You May Now Celebrate, Middle Earthlings

Peter Jackson to produce Hobbit film!

Published

Well, I'm going to be, anyway: check it out!

She's Alive!

The November/December time crunch is on, but I had to update you all:

• I have been accepted into UNT's PhD program in Higher Education!! Horray! (And eeek!)
• Appropriate gifts to commemorate the occasion include these sassy t-shirts.
• No, this has no bearing on when/if we're having kids, and furthermore, that's none of your business. Um, not that I'm sensitive about the subject...
  
• Thanksgiving with 18 of our family members was great fun.
  
• My hair has been re-dyed and is now slightly less fire-engine red. Very, very slightly.
• Alex and I are flying to Las Vegas for a real--gasp--vacation on Christmas Day, for 4 days/3 nights.
• I'm flying on four different trips during December, evenly divided between work and pleasure. Yikes.

And that concludes the news portion of this program. Thank you, and good night.

Is It Just Me...

...Or has AOL totally ripped off Nintendo Wii's "Mii" concept?

The AOL avator: the Wee-Mee.

Random Afternoon

• Sputtr: an interesting new search tool. (No, hit "enter" after typing your search--just click on the button below for the interface you'd like to search. And thanks, Mark!)
• 70 * 7: neat concept for a t-shirt store. Limited-edition shirts (70 made) for $30/each; when the stock is all sold, $1050 goes to a charity of the artist's choice, and $70 goes to someone in need in the artist's community. Oh, and they're also gorgeous shirts. (Thanks, Tihleigh!)
• Go, Spurs, go! They're doing well, and one of our GovDocs student employees, a fellow San Antonian, got to see last night's game. Bully for her!!
• Wow. I have a heck-ton of photo sets on my Flickr account. Guess that pro account really is worth it, after all.
  

Indifferents, Beware!

I'm an omnivore!

Consuming Mass Media (...Yummy!)

• Who names a poor, mutated duckling with four feet "Stumpy?" I mean, really. I just want to befriend this sick, twisted person who obviously shares my sense of humor.
• Lots of nerd news lately--all the hubbub last month about finding Stonehenge's secret (jury's still out on that as far as I'm concerned), last summer there was the KV63 tomb, and now another Egyptian tomb's been found! My inner Indiana Jones is aglow with delight.
• For Trump's sake... I hope he loses the WWE match. The man could seriously use a head-shave.
• ...Unlike Brittany Spears, who shaved her own hair off on Friday. All I can say is that at least she's getting help. (And honestly, with two little kids to take care of--it may have been a very wise thing, to cut haircare out of the picture.)
• The Oscars--yay! Print out your own ballot!
• Ha! I always thought that the "daddy long-legs have powerful venom, but their jaws are too small to bite humans" concept was a bit urban-legend-esque. And it turns out, that's correct--it's totally made-up!

CyberCemetery Story

It's always fun to tune into NPR on your morning commute and hear your coworkers! Woohoo!!

Read the print version of the story here:
"UNT's CyberCemetery keeps dead federal agency websites alive"
by Catherine Cuellar, KERA 90.1 Reporter

Or listen to the MP3 here.

(This story played on KERA 90.1's "Morning Edition" on 8:36am, 2.19.07.)

The Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.... and Birthday Boy

Kim Jong-Il turns 65 today. What kind of birthday cake do you think he likes, anyway?

Now, don't you have "I'm so ronery" echoing in your head? (Okay, maybe not for those who've never seen Team America: World Police. Hey kids, buy the DVD and a teeny tiny portion of the profits may go to Trey!)

Want to hear what I sound like being interviewed for our local NPR affiliate KERA 90.1, just one day after overcoming the flu? Then tune in to "Morning Edition" on Monday to see if the story plays. (Don't worry, if they archive it on their website later, you know I'll be linking to it.)

[Sniffle, sniffle, snork. ] That's all for now.

"I Failed You, Senator"*

*Sorry, it's just that anytime I've heard the word "senator, " for the past four years, that line haunts me. And yes, working in GovDocs, this happens a lot.

I listened to an hour of the Gates Confirmation Hearing with the Senate Arms Committee yesterday, and found it unusually compelling for a) a hearing, and b) a political gathering on c) the radio, where you can't distract yourself from the chatter by wondering what on earth that senator's wife was thinking when she bought him that tie. Then again, I think it's simply further proof that either a) I'm getting old very quickly, or b) this job is interesting me in things I didn't care about before, considering that I now not only will talk politics--one of the few topics in conversation that I used to remain absolutely silent on (out of mixed boredom and fear of conflict)--but I now seek out opportunities to do so, and regularly start discussion of political topics with my husband. My husband, who is similarly becoming interested in all this stuff, which is part of the reason that I suspect my interest isn't due solely to my job--since he tests office software for mobile phones, and the Iraq Study Group's upcoming report will have no direct correlation to his position. Hmmm... not that I know of, anyway.

Unrelated Banter
We had a farewell party this afternoon at work for my Awesome Boss, who leaves in a week and a half. It was a good party--great spread; yum!--but of course I'd far rather she didn't leave at all. Sigh...

And here's the link to my final presentation for my Online Family Archive in my Digital Libraries course. I plan on cleaning up the records, getting better (and lots more) images, and exporting them all in XML to use in a database of my choosing (or, if I'm insane enough, my own design).

Geoff Klock's asking for your 10 favorite comics/graphic novels list--not of all time, or the best, just your "most-fun" list at this moment. Here's mine:

1. Neil Gaiman's Stardust
2. Fables: Legends in Exile
3. Digger (vol. 1 / 2)
4. Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl
5. Batgirl: Year One
6. Death: The High Cost of Living
7. Persepolis
8. all of Frank Miller's Batman work
9. Lone Wolf and Cub (currently on vol. #2)
10. Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics / Making Comics (I know, I cheated!)

Nintendo's Wiimote Warning: Do NOT sling your Wiimote across the room. To which I reply: Uh-Duuuuuuuuh! This person obviously didn't get the warning, and this gal might want to take heed.

You want these shirts. You know you do.

Get Lost!

Make your own fortune cookie here.

Ahoy, It's Talk Like a Pirate Day!

• Erika over at the Amplified Library celebrates in Grand Pirate-y Fashion.
• Perhaps this artistic ode* to Talk Like a Pirate Day is in poor taste… but that doesn’t stop it from being completely hilarious.
• So, you just found out that it's TLAPD, and you're insecure about how to communicate properly in piratese? Never fear: there's a (hysterical) educational filmstrip for you!
• For more pirate-y goodness, check out my previous post on pirates vs. ninjas.

*If ye be offended by mention of sanitary items of a feminine and delicate nature, ye be advised to clear off right away.

What You Can Do With Half a Weekend

1. Spring Cleaning in Fall

Alex’s computer room now has twice as much floor-space, and he has several additional items on eBay and a nice stack of items still to be listed.And this in a weekend when I worked Saturday! I took two of those 33-gallon trashbags out yesterday, I have several power supplies to somehow recycle, and a growing pile of things to take to good ol’ Goodwill.

2. To Best Buy... And Back Again

Yes, we bought the much-longed-for Star Wars original trilogy set on DVD. And we're going to return it.

No, it's not defective. It's Lucas, in my opinion, who's defective. We decided to read a DVD-Talk review before we burst the shrinkwrap, since they've been reliable sources in the past. Mentions of few new special features, the lackluster look of the un-restored originals next to last years' beauties, the 4.3 format with black bars instead of true widescreen formatting (!!!), and the fact that we already have the sparklingly-gorgeous-but-wrong special editions on DVD all gave us reason to shake our heads with frustration and be slightly happy that we'll be getting over $60 back from Best Buy.

Oh, did you notice that next year is SW's 30th anniversary? And we all know how Lucasfilm loves to profit off of anniversaries. Here's some speculation/rumor/fact about what will be in the confirmed 2008 "saga" release of all 6 movies in one pack. Perhaps this set will include the deleted scenes that were rumored to be included in the special edition DVDs we all bought. But personally, I can't hold my breath that long.

Here's a fun track record of changes made to the Star Wars Saga.

Unrelated Banter:

• PS3 Downtime Donations: like SETI@Home or Folding@Home, there are rumors that the PS3 will enable charitably-hearted gamers to donate processor time in their downtime. Neat feature, even though I'd rather spend less and have more fun with a Wii.
• Brown: no longer my enemy. In fact, when speaking of my closet color-dominance, you might say that brown is the new black. (Well, okay, not quite; at least half of my closet will always be black. Brown is more like the new plum.)
• How do we know that Weird Al is a genius? Because his new single, "White and Nerdy," is a delicious parody including two insanely hilarious lines:

• "I'm fluent in javascript as well as Klingon"
• "Only question I ever thought was hard, was do I like Kirk, or do I like Picard"

Bow to the Supreme Nerd

Revisiting the geek/nerd topic yet again...

Thanks for another funny quiz, riofrio!

I'm just disappointed in myself for not thinking of the Vulcan comment...

Update:
I also rank as a Mid-Level Computer Geek. I aspire to more...

Normal Life to Resume Shortly

Lots of meetings... becoming library liaison... getting registered... paying for classes.

I'll catch up with you guys later.