Monday, May 27, 2002

I have discovered the joys of EAC and LAME. Since being awakened by the Mexicans, I have spent most of my time re-encoding a bunch of CDs with the --r3mix option, which yields very HQ, VBR joint-stereo files that are also space-efficient.

Daddy likes. Plus, because of my Kenwood 72x, most tracks rip at 15x-20x, which makes me smile big.

Mistress's nephew (brother's son) is turning two years old today, and my presence has been requested for the obligatory birthday party. I'm excited because there will be free food, but I'm not otherwise tickled.

Roomie came in and bitched about how his mother keeps calling him and bothering him. We've lived in this apartment for a year and a half, and now that he's moving out his mother is sinking her claws back in. He's going from living about twenty minutes away from his parents to living about two (or, measuring distance by his CD player as he is wont to do, "less than one song away"), which I think is a horrible thing. His mother is domineering and controlling, as well as being very loud, and she obviously can't wait to begin meddling again.

At least, that's what it seems like to me.

Posted by Keeper @ 12:13 PM CST [Link]

Why am I awake? It's 09:00 on Memorial Day and I was up until 02:30 last night.

I am awake because of Evil Mexicans with lawn care equipment. Gasoline-powered lawn care equipment. Directly outside my window. For almost an hour. Sleep, at this point, is hopeless.

Mistress and my friends and I played a six hour game of Monopoly last night. It ended with every single house and hotel deployed to the board. Mistress crushed everyone--she had over $16,000 dollars when the game ended. After winning, she rightly declared herself Empress of the Universe.

Posted by Keeper @ 08:50 AM CST [Link]

Friday, May 17, 2002

Yeah, I saw Attack of the Clones...and when I'm on my death bed, I'm gonna want those five hours and fifteen minutes back.

Five hours and fifteen minutes? Indeed--that's two hours and fifteen minutes for the movie and three for standing in line to get decent seats. I don't wanna talk about the wait. All the stuff you're hearing about friendly fans waiting in line is false; the line I stood in was made up of pissed off people who wanted to see the damn movie. A fight broke out because someone tried to cut in line.

When I finally got into the theatre, I was treated to one hour and fifty minutes of the most banal, weak, and soulless pile of cinematic masturbation to which I have ever been subjected. That was followed up by about twenty-five minutes of ass-kicking climactic battle and Yoda. Never has so much money and creative energy been spent on so little.

The movie started and I was immediately plunged into some action that I didn't care about. Then we went to some mindless talk that I didn't care about. Then a bunch of background information is presented in such a way that stuff I thought I wanted to know about--like, how is Uncle Owen related to Darth Vader?--make me weep with boredom. Then a chase that I didn't care about. Now we go to this other planet and there's a bunch of stuff that I didn't care about. Then some more stuff happened about which, yep, I just didn't care.

It was the first movie during which I checked my watch. More than once, even.

Many reviewers have been gushing about the return to "real Star Wars," but I didn't see that at all. There were a few glimmers of hope, but the movie felt about as much like "Star Wars" as a giant stinking dead whale.

The end of the movie was A-OK and fun. My friends and I complained on the car ride to the theatre that whatever Yoda looks like when he fights can't be as good as what we could picture in our heads, and that instead of showing Yoda kicking butt, his fight should have been left to the imagination.

I was wrong. Yoda fighting looked every bit as good as I could have imagined.

The climactic battle near the end was very good, but marred by some misplaced humorous moments that, while funny genuinely, disrupted the action like a guillotine disrupts blood flow to the brain.

One star, out of four. Pehaps two, if I hadn't had to wait for three hours in line. There were three people that showed up in costume--two little kids, who started lightsaber fighting and had to be asked to stop by the usher because their mother didn't seem interested in controlling her spawn, and one older guy who came in full Jedi regalia, complete with authentic replica lightsaber. He was openly laughed at, and considering the quality of the movie, I can't say I blame the hecklers.

Posted by Keeper @ 08:17 AM CST [Link]

Wednesday, May 15, 2002

A friend and I were discussing the series finale of "The X-Files," and she had this to say:

"I've really enjoyed watching 'The X-Files' spiral into madness and absurdity. This should be their crowning achievement."

That about sums it up for me.

Posted by Keeper @ 01:29 PM CST [Link]

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

And a very warm welcome to anyone reading this who was referred by the Yahoo Pick for May 13. The extra e-mail caused my inbox to melt.

Speaking of melting, I am recovering from a gigantic freaking hard drive crash. I came home from work yesterday to discover that my primary HDD, a Western Digital 40GB 7200rpm ATA-100 drive, was producing The Clicking. I was able to save nearly everything off of it, but I fear it is a total loss. I shall have to investigate the RMA procedure for WD drives.

Am I fortunate, or what? Within the past five years, I've had a drive from just about every major hard drive manufacturer fail on me--Quantum, Maxtor, IBM, Seagate, Toshiba, and now Western Digital. Is there anybody left? Let me know so I can buy one of their drives and have it blow up on me!

Since I'm losing my roommate at the end of this month, spending the extra $149 on a new drive was a painful experience. Ugh.

Posted by Keeper @ 09:47 PM CST [Link]

Wednesday, May 1, 2002

The Chronicles got linked on Metafilter again. The first time was before I had the forums set up, so this ought to be an interesting experience. I've had new-user registration on the forums password-protected for the last few days after a trolling, and I'm hoping to keep the password disabled. We have such a lovely little community going on in the forums--I hate to see people disrupt that. I have never before participated in a discussion board with posters that exhibit the kind of quality of personality as my regulars.

Interestingly enough, there aren't nearly as many negative comments on MeFi about the site as there were the first time. It's fascinating to read, but MeFi has had new user registration disabled for about a million years, so I can't toss my two cents into the ring.

S'alright. I am content to watch. I haven't been ego-surfing in a while, so it's a fun experience. I'm really frightened of the day--if it ever comes--when Fark links to the Chronicles. That's a wacky bunch.

I gave blood today, and this is coupled with a moderate change in diet. I feel funny. I was unable to avoid giving blood, since I am type O-negative and people from the blood bank actually track me during the day with spears and Ziploc baggies, trying to steal my precious live-giving juice. Or perhaps that's just in my imagination.

Probably not.

Posted by Keeper @ 11:19 AM CST [Link]