April 03, 2004

Survivor Merge

Two commercials that I've seen make it pretty clear the the tribes will merge this coming Thursday.

In one, Boston Rob and Lex are shown negotiating some sort of deal. And in another, the promo says that the next Immunity Challenge will make two individuals safe at TC.

Posted by jghiii at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2004

Doesn't count

UPDATE: Due to a snag, the whole thing has been slightly delayed. I'll try again later tonight (Saturday). At that time I'll clone the blog and its comments and try to make the transition.

It turns out that I can't totally turn off comments, so I didn't.

But I have already cloned the blog for transfer, so now anything added until you see a "we're back" announcement, won't be saved.

So go crazy.

Posted by jghiii at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)

Winston Churchill

"When you're going through Hell, keep going."

-- Winston Churchill

Posted by jghiii at 04:32 PM | Comments (1)

Danger Will Robinson

Sometime late in the day on Friday, I will begin a major bit of maintenance on the jackhodgson.com domain. This work could be completed in 24 hours or less, but it could stretch out for a couple of days. There are a few side-effects to this.

First, I will be temporarily turning off comments on the Gone East blog. Comments posted during the "construction" would be lost anyway, so I'm gonna just eliminate the problem.

Second, just like new comments would be lost, any new postings from me would be lost, so I will not be posting in the blog for the duration. (Although I may post off-line, and all those would appear, pre-dated, after the transition.)

Finally, there's a small possibility that the site will become totally unavailable. If it does this, sorry, and just be patient until it comes back, which it should by Monday at the latest. In the very unlikely event that there's a major glitch in this transition you can check www.da4.com for updates, but I won't post anything there unless it's a major disaster.

When this is done it won't make anything better for you, but it will make things A LOT BETTER for me. Wish me luck.

(For the Geek minded reader, what I'm doing is moving the domain to a new host, which has more capacity and lower cost. I've done this kind of thing before, but never with the kind of DNS setup we're gonna end up with, and never with trying to transplant the working database that is the engine for this blog.)

Posted by jghiii at 04:31 PM | Comments (3)

Does CBS even watch Survivor?

In last week's Survivor Notes, I commented that the commercial had said something about "see what the survivors do when they think the cameras aren't watching." Yet there was really nothing in the episode that fit that description.

Just now I was watching a TiVo of something from a few days ago, and the promo for this week's Survivor came on. It said, "A bizarre twist will drive one castaway to do the unbelievable." So what was THAT referring to?

It's long been known that the producers of a show don't create these weekly promos. The network PR folks do. In some cases they have been known to give away important plot points in the commercial. In the case of Survivor, they seem to just simply be making things up.

Posted by jghiii at 12:33 AM | Comments (1)

April 01, 2004

Elmore Leonard

"There isn't any secret. You sit down and you start and that's it."

-- Elmore Leonard




Posted by jghiii at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

Survivor All-Stars Notes - Ep#10

Posted after Ep #10, April 1, 2004. This post, and its comments, may contain spoilers....

>> Big Tom and Rupert in an alliance? But then BT starts bashing Rupert. He says. "Rupert is the biggest damn hog on that thing [spear]."

>> Rupert: "Big Tom caught a "goldfish fish""

>> Chapera painted themselves, Moga didn't. What was that about? The producers did this big setup to do something and then didn't really make anything of it. An idea that fizzled?

>> 1-1 picnic lunches: (non-challenge for reward)

Lex picked Boston Rob
Big Tom picked Jerri
Shii Ann picked Rupert
Alicia ends up with Kathy

Amber and Jenna left over

>> Picking new buffs to shuffle the tribes.

How did they do that!? They "shuffled" the tribes but ended up that they all stay together, except that rob and amber get split up, and they switch campsites. Was it rigged by the producers?

>> Rob: "Should we build a new shelter?"

>> Rob seems genuinely bummed that Amber is gone.

>> The new Mogas are bummed about trading their cool camp for a dump. Shii Ann says, maybe seeing how good we are will "knock them [the other tribe] down even further, cause they suck."

>> Survivor history quiz -- Immunity Challenge:

These people really know their Survivor history!!

Moga wins immunity... something finally goes right for them this week.

>> Notable quiz questions:

  • Moga got wrong: Which country for Africa? Kenya
  • Chapera got wrong: what bugs did Season 1 have to eat? butok, bug larvae (Kathy suspected that they were using the wrong term)
  • Chapera got wrong: First person off Season 7? Nicole

    >> Rob sends a message to Lex to take care of Amber... does he really like her???

    >> Rob bemoaning the loss of Amber, "...it's wickid haad..." For those of you not living in the Boston area, there's a Dunkin Donuts commercial that's getting a lot of airplay right now, which has this new-to-town Red Sox player listening to a tape trying to learn to "speak Boston". He says over and over, "It's wickid haad..."

    >> If you're a member of Chapera you are a "chapeer-an"

    >> What is this with Lex needing to tell people they're out? What kind of sick power trip is that?

    >> Amber survived Tribal Council. It is a measure of how strong Rob is in this game. Jerri out.

    >> Are these guys now the jury? In past seasons they would be.

    >> In her final confessional Jerri continues to be oddly upbeat and confident, in a clueless kind of way.

    >> Trivia: Amber is the only player left to be in only one
    tribe the whole game. Rupert and Jenna have been in three
    tribes. Jerri had been in three as well.

    >> Original tribes remaining: Chapera 4, Moga 3, Saboga 2
    ...

    # Remaining from the Meta-Tribes 

    Pula Tiga 1 of 4
    Australia 2 of 5
    Africa 2 of 3
    Marqesas 2 of 2
    Thailand 1 of 1
    Amazon 0 of 2
    Pearl Isl. 1 of 1

    # Latest tribe lists

    # Moga (5 members)
    Alicia 2-Australia 9th Chapera-then-Moga
    *Boston Rob 4-Marqesas 10th Chapera-then-Moga
    *Tom 3-Africa 4th Chapera-then-Moga
    *Rupert 7-Pearl Isl. 8th Saboga-then-Chapera-then-Moga
    Jenna L. 1-Pulau Tiga 8th Saboga-then-Chapera-then-Moga

    # Chapera (4 members)
    Kathy 4-Marqesas 3rd Moga-then-Chapera
    Lex 3-Africa 3rd Moga-then-Chapera
    Shii Ann 5-Thailand 10th Moga-then-Chapera
    Amber 2-Australia 6th Chapera

    Order Out:
    1 - Tina 2-Australia 1st (was Saboga)
    2 - *Rudy 1-Pulau Tiga 3rd (was Saboga)
    3 - Jenna M. 6-Amazon 1st (was Moga)
    4 - Rob C. 6-Amazon 3rd (was Chapera)
    5 - *Richard 1-Pulau Tiga 1st (was Moga)
    6 - *Susan 1-Pulau Tiga 4th (was Chapera)
    7 - Colby 2-Australia 2nd (was Moga)
    8 - *Ethan 3-Africa 1st (was Saboga-then-Moga)
    9 - Jerri 2-Australia 8th (was Saboga-then-Moga-then-Chapera)

    Posted by jghiii at 10:16 PM | Comments (1)
  • Wet outside

    It's been raining here for two days. It's rained pretty hard today and the weather service has issued flash-flood warnings for the eastern part of New England. It's supposed to keep raining for 4 or 5 more days.

    I should have built a boat.

    One of the most common legends from cultures all over the world is the story of a great flood.

    It's interesting, flood legends from all over the world are so similar that anthropologists believe it's likely that they all based on a single story.

    Most of the stories involve someone being told to build a boat, and to gather his family and some animals. The flood happens. After some time passes he sends out a bird, usually a dove, to look for signs that the flood is ending.

    Of course, the most well known story, to American and European cultures, is the story of Noah and the Ark. Two by two, Noah gathered a male and female of every animal species to be saved from the deluge.

    One of the oldest flood stories is the Epic of Gilgamesh from like 2000 BC. In this story, the god "Eu" tells Utnapishtim to build a boat and preserve his family, servants, and animals. Unlike Noah's 40 day flood, Utnapishtim's only lasted 7 days. After the flood, god's wrath has been appeased and, as if being saved from the flood wasn't enough, Utnapishtim and his wife were granted immortality. Which means they're still around somewhere, and could set us straight on this whole thing, but I'm guessing are reluctant to be part of the resulting media frenzy.

    China's flood myth is different. Their cataclysmic floods were something that happened all the time, and savior-hero Yu the Great, dredged some sort of super canal to redirect the water and save the world.

    My favorite is the Indian story where "Manu" is warned by a talking fish of the coming flood. Didn't they make that into a Don Knots movie?

    I don't know if any of these stories are real, but apparently there really was a cataclysmic flood.

    Archeologists have found evidence that somewhere around 1,000 years BC there was a massive flood in an area of Mespotamia. It was big enough, and lasted long enough, that it's really likely that the horro-story of its effects could have been passed down from generation to generation.

    So anyway, it's been raining all day. The back yard is all underwater. No talking fish yet, but I think it's time to start working on the boat.

    ...

    Here are a couple of websites with a lot of info about flood myths:

    http://ragz-international.com/floods.htm
    http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html

    Posted by jghiii at 06:33 PM | Comments (1)