Christmastime is here again

Another year, another trip home for the holidays. Unfortunately, this year I'm flying in on Christmas Eve, but hopefully we'll still make the evening service at our church. I might be meeting up with Phil at some point while I'm home, but that's kind of up in the air until Tuesday or Wednesday next week. I'm looking forward to seeing all the friends and family in the area, but there's going to be a lot of running around to do. I hope I can keep my energy up. Merry Christmas everyone, and happy New Year.

Of apes and men

Man, I love Vern's writing style. He's always good for a laugh. I doubt I'll go see Brokeback Mountain, though. It might be worth a rental.

I saw King Kong Sunday. That was a very strange movie. I thought it would be a great adventure flick, and I really admire Peter Jackson, but at one point a character even says "This isn't an adventure, is it?", and gets a reply of "No." Or maybe a head shake, I'm not sure. But they're right, this movie aspires to be something more than an adventure, and ends up a little bit creepy.

I picked up the new Frighteners dvd, which came with a free ticket to King Kong, and I still really enjoy that movie. I saw it in theaters when it came out, and as I recall it was actually pushed back because there was a mass murder in Tasmania just before it was supposed to be released, where some guy killed around twenty people in an afternoon. Jackson's a New Zealander, but they're close enough to Australia (kind of like Canada is to America) that it would be a pretty sensitive time. I was over there in Melbourne about a year later, and I don't remember ever hearing a peep about the incident, unlike, say, Columbine.

Anyway, Jackson has always liked scaring his audience, and King Kong is no exception, but in addition to an adventure movie and a horror flick, he also wants it to be a love story. And I just didn't buy it. I don't care how good of an actress Naomi Watts is, I don't care to see her fall in love with a giant ape. These long takes of them staring into each other's eyes just made me want to laugh. If you're going to see this one, make sure you don't expect a non-stop thrill ride, and it might help to have someone with you to share the joke.

Work and plans

I haven't felt like writing much lately. I finally got all my video editing programs installed, which I'd been putting off in order to hear back from the companies that I'd be able to re-register them first, and I'm still waiting to hear from one of them. Now that they're on the PC, I have to deal with the fact that I have a project to finish by mid-January.

I recovered all my writing, and some of my pictures, but none of my business records. I'll have to recreate them for tax season, which is just around the corner, unless Ramzi can give me the gift of file recovery. I'm mailing him my hard drives. On the other hand, the day job is going well, and I have a week off to travel to Indiana for the holidays.

Happy Thanksgiving

Well, it's not all bad news. I got to return the keyboard/mouse combo since there was nothing wrong with my old mouse and a friend gave me a wireless keyboard that wasn't being used. That's $40 back in my pocket. I got my dvd burner and scanner in the mail today, and both are plugged in and running. I'm just about back up to speed. I even found a cd with three of the songs I recorded on it, including the one original. That's a relief.

I'm going to Houston tomorrow for Thanksgiving with Phil's family. We went last year, too, and it was good. I have to work Friday, though, so it'll be a lot of driving. I hope everyone stays safe on the roads.

There's a hole in my hard drive.

Back up your files

In a word, ugh.

So I just spent the last ten days dealing with the fact that my computer blew up on Thursay, the 10th. I should have seen it coming, since it had been making a weird noise for several weeks, but it still kind of knocked me sideways. First, the monitor went blank, then there was a loud pop. Suddenly, all you could hear was the case fans, then those died too. After that, I switched the power off in back of the PC. I figured the power supply had blown, and I was right, but that wasn't all.

Elements lost in the meltdown:

motherboard
2 internal hard drives
power supply
scanner (USB)
keyboard
video card
USB card
firewire card (not entirely fried, but spotty)

Elements that survived:

CPU
RAM
printer
mic (USB)
external hard drive (USB)
sound card
monitor
modem
speakers
floppy drive (I got a new one anyway)
mouse (ditto, since it came with the keyboard)
camera cradle (USB)

As you can see, it could have been worse. On the other hand, since I had to replace the motherboard I went ahead and got the latest model, meaning I also had to upgrade my CPU and RAM, which aren't cheap. So far it's cost me about $680 to get back up to speed.

The worst part is, if I can't recover one of the hard drives, I'll have lost all the digital photos I've taken since September 2004, including the murals I shot over the summer. And all the songs I'd recorded. Not to mention all my business records and a couple of things I've written that were saved on a floppy disk that won't read for some reason. Sigh.

Blood on Halloween

I gave blood today for the third time in my life. A local radio station was promoting its Tenth Annual Hemogoblin Halloween blood drive (clever that), and I stopped in after work since it was pretty much right down the road from my place.

The first time I gave blood was not a pleasant experience. It was when I was working in Dallas, and every year they brought the big bus to our parking lot and many people took the chance for a decent afternoon break from work. After the extensive screening process, I settled into the chair and they inserted the needle. I didn't really know what to expect, but I realized my reaction was less than optimal when I started getting light-headed. I had never been squeamish around my own blood, having seen it often enough as a teenager with almost daily nosebleeds. I told the nurse I was a little dizzy, and she said I was almost done. Once they pulled the needle out, either they didn't tell me to stop squeezing the ball to make the blood flow or I was too out of it to hear them. Either way, I ended up with a huge bruise on my forearm that took about a month to clear up, turning from dark purple to greenish yellow before fading away. Later that afternoon, I tried taking the stairs a little too quickly, having already forgotten the warnings, and nearly passed out standing upright.

It was a couple of years before I gave blood again, shortly before I was laid off. It might have even been October. I felt like I should give it another try, seeing as how my dad had been giving at least a couple of times a year for most of his life. I have O-negative blood, which I'm told is always in high demand because anybody can receive it, and I figured I just had a rotten first experience. This time, we tried the other arm, and happily I had no bruise or dizziness. Same thing today, and it only took me five minutes to fill the pint bag. I think I should start going back more often, now that I'm signed up in Austin. The biggest reason I hadn't done it since I'd moved down here was the agency I used in Dallas is nowhere to be found. But it's a good cause, and I got a free T-shirt and some cookies. What more could I ask for?

Hat trick

I saw three movies today, back to back to back. I haven't done that in a while.

First, I had The Hot Spot from Netflix, starring Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen, and Jennifer Connelly. It's based on a book called Hell Hath No Fury, was directed by Dennis Hopper, and this is an overlooked gem. Don Johnson plays edgy, brooding, and violent, and pulls it off with gusto. Virginia Madsen hams it up with an over-the-top accent, but she just oozes sex appeal from the first time she appears. I have to admit, I find Jennifer Connelly's eyebrows strangely fascinating, and she was in her Career Opportunities phase (read: age) when this came out, so the movie's got that going for it. This one's got a nice twist ending that you almost never see, but it seems so obvious you can't imagine it any other way (unless you like Hollywood horseshit).

Next up, I went and saw Doom in the theater. I was a little worried this one wouldn't live up to the source material, but I enjoyed the hell out of this flick (so to speak). It's no Aliens, but it's miles better than any other video game movie I've ever seen. I'm looking at you, Resident Evil. The look and feel of the sets is perfectly matched (although I did wonder why they only rarely turned on the lights when they entered a pitch black room), and all the monsters look just like they did in the game, with the effects upgraded for the big screen of course. Plus, there's a twist in the last half hour that is at once completely true to the game (the movie's actually based on Doom 3), and still unexpected. I was quite pleased with the execution of this adaptation.

Lastly, I had another movie through Netflix called Finder's Fee. My dad recommended this one, and he was right. This is a surprisingly good movie you've almost certainly never heard of. The standouts are James Earl Jones, Ryan Reynolds, and Matthew Lillard, but the whole thing holds together great under Jeff Probst's (!) direction. This has been my day of twist endings, because this movie has one too, but this one feels a little more tacked on (or at least unexplained) than The Hot Spot's. It all takes place in one apartment, but it never feels claustrophobic, and they never used the same shot that I noticed. The acting is the main attraction here, especially if you're into small group dynamics and surprise.

That about sum's up my day, other than rejoicing in my new phone that actually works and is fun to use. I can even watch clips from the Daily Show on it. How cool is that?

Looking back

I've been in a nostalgic mood lately, which reached its logical conclusion tonight, when I went rifling through some old writings, drawings, and other papers I've collected over the years. When I was in middle school, one of my teachers had us write a letter to our future selves, to be delivered by him ten years later. I had just moved to Texas when my mother received mine, and I remember the confusion when she asked me about that strange piece of mail over the phone. She recognized my writing on the envelope, but why would I mail it to my old address? I don't think I remembered what it was at the time, but I had her send it on to me, and it was something of a shock to open it and get that little window into my young mind. By 23, I had written, I expected to have a car (check), a college degree (check), a house (nope), and be a pilot (wrong again-I gave that up senior year of high school, when I decided to focus on writing).

As I've gotten older, I've become a lot more reflective, especially in the last two or three years. Not so much long term, but in that I try to always examine my own reactions and motivations. If I get angry at something, I stop and think about why. If I say something and regret it, I try to remember what I was thinking at the time. It's occurred to me that this kind of behavior could be paralyzing if taken too far, but hopefully I'll never reach that point.

Maybe I'm overcompensating, but I took a course on hang gliding last Saturday at a local school through UT's informal classes. When I was in New Zealand, I did both sky diving and white water rafting. Eventually I'll get to bungie jumping, and not far north of Austin there's a zip line operation through the Texas treetops I plan to try out soon. I can't claim to be eXtreme, but I do enjoy trying new things, even (maybe especially) if they're dangerous.

Latest entertainments

I went and saw Tim Burton's Corpse Bride last week, pretty interesting flick. It's apparently loosely based on a Russian folk tale, but I would have to agree with some of the reviews that characterized it as "thin". Nobody but Burton would have ever made this movie, but I wonder how it might have turned out in the hands of, say, Pixar. The craftsmanship in the models was very impressive, but the acting didn't seem to be big enough, at least for the main characters, to match the performances the animators managed to achieve. The Nightmare Before Christmas was better all around.

Last night, I picked up a DVD of the Black Keys performing live in Sydney, Australia. I had to find something they put out, and I picked the DVD because 1) it was cheap, maybe less than one of their albums, 2) it may have been seeing them on stage that got me so excited about their music, and 3) I tend not to listen to blues on the radio or even CD, and I'm not sure why.