Archive for: January, 2007

And I’m a Thoughtful Consumer Who Knows How Computers Work

Jan 30 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Geekery, Speechifying

The Mac ads were a little cute at the beginning, right? Stodgy old PC in a bad tie and sport coat combo. Mac lookin’ scruffy, like he just rolled out of bed. Stereotypes are so cute!

And then they got sort of annoying, with the whole, “Cameras don’t work on PCs!” angle, but after that they faded into the background. Ah well. Justin Long is cute and all, but I only know him because he makes great movies with guys called Alan. I went on with my life, using my PC for gaming and office-y stuff and using a Mac for digital video editing. And when I needed to use Photoshop and InDesign? Which ever computer was closer, usually the PC. A computer is a computer and I find it difficult to believe that so many people can be so completely stymied when confronting a different sort.

I am now the proud owner of an iPod. I received it for my birthday, after I was told that I wouldn’t be receiving it because we were going to save up and spend that money on furniture. Nevertheless, I am thrilled—thrilled to the point of immobility, actually. I caress and fondle the iPod, but I’m scared to take it out of the house. So I’ve spent a lot of time poking around iTunes and looking at accessories on the Mac website.

Which brings me to the latest round of commercials. The PC has to go get some major surgery done to upgrade to Vista. Leaving aside how much testicular fortitude it takes to make a fun of a product that is obviously one long love letter to OS X, I’m annoyed at the lying. I can’t seem to convince myself that they’re Mac commercials, made by and for Mac, and designed to convince consumers who mostly know how things look, not how things work.

I dream of a follow up to the surgery commercial where it’s three years down the road and the PC is going back in for another upgrade and the Mac says goodbye, very sad. And the PC says, “Mac? It’s okay. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

And Mac says, “No, you won’t. They’ve got some new standards for me, so I won’t be coming back.”

“What?” Says the PC, stricken. “Can’t you just get an upgrade, like me? I thought you had great insurance.”

“No,” sighs the Mac. “I don’t get to upgrade. I’m going to the Old Macs Home to live out my days as a media server while my users spend thousands of dollars on a newer version that looks really cool but doesn’t offer much in the way of faster processing speeds or accessibility.”

“Oh,” says the PC, getting a little teary. They hug. Exeunt.

It’s like Gus said in his Gamer Switch ad: “Another great thing about the Mac is upgrades. On a PC, you have to open up your case, swap out your video card, change jumpers. On a Mac, when it’s time to upgrade, you just pick it up, throw it away, and go buy another one. Now that’s convenience.”

The number one reason to use a Mac is “they just work.” It’s true—they do just work, for about three years. Long enough for you to save up to pay cash for the next iteration.

9 responses so far

exercise {zombies: many;}

Jan 29 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession, Geekery

I’ve been exercising a lot, lately. Like every weekday a lot. And I have found, more than anything, that it staves off the malaise I am ever prone to—that state of being where nothing will make me happy because everything pisses me off. At this point, that seems to be the only benefit, too. Nevertheless, if it keeps me from spending Sunday afternoon wanting to kidney punch my husband for breathing too loudly, I’m all for it.

It also makes me sleepy. Like an idiot, I’ve actually believe the magazine nonsense that says, “Exercise makes you energetic!” After six weeks of two miles a day, I expected to be full of vim and sexiness. Turns out not so much. I get up earlier on weekdays but sleep 10 or 11 hours on weekends, which negates any bonus productivity. And I have weird, weird dreams. So vivid and detailed, in fact, that I wake up a little bit confused about what is and is not real. A sampling, from this past week:

  • Went to Space Band Camp. Met boy. Played Horn in microgravity. Lived in big green tube. Thought too much time was spending on private practice time and not enough hanging around in the big green tube.
  • Went to Baseball Church College. Watched others get autographs. Admired architecture. Wondered why all the players were wearing white uniforms with blue stripes. Wondered why I didn’t want any autographs. Admired stained glass and thought about all the papers I had to write.
  • Went to Zombie Chicago. Fought off zombies with a combination of chef’s knife and apartment on 25th floor. Discovered that if you live really, really high up you can laugh at the zombies way down on the ground. Until such time as they figure out how to work the elevator and then only the smell of fresh blood will keep them away. So you have to use the chef’s knife to make lots of long cuts on all your limbs and the limbs of your companions and stand very, very still while the zombies sniff you and determine that you are too freshly dead to bother with. Woke to bright sunshine, but hid under the covers anyway until reality of living in zombie-free Birmingham could be established.
  • Entire series of nights were I tried to solve problems via CSS. For instance, I was cold, so I had to create a style.
    blanket {
    length: 6ft;
    width: 6ft;
    color: #07aa39;
    border: 100px double #fff;
    margin: auto;
    }

    But then it wouldn’t cover up my left arm, so I’m trying to troubleshoot for IE. It was frustrating. To say nothing of the next night where there was an axe-murder wearing a blue and black windbreaker and I knew that if I could just change the stripe color value of his windbreaker from blue to yellow, I’d be able to save us all. And then waking up frustrated because who cares about the color of an axe-murder’s jacket? The solution is obviously to find the style

    axe {
    edge: sharp;
    killing: you
    }

    and delete it in favor of a style called .carp or maybe #teddybear.

I’m going to keep exercising. Though I may start filling up an empty water bottle with a nice dry martini to drink while I walk, just to kill off the brain cells responsible for the zombie and code nightmares.

3 responses so far

Son of Space Pen and the Mixed Metaphor

Jan 25 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Never Off the Record

Christopher and I arrived, last night, at the Hooters in Brook Highland, to four steaming plates of free wings and an announcement that Dave, Official Team Account, had been mixing his metaphors something fierce. It was an apt beginning to one of the best evenings we’ve had together, despite that fact that we lost, and lost hard.

The metaphor in question is the one about Mohammed and the mountain. The Dave version goes something like:

Dave: If Mohammed can’t get to the mountain, you bring the mountain to Moses.

Evidently everyone understood what he was saying, but somehow I think Mohammed will miss his mountain. And Moses will like, “Bzuh? Mountain?”

There swiftly followed a great many more metaphors, this time about the city of Boston and its many delights and attractions, which I took literally. This was a wrong notion, as it often is, but I don’t know any other way to be. Turns out Skillzy’s going to Boston, which means that he will be visiting the city in the literal sense, but also entertaining activities that may or may not be associated with one of America’s most historic cities. I realized early that “going to Boston” had taken on some extra meaning, but was content to leave it at that. For a whole ten minutes.

Sarah: Oh! Do you have a lady friend?
Skillzy: You can put away the clue bat!

And then they laughed and pointed and continued to discuss Boston and its environs as if it were one of the top five erotic places on earth.

Batonga: Go Math Girl!
Sarah: Huh?
Batonga: Sarah’s Math Girl!

About that time, we came to the first disputed question of the evening, which we would get wrong, setting the stage for failure. The question was: is zero a prime number, even number, or natural number? Batonga declared me Math Girl and I said zero was a natural number since it wasn’t prime, wasn’t even, and as I am not a mathematician, not even really a number so much as a semantic representation of nothingness. I was wrong. According to the Trivia Women, zero is an even number, “as in two, four, six, eight.” Zero divided by two is still zero, which I suppose does technically make it an even number. But if that’s true, it’s also divisible by itself and one, making it a prime number, unless it holds that you can’t divide by zero, eliminating its primacy. I still call shenanigans. Having done a quick and dirty wiki search, zero is an integer representing a null value, neither prime, nor even, nor natural. Seas and Oceans? Zero!

Christopher: When did you become Math Girl?
Sarah: About 20 minutes ago when [Batonga] declared it.
Christopher: She read Snow Crash!
Batonga: Snow Crash!
Christopher: And Cryptonomicon.

And that coversation proved two things: First, reading Neal Stephenson novels makes you brilliant. Try it; you’ll like it. The second is that Skillzy’s been reading some strange stuff on the Intarweb, because his remarks followed that Snow Crash had been mentioned in the Wikipedia article on the Vagina Dentata. And the less said about that, the better.

So we missed some more answers, and invented a superhero persona for Dave:

Skillzy: Is that right, Tax Boy?
Sarah: Math Girl and Tax Boy!
Dave: That’s Tax Man to you!
Batonga: Not if you’re the sidekick.
Skillzy: Help me, Math Girl! I’m depreciating!

Before Dave could throw something at Skillzy, they finally asked a question we could get right. True or false: a cockroach can live for up to nine days without its head?

Christopher: Nine earth days?
Sarah: [dissolved into peals of laughter]
Batonga: I think it’s weird that we can say “earth days” and think it’s funny.
Christopher: What I want to know is how many days can the head live without the body?

And during each lull in the questions and conversation, the topic of Boston always came up:

Skillzy: People go to Boston for the clams and lobsters, too.
Batonga: Bearded clams.

And after so much of that, I decided I really wasn’t going to be able to blog the evening. It was too naughty, and I am nothing if not an all-talk-tease. But Skillzy convinced me, even while we kept losing.

Skillzy: You need to blog all this stuff so we can tell HD, “You missed Dirty Night. You missed sexual innuendo night at Hooters.”

That goes for everybody else, too. It would have been great if you were there. You might have known who Nike was the Goddess of, because the rest of us sure didn’t. We just made a bunch of dirty jokes:

Skillzy: Say something good for Sarah’s book.
Dave, mumbling: Okay, you’re Math Girl, right?
Batonga and Skillzy: What?!
Dave: You’re into numbers? What’s the square root of 69?
Sarah, turning to Christopher: Dear, what’s the square root of 69?
Skillzy: You’re being literal again!
Dave: It’s eight somethin’.
Sarah: Oh, gawd.
Christopher: About 8.2.
Dave: It’s 8.3
Batonga: I don’t get it.
Skillzy: It’s funny as hell if you’re an accountant.

Dave seemed to take this turn of events as a personal affront and I don’t blame him. So he began fidgeting, which I also can’t blame him for.

Sarah: Are you getting shit in my tea?
Batonga: He’s getting shit in my beer!
Skillzy: [Dave!] You break penises! You ruin beer!

Then, it was time to lose spectacularly.

Skillzy: We could still come in 4th, even if we get it all right. We haven’t had a good night. Sarah’s book’s had a great night, but Space Pen? Not so much.

Grant Wood’s American Gothic? That’s his daughter, not his wife or sister. Ugh.

Sarah: Don’t move to Boston!
Skillzy: I’m not moving!
Batonga: He’s going to go steal a cookie. Find some nookie. Slap a monkey!
Skillzy: Try some clams.
Sarah: Yay monogamy.
Christopher: Oh, Lord.
Skillzy: Remember, you miss one hundred percent of the shots Dave doesn’t let you take.
Batonga: Cock-blockin’ Tax Boy!
Skillzy: That’s Tax Boy’s special ability.

In the end, this Math Girl made her husband figure up the tip and wandered out into the cold night, saying “Bif!” and “Pow!” and laughing at Skillzy shouting, “Quickly! To the tax mobile!”

13 responses so far

Petitio Principii and the Value of an Eight Share

Jan 24 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Fandom, Speechifying

Proving once again that you need both a Doc and a Sarah in your life, I didn’t think the return of Studio 60 was all that craptastic, as noted in comments here. Of course, I am not a respected, noted television reviewer the same way Doc is. I have strange, limited tastes that don’t seem to be germane to the rest of America’s tastes at any given time. Regardless of its ratings, I consider it a good program because it deals in ideas, if unsubtly, rather than pandering to vacuous procedure or plot-free panis-et-circuses gladiating .

The Danny story was a sweetly trite book-end an otherwise interesting filler-type episode. The continuation of pre-Christmas’s Danny and Jordan romance was lame, overwrought, and paternalistic and depending on how they resolve it, I think I could look back and see it as the beginning of a beautiful romance. It’s so cliché to write a story where a brilliant, powerful woman needs a man to just stalk her into loving him, because she obviously can’t determine how to manage relationships the same way she manages an entire television network. So cliché it’s now an anti-cliché and yeah, lady just needs a good man who won’t take no for an answer—which isn’t, in fact, stalking. He’s stalking her when he begins to threaten her safety, security, livelihood or life. Until then, he’s merely annoying and inept. If Danny gets Jordan in the end, with his campaign of care and cute—all the telephone calls are his concern for her and wish to be a part of her life; all the letters of recommendation are the frontline attack of an addict who knows better than to be convinced of his own worth in any way that isn’t explicitly meritocratic—I will be glad. I will sigh and possibly swoon and be happy for them, because they are flawed people having a flawed love affair gotten by flawed means. Just like everybody else in whole wide world.

As for the rest of it, it makes me wish I’d watch West Wing so that I could know for sure that Studio 60 is, in fact, Aaron Sorkin’s mouthpiece for cultural polemics the way I understand West Wing to have been his mouthpiece for political polemics. Regardless of whether or not I agree with the opinions he espouses via his characters, I’m buoyed by the fact that he actually details both sides, usually through the Matt and Harriet dichotomy. This week, I found myself firmly rooting for Jordan to tell the new Vice President of Unscripted Programming (I may have that title wrong) to go straight back to the Wesleyan classroom that spewed her forth in a cloud of brimstone. The epithet Head of Illiterate programming shot straight to my heart and surrounded it in warm, fuzzy snobbery, stroking my ego for avoiding an entire genre of program that the greater portion of the world seems to be in love with. This possibly softened me irrationally on the Danny/Jordan plot and I’m prepared to admit it. But when new lady talked about a show wherein a violated child forgave his priest attacker, et cetera, I wanted to slap her. How putrid and obscene, to set the stage to televise that, even fictionally, not to mention perverse, disgusting, and utterly banal.

I’m prepared to be out on my own with this one. I hear from Doc a lot about ratings—which programs get high, which programs get low, and how that translates into continued production via advertising dollars. It’s a workable, if not good, system for right now, that is going to need to change as primary method of television consumption changes, as it’s doing hastily. What I always bear in mind though, is that good ratings in no way equate good programming, if you can even declare something good or not good, when it’s so subjectively based on personal appeal. It’s like saying Penney’s sells 300% more white t-shirts than green t-shirts, so white t-shirts are good and green t-shirts are bad. It’s the begging-the-question logical fallacy: market value is not necessarily an indicator of worth. It’s easy to fall into a ratings syllogism: If a show is rated highly and you like said show, that show must be good. I cite American Idol, which buoys our national self-esteem by proving to a mass of individuals that regardless of other, secret character flaws, you are not, or not yet, as bad off as those poor sods, being verbally destroyed by a man who’s gone on record (Playboy, interview with Simon Cowell, February 2007) as having cultural taste metaphorically equivalent to a 10 year-old’s.

And maybe that’s where I get off this ride. I like Studio 60. I’m probably going to keep liking it until it’s canceled because its ratings aren’t high enough. I like it because it makes me think, and because I really like the characters, who are archetypical, but flawed and detailed enough for those archetypes to be easily ignored. It wasn’t outstanding, history-making television. It also wasn’t crap.

6 responses so far

Polymorphously Perverse?

Jan 23 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

Are you all reading Dinosaur Comics? You should be. T-Rex stars in them. And T-Rex is the Ultimate Hero for our time, conquering all of the ills of modern life with optimism and enthusiasm. And if that doesn’t work, stomping. He’s got friends to help him out, or call him out, when he needs it; and he’s got God and the Devil to make sure things stay interesting, just like we do. And sometimes he’s beset by a bedroom full of cephalopods, which is fairly uncool, and is also a metaphor for the part of your own life that you don’t like at all, yet keeps showing up.

Today, the Devil tries to get T-Rex, and therefor everybody, to refer to MMORPGs as “firm and sexy sauce.” I could be down with that, except it’s not very descriptive and I only find MMOs sexy some of the time. But T-Rex takes that, and runs with it, and bids us all a happy Tell Your Best Friend What Turns You On day. I pass on his greets, yo.

I also fear that I will get home this evening, ask my best friend to tell me what turns him on, and he will say, “Firm and sexy sauce!” And I will retaliate by saying, “Mr. Isaac, with no shirt on. Why, exactly, haven’t you dyed your hair black yet?”

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Laziness, Not Existential Ennui

Jan 22 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Confession

I have things to blog about. At least, I think that I do. My problem is making them interesting, or relevant, or entertaining. I usually have at least one “I need to share this with the world!” moment per day and then I blog that impulse and am done. But lately, that urge grows weaker and dimmer. “Share with world?” I ask any particular moment. The moments sort of shrug and say, “Meh.”

In the future, remind me to tell you about how exercise really is a mood-altering drug. And about how I turned 30 and it was fantastic—there were baby geese, goslings; they were juggled. And about whether or not eating a red velvet cake version of Felix Felicis really does help you get lucky. And about why I now have the most iron clad excuse of ever not to have to figure out the tip at a restaurant. And about vacuum cleaner research projects and why they’re lame and if it were up to me we just would’ve bought a Dyson already and been done with it and even though it is up to me, we haven’t done it yet because I haven’t done enough “research.” Or about how Hellfire is good times, quest-wise, but I haven’t been able to complete the first 5-man instance and it’s sort of starting to take a toll on my marriage; really, it’s exactly opposite what you want in a video game.

I’ll get back to you on those things. Until then, meh.

16 responses so far

Party on the Hellfire Penninsula

Jan 18 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Gaming

You know how I said I was going to kick the snot out of that thing, looking like a Dual-Wielding Bipedal Blue Doom Naga? Turns out it’s called a Doomwhisperer and I smacked it down but good:

Only level 59 and no minions-- not that big a deal.

And then Skillzy gave me an octo-uber ring as an early birthday present because he’s very, very thoughtful. And also has no use for clothie gear. But mostly thoughtful. Plus to crit rating!

Speaking of new gear, in the above images you can see the transition from my pre-Crusade Mooncloth Robes, with Magister and Sorcerer set pieces to the new, ad-hoc, Second Place Winner of the Azeroth Spellcasting Guild’s Look Like a Freaky Stupid Pimp costume contest. The gear is great– absolutely phenomenal. I find myself replacing blues and epics with plain old greens, too. But they look awful. Crazy purple floppy hat, pointy blue shoulders that look like doorstops, a chestpiece for a bdsm-involved bumblebee, and some leftover blue pants that make it look like I’m wearing denim leggings. Hot!

The game play is jerky, because everything is camped all to hell. I started in Ironforge last night and there were all of four people in the space between the bank and the auction house. It was a little bit scary, really, to see so few people. Then I flew to the Blasted Lands, went through the portal, took the bird to the Hellfire Penninsula and oh! This is where all the people are! And they’re all trying to do the same quests. I, like everybody else, had to ninja the rare monsters. It felt really, really wrong, but there really wasn’t any choice. I stood and stood and waited and waited and when I saw big pink dude spawn? Blinked in and pulled an instant cast so that nobody around him could aggro. Bitchy, but necessary.

Then we tried the first new five man instance. We ran it Rogue, Hunter, Druid, and two Mages. Seemed to work pretty well. I died twice on the way through the first two bosses, but that’s how we knew it was a real instance. I also still managed to do the biggest dps, including those two deaths. We tried the final boss three times and wiped but speedily all three times. I don’t know if it was because we didn’t have a priest or we didn’t have a tank, but one of those is definitely necessary for a 61 Elite dragon.

And just so this isn’t too analytical and blow-by-blow: I trained up to Master Alchemist and Master Herbalist. I found an herb I’d never seen before and got so excited; I love picking flowers. Clicked on it and no go– Herbalism 310 required! I pitched a fit! And Christopher made fun of me for half an hour.

2 responses so far

I Know I’m Bursting with Arcane Energy

Jan 16 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Gaming

The Burning Crusade went live at midnight! Christopher left the house at 6:30 to go to Wal Mart on his way to work and pick us up some copies. He’ll no doubt spend the day on the forums, reading about 70-runs, and Jewelcrafting, and new, hard-core, socketed items. A bunch of us played some battlegrounds last night and someone was linking the new set items for 70s. We were very nearly felled with gear lust. It’s beautiful and it’s going to be so good. Look here, at the trailer, and artwork, and screenshots. I think this thing is pretty:

Dual-weilding Two Legged Naga?

I’m going to have so much fun kicking its ass!

3 responses so far

No Quote Trivia

Jan 11 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Never Off the Record

The Space Pen trivia team (of which you should totally be a part) started off 2007 with a big win on a low key night. Trivia’s been on hiatus since before Christmas, so HD decided the first night back would be best spent using the spoils of our victory to have a wing party. It was low-key and great fun and there were massive piles of celery, which were interesting.

About three-quarters of the way through the evening, some well meaning dad brought his son’s team in for cokes and food after their basketball game or soccer game or whatever it is kids play these days in the middle of winter. Every time they got a question right, they’d cheer hugely, loudly, with pre-teen fists pumping in the air. We kept answering questions, but most of the time we just watched them, trying to get answers, looking at the trivia girls. Then we looked at ourselves and decided to make them our competition for the night.

When we won, as we are wont to do, they looked over at us, like how could those old people possibly know all this stuff? We made a few gestures like, “Yeah! Suck on it!” We were completely ready to throw down. They looked wiry, but I think we could have taken them had they decided to start something.

Trivia will continue apace and it’s always nice to meet new people, especially smart new people who know things that will win us free wings. Also, there’s beer.

2 responses so far

Birmingham, a Little Rust Colored

Jan 10 2007 Published by Sarah, etc. under Decontextualized

Tried to use the Rec center yesterday morning. No go. Seems that at 9:30 on a Tuesday morning, the closest parking space to University Boulevard is on 1st Avenue North. So ran back home to take a walk around my neighborhood, camera in hand.

Now advertising Dr Pepper at the I20-I59 split

I wanted to steal this to hang on a wall.

An alley in a residential neighborhood is the perfect place to abandon a box spring.

And a photo etiquette question for those of you who know about these sorts of things. I know better than to photograph a person without their permission, but what about a building? What about a completely unidentifiable portion of a building? On Saturday morning, a couple weekends ago, I was on my way home from running errands and stopped at a local church to take some pictures of their marquee, which has been fascinating me for weeks. After that, I decided to also take some pictures of different bricks in the building, some corners, and a couple of the little scrolly vent covers. They were all very tight, close-up shots and so would have been almost unidentifiable as belonging to a building, let alone a church, let alone that particular church. Someone connected to the church pulled into the parking lot as I was finishing up and chewed me out for photographing private property. I assured her that the photos were not for commercial use, that I would not profit, and further, that the building itself was unidentifiable. So she chewed me out some more. Now I’m all shutter shy. Is it okay to take photos of private property if those photos are non-commercial and said property is unidentifiable?

9 responses so far

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