{"id":1752,"date":"2008-03-30T09:00:34","date_gmt":"2008-03-30T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=1752"},"modified":"2008-03-30T09:00:34","modified_gmt":"2008-03-30T14:00:34","slug":"on-the-two-week-round-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1752","title":{"rendered":"On the Two-Week Round-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I think a biweekly recap makes more sense than a weekly recap.  At least, until I change my mind again. \ud83d\ude06<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s step back two weeks, to the day before St. Patrick&#8217;s Day.  There, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1731\">I mused on <i>The Return of the King<\/i><\/a>, which I watched the night previous.  Specifically, I talked about the original ending of the film, in which Aragorn battled Sauron at the Towers of the Teeth.  As I said at the time, I understand why the change was made, but that ending is what the film were building <i>toward<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Monday was St. Patrick&#8217;s Day.  And I wrote about events over the weekend &mdash; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1733\">my grandmother believed that the neighbors were stealing her bricks<\/a>. :\/<\/p>\n<p>Just to show that a good delusion doesn&#8217;t go to waste, yesterday my grandmother went on &mdash; <i>again<\/i> &mdash; about the neighbors stealing her bricks.  At least this time she didn&#8217;t complain about how the neighbors had a fire pit going in the bricks.  When she was fixated on that two weeks ago, I told her to go outside and tell her neighbors not to do it.  Knowing full well, of course, that there were no neighbors there for her to yell at.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1734\">I had a spreadsheet of 4,000 lines to work through<\/a>.  I had worked through 2,500 titles on Monday, and I was <i>certain<\/i> I&#8217;d be able to finish it on Tuesday.  Oh, the best laid plans of mice and men&#8230;  In reality, it wasn&#8217;t until that Friday that I had the time to even <i>look<\/i> at it again.  Middle of last week the spreadsheet was reformated in Word and printed out.  144 pages.  Damn, do we kill trees.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday also saw the news that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1735\">Arthur C. Clarke, author of <i>2001<\/i>, and Anthony Minghella, director of <i>The English Patient<\/i>, had passed away<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday, March 19th, was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1736\">the fifth anniversary of the United States&#8217; invasion of Iraq<\/a>.  Fuck you, George Bush.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1739\">I reflected on the song choices from <i>American Idol<\/i>&#8216;s second Beatles Night<\/a>.  The songs I liked, apparently the audience didn&#8217;t.  And the songs the audience and the judges liked, I thought were not good.  I&#8217;m not an <i>Idol<\/i> watcher, so it was all quite alien to me.  The realization that it&#8217;s basically a karaoke contest did wonders, though.<\/p>\n<p>Also, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1740\">my Egyptian sign is Satis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Friday there was only one thing to write about.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1741\">Tibet<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t read what I had to say then, take a look at it now.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday, I wrote my weekly &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1742\">This is what I did with WordPress<\/a>&#8221; post.  Now that I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 yesterday, I don&#8217;t anticipate anything similar for, oh, at least a month.  For the nonce, however &mdash; I&#8217;m now using the built-in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gravatar.com\/\">Gravatar<\/a> functions.  (And if you comment here, why not register for your own personalized gravatar?  It&#8217;s free.)  I had to find a new related posts plugin, as Simple Tags doesn&#8217;t work with WP 2.5, and <a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/extend\/plugins\/yet-another-related-posts-plugin\/\">Yet Another Related Posts Plugin<\/a> appears to work quite well, though it <i>does<\/i> spit out some oddball posts from time to time.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday, I wrote about something I&#8217;d long been curious about.  Repeats of <i>Doctor Who<\/i> are common in the United States, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1743\">what about in the UK<\/a>?  I realized I didn&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>Monday I reflected on how <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1744\">nothing happened over Easter weekend<\/a> for me, personally.  Except that I discovered <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spacedemocrats.org\/\">Space Democrats<\/a>, a website for space policy wonks. \ud83d\ude42  Also, I answered a few memes.<\/p>\n<p>Something momentous <i>did<\/i> happen over Easter weekend, though.  The United States&#8217; four thousandth soldier died in Iraq.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/nico-pitney\/a-mosaic-4000-americans_b_93044.html\">An artist created a photomosaic of President Bush and Senator John McCain, using photos of the four thousand fallen soldiers<\/a>.  &#8220;The mosaic speaks for itself,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1745\">I wrote<\/a>.  Nothing more to say about it, really.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday, it was &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1746\">Winston Churchill, Astronaut<\/a>.&#8221;  Wha?  Well, a study in Britain shows that a number of children there believe that Churchill was the first man to walk on the lunar surface.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday was also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1579\">Tolkien Reading Day<\/a>.  I hope you all pulled out well-worn copies of <i>The Lord of the Rings<\/i> and read them. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday I wrote about a dream I had &mdash; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1747\">rather than recite the Pledge of Allegiance, I recited a speech from Shakespeare&#8217;s <i>Henry V<\/i><\/a>.  Several days on, it <i>still<\/i> amuses me.<\/p>\n<p>I learned at work on Thursday that Barnes &#038; Noble is buying Borders, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1748\">I had some thoughts on the matter<\/a>.  Some are borne of my experience of going through a merger, and being on the losing end of a merger.  But mainly it was a look at the business side of things.  Interestingly, someone at B&#038;N corporate read this very post Friday morning.  For all I know, that person thinks I&#8217;m a nutter.<\/p>\n<p>Friday <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1749\">I talked about my Magical Editing Pen<\/a>.  Everyone should have a Magical Editing Pen.  But not mine.  Because it&#8217;s <i>my<\/i> Magical Editing Pen. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>First, I discussed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1750\">warrior nuns in comic books<\/a>.  And finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1751\">Rutlemania<\/a>, a series of tribute concerts to the Rutles, the band that spoofed the Beatles in <i>All You Need Is Cash<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>That, in a nutshell, is what I had on my mind the past two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Baseball begins this week.  And that&#8217;s only a good thing. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/graphics\/go-cubs.gif\" alt=\"Go Cubs!\" class=\"centered\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think a biweekly recap makes more sense than a weekly recap. At least, until I change my mind again. \ud83d\ude06 Let&#8217;s step back two weeks, to the day before St. Patrick&#8217;s Day. There, I mused on The Return of the King, which I watched the night previous. Specifically, I talked about the original ending<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1752\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On the Two-Week Round-Up&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[548,550,273,159,387,566,98,556,560,4096,4124,4102],"class_list":["post-1752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-american-idol","tag-excel","tag-george-bush","tag-grandmother","tag-iraq","tag-the-rutles","tag-the-beatles","tag-tibet","tag-winston-churchill","tag-wordpress","tag-work","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}