Kolchak, The Night Stalker: Ep 1 The Ripper

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So! Now we move to the first of the actual TV episodes. The rumor is that Darren McGavin enjoyed working in TV movies and only agreed to tie himself to a television show with the promise that he would also be executive producer. Then, on the first day of shooting, he found another executive producer on the set.

According to the story I heard, he felt betrayed and acted as the executive producer anyway. Essentially, the set had two bosses. Things became so contentious that at the end of the first season McGavin begged for the show to be cancelled.

Still, this was the first episode, aired 9/13/74. I wasn’t allowed to watch it, but I did end up seeing it later in syndication. Currently, all episodes of the TV show are available on streaming on Netflix. If you want to switch over to watch it (it’s about 50 minutes long) do so now, because I’m about to post some spoilers.

Really short plot synopsis: Jack the Ripper is loose in modern-day (circa 1974) Chicago, and only Kolchak recognizes him for the super-human killer that he is. Too bad for Our Hero that another reporter has been assigned to the story and he’s been relegated to a week of answering “Dear Emily” letters. Not that Kolchak would let that get in his way. Written by Rudolph Borchert, Directed by Allen Beron.

What happens in detail: Continue reading

Blow out those candles, quick!

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I want to wish Joss Whedon a happy birthd– Oh, damn, it was cancelled before I could finish.

Things that suck

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Originally, I was going to write about this somewhere private where I know I could talk it over with a few people I’ve known a while… sort of run through the issues here, but to hell with that. I’m just going to put this out as part of my public face.

Right now, a lot of rotten crap has been going on. What’s the number one thing that sucks? Me.

My wife and son are still out of town dealing with the death of my mother-in-law. I’m here alone, feeling adrift without my family. I’m also stymied by some other problems that I can’t talk about because they aren’t mine. Add the petty time-wasting of my recent Qwest situation, the uncertainty of my day job, personal crap I don’t need to see on the internet and so on, and you have one writer who hasn’t been able to write.

Writers write, yeah? That’s what everyone says. I’ve been writing, too, but I end up cutting or deleting it by the end of the week. Then there are also days when I don’t write anything.

I know I have plot problems to solve, but my head is crowded with stress, worry, and petty resentments. Somehow I need to clear some space, but all of my usual recharging activities–reading, movies, games–are wildly time-consuming. When to I get the writing done? When do I solve the plot problem that’s staring me in the face?

Those look amazingly like questions, don’t they? They’re not. Not really. They’re just expressions of my personal dismay and confusion. I really do want to be a professional writer. I really do want to write. I really love the book I’m working on; I swear to Pikachu it could be awesome. What I don’t have but really, really need, is the mental toughness to fall into story space even when I’m depressed, distracted or upset.

In a bit, I’m going to close my internet for a few hours, and I’m going to be less active online for a while. I need to find that hook inside my mind where I can hang a story.

Quote of the day

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“Apple is best understood as the Singapore of technological ecosystems—smart, forward-looking, and every so often you get caned for chewing gum. ”

— Patrick Nielsen Hayden

(posted after I realized that the Mac OS disables “Grab”–the screen capture utility–while “DVD Player” is running, because God forbid anyone want to post an image from a movie or TV show they’re writing critically about)

Blow the vuvuzelas!!

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We celebrate the restoration of my home internet connection. We shall not discuss the amount of time spent convincing Qwest that the problem was, in fact, on their end.

I’m logged in at the library

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Skimming through my LJ and checking emails. I didn’t make the trip to Best Buy to swap modems because guess what?? When I got home from work, the supposedly-broken modem was working!

I know. You’re shocked.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t working working. It took ten minutes and multiple tries before Thunderbird could download an email or newsgroup post. Yet another call to Qwest got me a conversation with someone who was willing to admit that they’d been having outages in my area for the last 48 hours. The engineers said it would be fixed in 8-12 hours.

This morning, I still didn’t have internet. This morning, I called tech support again. The helpdesk guy told me that the problem was fixed, but of course it wasn’t. He went consulted with the engineers again and reported that the server had failed again.

You know what? I wasn’t angry. He’d told me the truth, instead of a lie that cost me 90+ dollars and wasted several hours of my time. If the first person I spoke with had told me the truth, I would have been much happier than I am now.

Current plan: See if they can get this fixed by Monday morning. Then hook up my old modem again. If it still works, return new modem and use the 2hr commute time wisely (if possible).

Here is my sad face

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I must go home to an internet-less apartment. It will be beer, books, and maybe a DVD.

God! How do people live this way?!?!

In which I reveal my ignorance, part two

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Who knew jaywalking as a pedestrian norm was safer than a norm of crossing at the crosswalk?

I’ll admit that it pings my skepticism meter (along the lines of “Volvos are dangerous because people feel safe in them and drive like idiots”) but I still hmm over it.

Seen via this article about the punching incident earlier this week, when the Seattle police officer used “the punching technique” when a bystander objected to a jaywalking arrest.

Amazing coincidences!

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So, Wednesday after work I discovered I couldn’t connect to the internet at home. This was annoying, because I have writer-type crap that needs doing, but hey, it happens. I called Qwest tech support and after nearly an hour and a half I was told they’d traced the problem to my modem. I was entering the username and password correctly to connect to the ISP, but the modem wasn’t retaining the info (or something). They could access my modem, but I couldn’t get the internet.

Obviously the solution was to buy a new one, which I did. It wasted an hour and a half (notice the trend) of my evening, but I went out and bought a new Qwest-compatible wireless modem. ($90!)

When I brought it home to install it, guess what? Same. Exact. Problem.

After another long call to tech support (you know how long it took) the guy informed me that, by amazing coincidence, my brand new modem had the exact same problem as my old one. AMAZING! Go back to Best Buy, I was told, and exchange it for another one. And see if you can get them to test it right there in the store.

And… fine. I don’t believe them, but fine. I’m not going after work today (because I have a life[1]) but I will be going first thing tomorrow. So long, most productive writing time of the week! I will have to reschedule you, because I have to fix my fucking internet connection.

And if this doesn’t work, Qwest is out. I’d hate to lose the email address I’ve had for years but I may not have a choice. The main problem is that I don’t have any other really good options. The cable ISP in my area is Comcast, and those bastards are the ones pursuing the lawsuit against the FCC about packet-slowing. To hell with them. What other choices do I have?

::Shakes fist at corporate tech support::

Best Buy provides the email address for the manager of the store I’ll be visiting tomorrow. I’m going to drop him a line to let him know what’s going on and why I’ll be there. I’m sure Gary Mylie will be overjoyed.

[1] Not really

In which I reveal my ignorance, part one

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I will shamelessly reveal my ignorance here, because everyone is ignorant about different things, yes? First, I want to link to Oil spill crisis as opportunity, a rather detailed post that covers a lot of ground, including a much friendlier analysis of Obama’s “War on the Oil Spill” speech than my own, a clip of Rahm Emmanuel that I can’t watch, and a really awesome graph (I mean REALLY AWESOME) that shows what our energy sources are and what they go to.

But I want to comment on this:

Someday when battery technologies improve, the fuel and power worlds will blend in the U.S., and there will be strong and direct economic relationships between the production of electric power and the use of oil.

His point is that Obama is using the oil spill (caused by the extraction of a fossil fuel used mainly for transportation) as a basis to regulate coal and natural gas, too, which are used for very different purposes.

And this is something I’ve thought a lot about, too. Once we have a sensible (unlike, say, flywheels) way to store a lot of energy inside a moving vehicle, people will be able to charge their vehicles at home/work, and we’ll be powering our transportation sector (or at least, large portions of it) off the grid.

The grid, of course, can get energy from hydro power, solar, wind, tides, whatever. It doesn’t have to be coal, for instance.

However, my understanding is that the real problem here is the battery (makes sad face). There is no great new battery tech breakthroughs, are there? Most of the advances (to take one prominent example) made in powering portable devices is in LEDs and other ways to reduce power usage, not storage.

But maybe I’m wrong. Have there been big advances in battery technology? As far as I can tell, the barium-titanate powders never panned out. Am I missing something or is this a pipe dream?

But be sure to check out that graph.