Wow, just got home from seeing it (it was an 11:20 p.m. showing). That was a really good movie.

OK "good movie" doesn't really do it justice.

That was a REALLY great movie. It's haunting. I'll be thinking about it for a while.

Heath Ledger. OK, no hype -- even posthumously I think he deserves an Oscar nomination. He completely stole the show. What an incredible performance.

And you know what? Given the circumstances and timing of his death, he is going to wind up as a big cardboard cut-out standing next to James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.

I am completely expecting to see Nurse Joker Halloween outfits this year.

If you are kind of maybe thinking about going, GO.

But leave your kids at home. It's a rated PG-13 movie but there's a lot of violence. A lot. It's just a violent movie.

The score. The soundtrack. Wow, whoever did the score for that movie was a genius. Just sooo in tune with what was going on in the scenes. Odd cacophanies, weird screeches... so perfect for depicting fear, insecurity, menace, trepidation.

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OK I'll definitely put the movie in one of the best of the year.

Closed alpha for friends and family is now over. I'm going to assume they went back to make updates based on feedback. Closed beta has not started. After that, non-NDA beta, then GA, I assume. I still don't know if it'll be released in time for Christmas.

In the meantime, a lot of big changes. The real obvious ones like an increase in level cap to 80 and the introduction of the new Death Knight class...

but there's also new hair cuts and hair styles!! Woot! I am hoping it's not just allowing you to change to an option currently available to you, but a change to some NEW styles. I sooooo want the option to have Bride of Frankenstein stripes for my Marge Simpson Undead characters. I'm currently playing with a female orc rogue for fun (and to learn more about the class... but she is only level 38) and as hawt as they are, my favorite are the female undeads with the big souffle hair. But I wants NEW COLORS. Stripes!!!

OK OK... but one more thing. "Achievements." Lots of little projects and goals. Hundreds of them, in fact. It will give casual and non-group players a lot of mini goals, and I think this is AWESOME. Completely adds a totally new facet to the game. I LOVE it. What a great idea!

Remind me not to buy spearmint Altoids in the future. It's the green ones and I swear they taste just like toothpaste. Bleaugh.

At least in our neighborhood, it is nigh impossible to buy ginger-flavored Altoids. I had to go to Amazon and buy a case.

How can anyone not watch the end of this 5-minute video and not have their heart broken? This is formerly secret videotape documenting the interrogation of a then-16-year-old Canadian who was detained and held in Guantanamo.

At the end of the video, with no one else in the room, you hear him crying, "Help me. Help me." He tells interrogators he just wants to go home to Canada. But he's stuck in Cuba with no apparent representation (and certainly not an adult advocate).

The interrogator sounds very plain, but the situation is just terrible.

Story and video here.

Those liars at Alienware told me my computer was slated to have its components put together and ready to ship on July 22.

They are liars, because I just got a notice from FedEx that the package is on its way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

OMG OMG OMG WoW at more than 15 frames per second!!!!!!!

Odd, all the fields are showing up as Undefined this morning. The To field, etc. Odd.

You learn what people are like when they don't know they're being watched.

Rev. Jesse Jackson is apparently none too happy about Obama "talking down" to Black youth. Obama has been preaching the importance of fatherhood and responsibility, telling young people to stay in school instead of trying to have careers as rap stars and professional athletes.

You know, this is something another very successful Black man has been saying for a long time: Bill Cosby.

So Jesse Jackson was on a hot mic (that he didn't know was live) and was talking to someone, saying of Obama, "I wanna cut his nuts out" and making a scissoring motion with his fingers.

So here is this man who ran unsuccessfully for president many years ago because he was divisive and pandered to a segment of our population, who was and is probably racist against white people... and we finally have a candidate who will speak openly about some of the problems plaguing our Black population, and the guy wants to emasculate him?

Sheesh. What a bozo.

Rev. Jackson, you are part of the past. Just shut your yap and sit down!

Hey looky, Thralls Chosen managed to take down High King Maulgar tonight!

We got Gruul down to 33%. I was healing... wish I could've been DPSing... the Spectrum Rage guys are SOOOO low on DPS...

Oh well.

No, I don't think I like Twitter. I don't know why; it gives me the same "ick" feeling that MySpace does. Maybe it's too high-school. I also definitely dislike having the phone make incoming text message noises all day long (glares at husband).

No, I think I definitely don't like Twitter. I've signed up but don't expect me to use it myself. It's too... like, ohmygaa wuhtuhfuh bee-eff-eff Jill! Do I REALLY want to know what my friends are doing throughout the day? Not really. I think part of it is that the technology is intrusive. I'm not going out to see what's going out, I'm being told by people shoving messages to my phone. Yep, I definitely don't like it. Sorry.

Some things are just not meant to be viewed by others.

[Link is completely SFW; it's an article about it at E Online. If you want to watch a clip, just go to TMZ.com directly. You can't miss it. Trust me.]

Congratulations on your Alienware purchase! The details of your order are as follows:

Woot!!!

Gotta wait about two weeks.

Lani's search for a Powerbook G4 replacement:

1) Mac Airbook Pro: Doesn't play WoW well.

2) Dell m1730 World of Warcraft Edition: Too expensive, even with corporate discount; At $2500, $600 of it is just WoW-branded stuff

3) Dell m1330 (PRODUCT) RED: Wonderful super-slim design, part of Dell's contribution to the (RED) campaign to help fund the distribution of retroviral drugs in Africa (I have a (RED) iPod). 128MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS graphics card not designed for gaming, and not upgradable even at time of purchase. Boo.

4) Alienware Area-51 m15x 15" compact gaming laptop with 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT card,
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 2.4GHz (3MB Cache 800MHz FSB) processor, and 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 1024MB memory. Still much cheaper than the WoW laptop at $2167 (including tax/shipping).

At this point we haven't ruled out a desktop system, but it may become really cumbersome because my computer nook is next to the fridge in the kitchen, and between the fridge and the HP tower I have now, it gets awfully warm on some days (thank goodness the AC vent blows cool air right to my area). But right now we don't have any laptop mobility at all, so having one would be a real plus.

I realize I can't swap out parts in a laptop as easily, so I'm contemplating buying a little extra at the beginning when I order the unit.

I don't have really demanding gaming needs--after all it's just WoW, not Unreal Tournament. But I don't want to experience any lag in the cities, and I would love to be able to regularly get well over 20 fps. I run Quartz (an addon that shows lag as I play) so I can time my spells right, but it would be nicer to be able to upgrade to better, than deal with the same issues I have on my HP now.

Anyone have any other recommendations for a gaming laptop? At this point the price is probably somewhere around $1500 to $2300 or so. I don't feel comfortable going much more than that; it's not unaffordable but it's also unnecessary.

The hard drive on my Powerbook G4 bit the dust this week. I took it to the Apple Store and they couldn't resurrect it at all. Fortunately I transferred my address database to a Moleskine addressbook but still, it's the machine I used to lay out all my buttons and stuff.

Anyway, Alex offered to get me a new computer for our wedding anniversary next month (higher fps in WoW--woot) but I'd been looking at desktops all this time... until this week. Now we don't have any laptops at home, so Alex suggested that I might look for some laptop models.

The WoW model came to mind. I'd be paying $500 more for extras and branding (the Alliance logo version is on sale for +$300 off but not Horde. haaaaahahahahaha nobody wants to buy an Alliance one, suckahz)... but for that price difference I could buy a much better computer.

Hmmmm

Anyway, I think I am about to cross a threshold.... no working Mac in my household since 1990.

The word "compound" is an interesting one. I can use it in:

Compound adjective
Branch Davidian compound
Compound W

and they all mean very different things.

Hey kids, make sure to tell your parents to buy a Wii for Christmas so you can wield it like a lightsaber in this game!

Original sketch in a small Moleskine Sketchbook of a little Oxacacan river otter carving, drawn Saturday, June 21 with Staedtler Mars-780 HB pencil. Outlined with Staedtler pigment liner and filled with Aquash watercolor crayons while paying attention to an online class this morning.

So these people had a real live science conference IN World of Warcraft! Wow! Oh erm... WoW!

Not a week goes by that the airlines are yanking our chains. It's bad enough we had to take it in the rear from the TSA, now we have to take it in our face from the airlines. Sorry to use such a vulgar analogy but that's how it feels.

Anyway, I've revived my Travelite.org Web site again and have converted it to a blog format so I can post updates all the time. I have SO much to say.

Hydross in Serpentshrine Cavern down! Yay!

PS: Remember to respec out of frost next time we are scheduled to kill a boss that is IMMUNE TO FROST SPELLS HALF THE TIME!

Thank you. Yours truly,

a frost mage.