I had dental surgery yesterday, and the anesthesia had not kicked in 100% when they started.

Still, I would rather go through that twice more that ever hear "If Today Was Your Last Day" by Nickelback again.

Poll #1518298 Band collisions
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

Who would you rather see in concert?

Cheerfully stolen from an epic Facebook thread.

How to Suck at Facebook

I LOL'ed.


Edit: A companion piece of sorts: Eighteen People You're Scared Of on Facebook

In Duck Attack! news, apparently the binaries are already circulating on German pirate ROM sites. I can't say I'm thrilled about that, but it is a little amusing, since I haven't even finished the thing yet. (Very, very close, though.)

If you want to see a demo of the game in action, the (legitimate) publishers of the game, AtariAge, have posted a YouTube video, which will no doubt irritate the lovely Jenny, since she can finish Level 2 in, like, 8 seconds, and the guy who recorded the demo is still noodling around Level 1 a minute and a half into it.

In addition to making an authentic old-school cartridge available (the cover art for which looks amazing), I'm going to be putting a Javascript version of the game on my website at some point in the not-too-distant future, where you can play it for free.

Right now it's at version 26 and I have a couple of tweaks left to make. With any luck its release version will be 28, which I'd consider good luck.

Poll #1516927 Gr?y
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20

Which spelling do you prefer?

This is old, but it's still pretty darn funny.

Classmates.com Employees Don't Have Heart To Tell CEO About Facebook

Over on the AtariAge forums there's an ancient thread about an abandoned attempt at a Knight Rider game for the Atari 2600. At one point, the discussion goes off on a tangent and people start suggesting other TV shows from the 1980s that would make good 2600 games:

Too Close for Comfort- Monroe has mutated into a three headed beast and Cosmic Cow has to save the day by shooting milk lazers at the platform under Monroe.

Diff'rent Strokes- Arnold and Dudley have to avoid a creepy Maytag Repairman/Radio Station Manager that chases them around a bike shop.

Mama's Family- Guide Thelma around and bop Naomi and Vint on the head when they get lazy, Iola will occasionally skitter across the screen dropping power ups.

Sadly, none of these games were ever written, and only one even made it to the graphics design phase:

I know it's geeky, but I get a real thrill knowing that one day my name will be on this this list.

Granted, unless you're a hard-core retro-gaming nerd, you've probably never heard of anyone on there.

Well, except for Steve Jobs. You've probably heard of him.

Drudge linked to this "what kids think" article a couple of days ago, and I found this bit interesting:

Boys' Top Career Choices:
1. Athlete 15%
2. Scientist/Videogame designer (tie) 9%
3. Doctor 6%
4. Engineer 5%
5. Member of the armed forces 4%
6. Chef 3%

Girls' Top Career Choices:
1. Teacher 17%
2. Veterinarian 12%
3. Entertainer 9%
4. Fashion designer 8%
5. Doctor 6%
6. Chef/Writer (tie) 4%

For the record, I think I would quite enjoy being a Scientist/Videogame designer.

I dread going to class tonight. Last week was the first class of the semester, and the lecture was very dull. Plus, it was three hours long. Plus, the professor is hard to understand.

Worse yet, there are only six people in the class, so the professor is looming in our faces the whole time, making sure that we're following along. This means that my normal outlet for dull, lengthy lectures — i.e. working on other stuff while appearing to pay attention — is right out the window.

We're expected to participate in class, which would be fine if the subject matter was something I enjoyed discussing and/or had any expertise in, but it's a marketing class, and I dislike marketing. In the first class, the professor asked us to explain what we thought marketing was, and my answer was not very complimentary to the endeavor.

On the plus side, there's a beautiful foreign exchange student from France who sits nearby. I'm not sure why that helps, exactly, but it does, a little. Let's just hope she doesn't drop the class, because not only would there be no aspect of the class to look forward to, I'd then be responsible for 20% of the class participation, and I can't imagine that would be good for anybody.

Poll #1513728
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

Human teeth contain nerve endings which can sense hot or cold temperatures. This is:

100 video game-themed cupcakes. (Here's #85.)



A really cool version of Tetris that I cannot do justice to with a description.

Pseudo-retro video game cartridge labels. My favorite:

I found this rant on the "I'm a PC / I'm a Mac" commercials extremely amusing:

"The guy representing the PC looks like the kind of fellow who, if I needed to depend on him, would shake my hand and look me in the eye on Monday morning and say 'I had to work overtime all weekend, but I got it done.'

The guy representing the Mac looks like a fellow I'd finally track down three days later and find out not only had he completely blown off the project, he'd slept with my girlfriend in the mean time."

Rudy Giuliani, criticizing the Obama administration on Good Morning America this morning: "we had no domestic attacks under Bush — we've had one under Obama."

Interesting, that "no domestic attacks" bit. A Giuliani spokesman later clarified that hizzoner meant none after 9/11.

'Cause, I guess, that one doesn't count for some reason.

I'm thinking of having my LJ posts mirrored to my Facebook account, my Facebook posts mirrored to my Twitter account, and my tweets automatically posted here.

Then, if I post something here, it will ricochet throughout the three sites like a magnesium marble in a microwave, until one of the sites collapses under the strain of the bandwidth demands.

The only trick would be coming up with a post so unmemorable that no one would suspect it was a repeat until it was too late. I'm sure I have one of those around here someplace.

A couple of years ago, I noticed Jennifer the cat had a bump near her nose, so I took her to the vet. "Looks fine," said the vet, "but keep an eye on it, and if it gets bigger, bring her back in."

It seemed a little bigger last time I looked, so I took her back to the vet yesterday. "Looks fine," said the vet. "How old did you say she was?"

"Almost nineteen," I said.

"Well, I was going to say to bring her back in to check it a couple of years, but we don't see too many 21-year-old cats, so that probably won't be necessary," he said.

"Fuck you. My kitty-cat's going to live forever," I said.

Granted, I didn't say this until Jennifer and I were back in the car, but I was certainly thinking it. He's a nice vet, but seriously.

WorldNetDaily, the headquarters of the "Where is Obama's birth certificate?" movement, defends the birthers against the withering assault of... Glenn Beck.

Best quote: "Beck caricatured [the birthers] with straw-man arguments reminiscent of jibes made by Obama's apologists in other news outlets."

That's liberal ol' Glenn Beck for ya! Always parroting what the Obama folks say.

Last night the lovely Jenny and I went to see Sherlock Holmes.

I'd never seen a Guy Ritchie movie before (although I do admit to owning a number of Madonna albums.) And it's been so long since I've read any Arthur Conan Doyle that I remember practically nothing of it, so I have no idea what sort of blasphemies against Conan Doyle Ritchie committed in modernizing the characters.

Armed with that ignorance I found the movie a right enjoyable action romp. It was certainly among the more intelligent of action movies I've seen in a while, striking a decent balance between blowing stuff up real good and lengthy expositions filled with deductive reasoning.

There was one amusing bit where a bad guy was talking about his plans to take over England where he then adds that after that, he's going to retake the civil-war-weakened (former) American colonies, and the theater audience was all, "oh you crossed a line now, talkin' 'bout messin' with the U.S. of A., it's ON now, go get him Sherlock!"

Now that 2010's here, I thought it would be time to revisit a poll from a couple of years ago.

Poll #1506095 Zero one zero one one zero
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

How do you pronounce the year 2010?

In unrelated news, I have decided to purchase Jennifer Lopez's New Year's Eve outfit so that I can go to the next Halloween party as a space otter.

What kind of noise does a space otter make, you ask? I don't know, but I bet it's auto-tuned.

The lovely Jenny and I exchanged Christmas and birthday gifts last night. One of the things she got me was a Scrabble-based card game. We played a round, then captioned the cats.



( Here are some old-fashioned, uncaptioned cats. )

I just got back from a week in Florida with my folks, and was pleasantly surprised to find my car not covered in snow or ice at the airport parking lot.

One of the things we did in Florida was catch a movie, which, as near as we could recall, was the first time all three of us saw a movie in a theater together since I was a teenager.

As is my custom, I checked in with rottentomatoes.com to pick a movie, and Up in the Air had the highest rating, so we went to see that after my mom read Ebert's review to ensure it would be something she'd be interested in seeing. I tend to avoid reading reviews of any kind — especially Ebert's — before seeing a movie; I like the experience of walking into the theater with a completely blank slate.

I have a feeling I would have disliked this movie had I seen it immediately after one of the handful of times in my life I've been fired or laid off. ( Possible spoilers )

Bottom line, it's a very engaging movie with smart, sympathetic characters, and I definitely recommend seeing it.

I bought Back To The Future on LaserDisc today.

I'm not really sure why, I don't have a LaserDisc player. But I stumbled across an odd little record store (not a CD store, a record store) that sold all sorts of music and movies in all sorts of obsolete formats.

As I walked out of the store I felt guilty about spending $3 on something I'll never use. Just then, I saw three dollars on the ground. I looked around, and it didn't appear to belong to anyone.

So clearly that odd little record store is magical.

A few years ago, my buddy fuselighter gave his wife a kitten for Christmas. Apropos of the season, the kitten was named Noel.

I got to meet Noel soon after on a visit. I'd stay in the guest bedroom, and when I'd wake up in the morning, this cuddly, friendly ball of sweetness would be on the bed purring and giving me little kitty headbutts to let me know that she would like some attention, please.

Now, of course, I have a kitty of my own, Jennifer, of whom I'm very fond. She's the perfect kitty, except that she likes to scream at 3:00 AM for no reason, waking me up. I've tried a number of things to prevent her from doing this, from giving her extra food and attention before I go to bed to wearing earplugs to rigging up a loud fan on a remote control to chase her away from the door and drown out the noise a bit. So far nothing has worked for very long.

A few people have suggested to me that perhaps she's lonely and I should get another pet to keep her company at night, but I've resisted the idea for a number of reasons. First of all, I wasn't so sure about the "problem: loud cat; solution: MORE CATS" idea. What if they just screamed at each other all night? Or one screamed at 3:00 and the other screamed at 4:30?

Secondly, I had more or less decided that Jennifer would be my last pet. There are a lot of upsides to having a cuddly companion around, but they don't live forever, and I honestly never want to go through losing another pet. Losing my little orange buddy Huggins was very hard, and I do not want to repeat the experience.

Nonetheless, a couple of weeks ago, when Jennifer was treating me to a 3:00 AM symphony in F sharp diminished minor, I thought "maybe she could do with some company." Especially since I'm rarely home: either working late, or in class or rehearsals. I'd already felt a little guilty about the Florida trip I'd planned, since she'd be rattling around the house completely alone for a week (although the lovely Jenny did agree to come by and check in on her.)

So the next day I got a message from fuselighter's lovely wife, saying they had to find a new home for Noel, and would I be willing to take her?

Long story short, as of a couple days ago I now have two kitties. They get along surprisingly well.

And the best part? I haven't heard a peep from either of them in the wee hours of the morning. Who would have thought that "solution: MORE CATS" would actually work?

Here's Noel, nappin' and purrin' on my bed.

This week's Slow Wave: The Santa Conspiracy.

I saw Avatar yesterday with my Toledo peeps, and one of my first reactions was to wonder at what point George Lucas saw the film.

Because if he just sat down one day after it was finished and watched the whole thing like we average movie-goers did, he must have thought, "Huh. So this is how you make movies. Boy, I wish I'd known that before I started The Phantom Menace."

What James Cameron has done is open up an entirely new world of film-making.

I predict you will see the following two reactions from people who see this film:

(A) "Wow. James Cameron has opened up an entirely new world of film-making."
and
(B) "Yes, but [nitpicking and sniping about ( spoilers )]

My recommendation is to ignore the (B) people and go see it. Preferably in 3-D IMAX, if you can.

If you still want to failwank afterward, then go for it.

28bytes joined the group "if 1.00 × 10⁹ people join this group Facebook will start using scientific notation"

I just read a rather long-winded opinion piece discussing the relative merits of talking heads Bob Shrum, David Frum, and Kevin Drum.

Not mentioned were Heidi Klum, R. Crumb or Eve Plumb.

Which is a shame, really.