.

The Third Age

Had a really good weekend, about which more later. But what consumed me last night and today was The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, which I finally managed to find a GameCube copy of. Anyone who's not a fan of RPGs can move along.

Plot: The game is basically a Tolkiensque version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: you lead a sort of second-string fellowship, with members of the various races, that follows in the footsteps of the real Fellowship. Sometimes you're clearing the way for them; sometimes you're cleaning up their mess; from Moria to the Pelennor Fields. It lets the game follow the plot of the book, in a rough sort of way, but still introduce new locations and perspectives.

Chapters: Each chapter (which correlate to geographic areas) has a series of objectives you have to finish; complete them all to move on to the next chapter. If you missed a chest or want to level up, you can come back to any chapter you've finished.

Battles: As many sources have pointed out, it's precisely the battle system that Final Fantasy X had. That's pretty much it. There are two indicators on the world map, which indicate when you're getting close to a mandatory/scripted battle (blue) or an optional/random battle (red), the latter of which are limited to certain parts of a chapter.

Items: Gained only from chests, enemy drops, or later in the game, from crafting. No stores. The chests are absolutely everywhere and not marked on the map, so you have to keep your eyes open. Gives the game a bit of a... Krondor-esque feel, for lack of a better comparison.

Skills: Each character has a number of skill trees; learning one in a level opens up the next level, so you can skip ahead and then come back later. Each time you use any skill in a given tree in battle, you earn one skill point. Earn enough to learn a skill and move on to the next. Oddly, skills tend to take 30, 50, even 100 skill points to learn. So you find yourself using nothing but skill attacks. Plain old attacks are available, but I don't think I've used one the entire game.

Modes: Easy, Medium, and Hard. They can be changed at any time, and live up to their names. Why don't more games do this?

Evil Mode: After you've finished a chapter, you can go back and play the key battles again - this time, as the enemy. Pretty difficult, as you're trying to beat down the same party that kicked your ass before. If you manage it, you get some really nice (and otherwise unavailable) weapons/armor/etc. All in all, a rather brilliant idea. It's unbelivevably satisfying to be the Balrog and beat Gandalf to a pulp.

Overall: A lot of fun, if you have any love whatsoever for Tolkien, RPGs, or preferrably both. At minimum, worth a rental, as you'll know within the first few hours whether you want to finish it. Me, I'm pretty satisfied.

Lingua Franca

I think we've all got a mental blind spot that causes us to overlook familiar things, even when they occur in unusual contexts. Case in point: a few years back I was watching home video of a friend's trip to Russia; in it, he's conversing with a local through a translator. Suddenly, the native switches to fluent English. The translator notices immediately, but continues "translating" English to English, and it took my friend several minutes to notice what what was going on.

Or take the show Iron Chef. The host's fractured French is pretty noticeable; "allez cuisine!", which is roughly "go cook!". But it took me literally years to notice that, even on the original Japanese soundtrack, he sometimes says "iron chef" in English. It just went right under the radar.

Tidbit #1: Food Network will be resuming Iron Chef America with new episodes this January. Now, I had assumed that when the show's host referred to the host of the original show as his uncle, it was a little theatrical throwaway, the same sort that had made the original host the fictional chairman of a fictional gourmet academy. But no: apparently the actor who played Kaga really is his uncle.

Tidbit #2: There was a door hanger from Papa John's when I got home, announcing that their pizza is "now being delivered" in my neighborhood. Implying, apparently, that it didn't use to be. Kinda scary. I guess that pizza delivery really is the last step of gentrification.

Thank you for pressing the self-destruct button

Though Cerner's orientation program is focused into an intensive first week, it continues in a more leisurely manner through the first six months or so. Thus, I got to take a tour today of Cerner's data center.

Now, I should mention that we store absolutely no client data whatsoever at our main campus; nor do the vast majority of employees (including me) have access to client systems once they're deployed on site. But in the past few years, Cerner's gotten into the outsourcee business, becoming the IT department of a lot of hospitals. So now we have a data center. It's on a different site, but I suppose I ought not mention where. Security through obscurity.

Anyway, if you've seen one data center, you've seen them all. I have, and I have. But it's still a very nice data center as such things go, a Tier IV if you're familiar with them. Maybe it's my inner tester, but when I'm told that a facility lacks any single point of failure, I immediately begin to search for one. Mentally, of course...

Also? Biometric systems of any kind make me horny. We actually had a discussion with our tour guide about how the handprint scanners wouldn't work properly if you tried to use a severed arm.

Drove home through one of those otherworldly, distractingly stunning sunsets we get on the plains sometime. Couldn't take my eyes off it, even though I was endangering life and limb.

Annoyances

1) The Wal-Mart near my house invariably has one very lonely case of Boulevard, or none at all. In Kansas City. It's disgraceful.

2) The various poker shows always explain the rules; and when they show how to break a tie between flushes, they invariably show two different suits. Even though such a situation is not possible in Texas Hold'Em.

3) My apartment has developed a cold draft from an unidentifiable source, and my heat doesn't seem to want to come on.

Not-Worst Not-Birthday Ever

The day started off so well. The build magically fixed itself as mysteriously as it broke. I finished my (supposedly) all-day training session, helped some of my co-workers and the instructor with the lab, and still left early.

Then I got a flat tire on the way home.

If it's not one damn thing, it's another. I pretty well destroyed the outfit I was wearing putting on the spare, and then blew my evening getting a new tire at Wal-Mart. (I know, I know, but it's cheap and open late.) You'll be impressed or puzzled to know that, despite cooling my heels there for a good ninety minutes, I didn't buy a single thing. I consider it some sort of twisted achievements.

Yesterday, I briefly entertained the notion that Bush might improve in his next term, but it took less than a day for him to prove that he's learned nothing. To wit:

"With the campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort and results. I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals." If they shared your goals, they wouldn't be your opposition. Being bipartisan means reaching out to people who might have extremely different goals, and managing to find common ground anyway. It's a much harder thing to do.

"Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it." Where to even begin. First, campaigns spend capital of all sorts. There's the literal kind; many of the people who gave you money expect something in return. Moreover, you have to lay out your entire record, and convince people you've done a good job. In the process, you remind all the people who never did approve of you how much they don't like you.

If he imagines some sort of across-the-board mandate... he's nuts. I would value his political capital at approximately 3.5 million, in a nation of 300 million. I hope he spends it wisely.

In happier news, I'll be back in Lincoln tomorrow night. Stop by, say hi.

Worst Birthday Ever, Part 3

How could I forget the crowning glory? A few weeks back I made a rather paranoid post on my own apparent ostracism. Today I discover that a fellow in my hiring class has a grudge against me, for a mostly-imagined slight nearly a month ago that I barely remembered. And has been doing his level best to exclude me from anything and everything he can. With all due respect to any female readers, I hate it when men act like women. If you have a problem with me, for heaven's sake, say so.

Worst Birthday Ever, Part 2

It's the ultimate white elephant gift (forgive the pun): four more years of George W. Bush. I'm about as delighted about it as you might imagine, but for once I'm going to try to make a case for myself.

First and foremost, I must lay the increasingly poisonous atmosphere towards gays at lesbians at the feet of Republican party members. As I've said before, they have drawn on people's worst fears and instincts for political gain. If you don't believe me, Google for Sen. Ken Blackwell's comments on gay marriage in Ohio - let's just say the term "barnyard" appears more than once. And ultimately, I must therefore lay the blame on President Bush. Is it fair to hold him responsible for the actions of his party? Well, yes: he is its leader, and like the leader of any organization, bears ultimate responsibility for the organization he leads.

I do not believe it's a coincidence that most of the state amendments (not to mention the federal one) have occurred since Bush took office. His rhetoric condones and encourages them. And they're getting worse. Several of the ones passed yesterday could (depending on court interpretation) ban everything from gay marriage to civil unions to domestic partner benefits to hospital visitation rights to joint ownership to mutual wills; all of these constitute legal agreements between same-sex couples. There exist those who won't be happy until every last faggot is in a concentration camp somewhere; and they have the ear of the White House.

But I do have other political concerns. Read, if you haven't, Bush's victory speech. In particular, this passage caught my attention: "Reaching these goals will require the broad support of Americans. So today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent: To make this nation stronger and better I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation."

Let me start by asking a deliberately naive question: why, exactly, does Bush need the support of a large majority of Americans, or even of the other party? He's not up for re-election; his party has a majority in both houses; and the Republicans have demonstrated twice now that they're perfectly capable of getting elected and getting business done with a slim-to-no majority. (As have the Democrats in other decades, to be fair.) Why shouldn't the Republican party simply do what it plans to do, with or without their opponents' support? It'd hardly be a political novelty.

But I don't have to be so cynical; I can take the man at his word. How, exactly, does he plan to do this? A hint: "Because we have done the hard work, we are entering a season of hope. We'll continue our economic progress. We'll reform our outdated tax code. We'll strengthen the Social Security for the next generation. We'll make public schools all they can be. And we will uphold our deepest values of family and faith."

More worries here, in my eyes. One of the things I concluded from this election is that the candidates didn't differ so very much in their plans; it was more question of priorities that sent people one way or the other. The above are apparently Bush's priorities, but a necessary step to truly courting the other half of the country will be to reshuffle those a bit, to pull some up the list and push others down. Is he willing to do so? I truly wish I knew.

I hear quite a lot that Bush's presidency has been the most divisive in recent memory; certainly it's true in my memory. I think the reason why is quite clear: he truly is confident and stubborn to the point of near arrogance. I really do admire that quality in some, but my political leaders are not among them. It's difficult to imagine a man modulating his position one iota when he routinely invokes divine providence to support them. If religiosity remains the strongest deciding factor in our elections, we're in deep shit for a long time.

Yes, I usually vote for the Democratic party, but not out of any particular alliance. The best explanation I can give is that I'm economically conservative but socially liberal. It'd be nice if I could find similar people to represent me, but they are a rare hybrid. When they do pop up, it simply seems to be more often in the Democratic party. I can't think of the last such Republican politician I've seen; maybe John McCain on his better days.

They say that an election is always a referendum on the incumbent. Did I approve of the last four years? No. All political rhetoric aside, I truly don't expect the next four years to be significantly different from the last. No one on either side of the aisle has given me reason to believe so. The best I really hope for is not to be wearing a pink triangle by that time, but we'll see.

Worst Birthday Ever, Part 1

I'm sure you all know the really awful birthday present I got, but I'm going to do this in parts. This part is purely technical; if you're not a computer scientist, move along.

So today, for the first time, I broke the build. As most of you know, this is a bad thing, and if you work in a vital part of the company (which thankfully I don't), it's a really bad thing. And the worst part is, it wasn't particularly, or at least solely, my fault.

I checked in changes to a number of files, one of which had been modified by someone else not long before. My changes depended on their changes. Now, we also have a pipelined system, where changes must be actively promoted from stage to stage. It's supposed to detect version dependencies like the one I caused, and not allow me to promote code to build until the earlier code has been promoted. But for whatever reason, it didn't notice, and neither did I. The result was that the build servers got a "half-version" that included my changes to an implementation file without the other guy's changes to the corresponding interface file. Kaboom.

Easy to fix, I thought. But no. It's not possible to pull code back to a previous stage; the code that's there stays there. And it won't build. And it's blocking about twenty other projects. I can't just check in the interface file myself; if it's identical to the highest current version (even the current unpromoted version), the source control system silently ignores it. I inserted spurious whitespace to force a new version, but I don't have the permissions to cause a build to happen. Everyone who does went home long ago.

So the end result is that it's still broken, and I'm scheduled to be off-campus at a traning session all day tomorrow. I've explained everything to my boss in the hopes that he has the necessary mojo to fix it, but otherwise, I'm very much on the hook.

To cap the night off, I went to see "The Corporation", a film I'd very much wanted to see. And it was really good; at least until about halfway, when the projector broke and the theatre sent us all home. I got a refund, at least, but still: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.