Did the Tories win while we weren't looking?

Woke up this morning to continuing radio coverage of some British couple's wedding.  Didn't we rebel against these yutzes so we didn't have to be immersed in the royal pomp?  Is the problem that we listen to the classical radio station, and all the other stations ignored it?  Does Diane Chambers control programming at the station? 

The Tourist (2010)

Another film where I need greater granularity than 1-5 stars.  This is probably 2.5 stars, but we ended up giving it a generous 3.  It's a not quite harmless bit of fluff (I really, really hate the "a woman doesn't like to be asked questions" and "real men don't smoke electronic cigarettes" messages) that doesn't really hang together at all and doesn't have enough good lines to smooth over that fact.


This movie also finally kicked into play for me "which films would be improved if Johnny Depp's character were replaced by Captain Jack?" game.  I think The Tourist goes on that list.

The Terminal Experiment (1995)

This book is in clear violation of the Writ of Banning against the use of Pop Psych in otherwise readable sci-fi novels.  Half of the first 100 pages of the book are absolutely murdered by the unveiling of the protagonist's wife's affair, which occurs because she's trying to push him away, because she can't believe a man could unconditionally love her, because she had a cold and distant father.  Is there a bigger yawn than a paint-by-numbers female character with low self-esteem and daddy issues?


The protagonist's Muslim friend is enough of a stereotype to make me uncomfortable, but he's also the most appealing character because of "crisp".  From the novel:

"Crisp" was his favorite word; he used it to mean anything from well-defined to delicate to appealing to complex.

Sawyer then has Sarkar use "crisp" about once every scene he's in.  Its regular appearance gives us a very human trait to cling to, but it's not so overused that it becomes annoying.


Chapter 17: future imagination fail.  In Sawyer's 1995 imagining of 2011, we have voice-activated computers and can perfectly simulate someone's brain, but we're still using VCRs to record shows?  Really?  It's not something you tell the house computer to take care of?


More imagination fail: a character picks up a phone and hears the modem noise.  That was cool when Matthew Broderick did it in 1983; it would be slightly dated in a sci-fi novel written and set in 1995; it's ludicrous in a sci-fi novel written in 1995 and set in 2011


Once we get past the preliminaries and into the meat of the novel, the story picks up and I don't even mind that the "mystery" is really not very mysterious, because it's obvious practically from the start who the murderer is.  Ultimately, I'm a little disappointed that Ambrotos is simply dropped from the story at some point and never appears again.  


--spoilers-- 
I also don't think that we're given sufficient evidence that Sandra's "spirit" sim would necessarily let Peter go, much less go through the effort of covering up for him.  I think that would require more humanity than is left in the "spirit" sim, but that Sawyer wants the Sandra sim to let Peter go, so it does.  
--end spoilers--


Overall, this was enjoyable, but looking at the list of Nebula winners, I have to disagree strongly with the choice of this novel over Metropolitan, or even Mother of Storms.  (and I have not read the other three finalists)

Bike lanes are slow in Latona

Steam has been downloading updates to Audiosurf lately; yesterday's is part of an ARG promo for Portal 2.  If you manage a "gold medal" ride, you get a transmission that says "Bike lanes are slow in Latona."  (though I thought it said "Biplanes are slow in Latona.")


Some people on that wiki page linked to above are griping about the difficulty of getting gold.  I agree it's non-trivial, but did it on my third try (after scoring 488k and 486k the first two times -- note that I'm just showing the VT scores b/c the worldwide scores are much higher than mine):
  

Then again, I've been playing Audiosurf for a while now.  Annnnnd, that's probably as much I'll participate in the ARG.  (I only did this bit because it involved a game I already enjoy playing and the song is pretty cool.)

Spores! Spores! Spores!

In the attic!

Multiple choice quiz!

Referring to the images, do they depict:

A) An explosively growing colony of mold, first discovered last week, and just about the last thing you want to discover in your attic;

B) Pictures from *our* attic;
C) Something thankfully not affecting the air quality in the living space of the house;
D) Something first discovered when discussing a bathroom remodel with the contractor (the bathroom ceiling abuts the attic);
E) A problem we thought had been contained years ago when we hired a roofer with experience in problem attics and fixed the bathroom fans so they vented to the outside rather than directly into the attic; 

F) Something that thankfully should be solvable with money, and thankfully it looks like our homeowner's coverage with Vermont Mutual should cover most of it.

G) All of the above.

If you guessed (G), give yourself a gold star!  I'd have another multiple choice quiz asking who spent several hours this weekend hauling carboard boxes out of the attic and to the dump this past weekend, but that would be too easy.  I also learned, after all these years, that "Toys in the Attic" is an Aerosmith song.  I first heard (and prefer) the R.E.M. cover on Dead Letter Office.  

VT healthcare bill

I think some people are confused about why IBM might be against the healthcare bill in the VT legislature.

Smaller employers are put in a class with other small employers, and their health plan terms are determined by an insurance company.  IBM is self-insured.  It is its own class, and it already has fiscal predictability in the corporate budget for healthcare, or at least far more than any smaller employer.  The status quo benefits IBM as a company; why would it want to change that?

Granted, even as an employee of IBM, I might still want to see the VT bill go through, because (according to what Sarahmac has read) it would actually lower our cost of healthcare coverage.  Better yet, I'd like the option of taking either the VT plan or the IBM plan.

When it snows, it...

This winter, a water-damaged spot on the ceiling of my home office, right above where I sit, grew to about 2 feet in diameter.  At 7am this morning the guy from VT Energy Contracting and Supply came to look at it.  Sarahmac and I thought it was a leak in the heating system -- we have baseboard heating; the furnace is in the garage, and the pipes run from the garage through the crawlspace.

So, after cutting a hole in the ceiling and pulling out a load of soggy blown-in insulation, we determined it was, in fact, a leak where the soldering had come off.  They'll be back in 2 weeks to fix it. Until then, we have a bucket on the floor to catch the water-and-antifreeze solution, and I need to reorganize my workspace.

Drip, Drip, Drip

In other news, Sarahmac dropped off the car for 120k service and to look at the coolant system because the check temperature gauge had come on (again).  They told her not to bother having anything on the car fixed because the car frame is rusted so badly that it would require thousands of dollars of work to get it to pass inspection in October.  They hoisted it up so she could take pictures of it.

 

 

So it's time to start seriously sitting in cars, like I said I was going to over 2 months ago.  (been busy)

At least our beloved Jetta gave us 6 months notice, so we hopefully won't be rushed.

Finally, CCTA changed their schedules just 2 weeks ago, so Sarahmac missed the bus to go pick up Finn (we're a 1-car family), so I biked.  When I left the house, it was a very light rain, which turned to a wet snow.  Someone was having fun this April Fool's day.

This is all the fault of our 70's bathroom, which we finally decided to remodel. When we first started seriously spec'ing out the project, Sarahmac opined that as soon as we'd chosen a contractor, the car would break down and the house would fall apart.  We don't have a final plan signed, but we essentially chose a contractor last week.