Obligatory Retospective

So... 2013.

Not a great year. Lots of drama. Some personal, some professional, some just omnipresent and lingering like smog.

There were good points, certainly. It was quite the roller-coaster ride. Looks like 2014 will hold much of the same. Impossible to say if any of that will be a good thing or a bad thing.

However it all goes, I feel obligated to say farewell to car payments (yay!), adieu to so many friends who were part of my life for such a long time, and good-bye to a sibling with whom I had a complicated relationship.

I'm not going to go through the pantomime of resolutions. I'll adapt to 2014 somehow and hopefully better than I adapted to 2013.

Adios 2013 and bring on the new year! I've got a pint in my hand and a dapper hat to face the elements. I'm ready.

EDIT: Oh, and to any who read this, I wish you a very happy new year. May 2014 bring you joy and good fortune while leaving all the bad crap behind.

Review: The Time of the Doctor

So I saw it.

The final Matt Smith episode, "The Time of the Doctor" has aired and I have personal reactions. Spoilers follow, so be warned. I'll hide it under a deprecated font tag, which will do exactly jack for handheld devices, but I lack technical skill to hide spoilers properly and am too lazy to research so... here we go.



























































Still there? Seriously? Okay...












"The Time of the Doctor" starts with Smith's Doctor in orbit around a planet. He has a damaged Cyberman's head that he's talking to in the TARDIS while a fleet of every alien ever is answering a strange, untranslatable message from the forcefield-encased planet below.

Meanwhile, Clara is having Christmas dinner and has the Doctor drop by as her faux-boyfriend in an entirely immaterial side-plot. That gets Clara on-board the TARDIS when the Doctor learns the message is transmitting that the mysterious planet below claims to be Gallifrey. It isn't.

The story then spins off into the normal navel-gazing incoherent nonsense that Moffatt usually pens. The planet is protected by the once-noted Papal Mainframe under the control of some woman the Doctor knew from before. The Doctor tricks the Papal whatsits to letting him go down to the planet where he finds another crack in time from Series Five that leads to Gallifrey beyond time-and-space. There's a "truth field" in place to make people speak the truth. The Doctor is being asked "Doctor Who" under the arbitrary logic that the answer will call back the Time Lords. Nobody in orbit wants that 'cause they think it will start another time war (huh?) so the Papal whosit woman starts the Silence movement to stop the Doctor. The Doctor lingers on the planet in a town called Christmas where... um... you know, don't dwell on the town. It's just meaningless and random. The planet is named Trenzalore and this is where the final battle is going down.

The Doctor sends the TARDIS to take Clara home, but Clara hangs on the TARDIS and somehow comes back to Trenzalore only centuries have passed and the Doctor has started to age. Everyone and their cousins up in orbit is fighting and some of the Papal people have gone back in time to do the whole Silence mystery thing that was the plot of series five. Turns out those Silence wonks? Gene-engineered confessors. Yeah... okay.

The plot takes weirder turns and the Doctor with the Papal people are fighting everyone to stop them from... um... I dunno. Killing the Doctor so he can't call back the Time Lords? That's only one of many plot points that wind up making no sense at all.

In the end, the Doctor is dying of old age. Through very creative math, it turns out the Doctor is on his last incarnation, having had his twelve regenerations. Clara talks the Time Lords from beyond into helping somehow and they manage to send him a new life-cycle while opening and closing the time crack at will. So the Doctor's new regeneration blows up the Daleks (the only enemies standing) and turns him into the... um... next Doctor? The 14th incarnation or 13th regeneration or whatever.

Plot points that make absolutely no sense at all:
- How was the Papal Mainframe able to stop the TARDIS from doing anything? Isn't Gallifreyan technology more advanced than everyone else?
- How did the Silence movement blow up the TARDIS in series five? That was never, ever addressed.
- Really? That regeneration-into-the-hand thing is going to count? Seriously? Fuck you guys.
- So if the Time Lords are now not-bad (still an open question) why would letting them return be a bad thing? I mean, everyone seems okay with the Daleks hanging around and they're homicidal to the extreme. What the hell?
- Why the hell do the Time Lords need the Doctor's "real name" to return? Why not just have the Doctor use the TARDIS to respond?
- If the Time Lords can get through the crack, why not send an expedition from their side using their substantial technology? I mean... seriously?
- If Clara was able to get them to help the Doctor, it seems the Time Lords got their reply that all was well. If they could move the time crack (and they clearly could) why not just pop into reality at a different point? Why fuck around at Trenzalore?

So, yeah. It was an entertaining episode, I suppose, but it was incoherent nonsense. Moffatt should hand off the reins to someone with a better sense of details and focus on "Sherlock". My two cents.

Tis the Season

Happy Rod Serling's birthday!

We get the Doctor Who holiday, too! Happiness abounds!

I know the answer

Shoggoth.

Wherein I ramble on a Thursday morning

I can't believe how crazed this week has been and it's only Thursday. It's not just hyperbole that I cannot wait for the end of my workday on Friday.

---

Still flummoxed by the alterations that resulted in The Desolation of Smaug. I'm trying to parse out why Jackson opted for some of his more bizarre elements (vague spoilerish statements follow): Did Beorn really have to look like Wolverine's even-more-freakish taller brother? Did Bard really have to become a Han Solo-esque character? Was that painful-to-watch romantic subplot really have to happen? Did the Dol Guldur scene really have to be a rehash of something we've already seen in one of the LotR films?

I'm also wondering what happened to Jackson's sense of pacing and style. In the various Lord of the Rings movies, the fight scenes were complex and hectic without feeling frenzied and crowded. In the two Hobbit films thus far, all the fight scenes feel like badly-paced video game scenes.

---

Xmas shopping. I hates it. I hates it a lot.

Smauggy day

Saw The Desolation of Smaug. I finally understand what Peter Jackson is doing. He's done a filming of a video game of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign he did based loosely on Tolkien's books.

This second installment of "The Hobbit" has nothing to do with the book with the same name save that there's a few characters that share names. Oh, and tiny people are called Hobbits when they're not Dwarves. Otherwise, there's no resemblance at all to the book. Once you accept that, it's pretty easy to digest Tauriel the "She-Elf" and the appearance of Legolas all over the place.

I wonder what kinds of slashfic Jackson's got on Legolas? No, I don't want to know. Not really.

Smaug was pretty awesome, and it was an entertaining movie once I realized what it was. Worth admission, but purists will claw out their eyes.

Tarragoatmeal Explained!

So I have a (terrible) excuse for the "tarragoatmeal incident"! I was coming down with a cold!

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Two nights of Nyquil mixed with naps seems to have shaken the bug before it took hold too much. I was pretty much back to 85% on Saturday and fluctuating between 70% and 90% on Sunday.

I feel about 95% today, which is pretty amazing considering it's Monday.

Still haven't seen The Desolation of Smaug yet. I may try mid-week and give the crowds a chance to calm down a bit.

Tarragon with the wind

On cold mornings, I like to have some oatmeal. I usually spice the bland food up with some honey and cinnamon.

For whatever reason, I had trouble sleeping this morning. I suspect this has something to do with some files I lost when my PC crashed, but that's not really relevant.

As the Beatles song goes: I got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Then I realized that last bit was really silly. Moving on... so I started to put together breakfast. My motor skills in the morning work on a very basic routine that's essentially muscle memory. I can't do anything significant or analytical until I've had that first cup of coffee. So anything that disrupts my pattern is just not acceptable to the automatic functions that run my shambling form until coffee has entered the system.

Apparently waking up early was a disruption.

I put together my oatmeal, nuke it, then add honey and grab for the cinnamon from my spice rack.

By "spice rack", I mean "that collection of spices I have glommed-together in one place in a cabinet". I just grabbed the bottle closest to the front. No worries. Cinnamon is my most-used of my spices by far.

Uncapped the spice bottle and shook it to get some cinnamoHMYGOD!!!! WHAT THE HELL??? WHAT IS THIS STUFF??? Is that... tarragon??? WHEN DID I GET TARRAGON IN MY SPICE COLLECTION???? HOW THE HELL DID I...?

Breathe. Breathe. Okay, what the hell? This is tarragon. And there's a lot of it in my oatmeal.

Memory, inspired by adrenaline, returns. Yep. Used up the last of the open container with cinnamon yesterday. I have a second, but it's sealed.

I need coffee.

Nuked water. Created coffee. Dumped the tarragoatmeal. I'm just not open to experimenting like that this early in the morning. Re-made breakfast.

This is just going to be one of those days. I can already tell.

Agents of Y.A.W.N.

Saw the mid-season finale to "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." last night.

While sitting through the predictable and somewhat navel-gazing plot, I found another problem with the show just jumping out and waving its hands at me for attention.

The plot moves along to gradually reveal a shadowy character called "The Clairvoyant". When the heroes learn about that, they quickly dismiss the idea of clairvoyance as "impossible". "It's not in the index", they say (meaning it's not a "real" superpower).

And therein lies a huge part of the problem with this show.

"Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." is riding on the tails of success for the Marvel films (most noteworthy, "The Avengers"). Films rife with superpowers and grandiose crazy shit. Now you'd think that "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." would have a fair amount of superpowers in its lineup, but instead the show seems to go out of its way to close doors in its world and say that certain powers are "impossible". Telekinesis? Impossible. Not in the index. Clairvoyance? Impossible. Not in the index.

Now I get that there's rights issues involving mutants, the X-Men, and all that, but really? You're going to dismiss the superpowers that would be easiest to have on a TV show budget? Seriously? Instead we get tepid kickboxing fights with super strength. One guy who can throw fire. And... yeah. Okay, we're done.

I'm not saying the show has to devolve to "superpower of the week" like "Smallville" did, but for the love of the FSM, stop painting the show into a corner! Learn from (FSM help us) "Arrow"! Sure, "Arrow" had the premise of no superpowers at all, but they never announced that on the show! So now they can sneak in weird super-treatments that will inevitably lead up to a TV series for "The Flash".

Oh, and "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." writers? Really? The end was your big twist? You guys need help in the worst way.

Just how many regenerations now?

I'm calling bullshit on Moffatt.

This gets vaguely, kinda, maybe spoilery. Read at your own risk.






























You were warned.








So apparently Smith's Doctor is now considered the Thirteenth incarnation in the renumbering.

How in the hell is that possible, you ask? Well, here's what the fan wonks have to say on that topic:
Hartnell - First
Troughton - Second
Pertwee - Third
Baker (Tom) - Fourth
Davison - Fifth
Baker (Colin) - Sixth
McCoy - Seventh
McGann - Eighth
Hurt - Ninth (this was the first re-ordering)
Eccleston - Tenth
Tennant - Eleventh and this is where the reordering gets weird. He's also the Twelfth because of that weird "his hand regenerated" bullshitty side-story.
That makes Smith the Thirteenth Doctor.

By tradition (as established in "The Deadly Assassin", you can't have more than twelve regenerations (and thus, thirteen incarnations) of any one Time Lord without cheating (see Rassilon and the Master for how that's done). So Capelli's Doctor will actually be the Fourteenth, by this counting.

So how is this bullshit? Really? They're going to count a decapitated hand becoming a weird clone thing as a regeneration? Um... No. That's just... no.

No, no, no.

Toys

Got my new PC yesterday. Spent the balance of the evening loading programs and configuring stuff. That's going to be a process for a while. Probably won't take as long as last time. This PC is ridiculously-faster than the last one. Now to budget for a new laptop...

Signs of Old Age

• You thank the liquor store clerk for carding you.
• You get "Senior Singles" spam.
• You feel weather in your joints. For real.
• You look at some modern trends and think "what the fucking hell?".
• You stop getting shocked by seeing grey in your hair.
• You can't eat the crap you used to eat.
• You can't drink the swill you used to drink.
• You remember commercial jingles for products that are sold as "vintage" in specialty sites on the Internet.

Moons and stuff

• How are we not dead yet?
• Does anyone else think "Skynet" when you hear about Amazon delivery drones? Is it just me?
• There's a new TV show - "Intelligence" - coming out about a superspy with a chip in his head giving him super hacking powers. Wasn't that "Chuck"? And what the hell is it with the brain-implant-super-chip meme?

Also: Moons!

RIP Nelson Mandela

Rest in Peace Nelson Mandela. You will be missed.

Infodump 2889

• I neglected to post anything as a follow-up, but I have dodged jury duty again. YAY!
• Goddamn cold this morning. Had to find a scarf and bust out a wool hat. Oh the humanity.
• About 3/4 through "This Book is Full of Spiders". David Wong remains insane and awesome.
• The Holidaze are upon us! Things to do: 1) Avoid malls. 2) Avoid "The Little Drummer Boy" song. 3) Avoid Xmas specials. 4) Watch the credit card glow.
• I keep looking for a full moon to explain or justify the amount of crazy I've been encountering lately, but I think I'm looking at the wrong cause. It's December. That's reason enough.

Excitement! Fun! Jury Duty!

The exciting and fun part is that I don't have jury duty... at least in the morning.

Never ones to completely let people off the hook, the court has me calling in later to see if I have to make the trek in for an afternoon appearance. I'm hoping to dodge the bullet.

In other news, I've got the PC working completely now, save for one program. And I just learned that a recent Windows change means that the program is no longer supported for Windows 7, so that's that.

To take advantage of the Cyber-Monday deals, I bought a new desktop anyway. I figure the old one is working fine, but there's damage that's eventually going to erode performance. I can already tell it's a bit more sluggish than it was before the power supply crapped out. Never hurts to have a backup.

Gettin' a mite cold in the mornings now.

My new hobby...

... is reinstalling a corrupted program on a dodgy computer and having it fail 'cause I can't completely uninstall the corrupted program.

The fun is non-stop.

Thoughts on "The Day of the Doctor"

If you haven't seen "The Day of the Doctor", the following will contain spoilers. I will put in a series of line breaks then try to mask the text so it appears when highlighted in a browser. Hand-helds are SOL. Sorry. Stop reading if this is a concern.































Still there? Okay...

I've now watched "The Day of the Doctor" three times. The OCD nerd that inhabits the place where my soul would reside feels a need to sound off: First of all: Ian Chesterson is now the head-honcho at Coal Hill School? HELL YEAH! Wonder what happened to Barbara Wright? Awesome sound off to the First Doctor's era. And I'm curious what happened to the Dalek time machine they used to get home.

Now that my squee is out of the way, let's deconstruct the episode a bit:

So UNIT snags the TARDIS out of an open field. Just like that. What the hell? Since when does UNIT go about stealing the TARDIS? What if the Doctor needed it? Hell, why didn't the Doctor just dematerialize from the helicopter's grasp?

Kudos to explaining the Elizabeth I references re: the 10th (Tennant?) Doctor, but it felt... forced and weird. I would have been happier if they'd never tried to explain all that. And Elizabeth I had a hidden gallery of subversive art that lasted into the 21st Century? Um...?

So, the War Doctor was present for the Fall of Arcadia. Yeah, okay. So this is the "Warrior" Doctor. He's got no gun. He's wearing an empty bandoleer and sounds like a flavor of the First Doctor with his crotchety behavior. If he's been fighting in the Time War, why isn't he armed with something? Grenades? Demat gun? I mean, just some kind of token weapon would have set him apart as the "Not-Doctor" he was built up to be. And using the TARDIS to smash Daleks doesn't count.

While on that topic, why the hell aren't there more TARDISes or Gallifreyan war-vehicles in-play around Gallifrey? I mean, c'mon! The Doctor's got an antiquated TARDIS. It's not armed. He's dicking around on Gallifrey during the final fighting and nobody's touching him in an obsolete bit of technology. You'd think up-to-date Time Lord TARDISes would be in better shape to mess-up the Daleks.

Hell, the entire "final day" was a disappointment. All this talk of the Time War being such a huge thing and all we see is Daleks blasting Gallifreyans. We never see the evil the Time Lords do. All we see are Gallifreyan soldiers firing "pew-pew" guns at Daleks or running around and getting blown up. If Gallifrey can master multi-dimensional technologies and time-travel, I'd expect more surreal and weird crap being hurled-about.

On the topic of multi-dimensional things, so how the hell did the Zygons get the dimensional art thingie in the first place? What, were Gallifreyan artists dinking around on the Zygon homeworld before it was destroyed? And how did those Zygons get out of the art? If it's so easy, why hasn't Gallifrey just popped-out of its alternate universe? Hell, why didn't Gallifreyan refugees and/or Daleks pop out when the Doctors and Clara popped out in the Black Archive?

WTF happened with the Zygons at the end? What kind of negotiations were even possible at the end?

So shout-outs for having the Moment take the form of Rose Tyler as "Bad Wolf". It was ridiculous fan service, but made a vague connection to Rose's tie-in with the Eye of Harmony make more sense. Kinda. Maybe.

Loved Oswald's scarf. That was improved upon with "The Curator", though that made so much of no-sense that I just shut my brain off at that point.

And kudos for having Capelli do a cameo.

Bits of things

• If you've accessed this site and get hit with some kind of weird popup/redirect thing, leave something in comments (if you're so-inclined) so I can report this to Blogspot. I have so many script-killing things in my Firefox setup that I'm not sure if this site still has the problem I saw earlier this week.
• Still tweaking and updating things to get the PC working at the level it was at before the grand crash. So far everything is working well. We'll see how this goes.
• Now reading "This Book is Full of Spiders" by "David Wong". The sequel to "John Dies at the End", this novel remains at the same level of bizarre entertainment of "Wong's" style.
• Also reading "Stormdancer" by Jay Kristoff. Japanese steampunk. Yeah. Despite that genre name, it's pretty damn entertaining.
• I've washed my hands of the hope of getting anything constructive done this weekend. After a week of being stressed-out over the PC and other things, I've decided to just fuck it all and chill out. I need decompression time, which is why I took Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off. Time to just chill and drink a beer or two.

Adventures in Computer Disasters: Part Five

The PC is running.

Long story short: the power supply crapped out, causing the PC to shut down. This cascaded the issue by causing critical errors on the hard drive, making it nigh-impossible to boot.

Once the power supply was replaced, I was temporarily able to get into safe mode, but unable to run any kind of repair utility thanks to the errors on the hard drive.

Cue the heroic music as Ubuntu came to the rescue.

With Ubuntu loaded on a flash drive, I was able to boot an Ubuntu instance and eventually get it to the point where Ubuntu fixed the disk errors well enough that I could run the Windows Repair utility. From there, everything appears to be working... thus far. The PC passed a virus scan, so that's out of the way. Now I just wait for the other shoe to drop as I try to get to the projects I'd postponed...

Avoid this site for a bit

Seems to me someone's got a bit of malware infecting this blog. I'd suggest staying away until this get sorted out.

Adventures in Computer Disasters - Part Four

My PC is possessed by the Devil. It's the only real explanation.

I replaced the power supply. I can boot in safe mode. It technically works, but I can't get the goddamn OS to boot properly.

Won't boot from a recovery disk. Hell, it won't boot from a bootable Ubuntu flash drive.

Won't let repair mode work. Essentially all it will do is boot in safe mode. If I'm lucky.

My repair guy is out-of-town for the holidaze and I'm... filled with all sorts of holiday joy.

Since it's a goddamn Dell, it's got no installation disks. Everything of use to reinstall the OS is squirreled away on some inaccessible partition. So what I've learned today:

• I can't restore a system image from a backup in safe mode.
• I can't boot the damn PC in anything other than safe mode.
• I can't reinstall the OS.
• I've got a giant paperweight.
• I'm never buying a Dell again. Ever.

Adventures in Computer Disasters - Part Three

Got my PC back this fine morning. Needed a new power supply. $50+ later plus payment to the repair guy, I brought my baby home and fired it up.

And it won't boot.

I swear by all the gods, I am... not happy.

At least I can now get into safe mode. It's possible I'll be able to save it. I may have to reinstall the OS. Not sure. Still, it's an improvement.

If only I knew what sacrifices the technology gods required...

Adventures in Computer Disasters - part two

Bit the bullet and took the PC to my repair guy. I have hopes he can save it. I'd rather pay a couple of bills for a repair than more for a new machine at this juncture. With luck, I'll know later today whether I'm drinking in celebration or in memory of my PC. It's possible the data on it can be saved, but I'm not really holding out that much hope.

Adventures in Computer Disasters

Yep. The PC is still giving me trouble. Won't boot. I can't even get it to a point where I can run Windows Recovery or even boot in safe mode. It sticks on WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\CLASSPNP.SYS.

A potential solution found online is to rename this file but I can't even get a command prompt going on the PC.

I should just wipe the goddamn thing and start over but there's a few files I want to try to recover and the damn Dell didn't come with installation disks anyway. It's got some separate partition that ought to allow a fresh reinstall but I can't get to the damn process to let me do the reinstall.

To say I'm irritated doesn't come close. So now I'm downloading an Ubuntu ISO and I'm going to load that on to a prepared flash drive. In theory, I can boot in Ubuntu from the flash drive and troll around the PC to see what I can do and what I can recover, if anything.

The important stuff is all backed-up, so there's that, but it would be nice to grab less-important stuff that didn't make the backups.

From there, I'm going to try to figure out how to fix the PC. If Ubuntu fires up, my first trip will be to address the CLASSPNP.SYS file, if I can manage that. If that fails... well, I'll have to track down my PC repair guy and see if he can squeeze in time to help me out. It's that or dust off, nuke the site from orbit, and buy a new goddamn PC.

I really don't want Windows 8. Sigh.

This is the hammer

With my PC running the longest ever diagnostic routine (78% at this point checking my hardware and it's been running since 10am this morning), and with my evening plans unexpectedly destroyed, I decided to get out of the house and get away from the sources of my anxiety.

In short, I went to the moves to see Thor: The Dark World.

That was a rather entertaining flick, I must say. Good popcorn fun. Hokey, but not too far down the rabbit hole. Hammy, but not too bad. Nice effects without being overwhelming. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Worth seeing and then some.

Talking Techno Turkey

First day of my extended Thanksgiving vacation. I'd planned to dedicate the time to projects of some import.

The Gods of Perversity and Irony, however, have different plans.

For a while now, my main PC has been fussy about booting up. Resetting to previous saved points have mostly addressed the problem. Over the weekend, the PC decided that was just not acceptable.

I backed up most of my data and believed I'd addressed the problem. I woke this morning intending to get the rest of my data backed up then see if I could make progress on the projects while trying to analyze what's up with my PC.

The PC refused to boot.

Okay, I tried the system recovery disk I'd made.

Nope. Didn't like that at all.

Ooookaaaaaay. Fired up the laptop (which I'm currently on and has its own unique form of fussy behavior) and did a little research. I have a Dell, so of course I wasn't sent the Windows installation disk with the PC. Why would they make my life easy? So I have no easy way to make a bootable USB. Crap.

A little more research revealed the hidden partition drive where there's a fresh Windows install. I could use that. Potentially I could wipe the PC completely and reinstall fresh. Yeah... that's a nuclear option.

So now I've gotten it booted through the hidden drive and am running diagnostics. I'm not convinced the hard drive is failing, but I've been wrong before. I'm pretty sure it's a software corruption. I'm loathe to wipe and reinstall, but it may come to that.

The timing is not the greatest, but I've got lots of time off, so I guess it could be worse.

And to the Gods of Perversity and Irony: that wasn't a challenge. Fuckers.

Review and reactions: The Day of the Doctor

Fifty years ago, on November 23, 1963, "Doctor Who" first aired in the United Kingdom.

Today, I sat in one of many movie theaters among many fans and watched the 50th anniversary special honoring that day.

"The Day of the Doctor" was a follow-up to "The Name of the Doctor", the finale to Series 7 of the revived "Doctor Who".

If you haven't seen it, be warned, I am about to spoil stuff.






































Still there? Okay, you were warned...













As revealed in "The Name of the Doctor", the 11th Doctor is not the 11th incarnation of the Time Lord known as "The Doctor". There was a previously-unknown incarnation in the mix who committed a crime so terrible that later incarnations (and the incarnation who performed the crime) did not recognize that incarnation as "The Doctor".

The minisodes reveal that the unknown incarnation is actually the 9th and the successor to Paul McGann's 8th Doctor. Transformed by necessity into a "warrior" to fight the horrors of the Time War, this "not-Doctor" (played by John Hurt) spends a long time (as implied by the minisode) fighting to restrain the worst horrors inflicted by the Time Lords while trying to stop the Daleks.

"The Day of the Doctor" takes us to the last day of the Time War, in the Gallifreyan city of Arcadia. As one of the minisodes, and prior revelations reveal, the Daleks manage to penetrate Gallifrey's defenses and are attacking the city. Arcadia is doomed.

The "War Doctor" is there and reveals himself to the Daleks, to their dismay. He destroys several of them then moves on to steal an ancient Time Lord weapon known as "The Moment". "The Moment" is a sentient weapon capable of destroying a galaxy. It lies unused by the Time Lords because this weapon possesses a conscience and they are afraid of it. The War Doctor, however, steals it and takes it to a distant place to activate it.

The Moment displays an interface in the form of the Bad Wolf (aka Rose Tyler) and tells the War Doctor the price for what he intends to do, then points him to other points in his life.

In his future, the 11th Doctor finds himself investigating a strange case for U.N.I.T. that crosses his timeline with the 10th Doctor (who is hanging out with Queen Elizabeth I). The plot winds up... well, there's no point in spoiling everything. Suffice it to say it's very fan-service-y. Eventually the War Doctor is tied into the 10/11th and 11/12th in a story that defines and redefines the War Doctor and the future of the series.

It's not an airtight story, but it's typical Steven Moffatt. It touches emotions well. The villains are an incidental - and ultimately irrelevant - part of the true tale, which is the journey of the Doctor to find reconciliation with his past self.

And the cameos are pretty solid.

I'm not generally one for 3D hokum on the big screen, but this special was well-done. If you're fan, watch the episode. I think you'll be pleased.

Friday and... Friday!

• Still reeling over Tuesday's "Person of Interest"
• Crazy winds last night. All sorts of neighborhoods are without power.
• BART is down. That's a great start to the morning. Though the news said they're supposed to be up and running by 5am, so hopefully that's fixed.
• Did a shot of Nyquil last night and slept a good ten hours. I feel human again. Just in time for the weekend and then some.
• I'm taking the entire week of Thanksgiving off. Time to get some chill in and see if I can focus on projects.
• Seriously. Tuesday's "Person of Interest" was just way too fucked up. I'm kind of upset!

uuuuuuggggghhhh

This morning's ramblings brought to you by the headache I can't seem to shake over the last two days.

• What is that wet stuff coming out of the sky? Is this the legendary "rain" I've heard so much about?
• WANT! NOW! TAKE MY MONEY! (via Nerd Approved
• It's wrong that the Keanu Reeves 47 Ronin movie is getting my interest. Very, very wrong.
• I have to say, I'm impressed. "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." has me actually starting to like Ward and Skye. Ever. So. Slowly. The bit at the end of the last episode was awesomely messed-up. Sorry, the bit before the absolute end. Though I will say Coulson was right. It looks like a magical place.
• I am trying not to get my hopes up over "The Day of the Doctor", but I gotta say that minisode prequel was pretty damn awesome. And writing the words "minisode prequel" seems very, very wrong to me somehow.
• "Person of Interest" writers, I have only one thing to say: "OH NO YOU DIDN'T!!!"

Avatardy

I caught the last four episodes of season two of "The Legend of Korra" over the weekend. The finale to Book Two: Spirit was pretty indicative of the series to date: crazed, disjointed, rushed, yet flavored with ridiculous amounts of awesome.

Book Two has covered Korra's journey to discover the spiritual side of the Avatar and the Avatar's role as the bridge between the human (material) world and the spirit world. It's also been an insane branching of side plots, some of which are ridiculous and all tie together only under the most contrived of circumstances.

This season's writing has been reflective of "Book One: Air" in weird jumps in story, a lack of narrative flow, and contrived as well as random character personality shifts to accommodate plot elements that are largely unnecessary to the main story.

It's also explored the world of Avatar (The Last Airbender, not the ridiculous James Cameron world) in unexpected and awesome ways. We've seen the origins of the Avatar and how the Avatar came into being. We've had a chance to see the pre-Avatar world in all its delightful weirdness, making me wonder what it was like before events took place allowing spirits to spill into the world.

We've also gotten to see Korra follow her own unique take on being the Avatar. In the first "Book", I admit I was a fan of the character of Korra. She was headstrong and took no shit from anyone. She was willing to throw down and face threats. She lacked any real sense of spirituality, but that was okay. By the end of "Book One", she was a full-realized Avatar and had her shit together.

Book Two seemed to erase all of that and take us to an immature, ridiculous Korra who seemed almost a cardboard cutout for half of the season and never really seemed to command the narrative at any point. She was always overshadowed by the villain as well as Tenzin and his kids. Hell, even the side characters of Mako and Bolin seemed to have more of their crap together and overshadow her narrative with their own ridiculous subplots.

The only character who seemed more sidelined in this "Book" was the character of Asami, who never really seemed to accomplish anything in the story.

Hell, Tenzin's kids got some of the more interesting stories and those just came from absolutely nowhere.

It remains an interesting series, but I really wish they'd take the crack pipes away from the writing team for a while. Of course, given the last finale, I have no idea if there will be more of the series. I guess time will tell.

Tuesday yammering

It's Tuesday. Disappointment is the norm and the day's started out appropriately. Not unexpected, but still... disappointment.

In other news, a friend of mine shared this. I am on board with the sentiment:



Warning: some NSFW language. Headphones are advised if you're at work or around sensitive ears.

Those who can't do...

You know, I've always taken exception to the saying "Those who can't do, teach."

It's goddamn hard to teach. I know. I've tried. Many times over the course of my life I've found myself shoved into the teacher role. It's most certainly not my calling and continues to give me a strong appreciation for the teachers I know.

Why bring this up?

The Gods of Perversity and Irony have decided over this full moon to continue with their little jape.

Currently I'm a bit at loose ends. I'm trying to figure out stuff and learning I know exactly jack shit about stuff I really ought to know more thoroughly.

At the same time, I have to teach/mentor someone and I haven't the foggiest as to where to begin or how to go about it.

The gods are having far too much fun with this.

A little taste

Okay, be warned. This is a "minisode" leading into "The Day of the Doctor".

If you're at all sensitive to something vaguely spoilery, don't watch this.

I don't consider this at all a spoiler, just to be clear. This just answers an open... question the series has always had.

I have to say, I love it.

Coutesy of AICN and the BBC:















































My thoughts: part of me never wanted an answer on this particular transition, but I have to say this was very well-done.

Postal Woes

First it was a missing incoming bill. Thankfully I'm a bit OCD so I tracked down the amount due and paid it before getting burned with late fees.

Now I found out that a payment I'm sure I mailed out for a different bill just vanished into the aethyr. Same month I had problems with the incoming bill. And now I'm on the hook for late fees and have to figure out if it's worth it to cough up for a stop-payment on the missing check.

This sucks.

Wherein I am being critical

I watch a mix of tv and web-streamed shows to distract myself when I'm not otherwise trying to do productive things with my life.

My definition of "productive" would no doubt be very entertaining to truly productive people, but we're moving on from that topic.

One of my amusements, RWBY, just appears to have concluded its first... season? Initially I was drawn to RWBY 'cause it's got that cheesy anime feel and looked entertaining. Over a year or so, the Rooster Teeth crowd that produces RWBY released four trailers focusing on a fairy-tale themed intro of each of the four primary characters accompanied with some kind of music. I enjoyed the trailers and was intrigued enough to track the series. I've now watched it all the way through and... hm.

Pros:

• The voice casting is solid.
• The characters are entertaining.
• The worldbuilding and premise is really interesting.

Cons:

• The story is a little choppy.
• There seems to be a lot of focus on the side characters and not enough on the primary characters.
• The animation could use some polish. I know Poser has its flaws as an animation program, but... yeah. Still. Flaws.

Hopefully whatever counts as the next "season" will find some focus for the show.

Then there's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.". So I was prepared to give up on this show until I watched "The Girl in the Flower Dress". That episode proved to me that this show has potential. Then, very slowly, without my even quite realizing it, I started to like the characters. I'm still iffy on super-hacker-girl and square-jawed-badass-guy, but I have to admit I am warming to them. I'm now quite fond of the previously-annoying techno-nerds. They're like adorable puppies. Kinda. And the Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen combo is just unbeatable. I'm finding the mystery of Coulson to be a bit tiresome. The mystery of Skye is a little intriguing. I'm still ambiguous as to how I feel about the character of Skye, so I suppose that impacts my reactions to the sub-plot. I kind of wish the show would spend a little more time on a better antagonist or two, just to give the show some better dramatic tension. A few more super-powered bits would be nice, as well. There's a billion minor Marvel characters out there. Surely a few could be plopped into the show?

I hate to compare "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." with "Arrow", but I have to say "Arrow" does a better job with the action/antagonist thing. Sure, the acting is worse (soooooo much worse) but "Arrow" does a better job of capturing the mood and throwing in the little touches of the DC Universe to keep the show tied to its roots. Just throwaways like Kord Industries or Ferris Airlines or the League of Assassins is making a huge difference.

I maintain that "Person of Interest" is the best show I'm currently watching in terms of plot, acting, and interesting characters. Sure it's my opinion, but that's all I really care about anyway. Heh.

Books

I finished "The Republic of Thieves" by Scott Lynch the other day. The latest in the tales of the Gentlemen Bastards finally introduces us to Sabetha, the phantom love of Locke Lamora who has teased us over two books. It also takes us to the homeland of the Bondsmagi and gives more insight as to their society.

Oh, and it goes into the mystery of just who Locke Lamora is.

It's an excellent story and up to Lynch's normal high standards. It was an even mix of present-day with the lads doing their shenanigans and a flashback in which we get to see the late, lamented Galdo brothers as well as the young Bastards in action with Sabetha in the mix.

Excellent reading.

I'm now on to "House of Blades" by Will Wight. Part of his "The Traveller's Gate Trilogy" (which apparently has two books out), it's a fun read thus far. I'm about halfway through. Book two is out in Kindle format, but alas I lack a Kindle and will likely wait for a dead tree version as I've managed with book one.

Then it's time to search for new reading material. The next Dresden Files book - "Skin Game" isn't due out 'till January, per Wikipedia.

Sigh.

Professor X blows minds

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The weekend is tantalizingly-close

• I put in 2.5 hours in martial arts last night. Got tossed around like a bag of meal. Got thrashed by weapons. Got to deliver as well as receive.
• Almost done with "Republic of Thieves". Holy shit this book is good.
• Good lord I have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Life, you so crazy.

Annual Tradition

The only mail I got yesterday is my ritual mail I receive EVERY GODDAMN YEAR.

Yep. Jury duty.

To the charming keeper of the juror selection list: I hope your privates are infested with hungry fire ants and your automobile consistently suffers from expensive maladies. I hope you suffer eternal indigestion and every time you encounter any form of primate whatsoever, said primate flings fecal matter at your face while your mouth is open.

I believe I have made my stance and position clear.

Novemonday

I had grand plans for the weekend. Projects I intended to make headway on. Constructive stuff I needed to get done. I had all sorts of time. I was even a good little monkey and didn't take side trips to the pub or anything.

Just wasn't meant to be.

One of my projects requires some... creative writing... on my part and I'm finding myself blocked in that regard.

I played a bit with getting git working on my machines. Now both my Linux box and my PC appear to have it running. And then my PC decided it was time to start freaking out on me.

I don't think it was related at all to my git installation (I've had that in-place for over a week now) but it pretty much threw my other projects completely out-of-whack as I worked on fixing the problem (I haven't "fixed" the problem so much as I've gone back to a previous restore point in the update cycle... that seems to address the issue).

Goddamn annoying.

The Korra of the Matter

I enjoyed "Avatar the Last Airbender" with a ridiculous passion. I still re-watch the series from time-to-time and marvel over the excellent world building, character development, and narrative style. I hold the series finale up to some of the best I've ever seen. It actually runs neck-and-neck with the finales for "Blake's 7" and "Angel" for best finale in my book.

As a fan of the "Avatar" world (not James Cameron's version, mind you), I found myself watching "The Legend of Korra" when it first came out.

"The Legend of Korra" was more of a Roaring Twenties style offering with the teenage Korra getting into her role as Avatar. Korra was the polar opposite of the goofy, pacifist Aang with her aggressive and completely non-spiritual way of dealing with matters. The first season was a fun ride, if a little compressed and suffering of both ridiculous (if not unexpected) teen angst and a choppy narrative. It expanded the world and gave us a hint of what happened to some of the favorites from Aang's era (hint: Toph never lost her badass edge).

The second season has gone in some interesting places. The narrative style is still choppy and tends to go all over the place. There's some good characters, but most of the plot elements feel unnecessarily contrived and don't flow terribly well. Where this season hits its stride is in exploring the mysterious Spirit World and the origins of the Avatar. The swimming into the mythology of the series is some truly awesome stuff and has me hooked enough to forgive and ignore the fairly ridiculous side-plots and forced-feeling side-romances.

I'll be curious to see how they'll conclude this season.

blagulgaggulFridayIsHereblahrgh

• Taiwan: On-track for best new Imperial Stormtrooper look.
• Japan: Zombies.

Caught up on "Person of Interest". Another solid episode with multiple threads coming to a satisfying conclusion. I could watch an entire show just around the adventures of Root and Shaw. They're a delightful combination of sociopathic chaos and awesome. The story twists were solid and glorious. Plus the new mystery group gets a name. Pretty damn cool. GOD I love that show!

Happy Family Stuff

Happy Halloween.

Signs and Portents

Sometimes the Universe is just trying to tell you something and it's time to shut up and listen.

I woke today determined to attend martial arts class. My neck is in pain and I knew tonight's topic would end up straining my neck and shoulder, but I opted to ignore that. If I blew off stuff 'cause I'm in pain, I'd never get anything done aside from making delicious cocktails.

I hopped on BART and, just as I sat down, realized I forgot several items, including my ID.

On top of that, I woke this morning feeling a bit dubious. That feeling hasn't really properly subsided.

For a chance, dim thought penetrated the vast emptiness of my skull and I decided it was time to just call it. So, that's that. Sigh. So why do I feel guilty?

A few sputterings of nothing

• I continue to make my way through "The Republic of Thieves". I'm not even a quarter in and I'm remembering why I love Lynch's characters so much. I wish I'd taken the time to re-read "The Lies of Locke Lamora" and "Red Sails Under Red Skies", but I can vaguely remember the previous plots just fine.
• I never sleep quite so well as I do when Autumn starts to get cool. Then it's so very, very hard to get out of bed in the morning. It's slightly easier when heavy-footed upstairs neighbors are fucking around at 1:30 am, but that's a bit early for me. *sigh*
• If anyone tells you that your upstairs neighbors have hardwood floors but the insulation will prevent you from hearing them, know this: it's a lie. A terrible, terrible lie.
• I'm developing a taste for a Whiskey Rebellion (essentially a Manhattan with an extra half-shot of bittersweet Vermouth).
• I'm a fan of the music of Bear McCreary, the fellow who did the score to the re-imagined "Battlestar Galactica" series as well as the excellent first season of "Human Target". Out of an urge for new instrumental listening, I picked up the score to the blissfully-cancelled disaster known as "The Cape" (Google it if you don't know of this show... and for the love of the FSM, don't poison your mind by watching it). Good score. So much better than that awful program deserved.

Where's a baseball when you need one?

My laptop, back from its repairs and woes, now has a fresh reinstall of Windows Vista.

Yes, that's right. My laptop is possessed by the Devil.

It's what came with the damn thing. I downgraded Vista to XP, back in the day. For whatever reason, repeating the process prevents XP from running updates so the laptop is now running Vista. And I'm wondering if it was worth it saving $300 to go through this when I could have ponied up four bills for something newer.

Gah. So I'm running updates on it while my PC is running its pokey backup and the laptop takes a good 40 minutes to retrieve its updates from Microsuck. A good 124 updates, I should add. For three-and-a-half hours later, I'm watching the pokey thing update. My PC's backup finishes and the laptop is still chugging away at its downloads. And then the installation... gods damn. I can't believe how long that took.

I'm half-tempted to wipe the entire OS and just load Ubuntu, but I'm not yet convinced I want the laptop there just yet.

Give me time. I'm sure the demonic powers of Vista will drive me to that sooner rather than later.

Mondays Blow

• We had a bit of a windstorm last night into this morning. I think the average wind-speed I saw on the news this morning was about 43 mph. Needless to say, I didn't ride my bike today. Looks like our Indian Summer ended in a hurry. Hope this means rain.
• Started reading "The Republic of Thieves" by Scott Lynch. The third book in the Gentlemen Bastards series (the previous two are "The Lies of Locke Lamora" and "Red Sails Under Red Skies") continues where "Red Sails" left off. Locke is in a bad way and his one way out is... not a good one. This book finally starts to introduce the elusive, oft-mentioned but never-seen Sabetha, the off-camera love-interest of Locke. So far it's a fun read.
• Re-watched Pacific Rim over the weekend. I'm still a bit shocked it didn't do all that fantastic in theaters. Sure, the acting is fairly-awful and cliche. The characters are cardboard cut-outs. Still, how is that different than most movies that do well in the box office? And this had giant robots fighting giant monsters! Plus Ron Perlman! I weep for the future.
• Tweaked my neck on Friday night doing a bad roll in my martial arts class. Will this stop me from going again this week? Probably not. I believe that's a definition of stupid. Or insane. Or both. Could be both.

Review: "Blood Song" by Anthony Ryan

I finished "Blood Song" by Anthony Ryan yesterday. The first novel in his "Raven's Shadow" series, it's... just... wow.

Okay, I know what you're thinking: you're thinking with names like "Blood Song" and "Raven's Shadow" this is some kind of Dungeons and Dragons knockoff series.

Sure, there's a few tropes, but this book is nothing if not pure awesome.

Vaelin Al Sorna is handed over by his father to the Sixth Order of the Faith in his homeland. Trained to be an utter badass holy warrior, he starts to learn all kinds of crazy stuff. Turns out his dad was someone kind of important. His mom was a big deal too. And Vaelin himself has some serious stuff going on in his own life.

The novel is told over the passing of years, interspersed with interludes that make most of it a flashback.

I'll be honest, I found myself dizzy with the details of his world and the range of things going on. I found the protagonist, Vaelin, to be interesting and engaging. The magic is a fascinating thing and the world cultures were intriguing. The characters had me hooked across-the-board and there's certainly no shortage of action.

Apparently there's more books pending (the series is named "Raven's Shadow", after all).

I can't recommend this novel enough. If you doubt me (and I would doubt me...), check out the Amazon reviews.

Person of Interest

I will admit I was unenthusiastic about the latest season opener for "Person of Interest". It did nothing for me.

Then the show started to get its feet under it.

This season has mainly been focusing on exploring the addition of Samantha Shaw to the merry little band. With Shaw on board, the ladies up their badassery. Carter is doing more solo stuff in her crusade against the corrupt organization known as HR and Shaw is stone-cold death with a solemn face. And Root is now a regular with her ambiguous morality and endgame.

All of this hasn't given Finch much to do other than be Finch. Fusco has barely been present and Reese is pretty much in the background now. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I can handle the ride.

Reese and Finch got some good time in "Nothing to Hide", which exposed the new threat the Machine Team faces. "Reasonable Doubt" had some solid twists and turns. "Lady Killer" focused on the ladies: Shaw, Carter, and the semi-regular Zoe Morgan. It lacked a good story (the moral seemed to be that stalking can be okay at times... which is - at best - dubious) but it was nice to see the ladies take charge and kick ass.

The latest was "Razgover" and it really hits it out of the park. With a focus on Shaw and her interpersonal skills, the new Person of Interest is a young girl with odd hobbies. The story proceeds pretty normally then suddenly goes into awesome territory when the goal of protecting the girl goes sideways. The girl is spunky without being excessively annoying and her chemistry with Shaw is rock-solid. Bonus points for tying in Carter's side-crusade. The last ten minutes were just magnificent.

Best show I'm watching. Hands down.

Addictive Sugar Cookies!

• My mom gave me some leftover Snickerdoodles and brownies from a family event over the weekend. While the brownies are delicious, they're also rich so I can't eat a lot.
  The Snickerdoodles, however, are like sugary crack. Cannot...stop... snacking...
• The BART strike is (apparently) over! Yay for a return of public transportation populated by mentally-ill lunatics! Waitaminute...
• Ah cool Autumn mornings with the fog and the chill in the air. Lovely for morning bike rides. Added bonus: nobody out to bug me as I pedal in to the office!
• The BBC has a trailer out for the 50th anniversary special: "The Day of the Doctor". As teasers go, it's purdy. I'm not getting my hopes up for this. I'm expecting bitter disappointment and hoping it's better than that.

Just another manic Monday

• Still hating Google's new login portal. I have to go to the damn Help menu to actually get a prompt for login/password. Fucking nonsense.
• On the topic of nonsense: BART strike! Yes, BART is on strike and the Bay Area is fucked nicely. The news is split between blaming BART management and the unions. I suppose there's plenty of blame to spread around, but most of the news I'm hearing has it that there's two remaining points of contention. The unions apparently said something to the effect of "Okay, let's take these outstanding points to binding arbitration and go with that" while BART management said something to the effect of "Nuh-uh! That sounds too logical! We put everything in binding arbitration or we're taking our toys and going home!" And thus we have a strike. I dunno. I'm thinking I like the union stance, colored as I presented it.
• Pacific Rim on DVD! YAY!
• The BART strike doesn't affect my commute, thank the FSM, but it's utterly hosing the other things I had lined up this week. Feeling a smidge of rage there.
• Still hating Yahoo's email redesign. Period. Looks like it's time to start transitioning away from Yahoo for my email purposes.

UI

UI (user interface) is an important element of web design. One could argue it's an essential consideration.

It's a surprisingly-complex job, from what little I've observed of my company's UI staff.

I'm of the opinion that UI really should incorporate some kind of realistic end-user feedback, myself. It's been my experience that many people really just want a web interface to work, and - more importantly - not to change too much. If change happens, it's best not to make the change too sudden or jarring.

It shocks me when major software companies ignore their potential audience/customer base by introducing sudden, and often jarring, changes.

The best examples I've seen just this week:

• Microsoft's Windows 8. Yeesh.
• Yahoo's new mail. What a bug-filled, craptacular lemon this is.
• and now Google's change to Gmail login. I don't know what the fuck Google is doing, but it's nigh-impossible for me to get to the actual prompt to log in to Gmail.

That's three major companies, right there. All three have managed to annoy me and piss off several people I know.

It's this kind of behavior that makes people like me look for alternatives and this kind of arrogant, arbitrary behavior that ultimately becomes the undoing of these kinds of big companies...

No sense keeping something that works.

Oh Yahoo. You so silly. Your email client was working perfectly fine and then you had to go and try to make yourself like Google. Now... well... yeah. This reaction can't be a huge shock.

Reactions: Arrow and the Tomorrow People

Watched episode 2 of season two of "Arrow" and the remake of "The Tomorrow People".

"Arrow" seems to be struggling a bit this season. While they've returned to fast-paced action in the second episode, there's just really stupid stuff going on that's above-and-beyond the levels of a CW show. Examples:

• Caricature rules, even added ironically, are not appropriate (Felicity as Oliver's secretary? Diggle as Oliver's driver? WTF?).
• Laurel's sudden zeal to take down the Hood is feeling forced and contrived. It was more convincing when her father was leading the charge.
• Roy and Thea are... just... painful. They're a migraine in TV format.
• The Island flashbacks are seriously going into "Lost" territory. And I don't mean that as a compliment.
• The Queen Consolidated politics is making me yawn. Corporate takeover. Oh how... exciting. Oh the public hates the Queen name. *Yawn* I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

There were good things. Kelly Hu's character, China White, got a little more action. I like bringing in Michael Jai White as Bronze Tiger. Good fight scenes.

Still, I would like to see them get away from the cliches a bit. Of course there was something that would keep Oliver from attending some kind of benefit. Of course the politician was going to turn on Oliver and lambast him. Yawn. If the writers really want to impress, have everything turn out okay and then have some villain swoop in and do something horrible.


"The Tomorrow People" remains bland entertainment. I'm curious where they find these actors. Abercrombie and Fitch? I like the effects and keeping true to elements of the original series, such as the fact that the superpowered people can't kill. I find it nearly-impossible to like any of the characters. The only character who appears to have any kind of personality at all is Aaron Yoo's character, Russell Kwon. And he's still a bit of a cliche as the token non-white-guy-who-plays-the-smartass. Still, I'm loving Mark Pellegrino's cartoonishly-evil Dr. Jeddikiah Price. He's so gleefully psychotic! Maybe I need to root for him...

Friday go boom

• BART decided to go on strike. Whee. At this point I'm so pissed off at both sides in the BART conflict that I would not shed tears if the entirety of them were devoured by a horde of zombie gerbils.
• Holding out hope that my laptop is repaired today. Oh, I don't really need it, but I'd like to check one worry off my list today.
• Just dawned on me that the goddamn BART strike is going to hose my plans next week if it's still going. Gah!

Just 'cause I'm paranoid...

First it was a missing bill.

Now I'm noticing a bit of a trend. Some mail is just... gone. It could be held up in the chaos of the USPS, but I'm starting to wonder what the hell is going on.

Meanwhile, I calmly await word of my laptop. And by "calmly", I mean "I'm really trying not to annoy the techs with constant are you done yet? phone calls."

On the plus side, a couple of Kickstarters I backed have come through. Good times there!

So far Kickstarter is a crapshoot, but it's a little over 80% solid. So far.

Adorable getting sick .gif

Mostly testing to see if this displays... plus Karen Gilan is awesome.

From Dys to Barely-Functional

Looks like Congress figured out how to pull its collective head out of its collective ass to get the Federal Government running again. I'll admit I was expecting a default and utter collapse. Wonder what it would take to Gitmo the Teabagger/GOP jackasses under some kind of terrorism charge? I mean, they've managed to do more damage to the country than anyone else thus far...

Looks like BART is still running, day-by-day. They're taking a Dread Pirate Roberts cue, it seems. "Good night. Sleep tight. Most likely kill you in the morning." Oh c'mon. I worked hard to slip in that Princess Bride ref!

AC Transit now plans a strike but looks like the Governor is going after that 60-day cooling off period play.

The mind boggles as to what the Bay Area would have been like had the Federal Government remained shut-down (and defaulted) while both BART and AC Transit went on strike. "Mass hysteria" doesn't come close to fitting that picture.

Sigh.

... almost... there....

I can almost taste the weekend! So... close...

• I think I found someone who can fix my laptop. The money involved is somewhat less than just dropping four bills on a new laptop and cash is tight these days, so I'm going to see if it can be fixed.
• Watched my "Person of Interest" recording. This season lacks the "oomph" of the prior two, but I have to say I enjoyed last night's offering. Good ending. Seems like they're figuring out the balance between the cast.
• You've heard the expression: "a watched pot never boils" (or variations thereof)? I think I have a new one: "Waiting for mail ensure it will never come."
• Pacific Rim is out on DVD! JOY AND HAPPINESS!!!! Must...get...my...copy...
• I'm going to claim my ratatouille cooking experiment was a success. I wound up making a lot, so I've been eating the balance as leftovers over the week. I think I know know how to properly handle eggplant next time I try this. A tasty way to ingest veggies, I suppose.

Reactions: Ep 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Watched "Eye-Spy", episode 4 of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." last night. It was the best of the four thus far, but the series is still feeling tepid, directionless, and bland. In a nutshell, Coulson takes the team after a rogue agent, then shit gets real.

It was a good episode for Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen. They got good scenes and I kind of love their on-screen dynamic. Solid professionals without any contrived sexual tension. Fitz and Simmons are slowly (ever so slowly) growing on me, but I mostly tune them out as banter-engines and technobabble-suppliers at this point. Ward and Skye are fast becoming my least favorite characters and consistently bug me. They should axe both characters and bring in Pascale Armand's character as a replacement. The Skye-Coulson dynamic is also bugging me. It feels too forced and contrived.

I'm really hoping the writers figure out what they're doing and get this series on some kind of interesting course.

Getting Mooned

Rarely have I wished so much to have a dashboard camera as I did this morning.

I rounded a corner to get on to the freeway and bam!

No, it wasn't a collision with a car or anything, thank the FSM. Hanging in the sky, just above the horizon, was the nearly-full moon. It was an amber/yellow color and seemed oddly bigger than normal.

With our normal Indian Summer in full-swing, the air is clear and still this morning. It lent the entire scene a degree of surreality and other-worldliness that has left me a little discombobulated for the balance of my drive in to the office.

Oh well, I'm sure that's an end to it. Nothing weird ever happens around a full moon, right?

A weekend of stuff

Not sure if I can chalk this weekend as a win or not.

The game I ran seems to have gone reasonably well. New player added to my group and he seemed to have meshed well with others. It was a larger group than I'm used to and there was personality stuff going on in the background that could become a bad problem if not addressed... and I don't know how to address it (or if I even want to).

Adding to that was my laptop melting down. The Internet did not have many solid reasons why my laptop had a tendency to freeze up. The best reason I could find was a possible overheating issue, but I don't know how true that is. Certainly it's looking like time for a new laptop. Yeah, 'cause I have that kind of money lying around...

Got my flu shot last week and I think it hosed my immune system a little. That or my allergies are starting to kick my ass more. Having a rough time staying awake and focused today.

Early bedtime for this little camper, that's for sure.

Attempted to make a ratatouille for dinner tonight.

I'm going to start off by saying that one really has to be careful when cooking eggplant. Beyond that, it's not a terribly difficult dish but my first try could have been better. Still, kudos for attempting to eat healthy and all that.

Real life demands more of my attention now and I need to focus... after a nap.

C-double-suck

Watched my recordings of "Arrow" and "The Tomorrow People" from Wednesday.

Ye gods what a couple of turds those were.

"Arrow" just opened to tepid, weak, and badly acted storyline. Not too shocking there, but the action was underwhelming and the antagonists were just plain silly. I hope they improve the stories soon.

"The Tomorrow People" was, if anything, even worse in terms of acting and plot. I'm totally rooting for the villain, the guy who was in "Lost". He's actually somewhat entertaining. The main cast all look like Abercrombie & Fitch models. How disappointing.

Awe inspiring

This girl: I... just... wow. If I had one hundredth of this girl's strength, I would be a thousand percent stronger than I am today. This girl is just amazing. Utterly amazing.

EDIT: Make this girl boss of the world, please.

So glad it's Friday...

FSM what a week.

Busy doesn't cover the half of it.

• Caught up on "Person of Interest". The latest one... not so good. I'm liking the addition of Shaw, but it's coming at the expense of the Finch/Reese dynamic, which was starting to get good. Loving the Root side-story, though.
• I meant to watch my recordings of "Arrow" and "The Tomorrow People" (both of which cannot be anything better than awful), but... time. It's an elusive bugger.
• I think I managed to finally get my PC's booting issue squared away. Hopefully I didn't just jinx myself.
• I'm really enjoying "Blood Song" by Anthony Ryan. Oh, it's cheese, but it's entertaining cheese.
• Oh Facebook. You consistently keep me happy that I deleted my account with you fuckers.

...

The Daily Show
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Laugh. Cry. Laugh. Cry. Drink.

A decline in quality

I watch three broadcast TV shows (other than the news) at the moment:

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Person of Interest
• Sleepy Hollow

I'll probably give "The Tomorrow People" a try tonight, just out of nostalgia for the crappy old ITV series from the '70s and I'll watch "Arrow" when it returns. That said, I freely acknowledge that "Arrow" is pretty bad and I have very low expectations for "The Tomorrow People".

Where I ran into problems was my elevated expectations on two of my current-three viewings.

"Sleepy Hollow" had promise. Headless horseman. A Revolutionary War soldier thrown into the present. Witches. Demons. It was like "Supernatural" only weirder. Then they decided to take everything in the direction of Revelations from the Bible and... just... yeah. It's not working. "Supernatural" did it much better and... just... yeah. Not working at all. "Sleepy Hollow" would have made an outstanding mini-series, but it's already been renewed for a second season. They're... what? Three? Four episodes in? I'm already bored. I may drop this from my list.

That said, I'm liking the nutjob sister character they added. I may give it more of a chance.


"Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." aired their third episode last night. I dunno. I just expected more from Team Whedon on this. You have Marvel's rich backstory and mythology coupled with the nearly-limitless storytelling potential of S.H.I.E.L.D. You could dump in Hydra, A.I.M., and countless other nefarious villains. What do they do instead? Ambiguous and forgettable antagonists. A contrived group of pretty-people who fill cliche slots. Stories that are really just very "meh".

Even the pilot, which should have been a crowd-grabber, was surprisingly low-key.

Then there's the forced-feeling "mystery" surrounding the resurrection of Agent Phil Coulson. He's either a clone or a Life Model Decoy (android). As of last night's ep, I'm leaning towards clone and finding myself really not interested in the mystery at all. I'm hoping they leave it a mystery at this point 'cause any explanation they come up with will pretty much suck.

They're toning down the everyday quiet badassitude of Coulson and making him a little more bumbling. I'm not sure I approve. Oh, I like that he's a very mortal everyman, but he's a high-ranking agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Lessening his badass factor is just a bad idea.

Honestly, the only show that's remaining fairly awesome is "Person of Interest" and I read somewhere that their ratings are slipping. FSM knows why.

Time and Place

I don't believe in fate, destiny, predestination, or any of that crap. I believe life is a chaotic series of unordered events to which human beings assign meaning due to some psychological makeup in our wonky grey matter.

That said, I do find my stubborn, cynically-rational worldview challenged from time-to-time.

I find myself often in a weird position, just going from point A to point B where I'm called upon to help out someone.

Sometimes I initiate the interaction. I see someone who is obviously lost, upset, or whatever and try to help out.

Quite often, it's a lost or distressed sort who decides that, for whatever reason, I look trustworthy and asks for my help (in the form of directions or whatever).

I'm not including in this list the scam artists who always open with the same "Excuse me sir, but might you have a few dollars? My car is out of gas just around the corner and my pregnant wife is inside..." blah blah blah, though that happens a lot as well.

I've lost count of the number of folks I've helped get "un-lost" who clearly have English as a second (or third) language. I helped out some tourists who were very lost get to the right train to San Francisco. I'm still not sure what confluence of events got them to where I encountered them in the East Bay.

I'd think I "just have one of those faces", but I know for a fact that I don't. I've been described more than once as looking like a thug, especially in my sunglasses (which may as well be surgically-attached to my face).

The world is a freakin' weird place and I want to thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for making it so. Now if the FSM can just do something about these damn allergies...

The Day of Tues shambles forth

• My PC is still experiencing problems booting up. I think I've got it working now, after countless experiments, but I thought that before...
• Preparing for a game. New players joining. I anticipate chaos and insanity. So, situation normal.
• I think "Sleepy Hollow" is starting to lose me. Good start to a series, but this should really be a mini-series. "Supernatural" has done a better job with this material.
• I'm now convinced that my continued attendance in my martial arts class is proof that I've got some kind of latent masochism going on. Funny, given that I really don't like pain. I must live in an Egyptian river.
• Reading "Raven's Shadow" by Anthony Ryan. Very enjoyable thus far!
• One of my current addictions is a webseries called RWBY. An "anime" created using the Poser 3D animation program. The animation is okay. A little clunky, but the voice actors and story make up for it. And the music... so the creators did four "preview" trailers set to music for the four main characters. Each involved music with vocals by a singer named Casey Lee Williams (who is apparently related to the composer, Jeff Williams). The songs just kick my ass. I've grabbed all the MP3s from Amazon and find myself hooked.
  No, I don't think you need to care about this. I share as a brain-dump.
• Every time I turn on the news now, it's about some kind of meltdown. The U.S. government is shut down (and about to default on its loans) thanks to some right-wing terrorist nutjobs. BART is about to go on strike. Again. I have to say I'm starting to experience a bit of outrage fatigue over this. A bit.

Spitting up brain bits

• Arrrgh! NO! BAD WRONG BAD!
• Allergies. In Autumn. This sucks.
• ... the hell?

And finally:



Seriously.

I think I've heard this one before

Apparently 106 lost episode of "Doctor Who" were "uncovered" in Ethiopia.

I've heard variations on this before. I'll believe it when I see it.

PC go boom

Ever had that heart-sinking moment when your PC won't boot?

I hope not. It kinda sucks.

After a reasonably-panicked hour of startup restore goodness followed by a mad scramble to make sure all my stuff is backed-up, I appear operational for now. And worried...

Bit of a breeze

The wind is crazy strong here. There's tree branches all over the road and windows rattling like a baby's toy.

At least it's Friday.

Thoughts on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I've now seen two episodes of Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.". My reactions:

• I feel a little bit as though I'm watching "Human Target". Humorous moments with hyper-skilled characters against cartoonish shmucks. I kind of like it.
• Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen pretty much make the show. Their understated awesomeness is pretty much keeping me hooked.
• I'm having trouble with the rest of the cast: Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennett, Iain De Caestecker, and Elizabeth Henstridge. They're all "generic", for lack of a better term. I had this problem in Pacific Rim with the main hero guy and the Australian cliche characters. They all looked the same to me and didn't communicate any kind of unique qualities that imprinted on my mind.
  
  Dalton seems to have some range, but his character is so... bland... that I have trouble remembering what he even looks like.
  
  Bennett looks and like a typical Whedon character. She's a bit like a mix of Eliza Dushku and Summer Glau. She's engaging enough but I'm having the same trouble remembering her character as soon as she's off-screen. There's just been no surprises there.
  
  De Caestecker and Hendstridge are so cliche that I can barely remember what they look like when they're on-screen. Good lord.
  
  Would it have killed ABC to cast someone who doesn't look like a 20-something hipster-model? Just so my brain can imprint who they are...
• I'm liking that ABC is sinking money into this. Getting Samuel Jackson in a cameo was awesome.
• I'll keep watching. I really can't stop. I'm not prepared to claim I like this more than "Person of Interest" but it's beating out "Sleepy Hollow" for entertainment value so far.

Want to understand the Government Shutdown?

Jon Stewart spells this out perfectly:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Seriously. What. The. Fuck? At this point, the Republican Party is pretty much a terrorist organization. Fuckers.

A Marriage Made in R'yleh

ThinkGeek now sells Cthulhu Tiki Mugs.

This is a moment that was meant to be.

Oh, it won't be as awesome as when I got mine from the Kickstarter. I love how Byakhee and Dimensional Shamblers were used to do the actual delivery. I'm a huge fan of how it makes the shadows in my apartment even darker. And I love the odd, eldritch glow that seems to emanate from my refrigerator (though that may be unrelated to the Great Old Ones and simply be due to leftovers).

Ia Ia Mai Tais F'tagn!!!

Review: Cruisers - a comparison

So now I own two "Cruiser" jackets:

• The Best Made Light Waxed Cruiser
• The Filson Dry Finish Tin Cruiser

A few thoughts:

• They're both warm (but not too warm) coats with a ridiculous number of pockets.
• The Best Made Cruiser is lighter-weight. It has fewer pockets, but the pockets it has have greater capacity.
• The Filson Cruiser is heavier with some kind of weirdly-reinforced sleeves that I'm finding difficult to describe. Neat, but kind of weird.
• Both have a decidedly-loose fit, which works well for layering. I'd say Best Made's sizing is accurate enough. If you generally wear a Large, then you'll probably do fine with their Large. Filson's conversion chart gives "Small/Medium/Large" conversions for folks like me who look at size numbers and blank out.
• Both are reasonably water-resistant. I haven't tested the Best Made Cruiser yet in any kind of heavy rain, but it's been fine in the light rain I've worn it through. The Filson was fine in the freak rainstorm the other day.

Do I have a preference? Not really. Both are pretty awesome. The Filson's extra pockets are offset by the Best Made's pocket capacity. Both suit my style preferences (such as I have any kind of style). I look forward to the weather cooling so I can give them some proper use and love.

So much salt to mine

After a week of unmitigated sloth and gluttony, I am back at work and sad that I am not a one-percenter. I think I was born to be idly slothful and an utter waste space. I would be so awesome at being rich and useless!

Sigh.

I got caught up on season two of "Person of Interest" and have found myself even more hooked on that show. Goddamn those writers are brilliant. That or I'm just easily entertained (I'm easily entertained).

I rode on the bike path of the Bay Bridge over my time off. I have to say, that's a hell of a ride. It was... longer... than I expected. And the grade was more of a struggle than I expected, but I toughed it out.

I guess that means I violated the sloth bit. Sigh. Still, it was totally worth it. If you get the chance, ride your bike or walk that path. It's a hike and it doesn't connect with Treasure Island/Yerba Buena yet, but it's worth checking out.

I actually accomplished a fair amount of housecleaning until I tweaked out my wrist moving some heavy boxes. I got a proper bar set up in my kitchen and have given it more use than is healthy. Next step: learn to make a proper Old Fashioned (my current poison of choice).

A Return to Forbidden Island

Yesterday I returned to Forbidden Island in Alameda for a much-overdue visit.

Damn but they make great cocktails! The drink menu has expanded somewhat to add some new tasty drinks and now they do a punch-card option where if you try every drink from their redesigned menu, you get some kind of deal (a free drink, a free t-shirt, or whatever).

Life is good.

Review: Filson Dry Finish Tin Cruiser

Some time back, I came across a remarkable, impossible-to-pass-up deal and snagged a Filson Dry Finish Tin Cruiser. I'd been looking for a multi-pocket jacket in a non-black color and the Tin Cruiser appealed to me.

It arrived during a heat wave so I briefly tried it on to ensure it fit, then put it away 'till the weather got more agreeable.

The other day, we had a freak rainstorm hit the Bay Area and it was... while not cold, certainly cooler than normal.

I busted out the Tin Cruiser and went out to lunch with a friend. The freak rainstorm then decided to pour on me, letting me test the water-resistant treatment of the coat.

My reactions:

• This is a damn well-constructed coat.
• So. Many. Pockets. Just... pockets with pockets in them. Meta-pockets!
• Quite water resistant.
• Comfortable.
• Warm. This coat will do well when autumn gets chilly and will work well in Bay Area winters with a layer or so.
• Loose. That's nice 'cause I could stand to loose a few pounds...

Worth every penny. Alas, that's a lot of pennies, but you get what you pay for...

Review: Mikeller Bar

So you're in San Francisco, near the Powell Street station. You're suddenly craving lunch and wouldn't mind a nice pint of beer to go with said lunch.

What to do? What to do?

I've a suggestion: Mikeller Bar.

Possessing a constantly-rotating list of delightfully-tasty beers (most of which are local to the Pacific Coast of the U.S.) and a delightfully-tasty menu (I had the merguez sausage... mmm...) it ain't cheap, but it's worth the price.

Bits of Random Friday Babble

Returned to martial arts a couple of weeks ago. I'd forgotten the bruises, the aches, and the weird feeling of satisfaction I get from getting through a class more-or-less intact.

I tweaked my knee somehow. I think I managed to do this bike riding, though I'm pretty sure class didn't help any. Ice packs are a wonderful thing.

Finally got a proper bartending kit. I've now figured out how to make good mai tais. Practice makes perfect and all that.

xkcd calls out the truth of things

This is totally me. Except that my place really is a garbage pit.

Sigh.

Thems that dies be the lucky ones. Arr.

So it be Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Um... arr?

Haven't seen any of the Pirates movies recently so I'm a bit rusty. I do like me some grog, though.

Creeping Tuesdayness

Want: Gerber Downrange Tomahawk/Breaching Tool.

Need? No. Have any real, justifiable use for? No. Any place to put it? No. Any conceivable way to justify $220 + shipping for a tool thing I'd only ever need in an apocalyptic disaster? Well... there's that whole "apocalyptic disaster" justification, I suppose. Works for all the other crap I have... and you have to admit it looks damn cool.

---

Today's bike ride was oddly-difficult. No reason, I suppose. Just entropy.

---

How is it only Tuesday? HOW???

A few bleary-eyed Monday observations and musings

• Every time a Disney "Star Wars" rumor is circulated an angel loses its wings. The angel then goes batshit crazy, takes a basket full of puppies and kittens, transforms them into ravening soul-devouring beasts, and unleashes them upon the world to create more MBAs who will create more ideas for Disney to milk "Star Wars" to death and beyond. This is what we call "a perpetual motion machine". Metaphysics making physics its bitch.
• Ghost music continues to soothe my sleepy self.
• When I was in Portland, I stopped for a bit in the Deluxe Hotel. There, in the Driftwood Room Lounge, I had a "Whiskey Rebellion". Bulleit Rye, punt e mes sweet vermouth, Imbue bittersweet vermouth, and some West Indies orange bitters. My dad got some of the Imbue vermouth and recreated the "Whiskey Rebellion" over the weekend. This may well become one of my favorite cocktails ever.
• Okay, seriously. A $1,300 jacket? Thirteen-hundred dollars???? Fuck you.
• Someone had to explain to me who Miley Cyrus is. This. This right here. This is where I stand with the not-understanding-of-celebrities.
• So very sleepy...

A wounded sole

During training I noticed the soles of my favorite shoes were cracking and disintegrating.

This is extremely disheartening. My mutant feet are rarely completely-happy in footwear, especially work-acceptable footwear.

I pretty much have some boots that work, my beer-drinking slip-on shoe/slippers, and some flip-flops at this point. The weather is too hot for boots and the rest... well, they present problems of their own in the workplace.

I have other shoes, but they always rub the foot wrong, either along the heel or along the outer toes. I've tried gel inserts and what-not, but those never stay in-place and never seem to do the trick.

Time to do some shoe shopping again, I suppose. Sigh.

Review: EAB Gerber Pocket Utility Knife

Oh County Comm, you never fail to lure me in. When I got the AAx2 Maratac light, I also saw the EAB Gerber Pocket Utility Knife.

So the last thing I need is another knife at this point. Still, the design intrigued me and for less than $14, I felt the need to check it out.

I'm glad I did. The EAB is a tiny thing, but feels solid and well-constructed. It's got a smooth action for opening and I have yet to accidentally cut myself. Though give it time...

There are guards in good places to protect the delicate fingers from the disposable blade. Did I mention the disposable blade part? Yeah, this takes a box-cutter blade that you can replace with a screwdriver.

In short, it's the perfect box-cutter and utility blade. Portable and solid. Could make a good money clip, I suppose.

Review: AAx2 Tactical Maratac Flashlight

I saw it. I wanted it. I got it.

I opted to get County Comm's AAx2 Tactical Maratac Flashlight, mostly 'cause I saw it's advertised to spit out 510 lumens on the high setting.

It does that quite nicely. With two AA batteries, this puppy provides a nice variety of lighting options and has a nice, slender profile to slip into a coat pocket or cargo pants pocket. The reflector has greenish, glowing inner ring that's kind of creepy-neat.

Nice light and a good price for the performance.

Hopefully I won't have a repeat of my last mishap with another Maratac light and accidentally activate it in my pocket. These buggers get awfully warm if left on for a long time...

Bumps in the Thursday Road

Woke up. Got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head (I didn't really do that last bit... I just felt like quoting a Beatles song).

Headed out and... the roads were wet. It was... not really raining, but sprinking pretty intently. WTF?

Fortunately, this morning I was moving so slowly that I opted to drive in. And that worked out doubly-well as I arrived to encounter skunks by the entrance to my office. I waited until they were off doing whatever skunks do (look for food, I imagine) then rushed into the office and breathed a sigh of relief. Yikes.

Requisite bit of political blurting

Ten ways America has come to resemble a banana republic. And I'm not talking about the clothing store. Interesting reading, especially on today of all days.

Yet another Wednesday

Ah ghost music, your haunting weirdness visits me again this fine Wednesday morning.

---

As of this morning, 26 intrepid (or bored?) souls have perused Monday's post on tiki bars in the Bay Area. Huh. I'm flattered. In the interests of being clear, there are more than three tiki bars in the Bay Area. I should have included Trader Vic's on my list of ones I've visited and there are others in the general area. Maybe one day I'll do a rewrite or a better comparison.

---

I find it oddly-disconcerting how, as time passes, I'm having more and more difficulty both identifying "celebrities" and figuring out why, exactly, a person is a celebrity. Example: Kardashians. Why? Just... why? I still don't understand.

Wonkiness

Blogger's giving me trouble logging-in. Sigh.

I probably had something banal to observe earlier today but I've since forgotten. Probably for the best. It was probably something whiny.

In other news, I finished reading "Impulse" by Steven Gould. The third (fourth?) in his Jumper series, I found it a delightful read and good fun. I'll never understand why Hollywood messed with the plot of the original "Jumper" to make that piece of utter garbage that was the movie.

Tiki Rooms of the Bay Area: A few thoughts

I love tiki bars.

I love the kitch. I love the hokey music. I love the giant tikis. I love the fruit juice rum cocktails.

As such, I've visited a few in my time, in Hawai'i and on the mainland. The following the the "big three" I've visited in the San Francisco Bay Area and my thoughts on each:

Forbidden Island

Set on the island of Alameda, Forbidden Island is easy to miss if you're not paying attention. From the outside, it's an understated brown building, albeit one with a giant tiki set in an alcove by the main entrance with another on the inside.

Once you enter Forbidden Island, it quickly transforms into a marvel. It has a long bar with many seats set under a faux "grass hut" roof area. Set in a cork roof are hundreds of marked-up $1 bills set in place using cocktail umbrellas. This is in honor of a mariner tradition that's best explained by the staff.

The lighting is dim inside and there's stained wood paneling in a sort of faux "Robinson Crusoe" feel. Puffer-fish lamps, nets, Polynesian weapons, and kitchy paintings complete the decor. The staff wear obligatory Aloha shirts or tropical attire and there's always something on the television that fits the setting: Elvis's Blue Hawaii, episodes of "Hawaii Five-0", episodes of "Gilligan's Island", etc.

They have a patio in back for smokers or folks who want to enjoy those all-too-brief hot days in Alameda.

The drinks are excellent. They offer a variety, ranging from rum drinks, gin cocktails, beer, and wine. They have a rum tasting club as well.

The food is largely of the snack variety. I'm personally fond of the spicy chicken tenders.

A nice quirk is how the menu is marked. Each drink entry has a number of bottles next to it. That's the strength of the drink. And pay close attention, especially if you're thinking of getting a Zombie.

---

Smugglers Cove

Set in San Francisco, on the edge of the Hayes Valley neighborhood (I think?), Smugglers Cove is also unobtrusive on the outside. Within, the interior is similar to that of Forbidden Island with the decor. Instead of one level, Smugglers Cove has three levels. There is an upper level set in a faux grass hut that is entirely seating. The entry level has a small bar with a few seats and in the lower level there is a second bar with a few seats before it and more seating in an open area. There is no outdoor seating.

As I understand it, Smugglers Cove was created by the founder (or one of the founders) of Forbidden Island who struck it out on his own. The decor in Smugglers Cove has triva I personally found fascinating. There's menus for old, long-gone tiki bars from long before I was born, such as Skipper Kent's.

The drinks at Smugglers Cove are excellent. Sublime. Divine. They don't serve food. Their only flaw is the layout of their bars. They're small and can only handle one (maybe two) bartenders behind each. Each drink is hand-made and that place gets crowded so you may be a long wait between drinks...

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Tonga Room

Set in the Fairmont Hotel, the Tonga Room is a San Francisco tradition and has been around for ages. I visited it for the first time this weekend for a quick drop-by to see what the fuss was all about. The decor is cheesy and awesome with giant tikis, dim lighting (though better-lit than Forbidden Island or Smugglers Cove). The staff were friendly and attentive. The prices... ye gods.

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The Mai Tai Test

So my baseline comparison for drink quality is to use a classic Mai Tai. The Mai Tai is a big deal in my family. My dad has taught me how to make one the old Trader Vic's way as well as to be aware of the variations. As such, I've had a Mai Tai at Forbidden Island, Smugglers Cove, and Tonga Room. My thoughts:

• Forbidden Island: The classic Mai Tai is a delight. It's wavered a little in quality over the years, but generally stayed solid. Last time I had one at Forbidden Island, it was excellent. The cost is about $10. I've watched the bartenders making the drink and they do it right: adding the liquor and juices indvidually to make the drink properly. These folks know what they're doing.
• Smugglers Cove: The classic Mai Tai is excellent. The logistics for getting to the Cove have made my visits there less-frequent, despite the ease of public transportation. I can't recall the cost offhand but I think it was about $11, give or take. I watched the bartender make mine fresh and it was divine.
• Tonga Room: Despite a recent article I read that Tonga Room is shifting away from mixers to fresh ingredients, I found my Tonga Room Mai Tai to be disappointing. It was $13, too sweet, and made clearly with a mixer.

All said, I'd have to rate Forbidden Island as my favorite of the three. It's hard to get to without a car (Alameda is not well-known for their public transportation) but worth the trek. The location has capacity for a lot of people and they have lots of staff. Smugglers Cove is great but their space isn't terribly well-suited to the sorts of crowds they get. I find myself frustrated with the wait for drinks. Tonga Room is overrated. Period.

braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiinsssssss

Stuffy, warm evenings coupled with excessively-loud neighbors are giving me a lovely does of sleep-deprivation.

That never leads to good things. I don't deal well with a lack of sleep. Makes me go from zero to batshit crazy in no seconds flat.

With sleep it takes at least three seconds. Just so you have a comparison.

And it's only due to get hotter tomorrow. With luck, my goddamn neighbors will STFU before I have to start resorting to my own Tourette's shouting. 'Cause that always goes well.

I swear, if it were not for my supply of BBotE, I don't think I'd be ambulatory at all this morning.

---

I'm re-watching the entire run of "Avatar: The Last Airbender". Despite this being a kid's show I find myself amazed at how well-written this series was. It had a complex and evolving cast of excellent characters. The plots shifted between victory and defeat so many times, it makes the head spin a bit.

Interestingly-enough, I find my favorite character to be the one non-Bender of the group: Sokka. A sarcastic, self-deprecating, occasionally-foolish, scientist in a world of magic, the character really makes a fascinating transition over the three seasons of the show's run.

And the final battle at the end of the third season is still in my top-three list of the best finales I've seen.