ErkkilaDotOrg

Finished painting. Now if only we could find someone who does blown-in foam insulation and who would actually call back. None of the interior work can start til we get that done.

Unfortunately, we lost Squeak last Friday to unknown causes. She had been under the weather for a few weeks; tried mite dusting, yogurt, and keeping her in a quite spot, but to no avail. I had been just about to start getting her broody to raise the chicks we have coming in 2 weeks. I’m hoping we can get the silkies to do it instead; otherwise it will be heat lamps and the kiddie pool again.

We ordered a new tractor today, a Kubota L5740, a mid-size one. No cab, because we will be attaching a backhoe. Also ordered a front bucket and a 6′ bush hog (larger won’t fit through the woods). 0% financing, although it’s a bit disconcerting taking on debt again, especially as it cost way more than our car. Rather than paying it off fast, we’ll probably make payments and put extra in a high interest savings account every month.

Yet another sign we are hicks. Rusty pickup truck, riding mower, commercial mower, tractor, chickens, guns, and having gone to the emergency room with a chicken-related injury. And we once used an old toilet as a planter in the yard. Window air conditioners (not our fault–no basement, no duct work). OK, not the Subaru. And the fact that our new chicken coop is nicer than most third-world human housing. Not the servers and vanity domains, or the complicated a/v setup. Tacky lawn kitsch…could go either way. But here’s the thing. My boss has a barky dog and he got an anonymous letter from a neighbor in his mailbox about it. Here, nobody can either hear or see whatever annoying or eccentric thing we chose to do. I can no longer even fathom living somewhere where we’d be in a position to annoy neighbors, nor do I want to.

Dude, I can’t wait to drive that tractor around. Seriously.

Also, check out the Squidbillies art! Deerbait and Moon #1.

-epe

We went to see the new Indiana Jones movie last night. I think I would’ve been happier if they’d gone out with Last Crusade.

I should’ve known when I first listened to the soundtrack earlier in the day; lots of nostalgia there, but I didn’t feel as if there was much new or interesting. The best parts were recycled from Raiders.

The worst part was the relentless action. It was as if they were afraid if any of the characters slowed down for a second they’d realize their only plot function was to get the skull to the lost city, where everything was wrapped up in the most predictable and hackneyed way possible (and the heroes ceased to be useful well before the conclusion). Believe me, you’ll see it coming, and probably be wondering, like I was, how many more Rube Goldberg-machine-like action setpieces it would take before the evil communist villianess’s face was going to melt off (not literally; I mean it felt that much like a rehash of Raiders).

While I’m willing to suspend some disbelief about these characters being able to make it out of any scrape (think the inflatable raft-jump in Temple of Doom), it was unbelievably cartoonish here. You just wanted to laugh because it was so incredibly stupid–from Indy’s nuclear test site escape to the triple waterfall scene.

And aliens? C’mon. My least favorite theory about various ancient civilizations–that the only way they could’ve done it was by copying the answers off someone else’s test paper. I know this is an Indy movie and the supernatural is expected, but jeez. (Incidentally, there’s an article in Archaeology this month about the crystal skulls. Guess what, not elongated, and they’re also fakes. :)

A few of the jokes and reveals worked (Indy’s age, and who didn’t like seeing that little corner of the Ark during the Area 51 scene? And the Marcus Brody references were a nice touch.) but it was mostly just hokey. The Marion character ceased to be interesting just about instantaneously, when the ‘big secret’ (like nobody saw that coming) was revealed and during the subsequent love-fest (conducted on the run, of course, because they couldn’t possibly give up ONE action scene apparently). I felt like the best scenes (like the one where Indy’s packing to leave and discussing the current political environment with the dean of the college) were just rewrites of scenes from Raiders or Last Crusade (with Marcus). The backstabbing colleague seemed a bit too much like Benny from ‘The Mummy’–especially in the treasure scene. Between him and the giant ants (read ‘carnivorous scarab beetles’) you realize that this was Indy ripping off every movie that came after, and ripped off, the previous Indy films. The Mummy was better at it, unfortunately. Maybe the genre is just played out.

Silly, lacking in dramatic suspense, and a tacked-on ending that felt too little too late. Gee, when does it come to blu-ray?

• I was an extremely early e-book adopter–Rocket EBook. I bought all sorts of titles for it which I can no longer access, now that the device is a brick; nor could I transport the content elsewhere when they went belly-up. I will never buy another reading device that will not allow me to transfer content easily between either the same type of devices (what if it breaks?), or to a different device should they go out of business.
• I an not a technophobe, but I can’t shake my paranoia about any company holding on their servers the content I’ve bought, such as books and movies. This is why I’m not keen on the idea for video, either; what if they decide to withhold it someday for whatever reason, or if something breaks and they claim I never bought it, or decide they don’t want to offer it anymore (I could easily see a content provider like Disney, with their ridiculous ‘back in the vault’ releases, doing this)? I like having books and DVDs, or even downloaded content that I can back up, because once it’s home I (generally) don’t have this concern.
• Pay 0.99 a month for a freakin’ BLOG subscription? Are you kidding me? They can claim all they want that they’re paying for the wireless, but really you *are* paying for it; that’s why the 0.10 charge for sending FREE content to it, probably. Sure, I could use the usb connection, but there goes the convenience of content anywhere, anytime I want it. I guess only if you’re willing to pay for it. Not to mention having to translate certain content into the proper format.
• E-Ink is really cool and all, but hell, I paid a similar price for a black and white e-reader 10 years ago. I know the technology for color e-ink isn’t there (or cheap enough) yet, but I expect color in an e-reader…especially if I’m thinking of using it to replace magazines.

Bottom line is really the content protection. After being burned once, why would I want to buy a lot of content for a device that might not be around someday, and lose all of it, like I did with the Rocket?

It’s a real shame when Nigerian scammers take over a service that is legitimately necessary for others.

We have a friend from work who’s deaf and who recently had to resort to having me call Dell for him in order to straighten out an order. Their TTY line had a pseudo-IVR that ended up forwarding him to a line that disconnected. When he tried the relay service, as soon as they found out it was relay they forwarded him to a number that wouldn’t answer. Apparently Dell’s email and online chat for customer service weren’t of much use, either. But have a hearing person call, and all of a sudden it’s a quick thing that only takes a few minute to fix…and that’s with me giving them delayed answers as I typed in irc to act as relay! Apparently they didn’t have a problem with me, a female caller, dealing with an account with a male name on it and giving them delayed answers to questions like ‘what name is on the credit card’, AND having it shipped to a different address (relatives of our friend), but if I had said the word ‘relay’ it would have been game over! Thank goodness they *did* accept me as a don’t-ask-don’t-tell relay operator or I don’t know how he would’ve gotten through. I was happy to do this, but it’s pretty lame that Dell made it necessary.

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I like MySpace as much as the next person, and I’m better at reading the underlying code than designing an attractive webpage, but what’s with the goddamn super-detailed backgrounds and every fucking photo you own jammed onto one page? Why bother entering text at all if nobody will be able to read it? I’m beginning to think people pick their backgrounds based solely on how cool they think the photo is, rather than whether the overlying text is at all readable. Please! Save me the migraine! Pick a plain theme, or don’t pick one at all.  I’m sick of scolling around until the text is sitting on a region of the background that provides enough contrast to allow it to be visible.

After walking around wegmans picking up groceries this sunday morning I’ve come to the following realization.

I would much rather be surrounded by large hairy men with B.O. then be downwind of a single grandma in her sunday best go to meeting perfume. That goes for grandpas and rest of the righteous as well.

I recently was chided for linking to this blog on a site knowing that this blog contains the occasional profanity. At first I felt a little bad, and I even edited a recent post to clean it up. Then I started thinking about it and realizing, why am I censoring myself? I’m not one of those people who thinks the entire internet should be PG, PC, or safe for children. Does anyone really think their kids are seeing the word ‘fuck’ here for the first time? And if so, do I really care that it was this site that warped their fragile little minds? Well, no, because I think people take so called ‘bad words’ far too seriously. If everybody could just get over this taboo over a particular word which has been around something like 500 years, then nobody would get so upset over it. If you don’t treat it like a huge deal, your kids probably won’t be interested in ‘using it on you’ and the fun will wear off. So anyway, I edited the post back.
Think about it…here is a word that has many euphemisms with identical meaning and intent (hell, check out usage of ‘frak’ on Battlestar Galactica for example), and yet only that one (well, perhaps not the only one) is considered unmentionable. Why is that? Heck, read a few dry articles on its etymology and it loses a considerable amount of juice: wikipedia is one.
Talk about staying power. 500 years! Think of all the profanities that have been born and died in far less time. You almost never hear anyone use ‘Zwounds’ these days. Even ‘damn’ has lost considerable power. It must be because it’s related to sex; but then, why is it ok to use euphemisms to describe the same exact act? And, since sex being taboo in and of itself is largely a religious concept, why hasn’t the term itself become less taboo over time, as other religion-related profanity has?

Then we have ’shit’. Here we have a term that’s almost as old; it’s a bit less than 500 years. Now here we’re not talking about sex at all, just a bodily function that everyone does, and which you can’t really help doing, and which has many MANY substitute terms. So what is it about this particular word that makes it any more filthy than say your occasional ‘poo’ or ‘ca-ca’ or ‘crap’?

I’m also tired of this argument that you are somehow revealing yourself to be less educated or coarse by using words like this. They have a long, storied, colorful history and really, are no less distinguished than any other words in the English language. Should I not say them, just because a series of somewhat superstitious people has been passing down this urban legend that some words are ‘bad’ and will somehow affect the quality of your afterlife (if one exists)? Well, I say, what other words are so powerful that they could get you arrested in small towns just for wearing them emblazoned on a t-shirt (free country my ass)? And it’s not as if the presence of these words in my vocabulary is crowding out more sophisticated terms like ‘fornicate’ or ‘fecal matter.’ I think they’re just attempting to apply guilt and shame, effective tools in the past. Fuck that shit! Let fly with a so-called ‘bad’ word every so often! As long as they’re still taboo, they’re still fun to say!

And that leads me to a certain irony. If, suddenly, every ‘filthy’ word became acceptable to say, they lose their power to shock. Sure, nobody will be offended anymore, but then, the language becomes a bit less colorful. So I extend a hearty thank you to those who are sensitive to the profane–you make life fun for the rest of us!