I’m migrating from pMachine Pro 2.4 to ExpressionEngine. There may be some hiccups in the process. Not like I have a large reading audience anyway; I guess this is more for my own logs than anything else. Anyway, I’m starting with EE Core v 1.4.2 and it seems to be going pretty smoothly, only a few minor modifications done so far. And the Pictures category comes across too wide at the moment.

RIP, little doggie. ☹️

Yesterday I was all ready to post a comment about how VW sucks because my window fell down yesterday on the freeway as the rain was moving in. And of course it was Sunday so I couldn’t get to the dealer until today. But fortunately they offered to fix it for me today for free as well as the driver’s side window if it is indeed the window regulator clips. And I’m confident that it will be. So VW doesn’t suck, after all. At least they have atoned for this particular sin—designing a plastic window clip that breaks more than occasionally. To their credit, they did put redesigned ones on the 2003+ cars.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/index.php?p=938

It seems logical to me, but personally I don’t feel that Comcast has its act together enough to subtly sabotage Vonage VoIP packets. I’m just lucky if my Adelphia cable internet stays up for more than an hour at a time. Or maybe it’s their DNS servers, who knows what my problems are….

I call this one “Center of Gravity.” MC Escher would be proud.

My mother was right. The show is too violent.

A while ago I asked her to watch an episode on Wednesday night. It happened to be the one where Sayid beat on their Other hostage Henry. I explained to her that she needed to understand the backstory as to why the people behaved this way. Well last night the producers pushed me closer to that line where I will no longer watch the show.

This morning during my morning routine I realized that I still reeled after last night’s events. At some level I must have internalized the show. In the last 30 seconds of the show, one of our most sympathetic characters murders a sitting, defenseless woman in cold blood right after he says “I’m sorry.” First of all, if people could actually be brainwashed into killing their own with such specificity of purpose, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t apologize beforehand. (Nevermind the rest of last night’s particularly awful dialogue.) Yes, yes, it’s supposed to be a dramatic element. It’s not real, it’s fiction. Well Star Trek was even more removed from real life and people believed in it. But Lost is no Star Trek. Ethically.

I’d like to place a reminder on my weblog. It’s aimed more towards the news media, who tend to be making a big stink about rising gas prices. Contrary to popular American belief, driving is a privilege, not a right. There is no constitutional guarantee to driving a car or receiving cheap gasoline prices from vendors. Let’s face it people, demand is rising and supply is falling. Anyone who took a high school economics class can tell you that prices will rise. And there’s nothing anybody can really do about it. Wait—there is. Don’t drive your car. Or use a renewable fuel that doesn’t come from crude oil. If you want a point in the right direction, watch Fueling Change. But stop your whining. What and how people drive around here you’d think it was their God-given right. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness doesn’t specifically mean driving a gas guzzling monstrosity down the road at 80mph while getting 10mpg. And if you’re one of those people who drives one of those cars and thinks, “oh, my fuel economy isn’t so bad,” you’re deluding yourself. I get 35mpg on average and I think that’s bad. And you know what, it just might be. 🙂

No, this is not a nod to my present state of unemployment. I just (finally) watched Rent. I have mixed feelings about the movie. The broadway musical I love. The movie I do not. It had its good moments, even some truly remarkable moments, considering how much I disliked parts of the film. One of my passions is musical theater and musicals. They have not fared well lately in film adaptations. The bit that really irks me is the numbers do not feel motivated at all: the energy isn’t heightened and there is no need for the characters to break into song, with a couple of notable exceptions— I thought “La Vie Boheme” and “Take Me or Leave Me” started off well. The rest of the time the transitions were flat. A couple of other minor things became major annoyances to me. Two technical things: The CGI breath was too much. It was annoying and I didn’t believe it. Yes, it’s supposed to be cold outside. Yes, sometimes it’s a pet peeve of mine when movies are shot in LA and it’s supposed to be cold enough to see your breath. But computer generated breath is NOT the answer. It really threw me out of it. Second, the auto-tune on the vocal tracks, especially noticable on Mimi, really blew it for me. Okay, so they want to be pitch-perfect. Get it in the performance, don’t use the “fix it in post” attitude. Heavy auto-tune that sounds like Brittney Spears really ticks me off, especially since I know most if not all of the actors in this movie are capable of doing it right (e.g. it wasn’t so noticible on Idina Menzel’s and Anthony Rapp’s vocals).