2003/09/24
00:28	Link
Radiohead in a thousand words or less Doyce prefaces this page a lot better than I do, but I just had to mention it here: Fifth graders drawing interpretive art based on Radiohead. Courtesy of Doyce and Pace.

2003/09/22
18:21	Link
More Stick Figure Kung Fu Xiao Xiao's come up with another stick figure kung fu Flash film. Alas, he's sold out to Heineken. Courtesy of Mike Surbrook.

2003/09/20
00:50	Link
Hypermarkup Amazon is selling a keyboard offered by Office Depot. That, in itself, isn't strange. On the other, there's the price.

2003/09/18
19:54	Link
Art of the Saber If you haven't seen Art of the Saber, yet, why haven't you? It was made back in 2002, very well done, and I dare say that if Lucas could make a film as good as these guys, then maybe Episode I and II would have been worth watching. Courtesy of Slashdot. PS: Or you can watch Star Wars Kid. You're better off doing this first and then seeing Art of the Saber, though.

2003/09/17
07:12	Link
Pirates No, not about RIAA or P2P or Kazaa. It's about International Talk Like a Pirate Day. While we're on the topic, here's a pirate keyboard and the lyrics for the Arrogant Worms' "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate".

2003/09/15
22:34	Link
When Icons Attack A totally different take on the desktop wars. Courtesy of KFO.

2003/09/13
11:47	Link
Silly Nationalist Pride The way it is.

2003/09/12
00:48	Link
Help Desk Training The Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie have a hilarious video clip about training at an Internet help desk. If you've ever done tech support, relive the pain. Courtesy of Stef.

00:38

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Half-ton Man

When I last wrote, I had just finished my roundabout drive of bits of New England. Since then, it's been a whirlwind of packing and shipping, culminating in this:

I am now in Los Angeles, my new home.

There's still a lot to do, including some redecorating in the room that I'll end up taking, including some painting and reflooring, maybe some creative redefinition of lighting, some screens, drapes, and so on. Furniture will have to wait until the paycheques start rolling in, but in the meantime, I should probably get a bank account and a new cell phone number that's local.

As for the title of this post, why is it "half-ton man"? The total weight of all the boxes that I moved out of my apartment in Brooklyn and delivered to various shippers (US Postal Service, UPS, Airborne Express), amounted to nearly 1400 lbs in weight, well over half a ton.

2003/09/06
16:07	Link
Road Rules [Originally written around 1 a.m. Eastern Time on 2003.09.05, but I didn't have Internet access so I couldn't post it until now.] It's been a very up and down day, to say the least, though it really started the night before and won't really end until Saturday afternoon. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I got the last of the paperwork that I needed to make my border visit to get my work visa. Getting things together to get on the road took a little while, though, and I wasn't able to pick up the car until almost 5 p.m., which was an hour later than I wanted to. It took another two hours to get the car home, load up the cats, and get all of the things I needed to travel, including getting a hard copy of the directions to Soo Sun's mom's house. As soon as I was on the road, the bad things started to happen. Primarily, I had the radio switched over to 1010 WINS for the traffic and they were really pumping up a story about how "someone" had screwed up and ordered the start of construction on the Major Deegan (a highway) an hour and a half early, smack in the middle rush hour. Alas, I don't drive in the New York City area and I have no idea what highway the Major Deegan is. Nor did I know how to get to the Hutchinson River Parkway, which is what the traffic guy was suggesting. All I knew was that I was supposed to go on city streets until I got on the BQE (I-278), switch over to I-87 and then go up past Yonkers and change to the Saw Mill River Parkway. So... guess which one was the Major Deegan? It was I-87 in the Bronx. This is where it gets weird. Some weeks or months back, I was talking to someone and they had said that things seem to always work out for Soo Sun somehow, no matter how messed up they may seem at the time. I think that aura goes beyond just her. See, I never even saw the nasty traffic jam that I kept hearing about on the radio because I took the wrong exit off of I-87. On my directions, the exit numbers were all messed up--I was supposed to get off at exit 7A to get onto the Saw Mill, but I was already well past exit 10--so I took an exit that said Saw Mill Parkway. It turns out that the Saw Mill crosses I-87 in two places and I got off on the "wrong" one. My "wrong" move resulted in at least two good things. The first is missing the traffic jam. The second... Did I mention I was transporting my cats from Brooklyn to their new home in North Adams, MA? The cats meowed a bit when I put the carrier in the car back in Brooklyn and I didn't hear a peep out of them until about an hour and a half into the drive, around 8:30, when Diva started meowing something fierce. Then I caught a whiff of The Odour. Turns out she had vomited, or hocked up a messy hairball, and she had taken a dump, right in the carrier. Well, there was no way I was going to try to drive the rest of the distance in this condition, because it was bad, even with the windows open. I passed over a couple of exits that looked kind of desolate and ended up getting off the Saw Mill at Dobbs Ferry. After a little bit of driving, I found an open pizzeria and I was able to bum a huge wad of paper towels. I was able to wipe up the puke and had to throw out the towel that I had lining the carrier. Apparently I wasn't able to get it all, though, because the smell was still there when I started to drive back toward the highway. Moreover, I hadn't shut the door to the carrier properly and Diva let herself out and was sitting on the back seat. It was right then that I saw my saviour: Dobbs Ferry Animal Hospital. I found out later that they were actually supposed to have closed at 7:30, but I didn't know that at the time. All I knew was that their lights were one, there were people inside, and their door was open. I explained my situation and they were absolutely wonderful in helping me out. They cleaned out my carrier and gave me fresh newspaper to line the bottom. They also cleaned the cats, which required shaving off some of the hair on Diva. To top it all off, the vet even gave the cats free sedatives so they'd be able to stand the rest of the trip. The rest of the trip up wasn't any more exciting, thankfully, though it was really foggy so driving got a little interesting at times. I also managed to completely overshoot North Adams and ended up in the next town over, so I had to double back to find the house. The next morning, this morning, I had planned to get going early, but ended up spending a good portion of it unable to leave the cats. Soo Sun's mom and I spent a lot of time with them, helping them get acquainted with the house and with new people and their new cat friend, Zimmer. There was a little bit of hissing and a lot of hiding under beds and closets, but they seemed to be doing pretty well. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay forever and had to leave. Said goodbye to them one last time--I don't know when I may ever be back there to see them again--and left them to the safety of the linen closet that they had appropriated for themselves. The drive up to Champlain was uneventful, except for this one woman in a minivan that insisted on harassing the wolfpack that I was travelling with. She would come up to about our speed and exceed us a bit on the straightaways and pull in front of the lead car, but then when she hit any kind of curve, she would drop her speed by about 15 mph, which was really annoying for the rest of us who were trying to maintain a constant speed. The border crossings were alright. I had to wait for fourty minutes on the Canadian side as there was a huge line, but once I got to the immigration officer, it was smooth sailing. Turned the car around and went through the US side, which took a little longer since I was getting a visa. The process wasn't as smooth as the last time, so there were a few nervous moments, but in the end, I got the visa and was on my way. Now that was a nice high to have. At this point, I am eligible to work and the only things left keeping me from starting my new job in LA is a bunch of logistical stuff to get my possessions and myself over to the West Coast. Woo! My plan for the latter part of the trip was to swing through Fall River, MA, to visit Dazz and Lou and for this leg of the trip, I chose not to take I-87 back down to Albany. Instead, I headed east and took I-89 and I-91 down through Vermont. The first thing about Vermont is that it's small. There are three decently sized cities in Vermont on the route that I took: Burlington, Montpelier, and Brattleboro. Of them, I passed right through the former two without even noticing it and only saw the last one because there happened to be a McDonald's near the highway. The other thing about Vermont is that it's pretty right around sunset and it has absolutely no GSM cellular service anywhere, except for a little bit around Lake Champlain, and only because it's bled over from Canada. Aside from being horribly behind schedule to begin with, I made good time getting down to Fall River. I regained cell phone service as soon as I crossed over into Massachusetts about 10 p.m. and was able to get a bunch of calls out. Everything was great until I got near Providence, RI. On I-95 southbound, near the exits for Pawtucket, I suddenly saw traffic parting like the Red Sea in front of me. At first I thought it was just traffic passing slower traffic. Part of that was true. They were turning to get around slower traffic, except the "traffic" was actually a car stopped dead in its tracks in the middle late with none of its lights on. I saw it at the last moment and had barely enough time to jerk the steering wheel left and then back to the right when I started to skid. You'd think that having had prior experience with this same kind of skidding behaviour, I would have been better prepared for this, but the best I was able to manage was a 145 degree spin instead of 180 degrees. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to hit the accelerator and drive onto the shoulder before any of the following traffic made an impact on me. In retrospect, I think the fact that I spun around helped other motorists because when I was done, my headlights were shining toward the stopped car, silhouetting it for the others. No one was hurt in the original accident, but plenty of other people were run off the road. One man that talked to me said I was the third one to be affected by the car. Ultimately, there was no damage to my car and I hadn't seen the original accident, so there was no point in my staying around longer than I needed to. The cops arrived presently and, once traffic was redirected by the emergency vehicles, I was able to turn my car around and continue. So here I am, at Dazz and Lou's, still running high on adrenaline, though I can feel the crash starting to kick in even now. I'm safe, I'm sound, I have a visa to work, but I'm short a couple of cats. Update: The drive back to New York from Fall River was completely uneventful, though I was really short on sleep so my reaction times were horrible. Passable, but not what I would have liked them to be. Hanging out with Dazz, however brief, was wonderful, though I curse the boss gods that made her go in to work on a Saturday. I did get a chance to hang out longer with Lou and Pat at Stillpoint, though, and that was a lot of fun. Oh, how I've missed the "shop talk" and Lou's sense of humour. There's a man that loves his puns. With luck, I'll be seeing Dazz and Lou sometime in the near future, as GenCon sounds like a possibility, either in Indianapolis or in Anaheim.

2003/09/04
09:45	Link
Road Trip! The road trip is on! Got the FedEx with my letter for BCIS (formerly, INS) and offer letter and all the other stuff I need to support them (resume, diploma, transcript, passport), so this afternoon, I'm going to jump in a car and start the three day, two night, driveabout in the Northeast. Heading up to North Adams, MA, to take the cats to their new home with Soo Sun's mom and stepfather. I'm going to stay the night and then head up to Champlain, NY, in the morning to take care of the visa. Coming back down, I'll swing east to visit Dazz and Lou for an evening. Saturday morning, I'll swing by Stillpoint to close out my account and return to the city. Lots and lots of driving. Booyah.

09:19	Link
Moist "Moist" is the rather apt descriptive word for the weather around here for the past four days. It's just been dark and dreary and wet. It's rained three days in a row now, that I've noticed. And maybe, if FedEx will show up, I'll get to drive in it this afternoon.

09:17

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Firefly in DTS!

I never saw the show (well, a brief sliver of it, once), but I heard a lot of great things from it, perhaps most vocally from Doyce. I'd like to see it, but I'm terrible about scheduling my life around television (except Iron Chef, which occurs late enough at night that it doesn't matter). Fortunately, the DVDs should be released in December, but more importantly, they're going to make a feature film out of it. Hooray. I think.

Courtesy of Xkot.

2003/09/03
22:57	Link
The Freshmaker Gotta love those Mentos commercials...

14:24

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Downloading Music

Here's a BBC article that's a broad summary of heavy-handed tactics the RIAA is using against consumers. A little light on detail, but it captures the essence of it.

While I agree that stealing music isn't right, even if it's from big labels that are ripping off consumers, I also disagree with the methods that the RIAA is using to try to curb the practice.

Basically, they're filing suits against consumers, at $150,000 per infraction (that's $150k per song, as defined by law), letting them do the math, and then letting the defendant pay off $15k or some similar amount to have the RIAA call off their dogs. Supposedly, that number goes up to $50k+ if you even file an answer in court.

Sounds to me like it's outright extortion, especially considering $15k amounts to about 750 CDs (assuming $20/CD). I don't even have half that in my collection... I think.