I forgot to turn on my alarm last night and woke up five minutes late as a result, though somehow I managed to get in to work a couple of minutes earlier than usual. How does that work?
Today actually marks the last time I’ll be making this particular commute as, come Monday morning we will have moved to the new NOC. This is good news, as it’s actually closer to home than Reston is.
Though I’ve been working here for nearly five years at this point, I can’t honestly say that I’m sad to leave it behind.
It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with or bad about this place, it’s just that I’m not particularly sentimental about that sort of thing.
Okay, more accurately, I’m not particularly sentimental about much of anything.
Even if I were, a shorter commute would trump sentiment anyway.
Last night Verizon called to confirm that I would be home on Monday for my scheduled FiOS installation. Hello, I’ve been without Internet access since I moved into the new place; you honestly think I’m not going to be there when I’m scheduled to get it?
Here at work I’ve been downloading some of the TV shows I’ve been missing due to not having cable, which will help me pass the time until Monday morning.
I’ll be extremely pleased to have cable again, not just because I’ll be able to watch some of the shows I’ve been missing, but because using the HD antenna has been a pain in the ass.
Each channel requires having the antenna positioned differently, and frequently things will be working just fine and, with no changes, suddenly crap out.
The thing is that with the digital signal, if you’re not getting a strong signal, you don’t get static or “snow.” Instead, if you’re using Media Center like I am, you get a blue screen with white text that says that there’s no signal, or you’ll get a perfectly clear picture that doesn’t move and has no audio, or that does move in a jerky fashion, out of sync with the audio, and full of digital artifacts.
And finding the right configuration can be infuriating. What works one night may not work the next, and sometimes will be dependent on me standing in a particular spot.
So yeah, in addition to providing me with televised entertainment, getting cable will bring my stress level down a little, and lead to me spending less time screaming, “There is to a fucking TV signal!” at my TV.
In addition to some specific comics that I buy, such as Fables and Jack of Fables (which I still love and will, in the future, get back to listing the reasons why I love them), and Welcome to Tranquility, I’ve found something new to look forward to: Left Behind Fridays.
What are Left Behind Fridays? Well, first I should explain what Left Behind is. Left Behind is the title of the first book in a series of books published under that title that tell the story of a world in the not-too distant future after the event known by certain branches of Christianity as The Rapture has occurred. There have been a total of 16 books in the series, as well as a PC game and a movie adaptation starring Kirk Cameron. The books have sold extremely well, being something of a Harry Potter for fundamentalists.
I’ve been aware of the books pretty much since the first one came out in 1995, and I have been curious about their actual content beyond understanding the basic premise behind them, but I have not, of course, been so curious as to actually seek them out.
After all, while they would have a sort of ironic appeal to me in the way that Chick Tracts do, being actual novels, they’re not so easily digestible as Jack’s works, nor are they freely available the way the tracts are, and I’m certainly not going to add my filthy lucre to the piles and piles of it that authors LaHaye and Jenkins have managed to rake in from the foolish…er, faithful.
However, one day while perusing some of the non-Chick Dissection posts on Enter The Jabberwock, I found a mention of a blog called Slacktivist, which has a regular feature summarizing and humorously critiquing the books.
Or, really, at this point, book, singular.
It’s been over three years since he started, yet Slacktivist (Fred Carter) has not managed to get all the way through the first book.
But I’m not complaining, as that only means that I have, hopefully, many more years of Left Behind Fridays to look forward to.
Over the course of a weekend at work I managed to get caught up on all previous posts and am now forced to wait – rather impatiently – for each new post. I often go back to the site dozens of times in the course of a Friday in the hopes that I’ll see that L.B. in the title of a post.
What I’ve learned so far thanks to Left Behind Friday is just how stupefyingly bad the book actually is, and how grateful I am that Fred is taking the bullet for me and reading the books so that I don’t have to. His wonderfully witty examinations, filled with brilliant observations (and more than a few well-placed Buffy the Vampire Slayer allusions) about the book’s quality, or lack thereof, and the acumen, or lack thereof, with which it is written pretty much make my (Fri)day.
What makes the entries even more interesting is that Slacktivist is himself an evangelical Christian – albeit an extremely liberal one – so the books to him represent more than just bad writing, but bad theology, and are, as a result, not just bad, but full-on evil.
Thus he’s very passionate in his disdain, and that only serves to add to the fun.
(And also to the horror, when you think about just how many people there are out there who believe this nonsense.)
Beyond the posts themselves, the comments section is actually filled with some of the most intelligent and articulate discussions I’ve ever encountered on the Internet. I know that’s not saying much given the level of discourse found on the Internet, but honestly, I look forward to reading the comments almost as much as reading the posts themselves, and since there are constant additions, they can help fill the void until Left Behind Friday finally returns.
If you look through the comments you may even see a familiar name throwing his two cents into the discussion.
So Left Behind Fridays are, for me, a very good thing all around™, and I think that they are a little bit of joy that should be added to everyone’s life.
I’ve added a link to Slacktivist over on the right. Here’s a link to the L.B. Archives.
In any case, that will do it for this entry, I think.
When I return, sometime on Monday, I should be positively gushing about my hot new super-fast Internet connection, which will allow me to become bored with the Internet faster than ever before!
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Friday, October 05, 2007
New House Slideshow
(This is the entry I was going to post yesterday)
One day, years ago, at my parents’ house, I was flipping through the channels and landed on one of the movie channels playing The Producers. It was too far in to the movie to start watching it, but I paused long enough to catch the song “Springtime for Hitler.”
I never actually caught it again, though by the time the Broadway version of it took off I remembered what I’d seen and knew the basic idea behind it.
A few months ago – in June, I think – HBO2 was airing the latest movie version, so I decided to record it. After that it sat on my hard drive unwatched until yesterday, when, lacking anything better to do, I watched it.
I’ll say right up front that I don’t like musicals. Whatever capacity I have to suspend disbelief enough to allow me to enjoy things like science fiction and fantasy movies and novels and comic books just doesn’t stretch far enough to allow me to say, “Oh, they’ve just randomly started singing, with supporting music and no visible orchestra, and no one thinks that’s unusual. Hey, look, they’re dancing, too. And, despite being spontaneous, it’s all perfectly choreographed. Okay, that’s cool, I guess.”
Beyond the non sequitur aspect of people spontaneously bursting into song and dance, though, my other problem is that I just don’t enjoy song and dance.
But that’s just me, and if you’re into that sort of thing, good for you.
So given that I don’t actually care for its genre, what did I think of the actual movie?
Meh.
It wasn’t horrible, even with the singing and dancing, which are themselves inherently horrible as storytelling elements, and it had some entertaining bits, but the biggest problem I had with it was Matthew Broderick.
And honestly, it wasn’t him that I had a problem with, it was the fact that he wasn’t Gene Wilder.
See, very early on into the introduction of Borderick’s character, it became clear from some of his actions and dialogue that the role was probably written with Gene Wilder in mind. At the time I had no basis for thinking that other than knowing that Mel Brooks worked with Wilder so often, and that Gene Wilder would have been perfect for the part.
(After looking it up on IMDb, though, my suspicion was confirmed.)
Once I started picturing Gene Wilder in the role, there was pretty much nothing Broderick could do. After all, no one does Gene Wilder like the real deal, so seeing someone else even trying just rang false.
Apart from watching and not particularly enjoying the movie, I ventured out to Wal-Mart for no particular reason other than that I thought I needed to go there for something. Admittedly, there’s plenty of stuff I could buy, but there was nothing that I had any pressing need for, so I ended up not buying anything.
But now that I’m actually settled into the house and everything has been put away and unboxed and I have no cheap furniture to assemble or anything, I just don’t know what to do with myself and I feel like I should be going out and buying things, or doing something.
I’m sure that will pass once I have TV and Internet.
As Scott is off to Disney World with the family, I wasn’t going to be meeting him at the comic shop, so I decided I would stop there on the way, and also have lunch at Panera Bread to use the Wi-Fi to check mail and whatnot. On the way I got a call from Kathleen, so I invited her to meet me for lunch. She picked up Brian and we had lunch.
And that was the excitement for the day.
My Realtor had hired someone to come around for a few hours and do any work I needed done around the house, and he came by yesterday.
I didn’t really have too much for him to do, but I did have him mount my TV on the wall. It’s pretty cool, and he even fished the cables through the wall so that they’re not showing, but it does seem like it’s a little high. It’s also not perfectly centered, but that wasn’t possible given the layout of the studs, and it doesn’t really bother me, though the height is kind of bugging me.
It doesn’t actually impair viewing at all, it just seems like it should be lower.
I suppose that if it really starts to bother me I could have Brian or Scott come over and help me move it. After all, it would take less work to move it now that we know where the studs are.
We’ll see, I guess.
In any case, here are some pictures:
One day, years ago, at my parents’ house, I was flipping through the channels and landed on one of the movie channels playing The Producers. It was too far in to the movie to start watching it, but I paused long enough to catch the song “Springtime for Hitler.”
I never actually caught it again, though by the time the Broadway version of it took off I remembered what I’d seen and knew the basic idea behind it.
A few months ago – in June, I think – HBO2 was airing the latest movie version, so I decided to record it. After that it sat on my hard drive unwatched until yesterday, when, lacking anything better to do, I watched it.
I’ll say right up front that I don’t like musicals. Whatever capacity I have to suspend disbelief enough to allow me to enjoy things like science fiction and fantasy movies and novels and comic books just doesn’t stretch far enough to allow me to say, “Oh, they’ve just randomly started singing, with supporting music and no visible orchestra, and no one thinks that’s unusual. Hey, look, they’re dancing, too. And, despite being spontaneous, it’s all perfectly choreographed. Okay, that’s cool, I guess.”
Beyond the non sequitur aspect of people spontaneously bursting into song and dance, though, my other problem is that I just don’t enjoy song and dance.
But that’s just me, and if you’re into that sort of thing, good for you.
So given that I don’t actually care for its genre, what did I think of the actual movie?
Meh.
It wasn’t horrible, even with the singing and dancing, which are themselves inherently horrible as storytelling elements, and it had some entertaining bits, but the biggest problem I had with it was Matthew Broderick.
And honestly, it wasn’t him that I had a problem with, it was the fact that he wasn’t Gene Wilder.
See, very early on into the introduction of Borderick’s character, it became clear from some of his actions and dialogue that the role was probably written with Gene Wilder in mind. At the time I had no basis for thinking that other than knowing that Mel Brooks worked with Wilder so often, and that Gene Wilder would have been perfect for the part.
(After looking it up on IMDb, though, my suspicion was confirmed.)
Once I started picturing Gene Wilder in the role, there was pretty much nothing Broderick could do. After all, no one does Gene Wilder like the real deal, so seeing someone else even trying just rang false.
Apart from watching and not particularly enjoying the movie, I ventured out to Wal-Mart for no particular reason other than that I thought I needed to go there for something. Admittedly, there’s plenty of stuff I could buy, but there was nothing that I had any pressing need for, so I ended up not buying anything.
But now that I’m actually settled into the house and everything has been put away and unboxed and I have no cheap furniture to assemble or anything, I just don’t know what to do with myself and I feel like I should be going out and buying things, or doing something.
I’m sure that will pass once I have TV and Internet.
As Scott is off to Disney World with the family, I wasn’t going to be meeting him at the comic shop, so I decided I would stop there on the way, and also have lunch at Panera Bread to use the Wi-Fi to check mail and whatnot. On the way I got a call from Kathleen, so I invited her to meet me for lunch. She picked up Brian and we had lunch.
And that was the excitement for the day.
My Realtor had hired someone to come around for a few hours and do any work I needed done around the house, and he came by yesterday.
I didn’t really have too much for him to do, but I did have him mount my TV on the wall. It’s pretty cool, and he even fished the cables through the wall so that they’re not showing, but it does seem like it’s a little high. It’s also not perfectly centered, but that wasn’t possible given the layout of the studs, and it doesn’t really bother me, though the height is kind of bugging me.
It doesn’t actually impair viewing at all, it just seems like it should be lower.
I suppose that if it really starts to bother me I could have Brian or Scott come over and help me move it. After all, it would take less work to move it now that we know where the studs are.
We’ll see, I guess.
In any case, here are some pictures:
  |   |
Thursday, October 04, 2007
It Really Is
Monetary Value And Sexual Orientation
Apparently this morning I got a $2 bill with my change at 7-11. Haven't seen one of those in a while.
Given that a $3 bill is queer, and a $1 bill, presumably, is straight, is a $2 bill bi-sexual?
I mean, clearly it's not as straight as a $1 bill, and certainly not as queer as a (non-existent) $3. Maybe it's just bi-curious (Or would that be "buy-curious" instead? Ha! I kill me!)
Given that a $3 bill is queer, and a $1 bill, presumably, is straight, is a $2 bill bi-sexual?
I mean, clearly it's not as straight as a $1 bill, and certainly not as queer as a (non-existent) $3. Maybe it's just bi-curious (Or would that be "buy-curious" instead? Ha! I kill me!)
New Digs
So today I'm working out of our shiny new NOC in order to test functionality.
Everything works, for the most part, but it’s been kind of a pain as the place isn’t actually done yet. There’s still a lot of construction going on and not all of the computers are up and running.
And for most of the morning we didn’t have phones.
Also, my boss serendipitously chose to have me come in the same morning that they were testing the fire alarms.
So that was a fun way to start the day, especially after not sleeping especially well.
Just getting in to the building is a hassle. You have badge in to get past one gate, wait for that gate to close behind you, then badge in to get past another gate (makes for a considerable delay if you have any cars ahead of you), then badge in through a door, then another door, then sign in (or else the Wal-Mart greeter…I mean, crack security professional will get very cross with you), then badge in through a revolving door.
There would be one more door to badge in through, but it was propped open today because, as mentioned, there’s still construction going on.
The actual setup of the place is pretty cool, and a marked improvement over the old NOC in many ways.
I’m sure it won’t take long for the collection of slobs that make up the NOC personnel to completely trash it and turn it into a dank, dingy hole.
I have another entry written up (complete with a bunch of pictures of the now mostly-settled house) on my USB thumb drive, but with all of the SAs running around the place I don’t want to plug an unauthorized piece of equipment into one of the new machines, so I guess it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
Everything works, for the most part, but it’s been kind of a pain as the place isn’t actually done yet. There’s still a lot of construction going on and not all of the computers are up and running.
And for most of the morning we didn’t have phones.
Also, my boss serendipitously chose to have me come in the same morning that they were testing the fire alarms.
So that was a fun way to start the day, especially after not sleeping especially well.
Just getting in to the building is a hassle. You have badge in to get past one gate, wait for that gate to close behind you, then badge in to get past another gate (makes for a considerable delay if you have any cars ahead of you), then badge in through a door, then another door, then sign in (or else the Wal-Mart greeter…I mean, crack security professional will get very cross with you), then badge in through a revolving door.
There would be one more door to badge in through, but it was propped open today because, as mentioned, there’s still construction going on.
The actual setup of the place is pretty cool, and a marked improvement over the old NOC in many ways.
I’m sure it won’t take long for the collection of slobs that make up the NOC personnel to completely trash it and turn it into a dank, dingy hole.
I have another entry written up (complete with a bunch of pictures of the now mostly-settled house) on my USB thumb drive, but with all of the SAs running around the place I don’t want to plug an unauthorized piece of equipment into one of the new machines, so I guess it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Brief Update
I’m writing this in a Panera Bread (free Wi-Fi), as I still won’t have Internet for a week.
Not too much going on; the house is actually starting to look like a person lives there rather than a bunch of boxes.
I bought a microwave, which I already hate because it has all of these arcane methods for achieving the simplest tasks (setting the clock, even with the instructions, was like deciphering hieroglyphics without the Rosetta Stone).
Still, I have my kitchen pretty set up the way I want it. The living room needs work (and more furniture), and every other room just generally seems to need more stuff.
While I’m here I’m also trying to download some TV shows I missed. Looks like the connection is a little too slow for me to download more than one without sitting here forever.
Beyond not wanting to loiter, I have more stuff to do with my afternoon.
This morning I had to hit the DMV to get a new copy of my registration so that I can get my parking sticker from the HOA and have my car not get towed. I also had to get a Leesburg sticker, as apparently now that I’ve moved a half a mile I have to pay property tax on my car to Leesburg in addition to the tax I have to pay Loudoun County.
The DMV was remarkably painless, though based on her performance I would guess that the person who helped me hadn’t been working there long.
When she gave me my new registration card, she’d apparently grabbed someone else’s from the printer as well. As I gave it back to her she looked at me like I was retarded, saying, “That’s your new one. That’s what you wanted.” I said, “No, this one is my new one. The one I’m handing you belongs to someone else.” When that idea registered in her mind, she said, accusingly, “Where did you get this?” I was going to say, “Well, while you were standing there looking at me, I leaped over the counter, grabbed this from the printer, and came back here faster than you could see, just so that I could give it to you and baffle you.”
Of course I didn’t’, and the other DMV drone who needed it came over and took it from her.
While I was there I figured I might as well get a new license rather than just carry around the card with my new address that I’d gotten in the mail after I’d changed my address at the DMV Web site. If my brain had been working, I would have gone to the DMV after I got my haircut today, and I would have worn a different shirt, as I’m not crazy about the one I was wearing. Of course, I felt better about my shirt when I saw the dork with the orange pullover getting his picture taken.
After the DMV and City Hall trips, I got my hair cut and then went grocery shopping. I ended up stuck in line behind a family that bought $578 worth of groceries. That’s $513 more than I spent, and I actually spend quite a bit more than usual, as I was doing some stocking up.
And now here I am stretching out eating a scone so that I can justify sitting here and using up bandwidth.
(About 15 minutes to go on the download.)
And that brings you pretty much up to date.
Not too much going on; the house is actually starting to look like a person lives there rather than a bunch of boxes.
I bought a microwave, which I already hate because it has all of these arcane methods for achieving the simplest tasks (setting the clock, even with the instructions, was like deciphering hieroglyphics without the Rosetta Stone).
Still, I have my kitchen pretty set up the way I want it. The living room needs work (and more furniture), and every other room just generally seems to need more stuff.
While I’m here I’m also trying to download some TV shows I missed. Looks like the connection is a little too slow for me to download more than one without sitting here forever.
Beyond not wanting to loiter, I have more stuff to do with my afternoon.
This morning I had to hit the DMV to get a new copy of my registration so that I can get my parking sticker from the HOA and have my car not get towed. I also had to get a Leesburg sticker, as apparently now that I’ve moved a half a mile I have to pay property tax on my car to Leesburg in addition to the tax I have to pay Loudoun County.
The DMV was remarkably painless, though based on her performance I would guess that the person who helped me hadn’t been working there long.
When she gave me my new registration card, she’d apparently grabbed someone else’s from the printer as well. As I gave it back to her she looked at me like I was retarded, saying, “That’s your new one. That’s what you wanted.” I said, “No, this one is my new one. The one I’m handing you belongs to someone else.” When that idea registered in her mind, she said, accusingly, “Where did you get this?” I was going to say, “Well, while you were standing there looking at me, I leaped over the counter, grabbed this from the printer, and came back here faster than you could see, just so that I could give it to you and baffle you.”
Of course I didn’t’, and the other DMV drone who needed it came over and took it from her.
While I was there I figured I might as well get a new license rather than just carry around the card with my new address that I’d gotten in the mail after I’d changed my address at the DMV Web site. If my brain had been working, I would have gone to the DMV after I got my haircut today, and I would have worn a different shirt, as I’m not crazy about the one I was wearing. Of course, I felt better about my shirt when I saw the dork with the orange pullover getting his picture taken.
After the DMV and City Hall trips, I got my hair cut and then went grocery shopping. I ended up stuck in line behind a family that bought $578 worth of groceries. That’s $513 more than I spent, and I actually spend quite a bit more than usual, as I was doing some stocking up.
And now here I am stretching out eating a scone so that I can justify sitting here and using up bandwidth.
(About 15 minutes to go on the download.)
And that brings you pretty much up to date.
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