When you walk by my office, why must you look in at me. What’s so interesting? I don’t look into every office and cube that I pass by.

Further, why do you feel the need — YOU, who do not know me — to stick your arm in my office door and throw your garbage out in my garbage can? Granted, it’s better than leaving it on the floor in the hallway, but why MY garbage? Is your garbage too pretty to throw stuff into?

My wife has never received flowers at work in her life. So I set out to surprise her.

Ordered flowers last Thursday to arrive at her school today. Everything shipped out fine yesterday. The flowers were in NJ first thing this morning. Here’s the DHL delivery fine print:

3:00 is a good time for a school.

When I got home, the first thing I asked her about was the flowers.

“What flowers?”

Guess what? The flowers never arrived today, due to “weather conditions” and “Christmas backlog.”
So the surprise was ruined for my wife.

Screw you, DHL.

There’s an entire Amazon thread devoted to how late DHL always is.

use Perl | Happy 20th Birthday to Perl

On December 18, 1987, Larry Wall released Perl 1 to the public. That means today is the end of Perl’s 20th year. On Perl’s 16th birthday, Richard Clamp gave us Perl 1. Rumor has it that this birthday, Perl5Porters is giving us Perl 5.10, the best Perl 5 yet.

And it’s given me work for nearly a decade now.  Thank goodness for Perl.  I can’t imagine being a professional SmallTalk programmer. ;-)

More Twitter excerpts:

• Covers to Walking Dead #45 and Astounding Wolf-Man #4. Kirkman has a Shot To The Gut fetish, doesn’t he?
• Current Secret Project That Cannot Be Named is starting to build momentum. Wheeeee!
• Lining up another creator for The Commentary Track as we speak. It’s an Image book. I shall say no more, for fear of jinxing it all.
• @coverville: Ashley Tisdale, “Kiss The Girl.” From the Little Mermaid DVD set of 2006. Kinda catchy.
• I’d write a whole lot less at night if I could Twitter from work.
• Ordered stuff for the Mrs. on Amazon tonight. Needed to spend $10 for free shipping, and V FOR VENDETTA on DVD fit the bill! W00T!
• @ronxo - I also don’t need to hear “So, have we started recording yet?” at the beginning of an interview.
• @ronxo - there’s also no need to precede any interview question with, “As we were saying before we started recording. . .”
• Just got friended on Facebook from someone I haven’t seen since, oh, about eighth grade. Crazy world.
• Perl 6 changes for the better: Empty arrays are now FALSE. Yay! I’m SUCH a geek.
• I love how Amazon ships things immediately, but tracking that order shows that it sits on the dock waiting for pickup for a week first.
• Was at a 3 year old’s birthday party today and was terribly frustrated with this pos p-a-s camera
• Had a piece of spam mail asking me to reply with my GMail username and password. I sent them “augiedb” and “*********”. I hope that helps.
• I haven’t yet come to grips yet with the fact that I’ll never see a movie I want to see ever again. Might be time to sell MORE DVDs.
• My new addiction: Lode Runner on the Wii Virtual Console
• Dear Mother Nature - Make up your mind. RAIN or SNOW. This sleet stuff is just your way of not committing.

• BLADE RUNNER

This is all you need to know: 5 disc edition, 4 disc edition, and the Blu Ray edition. There’s a single disc edition of it out there, too, but is anyone seriously considering buying it?

I’m half-tempted to end it there, but there are lots of interesting releases this week:

• SIMPSONS: THE MOVIE

Pick it up at your local DVD dealer. Or 7-11.

• STARDUST

It flopped at the box office, but I hear it has its charms.

• THE ADVENTURES OF YOUNG INDIANA JONES: Volume 2

Has anyone actually watched the first volume of this yet? What did you think?

• BALLS OF FURY

Remember seeing a lot of promos and trailers for it, but don’t ever remember when it was in theaters.

• BRING IT ON: IN IT TO WIN IT

You go, girl!

Next week is Christmas week. Don’t be expecting ANYTHING. I think they released two movies last year for that week.

It’s a Monday tradition I’m working on now. Problem is, I have so many that I need to split it into two parts. More to come tomorrow!

Follow it all over here, or read some highlights:

• I’m hooked on baby carrots for my snack food. I’m going to turn orange.
• Time for a new glucometer. This one’s getting older and less reliable.
• “I once was blind, but now I see.” In other words: you drank too much last night.
• &$^%! Why do people only order a DVD off the Amazon Marketplace the day I’ve already dropped stuff off at the USPS? Can’t they coordinate?
• Really, though, doesn’t it break the conceit of the show to glorify these kids at celebrities, not average joes you follow on THE HILLS?
• You know what game the Wii Virtual Console needs above all others? CLU CLU LAND. I ate that game up back in the 8 Bit days.
• Was everybody shipping stuff for Christmas today? The post office was a complete zoo.
• Comic colorists, beware — all comics print out too damn dark. Time to update your color schemes. (More on this in Pipeline this week. . .)
• It’s VERY disappointing when a dustjacket for a nice HC is printed off-center and the spine is on the front cover. UGH
• I’m sick of hearing about Docks and Stacks from the same people who happily claimed the Dock was useless and unnecessary.
• Recording the Pipeline Podcast with my full mic/mixer/compressor set-up again. God, it feels good. Time for a LOOOONG podcast!
• Canon XTI dSLR price update: Now $589, $10 cheaper than yesterday. How low can it go? How quickly?
• I need to stop having ideas; there’s not enough time in the day to implement them all. If only there was easy big money in podcasting. . .
• It feels weird wearing a ring under winter gloves. I’m not used to this.
• It’s holiday time, and too many podcasts are shutting down for the year early. Hey, some of us have to work, dangit. We’re not vacationing!

I finally realized my problem with this show: It’s rushed. It’s sloppy. I don’t think VH1 knew what they were doing with this show when it started, and the cracks continue to show.

Each week, when Russell James repeats the big prize of the competition, his line about WHO THE SPONSOR IS is always overdubbed. Did they not know who was sponsoring the competition? Did it change at the last minute?

Jason’s wife dropped off a notebook of encouragement during their shoot this week. WHAT?!? Where did that come from? Why did it come to him? What’s the story here? Did the others get one, too, but that got edited out?

In that notebook, we see the date of August 2007, so we know how long ago the show was filmed. We also see “VH1 CLICK” atop the page. On top of everything else, the show’s name was changed since it started? OK, I suppose that isn’t so bad. . .

But let’s get to the show:

Jason is married. He’s straight. That surprised me. He’s also 39, judging from what was written in the notebook.

Jason then lost, mostly because he didn’t grow and made the same mistake over and over and over again, this week throwing about five kilowatts of light straight behind Joss Stone’s head. John’s picture was an absolute mess of composition and clutter, but at least he realized it.

That said, I agree with Jason’s opinion of the paparazzi, and loved it when he confronted the photographer in the van. I was surprised he didn’t come back with, “That’s what the Nazis were doing, too - their jobs.” Maybe he did, and the producers quickly edited it out.

Marie and Dean will likely be your finalists. Dean needs to overcome his attitude. Marie needs to overcome her technical deficiencies. I mean, it’s Photography 101 to NOT have a post sticking out of someone’s head. I guess that’s what Photoshop is for, though. John is just lost.

I’m working on a single page website for a friend of mine. We’re on a budget. It’s nothing fancy. It literally will be just one HTML page. No database, no fancy scripting, no blog engine needed, nothing.

Just a place to host a page that can be changed at will.

And someplace that will accept the domain name we have for the site. We already have the domain name purchased, so that’s not a problem.

I have to think that there’s a cheaper solution that GoDaddy. ($10 a month for a low-traffic local-interest-only seems too much for me.) There has to be some discount place out there for such sites, right? Any pointers?

Update:  As one commenter suggested, I found the economy web hosting on GoDaddy.com.  So I was able to get a domain name for two years and hosting for one for only $51.  Well within the budget.  And I used the “iFanboy” coupon code to save 10%!

taz_ornament_2007, originally uploaded by AugieDB.

The newest Christmas tree ornament, courtesy of Mom.  I have more of Taz up on the tree than anyone else, including Bugs Bunny.  Also have two Smurfs, a Garfield, a Daffy, a Sylvester. .  .

Watched part of THE LITTLE MERMAID on its most recent DVD release from last year. A couple of quick thoughts:

You can tell those bubbles are CGI. And I didn’t think the animation looked all that great, until I saw –

The (pre-nose job) Ashley Tisdale music video for “Kiss The Girl.” It incorporated clips from the movie that looked like they were edited in BEFORE Disney cleaned up the movie for the DVD release. Also, it turns out to be a catchy little cover. Some parts scream “Avril Lavigne” to me,and the whole thing is clearly Disney pop style. It has a little extra girl power, with Disney shying away from showing even the hint of sexuality amongst teenagers at the prom.

Yet I like it. I can’t help myself. I feel so wrong.

We didn’t watch the whole movie, but I want to just skip ahead to the second disc and look at all the behind the scenes stuff now. So much to do, so little time.

Spooks hunk to quit - Mirror.co.uk

Spooks hunk Rupert Penry-Jones is leaving after five years as spy Adam Carter.

The actor, 37, said he wants to leave the hit BBC1 series on a high.

He is in talks about his exit storyline which will be filmed in the spring.

I didn’t read any further down the article past that.  I still haven’t watched his character’s SECOND season yet.  I’m still a season behind, so I’m keeping myself in the dark.

* The Princess Bride: The Video Game now has a trailer. If you don’t watch it, you wouldn’t be missing much.

* Amazon.com gets the joke.

* Sad news his fans already know, but I felt compelled to mention here: Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimers.

* Pixar visual running gags. Some of these are so blink-and-you-miss-’em that I would never have had a clue they existed. Fascinating.

* Top 10 Astronomy Pictures of the Year. I love the lightning behind the observatory. That’s some good luck with a five minute exposure.

* Sure, you could pay the tax or hand over the bottle of liquor when airport security asks for it. Or, you know, JUST CHUG IT. That did not end well. Nice theory, though.

* USB Missile Launcher Goes Wireless. Sometimes, the headline says it all. Enjoy.

* Magnetic Nail Polish seems like such a good idea until you pick up a floppy disc or a VHS tape or — wait, this isn’t the 90s anymore. Carry on.

* Charmin pays tribute to Mr. Whipple.

Chuck Knoblauch was on the ‘roids? It’s amazing Keith Olbermann’s mother survived!  (For more on Chuck, I caught this blogger’s thoughts…)
So was Jose Canseco? Duh.

Who the hell is Nook Logan?!?

Yesterday, Slashdot had a story from the NY Times about UPS limiting left turns in its driving patterns for the big brown Teamster-driven trucks. Plenty of other blogs and websites picked up on this exciting “news” story yesterday, too.  It’s a cute story, isn’t it?

But it’s hardly news.  I linked to a story about this a year and a half ago.

So, slow news day?  Or UPS publicity machine finding a new venue for an old story?

You make the call.

I do not have a good feeling about this one. . .

E! News - Cameron’s Avatar Delayed

Film geeks anxiously awaiting James Cameron’s first big-screen spectacular in nearly 15 years are going to have to wait just a little bit longer.On Wednesday, 20th Century Fox announced it will postpone the Oscar-winning helmer’s highly anticipated 3-D sci-fi action film Avatar, from May 22, 2009 until Dec. 18, 2009.