Author: kelson

Halloween Roundup

I think the time change drove people temporarily insane earlier this week. People unaccustomed to driving home in the dark clogged the streets in the evenings from Monday through Wednesday. As a result, alenxa and I didn’t get home until 6:40 on Halloween.

We walked in the door. I immediately turned on all the lights so that it was clear someone was home, then grabbed a large bowl and emptied bags of candy into it. Meanwhile Katie put the finishing touches on her vampire costume: the gloves, cape and fangs that she hadn’t worn on the drive home. We were hurrying, because we could hear a group of trick-or-treaters below, collecting candy from our downstairs neighbors.

Footsteps tromped up the stairs, and the Vampiress was ready. They knocked on the door next to us. No one answered. (Our next-door neighbors had moved out on Friday.) They knocked again. No answer. And they went back downstairs. We heard one of the kids suggest trying the other door, but they didn’t.

I wrote up a “Use Other Door →” sign and taped it on the empty apartment.

In the end, we got a grand total of two groups knocking on our door. Anyone want some extra Skittles and Tootsie Rolls? (Sorry, the Twix bars stay!)

Feng-shui Klotski

A good chunk of this weekend was taken up moving stuff around the apartment. Management has been rebuilding all the balconies. (This is probably a good thing, since the previous owners didn’t bother to use treated wood, and sap leaked out from the floorboards for several months.) On Thursday, we got the notice that they would start on our group on Monday. This means that we have to move everything off of the balcony.

Our next-door neighbors lucked out, since they just moved out on Friday. Though I suppose that meant they had to clear off the balcony anyway.

So Saturday afternoon was spent clearing space out of the storage section of the dining area so that we could move stuff out of the the living room so that we could make room for all the plants and the patio furniture. Then Sunday morning was spent hauling stuff inside. By the time we were done, a corner of our living room had been transformed into an indoor jungle:

Indoor Jungle

With any luck, they’ll be faster about it than the previous management was. The previous management warned us to clear everything off overnight, then changed their minds, and didn’t actually start work until two months later. Not that they told us they had postponed it indefinitely, so we went quite a while wondering when they would start, and assuming we couldn’t put things back, until we finally asked. Fortunately we had less stuff on the balcony back then.

Current Mood: accomplished

Ubiquitous Narration

I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon playing The Bard’s Tale (the new one, not the one in my icon) while alenxa was off at kayshabeast’s bridal shower. After a many months-long break. This time I figured out the combat system, so I was able to get past the starting dungeon.

Anyway, after Katie got home, we watched an episode of Teen Titans with dinner. It was structured as a fairy tale, complete with a narrator. The narrator sounded really familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d heard his voice before. The credits listed him has Tony Jay, which didn’t ring a bell, so Katie looked him up at IMDB.

Turns out he was the narrator on The Bard’s Tale, and I’d been hearing his voice all afternoon.

Weekend Report

Friday: Stuck at work trying frantically to finish a website redesign that had to be done by that evening. I honestly don’t remember anything about the evening, as the still-not-gone cold slammed into me full force once the adrenaline rush wore off.

Saturday: alenxa and I risked going out to lunch, and managed not to cough all over the restaurant. Watched a couple episodes of Justice League and finally saw The Bride of Frankenstein (which I suspect I saw when I was maybe 10, because I recognized the framing sequence — more about that later — but I don’t remember much more). It’s interesting to see just how much of the Frankenstein mythos not only isn’t in the book, but isn’t in the first movie. Much of the tearing around the countryside is in Bride, for instance, and Igor doesn’t even show up until the third movie, Son of Frankenstein (and he’s a far cry from the mad doctor’s faithful assistant!) Watched an episode of Crusade, “The Well of Forever,” which explores hyperspace and starts to hint at Galen’s backstory (told in much more detail in the Technomage novels.)

I also caught up on some graphic novels, including Sam Kieth’s Four Women (disturbing and creepy, but a good story) and The Sandwalk Adventures, a somewhat offbeat story that covers the basics of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Sort of the “Cartoon History of Evolution.”

Sunday: Ran some errands. Finished Black Powder War. Actually ran the air conditioner for a while, though the floorplan means it doesn’t actually accomplish much. Went to Orange’s International Street Fair for dinner.

Monday: More errands. Re-read the second round of Tangent Comics that DC put out in 1998. This was the series where they took the names of various heroes and villains and created entirely new characters. Overall, the first set was better, but it was still an interesting side universe that I would have liked to see more of. Caught up on a couple of items I’d been meaning to add to my website. Also read half of the first book of A Distant Soil, which I first heard about ~20 years go and have been meaning to check out for ~10 years. After several issues of setting up a major space epic, it’s suddenly shifted to an Arthurian battle. I assume the plotlines will converge by the end of the book. Watched about half of Grosse Point Blank. It wasn’t as good as I remembered, and when Katie said it just wasn’t grabbing her, I realized I was more interested in showing her the movie than re-watching it myself.

I’m finally getting over this #$!@ cold, though I’m still coughing from time to time. And with the heat and dehydration, it’s still leaving me feeling completely wiped out several times a day. Oddly enough, I found myself looking forward to going back to work because the AC (when it’s running, anyway) is more effective than what we have at home. At least my ears are finally getting unplugged. Lunch on Saturday was really odd, because voices were muffled, but the background music wasn’t. Of course now everything sounds oddly loud.

The Dread Pirate Katie

We went out to the Spectrum on Friday to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. alenxa dressed up for the occasion, in the latest variation of her pirate costume.

The Dread Pirate Katie

Still in Line

As you can see, she was far from the only pirate in line. Two groups ahead of us there were about 5 or six people in full pirate regalia, who swelled to around a dozen, some quite elaborate, by the time the line let in. Once their whole group was there, they got someone to take a group photo.

Oh, on the subject of those cosplay photos from Comic-Con… the 2004 set has gotten a lot of hits from people searching for Elizabeth Swann costume. PageRank can do funny things…

Moulin Rouge

Went to see a screening of Moulin Rouge last night. It was a strange experience — stranger than watching it with a small group of friends — though that was largely due to the problem with the theater sound system.

The picture was perfect throughout the whole movie, but the sound would occasionally cut out or become distorted. If you’ve ever tried renaming a non-sound file as a .wav and trying to play it, that’s kind of what it sounded like. “Fortunately,” the largely late-teen-early-20s female audience knew all the words and sang Nicole Kidman’s part while a smaller group ran back to tell the manager that yes, the sound was out again.

Then there was “Spectacular, Spectacular,” which unfolded with a mental overlay of the AMV…

The Long Weekend

Friday: Goo Goo Dolls/ Counting Crows concert at it’s-still-Irvine-Meadows-’cause-“Verizon-Wireless-Amphitheater”-just-sounds-dumb. Nifty view of the central Orange County valley before the sun set.

Saturday. Spent the day lying on the couch with a fan running, catching up on the Babylon 5 script book commentaries. So far I’ve only read about 1/4 of one script, but the introductions are a fascinating insight into the process of making the show. Given how much was out in the open (since JMS spent several hours a night online during production), some of the stuff that wasn’t revealed back then is mighty interesting. (Example: we all thought season 4 was compressed because they weren’t sure they’d get a season 5, and wanted to get as much done as they could. It turns out that at the beginning of the season, they were told in no uncertain terms that there would not be a season 5. So getting that fifth season on TNT was a real surprise.)

Dinner at CPK, then Superman Returns Enjoyed it, but no interest in seeing it again. It already felt like deja vu since there were so many references to the first two movies with Christopher Reeve. There were some great moments, but overall it was just kind of okay.

Sunday: Finished Bad Twin. Decent book, but not exactly a major insight into the secrets of Lost. Waited several hours until checking my email, at which point I discovered I really should’ve checked earlier… so I could bring a server back online. Went down to the office, brought the server up. alenxa tagged along and we had lunch at the crepe place at the Spectrum. Happened to glance over at one of the wall alcoves, which held a vinegar bottle… labeled Temeraire. After some shopping for food for upcoming family get-togethers, went home and played Heroes V for a few hours. Fortunately I was still awake when the same server went down again at 1AM. So I drove back, brought it online, figured out a way to make sure that it would automatically start up again next time, then came home. Still trying to diagnose the cause, but whatever it is does seem to like holiday weekends…

Monday: Traditionally, the 4th of July consists of hanging around at home followed by looking for fireworks. This year, both our families wanted to get together. So on Monday we went to visit my grandparents, carpooling with my parents and my brother. My aunt and her husband brought their dogs, which meant I spent most of the afternoon in a Benadryl-induced funk, despite drinking way too much Dr. Pepper to offset it.

Tuesday: I squeezed in an hour or two of Heroes in the morning, then it was off to visit Katie’s family, with more BBQ. Dinner was relatively early, so we cleared out around 7:00 so we could make it back to Laguna Beach for the fireworks display there. They launch the fireworks off one of the bluffs, out over the ocean, and the viewing is pretty good from the beach. We caught the tail end of it a couple of years ago, while driving around looking for displays. Two years ago we got there too late and missed the entire show while we walked from the car out to the beach. (Hey, have you ever tried finding parking in Laguna Beach?) Last year I was sick, so we just walked out to where we could see the local display. This year we made it with plenty of time to spare, parking up on Forest (roughly in line with the Laguna Playhouse, and maybe a few hundred feet from the entrance to Tivoli Terrace, where we had our wedding), and snagged a spot on the beach. The wind blew the smoke in our direction, so a lot of the fireworks were half-obscured, but they lit up the smoke a lot more than I can remember seeing anywhere else. After the show, we did our semi-traditional stop at Diedrich across the street.

Today: Back to work. I’ve been stress-testing the server, trying to get it to crash under controlled circumstances so I can get some information about what’s causing the problem… and it just won’t crash!

What a Wicked Thing to Do

Last week, the Orange County Performing Arts Center sent out a notice that tickets for Wicked would go on sale Monday at 10:00 AM. It noted that seating was limited due to “unexpected demand” and recommended using the website for orders:

The quickest way to acquire tickets will be ordering online at the link provided below, choosing your date, and then selecting the “Best Available” seating option, which allows the computer system to select the best seats.

So yesterday morning, I checked the website around 9:30… and the website was already down. I tried calling at 10:00 and couldn’t get through. By 11:00, the website was still down, the phones appeared to have been disconnected, and I decided to take an early lunch and drive up to the box office.

My first clue that something was wrong was that I had to park on the roof of the parking structure. There was no sign of a line from above, but as I approached the stairway leading down to the box office from the main entrance, I started to hear the commotion of lots and lots of voices.

I followed what looked like a loose line back toward the parking structure. As I reached what appeared to be the end of the line, I realized it was actually two lines — or, more accurately, one line making a U-turn at the entrance to the structure. I followed it back toward the box office, and got almost all the way up to the front before finding the end of the line.

There was no way I could get through that in an hour, or even two. I figured I didn’t need to see the show that badly, went to grab lunch and returned to work.

I kept trying both the phone and the website over the course of the day, occasionally able to get a list of showtimes and ticket prices, but not much else. And by the time I could get into the phones or website today, they had completely sold out.

OK, shows sell out. I can deal with that. But there are two things that particularly annoy me about this:

First, some genius planning the tour decided it would be perfectly OK to have a two-week run in Orange County and no stop in Los Angeles. That meant that in addition to everyone locally who wanted to see the show, everyone in LA who missed it last year or wanted to see it again was competing for the same tickets.

Second, OCPAC specifically suggested using the website, which turned out to be incapable of handling the demand even before tickets even went on sale. (This is one case where it would have been better if they’d used Ticketmaster, who would’ve been able to handle the traffic.)

Snew

I ruined someone’s joke today.

I was walking back from the Spectrum, waiting for a walk signal while munching on one of those muffins they have at Jamba Juice, when a car pulled up in the turn lane. A girl, probably in her late teens, rolled down the passenger-side window.

“Sir? Do you have any updog?”

Updog? I thought. What the hell is that, some kind of code word for something? Since my mouth was full, I just kind of shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.

“Are you sure? You don’t have any updog?”

Same thing. The light changed, and the car turned into the parking lot.

And then I realized: she had been expecting me to ask what it was. As in, “What’s updog?”