Swift Rivers

Dudes Of Christmas Past

2011-12-24T08:18:00.001-05:00

This was meant to be posted yesterday but I got distracted by my annual cookie-baking madness. I swore I wasn't going to do too much this year and just like every year I always end up doing more than I'd planned. And I'm already lying to myself about having learned my lesson and not going overboard next year.

December 23rd was a date with a special meaning in my younger days. My friends and I as teenagers knew that we'd be too busy with family functions from Christmas Eve until after the holiday to hang around together so we all made a point of celebrating The Night Before The Night Before Christmas together. Underage as we were, we still managed to get some alcohol (I always looked and sounded older than my actual age and none of us were driving) and with it being the '70s weed was cheap and plentiful. We'd all get small gifts to exchange with each other - t-shirts, packs of imported cigarettes, records, that sort of thing - and make merry together

We've all gone off in different directions since those days. I still stay in touch with a very few of my old friends from back then but at this time of year I really miss the others who've drifted away. - Tony, Vic, Rob, Ray, Mark, Dave, Hogie and probably some others whose names have faded from my memory. I really miss you guys, especially Hogie and Dave who left this world long ago and far too young. Merry Christmas, guys. I hope your holidays have been happy ones and that you remember the fun times we had together like I do.

"Thank someone for contacting my office..."

2011-12-06T22:01:00.000-05:00

If I'd actually written to either of my Senators I might be happy to get a response back, even an automated one telling me which addresses I should send my e-mail to. The problem is that I didn't write to either of my Senators about anything.

My best guess is that some anti-SOPA hippie activist thought I'd be okay with them using my e-mail address on my behalf. It's not okay and I'm regretting ever having shown any support for stopping that vile legislation in the first place. It's proof once more that no good deed ever goes unpunished.

What Your Android Says About You

2011-11-30T20:01:00.001-05:00

It recently came to light that there's a hidden app on millions of Android smartphones logging everything users do on the phones. Every number dialed, every text received, every single button pressed on the device is noted and sent off to a company named Carrier IQ.

I was curious so I hooked up my LG Thrive and poked around a little bit. The following are screenshots showing that Carrier IQ didn't even bother trying to hide this app, it's right under the running applications. It claims it's not using any memory or system resources but my event logs say otherwise, I suspect this is the app's way of keeping it from being able to be closed.

I don't recall ever giving the app the permissions it has, either:

Sadly, this model of smartphone isn't open to being easily modded. Still, I'm looking around for ways to get this nasty little rootkit out of the phone altogether. I've read that in addition to being a huge invasion of privacy that it's also a real battery hog.

Sounds Of the Season...All Season Long

2011-11-30T06:52:00.000-05:00

There's no way to say something that starts off with, "Back in my day" without coming across as an old crank. Nevertheless, this is a post about how things used to be very different at this time of year and my general dissatisfaction with things as they are now. Those offended by old cranks may take this opportunity to move along to happier postings if they wish.

It wasn't very long ago when I worked in radio and we handled playing Christmas music very different back then. We wouldn't even consider playing any holiday songs until the day after Thanksgiving, the day we've come to refer to as Black Friday. And even then, we might play one and only one Christmas song in a four-hour shift. We'd gradually add more seasonal music to the mix as the weeks went by and cap it off with around-the-clock Christmas songs for Christmas Eve throughout Christmas day. It made the music seem more special and listeners seemed to enjoy it.

At some point since then, it seems to have become fashionable for stations to start airing non-stop holiday music immediately after Halloween is over. It's not enough that we've been seeing Christmas trees and decorations in the stores since Labor Day. It's not enough that holiday catalogs start flooding our mailboxes in early October. Oh no, we have to start singing about Christmas all day and all night before kids have even finished their trick-or-treat candy. And those of us who complain about starting things too early or out of season are shouted down and decried as miserable Scrooges and Grinches who lack any Christmas spirit.

But the part I find the most worrisome of all of this music being played way too early is the almost complete lack of any reference to Jesus or even Christmas in these songs. I don't think of myself as being particularly religious (my wife says I'm not religious at all) but let's give the reason for the holiday it's due. Yes, early Christians jiggied the date of Christ's birth from early April over to late December in order to make it coincide with the religious holidays of other faiths to convert more followers. But taking Christ our of Christmas is like having the Fourth of July without an American flag. It's as if the stations are trying to get people into a Christmas mood but are afraid that any hint of Christianity will offend them or scare them off.

The bottom line is that anyone who knows me well enough or even has read enough of my previous posts about the holidays can tell that I do indeed have a lot of love for Christmas. But I reserve that love for the proper time of year and try to remember what the holiday is really supposed to be about. Some of my favorite Christmas songs are the ones that are actually about Jesus' birth, the very songs you won't find on very many radio stations...either this early in the season or, sadly any time at all.

Another Place To Be

2011-11-25T21:13:00.000-05:00

Just FYI for those few in the small handful of people who have been keeping up with me here, you'll also find me over at my Tumblr site. My posts there are typically much shorter, usually just random bits of things I want to make a short comment about. I'll keep this blog active here as much as I'm able for those times when I'm feeling more wordy.

SOPA Continues...

2011-11-17T20:38:00.002-05:00

American Censorship Day came and went yesterday but the fight for the freedom of the Internet has only begun...

From Techdirt: House Judiciary Committee SOPA Hearings Stacked 5 To 1 In Favor Of Censoring The Internet | Techdirt

from the what-are-they-afraid-of dept

Apparently the folks behind SOPA are really scared to hear from the opposition. We all expected that the Judiciary Committee hearings wouldn't be a fair fight. In Congress, they rarely are fair fights. But most people expected the typical "three in favor, one against" weighted hearings. That's already childish, but it seems that the Judiciary Committee has decided to take the ridiculousness to new heights. We'd already mentioned last week that the Committee had rejected the request of NetCoalition to take part in the hearings. At the time, we'd heard that the hearings were going to be stacked four-to-one in favor of SOPA. However, the latest report coming out of the Committee is that they're so afraid to actually hear about the real opposition that they've lined up five pro-SOPA speakers and only one "against."

Click the link above for the rest of the article. And for a very clear explanation of SOPA and why it's wrong, check out the infographic below from AmericanCensorship.org

All About SOPA, the Bill That Wants to Cripple Your Internet

2011-11-17T04:51:00.001-05:00

All About SOPA, the Bill That Wants to Cripple Your Internet

Moving Out, Moving In & Moving On

2011-09-13T22:24:00.000-04:00

Shelly and I (okay, mostly me) have been very busy lately working on selling Casa Swift Rivers in Barre and getting a new place for ourselves in Worcester. Much smaller digs, mind you and not a house either, instead we're renting a condo in a densely populated neighborhood. The building we're moving into has quite a history, built back in 1904 it was once Worcester's first synagogue. Now renovated, it's all modern inside and right in the heart of civilization, or at least as civilized as the city can get.

This move has been a long time coming and we're still unprepared for it. There's so much to be done towards getting our things together and ready for transport to the new location but the move is inevitable, mostly because we've already got a lease signed and money invested in this. Plans are in place to have a truck rented before the end of the month and our sons are expected to come down from Maine to help us get everything loaded and unloaded in various locations. It's not just a straight trip from point A to point B, there's going to be some rented storage space involved and even a trip to my Mom's as she's getting a lot of my tools and my pride & joy workbench that I built several years ago.

There are some mixed feelings about this but most of them are good ones. Some things I'll miss about the Barre homestead are the quiet privacy of space between houses, the variety of birds (and other wildlife) that visited the yard and clear, cool nights with the haze of the Milky Way clearly visible overhead. But things I definitely won't miss are feeling like every trip to the grocery store is a major expedition, driving on some of the worst roads I've ever been on in my life (seriously, I replace tie rods on my Hyundai more often than wiper blades) and spending an hour and a half every day just getting to and from work in the city.

Shelly's therapy will continue but we'll be looking into getting her into Fairlawn, the acute rehab center where she spent the first few weeks recovering immediately after her stroke. If so, maybe we can get a schedule that's more accommodating to my work so I won't have to take quite so much time off and in the process save a little money, vacation time and cause less aggravation for my co-workers who often have to cover the gaps in the schedule that my absences cause. We'll also be closer to the majority of her doctors in the city with monthly trips back to Barre for check-ups with her PCP. As for me, I'll have a much shorter commute and no yard to maintain or leaky roof to try to repair which means more free time to spend on more relaxing pursuits.

Don't Know Much About Geography

2011-09-01T13:15:00.000-04:00

I've been waiting for a package to be delivered, nothing too precious or important but I'd still rather have it sooner than later. When I checked the package tracking today, I was absolutely mystified by the route my shipment is taking:

For those of you unfamiliar with Massachusetts, I'll illustrate what's wrong with this route with a map. My package went to point A (Shrewsbury) and was then sent to point B (West Springfield) so it could THEN be trucked out to point C (Barre).

I can't imagine anything other than some weird union rules for UPS that would prevent them from just going straight from Shrewsbury to my home. I almost expect they'll be driving out here by way of Cape Cod.

Never Tell Me The Odds

2011-08-07T08:50:00.001-04:00

As much as it's true that a real tragedy happened to us and altered the course of our lives, I often remind myself that there's just as likely a chance of something equally good happening that will offset the bad. A lot of my long-time friends are amazed to hear me say something so optimistic but some days that reminder is all it takes to keep me on my feet and moving forward.

Androids Of A Lesser God

2011-07-10T10:12:00.000-04:00

Since getting my very first smart phone I've been exploring its capabilities as well as my own in terms of figuring out how to get the most out of this gadget. It seems like I see this little blurb on the Android Market quite frequently for a variety of apps:

Sadly typical of AT&T to offer a lesser-quality phone to those of us who'd rather go prepaid than sign on the dotted line. Don't get me wrong, I have no serious complaints about my little Android. It does some amazing things I never expected a phone to be capable of. But just as much of a source of wonder as it can be, it's also a source of frustration.

For example, I had the devil's own time trying to locate and figure out the installation of the proper USB driver so I could do more with it than just use it as an external hard drive. It turns out that LG hasn't posted a proper driver for the Thrive yet. I scoured the web and found this post instructing me to use the driver for the Phoenix, a nearly-identical phone that AT&T offers for their contract customers. LG's customer service ranged from ignorant to cryptic at best on this subject, I had to feel my way around through the install process but it seems I've got at least that part of things sorted out now.

So why am I putting myself through this small bit of aggravation when I could just use whatever superficial abilities the phone has and leave it at that? Because I haven't entirely given up on my hope of rekindling my "mad skillz" and going to school to take them several levels higher. My interest and ambition in this area hasn't died, only been delayed while I focus on some of the other things going on in my life. I have a natural curiosity when it comes to programming and I'd like to see just what I can accomplish in the relatively-new field of smartphone app development.

Now if only my cheap-ass Android would be a little more cooperative...

It's Not Easy Being Green

2011-06-22T18:57:00.000-04:00

You can tell by my profile pic that I may be biased on this but I really don't understand why all of the hate being is thrown Green Lantern's way. Shelly and I saw it this past weekend and it was a fun superhero movie with lots of action and great effects. With a notable exception or two (I'm looking at you, Blake Lively) the acting was good and the extra cash the studio poured into last-minute post production of the CGI really paid off.

So what the hell is up with the crappy reviews and everyone acting so damn disappointed by the movie? Not every big summer action movie is going to be The Lord Of the Rings. That's why movies like that sweep the Oscars, they're exceptional. Has the movie-going public gotten so jaded that we expect each and every movie we see to be a triumph of film making? Or is it that the prices at the theater have set the bar for our expectations of the quality of the movies?

For my money, Green Lantern was a very good movie. It had all of the important elements that make up the mythos of the comics: The Guardians, the planet Oa, the Green Lantern Corps (in its entirety!), Tomar Re, Kilowog - heck, even Parallax and Hector Hammond were part of the mix and not once did the story feel overcrowded.

Hal Jordan beats Luke Skywalker for "shortest training ever" but I guess GL boot camp might have put a crimp in the plot. Blake Lively was almost acceptable as Carol Ferris but they could have done better. They could have at least cast someone closer to Reynolds' age so the idea of Hal and Carol being childhood friends isn't mathematically impossible.

Other than those quibbles, I didn't see very much wrong with the movie at all. Don't judge Green Lantern for what it could have been, just enjoy it for the popcorn-burner it is and enjoy the ride.

Before And After the Storm

2011-06-12T09:43:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I took what I refer to as the "back way" home from Enfield, through Somers, Hampden and Monson up to route 32 rather than just taking the Pike. It was my first trip through the area since the tornadoes of June 1st had cut a swath through the region.

My route intersected with the path of destruction along a stretch of Upper Hampden Road in Monson and even now, a week and a half later it's still chilling to see the damage that was done. Compared to this, the ice storm that hit our area a few years ago was just a breezy day with a bad chill. If you look at Google's street view of this location, you can see where it was once thick and green with trees and a house and garage were situated near the road:

Sadly, that's not the case anymore.

My feeble attempt at cell phone photo blogging doesn't do the view here justice. It's scary to look at this and realize this destruction wasn't caused by a machine or a bomb. This dense, old forest and the homes in and around it were buzz-sawed through by 160 MPH winds carrying a massive debris field.

As I continued my trip home, I stopped at Lowe's for a few things and I was asked if I wanted to donate to the local cleanup and restoration efforts. When you've seen first-hand just what happened to this area and the people who live here, how can you not want to help?

When The Life Gets Too Wild

2011-06-11T08:14:00.001-04:00

You'd think a bear stopping by for a snack would be one of the most alarming parts about living out in the country but the bear is a lot less dangerous than some of the smaller wildlife out here. One of our cats was recently attacked and her lower back is now in stitches and she's stuck wearing a satellite dish for a while. And to make it even more difficult for all involved, Ezzie was due for a rabies booster last month and our previous vet never sent us a reminder so now she's under quarantine for the next 6 months. Ezzie is our "adventure girl," she loves being outdoors more than anything so being confined to home isn't going to go over well with her or the woodwork in the house.

The vet's best guess as to what sort of animal did this to her was either a fox or a coyote. Even though I've heard coyotes off in the distance through the woods, my money is on the fox as a neighbor lost some chickens to one last year. Much too close of a call for comfort, it was only slightly miraculous that Ezzie managed to get away from her attacker and make it back home.

I'm really looking forward to moving back to civilization again!

Just That Kind Of A Day

2011-06-10T18:32:00.000-04:00

Earlier today at work I got upset when I found out Maintenance had apparently tossed out my lunch during a fridge cleaning. When it was brought to my attention that an e-mail was sent out about this last week I just got quiet and moody rather than appropriately apologetic. Yeah, I was the one who was wrong but in that moment it just aggravated me more - talk about displaced aggression! I retrieved the lunch bag, Maintenance had spotted it and several others as "live" ones and stayed their execution.

After work I made a stop at a grocery store about two towns over from home, that's about as close as we can find anything that resembles a real supermarket like the ones found in civilized places. I was frustrated by the inability of my new smart phone to retrieve my grocery list from Evernote and I had to do the shopping from memory.* I was certain it was because of a lack of any decent 3G coverage out here in the woods and considered a snarky Twitter post or two but had lost the old contact number I had for texting into that service.

Driving home with the groceries I mulled over the experience and realized I was in an area where I couldn't get any cell service at all with my old phone but the connection held up just fine the other day while talking to a friend. This area was even further in the country than the store was, if I could get 3G here...and that's when it hit me. I had turned 3G off on my phone out of fear of needlessly burning my still kind of pricey data, that's why I couldn't access Evernote. I never thought to check this while I was silently taking the phone's name in vain at the store.

I wonder how many more stupid moves I can make before the day is over...

* - I remembered everything except the whipped cream, probably because I never eat that stuff

I Was Warned

2011-05-30T09:43:00.000-04:00

I recently had a Facebook conversation with someone about my primitive, clam-shell cell phone and my naivete about smartphones and what they were capable of. My friend jokingly said that I sounded like he did a couple of years ago and told me, "We are the Borg, you will be assimilated." And now that AT&T finally offers a prepaid smartphone with the LG Thrive he's right. I've joined the collective hive mind of the smartphone culture.

I'm looking forward to moving out of the central Massachusetts dead zone so I can get some choice of carriers. The LG Optimus V ...

Out In the Country

2011-05-29T14:55:00.005-04:00

Life here in Barre (or as several of my friends call it, "Beary") sometimes means letting other forms of wildlife enjoy the bird feeder.

No, this is NOT the MSPCA!

2011-04-17T12:05:00.001-04:00

Please pardon the image quality,
it was taken through a screen window

This is an open letter to the person or persons who keep dropping off their unwanted cats near my home: you are assholes. There's no nicer way to say it, you are quite plainly and simply assholes of the lowest order. For whatever reason, the animal you once supposedly loved is no longer a welcome part of your life and it's more than likely your fault, not the animal's.

Is it a female who got pregnant and you can't deal with a litter of kittens? You should have had the animal spayed to begin with or at least made sure she stayed indoors. Any decent vet will tell you that you're not depriving the animal of anything by not allowing them outside. Is it a male who's spraying around your house? Then neuter the animal so he can't do that anymore. Yes, I know that spaying and neutering cost money. You should have considered that when you first thought you wanted that cute little kitten to live with you.

Do you have to move and now can't take the cat with you? You should look harder for a more accommodating place to live, there are plenty of places out there where pets are welcome. And as a last resort if you absolutely must part with your pet, there are shelters that you can take the animal to. Granted. no-kill shelters are few and far between but they do exist. Even if the animal has to be euthanized it's far more dignified and humane than letting that very domesticated pet try to fend for itself out in the wild. More than likely the cat you just couldn't bear to have put to rest is going to get sick and die either from illness and infection or outright starvation. Think about that the next time you tell yourself that you're doing that house cat a favor by abandoning it.

Maybe you assholes think that because you saw some cats in our yard that we wouldn't mind taking in your unwanted and no longer loved pet. We already have three cats of our own to take care of and one more mouth to feed and care for does indeed cost more in terms of time, money and energy. Besides which, we are in the process of trying to find another place to live. Having multiple cats limits our choices considerably, so much so that the 3rd cat will either be going with my sister-in-law or to a friend's home instead. The neighbors next door have two cats of their own to care for as well as a dog while the neighbors on the other side are an older couple who already have a large dog. So stop trying to burden everyone in our neighborhood with your unwanted cats!

Over the years, we've had numerous cats suddenly appear here in our yard, some of them even taking up residence under our shed out in back. When fully-grown cats still wearing pet collars show up in a neighborhood this remote it's painfully obvious that some asshole dumped them out here. We now have a beautiful and very frightened tan and white cat haunting our front porch and it's breaking our hearts that we can't do anything to care for the animal. We're not as cruel and callous as the person that left her here and listening to her crying outside isn't something we can easily ignore.

I can only hope that whatever asshole left her here will someday experience a similar fate when they've become too much of a burden to the people who supposedly care about them.

Paper Moon

2011-04-03T09:15:00.000-04:00

I seriously doubt we'll ever have a paperless society, this is just one example why I don't think it's ever going to happen:
This popped up after I tried to retrieve a forgotten username for my car insurer's web site. I entered the last 4 digits of my SSN along with my account number, both of which I triple-checked for accuracy and got this as a response.

As far as I know, no one ever got an error message when they mailed an actual paper check to pay for something.

The Neverending Winter

2011-04-02T08:46:00.000-04:00

It's hard to feel as optimistic as fellow blogger Tony does about the eventual (and hopefully inevitable) return of Spring-like weather when I look outside on April 2nd to scenes like this around my house. We got hit with considerably more snow than other parts of the state yesterday and the white stuff lingers long past it's welcome has been worn out.

Mind you, I'm a lifelong New Englander and this isn't my first rodeo as far as off-season snow storms are go. I remember one Easter Sunday back in the 1960s when we were hit with a full-on blizzard. And then there was the freak snowstorm on a sunny afternoon in in the late '70s that made the national news because of the damage done to the shade tobacco industry around the area.

But following on the heels of a winter as cold and miserable as this past one has been, this last and hopefully final blast feels especially nasty if not downright spiteful on Mother Nature's part. In years past, I'd be out raking or maybe even preparing garden beds by now, not reaching for the snow shovel or buying yet another bag of ice melter for the front walk.

Sorry, Charlie

2011-03-25T19:36:00.000-04:00

The completely bat-shit crazy, late-night TV comedy gold mine that is Charlie Sheen doesn't seem to be fading away as quickly as anyone was expecting it to. In fact, I noticed it being pushed into another week of buzz from a piece by Rob Sheffield in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine, "Charlie Sheen: As American as Apple Pie." Seriously, he's running the clock into overtime on his 15 minutes and it's way past time for me to step forward to take some overdue responsibility for my part in all of this.

A couple of months ago, my lovely wife Shelly and I were having a slightly (barely) heated discussion wherein I expressed some dissatisfaction with the way some things were being handled (or not) in our household. "Sometimes I feel like I just can't win around here, " I said. "I'm getting pretty tired of it and dammit, I'm going to start winning." It wasn't really an argument so Shelly smiled and accepted my declaration and we proceeded to start doing things my way much more often. Unfortunately doing things my way wasn't always necessarily the way that got desired results and when things would go off the rails for whatever reason one of us would wryly observe that at least now I was "winning."

By now I'm sure you see where this is going. Through whatever "butterfly in China causing a tornado in Kansas" interlocking machinery we're all part of, somehow Charlie Sheen got wind of my "winning" and decided to try it for himself. The problem is that when it all goes to hell in a hand-basket for him the irony of his so-called "winning" is completely lost on him and he gets even more arrogant and vocal about it. There's no recognition of the failure, only the utter conviction of the absolute rightness of his completely wrong bullheadedness.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to America, the world and most especially to Mr. Martin Sheen (a very talented actor who I'm sure no one thinks this is any reflection on) for having been such a bad influence on poor, easily-led Charlie. If I had known that my humorous observations of my own misfortune would be so completely lost on such a weak-minded fellow as Charlie I'd have just kept my mouth shut in the first place, hoping Charlie would follow that example instead. From now on I'll try to be more aware of my impact on the behavior of Hollywood's useless celebrities.

One Year Later

2011-03-12T16:28:00.002-05:00

It's been a year now since I posted the news of my wife Shelly suffering a stroke. Her birthday was on March 7th and she now calls the 12th her "rebirthday." There have been some tough moments for all of us here but I'm glad to write that Shelly's recovery is continuing every day. She hasn't regained a full 100% of her mobility yet but there's no reason to believe she won't, it's just going to take some more time and effort.

Shelly hasn't lost one iota of her sense of humor during all of this. She said after the surgery that neurosurgeons are lousy hairstylists, they never cut your hair the way you like so she opted to just have her head shaved and start fresh. This is a picture of her just a few weeks after the stroke while she was still in rehab at Fairlawn.

And here she is in a photo I snapped earlier today, just before we went out for the afternoon (the scarf isn't just a fashion statement). Check out those clear eyes, that happy smile and that beautiful, thick and healthy head of hair! And no more wheelchair, she's getting around fairly well with a cane now and has regained a lot of mobility in her left arm

Oh, and that gall bladder problem she was originally admitted for? They were finally able to remove that just this past January. Things are looking up and we're both looking forward to a long and healthy future together.

Hodgepodge

2011-02-24T19:23:00.001-05:00

Look at that, January came and went without me posting a single thing. No "Happy New Year", no talk of resolutions or hopes for 2011...I guess I'm just a bad blogger. Maybe some of you are expecting me to be repentant and promise to post more regularly, Sorry folks, you get what you pay for here.

At some point, my Twitter updates stopped being posted to my Facebook account. I think Fb switched me to their "new profile" during this time but I've been derelict in my Twitter and Fb postings of late so I don't know what the reason is.

Shelly and I have finally had it with fighting with the USDA over the mortgage for this ancient wreck of a house and we're getting the hell out before they foreclose on us. We had a real estate agent over the other day who was genuinely optimistic. Apparently, if all you want to do is get the Feds off your back and get out of your old house and on with your life you have a much better chance of selling during the current econopocalypse.

My boss at work pulled me aside for a moment today to let me know he's concerned about the stress level in my life. He "gets it" as he's been the caregiver himself at one time so he has some idea of what I might be going through. Some form of counselor was suggested so I can have a chance to verbalize all of the crap I'm feeling but I told him I'm a staid New Englander. Talking about my problems just feels wrong, especially with a stranger...but I'll think about it.

I tried DC Universe Online and found it just wasn't for me. It's clearly ported to the PC from the PS3 and I'm not into console games at all. I still enjoy City of Heroes despite my regular group of teammates having fallen by the wayside the past few years. In fact, I just received an automated wish for a happy birthday from CoH's web forums (I turn 51 tomorrow). If you're ever on the Freedom server look up Mr. Mercury sometime and maybe we'll run some missions together.

Unfriend This!

2010-12-21T17:53:00.001-05:00

Someone with even less of a life than I have (and that's going quite a ways in the wrong direction) apparently has nothing better to do with their time on Facebook than set up fake accounts posing as me, tricking my friends there into giving them access and then proceeding to make trash talk to and about people I know and work with. I knew it was just a matter of time before Facebook led to something unpleasant for me. It already has for so many other folks, why should I be any different?

So far this person has confined their antics to my co-workers which leads me to believe it's in fact someone that I work directly with on a daily basis. I don't make the name of the company that I work for known anywhere online and I rarely discuss my job at all when I'm not actually at work. The messages aren't reaching random people who happen to work at the same company as me, they're being sent to the people I work directly with daily. They also mention details that only someone I spend time with at work would have any knowledge of so that narrows down the possibilities considerably. This isn't some random hacker, it's someone I know and deal with in my working life. I don't expect to find out who it is any time soon and even if I do I'm sure that proving it will be nearly impossible.

The bottom line is this: If you're one of my friends (most likely a co-worker) on Facebook and you get a message from someone claiming to be me and that somehow my contact information got messed up, they're lying - it ain't me, just deny the request and ignore it. If you get a personal message from someone claiming to be me who then insults either you or someone else or makes any kind of rude or off-color remark it's not me. I don't use Facebook for that sort of thing and anyone who knows me can attest to that.

Facebook - making identity theft easier for creeps everywhere since 2003!

What It's Really All About

2010-12-20T04:56:00.000-05:00

Anything further I coould say would be redundant, this kid summed it up pretty well already. I still make a habit of watching this every year, just in case I might forget.

Minding My Business

2010-12-15T18:12:00.000-05:00

I caught flack from my sister some years ago for an e-mail I sent to her and a few other friends in which I pointed out that the character of Ebeneezer Scrooge was maligned. He never set out to make other people's holidays miserable. instead it seemed like the stress of the season was taking a toll on him when he'd rather just be left alone and left out of it. Poor Scrooge had the misfortune of being a businessman, although a tough boss to work for who dared to be concerned with making a profit in a story by Charles Dickens, a bleeding heart liberal. (Being a liberal myself, I can use that phrase - it's a left-wing thing.)

I bring this up because I'm having a hard time getting into the spirit of the season this time around. Maybe it's because of the changes we've been forced through over the past year, or maybe because of my own poor planning and not having accomplished much of what I'd hoped to have had done by now. Whatever the reason, I find myself wanting to just let others make merry around me while I mind my own business.

It seldom works out that way, though. People see me not joining their celebrations wholeheartedly and accuse me of being a Grinch or a Scrooge. I'm doing nothing to spoil the fun of others but that's not enough for these folks, they insist that if I'm not swept up in the holiday excitement then I'm somehow raining on their festivities while I feel like I'm doing them a favor by steering clear of them.

With just over a week left before Christmas is here I'm still hoping to find enough spirit to actually enjoy the holiday rather than just endure it. Part of me does still like Christmas and I'd be disappointed to have to wait another year before I had the chance to get some measure of happiness from it.

I'm just sayin'...

2010-12-03T22:14:00.000-05:00

Less Work = More Peace & Joy

2010-11-27T06:49:00.000-05:00

...at least that's the hope this year. In previous holiday seasons, I've gone completely overboard with decorating the house and baking up a storm full of holiday treats. But this year, for a variety of reasons my holiday spirit is slow to start.

In the past I would have had all of those lights up and the master switch that turns them all thrown on by Thanksgiving night. This time I'm trying different approach by slowing down, taking it easy and not making myself exhausted with all of that work. I might have a few decorations out this weekend, maybe even start some of the scaled-back amount of baking I'm planning.

Hopefully by reducing the amount of work involved I might get a little more actual enjoyment out of Christmas...we'll see.

No Fear, No Pressure

2010-11-21T17:14:00.001-05:00

I know, I'm arriving late at the party for posting the trailer for the upcoming Green Lantern movie. Reviews have been mixed but I think it's going to be fun while retaining a lot of the dramatic elements of Geoff John's "Secret Origin" update for the character.

There's actually quite a bit riding on the success of this movie as it's the first time DC Comics has had a major character other than Batman or Superman featured in a motion picture (sorry Shaq fans but no one ever remembers "Steel"). Here's hoping it's worth the wait and they knock it out of the park. As much as I'm looking forward to seeing Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan on the big screen, if this succeeds then maybe The Flash will finally make it out of development hell.

Mr. Cranky-Pants

2010-11-18T23:08:00.002-05:00

I recently took a look at my posts here and I realized that more of them are tagged as "Rant" than anything else. I should really work on that, I'm not always that curmudgeonly and bitching about things does noting to make those around you feel better. Unless of course you happen to be Lewis Black.

The Anti-Social Network

2010-11-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

Facebook, the current 800-pound gorilla of online social networking has recently added a new "feature" that allows you to see anything your friends post to your other friends' walls. There's no apparent way to turn this feature off and enough of an outcry from users against it that nearly 4,000 of us to date have joined an "Opt Out of the FB Friendship Feature" group.

Just as Facebook killed MySpace, so too will another web site eventually kill Facebook. The ongoing addition of so-called "magical experiences" like this one is only going to speed up that process.

They're Listening!

2010-11-11T18:54:00.000-05:00

Those of you who pay attention to my Twitter activity in the sidebar of this blog may have noticed a couple of missives I sent to DC Comics regarding their digital comic offerings in their online store at Comixology. They were taking questions and asking for suggestions so I mentioned my interest in the ongoing monthlies of both The Flash and Booster Gold. I was genuinely surprised to come home today to see the following on Twitter:
Imagine that, a company that's actually paying attention. I'm sure it's going to take more than my lone request to make this happen but I'm encouraged by the fact they took the time to respond.

Booyah!

2010-11-01T17:58:00.000-04:00

I am honored and humbled by this, my first celebrity follower on Twitter. Thanks guys, your show on Rock 102 really makes my morning every day!

Happy (but quiet) Halloween

2010-10-31T08:10:00.001-04:00

Halloween has never been much of a big holiday here at our house but this year it's especially quiet. Shelly's sister took her up north to visit the boys for a few days so it's just me and the cats minding the homestead while they're away.

I was a kid at the tail-end of the "Baby Boom" and we lived in a very populated neighborhood so my Halloween memories are of conga lines of kids streaming through the streets for hours. Now I live in a home that happens to be situated on the less-developed end of our street and our house sits a good distance back from the road so we've never had any kids come to our door trick-or-treating.

But I know I have to get some kind of candy to have ready to hand out, just in case. You just know that the one Halloween I don't will be the year that some kids will actually show up and I'd end up being the jerk who hands out granola bars and spare change as treats. Maybe if I get bored enough today I might even get a pumpkin just to see if I can actually carve it with my reciprocating saw...

"A picture is worth..."

2010-10-21T09:52:00.000-04:00

I know, according to the the calendar it's still too early for holiday reveries (although by "Wal Mart time" we should be several weeks into it by now) but I was recently transported back in time several decades by the Ghost of Christmas Past when I scanned some old photos for my mother in the hopes of digitally preserving the shots and making copies for relatives. I've also taken the liberty of uploading them to my Flickr account and they're viewable here.

The photos were from Christmas of 1967, as noted in the margin of the prints. I was still a few months away from my 8th birthday and the scenes brought back a lot of memories for me, some that I had carried with me all this time and others that had been set aside until now. I recall having a lot of toys to play with when I was a kid. Our family was never "well off" by anyone's standards but we kids wanted for very little, especially at Christmas. As many of the toys I've owned that I could remember, there are probably just as many if not more that I've forgotten about, much like an aging Jackie Paper leaving his friend Puff back in Honah Lee.

The toy in the foreground of this picture left me puzzled because I couldn't for the life of me remember owning it or even asking Santa for it. Curious, I turned to the Web and in very short order I learned that the "4 Way Sub Gun" was part of the merchandise cranked out in the '60s that was licensed by the TV show "Voyage To the Bottom Of the Sea." I was never a real follower of the series at the time, I only had a passing familiarity with it but my mother being aware of my love for all things sci-fi no doubt had bought it to add to the rest of my holiday toy haul anyway. Searching a little further, I learned that the toy is now a very pricey collector's item!

Even though the toy most likely wasn't on my wish list I'm sure I had lots of fun with it before it inevitably broke or pieces of it got lost. If only I had kept every toy I ever received unopened and tucked away in a vault filled with pure nitrogen somewhere I'd be a millionaire many times over by now. All of the various comics and games, Batmania paraphernalia, Major Matt Mason bendable figures with every battery-powered gizmo and play-set they could be sold separately from combined would be more than enough to send every one of my grand-kids (present and hoped-for) to Harvard and still have plenty of change left over.

But even if I'd known that at the time, I probably would have still chosen the path I took which was to actually play with my toys. I wasn't rewarded monetarily for all of the hours I spent wrapping my imagination around all of the gifts I enjoyed unwrapping. Instead, I've been blessed with a childhood full of mostly-happy memories and an imagination that has carried me into adulthood and far beyond. Those collectors who stash toys away in specualtion of earning a big price tag for them on eBay might get a fat bank account for their efforts. But my guess is that their cash-rich lives are that much more fun-poor for their efforts.

The Only Thing Certain Is Change

2010-10-19T20:10:00.000-04:00

I've been experimenting with Blogger's new template designer to update this site. It's a bit of a misnomer calling it a "template designer" as it doesn't really allow one to design a whole new template, It does however allow for easier customization of an existing template without having to get HTML and CSS under your fingernails doing so. I hope you like the new look, let me know what you think in the comments.

iStillDon't

2010-10-15T10:33:00.000-04:00

Continuing my previous post, here's a case in point...

I recently asked a friend who frequents his local comic shop (of which there is none in this neck of the woods) if he'd mind picking up a few titles for me on regular basis. Rather than just say either, "Sure, no problem," or "Piss off, I've got better things to do," said friend, a devotee of all things Apple instead strongly suggested just going to DC's web site and getting an "app" to download their comics in digital format.

Keep in mind, this is the guy who put together my reasonably kick-ass PC for me so he's well aware of my PC-centricity when it comes to computing. But he seemed very insistent and fairly certain that I'd be able to take advantage of DC's choice of digital format for the comics I wanted.

DC Comics is anything but helpful in this regard, with only a blurb posted on their site about their whiz-bang iWhatever app that will let you buy and view their comics. Nothing anywhere provides anything resembling real support and no one there wants to answer a few simple questions via e-mail. So I went through the process of installing iTunes on my computer with only a faint hope that maybe this would all work out somehow.

Big disappointment and at the same time not at all unexpected - it turns out that the only thing you can get from DC through the iTunes store itself is the free app which will only run on iGadgets. iTunes is NOT my favorite app for managing my media files, never has been and never will be. So now I'm about to restart the system to complete the removal process of that application from my computer, all just because I wanted to buy a few funnybooks every month.

Apple claims to be all about choice and that may well be the case...as long as you choose to do everything their way on the devices they sell. So I guess the choice is really just, "do it Apple's way or don't do it at all."

iDon't

2010-10-14T21:00:00.000-04:00

I'm sure I'm going to come across as an old fogey who fears change but there's just no other way of saying it. News of Apple's stock recently reaching $300 per share did nothing to allay my concerns that those of us in the PC crowd are rapidly becoming dinosaurs who are about to be obliterated by a giant meteorite in the shape of Steve Jobs.

Never mind the fact that I'm just not 100% convinced that the Apple way of doing anything digital is always the best way, all of those iGadgets and iGizmos cost money that I have better uses for. When the digital revolution is over and Jobs' face is the one on the Big Brother video screen, I'll probably be the lone Winston Smith online, hacking away at source code on a PC in a dark and forgotten corner of the web.

I'm Not Dead Yet

2010-09-23T17:33:00.000-04:00

Much like Mark Twain, rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I know it looks like I've either died or this blog has been abandoned but neither is true. I just plain a) haven't had a clue what to write about or b) when I did have said clue I haven't had a spare moment to do so until c) the idea either evaporates or is no longer relevant or interesting to me.

But I'm still around, Shelly is continuing to recover (sometimes by small leaps but mostly at an agonizingly glacial pace that's testing her patience to the limit) and this is still an active blog. Thanks for reading and please stay tuned...

On the Road Again

2010-06-14T08:13:00.002-04:00

Shelly and I recently made a short trip up north to reconnect with some old friends and also to see how well things would go for us taking an overnight trip away from home. I'm happy to report that neither of us are any worse for the wear of the road and we'll be making similar road trips more often throughout the summer.

Even though we usually bring our camera we seldom think to stop and take some pictures along the way. In typical fashion, we neglected to get any shots on our way up to Whitehall, NY, we did snap a few shots on the way home yesterday.

Passing through Cuttingsville. Vermont on route 103 we came across a beautiful old home that caught our eye. This Victorian summer home is known as Laurel Hall and belonged to a fellow named John P Bowman. More information about Mr. Bowman and the home can be found here.

As much of an attention-grabber as it might be it's nothing compared to the monument directly across the street from it in the Laurel Glen Cemetery.

Neither of us had ever seen such a unique memorial and we were already a little ways past it so we had to turn back to stop and take these shots. The statue is apparently a likeness of the owner of Laurel Hall, who had the mausoleum built as a memorial for his wife had daughters and more details about it can be found over here.

Somewhat less historic but no less eye-catching, much further down the road we spotted what was either a very old garage or a barn that wanted to be one...

The excursion was fun for the both of us and we're looking forward to another road trip together soon.

Stop the Flow At the Source

2010-06-08T19:13:00.000-04:00

The following is a paraphrased summary of a recent phone conversation I had with the company that manages my 401k plan.

"Hello, 401k investment company, how can I help you?"

"I'd like to get a summary of the various stocks that my 401k has been invested in. Specifically, I'd like to find out if any of my money is being invested in British Petroleum and if so I'd like to divest those, please."

"Certainly sir. The particular plan you're currently in has your investments in several different mutual funds. If any are in BP then they would be under the foreign investments which you do have a percentage in. These mutual funds actually contain hundreds of individual listings."

"Okay, I can wait while you check."

The person on the other end started naming a few things as they looked through the holdings and then said, "Ah, BP PLC is listed here, sir."

"Okay, how do I get rid of them?"

"It's actually part of several mutual funds so in essence trying to get rid of them would be like getting rid of the baby with the bath water..."

"Bye-bye baby, how do I do it?"

At this point, the person on the other end of the call seemed a little surprised that I wasn't willing to just accept his explanation and offered to transfer me to someone else. Another person answered me on short order and I again explained the reason for my call and was given a bit more useful information to work with.

Essentially, most of their investment plans have some portion designated for foreign holdings and there are no readily available tools to determine exactly which companies are part of which mutual funds. The long and the short of it is that if I want to stop the flow of any of my money to British Petroleum then I have to stop all of my investments in any foreign mutual funds.

Thankfully, the company that manages my 401k has a very helpful web site full of lots of useful resources for me to peruse. I'm not a big investor and certainly not the most financially savvy person in the world by any means. Nevertheless, I'm going to spend some time researching my options and find the right plan for me that will allow my money to grow while keeping it away from a company that I have a zero comfort level doing any business with whatsoever.

And Thor, Too

2010-06-03T18:53:00.002-04:00

Following the previous leakage of the concept art showing off Captain America's movie duds, here's what Chris Hemsworth is going to look like as the Norse god of thunder, Thor:

A little drab in the pants and boots but otherwise nicely done. Clicking the image gives you a bigger version of the pic and a visit to Collider.com will let you see another view of the costume as well.

Lazy Developers Are IE's Best Friends

2010-06-02T21:06:00.002-04:00

Dear large and small business owners everywhere,

Using Internet Explorer in your business does not mean that the rest of the world does. Maybe the developer you hired can make a web site that looks and works great on your desktop in your office but don't assume that the rest of us who use different web browsers will have a smooth and pleasant experience trying to do business through your company's web site.

It seems as if the only thing keeping Internet Explorer around is the fact that businesses all use it and as a result web developers aren't as hard-pressed to make their sites usable by other web browsers. If I want to pay my MetLife car insurance premiums online I have to use IE instead of my usual Firefox browser. The same now goes for my pay-and-pay-as-you-go AT&T phones that my wife and I have. I've been hearing similar complaints from my friends about other web sites that either look awful in anything other than IE or just plain don't work.

If you own a business and you're paying someone either within your company or outside of it to develop and maintain your web site then you have a right (if not a responsibility) to ask them to show you how well it performs when run in any other web browser than Internet Explorer. I'm sure Microsoft would like you to believe that those of us who don't use IE are a small minority but do you really want to risk alienating any of your customer base because of their sales pitch for a one-size-fits-all Microsoft solution?

Sincerely,
A frustrated Firefox user

Captain America Gets a Costume

2010-06-02T16:49:00.001-04:00

...and quite frankly it looks pretty snazzy. This is what we can expect to see Chris Evans wearing next year in "Captain America: The First Avenger."

This looks good, it's got the right feel to it without making it look silly or cheesy. I could see this guy hanging with Iron Man and Thor. Click the image for a larger version and head over to Ain't It Cool News for the full story

LOST: The End

2010-05-26T18:34:00.000-04:00

I was going to write my own post about the finale of LOST but I ended up writing most of what I had to say about it over here instead. (Sorry about that, Rich - I didn't mean to get quite so wordy with my comments.)

Show-runners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof always said they snuck the sci-fi elements of the show into a drama but I'd like to think it was the other way around. A lot of sci-fi fans who otherwise might not have been drawn to a prime time dramatic series were lured in by the offbeat mysteries served up every week. Maybe that's why some people were so disappointed with the ending, because they never quite "got" what the whole thing was really all about to start with.

It was a terrific show and I doubt we'll see the likes of it again anytime soon.

I Like Beer

2010-05-18T20:55:00.000-04:00

I've never been a heavy drinker. Oh sure, when I was young I partied with the best of them and made myself quite sick to my stomach on a variety of potions and libations, including the ever-present beer. But I outgrew that phase early enough, something my stomach and head are very grateful for. The majority of my time as a (questionably) responsible adult has been pretty much alcohol-free. I'm no teetotaler, though. I enjoy the occasional icy-cold beer on a hot summer day or every once in a while a 2 or 3 apple martini follow-up to supper after an especially stressful day.

Lately I've had a craving for the taste of a straight-forward, full bodied lager ale like the kind my dad would've enjoyed back in his day. Schlitz, Piels, Schaefer, Pabst and even Carling Black Label - these are the brands that appeal to me and the lack of them being readily available at any of the local alcohol vendors makes me want them even more.

I wonder how much of this is really a desire for the taste of said brews and how much is more of a longing for a simpler, bygone era that the new millennium has left behind. I've never seen Mad Men on AMC but given my nostalgia for that particular period in time I guess I should check it out.

It Only Ends Once

2010-05-04T20:10:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, a fellow blogger posted what he speculated the final scene of LOST might look like. At the time, I posted my agreement with him, I could easily see how the cycle would begin anew with one of the candidates replacing Jacob and the Man In Black remaining trapped on the island.

But since then, I've had a chance to mull things over and I recall the conversation Jacob and his Nemesis shared in last season's closing episode, "The Incident"

Man In Black: "Still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?"

Jacob: "You are wrong."

Man In Black: "Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same."

Jacob: "It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress."

You can't tease the idea of something like this actually ending without letting that happen and delivering the goods! Jacob has been bringing people to the island in an attempt to prove his Nemesis wrong, hoping that someone would make "the right choices." What if making the right choice means finally breaking the cycle once and for all?

In any event, the island isn't done with me yet, I'll be tuned in and parked in front of the TV tonight to see what "progress" is made this week.

Home Again, Home Again...

2010-05-04T20:09:00.003-04:00

This Friday will be two weeks since Shelly was discharged from the excellent acute therapy rehabilitation hospital that helped her reach the next stages of her recovery and we're all happy to have her back home with us. There's still a long road ahead for her but it will be easier for her and the rest of us to continue her progress now without her having to endure the unfamiliar surroundings and us having to arrange our schedules around the drive to and from the facility. Services are in place, with physical, occupational and speech therapy specialists making regular visits as well as home heath care pitching in with the extra work here.

My lovely wife has endured so much throughout all of this and thank God she's made the progress that she has. I'd like to extend a big "thanks" to everyone who has written to me or commented here with their support for Shelly and all of us during this time, your well-wishes are very much appreciated.

Swift Rivers will start getting settled back into its former routine of being mostly a "blog about nothing." I'll still be making notes of milestones in her recovery as they come along. Just as our household can make its way back towards what used to pass for "normal" around here, so too will my writing about comic books, television shows, homeowner chores and other various and sundry. In fact, I've got a post in mind about a TV show that revolves around a group of people stranded on a mysterious island...

Anticipation

2010-04-20T19:26:00.002-04:00

It’s been nearly a month and a half since I was able to relax at home with my wife. The last time I got to see Shelly healthy, happy and whole was back on March 9^th. Since then, she’s been through the wringer physically with her gall bladder and her subsequent aneurysm and stroke as well as emotionally with everything that her hospital stay and recovery has demanded of her. We’re getting to the point now where everyone involved is very eager for us all to move on to the next phase of her care and get her back into her home.

Shelly was originally given a tentative discharge date of the 27th but she's made such great progress that I think she's getting time off for good behavior. We’re looking forward to welcoming her home again and we know that it also marks a new phase in life for us. As I wrote when this first happened, this event has changed our lives in ways we’re going to be discovering for some time to come. In one sense, we’re going back to the same old happy life as before but in many others ways it will be a brand new life, too.

Our schedules are going to change and not just to accommodate various appointments. We’ll have new faces dropping by to help with ongoing care and such, actual sit-down meals at set times and new rhythms and routines for us to get accustomed to. I’m looking forward to learning about all of the changes that lie ahead but mostly I’m just looking forward to kissing my wife “goodnight” in our own bed again.

Good Days & Bad Days

2010-04-10T08:07:00.000-04:00

I've considered starting a separate blog to just track Shelly's recovery and keep people informed as to her progress. Even though this blog has never been especially focused on any particular subject I wanted to avoid too much emphasis being put on my wife's well-being. But Swift Rivers is about anything that enters our little world here and Shelly's recovery is the heart and center of everything else that's going on in our lives right now. She is truly the love of my life and there's hardly a minute that goes by that I'm not missing her while she's away from us.

The good news is that my wife's progress in physical therapy has been excellent. She's now able to transfer herself from bed to wheelchair or wheelchair to sofa with a minimal assist. She's also able to walk short distances with a quad cane and may very well not even need a wheelchair at all before the month is over. Slowly but steadily, she's regaining more voluntary movement with her left arm every day, her speech is clear and her facial muscles are starting to show her old smile again.

Our concerns now are the cognitive and emotional challenges she's facing. Shelly is more aware of her left side and is doing well on word recognition and other mental exercises but she also has a lot of anxiety and fear about nearly everything these days. Her emotions are often getting the better of her reasoning and keeping her from being able to focus on anything for very long. She's very angry that this happened and honestly, who wouldn't be? She often blames herself for the mistakes in her younger days, believing they led directly to her having a stroke so she alternates between "beating herself up" and crying. While her rational mind fully understands why she's not ready to come home yet her emotional side is fragile and really doesn't give a damn so she frequently gets very depressed about the whole situation.

It sometimes seems as if her emotional state was better when her physical one was more challenged. She was being treated for depression before the stroke happened so I'm sure it's tricky for her caregivers to get the right med balance that will help her get past those feelings while still not interfering with her brain's recovery from this injury. The phrase, "good days and bad days" comes to mind but it seems like sometimes it's "good minutes and bad hours." We knew there wasn't going to be a straight line to her recovery and that she'd have setbacks along the way but it doesn't make it any easier for those of us who love her to see her enduring this.

How the AARP Keeps the USPS In Business

2010-04-06T13:45:00.002-04:00

I think it's great that the AARP has sent me my membership card, newsletter and even their secret decoder ring that helps you identify any member of Congress who has ever even looked sideways at the issue of reforming Social Security (or at least making them accountable to someone). Now if they'd just stop sending me blank membership cards with sales pitches and offers to join, I'd be delighted! Why am I here in the choir being preached to?

I honestly thought that joining would stop, slow down or at least give some control over the volume of junk mail the AARP sends to me but apparently all I've done is identify myself as a key demographic to someone in marketing. After joining just prior to my 50th birthday I received another offer to sign up. I still haven't even read the fine print in my membership kit I received last week and I've already received another offer to join.

The US Postal Service will never want for business as long as good folks like those at the AARP will be around to waste resources and contribute to the growing pile of junk that us older Americans are leaving for our grand-kids to clean up.

Happy Easter

2010-04-04T09:44:00.000-04:00

In keeping with the spirit of renewal and new growth, this Easter Sunday brings more good news and lots of hope for Shelly's eventual recovery from her stroke. Indications are very good that if her progress continues in physical therapy she should be able to walk with a cane by the time she's released later this month. She's also recently regained some voluntary mobility with her left arm, another good sign along with her cognitive progress.

Shes still having trouble tracking to her left and an optometry specialist of some sort is going to check for any visual impairment. The emotional ramifications of all of this are amplified by the nature of a right-brain injury so there's still a lot of anxiety and mood swings that she's dealing with. It's hard to not be upset about suddenly having the rest of your life altered in such a profound way without your consent.

We try to understand Shelly's frustration and remind her that there's still a lot of quality living ahead for her and that getting well takes time. Was it really less than a month ago when writing about something like this was unimaginable? It feels like a couple of lifetimes ago already.

Little Victories

2010-03-21T09:47:00.000-04:00

I'm happy to be writing that Shelly's condition is improving. She was discharged from the hospital to an excellent rehab facility that her doctor and others have highly recommended because of their acute therapy programs. She's only been there since Friday afternoon so it's too soon to celebrate any big victories yet but we're seeing little ones every day.

Life-Altering Events

2010-03-13T17:30:00.003-05:00

This is a very recent photo of my lovely wife Shelly with our grandson Cody. As I mentioned in a previous post, last Sunday was her birthday, her 52nd to be precise. Yesterday, she became a stroke victim when an aneurysm caused a bleed in her brain. This single event has changed the course of our lives in ways we're only just now starting to realize.

If there's such a thing as good fortune in a situation like this, we had a good measure of it because this happened to her after Shelly had already been admitted to a hospital for an unrelated condition (her gall bladder was mass-producing stones and her pancreas was inflamed because of it). They had just finished a routine endoscopic procedure when she had a seizure and was immediately taken for a CT scan. The doctors discovered a bleed in her brain that had to be stopped and quickly if they were going to be able to save her life!

Shelly was rushed to the Surgical ICU where the head of neurosurgery himself was there to take care of her. Hopefully, the worst is over now and she's on what is going to be a very long and slow road to recovery. She's lucid but very uncomfortable as they're limiting the amount of pain killers and such that she receives while her brain tries to recover from this trauma.

It's amazing how quickly events can change and sweep us along with them. Shelly has to now change from being a care-giver for her mother to being one who is cared for while I step into the new and unfamiliar role of care-giver myself for her. In spite of the very different lives we now have ahead of us, I'm grateful and awestruck that this happened as it did and that we do still have our lives together.

Don't Call It A Comeback

2010-03-10T18:04:00.004-05:00

I'm a guy who made it through high school with okay (barely passing) grades and went straight into the working world after graduation. I've held a LOT of different jobs over the years, some were memorable and others I wish I could forget. Following is a short list of the ups and downs of my working life:

Warehouse worker - forklift jockey
Temp office help - I was a Kelly Guy
Cook - hotels and various restaurants
Machine shop laborer - welding, fabrication, that sort of stuff
Radio Announcer- yes, I was a disc jockey^*
Web Developer -Building dynamic web sites from raw code, weaving database technologies with multimedia front-ends created in Flash and Shockwave, building multi-user desktop applications from the ground up in IDE's like RealBASIC and Revolution, doing voice acting for instructional narratives that I helped create and more all for one employer for almost 5 years.
Customer Service - "Thank you for calling Thus & Such..."

I really enjoyed that next-to-last one up there, the Web Developer job. I'd like to do some more of that sort of work, please. With that in mind I've decided to get some school cred and applied at a local community college (insert your own Rodney Dangerfield movie bits in here) When people hear about this, they typically wish me luck at "going back to school" but it sounds strange to me since I never really went to school begin with, at least not one I had any choice in.

If I'd had the interest and inclination when I was younger I could have left the administrative parts of this up to my parents and guidance counselors. Sadly, in 1978 no one was offering anything resembling a "Computer Science - Web Applications" program so I lacked the motivation to pursue school back then. Instead, I left the chore for my 50-year old self to handle.

It's not an easy or friendly system for someone unfamiliar with any of it (like me) to navigate but I think I'm catching on. My next step is the placement exam I scheduled for next week.

Another journey of a thousand miles has begun...

* - Before a cadre of media conglomerates seized control of the airwaves from the people who still give a genuine shit about radio.

Another Pleasant Barre Sunday

2010-03-07T09:49:00.001-05:00

Today is my lovely wife Shelly's birthday. She's taken the car to church for the morning (she'd been away for a few weeks and was eager to get back) and I'll be making brunch for us when she gets home. After that, we're pondering a random day-trip for the afternoon, not sure which direction. If we happen to go anywhere interesting, I'll post some pics later.

Now That's A Speed Boost!

2010-03-03T17:26:00.001-05:00

I've been having some connectivity issues lately that I thought were being caused by my cable modem, a Motorola Surfboard. My cable provider recently put some free speed enhancements into effect and some customers have to upgrade their modems but as far as I can tell mine is already a DOCSIS 2.0 rated model.

I also checked the other computer in the house and it's doing just fine. Combined with my ridiculously impressive speed test results above, this is pointing to some other issue with the computer itself and it's just intermittent enough to make me nutty.

90% of Blogging...

2010-02-28T08:09:00.005-05:00

"Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud." - Theodore Sturgeon

Legendary science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon is reputed to have made this remark sometime in 1951, at a talk at NYU and it was later popularized at a session of the World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia in 1953. It found its way into print in 1958 in the March issue of Venture magazine when Sturgeon wrote, “I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud”^*

At first, it sounds overly-cynical but the more one ponders this revelation the more one has to admit to the truth it contains. If a good deal more of everything was of a higher quality, we wouldn't need awards or commendations to cite those things that rise above the mediocrity of everything else. Sturgeon's Revelation takes nothing away from the 10% of everything that is noteworthy and laudable, it just points out how much useless garbage has to be filtered out to find the really good stuff.

Sturgeon's Revelation came to mind recently when I came across an interesting factoid at MakeUseOf.com which, among other things, noted that there are currently 133,000,000 active blogs on the Internet. That's a whole lotta bloggin' goin' on! Some might argue that only 1,330,000 of those blogs rise above crud-level but it's a little more complicated than that. Since the vast majority of active blogs consist of more than one post or article then one has to consider that 90% of all blog posts are crud.

Swift Rivers currently holds 67 blog posts (including this one) and when Sturgeon's Revelation is applied to it we come away with a whopping total of 6.7 posts that are better than crud. After looking back over some of the things I've tacked up here over the past year and a half, I think that number is actually pretty generous.

^* - Curiously, many sources misquote this and replace the word "crud" with "crap" or similar expletives.

LOST, My Train Of Thought

2010-02-23T17:44:00.001-05:00

It's rare when I have this much to say about any one subject, especially when the subject is a TV show but the compressed experience of 5 season's of LOST in only 5 weeks has left an impression on me. The following was actually from an exchange between me and my son Brendon on Facebook recently and I wanted to share it here with everyone else.

I'm not convinced that the big picture behind LOST is really about "good vs. evil," not yet anyway. That seems a little too simplistic and it's no choice at all, really. Who would willingly choose evil? Most people like to believe their choices are for good. No, I think the conflict is a much broader one than that.

I see Jacob as (or representing) Fate, Destiny, Order, Pre-Determinism or whatever other name you want to assign to it. When first seen in the temple, he was spinning threads and weaving them into a tapestry. It's also interesting that he was using the back edge of a knife while working the loom, implying that there's an element of danger involved in the whole process. This aligns with the classic mythological imagery of Fate as someone or thing that weaves threads together to form a more intricate cloth.

Further evidence of this is seen in the connection that many of the 815 crash survivors share in that they were at one time or another touched by Jacob. Jacob brushed his hand against a young Kate's as well as young James and Jack when he was an adult. He placed his hand on Sayid's shoulder and touched Hugo's chest. He touched both Jin and Sun at their wedding reception. This could be blatant symbolism for being, "touched by Fate" or being guided by the hand of Fate. And every time Jacob told someone that they have a choice he was offering VERY limited choices - A or B, this or that, possibly because he knew that either of the choices made would ultimately lead to the same conclusion.

Meanwhile, Jacob's nameless, black-shirted adversary accused him of bringing the frigate to the island. The implication was that he had acted similarly many times before and that he would keep on doing so until the process reached its eventual conclusion. Jacob's nemesis went on about how he would someday find a loophole and kill Jacob, an admission that Jacob took in stride. Free Will seeks to conquer the concept of Destiny whereas Destiny quietly nullifies the concept of Choice by making it seem that every choice made was the one that was meant to be anyway.

I think the dark-haired one is or represents Free Will (or even possibly Chaos to Jacob's Order), the ability of all free-thinking people to make their own choices and control the outcome of their lives. Jacob enjoys a calm confidence that he can overcome the challenge of his rival while the dark-haired one actively looks for ways to "beat the system."

We've seen plenty of ultimate showdowns between good and evil ("The Stand," anyone?) so I think I'll actually be a little disappointed if we find out that's what all of this has been leading up to. I'd like to think that there's something a little bit deeper and more philosophical going on here. The again, it IS network television so I'm not really sure just how high-minded things are going to get. Either way, it's still a GREAT story - I just hope the ending is as good as the rest of it has been. :)

Since writing this, I've also read and heard speculation that Jacob is God (Jehovah, etc.) and the dark nemesis is the Anti-Christ. As trippy as it would be to see something like that played out on network television, I can't quite see that. Then again, LOST is so far afield sometimes that it could turn out to be some ancient Sumerian thing reaching it's end in the present day. At this point, I keep thinking the show is incapable of surprising me anymore and it always does.

Goin' Mobile?

2010-02-20T07:13:00.000-05:00

Last September, we took Shelly's Saturn to the shop, hoping to at least get a few of the things wrong with it repaired. It's now roughly 6 months later and the car has been parked in our driveway ever since. The mechanic told us there were simply too many things wrong with the car, including a damaged frame and it just wasn't worth the expense of fixing well enough so it could pass a safety check.

At first we were able to adjust our schedules and plans easily enough so that we could share our one remaining vehicle, my Hyundai Accent. But as time has gone on, it's finally reached the point where getting another car is an inevitable necessity. If and when our tax refund ever arrives, we're going to have to start shopping around at the smaller car dealers around here and get a second set of wheels for her to drive.

Sorry, roof and every other problem with the house that we've put off fixing too long already. Maybe we should solve two problems with one fix and just get a mobile home...

I Pissed Off the Mouse

2010-02-03T18:23:00.000-05:00

A high-profile entertainment conglomerate recently filed a complaint with my service provider regarding the manner in which I allegedly obtained inferior-quality, homemade copies of episodes of an intricately-plotted TV show that was broadcast for free to the public on a network they happen to own over the course of the past six years or so.

Again, I won't discuss the method involved but as I wrote in my previous post, I admit to acquiring copies of these shows for the sole purpose of watching them in my own household with my wife and no one else. There was no intent to distribute or profit in any way, only to watch and enjoy a television show that said conglomerate happens to own. I didn't even burn them to disc, which limits our viewing area to the office rather than the living room TV.

I have no problem disposing of these digital copies and rendering them unwatchable and purchasing commercial DVD replacements, this was my goal and intention all along. Shelly and I enjoy buying and collecting full seasons and boxed sets of DVDs of shows we're already familiar with. But after receiving this notice I think I'll be buying those DVDs second-hand on eBay and other such sources instead of the big chain stores simply to ensure that The Mouse doesn't get a cut of my cheese.

Getting LOST

2010-01-22T20:01:00.000-05:00

(Not your typical fanboy geek LOST blog post, I promise)

Back in September of 2004 a new series debuted on ABC titled simply "LOST." Millions of viewers almost immediately became hooked on this dramatic series about a group of plane crash survivors that were stranded on a mysterious island. I was NOT one of those millions of viewers.

I watch a ridiculously small amount of television. I've never been much of a joiner and sometimes go out of my way to avoid passing bandwagons, so to speak. Intriguing as this show sounded, I'd already missed the first few episodes anyway and decided it was probably too complex of a story to join already in progress. I quietly ignored the show as I do nearly all TV shows and went about my life.

But LOST is one of those shows that just won't be ignored. You can't help but overhear conversations among co-workers over their cubicle walls as they discuss the minutiae of every scene aired. Every corner of the Web contained some new spoiler or recap or synopsis or leaked tidbit of news about upcoming episodes. And each piece of news made the show sound more intriguing yet at the same time less and less like something a viewer could start watching in the middle and hope to understand.

After five successful seasons on the air it was announced that the sixth and final season of the series would start in early 2010. The show that had alternately teased and intimidated me for five years was now going away. I became determined that I was going to be the one who jumped onto this horse at the tail end of the rodeo. I planned to catch the final season of the series, figure out who was who and what was what on the fly and then maybe someday go back and watch all the stuff I'd missed.

I considered consulting Lostpedia but that seemed like overkill. I made occasional Twitter posts, half-jokingly asking if anyone could give me a quick recap of the story so far so I'd be up to speed. Friend and fellow blogger, Mike, shared a VERY brief recap of the show in well under 140 characters and later posted a link to "Everything you need to know about LOST in 8 minutes and 15 seconds", a clip I thought was not only very informative but hilarious. But the more I learned from various sources, the more I realized that I was going to have to just give up being so stubborn and watch the damn first five seasons. Then I could join polite society in understanding LOST, or at least being aware of what was going on if not fully comprehending it.

Without going into great detail about my morals or ethics, let's just say that I obtained commercial-free digital versions of the past five seasons worth of episodes through channels which lack anything resembling quality control and don't replace anything that's broken. (Hey, I'll be damned if I'll pay one red cent to watch a show that was aired on network television for free.) My lovely wife Shelly who just so happens to share my complete non-exposure to LOST settled in with me to watch the first few episodes.

We enjoyed the first episode of the series well enough until with about 15 minutes left in the show it froze and refused to play the rest of that episode which made for a frustrating start. During the recap at the start of the second hour we learned that all we missed was Greg Grunberg telling the others just how screwed they really were before being snatched by the monster in the jungle. This episode played all the way through with no problems so, encouraged we cued up the third hour only to be greeted by audio with no video attached to it. I burst out laughing and said, "After five years of avoiding this show now it's avoiding me!"

We've sorted out the technical issues and so far we've made it through the 4th episode. Shelly is completely hooked and I'm enjoying it well enough to keep watching an episode or two (maybe three?) each evening for the next few weeks. I'm sure it's a very different experience for us than it was for everyone else who joined the party at the start. Shelly and I aren't frustrated with having to wait a week or even worse a season for the next 41 and a half minutes the story to unfold. The lack of commercials helps as well, even DVR's have to be fast-forwarded past them and just those few moments can be enough to take you out of the story.

On the other hand the "water cooler" experience the show has enjoyed just inst there for us, not yet anyway. How can you share and discuss something that's brand new to you but five years old to a typical follower of the show? My wife is going to be able to enjoy more surprises in LOST than I will, I'm out on the Web much more than she is and as such I've been immersed in the pop cultural saturation of this show more than her. I've been simmering in a stew of spoilers, recaps and blurbs for half a decade without even trying to!

But overall I think it's a much more pleasant way to discover the show. If I had watched the series unfold in real time I might have bailed out sometime in the second or third season when the quality started slipping and the show got too dramatic. Thanks to the gift of hindsight, I know about that low point and also know that the show will get better again so I know it's worth staying with into future seasons.

So this is me, being part of the crowd and enjoying LOST just a little out of step with everyone else. Somehow that seems oddly fitting, given the time travel hijinks I know the show still has in store for me...

Same Game, Different Server

2009-12-30T20:15:00.002-05:00

I was starting to feel like maybe City of Heroes had run it's course and was on it's last legs. It was getting harder to find enough players for good teams, no one was running task force missions and it was starting to feel kind of empty. Here's a screencap of one of my toons logged into the Infinity server:

That's Doc Quantum with his back to the camera, fixture signature hero Ms. Liberty and...no one else, really. Look at all those awesome graphics going to waste with no one there to play in them.

But a teammate from our super group suggested changing servers and what a difference it made! Check out the exact same game location with one of my toons logged in on Freedom:

There's Bronze Beetle in the foreground and look at all the other players! Just a few minutes defore this, a lot of these folks and others were taking part in a costume contest...

No, I didn't win. But I am VERY encouraged to see that there are still PLENTY of CoH players around and the game is far from being over with.

Post-Yule Drowse

2009-12-26T13:04:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's the sugar high of too many cookies and too much fruit cake wearing off. Either that or it could be knowing that Christmas for good or for ill (if such a thing is possible) is once again over with for the better part of nearly a year ahead of us. Whatever the reason, we're enjoying some post-Christmas downtime this weekend. Gift cards can wait to be spent, for now we'll just relax at home.

I'm thinking that next year I should make plans for some vacation time to be used after the holiday as well, Monday is looming large already.

Looking Forward To Longer Days

2009-12-22T07:54:00.001-05:00

Yesterday marked the Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere, the first day of winter and the day with the shortest amount of daylight. From here on out, we'll keep getting more daylight with each passing day until late into June and I'm looking forward to it. Snow at Christmas-time is nice but other than that I have no use for winter at all and I'm pretty much done with nightfall coming around in the late afternoon.

Weather Closing In, Time Running Out

2009-12-19T10:19:00.000-05:00

I had to revise plans to go take care of the usual handyman chores at my mom's place today because of the encroaching storm. It's not here yet but neither of us wanted my trip home tonight to be hazardous. This leaves me with an extra day to take care of some holiday errands instead.

Every year without fail I manage to have too little time left before Christmas and still too much left to do. If I push myself into making two trips into town today I might get some packages in the mail but most likely I'll just get the boxes and get home with them. Just as well because I still have cards to write to be sent with the boxes and it's starting to look like the cards are going out on Monday anyway. And there are still gifts and gift cards to be shopped for and gifted.

How is it that every year we all resolve that next year we'll get things done better, earlier, cheaper, whatever and yet each holiday season finds us just as overtaken by time racing past us toward December 25th? I brace myself early by having my lights up outside by Thanksgiving. I plan an extra grocery trip for ingredients for baking, I even take time off from work right before the holiday itself. And time and space still thwart my efforts by requiring that gifts be transported hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

Christmas was easier "back in the day" because we were all at home then. It's nice to be able to send a gift to someone you care about but much nicer still to be able to hand it to them and see their smile when they open it. Even when my older siblings made their first flights from the nest they were never further away than a half an hour's drive. Visiting relatives for Christmas meant an afternoon away from home at the most. But now we're fragmented, the angles of our individual lives having sent us on trajectories that take us further away from each other with every passing year.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow...

Christmas Came Early

2009-12-18T18:53:00.003-05:00

I wasn't expecting to see this until "Sherlock Holmes"comes out next week but Jon Favreau gave us an early present with the trailer for "Iron Man 2" ...

The Annual Bake-athon

2009-12-13T17:43:00.000-05:00

I started baking for the holidays some years back when money was tight and I wanted to try something more creative for gift-giving. The good news is that people seemed to really enjoy it so I've kept up the tradition. The bad news is that it's not really any more economical than traditional gifts, No matter, it's become something of an annual obsession for me anyway and this year is no different.

I've already made one batch of grandma Mem's applesauce fruitcake along with a batch of banana walnut bread. I gave the oven a rest earlier today and indulged a couple of no-bake recipes, one for peanut butter bars and the other for corn flak wreath cookies. Maybe it's just me but it seems that the no-bake recipes are the ones that make the biggest mess. The melted marshmallow mixture for the wreath cookies is like napalm when hot and silicone caulk when cool. It's also vivid green and the food color can really stain your skin.

Still more baking ahead in the next couple of weeks. Luckily I'm off from work next week so that takes a lot of the pressure off for me.

A New Look

2009-12-13T10:41:00.000-05:00

Regular readers may have noticed the new look here. I finally got tired enough of the old blog layout to roll up my sleeves and make some changes. While I do know my way around XML, using an XML template as Blogger does is still a little confusing for me (I'm an old-school HTML coder) so I'm not quite ready to cook up my own template for the site yet.

But I was able to find a template that I'm comfortable with for the time being ("stretched denim") and I tweaked it just enough to suit my taste. I flexed my graphic app muscles a little bit to whip up a new header for the page and Bob's your uncle, the blog has a new look. We'll see how long this lasts before I get tired of it, but considering it's taken me a little over a year to get around to this update I don't expect to be changing it again anytime soon.

It's the Most Illuminated Time Of the Year

2009-12-12T08:54:00.007-05:00

I guess I should've posted this a few weeks ago, when they first went up but better late than never...

The Christmas lights are up! As usual, our big "light up" was Thanksgiving night and we had fun calling out a countdown and throwing the switches that send our electric meter spinning. Click through the links and enjoy the pictures.

I kept saying that I wasn't going to do quite so much this year as I have in the past. As much fun as the lights are to put up there's always the dreaded task of taking them all down, usually in much more frigid weather conditions than during the installation phase. Plus, the net lights were starting to show their age with several sets one or more "dead spots" in them and some of the other lights were in need of repair before they could be used.

But I picked up a LightKeeper Pro and I was surprised to find out that the thing really works! Granted, you have to follow ALL of the directions and keep in mind that it's a tool, not a cure-all. Watching their 40-minute instructional video online really helped me understand the why & how of the tool. But in exchange for my time spent learning how to use the thing I was able to fix all of the nets and other lights in literally a very small fraction of the time it's taken me in previous years.

So now that the argument regarding the repair of the lights was moot I found myself with many more usable lights than I was initially planning to put out. I'd already bought extra canes (thinking I wouldn't be using the nets) and the "Merry Christmas" sign pictured above. Ultimately, the only decorations that didn't make it to the yard this year were Frosty, the inflatable snowman and the animated reindeer pair of Rudolph and Clarisse (these pics are from 2008). Maybe I'll add them back into the mix next year. And maybe I'll add a string of blue & white C7's along the roof...

Role Reversal & Parental Mortality

2009-09-30T23:33:00.004-04:00

I guess this is one of those rare times when it gets deep here...

After going through a stressful day of worrying about my mother-in-law's surgery today we were relieved to hear that everything went fine and that she's now recovering. Unfortunately our relief only lasted for few hours. Late this evening we got a call from one of my mom's friends informing us that she had taken my mother to the ER because mom was having some chest pain and trouble breathing. With mom's history of heart trouble (she had a triple-bypass done just four years ago) they decided to keep her overnight for observation and run some tests tomorrow.

Talking with my sister about it on the phone, we mentioned how preferable it was when we were younger, free of responsibility and our parents worried about us. Now, as the years race past us each one seemingly faster than the one before we find ourselves being the ones who worry about our parents. Now we're the ones who have to rearrange our routines so that we can spend time in hospitals, wondering and worrying about the people we care about most.

I'd like to think it's not so much about selfishness on our parts but more about wondering just when this happened. I don't remember getting older so how did they? We're faced with the stark realization that these people who we've known our whole lives won't always be there. And along with that realization comes the knowledge that our own children will go through similar thoughts and feelings about us in a future that will be here before we know it.

For now, mom is resting in a place where caring professionals are there to take care of her. I hope to know more in the morning and maybe get to talk with her, to reassure both her an myself that this isn't that dreaded yet inevitable day of goodbyes. Some call it a "circle of life" but sometimes it feels like a giant wheel that's bearing down on us at breakneck speed.

Back To Paragon City

2009-09-30T20:19:00.005-04:00

After giving Champions Online what I think is a reasonably fair try I've decided that City of Heroes is still the better game. For whatever faults it might have and the missteps of various new issues ("Architect" anyone?) it still comes out ahead for playability, graphics and just plain fun.

Champs' approach to missions just didn't sit well with me, it seemed like other players could easily swoop in and get the glory for my work. And the graphics in CoH are much more fluid, especially after I'd made a major upgrade for a system that would be Champs-compatible. And I never saw the benefit of having a super group in Champs while CoH lets groups build bases with lots of perks for the members of such teams. And "Going Rogue" is still ahead...

Thankfully, I'm not alone in this choice. At least one other CoH teammate who crossed over to Champs isn't impressed with it either. So for now the Nova Killers (our super group on CoH)* is still alive and functioning. New members might be needed, we'll see but I think we're going to make another go of it. Congratulations, NCSoft - you can keep tapping my bank account every month...at least until Sony releases DC Universe Online sometime next year. Then all bets are off.

* - We decided on the name because the core members at the time consisted of several Blaster archetypes and we could mow thorugh most opposition with a series of Nova attacks

ET Visits IM2

2009-09-28T18:55:00.000-04:00

Random Can Be Good

2009-09-08T17:20:00.004-04:00

A fairly accurate random sampling of stuff I listen to...

Champions Offline

2009-09-03T18:24:00.005-04:00

Not exactly the start to a long weekend I was hoping for when I got home from work today...

Bugger. You'd think they would have sorted these sorts of things out in beta, which I've been enjoying taking part in for the past few weeks. But the game just shipped retail on Tuesday and I guess some problems just don't manifest until the Teeming Hordes^® are allowed in to overtax the servers and give the devs some real headaches. Pretty impressive, not only are the game servers down but the web site as well. I wasn't on board when City of Heroes launched, I wonder if they had similar issues.

"You are in the Village...again."

2009-07-28T21:00:00.003-04:00

Okay, I'm sold enough to really want to watch this when it comes to AMC in November. Thanks, and a tip-o-the-hat to Sean for sharing this link to the preview footage shown at this year's San Diego ComicCon.

Be seeing you...

"We choose to go to the moon..."

2009-07-14T18:38:00.001-04:00

Ten Things You Didn't Know About the Apollo 11 Moon Landing - I already knew some of these things but I was surprised by some of the others, like the drinking water being bubbly or the lander going four miles off course. And it turns out that "one small step" wasn't quite that small after all!

It's kind of sad to think that they were able to accomplish this and several other missions only to let the lunar program languish in favor of the space shuttle. But plans are underway to go back and establish a permanent presence on our celestial neighbor as a staging area for explorations further into our solar system. I hope I live long enough to see humans walk on Mars!

Even sadder is that 6% of Americans still think the Apollo missions were a hoax. Talk like that is a slap in the face to the hundreds of brilliant men and women who accomplished an amazing feat of engineering by delivering on President Kennedy's promise to put Americans on the moon by the end of the '60s. Getting to the moon was an incredible achievement and to dismiss it as just another conspiracy theory is insulting to everyone involved.

Green Lantern Casting Update

2009-07-11T14:33:00.000-04:00

Ryan Reynolds Is Green Lantern - This just in from Ain't It Cool News. If this is true then we can forget about a Deadpool spin-off featuring Reynolds as the merc with a mouth. I was actually hoping for Reynolds to land a gig as Wally West but I guess since DC is currently resurrecting Barry Allen any Flash film is going to focus on Barry anyway.

Various & Sundry

2009-07-10T06:45:00.004-04:00

New Battlestar Galactica 4.5 Clips Online ...

Do want! The penultimate episode with the final battle against the Cylon colony alone should be worth the price of admission.
---
McNair taped suicide prevention ad before death - If he could spend that much time with his 20-year old mistress without getting the message across I seriously doubt that a 30-second ad would do anything to help anyone else.
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Bryan Singer Regrets Leaving ‘X-Men’ For ‘Superman’ - Maybe if he hadn't wasted so much screen time turning Kal El into a deadbeat dad/creepy stalker and added a little more action and conflict to 'Superman Returns' Bryan would still have a superhero franchise to call his own. I think this guy needs to get a lot more familiar with whatever property he's taking on before the cameras start rolling. The second 'X-Men' movie was very good but the first one suffered from the same lack of action that took the fun out of Superman.
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Phantom menace to dark matter theory - Maybe some researchers should work a little harder figure out the intricacies of previously established scientific principles like gravity before they try to introduce questionable pseudo-physics like "dark matter" into the equation.
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Reynolds, Timberlake, Cooper Are 'Final Three' for Green Lantern - No, no and no. Okay, maybe Cooper but he still looks way too young to play Hal Jordan. Didn't "Iron Man" teach Hollywood that they can go a little bit older with more experienced actors and still deliver a great action movie? I would've picked Ben Browder although Nathan Fillion would be a good choice too.
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USB 3.0: A Primer - We can look forward to data transfers up to ten times faster along with a gazillion more completely useless light-up USB gizmos.

Let's Try Something New

2009-07-01T20:59:00.003-04:00

I realize I've gotten very slack about posting anything new here. It's not that I don't have anything to write about. I have plenty of thoughts to share but few of them would merit a full blog post. So I'm going to take a shot at "micro blogging" and give Twitter a try.

Ever since I stopped doing software development for a living I've gotten a little "curmudgeonly" about some of the newer tech on the web and I want to reverse that trend. I don't normally gravitate towards anything resembling "social networking" but Twitter looks like it can give me an outlet for those very short ideas that I want to post. And with the addition of the gadget to show my Twitter updates here I can keep at least some of the content here fresh in between those full-sized posts that come to me less frequently.

Best Fan-made Trailer Ever

2009-05-26T17:01:00.002-04:00

Okay, I'm sold on Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan. Now let's get Warner Brothers on board with this and get the rest of this movie made. This is honestly the best fan-made trailer I've ever seen...

Gardening Is Relaxing?

2009-04-25T08:27:00.005-04:00

I took advantage of the nice weather yesterday coinciding with a day off from work and did some gardening/landscaping here. A day of labor and one aching back later and what was once a weed bed under the peach tree in the front yard is now a nice bed of hostas.

The hostas were from my mom's house. I moved and divided a row of them for her last year and she gave me some of what was cut back to use at my house. I planted them last summer and they filled in nicely but I never had the chance to make a proper garden for them. I planted them in the remains of several failed attempts to grow anything meaningful under the peach tree out in front.

The soil there was good but nothing had been done to control the weeds. The plastic border that had been put in long before I arrived here was buried under a ring of large stones and those were sinking into the ground and being overtaken by the so-called lawn as well. I was determined not to let the weeds run rampant again this year or struggle trying to trim the grass growing between the rocks.

So I took out all of the stones, most of which were at least as big as my head and pulled up all of the old plastic edging. I then proceeded to put weed blocking fabric down, cutting and stapling it in place to allow openings for the plants whose leafy spikes are an inch or two above the soil now. Then I unrolled a length of new plastic edging and worked it into the trench I had dug with a hand trowel. I had to resort to cutting an additional piece from a second roll of the stuff. Apparently whoever installed the first one had more than a 20' length to work with.

A few more staples in the landscaping fabric to hold down the edges, almost three bags of cedar mulch later, some more work on my hands and knees and the whole thing looks a lot more like a garden. Now I just need find the time and energy to do this sort of thing in roughly a dozen other spots in the yard and I might actually have something resembling curb appeal here.

I hurt my back quite nicely doing this project. It's been a long winter and I'm out of shape, so I'm taking a day to rest and medicate the pain away. Overall, I think it turned out pretty nicely, I'll post more shots later this summer when the plants fill in again.

Almost Like Old Times

2009-04-04T09:56:00.003-04:00

I deliberately avoid talking about my work here. That's my professional life and I don't think this is the forum in which to discuss it. But a new project at work that I'm involved in has actually engaged the higher functions in my brain and I'm drawing on "mad skillz" I acquired at my previous place of employment. I won't go too deeply into the nuts and bolts of how it all works but the next paragraph or two could contain stuff that makes people's eyes glaze over if they aren't familiar with IT-related things.

The project calls for auditing data entered into a system and generating a report based on the audit results. Naturally it's all on an MS system so Excel is the weapon of choice, and for that matter I'm limited to 2003 for the time being. So it's finally come to this, I have to figure out an actual MS-based solution for reading a data structure.

Back in the day, I would have piped the data out of Excel into a flat file to populate a MySQL database. Then I'd use a PHP-based front end to access the data. Maybe for some extra flourish I might have even built a Flash animation that played music and gyrated in all different ways based on the results of the data queries, much like the one described in a passage from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency...but that would be showing off.

So now instead of using those tools I'm teaching myself Excel and VBA as the project scope increases, and also to focus on more elegant solutions to existing functions. Even though it's MS I'm back to learning new things for a living again. It feels good to access this part of my brain, the part that likes solving programming puzzles and finding better ways of getting answers out of data structures. I'm glad I had a mentor who gave me the freedom to acquire these skills to start with and I'm grateful for a new opportunity to use them again.

BSG: Finally a Finale

2009-03-21T19:25:00.003-04:00

It's been nearly 24 hours now since I watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica. I've been mulling over the events of the episode, sorting them out, savoring the bits I liked and trying to work out the bits that didn't feel right. More shows need to follow this model of having a beginning, middle and end planned out ahead of time as opposed to shooting for seasonal reneweal immortality.

All of the best stories have endings and overall this was a very good ending for a series that has been one of the best shows on television. Just as not ever epsiode of the series was a hit not every part of the finale worked quite as well as they might have been hoping.

Spoilers ahead and plenty of them!

I was grateful they spared us any lengthy goodbyes as Galactica left the fleet for her final mission. And Baltar's hand-wringing was non-existent, we all knew that this was going to be the one selfless act of his life that would define his reason for existence so don't even be coy and pretend he's going with the fleet.

For that matter they wasted no time getting into the big battle, one jump and in and the guns started pounding. I think the FX have been light in recent episodes because they were saving everything up for this episode and it's all the better for it. Yet still for all of the high-tech weaponry it felt almost like a pirate adventure with Galactica ramming the Cylon colony and the crew rappelling down lines to board it.

The long-running visions of trying to find Hera in the opera housse were finally linked to Deana's visions of the Final Five by Baltar and Six and their part in all of it. And all this time the both of them have been nudged, guided and mentally jostled by a pair of angels. Angels - that works for me, a lot better than some lame "chip in their heads" pseudo sci fi techno jargon hand wave could have ever done. And the same goes for Kara Thrace, I think her character is made all the more interesting and meaningful by her being an angel.

I got the feeling that the opera house visions were just as much memories as premonitions. Events like these had played themselves out so many times that they were becoming part of the genetic memory of everyone involved. I don't think "All Along the Watchtower" triggered the Final Five. I think that passing through the region of space that served as a signpost for the 13th Tribe of Kobol unlocked some of their shared memories which happened to include knowledge they were Cylons and a song they knew way back when. The same could be said for Kara's ability to play the song, her "father" taught her something important a very long time ago, the song is just a metaphor for a deeply seated memory.

How many times had God tried to set His plan in motion only to have it all go awry because of a bad pattern being repeated? Genetic memory, how much of our baggage is built-in and how much do we choose to drag along? Are we capable of overcoming the mistakes of our past and actually working towards a new way of doing things or is screwing things up just the way that we're wired? Big questions for a sci fi TV show. Regardless of genre, if more shows were as well-crafted and thought-provoking as Battlestar Galactica has been I'd be watching a lot more television.

Spring Springs, Winter Remains

2009-03-20T07:05:00.007-04:00

It's the first day of spring but winter is always slow leaving in this part of the state. Through an odd quirk of geography even the south end of Barre sheds its snow at least a week or two before the north end of town. It's a combination of altitude and latitude, not only are we farther north but also further up in some hilly terrain. Normally by now I've at least seen a robin or two but not so this year.

I have much less time for bird-watching this year anyway, thanks to this past December's ice storm and the damage it left behind. As the snow recedes more and more of the debris becomes visible. It's going to be a very active spring and summer trying to clean up around here.

What?

2009-03-13T19:05:00.004-04:00

A hearing test today confirmed that my hearing has in fact gotten slightly worse in the last couple of years. Tinnitus is maddening but can be treatable with amplification so I'll have to look into those options. I'm not deaf or even anywhere near hearing-impaired yet so there's no rush.

Meanwhile, here are a few links that caught my attention today - enjoy!
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Shoe-thrower fans unite online - Yet another great use for Facebook! This actually gave me the idea that maybe we should hold our politicians accountable to the best pitching arm at a dunking tank. At a buck a throw there's no telling how quickly we could wipe out the national debt.
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5 ways the unfilmable film Watchmen could have an unthinkable sequel - This has come up in conversation a couple of times lately and it bears repeating here. If an author refers to one of his works as, "unfilmable" writers and directors and other various and sundry in Hollywood shouldn't take it as a dare. And you know how Hollywood loves sequels so just imagine how much worse Watchmania* could get.

* - I take no responsibility in the event this word ever catches on.

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TV Guide Magazine's Feature on Battlestar Galactica - The homestretch is finally here, it's the beginning of the end for Admiral Adama and the remains of humanity as well as several friendly cylons and there's still a frackload of unanswered questions. If you're just joining the program now (or if you still get dizzy spells trying to sort out "No Exit") I highly recommend reading Airlock Alpha's 'Battlestar Galactica' Final Five Primer. “This is not going to be the ending you’re anticipating,” said exec producer David Eick. I hope he's right, that's what I've always loved about this show.

Warm Weekend

2009-03-08T14:34:00.006-04:00

This is the first time I can recall since December when the temperatures stayed above freezing for at least 24 hours. It's been warm enough to soften the snow into relinquishing more of the extension cords and Christmas decorations still lingering on the lawn. I might be able to finally bring in the reindeer but the base of the snowman is still frozen in a block of ice. Maybe by spring I can finally put Christmas away.
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This weekend also marks the semi-annual event in which we collectively agree to alter time. Springing forward into Daylight Savings time means this weekend is an hour shorter than it should be. In exchange we get days that stay lighter later. Longer daylight is a good thing, I like coming home in the late afternoon and still having a few hours of daylight in front of me.
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Yesterday was my wife's birthday and we celebrated last night with dinner out and a movie. We chose "Watchmen" for the night's film with her having no familiarity with the graphic novel and I being very familiar with the source as well as having reservations about the director's ability to make a meaningful film out of it. For the majority of the film it's devotion to the source is nearly slavish but too much was changed in the translation. Those who never read the book might enjoy it but those like myself who have read it will be disappointed.

"You have the right to leave a message..."

2009-03-06T16:44:00.007-05:00

Why does it take so long to leave a message for someone? In the course of a typical day I call a lot of people, almost invariably on their cell phones. It seems like it wasn't all that long ago when a trip to voice mail meant listening to several seconds of the person's message followed by a simple beep. It was a short and effective process that got the job of leaving a message over with in short order.

Not so anymore, now our Miranda Rights have to be read to us before we can leave a message. A page and a half of instructions are rattled off by some scripted, young female voice as you sit drumming your fingers, anticipating your cue to start talking, get your point across and wish the recipient a good day. And the greeting is delivered by a generic voice that's also used for every single one of that carrier's customers who didn't create their own greeting.

Worse still than those who don't personalize their voice mail are those who want to be DJ's with it. The words, "Please enjoy the music while your party is reached,"pretty much guarantee that I won't. If the variety of rap, hip hop, country, pop and other genres popular these days is represented by a large, random sampling of people's ring tones then my suspicions that commercial music died a few years ago are well founded. I'm glad I don't own a radio.

Too Quiet

2009-03-01T15:41:00.003-05:00

As circumstances would have it I've actually got the place all to myself for the next couple of days. My wife brought one of the boys back up to Maine and her sister went along for the ride this time so it's just me and the cats here at home. This makes for a very quiet house that I've been compensating for with some louder-than-usual music, one of the advantages of living in a rural area with space between the houses.

This week's episode of Battlestar Galactica (spoiler warning) revealed that Starbuck is not only aware of "All Along the Watchtower" but even knows how to play it. Aside from the other interesting revelations around this development, I was reminded of how much I enjoy Bear McCreary's version of this song. I love the music from BSG and anyone who can make me actually like a Bob Dylan song has definitely accomplished something.

Lots of Linkage

2009-02-26T17:46:00.004-05:00

Obama's budget would boost science - This is very refreshing news. The previous administration seemed to regard education as a bad thing and science as a tool of the devil himself. It's nice to see a more enlightened administration promoting scientific advancements.
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Philip Jose Farmer passes at 91 - I'm a little embarrassed to call myself a sci fi fan without ever having read Farmer's "Riverworld" books. However I did enjoy his "biography" of Doc Savage as well as "Escape From Loki" in which Doc and the five men he would later share numerous adventures with escaped from a German POW camp in WWI.
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Jackson's Fury in flurry of Marvel films - And now the circle is complete. When Marvel created their "Ultimate" line of comics they re-imagined the former WWII Howling Commando Nick Fury as being based on Sam Jackson. Is this some kind of a record? How many other actors can claim they've got that many movies lined up?
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'Heroes' hits lowest audience numbers yet - It's a shame because in many ways the show has improved with the "Villains" arc. "More than 15 percent of 'Heroes'' audience has departed the series since the current volume began, but most indications seem to point that NBC will give the show a fourth season as long as Bryan Fuller is involved." If you're a fan then keep your fingers crossed.
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A new 'Total Recall' is on the way - Why? It's been a few years since I've seen this one but I thought it was one of Arnold's better films. What the heck is the point of remaking this? This is just further proof that there is no such thing as a new idea in Hollywood.

My Limited Viewing Habits

2009-02-17T16:49:00.007-05:00

There's extremely little on TV that I watch on a regular basis. Heroes and Battlestar Galactica are pretty much it for me. There's always the occasional episode of Good Eats but I promise to never review that show here unless Alton builds something exceptionally cool like the Turkey Derrick. That being said, here's my take on the most recent episodes of my favorite shows (spoilers ahead)...

Battlestar Galactica "No Exit" - Did you get all that? We wanted answers and we got an information dump of them. I've heard disclaimers in car ads where the announcer talked slower than that. Once again we get a brief teaser that Starbuck might be a cylon that's dispelled almost immediately, building more suspense about the questions of who and what she is. Adama more and more is being forced to accept that he's now saving the cylon race as well as the human one. I'm looking forward to Ellen finding the Fleet and reuniting with Saul now that they're both aware of their true natures.

Heroes - "Building 26" - I didn't think they could make me dislike any character more than whiny, emo Peter but they've managed to turn Claire into the teenage version of her uncle. I thought Hiro lost his time & space powers, since when and how can he suddenly travel from The Middle Of Nowhere, America to India while staying "off the grid?" Inconsistencies like this really distract from the story. On the plus side not only has Sylar not killed his sidekick yet, he even gave him some basic training and later rescued him. I'm looking forward to Sylar meeting his father and also to HRG getting some more character development time next week.

Heroes 2-9-09 "Trust and Blood"

2009-02-10T18:23:00.002-05:00

Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't caught this week's episode of Heroes yet, you've been warned...

What I liked: In a neat twist on an old comic book convention Sylar now has a kid sidekick! Sort of like a nightmarish version of Batman & Robin by way of Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent in the classic movie, "The Mechanic."

A continued emphasis on character development is a refreshing change as well. The past mistakes of convoluted plots to destroy the world seem to have been left behind. The current plot is reminiscent of the sort of persecution that The X-Men face regularly, especially with one of their own kind turning against them as Nathan seems to have done.

What I didn't like: Tim Sale's paintings of random future plot points are truly beautiful works of art but Matt Parkman is just not the guy to be creating them. He's just the wrong character to have precog skill like that.

Daphne's death seemed rather abrupt but I guess super speed is hard to write obstacles for, especially when she's friends with a guy who can amplify her power enough to allow her to travel through time. That's Hiro's gig and he'll get his mad time skillz back soon enough, I'm sure.

Speculations: Mr. Bennett and Nathan are up to something covert within their own covert operation and I'm curious to find out what that's all about. At least one version of the future had Mr. Bennett helping people with abilities assume new identities and disappear from unnamed pursuers, I wonder if that will be explored at all.

Just When I think I'm Out...

2009-02-09T17:06:00.006-05:00

Some years back while doing ISP tech support for a prior employer I enrolled in their stock purchase plan. A few weeks later I thought better of it and then spent the next several months trying to stop my participation in said plan. At the same time I happened to notice that CGI permissions for employee web space accounts like mine were enabled. I assumed this meant we were trusted to use these advanced features and I uploaded a few scripts to the server, including a web forum that was used for a short time by myself and several co-workers, mostly to complain about work.

At one point my frustration with the company's inability to stop my payroll deductions for the stock plan led me to create a forum post in which I wrote that a certain organized criminal syndicate might be easier to stop participation in than the stock plan for this particular company. I may have been more specific in my comparison, I don't recall now. I must have been because the company took great umbrage at this comparison. Phone calls were made, supervisors were chastised, stuff was sent flowing downhill from corporate headquarters and orders were issued for my termination.

As luck would have it before all hell broke loose I happened to spot a supervisor named John several desks over talking on the phone while looking at my web forum on his monitor. "My common sense is tingling," I muttered as I realized that the merest interest by anyone in management about anything posted there could not be a good thing. I worked quickly but quietly as I opened a command line FTP connection to the server and deleted everything in my web space, right down to the nifty green rollover buttons I'd coded by hand - all of this while talking a customer through a dial-up connection. A short time after that I heard John in an office down the hall exclaim, "It's gone! It's all gone!" When I finished the call I had been on John appeared at me desk and very politely asked me to come have a talk with him.

Our meeting was surprisingly friendly and informal. While the corporate forces wanted my head on a platter and my hide on a wall John and other managers there were still local and loyal to the company that was recently acquired by the corporate entity, the company that hired them and had hired me prior to the acquisition. My job was safe, I was spared the wrath of unemployment.

The call center we worked in also served as the network headquarters for the region. Because of that management was more concerned with the how of what was being posted in my web space rather than the content. If I had posted the same words in a static web page management wouldn't have cared and corporate probably wouldn't have noticed. I simply shouldn't have had CGI permissions enabled to begin with and since I did nothing resembling hacking to make that happen then it wasn't my fault.

Feathers soothed, corporate settled down and stopped withdrawing money from my paycheck while providing stock in exchange. I contacted the broker and sold off all of my vested shares and ended my participation in the company's stock plan.

Or so I thought...

It's now nine years since I left that company. I received a letter from the broker today informing me that while I still had a vested amount saved in the company's savings & stock plan it had been idle for too long and had fallen below the minimum balance to maintain. They sent me a check for $42.87. They still had that much of my money and it never came up before now?! I KNEW that plan was shady, I am so vindicated!

Better Late Than Never

2009-02-08T07:13:00.004-05:00

Here it is, the second week of February and it looks like our January thaw has finally arrived...

Links for 2-4-09

2009-02-04T17:39:00.004-05:00

A Leap for Teleporting, Between Ions Feet Apart - No one is about to get beamed anywhere yet or even suffer a freakish mishap with a fly. However this could give an "ethernet connection" a whole new meaning with wireless data-sharing at an atomic level.
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Downey, Jr: Rourke Not in “Iron Man 2″- This is shaping up to be a very popular movie to not be in which seems ridiculous considering how good the first one turned out to be. I've read that two of the people who bailed on this did so because Marvel Studios isn't offering enough of the green.
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Spoilerish- Sneak Peak of AMC's "The Prisoner" - This being a re-imagining of the original "Prisoner" TV Series means that the Village will not be in Portmeirion but instead out in the middle of Namibia.

Who Needs An iPod?

2009-01-31T20:54:00.005-05:00

I miss Muzak, the quiet, the relaxing "elevator music" meant to stay unobtrusively in the background and for the most part be ignored. Muzak allowed you to focus on what you were doing without distracting you from the purpose of your excursion into the marketplace. Muzak knew its place and very politely stayed in it.

I'm not quite sure exactly when or why it happened but Muzak seems to be all but gone now. It's been replaced by actual songs by original artists. Usually these numbers are inappropriate for the venue they're aired in and more often than not played far too loud through a sound system never meant to deliver anything more complex than an announcement about a blue light special with any degree of clarity.

Feel free to dismiss me as an old crank who's out of touch with today's music if you want but I don't enjoy buying groceries while Avril Lavigne is screeching at me through a tinny-sounding speaker in an acoustic tiled ceiling. Just because Katy Perry kissed a girl doesn't mean I need to hear about it while I'm picking out hardware at the home improvement store. And I don't really care about how much back Sir Mix-a-Lot's baby has while I'm shopping for back bacon.

Even songs I like make me clench my teeth when I have to listen to them in these environments. Duran Duran, The Police, Bryan Ferry and countless others have all suffered being sent through the supermarket's sound system. Perhaps the most ironic moment was when I was in the alcoholic beverage section and happened to spot the six-packs of Miller Beer while listening to "Shambala" by Three Dog Night, the song whose guitar riff is currently being used as background music in Miller's TV ads. Talk about a multimedia experience!

Like most faults I find with the world I know this one is too big to change and there's no going back. That's fine, before my next trip to the grocery store I'll stop in my workshop and grab my earplugs.

"Cue the shark..."

2009-01-30T17:14:00.011-05:00

“Heroes” Is Working to Win Back Fans - I still like "Heroes" in spite of the bad directions the show has taken. The basic premise is still solid and the characters are still viable enough that I'm hopeful they can steer this thing away from the shark it's been circling around. But then I read stuff like this and my hope fades.

Things That Affect My Blood Pressure

2009-01-23T16:55:00.007-05:00

Cheney: Bush should have pardoned Libby - "He was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice, and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon." Oh, NOW you decide to mention this?! A few days earlier might have helped a lot more than trying to come to his defense now. People much higher than 'Scooter' Libby committed outright treason by "outing" an active CIA operative and got away with it while Libby can't even wrangle a Presidential pardon for being the fall guy for the whole thing.
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Worm Infects Millions of Computers Worldwide - Oh, crap. I use several levels of software and hardware firewalls and I don't use USB drives or any other portable media but news like this still makes me wonder just how safe I am. I also keep no banking info anywhere near my computer, they aren't even allowed in the same room together. Hackers could probably zombify my computer and use my City of Heroes account if they wanted to. Heck, if they can play better than me I'll take the extra XP. That brings us to our next item...
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City of Heroes Double XP Weekend! - Woot! Some time shall be wasted here.

"You don't know the power of the Dark Side"

2009-01-21T17:02:00.001-05:00

Did dark energy give us our cosmos? - space - 17 January 2009 - New Scientist

Dark matter filaments stoked star birth in early galaxies - space - 21 January 2009 - New Scientist

So if you can make up something no one can see or detect then it makes all of the other made-up numbers about how everything else works make sense. Plus we get an infinite universe and variations of String Theory start to sound plausible. Comic book fans have already seen similar cosmic scenarios in the origins of Galactus.

Historic & Hopeful

2009-01-20T18:57:00.001-05:00

Swift Rivers

Dudes Of Christmas Past

"Thank someone for contacting my office..."

What Your Android Says About You

Sounds Of the Season...All Season Long

Another Place To Be

SOPA Continues...

from the what-are-they-afraid-of dept

All About SOPA, the Bill That Wants to Cripple Your Internet

Moving Out, Moving In & Moving On

Don't Know Much About Geography

Never Tell Me The Odds

Androids Of A Lesser God

It's Not Easy Being Green

Before And After the Storm

When The Life Gets Too Wild

Just That Kind Of A Day

I Was Warned

Out In the Country

No, this is NOT the MSPCA!

Paper Moon

The Neverending Winter

Sorry, Charlie

One Year Later

Hodgepodge

Unfriend This!

What It's Really All About

Minding My Business

I'm just sayin'...

Less Work = More Peace & Joy

No Fear, No Pressure

Mr. Cranky-Pants

The Anti-Social Network

They're Listening!

Booyah!

Happy (but quiet) Halloween

"A picture is worth..."

The Only Thing Certain Is Change

iStillDon't

iDon't

I'm Not Dead Yet

On the Road Again

Stop the Flow At the Source

And Thor, Too

Lazy Developers Are IE's Best Friends

Captain America Gets a Costume

LOST: The End

I Like Beer

It Only Ends Once

Home Again, Home Again...

Anticipation

Good Days & Bad Days

How the AARP Keeps the USPS In Business

Happy Easter

Little Victories

Life-Altering Events

Don't Call It A Comeback

Another Pleasant Barre Sunday

Now That's A Speed Boost!

90% of Blogging...

LOST, My Train Of Thought

Goin' Mobile?

I Pissed Off the Mouse

Getting LOST

Same Game, Different Server

Post-Yule Drowse

Looking Forward To Longer Days

Weather Closing In, Time Running Out

Through the yearsWe all will be together,If the Fates allow...

Christmas Came Early

The Annual Bake-athon

A New Look

It's the Most Illuminated Time Of the Year

Role Reversal & Parental Mortality

Back To Paragon City

ET Visits IM2

Random Can Be Good

Champions Offline

"You are in the Village...again."

"We choose to go to the moon..."

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow...