Month: May 2007

Categories
Television & Movies

More Star Wars? Oh hell yeah.

Artoo Detoo, where are you?So help me God, I’m going to point you to an article on FoxNews.com for the first and only time ever. George Lucas is doing more Star Wars, but this time as a couple of TV movies – though I wonder if these won’t morph into the new trend of “direct to DVD movies which get a broadcast window immediately before their DVD release”, a la the upcoming Galactica movie.

And while I know that “received popular opinion,” as I like to call it, has decided that the Star Wars prequels were crap, I’m up for more. I was underwhelmed with a few elements of Episode II, but was almost completely happy with I and III. I love this idea. I love that I might be able to sit down with my son and watch some new stories unfold in that universe, not something that I’ve seen a zillion times and analyzed to death while he’s just seeing it for the first time. Something new to both of us.

Even if it takes, oh, say, four years from this September…well, hey, that was good enough for me when I was four years old.

Rock on, George.… Read more

Categories
Gaming Home Base

Game room redux

My garage-sale-hopping this weekend didn’t produce any games, but I did spend all of $13 on some decent shelves and some baby clothes. Shelves are a good thing: basically, everything of mine that’s in the little bedroom has got to come out of there to make way for baby. That means tons of books, more than a few knick-knacks, boxes full of stuff that’s just been stored in there…and quite a bit of it will probably get tossed out, or set aside for a yard sale of our own that I hope we’ll have the time and energy to hold between now and baby time. So I’ve got my eyes open for storage solutions for the stuff I don’t want to toss.

These two shelves aren’t a bad start.

Earl's game room… Read more

Categories
Spamatozoa

Seven (dozen) dirty words you can’t say on my blog

I got this in my e-mail today, and it just seemed so wonderfully vague that I had to laugh:

The primrose path is hereabout with Cial!s!

However, funny as that is, it reminds me that I’ve been meaning to post something for quite a while. To cut down on the already overtaxed comment management ability of the software here, I’ve put several frequently-spammed words into a list which basically auto-filters incoming comments. Basically, if a comment contains any of these words, it goes nowhere. It isn’t set aside so I can manage it, it’s just auto-deleted.

effexor, valium, casino, ephedrine, phendimetrazine, bowflex, zoloft, ephedra, cymbalta, zoloft, adderall, refinance, mortgage, rolex, viagra, xanax, phentermine, hoodia, cialis, alprazolam, singulair, adipex, protonix, carisoprodol, diazepam, ativan, vicodin, tramadol, taladafil, xenical, fioricet, hydrocodone, levitra, keno, baccarat, paxil, propecia, butalbital, celexa, albego, acyclovir, tadalafil, wellbutrin, refinancing, oxycodone, percocet

I’m providing this list as a courtesy to my friends, so they know…well…what not to say. I don’t normally go in for censorship of any kind like that, but (A) these show up way too often in spam comments that I delete before you can ever see (so they’re good tools to help weed out spam to a manageable level), and (B) I don’t see these things coming up in casual conversation around here. They’re all words that have appeared in spam comments here before.

Anyway, now you know…and knowing is approximately 47.2% of the battle. (Little known fact: approximately 6% of the battle is post-consumer recycled fibers.)… Read more

Categories
Critters ToyBox

It never fails…

So it’s May, and it’s the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, and it should come as absolutely no surprise that I’m digging into more of last year’s Great Star Wars Toy Haul for some upcoming pictorial pieces here on the site. And you know, by now, it should come as absolutely no surprise that there’s a great deal of interest in these items…from the kitten community.

Oberon vs. the Millennium Falcon

And Olivia will be happy to check under your hood while you’re fueling up at “Meows Eisley”:

Oberon vs. the Millennium Falcon

Stay tuned for next week’s update to see if I actually get any shots of the Falcon sans kittens. 😆 (And yeah, I know, I know, I better just get used to this sort of thing…)… Read more

Categories
Critters Gadgetology Home Base

Scoping the place out

I hang out on video and computer game collecting message boards where my friends always boast of massive hauls from garage sales, yard sales, and thrift stores, and I never have that kind of luck.

Tonight, I can report that I continue to have precisely not that kind of luck. My wife, however, is a different story. Because in addition to finding a really adorable (and, for this part of the country, kinda unusual) stuffed moose for the baby (my baby was bit by a m00s once…), she also snagged this setup for me:

Orbitor 6500

Oh, but wait, there’s more… … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Television & Movies

And he’d already have a cat buddy nicknamed Obi-Wan…

For all of about 60 seconds last night, we were hemming and hawing over the possibility of Ewan as a baby name, and then it was back to Evan. The only problem there was simply that, like Ellison (remember, that name where I was the only one who liked it), nobody would be able to disassociate it from, well, someone else in particular.

I have to recant a bit on a pet hate of mine – my wife has actually gotten me semi-hooked on a reality show, in this case Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch, or, as I call it because I can’t believe I’m actually tuning in on a regular basis for a reality show, That Damn Crab Show. I got to thinking about it the other night – as much as they go on and on and on about how these king crab fishermen who brave the Bering Strait are paid kingly amounts of money for all that crab…I wonder how much Discovery Channel is paying the photogs who are tagging along with them, getting in the way, and getting their gear soaked on a routine basis? At least the poor bastards accustomed to working on deck know what to do when some whacking great rogue wave knocks the ship on its side. What in the world do you do when you’re just standing around on the slippery deck with a $25,000 camera to hold onto and not much else? There are some jobs you couldn’t even pay me enough for.

And speaking of crab meat and danger, let’s talk Lost. … Read more