Stress

I had a weirdly stressful day today. I’m so glad it’s over. The dregs of 2009 are still lingering, and I wish they would just go away already.

For the last time, I don’t like Mudkips!

Have you ever had someone try and explain a meme to you exhaustively, hoping at any minute, you’ll actually laugh? And then when you don’t, they assume you don’t get it? And the whole time you’re thinking, “That meme hasn’t been funny for years. Where has this guy been?”

Or maybe it’s a brand new meme, but you just don’t find it particularly funny. You still have to endure it, or abstain from the internet. (And let’s face it, that’s not really an option for any of us.)

I hate to say it, but the meme meme is starting to get old, my friends. Or maybe I am. *sigh*

Netflix

Alas, how I will miss your 8-at-a-time plan, but winter break is over, and I must return to reality. See you again this summer, maybe.

A Christmas Wish

Dear God,

I have only one wish this Christmas. Let tomorrow be the crappiest Christmas I’ll ever have. I realize this is a strange request, so allow me to explain. Never before have I felt so broke, stressed, and unprepared for the holidays. I have very little to offer friends and family in the way of gifts this year. I am ashamed of this, and only hope they can accept our love instead.

But all of my friends and family are healthy and well. We’ve managed to weather the economic storm of 2009 without any major setbacks. We still have our home, our cars, our clothes, and our sanity. We haven’t gone hungry for even one day.

So even though this Christmas is kind of a bummer, I can only sincerely hope this is the worst I’ll ever face.

Amen.

Avatar

There are no words. Just go see it.

A Taste of Their Own Medicine

It seems that a lot of guys are now openly trashing New Moon. I think I know why. This movie was enjoyed by females in overwhelming numbers. Most of them went to ogle Jacob with his shirt off and/or drool over Edward’s brooding good looks. Women were openly giggling, screaming, drooling, and fainting over these hot guys. And I think the rest of you don’t like the competition.

Guess what, gentlemen? YOU’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS. Every action movie released EVER has hot chicks, quite often taking their clothes off. So deal with it, and let us enjoy our moment for once.

OMG, change your baby’s diaper!

So, I’m sitting at the allergy clinic, waiting my 30-minute sentence to make sure they don’t need to stab me with an epi pen and rush me to the hospital, and this couple just walked in with a really stinky baby. I almost puked a little. She obviously has a poopy diaper.

But the couple just plopped her down in the play area without even taking her into the bathroom to change her! Now, I can understand if she let one loose in the car on the way over, but there’s a nice, big, private bathroom right by the entrance here with a changing table.

Seriously gross.

Television

So I did the math, and between all the shows I’d like to watch on a regular basis, it’s well over a 20-hour-per-week commitment. Now, I watch TV for entertainment. What the networks have given me this fall is a part-time job. I already have two jobs. I don’t need a third.

We have an HD DVR in the living room, but with the silly 160 GB hard drive restriction, it fills up pretty fast, especially with HD content. But we also have no less than three computers in the house with a total of five TV tuners all feeding one massive home server storage repository. These shows can be viewed from the HTPC, or any other computer in the house — just not in HD glory until the multi-stream CableCard tuners come out next year.

So, I had to make some choices about what to watch live (which requires agreement from the husband), what to record in HD (which will need to be watched within a few days), and what to archive in SD for later viewing. Forcing my hand in this decision is the fact that many of these shows come on at the same time.

Treating this as a job, I naturally used tools I would use at work. In Excel, I created a combination of spreadsheets to organize the shows by priority. The result is shown here, as entered into Microsoft Outlook.

Green: Watching Live
Yellow: Recording on HD DVR
Red: Recording on HTPC and archiving on Server

Naturally, all the reality shows are 90% fluff and commercials, so those go straight to the HTPC for later viewing with the benefit of fast forward. The Daily Show and Colbert Report aren’t available in HD, and I often go to bed too early to watch those live anyway, so those get recorded on the HTPC. And there’s no way I’m convincing my husband to watch Vampire Diaries with me.

The rest was mostly negotiated with my hubby, based on our mutual preferences. Both green and yellow shows will be scheduled on the HD DVR, and we’ll watch whichever ones we feel like at the time. This is just a rough estimate.

And finally, as a backup, everything in green and yellow is also scheduled to record either on the HTPC or my desktop, just in case the HD DVR fills up. Since the server has over 9TB of storage, space really isn’t an issue.

So there, the planning phase of this job is complete. I sure hope this pays well…

Mordor

Need I say more?

Zombie Plans

Okay, so everyone just loves to talk about their zombie plans. What’s your zombie plan, Robyn? Well, I have come up with the perfect plan.

BECOME A VAMPIRE.

I will begin searching for a friendly vampire to bite me immediately. And when all you idiots are running from the zombies, I’ll be walking around, unharmed, and in full possession of my brains, thank you very much. Hell, I may even side with the zombies, so watch your back!

That’s about as realistic a zombie plan as I’ve ever heard.

(Relevant picture of Vampire Bella is relevant.)