Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Where were you on March 28, 1999? I was in my apartment, eagerly awaiting and then watching the premiere episode of Futurama. I had a feeling I would like it… but I didn’t realize how much.

Ben and I have the whole series and the straight-to-DVD movies in an honored spot in our home video collection (filed under “F”) and, well, let’s just say that we would already need to buy new copies if they were VHS tapes instead of DVDs.

After Fox cancelled Futurama (mutter mutter Fox smells of elderberries), there was uproarious fan-demand for the show to be revived—especially after Family Guy came back. There was a hint that it was possible from David X. Cohen & Matt Groening at the Futurama panel I was fortunate enough to attend at Comic Con 2008, and then totally awesome news from last year’s Comic Con that it was coming back (SQUEE) and would be aired on Comedy Central.

Then there was a little hullabaloo about the original voice cast not returning, which of course would completely ruin the revival. Not to worry; the salary negotiations were resolved and the first new episode is airing in June 2010.

Which brings me to…

My Futurama To-Do List

1. Dig out my 2003-ish era Moore Action Collectibles (still mint in box, of course) to display
2. Re-watch all episodes with the alien language decoder in hand
3. Create a companion guidebook that notes every single piece of alien text and its translation
4. Attempt to publish that book and likely discover that 8 million other Futurama geeks already posted the same thing online
5. Acquire a couple more of the Kidrobot mini figures (my aunt Jeanette gave me two blind boxes that ended up being Nibbler (yaaaay!) and Sal, the mystery chase figure. Well, she gave one to me and one to my sister, then my sister gave me her Nibbler because she saw the nerd-lusty pain in my eyes and she’s not really a Futurama fan, a fact which by the way makes me suspicious of our actual blood relation.)
6. Make more money so that I can immediately spend it on the entire (and currently ongoing) Toynami action figures
7. Be the first person to think of combing two of my favorite fictional worlds into Back to the Futurama (d’oh! This one’s not possible now)
8. Cross-stitch, frame, and hang a “Home Sweet GOTO 10” in my house
9. Acquire and frame a nice print of the Futurama poster (the image in this blog post) that parodies the 1927 German expressionist film, Metropolis
10. Watch the June television rebirth of Futurama, an episode rumored to be named “Rebirth”

I think a few of those items (2, 8, 10) are more likely to happen than the others.

I went to RC WIlley yesterday evening, which is a furniture store chain (with appliances, electronics, etc.) here in Utah and other nearby states. The sales people swarm like mosquitoes to get their blood commissions. But I had an expiring gift card, so I had to go in.

After long discussions over time with Ben about which TV stand to buy for our rear-projection big screen that we purchased several months ago (and love watching, sometimes to the point of tears it’s so wonderful… I’m talking about you, NBC’s Heroes), we finally agreed to purchase the stand that was made for our TV. It’s the end of the TV stand season, apparently, because I read somewhere online that many stores have them on clearance.

So I walked in and up to a sales guy in electronics and told him what I wanted. But I had seen it online for $100 cheaper because they’re going out of style for next year’s model, so could he do anything about the price? He said he would check and walked over to his manager, presumably. Then he came back and said that they could take $50 off…. and I said I’d take it. Because with shipping, the onilne stand would have been just as much anyway.

But. And there’s always a but like this when something is going well, right? The only TV stand in that model that RC Willey has anywhere, including all of their warehouses, was the one on display. The one with a big scratch on the front. Forget it, and also, dammit. Ben and I finally agreed upon a piece of furniture (a huuuuuuge deal…. we’re also still trying to find a decent couch to replace the one that I received from my parents when I went to college… the one that’s almost as old as I am and yes, you’d think that we’d have replaced it by now). Oh well.

For now, the TV will stay on the coffee table that Ben received from his parents when he moved into his first apartment… the one that used to hold his Commodore 64. The DVD player, cable box, Wii and topless modded Xbox (Ben doesn’t want to replace the lid for some reason unbeknownst to me) will continue to sit on the carpet until we find that TV stand somewhere else or, probably, change our minds and pursue a different one.

The problem was that I still had a $30 gift card to use before it expired yesterday. That was from a billing problem we had, and the girl who issued it wrote 9-3-2006 on it by mistake, even though it was issued in March 2007. I was prepared to fight the cashier if necessary. I had another gift card for a forgotten amount, procured through some crap “cash rebate” promotion that earned us another gift card 6 months after buying the TV in the first place.

So I called Ben (who stayed home to clean the storage room because he didn’t need to go because we knew exactly what we were going to buy) and we decided to purchase a second DVD player. One that upconverts. So now we can move our old one up to the still-quite-nice-but-not-HD 27″ tube TV. That will be nice.

Ben did some quick review research of the models available and we decided on the Sony DVP-NS77H and are pleased after testing it with portions of Pixar’s Cars and Star Wars Episode 3. Though it still didn’t make the Padme/Anakin “So love has blinded you?” balcony scene tolerable.

I think this player will hold us over until the HD format war is finished and prices come down on the HD players and DVDs.

Enough about TV stuff. I need to get moving and get to work. I’m still sick… though it’s mostly in my chest now. I have a pretty bad cough. Bad enough for Ben to go out and buy me some Robitussin, which has been helping. Though I hate artificially cherry flavored anything, and that’s the only flavor Robitussin has. Well, I don’t like artificially fruit flavored anything, really, so I’d probably lose out no matter what the fruit. I don’t even like Jolly Ranchers. Anyway, Ben reported that all the cough syrup is available on the shelves, even though labels clearly state alcohol levels up to 10% on the bottle. WTF?

No wonder kids are experimenting with cough syrup these days. But they still can’t buy 0.5% alcohol O’Douls beer until they’re 21, and all Claritin-D purchases are recorded on the Big Brother file to monitor illegal drug manufacturing (which can probably look worse if you’ve also got severe allergies). Not that it’s ever affected me directly, but I’m glad there aren’t any holes in our government’s drug rules and policies.

Who am I to complain? I got my cough syrup and I’m expectorating as expected.

The Muppet Newsflash: Fraggle Rock Season Three on DVD!

I like the simple look of that blog. I need to reformat my blog at some point. Also, I need to fix the forum. Still. I know, I suck. I remind myself that every time I think about the lameness of having anything out-of-date on my site. Hopefully next month, when a “real” web person goes full-time at my place of employment, I’ll be motivated to look at some code and fix up the site a bit. Right now I can’t do anything at work, and coming home the last thing I want to do is go to my computer. I must be sick, right?

My first priority is to fix the hellish, spam-infested forum.

smp and Stardust are awesome people, for what it’s worth.