Latest Posts

Something About the Weather

Random Thoughts

I have been known from time to time to check the weather report. If I have plans for the weekend, or am going on vacation somewhere. Sometimes, if I’ve heard about a storm coming in, I’ll even pop over to Weather.com or some place and see the predictions. But I don’t come even remotely close to being considered obsessed about it.

The people in the office I currently work in, on the other hand… I just don’t get it. They monitor the weather like a hawk eyes a field mouse. They meet in the aisles between the cubicles to discuss recent developments, storm or no storm, the way most people might discuss a recent vacation or a movie they just saw. And I just don’t get it.

What could possibly be so interesting about the fact that today is two degrees colder than yesterday as well as five degrees colder than it was on the same day in some other year? Who cares that three different weather sources are predicting different chances of rain?

If someone out there knows, please, I beg you, explain it to me.

Batman Begins

Reviews

When Batman came out in 1989, I was wary of the casting of Michael Keaton, Mr. Mom, as the caped crusader. But it turned out that he was actually able to capture the duality of Batman and Bruce Wayne extremely well. And while I was disappointed with the death of the Joker (why do they insist on killing the bad guys? the comic books don’t), the movie as a whole was just good.

With Batman Returns… well, Keaton was still good, but the way they chose to portray the Penguin was just… well… crappy. Catwoman wasn’t bad (a zillion times better than the most recent incarnation with Halle Berry) but there were issues with the movie.

Then Keaton flees Batman, and we get Val Kilmer. Now, Val, I thought, could make a very good Batman and Bruce Wayne, but watching the movie, he seemed to be phoning in his performance. He was very wooden in both roles. Add to that the introduction of neon day glo Gotham, and the movie’s suck factor began to swell. Making Robin not be a kid was a step in the wrong direction. He’s supposed to be a teenager, that’s the whole point of his freakin’ character, a young foil to help keep Batman from plummetting off the deep end. I thought after seeing this movie that it had to kill the franchise. Whatever pull Bob Kane had he’d use, and DC would look at the movie and say “Oh, hell no.” and we would never see a Batman movie again. Then the stupid thing, propelled by Jim Carey as the Riddler, made truckloads of money. God help us all.

Val exitted stage left, and we got George Clooney. Now, I like George… he was great on ER, he did a fine job in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn and even in One Fine Day. As Batman/Bruce Wayne he brought so much bravado and swagger to the role that the film choked on it. I figured when I saw Batman Forever we’d seen about as over the top a film as could be made… Then somehow Joel Schumacher managed to double and then triple it and cram it all into the godawful Batman & Robin. The plot was horrid, the actors all gave the worst perfomances of their lives, and Gotham became the new Las Vegas. Utter trash. Thankfully, without the odd star power of a Jim Carey, B&R died (well, it made over $100 million, but it was far less than any of the others in the franchise).

Now that I’m done with that walk down memory lane, let’s get to the movie at hand…

Forget all four of the previous films, Batman Begins is THE Batman movie. Much like I pretend that there is only one Highlander film, and thanks to Episode III I now pretend there are only 3 Star Wars films and it ends with Return of the Jedi, I will now happily pretend that this is the first Batman movie ever made.

Christian Bale is Batman. Christian Bale is Bruce Wayne. He’s able to pull off the brooding superhero, the tortured man, and the facade of the billionaire playboy like no one else. Add to that surrounding him a fantastic cast including Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, and more. Then add a fantastic script that isn’t full of camp and punchlines (though not without its laughs). And finally put Christopher Nolan (Insomnia, Memento) behind the wheel. What you get is a film about the construction of a hero, a crusader, a legend.

If you go to the film looking for the ‘Biff’ and ‘Wham’ of the old TV show, or the tongue in cheekiness of Batman Forever or Batman & Robin, you are going to be horrible disappointed. You’ll probably think this is the worst movie ever made.

But if you go for Batman… if you like The Dark Knight Returns, or Batman: Year One, or the current run of the comic books. If you view the ‘camp’ of Batman as a blip wrong detour of a much better and larger tale, then this movie is for you.

I can only hope that Batman Begins really is a new beginning, and that at least another movie or two with this collection of folks manages to find its way to the big screen.

Let the hunting begin!

Random Thoughts

No, this isn’t a review for some game or anything like that. Jodi and I are looking for a house. Well, we’ve been looking… today was the first time we had the real-estate agent actually take us to a house to look at it first hand. It was pretty nice. Good house, nice yard, 1.2 acres… a bit far from work, but hey, I like the bus and there is one out there too.

But the house hunt has officially begun! Cry havok and let split the puppies of peril! (The dogs of war are stuck in Iraq, so its the best I could do.)

Posting, Toys and Work

Random Thoughts

Well, after two months of posting every day (except Mondays), I’ve fallen back into my old habits of not posting as often as I’d like. Frankly, sometimes there is just nothing to post about… or I just plain forget.

Anyway… I continue to buy new toys for myself. After getting the PDA Phone, I’ve gotten myself a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for it, so its like having a little computer, much smaller than a laptop, everywhere I go. I’ve spent some time fixing it up with software, mostly free stuff, and getting it to the point where I find myself using it pretty often. Calendar, contacts, emails, even writing (the screen is small, so writing for the website can be annoying, but I can do it, and will since work is getting really boring again). Its pretty sweet.

Speaking of work, did I mention it was boring? As much as I love the idea of getting paid thirty bucks an hour to play Freecell (up to 75% win ratio, should have myself up to 76 this coming week, 77 the week after at this rate) and Minesweeper (which cheats, the mines aren’t set until you click a square, you cannot lose on the first click, and it always has at least one spot where you have a 50/50 chance and no way to determine logically which one it is), I feel like I want to tear my eyes out some days. When there is work to do, its awesome, like right now, I taught myself how to utilize XML files on the webserver to emulate global variables for a .NET app instead of making constant round trips to the database server for building my objects. But when I’m waiting on someone else to finish their work before I can start mine… I keep telling them, I cannot design a front end for a back end that doesn’t exist. Its like asking someone to design a car chassis without telling them the size of the engine that needs to fit in it. Sure, you can do it, but when you finish your sports car design and they hand you a diesel truck engine for an 18-wheeler, it just means you have to start all over. I can’t build a screen for data input without knowing what fields to put on it. I’d go for dynamic screen building, but it looks bland and just gives you text fields, none of the fancy radio buttons and drops downs that people like to see on their forms. Bah! And then there is this one screen in the application that is blank because I’ve been waiting about two months for someone to give me the info that goes on it (its a help screen that has to have specific guidelines for contacting support desks and all that)… and I’m still waiting.

Enough. I’m done. Off to clean the bathrooms.

Wonderfalls

Reviews

This is the best TV show you’ve probably never seen. Quick run down: Jaye is a 24 year old college grad who doesn’t know what exactly to do with her life, so she works a retail job (at a Niagra Falls gift shop called Wonderfalls) and lives in a trailer park despite having a rich family, and all is going fine in her uneventful world until a smushed face wax lion starts talking to her. As the show goes on, more things talk to her, and when she does what they say it always starts a wildly out of control chain of events that ultimately ends up with her helping someone, normally against her own judgement. Are the voices God? Are they just her suppressed “inner voice” bubbling to the surface? No one knows, and we never will.

Of this show, only 13 episodes were made. A typical half season order. However, only 4 episodes ever aired. It got pre-emted a few times, then they out and out cancelled it. It just wasn’t doing well (in its shitty timeslot on friday nights), and there was already another show on where a girl talking to something that might be God (Joan of Arcadia, also good, ran 2 seasons before they dropped it). The good news is they released all 13 episodes of Wonderfalls on DVD. Better yet, 6 episodes have commentary, and they included a great behind-the-scenes/making-of documentary. Like watching ‘Firefly’ on DVD, the show is so good it almost makes you cry that it won’t be on ever again (well, Firefly has a movie coming out, but I still rather would have seen it stay on TV for a decade instead).

One of the many good things about Wonderfalls is the theme song. Normally when I watch TV shows I’ve taped or gotten on DVD, I’ll skip the opening because lots of TV themes blow or leave you with that ‘eh’ feeling when you can’t decide if you care enough to bother rating its complete lack of grabbing your interest on either end of the spectrum. But Wonderfalls sports an original tune by Andy Partridge (the front man for the band XTC), “I Wonder Why the Wonder Falls”, a happy little jaunty tune that brings a smile to my face every time I hear it.

Anyway, while the show was rumored to be cancelled and through to the day they announced the DVD planned release, Save Wonderfalls was the home base of the effort to get the show put back on the air, and failing that get it put out on DVD. They report that over 25,000 copies of the DVD had sold by February. On their extras page, they have a link to a copy of the Video done for the song. Needless to say, it never made the charts nor any of the music channels here in the USA, and I have no idea if it did elsewhere.

If you like quirky dramatic comedy type shows, I highly recommend Wonderfalls. Its worth the $30 for the complete series.

Star Wars: Episode III

Reviews

Let’s start with ‘It was good.’ I enjoyed the movie. It ended right where I wanted it to end. It tied up nicely to lead into what we know to be true from the original trilogy. The battle scenes, particularly the lightsaber fights, were awesome. But…

Hold up. Need to do this. I’m about to ramble about the movie, and since I don’t censor myself, I might inadvertantly spoil something for you if you haven’t seen the film. So, if you are worried, stop reading now.

Again, there might be spoilers ahead, so stop if you don’t want to hear about the movie.

Third time… spoilers may be coming. That’s it, you read further, it’s your fault.

So, back to the ‘But…’ I think George Lucas messed up this movie. Like the two prior in this trilogy, there are a number of occasions where its appearant he couldn’t find a way to tell you important facts during the action, so he grinds the movie to a halt for a conversation, then puts it back in gear. Its moderately jarring when you think the movie is picking up speed, then it just stops again. Some of the early film is kinda boring, but the last 20-25 minutes of it are pretty damn good.

I enjoyed the special effects… however, and Jodi put this in to the right words for me, sometimes the special effects became the story, and that’s bad. In Empire, they ride Tuantuans (I’m sure some Star Wars geeks will correct me on the spelling, but I don’t care). They even wind up using one as a source of heat to survive the night cold. But at no point are we ever looking at the tuantuan… its Han riding the tuantuan, it Luke riding the tuantuan, its people handling the tuantuans. In Episode III, Obi Wan rides this lizard thing (which we never learn a name for) but it dominates the screen for 5 minutes in a crazy chase scene. Its so colorful and vibrant in its movements, the fact that Obi Wan is on its back is almost lost… we are watching a lizard run through and over the city, and sometimes we see something flail around on its back. Too much lizard, not enough Obi Wan, the scenes focus becomes the special effects, and in doing so becomes cool looking, but less thrilling. And this happens in a couple of places, the scenery upstaging the characters. Not good.

The lightsaber scenes rocked though.

Appearances can be Deceiving

Random Thoughts

I read on the bus to work every morning. This week I’ve been reading ‘Lamb’ by Christopher Moore, an excellent book thus far (about half way through) and its looking like it will get a very good recommendation out of me. The book happens to be a semi-satirical look at the life of Jesus Christ, Joshua, through the eyes of his never-mentioned-in-the-Bible best friend Levi, who is called Biff. Anyhow, as I’m riding the bus, I notice the guy sitting next to me. He looks ‘normal’, and I mean that in the “We never suspected anything because he was just a normal guy” sort of way. He wore typical business casual clothes, khaki slacks, a polo shirt, and nice shoes. His hair was an average short but not too short guy hair cut. He wore glasses, had a watch on (a nice gold colored one that may or may not have been actual gold) and a wedding ring. As he sat, he was flipping through some papers and highlighting as he went.

A brief aside here… If curiosity kills the cat, then I’m glad I’m not a cat. I have an insatiable appetite for looking at things that I shouldn’t. As a child, one of my favorite pastimes was sneaking into my father’s closet to take a gander at the Playboy magazines that he kept hidden there. I was like eight years old. Eight year old boys don’t really understand looking at naked women, but I did understand that I wasn’t supposed to look at naked women, so that’s why I did it. At jobs, I’ve always poked around the networks to find files I shouldn’t see, also because I believe that if you really want to keep something secret you should take the proper precautions to ensure that it can’t be seen. So back to where I left off, a guy sitting next to me highlighting papers.

I’m pretty good at misdirection and that sort of thing, so I’m pretending to read my book and stealing glances with my eyes only over to his work. This ‘normal’ guy is reading through and highlight passages in satanic texts. He’s flipping through pages of books by Crowley and others, making special note of referenced texts. Of course, you might be wondering, “How do you know what satanic texts look like?” And I might answer, “Umm… because I’ve read most of them myself.” but you might think less of me, so instead I’ll say, “Because all the pages were printed from a website, and when you print from a website the URL appears at the bottom (unless you disable that in Internet Explorer) and it has ‘satanic texts’ written in it!” But even if you choose to believe the former, at least I have my head shaved and sport a goatee, and have had a number of people tell me I look evil (when I’m not, I’m really a nice guy), while this man looks like the poster boy for Suburban Living Monthly (which, ironically, is the same look and acronym for Sociopathic Lunatic Monthly, both of which I’m pretty sure you can pick up at your local Kroger). I can only hope that he was doing research for something he’s writing, like a novel or a screenplay, which, I assure you, is what I was doing when I read the same books, and not researching quotes for his manifesto swearing his faith to the one true lord which he’ll have on him as he sacrifices teenage girls and he’ll include copies of with the video tapes he sends to the authorities of his deeds.

Some days I wonder if my imagination is too active, or if I actually see things that other people don’t… Time will tell I suppose.

Blasts from the Past

Site News

I finally decided that I’m going to back fill my old posts from my old formats into this weblog. It’ll be fun to read that stuff again. Anyway, I missed Saturday because I went to bed early and forgot to do it. I had about a half a post written, but I didn’t feel like finishing it for today.

So… whatever… See you soon. 🙂

Circle Strafing

Gaming

You know, its just one of those skills that I have but I almost never use. In some ways, and in some games, its really a boon. First person shooters… being able to zip around someone and pop off a couple of shotgun blasts is cool. But its a very short thing… zip, zip, pop, pop, done.

I’ve been messing around doing some dueling in World of Warcraft. I’m a priest, and fighting other priests or mages is fun, we shoot each other, resists and luck have alot to do with it, and spell choice and all that. When I fight warriors or rogues, its just stupid… if they fight me straight up, then its like the priest and mage fights, sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, its alot of luck and the game engine, player skill is part of it too, but its not ‘exploitative’. However, most of the melees who duel don’t play it straight up, they don’t bother to rely on their gear, their resists or hit points… they completely rely on exploiting ‘line of sight’. As a caster, I can’t cast 90% of my spells on anything that isn’t in front of me, so the melee circle strafes around, always staying behind. I can try to spin, but since he can switch directions in an instant, its still almost impossible to keep him in front. Its just… stupid. Why bother to ‘duel’ me if you are going to render me 90% useless? Its like saying you’ll get in the ring with Mike Tyson, but only if they chop off both of his arms, one leg, and gag him first.

I don’t get it… and I probably never will.

Battle-Chasers

Reviews

Normally when I go to the book store I’m looking for two kinds of books… either one by an author I have enjoyed in the past, or one that has been recommended by a friend or other review. Last week I went looking for books of a different sort… the kind you find on a bargain bin by and author you’ve never heard of. It was here I found ‘Battle-Chasers’ by T.S. Robinson.

First, let me say it wasn’t a bad book. Its not something I would recommend to someone with great literary knowledge, someone who has read Tolkien, Martin, even Jordan. But I might push this on a younger reader to perhaps get them interested in reading. It was a short, fun read, that I finished in about five hours.

However… the book reads like a few guys sitting around a table playing D&D. As opposed to much fantasy where oft times magic is rare, here it is everywhere. Magic bracers, magic weapons, magic potions, priests, sorcerers, spellcasting, etc etc… Every character uses it, and much of its use really does feel like someone reading off the back of a character sheet. Rather than saying “When he spoke his voice seemed to be accompanied by a low growl, as if he were speaking two tongues at once, and the dragon appeared hypnotized by his words…” he goes with “The potion of dragon control he quaffed earlier magnified his command…” And that happens alot, a matter of fact explanation that paints little picture of the scene. The author also seems to like the word ‘greasy’ or perhaps his thesaurus just didn’t have another word for it, because it showed up… alot.

Anyway… in the end, it was fun and I feel like that I might just walk away from this book a better writer now that I’ve seen a few things I want to be sure not to do. It was worth the two dollars I paid for it.