I got an invite recently from a technical vendor looking to get on my schedule, bribing me with Dinner and a Movie at our local Alamo Drafthouse Cinema to see the first-run Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the The Crystal Skull

The bribe worked.  I’m going tonight and will listen to their speil and have a nice night with the spouse and actually see a movie the day it comes out.  When I asked the vendor if I could bring my wife and they said yes, I was ready to agree to give them some of my time.

I usually reserve seeing a premiere for those that are real important to me - like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Matrix, etc.  There hasn’t been anything in the last few years that made me need to go see it on opening day.  Indiana Jones is something I’m very much looking forward to (who can’t hum the theme song and get all tingly?) but I wouldn’t otherwise battle the crowds to see it when it first comes out.  I can wait for a matinee for most movies.

Anyone familiar with Alamo Drafthouse knows it’s a great experience - theatre seating but with every other row taken out, and dinner tables put in front of you.  Waiters serve great drinks, appetizers and very very good food.  Good humor on the screen before the movies. 

It’s April 1st and I don’t have any pranks for you. Or do I?

August Rush is my new favorite movie

I have so much to say about this movie, but I think I’ll keep it to myself for now. Suffice it to say, I was completely taken and enraptured by this movie.  Maybe I’ll do a full Movie Review in a few weeks when I’ve composed myself (no pun intended).

Taxes in two weeks

Have you done your taxes yet? I haven’t.  Are you starting to think the Fair Tax might be for you?  I am.

Neal Boortz has an informative 1hr webinar about it.

You know, I wouldn’t care if the Fair Tax saved me money or not on my own taxes.  In my opinion, the best thing about the Fair Tax is that the people who are currently skating by will finally have to pay taxes (drug dealers, tax evaders, illegal immigrants). Maybe that’s where they get the word ‘Fair’ from?

Why not read up on it and possibly sign the petition?  Like, before April 15th, people!

How to Deal with Difficult People

I’ve been inadvertently pissing people off lately. Even when I’m agreeing with people, my words, tone or body language is seen as argumentary or contrarian. Now, I *am* a natural contrarian normally, but in these cases I’m not trying to be contrary or cause a conflict.  Someone will say “I make point A” and as far as I can tell, I’m agreeing with them, but the person I’m talking to hears “point A is stupid and point B is better” but really I’m saying “point A is right” but then I add some other stuff that isn’t important (I guess) and that’s what’s seen as an opposing view.

I’ll be discussing something with someone and BAM they’re pissed off at me and when I investigate further into why they’re pissed off, it’s because they see me as disagreeing with them OR disagreeing with them in a way that’s offensive.  It baffles me because I don’t recall disagreeing with them and I definitely don’t mean offense.

Since it’s happening with just about everyone, I have to assume it’s me.

I’m thinking the answer is to just reduce the amount of talking. I don’t think I have a lack of listening ability but maybe I do.

LOLcats

Hey Dave2 and Avi!  There’s an iPhone app for LOLcats so you can get ICHC on your iPhone.  Like, every day even!

I love each and every one of you like you were a well-worn song on my MP3 player.  On repeat.

Once Reviewed

Didn’t like it that much.

I liked the music, but the movie took a LONG time to get to it, and I didn’t like that first song he sang on the street that got her attention.  I think I’ll go check out the guys music.  I really liked the girl’s accent - can’t get enough of that.  More than just plain sexy, it’s… fetching.  It draws me in and makes me listen to every portion of every word, because I don’t want to miss a syllable.  And the storyline seemed to be real and not all hollywooded up.  The guy did a good acting job too.  It didn’t fall into a typical romantic struggle camp.  I felt like this could have been an actual story.  I got chills when they started singing together for the first time in the music store, and that’s common for me with musicals.  I’m the biggest hetero fan of musicals in the entire world.

Ok, maybe I did like it and just didn’t know it.

Exercise and weight management

For me, this isn’t just a New Year’s Resolution. While I don’t currently have a “medical monkey” on my back, I won’t live forever and I should pay better attention to this temporary vessel I like to call “my body.”  Unless, of course, scientists figure out how to extend my life before mine is used up, thereby buying more time until scientists can extend it further. 

In other words, (and I will summarize by using Led Zeppelin song names)

In my time of dying, I want to be over the hills and far away with my friends, thank you.  That’s the way I am, and it’s nobody’s fault but mine.  Your time is gonna come, too, so don’t let yourself get sick again and ramble on wearing and tearing for your life.  To help us both, I’m gonna crawl in the evening, listen to rock and roll, and eat some custard pie with the living loving maid in the light down by the seaside.

I’ve decided to become serious about getting in shape. For the most part, it means doing actual exercise, instead of my usual of jumping to conclusions, running my mouth and sweating about taxes. Fortunately, our exercise equipment was recently moved a lot closer, so I can more conveniently abuse it.  I’m currently about 20 lbs lighter than my heaviest weight during 2007 (and my entire life) and hope to keep it up.  Wait, I mean down.

If you’ve done a weight management program or discipline, what worked? Was it keeping a log or journal? Was it publishing the log and success? Was it diet and exercise?  Personal Training?  Keeping a plain old fashioned scale in the bathroom?

Best of the LOLcats

There were a few chuckles this last week or two. One thing I’ve gotten into the habit of is when friends come over who haven’t been exposed to LOLcats, I just go my lolcats blog tag on my blackberry or my Wii at home, since I’ve already filtered out the not-so-funny ones. So far, it hasn’t backfired on me like that time I kept showing everyone [insert favorite cult fascination that too many people sell you on, like Amway, Jesus, Nickelback].

What an absolutely fantastic movie Stardust was!

We sat and watched it last night - actually, I was very very tired and ready for bed but was convinced to stay up to watch it, and therefore my expectations were already low, thinking I’d fall asleep during the movie.

This has now become an all-time favorite movie - probably up there with The Princess Bride.  It’s funny, has tons of unexpected twists without being campy, and is filled with great acting (who could ignore Robert DeNiro, Rupert Everett, Peter O’Toole, Ricky Gervais and Ian McKellen as supporting actors?  What does that say about the main cast?)

I vaguely remember seeing a trailer for it once, and I don’t recall seeing it on the theatre marquee.  Seems weird, given that it was such a good movie.   This seems like a perfect movie to watch in a group vs alone.

Have you seen it?  Have you even heard of it?

We checked out Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix over this last weekend (wife and daughter saw it in theatres but I missed out) and I really liked it a lot.  I could wax poetic on how the special effects were great, the acting was definitely top-notch, and the story line seemed appropriate for the situations presented, but mainly what I got out of the movie was a happy, pleasant feeling.

I felt warm all over.

In fact, it was indeed a bit tingly.

I’ve finally watched a successful movie targeted at kids and WASN’T made sick by political agendas.

That’s right,

WARNING: the rest of this has some spoilers in it, so if you haven’t seen it, you might want to click away.

SPOILER ALERT!

Ok, now that I’m done with that spoiler alert part, I have to say how refreshing it is to have some common sense in kids movies every once in a while.  In the movie, Harry defends himself against a vicious attack by the Dementors with his magic wand (a “terrible WMD: weapon of magical destruction”) and then faces charges because he did so in the presence of a muggle.  The whole courtroom, Ministry of Magic, the new character Umbridge, and the incredibly pompous and liberal attitude of those in charge boiled my blood and for the screenplay writers to actually write in and display how ludicrous it all seems when faced with a dangerous situation deserves my sincere applause.

*applause*

When I asked my 13 yr old daughter how she felt about the court proceedings and how Harry was being persecuted for his actions, she agreed that he did what he had to do to protect himself.  It seemed common sense.  And she even got a little mad that the Minister moved the hearing up 3 hours in the attempt to make Dumbledore miss it - YEA AGAIN for the writers!  And who didn’t love Dumbledore’s response?

Dumbledore: Witness for the defense, Albus Percival Wulfric…Brian…Dumbledore.
Fudge: You, you got our message that the time and place of the hearing had been changed, did you?
Dumbledore: I must have missed it. But by a happy mistake I arrived at the Ministry three hours early.

Heh, “happy mistake”.

I did a little googling to see how many others caught this parallel between the script and gun control ideology and there are plenty.  Maybe this world isn’t going to hell in a handbasket after all - at least, as long as us gun-toting freedom lovers keep some common sense around.

If you’re wondering where I sit on the gun control debate, you can take a look at my bumper sticker collection

Almost half a year!  Now if only I could make GOOD habits last that long…

XMAS Tree, round 2

Last week I posted a picture of our almost-done XMAS tree, and now it’s finished.  Here it is with a complete bottom AND top:

and this picture has 100% more Jaden for your viewing enjoyment.

Live Free and Die Hard ROCKED

Sure, it took me three sittings to actually watch the whole thing because I kept getting interrupted left and right, but I really really liked this movie.

It was funny at the right parts, had PLENTY of action, was superbly acted and it was somewhat believable (the “fire sale” part and many technical plot devices).  You can say Bruce Willis has this character down pat.  I liked most of the technical stuff in the background and paid attention to most of it, looking for mistakes.

Of course, it didn’t hurt to have the “PC vs Mac” guy turn from a gutless wonder to someone who actually could do what he needed to do to save the day.  His comedic contribution to the movie was priceless.

Celtic Woman XMAS Special

Tonight I received a call letting me know that Celtic Woman was on TV again but this time it was a Christmas Special

WOW! I started my DVR recording late, so now I’ll have to go find where to buy it because I love Christmas music over almost any other kind of music, and I love Celtic Woman almost as much, so when they’re combined it just blows me away.

And I saw across the top of the screen that they’re coming to Austin!  I saw them in San Antonio earlier in the year and it’s easily one of my all-time favorite concerts ever.  Well, except for Schoolhouse Rock of course.

You can check me out on twitter on that night and you’ll be sure to get some full-on appreciate for Celtic Woman.

Well for 21 weeks now, I’ve been giving you stuff you don’t want to MISC, which is my cheesy way of doing a weekly summary of stuff usually not important enough to be its own blog entry.  Some people use “Bullet Sundays” some have a “snacking” of various sorts, and others even do video.

This week I thought I’d mix it up. I thought maybe I’d MISC my own entry!  That’s right!  Sunday went by and no weekly summary from Wayne.  Were you all impressed with how creative I can be?  See how I turned it around?  Clever, eh?  I sensed thousands of you sitting at your computer waiting for my post and HA I tricked you!

Ahem, ok, well, on with your regularly-scheduled thought-provoking and incongruous hilarity.

The Orchestra Concert was awesome!

I don’t think any other student had more people at her Orchestra concert than Caitlin.  We had twelve people there.  TWELVE!  And the music was amazing; simply amazing.  When you get the best of the best together, and they spend a couple days practicing with one of the best conductors around, it fails to matter that the musicians are in middle school.  It fails to matter that they’re at the beginning of their journey into true excellence.  It fails to matter that they’re entering puberty. 

I simply could not tell that I was listening to 13 year olds.

And then a couple of us stayed to listen to the High School Orchestra — and as you’d surmise, it’s made up of the best of the best of the high school aged chillen, and BOY were they good.  And I got a special treat in that they played a couple movements from Pictures at an Exhibition.  This song is special for me because back in *my* high school days, our band played a superb adaptation of this song as our marching band song and won several awards for it.  The music brought back many pleasant memories of practicing, marching, goofing off, and excelling with my fellow band members.  I can still sing and recite every word of the “Hallway of Men” song.

Car fire on Parmer Lane

Here’s 13 seconds of a car fire I encountered on Saturday right before Caitlin’s concert.  This is my first successful youtube upload with my Samsung S730 camera.  I’m very impressed with the quality of video from such a small, cheap ($99) camera.  It’s 7.2 megapixels, too!  (battery life sucks though)

Next

We watched Next, that movie with Nicholas Cage about a guy who can see two seconds minutes into the future.  I absolutely loved it!  I highly enjoy movies that take quite a bit of thinking and really good writing in order for things to come out right in the end.  It reminded me of the movie Primer - I mean, the writer had to really spend a LOT of time making sure things work out.

I’m thinking that kind of plot device could easily be made into a TV series.  And when I say easy, I mean it would be a success if it was done well.  It would be very difficult to write for and to come up with original story lines, but I know I’d watch it.

The movies special effects were great, Jessica Biel was hot, it had great action, it stimulated the brain, and I stayed interested throughout the entire movie.  What more could you ask for?

Well, I guess I could have gone without the Clockwork Orange flashback.  Ewwwwww *shudders*

Cabling and Recabling

A co-worker of mine and I spent many hours up at work this past weekend during our big remodeling project for the Austin facility.  One of the things we knocked out was a significant portion of re-cabling for our facilities.  We’re not done yet, but you can probably judge for yourself how much of an improvement we made:

Before:

After:

Man it just plain feels better to have it looking good.  The spaghetti is more well formed.  We still have a few loose ends to tie up (as you can see) but those require a well-planned-ahead maintenance window.

*content sigh* there’s just something about a well-organized cabling architecture that gets me all warm and fuzzy.  Here’s the new rack we put in, minus some key horizontal cable management (still on order) but before we get any more cables in, we’ll have the cable mgmt in and we will be looking prett-ty spiffy.

Jaden’s writing

How sweet is this. He wrote ‘elephant.’  *sniff*