The Evil Eyebrow

  • Wet & Wild or Boring & Mild?

    Mr. John Sassatelli was in town last week for some GE voodoo and was gifted with the opportunity to stay with us over the weekend. Much fun was had, several games were played, some beer was drunk, and we went white water rafting on the Ocoee river in Tennessee. Ocoee Rafting was our host and Doug was our guide.

    Doug offered us the option at the beginning of the trip of “Wet and Wild or Boring and Mild?” John, Jenn, and I opted for Wet and Wild but the other occupants of the raft were less inclined to be rolled down the river without a raft. Doug stuck John and I at the front of the raft where we were guaranteed the roughest ride.

    (we were also guaranteed the hardest ride on your legs, knees, and hips. You jam your feet into the crevice between the side pontoons and the floor of the raft, which leaves you in an odd, twisted position considering you are expected to lean way out and pull hard with your paddle)

    I expect that Doug does not consider it a good trip down the river unless he’s managed to dump at least one passenger. Luckily that passenger was me. It was odd how unexpected it was when I fell out of the raft given we’d gone 4 miles down the river already with us all hanging on for dear life. Suffice to say, I didn’t drown.

    It was a good time on the Middle Ocoee. This company also offers a full day trip including the Upper Ocoee, which is where the Olympics in ’96 were, and the Middle. We plan to go back sometime and do the whole thing.

  • Harry Potter: Yahhhh!!!!

    This is taken from my Recent Readings page (which reminds me I want to put a link to it on my blogroll) in exactitude. I want people to be able to reply to it…

    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling. SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ if you do not want to have critical plot elements revealed to you. You are warned (again).

    We waited in the Savannah, GA, Barnes & Noble from 10:00 PM on July 16th, 2005, along with 400 other people, for the stroke of midnight in order to buy the latest installment of the Harry Potter series. Despite wanting to cleave the skulls of some over-enthusiastic youths who were running around, it was a perfectly friendly environment, then…”attention Barnes & Noble Shoppers…” and the book was up for sale!

    We bought our books (one for each of us to avoid any potential marital discord) and proceded to read them in our hotel room until around 3:00 AM. We had them finished by 2:00 AM the next morning. Not bad considering we were also in Savannah for sight-seeing purposes. We discussed the book at bit, but we had to get up early to move on to the next part of our trip, so sleep was more important.

    R.A.B.? We had no clue to start. I know (or suspect) who it is now, from the J.K.Rowling interview alluded to in my blog entry of July 29th. It’s probably Regulus Black, and the locket is sitting in the cabinet inside Number 12 Grimmwauld Place, Harry’s new house. If you don’t believe me, see the opening chapters of The Order of the Phoenix, where Harry and Crew are cleaning the house and the cabinet in particular.

    The Severus Snape Scenario? I personally think that Snape is a mean, cruel, horrible man, who is not a member of the Dark Side of the Force. I believe that Dumbledore knew (somehow) that he was going to die because of either his hand or picking up the locket horcrux, and enlisted Snape to kill him to further his infiltration of Voldemort’s dark league. Why do I think this? It’s a feeling. I feel that Ms. Rowling would not have harped eternally on Snape seeming evil yet being one the good merely to cast him aside now. There are hints that this is possible, from Dumbledore’s and Snapes argument in the book, but I must confess I do not have any hard data to cast on the waters. An argument against this would be the second chapter where Snape swears the Unbreakable Vow. Would Dumbledore have known almost a year in advance that he was going to die? Possibly, but we know from this book that Dumbledore is not a seer. I seem to be arguing against myself, but I’m merely confessing to no conclusive data.

    The dilemma arises that if Snape is still a member-in-good-standing of the good side, how is he to explain what occurred on the top of the Astronomy tower? No one, least of all Harry, will be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, so there would need to be some ironclad proof to support that position. Another memory for the pensieve? One left to Harry by Dumbledore? I don’t know about that one. We know it’s possible to edit memories badly, as evidenced by Slughorn, and Dumbledore implies that it’s possible to do it well, therefore deceiving even the pensieve viewer. Perhaps the painting of Dumbledore in the Headmistress’s office will constitute unimpeachable testimony? Perhaps Snape is intending to sacrifice himself for the cause in the next book, thereby removing this question from play and showing his true colors? The last chapter of the book has a lengthy internal dialogue where Harry remarks that all of his protectors (James, Lily, Sirius, Dumbledore) are now gone and that it’s time to step up and be a man. Maybe the last, least-known, least-wanted protector will be Snape? Speculations, all, but it’s certainly ripe territory.

    Ginny. It certainly seemed trite at first for Harry to cast aside Ginny in order to pursue his quest yet maintain the help and support of Hermione and Ron. However, after the second read of the book, I realized that we don’t know anything like that at all. Harry divorces himself from Ginny at the end of the funeral, then attempts the same thing with Ron and Hermione, who refuse to hear anything about it. Then the book ends! No more interaction between Harry and Ginny, but we know they’ll see each other soon at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. I think it’s equally possible that she will hook up with the three musketeers again as remaining Harry’s reward for completing the quest. We will see.

    Godric’s Hollow. I look forward to seeing Harry visit Godric’s Hollow to pay respects to his Mom (mum) and Dad. I anticipate that there will be a Death Eater ambush there, resulting in useful intelligence for the good side. We shall see.

    Half-Blood Prince (and his book). Will Harry return to the Room of Requirement to get the Advanced Potion Making text he secured there? Hmmmm… Will the book play any more role in the series. We, again, shall see.

  • Permalinks: Engage!

    I managed to fix the permalinks issue. The help topic that saved me is posted at http://wordpress.org/support/topic/36214. In case it goes away, I’m posting it here, as a duplicate.

    Thanks, MWILSON.

    To get permalinks woking on my Win/ISS WP installation I created a php.ini and FTP’d it to my domian’s root. I placed the following inside the php.ini:

    cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
    cgi.force_redirect = 0

    In the WP permalink options I set up the following virtual site structure:

    /index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

    This may be helpful for those who cannot access the primary php.ini file in Windows or for those who don’t have direct access to ISS configuration settings.

    Posted: 2005-06-23 16:37:34 #

    Unfortunately, I confess I have no idea what exactly that does, but it worked.

  • Testing Permalinks

    Testing…uno, dos…

    The permalink function is screwing up the post call outs, so if you can’t hit my posts after clicking, I’m still working on it.

  • Trucks, Tolls, Traffic, Terminus

    I could not come up with a good way to alliterate Atlanta with Trucks, Tolls, and Traffic, so the former name of this burg was volunteered to the position. See any history of Atlanta and the Western & Atlantic Railroad for more details.

    Here is an Atlanta Journal Constitution story concerning the impacts of diverting intended high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to truck only toll (TOT) lanes. (Requires you to sign up for an AJC user account)

    The article makes some interesting points, but I have not yet had a chance to read the study which is posted on the HOT And TOT Study website

  • Harry Potter: "I Want MORE!"

    Alas, the sixth book is out, read, and leaves us dying for more. From things mentioned on J. K. Rowling’s website (I prefer the text-only version), it seems that she will not start working on the seventh book until next year. I guess we’ll all have to just wait, then.

    Until then, however, we can stoke ourselves on such tidbits as The Interview. It seems, from the horses mouth, that Ms. Rowling granted an interview immediately post debut of Half Blood Prince. This interview was given by the operators of the-leaky-cauldron.org and mugglenet.com.

    The interview contains serious spoilers for Half Blood Prince and indicates story arcs that will NOT take place in book seven, so if you’re interested in being entirely surprised by the last book, I would not read it. It does contain some very tantalizing pieces of information that would be of interest to a Harry Potter fan.

    The Interview transcripts can be found at Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet.

  • Astronomy Pics

    The Astronomy Picture of the Day website is one of my favorites. It gets a hit every day when I get into work. They proprietors manage to come up with some exciting and interesting images.

    Today they had a picture from Greece of a sun transit by the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Discovery, while docked. Far out…

  • Cats and their Sweet-tooth

    I heard on NPR’s Morning Edition on the 25th that cats lack the gene that enables them to sense sweet tastes in the same way we do.

    This study from the Monell Chemical Senses Center was published in the Public Library of Science’s journal Genetics.

    I find this item fascinating from an evolutionary standpoint. Was the gene turned off before or after cats became exclusively carnivores? I’m not a evolutionary geneticist, but it would be my inclination to assume that the taste buds disappeared, selecting cats to prefer meat-only diets.

  • Echinacea Does Not Work

    The New England Journal of Medicine released a study showing that there was no efficacy in taking echinacea before, during, or after the onset of the common cold.

    An Evaluation of Echinacea angustifolia in Experimental Rhinovirus Infections

  • Hockey: Game on!

    Despite the fact that there was plenty of hockey last season to be watched (college, ECHL, CHL, etc.) it’s glorious to have the NHL back in action. Here are some links to get you up to date on what the hay is going on.

    New Rules for 2005-2006 in the NHL.
    Overview of new stuff for the NHL
    Atlanta Thrashers Fan FAQ

    Of course, we can’t leave out Comments from the NCAA Ice Hockey Rules Committee concerning the stepped-up enforcement of interference and obstruction penalties during the ’04-’05 season. This courtesy of U.S. College Hockey Online with all the best college hockey coverage.

    If anyone is aware of any overarching evaluations of the rules enforcement for college hockey last season, I’d like to be made aware of them.

The Evil Eyebrow

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