The Default State Is Broken

Because it's a bit scattered about, I'm reposting my "Great Old Movies" essay for a broader* audience, and because I don't talk enough about movies. Inspired by a comment from a friend, my brain has been rifling through the databases in my consciousness and I keep thinking about those really excellent old black-and-white movies that made me fall in love with movies when I was a kid. Roger Ebert famously quotes his longtime-collaborator/frenimy Gene Siskel about the rule of thumb for judging whether a movie is good: "Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?" And since I love documentaries, it's hard for a movie to live up to my standards, but there are some amazing works out there. So here's some of my favourite old movies, in no particular order, so you can take a whack at them and see if you like them. 1) Bad Day at Black Rock . Spencer Tracy as a one-armed man in a small Nevada town. Probably the best m...

The experience of having someone google me, and then googling myself, has amused me all out of proportion to the experience. For instance, my first google hit is my twitter feed, but my personal domain (where I assume someone might actually be reading this) doesn't appear in the first FIVE pages of searches. So anyone looking for information about me gets data that is either at least five years old, or my twitter feed (which isn't exactly an in-depth view of my life right now). So what am I doing with my life right now? 1) Eating right and working out. A moderate change in my diet, coupled with a workout goal (a half-marathon at the end of June) has meant that I'm losing a moderate amount of weight and feeling better about my body. I'm not at my goal yet, but I'm moving in the right direction, and I feel good about working out instead of feeling it was a chore. 2) Working on my house. Yardwork right now, but I'm making a list of all of the improvements I w...

Portland turns out to be a really great town for going out and having a good time. Bar-hopping is not something I usually do, so I found a native guide, bribed him with trinkets and glass beads, and off we went to find pleasant vistas and tasty inbibants. Both, in fact, were had. Places I'm interested in going back to: Lotus, the Turtle, and whatever that dive bar we finished up at was. Places I'll skip: Low Brow, Life of Riley, and the skeezy strip club on 3rd and Burnside. I stuck mostly to gin and tonics, since that is rather my go-to drink, and also because in my suit and hat I looked like an Ad Agency Man from 1960, it was genre-appropriate. I could've gone for a Tom Collins, but I'm not really a fan, so g&t for me. Next time, though, I am going for the Doctor Who look. My new shoes are really pretty, but they're brand new, and that meant they gave me some pretty serious blisters. Four of them, the size of dimes, on my heels. Instead, I'll wear my canv...

The Nerds and Music show at the Aladdin was the show I was waiting for since I missed the last W00Tstock . The Jonathan Coulton show wasn't exactly bad , but it didn't scratch the itch I was feeling. I was hoping that this show would be as fun as past shows, and I was not left forlorn. Some interesting notes about the audience before I talk about the show itself. First, this audience skewed much older than the JoCo concert, like seriously so; there were a number of blue-haired old ladies at this show, and I have no idea why. There were also almost no children present, which was good, because the show got blue in the first fifteen seconds and stayed that way. Second, there were no talkers in the balcony this time, thank the gods. There was a bar, though, which I took advantage on a couple of occasions. And the balcony seats are much closer to the bathrooms, which I had to visit a depressing number of times. I really like the Aladdin, and have almost no complaints about...

Guardian Games got a liquor license at some point in the past, so they've started to host a "grown-up gaming" night: $10 gets you tickets for pizza and beer. This Thursday, they decided to have live music at the event, and the live music was The Doubleclicks, who are a musical twosome featuring acoustic guitar, cello, and two-part harmony. The pizza and beer stuff I could give less of a crap about, because I went to see the music. Suffice to say that the space is great for casual boardgames, and the beer and pizza selection is nice, but it's about the crappiest place you could set up for a band, especially an acoustic duet. How to categorize the Doubleclicks? I'm not actually sure it's even necessary, since it's entirely possible to simply say they fall under the umbrella of "nerd music" and leave it at that. But for anyone who hasn't actually heard or doesn't actually follow the Nerd Music movement, I'll give it a shot. Bear i...

There are advantages to having an iPad handy, not the least of which is that I can now see the keyboard I'm trying to use to type. It's also a bigger screen, which makes it look clearer (though my understanding is that the screen is exactly the same as the iPhone 3G). I'm also getting relatively good at typing one-handed (though part of that is due to autocorrect). Having something handy to joy down my ideas may in fact be handy and a boon to my creativity. I will need a keyboard to do serious long-form work, since my hand gets pretty tired pretty quickly, but that's a relatively minor complaint. My usage is obviously going to be less games than gaming; the various possible game apps hold no appeal, but there are some seriously nifty gaming and productivity tools that I'm chomping at the bit to snag and try out. It does mean that I'm now even more interested in finding a game to play rather than running my own, so I really want Brian to get his Ptolus game back...

Went to CrossFit for the first time tonight. Good: the people were pretty awesome. Bad: I was not ready for the workout. Par exemplar: warmup was interesting with lots of squatting and stretching and balance-type work, and already had me jelly-limbed at the end, and then we did fundamentals learning, which was the overhead squat, which nearly killed me, and then the Renegade Row, which turned my arms to noodles. And then, after I was already tired and woogly and dying, we did the workout. The workout was a 200 metre sprint, then 15 pushups, then a 200 metre sprint, then 10 renegade rows (on each side). And then do it all again. What I managed to do: 200M sprint #1, 15 pushups (at the knees), second 200M sprint (including a stop to puke in the bushes), and 5 renegade rows. And then my right calf cramped up so bad I couldn't straighten my foot, and one of the instructors spent the next 5 minutes massaging me out of my writhing in pain. I was trying not to cry in front of everyone, b...