BunkBlog

I haven’t seen the latest Michael Bay explodapalooza, but the reviews are coming in and they are not kind. What they are, however, is hilarious. Check out the Ars Technica review or the io9 review. Lines about Bay using the camera like a tongue whenever Rosie Huntington-Whitely is onscreen, a character who repeats “Deep Wang” enough times to become actually funny, making fun of the utter lack of respect for physics or biological reality in the action scenes – you must read the reviews, even if you have no intention of ever seeing the movie. I find the most entertaining reviews are when the reviewer is eviscerating the movie under scrutiny. This is no exception.

Update: Blastr has compiled some of the more entertaining quotes from a dozen or more reviews for you. Still hilarious.

In case you thought you could play “Red Faction Guerilla” in real life, watch this video. Knocking down a building with a jackhammer is not wise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TUDbw_HRmA&feature=player_embedded

What are we doing differently, to cause our employment rates to be so out of whack compared to pretty much every other industrialized nation?

This is possibly the best 30 minutes a Gen-X person could spend this morning. With more cowbell!

Facebook users: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=evA-R9OS-Vo (for some reason, FB says this is abusive, but they’re just jealous – it’s the Beastie Boys) should work for you, hopefully.

The USAF continues to rely far too much on email for communication, and continues to trust that sending an email is the perfect all-encompassing method of disseminating info with no possibility of failure.

Many years ago, when I was in the Army on this same Air Force base, a zoomie LT thought that a lack of getting a “reply receipt” from an email she sent was insubordinate and got very angry that I was, “deleting without reading” her emails. Of course, I was doing no such thing; Outlook at the time didn’t send a return receipt for previewing a message, and that’s how I read her missives (which didn’t apply to me in the Army anyway, but so much for logic).

Fast forward to 2011. The refrigerator is down the hall from my office, and I keep my sodas there. The fridge is in a common area, and there is a bulletin board right next to it. Imagine my surprise when my sodas were thrown away today. A sane person would have put the sodas aside, if cleaning out the fridge. They aren’t likely to spoil, after all. When I inquired, I was told that “everyone” was informed about the coming fridge purge, so wah (or something equivalent).

Obviously, I was not informed. The building manager sends an email to the squadron secretary, who sends it to everyone in the squadron. I am not in the squadron, but I had myself added to the squadron email list last year due to the necessity to stay abreast of issues in this building, and there is no email list for residents of the building. I apparently got booted out of the squadron email list sometime in the past (who knows how long ago, as I rarely care about USAF business and maybe I was just relieved at the lack of spam I didn’t care about). So, no notice for me, but complete notification to everyone in the building in the mind of the manager.

So…am I a crazy person for thinking, in addition to an email, a sign or note or post-it on the fridge or near it would have been a normal thing to do? I’m simple, apparently.

This morning, I headed out the door to go to work, and noticed a distinct lack of car parked behind the truck.  Since I remember leaving a car there, this was somewhat surprising. After the fun of dealing with the most humorless police officer ever, we eventually found that the car had been found even before we reported it stolen. The police said they thought the car might be drivable, but they were going to take it to the impound lot to await all the legal stuff. I question the perceptiveness of whichever cop said this might be drivable. There are only two tires!
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The foreshadowing at the beginning was a little too obvious, but the cold open had some great explodey bits and fabulous lines for Rory. But, once again, damn you, Steve Moffat! We’ve got to wait until September to get the second half of this two-parter? Holy frackin’ Sontarans!

Hey, Kindle users, I have a question for you. The Kindle has this cool feature where you can email things to it (either paid over 3G or free over WiFi). Do you use that feature much, if at all?

This is part of my continuing curiosity about all things ebook, and it seems that Amazon is the only one with an email address the user can shoot things to. With all the reviews for the new touch Nook this week, it just made me wonder if this is a feature that few people would even miss, or if it’s something really important.

A former President and Vice President have publicly confessed to war crimes – the ordering of and condoning of torture, among other things. The current President says we must look forward, not backward.

A former Presidential candidate had an affair and misused campaign contributions. The current administration is going to nail his ass to the wall for that!

A government of laws, and not of men. – John Adams

Kobo announced the Kobo eReader Touch on Monday; Barnes & Noble announced the Nook Touch on Tuesday. Both use similar technologies, to the point I almost wonder if they’re basically the same device, except for the store each connects to.

Both weigh 200 grams, use a 6″ Pearl eInk screen, have one button on the bottom bezel, and use the nifty infrared touch screen technology that Sony introduced last year. If not for the four buttons on the Sony PRS-650, I’d wonder if both Kobo and B&N hadn’t just nicked Sony’s design. Well, that and the fact that Sony costs twice as much and doesn’t include wifi. The Kobo is $130 and the Nook is $140, while the Sony is $230.

So, this summer you’ll have four different 6″ Pearl eInk ereaders to choose from. Three are infrared touch-screens, and one has a keyboard and is a bit bigger than the other three. The Kindeal is $114 and has a great store integration. Kobo and Nook are in the ballpark and have their own stores as well as compatibility with ePub stores of old. Sony is odd man out, which is par for the course over the past fifteen years.

I can’t help but wonder what Amazon will do next in the ereader war.

“No more ignoring the law when it’s inconvenient. That is not who we are.” – Senator Obama, August 2007

Checks and balances? War Powers Act? I can’t hear you.* – President Obama, 2011

* – For the oblivious, this is not a quote.

And there goes another one! Mitch Daniels, who by all accounts is a reasonable human being with deep ties to the GOP establishment and no significant baggage to scare off independents, has declared he won’t run in 2012. This leaves Pawlenty as the only declared possible candidate in the GOP that won’t scare off either the base or independents. Of course, he’s also not very exciting and has to run away from his own record in order to throw red meat to the Tea Partiers, so it’s not a lock. Take all statements as if they include the caveat, “18 months before an election is just plain silly to be handicapping races.”

As an exercise, my coworker and I took a look at the history of the Democractic and Republican party primaries and eventual winners. Only once in the history of either party could we find an example of a candidate who lost the general and went on to win the general election years later – Richard Nixon. With that in mind, and realizing that the economy is no longer screaming downward like a fireball of doom, might the more “adult” and sane members of the GOP stay away from becoming the sacrificial lamb in 2012? Surely, any analyst came to the same conclusion we did from our comfy chairs – if you lose against Obama, give up on ever being President in the future. It seems plausible that Daniels and other reasonable people may be staying away just because they know that Obama is likely to win anyway, so they’re not going to go through the bother.

With that in mind, why not nominate the most entertaining person to the GOP candidacy, just so we can all have some fun next year? Come on, you know a Michele Bachmann/Barack Obama debate would be absolutely hilarious!

So, Newt Gingrich told Sean Hannity, “I know how to get the whole country to resemble Texas.” This was in the context of economic and business issues. Which parts of Texas’ economy does he want to duplicate?

Does he want to duplicate the 99% reduction in state funding for libraries announced recently? Does he want to duplicate the gutting of education? Would he like to duplicate our empty, hollow city centers where tumbleweeds outnumber successful small businesses? How about the $23 Billion budget shortfall – is that worth duplicating across the nation? Maybe he wants to make the rest of the country look like our elder care industry, where next year’s budget will lay off nearly 60,000 nursing home workers? Texas is 50th out of 50 states in uninsured children as well as uninsured adults – maybe that’s what he wants to spread (hey, look at that – we only have the third highest teen pregnancy rate)? To be fair, we’re #1 out of all fifty states in the amount of carcinogens we dump into the atmosphere (double the #2 loser state), so that’s something to be proud of.

Maybe, just maybe, Gingrich really just wants to duplicate the unassailable GOP majority in Texas. After all, the 2003 out-of-cycle unprecedented gerrymandering has made it all but impossible for any Democrat outside of Houston or Austin to be elected to an office higher than dogcatcher. Maybe that’s the great success story Gingrich wants to duplicate.

Once again, my imaginary friend Kenji has inspired yet another winning meal. If nothing else, he was able to produce a great recipe for the “Secret” sauce for a Big Mac. We only had larger sesame seed buns (there was no way I was going to glue hundreds of seeds to smaller buns), and thus we made 1/6 lb patties instead of 1/10 lb micropatties. Overall, a great success. Who knew that nuking onions on low for ten minutes made them mild? Yay Kenji!

Mike Huckabee, one of the most pleasant theocrats I’ve ever heard speak, has dropped out of the 2012 race. To be fair, he never actually said he was going to run, but c’mon! He was near the top of the heap in every straw poll, and he’s one of the few people polling above single digits that could be a credible candidate. So he’s gone now.

Donald Trump, one of the most unpleasant human beings I’ve ever heard speak, has dropped out of the 2012 race. Again, he never actually filed as a candidate, but he also polled near the top of most straw polls, although he’s definitely not in the credible candidate category by a long stretch. More »

NBC announced they are going to air a comedy this fall, based on Chelsea Handler’s memoir, starring Laura Prepon as Chelsea. I love Chelsea Handler’s drunk slut schtick, and Laura Prepon has been my imaginary girlfriend for a few years now (poor October Road, we hardly knew ye), but I have a hard time picturing Prepon as Handler. Prepon has played mostly good girls, who have sex and maybe even drink but aren’t the caricature of those actions that Handler has built a career on. And, Handler’s persona hardly seems fit for primetime; how much of her memoir could they air on network television – 10%? Of course I’ll watch it (I give many shows two episodes before evicting them from the DVR), but I don’t have a great deal of optimism. Oh, I just heard that my other imaginary girlfriend, Natalie Morales, will be on the show too. Can we get another season of Middleman instead?

What is up with Steven Moffat and his “arc-y” approach to the Doctor Who series? Although billed as the conclusion of a two-parter, “Day of the Moon” still managed to sneak in a giant hanging cliffhangery wobbly thing.

I love the Silents as the monsters, the whole Rory/Amy/Doctor triad, and the idea that Rory can sort of remember the previous reality where he was made of plastic. That’s about as far as I can go without giving away any major spoilers, but this is a great way to kick of the new season. Woohoo!

My Kindle is arriving this afternoon, but all the techie ereader blogs are talking about the updated Nook Color firmware/software. I particularly enjoy the idea that $250 is “cheap” in most of the writers’ minds. Sure, if you’re comparing the Nook Color to an iPad or Xoom, $250 is cheaper. But, if you’re comparing it to the new ad-supported Kindle ($114) which starts shipping this weekend, no – it’s not. It’s kind of cool to watch the development of new Android tablets and near-tablets, though. I leave you with this quote from a recent review of the updated Nook:

At $249, the Nook Color is almost an impulse buy. [ed: poor impulse control?]

This self-selected sample of self-described “PC People” and “Mac People” is amusing. Some of the answers tend to make me think the Mac people are deliberately messing with the poll, though. “Oh, I use a Mac and I prefer my lunch of bánh mì while sipping a gimlet.” I cry shenanigans! I’m convinced no plurality of any group drinks gimlets in the 21st Century. Either that, or the Mac people are pretentious twats.

Just wandering through a Google Image search today, I ran into a great example of where a protected web-only operating system can save you some trouble. Although a good anti-virus/anti-malware program would prevent infection if you’re even a little aware, the ChromeOS netbook prevents anything bad from happening at all. I was expecting to include a screen shot here, but the latest ChromeOS version apparently breaks the screenshot functionality entirely. Anyway, the screen shot would have shown you an imge that looks remarkably like Windows XP’s security center, with lots of flashing red warnings of impending doom from all the Win32.worm things. This is particularly amusing on a Linux-based device, of course.