Definitely An Independent Film

I've done this "soundtrack of your life" meme before, but a) I'm extremely bored at the moment, and b) I think this is a slightly longer version, and c) anything involving random mish-mashes of music never fails to amuse me. So:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press play.
4. For every question, type the song that's playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you’re cool.

Opening Credits: "Closer to the Heart" by The String Quartet Tribute to Rush. Hmm. That's actually rather nice.

Waking Up: "Captain Jack" by Billy Joel. OK, that bodes less well. And, frankly, bears no relationship to my life whatsoever, even my teenage years. I was an entirely different type of disaffected teen.

First Day At School: "Young Lust" by Pink Floyd. Um, yeah, this is definitely somebody else's life we're documenting here.

Falling In Love: "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" by the Police. Well, at least it's an actual love song.

Fight Song: "Shelter from the Storm" by Bob Dylan. I can't imagine what kind of fight anybody could possibly have to that... Maybe it's actually played after the fight.

Breaking Up: "Soul Driver" by Bruch Springsteen. Um... OK. I guess the answer poor Bruce gets is a "no."

Prom: "Truck Drivin' Song" by Weird Al Yankovic. Bwah! That would have been much more interesting than my actual prom, which featured no cross-dressing whatsoever.

Life: "Jurassic Park" by Weird Al Yankovic. Alas, there has been a noticeable lack of dinosaurs in my life. Although I have seen a lot of movies, maybe that's what it refers to.

Mental Breakdown: "Par Avion" by Mike & the Mechanics. Possibly it's listening to this song that's causing the mental breakdown, I dunno...

Driving: "Battle with the Elements" by Dr. Jane and the Primordial Oohz. Apparently I'm driving across a periodic table. Or studying for a chemistry exam in the passenger seat.

Flashback: "For No One" by the Beatles. I guess I'm flashing back to that breakup I did to "Soul Driver."

Getting back together: "One Slip" by Pink Floyd. All right, that's just disturbing.

Wedding: "For Reasons Unknown" by the Killers. Yes, thank you soundtrack, I think it's now extremely clear that this is a doomed, loveless relationship I'm trapped in.

Birth of Child: "So Long" by the Goo Goo Dolls. So apparently the guy I married takes off as soon as the kid is born. Charming.

Final Battle: "I Love Almost Everybody" by Space Ghost. This movie appears to be some kind of bizarre tragicomedy, and I suspect it's going to be impossible not to laugh at this part.

Death Scene: "By the Rivers Dark" by Leonard Cohen. I have no idea what that means, but it seems weirdly appropriate, all things considered.

Funeral Song: "Cartoon Heroes" by Aqaua. Bwahahahahaha! I think I love this movie, actually.

End Credits: "Move" by Coleman Smith. Hmm. It's a jazzy, instrumental thing. I think it works.


OK, you know what? I definitely want to see this movie. It's got nothing to do with me, obviously, but it's got dinosaurs (possibly), cross-dressing truckers, a deeply cynical view of relationships, and a fine sense of irony and absurdity. Let me know when it's coming out on DVD; I'll stick it at the top of my Netflix queue.

It's Not Time To Go Home Yet?!

Wow, I'd forgotten just how tedious 12-hour shifts can be...

DIY Cat Project: Before And After

Having to tote ol' Vir Catto around in that pet carrier today reminded me all over again of how amazing this whole process by which small critters get to be large ones is, and I thought I'd post a couple of pics so the rest of you can compare and marvel with me.

So, here's the picture of Vir taken with my crappy phone camera a day or two after he was born, all cuddled up to a little stuffed bunny rabbit:



And here he is a year and a half later, with the same bunny:

I'm really hoping he's going to stop at this size!

Kitty Follow-Up Report

Well, Vir got the same corticosteroid shot I did. Let's hope it works as well for him as it did for me.

The Sun! It Burns!

Jesus, how do you day-dwellers stand it being this bright out? *grumbles sleepily, goes to stuff cat into carrier*

Currently Events

I've been neglecting this poor blog terribly of late, I know. *strokes poor neglected blog apologetically* Well, at least there's always this memey thing...

Current clothes: My old "save Farscape" fundraiser t-shirt with the words "Irreversibly Contaminated" on it. Blue jeans. Black belt. White socks. Black sneakers.

Current mood: Pretty good. In fact, I've been in a pretty good mood for a while now. I'm also starting to get a little sleepy... It's nearly 5 AM, so it's coming up on my bedtime.

Current music: I was listening to some random-shuffle music on the iPod earlier, but I don't remember what most of it was. The most recent (albiet non-musicy) thing I've listened to was the commentary for the latest Doctor Who episode, which I've been playing while doing a bit of housework.

Current annoyance: Hmm. Remarkably little is annoying me at the moment, actually.

Current thing: Living a nocturnal existence. First I worked my own week of night shifts, then I traded with someone else for his week of night shifts. This week, I don't have a set time I have to be in, but I'm on nights again for the weekend, so I haven't bothered to adjust my sleep schedule any. Actually, being awake when everybody else is asleep and vice versa does come with a few annoyances, but overall I'm quite enjoying it.

Current desktop picture: This extremely cool lunar eclipse picture.

Current song in head: It appears to be David Bowie's "Golden Years."

Current book: Eddie Bear, Private Detective, which contains two humorous fantasy novels by Robert Rankin: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse and The Toyminator. I've just finished the first one. It's written in a deeply silly style that teetered a bit between annoying and amusing for me for a while, but ultimately I found it pretty entertaining. Well, hey, I think it'd take a lot to make me dislike a book with a title like that. I do have to say that I think I slightly prefer Jasper Fforde's take on the whole "murder mystery with nursery rhyme characters," though. (And, man, that's kind of an odd sentence to type, when I stop to think about it. Is this becoming some kind of weird new subgenre?)

Current DVD in player: Nothing at the moment. I finished the last disc of The Greatest American Hero a while back. Next up is Richard III, the WWII version with Ian McKellen, but I keep not getting around to it.

Current refreshment: I had some lemon-ginger herbal tea a while ago.

Current worry: Poor Vir-kitty is getting pretty wheezy and/or snotty. When he went to the vet for his checkup a few months ago, I was told he probably had a touch of asthma, or maybe allergies, but he wasn't doing too badly then, so it didn't seem to be worth worrying about. It's definitely starting to bother him a bit now, though. Hell, it's starting to bother me. I can hear the poor critter breathing from across a room. He's got a vet appointment tomorrow. I'm just hoping he doesn't need some horribly unpleasant and expensive treatments or anything.

Current thought: Yes, getting sleepy. I should finish this up, listen to the rest of that Doctor Who commentary thing, and get some sleep so I can get up at the crack of 3:00 to take Vir in for his appointment.

Me Fail English? That's Unpossible!

Your English Skills:

Grammar: 100% Punctuation: 100% Vocabulary: 80% Spelling: 60%

Does Your English Cut the Mustard?

Well, that sounds about right. Although, as Fred of Occasional Fish (where I snurched this from) points out, a few of the punctuation questions do perhaps admit of legitimate stylistic variation, and one of them uses a different set of standards depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on.

Because Everyone Ought To Make One Of These From Time To Time

A list of things which are making me happy right now:

New Doctor Who.

Getting enough sleep.

Mornings coming at the end of my day, where I'm able to properly appreciate them.

Spring.

Being able to enjoy spring, rather than suffering miserably through it. (Thank you, drugs!)

Hardcore nerd rock.

The wonderfulness that is Robert Culp in The Greatest American Hero. (And the fact that cheesy 80's television is fun.)

Firefox (which I've finally switched over to using on my home PC, and which does not appear to randomly freeze or crash on me the way Netscape did).

Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia in low-guilt, low-fat frozen yogurt variety.

Getting more exercise, and actually feeling pretty good about it.

Lost in Time

Oh great, the clocks I had to set ahead by hand weeks ago have now just spontaneously set themselves another hour forward. Except, of course, for the ones that didn't, including the one on my living room wall that decided a few days after I changed it that I clearly didn't know what I was doing and reset itself back, as well as one I apparently never changed in the first place. Now one-third of the clocks in my house say 5:20 AM, one-third say 4:20, and one-third say 6:20. I may never know what time it actually is again.

Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep...

Definition of "hell on Earth" #173: having to sit for eight hours in a room with a malfunctioning fire-alarm panel, which beeps loudly approximately once a second, every second, all freaking night.

Fortunately, I found a very nice mp3 file of white noise somewhere on the internet. Which is itself mildly annoying, but at least it covers up the sound that's deliberately calculated to be annoying and impossible to ignore.

Yes, Hopefully This Does Mean I'll Stop Talking About It Now.

Three and a half weeks of effort, and I am finally finished cataloging my entire library on LibraryThing, including that roomful of books I understatedly refer to as "the To-Read Pile." (And, y'know, it's kind of weird not having that project to work on any more. Whenever I have a few spare minutes, I keep thinking, "Hey, I should put in some more books!" and then feeling strangely bereft when I realize there are no more.)

The final statistics: 2,763 books, of which 475 are labelled as "unread." I'm still trying to convince myself that I'll get to each and every one of those books before I die, but it would be a lot easier if new ones didn't constantly keep getting added. Damn me and my book-buying addiction!

If Only I Could Kill With the Power Of My Mind...

There are few things more guaranteed to ruin your day than picking your way carefully across flooded gutters after a rainstorm to ensure that you get no worse than one slightly damp sneaker, only to be walking along a nice dry sidewalk a few minutes later, minding your own business, and have some asshole in a truck with dimensions clearly designed to be inversely proportional to his dick size come racing along at illegal speeds straight through a huge-ass but nevertheless easily-avoidable puddle six inches from you.

What really pisses me off isn't the fact that I had to show up for work with my clothes wet from head to toe, nor is it the feeling of having been metaphorically spat upon. It's that I was holding a book in my hand at the time. *strokes the poor damp paperback sadly*

Hey, It's Got Mike Yates And Sarah Jane Smith In It...

Well, it was bound to happen... In the course of logging in all my unread books, I came across a duplicate of one I already had sitting on my shelves. Anybody out there interested in a good used copy of Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders?

But I'm Still Kind Of Annoyed That We Wasted All That Time On Jack.

Dude! Apparently Lost suddenly got all cool and interesting again! I'm not sure I was quite prepared for that, let alone for actually getting a good answer to a question I cared about. But, man, for the first time in a while, I'm actively looking forward to the next episode. Which is great, because I kind of need a show to be excited about now, while Heroes is on hiatus.

It's Like Ritalin For A Hyperactive Immune System.

Wow. I have just had my first completely snot-free night in weeks. (The night before last came close, but lost the title at the point when a cat decided to come and cuddle my face.) Nothing itches right now, either, and I'm not having my traditional series of morning sneezing fits. My nasal passages do feel kind of swollen, which is uncomfortable, but easy enough to live with.

Corticosteroids for the win!

Wow, That Averages Out to About 120 Books Per Day...

After 19 days of effort, I have finally succeeded in re-cataloging my entire damned library. Well, with the exception of the books I haven't actually read yet, that is. Which, admittedly, is a big exception; I'd say the To-Read Pile makes up roughly one fifth of all the books I own. And there are still a lot of book covers that weren't in the database, which I ought to scan in sometime... so even the main part's not quite completely done. Still, I'm willing to call it an Accomplishment. With the capital A and everything.

And, you know, it's kind of interesting to systematically revisit a library you've accumulated over the course of a lifetime. Man... Some people have tattoos or police records or, I dunno, extensive beer can collections to serve as souvenirs of their misguided and misspent youths. Me, I've got a couple shelves of bad Star Trek novels. Of course, what really gets me is how long I kept buying them for after I was old enough to know they were bad. Oy. (Note to Trekkies: No, I'm not saying there are no good Star Trek books. Some of 'em are actually very cool. But the bad ones... are bad.)

Anyway. 2,284 books down! Not too shabby, eh?

Armament Escalations In the War On Pollen

Just got back from the doctor's office, where I was given a jab in the arm and a prescription for steroid nasal spray. If all that stuff, on top of my regular allergy medicine, doesn't improve things, I think the only thing left is to move into a bubble.

(And, man, as much as I hate sitting in the waiting room and getting stabbed with needles and such, I do like my doctor. He actually talks to me like I'm intelligent.)

Actually, Given the BBC's Budget, I Suspect They Could Have Made a Doctor Who Episode for Less.

Whoo-hoo! My reading of the Eighth Doctor books can soon recommence! I was at last able to find a copy of Time Zero on ebay.co.uk for... well, for more than any sane person would pay for a paperback, but considerably less than the astronomical figures I've seen it selling for in the US lately. Note to my next of kin: if one day you should, as seems increasingly likely, find me lying dead on the floor, having been cruelly slain by an overdose of juniper pollen, you may wish to sell this volume to help defray funeral expenses. If it keeps going up in price the way it has been, in a couple of years I believe it will be worth an amount approximately equal to the GNP of Luxembourg.

I'll tell ya, it's probably too much to ask for, but it would be really nice if this turned out to be the best damned Doctor Who novel ever written.

I'm Not Dead! Here's Some Random Links To Prove It.

For those who are concerned about the state of my health, sleep, etc., I seem to be over the worst of the insomnia, but the allergies are still kicking my ass. I am, however, as tired of talking about that stuff as you probably are of hearing about it, so have some random links instead:

Medieval Help Desk: A friend of mine who works in IT sent me the link to this one, with the comment that it "just about killed [him] at work." I think I can understand why.

Paleo-Future: "A look into the future that never was." Deeply cool blog featuring visions of the future as conceived of in the past.

B-Movie Generator: This thing comes out with some titles that are downright inspirational in their awfulness. Come on, tell me you wouldn't watch MegaZombie or The Infinite Vengeance of Santa Claus.

Spiders on Drugs: I thought I'd heard about this experiment, but this video includes the parts of the story that most nature shows don't tell you. Heh.

Doctor Who icons: A co-worker of mine found these. I think they're spiffy, but I'm not terribly fond of custom icons, as I prefer it to be obvious at a glance what programs they represent. Still, they'd go awfully well with my custom Doctor Who desktop sounds...

I Know You're All Hanging Breathlessly On Every Detail About How Well I'm (Not) Sleeping...

Well, I have discovered that sleeping pills:

a) Do, indeed, make me very, very sleepy.

b) Do not, however, magically allow me to sleep.

And, c) Make my legs twitch in a strange and annoying fashion, which, at least according to Wikipedia, is a recognized side-effect of diphenhydramine.

Point c) really kind of didn't help with point b), although I think the real problem was the usual thing about being so concerned with whether you're going to get any sleep that you can't actually get to sleep. So last night turned out to be pretty much a replay of the night before, with me being awake for hours, then finally falling asleep, but waking up a couple of times, and ultimately maybe getting six hours or so of sleep despite spending something like ten hours in bed.

I think that at least while I was asleep, I slept more solidly than last time. I think I feel slightly better-rested than yesterday, but I also have a bit of a headache. Sigh.

Also, the goddamn time change means it's now later in the day than it really ought to be, and makes it beyond unlikely that I'll be able to get to sleep early enough tonight to manage a reasonable amount of rest before work tomorrow, even if I sleep like a baby this time.

It's hard to know exactly what time it really is, though, because except for the one on my computer, all the clocks in my house are confused, including the one that automatically sets itself based on radio signals from an atomic clock in Colorado.

I Give Up. The Insomnia Wins.

Last night I took an over-the-counter allergy pill on top of my regular prescription one, which I'm sure is not a recommended practice, but I was getting desperate. And, I have to admit, I was as interested in the side effects as in the added antihistamine action, as those things usually zonk me out completely. "Well," I thought to myself, "at least I'm going to sleep tonight." And, yeah, I did fall asleep... eventually. I might have even managed six hours or so, but they were bad, broken hours, and I feel about as bad today as I did on yesterday's approximately zero hours.

A little while ago, I was lying on the sofa with my eyes closed, not feeling like I could fall sleep, but not exactly feeling awake, either, until I finally hauled myself up so I could go and buy some badly-needed groceries. While I was navigating the store parking lot on my way home, I suddenly found myself thinking, "Man, I probably should not be driving." Because it was suddenly a challenging task just to keep my attention on where I was going. This... is slightly scary.

While I was there, though, I bought some sleeping pills. This is a major admission for me. Twelve years of shift work, with all its attendant sleeping problems, and I've never taken a sleeping pill in my life. Partly this is out of a sort of macho stubbornness: I can handle my own sleeping patterns! I don't need to depend on drugs to perform a perfectly natural function! And partly it's because I'm kind of suspicious of the things, being deeply convinced that natural sleep is always better than drugged sleep. But, man, drugged sleep must be better than no sleep.

I think I've had an adequate night's sleep once in the last two weeks, and, wow, the feeling of euphoric well-being I had that day, just from no longer being in a zombified stupor, was amazing. I wouldn't object to feeling that again, but mainly I just want to regain enough mental and physical energy so that I can do all the damned things I'm supposed to be doing, rather than finding it a major feat just to buy groceries. Wish me luck.

It's Going To Be A Loooong Day...

Oh, I see. This is the point where I go from "not getting enough sleep," to, apparently, "not getting any sleep."

I would like to trade in for my shiny new robot body now, thanks.

Keeping Current

Current clothes: I'm wearing a towel, because I just got out of the shower, and if I go and get dressed I'll no longer have an excuse not to go outside and bring in the laundry and stuff.

Current mood: Tired. I thought maybe it could be the decongestants that were making me have trouble falling asleep lately, even though they usually don't affect me that way, so I skipped taking one last night. I don't know that I got to sleep much faster, but, naturally, I woke up far too early with my nose stuffed. This has made me grumpy.

Current music: Most recently listened to: Dandys Rule OK? by the Dandy Warhols.

Current annoyance: Allergies and lack of sleep. Which are not entirely independent things.

Current thing: Re-cataloging my library, of course. I've now started on the paperbacks, and may never be heard from again.

Current desktop picture: This picture of Comet McNaught over New Zealand.

Current song in head: "She's Actual Size" by They Might Be Giants. I have no idea why.

Current book: A volume called Lord Peter and Harriet: Part I, featuring the novels Strong Poison and Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers. I'm a little unhappy with this, actually, because the "Part I" on the cover led me to believe these would be the first couple of books in the Lord Peter Wimsey series, but they're most definitely not; they're apparently just the first ones to feature this Harriet person. I don't much like starting series in the middle, even things like detective series, where the plots at least tend to be very self-contained. Starting this one was a bit like walking into a party where you don't know anybody and standing around waiting fruitlessly to be introduced, but about 100 pages into Strong Poison, I find it's growing on me. The mystery's fairly interesting, and the main character seems like a very appealing person, although I'm a little hampered by the fact that he talks mostly in literary and cultural allusions that I'm sure would make much more sense to me if I lived in 1930s Britain. I think I'm starting to understand how John Crichton's shipmates must feel...

Current DVD in player: The last disc of Stargate SG-1, season 2. I was hoping to have finished with that by now, but there keeps being stuff on television that I actually want to watch instead, a fact which constantly surprises me.

Current refreshment: A nice, hot shower, although the comfort of that is rapidly giving way to the discomfort of a damp, cold towel. I guess I'll have to get dressed soon.

Current worry: After months of working evenings, I'm finally back on the morning shift next week, for my first official stint at my new, combined duties. Given that even when I was sleeping well, I wasn't going to bed until about 3:00 AM, and that I'm now going to have to start getting up before 7:00, I'm more than a little worried about becoming even more of a walking zombie than I already am. And the time change is so not going to help.

Current thought: I'm gonna get up. Any minute now, I'm gonna get up.

The Person Who Dies With The Most Books Wins, Right?

After a week of effort -- helped along by the fact that I haven't been sleeping at all well lately and haven't been up to much in the way of more challenging or intellectual endeavors -- I now have 1,154 books cataloged on LibraryThing. Which is, erm, considerably less than half, I think, given that at some point I decided I was going to be completist about this and put in, essentially, every damned book in my house.

And, man, I have a lot of books. You'd think I'd have remembered this fact from the last time I had to pack them up and move them all, but I'm discovering it all over again. I have a lot of books. Good books, bad books, obscure books, popular books... I have books on subjects I'm not even interested in, and books on subjects I find myself being interested in all over again just by pulling the books off the shelves. And I haven't even gotten to the ones I haven't read yet, and which I've never before cataloged anywhere. That should be an enlightening endeavor.

On the admittedly slim and unlikely chance that you're finding all this stuff about indexing my library as fascinating as I am, I've added a little widget from LibraryThing to the sidebar of the blog, showing the most recent things I've added. (Scroll down past the links. It's there.) As you can see, I'm currently in the process of adding the "humor" section... Mainly because I can't quite bring myself to start on the daunting roomful of paperbacks. Eep.

This Sounds Disturbingly Possible.

You'll die from an Unlikely Illness (like the plague).

You will unfortunately succumb to a random and unlikely disease. Only to find out after death that eating more broccoli would have cured you.

'How will you die?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Hey, It Shouldn't Take More Than A Month...

Some while ago, I remember talking to Fred Coppersmith about LibraryThing, which is an online book-cataloging tool that lets you organize your library, compare it with other people's, get recommendations based on it, and all sorts of other stuff. And I remember saying that I thought it was a nifty idea, but that there was no way I'd use it myself, simply because it'd be far too much of a chore to input everything in my book collection. But yesterday I got bored and started checking it out a little more, and man, it really was way nifty. And I thought, well, maybe I could just use it to keep track of, say, the books I read this year. So I signed up for an account and played with it a bit more, and, man, there were even more nifty things to be found after that.

So, um... Well, so far I've added everything on the bookcase nearest my computer desk (hardback fiction A-Da). It turns out that it holds 132 books, which I suppose is an interesting fact. Only ~2,050 more to go! Assuming that I don't also feed in the Infamous To-Read Pile as well, that is. Um... Eep.

Truth is, though, this book-cataloging thing turns out to be fun. It's actually very easy to add stuff, and taking books down of the shelves to interrogate them about their vital statistics gives me an excuse to handle them. Hey, some of those volumes have been neglected for a long time, and deserve at least a little attention. And pulling some of those books off the shelves is a little like visiting old friends. Very dusty old friends.

Anyway, the stuff I've entered so far can be found here. I apologize, by the way, for inflicting yet another copy of The Da Vinci Code onto a site already grossly overburdened with them. I have no excuse, really. And to the other 16 people out of the ~155,000 on LibraryThing who, like me, own a copy of Paul Darrow's Avon: A Terrible Aspect, my heart goes out to each and every one of you.

I Have Gone Round The Bend Far Enough That I've Started Talking To TV Shows

Oh, Heroes, how very glad I am that I stuck with you. Who knew you were going to get this good?

And I was right, you are totally making Lost look bad, in terms of the, y'know, actual plot progression and the general sense of the writers having a clue where they're going. Not to mention your ability to establish more characterization with one set of flashbacks than Lost has done with entire seasons' worth.

You are now totally my favorite current American TV show. Just don't go screwing it up, now, 'kay?

Hi-Ho, Random Linkage!

Random Kitten Generator: Because some days, you just need a random kitten.

A public service announcement from George Takei: Takei takes on homophobia in his own, utterly inimitable way. Hee!

Trailers for the Simpsons movie: Man, I may have to break my "no more going to theaters until asshole movie-goers become extinct" rule for this one.

Geek Test: I am so astonished by the fact that I pretty much instantly got this question right that I immediately became convinced I must be wrong. I wasn't though. I find this slightly frightening... That's pretty damned geeky even for me.

Mythbusters quotes: Because I've been on a huge Mythbusters kick for months now. Sadly, many of these are not nearly as amusing if you can't hear their delivery.

Rob Paravonian's Pachelbel Rant: I found this extremely funny, largely because Pachelbel's canon in D is one of the few classical pieces I really love, and because I have noticed that it seems to be everywhere. Actual musicians are likely to find it even funnier.

Next Week: Complete Lyrics To "You All Everybody" Revealed!

Speaking of TV shows that don't deliver answers as promised by their marketing, I think this the ads and previews for the most recent Lost should have said, "This week, we spend an entire hour answering one question nobody actually gives a rat's ass about."

Honestly, is a little truth in advertising too much to ask?

OK, Possibly I'm A Little Sick.

Note to self: "I feel much better today" should really not be followed immediately by "therefore I will go and do lots of housework," or you are likely to feel the sudden need to lie down halfway through the vacuuming.

Sigh. Possibly I really just need food, considering that I haven't eaten anything yet today.

Who Needs Sleep? Me, Apparently.

I feel much better today. Still kind of stuffy, but far less craptastic. I think it's having had a full night's sleep that makes the entire difference. Which made me think, man, this must be another sign that I'm getting older, this inability to deal with not getting enough rest. But then I remembered that, honestly, I've never functioned well on too little sleep. Which is kind of a comforting thought, oddly.

Waaaah.

Ugh. Woke up this morning -- well, not technically "morning" as the sun wasn't even up yet -- after about three hours of sleep, with a head full of snot. Took a decongestant, which dried me out not quite enough to get back to sleep, but just enough for my bad eye to once again do that thing where my cornea tries to stick to my eyelid.

The eye doesn't hurt so much now, and I can mostly breathe OK, but I still feel like warmed-over crap. And I just had such a nice, happy three-day weekend, too.

I may just give up and call in sick this afternoon. Certainly at the moment I am kind of... minimally functional. Sigh.

My Heroes

So, the ads for next week's Heroes promise that we'll finally get answers to some of the show's mysteries. Rather surprisingly, given that pretty much every time any show's promised me that it's turned out to be a big, honkin' lie[*], I find I totally believe them. Unlike, say, Lost, which I'm still enjoying, but which tends to pile mystery on top of mystery without ever making anything any clearer, Heroes is doing a very nice job of feeding us genuinely relevant information as we go along, and slowly bringing things together in a way that feels like it's building to an actual, sensible conclusion, however far down the line that may be.

I doubt, however, that they will in fact give us the answer to the one, burning question that I have, namely: how is it possible that Hiro Nakamura gets even cuter with every passing episode? Forget stopping time, that's got to break the laws of physics somehow.


[*] Not that I'm still bitter about the final episode of Quantum Leap or anything. Much.

I Don't Have A Problem With The Result, But That Picture Kind Of Disturbs Me.

Aww, I Wanted to Be Hiro. But At Least I'm Still Cute.

Micah Sanders You scored 66 Idealism, 25 Nonconformity, 54 Nerdiness

Can we play Scrabble tonight? Congratulations, you're Micah Sanders! You're good-natured, intelligent, perceptive, and naturally inclined toward technology. You're also quite innocent and loving. You've got a fondness for computers and Scrabble. Your best quality: You're extremely perceptive Your worst quality: You can be a little demanding at times

Link: The Heroes Personality Test written by freedomdegrees on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

(I've decided to start removing the "how you compared to other people your age and gender" thingies from this OKCupid tests, by the way. They seem to be broken anyway, or else nobody my age and gender ever takes them, because they always say 99% for everything.)

That's It. Nobody Is Allowed To Make Any More Movies, Film Any More TV Shows, Or Write Any More Books Until I'm Caught Up.

It appears that I now have so many DVDs on my Netflix queue that it will no longer allow me to add any more.

Sigh.

Just In Case There Was Any Confusion

Dear world,

I wish it to be known that I am not wearing a red sweater in honor of Valentine's Day. I am wearing it because I want to get through enough bright-colored clothes to make up a full load of laundry.

Non-mushily yours,
Me

Song Inside My Head

I've been watching Heroes and enjoying it a lot, but there's one thing about it that is driving me absolutely crazy. Every time Christopher Eccleston's character comes on the screen, or even any time I think about him, I get Freddie Mercury singing in my head:

I'm the invisible man
I'm the invisible man
Incredible how you can
See right through me!

Stupid Queen's Greatest Hits album.

And while watching the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica, which features a character called Dr. Roberts, I kept finding it nearly impossible to pay attention because of the immensely distracting Beatles performance inside my brain:

You're a new and better man,
He helps you to understand,
He does everything he can: Dr. Robert(s)

I really, really wish I knew how to get that sort of thing to shut off.


(Note: I still haven't seen Monday's episode of Heroes, by the way, so no spoilers, please!)

Also, A Haiku

Haiku2 for maximumverbosit
matter entirely still i'll be interested to see what he was
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

I'm sure that's actually very profound and philosophical, somehow.

Gods? We Don't Need No Stinking Gods!

The Freethinker Way
Take Which Pantheon is Best for you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

Phaa! You need no stinking gods! You are an Atheist, a Freethinker, a Disbeliever, an Agnostic you have tossed out all the old ghosts & boogiemen and are set to march boldly into the future. Unless of course you are a stone fundamentalist Debunker and are spending most of your time bashing those not on THE way, but hey, to each their own.

Right Here, Right Now

Yeah, I'm several days later with this regular meme-thing than I usually am. I told you that time was getting away from me lately. But here we go:

Current clothes: Blue pajama bottoms with little pictures of sheep on 'em. Extra-large black pocket t-shirt. Dinosaur slippers. I'll get dressed for real later.

Current mood: Good. This last week has been pretty stressful, for a number of really stupid reasons, so yesterday was my designated day to catch up with all the stuff I was behind on, and then just quietly unwind. It worked very well: I now have clean clothes and groceries, and I feel much more relaxed.

Current music: Most recently, yet more randomly-generated playlists. I think the iPod was leaning heavily towards Gordon Lightfoot and Rush, which I suppose is an interesting combination. Last album played was Carbon Leaf's Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat, or at least part of it.

Current annoyance: I don't know whether it's just my allergies, or whether I actually have a cold, but either way, there is snot, especially when I wake up in the morning. I do not like it.

Current thing: Getting all stressed out about random stupid stuff. Although hopefully yesterday hit the reset button on that one.

Current desktop picture: A Cyberman smashing through my monitor again.

Current song in head: Leonard Cohen's "Democracy."

Current book: Camera Obscura by Lloyd Rose. This is the last of the Eighth Doctor books before I start hitting gaps in what I can find. Unless amazon.co.uk actually comes through with Time Zero for me, that is, but I'm not holding my breath. I don't suppose anybody reading this knows where I can find a reasonably-priced copy of that anywhere? I don't even care what kind of shape it's in, as long as it has all the pages. I just want to read the damned thing.

Current DVD in player: Nothing at the moment: I've opted for catching up on the backlog of stuff on the TiVo instead lately. Most recent disk in the player was season one of Coupling, a British comedy series that was recommended to me by a couple of people. It's pretty funny, I guess, but it has much, much more of an American sitcom sensibility than a British one, which I found kind of disappointing. I don't much like American-style sitcoms, in general, and the exceptions are usually the more intellectual ones, with strong, quirky characters. Think, say, Frasier. And Coupling... is really not Frasier. It's pretty much nothing but a series of sex jokes, and six episodes in, I still know absolutely nothing about these characters that doesn't directly involve their sex lives. It's well-done if you like that sort of thing, and I'm not sorry I gave it a try, but I probably won't bother with future seasons. Next up on DVD is season two of Stargate SG-1, a series which, based on what I've seen so far, is way more entertaining than it has any legitimate right to be.

Current refreshment: My morning coffee. Hey, I work late. It's still morning to me. *slurps coffee* Damn it, it's getting cold. *wanders off to kitchen briefly in search of more, warmer coffee*

Current worry: I had tons of them last week, but I've forgotten most of them now. Told ya I had a successful Saturday!

Current thought: Mmmmm, coffee.... *slurp*

The Random Links Strike Back

Burning a Candle at Both Ends: What happens when you burn a candle at both ends? Visual proof that physics is really cool.

Handmade Star Wars: The Death Star battle, re-enacted by, uh, hands.

The Face Transformer: Upload a picture of your (or someone else's) face, and see it rendered into a variety of styles.

KOMPSAT-2 image of VLA telescope: Terrific picture of the VLA taken from space.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: A 50-minute interview with Richard Feynman, filmed, I think, in 1981. Illustrates beautifully just why this guy is one of my personal all-time heroes.

My First Computer Had 64K Of RAM And Stored Its Data On A Tape Recorder.

So, today I bought a 1 GB USB flash drive for $14.49. One gigabyte of data, in my pocket, for less than fifteen bucks.

Damn, but living in the 21st century is cool.

The Time Warp Again

How the hell is it the fifth of February already? Where is the time going lately, and how do I get there so I can take some of it back?

Not Updating For Four Days Was My Fault. The Fifth Day Wasn't.

OK, that last entry was actually meant to be posted ages and ages ago, but I made the mistake, when I went to update the blog, of checking to see whether perhaps Blogger actually meant it this time when they said they were ready for me to switch over to the new version. Surprisingly enough, they said they were, so I figured, hey, cool, I've got a little while before work, I can get that set up, make my post, play around with it a bit, see how it is.

So I told 'em to go ahead and was informed that it would probably take a few minutes, maybe a little longer if I had a large blog. A few minutes later I was told to be patient, it was still going, it'd be just a little while longer. Nearly six hours later, long after I'd already left for work, I got the notice that it was finally finished. Way to start me off on the right foot, Blogger. Sigh.

Anyway, everything looks slightly different now, which is throwing me off a bit, but I think the improvements noticeable so far may actually be improvements. Posting does seem to be a bit more convenient, at least, and they've adopted something very much like gmail's spellchecker interface, which I was practically begging them to do a year or so ago. So, yay for that, at least!

And I can tag posts with labels now, as you may notice at the bottom of this entry and the last one. That might be useful, somehow. (But, no, I'm not going to go back and retroactively tag the 2,000+ earlier posts. I'm not that obsessive.)

Do let me know if anything suddenly looks broken or weird. (In bad new ways, that is, as opposed to my usual weirdness.) I may do some experimenting with the layout, etc. at some point in the future, but that's certainly not happening tonight. Not after I had to wait six hours to get my stupid blog back.

But The Fate Of The Universe May Be At Stake!

I'm trying to convince myself that the fact that I'm having trouble finding some of the BBC Eighth Doctor books, now that I'm within a dozen or so books of finishing the series, does not, in fact, actually constitute an emergency. I'm having a little trouble doing it, though.

Sometimes I worry a little bit about my sense of priorities.

And Keep Those Damned Kids Off My Lawn!

It's official. I am well into the process of turning into a crotchety old woman. Today, I sent a snarky e-mail to the company that makes my usual brand of shampoo complaining about the really annoying caps they've just switched to on their bottles.

I feel like Grampa Simpson.

It's 12:24 AM, And I'm About Ready For Some Dinner.

At work, we're currently in the process of combining what were previously two separate departments into one, and I've been doing a lot of cross-training over the past few weeks. While that's going on, we've pretty much abandoned the regular shift rotation, and I've mostly been coming in and working in the evenings. It's my favorite shift, when I'm in one of my periods of having no social life (which, frankly, I usually am), as it requires me neither to get up at the crack of dawn nor to stay up until the crack of dawn.

The problem, though, is that it allows me to give in to my natural inclination to drift my hours later and later... and later. For a while there, I was working until midnight, going to bed around 2:00-ish, and sleeping until 10:00 or 10:30, and that was fine. Plenty of time to get stuff done before work, and a nice couple of hours to relax afterward. By this point, though, I'm lucky if I'm asleep by 3:30 and am opening my well-rested eyes sometime around noon... Which is just late enough that I start to feel rushed instead of relaxed before work.

I think something down in my brainstem has finally caught on to the fact that things have changed and is sitting there going, "Hey, wait. Aren't we supposed to be on the night shift by now? I'm sure we're supposed to be on the night shift. Here, let's go ahead and prepare for that, OK? It's gotta happen soon..."

I Feel Bad. But Also Amused.

In case you've ever happened to wonder how to go about getting the most pitiful possible mewing sound out of a cat, I have just discovered the answer: accidentally step on his tail, then, when you go to pet him in apology, zap him with a big ol' static-electric shock.

Poor critter's still looking at me with this interesting expression of wary confusion.

Grand Cavalcade of Random Links

I got a bunch of 'em this time. With comments!

The Butcher Block: A podcast for fans of Jim Butcher's books. I haven't had the chance to listen to it yet, but it looks like the most recent edition has some commentary on the Dresden Files TV series and its differences from the books, as well as a cut from a forthcoming audiobook version of one of the Dresden novels.

Fly Your Name to Mars: The Planetary Society is putting together a DVD that will fly on the Phoenix Mars probe, featuring a collection of Mars-themed literature and art, as well as the names of all its members and anyone else who cares to submit one. Just give them your name by February first, then sit back and wait for the future Mars colonists to find the disc and read it.

Mr. Deity: Short, humorous videos featuring Mr. Deity, the all-powerful, sort-of-all-knowing creator of the universe. Likely to offend some and amuse others. Or possibly both at once.

The Pulling Report: A 1990 report thoroughly debunking the idea -- then taken with disturbing seriousness by the US justice system -- that a plague of satan-worshipping Dungeons & Dragons players was sweeping the nation, causing teen suicides and other mayhem. Not exactly current events, but as a gamer, I found it interesting reading. Best quote: "If games were anything more than a form of entertainment, everyone who ever won a game of Monopoly would magically become a Donald Trump and good Risk players would have taken over the world."

Star Trek: The Next Generation Recaps: Wil Wheaton recaps old TNG episodes with a near-perfect balance of affection, insight, snark, and humor. He provides a few insider tidbits, which are interesting, but mostly he comes across much like any other fan... albeit more articulate than most. Definitely a Trekkie must-read.

Livermore's Centennial Light: There's a light bulb in a fire station in California which has been burning continuously for 106 years. I saw this thing on Mythbusters, and somehow found myself bizarrely fascinated with it. Fortunately, there's a 24-hour webcam!

What I Did Over Christmas Vacation: What they did was to re-create the movie version of the Battle of Helm's Deep. Out of candy. Man, it's nice to know there are people out there even nerdier than I am.

It Isn't Ironic, I Don't Think

I'm currently reading George Carlin's Brain Droppings (or, more accurately, an omnibus collection of his books, including that one). Carlin's a pretty funny guy even when I don't agree with him, but, man, he's just earned my undying love and loyalty for this succinct, well-formulated explication of the correct definition of "irony." I am quoting it here in its entirety because I think it is extremely important for every English speaker to understand this, in order to stop annoying me. (Yes, Alanis, I am looking at you.)

Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. Irony is "a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result." For instance:

If a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck, he is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony.

If a Kurd, after surviving a bloody battle with Saddam Hussein's army and a long, difficult escape through the mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large.

Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley's son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley's son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum's son, that will be precisely ironic.

Photo-Blogging, Continued

OK, for anybody who wanted to see where I work, this is the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Array Operations Center, in Socorro:



And here's the inside of our (newly and rather spiffily re-designed) control room. This is the correlator side, where I traditionally do my thing:



And here's the array side, where I am currently learning how to babysit actual antennas, rather than just discs of previously-recorded data:



The best thing about this arrangement is that there is no longer a big divider between me and the windows. Actual natural sunlight, hooray!

Elf, Vulcan... It's All In The Pointy Ears.

What type of Fae are you?

I Watch TV! And Then Post About It! How Exciting Is That?

I did, by the way, also get around to watching the -- What are we calling it, mid-season premiere? That sounds pretty dumb -- of Battlestar Galactica. But, y'know, while I'm definitely still interested in that show enough to keep watching it, I'm nowhere near interested enough to get all excited and want to blog about it. I have to admit, at this point my main thought about that show is that I want to see more of Cavil. Partly because he's an interestingly-written character. Partly because, dude, Dean Stockwell. And partly because he has good taste in hats. In fact, I was actually rather glad when [spoiler for last night's episode removed], because it let me stop staring covetously at Cavil's hat, which was really rather distracting.

Also, I think Cavil should have scenes with Doc Cottle. Yeah, other people may watch that show for the hot guys'n'chicks, but I would totally tune in for the Battlestar Galactica: Snarky Old Guys spinoff.

A Brief Observation On Looking Out The Window For The First Time This Morning

Wow, we're getting a lot of snow this year.

And What Is It With Magicians Named "Harry," Anyway?

I've been very much enjoying Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series of books (despite the fact that a cat tried to maim me with a collection of them once). So far, I've made it up through book 7, which I read about a month ago. I've thought pretty much from the beginning that they'd translate very well into movies, and when I heard they were actually going to be turned into a TV series, I figured, hey, that'll work, too; the premise -- basically a "wizard detective" sort of thing -- has plenty of scope to sustain a weekly format. So I was fairly optimistic about what they might do with it, and rather curious to see how it would come out.

Well, I've just finished watching the series premiere, and I'm not sure I can form a coherent opinion, because almost all I could think about, the entire way through, was how incredibly weird it is to see something so familiar done so... so... so same-but-different. The concept is exactly the same. The main character looks and acts pretty close to the one from the books, and appears to have very nearly the same backstory. The whole feel of the show seems about right. As such things go, I'd say it's actually a pretty faithful adaptation, but that fact just serves to make the differences stand out in an almost surreal kind of way. I found it disturbingly hard to concentrate on the story, because I kept going: "Wait, who is this chick?" and "OMG, is that Bob?! He's totally different! But cool! But different!" and "Wait, Harry doesn't drive a Jeep!" and "No, no, no, Murphy's supposed to be blonde!" They're not bad changes, necessarily -- except maybe for the Jeep thing, which I can't help thinking the "real" Harry Dresden would object to -- but they do have this odd double-vision effect on me. I really hope that'll go away after another episode or two, because I think I could like this show if my hindbrain will just shut up about the books...

More Piccies!

OK, here we go... For those who wanted to see a picture of my house, here it is:



And, since a couple of people seemed interested in a more general view of what kind of place I live in, well, here's a couple of (highly uninspired) views down Socorro's main street:




And a better view of the mountain than the one I posted yesterday:



My sister wanted to see my infamous (and hideously misnamed) To-Read Pile... This was actually impossible to get in one shot, so here are two non-overlapping pictures. Be afraid!




And, lastly, here's what I had for lunch: a tuna sandwich, half a dill pickle, baby carrots, some reduced-fat potato chips, and a mug of tea. Which I ate at about 3 PM, because I am pretty much a time zone unto myself.



Exciting stuff, huh? And there will be more to come, eventually...

Welcome To My World...

OK, I've gotten a few picture requests already, both in the blog comments and elsewhere, so here's some pictures to start with. Photos of anything outside will have to wait until daylight, though, and the person who wanted to see where I work will have to wait until I go back in on Monday (or, more realistically, until I get around to downloading and posting the picture on Tuesday).

Actually, I did take this one out my front door earlier today, for those who are interested in general pictures of where I live. I was trying to get a nice shot of the snow-dusted mountain, but I didn't think it came out very well. Still, here:



And here's a shot of my computer desk. (I resisted the urge to tidy it up before taking the picture.):



Here's my first attempt to use the self-timer to create a self-portrait. It's not a very good attempt... I think I somehow managed to decrease the resolution by accident, and I have no idea why my face looks that red. But here ya go, dad:



And, for the freak who asked, possibly just to see if I'd do it, my toothbrush:



(And, d'oh, my internet's being a little flaky, and when I try to upload these to Blogger, it keeps timing out. Let's see if I can ftp 'em to my own webspace and link to 'em from there... Yay! I can!)

I Won't Guarantee They'll Be Worth A Thousand Words, Though.

OK, I still haven't had the chance to play around with the new digital camera very much, so I figured I'd call on you, my faithful readers, to help me out. I vaguely recall this going around as a meme a while back, but of course I wasn't exactly equipped to do it then. So:

Tell me one thing that you'd like me to take a picture of, and I'll see about doing so and posting the result. Note that I reserve the right to veto anything too personal or too inconvenient, and also to arbitrarily decide that I've gotten bored and will stop taking requests. Leave a comment here with your suggestion, or send me an e-mail, or contact me any other way you might happen to know of to contact me, as long as it doesn't involve knocking on my door or making my phone ring before about noon.

Even The Devil Can Quote Scripture.

You know the Bible 77%!

 

Wow! You are truly a student of the Bible! Some of the questions were difficult, but they didn't slow you down! You know the books, the characters, the events . . . Very impressive!

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I Growed Him Up Good!

I just took Vir into the vet's for his annual checkup and his shots. You may be interested to know that his current officially recorded weight is upwards of 16 pounds. That's more than 12 pounds heavier than when I last took him in, a year ago, and a very far cry from the days when I used to weigh him on a postage scale. It's actually pretty uncomfortable to pick him up inside the pet carrier now!

Anyway, he's all vaccinated and checks out OK. I did mention to the vet the one small concern I've had, which is that his breathing sometimes seems surprisingly loud, almost like someone with a stuffed-up nose, although he never has any snot. That's sort of always been the case, but lately I've been noticing it more, and also the very occasional wheezy or buzzy sound from him. I haven't been too worried about it, as he never seems ill or short of breath, and certainly doesn't display any diminished activity or energy levels. Which response, according the vet, is pretty much right on. He might have a touch of asthma, or allergies (which I think would be a sort of poetic justice), or scarring on his lungs from his fragile orphan-kitten days, but it's not anything that's currently a big deal. If it's asthma, there are treatments for it, but those tend to come with side effects, and if he's not actually suffering any problems, hey, why cause any? So, unless it gets worse, there's nothing to really worry about. Again, that's pretty much what I figured, but it's nice to hear it from the professional.

Now I have to make an appointment for the other two cats... Apparently they're overdue for their shots, but for some reason Vir was the only one I got a reminder about. Sigh. No rest for the cat lady...

Obligatory Random Links Post

The top ten astronomy images of 2006: One astronomer's choices for the top space pics of the year. Very cool images, with informative commentary.

Battlestar Galactica season 3 gag reel: Some extremely funny stuff on here, though I think my favorite moment was Adama telling Baltar to "eat shit and die." Because, man, you know he wants to.

Pictaps: Draw characters. Then watch them dance. It's weirdly, insanely fascinating.

This Mind Is Not Yet Rated.

Your Mind is PG-13 Rated

Your mind is definitely a little dirty. You're naughty, but not trashy. You don't shy away from a dirty joke, and you're clearly not a prude.

Do You Have a Dirty Mind?

Yeah, I'll accept that analysis. Mostly because it makes me sound good from both ends. (Of course, now that sentence looks weirdly dirty to me...)

I Want To Go And Live In My TV Set.

Current DVD-watching is season 7 of The West Wing. I've talked about that show here a bit before as I've made my way through it on DVD, and, given that I'm not a big fan of politics, it may have seemed a little odd that I've gotten so into a series that appears to be pretty far from my usual sort of fare. The truth is, though, that TWW is exactly the sort of thing you might expect me to watch, because it's absolutely, 100%, pure, undistilled, alternate-universe fantasy. And wish-fulfillment fantasy, at that. Man, I so want to live in a world where I'd have trouble deciding which presidential candidate to vote for because I think they're both good choices, instead of the same damned lesser-of-two-evils crap over and over.

Most especially, though, I want to live in a world where politicians have a clue about science and some remote shred of respect for the concept of "separation of church and state."

Gratuitous Cat Pictures

Hey, you knew they were coming!

Here's a picture of Vir, hefty adult cat that he now is:


And here's Nova, sitting on a cat tree and being very fluffy:


And Happiness, curled up into a sleeping kitty-ball:



Ah, they all look so sweet and innocent. You'd never know what little hellions they actually are.

Current Meme

Current clothes: Dark gray sweats. A white t-shirt that says "I had Great Four-Play in Las Vegas" in big letters, and "At Cinema Ride In the Forum Shops At Caesars, Las Vegas" below that in smaller ones. (They gave out free shirts if you bought a ticket for four of the 3D motion rides.) White socks. The dinosaur slippers pictured in the previous post.

Current mood: Not bad. Better once I finish doing this meme, because once it occurred to me that it was about time to do it again, the thought kept hanging around in the back of my brain bugging me until I finally sat down to type it up.

Current music: I was just watching the recent Doctor Who charity concert, which someone a work gave me a copy of on disc.

Current annoyance: I actually cooked some chicken for lunch a little while ago, and I made lima beans with it... But I forgot to turn the water down from "boil" to "simmer," and they came out tasting kind of funny, so I mostly didn't eat them. So much for trying to get some vegetables into my system.

Current thing: Learning to operate a digital camera. Also radio telescopes.

Current desktop picture: It's a picture of the Babylon 5 space station. I'd link to it, but I don't remember where I got it; I just found it on my hard drive while I was looking for something to replace the TARDIS-with-a-wreath-on-it picture I had up briefly over Christmas. I'm feeling a bit enthused on the subject of Babylon 5 at the moment, having just finished Peter David's Legions of Fire trilogy, which does an excellent job of filling in some of the gaps left by what we saw on our TV screens. (I was lucky to be able to read all of that, by the way. For some unfathomably stupid reason, the first two books in the trilogy are still in print, but the third volume is extremely rare and currently sells for about seventy bucks on ebay. Fortunately, I found a friend with a copy he was willing to lend me, after a different friend very generously bought me the first two in return for some favor I did her.)

Current song in head: The radio in my brain has been switching around rapidly between various songs I've listened to recently. Right now, it seems to be "The Noah Plan" by Peter Schilling. Fifteen minutes ago, it was "Song for Ten," from Doctor Who. Before that, it kept alternating between "Leaving to Stay" by Jonny Lang, "The Future" by Leonard Cohen, and "The Man Who Sold the World" by David Bowie. Hey, at least it's playing good music.

Current book: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson.

Current DVD in player: The disc with the aforementioned Doctor Who concert.

Current refreshment: Lemon-ginger green tea.

Current worry: I'm trying not to worry too much about anything.

Current thought: I think it's time to add the fabric softener to the wash...

Dinosaur Safari!

The new camera is now up and running, although I haven't exactly figured out any of its nuances yet. After my last post, someone suggested I should put up a picture of the dinosaur slippers. Well, your request is my command! Here they are:


I don't know how clear it is from the picture -- hey, I'm a novice with this machine -- but these slippers are startlingly realistic. Well, no, they're not realistic triceratops, or they wouldn't fit into my house, but they have this pattern and texture to them that looks remarkably like real reptile skin. It's actually a bit disconcerting to walk into a room when I've left them lying on the floor... My hindbrain tends to spend a moment shouting at me that there are strange animals in my house! The cats were kind of freaked out by them at first, too.

Anyway, there you have it! The beginning of my new digital-camera age! Be afraid...

Post-Holiday Shopping Fun

My digital camera arrived. Hooray! Haven't had the chance to play around with it yet, though.

Also, I now have a pair of slippers shaped like triceratops. Triceratopses? Anyway, I have slippers shaped like dinosaurs. This makes me quite unreasonably happy.

An Archetype I Am, Yes! Make Fun Of My Talking, You Should Not.

What Fantasy Archetype Are you?
The Weird Guy In The Hut In The Swamp You are The Weird guy In the Hut In the Swamp. In addition to talking funny, you're like Tom Bombadil (LoTR), The Lady of the Lake (Arthurian Legend), Yoda (Star Wars), The Beavers (Narnia), Old Bailey (Neverwhere), Hagrid (Harry Potter) and Adie (Wizard's First Rule). you are weird and strange. You isolated yourself from the world among your own private powers/library/artifacts. You usually have something important to teach or give the Unlikely Hero that will enable him to defeat the Totally Wicked Villain. When he comes, remember that young people are impatient and will never see the connection between their goals and crotchety old people.
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I Have A Memory Like A... What's That Thing?

Success! My old, woefully inadequate computer is now an old, slightly-less-woefully-inadequate computer! And it only took me about twelve tries to get the damned memory in there. (It's easy all the instructions say. You just line it up and push until it clicks. Well, I did that, damn it! Twelve times! It did not click! Gah.)

It's not as much of an upgrade as I'd expected, though, as I somehow had it in my brain that what was already in there was one 256MB DIMM, and instead there were two 128MB ones... Which, given that I've only got two slots, meant that one of those 128s had to come out before I could install the new 256. Meaning my memory is still pitiful (and, erm, so is my computer's). But at least it's better than it was. It seems to take somewhat less time to boot up now, and it hasn't frozen up on me yet in the 20 minutes or so I've had it running, which, sadly enough, is probably an improvement. At some point I need to replace the other 128 with a 256, and then I'll at least have as much RAM as your average laptop comes standard with these days. But it's going to have to wait until the blister I got from constantly inserting and re-inserting the damned thing heals up.

First Stupid Online Quiz of the New Year

Which Firefly Line Are You?

"The Bible is somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps." (Book, War Stories)
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Man, I totally love that line.

And, hmm... I suppose I probably ought to go and get dressed now. I can't spend all of 2007 in my bathrobe. Sadly.

So Many Books, So Few Days In A Year

OK, after much coffee and a hot shower, I'm feeling a little more awake, though I suspect this may be a temporary illusion. While it lasts, though, I will take the opportunity to present, as I usually do on January first, a list of all the books I read in the past year.

If I've counted right, 2006's total is 131 books, which seems pretty respectable to me. It's higher than 2005's count of 125, and considerably higher than the four or five years before that, when it typically fell below a hundred. I have been trying to resist the lure of the shiny, shiny internet enough to get a bit more reading done, and it seems to be working. Also, thanks to my self-imposed book-buying quota, I seem to have ended the year with 31 fewer books than I started it with, which is encouraging, even if at this rate it's going to take me something like 15 years to get the infamous To-Read Pile down to zero. (And, yes, if you do the math, that does imply that I bought or otherwise acquired an even 100 books this year. It's an addiction, I tell ya!)

I'm not sure what else to say about this list... There's a lot of Doctor Who novels on it, which probably won't surprise anybody. And the fiction-to-nonfiction ratio continues to shrink, a trend I've noticed increasingly in the last few years, and one which I don't predict is going to reverse itself any time soon.

Anyway, enough analysis. Here's the list:

2006 Books

Everybody Comes to the Nightside by Simon R. Green
Farscape Forever! edited by Glenn Yeffeth
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
The Dancer from Atlantis by Poul Anderson
Walking with Dinosaurs by Tim Haines
Doctor Who and the Hand of Fear by Terrance Dicks
The Wreck of the River of Stars by Michael Flynn
Collapse by Jared Diamond
The Year of Intelligent Tigers by Kate Orman
The Stainless Steel Rat for President by Harry Harrison
Resonance by Chris Dolley
Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
Forever Knight: These Our Revels by Anne Hathaway-Nayne
This Is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow
The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos by Terrance Dicks
The Borderlands of Science by Michael Shermer
The Other Extreme by T.J. MacGregor
So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid
Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Darwin Awards II by Wendy Northcutt
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
Justice Hall by Laurie R. King
Holy Tango of Literature by Francis Heaney
Accelerando by Charles Stross
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte
The Slow Empire by David Stone
Finding Serenity edited by Jane Espenson
The Little Country by Charles deLint
The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde
Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars by Terrance Dicks
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
The Day of Creation by J.G. Ballard
Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
The Whole Man by John Brunner
Black Seas of Infinity by H.P. Lovecraft
What If...? by Marshall Brain
Dark Progeny by Steve Emmerson
Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney
The Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison
The Hoboken Chicken Emergency by Daniel Pinkwater
The Odyssey by Homer (trans. by Robert Fagles)
Doctor Who - K-9 and Company by Terrance Dudley
John Glenn: A Memoir by John Glenn & Nick Taylor
Mammoth by John Varley
The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
New Rules by Bill Maher
To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Kathryn M. Drennan
Bad Trip by Joel Miller
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
The City of the Dead by Lloyd Rose
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (trans. by James E. Falen)
Raising Hell in the Nightside by Simon R. Green
102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer & Kevin Flynn
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGeuin
Grimm Reality by Simon Bucher-Jones & Kelly Hale
Bound by Law? by Keith Aok, James Boyle & Jennifer Jenkins
Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster by Bobby Henderson
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
The Ig Nobel Prizes by Marc Abrahams
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
Monkeyluv by Robert M. Sapolsky
Mortal Engines by Stanislaw Lem
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street by Lawrence Miles
The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher
Coyote by Allen Steele
Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons by Terrance Dicks
Wizard by Trade by Jim Butcher
Abducted by Susan A. Clancy
Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Paul Magrs
The Difference Engine by Doron Swade
The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Flying Sorcerers by David Gerrold & Larry Niven
In the Theater of Consciousness by Bernard J. Baars
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
Anonymous Lawyer by Jeremy Blachman
Hope by Mark Clapham
Rumspringa by Tom Shachtman
Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Lieutenant Hornblower by C.S. Forester
Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade
Strange New Worlds III edited by Dean Wesley Smith
Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams
Mathematics and Humor by John Allen Paulos
Black Hole by Charles Burns
Four Frontiers by Robert A. Heinlein
Small Things Considered by Henry Petroski
Anachrophobia by Jonathan Morris
Metallic Love by Tanith Lee
Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins
Song in the Dark by P.N. Elrod
Dave Barry's Money Secrets by Dave Barry
Doctor Who and the Armageddon Factor by Terrance Dicks
The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde
Us and Them by David Berreby
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
Little Gods by Timm Pratt
Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent
Trading Futures by Lance Parkin
Fear: A Cultural History by Joanna Bourke
Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy by Barbara Paul
The End by Lemony Snicket
Mina: The Dracula Story Continues by Marie Kiraly
The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig
Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow
Red Lightning by John Varley
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Breaking the Spell by Daniel C. Dennett
The Book of the Still by Paul Ebbs
Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
Doctor Who - Vengeance on Varos by Philip Martin
The Book of Jhereg by Steven Brust
The Family That Couldn't Sleep by D.T. Max
Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick
In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
Snow White and the Seven Samurai by Tom Holt
Adverbs by Daniel Handler
The Stories of English by David Crystal
The Crooked World by Steve Lyons
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
Wizard at Large by Jim Butcher
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman
Ingathering by Zenna Henderson

First Post of New Year. (Am Too Groggy To Think Of Cleverer Title, Sorry.)

Had a good New Year's Eve. Lots of fun. Am now feeling extremely bleary, partly because of a resurgence the cold I thought I was fighting off, mostly because I was up far too late and awake far too early. (Note to my dear friends, whom I love, honestly: I am delighted if you want to call me and wish me a happy New Year, but I am not awake at 9:30 normally, let alone when I've been out until 4:00.)

Will post my traditional year-end book list when I'm more awake. For now, must have more coffee.

Happy 2007 to all!