The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Random

  • Harry Potter Dethroned!

    At least from his place at the top of the blogosphere. Apparently, Alberto Gonzales is much more gab worthy right now.

  • Quote of the Day

    Found on David Louis Edelman’s blog:

    …if the Antichrist has an MP3 player, it’s a Zune.

    From a business perspective, how do you market to the Antichrist? Hmm…

  • Busy Weekend

    This is more of a livejournal posting, but as I only use livejournal to keep up with what my friends are doing, voila!

    Saturday I spent all day working on the AT with the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club. It was supposed to be the “District Maintenance Month” wherein all the section overseers (I have section 3.8; 1.2 miles of fairly level stuff) of a particular district get together and fix anything big that needs fixing. Unfortunately, we only had three people for our district, so we ended up hauling wood chips in to the Stover Creek Privy. After that, I drove back over to Justus Creek and joined the rest of the club who were working on a trail relocation. This involves much digging/chopping/cutting/bending/working and I was exhausted when I got home. But! We had friends coming over, so no sleepy for Billy, instead stayed up ’til 11:30 or so.

    Sunday, I was the trip organizer for an ITE whitewater rafting trip. I wish I could post pictures, but I had to use one of those disposable waterproof cameras, and it’s being developed right now. We rafted the middle Ocoee in Tennessee with the Ocoee Adventure Center rafting guides. We had a blast, and now I’m doubly tired. Work will be very early tomorrow morning.

  • 80/20 Rule

    There’s a rule called the 80/20 rule. It states that 80% of the gain comes from 20% time/effort/clients/etc. This is frequently mentioned with respect to my work because about 20% of our clients pay 80% of our fee.

    The Transportationist poses the question that, perhaps, 0.8% of the effort gets you 51.2% of the gain.

    I like that thought.

  • Escape Pod Podcast

    I am a huge fan of Escape Pod, a Science Fiction podcast published by Steve Eley. Its intent is to deliver an audio version of a science fiction short story every week. It is one of my favorite podcasts, and I listen religiously.

    Give it a try, and if you like it well enough, donate to it!

  • Armageddon will Destroy the Internet

    The Armageddon will destroy The Internet. At least, that’s my thought on the topic.

    This random thought came out of a random websearch using the terms “Bicycle” and “Armageddon”, the story behind which is really too involved to cover here. Anyhow, I came across this site, which asked, “Would the Internet survive Armageddon?” This question was asked in the context of “during a post-apocalyptic world, what services could reasonably be expected to survive?”

    My opinion arises from the term “Armageddon” which has one very specific connotation: The End of the Biblical World. I think if the final battle is fought between God and Satan, the internet is going to be a casualty.

    Outside my pedantic stance on the term “Armageddon” the question posed at the link has some good answers. If you’re interested in writing post apocalyptic fiction, I recommend you read it.

  • More Social Networking

    I learned about Twitter last spring, when it was mentioned during Podcamp Atlanta (which was a rockin’ good time). Twitter is an social networking protocol that lets you post a 140 character update about what you’re doing right now. For example, I posted this morning that I was “Developing traffic volume growth projections for a project” which is the first thing I’m doing today. You can see it there, over in the sidebar, under my picture. Perhaps later, I’ll post that I’m “eating lunch” or “becoming addicted to social networking.” The point is, that people who care can follow what you’re up to, as you choose to post it.

    At the moment, I’m unsure of the utility. I don’t know if any of my other friends are on Twitter (and Twitter doesn’t seem to have a search facility, but I haven’t thoroughly examined it yet), which would seriously reduce my dedication. I’ll keep you informed.

  • Name Searching

    I clicked through to Is This Your Name to find out what was going on with “Bill Ruhsam”. Amusingly, I found out that I don’t exist…

    3. According to the US Census Bureau°, 0.112% of US residents have the first name ‘Bill’ and fewer than 0.001% have the surname ‘Ruhsam’. The US has around 300 million residents, so we guesstimate there are 0 ‘Bill Ruhsam’s.

    Yay! There are zero of me!

    What’s neat with that site was I found some people who were citing my flickr photos without my previous knowledge. Cool.

  • The Call of Cthulhu

    Finally! It’s only been about twenty years since I first ran across Cthulhu, in the form of the role playing game Call of Cthulhu, in which if your character is not dead or insane by game’s end, you haven’t been trying hard enough. Now I’ve finally read the original short story that this is all based upon, The Call of Cthulhu, but by H.P. Lovecraft. It was definitely a picturesque scene of horror where Mr. Lovecraft lovingly described the Old One who would rise from the deeps to liberate and devour humanity.

    Now I can truly say I’m a geek.

  • Scifi Summer Movie Project

    Way back at the beginning of the summer I posted a list of scifi movies that I either needed to see, or see again. Let’s see how I’ve been doing.

    • Gattaca: Nope
    • Blade Runner**: Nope
    • Digitally scragged Return of the Jedi (I was so fed up with Lucas after his “improvement” of episode IV and V that I never went to see VI): Nope
    • Akira: Nope
    • The Last Mimzy: Yes, but it was a bit disappointing. It was an excellent tale, with good CGI, but it seemed a bit hollow from a science fiction perspective. Much ado was made about the kid brother being “the engineer” and then…nothing. Also (spoiler……) if all the future Earth peoples needed was a bit of DNA, why didn’t the Mimsy go and swap it’s furry hand through the kid’s mouth while she was sleeping?
    • The Animatrix: Nope
    • Time Bandits**: Nope
    • King Kong (the original): Nope
    • The Day the Earth Stood Still**: Nope
    • THX 1138: Finally saw this. It was exceptionally strange to watch, not only because it is a strange movie, but because I’m a huge star wars fan, and a lot of the same sound and visual effects that Lucas uses in episodes 4-6 are present in this film. Was very deja vu-ish.
    • Soylent Green (is people!): Amusing and campy. I’m still wondering why Charlton Heston’s character had a huge apartment that he shared with one person while there were people living on his stairway.
    • The Terminal Man: Nope
    • Robocop** (I saw this at a very impressionable age and it gave me nightmares. I’d probably enjoy it more, now): Nope
    • Bicentennial Man (we briefly saw the filming of this as we drove on 101 Hwy 1 in CA): Nope
    • The Thirteenth Floor: Excellent movie. Based off the same book Simulacra and Simulations as the Matrix was.
    • Red Planet: Nope
    • 28 Days Later: Nope
    • The Butterfly Effect: Nope
    • Thunderbirds: Nope
    • Children of Men (after I finish the book): Nope, and haven’t finished the book, either.
    • The Fountain: Nope
    • Ultraviolet: Yes, but I was heartily disappointed. I didn’t ever read this comic, and I think you needed to in order to appreciate the film.

    I don’t think I’m going to finish the list by the end of summer, but the year is still young!

    *There may be some films on this list that don’t qualify as “science fiction” in some fans’ minds. That’s ok. Make your own list! And keep in mind this is not some Top 10 or Top 100 list, an exercise I find is a bit meaningless on the hugely interactive web because no two people will ever agree on the contents of those lists.

    **Seen it at least once. Barely recall the plot

    ***Astute readers will note that most of this is a chronological/alphabetical list taken piecemeal from wikipedia