Ah, Giant Abraham Lincoln In Space

My fiancee was working on a PowerPoint presentation for her class this morning. The class involved history on slavery as she had a section to do on Lincoln. So, being helpful I sent her these images from a quick google search:
Ah Star Trek. The episode where the Enterprise encounters a giant Abraham Lincoln in space. For some reason she chose not to use the images I sent.
Actually, despite what you may think if you've never seen this episode, it's not bad. It also has the first canon appearance and reference to Kahless, the Klingon Jesus figure as well as Surak, a Vulcan historical figure.

Anyway, there is your classic Trek history lesson for the day.

D&D Podcast

Last year Wizards put out a 8 part podcast series of the folks at Penny Arcade and PvP playing an adventure with Christ Perkins. A couple months ago they started another with Wil Wheaton (of Trek and internet geekdom fame) added to the team. I've quite enjoyed listening to these on my morning commutes and with the last episode wrapping up last week, I'm thinking I can't wait until they do another (and I hope they do)!

High points for me included the awesomeness of Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics), the party Wizard. He pulled out the rolls and rocked the first series, and in this second he did not disappoint. Jokes of his legendary powers throughout the series (You? You are not Jim Darkmagic. Jim Darkmagic is seven feet tall! With a shock of red hair!) had me laughing on the subway with people staring.

Of particular amusement in the final part was Jerry's (the Cleric, Omin) consistent rolling of ones. We've all been there, and you feel sorry for him, as he sounds pretty upset during the final fight when he rolled double ones on his attack (Wil used a power to give him a reroll), but at the same time the banter directed at him was pretty funny. They posted a comic of his final attack with quotes straight from the recording:
And Wil posted a power card of the attack he personally was going to use on Jerry if he missed: "Wheaton's Vicious Cock Punch of Furious Anger"

Anyway, the point of this all is to say the series is a fun way to pass some time.

Wedding Dress Woes

With my fiancee's year trip to Korea, we've already done a lot of planning for our wedding so as to be ready for the fall.

There's a lot of superstition around weddings, and it gets a little ridiculous when you tell people something and they are beside themselves in shock, thinking your relationship is now on the rocks over the littlest thing. Yes, I know what my fiancee's wedding dress looks like, and I don't think the world has ended.

My fiancee occasionally goes on this forum, weddingbells, which is a congregation and focus of all women really obsessed with their weddings (I know, it's fully understandable...biggest day of your life and all...).

She occasionally finds posts like these, where her response is, "I've lost a bit of my hope for humanity":

So we got some of our engagement photos back "edited", and when I loaded them on my computer, I didn't notice they were loaded into my "dress" folder. So he was sitting next to me & we went through the photos, we got to the last e-pic & the next one was of me at the bridal shop in the dress I ordered (when I was trying them on).

I gasped & covered the screen right away....and now I am freaking. I've since been hunting for a new dress (well, just looking online), but can't find one I like nearly as much.

What to do? will he remember my dress? I'm so upset that I was sooo stupid & didn't watch where I loaded the pics.

*sigh*

She would actually consider buying a new dress over this? Whoa...

April Fools' Day - You're Being Watched

An office April Fool's prank.

As my company is a telehealth organization and thus deals with both patient data and video cameras, you can imagine that security and privacy are important issues. Well, someone (I suspect I know who), posted this in the hallway to the washroom for April Fool's day. It was quite well received and quite well done. Several have commented on the level of quality of the poster, which has a very professional ring to it.

The New pizzapizza.ca (And Their No Longer Crappy Code)

A few months ago I posted about the changes to pizzapizza.ca that horribly broke my ability to log in and order pizza. I tried logging in every couple of days for a week or two after that just to see how long they would take to fix it. I gave up after a little bit and have phoned in my order a couple of times since then. Well, I tried again tonight and it looks like they fixed it at some point. The first account that had a user name and incorrect password let me log in and change the email! The other account, which I had created but couldn't fill in the details, was apparently created, just without any address information. I've since filled both of them in, and everything appears to work. So, a little behind, but seems they got their act together. But seriously, how could anyone go live with their original, untested system.

Thoughts On The End Of Galactica

Just watched this past week's episode of Battlestar Galactica. The second last episode, and it was good stuff. I have really enjoyed this second half of the season much more than the first, or the second half of season 3 for that matter. The following contains spoilers, so for those of you waiting for some DVD box set or something (which I will refuse to buy due to the network's constant screwing with viewers over scheduling), you should stop reading now.

The end of last episode, with Adama's decision to abandon ship, left me thinking that there just needed to be one last huge battle that the Galactica would participant in. From this episode, looks like I won't be disappointed. Next episode is going to be huge!

The series has had so many unanswered questions throughout, that despite all the reveals over the past few episodes (particularly the "Final Five" explained), there is still so much they have to cram into the final episode; luckily it's two hours long. We should get the reveal of what actually happened to Starbuck when she "died" as well as Hera's connection to her and the Cylons. They've been dealing with this so the past couple episodes, so it's pretty much a guarantee that they'll tell us.

Hopefully too, we'll get an explanation of Baltar's "imaginary Six" and her plan. If this isn't revealed, I'll be fairly disappointed considering this has been a question since the very beginning.

I find myself debating whether the Galactica will survive the final battle. I can see it being destroyed in one last blaze of glory, but also I think a final victory, escape, and touching abandonment would be more fulfilling. That being said, I can also see the Galactica lasting thorough the series. The old girl could definitely pull off some sort of miraculous regeneration in the final moments of battle. I mean, they really haven't done anything with that Cylon guck that they've applied to the hull besides complain that it hasn't worked. With two episodes devoted to it, there's definitely some sort of surprise there. Consider the electrical control that Anders was able to exert and the hints at him controlling the jump drive. I find the idea that he wakes at a particularly grim moment next episode and sends an electrical pulse through the ship that ignites the Cylon guck and causes it the harder the hull giving it the strength to resist the battle. Maybe not quite that far, it could only be that he just manages to activate the jump drive in the last second and allow the ship to escape. Anyway, I'm just saying that Anders and the Cyclon guck haven't been dealt with fully and will more than likely play a pivotal role, there must be an ace up the writer's sleeves for an unexpected victory.

Anyway, I look forward to Friday.