I mean, I didn’t see one catgirl in there. How can this be the future?

未だ筈は筈の儘 = “mada hazu wa hazu no mama”.

I came across this one quite a while ago, and all my teacher could say about it at the time was that she couldn’t think of a way to explain it in English.

Five people at the table. Two of them have never, ever heard the phrases “jump the shark” or “break the fourth wall”.

Why, oh why, if the pod people are here, aren’t they replacing my friends with alien zombie catgirls?

I had three entertaining items in the mail today:

1. an equity loan offer with highly deceptive terms, from a company with an important-sounding name that was obviously made up for the occasion.
2. a transparently fraudulent "loan modification" offer pretending to be from the bank that holds my mortgage.
3. a report that really was from my bank, informing me that my escrow account is so healthy that not only are they cutting my mortgage payment by $150/month, but also that they're legally required to refund the excess money that's accumulated, so here's a check for $1,500.

So, one out of three for the day. Not bad.

If I were offered the choice between a box of Honeycomb and sex with a supermodel, I’d have to ask which supermodel.

You know, this one actually makes sense. Unlike the “you bought a hard drive, so you might like truffle oil” recommendations I usually get.

Fledge asked about the gaming performance on my ION-equipped Lenovo S12. At the time, the only benchmark I had was that it was possible to ride an epic mount around in Dalaran one evening at about 6 frames/second, but there’s really nothing you can do to get decent performance in Dal, on any machine; WoW just can’t handle a big crowd of people.

So, a more realistic test. Last night, I created a brand new level 1 human warlock named Lenova and ran her up to level 7. My framerate never dropped below 18 fps in the starter area, and averaged 24 fps there and in Elwynn Forest. It dipped to 14 briefly when I went into Goldshire (duels and a crowd), averaged 40+ in the mines, hit 12 in the main square of Stormwind (big crowd), but stayed a steady 15 outside the bank in Ironforge (moderate crowd). I even watched the character-intro movie, and it only had a few moments of choppy framerates; for the most part it was quite smooth, as was the gryphon flight back from Ironforge to Stormwind.

I had the visual effects settings pretty low, obviously, but this was at a full 1280x800, with the music and ambient sound on.

[Unrelated to gaming, but I like the fact that Win7 on the S12 is automatically switching to hibernate after the machine has been asleep for a few hours, and correctly resuming.]

[Update: we just tried the Star Trek Online headstart, and just flying around in space, we could get 10+ fps; once we entered a space station (which had a rapper as background “music”; word to my Federation homies, blech), it dropped to 5-6 fps, and lowering the resolution didn’t help much. The Atom just doesn’t have the guts, even assisted by an ION.]

Most people who’ve opined on the current Amazon/Macmillan flap have reflexively sided with Macmillan, without waiting for statements from either side. When the CEO of Macmillan issued a statement explaining that they went to Amazon to renegotiate their contract and the two sides failed to come to agreement, this was taken as further evidence that Amazon was Teh Evil and should be shunned from now on.

I read that statement a little differently.

M: “Okay, Amazon, our current terms are A. We want B (higher retail prices for ebooks), but if you don’t like that, you can have C (current pricing, but no ebook sales for N weeks after release).”

A: “We like A. Our customers like A. We’d like to stick with A.”

M: “No deal.”

A: “Okay. With no contract, though, we’ll have to stop selling your books. Today.”

M: (ohshittheydidn’tblink)

[Update: when the Kindle blog was updated with a “we’ll have to cave in to M’s demands eventually, because we want to sell their books”, this was immediately spun as a massive victory for Macmillan (and, in many eyes, for “us”). It’s now Tuesday, February 2nd, though, and a spot check does not show Amazon selling Macmillan books again. Apparently people were so excited that they missed the word “eventually”. As of right now, the deal’s still off, which has got to be hitting Macmillan where it hurts.]