It looks like I (and some other people) will be going to see End of the Spear on Sunday (Jan 22) afternoon at 4:15. Tickets are $4. If you want to come with let me know.
First was Hitch. Rather funny, but otherwise nothing all that special about it.
Today the family went and saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I think it was a good movie. The reason I say think is because the presentation was horrible. The projector had some jitter that made it look blurry (I think the second display of the frame was off), it was offset on the screen a bit (livable), the print had weird marks, and either the print or the projector bulb had an odd slight redish-yellow tint. Then there's the people who couldn't keep their mouths shut and had to talk about what was happening rather than just watching (I kept thinking of Book's quote). I knew there was a reason I usually wait for the DVD... Anyways, the movie was still good I think, so it's staying in the Netflix queue. Maybe I'll even dare to see it again though. When certain types of patrons aren't around and in a theater that I know can properly display a movie.
Anyways, to round out the long weekend, there was Jersey Girl. I don't know why it took me so long to get around to seeing it, but I hadn't seen a Kevin Smith movie in too long. Good movie, I think I need to throw more of his on the watch list again.
Actually this will cover close to two weeks. I should probably post this stuff more often but shorter. At least I'm posting stuff though I guess. Last week was the last work week of the year. Unfortunately that doesn't exactly mean the last actual work of the year, but good enough. At least it was a 3 day week for me. A lot of the staff and the most dedicated (nerdy?) student workers were all there which was good times. By the last day I was wanting to just get out of there, as the alternative was to start something that I wouldn't finish. I have many of those to choose from. Maybe next week will be headphones and closed door time.
Christmas Eve was with one side of the family. It went well and was fun, although I did end up pulling out the laptop after the pocketpc battery was too low for wireless (it wasn't all me - it was playing video clips for people most of the evening). Headed home late only to come back for an early 8am morning. Which reminds me, I like driving in the midnight-4am timeframe. Not much traffic, the lights usually work out pretty well, and there usually aren't too many drunks out.
Christmas was back to the parents to road trip for the other side of the family. Unfortunately as we were leaving I get a phone call from the server room complaining it's too hot. Fortunately for me I was on my way out of town and not the primary person on call anyways. Then google apparently can't tell the difference between SW and SE on an address in Willmar and silently swaps them, so we missed church trying to find it (SE put it between two houses on adjacent lots). Another long day but it went well. Got home I think around 3am.
The day after Christmas the parents rounded up the family again, and we finally ended up picking out our combined donation. Then the parents cheated and gave us gifts anyways, but I'm not gonna complain too much. At least this year it wasn't 1am before we started opening gifts. Eventually my dad ended up discovering I had Serenity in my bag and we watched that. Great movie and I would rather watch it than not, but that plus the deleted scenes plus outtakes meant I got home at 3:30 again. BTW though, that crew has great outtakes. They screw up and keep going but in some odd direction.
Wednesday I ended up having to work some. For what it was it was better than not working, but still it was right in the middle of my week off... Thursday night was Serenity movie night, and JoeBuck and the Walls were there. schdav showed up long enough to plan the New Years party, but didn't watch the movie if you're the person who cares about that. If you don't know about the party though, ask the Walls.
And that's my life. Sounds like tomorrow may be a movie with the family before the party. Should be a good one.
I think most of you who read this and are in the area are also on the movie-night mailing list, but in any case. Serenity, Thursday night, my place, lets say 19:00.
Work is work. However we did have a Christmas party which was fun, and there was even something in the white elephant exchange called a Chipotle Gift Pack. As evidenced by the pictures, it involved a lot of foil and someone's office. That was probably the highlight of the work week.
Friday night, after a big discussion with a lot of people and then most of them not being able to make it, was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with JoeBuck, brooke and Hannah. Not my favorite type of movie, but it was decent. Saturday was Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Decent if you don't care about the plot, just want to see action, and are willing to laugh at the movie. Sorta like The Transporter. Today was Hide and Seek. It's not as good as it'd seem from the trailers, but still OK. Not at all scary. It had like 5 different endings, although none of them went back far enough. I wish they would have gone back like 2 minutes later and changed something there, although that sorta depends on one's views of the characters/purpose of the movie. Could have made enough of a twist to make up for the not-scary part in my opinion though.
Joss, when asked about continuing Serenity/Firelfy even if it's only direct-to-dvd, said "Whatever format it is. If it's a chance to work with these actors again, to live in this world again, I'm there!". This is contingent on someone backing it though, so buy the movie!
Those of you on the movie-night list have heard at least part of this, but we'll be having a movie night soon with it. At this point it's sounding like sometime Dec 27-30, but that's not set in stone. Let me know if you're not on the list but are interested. Or if you are on the list and want to come but have conflicts and prefer certain dates. Should be a fun time.
As noted previously, I've been taking Mondays off in December, mainly because I can (I have personal time to use up). So last Monday I got new tires for my car. At first I wasn't too happy with them, and then I remembered they're all season tires and not snow tires. I'm starting to get used to them, but I do have to change how I drive slightly so I don't spin them or slide around corners too much. Still better than the old ones which were pretty much bald. Those were great on dry pavement though, but I had to coast over snow. I guess the benefit is the new ones are quieter. Such is life.
Work is better, but still busy. Nothing special. I think there'll be a couple ideological arguments coming up though, which should be interesting. It looks like I have a lot of email to go through when I get in tomorrow too. :( Guess if you want to bug me it'll probably be send an email (even more than usual) and it'll be answered somewhat in the order it was received.
Friday night was movie night at Paul & JoeBuck's place with the usual crowd, and the movie was Fantastic Four. Not the best movie ever, but it was fun anyways. Weekend otherwise was a lot of sitting around and reading, and a lot of sleeping. I don't really remember how much since the alarm clock next to my bed is still an hour and sixteen minutes fast, which makes me pretty much ignore it. Today was Sesame Beef "one last time" (according to the sign) in the DC for dinner, so went there and ate with my sister and her roommates. Can't argue with free dinner because students need to burn flex. After that I went back home and Run Lola Run. Can't complain about that movie. It's odd but interesting, and short so even though it's semi-repetetive it doesn't feel dragged out. Now it's time to get some sleep before
The weekend was long, but good. Saturday involved getting annoyed at my alarm at 2am, followed by leaving for the parents' place shortly after 2:30. Given that I usually sleep about 12 hours later than this on Saturday, this was a stretch. We then left for up north at around 3:30, and arrived a bit before 8. Of course at this point we realized that due to the unknown weather and roads we had left some extra time, we were a bit hungry, and we neglected to note that non-packaged food is a bit harder to find in rural MN than in the metro area. So after consulting google it was 30 miles of backtracking to find some food and a place to change, and then head back to the wedding at 10. What's an extra 60 miles when you're going 500? :) That was good, and had an interesting mix of American and Zambian cultures (the family has lived there up until a few years ago). At some point we finally ended up going back, and after making much better time on the way back (although still had to slow down to 45 in most towns, and 30 in some like LP - crazy small town MN, that's slower than the street I live on) and arrived back around 6. Then watched a movie with the family, and finally got to go home and sleep around 11. Long, but probably worthwhile day. I do wish I could have spent more time listening to music or something rather than driving though.
The movie was Beyond the Gates of Splendor, about the Waodanis and the missionaries who they killed, of which Nate Saint and Jim Elliot are the only two that are probably generally recognizable. It's been like 13-14 years since I read their biographies, so I don't remember much about how much was covered there vs in the movie, but it was definitely interesting. It did focus more on the later changes of the tribe where I remember the books I read focusing more on the initial contact and gaining trust before the seemingly sudden change. Anyways, it's a good movie, and I recommend it (even though I was falling asleep through it). There's another movie called End of the Spear which looks like it should be good too. I think one of the more interesting parts is how their culture has gone one direction, while they see the US as going in the opposite direction (why they allowed the movie to be made about them).
Back to the weekend, Sunday didn't provide a chance to catch up on sleep. Church, and then family birthdays in the afternoon. Did get home and have a chance to relax a bit, but then work comes early in the morning. That was a bit smoother than last week (as we had already run through the stuff last week), but still rather busy. Dave and I are spending plenty of time figuring out strategies and priorities. I'm glad I spent the time pestering to so I have a workable understanding of most everything though, and pushed things just far enough so that I'd have a reference of where it was on the to-do list and prerequisites, as the process could be a lot worse. I think we're making good progress though at cleaning up loose stuff, some of which just sat because it hadn't been revisited yet after things had been resolved, and some just gets the "too bad, this won't be fixed because the whole system will probably be scrapped at some point". I like those because it's less work for us. :) We'll see what tomorrow brings. Besides Sesame Beef that is.
So Friday went well, although a little depressing. Curt showed up, and it was good to see him again. No luck convincing either of them to come back though. Friday night was a network upgrade. Actually the only scissors involved were for making patch cables, although they did cut wires. The x-acto knife did a bit more damage, but nothing a bandaid didn't fix. Things should be faster and more scalable now, and eliminate some connectivity issues. Unfortunately the big thing I was hoping to eliminate is still there (not actually that big, it's just annoying me with lots of emails). So that's another project for next week (this should be an interesting week).
The weekend has been mainly relaxing. The first movie was Enigma, which was pretty interesting. Not sure how accurate it was, but it was decently well done. The other two weren't really movies, but rather the first two discs of Season 3 of 24. It actually looks like it could get interesting now. I'll find out next weekend I guess. For another funny thing to end the weekend (or start the work week), have you seen the parking lot advertising?
Free movie of the week was Star Wars III. It was the first time I'd seen it, and I'd have to agree it's the best of the first three. The story did better than I thought at connecting II and IV, although I note the stuff that everyone else rants about are still there, but I won't go into those. On the technical side I had mixed feelings. It seems in some cases they assumed poor quality sound systems on their mixing (the background noise sounds like it has an inverse noise gate off the dialog but with excessive padding). Then there's stuff that just seems to be left hanging at an odd spot rather than a smooth transition. Then there's the attention to detail on stuff like the holograms having high frequencies that sound like a flyback transformer (the ~15kHz whine of traditional TVs). Oh well, can't have it all. The Yoda thing is funny though.
Today was week 2 of Firefly theater. It was good, although Subway toasted my sub without asking me which wasn't so great. I guess it could have been worse. Scheduling has been iffy so far on this. If you want to show up (and are in the area), I think people would be open to moving it around as necessary.
Copyright ©2000-2008 Jeremy Mooney (jeremy-at-qux-dot-net)
