Phases of the Moon

I just took some pictures of my beloved Cascadian House Tiger and put them together as a single piece. I think they're kind of cool. This is a photo-sequence of her reaction to me as I came up from behind with a camera while she was stretched out near the door to the upper porch.

At long last . . . Something to blog about

After all, I can't imagine that the two people who read this really care to hear more about my daily efforts to revitalize the grounds at Chateu West Seattle.

Scottland and I saw An Inconvenient Truth on Saturday and we both thought it was relatively well done and informative. More so for the S.O. I think, as I've already seen or read most of the technical material. I did not, however, know that China has higher vehicle fuel efficiency standards than the US.

We both agree that the personal material wasn't as good and we would rather have seen more of the presentation. I figure that the personal information was put in for those audience members that would come down with a bad case of the Narcolepsy if they had to sit through two hours of technical presentation. Cynical types claim that the personal information was in there because Al Gore is planning on running for President again in 2008. I'm not quite sure I follow the logic of that argument.

Oddly enough, watching the movie made me think a bit about South Park. This season there was an episode titled Manbearpig that lampooned Al Gore. After I saw the episode I did a quick bit of research and figured out that the episode was specifically mocking Al Gore's global warming talk. Taking the episode at face value, Manbearpig is global warming doesn't really exist. Al Gore is just talking about it as an attempt to get people to pay attention to him.

Now, I don't really have a problem with the show making fun of Al Gore, but I do take issue with those ass-hats trying to take the position that human caused global warming doesn't exist. Scottland says I shouldn't take the cartoon too seriously and he's probably right. Still, I'm just bothered by it.

X-Men 3 : The Last Stand

Saw it with Ron, Andrea and Ryan. I wasn't very impressed. Ron put it best with, "Better than Star Trek 3, Worse than Star Trek 1."

Jacked Into the GRID

I'm posting from my laptop while sitting at my desk in my fancy new, bright yellow ofice. I will post pictures later. This room is 100% undiluted Aaron.

Also, for those who were burning up inside wanting to know the answer, it turns out that the problem with one of the CD's from Amazon was caused by the CD drive in my lap-top beginning to crap out. The other CD really was defective. It looked like someone had leaked some kind of solvent all over the read side of the disc.

UPDATEUPDATEUPDATE

Long time no post. Since my last post I have dropped out of graduate school, moved back to Seattle and am now living with my partner, Scottland. In the future, I will attempt to be a published writer of some sort. A more in-depth update will be forthcoming, though I have a hunch that the five or so people that read my blog already know most of the details.

In the meantime, please read this pro-nuclear power article written by the founder of Greenpeace.

Do Never Buy CD's From Amazon.Com

I don't know if anyone else has ever had this problem, but two of the four CD's that I purchased with a miniscule fraction of my casino winnings (story coming soon) were defective. I'm listening to the fourth right now and hopefully it won't be defective as well. Luckily for me, Amazon has a pretty robust return policy. Still, I have NEVER purchased a CD and discovered it to be defective after purchase until now. I guess that explains why their prices are so much lower than the CD's you buy in the music store.

Wet Squall

Apparently, a tropical air mass has impacted the southwestern US coast. It caused some rather interesting events this evening.



So my roommate Carolyn and I are sitting in the living room talking about the dogs when the wind really starts picking up and the rain starts pounding down. We run outside and watch in astonishment as somewhere around an inch of water comes down in only a few minutes while the trees are whipping around on account of the strong gusts of wind that are blowing through. We both thought it was really weird.

About 15 minutes later Carolyn is watching TV and I'm in my room when I hear the emergency broadcast system come on. I pad out to the living room and sure enough, it's not a test. Basically, there's a extreme thunderstorm warning for the middle valley being posted. A squall line is passing through at 40 mph and we can expect heavy winds (gusts to 60) and heavy rains. The warning then advised everyone to seek shelter in doors and away from windows. Then it repeated in Spanish.

Now, what's kind of funny is that we got the warning about 15 minutes after it happened and were outside when it blew through.

After I figured out what was going on, I went to weather.com and found the local 300 mile doppler radar loop. On that loop you can clearly see the squall line as it's the vertical line of orange. The pictures are in chronological order from earliest to latest.

Blast From The Past

So I'm going through some old files from a back-up I did of my desktop in 2003 and I found some pictures of Stromboli when she was a kitten.

Scottland's Visit

It was an exciting weekend, let me tell you. After Scottland arrived on Friday evening we:

(1) Ate Del Taco
(2) Watched BSG and other sundry Sci-Fi
(3) Went to bed
(4) Got out of bed
(5) Went to Posh Bagel
(6) Scottland then read a book while I beat my head against my take-home midterm.
(7) Got chinese food.
(8) Scottland watched the first three episodes of Stargate : SG1 on his DVD player while I continued to beat my head against the midterm.
(9) Went to bed.
(10) Got out of bed.
(11) Made coffee with the coffee beans Scottland bought at Starbucks on Saturday. Ooops, he forgot to tell me they have twice as much caffeine as normal.
(12) Went for breakfast at Baker's Square.
(13) Went grocery shopping and went to Borders to look at some books.
(14) Scottland packed his bags and left for Seattle.

So yeah, this is the kind of exciting behavior we engage in when Scottland comes to visit.

Sunday Morning Stromboli

I think she's happy . . .

Gargantuan Black Dragon

I'm still looking for a picture of the Collosol Red Dragon. The relevant details for this mini are on the WOTC website.

Brokeback To The Future

See the trailer here.

Wardrobe Malfunction?

I was unable to watch any of the Superbowl this weekend. In fact, I didn't even realize that the Seahawks were playing in it until my friend Rod sent me a text message about some touchdown they scored. Learning that the Seahawks were in the Superbowl did help to put Suzanne's comment from our phone conversation that morning about being disappointed that a windstorm didn't knock out all the power to Seattle on the day of the Superbowl into context. I thought she was just being mean. I didn't realize she was being REALLY mean.

That being said, I did manage to watch a solid 15 minutes of Puppybowl II. I highly reccomend the Bissell Kitty half-time show.

Fabulous Secret Powers

This video is rather amusing.

And here's the journal. I suspect it's not as old as the time stamp says, but maybe it is.

A Shout Out to Titiano Vicelli

You know you're getting old when it takes three of your gnomish servants to help you into your formal armor. My good friend Titano Vicelli painted this for me over the winter. I just wish he'd remember how to spell my name correctly. But hey, what's an extra lower case "n" in the grand scheme of things. I haven't comissioned a painting of myself since around the time that I was the Grand Inquisitor of Bakeenus. Boy, that was a long time ago. Aust has been in the ground for well nigh thirty years now and it's been a solid 15 since the unfortunate incident with Chadryn and the bone ooze. I don't blame him for not wanting to come back though. The whole coast got to be real nasty once things really started going dark. Needless to say, I'm still quite pleased with my decision to move operations to Manhattan. The business opportunities here are nearly limitless and I'm about as far as I can get from whatever is going on out west.

Flooding the Market With Cheap Labor

The market in question being that of the "adult entertainment industry."

Transcript of interview here. It's Tucker Carlson, but he's actually kinda funny and doesn't make me want to claw out my eyes or stab my ears.

They Live

I saw this movie on the SciFi channel last night. The acting was generally wretched and some of the production quality was bad. That being said, I thought the concept was very cool. I wouldn't mind seeing this re-done, and I'm generally opposed to redoing movies.

The fight scene in the alley is tres-lame, and I think they just threw it in so that Roddy Piper could show off his WWF moves.

Stromboli Update

She's fine. Putting on a bit of weight I suspect and being rather annoying about certain doors being shut. I dont' care much if she scratches at the doors going outside and to the garage, but I'm not going to tolerate her scratching at my roommate's doors. I can't imagine that they enjoy it either. Thus, the squirt gun has been brought out of retirement.


Here's a picture of Stromboli from about two weeks ago. She was splayed out in front of the gas powered wall heater while Scottland and I watched BSG. We weren't sitting on the couch with the digital camera available, so we were unable to get a picture of her doing "Cat Yoga."

Good Morning February

The final weekend in January was nice, with one or two exceptions.

I flew up to Seattle and only thought I was going to die once. Seriously. The plane did something scary that I've never experienced. It was sort of like hitting turbulence, only slower and the plane basically just went from being low at the back and high in the front to low in the front and high in the back. It was like we were suddenly and unexpectedly descending. It's probable that we simply hit a pocket of warmer (and less dense air) and so lost some lift or something. That being said, the flight crew was unexpectedly switching planes once they got to Sea-Tac. Whatever it was, I had enough time to think, "Oh my god, I'm going to die" and get my adrenaline really going. After that, the flight was pretty uneventful, though the landing in Seattle seemed odd in a way I can't describe. Sort of like the problem was over-correcting during maneuvers. *shrug* I was probably just paranoid.

Friday's episode of BSG was pretty good, although I didn't like how the handled some of the flashback stuff. Also, it's hard to imagine that there is that much of a demand for children in a "town" of 50,000. Baltar is apparently having his final break with reality. I wonder if he'll end up in charge of the Cylons like in the original tv show. Maybe it was just because Jamie Bamber was looking extra butch and muscle bound this episode, but it seems like his acting is improving. Either that or he just had better writing and more of a purpose.

Ryan came over and watched BSG with us and then we got in a spirited discussion regarding some D&D stuff. I think we're in agreement that spells that have the potential do lots of damage that do not require a saving throw and are immune to spell resistance are a real problem. I'm looking at you, Crystal Shard and Orb of Force. Maybe there are some exceptions where high damage spells that only require a touch attack are okay, but I'm not sure what they are. Also, it appears that we were using the "Earthen Grasp" Warlock invocation incorrectly. In the Complete Arcane version of the spell, the hands don't have improved grapple and so any attack of opportunity that deals any damage negates the grapple attempt that round. The hands have hardness 4 and so it should be pretty easy for some creatures to negate the grapple. This has been fixed in the Spell Compendium, as the hand does not provoke an attack of opportunity now.

On Saturday, we went to Morton's Steakhouse to celebrate Dana's birthday. Dana is one of Scottland's friends, though she is now my friend as well. Oh Lord. Morton's was good. My gut (haha) instinct is that El Gaucho's is better than Morton's, but not by a whole heck of a lot. I had a nice porterhouse steak and my only regret is that I foolishly ate potato and broccoli while eating the steak and thus could not consume it entirely.

Sunday morning, Scottland, Suzanne and I went to a local cafe (Circa) for breakfast. I highly recommend it. In my opinion, it's at least as good as Jitterbug without the ridiculous lines and the miniscule menu. Marty Durham was going to join us, but on the way over the spaghetti sauce he had made for his D&D group spilled all over the back seat of his car. After breakfast we went back to Scottland's and played three rounds of Puerto Rico. Have I mentioned how much fun this game is?

After that, it was back to Davis for me. Returning after this weekend was harder than usual. Davis always seems kind of blah after being in Seattle. The weather down here is pretty gray and dismal and I'm looking forward to the dry summer heat.

Also, I'm completely in love with Mr. Scottland Jacobsen. Just so we're all clear on that. :)

Cloture Vote

Looks like the Senate has voted (75-25) to end debate on the Alito nomination. Oddly enough, Patty Murray voted no and Maria Cantwell voted yes. If I were still a resident of the state of Washington, I'd be working this fall to hand Ms. Cantwell her walking papers. Luckily for me, both of my new Senators voted correctly.