What a BuzzKill

Last week I ordered Firefly: the Complete Series DVD set and Serenity DVD as a package deal on Amazon for just under $38. Sweet deal. Well this sweet deal turned out to be even better for me, since I’m apparently a late-comer to the entire Firefly/Serenity scene.

Back when Firefly first aired on TV, I remember catching most of one episode (I think it was the pilot) and liking it. For whatever reason I never managed to catch it again and as it turns out the series ended up getting cancelled. So last year I see these previews for this movie named Serenity and it looks pretty good. My son and I never got around to seeing it in the theaters, but we vowed to catch it when it came out on DVD.

Back in December Rece and I went to the video store and discovered that it had been released on video, so we rented it. HOLY COW! This movie turned out to be one of the best sci-fi flicks I’ve seen. I mean, it ranked right up there with Star Trek: The Next Generation, in my opinion. We loved it so much that we watched all the extras (except for the commentary) and I learned about the Firefly history of the show. NO WAY! It was at this point that I realized that I must buy not only the movie, Serenity, but the entire Firefly series on DVD. Money around the time was tight because of Christmas, and then Rece’s science camp tuition, etc, so buying them was out of the question. This month my expendable income was back to usual, so I ordered the set after following a digg link to the deal on Amazon.

So far I’ve only had time to watch the first 2 DVDs of the series and I am thoroughly impressed! How this show ended up getting cancelled, I’ll never know. I’ve seen som pretty crappy sci-fi shows go far longer than they should have, but this great show got canned. Go figure.

Anyhow, I’m about ready to go watch some more Firefly now. I just couldn’t contain my excitement about the whole thing. If you’re a sci-fi fan, then do yourself a favor and check it out for yourself!

No surprise there!

You Are Rain

You can be warm and sexy. Or cold and unwelcoming. Either way, you slowly bring out the beauty around you. You are best known for: your touch Your dominant state: changing

Found this interesting article about how a man is being sued for deleting information from his laptop by a company he worked for. It seems like a circular argument to me, so I’m having difficulty understanding how this is going to play out.

A company gives you a laptop for you to work on. You sign an agreement about not using it for personal business and also that you can delete information from the hard drive when you return it. You use it for personal business anyway, the company starts to suspect as much, you delete your personal business (and go so far as to permanently wipe it) from the computer, quit your job, and return the laptop. The company then attempts to recover evidence of your personal business from the hard drive, find that it’s been wiped, then because they don’t have the evidence that you used it for personal business, they sue you based on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, because you deleted possible evidence that they could have used against you – if it were even there at all. Hmm…

Part of it seems to be that the company wanted to get hold of some of his other business info/contacts, hoping to gain some knowledge to use for themselves. Anyhow, I thought it was an interesting read.

This past Friday we had a potluck lunch at work. It was themed off the Academy Awards Show, which was being held the following Sunday. Our staff was asked to bring in a dish and to come up with a name for it somehow derived from the list of Oscar nominees. As usual, I decided to bring my oriental cabbage salad, which has now become a regular dish at our company potlucks – if I don’t bring it, people almost get upset with me!

I must have missed the part about naming my dish, so when I was asked at the last minute what my salad was to be called, I quickly came up with something. To accompany my salad on the buffet table, I made the following sign with the name on it…

(click image for larger version)

Found this funny link on digg this evening while surfing around the web. It just seems funny that somebody would try this. The amazing part is that it didn’t slow Firefox down as much as I would have expected the guy to report it had. It really is an amazing browser!

Wow! What a week! So much has happened that I couldn’t possibly cover it all. Lots of fun, lots of laughs, plenty über geekiness, a couple of nice surprises, and a lot of time spent with friends.

I got to help my best friend celebrate her birthday – twice. Her friends and family were able to surprise her with a birthday dinner 2 nights early. It was great to see her genuinely surprised and I could tell that she was touched by our efforts. On her actual birthday I took her family out to for some delicious sushi (all you can eat – YUM!), then I hung out with them for a few hours afterwards just doing whatever came next. There’s no way that I can sufficiently express how much I appreciate the fact that she was born, which ultimately allowed for her to be such an important part of my life.

My life-long friend, René, was able to drop in for a visit this weekend, as well. We spent a couple of hours looking through my copies of our old junior and high school yearbooks. She’s been experiencing a lot of health problems over the last 4-6 months, but she seemed to be doing much better, which was a relief to see. We had a great time spent talking and relaxing. She’s been my friend since we were 14, which is the longest I’ve ever known anybody, outside of family. She means a lot to me and I’m so fortunate to still have her in my life after so much time has passed.

Today Rece and I went geocaching with a new friend. The three of us walked about 4 miles and found 11 geocaches in less than 3 hours. There were a lot of people on the trail, which meant that we had to be rather creative in searching for, retrieving, and then replacing the caches without attracting any attention to our actions. Stealth was the key. The variety of ways we went about accomplishing our objectives provided us with a lot of laughs and just an overall good time.

Those are just some of the highlights and I assure you that there were a lot more little moments in between that filled my week with a lot of fun and the enjoyment of time with my friends.