THE GODS HAVE HEARD MY PRAYERS!

Or they've received my sacrifices. Either way: FANTASTIC NEWS!

Wherein I rant about copper thieves

You've read about these assholes.

They break into places and snag copper, often from something that's using the copper for a purpose - like an electrical line.

They've gotten on BART tracks and done daring thefts (sometimes successful, sometimes tragic). They've broken into utilities. They've gone into anything with a wire to snag the copper and resell it as scrap for money.

Not long ago, these asswipes hit phone lines a few blocks from where I live, causing my landline to crap out.

Yes, I still have a landline. I use it mainly for my DSL connection (I don't care for Comcast, the cable option, and don't have other options immediately-available).

Less than a day later, the phone folks got everything back together, but I managed to chat with some of the maintenance guys to find out that the outage was due to some asshole or assholes scaling a telephone pole and cutting out a section of copper cable.

Seriously.

The daring nature of this boggles my mind, especially when I did the math and realized the perps had to do this in daylight, or at least dawn, based on when my outage began.

Next time I hope the fucker who tries this touches a live wire and gets cooked.

Gear

So I saw this on io9. I just had to put it here. 'Cause... awesome.

GEAR from Joe Ksander on Vimeo.

Review: "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."

Over the weekend, I was loaned a DVD of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., starring Henry Cavill (you know, Superman) and various others.

I don't know how Cavill was in Superman (mostly because I have zero interest in Superman stories) but HOLY CRAP was he good in this!

Actually, everyone in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was perfect. Everyone. Heroes. Heroines. Villains. Bit characters. It was glorious.

Guy Richie did a fantastic job capturing that whole "1960's in Europe" feel. The multi-screen cutscenes also gave a feel for the tv shows of the time. The dialog was brilliant and the action was solid. I'm astounded the film didn't do brilliantly in theaters, truth be told.

I should look up what it was playing against, but that will probably only upset me.

Two Shots of Rye...

There's those who say booze is not a solution to one's problems.

Fair enough, but I think that really depends on the problem.

Twenty minutes I sat on a BART train, waiting for a police action to clear. If the intercom was correct, there were two other stations shut down due to police actions.

I was tempted to just get the hell out and walk, but I was sore, cranky, and in the mood to be irritable.

Later, I got home. Shortly after that, I had a Manhattan. And then a second.

I didn't stint on the whiskey.

And I felt much better.

Sure, that much whiskey on an empty stomach made things a bit difficult (preparing dinner has been fun), but I regret nothing.

Hello 2016

Seven days into the year, I figure I should get back to this blog.

It's been a delightfully-wet start to the year. I almost believe the weather forecasts of El Niño. Glad my boots are waterproof.

I'm now starting Caliban's War as my latest BART book. I'm 126 pages in as of this morning and can see I'm going to have trouble pacing myself to make this story last.

I've finished The Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron. SCA-laden insanity aside, that was a fun fantasy read.

I'm glad to be switching gears to sci-fi for a bit in my reading. Then I think I'm going to go back and re-read the Song of Ice and Fire series to refresh my memory of Martin's insanity.

I'm really glad I've got a few more books in the Expanse series to read in my backlog. All my other favorite authors are fantasy and are a bit... slow... in getting stuff out. There hasn't been any kind of realistic ETA for the latest Martin book, The Winds of Winter for ages. I could get huffy about it, but Neil Gaiman insists George R.R. Martin isn't my bitch, and I can't say he's wrong. Patrick Rothfuss doesn't even discuss the third Kingkiller Chronicles book on his blog. He just talks about his charity work, which is lovely but doesn't even remotely interest me. Scott Lynch has postponed the latest Gentlemen Bastards book due to health problems and I don't even know WTF is going on with Saladin Ahmed at this point.

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Oh, I got one of my lingering Kickstarters in 2016. That was nice. Owltac Flashlights is wrapping up fulfilling their Kickstarter obligations and then will apparently start selling their light. It's a nice little flashlight. Bright (200 lumens on high beam) and takes two C123 batteries to power it. That's all fine-and-well, but what sets the Owltac apart is that the two batteries are tapped independently of one another with a control toggle. So when the battery for one setting dies, just flip the toggle and - in theory - the second, fresh, battery kicks in to give you illuminating goodness.

Seems pretty cool. I'm a sucker for flashlights, so I can't complain and I'm just pleased and mildly-surprised that any of my Kickstarter stragglers came through.

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I jogged today in an effort to take advantage of the break in the rain. Holy crap I'm out-of-shape. I have goals to address that in 2016. Jogging (weather-permitting) is part of that. I'm hoping to build up a bit more core and upper-body strength as well with a push-ups/chin-ups regimen. We'll see how long this well-intended bit lasts.

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I finally saw Kingsman: The Secret Service over the break. How did I miss this flick in theaters? Sweet FSM this was brilliant!