Month: October 2004

Webcomics

One of the cool things about living online is that you can get daily comics that are fun and funny *and* that don’t require wasting paper. I have four webcomics that I currently read and am always on the lookout for others that might tickle my fancy. If you go to my actual LJ page, you can see them in my links list. (I now practically use my LJ page as my homepage. Just about everywhere I need to go on the WWW is just a click or two away from my LJ page.) But I’ll also link to them here with some comments on why I enjoy them.

  • Station V3 – I have known axonite online for, like, ever. But I’ve yet to meet him in person. (One of these days, I’m sure…) Anyhoo, I bring him up because he writes and draws this comic. It’s a daily with colored/expanded cartoons on Sundays. It’s about a space station that’s full of “characters.” Very funny stuff and even plots that go on for weeks! 🙂 He also does Station Z7, which is a full color comic on Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays about a station that’s probably in worse shape that V3. Click here for one of my favorites from Station V3.

  • The Devil’s Panties – judiang got me hooked on this comic. One night she kept sending elsaf, hergrace and I to certain panels and we’d all laugh. So I started reading it regularly. And for Judi’s birthday last year, I got her an original piece (and two copies) as well. The artist, Jennie Breeden is a very personable lady as well. She added “Happy Birthday, Judi!” to the panels that I bought. The comic is a semi-autobiographical daily with (lately) occasional splashes of color. Click here for one of my favorites.

  • Arthur King of Time and Space – A comic by another online friend. Paul Gadzikowski does this full color daily about King Arthur. But there’s a twist. He puts Arthur and his entourage into several different times and goes from there. So one day you’ll see Arthur in a space ship, the next day might have Arthur in the Wild West. Some fun gags can thus be illustrated with the characters. Click here for one of my favorites.

  • Ctrl+Alt+Del – The latest addition to my regular reading is a full color comic that’s updated on M/W/F/Sat. It’s by Tim Buckley and revolves around two gamers and their daily lives. Oh, and one of the gamers (the one who’s just that wee bit odder than your usual bloke) has a girlfriend who also likes gaming. Yay! Let’s hear it for girls who play video games! I found this one when someone in girlgeeks had a link to this cartoon. That was enough to convince me to start reading, and so I did. Here’s another one of my favorites.

So check these webcomics out and if you’ve got some that you love to read, tell me about them, too. 🙂

No Dead Servers Today!

Yay! I was beginning to think that Mondays really hated me, but today when I went into work, I discovered that none of the servers had crashed over the weekend and none of them crashed during the day, either. Woohoo!

I also managed to get the other third grade room done today. And finally managed (I think) to delete the malicious hitchhiker that has infected my laptop for far too long. (It kept changing its name, which makes it VERY hard to get rid of.) I didn’t want to turn off ZoneAlarm before I had it licked, and I couldn’t clone computers without turning off ZoneAlarm. (It’s all about sequins sequence.)

It’s chilly outside today, but it’s AUTUMN so I don’t really mind the chill. 🙂

I think I’ll have Mac & Cheese for supper (aka Kraft Dinner).

Nothing else to report.

This is my theory. That is to say, this theory, that is mine, is mine.

This theory, which is my theory on the Edwards/Cheney relationship, is my theory. What it is, this theory of mine, is that John Edwards, who is 51 (not a theory) is linked to Dick Cheney, who is 63 (also not a theory). That is, they are linked in my theory that is this.

OK, so I’m getting a bit tired with the Anne Elk style of stating my theories. I apologize to those of you who are also tired of it. It’s like trying to write dialog for Mojo Jojo.

Anyhoo, I thought of this on my way home from work. John Edwards is 51, but doesn’t look a day over 35. Dick Cheney is 63 but doesn’t look a day under 75. The two of them really don’t seem to like each other. And I think I’ve figured out why. You know how Dorian Gray had a portrait of himself which aged while he didn’t? Well, I think that as Edwards ages, the years get put upon Cheney instead. So Edwards stays looking young, but Cheney gets to looking older and older. No *wonder* he doesn’t care for Edwards! That’s gotta be aggravating!

Are you Good or Evil?

If you’ve always wondered whether you were Good or Evil, now you can find out. The Gematriculator will analyze the letters in your name (or a text passage or a webpage) and do some Gematria on it to find out. (Just so you know, I personally don’t believe in this and hope that those of you who do, if any, don’t hit me with sticks for playing around with it.)

Some interesting stats:

Ghost Light, the Site!

Yesterday, I finished my Ghost Light website. Yay! I, um, haven’t edited it thoroughly, however, so if you find typos or bad links or something, let me know and I’ll sort it out. I’m pleased with the captures, though narrowing them down to just a few for the site wasn’t easy. And it was even harder with the wavs. I have on my computer 34 Ghost Light wavs. I ended up putting 11 on the site. That wasn’t easy for me! Most of the story is so quotable anyway. (My original intention was to put up just 10. So I had 10 set up. Then one of my computer sounds played when Windows had an Exclamation – and it was a quote from Ghost Light that needed to be included. So I included it, too. In case you’re wondering which one, it was “Things are getting out of control, even *I* can’t play this many games at once!”)

So, if you haven’t clicked on it already, please go to my Ghost Light site. 🙂

Monday, Monday, So Bad to Me

I never used to really *hate* Mondays, but I’m beginning to. Or at least admit that they hate me.

2 weeks ago, JohnnyCache’s harddrive goes kaput. Last week, one of the 4 drives in the Fileserver goes kaput. Today? The processor in the Fileserver goes kaput.

The new Fileserver wasn’t ready for Prime Time yet this weekend, but Dean managed to get the new HD installed in it this weekend. Most of the weekend was spent backing it up, apparently, and that’s once he finally got it to boot. So last night around 6pm we installed it back on our network at school. The new drive was accepted as one of the regulars and the D volume (where all the user files are stored) began to be regenerated. Everything looked like it was going smoothly, so we left before 7pm and let it regenerate away.

This morning I went in to check on it and couldn’t connect. Crap. So I rebooted it and after it finally logged on and all, I connected and checked Disk Mangler to see what happened. According to it, the regeneration of the D volume failed. Crap. Well, I got it started again and then opened a browser so that I could e-mail Dean the news. Only I couldn’t connect to the Internet. Crap. Ah well, I went back into the hot room, reset our switch to the outside world, and returned to the office. To find that the Fileserver had hung up when I reset the switch. Crap. I reboot AGAIN. This time NOTHING. No POST, no Winders, nada. Crap.

It wasn’t yet 8am, but I still called Dean to tell him the bad news. Despite his prior commitments (to the Sheriff’s department, of all things) he came right away. He brought the new Fileserver with him in case things didn’t work with the old one. He figured out that it was the processor that had gone bad this time. After doing some research, we found some computers in the building which had processors that the Fileserver could use. He had to update the BIOS to do that – starting with a 533MHz processor and then upping it to a 800MHz one. (One of the fifth grade teachers is now without a computer – I’ll set him up with a new one tomorrow.) But he got it working again.

Dean’s now working double time on getting the new Fileserver up to par. Hopefully we can do the actual change over this week. And then maybe this current nightmare can end.

On a much happier note, however, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, niira!!!! Betcha you’ll have a nicely decorated cake for your birthday! (Well, you’d better!)

Ghost Light

Well, I’ve done what I could to OD on Ghost Light this weekend. Having the DVD has been great. I’m in the process of making a page for the Sylv Site on this story, though it’ll be another couple of days or so until I get it completed. I still have some capturing to do. (I spent a good deal of time today trying to find a program which could play the DVD and finally Ulead came through with their DVD player. Alas, its sound capabilities suck, but at least I get pictures!)

I watched the commentary today. Marc Platt (author) and Andrew Cartmel (script editor) spent a good portion of that time explaining the plot for the folks who couldn’t figure it out. Perhaps the actors should watch the commentary too (during one of the extras on the CD, most of them mentioned how they never understood the plot when they filmed it.) The other two commentators were Sophie Aldred (Ace) and Mark Ayres (music). Good commentary, though I missed having Sylv play off of Sophie.

I was rather pleased to discover that I’d pretty much figured out ages ago what Marc & Andrew say in the commentary and extras. (Indeed, I found an e-mail I’d written to drwho-l back in May of ’96 explaining the story.) If you’ve always had troubles figuring out Ghost Light, the first thing to realize is that Control is the control to an experiment. Control and the Survey (Josiah) were originally identical. The Survey would then go down onto some planet, evolve into the dominant life, and then Light could do a detailed study. Everything went haywire, however, when Josiah lands on Earth (again) while Light’s still sleeping. Hilarity ensues. 🙂

As you might have guessed from my recent LJ posts berating the lack of Ghost Light, this story is a particular favorite of mine. It’s my most favorite Doctor Who story of all time. So having it to watch all weekend has been a wonderful stress-reducer. Mmmm, Dark Coat Sylv! Spooky Victorians! Ayres music! Witty dialog! Ace in drag! What more could one ask for?

Also, inspired by one of my photos (actually, my only true photo) from Ghost Light, I have made my first OTP (One True Pairing) icon. Enjoy! 🙂

Oktoberfest!

The bad news? Dean’s having trouble with the old Fileserver so the new Fileserver wasn’t ready today. Hopefully he’ll have things sorted by tomorrow.

The good news? Ghost Light arrived today! Woohoo! I watched it with 5.1 surround sound earlier today. And tonight I’m gonna watch it again with commentary.

The bad news? Can’t do any screen captures since the damn thing won’t play with PowerDVD on my PC. Ah well!

The good news? I went off to Oktoberfest in Minster this evening.

First I went to the cottage where the folks were and had an amaretto sour while I finished the book in my purse. (I hadn’t realized how close to the end I was.) Then we went into Minster for their Oktoberfest. I bought a neat sweatshirt for the Christmas season (penguins and snow), an Oktoberfest glass mug (to go with the others I’ve bought throughout the years), and some cinnamon roasted almonds and pecans. For supper I had a brat with kraut, onions, and spicy mustard. Then I got some french fries and shared with the ‘rents. Caffeine Free Pepsi as beverage.

I noticed something interesting – they had a magnificent way to tell when people got too drunk on beer. There was a stall selling Chicken Hats. And as people got drunker and drunker, the chicken hats looked more and more appealing. Eventually, they were so drunk they’d actually spend money on one and wear it. Ta da! Instant drunk indicator! 🙂 (No one in my group drank, so none of us came away with a chicken hat.)

So now I’m off to watch Ghost Light with commentary. Mmmmmm, Sylv! Maybe I’ll watch it again tomorrow. It’s only 3 episodes, after all. 🙂

Lockjaw!

When I was much younger (high school age or so) I would occasionally get lockjaw1 thanks to my gritting my teeth while sleeping. Then I went through a number of years when this didn’t happen. Well, it’s happened this week. And I’ve finally discovered the cause. It’s the stress! I do my best to go “ha ha!” to stress, but the fact is that when I’m sleeping at night, my teeth betray me. I blame the Fileserver for this.

Thankfully, the folks at work are more forgiving of me than my teeth seem to be. The superintendent assured me that no one is complaining about the computer jobs which aren’t done. They know I’m doing the best that I can with my 1 period a day. The high school principal later told me the same thing. And tomorrow when Dean and I (hopefully) put the new Fileserver onto the network, I’ll be getting paid for that time. (Dean took the old Fileserver with him today at 4pm in order to transfer the files to the new one – hope its going smoothly for him!)

Dad and I went to see Tipp City’s new high school today for the monthly county tech meeting. Before I taught at Newton, I taught at Tipp for two years. As we went to enter this gorgeous new building, dad said to me, “Just think, you could have been teaching here.” Yeah, yeah… Jim Wilson, the head tech at Tipp, took all of us on a tour after feeding us pizza2. The building is gorgeous, the auditorium to die for3, the science labs are nifty, and the wiring closets are amazing (and still orderly).

When we were in one biology room, I saw my old Mentoring Teacher from when I student taught at Tipp City, Derron Brown. I replaced him when I later taught there when he went to try his hand at Troy High School. Then when I left Tipp to go to Newton, Brown came back to Tipp. Heh. He took me off to look at the chemistry lab and storage area (more jealousy) and I managed to lose the techs. Found ’em again once I got to the first floor offices and continued the tour.

After dad and I were suitably wowed by the new school building (next month we get to see Miami East’s new building), we went back to our OLD school and checked e-mail. Then I announced at 5 til 4 that the Fileserver was going DOWN. Then after five minutes, there were still a few folks connected. Dad and I went around getting in touch with those folks (or simply turning off the computers they’d left on) and I turned the Fileserver off. Dean then took it home with him.

I was exhausted when dad drove me home. First, I was a bit disappointed that Ghost Light still wasn’t in. Then, I felt too tired to go to BW3s. And Fall Fair was tonight – as much as I love watching the kids do silly things, I wasn’t in the mood. And the folks were going to head off to the Lake and do Octoberfest there. So I went home, read LJ, and started to mope. But at 6pm, I decided enough moping, it was time to go out and HAVE FUN. So I went to BW3s, had an amaretto sour and popcorn shrimp (something new) and talked with the Fishers and Weavers.

After the Weavers left, I headed off to Culvers for some ice cream. I got a wafflecone with vanilla ice cream and sat down. Just as I was finishing, someone stuck a number/marker4 on the table and I looked up, surprised. It was the Fishers. After I’d mentioned the ice cream, they decided to get some too. So we continued the conversations we were having at BW3s and they even ordered me some more ice cream. Damn, that’s mighty fine ice cream!

I’m home again, ready to rest and relax. Tomorrow I’m on call. When Dean’s got the new Fileserver ready, he’ll call me and I’ll head off to the school and we’ll get it all hooked up. And maybe I can stop gritting my teeth!

1Well, I don’t mean REAL lockjaw. No bacterial infection for me. No, I just mean that my jaw locks up and gets sore thanks to all of that gritting going on. It doesn’t help that I grit my teeth in time to the music that runs through my head during the day.
2When he sent the all call out to the county tech mailing list on what pizzas folks wanted, I was the first to respond and asked for cheese (or maybe even cheese and pineapple). One of the three pizzas that he’d ordered for us was half cheese, half pineapple. Yay! Thanks Jim!
3Seriously, this auditorium looked better than some professional theaters I’ve been to. Apparently, it was paid for by private donations. Simply an amazing place.
4What do you call those little plastic bends that have numbers printed on ’em? Some restaurants give ’em to you so they can find you in the seats.