You are here: Home / 2007 / Archives for April 2007

Movie meme

April 30, 2007 By

I saw this at Carrie’s and I either have allergies kicking up or am getting a cold so this is going to be it for tonight:

1. Name a movie that you have seen more than 10 times. Lion King, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Cars, The Incredibles, Over the Hedge, etc.

2. Name a movie that you’ve seen multiple times in the theater. None

3. Name an actor who would make you more inclined to see a movie. Sean Connery, Colin Firth, Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant

4. Name an actor who would make you less likely to see a movie. Will Farrell, Jack Black, Steve Martin (and a number of others whose names I can’t think of).

5. Name a movie that you can quote from. Finding Forrester, Pride & Prejudice

6. Name a movie musical that you know all the lyrics to all the songs. Grease (although I never saw the movie until a couple years ago)

7. Name a movie that you have been known to sing along with. That would be for someone else to say ;)

8. Name a movie that you would recommend everyone see. See #5

9. Name a movie that you own. See #5 (we own both P&P versions)

10. Name an actor who launched his/her entertainment career in another medium but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops. So, this is supposed to be someone who we were aware of before they became an actor/actress? Awnold is really the only person I can think of that I recognized from a career prior to acting (other than bit parts). (I know there are others, but for example, I have not seen Madonna’s acting.)

11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in? No.

12. Ever made out in a movie? Well, a little.

13. Name a movie that you keep meaning to see but just haven’t gotten around to it. None I can think of.

14. Ever walked out of a movie? In a theatre, no.

15. Name a movie that made you cry in the theater. The Bourne Supremacy. The way they jiggled the picture around, it was brutal on the eyes in the theatre.

16. Popcorn? Andrea and I share.

17. How often do you go to the movies (as opposed to renting them or watching them at home)? Prior to meeting Andrea about once every 23 years. Since meeting her about once every 2-3 years.

18. What’s the last movie you saw in the theater? I believe #15.

19. What’s your favorite/preferred genre of movie? I choose not to watch horror and/or thrillers (the only exception to this has been the sixth sense).

20. What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the theater? The Sound of Music

21. What movie do you wish you had never seen? The exorcist.

22. What is the weirdest movie you enjoyed? Tough one. Aren’t all movies weird in some respect.

23. What is the scariest movie you’ve seen? See #19 & #21 and draw your own conclusions.

24. What is the funniest movie you’ve seen? That’s a tough choice. I haven’t particularly been into comedy lately so I’m having trouble remembering the titles of any. Updated: Thanks Andrea :D Now I remember one. I laughed the whole way through Rat Race.

Filed Under: Meme

Thinking post

April 17, 2007 By

I put this under book studies. But, I’m not going to get into the school type massacre of literature. What I am going to do is mention a book. I’m not going to do that at the start though. There’s something that I’ve been mulling over for the last month or so and the book provided some insight.

Over quite a period of time leading up to Andrea’s surgery, quite a few people asked some variation of how I felt about it. My initial reaction to the question (I can’t remember if someone asked me or if the question related through Andrea) was that I thought it was an odd sort of question. I wasn’t the person who was having the surgery and going to have to go through the recovery. I hadn’t really stopped to think about it in terms of anyone other than her. At one point (possibly the weekend before), she said, well, ‘we really haven’t talked about it’ (how I felt about the surgery).

I summed it up by saying, ‘If the choice I have is the surgery or losing you, it’s not a difficult choice to make.’ Excepting that I did not look forward to seeing Andrea going through more surgery and recovery, it was an easy choice for me to support whatever she decided to do. Sometimes I dream big and have very high aspirations, but when it comes down to brass tacks I don’t waste alot of time wishing and pining for choices that I don’t have. And I hope that I can say all of that without it sounding like it was directed at the people who asked. IMO, the people who asked obviously cared. What trying to articulate my thoughts on the issue of choices brought to mind was the moral:

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% what you do about it.

We all have problems and issues that crop up in life. Probably the issues here are radically different from most in the third world. For some here, when their mp3 player (or some other gadget) fails it’s a serious problem. There are millions (if not a billion) people on this planet who have never held an electronic device. Years ago, I helped my father with organizing some geneological data. Within the last 200 years, in my ancestry, there was a couple who had 10 children. Only 4 survived to adulthood. It’s a sobering thought. If I can rephrase,

Life isn’t what happens to you. It’s what you do.

If you played the lottery and won, that doesn’t dictate what happens next. That may give you more choices. But, really, what you choose to do from that point is life.

What I’ve noticed is that there seems to be two camps in our society with people spread across the spectrum between. One camp is the ‘life is what you do’ camp and the other is the ‘life is what happens to you’ camp. For a long time I wondered whether the ‘life is what happens to you’ camp was a product of the school system where things are largely set up to be things that happen to you. In watching (and reading) Pride & Prejudice, I realized that was not the case. I’ve concluded that Jane Austen was a keen observer of human behaviour and social interaction. I think she did an incredible job of describing the character of both camps.

A snippet of the exchange between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Gardiner was, ‘It was through my mistake…and so the remedy must be… The responsibility is mine, I must have it.’ It’s very much a statement of what I did and what I’m going to do. No where in the conversation does Mr. Darcy even hint at ‘what happened to him’.

In contrast, throughout the book (and hence the movie), Mrs. Bennett focuses solely on what happens to her both directly and indirectly. At no point in her conversation does she talk in terms of what she’s done or doing. In the miniseries version, I found the character somewhat overplayed. But, I think being overplayed really accentuated the fact that the character was obsessed with making the right things happen (to her or some other character).

I’ve spent quite a while writing this and I almost forgot the closing thoughts I had in mind. One of those is that whether or not systemized education has increased the commonality of the character flaw, it probably has existed throughout time. Secondly, if you haven’t read the book and/or watched the movie it is well worth watching. If you are going to do both, I would suggest watching the movie first. Finally, I suppose I’ve made it fairly clear which of the two camps I feel would be a better choice to gravitate to. So, I’m not going to restate that here.

Filed Under: Book Studies, Unschooling Adventures

Thinking blogger

April 17, 2007 By

Thanks Doc. I like the way you did that.

thinking blogger

If you read here on a regular or semi regular basis, you must be a thinking. There isn’t enough fluffy and/or humorous content to keep non-thinkers interested. Just right click on the image to get your award.

Filed Under: Meme, Site News

I forgot

April 17, 2007 By

I totally meant to write a post last night to show up this morning to mention that my birthday was today. I see Andrea looked after that for me. Thanks for the comments and email. We will be celebrating on the weekend. Even without a celebration today, it has been a great day.

Filed Under: Us

Personal history

April 10, 2007 By

If you have been reading here any length of time you may have noted that I don’t hold Microsoft in the highest regard. The fact that it has been on my mind may be responsible for the sidebar comment and the Vista review. What I have been considering doing is writing a bit of my personal history.

About 6 months before I graduated from college I was offered a job as an assembler programmer. If I had taken that job then, today I would likely be writing or designing code for operating systems (Windows, linux, etc.), device drivers (graphics or network adapters, printer drivers, etc.), or specialized hardware (mp3 players, cable or satellite set top boxes, robotics, etc.). I have written assembler code for process control type applications and used a bit of assemblier in DOS, but that’s pretty much it.

The job offer that I did accept about a week before I graduated was a close cousin to the assembly programmer. I became a systems programmer. My job was mostly spent keeping a small data centre and its network running. Most of the programming I did at the data centre was writing utilities, scripts and data conversion programs. Most of the utilities I wrote were for the express purpose of making my job easier. Or, as in this case, making it so that someone who wasn’t a programmer could do the routine parts of my job.

Initially the only operating system used in that data centre was VMS. Over the years I worked with MicroVMS, VMS, OpenVMS and OpenVMS AXP. OpenVMS can still be purchased on Itanium and Alpha systems from HP. Later other systems were added to the data centre including Novell Netware and variants of unix. Although it isn’t on my resume, I had a one year contract with Digital Equipment as a VMS consultant to work with 2 of their customers.

So, are you wondering what this has to do with Microsoft? Well, an engineer named Dave Cutler was one of the architects of VMS. He was also an architect of other operating systems including Windows NT. To anyone who has worked with both operating systems ‘under the hood’, the similarities are unmistakable.

Based on what I’ve said, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for someone to conclude that VMS has an associated third party industry of add-on security products like anti-virus software. But that isn’t the case. I won’t say that VMS never had any security issues. But, every version of Internet Explorer I’ve worked with has had far more security holes than VMS had in the 10+ years I worked with it. And, Windows NT (and derived versions) have had few security problems in the areas where the OS was/is similar to VMS.

About 20 years ago, I encountered a story/joke which is a bit crass, but illustrates a very valid point:

A woman was visiting her psychiatrist and says, “I’ve been married 3 times but I’m still a virgin.”
The psychiatrist asks her, “How is that possible?”
She says, “Well, my first fiance was in the military and got called to go overseas. We got married just before he left. He was killed in action before his first round of duty was up.
“My second husband was elderly. The wedding and reception put such a strain on him that he died of a heart attack on the way to the hotel.
“And, my third husband is in advertising. All he does is sit on the edge of the bed and tell me how good it’s going to be.”

IMO, the cornerstone of Microsoft’s success has not been writing good software, but in telling people how good it’s going to be. And, when compared to the promised and actual features of every other OS I’ve worked with, they have done an abysmal job delivering. I don’t suppose I’m really looking justify my opinion. Over the years I’ve met alot of programmers. Most of them had an unwritten priority of writing good software. Some were more skilled than others in doing that. What I think bothers me most about getting rich from bug ridden software is not the getting rich part (money is not the most important thing in the world), but in the stain said bug ridden software has on the reputation of the profession and those who practice the craft.

Filed Under: Linux Techy Stuff

I won, I won

April 10, 2007 By

ODonnellWeb Blog Awards

I won

See how much smoother these things go with a majority of one.

Filed Under: Site News

What would Jesus really do?

April 9, 2007 By

Link received via email.

Filed Under: Christian

Wikipedia Meme

April 4, 2007 By

I saw this at both Carrie‘s and Paradise Found. Wikipedia is a great site. I use it alot. I’m going to post for both Andrea and I (while she recovers).

Go to Wikipedia and type in your Birthday month and day only.

April 4 & 17

List 3 Events that occurred that day:

Andrea:

1) 1949 – Twelve nations sign The North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. (NATO)

2) 1964 – The Beatles occupy all top five positions on the Billboard singles chart in the United States.

3) 1975 – Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (and we’ve been paying for it ever since)

Ron:

1) 1964 – The Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Mustang at the New York World’s Fair. (I have never owned a mustang but always thought they were a nice looking car.)

2) 1982 – Patriation of the Canadian constitution in Ottawa by Proclamation of Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada.

3) 2002 – Four Canadian Forces soldiers are killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire from two U.S. Air Force F-16s, the first deaths in a combat zone for Canada since the Korean War.

List 2 Important Birthdays:

Andrea:

1) 1821 – Linus Yale, Jr., American inventor and manufacturer (d. 1868) (Yale locks)

2) 1965 – Robert Downey Jr., American actor

Ron:

1) 1894 – Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union (d. 1971)

2) 1954 – Rowdy Roddy Piper, Canadian professional wrestler

List 1 Death:

(A) 1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr., American civil rights activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1929)
(R) 1790 – Benjamin Franklin, American inventor, diplomat, and printer (b. 1706)

List a Holiday or Observance. (if any):

(A) International Day for Landmine Awareness and Assistance

Filed Under: Meme

Happy birthday

April 4, 2007 By

Slip on over and wish this beautiful lady a happy birthday :)

Filed Under: Us

Goodbye winter

April 1, 2007 By

This was one of our remaining remnants of winter. I took both the next 2 pictures yesterday.

Ice cave/wave

Ice cave

It started out like this in mid-February:

Emma's castle

The only thing between us and the ground was snow. The castle had 4 entrances, 2 on each side of the hill.

Filed Under: Images
« Older Posts