Movies

I’ve been to San Francisco before, but it was always for a trade show of some sort; which means you pretty much have 0 time to go see the city, as your whole day is filled with manning a booth, going to sessions, or taking clients out to dinner. So when Cheryl had to head to SFO for a trade show of her own, we decided to make a weekend of it and actually get out and see what’s what.

We headed to Alcatraz the morning after I arrived. It was pretty interesting and we got some good photos of the island. Inside is pretty much what you would expect (not really that exciting), but the history of the place is an interesting study.

After that we kinda just wandered around the city, mostly on foot. I think we walked around probably 3-4 hours a day on Friday and Saturday - we were both tired and sore by the time we got back to our rooms.

Cheryl had wanted to participate in that timed honored scam where someone sells you an oyster for $15 to see if you get a pearl in it - so we picked up one of those and got a nice blue pearl out of it. Of course, you can’t just have a loose pearl lying around, so for a measly additional $120 we had it placed on a pendant so Cheryl can wear it on a necklace.

We did see Hellboy 2 while we were there, and that was pretty fun. Good movie, though the theater next to the Mascone Center is kinda sucky - wouldn’t have been so bad if their sound didn’t keep going up and down in volumn (from loud to really loud to really really loud and back down again). I’d recommend the movie, but not the theater.

Some more pictures can be seen here, but my camera was having problems focusing in the haze so I only picked out a couple of good ones.

Since I haven’t posted an update lately, I figured I would run down the list of movies we’ve seen recently:

Aeon Flux - Action sci-fi. I haven’t seen the original cartoon series but apparently it’s pretty funky. I liked the movie, though the people who over analyze movies probably won’t like it as much. ***1/2
Jarhead - Movie about Marine snipers during Desert Storm: Part 1. More of a drama than an action flick, but very good and shows you what a lot of guys go through while deployed and working in the Armed Forces. ****1/2
Memoirs of a Geisha - Pretty good, though slow in some parts. A drama, so hardly anything exciting going on. But still good. ***1/2
Narnia - Done very well, much better than the TV series I’ve seen a bit of. ****1/2
Syriana - Action/Drama. Basically, our (America’s) oil corporations are evil. So is our gov’ment. Interesting and pretty good. ***1/2
The Ringer - Eh. **
Walk the Line - The Johnny Cash movie. Good, but slow in parts. Another drama. The best parts were the performances. ***1/2

And now, books!

I’ve started reading the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. I have to admit, it’s nothing like I thought it would be, but it’s very good. It’s basically a collection of short(er) stories during this upheaval and removal of a galactic empire. I’m now on book 3 and the time compression has slowed down quite a bit.

I was reading the Dark Tower books by Stephen King but those can be fairly intense, it’s nice to read something a little faster and less emotional.

And, not to leave the other two Media topics out:

Music - I got Monster Magnet: Monolithic Baby! for Christmas, and it’s pretty good. I don’t think I’ve gotten any other music lately, but that’s no surprise.

Games - Started playing EVE Online again recently with a bunch of folks from F13.Net. This is one of those games where you play for awhile, quit, come back, play for awhile, quit, come back… A lot of changes have been made since I last played, so I’m getting caught up on those and trying to figure out what exactly to do with our new Corporation.

And that’s about it for Media updates. Oh oh I forgot one!

Lost - We’ve recently started watching the first season of this show. It’s pretty good! Of course, the second season has already started so there’s no way to catch up. Next season I will have to setup Tivo to record the shows so they are ready for us once we have caught up.

L8trz!

So I’ve been slacking on the updates here, figured I could do a real long one and get caught up.. so here goes!

Movies

We (Ross, Liz, Jeremy, and I) saw a Serenity screening early last month, during it’s first viewing at the Highlands Ranch AMC theaters. It was very good, even with the rough edges. I can’t wait to see the polished version in September!

We (Ross, Jeremy, Dennis, Matt, Chad, Jeremy’s Dad, a few others, and I) went to another Serenity screening last week, on the 26th, and guess what? The actress that plays Kaylee was there! That was pretty cool. She was nice and answered a lot of questions (most of them lame) and signed a bunch of posters. Apparently there’s another screening coming up at the end of this month. Watch the Can’t Stop the Signal website for information!

We (Cheryl and I) also saw Kingdom of Heaven. It was interesting only because the sets and costumes were cool. Other than that it was very very slow and not too exciting. I don’t recommend it unless you are bored and happen to find it lying on the road somewhere. But don’t take my word for it, go see it. (heh heh, i dare you)

Hmm, what else have we seen? Letsee.. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (dumb!), The Princess and The Warrior (not bad), Hard Boiled (Yay! Chow Yun Fat!), Sideways (alright), Napoleon Dynamite (funny!), House of Flying Daggers (reminded me of Hero too much, only a so-so from me).

And of course Cheryl had to watch the season finale of Deadwood without me! Grrrrr! Now I have to catch it on my own somehow, which will never happen because I don’t have HBO! Meanie.

Anime

Finished the Samurai Deeper Kyo series: Not bad. The ending was drawn out more than I cared for (probably an episode (at least) too long - but I guess they ran out of ideas before the season was over). Other than that, I liked it.

Just started the Samurai Champloo series (notice a theme here?) this week and so far it’s not bad. Only watched 2 episodes so far, but I do like the animation style. Not too interested in the characters yet, but we’ll see where it goes.

TV Shows

Jeremy borrowed the discs for a series called Wonderfalls. I had never heard of it before, but apparently it was on TV at some point. I watched a few episodes with him and it’s pretty funny. It’s like Early Edition meets That 70s Show .. or maybe Gilmore Girls .. anyway, something like that. So there’s this girl, see, who starts hallucinating that these inanimate objects (animal figurines, stuffed animals, etc) are talking to her. If she does what they say then something good happens (kid reunited with her dad, for example), but the funny part is her trying to interpret what they mean for her to do with her underachiever attitude getting in the way.. that, and the witty dialog and character interactions (especially between her family) makes it a good watch.

Books

Finally, after much dragging of feet, I finished reading the last book in the Greg Mandel series by Peter F Hamilton. The last book certainly took longer to read than the other two books, even though it was still interesting. I think the steam was gone, thus the slower pace.

After finishing that book I picked up the first book in the Black Company series by Glen Cook. And I couldn’t put it down. I just finished the second book last night, and I can’t wait to start the third. Very good books. Kinda short, but I suppose that makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something.

And still reading the Time Traveler’s Wife. About half-way now, but it goes pretty slow since I only read it when I’m at Cheryl’s.

Flying

So. Weather. Sucks. I haven’t been able to fly much lately with the weather trying to cast doom and gloom all over the Front Range. I missed my chance to solo last Tuesday because I chickened out and “felt I needed to get more practice landing, since I hadn’t much time to do that lately”. What a wimp! Well ok, I hadn’t been able to fly for almost 2 weeks, so maybe I had a good excuse. And, of course, yesterday’s flight was canceled due to weather.

Well, we’ll try again next Tuesday - please please be nice weather!

Vacation/Fun

Cheryl and I went to Ouray again this Memorial Weekend, trekking over to Grand Junction and then down past Montrose to the Orvis Hotsprings. I know I said this last time we went, but it’s a really great hot spring (with usually 0 kids around). The nice thing is that the “public” is kicked out at 10pm, so if you are renting a room or in one of the camp spots you can stay and soak after the riffraff are gone. Makes it sorta romantic, if only you can stay awake that long.

We were able to go mountain biking for a bit, but since neither of us has done much biking lately (say, years) it didn’t last for very long. Now I remember why I like powered sports better.

And we leave for Cancun (again!) on the 6th of July for a 5 day trip. Yay us!

Other Stuff

Ross and Liz are getting married. Congrats! Now, who wants to guess what they will name their first child? I’ve voting for Harold or Latifah.

Gigabyte is coming out with a thingy called the iRam. Hmm, with WinXP loaded onto that we could be playing games in seconds!

Funcom is making a MMO game based on Conan. The Barbarian, not the Librarian. Could be cool.

Mythic is making a MMO game based on Romans! In Space!. Actually, looks interesting. Will watch this one.

Neither Xbox 360 nor the Playstation 3 seem to be shipping with a harddrive. Sigh. Hopefully they wake up and figure out that consoles can’t take over PCs for gaming if they can’t provide at /least/ what we get with our PCs.

ATI’s new Crossfire mutli-GPU video card solution looks pretty kick ass. Not too pricey either, I might have to pick me one up when’s it becomes available.

Phew. Is that long enough?

Yay! The trailer is now available!

Check it out:

Serenity: The Official Movie Website

My friend and coworker, Roman, had worked on a movie a year or so back and has finally been able to show it on the big screen. Check it out:

I had the chance to go to a screening of this movie and it was actually pretty good. The first half or so is a little jumpy but towards the end it was pretty fun. Some cool camera work too. Anywho, if you are in the Denver area and happen to be downtown, check it out.

Happy New Years!

I know everyone keeps talking about the earthquake and tsunami in Southeast Asian, but please don’t forget to donate to the Red Cross.

I finally started to read the Baroque Cycle which has, to say the least, been interestingly weird the first few pages. Still trying to get use to the setting and nomenclature. The end of The Naked God was less interesting than I had expecting. I think Peter Hamilton ran out of steam and couldn’t finish with too much more information (probably be a whole nother book) but it is too bad the whole crisis + other issues are all solved in one final event.

Cheryl and I watched a couple of movies recently:

• Oceans Twelve - You’d probably like this if you liked the first Oceans Eleven, but I didn’t think it was exciting as it could have been.
• The Life Aquatic - I was expecting this to be a funny movie so I came away disappointed. Reminds me of About Schmidt .

And I saw a couple of DVDs:

• Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex - Only on the 3rd disc, but a pretty good series. If you liked the movie, Ghost in the Shell you’d probably enjoy this. It is a bit toned down from the movie, but it’s still good.

• This is Spinal Tap - First time I’ve seen this. Pretty funny movie, reminds me of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster .

I think that’s about it. Oh yah, Cheryl and I will be heading to Cancun at the end of the month for a week’s vacation, so that should be fun!

Ever have one of those days where everything is fine until a certain point and then it just rolls downhill from there? That was yesterday. Why? No clue. Maybe it had something to do with the Lunar Eclipse? Which, btw, was pretty cool.

The Red Sox have won the World Series. Yay.

Today also marks the beginning of the Guild Wars World Preview Event. You should hop on if you need something to do this weekend and want to check out a forth-coming game. It’s probably a total of 55megs to download to start playing, but you can create a character after the first initial 10megs or so. Some folks from F13 will be playing as well, hopefully we can get a guild going to try some Guild Vs Guild combat. If you play, look me up - I’ll be ‘Viin Seeven’.

I had a SUTA drill last weekend with our new One man; Ben is still the three man so we basically know what’s going on already, but our One man is new to being a One man and has to get use to his functions. We started our Initial Certification for weapons loading which is basically going through the steps to perform 60-day (use to be 30) Functional Checks and load various munitions (within a specified time frame). We got through the functional checks, Mk-82’s, AIM-9s, and AIM-120s. We’ll be doing another SUTA in November where we should be loading the rest of the standard munition types: Mavericks, GBUs, CBUs, JDAMs, and whatever else they think we should know. Unfortunately, I also have to go in for our new annual physical fitness exam on the 6th (which is the normal drill weekend, as opposed to the SUTA weekend); hopefully it won’t take more than a few hours, I don’t really want to be there for two weekends in a single month!

Jeremy and I saw the Van Helsing movie last week: It wasn’t that bad, it could have been worse (maybe not by much). It was sorta interesting, but some of the FX were funny and kinda threw it off. Of course, I like vampires and things of that nature so maybe I liked it a bit more than the average joe. 2 and 1/2 stars from me! **`

I also started watching Samurai Deeper Kyo but have only seen two episodes. Not sure what to make of it yet, so I’ll tell you more later. :)

For those of you familiar with SOE games such as EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, and the new EverQuest 2, this quote from Raph Koster is pretty funny: FWIW, SOE has no such policy of intentionally releasing early. :P

You can find the full thread here at this Terra Nova thread I said Lunch, Not Launch!.

For the first time ever, I saw Apocalypse Now, the long version (Redux). It’s actually a pretty good movie, even though it reminds me a lot of Catch 22: Everyone is insane. In Vietnam. Which makes you go insane. Somehow. Overall, though, I’d give it 4 stars. ****

Speaking of Vietnam, I finally watched, from start to finish, Good Morning, Vietnam. Great movie, very funny. Robin Williams pretty near his best. Four stars. ****

Also got to watch the cartoons for The Chronicles of Riddick and Van Helsing. I really liked both of them and wish they would make them as a series. I’d be willing to bet my bum leg that the Van Helsing cartoon is at least a star (if not 2!) better than the movie. I’ll let you know if I ever happen to watch it. 5 stars for both! *****

I got Scott Kurtz’s The Dork Ages in the mail today. I’ve only had a chance to flip through it but it looks pretty good. If you haven’t had a chance you should check out his online daily comic: www.pvponline.com.

I also got Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver. I know I’m in the middle of the Reality Dysfunction series by Peter F Hamilton but I can’t wait to read it!