The stupid frost on my wife's car broke my ice scraper this morning. I was scraping her car off, but for some reason this morning's frost was really stuck to everything, so I scraped harder—and my scraper of about 4 years snapped in half.
If you're anywhere near where I am (Pacific NW, USA) tonight, don't miss tonight's total lunar eclipse!
I'll try to get better pictures than last time, since I have a new camera!
Well, since I finished the first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, what else could I do but start the second season??
Season Two launches with a wonderfully terrible movie called Rocketship X-M, which stands for eXpedition Moon. Yeah, I wonder how they got that, too.
Anyway, it's about a government agency that invites the press to witness the launch of an exploratory spaceship to the moon in 1950. Once the press were informed what was going on, they proceeded to tell them that they couldn't report anything that wasn't covered in the "official press release" that they would get later. Sounds plausible to me, uh-huh.
Anyway, the astronauts board the rocket about 5 minutes before takeoff wearing mostly leather jackets. Blastoff is intense, but their acceleration cots are up to the task. Once in space, they drop the aft section (something the directors should have done with this movie) and fire the thrusters toward the moon. Only they don't go to the moon, see, they end up at Mars after blacking out for a few days. This is evidenced by the stubble of beard on one of the characters in the next scene.
Luckily, they still have plenty of fuel to land on Mars and for the return to Earth, so they decide to land and explore our little red neighbor. They discover the remains of an ancient civilization that destroyed itself through atomic war, the remnants of which are now living like cavemen. At one point, footprints are found, but the scientists state that they'd have to be Navajo to be able to track them (someone mentioned that yeah, they're only rocket scientists!). These hostile natives then proceed to throw rocks at the scientists, who have not the brains to get out of the way. Two scientists die and are left behind, while one is dragged wounded back to the rocket. They immediately leave Mars and head home.
When they get back to Earth, they belatedly realize that they don't have enough fuel to land, so they radio in to the ground team, tell them what they've discovered, then crash into Nova Scotia (farewell) at a gazillion miles per hour. Thank goodness nobody lives there. They even let the wounded dude die in his sleep since it meant their last few minutes (male and female scientist, of course) could be together without the awkward third wheel.
The ground team declares the mission a success and they decide to build X-M 2. Thankfully, the producers didn't. The movie starred Lloyd Bridges, of original Battlestar Galactica (he was Commander Cain) and many other cheesy sci-fi movies and tv shows.
Well it looks like the next generation, high definition format war is over. The loser? US. The better features of HD-DVD (like backward compatibility) have lost to stricter copy protection and higher production costs.
I guess it's a good thing I don't plan on buying any of this crap any time soon…
I just got some pricing on polebarn kits. I've been thinking about building one and using it as a woodshop—I have plenty of room in my back yard for it. I'm surprised at the prices, they're a bit lower than I thought they would be! Apparently I can get a 24x32x12 pole barn kit for just over $5k. Unfortunately, that doesn't include any concrete, which can be fairly expensive.
Just when we thought it was all over, it snows again. Thankfully it was only about a half inch here in town.
I've discovered since I've started using rotated monitors with mplayer that any media files play back at a weird aspect—stretched really tall. I figure it had something to do with rotated screens (I run at 1600x1200 resolution, but rotated 90° clockwise). I finally found the correction:
Edit your ~/.mplayer/config file and add the following line:
monitoraspect=3:4
Since normal-aspect monitors use the 4:3 ratio, but I use mine rotated, I have to invert the numbers. This fixes the problem.
Happy (Valentine's Day|Single Awareness Day) everyone!
And now, for the final review in the series (well, Season One anyway), it's time for The Black Scorpion. This movie was made in Mexico, and it shows.
A volcano erupts near Mexico City, and giant scorpions are coming out of the earth and ravaging the locals. They love to eat beef, too. Two geologists out to study the volcano find themselves helping officials fight the scorpion menace. They travel into the scorpion pit where they find other giant insects, but the scorpions kill them all (the insects, unfortunately, not the scientists). The scorpions turn on each other, and the scientists spot a weak point in their armor, on the neck. They devise an electric harpoon gun (seriously, I'm not making this up!) and try to kill the last surviving giant scorpion. The first shot misses, and the army guy pulls its line back, but is killed because they didn't turn off the electricity to the weapon first (duh). One of the scientists jumps in, fires the electric harpoon, and saves the day.
Absolutely terrible, just like I like them 
I watched the next movie in the series: Untamed Youth. It was terrible. Teens forced to work on a Potato and Cotton farm (where we never saw any potatoes, by the way) by a judge that'd been hornswaggled by a crooked farmer guy and forced to work for $0.75 per day. All they have left is their music, which is, of course, rock and roll. And jiggling. There was a lot of that going on. Although it did look like she had a couple of rocket nose-cones under her shirt. Creepy. Nobody's built like that. The best line in the whole movie was the crack about pampers right at the last song. I don't remember who said it, but it was priceless. Although she was the older sister, her younger sister had more sense but less endowment. She (the older sister) got into some trouble, but the younger sister's boyfriend helps her out and they go back to singing rock and roll and dancing and shaking some more.
I wouldn't watch this movie again any time soon, but only because I have a bunch more MST3K to go through first.
Oh, it's because of this. Warning: Pokemon content.
I dare anyone to try to make it to the end.
Today I heard what I imagine will be the funniest thing I'll hear this month, at least.
I wish my lawn was emo, that way it would cut itself
Get her some Book-scented perfume.
I can't decide if this is weird or enticing.
Here's a super super easy caramel corn recipe you can make in the microwave with a paper bag in just a few minutes.
Caramel Corn
4 quarts popped popcorn
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup dark Karo (corn) syrup
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 tsp baking soda
Put sugar, syrup, salt, and butter in a microwave-proof bowl and cook at full power for 2 minutes. Stir until everything is mixed thoroughly. Microwave for 3 more minutes until or mixture has been bubbling for 30 seconds. Add baking soda and stir well. Caramel mixture will change to a lighter color. Put popcorn in a paper grocery bag and pour caramel over popcorn. Shake like it's going out of style. Stuff bag in microwave, cook for about 1 minute. Remove and shake again for about another minute. Microwave a second time for 1 minute, shake thoroughly, then pour out on to parchment paper. Let cool.
Microwave time may vary depending on power.
I just spent the last five hours trying to move a Microsoft CRM (version 3) SQL/Reporting Server to a new piece of hardware. Despite having good documentation, it was an incredible chore, and in the end I still ended up having to abort the migration and go back to the old server.
It was really frustrating, because I was 95% of the way there—everything was working except the Reports, and they only weren't visible in the CRM application (if you called them directly, they worked fine. I suspect it has something to do with permissions/trusts between the servers, but I couldn't find it tonight. Plus, I'm just not very smart after working for 14+ hours straight.