zen.org Communal Weblog

Finally he’s getting the props he deserves. Good on ya Wil. Can’t wait to download this episode. I might even watch it before the Hurley episode of Lost…

Seriously, Wil’s really blossomed as a writer. His two books are wonderful (Just A Geekcontained many read-out-loud-to-the-person-you’re-sitting-next-to moments) and he seems to have come into his own skin. Which is nice to say about someone. And I’m lucky enough to have had him friend me at Orkut :-). He apparently WILL do anything for some Guinness :-).

If you are as much of a dork for CSI as I am (tho I want to know who writes some of those lines…groaners), and if you like ST:TNG, tonight (in the States) is the episode where Wil Wheaton guest stars. Once it airs, he’ll talk more about it in his blog. He’s a great writer, and I really enjoy his style. Can’t wait til someone uploads it, so we can see it :-).

No NTL cable today, and the next time they can come to try to fix it? Monday morning. Nearly 5 days. If we want credit for the service being out, it’s up to us to call the billing department once it’s working again.

Harrumph.

Update: It turned out our entire street was out, which accelerated the fix and got it back up by late afternoon.

We’ve got a picture of the access card that’s inside the box and put it up here—half of it looks like it’s been over a candle, slowly slowly melting away:

Literally.

The online horoscope asked for a first name. So we gave ’em one. You guess what name we chose.

Right now you might need to develop some more trust in others, dickhead. You could be a little frustrated because you want to do things your own way. But you could be encountering some restrictions. Your dreams might require more time, money, and energy before they can come into reality. Try to have faith today. Realize that you have survived worse challenges in the past and have ended up triumphant. Don’t worry – you can make it through!

Then, cause I was going to say that we were looking at this cause our friend John pointed us to it, I went looking for a webpage that referred to him at all. Which is difficult, since his name is John Rambo. No, really. And then we found this, which made us cry with laughter even more than the horoscope.

Two movie reviews today:

The first is Garden State, a feel good romantic comedy about about a twenty-something who returnes home for the first time in years to attend his mother’s funeral. He forgets his behavior altering drugs he has been taking since childhood and learns who he really is. On Netflix I rated this one ★★★★☆, but 余艾蕾 pumped it up to ★★★★★.

Natalie Portman stole the show as the quirkily deep female side of the romantic relation. Her and Zach Braff’s character end up taking a mental and physical trip around much of New Jersey. While 余艾蕾 questions the title of the movie, and wonders why it needs to be in New Jersey, having grown up along the keystone/garden state’s border I think I see where Mr. Braff is comming from. I think the title is also a pun on the state of mind Mr. Braff’s character was in when the drugs finally wore off.

余艾蕾 also loved the music, and already has the sound track.

The second movie is The Manchurian Candidate with Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury. The two most surprising things in this 1962 thriller is that Mr. Sinatra can act, and that Ms. Lansbury is a great villain. I didn’t think about a singing tea kettle the entire film!

The main problem with this movie is that it made me think some other films are worse, I now realize how unoriginal they are. At the Oscars, when a film I’ve seen gets nominated for best editing I rarely understand why, this film’s editing was brilliant. The specials on the DVD said that Mr. Sinatra was offered any character he wanted to be on this film, he made the correct choice as Laurence Harvey pulled off being “brain dry-cleaned” better then I think Mr. Sinatra could. Both 余艾蕾 and I gave this ★★★★★.

It’s nice to be back in our own bed, ya know?

Traveling was a long day. Thank the goddess for JetBlue and the live DirecTV personal monitors. If they didn’t have Nick Jr, we’d have been in trouble. 🙂

Problems started when we got to Boston, finally got checked in and through security. We hadn’t eaten since about 8am, so we’re all starving (this is at about 4p). Went to a “nice” place (according to one of the check-in attendants at Aer Lingus), sit down, inside the security area. And ended up having this skanky bitch ho for a waitron. Now, I’ve waitressed. I know it’s not easy. I know it sucks. But the *second* I said “Our son has food allergies….” she got this blank look on her face. Like she didn’t want to hear it. Anything we asked her about, she would roll her eyes, sigh deeply, and huff away. After the last time, when she cut me off in the middle of explaining P’s allergies by saying “Yeah, my grandkids have food allergies too”, she just walked away. I shouted after her “Then WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?!?!?!” She didn’t come back to us. I went up to the hostess after 10 minutes (of waiting with a cranky, hungry 3 year old) and asked for a new server. We got a lovely woman named Sandra, who had some food on the table for P in about 5 minutes. They gave him something that wasn’t on the menu (pasta) and he was thrilled. So we tipped her. Handsomely.
When I talked to the manager later, I explained that I was a waitress, and I know it’s not easy. But for fuck’s sake, that woman needed a slap upside her head. B and I were wondering how she deals with her grandkids.

Even worse, when we got on the plane, we checked about our special meals. Only one. DAMMIT. I called the day before the flight, was told that there were two vegan meals, no toms, no nuts. That P’s wouldn’t be overrode by the fact that he was a kid (that happened once before). They managed to get a veggie plate on the plane as well, and that helped. The vegan food, by the way, is a keeper. Since food on airplanes has to be over-seasoned and have TONS of flavor (apparently your tastebuds don’t work so well up there, dunno why), I have had some excellent vegan meals on airplanes. This one was grilled tofu with rice and steamed veggies. The sauce on the rice was a fake-butter (I hope!) sauce, but it had curry powder in it. YUMMY. With the tofu it was faboo.

And P is recognizing things. He looked at the airplane (distinctive logo on it) and said “E-lingus!” Um. Okay. It’s Aer Lingus tho. “NO, E-LINGUS!” Okay, kid, whatever.

Thankfully, P crashed out during taxiing for takeoff. Didn’t wake up til 15 minutes before landing at Shannon. So he didn’t really eat. And I scarfed down tons of food :-). We all slept decently, but we were still out of it yesterday. And it’s 12:18 now, and I’m still in bed (love the laptop!). About to get up tho.

It’s nice to be home 🙂

In Shannon Airport, we waited in line at US Immigration to continue our trip. There were six booths, each of which can have two INS officers working separate sides. On this occasion, there were only four INS folks working, divided between two stations. We went to the line on the right, sporting about 15 people; the line on the left was similar in length. We saw it take an average of about 5 minutes for each person to make it through. The slowdown appeared to be the requirement that every single non-US citizen (which in this case appeared to be the majority of the people) pose for a photo and offer a finger for a digital fingerprint.

Setting aside the debate about the problems in such a thing—no commitment to how long the information is held, who has access, etc—we’ll just focus on the amount of time it took for anyone to make it through immigration. We heard repeated calls for passengers to board our flight, heightening the stress as we’re convinced the airline will find a reason to take off our baggage and leave without us. It didn’t matter that we had US passports, we just had to wait like everyone else.

The two people in front of us divide up, going to each of the two INS staff. After a long wait, we saw the first immigration officer left her station with the person she’d been assisting. A few minutes later, the same thing happened with the other INS employee, leaving our side empty. About three minutes later, the second INS officer came out and told us we had to queue up on the other side. We couldn’t believe we’d just wasted all of this time, only to have to go to the other line and wait even longer. It was with great relief that we saw the first INS officer from our side materialize, and signal for us to come back. In less than one minute, she’d swiped each of our passports, given some idle chatter, and flagged us on.

While we were stuck in line, and when we got transferred to the other line, we were able to commiserate with our fellow passengers, all of whom were not US citizens and had to go through the fingerprinting exercise. Without exception, they all voiced their opinion that this did nothing at all to encourage them to want to visit the United States. Nor, they said, did it give them any confidence in the ability of the US government to treat foreign nations as anything other than second-class citizens of the world.

Sometimes this kind of crap makes you feel ashamed to be part of the land of the not-really-free.

For a word geek, searchspell is a cool toy. For example, if you visit www.searchspell.com/sites/wordid/, you’ll find a list of the pages for a variety of words that begin with the letter “i“.

“accelerated learning” outfit (whassatwhenitsathome?) The Training Camp, have determined what type of music professionals in the wonderful world of computing listen to.

Are you in the right job?

M
(currently listening to FolkAlley.com, and therefore well beyond the pale… )

Those results in full:

Job: Microsoft-certified professionals
Favoured genre: Mainstream pop

Top three bands:

Britney Spears
Dido
Beyonce
***********************

Job: Security
Favoured genre: 60s “Alt” Rock

Top three bands:

Grateful Dead
The Doors
Hendrix
***********************

Job: Linux
Favoured genre: Electro

Top three bands:

The Orb
Underworld
Kraftwerk
***********************

Job: Developers
Favoured genre: Heavy Metal

Megadeth
Iron Maiden
Slipknot
***********************

Job: Database administrators
Favoured genre: Indie

The Smiths
Haven
Suede
***********************

Job: Project manager
Favoured genre: Rock

Pink Floyd
Queen
Rolling Stones
***********************

Job: CIO/IT director
Favoured genre: Classical

Mozart
Handel
Vivaldi