staying.cool

get the joke?

Must. watch. again. and again. and again.

what kanchan posted about triggered some leftover thoughts in me, and i went ahead and put together one possible version of it. mind you, what really came home to me is that i need to write more, and think about writing more.

however, such mundane musings aside: Discovery. it is a little unfinished for my tastes, and maybe a little uneven.. maybe a few reads i might make in a while will help. i know i can’t expect help from any of you.

otherwise, enjoy. i think.

based off certain people doing every single tag on the planet, i had to get one. she’s lucky its a literary tag, because, as we all know, i don’t have the time to do such things.

please, no drum roll. its my pleasure to bore you and insult you… all at the same time.

fatty, susie, dick kirrin, darrell rivers: name an enid blyton character i haven’t read about. these were probably my stand-out favourites… from fatty being the absolute genius that i wish i could be, to darrell being the normal freakshow that i have always related to. susie and dick are thrown in to remind myself of two teams of detectives that i still dig.

sherlock holmes: this was probably the character/book that woke me up to the world outside enid blyton. i started with a single book bought during a UK trip, to owning multiple original facsimile editions of his stories. has always been the god of detective fiction as i have known it, and ‘the final problem’, remains to this day one of the most moving stories i have ever read. every single detail, every single method he uses seems so… perfect.

marvin the robot: 1 sentence sums it up. “The first ten million years were the worst, and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.”
big surprise.

gandalf: its a lord of the rings thing. i have to admire the scope. i have to admire the character that comes back, and proceeds to kick serious butt. but most of all, i have to admire the character that can do anything on the planet, but spends time bursting fireworks.

1993. i ran ahead, the glories of the day past aglow in my mind. one space mountain ride under my belt, at only age 10, was enough. i was tall enough. too bad for warsha. this was disneyworld, there were plenty of rides for her. that horse-ride for one. she was ecstatic. then mickey and minnie. and a glimpse of goofy. life could not be better.

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2008. i ambled forward, having skipped through most of the tarzan treehouse. somehow, underneath all the revived childhood, there was a slight lack of excitement i wanted to overcome. the indy ride had been fun, so had that “jungle cruise”. ‘pirates was probably going to be next, hopefully not too badly distorted by the movie. appa and amma were waiting patiently in the shade. i whipped out the map. where was ‘pirates’ again?

**********

the line was going to take some time. this was a mountain ride of some kind. looked interesting enough. warsha would probably be allowed on it. that was good. the time left when we entered was 40 minutes or somethhing. 10 were over. this should be fun. people were moving, appa pulled me forward. i wondered what we were going to do next.

**********

the pirates ride was not as bad as i thought it was going to be. i went over the rest of what we had. probably get tickets for that mountain ride. probably have lunch soon. got to find fries for mom. should make sure that we get out of this area in the next 40 minutes or so. and at some point ensure i go there.

**********

that ride was pretty neat. where would we go next. my eyes bulged at the sight. there was an island here. with a steamboat. the sign loomed above. ‘mom !’ impatience mounts. ‘moooooooooommm ! look, look, tom sawyer island ! in disneyworld !’

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against popular recommendations, i’ve watched both tashan and the indy movie. the urge is deep to make possible ‘the tashan of indy jones’, but i think i will limit myself to simple lessons from these movies.

1. it is possible to survive a nuclear bomb by simply sitting in a lead-lined refrigerator, even if (a) said fridge is in the heart of the nuclear explosion, (b) you walk out of the explosion moments after it happens, just in time for the mushroom cloud and the actual nuclear fallout.
2. cars, boats and other sundry vehicles can easily survive falls from cliffs and waterfalls. more interestingly, all passengers have nary a scratch.
3. guns being fired by the enemy at heroes have no effect. even if it is at point blank range. the same gun, when fired by the ‘heroes’ will decimate enemies that are not even in range.
4. in general, guns lie around wasted, and only visible to heroes. enemies are constantly broad-sided by this tactic.
5. swinging on jungle vines, driving half-broken jeeps in the middle of the jungle is simple. in fact, most of the time there is no need to look where you’re going - you’re not going to crash/fall/die.
6. jumping in any direction is usually in the range well beyond normal olympic athletes.
7. its possible to use a waterski in 2 feet of water, jump it out of the water within 5 feet, do a double flip over a bridge 10 feet high within said jump, and land safely on the other side. similar things can be done with jeeps and trucks.
8. women, in general, have beatific smiles on their faces, and/or perfectly fitting clothes at all times. no matter whether you’re in a wedding, in the middle of a gunfight, or going over a waterfall.
9. in any sudden unexpected destruction ensuing, no matter what the cause, the heroes never even get touched. all villains in the area, however, come running to their doom.
10. supposed revelations about characters are usually made obvious in scene 2 of the movie. however, characters need everything spelled out for them, which usually takes up most of the inane movie. similarly songs are inserted, and irrelevant logic ensues as it is explained.

i must stop. i must write ‘the tashan of indy jones’. you’ve been warned.

i must also admit that indiana jones is something that you love, even when you hate it. and there, somehow, deep deep inside there’s still a little bit of magic. tun-ta-tuntun-tun-ta-tunnnnnn…

so, on a dreary sunday night, i decided to upgrade my wordpress. given the message on the header that i needed to do this ASAP, and that the fantastico doesn’t put it up for another 20 days, i looked in on WPAU. nice plugin install, nice step-by-step upgrading, upgrade database.. and re-login.. and boom! i cannot login. no matter what. my backups zips are apparently corrupted, and there is no mention of such an error on any page i google.

then starts hell. no login works, no login recovery works, the blog randomly kills itself and throws 401 and 402 errors, i get very very frustrated. the mySQL database decides to show me that there is no ‘users’ field (as per the error log). my provider has no clue. this keeps on until 1pm today, when i post on the wordpress forums. i await a solution. i work.

i try again.

…and it works. for no apparent reason, everything is functioning. the plugin matter-of-factly informs me that the upgrade did not complete thoroughly last time, do i want to do it again?

i create my all-important xml backup. then the database backup. i have everything, i can recover if it dies on me.

re-try.

…and it works. perfectly. i re-login. i see an updated dashboard. a little slow, but it catches up. k2 breaks, until i upgrade it too. the blog is alive, and i have no idea why it decided to kill itself for 16 hours. abs. no clue at all. somehow everything is working, i see ‘2.5.1′ in the footer in my dashboard, and i realize just how much this space means to me. hell, i pissed myself off majorly trying to make it come back to life.

i do not know the moral of this post, except that blogs should not mean so damn much. but somehow this one does. to me.

and at the end of it, i have no idea what major improvement 2.5.1 has given me over 2.5. no idea at all.

and i still don’t know why i went crazy either. ah, mystery.