JF :: Brain Farts :: Archive of December, 2002

Archive of December, 2002

Question

December 31, 2002:

In my site admin section I have a page that tells me which posts have comments made since I last logged in. Would you, my loyal readers, be interested in something like that? Or would it just be overkill since I only average about three comments a week?

Note: What? Nothing about the attack of the clone? No way. Frenchmen who think they've talked to space aliens are not credible scientific sources. If this turns out to be anything vaguely resembling real, I may have something to say about it. But not right now.

Found on the Net

December 27, 2002:

A friend of mine showed me this link. It seems like an urban legend, but you can consider yourself a geek if you get it.

http://seanm.ca:70/0/nerd/500mileemail.txt

There Seems to Be a Pattern Here

December 26, 2002:

I'm in the process of adding categories to Brain Farts. So if you wanted to see all the stuff I write about, say, politics you could just click a link. Nothing's online just yet since I'm still setting it up, but I got the first category taken care of: "Jason Needs a New Job," also the title of my first post back in April of '01.

Since then I've written 19 posts that would count. Most of them are from before I got fired, bitching about the shithole I worked in. The last couple were of the "OK, I really need a job now" variety. There haven't been any in quite a while. (Maybe this means I finally just shut the hell up about it.)

But, 19 in 20 months. Basically, I've been complaining about work once a month (on average) since last April. Maybe this thing really is a type of catharsis...

Happy Festivus

December 25, 2002:

It's Christmas, fer cryin' out loud. Get off the computer and go spend time with your family. I promise there'll be more useless junk here tomorrow.

Go on, now.

Here We Go Again...

December 24, 2002:

Well, another person who's too stupid to breathe is suing a fast-food restaurant over spilled coffee. To borrow from an IRC quote I saw on bash.org, I don't think stupidity should be a capital crime, but can't we get rid of all the warning labels and let the problem solve itself?

You Know You've Seen the Matrix Too Many Times...

December 20, 2002:

I rented Lord of the Rings to make sure I know what the hell's going on when I go see Two Towers. When Frodo woke up and was greeted by Elron -- played by the actor who was Agent Smith -- I half expected him to follow, "Welcome to Rivendale," with, "Mr. Anderson."

Kinda-update: Just remembered this: On Cruel.com there's a link to 50 reasons why Lord of the Rings sucked. Read and enjoy.

Socializing. Well, Not Really.

December 19, 2002:

Went to an LJ meetup at the 61C Cafe over in Squirrel Hill recently. Except I don't think anyone else showed up. I got there about 10 till 8 (it started at 8:00) and started looking for people who might be there for the meetup. But everyone else looked like they belonged there (I, on the other hand, looked totally out of place in a coffee house).

I waited until 8:35 and didn't see anyone else who seemed like they were looking around for other people, so I gave up and left. With my luck, everybody showed up 5 minutes later.

Now I'll grant you that the last two meetups (the only two I knew about) weren't scheduled at very good times -- November's meetup was canceled because it was right before Thanksgiving, and this one was after all the local universities went on winter vacation. So maybe January's will work out.

Jason's Movie Reviews: Star Trek X

December 18, 2002:

No spoilers in this one. Well, not many. I will save the ending for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

OK, it's not in the top three, but it was still pretty good. Maybe see it matinee instead of paying the full eight bucks. If they'd only spent some time tightening up the story it would've been better.

Some random points:

• We can pick up android bits from billions of kilometers away, but we have to walk around waiting for it to jump up and grab us once we get there? And the thing is, it added nothing.
• Nitpicky: UI by the MacOSX team. The button for "engage engines" is labeled something like "XP1034." If you really want to stretch things it might be a security precaution, but I doubt it. If the button means "go" it should say "go."
• The Remans were good baddies but they should have looked more like the Romulans. That's what they are, after all.
• Psychic targeting. Cool.
• Hey, a starship that can take a beating. Holy crap!

So where's it belong in my Top Ten list? Let's go to the board:

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Still the best.
2. Star Trek: First Contact. By far the best of Picard & Co.
3. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. A.k.a. Star Trek 2.5, it's the only violation of the "even = good, odd = bad" rule.
4. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. A close one, but the Whodunit barely edged out Nemesis.
5. Star Trek: Nemesis. Not bad, but not great either.
6. Star Trek: Insurrection. Forced humor and a movie that felt like an episode.
7. Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Much improved in the director's cut.
8. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. OK, so there are two exceptions to the rule. It was fun in '86, but it got old real fast.
9. Star Trek: Generations. It was... there.
10. There is no number 10. For some reason they went straight from IV to VI. Probably for the best.

Eh, middle of the road seems about right. That may change if/when I see it again or rent it, but I doubt it.

Inside Voice, Outside Voice

December 17, 2002:

After doing some painstaking research (meaning, I read the entire paper instead of just the front page and the comics) it seems like Trent Lott might really be a racist, instead of having a Quayle-esque problem with the English language. The guy's got a pretty long history of trying to keep black people down, and had a similar "mis-speak" at another event for Strom Thurmond. So he should probably do the smart thing and step down as Senate Majority Leader.

The really interesting thing is the people who are complaining the loudest -- conservatives. The first people to take Lott to task were staunchly conservative bloggers; Jesse Jackson and Al Gore didn't get into the act until a few days later. Of couse nobody listens to Jackson or Gore anyway, but I do wonder what took them so long. Then Dubya had to come out and bitch-slap the guy to make up for the fact that only three black people voted for him in 2000.

Well, this thing will probably blow over. White people will decide that either he's a lost cause or just an idiot, and I don't think it's really possible for black people to be any less pleased with the Republicans than they already are.

Why am I even writing about this then? It has to do with my political leanings -- mostly libertarian -- and the fact that on some topics libertarianism sounds like what Republicans say. Basically, these guys make it hard for me to argue the stuff I agree with them on (and it's not just Lott; Herr Ashcroft has a lot to do with it too). Basically I want these guys to shut the hell up so I can carry out a reasoned argument with my borderline-socialist friends.

Although after reading Shields's journal, I wonder if that's an impossibility anyway...

Ugh

December 13, 2002:

I have two freelance jobs going on at the moment. One's for a place up in Zelionople, the other's in New York. They're both almost done -- in fact, the Zelionople job was "done" several weeks ago and we're doing add-ons. And I just realized that working from home is hard: At Brady I at least had someone keeping an eye on me when a job got tiresome. Without that, self-motivation is a little more difficult.

Note: Since I wrote this, I've gotten the Zelienople job pretty much finished and as a result am much more motivated to do the other. So either it was the two-jobs-at-once thing that was sapping my motivation, or it was the both-jobs-getting-annoying thing. If I figure out which it was, I'll let you know.

'Tis the Season for a Rampage, Fa-la-la-la-la La-la-la-la

December 12, 2002:

Hey, it snowed a lot last night. Went to get in my car today and had to brush four inches of snow off the thing. As I'm opening the left-rear door to grab the brush, some jackass coming up Negley hits a slushpile and sprays me and the inside of my car.

Now, I don't want people to slow to a crawl just because there's a pedestrian nearby. But dickboy could've at least LET OFF THE FRIGGIN' GAS and maybe slowed all the way down to 40.

Ah well. No real harm, at least -- the brainiac could've tagged me instead of just spraying me -- but I was severely annoyed about having to waddle back inside with a very slush-covered (and very cold) ass to change before heading out. And the load of laundry I had to do as a result.

Ah, screw it. I'm gonna be angry about it. I hope that jerk slips on ice and cracks his tailbone.

Global Warming, My Ass

December 11, 2002:

We're just a few days into December and Charlotte, NC, just got hammered. Trees and power lines are covered in an inch of ice, and they're all snapping and falling all over the place. I forget how many thousands of people are without power. And it's supposed to be below freezing again tonight.

This ain't the Great White North, folks. This is almost in South Carolina. This is about the same latitude as the Mediterranean, and they aren't known for snowfall.

So the next time you see some environmentalist whining about how we're melting all the ice caps or some such, kick him in the nuts.

Karma

December 10, 2002:

Found a link to this article as I was reading Wil Wheaton Dot Net. It seems spammers don't like getting spammed. Make sure you read the discussion for some things that you definitely shouldn't do.

Ideas vs. Reality

December 06, 2002:

For a while now I've been kicking an idea around in the back of my head. It all got started after I read Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America.

The basic premise of the books is that the teaching of history in American schools is horribly flawed. Facts are left out for fear of offending various groups, and anything that doesn't show a steady upward climb is for the most part left out (don't want the kiddies to get demoralized). Historic events are also depicted as happening in a vacuum -- if the Vietnam War is covered at all, it's assumed to start with the U.S. sending soldiers in the early '60s, not the French colonization in the first half of the 20th century -- which makes everything seem random and disjoint. To top it all off, it's boring as all hell. Students plod through a morass of dates and names, and don't actually learn anything. The result is an overwhelming apathy towards American history, and the prospect of not learning anything from our collective mistakes over the last 500-plus years.

So because I have tons of time on my hands, and Loewen (the books' author) planted the idea in my head, I want to write an American history book that might actually be useful. My only problems are my writing ability -- or more my lack thereof -- and my unwillingness to do the research necessary for the job. This couldn't be a 7-page high-school research paper where I borrowed three books from the library and wrote it over a weekend. It would involve months, maybe years, of research to get us from the late 1400s up to now, and would probably involve libraries across the country as a base to really do it right. And to top that all off, it would have to be edited down to about 600 pages to be able to be covered in a typical 180-day school year.

It could be done, sure, but I don't think I'd be willing to see it through to completion once I got into the hard stuff. So here I sit with this great idea, and I'm unwilling to even try. God I suck.

Christmas Shopping

December 05, 2002:

My least favorite part of the holiday season is the shopping. Not because I hate spending money (I'm not that bad of a tightwad), but having to deal with everyone else. Idiots who can't tell their asses from so many holes in the ground, clerks who act like it's their first day instead of their tenth year, and moronic driving that only a masochist could enjoy.

This year was tolerable though. I did half of my shopping on Amazon, in addition to a small purchase from T-Shirt Hell, several weeks ago and went out at noon today when most people were at work. I even had time to silently laugh at the JC Penny's clerk whose hairstyle looked like it came directly out of Bride of Frankenstein.

But it still involved three hours of driving around and waiting in (albeit short) lines. Maybe next year I really will get off my ass (or on my ass, I guess) and get this all taken care of online. I don't think there was a single item I couldn't have purchased over the Web, with the exception of a gift certificate.

Pet Peeve of Mine

December 04, 2002:

I'm from a city in Ohio (yes, there are cities in Ohio, fuck you very much) called Akron. Simple to pronounce: "Ack' rən". Not exactly a small town, there are about 200,000 people there. So I'd figure that if my hometown was on the news, they'd at least get the name right.

When will I ever learn? There was a segment on Headline News not too long ago about a basketball player from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School who stands a good chance of going straight to the NBA instead of to college. How'd the sports-chick pronounce it? Ack-ron. Like two words, almost two sentences. Ack. Ron.

I have no clever comment here, I just wish people who get paid to do nothing more than speak would do so correctly.

Uncle Pennybags Would Be So Proud

December 03, 2002:

Well, it looks like making Andrew Jackson look like a lunatic wasn't enough. Now the geniuses want to add colors to U.S. paper money. Wonderful. Now our money can look just as ridiculous as the junk Europe's stuck with.

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