Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

I usually save my smirks for later in the day, but a headlining CNN.com article caught my smirking attention this morning.  I’ve heard about the uncontrollable satellite that could come crashing to earth in the next couple of weeks, and that The Man was going to attempt to blow it up with a missile before it entered our atmosphere.

Here’s the first sentence of the article: 

"Pentagon officials said they think a Navy missile scored a direct hit on the fuel tank of an errant spy satellite late Wednesday, eliminating a toxic threat to people on Earth."

Everything sounds great, right? No danger to life as we know it? Hold a sec. Was the phrase people on Earth really just used? Eliminating a toxic threat to people on Earth? That sounds like a sci-fi B-movie to me. Or maybe a fantastic sci-fi cartoon. I hear it in the distance…

"I am Lrrr, ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8 and controller of a toxic threat to people on Earth!"

Seriously, it doesn’t sound real. It’s weird, scary and humorous at the same time that stuff like that makes it into real news articles. Here’s another snippet, where you can guess which phrase made me smirk a second time:

"China is continuing to closely follow the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Thursday."

If you guessed outer space security, give yourself a shooting star. I love that China is (supposedly) suspicious because of the USA’s potentially devious actions involving outer space.  I’ll probably never know anything detailed about our government’s full story with this whole thing (or, if you believe any of the conspiracies you see on TV and in the movies, if we’re really the good guys or if we have top secret alterior motives). Maybe China is just cranky about it because this news is stealing their New Year thunder. Or the Rat does not approve of outer space hulabaloo in his/her Year. For chrissake, people, the Rat only gets one out of every 12 years!

Overall, I’m happy to hear the reports of the spy satellite being shot down. I don’t know what naked pictures of me might have been on there, you know? And it’s a really good thing that the spy satellite didn’t fall into China’s territory, because they really don’t need to be seeing that stuff.

Speaking of outer space, I’m bummed that I didn’t get an opportunity to see the lunar eclipse last night. It was cloudy and raining/snowing. Or maybe it was a government cover-up so we couldn’t see the explosion of the spy satellite….

*cue the X-files music* 

There’s now an easy-peasy way to convert your now-antiquated HD-DVDs into now-high-fashion Blu-Ray DVDs, according to a Wired How-To Wiki article.

(In the course of writing the subject line and that first sentence, I just used a record-breaking 10 hyphens… wow! Plus one for that sentence!)

Here’s the quick-and-dirty (I can’t stop using the hyphen! Augh!) process for each one:

1. Rip the HD-DVD
2. Burn to Blu-Ray

See how simple it is? All you geeks should be done by lunchtime. 

Alternately, if your player and discs are still in pristine condition, you should pack them carefully back into their original packaging and put them on a closet shelf to allow for proper fermentation of nostalgic value. Unless you already have one there, you MOC collector.   

If you still have some repressed anger about HD-DVD losing out in the end, you can put on your Wikipedian hat and add helpful and/or false information to the Wikipedia entries for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

The nail is in the coffin for HD-DVD, and the people at Sony are surely ecstatic to finally have a Booyah! in their pocket after the 1980s embarrassment of Betamax. And there’s no doubt that Blu-Ray will rock my world and wreak havoc on my finances in the next couple of years.

I’m very much looking forward to it, though I think I have the majority of the movies and TV shows I need on plain old DVD, most of which look great on my bigass HDTV with my under $100 upconverting player. 

So my acquisition strategy will be different for these new-fangled discs (once I have a player, or a PS3 if Ben has his way). I’ll probably lean more heavily on Netflix, which fits better into my long-term strategy of being less materialistic without giving up my entertainment budget.

I’m not saying that I won’t buy any Blu-Ray DVDs, because that would be complete insanity. I claim only partial insanity. There are select movies and shows that I am already looking forward to… remember that little TV show called Heroes? Please allow me to quote a covetous Wayne Campbell:

It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.  

All future Pixar films will also come into my home in delicious Blu-Ray HD glory, plus a smattering of other fantastic new titles as the average prices (hopefully) decline.

Amazingly enough, it was less than a year ago when I first posted about this format war. And at that point I was considering one of the dual-format players… I’m glad I waited. The thanks should really go to Ben, who convinced me to be patient until a clear winner was revealed.

Now everyone can move forward and Think Blue in ’08! (Aren’t thinly-veiled political statements okay in election years?) 

There was a time when I watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart almost every night–back when I worked second shift at a hotel and caught the 1am re-run on Comedy Central when I got home. Moving to Utah screwed up my Daily Show viewing because NOTHING is as it should be in Utah, including network or cable broadcasts. Jon Stewart graces the TV with his presence at midnight Mountain Time, with re-runs the next day at 9pm.

I watched a little TV last night to see how the polls were coming in from the Primaries (to make sure that Huckabee didn’t have a fighting chance [he doesn't, but won more votes than I'd liked] and to see if there’s any indication of whether Obama or Clinton are pulling ahead [not really--it's going to be a tight race]).  I didn’t realize that there has been a late-night macho fight going down between Conan O’Brien, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart about who made Mike Huckabee that came to a head last night:

The build-up and the premise are of course a lot more amusing than the actual fight sequence (though I do love that late night comedy hosts aren’t shy about using horribly disguised doubles). But Mike Huckabee does make a guest appearance at the end, and I find it interesting that he would have done that during the daytime taping before any polling results were in. Not surprising, but just a little post-it note in my brain of "how things work."

I think it might be time to pull out and watch some of the “Indecision 2004″ DVDs that I have to remind me of the hope I had then, and the confidence that I have now, of Bush no longer being president. I know that there’s still a chance that Bush will call a state of emergency and shut down voting so that he remains president for an unspecified and horrifyingly long period of time.

Let’s hope that God will really bless America like all the politicians request and not let that happen.

Well, the power finally came back on. It was starting to get chilly in the house… we have the thermostat set to an energy-saving 70 degrees in the winter (it’s cooler during the programmed "unoccupied" times, which is one of the benefits of having a fancy-schmancy thermostat). The power was off for a little over an hour and I definitely feel the temperature difference when it goes below 69 in the house. The fact that it didn’t get too chilly means that our energy-efficient windows are doing some good.

I just wish that my computer hadn’t been on with lots of programs open when the power went off. Grr. 

It’s been snowing steadily all morning, and we have a nice cover of 6-8 inches outside. It’s that storm that swept over from California and threatened to be icy… but luckily it stayed cold enough to come down in fluffy white flakes today. Our road still hasn’t been plowed, though.

We have an unknown neighbor who ocasionally plows the sidewalks in our neighborood with a snowplow attached to his 4-wheeler. I think that’s really cool of him to do that.  We don’t have that much driveway or sidewalk in front of our house, but having just one old-fashioned shovel to do the work gets old really quickly. We’ve had a lot more snow this year than we did last year… and we’re seriously considering getting a snow blower. We could both use the exercise from shoveling by hand, but that’s a real pain in the ass when you just want to get it done.

Speaking of weather, I flipped to The Weather Channel on TV last night for the first time in a while. Ben told me he’d recently read that it was for sale. If only I had $5 billion dollars on hand, I’d buy it. Though I long for the time when they had less weather-thrills programming and more of the old-school 24-hour weather reports. At least there’s still smooth jazz and Local on the 8s. 

The article in the Roanoke Times seems innocuous enough: Tech trio seeks market for new game. But hey, open it up and read and you’ll find two things:

1. These guys from Virginia Tech have created a NEW text-based online game (remember Zork?) in the middle of a graphics-whoring gaming society.
2. Michael Ringenbach is a friend of mine from college who won the title "Geek of the Year" at the 2001 Geek Party.

Are these guys crazy? Perhaps. But I think it’s pretty gutsy (and geeky cool) to move forward (and yet somehow backwards) with a text game. Then again, maybe not… the popularity of texting among teens (God, I sound old) is soaring and most phones could handles this kind of gaming on a mobile level… and it would make sense that if people became addicted to the story, it wouldn’t matter if there were no mind-siezuring graphics like World of Warcraft.

I just got another email from Mike saying that the game is definitely not yet ready to be released, so you can’t play it for a while. The website isn’t quite ready, either. So hopefully he’ll let me know when those are ready so that I can pass them along to the readers of this blog (and maybe the website, if I ever update it….). Speaking of WoW and his in trueness to gaming and geekhood, Mike also wrote this:

On the more geeky side of things, I’m working on my third 70 for World of Warcraft, with 2 other retired 60+ on a different server. 

Best of luck to you and your geeky buds, Mike.

Evel Knievel died on Friday from a one-two punch combo of diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis. His death was not related to on-the-job hazards like jumping on his motorcycle over 13 buses in London or 14 Greyhound buses at King’s Island in Cincinnati. (Therefore, crocodile hunter Steve Irwin wins the medal for horrible and yet not that surprising death due to on-the-job hazards.)

I wasn’t even alive during his heyday in the mid-seventies, but he was definitely an icon whose legacy carried over into my eighties childhood and beyond. I vaguely remember an elementary school presentation on safety with a "bad example" guy named Evel Knievel who rode a scooter around the cafeteria/gymnasium and crashed to prove a safety point. I don’t remember him jumping over any buses, though. What a lametard.

This AP article provides a eulogizing summary of the real E.K.’s life, and includes this quote from a television executive who was attacked by and had both of his arms shattered by Mr. Knievel:

"He was a true daredevil, but he basically was not a good human being."

Wow. I try not to care too much about what every single person on the planet thinks of me. But you can put "she was basically not a good human being" on my list of things that I hope aren’t said about me while I’m alive or anytime after.

I wonder how the AP reporter(s) who captured that quote from Sheldon Saltman reacted when he said it. Did they nod with knowing approval? Did their jaws drop with astonishment? Did they whine, "No he wasn’t, he was my hero!"

Interestingly, many similar articles don’t include that particular quote.  Maybe because stating that he was not a good human being only hours or days after his death is just. not. cool. At least wait until his family has given him a 21-engine-rev salute, dude.

I knew that there were talks for Disney to buy Pixar, but I usually don’t get involved or interested in corporate merger politics.  I think a lot of people are reacting to the purchase like me because Pixar was just… good. 

I had been anxiously awaiting the end of Pixar’s contract with Disney so that they could create totally awesome shiznit without the mouse big brother.  It’s interesting how it’s played out.  Hopefully Pixar will continue to put out great quality films and, I think the best that I could hope for, is for Disney to suck less in general. 

Besides, I’ve been going on Pixar movie dates with my now-husband since Toy Story came out.  Steve Jobs and John Lasseter, this is personal.  We don’t go to the movies that often, and I need to have the option to see something other than Kill Bill or King Kong-type movies once in a while.  And those Dreamworks movies just don’t have the same punch. 

Come on, buddies, do it for your old pal Yvette.  Of course you know me.  Remember that one time, at that party?  No?  Well, then, I’ll have to share the real history of Pixar with the public, won’t I?