We might actually have a WINTER this year
Jan. 3rd, 2004 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAt least in terms of cold. Because brrrrr cold outside. We've had some flurries off and on all morning, though nothing interesting is happening in terms of precipitation out there right now.
And now, our heroine greets a new person on her Friends list,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scrunchions in St. John's. Further, our heroine elaborates upon lunch had with friends, gifts exchanged, Master and Commander, and Nethack.
Yesterdaysolarbird and I had lunch with mizkit and her spouse, and that was very pleasant indeed: a nice interlude to an otherwise extremely quiet day at work. Some of the team was in but most of us were still out, and through a good chunk of the afternoon several bored testers were occupying themselves playing with remote-controlled cars. I brought Dara up to the lab to show my bench to her, since she wanted to see where I worked, and introduced her to my coworker Jack. So that was all pleasant too.
Last night,spazzkat came over and he, Dara, mamishka, risu and I finally had our Murkworks traditional (and usually belated) holiday gift exchange. Meems gave me and Dara a copy of Eddie Izzard's Circle DVD; yay! Paul gave me, however, a hardback edition of The Making of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World!
And ohhhhh the pretty pretty pretty pictures of Captain Aubrey all throughout this book. I've only barely begun to read it; all my time looking at it so far has been mostly finding all the pictures of Russell Crowe. ;) I am, however, amused by this one quote in Chapter 1, regarding the ship that the production team wound up buying to play the Surprise for part of the film: "You're dealing in a limited market when it comes to scouring the world for tall ships that are both accurate replicas of eighteenth-century originals and available to people who look like they might fire cannonballs at them."
Amusing quote #2, Peter Weir of Russell Crowe: "He has a natural authority. He was born to be a captain: a captain of actors and a captain of a ship."
Interesting trivia tidbit #1 discovered so far though is that in the Patrick O'Brian novel, which I have not yet read, the enemy ship confronted by the Surprise is in fact AMERICAN! It makes complete historical sense, but boy howdy am I not surprised that they switched it over to a French ship for the film. Even aside from the obvious problem of presenting an American ship as the bad guys to current American audiences, I can also agree with the book's contention that to try to explain why Americans are shooting at British ships would take up way too much valuable screen time. Just because yeah, American historical education just tends to be that sucky. To most people in this country, we can buy the English and the French shooting at one another in that time period, but we'd be sadly baffled until somebody reminded us, "Well DUH, the Americans and the French were allies during the Revolutionary War." It's that whole "because of the debt of honor to General Lafayette!" thing that Eddie Izzard rags on during Dress to Kill. ;)
I blew the rest of the night after the gift exchange playing Nethack, pretty much, since Rebecca has challenged my Nethack superiority with her recent win and is taking over the Top Ten list on lodestone. ;) Just to see if I could, I tried playing a Tourist for a little while. I named him Zim, and his dog Gir, though I am somewhat disappointed that I cannot in fact make a Tourist be a gnome. I figure that'd be more appropriate a race for Zim than human.
This afternoon, or at least the early portion of it, went to various and sundry errands on the Ave. Some of the latter portion of it needs to go to Chapter 19 since I didn't write yesterday!
And now, our heroine greets a new person on her Friends list,
scrunchions in St. John's. Further, our heroine elaborates upon lunch had with friends, gifts exchanged, Master and Commander, and Nethack. Yesterday
solarbird and I had lunch with mizkit and her spouse, and that was very pleasant indeed: a nice interlude to an otherwise extremely quiet day at work. Some of the team was in but most of us were still out, and through a good chunk of the afternoon several bored testers were occupying themselves playing with remote-controlled cars. I brought Dara up to the lab to show my bench to her, since she wanted to see where I worked, and introduced her to my coworker Jack. So that was all pleasant too.Last night,
spazzkat came over and he, Dara, mamishka, risu and I finally had our Murkworks traditional (and usually belated) holiday gift exchange. Meems gave me and Dara a copy of Eddie Izzard's Circle DVD; yay! Paul gave me, however, a hardback edition of The Making of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World!And ohhhhh the pretty pretty pretty pictures of Captain Aubrey all throughout this book. I've only barely begun to read it; all my time looking at it so far has been mostly finding all the pictures of Russell Crowe. ;) I am, however, amused by this one quote in Chapter 1, regarding the ship that the production team wound up buying to play the Surprise for part of the film: "You're dealing in a limited market when it comes to scouring the world for tall ships that are both accurate replicas of eighteenth-century originals and available to people who look like they might fire cannonballs at them."
Amusing quote #2, Peter Weir of Russell Crowe: "He has a natural authority. He was born to be a captain: a captain of actors and a captain of a ship."
Interesting trivia tidbit #1 discovered so far though is that in the Patrick O'Brian novel, which I have not yet read, the enemy ship confronted by the Surprise is in fact AMERICAN! It makes complete historical sense, but boy howdy am I not surprised that they switched it over to a French ship for the film. Even aside from the obvious problem of presenting an American ship as the bad guys to current American audiences, I can also agree with the book's contention that to try to explain why Americans are shooting at British ships would take up way too much valuable screen time. Just because yeah, American historical education just tends to be that sucky. To most people in this country, we can buy the English and the French shooting at one another in that time period, but we'd be sadly baffled until somebody reminded us, "Well DUH, the Americans and the French were allies during the Revolutionary War." It's that whole "because of the debt of honor to General Lafayette!" thing that Eddie Izzard rags on during Dress to Kill. ;)
I blew the rest of the night after the gift exchange playing Nethack, pretty much, since Rebecca has challenged my Nethack superiority with her recent win and is taking over the Top Ten list on lodestone. ;) Just to see if I could, I tried playing a Tourist for a little while. I named him Zim, and his dog Gir, though I am somewhat disappointed that I cannot in fact make a Tourist be a gnome. I figure that'd be more appropriate a race for Zim than human.
This afternoon, or at least the early portion of it, went to various and sundry errands on the Ave. Some of the latter portion of it needs to go to Chapter 19 since I didn't write yesterday!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-01-03 02:26 pm (UTC)As for that :P Keep this up and I'll have to go over there and protect my own place on the list! :)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-03 03:51 pm (UTC)Rebecca didn't knock you off the #1 slot; she didn't even beat my old score for the Freja ascension, or your original ascension score. But she's almost knocked me out of the rest of the nine slots on the Top Ten!
Thanks for the welcome!
Date: 2004-01-03 08:56 pm (UTC)Re: Thanks for the welcome!
Date: 2004-01-03 09:45 pm (UTC)winter? what winter?
Date: 2004-01-04 03:04 am (UTC)Re: winter? what winter?
Date: 2004-01-04 06:17 pm (UTC)It's wicked cold here tonight. And rumor has it we may have an actual snowstorm on the way!