UKLeG on Earthsea, Found Santa, and a sad story

It would seem Ursula K. LeGuin is none too pleased about the direction that was taken with the movie adaptation of her story, what with the themes they fabricated and injected and the words they put into her mouth...

The US Dept. of Justice released posters aimed at assisting authorities with properly identifying and searching Muslims and Sikhs; BoingBoing.net created one to offer to South Asian shopkeepers in rural areas: Common Redneck Head Coverings. (via bluekitsune)

Santa Claws Lobster and his flying crawfish! (via xviragox)

Worst human interest story I've heard recently, relayed by liandriel:

There's been a small drama over on Xanga this week -- a wonderful woman has been illegally evicted from her home with nine days' notice and put up a Paypal link for donations, so her kids won't be homeless for Christmas (long story short). Some random girl surfed by and made a snotty comment that this woman should get a job, rather than begging for money online. Drama ensued, and one of the things this girl said was, "Seriously though why give money to someone you dont even know?"

Traveling in DC, lots of work, and GPS goodness; Skeletal cartoons, IMAX Fighter Pilot, and TV

I'm rather fond of my GPS, even with the low-detail maps it currently possesses.* With it, I was only mildly lost/wandering/annoyed while driving around DC, instead of majorly so as I would've been without it. My first call of the day was in Bethesda, see, at the LexisNexis site I helped move last week. Their problem was merely a bent pin on a SCSI cable. I was all set to leave there, call Esther, and have lunch with her in Rockville, when Rob called to hand me another call--this one at the DOT in southwest DC. Now, there's really no good route from Bethesda--direct, perhaps, but not fast, and not tidy at the SW DC end. (I was basically on Wisconsin Ave in Bethesda, but without a good map--I'd left it at home, and the GPS doesn't yet have detailed maps--I didn't to try that way.) Thus, I headed back out the way I'd come, taking the GW Parkway--a very pretty road, incidentally--from 495 toward 395. Alas, despite signs indicating that they should connect near the Pentagon, I got shuttled off onto a few other roads I didn't want, before giving up and taking the Key Bridge into NW DC. I then had a good long ways to go through DC to my destination--what I'd been trying to avoid--and once I found parking, I had to find the building again. This took quite some time, a lot of walking, and a stop outside the wrong building. Once there, the problem proved intermittent, though I may have solved it by power cycling the affected drive.. and while there, I got assigned an install for Monday, and passed off the already-rescheduled Ft. Belvoir visit, since I have an install finalized for tomorrow.. and right before that, I'll hand off the new drive I already had in hand to the guy who's taking it to Belvoir. Sheesh. Things should quiet down, oh, next Tuesday.

* Check out the functionality added by the MapSend DirectRoute software! Detailed maps, automated street routing, turn-by-turn directions, audio prompts--sweeeet. (Ooh, and the MapSend Topo 3D can show 3D imagery on your laptop, constructed from topo data! Nifty.)

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Curious indeed: Skeletal systems of popular cartoon/comic characters.

Holy crap, must see! Fighter Pilot, in IMAX at Air & Space Udvar-Hazy! That sounds awesome. Anyone want to join me sometime? :)

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I realized, when I went to tape House for Nathan this evening, that the Earthsea miniseries was longer than three hours, as only part of it got taped last night. Oh well--I'll see it all at some point, since SciFi is showing it repeatedly. (I've never read the books--in fact, only one book by LeGuin ever--so I've nothing to compare to for disappointment value. :) I watched House while it was taping, though--really good show.