Life, Work, Fun, and Computing
So, Tax season has been over for exactly one month today, and my job ended almost that long ago. I'll probably make a post with more about the job later. For right now just let me say that I'm glad it's over. There were days I wasn't sure that everyone was going to survive, or at least survive and not be sitting in a jail cell somewhere.
I probably should have been back to posting long before now, but I spent the first week just recovering. Did some math, and my average work week during the season was 67.5 hours. My longest week was 103 hours and my shortest work week was 38.5 hours. The good thing is that translated into a lot of pay, but it also left me a stressed out, exhausted wreck. Well, the hours weren't the only thing that caused that, but they were a big chunk.
I spent the next ten days or so on vacation with my sister. Lots of fun. We watched some Buffy & Angel which I still love a lot. We watched both Iron Man movies & Captain America in anticipation of The Avengers. We watched some other movies. We watched an episode of Castle that was very funny. We ate lots of great food. I learned that I am no good at X-Box games where you have to shoot things, in part because the buttons seem backwards to me and I keep ending up staring at the ground or shooting at the sky. I lost most of a day to Peggle. I found that Fable is kind of awesome. We went to the zoo and the Cosmosphere, and of course saw Avengers.
I've been home for more than a week now. Two days were spent settling in. When I started up my computer, all I got was a big black screen. Some investigation revealed that it was probably the display that's bad, but the cost to replace is about what I paid for the computer in the first place. I was already planning on buying a desktop so that I didn't have to use the laptop all the time, but I really wish that the old laptop had held on for another couple of weeks. Here's the thing, the desktop that I want is expensive. Once I get a monitor for it and upgrade the keyboard to something that I'll actually want to use, it's about $2000 which is an awful lot of money for me. I don't have that kind of cash right now. A family friend died in January and left me $10,000. I'll have it soon, but soon is not now. So, I went out and spent $400 on a new laptop. It's not bad. It's not as good as my old laptop, but I won't need quite as much once I get the desktop. I don't have the blu-ray drive in this one, which I may miss, but probably won't because I'm getting a monitor bigger than our television anyway for the desktop which will have a blu-ray drive. I've also sacrificed a bit in terms of processor speed, but have a bigger hard drive and more RAM. It's a Toshiba, which I've never had before, but it was well-rated, and I've liked it so far. There doesn't seem to be nearly as much utter crap cluttering it up as came on the HP. I'm hopeful that once the new monitor comes, I'll be able to hook the old laptop up to it and get my files off. Otherwise it's going to be, at the very least, significantly more trouble to get the files that I have not backed up diligently off of it.
So, those are my computing woes. Hopefully, they're done with and all will be happy in the land of computing for a good long while now.
If you're interested in my thoughts on The Avengers, they can be found
So, I'm pretty much completely and totally in love with this movie & Joss Whedon. I've seen a lot of people on the internet say that it didn't feel like a Joss script to them (aside from the shoving something pointy through a beloved character's chest anyway). It definitely did to me, and that is not a bad thing. I've seen it twice now, and whether or not I see it again before it's out of the theatre depends mostly on how much self-control I manage to have with $10k in the bank.
I'm a comic book fan from way back (who is something like 3 years behind on the current comic canon). I've got about 40 years worth of Avengers canon in my head (and about that of the Iron Man standalone titles). I've also always been pretty willing to accept that the films are not going to follow comic canon. I don't mind that, as long as they're well done. In my opinion this one was. It doesn't hurt that I've adored this version of Iron Man. RDJ is the perfect casting choice, and there is not a single bit of character development that I would change. It also doesn't hurt anything that Chris Evans actually made me like Captain America, whom I've always found really quite dull on his own. It's not that I hated Cap. I just failed to care about him in any way unless it was for the effect that he was having on Tony in any previous incarnation. That's a difference I can't even really quantify, but he just feels more interesting to me this go around.
So, still loving RDJs Tony Stark. I like that while he was still Tony, he was different here. A reasonably stable relationship with Pepper is probably part of that, and not believing that he'll be dead in the very near future is probably a bigger part.
I continue to like Captain America. I have to admit that I still largely seem him through a lens of how his actions relate to Tony, but I like this Steve Rogers for himself too. He might be the ultimate good guy. But he can be kind of pissy from time to time which amuses me. Culture shock is probably too mild of a term to explain how he's feeling, but he does it mostly without complaint. I also love how excited he is to finally get a pop culture reference.
I found Black Widow(Natasha) to be kind of flat in Iron Man 2, but I liked her a lot here. I'm particularly fond of her interrogation of Loki. Overall, I thought she was good, if not a great rendition of the character.
Clint is a favorite from the comics. He's not quite as much fun for me here, but a good portion of that has to be that Loki took him pretty early, and that provides more than enough angst for later. I'm excited to see what he's like in the sequel.
I know it's weird, for someone who has read a lot of the comics, but the old live-action television Hulk will always be my Hulk. I loved that show, and there has never been a version of the Hulk that I liked as much. This one comes close. For one thing they manage to find that delicate balance where I like both Bruce Banner and the Hulk, each on their own merits. Hulk also provided us with some of the most hilarious moments of the film.
If there was a character from the comics that I liked less than Captain America it was Thor. The Thor movie didn't make me like him anymore (though I did fall a little bit in love with Loki). He's still far from my favorite, but I liked him better here. I'm sure part of that is intentional. The events of his own movie have forced him to grow up more than a little, and that makes him more tolerable.
Nick Fury was awesome, even if he is a lying liar who lies, and a manipulative bastard. Actually that should be especially because he's a lying liar who lies and a manipulative bastard. I kind of think that my favorite line of the whole movie might be when the guy is prattling on about how the Nav systems are...blah...blah, and he says, "Is the sun coming up?" Or maybe it was when he said, "I understand that you have made a decision, but as it's a stupid-ass decision I am choosing to ignore it." I think I like Fury, because he's kind of an ultimate pragmatist. If it gets the job done he does it, whether other people think it's ethical or not. It makes him very effective, even if it doesn't exactly endear him to the people around him.
I love Phil Coulson. I've loved him pretty much from the first moment he appeared onscreen in Iron Man. I love the kind of blandly inoffensive demeanor that hides this incredibly courageous, competent, kick-ass guy. This is why I choose to believe (and will pretty much forever) that the trading cards weren't the only thing that Fury was lying about. Which would be typical Nick Fury pragmatism, of course when Tony finds out he's going to have a meltdown. Also, how adorable is his Captain America obsession.
The individual characters were varying degrees of successful for me, but the way the team came together as a whole just worked. I love that it wasn't automatic. This is a team filled up with big personalities, most of whom are much more accustomed to working by themselves. They shouldn't fit together without working at it. That was particularly effective between Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. I also love that in the end, Loki wanting to take over the planet isn't enough to make them work together, but Loki killing Phil Coulson is. I like that it took something personal to make them all get over themselves and do what had to be done. But once they get there, it's like they've been working together forever.
One thing which I'm extraordinarily glad about is that we didn't get some scene full of manly angst between Steve and Tony where Steve admits that he might have been wrong about Tony, and Tony may or may not have some sort of self-loathing fit. Mostly because I don't know that I think these versions of the characters ever have that discussion, or at least not anytime soon. I think that Steve realizes that he was wrong about Tony. But he's not a big talker, and I don't really get the feeling that he's good at apologies either. And for his part, Tony is very good at hiding his self-loathing. He doesn't want to have that conversation, and neither does Steve, and eventually they'll find their way to friends without it.
So, I've been reading fic already. I am unsurprised that a huge percentage of it is Tony/Steve. It's an old-school ship, and I can see the same sort of subtext in the movie that was always a part of the comics. It feels a little too soon for me. I want to see them actually get to be friends first, but some of the fic is doing that for me. Probably the next largest pairing that I'm finding is Phil Coulson/Clint Barton. I'm honestly not sure that I find much justification for it, but they fit together pretty well in my head, so I don't mind so much. It's also the principal pairing in almost all of the fix-it fic I've come across.
Next is probably Phil/Clint/Natasha which doesn't actually work for me quite as well. That's probably because part of my head canon for Clint & Natasha specifically has them not having that kind of relationship (mostly because I suspect that before coming to Shield, an organization that still pretty much demands that she use sex to get the answers they want, she's never had a man in her life where that wasn't part of the relationship). That said, some of it is spectacularly well done, so I can deal with it.
I am a bit surprised that Tony/Bruce (with or without Pepper) is a distant fourth in the corners of fandom that I've found. It's not a pairing that I had ever contemplated prior to the movie, but the subtext wasn't exactly light. They ride off into the sunset together. I actually think they might be my favorite pairing in the movieverse. I think that Tony relishes the chance to talk to someone who might actually be as smart as he is, or at least close enough to see where he's going with things. He also seems to understand almost instinctively what buttons are okay to push with Bruce, which makes Bruce a lot more relaxed around Tony than you might expect. So yeah, this works for me, with or without Pepper involved in the mix. Of course, I also like the Bruce & Tony as bestest friends, which seems to be the more common thing in fic.
I've got a pretty lengthy reading list at AO3, but I'm definitely taking suggestions for any pairing and/or Gen fic. So what's on your must read list for the Avengers? Also, are there any good vids yet?
I read A Game of Thrones recently, and have just started A Clash of Kings. I'm tired, so much more than that will wait until later. I liked the first book enough to buy the second.
And I'm about to start rewatching Suits and Teen Wolf in anticipation of their second seasons. My plan is to write something up about each episode as I work my way through them. I might also start over on The Vampire Diaries and see if I can make it past episode 4 this time, but we'll see.
I probably should have been back to posting long before now, but I spent the first week just recovering. Did some math, and my average work week during the season was 67.5 hours. My longest week was 103 hours and my shortest work week was 38.5 hours. The good thing is that translated into a lot of pay, but it also left me a stressed out, exhausted wreck. Well, the hours weren't the only thing that caused that, but they were a big chunk.
I spent the next ten days or so on vacation with my sister. Lots of fun. We watched some Buffy & Angel which I still love a lot. We watched both Iron Man movies & Captain America in anticipation of The Avengers. We watched some other movies. We watched an episode of Castle that was very funny. We ate lots of great food. I learned that I am no good at X-Box games where you have to shoot things, in part because the buttons seem backwards to me and I keep ending up staring at the ground or shooting at the sky. I lost most of a day to Peggle. I found that Fable is kind of awesome. We went to the zoo and the Cosmosphere, and of course saw Avengers.
I've been home for more than a week now. Two days were spent settling in. When I started up my computer, all I got was a big black screen. Some investigation revealed that it was probably the display that's bad, but the cost to replace is about what I paid for the computer in the first place. I was already planning on buying a desktop so that I didn't have to use the laptop all the time, but I really wish that the old laptop had held on for another couple of weeks. Here's the thing, the desktop that I want is expensive. Once I get a monitor for it and upgrade the keyboard to something that I'll actually want to use, it's about $2000 which is an awful lot of money for me. I don't have that kind of cash right now. A family friend died in January and left me $10,000. I'll have it soon, but soon is not now. So, I went out and spent $400 on a new laptop. It's not bad. It's not as good as my old laptop, but I won't need quite as much once I get the desktop. I don't have the blu-ray drive in this one, which I may miss, but probably won't because I'm getting a monitor bigger than our television anyway for the desktop which will have a blu-ray drive. I've also sacrificed a bit in terms of processor speed, but have a bigger hard drive and more RAM. It's a Toshiba, which I've never had before, but it was well-rated, and I've liked it so far. There doesn't seem to be nearly as much utter crap cluttering it up as came on the HP. I'm hopeful that once the new monitor comes, I'll be able to hook the old laptop up to it and get my files off. Otherwise it's going to be, at the very least, significantly more trouble to get the files that I have not backed up diligently off of it.
So, those are my computing woes. Hopefully, they're done with and all will be happy in the land of computing for a good long while now.
If you're interested in my thoughts on The Avengers, they can be found
So, I'm pretty much completely and totally in love with this movie & Joss Whedon. I've seen a lot of people on the internet say that it didn't feel like a Joss script to them (aside from the shoving something pointy through a beloved character's chest anyway). It definitely did to me, and that is not a bad thing. I've seen it twice now, and whether or not I see it again before it's out of the theatre depends mostly on how much self-control I manage to have with $10k in the bank.
I'm a comic book fan from way back (who is something like 3 years behind on the current comic canon). I've got about 40 years worth of Avengers canon in my head (and about that of the Iron Man standalone titles). I've also always been pretty willing to accept that the films are not going to follow comic canon. I don't mind that, as long as they're well done. In my opinion this one was. It doesn't hurt that I've adored this version of Iron Man. RDJ is the perfect casting choice, and there is not a single bit of character development that I would change. It also doesn't hurt anything that Chris Evans actually made me like Captain America, whom I've always found really quite dull on his own. It's not that I hated Cap. I just failed to care about him in any way unless it was for the effect that he was having on Tony in any previous incarnation. That's a difference I can't even really quantify, but he just feels more interesting to me this go around.
So, still loving RDJs Tony Stark. I like that while he was still Tony, he was different here. A reasonably stable relationship with Pepper is probably part of that, and not believing that he'll be dead in the very near future is probably a bigger part.
I continue to like Captain America. I have to admit that I still largely seem him through a lens of how his actions relate to Tony, but I like this Steve Rogers for himself too. He might be the ultimate good guy. But he can be kind of pissy from time to time which amuses me. Culture shock is probably too mild of a term to explain how he's feeling, but he does it mostly without complaint. I also love how excited he is to finally get a pop culture reference.
I found Black Widow(Natasha) to be kind of flat in Iron Man 2, but I liked her a lot here. I'm particularly fond of her interrogation of Loki. Overall, I thought she was good, if not a great rendition of the character.
Clint is a favorite from the comics. He's not quite as much fun for me here, but a good portion of that has to be that Loki took him pretty early, and that provides more than enough angst for later. I'm excited to see what he's like in the sequel.
I know it's weird, for someone who has read a lot of the comics, but the old live-action television Hulk will always be my Hulk. I loved that show, and there has never been a version of the Hulk that I liked as much. This one comes close. For one thing they manage to find that delicate balance where I like both Bruce Banner and the Hulk, each on their own merits. Hulk also provided us with some of the most hilarious moments of the film.
If there was a character from the comics that I liked less than Captain America it was Thor. The Thor movie didn't make me like him anymore (though I did fall a little bit in love with Loki). He's still far from my favorite, but I liked him better here. I'm sure part of that is intentional. The events of his own movie have forced him to grow up more than a little, and that makes him more tolerable.
Nick Fury was awesome, even if he is a lying liar who lies, and a manipulative bastard. Actually that should be especially because he's a lying liar who lies and a manipulative bastard. I kind of think that my favorite line of the whole movie might be when the guy is prattling on about how the Nav systems are...blah...blah, and he says, "Is the sun coming up?" Or maybe it was when he said, "I understand that you have made a decision, but as it's a stupid-ass decision I am choosing to ignore it." I think I like Fury, because he's kind of an ultimate pragmatist. If it gets the job done he does it, whether other people think it's ethical or not. It makes him very effective, even if it doesn't exactly endear him to the people around him.
I love Phil Coulson. I've loved him pretty much from the first moment he appeared onscreen in Iron Man. I love the kind of blandly inoffensive demeanor that hides this incredibly courageous, competent, kick-ass guy. This is why I choose to believe (and will pretty much forever) that the trading cards weren't the only thing that Fury was lying about. Which would be typical Nick Fury pragmatism, of course when Tony finds out he's going to have a meltdown. Also, how adorable is his Captain America obsession.
The individual characters were varying degrees of successful for me, but the way the team came together as a whole just worked. I love that it wasn't automatic. This is a team filled up with big personalities, most of whom are much more accustomed to working by themselves. They shouldn't fit together without working at it. That was particularly effective between Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. I also love that in the end, Loki wanting to take over the planet isn't enough to make them work together, but Loki killing Phil Coulson is. I like that it took something personal to make them all get over themselves and do what had to be done. But once they get there, it's like they've been working together forever.
One thing which I'm extraordinarily glad about is that we didn't get some scene full of manly angst between Steve and Tony where Steve admits that he might have been wrong about Tony, and Tony may or may not have some sort of self-loathing fit. Mostly because I don't know that I think these versions of the characters ever have that discussion, or at least not anytime soon. I think that Steve realizes that he was wrong about Tony. But he's not a big talker, and I don't really get the feeling that he's good at apologies either. And for his part, Tony is very good at hiding his self-loathing. He doesn't want to have that conversation, and neither does Steve, and eventually they'll find their way to friends without it.
So, I've been reading fic already. I am unsurprised that a huge percentage of it is Tony/Steve. It's an old-school ship, and I can see the same sort of subtext in the movie that was always a part of the comics. It feels a little too soon for me. I want to see them actually get to be friends first, but some of the fic is doing that for me. Probably the next largest pairing that I'm finding is Phil Coulson/Clint Barton. I'm honestly not sure that I find much justification for it, but they fit together pretty well in my head, so I don't mind so much. It's also the principal pairing in almost all of the fix-it fic I've come across.
Next is probably Phil/Clint/Natasha which doesn't actually work for me quite as well. That's probably because part of my head canon for Clint & Natasha specifically has them not having that kind of relationship (mostly because I suspect that before coming to Shield, an organization that still pretty much demands that she use sex to get the answers they want, she's never had a man in her life where that wasn't part of the relationship). That said, some of it is spectacularly well done, so I can deal with it.
I am a bit surprised that Tony/Bruce (with or without Pepper) is a distant fourth in the corners of fandom that I've found. It's not a pairing that I had ever contemplated prior to the movie, but the subtext wasn't exactly light. They ride off into the sunset together. I actually think they might be my favorite pairing in the movieverse. I think that Tony relishes the chance to talk to someone who might actually be as smart as he is, or at least close enough to see where he's going with things. He also seems to understand almost instinctively what buttons are okay to push with Bruce, which makes Bruce a lot more relaxed around Tony than you might expect. So yeah, this works for me, with or without Pepper involved in the mix. Of course, I also like the Bruce & Tony as bestest friends, which seems to be the more common thing in fic.
I've got a pretty lengthy reading list at AO3, but I'm definitely taking suggestions for any pairing and/or Gen fic. So what's on your must read list for the Avengers? Also, are there any good vids yet?
I read A Game of Thrones recently, and have just started A Clash of Kings. I'm tired, so much more than that will wait until later. I liked the first book enough to buy the second.
And I'm about to start rewatching Suits and Teen Wolf in anticipation of their second seasons. My plan is to write something up about each episode as I work my way through them. I might also start over on The Vampire Diaries and see if I can make it past episode 4 this time, but we'll see.