It couldn't get better forever...
Having seen the new 2-parter by Stephen Moffat, I'm finally going to give a review of less than excellent. That's not to say that it's not a high point of a lackluster Season 4, but compared to "The Empty Child", "The Doctor Dances", "Blink", or even "The Girl in the Fireplace", but the new two parter is merely Good.

"Silence in the Library" set up the story (I'm being deliberately vague here, in case someone hasn't seen it yet, and wants to) in a perfectly acceptable fashion, and "Forest of the Dead" wrapped things up, while still leaving us with some questions. The countdown, the "being saved", it's nothing new, is the thing. Even River Song I could see coming.

This isn't to say that I hate it. Even while somewhat predictable, it was generally well executed, one or two scenes notwithstanding.

My verdict? 8/10

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Waiting...
After such a long absence, this may seem like a trite post, but I assure you, it isn't!

I've learned a disturbing truth about the world today. No matter how many times I hit "Refresh" on the UPS package tracking website, my packages don't seem to move any faster.

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Vegas
So I'm back from yet another trip to Vegas. I hadn't planned on going 3 times in less than 12 months, really :)

As always, it was a blast. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

First, I decided that Mike and Dan had been guilt-tripping me long enough, and it was time to get my lazy ass in gear, and visit them in San Diego. So I took off work for three days, and had a phenomenal time, albeit busy and full. Grace and James also took some time off, and flew out from Toronto to join us there.

Despite Dan and Jen having to work on Wed/Thurs, and Mike having to work Wed, we still managed to hang a bit, and Mike showed us around the area. It's amazing just how much San Diego feels like it's in Southern California. Odd, that :)

After a few days there, we rented a van, and started our slightly-extended road trip to Vegas. We could have gone the fast, boring way, but we decided to stretch it out a bit, and head up through the colorado and mojave deserts, and through Joshua Tree national park. What can I say? We saw a lot of cool stuff, and no one killed each other in the confined space. A successful road trip :)

Then Vegas, for Mike's bachelor party. There was a huge group of people there, since Jen and her friends were doing a bachelorette at the same time (so, to clarify, 17 people, 2 groups, no contact between groups, few pictures, no incriminating evidence!). Let's just say that it was a blast, and leave it at that. The first night was general partying, and a lot of people, including me, stayed up just a bit too late that first night, leading to a lot of droopy eyes, and caffeine infusions the next night, to get the bachelor party goin'.

And the gambling. Now let me be clear. I like to gamble. A lot. But I don't have a gambling problem, as some people (*coughstevecough*) would claim :) I only gamble in Vegas, and damnit, when I'm in Vegas, I'm going to gamble! And I finished the weekend up a fair bit, so that helped too :)

And now I should get back to work. Stupid work... Wish I was still on vacation...

[Edit:] I've also got no voice right now :) My throat is screwed up from yelling over the crowds in Vegas, and from trying to compete with Schwartz in conversations. He's one of the greatest guys I know, but damn, is his voice ever loud

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This is a public service announcement...
I hate taxes. They are bullshit.

That is all.

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Must... Have... Doughnut...
I've got this strong craving for Tim Hortons, and no way to scratch the itch. The closest Timmy's is Canada, and there's no way I'm driving 2 hours to the border for a doughnut. No matter how sweet a canadian maple sounds right now. Or a double chocolate dip. And timbits. Lots of delicious timbits.

*drool*

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Cheered by song lyrics...
I was just finishing up some shopping, and started up my car to hear The Eagles "Life's Been Good". The tagline really got me, "Life's been good to me so far", and it truly has.

I was in Toronto for Bryan and Jenn's wedding over the weekend, and it was a fantastic ceremony, if a little non-traditional. The bride got hammered, her boss passed out face-down in his appetizer during dinner, and while the bridesmaids were steady as a rock, the groomsmen just about broke down and cried during the vows. I always knew Schwartz was a sentimentalist!

The wedding was excellent, and the reception a great party. I saw a whole bunch of people whom I see far too infrequently, and it was like a reunion. I got a bunch of invitations to come visit people, and plans have been made.

It was a lot of flying, and a very exhausting trip, but worth it, completely. The only thing I regret is being in Burlington, and not seeing Matt, Steph or Stas. I hardly had a minute to myself, but I keep thinking that I could have somehow worked in an evening, or an afternoon, somehow.

I've got a lot of travelling to look forwards to this year. I'm going to Whistler in March, San Diego sometime between then and June, my family will be in Seattle in July, cottage in August, in September my Aussie friend Amanda is going to be in the US, October is Mike & Jen's wedding, and December is Christmastime with the family, probably somewhere warm. My dad mentioned the Cayman Islands, or the Bahamas.

So yeah, in conclusion, all I've really got to say right now is "Life's been good to me so far" :)

Oh, and "Drink and fight!". Words to live by

Current Mood: cheerful

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So... Cold...
So I'm going on to my 5th straight night with no power, and temperature dropping (last night was -2 degrees). It sucks, but Steve regained power yesterday, so if I don't get power back this evening, I'm going to crash at his house.

I'm screwed for Christmas shopping, though. I planned to do it this weekend, but that just didn't work out, and my car is still locked away in my garage, and I can't get at it, because the office can't find the key to manually open my garage. I've got to work some freakin' magic to get everything done, and not freeze to death in the process.

But above all, I'm still alive. That's something :D

*Edit*
I'm posting this from work, which has power, and some heat. It ain't cold, but it's not that warm, either.

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Eureka!
Probably not of interest to everyone, but fascinating to me, I just watched a live webcast on the laser inferometry xray scan of a folio of the archimedes palimpsest, containing the earliest known copies of some of archimedes work, including "The mechanics of floating bodies" and "stomachion".

It was fascinating, and kind've made me sad that I didn't go with physics or classics, instread of Computers. Not that I think I made a bad choice, but y'know, the grass is always greener :)

It was amazing. Archimedes text had been scraped and sponged off the parchment about 800 years ago, and greek orthodox prayers and psalms written over top of it. The in the 1930's, forgers painted fake illuminations over parts of that to try and increase the sale price of the book. Even more, the text had been damaged by fire and mold over the centuries, so Archimedes' writing was virtually invisible. The technique made it jump out, though, and it was very legible. I'm impressed, and kind've jealous, too.

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New userpic
I'd just like to tip my hat to ridethesainted for this wonderful new userpic. For all the once and forever Groo fans out there, I am THE Prince of Chichester.

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My first post in ages, and it's just to post this silly thing. You may all proceed to berate me (but berating counts as a comment!)

If you comment on this post:
1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a color that i associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on yours

So now it's up to you to decide. Chastising me for the lack of posting means you're going to have to continue this yourself. What delicious revenge :)

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Exciting Times
I've always been a big fan of space exploration and travel in general (real space exploration, not the fake star trek crap (as much as I like some of the shows, I'm a realist), and there are exciting times ahead, I think.

First we had (and still have) the unprecedented success of the mars rovers, then the X prize (which is a good first step, but still not bold enough), and now commercial spaceports have been announced in the UAE, singapore, and there are talks for building one in Florida. Some will probably fail, and others turn out not to be useful, but we've got to start somewhere.

The private sector has to (and is) take up some of the slack from Governments, as governments have dropped the ball on space travel. I'm not saying that NASA is bad, just inefficient. They still do a lot of great work, especially out of the JPL, but with the new Return to the Moon initiative, I think resources are being spent the wrong way.

The modern NASA is just a bureaucratic stepping stone, a place for ambitious political men to go to enhance their careers later in life. The drive that NASA experienced in the early days is gone, replaced by slow, plodding inefficiency at the top levels. This isn't to say that the NASA engineers aren't as good as ever, but they aren't as driven to excel as they used to be.

So yes, partial commercialization is the logical next step. And I see a bright future ahead, much like the early days of aviation. Despite the world seeming to be in a constant state of falling apart around us, we live in exciting times for science. There is so much just beyond the horizon that sometimes I can't sit still for the anticipation.

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Yay for me?
Well, I passed :) I didn't pass with flying colours, but I passed. I've got my washington drivers license, so no more tests :) Even when/if I go back to Canada, I can just upgrade to a full license with no test. Blasted tests

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Quote
I just saw this quote, and I really liked it:

"This life is yours. Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made yourself."

I've yet to decide if it's true, or just nice sounding fluff that we want to hear... I want it to be the first, but I'm just not sure.

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I shall call thee Zeus...
My rental car bears an electrostatic grudge against Ian and I. Every time one of us touches it, lightning from the frame smites us painfully.

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Things are always as they seem
I've had a great last few days, despite being sick on thursday/friday. Everything is coming up aces lately :)

On friday I saw Zurb in the evening, just a quiet night after bad 2 days of feeling "bleh", until I was reminded that time with Zurb is never quiet. Zurb is high energy, and zany, and never boring, so a good time was had by all. Saturday Ian and I saw Zurb for breakfast (though Zurb was still up from the night before, so dinner for him) before getting mildly lost looking for Costco home, and just screwing around in Redmond town centre for a while. Lots of fun. Oh, and my mattress and boxspring got delivered on saturday too, so now I have something to sleep on.

Sunday Ian and I hit up the driving range, taking out built up frustration at reticent bugs at work out on a few golf-balls.

Nothing special yesterday, but today I found out that my bedroom set should be delivered this week, a full 5-6 weeks early, which makes me a very happy camper. See my previous post about furniture to remind you why :)

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So happy...
I'm so very, very pleased with my furniture shopping yesterday!

Zurb and I visited furniture stores all over renton, bellevue, kirkland and redmond, and we ended up finding a lot of very nice stuff.

So I bought myself a nice bedroom set, dark stained wood. I got a sleigh bedframe, 2 nightstands, dresser, queen boxspring and mattress, and it's really nice stuff. I was amazed at the places zurb knew.

I also found a really great coffee table for my living room, grey iron frame, with a subsurface of slate tile, with a surface of glass about 6-8" above the slate.

Also bought a 30" widescreen HDTV television (not LCD). I'm telling you, if you ever move to Seattle, ask me to introduce you to zurb. The man is a wizard, he knows people. People who'll cut you great deals!

We also saw something that'd be *perfect* for wall decoration, above my fireplace. It's an array of 5 bronze clocks, hung off a bronze bar. There's one big one in the middle, and four smaller ones on the left and right of the big one, labelled with major world cities in other time zones (beijing, london, etc). It's a bit wide (63"), so it'll overhang the edges of the fireplace by about 2.5" on each side, so I may need to find somewhere else to put it, but it'll go so well with the room that I just can't pass up on buying it.

Still lots to do though. Going couch shopping later this week, zurb is friends with the owner of a leather furniture shoppe, so he thinks he can get me a nice italian leather couch for a great price.

Other things I still need though: Kitchenware, end-table/chair for beside couch, desk, bookcase(s), bedding, lamps, bowl+coins for coffee table, other stuff to fill up empty walls

So as you can see, I've still got a lot to buy, but I can't wait. I'm having more fun doing this than I thought possible!

Phew. I'm good. I'm calm.

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Weird...
I don't know what to feel... the sun is out! What do I do? This is a special occasion here, considering it's rained EVERY single day since I got to seattle.

Edit: Well, it's gone :( But it was sunny for almost 2 hours. That's got to be some kind of record

Edit 2: Oh, and now it's raining. 14 straight days.

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Still kickin'
Well, I'm here, and I'm not really sure why it's taken me so long to post. I think I'm just lazy.

It's been quite a time though. I just got the keys to my apt today, and I must say, it's gorgeous. It still smells a bit of paint, seeing as they just finished renovating it yesterday, but it has new paint, new carpets, new tile, new countertops, and new fixtures. Now i've just got to furnish it, and I'm more excited about that than any straight man should be :)

It's been an interesting two weeks. First of all, getting into the country was tough. Sitting in the INS office while I'm treated like a criminal trying to sneak into the US was no fun at all. I sat in the office for 5 minutes before they called me up to the counter. Once I got up there, the guy looked over all my papers, and proceeded to tell me that my Australian degree "wouldn't count for much in the US", and that my education "probably wouldn't hold up to US standards". Then he spent 45 minutes calling every frickin place he could think of to make sure that my documents weren't forged or some crap, and then grilled me for 10 minutes on why I should be let into the country on an engineering visa when I was clearly a programmer... Getting through that without losing my cool at him was really tough, and you all know how hard it is to piss me off.

Once I got here though, it was all smooth sailing. It IS the US, so I won't say anything specific about my job that could get me in any legal trouble :P, but let's just say it's tough, but fun, and I don't regret moving out here for it.

So it's almost time for me to hit the hay, so I'm going to wrap this up. Good night everyone

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Bye bye!
Well, this is it people. I'm off to seattle in a few hours, so it's time for me to unhook myself from the net, and pack up my computer. I don't know how much computer time I'll have for the next few weeks, so you may only hear from me intermittantly. Watch the obits, just in case :)

Cheers,
Chris

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No getting mad at me for my answers....
Click here.
Take the quiz.
Post your results.
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