Three till Seven

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. :)

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 hanging out at Todd’s parents’ house, where I’ve been since Friday. I took a three-day weekend this week to spend more time with Todd, since he’s leaving for an eleven-day trip to Ireland this weekend. He and Brent are going just for a vacation, and I’m so jealous because they’re going to visit all over the country and take lots of alcohol-related tours, I think including Guinness and Jameson.

I didn’t mention it last time, but I sent my Wii off to Nintendo on Monday because its disc drive doesn’t work. It’ll either not load a disc at all, or it’ll load but then crap out with an error message in the middle of a game. It did this for Wii and Gamecube discs, and I think it was due to a recent thunderstorm because my cable modem also got wiped out at the same time. The Wii is still under warranty, so it’s getting repaired free of charge; Nintendo even covered the shipping with UPS by mailing me a shipping label. The DS Lite has been very nice because I’d probably be going through withdrawal symptoms without some form of Mario in my life. :P I’m still chugging away at Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time (I’ve progressed a lot in it, actually) and Super Princess Peach, but then yesterday I bought The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

I had read on IGN that Phantom Hourglass is an awesome game, and so far I’ve really enjoyed it. This is only the second Zelda game I’ve ever played, the first being Twilight Princess on the Wii, and so I’m not used to seeing Link as a little boy, instead of sexy!Link in Twilight Princess. It’s neat because I get a ship that I get to route around the ocean, avoiding traps and docking at islands. One really cool DS-specific feature that’s used is the touchscreen, not just for ordinary movement and combat, but also to make notes on my maps. For example, I’ll go into a dungeon and I’ll make notes on my map about where a treasure chest is, or where I entered the dungeon, or where I’m supposed to take some key. Another cool use of the DS is with the microphone:

• There was a lady behind a door, and to get her to open the door, I had to call out to her via the mic.
• There were some candles and to solve a puzzle, I had to blow them out by blowing into the mic. That caused Link to blow them out in the game.
• I got a dusty sea map and had to blow the dust off.

I just find it really clever when a game causes me to interact like that, translating my real-life actions exactly into the game.

While I do enjoy the swordfighting in Phantom Hourglass, all this stylus waving is making me miss the Wii’s Twilight Princess because, with that, I got to wave around the Wiimote and it felt more like I was waving an actual sword. I just need to restart that game because it’s been so long since I played through the majority of it (seriously: I got down to the last area where I was going to fight the boss soon, and just got tired of playing; enough frustrating timing puzzles and discovering the Magic Armor at the very end, after I’d already absorbed all the bug-money, will do that to you). I still have my friend Chris’s copy and he’d probably like that back at some point…

So I have a job for the fall, huzzah. I’ll be working [again] at Lexmark, this time back in my old department in the commercial division. I’m excited because 1) I’ll be working in Linux again and 2) I’ll be programming in Ruby again. This new area I’ve worked in this summer has been okay, but I’ve had to work in Windows, programming Windows applications, and I’ve had to do it in Visual Studio. Gag me, please. My absolute detest of Windows and Microsoft hasn’t reduced any, and I’m anxious to get back to an operating system that doesn’t piss me off just by its existence.

This fall, I’ll be working as an AYPT student: Academic Year Part Time. That means I’ll work 15-20 hours (probably 16 for me: two eight-hour days) per week while taking a full load of classes. I’m taking a couple of non-major classes, though, so I’m hoping the class load won’t be that rough. The two non-majors are Asian philosophy (counts for a Cross Cultural requirement) and astronomy (counts for Natural Sciences).

After this fall, I’ll be left with a requirement of 7 more hours to meet the minimum number required to graduate, and of that 7, I need only one particular class: senior design for computer science. I’ll finish off my undergraduate career in spring of ‘09, probably taking more than 7 hours just to get in a few more enjoyable classes before I graduate. Then it’s on to a career for me, and repayment of my ever-increasing student loans.

Just a short note to say that I bought a Nintendo DS Lite on Monday and have been enjoying the heck out of it since. I’ve bought two games so far: Mario and Luigi Partners in Time, and Super Princess Peach. Partners in Time has been my favorite because it’s like the first two Paper Mario games in that it’s turn-based, and it’s also very cute. I’m running around with baby versions of Mario and Luigi, plus there’s a baby Peach, a baby Bowser, and a younger Toadsworth. I’m currently on Yoshi Island putting out fires by 1) letting baby Mario drink spring water, causing him to get all round and squishy, then 2) having baby Luigi whack baby Mario with a hammer, causing Mario to spit out some water onto a fire. It’s completely adorable and I’ve been enjoying spitting up everywhere.

Super Princess Peach is also enjoyable. It’s like an old-school Mario sidescroller, but Peach doesn’t die upon being touched by an enemy, which I always thought was more frustrating than enjoyable; instead, she has three hearts that diminish when she gets hit. She has different moods you can invoke that trigger different things. For example, you can make her angry and she gets so mad that a fire starts, allowing you to burn obstacles and enemies. You can make her really happy such that she flies, allowing you to gather extra goodies in the air. It’s a ridiculously girly game, what with Peach squealing and running around with her yellow parasol Percy (or is it Perry?). Percy-Perry is tougher than he looks, though: if you’re holding an enemy and duck under the parasol, the parasol “absorbs” the enemy to refuel Peach. “Absorbs,” my ass! I see Percy licking his lips after Peach stands back up; I hope she never gets on his bad side.

Holycrapholycrapholycrap! Portishead, one of my all-time favorite bands, has not released an album for eleven years. When I first stumbled across them back in high school, I bought all their albums, I bought their t-shirt, and I thought for sure I’d never see anything else from them. The lead singer, Beth Gibbons, did a solo project a few years back, I think, but it had a completely different sound from Portishead. Now, I just found that they’ve released a new album, Third, just this year. I’m previewing it now on Amazon, which is where I’m probably about to buy the MP3’s. I’m so very excited about this because I think their music is uniquely jarring (see “Cowboys”) and creepy (e.g. “Mourning Air”).

Once again, iTunes is hardly putting up a fight. I can get the album for $10.99 there and it’s not iTunes Plus, so it’s DRMed AAC’s. Whereas Amazon MP3 has it for $8.99 in DRM-free 256 kbps MP3’s. There’s an obvious choice here, and Apple needs to wise up about this competitor.

Huzzah, I’m not dead after all! I’m sorry if anybody has been anxiously awaiting a new blog post here; I tell you, I get my evenings entirely free of homework because school’s out and I blog less than when the semester is in swing. I think it’s because during the school year I have little breaks at random times—including during class, sometimes, ahem—whereas while I’m at work (which is what I’ve been doing this summer), I can’t just post a blog entry while I’m there. Then when I get off work, I just want to laze around, play Paper Mario, or work out. Well, maybe I don’t want to work out, but I do want to not be fat, so I work out anyway.

Let’s see, let’s see… I went home this past weekend (as in, to my parents’ house) and got to visit with the kittens again. They’ve grown a bit but are still small enough to melt your heart at 50 paces. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding picture:

There! Are you more appeased about me not blogging in… 2 weeks?!… because I posted kitten photos? They apparently like salty things, because that’s the only reason I can think of that they all were so keen on licking/nibbling my fingers. Or maybe my fingertips remind them of their mother’s nipples, though those are some pretty giant cat nipples…

Work has been interesting this time around. I’m doing another internship at Lexmark but I’m in a different area this time. I was initially hired to work on a project involving Google Gadgets, which was cool, but then I got switched off of that to working on a Lexmark Firefox toolbar (the new version with my changes isn’t up yet), which I also enjoyed. Then I wrapped up work on that and got put on another project, which is my current one, and it’s hairy. The code itself is in XML, XSL, CSS, Javascript, and C++, and somehow, these things talk amongst each other. For the first few days of this project, I was doing nothing but reading hundred-page-plus specification files, which was boring as all get out and, I felt, didn’t do much good. Now I’ve gotten into actually programming it and I’m enjoying it, after a few setbacks where I felt things weren’t working just to spite me.

I finished Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and, while I liked it, I didn’t think it was Pratchett’s best work¹. I haven’t finished American Gods by Gaiman yet because he just hasn’t kept me spellbound, so I don’t know as how he’s that great of an author to begin with. I’m currently reading The Color of Magic by Pratchett because it’s the first Discworld novel and, omigosh *fangirl squee*, it has The Luggage. After that, I’ll probably reread Reaper Man because Death is an awesome Pratchett character.

Now, that’s about enough blog posting—Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Nintendo Gamecube (as played on my Wii) beckons.

¹ In my opinion, Reaper Man is his best work, and this is because it’s my favorite book of his. Sourcery is also good.

This past weekend I spent in New York and Ontario, Canada. I was in New York for Kelly and Eric’s wedding and in Canada to see Niagara Falls. Ha, customs frowns when three carloads of people try to get into Canada and not a one of them has a passport, but they let us through nevertheless. You can see photos of the whole trip on my Flickr account.

I just bought Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and I’m already tickled I did. Here’s why I love Terry Pratchett^*:

Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded “Born to Lurk,” these two would have been on the album cover. They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.

I have been pretty surprised by an instance of “wouldn’t of” instead of “wouldn’t have” (page 114) and “could of” earlier on in the book instead of “could have.” Honestly, I wouldn’t expect that from two excellent writers.

* Even though what I’ve read of Neil Gaiman’s is good, too, this quotation is very Pratchett-esque; I just know he was responsible for it.

My dad sent me photos of our new kittens! See all of them in My Pets on Flickr; this is my favorite:

I returned from a visit to my parents’ house two days ago and I bring wonderful news: the “tomcat” that miraculously had kittens brought them out the first night I was home. Mom came in to tell me and Dad that she heard meowing near the attic of the shed where they were kept and, sure enough, when Dad and I came out there were little babies scattered across the ground by the shed, mewing. We rounded them up and put them in a box with some clean rags, but there was still one missing. We heard him mewing from the attic but any time we tried to reach in, he’d hide again. Finally, as we loved on the others, he came out and commenced to yowling because he was stranded on a board propped against the side of the shed. Dad lifted him down and all four kittens were reunited. We left them in the box next to the shed for the mom to do with as she pleased, even though it worried me to leave them.

Next morning, the mama was on the porch and one baby was under the porch, but the others were nowhere in sight. I carried around the one baby, loving on him, and eventually put him with his mother on the porch. I looked around the shed but couldn’t find any of the others, so I worried that they were gone. I went in to watch a movie, trying to distract myself from the idea that all the other babies were gone for good, but Mom came and got me later: the three other kitties were now by the porch! I s’pose the mama led them over in her own time. I went out and rounded up two of them to put with the other on the porch, but the elusive fourth kitten was still gone. Mom and I heard him calling every so often but couldn’t locate him. Mom said our golden retriever, Goldy (I’m so creative), had came ’round and scattered the three on the ground. I doubt she meant any harm; she’s mostly just inquisitive and sniffy with new animals that we take a shine to.

Dad joined the hunt for the fourth kitten later and we eventually determined that he was hiding under the foot of the wooden ramp leading up to the porch. He was so far underneath it that we couldn’t reach back there and grab him, so Dad started to take up one of the ramp’s boards. The drill scared the kitten forward, further out from under the ramp. I suggested he just do something to scare the kitten completely out, and give up the board removal. I had my head buried under the ramp, watching the kitten’s progress, when suddenly green light started flaring along with smoke and hissing. The kitten high-tailed it out from under the ramp, I ran and scooped him up, and that’s when I noticed Dad had lit a firework at the base of the ramp. That’s one way of inspiring a kitten to move…

So, the happy family was reunited amongst some rags on the porch. They’re sheltered behind a large aquarium and some plant shelves so the other animals can’t easily get to them. The rest of my visit home, I would periodically go outside and cuddle a few kittens. They’re incredibly soft, though of course all kittens are, but these are extra soft; even their mother, a fully grown cat, is still downy feeling. They’re all dark gray with lighter stripes. Some are blacker than others, and one has brown spots on him. They each have stripes in the shape of an ‘M’ on the forehead. I took lots of photos but all with my dad’s camera, since I didn’t bring mine home, so I’m waiting on him to send them to me before I can post them online. Don’t worry, though, I’ll post them as soon as I get them. Everyone has to see the fuzzballs!