Ad astra per aspera

I was introduced several months ago, by a friend, to the fabulous but cancelled sci-fi show Firefly. I had heard of it before, when it was being cancelled, and it inspired a Star Trek-like fan write-in campaign.

The show was quite good; I wish I had caught it while it was on the air, and that I could have lent my viewing weight to its ratings. They are making a movie based on the show, though, in the hopes of garnering a larger audience. I am excited about it.

Which is why I feel it is my duty to show those people who are interested the new trailer for Serenity that was released today. It is in QuickTime format, so you'll need that player installed.

Enjoy!

Oh, and River: DAMN.

*UPDATE* It would appear that an unfinished version of the movie will be screened in select cities across the country on May 5th. Guys down South Carolina way... I don't know how close you are to Atlanta, but you can get tickets here for a showing in that city.

Pro Wrestling

So apparently, there's this new wrestling league, Real Pro Wrestling. They purport to be a team-based wrestling league, based on freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling. I would be all over watching some of this, cept I don't think we get either of the channels it comes on, PAX and Fox Sports Network.

Brings back some memories, though.

Mmmm... meme...

Meme I picked up from Simo. Leave your answers in my comments.

*edit* Bah. Stupid links. It should just know what I want it to do, right?

:WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MY:
Personality:
Eyes:
Face:
Hair:
Body:
Clothes:
Voice:
Humor:
Choice of music:
Mannerisms:
Family:


1. Who are you?
2. Are we friends?
3. When and how did we meet?
4. How have I affected you?
5. What do you think of me?
6. What's the fondest memory you have of me?
7. How long do you think we will be friends?
8. Do you love me?maybe as a friend.
9. Do you have a crush on me?
10. Do you know people who do?
11. Would you kiss me?
12. Would you hug me?
13. Would you do anything else to me?
14. Physically, what stands out?
15. Emotionally, what stands out?
16. Do you wish I was cooler?
17. On a scale of 1-10, how hot am I?
18. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
19. Am I loveable?
20. Describe me in one word.
21. What was your first impression?
22. Do you still think that way about me now?
23. What do you think my weakness is?
24. Do you think I'll get married?
25. What makes me happy?
26. What makes me sad?
27. What reminds you of me?i
28. If you could give me anything what would it be?
29. How well do you know me?
30. When's the last time you saw me?
31. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?n
32. Ever held a grudge against me but never told me?
33. Do you think I could kill someone?
34. Do you think I already have?
35. Would you ever have sex with me?
36. Are you going to post this and see what I say about you?

Livejournal Users

For those of you who are LJ users, I've been meaning to post this for a while; Bridget's cousin Rick has set up feeds of my and Bridget's blogs so they can be viewed on your friends page.

Just add aricept-feed for mine and rabbit-feed for Bridget's.

Students!

"Yes, we've got eggs and students, and eggs, bacon, and students, and students and eggs and students, and waffles with students, and..."

That's a bad paraphrase of the Monty Python skit from which email spam gets its name.

But my point is clear. We've had a drought of new students for almost a year now, and suddenly we're inundated with them. I posted about all of our new students a few days ago, and now, Tuesday, I have FIVE coming to watch classes. Possibly SIX! That's like, half the size of the school!

Now, I'm faced with that same dilemma of what o do with everyone so nobody gets bored. Although really, things seem to be working out; they either fit into my kids class very well, or my adult class. The porblem is, my kids class is all very small right now, like under age 8, so throwing a 13 year old in there isn't going to help him much, as he'll be slowed down by me having to low down for the younger kids. And in the adult class, he'd just be creamed. I'd be more inclined to throw him in with the adults of the two choices, though.

I love this stuff

The 'Classical Holy Grail' That May Re-Write the History of the World

Scientists are using infrared technology to read previously illegible documents - the largest collection of classical documents in the world. They've discovered previously unknown works by great Greek poets and playwrights, just in the first few days of examining them. Some are predicting a 20% increase in the number of great Greek and Roman documents in existence

Firefox extensions

Since I was just talking about Firefox, thought I would take a moment to talk about the extensions I use, in case people find them interesting.

Adblock - Probably the quintessential Firefox extension, Adblock does just what its name implies, blocks ads. You know, banner ads, flash ads, all those annoying things that take up screen real estate in your browser window - like that stupid iPod ad at OpenDiary.

Tabbrowser Preferences - Not as feature-full as Tab Browser Extension, but not nearly as buggy, either. Gives you more control over what can be done with the tabbed browsing of Firefox. Wish it supported Undo Close Tab, though.

StumbleUpon - This one is just fun. It randomly throws you to a page based on preferences you've set. You can vote whether you like the page or not, and it updates your preferences based on your "likes" and "dislikes". Its coolest feature, however, is the ability to easily send a page to another Stumbler, or even just email it to someone. It is for Awesome. It has reinvigorated my desire to surf, which I thought I had died some time ago.

Mouse Gestures - I learned to love both tabbed browsing and mouse gestures when I was using the Opera browser, and one of the first things I did when switching to Firefox was find a mouse gestures extension. Basically, this allows you to use mouse-shortcuts to activate certain features of the browser, like back, forward, open new tab, close tab, open new window, open link(s) in new tab... all sorts of stuff. You can map new gestures, also, and even have a gesture do something as simple as, say, open a single bookmark.

I've also started using a few new ones recently on my PortableFirefox usb key...

Bookmarks Synchronizer - I use this to keep my bookmarks consistent between my PortableFox and my regular Windows- and Linux-based Firefoxes. Set an upload site, and set to auto-update or not, and you're good to go.

WebMail Compose - allows you to compose emails in a webmail window by clicking on a mailto: link. Normally, you'd need to use an external client, like Outlook Express, or Mozilla Thunderbird. This, for a portable browser, is a great solution, as I don't have to configure a mail client for my return addresses everytime I want to mail someone from a webpage.

FireFTP - This one is not hosted at update.mozilla.org, so Firefox will not, by default, allow you to install it. It will pop up a small yellow bar at the top of the screen; click the button on the far right of it, and follow the instructions. It's an FTP client that sits in a Firefox tab - works pretty well, too, has a good bevy of features.

That's pretty much all the ones I use, actively. Let me know what you're using.

Firefox 1.0.3

For those that use it, Firefox 1.0.3 is out. It's mostly a security update, providing a number of fixes for various holes, as well as tweaking the update process.

The update process is pretty simple: in the upper right corner of the Firefox window, next to the activity icon, will appear a little red arrow. Click that, and it should start the update process.

Speed limits

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Light. Or rather, the speed of light. 3.0x10⁸ meters per second (that's 3 followed by eight zeros, or 186000 miles an hour) - the one constant in the universe, right? Tell that to these people. They slowed light down to 17 meters per second, just over 38 miles an hour.

Like, I think I can ride a bicycle faster than that.

Babies galore

Babies just seem to be everywhere, don't they?

My sister's pregnant, again, Daisy's sister just had a baby, and one of my best friends growing up just sent me a picture of her year old baby girl. First time I'd seen her. Isn't she adorable?

I worry, sometimes, that I won't get to be as big a part of these babies' lives as I would really like to. I only see my nephews a few times a year; Brodi, though, calls me Uncle Nathan now, at least, which is good for a three year old. He doesn't always call me that, of course. I'm a five hour round trip from them; an afternoon visit doesn't often come up. Even the occasional weekend trip can be difficult to arrange.

In the case of my friend, I'm almost 2000 miles away; that's definitely not in the works as an easy visit. Bottom line, I'm not really near anyone. This will eventually change, of course, after I graduate, but even then, we have no idea where I might end up teaching. Or even if I will end up teaching. Or WHEN I'll end up graduating, for that matter. These babies might be nearly grown by that time.

Friendship

Pardon me whilst I wax sentimental.

I miss friends. I have friends, don't get me wrong. My friend-landscape is so VERY different than it was just four or five years ago, though. And I miss them.

My friends used to be my life. Probably everyone's life. And actually, growing up, I didn't have that many friends near where I lived. In fact, I had like one friend that I would hang out with on a regular basis. During the summer I hung out with a TON of people near my grandmother's house. THOSE were my friends, they were the center of my life when I was young. One eventually was the best man at my wedding.

I haven't seen any of them regularly for like 6 years. Some came to my wedding, which was great. I miss them.

My mom was always upset with the amount of time I spent with my friends. "Friends come and go, but your family will always be there for you," is what she would always say. At 14, I didn't understand how I would ever NOT be friends with these people. Now I haven't spoken to many of them for years. My mom knew, though; her best friend from high school never returned her calls when my mom was in town for a week for my great-grandmother's funeral. I'm not saying any of my friends are like that, or that that is the kind of friend I am or will be... just that she knew that friends do come and go, and I hadn't had that experience yet.

My mom had a lot of friends, I thought, when I was growing up. Later she told me that she was always afraid that my dad was cheating on her, so she tried not to gather female friends. She may have been right, I don't know, it's not the kind of question I'm going to ask my dad. Kind of helps me understand the mentality my mom helds/holds on friends, though.

My first year of college I made a great group of friends - the kind you have picures of in your office and say, "Yeah, those are my college buddies." My second year most of them were gone, and by the end of the third all of them were. I cried when the last one left.

And now I have all-new friends. Great friends - that's why we're friends, right? I love them. I love hanging out with them, enjoying their company... sometimes I can't quite express that. I know, especially recently, I haven't been able to do things with them nearly as much, but I do appreciate them, even if I don't always show it.

And everyone's lives are like this, too. We have our friends growing up, elementary, middle, high school. Then we go off to college, probably make all new friends there. Then we go off into the workforce, move to a new place, make new friends there. I dislike the temporary nature relationships seem to have. I wish they would just... stay. I wish they were easier to maintain.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." - John 15:13, KJV. I remember reading that at 15 and thinking, "Wow. Do I love anyone that much?" I thought about that for weeks. That, actually, is what led me to tell a girl I loved her for the first time - and yes, I meant that in a romantic sense, as well. Ever since then I have periodically sat down to go through who I would willingly lay down my life for, and who I might only be willing to imperil my life for. Very few fall into the latter category. Do I just pick them right, or am I too giving with my life?

Wow, this was kind of rambling. Perhaps more personal than I meant it to be, too. Ah, well. See you on the flip-side.

New students!

We have just had a RUN of new students recently. First Cade's brother, then one of our regular families brought in a friend, and then I get two new students on Tuesday, and one might bring her son! I mean, that's four or 5 new students, when we haven't seen one in almost six months.

Now, the problem with new students is that they are hard to integrate with our existing students, the majority of whom are already half way through the pre-black belt rank structure. It's not so hard with adults, actually, or with young kids, but in between that... I don't want to slow them down by putting them in my children's class, or throw them in with my advanced students, or throw them in the adult class... so it's a bit of a predicament. For now, though, I'm safe..

I could always add a new class, rearrange the time structure a bit... say, move all the classes up a half hour and add a fourth class, so I have classes at 5, 6, 7, and 8... that could be workable, but then I'm there a LONG time. And do students really want to be going home at 9pm?

Fat Lip

The right side of my face is the size of a watermelon. Re feels like it, at least. Bridget says my face is just normal sized.

I had more fillings done and my lower right wisdom tooth extracted. Yay for more blood tinged saliva. I'm in a foul mood right now from the procedure - I don't think I could tell you why, I'm just not a pleasant individual. So thank Bridget for putting up with me the next time you see her.

Squirrel Slayer

I'm a pretty normal person. When I see an animal in the road, I attempt to avoid it. I will brake, I will try to go around it, in general try to avoid hitting it without endangering my own life. Usually, the animal agreeably joins me on this quest to extend its life.

Until this morning. This morning, driving myself back from the hotel, I happen upon a squirrel absent-mindedly sniffing at something in the middle of my lane. I began to break, and he did not move, although he did look directly at me. So I began to move into the other lane. He seems to think this a LOVELY idea, and jaunts on over as well. I brake harder, moving back into my lane, still a good twenty feet or so from the squirrel. He, of course, dances happily back to his previous spot. I am now braking as hard as I can, thinking "Please, don't let me kill this squirrel."

I am now at a complete stop. Either I am directly atop the suicidal rodent, or he is staring at the undercarriage of my van. I watch in my side mirrors for his quick escape, and see nothing. I press on the gas, watching in my rear-view mirror for his body. There it is, lifeless in the road. Wait, no. He moves! He... twitches? His upper-body lays against the pavement while his lower-body dances across the road. I watched him move two feet or so, dragging his head, before I moved on, unwilling to see more, but knowing that in a few minutes I would be sharing his demise with you.