Dr. Horrible a Huge Success Already!

It turns out I did have to wait. I had stayed at work to watch it there, but when I clicked on the site at 9:01. what I got was a message from Hulu saying they were sorry but their video library was not accessible outside the US at the moment. Frak! I was very disappointed. I’d been looking forward to this for months and now I was told I couldn’t see it because I didn’t live in the US??

Of course, I immediately went to Whedonesque and became the third or fourth person to post – and say they couldn’t see it because we were ‘furriners’. I decided to come home. By the time I got home, there were well over 100 posts in the thread, about half complaining because they couldn’t see it and the other half raving about Act 1. Luckily I’m on Twitter and Dr. Horrible posted that ‘he’ was working on the problem. According to a post that Joss made a bit later, they (“well, mostly Jed”) were working hard to make it available to everyone.

Then people kept mentioning ways of getting around Hulu. When Dr. Horrible twittered about a download program which would help, I finally gave in and loaded it. I was able to watch Act 1 – twice – although it was very jerky and therefore hard to grasp the continuity of the music, but I loved it from the beginning. And seeing “Mutant Enemy Productions” on the screen made my day before I saw one bit of the acting/singing.

I removed the downloaded program right after since it allowed annoying popups. Then the Dr. Horrible site was crashed this morning, followed by Whedonesque crashing so badly they are havingto move it to another server, which they expect could take two days! Luckily, Dr. Horrible was fixed for international visitors and so I watched it during my short lunch break, then after the Board retreat was over, I watched it again – came home and rewatched it!! I can’t wait for Part 2 tomorrow night.

Dr. Horrible’s Starting Time Confirmed

According to Dr. Horrible’s Twitter feed, the 12:01 pm is Eastern time, therefore those of us on the West Coast will see it at 9:01 pm tonight, roughly four hours from now!  I can hardly wait!

Travelling

I’ve been home with a cold the past two days – not a bad one, but sore, scratchy throat, slight temperature rise, fuzzy and dizzy feeling and generally blah – so I erred on the side of caution.

While I was home, I did some more planning for my trip, which involves measuring my backpack, my purse/bag, my suitcase, etc., to make sure they fall within the new baggage regulations for the airlines.  Air Canada still allows even economy passengers to check one bag free and that’s all I plan on having.  I may buy a smaller backpack because I think mine is too large for carry-on, if they decided to be sticky about it, and it certainly is too big for me to have on my back while walking around a convention hall with 40,000 other people.  I’m not even sure it’s the best plan for me, since putting a backpack on and taking it off actually make my back worse!

I have to make sure that any liquids I’m carrying are less than 100mg and can fit in a Ziploc bag of certain dimensions!  That apparently includes toothpaste.  What on earth do they think you can hide in a toothpaste tube?  I’m all for being safe and doing whatever we can to protect ourselves, but I think we’re becoming a totally paranoid society.

I read an article yesterday about an electronic bracelet that has been developed with the possibility that every airline passenger will have to wear one in place of a boarding pass.  In case of a hijacking, they can be activated to paralyse – yes! paralyse – the person or persons involved.  Of course, the manufacturers said that only the hijackers’ bracelets would be activated – by a laser pointer from the flight attendant at a distance of 10 feet!  I don’t thinks so!  There are so many things that can go wrong there, I don’t even want to speculate.

Is this really how we want to live our future?  Being so afraid of everything and everybody that we arm ourselves with tasers and pepper spray and electronic bracelets?  I admit that I am not the most courageous person in the world, but I am not going to believe that every person around me is a possible terrorist.  Defensive and reactive actions are not a solution.  We have to solve the underlying problems – or at least admit that they are there, which would be a start.

There is such a discrepancy between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ in the world – between countries and between people in countries who can actually claim ‘haves’.    We have millions of people in the world who go to bed hungry, a good number of them children.  And yet, the world produces enough food for everyone in the world to have enough to eat.  I think that’s worth repeating.  THE WORLD PRODUCES ENOUGH FOOD FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD TO HAVE ENOUGH TO EAT.  So how are we going to get food produced into the hands of people who really need it.

I don’t know.  I don’t have a solution, but maybe if we keep thinking about it, we can come up with one.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Be sure to check this out. I can’t wait.

A Day of Sorrow and Joy

This morning Bob Ackles died unexpectedly of a heart attack.  He was 69.  I never met him personally, but he was in my life on a peripheral basis for years.  His title when he died was President and CEO of the BC Lions Football Club, but he was much more than that.

He started out as the BC Lions’ first water boy when he was a teenager and worked his way up to Equipment Manager by the time they won their first Grey Cup in 1964.  He kept moving up and was General Manager for their next one in 1985.  Although he left in 1986 to work for the Dallas Cowboys and other NFL and one XFL teams, he returned in 2002 to lead the Lions once again.   He hired a respected and proven head coach in Wally Buono and the Lions won their fifth Grey Cup in 2005.

Since Bob Ackles returned to the Lions, season ticket holders have gone from around 8,000 to about 25,000 this year and the team and fans have worked together to improve on and off the field.  (Unfortunately, the Lions have lost their first two games of this season, but it will be interesting to see if this motivates them to get back on track.)

Although short in stature, Bobby Ackles is being mourned by football fans across the country as a giant of a man who always had the best interests of the game at heart and still managed to be an asset to his community and stay close to his family.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Ackles; you deserve it.

On a happier note, after a month of the Goners board being down, it suddenly came back up today.  I was IMing with Diso when I got an e-mail notification that lilbird had posted in a Goners thread.  I was dancing in my chair.  I have missed that forum in a way I wouldn’t have believed possible.

It’s more than just a forum – it’s my Internet home.  Even though most of us moved over to the Serenity board to post, not everybody did and it just wasn’t the same.   Some of us kept in touch by e-mail, too – or by IMing.  Diso and I ‘talk’ almost every night by IM, which may not have happened otherwise and I talk to Blue usually once a week or so on the phone, but I missed hearing what everyone was doing on a day-to-day basis.  Or, in the case of Dragoned, week-to-week.

We don’t know how long the board will be up, but QuoterGal is working to move everything over to the new Goners forum she’s been setting up and to which most of us will contribute.

In just over two weeks I will be meeting some of my Goners friends – and a couple of non-Goners Whedonesquers as well.  I can hardly wait, but I will save that for another post on another day, since I should be in bed already.

Here I Am

I was trying to think of an adjective to come before ‘ponderings’ and came up with several (preoccupied, presumptious, pretenious, preternatural, purple, prevalent).  I settled on ‘prevailing’ and then decided that it didn’t need an adjective after all.  Plus it made the title too long!

I’m not sure how much or what I’ll write here.  I already have a blog that I don’t write in very often, plus a LiveJournal.  I’m not sure that I have that much interesting to say, even to myself.

But, here I am, willing to try again.   Perhaps I will at least be able to top the musings of a mediocre marmot!