Quote of the Week

"I'm tired of heading off on expeditions with no funding and no planning. Rations and a lantern would have made so many things in the last few months so much simpler."

--Derynn

Thought for the day:

http://devilspanties.keenspot.com/d/20080211.html

Correcting a mis-perception

I had been so confused by the references to Tim Burton and Coraline, I wanted to post the link to Neil Gaiman's clarification.

. . . and we are the dreamers of dreams, but not usually like this

Okay, well-known fact: I have weird dreams. Spelunking on Mars, cartoon characters in whorehouses, being Batman, jumping out of a tower window while the seas boil beneath me . . . Yeah. Quite common for me. Much more common than going to the store, being at work, riding up an escalator. My dreaming brain is apparently well-connected with my science-fiction library.

I'm going to put this one in the blog because it was fairly notable, even for me. And heck, the rest of you might as well be boggled. Er . . . I apologize in advance. I may cut the dirty bits out; I haven't decided.

[dream]
I was me, more or less. I was living in a enormous building with lots and lots of other people. A mega-building. I saw tornadoes coming. First one. So we all ran for cover. Then another. After that, there were two together. At some point, we decided it was an unnatural phenomenon, but we didn't know who was behind it. Someone was trying to do evil to us.

After the tornadoes, there was no longer daylight. It was light enough to see by, but all you could see in the sky was a halo of light around the edges of a dark mass.

Someone was trying to kill us. The best and the brightest, especially. But the best and the brightest were hard to kill. Whoever or whatever it was, it was trying to discorporate us. And those strongest of mind were able to hold themselves together. In the process, the animating spirit was somehow separated from the body. The two were congruent, but no longer entangled. And somehow, that gave us superpowers.

I figured out that we had been translocated to a binary star system . . . and the suns were close enough they would have been very large in the sky. In fact, the radiation would have killed everything on the planet, except that we were tidelocked with the dark mass between us and the suns. Something had intervened on our behalf, in placing it there.

And now something else was trying to move the mass that was protecting us. A god, I think. An evil god. By now, there were enough individuals with superpowers that we were able to mount a defense. Arsenio Hall was at the forefront of it. I'm not sure why, but he flew up, pumping his fist, and I knew that we'd been waiting for him. That was the turning point in our defense. I think the other gods began to help us.

Then, I was no longer me. I was a grown up Harry Potter. There was a beautiful woman I was very much in love with, but Apollo had showed up and wanted her, too. And it really wasn't possible to tell a god no. Actually, he wanted both of us. Apparently, the gods weren't picky.
[/dream]

And that's where I woke up. Er, more or less.

What's in a name, redux

My front-runner, "Computer Housecalls," is taken. Twice. I'm not sure how that works--if the last one's expired, I might get away with it.

The current available leading contenders are:

Computer Fix-It
Will Geek for Food
The Doctor is In: Computer Repair

Computer Fix-It is simple, uninspiring, and toward the front of the alphabet (important for print listings). Will Geek for Food has the highest entertainment value, but is at the back end of the alphabet. The Doctor is In has a place near and dear to my heart, but it gets to be awfully long before you understand what kind of business I'm in.

My advertising plans are business cards, craigslist, maybe the local university's student newspaper, and maybe listing myself in an online directory or two (e.g. Yahoo! Yellowpages) if it doesn't cost much.

Thoughts?

The Stuperbowl

RH and I went to a Superbowl party. I don't usually do the Stuperbowl, but it was cheap socialization in a city where I don't know many people socially. It even turned out to be a reasonably good game, the Cardinals' efforts to the contrary. (Most penalties since something like Superbowl XII, according to the commentators).

Here's what I noticed about the commercials: All the air time wasn't sold. Not only were NBC shows hawked heavily, we even had a local ad or two run sometime in there. And it felt like about 20% of the advertising was beer. Bud, to be specific. As if we needed more signs that the economy sucks, folks can't afford to advertise . . . but everyone drinks more beer.