johnbowman.net

“I love
deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they
make as they go by.”

– Douglas Adams

I did a backgrounder about the Rogers@Home situation today. I ain’t my best work and I had a hard time getting going on it, so it was pretty late.

Someone once told me that, when I have trouble writing, I should just write. I have a tendency to edit as a write and it can be paralysing.

I haven’t heard from that someone in a while. I miss her.

A few notes about tonight’s episode of The Weakest Link:

• It was yet another celebrity edition. Unlike every other one, however, this contestant panel was not made up of complete chuckle heads. Here’s a complete score sheet for the show.
• The total of $167,500 was the largest ever won on the show. Congratulations to LeVar Burton.
• The contestants answered nine questions correctly in a row, also a record. If the chain had not been broken by someone banking the money, they would have completed a $125,000 chain. (Although not banking at $25,000 is just crazy.)
• Wil Wheaton’s Web site is currently down, a combination of the Slashdot, fark and MF effects and just general Net hype. He was in the final three, despite the fact that Roxann Dawson had a serious hate on for our friend Wil.
• I wouldn’t be surprised if that episode pulled in the best numbers yet for that show. Hell, I watched, didn’t I?

We got some slick new computers in the newsroom today. Big Dell boxes with flat screen monitors… in black!

I don’t think I’ll end up with one, though. Once I’m back to my regular gig as researcher, I’ll be at a new desk with one of the old computers.

Although, that they would go to the trouble of setting me up at a new desk shows that I’ll be around a little while longer, right?

Then again, I did get sacked from Careclinix the day after they give me the passwords to the live server.

Speaking of Careclinix, since they fired me they have changed their name to Blue Rock Systems and have gone bankrupt.

Bah. Screw this. I’m hungry.

I’m gonna go get a falafel and rent some weird movie from Suspect.

The fight against consumerism and corporate globalization can wait for another day.

I’ll go burn down a McDonald’s or something.

I’m rather ambivalent about Buy Nothing Day today.

Yeah, I packed a couple of sandwiches so I wouldn’t have to buy lunch. (Actually, I should probably do that a lot more often.)

And I won’t be going out to the mall to take advantage of all their Christmas season deals. (Not that I would any way.)

But if I defer my purchase of a new TV and VCR till tomorrow or next weekend, does it really make any difference? Yeah, BND is meant to be symbolic, not to bring capitalism to its knees. But sometimes such symbolic gestures can seem pretty hollow.

*sigh* Does renting a movie from an independent video store break the rules?

There are a few new pics of me as cast characters on the Epoch site.

That’s me in the bastion costume. Bastions are evil monsters whose smell can knock you over. When I played it, I was so worried about keeping track of damage and trying to see through that little mouth hole that I forgot about the stench attack.

Here I am as one of The Owls, a mage called Barn.

Waitaminnit. Barn? Owl? *blink*

I can’t believe I just got that.

And here’s Lloyd of Dwarf’s Bridge, the most trusted man on the frontier, along with his good pal (*snicker*) Sylar, the chauvinist elf.

I’ve now seen the Buffy musical three times and that’s more than enough.

But, of course, today I went looking for the lyrics and MP3s…

(What is with personal sites and their tiny fonts lately? It’s almost as if they don’t want you to read their stuff.)

Oh my God, could Iron Chef USA have been any worse?

They just took every little thing that was interesting about that show and replaced it with ugly-ass blue flame graphics and William &*#$@ Shatner!

It was like watching the American version of Robot Wars. Over-the-top and just cheesy.

Good thing there was Buffy on. Nega-Willow makes me melt.

And speaking of Buffy, I just watched the musical for the second time.

I started singing along.

I think that’s enough of that.

Scott Adams made a spin-off of Dilbert called Plop, but he’s shelved it because Elbonians look too much like the Taliban.

Perhaps we should be thankful.

(And I’m off for the weekend. Later, Slater.)