Girlfriend and Girlfriend

A tale of two ... um... songs. One has anime and the other has the F-bomb.

My girls like the Avril Lavigne song "Girlfriend." They heard it on the pop station Stef and the kids listen to in the car sometimes, and even if Stef tunes away when it comes on they are already aware of it and get all excited when a promo for it comes on or the DJ says it's coming up. Ordinarily, I think it's great when my kids hear a song they like (Sarah has become attached to the song "New York City" by "They Might Be Giants" lately) but I'm none too pleased about "Girlfriend," since the song drops the F-bomb about a third of the way through. I don't know doodely-squat about Ms. Lavigne except that she appears to have been 16 for about the past ten years, and drops the F-bomb in a song my 8- and 6-year old like. Yay.

Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=cQ25-glGRzI ... T-53 seconds to cussin'.

When Lily first told me that she likes the song I told her that I liked it too, because I thought she meant the song from Guitar Hero 2. One of my favorite tracks is "Girlfriend, as made famous by Matthew Sweet" ("as made famous by" is their code for "it's not really him") and the girls have seen me play it, and have played it themselves. After watching the above-linked Avril Lavigne video, I decided to search for the Matthew Sweet version.

And here it is: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4b98QpDh65I ... go watch. I'll wait here.
EDIT: this one works ... http://youtube.com/watch?v=UYOt9_5v1cA

Not only did I find it, but I quickly realized that I had heard of this video before. Back in 1991, when Matthew Sweet's version was released, anime was fairly rare in the U.S. The fact that a great deal of the video was footage from the anime file Space Adventure Cobra was a real oddity at the time. Pretty much everyone who saw the video told me about it, but I never once got to see it. Until now. And I didn't miss much, did I? First off, how uncomfortable do you have to look before the director of your music video just says, "You know what? Let's just use the animated parts and leave you out, okay?" It's not like these were the early days of music video or something... "Nevermind" came out that same year.... they should have known better.

Anyway, what's the point? I don't know. It's just a contrast for me to point out.

GD Entry WIP 1

I've heard people on forums advise against talking too much about one's Golden Demon work in progress to avoid having anyone steal your idea. It seems kinda paranoid to me. Maybe if I make the finalists this year I'll think about being super secret next year.

I bought the model on July 1, one of the new giants that I'm converting for the Skaven. I'm pretty much done with basic assembly and gap filling. I've created some little balsa scaffolding for the engineer to perch upon as he peers around the giant's left shoulder. I still need to come up with a convincing way to connect all the Skaven mechanisms to the giant's back. The current favored idea is a couple of vertical posts attached to the giant's skin with metal brackets, then having everything else hanging from those main posts.

In addition to the engineer, I'm trying to find a place to put an engineer hero on the model. He's pretty cool, holding a warplock pistol in one hand and pointing with the other. He's an old model, too, which appeals to me for some reason on the new giant. I'm debating whether to put him on the giant somewhere, perhaps on the right hand side slightly higher than the other engineer, or on the base slightly behind the giant, as if he pointed and the giant went. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Skepticism

Two people now have told me that the Transformers movie is great. I'm still unconvinced... I mean come on, it's Transformers. Robots that turn into cars and airplanes and tape decks and handguns and what-not. Maybe there's an implicit buy-in for people who loved them as children. I missed the Transformers age by a couple years so they hold no appeal for me. As a long-time anime fan I even have some affection for robots that turn into other things, although that typically means something useful (even if dubiously so) in anime. I just have no interest in the Transformers brand, its intellectual property, and so I have been unable to muster interest in the film. Now, make an Aura Battler Dunbine movie, and I'll be trying to convince the Transformers crowd that it has potential. Okay, maybe not.

I've been preparing my model for the Chicago Golden Demon painting competition. Creating a Demon entry is sort of like buying a lottery ticket for me... I know I don't have a great chance of winning, but I just can't resist fantasizing about that lifting that sword. I've set my goal this year to make first cut in the judging, but deep down there's that little spark of hope. At the very least, I'll get to see the winners, something I have been looking forward to greatly. If I were going to a European Games Day I'm sure the anticipation would be a bit different. Their competition models are unbelievable, so I'd have zero hope of winning and be all giddy about seeing the entrants.

That's It.... I'm Old

I just went out on my front lawn to yell at some kids across the street who were breaking up my elderly neighbors' decorative white rocks. The kids were throwing the rocks at the street to shatter them, spraying rock chips all over the place.

I yelled at some kids. Next stop: riding my Rascal(tm) out there to yell at some kids.

The Sweet Spot

Stef and I took the kids to see Ratatouille this weekend. Now before I talk about the movie I have a confession to make. I'm a Brad Bird fanboy. His first movie, The Iron Giant, was wonderful, but after it had a less than stellar box office performance I suspected his career in animation was over. I was thrilled when Pixar put him in charge of The Incredibles, which seemed to pay off since the film was commercially successful. I was again thrilled to see that Brad Bird was writing and directing Ratatouille. Sure, I would have wanted to see it irregardless, as I have loved every Pixar movie I've seen (disclaimer: I haven't seen Cars yet), but the fact that they brought Brad Bird back made me actually excited to see it. Okay, enough fanboy action.

The movie itself is great. It has wonderfully exaggerated character design, great voice acting, a compelling plot and a lovely ending. Where it really shines though is in the portrayal of mental state, from the initial visualizations of flavor, to the state of being lost in doing what you love, to being taken back to your childhood by a particular experience. It is also very funny; I found myself laughing out loud far more often than I do in a typical movie.

Side note: I react more to movies and TV since having kids than I ever did before. When I watch things with them I want to share the experience of finding something funny or tragic. I want them to share how they are feeling too, and I don't think sitting stone-faced through a movie really encourages that. I want them to see that I enjoy things and that it's okay for them to enjoy things too. Don't look for too much meaning there.

Okay, back to Ratatouille. Another of it's strong points was the physical comedy. We are accustomed to seeing animated characters in unlikely physical situations and not thinking a thing of it, so I was very impressed at how the physical comedy seemed a little crazy yet still realistic. A good example is Linguini (human main character) wrestling his bicycle in through the front door of his apartment. He has a terrible time of it, but it seems plausible. It could have been done all wrong, like the typical "fighting with the chaise lounge" scene so common in cartoons. Instead, it is beautifully animated with just the right balance of realism to invoke my own memories of wrestling bikes through unlikely places, making the scene all the funnier.

I was somewhat sad when I learned that Disney's last 2D animated film would be "Home on the Range." Not that Home on the Range was bad, but I like 2D animation, and felt that something would be lost in 3D. Pixar has always managed to capture the character of 2D animation, and Ratatouille (or Rapatooey or Rapatooney as my kids would call it) has really shown Pixar as the successor to the animation crown, if I'm not being too pretentious. Pixar movies aren't great for their technical accomplishment; they are just plain great, and Ratatouille demonstrates just how great they can be.

EDIT: Oh, yeah... the title. Something about this film just hit the sweet spot with me, but I can't really say why. I can identify so many things that I liked about it, yet I am unable to identify what makes it great.... more than just the sum of a number of enjoyable elements. I'll suppose I'll have to be content with calling it great with no plausible rationale.

Grade School Humor

The Chinese take-out place around the corner from me has a dish called "Pu Pu Platter" shown on the light-up color picture menu above the cash register.

I Know It's An Old Joke, But....

I just found out that all the volume settings on Guitar Hero 2 go up to 11. It's been 23 years since that movie, and I still giggle at references like that.

Going To Chicago!

Well, I bit the bullet and did it. After two years of wanting to go, yesterday I purchased my bus ticket to Games Day Chicago 2007. This is a yearly event in four U.S. cities (Altanta, Baltimore, Chicago and L.A.) and a few other cities world wide where Games Workshop has a dog and pony show. There are previews of unreleased items, seminars and workshops, and the "Golden Demon" national painting competition. I am greatly looking forward to seeing world class painted miniatures in person after seeing only photos of them for the two years I've been painting. I'm going to have my own entry, and I will be thrilled to death if I make first cut. I'd also like to meet any CMON'ers who might be there in person.

One nice thing is that a bus is leaving from the Paint Creek Crossing GW store, about 10 minutes from my house, early Saturday morning for the event. I can veg out for the four hour trip, go like crazy all day, sleep the whole way home, and it costs less then the gas would cost for me to drive the truck there!

Fourth Grade Logic

I don't know who Steven D. Krause is. Maybe you do. All I really know about the guy I learned by reading this. Maybe I'm just being cranky, but I didn't find it particularly funny. Okay, maybe a little funny but still exasperating.

Assertion: If you want to run some arbitrary system and ICT refuses to support it, citing "security and support issues," it really means they don't want to or they don't know how.

I work in ICT. We support a lot of stuff. Really. As soon as we take part in whatever server/software you are interested in running, we have to own it. That means every little problem with the system falls directly into our lap. That means that every difficulty the user has with the system falls directly into our lap, even if the software is working exactly as designed. It means that we have to stay abreast of updates, including security vulnerabilities, that this software may have. It means we have to add this system to a backup plan. It means we need a disaster recovery procedure for this system. It becomes part of our job. It becomes part of our life.

In elementary school it was a common activity to try and get peers to do things they shouldn't or didn't want to do. To the mob, reluctance to perform would only indicate that the person either didn't know how or was, heaven forbid, "chicken."

Some attitudes never die, I suppose.

Retroactive Distrust

My trust in my employer, Eastern Michigan University, is wavering. In the past I have given them a great deal of slack about things such as the University House. Now I am starting to wonder if my trust was ill placed.

In December a student, Laura Dickinson, was raped and murdered on campus. The strange part was that we (the university community) didn't know that a crime had been committed until another student was arrested for the crime on February 23. We had received the sad news that a student had died on campus, something that seems to happens once every few years for various reasons, but until the arrest the university's communications with the community (and with her parents) had indicated that there was no reason to suspect foul play. Even after the arrest I wanted to give the university the benefit of the doubt and assume that either officials were ignorant of the facts surrounding her death or that they had some other justifiable reason for the "no cause for alarm" communiques.

On June 8, the board of regents hired a law firm to investigate and report on the situation. I'm no lawyer, but the time frame given in the report (here) sure makes it look like the university performed a cover-up operation. When it comes to conspiracy theories, I have always tended to assume incompetence over impropriety, but this is just too fishy. EMU may have even broken the "Clery Act," a law that requires federally funded institutions to divulge crimes that occur on campus.

I now find myself wondering if any of the slack I had formerly extended the university was well founded. If the default position is "deny everything, but recant and apologize in the face of incontrovertible evidence" then I am hardly inspired to trust.

EDIT: I have met most of the EMU staff cited in these stories during my time here. If someone wants to contact me and set me straight on some of this, especially regarding the "no foul play" communique, I would love to hear from you.

LightSprites

I've been keeping up with Kongregate's challenges for the last few months, collecting their pointless little online cards. The latest one involves (in part) the game LightSprites, and I'd like to take a moment to say how much I love this little game.

LightSprites is a little flash game that involves throwing colored balls at similarly colored circles on a landscape that scrolls by to a sunny little tune. Hit a circle with the correct color ball and a little person will pop up and dance. Hit the circle with the wrong colored ball and a little person will pop up and suffer a horrible fate... burned, killed by a ninja, carried off by a bird... you get the picture.

What makes it so great? Does it have gameplay longevity? No, not really. I'm sure I'll play it over the next month or so and never again. What makes it great for me is the presentation. It looks polished, the game mechanics are solid, and it's fun to watch. I think more games (and even movies and books) should be like this. Pick your scope, execute it well, and move on. Not everything has to be epic.

Outside the Demographic

There is a link to a survey by Games Workshop and computer games publisher THQ on the Games Workshop web site. I decided to participate since I truly enjoy THQ's Warhammer 40k game, Dawn of War.

I started the survey and was informed that it would take me approximately 20 minutes to complete. For question #1 I was asked if I was male or female. I answered. Question #2 asked for my age, to the nearest whole number. I answered.

There was no question #3. My age apparently put me outside the relevant demographic for the survey, and I was shuffled off to the "Thank you for your participation" screen. The 20 minute survey took less than 20 seconds. Am I a little miffed about being marginalized? Yeah, just a little.

Reliving Futurama

Buck and I have been watching Futurama on our lunch break. Despite the fact that I have seen every episode 10 times, watching it with someone who has not seen it before makes it even more entertaining. We watched all of the season 1 DVD's, then I brought seasons 2 and 3 in.

After two episodes of season 2, it became clear that Buck was lost. Things were being referenced that he didn't remember having seen. I have seen all the episodes so many times that I couldn't remember which he had seen and which he hadn't, so then I was confused. It turns out that the last person I had lent the DVD's to had put the season 2 DVD's in the season 3 box and vice versa. Buck and I had started watching season 3 thinking we were starting season 2.

Boring, yet true!

I Miss Jen Morgan

It seems random, but today I thought of Jennifer Morgan. Jen hung out with Stef and me in the late 90's, back when there used to be a Silverman's restaurant on Washtenaw Ave. in Ypsilanti. She worked at a deli in town where Stef was job coaching a person with developmental disability, and she and Stef struck up a friendship. Since Silverman's was open 24 hours, they used to hang out there at all hours. Jen took a fall in the cooler at work and hurt her back to the point where she couldn't work at the deli anymore. Zingerman's certainly seemed to go to a great deal of trouble to deny her any kind of workman's comp.

In any case, sometime around 2000 or 2001 Jen ended up moving to Canada to ... you know, I don't really remember the exact circumstances. I'm pretty sure there was a guy up there, and I think she was also planning on going to school. In any case, she moved and just ... disappeared. We couldn't get in touch with her. Her parent's couldn't get in touch with her. She had just vanished. I know Jen's folks tried a number of avenues to find her, but as far as I know never have. What do you do? I was somewhat dismissive about the whole thing at first.... oh, she'll turn up. It seems naive now.

Jen was really Stef's friend, but I developed a certain kinship with her that I haven't experienced with Stef's other friends. It's difficult to describe.... she just seemed like she was on the same frequency as me, something I would describe only a handful of people in my lifetime as being. She was a firm believer in living your life in such a way as to not be in other people's way. She and I would commiserate about the casual breakdown of societal rules... things like parking right by the door of an establishment because you (or someone in your car) only needed to run in for a second. She hated movies with Bruce Willis merely on principal. She introduced me to the band Soul Coughing.

Jen, if you're out there somewhere, we miss you.

Looking Skyward

Tonight, apparently, the Space Shuttle (STS-117) and I.S.S. will be visible to the naked eye in my neck of the woods. Around 10:00 PM moving from northwest to southeast at about the visible speed of a commercial jet.

Sarah got a telescope for her birthday a year-and-a-half ago. Time to bust that sucker out of the box, says I.

EDIT: The telescope seems to work, although it's not the most stable platform for viewing things. The real problem is the haze... the moon is a yellow crescent blob in the sky, the stars are entirely invisible, and all hope of seeing relatively tiny vehicles is gone.

Family IT Foibles

This one is for the search engines more than anything.

Stef's computer was repeatedly crashing when attempting to play anything from Shockwave games. (She has a subscription to shockwave.com which let's you download and play tons of "casual" games... most are quite good, with high production values and ... back to the point.)

Anyway, the games would lock her computer up after a few minutes of play. I tried swapping out the video card, reinstalling all Shockwave drivers (per Shockwave.com tech support) and just generally being "family IT guy" to fix yet another computer problem. Nothing at all helped.

The breakthrough came last night, after I had completely removed Shockwave and Flash drivers from her computer (both files and registry entries) and realized that the games all still played. All this time I had assumed that these were Shockwave content games, especially since their tech support recommended reinstalling the drivers. Anyhoo, the games still ran and still crashed in exactly the same fashion... the screen would freeze and whatever sound was playing would repeat in about a half-second loop for maybe ten second and then the computer would reboot. The sound is what finally tipped me off. I disabled the sound device in control panel and everything started working perfectly (minus sound, of course.) I uninstalled as much of the sound devices as I could, then rebooted and let windows reload the sound drivers, and now everything works perfectly!

So, all you search engine peoples, if Shockwave / Shockwave.com games are freezing / crashing / locking up try reinstalling your sound card drivers. It worked for us.

EDIT: Things started going south again, and I discovered that the fan on the video card was freezing up. It may have been a combination of the two issues at the time, but replacing the video card (or in our case, reverting to the on-board video) has solved the problem.

Breakfast Showdown - part 2

Contender 1: Kroger brand "Chip Mates" Cookie Cereal, chocolate chip
Contender 2: Kroger brand "Chip Mates" Cookies, chunky chocolate chip

Mascot
Cereal: "Chester" the cartoon pirate
Cookies: "Chester" the cartoon pirate

Serving size
Cereal: 1 cup (30g)
Cookies: 2 cookies (29g)

Calories / fat
Cereal: 120 / 1.5g (0 saturated)
Cookies: 150 / 7g (3 saturated)

Carbs:
Cereal: 26g (13g sugar)
Cookies: 20g (11g sugar)

Nutrition:
Cereal: various, 10-30% vitamins and minerals mostly
Cookies: iron 6%... but they taste so good.

Verdict: Despite the fact that the cookies somehow have less sugar and carbs than the cereal, I've gotta go with the cereal on this one. Maybe it's the chunky chocolate chips that add all the fat and calories.

The Bose Experience ... Guitar Hero 2

My parents got me a pair of around-the-ear Bose triport headphones for my birthday this year. Um, wow. No, seriously. If you haven't tried a pair, I sincerely recommend them. I'm not much of an audiophile so I never would have given much thought to headphone above the $30 range, but these Bose headphones are a thing of beauty. I could hear things I didn't even know were in the original recording. I've been letting my coworkers demo them, and reactions have been consistently enthusiastic. In one recording I have, you can actually hear the orchestra members shifting in their seats during the lulls. Not in a distracting way, mind you, just in a "you are there" way.

Last night I managed to finally get 5 stars on all 40 songs of Guitar Hero 2 on medium difficulty. I went on to complete the first set of songs on hard. I don't think I could ever 5 star hard in a gajillion years. Literally. I've had multiple people ask me if guitar hero was teaching me to play the guitar, and every one of them loses interest in the subject when I tell them that it doesn't. Everyone seems to accept the fact that playing a snowboarding game on a game console will not make you a competent snowboarder or that a barnstorming game is not preparing you to be a pilot. Playing Galaga prepares me to be neither an astronaut nor an exterminator. It shouldn't really be a stretch to assume that the act of simulating an exciting activity is sufficient in itself to be worthwhile. Somehow, if the controller of a game vaguely resembles a guitar then it needs to have some additional life skill acquisition attached to it for them to care. I don't want to learn guitar right now. It's a real skill that requires a serious level of commitment for one to excel. I want to play "air guitar: the game." The key word there was "play."

Happy Birthday Lily!

My "Lilyest" is six years old today! She's been losing teeth like crazy lately (three in three days!) so she has a cute little cat smile.

Tonight Stef's Mom is coming over to take Lily out, as has become birthday tradition for our kids. We're probably going to have a little party with the neighborhood kids later in the week, then again over at my folks on the weekend.

Gaming Compeition

I'm not much of a competitive gamer. I participate when the people I know are involved, but I don't honestly do very well in competition. Today's happy fun time activities included a "World of Warcraft" card game tournament at work, followed by a Warmachine/Hordes tournament at Rider's in the evening. I did okay in the WoW tournament, earning a few booster packs as a prize, but I got totally smoked at Warmachine. Just like last time.

I like friendly pick-up games. Competition is mainly fun because you get to meet more people (can you believe I'm saying that as a positive?) I'd have to say that tonight's tournament was probably worth the $10 it cost to join, at least from the fun standpoint.