Today at work I’m spending a lot of time updating scripts and testing said scripts.  The scripts take several minutes to run in between fixes, so my day has been a cycle of fixing a script, waiting three or four minutes for the script to complete, making another change, then testing the script again.  And sure I could be doing something useful during those three or four minute stretches of time when the script is running, like writing up my Summary of Accomplishments (which is apparently due tomorrow); however, I have only had one cup of coffee today, so my brain is insufficiently lubricated to pull that off, so I’m taking those stretches of time and doing other, less productive things.

For example, I’ve been watching this movie trailer over and over:

As movie trailers go, it’s pretty awesome.  There’s no official title for the film, but the code name or working title is apparently Cloverfield.  Lots of secrecy has surrounded the film, and for most people, this trailer was the first indication that J. J. Abrams was working on anything at all besides his Star Trek project.  Rumors and theories about (you can find some really interesting and loopy ideas in the Talk Back sections of AintItCoolNews.com); the most intriguing has it that Abrams has finally set about to bring Cthulhu to the big screen, and the most frightening has it that this is going to be a live action Voltron film.  There are mysterious websites attached to this film, such as this one and this one, as well as others that were originally thought to be attached to it but which may, in fact, not be after all, such as this one and this one.  The most reputable-sounding note I’ve seen, though, says it’s a giant monster flick with a monster that is tentatively being called "Parasite", filmed in a hand-held video cam style, sort of Blair Witch meets Godzilla.  I’m hoping for a Cthulhu film, though; it’s about time Squidhead got his due on the silver screen.

Of course, the Law of Inverse Trailers may apply here; the trailer is great, so the film, when it finally is released, may suck.

In honor of the possibility that Abrams is bringing Cthulhu to the main screen, I’ve switched my home page back to the Cthulhu theme.  And this time I’ve added dripping blood to the menu bar, because I can.  Sure it’s cheesy and tacky, but I’m in a cheesy and tacky mood today.  And at least the menu bar is still readable.

In other news, the move continues to be traumatic and stressful and annoying.  We love our new house, though it’s taking us longer than we’d hoped to finish laying the laminate flooring.  Part of that, I’m sure, is due to the fact that Jennifer and I both come at home at night, look at the pile of laminate still to lay and the large swaths of concrete that are still the only floor we have in our bathroom and guestroom and hall, and go, "Ah, crap," and we look for other things to do.  There is a smell to the laminate — it may be the glue which binds the padding to the engineered wood — which I’m sick of, and since I spend so much time cutting apart pieces of laminate with the table saw, I get to smell a lot of it.  Last night we also attempted to install a couple of the door strips that go between the rooms that have the flooring, but that means drilling directly into the concrete, and there’s something about drilling directly into the concrete which I am apparently missing.  I have my 12-volt drill.  I have my masonry bit.  I have my bicep muscles.  I have the concrete.  So why can’t I make a hole in it?  Seriously, I sat there last night with the drill pointed directly down (clever drill has a little LED that lights up steadily when the device is properly vertical) and the masonry bit spinning and my muscles quivering.  No progress at all.  Oh, I may have gone 1/8 inch into the concrete, but it just refused to go further.  It’s like someone lined the underside of our house with titanium, which seems profoundly inefficient to me.

We’ve had an electrician coming in just about every night this week, updating much of the wiring in the attic and installing a pair of dedicated circuits in our office.  This means that we can’t yet use the attic for storage (and with evidence of rats in the attic, I’m not sure I ever want to anyway), and with the downstairs guest room still incomplete, many of our boxes of books and other belongings are piled in great big stacks throughout the house.  Our living room is mostly livable, but our dining room still looks like a self storage company has been subleasing from us.  We can’t set up our office yet because the electrician is still working in there, though hopefully he’ll be finished in there tonight.

There’s also a strong possibility that our DSL will actually be active tonight.  We have word from our ISP, Sonic.net, that they’re moving forward with it, but there’s still the possibility that AT&T will put up more roadblocks, because AT&T is run by evil robots.

On the writing front… Well, I haven’t gotten any writing done for a couple of weeks now.  Part of the problem is the lack of office space at our new house, but that’s only part of it.  I’ve also just been lazy; instead of writing, I’ve been re-reading all of the Harry Potter books in anticipation of the release of the last book in the series.  Last year, you see, I decided on the very day that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out that I wanted to re-read all of the previous books, which earned me great grief from Jennifer, who read HBP on the day it came out and had to wait until I was finished before she could talk about it with me.  I have learned from my mistakes.  So for the next week or so, Harry Potter trumps the writing, though when I get our home office set up I’ll probably start shifting my priorities back appropriately.

Anyway, that’s about it.  And if anyone has any idea what I’m doing wrong with regards to the door strips, I’d really appreciate a word of advice.