Claire's blog

CAMPING: Free camping in Virginia | RV camping, Car Camping, Tent Camping

Just checking

LINK URL: http://freecampsites.net/attribute/states/va/

So the other day, I needed to drag a window from my secondary monitor to my primary monitor (tv)…

But the secondary was off, so I wouldn’t be able to put my mouse on the window (beucase I couldn’t see it)…

And I didn’t want to get up to turn it on….

So I used VNC to VNC to myself, and did it that way. This means I had a window on my desktop that was my entire computer. So there were 2 copies of everything. And if I moved my mouse pointer inside the VNC window, it would attempt to move my mouse pointer to the same place it was pointing to on the window within.

Sure, it was hard for awhile, fighting the fact that my mouse was trying to be in two places at once.

But in the end, I won.

I got that window dragged. w00t.

Daniel H adds: “I am both appalled and filled with admiration.” (more…)

ANTI-MEME: Actually — You Are Less Beautiful Than You Think

Remember the viral video campaign where women told painters what a they looked like, then a stranger told the same painter what the same woman looked like, and that painting was better looking than the original, and the women cried when they saw how good looking the paintings were? 

And this was supposed to prove that people were more beautiful than they thought?

Yea, it was a real nice feelgood sentiment.

But as I had commented on everyone who posted it — it didn’t prove what they said it was proving. It simply proved that people won’t talk smack about someone knowing they are on the other side of the curtain.

Well anyway — Once you dip into actual science, the opposite is true: Everyone is worse-looking than they think they are.

Sorry to burst your bubble, everyone. But truth is truth.

You also are probably not as good of a driver as you think you are.

LINK URL: http://www.businessinsider.com/you-are-less-beautiful-than-you-think-2013-5

CORPORATIONS: Wells Fargo Forecloses On Homeowner For Making Early Mortgage Payments

Of course the worst stories (like these) are disproportionately non-white people…. which makes me wonder just how deliberate this type of targeting is.

So glad I took all my money away from these assholes, and dropped it in a local credit union instead!

Everyone should follow suit.

LINK URL: http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/05/22/wells-fargo-tries-to-foreclose-on-homeowner-for-making-early-mortgage-payments/

[IMDB link] [Netflix link] [Original 2007 movie IMDB link] [Original 2007 movie Netflix link]

PLOT SUMMARY: Worst. Funeral. Ever.

UNCOMFORTABLE PLOT SUMMARY (inspired by this): Illegal drugs lead to complications.

QUIRKS: A remake of Frank Oz‘s original movie. Yes, the original movie was made by Bert / Grover / Cookie Monster / Yoda / Fozzie Bear / Miss Piggy. But this guy can make movies, too. He made The Dark Crystal, Little Shop Of Horrors, The Stepford Wives. So he knows how to make a good movie. However, it was still remade 3 years later, as the original was a UK movie.

In fact, this remake is almost a scene-by-scene identical remake. In this case, that’s a good thing. I was scared they would butcher it.

PEOPLE: Directed by Neil LaBute, who did The Wicker Man remake. With Keith David (Goliath from Gargoyles, Gamer, Coraline), Loretta Devine (Muriel from The PJs cartoon, Cougar Club, Boston Legal), Peter Dinklage (who was in the original version, as there aren’t a lot of little people to cast in such roles, and was also in Nip/Tuck), Luke Wilson (Idiocracy, Blades Of Glory, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Old School, The Royal Tenenbaums, Scream 2, Bongwater), Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Uhura from the Star Trek reboot, Pirates Of The Carribean), Regina Hall (Superhero Movie, Scary Movie 1-4, The Honeymooners Remake), Chris Rock, James Marsden (Cyclops from the X-Men movies, Zoolander, Sex Drive, Superman Returns), Ron Glass (the priest from Firefly/Serenity), Martin Lawrence, Columbus Short (Quarantine), Tracy Morgan (Superhero Movie, Half Baked), Regine Nehy as the just-turned-18 hottie, Kevin Hart (Superhero Movie, Epic Movie, Scary Movie 4, The 40 Year Old Virgin), and Danny Glover (2012, Blindness, Be Kind Rewind, Saw 1, The Royal Tenenbaums, Lethal Weapon 1-4).

VISUALS: Not much going on, but one scene is really gross looking.

MORALS: If you fill a pill bottle up with pills that aren’t what’s on the label, maybe you should remove the label.

GOOD STUFF: Incredibly awkwardness; drug-related hilarity; funeral-related hilarity; gay-related hilarity. This version is a bit more relateable to Americans the the British version.

BAD STUFF: A *lot* of people are turned off that they simply “copied” an existing movie. The thing is, nobody saw the original (‘cept us). This gave a chance for a great story to be told to an American audience. A lot of people have problems with the cast being replaced by black people. Initially, I thought this might detract from the movie, as a lot of the funny British situations are due to their dry culture. But the British version was FAR from dry, it was a crazy story. It worked really well with black Americans as opposed to white Brits. In the end, it didn’t really matter that they changed everyone to black. Big fucking deal.

A lot of people hail this as being unfunny, unlike the original. BUT THEY ARE THE SAME FUCKING MOVIE. Scene by scene, character by character. This is one of the most faithful remakes I’ve ever seen. I can’t fathom how someone would love the original and hate the remake. It’s just a form of elitist snobbery.

CONCLUSION: Loving the original and hating this remake constitutes a stupid opinion — they are, scene by scene, character by character, the exact same movie. The difference are slight — this is one of the most faithful remakes I’ve ever seen in my life. There’s simply no reason to not have a consistent opinion between the two. I thought I wouldn’t like this nearly as much as the original, but as it turns out, I liked this MORE than the original. I am pretty consistent in enjoying anything Americanized more than the original. I thought this would be an exception, but nope. I liked this better than the original, which we watched in 2008. We almost didn’t watch this; I’m glad we did.

RATINGS:
Clint: Netflix: 4.4/5 stars. IMDB: 8/10.
Carolyn: Netflix: 4/5 stars. IMDB: 7/10.

We weren’t as good at rating movies back when we watched the original. When I went back to Netflix, I saw it was rated 3/5 stars. I was kind of surprised we rated the original that low.

The native public rating for this movie is: IMDB: 5.0/10, Netflix: 3.3/5 stars (Netflix‘s predicted rating for us was 3.7/5 stars). Very low. But then you have to take into account that 20% of people voted 1/10. These are remake haters who voted 1/10 without watching the movie. IT’S PRACTICALLY THE EXACT SAME FILM. If you throw their votes out, you get a rating closer to the original.

The native public rating for the original: IMDB: 7.3/10, Netflix: 3.7/5 stars (Netflix‘s predicted rating for us was 3.4/5 stars).

So Netflix did accurately predict that we’d like the remake better than the original. Which is funny, because I thought for sure, replacing all the British people with black people would make it less funny. Try not to interpret that as racist, please — we all have our preferences.

RECOMMENDATION: Check it out! Check the original out too! They are 2 sides of the same coin.

MOVIE QUOTE: Ryan: Look at Martina, man the girl’s all grown up.
Aaron: You mean little Martina? She’s like in the 12th grade.
Ryan: Well she may be in 12th grade, but that ass is in grad school.

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SUMMARY:

Got up around 7:45AM, made it out driving by 8:25AM and went out until 1:28PM for a total of 5h3m (3h16m spent driving, 1h47m at sales).

Spent $97.75 plus ~$14.58 gas for 54.3 miles of driving (12.7 mpg @ $3.41/G), for a total cost of $112.33.

We drove to 52 yard sales, stopping at 26 (50%) of them. We made 27 purchases (51 items) for a total estimated value of $770.52, leading to a profit/savings of $658.19.

So in essence, we multiplied our initial investment by 6.86X.

(Also, if you think about it, the profit counts for even more when you consider that we have to earn $770 on the job, pre-tax, in order to take home the $658 in cash that we saved. How long does $770 of disposable income take to earn, vs the 5 hrs we spent here?)

Anyway, this works out to a *post-tax* “wage” of $130.33/hr as a couple or $65.17/hr per person.

COMMENTARY/ANECDOTES:

[Yes, writing in the 3rd person, because Carolyn & I co-authored this.]

Clint had shaved his facial hair into a handlebar mustache the day before… He had also added some fake blood coming from his ear all the way down his neck. This is something he does while drinking with friends. But then he decided to go yardsaleing like that. Also: Clint was wearing a Celtic Frost shirt with a prominent pentagram on it.

The best part was when we went to a church bazaar. Walking inside of a church, interacting with youth volunteers, all while visibly “bleeding” and wearing a pentagram and handlebar mustache. Fun times.

Despite going go 26 yard sales, only two people total commented on the fake blood. Both were female. The one asked questions about who Celtic Frost was, and what kind of music they were. When we were walking away, she said, “Have a Celtic day!”

Also, a few people commented on Carolyn’s glow-in-the-dark Misfits shirt.

This whole expedition was amazing in that it was amazing that we even got out of bed… Friends came over at like 7:30PM, we were drinking by 11:30PM, and up until 4:15AM or so! Somehow Clint roused out of bed at 7:45AM WITHOUT EVEN FEELING TIRED.

When we got the bowling balls, and the car ramps, we arranged them in the trunk in such a way that the bowling balls kept rolling around inside the ramps. It was funny how much noise they made. Every time the car accelerated or decelerated…. You had a 1-second bowling ball roll sound. One would think it was the sound of damage being done if one did not know what was causing it.

We had to use Carolyn’s phone to navigate at one point because we’re dorks and didn’t think about how you could cross over Rolling Road and go straight. Derp.

There was a really nice-looking blue acoustic guitar for $50 that we didn’t buy. It was the nicest shade of blue I’ve ever seen on a guitar in person.

There were tons of Walking Dead graphic novels that we missed by 2 minutes.

There was a pair of the original Hulk Hands for $10. We could have completed our set, and we called Sean to see if he would be interested in the other one, but we all passed. They were being sold by a single-mom woman who was being kicked out of her rented house in 30 days, and she had all kinds of cool stuff (the swords, lizard costume gloves). Clint spent a long time talking to her, and she thought he was in his 20s. Nope… I’m 39, ma’am. (I didn’t actually call her ma’am.) She had all the Dragon Ball Z action figures that Clint bought to prank his DragonBall-Z-loving co-worker by hiding them all over his cube. (Only to receive an announcement 2 hours later that they were replacing our cubes with pathetic little kiosks.)

Clint saw the fur rug and asked for the price. When the man said $10, Clint consulted with Carolyn. She got out and looked at it, and they decided to go ahead and get it, so Clint paid for it. While Carolyn picked it up and started taking it to the car, the man yelled at Carolyn that she didn’t pay for it, and she pointed at Clint and said, “He paid.” Then the guy was like “Oh, I thought you meant that other rug…” He decided to go ahead and let us have it for $10. I wonder if Clint being bloody and handlebar-mustached had any effect on the negotiation of the situation.

click through for the booty… (more…)

I was so annoyed that this album became popular RIGHT after I started listening to it. I actually had a copy before they ever had a video on MTV. Then they became super-mainstream.

Still, this is my favorite Alice In Chains album – and frankly, the only one I think is truly worth owning and KNOWING.

Without further adieu, here is a listing of the songs in the Alice In Chains album “Facelift”, in order from best to worst. Yes… This probably took me 40 minutes to evaluate and verify! Sweet love my labor…

THE LIST:

01_We Die Young [JtC’s #2]
04_Bleed The Freak
06_Love, Hate, Love
02_Man In The Box
07_It Ain’t Like That [JtC’s #3]
03_Sea Of Sorrow [Parthena’s favorite]
12_Real Thing [they should’ve fleshed out the structure more]
05_I Can’t Remember [possibly the best bridge on the album, though]
09_Put You Down
11_I Know Somethin’ (Bout You)
10_Confusion
08_Sunshine [JtC’s #1]

I will accept other submissions of other peoples’ rankings, but you MUST *actually* evaluate all the songs. That means comparing one song to the song next to it, bumping it up one, and doing it again and and again until everything is sorted. This is very similar to a bubble sort.

Here is the full album on youtube:
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MUSIC VIDEO: Neosignal – Planet Online (Official Video)

This is NOT a band or music I listen to.

This is a video that stands on its own awesomeness — Basically, all of the popular aspects of the internet represented as 1990s toy commercials.

Pretty awesome.

This is great. Some assembly required.

Thanks Alan M!

LINK URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnhPMdIsOBc&feature=youtu.be

[IMDB link] [Netflix link] You are being watched!

PLOT SUMMARY: In the future, there are a LOT of cameras. Everywhere. Eventually, mobile cameras are introduced. But are these cameras killing people? Is there a conspiracy to kill the president?

UNCOMFORTABLE PLOT SUMMARY (inspired by this): America fails at protecting democracy and liberty.

PEOPLE: Written and directed by Richard Clabaugh. Starring Adrian Paul (Duncan MacLeod in Highlander:Endgame/The Source and the TV series) as the agent, Megan Blake as the hot, older reporter, and Luke Eberl as the purple-haired musician who just so happens to be the president’s nephew. But of course nobody knows this, as journalists in this day & age would lose their journalism license if they were to ever report on such a fact. Terrorism is a big scare in this movie. Also with Danny Trejo, who’s in so many movies that he watches movies without realizing he’s in them, and then goes, “Hey! I’m in this!”.

QUIRKS: Terrorism politics. Technology. Paranoia. Action. These are a few of my favorite things…

VISUALS: Those robots are really creepy. This pretty much depicts how I DON’T want things to turn out.

SOUNDTRACK: Bad Religion’s 21st Century Digital Boy! Used somewhat appropriately, actually. Definitely appropros for the movie.

POLITICS/MORALS: Putting blind faith in technology is even more dangerous than putting blind faith in god. God stopped lying to us after the bible was written. Technology can invent new lies that harm us in new ways. Just because technology is awesome — and a positive force for humanity — doesn’t mean we can take it as a substitute for the real thing. Seeing something on camera is not the same as seeing it with your own two eyes.

Also, it is important that citizenry retain (and maintain) the right to record our public servants as they perform their duties. If we cannot record police, politicians, and congress, then we don’t really know what they are doing, do we?

Also, sites like WikiLeaks preserve freedom by allowing a place for critical leaks to be deployed to the public. While the movie didn’t directly cover this, it is an implication of the movie nonetheless.

And above all — beware electronic voting machines that have no clear way of verifying their results!

One more thing! This movie also shows how even the smallest details can be used against you in ways you don’t expect.

Oh wait! Another thing! Actual eyeborgs in real life may not be far off. Here’s a prototype already in development. Well, actually, it’s not really a prototype in development. But if it was in development, do you think they’d tell us? I’m writing this article in 8/2010, but it’s not going to post until 5/2013. I wonder how much farther this will have come by then. [Edit: Pretty far. They now actually have mosquito sized drones, which can of course carry miniature cameras! Amazing. In just 2.75 years, things have progressed even more than I thought after watching Eyeborgs.]

GOOD STUFF: Great political paranoia! And the ending? Oh my god. That’s probably the most realistic part of the movie right there. [highlight for spoilers]→ You won’t be happy, but it is well worth the wait.

BAD STUFF: The movie comes off as a cerebral, paranoia-inducing, techno-political conspiracy/suspense — but then it partially descends into an action flick with robot fights, guns, and a bomb. The profound political conspiracy would have come off better without the mindless action, and the action would have come off better without the slow conspiracy beginning. The two different aspects of this movie tended to detract from each other, rather than add to each other.

CONCLUSION: The techno-politics, surveillance paranoia, and implicit* political commentary of this movie is AMAZING. The ending is a GREAT TWIST, without really being too big of a stretch (at least, not when compared to the premise). This is like 1984 meets The Matrix (but without as much action). It was a slow build-up — not a lot of excitement per se — and then later half made the mistake of focusing on the action at the expense of the story. This movie, unlike most, had the potential to be a 10/10, but blew it. I still give it an 8/10 — a high 8. Carolyn gave it a 9. I’m sorely tempted to.

*[Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of EXplicit political commentary too.]

RATINGS:
Clint: Netflix: 5/5 stars. IMDB: 8.4/10.
Carolyn: Netflix: 5/5 stars. IMDB: 9/10. “Still had a few loose ends I wanted tied up.”

The native public rating for this movie is: IMDB: 5.0/10, Netflix: 2.6/5 stars (Netflix‘s predicted rating for us was 3.1/5 stars–it knew we’d like this more than average, at least). It seems like the public just doesn’t get the importance of technological politics (This review was written in August, 2010). After all, if they did, they’d be more livid than they currently are.

RECOMMENDATION: Paranoia-loving, surveillance society-hating, George Orwell fans, politics lovers, surveillance haters — you all need to watch this… NOW. It’s not quite a masterpiece, but it’s pretty damn good!

SIMILAR MOVIES: Metropia. It’s like a small-scale, low-action, animated version of this movie. I now consider Metropia to be a “failed animated Eyeborgs”, though Metropia is about mind control [and not just surveillance], and thus has a different kind of paranoid feel to it.
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