I picked up the Blu-Rays for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It holds up pretty well on the second viewing, and they do a great job with all the characters. Looking forward to season 2 of this one.

Nerd Life Tip: When saving huge long video game FAQS to your computer, make them into PDFs. Then you can bookmark the PDFs and find the information you need really easily later on. I used to save them as palm doc files for my PDA, but PDF works so much better.

Jon A.

Mark, my only experience was playing one of the previous incarnations back in the early PS2 days. John Nadzam had a copy. It was a game, and it had mecha in it, and you did kind of a Quake deathmatch thing, but it just wasn't much fun. I had a lot more fun with the Zone of the Enders game that came with the Metal Gear Solid 3 demo.

Jessica, your views on kitty socialization should be an inspiration to the world, and I subscribe to them wholeheartedly. I've known way too many people who were co-dependants of their cats, not owners.

Jon A.

And the same thing goes for dogs and children.

Ginger was sufficiently socialized even by Jessica's standards. I miss him.

We got Zippy from the shelter already with his head full of short circuits, and while I had made some progress with him compared to his original state, the entire reason he needs the pill is that his head is unusually full of short circuits right now even for him.

Ah well - I fail at the Jessica Cat-Training Standard this time. :)

My cats know full well that they are not ALLOWED to claw or bite me. The best they can do is piteous meowing while trying to escape (without clawing or biting).

Generally speaking, one may securely wrap one's cat in a big beach-sized bath towel. Fold front legs and back legs as if cat is lying down. Wrap cat so that the only exposed part is the head, taking care not to suffocate the cat or strangle it.

Put cat on ground, on its back, between your two knees. You should be kneeling, here, with the swaddled cat between your knees, looking up. DO NOT KNEEL ON CAT, just beside it.

Using non-dominant hand, pry open cat mouth.

With other hand, drop pill into cat mouth, aiming towards the back of the tongue.

Use previous hand to hold cat mouth closed and tilted skyward until you think the cat has swallowed.

(If cat will not allow you to swaddle it without clawing or biting, then you have an insufficiently socialized cat and you basically have to tolerate the little shit the way it is until you have time to beat the cat so that has a better grasp on the no clawing and no biting thing. In the event that you do not have the time or inclination to retrain your cat before pilling it, a pair of welding gloves might be quite helpful.)

-- Jessica

I own two delightfully affectionate, well-socialized, friendly cats who do not claw or bite humans, even under extreme provocation. It is indeed possible to manage this standard of behavior without ruining or abusing a cat. Nornor and Youbee also come when called, sit on command, and ignore food unless it is placed on the floor for them. People who achieve less with their cats simply aren't trying very hard.

Edited by author 08-27-2008 03:59 PM
Ordinarily AC wouldn't make much of an impression on me, but I love really huge and complicated boss fights, and so if you walk up to me saying "this entire game is about the player's giant robot vs. city-sized war machines"... Well, ya know, it'll turn my head.

Edit - Jon, what is your experience with the series, actually? I've never played one.

-- Mark
From the rumors I've heard it sounds like one of those games where I'd better preorder it if I want Gamestop to get a copy in at all. :-/

Stayed home from work today. I've got some kind of cold/sinus infection that was storming the office this week. Not horribly sick, but the room kind of spins a little more than I would like.

Mark: Armored Core? Really? I never thought much of the series. Though, apparently they have an all-star set of designers this time out.

Jon A.

And the worst part is, Wonder Woman is all passive aggressive about it, to add insult to injury.

You wouldn't think Wonder Woman would need to be passive aggressive.

In other news, I... I suddenly want this game more than anything in the world.

-- Mark

Economic Haiku!

Write some, and get free stuff!

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/

No, not spamming. What Would Comrade Stalin Do sent it to me.

Having done this a lot, you take the towel, you wrap the cat so it's legs are contained, and then you sort of hug it while sticking the pill all the way down it's throat.

OR... you buy a nifty "pill gun" which you stick mostly down the cat's throat, and then fire it way down into the esophagus. Hold the cat for a bit so it swallows, and then let it go.

SubPrioress Semicolon Sue

I definitely need to adjust my approach, one way or another - I need those fingers on my hands and that blood *inside* my body!

Yes. How else will our alien overlords be able to advertise -

Humans. Melts in your beak, not on your pseudopod.


Jess may be able to attests to best cat wrapping methods, but I found sometimes the pin-like-a-wrestler-on-the-floor method better than wrap-cat-like-tamale method.

The second method usually requires catching them unawares. When does that happen? When they sleep. Bwwwaahaha!!



Eva was nice, but to reiterate Jon A's sentiment the TV series appeared to be a bit drawn out.

Gendo Ikari: Shinji another Angel! Get it!

Shinji: I'm suffering internal angst here Dad. Get bent!

Gendo: You suck Shinji! Suck it up and whack some angel!

Shinji: Grrrrr. Arrrrghhh!! Die!!!11!1!1one!1! [Splat] Why do I keep doing this?

Gendo: You'll know when we all turn into raspberry jelly.

[Gendo exit stage left]

END ACT III


The movies were just a disturbing revenge on the fanbois. You want an ending eh? Let's see yer little psyche handle this!



Never saw Gasaraki or Dual. I dunno if they came out right before or after my time went slipping away into house repairs and moving.

It seemed like anime starting popping up fast and furious and I couldn't keep up. Heck. Stand Alone Complex was a herculean feat to watch.

Although as a side note both Eva and GiTS focused a bit on the theme of the self. What is the self? What is it to be me? How do I fit in with everyone else in the world? And the most popular- Why does crap happen to me?



Mmmm.. Existential Raspberry Jelly. It's the surrealiest!

I definitely need to adjust my approach, one way or another - I need those fingers on my hands and that blood *inside* my body! :)

Today, for example, pilling him was so violent that he ended up destroying one of my favorite artworks, which was hanging four feet up the wall five feet away from where I was pilling him.

You need to give him the sedative before the hallucinogen. He thought the artwork was an alien trying to attack him.

--Jon

Abner, you might try wrapping him in a towel first, then the drugs. Makes them less likely to damage things, including yourself.

Craig R.

The movie was very much altered from the comic books (for example, they left out the long, involved satanic cults plotline as I recall). It was better ... but still not good.

BTW, my kitty is now on drugs, and it seems to be doing wonders for his disposition in general.

On the other hand, the actual act of pilling him with the drugs is proving ... painful. Today, for example, pilling him was so violent that he ended up destroying one of my favorite artworks, which was hanging four feet up the wall five feet away from where I was pilling him.

Ugh.

Saith the Abner:
If I recall correctly it starts off with Wonder Woman leading a band of women to kill all the men in their vicinity (who were, admittedly, apparently all bad men), then Superman trying to argue that she had done a bad thing and basically failing utterly to make a case that killing people is bad.

Yeah, they left that part in the animated movie. And the worst part is, Wonder Woman is all passive aggressive about it, to add insult to injury.

Later on, she crashes the Invisible Jet.

Saw the new Mercs 2 trailer on the Pandemic website. Oh no you di'n't! Indeed.

Jon A.

No, I'm probably not going to shut up about that game until sometime next week. Sorry.