Whenever I need a laugh, I turn to Miss Teen South Carolina and her stirring response about “US Americans” and map reading. This clip never fails to give me a chuckle!
Some of the comedic responses, like Miss Teen South Carolina calling 911, are almost as funny. 😉
I know what I’m going to be spending my weekend doing: coughing, blowing my nose, and taking pictures with what is hopefully a fantastic camera!
I had this great idea where I was going to write a free verse poem summarizing the last week of my life, but I just don’t have the metal firepower right now…so here it is in point form:
Last night (New Year’s Eve) and today (New Year’s Day) Ashley and I did something we’ve talked about doing for a while now: watching all of the Lord of the Rings movies, extended edition, in succession. We “cheated” by having some sleep involved, but we made it through LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring last night, then watched Casino Royale fora bit of a change of pace, went to sleep, woke up, and today watched the remaining two LOTR movies. That’s 11.5 hours in total for all three movies – yikes! It was quite a feat – I wouldn’t think if would be hard to do, but strangely enough it was. I’m going to be dreaming in the Elf tongue tonight I think… 😉
One of the bad habits I have is to start, but not finish, certain things – and unfortunately it tends to be writing projects more often than not. Cleaning out my “Things to Blog & Post” folder, I came across the summary of my third day in New York, the day I came home (day one was already posted). It’s mildly amusing because it wasn’t a great experience, so I share for your general amusement. 😉
From Airport to Hotel: When I booked my car with Carmel a couple of weeks ago, they said that if my flight was leaving at 7:50 am (it seems to be the only direct flight back to Calgary), I should be picked up at 5 am. I figure these people know their business better than I do, so I said sure and mentally prepared myself to wake up at 4 am. When the time came (the morning I’m writing most of this) I dragged my sorry self out of bed at 4 am, had a shower, and made it down to the lobby for 5 am. This time it was a blue town car that picked me up, not a blue mini –van. I would have preferred to have mini-van guy pick up though – the blue town car experience ended up being pretty unpleasant. The car’s signal light made a loud squawking sound whenever it was turned on, which was frequently. Right, left, didn’t matter – squawk, screech, squawk. The driver drove incredibly slow as well. I couldn’t tell if he was doing the speed limit or not, but regardless, every other car on the road passed him. Some cars honked because he was holding up traffic in some places by going so slow. I had to open the window because his body odour was making me nauseous. When we arrived at the airport he asked me to help him read the terminal signs to find Air Canada. I thought it as a bit strange he didn’t know which terminal I’d be leaving from, but ok, I was happy to help. I don’t think he could read English: he was braking hard and not hitting the gas until I told him it wasn’t my gate, even for the gates with signs that only had two airlines listed. We made it to my gate in 26 minutes from the hotel pickup.
From Check-in to Gate: After finally figuring out that there was no Air Canada counter, and that I was really flying on United, I used their automated check-in service. It was about 500% faster than the Air Canada system (why am I not surprised?). I had my boarding pass in about 90 seconds, and 30 seconds of that was me trying to figure out how to use the passport scanner. I went through security, and once again my bag was opened for a search. The security guy told me that I should take out my camera next time and put it on the scanner separately, it’s what was triggering the inspection. Good to know for next time! I made it to my gate quickly after that, and it was 5:46 am. I was the only person in that section of the terminal – my flight didn’t leave for another 2 hours. Damn. Could have slept some more. Damn.
I was a bit dubious when my cable ISP, Shaw, released a new service called PowerBoost recently. The claim is that it provides a significant boost of speed for 5 to 20 seconds, but no specifics were given about what speeds should be expected. They’re charging $2.95 a month for this feature, but I received it for free because I’m already paying an extra $10 per month for Shaw’s 10 mbps Extreme package. I didn’t think much of it at the time, and honestly hadn’t noticed any difference (most servers can’t saturate a 10 mbps connection), but today I was downloading a series of files from my own server and noticed an impressive burst of speed: 2.4 MB/s real-world speeds when downloading two files.
The speeds didn’t last longer than a few seconds, which is unfortunate because when you’re downloading big files you need the speed for longer than a few seconds, but it’s nice to see that more speed is possible. Too bad Shaw wants $93/month for their 25 mbps package and it doesn’t offer more upload speed – I’d pay a bit more to get 2 mbps, but they don’t offer that as an option. Then again, compared to the 30 KB/s speeds a friend on the other side of the world is getting, I shouldn’t be complaining at all. 😉
When I watch a movie, the single biggest thing I look for is impact. If it’s a comedy, does it make me laugh? If it’s a documentary, does it make me think, and perhaps change my viewpoint on something? If it’s an action movie, does it make my pulse quicken? If it’s a thriller, does it make me nervous and jumpy?
I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, is an action/thriller/horror hybrid that does the job quite nicely. I won’t ruin it for anyone, but the basic premise that the trailer reveals is that Will Smith’s character is the last human left on Manhattan Island, his only companion is his dog, and he has to find the cure to something…something that, when night comes, causes very bad things to happen.
Maybe it’s because Ashley and I went to a late afternoon matinée, so when we left the movie theatre it the sun was setting, or maybe it was because I was dropping Ashley off at her parent’s house and I was going home along to a house with only my dog…but I sure felt jumpy on the way home and for a while afterwards! The movie really got under my skin, but in a good, entertaining way. Will Smith pulls off the nearly impossible feat of not being boring when pretty much the only thing the camera focuses on for the bulk of the movie is him. About the only negative thing I have to say about it is that the CGI “creatures” didn’t look all that believable, but not comically so. It’s still a gripping, tense movie – a movie worth watching. [Web site / HD trailers]
It feels SO good to finally get the re-vamp of Digital Media Thoughts launched, with the name changed to Digital Home Thoughts, a new template, and hooked into our new forums. It took a lot of work from a lot of people (Fabrizio, Jorj, Janak, myself) and was on the heels of a double-server hack, so my life has gone from massively stressful to just a trickle of stress. Up next, migrating Pocket PC Thoughts…
I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas and happy holidays! Me, I’m still migrating servers in between family events. I can’t wait for life to return to normal…