Linkdump!

Folks in the Puget Sound area should watch KBTC tonight starting at 6 p.m. to watch my husband and the Emerald City Androgums answer phones during Doctor Who.

Everybody is posting this one, because it's so awesome: This isn't the petition response you're looking for.

My husband is already pretty excited about the new Oz movie, but he's also a huge Danny Elfman fan so this news has him practically squeeing in delight.

Oscar Nominees. I have seen none of the movies. The Razzies Nominees. I have seen none of the movies. Oh well.

How Voltaire got rich enough to be Voltaire.

The lie of Nazi gun control. Not that anyone who is indoctrinated by the NRA will read and believe this, but hey, I like spreading the truth when I can.

Why Adobe (and other vendors) should give away older software. I admit it, I snagged InDesign, but haven't installed it yet. More at Slashdot.

Most of these 25 foods you'll never eat again actually gross me out, but I did like the crispy M&Ms.

Future gadgets that might be worth buying from CES this year. The only one that made me wish I could afford it was the solar battery back up.

The Onion does it again. I like the Toyota Highlander comment.

Oh man, I wish I could afford to get this Aquaman #15 Blank Cover variant with art by Fred Hembeck! I did buy a blank variant for myself, but haven't figured out what to do with it yet.

One of these years I will make it to GeekGirlCon. I hope it's soon.

More on lab-grown meat. Again, I have no problem trying lab-grown foods myself. I'd rather have a cleanly grown hamburger than some of the stuff that gets into hamburger nowadays.

Speaking of food, for the twelve-week-challenge I'm using myfitnesspal to log food intake and exercise. I would have used Calorie King like I did in the past, but it doesn't have an app for Android and the PC app hasn't been updated in years.

An update on my post from the other day. Yes, the student who died was the athlete. That makes it so much more painful for some reason.

Also, when I got in on Thursday there was a note on my desk from the editor pointing out that my Wednesday afternoon's work was pretty bad compared to my usual and asking me to do more proofing before turning stuff in. When I went to talk to the editor about it I quoted a techie, "Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debuging Monday's code." At least he understood.

Home...

We went away for the weekend, off to Seattle-side of the mountains to visit family (lots and lots of family!) which is why my blogging has been... off. We also did a PBS drive and an Androgum party while we were out there. And now... now we are home and resting and hopefully I'll manage to pull together a good link blog tomorrow. If I'm not too busy digging fence post holes for the backyard fence. Squee!

Where Am I?

About the time this posts, I should be at a PBS station raising money. I'll be away from the cameras, since I don't like being on TV. My husband will be "talent", one of those annoying guys who asks for money. I'll be in the green room watching him.

Fun fun fun!

Friday, Saturday, Busy Busy Busy Days

On Friday hubby-Eric and I took a little road trip out to Eastern Washington. I can't really tell you much about that, except the weather was gorgeous and I got carsick. Besides getting carsick, I really enjoyed the trip.

Bright and early Saturday morning, Eric and I went down to visit my evil twin, and together we all went to the Race For the Cure. We met a friend or two down there, and walked the viaduct along with thousands of other people. Evil twin Lisa took a picture of hubby and I while we walked:

After the walk, our group, now five in number, went back to my parents' house. We played on Lisa's Wii Fit, were fed a wonderful lunch by my mother (THANKS MOM!) and ran some errands and such. We also made sure we had... um... the latest Doctor Who.

After playing around on the Fit (which I want even more now, if that's possible), we all piled into the car and drove down to KBTC where we volunteered for the Doctor Who pledge drive.

Hubby-Eric was "talent" at the pledge drive, as he's been before, but this time he got to anchor the pledge breaks with William. Here's a pic of him once he'd been gussied up a bit by a fellow fan:

Both Lisa and I did our usual behind the scenes work. I monitored the "green room" and made sure nobody walked off with a computer or somebody's bag. Lisa helped tally the totals on the breaks. Before the drive started, we all sat down and watched "Turn Left" (the newest Doctor Who) as a big ol' group of fans.

While we goofed around between breaks, Lisa took some pictures of me, including this one which I altered slightly from the one that appears in the photostream. You can see a lot more pictures, including some fairly embarrassing ones, over in that Flickr stream, by the way.

Some idle final thoughts... Friday's trip could very well change our lives, and in some ways already has... I loved playing on the Wii Fit, especially once it told me my Wii age is 28 instead of 40-something like last time... One of our group made a Mii named "Killer" and the Wii said her Wii age was 61, Ouch... Mmmmmm, sloppy joes for lunch!... The weather for the Race for the Cure was perfect... I ate too much over the weekend and need to be really good the rest of the month to stay under my weight limit... Killer was the only one of the five of us who had trouble walking the Race for the Cure route... Elmo and Big Bird destroyed my little remaining innocence... Watching new Doctor Who in a big group was both fun and annoying... I really like the Wii Fit step aerobics, but the jogging was also great... While I am Lisa's Evil Twin, she's apparently my Evil Twin as well. I'm not sure either of us is the good twin... Once again, many thanks to the people who donated for Race For the Cure! Our little group raised a decent amount of money... Regardless of what happens, I hope to do the Puget Sound Race for the Cure again next year... If you didn't get a chance to donate on Saturday, KBTC is still accepting pledges. I recommend the TARDIS mobile phone charm, it was cool (even if it doesn't work with my phone)...

And lastly, my Evil Twin will be trying to ride her bike 150 miles for charity thie September. I'm going to try to post a reminder about it every week or two until the date. If you want to help Lisa in the MS 150 then donate here. She's trying to get $500 in donations so she can get a jersey, but needs at least $250 in donations to be allowed to ride.

Pledge Drive

So I mentioned that I did a PBS pledge drive on Saturday? I was acting more as the security person for the "break room" than doing anything useful. But I was there, and I recorded the breaks to share with you. In addition to Paul, William and Ryan, my hubby-Eric and the famous Monty the Penguin acted as talent in these two clips. Paul and William start each one off, then Eric, Monty and Ryan comment on them.

First up: The Pledge Heads.

And now that you've seen that bit of insanity, check out the all-time classic, and still considered one of the funniest bits ever done for this station, The PBS Police.

And hey, if you feel like giving the station money to contribute to the continuation of Doctor Who on KBTC, the number or the website are still active. Just select a Doctor Who thank you gift, as listed in the pull-down on the website. Along the same lines, I've got more items for KBTC up on eBay.

Random Thoughts

Couldn't get through all the links I wanted to post, so I'll finish tomorrow if I have the time...

Self-Link #1: Grassroots promotion of Aquaman.

Self-Link #2: It is time once again to remind you of our eBay auctions. If it has "KBTC" in the description, all proceeds are going to the local PBS station. If it doesn't, all proceeds are going to pay our bills.

Colleen Doran Sees Wicked then flaunts her stuff at the DC offices.

Heidi Meeley applies "The Customer Is Always Right" to the comic book industry.

Ten in Green. Remember the Alamo.

Pictures from Wondercon.

I got my monster, thanks to Adventures in Applied Math. Apparently, Tegan eats townsfolk and abducts geeks. Hrm.

Speaking of monsters... mmmmmmm Chocolate Dalek. It looks REALLY messy. Yum.

With March came a tiny bit of spare money, some of which went to Conlan Press to buy The Last Unicorn DVD.

FilkerTom on naked actors and stupid commentators.

If you haven't checked out Strange Maps yet, you really ought to. All kinds of neat stuff there, from Oz to the DCU and back again.

I don't really care much about this news item, except I do hope the press gets to ask the perp one single question: WHY?

After several days of not moving, the Leif Erikson statue finally was successfully removed to be renovated and moved to a slightly different location.

Hmmm, I think I'd actually watch this.

I Park Like An Idiot dot com, where you can get bumper stickers to put on the cars of people who can't park in between the lines. I don't think I'd have the nerve to actually apply one of these, but I am amused by the thought.

Reading Scriptures leads to Violence.

Don't use the words winter, games, or gold in Vancouver BC for the next few years. More from Boing Boing.

Oz and Ends tells us what a "baramin" is.

Junk science from the RIAA.

Duct Tape comes in handy.

We still don't understand ball lightning.

9-year-old Canadian Terrorist detained by the US.

Diebold may dump e-voting unit because it's tarnished their reputation. Well, duh. Creating easily hackable voting machines with no paper trail would tarnish any company's reputation.

Garrett wants us to remember what a jury REALLY is. As a juror, you have the right to judge both the criminal AND the law. It's called Jury Nullification, and judges don't want you to know about it.

You must know your rights! Because, once selected for jury duty, nobody will inform you of your power to judge both law and fact. In fact, the judge's instructions to the jury may be to the contrary. Another quote from US vs Dougherty (cited earlier): "The fact that there is widespread existence of the jury's prerogative, and approval of its existence as a necessary counter to case-hardened judges and arbitrary prosecutors, does not establish as an imperative that the jury must be informed by the judge of that power".

For St Patrick's Day: Oh Danny Boy, as performed by three of the best evah Muppet singers. Don't get yer hopes up.

eBay Adventures

Hubby-Eric and I are really short on cash this month, AND we want to clear out some of the mess in our house. Hubby-Eric has decided to sell off his Green Lantern collection, and I'm going to prune my own collections a bit. The result is that we've been readying ourselves to put stuff up on eBay. And finally, now, we have posted our first three non-KBTC auctions. All for PVC sets that feature Green Lantern.

If you want to look at my auctions, I'm the user tegan. There should be three KBTC auctions (all the money we get from those goes to a local PBS station) and three PVC sets.

Heh. The original goal was to just get the stuff out of the house and find a good home for it. Now that I've seen our monthly bills, I'm really hoping to see a bidding war and some nice prices, though I suspect we aren't going to. *sigh*

Coupla' Links and Hubby-Eric on Video

A new Blogaround Challenge has been issued. Get yer browsers fired up, folks.

Apple's Next Product Photoshopping Contest.

Here's hubby-Eric at the KBTC Doctor Who Pledge Drive, being harrassed by a mad penguin. It's three minutes long, but the most fun moment happens in the first 30 seconds. In case you are wondering what Eric's shirt says, it's the Russell T Davies is my master now T-shirt from my Zazzle shop.

Happy Birthday to Eric!

Yay! Hey look, your birthday present! A TiVo! I love you hubby-Eric!

Clearly I was unable to post a Ripples yesterday. I will post one tonight. I also plan on using that YouTube account I made to post some of the Pledge Drive from last night. You'll get to see hubby-Eric as "Talent", and Monty the Penguin lose his scarf. I just have to get the vids downloaded and see what we caught on the TiVo.

Many thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday yesterday, and to the folks who donated to KBTC through the website during the pledge drive (yes, we noticed!), and especially to the people who called.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yay! I'm 27 again! And spending my day away from the computer. My birthday present from my wonderful hubby-Eric was a TiVo (and that's my present to him, since his birthday is tomorrow). Today I'll be off across the water for the afternoon, then down at the Tacoma PBS station tonight for the Doctor Who pledge drive (we're TiVo'ing it!). I don't know if I'll get home in time to post a Ripples Through Time, so maybe I'll try to get it done in the next two hours before I leave... hmmm...

Linkages

My birthday is in a couple of days. I'll be celebrating by being at the pledge drive for the Tacoma PBS station, KBTC as they run a Doctor Who marathon. If you are so inclined, drop a few bucks to the station for Doctor Who as a birthday present. If you aren't inclined, please do not. If you're really daring, you can even try calling during the pledge drive itself and see if I answer the phone (if you do please donate some money, and ask for Laura not Tegan).

Fun Fifty of 2006 part 4 and Fun Fifty of 2006 part 5.

Heroes returning for a second season.

I gotta get this issue. Power Man and Iron Fist meet... WHO???

We're going to have to introduce Bully to Torvald someday.

Colleen wants us to watch an ad.

What does 200 calories look like?

How Big Is YOUR Starship?

The secrets of the 1918 flu, and what it can tell us about bird flu.

If the snow and ice continue much longer, I will have to order a pair of these just to get around. I don't want to completely stop walking when the weather gets like this, but I cannot risk falling. At least it's raining today, and the ice is pretty much gone.

Speaking of weather, here's a video of car crashes in a tunnel when there's ice on the roadway. And I thought Seattle drivers were bad. And, in case you missed it, here's video of that icy hill in Portland. The Modulator also links to another version of the video.

The Comet.

Police need to be educated in the use of tasers, as shown by another tasering incident in which a man was tasered for refusing to take off his hat at a city council meeting. Too many police departments seem to think that tasers are a stun gun... they aren't. Tasers can kill. No police officer should use a taser unless they think they situation is so bad that they are willing to kill the person they are tasering to stop them. Getting unruly after an officer forcibly steals your hat from your head doesn't seem to be a drastic enough situation for tasering.

More on Leah, from Colleen.