Notes from the Aboveground

URGENT: Share or crashspace at Darkover

dzieger@gmail.com — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:37:50 GMT

Anne and I are planning to attend Darkover, but haven't made hotel arrangements yet. We can afford a room if one is available, but it would help to share to defray costs (assuming there are even any rooms left.

Alternately, we're looking for crash space.

703-537-8105

Looking for room share or floor space at (& ideally, ride to) Shore Leave

dzieger@gmail.com — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:01:03 GMT

It will be just me. I'd like to take in the Friday and Saturday festivities -- mostly the Filk, I'm not much of a media fan. Whether I can stay over Saturday night depends on money involved.

If anyone is traveling from points south of Reston VA and can give me a ride without undue inconvenience, it would help a lot -- we have only one car at the moment.

Willing to babysit as long as it doesn't overlap with _all_ of the stuff I want to get to.

703-860-0796 / dzieger @ gmail.com

A creative summer camp option for DC-area parents without dinero

dzieger@gmail.com — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:35:09 GMT

Hi guys:

Anne here. How's everyone? I miss socializing with y'all, but I'm busy as heck. Sometimes I feel like a hamster on a wheel, without the reward of nice tasty pellets when I'm done. :-)

Anyway, summer is here, and we still don't have a *&*^^ summer camp in place for our boys. (Non-parents, you wouldn't *believe* what it costs; think about $1600 to $2000 a month. Yikes!) But I have an idea of how to solve the problem--and if you're in the DC metro, and your offspring is bored and idle too, we might be able to help each other.. For details check out http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/kid/1244741005.html. Would love to get your feedback as well.

Chirp!

dzieger@gmail.com — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:03:08 GMT

10:11 @jephjacques "meh" is just the retarded nephew of "feh," which is Yiddish for "Fuck that noise." #

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Chirp!

dzieger@gmail.com — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:12:41 GMT

00:48 @loresjoberg (re: Q-tips) aaaaahhh! get out of my head! (addressed to you, but come to think of it, sometimes apropos of the q-tip itself). #
00:49 @loresjoberg (re: Q-tips again) I'd keep 'em out of the house, stay outta trouble, but my kid's got an N64, and there's contacts to clean... #
00:59 @pennjillette Finnish pop-up ads suck as much as American ones. Don't know if this is comforting or disappointing, but it _is_ trivial. #
01:02 @maddow (re: whiling away...) you...have time to...do stuff? Man, I'm slacking off just posting here, and I don't even have a job! I suck ;) #
01:08 @cklouis ..and I didn't even know you were developing a show -- promotional utility of twitter-presence validated. Congrats, and good luck! #
01:13 @loresjoberg Me, I reach for the noise-screwer* somewhere between the words "anime" and "themed." *thanks, btw, for another fine neologism. #

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Chirp!

dzieger@gmail.com — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:03:33 GMT

22:53 Why, you ask, have I, of all men, chosen you, of all other men, to borrow money from? Let me tell you a story... #lyttlelytton #
22:54 Why, you ask, have I, of all men, chosen you, of all other men, to borrow five dollars from? Let me tell you a story... #lyttlelytton #
22:54 Slight edit there, but it makes all the difference #

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Bender's back, baby! New Futurama episodes are in our future - TV Squad

dzieger@gmail.com — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:23:52 GMT

New Futurama episodes are in our future - TV Squad

...and no one will have to punish anyone for the cancellation!

Chirp!

dzieger@gmail.com — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:03:17 GMT

23:27 @pintsize0101 dammit, you just ruined the word "jacuzzi" for me. Bad as the 1st time I saw "vagina" paired with "dentata." Back to therapy. #

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Chirp!

dzieger@gmail.com — Fri, 22 May 2009 23:03:55 GMT

17:44 @reneengstrom "firing the surgeon general" #euphemismforwanking (title of a song full of examples: tinyurl.com/r273vz ) #

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Medical expenses--and how we hope to get them paid

dzieger@gmail.com — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:32:02 GMT

Here below, pretty much unexpurgated, is a post from our friend MammaSteed. It's pretty self-explanatory; all we can add is thank you in advance for any Web jobs or such you might be ready to get done. Oh, and that we're good, we're fast and we're cheeep.

It appears that Darren and Anne urgently need some cash. Anne needs to get into a special medical program at Johns Hopkins, and there is an upfront fee that the hospital wants in cash. Although they are doing all right on the day-to-day stuff, they just don't have the extra money to cover the entrance fee.

Nevertheless, Darren and Anne aren't looking for charitable handouts. What they're hoping for is a little bit of paid work. If you've got something in their skillsets that needs doing, and you've got some money, perhaps you could please consider hiring one of them to do the job.

Darren is a web designer by trade. His work includes:
http://www.royzimmerman.com/
http://www.otherworldsandlands.com/

My personal experience of Darren's web design is that he's brilliant with the visual "look" of the site (the "design" aspect of web design), but likes to break unordered lists *grin* (I had been withholding his name from my previous posts, as I didn't know whether he wanted anonymity or not... now I know that he's looking for recognition.)

Anne is a writer and a marketer (sales person) by trade. Her specialty is marketing writing. A gallery of Anne's work is at http://annezieger.com/default.aspx

You can reach anne at anneczieger@gmail.com, or darren at dzieger@gmail.com.

More Doctors Smoke Camels (1950's Print Ad)

dzieger@gmail.com — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:56:56 GMT

More Doctors Smoke Camels (1950's Print Ad)
Originally uploaded by darrenzieger

Found this gem on the back cover of an old Life magazine from a yard sale. Amazing.

Chirp!

dzieger@gmail.com — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:05:20 GMT

10:31 Waiting for the FIOS guy. Tonight, we get Adult Swim back! #
10:33 Do you hear me Comcast? - you dropped CartoonNetwork from your basic package and I switched to Verizon. I assure you I'm not the only one. #

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Animation Meme

dzieger@gmail.com — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:25:09 GMT

[ ] what you haven't seen or haven't finished
[X] or Bold what you loved [I also have XX for double-love -- Tom]
[O] or Strike for what you disliked
[-] what you thought was just okay or neutral

Classic Disney
--------------
[-] 101 Dalmatians (1961)
[X] Alice in Wonderland (1951)
[-] Bambi (1942)
[X] Cinderella (1950)
[-] Dumbo (1941)
[X] Fantasia (1940)
[X] Lady and the Tramp (1955)
[X] Mary Poppins (1964)
[X] Peter Pan (1953)
[X] Pinocchio (1940)
[X] Sleeping Beauty (1959)
[X] Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
[ ] Song of the South (1946)

Disney's Dark Age
-----------------
[-] The Aristocats (1970)
[ ] The Black Cauldron (1985)
[-] The Fox and the Hound (1981)
[-] The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
[X] The Jungle Book (1967)*
[X] The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)*
[O] Oliver and Company (1986)
[X]Pete's Dragon (1977)
[X] Rescuers, The (1977)
[ ] Robin Hood (1973)
[ ] The Sword In The Stone (1963)*

*I really don't think of these as part of any "dark age", given that Walt was alive and well when working on them -- except for the last part of Pooh

The Disney Renaissance
----------------------
[-] Aladdin (1992)
[X] Beauty and the Beast (1991)
[ ] A Goofy Movie (1995)
[-] Hercules (1997)
[-] Hunchback of Notre Dame, The (1996)
[X] The Lion King (1994)
[-] The Little Mermaid (1989)
[-] Mulan (1998)
[O] Pocahontas (1995)
[ ] The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
[-] Tarzan(1999)

Disney's Modern Age
-------------------
[ ] Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
[ ] Bolt (2008)
[ ] Brother Bear (2003)
[ ] Chicken Little (2005)
[-] Dinosaur (2000)
[-] Emperor's New Groove, The (2000)
[ ] Fantasia 2000 (2000)
[ ] Home on the Range (2004)
[X] Lilo & Stitch (2002)
[ ] Meet the Robinsons (2007)
[ ] Treasure Planet (2002)

Pixar
-----
[X] A Bug's Life (1998)
[X] Cars (2006)
[XX] Finding Nemo (2003)
[XX] The Incredibles (2004)
[XX] Monsters Inc. (2001)
[XX] Ratatouille (2007)
[XX] Toy Story (1995)
[XX] Toy Story 2 (1999)
[XX] Wall-E (2008)

Don Bluth
---------
[ ] All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989)
[-] An American Tail (1986)
[ ] An American Tail: Fieval Goes West
[-] Anastasia (1997)
[O] The Land Before Time (1988)
[ ] The Pebble and the Penguin (1995)
[ ] Rock-a-Doodle (1991)
[X] The Secret of NIMH (1982)
[ ] Thumbelina (1994)
[-] Titan AE (2000)
[ ] A Troll in Central Park (1994)

Claymation
----------
[ ] The Adventures of Mark Twain (1986)
[X] Chicken Run (2000)
[XX] Corpse Bride (2005)
[XX] James and the Giant Peach (1996)
[XX] Nightmare Before Christmas, The (1993)
[ ] Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
[ ] Coraline (2009)

CGI Glut
---------------------
[X] Antz (1998)
[ ] Happy Feet (2006)
[ ] Kung Fu Panda (2008)
[-] Madagascar (2005)
[ ] Monster House (2006)
[ ] Over the Hedge (2006)
[ ] Polar Express, The (2004)
[X] Shrek (2001)
[O] Shrek 2 (2004)
[-] Shrek The Third

Imports
--------
[ ] Arabian Knight (aka The Thief and the Cobbler) (1995)
[ ] The Last Unicorn (1982)
[X] Light Years
[XXX] Triplets of Belleville, The (2003)
[ ] Persepolis (2007)
[ ] Waltz With Bashir (2008)
[XX] Watership Down (1978)
[XX] When the Wind Blows (1988)
[X] Yellow Submarine (1968)

Studio Ghibli/Miyazaki
-------------
[ ] Grave of the Fireflies (just got it today; looking forward to checking it out)
[ ] Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
[ ] Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
[ ] Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986)
[ ] Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)
[ ] My Neighbors The Yamadas
[ ] My Neighbor Totoro (1993)
[ ] Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
[ ] Only Yesterday
[ ] Pom Poko (Tanuki War)
[ ] Porco Rosso (1992)
[ ] Princess Mononoke (1999)
[XX] Spirited Away (2002)
[ ] Whisper of the Heart
[ ] The Cat Returns (2002)

Satoshi Kon
-----------
[ ] Millennium Actress (2001)
[ ] Paprika (2006)
[-] Perfect Blue (1999)
[ ] Tokyo Godfathers (2003)
[ ] Memories - "Magnetic Rose" (1995)

Shinkai Makoto
------------
[ ] She and Her Cat (1999)
[ ] Voices of a Distant Star (2001)
[ ] The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)
[ ] 5 Centimeters per Second (2007)

Other Anime Films
[ ] Akira (1989)
[ ] Appleseed
[ ] Appleseed: Ex Machina
[ ] Arcadia of My Youth (U.S. Title - Vengeance of the Space Pirate)
[ ] Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2003)
[ ] The Dagger of Kamui (U.S. Title - Revenge of the Ninja Warrior)
[ ] Dirty Pair: Project Eden
[ ] End of Evangelion
[ ] Fist of the North Star
[ ] Galaxy Express 999
[ ] Ghost in the Shell (1996)
[ ] The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
[ ] Lensmen
[ ] Macross: Do You Remember Love (U.S. Title - Clash of the Bionoids)
[ ] Metropolis (2001)
[ ] Neo-Tokyo
[ ] Ninja Scroll
[ ] Patlabor the Movie
[ ] The Professional: Golgo 13
[ ] Project A-ko
[ ] Robot Carnival
[ ] Robotech: The Shadow Chronicle
[ ] Silent Mobius
[ ] Space Adventure Cobra
[ ] Steamboy (2004)
[ ] Sword of the Stranger
[ ] Unico and the Island of Magic
[ ] Urotsukidoji: The Movie
[-] Vampire Hunter D
[ ] Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust
[ ] Wings of Honneamise: Royal Space Force

Cartoons For Grown-Ups
----------------------
[X] American Pop
[X] The Animatrix (2003)
[-] Beavus and Butthead Do America (1996)
[ ] Cool World
[ ] Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
[ ] Final Fantasy: Advent Children
[ ] Fire & Ice
[X] Fritz the Cat (1972)
[X] Heavy Metal (1981)
[ ] Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)
[ ] Hey Good Looking
[ ] Lady Death
[ ] A Scanner Darkly (2006)
[X] South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
[ ] Street Fight (AKA - Coonskin)
[ ] Waking Life (2001)

Other Animated Movies I Can't Categorize
-------------------------------
[ ] Animal Farm
[ ] Animalympics
[X] Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon The Movie
[ ] Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
[ ] The Brave Little Toaster (1988)
[ ] Bravestarr: The Movie
[ ] Care Bears: The Movie
[XX] Charlotte's Web (1973)
[ ] Fern Gully
[ ] G.I. Joe: The Movie
[ ] Gobots: Battle of the Rock Lords
[ ] He-Man & She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword
[X] The Hobbit
[ ] The Iron Giant (1999)
[ ] Justice League: The New Frontier
[XX] Lord of the Rings
[ ] Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1992)
[ ] My Little Pony: The Movie
[X] Pink Floyd's The Wall (1982)
[-] The Prince of Egypt (1998)
[ ] Powerpuff Girls: The Movie
[ ] Quest For Camelot (1999)
[ ] Ringing Bell
[ ] Road to El Dorado, The (2000)
[ ] Rock & Rule
[ ] Space Jam
[ ] Starchaser: The Legend of Orin
[ ] Superman: Doomsday
[ ] The Swan Princess
[ ] Transformers: The Movie (1986)
[ ] Wizards
[X] Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
[ ] Wonder Woman
[ ] Balto
[ ] Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

Chirp!

dzieger@gmail.com — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:07:36 GMT

01:12 ..hey, my eyes are up here...: plinky.com/links/KRN #fancyclothes #

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..hey, my eyes are up here...

dzieger@gmail.com — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 05:12:32 GMT

Man Bra

In business or other formal settings, I find that wearing some sort of upper-body covering, be it a t-shirt, pinstripes, or the pelt from my most recent Mastodon hunt, is de rigeur; because it's hard for people to take you seriously when they're mesmerized by the motion of your pendulous man-boobs.

Main Selling Point of a Flying Car

dzieger@gmail.com — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:20:31 GMT

"It's a flying car."

(if you need more than that to engage your enthusiasm, leave the dealership and check yourself into the county morgue.)

Chirp!

dzieger@gmail.com — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:03:48 GMT

18:17 Just added myself to the wefollow.com twitter directory under: #songwriter #webdesign #socialist #

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Quote o' the Day

dzieger@gmail.com — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:48:38 GMT

"If investing in single-payer healthcare, green energy, affordable housing, infrastructure, and mass transportation became normal ways of creating living wage jobs, then the argument that we must build weapons in order to have jobs would collapse." -- David Swanson

Random Trivial Shit That Bothers or Interests Me

dzieger@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:32:52 GMT

<b>Part 1 of a potentially infinite series: a Jermaine Jackson Lyric from 30 years ago:</b>

"Why don't you do what you do
When you did what you did to me"

A grammatologicotemporal train wreck.

I'd be willing to let this go and grant Mr. Jackson poetic license if making that phrase make sense would somehow mess up the scansion or make it sound awkward.

But really, changing it to either

Why don't you do what you do
When you do what you did to me

or

Why don't you do what you did
When you did what you did to me

...the latter making more sense in the context of the song -- would involve switching a single, one-syllable word for another, and would not introduce anything new to the mind-numbing little "do" / "did" scheme.

Most importantly, it would have freed up the billions of neuron-minutes I've wasted over the past 30 years on this microscopic dot on the edge of a asterisk in the footnotes to the appendix of the annals of late 20th century pop culture.

I've made an extremely trivial discovery!

dzieger@gmail.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:37:00 GMT

I've found that by deleting the text from the "Name" property of a link on my Firefox bookmarks toolbar, I am left with just the favicon, freeing up room for 3 or 4 times as many bookmarks. If I can figure out how to assign a custom favicon to the ones using just the default blank one, I'll have completely pwned that fucking toolbar.

[sfx: crickets chirping]

Yeah, well, it's exiting to me, dammit.

Roy Zimmerman - I Approve This Message

dzieger@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:32:16 GMT

In celebration of the New World Order...

Having a windows XP problem and a Laptop AC adapter problem...

dzieger@gmail.com — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:53:13 GMT

...and I'm reasonably sure that banging my head against the wall isn't going to yield any further solutions (though it's possible that I'm in the control group and have been using the placebo wall).

Anyway. onward. (with the relevant facts bolded to distinguish them from my usual insane ramblings)

Most urgently:

The AC adapter for Anne's laptop seems to have decided to take the early-retirement package. I'm fairly sure the problem in internal to the brick and not an issue with one of the wires.

It's an easy enough item to replace through any number of vendors for $25-30, if you're willing to order online and wait for delivery. Or if you're willing to pay $100 for a universal adapter from Best Buy.

However, Anne has work she needs to do immediately if not sooner, and a lot of the data she needs is stuck on the laptop hard drive.

So, we need to either a) borrow an adapter from someone who has a compatible one they can spare (specs below), or the address of a brick-and-mortar business that can sell us a compatible adapter for somewhat less than the meager amount of cash we have on hand to live on until the 15th.

Or find someone who knows how to fix laptop adapters and is available on Saturday.

The adapter in question is for a Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook; markings as follows:

65W AC adapter
Model No.: LA65NS0-00

PA-12 Family
DP/N: DF263
PA-1650-06D3

Input:AC 100-240V~1.5A
dc 19.5V 3.34A

================

XP problem:

I recently decided that it would be easier to format my hard drive and re-install everything than to keep fighting one particularly tenacious Trojan. The fucker was corrupting my anti -virus/ -malware/ -spyware software as I ran it, and giving it the Borg treatment, turning it against me before they could lay a hash on it.

[skip down a bit if you want to get to actual information; I had a little too much fun with the next paragraph]

After three days on my hands and knees, disinfecting the system, running and re-running every security package I could find until my mouse itself developed carpal tunnel, I was ready to rip out the drive, smash it to pieces, melt down the pieces, gather them up, dip them in liquid nitrogen, smash them again, feed them into a wood-chipper, collect the shreds, smash the wood-chipper to bits, set it on fire, come back the next day and collect the ashes and the shredded remains of the drive in a toxic waste barrel, ship it to somewhere within a 5 mile radius of Chernobyl, apply for a passport, book a flight to the Ukraine, purchase a second-hand hazmat suit from a local street vendor, make my way to the drop-point, dig a 10' deep hole, bury the hard-drive-shreds-and-wood-chipper-ashes-full toxic waste barrel in the hole, piss on it, fill the hole halfway with molten lead, and the rest with (in no particular order) a layer of pigs' blood; a layer of orphaned children's unanswered letters to Santa; a layer of bones and artifacts from a desecrated Indian burial ground; 10,045 mimeographed copies of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion;" 200 lbs of asbestos mixed with the liquefied remains of Paris Hilton, Ann Coulter and the Olsen Twins to form a thick smooth paste (if paste comes out too thick, add at least one liquified Bush twin); a layer of concentrated pig squeals from a Chicago slaughterhouse; 1 fluffy bunny (diced); seal it all off with 36" of solid iron, then take out the entire vicinity with a suitcase nuke.

When that proved impractical, decided to just rebuild the system.

I reformatted my HDD, reinstalled XP (SP2), and very carefully went about rebuilding my system - any data not originating on a commercial disk, I scanned by three separate utilities.

Everything was running just fine until I tried to install Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, etc.)

First I was told I need to upgrade to SP3. I did.

But when I tried again to run the install, I'd get this infuriating thing where "setup.exe" would start to load for about 5 seconds, then, nothing.

The task manager would indicate that the program was in memory. It just wasn't doing anything.

This is happening any time I try to install software that isn't completely contained in a single exe file.

No issues downloading, say, ccleaner.exe, running it and installing successfully. But - and I've tried other software to be sure - when it's a more complex install, where installthisyoujerk.exe invokes getlost.msi which references wherewedsendthefilesifwedidnthateyou.xml for where to distribute the 14,000 files in the (why did I) "payloads" (for software that hates me?) folder... then the application acts like a cell phone that just powered up to tell you it's out of batteries and is going to shut down again.

I've gone spelunking though every area of the system I know enough about to tweak without causing the CPU to spontaneously dissolve in a cloud of dust, and nothing seems to have the slightest effect.

I even found a registry edit to fix the exe file association, which has helped some people with similar issues. No luck.

Anyone have a clue what's happening

Thanks in advance for any and all insight,

DZ

Chirp!

dzieger@gmail.com — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:06:55 GMT

01:57 Having a major revelation: Go to tinyurl.com/7dne7w to discover the ancient secret behind the latest stupid #^%ing Web meme... #
09:20 Graffiti above the urinal at the local McD's: "ZEITGEIST." ... I agree. #

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A Major Revelation! Please Digg!

dzieger@gmail.com — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:50:03 GMT

omnomnom
Originally uploaded by darrenzieger

It came to me in a flash...now I know where it all began.

Om - the alpha. Nom - the omega.

Om - to regulate your breathing, critical when biting off more that you can chew.

Nom - a name, I call myself.

It all fits together.

Coincidence? I think not.

==========

Please Digg this. The people need to know what I have discovered; and if anything will get you onto the front page of Digg these days, it's a unique iteration of "om nom nom."

Songs, etc.

dzieger@gmail.com — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:46:07 GMT

I've been looking for a good way to post my songs to this journal and other places, and I found this widget on a site called reverbnation.com, which I'd signed up with a year ago and forgotten about. I was actually hoping for something I could place permanently on the sidebar, but what can you do.
There are currently 7 songs and 2 instrumentals, with more coming soon as I upload more files.

As always with my recordings (until I get my home studio squared away): these are 10 to 20 year old demos, ranging in performance and audio quality from decent to crappy; but I'm fond of the material. Actually, the two instrumentals are even older, recorded on the sequencer of a Casio synth (as opposed to one of their toy keyboards).

Anyway, enjoy.