Since everyone else in the world is probably going out to see A.I., I stayed home and watched D.A.R.Y.L., an earlier movie about a cyborg boy. I wanted to be D.A.R.Y.L. when I saw him playing two Atari games while watching four channels and listening to classical music all at once. I can multitask, but not that well. Now that I've seen it as an adult, I still want to be D.A.R.Y.L., but I also wouldn't mind being Turtle's sister "Hookie". She's got an Atari 800XL and gets a lot of dates. Hmm... on second thought I'd rather be one of her dates. If she'd let me use her computer, that is. And here's something I never realized before: Barret Oliver played both D.A.R.Y.L., in this movie, and Bastian in The NeverEnding Story. He did good work with good roles. I wonder where he is now... Tomorrow morning I'll go to work again (bleh). I've got to move some hardware around, swap out a bunch of network cables, make a bunch of cables, and basically tidy up the networking closet. It'll be worth it, of course. It's just slightly inconvenient. But such is the work of a sysadmin. I'll also get to meet a student who thinks he'd like to be a systems librarian. He'll help me, and I'll talk to him about what it's actually like doing this stuff. (Quick answer: You have to know a little bit about everything, and the more time you spend learning new stuff, the more time you'll have to spend learning new stuff.)

I saw the beginning of Cannibal! The Musical last night, and I can tell that I'm going to enjoy other Troma films too. This afternoon I've been going through my old floppies, some of which date to the early 1990s (and still contain interesting data). The greatest find so far is a patched version of Sid Meier's CIVILIZATION. My circle of friends in college, KaziCorps, edited the text files that came with the game to suit our own style of humor. For example, the captions that appear as you begin a game were changed as follows:

_
In the beginning,
the Earth blew up.
It was replaced by this hunk of crap.
_
But the Sun shone upon the crap
and deep inside its brittle crust
massive forces waited to be unleashed.
_
The seas farted.  
Great continents were formed.
The continents shifted, mountains arose.
Earthquakes spawned massive tidal waves,
then the mountains to sank into the mud.
New mountains rose and also sank into the mud. 
But the third set of mountains stayed.
For now.
_
Into this swirling maelstrom,
not unlike a public toilet,
the first stirrings of Life appeared:
invisible dogs, unicorns, and dragons.
They began the life cycle.
_
The seeds of Life grew,
and strengthened, and spread,
and diversified,
and prospered, 
but the tidal waves came again,
and they all sank into the mud.
_
But then DNA samples were found,
extracted from fossils,
and with biological engineering, 
Reptiles, Dinosaurs, and Mammals were made. 
Man made them all.
Man was intelligent.
Man made a theme park out of it.
Man is cool.
_
The fruits of intelligence were many:
fire, tools, and Cheese Whiz,
the hunt, farming, the sharing of food,
parties, sex, drugs, and rock & roll.
Now it required but one more ingredient:
Really Good Beer.
Beer that tastes
as if it came from a bottle,
but comes in a can.
Then everyone got drunk and formed:
_
a CIVILIZATION!

I'm also finding all sorts of things I thought were interesting in college (and even the late days of high school), including shower scenes featuring AYUKAWA Madoka. Ahem. Once a geek, always a geek...

Pied and Guildenstern have reached their new home. The trip was uneventful, if your eventfulness squelch is set above "constant meowing and trying to bite an escape tunnel in the carrier wall". At first, they indulged their curiosity. Then they found out there was a nice dark spot under my bed, and have used that as a base of operations. Occasional forays to the litter pan are announced some minutes later by the machinery (it's a cyber poop tray with an electric eye), and they know where the food and water bowls are. I spent the first day with them, and expect to come home from work to find they've learned to dial in and send naughty messages to alt.fan.hello-kitty. At the least, they'll probably be more comfortable. By a stroke of luck, Jodi was off this weekend, so I got to hang out with her on Saturday. She'll be in town soon. Yay! (But she has to finish a math course before transferring to a four-year university. I'll see what Hillsborough CC offers.)