Doug's Sounding Board

From Overheard in New York:

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

“Thank you for flying ______ Airlines. I hope you enjoyed the in-flight movie, I know I sure did!”

Tuesday I was feeling the allergies strongly and took my last Allegra.
Wednesday I had my allergy shots for an increased allergy load and I didn’t make it to the pharmacy to get a prescription refill. My head filled up.
Thursday I got more Allegra in the morening and I had some draining throughout the day. Sudafed helped keep most of it away.
Friday morning (2:10AM) I woke up to all of it wanting to come out. After an hour and a half I tried going back to bed but it wasn’t done yet. I think the revier is finally drying up.

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.

From when I was in the Chicago O’Hare airport security line when everyone was taking off their shoes:

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?

Movies going back to early April!

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.

I’ve kind of missed out on the last month of reading about people’s lives, even on icb where I’m just paging through text between meetings. I think I’m caught up now, mostly. Now there are just evites to go through. I don’t expect this to get better any time soon since my day job project is about to enter the development phase on very aggressively scheduled project and the night job project is finally getting work from me.

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.

Similar to the trip to Chicago, work sent me to Atlanta at the beginning of the month for two meetings on two different days. That left me time to wander around before the afternoon meetings happened. I like the MARTA train system they have, it’s quick and convenient for getting down town. Downtown has some nice free maps available and a lot of people who look like they have nothing better to do than to lean against walls. They probably don’t.

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.

Work sent me to Chicago two weeks ago. My co-workers and I flew in at night (late because United likes delays). The escalator leading out of concourse C had a video screen on each side of it. The boot device for the PC driving those screens had failed and you could see “Operating System Not Found” on the screen.

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.

I mean besides to take care of an itch. It seems likely that the cause of an itch is often some external irritant so scratching might elliminate that irritant or bring your attention to it. What I noticed the other day though as I was having an allergic reaction is that scratching increases blood flow to that area. So perhaps another reason is to get blood to the area so white blood cells can deal with anything that needs to be dealt with.