Brisk and Refreshing

Not a lot of cloud cover this morning.

That made the bike ride in... cool.

Probably not the best time to opt to wear shorts.

Meh. I'll be grateful for that decision when it warms up later.

And it's Friday. Let the joy begin!

Oh yes

Saw this on Topless Robot and had to share. Give up seats to seniors and handicapped or suffer the wrath of the DARK SIDE!

My laziness and SHINY THINGS!

I have to run an errand after work, so I drove to the office today.

Amazing how quickly that simple concept makes me feel like a lazy slug.

Supposed to rain tomorrow and Thursday, so I'll probably drive for the next couple of days. Meh.

In other news, my slingshot arrived!

Things will break in my apartment very shortly. I have already narrowly-averted putting a hole in my apartment walls and breaking a picture frame.

I regret nothing. It's a really nice slingshot. Comes with some metal shot, so I can break my windows and computer screen properly as I mess around like an irresponsible child. Okay, I'm kidding. I'm not really shooting the thing in my apartment. I can't risk breaking my windows (or, worse yet, my neighbors' windows) and hurting someone.

I also got my greedy hands on a new toy: a Nuketools TiGBi keyring. You know... for my keys. Yep. That's why I got it. Any impact-tool use (say for early morning bike ride encounters) are purely coincidental.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, I saw it on the genius that is ApocalypseEquipped and pondered the purchase for about 2.5 seconds before contacting Nukotools.

A short time later, I had some titanium goodness in my hands. It's a nice little tool. I think ApocalypseEquipped gives a better review than I can write. I personally like the Jack Skellington look to it. I admit that was a big part of the draw. It fits well in my hand and it's so light and nicely-tooled!

Okay, time to breathe, step back, and chill on the stuff. Mother's Day is coming up and several birthdays are also on the immediate horizon.

Yeah, I'm not convincing myself either.

Madness

First Blogger does their damn interface redesign, now Salon does one.

Why is it that sites have to be redesigned in such a way as to completely disrupt the flow of information and make users have to re-learn the site use? It doesn't really accomplish much more than irritating the users I know.

Irritating.

---

I hit the Martinez Beer Festival over the weekend. If you don't know where Martinez is, be grateful.

Best festival I've hit in memory. While the temperatures were unpleasantly-hot, the setup was the most organized I've seen. The staff kept the crowds organized and the festival was the way things should be. You pay at the door and all the beer tastings are covered. You only have to pay for food, non-beer drinks, and the other crap that was sold. There was (bad) live music and lots of tents as well as tables with smaller tents. And there were misters making mist to offset the burning death-rays of the dayball.

And the beers were good!

---

Had a moment of joy when I met some earnest and charming youth who were impressed by a Flying Spaghetti Monster symbol I had. Said symbol caused a bit of an unintended ruckus as one of the youth was undecided as to whether or not she should feel offended by the FSM symbol (apparently her belief system is contrary in some manner). The other three youngsters had an animated discussion about the FSM with her.

It was quite interesting. Smart young adults. Gave me hope for the future.

---

Looks like I won't get much bicycling in this week. Apparently rain is due in the forecast for the next few days. May or may not happen, but I hate riding on wet roads so I'll be back to burning fossil fuels instead of being my own fossil fuel.

See what I did there? Me iz clever!

2289

One thing I'll say about the updated (and still irritating) Blogger interface. It shows me a quick and easy count of my blog posts.

With this post, I've done 2289 entries to this blog.

Two-thousand and eighty-nine posts.

Sweet mother of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but that's a lot of nonsense to add to the grand cacophony!

Evidence that Science Fiction Influences Reality

Someone has built a device that functions roughly akin to a sonic screwdriver.

Ponder that for a moment.

Soon, my friends, it's just a matter of time before we've got TARDISes and we're gallivanting about in time and space.

Whoa. I just got a chill from that, actually. Time travel is a technology human beings should never, ever have.

That said, I'd love to have a storage space that's bigger on the inside than on the outside.

Relief

Thankfully I have some music on the flash drives I always carry. My sanity can hang on by a fingernail for another day. Though it's debatable it's hanging on at all...

KHAAAAAAAN!!!!!!

I forgot my iTouch today.

I must have forgotten to put it in my bag after charging it.

I... I'm... I'm without music at work!

KHAAAAAAAN!!!!

A smattering of things

1) Blogger's new interface was redesigned.

As with most aesthetic changes, I don't like it. The old interface worked fine. I wish they would leave well enough alone and stop fucking around with the interface making me have to hunt down and re-learn functions.

At the very least, I wish they'd just let users have the option to use the older interface. This sort of disruptive bullshit is what pushed me to ditch Facebook.

2) Since I'm in a pissy mood, I may as well voice my observations regarding the time-travel thriller Looper.

I saw a trailer before The Cabin in the Woods last night.

Yawn.
Time travel hit squads. The premise seems remarkably stupid. Kudos for having Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the lead, but I'll pass on this one.

3) On the flipside, now that I've slept on it, I'm convinced that The Cabin in the Woods may well be one of the most brilliant horror movies ever.

Goddard and Whedon successfully explain away every horror movie trope and cliche with sinister genius.

It helps that they add in little touches of scene cutaways and witty dialog that reminds me of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" when it was in its prime.

Only with lots of gore in parts.

4) Four days of riding my bike to work. My legs hurt. I whine because I can.

The Cabin in the Woods

Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have created a meta-horror masterpiece.

It's called The Cabin in the Woods.

It's amazing.

I'd like to review it in detail, but to share anything of the plot is to ruin it.

Well... most anything.

Five young people go to an isolated cabin in the woods and... horror happens.

It's not what you think. It's totally what you think.

And it's goddamn brilliant!

Literally. Bwahahaha!

Sadness

I guess my game of "count the hookers" is going to have to go on-hold for the time being. Pretty quiet in the wee-hours o' th' mornin'.

Not that it's a bad thing. Quiet rides in is very, very good.

Legendary

The Legend of Korra aired on Saturday the 14th.

Actually, the first two episodes of the series aired.

What the hell am I talking about, you ask? Have you seen Avatar: The Last Airbender?

If not, drop everything and rent the series. There's three seasons. They're all awesome.

Go ahead. This post can wait.


Okay? Good. Moving on.

"The Legend of Korra" is the sequel to "Avatar: The Last Airbender" (and I'm talking about the animated series, not the abomination that was the live-action movie).

Caveat: I refer to "Avatar: The Last Airbender" as "Avatar". I do not mean that fluffy piece of brain-dead drivel that was James Cameron's movie. Just to be clear.

"The Legend of Korra" is set about seventy years after the conclusion of "Avatar" when Avatar Aang (the main character from "Avatar") has passed away and been reincarnated as a Waterbender named Korra.

In this world there's four classic "elements": earth, air, fire, and water. Certain people in this world have the ability to "bend" one of those four elements. So earthbenders can make stone/earth move. Firebenders generate and throw fire. Etc.

In every generation, there's one person - the Avatar - who can bend all four elements (and then some) as well as commune with spirits and all that fun stuff. The Avatar is responsible for maintaining balance, blah-blah-blah. As part of the role, an Avatar must wander about and learn how to bend all four elements.

This presents a bit of a problem in the post-Aang era. Airbenders, as a result of a pogrom in the events of "Avatar" are almost all dead. There's a small number now, mainly consisting of Aang's son, Tenzin, who is the only Airbending master.

So along comes teenage Korra. She's more aggressively kick-ass than Aang. She's able to bend water, earth, and fire pretty early on in life.

To really get her Avatar-ness together, she needs training in Airbending and some of the more spiritual elements of her role.

And now we have the series...

The first two episodes were pretty solid. The first episode introduced Korra and Republic City, the setting for the show. It's got a steampunk/1920's vibe and Korra is clearly a fish-out-of-water (ironic, given her ancestry). She mixes it up and meets a few characters with ties to characters from the previous series. Great fun ensues. A big bad is introduced.

Cue the second episode. Korra is not good at airbending. She's got issues and is trying to work them out. She also gets exposed to "Pro Bending", a sort of gladiatorial sports-event with earth, fire, and water benders doing their thing. She meets a couple of pro benders - Mako and Bolin. There's cheesy teen romantic tension. Lessons are learned. Good times.

I'm being deliberately vague to avoid serious spoilers. The stories and dialog move smoothly. The characters are all interesting and the animation is spectacular.

It's my hope the (mini)series keeps up the pace. This is one of the better shows on TV right now.

More Adventures in Bicycling

Okay, not really all that much in the way of "adventure" today.

In "Count the Hookers", the game score is still zero. Maybe they moved to a different area?

I don't even have crazy street people stories today. And that's not a bad thing.

Adventures in Bicycling

In honor of the anticipated warm and sunny week, I got my lazy arse out the door and pedaled to work.

It's refreshing to know that I'm not that out-of-shape. I wasn't panting too badly by the time I reached my office's bicycle storage.

In today's game of count-the-hookers, I spotted a total of zero.

Got shouted at by a crazy guy at a bus stop, though. Near as I can figure, he wanted to use my cell phone. A guy on crutches asked if I had some smokes, but I'm not sure that counts for anything (and he seemed nice enough).

Actually, people have generally seemed nice lately. My bike ride on Saturday was a parade of pleasant, smiling, and friendly folk of all walks of life. Most of the folk I encountered riding in this morning exchanged pleasant smiles and nods (save bus-stop guy, but he might have been smiling. I couldn't see his face to tell.).

And now Monday begins. *Sigh*

Checklist

Bake: check. I'm getting the angel-food cake (made from scratch) down.

Balance checkbook: check. *sigh*

Go for a bike ride: check. Wow. The weather was unreal. Gorgeous beyond words. My legs. They hurt.

Eat healthy: Um... no. Oh well.

See The Hunger Games: check.

Okay...

I saw two of a triple feature at the Castro last night: Lost in Translation and Battle Royale.

Having refreshed myself on the orgy of blood that is Battle Royale, I had to go see The Hunger Games.

So I haven't read the books. I've no idea how faithful the movie is to the book in question. My impression is that it's not as Battle Royale-esque as I expected.

Interesting premise, I suppose. Good casting. I liked all the characters, though I had a hard time warming to the main heroine. I have to assume she's a more interesting character in the novel.

Nice flick. I'm glad I saw it.

Seriously?

Okay. Show of hands. Who out there is surprised that Facebook is demonstrating douchebag behavior by supporting CISPA, the latest SOPA/PIPA/Fuck-everyone-with-censorship legislation?

Anyone?

Hello?

the crazy

Pouring rain this fine Friday morning. Standing water in the roads. Good times.

By which I mean the times were lacking in "good", save that I have avoided harm to myself or my precious car. People need to slow the fuck down. Sweet FSM.

---
Payday! I love that word. I'd love it more if I weren't in the hole this month. Going to be a tight two weeks 'till the next cash infusion. *sigh*

I am learning fiscal self control again. Slowly. Must. Resist. Buying. Shiny. Things.

---
I actually can resist the shiny things pretty well right now. Some personal events have made me have to reassess my skill-set a bit. I need to renew my CPR/First Aid certification. Just in case.

I could do it through my office for free, but that would put me on a team... and that would mean meetings. And... yeah. No thanks. I'd rather take a day, cough up a hundred bucks and change, and just walk away with the renewed skills.

I hate meetings.

---
One of my friends has decided to bow out of gaming. I've been thinking over the last week or so just how much his unique (and often insane) perspective has brought to our gaming table.

To say he'll be missed doesn't begin to cover it. He drove me batshit insane, but he also added a richness and depth to our campaigns that can't really be put into words.

I respect his reasons and decision, but I have to say his departure depresses me far more than I expected.

---
Cracked.com has dispensed wonderful gems of wisdom in the past, but this article really kicks my ass.

Love it.

I've always had trouble with the "follow your heart" cliche. Last time someone dispensed that little bit of lore to me, I recall giving a fairly verbose reply:

"Well, my heart's primary job is to distribute the blood (or ichor) through my body. It's a simple task for a simple organ. I'd rather not distract it from that important goal by having it make decisions that my brain should be doing. Thanks, though."

It sounded wittier at the time. Trust me.

Or maybe it was the beer talking.

---
On the topic of Cracked, I, for one, welcome our female overladies.

Christianity - updated (or down-dated or side-dated)

Because nobody has the visionary genius of Sinfest. Nobody.

Best way for Christianity to recruit from the nerd pool.

Signs of Addiction

When I got home from work yesterday, bleary-eyed and tired, I performed my usual routine: I turned on my PC.

Horror struck me. I did not have Internet access.

I'd just spent 9+ hours in the office, pounding away on a computer. This shouldn't have been the end of the world.

I called my service provider and found out there was an outage. No ETA for restoration of service.

Breathe. Breathe.

I plugged in a workout DVD and tried a P90X "Kempo X" workout.

Felt good.

I went back to my computer. Still no Internet.

OH NOES! HOW WOULD I SEE LOLCATS?

Wait. I don't look at lolcats. I don't care for the meme.

Pr0n? Nah.

I had to check the balance on a couple of accounts and retrieve something from Dropbox, but none of that was terribly urgent.

Why the anxiety? Why?

I finished the workout. I called my service provider again. Still no ETA.

Sighing, I went back to my computer, fired up some tunes, and looked around for a book... hey! I HAVE ACCESS AGAIN!!!

WHEE!!!!

Glee filled me. Happiness. Giddy, giddy happiness.

Ecstacy!

JOY!

Yeah... addiction. That's all it is. Pure addiction.

[EDIT: And now YIM is down this morning. Anxiety...]

['NOTHER EDIT: Just my YIM is down this morning. Glee. My personal login can't access YIM, but others have no problem. How wonderful.]

High Comedy

My friend V sent me this:

Review: Karen Santorum's
Dirty Book on Good Manners.

You just can't make this shit up.

I can't stop laughing. The conclusion is pure awesome.

Salty Mines

Monday sure came quickly.

I guess that means the weekend was busy. And it was. Highlights (to inspire yawns):

* got my bike fixed (FINALLY!)
* tepid and entirely-forgettable Firkin Fest (beer tasting festival)
* got very disturbing (but not surprising) news
* saw a newborn faun. We believe the faun was born on Easter Sunday, no less.

Honestly, I don't care much about Easter. I'm not especially religious (save for my deep and all-abiding devotion to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, of which I am an ordained minister).

That didn't prevent me from enjoying the Easter-ish meal of lamb (ah, irony) that I devoured with gluttonous glee. I picked up some Cadbury Easter Eggs as well, just to push my system into diabetic coma all the faster.

Of course, now that I have my bike fixed, I should exercise more and burn calories. Wait. The weather report for the week is rain from Tuesday through Friday? Seriously?

Yes. Of course. That makes perfect sense. Oh well.

Throne of the Crescent Moon - review

I finished Saladin Ahmad's "Throne of the Crescent Moon" last night.

Easily one of the most fun novels I've read in a while. I haven't enjoyed characters such as Ahmad's in what feels like ages. I found the story sucking me in with the same sort of infectious intensity of Patrick Rothfuss or Jim Butcher (two authors who have that sort of effect on me).

The story is set in a faux-"Arabian Nights" world, complete with monsters of every stripe. There's high magic, noble heroes, crafty scholars, daring outlaws, and vile villains.

For all that, the heroes are very human, complete with flaws and quirks a'plenty.

In a rarity for these sorts of novels, I found the villains to be far less-interesting than the heroes. Ahmad's villains in "Throne" are very one-dimensional and under-developed. Though that statement really needs to be qualified by which characters I'm labelling "villain".

Aside from that very minor quibble, I found the narrative very easy to read and the story flowing in a fun, easy pace. I wasn't bored at any point.

My only other quibble is that I found the ending a little rushed and a tad anticlimactic, but that may simply have been my disappointment in realizing the ride was over.

It's clearly set up for more stories in the series. I can't wait for Ahmad's next offering!

Zen and the Art of EX-TER-MIN-A-TION!

Cake! And Brainwashing.

Apparently, someone is saying Saladin Ahmad's book is "The last straw in PC Islamist brainwashing.".

I must admit, it's a very good book!

I wonder what kind of cake, Mr. Ahmad would like? I would totally make him a "Treacherous Angel-Food Cake", but the joke is only understood by anyone who has read the novel.

So go read the novel. Now.

It's a hell of a solution

Not too long ago I lost self-control (again) and added more stuff to my pile.

One of those things was a Spartan OG from Skinth Solutions.

It arrived after I left the office yesterday.

Took the edge off of my Sinclair-anger this morning.

It's a neat little belt-holster-thing and the new home for my POS cell phone.

It's smaller than the Chrome Accessory Pouch that I usually cart about for my phone and a pen. It's capable of carrying either a phone or my Leatherman and a couple of pens (or pen-shaped things). There's another pocket that could maybe hold something very small and slim but I haven't figured out what just yet.

It's pretty awesome.

And they shipped without delay. Bless 'em.

I can see myself buying different Skinth Solutions stuff in the future.

Enough is enough

I've yanked Iain Sinclair from my list of shopping sites I enjoy.

I've had it with them.

As I mentioned before, I've had a long-outstanding order for an Eon Extreme floodlight.

The ship date just shifted. Again.

I get when a company has production issues. I really do. These things happen.

I don't accept when a company's behavior is:

* charge for a purchase up-front then take forever to ship.
* don't clearly-communicate shipping delays.
* continually have the same delay over-and-over.

When you purchase an item from Iain Sinclair Ltd, you're charged up front. Their items on their main (not FAQ) page list an approximate wait of 28 days to ship.

So you're hit for the cash immediately and you wait (and wait and wait...). When the wait is more than a month, you're essentially giving them an interest-free loan while you continue to wait and wait...

If you want more details on what the hell is taking so long, you have to work your way through their site, find the FAQs page, and get the real skinny or send them an email and hope someone replies. They're about 50-50 on replies. Sometimes they're dead-on and reply quickly. Sometimes it's firing off into the void.

What really pisses me off about them is that you can go to the Eon Extreme main page right now and see they're still claiming it's going to take 28 days to ship. They claim the same on their shopping page.

This is despite the fact that they've had delays on shipping this since... October of 2011?

I've had it with merchants like this. They've got clever ideas, but their business model sucks ass.

Gettin' my read on

After reading reviews on io9 and BoingBoing, I picked up "The Throne of the Crescent Moon" by Saladin Ahmed.

I have had trouble putting it down. I actually blame this book for the lack of housecleaning and general chores I did over the weekend. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

This book is freakin' genius. Ahmed's narrative style is gripping and engrossing. His characters are each fascinating and very "non-Tolkien". His world has all the Arabian Nights flavor one might ever want.

I'm aaaaaaaaalmost done. Exhaustion made me stop and go to bed last night.

I highly recommend this. I haven't enjoyed a book this much since the last Patrick Rothfuss novel.

And that, from me, is high praise.

SERIOUSLY????

Salon has an interesting article today entitled Why the GOP distrusts science.

Those very words "distrusts science" offend me.

I think people get confused when they talk about science. When people whine about what science has wrought or how it has impacted the world, what they tend to really be whining about is the implementation of technology.

Technology that has been developed through use of science.

Science is a process. It's a method of testing our environment and aspects of our world to work out how things function and what things are.

Technology consists of the tools we put in place to shift our environment to something that better suits our needs and wants.

Yes, I'm oversimplifying, but to "distrust science" is just so... asinine.

Science is the process of seeing a flame, putting a log in the flame, and seeing the log burn. One can quickly process out that the heat from the flame will burn other things.

So, one who "distrusts science" would therefore put one's hand (or head) into the flame, not realizing said object would burn...

It... I... gah.

Science gave us the technology to go to the goddamn moon! To build nuclear weapons (yikes!). To figure out how to generate electricity. To combat disease!

To distrust the process is just... mind-boggling.

I've never understood people who insist on contrasting science with religion. They're not even apples and oranges.

Science is a process of discovery using observations to determine facts.

Religion is "afterlife insurance". It's faith-based using subject matter of uncertain origin to try to explain the will of an unknown and unknowable entity that may-or-may-not exist. These explanations are, more often than not, simply a form of mass crowd control to reinforce an existing power base or supplant one.

Of course, my definition of religion is pretty subjective and not very scientific.

I'm emotional and angry, so folks will just have to deal, I guess.

Fortunately, I have a short atten---OOH! Shiny thing! Gotta go!