Holiday “Stuff” Update

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P.S. …and by the way, for those of you who should be expecting something from me this season, whether it be card or present or delicious baked good – don’t get your heart set on receiving that by Christmas, okay? According to these guys who ship stuff, I’ve got until Wednesday to get packages in the mail, but probably only tomorrow for cards. Seeing as I haven’t technically printed them yet, you might look forward to receiving New Years greetings from me this year instead!

Sorry, but other extrenuating circumstances have kept me a little preoccupied lately… 🙁

“They disappointed me with science…”

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I took a trip over to MOSI yesterday afternoon and, well, let’s just say that it’s a good thing that admission was FREE because otherwise I would’ve left there feeling disappointed and ripped off! Quite the bummer, too, because I’ve been wanting to go there for such a long time now – it seems like a year and a half later I’m just now getting around to visiting the big name venues of the town – the Forum last week, the science museum yesterday, the unemployment office tomorrow…I kid, I kid…

Anyone who’s been there will probably agree that the place has scads of potential, but just continuously seems to drop the ball at all of the wrong times. Very nice building – plenty of room, and even an IMAX-dome theater – but the content was simply severely lacking and barely even close to par with some of the other science museums I’ve visited. Signs were old and faded, some displays reminded me more of middle school science projects than what you’d expect to see having just paid $20 a piece for admission. They had about three worthwhile exhibits – space exploration and the planets, magnetism, and a few neat displays about forces and whatnot, but overall I probably won’t be going back anytime soon…especially if it’s not free.


In other news, I just got finished watching Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition) – and maybe this is just my weekend for disappointments, I don’t know! Of course, the theatrical movie itself is still stellar and it had been a while since I’d watched anything on the big screen, but the extra 50 minutes just seemed like a waste to me. Nothing really significant, other than the scene where Aragorn and the army of the dead took the boats on the river, but unlike the uncut footage from the other two, it almost felt like the director was just throwing in extra footage because he had done the same with the previous two DVD sets… *shrug*

I did, however, watch Resident Evil: Apocalypse last night and I thought that that turned out really good. I had been wondering if this was going to be a completely separate movie, so it was a relief to see that this one basically picks up exactly where the first one left off…give or take maybe five minutes. Mind you, a considerable number of scenes scared the bejesus out of me, but anyone who’s endured pretty much any movie with me will vouch that this is a common happening! I think I slept in the car for something like six days after seeing Arachnaphobia for the first time… 😛

blogging from bed

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Woo hoo!!!

After waiting over a month, buy.com was finally able to get my order shipped correctly and now I find myself proud to boast that my home network also offers wireless access as well as the traditional wires that have held me down for the past years. I was quite surprised to find that it really only took me a few minutes to set the entire thing up, and then maybe another fifteen to configure the security and keep out the locals and whatnot – not bad, really. So now that’s one less cable running across my living room, and better yet I can watch The Simpsons without getting out of bed – rock on!

In other news, obviously morale was very low at work today. We did have a couple of meetings and some dates and numbers were thrown around, so now I know that I at least have the potential to be around for another five months or so. It’s really sad because a large chunk of people took all of their personal effects home today to avoid having to deal with it at the random time that they get sent home themselves – it just makes the place seem so empty and foreign, almost like it did a year and a half ago when we started this whole thing. Nonetheless, I’m keeping all of my stuff there until the end, for two reasons – 1) I couldn’t bear to sit at an empty desk myself; 2) I haven’t cleaned that thing in God knows how long anyways, so if I can somehow get out of the final cleaning, all the better!

Regardless, at this point I’m keeping the frame of mind that the company will be able to relocate myself and many of my co-workers to other departments when this is all said and done – it’s all that I can do, really. After the holidays pass us by, I’ll definitely start to get my resume in order and whatnot, but if I can somehow get through all of this mess and remain under the same employer (…and benefit plans…), that would be ideal. Anyways, tomorrow is another day – we’re having a potluck at work and I’ll be waking up to the wonderful aroma of simmering meatballs in a few hours…life could be worse!

So much for the spirit of the season…

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Well, the gauntlet finally came down today at work – they laid off 20 people right off the bat and it’ll all be done in a matter of months now. I was pretty calm and collected when it happened earlier this evening, but now I’m beginning to get a little more than concerned. In theory, I should be around for a while because the temp workers should go first, but I guess you really just never know and this is the kind of business where you’d simply be too big of a liability if they were to give you notice. Whatever happens, it’s going to be very hard to sit there and watch as some of the best friends that I’ve made down here get walked out the door.

…and just when I was nearly finished getting myself out of debt and back on a solid financial track – fucking wonderful.

Today was a cold day in Tampa.

…clear skies are here to stay…

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Also, after many long years of searching, I was finally graced with a new desktop application that allows me to uninstall The Weather Channel’s Desktop Weather forever!!! Such a bloated waste of computing power – it should not take 35 megs of memory to tell me what the temperature outside is… 😛

Konfabulator – simply put, it’s “whatever you want it to be!” From clock and sticky notes applets to desktop weather and all sorts of live feeds, this nifty little app allows you to run dozens of pre-developed and user-developed applets (or widgets, as they opt to call them), and if you’re really creative and would like to put your JavaScript skills to the test, feel free to create a widget of your own! Plus, they boast those shiny graphics and transparency features that we all crave nowadays, making your desktop resemble OS X all the more…

I’ve only dabbled with a handful of the bundled widgets included in the 7 MB install, but add-ons are small enough that even a dial-up user could essentially go to town. The largest selling point, though? I can run multiple instances of the weather widget to see just how freezing it is up north compared to here at home…or anywhere else in the world, if you want to nitpick!

They’ve got my stamp of approval – very cool, indeed!

“You are not affiliated with me!!!”

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I finally had a chance to watch The Incredibles (Disney / Pixar) this evening and boy, what an incredible flick! It just seemed like another fun movie to watch, much like Monsters, Inc. and A Bug’s Life and just about every movie that the two companies have done together over the past nine years. Come to think of it, I think I’ve actually enjoyed more of the recent joint ventures than I have any of the straight-up animated features that Disney has put out since establishing their relationship with Pixar…with the exception of Hercules, that is…

I think it’s going to be kind of sad when the two part ways after this next film, which is said to fulfill contractual obligations on Disney‘s behalf. I’m sure they’re simply doing it to save money, with talks of already planning to develop a Toy Story 3 in house, but I’ve just got this feeling that there’s going to be something missing up on that screen. Disney‘s got the wonderful stories, Pixar makes them come alive – that’s always how it’s worked in the past! Here’s to hoping that Pixar is able to keep things afloat after drifting away from the giant, and that we don’t merely end up with nothing more than a handful of Shrek clones from them while the mouse is busy counting his money. 🙁