It's the Simple Things

I'm a math nerd.  I love math.  I think it's fun to sit down with a difficult problem and puzzle it through until I find the solution.

Of course, I'm also very likely to finish a whole calculus problem and divide wrong in the last step.  I've been doing that since junior high, when math first got interesting.

So it should come as no surprise that I fail at simple things like measuring my own waist and hips.

Y'see, I have a very difficult time finding pants that fit for reasons not really related to overall size.  I have a long waist and short legs (inherited from my dad) and my hips are wider than my waist.

Every once in a while, I find a brand that fits well.  For a while, it was K-Mart's Route 66 line, but the material in those tended to irritate the skin on my stomach.  Then, WalMart had a line of Smart something or other that had an extra layer of soft material inside the waistband, which was nice.  Of course, to get the waist and hips to fit, those pants were too long by several inches.

Then I discovered Catherine's, and their main store brand, which fit very well.  Except, of course, that to fit my hips, the waist was rather big.

So, after a pair that I had bought at an outlet store tore (likely due to a flaw in the fabric or from being a display pair and having the fabric wear out in the sun) when I got an email with a coupon, I decided to try their Right Fit line, which supposedly tailors their pants, so to speak, to fit three different body types.

Plus, they come in petite lengths, which you wouldn't think someone who's pushing 5'7" would need, but...yeah.

Anyway, not having an actual sewing type tape measure, I used a piece of string and then measured it against a non-flexible construction-type tape measure.  I did hips and waist (I do, indeed, wear a "blue") and inseam (yup, petite it is).  I took care to pull the string relatively tight, but as I prefer my clothes loose, I didn't pull it...tight-tight.

Yeah.

What could go wrong, right?  I measured every possible measurement.

Well, apparently, I fail at measuring.  I was at least a size too big, and probably 2 sizes too big.  So, I'll take them back and downsize.

On the plus side, I got a very pretty t-shirt (Patrick wanted me to get this one but I'd have had to try it on -- it could either look really good or really bad) and a pretty white blouse with pink pin stripes.  Both have reasonable sleeves.

(Sleeves are a sore point with me, especially right now, as the current trend seems to be miniscule length sleeves.  

I have pretty serious sensory issues -- in that area, and sleeves have to reach a certain point on my upper arm before I am comfortable...too short, and I am pulling at them and adjusting them constantly all day.

For the record, my ideal sleeve length would be more or less what you'd get wearing a traditional polo shirt.

I must add, however, that one of the suggestions in the article linked to above about tactile defensiveness -- namely, that the first step in a desensitization campaign should be to give your child massages with lotion -- illustrates without meaning to an important point on the subject.

Kids (and adults) with sensory issues are not all the same.  I find lotion -- all lotion -- absolutely disgusting.  It's all I can do to tolerate hand sanitizer -- and that only because it evaporates quickly -- and aloe -- 'cause my skin is naturally dry.  Now, desensitization campaigns can be good, but don't believe everything you read on the Internet.  If that had been step one with me, I'd have run screaming for the hills.

Well, no, I wouldn't....  You just didn't do that kind of thing in my family.  But I'd have been deeply, abjectly, horribly miserable and probably worse off than when my biggest clothes issues were that my socks were too tight and my sleeves too short.)

Ahem.  That was a long parenthetical.  Sorry 'bout that, but I figure that since I'm an adult who can actually explain what some aspects of sensory integration problems feel like, those who are interested in such things might benefit from the description.

By the way, in the second article, I just discovered this absolutely profound thought (I am absolutely not being sarcastic here):  "in the case of the person who just clipped their nails, the discomfort comes because the nerves that have been sheltered are now exposed making the person acutely aware of sensations he does not ordinarily feel."

Oh.  My.  God.  That's me -- I keep my nails short now (years of piano playing and typing) so I'm probably desensitized to it some, but even now after I clip my fingernails, things just feel...wrong...for a while.  The same was true of losing teeth, hair cuts...anything that changed the sensations I'd managed to become accustomed to.

How's about that?  Learn something new every day.

A Dream Deferred

Note:  I have been composing this in my head all day.  Whether that will translate to a good blog post or not, I have no idea.

When I was seven, we went to Walt Disney World for the first time and, though I was too young to really enjoy World Showcase, we (of course) visited every one, and every attraction.

We also bought the "soundtrack," which I listened to often after that, as a way -- I think -- to remember the trip itself (I often visually 'flash' to where I first heard a song when I hear it again).

On that song was "Golden Dreams," from the American Pavilion.  Amidst the lyrics, there are audio clips of important moments in American history.

(Interestingly enough, there are no recreations -- anything that happened before video is shown with Ken Burns-ified photos and dramatic readings are used before audio clips.)

In any event, among them are the usual suspects, including "the Eagle has landed" and JFK's "ask not" speech.

And, of course, this:  "I have a dream this afternoon . . . that the brotherhood of man will become a reality in this day . . . [a]nd with this faith."

I was seven.  I had no idea who Martin Luther King, Jr. was, nor did I have any real understanding of racism, the Civil Rights movement, nor even, really, what he was saying, except that something about the conviction in his voice told me he wanted a Good Thing.

I am in many ways a stereotypical white Valley Girl...so why would those words resonate so deeply with me?

Well...I'm a stereotypical white girl except...

...except that I'm semi-fluent in Spanish (and reactions to that are always funny)

and

...except that out of all the American poetry I've ever read, it was Langston Hughes that I ended up going out and buying (I much prefer English poetry) -- it's Langston Hughes that I borrowed from for the title of this post.

I'm sure other people have posted reflections on King's life and his dream, but I thought I'd share a slightly different perspective.

In his famous I Have a Dream speech, King referred to wishing for a future of equality of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles -- but the primary focus of his work was Civil Rights.  That is, removing the systematic barriers placed in front of African Americans throughout society.

Or, as Angel, my sixth grade angel, said, "He wanted...the kids...to have the same school."

Being the stereotypical white girl, there are no people of color in my family (that we know about, at any rate).

But there are people with disabilities (cognitive and, more recently, physical), people of Jewish heritage, people who have converted to Judaism (one of these days, when go for Hanukkah, I will remember more than the first two lines of the candle lighting prayer), and people that are gay.

And I would suggest that for the majority of the groups listed above, King's dream of equality is a long way off.

How often do you hear people casually tossing about the word r*tard?  How often do you hear people using the f word (not the verb)?  Think of the 2000 presidential campaign, and how much hand-writing there was about the fact that Mr. Lieberman was Jewish.  How much incredulity there was that he -- gasp -- walked to Temple on Saturdays.

How often do you see someone using a wheelchair and immediately assume they are less capable than someone who does not?  I've seen that myself with Patrick at Disney World -- where he is treated with near universal respect at Disneyland (people speaking directly to him, etc.), that was very much not the case at Disney World when he was using his wheelchair.

This is not the place for a political rant, really, so I'm not going to get into my rant about gay marriage (other than to say that allowing the civil contract aspect of marriage as far as the government is concerned should absolutely be legal and denying two people a marriage license because they are both the same gender is sexual discrimination).

But the fact of the matter is that there is still a lot of discrimination and institutionalized inequality in America.  And while it's fine -- and necessary -- to take time on anniversaries like today to ponder race relations in America, it's just as necessary to, at some point, examine other areas of inequality as well.

King talked about his children going to school with other children.

I'm fortunate to teach at a school in a district where mainstreaming, if not inclusion, is the norm, and inclusion is not all that rare either -- but that's far from the case elsewhere.

Infinite diversity, in infinite combinations, as Spock would say.

Anniversaries like today prompt us to consider one kind of diversity, but I'd like to argue that we consider, that we reflect on, all diversity.

It's trite, but people often say that life would be boring if we were all the same.  But, you know, trite sayings become trite and cliched because they're true.  Of course, trite sayings become trite because we stop actually thinking about what they mean and just accept them as truisms.

Today's a day to remember Dr. King's dream, and to reflect on what we can do to make it come true.

In college, I took a class called the Holocaust in Literature and Film.  The class itself was fascinating, but one of the assignments was to write a paper on any aspect of the Holocaust.

I chose to write about the killing (euphemistically called the euthanasia) of people with disabilities in Germany.  Something like 98% of Germans with disabilities were killed.

The closing paragraph opened with a variation of the following: "The Holocaust was, to be certain, a Jewish tragedy, but it was not only a Jewish tragedy.  It is important to make sure that all victims of the Nazis are remembered and honored."

The professor took great exception to that notion.  She was fine with the paper, but she wanted the euthanasia aspect separated from the Shoah (I'm nitpicking linguistically here, but the idea was that the Holocaust itself, as an idea, encompassed only the killing of Jews, which is why I used the Hebrew term for the latter).

It was the only time in my school career that I refused to make a change in a paper requested by a professor, and I was graded down for it.

So it should come as no surprise that even on the anniversary of Dr. King's death, I choose to focus on broader areas of tolerance and equality.

Infinite diversity, in infinite combinations.

Some Progress

Okay, so, I still can't get Lore to connect to my network attached storage, but I managed to get both Boardmaker working well enough to get homework done for next week.  Writing with Symbols is still iffy, as it's making me re-import a bunch of graphics, so the "This Day in History" part of journals is just not going to get done (I'm squinting at a 24" monitor...this means it's time to stop) until the weekend, nor are the questions for the next two chapters of Matilda (the text itself is done, but the questions aren't).

But, really, it's not bad, given that I had to start from scratch over the weekend and re-install Windows.

Also, 4th Grade Teacher VS talked to Other 4th Grade Teacher KC, and found out KC is struggling with having a 2-year-old and a newborn, so good thoughts sent her way would be useful.

4th Grade Teacher KC is a very, very nice person, who is responsible for both 4th Grade Teacher VS and 5th Grade Teacher EW actually liking me.  She insisted (rather, dragged me by the hair, more or less) that I come along with them on their weekly Starbuck's run (I drink neither coffee nor tea).  Before that, VS and EW were...polite but a bit disinterested and incredulous.

Yesterday, I ran into VS in the parking lot after school, and she thanked me again for translating one of her conferences, and mentioned that it must be very hard.  I mentioned (without thinking that it probably sounded like fishing -- but you know me and social skills) that the ladies in the office had once talked about me getting a stipend for it.

And she said she'd plead my case during the leadership meetings.

Which, you know, probably won't happen, 'cause she'll have forgotten by then -- but that she volunteered was very nice indeed.

Meanwhile, Bulldozer slugged Aide J today, but according to Aide S, she had...ahem..."earned it."

Superhero has been edging closer and closer to meltdown-land as the week has gone on.  I anticipate drama tomorrow.  Which, of course, is when Psychologist JW is coming to observe Mr. Voice to begin working on his tri.

And, I learned something today.  We had an assembly this morning during morning journal time, which is when 3rd Grader P has been visiting, so he came with us to the assembly.  Nothing terrible happened, but note to myself: Keep PH and Bart (just came up with the nickname...he has a Simpsons backpack and, now that I think about it, reminds me of Bart) away from each other at assemblies...or, you know, most of the day.

Yeah.

Oh, and, 3rd Grade Teacher RE said she's considering sending her son to me for his sixth grade year.  He's a cool kid, but she strikes me as a Scary Parent.  We shall see...she talked about it for fourth grade this year and ended up changing her mind -- which is good, 'cause his drama would have been too much for us.

More On Lore

Great...I kept thinking that Lore used to sing a song, and when I googled it, I remembered right away that he did sing (it starts at 1:30) as he entered the room in "Brothers"...but now I have it stuck in my head.

(I'd much rather have Miles singing "The Minstrel Boy" stuck in my head, but, alas, it does not work that way.)

Anyway.

(I now own two vocal and one instrumental version of "The Minstrel Boy," by the way, but the phrase "warrior bard" always makes me think of Gabrielle.)

VMWare Fusion has a 30 day trial.  I am already in love with not rebooting.  I still can't figure out how to get access to the network attached storage, though -- which is crucial, because the word processor is on the Data side, and you can't access the Lore side while Windows is running without doing lots of dragging and copying, which is redundant and ridiculous.

However, barring anything else, it'll work.

There's something surreal about a Windows shut down screen with my Leopard wallpaper in the background.

Not bad.  Just...surreal.

Now, having violated my rule by nearly 2 hours, and getting nothing out of it except the agenda book stuff...I'm giving up for the night.

(Also...the result of all that googling was getting Data's darned life forms song stuck even more in my head than the other one.)

I just...love scanning for life forms.

(Be afraid.  Be very afraid.)

Life forms...

(C'mon blogger, upload the screenshot.)

You tiny little life forms...

(I had to try to say "fluency" and "stamina" today, in Spanish, in regards to reading.  During the first conference, when my vocabulary is always rusty.)

You precious little life forms...

(I need to borrow someone else's Boardmaker disk...mine has a hairline crack that was never a problem before, but it's not letting me use these nifty (free!) tools that let me virtually mount Writing With Symbols and still have a free CD drive.)

Where are you...?

(Am I the only one who thought it was sexist that the saucer didn't plow into a planet until Deanna took the helm?)

It's official.  My brain has imploded.  I am now wondering if the emotion chip made it so Data could whistle too, and for the life of me, I can't remember.  Googling has not 

helped, and I now have Data's poem stuck in my head instead.

Felix catus, your taxonomic nomenclature

Connotes an endothermic quadruped,

Carnivorous by nature

Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses

Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations

A singular development of cat communications

That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection

For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents

You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance

(Something something) a true and valued friend.

Trust me...I am as disturbed as anyone else that I remembered that much, as accurately as I did.

Living Up to His Name

For the life of me, I cannot get Lore to connect to my network attached storage...which is where I moved the school stuff so that the Windows programs (Boardmaker, Writing With Symbols) could do their thing, while the Mac programs (NeoOffice, Pages) could also do their thing.

Le sigh.

Good Karma

Please send good karma Amie's way.  That is all.

Actually, it's not.  For those of you who aren't Amie, just so you know, she's not a "cyberfriend."  I've known her since the first grade (err...I was in first grade with her brother before they skipped him and she was in kindergarten but whatever), and though we've drifted in and out of contact over the years...

...well...we've been friends since the first grade.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

The Old and the New

Who needs an external hard drive enclosure when you remember that your account is two arrows down and can log in without a monitor?

Add to that being able to browse your own network well enough to get an internal IP address for the old desktop without a monitor to ask it what its IP address is.

Add to that remembering that to log into a shared windows drive you have to use smb://ipaddress.

Et voila.

Now to write the scary IEP, while pretending I don't have a migraine.

(And while pretending that Program Specialist and Former Teacher RR didn't outright say CAPA would be harder again this year, because apparently "correlating with standards" no longer means teaching age appropriate topics at skill appropriate levels, and I should be teaching kids to sort leaves by type.  As in...toothed, compound, and something else.  Because we couldn't take the general, "Oh, fifth graders learn about plants" and go for, "What do plants need to live?"  Oh, no, we have to go straight to types of leaves.

Also...I've had kids go to fifth grade science.  They do not learn this anyway.  Eesh.)

I am a Nerd

But we knew that, right?

May I present the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide of the computer world:

Some Progress

So, Windows XP is now installed on the iMac.  I haven't installed Boardmaker or Writing With Symbols yet because I'm still waffling on whether to stick with Boot Camp and deal with rebooting when necessary or to spring for Parallels or VMWare.

The advantage to Boot Camp is that it's free.  Parallels got mostly good reviews everywhere I looked, but VMWare's reviews were almost uniformly a variation of "So much better/faster than Parallels."

So we'll see.

Now I'm trying to get some of my programs off my PowerBook and onto the iMac.  Some of them (like Final Cut Express) will have to run under Rosetta (emulation)...which will be slower than universal binary or Intel native versions...but considering that video rendering went from .14 frames per second to 29ish frames per second...I'd imagine that even "slower than native" Final Cut will be...at least equivalent, if not faster, to how it was running on my laptop.

(Plus, big beautiful screen.)

The only remaining task is to get the files off my old PC (I've got several years of adapted books on there, for one thing) and to get an external CD/DVD drive for the iMac to run Writing with Symbols and Boardmaker concurrently.

(Unless I can find a way to trick the computer into thinking they're in the drive.  I tried that once years ago with a program used by gamers for the same essential reasons but it didn't work.  Basically, the program was supposed to make a copy of the disk and then mount it as a virtual drive, but I never could get it to work.  It may be worth exploring, now that I think about it.)

Incidentally, I like Cat's idea of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde name scheme for the iMac.  Unfortunately, I can't think of any fandom names for this except for Angel and Angelus (Angel) and John and Harvey (Farscape).

I'll keep thinking....

Something About That Song

Picture this.

(Sicily...19...dang, Patrick's been watching too much Golden Girls again.)

Ahem.

Picture this.  It's 2001, and I've walked with Patrick's class to the movie theater to see Shrek.  It's their last field trip of the year, and his last in middle school, half community based instruction and half his teacher just wanting to let the kids have a good time.

Of course, at the time, Patrick was deathly terrified of movies.  So I went along, mp3 player in tow (yep, this was in the pre-iPod days) in case he had a panic attack.

The movie had lots of music -- in fact, that's what sets the first Shrek apart in my mind -- the music seemed to be much more carefully selected in the first one.  And Patrick did okay.

And "Hallelujah" came on.

There's just...something about that song.

The montage was great, but the quiet, sublimated anger in Rufus Wainwright's version was enthralling.  I had no idea that so many versions of the song existed, until a couple of years later, when I searched it on a whim in iTunes.

See, I'd recently searched the song "Yerushalahim Shel Zahav" ("Jerusalem of Gold").  One night when inputting lyrics, I'd googled the song to see what I could find, and I found out that the tune is actually a basque lullaby.  Well, I couldn't imagine the defiant chant in Schindler's List (which is how I had the song in the first place) as a lullaby, so I searched for other versions of it.

Thus began my interest in different versions of songs -- I love how different artists can put such a different spin on things.  What is a defiant statement in one version (Schindler's List) is a quiet, introspective song in another version.

Anyway, I was searching for different versions of Hallelujah and came across k.d. lang's version from Hymns of the 39th Parallel.

Wow.

Just...wow.  There's a quiet...almost desperation to the song.  I was absolutely enthralled.  (I now have 4 versions of her singing the song.)

So, now, I have a total of...I think 8 versions of the song.

And then, a few nights ago, I was reading through writer Elizabeth Bear's blog, and discovered, to my amusement, that she had posted on the subject a little while back.

She has 14.

The funny thing is, now that I have a computer that doesn't stutter and die on youtube videos, I can easily see myself finding that many and more.

There's just something about the song.

Easter, Writing, and TMI

So, as has been the case for a few years now, the only folks in my family nearby that celebrate Easter had other plans.  Which, to Patrick, means one thing: Disneyland.

But we did depart from our usual routine, and even had dinner at the Wine Country Trattoria -- which is a very nice table service restaurant with (get this!) reasonable prices.  Not just Disneyland-reasonable-prices, but semi-good-Italian-restaurant reasonable prices.  Wow.  Of particular interest is the orange sorbet dessert, served on a frozen navel orange.  Yummy.

Anyhow, it being a holiday, Patrick...ahem...permitted me to use (my) point and shoot camera to take a few shots, on the condition that I also shared the next in his self-portrait series.

(See if you can guess which shot is his.)

In other news, I have been writing up a storm.  I'm just not sure if it's any good -- it probably isn't yet, and probably won't be without a significant re-write, but it's nice to shut up my inner critic and just get the ideas out.

Meanwhile, I find myself watching the beginning of season 9 of Stargate to determine the extent of Cam's injuries...and 'cause that's when the whole Ori thing started.

(Did I mention I liked the Ori storyline?  Yeah....)

Now, as far as the TMI stuff....

Men are babies.

My grandfather has developed a touchy stomach in the last year or so, and often when he goes on dates with his girlfriend, he ends up throwing up the next day.

He threw up today a couple of times, and called my mom this afternoon to say he's going to go to the emergency room 'cause he just can't keep getting sick like that.

Now, far be it from me to be unsympathetic, but....

When I was in 8th grade, I had a rare form of mono that manifested itself with months of excruciating stomach aches that kept me up for hours at a time because the pain got worse when I laid down.  It was literally unbearable laying down; I'd have to walk in circles until it died down enough to sit, where I'd gingerly curl up with a pillow (because if I got too horizontal, it'd all start over again) and try to sleep.  A few hours later, I'd be able to lay somewhat flat.  A few hours after that, I'd go back to bed, only to get up an hour or two later and try to make it through a day of school.

Then, one Friday morning in...it must have been early February (the stomach aches had been going on since August or so), I was getting ready for a half-day of school.  My parents were picking me up afterwards, and we were going down to Anaheim to stay at the Disneyland Hotel for the first time in several years (my dad had started his own company four years or so before).

I woke up and threw up.

(I warn you -- I said TMI was coming.)

I threw up.  To the point that there was only stomach acid, and I kept throwing up.  I threw up until I was literally screaming from the stomach cramps as my stomach tried to keep throwing up when even the stomach acid was gone.

I didn't keep solid food down for a month.

But after that, the other stomach aches tapered off.  For years, I'd get one or two a year, always accompanied by other TMI symptoms that I associate with what was going on when I was in the worst of it.  Over the years, I figured out what I could and couldn't eat -- for instance, I can only eat kosher hot dogs because something in regular hot dogs will trigger a stomach ache.

I know it's no fun to be sick.  And I remember being in the middle of two or three of the worst stomach aches, wanting to go to the hospital -- if for no other reason than that they could sedate me and I wouldn't be aware of the pain -- but literally terrified of the pain that sitting in the car would provoke.

I remember that -- and I remember sitting on the steps outside of my Spanish class during lunch because the smell of the cafeteria was just too much, hoping the yard supervisors or whatever we called them, wouldn't catch me until the library opened for lunch and I could hide in there.

I remember when the fatalism caught up with me on Patrick's birthday and I figured, "What the heck.  I'll throw it up anyway; might as well have a hamburger."

It was the first solid food I kept down in 30 days.

And I know it's awful and uncharitable, but part of me says, "Give me a frelling break.  So you threw up a couple of times.  Come talk to me when you're throwing up stomach acid and not food."

Thank you.  I just had to get that off my chest.  This way, I can be the nice, sympathetic, dutiful granddaughter.

Back to your regularly scheduled program.

Where I Had Dinner

I had just gone through a drive through for him but Patrick would love
it too.

Plus...sweet potato fries FTW.

http://redtractor.com/

More Computer Squeeing

The picture above is from my laptop, where Handbrake has been laboring for four days to convert a total of four hours of video.

Yup, you heard that right.  One hour = one day.

To be fair, that's H.264 encoding...just straight non-ipod-compatible mp4s are about one hour = five hours.

The picture above is from my iMac.  The 29.01 frames per second is how fast it's encoding the video.  Compare that with the 0.14 frames per second above.

One hour = 33 minutes.

Wow.  I knew it'd be faster, but...wow.

While I Wait

To answer Cat's earlier question, I have not yet decided what to name Sparky Jr.'s successor.  All my other Sparkys have been PCs...so maybe once I get Windows installed, we can call it Sparky III when booted in Windows mode...but I still need a name for Mac mode.

Anyhow, I'm currently in the process of importing my 90 GB iPhoto library, and rebuilding my 300 GB iTunes library, so while I wait, I thought I'd get around to my Ark of Truth review.

There will be spoilers.

I imagine any of you who continue reading will be familiar with the plot, but since Amie has said she reads everything, here ya go, just to get you up to speed:

Millions of years ago, humans evolved past the need for physical bodies.  There were two camps: Ancients/Alderans and Ori.  The Ancients are generally nice but have a strict policy of non-interference with corporeal beings.  The Ori derive energy from corporeal beings' worship and create a religion, Origin, so that more people worship them.

The Ancients knew the Ori were bad, but did not interfere (the whole Rule thing), except for Myrrdin, who we know as Merlin.  He created a device that would kill Ori, but never got a chance to use it.

That's where the Stargate folks come in -- they searched for Merlin's weapon, and used it.

But.

All those people who follow Origin?  They don't know the Ori are gone, and are bent on domination of the universe.  Their philosophy is join us or die.  So the Stargate folks are looking for a device called the Ark of Truth which will convince people that the Ori are gone, and will stop the Ori's followers from trying to kill all of them.

Meanwhile, long ago, the Alderans created a race called the Replicators.  Think Borg Legos.  They look like an erector set, and devour everything.  They are Very, Very Bad.

So, SG-1 is looking for the Ark.  But a bad guy on the ship plants a Replicator, so that the Replicators will infect the Ori ships.  People get tortured, Cameron gets beat up, the ship nearly gets destroyed.

But it's Stargate, so things work out.

What I Liked

• Being a fan of Arthurian legend, I loved the Ori storyline.  I liked how it got back to Stargate's origins (though they were using Egyptian legend to begin with).  Given that they'd already looked for and found an Ancient device to win the war with, finding the Ark of Truth didn't strain credulity as much as it might have if they hadn't already gone looking for Merlin's weapon.
• I adored Vala's rant at the beginning about opening the box they thought was the Ark of Truth, and especially liked Daniel's exasperated, "Why do I even answer?"
• After arguing with the IOA guy, Cam asks Sam if she's sure she doesn't want "the chair" (that is, to be in command).  "Oh, nooooo," she says, then gives his shoulders a squeeze.  "Got your back, though."  I loved the simultaneous support mixed with the, "No WAY am I subjecting myself to that."
• Teal'c's conversation with Tomin, who had been a commander for the Ori before he realized they were false gods (something Teal'c has intimate understanding of).  It was awesome...the way he shared his own experiences without directly saying, "I'm saying this to help you through it."  It was a very, very nice moment.
• Morgan Le Fay, despite Daniel's frustration at how little obvious she was doing to help, is made of win.  (Except that she looks just like the teacher who had Cat's class before Cat had Cat's class.)  The look on her face at the end (Adria -- the only Ori left -- says, "You're no match for me," and Morgan says, with this wicked gleam in her eye, "I am now.")
• Cam's initial report that the first Replicator has...err...replicated, is also hysterical:  (note that I'm loosely quoting here)  "Sam!  This thing's living up to its name...there are definitely more than one."  Sam:  "How many?"  Cam:  "A lot!"
• Sam baking Cam macaroons was absolutely awesome.  (Hey, I'm a 'shipper.  Sorry.)  The look on her face as she gives him the bag was great.
• Daniel and Vala's silent communication during the last stand-off with Adria was also cool, as he realizes what the password to the Ark of Truth is, and silently asks her to distract Adria long enough to put it in.
• The whole end sequence, as they go off to their next mission, was great -- between Daniel's resigned acknowledgement that you just have to get used to being blamed for stuff, and Vala's delight that their might be "treasures" to find on the next planet...it rocked.

What I Was Iffy About

• The Priors got old.  (They are like the Ori's priests, I guess.  They walk around with a powerful staff and are in charge of all the ships.)  How many times can you hear, "Hallowed are the Ori," before it gets old.  Also, the crying Prior at the end...just wasn't convincing.  However, Cam and the Prior at the beginning were just too cool.
• Tomin just never...bleh.  As I said before, I liked him and Teal'c...I just -- he never seemed that interesting to me.  He clearly loves Vala, and she cares for him -- and I give him points for knowing that she doesn't love him back.  I dunno...I've just never been a Tomin fan.
• The bit with the Ancients at the beginning?  No one talks like that.
• What was with Daniel in the cell?  Did Michael Shanks just have a bad acting day or something?  I get that he was supposed to be frustrated and near the end of his rope -- nearly broken -- but still.
• I liked that they acknowledged how dangerous the Ark could be, but it's bittersweet because they obviously can't do anything with the idea, with only a couple of direct-to-DVD movies.

What I Didn't Like

• Replicator-IOA-guy beating the bejeezus out of Mitchell.  Not that it wasn't important to the story, and not that it wasn't good stunt work, but it just went on to freaking long.
• Speaking of -- when Mitchell was hiding in that little room, and couldn't get back to Sam on the radio...couldn't they hear him anyway?  I would imagine Replicators could hear radio waves...so what was the point of freaking her out?
• The Prior at the SGC.  That just was...old.
• The footage of Cam getting nearly blown up.

Overall Impressions

I liked Ark of Truth very much.  In fact, it felt like a stronger follow-up than The Peacekeeper Wars was, even though it had more to cover in less time.  For one thing, the characters seemed true to the characters on the show.  For another, it didn't try to introduce new canon (like the origin of the Peacekeepers) that it wouldn't have enough time to explain and explore.

In fact, my main gripe with it is that it really made me miss Stargate.  As I said when it first went off the air, my interest in the show waxed and waned over the years, but it ended on, for me, a very high note that this movie only continued.

Here's hoping the upcoming Continuum will continue in the same vein.

My Geekdom, Let Me Show You It

(Okay, the bundled keyboard is, at best, going to take some getting used to.)

I am in computer love.

It is beautiful.

It is big.

I can see everything.

It's fast.

Did I mention it's beautiful?

Also?  Setting up a computer in five minutes FTW.

Come to Mama

This Amuses Me

Poor Microsoft.  On the amazon.com Windows XP page, the first five products listed under "customers who bought this also bought these" are Apple or Apple-related products.

Almost Spring Break

So, the plan was to get most of the stuff for after spring break done over this past week, so that I could clean up the room and leave in time for my 3:30 appointment to get a hepatitis B booster predicated by the bite incident.

That was the plan.

I left around 3:15 or so and headed to the worker's comp doctor's office, where I signed in for my appointment.

And waited.

And waited.

And chatted (yay me with the social skills!) with the lady next to me, who had been there since one freaking o'clock.

At 4:45, I finally go back to an exam room, where they tell me that Bulldozer's parents had never given them the results of his blood test, so I not only get to get a shot, I get to have another blood draw.

Me = needle phobic.

Me = petrified.

Anyhow, I survived the booster -- which hurt a heck of a lot more than the first one did.  The nurse takes a look at my veins (after trying a "nifty new toy" -- a cuff for your upper arm, like when they put the latex band around your arm -- that clearly did not, and would never, fit my upper arm, short of emergency liposuction surgery).

Ahem.

Anyway, she takes a look at my veins and comments at how thin they are.

"Actually," I say, trying to be helpful, "the lady at the lab last time said they were just very deep, but she did go get to get a smaller needle."

The nurse looks at me doubtfully.

Me = petrified x 2.

She looks at my arm one more time, decides that she doesn't want to miss and "blow out [your] vein" and sends me to the lab at the hospital...again.

Where I am met by a different tech, who also has trouble finding veins in the normal place.  So, she takes my right arm, slaps it -- yeah, slaps it -- a few times to make the veins...puff up, I think is the word she used.

She sticks the needle in.

HOLY FREAKING MOTHER OF GOD!

Ouch!

So, at this point, it's 5:15, and I head back to school, turn everything off, and leave it in the disastrous state it was in.  I'll head back tomorrow to finish up agenda books and copy the beginning of Matilda, and then spring break'll start.

The Letter R

Patrick has a long and sordid history with the letter R. In most words that involve both Rs and vowels (e.g. birthday, bird, skirt), he reverses the R and the vowel.

Thus, many, many gleefully decorated brithday cards.

So, I'm looking at a wikipedia article for April Fools' Day for the kids' journals (Angel needs two or three sentences to the other kids' one) and I notice a quote from Chaucer in the origins section. Namely, a reference to "thritty dayes."

Now I am consumed with a desire to find out if that's a wikipedia typo or genuine Old English.

'Cause if it is, at least I can tell Patrick he just must be a reincarnated scribe or something. :-)

ETA: The Internet gods must've heard all my whining about boring days, and decided to get back at me with April 4...where the dilemma is which interesting thing to choose.

Human Error

"These kinds of problems have cropped up before, and they have always been due to human error."  -- HAL 9000

I'm not sure Arthur C. Clarke would want to be remembered, or eulogized, by a quote from 2001, but it's the only one I can think of off-hand, and fits that first thought you sometimes have when you hear someone has died:  That can't be right.

For years, despite being an avowed sci-fi fan, I mostly read tie-in novels -- Star Trek, Babylon 5, X-Files, and the like.  The few sci-fi books I'd read just hadn't captured my interest.

Turns out, when it comes to my reading material, I like hard sci-fi.  Science-based stuff.  The probable made possible.

His was some of the first I read, after I'd discovered that Fahrenheit 451 just didn't do it for me (the message was chilling; the book...meh).

I started, amazingly enough, with 2001.  There was an excerpt from it as a training passage for Dragon Naturally Speaking, which came installed on Sparky Junior.   Most of his novels were riveting -- Rendezvous with Rama, for one; some of his sequels were...meh, not so much.  His collaborations with Stephen Baxter were excellent, and led me to Stephen Baxter's solo work -- my favorite of which being The Timeships...which, in turn, led me to read The Time Machine.

It's sad, in a way, that Arthur C. Clarke is mainly being mentioned in reports of his death, as the acclaimed science fiction writer.

He was also a very intelligent man, who is credited with the idea of a space elevator (for which there is now a prize) and with spreading the notion of a communications satellite.  He'd written as many scientific papers as novels.

For the sci-fi community, it's a sad day.  I think I'll start to re-read 2001 over the break.

(Incidentally, for those of you who have seen -- and puzzled over -- the movie, the book makes it make much more sense...the two were written concurrently.)

Unfortunately, the only other quote I can come up with is, "Open the pod bay doors, HAL."