I'm watching a little Teen Wolf. I was looking at something else on wikipedia and found a link to the show, and noticed it had received mild approval from critics. So today I watched the first two episodes. Some observations:

-What kind of person hears that there has been half of a dead person found in the nearby woods, and decides they want to go look for the other half??? Why would you want to do that? And why would you let that person be your best friend? In high school my best friend wanted to go see a bad movie and I refused to go. Hunting a corpse is absolutely out of the question.

-The main character has an awful lot of hair. He's reminds me of John Travolta in the '70s. People who have a lot of hair are usually really into brushing and styling it, but this guy is more of a "run to school wearing whatever" kind of guy. Maybe it's a Justin Bieber influence on kids today.

-Lots of "I can't control my emotions" and "I can't control my werewolf transformation" moments that don't interest me. I realize it's occasionally hard to control yourself, but grunting and rolling around on the ground is not how real people handle these moments. Man up teen-boy!

-None of the girls are hot. I'm not sure if this is my fault because I'm just too old for high school girls now. But there are only two female character and I don't find either of them to be particularly attractive. They remind me of the girls on the OC. Angular chins and long wavey hair. At least the popular one is competent at Algebra II. Friday Night Lights had some hot high school-ish girls. Let's get it together, Teen Wolf!

-Do most people know how to play lacrosse? I certainly don't. I was going to call BS on there even being lacrosse in California, because we didn't have it at my high school, but apparently there is a small league out there. I know I hadn't even heard of the game until seeing it in American Pie. What exactly are you supposed to do when someone has the ball in their- ...basket-stick-thing and comes running towards you? Apparently "tackle" is not the answer. But not knowing what the defenders are even trying to do makes the guy's spins and leaps less impressive. Lacrosse is heavily featured in this show. I wish they'd included a scene explaining how it's played.

-I like how the "super speed" isn't conveyed using fast motion film, the way it is in Vampire Diaries and True Blood. That never looked very convincing.

(Trent Reznor, to fans after finding out his new album was retailing for $30)
"You know what that means. Steal it. Steal away. Steal, steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealing."

Hello, All. (Rachel, Sarah, family.) This month I need to do work, so I won't be updating again here until October, but I should update now while I'm thinking about it.

I made it to NYC two weeks ago just in time to get hit by Hurricane Irene. I didn't think it would be a big deal, but all the buses shut down 24 hours before the storm. So I couldn't get back to DC and ended up unexpectedly spending a few days at my cousins Brian and Linda's place. They were very nice about it and power didn't go out or anything. It would have been fun if I wasn't stressed about late work and if I had more than a single change of clothes.

Then last weekend I was in New Orleans in time for tropical storm Lee. That was really just a lot of rain but I think it was the first storm since Katrina and a lot of people were worried about flooding. We had sandbags ready, but I was unconvinced as to their standing-water effectiveness, which my host did not appreciate. Apparently blind optimism is preferred in some situations.

I'm buying some Vietnamese coffee equipment from Amazon because Linda showed me how to make it in NYC. It's surprisingly easy, but my order is $2 short of Amazon's free shipping. Now I'm looking at videogames to add. How did I not hear about a Donkey Kong Country sequel being released for wii? I thought about buying that, or Super Mario All-Stars, or Punch-Out, but in the end bought none of the above. Next month though I'm hoping to redbox rent the new Deus Ex. It's gotten good reviews but I've been fooled by glowing videogame reviews before. Instead I'm going for a $3 mouse pad. I spilled a drink on this one and it's all gross.

Oh, according to facebook Julie is getting married this weekend! I hope to spot photos on facebook later.

There was an earthquake yesterday afternoon. Lots of west coast jerks on facebook thought it was funny that we got worried over a 5.8 earthquake. "Out here we eat 5.8 earthquakes for breakfast!" Har, har, har, asshole. You must be really popular. The difference is that California buildings are designed to handle earthquakes so you can sit pretty, comforted by your rigid building codes. If I was in the middle of the desert I wouldn't care about any sized earthquake. It's collapsing structures that are the cause for concern, not the possibility of falling and bruising your ass. Dumb ass. If there was a little tornado in California I wonder if the Midwest would say "I eat F1 tornadoes for breakfast! Just go to your basement!"

My apartment building was built in 1926, and is made out of concrete that is older than the freeway that collapsed in Oakland in the 1989 earthquake. (An earthquake which I remember, and it didn't scare me nearly as much as this one because I was at my parents' solidly built house in the CA woods when it happened.) I didn't crawl under my desk, but for 20 seconds I stood in my 4th floor apartment's doorway, listened to the building creak and groan while swaying, and thought "If this keeps up much longer, it is going to collapse and I am going to die." And any of you would have thought the same thing. It was a little traumatizing.

Now I have some deep cracks in the concrete in the hallways of my building. You can see spots where the wall is no longer flat because I guess part of it has moved. The water and gas and everything still works so I suppose its fine as long as there's never another quake, but still I'm not comfortable with it. Large buildings this old should come with a warning in the lease.

"I have studied geology and therefore earthquakes and know that a 5.8 is not the end of the world." My esteem for geologists just plummeted, because you are an idiot. The earthquake started as a subtle tremor and got progressively stronger. During the quake nobody knew how strong it was going to get. And I'm sure you're not qualified to look around and tell how strong an earthquake these different east coast buildings will withstand.

I don't think I've ever been more angry at idiots.

Phil: Joe, it's tall, dark and handsome. Two out of three isn't bad.

I've been reading A Game of Thrones and am now on it's sequel (can't remember the name). The HBO series does actually cover the entire first book, and does it pretty well. I didn't notice anything really missing except some some minor battles towards the end. So you can probably skip that book if you've watched the whole tv season.

The books have much less sex than HBO, though there's still a little of it and it is occasionally more graphic than most fantasy books. Also there's less of a rivalry between Littlefinger and Varleys the eunuch. The book makes it clear that Varys the eunuch is the sneaky spy master while Littlefinger is just a nobleman who for some reason sits on the king's counsel, while in the tv series the two both seem to have extensive and comparative networks of spies. Finally I think the king's brother is gay in the HBO series but none of the characters are mentioned as being gay in the books. Maybe that'll be made more plain later in the books though.

I like most of the characters and it's an engaging, though slow-paced story. I have two complaints. First, the female villains are all two dimensional pseudo-characters and the female protagonists are only slightly better. I also don't care at all about the woman across the sea or that silly mish-mash barbarian culture. I should have just skipped her chapters. The other thing I don't like is the chapter structure. It seems like the author purposefully ends one chapter just when it's starting to get interesting and then jumps storylines to the least interesting storyline possible. Or maybe he only does this sometimes, but it just seems like every time because it's so incredibly annoying.

Penny: Has Leonard ever dated any regular girls?
Sheldon: Well, I assume that you're not talking about digestive regularity, because I've come to learn that such inquiries are inappropriate.
Penny: No, I mean has he ever dated someone who wasn't a brainiac?
Sheldon: Oh, well there was this one girl who had a PhD in French Literature.
Penny: How is that not a brainiac?
Sheldon: Well, for one thing, she was French. For another, it was literature.

What is the name of the phenomenon of light bending as it travels from one medium to another? Answer: Refraction! There was a physics question at last night's trivia and I was all over it! Though I think Rachel knew the answer too. This makes up for me confusing Ohm's law and Ampere's law a few months ago.

It was a busy July and now it is a busy August. I went to Courtney's wedding in Texas and then Rachel's wedding in Cape Cod, then spent a week in Mississippi doing construction, and then a week in New Orleans relaxing. So, very briefly:

Courtney's wedding was a great time. I was at a ranch near Houston and then out in downtown Austin. I really like the Dickens side of my family and am happy to hang out with all of them. They're just so friendly! Maybe it's a fake southern hospitality thing, but I'll take it! I was originally just going to do a Thursday-Sunday trip but then extended it because Courtney has been living in London for the past few years and I haven't seen her at all. So after the wedding I stayed in Austin with Courtney and Phil, and a bunch of their friends. Staying in a downtown hotel and wandering the downtown Austin bars is almost like being in DC, except everyone there is very laidback and beers are 1/3 the price. Also we have no dueling pianos in DC.

Rachel's wedding was also fun, but more rushed than I would have preferred. I drove up with Puja and Sunjeev, and what was supposed to be a 8 hour drive turned into 12 hours, which is longer than any drive should be. So we arrived Friday night, got lunch and went swimming on Saturday, Rachel's wedding Saturday evening, and then we drove back on Sunday. It was busy. Driving with Puja and Sunjeev was fine (when Puja wasn't checking my alertness by asking me to explain the entire Rent storyline), but I really should have flown. And then I should have taken an extra day or two to relax on the cape. But I got a photo with me and Rachel when she was all decked out, which was all I really wanted, and I bought a drink for Diana, and I discovered that while I can dance just fine to club music while intoxicated, more alcohol will not enable me to hand jive or whatever to oldies songs. And there were a lot of oldies songs at this wedding.

I wish I'd taken more photos at both events. You see dozens of people everywhere taking photos and think it's unnecessary for you to take your own, but then it turns out that nobody wants to share their photos! Everyone is privacy-paranoid with their facebook photos.

The construction at Mississippi wasn't too exciting. I met some nice people, some people I didn't appreciate as much, and had a very stress-free week. Construction each day, and the Hearts card game and ice cream trips each night. It turns out that I really don't enjoy being both sweaty and covered with dirt/sawdust. The combination of the two is 10x worse than either being dirty or sweaty on its own. I guess that much like Jesus, my contribution to the world will not be by following a parent into carpentry. I am good at hearts though, especially when playing conservatively I can pretty consistently get the fewest points.

New Orleans was a lot more fun that I thought it would be. Alcohol is dirt cheap, everyone is eager to give you a to-go cup, and you can just walk around or even drive around while drinking. Also pretty much every meal had something surprisingly delicious. I'm not normally a food person but this was all great stuff! I had some fried oysters and actually enjoyed oysters for the first time. (Raw oysters are inedible.) On the downside, the weather is routinely hot and humid like the very worst days of DC summer, and it only gets hotter at night for some reason.

I'm going to be working hard this biweek. I'm hoping to meet up with Dave in NYC at the end of the month.

And I'm posting from my office so no quotes this time.

Megamind >> Despicable Me

I've been watching The Walking Dead. It's okay. Some moments of good writing and a few of pretty terrible writing. A lot of characters I don't care about. Especially the female characters who tend to alternate between breaking-down crying or getting really bossy. Maybe I'm sexist, or the show is.

The secret to surviving a zombie attack is the same as in real estate: location, location, location. It is not sticking together, which is what the characters on this show like to tell each other. "We've got to stick together!" The number of people is a moot point if you get swarmed with zombies, which is more likely to happen if you're sticking with noisy, dumb people. I guess if you know you're incapable of surviving alone then you should find someone who is competent to latch onto. But that's how life is for some people, zombies or no.

So location. Just be where the zombies are not. Take your supplies to the middle of the desert. Zombies don't drive, and if they do you'll see them coming 20 miles away. Or if you're near a coast take a boat out. Zombies won't swim.

I wonder if part of the zombie appeal is the average sci-fi geek knowing that he could easily take out a string of zombies with just a shovel or a hammer. It's so manly! Just a man and his trusty shovel, breaking bones of aggressors who can only clumsily try to grab at him.

And how could zombies possibly overrun a military base? Every man with a gun can take out dozens of zombies without a problem. I guess they didn't know at first where to shoot, but how long would that really take to figure out? After the first zombie didn't die until his head was blown off, I think I'd start aiming for the head. Heck, a lot of those macho military guys could probably take on endless zombies just using an improvised club.

The last episode of The Walking Dead is weak. Some extremely contrived events and poorly thought characters. It's funny that one guy introduces himself as "Doctor Edwin". Even after the apocalypse, doctors will cling to their titles.

There's a moment near the end where the doctor says "Before you go..." and he leans in and whispers something in the main guy's ear while everyone else is just watching them. I find myself not caring at all what he said. But from reading a couple online reviews, I guess I'm the only one who isn't actively pondering what one adult man might decide to whisper into the ear of another. They tried to pull a Lost trick and I'm disappointed in the writer's cheap tactics.

(comments about a news article about LightSquared's wireless network causing GPS interference)
kdavis: GPS's are so useful to me that I'm very biased here. I travel a lot for business, maybe 15-20 business trips per year, and get lost easily. The GPS has improved my quality of life more than any single device invented in my lifetime. Frankly, if somebody found a way to eliminate HIV but it would wipe out GPS's, I would choose saving the GPS's.
NotContinuum: kdavis: I will now kill you, bury you, and piss on your grave.