378 thoughts on “JMDPUS21

  1. I’m Back. Sorry Wolf, got your order too late.

    I’m now going to have a real healthy lunch of chicken soup, cucumber slices and a slurpee mmmmm.

  2. Wolf, just coke, nothing fancy.

    Ice, Ice, baby 🙂

    Now, because I’m really, REALLY trying to avoid my vacuuming, and in the spirit of a post started by Van earlier…

    5 things about me in five words or less

    1. I hate horses

    2. Creepy crawlies scare me

    3. I like most other animals

    4. I don’t dye my hair

    5. Laughter means more than looks

    Now, where’s that vacuum?

  3. Ya, that’s the one. Has anyone seen the movie “A Little Sex?” I don’t recommend it, but it does have one redeeming scene of a woman vacuuming in the nude. I’m not sure why that popped in my head.

  4. Five food snacks (all stolen from another site)

    1) What vegetable burns more calories than it contains?
    Celery has about 6 calories per stalk. But your body burns more calories than that in the digestion process. It’s not the chewing and crunching but the digestion of the high amount of cellulose in your stomach that burns the calories.

    2) What common bagel topping can show up as an opiate in drug tests? Poppy seeds are related closely enough to opium poppies that they can show up in a urine test as an opiate like heroin or morphine. The level is generally considered too low to be determined a “true positive,” and most drug testing companies discount these results. However, just to be on the safe side, the federal prison system has banned its inmates from eating poppy seeds. And in case you were wondering, you could pretty much eat your weight in poppy seeds and not get high. (didn’t Mythbusters do an episode on this?)

    3) Which U.S. state eats more ice cream per capita than any other? Despite living in one of the coldest states in the Union, Alaskans eat twice as much ice cream as any other state.

    4) What are the food additives cochineal and carminic acid made from? These scientific terms found in the ingredient lists of many foods, beverages, and cosmetics are fancy names for a red food coloring developed by the Aztecs, made of dried powdered beetles native to Central and South Americas. While their origins may be less than appetizing, they are perfectly safe to eat.

    5) What do the letters in the canned meat product SPAM stand for? Salted Porky Anonymous Meat? Guess again. Originally it stood for SPiced hAM, named in a contest wherein the winner was awarded the princely sum of $100. The people at Hormel Foods say that while it does include ham and spices, it doesn’t begin to describe the product that is SPAM, and they now maintain that SPAM stands merely for SPAM.

    really, really, REALLY going to do my vacuuming now!

  5. Dow is down over 300 points. Seems that oil stocks were propping up the market. Now that oil prices have plumetted, the market’s got nothing.

    It’s the old “be careful what you wish for” scenario.

  6. Grrrr.

    Even though Obama went on national TV and clearly stated he will LOWER your taxes if elected … one Republican after another comes on CNBC and talks about the Democrat’s tax hikes. What surprises me is that none of these reporters ever bothers to correct them on that.

    Maybe it’s time for Democrats to just embrace this strategy and start mentioning how bad the Republican’s Tax Hikes will be for the economy.

    Apparently, if you just repeat something enough times it becomes a “fact”.

  7. Stocks always seem to exist in an alternate reality. Oil needs to be low to help the economy, a healthy economy creates a higher demand for oil, higher demand leads to higher prices for oil, high price oil hinders growth and the cycle renews again. =P I have to wonder though about all the oil investors, who do they think will buy all this oil at these inflated prices, especially people who recently lost their job because of an ailing economy?

  8. “China”

    Certainly that is the hope, but even the Chinese government could only mask the cost of surging oil for so long, demand eventually dropped there as well. I’d be nice to have some stability in the market, but I don’t fore see that coming for a long time.

  9. Well I’m tempted, I’m a fan of SSDs since my Eee 701 was knocked onto the floor and got no data corruption. In the UK, Dell sell the 16gig model with XP..hmmmm!

  10. *blinks* BOOZE on battle armor?? Obviously, you must be talking about the Iron Man group, or perhaps the random plastered Master Chief, because I don’t drink booze.

    I drink Guinness, and it would be a travesty to waste a single drop of it on one’s armor. 😛

  11. Morning, Deadpan!

    The conventions are over — yay!

    I’ll be offline for much of today — they’re unhooking my electricity to take this giant tree out of my back yard . . . no internet — what do I do?

    Have a great day, yo.

  12. Torrential rain is here again. It’s on day like this that I wish I had invested in a pair of Wellington boots.

    First dud of the new TV season is ‘Raising the Bar’, a big disappointment from the guy behind Hill Street Blues.

  13. Wow thanks, Tee Morris! I am unworthy. You are also to be commended for your Moraeq17jzevi series.

    OK, Everything has been nuts today – I’ll get caught up on the comments. Please keep posting nipples, I’ll get there.

  14. I got my mic working with my laptop. Good.

    My recording totally sucked. Bad.

    It got right binned.

    Sorry to all those who were drooling for more Lovecraft. He’s a megatough read even when you have your health 😛

    This has been your audio update.

  15. Ah Lovecraft, although rationally I know he was a product of his times, some of attitudes of his characters towards non whites and the poor can be hard to stomach.

  16. Van, that has nothing to do with his times. Being an ass or worse is totally timeless. There are many creators today that I would not ever want to be in a room with.

    Still, if we toss out art because we don’t like the person, or at least not all their bits, well, we wouldn’t have any art. Or science. Or anything of value.

  17. If you have tastebuds, any at all, you must eat: Jelly Belly jelly beans.

    Seriously.

    They’re like magic harry potter candy, except, like, you get green apple instead of infected snot flavour.

  18. Actually – the kids and I had a blast a few months back with a bag of random Jelly Belly selections. While a bunch of them were fantastic (Dr. Pepper FTW!), some of them were truly teh horror. Earwax-flavor could not have been worse.

  19. D.A.M. has just been triggered!

    When I was a lad my Dad took us to a 7-11 (or was it a U-Totem? can’t recall) and was going to introduce us to something called a “Slurpy”.
    He bought us the Cherry flavored and he got a “Cola” flavor.
    He took a sip of his and did a “spit take”. As we kids stared in horror he exlaimed, “It tastes like cardboard that a cat has pee’d on !”

    I may have been in 2nd grade at the time but was probably younger. That’s just the sort of unexpected comment from a parent, that stays with a kid. It also left me baffled as to what exactly that tasted like … and how anyone could know.

    … and really, I still wonder.

  20. Here’s a question – what are your favorite books, both genre and non-genre?

    Genre:
    – Song of Ice and Fire series – GRR Martin
    – Wheel of Time series – Robert Jordan
    – Southern Vampire series – Charlaine Harris

    Non-Genre:
    (too many to even remember, but . . . )
    – The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
    – Almanac of the Dead – Leslie Marmon Silko
    – As I Lay Dying – Bill Faulkner

    I’ll just start w/ three (even though I cheated w/ series!) of each for now. What about y’all?

  21. Good meme, Like Butta!

    At this point on a Friday, my brain is too funkified to call any list official, so I’ll just throw some books that leap to mind.

    Genre:
    Neuromancer *OR* Burning Chrome – William Gibson
    Dune – Frank Herbert —- is that an “of course” selection?
    “The Scar” – China Mieville.

    non-genre
    Recently read both of Khaled Husseni’s books, enjoyed the hell out of ’em both.
    I also really dug “Shopgirl” by Steve Martin. Yes, that Steve Martin.
    Dorothy Dunnett’s “King Hereafter”.

  22. Careful with that Fixx, J0e – you know that One Thing Leads to Another.

    OK all, I may be offline for the weekend. My home computer has gone to Dell in a handbasket, and is still not back yet.

    I’ll miss all of your nipples.

    Peace out.

  23. Yeah, Friday afternoon, my mind is “Like Butta.”

    I’m racking my brain trying to think of a non-genre book I’ve read. I did read “King of Tortes” but it was crap. The small bit of “The Count of Monte Cristo” I read was pretty good.

    Genre: I’m big fan of The Riverworld series by Phillip Jose Farmer, the first book “To Your Scatter Bodies Go” was exceptionally good.
    http://tinyurl.com/5c6byr

    Plus, I really liked the Forgotten Realms Dark Elf books with “Streams of Silver” probably being the best one.http://tinyurl.com/5p4w8k

  24. Catching up on recent discussion.

    10 random things about me:

    1. On my 21st birthday, my celebratory first drink in a restaurant was an umeshuu (Japanese plum wine).

    2. In fifth grade, I gave a speech to my class at the graduation ceremony for our D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program.

    3. The first website I ever got an account on was The Jedi Council Forums.

    4. I played the clarinet from 5th through 12th grade.

    5. I’ve been to 4 foreign countries: The UK, Spain, France, and Japan.

    6. My dad and I once bicycled 105 miles in one day on a tandem bicycle.

    7. I’ve had a Neopets account for the last 5 years, and I still play semi-regularly.

    8. My favorite pasta recipe involves canned tomatoes, basil, cream, and parmesan cheese.

    9. My bedroom and dorm room both had violet decor for the last four years. I changed it to green when I moved recently.

    10. I wore four different stoles around my neck at my college graduation ceremony.

    J0e: Re: performing in stadiums for an audience of 70,000: You were in a marching band, weren’t you? I was, too. 🙂 Which one were you in?

    Holy cow! Posts from TD-0013, Tee Morris, and marlodianne! Hi, you guys! 😀

    Rhettro: I loved “To Your Scattered Bodies Go,” too. I can’t concentrate enough to think of favorite books right now, though. Sorry.

  25. Amy – I have already said too much! At the risk of further proving I AM Vanilla Ice … I will add that I too played Clarinet from 5th grade through 12th+ grades!

    I suspect the Deadpan has enough musicians to put together a really great, eclectically instrumented, punk-rock folk-metal nerd band!
    I know Jack has been working on the name for some time now. 🙂

  26. In this particular meme, we’re using “genre” to refer to speculative fiction (occasionally referred to as “genre fiction”), meaning fantasy, sci-fi, and all subsets thereof.

  27. LOL, cool! Hello, fellow woodwind player! 🙂

    If we Deadpanites ever do get together in any one place in significant numbers, we really must bring musical instruments. We would be an awesome nerd band! 😀

  28. Joe: When you go into a bookstore, the genre is the section where the book is, so: mystery, fantasy, romance, horror, and so on. Or, did someone pussy out and put it in ‘literary fiction’?

    The genre something belongs in is usually heavily argued. Sometimes the writer gets crazy bitter by what the public classes their writing as–Margaret Atwood so comes to mind here, who throws a drooling illiterate hissy fit when someone calls her shit fantasy or sci-fi, just because it clearly IS.

  29. MA annoyed the hell out of me at the time Oryx and Crake was released (squids in spacceeeeeeeeee).

    But to be fair she did later admit some her books were scifi (after the winner of the booker prize had been annouce).

  30. Recent Books Meme…

    Not really reading at a rapid pace of late.

    Golden Compass- Phillip Pullman (yeah, I’m slow to get to some things)
    Watchmen
    Vampire Files Vol 1 Trade paperback – P.N. Elrod

    Listening to:
    Jack Wakes Up – Seth Harwood
    One Among the Sleepless – Mike Bennett
    New World Orders – Edward G. Talbot

  31. Some of my fav genre books:

    2001 a Space Odyssey – Arthur C Clarke
    The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
    Mythago Wood – Robert Holdstock
    The Magician’s Nephew – C Lewis

    Non Genre (non fiction in fact)

    Longitude – Dava Sobel
    Cosmos – Carl Sagan
    The Golem_What You Should Know About Science – Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch
    Galaxies – Timothy Ferris

  32. Why do I never learn. Looks like Dell has shipped Mini 9’s to reviewers with faster SSDs then are in production units.

    I await the arrival of the new laptop with mounting dread..

  33. Pretty much, JOe! We have firewood for the winter — let’s put it that way. Of course, we have a pellet stove . . .

    Got ribs on the grill. I’m trying a New Orleans baby back beer recipe. Might be good.

  34. Of course if you were in full blown startrekapologistmode you could have argued that Giant Scorpions are different from the usual kind…

  35. Hey Jack,

    So do you have home internet again? I did a little PC maintenance, but still was experiencing some issues. I did manage to play some NWN’s Hordes of the Underdark and practice “I Want Out” with Guitar Pro. Boy is my left wrist sore. LOL

  36. Frayed Ends of Sanity?

    I did play lots of guitar, watch some DVDs, try to get out of the house, talk on the phone. I was actually fine (although my computer had better f*#king be delivered and working tonight). It’s a little disturbing just how dependent I’ve become on this material, worldly item.
    Any of my fellow Net Addicts ever think the same thing?

  37. Jack, I was without POWER and a phone line on Friday, and it was kind of nice, but I’m glad it’s back on. I think that I’d be much worse off with no satellite television than no internet. Of course, I’d rather have both.

    I enjoyed True Blood last night. As a lover of the books, here are my initial thoughts: I love what Alan Ball is doing with the character of Tara; Anna Paquin is a great choice for Sookie; I wish Bill didn’t have a Southern accent; the sex scenes are pretty steamy; I love the character of Lafayette as I did in the books — I hear he’ll live longer on the TV series. I think it’s gonna be a great series.

  38. Ed: The very tip of one of Ike’s arms just passed over my town in the last hour or so. The wind and driving rain lasted less than 30 minutes. Part of me wishes we (we = South Florida) were getting the direct hit instead of the Gulf Coast getting it again. 🙁

  39. Smarties catching up on TV update

    we have watched episode 1 and 2 of Eureka
    episode 1 and 2 of Mad Men
    only 1 week behind on all political shows (meet the press, this week with George s., colbert, daily show, etc etc)
    umm.. what else

    Hugh sez: and da Bears

    Yes 🙂 we watched the Bears KICK the Colts ASSSSSS last night

    Hugh sez: *swooon* it was wonderful

  40. It’s the Hotties! Mark your calendars!

    I may be wrong but I think Sarah Connors starts up tonight. I’d better be sure my Tivo is up to the task.

  41. Paul Cole reads my short story “Bodies in the Water” over these 3 episodes of the Beam Me Up podcast/radio show. Check it out.

    http://beameup.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2008-08-23T19_27_36-07_00

    http://beameup.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2008-08-30T16_12_24-07_00

    http://beameup.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2008-09-06T15_23_02-07_00

    I should probably act like a real blogger, and post this news on the main page.

    CP: Whole Lotta Love – Led Zeppelin (on pause because of work stuff)

  42. So much new TV, so little time.

    That razor looks a bit old fashioned Jeremy and if it uses the blades I think it uses (the ones depressed people used to slit their wrists), I’m staying well clear.

    -update- yes it does use those sort of blades.

  43. Jack, Rhettro: Thanks. I’m safe for now. I’m not used to living on the East Coast myself, yet. It’s a big adjustment that will take time to make.

    TSH: Oh, yeah! Thanks for the reminder! Happy birthday, Star Trek! 😀

  44. Jack: I consider the internet another limb. The difference between it and my other limbs is it has a much smaller failure rate.

    When it’s down, not only do I have nobody to talk to, not only can I not work, but I find losing google et al is like the power going out, and there go the lights. Over and over, you keep trying to flick the switch.

    “Oh, I need to look up…argh!”

    *a moment later*

    “Oh, I wonder when…ARGH!”

  45. I had multiple beers last night with a group of friends that just raved about “True Blood”.
    Seems it was a hit … I do have to wonder if they were swayed by the “steamy sex scenes”. They each made a point of mentioning that aspect.

  46. I didn’t think True Blood is a clumsy allegory, but think after only one episode it’s too soon to tell.

    I think the books are from the “paranormal investigation/romance” genre, and fluffy compared to what I usually get into, but I love them. I think that the vampires’ “coming out” is a wink-wink towards gay visibility these days, but again don’t think it’s clumsy.

  47. Well tonight I’m going to setup a friends laptop to access his broadband via a router.

    It should take 10 minutes, start placing bets on how long it will actually take..

  48. I haven’t watched “True Blood” yet, although there is a part of me that thinks that vampire stories have been over done. But who knows? I did like “Kindred” when it was on. I enjoyed “Sarah Connor” last night.

  49. Re: Sarah Connor – BLAST!!!! My TiVo had too many programs marked “save till I delete … and didn’t record the show. 🙁 sadness.

    RE: True Blood – several of the folks I talked with (who loved the show) thought that it was a vehicle for “airing out” a LOT of current social issues, being able to parade them in front of the public by cloaking them in fantasy/vampire wrapper.

    People will watch a show “about vampires”.
    Less people will watch a show “about discrimination based on fear and misconceptions”.

  50. Well, I haven’t watched the show as I’m not particularly into vampire fiction (though Murder at Avadon Hill is proving interesting).

    But, if it’s the case, I would have to wonder about how effective it would be to use vampires as an allegory for homosexuality. I’m not sure I’d see that winning many converts so much as preaching to the choir.

  51. I feel kinda the same about the vampire and zombie genres being overdone

    (sorry, sorry – just my take. I’d have to have the most amazing idea EVAR to write in either milieu. Yes, milieu). I don’t have HBO, so I doubt if I’ll ever see TruBlood, even with the clever vampire premise and Anna Paquin.

    Anyone pick up the new Brad Sucks yet?
    http://www.bradsucks.net/albums/out_of_it/

    WNDR, I assume you’ve downloaded it.

  52. One more thought on that vampire/zombie stuff:
    I think Anne Rice’s books are still the pinnacle of the vampire genre for me.

    YW, Rhett! There’s a chance I’ll get my computer back for tonight. Fingers crossed.

  53. pwnd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    “Spider-Man 2 was not a documentary.”

    – Physicist to morning radio DJ concerned about the Large Hadron Collider experiment going bad. The DJ had brought up Doc Ock’s fusion experiment as an example of how scientists can destroy things.

  54. Looks like NOT having downloaded the last several iTunes software versions is paying off.
    They are now poised to abandon that which I never had to struggle with and never even missed.
    “Take that you software bloating, code monkeys!!!!”
    *shakes tiny fist in air*

  55. Well version 7 of iTunes was my first taste of the software. Since I only really use it to download podcasts, I’m puzzled in how it’s terrible.

    Anyone care to elaborate?

  56. Van: Just venting. Most software has good and bad points. There are a number of things that iTunes does that really annoys me, including the recent additions of bloatware that Apple insists on installing.

  57. As is often the case, I agree with JustaJ0e. I never install the iTunes updates anymore. It’s still a little scary living in the past, but I think I’d break Deadpan if an update trashed my library.
    In fact, WinAmp is looking more and more attractive – as long as it interfaces safely with an iPod.

  58. I’ve always had non Apple MP3 players, of course I managed to wash one and drop the other on a concrete floor. Currently, I’m using Teresa’s back up iPod Shuffle for jogging and my Sony PSP for listening to MP3’s in the car. I don’t buy music off iTunes anymore instead, I’ll either buy CD’s and rip them or MP3 off of Amazon. I’d love it if I could mount iPods like flash drives and drag and drop MP3’s onto them. iTunes seems to be obtuse in this regard. =P.

  59. I’ve yet to have any serious issues with iTunes. Admittedly I’d like a few more options to help manage podcasts, but nothing major. I started using it 3 yrs ago when I bought my first ipod, and I’ve never regretted that decision. In my opinion it’s easier to move drm videos between computers with iTunes versus amazon’s unbox.

    I did by Spore on Sunday, and played it for 4 hrs so far I’m at the single land animal stage. It’s fun, very much like an rpg right now, and game control is easy and fairly intuitive. I was looking for a game that I could put down and pick up at will, which I think Spore will satisfy. We’ll have to see what I think at the end off the week.

  60. Rhettro: Me, too. As a lifelong user of Windows, I was really surprised and perplexed to discover that I couldn’t drag and drop things from my iPod. I wish I could do that, too. iTunes’s methods for getting things on and off the iPod really took some getting used to, for me.

  61. I guess it’s not that big of a deal, but typically I’ll download a podcast or two directly in the morning for my commute. I’m rushing to get out the door so taking the time to boot iTunes, then import the MP3s and then import them to the iPod leaves me flustrated. I love my PSP in that regard, I plug the flash memory to my machine and it download directly to it. Ready to roll.

  62. Well lately I’ve been playing Radius on the iPhone, very simple game, but fun when I can grab a few minutes in the working day.

    Oh and Metal Slug 7 on the NDS is still grabbing some of my attention.

    Agree for about iTunes, it was a shock to my usual way of doing things (I would just copy files over to the memory stick for use in my old phone), and it took me a while to get used to it.

  63. Had an exhausting yet humorous day. One of our engineers has till the end of the week to build a stormwater model on this prison facility that I’ve been working on for over a month or more… Its been incredibly stressful because it’s based on 11 surveys over the past 13 years… Anyway we were supposed to be in the home stretch this week, having the survey department catch the newest part of the facility and dip the rest of the manholes we were missing (and if you don’t know what dipping a manhole is… probably best not to ask).

    So I start with three days worth of survey notes and bring in the first day, and right off the bad realize the entire line of manholes they missed back in 95, rather than dipping them this time around the surveyor just wrote “locked.” (which, you know, it’s a prison… They obviously don’t want a repeat of Shawshank Redemption here) But the one that really made me laugh was the manhole they marked “unlocked,” and didn’t even bother dipping.

    Which only got more amusing when I told the engineer, who then frantically ran around the building looking for a principal to tell. Of course it was after five, so nothing could really be done.

    On the brighter side, I’m going back on Lyrica tonight. My doc has a 21 day trial for me while he gets his next appeal going… and if that doesn’t go through, I’m ordering canadian. I’ve had enough of feeling like shit and having no energy to do anything.

    Oh yeah, did I mention my book is for sale now? http://www.lulu.com/content/3985038

  64. Admittedly, the way Itunes interfaces with the Ipod is definitely a different mindset. Honestly, I haven’t really kept up with what other players/programs have done since I made the jump into my 5G Ipod some three years ago.

    At the time, it offered the bet integrated Podcast support, which was and remains a high priority for me. I wish that Apple would do more to improve podcast support, but I haven’t read about anything new on the angle for Itunes 8.

    The other killer app for me has been smart playlists. In the months before I got my Ipod, I made a concerted effort to clean up my ID3 tags and rate my songs. Doing so has paid off handsomely in making smart playlists effective, especially the ones that I have that will kick a song out of rotation for a number of days after I listen to it so I’m not having the same tracks coming up all the time.

    From what little I’ve seen so far, Itunes 8 seems to be more about extracting more cash from users than really improving things.

    I’ve only ever bought one track from Itunes. Everything else has been either from allofmp3 in the past, and now from Amazon.

  65. Book tangent..

    Today I finished consuming the best vampire porn book Ive read in a long long time. 238 pages which I read over 20 hours between last night and today. So taking out time to sleep, eat and do other things in those 20 hours. I read it pretty fast.

    I am actually currently reading Christopher Moore’s Lamb which is about the most funniest books Ive read in a long time but Hugh had put in an Amazon order and ordered me one of my vampire porn books I had saved in the shopping cart. I began to inhale it the moment he passed it to me 🙂

  66. So the good news:

    I got my computer back.

    The bad news:

    They didn’t fix the problem. It was gone for almost a week….. and they didn’t fix the problem. Sigh.

    In other news. . . . . Smarty Hotties!

    And Dubshack! Congrats on releasing your book! That’s a pretty big deal!

    No more exclamation points!!

  67. Morning Pan, cool demo for a PC shooter called Reflex:

    http://tinyurl.com/5c6dfe

    The sites in Japanese but looking for the version number should help you find the download link.

    How did upgrading to version of iTunes go LostRalph? Since I mainly buy CDs at the gigs I’ve never bought any tracks on iTunes..just the Radius game for the iPhone. I’ve spent more at money at Fictionwise for the e versions of Analog and Asimovs than at the iTunes store.

    The non fixing blows chunks Jack, hopefully they didn’t charge too much for the non repair.

    I didn’t noticed the ‘Degree for Men’ pimping in Eureka, might help if I knew what the product was…

  68. Morning pan

    Happy no doomsday day I guess 🙂
    Van maybe it does die away if you haven’t noticed it- ALso like right when they cut to commercials here they have a commercial for it featuring a Eureka cast member, so that may be why it seems so obvious to me. The placement in the show I guess is really not that bad.

    Ed- I wouldnt say the book is a great vampire genre book.. it was really just a very hot vampire porn book.. really- the reviews in Amazon were correct about the actual story. The story was quite lame, I had the ending figured out by the middle of the book, but the sex scenes were really really good. So if your wife likes to read kinky vamp sex books then she will love it! 🙂

    Jack sorry about the puter

  69. I don’t understand why the Barack camp doesn’t just dig out all of the clips of the Bush people attacking McCain when he ran against THEM!

    Why re-invent the wheel? Those Republicans already made a strong case against voting for McCain. At the very least, all of that stuff should be gathered and on youtube or something.

  70. Re: Mad Men

    Don’t know if we have any other “Mad Men” fans here but I really thik the show is back in it’s stride. About the first 2 episodes of this season had me wondering what I had seen in the show but it is back to it’s “Whaaaa, that’s all for this episode? Oh come on … give us another 10 minutes!” status.

  71. Good morning, Deadpan!

    Catching up —

    Love the vampire porn, Hotties!

    Love Mad Men, JOe, but still back in Season 1.

    Wolf, excellent sticker! The one I see on every other car in my town is the Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman. Blech.

    Back to the work disaster of the moment . . .

  72. I finished reading “Halting State” by Charles Stross last night. It’s an excellent book but only if you can get past the fact that it is entirely written in 2nd person perspective.

  73. Ive read “Singularity Sky” and “Iron Sunrise.” He writes well, but it takes a little getting into his style and universe.

    I’m currently reading “Century Rain” by Alistair Reynolds (like 40 page left). He’s one of my faves and I love the Revelation Space universe.

  74. Oh, Jeremy – it looks like we’re not out of the woods yet. The LHC hasn’t actually smashed anything yet.

    Now, I’m not in the “end of the universe” crowd, but I can see the naysayers crying that the enthusiasm of the LHC backers over a “successful” startup is just a cover up ploy.

    So, I wonder when the real action does begin.

  75. Morning Deadpan!

    Came home from the office this morning to find a note in my mailbox from some stranger wanting to pick apples from my tree. I phoned him up and said yes. Now expecting some strange man to be prowling around my front yard later today 🙂

  76. The biggest hole (pun intended) in the LHC doomsayer’s theories is that these collisions happen all the time. The LHC is just a tool for allowing us to control and observe these collisions.

  77. I think it amazing that it will take a year before the LHC is fully powered up. Kinda reminds me of Ghostbusters. 😉

    “Why worry? Each of us is carrying an untested nuclear accelerator on his back. Switch me on, Ray.”

  78. Great review by ZP. I’ve avoided “Too Human” based on the reviews. It’s too bad because “Eternal Darkness” was all kinds of awesome and I agree with ZP that it is insane they avoided making a sequel of that. Hell, they could upgrade and port it to the new gen of consoles and still make money on it.

  79. I refuse to upgrade when it’s actually a downgrade. This means I’m often stuck several versions back. Example: I play my audio with winamp 2.8. Really.

    If I could find something open source that actually worked, I’d use that.

  80. So far I like it. May not activate the Genius bar though.

    I KNOW we weren’t going to be gobbled by a little black hole. It was for teh_funneh.

  81. So many links to click, but no time!
    I don’t know what this freaking insane day is going to mean for tonight’s Deadpan.

    I’m still waiting for the Maximillian robot to emerge from the Hadron Collider.

    OK, back into the madness.

    CP: Give up on Ghosts – Computer vs. Banjo (I really dig this tune)

  82. Jeremy: looked up songbird. Sounds like it does what I refused the new winamps (and others) for. It goes skynet with the damn net.

    I hate programs that dial home. I sure won’t use one that tries to spend more time online than I do, hogging resources and doing pure evil besides. Ick.

  83. I got the BSOD with vista. Although it restarted itself and gave me a very polite message, telling me it had a BSOD, and was restoring my session of windows.

    It crashes a lot, but it’s more polite about it. The old error messages always reamed the user, which only made you angrier.

  84. Not a great fan of MS, but the way Apple gets aways with a load of crap cos their products look cool constantly amazes me.

    So the next you get shafted by an Apple product, smile and start singing ‘It’s Cool for Cats’…

  85. Ed – quite true, it does look like we will miss Ike completely. Gustav on the other hand pissed on Chicago quite a bit. That was a bad day 🙁 Of course seeing what hurricane’s do to the coasts versus the insane thunderstorm we get, I think i have nothing to complain about.

  86. RE:LHC
    I think that it will take a few of weeks for the world to end after it starts smashing those Hedrons. This is because the black holes it will create are very small. Size of a pin type things that will orbit the earths core.
    Could take days before the first few manage to randomly come in contact with (and pass through at hypervelocity) the first humans. Of course know one will know that they have been reemed by a micro blak hole. They will just suddenly feel this sharp pain throught their body. It won’t be until one of these people manages to get some sort of MRI that they will discover the tiny scar-tissue trail that seems to pass from one side of their body to another.
    Still, no one will link this to the LHC even as there will start to be a rash of strange and unexplained failures of otherwise very healthy computers and other machines. Caused by lucky (or unlucky) strikes from the increasing number of these tiny unstoppable phenom.

    Eventually a savvy sci-fi writer will figure it all out but by then these black holes will have begun generating their own black holes as their deadly orbits have brought them into collision with “free range” Hedrons.

    By now the swarm of tiny death will have started to fatally “swiss cheese” the earths interior as well as those on it’s surface.

    … or so it went in the Sci-Fi story I read about 20 years ago.
    I think in Omni Magazine.

  87. Well I didn’t get the BSOD after the upgrade (but I did have photo syncing off).

    Didn’t bother switching Genius on, and so far, so good.

  88. So far iTunes 8 has been good. It downloaded new podcasts last night and transferred them to my iPod. My only issue was it wanting to display my content as icons instead of the old list format, easily fixed. I too deactivated the genius bar, although I think Ed might get a great deal of use from it.

  89. I feel like a productive pseudo-podcaster tonight! I finished editing all my lines for “Questors” Episode 2, and the first two minutes of the episode are all put together. I’m about to fall asleep here, so, good night! 🙂

  90. Yeah, iTunes 8 doesn’t impress me much over the old one, the genius sidebar is “unable to recommend music at this time” as it has since I installed it, wow what a feature.

    But it has always worked solidly for me, as a Mac owner with 3 iPods, I see no reason to use anything else…

  91. Oh, yeah guess I have recording for Effpiem, an I think I promised a DAM a few weeks back, oughta deliver.

    But got my Angel Between the Lines script in on time (one of four that did so out of the 12…).

  92. Well, friends. Ike has me in his sights and we’ve received the mandatory evacutation order for 8am. Knowing what a mess that’s going to be, we’re getting ready to roll out for my parents place within the hour. I’ll check in tomorrow some time from there.

  93. I’m in a ‘I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy’ mood. One of the programmers that created one of my fav games from the early 80’s is posting in a forum I read.

    cough

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