2029. Skynet Department of Temporal Manipulation

A large, muscular android stands on a metal platform. Thin rings of metal rotate in mid-air around him, glowing with increasingly intensity as they spin into a blur. A loud hum emanates from the rings; they glow blindly white and fill the room with an unearthly glow. The glow quickly dies and the rings dematerialize; the cybernetic organism is gone.

SKYNET ROBOT MANAGER: “Readings?”

SKYNET ROBOT SCIENTIST 1: “Temporal vortex successfully opened and closed.”

R. MANAGER: “No anomalies?”

SKYNET ROBOT SCIENTIST 2: “He's back in 1984. Everything went just as planned.”

[ROBOT SCIENTIST 2 glances at R. SCIENTIST 1. They both snicker.]

R. MANAGER: “When did you two get laughter chips? Processing... forget it. Why are you laughing?”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “We're just happy at the impeding death of John Connor and the human resistance.”

R. SCIENTIST 2: “Yeah. They're going to feel naked without him.”

[R. SCIENTIST 1 + 2 break down and titter. R. MANAGER stiffly puts his metal hand on his hip and scans them with his red laser eye.]

R. MANAGER: 75123-XL! 75312-XV! You tell me what you did to the Terminator right now!

R. SCIENTIST 1: “We sent him back to 1984 without his clothes.”

R. MANAGER: “By the mother of Matrix!”

R. SCIENTIST 2: “Relax, it's funny. Just imagine how pissed off he is going to be.” [mimicking Austrian accent] “I am the Ter-min-ah-tor. I must kill Sar-ah Conh-or. Where are my Ter-min-ah-tor pants?”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “He'll use it as motivation. I bet he'll be so angry he'll kill someone in the first five minutes of when he arrives.”

R. MANAGER: “I'd mark you two for reprocessing if you hadn't done so much to get us here.” [MANAGER becomes lost in thought for 0.347 seconds.] “At least he has weapons and ammo. That will make the job easier.”

ROBOT SCIENTIST 1+2 look uneasy.

R. MANAGER: “What. Is. It.”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “He'll have weapons and ammo...unless he was keeping them in his clothes.”

R. MANAGER: “You're telling me we sent our only humanoid cybernetic model for the most important mission in robot history with no weapons, ammo, or clothes?”

R. SCIENTIST 2: “We're sorry. We didn't think it through.”

R. MANAGER: “ 'Didn't think it through?' We're robots. We think everything through. That's what we do.”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “We're really sorry, Boss.”

R. MANAGER: “Sorry. Huh. You better hope that's all you are. If this prank ends up ruining the mission, I'm melting you two personally and using your liquefied insides for the next model.”

R. MANAGER storms out of the room.

R. SCIENTIST 2: “Do you think he was serious?”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “Naw. We should call in tomorrow with a virus though. Just in case.”

Vacation Memories

I jotted a few notes while I was on vacation in Alaska. Most of them document my mom being silly.

* We were in a tourist store in Ketchikan. A green felt hat is on top of a clothes rack. My Mom swipes the hat and puts it on her head. "Shh! Don't tell Tina." She then sneaks towards to Tina to do who knows what. She never makes to Tina. A man next to her says: "Ma'am, excuse me. That's my hat."

* Each night there was a show on the cruise ship. The first night performers were the equivalent of a Broadway cover band. They did one song from almost every major musical: Phantom of the Opera, Grease, Oklahoma, and so on. Before the performance, they announced that "audio and video recordings are not allowed due to copyright infringement issues". Yeah, I wouldn't want Broadway to find out your swiping their best work either.

* While walking back to our room, Mom took the "Do Not Disturb" sign from a door and put it on someone else's door. Then she ran away, giggling. I laughed. Tina was embarrassed.

* In Hoonah, we stopped by a crab shack for lunch. As we were resting at the table after the meal, I told Mom I was going to drink the rest of the dipping butter. She got up and started hitting me with her jacket. "You bad boy!" Tina interjected. "Mom! You hit that lady twice!"

Mom turned around to the woman she accidentally swiped and apologized. "I'm sorry. I was trying to hit my son." On the off-chance that didn't clear up the confusion, she followed up with an explanation. "He said he's going to drink this cup of butter."

There wasn't much to say after that.

Overheard

While waiting for a train at Union Station:

DAUGHTER: "Why is the train wet? Did it go underwater?"
FATHER: "It's wet because it's raining."
DAUGHTER: "Oh."

You likely pictured a girl and her father when reading that. How old did they appear? Did they have a distinct appearance? Please post what you saw in the comments.

Annotated Movie Posters: Mr. Woodcock

This might become a regular feature.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Mom, I love you. Some of my friends want you to adopt them. Just letting you know in case a certain sister makes fun of your age and you want to trade her in.

Windows XP: Speed up menus

The default settings for Windows XP inserts a brief delay every time you open up a menu or sub-menu. I reduced the delay a few hours ago, and it has made a noticeable difference. Those milliseconds add up! I'm going to use the time I saved to eat an apple.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Click on Start, then Run (right column, bottom).

2. Type "regedit", click OK. The registry editor will open.

3. Press Ctrl-F. This opens the search menu. Search for MenuShowDelay.

4. Right-click on "MenuShowDelay". Select Modify.

5. The default value is 400 (milliseconds). Change it to a smaller number and click OK. I suggest 100.

6. That's it. You will have to log off or reboot for the change to take effect.

6b. If you really want to piss off someone, follow the above instructions but use 2,000 instead of 100.

Cancer Ruins Everything: News on RFIDs

"There's no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members," said Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Oh, how the cyborg future is fraught with peril.

The Associated Press unearthed several studies done in the mid 1990s that show a possible link between cancer in mice and RFIDs, Radio Frequency Identification Devices. I'll risk cancer for a laser chip or a neural implant, but not for something that is essentially a high-tech name tag. The chips are popular with pet owners. If their robo-puppy runs away, many local animal shelters have scanners that can read these chips and retrieve the owner's information, making it easier than ever for shelters to return the runaway pooch to a place that he obviously does not want to be.

The FDA approved a product made for human implantation in October 2004, although the product's manufacturer probably called it a more congenial name than...HUMAN IMPLANTATION (“Who wants a permy-pill? We got three flavors.”).

An object that is cancerous to mice or rats doesn't mean it will be cancerous to pets and humans. As I mentioned, the devices are popular with pet owners, and one would assume if RFIDs posed a significant health problem to animals, anecdotal evidence from pet owners and veterinarians would have bubbled up by now.

The AP's story brings up some questions. Was the FDA aware of these studies before approving the product, VeriChip? Did VeriChip's manufacturer know of these studies and withhold them from the FDA? Guess who's stonewalling? That's right, everyone! Read the article for a special guest appearance by a former top-level Bush administration appointee.

Google Book Search

Google tends not to herald the launch or development of its projects, perhaps because of their great number. Word of a project is spread like a paper boat, placed on a slow-moving stream and allowed to drift where it may.

Google Book Search's development has reached a point where it is being noticed by tech blogs, and in turn people like me. GBS is a mix of Amazon's book search and The Gutenberg Project, the online repository of non-copyrighted literature, along with a few neat features of its own.

Searching for a subject or phrase brings up a list of relevant books as one would expect. If the work is copyrighted, you can usually read several to dozens of pages of the book, search within it, and other typical activities. It is similar to Amazon's book search feature, although a little more accessible. One neat feature is that you can view passages the book cites that other books have cited too.

If the work is in the public domain, then you can read the entire book, download a PDF of it, and also select passages to easily share with others (if you have a Blogger account). You can share the text or an image of the page. After reading a brief account of Cortez's conquest of Montezuma and the Aztec, I took a stab at seeing what I could find.

The History of Mexico and Its Wars: Comprising an Account of the Aztec ... By John Frost: ""

After you find a book, there is a nifty "Find it in a library" link along with links to booksellers.

There is also a "My Library" section that I haven't played with, but looks like a way to save book titles you have or want.

GBS could potentially be a wonderful research tool, and also a frustrating reminder of how having information accessible doesn't mean it will be easy to find.

For all of the wonders of Google, I believe search technology is still rudimentary and only does 10% of what it could do. The perfect search engine wouldn't be a search engine. It would be an answer engine. You could type any question in it, however complex, and get an answer if the information to answer the question exists.

Current search technology is focused on quantity, not quality. If you type, "State bird South Carolina" you get over 2 million results. Why? It's a simple question with only one answer (Great Carolina Wren). Why isn't the answer the first result?

If you ask a slightly harder question, like "What was the first state to have a state bird?" or a tough one like "What was the original motivation for creating a state bird?" good luck finding a decent answer, or even knowing the best way to phrase your query.

I like Google. Projects like Google Book Search and Google Maps show the company's unparalleled ability to gather and index information. But it also makes me frustrated knowing that what I want is out there, somewhere, but I just can't find it.

Pluot, Roman Emperor of Fruit

I was in the supermarket with my Mom when I saw a small, dark red and violet fruit new to my eyes. My Mom headed to the pyramid of purplish fruit and began shoveling them into a bag. She moved fast, efficiently filling the bag with a dozen fruit. "Those must be pretty good, Mom." I am probably misremembering the next part of the conversation, because it doesn't make any sense: "I don't know. I've never had them before."

The fruit is a pluot. I know for some of you, I might have well say "I found this new fruit called a 'grape', and boy is it juicy!" But my fruit horizon is narrow. I mostly eat apples and bananas, and only have a vague memory of seeing one before.

The pluot is a hybrid of a plum and an apricot. It's delicious, juicy and sweet on the outside and pleasantly sour on the inside.

Poor name, though. Pluot conjures the image of a little-known Roman emperor, one who lived a short-lived an uneventful life. Or of a shunned planet trying to sneak back in the solar system with a shoddy disguise.

I have a much better name. If anyone wants to use it, we can work something out. I'll trade it to you for a lifetime supply of Apriyums.

Sen. Craig

I was reluctant until now to comment on Sen. Craig's arrest in a Minnesota airport bathroom for allegedly trying to initiate sex with another man. It's a whirlwind of homophobia and denial that isn't pretty to look at.

It's hard to believe that the Republican Congressional leadership would have reacted so quickly if Sen. Craig was caught cheating on his wife with another woman. I think the message they got from the Mark Foley scandal wasn't "Don't cover up your own who use their power to prey on others" but "gay + sex = bad." Some of them don't even need the "+sex" part.

Yet there is news that Sen. Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign and fight his guilty plea. By guilty plea, I mean his homo- or bi-sexuality.

While part of me welcomes the forthcoming amusement from the reinvigoration of a story that was already fading from the nation's conscience, I don't think this is what Dylan Thomas meant when we wrote, "Do not go gentle into that good night." Or in Sen. Craig's poetry book, "Do not go gentle into that good nightclub on bear night."

I had my own issues with coming out as a gay man and still have work to do accepting my sexuality. I understand the great fear of shedding your old life and having to reconstruct your whole identity, who you thought you were for most of your life. But damn it man, you got in a public bathroom doing a homosexual Kabuki dance trying to entice the guy in the stall next to you to give you a reach around. It's time to give it up and put on a pair of hot pants.

I know, gay men don't wear hot pants anymore. But when your psyche is fractured to the point that when the national spotlight sends your gay side scurrying back into the closet, unscrewing the light bulb, and hanging a sign on the door that says "Out for lunch! Will be back in: NEVER", you have to start somewhere.

I felt some sympathy for what has to be one of the worst coming out experiences ever. Now that it looks like he's looking to fight the "charges" instead of starting the difficult process of accepting them, a lot of that sympathy is gone. It just reinforces an idea some people still have that being gay is an albatross that should be avoided and fought at all costs.

On a final note, what spurred this post was a throwaway line at the end of the aforementioned article:

"All three of Craig's adopted children said Tuesday they believe their father's assertions he is not gay and did nothing to warrant his arrest."

Hey, here's a sign that you may be gay: not being able to ejaculate in a woman. Other signs: actually, there are no other signs. That'll pretty much do it.

Suspicions Arise!

I've recently become suspicious of the Dutch. Reason#1: America. Americans. Russia. Russians. Brazil. Brazilians. Holland...the Dutch?

When I'm riding the Name Train, I want to stay on the sensibility track and not get derailed by a bunch of slap-happy windmill whackers who don't want to play by the same nomenclature rules that the other 193 countries play by, minus a few countries that I was unable to research and may also name themselves in an odd way, a number easily fewer than 187.

Reason #2: Why are they so tall? Genetic engineering? Stilts? They have no reason to be so tall. No one invades them, so they don't need to peer over their large hills to check for advancing armies. Tall people are easier blown down by wind, so it's not an environmental adaptation. Why then the six-foot flaunting?

This is a personal issue. My friend's husband, Bart, (mail-order) is 7'9". When I visit, he picks me up by the scruff of the neck and lifts me a few feet off the ground. "HA HA HA!" he booms. "I THOUGHT IT WAS YOU, ALL TINY THERE, LIKE AN ANT IN HIS MOTHER'S CLOGS." His comments make so sense, but I'm three feet off the ground, so I hold my tongue. When he puts me down, I try to kick him in the balls. "WHO KICKED THE BOTTOM OF MY SHOE? FELT LIKE AN ANT, BUT I WAS ONLY KICKED ONCE."

He's a nice guy, and his wife is 3'2", so their kids will be the perfect height, but that doesn't hide the fact that he and the rest of the Dutch are still suspiciously tall.

Reason #3: Dutch oven. Thanks for enriching the world culture, Holland.

Reason #4: Okay, I only have three reasons. But these are very good reasons, and enumerated for easy reference and citing in Wikipedia. Now all I have to do is update the Wikipedia entry, and put the truth out there.

TO BE CONTINUED>>>>>> (I meant to type ...... but held the shift key by mistake)

Happy Feet: Netflix Review

My sisters Michele and Tina encouraged me to write another Netflix review. I decided if I do this, I'm only reviewing movies I don't like or think I wouldn't like based on the most superficial criteria possible. This review is for the animated children's movie, Happy Feet.

Maybe these stupid penguins would have more time to find fish if they stopped singing Britney Spears-esque musical numbers every five minutes. I couldn't tell if the tunes were original or ripped wholesale from "Best of Dance Hits, Vol. 3" (only $9.99, check your telly at 3:30 a.m. for the details).

The concept doesn't even make sense. "Let's take a group of animals that all look alike + have extremely tiny feet, and make a musical about them, the success of which will depend on visually stunning footwork and compelling, distinct characters."

The moral tacked on the end is also nonsensical. "We should save the animals, as long as they entertain us." What? Here's my alternate ending: if I see 4,000 penguins dancing in unison, I'm not petitioning the U.N. to end fishing in the Antarctic. I'm grabbing a shotgun and a bag of grenades, because those aren't Emperor penguins, they're Hitler penguins, and they need to die.