tweeeets 07-31-2008

• 09:49 I can't send personal email to my work email, which is, among other things, ANNOYING. #
• 12:45 next up on the list of tech I'm a decade behind on enjoying: universal remote controls. Holy crap, are they easy to setup online. #
• 19:04 one would think, as a teleworker, I would not have to spend a day doing research for a telework tools story. But I do. #

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Good Tweetage, 7-26 to 7-30-2008

• The reasons for having a container garden on the deck (protection from deer, hare) goes out the window when the dogs eat all the peas. - today
• So long Bennigans. At least it's not Chilis. Or Applebees. Or Ruby Tuesday. Or PFChangs. Or Red Robin. Or Panera. Or IHOP. Or.... about 23 hours ago

• My father seriously asked if he should buy a laptop from a grocery store this morning. not just any store: ALDI. At lunch, I plan to go buy some produce and milk at Best Buy 11:23 AM July 29, 2008
  
• are there really people in the world who wake up refreshed, not craving more Zs? I hate them. 09:37 AM July 29, 2008
  
• I used to like "For Better or For Worse." This morning, I literally shook my head at the punny horror. Let. It. DIE. Yet I can't look away! 08:22 AM July 28, 2008
  
• back from bagel breakfast. I truly hate when they forget to put butter on, but I eat it anyway, cause it makes me feel "healthy." 08:16 AM July 28, 2008
  
• enjoying another night out on the deck writing. So glad I don't have actual responsibilities. 07:33 PM July 27, 2008 from web
  
• just back from the Farmer's Market I vowed never to visit again. It pays to park as far away from it as possible, however. 12:29 PM July 27, 2008
  
• IMing with my friend Bill. He's in Iraq. It's 6:15am tomorrow there. He lives in the future, but not one he should have to. 11:16 PM July 26, 2008

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  Posted by Eric G. at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

The Results: PC Mag's Reader Survey is Live

Last year it was scary to write this. I thought I was putting my relationship with every major hardware product vendor on the line. Then I realize: Hey! It's not my fault! Its the the PC Mag 21st Annual Reader Survey! It's not like I personally proclaimed Apple the greatest vendor in the history of support for desktops, notebooks, media players and even routers. So, for the 21st time, and the 2nd time by me, here are the best (and worst) out there.

Turning Lactose Intolerance Into Free Books

I'm having a good weekend.

First, the weather's been great, enough for me to actually eat outside last night, with friends Wendy and David over for hand-made hamburgers and some corn on the cob. Tasted like summer.

Before that even happened, I got an amazing email. Amazing for me at least. Last weekend, I did several email submissions of some stories I'd written, some of them months previous. One of them was my Viable Paradise story, the one I wrote during my week at the workshop, based on all sorts of crazy criteria thrown at me (like the requirement to include a kid vampire). I sent it to one online-zine and the editor there liked it -- he said he laughed out loud, always a good sign (unless you're writing about the holocaust) -- and he wants to run it in his September release. No contracts signed yet, but when it's all official, I'll let you know. Suffice to say: it will be my first professional fiction sale. Sweet.

Today I got another great email. One of my favorite blogs is Tod Goldberg's. He a writer of short-stories and novels. I really liked his collection Simplify, and I've got his novel Living Dead Girl in my stack of to-read books. His blog is a riot of rudeness and comedy -- his hatred of the stupidity of Parade magazine is legendary. He recently announced that he'd give away some copies of his new book -- his first tie-in novel, an original story based on the great TV show Burn Notice -- to those who left comments on his blog "detailing your secret skill or power." I posted about my body's inability to properly process cheese. In Tod's eyes, this qualified as enough of a secret skill to earn me a free, advanced copy.

Yep, a very nice weekend, indeed. Next weekend probably won't be as nice, as I'll be tearing my hair out hooking up a new home network and a new HDTV system... but then again, I'll have a new network and HDTV, so what's to complain about?

Sticker Shocked

The long overdue spending orgy took place tonight. My wife and I, in our respective chairs, on our respective aging, pain-in-the-ass notebooks, went shopping. This in lieu of a big vacation this year.

The result: the wife is give me her MacBook Pro as a hand-me-down, with hopes I will find a way to solve it's spontaneous reboot and blanking screen issues. She bought a new Dell XPS M1530 (PRODUCT) RED -- it comes with a candy-apple red case. Core 2 Duo chip running at 2.5 GHz, 4GB RAM (more than my desktop), 11n, slot-loading DVD, etc. With no guilt, cause RED products mean donating money to fight AIDS.

Me, I watched her do this with a smile and felt it was time to also take the plunge on the purchases I've been putting off all week. So after a few more hours of research on some things, I just started clicking Buy-It-NOW buttons on Amazon.com like a I had OCD. My purchase: a 40-inch Samsung HDTV is the set piece. Of course, to go with this new tech, I need a new audio reciever, so I got a new digital Sony. A universal remote with Xbox buttons. And four HDMI cables to cobble it all together.

I also bought a new, faster router for my home network, and a wireless bridge to go between it and the TV (which has Ethernet) and the Xbox. And eventually a new TiVo, tho for now I'm going to once again put myself into the hands of Time Warner and its DVR. Hopefully its improved since our least encounter.

All in all, a quick way to burn through our savings. Lets hope we don't need a new roof, or surgery, or worse, anytime soon. Not until I've watched Pushing Daisies season opener in glorious HD.

Skitterin' away 7-24-2008

• 12:34 just got some pea-sized hail to go along with another torrential downpour. That's eight days straight with rain. #
• 22:35 amazed that Gateway is getting out of direct sales. Then realized I own a Gateway, which I bought cheap at Best Buy. So who cares? #

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twitterin' away 7-23-2008

• 09:35 Hollywood Rumor! Ed Norton finds new publicity for Hulk, Christian Bale-style, taking his grandma to LA Hooters and slapping for paparazzi. #
• 09:37 Hollywood Rumor! In aftermath of death of Estelle Getty, NBC to bring Golden Girls back - as a prequel! Starring Sarah Jessica Parker. #
• 13:31 so THIS is what a splitting headache feels like. #
• 15:41 Three dogs asleep around me. All snoring. It's like a slumber party of elderly canines. #
• 18:29 directv: no local channels in HD. TimeWarner: go cable card, no guarantee of all HD channels. Makes me want to watch only DVDs. Almost. #

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Build a Future-Proof Home Network

This may be my last story for PCMag that runs in the paper version first before going online. Or second to last. I'm not sure on the schedule. Anyway, it's a damn fine tale of what to invest in for your home network if you don't want to invest again anytime soon, called Build a Future-Proof Home Network. (I only wrote the first bit, not the reviews, sidebar, or the stuff about Cat 5e wiring.)

Are You Fit for Command?

Randy is, foot-fungus and all.

A Spoiler-ific Look at The Dark Knight

Take out every super-fantastical thing about all previous Batman versions: no super-stylized city ala Tim Burton that looks like nothing on earth, nothing close to a "super-power" on a bad-guy, no camp (at least, not intentional camp), mix it up with some people who can really act, some almost plausible technology/weapons, in a story with some actual surprising twists (Gordon's dead? No! But Rachel is... but she's coming back, that was a fake out, right? Uh... no. So much for Maggie Gyllenhaal's future with the franchise.) and this is what you get. A damned cohesive movie, that felt to me like the super-hero equivalent of The Godfather, watching Bruce Wayne struggles not to go down the road to becoming what the Joker is, same as Michael Corleone tried to avoid becoming his father. Bruce does a little better. But he still loses it all in the end. Everything but his secret identity and his butler, at least.

I've read one review that said the film should have ended at the point where Rachel's dead, Harvey's disfigured and crazy, the Joker's loose, and Batman's lost his love and the battle, if not the war. I can kind of see the point, but I'm very glad it went on. It was going to be a bleak end no matter what, but I'm glad there was some closure. Though I bet the studio wishes they'd killed off the other bad guy, considering what happened with Heath Ledger.

Ultimately, the movie should have been called Killing Joke or something, because it is Joker's movie. Batman's a spectator trying to catch up (though nice detective work on the shattered bullet). Even when he arrives in plenty of time to save Harvey Dent from death, he still manages to let the DA get half his face burned off, leading to the creation of a somewhat stunted Two-Face. I'm still shocked they killed him off. A sequel with Two-Face and Joker at war for the control of the underworld would have been a no-brainer, but no closure. These Hollywood flicks love to kill the villains to get that.

(So do the comics, but there we fanboys always know they're coming back. Even if you see the body. And kick it, burn it, and bury the ashes, they'll still come back in the comics...)

Ledger should get a nomination for Oscar for that performance (but I bet he won't, as the academy probably hates the stick of "super hero" even more than the stench of "sci fi"). It's unlike any Joker ever seen in any incarnation of the Batman mythos, better than any that's come before with perhaps the exception of Mark Hamill's Joker on the Animated Series. If that Joker had been allowed to be a true homicidal nut, he would be unbeatable.

Ledger gets the edge by getting to be the post 9/11 grunge Joker who has no boundaries -- the modern world finally caught up the Joker's brand of crazy.

And, thankfully, there's no Joker origin. His repeated made-up tales of how he came by his facial scars are perfect. Not knowing what made him like he is makes him the elemental force Batman can only try to be in this film. But the Bat of Dark Knight is no mystery to the people of Gotham, no urban legend. He's a dude in a rubber suit and the people all know it. Which is a shame, especially since he gives up what little bit of heroic stature he had for them, all for the greater good in the end.

So what did I like in particular?

1. Skyhook! Very James Bond.
2. Sonar -- very bat. Though the sonar tech being patched to every cell phone in town was less realistic to me than the guy in the rubber armor fighting a guy in a purple suit. Seriously, how long would it take for that to be approved for the iPhone App Store?
3. Morgan Freeman.
4. No Katie Holmes.
5. Prof. Crane! And he's actually trying to help the city? Wow.
6. Gotham MCU. I was surprised Bullock and Montoya were not among the cops.

Three things I don't like about the new Bat-flick

1. Christian Bale's Batman voice. Unless you're talking to the same people as Batman and Bruce Wayne, you don't need to mask your voice. You sound like you swallowed a tracheotomy microphone. Christ.
2. The Joker constantly licking his lips. Is that why they were so red?
3. Not a lot of relief in the form of laughs, not even from Joker. In fact Morgan Freeman delivered most of the funny --and a film that grim needed a few guffaws.

Tweetage from 7-16 to 7-18-2008

stupid automated system for sending these to the blog is down. so here's a cut and paste for non-twits:

Thank dog for The Nines in Collegetown. Best pizza this side of Noho, Mass. 07:57 PM July 17, 2008

when one is writing about the electronical commerce of the intarwub, it helps to have a friend who edits a site about that very topic. 01:33 PM July 17, 2008

dr. Horrible act II is live. http://ping.fm/o4AbX 10:33 AM July 17, 2008 from Ping.fm

FYI, art I saw from dentist chair: 80's era poster of a painting of crashing waves turning into white horses emerging from the sea. 10:00 AM July 17, 2008

Now home from Dentist, obviously. Of the 28 teeth in my head (post wisdom teeth extraction 22 years back), only 82% are still real. 08:41 AM July 17, 2008

Thanks for that Jott. What I said was, "someone should do a study on the artwork found in dentist offices." 08:39 AM July 17, 2008

___ want do a sturdy on the the outlook found in dentist offices. http://tinyurl.com/6xc9nw 08:30 AM July 17, 2008 (from JOTT)

Had to run out to Target to buy a laser pointer, which their dogs demand to chase every night. Ended up at Spensers. $4.99. It's got a pen. 10:00 PM July 16, 2008

The 'rents are spending the night, dropping off their three dogs for a week while they're off to VA for a wedding. 09:58 PM July 16, 2008

Posted by Eric G. at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)

Who Watches The Wire Of course, a Watchmen trailer out today means someone has to ask Alan Moore how much he hates the thought, and that job went to Entertainment Weekly this time. But here's the bit of the interview I love:

The absolute pinnacle of anything I've seen recently has got to be The Wire. It's the most stunning piece of television that has ever come out of America, possibly the most stunning piece of television full-stop.
--Alan Moore

If that doesn't say it all.

Watchmen Trailer

Get it while you can:

(I admit, I'm a little disappointed Niteowl isn't a little more... schlubby. But Dr. Manhattan? Right on.)

tweeeeeeet 7-16-2008

• 15:55 my NYC co-workers leaving early today to play softball in central park mitigates any guilt I have for my 4:20pm Friday tix for Dark Knight #

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Entertaining Labradors

An experiment with new web site Animoto.com, which turns your pictures into a music video.

It sucks in pics from Flickr automatically, provides music if you don't have any, and then exports it directly to YouTube. Sweet.

Destinkifying Arkport

For my entire life, the town of Arkport, just north of where I grew up, smelled to high-heaven. It's not like I had to go there much, maybe just once a year (tho there was that period where Mom took us to get hair-cuts there... shiver), but whenever I did, there was no mistaking it. That place reeked like an milk jug left out in the noon-day sun.

And they're finally getting around to fixing the problem with a "new aerobic sludge digester at the existing wastewater pretreatment facility at the Crowley Foods plant... should almost completely eliminate the smell wafting through the air around Arkport" according to the Evening Tribune (who quoted a local restauranteur as saying "the area smells like rotten milk and cottage cheese").

Wow, and it only took 30 years to fix! At this rate of tech advancement, imagine how cool our electric cars will all be in 2038.

Access Everywhere Story at PCMag.com

Finally, the story you -- and I -- have all been waiting for, my Access Everywhere story, which the PC Mag editors subtitled "The Definitive Guide to Wi-Fi" (which i think might be extreme... maybe "definitive guide to finding Wi-Fi").

In fact, the exec editor told me the story could easily be turned into a book. But I think he was actually complaining that it was just way to long.

tweetly-deetly-dee 7-15-2008

• 00:19 my twittter followers now equal the number I'm following. tho several of my followers may be spambots of some kind. I'll take what I can get #
• 08:22 It has arrived: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. See the wonder: ping.fm/Sw1l6 #
• 12:30 two TV-web show blog posts today on www.appscout.com already today. Yes, one is for www.drhorrible.com. Of course. Whedon is my master. #

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Won't You Be My Neighbor?

As of yesterday, I've got neighbors again.

The previous owner of the house to the north got screwed -- he had the house custom built, moved in there with girlfriend, got her pregnant -- and then got transferred. To Rochester. Blah. The house has been on the market since last November, and only just got bought.

The wife and I popped over last night to say hi. Nice couple, with a boy who's maybe about nine. They moved cause the mom, Melanie, got a job at Cornell teaching theater. You couldn't move to a better town than this for theater stuff. Well, maybe New York. Or LA. But I mean a town were you can afford to live. (And I know what they paid for that house, it's still not that affordable). It's nice to know there's at least one less empty house in the area... though that overpriced place to the south remains as empty as Dick Cheney's soul.

We Can Rebuild It

Last night I spent a few hours as I watched TV (The Middleman is the only thing on this summer worth watching besides Burn Notice) and rebuilding the wife's Macintosh. It's been acting up for a while, so we figured it was high time. When I say rebuild, I don't mean hardware, just simply taking the operating system that came on DVD, using it to erase the hard drive, and re-write the OS to the drive. The hardest part is backing up everything. Luckily, she had almost no data on it except emails and music. The music was easy to move from the iPod back to iTunes (using a cool program called Senuti). If she starts checking email only through Gmail as I've suggested, next time I won't even have to backup messages. Ah, to live totally in the cloud....

Xanaduing away - 7-14-2008

• 12:41 my dirty secret: watched Xanadu on Hulu.com this weekend. Fast forwarded through any sceens without music, Gene Kelly, or Olivia N-J. #

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twitterin' away 7-13-2008

• 13:04 schizophrenic weather=staying inside all day long, reading and writing. #
• 13:05 I think today I'll kill off my protagonist. She's just too close to the truth! (I heart villains.) #

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twitterin' away 7-12-2008

• 18:07 chillin' on the deck. in the 86 degree heat. with industrial floor fan blowing on me one way, 11mph wind from the other. #
• 18:08 just ate real beef hotdogs (from farmers market) with home made mac salad and bean salad. with oatmeal choc chip cookie chaser. #
• 18:10 Stomp your feet in disgustCurse the gray sky if you mustBut you'll find when you are doneThey'll be blue skies for everyone -B Schneider #
• 22:21 Holy crap. New Robert Crais book is out, and I just found out Connelly AND Sandford will have new novels in the next 4 months. Sweet. #

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twitterin' away 7-11-2008

• 11:30 currently not buying an iphone. Nor will I until version 5.0 comes out on VeriZprinT-Mobile network in 2015. #
• 11:32 may not even force the wife to upgrade her iPod touch to 2.0... oh, who am I kidding. It's for her own good. #

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twitterin' away 7-10-2008

• 13:32 iPhone 3G overload today... and the damn phone isn't even available until tomorrow. #
• 13:40 its official, I do indeed have high school reunion coming in August. Since I look completely different, I can go as anonymous. #
• 15:51 "you say that like it's a bad thing" is is now my official tweet reply. #
• 18:13 If HBII doesn't kick Hancock's drunken arse this weekend, I quit humanity. #

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20 Years Later, My Work Still Stands

It was weird enough to find out last night that my 20 year high school
reunion is still on, (since I thought it was not going to happen and
told my friend Bill over in Iraq as much this past weekend). But not
only did I get confirmation it's on, the flier for it came in the mail
today, less than 20 hours later.

And there on the front is a reproduction of the cover of our yearbook.
Which I painted.

Somehow we, the yearbook staff of '88, came up with this cockamamie
theme called "Images in Graffiti" and went with it. I remember sitting
at home and painstakingly painting each brick in acrylic, then using an
airbrush in front of the gathered yearbook staff for the graffiti parts.
Back home, I again hand lettered the word "images" in pen and ink which
the printer some how turned into the foil-leaf used on the cover.

Yet, I bet there's more cool technology involved in making this paper
flier with an ink jet printer than there was in making that entire
yearbook 20 years ago.

twitterin' away 7-09-2008

• 17:31 I just found out that this summer's 20th anniversary high school reunion I thought was off may actually be on. trying to confirm. #
• 19:48 Watching agility and eating smores. tinyurl.com/5emnbn #
• 22:05 I've had the movie "In America" on the TiVo since April... of last year. Now I feel bad, cause it's a damn good movie. #

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The Epoxied Garage Floor

I lost two days of my life to making that floor look that good -- and it still has splotchy patches from the spots where salt ate away the concrete. Now maybe the salt will have to work a little harder next winter. Or not.

twitterin' away 7-06 and 7-07-2008

Sunday:
• 14:44 may go blind trying to read this too-reflective laptop screen in the sun, but I refuse to stop computing on the deck, in this breeze.
• 15:08 shopping for a laptop on my current laptop. Why? I don't *need* a laptop. But, oh, the want. (Also wants: HDTV, audio receiver, chocolate.)
• 15:37 worlds greatest song lyric ever? "And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee"
• 19:40 You know what makes me sad? No one says "Let's hug it out, bitch" anymore. #

Monday:
• 09:39 quote o' the day: Ralph Bakshi sez, "I think people are idiots." ping.fm/BNKiH #
• 15:01 temp outside feels like the inside of a mouth eating spicy chili. In my basement, is cool with nothing but a fan to move the air. I wins. #

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The Loot Kernal Cometh

Time for a public shout out to my buddy Bill, who has been in Iraq (again) for some months enjoying the 120 degree heat, away from his wife and eight kids (4 boys, 4 girls) and dog. Maybe it's an improvement over living near Watertown, NY, which I believe still has 3 feet of snow on the ground even now... but I doubt it.

He just e-mailed me some good news, however: after 16 years of active duty and years of ROTC before that, steadily climbing the ranks, he will find out officially tomorrow that's hes going to be a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army.

That's cool enough I may even salute him next time I see him. (Though probably not, cause I'm a big dick.) Hopefully, I'll see him soon.

twitterin' away on Indy Day 2008

• 23:56 accidentally wrote 2,400 words of new novel tonight. Will make up for it tomorrow by doing closer to zero. #
• 19:23 I win a $5 bet with the wife: our 12-yr-old dog neither puked nor pooed in house while we were away for 7+ hrs of holiday festivities. #

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twitterin' away 7-03-2008

• 09:35 My radio interview on NHPR from yesterday is now on the interwebbing. Listen to my melodious ums at ping.fm/G6GJh #
• 15:42 The afternoon's salsa and guac making is fini. Thus endeth my IndyDay food contributions, done one day early. #

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Stop Trying New Things (Man in the Box)

From my favorite online TV show at the moment...

This brings to mind when my friend Mark got his earring when we were in high school. I did not in anyway have this conversation with him... I guess dudes with ear-bling were in back in 1986, though I didn't have the stones to let someone put a needle in my lobe. What I remember most: after he had his "starter earring" in for a while we looked at it in the downstairs boy's bathroom at school, and saw just how infected the spot had become... so bad it looked like he's packed guacamole around his lobe to hold the damn thing in. It kinda makes me want to throw up. (Eventually, the infection cleared up and it looked stunning. I'm sure Mark will agree, especially if he's still got it pierced. Mark?)

A Face for Radio

Those of you dying to hear me um and ah my way through a radio interview about my Future Tech story, now's your chance! NHPR has posted both Windows Media and MP3 versions of my interview yesterday on its Word of Mouth program. As always, there was more to say, but never enough time, but you can get the full scoop by reading the story.

twitterin' away 7-02-2008

• 09:12 Why do so many of my dreams involve leaking roofs? #
• 10:54 I'll be on New Hampshire Public Radio, noon hour. They are pros. They even sent me a script. I figure 2 minutes for me to mess it up. #
• 17:25 It's always nice to get reminders to hand in stories I've already handed in. Way ahead of you, automated reminder system. Nyaa. #

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Be Well Groomed, But Don't Be an Ass Chad with some employee dress code tips.