grab-bag

1. Nothing like waking up naturally, realizing you didn't hear an alarm, realizing it's much too light for the alarm not to have gone off, looking at the clock, and seeing "3:49" flashing in your face. It's a little exciting, when you still don't know what time it was three hours and forty-nine minutes ago.

Turned out the actual time was only a few minutes after I'd have got up anyway, if the power had never gone out, so on balance that's a win, but I don't like that kind of adrenaline spike in the morning.


2. More dental work today - but I genuinely believe I am on the downhill slope of this thing. Along with whatever else they're doing, they'll be able to tighten up the temporary crown, which has come a little loose (I can push it back into place with a ~click~ after I floss), what fun.


3. I heard on the radio yesterday where it appears likely there will be an iPhone for Verizon in January. Not sorry I waited!, and a little glad I didn't get a new some-other-kind-of-phone and bind myself to Sprint for another two years.

oh, also -

I haven't been following the confirmation hearings closely, but here are a few things about Supreme Court nominee Solicitor General Elena Kagan:

• DOB 26 April (1960) - Taurus! ~ding!~
  
• MPhil (Oxon) - hers is from Worcester College and is presumably not in linguistics, but still, it's Oxford and not Cambridge, and it's an MPhil and not a DPhil, that's my girl! ~ding!~
  
• SEN. GRASSLEY: [regarding that MPhil thesis, ca. 1983] Is it appropriate for judges to 'mold and steer the law'?
  MS. KAGAN: I wrote that paper before I went into law school. I didn't know a whole lot of law then.
  GALLERY: [laughter]
  SEN. GRASSLEY: If I accept your answer, it's going to spoil a whole five minutes I had.
  SEN. LEAHY: Chuck, go ahead and accept it.
  SEN. GRASSLEY: Let me enjoy it.
  GALLERY: [laughter]
  
• SEN. GRAHAM: [setting up a series of questions about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] Where were you on Christmas Day?
  MS. KAGAN: You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.
  GALLERY: [laughter]

(Of course, Sen. Graham went on to say "Great answer! So, you were celebrating Hannukah." [headDESK] But otherwise, I'd say the Oxford-MPhil-sign-of-the-bull SG is having a decent few days.)

grr.

me: Level VI:5 "Jedi Destiny" - there is an area in which I am supposed to use the Force to stack three chairs and then build the Lego bricks into a vent for a short character to crawl through and fetch a canister (after having a bounty hunter blast an obstruction). Quite suddenly, my game refuses to do this: I can stack the chairs and build the bricks, but it only builds a doorway - no actual door, so there is nothing to crawl through, so I cannot retrieve the canister. No amount of resetting has fixed this. It doesn't even work in a saved game where I had already successfully done it. What kind of de-glitching options have you got?

lucasarts.com support: Hints and gameplay assistance are not available from technical support. Please refer to the forums at http://lucasarts.com for gameplay questions.

[seethe]

So I copied the message back to them and said Thank you, but I don't need hints or gameplay assistance - there is SOMETHING WRONG with the game, because it is not doing what it is supposed to do (which it has even done before), so I'm looking for debugging.

On top of which, the forums are down, so eff off. Boo. Hints, indeed.

30 days of TV meme

Day 01: A show that should never have been cancelled
Day 02: A show that you wish more people were watching

( Day 03: Your favorite new show (aired this TV season) )

( twenty-seven more days )