Speed Racer

Wow.

A few nights ago we caught Speed Racer at the dollar show.



Call us crazy, but we actually liked it!

I had heard that the reviews were terrible, so I went in to it not expecting it to be double-billed with The Shawshank Redemption, so perhaps our sights were lower than the average critic.




Psychedelic-trippy-more-than-exist colors? Totally. Sometimes there was just so much going on in the scene that I had no idea what was what, who was winning or if we had just gone plaid.

The acting was okay for this type of movie, and I actually laughed out loud a few times, which surprised me. Our kids definitely enjoyed the racing scenes and crazy stunts and tracks, but they got a little restless in the extended dialog scenes.

What's funny is I went through the whole thing thinking Val Kilmer played Rex Racer, but apparently it's this dude! Some people on the forums apparently also think that he looks like Val Kilmer, so I guess I'm not the only one.

I really like the car designs too.

McDonalds commercials

Man, over a month off of blogging and I come back for my 250th post with some McDonalds commercials?

Yes!

The only thing we like about McDonalds is the ice cream cones. And an air-conditioned playscape. The two things we like about McDonalds are the ice cream cones and the air-conditioned playscapes. And RedBox drops. Okay, I see where this is going. While we don't eat there, I really liked their commercial featuring Line Rider, a great game that deserves some posts of its own.

I love the "music" on the first one.



I didn't know there was another one until I searched for the first one.



Last night my boys and I are watching a little SpongeBob...do we really need a link?...and I saw another commercial that has moved up in my favorites list.



These girls can dance! It looks like the motion has been sped up slightly in a few places, or some frames have been removed reminding me of some really old-school MTV VJ techniques. I made my boys sit through the commercial about five times before relinquishing control back to SpongeBob.

Besides their technique, which I'm trying to copy to perform at work, I love their facial expressions.

Weezer: Pork and Beans

So Weezer, one of my favorite bands, is coming out with a new album next month, and you may have heard the first single, "Pork and Beans."

They've released a video chock-full of internet memes.



Here is one of many websites that start cataloging the memes.

No Rick-Rolling, though!

Edit: I almost forgot to give credit where credit is due - thanks for the heads-up Cobra!

World War Z

I recently finished an audiobook as well - World War Z by Max Brooks.



It's by the same author that wrote the Zombie Survival Guide, which I've seen and flipped through, but never read.

World War Z was my first audiobook, and I listened to it on my ~20 minute commute. It was very well...written? Read? Both. I'm not sure how the dead tree version is, but this was made up of interviews from survivors of various nationalities and professions. I immediately recognized Henry Rollins and James Woods, but there are a few more that I new but couldn't place a face with the voice. I found the multiple actors a definite plus to the experience, but I wonder if that is due to the interview style of the book. I don't have any prior audiobook knowledge to compare.

If I didn't have 40 minutes per day alone, I probably wouldn't have even tried it.

I got it from emusic.com, for which I had a coupon for some free music and an audiobook.

24: 1994 Pilot

So 24 got picked up by Fox again (duh), but it won't be until next year before we get some Bauer-licious action. What to do in the interim? Feast your eyes on this lost pilot recently unearthed from the archives.



Luckily it's posted to youtube.com and not just the Humor-Site-that-will-get-you-fired-and-in-hot-water-with-your-wife.

Thanks Shayne!

7,365,886: Method and apparatus for feeding a document to a device

That's me, babies! One of my ideas finally made it through the near-interminable wait in the US Patent Office. Big Ups to Christa, too, my mentor when I got to the printer group.

It was submitted December 2004!! Normally it can take a long time to go through the US Patent Office as the clerks try to determine if there is prior art or if it actually is patentable.



At work, if someone submits an idea, it goes to the patent committee, which is a group of senior engineers from just about every area in technology. If it passes muster through a scan over email, the inventor gets to defend it in person at a weekly patent meeting. You better have your ducks in a row. If you successfully defend it here, it goes through Legal to our patent attorneys, with whom you work to create the actual disclosure. Then it goes to the Patent Office where you may or may not hear anything for some number of years, and all of a sudden, BOOM! You are a patent holder.

While your idea is at the patent office but before it is granted patent status, it is an application. I have more waiting in the wings, so hopefully this is just the start.

You get a plaque in a meeting, a similar plaque goes up on the wall at work, and you get a free certificate that you can frame (or buy a metal plaque). There are also other benefits for this process, but that's just money and stock options - BFD, right? Yes!

I don't know if getting on through the USPTO will open any doors, but I'll let you know.

Personalized gift cards

We get occasional "On the Spot" instant bonuses at work, usually around $50, and you can pick what kind of gift you want - usually I select a Visa gift card. Once you log on and verify the code number, you have the option of adding a personalized message to the card face, which I did.



I got zero response from any vendor to whom I presented the card. My friends thought it was funny, but I guess all the merchants' sense of humor has been ground down to nothing.

I know what you're saying - "$48? I thought you said $50?!" Yes, it is a $50 gift minus a $2 processing fee for the privelige - nay, the honor! - of getting one of their cards. Lame.

Coffeeshop blogging

So I have a new laptop and it comes with an integrated camera for all your photoblogging needs as well as potentially embarrassing coffee spills. I'm at a local coffeeshop working on some, uh, work.



Once I set another laptop up for my wife, we'll be able to try video chat using Sightspeed, which from what I understand is similar to Skype video chatting, but I could be totally wrong as I've never used Skype before!

A vintage Halloween pic

Vintage? Really? Halloween was only what - six months ago? Is that my timeframe for blogging? Can there BE any more questions (or Chandler references)?

Anyway, we cut a pumpkin on Halloween. 2007 - please. Wait...does the act of cutting the pumpkin turn it in to a jack-o'-lantern? I think so, but let's see. Wikipedia to the rescue!

Yes, it does.

So we made this jack-o'-lantern, and I kind of forgot about it for a while. Maybe just a week, but the spirit of Don King...you know, that traditional apres-Halloween visitor...came by and, well, this is getting out of hand. Picture, please.



Wow, that's a lot of buildup. Hmmm...I meant buildup in terms of raising expectations, but I guess it works in the hair/mold sense as well.

Finally some action pics

I know - playing a child's guitar in my jammies with a micro-Mariachi hat wasn't actioney enough. To satisfy my rabid fans, here you go.



Living on the Greenbelt is nice! Whenever we want to bust out the firepit, I just go outside the fence and find a big log. I tried using an axe, but I've had much better luck with my reciprocating saw from Harbor Freight.



I've gone through all my demolition blades and now I have a pretty scary specialty wood-cutting blade. Itsa nice! By nice, I mean it looks nice - I haven't actually cut anything with it. But believe me - it looks like it will do the job!

Here I am sanding our deck. We rented a huge industrial sander from Home Depot, and it pretty much drove us around the deck.



It was time for another treatment of stain, and we didn't want a repeat of the original stain job (oh, the humanity!) to happen again. Last time we waited too long after we had it built and then waited until the weather was as hot as possible. It was awful. The wood was so hot the stain would not be absorbed, and it never got a good lock, or set, or whatever the term is to indicate that stain has soaked in to your wood correctly.

Now we have to decide whether or not to keep the deck or take it down and build a stone patio!

My newest, cheapest guitar

So I was in our local Goodw*ll the other day and saw a guitar in their auction pile. Hold on a second - it wasn't just a guitar. It was a child-scale classical guitar, with case, and the best part? Two Mariachi, uh, hats.

Unfortunately, the hats were child-scale too.

 

The auctions are held on Saturdays at high noon, and I had a few reminders to make sure I was going to be there. Throughout the week the items are in silent auction mode, with binders out with pages for each of the items. On Saturday, in an bid (ha!) to get more money, the items transition to traditional auction mode, with one of the employees doing the auctioneering. The bidding started out at $16 and there was some back and forth between me and someone else behind me. I wanted to play fair, so I didn't turn around and psych him out. I just kept my cool and kept bidding. I stepped up to $21 - a level he dared not follow, and I won the auction!

 

The smaller scale doesn't bother me, but it is very resonant at the bottom end, so most of my work on it sounds bass-heavy.

 

You don't get to touch some of the items beforehand, as they are in lockdown in a metal cage. Once I got it home and started playing with it I noticed that there is some fret buzz on the high E string. It looks like I'll have to build up the nut and file down a string slot (thanks for the baking soda/super glue tip, Louis!) or replace the nut.

All in all, it's a sweet deal, as the guitar is solidly made, and you can't beat the price. We've used one of the Mariachi hats for a White Elephant gift (along with playing La Cucaracha when it was opened), and I'll have to bring the other hat up to work for the serious times

RIP Gary Gygax

Thanks to Cale for the tip - Gary Gygax, one of the co-creators of Dungeons and Dragons, died yesterday.

Wow. I've been playing D&D for over 20 years...probably closer to 25. I remember the Basic Set my parents got me for Christmas. Man, that came out in 1977! I can't remember how old I was when I got it - I'll have to find out.

I have D&D to thank for many of the friendships I still have, and many new ones I've made since holding those dice for the first time.

Here is a link to one of the many websites that mention his passing, and it has an email address that was set up to communicate any thoughts you may have to the Gygax family.

Cryptonomicon

A few weeks ago I finished Cryptonomicon (more info here), by Neal Stephenson.



I really enjoyed it. Without giving too much away, it deals with cryptography, World War 2, Alan Turing, math, society, global finance, intrigue...I could go on, but I won't. If you have any interest in any of these topics, or none of these but you like a really good book, pick it up!

I've also read Stephenson's Snow Crash in college, and it was excellent as well.

3/4 update - we were in Goodwill last night and I picked up Snow Crash for $2.99!

Who's in charge here?

I stumbled upon a cool website - Who's in charge here?

It takes a publicity photo and asks readers to determine who they think is the leader - based on the photo only. It doesn't matter if you know who is the "leader" of the group...this is an examination of the dynamic within the oh-so-important press materials.



There is some hilarious text and some great comments are sprinkled throughout.

Speaking of cheeseburgers....

Okay, you're hiking. Somewhere remote...rugged terrain...carrying everything you need in your pack. The tent is pitched, campfire blazing, perimeter secure. What's this? Hunger pangs? What sounds good?

Trail mix?

No.

Can of beans?

No.

Granola bar?

No!

There's only one thing that can satisfy camping hunger. What do you turn to when you're sleeping on rocks and putting your food in a tree away from bears?

Cheeseburgers.



Specifically, cheeseburgers in a can.

Check out this website for all your shipped cheeseburger needs. Something tells me that what comes out of that tin when the seal breaks won't look exactly like the picture.

If they could combine those burgers with the self-heating coffee can technology, I think we would have a winner.

Thanks Cale!

I can has cheezburger?

What do you get when you combine cats, cameras and bad grammar? I can has cheezburger!

This website contains photos of cats (and other animals) submitted by people on teh interwebs with captions, usually from the animal pictured. Some of them are so-so, but some are FUNNY! I showed my wife some the other day, and she was moderately amused, at best, but I couldn't stop laughing...and looking at more...and laughing...etc. She had to practically shake me off the computer. This is the picture that started the website:



This internet phenomenon was dubbed "lolcats" and originated on some message boards before the aforementioned website.

Check and mate! Finally something worth blogging about!

My oldest son was accepted into his school's chess club yesterday!



So what's the big deal? Normally they don't allow first graders into the chess club. That's one smart cookie, and I'm one proud daddy!

I found this book of chess for kids at Half-Priced Books for some ridiculously low price, and it is a good one for a chess beginner or semi-beginner. It describes each of the pieces, has some basic strategy and one or two opening gambits.

Anything else about chess? Sure! One of the tattoos I've been preapproved for is a Knight's Tour, which is having a knight move according to the rules of chess and landing on every square exactly once.



Sort of like this, but I would have to use my rippling muscles to make it move.

I would love to find some sort of chess applet that I can put in the sidebar of my blog for ongoing games, but so far I've found some graphics that I can manually update only. Oh, the humanity! If anyone has found something else let me know!

Darth Vader Harmonica Bayou

Really, I never knew he was so talented!



Thanks Louis!

Desktop Tower Defense

I've been playing a lot of Desktop Tower Defense. It's a simple game, but very addictive. Your goal is trying to shoot all the "creeps" that are trying to get from one side of the screen to the other, and you do this by placing guns in what amounts to a maze-like configuration.



You are given all the time you want for the initial configuration, but once the game starts it doesn't stop! You spend most of your time frantically upgrading guns or placing new ones of different types. Some creeps are immune to certain guns.

It's fast and I'm addicted to it - check it out! It has gotten into a few game journalists' and reviewers' Game Of The Year lists as well.

We were dreaming of a White Christmas!

I'm back!

We went to Copper Mountain, Colorado, for Christmas. The first leg was to Lubbock to spend the night with my brother and his family, and then we drove to Aurora, CO, to stay with some friends. Here is the view from their front yard.



We stayed in a condo, spent too much money and didn't ski enough. Here's another pano from the condo porch:



This is outside the condo, and you can see the dumpster.



We stayed in Silverthorn. Behind me is Lake Dillon, and we would drive over the dam to get from Silverthorn to Dillon.



These are icicles. Relax - it's just frozen water.



The morning we left it was 12 degrees below zero. That's not the wind chill! Including wind chill I think it was about 20 to 25 below zero.



We're on the road back!



We drove from Silverthorn to Denver where we stayed a few days with some friends of ours. Thanks Karen! Thanks Michelle!



We left Denver and decided to drive straight through the night just to have more time at home and not have to worry about finding a motel, carting in all the valuables, sleeping late, food, etc. It was 20+ caffeine-bombed hours.

I think this is Mt. Capulin that we passed on the way through New Mexico.