Diary of a Wolfeman

Two Saturdays ago I wore my Transformers T-shirt when Pookie and I went out-n-about running errands and grabbing lunch. Just about everyone who seriously looked at the shirt recognized it, and had something to say about the new movie, whether they were looking forward to seeing it or had already been and enjoyed it. This worried me, as I had already heard some pretty worrisome things about the new movie.

What really worried me was the realization after lunch that the more effusive the excitement about the movie, the more obviously unintelligent the speaker. For instance, the guy at the video store was saying how one of his co-workers (a big fan of the franchise) was looking forward to the movie. Being an avid movie-man himself, he wasn’t about to talk down any movie that would possibly earn him dividends later on. The checkout girl at the stop-n-rob, however, praised the movie high and low through her missing front teeth. (At least, I think she was praising the movie – she was using words out of context. Badly.)

My friends and other folks who I deem to be high on the thinking chain, however, were all uniformly against the second installment as a “waste of valuable resources, and time you cannot get back.” This guy does a great “review”.

Plot holes you could drive the Titanic through, dis-continuity problems, terrible writing and you get tea-bagged by a robot.

Yeah, I’ll be skipping this one.

So the poor Zoe T. Monster Kitty has had a grooming issue for some time now. The dear is a long-haired black cat, and without a fair amount of attention, her coat knots itself up pretty damn bad.

Now, she used to take excellent care of herself, but then she got a tooth infection at some point and stopped a fair portion of her grooming routine, and the nats started to pile up. I brushed when I could force myself to, and cut them out when I couldn’t brush (she is rather unfond of both procedures), but it had finally gotten to the point where we just had to shave her.

I called around to various groomers, and the short of it is that it would be more expensive than buying the tools and doing it myself, plus I would have to put her in the car – another activity she is terribly unfond of. (Zoe does not travel well.) So, Tolerant and I ran out to PetCo today and picked up a new set of trimmers, some meaty treats and some advice from a pro:

“Trim the claws first, then apply any sedatives you may desire and your vet approves. Mow in the direction of the fur and just use the trimmer without a guard. Don’t pull on the skin and go slowly, and you should be able to come up under the nats and cut them out bit by bit.”

We had to do it in stages, and I started from just about her shoulders and went back from there. The end result is similar to a lion cut, but looks much worse because I am a terrible groomer. Here’s the after shot: (I don’t have a good example of a before handy)

This shot was taken after the final indignity of tossing her into the sink for a quick rinse to wash away the remaining dander and trimmings. The poor thing.

I’ll be checking my shoes rather carefully before donning them for the next month or so.

So there has been apparently some traction in the area of making Cowboy Bebop into a live-action flick. First announcement was that Fox Studios bought the rights and had a director, second announcement is that Keanu Reeves will take on the role of Spike Spiegel, mysterious man-of-action and partner to Jet Black.

This annoys me. On a number of levels.

First, let’s face it – they’re going to fuck it up. The chances of Fox taking on a movie like this and doing it any justice at all is so minimal as to be a statistical error.

Second, they put Reeves in as Spike. Now, if you look at pictures of Ted (Theodore) Logan and compare them to snaps of Spike, there is definitely a resemblance. Okay, I’ll give you that. But then there’s the fact that Keanu can’t fucking act. I realize that Spike isn’t the most emotive of characters, but let’s face it – he’s just a happy-go-lucky guy. Keanu acts woodenly because that’s all he’s got. Whoever they cast as Faye Valentine is going to have a helluva time carrying the movie on her tits.

I think one of the most terrifying things, however, are the Keanu-fanboy boards. I ran across one earlier today that spun the hell out of it and was trying very hard to give the impression that Reeves was actually in charge of and the driving force behind this project.

Bullshit.

You know how this went down? Someone at Fox managed to get the rights and tossed the project at one of the directors in their stable. Director sat down with a writer and pitched ideas back and forth. Then they watched a few episodes to get an idea of what the fuck they were talking about. The writer passed the spliff to the director and said “y’know (koff koff), we should get Reeves for Spike (koff).” So the director calls up Reeves and offers him the role, to which Reeves responds, “Whoa. Yeah.”

$Diety save this project.

The crime scene: the living room floor.
Description of event: came downstairs to feed the cats on my way to work and discovered:

1.) Laptop power transformer cord on the floor almost to the kitchen. When last seen, it had been plugged into both said transformer brick and the wall outlet 7 feet away.
2.) My Toshiba laptop, upside-down on the floor in front of the bookshelf it normally rests on top of.

Normally, the laptop sits on the top of my 7′ tall bookshelf as the only available horizontal surface in the living room unlikely to be covered with cat hair and the only place where the laptop is unlikely to become a cat pedestal. The power transformer sits in the corner of the windowsill, which is another handy horizontal surface midway between the nearest outlet and the top of the bookshelf.

Possible cause: I’m guessing that a certain gray mackerel tabby named Trouble Underfoot managed to get his tail (which is semi-prehensile and, we suspect, owner of a brain all it’s own) wrapped up into the cords as he jumped off of the windowsill, in the process pulling the laptop off of the bookshelf.

Partly my fault, as I had been in the habit of leaving the laptop a) running, b) charging, and c) perched kitty-corner on the shelf for best cooling airflow.

In any case, I think the poor beastie may be dead. Every time I press the power button, I get a different response, ranging from I get a power LED and nothing else up to allowing me to enter my login password before it freezes up. Popping the main panels off and re-seating all the connectors I could find hasn’t done much with it, the next step will be to completely dis- and re-assemble it.

Luckily, this is a Toshiba laptop and it was assembled with completely sane Phillips-head screws instead of some esoteric design I have never seen before. They even went so far as to make use of only 3 sizes of screws – One about a centimeter long that holds almost everything in, a tiny one for tight places, and a stainless steel one on a couple add-in cards.

Wish me luck…

Just how the hell did a search for “jock itch purell” bring someone to my blog?

I’m scared.

Because not only did it bring them here, IT’S THE TOP FUCKING SEARCH! Over and above the Exchange repair articles that have held the top search gold for months.

O.o
.

So the Bossman takes a moment this morning to read my response to La Grenouille to the entire crew at our weekly meeting. Said crew makes approving noises, and then Bossman slides a fifth of Captain Morgan’s Private Reserve across the table at me.

I love my job.

Hmmm… let’s see what the old dog has been up to…

Went to Katie O’Brien’s for breakfast with Tolerant and the Snake Boy, and I found myself tapping my fingers along to the music they had playing. I was certainly not expecting it, but sure as shit, they were playing “Bad Dog, No Biscuit” off of the Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack.

Japanese anime Bebop Jazz in an Irish bar. Who’da thunk it?

Planning for the tourney season has gone a bit wonky this year, as the Chef has decided to depart for greener pastures, and half the kitchen gear goes with him. Tolerant found us a deal on a new 8′ pop-up, but it’s from an on-line retailer who says they had one blue, one green and several orange units for sale. I asked for blue, but we’re taking bets on the end result – odds are leaning toward orange.

Work has been crazy the past couple of weeks – and it certainly hasn’t helped that I’ve been dealing with La Grenouille out at the winery for a good chunk of it. Damn little prick won’t drop an argument that he lost a week ago. I wrote him the polite rebuttal earlier (instead of telling him to fuck off and drop it already) and let his reply to that sit in my inbox for a couple of hours before curiosity got the better of me. What did the little frog say? “OK, thanks.”

That’s it? Fucker.

Speaking of other things work-related, construction continues on the new offices, and they finally got the sheet rock up in my new office – which is half the size of my current office. The downgrade is a bummer because I lose my personal lab space – I had a spare desk in the back of my office I would use for extra workspace when I needed it. Oh well. Bossman has mentioned before that if we ever got enough business concentrated between downtown and the East Side, it would be worth maybe opening a second office. Now I just have to get the sales guy out of the Winery-and-Country-Club circuit and onto the Lawyer-and-Commercial-House circuit.

Forget it. I hate lawyers too much, and I’ve heard bad things about them.

Time for bed, more next time – probably next month, at this rate. :)

So we’re remodeling our offices, and it turns out that Bossman has had the great idea to install ceiling speakers throughout the new space. RF was in this morning early and put his music on the system.

His choices leave a bit to be desired. Anything that isn’t from the 70’s, for instance.

*shudder*

So, back today from a sudden overnight trip to Bellevue Washington… which is a very weird place.

Bellevue is not too terribly far from Seattle proper, and you can tell that the Grand Vision for the downtown area is to be a little chunk of Manhattan as far as density goes, but they want it to be more modern. They have basically flattened and repaved all of Downtown, and built up towers. (They call ’em skyscrapers, but they average maybe 40 stories.)

I went to see our client’s offices, and noticed that there were three (3!) towers within 2 blocks of my client with Microsoft signs on them – which has got to be confusing when giving directions. “Now, ya turn left at the M$ tower, then turn right at the M$ tower and go past the M$ building…”

For anyone else who may be going there for some reason, I will tell you this: don’t cheap out on the hotel room. I stayed at the Extended Stay America on Main Street because it was only $100/night, and the bed was too hard, the pillows too flat, the windo faced the freeway, and worst of all, the “high-speed wireless Internet” was a $4.99 surcharge, and tested out at a whopping 256k.

I can get that tethering to my fucking phone. To sort of top everything off, the room stank of baby formula and I had to track down a Walgreen’s to get a can of Febreeze.

Another reason not to cheap on the hotel: get one with a decent restaurant or cafe because you’ll have to pay for parking everywhere you go, and the good restaurants that aren’t in the hotels are in the office towers, and parking is $3 an hour. Either that, or take a cab.

All in all, I didn’t like Bellevue and won’t be going back if I can help it.

Da Roomie and I have been sadly watching the downward spiral of local radio in Portland, and it has gotten to the point where I just can’t take it anymore. Radio sucks, and I get tired of swapping CD’s around on the road – especially when I’m flying solo out to one of the wineries on the back twistys and don’t want to stop just to change discs.

So, I’ve been saving up for a new toy, and today I treated myself (and my passengers) to some new audio capabilities: a Kenwood KDC-HD942U. So far I’m diggin’ it. MP3-on-CD-R support, USB support and built-in HD radio.

I don’t really care about the HD radio – it sucks just as bad as regular radio – but that USB support is crucial. The reason for this particular model, however, is that the USB port is a cable that they routed from behind the unit to one of the center console pockets. On all the other models in my price range, the USB ‘support’ is a port on the faceplate so you can break off you thumb drive and kill the port with an accidental grab at your drink.

A quick trip to the electronics store netted me a 4GB USB drive, which is plenty of room for my roadable selections. Of course, it will take a bit longer to dig my way through the manual to figure out how to use all the functions on the thing.