The new normal...

Windows 8 suddenly locked up hard, requiring me to hold down the power button for several seconds until the system shut down most inelegantly.

I am getting really tired of this, y'know?

Maybe I should add the Microsoft Office repair program to my start menu, so that it runs every day?

October starts...

The Routine Stuff™ was a little surprising in its volume today, weighing in at around 3,000 words by the time I got to a stopping point. The rest of the day went by in a blur, finishing with watching tonight's NCIS, albeit recorded while I was at tai chi. The utter absence of Colin Hanks during the first ten minutes of the show pretty much whittled the field of bad guys to one, but there were plently of other things to wonder about.

Strangely enough, Cote de Pablo's departure from NCIS caused me to consider the careers of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson after The X Files went off the air. While Duchovny might arguably be said to have been more successful in landing post-Mulder roles than Anderson has in landing post-Scully roles (of course, this assumes a stereotyped set of goals common to all actors), I think it may be safely said that they have not replicated the success they enjoyed on The X Files.

That, in turn, reminded me of something I overheard at a "Silicon Northwest" reception I attended as a member of the computer press at a COMDEX back in the day. (Silicon Northwest was, if memory serves, a promotional consortium of mostly Seattle-and-surrounding-region high-tech companies that hosted very nice press receptions, with many of the edibles and drinkables "imported" from the northwest as well.) The speaker was a woman who worked for a company in Vancouver, and she was in full name-dropping mode with regard to The X Files—Duchovny, Anderson, Chris Carter, and various other behind-the-scenes folks—and she made a remark I found curious at the time.

In response to someone asking what Duchovny was like "in real life," the woman said David was "very sweet," but that alas, "the poor boy cannot act his way out of a paper bag." At the time, I rejected her assessment as simply an attention-getting ruse, but years later, after the show went off the air, I got to thinking about what she had said, especially when seeing a less-than-impressive Duchovny in yet another dud role.

So as I watched a tearful Ziva watch Tony get on the plane home this evening, I found myself rooting for de Pablo, and I guess the point of this ramble is to say I hope she's not a "one-hit wonder," and that regardless of where her personal interests lie and what she seeks in the future, I hope she enjoys every success.

(Returning to the show someday would also not hurt, IMO.)