Matt, Jesse, and I have been planning our trip to PAX East this year. I’m really excited for it, but it’s going to be hard leaving Amme and Gabriel at home. I wish they could come.

Amme is making sushi tonight. I made some yummy ramen but I may have to steal a piece!

Jesse and I have been playing a lot of minecraft again. We started a new map to try out the latest biome features. We haven’t made any mega-structures yet but I think we will after we save up enough resources and think of something really good.

I’m in an “ease of use”/”minimalism with a splash of color” sort of mood, especially with a flood of baby updates, photos, and videos on the way, which leads me to our current theme: P2. This is a wordpress theme I’ve admired, and had installed but not enabled, for quite a while.

I’m hoping it pushes the content to the forefront, and that it’s ease of posting will mean I update it more frequently (a constant battle for me).

The absolute best way to start newyears day: DBZ and breakfast in bed.

We chose to go up the Gorham Mountain trail. It’s listed as a moderate trail, but doesn’t require any climbing. It did get our hearts pumping though!

There was a nice little overlook that we stopped at to catch our breath and take some photos.

Eventually Amme let me know how she felt about the camera being pointed at her, lol.

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When we got to the summit we took a little break to enjoy the beautiful view and how gorgeous the ocean looked.

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We still felt pretty energized so we decided to keep going forward instead of backtracking, continuing on the backside of the Gorham trail.

We met up with the Beehive trail and on the way down, saw some hikes taking a more perilous trail above us. The Beehive trail ends at the Park Loop Road at the entrance to Sand Beach.

Once we got there we hiked a ways back towards the car and had a picnic on the rocks just above the rising tide. We ate bologna (Wunderbar!) sandwiches and then sunbathed for a while before heading back to the car. I was too relaxed to remember to take more photos, but Amme did!

While we were hanging out on the rocks some ballsy seagulls pestered us. After feeding them a while they got even bore brazen and tried to grab our bag of orange and banana peels (which is funny because Amme threw them a piece of orange and they were having none of that!). This photo was snapped while he was about 3 feet from my face.

We drove into downtown Bar Harbor after hiking back to the car and got some huge dark chocolate truffles before heading home. I love hiking days!

PS: See the full album in my photos section, or on flickr, or as a nifty slideshow!

Lately I’ve just been working and finishing up classes. The mall on campus (long stretch of grass, not shopping mall) is once again the constant home of one of the many slacklines owned by those of us that love the discipline. I love having a break between classes and going out there to find that there is always a line set up. Sometimes one of us will put one up, go to class, and come back later, knowing that our friends will make sure nobody steals it while we’re gone. I’ve made some really cool friends through slacklining over the last few years. Amme hasn’t had a chance to do it since the beginning of the summer, but she’s gotten really good.

I’ve also started climbing again at the rock gym here on campus. Its free for students which is awesome, and I still fit my shoes so that’s a bonus. I can’t climb at the level I used to, but I still know how to move and not overexert myself. I’m making progress slowly.

The leaves were all messed up this fall. We had a couple of bouts of cold weather that caused some of the trees to change and others not to, so we didn’t get the nice vistas of dense autumnal hues. Instead there were a few beautiful trees surrounded by clumps of green or dead brown. This made for some nice contrast, but I didn’t get any good landscape photos. I’ll have the photos up on Flickr within a week. I also have some shots from UrbExing around the former Loring Air Force Base on there, so be sure to check those out.

They include our trip to the old Nuclear Weapons Storage Area, the first of its kind in the US! There are no weapons there now, of course, but you can really see how hard they were hiding the stuff from satellite surveillance and how thick the walls and vault doors were. Its pretty nuts thinking back on it. There are also photos of some of the Oakfield Station in Maine, for you railfans.

Classes are good, I’m finishing up my second degree and can’t wait for it to be done. I want to WORK not have all of my time monopolized while I pay for it. I’d love to start my own company but I need to learn more about the process. I also need the free time for it. I’ve let friends down in the past by trying to take on projects that I didn’t have time for and I hate myself for doing that even though I’m putting schooling first.

Amme and I went to NY for her cousin Subee’s wedding. We had a great time; it’s been so long since we saw a lot of the family down there. I have the photos up here and here. BTW: the facebook photo resizing algorithm makes my photos look all artifact-y. If you want a high quality photo from that album email me and I’ll send you one.

I have two wisdom teeth coming in. One of them is already exposed and is currently stopping me from opening my mouth all the way. It makes eating difficult. It just started doing that out of the blue, else I would have had it extracted by now. I went to the dentist at the healthcare center here that has a sliding pay scale since I don’t have insurance and it’s very affordable. They did a panoramic digital x-ray of my jaw, which was very cool. Our vet uses a digital x-ray as well. They can open the image in a viewer and change the contrast, levels, and zoom in and out to get infinitely better images than the film and developer x-rays. That visit was fast and cheap, but to get my tooth extracted the next opening they have is in the end of January! I won’t be able to open my mouth at all by then, so I have to look elsewhere for an oral surgeon. I’m homing someone has an opening within a week. I’m tired of eating
soup and cutting things into toddler-sized
pieces.

Amme has been taking good care of me though. I hope I take just as good care of her. I’m anxious to get on with life and make a name for myself, but as long as we have each other I can never be discontented. I could move out to the woods, build us a house, and just provide for us both and be happy forever.

“English System MOTHER-[beep]: Do you speak it?”

What a great few days this has been. This past Friday I went up to Caribou for my nephew’s 1 year birthday. For the next 12 months he will be “1 year and N months”. When he is 1 year, 6 months, it shall not be said he is “18 months old”, or I will start punching people in the teeth. Why? Because one of my pet peeves is people counting a child’s age in months after they’ve reached the next higher increment (YEARS). I am not 1120 16ths of an inch tall, I’m 5 feet 10 inches. Your car doesn’t hold 192 cups of gasoline, it holds 12 gallons, etc. He’s 1 year old. He’s also 12 months old but you don’t say that out loud. Wow, rant. Where was I?

Oh yeah, so my nephew, Parker, turned 1 year old last Wednesday, so my mother and sister came up to celebrate with the rest of the family. I hopped in with them at Bangor and we all drove home together. After stopping in to visit Lindsey, I hopped online and played Zombie Master with Doody, B, Jesse, Aaron, and Zach(!!!) while chatting on Skype. It was so awesome to talk to Zach in particular, and great to play with everyone. The internet isn’t killing humanity, rather it often brings us close together when we otherwise could not be. After gaming until about 4am, Doody came over and we caught up on stuff before crashing an hour later.

The next day, or later that morning really, we awoke and got ready for the party. Grammy and Grampy, and my godmother and Parker’s grammy and grampy and great-grammy and aunt and loads of other friends and family including Mom and Dad all were there (I even convinced Doody to stay!) and we had a great time. Parker got to grab fist-fulls of cake, made by the same lady that made Alyssa and Lindsey and I’s first cakes (she came out of retirement from cake making to do this one last one for Lindsey), and we chatted and had fun and ate and opened presents. Parker helped me put a couple of toys together with Alyssa–he kept grabbing and trying to turn the screwdriver–and he is wonderfully smart. It only takes him seconds to figure out new concepts, and he loves all things mechanical. I can see he’s going to be a lot like me when I was little, taking things apart and being fascinated by mechanics and electricity.

After the party we managed to get a hold of Jalbey, and we gossiped some more with him before going out to rent Mulberry Street (one of the “8 more films to die for”). We watched that with Dad and it was just so-so, picture a zombie movie where the zombies are actually infected humans turned rat mutants, but it was entertaining at least. We had fun punning though. “You rat bastard” and “President Bush doesn’t care about Rat People” were among the best. Doody and I stayed up browsing the internet for a while then crashed again.

Sunday I woke up and cleaned the inside of Amme’s Camry, and Dad waxed the crap out of it (it looks like a mirror, beautiful). Before I headed back down to Bangor Doody and I went to the Jade Palace for lunch and had some seriously good buffet and had a couple more good puns (“jimmy’s buffet” and “the bob buffet” PROTIP: say buffet as buf-fet). This comes from reading too much Spider Robinson, I’m afraid.

“I swear I won’t start singing Peaches & Herb”

After being reunited with my lil’ angel on Sunday night, we went to bed so we could wake up at 6am to head down to Boston. We got to Alyssa’s around 12pm and went straight out downtown to go visit the Aquarium and do a little souvenir shopping. Later we went home to change and headed back out to the game, Sox vs. Diamondbacks, which was really fun since it was Lindsey and Amme’s first games, but incredibly slow since no runs were scored until the 6th inning when Arizona scored 2 runs, and the Sox never did come back, scoring just 1 run. However with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 8th, the tension was palpable.

“Yes Margaret, it is possible to spend several hours reading about shaving.”

At this point, I should mention that I’ve become a huge shaving nerd. Yes, shaving nerd. This came about from 2 distinct events. Last year I read an article about how you can save a ton of money and get a closer shave with less irritation by switching to a safety razor (the old double edge metal ones). I thought that was really cool but never got around to buying one. Then just a couple of months ago, my friend Andrew told me he’d started shaving with one, and there was a whole online forum devoted to the art of shaving (and lathering, which is almost more important than the razor) called BadgerAndBlade.com. My curiosity was piqued and I decided to check it out. What I found was a very friendly and helpful community of people who had set out to find the secret of getting a better shave, with less irritation, and had ended up finding a place to share stories, make friends, and get guidance on what to buy and how to use it.

I’ve been shaving with a safety razor and badger-hair brush for a few weeks now and I’ve never had such a smooth shave or less irritation. Whats more, I spend about $4 on 20 razors, instead of $20 on 4 mach-3 razors!!!

Anyway, I bring this up because The next day we went to the Natick mall. For you Family Guy fans, there WAS a Twinkie factory in Natick, but she’s gone :(. Despite that tragedy, we had a blast shopping and hanging out and just enjoying everyone’s company. My mission was to find all the shaving supplies I needed but couldn’t get in Bangor. This included some shaving soap and/or cream, a high-quality badger-hair brush, aftershave lotion, possibly some cologne, and some good aftershave spash with witch hazel and no alcohol.

Armed with reviews from B&B, and a list of stores with possible supplies, I came away with everything I needed. I also got some new clothes (I clothes shop about every 1.5 years, or 18 months for you unit-impaired new mothers out there).

“Nom nom nom”

Before Amme and I had to head back to Bangor, Alyssa took us all to Asiana Fusion in Watertown, that has absolutely amazing food. This is real asian food, as in authentic Korean bulgogi, kimchi, and kalbi, as well as Pad Thai and other Thai and Japanese and Chinese dishes. Everything we got was just excellent, and we chatted with the Korean girls there and got some most excellent deserts! I highly recommend it to anyone near the Boston/Watertown/Waltham area.

The following morning we all went to Alyssa’s work for a little pizza party and met a lot of her co-workers. It was brief but really nice to meet everyone. Amme and I headed home after that and had a pretty un-eventful drive back home. It was really nice to pass out in our own big comfy bed with the A.C. on.

I just finished assembling it and took it out for a little ride. Its smooooooth and has a ton of pop.

View more photos on my flickr slideshow

Les Spécifiques

• ELEMENT MIKE V AVIARY DECK – 7.88 width – On sale, and its a helium deck, so its lighter and stronger.
• TENSOR RODNEY MULLEN CUSTOM MIDS TRUCKS – Mullen is my all-time favorite skateboarder and he personally designed these trucks.
• SPITFIRE OLSON LIFERS WHEELS – 57mm, 97a durometer, for a smoother ride over crappy asphalt.
• FKD SAWBLADE SPEED BEARINGS – ABEC 5, IMHO the best balance between speed and durability. These ones have a clear shield so you can see inside, with a red spacer for a little extra bling.
• BLACK MAGIC GRIP TAPE – of course!
• MYSTERY RISERS and hardware – No real difference in performence, but they are white and complemented the trucks nicely.

Now to go work of those extra pounds!

Amme has summer classes all summer, and they’re from 9-5 for the first session. Since I work 8-5 in the Network Op. Center all summer we at least get to have lunch together, except for today because she had to go to sleep at 6pm and get up at 2am!!! to go to a super-early morning shift at her job. I hope she can relax a little tonight if she doesn’t have too much to study for tomorrow. I worry about her.

B and Kelly finally got on Second Life, which made me start using it again. B and I went boy-shopping together at this cool store called Gritty Kitty. There were some freaky furries there with gigantic squirrel tails, and some loitering emo kiddies, but other than that it was a cool place. They even had a bitchin’ roller coaster but it wasn’t open so we played tag then went and found an amusement park with some crazy ass rides and coasters. I’d like to get Amme playing if she has the time. Lately we’ve been playing Worms World Party (Worms Armageddon doesn’t run on XP even in compatibility mode) in vs. mode and she’s slowly started to kick my ass on a too-consistent basis, which is especially impressive since I’ve had years of Worms experience. I’ll have to try to counter that somehow.

I made a nice iPod clone in SL, though its just eye-candy at this point until I figure out how to render headphones with a flexible path cord that will attach to the earpieces and iPod. At its current stage one end is anchored to either the iPod or ear-piece, and the other end blows lazily in the wind. I’ve sought help from various sources and we’ll see if anyone can save me. I’ve tried the Ivory Tower Library of Prims, which taught me a lot, but nothing relevant to the headphones.

Well, time to head home!

At any rate, B and Kelly came up this weekend to see family and stayed with us! Amme and I aren’t the most exciting people right now, so we may or may not have kept them entertained, but we had a good time at least. They went to a flower show with Matt’s family and got us a little bamboo plant! I’d seen them before in Chinatown but never got one because we were so far from home. Its really cute and is sitting on a little shelf in the living room. They came up Saturday and got done visiting family around 6, so we decided to go find a restaurant with vegan options for them around Bangor. Little Lads Bakery shut down, very disappointing, so we went to a Pakistani restaurant that was very good. Some dishes were similar to Indian food, so Amme and I ordered samosas, lamb curry and rice, and naan. It was all really good, and the mood of the place was really neat. It even had some catchy native music playing.

After that we went home and watched some TV shows until we were too tired to keep our eyes open, and crashed for the night. The next day we relaxed for a while then went for a stroll in the woods but there was still a lot of snow on the trails so we ended up cutting it short. Not having gained very much energy despite sleeping in, we just lazed around the house until B and Kelly had to head home. After that Amme worked on her paper that was due and I worked on wikipedia and my TiddlyWiki for a while.
All in all, we had a really fun weekend and hope to see more of our friends soon!

A quick google search yielded a painless plugin to palliate my printing problem (sorry I couldn’t resist the alliteration). The WordPress Plugin Repository offered up the WP-Print plugin, which is available at lesterchan.net.

Installing the plugin was is completely painless. You just put the extracted folder into your /wp-content/plugins directory, enabled it in the admin interface, and put this:
< ?php if(function_exists('wp_print')) { print_link(); } ?>
where you want the print link (in my case, next to the category listing at the end of the post).

Now whenever anyone wants to print one of my posts, they simply click the “print this post” link, and are brought to a version of the post that prints very gracefully. The printable version of the post includes The title at the top, the categories it was posted in, the article URL, and a legend of the URLs referenced in the post.

A big thank you to Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan for this slick little plugin!

The other change to Euicho.com is the addition of a Wiki link (euicho.com/wiki) in the top navigation. Not surprisingly, it takes you to a wiki, TiddlyWiki of course! More precisely, it’s a variant of TiddlyWiki that allows server-side saving of tiddlers called PhpTiddlyWiki. I chose this so anyone who wanted to edit it, could!

Why have a wiki? why not? TiddlyWiki is fun, and I really should have an example of one on my site. Also I needed a place to stow little bits of information, hacks, and code snippets that don’t warrant a full blog entry, but that I felt others may find useful. I encourage and even beg that others contribute to the wiki with anything they feel useful.

I though I’d post a little update on what I’ve been up to lately, so here goes.

I’ve been pretty busy with work and school as usual, but for the past two weeks I’ve been on break. The first week Amme and I went up North and visited with the family and friends. I hung out with Evan a few times, but didn’t get to see Jalbey hardly at all… bummer. Hopefully I’ll get to spend more time with them soon.

Last Friday I built a cat tree for our two little hellions to play on, after having seen one in the store for $450!! (Seriously.).

I went to my grandfather’s early in the morning and we cut all the wood and upholstered most of it. I couldn’t fully assemble it because it was way too large to fit in the car for the 3 hour trip back downstate. Once I got it in our apartment and put it together it was a glorious sight to behold, and building it myself saved $440 (I spent $10 on sisal to wrap the posts in and angle-brackets to hold it together). The cats love their new toy and climb all over and scratch at it throughout the day.

Becky and Alex came up over the weekend. We had a great time playing Apples to Apples and went to see the stunning movie 300. I don’t even know how to describe how great that movie is other than to say that every shot could have been a beautiful print in an art gallery, and that the movie as a whole was wonderfully written and stunning to watch. Its definitely a must-see. As Amme put it “That was a great way to kick off the Spring 2007 movie-going season.”

This week was our relaxation week. Other than grocery shopping we’ve pretty much just relaxed and sat on our posteriors. I ended up trading the 2000 Sunfire I’ve been driving for my old ’89 929 because it not only is more comfy, it also passes inspection. Sad isn’t it? I did miss the old 929 though. I’m glad to have it back. In our leisure time we’ve been watching our favorite shows, watching movies, reading books and graphic novels, and wasting our lives away on the internet. Okay, maybe not wasting, but we do spend a lot of time online. I’ve recently started editing Wikipedia in my free moments. I love finding and reverting vandalism, as well as editing articles for neutrality and factual, referenced data. I personally believe that all editors should be required to log in, which would drastically cut down on vandalism, but (as some would argue) cause Wikipedia to lose its “anybody can edit” appeal. I don’t think it would lose anything however, because this would both increase its over-all credibility and still allow anyone to edit it, they just have to quickly create an account (which cuts out a lot of bots and morons who would rather go somewhere else to cause trouble). The internet is just full of too many bots and immature people to have it completely open to editing, IMHO. At any rate, Its a lot of fun to contribute to this amazing project, though I’m not sure why I didn’t start doing this a long time ago.

Today Dad and his friend Brian drove a couch and love seat down to us that Amme’s parents were getting rid of. They actually made the 3 hour (each way) trip just for us, which they didn’t have to do, and we’re immensely thankful for their having done it. Our couch was tattered and uncomfortable, so we’re really excited to have these ones. I think I’m going to sew some slip covers for them tonight if we can find some nice, cheap fabric. I’m pretty handy with the sewing machine, but these will be a first for me. We’ll see how they turn out. I’ll try to post some photos of the cat tree later tonight if I get a chance.

On a more emotional level, I’m getting tired of not being able to get a good-paying job because they all want a full-time employee, which my classes prohibit, but overall life is very good because I’m lucky to have everything I have, and I get to spend every day with the person I love most in life, and makes me the happiest I could ever be. Take care all, its closing time here!

Amme and I went down town to go to a restaurant but there was nowhere to park so we went to UNOs instead. On the way out of Old Bangor we almost got stuck, crawling up a steep hill at about 0.5mph. At one intersection there were cars stuck at either end of a light and nobody was moving. We were glad to be heading perpendicular to all that. UNOs was good. In the past I’ve had an aversion to it, I’m not sure why, but their food is really good and the prices are fair. There was a really strange girl in the booth next to us talking to her boyfriend like you’d talk to a kitty going “broccoliiiiii… Eat it broccoliiiiii! brooooooooooooocoliiii!” it was bizzare to say the least.

This morning there was a layer of ice over everything.the parts of my car that had snow were really easy to clean, I just punched the ice and it broke apart, but the rear and side windows were frozen solid. I cleaned tiny holes to see out of the sides, and the back cleaned off fine. I had to rock back and forth for 5 minutes to get out of my spot though. Damn plows never come in the morning…

Oh yeah, I saw a truck off the road on the interstate. This guy must have been cruising, because he was on top of a snowbank. Talk about a bad morning:

from TBR News by way of Nyrath

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., January 5, 2007: “Working in the White House is like working in the monkey house in a zoo when all the primates are loaded with uppers.

A number of lower staffers have abruptly quit, Harriet Myers has quit and others are going the same way. Now why is this? Because it is now very obvious that Bush has lost his marbles, if he ever had any, and we are headed into a major governmental crisis.

Bush has absolutely no intention of leaving Iraq. Any general officer who disagrees with his stupid “surge” is promptly fired and others warned that Bush will fire them if they open their mouths. The brass at the Pentagon and the troops in the field are approaching open mutiny.

There are very serious rumors that National Guard and reserve units will not show up for shipment to the slaughterhouse. Bush has told Congress that they will do what he tells them and if they do not, he will refuse to sign any of their bills he does not approve of and refuse to implement anything they try to pass over his head.

He has deliberately antagonized the new Congress and when he is told that the people want an end to the Iraq horrors, he claims the public still want him to “stay the course.”

Hate mail and death threats are pouring in here in unprecedented numbers and the Secret Service can’t begin to keep up with them. There is no question that very soon, there will be a major confrontation between Bush on one side and the military and Congress on the other. And be sure Bush will lose.

No one seems to know what to do about Bush. He will listen to no one and could care less what the American public wants. What he wants is to hang the remaining Saddam crew, launch a huge military attack in Baghdad, level parts of that city that he personally feels should be leveled, kill off anything that moves, replace the current Iraqi government with a pliable military dictator like Saddam and then come home in what he considers will be a great triumph.

A Republican Senator recently said that what Bush was doing was criminal. It is and now both Congress, the military and a growing segment of the American public are beginning to realize that Bush has to be removed, by force if necessary, from his high office.

I have talked with some of the staff members who are in his presence on a regular basis and all of them say, without reservation, that he has gone around the bend. The Pentagon brass have nicknamed him Caligula and there is a very strong possibility of open revolt from that sector. Troops in the field are seriously talking about mutiny but if Bush knows about this, he could care less.

The plain and simple truth, children, is that our President is a fanatic nut and has absolutely no business running a war. Whatever happens to him will be entirely his fault and I am looking for another job starting this afternoon.”

I could blame my hectic life, however that’s my own fault, so instead I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to lately.

Tax Day, April 15th, was my birthday. I don’t like to make a big deal when it’s my b-day it so I don’t go around telling the world so. I did, however, have a great day/week. Amme May and I went up North for Easter dinner with my family so we found ourselves in a desolate town with nothing to do, and as a bonus it rained all weekend. While that doesn’t sound like much fun, we ended up curled up on a big leather couch reading great books all day while cuddling with my dalimation McKenna and our attention starved cats Tessie and Jake. It may seem tame but thats all I wanted.

As for presents I got 2 big ones, one of which I asked for, and one I didn’t even know existed. I’ve been wanting a new iPod for some time now. My 15GB 3rd generation one only holds half of my music collection (thats right, I have roughly 30 gigs of music), and is still in good shape but is just plain outdated compared to the features found on the 5th gen. models. Most gratefully my wish was granted, and I am now the proud owner of a 60 gigabyte 5th generation Video iPod! I chose white because I like to stick to my roots, and on the back I got engraved, “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good“. Rad.

That made my year, only to have it equally re-made by another present I didn’t deserve but got anyway. My Nokia 770. I decided to keep my intro to the Nokia 770 separate, so you’ll find it in the next post.

Amme May got me way more than she should have and got me “Y: The Last Man“, “The Ballad of Halo Jones“, AND “Crisis on Infinite Earths“. She really went out of her way and I love them! They are all so incredable and she really spent too much on me. I’ve read Y so far, which was really great, and I can’t wait to start on Halo Jones and Crisis.

Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday!

I remember waking up early to catch all of my favorite shows, but didn’t actually remember the titles of many of them. At least not until I stumbled onto this little gem:
Saturday Morning TV Schedules of the 90s.

This site has a lineup of Saturday Moring Shows for NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX, grouped by year (Spring/Fall), and it’s sure to bring back memories. I think I started watching TV around 1988, so if you’re older than I am, be sure to check out 80s Saturdays and 70s Saturdays.

Just because this is my blog, here are my top 5 favorite Saturday morning shows:

1. Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies
2. Scooby Doo
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
4. Garfield and Friends
5. Reboot (first completely computer animated TV series, and well done at that!)

I personally believe things started going south around 1995, for Saturday Morning shows anyway, and I not gett all my cartoonage on Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. What were you’re favorites?

I want you to understand how I feel about our troops, so you can see the misunderstanding between many pro-Bush vets and anti-Bush civilians. When U.S. Soldiers came back from Vietnam, they were treated as no humans deserve to be treated, much less ones that had just staked their lives fighting for both their country and the lives of those who mistreated them. Upon returning home from the war, vets were cursed at, called foul things, bullied, and were assailed by spit, rotten fruit, and human feces. I don’t pretend to know exactly what they felt, but I would have been scared, hurt, and damned confused.

Why were these soldiers treated this way? Why were they not commended for bravely fighting for the rights of those now tormenting them? They were the whipping boy for the anger that should have been directed at the government. Those that struck out at the soldiers were completely and utterly opposed to what their government was doing, enraged by what was being carried out in their country’s name. They were angry at the Government, but the Government wasn’t marching down the street, or riding home on a bus. U.S. soldiers were, and it was they who were wrongly and horribly treated.

Yes, some soldiers killed civilians in the war, or did things that would mortify most non-soldiers, but it was not their decision. They were not doing it for fun or for the hell of it. It was the decision of their leaders, and it is they who should have been held accountable. Not the hand that carries out the command, but the brain who issues it.

Fighting for one’s country and freedoms is an honorable thing to do, but an administration starting a war for one’s own personal gain is not, which brings me to my main point:

Bush supporting vets have the wrong idea about anti-Bush activists, and I can see why. After being treated the way they were, they see people now protesting the war to be personally attacking them and what they fought for. This, however, is not the America it was when they returned home from Vietnam. American’s feelings toward soldiers have been changing ever since the Gulf War, and today’s protestors are not angry at their troops, they are angry at the ones sending their beloved troops, their mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters, to die for a war not worthy of those soldier’s devotion and lives.

Next to nearly every Bush ’04 sticker you see on a car these days, you see a “Support Our Troops” magnetic ribbon decal. Why doesn’t everyone have one of these stickers? It is because people’s views have been slanted by those seeking to denounce anyone anti-bush as an anti-American troop hater. To them you are either “pro-Bush, troop supporting” or you are “anti-bush, troop hating”. This is not the truth! There are just as many ribbons on the vehicles of those who don’t support Bush, and many more who don’t see their vehicle as an effective means to show their support, but rather support our troops by trying to get them home.

I love our troops. I support them and what they give up and face every day for our country. I love them, but I do not believe in the war they are sent to fight, and I just want them brought home now, brought home alive, and unharmed. I despise our President and what he stands for, I despise his motives for this war, and I despise his use of our devoted soldiers as a meaningless means to his own end.

If you are a veteran, and you cannot comprehend why someone could love their troops but choose Kerry over Bush in 2004, I will clear it up for you. Kerry was the lesser of two evils. Yes, we had to support a man who slandered and hurt hundreds of thousands of veterans, but we did so to try to stop Bush from killing more soldiers. Our loved one’s lives were more important to us than getting revenge on a man for his gross mistakes.

Think about the men that came home to a world that seemed alien; the veterans who have felt forever changed by war. The men who were poisoned by their own government’s chemical weapons, were put in wheelchairs, maimed, and paralyzed. Think about the fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons… the men who died. Is this something you would wish on anyone? It is the fate wished upon any US soldier who proudly fights this war, by his Government. These soldiers are great men and women, but those who would send them to die for illegitimate reasons are despicable.

Upon reading this, the family-members of many of those in Iraq will hate me, will be outraged, livid even. They will think I am telling them their loved ones are dying for no reason, that their deaths/time served is meaningless. I assure you they are mistaken. I believe any soldier in Iraq is honorably trying to defend freedom and America, and any solder that dies does so for a belief that is just and right. The point I am trying to get across is that they should not have been sent there, that they should still be alive, and to those who have already lost a loved one, that is hard to hear. That makes them angry, and they will lash out at me in lieu of their government, just as protesters wrongly lashed out at our veterans so many years ago.

My Grandfather and late Great-grandfather are veterans. They both fought wars for their country, and they likely see my protest of our President as an attack on them and what they fought for. I may seem an ungrateful snot who couldn’t comprehend what they’ve done for me and the rest of America. I write this in hopes that they might know how grateful I am for what they did, and that I am proud to be their descendant. I hope they can understand that I support our troops and veterans, and that, for me, supporting our troops and supporting our government are two very different things.

Thank you,
Thomas S.E. Gagnon

via CNN.com

On the eve of Iraq’s historic election, President Bush took responsibility Wednesday for “wrong” intelligence that led to the war, but he said removing Saddam Hussein was still necessary.

He still states that he was justified and it was the right thing to do, which is bull, but I can’t exactly expect miracles here. The article goes on to state that his aproval rating is at 42%, up 4% from November, which I don’t understand, but I also don’t understand how ID has gotten as far as it has, so logic doesn’t exactly enter into it.

On a side note, I got so furious while reading Atlas Shrugged last night (I’m at the part where Ellis Wyatt, Hammond, and the like are starting to disapear) that I was just fuming at the flood of ignorance and self-serving hypocracy. I though I was going to punch something. It’s amazing what an affect a novel can have on a person. The way people like Hank Rearden’s “wet nurse” pervert the English language into a babbling, meaningless bastardization makes me sick.

Also, I was wondering when this would happen. I don’t know whether I should be terrified or thrilled. The novel has a lot of internal emotional dialog, like 2001: A Space Odessy, which, while written at the same time as the movie was being written, doesn’t make any sense in movie form. Will the Atlas Shrugged movie be the same, turning into a bastardization of its novel form? We all know that a movie has NEVER been made that lived up to the book it was based on. I personally think that certain distinguished litterary figures or professors should have input into the creation of such a monumental film as this one. If only Ayn could have written the screenplay herself, as she did with The Fountainhead.

Even the ocassional imbiber should have heard of Absinthe. Sometimes called the “green fairy”, it is a 140-proof green liqueur made from fennel, anise, and wormwood leaves. Absinthe dates back to 1792, but has been banned in the US and many other countries for almost 100 years.

Known for its alleged ability to induce a unique state of mind, appart from a regular alcoholic intoxication, absinthe has been consumed by such writers and artists as Baudelaire, Picasso Rimbaud, Toulouse-Lautrec, Oscar Wilde, and Van Gogh.

The main reason for banning absinthe was the fact that it contains an ingredient called thujon, which is poisionous. The irony of this is, drumroll please… all alcohol is a poison!!! However, that is not the point. The point is that it has never been proven that there is enough thujon in absinthe to hurt you at all, despite the terrible accusations that have plagued it for so long…

Enter Ted Breaux, water sample tester by day, absinthe aficionado by night. Breaux used the gas chromatography-mass spectrometers in the lab of his company, Environmental Analytical Solutions Inc., to not only discern whether the drink was poisionout, but also to unlock what exactly goes into good absinthe, and how to make it.

Ted Breaux has contributed a great deal to the modern revivival of *true* absinthe, and I think everyone should read this great article about it and him, at wired.com.

Breaux is the creator of Lucid brand absinthe, which in 2006 became the first genuine absinthe to gain approval for legal distribution in the U.S. since 1912.

I personally have not consumed alcohol in at least 6 years, because I enjoy being sXe (to learn more about sXe, or straght-edge, go here and search for “Subject: 1. About straight-edge”) and frankly, I could be dangerous on alcohol (ask Amme or any of my friends about that!), but that doesn’t mean I demonize alcohol, or those who drink it. Much the opposite, I am very interested in the history of some alcohols, especially one as unique and infamous as absinthe. So go there and learn a little something. Remember, “If you haven’t learned anything new today, the day is lost…”

Updated:
See also:
http://www.wormwoodsociety.org
Absinthe Party – WOMBAT 3 on Flickr by Hiku
There’s now a Wikipedia article on Lucid.

When it comes to managing my life and all the random thoughts and tasks I have that fill it, I have many ways I have tried and new ones I am currently trying.

For example, in the past I have…

• written reminders on the back of my hand (for most of my life)
• written notes on slips of paper and put them in different pockets
• put post-it notes around my work area and in my wallet

All of these have their faults. I never look at the back of my hand (I rarely wear a watch, which would facilitate this), I never remember to check my pockets to look for slips of paper (maybe I should write “check pockets” on the back of my hand!), and I either don’t bring post-it notes with me, or never check my wallet for them.

While GTD is a bit too involved for my taste (most of my tasks are very quick ones), I am trying alternate methods to help me remember things to do.

My current experiments include:

• A TiddlyWiki To Do list
• My good ole’ PDA for school related To Do and Assignment stuff
• The Hipster PDA (which is currently working out wonderfully)

And my latest fancy, Remember The Milk.

Remember The Milk is a free, online to-do list managing aplication. It allows multiple lists, is user friendly (set a date as “next Tuesday” or “in two weeks” or “friday 5pm”), has note storage, and will msg you on AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, or mobile phone when your tasks are due!

Accessability:

I like the fact that RTM is accessable. It can reach you many ways (listed above), and you can either add tasks on the website or just email a new one to your list.

As far as viewing your lists, you can print them (to add to a weekly planner, or just as a reminder), access them with iCal or any app that supports the iCal format, or you can subscribe to Atom feeds of your lists.

A Brief Overview:

RTM has an attractive UI that is easy to use. Once logged in, an overview section is shown. There you can see tasks due Today, Tomorrow, and ones that are Overdue. To manage your tasks, click the “Continue to Tasks” button.

Here, your lists are shown on the left hand side of the screen. Default lists (Inbox, Personal, Study, Work, Sent) are made, but you can add, rename, or delete lists at you see fit.
To add a task just click “Add Task” and type in a description/name of the task. To set things like the due date, whether to repeat, time estimate, or add notes, just click the appropriate icon in the box on the right-hand side of the screen.

When you’ve finished a task, click on that task and hit the “Complete” button. If you need just one more day, hit the “Postpone” button to procrastinate one more day before being reminded to finish it.

I’m no expert, as I’ve just started using it, but it looks like a really cool way to track todo lists. I’ll use it for a while and update on it in a few weeks.

But… But… this time is different! Honest! You see, I just got a new job working technical support at UNET, the University of Maine System’s network that supports almost every school and library in Maine! It’s a great job and I get to play with routers in my shell acct. and help solve problems across the network. Today I took a 58 minute call, which was crazy, because it was only my second day on the phones. But non-disclosure and such, I’ll leave it at the fact that it’s a great job.

Besides that, I feel accomplished today. I fixed Madman‘s ftp issues (the username I have him wasn’t quite right), and installed WordPress 1.5 on his subdomain so he can now get to work on his photoblog!

That, however, is only half of it, because I also upgraded my site to version 1.5! You may have noticed my links and about pages being missing. Rest assured, though, that these will be resolved in the next couple of days.

The upgrade was painless, except for the fact that my posts wouldn’t show up in my template. After 20 mins of tweaking, I realized that I had not turned plug-ins off, like the directions specifically told me to. RTFM Tom. Just RTFM…

I was so procrastinatory (I don’t care that that is not a word) about upgrading because I had a lot of special formatting in my index.php file, which I thought would be lost. However after reading a straightforward tutorial on it at codex.wordpress.org, I realized it would only take a few simple steps. I know Jalb, you told me this way earlier this year, but you never imported your old style, which led me to believe it was a more involved process. Oh what a cop out, the truth is that I’m a horiffic procrastinator–a point I’m sure you all already know all too well.

I also upgraded my version of gallery, which needs drastic formatting changes. It’ll be done after I resolve my blog issues. Then I will update it with tons of new photos. For now, I’ll leave you with a halloween gift: Amme, her old roommate Becky, and I in our Halloween costumes. I’m wearing facepaint, going as a Dia del los Muertos style priest, Amme is a dark faerie, and Becky is a punker girl.

Update: I fixed my RSS 2.0!!!
The problem: A plug-in I was using had extra white space in it!

I’m not one to like making excuses, but I would like to let you know what happened. On 6/28 I got an email from my hosting company telling me a new invoice had been made, and was due on 7/2. I’m not used to deadlines that close to first notices, so I waited until payday to pay it, which was 7/1.

My credit card information was stolen from paypal.com some time around the end of june (I have been dealing with them about all that), and my bank rightly deactivated my card when someone in Romania (I’m not making this up!) tried to relieve me of my checking acct. funds. I know everyone knows if you get an email about personal info you are to delete it immediately, but my bank told me there are a new round of spoof sites going up with addresses like paypal-ca.net and the like that are indistinguishable from the real paypal.com exept for the all-too-familiar url. If you get ANY email from paypal, ebay, etc, don’t click the links in it. Just delete it. If you are still curious about whether your account really does require action on your behalf, type http://www.paypal.com into your browser yourself and check your account then. Similar ebay-clones etc. are also popping up. Please, be cautious people.

Moving on, I got all my paypal and bank logins changed, as well as a new debit card, but I have no credit cards (I don’t trust myself with them) and couldn’t pay my now overdue hosting charges until my replacement card came. It did 10 days later, and i promptly paid my bills.

It was supposed to take a day or two to re-activate my site, but when it didn’t come back online, I decided to wait longer, hoping it would eventually come back. This was my big mistake. I should have contacted Ace-host immediately.

I finally submitted a help desk ticket to them last night at 10:30pm EST and they had my site back online within hours. They are a great (and cheap!) company and I should have contacted them immediately.

Moral of the story: DON’T PROCRASTINATE, TOM!!!

As penance for what I’ve done I’ll leave you with an image that should have never see the light of day, but will likely make you all laugh at me out loud…

Pecos Tom

Amme and I went on one of those VR rollercoaster rides in Palisades, which was a blast, and I got my burbon chicken from the Cajun Grill. That chicken, btw, is some of the best damn chicken I’ve ever eaten! I get it every time I come down here. The other thing I try to always get is called Roti Canai from a place called New Malaysia Restaurant on Bowery Street. Roti Canai are a Malaysian pan cake served with hot curry dipping sauce. The sauce has a hunk of curry chicken in it that usually prompts me to order a Curry Chicken with Rice once I’ve tasted it. When we went yesterday morning the waitresses seemed like they had more important things to do than serve us, but the roti canai were as fresh and delecious as ever!

I also got to hold Amme’s new baby cousin, Dahlia, for a while. She’s so adorable. Jesse and Linda already got married without a ceremony, so tonight is just the reception with dress showing and lots of amazing authentic Chinese cuisine. We are going to need scooters to get around when we get back to Maine.

On that note, someone just showed up with two suitcases of White Castle burgers. I have to go. Now.

PS: Jalbey saw this and sent it to me from his phone. It gave me a good laugh. I wonder how many other Pyromaniacal Gagnons there are in Maine. Also, Doody’s car is on the web now! HAHAHA It will never be deleted. Thousands of users will download this picture with Doody’s car in the foreground and little kids will look at it when their parents aren’t watching. *MUAHAHAHAHA*

• The semester is wrapping up, and with it comes projects and final presentations. Ugh *shivers* I hate presentations.
• I got a job at Wendy’s. I know, its no ATX, but they don’t have any off-site work for me and I’m taking summer classes down here. I work from 4-11:30 every night, so I’ve lost quite a bit of free time. I’ve also applied for a really interesting programming job down here and am waiting to hear back from them.
• Zach is moving down to Portland for the summer, so we are finding a smaller, nicer, cheaper place for the summer/next fall. We’ve been appartment hunting for the past two weeks and fixing up our place to get our security deposit back (mostly painting).

So, pretty much I’ve lost all of my free time to the necessitys of life. I’ve got a great story about a pair of grass skis I got for my birthday that I’ll post soon I hope. I apologize to all of my readers that expect consistant content and I am sorry I’ve become remiss of my duty as a blogger.

WOOHOO! THIS IS EUICHO.COM’s 100TH POST ANNIVERSARY!

In this rant, Evan finally discovers girls are made different than boys. (Not like that. He still hasn’t found that out yet.)

Scientists (the group of friends I have) have recently discovered that there is a difference between men and women. While dining out at a chain pizza restaurant one of my friends from high school thought it would be cool to waste the cheese….

This entry is authored by: “Evan”
His “Rants” are here purely for entertainment and comic relief.
All of the views expressed in this and all rants are solely that of Evan.
Please don’t take them seriously. If you do… don’t come bitching to me… you’re the one that needs to change something.

Seeing as how we were all pretty bored of waiting for food, an entire shaker of cheese was poured onto a plate. Tom then continued to play with the pile of cheese, adding hot peppers for “connectivity,” he then proceeded to turn down multiple dares to snort a line of it. He then created the master creation of cheese, a parmesan cheese pyramid.

At this point it had become quite evident that only the men at the table were excited about this sight. Tom with the accompaniment of the men around the table created a great looking pyramid complete with erosion. It was then turned into a volcano, using none other than Hawaiian Punch.(slightly ironic don’t ya think?)

I noticed a few eyes rolling and the fact that the females of the group stopped talking made me realize one thing. Women are boring. Yes, I have discovered why women roll their eyes, sigh, and become tired of men’s incessant fidgeting with food products and other tedious items, it’s very simple too.

Women are boring. They have lost all of their creative flow by the age of twelve. I think it might have something to do with the period talk they receive. It puts them in a mindset that they are no longer children and can’t be anything exciting except child bearers.

I’ve never been present for one of these speeches, but no woman that I’ve spent time with has ever found me making a mashed potato circus tent amusing after puberty has set in. I’m not saying I find women uninteresting, in fact I find them quite the opposite and I would like to eventually date one. All I am saying is, their minds are formed and they do not allow for much imagination.

That is the complete difference between men and women. Men are interesting and easily amused and women have no imagination after their first ovulation. So I say don’t let women ovulate, hell they couldn’t get pregnant and those burping and farting competitions followed by my personal favorite booger flicking would be a much more of a challenge with a female division.

So with that I say “NO!” to first periods, hey women don’t like them either.

Hmm I’m hungry…

I re-drew a design I’d come up with a while ago, but it doesn’t convey the attitude I want to get across, its too emo/AFI, so I’ve scrapped it. So far that makes 4. I like the personal dingbat idea Andrei talks about. They have a simple elegance and universality about them. I have 15 tabs open in Firefox as I am writing this (blasted A.D.D.), and every one of them has their own logo/dingbat and corrisponding favicon. This, I must attain.

I’m not going to “Wal*Mart” for a LONG time. Know what the “*” stands for on the sign? Its where they edited out “F***ING”. I’m so sick of Wal *BEEP* Mart right now. Hell, we went there almost every day last semester, because Amme is just funny like that, but this weekend we went about 3 times a day, and thats just depressing.

We painted every day, some days more than others, and managed to finish the living room and almost finished the bathroom and Amme and I’s bedroom. We got more paint and rollers and tape. I can’t thank Jalb and Doody and Amme enough for all their help. In between painting we did a lot of stuff though. We played a lot of Texas Hold-Em and Crazy Eights. Jalb forgot his nice clay chips at home and we couldn’t find any poker chips at WalMart so we bought ziti noodles and they ended up working pretty well, except we had to keep them in bowls so they wouldn’t roll off the table.

We shampooed the carpets and when we rented the unit the lady didn’t know how to fill out the form so that took about 20 minutes. When we returned it they said we needed our receipt to refund the deposit, which the lady had neglected to mention to us when we rented it. We had to drive all the way back to our place to get the stupid slip of paper. Jalb asked where the hand-held radio scanners were and they told us they didn’t carry them. We knew they did in Presque Isle so we checked automotive anyway and lo and behold, there the little bastards were right with the car stereos. He bought one, only to have it not take manual frequencies when the package said it did, so he returned it and got a cheaper, MUCH better one from Radio Shack.

I have to say, I hate going to Radio Shack because they are always so pretentious and assholes about everything, but this one salesman at the one in Brewer was amazing. He was all smiles and very helpful and talked about all the features with Jalb and even offered to take it out and put batteries in the one he was buying to test it out. He bought it along with a $5 adapter the guy gave him for free, and to top that all off, he went out back and got a list of all the popular frequencies for the area. I was thoroughly impressed, and from now on, that’s the only Radio Shack I’m going to. After cooking up some of my special spaghetti sauce with much help from Amme, and mauing down, we went out to take night photos (our favorite) at Bangor International Airport (BGR).

On our way into the airport, we saw a blue and white tail-design sticking out from behind the terminal, and it turned out to be an Antonov Design Bureau plane! Don’t crucify me, I’m still new at aircraft identification, but I believe it was an Antonov An-124 Ruslan. We found out that the planes were landing on the end of the runway that ended at a public road (bottom of this picture), so we parked there and waited. We ended up having two or three planes come in, and they were BIG. I don’t remember what Jalb decided they were, but I’ll find out when he once again joins the living (he didn’t come in to work today, that bad boy). It was so loud and exhilarating, and we got some great wake turbulence! We also caught a jet taking off but it was too dark to see, too fast to use a high shutter priority, and too far away to use a flash.

We went out again the next day to take some daytime photos, and found some great shortcuts around Bangor. We stumbled across a playground and decided to play for a while. Amme and I swung on a tire swing and got very dizzy.

I don’t remember which day, but we took more night shots around Bangor and got a few really good ones. On our way into town, we saw a tall church casting a shadow in the sky. This is one of my favorite shots:

Theres an overall sense of impending doom, and them standing there with their paintlegs unknowingly stuck on their shoes, mirrored, is priceless to say the least.

My memory is blury, but at some point we fed seagulls fries from Wendy’s, saw a 3 foot long nurse shark, made stirfry, saw a C-5B Galaxy?, and watched an Omni air International DC 10 take off.

We also wandered around Borders trying to get free WiFi on Jalb’s powerbook, but it said we needed a T-mobil account and the software was only for Windows. They said there were booklets about how to connect, but they had run out so we ended up leaving with some periodicals. Today Kevin told me all you have to do is put in the username and password and its free, but those are in the booklets. He thinks they are “Borders” and “Bangor” respectively. You don’t need to d/l the connection manager on the Mac because, as always, it ‘just works’.

We had an amazing time and I can’t wait to get us or more of us together again. I leave you with Doody’s centerfold picture for 2004.
You can see all the pictures at http://euicho.com/pics/doodjalb/

On a tangent thats parallel with the latitude line where that thing happened with that guy that one time in the place with the thing doing that stuff:

Defective Yeti decided there should be a March Madness Cinematic SuperVillian. My personal favorite is Verbal Kint vs. HAL 9000. Verbal would totally fu$k up his logic, but HAL might possibly one-up him.

Scratchmedia has a wonderful web design tutorial page, I suggest all budding designers check it out.

If you are looking for a new digicam, if you are thinking about getting a new digicam, if you don’t know if you can afford a new digicam, if you family member, friend, or pet is looking for a new digicam, hell if your spidey-sense tells you a total stranger that passes you on the street is looking for a digicam, GO TO Steves-digicams.com. You will never see a more in-depth digital camera review site ANYWHERE on the net. C’mon I dare you. I double dog dare you! Can’t do it can you? Nope. Didn’t think so. This place has about 6 pages of review per camera, and hundreds of cameras, plus printers and accessories. They have close-up photos, sample photos, even 360 degree VR tours of the cameras. They show better specs than the maufaturer’s sites, and have links to the best deals on them.

If you feel the need for this bed, I think your money would be better spent on a psychiatrist for paranoid schizophrenia. Unless, of course, you are vacationing in Iraq.

Homeland Insecurity Advisory System is a website that lets you rate the U.S. Government’s threat level:

The Homeland Insecurity Advisory System (HIAS) is a public rating system that allows people from across the globe to determine the US Government’s Threat Level by collectively rating RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) feeds from major US news sources. Turning the “Homeland Security” threat level on its head, the HIAS system will allow the people to collaboratively challenge this internally determined (and seemingly arbitrary) threat condition by rating each major US news source according to its support level for or against the US Government’s actions.

If you’re wardriving, or just need to find some free internet, check wifimaps.com before you venture out.

Our application displays stunningly detailed interactive street-level maps of the US and of the World, with triangulated access-points from wardriving data. We provide searching for MAC, station name, US state, or by geographic region.

If you consider yourself a photographer, you know about lomography, or ‘lomo’ (which roughly sounds like the last half of “f#$k your mother” in Cantonese). I’ve been a fan of lomography for a long time, I like shooting from the hip with my T616 (no not like that kid at safeway ). Its a really interesting artform, so if you’re interested go check it out at lomography.com

I’ve spent hours reading all the how much is inside articles at cockeyed.com. This guy definately leads an interesting life. His Incredable Creations are also really entertaining. His writing is hillarious. Take, for example, these two excerpts from How Much is Inside a Pack of Rolling Tobacco:

There are two reasons people smoke cigarettes. The first reason is to support their federal, state and local governments with vast amounts of tax revenue.
…
Having traveled all over the globe as a child, Steven became an expert at “origami”, the ancient Japanese art of cigarette rolling.

I’m on a quest to find a list of all the different Tech/ Geek/ Anime/ Comic conventions that go on throughout the year. So far all I have is

• defcon
• HOPEcon
• boggercon
• dragoncon
• comic-con
• sakura-con
• FanimeCon
• Oni-Con

Anyone know of the kind of site I’m looking for?

The movie I, Robot was originally a spec script, titled “Hardwired,” by screenwriter Jeff Vintar. It was later infused with elements from Asimov’s short stories and retitled after Davis Entertainment aquired film rights to it from the Asimov estate.

As an avid reader, one has to realize nobody will EVER perfectly reproduce a great story or novel as a film. It can’t be done. Something always gets horribly fu$@ed up. Look at Dreamcatcher: 130 minutes of pretty damn good work, and 6 minutes at the end of classic hollywood bullshit that left me crying in the corner of the theater. This leads me to view movies, like i tried with I, Robot, with the very critical Sci-Fi loving part of my personality bound, gagged, and in my trunk. Because if I tried to review this movie as being “based on a novel”, not only would it look immature and ignorantly stupid, it would, frankly, look exactly like this.

However, I MUST take into account the fact that the idea of robots becoming violent is exactly Asimov was writing against in his work as an author. Indeed the act of placing the three laws into his stories forced him to write more complex plots, with robots who were more then just weapons. They had personalities, human-like traits, and sometimes, feelings.

So… the verdict? They shouldn’t have called it I, Robot, because it didn’t do the story justice. It should have been like Minority Report, where it was based, from the start, on a short story. Instead, they used the popularity of the stories to draw a crowd to a movie that had only four similarities to the stories:

• The title, “I, Robot”
• It boasts The Three Laws
• Asimov has a writing credit
• It has a character named “Susan Calvin”

Yep, thats about it.
So as a movie, it was good, no big stereotypes, the CG was impeccable, and the script wasn’t a bloated P.O.S.
I was riveted through most of it, and it really drew me in. It was quite well made.
However, I still think it was false advertising and they should have left the script as it was in 1995.

You can read further about the evolution of the I, Robot script here.