I like my idea better.

shadesong: Am I insane for wanting to participate in Operation Freefall?

(a long conversation ensues in which I attempt to convince her that yes, she is insane for wanting to jump out of an airplane).

Me: I think you should participate in Operation Footfall instead. You just throw a Larry Niven novel out of an airplane.

Friday updates

1. UPS: Called them last night, and the condescending jerk at the local center told me that "out for delivery" doesn't mean it was ever on the truck. She apologized (half-heartedly), and promised that it would be prioritized to get her first thing in the morning. Needless to say, she was lying, and when I called this morning, the person at the call center (equally condescending, and twice as rude) told me that there was no note prioritizing it, and that she'd investigate it and get back to me. That was an hour ago. Fuckers. Anyone got a spare copy of The Ghost Brigades that they can attach to a crippled homing pigeon? It'll probably get to me faster.

2. KOL: Halfway through level 10. Way too weak to do much at the Castle in the Sky without my potions of gr8ness.

3. Olympics. Dude. The US won a medal in Curling! Who cares if our ski team, on balance, crapped out (minus the giant slaloms)? Who cares if our male figure skater whined his way out of medal contention, or if a snowboarded showboated and blew a gold medal? We won a curling medal! Woohoo!

4. Olympics, part 2: As far as the women's figure skating goes, I was underwhelmed last night, but the person who deserved the gold won it. Irina, on the other hand, should have been fourth. Her choreography wasn't anywhere in the range of the other medalists. I was happy to see that, even though Cohen choked, she showed incredibly poise and got back up (and, as with pairs, the new system doesn't penalize a fall nearly as badly as the old one did). And Arakawa was just damned near perfect. As for four years from now, I was more impressed with the poise of Hughes than with Meissner, overall, and see her as the next big hope for us (although Kimmie's certainly got potential). On the international scene, Elene Gedevanishvili is going to be amazing within a year or two, if her performances here were in any way representative.

5. Other than the Olympics, no TV last night. *shrug* Anyone else as excited as I am to be able to finally refer to the place as Turin? I mean, having a bunch of folks who act like real-life characters in a Dan Brown novel claiming that Jesus was buried in and decomposed on a cloth from 1350 called the Shroud of Turino just totally undercuts their arguments.

6. CNN has a story on their front page about Mardi Gras. The picture shows two women dressed as brides, with the caption, "Parade watchers dress as brides to help get more beads at Mardi Gras parades Thursday." You'd think that the reporter would take pity on them and explain what they really need to do to get beads.

7. Finally, Businessweek has an interview with Six Apart (the company that owns LJ, Movable Type, and other stuff) bigwig Mena Trott. An interesting (if way too short and non-technical) read.

KOL really starts to hit the big time

An eBay auction for a KOL Hypnodisk just broke $100.

Granted, we're not looking at the secondary economy that games like Evercrack generate yet, but it's still a bit surprising.

iBooks, R.I.P.

iBooks (the publisher, not the computer line) has declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy. :-( I don't know any of the behind-the-scenes stuff, but as a reader, I'll miss this company.

nihilistic_kid and deep_bluze -- any word on whether the Horror: Best of 2005 made it to distributors, or is it doa?