Just over there
Okay… cynically… the 2 actual shows about Superman? Wild guess — they were paid for from the marketing budget for the movie.
Nothing to watch on tv? Why not watch a rerun of “Ultimate Super Vixens” on Bravo?
Only women who’ve appeared in movies/tv of course. Some of them of dubious “Superness” (The “Bond Girls” are #2? Huh? So Halie Berry gets on the list more than once?)
(It was really a promo for that year’s X-Men movie (several of the “Vixens” were from that movie.)
But at least Emma Peel made it on the list… #15 (And she gets a ‘Bond Girl’ nod) and then there’s Buffy — who makes it to #3.
(Somewhere around here… I thought I had the complete list from when I watched it the last time. Hmmm… here we go… )
I was thinking of getting a new iPod and passing the old one down the family tree (The T’s Shuffle is apparently kaput. My old 2GB Nano would be a definite upgrade) this week now that the next update (the 8GB Nano) is supposedly delayed until Christmas now (Darn).
I have a coupon from Best Buy. 10% off… guess what ISN’T covered by the coupon? Anything Apple (Why? So they don’t compete with the new Knoxville Apple store that is opening up this weekend?) (And a bunch of other fun/cool high-tech toys. The coupon is basically good for TV’s and stereo equipment. And DVD’s– Hmmm… there are a couple I would like to buy with that kind of discount… )
So… I’m wondering if it’ll cover the Palm PDA I was looking at… (Best Buy in Knoxvegas just has the PDA, no accessories so I would have to go somewhere else for those).
Or maybe I’ll finally get that “The Complete Emma Peel” Avengers boxed set?
Expensive oil/oil pan gasket change today… most of it in labor.
How much labor is there in changing out and removing an oil pan to replace a leaking gasket?
Well….
To change the gasket in the rear oil pan in my car… you have to unbolt the engine from the car and lift it up (Or so I’ve been told – my info could be wrong).
To change the gasket in the smaller, front oil pan — remove a piece of plastic and remove a few bolts. Not a big deal at all…
Unless… some previous owner/mechanic/yahoo hadn’t used a gasket the last time they removed it (which would have been before I bought the car 3+ years ago) but had instead used a heavy coat of silicon gasket sealer INSTEAD of an actual seal.
ARGH!!!!!
And my current independent mechanic? A very nice guy who insists on real BMW warranteed parts (and won’t use the cheap Chinese junk you can get off of eBay) and who doesn’t mind an audience while he works if he isn’t too busy?
Horrified doesn’t quite describe his reaction to that little car repair innovation. He spent over an hour carefully removing the silicon and cleaning it all up before putting in a real BMW certified gasket.
And… while he was there he checked out the infamous (they (BMW V8′s) all do it) loose oil pump bolts and found a couple not as tight as possible but none loose.
So much for that adventure… next up… let’s have some suspension work done in August… and I really need a new radio (the old one is dying (no sound on the left side) but I don’t really want to spend $400 to replace it with the stock BMW radio head unit. Crutchfield has a more modern tune/cassette head unit and 12 disc CD changer for a bit less. It wouldn’t be as integrated into the car controls as the current one… but it would be better than what I have now (A BMW branded Alpine setup)
That changing a headlight bulb would be such a dirty job.
I’ve had my E34/530i for 54K miles now… and I just changed my first headlight bulb. (Two actually… you’re supposed to change both sides at the same time so they wear evenly.)
Took me 25 minutes, and my hands were almost black when I was finished.
The left one(low beam), the one that was actually out, was the hardest.
My recommendation? If you need to change that bulb or the high beam next to it (it, like most recent BMW’s, has separate high/low beam bulbs)… find someone with tiny hands that’ll fit in the small space you have to maneuver in. Probably easier in one of the inline 6 cylinder models. That V8 takes up a lot of space under the hood.)
But still faster than my little 318is with the sealed beams (Had to change a headlight on that one at 4AM one winter before catching a flight out of Boston. With a flashlight…
(Wanted to change it before taking the buggy to the garage tomorrow morning for an oil change/leaky gasket change.)
One of those ‘running errands after work’ kind of days… (groceries, tank of gas, lottery ticket, haircut (a little on the short side — not a bad haircut but so short I think it makes my head look too unbalanced (kind of egg shaped — oops — gonna take a couple weeks to even out…))
Then I ate dinner/watched the Australia/Italy World Cup) game (I’ve been recording them — wander over to my LiveJournal for details of the whole OOC sports watching thing) and fell asleep, waking up around 11PM. And now I need to go back to bed so I’m coherent at work in a coupe hours…)
And no writing… I’ve got a couple hundred words of “The Two” to move from paper to here and the next TtH100 installment to straighten out (three+ paragraphs covering the same ground that need to be merged – it’s a mess right now.)
And “Radio” has been a little flakey since I moved it from one volume to another on my powerbook. Maybe I missed a directory reference somewhere? How did I move it last time? Hmmm…
(And I don’t mean “Tomb Raider Legends” for the PSP – that was a planned purchase.
I want to buy a Palm TX. Not really sure why… I’ve tried to buy PDA’s in the past. (I have an original Newton MessagePad in a box somewhere and a Sharp Zaurus that I really should do something with).
Why?
I’ve been looking at Tablet PC’s for the last year… and I’ve checked out similar objects (Microsoft calls their version of the PC between a tablet and a PDA the uMPC. Sony has a similar Vaio and other companies have attempted similar things)
But none of them meet what I want… too expensive (I don’t want to pay more than $1K) or the wrong size… something between trade paperback size and my 12″ Powerbook with the cover closed would do it for me. (Mac OS X support would be even better)
It’ll be a couple more years before that happens (Of course, I’ve been waiting for something like that since buying that Newton – 15 years ago)
So… I thought I would buy a cheapish PDA while I wait. The Palm TX does bluetooth and WiFi (802.11b like my PSP) and there are at least 2 different GPS options (though they seem to cost as much as the TX).
The LifeDrive is slightly faster and has a 4GB hard drive but costs $100 more… more than I want to pay for this kind of thing when it is an impulse buy…
We’ll see…
Finally… after being stalled for almost a year… I think I have the right idea for my fic “The Two” — now I just have to write it. It’ll be the action part of the story… parts 13 thru 18.
Maybe I’ll even get the whole section done before September 
.
For those who don’t know –
YAHF = Yet Another Halloween Fic
But what is it?
It’s a story based on the Buffy, Season 2 episode “Halloween” where people turn into their costumes on Halloween, thanks to one of the semi-bad guys.
Several important things in this genre to note:
And, of course, I’m over generalizing. The stories aren’t always Xander-centric. There’s one good series of stories centered around Dawn (she dresses up like a character in “Noir”) but so many of them seem to be an excuse to write a “Super Xander” story.
So… I’ve had in mind for a while to write one centered around Buffy… let’s have HER be somebody different. Like an Elf. And maybe Willow can be an elf also…
So I’ve added an entry over at my bad fic page… just in case I actually ever write this idea…
Just a couple things…
- Bought “The Rockford Files” – Season 1 today… it’s been a long time since I watched that. It has that gritty early 70′s feel to it. I think the word for it is “Realism” — Jim Rockford certainly isn’t a “pretty” detective like Crocket and Tubs.
Hadn’t realized it was so old (Season 1 was made in 74)… must have seen it in reruns when I was growing up.
The few episodes I’ve watched so far… seem to be very stand-alone. No story arcs.
- I’ve got a few episodes of Dr. Who sitting on the DVR — maybe I’ll finally catchup. And the first episodes of “Hex” (A new show on BBC America — though I hear it only lasted two season on the BBC — not sure how many episodes that really is.)
- Or maybe one of the pile of DVD’s I haven’t watched yet…
Finally bought myself one of those universal remotes. I was getting tired of having to juggle 3 remotes just to watch tv (cable box, tv, and receiver) or dvd’s.
An interesting gadget — a Logitech Harmony 550. You connect to the Logitech web site, enter your device info and they send you a file that is then loaded into the remote via a USB cable.
Seems to work… though it’ll take me a little while to get it set up to my satisfaction. (It thinks my TV is an older model (I entered the correct model but they must not have that one there so their software went with the closest.) which has a slightly different feature set than mine… so the options aren’t quite correct.)
First step is done… 1 remote that does 90% of the things I want/use.
Found an old fic (Just to be clear – not a fic of mine.) that has several things in common with my new one “Where the Books Are”.
(I don’t think this is where my idea partially came from… but I’m sure I read it at some point in the past)
A B/W where Buffy is in a wheelchair — Flying Without Wings. Note: This fic is purely of historical interest. This writer could have use a beta or something… the story has a few continuity / mechanical issues….
Just how many books did Giles lose in this episode? Seemed to be an awfully large fire…
I don’t recall any complaints from him later about the books he’s lost… guess I’ll have to watch the episodes after….
And where is Faith anyway? She just disappears for a couple episodes? And no one says anything?
Why yes, I am watching “My Name Is Nobody” again. It’s a favorite. (It’s also a Sergio Leone film)
Note — the Wild Bunch Jack fights at the end… only vaguely resembles the real thing. If you Google around you’ll find that there were never more than 10 of them at a time — not the 150 in this movie.
