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Living on Geek Time

Firstly, a note on what I'm doing right now at work. Well, what I'm doing right NOW is listening to one of my archconservative cubicle-mates defending Pat Buchanan. Make him stop... make him stop...

Anyway, next, as I turn up WinAmp to drown out the sounds of political debate that are almost inevitable in the programmer's dungeon, what I'm doing currently at work can only be described as mind-boggling.

We've got this wacky thing called "MapQuest(tm) NT Server" which allows us to generate wacky maps on our own system, which is an advantage, as previously we were just mooching off of MapQuest(tm) itself. However, MapQuest NT Server is essentially a big, undocumented, pile of whale snot. We've yet to be able to get through to customer service. We've yet to be able to find any documentation that's at all worthwhile. Oh, sure, it would be worthwhile if we wanted to write our own custom C++ programs to fiddle with this data, but we just want it to work, you know? So, as always happens, it was up to me to delve into the wretched depths of their "demo" application and see what I could see.

Problem number one. Their demo program appears to call some kind of weird black box functions that are completely undocumented. We don't even know where they ARE with 100% certainty, since they're internal to the MapQuest(tm) server and could well simply reside within the main program.

Problem number two, the demo program is written in ASP. Yes, the glory that is Visual Basic Script has returned to haunt me, torment me until my dying day! Since we're not exactly sure how to translate the black-box calls from the ASP (Active Server Pages, by the way) into OUR chosen scripting language, Cold Fusion, or if we even CAN, that leaves us with the terrible, grim task of interfacing ASP pages with Cold Fusion pages in as seemless a way as is possible.

The good news is, I get more exposure to ASP. (Ooo! Resume' fodder!) The bad news is, I may end up wishing I'd just written one of those C++ programs instead...

Today, returning to an age-old custom, we have - the Comic Book Reviews.

1. [Dark Horse] SpyBoy #4 - Don't laugh, it's Peter "I made the Incredible Hulk readable! Worship me, fanboy!" David. Being silly. A secret spy headquarters dangling between that two-towered buildingy thing, hidden by mirrors (and the bane of pigeons everywhere). Wacky villainesses with names like Ida Jury and Barbie Q. It's like a young, snippy James Bond, although PAD seems to be cheerfully stealing from spy stories everywhere. At least this is one story where he can't bring in angels. Uh... right? Please? Aiiieee...
2. [DC/Vertigo] Transmetropolitan #31 - Warren Ellis transcends all previously recorded levels of bitterness in this drug-crazed tour de force! Anti-establishment journalist Spider Jerusalem finds that his enemies (aided by a few mistakes on the part of his loyal followers) have enacted the ultimate revenge. They've assimilated his image into their media pablum. Yes, now it's the Spider Jerusalem cartoon! The Spider Jerusalem made-for-TV-movie! Spider Jerusalem porn movies! Depressed, Spider turns to drugs. Well, more than before, I mean. As if the stuff on the telly weren't bad enough, now he gets drug-induced hallucinations, too. Those wacky Brits. What can you do?
3. [Marvel] Generation X #61 - Okay, I admit it, I buy an X-book or two. But only the peripheral ones! There's something oddly appealing about this one, with its horrible retcons, wacky stories, and people smacking each other around. See Juggernaut appear for no clear reason, despite having been busy over in Avengers for the past few issues! See Emma Frost smack the hell out of her whiny younger sister! Now with more pouting than ever before! Also includes Juggernaut beating up all the other characters in the book, easily, by himself. Including the other villains. Fun! An episode that will make no sense to anyone else, as it involves the writer, Jay Faeber, having to clean up the messes and horrible conflicting ret-cons and re-ret-cons that were left by previous writers, in preparation for Warren Ellis taking over as Plotmaster in a month or so. Marvel Janitor... there's no more embarassing position for a writer in the comic book industry. Except perhaps being Rob Liefield's personal assistant.
4. [Marvel] New Warriors #6 - An issue chock full of d'oh moments. What more could you ask for? After editor-proscribed costume changes, major character Nova is slapped around and reminded that he's not wearing a costume, he's wearing a /uniform/, being as he's a cheap Green Lantern knock-off. Also includes Our Heroes beating up a fifth-string group of villains called the 'Mutant Force' ("All the good names were already taken, hunh?"), which includes such members as the Lifter ("Hah! My powers of gravity nullification allow me to lift ANYTHING!" [The heroes just sort of look at him] [Lifter mutters and climbs into the police van] "You haven't seen the last of me!" "Oh, what're you going to do, lift us to death? Oooo...") What more can you say? Stock superhero schlock. Mmm... schlock.
5. [Marvel] X-Men: Phoenix #3 - Okay, so I bought a book that can only be described as craptacular. Why? Because I like to COMPLAIN about it, that's why! Anyway, you have to wonder why Marvel even tries. Here's a character named Rachel "Phoenix" Summers, who comes from a Dark Future. Well, one of them, anyway. Marvel has a LOT of Dark Futures. She travelled back in time, messed around for a bit until the writers realized that it was awful hard to write stories when you've got a character who's awe-inspiringly powerful in the realms of telepathy and telekinesis, and she keeps breaking chairs over the heads of the villains, and tossed her back to a DIFFERENT Dark Future. This one, like her own Dark Future, was caused by Marvel's favorite Dark Future Plot Device, Apocalypse. Note that we're still in the backstory, here. Now, this is a three issue mini-series about how Rachel does something and becomes an important part of Cable (don't ask - really. you don't want to know) backstory. Or, at least, that's what we think. Actually, it just sort of involves Rachel wandering around, being awe-inspiringly powerful but never bright enough to figure out that things would be a lot simpler if she just popped a few heads off with her telekinesis (which has been established as being powerful enough to crush your average sun). You have to wonder why they bother. Instead of even trying, the writers just saddle her with a code against killing (of course, she has always been cheerfully willing to kill in the past), because otherwise she'd just pop the main villain's head off and then there wouldn't be much of a story. Instead, in the final confrontation (this whole three-issue miniseries being pretty much one long running battle) with someone who steals mutant powers, instead of either making the villain bad-ass enough to challenge her, or making Rachel smart enough to simply pop off the head of her enemy, they go for the "hey! only the idiotic and pure of heart can weild my mighty powers! i'll just let the villain STEAL my power, and be unable to handle it!" ending. Um, yeah. This is just plain bad. Bad, bad, bad. Bad writer, no cookie. There's just so much to hate here, I could go on all day, but I think nobody cares. So, moving along...
6. [DC/Wildstorm] Gen13 #...uh, 43 or something - There's something oddly endearing about the tripe that is Gen13. Now, sure, it's the same tripe it's always been, with wacky characters, shameless power-ups (one of the characters is becoming an uber-psi! why? we just felt like we needed one! all the other books have one, and we're JEALOUS!), and costumes on the female characters that look like they're stuck in eternal Wedgie Mode. On the other hand, at least the book doesn't take itself seriously, unlike many other books that have the exact same ingredients. I mean, what other book would use third-string supervillain group The Seven Deadly Sins for no other reason than to make jokes about Lust's attributes and have Sloth show up late for the battle? ([Sloth] "Did I miss anything?" [Everyone else] "Sloth!") Also starring surly mafia types! ([Mafioso #1] "My boss's boss's under-boss's friend who knows the boss of the underboss of the boss who owns the 'Little Italy' store down the street... (this continues for several lines) ...underboss is Very Upset that you decided to open a competing restaurant. Got dat?" [Mafioso #2] "Er... no?" [Mafioso #3] "Not a bit, boss." [Mafioso #4] "So, uh, who do we hit?") Add in shameless fourth wall breaking ("Whoa! This page is pretty embarassing. Could you, y'know, skip forward about five pages?" [Narrator] Well, I... I'm not supposed to... oh, well. Ahem: Five pages later...) and you've got a recipe that's chock full of amusing tripe! As opposed to the previous book, which was just bad tripe.

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