Taking a break from invoices...

And wondering if it’s going to be raining on the drive home.

 

Last week I got pretty lucky and even on days it was pouring during the day, it was pretty light during the evening commute.

 

The only real issue was actually a week ago, when I was chaperoning a field trip with the B’s class to the Heritage Museum (The Kellogg House). The Kellogg House is a restored Victorian manse where they taught the kids about life in turn of the century California. This ended up including an unexpected lesson is just how cold a house with no central heating (and no working fireplaces apparently) can get in a winter thunderstorm, just how creepy a Victorian mansion can feel in the rain (or at least get a feel for the inspiration for the Haunted Mansion ride at D-land), and what happens when the orange grove in the backyard floods. The kids found all this fun and exciting, the adults less so.

 

Although driving back to the office via the flooded streets of Santa Ana was certainly exciting, if not fun.

 

On the upside, the movies were a welcome escape from the rain, so we finally watched Zombieland. Which was full of awesome. (I think I have yet to see a movie with Woody Harrelson in it that I didn’t like at least a bit. He’s brilliant in his own way.) More than made up for the disappointment that was 28 Weeks Later. (We’ve been catching up on our zombie movie watching – Shaun of the Dead is likely next on the list. But it might be the Resident Evil films if we can get our hands on the Blu Ray copies – Blockbuster never seems to have them available.)

 

There are actually a lot of movies out right now that we still need to watch, but not sure how many of them deserve plucking down the cash for the theater. We’ll probably need to pluck down the cash to watch Avatar in 3D sometime soon I suppose. Although it’s still #1, so I’m not feeling in any rush here.

 

Note – if I seem less than enthusiastic about Avatar, well, I am. I can’t see 3D very well due to vision problems I have that are rare but not unheard of. I could also layer the 3D glasses over my prescription driving glasses, but it’s kind of annoying to do. Also, I’m still skeptical. Even Titanic (which was awful) had some iconic imagery and quotes that everyone knew within a few weeks, but I haven’t seen anything like that with Avatar – where are the iconic scenes? The quotes that geeks will be spouting for decades? The beloved characters that kids will dress up as on Halloween generations from now even when they are too young to have seen the movie? I don’t really see anyone saying such and such character was cool, or remember that scene when that cool thing happened, or endlessly quoting the movie (trying to understand “the Rules” references alone spurred me to watch Zombieland). Instead it’s all talk about the really cool landscapes and special effects. I mean, people I trust say that it’s a good movie, so I’ll check it out and see for myself, but I’m not going to hold my breath on it’s having a long term cultural relevance, other than it ushering in an era of all blockbusters being in 3D. (Thus, my bias. I don’t really WANT an era of 3D movies.)

 

If anyone would like to step up with a reason to see Avatar other than for the cool special effects, feel free to let me know, but anytime people start saying “oh, don’t bother seeing it in 2D”, it makes me really wonder about the merits of the movie.

 

 

Because I am tired of looking at Access

Here’s a post.

 

Random things:

 

Dragon Age is awesome, but highly addictive. Even though technically David is the one playing, I’m in charge of the guidebook and looking things up on the Wiki when he gets stuck. Also, the NPCs are hilarious. Especially the alcoholic dwarf.

 

We need a new game to take advantage of the two Xbox set up. We’ve kind of squeezed the life out of Borderlands, even (or maybe especially) after finally hooking up both the consoles to the network and playing with friends on Xbox Live.

Gears of War 2 is sitting in the game rack we set up between them. May need to bust that out next. (Did the demo for Army of 2, but… it sucks. The graphics and the interface make me nuts.) Suggestions are appreciated!

 

Spent most of the weekend consolidating the data from 4 hard drives (2 backup drives, and the two “on their last legs” computers), which represents a decade of writing/blogging/editing/job searches/a couple gigs of photos and about 14 gigs of music. I actually took the time to organize it instead of just dumping it all on to the shiny new comp, so it’s been a sizable project that is almost completed, but I think will be well worth the effort.

 

When we’re done the old comps will be cleaned out and David’s dad is going to attempt to fix them up for potential use. His mom and sister have managed to trash their comps, so ours are appreciated donations. Especially since at least one of them has a working burner, so maybe his sister can stop asking me to burn CDs for her dance classes. (This alone is worth donating my old comp to the cause.)

 

We will now be a one comp family again, but new comp has an HDMI port, which means I no longer have to move the TV and rewire everything to play Hulu, etc. via the laptop. Which means we may soon be free of the evil oppression of cable television. Hoorah for the 2010s! (Also, hoorah for end of year bonuses and overtime, which made all this possible.)

 

(On the downside, said overtime means David is back to getting home late on weeknights, which sucks.)

 

Ok, more later if it occurs to me to do so.

 

 

Stuff

Looks, I blogged again.

Not sure if this will last past being rained in every lunchtime, but who knows. I don't usually stay in for rain, but this is RAIN - flooded streets and all.

On another note, wow, this is a killer story... can you imagine? Woman scorned, etc.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1245296/Spurned-mistress-YaVaughnie-Wilkins-takes-revenge-Charles-E-Phillips-plastering-U-S-cities-compromising-posters.html

Rain

The rain sucks and it made me sick.

I guess that's a bit unfair to the rain. But still... why so much?

I guess it's good for the drought. Or the hopeful end thereof.

Been sick since Friday. Probably because I keep getting rained on. Almost entirely better, but way behind on work now (left early Mon, stayed home Tues).

Oh well. So it goes!

So...

Work's been tough. Anticipating future outsourcing of the Service Department to less-expensive climes (the Midwest), my boss engineered a move over to another department. He took me along with him, but his other two dozenish people were left out in the cold. It's a bummer for them though honestly they're in pretty good shape compared to a lot of people - the Company tends to give a bit of severance and at least a couple of weeks warning.

On the other hand, my dad's been unemployed since June and he's far from the only one.

The new department is interesting - we're working with accessories and new techy stuff, which is pretty different from service - more something people are interested in than a necssary evil. We still have connections to the old dept, tho - many of our old job functions are included in the new ones.

Been working like it's a new job, since I have a new boss's boss. Kinda tired. J's the same way after doing lots of year-end madness. Going to watch some movies and play some Xbox today. We have two Xboxes now.

That's... about it. Excelsior!

So... anybody still out there?

I've been vaguely thinking of blogging again, if anyone cares. I used to blog when I was bored... haven't been bored in a while. But I vaguely miss it, for some reason. Anyone still check this thing? Or is everyone on Facebook?

Random Thought...

If Twitter had been around during the Internet peak of MarioGeorgeNitrini111, his signature would have taken up an entire tweet.