DogNose Data Werkz

My friend Charlie is very upset with bathroom trends. He feels that technology is working against us. I have always been a proponent of technology, so his feelings alarmed me.

If you’ve ever been to a modern bathroom, you’ll notice that most of the toilets and urinals automatically flush. They use some sort of motion-sensing technology to accomplish this. If you’ve been to the Embassy movie theatre bathrooms, you’ll notice that not only are the toilets automatic, but the soap, water, and paper towels are as well. I find this very entertaining for two reasons. First, I like futuristic things, and on-command soap from a shiny metal tube is very futuristic. Second, I can also pretend that these devices are controlled not by motion sensors, but by my mind.

Charlie appreciates the automatic nature of modern bathrooms, but he has a complaint: automatic toilets eliminate the Courtesy Flush.

He’s right.

He told me this, and then recounted his feeble attempts to lean out of the way of the sensor so that the toilet would flush. It did not. Charlie was just trying to do his duty (being courteous) while he was “doing his duty.”

Charlie has lots of good ideas when it comes to restrooms. He’s previously pointed out that all this automatic stuff makes it so you don’t have to touch anything in the restroom, but you still have to touch the door when you leave. They should make it automatic like supermarkets (and Star Trek) have had for years. Charlie has also conceived of a wheel chair with a seat that slides away from the base, so the handicapped person doesn’t have to wrestle his or her way onto the toilet seat.

He’s a wealth of ideas, that kid.

Thrusday was my last final. 8:00 a.m. We studied for about 5 hours on Wednesday. That morning, the professor gave us an option: If we wanted, we could keep our current grade and not take the final. I elected to keep my A. Sweeet.

Graduation went well. It was really short. We were supposed to arrive at 6:00 p.m., but due to various reasons (traffic, lazyness) I arrived at 6:50. I slipped into my place in line and dressed as we walked toward the stage. No one was the wiser.

I’m back home now, looking for a job. Well, mostly playing computer games, but soon I’ll be looking for a job.

April came in from Frisco last week for Jen’s wedding (which was very nice—congrats, Jen) and was horrified to see my hair, which has been growing steadily for the past year. After the wedding we went over to her house, and under some loose supervision, well, see for yourself:

A bit short, but a welcome change in these hot summer months. And a home-made pillow!

Before I mention anything else: Longhorn has a name: Windows Vista. I’m not too impressed. PC Magazine has an article about it, including a round up of humorous name suggestions.

Now, on to the point of the post. Do you remember Scorch? You know, the old DOS game Scorched Earth. I used to play it back in the early ’90s on my friends’ 386. It was so fun. Recently, I found a Flash knock-off called Tanks. I got my school chums playing (you know who you are) and we ended up wasting several days in the lab, sitting on the couch with the screen pulled up so we could all see.

Tanks is initally fun, but the game is not as feature-rich as Scorch, and the game becomes very unbalanced after a few rounds.

This prompted Marc to do some research, and he found the original Scorch. It even runs on Windows XP! I was thrilled. The gameplay is as good as I remember it (although the graphics seemed a lot better back then).

Then, Marc topped himself. He found Scorched Earth 3D. This thing rocks! Try it out, for old time’s sake.

James Doohan died today. He was 85.

His ashes will be launched into space. Roddenberry had the same thing done.

I didn’t realize how old he was until today. He doesn’t (didn’t) look that old. Then I remembered how old the original Star Trek is. He’s the second member of the original crew to go, after DeForest Kelly, who died in 1999.

Doohan was Canadian, and he served in Canada’s army on D-Day. He was shot six (!) times. He lost a finger, and the bullet to his chest was blocked by a silver cigarette case (I guess smoking can save lives).

From the E! Online article:

In 1965, Doohan shot a pilot for a proposed series that NBC had already rejected once on the basis that it was too good, and too smart for TV. The second time around, the network bit. Star Trek premiered on Sept. 8, 1966.

In a story he told countless times, Doohan claimed responsibility for Scotty’s ancestry. “I did about eight different accents when I was reading,” he told Los Angeles writer Sean Doorly in 1996. “Gene [Roddenberry] asked me which one I liked…I said, ‘If you want an engineer, you’ll want a Scotsman! He liked it, and I said fine.”

The new seasons of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Gallactica started on Friday. I enjoy all three of these shows. However. I was somewhat disturbed about Friday’s SG-1.

Over the past year they’ve killed off or reassigned many of the characters, including Gen. Hammond (“Hammond of Texas”) and Carter’s dad. I also know that Richard Dean Anderson has wanted to leave the show (to make a MacGuyver (!) movie, among other things), and that they recruited the two main actors from Farscape to join the cast (I wonder if Vala is going to wear that get-up for every episode). That’s a lot of upheaval, but I was still not worried about the show.

But within the first ten minutes of the show, the plot established that all of SG-1 had been reassigned. I thought, how can this show possibly call itself SG-1? Why don’t they just end it and make another spin off? Well, over the course of the episode, Daniel and Teal’c got recruited to help out, so I guess they’re sticking around, and Carter will be around too, but jeez!

I wonder what Pierre Bernard has to say about this.

My other problem with all three shows was that they all ended with a To Be Continued! I can’t take that much pressure! (Actually, Atlantis didn’t end with the actual words “To be continued,” but it might as well have. I can’t believe they turned Ford evil!)

Speaking of new characters, the newest addition to Atlantis is Mitch Pileggi (Skinner from The X-Files). And they’re bringing in another guy, too. Pick a cast and stick with it!

This reminds me of how sci-fi actors just get traded around from show to show. Think about it. Some guest actors on SG-1 and Atlantis have been:

• Colm Meaney (O’Brien from Star Trek TNG)
• Claudia Black (of Farscape)
• John de Lancie (Q on Star Trek TNG)
• Robert Patrick (The T-1000 in Terminator 2, and Dogget in the last season of The X-Files)
• Dean Stockwell (Al on Quantum Leap)
• Bruce Harwood (Byers on The X Files)
• Roger R. Cross (of First Wave, who was also in The Chronicles of Riddick and X-Men 2)
• Sebastian Spence (also of First Wave, who’s also been on Andromeda and Mutant X)
• Oh yeah, and two, count ‘em two Goa’ulds have been characters on Andromeda

This is just a small sample. I’m constantly thinking, “that’s the guy from….”

Update: Add Lexa Doig (of Andromeda) to the list.

One exception to this was when Wayne Brady was on SG-1. I have no idea how he got on there. And Isaac Hayes plays a Jaffa on SG-1 as well. I wonder when Ryan Styles will show up as a Tok’ra.

Okay, listen. Don’t put things off. I’m serious. I’ve been putting things off my whole life, and it’s rarely turned out well. Most recently, I put off renewing my vehicle registration and adding some power steering fluid, and on the very day that my registration expired, I got in a wreck. So not only did the Cop see that it was expired, now I can’t open my hood to add power steering fluid. My inspection sticker expires this month, but now I can’t get that done either! The moral: Do stuff when you’re supposed to.

According to some, Firefox will break 10% market share by October. <Mr.Burns>Excellent!</Mr.Burns> Apparently Opera isn’t too fond of Firefox (which I have dubbed “The Fox”). Opera claims that The Fox’s usage is overreported due to their caching system, and that Opera’s stats are underreported since Opera has a more advanced caching system, and because it identifies itself as IE by default.

It’s not Firefox’s fault that Opera is ashamed of itself! Opera should identify itself as Opera, rather than get bent out of shape over this. And don’t get me wrong: I like Opera as a browser. I just like Firefox better.
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