Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

This is what happens when Joss Whedon gets bored during the writer's strike.

10.48

10.48 hours.

That's a minute shy of 10 and a half.

That's what I worked today. Tomorrow isn't looking to be good either. I've got to get all my ducks in a line as it were, before we take off for the home state. This is the first time I've worked later than my boss. Oddly, it's about the first time he's been in before me as well, so I guess that works out.

Follow that up with a frustrating time preparing dinner (not enough pasta, couldn't get audio working on the movie I was trying to watch, burned the meat, etc.) and I have had a pretty frustrating day. At the end of it all though, I've consumed a tasty pile of carbs and protein, I'm watching my favorite movie, and (...pause to run to kitchen) drinking a glass of triple distilled, seven year aged, Irish imported water of life. So all in all, I guess it works out pretty well.

I really forgot just how much I enjoy the movie I'm watching - "most beautiful thing in the world" jokes aside, American Beauty really is the best film I've ever watched. I don't think I've watched it in... like 3 or 4 years, and it sort of drifted from my mind. Even before I fixed the sound, just watching the first 5 minutes on mute while I was cooking reminded me how much I enjoy it. Wonderfully shot, perfectly acted, flawlessly written, and, as I've noticed for the first time tonight, awesome use of music. I've wanted to watch it all day, but I must have subconsciously added it to the queue after watching Fight Club last night. Seeing them back to back, they've got some pretty strong thematic connections I'd not noticed before. Does that make me a bad wanna be film student?

Oh, and happy birthday to one of my (very few, based on the comments I get) readers. I'd say belated, but it's still June here!

Decadence

We ate out last night, at a place called Black Angus. They appear to be a chain out here. As Erin said to convince me: "We have a coupon!" It was a deal on their "dinner for two" special. We paid 37 for it (not including wine), where it would have been something like 50 or so normally. Chicken fingers(split), clam chowder (for Erin) and salad (for me), Filet Mignon with veggies and rice pilaf(for Erin) and Sirloin with veggies and baked potato (for me), and a Creme Brulee (split). I still feel sluggish 12 hours later. I'm fairly confident that there were more calories in that meal than I usually eat in a day.

Ugh.

I just got the following email:
Compare People to me show details 1:57 PM (38 minutes ago) Reply
This email was sent by Compare People. You can disable emails here.---Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses:
STRENGTHS:
best friend
most punctual
bravest
WEAKNESSES:
most confident
craziest

I get one of these a week or so, always pretty much the same. The last bit is what bothers me: is the metric on "craziest" trating it as a positive or negative trait? Is this telling me that I need to be more crazy? To anyone on facebook: when that question comes up in Compare People, which do you peg me as?


A note about my upcoming trip: I've embedded a google calender on the bottom right of this page, check it to see where we'll be over the 2 weeks we're there. Let me know if you want to get together when I'm near your part of the state.

I love the new millenium

This is what's wrong with the world. I'll watch it anyway, but it's wrong on so many levels. I mean, come on. This stuff happened 3 years ago. What. The. Hell.

Smoke signals

I've given up the dangers of wind and water for those of earth and fire. Not really a good trade.

I never realized before we moved out here how far smoke can diffuse. Like our first earthquake, our we heard about our first forest fire after the fact. Well, sort of. We're in no real danger where we are, as our town and the surrounding are plenty urbanized, so we only get the indirect effects. The first fire of the season was in the Santa Cruz mountains, a good 30 miles or so south of us, about 2 months ago. The current crop are burning in the East Bay and Brisbane.

The smell is what really amazes me. From miles and miles away, we get the scent of burning wood. Erin insists it's like living at a campfire, whereas I find it smells like pipe smoke is following me everywhere I go. The secondary effect is on the sun as it sets. It caught my eye on the drive home this evening, and I did my best to record the image. Sadly, the photographic spirit is willing, but the equipment is weak; the following are my best shots and still don't do the glowing orange orb justice.





Damn I need a DSLR.

George Carlin

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

After dark... The pandas stalk...

Feasting on bums, who sleep in the park.

Doing my best to spread viral videos. This is all of 15 seconds long, but you'll watch it at least 4 times.

Start spreading the news...

Yankees win! Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees win!

4-1 Yanks over A's, thanks to a grand slam from Hideki "Godzilla" Matsui. Awesome seats, 30 rows back from first base. I'll post pics later on. (EDIT: Pics below!) There were, no joke, as many Yankee fans in our section as Oakland fans. And the drunk dude in front of us got kicked out. Good time was had by all.

Neeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrds! Mk. II

Just returned from the aforementioned game day event. A good time was had: we three were all at the same table (the store ran two events concurrently), with a pair of quiet hack and slash type guys who knew each other. We had a really great DM, by name of Travis, who clicked pretty well with us. Perhaps we shall make some effort to track him down, I was hoping to talk to him afterward but he seemed to be in a bit of a rush. All in all, no one died, children were rescued, and a good time was had. I had the human cleric of Pelor, Erin had the half elf rogue, and Steve had the human fighter. Having immersed myself in the new system for the first time, I'm pretty happy with it. Judging when to use encounter and daily powers will be rough to adapt to, but even at first level you have enough encounter powers to use them pretty freely. I've got some complaints about old favorites that they've reworked, prime examples being Fireball and Power Attack, and Magic Missile a little bit, but some of the new stuff interests me, like Hunter's Mar- um, Quarry, and Warlock's Curse. I'm really on the fence about multiclassing. I'll have to do a few builds to decide.

Neeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrds!

D&D 4e came out today. Erin's picking it up at work, since Amazon would only save us 10 bucks or so and rumor has it they're backlogged a month and a half. I've seen... a bit of the new material, via the standard channels, of course (wink wink nudge nudge knowwhatImean knowwhatImean), and I'm sort of excited about it. It's very different. Very. But it seems like it could be fun. Erin, Steve, and I will be going to a D&D gameday event tomorrow, or at least attempting to: there seem to be only 3 or so in the whole of the Bay area, and alot of nerds, so who knows if we'll get in. Handy for us that the only store on the penninsula (including SF proper) running one is a mile from our apt. I'm a little disappointed in the rumors about the pre-gens available in the adventure, but I'll take what I can get anyway. Seems a shame they're only demoing one of the new races, and none of the new classes. I mean seriously, why double up on fighters? Also rogue is the only striker that didn't catch my attention, and is the only striker in the party.

In context of the 4e release, I got an awesomly hilarious email from Amazon:

Amazon.com recommends "Complete Scoundrel: A Player's Guide to Trickery and Ingenuity (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying)" and more

None of the "and more" were 4th ed books. All 3.5.