Month: November 2008

Categories
ToyBox

Torchwood figures for sale on eBay

Buy now, buy oftenGrrrrr. Basically, this is almost all of wave 1 (I’m keeping Gwen if I can afford to); I ordered in July, cancelled in August, and scificollector.co.uk seems to have forgotten I cancelled…so, long story short, I have an overdraft and some stuff for sale. Listings: Captain Jack, Weevil, Cyberwoman.

Didn’t really plan this, and it’d be Groundhog Day before I could get them returned and refunded, so to eBay they go. Thanks for looking.… Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

That Doctor Who book I keep saying I’m going to write

uh-ohSo, that big-ass Doctor Who reference book that I keep threatening to write and publish? I’m still working on it. Oh yes, it’s not going away. It will happen. The purpose of this post, however, is to do a wee bit of market research ahead of time; I’d appreciate it if those interested would respond and help me out a bit. While I’ve got some fairly definite ideas on how I’d like it to turn out – basically, my criteria with just about anything I create is that I’m producing a DVD that I’d like to watch, writing a book that I’d like to read, writing a song that I’d like to hear, and it just so happens that no one else has saved me the trouble of doing this stuff first. … Read more

Categories
Home Base

Toasty

Did everyone get online to get their free Dr. Pepper coupon today? If not, click here – you’ve got about 10 hours left. Bear in mind that the server is pretty much swamped. And if you don’t care for Dr. Pepper? Heck, send me the coupon. I’m a stay-at-home dad, I could use some free caffiene. (For those wondering why Dr. Pepper is giving away the farm, the president of the company made a bet that he’d give everyone in America a free Dr. Pepper if Guns ‘n’ Roses actually got their zillion-years-in-the-making album out this year. It was a pretty safe bet, since Axl’s held off on releasing the thing for over a decade now, but lo and behold, Dr. Pepper’s gotta pay the piper. I don’t care a thing about Guns ‘n’ Roses, but thanks for the free soda, guys.

I’ve been ignoring the ads on the right side of my screen on Facebook, but I did see one last night that I had to check out: Squirtshirts.com. Holy cow, I wish I’d known about this place sooner. They do pop culture-themed infant and toddler wear, bibs, diaper bags and so on, sort of like ThinkGeek’s T-shirt section, except for kids; their designs riffing on Lost and Star Wars are fantastic – I love the Dharma Initiative “Changing Station” symbol. 😆 If I had any money right now, I’d spend it there. Well done – this is a case where targeted advertising works (well, aside from the part where I’m broke so there’s no follow-through that actually generates any kind of revenue…)

Still keeping the house toasty, but I’d really like to have the central heat back up and running soon.… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base

The not-freezing-our-butts-off update

BrrrrrrrThe one guy in the county who will bother to look at our apparently outdated furnace is unavailable until Monday. We’re on our own since then. Borrowed a couple of space heaters from “the fam,” despite my huge, huge, huge reservations about those things (especially in terms of putting one in Evan’s room – I think I finally stopped looking into his room every half hour at around 3am), and we’ve kept the bathroom heaters running full-tilt too. I’ve also been doing a heap of cooking – tuna casserole, chicken, brownies…today’s menu probably includes hamburger helper (with ostrich meat instead of beef – I’m aiming for a minimum of beef usage, or, if you like, keeping it all to a “beef min”) and some teriyaki yumminess. The oven heat vents mostly inside the house (have I ever gotten into how weirdly this house is wired/arranged?), though not all in one place, so there’s a method to the cooking madness.

Evan’s already got a snotty nose, so my race to keep him from getting cold was probably lost on Thursday night when the heat stopped working. He slept warmer last night, though it took him forever to get to sleep with the space heater in his room – it has a blower in it, which made plenty of noise. It was either that or have him sleep in the playpen, which is in the game room – lots of glowy lights generating heat, the Avid making about as much noise as the space heater’s blower…same difference really.

I’ve been trying to do some PDF II work while the Avid’s fired up, but I’m running low on inspiration at the moment. I’m urgently needing a bit of a vacation from the boy, as much as I love him, and you know, working my ass off on the farm on Sunday doesn’t really meet any of the prerequisites of being that vacation. I had to be reminded that yesterday was Friday – the day of the week is pretty meaningless when you’re “on” 24/7 regardless. In that context, weekday or weekend ceases to have any meaning.

Anyway, I’ll stop there before I start getting really grumpy.… Read more

Categories
Home Base

We’ve got a problem

I could use one of these right about nowRemember this whole ordeal a couple of years ago where out heat went out at our house right in the middle of a cold snap? Looks like the rubber band that was installed on that repair has broken – which explains why I was sitting around last night thinking the house was so drafty. I was, in fact, feeling lots of cold air blowing on me, but it wasn’t from some new and mysterious draft that had suddenly popped up since the last cold snap – it was from the central heat & air blower vents. My wife recently got a “temperature taster” thing that can sense air temperature as well as direct readings (forehead, etc.), and I’ve been going around the house zapping the air with it:

Game room (where Evan and I are obviously going to be staying all day with the Avid and rope lights powered up) – 67 degrees
Evan’s room (one of the only tile floors in the house) – 58 degrees
Dining room next to the back door – 52 degrees
Today’s forecast high – 48 degrees

I’ve taken some immediate action, namely Turning Everything On That Generates Heat (including doing some cooking, which I needed to do anyway); it’ll run up the bill, sure, but so does running central heat at an average of 77 degrees. What I don’t know is what in the world we’re doing tonight: a couple of years ago it was “snuggle up with every available cat” but the equation changes ever-so-slightly with a one-year-old baby – it now takes on the dimensions of an emergency. Obviously it’s gonna be a long-sleeve day for him even in the house, but I have no idea what to do tonight. It may be time for a slumber party at the grandparents’ house. (Joy.)… Read more

Categories
ToyBox

Skip this if you’re not up for a toy-collecting rant

Kind of awkward huh?As has probably been painfully apparent lately, I really off of the sci-fiaction figure collecting bandwagon in 2008, largely thanks to Doctor Who. (Hey, there are worse hobbies/habits to have, and in all likelihood there are less expensive and more “mature” ones too. At least my practice run for a midlife crisis involves little bits of plastic.) Now it’s looking like next year’s Star Trek movie is going to make 2009 a hell of a year to have fallen off the wagon. … Read more

Categories
Cooking With Code

Oh hell yeah!

Look out! Oh no!Two lovely bits of news:

I’ve gotten video working on Scribblings again, see you can once more view gems like this or this or this. This feature has been broken for the longest time and now it’s back. Yay!

Maybe even better than that, I’ve installed a plugin that grabs comments from my Facebook notes and sucks them back into Scribblings as comments here – really the best of all possible worlds. Blog entries here are autoposted there, comments left there are duplicated here! (See this post for an example.) This is precisely the kind of incredibly useful stuff that has me seriously, seriously thinking of letting the Livejournal and Myspace dupes of this blog go dormant.

At this rate, when you come back tomorrow, my blog will be cooking breakfast for you.

/me goes to look for a babysitting plugin… Read more

Categories
Gadgetology

Facebook

So I finally got around to creating a Facebook account (how 2006 of me, huh?), and I’ve gotta say, I’m way more in love with Facebook already than I think I ever have been with Myspace or, lately, Livejournal. Facebook automatically does what those services damn well ought to be able to do: take the RSS feed from my blog and incorporate it into my profiles as if I’m writing it there as well. I’ve grown really tired of reposting my blog entries on LJ and MS, and let me tell you, Facebook’s ability to do that one simple thing makes me think seriously about letting those others slide. I used to be able to add stuff to my Livejournal blog automagically, but somewhere in there, LJ changed things around and broke the WordPress-to-Livejournal plugin. And as much of a pain in the butt as everyone on LJ thought it was to have to log in to my blog to comment, I kinda miss having all the commenting going on in one place instead of two or three places – it makes the “real” blog look pretty barren. 😆

Anyway, if I do make any drastic decisions, you’ll hear about it here. In the meantime, here’s ye olde Facebooke profile for anyone who wants to add me.… Read more