Diary of a Network Geek

I know some of my hobbies and obsessions seem rather more costly than is reasonable.

I'll bet most of my readers thought it was a little crazy to even contemplate bidding on ephemera and, well, junk from the Battlestar Galactica set. I suppose, in a way, it is. And, I would imagine that more than a few people who are drawn in by the gravity well of time and energy I like to call The Diary of a Network Geek would find my semisecret urge to create my own props for my own, internal, unpublished science-fiction world, well, a bit odd, to say the least. Well, for those of you who doubt, I share with you Weta Collectibles: Original Rayguns. Look at them. Look at them closely. Now, look at the prices. There's money in those rayguns!

Who's crazy now?

So, yeah, I bid on some Battlestar Galactica items this week.

You know that part of being a full-on network geek like me is being into science fiction, right? Well, it is. And some of the best science fiction on television in the past couple years has been Battlestar Galactica. They're almost done with the series, which, wisely, has a definite story arc and a planned ending. Naturally, they decided to whip up a little frenzy about all this with an auction of genuine, screen-used, props from the show. Only, I think things may not have turned out quite the way they hoped...

Apparently, the recession has hit BSG fans pretty hard. So, I don't feel quite so bad for getting aced out of a couple super-geeky, background props that I really can't afford to spend money on in the first place. Besides, in keeping with the only thing resembling a "New Year's Resolution" I made this year, that I want to produce more than I consume, I should be making stuff like this. In fact, with my latest obsession, photography, I think it might be fun to create "props" for a science-fiction setting of my very own. Between watching all the seasons of Battlestar Galactica out on DVD and watching my Space: Above and Beyond DVDs, well, I'm finding myself inspired to think of some good, old-fashioned science-fiction stories to tell with the camera. Surely, the world could handle a little old school, gritty, space opera complete with photographic illustrations.

Well, we'll see how that goes as things warm up and my garage gets more usable again. If I were to clean it out and make a little room, I could easily have a photography studio and a prop workshop out there.
It would keep me off the streets at night!

Leave it to crazy kids to beat the system.

No, seriously, high school students have found a way to make those pesky red-light ticket cameras work for them. Or, rather, work against their "enemies". According to the Montgomery County Sentinel, some enterprising kids have figured out how to print fake license plates that are good enough to fool the cameras. Armed with those, they borrow cars that look like their target's cars, apply the fake "plate" with their target's information on it, and speed past the cameras. Bingo! Their target gets hit with the speeding ticket. Do it enough times and, well, it gets to be a problem worthy of the Internet news. (And, yeah, I called them "red-light cameras" instead of "speeding cameras" because that's how they use them in Texas.)

Clever kids!

Oh, also, after having Thai curry for lunch yesterday, I'm feeling much better. And, I checked on my peanut butter via the toll-free number on the side of the jar. The nice recorded voice assured me that my precious peanut butter was salmonella-free, so I'm all good. Physically, at least.

Okay, okay, the pressure of regular posting is weighing on me today!

Right, so you regular readers may have noticed that there was nothing new this morning. There will be later this week, but I just wasn't feeling well last night and I was tired, and a little crabby, so I just didn't queue up something for this morning. Honestly? I think I may have gotten tainted peanut butter. I don't know what salmonella tastes like, but I've been queasy since yesterday at lunch when I had some. And, frankly, that strikes me as too much of a coincidence to not be somehow related to the latest public health scare. Oh, well, at least I'll probably end up losing a few pounds!

So, more and better posting tomorrow, I promise.

No, this is not a plea.

Really, I have a giant stack of books to read, so all I need to do is reach randomly into the stack and pull out something miraculous. No, this is to help you, dear reader, pick out something new to read.
As a computer geek, I love anything that programatically generates something new based on previous information. Markov Chains, for instance, are fascinating to me, even if I barely understand them. So, when I saw this website, What should I read next?, I had to share it with you. To use it, go, enter the last good book you read and its author, then clikc the big button. In a few seconds, the page will refresh with a link to what it thinks you meant, which will hopefully be the book you had in mind. Then, click on that link and you'll be taken to a list of suggestions for what you should read next.

I'm not sure I entirely trust it, though, since when I used Choke by Chuck Palahnuik, it returned a bunch of Photoshop books. Still, it's a fun way to get shoved out of your little reading rut! So, go ahead and try it!

It turns out, yes.

So, apparently, being a professional network geek is one of the sexy jobs to train for in 2009, according to an article on MSN Encarta. Which means that, as frustrating as my job can be some days, it's apparently a good gig to have. Hunh, who knew?

I cannot make this stuff up.

So, the military is concerned about their image. I get that. Blogs and other on-line media are incredibly popular and a source of information and opinion that may influence readers. I get that, too. But, the Air Force is so worried about this they apparently have a flowchart to help counter-bloggers do their work. At least, if Wired is to be believed, they do.

Actually? It's not a bad suggestion for how anyone might respond to a blog post or a comment on a blog post that they don't like or with which they disagree. Seriously. Check it out.

You knew someone was going to do this, right?

Okay, given my obsession with the ultimate Nerf weapon, the Vulcan EBF-25, I'm sure many of my readers thought I would be the first person to make super modifications to it. I'm proud to say that I am not. I may be a geek, but I'm not that big of a geek! Those guys are here: Nerf Chaingun Modifications.

Basically, these guys made the EBF-25 four times more awesome by adding a better battery pack and a cooler paint job. The paint job is, I think, self-explanatory. The battery pack, however, is what makes it a chaingun. The bigger, better batteries give the motor which drives the belt more power, which means this already incredible weapon can fire up to four times faster.
I think I may start counting the days until it's warm enough to paint in my garage again...

Speaking of frivolous lawsuits...

Oh, well, I guess I haven't really mentioned that, but, well, this suit being threatened by a group identifying themselves as Knights Templar are doing just that. According to the article in the Register, this group is trying to get the Pope and Vatican to acknowledge that the Catholic Church was politically motivated when they suppressed the Knights Templar back in 1307. Obviously the "threat" is that they'll drag the Holy See through the court system unless this, well, sort of silly, demand is met.

Well, I guess it's nice to know that America isn't the only place that's gotten a little lawyer happy!

Frost

Originally uploaded by Network Geek
I saw Frost/Nixon Friday night.

It's funny, really, because I almost didn't see this movie at all. I'd just gotten some less than stellar news while driving with a friend to see the movie. In fact, I took the call on my cell in his car. Actually, that turned out to be a good thing because I was able to check with him afterward to see how I'd handled the news, since I tend to blank out when under that kind of stress. According to him, I did really well. Not over-reacting or saying anything stupid or inappropriate. (And, no, it wasn't a job interview, but, as per usual, a girl.)

So, in any case, I was a little numb and disappointed and mildly depressed. And, since my friend is a kind soul, I had the offer to see something else, like, for instance, a comedy. But, frankly, none of the comedies still playing at this theater were appealing to me, so we went ahead and saw Frost/Nixon. I expected a rather slow documentary style of movie. I was pleasantly surprised to be quite wrong!
The story, of course, is that of the David Frost and Richard M. Nixon interviews which took place in 1977, after Nixon had left office in disgrace and been pardoned. Now, you may be asking yourself how a movie about a series of interviews between an Australian talkshow host and a disgraced former president could possibly be all that captivating. Certainly, that's what I thought when I heard about the movie. So, I went in braced for being bored out of my mind. It seemed a marginally better time than going home alone, though, so I went anyway. I'm so, so glad I did! At first, I found myself identifying with David Frost who risked everything, his career and all of his personal funds, to make the interviews happen because he was betting that it would put him back on top after being relegated to work that he thought was beneath his career. I completely understood taking that kind of giant risk even though no one believed in him anymore because he knew, deep in his heart, that it was only by taking such a huge risk that he could reap the rewards he desired. As my friend reminded me, if there was nothing to lose, then there was no risk. But, oddly enough, by the end of the movie, I found myself feeling a little sorry for Nixon! By this time, he'd become a broken man. His entire life was based around his political career and when he got caught in the Watergate scandal which forced him to resign, it destroyed him. That's the Nixon that Frank Langella recreates for the screen. And, I have to tell you, he does it amazingly well. I tend to think of Langella as the B-movie vampire actor, but at one point in this movie I was shocked to see Frank Langella on the screen and not Nixon. I had gotten so sucked into his performance that I'd forgotten he wasn't Nixon! Remember, Langella looks nothing like Nixon at all, so this is quite an impressive feat.

There's not much in the way of a complicated plot for this movie and it's hardly worth going into here. Simply put, it's about getting Nixon and Frost together, getting the interviews taped, getting them paid for by sponsors and then getting them on the air. But, the movie is also about getting Nixon to admit wrong-doing in the Watergate burglary and associated scandal. And, it's about the two men and how they verbally wrestled with each other throughout the interviews. Finally, it's about the two men individually, about how they fought their own inner demons, about the choices they made and how that worked out.

I have to say, I loved this movie. I know, partly it was due to me being in the place mentally, emotionally and spiritually that I was, but part of it was just how surprisingly good the film was! I mean, I really was not expecting anyone to be able to make something as boring as interviews interesting, but it was a totally engaging film that moved along so quickly it was a surprise that it was suddenly over.
Brilliant film and I highly recommend it!