Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Love Actually… Short Version

    I am such a girl for this movie. I watched it this afternoon and cried and cried. I blame exhaustion, but honestly, I’m just a big baby. I have more to write on why I’m such a fat blubbering baby, but I’m too tired to write it at the moment.\
    I will though, really.

  • Mikey’s Got A New Album

    I’m a shameful loser for not posting this earlier, but please go check out Mike Golay’s new album. I haven’t heard it yet past some demos during the summer, but if it’s anything like his first album, you won’t be disappointed. If you like acoustic guitar, you’ll love Mike’s stuff.\
    Oh, and you can find his first album in the iTunes Music Store, which was really weird for me. Mike used to be my boss, and finding your boss in iTunes? That’s just weird.

  • Incredible Commentary: Geeks From Another World

    I’ve watched a lot of movies stuck here on the couch (except for a couple nerdy hours today when I went back to work to give a presentation to almost 200 people, but we won’t talk about that now). I’ve gone so far as to start watching the commentaries on movies I’ve seen before. I never watch commentaries. Most of them are really boring. But, I’ve found a couple really, really good ones, and they’re both from the same movie!\
    The Incredibles has a really nerdy animator commentary that’s way too revealing about the neurosis of nerds. You get a peek into the never-perfect (in their mind) world of animators, obsessing over displayed-for-a-second hand gestures and eyebrow raises, gleeful geek-joy at getting to animate a scene with two guys talking in a car (yeah, I know). It’s just brilliant to me to peek into another World of Geeks, full of new vocabulary but the same passion for craft and the same obsessive search for perfection. It’s fun, and really enlightening about the whole process of animation.\
    The “main” commentary is fun after watching the first. The Animators commentary is the “victim” commentary, where Brad Bird (the director) inflicted all of these really hard things on them. In the main documentary you get the director and producer’s justification for the “pain” they caused the animators, and usually with throwaway lines that belie the pain they caused the animators. Isn’t that always the way it is? The idea folks never care/realize how difficult it is to create the idea they come up with. I think that Brad Bird does, being an animator himself, but it’s funny to hear the differences between the two “versions” of the story.

  • iPod Virgin

    I’ve come into some “free money” and I’ve decided to blow it on a sexy black video iPod. Oh, dear internet, what accessories should I get? How should I protect my new toy? What should I definitely NOT get?\
    Thank you and good night.\
    UPDATE: My iPod shipped this morning less than 18 hours after I ordered it! Come on, you sexy beast, come on!!

  • Ubuntu Is Snazzy

    Since I don’t have the mental capacity at the moment to concentrate on anything for more than fifteen minutes, I decided to try out Ubuntu, a “linux for the rest of us” distro that actually lives up to the hype. Install was insanely easy, even though it did take too much of the hard drive for itself (which was easily fixed with Partition Magic). The install was quick as OS installs go, the bootloader found everything it was supposed to and the usually problematic things weren’t. You know, the usual:

    • wireless
    • video adapter/monitor/refresh settings
    • mouse
    • sound\
      Nope, none of those were a problem at all. It’s been awhile since I’ve used a linux distro for more than command line stuff (X on my Fedora box doesn’t even work anymore – stupid NVIDIA card) and running webservers. I’ve missed a lot of new stuff!\
      For example, I’m posting this using Drivel, a journal client for GNOME. It’s simple, but it works (so far).\
      I tried using Blam!, but it exploded with the 330 feeds in my blogroll. maybe I should have started smaller.\
      Overall, Ubuntu feels like the perfect linux distro for folks who’ve always wanted to try linux but were too afraid to try. So far everything just works, and the install couldn’t be easier. So, don’t chicken out, get up with Ubuntu right now. Really.

  • Note To Self

    Falling down hurts. Falling down hurts even worse when you’re on crutches and have a bum foot.\
    I wish I could sleep.\
    I wish this pain pill would kick in.\
    That is all.

  • Hee.

    Nobody commented on my inadvertent description of Kevin’s green pussy in the ‘life update’ post? Tough room.

  • Max and Brian stats

    As of today:\
    Maxwell, age 6 yrs, is 48 1/2 inches tall and 53 lbs.\
    Brian, age 18 mos, is 35 inches tall and 30 1/2 lbs.\
    All of these stats are at or above the 90th %. No wonder my back hurts.

  • Write Your Senator, Congressman and The President

    Sent to John Warner:\
    Dear Senator Warner,\
    Even though I’m in the “other” party, I’ve always respected you as a moderate and as a man of reason. It is with that sense of respect that I e-mail you today, requesting your help.\
    It has come out in recent weeks that not only have our armed services used white phosphorus on the battlefield: a horrific munition, but we’ve set up “black site” secret prisons where we torture terrorism suspects.\
    Torture is against US law (see: Report of the United States to the UN Committee against Torture, October 15, 1999, UN Doc. CAT/C/28/Add.5, February 9, 2000, para. 6.). It seems that on more than one occasion, that law has been broken, commands given at the highest levels of the Executive branch. There is no exemption, no provision for exigent circumstances (see the above reference).\
    I’m the son of a twenty-three year Air Force veteran, and I grew up under the threat of terrorist attack while we were stationed in Germany in the early eighties. I grew up afraid of the Russians. I am proud to be an American, but today, I am ashamed.\
    I’m ashamed that our government has fallen so low as to endorse, and try to redefine torture and rationalize it away in the name of national security. I wonder where the outrage is, and why no one in a position of authority has been held accountable.\
    Our own Vice President has lobbied the Senate to exempt the CIA from torture, and although our own President said this week that “we don’t do torture”, no one believes him.\
    If we can impeach Bill Clinton for lying about an affair with an intern, where are the articles of impeachment for Dick Cheney, who obviously condones torture?\
    Your own leadership wants to investigate who leaked the existence of the “black sites”, but not the black sites themselves. I hope you can help. This is an abomination and a black mark on our country. We’re the land of the free and the home of the brave. Torture should be beyond the pale.\
    Thank you for your time,\
    Kevin Lawver

  • No Excuses, No Rationalization

    Torture is prohibited by law throughout the United States. It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. Every act constituting torture under the Convention constitutes a criminal offense under the law of the United States. No official of the government, federal, state or local, civilian or military, is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. Nor may any official condone or tolerate torture in any form. No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification of torture. US law contains no provision permitting otherwise prohibited acts of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to be employed on grounds of exigent circumstances (for example, during a state of public emergency) or on orders from a superior officer or public authority, and the protective mechanisms of an independent judiciary are not subject to suspension. (Report of the United States to the UN Committee against Torture, October 15, 1999, UN Doc. CAT/C/28/Add.5, February 9, 2000, para. 6.)\
    With today’s revelations about white phosphorus, and the continued revelations about “black sites” and Cheney’s continued lobbying for torture exemptions, it’s high time someone goes to jail.\
    I’ve never been more disappointed in my country. I was embarrassed by the Lewinsky thing, because I saw it as a case of sexual harassment. I thought impeachment was the right thing to do, because there was obvious wrong-doing and a crime was committed (even if it wasn’t the one they charged him with). But this? THIS?!\
    There is no excuse. There is no rationalization. There is no way to cover this up or make it go away. Our government has committed atrocities in the name of “freedom” and put a huge bloody mark on our flag that may never go away. It’s time for people to stand up and say “no more”. Write your congressman, write your senator, write the President. This has to stop, and those responsible have to be held accountable.\
    bq. US law contains no provision permitting otherwise prohibited acts of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to be employed on grounds of exigent circumstances (for example, during a state of public emergency) or on orders from a superior officer or public authority, and the protective mechanisms of an independent judiciary are not subject to suspension.\
    It’s already the law, and we’ve already broken it. In the past, we’ve gotten exemptions for US soldiers and military leaders from international courts, but you know what, this is a case where it may be justified to turn Bush, Cheney and anyone else who endorsed and passed down the pro-torture rules, over to the Hague. It’s not the soldiers’ fault, it’s their commanders.\
    This makes me think of Abu Ghraib. Since we now know that torture was a part of the policy, what does that mean for Lyndie England and the other enlisted soldiers who were found guilty? Why hasn’t anyone in a position of authority been held responsible?\
    We’re supposed to be better than this. We’re supposed to be land of the free, home of the brave, not the land of the war criminal, home of the torturer. We can’t spread freedom if we’re also spreading torture, death and oppression. They’re mutually exclusive. You can’t build a democracy from the scorched bones of women and children. You can’t wipe away the stain of secret torture prisons without someone paying the price for it.