Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:40 PM

I don't think I can stay awake long enough to watch, but David Wondrich will be appearing, and I can only presume he'll be mixing drinks like this:

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:58 PM

This afternoon at work, I received an announcement/invitation for:

Identity Theft Seminar on Tuesday - sign up requested.

my gut reaction was

‘Phishing scam!’

I immediately realized how illogical that sounded.

The only explanation I can come up with is that "identity theft" is such a hot-button phrase that it primed me to suspect any request for information...

That's the kind of place my mind has been lately...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:45 PM

Remember what I said about being consumed by my data-geeking side?

I spent about 2.5 hours this evening putting together a table to compare and contrast different brands of multivitamins...

[And then I wonder where the time went.]

The greater problem is that I feel like my facility with words has been failing me this week.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:08 AM

These have got to be the best political ads I've heard this entire election season.

Listen the streaming audio (90 seconds) from Marketplace Morning Report on Public Radio.

In the interest of balanced coverage, they provided ads both for and against Prop. 111, so you can decide for yourself.

They've also posted the transcripts if you're somewhere you can't listen.

What do you think?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:35 PM

So, was Peter Schilling writing David Bowie fanfic?

Please explain your rationale.

For those unfamiliar with the source material, a quick refresher course:

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:35 PM

Normally, this time of year -- late December and early January -- have a relatively light workload.

With all the holidays, projects usually slow down, giving one time to clean up one's desk and take care of much-needed maintenance.

Not this year. I was involved in shipping a major release just before X-mas, and am already hip-deep in another massive project.

That's one of the reasons the blog has been so quiet lately -- I just haven't had time to write much, even this explanation of why I haven't had time.

Compounding that... I sometimes perceive myself as having two sides: I've got an creative-and-verbal half and a hard-science data-crunching half.

I perceive them as separate aspects because I often find that if I spend too much time in one field, I need to balance it out with tasks from the other.

I've really nourished my literary side the latter half of last year, with the Marlowe symposium and all the plays I've seen.

And now I'm paying for it, because it seems like everything I do these days requires me to construct a spreadsheet table to sort and standardize.

I can't quite explain it, but I'm barely having time to read, much less write.

This is probably just a temporary obsession; hopefully I can get these competing... drives... back into balance and resume a normal posting schedule.

But until then I just waned to keep you all appraised.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:10 PM

Some sentimental blogger has compiled links to oodles of classic TV intros (with a 1989 cutoff).

Some damn fine theme music, too. A few cases where I couldn't recall a song by the show's title, it all came back to me with the first note.

A few favorites of mine:

• Quantum Leap (Season 3)
• Amazing Stories (featuring My Favorite Martian Ray Walston as the storyteller)
• MacGyver (which always makes me think of Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers)
• The Amanda Pays sidekick double-feature:
  • Max Headroom (which, aside from the bulky camera, still feels less dated than most older SF)
  • The Flash
• And her husband, Corbin Bernsen: L.A. Law
• And anyone else remember Ellery Queen? version one or version two

Some truly great music in these.

And many of these clips are making me long to go out and buy DVDs of the shows.

Any others that particularly capture your eyes, tickle your eardrums, or bring back fond memories?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:30 PM

2008 marks the 30th anniversary of a surprisingly popular and influential game by Warren Robinett.

Online tributes include:

Did you play Adventure? I most certainly did.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:40 PM

Mitt Romney really needs to lay off the sports metaphors if these are the best he can come up with:

"When we say I saw the Patriots win the World Series, it doesn't necessarily mean you were there."

and

"You know, [Iowa] is uh, let's see, it's the first inning in a 50-inning ball game. So you know you want to get on base in the first inning, but we're planning on doing well."

I'm not much of a sports fan, but even I can differentiate between football and baseball (I'm particularly fond of George Carlin's explanation) and know how many innings are in a single game of the latter.

Then again, it seems as though picking on Mitt is everybody's favorite sport this weekend, as the video clip on the right and other recent Talking Points Memo entries make perfectly clear.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:05 PM

Many people have felt a sense of schadenfreude over this story:

Secret Service agents who were nearby flanked [FOX News' Bill] O'Reilly after he pushed [Obama's staffer Marvin] Nicholson. They told O'Reilly he needed to calm down and get behind the fence-like barricade that contained the press.

By the way, Mike Huckabee has stated that the Republican nomination isn't the only race he's entering in 2008. He also plans to compete in this year's Boston Marathon.

So, if he's still a viable candidate in April, what's the Secret Service's responsibility for such an event?

Do they have to find sufficiently-fit agents who can run the 26 miles alongside him? And if so, how do they count in the race results? Or are agents allowed to enter and leave the race in shifts?

PS: when asked about his expectations for the Marathon (held on Patriots' Day, a Monday in April), Huckabee replied that he hoped to "finish before Tuesday."