Current Music: "One Shall Stand and One Shall Fall"
Current Mood: nerdy
Actually a serious breakdown of the movie now that I have seen it twice, but first a comment about movie screens.
Right now in Minneapolis it costs about $9 a person to see a movie. It costs slightly less than that (7 or 
at my parents suburb of St. Louis. And, before a movie we see literally 20+ minutes of commercials and previews after the time when the movie is supposed to start. WTF! Why the hell do I pay you for advertising, followed by product-placement filled movies.
This seems outrageous to me, and is very annoying….especially since the commercials mostly suck.
Also, the second time I saw the movie, the screen / print of the movie really sucked. And the quality really detracted from my enjoyment the second time around. Again, why should I pay you, if you can’t even clean the window to the projector, and make sure there isn’t shit all over the film print.
Now, on with our regularly scheduled program.
( A more serious analysis with LOTS OF SPOILERS....DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT TO SEE THIS MOVIE )
Current Mood: 
nostalgic
I’m a big fan of the original Transformers show. This is no secret. I’m not a crazy-go-nuts fan, I’ve never attended a bot-con and I don’t buy and sell toys on ebay. But I have re-watched the original series (which I own in its entirety on DVD) as an adult. And when I’m bored and Lauren isn’t home, I’ll put the movie in for fun.
( For silliness, and over analysis of my childhood )
Current Mood: 
pissed off
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html
Last time I still checked, the constitution which grants power to the president, also provides freedoms that he cannot take away from the people. And this executive order tries to do just that.
How can you believe that it is a mandate from God to spread freedom to the countries around the world, only to relieve your own citizens of their guaranteed freedoms.
I’ve really really hated this term of this administration. It makes me ashamed that I voted for Bush in 2000.
Edit: Found this interesting and useful.
http://www.2decide.com/table.htm
Current Mood: nerdy
Over at Tom’s Guide Daily they are doing an article on switching to Ubuntu.
Link to article
While this is nothing new these days, I was particularly enjoying it even in the first page because of this paragraph.
Have you ever been some place you really didn’t want to be? I mean, have you ever really, really had a desire to leave but for some reason you just couldn’t? There was always something holding you back. Maybe it was circumstance, the comfort of your surroundings, or it was just too familiar (even though you know you should’ve moved on long ago)? Sound familiar?
Conditions like these keep many people tied to Windows. Those users feel there has to be an alternate way, but are unsure how to proceed. Well, there are alternate solutions to Microsoft Windows. Many are robust and allow users to make the migration with little knowledge and no loss. For anyone interested in finding the route out of Redmond, WA, please continue to read on. Today, we’re looking at the new face of Linux: Ubuntu.
Check it out if you have that same feeling. I know I had that feeling last summer when I made the switch, but it subsided after I got the feel of things.
Tuesday after work Lauren and I headed to Dirk and Val’s house, where we got in late, crashed, and got up around 7am. I wished Dirk a happy birthday (Wednesday was his B-Day you forgetful bastards), and got rolling down to the parents house around 9am.
The next few days were a lot of work to help get things ready, and I didn’t sleep as much as I would have liked, but in the end it was a pretty darned good trip home. I’ll sum up some of the highlights.
1. David and Krysta got married - this is the most important part
2. I got to make David and his best man very uncomfortable for most of the picture taking - this amused me
3. Aaron successfully defended his masters thesis, and is now finishing up the final revisions.
4. I got to see my extended family for the first time in a couple of years
5. I saw transformers again….it still rocked
6. I looked sexy in my Tux
7. I listened to a lot of a podcast on the Byzantine rulers in the car
8. I got to talk a lot with Lauren about where we want to go and what we want to do with the near-term aspects of our life. This is a good conversation to have from time to time and we haven’t had as much time to lay it all out in light of the several big things that have happened. It was nice to lay everything out on the table that was going on and step back and look at it all together.
9. My ex-Vineyard pastor cousin prayed for me - which is the first time I think I’ve prayed like that with any of my extended family. I was both touched by the sentiment and encouraged by the prayer.
10. Aaron and I did up the car really well and didn’t get in trouble - does this mean I’m growing up?
11. I chastised Walmart, the republican party, and SUV’s and my parents didn’t throw anything at me (Aaron almost did)
12. Aaron didn’t yell at Lauren once (that I’m aware of), and only yelled at me a little. I think maybe our relationship is improving.
Other than that I drove through the worst storm I’ve ever driven in on the way home. It was like someone was taking 10 gallon fish tanks of water and throwing them at my car every other second. But I came through it with some white-knuckling no worse for wear.
And, now I’m finishing up lunch back at work, surprised to see how much things did not pile up while I was gone. I’m already caught up on most of my emails 
Last night after much deliberation Lauren and I finally decided on a laptop for her future endeavours as a writer and student at the university. As many of you know I have primarily subsisted on second hand, or ebay bought, used and repaired laptops. And in many ways I plan on continuing to do so (if I could only fix Liz’s and Barney’s old ones anyway)
Well, after a few years of the P2 400 Mhz that the braincell knows and loves, followed by a year of the P3 800 Mhz that was bought for my sister-in-law to take to school back in 2001, we are actually buying our first new laptop EVER!
I’m a little excited. The original plan was to wait until Apple’s WWDC and see if they released the thin ‘n’ light that has been rumoured for about a year now. But with recent news that it will be delayed until at least October a new plan was hatched in order to avoid the multiple-year cell phone ordeal that Lauren sometimes refers to as “the Great Wait”. And we are purchasing the fairly thin ‘n’ light model that dell just released, the XPS m1330
The thing is about 0.7 inches at one end and about 1.3 at the other, and weighs in around 4.4lbs as we configured it w/ the mid-sized battery (the smallest puts it in at 3.9).
( The rest of the spec's as we ordered it )
I saw the opening show of Transformers tonight.
For those of you who are afraid that this would be 2.5 hours of Micheal Bay taking your childhood in the form of the all-metal original toy of Megatron violating you in all the wrong places while Optimus Prime with lips kisses you inappropriately and says “Who’s your daddy?”, be assured, it is actually the complete opposite of that.
On BigCat rating Scale of Pearl Harbor crossed with Manos to Batman Beings this movie gets a confident:
“Fuck yeah! Transformers!”
P.S. For those of you who saw the original form of the amazing Transformers afgan that Lauren made for me, she has recently expanded it with new squares that are the negative colors of the other squares with an amazing border that says “Transformers” on the top and bottom, and on one side it says “Robots in Disguise” and on the other it says “More than Meets the Eye”
It is fantastic, and my wife is awesome!
A Neo-Con I am not. Neither is Ron Paul, which to me makes him interesting.
What he is:
- Actually pro-lower taxes - not just about preaching lower taxes and then raising them to pay for Wars and big military budgets. He has never voted to raise taxes while in congress.
- Pro-life - automatically makes him more electable as a Republican than Gulliani, and even McCain. As a Physician in his private life he delivered over 3000 babies.
- Anti-Iraq War - as a Republican he voted AGAINST it in congress. How cool is that? He broke rank and file to do what he felt was right.
- Pro-constitution - He will not vote for increasing the government in any way that is not expressly allowed in the constitution
- Intelligent and not just preaching the party line - This is distinctively different. He was lambasted by Fox news and some other more conservative outlets for saying that the 9/11 commission stated that we are antagonizing extremist terrorist groups with our heavy presence in the middle east. But the point here is that he actually read the 9/11 commission, and understood the logical statements made in it in terms of Americans being woefully ignorant of the anti-American sentiment in the rest of the world. That says a lot for his understanding of Global politics relative to some of the other Republicans in the primary as well as our own current President.
Anyway, he is getting more and more attention as time goes, which I’m hoping will turn into a Season 6 of the West Wing style victory and make for an actually interesting Election.
But, while he is picking up steam Gulliani is already crowned King by some of the media for his “management” of the post-9/11 situation in NY, and McCain is running back to the far right neo-con side of things in order to try to swing the base away from the pro-choice Gulliani.
Personally I still disagree with Ron Paul on several things, but I admire his voting record and what I perceive as actual integrity that he seems to have in comparison with the current administration. I like that he isn’t playing the “Distance myself from Bush, but keep the party happy” line that some of the candidates are into right now, and I certainly like it better than what I’ve been hearing from Gulliani, which just makes me wonder how he is even participating, let alone leading, in a nationally staged election.
Ron Paul’s Website
Vote Ron Paul in the primary, and raise the level of debate in the ‘08 election. Lets not have a repeat of ‘04…that was terrible.
Current Mood: 
amused
Matthew 11:30
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Today when I read this all I could think was “Bullshit”
That ever happen to you when your reading the bible?
