On Saturday Nicole and I saw The DaVinci Code. I’m one of about 1000 people who haven’t read the book and I think this was made more for those who have read the book. Sometimes it felt very rushed and uninteresting a the same time. Actually, it was that way until Ian McKellen’s character arrived on screen, after that it was entertaining through about five minutes from the end.
X-Men 3 I saw on Monday with Nicole and Julie and Fish. We also ran into
We’ve had the Highlander Hybrid for 5 months now, and overall I like it. It’s comfortable and it gets better gas mileage than the Passat Wagon despite being bigger and heavier. Like 10% better.
First, to get the most out of the car, you need trips that last longer than 5 minutes. The first 5 minutes the engine always runs because that’s the warm-up period. A lot of trips in Santa Cruz are 5 minutes.
Next, to get the best mileage, yuo should be on cruise control. There’s no way for you to be able to control all the systems with just a gas pedal. As evidence, when you switch on the cruise control you can watch the gas mileage go up.
So what would I change? I don’t think the car does a good enough job at using all electric at low speeds, and there is very little you can do to control that. I would divide the range of the accelerator with a slight “bump” in the movement so that up until the “bump” the drive would eb electric and after that it could vary. It’s not like it has a physical connection to the engine anyway so this should be pretty easy to do.
Second, I would make it so if you are coasting downhill in cruise control and you are still accelerating, the car should engage B-mode (regenerative braking) to try and maintain the desired speed.
Third, I would add the button to go into B-mode on the steering wheel, maybe combine it into the cruise control lever so I wouldn’t have to use the shift lever.
Julie & Fish were going to be spending two weeks there and rented a house. We were invited to join them for a weekend so after a lot of figuring out, we made the journey.
Thanks to
We drove because flying is too expensive right now. The drive there was uneventful. We stayed Thursday night in Buttonwillow and continued on to arrive for lunch on Friday. Friday night we went to wander the strip. After watching the Atlantis animatronic thing in Caesar’s (bad animatronics and bad sound) we tried to get out to get to some other casino. 15 minutes later we managed to find an exit.
From there we went to Paris where I won $5 on The Price is Right slots. We were hungry but the restaurants there had a 2-hour wait so we went in search of a less popular place to eat. Standing outside it was about 90 with a strong breeze which felt nice and after the crazy guy walked by we decided on Bally’s. After a few minutes we found Chang’s and had good chinese food.
After dinner we played Hot Hot Penny slots where Julie won $70. From there we wandered to the Bellagio and got some gelato and watched the fountains for a few songs.
Saturday morning my Uncle Dave and his wife, Carol, picked us up and we went to breakfast at Arizona Station. It was good to catch up with them since it’s apparently been 13 years since last we met. After that it was an afternoon of laying around. Nicole and I drove north of town to look at Red Rock so we took the scenic rout and looked at scenery. Scenery that day included a dead body. Two police trucks and two other trucks were parked in a turn-out and there was a sheet over the body. There was no sign of an accident so we were thinking heart attack. When we got back Nicole went to the Liberace museum with Fish and had a great time. That night we went to Starbucks for the internet to look up possibilitied for Nicole staying longer, but it ended up that she was coming home with me on Sunday.
Sunday we had breakfast at Blueberry Hill (good pancakes) and then got ready for the drive home. We learned that going through Barstow Sunday afternoon is a bad move.
The population has tripled there in the last 6 years.
I think the police there are the busiest of any police I’ve seen. They either have someone pulled over or they are rushing to go somewhere with sirens on.
There are no minor accidents, when the wreck they do it right. Lots of crazy drivers too.
I’ve seen three recent movies!
An American Haunting – This is the movie version of a theory explaining a well documented haunting in the early 1800s. The movie works well while you’re watching it and it builds good tension and all seems to fit together. But then awhile after you’re done your brain starts noticing all these holes in the theory and makes you want to see other film versions or go read about it. I like it when movies get me interested in a subject so thumbs up.
Mission: Impossible III – I went into this with low expectations after Mission: Impossible II. It turns out I didn’t need to. It easily surpassed the second one and I think it’s even better than the first Mission: Impossible movie. The action is good, there isn’t too much reliance on gadgets (though they are there), and it manages to not take itself too seriously.
Poseidon – This movie gets right to the action. The effects are good, the sets are great, and Wolfgang Petersen can still direct some good claustrophobia. It falls down on the characters though. I think there was a lot more filmed about them which would have made the movie about 3 hours long. Then I think the studio wanted it shorter and if you cut some of that then it all had to go. It is easy to make up your own but it would have been nice to have.
Each player of this game starts with the “6 weird habits/things about yourself” and people who get tagged need to write a blog of their 6 weird habits/things, as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names.
The problem is I couldn’t think of any so I asked Nicole and she came up with 4.
1) I brush my teeth for 8-12 minutes.
2) I like peanut butter and mustard sandwiches
3) I don’t like porn
4) I only need 5 hours of sleep a night.
Tagees?
I’ve read three books in the last month, mostly while waiting for builds at work or while brushing my teeth.
First up is Fledgling by Octavia Butler. I like stories that give a real world like base for something that stories generally treat as supernatural. It’s not that I dislike supernatural stories, but once something is in that realm, more and more powers tend to get heaped upon them which makes them kind of boring. As usual with Octavia Butler, the characters are compelling and the book is left open for a sequel without requiring one. Unfortunately, this is the last book from her unless she was near completion at the time of her recent death. I’m going to miss her work.
Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner is an economics book, but not with graphs and theories, with situations you wouldn’t normally think could be analyzed. It’s fun to read and it might change how you look at some things.
The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt is focused around a take-off of the Pergolessi Cafe in Santa Cruz and will visit or pass a lot of other places you know in the area all the while leading up to… I think the first chapter was a little awkward but after that, the more you read the more you want to read. I look forward to seeing what Tim Pratt writes next.
We watched Junebug at a friend’s house recently and I think I’m the only one who enjoyed it. There isn’t a lot that happens so it’s mostly about the characters and trying to figure out why they are all acting the way they are.
(Sorta Spoiler)
Everything in the movie makes sense if Ashley is having George’s baby.
I am not a creative person. A number of people insist to me that I am and will even cite turning my room into a cave as an example, but they fail to persuade me.
A creative person is not someone who has the occasional neat idea. A creative person is someone who takes those neat ideas and expresses that idea in some medium. The implementation doesn’t have to be good, quality of the implementation is a technical skill that can be learned by anyone. Of course, how that skill is applied will very from person to person like finger prints, but the basic skills of working in a given medium are learnable.
In playing jazz I can’t improvise. I can’t think of a story line to write. I can’t think of something to draw.
Sure, I have the occasional idea. Sometimes I put enough dots on a piece of paper that I can see a shape and put more dots in to make the shape more noticable. I have on a handful of occasions thought of fun ways to wrap gifts. I have even made a few things from chicken wire. That doesn’t make me creative though. Creative people do this realization of their ideas on a regular basis. Not that they realize all of their ideas, but their density of idea realization is quite high. When one idea is completed, there is another one waiting to get started.
I can perform “creative” tasks given directions, but I’m not the one to come up with those directions or what to make.
This weekend I pulled another two green-barrel loads of weeds, bringing the total for the month up to four. The remaining weeds are very tiny or grasses and clovers where it’s hard to get their roots, they are also in open areas where no plants will be going. I’ve sprayed the back yard for those and still need to do the front.
The refrigerator is installed now. That’s the major kitchen change. We’re still waiting for drawer pulls to arrive and for the downdraft to be installed. We also need to order glass for the cabinet door inserts. We’re slowly moving everything back into the kitchen.
In the bathroom we have counter tops installed and the sink as well. We’re waiting for the drawer pulls to be installed there as well, and we have to order glass for the shower. Glass ordering should happen tomorrow if all goes well which would put us about a week away from glass.
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