Category: Sci-Fi/Fantasy

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So work decided to do Halloween on the 30th rather than the 31st because some people don’t work Fridays. This was a good thing, considering that we have not only a potluck but also a costume contest and a pumpkin-carving contest all on the same day and I have a finite amount of time after work. Last year, I was scrambling to make whatever it was I made and carve the Eye of Sauron into a pumpkin (costume was taken care of–Ren Faire outfit) on the night of the 30th, which was very not fun. This year, I baked the cookies on Monday and took Tuesday off for the usual Farscape night. Wednesday, after getting back from the pointless class I’m taking for work, we frosted the cookies while watching Angel and I carved my replica of the “Gourdzilla” face from Monday’s Grand Avenue strip and went out and tossed a mini-pumpkin on the ground to put in its mouth. Easy, simple, and I got sleep.

Here’s what I wore to work.
2003 Halloween
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do until the other people in my unit started talking about making a graveyard in the space between my desk and the cubes across the aisle and then doing makeup like dead people. I, being the genius I am, said something like, “Oh, and hey, I can be the undertaker.” So that’s what we did. The graveyard didn’t get made, but everybody dressed dead and someone played “Thriller” really loud. And I won the costume contest.

Gourdzilla also won a prize.

We are now in possession of four no-restrictions, no-expiration passes to Regal theaters, and $20 in gift certificates. So now everybody can go see Return of the King regardless of cashflow. Cool.

The best part of having two days of Halloween is that I had a chance to carve a second pumpkin.
Aeryn pumpkin in lightAeryn pumpkin dark
I’d been dying to try this since seeing that other Farscape images had been converted into jack-o-lanterns, and I’d been telling Kelson’s mom I’d give it to her. So it was good to have an extra night to get this done and remember exactly how much I love carving pumpkins. And tomorrow night, it’ll be good to get some frelling sleep…..

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Inspired by finding a list of Babylon 5 viruses earlier this week.

Harry Potter virus: Looks like the last file of a virus you just wiped out, until you try to erase it–then it wipes your drive.

Voldemort virus: You can’t get rid of it, only make it dormant. It can be reactivated by the Wormtail virus up to thirteen years later.

Dumbledore virus: Scares off all the other viruses but never seems to actually *do* anything.

Hermione virus: Fills up all available drive space with files of useless information.

Ron virus: Contains code, some of it buggy, from the author’s five previous viruses.

Continue reading →

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So my computer dumped my “Recent Items” list again and I had to go digging through my WP files to find the writing bits I was looking for. And I found some stuff that would have made great blog material if I’d had one at the time I wrote it. This one is from the summer I spent painting residence houses at UCI. I’d just been introduced to the wonderful world of sanding down semi-gloss paint to make sure the new coat would stick, and I was high on Babylon 5. So I started thinking, “What would the B5 characters say or do if someone asked them to sand doors?”

Ivanova: Doors? You want me to sand doors? This is a joke, right? John, this isn’t funny.

Garibaldi: Let me get this straight. You want me to sand doors…….do you have any idea how busy I am? Tell you what, you get someone–Zack! Will you go sand some doors for me?–and you just tell them I did it. Would that make you happy?

Lennier: (bows and leaves)

Kosh: (music) No… (more music)

Corwin: Nobody ever tells me anything around here, and now they want me to sand doors. I’m not sure, but I think I may have been demoted.

Zathras: Great door. Terrible door. But great hope for smooth finish. Zathras used to sanding doors. Doors understand Zathras. Doors always in the way. Much being pushed out of way. Just like Zathras. (this one is Kelson’s)

Morden: You say you want me to sand doors, but I believe I can do more for you than that. Let me speak to my associates and I’ll be right with you.

Lyta: The other Kosh never made me sand doors!

Londo: Yes. You want me to sand doors. But in the grand old days of the Centauri Republic, thousands of servants would have sanded thousands of doors at our slightest whim!

Vir: Londo….I don’t like this. I mean, I mean–bad enough you have me dealing with the Shadows…..and Mr. Morden, and keeping all your secrets……I just can’t take this any more, I–All right. I’ll sand the doors. But this is the last time, Londo.

Marcus: All right then, I’ll just go and…sand doors, yes….and then that’ll be the high point of my day. See you.

Further suggestions are welcome.

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I finally saw Terminator 3 this weekend, and something has been bothering me about the ending (aside from watching the end of the world).

Skynet’s a distributed system. Presumably its intelligence scales along with the number of nodes it has. Those nodes are computers all over the world. Those computers are most concentrated in major cities. Skynet launches a global nuclear attack on those major cities. That wipes out a huge percentage of its own computing nodes. It’s also going to take out huge chunks of the Internet’s infrastructure, leaving many of the remaining nodes disconnected from each other.

In its attempt to wipe out humans, Skynet gave itself a world-class lobotomy.

I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t sound like a winning strategy to me.

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I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, but recently I started to wonder if, given the prophecy stuff and plotlines of Order of the Phoenix, Neville could end up Sam to Harry’s Frodo. “Who are you? His bodyguard?” “His gardener.”

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I’ve been to the San Diego Comic Con every year since 1990 (before they changed the name to Comic Con International), but this is the first year I’ve gone in costume.

Last weekend, Katie and I searched a bunch of vintage clothing and regular clothing stores looking for pieces she would need for a Sluggy Freelance Gwynn costume from “The Bug, the Witch and the Robot”. I already everything for a Riff costume except long hair, so we looked for hair extensions as well. We plan on putting up a “how-to” at some point, but I’ll just post the finished product here.

A ton of photos follow: Continue reading →