Varion

03.08.2006

One of my favorite people to pick on during the local news was channel 48's Varion Walton. This was mainly due to her restaurant Scorecard" segment, where she would go over the health department inspection scores for local restaurants, highlighting the highest of the high scores and the lowest of the lows.

Like all news stories that are stressed during a slow news week, her scorecard segments were always underscored with a "you need to watch this to find out where it's safe to eat" tone. God forbid somebody would find a hair in there soup, because Varion would be there cracking the story. You would think nobody had ever found a cat tooth or fingernail in a Chinese take out order before (both of these were true stories around here, by the way).

It got to where when they would start to show Varion Walton, I would instead refer to her as "Varion Healthy", since it comes out "Very Unhealthy", because I knew that some place I liked to go eat was about to score a 12 on their health inspection. And I could only learn about it on channel 48.

It seems as if Varion has left to return to her hometown of Mobile. I fear for the tourist trap restaurants with roaches preparing to attack right before their health inspection. Varion will be there, ready to report the details. Food service staff with open drink containers in a non-assigned space? Varion will let you know. Tuna fish too warm. Varion will warn you.

Alas Varion, I will miss ye. Especially since the reigns of the restaurant scorecard have been passed to Will Kennedy. How am I going to make a play on words and health with "Kennedy"?

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Javascript Fun

03.07.2006

Today is more of a post for me to be able to look up something later than anything else. If you're looking for some nifty Javascript, this could also be a good pointer.

An age old problem when making interactive websites has always been trying to reorder a list and a good interface. Lists were always a favorite source of programming exercises back in the school days of yore, but the problem back then was how to create the logic to handle re-ordering them, not necessarily a good interface to make the reordering happen.

Enter Drag & Drop Sortable Lists with JavaScript and CSS. A nice "drop it in your directory and go" solution. It casts <li> tags as buttons and lets you drag them around to change the order of items appearing in the list. As a nice addendum, they even have examples of how to save the reordered list.

Now I'm going to have dragable lists everywhere!

Permalink programming/interweb

Chaotic Evil Human Barbarian

03.02.2006

The other day I came across one of those "what type of person are you" quizes, this time to see what type of D&D character you are. I've forgotten a lot of the details of the character statistics given, but it turnes out I'm a Chaotic Evil Human Barbarian. I don't think I would argue with that.

Just for filler, here are the details:

You Are A:

Chaotic Evil Human Barbarian

Alignment:
Chaotic Evil characters are the most 'evil' people out there. They are willing to do anythingto get ahead, and will kill anyone who stands in their way. A chaotic evil person sees no value in order and governments, and believes to the utmost in the tenant that 'Might Makes Right'.

Race:
Humansare the 'average' race. They have the shortest life spans, and because of this, they tend to avoid the racial prejudices that other races are known for. They are also very curious and tend to live 'for the moment'.

Primary Class:
Barbarianslive outside the 'civilized' They have tribal goverments, and are often nomads. What they may lack in refinement is balanced by there strength of individual character and ability to survive.

Secondary Class:


Detailed Results:

Alignment:
Law and Chaos:
Law ----- XXXX (4)
Neutral - (-1)
Chaos --- XXXXX (5)

Good and Evil:
Good ---- (-1)
Neutral - (-1)
Evil ---- XXX (3)

Race:
Human ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (20)
Half-Elf - XXXX (4)
Elf ------ X (1)
Gnome ---- XXXXXX (6)
Halfling - XXX (3)
Dwarf ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Half-Orc - XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)

Class:
Fighter -- XXXXX (5)
Barbarian -XXXXXX (6)
Ranger --- XX (2)
Monk ----- XX (2)
Paladin -- XXXXX (5)
Cleric --- XX (2)
Mage ----- (-4)
Druid ---- XX (2)
Thief ---- (-4)
Bard ----- XX (2)

Permalink boardgames random

Broke

02.27.2006

Have you ever noticed that once something goes wrong, you are more apt to notice other things that may have been wrong for a while? If so, then you can imagine what I suddenly went through over the weekend.

My freezer has been acting weird, and by weird I mean not freezing, off and on for the better part of a month. It had been warming up occasionally, but about a month ago I started testing it with a bowl of water. Some days I would look in and see a bowl of water. Some days I would look in and see a bowl of ice. I tried changing the temperature setting, but at best it only seemed to change the length of each cycle (be it water or ice). I started to then search for my paperwork and receipt for the refrigerator, since I remember buying the extended warranty but knew that once I made the phone call for service they would want proof. I found everything, but seeing that a freezer that has been acting goofy for more than a month can't be that important, I put off the phone call.

Saturday I plopped down on the couch to catch oup on some more Star Trek Enterprise. Halfway into episode 52, the finale of season 2, things started to look funny. Everything had a blue shadow. Soon things started to have an additional yellow shadow. I brought up the menu with the remote, and the top line looked like this:

MMMeeennnuuu

My first thought was that the whatever makes the lcd projection tv project, something is out of alignment. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything in the owners manual about how to fix colors out of alignment, so I called Hitachi. Surprisingly fast, an actual human person answered and pointed me to a local approved fixit place, saying it sounded like I may just need a software upgrade. Next time I'll buy a tv with a PHP interface and I can program the damn thing myself. So, I call the fixit place and get a message telling me they're open Mon-Fri (not a lot of good on a Saturday morning). So now I will make a phone call to them bright and early Monday morning. The irony is, from looking at the Google Map of where they are, I think they are about 2 blocks from the place I bought the refrigerator from. Maybe they can carpool to come fix my crap?

Since the big boy tv was now on the fritz, I was forced to watch the smaller tv in the bedroom. It's only a 27" tv, but I swear the thing weighs about 200 lbs. It's been sitting in an entertainment armoire for about 2 years. Over those 2 years, it's been bowing the shelf it's sitting on little by little. It's gotten to the point where I've noticed it but not thought about it, until today. Suddenly it looked like the right side of the tv was about 2 inches lower than the left. Thanks to a tape measure I convinced myself it's only a ¼ inch, but now I'm starting to get paranoid.

I also have a crack in the windshield of the Explorer that's growing with every semi-major change in the temperature. The crack is down low, about even with where I would see the top of the hood, so it's not in the way. But it's there. And it's growing. And I need to get it fixed.

This Saturday is my birthday. For my birthday, I want all my shit to quit breaking. And not just on Saturday. Forever. Is that too much to ask?

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Not The Olympics

02.20.2006

I've never been much for sports, everybody that knows me knows that much. I might watch part of the Super Bowl. I occasionally get sucked into a NASCAR race, but I think that's my subconscious digging into my redneck trailer park roots taking over. With the start of the winter olympics last week, most of my normal television viewing has either been put on hold (such as normal NBC shows) or relegated to reruns (and I don't see the suspense factor of a CSI that I've already seen).

Enter the Russellmania DVD Collection ™. I've been wondering what series I should delve into, and this has given me the perfect opportunity. I had been eyeing the 2 Star Trek series that I haven't watched, and the more I thought about it, the more I was tempted to watch Enterprise. So tempted, in fact, that while the olympic opening ceremonies where on tv, I was watching the Enterprise pilot.

Over the past week (9 days?), I've managed to watch 1½ seasons of Enterprise. I've been approaching the series with an open mind, and so far I have to admit it's a little better than I was expecting. I dare say I'm enjoying it. Luckily, there's no one character that I am driven to hate (a'la the "Wesley Crusher" syndrome). Being a prequel to every other Star Trek series, there are things that you know won't happen and some things you know will. It's staying within these rules that have led my to enjoy Smallville so much. So far, those rules have been doing the same for Enterprise. Maybe they can keep it up for another 2½ seasons - or that should be about 2 weeks for me....

Permalink movies/tv/dvd random