Month: May 2010

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Cleared to land


Air Force One, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

The day before yesterday saw President Obama visit the Buffalo area. He was in town for all of three hours — enough time to meet with the family members of the people who died in the plane crash a year ago, stop at a restaurant to pick up some chicken wings, and then go to a factory that’s been steadily expanding for a number of years for a tour and a speech.

I was working, so I didn’t get to see the President or hang out along the streets so I could see his motorcade, but as The Store’s parking lot roughly faces the same direction as the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, I figured I’d get to see Air Force One on final approach, just like I did six years ago when President Bush came to town. I found an excuse to hang around out front of our building at the rough time that the President was supposed to arrive, and sure enough, there’s Air Force One, making its final approach to the runway.

Three hours later I went outside again, hoping to see the takeoff, but as the President’s next destination was New York City, the plane took in the other direction. Oh well. I hope the President gets back here soon! Three hours isn’t enough time to spend in so fine a place as Buffalo.

BTW, you may have seen in the news that when Obama stopped by Duff’s to pick up some wings, a local woman told him that he was “a hottie with a smokin’ little body”. Well, that’s certainly on the list of things it would never occur to me to say to a President of the United States. But what would I say? Probably one of the following:

“Can you play quarterback or at least block for one?”

“Can you call up George Lucas and order him to invite me to an overnight stay at Skywalker Ranch?”

“Well, you’re doing a fine job, Mr. President. Not as fine as Jed Bartlet, but you’ve got time to catch up.”

OK, I wouldn’t say any of these things. I’d probably default to something along the lines of “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. President.” And I’d almost certainly ask for a picture. A hottie with a smokin’ little body? Yeah, probably not so much. Not even if Stana Katic was the President!

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Hate mail! I get hate mail!

I don’t get nasty e-mails all that often, so when I do, it’s kind of fun, in a bizarre sort of way. Especially when the mail is so staggeringly illiterate as this one. Here it is:

YOUR A STUPID BITCH!
It’s Not supposed to be unpredictable
“children’s book!” …He made no mistakes
its a novel for leaning and imagination god…

Now, there’s lots of funny there, to be sure. It’s amusing to be taken to task for a book review by a person who can’t tell “your” from “you’re” and calls me a “stupid bitch”, thus demonstrating a failure to even read my GMR bio and note the masculine pronouns used there in reference to me. But the funniest thing about it is that in my review, I raved about the book in question! Seriously! I loved the book, and said so.

So I’m sent hate mail by someone because I didn’t like their favorite book enough. There’s something funny about that, oh yes….

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Quiver, pathetic humans!

I saw this at SamuraiFrog‘s place, and I had to do it myself. Used to play some AD&D back in the day (mainly college). In the big campaign we did, I had two characters. One was a lawful-good cleric-ranger, and he was fun to play (I interpreted him as a real prude — Captain Picard with a sword and even less of a sense of humor), but the character I was really invested in was my chaotic-good necromancer. I played him as an arrogant wise-ass with an odd love of black humor. So this guy is probably right in line.

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Sorcerer (5th Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-14

Dexterity-12

Constitution-13

Intelligence-14

Wisdom-10

Charisma-12

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

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Something for Thursday

For his PBS show Cosmos, Carl Sagan did a brilliant bit on evolution, with some then-amazing computer animation:

Here’s the same animation, without voiceover and with a different piece of music that was also used in the series, called “Alpha” by Vangelis:

This has always been one of my favorite pieces of animation.

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USB UBS SUB BUS BSU UBS SBU


I’m in USB device Hell!, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I love my techno doodads as much as anyone, but wow, have I ever in just the last year or two amassed an incredible number of things that plug into my USB port. I have so many of these things that I sometimes can’t even plug in all the things I may want to plug in at one time! ‘Tis wild and whacky, it is.

A small inventory of USB-powered or USB-interfaced stuff at Casa Jaquandor:

1. Printer
2. Digital camera
3. My MP3 player
4. The WIfe’s MP3 player
5. The Daughter’s MP3 player
6. My main external hard drive — 250GB
7. My backup external hard drive — 320GB (I’m paranoid about backing up, and I may buy a third one come August, when they can be had at Target pretty cheaply.)
8. My cell phone (I use the USB port to charge it, instead of the wall outlet)
9. Flash drive, 8GB
10. Flash drive, 4GB
11. Flash drive, 1GB
12. Flash drive, 1GB (This one I use for that “System Boost” thing that Vista can do, which treats the flash drive as memory, because I’m too lazy to go and get a proper memory upgrade.)
13. Flash drive, 512MB
14. Card reader for MicroSD cards (of which I have three; one’s in the phone and one’s in the camera, and one I’m not currently using for anything)
15. Turbolaser

OK, I made that last one up. But yeah, I’ve got a lot of USB-related crap.

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Hey, do you think “muffin” was a euphemism for something?

I watched Betty White on Saturday Night Live the other night, and I found it for the most part very enjoyable, hilarious at times and occasionally “meh”. (I didn’t stay up for the whole show, actually; I went to bed after “Weekend Update”, happy to let the visions of Tina Fey behind the newsdesk once again dance about in my head.)

White did a really good job on the show. I have to confess that I’m just not that huge a fan of Betty White. I have no problem with her whatsoever; I don’t dislike her at all. But I admit that I just don’t get why it’s become the case of late that anything with Betty White in it is automatically considered Awesome. (And to be honest, I didn’t like Golden Girls much at all, but that’s certainly not Betty White’s fault. The show just didn’t amuse me much.)

But as for SNL? Some great stuff there. The opening sketch, a parody of Lawrence Welk, went on a bit too long, but White’s monologue was one of the better monologues I’ve seen on SNL in a long time. There was a sketch in which White appeared on what appeared to be a Latino talk show. I actually dosed off during this sketch, but I’m willing to grant that this may be due to my almost always being asleep by 11:30 pm than because of the sketch. The “muffin” sketch was hilarious, and I also found the next one funny as well (“Maybe it’s because she’s a lesbian!”). All in all, I thought White did a great job on the show.

I also listened to Jay-Z’s rap performance, and it confirmed what I’ve always thought about rap music: I admire the artistry at work in it, but man oh man, is it ever not my cup of tea. It doesn’t appeal to me at all, but I don’t hate it and I would certainly never claim that “rap isn’t music”.

Anyway, kudos to Betty White. Next week we’ll have Alec Baldwin hosting SNL for what must be the 89th time. I think Baldwin has probably appeared on the show more times than John Belushi by now. Yeesh! (Actually, I’ve just looked it up, and it’s not even close. This will be Baldwin’s 20th appearance. Belushi appeared in 88 episodes.)

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Smart Noshery Makes You Slobber

Via the NYT:

For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in China offers a confounding array of choices. At banks, there are machines for “cash withdrawing” and “cash recycling.” The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as “fried enema,” “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid” and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as “The Jew’s Ear Juice.”

Those who have had a bit too much monolithic tree mushroom stem squid could find themselves requiring roomier attire: extra-large sizes sometimes come in “fatso” or “lard bucket” categories. These and other fashions can be had at the clothing chain known as Scat.

Go ahead and snicker, although by last Saturday’s opening of the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, drawing more than 70 million visitors over its six-month run, these and other uniquely Chinese maladaptations of the English language were supposed to have been largely excised.

Well, that at least is what the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use has been trying to accomplish during the past two years.

Fortified by an army of 600 volunteers and a politburo of adroit English speakers, the commission has fixed more than 10,000 public signs (farewell “Teliot” and “urine district”), rewritten English-language historical placards and helped hundreds of restaurants recast offerings.

There’s a photo gallery of hilariously mistranslated Chinese signage as well. This one nearly had me spewing coffee all over my laptop:

I mean, who wouldn’t want their Marxism hot and fragrant!

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