I just got back from seeing the Marvel (It is “Marvel Group”, now, not “Marvel Comics”.) movie The Avengers.  I liked it very much. 

     We all know I do not watch TV:  Too much junk, commercials, nonsense.  We all know I just do not care much about movies, and My attention span tends to be on the small side.  We all know, also, I love reading engineering books,and have zero interest in comic books.  I know this too, being as “I” am part of “we all”.

     My brother telephoned, suggesting we watch the movie.  I went for the earliest time today.  This, it turns out, is the stereographic version, rather than the 'flat' version—apparently they alternate. 
     I have read bad comments about comic-book movies.  I have read even worse comments about stereographic (Mis-labeled as “3D”:  Just try looking at the side of something.) movies.  Insipid plots, when there is any plot, and things coming out of the screen at you, seem to be the unselling points of these comments. 
     This movie takes place after the Captain America movie of some months back.  The plot involves Loki using the power of the cyan power-cube to bring an invading army from 'somewhere out there'.  The people who make up The Avengers fight them off.  Duh.  What else would happen? 
     The strengths and weaknesses of each character are used to make a very satisfying whole.  The plot even makes sense!  (This last part is very important to an engineer.) 
     OK, so some things do come out of the screen, in your general direction.  They are supposed to do that, as they are part of the action.  They are not tacked-on crap. 
     Unfortunately, some of the CGI look it.  If you can ignore this—and I certainly did—then the movie will be enjoyable watching! 

     Actually, yes.  I would see it again.  And, yes, even I believe it was worth nine (Ouch!) dollars.  The music is cool, too. 

From:  Everyone
To:  Everyone
In Re:  Friday the Thirteenth
Relevant period:  All today

     Today is Friday the Thirteenth.  If you are amongst the portion of our population which participates in the superstition rituals concerning this period, you are expected to exhibit the looney, nutcase, conspiracist, and generally aggravating behaviors typical of your kind, as determined by the particular version of the superstition to which you adhere. 

Note:  There is no get out of jail free card, so please keep it clean.  We all need the laughs!


Message ends. . .

     Yes, I am sorry!  You have been waiting for photographs of My timmy from the 2009 Folsom Street Fair, for a long time, now.  I know.  But, one dasn't rush into things, you know!  (The spell-check on here seems unfamiliar with literary American colloquialisms!)
     I have only started working on this, so I have only the four shots of My timmy’s books stand.  So, the link is just general; flickr did not have Me make a set, so I will need to deal with that! 

My "Flickr" account

  I went to Duke & Rat’s [broduke2000, barbarian_rat] for dinner on Christmas Day.  I do not drive, so Rat gave Me a ride there, and Duke gave Me a ride home.  Bob and Gary arrived later, so there were five of us there. 

     We started with one of those "gift-box" "sampler" thingies, with the tiny sausages, tiny cheeses, and something-else-I-have forgotten.  Rat got Ritz crackers, to put with the sausage and cheese.  The result was pretty tasty, and we had pretty much finished it off by the time Bob and Gary arrived. 
     For a while, Rat was working on dinner preparations, Duke was throwing wadded papers at Bob, and Gary and I were talking together.  Some of the papers, bouncing off Bob, hit Me; all landed on the floor.  Gary was also attempting to respond to remarks from Duke, which made for some confusion, not that anyone much cared---except Bob, who apparently disliked his propelled-paper pelting problem. 

     Dinner was ham, smashed taters, Broc Coli, and something I liked but have completely forgotten.  (I seem to have forgotten to take My anti-senescence treatments, these last few years!)  The potatoes were peppery, and I liked them quite a lot.  Rat thought the ham and the potatoes were salty, but ham is always salty.  Anyway, dinner was yummy, and there was plenty of it---we were all happy with it. 

     After dinner, Gary brought out a gift for Bob.  This was a frame-mounted photograph, like the one I had noticed earlier of Duke and Rat.  As with paint canvasses, There is a surface for the images, and two-centimeter-deep sides. 
     Unlike paint canvasses, though, the side of these frames have image on them.  The image reflects at the boundary, so that down each side is an attached mirror-image of the two centimeters nearest the edge.  All four sides have this---it is why I noticed the image of Duke and Rat. 
     Bob was wearing the same jacket as in the photograph.  This would be nothing to write about (Ahem!) except that the colors matched.  I could see the colors mismatched slightly, but I am a color-fiend---the colors matched 99.99%, and I have never before seen anything which even came close to that.  I will skip the technical details---they are myriad---and just say Gary did an excellent job. 

     After the gift, and the appreciation of all of us for the gift, came:  Toys!  Small electric toys with some semiconductor-imparted smarts.  There is a photo of them here.  Note:  The colors are very strong, and translucent.  The photo does not reveal this.  I am not a toy person, but they were cool. 

     The whole evening was lots of fun!







Once again, no Preview button!

     I waited until "Black Saturday", and bought a one hundred pack of CD-Rs, and a sixteen gigabyte USB "drive".  Now, I need a disk drive, RAM, and paper.

     I refuse to get lost in, or caught up in, the ridiculous pushing, shoving, and waste of time, Black Friday elicits, just to save a few dollars.  The USB "drives" were "very popular yesterday", but I detest crowds!  I got the next-to-the-last unit.  There were plenty of CD-R packs available. 

     I made attempts to post this thought yesterday, but Comcast was being even more Crapcastic than usual!  Google Maps was working---slowly---but nothing else would.  (Sigh)

     I hope everyone had a good time!

     She died on Wednesday, was eighty-five. 

     Her "Dragonriders of Pern" books mixed fantasy (Dragons are too heavy to fly.) with science and technology (astronomy, computers, genetics, mining) to make a somewhat new product.  Her stories were, as I have said, romance novels, with a much wider appeal than the straight genre romance stories. 
     She lived "in County Wicklow, Ireland, in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, so named because she had to dig out a hill to build it."  (From the Author blurb in "Nimisha's Ship".) 
     Her son Todd has been writing some Pern stories, too, with her, and alone.  There are two books coming, one out now, and one next year.  I expect Todd will write a few more, after these. 


     She was someone who made the world a better place. 

     I acquired a G5 computer, yesterday.  Two gigahertz dual processor.

     This is an older unit---it writes DVDs, but only at 4X speed.  The newest units (dual core, not dual processor) write at 16X, while these older units write at only 4X.  A "two-hour" DVD writes in thirty minutes on this, but in eight minutes on the faster drives.  Getting a newer drive might be well worth the money and effort for making the upgrade!


The system photographs: (From the original owner.)



RAM:
     The RAM slots can hold one-gigabyte parts.  Thus, the RAM could be eight gigabytes.  I hesitate to say "Even OSX cannot use up that much RAM!", knowing it likely would find a way to do so; but I think that, anyway.  I will probably buy four gigabytes for it.  The resultant five gigabytes will be four times what I have now, in My G4. 



DVD drive information: The drive's speed is notably absent!



It comes with X.4.11, and an install kit for X.5:



     I am hoping those Java'sCrap-laden web sites will work better, with this computer, than they do on My G4.  The processor is more than two and one-half times as fast as My G4's processor.  The RAM is three times the speed, and the RAM is twice as wide---this is why the DIMMs must be installed in pairs. 
     Plus, the monitor is bigger, 1680 x 1050 versus 1280 x 1024.  Better still, the monitor, being from Apple, likely has good black-level performance.
     The monitor I have has about three levels of black, where there should be sixteen or so.  So, blacks come out too black, or too gray---this sucks! 

     I will still use My G4, naturally.  Having a backup is always a good idea.