Sunidesus

Sunidesus tag:www.sunidesus.net,2008://7 2008-10-04T00:06:13Z Welcome to my Home Page! There's a bunch of separate blogs involved here, but they're all me! The last ten entries across all the blogs show up here. If you want a specific section click on it under categories. Everything here does get updated, some areas just get updated more often than others! Contact Movable Type Pro 4.21-en Almost tag:www.sunidesus.net,2008:/blog//1.2461 2008-10-03T23:57:24Z 2008-10-04T00:06:13Z

I just have my three shopping bags that need their pictures taken, but everything else is up to date on the knitting blog. The entries are dated by close to when they were actually finished so you'll have to go...

knitting blog. The entries are dated by close to when they were actually finished so you'll have to go through the monthly archives if you want to see everything. Also... the RSS feed on the main page works now. It'll grab the latest entries across all the blogs, just like the main page does.]]> Blindness tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2458 2008-09-26T23:40:28Z 2008-09-27T00:08:57Z

, by Well, that was an incredibly strange book. I first saw it a few months ago and thought it sounded interesting, but didn't get around to reading it right away. A few weeks ago I started seeing trailers for the movie adaptation and figured I should get around to reading the book. And assuming the movie is anything past mediocre it's going to be one of the very few exceptions to my normal "the book is always better" rule. The author, Jose Saramago, is apparently a Nobel laureate, and he and his books are popular and critically acclaimed and all that. Which seems odd to me, I think it desperately needs a ruthless copy-editor. One of the Amazon reviews said that they thought the lack of punctuation and run-on sentences and complete confusion of the writing was to keep the reader as confused as the characters. Which would be a good point, except that that seems to be the way the guy writes everything. So it wasn't a choice for effect. Beyond the writing style (which can be dealt with even if it's incredibly annoying) the characters were weird and their actions just didn't make sense. Why would everyone stop using names? If you can't see to describe someone the most logical way to identify them is by their name. But instead everyone just wanders around and thinks names are useless for some reason. They all seem to slide entirely too easily into behaving like animals. I realize that newly blinded people wouldn't be able to take care of themselves as easily as someone who has been blind for a longer amount of time, but none of them even try! They all just give up. And wouldn't it make sense to recruit actual blind people to help out? They can't "catch" whatever is blinding people so when it seems like it'll be a containable event, why not have blind people there to explain how to do things? To share their experiences? I lost patience with "the doctor's wife" pretty early on. She gets more and more upset by the way everyone is living, and yet does nothing to help the situation. She's in the perfect position to help a ton of people and she does nothing. Because she's afraid she'll have to lead everyone around all the time? That's just silly! Blind people don't need to be led everywhere. Help them figure out how to take care of themselves, how to help themselves. The whole thing just came off as very condescending and pretentious.]]> I Hate Jeans Shopping! tag:www.sunidesus.net,2008:/blog//1.2456 2008-09-20T20:03:32Z 2008-09-20T20:14:48Z

It's been rather chilly here the last couple days and the jeans I bought this past spring no longer fit. I realize this is a good problem to have, nonetheless, I hate clothes shopping in general and pants in particular....

capri story before. I am short. Petite pants are even too long, they need to be hemmed. But they do get close length-wise. A lot closer than "normal" pants. Unfortunately the top half of petite pants really don't fit at all. So I end up buying "normal" length pants that fit on the top half but are then 6 inches too long. I think I tried on at least a dozen pairs of jeans before I found one that basically fits. They're waaaaay too long, but they'll work. ]]> May I Take a Nap Please? tag:www.sunidesus.net,2008:/blog//1.2453 2008-09-15T22:23:31Z 2008-09-15T22:28:25Z

It's probably a really good thing that I'm just babysitting the 10 tonight 'cuz I'm not sure I'm going to conscious by then, let alone be able to do anything horribly useful. But on the plus side, BBC did finally air half of the 3rd quarter and all of the 4th quarter of the US/GB game. The gold medal game will be tomorrow at 8am (EST). So, still early, but not as bad and I'm off at 11 tonight so hopefully I'll actually be able to get some sleep before then! Go USA! C'Mon BBC! tag:www.sunidesus.net,2008:/blog//1.2451 2008-09-15T10:31:22Z 2008-09-15T10:34:27Z

So I figured out how to watch stuff on BBC's website (there's a proxy involved). Their player for the Paralympic coverage says "Live!" on it. So silly me thinks that means live. So I get up at 6 am (after being at work last night until nearly 1 because stupid football made us start late) to watch the US vs. GB rugby game. I thought they'd have it. It's starting to look that "live" means what they're airing on the BBC right now, not actually what's live right now. They've had track and swimming so far which is all stuff that happened earlier today. Grrr!!! It Never Fails tag:www.sunidesus.net,2008:/blog//1.2450 2008-09-12T19:36:45Z 2008-09-12T19:41:56Z

Every time I think I've seen every weird thing drivers around here do, something new and strange happens. On my way in to work this afternoon I was behind someone turning left. So I'm waiting for them to make it through the intersection, they finally get through but on the yellow. The light turns red, and I stay put to wait for it to turn green again. After maybe 5 or 10 seconds the person behind me starts beeping at me. I figured I'd completely zoned out and the light switched, glance up... nope, still red. So I point at the light and look back at him going "It's red!" The guy is behind me gesturing and all disgusted at me. It looked like he wanted me to go through the intersection. On the red light. It finally turned green and I went through and this dude turned left behind me so I only saw him for a few more seconds, but he went through his turn just shaking his head all disgusted at me. It didn't make me mad or anything, it just confused the daylights out of me. What exactly did he want me to do? How is stopping at a red light a bad thing? It makes me wish there were some way to track the guy down and ask him what on earth his problem was. The Honor of the Queen tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2448 2008-09-05T01:29:33Z 2008-09-27T00:27:28Z

, by Second in the Honor Harrington series by David Weber... This is going to be quick and short since it's Honor and Weber and my love for both has already been established. This is the one where Honor goes to Grayson for the first time, we meet the Mayhews, and there's the whole confrontation with Masada. The thing that really struck me this time around was the religious extremism. And the complete obliviousness of certain political types to it. That logic just isn't something that will work to combat that level of conviction. I'm always amazed by authors that can get me completely emotionally involved in a story, especially when it's one I've read before. ]]> Blue Tofutsies Socks tag:knit.sunidesus.net,2008://3.2430 2008-08-30T23:54:38Z 2008-10-03T23:51:32Z

Generic socks... This yarn totally rocks. The ball looks so tiny and the yarn itself looks so thin, but once I got going it was great. It's really soft and comfy stuff, and there's a huge amount of yarn in one ball. A lot more than I expected given it's size. I think I used just barely more than half of it and I made this pair quite a bit taller than I usually do. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get a second pair out of it without too much difficulty.

The Stats... Needles: 0's (2mm) Yarn: Tofutsies - Color 91506-82 Pattern: my standard generic Sizing: 14/needle up to 30/needle SPI: 7.5 Started: 7-21-2008 Finished: 8-30-2008]]> Sometimes Working in TV Has Advantages tag:www.sunidesus.net,2008:/blog//1.2447 2008-08-29T18:54:31Z 2008-08-29T18:57:09Z

I just got handed a DVD that has the episode of Bones that'll air this Wednesday. I now have something to watch when I get home from work tonight! Yay!...

Bones that'll air this Wednesday. I now have something to watch when I get home from work tonight! Yay! ]]> No Surrender tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2446 2008-08-28T15:14:30Z 2008-09-15T10:51:58Z

, by Fourth dead tree Star Trek: SCE book. Has ebooks #13-16... This is one of my few re-reads so far that are since I started the book blog, it showed up originally here. I didn't write much about it at the time, and I don't think I will this time either. I'm now caught up to where I left off last time in the SCE series so the next one I read in it will be new.]]> Consequences tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2445 2008-08-28T04:42:06Z 2008-09-12T20:12:53Z

, by Number three in the Retrieval Artist series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch... The first book is here, the second here. This one is a bit of a departure from the first two since it doesn't really involve aliens. There was a civil war on a colony planet more than a decade ago, and certain people ended up disappearing since they were under death sentences. The power structure on that planet has since changed and pardons have been issued and everyone can supposedly come out of hiding. Miles ends up retrieving one of those people and there are all kinds of consequences steming from that decision that go all the way back to the reason they disappeared in the first place. A number of people die and would they have if he hadn't retrieved that person? A lot of the core story ends up being about the lengths people will go to to get their desired result. Very much a "do the ends justify the means" kind of thing.]]> Smoke and Ashes tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2444 2008-08-23T23:12:54Z 2008-09-12T19:49:50Z

, by Third in the "Smoke &" series by Tanya Huff... Alrighty... since I've already talked about this series quite a bit before I'll skip rehashing all of that. So Tony realized in the last book that it'd be a good idea to actually work on the whole wizard thing so he has a bit more control of his abilities in this one. Still not great, but better than last time! Which is good since there's all kinds of nastiness being shoved through various gates that he has to take care of. There's also all kinds of business with Lee and the two of them finally relating to each other as people instead of PA and star. ]]> Smoke and Mirrors tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2443 2008-08-21T05:16:41Z 2008-09-05T02:04:00Z

, by Second in the "Smoke and" series by Tanya Huff... I'm thinking I might like these more if they were a completely seperate series and didn't have these little tantalizing bits of Henry in them. There's just enough there to make me notice how much he isn't there. Aside from my "I want more Henry" issues, I do like this series. I love the whole TV thing, behind the scenes stuff always fascinates me. I'm one of those people that wants commentaries on everything and loves behind the scenes featurettes on my DVDs. Yes, I work in TV, but it's TV news which is a completely different thing. The one thing that is the same though is the distribution of people. There's so many more behind the camera than in front, no matter what kind of TV it is. So... Tony is starting to figure out what the whole "being a wizard" thing means. And ends up having to "out" himself to a big bunch of his co-workers when they all get stuck in a very haunted house where they were shooting. It makes for an odd dynamic since he's low man on the totem pole, being a PA, but he's the one who has at least some idea of what's going on so he has to at least somewhat be in charge.]]> Argh! tag:www.sunidesus.net,2008:/blog//1.2442 2008-08-16T22:44:41Z 2008-08-16T23:07:10Z

So a couple things have happened over the past few weeks that resulted in me buying a new laptop today before work. Thing the first: I got a lovely little surprise at the beginning of the month; I was picked for the employee of the month. That comes with a monetary bonus. So that on top of the OT we've all been getting lately means that I have a bit of extra cash. Thing the second: Mass is doing their tax-free weekend thing this weekend. So I ended up at Best Buy today. I went in knowing exactly what I wanted since I knew it would be a madhouse and there'd be no way to actually look at things or try them out. I did that last weekend. Having heard all kinds of horror stories about Vista I was more than a bit apprehensive about that. But I figured I'd buy the thing, see how it works, and then decide if I want to deal with it or if I want to do a little reformatting myself. After messing around with the thing at work this afternoon for about two hours... I'm gonna be reformatting when I get home tonight. Vista is driving me absolutely nuts. I brought a couple programs with me so I could see how it works as far as installing things goes and it just refuses to cooperate. I keep changing settings, using different accounts... had to go into the command prompt to find the administrator account! I keep getting "access denied" messages no matter what administrative powers I give myself. It is just not intuitive at all. Settings aren't where I expect them to be, or they're hidden three menus down, and that's assuming the menu bar even shows up! It's pretty, but that's about it. And even the pretty is rather annoying (at least to me, I'm sure that's not true for everyone). The menu boxes have to do a little animation every time they pop up. It wastes time and it's distracting. I don't care if it's pretty! I just want it to work! I've already gone looking and all the drivers I'll need to make sure the hardware keeps working with XP exist. And I have an old copy of XP at home, so tonight I'll be joining the ranks of the "downgraders." Cyborg tag:books.sunidesus.net,2008://5.2441 2008-08-15T16:04:51Z 2008-08-16T00:05:01Z

, by By Martin Caidin, this book was the basis for a TV movie and then the TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man". This was an odd read, and it's become slightly more strange now that I've read a couple of the reviews that were left for it over on Amazon. All the reviews there were these glowing "best book ever" "amazing sci-fi" things, which was really not my experience at all. The story itself isn't bad and there's some mildly interesting cybernetics/bionics bits. Maybe at the time it was written (early 70's) it would have been more revolutionary as far as that particular subject goes. But the issues I had weren't really to do with the science at all. First issue is that it's incredibly sexist. Yes I'm sure part of that is because of when it was written, but I've read lots of sci-fi "classics" that were written decades ago that don't have that problem. The women all do that "damsel in distress/I just want the big strong man to love me" thing, which is just weird. And the guys do that "I'm going to make the decisions for your own good" thing. The characters in general, but the women in particular are very two-dimensional. Moving on from that, the attitudes after the main character gets hurt (which allows him to become the bionic man and all that) struck me as really off. Again, maybe it's because at the time it was written there weren't as many options for people with serious injuries. But even so, they seemed extreme. It was just assumed that of course he'll want to kill himself, who wouldn't? And then it took forever for the dude to start interacting with the world again. All the characters' baseline attitudes seemed very out of wack to me. If it were one or two of them, fine. But this was all of them. It would have been more realistic to have a range of attitudes and reactions. Also, it took quite a long time for anything to happen. Both in terms of time within the story and pages for the reader. I found myself thinking "get on with it already!" more than once! A lot of the science and explanations took a lot longer than seemed necessary, and rather dry on top of it. It just seemed overly elaborate for no real reason. There are a couple more books that were written (I think there's four total in the series) but I'm not at all sure I'll try any of them. Maybe I'll hunt up the next one and skim it to see if it gets any better before committing to the whole thing.]]>