Cerebral Oversight Committee

Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think we think.
~ Ambrose Bierce

Therefore, you are pondering what I'm pondering.
~ Brain

I missed a Christmas post, and a New Years post, but I'm not going to miss this one... January 3rd, the greatest day of the year thus far! January 3rd, the anniversary of the day Leonardo Da Vinci tried, and failed, to fly his flying machine. Hmmm, maybe not that one, then. January 3rd, 1868, the first day of the Meiji Restoration? Nah, too depressing. It's the 49th anniversary of the patriation of Alaska? Nahh, also depressing. NO! WAIT! I GOT IT!

J.R.R. Tolkien's Birthday. Happy Birthday, you old British coot!

I'm back at work full time, and this year promises to be terrifyingly promising. Why terrifying? Well, my boss basically wants to give me a huge promotion... more work, more responsibility, more yelling, and theoretically more pay (which is good, since in the past three years, my effective 'pay vs cost of living' has not changed). All I ever wanted was to just be the best damn CAD guy I could be, but it seems that it isn't allowed unless I also pick up the slack for everyone else in the office. I guess we'll see how I do!

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

ANOTHER cold is rampaging through the house, and my son sounds just like I did back when I had croup and bronchitis every few months. It's pretty scary for me to hear him be like that, but it's REALLY scary for him because he's never been sick like that before. It only gets bad late at night when he's breathing dry air and not drinking water. A cough hurts, so he cries a bit, and the crying strains his throat, which makes it hurt, so he coughs... it took a while to calm him down the other night enough to go back to sleep. Still, it's a lot better today, comparatively.

*sigh* Poor little guy...

Video time! This one is just a song, since too many people have been deriding Myles and the good parts of Creed lately.

Such A Strange Combination Of Pity And Indigestion

You don't need a license to drive a sandwich.
~ Spongebob Squarepants

And the new diet started about two hours ago, and so far I don't feel the urge to grab a jagged knife and rob a KFC. That's a good thing, for me! I bought a 10lb bag of apples and 4lb bag of peanuts (they were half price!) at the store yesterday, and today have been dining on them quite extensively. Apples are good!!! Did you know that?!?



Sadly, neither one gets more than a 3/5 for weight loss, so I need to find something that's inexpensive, good for weight loss, and that I'll actually eat. Any suggestions> Also, www.nutritiondata.com is such an awesome website.

I Expected Singing And Dancing...

Out-of-town shooters. That's what I said. I remember hearing myself saying, "Out-of-town shooters." You know what? You don't pay a ho to fuck you. You pay her to leave. What you pay out-of-town shooters to do? You pay them to get the hell back out of town. That's why I asked for out-of-town shooters. What'd I get? In-town shooters. Someone decided to hire in-town shooters. You know what else I got for my money? In-town police. In-town trouble. Who's got to get in the ring with me on this?

Ok, I'm not really sure why I went with that line, but it's a good line anyways, you know? Anyways, first day back at work. A few hellos, a 'your e-mail doesn't work, I'll fix it in a bit', and a coffee, and back to the grindstone. Hey diddle diddle hey, welcome back, now get to work. Oh, by the way, we rearranged the network, and we didn't respost the new files that you worked on while you were staying home with your newborn daughter and your wife recovering from major surgery, could you take care of that? Thanks.

Still, it's oddly comforting to be back. It's my desk (until we move and I get a new one), it's my computer (until we move and I get a new one), and it's my big honking warm headphones (which they will have to pry out of my cold, dead hands). I'm hoping we move in January on schedule, since we were supposed to move at the end of October, and as of yesterday the new building is still composed largely of rotting siding and new plywood. I'm sure it's nicer inside.

Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal!

So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with
God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels
already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes
into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one.
Noah's ark is a problem. We'll have to call it "early quantum
state phenomenon". Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammals
on the same boat.

Hee. Firefly.

It's 11pm, and I have to put together a building in Nelson I'll never be able to afford to live in. My newborn baby girl is asleep and meeping a few feet away, and I still have to do some laundry tonight, and tomorrow do the bulk of my Ecksmass capitalist sacrificing. I'm all... bendy...

*stretch*

*pop*

*crackle*

Much better. I need a dark chocolate crackball, only $0.88 for three! What a bargain! What a deal! What a twist!

Make people answer their gorram e-mail.

Cold Diggitty Daffodil!

Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
~Charles Kingsley

Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours." ~Robert Byrne

It's like Hot Diggitty Daffodil, but instead it's cold. It's the sort of cold where you go outside, and your skin says "Hey, this isn't that bad!" because it takes a few seconds for your skin's protective cushion of air to bleed off. However, you look around, think it's all right, and you take a deep breath. Your gasp of shock is drowned out by the death cries of your nostril hairs, and the wintry gust moves into your lungs, freezes the deposits of tar and polyunsaturated fat, shatters your alveoli, grudgingly warms up, and exhales in a cloud of vapor which soon solidifies around your skull, smothering and killing you.

This is why I'm inside right now.

Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land
the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon
as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw
and become audible, so that words spoken in winter
go unheard until the next summer. ~Plutarch

Also, because of the cold, most of my other business ventures have ground to a halt. There's no more traffic at all over at ThinkTank Designs, which is my side job of creating environmentally housing for people who want an artistically distinct home that will keep them warm in the summer, cool in the winter, and last longer than any of the stick-built McMansions down the street. The Seniors Guide is also going very slowly, since it's too cold for the salesman to go out and actually get ads. He's old.

Right now, we're all huddled in our house, enjoying the Christmas lights hung from the crown moulding, and trying to teach our middle child that the new baby can't, in fact, withstand a full nelson, a throat punch, or a head-butt. Also, we have to teach ALL THREE kids that since my wife's C-section was apparently performed by a first-time resident, and five of the staples fell out on their own (while three just came loose and got snagged in her clothing, with agonizingly painful results), they should very VERY GENTLE with her. So far it isn't taking, and both kids keep trying to hug and tackle her with good intentions and painful results.

Enjoy the movie down below :) One of my favorite songs, and one of my favorite movies. MWAHAHAHAH!!!

Congratulations! It's A Baby!

If you are like me, and you certainly must be,
you are appalled and shocked at the weird,
unnatural things going on tonight. ~ Sam the Eagle

More specifically, it's a baby girl. Say hello to Ophelia.



I'm sure she'd wave back, but right now all she can do is cry, eat, sleep, poop, and gnaw on her own hand. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was trying to escape. *sigh* Babies.

Ok, now to start the work that I couldn't do this week, since my office doesn't like to hire competent CAD people (I don't mean you, Sim... you rock.)

I'm bored. Have a video.

The Interblogosphere Tubes Are Clean

Related to moral relativism, it states that ethics
become subjective only when you approach the
speed of light. That is, it's OK to be self-serving, steal,
and murder as long as you're going really, really fast.
(Note: This is why rap sounds better on the highway at 90 mph)

Hee. xkcd has a Wikiquote. Awesome.

Yeah, two weeks, I know. Everytime I think about blogging about something I came across on the tubes, I just think "You know, three people read this blog, and two of them don't care about the latest dust-up at NASA, or Gamespot, or Israel. All that's left is to talk about myself, and two of my readers don't care about that either (and given the third is there when stuff happens, I guess all three don't care to read about it.) I don't really hang out on YouTube so it's hard to find movies to wrap up my posts with, which might be for the best, because it also felt wierd trying to lure people to my blog with funny videos, only to ambush them with boring text first.

So, maybe I'll just try something new.

Newbie

Into December, you entered the world,
Small, squalling, pinkish and furious,
Ripped untimely, and into our lives hurled,
Pausing enough to be curious.

It's hard to say what to make of today,
You picked a lousy time to be born,
We got wars, genocide, DMCA,
You have good reason to be forlorn.

But I'm here to adore and protect you,
What fathers are supposed to do best,
I'm bigger than the problems in this zoo,
And you know that I will never rest.

Nothing will harm you while I am alive,
But I can't do anything until you arrive.

It's A Big... A Big Hard Sun...

Once I dug an early grave, to find a better land
She just smiled and laughed at me, and took her rules back again

Once I stood to lose her, and I saw what I had done
Bowed down and threw away the hours of her garden and her sun

So I tried to want her, I turned to see her weep
40 days and 40 nights, and its still coming down on me

I continue to educate people that this song, the theme song from the movie "In The Wild" and sung by Eddie Vedder, is actually a Canadian song from 1989, from a man who calls himself Indio. The Eddie Vedder song is big on the radio, even satellite radio, and the YouTube videos are replete with posts saying "Eddie Vedder's best song ever!" I am against patriotism, but I nonetheless feel the need to tell people that it's not a Vedder song, but it's Canadian, which is why Vedder picked it for the movie. It just fits so well with nature.

Anyways...

Zalgite is, for better or for worse, off of his medicine now! His knees are doing good, his eyes are fine, and because the rashes present on his nose are actually indicative of a naproxen reaction, he's going off the meds. Yay! In 4-6 weeks, we should see how his body is doing, and we'll take him to the pediatrician here in town. I'm hoping it goes well!

Also also, my mom just had her 64th birthday, I had my 26th, and my friend Porkchop had his... uhm, 32nd? Crap, I need to check Facebook... I don't know how old anyone is. Newbie will be born Dec 4th, right on schedule, so that's good! Christmas is coming, and a new baby and a month off work at severely reduced pay can only make things go smoother. I need to bloggy-blog more.

EDIT: I need to add this. This is just disturbing. For those who think it's tl;dr, I'll sum it up. Two girls are good friends. Then they're not friends. The parents of girl A work with girl A to make a MySpace account, pretending to be a nice, cute guy. They befriend girl B on MySpace. They get to know eachother for weeks and weeks and weeks. They then start to say horrible things to girl B. Girl B then kills herself. She went upstairs, and hung herself in her closet while her parents cooked dinner. Girl A and her parents do not apologize, and are not being charged, since they say it can't be proved it was their fault. They live a block away from eachother.

I fucking hate humanity.

Video time! What's something I haven't done before...

I Blog! I Swear! I Think...

No more gold lights for the queen earth
To keep you warm in your kingdoms
High on the waves you make for us
But not since you left have the waves come
The bar is dead and the rocket's rain
Is keeping you wet in your deathbed
So high on the waves you made for us
And not since you left have the waves come...
Have the waves come...

Good song.

Yay, wireless! Now I can blog while I pee!

...

Not that I would. No, right now, I'm just using it to sit on the couch, under a nice, tasty warm blanket, so I can play Stars!, watch Farscape, and talk to you, the tumultuous masses! And by masses, I mean Lostie and Sleeping Kyle.

My laptop needs a better battery, so I really hope that supercapacitors finally make that final price breakthrough, replacing the wildly inefficient chemical batteries forever. They charge faster, they last longer, and they have two ingredients, both of which are considerably cheaper on a global scale. Yayyy!

You have such limited mental capacity,
and yet you have such an abundant will to prevail.

Good line...

I don't have much to say. Work was hellish today. I almost put my fist through the monitor, and had one of my bosses been here today, I might have forever lost my boot within his unplumbed depths. I don't think either would have really endangered my job, but in the short term might have made my main boss angry, since he seemed to indicate that he thought of me as one of his kids (I'm not sure how to take that.)

Coffee time!

16, 10, 7, 6... What Up For November?

FREEZE! You're under arrest! You have the right to the remains of a silent attorney! If you cannot afford one... tough noogies! You can make ONE phone call! I recommend Trixie: 976-Triple 5-LOVE. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?! Well do ya, PUNK? No? Then I can't arrest you!

Hee.

Well, NaNoWriMo is well underway, and my wordcount is up to a MIGHTY.... four (4) words. Fear me, Stephen King... I've got you in my sights! RAWR!

Now, a lot of my on-line time recently has been tied up arguing about the three epic sci-fi series of our time... Farscape, Firefly, Babylon 5. Which is better overall, which has better writing, which has better production values, which is more interesting, which has better characters, etc etc etc. Unfortunately, most people are of the incorrect opinion that Farscape isn't the best, and they won't listen to me when I try to correct them! Why would that be? I'm just trying to educate them, and they ignore me... *sigh* Now I know how high school teachers feel.

Ok, but seriously, Farscape only slightly edges out Firefly, and Firefly edges out Bab 5. They're all pretty close. Imaging, though, what Firefly could have done if it had been allowed to reach 88 episodes like Farscape, or over 100 like Bab5? As it was, it died at 13 episodes, and despite the truly GAWDLIKE feature film (Serenity), the story was not epic. It was character driven, and episodic, and the finale approached epicosity, but the story never had time to bloom. Bab 5 bloomed, and despite some dragging and irritation, was an excellent and incredible story. "Get the hell out of our Galaxy!" may be one of the best parting lines ever.

But they still can't touch Farscape... and I just hope someday to get someone to see it the way I do.

But, to all the people who never will, here's Wash, in all his goofy glory.