Coffee Klatch

So it’s New Year’s Eve and I’m watching the Twilight Zone Marathon on the SciFi Channel. Flipping back and forth to/from the Colts game, watching them beat the Dolphins. I’m also spending time this weekend working on some projects at home, like rearranging my entire library (1100+ books), organizing it by the Dewey Decimal System working from my LibraryThing catalog.

How weird that on the 31st of December there’s a ton of rain and even flooding, with a high of 58° here in the Midwest. Doesn’t feel like it will be January in a few hours.

The SciFi Channel is running their usual Twilight Zone Marathon for New Year’s Eve. It begins at 9:00am on Sunday, Dec. 31 and runs for 45 hours, through 6:00am on Tuesday, Jan. 2. If you enjoy the show and don’t want to buy the DVDs, this is a great way to record tons of episodes. I did it a few years ago and filled three VHS tapes with them, editing for commercials whenever I was awake.

Today they’re playing a variety of animal horror movies, just like the kind I blogged about yesterday. First was Chupacabra: Dark Seas, which starred John Rhys-Davies and nobody else really. It was about a legendary beast that gets loose on a cruise ship, having been smuggled on in a crate. Of course almost every plot point occurred because somebody did something stupid, like opening the crate or going back for a bag of money. And then there were the stupid things that people did, like firing automatic weapons repeatedly in the engine room. Of course the monster could take out trained soldiers, but the young girl who teaches aerobics can use pseudo-kickboxing techniques to keep it at bay.

Flying Virus is playing right now (featuring Gabrielle Anwar and Rutger Hauer). It’s about virus-carrying killer bees that get loose on an airplane (yes, bees not snakes). The bees enabled quick healing And of course the turbulence the plane goes through causes things in the cargo hold to fall and tumble around, damaging the case enough to open it a little and let the bees out. Go fig! A funny scene was when some dorky guy went into the restroom on the plane to “clean up” and when he turned off his electric razor, the buzzing continued, followed by the bees coming up the drain. Of COURSE the cargo hold is connected to the sink’s drain! I also laughed out loud when some woman picked up her headphones and put them on, tapped one ear (probably heard some buzzing), then jumped up and started screaming. And then I laughed even more when some guy was eating jelly beans, which were conveniently spread around on his tray, and then a bee landed one the one he was just picking up. Of course he held it only from the sides, so he wouldn’t notice until he put it in his mouth. Oh, and then there were the cheap effects like watching the airliner fly through the sky and turn around when the effects were obviously digital and not real. One more thing–these bees can sting people repeatedly without dying themselves.

Both of these movies had someone smuggling dangerous animals onto a plane, people on fire who forgot to stop-drop-and-roll, someone on a phone/radio saying “What? You’re breaking up.” and made some hissy noises to make the other person think they were losing the signal.

Great times! Coming up are Man-Thing, The Beast of Bray Road, and the ever-famous Frankenfish! (Doesn’t the very NAME make you laugh??) These movies star absolutely NOBODY!

[tags]sci-fi, scifi channel, twilight zone, animal horror, movies[/tags]

Lately I’ve been seeing quite a few commercials for Comcast High Speed Internet. It’s a cable company that offers Internet access via cable modem. What galls me is that all the commercials emphasize the high speed available and they say brag about how much faster it than DSL. Not that it’s untrue, but it’s only PARTIALLY true.

Cable modems allow faster download speeds but slower upload speeds. Example:

I like to use InternetFrog to see what my current upload/download speeds are. Right now, I actually do have Comcast Internet service, so I have a cable modem. As of right now, my speeds are 4.39 Mbps download and 415 kbps upload.

It’s all fine if you download a lot, but when it’s time to upload things, it averages 8 times faster than dialup (as opposed to over 80 times faster than dialup for downloads). Basic DSL, on the other hand averages 27 times faster than dialup for both. Or, to put it another way, cable modems are about 300% faster than basic DSL for downloading but 27% as fast when uploading.

So it’s all in how you put it. Yes, cable modems are “blazingly fast” for downloads, but I think commercials should say that it applies to downloads. Verbally. Not just in fine print at the bottom of the screen that’s gone so quickly you can’t even read it. They don’t have to say how much slower they are when uploading, but they should at least say that it’s DOWNLOADS that are so much faster.

[tags]internet, DSL, cable modem, download speed, commercials[/tags]

One of my favorite pastimes is watching ‘B’ movies and laughing. They’re usually cheap or “bad” movies that were made with serious intentions but had bad acting, lousy plots, horrific directing, cheap effects, or all of the above.

One the types of movies in this category that I enjoy is animal horror movies. Ones where animals either get real huge or attack in huge numbers.

Any kind of scary movie usually has moments where something that’s not visible to the camera scares or attacks someone. Maybe they’re grabbing them and pulling them into something or maybe they’re beating on a door or wall, trying to get in. You know the kind of scene I’m talking about. Somebody peeks into a hole and gets pulled in. Or maybe they take refuge in a small room with a locked door and then the “creature” starts pounding on the door, denting it, trying to get in. Or at least is shaking the flimsy walls.

That’s the role I would want. If I couldn’t play a character actor in a movie, I’d want to be the one behind the scenes that’s shaking the wall or grabbing the person. Every time I see that happen in a movie, I think, “That would be me there!”

For your holiday pleasure, here are a few more interesting yet pointless websites. Some are fun, some are funny, and some are just useless.

• Falling Sand Game
• Cows Go Moo
• Text Version of Pong
• Leek Spin
• Jedi Trainer
• Spot the Difference
• Become a Gnome
• Singing People

There are tons of free websites that provide online Sudoku games. Yesterday I saw some books of Sudoku games in a store, but figured I could get them for free online and not pay for the book. Since I’m more often with my laptop than I am without it, the online way to go was preferable. I was looking for a website, then, and I decided I liked Web Sudoku pretty well. It actually offers billions of puzzles (levels easy, medium, hard, & evil) and keeps track of your average time for solving each level of puzzle. Options include displaying or not displaying the time, allowing multiple numbers in one cell (to help solving), and the effects of the “How Am I Doing?” button. They also offer daily variations, so there’s always something new if you just want a single puzzle to solve.

If you want more, they offer a Deluxe version (for Windows and Mac) that includes playing offline, extra sizes (from 4×4 to 16×16!), full screen viewing, several variations, and printing up to 6 puzzles per page for old-style pencil-and-paper solving.

Visit http://www.websudoku.com/ to get started.

[tags]sudoku, online puzzles[/tags]

Okay, so I’ve often said that Ralphie from A Christmas Story reminds me of Alaric, my oldest boy. The way he looks, the way he treats his brother, everything. Well, Alaric has been asking for an air-soft rifle for Christmas and he actually got one. No compass in the stock, but the stock does detach. And no “thing that tells time” either. And air-soft guns shoot plastic pellets, not metal ones, but they can still sting.

Anyway, Alaric got the gun for Christmas yesterday and wasted no time in setting up some targets at the end of our wraparound porch and working on sighting in the rifle. The gun did come with safety goggles, but Alaric chose not to use them because they got in the way. After a while, one of his shots ricocheted off of something and bounced off something else and then hit him in the face. It wasn’t hard and he wasn’t hurt at all, but it was in the EXACT SAME PLACE as Ralphie! He came in and said what happened and I said, “You shot your EYE out!” Pretty funny.

Oh, and as a bonus fact, if you aim a red laser pointer at a regular incandescent lightbulb, it sort of lights it up all red. That was for free.

[tags]Christmas story, Ralphie[/tags]

Hodie Christus natus est! Today Christ is born! Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.

When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.

Luke 2:15-20

Here’s a special gift for you. A link to the Weebl & Bob website, where they’ve made a special version of the famous Badger Badger Badger cartoon, called Badger Santa.

[tags]Christmas, birth of Christ, badger[/tags]

I guess I’d never seen the whole original movie before, but today I watched Miracle on 34th Street and actually enjoyed it. I guess I’d thought the movie was more sappy or overly sweet or emotional or something, but it really wasn’t. It actually was pretty funny and more enjoyable than I’d expected. Plus it starred Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, Gene Lockhart, and Natalie Wood (at 9 years old).

If you’re looking for a Christmas special that’s not too serious and not too preachy or sweet and mushy, this is a good choice. It’s light enough to get you laughing now and again, while managing to make a relatively subtle statement about the Christmas spirit. Definitely on the list of best Christmas movies.

The holidays are a busy time. Many of us get so busy with concerts or baking or activities that we don’t have time for the really important things in life. Like Christmas Specials on TV!

Don’t have time for watching that favorite special? Well, here you go. The SUPER-CONDENSED versions!

• It’s a Wonderful Life. In 30 seconds. Acted out by bunnies!
• A Christmas Story (same thing)
• Christmas Vacation (yes, the same thing)

You can see all these and much more at Angry Alien Productions.

And as a bonus, here’s a link to a redneck reading Twas the Night Before a Non-Denominational Winter Holiday!

[tags]movies, satire, bunnies[/tags]