I've always had eyes that other people found odd, because they change color with annoying frequency. On several occasions, two people would look at them and see different colors - one would see blue, the other, green, etc. I've even got a picture of myself with brown eyes.

Because of that, whenever I get my driver's license renewed, I don't tell them an eye color, I ask.

For many years, my license was usually marked blue.

Last time I got a renewal, they'd pretty much settled on green, and there they've stayed for years.

I got poked in the eye a little over a week ago, and to my annoyance, my eyes turned blue again (after the red went away).

Back in 1990, there was an offbeat hit making the rounds on all the Top 40 stations by a band called '2NU'. The song was 'This is Ponderous'. A lovely little spoken-word number about some whacked-out dream. I thought it was wonderful.

I wanted more. But, the only thing I could find in the music store at the time was the single, with a sci-fi-sounding number called 'She' on the flipside.

Years go by, and things get forgotten. Until, sometime in the late 90s, I'm looking through the offerings at mp3.com and, lo! I find not only this wonderous song from back in my youth, but more off the original album! Count Em Up Queek, DDS Blues, Spaz Attack... I'm in heaven!

One of the annoyances I have with SourceForge is that there is apparently no oversight in regards to categorization.

I'm browsing the Point-of-Sale category, and find variously:

• Instant messenger
• Invoice generator
• Operating system (and virtual machines)
• Software debugger
• ISDN configurator
• Mailing list (newsletter) manager
• Slashdot-style CRM
• Etc...

Ugh. How freakin' annoying.

On the bright side, it appears that the latest site upgrade deals quite cleanly with download mirror selection.

*I stole this from author Sarah A. Hoyt. Commentary in italics - all mine*

Instructions:

1. Put numbers in the boxes instead of x's (example: 1, 2, 3, 4, ...)
2. Repost as "I have lived through ___ of these 158 things.

[1] I have read a lot of books.
[ ] I have been on some sort of varsity team.
[ ] I have run more than 2 miles without stopping.
[ ] I have been to Canada.
[ ] I have been to Europe.
[2] I have watched cartoons for hours.
[3] I have tripped UP the stairs.
[4] I have fallen down an entire flight of stairs.

...I happened across this week:
Beer Goggles

It may soon be time for the truly automatic consumer automobile to arrive. Several major technologies that are necessary are here right now, in production and being offered to the public.

First, GPS. Yeah, yeah, no news here. Add a moving map display, route planning and a yellow-pages-like address book, and there you go. You can find one in just about all new luxury vehicles, and are available in many mid-level cars, too.

Add to that real-time traffic monitoring, via satellite or radio uplink.

Then there's the automatic cruise control, the first of which I have seen was in the 1985 Nissan Cue-X concept, but wasn't put out to the public until the oughts by Mercedes. Basically, it uses a range-finder to maintain a set distance following the vehicle in front of you, controlling both the throttle and the brake.

Once again, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) beckons writers, amateur and professional alike. It runs every year through the month of November.

I signed up in anticipation of participating, but I don't yet know if I'm going to be able to go through with it, as November tends to be a busy month for me. It's really too bad it doesn't happen in September, when I'm sitting around twiddling my thumbs most of the time.

Just the other day, I read a fun little short story about lost love. The "hook" (the "love" lost) was a TI graphing calculator that got crushed.

I get this itch in my hindbrain to draw a comic panel based on the scene, see? Arrgh! I couldn't get to sleep that night until I put it down on paper. After I get this scanner I recently acuired hooked up, I'll probably post it.

Anyhow, a really odd coincidence happened a few days later -- my uncle presented me with a TI-81 graphing calculator that he had found in the street, which was run over a couple times. It still works just fine, it's just scratched and dented all to hell.

The one thing I hate the most when playing games is rules lawyering.

If it takes more than a minute -- 60 seconds -- to figure out what a rule should be, just roll a die or flip a coin to choose one -- then play with the rule until the end of the game or that session. Figure out the rule later, then integrate it next time you play.

The point of game playing is to have fun. Arguing over the rules is not my idea of a good time.

I recently discovered that the Sci-Fi Channel is going to be airing ECW wrestling.

What does wrestling have to do with science fiction?

A few of the press releases hail it as 'a good thing that will help increase viewership'. Well, I'll give you the increased viewership part, but a success for Sci-Fi? No.

The Sci-Fi Channel was started as a niche channel, specifically for airing shows in the science/speculative fiction market, which includes fantasy. Shows like 'The Outer Limits', 'Battlestar Galactica' and the like. Movies such as 'Alien', 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Bladerunner'. I haven't seen any wrestling in any of the sf/f novels or short stories I've read. Nor have I seen wrestling in any of the genre's movies.