Flooded Lizard Kingdom

Why I am never buying another Dell Computer ever again

2010-03-12T05:26:31Z

They will not stop sending catalogs to my house! Despite multiple phone calls, online requests (which they do not make easy unlike other responsible companies who send catalogs), and even sending them a real letter via the U.S. Postal Service for heaven's sake!

For over two years I have worked on this project, to no avail.

They are dead to me.

(p.s. Yes, I have previously purchased Dells when I was in charge of purchasing computers for a nonprofit. No more, I tell you.)

(p.p.s. This is what happens when you buy a house that was formerly inhabited by college students. They are on ALL the mailing lists.)

(p.p.s. Also, the graffiti they drew in the upstairs hallway will bleed through the shoddy paint job that the house fixer uppers did when they were getting it ready to sell. There is leftover KILZ in the garage, and now we know why they had some left over. They didn't use it! Someday, if you are very good, I will take pictures of this graffiti and post them on the blog.)

(p.p.p.s. Did I mention we also found an entire pane of broken glass in a flowerbed? And then we found another one? Like, they would break windows and never pick it up, just put a new one in.)

(p.p.p.p.s. I bet the people at Dell would do THE EXACT SAME THING. Bastards.)

On the way to the doctor's office

2010-03-09T15:22:40Z

The Princess, driving: Okay, that wasn't so bad, thank goodness there isn't anyone else on the access road.

C-Man, riding shotgun: Yeah, I think the most difficult part of this is going to be getting in and out of the parking lot.

Ahead of us, an ambulance rolls slowly out of the parking lot exit, then does a U-Turn and drives right back into the entrance.

C-Man: SEE?!

Achievements in Not Sleeping, Personal Best

2010-03-08T16:01:32Z

Last night, I turned out the lights at 10:56pm and fell asleep fairly quickly.

I woke up at 1:15am and have been awake ever since.

When one partner goes off the rails, sometimes professional help is needed

2010-03-06T03:09:51Z

C-Man: Facebook's whole site is a piece of sh&t.

The Princess: Why the fuck are you on Facebook? Do we need to get counseling?

Reading the documentation isn't cheating

2010-03-02T15:56:10Z

The Princess here. Doing my part to uphold the principles of free speech upon which this country was founded (or something), I am pleased to provide airtime today to C-Man. In my post How is this not cheating? I basically called him a cheater, so it seems only fair that he should be allowed to respond publicly to these accusations.

I do take exception to the use of the word "deigned" in the following, since he was originally going to respond in a comment and I encouraged him to post instead so that he would have the greatest possible opportunity to remove the stain from his reputation. I also take exception to his erratic capitalization and how he types his ellipses. My guess is he learned both of those behaviors in law school.

Now onto his defense.

So the princess deigned to give me the opportunity to defend my "cheating" ways in a guest post.

I'm a programmer by trade.

Copying someone else's code without their permission. . . that's cheating.

Reading the API documentation, even if the manufacturer didn't see fit to provide the documentation and left it up to enthusiasts to write it themselves . . . not cheating.

This pretty clearly falls into the latter category:

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES Fusion Database

It's all about what the rules of the game are, not how to exploit them. Coming up with your own exploits, in this case deciding what persona to create to counter a given boss, is the fun part. Pressing X and O 65,280 times in order to write down every possible combination of personae, not so much fun.

(great game by the way, highly recommend Persona 3 to anyone who likes RPGs)

The Princess again: I feel it's only fair to include that while he was writing this out, I said "I clearly remember a time when you were playing Final Fantasy XII and you went over the the computer to find out exactly how to get out of this clearing because you couldn't figure it out, how does that fit in? That's more what I was thinking about when I was writing the post." and he was like "Oh yeah that."

Okay March, this is how it's going to be. You listening?

2010-03-01T02:34:14Z

2010 has kicked my ass in January and February, and I have had it.

I'm also up to here with my current attack of insomnia, the next installment in a lifelong battle. (How it didn't flare up and kill me when Boy Detective was waking me up every night multiple times for the first 18 months of his life is totally beyond me.)

I have also had it with my mad procrastination, which I often blame on the ass-kicking and the insomnia, but is really just a personality flaw.

So in March, I am not going to take it anymore, even when the enemy is me. The following things are all stressing me out so much that I can barely think, and they must be eliminated:

Insomnia
Clutter in sewing room
Massive clutter in guest room
Even more massive clutter in garage
Other random clutter all over the damn place
Disarray of finances
Chore-doing all being organized and tracked by me
Meal planning all being organized by me and MIL
Lack of time away, alone, without a two year old climbing on my body or shrieking "Mommy"
Stuffed full inbox
Stuffed full feed reader
Disarray of blogs
Using work to avoid life

I am going to smash it all.

I am dimly aware that embarking on a self-imposed tyrannical large project that requires doing a bunch of stuff (beginning while my husband is laid up in bed and during the same month as SXSW) may not be the kindest thing given how tired I am, but I don't know how to rest with all of this hanging over my head.

When I'm done, I might be just as miserable, but at least things will be tidier.

Hey, do you know what happens when you put almost an entire piece of bread in with a load of laundry?

2010-02-27T22:21:42Z

I do!

Apparently I live in an alternate universe

2010-02-27T02:15:39Z

So there's this blog called Frou Frou Fashionista, which is all about lingerie. 99% of my wardrobe consists of jeans and tank tops and all my cotton underwear is from Target, so I am not the kind of person who typically reads fashion blogs, let alone lingerie blogs. Regardless of topic, though, most good blogs share certain things in common regardless of the topic - enthusiasm and a personal viewpoint being among them. The Frou Frou Fashionista gals definitely have that, and I have nothing against their blog specifically.

(It does seem likely to give me the same body image / appearance issues that caused my breakup with Glamour magazine years ago, since both are filled with images of women who are, let's say, unnaturally compliant with bizarre cultural beauty standards? But that's not specific to them, that's a nationwide epidemic, so we're going to ignore that part for right now.)

One of their recent posts was a startling reminder of how far removed my day to day thoughts must be from the rest of the world. The Lake & Stars - Spring 2010 is a collection of photographs produced to highlight a new lingerie collection. The images include what look to me like a lingerie-clad woman in the following situations:

being pulled by a rope tied around her midsection
being stalked by a man holding an axe
caught in a net in the back of a truck
floating dead in a lake

When I saw that there were over 30 comments on the post, I scrolled down to check them out, expecting to see some controversy. Instead, every single comment praised the photography, the lingerie, and the creativity of the photo shoot.

I was stunned. In my world, SOMEONE would have said something like "Um, yeah, because what's sexy is women being captured, stalked, and killed. Wait, WTF?" I am aware that some non-sexist people find images of people tied up to be sexy, and I'm not taking a position on that here. I'm just so unaccustomed to spending time in environments where no one would point out that these images have the potential to be problematic.

If you go on to the The Lake & Stars Spring/Summer 2010 Lookbook itself, you can see the entire sequence of images in the order they were published, along with the "captions and a bit of a dangerous story" mentioned in the Frou Frou post.

In context, the unsettling images are a bit more "suspense thriller" and a bit less "exploitation." The woman is in the woods running, setting traps, and spying on her unnamed opponents with binoculars. The caption that goes with the axe photo is this:

When a guy suddenly comes at you with an axe, it usually means he's as unprepared as you are. Remember, an axe is rarely a weapon of choice.

The caption that goes with the picture of her in the net is this:

Sometimes, your opponents will be sure they have the upper hand. That's when they're most vulnerable.

Taken altogether, I'm not as disturbed by the set as I was by the subset presented on Frou Frou Fashionista. However, I'm still a little freaked out by the fact that in over 30 comments on the post, no one raised even a slight concern.

Either I'm completely off-base, or I spend too much time in the feminist blogsphere, or I should spend ALL my time there because the rest of the blogosphere is too unsettling. I can't decide.

OMG Netflix I Was Kidding!

2010-02-24T01:30:09Z

Okay so you know how I wrote that big post on whether I should try to outguess Netflix so it would give me better recommendations, and in that post I said this:

There is definitely a tone-deaf aspect to the way Netflix classifies movies. "Foreign" is one of the worst category offenders. There's a vibe of "if you liked Amelie, you'll like The Hidden Fortress."

So what does Netflix have for me now?

Based on how much I liked Eddie Izzard: Glorious (liberal standup by a transvestite Brit) and Throne of Blood (1957 Japanese masterpiece based on Macbeth), I will apparently like...

Long Way Round: A sort of The Motorcycle Diaries for the Hollywood set, this documentary miniseries chronicles the cross-continental adventures of actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman as they set out on their BMW bikes to travel round the world. Embarking from London and arriving 115 exhausting days later in New York, the duo tackles 20,000 miles of tough terrain, explores offbeat destinations and takes in colorful local culture.

Seriously, quoi? Why, because they're all not from around these parts?

My car is the best stereo I've ever owned.

2010-02-21T03:29:17Z

Question the first: What is it about listening to loud music in the car that helps me let go of some of this constant twitchy stressed out feeling?

Question the second: Why can't I get even a little bit of that relief to last?

I just put on a sweater and wool socks so I could eat ice cream, and here is why.

2010-02-20T02:52:50Z

You know what shouldn't be in a computer?

A virus.

Especially because when the virus thing happens, you realize that in order to reinstall Windows your husband has to give a guy from a Craigslist ad $40 cash in a parking lot (get your mind out of the gutter) for a Windows XP CD with Service Pack 2 (totally legal I swear) to replace the perfectly legal copy you already own which only has Service Pack 1 which isn't good enough to run BootCamp on the iMac AND you also have to go the hardware store and get a plastic putty knife to open the damn iMac to upgrade the RAM that your husband ordered off the internet AND get a copy of Safari 5.2.Squillion (or whatever version has the BootCamp drivers) from the Apple store in the mall where they only check people out with iPhones instead of cash registers so he can't find anyone to take his goddamn money for like half an hour...

...all of which will be useless if while the iMac is open, your husband can't figure out why the CD drive stopped accepting CDs a few weeks ago and fix it.

Aside from virii, you know what else shouldn't be in a computer, and more specifically in the CD drive?

A shard broken off the edge of a melamine plate with Raggedy Ann and Andy on it.

(I'll give you two guesses how that happened.)

This is what I have learned from this episode:

The year 2010 is sucking just as much as 2009.
Although I claim to hate Bill Gates quite a lot, I am willing to contort my life to an amazing degree in order to avoid the stress of starting to use the perfectly workable and perhaps superior operating system that came with the iMac in the first place - so I may in fact need professional help of some kind.

And then Boy Detective got a sinus infection, started taking Amoxicillin, broke out into a ghastly red rash all over his body, and when the pediatrician saw him for the third time in a week, he said "and that cough sounds a little barky, like it's turning into croup" and sent us home with a prescription for steroids. My boss said "it may make him a little wiggy" and I said "he's 2.5, how will i tell?" and she said "noted" but OMG HE'S COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT and spent a lot of storytime today TRYING TO BITE HIS GRANDMOTHER.

Did I mention C-Man went out of town today for the weekend?

The End.

This One's For The Ladies

2010-01-29T20:28:31Z

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to C-Man that I was out of maxi-pads and needed to run over to CVS and pick some up. He asked "Run over there in what?" and I said "Huh?" and then I remembered that we had no working vehicle. Blarg!

C-Man then proved that I was right to marry him (even though he is a lawyer) by concluding the only reasonable thing to do was for him to walk 20+ minutes up and down hills under a highway and through a dark neighborhood to CVS and bring back whatever I needed. Extraordinarily generous for a man with a bad knee.

I concluded differently. My solution was to go across the street to the house where several polite and pleasant young women live and ask if anyone could spare a couple of items to get me through the night until C-Man's mom brought her working vehicle back and I could drive to the store.

(Please note that the solution of going back in time to purchase a house within more reasonable walking distance of a grocery store or drugstore - like everywhere else I lived for the decade before we moved in here - did not seem feasible that evening.)

C-Man was not quite aghast, but he was quite concerned that this would be terribly embarrassing for me. He reiterated his willingness to make the trek. I told him that I thought he could probably go to the Whip-In, which is far closer, but that the house across the street was closer still and it was really no big deal.

"It's a girl thing!" I insisted, "It's fine!"

Indeed it was fine. Girlfriend across the street gave me several each of two different kinds and even apologized that she didn't have a bag for me to put everything in. I went home and said "see?" and he said "well okay then" and I went along my merry way thinking that other woman would have done as I did and C-Man was just out of the loop because he's a guy.

Then I told Grace, and she said "Wow, I would have found that really embarrassing."

I was shocked.

So, women of the internet, tell me, what would you have done?

Finding Ways To Save Time

2010-01-27T15:45:31Z

Upon reflection, I've realized that I would have more time to do exciting things like laundry if I would tighten up my blog posts. For example, here are alternate versions of my last two posts that would have freed up precious minutes - nay, hours - for me to pursue domestic chores.

"I have enough time on my hands that I spend some of it worrying I might watch the wrong 293 movies next."

"I'm a 35 year old woman developing an interest in the X-Men comics so strong that I have even started reading blogs about comics. Kill me now!"

Perhaps to give up blogging altogether and go back to Twitter.

Gaming the Netflix Recommendation Engine. Or Not?

2010-01-26T18:54:34Z

In addition to trying to get my act together generally and accomplish Actual Life Tasks, I have also spent an embarrassing amount of time in the past couple of weeks on Netflix.com and IMDB.com. My pretense is that this is all research since Grace and I have started posting on Heroine Content again, but in reality it's just because it's cold and dark at night and I am easily addicted to rating things and making virtual lists. It's like shopping without spending.

I only started taking Netflix's recommendations seriously when Grace shared her Heroine Content queue with me and I was jealous of how interesting it was. Mine is composed of basically stuff I have already heard of, whereas she has added a ton of stuff to her queue that Netflix suggested to her either based on her ratings or on the "more like this" feature. So while she writes reviews of documentaries about women who box, I watch Catwoman. The Halle Berry one. This hardly seems fair.

Netflix is very keen to have you rate films, and I have humored them over 1,150 times now. I'm still a little unclear on whether I'm doing it right, though. Netflix's best guess on how I would rate Aliens was 3.3 stars out of 5.

I find this troubling.

Part of me wants to not think too much, kind of like when I took the SATs. I hated Catwoman, so I should rate it "hated it." I'm not interested in seeing Charlie's Angels 2 (especially if I already did and can't remember), so I should click "not interested." Right? The question becomes, do they know why I don't like it? Are they really going to look at my high ratings for Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life and Tank Girl and say "oh, well then, we'll show her recommendations for action films with female leads that don't suck?" Their prediction of my vote on Aliens says maybe not. "Not Interested means you aren't interested in this movie and movies like it," they say, so how do I indicate that it can stop recommending Charlie's Angels 2 because it sucks, but actually I am interested in movies like it, if by "like it" you mean action films with three female protagonists?

There is definitely a tone-deaf aspect to the way Netflix classifies movies. "Foreign" is one of the worst category offenders. There's a vibe of "if you liked Amelie, you'll like The Hidden Fortress." Maybe that's statistically true. Maybe they really can look at patterns within their bajillions of users and see that even though Amelie and The Hidden Fortress have nothing in common but subtitles, generally people who like one have a good chance of liking the other. Maybe they can pick up on the fact that I like Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life and Tank Girl for totally different reasons than a guy who rated both of those highly because of the cleavage.

(Heaven forbid I start allowing C-Man to rate anything, or I'll be deluged with anime suggestions.)

Then again, this is all based on the theory that I'm going to miss something good if they don't get it right. With 293 items in my queue and only a handful of them belonging to C-Man, it's not like I'm going to run out anytime soon, but quantity and quality are two different things.

Yes, I realize that in the time I spent writing this post, I could have contributed something meaningful to the world. Some thoughts must be let out of my head and organized, though, or they will NOT leave me ALONE.

I Will Not

2010-01-26T05:19:06Z

I will not add a folder for feeds in my Google Reader called Comics.

I will not I will not I will not.

Fuck.