sylvar

I finally got to see the movie.  I was amazed by two things: one, how much Lyra reminds me of an older Bug, and two, a scene that wasn't in the book [spoiler here].

When I saw that scene, I was stunned.  I actually paused the movie, stood up, and said out loud to nobody in particular, "She... Oh my God, she actually ---!"  And apparently Pullman came up with that idea, too, so I guess the Word Of God says it's canon.

[Poll #1185401]

I've been avoiding Amazon.com's "Unbox Video Download" because the terms of use on a PC, last time I checked, were fairly heinous. But now they've got their service hooked up to TiVo, so you don't have to authorize Amazon.com to do anything to your PC -- you can just let them upload movies and TV episodes to your TiVo series 2 or 3.

They've got a fairly good selection on TiVo Unbox.  You select a movie, pay Amazon.com through their regular checkout process, and they send it to your TiVo.  In the case of movie rentals, you pay $3.99 and it stays on your TiVo until 24 hours after you first start watching it.  So if you rented Little Miss Sunshine today and then got called out of town for a few days, you'd still have it waiting when you got back.

Not bad -- and, of course, I get a kickback.  (There's your granum salis.)  I haven't tried it yet, but I'll report back with the results when I do.

Three things that made me happy today:

• Resigning from both chess games with honor, and realizing that I enjoyed them enough that it didn't matter that I lost.  I'll probably return to those boards in a few days to analyze them.
• Having an early VD with Jodi (dinner and a movie)
• Specifically, watching Sweet Land (about which more later, probably in a day or two) and talking about it afterward.  For now, I'll just quote without context: "Hallo, hems."  And I want an icon of Brownie's "Have more pie" line.
  

Three things I accomplished today:

• Configuring the assistant director's new Treo smartphone to connect to the Exchange server
• Taking some pretty good photographs of one of the new employees, for our website
• Finding a supplier for custom compounded medication for Pied, and then finding an even better supplier after she started drooling, Turner and Hooch-style, following the administration of 1mL suspension p.o. (apparently the fish flavoring is what did it; the better supplier makes their own fish flavoring from scratch)

Anyone else thinking about seeing Nightmare Before Christmas 3D Friday night at 8:10pm in New Tampa? We should get tickets!

Crossposted to latin_lovers:

Contra sicilianus numquam pugna cum mors acta est.

Is that a pretty good translation of "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line" (a classic quote from The Princess Bride)? I tried to avoid a literal (temporal) translation of 'when', and I found a dictionary entry that said 'actus esse' can be used for 'to be at stake'.

I suspect it sounds a little bit off to someone who's actually been using Latin more recently than I have. I'd welcome any suggestions to make it sound more like an actual proverb or epigram might have.

I saw most of King Ralph last night, despite the fact that the opening credits are done in Zapf Chancery. (I very nearly abandoned it for that reason alone, but I'm biased; my high school newspaper used Zapf Chancery for its masthead, so I'm a bit sick of it.)

I enjoyed it, actually -- and three actors in it would go on, ten years later, to work together in the Harry Potter movies. The actors
who play Vernon Dursley and Mr. Ollivander play a lord and a high-level official in King Ralph, and another lord is portrayed by the man who later provided the voice for the Sorting Hat.

Watching Vernon Dursley smile graciously (and therefore in a most un-Dursleyish manner) disturbs me a bit.

Ben-Bob says check it out.