Thursday, January 31, 2008

I heard through the rumor mill today that Jon Tenuta is going to Notre Dame. It's like a dagger through my heart. After Paul Johnson sent him packing, of all the places to go, the blasted Irish.... *sigh*

Friday, January 18, 2008

We watched the first episode of the new Terminator TV series last night and the whole thing left me feeling sort of confused, angry, and betrayed. I'm willing to give it one more episode already on my DVR, but if that doesn't win me over, I'm done with the show. Here's my problems with the show:
1) It violates established canon. This is my biggest beef. For people to buy into a franchise like Terminator, everything has to make sense when taken as a whole. As such, this TV show much dovetail with plot elements established in the movies.
1a) I have no problem with a female terminator, however, why is John surprised by her existence in Rise Of the Machines when he's previously met a female terminator when he was 15 on the TV series? Which leads to the next problem.
1b) John never meets the female terminator in Rise of the Machines because according to the executive producer and head writer, T3 took place in an alternate timeline. Are you kidding me?? What a cop out. Why does a previously made movie get the cold shoulder and your crappy TV show gets to be the new official canon? This was almost a deal-breaker for me on the show. You don't get to brush off a terminator movie that starred Arnold just because it makes writing your own show easier. Make your new show take place in an alternate timeline, you pompous ass.
1c) Like the above, the minute they timetraveled to 2007, all kinds of warning alarms went off in my brain. I couldn't remember the exact date, but I knew T3 ended in 2003 or 2004 with the self-awareness of Skynet and the near-annihilation of humanity by nuclear war. This was obviously precluded by appearing naked on a freeway in LA in 2007. For a franchise so firmly entrenched with altering the future, you have to make things like this explainable within the context of the plot (ie, not with an arrogant statement like in 1b).
2) The protagonist terminator is named Cameron in an obvious homage to James Cameron. This is fine, but if you're going to do it, you can't betray Cameron's vision or undermine the authority of his previous work (see problem 1). I know he didn't direct T3, but he also called that movie "in a word: great."
3) I've always hated the "go back to the past and set things up for yourself in the present" plot device. Bill and Ted used it all the time, but they also had a magic phone booth and Socrates called Freud a geek. They also pointed out that while anyone could potentially go back and do that, you have to escape the current predicament in the first place to be able to do it. Most of the time, you just have to suspend disbelief and go along with the story, but this particular plot device always bugs me. It's like having a magic genie to grant your every command. Note to self, after I get away from this gun wielding pyscho robot, go back in time and make sure there's a RPG launcher handy when this happens again so I can fight back. You might as well ask your magic genie to conjur up a BFG9000 instead.
4) You can't change the future by altering the past or the future would already be what it is. This is a major catch 22 in all time-travel narratives, but since it's already established canon (or was until Josh Friedman got his hands on the franchise) that Judgment Day occurs despite John's actions, everything tied up neatly at the end of T3.
5) John is not supposed to be a whiney mama's boy. What 15-year old kid, as a reformed hacker, after having battled a terminator, and then having made friends with a terminator, is going to turn in a crybaby so quickly. I understand teen angst and the "why me" attitude. I don't understand asking mommy for help or to take care of the problem for you. Granted, Linda Hamilton set the bar pretty high for women everywhere, and this new woman isn't half bad, and yes, Sarah Conner makes Rambo look like a wuss, but adolescent males don't change regardless of what year it is. They reject parental authority and insist on doing things for themselves.

I really want to like this new TV show because, well, it's the Terminator franchise, but so far things are not looking so hot for the Sarah Conner Chronicles

Thursday, January 17, 2008

I can't help feeling a bit paranoid about what just happened, especially given that I do work for a defense contractor. Certainly we're no Black Mesa or Aperture Science, but still... So I finished Portal this afternoon (after I came home from work early because of snow and freezing rain). But In my haste to leave work, I neglected to do my timecard, so I logged back in to do so and saw I had a new email from HR announcing a dessert bake-off contest next week, and in the background of the announcement is a piece of cake that looks WAY too similar to the cake icon in Portal. And even if, as I found out, there really was a cake after all, the idea that "the cake is a lie" is still etched freshly in my brain as my reminder that my female-voiced computer supervisor was trying to kill me. Nice try evil computer that controls everything! Without my portal gun, I'm defenseless, except for my skepticism at the concept of free cake, so I'll be staying as far away from this "bake-off" as possible lest the hidden plan be to try to bake me in yet another furnace...

Thursday, January 10, 2008

A couple interesting things I've learned the past couple days:
1) I fidget a lot (this is quite well known) while giving presentations (not so much). I caught myself on numerous occasions playing with my ID badge, pocket rivets on my jeans, and knife clip while giving a presentation to a group of Navy Chiefs and First Class POs. Whoops.
2) Apparently I've adopted enough of Dave's mannerisms to be noticeable to other people. Certainly modeling yourself after your mentor isn't a bad thing, but when other people call you out on having the same bad habits and epiphanic reactions to things, it's gets to be a little scary.
3) I'm awesome for my age. One of the aforementioned group of sailors (I'd guess age ranges from 25-35) asked how old I was after I finished my instruction period. I couldn't really read his reaction to me being 26, but it was certainly one of surprise. I didn't press the issue or ask why he was interested, but instead decided that he was impressed rather than appalled and I have therefore decided that I'm awesome rather than awful, if for no other reason than that I seriously need a pick me up this week.

Monday, January 07, 2008

It has got to be 85 or 90 degrees in my office right now. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the unseasonably warm low-60s temperature outside right now, but I'm really nto such a fan of how damn hot my office is. The heat is still on in the building and my 3 huge windows all face directly south and I have no shade coverage (even in the summer when trees have leaves) because I'm on the 5th floor. *sigh* I wish I had more work to do in the lab today where I could snuggle up next to the supplemental air conditioner we use to keep all our racks of servers comfy.

I'm sorely dissapointed that the new American Gladiators didn't have a similar theme song. I was all excited for it and instead just got very dizzy with the quick camera cuts and flashy lights. In any case, the premiere was pretty entertaining. Way more trash talking amongst the contenders and gladiators than I remember in the original. Also, everyone should call Hulk brother and see how long it takes to piss him off. If he can use it 4-5 times a sentence, surely so can I.

Friday, January 04, 2008

While helping to clean out some junk today, I came across two old 23GB hard drives. I know that doesn't sound like anything all that impressive. There are flash drives that can match that, and you can get a 500GB SATA drive for well under $100 any number of places. But here's my favorite part: They weight 7 lbs each and they're as big as six standard 3.5" hard drives. I believe they were produced in the late 90s, which does make their capacity pretty impressive, but their size and weight is what really made me laugh.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Happy 2008!
Emily and I had a great Christmas in Savannah and a fun New Year's back here in Fairfax. I immensely enjoyed my 12 days off from work. I told people I'd check email periodically in case anything important came up. That never happened and I couldn't care less. It was so nice to totally unplug from work for a while and just relax.
I got some nice presents this year, now I just have to find time to use them! The frigid weather today made me glad for my new hat and scarf. And the dancing lessons my parents gave us are going to come in handy so I don't look like a total dope during our first dance (uncoordinated tool maybe, but not a dope). I wore my new GT hoodie during our losing effort in the Humanitarian bowl - now's it's forever tainted I'm afraid. I also got some games and movies that I'm going to make time to play/watch somehow. I scored a ton of Valve software from Steam in their after-christmas sale for a huge discount that I'm also quite excited about.
On the way home from Savannah, we stopped at South of the Border to buy fireworks for New Year's. I see that place from the road all the time, but I've never stopped there. If you've never been, you're not missing much. The fireworks were good though.
The wedding is going to be here before we know it. 87 days by my count. Yikes! I'm picking up our wedding bands today after work. Emily has her final dress fitting on Friday. We got cleared to wed by a priest over the holidays, having completed all our prewedding counseling, which, I have to say, was much easier and less intrusive than I was expecting. Our to-do list is still a mile long, but I think we're getting to the point where we can start farming out some jobs to other people to help close things out.
I swear I had some other things to talk about but I can't remember them now. *shrug*

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  • I'm Rev. Adam
  • From Oakton, Virginia, United States
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