In a wide ranging discussion about endangered species, overpopulation, and the enviroment, I mentioned the “rabbit problem in Australia”:http://www.csiro.au/communication/rabbits/qa2.htm.
bq. H: Unfortunately, rabbits have no natural predators in Australia.
bq. G: Except the Tasmanian devil. But I guess Tasmanian devils don’t actually eat rabbits.
three seconds later, M bursts out laughing….
(think about it :-)
The patches originally scheduled for June are finally done! Causes were many; a steady stream of new defects, staff defections, and general overload (both my team and QA :-). Now we just have to get all of our other “before the end of the year” commitments done before the end of the year.
That’s part of the lack of activity around here; another part is persephone 2.0, currently about half-constructed in a VMware partition on the home machine. I’m upgrading all the way from RedHat 7.3 to Ubuntu 5.10. That’s not really an “upgrade”; instead I’m building a new disk image from scratch, and then carefully migrating the configuration and data for each user and service. I’m hoping to be done by the end of the year…
I’m sure it’d be easier to just buy a new machine and put them up side-by-side. I’m not sure how Michelle would feel about that, though :-).
Also from John Scalzi, here’s the comedy list. Again, bold the ones you’ve seen (27/50), and mark the ones you own (3).
*Airplane!*
All About Eve
*Amelie*
Annie Hall
*The Apartment*
*Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery*
Blazing Saddles
Bringing Up Baby
Broadcast News
*Caddyshack*
Le diner de con
*Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb*
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
*Duck Soup*
*Ferris Bueller’s Day Off*
*Four Weddings and a Funeral*
The General
*Ghostbusters*
The Gold Rush
*Good Morning Vietnam*
*The Graduate*
*Groundhog Day*
A Hard Day’s Night
His Girl Friday
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Lady Killers
*Local Hero*
Manhattan
*M*A*S*H*
*Monty Python’s Life of Brian*
*National Lampoon’s Animal House*
*The Odd Couple*
*The Producers*
*Raising Arizona* *
*Roxanne*
Rushmore
Shaun of the Dead
A Shot in the Dark
*Some Like it Hot*
*Strictly Ballroom* *
Sullivan’s Travels
There’s Something About Mary
*This is Spinal Tap*
To Be or Not to Be
Tootsie
*Toy Story* *
Les vacances de M. Hulot
*When Harry Met Sally*
*Withnail and I*
Some rather more obscure ones in there – The General is 1927 – and some real dogs too. Tootsie? I think personal taste has a lot bigger role when it comes to comedy. And several of these are as much drama as comedy – like The Graduate.
Jeff K says: I think we need to rewrite this list. Easily 50% are dogs, but maybe I missed something. Why is the slow paced “A shot in the Dark” any better than one of the “Pink Panther” movies? Also, owning comedy is like retelling the same joke, but fortunately, most of that list is deliberately serious satire.
The list is from “The Science Fiction Film Canon”:http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003785.html, from the book “The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1843535203/103-9758806-6427829?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance by “John Scalzi”:http://www.scalzi.com/. He describes it as “Reviews and commentary on the 50 science fiction films you have to see before you die”…
I’ve bolded the ones I’ve seen, and marked the (two) that I own. 31/50; Not too bad…
*The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!*
*Akira Kaneda!*
*Alien*
*Aliens*
Alphaville
*Back to the Future* *
*Blade Runner* *
*Brazil*
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
*Close Encounters of the Third Kind*
*Contact*
The Damned
Destination Moon
*The Day The Earth Stood Still*
Delicatessen
*Escape From New York*
*ET: The Extraterrestrial*
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
*The Fly (1985 version)*
*Forbidden Planet*
*Ghost in the Shell*
Gojira/Godzilla
*The Incredibles*
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
*Jurassic Park*
*Mad Max 2*
*The Matrix*
Metropolis (Extended version)
On the Beach
*Planet of the Apes (1968 version)*
*Robocop*
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
*Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan*
*Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope*
*Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back*
The Stepford Wives
*Superman*
*Terminator 2: Judgement Day*
The Thing From Another World
Things to Come
*Tron*
*12 Monkeys*
28 Days Later
*20,000 Leagues Under the Sea*
*2001: A Space Odyssey*
La Voyage Dans la Lune
*War of the Worlds (1953 version)*
Wow, the only ones I have NOT seen in that list are:
Alphaville
The Damned
Destination Moon
Delicatessen
The Thing From Another World
Btw, I assume you mean the 1936 version of “Things to Come” with Raymond Massey in it . I haven’t seen the later versions.
Harald Koch says: I bow to thee, O Alpha Geek :-)
I have seen Alphaville and Delicatessen (the latter is definitely worth seeing). Also Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version) which I didn’t find as scary as the later version with Sutherland but then I saw it later. On the other hand I have never seen Ghost in the Shell.
Greg says: What, T2 made it, but not T_original? Bah…
Jeff K says: I could entirely do without Delicatessen, “ET”, Mad Max 2, Tron and Godizilla. Most folks don’t “get” Alphaville or Clockwork Orange, I don’t think. I own about 40 DVDs on that list. The list looks suspiciously popular to me, missing the Road Warrior, Matrix Reloaded, Time Bandits, Andromeda Strain, and some others on my shelves.
I can’t believe I didn’t link to this before!
“Squirrel vs. Biker”:http://www.hftonline.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16501 subtitled ” And people ask me what I need a Browning .338 Winchester Magnum for… ”
It’s apparently from “The December 2004 newsletter”:http://www.victoriagoldwings.org/newsletters/dec04.pdf of the Gold Wing Road Riders Association of Victoria, BC, but the html link is easier to read.
I love this story. :-)
Congrats on getting the patches out! I’ll miss ye olde persephone…