Random thoughts, organized and categorized for your consumption.
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Posts by admin
Review: Batman Begins
Jul 10th
I took a part of this afternoon to go see Batman Begins and I walked away from it pretty impressed. It could have fallen apart just like the many other iterations of Batman have, but it held it all together through the whole picture. It felt, dare I say it, believable, which you could never have said about the first set of movies.
The soundtrack is great also, with Hans Zimmer doing his best to convey the dark tone of the new picture. So great, in fact, that I went straight over to Amazon.com and ordered the soundtrack. But, I am a More >
Upgrade/Downgrade: Tokyo Travel Edition
Jun 22nd
For those of you who have seen the VH1 show Best Week Ever this will be familiar to you. For those who haven’t, there is a segment in the show about good things happening to someone meaning “upgrade” and bad things happening meaning “downgrade.” I now present my own version: the Tokyo trip edition.
- Got to fly out of the local airport directly to Tokyo: Upgrade
- Had flight delayed by nearly two hours: Downgrade
- Magically received bump from business to first: Upgrade
- Ran out of water 1/2 way through flight: Downgrade
- Was second person off plane, breezed through customs: Upgrade
- Had to wait for an hour for More >
Episode 3: It could have been worse
Jun 5th
Yes, I knew this 3rd (or 6th) installment of Star Wars would be rough. I’m a fan of the previous SW movies, so I knew what I was in for. The effects were fantastic, and the battles were epic. Its good to finally know how everything fell into place and how the empire began.
But good lord, could the dialog the actors had to read be any worse? Hayden should have changed his name to wooden, Natalie turned up the sap and turned down the drama, and Ewan & Sam just phoned it in. I was thankful for the long silences More >
I Found the Lost Season Finale Sad
May 26th
Maybe I set myself up to fall on this one, but I was expecting much more from the LOST season finale than I received. Yes, the crazy French woman is back. And the baby is stolen and returned. Rocker dude finds the heroin from the drug plane. And of course the rescue raft sinks.
But the biggest bummers are the hatch is now open but all we see is a ladder, and the creature on the island is a puff of black smoke and clanking sounds. What gives with that? We have to wait all season long for these bits of More >
Of Bumps on the Head and Untrustworthy Toilets
May 22nd
I’ve learned two important things this weekend, both quite different from one another:
- Watching a cat negotiate its way down a slide is so much less important than making sure you don’t slam your head into a 2×6 board
- Installing toilets can be painful, and learning to trust that your own installation works without making a mess is even more painful
So for those keeping score at home: head vs. 2×6, 2×6 wins. Thinking vs. toilet install, well I’m still waiting to see who wins this one.
Tile Floor Installed
May 14th
The final touches are being put on the new tile floor in the master bathroom this weekend. This is the first big, costly upgrade to the place since I moved in last year. This should rectify the absolutely dumb setup that preceded it: carpet.
Strangely, when the carpet came up, there was at least one other vinyl floor beneath it, then the wood sub floor. Why people do this stuff is beyond me. Getting a toilet installed and tacking down the carpet is all that remains to get things back to work again for this newly upgraded room.
First up, what it More >
How Did You Spend Your Mother's Day?
May 9th
I spent mine (and Steve & April’s) pulling out and replacing 2 toilets at the homestead. It as one of the most horrifying experiences I’ve ever been a part of, primarily due to the cleaning and moving task it presented.
All of this pain was undertaken to kick off the re-do of the floor of the master bathroom, which for reasons unknown to me, the previous owners had carpeted. Hopefully that will soon be remedied, but until then I have the scars of the toilet removal that will haunt my every waking moment.
Flights, Frights, and Long Painful Nights
May 7th
Another week, another trip to LA. This week brought the following interesting and weird happenings to bear…
- I walked across the street for lunch and saw Robert Blake. TV really does make people look fat, because this guy is a straw in real life.
- For a change, I stayed at the LAX Westin. It was a comfortable bed but I got very little sleep. There is evidently a kennel or pound within 100 feet of the hotel and dogs were yelping from 3am on.
- My boss purchased a Ducati motorcycle. She is coordinated enough to have dropped it twice in less than a More >
Newsletter Finally Available
May 1st
I’ve finally completed my novella and posted it online. Go take a look at the latest creation, almost 15 months in the making: MS Insights Newsletter for 2004
Go on, read it. You know you want to.
Bad, Bad Microsoft
Apr 29th
I had one of those wake up calls today where I remember why its best not to leave all the thinking to someone else.
Microsoft’s XP Windows Update site pushed an upgrade to my home PC. Since it is automated, all I had to do was say “yes” to reboot the system after the update arrived. Once I did, I got a “blue screen of death”, had no working audio, and shortly found several dead files written to my hard drive. Of course, the WU Crash dialog appears shortly after my 3rd reboot, telling me that Microsoft has no idea what More >