Critter’s page

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – I’ve finally finished up the second Professor Layton game. I liked the setting and feel of this game better than the first one. The animation for the cut-scenes are both increased in amount and in quality. I think there are a few cases of poor wording of the puzzles. It’s probably because I just finished the first game, but for the most part the puzzles felt easier than the first game. Also there are more hint coins in this game so there’s no worry on running out of ways to get hints if you need them. I did run into a problem assembling the camera as it apparently needs to be assembled in a particular order an not just with all the pieces in the right place as the instructions indicated. Also if you miss a certain puzzle you will not be able to complete the tea puzzles. Luckily after the game you can go back and complete anything you missed.

Wii Sports Resort –  I mostly wanted this to try out the gyroscopic attachment to the Wii remote and it works as advertised. It does a great job of 1:1 motion between what you do and what happens on screen. I’ve only tried a few of the games so far but they are all well done. The frisbee game was challenging at first but soon enough I was throwing as I would a regular frisbee. I look forward to the other games and seeing what else will take advantage of this device.

TV:

Alice – I wasn’t that impressed with SyFy’s Tin Man take on The Wizard of Oz, but for some reason I thought Alice looked promising, and for the most part it delivered. Large unpopulated cities, while looking cool don’t really fit with how it should be, but everything else ended up being a fairly interesting take on the Wonderland stories. It makes me wonder how much it has in common with the upcoming Alice in Wonderland which also appears to take place in a future Wonderland, based on the trailer.  

Black in America 2 – More great stories about the subject matter! I didn’t get to see the first Black in America, but I really liked Hispanic in America and this is right up there with it.

Movies:

Another free preview weekend means I get a lot more movies to watch, good and bad. There’s a lot of bad this time so I’ll put the better ones first. I have to start writing these before I have so many piled up.

• The good:

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Herbie Hancock: Possibilities – This a documentary about the making of the Herbie Hancock album by the same name. It’s a collaboration with a number of artists and all of them are shown in their collaboration. I learned about several artists I’ll be looking into from this which is better than I was expecting going in.

Bottle Shock – I’m not sure how accurate the portrayal of the characters are but I think the events are probably about how they happened. The characters to make for a fun ride through the rise of Napa though. You dont have to be a wine afficionado to enjoy this movie.

Le Placard – A fine film! I don’t normally expect a straight up comedy to come from France, but this one really delivers.

Black Irish – It’s good, but I wasn’t expecting something this heavy. This movie is pretty heavy on the drama but not in a bad way and doesn’t go down the rode of the morose.

Sweet and Lowdown – Great mockumentary about a fictional guitar player. The music is good and the humor is played perfectly.

CJ7 – A mostly non-kung-fu Stephen Chow movie, but I still like it. File this mostly under heart-warming family film. I look forward to the sequel.

The Anniversary Party – A small group of actors getting together to make their own movie can often go wrong, but in this case it all came out right. I guess there’s nothing else to say other than I really got into the characters.

• The okay:

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The Bachelor –  It’s mostly pretty silly in the premise but the it starts to get fun when Brooke Shields’ character enters the scene. I’m glad it referenced Brewster’s Millions because that’s what I was thinking this was goign to be like early on. Seeing a couple hundred brides running around is pretty fun.

Blood: The Last Vampire – Live action anime! Apparently it isn’t as good as the original anime, but it was still entertaining enough. I probably wouldn’t seek it out, but if you like anime vampire/martial arts/demon movies you’ll probably find this entertaining.

A Wake in Providence – A second tier family reunion type movie. It’s entertaining but not as good as other examples of the genre.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop – I was skeptical that this was a movie worthy of how much money it made. The first 30 minutes weren’t that exciting, but then it turned into a fairly decent comedy version of Die Hard. Yeah it would be better to watch Die Hard, but this wasn’t that bad.

Fired Up! – This stated off with kind of a Ferris Bueller feel. The main characters could improvise a plan and get out of any situation. After the first 15 minutes the only thing left is what you see in the trailer. Their ability to hatch plans and execute them on the fly vanishes, killing the best thing this movie had going.

The International – Thriller and international banking don’t seem like they would go together and really it ends up more of a commentary about the far reaches of the banking system and why it is untouchable.

The Breed – This movie was a little confused. It tried to present a Brazil-like future, but that was completely unrelated to most of the movie both in content and in style. I like the idea behind the movie and it plays well except for about 10 minutes in the last third which seems to come out of nowhere. The movie gets back on track but there’s defeinitely a “what the hell is going on” section.

The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle – Bullwinkle and the narrator seemed fine, but Rocky seemed a little flat, despite being in 3D. I think the silliness stayed true to the cartoon including a heavy dose of meta-fiction. Overall I think it was a successful live-action version of the cartoon, but I don’t think the public wanted a live-action version of the cartoon. I enjoyed it though.

Bart Got a Room – Good prom flick and William H. Macy is funny as the dad. It made me think this is what would happen if John Hughes were to make a less-funny indie film.

Confessions of a Shopaholic – I give props to this movie for pointing out the difference between cost and value right up front. It also does a good job presenting people’s problems with credit cards. It’s all wrapped in an entertaining film, though I suspect the economic advice will not be applied by most people.

Step Brothers – I’m not really sure why this works, but it does. I think the only part that doesn’t work for me is the school yard bullies, but that’s a small enough part that it doesn’t really detract. 

Sunshine Cleaning – I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d watch it again despite Alan Arkin being in it. I’ll watch him in anything.

Wrongfully Accused – It’s Airplane comedy and it’s pretty close to that original feel. I’ll credit that to the writer/director working with the Zucker/Abrahams team in the past. It’s pretty funny and I might consider it again if I were in the mood for a Fugitive parody.

The Rookie – Yay, I love baseball movies! It doesn’t seem like this story could actually happen, but yet it did. I think it has a little too much of a feel of destiny to it, but it’s still a good story.

Strictly Business – This falls in the average comedy range. It’s interesting watching it now though since the gangster as the dominant black character hadn’t yet emerged.

My Faraway Bride – It’s kind of a middle of the road cross-cultural romantic comedy. It probably would have been better had it not been based on how the writer met the lead actress. The fish out of water/rich-poor/you-us marriage conflict film has been done much better any number of times, but this is an entertaining enough way to pass time. Bonus points for being short.

Happy-Go-Lucky – For the first two thirds I think the main character has to be one of the most irritating characters I’ve seen in a movie. Thankfully events happen to tone it down and as a whole I think the movie ends up being pretty good. I’d rank it about the same level as other Mike Leigh movies.

Standard Time – I like song standards so I was pretty happy with this from that aspect alone. Andrew McCarthy makes any scene he is in better than it would have been otherwise. The ones without him aren’t bad, but his stand out. I have to give it credit for going through with a wedding scene unlike any other I can recall.

The New Guy – Not the fish out of water comedy I was expecting, but a rise of the little guy comedy instead. It’s fairly funny, but not consistently. I like the casting and it all sure beats a flaming marshmallow to your eye.

• Stop reading here:

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Bob the Butler – Tom Greene isn’t as obnoxious as he generally is in this movie which makes this an average entertaining movie. Not the kind you go out and try to see, but the kind where there’s nothing else on tv and this comes on and you feel like being lazy.

Stealing Harvard – A silly premise, which is fine, with a lackluster execution. The movie only really hits where it needs to be right before the end which is just enough to make it okay.

Lucky 13 – In some ways it’s similar to Bart Got a Room in that the main character gets advice from everyone before figuring out what they need to do to be happy, but it’s not nearly as good. I think the ending is appropriate though.

Sugar & Spice – A cheer leading version of The Usual Suspects. It seems like this should be an easy sell but it ends up being fairly forgettable. Maybe if it had gone more along the Point Break lines with multiple robberies that would help, or even more training. Instead it feels mostly like a discussion of heist movies.

Wet Hot American Summer – Could this be the least funny summer camp movie ever? It might be. By the end I don’t even think the actors cared anymore.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua -   The worst movie of the bunch. Good thing I was able to work on code while this played or I might have gone insane. I do have a theory that this actually started out as a script for a rich white girl who gets stuck in Mexico, but that was too generic so they changed the story to be with dogs. Aside from the occasional dog references, and since the dogs talk, there is nothing preventing this from being made with an all human cast. Except then you wouldn’t get people to watch it because there are dogs in it.

I’ve been running XP in the classic (old) UI so I wasn’t sure how well I’d get along with the latest Windows UI but it all seems to have a nice logical flow so far. I’m fairly impressed with the whole experience. Now if only Windows had the equivalent of Spaces on MacOSX.

On the cake front I tried to make Cranberry Obsession Snow Cake. It’s a cake I wanted to try making last year but the blood clot got in my way, and then cranberries weren’t in the store. So finally I’ve done it and it isn’t as ugly as most of my cakes are. I think it’s ugly on the inside, or certainly not as pretty as the picture. How is it? I don’t know yet. It felt like a serious effort to make so it will have to really blow me away to make me want to make it again. It’s almost time to take it out of the fridge so the co-workers can try it out though.

Having healed legs I trained for and completed the Turkey Trot 10K, a new personal distance record. Very slow, but I did it.

From the morning of Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day morning I lost 0.8 lbs.

On the 30th of December I got a clot in my right leg to match the one in my left leg. The similarities don’t stop there. It’s even in about the same place and five days after when the left leg one make itself known to me last year. This one was caught earlier so my leg isn’t as swollen and doesn’t swell as much. Hopefully this time a cause can be determined.

Movies:
Nochnoy Dozor (Night Watch) – This apparently was supposed to be the pilot for a television series. I’m glad they decided to take it to the big screen because it’s totally worthy. Interesting story and characters.
Dnevnoy Dozor (Day Watch) – This feels like the was the television series that would have been, but all crammed into one movie. Nothing has time to develop which by the end makes you think “Really? That’s it?” Just watch the first one.
The Final Season – Yay! A baseball movie! Actually it’s about small town vs larger interests, with the little guy not being listened to. It manages to avoid being sappy or even too cliche. Don’t go out of your way for it, but it was better than expected.
Couples Retreat – Fairly funny. I was thinking all the funny stuff was in the trailer but such is not the case. It’s almost like an episode of The Love Boat, but set on an island. I’m surprised no one has made a movie version of Fantasy Island yet. How, according to imdb.com there is one in production.
Capricorn One – I think this movie is as relevant today as it was when it was made. Apparently someone else thought so too since it appears to be headed for a remake. If they were to re-shoot the old script with modern props, costumes, and effects I think it would be just fine. I can think of a number of good angles to include and explore in a re-make. I hope they think of them too. Anyway, totally worth seeing.
The Final Cut – Good idea, uninspiring execution. It feels like it’s just slightly off from its target. Is this a criticism of today’s funeral industry? Lack of privacy in society? I think it needs to show more motive for the characters.
Be Cool – I like “Get Shorty.” I was hoping I would like this as well. It’s fully entertaining because each character is entertaining to watch. The structure those characters fit in is pretty boring. I didn’t care too much though because the characters are cool.
Marley & Me – This was better than I expected. The family story is interesting and it isn’t just Marley constantly on the screen destroying their lives. The bond between Marley and the family comes across on screen.
My Name is Bruce – Can a movie about Bruce Campbell be a bad thing? If you have enjoyed any Bruce Campbell movie, you will enjoy this. Heck, if you’ve ever enjoyed a B-movie you will enjoy this. Just see it!
Sherlock Holmes – I don’t remember many details from the stories I read long ago, but I like the movie and look forward to a sequel. I like that Watson is more an equal than a sidekick. I like the thoughts before action. I like the film as a whole.

Nintendo DS:
Professor Layton and the Curious Village – I got this as a gift and dove right in. It’s essentially a series of puzzles of varying types you need to solve to move the story ahead. You don’t really have any control over the story. The story is told mostly with textual dialog and occasional animated scenes. They really blend together well and the story works well as a nice reward for the puzzle solving. The puzzles generally aren’t extremely difficult. Most of the times I had problems it was because I was mis-reading what he puzzle was asking for. I have one more bonus puzzle to go and then I’m on to the sequel.

Nicole just reminded me that the time it went down is the time we had the power outage. So that just means that I need make it start automatically when the system reboots. I feel slightly better about it but not completely.

Now it’s time to eat!

My goal was to run just like I had on the Sunday runs, slow and steady, with the addition of running the whole way. The race workers at every mile marker let me know I was keeping up a steady 11.5 minute mile. The mile markers themselves let me know that my uncalibrated pedometer had been telling me I was running further than I actually was. My push from Sunday run distance was going to be harder than I thought.

I did stop for about 5 seconds to have a small cup of water at the halfway point, but aside from that slow and steady was working. I slowed a bit in the second half and I think miles 4 & 5 were the hardest. Mile 6 got easier just because I knew I was almost done. My legs were done at the end; definitely a lot more effort than they were used to. Now after I recover I need to decide what my running goals are going to be. Probably getting 10k to be a comfortable distance and a bit faster.

During the course Tom, the owner of the Fleet Feet in Aptos and instructor, made every effort to make sure we didn’t over-do the training. Sunday was the long conversational run and Wednesday was the speed building run with a few walk/run miles on other days to keep things moving.

Sunday also had various health and fitness guest speakers. One of those speakers was a physical therapist at Dominican. He explained that the cardio-vascular system will get to where it needs to be a lot faster than the muscles that do the work will. Also that it’s important not to push beyond what you can do. He didn’t explain where that limit was or how to find it, but he at least did say that you shouldn’t increase more than 10% from week to week.

So on the final long run this last Sunday I realized that at the slow pace I don’t seem to get any exercise-induced asthma, while when the Wednesday runs got intense enough out it came. I missed one of the Wednesday nights but I tried to make it up on a Thursday morning and as soon as I tried to push it the asthma came.

So maybe the onset of asthma is my dividing line; where I push myself beyond what I’m capable of. I know I used to be able to do more before it kicked in when I’ve been in better shape. It’s frustrating, but at the same time it’s also really satisfying to learn the signals of my body and learn where the limits are so I can begin the push to extend them.

* I also can have allergy induced asthma, but I can generally tell if that’s going to be an issue before I begin exercise.

YouTube
The Receptionist – I just thought I would mention this channel. It’s a channel for short films he makes while at work. Everything in the video aside from himself is made form the office supplies. Good stuff!

Movies
88 Minutes – 16 minutes. The time it takes to be fully convinced it’s going to be pretty dump. Luckily the actors are generally entertaining and it’s pretty short.
The Jane Austen Book Club – I like the parallels between the characters and the books they read. It all ties together well and seems thought out. Of course I’m just basing this on the movie and other Jane Austen movies (not including Jane Austen’s Mafia).
No Country for Old Men – More intense and less violent than I anticipated. Not to say it isn’t violent, just not as much as I was led to believe. The use of silence in the film was great. Everything about it was compelling.
Quarantine – Watch this movie with the best sound system you can. The helicopters and other outside sounds were completely immersive. The single camera shoot works well too and wasn’t a turn-off like in The Blair Witch Project.
Becoming Jane – What made Jane Austen into Jane Austen? I don’t know how accurate this movie is in answering that question but it is pretty entertaining. I’m sure the entertainment value goes down the more you know about her life. Good thing I don’t know!
Snow Dogs – Have you wondered what Cuba Gooding Jr is up to? This is it. It’s a mildly amusing, cheesy, light film. Something that’s completely non-offensive.
WALL-E – Great movie about humanity and is very close to being a modern silent movie. A lot is communicated with an economy of words. Also it’s a more realistic look than your typical Pixar movie which I think is a good thing.
The Truth About Charlie – While I was watching this movie I kept thinking that it felt like an old movie. Sometimes I was able to picture the scene with the exact same dialog. It turns out it’s a remake of Charade. I think it should have been pulled fully into the modern day because it felt out of place in the modern day setting.
Kickin’ it Old Skool – It started off with some funny stuff, but then it went stale.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story – I was thinking this was going to be the same joke over and over, but instead there were a good variety as it was able to mine the history of pop music. I probably would have been happy enough with a machete fight an the Beatles in India, but I know I have low standards.
The Foursome – A reunion movie and a golf movie mixed into one. I normally like golf movies but this one is one to avoid. It’s dull, predictable, and poorly delivered.
Bedtime Stories – This movie doesn’t fit too well into categories. Maybe Adam Sandler and fairy tale work. It’s a pretty enjoyable movie unless maybe Adam Sandler bugs the shit out of you.
Gray Matters – An odd love triangle movie that pays homage to old Fred and Ginger type movies. It’s a good bit of fun!
Summer of Sam – After the first hour is settled down and got pretty good. Until then you’re wondering what anything you’re watching has to do with anything else. Overall I’d recommend it, but be prepared for it to take awhile.
First Sunday – It seems like it would be an offshoot of the Friday series, and I think that what they want you to think but they have nothing in common except for Ice Cube. There are some good community building messages among the hit and miss comedy.
This Christmas – Family holiday gathering with all the family comedy that goes with it. It’s probably most similar in feel to The Family Stone. I think it comes off well, but then again I like these kinds of movies. My favorite is still Home for the Holidays.
The Invisible – Most similar to Ghost, but it’s pretty good. I haven’t seen the Dutch film this is based off of but I thought this version was well done.
We Own the Night – I wasn’t expecting much based on the trailer, and it turns out the trailer for this only covers about the first thirty minutes of the movie. There ends up being a fairly good cop-brother drama in there.
Die Mommie Die! – This is a 60s parody. I think it started as a 60s porn parody because there are a lot of scenes that lead right up to getting it on. But it’s also a parody of other films of the era. It’s purposefully bad and it doesn’t carry that off at first like an unintentionally bad film can. I don’t know what changes but the camp starts connecting. I think I have to attribute it to Natasha Lyonne.
Fido – A great boy-and-his-dog movie, but with zombies! It’s not scary and has very little gore so it’s safe for pretty much everyone to watch.
Pineapple Express – Why do I like stoner movies? I don’t know, but this one is pretty good. Maybe it’s the pothead logic? This one has characters aware that they have pothead logic and an over the top ending.
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant – The pacing on this kept it pretty entertaining from start to finish. I also like their take on motion blur and I hope it’s used elsewhere.
Head Over Heels – It’s like Zoolander except with female models, and they all live. Freddie Prinze Jr is the love interest and that’s find but he’s not very believable at playing someone in his job… either of them. There’s enough funny to keep it entertaining though.
Capitalism: A Love Story – So far my favorite Micahel Moore movie is still Sicko. It is straight to the point and doesn’t rely on his usual gimmicks. This one shows in general he’s improving, but he still falls back on his gimmicks from time to time. The first hour feels scattered, and while the stories are sad, they have little connection to one another or the point he’s trying to make. Later he finds his focus and that’s great! Except you’re wishing he would have tied those earlier stories in to the now focused narrative to drive the point home.
Trojan War – This movie must ahve been sponsored by Trojan condoms. It’s one of those everything goes wrong in a night kind of movies. In this case the guy is trying to get laid and his quest is to find a Trojan condom. Not the best movie of its type but it’s amusing.
Miracle at St. Anna – Good WWII movie, but it’s about the black soldiers who served. Surprisingly there is a decent amount of humor to keep it from getting too heavy. It’ll still get heavy but it won’t stay there. It doesn’t feel as long as it is.
The Brothers Solomon – This has to fall along the lines of A Night at the Roxbury. Except these two brothers aren’t dumb, just insulated from the world and insanely positive about everything. Nothing escapes their positive spin.
Inkheart – Bringing characters to life in a story can be tricky but this manages it well. Kind of like an inverse Never Ending Story. Unfortunately I don’t think it did well enough for the sequels to be made into movies.
Easy Virtue – Funny period piece about an American woman causing upheaval in an English family. It didn’t have the ending I was expecting, or a lot of events throughout the movie for that matter. Check it out.
Lakeview Terrace – Samuel L Jackson plays the neighbor from hell. The trailer only shows a small portion of what goes on. It’s not like there’s even a transformation, he’s just messed up from the start.
A Christmas Carol (2009) – The level of detail was amazing! The leather, the wood, the buildings, the cloth, the motion! You could even see that the outside of his foot comes down before the inside when he climbs the stairs! On top of it, it was a good telling of the story. It even make use of an absence of sound. How often does that happen in an animated movie?
Factorum – This has the same main character as Barfly. I’ve never seen Barfly, and I’m not sure I want to. The main character is interesting in that he can be repulsive and sympathetic at the same time. It’s listed as a comedy, but the only really funny part I though was when he got crabs.
We Don’t Live Here Anymore – Irritating characters who don’t like one another destroying their relationships. Surprisingly the kids don’t seem too effected by the whole situation despite Laura Dern having some impressive angry yelling and throwing things.

Monday I called the insurance company to cancel the check and issue us a new one.
Tuesday we received an envelope with the check and this note in it:
“Found this on the street. (Pacific Ave)
In Front of Borders.
Figured you could use it.”

There was no identifying return information. Thank you anonymous
nice person!

For future weather I dug a hole to put in a pole for the satellite dish so it stops going out of alignment every six months. Then I found out that there aren’t any 2-inch diameter, 8-feet long fence poles around on a Sunday so that will have to wait.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to putting a layer of plastic under the house and after this rain it’ll probably too wet under there to do that easily. Next year for sure!

Later in the summer Vinna wanted to play Asteroids and it wouldn’t turn on. I thought it might be the kill-switch that triggers when the back panel is open but that tested fine. The power coming out of the power supply was non-existent though. I looked up replacement power supplies and found the service manual. From that I learned about the fuses. One of the six fuses was bad so I replaced it and it powered up. Since I was working on it I replaced the lock on the back panel so I wouldn’t have to tape it in place anymore. I’ll try harder not to lose this set of keys.

Now I just have to replace the RAM chips in the Battlezone machine.

I walked in and the guy recognized me and told me that 10 minutes after I left he tested it and it tested fine. I asked him why it didn’t test fine for me and he told me that when he asked the lamp guy about it he was told that it needed a minimum of a 25W load to operate. Also the lamp guy posited that the problem was the socket since he had replaced a number of sockets on lamps like mine. I was told I would have to bring the lamp in since four different sockets have been used on that lamp.

Yesterday I brought the lamp in and I was shown to the back room of the electrical room (almost a back room in its own right) when a tall man name Larry looked at it. He said it could be the socket the the look on his face didn’t indicate confidence in that. He said he would work on it that day.

Today I went to the post office and decided to stop by and see how progress was. I walked right back to the back room of the back room and Larry was packing something in a box. I said I had come to check on the progress on my lamp. “Is this your lamp” he asked while tilting the box so I could see inside? I affirmed that it was and I asked him what the problem was. He explained that the installer had over-tightened the screw that holds the coaxial power cable in place which ended up causing a short. I’m guessing that me having to replace the original transformer caused enough movement in the wire to highlight the problem. Larry re-tightened the screw properly and applied some glue stuff to the damaged section so it wouldn’t short anymore, and here I am with a repaired lamp on my desk at work.

Six weeks later the replacement was dead. After it was installed and working I dumped the receipt. I went to Riverside expecting to have to buy a new one and they just traded me for a new one without any hassle. Hopefully this one isn’t another dud.

Saw part 1 of Black in America 2 on CNN. Now I wish I had seen the first one.

The Hangover – Pretty funny and well done trace-your-steps movie. All of the characters play well together. Nice setup for a sequel too.
Delirious – It’s kind of quirky and entertaining but Michael Pitt comes off as too wooden for me. Good thing he’s mostly paired with Steve Buscemi!
State and Main – This is a funny big-name ensemble. It feels like it was or could be a stage play. The dialog is clever and everything is fast paced.
I Am Legend – I think this tells the story better than The Omega Man and from what I’ve read it’s closer to the original novel (which I now want to read). The practicalities are seen. The loneliness is felt. The feelings of the others are made known too. Good stuff and I look forward to the prequel.
Keeping Mum – An English comedy that isn’t about celebrating the quirks of a small town. Sometimes it seems like that’s all you get from the English indie comedies. Anyway, it’s enjoyable and you should watch it.
Wedding Daze – This isn’t very memorable; I had to go look up what it’s about. It has some funny parts but most of it I just didn’t care about the characters.
Elegy – An affair between an older man and a younger woman? I thought this would be awkward or cliche. Instead it has some compelling relationship stories and I really felt for the characters.
Righteous Kill – It’s always fun to watch De Niro and Pacino. The story isn’t that great but you almost don’t notice!
Seven Pounds – Sometimes the story seems a little disjointed but it all pulls together and it ends up being a good story of the personal. It ended better than I expected.
Passengers – Kind of another version of The Sixth Sense, but not nearly as good. I just wanted them to get on with it so the movie could end. I don’t think I would think of The Sixth Sense this way if I had seen Passengers first.
Public Enemies – This is good but it felt like there was more cut out to get it to a good theater running length. I guess we’ll find out if there’s director’s cut. The film looks weird at times. It was obviously filmed with digital cameras that at times made things feel too smooth when filming in dark. It was both distracting at times and made things stand out at others. I’m sure that’s just a glimpse of what’s to come.
Swing Vote – It’s both a commentary on the political system and the stereotypical non-voter. Kevin Costner plays close to the type he played in Tin Cup. I say check it out!
The Dukes of Hazard – This might be hard to believe but I think the plot of the average episode was better than the movie. Highlights: They showed off Jessica Simpson’s legs nicely in the beginning, and Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg.
The Midnight Meat Train – I can say I’ve never been that crazy about Clive Barker movies. This is the first one I actually got into. The story was interesting. The gore was over the top so if that turns you off avoid this movie. Or just cover your eyes since you can see it coming.
Funny People – The trailer doesn’t spoil the movie for you and the story told ends up being good. I wasn’t expecting comedy, but a movie about comedians with some funny parts. With that in mind there was a lot more humor than I was expecting. Also I think it’s the first thing I’ve liked Eric Bana in.
Religulous – Bill Maher’s documentary to show how much religious is a big mistake. The best part for me is when he was talking to the Jesus at the Holy Land Experience. He talks to a variety of people but it’s mostly a rehash of ideas I’ve heard about why religion is bad.
Slumdog Millionaire – When I was watching this I was reminded of four movies it borrowed from but right now I can’t remember what they are. Anyway, good movie and I like how it was told with the flashbacks. I don’t think this would be my pick for best movie last year but I don’t think I saw any movies last year that were better.
Julie & Julia – I liked this but I, like many others, wished the movie focused more on Julia than Julie. Good job to the movie makers for making Julie more likable. I went and read some of the Julie & Julia blog entries and she comes across as much more self-centered there.
The Wrestler – This movie was better than I expected and I thought the ending was great (but I seem to like abrupt endings)! I had heard it was like a retelling of Passion of the Christ and I can see what they meant. The stories line up pretty closely.
Death at a Funeral – Funny! But if you haven’t seen this you can wait for the inexplicable remake next year. Remaking a recent English-language film directed by an American director doens’t happen that often but it’s happening here. Actually you should just see this one since you never know how the remake will turn out.
Sicko – Seeing this movie while the current health care debate is raging really drives home all the more that we need this change. I think this probably plays better now than when it originally played in theaters. The usual Michael Moore gimmicks are not as present here and when they are they are short lived; the material stand up on its own.
Michael Clayton – Well played by everyone and an ending I could really enjoy. This movie made me miss John Grisham movies though. What happened to them?
Gabriel – A rebellious teenage bible student watched the Matrix too many times and this is what came out. Why did the end have to go on so long?
Sex Drive – This movie takes awhile to hit its stride. It’s shortly before they get to the Amish. Seth Green cements that as one of the Amish, but what doesn’t Seth Green make better? It never gets great but it’s fairly fun.
Beowulf – I was wondering if I would haev any uncanny valley problems with this movie and I’m happy to report that I didn’t. This movie once again demonstrates that animated doesn’t make it a kids movie. The story is told well and I’m glad I saw it. I think it was perhaps the right way to film it.
Houseboat – Crazy living situation. Italian beauty. Drama behind the scenes according to imdb. It all makes for an entertaining movie. Good for a lazy afternoon or evening when it happens to be on.
District 9 – Really well done. I liked most everything being from the point of view of security, news, or documentary cameras. A main character that doesn’t think clearly and pays the price. I look forward to the sequel.
Video 3000 – A 5 minute foreign short about a universal remote. Kind of like Click but very short.
Porno – An odd Polish short film.
No Bikini – A great short story about a girl’s summer switch to another gender.
Uncle Nino – A well done story of the outsider coming in to show the family what’s important in life.
9 – My favorite movie of the year so far. I liked everything about it! No sequel for this one please. I don’t know how it compares to the short by the same name, but I’m guessing since I’ve seen this one the other probably won’t stand up. It might be the reverse for those who have seen the short.

My first thought was to check the oven. It goes down as low as 80 degrees F (great for letting dough rise). The oven doesn’t have every 5 degree interval on it, instead having every common temperature. Unfortunately getting yogurt cultures to do their thing didn’t make the cut. The oven jumps from 80 to 100 to 125.

The next idea was to use the induction cooktop. The cooktop can go way below normal settings you would get on a gas cooktop unless it is the really old kind that has the always-on pilot light.

In all of these cases you need the milk and cultures in the container with a lid on. I used a remote bbq thermometer in the pot to measure the temperature. First up was a quart of water in the tall sauce pan on the lowest setting. The remote thermometer showed it climbing well over 115 in no time.

Next I decided to try half a gallon in a large sauce pan. The climbing temperatures were slower but they also passed 115 without too much time passed.

I then decided I needed more surface area to dissipate heat so the big skillet was up next. Luckily I could just dump this water from one vessel to the next for each test. On this one the temperature dropped the most before the heat was once again applied so maybe it would work. Unfortunately this one had the fastest climbing temperature. Yes there was more area to eliminate heat, but there was also a lot more area to absorb heat!

I thought I was out of luck when I remembered the cast-iron wok. It has a small area base and a wide open top, perfect! I put two sheets of foil on top for my lid and after heating in a slow climb the temperature held steady at 114 degrees F. Figuring there must be a way to make it work I reconfigured the foil into a a very crude cone with an opening in the top. After some more tweaking I got it to stay steady at 107 degrees F for 45 minutes!

So, can I make yogurt? Probably. I think that it would have an iron flavor to it by the time the batch was done though. Also there’s a significant setup time needed for that foil cone to see if it is just right. It’s probably better off to get a yogurt maker.

Other things to try:

• We have a portable induction cooktop that might be able to go lower, but probably not.
• Using a mason jar in a water bath. An uncovered pot might be able to keep the temperature low enough.

I was worried the scooter would be in bad shape after no riding for almost seven months, but the batteries don’t even seem to  be any worse after the long period of neglect. The front tire can use some air and it’s more dirty, but it’s almost like there wasn’t a break in there!

We rode the Giant Dipper on Monday (1907 night). I avoided it before because it can be jarring and I just didn’t want to risk it. Here it is:

I don’t remember the prompt in the checkout process that led to the card, but I remember what I wrote: “Send me a limerick.” The card contains “limerick” printed on a blank label-sticker stuck to the inside.

That’s customer service!

The ultrasound people at Dominican managed to fit me in with maybe a 10 minute wait and the ultrasound tech said none of it looked like fresh thrombosis, but of course I would have to wait for the official word from the radiologist. This afternoon the doctor called with the official results. There is still a slight blockage of scar tissue. There is no clot. I can stop taking the blood thinners! I do have to keep wearing the compression stocking for at least a few years, but I’m okay with that.

We’ve talked about other solutions, one of them being grass for the paths. Julie & Fish just had sod installed and had a lot left over and they offered it to us so Friday we went to work to install it. Breaking up and clearing out the decomposed granite was the slow part, taking probably about 8 hours to remove about 2 cubic yards. After that all the steps were fairly simple (thanks to Julie for providing a list). We didn’t have a sod knife but Dean suggested a serrated knife would do the trick and indeed the bread knife was great and cutting up the sod.

So now we have a patch of grass (assuming it takes) in front of the back door so the dogs will have to run across it (hopefully cleaning their paws from granite) until more can be done.

Thanks to Julie & Fish for the materials and the instructions! Thanks to Dean for assistance in putting down the sod! Thanks to Ward for the digging rod which is a great workout and a great digger!

Saturday we needed a rest so we went with Dean & Marcia to the Gilroy Garlic Festival where I had chocolate garlic ice cream, a garlic sausage sandwich, garlic corn on the cob, garlic fries, deep fried garlic, and garlic chocolate peanut butter cups.

Sunday was more relaxed and got some motivation at the end to finish fixing the front fountain. The water tube that connected the bottom to the top was pushed out by the papyrus plant growing out of control. When I hacked it back some to check out the situation I accidently cut the power cord to the pump. Nicole and Abby hacked away the papyrus some more so I was able to reinstall the tube and install the new pump.

Now we just need to get back to the fence.

I still have problems with two rules: icing, and intent to end play. Icing is when a player in their own end of the ice hits the puck across both center lines into the opposite goal line without any other player touching the puck along its journey. Icing isn’t actually called until an opposing player touches the puck in the end area. It doesn’t always seem to apply though; I think the goalie is exempt from causing the icing call. The intent to end play isn’t hard to understand, the whistle blows and the play is dead… almost. Play is actually dead when the referee intends to blow the whistle. This is I think the most abstract rule in all of sports since the referee can say they meant to blow the whistle seconds before they actually do. Most of the time it makes no difference but there was a play where it did make a difference. A puck was still loose but obscured from the referee’s view. It was hit in to the goal but the whistle was blown indicating the play to be dead. Normally a puck in motion gets to count as a goal, but the referee said the intended end of play was when the puck appeared dead to the referee.

The best part I think is that during the playoffs, after I had a good enough grasp of the rules, I started seeing the action as a whole again but instead of seeing it in an aesthetic way I was seeing it as a real-time moving traveling salesman type problem. The players constantly are searching for the shortest path to the goal but the nodes (their teammates) and the legs are constantly changing their values. The weights of the legs are determined by distance and proximity of the opposing players. It’s a very difficult problem to solve! I think very similar problems are solved in soccer, and to a lesser extent basketball.

Now I look forward to seeing what I’m going to learn in the coming season.

In clot news, I saw my doctor this morning to decide what’s next for the ugly leg.  Considering my leg is pretty much the same as it was after 3 months the clot is still there and she says it’s likely to remain there. So the choice is whether to continue on the Warfarin and start developing a risk for major internal organ bleeding over time, or to stop taking it and see if the clot gets worse again. I decided it to put off that decision in favor of talking to a vascular surgeon to see what they think can be done.

Hopefully a surgeon will consider this something that can be dealt with and the clot can be removed. Since I’m not a clotter by nature I won’t have to worry about recurrence so much. I know what to look for now.

The Girlfriend Experience – Looking back on it I can see some of the points it was trying to make and, but while I was watching it I really didn’t care. It was all kind of an uninvolved jumbled mess.

Casino Royale – Lots of fun action sequences here. I liked the introduction being done in black and white and a nice way to show history. I also liked the impression of insecurity in Bond underneath his cocky, in-control presentation to everyone.

The Bucket List – This one surprised me. I thought it was going to be all about them going out and doing trivial crap. That’s all the trailer and reviews really mentioned. Instead that was just a backdrop for quality of life at the end and learning what’s important.

I Could Never Be Your Woman – Entertaining movie about age issues with people in the tv and movie industry both on screen and in their relationships. I thought the relationships were well played throughout and the casting for Michelle Pfeiffer’s daughter was great!

Pittsburgh – I’d watch Jeff Goldblum in the Music Man; that’s what I learned from watching this. Aside from that it’s kind of an odd pseudo-documentary. It feels partly real and partly fiction and that makes it feel almost invasive at times.

The Nanny Diaries – The opening and closing visual presentations in this movie were very clever. The rest of the movie is entertaining but it’s not too special, except where you get to spot the Mary Poppins references littered throughout the film. They are musical (not sung), visual, and scattered throughout the story.

Shutter – A Japanese ghost/horror movie but centered around Americans. It’s fairly suspenseful at times and the story told is pretty good. The story of the ghost and how it acts are the main reason to see this.

300 – Well it looked pretty cool. And since it’s all told as a story being told, the embellishments told are well represented and that was entertaining, but it all just seemed so ridiculous.

The Accidental Husband – This was less believable than most romantic comedies. For being out for revenge, the male lead didn’t seem so vengeful. In fact he seemed to like her pretty much from the get go. Uma Thurman’s drunk scene was pretty funny though.

Untraceable – I think this movies wins for most realistic use of technical jargon. Not to say that it’s all correct, but the sentences made some sense and weren’t far off the marl. It kind of falls down towards the end to make it all work out, but I still think it’s pretty decent.

Jump! – I know jumping rope is hard, but these kids make so much of it look easy. The things they try to attempt and how far they push themselves is great to watch. I join them in hoping to see jump rope as an Olympic sport some day.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno – So much fun and pretty much what I expect from Kevin Smith. Great dialog and entertaining characters. It’s also a good look at making low budget films, probably inspired from his making of Clerks. Yay for seeing Jeff Anderson not as Randal and Jason Mewes not as Jay!

Other

The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery – Based against the background of one family with a very rare prion disease the book goes over the history of prion diseases in animals and people. It also covers the people who have been and are the big name workers in the field. There is a lot of good information here and I recommend it to anyone who wants to know about prions or mad cow.

American Sphinx – The Character of Thomas Jefferson – I started reading this after the primaries but before the election and it ended up being frustrating so I had to put it down. After the election I was able to pick it up again and enjoy it. The book shows clearly that our two party system and the style of politics in this country come from Thomas Jefferson. All the divisive attacks and casting everything as good vs evil or right vs wrong come from how he saw and presented his arguments. Good book, but not during elections.

Pathwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Colombus – Published in 1996, this is the first and only Orson Scott Card book I’ve read so far. His research into all the elements Columbus and the period are evident in the story telling and it makes for a good story.  I recommend this one too.

Misquoting Jesus – I always wondered if there were deleted scenes in the New Testament or who got to write it. This isn’t really the material that answers those questions but it’s close. It discusses why changes happened over the years and which people may have been responsible for which types of changes. The author shares his relationship to the bible in the introduction and it’s an interesting story of growth as well. I recommend this to anyone with any curiosity about religious history. The paperback version has some further Q&A with the author and a summary of responses to the book which are also interesting.

Star Wars

I fell behind on my Star Wars reading a bit last year so here is me catching up. Of course I’m starting to fall behind again now.

Star Wars Republic Commando: True Colors – Like the other Republic Commando novels this one is very good, probably even better than the second one. These books would not be a bad place to start reading republic era Star Wars.

Star Wars: Death Star – This book takes every story fragment relating to the death star in all the movies and novels and consolidates them all into one story. The author pair previously wrote the MedStar Star Wars books,  version of MASH set in the Star Wars universe and not done very well. None of those problems are present here and the stitching of the various stories works fairly well. Of course the ending is known in advance so you don’ thave to get too worked up over any characters.

Star Wars: Order 66 – A Republic Commando Novel – The final Republic Commando novel and it’s another good one. The result is a little predictable since it wraps up things you know are coming from the previous novels but it’s still a a good read.

Star Wars: Lecacy of the Force – Inferno – Inferno through Invincible continue the New Jedi Order books and there is familiar conflict in the galaxy but with a next generation Jedi thinking he has to bring peace.

Star Wars: Lecacy of the Force – Fury – This series also seems like a good time to kill off a lot of characters that have become familiar in the novels. The level of destruction is impressive.

Star Wars: Lecacy of the Force – Betrayal – The story told of Boba Fett and Mandalore in this series is a good one and it also ties in with the Republic Commando series. Karen Traviss writes the books that have a lot of Boba Fett in them.

Star Wars: Lecacy of the Force – Invincible – The climax is intense and the very end points the direction that will be taking place in the next story arc which looks to be heading towards the dark future portrayed in the Star Wars: Legacy comics.

The Clone Wars – This is a novelization of the pilot movie for the tv series. I haven’t seen the movie or the series but I have read some of the comics and it seems to stay in line with that. It’s pretty clearly aimed at a younger audience which at time is annoying. The best parts are those involving clone troopers because Karen Traviss, author of the Republic Command novels and Mandalorian authority wrote this.

Shannarah

I fell behind on the Shannarah reading in the last couple of years so I decided it was time to catch up on that too which I think clears me until 2014 when the next trilogy is scheduled to be completed.

Running With the Demon – Set if our time, this takes place a couple thousand years before the first Shannarah books written. It’s a different feeling book than the other Shannarah books and it took a little longer to grab me. I liked the portrayal of demons working among the humans.

A Knight of the Word – Ten years after Running With the Demon and this story is both interesting and frustrating. Frustrating because you know all along what one of the characters is going to need to do but they don’t see it until the end.

Armageddon’s Children – About 80 years after A Knight of the Word is how this “Genesis of Shannarah” series starts. The world is collapsing and it looks like a lot of movies told you it would look. It better highlights the troubles of survival in these times though. I think this is probably the best book of this trilogy. Good cliff-hanger too!

The Elves of Cintra – This book gets everyone where they need to be for the finale and it’s a fun book. You also get to see what the elves have been up to living in our world all this time.

The Gypsy Morph – The opening of this book also tells you part of the end. That’s not a bad thing since I found myself looking forward to it. The on-going allusion to the story of exodus in the series is even stronger in this book and works well. The series as a whole tells the history I’ve been curious about since the few lines of reference to our time in the first Shannarah novel. How did we get from here to there?

I should try to do these once a month so the list isn’t so large.

YouTube

Three channels I enjoy on youtube right now are:

spricket24

ponceman

TheReceptionist

TV

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – I’m sorry this got cancelled. I really liked where it was going and the character growth and one more season to finish it off would have been nice. Also it would have been nice if some of the elements int eh series were carried over to Terminator Salvation.

Chuck – I thought the season finale of one of my favorite shows was great so it might seem a little odd that I’m disappointed that it was renewed for another 1/2 season. They wrote the end of the second season like it was the end of the series and in doing so they brought it to the problem point in The Greatest American Hero. The problem being that in The Greatest American Hero at some point he no longer needed his FBI partner to do things as he mastered the suit and so the FBI partner was in the show less because there was less for him to do. Without that interplay the show then became generic. The writers of Chuck have skillfully walked that line until the final episode where it’s clear that the government agents are no longer needed. That wasn’t the only line they crossed though, they crossed the same point that caused Cheers to lose a big portion of its audience when Sam and Diane hooked up. Chuck and Sarah connected and now that tension is gone and hard to put back. I’ll give it a shot but I’m pretty sure this last half season is really the end.

Time Warp –  This is a newish show on Discover that I like most of the time. They take high speed camera that can record up to about 40,000 frames per second and slow down everyday things to see what’s happening in detail. A lot of the time it also just focuses on things getting squished.

Movies

College Road Trip – Why is a movie about picking out a college and visiting it rated G? Would this even be interesting to young kids? I think I G-movies like this are useful in showing more adult things in a way kids can accept, assuming they were interested enough to watch it. Bonus points for the genius super-pig, but as a whole not too interesting.

Wind Chill – This was a pretty good creepy story until the end. What kind of ending was that? Turn it off five minutes before the end and you will be more satisfied.

Knowing – Overall this was entertaining, but I was surprised at the heavy religious messages throughout.  The ending went on forever, but that might just have been because I really had to go to the bathroom at that point. Also I take issue with the GPS coordinates in the movie, having recently worked with GPS coordinates. Those given in the movie would only be accurate to a diameter of about 3000 meters.

Outlander – You see a movie with vikings and aliens and you think that you’ve got something worth watching. It’s true, this movie is a lot of fun. Don’t think about it though or you’ll spoil the illusion. I think it would have been better had it been set in the times when the Norse gods were still running around. Playing into that would have been a lot of fun.

The Secret Life of Bees –  I’m starting to think that rural semi-mystical stories might be saying something about how humans work. The fact that they’re always good to watch probably reinforces whatever that message is. Anyway, I liked it.

Being There – I think this is the most subtle, low-key, comedy I’ve ever seen. When the credits start stop watching so you can avoid the bloopers. They really detract from the film. Also I’ve found a lot of good arguments on a number of viewpoints on the final scene. I might have to watch it a few more times before I really decide what I think though.

WarGames – I watched this because I recently watched the sequel and this one holds up better than I expected. Partially because WOPR is a great looking movie computer and actually has personality on screen. I think Professor Falken’s portrayal when in NORAD is not right though. Still enjoyable!

Mutant Chronicles – Avoid this movie. Yeah it has Ron Perlman and John Malkovich but I’m pretty sure they want you to avoid it too. It tries to be kind of an Art-Deco/WWI/WWII style but it can’t really make up its mind. People have to be brought to the machine to be converted which should make it spreading different than what it is. It gets worse from there.

Next -Nicholas Cage must be having a thing for knowing the future between this and Knowing. I liked it. I thought it was pretty smart in how a person like the main character would have to hide himself. Maybe that was covered in the book, I don’t know, but it came across well on the screen.

Star Trek – Such a fun movie. Tons of nods to the old series but they didn’t get in the way. At the same time they didn’t wimp out in the end. Pushing the boundaries of too much lens flare though.

Fred Claus – I’m a fan of Christmas movies. This one I wasn’t looking forward to so much because the trailer looked pretty dumb. It turned out to be pretty funny and even had a touching spirit of Christmas type moment in it.

The Godfather: Part II – Finally I get to see parts two and three.  Part II is two movies in one spliced together showing what led up to and came after the first one. I think the early story of Vito is more interesting than Michael’s ongoing quest for legitimacy for the family but both are good.

The Godfather: Part III – I think this one is looked upon unfavorably because it seems more fantastical than the other two. It’s taken to such a high level of corruption that shows the quest for legitimacy is futile and shows it all to be a tragic cycle. I like the whole series.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall – It’s kind of like a Love Boat episode but more raunchy and not on a boat. It is pretty funny though. I liked it.

Step Up 2 the Streets – Yay dance movies! The best dancing isn’t in the finale and they didn’t use any of the character’s super powers specialties but I still liked it. It has the feel of guilty pleasure when watching it.

The Incredible Hulk – The on-foot chase through the dwellings in Brazil was great. The rest of it was like the tv show but bigger and faster. They referenced the theme music, the hulk is of constant size. It was still entertaining but it just kept making me feel like I was watching a version of the tv show with more action and bigger effects. I liked it but I also liked Hulk.

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising – I liked this series of book a lot as a kid so I was looking forward to this movie. Unfortunately I don’t htink this movie would make much sense to anyone who hadn’t read the books. It’s just not very good. Nothing is explained it’s just a string of events. I think the acting of the main character was pretty good though despite the rest of the writing.

Leatherheads – I wonder how much of this fictionalized account of the beginnings of pro football are true; not enough to look it up though. It’s light-hearted and fun but some of the music doesn’t match the period.

The Game Plan – Dwayne Johnson is almost always entertaining to watch so I gave this one a shot. He doesn’t really disappoint here either. His co-starts make him look small by comparison in some scenes too. It was predictable but it still sucked me in.

The Great Buck Howard – I had no idea what to expect. Unlike Mutant Chronicles, John Malkovich wants you to see this one. Good story based on the director working for The Amazing Kreskin.

In the Valley of Elah – I didn’t intend to but I watched this on Memorial Day. That seemed to make the film more heavy and made me think about Memorial Day more in general that day. I cried a little while watching it and in light of the recent killing soldier turning on his own troops I wonder again how much damage is being done in Iraq.

Terminator Salvation – I liked the choice of time periods to cover in John Connor’s life but I wish it incorporated some characters and elements from the television series. Maybe that will come in the inevitable sequel but I doubt it. The characters of Marcus and Kyle Reese were the more interesting characters in the movie.

Big Trouble – This movie had me laughing out loud quite a bit. I think perhaps more than any other movie I’ve seen in the last year.

License to Wed – The first half is fairly funny and then then it turns to not caring a whole lot. I also thought the groom was just not right. Mandy Moore and Robin Williams hold it together though/

Lady in the Water – I liked this more than The Happening and Signs, also by M. Night Shyamalan. It wasn’t the normal structure his stories take which made it a nice change up. All of the characters were entertaining!

Be Kind Rewind – An overlooked low budget movie about low budget film making! I think you should give this movie a chance. yeah it’s a little weird but it works. I wonder of anyone has Sweded this movie.

The Simpsons Movie – Simpsons humor but in a much longer episode. I saw it for spider-pig but the rest was funny too.

The Gathering – A creepy English church-based horror film that has a good amount of creepy. Like the kind of creepy you get from 70s English church-based horror films. The ending is a little weak but it works.

Convoy – This movie clearly wou;dn’t have come about if Smokey and the Bandit hadn’t happened a year earlier but it is fully its own movie and the climax is great! I swear some of the road music had to be the inspiration for the Knight Rider music.

Australia – It’s two movies in one. The first half is a comedy an the second half is a love story. However people usually like their movies to be single movies or at least integrated and not sequential. Each half was good on its own and wouldn’t have made sense without the other but the feel of them didn’t feel right together.

Land of the Lost – This movie isn’t for kids yet a number of kids were in the audience. I thought it was fun, but I think if I thought it was going to be like the show I’d be disappointed. Everything about it is cartoony from the cg creatures to how everything acts. So I guess entertaining but don’t expect the tv show.

You can drive with all the windows open and now worry about messing it up or it getting tangled.

The texture changes every day (so far).

You can feel the slightest temperature change on your scalp and it’s very directional.

There is still a feeling sometimes that it’s messed up and I will check a mirror; then comes the “duh” moment.

I like feeling the fuzz.

Saving Silverman – It could have been funny but mostly something is off and the jokes don’t work. If it wasn’t for the nipple fire scene and Neil Diamond at the end it would be a total loss.

Calendar Girls – This was nice in that it wasn’t the typical British comedy. It wasn’t the underdog working towards a minor goal in a small town. It had that going on but it was more about the effect of that on the relationships of those going through it.

RV – Started out funny and then it degenerated to random odd events. The annoying family that kept following them was more interesting than the RV trip.

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan – I thought this was skillfully rediculous and it’s Mariah Carey’s best film role, playing herself. I think it’s my favorite Adam Sandler film since Happy Gilmore.

The Rules of Attraction – This is sort of a follow up to American Psycho since it follows the younger brother of thae main character there, but I really didn’t care about any of the characters and wanted them all to go away so the movie would be over.

Bride Wars – There were some funny bits here but I think it needed to focus more heavily on Anne hathaway’s character. It seemed to indicate that it was going to in the narration but then it split the time pretty evenly which I think made things worse for the telling.

Mirrors – I thought this was well done overall. There was good tension, there was good creepiness, there was a good ending. A few inconsistencies don’t really detract from the whole experiance.

Revolutionary Road – I really liked this, but if it wasn’t for the crazy son of the realtor this probably would have been too heavy. That’s even more remarkable because he’s the only character that tells you the truth of what’s going on in the movie. I want to read the book.

Mamma Mia! – I liked the overall idea of it, but I think the overall execution didn’t work so well. The greek chorus was under used. The times the movie truly shines are when Meryl Streep is on the screen. When she leaves it shows the rest to be kind of flat.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown – Awesome documentary about the band behind all the Motown hits. They didn’t get credit to the end but they were all amazing musicians. It also has several songs from a reunion concert with the last remaining members and a variety of vocalists, proving it was the band that made the sound.

Casanova – I wasn’t sure, but watching it made me feel like I was watching all sorts of historical inaccuracies. Like I even felt like the costumes were probably wrong. And why is it that whenever we want someone foreign and not low class we always give them English accents in movies?

King Arthur – I liked this movie a lot and I really didn’t expect to. Also based on the trailers I expected a lot more Keira Knightly, but really she’s barely in it. Anyway, I thought the  historical context for the Arthurian legends was believable and a welcome change from the sword and sorcery aspect usually told.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans – I think this might be my favorite Underworld movie; it’s certainly better than the first one. The werewolf effects are starting to get close to the level they were at in the 80s, but really computer generated werewolves still don’t cut it.

Gangs of New York – It’s strange to think that New York could have ever been the way it is portrayed in this movie, especially considering how quickly it went from that to the metropolis we normally see it as. I really want to read some New York history now, especially the book the movie is based upon. At the very least it shows the problem of private and competing fire companies.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – When I saw this I knew it had the whole Forest Gump thing going for it, and if it wasn’t for Slumdog Millionaire it would have won a lot more awards. The makeup was amazing and the adaptation was a good one. The original short story can be found on-line easily enough and is worth a read; it’s only about 20 pages.

Under the Tuscan Sun – It kind of meanders and is nice to watch while you’re watching it, but now I don’t have a strong memory of the movie. So I guess for me it was enertaining but not overly memorable.

Coraline – This was a really well done horror movie for kids. Judging by the reaction of the kids in the audience it was effective that way too. The style and animation were amazing too!

The Guru – Not to be confused with the recent Mike Meyers movie, this was actually a fairly funny romantic-ish comedy.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People – We rented it for Simon Pegg and it was a fun enough movie, but the special features were interestng. No one wants to say it but they indicate that the movie is more sympathetic to the main character than the book and is a better story as a result. The book is true and is about the author, Toby Young, which if you’ve seen Top Chef season 5 you know his as the substitute asshole judge. Basically he is famous for being an asshole and the movie makes him a nicer person.

Valentino – This movie is played seriously but it’s so bad that it’s often laugh-out-loud funny. In fact inthe imdb trivia it says that the founder of the Razzies ranks it as the 26th most laughably bad movie of all time and I agree with that.

Wargames: The Dead Code – It’s been a long time since I saw the original but I thought this made a mostly decent sequel. Sure you have to ignore the computer technology, but not as much as I expected to and I thought the basic premise was updated well to modern threats. I need to watch the original agin to see how well it really holds up.

Beauty Shop – The cast line up for this movie is fantastic, but mostly it’s just flat in the delivery. The only exception is Kevin Bacon as the over-the-top fake-European hair stylist.

What Happens in Vegas – A romantic comedy with very little romance and that’s nice for a change. In some ways it’s similar to Just Married, which also starred Ashton Kutcher, but the premise underlying the antagonism is totally different and it’s more entertaining. I actually watched it twice because when I told Nicole about it she wanted to watch it.

The Happening – This is pretty dumb. If something is removing the self-preservation instinct from people I don’t expect everyone to commit suicide, I’d expect them to engage in more risky behavior. Not caring whether they smash into someone during lane changes, thing like that. Everyone committing suicide imples that everyone just wants to commit suicide. Good job on making wind blowing through trees seem creepy though.

Smokey and the Bandit – Awesome driving, great stunts, and just a whole lot of fun. I never managed to see this before now but I’m glad I finally did.

Smokey and the Bandit II – Unfortunately I thought this movie would be more of the same that made the first one great. This one has slow driving, very few stunts, and a whole lot of who cares. The finale was pretty cool to watch but it was more cartoony than the first one even though the scale was greater. It was too long to wait to get there too. At least the makers of Operation Dumbo Drop thought the plot was good enough to borrow for their film.

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause – I’ve enjoyed the first two Santa Clause movies because Tim Allen makes a good Santa Claus. This one is likewise as fun and even though it isn’t as good I think I enjoyed it more than the second one. Maybe it was the extra time travel elements involved. It was fun seeing Juliette from Lost too as Mrs. Claus.

Twilight – When I watched it I thought it was a pretty good vampire story but it also seemed pretty light while maintaining a nice tone. On second thought, it’s nice that it’s not all over the top vampire action all the time that a lot of vampire movies seem to feel like they need to do.

21 – Framing the whole story with a med school interview was kind of silly but it doesn’t hurt the movie. Come to think of it, that makes the movie a lot like Risky Business with the business school interview. I wish they had gone over the techniques used in the movie, but I hear that’s on the special features of the dvd.

College Road Trip – I wasn’t expecting a G-rated movie and really there was nothing that couldn’t be shown to someone of any age, but I really don’t think little kids would find of lot of it interesting. Anyway, Albert the genius pig and the little boy were funny and the rest just kind of gets you there.

Wind Chill – The whole thing was a nice atmospheric ghost story and then the end came and was just kind of there. That’s it? Turn it off when she walks into the woods and you’ll be happier with the ending.

Sunday in New York – Jane Fonda in a good comedy about pre-marital sex. It’s based on a broadway play and it shows in the staging. And here I didn’t know Jane Fonda was in any good movies.

Now this weekend I am packing for another tie occasion and I already know the answer so I don’t even look. Then I get a memory flash about a box in a closet. I go look and sure enough, they’re all there! Packed up away since we remodelled. Sure they needed to be cleaned and pressed but they’re back!

I think I need more occasions that require dressing so I can keep track of these things.

Being that this was my first time making the krispee treats I got the recipe from the rice krispee website. I melted the butter and dumped in the marshmallows to do their thing and after a few minutes they weren’t doing much. So I started stiring with a spatula and scraping the bottom because some of the marshmallows had caramelized. After a few more minutes I got it into a soupy pink mix that looked like something more akin to a horror movie special effect. I removed it from the heat and dumped in the 6 cups of rice puffs and quickly discovered that I should have used a bigger pot. The first few stirs dumped cereal on the counter but I was careful with the rest and managed to mix it up and get everything coated. Nothing mentioned how stiff it was going to get and  getting it into the pan was a challenge, but I did it.

So then it went to work. Nicole didn’t want it around the house and I am not a fan of marshmallow so I wasn’t going to eat it. At work it sat for the first half of the day. The glance it got from people told them it was a dish of beans or something like that and they weren’t going to touch it. It wasn’t until someone cut out the first square that people realized it for what it was. Maybe I should have gone for green. Anyway, once people realized that they were a yummy treat they enjoyed them.

The doctor said that when I started at the Coumadin clinic I could be more active and even though my levels don’t seem to be stabilized yet both the clinic and the doctor said it was good to be active as long as I wasn’t in danger of falling or bumping into things. So no scooter or bike riding for a few months, but exercise and running are fine. Any activity is fine as long as I avoid cuts and bruises. So with that yesterday I returned to the office, yay! I was glad to be able to discuss problems directly with co-workers instead of just in e-mail or IM. I’m keeping my leg elevated and straight when I feel like it even though the doctor said it wasn’t necessary. It just feels good to empty my leg after I’ve been up and about for awhile.

So what next? Now I keep getting my levels adjusted and around the end of March I’ll have another ultrasound to see if the clot is gone. If it isn’t then I’ll find out what the next step is then. If it is then I might be on Coumadin a little while longer until they are sure nothing is recurring. If it turns out I’m a hyper-clotter then I’ll probably be on some form of blood thinner from here on out.

When I had my hernia surgery about 10 years ago I was similarly frustrated at being immobilized and the recovery time, but really the downer to my mental state was the feeling of mortality, or maybe it’s the feeling of a blow to the normal state of “everything is fine” which plays into the natural state of immortality. Normally you don’t think about that, it’s just the normal state. There is an implicit expectation that things will continue as they have and when they don’t the continuum has been spoiled and the awareness of mortality sets in. Well as of this morning I feel really good! Like this isn’t going to dominate my life from here on out. Like it’s going to heal quickly and I’m going to be back being active shortly and begin making myself better than I was.

I hope everyone has a happy new year!

This Film is Not Yet Rated – A documentary about the MPAA rating system. I knew a good bit about it from following movies over the years but still there were a lot of new information and a lot of it was surprising. I think it’s worth watching for any movie fan.

Vacancy – This one started out with some good tension but it ended up with a good bit of comedy in it by the end. Not really laugh out loud, but definitely not so serious as early on. Come to think of it, that humor was early on too but the mood wasn’t set yet so it didn’t really fit in.

Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins –  This is kind of an odd coming home story with not as much humor as you would hope, but enough entertainment to make it through. This is one of those you might watch when nothing else is on.

Mad Money –  This is a pretty smart heist movie with average characters. Not that the portrayal is average, but the character’s background is from the common person. I like house this is put together from start to end.

Igby Goes Down –  My favorite Culkin, Kieran Culkin, in a disfunctional family comedy/drama. It reminds me in some ways of Catcher in the Rye.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford –  This movie is compelling and it pulls you into the time and characters. I’ve heard that the original cut was five hours and I want to see that cut.

Lawrence of Arabia - This film is beautiful. The story is good. The acting is sometimes laughable as you see Lawrence appears as always happy-go-lucky. I’ve read that after it came out someone said he were any prettier he would have been Florence of Arabia and the prettiness of Lawrence is part of the laughability. The rest of the cast is great though and the photography on all the locations is awesome. If this film is remade the one area it won’t improve is in the photography.

Dreamgirls –  I thought the filming style on this was odd until I realized that it’s a film version of a stage musical. I don’t know why I didn’t know that before but the context helped. Anyway, I really enjoyed it but I enjoy musicals in general. There were no weak performances here.

Europa Europa –  This was an interesting Holocaust story I hadn’t seen before. How he kept his identity secret and how he was able to integrate himself with all those he encountered.

High Anxiety –  So now the only Mel Brooks movie I haven’t seen is Silent Movie. This ones has some great moments but on the whole it isn’t so much funny as it is a set of references to Hitchcock. Very well done and clever references. My favorite is that since many remember the shower stabbing scene in psycho having the blood going down the drain in color. In High Anxiety the stabbing is with a newspaper so though it’s in color it’s black going down the drain.

Good Night, and Good Luck –  I was totally unaware of the battle between Ed Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy. I liked the weight given to the subject, the portrayal of the time, and the older look to the film.

The Strangers –  Another home invasion movie, but this one is a lot dumber than Vacancy. It’s portrayed tat the attackers are normal humans and yet things happen that wouldn’t be happening with normal people. Especially with as it turns out in the end, it was their first time and they indicated it didn’t go that smoothly. Well they had the most elaborate plan and were ready for any event for it being their first time. Another thing I decided is that I dislike the person in the distance that vanishes on the next look. Close up, ok, because they could see the target of the soying and dodge. The far away spooking I can’t get behind.

The Librarian: Quest for the Spear – We checked this out because the third one was being advertised a lot. It’s a pretty good tv movie. The cast is good and a lot of fun with Noah Wyle, Bob Newhart, and Jane Curtain. The premise is fun and the humor works well with the characters and the story. The effects are lower budget than a big budget picture but they do the job. Think of this as a kin to the National Treasure movies.

The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines –  Another adventure with the addition of Gabrielle Anwar. Jonathan Frakes is the director this time and aside from that it upholds the standards in the first movie.

The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice – The latest installment of the Librarian series and I hope it isn’t another two years before the next one comes out.

Woman of the Year – You look at the women in this movie and the level of their careers and recognition and you wonder why there was such a leap away from it after WWII until more recent times. The chemistry between Hepburn and Tracy was excellent and this plays as well today as it did back then.

The Three Musketeers (1973) – I always thought this would be some cheesy 70s movie. I certainly didn’t expect good costumes, good sets, and more realistic fight scenes than probably any version. This now ranks up with the 1948 Gene Kelly version for me. The 1948 for it’s energy and playful sword fights, and this one just because it’s good all the way around. There is still humor here but it’s a not the same as in the 1948 version. Now I have to track down The Four Musketeers and see how I like that follow-up.

Get Smart – Yeah, it’s not the original but I think this fits well as an update to the old series while still referencing it. I think the cast is as good as you’re going to get for this and I liked the whole thing quite a bit being a fan of the old series.

Grindhouse –  Planet  Terror was the more entertaining of the two, but when you compare Robert Rodriguez to Quentin Tarantino, Rodriguez make more entertaining popcorn kind of films. Planet Terror was also far more gory, but it really captured the B-movie feel. Death Proof was half Tarantino dialog scenes and the rest was car duel. Both were fine on their own but they didn’t really flow well together.

Shrek the Third – So here’s something unusual, I liked this one better than the second Shrek film. Usually when something starts going downhill it just continues, but this I felt was a definite improvement. The story had more feeling and the look was a definitely improvement throughout.

Ratatouille –  This film made me feel like Pixar is growing up both in the story telling and the look. Everything used to be bright and have a halo. Now the characters still have a cartoon look to them but not like they glow. The effects for looks for the environment were fantastic with the water. The story was more complex and directed to an older audience than the usual Pixar film and I’m not sure I’m completely happy with that but it works for this film.

“What do you think it might be?”

“I think it might be a blood clot.”

He agreed, but wasn’t certain because despite my leg being swollen and red I had no pain which usually goes along with it. He went through some more possibilities before deciding that it was definitely a clot and sent me to Dominican for an ultrasound.

Dominican wasn’t crowded in radiology but there was only one radiologist on duty that day and that included covering the emergency room which was apparently crowded. The ultrasound tech. found the clot but couldn’t tell me because she’s not a doctor. She also said that I couldn’t get a CD of the images. It was cool to listen to my blood rushing when the probe was kept in one place. After that they sent the results to the urgent care and the doctor there called me back and teld me it was a large clot and that he was trying to get me some Lovenox from Dominican. Apparently the only pharmacy open at that point was in Watsonville and they didn’t have much. Domican had plenty but they didn’t want to give it up unless I was admitted to the emergency room so off to the emergency room we went.

Dominican was fast at getting me checked in and all the results were sent over to the one doctor on duty there. Unfortunately I seemed to arrive during a shift change so while I was put in a room and hooked up to the monitor I wasn’t added to the list. I was able to listen to the patients around me liek the woman across the hall whose husband died ten years ago that day. Forty-five minutes and still no doctor later Nicole flagged a nurse down to get some attention. The nurse then got the current doctor who knew nothing about my situation so the story got told again and they wanted to draw their own blood. For whatever reason they decided the side of my forearm was a good target (ow!) and we got to see my pulse jump to 92. The doctor decided I had a large clot and should have Lovenox and get started on Coumadin. He also ordered more blood tests to determine whether I’m a hyper-clotter or not so they needed another poke for that one. Luckily they decided to go for the crook on my left arm. I also got my first Lovenox shot (actually two because I’m big) subcutaneously on the sides of my stomach. We finally got out of there and went home where I put up my leg and we watched tv until I fell asleep.

I transferred to the bed and this morning the swelling was greatly reduced. I went to the doctor they set up for me to see as a followup and she said my leg was looking good and prescribed the rest of my Lovenox supply which Nicole or Julie will be lucky enough to inject me with later. The doctor saw no reason for or against using a thrombosis stocking so that’s up to me. For now I’m going to go without one I think.

How did it happen? No one is sure. One generally has to be a hyper-clotter, have some trauma or surgery recently, or be sitting or laying in one position for about 20 hours. I wasn’t sitting around that long and there isn’t any recent trauma so I have to wait for the results on the hyper-clotting. My aunt recently had problems with clots that the doctors believe are left over from a car accident four-years ago so if that’s the case this could be related to my long ago scooter accident. The doctor says that’s not likely though.

So now it’s drugs and rest for the rest of the weekend.

In the mean time I have to not do anything and that’s starting to drive me crazy and it’s making me feel a little bad that I can’t help out with anything around the house. Nicole will let me do something simple like carry dishes to the kitchen but beyond that I have to stay still until the Coumadin reaches a stable theraputic level.

My parents came up for the day yesterday which was really nice. It gave a Nicole a small break from watching me to see if I’m still ok. We got to exchange Chanukah gifts on the final night which looked like was going to have to happen some time in January or so. My father took me to the lab this morning for a blood test to determine whether I still needed the Lovenox shots or not.

There was only a 5 minute wait at 7:30 in the morning and theblood draw was only two vials. It was marked for same day processing so I called the doctor at 2:30PM to see if they had results but nothing was there yet. I called again at 3:30PM but still nothing. I called again at 4PM and they said they were going to call the lab, but still I heard nothing back. Finally at 4:30PM I said I really needed to know since I take the shots at 5PM and I needed to get to the pharmacy if I needed to get more. They promised to check and call me back. In the meantime I called the pharmacy to make sure they got the supply they said was going to be in today and they confirmed that my prescription was filled and waiting. The doctor then called back and told me my INR levels were at 3.6 (they need to be between 2.0 and 3.0) so no more Lovenox shots in my stomach (yay!) and no more Coumadin today or tomorrow. I’ll also be glad to get my blood less thin because my hands will stop getting tingly when I hold them up reading too long. In the meantime I need to avoid things that will make me bleed because clotting will be a problem. My next blood test is Wednesday morning and that afternoon I’ll find out how much Coumadin to take next.

The morning of the Turkey Trot was cold but the free socks made decent gloves while waiting to start. We never got to the point of running the whole thing so it was intervals all the way, which was fine. Seven weeks ago it would have been walking the whole thing so it still feels good to complete it without having to give up on the running part.

About 2-3 weeks from the end of the program two days after the most recent run I woke up with my left calf feeling like it had been through the workout from hell. No cramping, just muscle soreness. I continued running on it until No Boundaries was done which was pretty dumb but it didn’t seem to be getting any worse so it didn’t seem so bad at the time. I’ve since learned it’s a calf strain and once the program ended I’ve been resting it and wrapping it and keeping it elevated and today I was able to go without the wrapping without discomfort. Now it just feels like the muscles are tight and need stretching. Tomorrow evening I’m going to try walking the dogs (they’ll appreciate it a lot) and see how that goes. I’m glad the end seems to be in sight for the healing. Now maybe I can consider a full length version fo the program this spring.

So Fullpower’s had good food, good music, it was easy to socialize with everyone, there was a pile of games to play with, holiday trivia, co-worker trivia, guessed for number of Hershey’s Kisses in a jar (894), of how many marshmallow’s are in 3 jars (563), and for how many bows in the jar (82 I think). The Kisses were won by my cube neighbor and he doesn’t like chocolate so they are in my cube. I separated out the mint ones this morning so they don’t contaminate the rest. I won the marshmallows but I don’t like marshmallows so they’re on my desk too. Oh yeah, there was a series of boxes to guess the contents of too. For the kids there was a magic show and face painting and toys, and later Santa Claus came in with Mrs. Claus to give gifts to the kids. The whole thing was just right.

Now comes the waiting.

Finally I found an answer way down  in a support forum:

1. Turn iPod Touch OFF completely
2. Plug iPod Touch into PC/MAC while still off
3. Turn iPod Touch on if it wasn’t turned on my plugging it in and IMMEDIATELY do the followign steps
4. Hold the ‘Home’ and ‘Sleep’ buttons down for at least 5 seconds. It will restart and the Apple logo will appear
5. Release the ‘Sleep’ button, keeping the ‘Home’ button pressed
6. The iPod Touch will switch to restore/recovery mode and you can follow the prompts on the computer to erase and restore the iPod Touch

The broken thing was the Blackberry Pearl I had for work. It was still in my jacket when I washed it. I took it apart made sure it was dry, re-assembled it, and it would charge the battery and blink some status LED but that was it. Then I followed the directions I later found that said to put it in a sealed comtainer with rice and put that over something warm like a DVR  for 5 days. That definitely pulled more moisture out and the backlight came on and some bad looking streaks showed on the LCD and then it was back to how it was the first time. I now fully admit it is dead and just when I was getting used to the keyboard and starting to appreciate the e-mail features.

The recently were free preview weekends for HBO and Starz and now I’m making my way through the backlog on the dvr.

The Reaping – This is the best religious horror movie I’ve seen in a long time. No stigmata, too many candles, or arcane church lore necessary. It has a similar kind of satisfaction as I get when watching something like The Omen (haven’t seen the remake).

Dudley Do-Right – I wanted to see this because I like Brendan Fraser and George of the Jungle was great. This wasn’t great, but it still had a lot of fun. Unfortunately most of the fun came from the announcer. I think perhaps they should have borrowed the writers and director from George of the Jungle. The casting was fine.

The Devil Wears Prada – Great movie about a hell job and what it takes to get what you want.

Epic Movie –  There was just enough entertaining to keep watching and a few funny parts. If it didn’t haev the cast that it did (and how did it get that cast?) then it wouldn’t even have that. But hey, Stiffler’s mom.

Les Triplettes de Belleville –  Making a movie with no dialog that keeps you focused and doesn’t put you to sleep is a challenge but this movie is just that. It’s an odd story, and it’s funny, and it totally sucks you in.

Run Fatboy Run –  Despite Simon Pegg, based on the trailer and how long it lasted in theaters I didn’t expect this movie to be nearly as funny as it is. Not only that but it also manages to represent a good portion of what makes Rocky the movie it is in its own way.

Flushed Away – Most of this movie is pretty good except for the parts with the slugs. The slugs are awesome! See this for the slugs!

Babylon A.D. – The action is good but the plot seemed like a jumbled mess in the end. Apparently that’s because 70 minutes was cut out when the completion guarantee forced it to market. At least it comes out better than Highlander II did in that case. The action carries the day.

The Invasion – I think in 20 years there will be more remakes of this movie than any other movie, if it doesn’t already have that status. Surprisingly for a remake, it has a lot of good tension and it’s well done! I’m not so sure about the very end but I don’t think it really detracts from the rest of the movie.

I’m not moving anywhere, it’s just an observation.

Star Wars – Darth Bane: Path of Destruction by Drew Karpyshyn – This is the start of the story about how the Sith came to have the rule of two; master and apprentice. One Sith destroying the rest is well done and I look forward to the sequel that establishes the rule of two in Star Wars – Darth Bane: Rule of Two.

Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact – by Karen Traviss – Karen Traviss has defined more of the Mandalorian culture than any other author and now that is expanded to include the clone soldiers. She covers a lot of issues with cloning scattered throughout the story and gives humanity to the human clones. No longer so you look at them on screen and think of them as disposable droids. This was based off a video game and I think it has surpassed that game.

Star Wars Republic Commando: Triple Zero- by Karen Traviss – More growth of the clones from Hard Contact as well as introducing new characters that were only alluded to in Hard Contact. This story doesn’t go exactly where you expect it with awkward love interests for some of the clones and how that impacts the troopers in and out of the relationships. Their sergeant vowing to find a cure for their rapid aging to give them a chance at a normal life. Also seeing how one squad raised with fear and punishment act versus one raised to try and please their sergeant also provides an interesting take on nature vs nurture and what that gets you as an end result.

Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Ppoint in Western History by David Klinghoffer – Not necessarily continuing on the antisemitic themes from Why the Jews? this book covers at all the stages in Christian history the reasons why Jesus was rejected by the Jews and the methods employed on both sides to convert/resist. One of the most interesting parts was the look at early Christian history. The conclusion was the in the beginning the Jews couldn’t have rejected Jesus as a whole because almost none of the Jews at he time knew about him. This goes more in depth in places and fills in nicely in some places where Why the Jews? leaves off.

Finally some fiction!

Chosen by Chain Potok – This is a book about people from different backgrounds learning to appreciate one another even if they don’t fully understand one another. In this case, Orthodox Jews and Hassidim. In it there is a basic history of the Hassidic movement and after reading Why the Jews Rejected Jesus I can see why there was such a big split. Jesus basically taught that the rabbis should be ignored and people should judge how best to serve god by interpreting the Torah themselves. The founder of the Hassidic movement had a similar message except you would go to the Tzadik to interpret things for you. Anyway, to some degree I identify with the character of Danny since I sometimes felt I lived in the intellectual and “had no soul”. I feel like I’ve gone in and out of that over the years and I’ve always worked to help myself in that regard; mostly with success.

Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer – This book takes place in Poland just before WWII with everyone waiting for the impending invasion from Hitler. There is a lot going on in this book, liek the kind of goings on that a lit class could analyze for days, but at the same time the story is good. Arele married his past and when he had to flee Warsaw, his past died and he could not take it with him.

With God’s Politics – Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It by Jim Wallis I was hoping would clarify where religion falls in politics and it does that. It discusses how the right has been allowed to define religious issues to the very narrow scope of abortion and gay marriage while the left has tried to steer clear of any mention of god. The book then goes on to define many other things which are religious issues, like poverty and war, and advocates that the people who believe in that need to get involved and take back the religious discussions to turn it to those “liberal” issues. I agree that it needs to be turned away from what the right has defined as religious issues and I think some of that is happening in this current election cycle. I did have some trouble reading the book because it is so heavily focused on getting Christians involved in politics on the left side. It definitely wasn’t written with the non-Christian in mind and as a result it at times feels alienating and occasional references to Jews and Muslims don’t really help.

The Presidents: Every Leader from Washington to Bush edited by Michael Beschloss is a set of short biographies of every president we’ve so far had in this country. It even includes up to aroudn the 9-11 time frame on Bush so that one is more of a wait and see what he does and we know how that turned out. Reading history fro the perspective of the presidents is definitely different in some cases. Instead of covering what did happen it also can cover the issues and conflicts that president faced. I did find it interesting that even including recent elections the mudslinging of presidential elections hasn’t reached the heights it did in the 1800s.

Before reading Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick I can pretty safely say that all I knew about the pilgrims is that they came over on the Mayflower to avoid religious persecution and the indians helped them survive. In reality the history is full of peril and war and political intrigue! The compromises they had to make with their faith to survive, the changing relationship with the indians over the years, the relationship with other colonies established after Plymouth. Also in reading you start to get in impression of the start of the American character. Many thanks to Cathi for lending it to me for over a year before I got to it.

m&m’s Premiums – These come in five varities: Mint, Chocolate Almond, Triple Chocolate, Raspberry Chocolate, and Mocha. Mint, chocolate almond, and mocha are fairly standard. Raspberry chocolate is white chocolate, raspberry flavor, and an almond. Triple chocolate is a dark chocolate core, white chocolate middle layer, and a milk chocolate outer layer. The flavors on all of these is good and the look of the shell is speckled and almost metallic in the shine. The packaging is nice with a re-sealable bag inside. It all falls apart when you pop one in your mouth and bite down; there’s no crunch. The attractive shell you see is more like a paste that will jam between your teeth when you first bite down. I’m sure the confused expression on someone’s face when they first bite one of these and just have it squish between their teeth is great. I should try that out on some co-workers tomorrow.

Tropic Thunder – The funniest movie I’ve seen in awhile and the best Ben Stiller movie since Zoolander. Everything just plays right in this and Robert Downey Jr. has a role that I think only he could pull off.

The Bunny House – The trailer was funny and the movie held up to what the trailer showed. Shortly after I started thinking that the message in the movie was pretty bad it reversed direction which caused more relief than I anticipated.

Smart People – Like watching geeks flail in their personal relationships but tired of it being the same geeks? Then this movie is for you. There are familiar elements to it and it’s much better than I made it sound in the first sentence.

The Scorpion King – I decided to try out hulu.com with this movie because there was no way I was going to pay for it. It’s actually a fairly fun action adventure flick even if I can’t figure out how it relates in any way to the second Mummy movie. Maybe the straight to video sequel that just came out will clear that up. Seeing as how that doesn’t have the benefit of The Rock being in it I’ll probably skip it though.

THX 1138 – Finally! It’s true, I haven’t seen it until now. The start is fairly disorienting, like it’s tuning your brain into the story. There are a number of great elements in it that I’d like to see explored in other movies like the endless prison room or the micro-accounting during the chase. I don’t think that has been done since then in any form. Also the car chase in it stands up to any car chase scene today. Thumbs up!

Bright Lights, Big City – Michael J Fox as a coke-head? Hey, it works! This movie, dealing with loss, works as well today as I imagine it did in the 80s.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay – This is a pretty disappointing sequel. Maybe it had too mcuh to live up to? There were parts that were great but there were even more parts where I was left wondering where the fun went.

I don’t really like judged events. I guess I mean I don’t really like the judging in judged events. The athleticism in those events tends to be top notch but the scoring is a complete mystery. I’m fine with teh new system of having a difficulty multiplier to go along with the score, but nothing explains how the difficulty number is determined. There must be some table because the difficulty seems to be known in advance in the live as well as the pre-recorded coverage.  In diving this seems to work better than in gymnastics where apparently judges are allows to go frame by frame on an instant replay to determine score. That slowed things WAY down. During this delay I had to listen to the commentators and stare at pacing gymnasts when there were 4 or 5 more events going on that they could be showing. Nope, must stay focused on American athletes all the time. In one of them it was a surprise that France won a medal since the gymnast was only shown once. Boxing was annoying because the judges rarely awarded punches. We could see many clean punches landed by their definition: From the waist to the head on the front of the body, hitting witht eh white part of the glove with your shoulder behind it. The commentators here were actually good and at times would mention punches the judges missed.

Track and field stuff is great! Too bad barely any of it was shown. They showed the entire marathons and the race walking without leaving for other events. Meanwhile things like the decatholon had a 15 second recap followed by the final event. I was surprised the interviewer waiting for athletes leaving the track didn’t get the crap kicked out of him for asking some of the things he did.

A lot of the likes and dislikes devolved into my problems with NBCs coverage. I can skip sports I don’t care about but sometimes you can’t look away. The first weekend we got spoiled; DirecTV had a block of 6 or 7 NBC channels that were all Olympics instead of regular programming. The variety of events to choose from was fantastic! When Monday hit all that went away and it was one channel for boxing all the time and the rest was the prime-time block in the evening. The second weekend rolled around and we figured it would be back to many channels, but instead it was the boxing channel and a few more. If it wasn’t a race you might think there were only an American and one or maybe two others in the competition.

One thing I really liked about the coverage was the cameras in the water and track events. The under-water cameras on tracks, the overhead cameras, the  diving camera that goes down at free-fall speed all the way into the water! In track the camera that follows them around the outside of the track allowed for great views in the sprints.

For once the closing ceremony didn’t feel like an after-thought. I think I liked the closing ceremony than most opening ceremonies I’ve seen. I hope we don’t have to wait too many olympics before we see something that grand again.

The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave –  I loved the Super Dave shorts when I was a kid so when this came on I had to watch it. The original cast is all still there and the stunts are rediculous, but the parts that work keep it flowing enough. I’d just like to add that Super Dave has a herd of mimes.

Kung Fu Panda –  The art style is great, the fu is good. It ends up being similar to Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon and I don’t consider that a bad thing.

The Secret of Santa Vittoria – The description was just that a village tries to hide their wine from the Nazis. It has that but it also brings the small Italian town and it’s residents to life.  I suppose I should mention that it’s mostly comedicthough there are heavy moments.

Darkon –  A documentary on LARPers in Maryland. Darkon is the land that all the LARPing nations inhabit and war in. You get to see alliances and conflict and people trying to come out on top in and out of Darkon. It doesn’t tend to get too uncomfortable with the level of involvement they have. At least they’re being social instead of sitting at home alone.

The Man From Earth – A thought experiment portrayed as a thought experiment in a movie. I don’t always understand the reactions of some of the characters in the movie but the story holds up fairly well I think.

Enchanted – Crossovers between the cartoon and real world are usually to the cartoon world or a small managable space. I guess it’s not so much a crossover as it is a parallel universe story. Anyway, the end result really came out well from the fish out of water moments to the songs!

Kinky Boots – In a depressed town, a few people decide to take a risk that make people think they are crazy or get looked down upon before the town rallies behind them to success. This fits that English film class and like most of the others it does it well and is very entertaining.

Hancock – This definitely didn’t go where I was expecting it to based on trailers or even the first part of the movie. There are hero rehabilitation stories, but not many about super heroes. This manages that well and throws on an interesting and fairly unique back-story.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army –  Nice art style in the opening story. This movie is all about enjoying the characters from the first movie. It works as that though I would have shortened one of the fight scenes.

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D – I wanted to see this fow two reasons, Brendan Fraser, and new 3D technology. Brendan Fraser was fun and the 3D was really good! There were some 3D trailers and if you have a chance to see “Fly Me to the Moon” in 3D, skip it. They were forcing the effect enough to hurt your eyes. This uses a new radial polarization technique so you can rotate your head and not lose the effect as you do with traditional polarized lenses. The 3D at times made you feel like you were in the middle of it and at other times looking at something with wonderful depth. It starts with a few things flying at you that every 3D movie has to do to make you flinch. The worst 3D effect was the last one in the movie. All that stuff you just watched and then you wonder how that scene could have made it into the movie. The movie itself is a fun modern tour through Vernes’ center of the earth.

The Mummy & The Mummy Returns – Nicole hadn’t seen these and since the third one was coming up we deciced to see them. The Mummy holds up well, effects and all. The Mummy Returns doesn;t look as good effects-wise, maybe they were trying too much? Also it’s not consistent with the fist movie. They say he won’t be as powerful and isn’t at full power yet even though he is doing more than he did in the first movie.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor – The first third or half of this movie irritated me. I really didn’t see Evelyn’s character ending up where it was or their son’s conflict with them as fitting. Once all the action started it settled into a comfortable groove and hey, there are yetis! I think I have to rank it about even with The Mummy Returns. The high are higher but the lows are lower.

China’s First Emperor –  This was a documentary on tv recently and it was interesting because it it showed me where various stories surrounding that period were based on fact and where liberties were taken for the story. I knew he unified the language. I didn’t know he unified currency and weights and measures but that makes sense. I didn’t know about his early life or how he ended up. Also seeing the scale of his burial city was very impressing. All those terracotta soldiers only come from a small part of the entire site. There was an indication that they are not going to explore that until preservation can be done. Apparently there are rivers and an ocean made of mercury in the scale-model china inside. Since there is evidence that mercury is leaking out slowly, it is thought that the description of the inside is accurate.

Mongol – This is a look at what led Ghengis Kahn to become what he was. The movie feels like it’s missing quite a bit, like it was cut down to be about 2 hours when it really wanted to be 2.5. I hope that extra time is on the DVD version when that comes out, but considering it’s a foreign film there’s probably not much chance of that. I’ll still ok forward to picking it up when it comes out.

Starman –  An alien comes down to play the fish out of water game and offer insights into humanity. I think this probably played better in the 80s though I think with a few minor changes it would work just as well today were it to be remade. That’s not a suggestion that it should be remade. Jeff Bridges plays the star man well, and Karen Allen is good as usual.

Kaw –  Killer ravens are attacking a small town! Since you probably aren’t going to see it I’ll just say that it’s because they ate some cow that died from mad cow disease and now they’re going to take out all the people. Despite being obviously low budget, they actually had a number of trained ravens and decent production value. Worth seeing? Maybe if you’re bored or want a background movie.

We tried buffalo burgers recently and I was surprised at the difference between it and beef. The texture in handling it feels sort of clean and loose but it all holds together well. In cooking it seemed to want to brown faster than beef and in spite of it having less fat there is still plenty and it’s wasn’t dry. Flavor wise it didn’t have a gamey flavor but it was different. Smell wise it wasn’t too strong to me but I think GRover was about ready to climb down my throat to get some.

Chicken rub

Another day as I was trying to figure out how I wanted to make some chicken, I ended up with the following spice rub:

• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1tsp corriander
• 1/4 tsp cayenne

I flattened out the chicken, applied the rub to both sides and cooked for a few minutes on each side. Mmmm! Next time maybe a little lighter on the cayenne though.

Haagen Dazs chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

I had never had this version and decided it was time to try it. The vanilla ice cream part of it is I think the strongest vanilla I’ve ever had and I’d be happy with just that. The cookie dough part tasted to me more like real cookie dough than the Ben & Jerry’s variety. This is now my new favorite version of this flavor.

I finally got some gopher cinch traps to deal with the gopher problem. Right around that time Grover killed one (and ate half of it before I stopped him). Using the cinch traps has been effective and after not seeing any new gopher activity for a few days we decided to clean up and put down a new layer of mulch/bark. The next morning in the areas we worked on there were four fresh gopher mounds. I think as they are being taken care of new ones are moving in from the 1/2 acre lot next door. More trapping took care of that one though. Still there are still a few lurking elsewhere in the yard. I’m trying to get them in the neighbor’s yard too (with permission) to stop the exodus.

Today we were going to excavate the flagstones making up the front patio to put gopher wire between them so the gophers won’t mess that up in the future. Starting on the first one was ok until I saw a bee fly to the ground and disappear down a hole next to the flagstone. I stepped over for a closer look and within a few minutes there were a number of bees looking for the holes in the dirt I had just cleared away. Looking around the rest of the flagstones I now see a lot of these holes. I stopped because I don’t want to be uncovering a nest and pissing off all the bees inside.

The Neanderthal Man – I had seen this before. A scientist believes that the larger brain case in neanderthals would have made the neanderthal more intelligent. The other scientists laugh at him so he continues his work on a serum to revert things back to their older genes. The cat turns into a sabre-tooth tiger (looks just like a regular tiger!) and the scientist and his maid get sent to their neanderthal roots where they look more like the wolfman and attack people in the woods.

Octaman – 70s Environmental horror. In Mexico a scientist discovers a half-man/half-octopus. It gets pretty pissed when they start studying the babies and it attacks the scientist camp, mostly at night. Once nice thing about these movies is that the action parts can be watched on fast forward and it generally increases the quality. This movie has a lot of “action” which often means octaman is staring at people from the reeds in the swamp. My two favorite moments in the movie were octaman stabbing a guy with a suddenly rigid tentacle, and when octaman jumps out of the RV at the scientists because it made me laugh out loud.

Eight on the Lam – Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller. Phyllis Diller is fun whenever she’s on screen but this is pretty uninteresting otherwise. Bob Hope has 8 kids and is that casual? Not buying it.

Alienator – An android bounty hunter is sent to Earth to catch an alien criminal. This movie was made in 1989 but all the effects were from the 70s. Speaking of that, I’d like to see movie effects and editing software offer the ability to apply 70s effects. How hard can rotoscoping with a bright border be? Anyway, female bodybuilder is the android and the body armor she wears is pretty horrible. The dialog is pretty fun though so don’t fast-forward through that.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls – Saw this Thursday night before the crowds got crazy. Liked it quite a bit and thought it fit very well with the previous movies in feel and in style. I was also very glad Karen Allen was back in her role from the first movie.

The Vampire – A doctor takes some addictive pills that wirn him into a vampire at night. The makeup looks more like a werewolf, but that’s easily overlooked. This movie is more about drug addiction turning you into a monster that destroys yourself, your family, and loved ones around you with a thin layer of vampire on top. It’s actually pretty good.

Blood Simple – I finally got a chance to see this and I definitely liked it. All the twists were great and I thought the use of kecak music for Frances McDormand’s character’s pivotal points was well done. If this didn’t have background music it might almost be a David Lynch film.
Vicious Lips – This movie was made in 1987 but it feels like it was written in 1983 and had to wait for what budget it had. A rock band gets signed and has to go play on another planet. This is a USA: Up All Night kind of movie all the way. At some point it switches to weird dream sequence and feels like the Wizard of Oz in a strange way. You probably want a few drinks for this one.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark – Having seen the new Indiana Jones movie we decided to watch the previous ones. The DVD is from a nicely cleaned up print and visible effects have been made invisible. Aside from that it’s still the same classic.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – I didn’t remember many details except that it is my least favorite. That’s still true and I think the movie could be much better and very little changed if Kate Capshaw’s character, Winnie, would have been cut from the script.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade –  This one builds on what made the first one good and solidifies that which is good because it allowed the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls to come out as well as it did. The interplay between Indy and his father is great throughout and really amke the movie.

Sunday we went to Castroville for the artichoke festival. The number of restored and modified cars on display was much larger this year. The We had some fried artichokes and I had an artichoke and carne asada taco (very good). There was a sign for artichoke cupcakes but unfortunately they were sold out. Oh well, that’s what we get for going two hours before closing. The vegetable sculptures weren’t as impressive or numerous this year except for the snake in a tree that was the first one you ssee when entering the hall. Having done almost all we went to do, it was time to buy a couple cases of artichokes and go. The nice thing about going late on Sunday is that they don’t want to haul all those artichokes away so by the time we were there a case of 18 jumbo artichokes was going for $16.

On the way back to the car I rested the artichokes down on top of a fire hydrant while we watched some dancers inside the festival area. Then I picked up the cases and turned to continue with a jolt of pain as I slammed my shin into the fire hydrant valve. About a block later I stopped and checked my shin and found it was already swollen quite a bit. Nicole got the car and came back for me and the future food. When I got home I rested it andiced it on and off for about 45 minutes which greatly reduced the swelling and today the pain and swelling is very minor, yay!

It’s a bright red bug (6-legs), about 2.5-3mm long and probably about 1mm wide. The head is probably 1/4 of the total length and is more gray-brown in color. When walking the body is fairly high off the surface at about a millimeter. The antennae are about the length of the body with the last 1/3 of that being about twice the thickness of the lower part.

Iron Man – I think this is my new favorite comic book movie, but Hellboy is still close. Everything about it is just right. I’m looking forward to the sequel already.

Sunshine – This movie is heavy but it’s a great story and it draws you in to the family’s story. If there is any movie that it is similar to I think it is To Live, which I also feel similarly about. I got the impression that there is more to the story which usually indicates the kind of details you get in a novel as being the source material, but it’s written by the director; I’m guessing a good bit is based on his own family and experiences to give it that feel.

Flawless – The 60s appear to be a hot time frame for movies and tv right now. This heist movie takes place in the 60s and it’s a pretty good heist. Michael Caine is great and Demi Moore is surprising, mostly because I don’t think of her in this kind of role so I didn’t recognize her at first. Unfortunately the end is a little weak and forgettable but it’s still good overall.

Speed Racer – I didn’t see it and I don’t want to. I just want to express my happiness that it’s doing so horribly at the box office. When I first saw the trailer I thought I didn’t want to see it but I might check it out for the effects. As the number of times I saw trailers and still for it increased so did my dislike for it and the certainty that it would suck. It seems that happened to a lot of other people too, the reviews and the box office are horrible for a film that expensive. Yay!

Scrubs – It’s been confirmed that the 8th ad final season of Scrubs will be 18 episodes long and will be on ABC. More Yay!

2) The half-time show at the roller derby was horrible. The Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra came out and played the same rhythm for a few minutes while the leader was slowly introducing the members through a megaphone that distorted everything to the mostly unintelligible. They had a variety of things scavenged from all over but none of it was put to good use. Having tuned paint cans is a fine idea if you’re going to actually do more than play on a couple of them, ignoring their tonality. Eventually my brain was able to tune them out as white noise effectively enough that I didn’t know they finished until Nicole told me they finished and no one clapped. People noticed they were done and clapped, allowing them to exit and the roller derby to start again.

Saturday evening was another Santa Cruz Roller Girls roller derby match, this time between Fistful of Dollies and Beach Flat Betties. These two of the three local teams that the all-star team draws from to play against teams from other cities.  The Dollies ended up winning by about ten points but it was pretty close all the way though. Robin Yo Life joined the announcers which was nice for clarifying what was going on at various points and amusingly it sometimes turned into comments that were meant more for coaching what was happening at that moment. Next match in Santa Cruz is on June 28.

Sunday we went to Bay Meadows for the final day of live racing and it was really crowded, both from people there for Mother’s Day and people there for the last day. For the first half there was a lot less smoking going on than normal, but then the parties with mothers thinned out some and the smoking kicked it up a notch. The horses ran, we lost money on our small bets, we ate junk food, it was a lot of fun.

Unrelated to that but still odd is that this weekend the garbage disposal started turning itself on randomly. I think the fiber-optic switch on it is somehow triggering incorrectly. The first time we were watching a movie in the other room, the second time was at around 3AM. Both times the cat was sleeping on the bed. For now we’re leaving it unplugged when not in use.

Next we went throught he Disney section which was surprisingly cool. Seeing how they mock up attractions and with a model and a camera, and seeing early stage animatronic models was nice since I didn’t think that stuff really escaped the back room. A few years ago I read that someone had come up with a new hologram process that really made things look 3D. I hadn’t heard anything else about it since then but I’m pretty sure that’s what they were using for the Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey. There was no electronics involved, just a hologram in a frame, but the image stood out in front of the frame. Moving from one side to the other I could go from seeing the front of Mickey’s ear to the back. People kept touching the frame because they kept moving closer in an attempt to touch the image.

After that we went to the big hall where we saw the robotics and other things that needed space and more commercial areas. We got to play with what was called “Galaxy Goo” but Crayola calls Modelling Magic. It’s easy to manipulate but then you let it sit for a weeks and it turns hard, no more going back to soft. It feels solid like a plastic but light like a foam when it’s dry. I want the 3D candy printer. We sat in the Tango electric car and then learned that it’s WAY too expensive.

After a lunch break we wandered outside, saw the Burning Man metal sculptures burning, the human beat box, a demonstration on methane from algae as a fuel source, and the QuickCamper. The QuickCamper folds up to act as a shell for a pickup truck but can expand to allow access to a queen size bed, a sink, a stock, a refrierator/freezer, and sitting space (where the bed would be). It’s not in production yet.

We wandered over at the right time to see the Diet Coke and Mentos guys doing their show and selling their nozzle kits, checked out the steam punks, and then wandered the craft hall, picking up cards for later purchase possibilities. I thought the clothing swap/redecorating stations were a good idea, but there wasn’t enough room for the tables selling stuff.

Finally we wandered into the fabrication room and saw several ShopBots in action. Surprisingly they are fairly quiet. There were automated toold for foam, vinyl, plastic, wood, probably other stuff I’m forgetting, There were some trying to start a 500 person co-op where so you wouldn’t have to buy all these things on your own. I started thinking about that and I think it’s a good idea, but I don’t have time for a remote co-op space either.

As we were walking towards the exit we got to see the giraffe bot ambling/rolling along.  Now we look forward to next year.

1408 – I wasn’t expecting much from this and I got a good bit more. John Cusack is very good which is essential since it’s often a solo performance. When things are starting to get going there is some good tension build up but then it transitions to the abstract. If Rod Serling were making long Twilight Zone episodes today, I think this would be among them.

The Apartment – This movie matches a lot of what you see in Mad Men about the 60s. Shirley MacClaine and Jack Lemmon both portray complex characters and make them feel real, especially MacClaine. The whole movie still plays well today and it seems that you could drop the whole thing in a modern setting barely changing a thing. I wonder if that’s why it hasn’t been remade yet.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith – Such an entertaining backdrop to look at relationship issues. Doug Liman has a skill with showing action that I enjoy greatly. And while the action was great, I thought the re-exploration of their relationship in that context to be probably my favorite part.

DCI 2008 Countdown – Since I’m a band geek I tend to go for these drum & bugle corps shows. This was a theater event showing the best shows of recent years and some things to look forward to from this year’s shows.  Unfortunately it was filmed in standard definition and then blown up so it was fairly blurry. It was still mostly good enough and I am looking forward to the upcoming season (The Blue Devils are putting together marching mini-taiko drums!).

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium –  This movie was fun and afterwards I learned that the writer/director, Zach Helm, also wrote Stranger Than Fiction. Knowing that you start seeing similarities between the two: an accountant that is being troubled by the super-natural, Dustin Hoffman, and a slender woman with short dark hair.

Lars and the Real Girl –  This was good but it wasn’t the comedy that the trailers made it out to be. Sure there are humorous bits, but most of it is a fairly serious journey.

I was glad to see the track was bigger so the skaters got to get up more speed. The half-time show was kids from a local dance studio and of those I think the pop-lockers were the best.

The only negative from the night I think was the officiating. There were a number of penalties that weren’t called against Roller Girls and at one point the Angry Beaver’s jammer called off the jam but referees weren’t paying attention. As a result one or two Beavers ended up in the penalty box for play that was continuing that shouldn’t have and the Roller Girls, I think, got some points out of it that they shouldn’t have.

I look forward tot he next match on May 10.

We can’t just use natural cocoa and expect the same result because dutch-processed cocoa is pH neutral. We could try a work-around by adding baking powder to natural cocoa but that probably won’t come out the same. When did it become so hard to get dutch-processed cocoa? We purchased some without difficulty a few years ago for the first death by chocolate trials. My theory is that since natural cocoa retains the anti-oxidants in chocolate while dutch-processed cocoa destroys them, people are demanding their healthier cocoa and not considering the desserts! I could order it on-line, but it’s not something I thought I would have to order on-line or be able to get on short notice in this area.

A Love Song For Bobby Long –  I could watch these characters in a movie five times this long and I’m pretty sure I’ll be watching this one again several times as soon as I get a copy.

Brigadoon –  I’m converting old video tapes to DVD for my parents and this one was recording while I was doing other stuff so I finally got to see it. I like musicals, but I wasn’t crazy about the songs in Brigadoon. The dancing I liked, the sets and characters I liked. So it’s not my favorite musical, but the story is fun. I really liked how they portrayed triggered memories in the movie.

Janis –  Another conversion for my parents… I liked Janis Joplin, but I haven’t really appreciated her work; this documentary changed that for me. I think the difference is all the live performance footage whereas before I had only heard studio recordings.  It all feels more raw and potent.

The Other Boleyn Girl – This movie is entertaining but somewhat confusing for someone who knows absolutely nothing about the history. The confusing part is that there is almost no notion of time passing in this movie. On the bright side, that got me to go look up the history. The basic story is right, but a large number of details are changed.

M*A*S*H – I’ve probably seen most of the television series but never before had I seen the movie.  Did you know the title theme is called “Suicide is Painless”? I didn’t until I watched it until I flashed back on a memory from high school band playing the M*A*S*H Theme (Suicide is Painless). It’s weird the things that get pulled up. Anyway, there’s more fast-talking and talking over one another in the movie. In the tv show you’re given more time to digest various jokes. The humor is darker in the movie and there is more sex and blood, but not much more. I think it’s worth watching for the suicide alone.

Last Holiday – Queen Latifah version. I haven’t seen the original with Alec Guiness, but I imaging it’s better. This one isn’t bad, in fact it’s a good bit of fun. Not the kind you should run out to rent, but the kind you start watching because it’s on and don’t really mind.

The Wedding Date – At a certain point in this movie you’ll be thinking “This is like a gender reversal of ‘Pretty Woman’”. There’s a lot of I didn’t care too much about and it really just served to get me to more of the best friend and the father characters. If they weren’t in it this would have been a waste of time.

TMNT –  I liked the first live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. The second was horrible and the third was ok. This can be considered the fourth movie except it’s all computer generated. It ranks well with the first one, not as good, but definitely better than 2 or 3. Everything in the movie is cartoony except the turtles which are given by far the most detail in their structure and their animation. Some body language was copied from the actors in the live-action films. If you like the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie you will probably like this.

Zombie Honeymoon –  Every relationship has it’s tests, this one is evident from the title. It’s not as funny as it could have been, but it was fairly decent. I probably would have cut out a little more in some spots to keep the pace going, but then the moviedoesn’t even make it to an hour and a half as it is. If you’re up late and it’s on it an enjoyable watch.

I’m starting this at 195 pounds and body fat at 24%.  I use the Navy body fat calculator because I find it most accurate with the most easiest measuring techniques. I’ve read some studies that show it to be at least as accurate as other commonly available methods so I’m sticking with it.

After the first two days Nicole and I werre both in pain from the workouts, but by the end of the week it had thankfully transitioned to normal muscle soreness and tiredness a after a workout. I think the first two days are a shock to your system if you haven’t exercised in awhile.  By the end of the first week we both noticed body shape changes with clothes fitting differently and muscle definition more present.

At the start of the second week I measured myself again and found that the measurements used for body fat calculation had not changed enough to report a body fat difference. The book says don’t get hung up on measuring too often and that sometimes things might seem to go in the opposite direction as you build muscle, but it’s still a little disappointing. I can see and feel the differences but those changes haven’t started in the shrinking area yet.

At the start of the third week we can add in beans of all sorts and peas and chickpeas. Nicole has learned that she’s sensitive to beans, good to know! Halfway through week three we’ve finally got the supplements correct. I went to tenyearsthinner.com to look for something else and in addition to what I was looking for that we needed to be having larger doses of the EFA and DHA (2400mg preferably in a ration of 2:1) in our omega-3 fatty acids and that we need more calcium and magnesium. We’ll see what kind of impact that has in the coming days. Overall my energy levels are good and I get farther in the workouts which means muscle is being created.

End of week three and I don’t know why but I just realized I was doing the squeeze crunches slightly wrong. My stomach has been getting toned, but the lower abs weren’t getting so much. So today I started pulling my legs in too like I should have been doing all along and that certainly was felt when it came time to do the bench dips. Exercise-wise we’re going to do week three again to try and get our reps up in preparation for week four which adds more stuff!

Starting week 4 I’m noticing the layers of fat are getting thinner. I’ve dropped another body fat percentage point to 20, my thighs, and fore arms have gained in size, and I’m seeing more definition in muscles than I have before during previous periods of fitness. We decided to run through week 3 exercises again to try and get our reps up before the week four routing adds in another set of four exercises. Nicole’s back and neck are being aggravated so she’s going to start going different exercises.

Starting week 5, we can add in grains and grain based foods, but not more than 100 calories per meal. I’m thinking that the extra week on week-3 exercise was not the right thing to do. Yes, I feel that they were good workouts, but I am beginning to believe that it was really designed for you to move to the new exercise set. You might not be able to do all the reps but you need the extra exercises to start pushing you. I was even thinking this before I didn’t have any body fat reduction this week. Tomorrow the workouts do for four-day stretches and have 4 more exercises in them for a total of 16.

On to week 6 and I see definition starting to show in my arms and maybe in my abs? I’ve never had that before so I’m not sure.  When the 6 weeks we’re supposed to be able to have one cheat meal a week, but our first one came durign week six for a birthday dinner. My body doesn’t seem to have noticed despite it being the first grain I’ve had in almost six weeks. Finally the fat around my middle is starting to diminish.

End of week six and on to maintenance. So where do we stand? I’ve lost 2.4 pounds and 5% body fat which means about 10 pounds of fat lost and 8 pounds of muscle gained. My clothes certainly fit differently and I feel good in general. Even when I was hitting the gym a lot and eating well previously I hadn’t had body shape changes this quickly. I’ll be continuing this to see how far it goes.

My scooter lights: I haven’t been riding the scooter because the headlight hasn’t been working and it’s been dark when I leave work. I spent a couple of afternoons two weekends ago looking for what I figured was a burnt out wire from when smoke started pouring out of the front when I was installing new batteries. I looked at the old parts scooter for how things were wired up and found a few burnt wires there as well (yay for cheap Chinese stuff?). I found the burnt wire and put in a new one, still no headlight. I followed more wires and found two more burnt out. More patches and still no headlight, but now I see the battery level go down when the headlight is on which means there’s a short and it’s definitely not good. I look but I can’t find anything else so I pack it up to look for the problem later. Now thanks to daylight savings time it’s light when I leave work and headlight isn’t an obstacle. So I ride to work today but I notice that when the turn signal blinks there is a major draw on the battery gauge so the short is more serious than I thought but should be easier to locate and now I’m down to hand signals.

Another thing I noticed was that most presidents had some legal profession background before becoming president. Of the 42 presidents, 25 have had a background in law while 17 haven’t. Of those, 11 of the non-lawyerly background were in the 20th century. Certainly both groups have their ups and downs, but the ones with the law background tend to have a bigger impact during their presidency (for better or worse).

Presidents without a law background:

• George Washington – He was primarily a planter though he certainly knew how to run things.
• James Madison – Life-long politician
• William Henry Harrison – Soldier
• Zachary Taylor – Soldier and farmer
• Andrew Johnson – Tailor
• Ulysses S Grant – Soldier, farmer, real estate agent, leather store clerk
• James A Garfield – Schoolteacher, college professor, preacher, canal worker, soldier, president of Hiram College
• Theodore Roosevelt – Writer, historian
• Warren G Harding – Newspaper editor
• Herbert Hoover – Miner, engineer
• Harry S Truman – Timekeeper for railroad construction, bank clerk, farmer, haberdasher
• Dwight D Eisenhower – Soldier, president of Colombia University
•  John F Kennedy – Writer
• Lyndon B Johnson – Teacher
• Jimmy Carter – Farmer, businessman
• Ronald Reagan – Broadcaster, film actor
• George Bush – Founder of Zapata Oil and Zapata Off-shore Drilling
• George W Bush – Businessman

• Eat Me
• SKULLFUCK
• STAYOUT
• SonjaCan’tDoComputers

1. More graffiti! I know that sounds counter-intuitive but when you think about most graffiti as being territory markers then you start to see it as someone’s personal calling card. So the idea is when you wake up in the morning to find some fresh graffiti you add something like “eats ass” to it and then have the police wait that night for the tagger to fix the amendment. Cost is fairly low for the extra spray paint, and the wall already needed repainting so no extra cost there. The main cost comes from the stakeout and the social cost of having obscene message in highly visible areas. Chance of success? Probably not very high. I don’t see a lot of back and forth when rivals deface their tags so why should a little insult matter to them?
2. Video cameras. Basically this is the obvious appraoch where businesses would have tog et video cameras, mount them in a hidden or out of reach area, and make sure it’s high enough resolution so the perpetrator can actually be identified. The problem here is that video cameras like that are expensive, they are easily defeated with masks or just taken out directly.
3. RFID tags. I came up with this when I decided video cameras were too expensive but it involves more infrastructure. First you need to get spray paint makers to put RFID tags in the cans, then when you show your driver’s license to buy your spray paint the RFID gets linked to your driver’s license number. Business owners need to buy a series of readers (about $20 each) to monitor the taggable parts of their building and when graffiti happens they can get the RFID that did it and give it to the police. The downsides to this plan are privacy concerns about purchases being tracked. Also the RFID signals can be blocked but then a tagger has to carry around jamming equipment which I don’t think is very likely; tagging seems be somewhat a crime of convenience.
4. Honey pot. I just thought of this one last week after seeing another under-construction building tagged. Incomplete buildings always seem like a good target. An incomplete house will be tagged but a completed house gets avoided, though fences always seem to be fair game. So the idea is to find an empty lot and put up some very cheap non-permanent pre-fab structure. Then use a stakeout or  cameras to catch those that show up to do their tagging.

Any other ideas?

Rambo – Unlike some of the Rambo movies, this one isn’t a glorification of war. It’s a lot more gritty, like opening of Saving Private Ryan style, but more so. Yeah rediculous things happen, but the wounds and deaths from the feel more real. I think it’s a good end to the series.

Jumper – This one is a good idea fairly well thought out with good action scenes, exactly what I expect from Doug Liman. It’s almost more like the pilot of a tv-show though. The conversion to a show should be relatively easy and I expect it within a few years.

Anderson Cooper kept things rolling for the most part and for the first half it was all very polite between the candidates. McCain and Romney were givent he most time to talk and Ron Paul was cut off several times after one sentence.  After awhile Huckabee reminded the moderator and questioners that the other end of the table would like some questions too and then he and Paul did get more chances to speak which is good because McCain was starting to antagonize Romney and that was getting old fast. I think my favorite part was Ron Paul (you prety much always have to put the whole name) questioning why McCain and Romney were quibbling over something said back in April 2007 when the real issue is that we’re there at all based on faulty evidence and cause. I still think if McCain wins the nomination that Huckabee will end up as his vice presidential running mate.

Democrats:

I was thinking/hoping that Edwards was goign to stay in the race at least through super Tuesday. He didn’t just end his campaign though, he suspended it. That means he retains control of all his delegates and if it’s close you’ll still see him come into play at the end. He might have enough to bring his issues to the table at the Democratic National Convention anyway.

The message of the debate was that no matter which one you choose it’ll be better than the republicans. They also both mentioned that they only differ in a few ways and agree in most things on policy. They both presented themselves well with their similarities and differences, and stopped Wolf Blitzer when he tried to stir up trouble. I still feel positive about Obama but now I also feel more positive about Clinton, and I’m thinking that I don’t want to see Wolf Blitzer moderate any more debates.

Anyway, I made it to work and the chocolate pies were devorured along with the cookies. I checked in the last of my code changes, visited with a lot of people, had a goodbye lunch. Things were good. HR person wasn’t made aware until very late that I was leaving today so my exit interview was over the phone. I found the big box of kazoos from our wedding party that was left over and I gave them out throughout the building. I gave away the cube loot people wanted and since cube space was available at the new job so I carted all the stuff I was keeping on cart to the new cube in the new building. I answered some questions at the new job and ran back to the office so I could turn in my badge before the person I needed to turn them in to went home.

I had Dan go with me to Long’s so I could get back into the building after I bought a lot of chocolate to leave on my desk so people wouldn’t have to go cold turkey. Then I said my goodbyes to those still remaining and went home. I’m going to miss working with everyone there and I hope I get a chance to work with them again in the future.

Well a co-worker was nice enough to drop me off at the corner on their way home and I was told that I couldn’t cross to my house because it was all a crime scene. I told them I lived one house away but that didn’t help and said I could go home if I could find a way into my yard without them seeing me. I thought about crossing behind my neighbor’s house but I would still have to cross to my house in view of the street and I didn’t want to have the cops irritated at me. So I called Nicole and told her the details I heard a sheriff tell the camera man from fox-35/kion-46 who was there filming and asking questions. I decided to ask how long they thought it would be.

When I asked another sheriff how long he thought it would be he asked if I was the taxi guy and I said I was. He went to check but he got caught up in helping the CSI. T alked to the camera man for awhile, learned that channels 35 and 46 share a building and that his footage goes to both of their stations. I also learned that kion-46 is owned by Clear Channel but that it is up for sale as Clear Channel is trying to sell off all their tv stations. I learned that they used dogs to track the suspects to Dougmar, a street off the opposite side of the block, that there was a bullet lodged in teh house directly across the street from ours, that the victim was in critical-critical condition which I think means they weren’t expecting him to live and indeed he died at 1AM.

After more chatting and watching the ksbw-8 reporter show up without a camera man and just trying to make due with a digital camera the sheriff returned and I asked again if I could make it to my house. He decided I could cross my neighbor’s yard in front while he paralleled be on the sidewalk. About halfway across the CSI questioned why I was there and he explained for me that it was ok and I had been waiting patiently (for about an hour and a half) as I crossed the dividing picket fence between our yards.

The block was closed off for almost 8 hours, ending at about half past midnight.

Last night on the way to the store sheriffs on foot approached us as we were about to go to the store and they asked Nicole about everything she might know to establish timelines. When we got back from the store they were still canvasing the neighborhood.

Today in the paper I learned that the shooter was 16 and they are working on charging him as an adult.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street -  Visually it was great throughout. As a story it starts off a bit slow but it still doesn’t take too long to drag you in. I don’t have experience with the stage production to compare it against and from talking to those that do I think it comes off better for it. It’s clear there is much pride in the mechanism. By the end I was taking great enjoyment from the dropping bodies.

Snatch -  A bunch of quirky characters that have occasional moments but they don’t really shine until they are all brought together in the last quarter. That’s enough to make it all worthwhile.

Carefree -  I hadn’t seen the Fred & Ginger movie before and I was delighted to see familiar sets from past movies used again. This is one of their later films and the chemistry on screen shows for it. Goo dhumor, good dancing, and I love Ginger Roger’s slow laugh.

I’ve watched the first three episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and so far I’m surprised at how well it holds up. After the pilot I thought I’d give it a chance and aside from one thing I thought didn’t fit I think it’s well thought out and it seems like there is a notion that this is going on a planned path. I like how the characters are protrayed and I like the story so far.  wherever it’s going.

They took the old ones and they took my money in exchange for the replacements I desired. I managed to get the scooter re-assembled with only one mishap. The main power was off but half way though I heard a pop and  magic smoke started pouring out of the front end of the scooter. The otehr end of the batter lead I was attaching made momentary contact with the frame and fried something. When I got it all together everything still worked except for the headlight so I’m guessing that’s what got the bonus juice.

The UPS was trivial to re-assemble after that and it’s now happily charging.

Why is Hillary Clinton so often referred to as Hillary rather than Clinton or Hillary Clinton? It seems disrespectful to me and it’s not just in the media, but in everyday life. Was it started by Fox News as a disrespectful address? I doubt that she would be referred to as President Hillary or just plain Hillary if she is elected (except maybe by Fox News). Is it done by her campaign to appear more approachable? I think that’s only part of it or maybe an attempt to take back her first name; I think The Hillary I Know  is an attempt at that. Anyone?

After seeing Huckabee’s most recent appearance on the Colbert Report, where he again asked Colbert to be his running mate, and seeing his Chuck Norris video, I think Huckabee probably has the best sense of humor out of all the candidates. On the Colbert Report there were some jokes about Huckabee not believing in evolution and since people who do’t believe in evolution tend to be very serious on the subject and not prone to jokes I decided to read more about it. It’s true that he doesn’t believe in evolution but he doesn’t have a problem with it being taught in public schools and doesn’t expect creationism to be taught there since that’s the job of the parents, also that students should determine for themselves what they believe. I’m disappointed that any potential leader wouldn’t be going along with accepted science, but I am relieved that he’s not for forcing his views on everyone else. I’m still thinking that Huckabee will end up as a Vice Presidential running mate for McCain.

RoboCop – I re-watched this in HD recently. It’s nice to not have every movie with machines be man vs machine. A lot of the technology and fashion looks very dated, I guess those go together. It’s funny for such a gritty future to have all the uniforms always perfectly spotless, the story is worth it though!

Drive Thru – Slasher flick about a drive-thru clown offing people. It borrows heavily in styling, story, and even dialog from other movies to make a moderately entertaining movie. I found the microwave death scene pretty creative and out of character for this movie. I think they just wanted it in there as a personal favorite.

Jurassic Park & The Lost World: Jurassic Park – The effects on these still hold up, which is more surprising in the case of Jurassic Park. Continuity errors don’t detract from the fun dialog and dinosaur attacks. I’ll have to revisit these when I get a powered sub-woofer.

A Daily Show and Colbert Report – I’m glad these are back on the air. They make use of a lot of archived footage and are rambling more to fill time but it still works.

Republicans:

I  haven’t really kept up to date with the Repuiblican candidates except blurbs I hear in the news. I knew next to nothing about Huckabee, Romney, or Thompson. The biggest surpise of the night for me is that out of the Republican field I liked Huckabee the most. He seems the least like a follower of the Fox News platform and most sincere in his answers. McCain was my second favorite  overall  though I like the moderate  non-campaigning McCain a lot better than the campaigning McCain. I wish Rudy Giuliani would go away, fortunately I don’t think it’ll take too long. He seems to be a lot less important than early in the campaign season. Ron Paul was asking good questions and I’m glad he’s there for that. Hopefully he’ll get some other people to think about those things when making policy. Mitt Romney comes off to me as being too slick. Like he has the answer for everything already and nothing needs new thought.  Who cares about Fred Thompson? Well I guess he thought he was being clever by suggesting that Mitt Romney liked man dates.

Democrats:

I think Clinton was strong throughout and will probably get a boost from it. I think Obama held his own but who knows how it will affect his outcome. Edwards came across to me as wanting to be president but at the same time positioning himself to be a vice-presidential candidate. Richardson seemed to start out slowly but by the end he was able to list all his experience and explain how that will help his presidency. His list of experience is indeed impressive and he managed to help make Clinton’s point that having the experience will help create change.

I still have no idea how it’ll all turn out but the coming weeks should be interesting.

Leaving the driveway we went towards the intersection with power on the way to work and quickly came across the freshly downed branch blocking both lane that took out the power line also blocking both lanes.  There’s the power outage. Luckily being in the same power block as Dominican Hospital meant that power was restored in a couple of hours. I need to replace the UPS battery that died in December. Without it when the power goes down access to 7thsign goes with it.

At work there was power and I got stuff done, but then the power went out for about 30 minutes. In the second wave of power I was almost able to complete what I went to work to work on but then the pwoer went out again and didn’t come back until about 7PM apparently. I gave up around 1:15PM, went home, and relaxed.

Zone Troopers – A Full Moon video starring Tim Thomerson (Jack Deth in the Trancers movies) as a WWII sergeant helping his squad trapped behind enemy lines. Eventually the aliens help out. It’s not great, but I’ve seen less entertaining movies certainly.

Hitman – Another movie based on a game. I’ve never played this game, but these movie adaptations are getting better in general. It has some fun action and gun action, but if you really want a fun action/gun movie I think you should check out Shoot ‘Em Up.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry – A lot of stereotypes here but it’s still pretty funny and handled fairly well. It stops making much sense towards the end but there was enough laughing throughout so I didn’t care too much.

Atonement – WWII period piece with great costumes and sets. Why is this rated over 8/10 on IMDB? I think people are desperate for war stories or something. Yes it’s all well done but I’ve been better told stories.

Bad Santa – Finally this years I saw this movie, and I’ve seen it twice now. It genuinely is a good spirit of x-mas movie, though it takes awhile to see how it might get there. According to the IMDb the “badder” version has about 20% more swearing.

Juno – This one was just good from start to finish. See this one!

Poltergeist III – Hey, it was on. I saw it long ago and didn’t think it was that great then but now I see the best part about this movie is the mirror effects. The movie revolves around them so it should, but almost every time they are pulled off perfectly. Watch it to learn mirror effects.

Loser – Hey, this was on too! This movie isn’t inherently bad, but there is absolutely no chemistry between Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari. It seems like this should have been an easy one to get right but something fell apart along the way.

HD Notes:
The Wizard of Oz in HD doesn’t just give you better colors, you get to see things like the burlap texture on the scarecrow’s face!

Flash Gordon in HD let me see that the shiny costumes weren’t just shiny fabrics, many of them were multitudes of beads sewn on.

Now that we’re in the new year I can get back on a more regular eating schedule that consists of more regular foods. I didn’t do too poorly over the holidays though; I gained 0.4 pounds from the day before Thanksgiving (November 21) through today. Now I just need to get myself to the gym.

When we walked in they handed us each $10 in Woodstock dollars and reminded us to be patient since everything is still new. We used the W-bucks to buy our pizza and drinks. The fountain drinks weren’t working yet so we got juice boxes.

It was very busy and even with a new crew our pizza came out in a timely manner and it was good!  The seating is good, the outdoor seats have heat lamps, inside there are I think 4 high-def screens, 3 or 4 arcade games, and music that is a little too loud when you’re trying to order.

For the anti-fitness, I finally found my cinnamon roll recipe and have put it on-line so I won’t lose it again.  So now those of you who like them won’t have to wait for me to get around to making more.

Man of the Century – A black and white semi-period piece. For awhile it seemed like it was going wear out the novelty but it managed to stay good to the end. I would like to have seen the silent movie title cards from the beginning breaking up the scenes.

The World’s Fastest Indian – It’s always nice to see what inspirational obsession can get you and this movie shows it well. I’m not sure why this one went away so quickly, it’s really good.

Blade: Trinity – I think I have to put this one above the second one. The directing isn’t as good, but you also don’t have a silly 15-minute CGI vampire professional wrestling match like at the end of the second one. Also Jessica Biel plays well opposite Wesley Snipes, Ryan Reynolds shows me what Dane Cook whishes his movie career was, and Parker Posey as a vampire!

Rocky II – I’d seen every Rocky movie but this one. I liked it! I liked that it started right where the first one left off. I liked the money (what little there was) going to his head and buying everything. I liked the unfurnished house. I liked the story.

 Never Too Young To Die – This is one of those movies that knows it is bad. It’s mostly really bad, but the last 15 minutes are something I think people should see. Gene Simmons as the she-male/transvestite, John Stamos, Vanity, Robert Englund.

A gopher has  moved into the yard. I think it’s feeding on the new bounty of weeds since the previous gophers moved out after decided we didn’t have anything good to eat. The gopher isn’t keeping up.

We haven’t had to turn on the heat yet.

Yesterday Nicole and I went for the season close of the Bay Meadows race track. The weather was perfect in our odd November heat wave since we were shaded and were also able to make use of an unused box. A surprising number of horses were scratched throughout the day and it was good to see them looking out for horse safety that way. Of the $20 used for betting we left with $8 which is pretty good. Now if they could just get rid of the smoking. Many of the smokers stand by the doors so you have to go through the smoke to get in or out, bleah.

Highlights for me:

• Al looked like he was having the time of his life on stage, singing with a big smile on his face.
• Althought the stage was about the size of the Catalyst stage he still managed to ride a Segway out for White & Nerdy.
• He had a medley of his older songs that must have gone on for 20 minutes with about5 quick changes thrown in there.
• During “Wanna B Ur Lover” (he pickup line song) he came out into the audience and sang them to women in the aisle.
• He did his version of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful,” which is “You’re Pitiful” while stripping off wardrobe. One of the shirts read “Atlantic Records Sucks” since they didn’t allow him to put that on his album.
• When the bomb drops in “Canadian Idiot” streamer cannons shot red and white streamers into the audience.
• During an “Al TV” interview with Michael Stipe he asks him for lyrics for a song they can collaborate on. Michael Stipe says “Everybody’s got cell phones, get real.” At the start of the encore Al sings the song he made out of it. Also everyone took out their cell phones and waved them like lighters.
• For his encore he performed “Albuquerque” which I had always hoped to see in concert but never thought I would since it’s about 11 minutes long on the album. He extended the doughnut section for another minute or two.

I made a  dessert appetizer composed of graham cracker, semi-sweet chocolate, and boysenberry butter. It ended up being a lot less sweet than I thought it would be which was a good thing since I was worried about it being too sweet. To make it I started melting chocolate chips while I got to work on the graham cracker pieces. I cut the graham crackers into quarters since ther perforations weren’t deep enough to break evenly by hand. I put the chocolate on one end of the graham cracker sticks in an attempt at a very shallow bowl and to leave an easy way to hold it without getting chocolate fingers. The best application I came up with was to use an espresso spoon to blob the right amount on and then do a swirl with the bowl in the center to spread most of the chocolate to the outside. The boysenberry butter was about 6 or 7 tablespoons of salted butter softened with boysenberry syrup added until it tasted “right”. I think that was about two tablespoons. The butter was then applied with another espresso spoon.

The final if the show I thought was great! I liked the live reveal in Chicago (where season 4 is filming right now). I liked the sous chefs they were provided and how they were delivered. It seemed to give a better look at the preparation and cooking than previous finals in Top Chef. I liked the head-to-head matchup of the food. I liked having many guest judges for the meal, and I liked the outcome! Going into it I thought Casey had an edge with her flavors as long as she didn’t panic, and Dale would be a contender if he stayed away from dough (altitude) and spicy (smoking has killed his hot receptors). I figured Hung would be excellent and finally able to bring his flavors which is exactly what happened.

So how is it? It’s very dense which makes it easy to slice and very filling. The texture is smooth, but the flavor of the cake itself is somewhat bland without the glaze. The glaze tastes a lot like a maple bar frosting. When eaten all together it’s a good combination, but probably not one I’ll be randomly wishing I had when I want cake.

They Might Be Giants were tight, moving from one song to another with few breaks in between. There were a few mistakes which probably wouldn’t have been noticed had they not apologized for them. It’s still the beginning of their tour so I guess they’re still working out the kinks. One thing is for sure and that is they were getting better as the concert went one, finishing up with two encores.

This was my first time in the Rio Theater sice it stopped being a movie theater. One the whole it was the same, but cleaned up and about the first 20 rows removed to make room for a stage and floor space. It makes for a good concert space. I’m not crazy about whomever was doing the sound though. The vocals and mid range were great, but the bass tones were muddy which made hearing what the bass was playing very difficult.

I cooled the “cake” some and could see that the fluidity was not getting any better so I decided to turn it out to see just how bad it was. After rinsing the molten sugar goo (nicely insulated in the middle) off my finger before it could burn I could see there was probably about 1/3 uncooked. The cooked part was fairly tasty though and it might work well in ramikens or added to something else; Nicole suggested crumbs on ice cream.

Now the only question is: Will I try again before Top Chef tonight?

The authors wrote in things that are references to books they have not yet written. I don’t plan on reading those because I don’t think the time between “Dune” and “Dune: Messiah” is a story that needs to be told.

Spoilers coming – how I see what Frank Herbert intended:

I don’t think the final enemy is meant to be a machine intelligence. In “Children of Dune” when Paul and Leto confront one another about the future it is just mentioned that the nuclear arsenal is meant for hostile intelligences. I believe the final enemy is how it appears to be set up in “Chapterhouse: Dune” which is face dancers that rule themselves. Throughout “Sandworms of Dune” the machines hardly play a role while the face dancers have infiltrated every top level of human society and are preparing to take over through sabotage and politics within.

I do believe that Duncan was meant to be the Kwisatz Haderach and that’s why he can see the old man and woman, which should be advanced face dancers. I believe part of the God-Emperor’s ghola program for Duncan was that some connection to the face dancers be put in place. The advanced face dancers have a sort of hive mind and I believe that power is what eventually is manifested in Duncan in Frank Herbert’s original outline and notes to allow the defeat or control of the face dancers.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – This movie is all over the place. At times it’s fantastic, at times the acting is horrible, the fight scene isn’t very good. But those good moments far outweigh the bad and every scene with Walter Huston was movie stealing awesome. While I was watching it I was thinking about how much it reminded me of Tresspass and looking up the Trespass trivia I found that Treasure is what it was loosely based on.

 The Great New Wonderful – An odd collection of post-911 stories. Some of them work and some you just wait for the more interesting ones to return. Stephen Colbert has the best line which I’m putting in here because it’s cool and you probably won’t see the movie: “No, actually he’s a selfish, incorrigible monster with a heart made of shit and splinters.”

Balls of Fury – I’m not sure I’d want to own a copy of this but it’s the kind of movie that I’d watch whenever I happened across it on cable. On second thought maybe I do want to own a copy; I certainly want to see it again.

I’ve watched some first episodes of  shows and here’s what we’ve found that we might pursue further:

•  Californication – The first thing that’s made me not think of David Duchovny in an X-Files kind of way. It’s entertaining so far.
• Chuck – An odd spy comedy with occasional good action. It has a Greatest American Hero feel to it and I can’t see it lasting long.
• Pushing Daisies – An Addams Family level of dark comedy that’s a lot of fun. I hope this manages to stay around.
• Lipstick Jungle – The stories of three driven career women and how they deal written by Candace Bushnell. I don’t think it’s quite found its rhythm yet. Nicole liked it but doesn’t think it’ll last long.
• The Big Bang Theory – The first sit-com I’ve watched in forever. It’s about two two ultra-nerdy physicists trying to make friends with the new (female) neighbor.  I don’t think this constant level of nerdiness has been shown before and while it was pretty funny, I don’t know how long it’ll continue to be on tv.

The only series we’re currently watching is Mad Men, about Maddison Avenue ad men in the early 1960s. I originally saw part of an episode at Jeanne’s house and decided to give it a shot. At first the misogynistic sentiments and level of cigarette smoke set the stage for the time well but are hard to get past. Once you accept that as the environment for the show you can start appreciating the story going on.

Finally, since we now have a region-free DVD player Nicole was able to bring me back the Spaced  definitive collectors’ edition box set from her UK visit complete with homage-o-meter for seeing all the references in a given scene.

The downside of the trip is that it wore Nicole out and now she has a cold.

Happy Gilmore – It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it but it’s still great. Also I think the deleted scenes from when his grandma’s house is being packed up should have been left in.

The Shaolin Drunken Monk (Shao Lin zui ba quan) – This film is capitalizing on Gordon Liu’s popularity from Master Killer/36th Chamber. The action is good, the drunken training is good, the voice overs are so bad they’re good.

The Bourne Ultimatum – The first movie was great, the second movie was fun but didn’t really have direction, this one was back to the feeling of the first one. It mirrored the first one in the action and look, had good suspense, good action, and was a good wrap to the series. I’d even see this one a few more times.

Poison Ivy: The New Seduction – Another movie where the third was better than the second. Not to say it wasn’t rediculous, but it’s entertaining similar to how the first one was.

Bandidas – Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz wanted to make a western/comedy and this is what came out. It’s a fun movie!

The Legend of Zorro – The string of good sequels ends here. Not that it was a horrible movie, just missing some things to make it flow together and when you see the deleted scenes you’ll see why. This is the first movie I’ve seen where I think all the deleted scenes should have been included. It’s clear that they were cutting to get the time down, but when you’re already at 130 minutes those extra bits don’t make much of a difference and the resulting movie would have been MUCH better. The only scenes not cut for time were the original beginning and ending. The studio cut those because they wanted to option for more sequels with the same stars, but seeing how long this one took to make that clearly isn’t going to happen. The framing from the original beginning and end would have improved the movie as well.

Stomp the Yard – I like movies about breakdancing and this is kind of one so I had to see it. Fairly predictable plot to hold the dance/stomp stuff; the dancing isn’t as good as You Got Served, but the acting is oscar-worthy by comparison.

Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia) – Another awesome movie from Yimou Zhang! The sets are amazing, the colors are amazing, the cleavage is costumes are amazing! Really though, you can’t go wrong with Yimou Zhang directing Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat in a period piece.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – I hadn’t seen any Russ Meyers movies so I decided it was time to change that with three well known ones. The dialogue is awesome, the acting and action is laughable but it doesn’t matter. Generally low budget movies like this don’t look this good. I thought the guy who played the old man was great. Thumbs up.

Motor Psycho – Again, great dialogue and look and with better acting this time. Unfortunately even though it was only 75 minutes it started to drag towards the end

Supervixens – This one is in color and I think I liked Russ Meyers’ look in black and white better. This movie has more comedy in it and by the end it gets pretty strange. I thought the barn sex scene was really funny. After these three movies I have a good idea what to expect from his movies:

• Women with large breasts (but I knew that going in)
• Car chases and/or long shots of driving
• Fight scenes
• Maybe a rattlesnake bite/suck out the poison scene
• Lots of fight/death scenes
• Sex scenes
• People being blown up

Once home I verified the wasp was still there and then I just had to wait for the wasp to get within reach. I wasn’t about to get on a step stool since I figured I might seriously hurt myself in an escape attempt. I had to wait for it to crawl down to spray it, and then a second time, and then a third time, and then a fourth time. Kills in seconds is true when it’s about 1000 seconds. I was just outside the kitchen waiting when I heard it fall to the floor. I looked just in time to see it right itself and fly into the kitchen window where I lost sight of it.

I looked carefully in case it was just pissed off and waiting to strike, but I saw no evidence of a wasp. While I waited I munched on the snack food I bought when I got the bug spray so I wouldn’t be subject to another sneak attack in the kitchen. A couple hours later and I looked more thoroughly and still no sign of the wasp. My best theory is that it crawled under the window in the track but moving the windows hasn’t turned up a body yet. I’m satsfied I won’t be troubled by that wasp again.

Anyway, Nicole’s machine now has an energy efficient power supply and an AMD64 processor that tops out at 45W. With it slowing down when not in use, it actually spends most of its time using around 15W. Tomorrow I need to recycle all these boxes, donate the working old parts and take the rest to e-waste recycling.

Hey, anyone want a Panasonic A310 dvd player? It still plays any non-recordable media I throw at it. It has a slightly chewed, but working, remote and still has the manual.

I found on some random hardware message board with messages from a few years ago discussing motherboards with similar failures. They were from about when I got mine (6 years ago) and the failure apparently was drawing too much current from the power supply, making sure to take the pwoer supply with it.

I was planning to do the computer upgrade next year and wasn’t really prepared for this, but I kept in mind my goals for the new machine: to be quiet, to be energy efficient, to be relatively inexpensive, and to be upgradable. I picked up a low-end motherboard sporting AMD’s most recent CPU socket since they change sockets less often than Intel and upcoming processors will be backwards compatible. The CPU is an AMD X2 4600; I’m coming from a dual AMD 1900 world so the speed bump isn’t as huge as it might be coming from a single processor, but the tripling of the RAM speed makes the difference quite noticable. An extra bonus, my old CPUs were about 70-75W each, but the new dual core processor is just 65W by itself and it can be clocked more slowly when not in heavy use for even more power savings. The motherboard has pretty much everything built into it so I have no extra cards installed right now which also helps with cooling and air-flow though if I can’t get the on-board graphics to start driving two monitors I may have to resort to buying a video card.

The RAM was a good brand and on sale so I picked up 4GB. The only thing that kept the previous set of hardware from feeling old and slow after 6 years was the 3GB of RAM in it so I knew I didn’t want less than that.

I wanted to keep my hard drives since they have plenty of life in them. The only problem is that modern motherboards are all Serial ATA and I have old-school drive interfaces. So I picked up some adapters for them that I had only heard would exist when Serial ATA came on the scene. Despite seeming a little sketchy with not even a sheet showing what to hook up and just being a bare circuit board they work perfectly!

The new power supply is an Antec NEO HE (high efficiency) power supply. It’s definitely the heaviest PC power supply I’ve used. It is part of the new wave of pwoer supplies that is about 20% more energy efficient, which means it hovers around 80% efficiency. It controls its fan based on temperature, but with not enough noise that I can hear so far. Another nice feature is that you only plug in the cables you will be using in the system so there is no need to find a place to stash all those loose ends; yet another bonus for air flow!

The result? Something much faster, much quieter, much more energy efficient, and hopefully a platform that will last awhile. Oh yeah, a most of the components are RoHS compliant which means they don’t have the usual nasty stuff used for building electronics.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – I thought this was a good ending to the series, while touching on corporate influence on government and focusing on how corporations try to stomp on the rights of individuals. The final battle is also something I hadn’t seen before.

Night at the Museum – I thought this was going to be fairly light, but it ended up being solid fun all the way through. Dick van Dyke is over 80 and he can still dance!

Knocked Up – This movie had a lot more depth than I was expecting, and it was a lot longer than I was expecting from a comedy. It’s at its best when it’s playing for pure comedy or for the serious moments, when it can’t decide which one to choose it seems to be at its weakest.

Idiocracy – Have you ever feared for the future of society when you look at all the dumb-asses out there? This movie shows you a potential path things might take. I have to recommend this to everyone. It’s funny too, which sometimes makes you wonder if you’re one of the dumb-asses.

Transformers – Who doesn’t like giant robots?!

Anastasia – We watched this again just to make sure everything was hooked up again in the tv-room. It’s still has good songs, is well animated, has good voice talent, and is a good story.

Rocky Balboa – The finale to the Rocky series and it’s right up there with the first one. It gives a good feeling of his loneliness in his search and has been popping into my head in the days since I’ve watched it. If you liked the Rocky movies, or even just the first one, see this.

The Painted Veil – A relationship in the midst of a cholera epidemic. It starts in a broken place and the changes are smooth and subtle. It doesn’t seem like things have changed until you think back to where they were and that makes this one worth watching.

I tried booting into the Window recovery console, but that told me that I had no hard drives in my system. I figured I was going to be buying and installing another hard drive. I tried different controllers, and different cables to see if that would help but no change.

Finally I was resolved to trying to salvage data and get a new hard drive so I plugged it in as a slave on Nicole’s computer. That managed to boot after trying chkdsk and failing with something like: Unspecified disk error. That’s good for confidence building. I set it for the thorough fixing and had it reboot into that and after about an hour it repaired the file system! I lost all my bookmarks, but I had a recent enough copy that I was able to restore. Yay!

Pilot: Why, hello, everyone! This is your captain, Bud Howard, and your copilot, Harvey the Rabbit. The FCC or FCA… Some fancy organization told me to tell you that I have to show you a very low-budget and entertaining movie on how to act on a United flight. Basically, if you’ve been around the past 50 years you know how to put on a seatbelt. You can’t be jumpin’ up and down like a jimmy-cricket, and the sooner you watch it the sooner I can push this big mother. Lastly, my young Jedi here says he’ll fly us so I’m going to take a little nap while our copilot does everything. Relax. Anyone doesn’t know what I said, find the nearest southerner and ask for a translation.

–LaGuardia

See that windowed deck/bar that goes across the front and hangs over the sides some? I’d put a moving red light in there to make it an ocean cylon or an ocean Knight Rider.

Do foot fetishists have to work at keeping their cool going through airport security?

From when I was brushing my teeth last night:

If we develop intelligent machines, are we going to ban and destroy all copies of movies and books about man/machine war? Seems like you wouldn’t want them to know you’re afraid of them.

Would that then extend to media with scenes of violence against machines like the destruction of the fax machine in Office Space?

The Pursuit of Happyness – Everyone like nothing to something stories. This one avoids sap and forceful attempts at manipulating the viewer and ends up being very enjoyable.

The Holiday – It’s like two movies in one and neither could have stood on its own. Kate Winslet’s story is the more interesting of the two but that’s mostly because of Arthur, played by Eli Wallach.

The Queen – I’m not big on royals. I barely know who is who and I didn’t pay much attention when Princess Diana died except to feel sorry for her sons. That said, I really enjoyed this movie for showing some of how they have had to adapt to society changing over time. I’d like to see a movie that just focused on that.

Film Geek – The story of someone really, really obsessed with film. He can’t really talk about anything else. It has moments that are really funny and never ventures into the slow boring area. I also think following the early 80s John Hughes model for the story gives it an extra boost.

She’s the Man – Twelfth Night set in a high school. It’s a good adaptation and it’s funny all the way through. This is definitely one to see if you haven’t yet.

Thank You For Smoking – There’s probably not any movie that explains the lobbying system we have currently better than this movie. At the same time it pushes a message of personal responsibility and manages to be funny.

Hollywoodland – I’m not really sure where this one went wrong. I thought the acting is fine by all involved, the pacing seems ok, but all through the movie I just didn’t care about anyone in it. Maybe it’s because I was flying to Atlanta.

Music and Lyrics – I wasn’t really expecting anything from this but it ended up being really cute and fun. Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant surprisingly work well on the screen together and the pokes at the 80s are a lot of fun.

Disturbia – The movie that is supposedly like Rear Window. It’s kind of like that, but I think a closer match for movie comparisons is The Hitcher. I like how all the characters are played.

Hot Fuzz – Best comedy of the year right here! It starts out more like Spaced and then gets more Shawn of the Dead in feel. The early tag-line of “from the guys who watched every action movie ever made” makes a lot more sense now.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Anything with Robert Downey Jr. is alright by me. The next day the movie was still in my head and I wanted to watch it again. Just writing this is reminding me how much I want to watch it again. You should watch it again too, even if it’s the first time.

Children of Men – It started well. I bought into the vision of how humanity would behave without a hope for the future. But then when the waring factions started doing dumb things and all the interesting characters got killed I discovered that I really didn’t care what happened to the main characters which made the last 30 minutes or so really bleah. I kept going to the end hoping for an improvement but no reprieve for me.

28 Weeks Later – This one had potential to be good. It doesn’t have to ask you to buy the dumb mechanics of the Rage virus since that is established in the first film. It starts well in how it shows clean-up and containment working and then it just gets dumb. It stayed visually interesting to the end but there was no chance of being scared. People in the theater were laughing by the end and it wasn’t being played for laughs.

On the home front, we bought a fountain for the front yard but it isn’t in place yet. I’ve added another irrigation zone to better handle parts of the front yard, and I planted 3 heirloom tomatoes, a serpent cucumber, and an Israeli melon, all provided by a co-worker. Painting of the tv toom is about to happen, followed by carpet, followed by the couch which is now delayed 2-3 weeks to mid to late July.

Oh yeah, last week Grover and Sage got in some disagreement during a 10-15 minute window from the time I left to the time Nicole got home. Sage ended up the worst with a bruise above her eye, a cut below her eye, and a flap of skin torn under her jaw. Grover had a cut on his leg. Both required staples for their cuts. I was hoping to go to the Maker’s Faire on Saturday but figured we should stay around to watch Grover and his bandage. Grover hadn’t shown any tendency to mess with his bandaged and taped leg whether we were present or not, except while we were gone today. He unwrapped the whole thing and then pulled out his staples but didn’t otehrwise mess with the wound. He was already scheduled to return to the vet tomorrow so they could check his bandage. We’ve re-bandaged it for now.

Oh yeah, we went to the Artichoke Festival today, saw some cool vegetable sculpture, bought a case of artichokes cheap, and finished off the day with frozen custard.

Shortly after arriving downtown I walked by a shoe store and some shoes caught my eye. The sign said up to 50% off so I decided I would go back later. Off I wandered, to find a snow globe for Nicole and maybe some frozen custard. I found the snow globe but didn’t get it in case I ran across a better one later. Then my mom called randomly and hearing I was in Atlanta said I needed to check out the underground.

I found the underground, and it’s really neat to be walking on old restored street. The stores are mostly generic, but I found some replacement singing magnets and some good fudge.

The World of Coke was closed and the New World of Coke doesn’t open until later tis month so I went there at the exact wrong time for a Coke pilgrimage.

In Atlanta there is a lot of music played on speakers outside of businesses. Not to drive people away, just to have music. So when I exited the underground and walked by the big Coke sign and heard some jazz I didn’t think anything of it. Then as I kept walking it sounded not like it was from small speakers and it was really good, and then I was at a park where apparently on Wednesdays for lunch there are concerts. The performer was William Green. He would throw in things liek Birdland in the middle of a song or the Jefferson’s theme, saying it was to see if we were paying attention. Afterwards I went up to give him all my money $9. CDs were $10 but I didn’t care if I got one or not. I told him I appreciated the Birdland and I ended up with a CD. I want his current CD now. I recommend seeing him in person if you get the chance.

Anyway, back to the shoes… I got back to the shoe store and found one fo the pairs I liked and asked if they had my size. They didn’t but they had a close size so I tried that. It wasn’t right, but it was enough that I could tell that if it were in my size it would be the most comfortable shoes I had ever worn. Good thing they weren’t right though because they were $700. But with the sale I could get a second pair for free. The shoes are made by Fennix and one of the pairs I liked looked similar to these. The pictures of the ones I liked don’t seem to be available anymore which is a shame because the blue ones were great!

You might be wondering about the frozen custard. I’d only had it once before in 1996 or 1997 when I attended a friend’s wedding in Virginia Beach. It was the best frozen treat I’d ever had and was disappointed that it’s pretty much an east coast and mid-west thing. This was my chance to get some but it wasn’t just waiting for me out in the open. I told my co-worker about it and he decided he needed to try some. After the meeting, we were taken to a Korean food feast which was very good, but it was clear we weren’t going to get custard there. So when we got back to the hotel we looked up directions to a custard place, called to maek sure they were going to be open, and finally got frozen custard. It was just as good as I remembered. It was good enough that my co-worker suggested we come back the next day before heading to the airport (we did).

The second day the meeting was earlier but I had enough time to head back downtown and get Nicole the snow globe and experience the escalator where if you are going up and tilt your head at a 45 degree angle to match the tile it feels like you are just travelling horizontally.

Upon returning and telling Fish about the custard his response was “You can get that in San Jose!” And sure enough you can! You only get vanilla, chocolate on weekends, and it’s not quite as smooth as ther others I’ve had but it’s still great! We’ve been twice already. Now if only it were in Santa Cruz.

Atlanta as a whole? Everyone seemed nice there. Not just pleasant or polite, but nice. I think it’s funny that there is so much construction that the city slogan is “Everyday is an opening day.” As far as I can tell they close highway lanes every night just so they can re-open them in the morning.I don’t know that I’d want to live there, but I did enjoy my visit.

In the Hertz shuttle the LED display that showed the time and date was claiming it was November 30, 2026. The time was almost correct but it hadn’t been adjusted for daylight savings time yet.

The Hertz desk was having problems using their computer to find a car for us. I guess technology isn’t so hot in Chicago.

Since being back I’ve been told that Chicago has two seasons, Winter and construction. This was definitely construction season. We were cruising on the freeway to get to our hotel. A helpful sign pointed out that our exit was closed and we should take the exit before it as a detour. That sign is placed so you’ll only see it as you are passing the detour exit and the next exit was 15 minutes away. after going 30 minutes out of our way we made it to the hotel in Evanston.

The next morning was business breakfast in the hotel followed by a 3-hour meeting. Then a business lunch int he hotel, followed by another 3-hour meeting. Then there were informal but essential meetings in the hallway afterwards. Then it was time to go to the airport.

Evanston seems like a nice place and the return trip to the airport showed me a large Jewish population (bagel shops, kosher delis, two large temples). The houses have some really nice brick work on them. I was surprised a lot of trees weren’t starting to get leaves yet so a lot of areas looked barren, but it was neat seeing people paddle their little boats in the streams. I think I need to go check it out without business betting in the way.

Is there an iron bottomed wok that is flat on the outside but curved on the inside?

On the 7th Avenue side it said “Expect Looong Delays,” but I guess that wasn’t considered appropriate so it was changed to “Expect -Long- Delays.” On the San Lorenzo side it still says “Looong.”

This was supposed to be the 3D Sonic that most captures what Sonic is like in the 2D games and for the most part that’s true. When you have control you steer left and right and aside from that Sonic runs as fast as he can. Upgrades come later that let you go faster and have better handling. The controls fall apart in the jumping I think. The jump happens on the jump button release instead of on the button press so it lags behind when you wanted to jump. The developers chose this so you could charge your jump for a higher jump by holding the button down, but the higher jump is accomplished in other games by holding the jump button while in the air which I think works better.

Overall it’s pretty good, but I’d probably only get it after it gets discounted to $20 or less.

Voted most deadly of the chocolate dishes last night was Black bottom chocolate pie prepared by Shelley. Second was the chocolate mousse brought by Ian.

My arms feel their arm workout from mixing the extremely thick cookie dough. That’s the thickest cookie dough I’ve every worked with.

I ran into a hitch making the Chantico death cake, it turns out Starbucks hasn’t sold Chantico in over a year. Nicole told me that she thought they made it with half-and-half so we got some of that and then I looked it up and found a few recipes for similar chocolate drinks. They used whole milk or evaporated wilk with heavy cream. I decided to go for the half-and half since it’s what I had on short notice and it came out a little thicker than would be drinkable, but not quite as thick as pudding. I decided to go for it anyway. I don’t think it really enhanced the cake portion but the “Chantico” frosting was really potent. I can imagine that with the real thing it would have been impressive but unfortunately this can’t really be duplicated anymore.

He was having fun with tennis and then he wanted me to demonstrate bowling. I was careful to avoid the conference room table, but in the third frame my hand hit my badge that was hanging from my right hip in its hard plastic case. It didn’t hurt much so I didn’t bother with it, but then I happened to see blood on it a few minutes later. My knuckle took abou t15 minutes sto stop bleeding from the slice.

I know it’s minor compared to what you see on wiihaveaproblem, but I had to share.

It feels like we’re almost at the borderline fo critical mass for keeping everything running.

I was talking to a contractor who is disappointed because instead of working on doing something new for this new project she’s just reshuffling the old stuff into new piles to look new. I know what it’s like to have the excitement when working on something new. I had it briefly this past December for the demo. I’ve been lucky in my career in that I’ve been able to work on three satisfying from scratch projects. Being able to work on a project like that shows you how monotonous the rest of it is. So yeah, this new project is going to start and it’s a from scratch client, except for all the baggage of how the server will feed the client which makes the new client a lot like the old client.

I’m ready for something else.

The moment where it completely lost it for me is when, seeing that she needed to consult someone about premonitions, goes to the local priest. He happens to have a book of premonitions (and other psychic phenomenon?) handy with all the premonition stories and how they ended bookmarked. Then you get the out of place speech about faith. I’m guessing there used to be a lot more with that character, really they should have cut that out completely. While they were at it they could have jumped right to the end.

After seeing how much I was enjoying playing Excite Truck at Julie & Fish’s house Nicole got me a copy. It’s a fun arcade racer with a good feeling of speed like you get in the Burnout series, but it doesn’t have good crashes and it’s all off-road. It lets you go fairly far off-track before you are told you’re going the wrong way or hitting a boundary which lets you do things like fall a hundred feet off a cliff and climb the 70 degree incline back into the race.

It makes you take 5 minutes to run through a very basic tutorial before racing which is probably a good thing but for the impatient it might be a little frustrating. With the basics down you pick up the rest pretty quickly while racing. After 20 minutes of play I picked up everything that was in the later lessons except for the mid-air truck spins. Why do you want to do truck spins? For points. Everything has points associated with it and in head to head races it’s points that determine the winner. Finishing first gives you a bigger bonus though so there’s still incentive to race better. Anyway, totally fun arcade racer!

I was also able to repair almost all the damage to the irrigation system so most of the plants should be getting water again. There is still more work beyond the repairs, mainly in setting up drip rings for the trees and drip lines for the bamboo so they start getting enough water. After that I can evaluate whether I need to split the system for different watering needs.

I also chose the two “deadly” chocolate recipes I’m going to make for Mortal Chocolate. The Chantico Death Cake and Carol’s Chocolate Death Cookies.

The Number 23 I wanted to see because 23 is my favorite number, but not for any connection to the movie. The efforts the main character goes through to come up with the number 23 get more rediculous as the movie goes on and I wasn’t caring about any of the characters by the time the end came around. I liked the visual separation of the story within the story, and I liked Virginia Madsen, but overall it was disappointing.

Black Snake Moan we saw even though it isn’t a horror movie because Tami likes Samuel L Jackson. The music was good and the scene with title song that the movie was built around was a joy to watch. The Aside from that the movie kind of meanders but stays entertaining all the way though.

Zodiac was easily the best movie we saw all week. We say a 9:30 showing and even though it is 2 hours 40 minutes is was engaging until the end. Definitely see this one.

Dead Silence was the only real horror movie we saw but I didn’t find it scary or tense. It’s a pretty decent ghost story and the effects were good. I really enjoyed the travelling scene changes and Donnie Wahlberg as the detective. The ending was well done too I thought. The scares for me at least weren’t there. The jump scares were in predictable places.

Nicole and I wanted to see Wild Hogs because the trailer was funny. The movie was funny too except for the sappy buddy buddy part towards the end, but I saw it coming so it wasn’t so bad. John Travolta lots some weight and is looking pretty good again too.

I was most concerned about Opera’s data since that’s also my e-mail reader and note keeper. I didn’t realize how much I had in there. Quicken was the easiest to restore and Trillian was a little tricky, but not too bad.

Next up is installing the sound card drivers, the extra IDE drivers, and catching up on everyone’s pages so I know what’s going on in everyone’s lives.

Date: Sunday, April 1, the day before Passover starts
Time: 6:30PM

Making something is not a requirement for attending, but if you feel inclined, I would like for people to make a recipe found here and bring it for all to judge its deadliness. Previous winners have the round they won next to them and items italicized are not deadly enough. If you see a recipe you would like to make, please let me know so I can put your name next to it to help avoid duplicates.

This time I’d like all recipes there by 7PM to start the tasting. Last time late entries didn’t get tasted as much since people were chocolated out.

At Nicole’s mom’s house we went to Sacramento to paint more this past weekend. We got two coats of paint on two of the bedrooms, got the bathroom cleaned up, got two coats of paint on the living room, finished painting the dining room, and we got a single coat on the kitchen. Preping the kitchen was pretty time consuming with all the lines and the mess to clean up under the microwave and refrigerator, and the countertop needing to be re-caulked. Dean & Marcia cleaned up the kitchen and the garage and got one of the bedroom lights working and are workign on fixing the garage door opener.

Next Sunday we go up for finishing touches and another coat of paint on the kitchen.

I just finished reading To Infinity and Beyond – A Cultural History of the Infinite by my favorite math historian, Eli Maor. You don’t need a strong math background to enjoy the book, but it probably helps. It covers the various struggles people have had over time with the infinite and how they approached it, starting with the greeks and moving up to current day (though astronomy of the last 20 years makes it look a little dated). I think it provides a good overview of infinity (hehe) and I’m sure there is something new for just about anyone who reads it.

Then on Monday we cleaned our house and pulled weeds. I don’t know where they came from but there were hundreds of grass seedlings growing on the surface of the crushed granite paths. Definitely not growing from underneath. I focused on pulling those before they got established.

Thanks to Liana for suggesting latex dipped knit gloves. They are small enough to work in and breathe and protect my hands. Unfortunately I can’t find them big enough but I’m doing ok with what I found.

Bowl 1
• 4 bay leaves
• 6 cloves
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp asafoetida

Bowl 2
• 1 tsp corriander
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp ginger powder
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp cashew butter
• 5 tbsp + 2 tsp water

Bowl 3
• 2 tbsp packed of fresh chopped cilantro
• 3/8 tsp cayenne

Other ingredients
• 1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken cubed
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp tumeric

Steps
1. Heat oil in a large pan on medium and fry contents of bowl 1 for 1 minute
2. Add chicken and tumeric and stir fry for 5 minutes
3. Add a spoonful from bowl 2 and stir until the liquid is absorbed (about 2 minutes). Repeat about 5 times until bowl 2 is empty.
4. Add the contents of bowl 3 and stir fry for another 2 to 3 minutes.

Also I added a plugin that should allow you to get e-mail notifications to replies for a given post. I haven’t tested it, but it should allow you to get notified when new comments are posted on a post so you don’t have to check back or bother with an RSS feed.

The other important part of hitting 195 is that it’s the weight I picked to actually get an exercise regimen going. I’d better get to work on that.

Technology is made use of thousands of years before it is invented. They have ignored information from the last chapter of the 6th book. They have a character running around afraid something will get found out when two other characters know it already and the character afraid of discovery should know they know (again from the 6th book). These things and more can be overlooked to get the story out, and the story telling is entertaining, but seeing these inconsistencies jar me out of the reading. I find it irritating that they didn’t even have someone who recently read the original novels read their new novels to point out any inconsistencies so they could be fixed.

I’ll still read the finishing novel but then I’m done with any other Dune novels they might write. I hope they decide to release Frank Herbert’s outline and notes when they are done. I’d like to see what was intended.

Later this week I’ll make my own chicken broth to have around for occasions like this.

This past week I had my own cheffy feeling. I needed to do something with the chicken I was going to put with the Vietnamese garlic & ginger fried rice. I started smelling the spices, which is something that I couldn’t really do before allergy treatments, and picked corriander. That wasn’t enough so I kept going and decided on garam masala. I seasoned the chicken pieces with both spices and cooked them in a pan with some piccante olive oil which gave it a spicy after-taste. Yum!

Also, with this theme if you click options you can set the colors you want to view with, unless you are
using the Opera browser like me in which case clicking Options is more of a way to pass time without any
results except for some light finger exercise.

Related to that, should I allow readers to select the theme they want to view with? There are plugins that
allow that and it might be fun. That way if I choose a theme that you think is ugly you can keep going with
one you like.

Stupid Why didn’t that get rid of it?

Stupid machines hate me.

$@#$%!

After having played the Nintendo Wii briefly after Thanksgiving, Nicole and I decided it would be our holiday gift to one another. Unfortunately around that time they became impossible to find unless you had nothing else to do during your days except camp at stores hoping for a shipment. On Thursday I heard that a lot of stores were going to have a lot of Wii on Sunday, and GameStop was having $50 off if you traded in your old Gamecube which is a good deal since the Wii plays all those old games. Saturday night I confirmed that GameStop would have some in stock and rather than wait another month for probably the next chance to get one I got up at 4AM and got there at 5AM. No one else arrived until 6:15. By 7:30 there were 5, and by the time the store opened there were probably 40 groups in line for what turned out to be 20 units. A kid waiting for the store open and trying to peer in was singing “Wii” over and over to the tune of the Imperial March, and another kid trying to peer in ended up in a kneeling position that made it look like he was praying for a Wii.

More errands on Sunday kept us from playing it until Sunday night. The dogs seem to be freaked out by the Wii Bowling as we do things they haven’t seen before going through the bowling motions. We actually had to put them in another room. I think they’ll adjust soon enough.

I’m ready for a slow week to relax.

I’m guessing next month’s PG&E bill will be HUGE!

There are a lot of fire engines zooming around throughout the day, more than in summer months. A lot of people are having chimney fires and wall.floor heater fires.

This morning I had to go back to work and I knew the scooter ride would be slow because the batteries hate that. Instead of 25mph I was cruising at 15-20mph, mostly 15. On the way to work I saw a traffic signal out. I was near downtown so I figured downtown power was out. A number of us couldn’t get into the building until someone came out. Nicole called right after I got in the building and power was out at home too. Turns our that power was out almost everywhere except Watsonville. They say they still don’t know why it happened, but at least it was only out for an hour.

A co-worker got stuck in the elevator and I learned that you can’t pull the doors open like in the movies. I’m sure use of a big lever would have helped but not without breaking something. Turns out there are no emergency lights in the elevator so it took him awhile to find the phone and he definitely couldn’t read the emergency numbers inside.

Lay’s Sensations Sweet Chili & Sour Cream – I think it only was on the market for two months but it instantly jumped to the top of my potato chip list. Kettle cooked with great flavor!

Frito-Lay says that the whole Sensations line of chips wasn’t selling well on a national level but they passed my comments on so I get to home for a resurgence some day.

Hershey’s Kisses Dulce de Leche – White chocolate kisses with dulce de leche in them. Mmmmmmmmmm.

Hershey says that they were a limited edition item but that they are coming back but they don’t know when yet.

Black Cherry Vanilla Coke – I never liked the Cherry Coke and the Vanilla Coke was only good ice cold (not real vanilla). Black Cherry Vanilla Coke has real vanilla and tastes good from ice cold to room temperature.

Coke says that they still make it but that it’s up to the local bottler to produce for our region. They also suggested that I check other stores and gave me the number of the bottler to call, but I haven’t called them yet.

Tangentially related, when did Yngwie Malmsteen get fat, and how does that not interfere with his playing?

When you drive in you pay and they tell you to turn off your headlights and turn your radio to 104.1 to listedn to holiday music. Then you cruise through slowly in a line of cars past all sorts of animated lights for 10-15 minutes.

Information wise it’s good. I didn’t know that radioactive sources were used in paper and steel mills to detect that the sheets are the correct thickness. And I didn’t know that we had used radioactive tagging to determine what plants absorb and in what quantities to determine the optimal fertilizer. Some of it is out dated because I don’t think we put small radioactive quantities into gas and oil pipelines to trigger a switch to redirect slow down the line. Seems like that would be some computer control now. It briefly goes over problems and dangers, usually followed by how quickly and effectively they can be cleaned up.

Now after having read it, I can say that for many it is what they look to achieve. They view sex or the illusion of sex as their road to power and popularity. There is a lot of information in the 200 pages but some of what the book covers is the origins of today’s state in the early feminist movement with the split between open sexuality and anti-pornography, the effect on school-aged girls, and the commodity that raunch has become. I recommend it.