She's falling apart, captain!

Now, if I worked on a starship, this would be the time in which the whole thing exploded and came flying apart at high warp speed, while on fire and everyone screaming...and I'm one of only two redshirts.

Yeah, one of those days at work where the boss is gone, the network admins are gone or have left early, our most experienced tech is out, along with nearly all our programmers.  So, it's just me and one other PC tech the whole day, and everything decides it wants to break.  What a load of fun.  One thing's for sure, I felt like Scotty at the end of the day.

Anticipation

So, I've been wanting to read MHI for a long time, and I finally got my grubby little hands on a copy the other day, and now that I've had time to start reading it, I am completely hooked.  It's been a very long time since I've read a fictional book that causes me to yearn for any kind of break I can get, just so I can keep reading it a bit more.  Man, I gotta see if I can get in cahoots with whoever is running the Utah County office of MHI and get myself a job!

Yuuuup.  Totally need to find out where these guys are.

Which, obviously brings me back around to my own measly writing endeavor.  I remember bringing it up on here a while ago, but I barely touched the thing since.  I have a fairly good idea of what I'd like to write, but the problem, is that I don't' particularly like the way that portion of the story is going.  Writing the climax so that it achieves the already written ending, has just been torture.  I am very unwilling to give up the ending (as that's how I started writing it, was coming up with the ending first), but that makes every variant of the climax that I've been able to come up with feels unoriginal, unexciting, and just plain dull to me, which is driving me crazy.  So, instead of something simple this has ended up becoming a 5 month long project just for a dang short story.

In other, more eventful news, it's only a short amount of time until my family will be able to come by for a whole week of debauchery and fun, and I'm looking forward to it.  Hopefully, with any luck, I'll actually remember to consistently take my camera with me and get a few interesting shots.

HB 76

It saddens me so.  I have scratched the surface before on the subject of my feelings on the current double standard with gun ownership and concealed carry permits, and I was honestly hoping that this bill would go through to provide some much needed justice and fairness to the laws.  However, as much as I'd like to go on a rant about that double standard, this is about HB76.

We all know by now that the Utah Senate and the House both passed the measure, only for it to be vetoed later by the Governor.  The hope was that since the House and Senate passed the bill by such a large margin, that they would vote on it again to override the Governor's veto.  However, for some reason, the prospects for that happening appear to be grim at best.

My only consolation at this point, is that with such a strong gun community in this state, it's nearly assured that he's not going to be reelected any time soon.

Excellent idea Governor!  Why not piss off one of your largest constituencies!

Life is wasted on the living

It's like a catch 22.  The less I do, the less I can actually write about that's worth posting on here.  On the other hand, the more I do, the less actual time I have to write anything at all.  A fun conundrum.

So, what am I doing then?  Well, Saturday saw me going to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch UFC with the whole IT crew, which was loads of fun, and even some great fights to boot.  Even though we got some of the worst service I've ever had from a waiter.

Also had an all day Cowboy Bebop marathon with J, as he hasn't seen it before, and we almost watched the entire series in a day.  The more I watch both Bebop and Firefly, I can't help but realize Joss Whedon is lying his ass off when he says he's never seen Bebop until after making Firefly.  Come on, Joss.  The jig is up. Just admit it: Firefly is totally a live action adaptation of Bebop, but with a few different characters.  Nobody is gonna think less of you for it.  Well, except for not keeping the soundtrack.  Let's face it, everyone's gonna think Bebop's soundtrack is far better.

That, and even though I rarely wear t-shirts anymore, I just had to buy me a Spike Speigel T shirt I saw on http://www.riptapparel.com/  (Thanks, Mary!)

Also managed to stop by the bookstore during the weekend and got myself a nice little treat:

This is totally the guy equivalent of romance novels.  I just sit and fantasize of having that job.  Double super secret bonus points if you guess the reference in the post title without using google.

My tardiness knows no bounds

So enjoy some tunes a day late:

one giant leap forward, but two big steps back

Star Trek: Into Darkness - a review.   What do I say?  Well, without spoiling anything for anyone, let me separate this review into two parts.  The first part is for anyone who is not familiar with Star Trek, or hasn't seen any of the other (more famous) trek movies before:  Go see it, it's the most intense sci-fi action movie you will ever see, chock full of very memorable and interesting action throughout, and have to admit that I liked it a lot.  All the cast delivers great performances, special effects are good, and I will reinforce once again that Karl Urban as Bones, is quite possibly the greatest re-casting decision in film history.   Benedict Cumberbatch pulled in his usually awesome performance and presence as well, and we get to see some Klingons!

However, this isn't to say the movie is without any issues (mother effing lens flares, anyone?), and here's where I get to the second (the hard) part.  I will admit that almost all of my complaints about this movie (and the last movie) are simply fanboy rage gone wild, and that despite all those complaints, they don't really detract from the film experience at all, they just serve to piss off the hardcore fans such as myself.  But, I'm not going to get into any of those, because I'm sure any real fan of Trek would have pick up on 'em.

Now back to my initial point.  Some people will view my primary (and my only big) complaint about the movie to be a nitpicking fan's frustration.  However, I view it as extremely bad and lazy film making, as I was very much enjoying the film up until that point.  Okay, I think I've exhausted my ability to review without spoilers, so if you seek more knowledge, click on the link below.

More conversations at work

Getting in trouble one conversation at a time.  A coworker of mine in sales, pointed out that they have a fresh overabundance of food they need help in liquidating that is up for grabs in the popularly-dubbed "foodicle."  He insisted I try some, and so I asked what kind of food they have.  He then offered what I thought was the weirdest description of the food possible by saying, "Well, it's girl food."
"What?  What the heck is that?!"
He replied, "You know, girl food."
"No, no I don't know.  I have no idea where to start with that.  What does that even mean?!"
"Like salads and stuff.  It was from a baby shower."
After straightening up, I reply, "Well, I still don't see how that makes sense, as I don't think salads are restricted to a particular gender, and I doubt there are any vegetables that are assigned as a particular sex, otherwise I would be dating one.  Unless, you're trying to say it was made for girls, and even then, I doubt that can apply to anything other than some kind of specialty cake with some ripped shirtless man on it, or something like that, and even that's still more a question with orientation."

There was too much laughter around the office to really continue my argument.

ZOHMFGWTFBBQ!  I totally forgot to mention that I'm going to see the new Star Trek movie tonight!  I'll be sure to share my thoughts on it afterwards.  Woo hoo!

A recap, shall we?

So, the weekend was pretty enjoyable.  A good friend of mine had a birthday, so I insisted on treating him to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings.  I was never much a fan of wing until I went to this joint.  Now I'm looking for any old excuse to eat there whenever possible.  Let's see, what's tomorrow?  Any holidays going on?  Let's see what a quick wiki wander reveals...hmmmm...we have:

• 1869 - In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association. - certainly worth celebrating, but see the rest before making a call
• 1858 - Opening of the present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. - good music is always cool, but not the kind of thing to warrant a trip to BWW
• 1957 - At Malden Island in the Pacific, Britain tests it's first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple. - Yeah, I'm still a part of the "legalize nukes" crowd, but let's see what else there is.
• Today is also Peace Officer's Memorial Day - yeah, as if I'd celebrate that.
• 1718 - James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the Puckle gun, fore barer to the modern machine gun. - This is the one! The reason to go get some wings to celebrate!

So, why the puck not?  From here on out, May 15th is officially "Puckle Gun Day!"

As for how else I've been spending my time, the roomie and I have been sinking our time into a new game we just found out about called Guns of Icarus.  Just imagine huge steampunk airships that are loaded to the hilt like battleships, duking it out over ruins of warships, and everyone plays an individual crew member on that ship, requiring excellent teamwork to survive.  Go check it.  It's intense.  

ugh

Busy trying to cough out my lungs at the moment.  Blogging will resume soon.

Momma

Next on the "most important" list after offering entrails up the lord, is thanking the mother he provided to care for you.  So, here's to you, Mom.