Just a reminder to forget the stress and have loads of fun this holiday season. And no one reminds me to take things less seriously quite like Jonathon Coulton.
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Jonathon Coulton: Chiron Beta Prime
Dec
17
Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree…
Dec
17
Pre-lit Christmas trees = very good.
Our flocked pre-lit Christmas tree = beautiful.
Hunting through a flocked, pre-lit Christmas tree to find the dead bulbs keeping the top of the tree from lighting – TORTURE!
About a week ago the top quarter of our tree just went dark. Weird, I thought, what about that whole stay-lit technology of wiring the series of bulbs with shunts that keep the string lit even if a bulb goes out? So, I figure the problem must be a blown fuse in the top strand. To my surprise the fuse was fine. Crap. So the hunt begins. Which of the dark bulbs is the bad one keeping the string from lighting. Now I don’t remember how many bulbs are in our tree, but it’s a crap load. And to make things tricky, our flocked tree has most bulbs coated with clumps of ‘snow’ so you can’t even casually find them when they’re not lit.
I start by testing one random bulb from the top in the lower part of the tree. The bulb doesn’t light and the lower string stays lit. Hmmm. I try the good bulb in the top. Nothing. Okay, that was a bad bulb. I replace it by snagging a bulb from a spare string, pulling the bulb from that holder and inserting it into the holder that the tree uses. As common as all Christmas bulbs are, you’d think the bulb base/holder would be universal – but, nooooo, everyone makes them differently. Which means every time I need to replace a bulb I need to pull the old and new bulbs from their bases and insert the new one, carefully feeding in the two tiny wires, into the correct base. This only seems mildly annoying…at first.
I keep repeating the process of pulling a bulb from the top and testing it in a working part of the tree. Over and over, every bulb I pull down is bad. With every replacement I put in, I feel more and more like Clark Griswold anticipating the miraculous lighting of the whole lot with a glorious choir singing in the background. After 35 bulbs, I run out to the store to buy another strand to supply me with more bulbs (by the way you can either buy a pack of 5 replacement bulbs for 99 cents, or a 50 light strand for 2 bucks).
After a while, finding bulbs that I haven’t replaced becomes some freakish yuletide Where’s Waldo exercise. Following the wire strands seem logical enough until you see how tightly wound they are around the branches. Plus, there’s all that damn flock in the way.
After inserting the 58th new bulb, I’m covered in flock as if I’ve been making artificial snow angels all day, and the choir launches into song.
Filed under General News
Dec
13
What’s in The Mist?
Dec
13
I caught the film adaptation of the Stephen King novella, The Mist, a couple weeks ago after much anticipation and a blog post back in May. This story, after all, was the first thing I remember reading from King plus it inspired the game Half-Life many years later. Although I didn’t have a chance to re-read the story prior to the screening as I’d hoped, I remembered quite a bit of the story from many years ago. And from my memory the film held pretty true to the book – except for the interesting, but heavy-handed ending they tacked onto the end. Without giving anything away, the filmmakers decided to answer more questions than the original did. For a creepy story rooted in a lack of information, having answers and resolution provided at the end just felt all wrong.
By far this is director Frank Darabont’s weakest King adaptation. Of course it will take a miracle to pull off one better than Shawshank and The Green Mile. But it wasn’t bad either. Surprisingly, the visual effects didn’t disappoint as in so many other King movies. I went in with the attitude that’d we’d be best entertained by seeing very little of what’s in the mist, and if they had to show us, well, they better bring it. And they did. You practically can’t impress an audience anymore in this post-LOTR era, but the cgi has to be believable, else it’s a distraction. In this flick, all the baddies from big to enormous were done quite well.
In this film, it was the flatness of the characters that left this movie short of the others in Darabont’s resume. There just wasn’t much character development throughout the movie – characters were introduced quickly, and what you saw is what you got. Most fulfilled their very typical roles, and few had any kind of arc. Really the only development you see are stereotypical characters becoming bigger and more exaggerated caricatures of themselves…the bible thumper, the reluctant hero, the uppity out-of-towner, the town yokels, etc. In fairness I think Darabont didn’t have much to draw from – the simple characters worked fine in the short(ish) story, but on film where less is left to the imagination their shallowness was too obvious. Still, there’s plenty of action to keep things moving, and I personally managed to quickly forget the bits of dialog that were either lifeless or way over the top.
Overall it’s a fun watch. I just hope when Darabont takes on King’s The Long Walk, he returns to his old self and knocks one out of the park.
Filed under Movies
Dec
03
Back to the BIG Bowl
Dec
03
In one of the craziest, most upset filled, college football seasons, Ohio State has landed back in the number 1 spot at just the right time. Last weekend, former #1 Missouri and former #2 West Virginia both fell flat on their face while skipping toward the BCS Championship game. Very wacky to see both top ranking teams get replaced on the eve of the bowl pairings.
So, it’ll be OSU going down to LSU territory in New Orleans for the big game on Jan 7th. The number 2 LSU, with one more loss than OSU and the only team with two losses to ever play in the BCS championship, will almost certainly be a heavy favorite. Besides the home crowd advantage, many fingers will point to the cupcake, practically intramural, schedule OSU has had. And they would have a good point. Others will point to the shellacking the Bucks took last year in the championship game when they had a much more potent offense. And they would have a good point. And others will point to the 50-day layoff between the annual Michigan spanking and the showdown in the Big Easy.
But the Buckeyes have some pluses in their favor. First off, they’ve been steaming over the loss to Florida for a whole year. Tressel and the rest of the staff haven’t let them forget with constant reminders like using the embarrassing score as the team training center’s key code in the offseason. Second, Beanie Wells has had a lot of time to heal up (even though the wear and tear was rarely reflected in his numbers). And third, there’s no Heisman hoopla distracting our QB this time around. In general, I think the offense will be more level-headed and focused than last year’s squad and the defense should be as solid as last year’s should’ve been.
So for sure it’s not going to be a easy game for the Bucks. Still, to lose eight player to the NFL draft (including the Heisman winner) and be right back in the thick of it is pretty damn cool.
Filed under Sports
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