Standing On Boxes

A few more (22+) hours and it’ll be 2006. Are we ready yet for another year to start?

“Fish innards in a stew are perfect“

Why yes, I am watching this Friday’s 11PM installment of “Iron Chef” – The “Shanghai Cabbage Battle” episode

As much fun as it is to watch… it is a good reminder that so much of what we consider edible food is culturally based. There’s always at least one dish or ingredient that makes me go “Ewww…”

Van Helsing

Not getting much out of it… action and special effects… not much plot… but it’s better than most other things on tonight.

Unless you count Kill Bill II

Choices, choices (and it’s still raining out…)

I’ve been doing some writing… just for fun… something corny, unrealistic. Something that requires a larger than normal suspension of disbelief… I’ll post it here after January 1st.

It actually flowed very quickly. I’ve got a good idea why… I’ll explain when I post it here.

Soggy Christmas?

It’s Christmas Eve, I’m in Tennessee, it’s 50F out and it’s raining…

No snow here this year…

The irony? It’s been very cold around here at night for the past 2 weeks. If it had rained like this last week… we would have had real snow…

On tonight… An old western. Must have seen it half a dozen times growing up. My Name is Nobody. Apparently it’s a rare western comedy written by Sergio Leone. Never would have occurred to me to call it a comedy. It was just fun to watch.

It has that spaghetti western dubbed feel to it.

Henry Fonda and Terence Hill. And a fight with the Wild Bunch.

Terence Hill seems kind of creepy in this. Overly Blue eyes, blonde hair and a tan…

The shootout with the Wild Bunch was a bit silly… but the rest of it after that works out pretty well…

Playing with my new PowerBook . The replacement for my trusty old iBook.

Opinion so far?

Physically, It’s the same size as my iBook (3x as fast CPU-wise, almost twice as much memory… 7 times as much disk space…) but it’s a different color… and the trackpad works.

The oly thing I’m not too thrilled with? The keyboard. The color of the letters is a little too light for my taste. Hard to see without straining my eyes with the way light reflects off of the keys in low light. The powerbooks with the larger screens have lighted keyboards… They couldn’t do that with this one?

Maybe it’s time I learned to touch type? Or found a replaceent keyboard with darker letters?

I couldn’t use the “Migration Assistant” to copy stuff over from my iBook. It seemed to get confused with my setup… had to manually move things over… I’m sure I missed a few files. Fortunately, I have plenty of time to make a backup of the stuff on the iBook for future reference.

Not sure what happened… but my fic “The Two” appears to be nominated in a few categories on a BtVS fic award site. And this was before I finished the revisions today) (I think someone went thru ikoly and over-enthusiastically nominated a bunch of stories they liked…)

What categories?

Best Author Best Angst Best AU (Alternate Universe) Best Characterization – Buffy Best Drama Best Pairing (Unconventional) Best Plot Best Unfinished

I don’t think that fic, which – frankly speaking – is not IMHO my best one, really belongs in the same company of some of those other fics. But if more people read my fics… because of this… I certainly won’t complain. Though I’m surprised there is no fic age limit…

And don’t forget to check out the other nominees.

Finally finished the revision of the finished chapters of my fic “The Two”. I’m not sure it is any better than before but it somehow ended up 2000+ words longer. (It’s over 45K words so far) And a year later.

I’ve updated my Palm eBook version to match.

I’ve also added a single file html version for those who like that sort of thing. Nothing fancy or complex. I’ll probably put the rest of the story in a separate file when it is done.

And now… I need to start working on the rest of it… I guess I won’t get the whole thing done by the end of the month.
[To Fix]

Picked up a copy of the “Next Karate Kid” at the local used book/dvd/music store. Haven’t watched it yet. Maybe some time this week… (Also picked up three of the ‘Noir’ DVD’s. There apparently are a total of 26 episodes scattered across 7 DVD’s. I need #’s 2,5,6,7)

The log cabin sold… so after paying a few bills and Uncle Sam (when I finally get my share of the money) I MIGHT have enough to get a new tv (I was looking at wide screen/HD televisions in “Best Buy” yesterday… I’m thinking something between 32″ and 37″ would do it (Anything bigger wouldn’t fit in my apartment. Any smaller and I don’t gain anything size-wise).

The only issue(s)… my other stereo/home entertainment equipment. Even the newest piece (my “cheap” home theater receiver) predates the HD standard and supports older video output standards (RCA, s-video, composite video).

My DVD player is even older…

So all that would have to be replaced or the tv I get would have to support them…

The cable box is easy… I just call up the cable company and order one (for a couple more dollars a month).

And I want whatever I get to work with the PS3 I plan to get when it comes out next summer…

We’ll see…