4186: Observer
I've decided that I was sufficiently self-demonstrative of intelligence today that I decided to continue in that vein and put my unfinished post queue into a separate file that can be backed up vs. the temporary "draft" that regularly gets overwritten. For once.
Things I figured out:
- There's NO good reason for me to actually have the default printer set to a printer. There is effectively nothing I would get that justifies the paper and ink, and if there is, I can always go through the extra steps to choose an "alternate" printer. Therefore, my default printer is now "Adobe PDF", which is easily cancelled in the event of a misclick, since for what reason "Save As" is sandwiched between "Print" and "Remove" X/ [I have not figured out how to scan directly to a file folder instead of mailing to myself, but by this point I'm used to the extra step and am not sure how I would manage the files otherwise.]
- The Keurig machine can do at least 16 oz. from a single K-Cup, but they [tend to*] throw away anything not used in the interest of single-serving convenience, despite the waste that brings. I figure at least 16, because my thermos can only hold about 14 [12 without spilling], and I haven't really been excited about experimenting with how much I can milk a single K-Cup if all I'm going to do with the excess is dump it in the sink, anyway.
*The break room Keurig machine allows for faking a new K-Cup being in there, by lifting the lid just enough to register it being open but not far enough to actually dispose of it. The meeting room K-machine dumps it automatically.
...well, okay, that doesn't seem all that impressive written out, but I like the changes.
Other things I discovered that were even less impressive than that:
- Those nigh-microscopic red fleas? They survive microwaves pretty well =C EEW WHY BUGS IN MY LUNCH?!?! [Note: MythBusters covered something like this, but I guess on an even smaller scale, they're too simple to be hurt by the radiation. Still gross seeing something moving in there IMMEDIATELY as the microwave stops.] [[THOUGH WHY ARE THEY IN THE MICROWAVE IN THE FIRST PLACE EEWWWWWWW]]
- The break room Keurig machine broke, by spilling 2 oz. of whatever brew into itself. I don't know if it's from my experiments in milking a single cup [seems like a strange flaw, if so], but--annoyingly--it kept me from sufficient cider-age today.
- If I save a PDF for Fast Web Viewing or whatever it calls it, it adds 3-4K to the filesize =/ I don't understand why that would be, unless the copier scans at a better compression and Acrobat is uncompressing it for the Web. [Only a rare few ENORMOUS files actually get smaller with optimization, which I also don't get.]
- I am just down the road from Red Robin =( [this is not a discovery so much as a lunchtime realization, OH SHIT I COULD TOTALLY BLOW $8 ON A ROYAL RED ROBIN AND BE BACK TO WORK IN TIME]
[And that awful book I read.]I also finished reading The Mediterranean Caper, which leads me to believe that anything called (The) _____ Caper is guaranteed to be awful. I mean, it has its good points, such as Cussler actually sounding like he did research--but then, so did Dan Brown [arguably].
What strikes me about the writing [I am going to fairly try to assume that one novel is not 100% indicative of all novels by a writer] is that Cussler doesn't know how to write for women: The only female character of any importance is presented as a drop-dead gorgeous [of course] woman who remained physically and emotionally celebate following the death of her husband eight years prior [which, given her age, must've happened fairly close to straight out of school], who has no particular purpose except to be a toy for Buff McStupidname. SPOILER: Ultimately, she has a secret purpose, but the way she acts in order to conceal that purpose is so transparent, it's no wonder Buff McStupidname figured her out. I mean, sleeping on a couch in the mansion in skimpy lingerie vs., oh, IN A BEDROOM? What what what |=o [She is supposedly living there with only her grand-uncle, so even more why is she out in the open all slutted up]
The actual protagonist, the aforementioned Buff McStupidname, is this kinda wannabe James Bond + Sherlock Holmes, with none of the likeable traits of either. He's written as a chauvenist ass--he slaps NoHips McTits [a "tour guide" accused her of not having the hips for a proper Grecian whore] when she claims she is still saddened by her husband's death, yet they're locking lips moments later. At the end of the book, when some token females show up, 3/4ths of them giggle in flirtatious admiration of his battle injuries--the other snubs him, to which he responds by slamming his cane on the desk and saying, "WOMAN! Get me the Inspector NOW!"
[Basically.]
[[This also accentuates his manliness to the gigglers, vs. them saying, "GAWD, what a jackass."]]
[[[Oh, did I mention he's MAJOR Jackass? So salute, bitches.]]]
As a whole, the book does absolutely nothing to discourage the idea that every man is owed a hot woman, because the aforementioned Hot Woman practically throws herself at Chauvenist Hero even AFTER he slaps her and kidnaps her AND still goes home with him at the end though he's figured out her game. Even when half the book is devoted to talk of his Girl of the Week during any other period prior to this specific overseas mission. I found that this, overall, prevented me from enjoying any of the parts that might've made the book better than "filler for the Books No One Else Wants shelf"--the basic plot is an average search for a lost "treasure"* that turns into a crime mystery, solved by the "Hah, look how smart I am because I found out information you couldn't have possibly known until I revealed to you at the end that I knew it!" mystery method, which is usually only an interesting read IF the rest of the book is well-written.
*literally described as a "Teaser"
Unfortunately, the writing is littered with superfluous adverbs ["the empty calories of writing"], third-person limited perspective that periodically switches unnaturally to third-person omniscient, and assorted minor grammar structures that bug me ["because of", "can't help but", "(s)he said"], besides the fact the character interactions are positively dreadful. I nearly fell asleep through most of the plot points, and I kept waiting for that moment of clever that made up for the dreadfulness. Sadly, that never came, and even if it had, it doesn't make up for the convolutedness of the story. ¬_¬
[oh btw, he finds the treasure just before the final confrontation]
[[conveniently]]
Now, I *had* expected it to be a story about time-travel [I am effectively ignorant of the preferred genres of most authors], and I was surprised to realize it wasn't. What had me thinking "time-travel" was the prologue describing a mysterious 1930s war plane attacking the base, followed some time later by another character's description of a man who flew said plane disappearing without a trace. My theory was backed up by the second attack on the base being thwarted by THE SAME METHOD used to defeat the 1930s pilot who disappeared.
"Ah, but that's how you defeat pilots!" Well, not when the pilot is someone working for THE PERSON WHO MENTIONED THAT METHOD IN THE FIRST PLACE."Hey, boss--they put up a thingie like what they used to defeat your friend!"
"KILL IT DEAD"
"Hokay, boss!"
*gets a sploded*
I would find this more plausable if it had indeed been the 1930s pilot who got sucked into a wormhole only to find himself over a strange base. The above bit just reeks of Imbecile Sidekick. THE SHORT OF IT IS THIS BOOK SUCKS. Tomorrow I will start a new one, though since I determined it is a "Take a book, leave a book" receptacle, I don't know if it will be one already on the shelf or one of my own purchase that I simply have not gotten to yet [and would leave there whether or not I ultimately like the book]. Certainly they will gain a MacWorld, since I'm apparently still getting issues for some reason though I never read it.
Things I figured out:
- There's NO good reason for me to actually have the default printer set to a printer. There is effectively nothing I would get that justifies the paper and ink, and if there is, I can always go through the extra steps to choose an "alternate" printer. Therefore, my default printer is now "Adobe PDF", which is easily cancelled in the event of a misclick, since for what reason "Save As" is sandwiched between "Print" and "Remove" X/ [I have not figured out how to scan directly to a file folder instead of mailing to myself, but by this point I'm used to the extra step and am not sure how I would manage the files otherwise.]
- The Keurig machine can do at least 16 oz. from a single K-Cup, but they [tend to*] throw away anything not used in the interest of single-serving convenience, despite the waste that brings. I figure at least 16, because my thermos can only hold about 14 [12 without spilling], and I haven't really been excited about experimenting with how much I can milk a single K-Cup if all I'm going to do with the excess is dump it in the sink, anyway.
*The break room Keurig machine allows for faking a new K-Cup being in there, by lifting the lid just enough to register it being open but not far enough to actually dispose of it. The meeting room K-machine dumps it automatically.
...well, okay, that doesn't seem all that impressive written out, but I like the changes.
Other things I discovered that were even less impressive than that:
- Those nigh-microscopic red fleas? They survive microwaves pretty well =C EEW WHY BUGS IN MY LUNCH?!?! [Note: MythBusters covered something like this, but I guess on an even smaller scale, they're too simple to be hurt by the radiation. Still gross seeing something moving in there IMMEDIATELY as the microwave stops.] [[THOUGH WHY ARE THEY IN THE MICROWAVE IN THE FIRST PLACE EEWWWWWWW]]
- The break room Keurig machine broke, by spilling 2 oz. of whatever brew into itself. I don't know if it's from my experiments in milking a single cup [seems like a strange flaw, if so], but--annoyingly--it kept me from sufficient cider-age today.
- If I save a PDF for Fast Web Viewing or whatever it calls it, it adds 3-4K to the filesize =/ I don't understand why that would be, unless the copier scans at a better compression and Acrobat is uncompressing it for the Web. [Only a rare few ENORMOUS files actually get smaller with optimization, which I also don't get.]
- I am just down the road from Red Robin =( [this is not a discovery so much as a lunchtime realization, OH SHIT I COULD TOTALLY BLOW $8 ON A ROYAL RED ROBIN AND BE BACK TO WORK IN TIME]
[And that awful book I read.]I also finished reading The Mediterranean Caper, which leads me to believe that anything called (The) _____ Caper is guaranteed to be awful. I mean, it has its good points, such as Cussler actually sounding like he did research--but then, so did Dan Brown [arguably].
What strikes me about the writing [I am going to fairly try to assume that one novel is not 100% indicative of all novels by a writer] is that Cussler doesn't know how to write for women: The only female character of any importance is presented as a drop-dead gorgeous [of course] woman who remained physically and emotionally celebate following the death of her husband eight years prior [which, given her age, must've happened fairly close to straight out of school], who has no particular purpose except to be a toy for Buff McStupidname. SPOILER: Ultimately, she has a secret purpose, but the way she acts in order to conceal that purpose is so transparent, it's no wonder Buff McStupidname figured her out. I mean, sleeping on a couch in the mansion in skimpy lingerie vs., oh, IN A BEDROOM? What what what |=o [She is supposedly living there with only her grand-uncle, so even more why is she out in the open all slutted up]
The actual protagonist, the aforementioned Buff McStupidname, is this kinda wannabe James Bond + Sherlock Holmes, with none of the likeable traits of either. He's written as a chauvenist ass--he slaps NoHips McTits [a "tour guide" accused her of not having the hips for a proper Grecian whore] when she claims she is still saddened by her husband's death, yet they're locking lips moments later. At the end of the book, when some token females show up, 3/4ths of them giggle in flirtatious admiration of his battle injuries--the other snubs him, to which he responds by slamming his cane on the desk and saying, "WOMAN! Get me the Inspector NOW!"
[Basically.]
[[This also accentuates his manliness to the gigglers, vs. them saying, "GAWD, what a jackass."]]
[[[Oh, did I mention he's MAJOR Jackass? So salute, bitches.]]]
As a whole, the book does absolutely nothing to discourage the idea that every man is owed a hot woman, because the aforementioned Hot Woman practically throws herself at Chauvenist Hero even AFTER he slaps her and kidnaps her AND still goes home with him at the end though he's figured out her game. Even when half the book is devoted to talk of his Girl of the Week during any other period prior to this specific overseas mission. I found that this, overall, prevented me from enjoying any of the parts that might've made the book better than "filler for the Books No One Else Wants shelf"--the basic plot is an average search for a lost "treasure"* that turns into a crime mystery, solved by the "Hah, look how smart I am because I found out information you couldn't have possibly known until I revealed to you at the end that I knew it!" mystery method, which is usually only an interesting read IF the rest of the book is well-written.
*literally described as a "Teaser"
Unfortunately, the writing is littered with superfluous adverbs ["the empty calories of writing"], third-person limited perspective that periodically switches unnaturally to third-person omniscient, and assorted minor grammar structures that bug me ["because of", "can't help but", "(s)he said"], besides the fact the character interactions are positively dreadful. I nearly fell asleep through most of the plot points, and I kept waiting for that moment of clever that made up for the dreadfulness. Sadly, that never came, and even if it had, it doesn't make up for the convolutedness of the story. ¬_¬
[oh btw, he finds the treasure just before the final confrontation]
[[conveniently]]
Now, I *had* expected it to be a story about time-travel [I am effectively ignorant of the preferred genres of most authors], and I was surprised to realize it wasn't. What had me thinking "time-travel" was the prologue describing a mysterious 1930s war plane attacking the base, followed some time later by another character's description of a man who flew said plane disappearing without a trace. My theory was backed up by the second attack on the base being thwarted by THE SAME METHOD used to defeat the 1930s pilot who disappeared.
"Ah, but that's how you defeat pilots!" Well, not when the pilot is someone working for THE PERSON WHO MENTIONED THAT METHOD IN THE FIRST PLACE."Hey, boss--they put up a thingie like what they used to defeat your friend!"
"KILL IT DEAD"
"Hokay, boss!"
*gets a sploded*
I would find this more plausable if it had indeed been the 1930s pilot who got sucked into a wormhole only to find himself over a strange base. The above bit just reeks of Imbecile Sidekick. THE SHORT OF IT IS THIS BOOK SUCKS. Tomorrow I will start a new one, though since I determined it is a "Take a book, leave a book" receptacle, I don't know if it will be one already on the shelf or one of my own purchase that I simply have not gotten to yet [and would leave there whether or not I ultimately like the book]. Certainly they will gain a MacWorld, since I'm apparently still getting issues for some reason though I never read it.