Doug's Sounding Board

Not slow at work, work had a costume party with much beer so there was a lot of loud people running around in costume. Also not for my stomach. I’ve been eating well but yesterday I decided to eat tons of sugar and it was great! 4 cup cakes, 6 mini Hershey bars, 4 cookies, a mimi Twix, 3 sodas, a Take 5. I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting since it was pretty much all afternoon.

The slow was the candy giving at home. By 7 no one was there and then we left, leaving the bag of candy on the front step. Only about 5 pieces were taken while we were gone. I’m guessing that’s because parents told their kinds not to be greedy or they thought they were being watched.

While I was off I got a chance to see a few movies and I finished watching season 1 of Scrubs (thanks to Cathi for pointing me there).

First up is Many of the Year. It was entertaining overall but as a whole it was uneven in just about every way. The story had awkward subplots, the humor was a rehash of a lot of old jokes with some new stuff in there. The supporting characters were generally far more interesting than the main ones with Jeff Goldblum’s character being my favorite. The overall message against electronic voting machines is a good one but why did they use the dumbest computer bug ever created? What code would be looking for double letters in names let alone sorting on them?

That night we sat down for Munich and then two days later we watched Munich since I fell asleep about 10 minutes into the first attempt. It’s not a slow or boring movie, I was just really tired. When I actually got to see it I thought it was very good. It didn’t just present a pro-Israeli viewpoint and didn’t have any pronouncements over what is right and wrong. I want to read the book it is based on now.

Towards the end of last week we watched Click which was much better than I anticipated. I thought it would be all wackiness, but all that stuff in the trailer is like the first 15 minutes. Then it turns towards the “It’s a Wonderful Life” realm but it keeps it funny along the way. *flap*flap*flap*

Finally a Jewish film that only played in New York and LA last Passover, When Do We Eat?. We missed it during the visit to my parent’s hosue for Passover but it’s on video now so, yay! It’s a comedy about a Passover seder in a family with problems. It had a good amount of funny and a good amount of Jewish but it never really found a consistent groove. I enjoyed it but not as much as Keeping Up With The Steins.

I had all of last week off. Originally my sister was going to be here for it but her work exploded into a nightmare that leaves them without a manager going into the holiday season. She’s at 60 hours for the week and on her 9th consecutive day. Not only doesn’t she get a fun visit, she gets work hell.

My week was good though. Aside from two simple e-mails I was work free. So we got a light installed in the sitting area off the kitchen, pulled a lot of weeds, took out the dead lemon tree. Another lemon tree will get planted soon but right now I’m not feeling burnt out on work. Yay!

Thanks to Cathi I learned that there is LJ IM. And based on this page I could set it up in Trillian using Jabber.

I saw in teh Friday Sentinel that the Santa Cruz Band Review would be happening on Saturday. I haven’t had enough marching band in my life lately so Nicole and I went to check it out. After seeing about 50 bands and getting a little sunburned there is now satisfaction. Some were very good, some very bad, it was all entertaining. The worst band by far was South San Francisco. The drum major didn’t even march to the beat. The best band was Half Moon Bay High School. Their marching was clean and their sound was well balanced and tight.

Next year we bring chairs and hats.

A couple Fridays ago we went to the Davenport Roadhouse at the Cash Store which is to say, it’s new and improved. The food is actually good and reasonably prices and the wait staff is fun! Also the decor inside is much nicer than it used to be. I’d definitely drive up there for a meal. I had the prosciutto pizzette which also had carmelized onions and a balsamic vinegar mix for the sauce.

The other recent visit was at 515 Kitchen and Cocktails at 515 Cedar in downtown Santa Cruz. It was a comfortable gathering space with the only drawback being that people entering don’t know where to go. I think a Space Mountain like light tunnel leading them up the stairs would be great. I ate a lamb, feta, and something else pizza like thing. I thought it was great but bordering on too much feta at times.

This recipe was our latest attempt in Vietnamese cooking. It turned out very tasty served over your average white rice. The only difficulty was finding mint. We visited three different stores to find mint. I guess it took two stores to find the fish sauce too. Anyway, it’s good and simple and most of the cutting happens while the beef is marinating so the prep time doesn’t seem so bad.

When I’m not reading while brushing my teeth (I take a long time) I often hum along to my Sonicare. Sometimes it’s the same tone, usually it’s harmonies. Today on the way to work on my way to work on the electric scooter, I found myself going not at full speed so the tone of the electric motor could match that of the leaf blower I was passing.

He destroyed all the spice so that humans would invent a way to navigate fold-space without needing the Spacing Guild’s monopoly with it’s prescient navigators. Also to remove people’s dependence on spice in general and not be able to be ruled by its necessity.

The Fish Speakers (Leto’s all woman police force) are all Atreides descendents. It’s not explicitly stated, just that they are faster and stronger than people used to be. Well the only other people that way are those on the core Atreides breeding line. It’s confirmed int eh first chapter of Heretics of Dune though when the Bene Gesserit say that the remaining Fish Speakers don’t have exclusivity on those genes.

Gerald will think I’m crazy, but I think this is possibly the best Dune novel thus far. It doesn’t stand on its own like Dune does but it’s just about great in every way. It’s about humanity, what it means to be human, and where they should go in the future, and where we have been in the past. The previous books have been about that to some degree but this one is all about that. I feel like I can read it again right now but I need a rest first. Heck, I think I’ll have to read it a few more times to get everything, or one more time really slowly.

You find that Leto, true to his word has become a 3500 year old sandworm and ruling the universe to keep people constrained. The point? To bring about a restlessness in people so they will expand far beyond the boundaries they have reached until that point. Also to make them think twice about what government they will let be in place in the future.

It’s interesting that Leto can see pretty much anything in the future but because he he he cherishes anything that surprises him. Part of that is that he refuses to see how he will die, though he does seem to know when it will happen.

The results of the breeding program poses interesting possibilities for the future books. I’m thinking that Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson didn’t read this too closely before writing their Butlerian JJihad series. One small part in this book contradicts what they wrote in there about the origins of the guild ships and that, along with the end of this book makes be have a dread of the conclusion to the series that they are writing. Maybe I can read it and just remember the basic story elements that are from Frank Herbert’s notes.