Ultranormal

  • Small World, Good World

    One of the victims in the Amish school shooting is Anna Mae Stoltzfus. We’ve been up up to the Stoltzfus place to buy eggs and cheese and met Mrs. Stoltzfus and most of the kids. We call Mrs. Stoltzfuz the egg lady and Anne travels up there so frequently they are practically Christmas card buddies. I am not sure if this is the exact same family, or maybe some cousins. Sad though, either way.\
    Yesterday, on Max’s birthday, the kids and I spent three hours at the doctor’s office. It was not fun but the kids were very well behaved. I was especially impressed with Brian whose nap was interupted for the appointment and who refused to eat lunch because I wouldn’t give him an early peice of birthday cake. I wasn’t expecting such a long visit, so I didn’t bring any toys or snacks with me! Brian only started fussing the last half hour, which was almost 9 hours since he’d eaten last. By the time we got home, we were frazzled and tired. We goofed off for an hour, unwinding. By the time the pizza came, Max was too tired to eat. We opened presents, sang happy birthday, offered the smallest peice of cake to each boy, and the sent them off to bed. Whew. Max was very pleased with his haul. So was Brian. :)\
    Totally O/T but funny- After Max read my Parents magazine today, he asked what “boobies” are. Ha. Should I be happy or sad he didn’t know before?

  • The confessions of a true fangirl

    I took part in a teleconference with Eric Kripke, creator and Executive Producer of Supernatural, lastnight. It was fun and amusing and enlightening. Talking with him made me squee, cuz he loves his show and that enthusiasm is infectious. He was asked questions about: a potential love interest, John’s fate, Sam’s powers, Dean’s amulet, Dean’s bloody eyes in Bloody Mary, what John said in the season premiere, the Myspace music contest, gay jokes and “Jensen and Jared can’t keep their hands off of each other.” I copied the unofficial transcript here. Bragging rights to the first person who correctly identifies my question!\
    I am really impressed with the attention to detail and his insistence that all monsters and demons refered to must be found in real myths and folklore. Nothing can just be made up. I also love that he is in tune with the fans desires and fears and said, “We’ll keep something if it works and get rid of something if it doesn’t. I am a bigger fan than anyone and am very protective of the show.” He also gave us some scoop (extra, extra, you read it hear first!) that they are in talks to do a comic book about John Winchester, the early years, with Sam and Dean as wee babies.\
    I love being able to chat with the guys in charge, to get a feel for their general attitude about different aspects of their shows. It was fun and I hope to continue having these neat-o opportunities.

  • Max and lots o’ tv talk

    Today is Max’s birthday. He is the big 7. I can’t believe it. He is such a handsome, funny, smart, and thoughtful boy. He is in the first grade and has classes in art, music, PE, and Spanish. They also have library time, computer lab time, and SEARCH instruction (like GATE). I am like, when do you have time to learn anything? Heh. He has his first school math book-wheee, and even has homework to do each night.\
    Since we are still kind of sick, we are having a small celebration tonight with just the family who lives and breathes on and shares germs with other everyday. Pizza, cake & ice cream, and presents! Sounds fun, huh? And then later in the week, we will get together with the other family members. Hopefully, we will be all better then.\
    Now, for the only other thing I seem to post about: TV!\
    Gilmore Girls: Pretty good episode. Luke’s “You are the one that proposed to me,” was a killer. Ouch. The Lane sex talk was potentially interesting until it became farcical, especially the way Lane was raised. Remember kids, knowledge is power. Rory calling out her mom was awesome and realistic, in my opinion. Finally, Rory was a grmupy ass with realistic reason. And then she got to realize that parents aren’t perfect, without beating us over the head. Much thanks to the writers for understanding that viewers have a brain. And how freakin’ crazy is it that Liz and TJ have the healthiest relationship on the show?\
    Veronica Mars: Ok, people, why aren’t you watching this show? (Maybe viewers don’t have a brain, afterall.) Since Kevin hasn’t seen the episode yet (he was busy wrapping presents lastnight), I don’t want to get too detailed, but I loved:

    • Piz. Has a lot of entertainment potential.
    • Dick never fails to entertain me.
    • BSG shout out! (And one on GG earlier, too.)
    • “What about the bitch he’s seeing?” Heeee!
    • “Nice shirt” OMG, I LOVE these people. How awesome was this one moment? I still miss what Duncan could have been in season two.
    • Damn, that sex looked hot.
    • I so appreciate the end. (Purposeful vagueness for those who haven’t watched it yet.)\
      Nip/Tuck: After Rosie pimped her appearance, I had to watch. Wow, she was kind of amazing in it. There wasn’t a hint of Rosie’s public persona in that character. I was also surprised to learn that they are tackling the problems of Scientology on the show. That is ballsy.\
      Studio 60: I laughed so hard, I coughed up a lung. I heart Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry together.\
      Danny: I can’t seem to remember. Are you a boy pussycat or a girl pussycat?\
      Matt: What the hell?\
      Danny: You’re a boy pussycat. You’re a pussy-boy.

  • TV time

    Veronica Mars tonight, baby! 9 pm EST on the CW.\
    Watch it!

  • I Could Use Some Good News

    Is there anything that doesn’t suck right now? I mean, really… anything. The bad news keeps piling up, and I’m looking for some hope in here, and it’s either not there, or it’s buried under enough bad that digging for it doesn’t really feel worth it.

  • Gay Rights

    “Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”\
    — Ernest Gaines

  • I’m meh for football

    The Redskins won, which YAY! But they won in overtime, which practically negates the win in my mind. The NFL keeps making minor changes to rules (to get higher scoring games, imo) but they need to focus on the OT rules. Football is about offense and defense, with one half working to get the other half back on the field. Flipping a coin and then having the first team to score getting the win just isn’t staying true to the spirit of the game. OT needs to be more balanced: set the clock for five minutes and let the teams go at it. How hard is that?

  • Yo

    Dudes! Other people like Supernatural too: Supernatural Premiere Review.:\
    bq. Against all odds, “Supernatural” is just plain cool. But the show isn’t cool in the way of hip, well-dressed prime time TV stars aspire to be. Instead, “Supernatural” is its own kind of Americana cool, with classic rock tunes blasting out of an old beat-up Chevy Impala filled to the brim with salt-loaded shotguns and holy water… Weaving its own way through haunted highways and small towns, “Supernatural” is a refreshing break from most network horror shows. While the promos might seem glitzy thrown in with the rest of CW’s fare, try looking past the surface and you’ll see an intriguing mythology emerging in the heart of America.\
    And um, to prove that I have a life beyond tv and vomiting kids: Go Redskins! (Oh wait, that is TV) I could update you on Max’s pneumonia, but that falls under the vomiting kids category. Uh. Um. Thinks really hard. Scratches head. I will leave you with this thought: E probably still equals M times C Squared, but I am kinda too busy thinking how Polka Dots changes the Joe and Blue dynamic and how best to get my kids to keep their food down to really know for sure.

  • The Culture Warriors’ Inner Battle

    This whole thing with Mark Foley is insane. Not only was he the head of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, but he sponsored more than one bill on child abuse. A 50 year old man was propositioning a page… it looks like more than one. Was it an intern? No. Was it someone of legal age? No. The worst part? The GOP leadership in the House knew about it for ten months and did basically nothing. The didn’t dig deep enough to find out what was going on so they could turn a blind eye and pretend that nothing happened.\
    This seems to fit a pattern. Culture warrior rails against some big evil in the world, advocating draconian punishment for any criminal dastardly enough to perpetrate such a crime, only to be a secret practioner. There are plenty of examples:

    • Bill Bennett rails against gambling and all other forms of moral weakness only to turn out to be a huge gambler himself.
    • Rush Limbaugh advocates insane jail time for non-violent drug offenders only to turn out to be a huge illegal oxycontin user.
    • Henry Hyde, who helped lead the impeachment of President Clinton over what boils down to marital infidelity, turned out to have committed the same sin himself… no one threatened to impeach him.
    • Rick Santorum goes on a crusade for tort reform, yet his wife takes a huge settlement in a civil trial.\
      The rules only seem to apply to everyone else in the culture wars. They fight against what they themselves are most guilty about. Well, you know what? Not only is it hypocritical in the extreme, it’s just psychotic. Get counseling, talk to your clergy, pray, but keep your fetishes out of my laws, and your broken government out of my bedroom, e-mail and phone calls. Get your own life in order before you go preaching to me, you Pharisees.

  • Tips for Young Developers

    This has been a crazy week. I’m tech leading a huge project with a crazy hard deadline, and to be perfectly honest, most of the stuff I’ve tech lead, while large projects, have had fairly small teams and dealt with systems I knew inside and out (it was all in the AOL Search days). This is a pretty large team, and we have to deal with systems I’ve never even heard of before. What does all this mean? It means that I haven’t worked less than a 12 hour day this week, and one day, I actually worked a 20 hour day.\
    In the midst of the 20 hour day, I realized that we have a bunch of new folks on the team, and I came up with a list of some of the hard non-technical lessons it took failing a couple (OK, several) times to learn. These are painful lessons, and I figured I would do my best to save them the trouble. The whole e-mail got a little maudlin at the end (I think I sent it in hour 18 of the 20 hour marathon), but I figured the list might be worth sharing with the world. Enjoy. I’d love to hear your tips for surviving in development (web or otherwise) too, because I know this isn’t all of them.

    1. If the process is slowing you down and isn’t helping you, throw it out. (one small condition here… under normal circumstances, reasonable process is a good thing. under a crunch, process should be curtailed where possible)
    2. If you’re stuck, scream until someone comes to help. And if that person can’t help you, scream until you get the help you need.
    3. If you get stuck, start screaming early. We don’t have time to spin our wheels. It’s most likely not your fault that you’re stuck. Asking questions earlier is better than asking questions after it’s already too late. Also, ask questions until it makes sense. If you don’t get it, it’s probably because the person explaining is doing something wrong. Make them explain it till they get it right.
    4. If you don’t know, don’t guess. Disinformation is poison, and confusion leads to bad decisions. There’s nothing wrong with telling someone that you’ll get back to them when you know the answer.
    5. If you commit to a date, don’t miss it. If you think you might miss it, tell everyone and tell them as soon as you think you’ll miss the date.
    6. Over-communicate. I’d rather get more mail and know what’s going on with everything than have no idea and have to track people down. Scrum is a good start… oh yeah… think about what you’re going to say at scrum before you get there. Write it down and bring it with you, and then take notes if you think of something else.
    7. Get out of your chair and go talk to people, or pick up the phone. E-mail and IM are great, but you can resolve stuff face to face faster, even if you’re shy.\
      I know, you’d think that this stuff is pretty self-evident – but it’s not. Geeks are proud. We don’t like admitting we don’t know the answers, and most of us don’t like asking for help. If you have a geek in your life, you know this. It’s something we have to get over. It takes time – be patient with us.\
      Got more? What else belongs on the list?