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Matt's LiveJournal
Dec. 3rd, 2009
04:23 pm - DVD Cases
I have a couple hundred empty DVD cases that I got from a friend who was doing some housecleaning, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with the ones I don't need for myself.
They're mostly single-disc black cases but there are some clear, white, and specialty colors (very few). Also there are some two-disc cases and a few multiple-disc cases.
DVD case art inserts for random US-released anime titles are available if you need to replace your own case art or are just curious.
Jun. 22nd, 2009
04:12 pm - Countdown to Otakon
At the time of this writing it is 24 days, 16 hours and 47 minutes until Friday, July 17, 2009 at 9:00:00 AM (Baltimore time).
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH!
Jun. 17th, 2009
01:11 pm - Meat Machinery
Anyone know where to buy a thingie to hand-press hamburger patties? They never cook evenly for me when I make them out of round lumps of meat which are then mashed on the countertop.
My mom used to have this hamburger-sized ring to put the meat in and a hand-powered piston-ey thing that you'd mash the ground meat flat with.
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pensiveJun. 12th, 2009
02:27 pm - I Swore I'd Not Pass This Up...
Several years ago I remember hearing about a movie theater somewhere that ran a LOTR marathon when the 3rd & final film was released... and I was seriously bummed out when I realized that the date had already passed.
Despite the fact it was two states away and on a work day, I half-seriously was calculating whether I could have gotten away with taking off only one day of work to attend.
Standing in the ruins of Tara, I swore that I would never be hungry again -- wait, no.... Sitting in front of my computer, what I said was "Crud. Now I'll never have the chance to see the extended versions in a theater marathon."
But now I do:
The Colonial Theatre in nearby Phoenixville, Pennsylvania is doing it with breaks between the films for lunch and dinner on Sunday 06/21.
http://www.thecolonialtheatre.com/2
Jan. 6th, 2009
07:04 pm - Hey Vern, check out this cool thing I shot!
For my cousin, who has a professional interest in the woes of librarians:
http://librarianwoes.wordpress.com/
Oct. 22nd, 2008
10:54 am - Farewell, Friendly Neighbor
Posting to pass on the very sad news that my neighbor passed away yesterday.
He was 83 years old and had leukemia (cancer of the blood). Slightly more than a week ago his health took a turn for the worse and he was hospitalized for the last time.
Before that he was always active and cheerful despite his age; when I bought my house he and his wife welcomed me to the neighborhood and were always glad to see me when we'd meet in our yards while working on the lawn or in the garage. A decent guy who loved his wife, kids, and brother.
My condolences and best wishes to his family and friends, who will never read this post.
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sadOct. 17th, 2008
02:13 pm - Bleah.
Sick again: sore throat coughing up green gunk. Now the ears are filling up.
...and work is so far behind I'm coming in on Saturday AND Sunday to work overtime.
Fuck.
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annoyedMay. 14th, 2008
06:20 pm
Ya just can't make this stuff up:
http://www.whatisdeepfried.com/zogg/zog
ZOGG is coming to destroy us. KTHXBYE
Apr. 18th, 2008
04:49 pm
Found while doing some job-related internet research.
Really.
http://www.mightywarriorsofcomedy.com/m
Mar. 13th, 2008
01:59 pm - Planet of the Doctor
Has anyone seen this Canadian documentary on Doctor Who? (I stumbled across it while looking for pix of my favorite Doctor's companion, Sarah Jane Smith.)
http://www.cbc.ca/planetofthedoctor/
Feb. 12th, 2008
07:06 pm - Mad craziness heah, yo, dog.
Stumbled across these guys while net-surfing, so I'll post the link here to make sure I don't lose it.
http://www.cthulhulives.org/store/s
The "Call of Cthulhu" silent movie.
I'm a proponent of the "period movies seem more authentic when produced using period technologies" school of movie watching.
Rock music in pseudo-medieval fantasy movies (I'm looking at you, "Ladyhawke")? No frikkin' way.
Nov. 12th, 2007
12:48 pm
Not that anyone hasn't heard of this guy yet, but Studio Hybrid made a great AMV to this song, so I'm pimping the original song to y'all.
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2006/0
I dunno why but this song really gets to me in a sentimental way. The guy hates his dead end job but stays anyway because he likes the receptionist.
--Matt
Aug. 30th, 2007
02:29 pm - The End of Time
California, one of the last remaining states to still offer the Current Time telephone number, will go silent in September due to aging equipment and the ubiquity of time-of-day information in the modern world.
(Plus, they need the exchange for new phone numbers --apparently a whole exchange was tasked to service the Current Time service.)
See the link
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-l
I myself stopped wearing a wristwatch years ago because everywhere I turned -- the wall, my computer, my car -- there was a clock of some kind. Hardly surprising, then, that the Phone Company decided to let it pass into memory.
Jun. 28th, 2007
01:19 pm - The Order of the Stick
Okay, normally I don't go for pimpin' the web comics an' all but today's Order of the Stick was way cool:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots
And as long as I'm tossing around nifty URLs, here's one that I ran across last week when I was desperate for new stuff to listen to at work:
http://www.renaissancefestivalmusic.c
There's a good song by Joni Minstrel called "My Own Hero" at about 9-10 minutes into show # 76. The pirate song by the Jolly Rodgers right before it is good too.
Jun. 16th, 2007
10:23 am - Oh, dear old Comment Settings, why dost thou vex me so?
LiveJournal has this nifty feature in Comment Settings where the comments of people who respond to your LJ posts are e-mailed to you.
This is really quite cool, except when it doesn't work properly... as is the case with my LJ account. I've checked my settings and the option is most definitely turned off, nevertheless the e-mails keep coming. I tried turning it on, saving settings, and then turning it off again. We'll see.
Jun. 13th, 2007
07:24 pm - Good News, Bad News, Worse News (BLITEOTW)
Managed to get some time to rest and post some more. Where to start...
After our last major engagement, the National Guard guy who's nominally in command of the gang/platoon of guys I've been traveling with lately declared the area 'secured' and established a perimeter. Nat'l Guard chain of command is (for all practical purposes) broken right now, so we're heading north to the apple orchard to meet up with Cousin_Sue and elements of Quest Labs irregulars.
Wifi laptop became mine during last zombie assault, you can pretty much guess why. (Note: disable password-protected screen saver ASAP! [Later] Done.)
Got a lot of bars in this hotspot so this is best time to get out news I have. Been touching base from time to time during the day with a VOIP conference call which includes a bunch of guys from European Union, and been getting news from them. Northern Europe has been very hard hit (like you can't believe how bad things are there right now). Best estimates are that zombie uprising started there around dawn, Finland time.
The important thing about this conference call is that there's this one guy from a university in Denmark who studies glaciers (what do you call a geologist who studies ice formations? A glaciologist?) as part of some joint study with the university and the government of Denmark. Don't know if he's onto something but he sounds very, very scared and seems to believe his theory. He speaks English proficiently, except when he gets emotionally wrapped up in his story and lapses back into his own language. Frustratingly, this tends to happen right at the best parts.
A couple of years ago, they were doing their usual work studying the glaciers in Greenland and some of the ice cores came up with contaminants which, when analyzed in the lab back home, were extremely atypical to the point of being unique. The most interesting thing was that this specific contaminant occurred only in samples taken from one small area. The area is what anyone else would consider large, but it's "small" in proportion to the overall size of the glacier it's from. Some kind of dessicated microorganism (virus?) is how I'd characterize it. Bing! Zombie problem solved, right? Wrong.
The contaminant from the ice-core doesn't do anything bad. One guy on the analysis team even touches it by accident and nothing happens to him. Didn't even get sick. Although this may be because he was immediately decontaminated and then quarantined for about two weeks before they released him.
[Later] Forgot to post this. We're on the move again, keeping ridgelines when possible to avoid more zombie ambushes, or at least see them coming. Haven't seen any sizeable (live) animals lately. Saw a crippled horse ripped apart by about seventeen zombies down in a valley. Thankfully, the horse died after only twenty minutes.
It had on a saddle but no signs of the rider(s).
uncomfortableMay. 24th, 2007
12:37 pm - Cool stuff I found on teh intar-webz
Found this wiki during a web search for something else and spent so much time reading articles in it that I figured you all might get a kick out of it too.
http://tvtropes.org/
Warning: by its very nature it contains spoilers in abundance and will assuredly rip asunder that veil of complacent ignorance that allows you to enjoy entertainment and literature (think "actually knowing how sausages are made").
Jan. 23rd, 2007
04:55 pm - Why the Internet Will Dominate
As much as I hate to use Wikipedia as a primary source of knowledge, I ran across an article there today which provided me with much illumination on the economics of successful online businesses like Netflix and Amazon, and the success of the web in general:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_T
Simply put, if your business can cheaply warehouse & deliver many niche products instead of the few most-popular products, the sum of all transactions involving niche products will be greater than the sum of all the transactions involving the most-popular products.
Same goes for web sites, with data/information/intelligence as the "product".
Dec. 19th, 2006
02:05 pm - Christmas
Updated LJ settings a bit. Let's see how this works out. And now for today's wacky ad-lib: "Like a jet-powered steamroller, Christmas bears down upon us all, an inescapable juggernaut of festivity. Zoroastrianism is no escape." Merry Christmas, everybody!
Dec. 13th, 2006
12:31 pm
Well... update on the job situation metaphor:
Although Toto did nothing to slay the wicked witch, a safe fell out of the sky and beaned her a good 'un, and the hourglass has been turned on its side.
In other words, before the layoff could take effect I got another position in the company in my old department.
Am now busily trying to get back in the groove with my old job, and work ahead so I won't be neglecting the listings over my christmas vacation.
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