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Naamah's Curse |
Posted By Casey on March 22, 2010
I’m a little afraid to venture into Chatroulette myself, mostly because I don’t particularly want to see random naughty bits or talk to people, but the Merton video is awesome:
And the actual Ben Folds tribute/response is equally awesome!
Posted By Casey on February 22, 2010
Yeah, you read that right, and boy do you have to hear THIS story.
I went to the theater with Kev on Saturday and we sat down in the back row, like we do, because nobody can kick the back of your seat if it’s the WALL and the troublemakers with small children tend not to want to hike that high. What can I say, we go to a lot of movies that can reasonably be expected to have a high child-to-adult ratio in attendance. We’ve learned.
An older woman and two tweenage girls make the trek up and sit a seat away from us. The film begins. All is going well until about ten minutes in, the woman opens a book and takes out a booklight.
I know I should say something right then, but I don’t; I think perhaps she is checking a schedule or something. No, she is READING. I’m rather enjoying the movie so I hiss (loudly enough for her to hear) “Let’s just move” and we do.
Unfortunately the view from eight seats away isn’t any better, since the damn booklight is shining right in my eyes. I hold my hand up to block it (and might I add, sustain an extremely rude gesture, because I’m passive-aggressive like that and it totally makes me feel better) for the ENTIRE HALF HOUR that the ratbag reads her stupid book. Eventually she shuts it off. My triumph is complete, or so I think…
Until the movie reaches a slow moment! Then, on comes the light AGAIN!
I want to get up and give the old bag an ultimatum. “You have three options…you may give me the booklight, you may leave your children and go to the lobby to read, or you may promptly receive a booklight enema free of charge.” About the time I’m about to get up and deliver this, Kev (who can still see the light, I guess, since my hand is only blocking it for ME) finally leans over and yells at her to turn it off.
The woman has the gall to look SURPRISED AND OFFENDED. She shuts it off, and it doesn’t come back on, but I can’t imagine what reasoning led her to believe that turning on what essentially amounts to a flashlight during a movie and leaving it on counts as polite behavior ANYWHERE. I thought cellphone-talkers were bad.
Later on Kev realized what he SHOULD have done the first time the light came on, before we moved. I wish he had, too: he could have taken the seat between me and the old woman, leaned over, and started loudly asking her about every aspect of the story. “Whatcha reading? Is it any good? Who’s that person? Why did they say that? What’s happening on this page? Don’t turn it page, I’m not done yet!”
That would have been glorious. Oh well. Maybe I’ll adopt this tactic the next time somebody takes out a cell phone during a movie. “Who are you talking to? Tell them I said “hi!” Ask them if they’re wearing their sexy underpants…”
Posted By Casey on December 8, 2009
Client: “I upgraded Firefox and now my tabs don’t work like they used to. They changed how the tabs work. I want it fixed.”
Me: “Yes, they drastically changed the program behavior of some features in the latest version. There are a number of plugins…”
Client: “No, I don’t want to use any plugins.”
Me: “Well, I may be able to find something in about:config…”
Client: “No, I don’t want to change any settings.”
Me: “So…they changed how the program works, and you recognize this. What exactly would you like me to do here, since you don’t like any of my suggestions?”
Client: “I want it to work like it did before. But I don’t want to use any plugins or change any program settings.”
Me: “So…you want me to help you install the previous version?”
Client: “NO! I want to use this version.”
Me: “Sir, you have shot down every one of my options. Perhaps you should post something on a Mozilla support board rather than calling your internal technical support team. We don’t control Firefox.”
Client: “Fix it!”
Me: “Clearly I can’t help you. Please contact the poor sap who was unfortunate enough to be working your case in the first place. Bye now.”
*fume* Sometimes I really hate people.
Posted By Casey on December 2, 2009
I’m kind of a movie music geek. By which I mean, as usual, I’m a “useless information about some really obscure topic” geek. Soooo…today’s lesson is all about movie trailer music.
Aside from all those films that use the Dragonheart theme in their trailers – which annoys me, because I recognize it and associate it with a specific movie since it was actually part of the movie’s score. Cheaters. – most movie trailers actually get their music not from the movie itself, but from an audio house that composes custom music just for movie and TV trailers.
That custom music is the 2-3 minutes of epic track you hear behind all the voiceovers for movies and video game commercials, that swells to a grand climax over the big bloody battle scene or the first kiss. Basically the soundtrack to accompany all the “good bits” of the movie or game they’re showing you in the trailer.
You can find music from all these guys on YouTube (and other places):
Two Steps From Hell
Audiomachine
615 Music
Immediate Music
Epic Score
Audio houses like these used to be fairly difficult to track down, but thanks to The Internets they are starting to realize that there’s a good fan market in trailer music and have started to come out of the shadows, so their music is more readily available. Two Steps From Hell is actually releasing an album of full-length tracks to iTunes! (I’m not much of a fangirl, I swear.)
On a related topic, if you’re like me and go a bit bonkers trying to place songs from TV ads, AdTunes is the place to go. They know EVERYTHING.
Posted By Casey on December 1, 2009
Paul, trying to describe our frustration over the difference between 3.5 and 4th edition D&D to someone who has never played either one:
“Let’s say you and your friends used to play Cowboys and Indians together, and had a lot of fun. The rules were pretty complex, but everyone understood them and loved them despite their flaws. Then, this other group of kids got together and created an online game that was based loosely on Cowboys and Indians as you used to play it, but everything was way more codified and structured, all the free-form fun that used to be part of your game was channeled into rigid hierarchies of class structures, but the class structures kind of overlapped in odd ways. This online version of Cowboys and Indians, let’s call it “World of Cowboycraft”, became immensely popular. So, your friends all got together and said “Hey, we love how Cowboycraft does it’s stuff, we should make Cowboys and Indians more like that”. So they did…and some folks were excited about it, but it was A HUGE CHANGE, it totally redefined the spirit of Cowboys and Indians in a way that made it almost unrecognizable…”
Posted By Casey on November 30, 2009
I had a really weird Lovecraftian dream the other night in which the Earth was swallowed by Great Stritax, Devourer of Stars. I spent the rest of the dream trapped in the digestive tract of the giant space slug, until I emerged out the other side as one of “The Cleansed” to repopulate a reborn Earth.
Basically the moral of this story is, there were waaaaay too many sphincters in that dream.
Also, ‘Stritax’ sounds like the name of a particularly swanky tampon brand.
Posted By Casey on November 22, 2009
FYI, the free samples at Sam’s Club are:
- Best the weekend before a holiday. Caramel apple pie, a giant plate of cheese and crackers, cappucino and cookies!
- Fat- and calorie-free, as everyone knows.
After spending all morning trying to put the interiors of our cars in order, I’m watching The Big Bang Theory and trying to decide what Big Project from the November List I should tackle next.
- Website for weapons and hoods and all that other stuff I seem to sell a lot.
- Leather pouches.
- The unexpectedly giant pile of tabbards I have to make.
- The equally unexpectedly giant pile of hoods I have to make.
- Writing. I have things. Stop laughing, it’s not ALL fanfiction.
What should I pick?
Posted By Casey on October 21, 2009
What we say: “OK, it looks like you have a corrupt driver…remove the file in the driver folder you just opened, and replace it with the new one I just had you download. If that doesn’t work you may also have to disable/re-enable the interface, and maybe reboot.”
What they hear: “OK, try reversing the polarity on the phase generators. If that doesn’t work you may have to purge the quantum flux, and eject the warp core before it overloads.”
P.S. If both of these things sounded like incomprehensible babble to you, congratulations, you probably have a fulfilling normal life, and people don’t point at you and call you king/queen of the nerds.
Posted By Casey on October 16, 2009
Teaching users to think for themselves, or use support that does not simply involve calling a number and having one of us do all the thinking for them, is a really painful process sometimes.
But this comment from one of my coworkers made it all better, for today at least:
“There is one other person who may be able to help you. Your journey to reach him will not be easy. Head toward the land of PC to access the mailing list. Solitare and Minesweeper will tempt you but you must press forward. A moment of trust will occur, a password will be requested. Follow your heart.”
