Not so Secret Santa

I accidentally got involved in the #notsosecretsanta on Twitter. What happened was, @geekgirldiva tweeted that she wanted to do a secret Santa. In my experience, a secret Santa is like a gift exchange, only you don't know who is getting your present.

So I tweeted back that I'd love to join and offered up a DVD as my gift.

The thing is, #notsosecretsanta was more of a #we'reofferingfreegifts. Which is cool and all, but not what I thought. Once I realized this, is was too late to be all "Not what it thought I was getting into..." And anyway, I really enjoy giving people things they might enjoy.

So I got the DVD in question, which was Fern Gully and added in The Lorax since I saw it there next to it.

It was an interesting experience. I got several new followers and a lot of replies (a lot for me anyway, the other #notsosecretsanta gifts were a Taun-Taun sleeping bag, a Boba Fet poster and Rock Band so I was definitely the least awesome of the gifts).

Picking the winner was easy... I made slips of paper (I photographed with my phone which I couldn't hold still as the dog was investigating)...



And into the Cyclops Santa stocking the slips went...


And someone named @uberdorkgirlie won! Go to Twitter and send her congrats if you get a chance...

All in all, giving things away on Twitter was interesting. No one who had been following me previously replied so there was no chance to cheat and play favorites even if I wanted to. (I totally would have too.) I'd do it again, and think I will, but under my own steam next time.

Agnostics

Okay, I just want to vent for a moment. If you don't want to read religious related ranting, don't go further.

I have a real problem with people who call themselves Agnostic and try to justify it by saying that they are somehow being more logical than Atheists. The best example of this is a quote from a self-professed agnostic,

"My personal stance is the doctrine of Agnosticism. Because one can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a higher power, I don’t ascribe to Atheism, the belief that there is no God. Nobody knows with certainty, and as a skeptic I feel it’s silly to profess an unsubstantiated belief either way."

-Alpha Dominance
in what otherwise was an interesting article

Are you f'in kidding me?

If you believe that there are fundamental truths about the universe that can never be known, fine. Life, love, happiness, you get down with your bad self. But the existence of a deity is no different than the existence of unicorns. And if someone told you that since we can never know for sure whether unicorns exist and are therefore unicorn-agnostic you would laugh in their face.

Atheists are not going out on a limb here. With absolutely no evidence in support of a deity, we can state with a reasonable amount of certainty that there is no deity. This is not an unsubstantiated belief. Lack of evidence for something is still evidence, just for the opposite claim. If you cannot substantiate your belief in god, then I can use the lack of evidence as evidence that there is no god.

There is no evidence for the existence of unicorns; I do not believe in unicorns.
There is no evidence for the existence of Santa Claus; I do not believe in Santa Claus.
There is no evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness Monster; I do not believe in the Loch Ness Monster.
There is no evidence for the existence of God; I do not believe in God.
Do you see what I did there?

I do not feel any need to qualify any of those statements with a disclaimer about how we can never know for sure one way or the other, so in fact I am a unicorn/ Santa Claus/ Loch Ness Monster/ God agnostic.

Honestly, I think you're silly for calling yourself an agnostic just because you think that belief in god is held to a different standard than belief in anything else. If you call yourself an agnostic in relation to god, then I don't ever want to hear you say that you do not believe in something. From this day forward you are faery agnostic, bigfoot agnostic, and vampire agnostic.

It's all or nothing.

(Of course, if you call yourself unicorn/ Santa Claus/ Loch Ness Monster agnostic then more power to you. I'm cool with that.)

Fail Whale

Look what I got!


It's a USB hub! I have like a million and nine USB gadgets and while Lovelace has three ports of her own, there was definite room for expansion. So I got this little guy. He has four ports and is adorable. Of course I had to get the white whale, but I really struggled not to name him the Fail Whale. I mean, that's like naming your kid Gertrude or Eugene, you're dooming the kid to a life of trouble from the start.

But-but... it's the Fail Whale!

An evil Fail Whale. Wow, that's creepy. Are the glowing red eyes really necessary?


ACK! From hell's heart it has stabbed at me! *is ded*

I have the heart and stomach of a king - Queen Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth's speech to the troops at Tilbury. It is the bit in the middle where I start really choking up, and it has its merits not only in its function but in brevity: 313 words passed down through history. Like Ain't I a Woman?, I am posting this speech in its entirety.

I have the heart and stomach of a king...

My loving people,

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

- Queen Elizabeth, 9/19 August 1588

Modern Cool

Acting on the advice of Geek Girl Diva I took the Nerd? Geek? or Dork? test. The results were as expected.

Modern, Cool Nerd

83 % Nerd, 65% Geek, 39% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

Congratulations!

Actually, the first thing I thought when I saw my results was that I was 187% Nerd/Geek/Dork. Then I realized there was some overlap and decided to let it go.

Droid

Let me start with this: I have never owned an iPhone. I have never held an iPhone. I have no idea what an iPhone works like or how amazing it (hypothetically) is.

If you're thinking about getting a Motorola Droid and have been put off by all of the Droid v iPhone reviews where the Droid comes out lacking let me tell you this: yesterday, I bought myself a Droid and I am in love like you wouldn't believe. I am flashing back to my early days with Johnny 505. I can say unequivocally it is the most amazing thing I ever held in my hand.

The screen is so clear it was hard to get a good picture of it. Yes, that is my camera's eye you can see. Sorry.
And that is not a flower, it's a sunspot in infrared.

What? You want an actual review of something for once instead of me rhapsodizing about my love? If you insist...

The Droid weighs in 6oz and is slightly narrower than the palm of my hand. It includes a slide-out keyboard upon which the backspace key and the enter key are dangerously close together. Ask Twitter users if you think I'm exaggerating. The screen is crystal clear, and I would dare to say it's crisper than my laptop screen (sorry, Lovelace, I still love you best!). The power cable doubles as a USB cable through the magic of modern technology and file transfers from Lovelace to the Droid were as simple as drag and drop. The whole phone is pretty intuitive, I spent about twenty minutes messing with it and by the end of it, I only had to look up a few things.

(Are people really complaining about the weight? [Answer: Yes] It weighs 2oz more than the iPhone. 2oz! I brush my hair and lose more than that!)

Sidenote: When did it become okay for phones to get bigger? I remember there was a real push for a while for phones to be as tiny as possible, the size of a ballpoint pen. The Droid is easily twice the size of my Razor. Wait, I take it back, it was when we decided that phones should be personal computers as well. I'm okay with that.

The home screen is made up of three panels which all share the same background. You can swish your finger across the screen to navigate between them. I love this as it means I can keep my useful programs I use to the right, and the silly games and things off to the left, leaving my center screen gloriously empty and beautiful. Then main menu is accessed through a tab at the bottom of the screen and I really like the look of it. Figuring out how to move icons around was a little odd. I could drop things on the desktop, but couldn't manage to grab them. Easy solution, touch the icon until the phone vibrates. Then you can either move it or trash the icon (not the program); if you hold the icon to either side of the screen, it will move into the next panel. No, that last bit did not take me 15 minutes to figure out. No it didn't, shut up. Also on the phone are four "buttons" which let you go back, go to a menu, go back to the home screen, or search.

The OS looks exactly like my Ubuntu desktop, down to the thinking circles and top taskbar. I'm super happy about that. If you are not a Linux user, don't worry, it's nothing all that different - it just made me happy that it looks so alike. The top taskbar will let you know if you have email or updates or tweets or whatnot and you can access any of the above by swishing the thing down. Nice - also, handy.

When locked, which it does automatically after what feels like ten seconds but is in fact set to two minutes, you have a clock and the date as well as an actual percentage indicator for the battery if charging. I like that. It's good to know I have 80% of my battery left, or how much is left until charged, or whatever. To unlock, you have to swipe the unlock icon over, or you can silent or ... unsilent (?) your ringer while it is still locked. I like that too. What I do not like is that I have to press the power/unlock button to get to that screen. I would much rather be able to just tap my way into the phone. I don't know, this is a convenience vs accidental phoning thing. You can't stick your hand in you pocket/purse and turn this thing on by accident.

Let's get to what people really wonder about, which is apps. The very first thing I got was Twidroid, because I am a twittering fiend these days. Apps in the Android market were super easy to find and the download went smoothly. I immediately got the important apps such as Facebook, OI Safe (for passwords), pandora, lightsaber, sudoku and amazon. On the sudoku note, this is easily the best sudoku I have seen outside of paper and pencil. Oh, I also got the bubble level and spent part of today calibrating it. 'Cause I'm obsessive like that. At the moment I'm running my email, twidroid, pandora and sudoku with no problems.

Update: I took my droid back to Verizon and got a new one. Since then, I have not had a single issue with it. If you are having the problems I'm about to describe, TAKE IT BACK. Nothing will fix it. On the not awesome note, it does have a tendency to shut itself down when it gets confused. It's done it twice in the time it has taken me to type this. Fail. In all fairness, it does not do it out of the blue, but rather when I have asked too much of it. It looks and acts so much like my laptop I expect it to be able to handle as many separate processes. And while it is awesome, it is not magical. Sad face :(

The scary thing is, it's smarter than me. Like a lot smarter. It does things without my asking, like grab people's facebook profile picture and put it next to their name in my contacts list. What's up with that? Scared the hell out of me. Really, 90% of my uses for it are sudoku and music. My phone is probably sitting here sullen and brooding at the unfulfillment of its potential. Like a wife that gave up her career and the kids turned out to be shit.

All in all, I'm quite impressed. It is my first smartphone and the sound and picture quality are amazing. The camera function is alright, but I haven't quite figured out the night functions.

Some of the bitching I have seen has been about the keyboard, which some people claim is extraneous as the onscreen keyboard is exceptional. I do not use the onscreen keyboard, it is such a pain in the ass and I inevitably mess it up. It does offer suggestions before the word is finished which is kind of nice. I suppose if you've gotten used to the onscreen keyboard on an iPhone you will default to that, but personally I'd rather use the keypad.

In the end, I am so freaking excited by my phone you have no idea. I have named it R4-P17 in honor of one of the greatest droids of all time and find that I'm using it in place of my laptop, even when my laptop is within arms reach. I'll get back to you in a month or so when the novelty has worn off and R4 is leaving dirty dished in the sink and socks on the floor.



Technical Sidenote for Users:
Droid and some freemail accounts don't get along. If you have a Droid and have been having problems synching your Yahoo! mail with it here's the fix (Note, you need to be on the 3g network to do this - it won't work on a wifi network for reasons beyond my understanding):
1. Go into email and then pull up the menu to add account.
2. Enter your email address and password, then choose Manual Setup
3. Choose IMAP
4. The IMAP server should be imap.mail.yahoo.com; and the port is 143. Security: none. IMAP path prefix: leave blank.
5. On the next screen (which should be outgoing settings)... SMTP server: smtp.mobile.mail.yahoo.com; the port is 587. Security:none. Make sure require sign-in is checked.
6. Name you account and move on.

New Moon

Words do not even begin to express how much I don't want to admit to having seen New Moon, on opening day nevertheless. Let's just say I have a friend (A) who is not a lolfan.

The premise will be familiar to virtually everyone who will go see it, but I'll do a recap anyway. Bella Swan and Edward Cullen love a love than has never been loved before. Edward decides - with less evidence than what the first book's actual plot provided - that being around him puts Bella in danger. So he leaves. Bella proceeds to mope for about four months. In the book this is done with symbolically blank pages with the months as headers - in the movie it is done... as well as could be expected actually. Finding out that putting herself in danger let's her see an apparition of Edward. She enlists the help of what should be the third side of a love-triangle, Jacob, but since there is never a doubt that Bella and Edward were meant to be (see the loving of love that has never been loved before) there's not much of a triangle, just some Jacob pity. We discover Jacob is also a mythical monster, Bella nearly kills herself, Edward nearly kills himself, vampires fight, Alice tries to be as awesome as she can with her limited screentime. And in the end, it turns out that Bella and Edward's love wins out. On a move v book note, the movie stuck to the book enough to appease the Twihards, but with enough nods to the lolfans that I was in stitches.

I can think of only one word to describe New Moon - fanservice. Not only are there a half dozen teenage boys who spend 98% of the movie shirtless; but we have a shot of RPatz shirtless, with jeans slung so low you know far to much about his personal grooming habits. Far. Too. Much. The shirtlessness got so silly at one point that the audience was actually giggling. Most of the audience anyway, I was cackling. My cackling led others to let loose and what was meant to be a rather poignant scene between two leads was drowned out by the audiences laughter.

I will say, and it was rather cool, is when the vampires start fighting and getting slammed into marble, you see the marble crack while similar cracks appear on the vampires and I see what u did thar.

I would love to go on, but I'm pretty sure I've already stolen 10+ jokes from Cleolinda Jones unintentionally. So I will leave yo with this list:

Things I mumbled during New Moon:

1. Jaaames Deeeans
2. It's the volvo of great justice!
   
3. You could do so much better [@Jacob]
4. Go to the thugs Bella, end it all now...
   
5. Oh come on!
   
6. Furspolsion!
7. Oh snap (@Alice)
8. Jacob, how could you?
   
9. Oh Edward, you sparkly diva
10. Wait, are those... ew, put your shirt back on.
11. I see what you did there.
    
12. God I hate her so much [@Bella]
13. So much.
    

See what I mean about stealing Cleolinda's jokes? Go read the Twilight recaps, just go (come on, it's called Twilight II: Vampire Boogaloo). My sense of humor about this is obviously compromised beyond all measure.

[I can say this... in the middle of the movie, they go see a movie (a metamovie if you will) called Face Punch that has some of the best dialogue ever. I really wish I'd gone to see that movie.]