Monthly Archives: July 2004

Well, I have a minute or two to post, so I will. I’m back home in NJ now, and will be leaving in just a few short minutes for Baltimore….

Yes, Ithaca->NJ->Baltimore ~= 3.5+4.5 hours =8 hours > Ithaca->Baltimore ~= 5.5 hours………. but the other way we wouldn’t have gotten to ride partway there with Mike, and I wouldn’t have gotten to see my dad. So there.

Anyway, so, yeah. Otakon soon, so yay.

Oh, I saw I, Robot Wednesday night with Beth. In short, it’s a much better movie than I thought it would be, possibly even better than the boook in some ways. Sure, it seems more like something by Phillip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) than Asimov (I, Robot [and other sordid tales]), but that’s not exactly a bad thing. Somethings just make for better movies is all…. Anyway, I don’t have too much time right now, but yeah- Calvin wasn’t bitchy enough, and Cons do give you super powers (I have some, afterall, so they must). Surprisingly, even Beth liked the movie- so much so, in fact, that she almost immediately borrowed the book from me.

…I’d defenestrate it. My car, that is. In addition to the afore-mentioned sprung spring (~$400 /fix), the transimission is snafud. The mechanic I took it to for the brakes ($235, btw) doesn’t do transmissions, so I can’t get a full diagnosis- I just know that it is going to cost a non-trivial sum of money.

There’s no question about the brakes- I have to get them done now. But I’m holding off on the suspension and transmission for now. I figure that together those may cost me on the order of $1000 (low estimate), and as my car is only worth about $2000 on the books, I don’t really know what to do about this.

Sigh. I was thinking about getting a new car as recently as last week, but wasn’t planning on doing it for another 6 months or so- I really need to pay off my credit card fully before seriously considering something like that (I am paying more in credit card payments now than I would pay for almost any car payments). But now I just don’t know whether my car will last that long.

If only mass transit were good enough to not need a personal car to make even a trivial journey….

If only we were amongst mechanic friends…. or rich persons….

*cough* Sorry about that. I got carried away.

Now, so this post has something besides angsting, I leave you with a bit of hope for the future:

Mood: worried
Music: The Cranberries – Dreams

I took my car to the shop this morning to get the brakes and transmission fluid replaced. I asked about the cost of replacing the broken spring, but that will be about $400, so I’m holding off on that until at least next month (what’s the worst that can happen with a busted spring, anyway [duh, duh, duh...]). However, this means thst my car won’t be ready for the rest of the week, so Chris will have to put more miles on his car for the trip to Otakon (via NJ) this weekend :)

In other news, GameFly is mondo cool. Yesterday I got Spider-man 2 (which is surprisingly good fun) and Xenosaga (which I have not yet played). I’m really surprised just how much fun web-slinging in Spider-man 2 is (I haven’t tried it in Xenosaga yet ^^ ). In addition, the game has a good transition from easy (while you’re learning) to progressively more difficult (while you’re suddenly getting your arse kicked), and snarky voice talent by none other than Bruce Campbell (the coolest actor to ever weild a boom stick).

Now I suddenly find myself having too much stuff to take my mind off of the drudgery of day-to-day existence- the above-mentioned rented games, NetFlix rented Berserk disks (which I haven’t watched any of yet- though I should before Otakon), ‘acquired’ Dr. Who episodes on my computer, Spirited Away (which I have seen before but recently purchased), games I’ve owned for quite some time but haven’t gotten around to completing yet (among these: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Sword of Mana, Rebel Assault, Zelda: Four Swords, and at least two Monkey Island games), a largeish pile of ‘Essential Spider-man’ (4 books and 90+ backissues), and my long-standing (and ever-growing) book queue which contains too many things to list at the moment.

Oh, and I also want to watch I, Robot and get some laundry done tonight, so that tomorrow Chris and I can leave Ithaca promptly after work.

Looks like I need to prioritize. Needless to say, all of these things are more important at the moment than any (heh) ‘life issues’- including work, car, and personal health and well-being.

o-b-w is fixed, finally. Some of the reactions by the people in the community who unexpectedly got served Chris‘ site for the past few days are kind of amusing. No happicow is not some 1337 kr4xX0r, in reality he is my mild-mannered roommate and best friend. He had no idea this was happening at the time (he didn’t even notice that it actually generated real live traffic to his website). It’s probably for the best he didn’t know, because if he did he would have just made an animated cow eating Magus or something, to further scare the children. :)

In less humorous news, I got a nifty new mini-messenger bag (of über-1337ness), much larger and cooler than my old satchel (formerly of über-1337ness). It is more than large enough to lug about all my gadgets and shite (slightly too small for the laptop, but that’s fine) while still being small enough to not be a burden. Joy.

But my car (while well-oiled) has sprung a spring, as more of the parts of it that shouldn’t brake do, and the parts that should don’t (well, they’re getting there, anyway). Unjoy.

And my Spider-man comics which should have come via UPS are delayed another day, while I have to spend my time troubleshooting PERL5LIB snafus. Doubleplus-Unjoy.

In more interesting news, the time of Otakon is nigh at hand. I will be there (I’ve already scheduled my personal day for Friday, even). If any other anime geeks will be there, drop me a line, and we’ll get together and watch hentai or something.

Today Chris and I went to hang out in his boat. We docked over at the BistroQ and met Beth and ctl for dinner, then all four of use hung out in the boat some more.

I have lots of pictures.

Well, I liked Napoleon Dynamite, but Chris thought it was a “movie about a family of slow people” (not to mention a stupid and mostly boring movie besides), and Beth didn’t even see it but she thought the trailer looked really stupid.

Bah.

I say it’s a movie about a geek in the old (but not old enough to be biting the head off of a chicken) sense of the word- before the Internet came about and geeks started being “cool”. Sure, it’s exaggerated but it’s still entertaining. Sure, there’s no plot, but not everything calls for a plot.

I dunno, maybe I liked it because when I was in 7th grade I was the same type of geek- drawing pictures of fantasy/video game creatures all day, hated and mocked by the popular kids, and generally getting by doing my own thing and not giving a damn about what the rest of the world thought (for the most part, anyway). If you don’t believe me, just ask Peter- he was there, and he probably still has my yearbook picture to prove just how big a dork I was.

The fact that Chris seriously thinks the main character is retarded hurts for some reason, I don’t really know why. Maybe because part of me feels like I was just as bad as (or even worse than) him back in “the day”. Sure, being a mouth-breather makes you look dumb, but then again having the occasional lazy eye doesn’t make you look particularly intelligent either. Sure, I never electrocuted my crotch, but I did format my dad’s harddrive once by mistake. Afterall, this is supposed to be an über-geek caricature, not a real person.

Whatever the case, while I’ll admit this wasn’t the best movie ever (even though some reviews make it out to be), it WAS enjoyable. And I really don’t give a damn if anyone disagrees with me :)

Meesa has a new camera! Sadly enough, Beth blogged this before I did. I don’t have any pictures up yet, but suffice to say this camera is über-cool, and has more features than I could ever fully utilize. Of course, it has the main ones I wanted in a new camera: Compact Flash, compact size, optical zoom, relatively quick shots, and high picture quality. Here’s some more info.

In other news, I got my first Amazing Spiderman comic (which I subscribed to a few weeks back) in the mail yesterday :)

Oh, and I’m going to see Napoleon Dynamite tonight, too.

I’m just raking in geek points here, aren’t I?

Well, I would be anyway, if I could only hurry up and get o-b-w fixed….

Stolen from Marcia Barrett Nice via LinuxChix Live:

Well, I went out to lunch and to get a haircut, and out of nowhere I got attacked by a wasp. Ouch. Even nature is against me today :)

Well, at least I finally got my hair cut, and I figured out what’s up with the whole dental plan thing (it’s there, but doesn’t kick in until September, for whatever reason). Now I just have to worry about upgrading and handful of Redhat 7.2 computers to a point of being at least slightly secure. Which looks like it will be well-nigh impossible, at least without breaking everything currently on said systems…..

My body is rebelling against my tyrannical rule (I’m getting old and über-achy), my Cornell benefits (retirement and dental) are non-existant because I didn’t know what I had to do to set them up in the first place, meetings suck, my Chai came and it was damaged (but at least they are sending me more), and Beth can’t get up in the morning, which is also my fault (apparently).

<insert gratuitous grumbling>

I don’t need this shit. What I need is a vacation.