I Used To Be Brilliant

The best part of this week?

2012-01-27T20:31:00.001-06:00

It’s over.

Eyes on the skies

2012-01-22T20:34:00.001-06:00

We’re supposed to have a spring time severe weather outbreak here this evening so I’m keeping an eye on what is happening west of us. These storms in Arkansas, where there have already been confirmed tornado touchdowns, will be here in around 5 to 6 hours.

It’s way early for this kind of weather but it’s also way too warm for this time of the year. It’s also way too early for me to have to start paying the roofers to repair storm damage.

Big Bang Thursday

2012-01-19T16:23:00.001-06:00

Thursday means Big Bang Theory and Person of Interest. It’s also the only night of the week that sort of centers around TV for me.

Since I got my refurb Dell Streak 7, I rarely use my iPod Touch anymore. I’ve been playing IHeartRadio quite a lot. I listen to a lot of 70’s music and I’m sure they will be inserting AARP and Geritol commercials into my feed at some point. You can listen to my Fleetwood Mac themed station here.

Other than that, I am still battling sinus woes. I woke up with another headache this morning at 4:15AM. It’s really starting to get annoying. And, the earlier I get up, the earlier I want to go back to sleep. I’ve also “wrenched” my back (that’s the only word I can think to describe the constant discomfort). Getting old is a real pain – literally.

At least there is just one more day in this week.

Tuesday: I get sick, fuss about work, finish The Fault in Our Stars, and watch Courageous all in just 23 hours

2012-01-18T00:00:00.001-06:00

Though I have never written about it here before, I have a fun thing called chronic hypoglycemia. This is really just a fancy term for low blood sugar that comes and goes. I spent a lot of time going to the doctor with it when I was a kid. As an adult, I’ve had to be quite careful what I eat and what I don’t eat. I typically only have what I would call “a bad attack” once every six months or so.

The odd part is that I am never really sure what will turn a mild (better eat something now) deal into a full blown (I don’t have enough energy to walk and wonder if I am in need of an ambulance) deal. Also, these things happen so rarely that I typically miss whatever signs there are that would warn me that the little blood sugar dwarves are about to have a riot in my insides.

Before I went to bed last night, I felt a small headache coming on. We had a big change in the weather coming so I thought it must be sinuses. I woke up at midnight still hurting and took some sinus pills. Then, I woke up at 2AM and thought my head was coming off my body and barely had enough energy to get from the bed to the bathroom thinking this was a stomach bug because, well, don’t worry about that part. That’s when it hit me that this was the blood sugar plummeting. Thus we have the paradox of low blood sugar – you must eat to recover but you feel so bad that the last thing you want to do is eat. And, I get so nervous and edgy that I can’t lay down. I have to sit up for all of this because laying down seems to make it worse.

I finally ate enough Ritz crackers and drank enough Coke to start to feel alive again but I never could go back to sleep. So, here I am, 23 hours later, sitting at the kitchen table typing out another entry in the blog. Also, you really need a full day and a night of sleep to get over a real good low blood sugar spell so I felt like warmed over in the hot sunshine crap all day and it was busy as all get out at work but I still propped myself up in my office chair and just kept going.

Sitting in the office window all day gave me a front row seat to all of the lightning. I had to finally close the blinds since I have no desire to leave this world being electrocuted while filling in a Sharepoint form.

The tornado missed us here but a bit west and a bit south and a bit north of us people had roofs ripped off. We complain about the snow but then get a reminder of just how nasty spring gets around here these days.

Now, I can’t sleep. Partially because I was stupid enough to look at my Blackberry at 7PM and saw an email that made me so angry that I nearly spit fire and partially because I still had 150 pages to go in The Fault in Our Stars at 9PM and got so engrossed in it that I had to finish the rest of the book and now I can’t stop thinking about it. I had read a review somewhere that said it was as good Catcher in the Rye, which I have read multiple times starting in 1987. I disagree. It was better than Catcher in the Rye because these characters never stopped caring and never stopped trying. It was funny, it was honest, and yes, it was sad. One thing is certain – I may never read The Catcher in the Rye again.

Even sadder than the things in the book that I will not reveal here, it is over and part of the book is about another book that the main character is sad about because it ended with so many questions. TFIOS didn’t end with a ton of unanswered questions but it did leave you hoping for more and I personally hope that the assumption I have about the way the story would have truly ended if it were another 50 pages long might not really be right. At least us readers are left with that hope.

It was also the first real book, as in not an e-book, that I have read in a long time and I really found myself getting frustrated with the pages wanting to close and not being able to get comfortable holding the book. Either the Nook has really spoiled me or I am achieving a level of fantastic laziness in my middle age. Now I have to figure out what I am going to read next.

Oh! I almost forgot but after supper we did sit down and (in between work email-related rage fits) watch Courageous. We had watched Fireproof a while back and these movies are pretty similar. I was curious about this one and I was a bit let down. To me, Fireproof was much more believable. I think one problem was that there were too many characters in Courageous and they were trying to tell too many stories and teach too many moral lessons. This also rushed the whole story.

A lot of people seem to think it is a life-changing movie but I just kept thinking that maybe things happen like this in a Christian-themed Disney World but not in real life. I tend to think that there is a certain danger in presenting people with a false idea that being a Christian solves (or leads to a nearly immediate solution of) all of our problems. When people realize that is not the case, they turn away from being a Christian and go right back to “winging it”. Faith means trying to live with the right goals in mind and trying to look to a higher power when things are and are not going right. You’re not going to hit the mark every time and you’re not going to get the answer you want every time.

That was my Tuesday – take it or leave it. At times, I would have rather left it but all-in-all it worked out just fine.

Wynton Marsalis talks about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2012-01-16T19:09:00.001-06:00

CBS This Morning really seems to get better everyday. I taped it this morning so I could go back and watch it later and I’m glad I did. This is one of the best tributes to Dr. King that I have ever seen.

The Weekend in Pictures

2012-01-15T20:23:00.001-06:00

We still have a lot of coughing going on in this house as the upper respiratory crud is continuing to make the rounds. Everyone seems to be getting better but the progress is very slow. It’s annoyingly slow. At least we’re not having an upchuck fest like these people in Canada. I think I had a sympathetic stomach ache just reading about it.

The weekend for the kids started on Friday due to our massive blizzard that came in Thursday afternoon. Watch this video to relive the horror of the 1/2 inch of snow we got that closed down all of the schools and totally gridlocked all traffic.

Here is the pic from Friday night. I think we were on the way to Chili’s. It was o.k., average, whatever. I would have preferred Waffle House.

I drove over to see my parents on Saturday. Check out all of the salt still on the roads!

I got back home to find my pre-ordered copy of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars had finally arrived! I follow John Green on Twitter and Tumblr and I kept reading all of these incredible reviews of this book so I had to order it. I just started reading it today so I’ll post a quick review when I am done.

John Green signed 150,000 preorders yet Walmart managed to get rare unsigned copies and sent me one! Am I special or what?!?

I guess I could return it to Walmart for a signed copy (they had some left a couple of days ago) but I’m just going to suck it up and keep my ultra-rare unsigned copy.

And, yes, you might think I am a bit old to be reading young adult but John Green is nothing like the little bit of young adult I read growing up. Remember I Am The Cheese or A Separate Peace? The Young Adult category is nothing like that now. The big plus is that this will get handed down to the kids when they are old enough to read it.

That leads us to Saturday night and another picture. It was still pretty windy when I took this one.

Now it is Sunday and we weren’t worth two dollars today. Driving west in the afternoon is no fun at all.

For some reason, I felt the need to commemorate mile 143,538 in the amazing Ford Contour.

That’s my weekend. I’m watching some Golden Globes now. Everyone but me is off tomorrow so I am quite jealous. There is a nice grocery list for them to deal with tomorrow so at least they will be tortured a little. That makes me feel better.

A new level in laziness – achieved

2012-01-12T15:11:00.001-06:00

Why turn around to watch the news on TV when you can pop in your Hauppauge WinTV-HVR850 USB tv tuner in your laptop and stick an antenna up in the window?

I bought this thing almost three years ago and doubt I’ve used it for more than 3 hours. I spent around 10 hours a day working on the laptop and I kept thinking – I wish I could catch the news or weather without having to stop what I am working on. Voila! I open WinTV and there is our local CBS station in a nice window right next to what I am working on.

Next, I just need to install a potty in my work chair and bring in a mini fridge.

Hey, Twitter! Quit whining about Google Search+.

2012-01-11T15:25:00.001-06:00

Skip reading this today if you don’t want to read another one of my tech-induced rants.
Earlier today, MG Siegler pointed out this tweet from Twitter’s General Counsel, Alex Macgillivray:

Folks asked for examples. Here’s what a user searching for “@wwe” will be shown on the new @Google. twitter.com/amac/status/15…
— Alex Macgillivray (@amac) January 11, 2012

Twitter is offended because they feel that they are being “buried” in Google’s search results under the new Google Search+. I think that this is Google promoting their own service which they have a right to as a company. I don’t see Twitter freely promoting its competitors anywhere so I have no idea why they expect their competitors to do so.

Take a closer look at the picture:

Now, look at what is just barely down the page:

Twitter is actually the fourth result! They are whining about being the fourth result. Big whoop! I don’t think it’s hard to find at all. And, why would Google “showcase” a result for a competing service for free?

Finally, Twitter doesn’t even title the page “@wwe”. Why would a search engine index it as @wwe (and give Twitter the coveted top result) if that is not even the title of their page?

Should Google, again for free, create a script to insert that in there for them? I certainly don’t think so.

Does Google have a responsibility to mankind to be Twitter-friendly? Give me a break.
People need to seriously get a grip. It’s business. It’s not a charity and it’s not an anti-Twitter conspiracy.

Twitter, stick a Google search box at the top of your page for free and maybe I’ll reconsider.

Sunless Sunday

2012-01-08T20:55:00.001-06:00

Another typical Sunday here. We started with a fast food breakfast (McDonalds). We went to church. We had lunch. We came home and lazied around for a while. I clipped coupons. I emptied the dishwasher. I continued to play with my new gadget, the Dell Streak 7, and admired its new red case. I think I finally figured out while it has been eating battery power all night while it “sleeps”.

Our youngest daughter started feeling puny so I stayed home from evening church to give her more time to rest. We’re both starting to get colds. It’s probably the wonderful weather (warm/wet/cold/dry/repeat) that is getting us.

I read some work emails. We ate Chinese for supper. I did not watch the news because I didn’t want to have a news-induced freak-out that I would then have to blog about. I did not watch football because it’s over for the Titans and I really could care less about the rest of the teams still playing. I did listen to some podcasts and I even read some.

That was Sunless Sunday. Tomorrow is No Fun Monday. Boooooooooo.

Democracy=Every 3 years, take a year to poop on the President

2012-01-07T20:45:00.001-06:00

Is it any wonder why our country seems to get less and less respect around the world with each passing year? Our election years have disintegrated into a circus where a stage full of monkeys fling poop and they don’t just fling poop on each other, they fling it on our President and his administration.

The poop flinging is going on right now on national television.

I am not an Obama fan. I think our country is a mess and whether it is him or all of the people surrounding him in the White House, we’ve got a grade A mess on our hands. However, we have a stage full of politicians that cannot tell us what they will do to fix things – they can only complain about how broken everything is and they point the finger squarely at Obama.

Of course, this is the same way Obama ended up in office four years ago.

Can an election occur where we have people who put making this country better above and beyond everything else? I don’t think it can happen without a huge overhaul of election laws. The $$$ has got to be taken out of these campaigns. As Stephen Colbert has shown us, it’s way too easy to hide behind a PAC (or a Super-PAC). It’s all about who has the money. The elections are bought and then the legislation is bought by the same people hiding behind lobbyists.

Yes, it’s been like this for years but it is getting worse and worse and the people no longer have a voice because we (the very few that still vote) are bought by the constant barrage of commercials. We also don’t do the research. Many people voted for Barack Obama because they were voting against Sarah Palin. What a terrible way to have to make sure an important choice.

And, the primary/caucus process is a mess. Look at Iowa – around 122,000 people out of approx. 2 million registered votes had enough power that one candidate is already out. I agree with this article at the Huffington Post – these candidates won nothing. New Hampshire will be no better. Also, do these early voting states really reflect what people in more urban states (like California or Florida or New York) want?

We’ll all just have to do our best to watch this process with amusement and not let it make us any more bitter than we already are. I’m already looking forward to heading to the polls in November and placing my vote to that special candidate who is least likely to destroy our country for three years before we get to fling poop at him/her and then go through all of this again.

Hump Day

2012-01-04T21:31:00.001-06:00

I celebrated Hump Day by getting just a bit more busy and just a bit more stressed out and edgy. I needed to dial down the stress a notch so I busted into a bag of the Taco flavor Doritos tonight.

I keep trying to remember if this is the flavor I ate when I was a kid. I don’t remember eating Cool Ranch until the late 80’s or maybe even the early 90’s. These are pretty tasty. I think you can only eat 3 a day or you’ll gain weight. I bet they transform into fat immediately upon digestion.

Thank goodness this is just a four day week. I just need to get through my five conference calls tomorrow and then I can ride the momentum right into Friday.

Quiet and Cold

2012-01-03T20:19:00.001-06:00

Today marked the end of the holidays so the house was suddenly completely empty and completely quiet. Not only was there silence but there are also no holiday decorations. Everything has gone back to “normal” and what fun is that?

The other side of going back to “normal” is being back on conference calls all day long. A lot of people seem to be making up for lost time by scheduling as many as possible.

It was also quite cold all day today. We’re having our first arctic air of winter. It’s been unusually warm so far. Having temperatures below freezing all day is pretty tough when we’ve been spoiled by 50’s and 60’s for the last month.

It’s also been quite windy lately. The wind brought in the cold and the wind comes back tomorrow to bring in the warmth. We’ll be back up to 60 again by Friday which means some more time with the next basketball goal. I am really quite terrible at basketball. It’s good to know that some things never change.

I also finally had to watch some Portlandia since this seems to be the show that everyone is talking about lately. They have posted an episode from the upcoming new season here and I really enjoyed the allergy parade at the beginning because I seem to be allergic to just about everything.

My favorite gadget of 2011: Logitech Portable Speaker S135i

2011-12-31T18:52:00.000-06:00

It’s the last day of 2011! Instead of going back through the blog archives and trying to find something exciting out of all of my boring moments, I decided that I would continue the tech theme from yesterday (which was a nice break from my two day magazine rant) and look over all of the stuff I ended up with this year and would pick out the one gadget that was the best value. For me, that is the Logitech Portable Speaker S135i.

Here it is, on the bathroom counter. I was listening to WGN in Chicago this morning while getting ready to take on another exciting day.

Yes, this speaker would be completely useless without the iPod Touch. But the value it adds is that it turns the iPod Touch into a fully functional and nice sounding internet radio. There are plenty of dedicated internet radios (such as the $150 Squeezebox, also by Logitech) out there and most of them are almost as expensive as the iPod Touch itself. An iPod Touch can do an awful lot so why would I want a dedicated internet radio when I can just add a speaker to a device that I can also check my email on, read books on, and play games on?

The speaker is right around $49 (as of today) at Amazon.com but I found mine on clearance at Walmart for $25!

It runs off of an AC Adapter or batteries. It also charges when plugged into AC. We use it all over the house. We also had it in the garage earlier this week playing an iHeart Radio station out of San Diego. It was nice listening to a station where the weather is so much nicer than it is here.

As for New Year’s Eve, the plan is to watch Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin ring in 2012 in New York at 11PM our time and then go straight to bed. There is no point in staying up until midnight just to see it again on tape delay. Watching Dick Clark always makes me feel sad for him so I try to avoid that also.

Here’s hoping we all have a great 2012!

New to Me Gadget: Dell Streak 7

2011-12-30T21:20:00.001-06:00

My “new” refurbished Dell Streak 7 arrived today. The Streak 7 is a replacement for my Acer netbook that developed a weird short in the screen. The brightness just starts going up and down by itself any time the netbook is barely touched. Typing could have triggered epileptic seizures. It got so frustrating that I finally just shelved it.

I thought my iPod Touch was going to replace my netbook but the screen is just painfully small at times. With my eyes, this is not a good thing.

I really went back and forth on this purchase. I had read so many bad reviews that I didn’t know what to expect. People complain about the battery life (3 to 4 hours). My laptop battery barely gets two so this is an improvement. The screen is supposedly too “low resolution”. My eyes are old and tired so I can barely tell the difference. Also, I paid the refurbished price which is way less than an iPad and even cheaper than a Nook Color. All of these things considered, I am very pleased.

I do have two complaints and they are not about the hardware. #1 – Dell Outlet barely even packaged this in the box. All of the accessories were loose (no packing) underneath a piece of cardboard with the tablet shrinkwrapped to the cardboard with zero padding or protection. I was amazed that the screen was not broken when I opened the box. I think FedEx deserves the credit for it surviving. My FedEx guy is not throwing anything!

#2 – The Dell Outlet description said it already had Honeycomb (Android 3.2) but it actually had Froyo (Android 2.2). So, I didn’t want to install anything until I got the upgrade done. Well, tapping on Menu > Settings > About > System updates did nothing so I had to look all over the internet until I found out that I could download the update by navigating the browser to http://mobileupdate.dell.com/?version=GLUNB1A334430 and tapping on Download and Install. You can also just navigate to http://mobileupdate.dell.com/PackageProductionLocations/LG7-WiFi_506_19534_30.pkg.

Once I finally figured out how to download it, the Honeycomb update took about 15 minutes and it came up with a bunch of built-in apps and the Android Market works great. Every app I have downloaded so far has worked with no problems.

So, why didn’t I want a Nook Color or Nook Tablet? I really wanted the Kobo app for reading and I also wanted all of the social networking and email apps (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). And, I wanted the freedom to set up all of the screens in the order I wanted without being “locked in” like on the Nook Color or Kindle Fire. I was really leaning toward the Kobo Vox but this was just $10 more and is so much more flexible.

Here is my wife’s Nook Color next to the Streak 7. You can tell that the screen resolution on the Nook Color is a lot better but I’ll deal with that since there are so many other positives.:

I barely sneaked this purchase in before 2012 which I have declared “The Year of Buying No Gadgets”. I am spread out between a work laptop, a home laptop, an iPod Touch (apps / internet radio), a Zune (music/podcasts), and the new tablet. I have considered eliminating the Zunes from the mix but the iPod Touch music navigation stinks. It’s a shame that the iPod software (and iTunes) is not more user friendly. I guess one thing is certain - having too much tech is a good problem to have. It’s also helpful to learn more about Android when we have so many Android phones being used at work.

I think that the Streak 7 is going to be a lot of fun and quite useful for me in 2012. It better be since there will be no gadget purchases for at least a year!

More Magazine Mischief! Orbital Publishing Group sends a renewal invoice look-a-like

2011-12-29T20:39:00.001-06:00

Another day, another magazine renewal letter that gets my britches in a bunch.

I got a very-bill looking slip in the mail today that someone who doesn’t pay attention might have fallen for. It’s from Orbital Publishing Group in Reno, Nevada. It looks just like an invoice but there is print at the bottom that says NOT A BILL. Can you find those words with just a quick glance? They are hoping that you can’t!

They want to charge you $59.95 but you can go to Magazines.com and get a one year renewal for $15. I actually pay less than that each year.

What is especially disheartening is that Entertainment Weekly obviously sold my information either directly or indirectly to this company.

Here is the back of the slip:

My favorite part is “As an agent, we do not necessarily have a direct relationship with the publishers or publications that we offer. With your purchase you authorize us and our suppliers to process and clear your order with the publishers directly or by whatever means available.” I think this means that they will pay the $15 (or less) and pocket the $44 difference. That’s quite a profit.

If you look at the “bill” above, you’ll notice that this company refers to themselves as Subscription Business Center and Publishers Billing Center. On the envelope, they call themselves Orbital Publishing Group. If you look at their Better Business Bureau page (they have a Grade F with over 500 complaints in the last three years), you’ll see that they have quite a database of names that they use:

Alternate Business Names

Orbital Publishing Group, Inc., Allied Publishing Services, American Consumers Publishers Association, Associated Publishers Services, Associated Publishers Subscription Services, Billing Services Association, Billing Services of America, Bradford Publishing Service, Circulation Billing Center, Circulation Billing Services, Global Publication Service, Global Publishers Center, Innovative Data Services, Lake Shore Publishers Service, Lakeshore Publication Service, Magazine Billing Network, Magazine Billing Services, Magazine Distribution Service, Magazine Payment Services, Magazine Subscriber Services, Magazine Subscriptions Center, National Magazine Services, Periodical Billing Center, Periodical Billing Services, Platinum Subscription Service, Publication Service Networks, Publishers Access Services, Publishers Billing Center, Publishers Billing Services, Publishers Consolidated Subscription Services, Publishers Distribution Center, Publishers Education Services, Publishers Magazine Billing, Publishers Magazine Payment, Publishers Marketplace Services, Publishers Network Exchange, Publishers Payment Services, Publishers Periodical Service, Publishers Processing Service, Publishers Services Exchange, Readers Billing Network, Readers Billing Service, Readers Billing Services, Readers Payment Center, Readers Payment Service, Seascape Publishers Network, Slo Call Center, Subscription Billing Service, Subscription Payment Exchange, Subscription Payment Services, United Publishers Services, Subscription Business Center, Seascape Publications Service, SPS, Publishers Billing Association, Seascape Publishing Services

Can you imagine going to Walmart every Saturday to get groceries and finding out that they are changing the name of the store every week?

These guys sound incredibly dodgy. I feel bad for all of the people who have fallen for crap like this.

Better Homes and Gardens mag tries to use the environment to guilt us into renewing 8 months early

2011-12-28T17:17:00.001-06:00

I have always been annoyed with the newspaper throwing out a weekly “free” version when we don’t subscribe and the local Avon lady sticking a catalog on our mailbox and every mailbox in the neighborhood. It’s littering and it’s a huge waste of paper.

Even with all of that, I’ve never had a company try to use “environmental guilt” to force me into buying a product.

You’ve got to hand it to the marketing team of Better Homes and Gardens. They want us to renew now (our subscription is good until August 2012) and they urge us to do so by reminding us about the trees that will be cut down for the paper needed to print the renewal reminders. Never mind all of the trees cut down to print their magazine every month (even though their magazine is printed on paper so thin that you could use it as a coffee filter).

If we don’t renew, this letter gives me the impression that they will continue to destroy trees and will continue to harass us with reminders.

We got our subscription for free. They can annoy us all they want with their “renewal reminders”. They can cut down an entire forest trying to get us to renew. It won’t do any good.

The only good that their letter did was making us feel “environmentally guilty” for getting their magazine every month so we’ll have to let it go come August. Then, they can save a few trees on our behalf.

The Christmas Tower of Trash

2011-12-26T21:50:00.001-06:00

Another Christmas has ended and that means it’s time for one of my favorite traditions – creating the tower of trash. As I explained last year, the city we live in won’t pick up any trash that is not in a city owned trashcan. You either leave a pile of bags or you “make it work’. I choose to make it work by building cardboard walls to turn my can from regular to super.

I think we went even higher this year. I took this picture before I added a layer of cardboard on each side and threw one more bag of stinky leftovers on top. The best part is the rain that started about an hour ago and will keep on all night. Happy Holidays to whichever city employee came up with this exciting rule.

Christmas went off without a hitch. We’re becoming pros after all of these years of pulling off the family get-togethers. Also, the kids want less and less toys which means less and less annoying packaging to try to break into. I wonder how many people end up at the ER with scissors through there hands because of all of that crap.

Here they are about to tear it up.

Here they are opening stuff under the watchful eyes of Ralphie, his mom, his brother, and the ‘major award’.

I think they cleaned up pretty good this year. The Nerf guns were my idea. Clothes are fine and they love clothes but you really need to have something a bit dangerous or it’s just not Christmas.

Christmas Eve 2011

2011-12-24T22:39:00.001-06:00

It feels like it took forever for Christmas to actually get here and now I find myself surprised that it is almost here and almost over.

The Elf took over the record player yesterday.

He made his final appearance of the year watching over all of the gifts that took over the living room.

This is what it looks like when you have a house full of people and 5 kids over on Christmas Eve.

I went ahead and broke the Santa code by giving Sara her big gift a day early. It was 55 degrees so we had to take advantage of that while we could. If it wasn’t for my brother-in-law being here to assist, I might still be outside trying to put this thing together.

It was a good day and I think the kids will be pleased with Santa’s deliveries for tomorrow.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

It's a Festivus Miracle!

2011-12-23T16:19:00.001-06:00

It’s December 23rd again and that means that today is Festivus. I’ll soon be going to our Festivus dinner and afterwards we’ll have our annual “Airing of Grievances” where I will be letting everyone know how they have disappointed me in the last year. Then, we will move on to the “Feats of Strength” in which someone will have to pin me in a living room wrestling match in order to end Festivus. I’ve moved up a weight class this year so Festivus might go on a bit longer than it usually does.

It’s not too late to whip up your own Festivus celebration. Just click here to study up on the Festivus traditions and don’t forget to end dinner by standing up and saying, “I got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you're gonna hear about it!!!”

Also, we have another special Christmas tradition this evening – the annual Late Show with David Letterman Christmas show. Not only will Darlene Love be singing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home” but we’ll also hear the retelling of the Lone Ranger story by Jay Thomas (Tonight, they will do a live reenactment of the story for the first time) and watch Dave and Jay compete in the Holiday Quarterback Challenge.

My December 23rd is all planned out!

Relapse Wednesday and Bad Christmas Songs!

2011-12-22T15:03:00.001-06:00

We ended up back at the doctors office last night to get Sara’s positive (again!) strep test. She finished antibiotics on Tuesday and ends up back on antibiotics yesterday. It’s the Christmas gift that just won’t go away! It appears to be very minor so we should all be back to normal and waiting for the next surprise infection soon.

Christmas continues to approach and there is no slowing it down. Work is finally slowing down just a little bit and that is a good thing. I thought this would be a quiet week and I was very, very wrong. It’s also pouring down rain here so we continue to be trapped in this odd spring-like weather cycle. The grass continues to grow and the weather is staying fairly warm. It may be Christmas but it feels like March!

In the important category of Christmas music news, MSNBC has posted 11 Christmas Songs We Hope Never to Hear Again.

I agree with most of them. I don’t see the offense in “Last Christmas” by Wham! We should give mad props to George Michael for writing a new (at the time) Christmas song that has actually become a modern Christmas classic. I think the Taylor Swift version is pretty cool and it’s always good for George to keep getting nickels piled into his legal defense fund.

I also don’t understand “Wonderful Christmas Time” by Paul McCartney being on the Christmas poo-poo list. “Overproduced, strangled-by-synthesizer mess”? It was 1979!!!! Just about everything sounded like this in 1979! At least it’s not Christmas disco. And, just like George, Paul wrote a new (at the time) Christmas classic! That’s pretty hard to pull off since most Christmas artists are still competing with the ghosts of Christmas past like Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby.

I guess we all can’t record classics like Gayla Peevey did.

It wouldn’t be Christmas without Darlene Love

2011-12-20T11:07:00.001-06:00

If I didn’t see this every year, Christmas wouldn’t be the same.

Monday Monday

2011-12-19T19:56:00.001-06:00

The pre-Christmas prep is in high gear now. And, all of the people at work are scurrying to fill up my 2012 calendar with conference calls before they head out on vacation. I never take vacation at Christmas. I enjoy all of the peace and quite that occurs when everyone else is off.

I de-cluttered the living room today. I had let all kinds of junk creep back in over the last month. Once the Christmas stuff goes up, clutter seems to covertly follow. In the last 4 days I have “reset” the living room and both of the kids rooms and I ended up filling the garbage can to the brim and making an unplanned trip to the thrift store. It feels good to get rid of stuff and I’m trying to not think about the new stuff that will be unwrapped this weekend.

We’re at the verge of another two days of pouring rain. We’ve been having a second spring here for the last week or so and the grass is growing out of control. I keep thinking about mowing it but I know that the 10 and 15 degree nights will sneak up on us and kill all of that grass anyway. Mother Nature is helping me stay lazy.

Just three more days until my four day weekend……

Two more elf pics

2011-12-16T22:02:00.001-06:00

I’d write about my week and the movies I’ve seen recently and all of the work we’re doing around here to get ready for Christmas but I’m just too lazy to do that tonight. All I’ve got for tonight are these two creepy elf pics.

Zicam Sunday

2011-12-11T19:52:00.001-06:00

Birthday Friday morphed into Birthday Party Saturday.

We had her party at the movies and we saw “The Muppets”. It was pretty good – it was a nice tribute to the original show that was on television when I was much younger. There were tons of cameos in the movie also.

They also showed a new “Toy Story” short before the movie. It was hilarious. The last “Toy Story” movie was such a downer. The new short was just plain funny and makes me hope that there will be another movie. In this one, we meet all sorts of abandoned fast food kids meal toys including T-Bone the Transforming Steak. A short clip is below:

It’s worth seeing just for the horrible chicken fast food creations that are shown during the ending credits. There are some crazy people at Pixar.

So, we got through most of the day before the world’s worst restaurant experience. We waited FOREVER for food. The place was freezing. My toes were numb when we left. Then, we went to Target at 9PM like nuts. It was at Target that Sara started complaining about a sore throat and being hot. We went home and she had no fever but still the sore throat.

That leads us to Zicam Sunday. Sara and Lindsay both woke up puny this morning and we went right to the clinic and they both won the prize of positive strep tests! So, they are on the antibiotics.

And, my lousy headache and congestion and random sneezing fits have continued so I am taking Zicam hoping that I am not the next one being swabbed.

I guess only time will tell.

Here’s the most recent Elf on the Shelf mischief to close this one out.

Lindsay’s Birthday

2011-12-09T16:53:00.001-06:00

Lindsay is another year older and she ripped through her gifts like a rabid wolverine. Among all of the stuff she got, we finally replaced the karaoke machine that died earlier this year.

Karaoke machines are for sale everywhere this year and I blame Glee.

The elf and his weird group of friends commandeered the Wii last night so that means no video games tonight.

Note that they are all wearing their Wiimote safety straps.

Indigestion, a bad elf, a silly video

2011-12-08T17:28:00.001-06:00

I’m getting really tired of random indigestion. It seems like I can’t each much of anything these days without needing an antacid at some point not long afterwards. Some days I want to blame the coffee. Today I visited the Taco Bell at lunch. I used to be able to eat Taco Bell without having to run for the Maalox afterwards. This ‘getting older’ thing really stinks sometimes.

I walked into the kitchen to discover another elf made mess this morning. I can honestly say that I have zero involvement in the latest elf crime spree we are seeing here.

I’m going to close with a video that I keep bookmarked in case I have an emergency need for laughter.

Tuesday

2011-12-06T20:57:00.001-06:00

Here is a short video before I declare incoming snow/ice insanity. Chances are pretty good that the snow and ice will miss us or will not stick but you never really know around here until it actually happens. At this point it’s just too close for comfort. If the kids are out of school tomorrow or even get out early tomorrow and then they are home for two weeks for the holidays….hmmm…it’s really too depressing to consider.

I had to deal with AT&T today thanks to my parents switching from DSL to Cable internet. This video pretty well sums up that experience:

This is why I dropped AT&T a while back. Unfortunately, I am stuck with them on my work owned cell phone. It is horrible.

In other news, our Elf is back and he just gets weirder and weirder each year.

The Monday that I reluctantly invested in two dog prisons

2011-12-05T21:01:00.001-06:00

Last night will be remembered as “Poopfest 2011”. Our two dogs decided to throw their own dookie party all over the bedroom. Last night will also be remembered as “The Last Straw” in my war against dog whiz and dog logs.

We’ve been fighting this war ever since our newest dog, ~~Devil~~ Sadie, became a member of our home. Alex was always pretty good about going out. Sadie is also trained but will randomly decided to go against her training and then Alex must instinctively mark her territory. This typically happens in our bedroom where they are gated in with us at night. They love to use my home office area as their personal commode. Oddly this only happens every 4 weeks or so. We’ll go through with no accidents at all until all of a sudden the carpet cleaner has to come back out for some action.

The dogs have also taken over our bed. They must stay warm and we are huge human pillows that they love to lay on.

Enough is enough.

I finally invested in two dog prisons. These are where they will now be sleeping at night.

I am hugely reluctant to do this. I really don’t like it but I see no choice anymore. I really don’t like the idea of having to cage our dogs at night but they also love to get me up at different times half the night and I can’t keep getting up at 12AM and 2AM and 4AM when each one has a whim to finally wake me up.

Of course, maybe the accidents are happening when they can’t (or won’t) wake me up. I don’t know. We discussed a dog door but Sadie is a digger and she loves rolling around in wet grass and mud for some reason. I can’t have Pigpen the dog coming back and forth in and out of the house at will.

I guess only time will tell how long until I can’t handle the guilt anymore and finally give the dogs parole.

Fog!

2011-12-03T18:26:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, one day after the 170+ car accident in my hometown, I had to drive there also. The fog was just plain insane. We had none where I live about 45 miles away. There is nothing smarter to do when driving in fog than to whip out the phone and take some pics.

Way out in the distance you can see the fog settled in.

Once you were in there, visibility dropped pretty fast.

And it just kept getting worse.

It was just a bit warmer so there was no ice. The ice was a huge factor in the big pile up. By the evening drive home, things were nice and clear again.

I’m not going to go into what my day was like Friday. I had to deal with two utility companies and a bank. That should explain everything you need to know. It was a lesson in frustration. I have less stressful days at work and that’s saying something.

The good news is that my anger-induced headache is finally starting to go away.

I write about a lamp and a vacuum because I am sadly domesticated

2011-12-01T17:09:00.001-06:00

I recently acquired two pretty good items so I am going to dedicate this entry to sharing my good buys.

First, I finally found a decent light for my impromptu home laptop nook which is actually “hiding” in a corner of my living room behind our recliner. It is the V-Light Architect Clamp Lamp. I got it at Office Max for $15.99. For some reason you can buy it at their website here for $1 cheaper but you will pay shipping on top of the tax.

It also comes with one of those new Al Gore lightbulbs. These are the only ones we’ll legally be allowed to buy soon. Surprisingly, this one comes right on and is plenty bright. It’s not like the ones in our bathroom where they act like old gym lights warming up.

I had to move my home laptop over here since the Christmas tree is now up in my “spot” in the living room. I know it seems silly to have two computers set up in different parts of the house but I try to avoid my work desk at night so I keep my blog and all my stuff on my trusty old Gateway laptop.

Second, I acquired a Dirt Devil Extreme Power Hand Vac. It’s available at Amazon.com for $40.54. It’s the best hand vac I have ever had and I’ve had quite a few Dustbusters over the years. They don’t seem to last more than a couple of years and they are not nearly as good as this Dirt Devil.

The best feature, since I am sadly totally domesticated at this point in my life, is the flip down nozzle. They call it the “crevice tool”.

I use it to get the corners of the carpet and when I sweep the kitchen and bathrooms. And, it has a three year warranty! That’s pretty amazing in the world of 90 day warranties that we live in.

Finally, I’m glad I didn’t drive to my hometown this morning (I am actually going over there tomorrow morning for my day off). They had a wreck in the ice fog this morning that involved 170 cars and one fatality. I’m amazed more people weren’t killed after seeing the video from the scene.

The worse part of winter around here is the ice and ice season has definitely started early this year.

Holiday Recap

2011-11-28T20:33:00.001-06:00

There was eatin’. There was shoppin’. There was decoratin’. It was just another typical Tennessee Thanksgiving.

We found time to decorate the house Friday when it was still 70 degrees.

We discovered that some people like to add their favorite restaurants to their Christmas villages.

We took a trip to the Opryland Hotel and walked around with the holiday weekend mob.

Two strange kids wouldn’t stay out of the revolving doors. We don’t have the revolvin’ doors out here in the sticks.

We saw the Christmas Panda.

We saw the Christmas Zebra.

Another highlight of our holiday was our annual viewing of Snoopy and Woodstock in the cartoon version of “The Silence of the Lambs”.

We all went back to work and school today just in time for the first snow to arrive sometime tonight. Since it only takes about a quarter of an inch of snow to throw our city into complete chaos, I am not looking forward to tomorrow.

Summer is so far away.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-23T13:40:00.001-06:00

I’m taking a holiday away from the tweets and the status updates and the Tumblr.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Good song, weird video: “Hearts” by Marty ‘MacGruber’ Balin

2011-11-19T09:50:00.001-06:00

I’ve been hearing “Hearts” again on the radio lately. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because it is 30 years old this year. I’ve always liked the song but I never knew much about Marty Balin other than that he was a member of Jefferson Airplane at one time.

I had also never seen the video for “Hearts” until I decided to write about the song and started looking around YouTube for it. That is when I discovered that Marty Balin just might be MacGruber or MacGruber’s father.

At the very least, Marty Balin looks a lot like Will Forte.

The video is absolutely horrible in a most hilarious way.

At the start, I got the impression that Marty did something completely inappropriate with his guitar that is illegal in most states.

The video ends with a terribly funny “fantasy” scene that seems to have inspired every movie they show late at night on Cinemax. It is also mixed with footage of a speedboat which the director seems to imply is an inappropriate metaphor for “getting’ busy” with the musical instrument that you are pretending is your long lost lover. It also reminds me of the episode of Miami Vice Season One when Crockett and Tubbs got Calderone.

I was hard for me to concentrate since I keep expecting someone to yell “What do we do, Macgruber!?!”

It might be best if you just listen to the song and keep your eyes shut because this video could ruin “Hearts” for you forever. I know that I’m going to look funny standing in the mall laughing the next time I hear this song over the intercom.

Spring is Back!

2011-11-18T21:06:00.000-06:00

I know – I should not complain about it being 70 degrees in November when other people are dealing with minus 35 or worse. I like the warm weather.

This whole “Spring in November” thing would be fine if it wasn’t for all of the stormy weather that always accompanies “Spring in November”. I don’t like the possibility of having to pick roof shingles up off of the lawn again.

It’s the weekend. I’m tired. That’s all for now.

Guess what is back at Fred’s!

2011-11-17T14:33:00.001-06:00

It’s time for creme drops. If you don’t have a Fred’s, you better get to a store that just might have them before they are all gone. Since I buy them six bags at a time, they might sell out and you’ll just be stuck eating a lousy candy cane.

Good song: “Lawyers in Love”

2011-11-15T22:32:00.001-06:00

The kids decided they wanted to go through my record collection Saturday night. They are interested in how we lived in ancient times. They seem to be amazed that music will play through a needle. They are also not impressed at how short albums are considering they can play hours of MP3’s on their players.

One album I came across was “Lawyers in Love” by Jackson Browne. I bought it in 1983 and I’m guessing I used birthday money to buy it since, being 10 years old, I wasn’t employed at the time. The album cover always stood out to me. It also makes me realize how much of the “personality” of albums that we have lost without them.

The title song was always one of my favorites and I wanted to embed the video here from YouTube but, to my dismay, there were only two uploads of the song. One was just the song with a blank screen and the other was the video with someone doing karaoke and farting in the background. How lovely. I decided I had to correct this injustice against Jackson Browne fans everywhere so I downloaded the video and mixed the original music back with it. It took a while to get the timing right but I finally got it extremely close.

So, turn up those laptop speakers and enjoy the somewhat odd video for “Lawyers in Love” while I go hide from the copyright police.

A barn, not a drive thru

2011-11-14T19:51:00.001-06:00

I’m about to get on a conference call this morning when I get a call from an insurance agent telling me that one of his clients has turned the storage barn at our church into a drive thru. Oddly enough, the driver had the same insurance as the church, was covered for property damage, and was not injured. The barn did not fare as well as the driver.

I’m thinking our hoarding over the years may have saved the guy from injury. He was unable to make it through the whole barn since he ran into all of our junk. I’m thinking the thing would have collapsed on him if he had pushed the back out. This shows that hoarding may be good for us in odd and rare circumstances.

I’m standing up by the road for this one. That barn is pretty far away. You would think he would have stopped or missed a gigantic barn. It was 4AM and nothing good happens at 4AM.

The rain is coming tonight so we’ll soon have a pile of wet junk to deal with.

In other news, I spent most of the weekend watching my new Hulu obsession, Doc Martin. It has the small town quirkiness of Corner Gas. I highly recommend it. I’m in season two right now.

Finally, the rain is fast approaching. If you believe the weather experts, we’re in for a couple of really soggy days. They’ve missed most of the rain predications lately so who knows what will really happen. It was almost 80 degrees today and I am starting to get tired of the ups and downs. Can’t we just have a nice run of the mid-60’s for the next, oh, four months?

IMHO? There are not many humble opinions on the internet

2011-11-11T21:41:00.001-06:00

Every so often, I get on an internet tear. Something perturbs me and I feel the urge to comment on it even though it accomplishes zip. Instead of releasing the frustration and tension, I feel even more frustration and tension for adding my opinion to a cacophony of opinions from others who are also on an internet tear.

Case in point: The Poynter-Romenesko debacle that ended with the early resignation of media blogger Jim Romenesko. I’ve been reading Jim’s posts for years and I feel he was unfairly ‘attacked’ by a member of his own team (supposedly). You can read about it here. If you poke around, you might also see a trail of comments I left behind on Twitter, the Poynter website, and the Columbia Journalism Review. Looking back on the last twenty-four hours, I wonder why I would even be tempted to get involved at all. It was a huge waste of my time and I certainly get nothing out of having others read or comment on my thoughts.

That’s the trouble with the internet. Opinions are bad enough when they are thought out but the internet gives us the ability to post these opinions in real time without even thinking them over. I used to write Letters to the Editor until I got so disillusioned with them that I stopped. I was foolish to think sharing an opinion was actually for the common good because most people who read opinions and letters to the editor are not doing so because they want to change things for the better. They just want to have something to get mad about.

I even posted several links to Facebook on the whole debacle. I was outraged over the treatment of Jim Romenesko and posted the story to a group of people who don’t even know who Jim Romenesko is. What a waste of bandwidth. When it comes to information overload, I am part of the problem.

In looking back on my Facebook and Twitter posts from the last week, I also let some comments fly about Penn State and the Conrad Murray trial. Why do I care? Don’t I have more important things happening in my personal life that I should be doing rather than writing about news stories that have absolutely nothing to do with me?

I believe that part of the problem is that Twitter, Facebook, and even blogging pressures us to post “universal ideas” for the masses rather than just focusing on the smaller sphere around us that is our day to day life. Should I write locally about what is happening in my community and leave the big news stories for CNN and the such or should I just use the internet as an online journal of sorts and only tell my own personal stories?

Won’t it get old if all I write about is a reflection of who I am and those close to me who are important? I’m certain it won’t be that entertaining and there is also the fact that personal writing might make me confront things that I am not completely comfortable sharing.

Also, there is the chance that I will just reveal to the world that I live quite the boring life. I didn’t achieve and maintain my status as the Foursquare mayor of Walmart by living some sort of glamorous life.

It’s days like this when I step back and reevaluate. Oddly, I feel much better sitting here tonight and writing all of this for myself than I did sitting here last night and posting my opinion on sites for someone else to judge.

Maybe Robert Browning was writing about the internet when he wrote “Less is more”.

Sorry, Nintendo - Cartridges are so Two-Thousand and Late

2011-11-10T16:24:00.001-06:00

The big Christmas gift for the kids last year were the Nintendo DSi’s. These were upgrades from the used DS models that we’d had for quite a long time and had suffered much abuse. The kids could play the games they had, the battery life was better, and now they had cameras and could even surf the net!

Sadly, we discovered that the internet function is so clunky that it is unusable (a trait the DSi shares with the Wii Browser). Also, the clamshell of the DSi makes for a not so portable or functional camera. It’s fun for goofing for a bit but not for anything more. And, there is a stylus which seems more and more archaic as we embrace the touchscreen. The touchscreen on the DSi is just awkward and small enough to need the stylus for most functions.

The kids actually wanted iPod Touches last Christmas since they always played with the one my wife had. I thought that $249 was far too expensive for gadgets for 8 and 9 year olds. I was incredibly mistaken. The DSi is cheaper but cartridges are expensive and the kids get bored with them pretty quick. We have about 25 cartridges so I can tell you we have far more invested than $500.

On top of that, the iPod Touch is a phenomenal camera and video camera. Both kids love borrowing my camera. So, add the savings of buying a camera. Then, consider the savings involved in the thousands of free and super cheap apps out there in the App Store. What isn’t free can be easily tried for free using the Lite versions of many games that are available. And, what ever app we do buy can be downloaded to every iPod in the house. For example, we all have all of the Angry Birds apps now and we have gotten hours of play out of these 99 cent apps.

Sara got an iPod Touch for her birthday and Lindsay is getting one for hers. Now, I have no idea what to buy them for Christmas since there is no need for anything else. The DSi’s sit stored waiting for long road trips but I believe their days are numbered. The only things they have going for them is the long battery life and not needing an internet connection. A lot of iPod games like to reach out and touch the internet because all the free apps really want to sell you ridiculous upgrades. This is one thing you MUST be careful about with your iPod.

As someone who works in computers, I think the faster we can get our kids involved in and comfortable with technology, the better. Thank goodness my mother got me a TI-99/4A all those years ago because it fostered an interest in computers that has benefited me my whole life.

And, did I mention how fun Angry Birds is?

The only thing Nintendo can do to compete is a radical redesign of the handheld gaming platform that involves one big touchscreen plus a directional pad (the one thing the iPod Touch needs to be a truly awesome game machine). Get a decent browser and a killer camera and great speakers. Put together an online store that doesn’t look like it came out of the 90’s and have GB’s of storage on there for downloadable games with a cloud option for storage. Throw an HDMI port on there to allow games on the big screen and add Netflix and Hulu. Maybe add Bluetooth for multiple controllers.

And, take a hard look at the Wii. We rarely turn it on either. The cartoonish stuff has lost its novelty and the Wii U doesn’t look much better.

What ever you do, Nintendo, get out of the cartridge business yesterday. Do something quick or you will be the Atari of 2012.

Penn State Riot : Even the college kids are unhappy about the writing on Two and a Half Men

2011-11-10T06:42:00.001-06:00

I wonder if the warlock made them do it.

We interrupt this blog for a brief return to 1991

2011-11-08T19:19:00.001-06:00

We started the week saying goodbye to Andy Rooney. Now we bid farewell to Heavy D and he was just 44.

I wouldn’t call myself a rap fan but this one was pretty catchy and I do have it in my music collection. It brings back fond memories of the year I graduated from high school and the video makes me wonder if we had a hardcore fear of rain back in ‘91. There are a lot of people wearing parkas in this for no apparent reason.

Thank you, Andy Rooney

2011-11-05T08:12:00.001-05:00

(AP PHOTO/ARIZONA STATE UNIV.)

When Andy Rooney delivered his last essay on 60 minutes just a few weeks back, I was suspicious that something was up. I expected him to work until the last possible moment and I thought we were seeing just that. When news soon came that he had been in surgery and that there were complications, I thought that there was no way we would hear such news about such a private man unless his family realized that there was no chance of survival. Imagine the essay-length rant that we would have all heard or read if he had recovered. Sadly, he did not.

Andy has gone to a place where there is no impossible to open plastic packaging and no partially filled bags of chips or boxes of cereal. I’m not sure what he’ll write about there.

Here on Earth, we’ve lost a great voice that pointed out a lot of what is wrong. Sometimes he spoke of the minor annoyances of day to day life and sometimes he took on the great injustices that no one would dare speak of.

In the obit posted on CBSNEWS.com that he appears to have penned himself, three such injustices stand out:

“Native Americans demanded apologies when he belittled their efforts to stop sports teams from using names like "Braves" in 1995 and again in 1997 when he suggested Indian casino profits be used to support poor tribes. He reacted to the acquittal of O.J. Simpson in 1995 by offering a $1 million reward for information leading to the real killer - a reward he said he would never have to pay because Simpson committed the murders. His essay in 2004, in which he said God told him that the Rev. Pat Robertson and Mel Gibson were "whackos," resulted in 20,000 complaints - the most response any "60 Minutes" issue ever drew.”

AP PHOTO / JIM COOPER

I feel like I’ve watched Andy Rooney my entire life. I always wanted to be a writer. I’ve just never figured out exactly what I want to write. I also loved that we saw his desk in his office during his segments. I like to see how writers write and what environment they do it in.

A lot of people said that Andy Rooney was a curmudgeon. He didn’t seem to respond to praise in the way a “normal person” would. He was turned off by it and sometimes appeared offended. I think he was just uncomfortable with it. I spoke at church last week for 45 minutes. It’s something I prepared for over a couple of weeks but the most difficult part of the whole thing for me was having to go to the door at the end and shake hands with everyone and be thanked. I know that sounds silly but it’s nice to know that Andy Rooney appears to have felt the same way.

I’m not sure I want to work until I am 92 but it would sure be nice to love what I do and be good at what I do all the way until the end.

Andy said it best and I hope he’s right - “Writers don’t retire and I’ll always be a writer.”

Cool and drippy

2011-11-02T16:39:00.001-05:00

It sounds like a new dessert at Dairy Queen but it’s not. It’s the latest official forecast from the National Weather Service! I guess they are running out of ways to describe rain.

Tom Turkey has returned and will be in charge of the front yard through Thanksgiving. Then it will be time to pull down the Christmas stuff. Ugh.

This week started out so promising and now I have hit the wall of no energy and what energy has been around is all negative. I’m hoping to wake up tomorrow morning feeling positive no matter how cool and drippy it gets.

Old Halloween Pictures

2011-10-31T20:58:00.001-05:00

I don’t have pictures from John Kerry’s first appearance . These things happen.

Halloween 2011!

2011-10-31T20:02:00.001-05:00

Today is the day I discovered Orange Tootsie Rolls. I wish I had not since I am now addicted. I’m afraid to even consider what a Tootsie Roll is made out of. It’s like McRibs – I’d rather not know since it would probably ruin it for me.

We were pumping out the Halloween jams (with a few snippets of classic John Kerry and George W. Bush quotes mixed in for good measure) for all of the neighborhood to hear thanks to my still awesome Windows ME Thinkpad. Vintage laptops forever!

We dressed up in our finest weird-wear and posed with our good buddy John Kerry, who is making his 8th annual appearance this year! He only comes out at Halloween and it’s a tradition that cannot be missed.

People actually took pictures of John Kerry peeking out the window at them this year. I thought people did this at every house. I know – I need to repaint the shutters. I’m a slacker.

Another spooooooky Halloween is in the books. Next stop – Turkey Day!

Birthday!

2011-10-30T15:08:00.001-05:00

Our oldest, Sara, turned the big 1-0 today. So, we had one of our crazy and chaos filled parties last night. If you didn’t see the pictures on TMZ, here are a few:

In this one, Sara is holding up her favorite thing.

Check out the ‘cupcakes of peace’. Maybe we need to send one of these to Iran.

We made her open our gifts this morning because we are cruel like that. We’re also cruel enough to take pictures of people when they have just gotten out of bed.

A good time was had by all and it’s all done which is the best part of all to me.

On to Monday!

Just a couple of more days left on the blog sabbatical

2011-10-29T21:59:00.001-05:00

I’ve been too busy to update. Soon, I will fill the blog with pictures of birthdays, Halloween costumes, and the McRib’s I have eaten lately.

Creeping Along

2011-10-25T21:29:00.001-05:00

Another week is slowly slipping by and that means another 30 degree temperature drop is coming. I would complain about all of the back and forth with the weather but at least this means we get some warm weather before it just turns completely cold. I took advantage of our second to last 80 degree day to pull out the grill tonight and fix pork chops. It actually felt a bit like summer out there tonight. It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is just a few weeks off.

I’m completely unprepared for the holidays. I haven’t bought a thing. I am a slacker. I need to stop thinking about how soon the holidays will be here.

I am feeling much better today after a somewhat sleepless night. To reward myself, I bought the absolute best lunch I could think of.

I think I shall have another tomorrow so I can maintain the roundness of my figure.

Sick Day

2011-10-24T19:28:00.001-05:00

I didn’t really take a full sick day but I sure felt like taking one. I’m not sure where this stomach bug came from but I will be glad when it is over. The only odd thing that happened this weekend was that I got stung by a bee. Other than that, I ate the typical junk I always eat and no one else in the house is sick. I didn’t attempt to eat any healthy food which I am certain that my system would reject.

So, I am now on a diet of Pepto, toast, and other assorted light foods.

Don’t worry – I did spray my laptop keyboard with Lysol so you most likely will not become infected by reading this.

Facebook is more trouble that it’s worth

2011-10-21T17:23:00.001-05:00

Do you know what really bugs me? Facebook really bugs me. I would delete the whole thing if that wasn’t the equivalent of dropping off the face of the Earth. I actually did that for a lot of years after school – just dropped off of the face of the Earth and it really wasn’t that bad. Out of my nearly 300 Facebook “friends” ("Friend” does not mean what it did before Facebook – now it just means “Person I may have just bumped into once at Chili’s who looked me up on Facebook”) there are about 20 who I really would bother hanging on to.

My big frustration is how difficult it is to filter out who sees what, such as who has my phone number that might sync over to their phone because Facebook has a way of melding into every electronic device you have. This person I saw once at Chili’s might possibly go down their entire contact list and finally ring me in the middle of the night because they have a flat tire on the expressway. This bothers me. I barely sleep as it is. I’d probably already be up. That doesn’t mean I want to go to the expressway in the middle of the night and help someone I only met once at Chili’s. I know – a real friend would help. But, we’re not REAL friends. We’re Facebook friends.

What also bothers me are people who don’t understand that they control their own security – not me. They think that me doing something with the SUBSCRIBE button on their page actually will prevent their comments from becoming public. No, the SUBSCRIBE button only limits what appears in my news feed. It has nothing to do with what they like or comment on and where it appears on what page. They control that themselves. I could “inform” them of this in a likewise very public post but they would just say I’m the bad guy and they should have known that before they added me on Facebook because I wasn’t particularly friendly to them that one time at Chili’s. They just added me because it was cool back in 2010 to have as high a “friend” count as possible. Now, in 2011, they’ve just realized what a pain it is to have such a high “friend” count. They don’t want the hundreds of “friends” they accepted in the first place seeing so much of the personal parts of their own lives.

I’ve seen multiple people rant about this in various finger pointing statuses. I get offended because they obviously have not looked at their own security settings and then I agree with them because no one can figure out the security settings. I work in computers every day and the settings on Facebook make me long for the simplicity of MS-DOS 5.0.

So, my five paragraphs of complaining about Facebook are happening because Facebook is too complicated and too annoying for anyone to truly figure out. It has put the Postal Service out of business and it has made us way too connected to each other in a completely un-positive and un-meaningful way. I hope the other people who get frustrated over the mess that is Facebook will just delete me and save me having to do it when I am up real late one night and bored and get all crazy with the delete button just because I’ve already seen that episode of Later with Carson Daly.

Don’t worry – you won’t miss my generic updates and dog pictures anyway.

Ugh-ly Day

2011-10-19T17:59:00.001-05:00

I could not “get in the groove” today. I barely slept last night and have no idea why. I vaguely remember watching tv and goofing around on the internet at 3AM. I also ate something but can’t remember what. So, now I am tired and wanting to go to bed but I know that I will go back there tonight and not be able to sleep. It’s funny how that happens.

Oh – the ugh-ly day? That was caused by our early sneak peek preview of winter that arrived last night. It looks like this now:

And, it’s cold and rainy. It’s an early start for the cloudy season and I hope it doesn’t stick around for long. I remember whole weeks last winter where there was not a peek of sunshine. Hopefully, our relief will come on Friday.

Finally, I bought a new end table from my preferred source of ultra-cheap furniture, Freds.

I needed something small and functional to sit between two chairs and this worked perfectly. The best part was that it was just $15. Of course, it looks like a $15 table. I won’t be in Architectural Digest any time soon so I’m not too worried about it. And, the Chinese craftsman who created this beauty slapped this interesting warning sticker underneath:

THIS IS A TABLE!!!!

To top off my day, I burned my hand on the stove while preparing the evening cuisine: fish sticks and french fries.

OWWWWWWWW!!!!

Merry Christmas!

2011-10-18T21:59:00.001-05:00

This crazy station flipped to all Christmas music today. You just try to resist clicking here to listen. I’ve been listening for almost an hour. Something is wrong with me.

Happy Manday!

2011-10-17T19:56:00.001-05:00

It’s Manday again so I’m bringing the fabulous Divine out of the archives to start out my entry today. There’s a story behind Manday but it’s one of those “you had to be there” stories that won’t make much sense if you weren’t.

Today was the first day back from vacation and it was crazy hectic. Also, I have no additional vacation scheduled for the rest of the year so that means all I have to get me through the rest of 2011 is binges at Baskin-Robbins and cups of coffee – lots of cups of coffee.

Hey! Let’s all get pneumonia!

I’m sitting here listening to a podcast through my earbuds because I am attempting to drown out Two Broke Girls. Every time I see the commercial proclaiming that this show is the #1 new comedy, I cringe. It is horrible but it appears that the majority of people who still watch tv do love horrible shows. Of course, maybe people are leaving the room between How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men. This show is just left on while they are folding clothes or taking dumps. And, compared to The Sing Off, Two Broke Girls starts looking like Masterpiece Theater.

At least Castle is on tonight. Thank goodness. I coffee’d up real good at supper so I will have enough caffeine to stay up until 10PM. I woke up around 5 this morning and could not get back to sleep. Maybe it was a huge case of the ‘going back to work’ dread. Coming back after vacation does remind me of how I felt on the morning before the first day of school.

Last and least, my iPod experiment is continuing nicely. I spent a lot of time away from the laptop over the weekend. I’m also slowly learning all of the ins and outs of iOS. I did spend a little time on the laptop setting up iTunes Home Sharing and it is phenomenal! No more moving files back and forth with flash drives! It is sheer genius! I send my sincere thanks to all of the unknown little people who have created this while working in the shadow of Steve Jobs.

Onward to Tuesday!

Gadget Talk: I rant on and on about Nooks, Zunes and iPods, Oh My!

2011-10-14T15:20:00.001-05:00

I’ve been in the middle of a gadget conundrum for the past few months. I’ve been looking for one device that can take over the casual surfing of my Acer netbook that has developed an annoying short in the screen. I wanted something easily portable and quite simple – any heavy duty stuff such as writing on the blog would still occur on my trusty 5 year old Gateway laptop.

Gadget #1: My Nook Touch is just about the best gadget I’ve ever had and I do all of my reading on an e-ink Nook since the color display kills my eyes after a while. It can surf the net some but the browser is really locked down. It’s meant to be a document reader and does that very well but it is not right for casual internet use.

Gadget #2: The first thing I tried was our sadly underutilized Nook Color.

I can browse all over the internet and the browser is quite good. The stock software on the Nook Color did not allow sideloading of apps (if you can’t get it in the B&N Nook App Store, you can’t get it) and I had some stupid hangup about wanting to load apps just like my wife does on her iPod Touch. I’m not sure why I thought this would change my world but I stupidly decided to root the Nook Color.

I installed Cyanogenmod and that changes the Nook Color from a locked down Android device into a full fledged Android tablet. Sure, there are benefits. You can customize the appearance and you can download any Android app that will work. “That will work” is the key because not all Android apps work on all Android devices. If your LCD Screen Density is not right for an app, you cannot download the app. FRUSTRATING!! I can’t imagine an un-geek even trying all of the crazy crap I tried just to make different apps install and just because they installed didn’t mean that they would end up working.

This experiment made me realize that I was wrong about “locked down devices”. Having locked down devices means app stores dedicated to your device and this is the way to go. They go to all of the trouble to make sure that things will work. B&N, Amazon, and Apple all “get it”. They all control the device and the app store. There are so many models of Android devices out there that the Android Market just can’t cover them all.

I finally just gave up. Yesterday, I returned the Nook Color back to its own factory software. It is a real Nook Color again and I forgot how wonderful that actually is.

So, with the Nook Color back to being a Nook Color, I surrendered it back to my wife.

Next, I looked at my Zune HD and tried to use the built in browser to navigate to some websites and considered making it my casual surfing companion. Well, Microsoft has never updated the browser so a lot of stuff does not work.

Gadget #3: My Zune HD has traveled with me all over the country but Microsoft is discontinuing the Zune line so that ship is sinking. It’s a shame because the Zune player is a great media player – it’s perfect for music, videos, and podcasts. Navigating through your media collection is an absolute breeze.

Also, the Zune software is 10 times better than iTunes (which still looks exactly like it did in 2001 and works about as well as it did then also). You can quickly organize songs and control what syncs and burn cd’s and add podcasts, etc. etc. etc. iTunes looks like something out of the Soviet Union and most everything you need is buried in menus that you can’t find.

So, why is it dying? First and foremost, because it is not an iPod Touch yet Microsoft tried to make it into one by adding apps but they were an afterthought and it sure showed.

Second, Microsoft Points is a joke. Let me set up a credit card like we have in iTunes and let me pay for the items I want without having to buy Microsoft Points first.

Do you want Wichita Lineman? That will be 110 Microsoft Points, please!

With that all said, I went out and drank the Steve Jobs Kool Aid.

Gadget #4: My new iPod Touch.

My wife has had one for several years. It will be my casual surfing buddy and my go to device for casual picture and video taking. For now, my Zune HD will continue to be my main media player but the iPod Touch can do so much more. Getting my music organized in iTunes was a bear so I’ve only moved over a few songs. Podcast management is not that great but I do like the convenience of the built-in speaker.

Apps work exactly like they should. I can easily refill my prescriptions with the Walgreens app. I can catch up on my email. I can check the news and weather. I can breeze through social networking and see who is unintentionally making me laugh on Facebook with their crazy opinions and posts. The pictures I take are quite amazing and I can email them in two or three taps. I can do just about everything I can on the netbook and I don’t find myself getting “sucked in” like I do when I open up the laptop.

I’m starting to miss the days when all we had was a floor console TV and an Atari. Books were books and if you wanted to know about the news, you picked the newspaper up out of the driveway every morning and afternoon!

I still have too many gadgets but at least each one will have a specific role. My Zune is my media player. My iPod is my mini computer and may one day become my media player also. My Nook Touch is my e-reader. My laptop is my “heavy duty” machine. I’m thinking that if I didn’t work in technology, I might not think I have the need for all of this stuff. But, everyone around me seems to be in the same boat. I see tablets, cell phones, laptops, etc. all over the place and I wonder how all of it doesn’t consume entire lives.

I’ve finally gotten to the point that I want to stay connected but I want to take the absolute least amount of time doing it. I think that these are the tools that will allow me to accomplish just that. At least, that is my hope.

Decorations = Back Pain

2011-10-12T19:49:00.001-05:00

All of these totes…

…turned into all of this.

Some of these decorations now have seven or eight years of wear on them and it’s starting to show. I guess this is the year I’ll be hitting the after-holiday clearance aisles so I can get some newer yard swag.

Even my glowing eyeballs are starting to crack.

They probably feel like my back does. In addition to dealing with the decorations, I also mowed the yard and put all of the totes back up in the attic. I’m starting to wonder if this is really a vacation.

Braces Tuesday

2011-10-11T18:53:00.001-05:00

The day we’ve all been waiting for finally arrived. The orthodontists get to take another vacation or remodel the kitchen thanks to Sara getting her braces today.

Sara’s a bit younger than I was when I got mine and that’s a good thing – she’ll only have to have them for about 18 months. And she is out of school for fall break this week so she can mope around here complaining about the soreness instead of having to do it in the classroom.

It was also a rainy day today and it rained just enough for me to postpone mowing the yard again.

I’ll probably have to mow it tomorrow since I will have to put out all of the Halloween yard decorations and unpack the Fall stuff that I pulled out of the attic today. As much as the kids enjoy looking at decorations for two and a half months each year, it sure is a lot of work and it gets a little harder pulling down the heavy totes each year as I get older.

I started reading the first Richard Castle book on my Nook Touch today (so far, so good) and I even got caught up on some podcasts as we drove back and forth to the orthodontist (about 40 miles each way – it will be a really fun drive when the snowy weather arrives) and as I cleaned the house. So I am also getting a little “me time” in there as my last week of vacation for the year slowly goes by.

Commercial Truth

2011-10-10T16:02:00.001-05:00

Every time I see this commercial, I can’t help but think of how the trajectory of life works out. She has all of this hope and promise and yet ends up being a pharmacist in a big box superstore. Yes, she might be the best educated person working in the superstore, but she’s still working in a superstore. She might drive a Mercedes but she still has to park it out front at Target and she still has to park out beyond the outer yellow line during the holidays because all the spaces up front are reserved for the customers.

This commercial is a true story. She really is a Target pharmacist. Instead of being out there changing the world, she’s explaining the side effects of Cialis to a 70 year old man wearing a gold chain and smelling like Old Spice. Of course, the smell of the Old Spice is a nice change because it covers up the constant wafting odors of hot dogs from the snack bar.

Of course, Virginia might be a real-life Chuck. She might be a spy and this whole Target gig could be her cover. If not, at least she gets a killer employee discount.

Thanksgiving!

2011-10-10T08:05:00.001-05:00

Today is Thanksgiving in Canada and I am off this week here in the US just by sheer coincidence. I took a week of vacation for fall break and because Sara is getting her braces this week.

Roast for Thanksgiving? I think I’ll pass.

I normally don’t take today off because I enjoy the days that our Canadian office is closed because that means a good catch up/get organized/purge things day for me. Canadian Thanksgiving marks the first big holiday at work and our descent into the run of holidays during which I have yard decorations up for over two months.

I’ll be heading up into the attic this week to get our Halloween decorations and it will be way too hot to be up in the attic as usual. It’s weird how summer here seems to last into October. It’s hard to get in the holiday spirit when it is 90 degrees.

I would write about what we did all weekend but it is a blur of running from one place to another. I know there was a trip to Walmart in there somewhere because I had enough food here to fix breakfast this morning. I’m hoping that there will be time to rest a bit this week in between the yard decorating and trying to keep the kids entertained.

Mac Memories

2011-10-07T10:21:00.001-05:00

Here’s a picture of our yorkie, Angel, with my old Mac Classic II. Both are gone now. I no longer have the file of this picture. I printed it out way back when and kept it.

Note the blazing fast 14.4 modem on top of the Mac. At the time, this thing was blazing fast and could do things that we’re just about unbelievable.

So, Steve Jobs was a rear end a lot of the time. I’ve read all of the nasty things people keep bringing up and guess what – no one is perfect. I’m sure plenty of the jealous and not creative people who crossed paths with Jobs over the years made a point of recording every imperfection they could just so they could boost their own bruised egos.

If you’re going to do big things, you’re going to have to be not so nice. There are a lot of naysayers out there. And, yes, Jobs was a pretty bad father also. His priorities were a mess. But, I never bought an Apple product because I was trying to validate the personal life of the man behind the product. I bought Apple stuff because it worked. I bought it because Apple took the nasty side of computing and hid it behind a very user friendly interface that we could all use. I bought it because Apple unlocked the door to so much we could never do before – real desktop publishing is one thing I can think of that completely blew me away. We could all make real newsletters. We could all make real professional documents.

Thanks to Steve Jobs, we can go to a computer and not boot into DOS and have to type in commands to open programs. Did he invent every innovation? No. But he did believe in innovation and he had an eye for what the common user needed. Before Macintosh, the features of computers today that we take for granted were only accessible to the very wealthy or quite connected. Home computers were a joke and small businesses still using pen, paper, and filing cabinets were trying to compete with big businesses that were totally automated.

Steve Jobs and Apple made real computing accessible for the majority.

Sure, people complain today that iOS is too locked down. Apple controls it all! The horror! But, it works. This is the failing point of Android. The system is beyond fragmented. Go to Walmart and look at 4 different tablets on four different versions of Android and then remember that they all cannot run all of the Android programs.

Think about how fast Mac evolved while Windows lagged behind. It took years for Windows to try to copy all of the good things in Mac and they only finally got it right in Windows 7!

I miss my Mac. I miss Oscar the Grouch jumping out of the trash can and singing when I deleted things. But most of all I miss the feeling I got discovering all of those cool things I could do on a Mac for the first time.

People born after 1992 think we’ve always had those things and we need to thank Steve Jobs for that, warts and all.

Thanks, Methheads and Big Pharma

2011-10-05T17:25:00.001-05:00

Thanks for discontinuing the only allergy meds I have ever taken that has worked. I have been informed by my pharmacy that the last major distributor of Brompheniramine has ended production and I will no longer be able to get my pills.

Breathing is overrated. So, who is to blame for this? It depends on who you ask. In one corner, we have the meth makers (like you see on Breaking Bad). They are the reason that the government has cracked down on every decent antihistamine with decongestant and caused them to be jammed behind the counter where no one with an actual medical need can get to them without standing in a line and then overpaying.

Remember these pills? They worked also but they are no longer distributed in the US. We have to drive to Canada for these now. Thanks, meth makers of America!

In the other corner we have big pharma. The pharmaceutical companies want us to buy their patented items like Allegra and Claritin (which don’t work as well) so they have taken the cheaper (and better) products off of the market. It’s a great way to line their pockets while we are sneezing our heads off.

So, I’m going to enjoy my last two and a half weeks of pills and then I guess I will move to Antarctica where there are no allergies or meth making penguins.

Content, content every where, and no time to think

2011-10-04T19:36:00.001-05:00

I’ve spent the better part of the last couple of weeks “realigning” my virtual life because I’ve been drowning in “content” – bookmarks, tweets, Facebook birthdays, unread blog entries, etc. - and I finally hit oversaturation. My virtual cup has runneth over.

I’ve had so much information coming in that I couldn’t possibly process all of it. There is so much to read and most of it is just filler and filler has a way of pushing out all of the good stuff and taking over.

I stepped away from all of it in order to regroup. I realized that I needed to do two things. First, I had to decide what was important to me. Second, I had to purge the things which were not.

In the important category, of all of the things I “create”, this blog is the most important. It is my outlet and I have not been doing much of a service in the writing department lately. This is partially because I have been letting myself drown in distractions and partially because I had crazy self-imposed rules such as only writing one entry a day. If I have a voice and an idea on a particular day and that comes out as three entries in one day, I need to do that. I can’t put ideas in the queue and find any inspiration in them on my down/distracted/low-energy days. Yes, just like everyone else, I have down/distracted/low-energy days and those seem to be the days that I don’t write or I write about something completely uninspired such as how the weather is.

I also have this crazy need to rearrange stuff every so often. I have the itch right now to reset the living room. I’m not sure why I get bored with things when they sit in the same place too long but that compulsion has also spread to this blog and that is why I have posted the new layout I’ve been kicking around in my head over the last few weeks.

Also on the ‘important list’, Twitter comes in second for me and everything else is just me dabbling – Tumblr, Foursquare, and GetGlue are ways for me to like other things publically, such as the shows I like to watch and the places I like to go. Of the blogs which I read, those listed on the right hand side of this page are the ones I care most about.

On the ‘not important’ side of things, I had a lot of cleaning up to do. I purged a lot of blogs I followed. I went through the people I follow on Twitter and cut out about 30 of those. I blocked all of the people I don’t know on Twitter so they are no longer following me either. I’ve decided that Facebook and Google + are more wastes of time than anything else and I’ve really cut down on what I am doing social networking wise. I examined the podcasts I listen to and made the decision to cut out more than half of them and this included some I’ve been pretty dedicated to for years. I even deleted programs off my laptop and backed up and eliminated files I just never got around to reviewing. I deleted a bunch of bookmarks I saved for rainy days that have never come around.

I needed to eliminate the clutter from my virtual life in the same manner that I have eliminated it from my physical life and I needed to do it for the same reason – the clutter, whether real or virtual, can paralyze us. It can take over and snuff out the time we need to create and to learn. I spent more time reading web pages this summer than I did reading books. I spent more time fretting over what to write about than I did just sitting at the laptop and letting the words come out as they should naturally.

My goal now is to throw out “the rules” and write when and where the urge hits and also to narrow the amount of information coming in to a point that I am not wasting my time on the things I shouldn’t be wasting my time on. It’s all about focus and at this specific point in time, I have my focus back. We’ll see how long it lasts!

Favorite Songs–“Love Don’t Bother Me”

2011-09-29T20:35:00.001-05:00

I never understood why this one was not a hit here in the U.S. I worked at Taco Bell when it came out back in 1991 and this song was in heavy rotation on the satellite system we had in place of Muzak. Of course, there was no internet back then and the “Taco Bell Channel” had no announcers. I have no idea how I found out that the band was Stage Dolls. I probably got lucky and heard this on the alternative station here (Lightning 100).

I finally hunted down the cassette of their album Stripped at the long-defunct Tower Records near Vanderbilt University. It’s hard to believe that was 20 years ago.

Stage Dolls is from Norway and they still seem to have a pretty big following. A lot of their other songs are out on You Tube.

In other news, this has been a crazy week. The allergies have kicked in full this week. I’m ready for the cooler weather to come in tonight and hoping it brings a bit of relief.

I survived Vegas 2011

2011-09-25T15:37:00.001-05:00

Sleep was at a minimum over our three day Vegas excursion which really only consisted of being there Thursday night, all day Friday, and flying out first thing Saturday morning. I had to be at the airport at 7AM Saturday and it took a lot of coffee to handle that. I went to bed at 6:30PM last night just so I could recover in time for today.

These pictures are actually inside the Venetian right outside of Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio Bar & Grill.

Here’s some pictures from the lobby and the hallway to the rooms and casino. Overwhelming wealth and luxury, anyone? They’ve got plenty.

And, if you need to dial number two while doing number two, they have the phone you need in the place you need it.

It was a good time but it sure is a lot of traveling to do in a very short amount of time. I’m glad to be back and back on a normal sleep schedule.

Dreams can come true

2011-09-23T00:19:00.001-05:00

In my room in Las Vegas, I have a television in the bathroom.

I also have a remote control that operates the curtains and blinds and I have those soft robes like the ones Axel Foley gave to Rosewood and Taggart in Beverly Hills Cop.

If I can get just enough sleep to last through the day tomorrow…….

On the road

2011-09-22T08:52:00.001-05:00

First up, yes – I deleted the last two posts I wrote here. I went back and read them and realized that I was only writing about television shows because I wrote about them last year and the year before. Really, I had nothing to write about so I chose a topic that, frankly, blew. I don’t even watch that much tv and I couldn’t care less about what I wrote even as I wrote it. When writing is a chore, it’s time to step away and hit delete.

Of course, what I said about Castle being one of my favorite shows still stands.

I’m just hit a creative lull lately and that is sure coming through on the blog. I’m in between books and am completely unmotivated. I have big meetings I have to attend in Las Vegas starting today (I’m leaving for the airport in an hour) and I guess my mind has been on that for the last month or so. I’m not sure why these things stress me out but they do. A lot of the people at the meeting will be people I’ve only heard over the phone for the past three years and have never seen. That’s always tough – there’s the pressure to make a good first impression while still wanting to be honest in meetings and expressing the constructive ideas that need to be expressed to make things better. Let’s just say – there’s a need for that to happen. But, every company is the same so I can’t complain too much.

So, I am heading out to Las Vegas today and will return Saturday morning. I’m going from 75 degrees back to 100 degrees. It’s a short trip and there won’t even be enough time to adjust to the time zone difference.

Coffee is going to be my close friend.

Lazy Days and Lazy Nights

2011-09-16T22:00:00.001-05:00

I spent an exciting evening at the Walmart with what seemed like a few hundred of the weirdest people in town. There were quite a few mohawks on display tonight. Mr. T would have been proud. I didn’t get mugged in the parking lot so that’s one thing to be happy about.

We finally started fixing all of the problems at work yesterday so today was much smoother. The good thing about being so busy is that it made the week fly by. The bad thing about that is that the weekend will probably fly by also and then it will be Monday and nothing good seems to happen on Monday. I also have to get on one of those pressurized tubes called airplanes and fly a few thousand miles round trip next week. I can’t say that I am looking forward to that either. This also means that I will be at a meeting during the premieres of Parks and Recreation and The Big Bang Theory. My DVR better not mess up if it does not want to end up in the front yard,

So, on to the weekend – at least I don’t have to go to Walmart tomorrow.

It’s only Wednesday. Two more days of crap ahead.

2011-09-14T21:27:00.001-05:00

I just heard thunder. Do you know what that means? Let’s look at the redesigned weather radar and find out. It takes all of the guesswork out of looking at a radar.

What a week. We’ve been having problems on the “mainframe” at work. I call it the mainframe rather than calling it the ancient relic. On Monday morning, someone must have told it that Ronald Reagan died because it’s been acting up ever since. I was asked today when it was going to be fixed and I told them as soon as the man from the Smithsonian arrived with the parts.

I kid, I kid. (I’m not really kidding)

Oh, and my allergies. Gripe, gripe, gripe.

And I have to get on a plane next week to go on a work trip I’ve been dreading. Complain, complain, complain.

After the craziness at work, I haven’t had the energy to create any new gif’s for tumblr this week. For some reason, I haven’t been motivated enough to get on the computer much at night after being on one and screaming at one all day. (Did I mention pounding my fists on the desk? Office Max desks are pretty sturdy or I’m wimpy or both)

I keep having to reblog every one else’s gems. There are some really good ones from The Office making the rounds today.

O.K. Onward and upward to Thursday. Let’s see if the 40 degree temperature drop will bring us all the pneumonia that would be the icing on the cake.

More thunder! That’s a good reason to close up the laptop until tomorrow at 6AM when I am back at work solvin’ problems!

14 Months of Election Crap

2011-09-12T20:10:00.001-05:00

We’re actually 4 days shy of 14 months now. That’s four less days of rhetoric and all around bull that we have to deal with. Speaking of bull, there is another debate on tonight. At least six of these people are just wasting their time and money.

One of these people will be taking on President Obama in the election next year. It’s also quite possible that another one of them will be running as Vice President. So, the real question is do any of them stand a chance against Obama?

At this point, who knows. I thought Obama would do a better job than he has done but he's got nothing to work with. The real reason that our country is an economic mess right now has to do with all of the division in Congress. We’re quickly turning into a three-party government. In order to become viable, the Tea Party people have quite a strategy – they throw a wrench into everything. They won’t agree on anything because it draws attention when people are disagreeable. Obama can’t get anything done because the parties have turned into a finger-pointing mess. If I was a Republican, I wouldn’t be a part of this Tea Party debate tonight because it just gives the Tea Party validation and more power. But, the Republicans know that they cannot win the election without the Tea Party. In that way, the TP’ers are good for the Democratic Party. In every other way, they are part of what is destroying the Democratic Party.

The other part of what is destroying the Democratic Party is that their President cannot function without a script.

I have a hard time believing that President Obama could adlib his order at a McDonalds drive thru. He seems stiff and stilted and unnatural and unemotional. He comes off as cold and distant. To me this conveys a lack of passion and I believe that this is one reason that the government around him have turned their backs on him and isolated him. It’s hard to risk your rear supporting this man when it puts your own political future on the line. He’s like a lame duck months and months too soon.

Sure, President Bush made plenty of off the cuff gaffes over the years but at least he seemed real. Yes, mistakes were made (Iraq, Katrina, etc.) but look at the mess he ended up in ten years ago yesterday.

We need leadership. Maybe Obama will step it up or maybe he’ll get forced out. Only time will tell which way this next election will go. I foresee my mute button getting quite the workout between now and November 8, 2012.

Remembering 9/11/2001

2011-09-10T21:22:00.001-05:00

I think that I would remember Tuesday, September 11, 2001 as vividly as I do even without all of the video clips we see in continuous rotation around this time every year.

I was at home – I was off work that day and scheduled for jury duty the next day. I did not have the television on. I was listening to the radio and the newsman on there said that there was a fire at the World Trade Center and that he was watching this unfold on television and he actually recommended that all of us who were listening should get to a television as fast as possible because this did not seem like an accident to him.

I turned on the Today show just in time to see the second plane hit. I called my wife at her work to see if she was seeing this and they had turned on a television there also. The internet was more of a novelty at the time – most people still had dial up modems – so the main choice to get news was still television and I think we all sat in front of the television until late into the night.

I remember that it was a beautiful and clear day here just like it was in New York City. I don’t remember the weather on many days but I do remember that day. It sticks out because it seems so odd for it to be so beautiful when so much bad was happening.

Since Sara was due in October, my first thoughts were about what kind of world we were bringing her in to. There was a great deal of uncertainty as to what was going to happen and that didn’t just wear off after a few days – it seemed to last for months and months. For example, the color coded terror threat system that came out of all of that was a constant reminder of the danger we were in. It was always with us.

The only things I can even remotely compare 9/11 to in my lifetime are President Reagan being shot, the Space Shuttle Challenger accident, and the Oklahoma City bombing. All of these events were just hard to comprehend – each in their own unique way. Sure, other “events” have happened, but these are the ones that stick out in my mind as I write this as being the ones I witnessed that changed our country the most.

For me personally, 9/11 popped some sort of bubble of “safety” I guess that I was in. It’s hard to describe what that means but I can say I never get on a plane any more without looking at everyone suspiciously. 9/11 also changed my television and movie habits. I stopped going to violent action movies. I stopped watching crime TV shows. Seeing what I saw on that day made me want to look only for the positives and made me want to be as far from the negatives as possible.

It’s odd that my kids see 9/11 as history in the same manner that I saw Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK as history. Studying about something like that is not the same thing as living through it and one day my kids will have to live through such an event first hand. Thanks to our government, President Bush and now President Obama, and all of the many armed forces and police and TSA employees and countless others, they have not had to just yet. I can only hope that we will be able to get to the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and say the same thing.

Birthday #38

2011-09-09T00:51:00.001-05:00

I think Ron Swanson perfectly sums up how I feel about birthdays.

What nugget of knowledge from my 38 years can I share with you today?

Wisdom is not expressing every feeling that you have, every moment that you have them.

Sally Albright actually told me that back in 1989. Each year I have realized more and more how right she was!

Home Improvement

2011-09-07T17:23:00.001-05:00

The Fall home improvement project is finished. Lindsay’s room has been repainted and rearranged in order to transform it into a “big girl” room. Gone is the bright green paint and jungle themed wall border.

Of course, stuffed animals remain. You never outgrow stuffed animals. If you want proof, just try to come between me and my Christmas Rodney Reindeers.

Soggy

2011-09-05T12:15:00.001-05:00

My Walmart rain gauge overflowed sometime last night so I’m not sure how far over 5 inches we’ve got here now. The yard did not flood out like it typically does and I’m guess that is because of the weeks of no rain and 100 degree weather we’ve had. Today it’s staying right around 60 degrees and the feeling of fall is in the air!

Unfortunately, we know that the heat will sneak back in at some point. We normally have hot weather all they way through the end of October so this is just a temporary break.

And, it is Labor Day and we’re trying to be lazy but it is tough. This day is dragging. I think we’re going to have to go out in the rain to get lunch before we all go stir crazy in this house. So much for staying in and staying dry today.

No Sun Sunday

2011-09-04T15:55:00.001-05:00

The rain has arrived but the extreme forecasts of five to ten inches will probably be over to the east of us. We’re still looking at 2 to 3 inches here and the rain will fall slowly and will linger all night tonight and all day tomorrow. It’s annoying but we do need it. We’re getting really tired of all of the dust and I am really tired of all of the allergy-related sinus issues thanks to the incredible amount of ragweed that has sprouted up this year.

So this has turned into another afternoon of being all pilled up on the couch. I bet I was up and down ten times last night – I could not get to sleep and when I did get to sleep, I could not stay asleep. This is a problem that is getting worse and worse. I want to blame it on getting older but I’m really not sure of the reason. I’ve really tried to watch the sugar intake and I’m being really careful to avoid coffee late in the day. I just don’t get it. I’m also running out of internet to surf at night so I’ve turned to pulling out the AM radio and trying to put myself to sleep listening to talk radio. Guess what – it’s not working! I ended up listening to WGN out of Chicago the other night for two hours.

To top off the rain and the lack of sleep, we’re also working on painting our youngest daughter’s room this week. We took a huge load of old stuff to the thrift store yesterday in preparation for moving everything around in her room and tomorrow we’ll be getting the spackle done. On Tuesday, the kids return to school and the paint goes on. The fun of owning a house is that there is ALWAYS something to be working on.

I need to get back to zoning out on the couch now.

Hot!

2011-09-02T19:48:00.001-05:00

Another 100 degree day today with another one coming tomorrow. So much for September bringing us any relief. We haven’t had a drop of rain here in about six weeks. I stopped mowing three weeks ago. I am officially sick of summer.

Lucky for me that it’s all about to change. The tropical storm that just formed south of New Orleans appears to have us in the bulls eye and will be making a visit here by Wednesday. It’s so large that the rain will start Sunday night and we’re looking at up to 10 inches of rain possible here once this thing is out of the area.

I’m not sure where all of this rain is going to go on ground that is hard as a rock. I have flashbacks to previous storms that tracked right over us like Hurricane Andrew that soaked us back in ‘92 and Katrina in 2005 that maintained a tropical storm status all the way to the Tennessee border and brought 50 to 60 mph wind gusts.

We need the rain and I guess that is all that matters. I’m also looking forward to the 30 degree temperature drop that will be coming in with all of this rain and wind. I’m sure our AC unit is also looking forward to a break.

We buy popcorn marked up 2000% and watch “Crazy, Stupid, Love”

2011-08-31T20:29:00.001-05:00

We saw “Crazy, Stupid, Love” at the theater last weekend. We did not wait for it to go to the Redbox so that right there tells you that we were hoping it would be worth the money.

It was a pretty good movie. The cast was likeable and it was toned down to fit the PG-13 rating except for one inexplicable and completely unneeded F-bomb. Maybe they added that to get the PG-13? I’m not sure if a PG-13 rating is more attractive than a PG rating or not but it could have been to set this apart as a romantic comedy for adults vs. a romantic company aimed at the teens. They can have “Twilight” – we’ll keep Steve Carell.

There was a twist in this movie that I was either too full of popcorn or enjoying the movie too much to notice before – wham! – it got me. It’s like a Seinfeld episode where it all comes together by the end. The subplot involving Steve’s son and his babysitter is quite funny also.

It’s a winner. It’s quite intelligently written and there are plenty of little personal touches you learn about each character that makes you really buy in to each of them.

The movie also had me analyzing the way I dress as I am not far from Steve Carell’s age and too often I throw on an old polo shirt, a “relaxed fit” pair of jeans, and tennis shoes. I learned that this combination is a no-no.

Redboxin’ : “The Beaver” and “Cedar Rapids”

2011-08-29T22:02:00.002-05:00

From now on, I’m going to refer to the act of paying a dollar to see movies that I was unwilling to pay full price to watch in the theater as Redboxin’. As part of the review, I will also tell you how much of my dollar the movie was actually worth to me.

First up is “The Beaver”. “The Beaver” is the kind of movie that makes me wonder what sort of people sat down with the synopsis or the entire script and actually agreed to give the green light to spending millions of dollars on something that would seem to me is an obvious flop from the get-go.

There are two ways to think about this movie. One way is “Wow, this is a phenomenal turd of a movie”. The other way is “This is an incredible portrait of mental illness”. Unfortunately for “The Beaver”, it falls right in the middle of the two. I wanted to call Mel on the phone and yell at him after this because his character is so incredibly frustrating. But, maybe that is the point. The performances here are good but the story made me cringe the entire time I watched it.
What is odd is that the sub-plot involving the oldest son of “The Beaver” is more interesting than the main plot. Anton Yelchin shines as a high school student who makes money off writing papers for other kids at his school all the while saving up his money to get as far away from home as possible. He befriends a girl who wants him to write her graduation speech (played by Academy Award nominee and future “Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence) while struggling with his own inner demons and the fear that he is going to end up just like his father. The story around their relationship could have carried the entire movie and it would have been a better movie if it had.
I give this one 60 cents out of my dollar. Mel owes me forty cents.

*****

The second movie we watched was “Cedar Rapids”.
This one is about an insurance agent who has to leave the insulated comforts of his very small home town in order to go to an insurance convention in the “big” city of Cedar Rapids. An award that the agency gets every year is on the line and it is up to him to get it.

Ed Helms is quite likable and he plays the “somewhat innocent” role quite well. He is truly put out by the actions of his fellow convention goers at first but quickly embraces the insanity around them. He cuts loose and everyone has a better life for it by the end of the movie.
It’s also quite raunchy. It’s not a “Hangover” R but it does go for it at times. I guess that is the one problem with it – it can’t decide between being a movie with heart or being a movie with no morals whatsoever.
The cast is pretty good – they seem to gel quite nicely. Isiah Whitlock, Jr. is quite good as the insurance agent who appears to be shy and reserved but takes on a completely different persona right when needed. You’ll just have to see it to know what I mean.
This one was worth the whole dollar but you don’t want to watch it when the kids are around.

*****

We also made it to the theater and watched a movie that we paid full price for. I’ll try to get that one written up tomorrow night.

Science!

2011-08-24T16:15:00.001-05:00

Our first science project was completed last night! Fourth grade is going to be a lot tougher the second time around. This plant cell cookie took forever to make. My contribution is the labels. I also requested red mitochondrion. This better get an A.

Since I’m still exhausted from all of this learning, I’ll keep this short and go out by shamelessly plugging my Tumblr blog. Please have a look over at http://iusedtobebrilliant.tumblr.com/.

Blogger is a place for serious writing and Tumblr is a more artistic counterpart. It’s more like building an online portfolio or scrapbook. I’m still learning the art of creating decent GIF’s. The fun about tumblr is the ease with which you can share posts and pictures. Also, you can easily follow multiple blogs. The entries here get imported automatically with a 24 to 36 hour delay.

Most of my enjoyment is coming from searching for stuff from my favorite shows and reblogging the good stuff I find. Here is a GIF I made and just posted from Frasier:

And that’s all for Wednesday.

An Appreciation: Nick Ashford

2011-08-23T18:08:00.000-05:00

Music lost another great yesterday. A lot of us remember Ashford and Simpson from their 80’s hit “Solid”.

Of course, their contribution to music is much greater than one song. They were one of the most successful writer/producer couples in music and they gifted us with an incredible list of classics. So many of my favorites came from their collaboration.

No one today sings like Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell did and they did it without any computer mixing or other trickery! And, all of these songs and so many more were written by Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson.

The soundtrack of our lives is better because of them.

Ugh Saturday

2011-08-20T19:57:00.001-05:00

I’ve taken too many of these…

…to clearly write a decent entry here tonight.

I did end up dragging through Walmart this morning but the rest of the day was made up mostly of sitting on the couch and watching episodes from the first season of Frasier.

Fair Thursday

2011-08-19T20:39:00.001-05:00

The kids love the fair. And, they love Christmas. I’m glad of this but I’m always a tad relieved when both are over.

We hit the fair jackpot last night. The clouds moved in about an hour before we got there and the wind from dying thunderstorms gave us a cool breeze for most of the night. Last year it was hot as fire.

Even better than the weather, the kids had friends there to ride with on everything so us old people didn’t have to ride a thing! I didn’t have to risk any of the motion sickness that I got at Beech Bend earlier this summer!

We were also smart enough to stay away from all of the super-unhealthy fried foods. I really wanted a funnel cake but we skipped it. Our stomachs all benefited from this decision.

A good time was had by all. We got home at 10PM and it was extremely difficult getting up this morning. I think I was in a fog from 6AM to lunch. And, thanks to the cold or sinus mess I now have, I’m back in the fog at 8:30PM and counting the minutes until I can slink off to bed.

Oh, here’s a bad picture (thanks, Blackberry) of the creepiest guy I saw at the fair last night. He was “manning” this ride by standing every still with his big cup and quite a scowl on his face.

Finally, here was the most entertaining part of the night for me. This was some sort of amateur square dancing thing. The impromptu electric slide with audience volunteers to “Achy Breaky Heart” was the highlight of my evening. The guy staring at me as I took the picture brought me even more joy.

Anti-Social (Networking)

2011-08-17T14:22:00.001-05:00

My interest in Facebook is continuing to fade away. I might check it once a day just because I have a nice button on my bookmark bar in Google Chrome. Sometimes, I go down the line clicking the buttons in order and quickly remember “Ugh, it’s Facebook” and I just click the next button before it even opens. I rarely update my status and when I do, it’s typically via Twitter.

(I took this picture at sunrise this morning.)

Of my 244 “friends”, I think about 12 regularly update. The others are ghosts or lurkers or only update when they need to vent or celebrate. There are quite a few that I only “sort of know” – some are people I graduated from high school with who probably added the whole graduating class. I barely remember them and I am certain they barely remember me. I would leave Facebook but there are some people on there who I would completely lose track of if I left because I know them just well enough to give a comment or a like here or there but I don’t know them well enough to make the effort to sit down and write an email. That would be something I would have to work to maintain and I just don’t have that kind of energy.

I guess it all comes down to our “indirect” relationships vs. our “direct” relationships. If we are “indirect” friends, Facebook gives us the comfortable distance to successfully continue our “indirect” friendship that would most likely not translate into a “direct” friendship. I’m just too lazy to add any more people to the “relationship roster”. I enjoy my quiet time too much to try to invest in additional “direct” friendships. I have all of the facetime I need right now and sometimes it’s more than I need!

I added Google + and even invited several people and now I feel guilty about inviting people since I look at it like it is just one more social network to deal with.

So, I’ll just keep reading my favorite blogs and using Twitter and writing here and I’ll let the rest of it sort of just sit out there like a big virtual business card. If you need to get hold of me, just knock on my virtual door and I’ll do my best not to sit very still and pretend not to be home.

(The birds got them a nice new birdbath)

Digital Magazines? No thanks!

2011-08-16T20:00:00.001-05:00

I have a video game magazine subscription. It came with my Gamestop membership (we buy games used, play them for a while, the kids get sick of them, we trade them). Now they are asking me if I want to convert from a traditional magazine to digital.

Sure, it’s a win-win for them. They’ll save big time on printing and postage. For me, it’s a big NO.

I subscribe to these traditional (tree killing) magazines: Game Informer, Sports Illustrated (which has the best writing you can find in a magazine), Bloomberg Businessweek (which I consider the best magazine in print today), and Entertainment Weekly. I buy Real Simple at Walmart every month (I clip $1 off coupons for it).

I also subscribe to one digital-only magazine - a radio magazine called Monitoring Times. I used to buy Monitoring Times in the bookstore each month but it is just a pain to find and the digital-only subscription was a huge savings. Unfortunately, I haven’t read my digital copies in three months. I keep downloading them but I find it annoying to read them on the laptop. They don’t look good on the e-ink Nook Classic. On the Nook Color, the print is too small and if you enlarge the page, you end up scrolling back and forth to read it all.

My verdict – eReaders are awesome for books and terrible for magazines. Maybe an iPad would provide a much better experience but it sure isn’t worth that sort of investment for a casual reader to go all digital.

I just prefer the convenience of a magazine. There is something about the glossy pictures and the portability that makes magazines the winner in the old school vs. digital competition for me. It’s also nice to have an escape from the whole “web experience” for a bit to go offline, grab your magazine, and concentrate on what you are reading without any digital distractions.

Here’s to old school magazines! May they stay around for many years to come!

I Go to the Movies! : “The Help”

2011-08-13T20:31:00.001-05:00

While everyone else went to Glee 3-D, I did the grocery shopping at Walmart and then headed to the movies to watch The Help.

I just finished reading the book last week. The immediate challenge is that there is an awful lot of book here to try to cram into a movie and that is probably why this movie was a bit longer than some people might expect at 2 hours, 17 minutes. I guess since I just read it and have it fresh on my mind, I felt somewhat rushed. The result is that the depth we have with the characters in the book does not translate to the big screen with two notable exceptions – Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). These two deserve Oscar nominations. While Emma Stone seems to be portrayed as the main star (and she is quite good in her role), Viola Davis carries the movie and flat out deserves the Oscar. Of course, I believe her character is also the main character in the book. Aibileen is the glue that holds it all together.

The ending is hopeful but still heart breaking. It is exactly true to the book and most of the audience was left in tears and this is all because Viola Davis is able to play the scene in a way that is so incredibly true (true being the only word I can think of to describe it) that you just can’t believe that people can be so incredibly wicked. (You’ll just have to go see it to understand what I mean.)

Most of the audience did not appear to have read the book. They gasped at the parts I knew were coming all along so the ending seemed to really hit them out of nowhere.

That is a point many of the reviewers miss on this movie (and the book). Hilly, in what will be Bryce Dallas Howard’s breakout role, does get taken “down again and again” but it only seems to make her stronger and more bull-headed and more tragic. She gets knocked down but always manages to win in the end. She is unwavering and nothing makes her change.

At the end, the full theater (maybe there were 20 empty seats) applauded. And, oddly, most did not get up and immediately leave. Maybe they were cleaning up after a good cry (and there was a lot of crying). Sure, there was some comedy in there but for the most part it pulled no punches. I think most people were just stunned by the whole movie in part because things haven’t changed quite as much as we would like to admit.

Music for a hectic Thursday

2011-08-11T22:09:00.001-05:00

My daughter, who is in fourth grade, described her day at school as “hectic”. “Social studies! Science! Math! It never stops!!”

Tell me about it.

Here are a couple of songs to help you wind down after a hectic day.

Pepto Tuesday

2011-08-09T21:47:00.001-05:00

Something has been “disagreeing” with my stomach all day long. I finally had to give up and drink some of the dreaded pink Pepto Bismol tonight just to try to regain some control over whatever craziness is happening to the internals. I don’t think I’ve used Pepto for many years but I’ve always kept a bottle for those special emergencies and mainly for the kids. As nasty as it tastes, it does work. What I hadn’t noticed is how fun they’ve tried to make the bottle look.

That super fun font and those graphics can’t hide the fact that it still tastes the same way it did 30 years ago when the bottle looked just like it tasted:

See – it just looked nasty. We need more truth in advertising and we need to stop dressing up products to give us a false expectation of fun and joy. Drink Pepto Bismol – it’s the fun exciting medicine for the new generation of people with the craps!

Just as I suspected – there is a tiny boat inside my stomach. That explains all of my troubles!

Money-day

2011-08-08T20:28:00.001-05:00

Sure, it’s Monday. But it’s also the day that I went to my daughter’s dentist and had surgery. He extracted the money from my wallet after he explained how much her braces are going to cost. Even after insurance, I’m in it for about $4000. Yep – four grand. I don’t have four grand in plasma to sell so I guess I’m going to have to join the Chippendale’s Chubby Dancer Program. Or, I can mow all of the lawns in the neighborhood. Maybe I can sell lemonade in my driveway. Hmmmm.

In Nook news, I finished The Help this weekend.

It’s quite a story. It’s actually downright scary in parts when you think of the danger these maids are in when telling these stories. It’s disgusting when you read about how they are treated by the people they work for. Sure, some of the nastier of the people in this book get their comeuppance but it’s still not enough.

Now, is it the best written book I have ever read? No. It moves far too fast. It glosses over a lot. One of the three main characters has a mother who appears to be deathly ill by the middle of the book (even the doctor seems to give her just weeks but maybe months to live) but it still hanging on without explanation at the end (when this main character appears to be about to move hundreds of miles away while leaving her still dying mother behind). The author loves to stir up drama for drama’s sake and then just yank out the rug and move on with no explanation. Also, a lot of history is mentioned but sort of glossed over.

What really gets me is the apparent backlash by some in the African-American community over this book because they don’t like the fact that a white woman was the catalyst behind the black maids sharing these stories. In the most recent Entertainment Weekly, author Martha Southgate wrote, “Minny and Aibileen are heroines, but they didn't need Skeeter to guide them to the light. They fought their way out of the darkness on their own — and they brought the nation with them.” I don’t think the book hides the fact that Minny and Aibileen are doing the “heavy lifting” when it comes to telling these stories. I don’t think the book hides that they are the heroines. But, if you go into this book (and through life) with the idea that everything has an agenda (Martha seems to believe that the agenda here is to convince us that black people can’t do anything without a white person leading the way), then you’ll come out of the other end of the book with the same idea.

I believe that there were a lot of Minny’s and Aibileen’s out there and the risks they took everyday just to provide a roof over the heads of their families was quite incredible and inspiring and I’m looking forward to seeing how it ends up looking on the movie screen this weekend.

Enjoy this video while I take a small blog break

2011-08-04T15:43:00.001-05:00

I’m buried in work this week and have had to ignore the blog for a bit. Maybe something exciting will happen in the next day or so that is worth writing about. Until then, watch this really odd video for a pretty good song.

First Day of School

2011-08-01T10:16:00.001-05:00

Another school year has begun and that means another picture out in front of the school.

View all

Get your own

I took today off so I wouldn’t be so rushed. It’s weird to see all of the kids who come in alone – no pictures being taken or anything. Maybe I’m just weird and I should just drop them off at the door like it’s no big deal. But, I can’t. And I can’t help being a tad sad on the first day since this means they are growing up so fast. It’s amazing how fast it all flies by.

Sara starts fourth grade today. I made her pose next to the pencil sharpener.

Lindsay is in third grade and she was ready to go gossip with her friends about everything that happened over the summer.

I had to go to Walmart after I dropped them off. Next, I will mow the yard thanks to the rain we finally got last week. I can’t think of a more exciting way to spend my 96 degree day off.

Cowboys, Aliens, Smurfs, Chrome, and Rain

2011-07-30T15:49:00.003-05:00

I am back from the land of no blogging. I’ve been updating my file backups and moving things around on my laptops (work, personal, and netbook) over the past few days so I just haven’t had much time to update. When I did have time, the laptop has been running a backup or copying files. One thing I realize now is that I have taken thousands of digital pictures and many have become duplicated by moving between computers and external hard drives. It is going to take a while to clean up that mess.

Last night was movie night and the kids saw Smurfs while I ended up seeing Cowboys & Aliens. C&A is not my kind of movie. I don’t care for action movies. I like comedies. The last action movie I saw in the theater before last night was probably Independence Day way back in 1996.

Since I don’t care for movie like C&A, it’s probably unfair for me to share my thoughts but I will give it props for having good actors in it who tried to make such a far-fetched story believable. Another problem is the huge lack of "buy-in" we have for the characters. None are particularly likable so you find yourself feeling a bit pulling for the aliens. These paranoid and self-destructive humans deserve to be probed and then turned to ash. Harrison Ford seemed to be lucid through the entire movie which is a lot different than he normally is on talk show interviews and throughout the whole Morning Glory movie. Olivia Wilde plays the eye candy and gets to tag along with the boys who are chasing aliens halfway across the desert. The time period for this is the late 1800’s and I seriously doubt any man would let her tag along but they do because these are modern men who are ahead of their time in believing in equality of the sexes, I guess.

Of all the performances, Daniel Craig is the best. He really needs to be in a Coen brothers movie. He’s so serious that he is nearly believable in all of the craziness that this movie throws at us. I am betting he will be incredible in the upcoming The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie.

At the end of C&A, there is a resolution to the whole story but even it makes little sense. I was not impressed and, based on the box office predictions, neither are many others.

As I wrote earlier, the kids saw The Smurfs.

They did not seem to enjoy it much. All of the quick motion (all of it there to take advantage of the 3-D) was so jerky and fast that they said they had to keep looking down. I didn’t care for The Smurfs when they were on TV in the early 80’s and I sure don’t care to see them now. Still, they couldn’t have been much worse than the Alien mess.

*****

In nerd news, I finally had to tackle the upgrade of Firefox to 5.0 this week and the problems that the end of Google Toolbar support would bring. I have been a Toolbar user for a long time due to the syncing bookmarks across PC’s. I guess Google ended that support so people might be inclined to try out Google Chrome. Chrome has its own Sync function that is actually much better than using the Toolbar. I realized this after searching for decent add-ons for Firefox to sync bookmarks.

I ended up uninstalling Firefox from all of my machines and installing Chrome instead. Chrome is the fastest browser of all three (IE, Firefox, and Chrome) and the sync is flawless. I also like the built in apps that can be downloaded and installed. I’m very pleased with Chrome and I’m also keeping IE going on my work PC for work related stuff.

*****

Finally, we got over an inch of rain this morning but now it feels like it is 1000 degrees again since the humidity is back. I hate to say I am ready for Fall because Fall lasts about two weeks here. We basically go from melting in the summer to freezing in the Winter with hardly a break in between.

That’s it. I have some reading today and then maybe there will be time for a nap. I am off Monday also so I will go to the Walmart (ugh) and mow the yard after I take the kids in for the first day of school. Yep – the first day of school is Monday. Summer just gets shorter and shorter!

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

2011-07-26T18:54:00.001-05:00

Cheers was one of my favorite shows. There was rarely a Thursday night between 1982 and 1993 that I didn’t watch it. Since the summer television schedule is pretty empty, I’ve been setting the DVR to catch certain episodes and today I taped the episode in which Shelley Long left the show in 1987. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen this one since then but I sure remembered the ending. Of course, you have to watch the whole thing to get the full story so I’m positing parts 1 and 2 down below.

It’s classic 80’s television but to me it’s pretty timeless. I guess since the bar never changes, there is nothing in there to really date it – except for the way Frasier dresses and the way his hair looks.

Part one..

Part two..

Scratching our heads

2011-07-25T20:51:00.001-05:00

I think most of the world is like me – still scratching our heads when thinking about this mess in Norway and when wondering why we are a bit shocked about Amy Winehouse.

*****

The Norway suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, is a world-class nut. He has come up with a whole revived Christian militia (from the 1100’s) in his 1500 page rant. He even made uniforms and has asked to wear one in court.

This is not the most shocking photo he made – the one in what appears to be some sort of scuba outfit with an automatic weapon and a badge that says “Marxist Hunter – Multiculti Traitor Hunting Permit”. I have posted the 1500 plus page manifesto in my public Dropbox folder here. I did so for two reasons. First, it’s fairly hard to find a full copy of it in the format that he emailed it out in to 7,000 people. Second and most important, we need to know what is going on in the mind of nuts like this. This man worked for 8 years on this plan. Putting together a 1,500 page manifesto is certainly a sign of insanity. The way he goes in to in depth descriptions of his friends and then rambles on about playing video games with smileys and “lol’s” should show us all that we are dealing with someone who is not only dangerous but also quite immature.

And, you don’t have to read the whole thing. Go to the part called “Knights Templar Log” and prepare to be shocked.

Just think – in your community right now, you might have someone on page 1300 of writing his manifesto. They might be sewing the uniforms and ordering a digital camera (this guy used a Casio – I know because he tells us in his manifesto) so they can take self-portraits in their homemade uniforms. They might be in the process of getting their 10 credit cards and registering a business so they can buy fertilizer without raising suspicion. This “book” tells it all.

Yes, we live in an unstable world. There are extremists everywhere and they are not just muslims. It’s amazing that the first thing people thought was Al Qaeda. We’re thinking that way too much and that’s making us miss the danger right in our own backyards.

*****

Am I the only person in the world who was a bit surprised when news came out Saturday that Amy Winehouse was found dead? I guess I thought she would keep making the news with her risky behavior until she eventually faded away into non-popularity.

It’s sad because it is a huge waste of talent. When she was on, she was on. Addiction is a horrible thing and maybe there are a few people who are on the edge that will be scared straight before it is too late. Tragically, this might not even be an overdose – she may have died due to all of the damage she had put her own body through over years of addiction and “hard living”. It’s a shame that she couldn’t get it together.

Well, here she is singing a song I really like – “Valerie”. It’s actually a cover so I am posting the excellent original by the The Zutons right after it.

Norway

2011-07-22T21:22:00.001-05:00

I don’t get it.

The live pictures started streaming in here around mid-afternoon, I guess. It reminded me of stopping in a cafeteria in college and watching, in complete disbelief, the video coming in from the Oklahoma City bombing.

What makes more similar is that this appears to be the work of one person or a small group of people that have no external or terrorist ties. This is a Norwegian killing his own people much like Timothy McVeigh was an American killing Americans.

Should we be surprised? We’re bombarded with images of violence night and day on television and on the internet. Movies make heroes out of characters whose main hobby seems to be destruction and vigilantism. Music glorifies acting with careless abandon, lack of morality and no reason to worry about accountability.

I know – I am starting to sound like one of the old geezers who just points at all wrong in the world and doesn’t seem to realize that most people will rise above all of this and be the kind of people who want to be a part of society. But the problem that leaves us with is that it only takes one of these nuts to do this kind of damage. It’s not much different from how Hitler rose up but instead of wanting to take over the world, extremists like Anders Behring Breivik just want to inflict as much damage as possible to give attention to whatever sick “ideal” they want to promote. It’s all about sending the message and they send the message with carnage. He’s no different that Tim McVeigh or Jared Loughner or Lee Harvey Oswald.

As if bombing buildings was not enough, he drove out to a government sponsored camp and gunned down at least 80 innocent kids.

The scary part is that these people are all over. They are our neighbors. And, we don’t know what might trigger them off or what they might be planning. It’s only a matter of time before we once again see video like this coming from an American city and we are ill equipped to stop it.

The more we strip faith, accountability, and morality from our society, the more we will have events just like this.

I read a book by Henry Winkler, take the tv out of the kitchen, and try out Spotify

2011-07-21T19:46:00.001-05:00

I couldn’t think of a better title to cover all the things I write about in this entry.

*****

At the library last week, I picked up Henry Winkler’s I’ve Never Met an Idiot on the River.

I’ve always been a Henry Winkler fan. He was on Happy Days as I grew up and I loved him in the very under-rated movie, Night Shift. These days he seems to be just about everywhere you look. He’s on Royal Pains on USA and the quite insane Childrens Hospital on Cartoon Network Adult Swim. He is also possibly the friendliest person on Twitter under the user name @hwinkler4real.

The book is a fast read because once you start, it’s hard to put it down. He seems like a genuinely good person and is not afraid to share glimpses of the many challenges he has encountered and overcome in his life. Most striking to me was when he wrote quite honestly about his relationship with his parents.

He is vulnerable, like many of us are, yet remains incredibly optimistic and driven even when, as he puts it, his career was in “a lull” a decade or so ago. I was glad that reading his book seemed to validate my assumptions that he seems to be one of the “good” people in show business.

*****

I moved the television out of the kitchen today. It’s part of my attempt to reclaim certain parts of the house from technology. The kitchen seemed like a good place to start. Since what we have of a dining room is an off-shoot of the kitchen, I’m hoping that this decision will lead to more uninterrupted eating and quite possibly some unforced family conversations!

*****

I got one of the hard-to-get, not-so-hard to get if you know where to look (hint:click here, fill it out, wait an hour) invitations to Spotify. Spotify is a new online streaming music service. Amazon and Google both have versions of the same type of service but the emphasis with them seems to be online storage. Spotify is trying to become your only music app. It intends to eat your iPod and your record collection.

I like Spotify. It has a nice interface and you can play just about any song you can imagine. If you don’t have a huge music collection, it’s perfect because now you do have a huge music collection albeit virtually. If you already do have a lot of the songs you like, you’ll probably miss the point of this. In 10 years, mp3’s may be as ancient as the box of tapes in my closet and the old vinyl albums and 45’s I keep in an endtable in the living room.

I’m not totally sold on this service because I grew up having to own music. My kids are growing up in a world where everything is virtual so they see no need to have material possession of items that they can just pull up as a file. The ownership means nothing. Spotify appears to be the way of the future and Amazon and Apple better be taking note or they will end up being the Camelot Music and Tower Records of 2015.

*****

Onward we go into Friday. I am ready for the weekend even though I am already dreading the end of summer vacation and next week is the last week. The kids go back to school on Monday, August 1st. That means school supplies to buy and all sorts of new activities that will end up taking over the calendar. Summer goes by way too fast around here!

Fun with Rupert Murdoch–A Story in Tweets and Pictures

2011-07-19T17:02:00.001-05:00

used2bbrilliant 7:25AM Live video from the Commons home affairs committee News of the World questionings - Murdoch in an hour - t.co/i877CeV

used2bbrilliant 7:25AM I love it. The government acts stunned that News Corp took advantage of all of the power that they gave them. They are just as guilty.

used2bbrilliant 8:25AM Everyone on this committee sounds snobby and pretentious. I am going to start talking with a British accent so I can be sarcastic 24/7.

used2bbrilliant 8:37AM #Murdoch and Son are in place for their committee grilling. What a huge load of too little, too late.

used2bbrilliant 8:49AM The real revelation today is that one day James #Murdoch is genetically destined to look like a small frog in a suit.

used2bbrilliant 8:57AM Wow. Rupert #Murdoch should have stepped down a while ago. He's either playing dumb or has a 100,000 mile view of the company.

used2bbrilliant 8:58AM And, this Tom Watson who keeps grilling #Murdoch is a knob. I'd like to pull out all of his dirty laundry for the world to see.

used2bbrilliant 9:11AM Closing News of the World was simply good business. #Murdoch is no dummy. Let's dig into the government corruption that allowed this.

used2bbrilliant 9:21AM So, the most used tag for the #murdoch mess is #hackgate?

used2bbrilliant 10:16AM Rumsfeld best sums up #hackgate: "There are known unknowns.That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know."

used2bbrilliant 10:36AM When and if I make it to 80, I hope I can sit there and hold my bladder as long as #Rupert has today. #hackgate #hashtagforfunonly

used2bbrilliant 10:44AM #Murdoch just stuck it to the Telegraph! Shazam!

JonnieMarbles 10:51AM retweeted by used2bbrilliant It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat

used2bbrilliant 10:54AM Uh, Murdoch was just attacked. Cameras off.

used2bbrilliant 10:58AM It looked like someone threw a whipped cream pie on Rupert Murdoch. Very odd. #hackgate

used2bbrilliant 10:59AM BBC is reporting that it was a shaving cream attack. #Rupert's wife smacked the dude. Good to have a much younger wife!

used2bbrilliant 11:01 AM From BBC: Rupert Murdoch was apparently hit in the face with a plate of shaving foam by a man shouting: "Greedy." #hackgate #rupert

used2bbrilliant 11:03AM Today's questioning of Rupert Murdoch sponsored by the new Fusion ProGlide razor by Gillette. #hackgate #fb

used2bbrilliant 11:05AM Wendi Deng is not only #Rupert's wife but also his bodyguard and she kicks major butt. A star is born!

used2bbrilliant 11:08AM #hackgate #Murdoch coverage on BBC is 10 times better than the US coverage t.co/i877CeV

used2bbrilliant 11:15AM #Murdoch is back with no suit jacket and appears to be freshly shaven also. Where do I sign up for such a unique service? #hackgate

used2bbrilliant 11:21AM So, Jonnie Marbles pre-tweeted his attack on #Rupert Murdoch. How come MI5 did not intercept the tweet and stop the attack? #hackgate

used2bbrilliant 11:41AM Rebekah Brooks is next! I hope Wendi will be sitting behind her also just in case. #hackgate

used2bbrilliant 11:44AM Wife of the Year Wendi Murdoch is not there. Rebekah is on her own! #hackgate

used2bbrilliant 12:18PM Rebekah Brooks is boring. Fox should have cancelled her show years ago. #hackgate

used2bbrilliant 1:00PM Rebekah Brooks - The Hair. A new horror show coming to Fox this fall. #hackgate

Rain!

2011-07-18T15:55:00.001-05:00

What is this weird substance falling from the sky and turning to steam as soon as it comes in contact with any object!

We didn’t get enough rain to really help but it was an interesting change and may have knocked down a little bit of the dust for a few hours. With the clouds, it didn’t flare up to feeling like it’s 150 degrees after the rain. It will be 99 tomorrow so we might as well enjoy it while we can.

*****

Just a thought – do these people who follow me on Twitter think that by following me, I will follow them and then they can sell me whichever product they sell? This way of thinking appears to work. Look at this example of the latest unsolicited person that added me:

Only 1,650 people didn’t follow him back! I’m proudly part of the 1,650. I’m expecting that whatever marketing firm or unfortunate relative he is using to follow people will give up and unfollow me after a few days. That’s the only way I know of to explain the small “failure” rate unless people are really this gullible or in need of fake cyber attention.

*****

I finally finished off and posted my page dedicated to all of the things I learned about the Alphasmart 3000. If you are reading this on Blogger, a link is available on a tab up at the top of the blog. If you are reading this on Wordpress, there is a link over to the right under Pages. The Alphasmart 3000 is a very-portable device that only does one thing and it does it well – very basic word processing.

*****

Finally, this is where I whine about still being tired. I really got off of my daily schedule this week with no one here. I stayed up too late and didn’t sleep in enough to make up for it. Trying to get back in the groove at work today was ROUGH. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for decent sleep tonight versus waking up repeatedly last night. I woke up at 3:30AM wide-awake and ready to sit down at the computer. So, I drank no coffee today in anticipation of getting tired at a normal time so I can rise and shine for work starting at 6AM tomorrow.

Reunited!

2011-07-17T14:22:00.001-05:00

Instead of attending the $70 a head 20 year class reunion last night, I attended a small get together mini-reunion Friday night that was much cheaper and probably far more enjoyable. Of the people there, I had only seen one of them since graduation. That’s twenty years of life out there to discuss but we spent most of our time passing around our senior year book and trying to remember the names of the teachers that had inspired us or we had conspired against.

We learned that just about all of us had gone to Disney World at some point in the last few years. We realized that we all had blank spaces in our memories but between all of us, we could pretty much fill in all of the details of anything we tried to recollect.

We also talked about the accidental joys of Facebook – those who overshared in high school are still oversharing now and we all get great enjoyment out of this.

The greatest lesson is that no matter what life has thrown at us, we’ve all persevered and we can look back now and have quite a lot to laugh about. To my old teachers, I can happily report that the Class of ‘91 has turned out just fine and maybe has even exceeded your expectations.

So, we talked until after midnight and since I am here solo this weekend and we had been talking about the old days, I guess ‘young me’ (who still lives on inside, likes to hear 80’s music, and can’t understand why I get winded mowing the lawn) convinced realistic ‘old me’ that I might as well hit Kroger on the way home. Why rush? I used to shop in the middle of the night in college. I can still do it now. I was getting the eggs when I started to feel just a bit tired so my body was telling me that I was too old for this even though I was ignoring it.

Dumb me.

Oh, and only self checkouts are open at 1:23AM. Who knew?

I’m already out. Might as well stop and get gas. Then, I might as well go by my in-laws house (they were out of town also) and pick up a laptop I was going to work on.

I drag in at 2AM. I put up all the groceries and now I’m too tired to go to sleep so I start on the laptop. I do some vacuuming. I put up the dishes. I watch Leno being repeated for the insomniacs.

At 4AM, the coma takes over and I drag to bed. At 6AM, the dogs need to go out. At 9AM, I wake up starving.

I drag around in the sleep deprived coma for the rest of the day. Saturday turns into a throw away.

Note to self – this is the reason you don’t stay up past 11:30PM for any reason.

Everyone returns today. I have all of the dishes clean and all of the trash out. My to-do list is not completely finished off but I accomplished quite a bit.

Going back to work tomorrow is going to be rough since this was the weekend that didn’t feel like a weekend.

Just me and the dogs

2011-07-14T22:29:00.001-05:00

The fam is out of town so I am here holding down the fort until they return. That has meant a lot of excitement since Wednesday:

Vacuumed the house
Got frustrated with the DVR and erased everything I had recorded to watch while I was here alone. Listened to podcasts instead
Scrubbed the grill
Went through the kitchen cabinets
Cleaned some stuff out of the attic
Cleaned up both kids rooms
Cleaned up all of the mess in the bathroom closet
Cleaned out from under all of the beds
Filled up three very heavy trash bags
Filled the trunk with stuff for the thrift store
Watched my normal two crazy dogs with one insane crazy dog guest

They’ve worn each other out today so I am hoping that they will sleep through the night. Last night was up, down, up, down, up, up, down. It was hectic.

I guess everyone better get back home before I throw everything away!

Twenty Five Years Ago: The Moody Blues

2011-07-12T16:10:00.001-05:00

During this week in 1986, “Your Wildest Dreams” by The Moody Blues peaked at number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. This has always been one of my favorites.

“I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” was considered the sequel to “Your Wildest Dreams” when it appeared on their next album. It peaked at #30 in August of 1988. I have this one on cassette single somewhere.

Good songs – good memories.

One Hot Trip

2011-07-11T20:00:00.001-05:00

We’re back in the comfort of the air conditioned house. We drove up to Kentucky last night and stayed at a hotel so we could get in some pool time. This morning, we drove up to Beech Bend Park and split our time between the water park and the “traditional rides”. This is a promo picture from the website since we did not bring in any camera or cell phones.

What we had not planned on was the brutal heat. So far, today was the hottest day of the year up there and down here. Notice the heat index in this snapshot? That’s at 6:53PM!! Still 112 degrees! When we left the park, they said that the heat index was 116. So, after getting completely exhausted, we left 3 hours earlier than we had been planning.

So, here are my thoughts on Beech Bend – it’s an A. Some of the rides in the amusement park area were what you might expect to see at a county fair. Some of them, like the Kentucky Rumbler, were huge, custom-built rides you would expect at a place like Opryland (R.I.P.) or Dollywood. Speaking of Opryland, they had rides just like the old Flume Zoom and the Tin Lizzy cars! They also have one ride (Sea Dragon) that they bought from Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch!

What surprised me was the variety of rides and how much everything is spread out. You can tell that this is a park that is steadily growing. The water park was very nice. They had tons of stuff to do and plenty of seating. There were employees everywhere and every one we encountered was friendly. The park was immaculately clean.

Give it a few years and this will be one of the premier parks in the southeast.

Is it a value? Ticket prices average 30 bucks a piece but discounts are out there. We had two buy one, get one free coupons. There is also a discount through the web site. But, the price also includes free soft drinks, free sunscreen, and free use of the floats. These are typically all charged items at other water parks. The food was also good and not too expensive. I had a cheeseburger and a slice of pizza and both were very good.

No, they are not paying me to say any of this. I was very pleased with the value and the trip (only about 75 minutes each way). The heat really made for a shorter day than expected. We should have spent more time in the water and not tried to write as many rides!

On a final note, we caught part of the Kent Family Magic Circus. The kids really enjoyed their show. They have a son who balanced a 6 foot ladder and a wheelbarrow on his chin. My chin hurt just watching. They have a really interesting blog where you can read about all of their travels. It is one of the most unique blogs I have read and quite a cool collection of memories that they are building for their kids.

I have one more day of vacation tomorrow and we will be spending it closer to home. We’re supposed to hit 100 degrees again tomorrow so I won’t be getting any outdoor projects done. I guess most of those will have to wait for my next vacation in October! After tomorrow, I go back to work and my family heads off to Gatlinburg for a few days in a cabin up in the woods with the bears. I’ll be here minding things with the dogs and plenty of odds and ends I can try to work on around here until they return on Saturday.

Larry Crowne, Google Plus, and… Mowing!

2011-07-09T21:57:00.001-05:00

We used our Groupon half price movie tickets on Larry Crowne last night. After seeing the so-so box office results from last weekend and reading several so-so reviews, I went in with low expectations.

I’m happy to report that it was much better than I expected. It had funny parts but it also was realistic and brutally so at times. Larry deals with being downsized based on the excuse that his company cannot promote him because he has no college education. Larry also has to deal with overwhelming debt from his divorce and his house ends up going into foreclosure. There are no illusions that he will get his job back or save his house but at the end you get the impression that things are back on track and he is actually happier without all of these things tying him down.

A lot of the reviews point out how unrealistic the movie is. Why would a beautiful young co-ed befriend him and make it her mission to transform him into a hipper version of himself just based on the fact that they both ride scooters? Are there really gangs of friendly and fun scooter enthusiasts out there riding around together? Sign me up now if all of this exists.

Julia Roberts brings out the dramatic talent as we watch her marriage crumble. It’s almost as it there were two separate stories going on here that end up somehow merging together. They are both great actors but Julia’s character has the greatest depth and transformation so it’s odd that the movie is named Larry Crowne.

I also really enjoyed the soundtrack. There is a lot of Tom Petty and the movie ends with Calling America by Electric Light Orchestra which is a song that never got the airplay it deserved. It also came out in 1986 which was sort of at the end of the popularity cycle for ELO. It’s really the last big song for them that has that classic ELO sound.

I did finally get on Google Plus Thursday. Here are my geek thoughts: It is cleaner than Facebook – easier to look at and easier to navigate. Circles is a nice feature for grouping your friends and then deciding who sees what updates or photos or videos. Sparks is where you type in a subject that interests you and then you can click to see the latest news on that subject. It is really just a custom search.

So, is it a Facebook killer? Not yet. It’s just different than Facebook. I don’t see anything there yet that is going to sway millions of people to give up on Facebook and that means a lot of people are going to get Plus profiles because it is the cool thing yet not totally practical thing to do. It’s a lot like owning a Mac where you love your Mac for home use but you still have to use a PC at work. Google Plus is great for it’s simplicity but I’ll still have to maintain my Facebook (and give most of my attention to Facebook) or I will risk losing a lot of contacts that I really don’t want to lose. Businesses are going to stay put on Facebook for the same reason.

In other suburb news, I was crazy enough to mow this afternoon in the 90 degree heat with what felt like 90 percent humidity. I think it was the hottest I have ever gotten while mowing.

I had to sit down three different times. I stared at the last little bit of yard I had left to do for a long time before I was confident I could do it without the family coming home and finding me laying in the yard. I guess getting older and out of shape doesn’t help when attempting to mow on the surface of the sun.

Finally, I’m going off on vacation for a couple of days. This is a no tech vacation so the laptop is staying at home!! I am back at work Wednesday so this is a short one. We’re heading to a family fun park as a surprise for the kids and we’ll be there on what may be our first 100 degree day of the year (with a heat index of 110)! I am not looking forward to the sunburn and heat stroke but I am looking forward to a little bit of no Facebook, no Twitter, and no Outlook time.