Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (act I) has been released! 13:48 of pure awesome.



(It's the *musical* video-blog of a wannabe supervillain, starring Neil Patrick Harris)

oh my GOD I have only 120 pages left but I have to SLEEP!!

(I expect more Harry Potter dreams tonight)

"Nobody can beat you!"

followed by

"What a disappointment!"

Video games these days are way ruder than In My Day. The worst thing that Blasto! ever did to me was go BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

I think DDR2 is meant only for people who played DDR, played it well, and probably are on meth or something.

...no, this isn't a vodka ad.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: my Logitech Harmony remote makes me so happy.

We have a TV, AV Receiver, DVD player, CD player, hacked-together laptop media centre PC, Nintendo Wii, and Roomba robot vacuum* in our house. Each has its own remote. But they are all controlled through the Harmony (updated minutes ago for the new Wii**), and their official remotes are in a box downstairs (except the Wii controllers).

The only frustration is my old-fashioned TV. Built when dinosaurs still walked the earth, it only displays 480i -- though it does that well -- and has only 1 input each of Component, Composite, and S-Video. 2 Composite if I sacrifice the S-Video. I managed to get all the devices working together in an appropriate way, but it took a diagram to do it. Though I secretly loved it.

Of course now I want a new home theatre setup*** and a new TV. Remind me again when money will start growing on trees? I seem to recall my parents telling me something about that when I was younger, but I wasn't paying close attention at the time...


* the Roomba has control buttons right on the case, but they don't seem to be working correctly any more. So the only way to vacuum now is with the remote: Device -> Next -> Home Appliance -> Max [as in maximum cleaning]. Then it putters around until out of power or out of dirt.

** technically, the Wii is not controlled by the Harmony because it uses Bluetooth. But all the other devices are controlled appropriately so that I can then shift to the Wii-mote and immediately use the thing, no input-selection or nothin'.

*** though what we have can hardly be called that since the rear speakers are still collecting dust downstairs instead of collecting cat hair in the living room. I need to drill holes in the floor to place them and haven't cared enough to do it yet.

I refuse to *judge* art. But I do not refuse to mock it, when it is oh-so-mockable.

Oh god. My adorable husband just bought me a Wii for my birthday.

So much for being productive until 2009.

Suggestions on must have features/tips/games?

What was I thinking deciding to build a poll this big?
( Read more... )

fiver00 got me on here, I think. Or maybe it was bartok first. I get them confused -- they share a sunny disposition, a love of dial-up internet, and probably several genetic sequences.

Man, I've been on here a billion years. I mean, not as long as fiver00, but still. :)

I can't BELIEVE they did that. We're ten or so episodes from the end, and they burned through such huge events in just one episode? If this was season two it would have taken like four episodes. What the hell does RDM have in store?

God that show is good. I know some of you haven't been enjoying it this season, but I just love seeing a vision come to completion. Same with Matrix 2&3 -- they weren't my story, so while I can enjoy or not enjoy* I never felt like I had the right to feel betrayed, as some did.

Anyway.

Added: next episode doesn't air until 2009? WTF! I had read that but forgotten. Argh.

* for the record: enjoyed. especially the wackiest bits.

I even followed the link and it still doesn't make sense. :)

The Facts:
- I booked off July 23-27 for vacation, and we booked flights with friends to show them the Maritimes (well, Halifax and PEI, to be precise)
- I have been requested* by work to teach July 28-Aug 1 in Edmonton. This requires flying to Edmonton the evening of July 27.
- I currently have a flight from Halifax to Toronto (via Quebec City on Porter Airlines) that afternoon, arriving in TO at 18:55. This flight is cancellable for credit minus a fee.
- It is possible to fly from Halifax to Edmonton that evening and only miss out on the flights with Vinny, Bryce and Daryl, but not miss out on any other vacation time. (option 1)
- It is also possible to return to Toronto with everyone, go home, get another suitcase, and then head for the big airport and fly to Edmonton, arriving about three hours later than the previous option. This only works if there are no delays greater than 30 minutes. (option 2)
- I'm probably going to choose option 1.

* I say "requested" because I could say no, but I sort of already said several weeks ago that that week would be OK, not thinking it was likely. Apparently I've learned nothing about this company in eight years, because of course they would choose that week.


Poll #1204814
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

This situation is...

View Answers

slave labour
0 (0.0%)

indentured servitude
0 (0.0%)

unacceptable - go get a new job STAT!
0 (0.0%)

kinda sucky
8 (80.0%)

pretty reasonable
0 (0.0%)

I wish I had your job
0 (0.0%)

STFU you stupidhead
2 (20.0%)

On Saturday I tidied up the basement for our upcoming houseguests, visiting us to enjoy one of the world's largest GLBT Pride events*. One task was "move the winter boots to another spot", and I didn't expect it to be quite so exciting as it was: there was water under them. Not a puddle, or a leak, but some drops of water as if they had just recently been worn in the snow or rain. Except they'd been sitting there for two months. Humidity, we guessed?

On Sunday night I checked and the water droplets were still there, rudely refusing to evaporate. This seemed like more evidence of excess humidity. Since the room stores many books and some artwork, we thought maybe that's not a good situation.

Today, I bought a dehumidifier from Pneu Canadien** and set it up. It has all sorts of lights and indicators and so forth. However, I do not yet find it coherent. It's supposed to have a setting (such as 60%, which is the default), to which it will automatically attempt to adjust the room. When I plugged it in, it said 43% (ostensibly the current humidity -- my ass!). Then I set it to just run nonstop and checked it after an hour. Then it said 58%. Was it humidifying? Rebel scum.

Later I set it to automatically work, and it has displayed numbers like 59%, 48%, and also the unintuitive (and undocumented) "P1". It is creating water, but I chose it for the lights and doodads a bit. If I just wanted dehumidity I could have saved a few bucks!



Vinny's tongue-in-cheek theory was that it was not showing the current humidity, but rather the dehumidity -- how much humidity was not there. But seriously, if I need quadratic equations to make the LCD make sense, I am going back to wiping up water with friggin' paper towels.

---
* I search in vain each year for some proof that Toronto is largest, but all I can find is proof by elimination of other competitors. This year though, it looks like we've been eclipsed, but that's OK -- it's still friggin' insane. This year's research (some are for the parade, some for the entire event, all for 2004 or later):

Sao Paulo, Brazil	3,500,000
Toronto, Canada		1,200,000
London, UK		600,000
Vancouver, Canada	380,000
Amsterdam, Netherlands	350,000
Sligo, Ireland		100

** My Dad always calls Canadian Tire that.

"I finally figured it out, Stephen Harper is making a mockumentary about parliament, but to avoid paying scale hasn’t told the other actors."

--From a comment on the Maclean's blog Inkless Wells, related to this series of entries which provide an explanation from Kady O'Malley's Inside the Queensway.

Since January 1st, I've flown 62,237 km (38,672 miles). Of those, 35,249 km were "status" miles with Air Canada. 35,000 being the magic number to reach Air Canada's Aeroplan "Elite" status. Woo!

So now I'm sitting in the Maple Leaf Lounge at Edmonton's airport, and it is just comically extravagant. This is not the sort of thing that makes me think airlines are in it for the long haul, but it is certainly enjoyable.

- free newspapers and magazines (not just to read, to take with you)
- free salad, soups, snacks
- free pop, water, juice, cappuccinos
- free alcohol (beer, wine, spirits)
- Added: pre-rimmed Bloody Caesar glasses
- free internet and TV
- comfy chairs
- announcements about the flights relevant to people in the lounge, such as "don't bother getting up, they still have to deplane, we'll warn you when it's time"

They welcomed me at the front desk and happily explained how it all works when I said that I just got Elite for the first time, and were all "congratulations!" and so forth. They also gave me a piece of paper that proves I'm Elite until my new Aeroplan card arrives.

God, it's so bourgeois. I feel a little like I should go volunteer at a homeless shelter as penance.

Here's a fun set of stats from FlightMemory: (for all flights in 2008 plus any flights I could remember for 1999 onward... does not include regular domestic flight until 2007)



Update: Edmonton has been hit by a large thunderstorm, and the airport is "experiencing a red alert situation" so no flights are going in or out due to the weather. Guess it's a good thing I'm here in the lounge then.

I forgot to post this when I was shown it recently courtesy of a friend's Facebook news feed. One word: YUM. (clicky clicky for large size; this comes from a recent issue of Cosmo UK with naked-ish male centrefolds. Mostly footballers though.)



More words: Canadian, twin, didimentionyum, and nomnomnom.

jPod season one is being rebroadcast this summer on CBC - Thursdays at 8pm, starting June 19th. If you get CBC, check it out, especially if you like off-the-wall non-sitcom humour! And here's the favour: tell some of your friends! If CBC gets good ratings, they'll be encouraged to do this sort of thing in future.

If you're outside Canada, jPod can be found online on high-quality bittorrents, and you can watch entire episodes on the CBC jPod website! jPod can also be enjoyed in the original book flavour.

...or at least, that's what Windows Calculator says. Who *knows*, really.

(Previously: http://c9.livejournal.com/394190.html)

I've been on more planes in the past four months than in the previous couple years, which is fun but also exhausting. But at least this year's travel (combined with some personal travel) has gotten me up to Special Status Number One with Air Canada for next year, and I think in another few weeks I'll hit Special Status Number B!

Do not do a google image search for "lick" when you have SafeSearch turned off.

Well, at least don't do it on your work computer.

No, I'm not giving you a link.

What a weekend!

1_2_ready_go and I spent the weekend in New Brunswick visiting with family and friends, traveling on Aeroplan points thanks to our house's canny (and common) ability to suck money out of our accounts.

Awake at 5am Saturday, walk to the subway -- with the legally required stop at McDonald's of course -- and here we goooooo!!! (thanks Zach!)

Saturday saw us:

• fly to Saint John
• get our rental car - a Mazda 5, for those curious
• get lunch at the Saint John Superstore
• drive to Fredericton
• visit simplisticton and purplemartini and their chilluns Z and K
• drive to Scotch Lake, which is out past Mactaquac Dam, outside Fredericton, to stay with Vin's mom
• eat too much

Sunday saw us:

• eat breakfast at the Diplomat (the (in?)famous 24-hour Chinese-ish-and-Canadian restaurant beside the SheratonDelta
• go for a 40-minute run (Vinny only)
• Visit the UNB campus and walk around in the throes of nostalgia (Cam only)

Visiting campus was fun. I walked around Head Hall, the engineering and computer-science building, which really consists of a Frankenstein's Monster combination of many different additions. The biggest building on campus, I think. Anyway, I wandered around the newest piece, the Information Technology Centre (ITC), which didn't exist yet when I was attending UNB. I found various familiar professors' names on doors -- they had been moved out of the crappy older bits of the building once brand new offices were built -- and I also spotted something else familiar: a Safe Space sticker.

When I was at UNB, I (along with a couple queer-friendly administrators) started the UNB Safe Space program. Stickers on office doors to say you're cool with the queer kids. Fredericton went through some rough times in the late 90s for us GLBTQ* types (phobic mayor, nasty letters to the editor, freaking-out residence Don, blah blah blah) so it was a fight back tool. I'm still a little thrilled each time I visit the site and see that it's still in operation, although I think it's fairly quiet now -- once there were many stickers out there, it's hard to do much else I guess.

Next I visited Memorial Hall, the campus theatre where I sacrificed at least a half point of my GPA over four years or so. No regrets! The theatre itself was locked, but the rest of the building was open so I wandered around, clearly the only soul in the building (this was 10am on a Sunday of a long weekend during the summer) and yet free to wander. I love Fredericton. Anyway, I wasn't able to break into the theatre by any of the many ways I knew, sadly. I wandered the basement and into the utility areas that led to the Green Room under the stage, and the stupid room was locked. (as it should be, really. Drunken theatre junkies make messes.) I did see through the door's window that old Theatre UNB production posters have been mounted on the walls of the Green Room under plexiglass, including in a nice high spot my show Lilies (yes, the John Greyson movie one). Yay! That made me pleased too.

Truth be told, I could have wandered campus for another two hours without getting bored, so next time we visit I'll have to try to make it a weekday so I can visit people I know. Maybe Vin can plan a two-hour run or something. But it was time to pick him up from his run by this point, so here we goooooo!!!


• off to find samosas (which are only assembled correctly in Fredericton -- I don't claim to understand, and I don't claim authenticity, I only claim absolute truth. Is that too much?)
• next to Memere and Pepere's house. Say hello, refuse food several times, and fail to fix the allegedly universal remote control (Cam only)
• off to Future Shop to find a better universal remote control without any USB-ness (Vinny's grandparents are not in the target market for Harmony remotes)
• remote works, first try. yay!
• O'Dell Park (no more fenced-in deer!)
• Superstore (low-fat but let's be serious not really healthy either coffee cake!)
• Ben and Jackie's for another quick visit
• back to Scotch Lake for dinner

On the way back, we passed a small cemetery, which has been there for many years. Except this time, there was a brand new cheap pinewood box sitting by the road, approximately the shape of a casket delivery box, if there is such a thing. We did not stop to investigate.

Monday included lots of tiredness, a drive back to Saint John, enduring a bit of inanity on TV, some tasty Chinese-ish food, and now we sit in the airport bored to tears. Damn you Aliant and your wifi hotspot that is neither free nor linked to any other hotspot systems!

Update later: On the approach to YYZ, around 9:30pm Eastern, we had the lovely sight of hundreds of towns, cities, and backyards setting off fireworks for Victoria Day! Nothing is so lovely as seeing an entire metro area twinkle and sparkle quite like that.

Hope everyone else's weekend was fun!