The things that should have been obvious, had you thought ahead.

Sitting in a hot tub for three hours really dehydrates you. I have the most amazing 'hangover' right now. :-(

Some Day....

Some day, the Lego corporation will expand the current "Lego Creator" concept to a "brick-on-demand" service, where you will be able to order any brick you want, in any color needed. At that point, it will be possible to mass-order the transparent/translucent bricks needed to build such wonderful projects as the Palace of the High Ones, or an optically camouflaged Tachikoma. When that glorious time comes to pass, geeks everywhere will rejoice.

Speaking of Ghost in the shell, one of the neat things I've noticed about the "Stand Alone Complex" series is that optically camouflaged characters really _do_ become more noticeable when they move. I thought that was a neat touch. Something that I found highly annoying, though: For an elite paramilitary unit, Section Nine has _lousy_ muzzle discipline. They 'flag' each other _all_the_damned_time_. I don't care how advanced the fire-control capacities of their weapons and artificial cyber-bodies are, the whole unit is a frindly-fire Darwin Award waiting to happen. This would't be so jarring, if the rest of the show wasn't so realistic. But ASIDE from that, the series is great, and everyone should watch it.