The Secret Lives of Technology
We received our new printer today, a shiny, black monstrosity that strongly resembles a doomsday machine of some sort. This impression was liberally reinforced by the bits of yellow and blue warning tape stuck to it all over the place, as well as the red-ringed "DO NOT" type signs warning us away from... well, as far as I could tell, anything.
- Do not plug the wrong plugs into the wall.
- Do not plug other wrong plugs into the wall.
- Do not insert hand into print tray while machine is operating.
- Do not slam scanner lid on your hand.
- Do not use product in the water.
- Do not drink the ink.
- Do not attempt to operate printer while standing on your head.
- Do not attempt to operate printer while standing on other people's heads.
- Do not ballroom dance with printer.
- Do not feed printer potato chips.
- Do not feed printer to cat.
- Do not feed cat to printer.
Clearly this machine is dangerous.
(You may be surprised at which of these I didn't make up.)
Posted by: Kari Lucin, Daily Globe on 2/05/2010 at 5:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: geeks, printer, tech, technology
Review of 9: Apocalypse Knit
I rented 9 this week. No, not Nine, the Daniel Day-Lewis musical featuring one guy and about seventeen gorgeous women, and not District 9, the movie about aliens and apartheid.
Nope, I saw 9, a strange little animated dystopian flick about a post-apocalyptic world where humans have been eliminated by the machines they created to fight other humans.
Our heroes, thus, are a bunch of smallish living doll-creatures about the size of a human hand. They appear to have been stitched out of burlap or knitted and given some sort of mechanical eyes and hands, allowing them a surprising range of emotion and expression.
To put it another way, I watched a movie starring Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly, featuring Crispin Glover, John C. Reilly, Martin Landau and Christopher Plummer.
It was a strange movie, but fairly satisfying, if you don't mind a few minutes of sledgehammer-obvious moralizing for a few minutes here and there. The movie is PG-13, because the machines hunting and attempt to kill the doll-creatures are scary. To be frank, many of them look like the windshield wipers from hell, full of sharp edges and ravenous razorblade mouth-things.
And the biggest baddest machine can suck out your soul.
Yeah. Not a movie for little kids.
The movie's setting was beautifully textured, with the remnants of the human world popping up again and again, not always obvious at first glance (a torch is really a human-sized match, a giant sword is really a chef's knife repurposed) and it's fun to check out the detail of the world. The action sequences are pretty good, and involve by turns running away and fighting the creatures using the weapons at hand.
And you care about the little doll-creatures, which is more than I can say for the characters in some action movies (Transformers, I'm looking at you).
Posted by: Kari Lucin, Daily Globe on 2/04/2010 at 5:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: 9, animated, apocalypse, dystopia, entertainment, films, movies, science fiction
Revealing Swimming Suits
I have not worn a two-piece swimsuit since I was about 4. It was a pink bikini with little black polka dots, and I can't remember liking it or hating it; it allowed me to swim, and apart from that, I probably didn't care.
Now I'm the proud owner of the first two-piece swimming suit I've had in more than 20 years, shown at left. Yes, that's a swimming suit, and yes, it has two pieces. It's one of those newfangled tankinis.
It's very difficult to find swimming suits if you're not a size zero, and these days, tankinis seem to be most of what's on sale. They're two pieces, which allows you to mix and match tops and bottoms, but they look like one piece swimsuits and cover your belly.
Sort of.
If I bought swimming suits to try to look decorative while lying on the beach, my priorities in swimsuit purchases would probably change. However, I buy swimming suits to swim in them, and thus, I like a nice high neckline and legholes that aren't high cut. They have tankinis in all kinds of different styles and I was able to find a high necked top and a pair of shorts-like bottoms.
The tanktop has two parts; the pretty outer part and a sort of bandeau-thing inside that fits like I imagine a bikini top would (since I don't remember how the pink bikini felt anymore).
That's because when you swim in a tankini, the outside part sort of floats around. It feels very strange and I'm very glad the people at the YMCA are non-judgmental, because they probably thought I was crazy when I swam in it the first time. I kept having to surface and pause to giggle. It feels like swimming in your clothes, but without the excess weight, and it had almost a tickly sensation as the extra fabric from the outer layer floated around you.
This may be how jellyfish feel on a daily basis.
The tankini top just floats around you (with the inner bandeau making sure nobody sees anything important) and here's the critical part: even if you aren't actually showing that much tummy, it feels like the whole thing is exposed the whole time.
If you are self-conscious about your belly, you should probably stick to a good old-fashioned one-piece swimsuit.
Posted by: Kari Lucin, Daily Globe on 2/03/2010 at 5:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: fashion, review, style, swimming, swimsuits, tankini
More Winter, Says Most Hated Groundhog in the World
I wonder if Punxsutawney Phil gets death threats.
I'm not saying we should threaten the poor thing. The position of the sun isn't his fault. However, I am getting awfully tired of winter.
Generally speaking I'm very fond of snow right up through the end of January, but I think I had my fill somewhere around the day after the Christmas blizzard this year. And by the time Valentine's Day rolls around, accompanied by extreme cold and lots of miserable, depressed and depressing single people, I'm pretty much willing to move to Hawaii.
That's why I usually just ignore Valentine's Day and celebrate Viking Day instead. There's more candy, because you pillage it from all the people celebrating Valentine's Day, and plus you get to wear one of those pigtail hats with horns on the sides (even though real Vikings didn't wear those). Then there's the warm fuzzy feeling of satisfaction in meeting every non-Scandinavian you know and thinking: My ancestors beat up your ancestors.
Hey, we have to be Minnesota Nice all the other 364 days of the year. Something's gotta make up for that.
Posted by: Kari Lucin, Daily Globe on 2/02/2010 at 9:22 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: groundhog day, holidays, minnesota nice, news, valentines day, viking day
On the Fringe: Television for the Strong of Stomach
I have become addicted to Fringe, a television show which I call "Denethor, Mad Scientist," because the guy who plays the mad scientist played the mad king in Lord of the Rings. (If you don't remember the name, he's the one who set himself on fire and then plummets to his doom after almost killing his own son.)
It's a surprisingly addictive show that seems to be a combination of X-Files and House. The shows usually start with something bizarre, gory and horrible happening to some poor schmoe just going about his business, and sometimes said schmoe kills a bunch of other people too. Sometimes they turn into a monster, sometimes they explode and sometimes a giant slug erupts from sensitive body parts. It's pretty gross, which is why I'm enjoying watching Season 1 on DVD--I can fastforward past the yuck.
The rest of the show centers around the efforts of the Fringe team to figure out what happened and prevent it from happening again.
The team is composed of a kickbutt FBI agent, a mad scientist (Walter) and his son/babysitter (Peter). The mad scientist really is mad, having been taken out of a mental institution during the first episode, and he says some appallingly inappropriate and funny things on a fairly regular basis.
Walter: All commands will come through the headphones. Once you're given the order to put on the headphones, do not remove them under any circumstances. If you do, you may die a gruesome and horrible death. Thank you for your attention and have a nice day.
And another example:
Peter: I need my own bedroom. I woke up to this morning to him singing an aria from Pagliacci.
Astrid: Your father has a wonderful voice.
Peter: Not when he's doing jumping jacks. And did I mention he was naked?
Walter: A good morning sets the tone for the day.
It's a strange show, and while it's gory and kind of disturbing at times (don't watch it with small children around!), it's also very well-written, with the dark spooky stuff firmly counterbalanced by Walter's total loopiness and his son Peter's attempts to act as a primary caregiver despite not being a caregiving type. It's an interesting dynamic for a father-son show, and I don't remember the last time I watched a father-son show where both parties were adults.
And remember:
Walter: Just because no one has documented flying monkeys or talking lions yet hardly means they don't exist.
Posted by: Kari Lucin, Daily Globe on 2/01/2010 at 2:14 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: entertainment, fringe, television
Technical Difficulties, Ack
Some of you probably noticed the Daily Globe website wasn't updated at the usual time (midnight). As it happens, we experienced some technical difficulties with the website and couldn't put up any stories for a while.
Whenever this happens (and to the Fargo folks' credit, it doesn't happen often), it drives me crazy. It's kind of the online equivalent of having a piece of broccoli stuck in your teeth and not being able to do anything about it.
On the bright side, the whole website stayed up and functional, and you could still read articles from yesterday, so it wasn't as if people were hitting an error message or a blue screen of death or a picture of a geek weeping over her keyboard. And I came into work this morning and put up everything as usual, from the obituaries to the news stories to a couple of opinion pieces.
So, sorry about the delay. Be sure to check out the update some time today!
Posted by: Kari Lucin, Daily Globe on 1/29/2010 at 12:28 PM | Comments (2) | Permalink
Tags: geeks, technical difficulties, technology
Jumping into a Frozen-Over Lake While Wearing a Swimsuit
I didn't really have anything sensible to say after jumping into an ice-cold Lake Okabena in the middle of January. If I'd been entirely sensible, I probably wouldn't have participated in the Deep Freeze Dip in the first place.
But together, the 30-plus crazy people raised more than $40,000 for the Southwest Minnesota Honor Flight on Saturday, just by agreeing to jump into the lake, and that made the effort seem sane. After all, many of the veterans we were raising money for had gotten shot or at least, shot at, by enemy soldiers during World War II.
I've experienced immersion in cold water before, and I'm pretty sure it's better than being shot.
The worst part about the jump was probably waiting for it, while standing in the 2 inches of cold water on top of 
the lake. I didn't actually have to do this. Every time I came out of the ice house while other people were jumping into the lake, the cold water stung my feet badly enough that I had to go back into the ice house.
Finally, all the other women had already gone, so I left my warm shelter and stood outside. The gentleman at the front of the line allowed me to go ahead of him (thank you! I owe my toes to you!) and suddenly, I found myself about to leap into a hole cut into a frozen lake.
I had to take my glasses off for the jump, which is always unsettling, and after I had, I couldn't actually tell where the carpet on the ice ended and the water began. I had to test the "ground" with my toe to figure out where the edge was before I could jump in. I didn't want to fall in sideways and bonk my head on the ice and die of either head trauma or severe embarassment.
My first words, once I started climbing up the ladder, were "Uff da." Only it was too cold, and I shivered, and it came out "Uff...ff...ff da."
This was a relief to me; I thought for sure I was going to say something much less printable. I was worried I'd have to find a "beep!" sound effect for our video.
You can see me, Worthington mayor Alan Oberloh, radio guru Chad Cummings and almost everyone else who participated in the Deep Freeze Dip on video at http://www.dglobe.com/event/videos/ and a photo gallery of participants at http://www.dglobe.com/event/photogalleries/tag/photo%20galleries/.
Posted by: Kari Lucin, Daily Globe on 1/27/2010 at 5:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: craziness, deep freeze dip, honor flight, lake, lake okabena, southwest minnesota honor flight, weather
Seriously, Don't Drive! Really, We Mean It!
Some people believe the press catastrophizes storms in an attempt to scare people into reading the news. Mostly we just pass on what the National Weather Service says, which is often, in fact, scary.
In this case, visibility has dropped to zero in some places, there's people in the ditch all over the place, and MN/DoT and the National Weather Service are both telling people to get the heck off the roads (and I paraphrase).
Please do not drive out there, people. For reference, we are under a blizzard warning. Most of the previous storms (including, in our part of the state, the Christmas Blizzard) have not qualified, technically, as blizzards.
(That's not to say they weren't, in common parlance, blizzards--winter storms that drop a lot of snow and have some wind and ice associated.)
This one is an actual technical blizzard, and it is very dangerous out there right now.
If you travel, you put yourself at risk, but you also put at risk all the emergency personnel who will have to rescue you. They can't see any better than you can out there. Unless there is some emergency, by which I mean someone is bleeding or dying, please do not drive!
Posted by: Kari Lucin, Daily Globe on 1/25/2010 at 1:35 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
