Displaying Category: News

Things have been moved around a little in order to make room for the new search feature up there at the right. This is the absolutely most basic form of search I could provide. I plan on enhancing this as I learn better ways to do this and come up with improved features. In the meantime, this should serve.

I am swiftly growing annoyed by the increasing flow of "tweetshaking" that I see going 'round. Or maybe it's a "tweetconomy?" Wherin, some person or company says "Tweet about me and you can download something cool!" or "People who tweet about us can win something great!" And I have nothing against Imogen Heap or EVGA, quite the contrary, but when the people/companies I like the most are now jumping on this bandwagon I start to see the pervasiveness of these trends that, to my eyes, seem to be fleeting. By fleeting I mean evolving. I am sure tweeting will evolve into some new social networking trend within the next two years, bringing about the gradual decline of "tweets" as we know them. I'd say that's good, but I shudder to think about what comes next...

Wells Fargo has filed suit against itself as the holders of the first and second mortgages on a condo in Florida. I sure hope Wells Fargo didn't receive any taxpayer money to support such stupidity...

Nevermind.

It's been about seven years since the last MechWarrior game. Now we see the first gameplay footage from a new series reboot. HOT. There's also a press release.

I found this article on io9 explaining a bit about SyFy's plans for a reboot of the movie/TV series Alien Nation. I rather enjoyed the movie and followed the series with interest, though not dedication. SyFy has gotten Tim Minear (Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse) to do the writing (with a team, I am sure).

Though the article doesn't mention it, I actually find the current series, The Unusuals to be a great buddy-cop series, especially since it follows three sets of cop-buddies.

I think what interests me the most about Alien Nation is to see what sort of look they give it. BSG was great drama, sure, but the setting and effects really cemented the sense of reality the series was trying to convey. So I'm curious how the sense of an enormous alien spacecraft crashing on earth and then integrating the ships slave crew into modern society is going to feel, ya know?

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, folks. Work has been kicking my ass and when I do have the time, my mind has been elsewhere. However, I do have a LOT of events and outings planned for the summer that I am really looking forward to. Some will get reviews and some will get commentary. Others will be spurned. I don't know why, but someone has to take a bullet for the team.

For example, tonight I watched Quarantine (psst... they all die) and then went with Derek to a "Summer Stroll" event at Huntley Meadows. To be completely honest, I didn't care so much about seeing animals or getting an education about the various creatures in the park, I just really wanted an opportunity to walk around at night surrounded by nature. I really love enjoying a warm night outdoors. Back in my college years, my buddy Dave and I would get lawn chairs and sit in his back yard overlooking a lake and talk for hours. Something about night air and not quite being able to see the other person's features makes conversation flow easier... Yeah, that sounds kinda bad... But my point is, I like talking with people, and outside at night seems like a really good time and place for conversation. And I miss it.

That didn't really happen on this walk, but it was nice to be outdoors. And then there were the fireflies. We were up in the tower overlooking the marsh for a good while and we could see the fireflies in the meadow below and that was kind of nice. Then we walked back toward the visitor's center and we witnessed the most amazing show. The treeline was awash with glittering lights everywhere, which seemed incredibly neat to everyone... and then we got into the woods and it was absolutely unbelievable. It was like the stories you read about faeries in a mystical forest. I know, it sounds kind of silly, but you see it was, well, magical. From the foreground far into the distance there were tiny lights constantly flickering. If you slightly unfocused your eyes so you weren't looking at anything specific it looked like something out of a movie or what you would imagine from a book. I can't describe it any other way. Magnificent and beautiful.

More to come, I just can't guarantee regularity for the next few months...

I love that the Japanese spend so much time and energy on "little" things like this...

I apologize for not being able to find the source of this photo, but it came from Photobucket, that's all I know.

So some of you may be wondering how this situation resolved, well, it's not quite how I would have liked. Acura classified it as a "warranty repair" and took off 20% of the final price. The final cost to replace the transmission and the computer came to a little under $3700. That's a long way from my request that they cover at least half, but the almost $900 off is better than paying full price.

I have been trying to get in contact with the client care reps to discuss my "satisfaction" with my service. I don't really expect that will make anything better, but at least I'll get some closure on being able to express my disappointment.

Updates in the ongoing saga of my car...

I have a 2001 Acura CL Type-S. It is currently at the dealership getting a third transmission installed. The original transmission was replaced under warranty at ~78k miles. This factory rebuilt transmission is now being replaced after ~59k miles. Apparently, these replacement transmissions only have a warranty of something like 37k miles. That seems obscenely ridiculous to me. On top of this, my car has had all sorts of really unusual repairs, like the replacement of a sensor in the throttle body (or something like that), the rear view mirror that nearly blew up, a couple engine mounts that needed replacement, all of the injectors were replaced because, in the service advisor's words, "the seals are all gone," and the manifold gasket was replaced. On top of all that, I still occasionally get combustion fumes leaking into the cabin, which they haven't been able to solve.

The topper on all this is that my car is probably only worth about $5000. I have REALLY been wanting to get a new car these last couple years, largely because I am tired of dropping $2000/year on repairs for my car. So I've been saving up for a down payment... now this repair work is going to cut into that potential down payment significantly.

My Normal Car is seriously complicating My Normal Life.

As a followup to Sander's suggestions, I have further enhanced the commenting functionality. I have added a quick list of the allowed HTML elements (we all know HTML, right?). I have also added a convenient little "expand" option in the bottom right that will expand the textarea to something muuuuch larger than normal. If that works for folks, I'll probably extend that to other large textareas on the site... you know, the ones that only I see... Which I suppose no one cares about.

Oh, and I also added a real favicon. You'll probably have to clear your cache to see it. Come on, you know you want to! Thanks again for the feedback and I look forward to continuing to improve the site!