Omphaloskepsis  -

+ 0 - 0 | § ¶My Upcoming Week, Feb. 28-Mar. 6

Monday

Work

Whose Line is it Anyway? -- new episodes on ABC Family (second one tape delay)

24: "Day 4: 5:00 P.M.-6:00 P.M."

Medium: "Coded"

Tuesday

Work

NCIS: "Pop Life"

House: "Cursed"

Wednesday

Work

Lost: "Numbers"

The West Wing: "A Good Day"

CSI: NY: "The Fall"

Psi Phi meeting

Thursday

Work

Survivor

Friday

Work

Joan of Arcadia: "Secret Service"

Jonny Zero (I'll give it a try)

Battlestar Galactica: "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down"

Stargate: SG-1: "Reckoning, Part 2"

Stargate: Atlantis: "Letters from Pegasus"

Saturday

Perhaps hanging out with Joe

No television plans

Sunday

(possibly) Church

Young Blades: "Enchanted"

davidh

+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Opportunity knocks...

...should I answer?

(More on this later.)

davidh

+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Have done this weekend (comparison)

I recently posted my plans for this weekend. How closely did those plans match reality? Find out. . . (more)

+ 0 - 0 | § ¶My Upcoming Week, Feb. 21-27

Monday

Work

Whose Line is it Anyway? -- new episodes on ABC Family (second one tape delay)

24: "Day 4: 4:00 P.M.-5:00 P.M."

Medium: "Lucky"

(perhaps) CSI: Miami: "Nothing to Lose" (90 minutes, 8:30-10:00) (DVR'ed)

Tuesday

Work

NCIS: "Caught on Tape"

Veronica Mars: "Ruskie Business"

(possibly) Constitution Reform Committee chat

Wednesday

Work

Lost: "...in Translation"

Alias: "Echoes"

CSI: NY: "Hush"

Psi Phi meeting

The West Wing: "Drought Conditions" (on tape, 1:05am -- pre-empted by Bradley basketball)

Thursday

Work

Survivor

CSI: CSI: "Big Middle"

Friday

Work

Joan of Arcadia: "Shadows and Light"

JAG: "Straits of Malacca"

Numb3rs: "Sabotage"

Star Trek: Enterprise: "Divergence" (exact time unknown due to basketball) (tape delay)

Stargate: SG-1: "Reckoning, Part 1"

Stargate: Atlantis: "The Brotherhood"

Battlestar Galactica: "Flesh and Bone"

Saturday

Perhaps hanging out with Joe

No television plans

Sunday

(possibly) Church

Constantine with Jim, Eric, and Joe

(possibly) Movie thingie at Bradley

(possibly) Some of the Oscars

davidh

+ 1 - 0 | § ¶To do this weekend (revised)

Saturday

• Drive to Washington
• Buy groceries (lower sales tax than Peoria, since I'll be driving out there anyway to...)
• Pick up Joe
• Destroy* Psi Phi television to Goodwill (* - maybe "donate"; the wording was fuzzy)
• Hang out with Joe
• Drive Joe home
• Return to Peoria

Sunday

• Attempt to wake up in time to go to church, then do just that
• Drive to Bloomington
• Hang out with Kevin
• Help Dan move out of his apartment and back into Dad's house
• Watch "The Simpsons" (tape-delayed) and "Young Blades" (either before or after...)
• Return to Peoria

There is a lot of driving in my future. :-)

davidh

+ 0 - 0 | § ¶If I woke up with Alice

Over on LiveJournal, there's a rather silly meme going around, "If you woke up and I was in bed with you, what would your first thought be?" I even perpetuated it. One of the replies I made to another person's posting was, I thought, a rather good piece of writing (at least for me), and since nobody but the person to whose instance of the meme would ever see it otherwise, I've decided to post it here, with a few minor modifications related to this person's identity, such as changing people's names and how I know her, and expanding it just a bit. So, without further ado, here's "If I woke up with Alice".

(more)

+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Something trivial

On Sunday, I helped Kevin and his team, Society for Creative Anarchism, with a big question in KVCS's 50-hour trivia contest, "TSI: Trivia Scene Investigation". The question was as follows:

Someone has been murdered, and the only clue is a series of five numbers:
19, 39, 74, 148, 295
What is the victim's mother's maiden name?

Read on to find out the answer to this and other questions...

(more)

+ 0 - 0 | § ¶My Upcoming Week, Feb. 14-20

Monday

Work

Whose Line is it Anyway? -- new episodes on ABC Family (7:00-7:30 and 8:00-8:30) (second one tape delay)

24: "Day 4: 3:00 P.M.-4:00 P.M."

CSI: Miami: "Identity"

Tuesday

Work

NCIS: "Witness"

Veronica Mars: "Mars vs. Mars"

(possibly) Constitution Reform Committee chat

Listening to WRBU (DJ Roo's Funtime Hours)

Wednesday

Work

Lost: "Outlaws"

The West Wing: "Freedonia"

CSI: NY: "'Til Death Do We [sic] Part"

Psi Phi meeting

Thursday

Work

Survivor (season premiere)

CSI: CSI: "King Baby"

Slipstream (movie on Sci-Fi Channel) (tape delay)

Friday

Work

Joan of Arcadia: "Independence Day"

Star Trek: Enterprise: "Affliction" (tape delay)

JAG: "Bridging the Gulf"

Numb3rs: "Prime Suspect"

Stargate: SG-1: "Citizen Joe"

Stargate: Atlantis: "Before I Sleep"

Battlestar Galactica: "6 Degrees of Separation"

Saturday

No particular plans

Sunday

Trip to Bloomington -- see Kevin, help Dan move

Young Blades: "The Exile"

The Simpsons: "There's Something About Marrying" (tape delay)

davidh

+ 2 - 0 | § ¶Places I've Lived

Because I need to get to bed but have decided not to do so just at the moment, this was borrowed (to be later returned with interest) from kradical. And since it's more "personal" than most memes, I'm putting it here rather than my LiveJournal.

Places I've lived:

(more)

+ 0 - 0 | § ¶They're here!

I've received (at last) my copies of Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume Two and Volume Three! I've been looking forward to these books for quite a while, so I'll be starting in on them very soon.

I'm awfully close to the end of Microserfs, though, so rather than jump right into Worlds, I think I'll hold off until I finish that book.

In other book news, I got the cover artwork for the Star Trek: Voyager: String Theory trilogy from Marco yesterday. I should have it posted tonight. I think it's quite nice with all three covers connected, though given the style I wouldn't be surprised to see some complaints about it.

davidh

+ 0 - 2 | § ¶Figured it out...

On Saturday, Joe came over to watch hang out and watch Star Trek. We ended up watching three episodes of Deep Space Nine: "One Little Ship" (since he'd seen the first half of the episode recently but didn't get to see the end), "His Way" (since I was looking for another "fun" episode from the sixth season, and he hadn't seen that episode before), and "Children of Time" (since Joe remembered seeing the end of that one, but not the beginning).

While he was here, we took a look at my DVD writer and give it a test run. With my digital recording of Enterprise's "Daedalus", I used InterMedia's WinDVD Creator 2 to edit out the commercials (it was seamless!), make scene menus, and record a finished DVD. I used a super high-resolution image of the Enterprise I got back in the summer of 2001 for the background image. Since I couldn't figure out how to separate the audio track from the video track, I couldn't get the Enterprise theme song from the recording, I had to use the first season version from the Enterprise soundtrack for the menu background music.

It took three tries to get everything set up correctly, such as getting still images for the chapter breaks (which I forgot the first time), getting the volume correctly balanced (it was much too loud the first time, so we adjusted it the second time, but discovered that you have to balance each chapter individually (or else we didn't see how to apply the setting for all chapters at once)), getting all the labels set (I'd set them the first time, but when I changed the number of chapters per scene selection screen, it reset all of the other settings), and so on. But fortunately, DVD-R's are fairly cheap.

So I'm going to have to start moving all my recorded episodes onto DVD, since I'm down to only 24Gb free on my 160Gb drive!

davidh

+ 2 - 0 | § ¶My Upcoming Week, Feb. 7-13

Monday

Work (go in early)

Transfer the Psi Phi bank account to the new officers' names

Whose Line is it Anyway? -- new episodes on ABC Family (7:00-7:30 and 8:00-8:30) (second one tape delay)

24: "Day 4: 2:00 P.M.-3:00 P.M."

CSI: Miami: "One Night Stand"

Tuesday

Work

NCIS: "The Meat Puzzle"

Veronica Mars: "Lord of the Bling"

On-line chat: Constitution Reform Committee

Wednesday

Work

Lost: "Homecoming"

Alias: "Nocturne"

CSI: NY: "Blood, Sweat, and Tears"

Psi Phi meeting

The West Wing: "The Wake-Up Call" (on tape, 1:05am -- pre-empted by Bradley basketball)

Thursday

Work

CSI: CSI: "Unbearable"

Friday

Work

Joan of Arcadia: "Romancing the Joan"

Star Trek: Enterprise: "The Aenar" (tape delay)

JAG: "Fit for Duty"

Numb3rs: "Structural Corruption"

Stargate: SG-1: "Full Alert"

Stargate: Atlantis: "Sanctuary"

Battlestar Galactica: "Litmus"

Saturday

Birthday party for Zoey (in Normal)

No particular television plans

Sunday

Young Blades: "Enchanted"

davidh

+ 0 - 2 | § ¶Knock knock/Who's there?/(no reply)/See you in court!

From cnn.com: A 49-year-old woman sued two teenage neighbors who brought her some home-baked cookies, because they did not say who they were when she asked.

Wanita Young was so frightened by the non-reply that, even after spending the night at a relative's house, she was still shaking and had to be taken to the hospital.

Although the families of the teenagers offered to pay for her medical bills, Wanita decided that since there was not an in-person, sincere apology, a lawsuit was the proper course of action.

The judge ordered Ms. Young to accept the teenagers' original offer of paying for her medical bills; he did not require them to give an in-person, sincere apology. (The article states that this is ruling was in favor of Wanita, but for all practical purposes, it was really a ruling in favor of the teenagers, since they did get the ruling they were looking for, and Ms. Young did not get what she was looking for.)

Said Ms. Young after the ruling, "I'm not gloating about it. I just hope the girls learned a lesson." I'm sure they did: The next time you make cookies, leave Wanita Young off the delivery list.

davidh

+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Yesterday's outage

Thursday, between 1:52pm and 8:26pm CT, the Psi Phi website was unavailable. Initially, it was thought that the machine had been taken off-line to install a second hard drive to do a complete backup onto (previously, tape backups were performed), but as it turns out, there had been a miscommunication, and instead of installing a second hard drive, the new drive was installed as a replacement drive. Thus, with no data on the drive, the site was unavailable. This also affected the comicboards.com discussion areas, since they are on the same machine.

Fortunately, everything was resolved with no loss of data, just loss of time.

It occurs to me that a good way to inaugurate my DVD writer would be with a complete backup of the Psi Phi website. I think I'll see to this tonight.

davidh

+ 0 - 1 | § ¶Star Trek: Enterprise -- cancelled

STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE TO END ITS CURRENT VOYAGE ON UPN IN MAY

UPN and Paramount Network Television have jointly announced that this will be the final season of Star Trek: Enterprise on UPN. The series finale will air on Friday, May 13, 2005.

"Star Trek has been an important part of UPN's history, and Enterprise has carried on the tradition of its predecessors with great distinction," said Dawn Ostroff, President, Entertainment, UPN. "We'd like to thank Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and an incredibly talented cast for creating an engaging, new dimension to the Star Trek universe on UPN, and we look forward to working with them, and our partners at Paramount Network Television, on a send-off that salutes its contributions to The Network and satisfies its loyal viewers."

David Stapf, President of Paramount Network Television, said, "The creators, stars and crew of Star Trek: Enterprise ambitiously and proudly upheld the fine traditions of the Star Trek franchise. We are grateful for their contributions to the legacy of Trek and commend them on completing nearly 100 exciting, dramatic and visually stunning episodes. All of us at Paramount warmly bid goodbye to Enterprise, and we all look forward to a new chapter of this enduring franchise in the future."

A prequel to the original Star Trek series, Star Trek: Enterprise premiered on UPN on Sept. 26, 2001, and aired for its first three seasons on Wednesdays (8:00-9:00PM, ET/PT). On Oct. 8, 2004, Star Trek: Enterprise moved into its current time on Fridays (8:00-9:00PM, ET/PT). Through its four-year run, Star Trek: Enterprise produced a total of 98 episodes and earned four Emmy Awards.

In January, Paramount Domestic Television sold the rebroadcasts of Star Trek: Enterprise into off-network syndication in over 90% of the country, including 49 of the 50 top markets, and is set for debut in Fall 2005.

The series stars Scott Bakula as Capt. Jonathan Archer, John Billingsley as Dr. Phlox, Jolene Blalock as the Vulcan Sub Commander [sic] T'Pol, Dominic Keating as Lt. Malcolm Reed, Anthony Montgomery as Ensign Travis Mayweather, Linda Park as Ensign Hoshi Sato and Connor Trinneer as Chief Engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker III.

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are the creators and executive producers of the series. Star Trek: Enterprise is a Paramount Network Television production.
____
(UPN Press Release)

+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Overview of the past week

Tuesday morning, I woke up feeling a little "blah". Went to work, and one the way there, nearly got squished... I was in the left turn lane when the light turned green... there was no oncoming traffic, so I pulled forward to turn, but then I had to wait for a pedestrian who took that time to cross, and by the time the pedestrian was out of the way and I continued my turn, another vehicle came along thinking it had the right-of-way. (Since I was turning left, it actually did, but that's beside the point.) I was able to stop in time, but the driver gave me an angry horn honk. I got to my destination, parked, and caught my breath. It was a bad start to a worse day.

Work itself was okayish, but by the end of the day, I was feeling very bad, with a big headache and sore throat. I took some Tylenol and some Chloraseptic, and went to bed.

Wednesday, I didn't go in to work until early afternoon, I think it was, though I stayed rather late. The thing at work had been rescheduled from 6am to 5pm. When I got home, I got on AIM and started chatting with people, but my network connection cut out in the middle of a few conversations. This isn't the same as the occasional network blips I've written about in the past... the cable modem lost signal completely. I tried unplugging it and replugging it in, but to no avail. Medicated myself several times throughout the day.

Went to Psi Phi, had a good time, came home. Network connection still out.

Thursday, got a call from work letting me know that things had gone horribly wrong and I was needed to diagnose and fix it. Went in, I think, a little before noon. Sore throat was not so bad, but now my nose was running a lot. At last, a reason to use up all of those napkins I got from restaurants. Side effect: Sore nose.

After work, I meant to come straight home, which should've taken no longer than 20 minutes from the time I left my desk. However, a number of factors comspired against me. First, since it was late, all of the doors leading out of the building were locked. This in and of itself is not unusual; they're always like this after a certain point in the evening. What usually happens is I push the buzzer and security remotely activates the door to let me out. Tonight, though, the buzzer doesn't work. There's no sound, and the light next to it doesn't light up. I try another door, and that buzzer it out as well. Finally, I find a third door, and that buzzer is working, somewhat... it's very staticky. So that took a good five to ten minutes, plus there's the greater distance to walk from the further door to the parking lot.

On the way home, I realized that I needed to pick up some more Chloraseptic, since I was very nearly out, and some tissues, since restaurant napkins just aren't soft enough. So I knew I'd need to make one additional stop.

Then, as I approached home, I realized I was very low on gas in the car, so I pulled into the gas station near my house. And found that all four lanes were in use... there are two pumps in each lane, only one car in each lane, but each was facing the wrong direction for me to pull in so the gas tank was on the correct side of the car. So I parked behind one of the cars and waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, it became clear that three of the four cars belonged to one guy, who had parked them in front of the pumps to do some repair work, rather than using other areas that would be more appropriate, such as ANYPLACE ELSE. At last, the fourth lane opened up, and I pulled around and got some gas.

After finally finishing at the gas station, I went to the grocery store. When I got there, I discovered that they were remodeling, so many things were not where they normally would be. So I had to walk around a bit to find them. And, then, since I was at the store anyway, I went ahead and got some other groceries. Eventually, I hot home about an hour later than I'd intended... part of it completely my own doing, part of it completely caused by others, and part of it caused by others as a result of my own doing. :-)

Network was still out. Called Insight to report it; they could have somebody out Saturday. Made the appointment.

Friday, went in to work... things still chaotic there. Health improving somewhat, but still feeling not-so-great.

Got home, and the network connection was back! Watched TV, then stayed up entirely too late enjoying my newly-recovered connectivity.

Saturday, went and got Joe for the final part of the oil change (replacing the filter), then we watched a couple episodes of Voyager and had some pizza, and I showed off The Sims 2.

So there you have it.

davidh