Daily Deformations - Jet Wolf's gray matter

Friday, October 31, 2003

Installing Spaces

I just picked up the cable necessary to install the nearly brand new 80 GB hard drive I had just lying around. It is formatting as we speak -- er, type. Whatever. Anyway, this is great news, especially since I've been totally in the video groove lately and all that. I can actually, for the first time ever, have a video in progress and not be constantly nagging myself for the amount of space that it's taking up. Very exciting. I might actually be able to have multiple projects running! Ooo, the thrill.

It's a good updraft to a day that started with angry words followed by no-talking and badness. Never a good way to begin.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

Super Freak Out

I just finished watching "Conversations with Dead People", from Buffy's 7th season. What a thoroughly disturbing and partially upsetting episode. In moderate good ways, though. In all the episodes that I've watched, I don't think anything has freaked me out quite as much as seeing what was lying on the Summers couch just over Dawn's shoulder. GYAH. And how freaking sad was the "reunion" in the library? Gods, Willow's right, it just doesn't get any easier. I was discussing with Mike whether or not the scene would have been enhanced or degraded had Amber Benson actually done it; I think that at the end, I preferred it without her. To see "Tara" show her true colours at the episode's conclusion would've just felt so, so wrong. And how heartbreaking was the "you can't see her because of what you did" comment? I swear, if anyone needs a hug, it's Willow. Forget Buffy and her self-involved, semi-forced pathos.

I don't really know what's coming, and all told I'm not enjoying this season on anywhere near the same level as the previous, but a big thumbs up for this ep.

I'm going to go to sleep now. With the light on.

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Horrid Way to Wake Up, #651

By the building's fire alarm. Listening to it shriek for 20 minutes actually almost makes you upset when there's no fire. When you're pretty darned sure why it went off, though, it makes you wish there were justice.

The stupid cow downstairs. The one who introduced us to Horrid Way to Wake Up #489 (blood-curdling scream). Or, more specifically, her drunken deadbeat boyfriend/husband and his drunken deadbeat friends.

Of course, I leap to conclusions. I'm sure the fact that he and his buddies are outside drinking beer and smashing the bottles against the nearby wall at 3am most mornings has nothing to do with it. Nor the fact that she cheerfully, and rather agitatedly told the firemen, when they finally showed up, that she'd seen "two guys running away". How do I know this was a lie? Because the building fire alarm has never gone off before, and I'm fairly positive that, even if she wasn't asleep like me, she was disoriented long enough to not know what the sound was. Given the unlikely event that the "two guys" who pulled the fire alarm -- the very one that was right outside her door -- stuck around more than a fraction of a second after pullage, long enough for her to figure out what was going on, walk to her door, open it and see them in the pitch of night ... well, it's a suspension of belief that even I couldn't make in my half-dazed, half-asleep state. I was cognizant enough to notice, however that her deadbeat b/h was, surprise surprise, drunk and screaming, and there was a buddy of his inside with him, and that their only window within sight of the fire alarm was closed with blinds drawn, so she couldn't have seen it that way either.

I hate them. By the gods, I hate them.

Of course, I did get to learn something new about myself during the debacle. In a potential fire-related situation, where I'm woken from a deep, sound sleep, my very first thought is "pants".

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Sugary Deep Fried Goodness

Good start to the day, visiting a Krispy Kreme. There are no wordly ills which cannot be soothed by a doughnut. Of this, I am convinced.

Today is nice and overcast. No class, cuz it's Tuesday and all, and I don't have any looming schoolwork since I punched through a hairy bit of VB.NET yesterday. I shall probably devote much of my day to my continuous gathering of moments for my latest Top 100 list -- I currently have 169 and I'm only on the second episode of Season 4. The sorting process should be a real hoot.

Of course, I probably SHOULD be doing those comic reviews. I'm two weeks behind now. I just haven't had the motiviation of late, and there are so many of them. Bleah. I need to just make myself do it. But later. Right now, I think I hear a glazed devil's food singing its sweet, sweet Siren's song.


Listening To:Super Fun Kathy!

Looking Forward To:Accomplished tasks.

Thursday, October 23, 2003

It's the skeeziest!

It's official. Generic mac 'n' cheese, it tastes like crap. Let this be a lesson for us all. Spend the extra 15 cents and go Kraft.

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Return of 4Paws?

So I was just tinkering around with the video a little bit, and discovered, much to my delight, that I can get this new video compressed pretty darned spiffily with highly acceptible loss of quality. What does this mean to you and me? Well, it just might mean the return of 4Paws. You know, in a more concrete virtual sense (sure, that's not a paradox), rather than in my head and on my hard drive.

Before I rebuild the whole section, though, I want to test out the possibility of bandwidth problems first. That in mind, I invite those interested to now download my latest creation, which you can do by clicking here and saving the 13MB zip file (note: the vid contains extreme S6 spoilers). If all goes well, then I may actually recompress and store all of my vids ... or, well, the ones that I still have in digital format, anyway, which is four or five, I think.

You know, I really enjoyed the heck out of making this video. This and the X-Men one ... I've missed it, I think. I think that this weekend I'll go get the last parts I need to install that new hard drive, and then maybe return this long lost hobby of mine with a bit more gusto.


Listening To:Songs in my head.

Looking Forward To:Maybe doing those comic reviews from last week today ... all seven of them. Yeah.


[EDIT: 1Nov03] The above link to the Willow vid has been modified to reflect the video's new location (and new file size)

Where do we go from here?

It's not quite, but that's almost a record for a music video; about three days. Could've been quicker too, except that I used a rather significant chunk of Buffy S6 footage, which Mike hasn't yet seen, so I could only work on the video when he wasn't in the room.

Anywhoo, those who are interested in seeing the video (or getting more information on it, since I won't post here for spoiler's sake), just drop me an e-mail and we'll work out some sort of exchange time. Brief details: 'tis a Buffy video, set to "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence, and I love love love Willow (and Tara). That should give you a general idea.

If I may say so, it's pretty keen. And very cathartic. After watching S6, I was pretty much driven to create something. I'm feeling better now (as better as possible).

Now maybe I can focus on some of the other stuff that I typically work on, like my comic reviews. I hate it when I get in über obessive mode. It makes it so very difficult to do a wide variety of tasks.

Saturday, October 18, 2003

Rude Awakenings

I think that I've discovered one of the single worst ways that you can be woken up in the morning: By your spastic dog's lead pipe tail exploding into your eyeball.

Okay, ow?

Thursday, October 16, 2003

Tara r r0x0r

Okay, so I'm currently wading through Season 6 of Buffy courtesy of FX and all the downloads I can get. It's amazing to me how much I'm loving Tara too. I was moderately luke warm towards her at first, but she's totally grown on me. It's also interesting how, every time I see her now at this point in the story (I just finished "Dead Things"), it's like a punch in the gut. ARG. Willow. Tara. ARG.

But a good ARG. Sorta.

At least I know what my next Top 100 is going to be on. Look for it soonish.

My computer's been downloading pretty much non-stop for three or four days now. Thank the gods for a stable version of Windows and broadband.

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

High Praise

I think I received high praise from my Math teacher yesterday. As I think I've mentioned before, she's a tad on the young and, dare I say it, flighty side. She knows her stuff just fine, but her thoughts tend to bounce around an awful lot. She routinely interrupts herself while presenting an idea, which can be a tad distracting, but she makes up for it largely with a healthy (if confusing, given the subject) dose of enthusiasm.

So anyway, she gives us some problems to do in class yesterday, and goes through the usual routine of walking around and checking each person's work (it's a small class) to make sure they understand, stopping to give one-on-one help to those who don't. She finally got around to me, so I moved to show her my answer. I heard her saying, half to herself, "Do you have it? I'm guessing you have it." A vote of confidence from the teacher is always nice.

My MST3K downloading it currently on hold, as I scrambled madly around the internet trying to find and download all of Buffy's Season Five. The DVD set isn't due to come out until December. Must ... watch ... sooner ... Grrr. Arrrgh.


Listening To:The sound of silence.

Looking Forward To:Getting some consistent download speeds here.

Friday, October 10, 2003

Printastic!

Ooo. Pretty colours.

Picked up my new printer this morning. 'Tis quite nice, and does colour, which is a new thing for me. It actually prints with no streaks, too. I haven't seen that in years.

Hey, now I can make labels and stuff for all these discs I keep burning. Keen.

Today is "do homework" day. My VB.NET not-a-calculator takes the next step into actually doing computations, and then there's super happy fun time adventures with Java classes. Meanwhile, I wait anxiously for "Werewolf" to finish downloading, and get to work (on Sylvie, Mike's computer) converting and burning "Final Justice", which I got this morning.

I'm surrounded by neat toys. Life is good.


Listening To:Fame '90 Remix - David Bowie

Looking Forward To:Finding something else that needs printing.

Thursday, October 09, 2003

Print This!

<kicking printer> Stupid old thing. It just crapped out on me. Right when I was printing up a slew of As If! addresses to use for tomorrow, too.

I suppose I shouldn't bitch too much. It's about ten years old and has served me well. But still. I'd just bought a new ribbon for it and everything. And dammit, I can and will bitch! *bitch*bitch*bitch*

There, that's better. So, Best Buy tomorrow? Yes, I agree. But until then, I'm going to finish burning off The Undead for our evening's entertainment.

...... "SLEEEEP!!"

A Vet Story

It seems like the new veterinarians might turn out okay. Busy place, which I take as a good sign, and quite understanding of me and my crazy mutt. And they do boarding, which is nice for if/when we ever decide to actually go somewhere. Now her shots are all current for another year.

Not that I'm complaining (although it is cleverly disguised as such) but GEEZ it's cold. I think I can safely say that summer is well and truly behind us. Time to dig out the heaters and down comforter, methinks. Brr. Icy Cold Hands of Death.

Update-o-rama

No worries on neglecting Flatscan: new reviews for the week are up. More quickly this time, aided by the fact that I had only a third of last week's to review.

Today is errand day. We're trying out a new vet for Jett, in my continuing quest to find someone I like as much as the one she had in Louisiana; one of the only things I miss about that boil on the arse of the world. I also quest today for another long comic box, since I still have all of these old, old X-Men issues scattered all over the place. In addition, I have to go find a paint pen so that I can sign the autographed issues, which I received a few days ago. Then tomorrow, another trip to the post office and much mailing.

Oh, reminds me: thanks for the suggestion about ordering the Postal supplies. A form was shoved in my hand when I made my last trip there, and I placed an order the same day. Still haven't gotten anything, though, and that was a week ago. Most irksome. Any idea how long it takes?

Later today, I'm hoping to take some time to watch some of these movies from NetFlix. We've had them for over a month now, and like to not flush the monthly fees down the toilet like that.

Fingers crossed on the new vet. It's amusing how much I fuss over that mangy mongrel.


Listening To:Mike laughing.

Looking Forward To:Getting things more tidy. Starting ... to drive me ... insane ...

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

We've Got Movie Sign!

I've been distracted lately. You probably noticed. I happened upon a treasure trove of cheesy MST'd movie goodness, and have been spending much of my spare time downloading, converting, and creating VCDs. I'm still a long way from a complete collection, but I have a system set up now, so I don't have to devote quite so much time to getting it done.

I have KTMA episodes. And they're ... so, so old.

I'm currently working on #310: Fugitive Alien. It appears to be Japanese, which should raise the entertainment value considerably.

Anywhoo, once we have a glut of them burned off, Mike and I plan to sit down and have a "new" MST3K marathon, which should be an event of much joy.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the Internet?


Listening To:The KTMA theme song version in my head ... "We'll send him cheesy movies, the worst ever made. Joel says when you have lemons, you make lemonade."

Looking Forward To:All the Shorts I can eat!

Friday, October 03, 2003

Caffeine Headache

JEEZ. I have spent -- get ready for this -- a whopping seven hours on my Java homework. That's pretty much straight, I stopped only for the phone, bathroom breaks, to nuke lunch, and to run downstairs to get the next program recording off of TiVo.

Am I not understanding it? Quite the contrary, it all seemed to make perfect sense. It just would not WORK.

And then, just as I was rounding the curve into hour seven, I realized what I wasn't doing right. The single little detail that I was leaving out of the program.

Then I had the lab finished within 10 minutes.

<beating head repeatedly on desk>

Looking on the bright side, I have these first two units down solid. On the down side, there went the bulk of my Friday. And the darned thing isn't even due until Tuesday.

Grrr. Won't make that mistake again.

On to my calculator program for VB.NET that isn't actually a calculator.


Listening To:My inner masochist laughing and laughing and laughing ...

Looking Forward To:Tomorrow's Evolution episode.

Thursday, October 02, 2003

Let There Be Life

I went out last night and actually pretended to have a life, it was neat. Mike and I went out to dinner with our friend Jeannine from the DTVBB days; she also works with Mike at Wells Fargo, although in different departments. After driving around exciting Beaverton at 9:30pm trying to find somewhere that stayed open past 10 that served both food and alcoholic beverages, we settled on a place right by my apartment that I've driven past almost daily for two years but never paid much attention to.

That's a pity, because it's really quite nice. Not too terribly expensive, either, and our waitress was hilarious. I'm not sure if it's because she detected the jovial mood we were in or she just ceased caring about tips, but she was slinging the insults like the best of us. We tipped her well.

Today is Mike's mid-week day off. The split shift thing still sucks ass, but we're making do. I have some errands to run today, including finding my way back to the Cascade campus, located in an oh-so attractive section of downtown Portland, to return some software I had to borrow for one of my courses. After that, I'm headed to the post office with an armload of comics for shipping. I wonder if they'll let me walk out with a handful of priority labels and envelopes? We can be try.

That aside, the day is pretty much free and clear. I expect I shall spent part of it working on my weekly Flatscan reviews, and possibly even finishing up my first VB.NET assignment; we're working on a calculator that doesn't actually do anything. Practical application a-go-go.

Oh, yes, Greg asked about Alpha Centauri vs. Civ3. AC was one of my favourites until Civ3 came along, but now I never touch it. I enjoy the "storline" of AC, and I think it's a really creative way of doing a game like that, but Civ3's culture and resource features make it no contest.

Mm. Civ3 .... Okay, I know how I'm spending my morning.


Listening To:I Can't Break Away - Big Pig

Looking Forward To:Completing this week's homework.