24: 4pm to 5pm

If you’re wondering what this post is about, it’s something a bunch of folks do every week over on Dave Barry’s blog of the show “24”, and here’s my contribution:


4:00 pm – The Russian terrorist, who inexplicably speaks better English that most Americans, gets a call from yet MORE terrorists in the field.

4:01 pm – Manilow finds out that Mrs Manilow is in the limo! Finally, a way out! …No wait…. He wants to stop the motorcade to get her back.

4:03 pm – Manilow calls Mrs. Manilow, and tries to convince her to come back. She hangs up on him! Well, he tried. Guess that’s it for her!

4:06 pm – Manilow realizes that the Russians might find out that Mrs. Manilow has never ridden in a limo. …Oh, and that he gave the terrorists their route so the terrorists could kill them all. Whoops!

4:07 pm – Audrey tells Edgar to meet her in the server room, but won’t tell him why. Edgar looks really hopeful, and pops a breath mint.

4:08 pm – The Hobbit is slowly decending into craziness, and starts asking about Lemba wafers.

4:09 pm – Audrey and Chloe are both in the server room. The Hobbit would never think of looking there. Meanwhile, if Edgar walked in that server room in his present state of mind, he’d probably faint at what he thinks is going to find there.

4:10 pm – Jack gets a phone call from Audrey, and we find out that Jack is going to meet his previous boss’s replacement boss’s boss, that Jack investigated for selling secrets. This is going to be a happy reunion.

4:11 pm – Edgar is shocked to find Audrey and Chloe there together, and immediately demands to know if they’ve already eaten the secret stash of Cheetos Audrey alluded too.

4:12 pm – Manilow keeps thinking of wacky scenarios to get his wife out of the limo. That kook!

4:12 pm – Mrs. Manilow asks about route changes, and says she’s just worried about heavy traffic. Doesn’t she watch this show? There IS no heavy traffic.

COMMERCIAL

4:17 pm – Back at CTU, The Hobbit, asks this new person “Cary” who she’s on the phone with, she says “Homeland Security”, and he fires her. I’m sure she’ll remember that the next time someone asks her that, she will NOT answer “Homeland Security”. I can only imagine what would have happened if she answered “FEMA”.

4:18 pm – Audrey and Chloe get caught by The Hobbit, and Audrey confronts him. Audrey argues long enough to let Chloe send a new security update to the computer system of the company that Jack’s going to. The Hobbit tells Audrey he needs “Precious” and Chloe goes with him.

4:19 pm – Jack bypasses the crack security guard, and gets Audrey to get an assistant to go away from her desk.

4:22 pm – ROBOCOP, CUNNINGLY DISGUISED AS A REGULAR HUMAN, TAZERS JACK!

4:23 pm – Jack tells Robocop that the terrorist have Centox gas, and Robocop swears he only shot a few people, and doesn’t know about the gas.

4:24 pm – Jack asks to see a bunker, and Robocop leads him out of the office.

Commercial – TWENTY FOUR THE GAME!

4:29 pm – Edgar tells Chloe about an intercept, and it appears to be some chatter about the exact situation they’re in on the website by a famous humorist who’s name rhymes with “Brave Dairy”. He’s going to do some further investigating.

4:30 pm – Edgar and Chloe go to The Hobbit to tell him about the chatter that was intercepted, and since it has nothing to do with “Precious”, he doesn’t want to hear about it. He says he’s been embarassed enough for one day. (He’s wrong. There’s PLENTY more to be embarassed about.) Curtis tries to tell him to put people on the threat assessment, and is told to go play with an elf.

4:31 pm – Impecible English Speaking Terrorist (IEST) calls to make sure that there’s still no traffic on any street in LA.

4:32 pm – Audrey goes to The Hobbit to tell him about the threat, and even threatens to cry, but The Hobbit STILL doesn’t want to hear about it, unless it involves The Ring. At this point, I think The Hobbit is in on the plot.

4:33 pm – Chloe instant messenges Edgar to meet in the hall. He sees Chloe and Audrey there, but still no Cheetos.

4:34 pm – Audrey wants Chloe to hack the Hobbits account, so she can send a secret message. Edgar doesn’t want to do it unless he sees some Cheetoes RIGHT NOW. They convince him to help them send the message.

4:34 pm – Audrey tells Curtis that she wants to invoke “Section 112” to get Bill back in charge of CTU. Curtis doesn’t understand how getting Bill to dress up like a circus clown is going to help anything, until he realizes that she said “Section 112”, not “Section 212”. He’s still not sure it will work, since a mad Hobbit is a bad Hobbit, not to mention it’ll be a LOT of paperwork.

4:35 pm – Meanwhile, there’s ZERO traffic on the freeway in LA. That ALONE should make the Russians suspicious.

4:35 pm – Manilow and Cheney-Looking-Guy (CLG) are talking about as much as the end of a scene in a soap opera, right before a commercial…lots of meaningful glances, but ZERO DIALOG. …Wait, Manilow tells a little story his father told him about a man named Jed, who was shooting at some food, and wants to know how this fits in with what the terrorists are doing. (I think it’s a race between The Hobbit and Manilow to see who goes completely berzerk first). Manilow starts blaming Mrs. Manilow for the situation she’s in. Now he wants to pray, and wants CLG to pray too. Apparently he doesn’t know that CLG is a Cthulu worshipper, and that would be a REALLY big problem.

4:38 pm – The jig is up! The Hobbit caught Edgar orange-handed! How could he not notice the Cheetoes dust all over his terminal! Chloe sticks up for him, and so does Audrey. The Hobbit has red-shirted security guards with him, so you know he’s kind of serious. The security guards have no idea what they’re in for, since apparently they’re not familiar with Star Trek theory of security guards wearing red shirts.

4:39 pm – Curtis goes against The Hobbit, invokes Section 112! He is one mad little Hobbit.

COMMERCIAL

4:45 pm – Bill is back! Everyone is back into the swing. Manilow finds out that CTU knows about the terrorist plot, and is speechless. Manilow looks mad. They’re about to save Mrs. Manilow.

4:47 pm – Terrorists are in position…. Secret Service goes into evasive manuvers, a missle is shot at the motorcade and top secret service guy looks like he’s dead. The terrorists machine gun the car, pull a flame thrower out, try that…nothing is doing anything to that car. The top secret service guy is alive, and he looks mad! He opens the door and fires on the terrorists, even blowing up the guy with the flame thrower! YEAH! And secret service guy is going to be OK! YEAH!

4:49 pm – Manilow gets the bad news. His wife is OK. The terrorists are going to be mad. Silly Manilow…. terrorists are ALWAYS mad.

More terrorism! Wait, that’s Amercian Idol, tomorrow. At least they warned us.

4:54 pm – Robocop and Jack finally get to where they’re going. That must be one BIG building. They go into a basement, Robocop says he doesn’t know who’s working on the Centox project, and as a senior VP, he is able to sit down at a terminal and actually use it, which is again…unrealistic.

4:57 pm – Robocop leaves, and when Jack goes to check the phones, they’re all dead. Jack checks the door, and it’s locked. He checks the notepad that Robocop left behind, and it’s got a bomb in it. Jack says he feels stupid. I’m guessing that’s an understatement.

4:58 pm – Robocop leaves, telling whoever is on the phone that CTU doesn’t have enough info on them. He goes out to the car, saying Jack will be dead in one minute.

4:58 pm – Jack puts the bomb in small room.

4:59 pm – Robocop remote detonates the bomb, but Jack was safe because he pulled a floor tile and hid there.. He walks out of the room with his gun drawn. That’s our Jack!

4:59 pm – Manilow and CLG are working on a cover story. Phone call from IEST direct to the president, saying that this time Americans are going to get it.

next time – TWO HOURS OF JACK BAUER! MRS. MANILOW TELLS SECRET SERVICE ABOUT THE PLOT! JACK’S DAUGHTER RETURNS! JACK CATCHES UP WITH ROBOCOP! I GET THE CAPS LOCK UNSTUCK FROM THIS KEYBOARD!

What’s Apple up to?

Speaking of mysterious new devices….

Apple will announce something “new” next week, according to the invitations that some chosen few have received. There’s a picture that’s circulating which looks like a small cube. The person that took it says it measures 8x8x8 and has a bunch of ports on the back.

My guess is that it’ll be a device that you’ll connect to your TV, will have a wireless internet connection, and the ability to download movies right to it. I don’t think they’ll go the TiVO route, since there’s still a lot of shakeup about to happen in that market.

People have been going “gah-gah” over the ability to have TV shows on their iPOD…doesn’t it make sense for Apple to introduce something that people will be able to use in their living rooms?

Any other guesses?

Microsoft “Origami” to debut March 2nd

There has been a lot of speculation on what Microsoft “Origami” might be over the last couple of days. The website http://www.origamiproject.com, has a weird little flash movie that doesn’t really do anything more than add to the mystery of what it might be.

A few years ago, National Semicondtor came up with a device named “Origami” which was a small handheld that could be opened and turned in a variety of different ways, depending on how it would be used.

The device that was talked about back then was a phone, pda, MP3 player, e-mail device, and video conferencing tool.

LOST: More Hieroglyphics

A couple of people have asked me where I found the information on Egyptian Hieroglyphics that lead me to the conclusions in my previous post about the LOST counter. I did all that research via Google. Here are some of the pages:

The Egyptian Vulture
Hieroglyphics!
Hieroglyphic Dictionary
Duke Papyrus Archive
Hieroglyphs.net

These are just some of the sites that I looked at. There are quite a few others on the Web that might help you draw your own conclusions about what the symbols mean.

One of the things I didn’t mention before was that apparently there is some controversy surrounding Hieroglyphics found in Australia, and whether they’re real or not. Since some of LOST centers around Australia, it brings up a lot of interesting questions.

There have been a lot of theories about what the hieroglyphics on the “countdown” timer in the hatch mean. The thing that occurred to me wasn’t so much what they meant, but why there were hieroglyphics symbols there in the first place. Doesn’t it seem a little odd that of all thins, Egyptian hieroglyphics would show up on the timer? Why not words? Why any message at all?

Dave Barry and “24”

If you like Dave Barry and the show “24”, you should head on over to his blog on the nights they show new episodes. On the nights Dave is home, he posts updates while watching the show, and people make comments while watching the show live.

A couple of weeks ago, Dave asked if folks could write summaries of the show, and I started posting some of my own. A few people over there liked ’em, so I thought that this week I’d post my entry here:

Super quick summary:

3:00-4:00 – Jack gets a phone call from The Guy Previously Known as the Guy in the Dark Room, through Audrey at CTU. Jack gets into a gun fight on the roof of a building, no one calls the police over the machine gun fire, or the helicopter that’s flying around with black smoke after someone shoots at it. After all, this is LA, and this happens every day here.

Audrey works with Chloe to get information from the chip Jack gets from The Guy Previously Known As The Guy in the Dark Room. The Hobbit goes CRAZY looking for the One Ring, and SWEARS that Chloe and Audrey are keeping the information from him. He goes so crazy, he locks up Bilbo…er….Bill, when he thinks Bill, Chloe, and Audrey are working against him. He looks threatheningly at Edgar, who was eating a ho-ho.

In the meantime, the terrorists get a hold of the President, because it’s SUPER easy to get ahold of the president, (well, at least President Manilow), and ask him if they can pretty please have the motorcade route the Russian President is taking back to the airport. Mrs. Manilow hears this and completely freaks out. She’s never been in a motorcade. She jumps into the limo at the end of the episode. As she drives away, it occurs to her she heard something about terrorists and a motorcade.

Body counts:
A number of people get shot, a living room in a video game commercial gets shot, Stylish gets knifed by yet ANOTHER terrorist (they must pay these actors per episode), who’s apparently the REAL bad guy, at least until next week. Jack shoots at least two people, and brings down a black helicopter by shooting at it.

Dave, in answer to your question about what “the twist we wouldn’t believe”…. I think it’s that Jack actually got to shoot at people this episode.

Be sure and check out this week’s “24” action on Dave Barry’s Blog.

Stamps with moving pictures

You may have heard about “electronic paper”, a technology which uses electrical charges on individual elements within the “paper” to display text and images.

Another new technology now brings moving pictures onto stamps.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Minority Report”, and remember the scenes where the advertisments were moving, even though they were on flat posters, you’ll get the idea of what they’re doing….. except on a much smaller scale.

It’s coming folks… It’ll probably take a few more years, but pretty soon you’ll be bombarded with ads on cereal boxes, moving around to get you to buy that box.

Sure hope there’s an easy way to turn those off.

LOST: Egyptian Hieroglyphics

On LOST last night, the episode entitled “One of Them” came to a climax where the timer hit zero and a partial display of Egyptian hieroglyphics was displayed.

It hasn’t even been 24 hours since the show as I write this, and someone has posted they’ve discovered what the symbols might mean. Check out this picture of the LOST timer glyphs posted by “onehundredeight” over on http://lost.cubit.net.

I saw this post, and took a look at a number of hieroglyphics sites on the web to see if I could get independent confirmation about what those symbols mean.

First of all, heiroglyphics can be read in several different ways. The biggest question is whether to read these symbols from right to left, or left to right. This is actually pretty easy to determine, even if you don’t have experience with hieroglyphics (and I certainly don’t). The direction the symbols are facing is the direction they should start from. So, for these symbols, you have to read them from left to right.

One of the tricky things about hieroglyphics is that even one symbol change can change the meaning of the phrase. Since we didn’t see the entire set of five glyphs, we have to keep that in mind.

Another thing to notice is that the first three symbols were on a black background, and the fourth and fifth symbols are on a red background. This may mean that there are two glyph phrases. Without the second symbol (which was never revealed), it’s difficult to know if the hidden glyph would make two distinct phrases that make sense.

The first symbol means “to cause”. The last symbol means “enemy” or “death”. Seems like a slam dunk, right? There are a couple of symbols that aren’t used, and like I said, those symbols are important.

I wasn’t able to determinate what the third symbol meant, but the fourth symbol was “the vulture”. One of the heiroglyphics sites (and I’m sorry, I don’t remember which one) described the Egyptian vulture as a bird that will repeated try and open eggs by flying over them with a rock and dropping the rock. Needless to say, this doesn’t work very well, but they continue until they succeed.

So, if we take those two symbols alone, could they mean “drop death”? “Drop death”, as in a bomb? Think about it for a minute. They’re in a hatch near a sealed chamber that’s highly magnetic. There are blast doors in the hatch. Sayid said that there may be nuclear material behind that thick wall of concrete.

Could “drop death” mean “drop a nuclear weapon”? Sure, it’s a variation on “cause death”….but, that’s my theory.

I think the real question that people are overlooking here is not what the heiroglyphics mean, but….. What the heck are Egyptian Heiroglyphics doing on that counter in the first place?

Update 02/23/06 – Read More about the Lost Heiroglyphics

Update 08/22/06 – According to the LOST writer’s themselves, the meaning is “Underworld”. The writers revealed this at this year’s San Diego Comic Con.

LOST: Has Walt met Alex?

Michael’s been gone for two episodes now, and is trying to find Walt. I’ve been hoping that Walt will be back soon, because we might get a better idea of what The Others have been thinking when they tried to grab Walt.

We saw the bearded man (the guy Sawyer called “Zeke”, and that the producers call “Mr. Friendly”), ask Alex to bring Kate to him. Could Walt have met Alex? Might Alex try and leave with Walt to go back to the LOST camp? That sure would make Danielle a larger part of the show.