Three till Seven

Well, Todd left for Ireland last night, and he should’ve arrived there sometime very early this morning, at least by Eastern Standard Time. I won’t see him for eleven days now, and I’m already kind of sad and missing him. My biggest worry whenever someone dear to me travels is that they’ll get hurt or killed, because I’m just an optimist like that. If I don’t think about that possibility, then I’m fine because I know I’ll see them again before too long.

Yay, so according to Nintendo’s web site, my Wii has been shipped back to me. I checked its tracking and yesterday it was in New York. I don’t know why it made a pit stop in New York on the way to Kentucky from Washington state, but there you are. It’s supposed to arrive Monday, which kind of sucks because I’ll be at work, and UPS always tries to deliver packages during the day when both me and Jessica are working. I have yet to receive a UPS package, even stupid rinky-dink things that ought not require an in-person signature, that I haven’t had to drive across town to pick up myself. They should just save me the trouble of calling to have it held for pickup and ship it to their place to begin with.

I just noticed that I’m really bad about starting new paragraphs with word-comma, so now for something completely different! (Didja catch the Monty Python quote?) Guess who got a Wii Fit the other day? Just guess! No, it wasn’t the pope, at least not that I’m aware. No, it wasn’t Jack Nicholson, though he could certainly use one nowadays. It was me! Well, me and Jess: we went halfsies (halvsies? halvesies?) on one. I never expected to find one this early because they’re always sold out. A coworker of Jessica’s had somehow put his name down to get one in Target’s next shipment, and then that shipment was delayed a day, so they emailed him to let him know he could pick his up. He told Jess and Jess told me and I called Target and, lo and behold, they still had some so I reserved one myself. When I picked it up that afternoon (for $89 + tax, much better than the $140+ they’re going for on eBay), I asked the clerk if they had been selling them pretty fast: “Oh yeah.” I asked if they had any left besides the reserved ones: “Oh no.”

So I got my Wii Fit and the sad condition is that I have a Wii Fit but no Wii, at least not till Monday, or probably even Tuesday after UPS has tried to deliver once, failed because no one was home and Nintendo’s bound to require a signature, and I’ve called to have them hold the stupid thing and stop trying to deliver it to an empty household. Honestly, I don’t know how that works for anyone, since most people work in the 8-4 or 9-5 range when UPS delivers. Anyway, I tried out the Wii Fit at Todd’s place that afternoon since his Wii has yet to die due to a lightning storm. My first Body Test, which tests your balance, had the little Balance Board on the TV asking me if I tripped much while I walk. No I don’t, thank you very much Mr. Balanc–whoop! Did anyone else see that lump in the sidewalk? Jeez, you could break an ankle around here… Ahem, right, so I also tried hula hooping and got 2 out of 4 stars, then yoga and got 3 stars, then lunges and got 4 stars, which really had me feeling good, but that was all laid to rest when I tried the ski slalom and got 1 star. Man, do I suck at balancing, apparently!

The Wii Fit also told me I was fat, which I already knew, and oh how sad it was to see my little skinny Mii go to having a ring of belly fat when it calculated my weight and BMI. I do have much hope of slimming down again, though, what with my better diet, 5-day-a-week elliptical machine bouts, and Wii Fit to keep me entertained while I exercise at home. Todd gave me the added incentive that when I get down to my goal weight, he’ll take me out and buy me a nice dress to show off my they’d-damn-well-better-be-skinny-by-then legs.

I’m so disgusted about yesterday’s result on the FISA amendments. I’ve emailed Kentucky’s senators, complaining about how if our own President, ideally someone who breaks no laws himself and especially not someone who asks other entities to break the law, can commit felonies and not get in trouble for it, why on earth should any regular citizen obey the law? A government by and for the people should be held accountable to the same laws that govern those people.

I’m also disgusted with Obama voting to approve the amendments. Clinton voted against them, so remind me again why Obama is to be the democratic nominee in this year’s presidential election? He’s the one caving to the Bush administration while she’s the one trying to support the Fourth Amendment. I feel now like I have these options this November: 1) vote for Obama and maybe something will change but most likely things will stay the same (new absolved-from-all-crimes dictator, same slop), 2) vote for McCain and things will definitely stay the same, or 3) vote for some other candidate who has no chance of getting elected and things will stay the same.

Here’s some news:

1. The surveillance controversy:

   President Bush acknowledged the existence of the Terrorist Surveillance Program in December 2005, after it was first reported by the New York Times.

   The program — under which the National Security Agency monitors electronic communications, including e-mail and phone calls — was aimed at identifying potential terrorists who were communicating with people in the United States. As part of the program, U.S. telecommunications companies secretly granted government access to e-mails and phone calls on their networks. Bush said the program had thwarted a number of attacks.

   Critics have alleged that the program circumvented the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. That law created a secret, independent court to handle government requests for electronic surveillance in terrorism and espionage cases. The law was enacted as a check on executive power after the Watergate scandal.

2. Get FISA Right Campaign
3. Send an email to your senators
4. Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, legalize warrantless eavesdropping by Glenn Greenwald:
   

   The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal, as the Senate approved a bill — approved last week by the House — to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President.
   …
   Today, the Democratic-led Senate ignored those protests, acted to protect the single most flagrant act of Bush lawbreaking of the last seven years, eviscerated the core Fourth Amendment prohibition of surveillance without warrants, gave an extraordinary and extraordinarily corrupt gift to an extremely powerful corporate lobby, and cemented the proposition that the rule of law does not apply to the Washington Establishment.

5. Betrayed by Obama by Joan Walsh:
   

   The only thing Obama has going for him this week is that McCain is matching him misstep for misstep. While we’re railing about Obama’s craven vote on FISA — rightfully; Glenn Greenwald is a hero for his work on this topic — McCain was outdoing Dick Cheney with neocon crazy talk, warning that Iran’s test of nine old missiles we already knew they had increases the chances of a “second Holocaust.” Every time I wonder whether I can ultimately vote for Obama in November, given all of his political cave-ins, McCain does something new to make sure I have to.

6. Bloggers Slam Barack Obama on FISA Vote

Aaaand here’s a video that about sums up the stupidity of it all:

Let’s see, what all has happened in the sixteen days I haven’t posted… Well, opening night of The Dark Knight, I went with a group of folks to see it. We got there half an hour early, having already bought our tickets earlier in the day, and there was a gigantic line just to get out of the theater lobby. We checked with a couple of folks and, yep, that was The Dark Knight’s line. When we finally got into the theater, there was no way our large group was going to be able to sit together; we ended up splitting into twos and sitting mostly down front, which is where the only seats were left. Todd and I got stuck way down front and on the rightmost side, which isn’t great for seeing the screen, but we made do. They even had the theater ushers out, making sure people found seats and that no one who wasn’t handicapped took a handicapped seat.

It turned out to be one of the best films I’ve seen all year (it would be the best, but I’ve also seen Wall-E and The Incredible Hulk, and it’s a toss-up), and I enjoyed it so much that I went back to see it a second time with Jessica. I found out when buying tickets with her that she hasn’t seen Batman Begins, so now that’s next in line on our Netflix queue. She thoroughly enjoyed the movie as well, and we both agreed that Heath Ledger makes a surprisingly good Joker. He was my favorite character in the film because he was like sadistic-charismatic, however that works. I remember when I first heard Ledger had died that I was surprised and thought it was sucky, of course, but I wasn’t too upset about it. I hadn’t seen enough of his movies to be a big fan of him at the time. However, after seeing his performance in The Dark Knight, I got to feeling glum about the fact that, in subsequent Batman movies, he’ll never be the Joker again. He was so ridiculously good at being creepy, seeming unhinged, and doing evil things but still somehow making me laugh. I loved the part when the gangsters first meet with the Joker, and he does his “disappearing pencil” trick; I laughed my ass off, along with the rest of the theater, at that.

The other day, I ended up part of a very funny and impromptu mailing list. I got to work and checked my Gmail, as always, and saw I had a message about a Ruby on Rails position from a Pradipta Archiputra. I’ve gotten word about RoR job offerings before, most likely due to my Working with Rails profile, but this was something else, because in addition to the initial email (which simply said “I have a couple of Ruby on Rails position, wanted to know if you are interested?”), there were hundreds of responses. Wondering what the devil was going on, I checked the email headers and, sure enough, the “To” field was massive, and many people who had received the email had hit Reply All to give a response. One Mark Coates said “this is fun. it’s like a message thread i did not subscribe to. please no more ‘reply all’s. thanks,” and David Gibbons said “Mr Pradipa needs to learn how to BCC,” and Anders Combere said “Please KEEP ME ON THIS CRAZY LIST!!!”. I read through many of the responses and got a kick out of them. So many people responded, introducing themselves and joking about the craziness of a social network starting because of some nerdy recruiter copy-pasting to “To” instead of “Bcc”.

This craziness extended so far as to inspire the creation of a Google Group titled Pradipta’s Rolodex. I got another email from ol’ Pradipta, this time issuing an apology:

First of all I just wanted to say I apologize for the emails I sent. As of today I promise to stop the Email marketing campaigns. And I do believe it was a very…very..stupid mistake, this is the result of working late.

Also, I am deeply amazed of how talented you guys are. I mean seriously all this happened in less than 24 hours. I hope this mishap would create a benefit for all of us.

…

P.S: this time I used BCC. :)