Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

The Next Wave of Cell Phones
August 23, 2006

I happened upon a post that talks about what might be in store for us in the future when we reach for the phone on our belts. It’s bogus.

I’ve seen many of these types of prognostications lately, and they’re starting to annoy me. It seems like the people reporting this stuff can’t tell the difference between a feature that is a futuristic accessory (powered car windows) and futuristic folly (hovercars).

Sure, I think many of the imagined ideas are neat, but I’m still even unsure of the utility of the custom-colored faceplates they sell for some phones at the mall. I guess I’ve always thought of my phone more as a tool than a fashion accessory. That is to say, I’ve never once thought, “Gee, if I must carry this, it might as well look good on me.” Whereas, I have had the thought, “If they didn’t waste all that space for two outer layers of plastic, they might have fit in some more useful electronics.”

Stargate SG-1 Cancelled?
August 22, 2006

This posting requires a huge preface and will still end up causing all sorts of heckling of me by my friends, but yet I think I still need to post it.

No. I do not like the move “Stargate”. I think that the movie as it stands alone had the best potential to be an amazing sci-fi movie, and then turned into a lame desert movie. I have long said that there is a point in the movie where you can feel the actual turning point from “hey, this is cool” into “holy crap, this sucks!”

That said, if you take what the movie might have tried to do and combine it with the ten seasons of Stargate SG-1 that followed, then you have something. Perhaps the movie should not have been about the discovery of the gate or the things on the other side of the portal it opened, but somewhere in the middle. Regardless, Stargate SG-1 (and the Atlantis spinoff) have become one of the few things I look forward to on TV these days.

And so, of course, they’re cancelling it.

Exercise In A Box
August 17, 2006

I found a box in the garage while we were moving (actually, I kew it was there all along) that belonged to my grandfather, which I took for my own after he died. In it I put all of those things that I held precious during my teen years living at home.

Assuming you had a box that contained a volume of 6×3x9 inches, what would you put inside it that would represent the most significant things about your life that you would want to remember?

Installation
August 15, 2006

Yesterday, the Dish Network folks showed up early within their delivery window, installed better components than what their online ordering system forced me into, installed two dishes and all of the inside wiring (including running a new cable and phone line), and were gone within three hours leaving me with crystal-clear high-definition TV in four rooms.

The delivery of our new washer and dryer from Home Depot took a terrible turn this morning when I received a call from a woman saying essentially, “Your washer fell off the truck and we won’t be delivering anything to you today.”