Horizon Zero

"That's funny, the damage doesn't look as bad from out here..."

The Maxima is salvagable, thank The Maker!

The shop was still finishing up the estimate on Friday, though. 70 lines sounds like a pretty long list of parts.

I had already started putting myself in the mindset to buy a new car. Glad that won't have to happen.

Mutter Garble Garble Murmur

Okay, it's not as good as Talk Like A Pirate Day (and honestly, what could be?) but summer needs its fun too, so Happy International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day.

Sigh

So my spotless driving record? Not so spotless now.

Nothing was hurt, save my Maxima and my pride, but twisty Missouri roads plus sudden thunder showers equals potential for really bad things.

It could have been much worse. I'm still alive, and more importantly I didn't hurt anyone else. Waiting to hear if the car will make it though.

Man, I loved that car.

Cowards

The US Senate held a cloture vote today regarding the proposed immigration "reform" bill many are already critisizing as an amnesty deal. The cloture vote means that debate on whether to consider the bill is done - what remains is the wrangling on the particulars of the legislation.

Most Senators concede to not even having read the bill just yet.

The full roll call vote is available elsewhere, but take a look at this part of the roster - the names of those counted as Not Voting:

Biden (D-DE)
Clinton (D-NY)
Dodd (D-CT)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
McCain (R-AZ)
Nelson (D-FL)
Obama (D-IL)

Notice anything about those names? Like how most of them are busy running for President of the United States of America?

Were they too busy opening shopping malls, attending town meetings and handing out buttons to, y'know, actually do the job they're currently elected to, or were they afraid to get put on the record with regards to a major wedge issue?

Yeah.

If You Can't Win, Change The Rules

That appears to be Nancy Pelosi's stand, anyway. According to Drudge, the Speaker has decided to alter the long standing House rules allowing members of the minority party to make a Motion to Recommit. The Motion usually allows the minority party to make a symbolic stand on a piece of proposed legislation, but Republicans in the current Congress have been able to win some highly embarrasing victories over the Pelosi led Democratic majority.

So, clearly, it's got to go.

The right to recommit has waxed and waned over the years. The basic concept has been part of the House Rules since the early 1820s. The minority's ability to recommit was near completely trashed in the 1930s, however, by a radical reinterpretation of the text a string of imposed conditions set by the Speaker and the Rules Committee all in the power of the majority, naturally. This led to an increasing amount of unrest in the House until the GOP took over Congress in 1995, where rules reform became one of the banner changes in the Gingrich Speakership. (Of course, it didn't take too long for House Republicans to violate the spirit of the rules change if not the letter, but it's doubtful that anyone is too shocked by that tidbit at this point in time. Oy.)

So Pelosi's petty attempt to avoid future humiliation by changing the rules isn't really a new thing. But it is another data point for a worrying trend in American politics, the same as the various initiatives to bypass the Electoral College or the now expected peremptory charges of vote tampering. Can't win using the rules currently in place? Then change the rules. Never mind that each cynical attempt to garner a momentary advantage this one time further poisons the entire system. It's okay because our cause is just! Right?

To borrow a line from Instapundit: They said if we reelected George W. Bush the majority would find a way to silence dissent. They were right.

UPDATE: Pelosi seems to have caved to a concerted minority uprising.

So, she tries to change the rules because the existing ones make the Dems look weak, then fails to pull it off, making them look weaker? Good Job.

This Man Needs To Be President

Can you imagine eight years of this kind of Presidential pwnage? I can totally see him chomping down on a cigar while informing Ahmadinejad via public video address that the bombs started dropping twenty seconds ago.

Also, the State of the Union address would include that Law and Order bah-duh! sound effect.

Shattrath City Here I Come

Warning: World of Warcraft Geekage ahead.

My main, Neiran,  dinged 58 Paladin last night. Yay me.

No guild yet, partly because I wanted to bootstrap myself to Burning Crusade, but mostly because I'm just not the joining type. Eventually I'll have to surrender to the inevitable, but for now I'm enjoying my lone wolf-dom.

Of course, now I'm two levels away from 60 and still only half way to having enough gold for my epic mount. I've been farming elementals for stuff like Essence of Fire, and killing dragonkin elites since they drop an average of 10-30 silver but there's still a long way to go. I'm nearly to Honored status with the Argent Dawn, and closing in on Friendly with the Cenarion Circle. (I hate Silithus. I hate bugs. I hate the fact that I only get one rep point for every stupid Twilight Hammer I kill.) I don't even want to imagine how long it would take to work up to Exalted with the Timbermaw Clan, but I also can't see wanting to, so that's moot.

I'm looking forward to exploring the new lands, where they say green is the new purple and XP and Gold flow like honey.

Yeah, I'm prepared to believe that they might have been exaggerating just a little. :p

Also: Final Fantasy XI is getting another expansion. This time with Time Travel. I'm actually still paying Square Enix to essentially not delete my character, so maybe I'll go back for a while. There will be plenty for me to do, seeing as how I never finished the content in the original release, let alone Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia and Treasures of Alt Urghan.

Not to Sqeenix: A single player game based in Vana'diel would be ever so much appreciated. Stop churning out craptastic FFVII spinoffs and get on FFXI-A.

Busy Week

Things have been kind of hectic the last few days. We had a major to-do yesterday - staged a briefing for the new hires that are getting ready to start up work overseas. Which involves a lot of the typical admin type work, ie get them set up with email accounts, show them how to use the email client, cover the typical "here's how to keep your laptop operating in an environment that's 90% sand" lecture. That kind of stuff.

At the same time, I'm trying not to lose my temper with a behind schedule parts vendor, finishing up on our two new desktop PCs, fiddling around with a company branded WinXP overlay courtesy of ObjectDesktop and putting out the usual minor fires that crop up on a regular basis.

Like today - one of the desktops I built earlier in the year has stopped accepting input from the microphone, which is a big deal since we use VoIP software to communicate with our guys overseas. Near as I can tell, the on-board audio has simply stopped recognizing anything plugged into the mic jack. It should be an easy enough fix - disable the on-board audio and pop in a cheap Sound Blaster from Wal Mart - but it's one I shouldn't have to be making. Stupid RealTec '97.

Anyway, the upsurge in things to do at work has also seen a corresponding decline in gaming time at home. Hopefully that will be rectified this weekend. My paladin on WoW is right at level 55 and I'm itching to get to Outland.

Along Came a Spider

Spent the weekend at Mom and Dad's, and had a chance to watch Spider-Man 3.

Short Version: 2 was better.

Long Version: I felt there was too much stuff crammed into the film. I'm on record as not liking multiple villians in a film - unless it's a team movie like X-Men - and I think that history shows that it just burns through antagonists without really giving them their due. Doc Ock got a great deal of characterization in Spidey 2 and it made for a better movie. Thomas Haden Church tries to do the same with his portrayal of the Sandman but there's simply not enough time to show much development and Sam Raimi opts to have him do more telling than showing anyhow.

Frankly, I think they would have been much better served cutting Venom from the film almost entirely. Keep the symbiote and the black costume, but have the fight at the end be just against Sandman and wrap the film up with the Osborne stuff and the obligatory Peter/MJ scene. Then credits... followed by a Pirates of the Caribbean style stinger where Eddie Brock comes across the rejected symbiote.

In lieu of that, they could have gained a little more time for character work by trimming back that godawful Dark Peter strut through NYC and the jazz bar dance number.

Gwen was pretty, but underused. The Aunt May scenes didn't really contribute much either, in my opinion.

Even with all my criticism, it was still a pretty good movie. Just nowhere near as solid as Spider-Man 2. There's still plenty of stories that can be told, and the franchise is strong enough that it can survive a new cast and director if the right people come in to replace the current bunch. It's worked for the Bond franchise, after all.

Overall, I'd say 3 stars (off a 5 star scale). It's already broken box office records, so what matters quality?

Does this presage a better than average summer season? There are a raft of films I'm actually interested in seeing in the theaters this summer, which has not been the case in the last few years.

Apple's Marketing Campaign

Am I the only one who watches those "I'm a Mac" commercials hoping against hope that poor, put upon PC will finally manage to beat the everloving snot out of Warren Cheswick?

Americans typically root for the underdog - it's practically drilled into us from an early age. So who thought making the avatar for the Mac into Lucy while portraying the PC as Charlie Brown was going to engender happy thoughts for Apple?