When I was younger I knew I wanted to be an actor when I grew up, but other than a small voice role in an anime dub, an impossible to see stint as an extra in Hoffa, and being cast as the lead in a community theater production of You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown that I had to drop out of due to work commitments, I’ve never actually achieved that youthful dream. A lot of that is because it would have required moving to either New York (for stage plays, which I’m not fond of) or to Los Angeles (where they have earthquakes and wildfires) and I’ve just never been motivated enough to do that. There’s enough theaters and such around Michigan that it’s possible to make something of a living as an actor locally as my brother-in-law has managed to do, but it’s nothing that’s likely to result in you hitting it big time. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve had absolutely zero training as an actor outside of a high school drama course I took 20 years ago. But perhaps that’ll change as more and more of Hollywood moves to Michigan. With stuff being produced locally there’s the chance that I could at least have some fun being an extra a couple more times.

And the chances of that are improving as things heat up in Michigan’s new film industry. Early last year our state legislators passed a bunch of laws and tax breaks designed to make Michigan much more attractive to film and television productions and it’s already worked quite well. There’s a whole bunch of movies filming in Michigan with more on the way and now word comes down that we may end up with some full fledged production studios too:

State film officials say they are on the verge of sealing an $80 million development deal that would create three film and television production studios in southeast Michigan, boosting one of the state’s few fast-growing industries.

Two of the potential locations for the permanent studios — including one in Detroit — haven’t been used in years, while the third site would have to be built. One of the facilities would be a multi-studio complex that would occupy up to 130 acres, state officials confirmed. Another facility would be geared toward post-production work, such as audio and editing.

The Detroit facility, if the deal is finalized, could be in operation by the end of the year.

[...] “It’s a game-changer,” said Anthony Wenson, CEO of the Michigan Film Office, the agency that promotes the local film industry. “We truly (will) have a year-round industry. We can see a television series shot here. We can provide space for filmmakers to build large-scale sets. We can greatly expand our offerings to the video and digital media community.”

The state film agency has been working on the deal for months and contends it would create the infrastructure to support what has become a $100 million industry in the nine months since Michigan passed the most aggressive film industry tax incentives in the nation.

That would be wonderful if it does grow that big as Michigan is in desperate need of a shot to its economy. Plus, who knows, maybe I’ll finally get a chance to live out that youthful dream.

Found via the Michigan Messenger.

I love the Planet Earth documentary series, but they’d be a lot more entertaining if they were more like this clip. NSFW Warning: This video clip contains almost non-stop “fucks” so lower the volume if you play it at work.

Found via Greg Laden’s Blog.

I declare today a National Day of Mourning as the inventor of one of my favorite shirt styles, Alfred Shaheen, has died at the age of 86:

As tourists from the US to Hawaii after World War II, many began to bring home colorful but cheesy looking shirts and sundresses that would be cause for much amusement among friends.

Shaheen began to change that in 1948 when he opened Shaheen’s of Honolulu and began designing, printing and producing “aloha” shirts, dresses and other ready-to-wear clothing of better quality.

Among those seen in Shaheen-designed shirts of that era was Elvis Presley, who wore one for the cover of his 1961 soundtrack album “Blue Hawaii.”

Such Shaheen originals now sell for more than £500

“Before Shaheen came along, there was no Hawaii garment industry. There were mom and pop stores but no real modern industry,” Linda Arthur, a professor of textiles and clothing at Washington State University said.

I loves me some Hawaiian shirts. Those and t-shirts comprise the majority of my wardrobe. OK so I’ll admit that until I saw this news story I didn’t even know someone had invented Hawaiian shirts, but it’s still a bummer to hear he’s passed on.

During the 2008 Presidential campaigns, before either candidate has picked a running mate, aliens land in Washington D.C. and I’m one of the only people on the planet that can understand what they’re saying. They look like nothing more than a bad Doctor Who special effect in that they are bright globes of white light, but they start handing out Ancient Wisdom like how to cure the common cold and how to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in a just and fair manner that actually works and everyone is happy with. Because I’m the only American out of the three people who can understand what the aliens are saying I’m drafted by the government to be an official liaison for the United States. After some initial suspicion the aliens are quickly accepted as being almost Oracle-like because of the usefulness of the Ancient Wisdom they are handing out and it’s not long before every pronouncement they make, which is once or twice every other week or so, is a major news event.

The one thing that isn’t clear is what they want from us and it’s a question I’m repeatedly asked to raise. Then one day they finally get around to stating what they’d like to receive in exchange for all these useful bits of knowledge they’ve been handing out. It turns out they’ve been reading my blog for awhile and they want me to be Vice President of the United States. They don’t say why they want me to be Vice President as opposed to President nor do they say why they think I’d be good in the role. It’s not entirely clear that they’re not making the request for the humor potential alone, but Barack Obama quickly decides to announce that he’d be happy to have me as his running mate. This is a pretty bold move on Obama’s part considering I’m openly atheist and have written a lot of stuff on my blog which would, under normal circumstances, pretty much make me unelectable. The Republicans wouldn’t even entertain the idea given my liberal/atheist/heathenism and this doesn’t improve their prospects among any of the populace outside of the paranoid faction that thinks the aliens are planning to cook us all for dinner any day now in spite of the fact that they don’t have any discernible mouths or need to eat.

So in addition to my job as U.S. Liaison to the Glowing Blobs of Light I end up also running for Vice President alongside Barack Obama and, despite my unelectability, we win. The aliens take this as a sign of excellent reasoning on the part of Americans and decide to stick around dispensing more Ancient Wisdom because they get a kick out of watching Whoopi on The View. The only other request the aliens make is for a 105” LCD HDTV and free cable TV. And that’s when I wake up.

Japan spent ¥4 billion (roughly $43 million USD) on a newfangled fingerprint security system to keep undesirables out of their country and it works great unless someone thinks to put tape over their fingers:

The biometric system was installed in 30 airports in 2007 to improve security and prevent terrorists from entering into Japan, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said.

The woman, who has a deportation record, told investigators that she placed special tapes on her fingers to pass through a fingerprint reader, according to Kyodo News.

[...] The South Korean woman was deported in July 2007 for illegally staying in Japan after she worked as a bar hostess in Nagano in central Japan, Kyodo said, citing justice ministry sources.

She was not allowed to re-enter Japan for five years after deportation but the Tokyo immigration bureau found her in August 2008 again in Nagano, Kyodo said.

A South Korean broker is believed to have supplied her with the tapes and a fake passport, the Yomiuri said, adding that officials believe many more foreigners might have entered Japan using the same technique.

No word on if the “special” tape had false fingerprints on it or just obscured her own prints enough to fool the system, but it’s still an impressive flaw in an expensive system. Ooops.

We’ve already seen lots of studies showing that abstinence only sex education is a miserable failure, but what about the popular-among-the-True-Believers virginity pledges where a daughter pledges to her father that she’ll abstain from sex until marriage? As it turns out the best they do is delay how soon someone has sex for the first time from the national average of 17 years-old to 21 years-old. Beyond that they don’t stop people from having premarital sex though they do increase the likelihood that someone won’t use proper contraceptive methods increasing their chances of getting pregnant and catching a STD. Ultimately it seems the pledges themselves have no effect at all compared to a person’s religious viewpoint:

In the new study, Janet Rosenbaum, Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, analyzed the large chunk of data used in all the studies that have looked at virginity pledges: the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. In this survey, middle and high school students were asked about their sexual behaviors and opinions starting in 1995-96.

In the analysis, Rosenbaum compared 289 young adults who took virginity pledges in their teens with 645 young people who did not take such a pledge. The researcher was careful to only compare teens who had similar views on religion, birth control and sex in general, regardless of whether or not they took a pledge.

Five years after the initial survey the study subjects were aged 20 to 23. Eighty-two percent of pledge takers denied (or forgot) they had ever taken such a vow. Overall pledge takers were no different from non-pledge takers in terms of their premarital sex, anal and oral sexual practices, and their probability of having a sexually transmitted disease.

Both groups lost their virginity at an average age of 21, had about three lifetime partners, and had similar rates of STDs. “And the majority were having premarital sex, over 50 percent,” says Rosenbaum. Overall, roughly 75 percent of pledgers and non-pledgers were sexually active, and about one in five was married.

So if you’re very religious you’re likely to start having sex several years after the national average, but beyond that you’re just as sinful as everyone else. Plus you’re more likely to not use protection:

Unmarried pledgers, however, were less likely than non-pledgers to use birth control (64 percent of pledge takers and 70 percent of non-pledge takers said they used it most of the time) or condoms (42 percent of pledge takers and 54 percent of non-pledge takers said they used them most of the time).

“There’s been some speculation about whether teenagers were substituting oral or anal sex for vaginal sex and I found that wasn’t so,” says Rosenbaum. “But I did uphold a previous finding that they are less likely to use birth control and drastically less likely in fact to use condoms—it’s a ten percentage point difference.”

Rosenbaum is concerned that abstinence-only sex education programs that promote virginity pledges may also promote a negative view of condoms and birth control. The result may be teens and young adults who are less likely than their peers to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies.

[...] “Studies find that kids in abstinence-only programs have negative, biased views about whether condoms work,” she says. Since such programs promote abstinence only they tend to give only the disadvantages of birth control, she says. Teens learn condoms don’t protect you completely from human papillomavirus (HPV) and herpes, which is true, but they may not realize that they protect against all the “fluid-based STDs,” she says. “People end up thinking you may as well not bother using birth control or condoms.”

I guess it’s arguable which is the better situation: People having safer sex at a younger age or unsafe sex at an older age. Personally I’d think the ideal would be to encourage kids to put off sex until they’re older, but to encourage them to use protection if they give in to the temptation. That’s the approach I took with my own daughter and it seems to have worked pretty well.

News item sent in by SEB reader Gary.

Despite my best efforts I didn’t become filthy rich over the two weeks I had off from work so today finds me back behind my desk doing that voodoo that I do, also known as work. I had one voice mail waiting for me and it was from the old lady that doesn’t understand the concept of voice mail who calls every so often looking for “Mike and Cindy” only to wonder why I never say anything after the initial message and beep. Today’s message was: “Oh, I’m sorry. This is the wrong number. I wanted to talk to Mike and Cindy. [short pause] Hello? [longer pause] *Click*”

I’ve not been keeping up with my RSS feeds so I have a couple of thousand entries spread across the blogroll to dig through which should occupy some of the downtime today. We’re surprisingly slow support-wise considering we just got off a two-week break. I thought there’d be a ton of issues to deal with, but so far I’ve only gotten a couple of calls.

Other than that the only other news is the amazing lack of snow we’ve got here considering how much we had at Krismas. We had one day were we broke a record high of 60 degrees and the landscape has looked more like spring than winter since then. We might be getting more snow later this week, but it’s pretty bleak looking out there at the moment.

Lastly the next semester of college classes start next week. Not looking forward to it as it means I’ll be going from work to school Monday through Thursday nights every week for 15 weeks, but it’ll get three more classes out of the way. Decided to go ahead and take the PC Hardware class even though I already know 90% of it (been building my own PCs for years) as there’s still that 10% to fill in the blanks with. If nothing else it’s an easy A. The Windows Server 2003 and ISA classes will actually be new to me, though, so those should be fun. Speaking of classes, my grade for last semester was a solid A giving me the first 4.0 GPA I’ve ever had. Kind of cheated in that I only took the one class and I knew most of it already, but you take your accomplishments where you can find them.

It’s official. The BBC has announced that come 2010 when the next actor takes on the role of The Doctor on Doctor Who his final form will be that of Matt Smith. Haven’t heard of him? Yeah, it seems a lot of folks haven’t:

Matt Smith, a virtual unknown, has been named as the 11th actor to portray The Doctor, according to the BBC News. Viewers will begin seeing Smith in 2010, when he replaces David Tennant, who announced his intentions to leave the show in October.

At 26, Smith, who has been seen in the BBC political series Party Animals and on stage in The History Boys, is the youngest to every fill the Doctor’s shoes. Smith is believed to have beat out heavy competition from bigger names such as John Simm and David Morrissey. His casting also puts to rest rumors that the Doctor would be played by a woman for the first time, with names such as Catherine Zeta Jones and Jennifer Saunders being tossed around.

Executive producer and head writer Steven Moffat said it was Smith’s original take on the role that made him the one.

“As soon as Matt walked through the door, and blew us away with a bold and brand new take on the Time Lord, we knew we had our man,” he said. “2010 is a long time away, but rest assured the 11th Doctor is coming — and the universe has never been so safe.”

You can see Mr. Smith’s IMDB profile here. He doesn’t appear to have a lot of roles under his belt so this could be a risky move on the part of the BBC. A lot of noise is being made about his age, but that doesn’t concern me too much as Peter Davison was only 29 when he took on the role back in 1980. Interesting bit of trivia on Peter Davison: When he reprised his role as the Fifth Doctor in the 2007 mini-episode Time Crash Davison was 56 which was older than William Hartnell—the First Doctor—when he started the role at the age of 55. He’s also the only former Doctor to make an appearance in the new series that wasn’t a film clip.

Anyway, so that’s the new Who and it should be interesting to see how he takes on the role come next year. He certainly has a bit of the Doctor look to him so he’ll probably do just fine. It’ll be awhile before we get to find out either way.

Updated: Here’s an interview with Matt Smith on how he feels about landing the role:

I’m several days late getting the annual Krismas loot report up, but I’ve been taking advantage of the time off from work to catch up with friends and family I’ve not seen in awhile. Spent a couple of days this past week hanging out with Bob and my brother-in-law joined us for New Year’s Eve. What little computer time I’ve had has been spent playing WoW or CoD:WaW.

Krismas itself was enjoyable as always with my in-laws and several SEB readers playing Santa for me this year. This year it was all about the DVDs/Blu-rays and books as I received several of both. DVD-wise I got the most recent Blade Runner collection of movies with something like five different versions of the film including Ridley Scott’s director’s cut, The Frighteners Director’s Cut, Hitman Unrated, the fourth season of Doctor Who, and first seasons of Freakazoid and Invader Zim.

In books I got two-copies of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book so I’ll have to see if I can return one of them at some point, Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, and the Windows Command Line Administrator’s Pocket Guide. Gadgets I got included a Pirates vs. Ninja’s RC toy, The Doctor’s Fob Watch toy, a new PS3 controller, Bluetooth headset, and Bluetooth Blu-ray remote to make watching movies on the PS3 a little easier. And finally I got a new Krismas ornament for the tree along with some homemade cookies. No new video games this year, but plenty to keep me busy for awhile. I’m already halfway through Kluge and am enjoying it immensely. Again I’d like to thank the several SEB readers who were generous enough to send along a present as it was a very nice surprise.

So what did you guys get?

Just a quick note to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! Hopefully this will be better than last year for many of us.

Sorry the posting has been so light lately, but been busier than I expected considering I’m off work. Will try to get back to posting regularly soon.

Had trouble getting to your favorite websites yesterday? Seems there was some trouble in AT&T land thanks to an issue here in Michigan:

“At about 9:30 a.m. CST on Dec. 28, a power failure impacted an AT&T facility in Bloomfield, MI,” state and AT&T spokesperson. “This situation has resulted in intermittent disruption of mobile services for customers in some Midwest states.” The spokesperson went on to use the hideous word “impacted” a few more times in explaining that technicians had restored power and were trying to fix the network.

Bloomfield is way north of Detroit, MI, but the latter town may have been the site of some Level3 backbone problems that caused outages at a number of sites today, including Ars. A post at the SANS Internet Storm Center indicates that many of that site’s readers are fingering the Detroit area as the outage’s source and citing the Internet Health Report (which seems to indicate that things are fine right now) as evidence that Level3 is to blame. TechCrunch has a screenshot of the IHR when it was lighting up red for Level3, and some of the comments list a few of the other major sites that were down.

Bloomfield isn’t THAT far north of Detroit—about a 37 minute drive—unless they don’t mean Bloomfield Hills, which is what I suspect they actually mean, because Bloomfield Michigan isn’t even in an AT&T service area.

Anyway, while the above affected mostly cellphone users (our cell phones were dead for most of the day) it appears that there’s been a number of other problems in several Midwest states that affected the Internet as well:

Forum and blog posts, like this post on the Dataoutages New Blog, indicate that the network outages have hit several Midwestern states, with Indiana, North and South Dakota, and Ohio affected alongside the aforementioned Illinois and Michigan problems.

Personally I thought it was all the time I was spending watching porn on the Internet that was clogging up the tubes, but I’ll be happy to let you guys blame it on some other vague problem that has nothing to do with me.

Edward Current is back with more subtle satire that’s right on the money:

Found over at the Atheist Media Blog.

Looks like things have cleared up just enough to allow for the annual trip up to my parents place for Krismas Eve dinner. With the weather being so crappy over the past couple of days we weren’t certain if we’d be able to make the trek safely or not. From Ann Arbor it’s a good hour and a half drive and with the freezing rain we were getting last night we were thinking we might have to stay home. Right now, though, we’re up to our high temp of the day of 38 degrees Fahrenheit and the roads look to be relatively ice free. Or at least Courtney and I will as Anne has to work today. My sister and her husband will be present, but we haven’t heard on if my brother and his family will make it up yet. Wes is also working today it seems and as such may not make it up. Family friends who usually drop by are also either questionable or no shows at this point which, given the fact that things are likely to freeze over tonight when the temps drop back down, is understandable. Still it’ll be good to get what parts of the family we can together for a few hours as it’s so rare we’re all in the same spot at the same time these days.

Tomorrow morning we’ll get up and open the handful of gifts we have under the tree which consists mostly of the couple of items we got Courtney, the half dozen or so you folks were so generous to send to me, and Courtney’s gifts to Anne and myself. The presents are a little sparse compared to years past, but we’re back out under our own roof, the bills are pretty much up to date, we’re relatively healthy, and we’re all together and those are arguably the best gifts one could hope for. After doing our small gift exchange in the morning we’ll be heading over to Anne’s parents place for Christmas brunch and the gift exchange there. To keep costs down us adults drew names this year and set a limit on how much to spend. Anne is working tomorrow as well so we won’t be able to stay too long before heading back to Ann Arbor.

On the plus side it looks like Anne and I may have a little spare money to take advantage of the After Khrismas Sales to pick up a little something something for each other. We won’t be opening them up on Krismas Day, but better late than never I always say. It’ll also be one of the first times I’ve had any money to spend on an After Krismas Sale. May see if I can’t pick up a few sets of LED Krismas lights on sale in preparation for next year. I want to have enough strings to do up a couple of windows in lights as well as the tree. All in all it should be a very good Krismas in spite of the tough times everyone is facing at the moment. I’m feeling very grateful for the family I have, both immediate and the extended family that includes the SEB Regulars who drop by to see what nonsense I’m spewing each day.

Posting has been light the past couple of days because I’ve been fairly busy running around getting last minute stuff done with the family and it’ll probably continue to be light until at least Friday, but I’ll try to get a few more things up when I can. For now I’ll leave you with my sincere hope that you’re enjoying your Krismas Eve as much as I am.

... because I don’t have to dream. The not-quite-winter winter storm that was blowing across the country last week made it to Michigan over the weekend and left even those of us here in the southern region with at least a foot and a half of snow. This is the view from my front door Sunday morning:

Click to embiggen!

Today it’s snowing some more. The weird part is that it’s wasn’t, and still isn’t, the stereotypical big fluffy flakes you normally associate with lots of snow, but lots of wussy little flakes reminiscent of sugar substitute that sting your face and are generally annoying as hell. Normally you’ll get an inch or so out of those, but it just kept on coming and we ended up with a metric assload of the stuff. It’s also been bone bitingly cold as of late with temps not reaching far out of the teens, if at all, during the day. It feels more like February than December.

On the plus side it does feel like the Krismases of my youth. It’s entirely possible that I’m not remembering them clearly, but it seems we had snow like this a lot more often when I was a kid. Of course Pontiac is a bit further north than Ann Arbor so it’s possible we did get more snow, but the past decade or so it seems like we get dumped on with a foot or two in November that lasts three days tops and by Krismas we’re lucky if we have a dusting of snow. This feels like Krismas. Though ironically it may end up keeping us from visiting with my folks come Krismas Eve as the weather report guys are predicting freezing rain that day. Winter has come early to Michigan.

Updated: Just checked the weather and we’re under yet another winter weather advisory until 7PM tomorrow night:

... WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM EST WEDNESDAY…

THE WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW… SLEET… AND FREEZING RAIN IS NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM EST WEDNESDAY.

PERIODS OF SNOW ARE EXPECTED FROM LATE THIS MORNING THROUGH TONIGHT. SNOWFALL WILL BE MODERATE TO HEAVY AT TIMES… DROPPING VISIBILITIES TO LESS THAN ONE MILE. SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 2 TO 5 INCHES WILL BE POSSIBLE THROUGH EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING. IN ADDITION… THE SNOW IS EXPECTED TO MIX WITH SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN LATE TONIGHT… BEFORE CHANGING OVER TO MOSTLY RAIN BY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.

A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW… SLEET… OR FREEZING RAIN WILL CAUSE TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. BE PREPARED FOR SLIPPERY ROADS AND LIMITED VISIBILITIES… AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.
More Information

... ANOTHER WINTER STORM TAKES AIM AT SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN…

.A PROLONGED PERIOD OF UNFAVORABLE WEATHER CONDITIONS WILL OCCUR TODAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY AS A COMPLEX WINTER STORM TRACKS THROUGH THE UPPER MIDWEST. A WARM FRONT PRECEDING THE SYSTEM WILL SLOWLY LIFT ACROSS SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN TODAY AND TONIGHT… BRINGING WITH IT SEVERAL BANDS OF SNOW. THE PASSAGE OF THESE BANDS ACROSS THE AREA WILL PRODUCE PERIODS OF MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL… WITH ACCUMULATIONS GENERALLY RANGING FROM 4 TO 6 INCHES BY 700 AM WEDNESDAY MORNING.

THE MAIN SURFACE LOW IS THEN EXPECTED TO TRACK NORTHEAST THROUGH SOUTHERN LOWER MICHIGAN ON WEDNESDAY BRINGING A SECOND ROUND OF WINTER WEATHER TO THE REGION. BY THIS TIME… ENOUGH WARM AIR WILL HAVE SURGED NORTHWARD TO ALLOW SNOW TO MIX WITH SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN. THIS WINTRY MIX OF PRECIPITATION WILL MIX WITH RAIN TOWARDS THE OHIO BORDER. AREAS NEAR AND NORTH OF TRI CITIES WILL REMAIN PRIMARILY SNOW… AND THE POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR ADDITIONAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 6 INCHES FROM WEDNESDAY MORNING THROUGH WEDNESDAY EVENING. FOR LOCATIONS ALONG AND SOUTH OF I-69… ADDITIONAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS ARE EXPECTED TO REMAIN LESS THAN 3 INCHES… WITH LIGHT TO MODERATE ICE ACCUMULATIONS. TRAVEL WILL BE DIFFICULT ACROSS THE REGION TODAY AND WEDNESDAY.

Jinkies!