Movie Review - The Queen
Movie Review - 300
A very stylized graphic novel adaptation of the story of 300 Spartan soldiers who defended their country against thousands (depending on what history you believe) of Persians who were running roughshod over much of the civilized world. It's a combination of Gladiator for context and Sin City for the look, with more archetypal characters in the lead roles as opposed to going for real accuracy. Not for the squeamish, blood and interesting ways to separate it from the human body are explored here. Still, it delivers on what it promises and it was a good movie for the style. Worth a rental if you're not inclined to pay movie theater prices, although you need to see it on a big screen to enjoy it.
Hello, I Must Be Going
don’t look now, but things have changed again. Today’s version of the story has me moving to another state later this year and then going overseas early next year. Tune in later this afternoon when I will find out that I am in fact not going anywhere but now must insist that I am King Richard III, dress appropriately for my title, and annex southern Arkansas in the name of the empire. And then, tomorrow, I will be moving to another, different state later this year, and then going underseas next year. Until it changes, again. Followed by another change. Which will be immediately followed by, another, different change.
Spring Ain’t Here (or perhaps it is)
(always good to quote Metheny, I feel). The inspection that has many at work gnashing their teeth and grimacing draws closer. I guess it’s unavoidable that people will have to be scrambling at the last minute for these things. I still hold to the opinion that if everyone was diligent towards their tasks all year long then the inspection wouldn’t be so stress inducing. I’ll allow that even if we were so lucky as to be blessed with 100% dedication and industry among all our workers, that a measure of panic would still set in before any inspection, so perhaps it’s just the nature of these things and not necessarily particular to a staff of both dedicated and indifferent.
Significant developments on the homefront (or maybe not)
The last week has been tumultuous to say the least. On the professional side I have learned that I will deploy overseas (I won’t go into details). That last part was as of 22 Feb and now on 6 Mar I can say that it is no longer valid. There was much argument and posturing between the various levels of my supervisory chain. The end result is that my name is on the lips of far more people than when this process started, so it’s more of a matter of when and not if I’ll eventually go overseas or not.
Book Review - American Gods
I saw this while browsing at B&N and it caught my eye. I have seen his novels on the shelves for awhile now but never picked anything up. This won every major Fantasy/Horror award the year it was published and it looked like a nice modern fantasy with elements of Clive Barker/Stephen King set in America at the turn of the new millienium. After reading the novel I considered it a good read, although I had my doubts as to whether it was worth all the awards. I'm not sure about the other novels it was competing with, so maybe that's not fair. Gaman introduces some pretty cool concepts in the ideas that Gods of all religions and myths survive based on the faithful and their support. As people began to emigrate in great numbers from Europe to America around the time of the colonies, many of the old religions and Gods began to lose supporters in the old world. This eventually motivated many of the Gods to come to America as well, in an attempt to follow the faithful. The story focuses around an ex con and his hiring by a mysterious character with a nebulous past. Without giving the plot away, it's based on what happens when the old Gods have to compete with the new "American Gods" of television, the internet, etc. The God's avatars are all fairly normalish characters walking around in the story and interacting with each other. It's definitely a nice modern twist on the concept of religion and set in the backdrop of a very different America.
Book Review - One Train Later
The autobiography by the brilliant guitarist for the Police. This covers his entire life until this point with a large portion detailing his musical career before the Police which unknown to me prior to reading this book was actually pretty successful. He was a member of much of the 60s musical movement in England and the San Francisco/California psychedelic movement. He bounced around to various bands and gigs and was pretty well known to many of the big players in those days including the Stones, the Who and others. He played with the Animals and had a variety of backup/session type gigs including Neal Sedaka to name just one. He was heavily influenced by Jazz at an early age and it's the variety of musical experiences he had that allowed him to develop such a unique sound within the Police that had never been heard before and has been copied but never equalled in the time since. It's a good book for Police fans and a great book for Andy Summers fans. On the tail of finishing this book, the news broke that the Police have reunited and are touring this summer. I just finished watching them open the Grammy's last Sunday (they sounded fantastic by the way, they haven't lost anything in twenty plus years apart) and have now found out they will play Dallas in June. I plan to be there if at all humanly possible. I was fortunate enough to see them play across the street from where they are playing this June on their last tour (Synchronicity). Update: I was able to buy two tickets for 17th row center floor at the Dallas show in June. I'm just slightly stoked, to put it mildly.
Movie Review - Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny
This reminded me of how Wayne's World appeared to be written after they had started filming in that they only had about 30 minutes of plot and passably funny material and the remainder was filler. They are much better on the shorts they filmed for HBO, and at this point they don't hold up for 90 minutes. I should add that I am a big fan of the D, having their "masterworks' DVD which is a much better representation of their humor.
Book Review - Stairway to Heaven
Stairway to Heaven by Richard Cole - this is basically the diary (or at least a very subjective retelling) of life on the road with Led Zeppelin by their primary tour manager, Richard Cole. It is mostly filled with stories of life on tour, including all the crazy stories that surround the band. Yes, the shark story is there in full detail. It's a interesting read in that it does reveal some character traits of the band members that may not be as readily obvious through their music and interviews. Since he was their tour manager, there isn't much about their studio time and the development of the songs and albums, which is what I would consider the most important aspect of their legacy as a band, although their touring is probably what made them most famous. This is mostly for the real fans of the band, but it is told by someone who was truly on the inside so it gives details you won't find anywhere else. I also recently re-read "Hammer of the Gods" which treads much the same ground as Stairway to Heaven
Book Review - An Equal Music
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth - tells the story of a classical violinist in a professional touring quartet in Europe. It's equal measures of the musician's life and relationships among the various players. It also is very focused on the failed relationship between the violinist and another student and his regret at losing her. After a chance sighting of her in London he spends the next several chapters trying to track her down only to find that many things have changed and neither of them are like they were. The relational aspects of the novel border on lifetime channel material, but the life of a touring classical musician rings true and is interesting for anyone who is a player or musician or has an interest in that life. I read this after seeing it recommended by Neal Peart on his website.
Movie Review - Children of Men
a near future sci fi thriller about a time when the human race is headed towards extinction with no human births in nearly twenty years. A dark view of the future, similar in tone to Blade Runner, and reminiscent of the golden age of science fiction when writers like Asimov and Heinlein wrote stories with adult themes that provoked thought and discussion and not purely for entertaiment value.
Book Review - A Short History of Nearly Everything
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (Non-Fiction).
It's a laymans guide to the history of science and an enjoyable read. There are bits that apparently get lost in translation when Bryson tries to decipher some of the more theoretical topics, but this isn't meant to replace textbooks or research articles. If you like the Discovery channel but sometimes find yourself wanting a little more, you'll probably enjoy this book. I have particularly enjoyed some of the analogies he makes (quotes?): if you reduced the Sun down to the size of a pinhead, Pluto would still be 35 feet away, and the outer edge of our solar system (everything within the gravitational field of our sun) would still be farther away than the eye could see (the edge of our solar system is tens of thousands times farther away than the distance to Pluto). Those sorts of quotes really altered my perception which was mostly based on those illustrations in my old science textbooks (you know the ones which show all the planets in relation to the Sun, complete with Mars being in the shadow of Jupiter, etc.) There are many great analogies like that which really help to gain a perspective on how complex and amazing the natural world is, and how insigificant and temporary modern man is in the age of earth and the universe.
Book Review - Devil in the White City
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - an interesting dual tale of two men, one the primary architect for the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago that was a stunning achievement in architecture, science and modern innovation for its time, the other being one of the first (if not the first) American serial killer who exploited the tumult in Chicago during this momentous season, preying upon many young women who were attracted at the opportunities that this event and city promised. A really fascinating story that works on many different levels and shifts between a great historical novel about American innovation, perseverance and the realities of living in turn of the century Chicago and the intricate web of deceit, misdirection and malevolence masterminded by a well respected Doctor who used his power to commit unthinkable acts of violence. This tale seems so fantastic that it's hard to believe it's actually based entirely on true events without a great deal of embellishment or artistic license.
God Has Forsaken the Cowboys (continuing the daily whine series)
The MNF game against the Giants was supposed to be a real indicator of where the team was currently and where it was headed. Well, if that’s true then I’ll be rooting for whatever underdog I identify as least intolerable during the post season for about the 9th out of the last 11 years (not really rooting, just trying to give myself some excuse to continue watching football once Dallas is done for the season). God knows it doesn’t look like the Cowboys will be a viable interest after the last regular season game. Actually, we’ll probably have a good idea if the season is even salvageable in the next month or so.
Right now we don’t have an offensive line that can block (against teams with winning records anyway), we don’t have a quarterback that understands that discretion is the better part of valor (in football terms, it’s better to throw it away than to throw an interception, anytime) or a secondary that can prevent the big play downfield. We have what is arguably one of the top 5 sets of offensive weapons in the NFL with TO, Terry Glenn, Julius Jones, Jason Witten, and Marion Barber. These guys are all very talented and any individual in that group could effectively carry half of the responsibility for moving the ball if needed.
The problem is that if the OL can’t block then we have no running or passing game to speak of. In the last two losses against NY and Philly, or OL looked like a college team playing against the pros. I also wonder why they don’t just accept that the OL needs help and start leaving an extra blocker or two to cover the QB. There were a couple of completely unblocked sacks last night, and that’s just unacceptable, especially after we knew it was such a problem against philly.
Romo taking Bledsoe’s place was a case of feast or famine. He started off with a play that sadly foreshadowed the game’s outcome by throwing his first pass for an interception. A feat he would repeat two more times, including a complete turkey ball that was returned 96 yards for a touchdown with less than 4 minutes left in the game. And yes, it was 96 yards which means we had been poised to score. He had a few positive moments including a couple of TD passes (I didn’t see the second one because it was WAY past my bedtime and the game was already effectively over) (give me a break, I get up at 4am) and he is much more mobile than that jerseyed statue we had start the game at QB. Romo shows some promise and you can’t fault the guy for trying his best considering he was put on the spot in the middle of MNF game with an OL that wasn’t giving him much help.
Maybe if Romo is a very quick study we might be able to turn things around, at least at this point we are only one game out of the division lead (we would lose a tiebreaker against NY or Philly though) and we still have a chance to put together a solid season. At this point Parcells hasn’t made any commitment to who will start the next game against Carolina, so if you were waiting to hear the “quarterback controversy” theme get tossed about, your wait is officially over.
After 11 very frustrating years in a row, I realize I just need to quit taking these games so seriously, because it becomes a real downer to get emotionally invested in this team anymore. I’ll still watch and root for them, but if I have learned anything about football it’s that it doesn’t matter how talented your team looks on paper. It makes you wonder if we wouldn’t have been much better off trying to recruit or pay for a talented QB instead of throwing all the money at TO, knowing what he brings to the table both on and off the field. Not that even Peyton or Tom Brady would be succesful without a good OL.
God Bless the French (today’s whine)
Without going into detail, my job is medical and one large aspect is filling a slot on an emergency response team for the facility where I work. Our typical emergency response role is for a long term process going on here that essentially runs 24 hours a day and will continue to do so until complete (several years from now). The specific medical coverage we provide is actually for a support operation that usually runs during business hours (close to that, anyways) and has been running on Saturdays for several months (and will also continue to do so for several years). As luck would have it, the large 24 hour operation was going to be shutdown this weekend, so we would have had our first truly free weekend in several months.
Cue the French. Part of the large process is that it involves international treaties with several countries who will send inspectors periodically. Usually they come during the week and their presence is barely noticed by the facility at large. However, they require medical coverage just like the big operation and wouldn’t you know it, they schedule their visit for not only a weekend, but the one weekend in several months in which we were actually going to be off. Nothing of note happened, but we we’re still required to be present and available in case something did happen. I’m sure it was of no consequence to them that they were screwing dozens of people out of time off with their families. I don’t know, perhaps their international inspections take them away from home as often as we have to work weekends. Doesn’t make it any more tolerable, though.
A Milestone on the Horizon
Ae Young, my wife of 16 years, is going to be the first of the two of us to reach the 5th decade of life on this bountiful round orb that is God’s Green Earth (not sure where that came from, but there it is. So you have it). We are typically pretty low key about our birthday and anniversary celebrations. I have never forgotten any or not marked the occasion with some sort of gift and the requisite ancillary celebratory maneuverings (cake, flowers, etc.) because I do find value in acknowledging how important she is to me (lay off you romantics, I let her know every day, sheesh), but we don’t ever make a big production out of anything. That being said, I felt it was important to “emphasize” this birthday in my own subdued manner.
To serve the materialistic needs I had already bought her a new watch via the rural American’s mercantile messiah, oh glorious Amazon. Not sure what I ever did without online shopping. I get really tired of having to go to stores and talk to people who are either incompetent, apathetic or a frustrating conglomeration of both. Anywho, the package came ahead of schedule and I gave her the option for the early reveal. For which she opted. And I will say she was quite happy with the choice (she had been dropping hints).
Crass materialist needs having been served, I also needed to arrange the ancillary (ok, that’s from a man’s point of view, I’m sure a woman would never consider flowers as ancillary) tokens of love. So I ventured to the corner baker and florist to arrange the baking and the, um floristing (40 roses, red) Speaking of which, the baker (or would you call a woman a bakess? bakestress? mistress of the oven?) was left speechless for at least 30 seconds of which was occupied with focused staring at my forehead while she tried to process the request for “Happy 22nd Anniversary of your 18th Birthday” on a cake. (btw, that’s what we’re calling the “you know what” so leave it alone)
While I don’t fancy that she has had the specific request before, certainly it’s not the most outrageous request she ever received and it’s not like I asked her to write the message in sanskrit. I didn’t think about the size constraints considering it’s an eight inch cake (for the two of us and the dogs) until I was driving home. I guess I’ll find out how good she is at small fonts on Thursday. There might be some quick scrambling to the WalMart bakery if my request doesn’t turn out as hoped for.
As I had discussed with a friend at work, turning 40 is a strange thing (I’m still 9 months away) From a numerical standpoint it seems significant, but I’m certain that neither Ae Young nor I feels as if we’re getting much older. The only time I really notice my age is when someone younger makes a joke or points it out otherwise. Or when I’m doing a physical exam on a patient who wasn’t born when I joined the Army. That was a bit of a blow to the ol’ solar plexus when it happened earlier this year.
Another element of confusion is that I still enjoy music, movies, books, video games and other forms of entertainment that might be focused on people in their twenties or even younger. I have long since given up trying to act a certain age or to filter my hobbies or pasttimes based on my social standing, age, position in life, etc. Ae Young and I still like watching movies like Shrek or the Incredibles along with all the independent films and less family friendly (not porn, you perv, I mean mature themes) material we also watch. We don’t draw a distinction based on what the intended audience of the material is. We either like it or we don’t. The result being that we can have fun going to a classical recital, a football game, a theme park, an art museum (I threw the last one in, really we’re more natural science & history museum types), you name it. Age seems more important to how others are interpreting us as opposed to how we perceive ourselves. That being said, I do think it’s important to take a moment to make a reckoning of where we stand in our lives and what this moment in time means.
Ae Young has been a breast cancer survivor for over 9 years now. The initial estimates of her survival (based on the type of cancer she had) were at 80% for 5 years and 50% for 10 years. She had just had an essentially complete body MRI through the Women’s Breast Imaging Center in Lawton, Oklahoma in 2005 and the results were completely negative for any sort of recurrence or new growth. I know she thinks about it more often than I do, but I don’t know exactly how often that is. I don’t ever forget about it, but I have to admit that I’m pretty optimistic since she has made it this far without any apparent recurrence. I think the very aggressive surgery and chemotheraphy might have done its job as intended.
From an external standpoint there’s really nothing to indicate it ever happened. Most people never realize or expect that she could have not only gone through the ordeal, but that it happened almost 10 years ago when she was barely into her 30s. I know it has led to us to appreciate every day that we have, and we both realize how important it is to do something today that will mean something tomorrow (or in the future).
While we both have different belief systems, I know we both appreciate that our lives are a gift that should be used to its utmost potential.
Book Review - The Runelords
The Runelords series by David Farland - an interesting premise for a fantasy series in which Runelords are powerful men and women who gain superhuman abilities by proxy. They use magic to take certain attributes (brawn, stamina, grace, eyesight, hearing, etc.) from willing (and sometimes unwilling or unaware) subjects who are in turn promised lifelong protection from their patron in turn for relinquishing these priceless gifts. The tale centers around a prince named Gaborn (of course it does, it's an epic fantasy isn't it?) who must battle the Wolf Lord (an epithet for another rune lord who has taken the attributes of dogs and wolves as well as humans) Raj Athen who is trying to become the "Sum of all Men" by taking endowments from thousands of subjects that may eventually grant him immortality and immense power. As the series progresses (I read the first four books, another is forthcoming this November, but it's about the children of the main characters in this story) another main rival is introduced in the form of a race of insectoid creatures known as the reavers and their powerful leader. They will all battle for the fate of the Earth (again, it's Epic Fantasy, what did you expect?) with several unexpected twists as the tale progresses. Overall it's a decent read. Not on par with Robert Jordan for page turnerish goodness, much less George RR Martin and his Song of Ice and Fire series.
(Not so) Spectacular Vistas
So I think I may have finally recovered from my foray into the pre-release wilderness. After I got home yesterday, the attempted killdisk re-format and subsequent reinstall attempt resulted in the inevitable boot for a few seconds and then BSOD. Lather, rinse, repeat. So I googled and found someone who was having essentially the same problem as myself and an ITish person had suggested a different format utility while also suggesting that it didn’t sound like a Vista specific issue and perhaps it was something to do with the install program. I downloaded the suggested format utility which must have been really extra special deliciously good because instead of 3 hours, this thing took 14 hours to finish. Imagine my delight when I went home for lunch today and the cycle of reinstalling XP and the … wait for it… BSOD began yet again. This after peforming a destructive reformat 3 times in a row with a duration of approximately 20 hours of continuous erasing of the little 1s and 0s. So in a last dying gasp of an attempt I decided to try the Windows Vista disk to see if it would offer any recovery utility. After booting up I was given some recovery choices but I couldn’t tell if it meant recovering to my previous installation or to Windows Vista.
Since I was having no luck with anything else I decided to run a program called something like automatic or self repair of installation errors. I don’t know exactly what the focus of this utility is, but I couldn’t be any worse off than I was, so I tried it. The odd thing is that I let the program run for about 30 minutes (it does warn of taking several minutes, but several sounds like less than 30 to my ears) before giving up and shutting down the computer. After this I tried booting from the Windows XP install disc and lo and behold, there was my SATA original hard drive and the extra SATA I had added, ripe for installing XP upon (certainly no pesky data left to get in the way after having been formatted thrice over) which I immediately set about. After letting the install finish and getting to the Windows desktop, I realized that the Gateway recovery disk I had been using was to my wife’s Gateway and was actually from 2003 while my recovery disk is from 2005. I don’t know how much of a difference that makes, but I figured it would mean fewer updates to download, so I went ahead and ran my correct 2005 recovery disk right before I returned from lunch. I’ll see how it went when I get home.
I think I have learned my lesson in that running a beta operating system needs to be done on not only a drive that you’re willing to lose the data from, but probably also on a secondary drive (read: smallest) that isn’t a better default drive that you would prefer to use. In my case, I would have been better off using the 200GB SATA drive to play with so I would still have the 500GB as the fall back OS and backup drive if things went poorly. Fortunately I just lost a bit of time, but no significant data that I couldn’t do without. This has also given me the excuse of cleaning up some excess BS off the hard drive I needed to discard anyway. The only big pain now is going to be the Itunes and other authorization hoop jumping I will have to do since the DRM cops will assume I’m trying to run my software on a “new” computer even though I’m still going to be running one version of all my software on essentially the same computer. I think I have had to get Apple, Audible and a few other DRM happy companies to de&re-authorize my computers on several occasions since I don’t keep a static setup for more than about 1 year at a time.
My Windows Vista RC1 experience
So, in the true spirit of the frontier, I decided to try out the new Microsoft Windows operating system in beta pre-release, because apparently I don’t have enough fun with computer and operator meltdowns at work. I used it for about a week and it wasn’t causing any major problems. I will say that I like the new graphical enhancements and the sidebar, but these are really just nice little aesthetic enhancements and not really worth upgrading for. One of the major changes to Vista is a real time search engine which constantly scans your computer for changing information with the apparent intent of being able to readily produce quick, context specific results to any searches you throw at it. It’s similar to the Google desktop search tool, especially in the “I’m now taking over your hard drives and you can wait your turn for whatever trivial task that you consider important” sense of the word.
This wasn’t such a problem at first because I thought it would eventually get done with the majority of the indexing and only need to update changing information. Well, in practice this seemed to result in the hard drive spinning CONSTANTLY regardless of what background tasks were or weren’t active. I tried shutting down everything except the bare minimums and still with the spinning hard drives. I would specifically try to shut down the search indexer, but it would always somehow restart itself and I couldn’t find a way to disable it (although I’m sure there is probably a very obvious way in the control panel or something in the interface, but I didn’t find it. If not, they need to provide this option or find a way to get the thing to get it’s indexing over with so the computer can be used for something else.
I don’ t know if this is directly related to the search indexer, but the straw that broke the wildebeest’s pinky hoof was the fact that I kept having problems with the audio engine freezing up which resulted in audio drop outs during recording. Nothing is more satisfying than finally nailing a take of a longish song (4+ mins), especially when you have had to try multiple times to get it down just right. Arguably, multi track recording and digital audio workstations eliminate the need for the perfect take because you can always tweak, tweak, tweak. However, in the world of solo acoustic guitar, I am a firm believer in the “nail it right in one take” school of thinking. I don’t mean you need to get it perfect the first time, but you should endeavor to be able to play the song perfectly and so it’s even more important to achieve this when recording. It makes the mixing process so much more straightforward than trying to splice clips and get the right volume, etc. levels. It’s much more difficult to fool the ears with an acoustic instrument that is basically recorded dry with little in the way of effects. Yes, I know you can do anything with digital audio, it’s just that I hate all the extra effort at the computer when I could expend the work at learning the song better and be able to play it in one take and forget about tweak, tweak, tweak.
Well, one of the “features” of Windows Vista RC1 is that the drivers aren’t quite up to par yet, and this combined with the hard drive on perpetual spin courtesy of (in my opinion) the search indexer, may have been the reason I was plagued with audio dropouts, especially when I had finally nailed a take. Because of these issues, I decided to let Vista work out it’s problems on its own time. This is where the fun begins.
Apparently Vista makes some changes to the master boot record of the hard drive (in hard drive terms, the holy of holies where thalt shalt not tread unlesseth thou knowest what the hell thouest is doingeth) (and thou doesn’teth) which Windows XP apparently gets very confused about and does what any good Windows machine does when it runs out of ideas. Yes, the BSOD. (That’s the blue screen of death if you were wondering). I had tried to reinstall Windows XP clean once I decided to rid myself of Vista, but XP wasn’t going along with my plan. I then tried my recovery disk courtesy of Gateway, which seemed to make better progress, but eventually led to the BSOD once again. As I type, my home computer is trying to perform a completely destructive low level format via the killdisk shareware program. It takes a long time, so hopefully it will be finished by the time I get home. If that doesn’t cure the problem, I may have just bought a 500GB paperweight in the shape of a SATA hard drive.
Yes, I had backups of everything important for those with the smug grins on their faces. It’s just a little frustrating when the XP format utility isn’t enough to wipe the hard drive clean and I have to go to these extra lengths. And no, I never wanted or expected to be able to recover the hard drive intact with the original files (hence, the backup was performed before I tried to reinstall XP).
All that being said, I will probably look at Vista once it’s finally released and had a chance to get a decent user base established to work out the bugs. It promises some nice improvements and there are a host of other features that I haven’t even mentioned. Time will tell.
My First Post
This website grew out of a desire to share my musical “experiments” with the world at large (whether they are interested is entirely beside the point), and to act as secondary motivation for me to refine said experiments so they are fit for public consumption. If no one ever looks or listens at any of the material here, it will still have served its purpose. Hopefully anyone who does look will find something worth their time spent here. If not, suggestions on how to make it so are highly encouraged!