Awesomeness

I had the greatest weekend, and am really sad that it’s over. On Friday, I hung out with R and went to see The Uninvited. Then yesterday, I had my second date with G. He’s adorable, and I’m mostly smitten, and we had a great time. I caught up with some other friends of mine just in time to get a ride back home to NJ, which is great, because I have no idea what I would have done otherwise (would probably have stayed with one of my city friends, but I’m glad I didn’t have to try to arrange that as inebriated as I was). I awakened this morning with a pounding headache and mild nausea, but it’s really no more than I deserved, considering how much I had to drink!

Then today was the Superbowl. As usual, I had no stake in either team, so I randomly chose to go with the Cardinals. Well, maybe I’ll pick better next year. We went to the Reade Street Pub, which was great. The house beer (who ever heard of such a thing??) was this great dark, and there were tvs all over. The food was pretty great, too. The waitress started out being professional but kind of surly, but then she won $1,000 because her Superbowl grid numbers hit, and she was all smiles after that! It was great to hang out with friends old and new, and the weather today was so lovely. We got up to a balmy 53, and even though it’s almost midnight, it’s still 37 degrees. It’s going to snow and get cold again later this week, but I appreciate any duration of weather ths awesome.

Tomorrow it’s back to the salt mines.

I love corrupting my nephew. He’s been walking around the house singing, “Tacos and mojitos. Cerveza, por favor. ¿Dónde está la biblioteca?”

Love. It!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9NFkB_GUDQ]

All things Opera

The last time I thought that Opera was working with Multi-Touch/Multiclutch gestures, I closed it down completely (carrying over no windows between sessions), only to find that I had been mistaken. Again. I was so disappointed that I didn’t open the program for over a week. I hear that lots of Mac users don’t like Safari, but I’m finding that it suits my needs pretty nicely (although I do still also use Firefox on occasion).

Today, though, I wanted to use a fresh browser to check for airfare, and didn’t feel like going through and deleting all of my travel-related cookies from Safari and Firefox. I opened Opera, and was informed that new build was fixed. I downloaded it, and HUZZAH!! It does work with Multi-touch gestures. Immediately, with no dumb luck involved. Unfortunately, my bookmarks didn’t make it from one version to the next, but that was easy enough to remedy. It seems like such a stupid thing to dump a browser over, but I’m so used to this now, that I hate maneuvering without my gestures, and I think my windows laptop is little more than a lapwarmer.

Speaking of opera, I just realized that I didn’t speak about my trip to see Aida last week. Eyes are floating shut, more on that later.

Just how big a nerd am I?

I dual-booted OS X and Windows 7, just to see if I could.

Windows 7 is pretty interesting so far, but I finished the install and played with the whole setup for about 20 minutes before I had to go to bed. Will explore more later.

lolXtians

I don’t often post about knitting on this blog, but I saw something too funny not to share. I just finished making a pair of mittens for my nephew, and the drastic drop in temperature has convinced me that I need to make a pair for myself, too. I wanted to make a pair of convertible mittens, because although traditional mittens are warmer than gloves, they allow for less mobility of the fingers; I would hate to have to pull off a mitten to reach into my bag for something. I was browsing different mittens patterns on Ravelry, and found a reference to “Mittens of the Beast.” I had no idea what that meant, but the name itself is hilarious, so I Googled it and found this blog, which in turn linked to thisgem of a post.

It sounds too stupid to be true, but a Christian knitter saw a pattern for a pair of mittens that included a pocket on top for a Charlie card and wrote a post on the Ravelry forums about how these mittens were for those who had had their skin embedded with RFID chips. She based this incorrect assumption on an unnamed broadcast she claims to have heard that talked specifically about a mittens pattern for those who had been embedded with an RFID chip. One interpretation of the Book of Revelation states that a time will come when people will have to take some form of microchip in order to buy or sell things in this world. This is known as the mark of the beast, and will separate the believers from the hellbait.

Barring how impractical it would be for any municipal transit corp to embed some people with chips when the current crop of plastic cards don’t even work all the time, think about it: why would someone who already had an RFID chip embedded in his or her body need an external pocket in a mitten to somehow speed along the identification process? How could an extra layer of anything between the chip and the sensor be considered as desirable? This is why people should only denigrate technology that they actually understand. This same principle applies to PC users who wander into Mac threads on Engadget. See what I did there?

The thread on the Ravlery forum in which this discussion appeared is still hilarious to read, nearly a year after the fact (you will have to be Ravelry member to read the forum). It’s now closed, but after the first few Reading is Fundamental types agreed with the original poster’s interpretation of the pattern, some cooler heads prevailed and pointed out the exact purpose of the pocket. Of course, idiocy means never having to say you’re sorry, so no genuine apology or expression of remorse followed, although she did admit that she was wrong about this particular heathen pattern. Several people actually pointed out that this kind of thing is why some non-Christians get such a kick out of laughing at illogical, religious Christians, and why evangelicals get such a bad rap.

Anyway, I know that there is a dedicated subset of Christians who live for opportunities to tie the current world to the end of times (DUN DUN DUH!!!!), but these people (and their unbowed descendants) have been wrong for over 150 years, and I’m starting to think they may be trying too hard to connect unrelated things. In order to help them along, I leave them with one bit of advice.The book is called Revelation. I know you’ve been saying it with an extra “s” all these years, mostly because you’ve never read it, but I’m sure that, with practice, you, too can learn the name of your holy book’s final testament. If all else fails, just remember the commercials for 1-800-Mattres: Leave off the last “s” for sinners.

The story behind these mittens amuse me so much that I believe I will be making myself a pair.

More terrifying than the original

I never got those Toyota “Saved by Zero” ads. How is 0% financing going to save you if you probably shouldn’t be buying a car in the first place? I mean, I guess you’ll appreciate the extra three months before it gets repossessed, but you know that buying a car in this economic climate probably wasn’t a good idea in the first place. Plus, that song is just horrible. So annoying. I don’t usually look up during commercials, so it took me a long time to even understand what was being said. “Day five zero?” Probably not, but that was the strongest contender early on.

Anyway, I’ve come to learn that I’m not the only person who find these commercials ridiculous. Consumerist posted a pretty hilarious mashup of these commercials with the horror movie The Ring. Enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5fTfv7SCi0]

Some good news!

I was worried about Life’s prospects when I heard that NBC had canceled My Own Worst Enemy and Lipstick Jungle, but apparently I wasn’t paying enough attention to the news coming down the wire. Before axing those two shows, NBC had already given Life a full-season order. Awesom! Let’s hope the show can do well enough in its timeslot to come back for a third season! I love Damian Lewis and Sarah Shahi to bits, and want their show to succeed!

I’m enjoying a lot of things this season, but many of the things I don’t like all fall into one category: romance. I don’t know if this show just doesn’t need it at all, or if I just think all its attempts up until now have been pretty unconvincing. I don’t believe that Charlie should have anything to do with Jennifer, his ex-wife. At the very least, she is just one more person who wasn’t there for him when he needed her. Also, I kind of suspect her of being evil and somehow related to what happened to Charlie (although she did warn him when that teacher posed as a reporter and asked her questions about Charlie). Anyhow, just going on what we know up until this point, I do not think it’s realistic to believe that Charlie’s remarried ex-wife has his best interest at heart, or that anything between the two of them is going to end well.

Also, I think that Reese should stay 100 feet away from Tidwell at all times. 1) The man looks like he does not bathe (Dear Donal Logue: please make your character less vile); 2) He is her boss and that cannot be a good idea; 3) He is ridiculous (the tics, the rudeness, the stunning callousness); 4) Sarah Shahi is as hot as the fire of a thousand suns, and should be with a similarly awesome guy (what’s Bradley Cooper doing these days? A little Alias reunion would be sweet).

Finally, what the hell is going on with Ted and Olivia, Charlie’s dad’s fiancée? I will admit that Christina Hendricks and her impressive bosom are pretty sweet, but what is this storyline all about? We know nothing about Charlie’s dad, and haven’t even met him yet, but we’ve seen said missing father’s intended how many times now? Okay, so Charlie is avoiding her. But wouldn’t that make her even less likely to come around? You can’t change the mind of somebody you can’t pin down. But then what’s the story with Ted? I guess a romance between these two is not entirely implausible, seeing as she obviously has a thing for old dudes, but because I don’t understand Olivia, the whole thing seems suspect. I guess I can understand why Ted just come out with, “Hey Charlie, I kissed your dad’s fiancée during that earthquake,” but why would he have neglected to mention her presence at all? And lied about how the pencil got out of his hand. Was Ted always this bad at lying? Maybe that’s why he ended up in prison. Plus, even if I did finally understand and maybe support a Ted-Olivia, Christina Hendricks is kicking ass and taking names over at Mad Men, and how often could we really expect her to show up on Life?

Sweet!

My new computer arrived today, three days ahead of schedule. It’s so awesome I can hardly stand it!! I haven’t even done too much exploration, but this machine is so quick, it’s insane. It was no hassle to set up my network, connect to the internet, or set up my programs. Plus, I’m using my same network connection as always, and it’s seriously about 6 times faster than my PC.