We received our new Mini and AirPort Extreme this week so I will be upgrading the equipment starting Saturday morning. I hope to have at least the server going again by that evening. The AirPort part nobody will notice unless they live near my house.
The long awaited OS update from Apple was officially released into the wild…hey, it’s Lion (aka 10.7) so isn’t that what people do with the big cats after raising them in captivity or a zoo? This one follows the ongoing tradition with Snow Leopard (10.6), it’s for the Intel-based systems. If you have an older PowerPC, you should stay with Leopard (10.5) and probably look into getting a new Mac.
I got the opportunity to do some beta testing on it too. Not as much as I wanted because my recent vacation interrupted the process of seeing what I could break or discover.
Should you upgrade? It really depends upon your applications unlike Lion’s recent predecessors. If you have anything which requires Rosetta, (in plain English, it’s an older piece of software which used to run on PowerPC, tends to pre-date 2006) then you will either need to upgrade it (for me it’s Quicken, Amadeus, QuarkXpress) or live without it (GIF Builder, Real Player). Not sure? Do a ‘Get Info’ on the application, if you see “(PowerPC)” to the right of its name, it won’t work. “(Intel)” and “(Universal)” will be operational.
I made it past the 200-mile marker this morning which was a huge accomplishment, especially with how long it took to hit 100. Alas, there was a little difficulty on the treadmill. For some reason the belt and/or motor hasn’t been operating at the right speed. I think I overtightened it to preemptively prevent further slipping.
When it slips, I’m only supposed to give the adjustment screws a quarter turn. This held for less than a week after a couple times. Figuring I could avoid problems down the road, I gave the screws half turns. It seemed to work until I found running 5.9/mph (my current cruising speed) not as strenuous yet the odometer couldn’t have been false. The motor suddenly shifting to a higher (probably accurate) speed in the middle of a run was another clue. Foolishly I kept pressing forward. The acrid, oily smell today was the warning to investigate further. The manual had a symptom regarding the motor being sluggish and its recommended solution? Loosening the belt a quarter turn. I’ll find out tomorrow morning. At least I will be using new shoes which might address my lessening hip pain.
Meanwhile, I’m less than six miles away from the goal I set back in January. The last two months have been spectacular too. More than half of the distance was covered through June and July.
What’s next, maybe where’s next? Some old destinations I established back when I running via the Wii Fit. Ozona, TX which is 252 miles from my house. The old route went mostly along I-10 on its way to our time share in Las Vegas…the ultimate goal, 1352 miles. With 2011 I’ll be impressed if I can finish December 31 at 365 miles which would give me a mile/day average.
Last week they announced our new head coach, another guy from a decent franchise in the AHL and now we have his only assistant, a very experienced dude who spent last season getting San Antonio’s act together.
It’s late so I didn’t feel like looking up their names. I’m just glad the owners have some promising people. Now to shore up our forwards because we have an abundance of blueliners.
According to GQ, a male-fashion magazine that tries to lure readers in with heavily airbrushed (via Photoshop) covers, Austin is the 18th Worst Dressed City. If this came from Vice which is a funnier publication, I would’ve laughed harder. To its credit, I do share the GQ writer’s complaint over my adopted home being overrun with Hipster Californiacators but most of them got here through the assistance of their Republican parents who are also doing their part to make this place unaffordable if you’re not in the right caste (see toll roads, charter schools and intelligent design).
How we beat out Houston and Dallas, two major breeding grounds for the nouveau riche, is beyond me. Chicago, LA, Atlanta, Philly and Boston weren’t a surprise.
Multiplex is about the only online comic strip I bother to follow anymore because I’ve done time in a movie theater so I can relate to the characters’ annoyances. One ongoing joke with the main protagonist (Jason) is his love of this movie. I’m not sure if the cartoonist necessarily speaks through him but I had a hard time agreeing on Train being superior to Toy Story 3. After watching this standard Dreamworks’ snoozefest, I am absolutely sure.
The whole plot revolves around an ongoing war between a village of Vikings, who develop Scottish accents when they become adults, and dragons that come in a variety of semi-related species like the Arachnids in Starship Troopers. Obviously as per the trailers/commericals, an atypical Viking teen named Hiccup discovers the impetus of the conflict. Through Hiccup’s relationship with a rescued dragon he names Toothless, the healing can begin.
There’s nothing terrible with the plot, I just found the execution rather boring and my ennui amplified by Dreamworks’ casting choices. Besides the Scots Craig Ferguson and Gerard Butler, the Viking teens are primarily Judd Apatow’s stable of second bananas. To me, this is a standard Dreamworks’ move to cover up a mediocre cartoon. I fell asleep somewhere near the end with no interest in knowing how it panned out.
It wasn’t a complete waste. Toothless’ behavior amused me because it was reminiscent of our youngest cat Kuroneko and all the feral kitties I usually gain the trust of.
However, Dreamworks has generated just another time killer to pacify children during a long car ride. Their ever-growing forgettable library keeps growing.
There’s an upside and a downside to playing the “Game of the Year” edition.
Upside:
Downside:
Then there’s the fact I hadn’t played a video game based upon a superhero in years and even then, they weren’t very impressive…they were 2-D sidescrollers for the Eighties’ NES. (Wait, I did finish Lego Batman earlier yet it doesn’t count because it’s more of a Lego game than a superhero game.) Contemporary versions all too often are tie-ins for a movie which either just re-enact what you already saw or they’re terrible pieces of crap whipped together for a quick buck.
Admittedly, Arkham uses the momentum the Batman franchise gained from 2008’s The Dark Knight (something I chose not to bother writing about on my site, too much time passed) but the game publisher(s) didn’t use anything from it. Instead the committee of corporations involved went with the well-loved 1992 cartoon series for the foundation: namely the voice actors (Mark Hamill as the Joker, Kevin Conroy as Batman) and characters (Harlequin, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy). To guarantee its appeal for the hyper-violent, socially retarded videogame base, everything got a makeover from the Hot Topic employee who’s just a little too into the Tim Burton-Crow-Goth thing.
At least the storyline portion is enjoyable, once you get past the long-ass exposition on why Batman has to fight several hundred people. It shares some the same DNA as those early Tom Clancy-based games (minus the Right-wing politics) because stealth usually trumps direct confrontations. Jumping in and beating the crap out of the Joker’s flunkies isn’t wise when they have hostages…you get to keep repeating the scenario until you get it right. The henchmen are also pretty accurate with guns, shivs and lead pipes unlike the comic books. There’s a couple weird surprises involving the Scarecrow’s psychotropic drugs so don’t panic when they happen, it’s this nemesis, not your console crashing.
My only immediate complaint regarding Arkham is the same I have with most of these games (Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank), it doesn’t have much re-playability after you’ve completed the narrative portion. There are separate challenges based upon how quickly something is solved or how perfectly you can defeat a dozen flunkies. Yet they lose their luster due to them being redundant. This is why I’m looking forward to the pending sequel Arkham City, more villains from the Batman mythos will appear (Catwoman, Two Face) but I’m hoping it will use Gotham City as a giant sandbox in the same vein as the Grand Theft Auto games.
Amidst the Y2K insanity (and stupidity), there were numerous lists of things to close out the Twentieth Century…the best this, the top 10, etc. One caught my attention around 1998 because I was voraciously reading novels to kill my remaining time in North Carolina (sold the TV). I downloaded the list for laughs, figuring I probably had read a couple. It blew my mind that I had seven! So I saved the list in a Word file but lost it during the many Mac migrations I’ve made since then. How I’ve tried to find it over the years, sporadically.
Earlier this week, I brought it up with Somara in our many debates over what is a good novel. Leave it to her to find the legendary list online in a matter of minutes. If public libraries weren’t on the skids, Somara would be a great reference-desk person. Sadly, most morons in charge of the purse strings think Google is good enough. Never mind my gripe about Google and its ilk understanding the context of a question, I was thrilled she found it. How did I know it was the same list? It had Ragtime by E. L. Doctrow plus Gore Vidal was on the committee to decide.
Click here to see it and it’s on the left, not the right which is skewed by Randroid douchebags who spammed the judging to inflate the numbers of their false prophet’s screeds. There is a little justice. The link to her biggest steamer goes to The Fellowship of the Ring, another chore of a novel to get through.
What have I read on this? Oddly, a couple were voluntarily and not as assignments in high school or college:
Grade/High School:
Voluntarily:
Not a bad job I’d say. There were several I tried to read yet I just couldn’t get through them, namely Henry James whose The Wings of the Dove is an awesome premise, made a fantastic movie starring Helena Bonham Carter but was bogged down in verbosity.
Don’t be shy, post away on what you’ve read and elaborate on your favorites. The Great Gatsby is definitely one of mine. Why? It captures the zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties even if it’s an atypical experience for the average American in 1926 (my grandparents didn’t live it up like Daisy or Gatsby…they were too busy working). I hope to write more about this for another reason soon but it will be covering a novel closer to my heart.
You can find out more details about his career here (NY Times) and here (Guardian).
Anybody growing in the Seventies felt the influence of Schwartz’s two major contributions to American Pop culture: Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch which were both heavily syndicated by then. We drove my mother crazy watching Gilligan weekday afternoons. There’s something appealing to the huts, coconuts and lagoon to children. It was like the castaways were living in a giant treehouse! Why not? Gilligan and Skipper slept in hammocks.
A favorite reference/debate comes from a pair of favorite movies. I couldn’t find a short enough clip from Galaxy Quest so here’s the quote. The other is Dazed n’ Confused, the argument doesn’t come up until the girls are in the ladies’ room.
The Brady Bunch was more ‘insidious’ because it received complaints from both parents due to the reruns airing closer to dinner time. Looking back as an adult and learning about the context of when the show originally aired, Brady seems to be an anomaly for 1969 and even more by its end in 1974. How? More ‘realistic’ situations were the staple of American TV as All in the Family demonstrated. During dinner I stated how Brady today would more likely have parents being divorced and their marriage being a second (or third) attempt versus the more acceptable widowed scenario of the late Sixties. Divorce happened back then, it was taboo.
This show’s appeal is a mystery to me. I know it enthralled me as a kid. Looking back though, I can’t explain it well. The characters had rather mundane adventures after you remove the trip to Hawaii, the Grand Canyon, Rosie Grier and Davy Jones episodes. Maybe a bigger aficionado will gladly give an explanation here.
Brady certainly lent itself to parody more easily as the first movie did; Gary Cole’s caricature of Mr. Brady is what made it funny. The X-Files then had Scully, Doggett and Reyes investigate a something sinister in a house modeled after the trademarked family residence.
The mileage progression bar finally got a day off after 21 straight days of running at least two miles. I decided to give my hip joints a break and celebrate with a little more sleep…okay, lying (not laying!) in bed until it was my turn to use the shower.
In other good news, the powers that be at Apple finally approved Somara’s more modest schedule request to start her shift 30 minutes earlier. I recently got mine bumped back 30 as well so this means we only have a half-hour overlap. Originally, they had her starting at 930 AM and I was 8 AM. Now mix in us having only one car. Crap City.
Tomorrow I get back to my goal, Jose’s house before my birthday. The current mileage and pace are 2.3 miles/day at 5.9 mph. By the weekend I think I will raise the speed to 6 mph which will finally help me achieve the 10-minute mile pace.
Having some water to get through the Texas heat…while Molly is napping.
Our neighborhood has developed a feral cat problem. I think it was always there but now it may be worsening. Currently there’s Tybalt wandering around the front yard zone and I am trying to see if he has an owner; this has become doubtful based upon him hanging around a storm drain. Now it appears we have a trio claiming the backyard as their mutual turf. The latter often scamper away whenever I open the back door to dispose of our cats’ litter.
Yesterday I managed to convince this one to not bolt. First I kept myself scrunched down to appear smaller (cats arc up to look larger). This was followed with a short trail of treats to lure it in. Then it let me pet it. Knowing me, I grabbed it to get a better examination. I wasn’t scratched too badly yet I failed to confirm its gender. It still didn’t run away so I left a bowl of water and took its picture through the glass. Maybe the other two this cat associates with came back to share.
As for our ‘spoiled rotten’ indoor cats, Kuroneko took some interest. To her, other felines are supposed to entertain her as she meows at them, probably as an invitation to play.
Right now, the working name for it is Yevva which is a short/corruption of ‘brave’ in Greek. I cut off the word after the letter a due to the Greek alphabet being a mystery. I’m open to suggestions should anybody can post a better name.
Next up, talking to the backyard neighbors to confirm this isn’t their cat before I have it neutered by my vet. According to this Mother Jones article, it appears to be a losing battle but I would like to avoid having these critters put to sleep.
Whenever there’s a headline or mention of the surname Hanson, I think all hockey fans’ ears perk up to see if this pertains to the infamous trio from Slapshot and/or Christian Hanson, one of their sons who plays professionally.
Sadly, today’s headlines in the AHL do pertain to Christian. He was picked up by the Washington C(r)apitals. I do hope he makes the cut to play in the NHL, even if they’re a rotten team…don’t bother trying to tell me with how well they end their seasons, they always choke in the playoffs, a position formerly held by the Senators. The alternative is that Hanson spends his contract with the Hershey Bears which has been a winning franchise. This also means we Stars fans won’t get a chance to see him play, regardless of the re-alignment.
During his time with the Marlies, I only managed to see their first appearance and the coach didn’t dress him. The following year, we were in Dallas and I have no idea if he was in Toronto or not.
Fingers crossed he has a break out year or is traded to a Western Conference franchise.
Starship Troopers was a flop in theaters when it debuted in 1997 since audiences either expected it to follow the book (mixed opinions here) or be on par with Cameron’s Aliens. The R rating also doomed it because some states also enforce the age restrictions; when I was a projectionist in North Carolina, the General Manager paid the fine when unaccompanied kids under 17 are caught.
Personally I liked it. To me, Paul Verhoven brought a little symmetry through the MI’s uniforms’ resemblance to the USCMC’s…Cameron had all the marine actors read the novel (Michael Biehn got an exception for replacing James Remar at the last minute) to get into the militaristic mindset. With my part-time job at Park Place 16, I saw Troopers a few more times, piecemeal, and realized that some aspects were a parodies of propaganda. Much like his violent Eighties masterpiece Robocop.
Then I watched it in its entirety about a year after the 9/11 shitstorm…how sadly life imitates art. This link from Cracked (when did they become funnier than Mad?) makes a great argument about how Paul Verhoven must be a time traveler sent to the ‘past.’ I hope life has a better ending than art received which entailed two mediocre sequels.
The attached certificate is a tracking number to prove these were grown, processed and made in the US.
One thing I always looked forward to during the Fourth of July…beyond a three-day weekend, was getting a couple pairs of new jeans. Years ago I got hooked on the Lucky brand through Costco. The price was amazingly good (I recall they were under $40 then) and more importantly, they were made in the US (I’m also cool with Europe, Japan, Australia or Canada). I later stumbled upon their bi-annual sale at their mall stores which was pretty nice because Lucky tends to be in the higher-end locales. In Austin, they’re at the Domain, across from the Apple Store and near the center of Barton Creek. I often see them in the more expensive shopping sections of Las Vegas too.
Back to the sale.
Around early July, I would hit the Lucky store, buy two pairs for the price of one and I was set. Gradually, year over year, I was purging those outsourced jeans from the numerous Third World sweatshops while building up a steady stable from Lucky. Even on sale, many considered their price-tags steep, close to $60/pair. To me they were worth it. As Lincoln once countered protestations over a tariff in 1865, the latter half is what I take to heart, “…when we buy manufactured goods abroad we get the goods and the foreigner gets the money. When we buy the manufactured goods at home we get both the goods and the money.” I would like to add that jobs are an important reason, especially in a nation of 300-plus million people. There is no way the United States or other like-minded countries can survive, prosper or continue if shopping for cheap, imported stuff is the cornerstone of their economies. I also don’t buy into the ‘savings’ myth. The lower labor costs aren’t really passed on to the consumer. Case in point, my one big weakness I readily admit to, Converse All Stars (aka Chucks). Before some sleazy raiders and Nike acquired Converse (20o1 and 2003 respectively), many were made here and ran about $30/pair in 1999 (what I paid at Academy and Rooster Andrew’s). Now they’re made in China, Vietnam or Indonesia and go for $45/pair. If inflation were taken into account, the same $30 shoes would really be $39. Plus we all know why the previously listed Asian nations are used, they have obscenely low wages and non-existent labor laws. Thus, ‘savings’ is Newspeak for ‘larger profits.’
Sadly, Lucky has given in to this cynical, greedy strategy. Everything I examined said it was made in Mexico, same price as before too. I complained to their Web site, received a robotic answer claiming they still carried some US-manufactured stuff online yet couldn’t get any directions on where it existed.
I wasn’t totally discouraged. Internet searches can yield good results when you invest significant amounts of time and effort into them. It’s just a little harder through a mobile device. This wasn’t the case for replacing Lucky. Within 10 minutes I found All American. I rolled the dice on three pairs (shipping was free for an order over $100): two regular, one shorts. They arrived yesterday afternoon. How are they? Right now I’m breaking in the shorts and I’m pretty pleased. I probably should’ve washed ’em first yet I was too excited to wait. I’ll give these pants another week before giving a more elaborate judgment. Things look pretty favorable unless something unusual happens.
Now my American Apparel shirts won’t be lonely.
&;
One of my biggest peeves about Facebook is that it has become many people’s piss-poor substitution for communication. Never mind how effortless it is to write a short e-mail, how cheap long-distance phone calls have become or how ubiquitous chat clients are. Hell, I even gave in on getting the unlimited SMS nonsense for my iPhone due to others sending me those despite numerous requests not to (they used to cost me a dime and they can add up).
They Might be Giants shared this little YouTube movie but I think they retracted it for fear of losing a helpful tool to keep fans in the loop. It’s pretty funny. I would like to amend Number Five though. There have been old friends from college and high school I’ve stumbled upon which nice at first. Then through Facebook, you discover they’ve become hypocritical Christo-Fascists (especially the former ‘swingers’ who used to sleep with anybody) who demand to know why you won’t sign Glenn Beck’s 9/12 horse crap. Many were such peripheral people in my life so hitting the ‘unfriend’ button happened without hesitation. Others get a few more strikes before I just write them off as terminally ill with Angry White Man Disease. I’ve had my differences with those in my Socio-Political camp too. Nowhere near as heated thankfully since it’s probably a side effect of our own Echo Chamber. The difference between them and the Christo-Fascists is they won’t turn into 1984‘s O’Brien; eagerly wanting to torture me into joining their spiritual Ponzi Scheme and/or belief in Cake n’ Crumbs economics.
