488 thoughts on “Jack Mangans Deadpan #255: David Lee Summers is Busy”

  5. Morning, Pan!

    I will participate more this week, I hope.

    Click on my name at the top of this post to see what I’ve been up to lately. I’ve started posting to my blog regularly again.

  13. Sunday in the LA area was great. We rented a car and drove to the Santa Monica Pier, then we went to the Will Rogers State Park and hiked up to Inspiration point. Awesome view. On our way back to the hotel I realized we were in the vicinity of the Getty Center which was on the list of the best free things to do in LA. However, upon realizing that it was going to cost $15 to park at a “free museum” we gave up and left. I went to bed good and early to get my body used to west coast time and it worked pretty well. Then I worked a 14 hour day yesterday. The schedule eases up a tiny bit today and then becomes downright bearable Wednesday and Thursday. Still waiting to find out about if and/or when the Phoenix trip will occur.

    • Mistborn is on my list. Still trying to cram my reread/listen of the WoT before the final books comes. I’m not going to get through them all before release, but hopefully by April I’ll be ready for it. Currently on book 5.

      RE: The Passage – friend of mine at work greatly enjoyed it and highly recommends it. He was quite excited to learn that a new book in the story came out.

    • Itunes still works good for me. But then, I do treat podcasts different than most people. I have all my unlistened to podcasts in a play list in my itunes. I can then rearrange them in an order I want to listen to that particular time. It tends to treat them like an album and just plays one after the other.

      • I have a really large feed that causes iTunes to lock up for about 15 minutes. And for whatever reason, this week it refuses to download the latest episodes. Sigh.

      • The latest update of the Podcast app said it would updated podcasts to the cloud and allow me to get them updated without hooking up to iTunes. It was a big fat lie. Being on the road for a week at a time, I still have to wait to get home to hook up to itunes to get my podcasts updated.

        I’m also pretty upset that the audiobooks and music in itunes no longer allows you to move around freely within the track or even see where you are in the track. All you get is rewind, play, fast forward. No other information AT ALL. When you have hour long tracks for audio books and no way to get back to where you were when you last left off, or even figure out where the hell you left off, it makes listening to audio books near impossible.

        I’ve tried finding other audio book apps, but they all seem to want you to use their audio books and not deal with ones that you already have.

        Fuckers.

    • I don’t have a problem with iTunes on my netbook,but Apple’s podcast app is PIA. It keeps marking episodes I’ve listened to as unplayed, I can’t even delete them from the app as it brings them back again when I refresh the feeds. Also with iOS6 you can no longer make podcast playlists on the phone….teeth gnashing.

  43. Just finished Assassin’s Creed Revelations in preparation to AC3. I hadn’t played both Brotherhood and Revelations as I assumed they were mostly multiplayer. I was wrong. They both have large single player story arcs (brotherhood more than Revelations but still). If you are planning to play AC3 and haven’t played these two, I recommend that you do. A lot happens in the Desmond story arc.

  44. Interesting talk with my insurance agent the other day (I know! How weird is THAT statement?)

    You know how the privacy statement on your credit card says they won’t share your info with anyone but business partners. Turns out most credit card companies/banks/insurance companies are either business partners or just different subsidiaries of the same firm. So sharing your data isn’t even considered “sharing” to begin with.

    What does this mean? Well, you know how insurance companies have always collected large amounts of data by which to assess risk factors and figure out what to charge people based on behavior (Are you a smoker? Do you drink alcohol, …et). Yea, well if you use a credit card they now can tell exactly how many times a week you eat at McDonalds or how much you spent at the bar and what time of night you paid that tab (and probably drove home). They are now collecting all of this “personal habits” data and trying to decide how exactly to integrate that into their rate structure.

    I honestly don’t know what this all means. I suspect they will find out that 99% of their clients regularly participate in “higher risk” behavior. Still, it was another aspect of how all of this easily accessible data has made our lives even less private.

    My agent suggested I might want to try and pay cash when I go out for a beer from now on. :pinch:

  45. My husband laughs at me. I’m starting to think Christmas (it is coming quick). I told him, since I have no idea what to get people, everybody is getting gift cards (or the electronic equivalent). He doesn’t care. He has nothing to do with the Christmas shopping anyway *shrug*

  52. Jack, I liked the episode today, and found David Lee Summers charming! I do want to fill you in on some SW history pre George Washington, but we can do that any old time! 😉

    What was the song today?

  53. AND BTW?!?!?!?!? Who thought it was a good idea to put the “b” and “n” keys next to each other on the keyboard? I’ve typed the word “bigger” twice today and nearly sent would would have been a horrific email.

  64. aaaand I’m back.

    Cable company upgraded me into non-functionality yesterday.
    They noticed my cable modem was 11 years old so they swapped it out with a new one. A new, non working one.
    As you might imagine, I was impressed.

    • I looked at that yesterday. I especially find #2 disenchanting.

      I feel incredibly disenfranchised. If I was to vote with the party that represents my politics, I would vote for the Green ticket. However, that would be insane in this tight race. I will vote for the President because I think that it’s important for us as a country to at least have someone who cares (but probably won’t do anything) about the poor and working class and other disenfranchised groups. I don’t believe that Mitt Romney gives a good shit about working people. I also was truly horrified by his responses on women and on immigration on Tuesday – both were obviously rehearsed answers and written for him, but evenso really revealing.

      • That was ranty. I meant “working class and other under-represented groups.”

        This is really infuriating to me and at the front of my mind currently.

        • That is crazy. I’ll have to look at it more closely later!

          What has been festering for me since Tuesday is the fact that there have been 3 debates, and not one word yet about LGBT issues. I took Romney’s comments – and the President’s essential agreement with them – about “if you’re going to get pregnant, marry someone” very personally, and in this context.

          I don’t understand religion much, and I guess I don’t hold Romney’s LDS-ness against him, but it seems to really inform his positions on social issues. I think it’s so weird that you can be a disgusting corporate pig, laying off tons of people and shipping jobs offshore, and then think a single mother is wrong and try to get her to put her baby up for adoption. I care about people, but I don’t care about people!

          • Well, I’ve only known a handful of Mormons personally and they were some of the most moral people I knew. My old boss, who was a Morman, adapted a South American child to save him from a life of poverty. He walked the walk as they say and that is something I respect, even though I found his religion pretty “out there.” I see Romney’s faith as an excuse not to think critically about things and it leaves him void of compassion.

          • I’m with you there, Rhettro. I have a good friend in your ‘hood who like you say walks the walk and has an enviable moral compass.

  72. Let’s go fantasy today.

    Today’s movie is Age of Dragons

    The DVR write up: Danny Glover stars as an obsessed Ahab who seeks revenge on the fire breathing dragon that killed his family and left him horribly scarred in this re-imagining of the classic novel Moby Dick

    Why do I have the feeling this movie is going to leave me horribly scarred

  186. Back to my mom. About ten years ago she sent me a copy of her will. Included was a $1,000 dollar bill. She asked me if I still had it. Of course not. I deposited it way back when I got it. Who wants that much cash laying around the house.
    Her reply was a snarky, “I send you such things for a reason you know.” Seriously?

    On a different note, it was the first and only time I have ever seen a thousand dollar note. We weren’t even sure if it was real until we took it to the bank

  192. I have this hate relationship with the coffee machine. About half the time, when i make it, the filter folds over, there is coffee and grounds everywhere. We set up the machine the night before so it’s ready when hubby wakes up. I asked him, since he will be late, if he wanted me to set up the coffee. His reply, “no. No, that’s ok”. I could almost feel the fear in his text :biggrin:

      • Semper Wi Fi?

        While I’m nonplussed about Windows 8 coming out the fact that one can upgrade for $40 has caught my attention. I was thinking of installing it on my old XP machine. But then I started to think about how it is a lot better to install a new OS on a brand new hard drive. After a quick look at Newegg I see I could completely swap out my PC’s motherboard and CPU with shiny new ones for around $230. Then I read that CAD systems should really have 16 gigs of RAM and all the cool kids have solid state boot drives. All of a sudden I’m looking at spending $500. Now that cheap $40 upgrade to Windows 8 doesn’t seem so cheap anymore.

      • Maybe I was using the guest account, I can’t remember it being that wacky.

        My guest account is called GUEST, I should really start wearing a suit…

        • Van, it wasn’t his wifi so much as that password 😉

          Rhett, I just got a new custom built computer last month, I’m very happy with it the way it is. I think I’ll wait before I think about Win8

          • Ah that explains it, I think I just let Jack type the password in, or maybe I didn’t.

            Damn you failing memory..DAMN YOU!

          • If you recently upgraded, I wouldn’t worry about Windows 8 either. But the desktop computer I’m currently using is feeling a bit creaky. The fact that I can upgrade it to a 64bit version of Windows for around $40 would do it a world of good. Of course the occasion of OS change is the optimal time to upgrade the motherboard cause if you do it in the future, you need to do a complete re-installation anyways. Although, in the interest of spreading the cost over the year I may just purchase a solid state harddrive and hold off on everything else until next year with the idea that installing on a solid state drive should go quicker.

  201. I am both attracted and repulsed by the prospect of Windows 8. Thankfully, the $40 upgrade offer is good until the end of January, so I expect we’ll get plenty of good reviews of the final shipping version before I have to decide.

    FYI – Those who’ve bought a new computer since June can get the upgrade to Windows 8 for just $15.

  203. I do regret missing the Mormon discussion from earlier (grr lockdown). The Mormons I’ve known (well enough to know that they were Mormons) were all good guys, all determined to have thousands of kids. One of them even went way out of his way to help me with my garage sale, when I was bailing out of my old house. I’m never one to diss people’s benign and positive faiths.

    Zealots of all kind scare me, regardless of their chosen religion, and Mitt has never come across as a Mormon zealot. It’s not his religion, it’s his close resemblance to George Dubya Bush, i.e., the “war-for-profit, fuck all non-rich to make the rich richer, restrict equality and equal rights for all Americans” tendencies – – that’s what scares me.

    • So here is the conundrum with Romney and his being a Mormon.
      If you are a self professed, conservative Christian, you simply CANNOT vote for him without running afoul of your own faith.

      In technical terms, Romney is a believer and teacher of “false doctrine”. All the other stuff, the anti-abortion support, the contempt for women as equals, the desire to erase the lines that separate the state from my faith … non of this should sway a “Conservative Christian” to support Romney any more then if he was a Muslim Candidate.
      After all Muslims hold those same values AND they worship the same God. Like Mormons though, they have their own books of the bible and worship their own saint.
      Yes. I did just compare Mormans to Muslims. After all, they both start with “M” don’t they?

      So … if you are professing to vote purely based on your “Christian” values … you simply could not vote for Romney. That segment of the voting public is more the willing to overlook this HUGE fact though because their candidate isn’t bla… um, because he will say what ever they want to hear.

    • Heard a report this week on that topic. They have discovered that getting less then 6 hours of sleep at night reduces your bodies ability to process sugar … so it stores it away as fat.

      So … take that you people who only need 2 hours sleep! Of course, I’m lucky to get 7 hours.

  221. I just got junk mail asking me to STOP the Environmental Protection Agency. I’m fucking sick of the brain-dead asscunts in this country.

  223. Time for beer time. I am going with a very basic Boston Ale.

    ZOMG (sorry CJ) after 3 years I finally found Alaskan Baltic Porter again! Somehow I missed the 2010 and 2011 vintages. As you well dont care, this is my fav beer ever. In fact it’s called “Baltic” because that’s what it does to mine. (First one who gets that joke wins a prize)

    • I need to watch this tomorrow. Now the garbled “Prepare to qualify” voice from Pole Position is in my head.

      Goodnight :laughing voice from Kung Fu Master:

  227. My trek to LA is now over. My last day there I was supposed to have 8 hours of free time and was going to take a bus to the Manhattan Beach area, but an assload of work was dumped on me and I was working from the hotel all day and all night. Fuckashitpiss. I was able to score an exorbitantly priced Delirium Noel which has been on my wish list for quite some time. The rest of my west coast beer stocking had to be accomplished from the shit-hole liquor/convenience store across the street from the hotel.

    Beers drank in LA:
    Fat Tire
    Pyramid Hefeweizen
    Fireman Brew – Redhead Ale (best of the lot)
    Victoria
    Tecate Michelada (because I’m a sucker for anything with chili, even crappy, crappy, crappy beer).

    Beers brought home to consume:
    Delirium Noel
    Hangar 24 Orange Wheat
    Rayon Vert
    Anchor Steam Beer
    Anchor Liberty Ale
    Indio
    Bohemia

    Between the empty and full bottles brought back for my collection, my suitcase weighed in at exactly 50lbs. Booya!

  237. I can take or leave twitter most days, but this weekend a young games programmer/musician, is discovering how great old arcade games can be, great stuff.

  241. From 50 Sheds of Grey on twitter:

    @50ShedsofGrey: ‘No,’ she sighed, gazing sadly at the large stuffed crust Hawaiian with extra cheese, ‘I said I’m really turned on by orders from dominants’

  242. So for those not on FB, I’ve permanently moved to Phoenix, and into Cj’s house. For some reason she considers this a positive thing too. 🙂

    Good times ahead!

  243. I have this incredible urge to correct LostRalph and tell him he moved to Mesa, not Phoenix, but he’s so damn cute, I just can’t bring myself to do it!

    Phoenix it is! We live in Phoenix.

    Meet me in my bunk.

  245. Alright, I’m giving you guys the exclusive before posting this to Facebook –

    We’ve taken corrective action to reduce our bad parent ratio. Somehow, it has slipped by us that we’d never introduced the kids to “The Princess Bride”. We corrected that this weekend….twice.

    I think the kids understand their old folks a little better….at least why we talk the way we do.

    • I think I still have my original DM Guide, Players Handbook, and Monster Manual. They’re not in good shape as they suffered from many years of use and abuse (notations, etc). I doubt any collector would want them. I could be wrong.

      • I still have my original DnD books and they are in good condition. However, they are either second or third print editions, so not very collectible. I did have Wil Wheaton sign my blue Expert level book. 🙂

        • I actually still have all of the 1st and 2nd Edition TSR Marvel Superheroes RPG rule books. I’ve even used them a bit in recent years, rolling up random characters with the kids. Good times. No wait – – Excellent, Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, Monstrous, Unearthly, Shift X times.

          • Superheroes! Fun! Somewhere I have a Dragon magazine with Rom Spaceknight’s stats on it. *drool*

            I mostly seem to collect RPG books rather than play them, mostly because I don’t have the time to devote to the world creation they require. But I do like to look over stats and imagine how particular scenarios would play out. 

            I have played a real Pen & Paper RPG since 1996, Although, everyone in my family has played Star Wars Miniatures and loved it.

  259. I watched 15 minutes of the debates and remembered that THEY ARE EXACTLY THE SAME ON FOREIGN POLICY.

    Romney looks exhausted. He needs some tea and a nap.

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