Reverend0's Pulpit

Review: Watchmen

2008-08-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

First off, I am not by nature a comic book guy. I have enjoyed the occasional comic book that I have picked up. I have not really read any series regularly. With the upcoming movie for the Watchmen, I decided to take a look at this graphic novel. The trailer to the movie definitely looked interesting, but really what was this all about?

The color and imagery are vivid. The writing is good. The story is mostly good. I am sure that just pissed off quite a few people on that one... that is if anyone reads my entry. The basic premise of the story is you have a world where masked vigilante heroes exist. They are not super in terms of power, but truly super in their desire, drive and training in their fight against evil. This has created a story where many of the pivotal events in our world have changed since their emergence. The cold war is stronger than ever. The US won in Vietnam. Public riots eventually led to the downfall of these masked vigilante's and the public soon began to fear as there was indirect conflict with the police.

As this world unfolds, the story starts with murder of someone and how one masked vigilante, who refused to put away the mask attempts to track down the killer and determine who is behind it and what it all means. It really is a murder mystery/conspiracy tale at its heart.

I found the story excellent through most of it. It created a world that was interesting. At several points in the story, it is told next to the telling of a popular comic of that universe (Tales of the Black Frigate). Where what was happening to the characters in this book were a reflection and sometimes counterpoint to the actions in the tale of the Watchmen. I am sure many comic aficionado's found this as brilliant, I found this ploy difficult to read. And without given away the end, you feel as if you are building to something brilliant and enlightening or terrible and frightening, when suddenly the story twists into something less interesting and oddly like a forced closure. I felt there was more to explore in the world, but it was closed down because of a print limit or disgruntled artists, or some other reason.

I do recommend this to adults. It is a tad on the dark side. Enjoy.

Date Night

2008-08-10T08:34:00.001-07:00

Well, for all my hard work, I was given a gift card at work to take the family out for dinner. Of course we excluded Miranda, instead giving her the treat of running around with a bunch of other kids, since really we wanted the ability to eat a meal and not have to eat as fast as possible cause she is bored.

So on Friday night, Michelle and I went down to one of our favorite restaurants in the area, Salty's at Redondo Beach. Since we had plenty of time, we went about meal at a casual pace. Michelle really wanted the mussels and clam appetizer, we got that. It was steamed and sauced in a wonderful pesto sauce. It was definitely very good. Michelle also got a Mango Alcohol slushie (can't remember the name). For our main course, Michelle got the Salmon with a dill cream sauce and I got the Halibut with tomatoes and capers on asparagus. I thought the dishes were cooked perfectly but were slightly underseasoned. Both of these fish have a strong flavor but need very strong pairings. Still, the dish was very good.

For dessert, Michelle ordered the Triple Chocolate Cake, while I ordered the Ultimate Nudge (coffee drink). My coffee drink was ... potent. The cake was very heavy and dense (and far too large a portion).

Overall, it was very relaxing.

At some point, I am hoping to put together a decent review of the Watchmen graphic novel that I just completed. If I run out of time, I will drop off a half-assed one...

Woodland Park Zoo

2008-08-06T18:35:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I decided to do something I had yet to do with Miranda. A friend from work suggested a daddy and kids day out at the zoo to let the moms get a break. So, Miranda and I made the 30 minute drive into the zoo to meet Jeff and Nathan. I have to say, I was very impressed by the zoo. Yes the animals looked bored, but that is universal for zoos that I have found. You could see though that the staff really tried hard to make things good, though. The worked with feeding and cleaning. They talked to visitors. Overall it was a nice experience.

Miranda explicitly told me, "No Stroller." I should have overrode her, but generally I let her make all the non-critical decisions. This became critical after about 90 minutes of walking and she was getting tired. We had a bit of a meltdown, but really it was a combination of tired, hot, hungry, and thirsty. We got all that remedied when Jeff suggested a nearby mexican restaurant that had awesome quesadilla. Miranda consumed a lot of the chicken and cheese, but avoided the shell.

So I did get some pictures of the zoo. Feel free to look at them.

Useful widget that may make you a buck or two

2008-08-01T15:22:00.000-07:00

Thought I would take a moment to promote the Amazon Page Recommender Widget. First off, as disclosure, I do work for Amazon.com and might have had something to do with the widget. First off, it gets you the power of Amazon Recommendations to try and earn a percentage of the income. On top of it though, will provide recommendations for other pages on your site. Given my traffic here is pretty low, the recommendations for my pages tend to be based on the couple posts before or after the one you are on. It just happens to be how my readers are going through my site. But after crawling through my pages every once in a while something interesting pops up.

That said, if you have a site and an Amazon Associate account, you should try it. Also be sure to check out the helpful FAQ and performance tips.

Stress...

2008-07-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

I hate where I live. I don't know if it because of the economic climate or what, but it feels as if people are getting crazier. A couple months back, at the end of the block, there was a break in. Plus there was a car break in a week later. Lately it has seemed to be quiet, but then I found out that someone had tried to enter one of the vehicles on my property at about 3 am mid-week last week. I also just found out that a neighbor down the block had his gas line on his truck cut to siphon out the gasoline.

The stress of worrying about my family and their safety is starting to get to me. With all this I wonder what I can I do to protect what we have. I can't afford anything better. Is it just Seattle? Is this a city problem? I don't remember this from when I lived in Michigan.

Stupid laptop

2008-07-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

Looks like my repair job isn't holding. It is making if awfully tempting to solder the power cable right to the board. Seriously. At this point, I don't really plan on replacing any of the batteries or doing any serious spending on this thing, but there is a point at which the time I am spending making it work is very detrimental to the actual operation of it.

I would prefer to not buy myself a new on. I mean for the primary case which is to remote into another machine, it just doesn't make sense to spend even $100 on a small laptop. Now the next question would be where would one ever find a $100 laptop. So with that, I am pretty sure that I am stuck.

So probably on Sunday, I will rip it apart again (wanted to reattach the touch pad anyway) and try and do a better job at applying the glue. I figure I want to give it one more change before I start cutting wires and breaking out the solder iron. Which also means I have yet another reason to postpone Ubuntu. But that you can chalk up to lazy.

Maybe Ubuntu will wait

2008-07-28T21:16:00.001-07:00

Well, it look's like ubuntu is going to wait a bit before I tackled installation. Reason 1 is that I am still waiting for it complete downloading. That is blazing fast Comcast for you. Pay for "Powerboost" and it takes 28 hours to download 650 meg. Honestly should have take a few hours but seriously... why to I pay the extra.

Second off, part of development effort is taking a look at Microsoft Live Writer and seeing what it would take to put together a plugin that would allow one to add in associate links to their blogs via this tool. It may work out that the current plugin set that is available is sufficient, or that the services available from Amazon are inadequate and those would stop me. But, I think Amazon's APIs will be rich enough and the other plugin's to be good but missing features. The only other thing is that it is likely to take a decent amount of programming time as I am definitely rusty and .NET programming.

My other concern is that I am not getting any sort of funding for this. Many of web development efforts come with the side incentive that I could make some money via Google AdSense or via Associates. I know it is delusional, as I have made a whopping $1 off all of my projects. Granted I don't do many.

Basing this project on many past projects, I give it a 7% chance of survival. Web based projects usually run in the 70% chance of survival, but I guess you do what you know.

Also to be noted I am working on updating my template to support 3 column again. This time without tables. Oh how I hate floating div's.

Downloading Ubuntu for Alienware Sentia

2008-07-27T16:16:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, I bought an Alienware. At the time, Alienware was one of the edgy companies that was producing high performance machines. I ended up buying what was considered their business series laptop, the Sentia. This was really before they started tacking on numbers after Sentia so as best I can tell, it is a model 223. It's not a terribly fast machine, but it did set me back some serious cash and add on to it the problems I have had with it, I really regret purchasing it.

First and foremost the battery for the CMOS has never really worked. It is always dead. This would be less of a problem if the CMOS settings from no power would allow you to even use the laptop. Nope. Everytime I power on, I have to blindly go through the bios settings and restore to defaults as the LCD screen doesn't work otherwise. I would replace it, but the model number on the CMOS battery is non-standard. I could use a CR1220, but this is a ML1220 which is supposedly rechargeable. I am afraid if I use the CR series, it will burst into flames.

Second problem as of now is the main battery is dead. Although the laptop is now roughly 4 or 5 years old... I guess it is to be expected minus I haven't really used it much.

The third problem was one I created. The power plug had gotten kicked at some point and the power connected liked to emit blue sparks or not work on occasion. This with the lack of battery rendered the laptop completely unusable.

However today, I decided that I must restore this laptop to working condition. I removed 25+ screws and multiple panels to expose the inner workings. Wouldn't you know it, I had to disassemble pretty much everything to just get to the power connector. When I got there I was expecting a broken solder point so I had the solder iron all ready to go. Not to be the case, as the plastic housing that holds the connector in place was the culprit and cracked good. After applying some Loctite Super Glue, and holding for 20 minutes, I was able to reassemble the laptop. Unfortunately I had one extra screw and the touchpad isn't hooked up anymore. Overall though, it has been restored to usable, I just can't power it down.

So now, I have decided that I would drop ubuntu on it. I have Redhat 9 on one of my desktops but it rarely gets used. Right now I am looking for something that I can do a little development work while I wait for Miranda to go to sleep while I sit in her room. It looks like I have 11+ hours of downloading before I can attempt an install so it may end up waiting till next weekend for installing.

So hopefully, in the future I can share some of the mini projects I am working on.

Potential solution to puking

2008-07-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

Michelle may have figured out one of our puking problems. Basically Miranda has a tendency to puke. Many things can cause it, but one stumped us. Some nights she would just suddenly start whimpering and puke was going to be coming soon. Well it turns out that if she eats dinner well, and then follows it up with her normal cup of milk, it exceeds the capacity of her stomach. Yup, that's it.

Sigh.

That doesn't stop her from throwing up when she gets too upset so I will likely still be spending every evening hanging out in her room. But at least one mystery solved.

Joss Whedon

2008-07-18T18:52:00.001-07:00

So there has been a little bit of a buzz on teh intarweebs about Joss Whedon's latest endeavor, Dr. Horrible. Basically it really hits on one of my personal favorite songs by Jonathan Coulton called Skullcrusher Mountain. What happens when a super genius villian is in love? Well I can say it is terribly interesting. You should definitely check out the video for Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Seriously. First off it stars Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day. Second, the music is good. Third, it is definitely bite sized at under 14 minutes per act (so far as Act III hasn't gone up yet).

I watched some of Mr. Whedon's early TV shows, but I didn't recognize genius until Firefly. But this really is a wonderful work and quite enjoyable.

"Why" #

2008-07-16T16:31:00.000-07:00

I am here testing at work instead of riding the train.

July 7, 2001

2008-07-07T08:03:00.001-07:00

So 7 years ago today, Michelle and I were married. That is 7 years, 1 kid, 2400 miles, and countless other things that have occurred between here and there. And in all of that, I am still deeply in love and quite happy. We may not do anything out of the ordinary today (planning with children can be difficult at times) but it will still be special.

So what does one do the day after the fourth?

2008-07-05T19:04:00.000-07:00

Well in my case you make one trip to Lowes to pick up a few minor things (propane included). Second you fix the tonneau cover to the truck which broke off last year. Third you clean the living room and family room. Fourth you play some Super Mario Galaxy cause you little girl is hooked on the fat italian plumber.

So late last year, the pin that hold one of the two arms on my tonneau cover broke off. The single one didn't have the strength to hold it up, and put too much strain on the back of the cover. So after a couple of tries I found a size bolt that worked well. So if this one breaks, I am in serious trouble.

And I was surprised to find that Miranda likes to watch either Michelle or I play Super Mario Galaxy. "Mario Jumping!" "Mario Swimming!" "Mario two eyes." Really cute and fun to see her so excited.

Mucked some more with my template

2008-07-04T11:10:00.001-07:00

I am pretty sure no matter what I do, I won't be happy with whatever changes I make. I will likely revisit this on the next rainy day we have in Seattle (no jokes please). But on the plus side, editing all my ridiculous advertising chunks was very easy. Look at my widget, I have a page recommendation, but it does point to the main page . . . from the main page. Sigh.

Work looks to be going back to a reasonable level. Launch pushes always bring more hours to make sure we make it as good as possible for customers, but still meet any sort of obligations we have. So I am very tired, but recovering.

Lately, I have been playing with twitter. I am still not sure about it's use as to me it has always felt like blog light. Right now I am primarily using it to update my facebook status as I really never log into facebook unless someone sends me a message and it emails me. I just don't have much compelling reason to use it. Twitter I worry about as I don't want to fire off tons of this little snippets every day, so I try to keep it to 2 tweets a day at most.

Now that work is slowing down, hopefully I can get back to my two blog posts a week. And also maybe beat GTA IV soon.

Don't muck with your template at 4am

2008-07-01T08:54:00.001-07:00

Well I was doing to testing by adding a new widget for my advertising column when I accidentally clicked save instead of preview. Needless to say, I quickly grabbed a template to use until I get my old one back operational (or maybe create a new one).

Either way, most of my major work project of late is somehow tied into the amazon widget on the right. Which recently released, so that is where I have been.

Happy Birthday Jason!

2008-06-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to 30

Now you can't give me crap for being 30 and you being in your 20's :P

Bacon Floss?

2008-06-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

Cinnamon? Mint? Nope.

I am not sure how I feel about this. I think I would prefer soap as generally I am looking for a "clean" flavor and feeling when I floss. But it seems I should post something about a bacon related item. If I would have remembered earlier, I would have posted about the 3lb. of bacon in a can.

Replies

2008-06-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

Thanks Jay for the book recommendation. I will likely grab a copy when it gets into a translation I can read. Although an interesting NPR report I heard recently discussed that some of child behavior problems stem from a lack of unstructured play. The basic premise of the research was that by allowing children to play outside of the control of adults allow kids to develop the skills to self-regulate. This also gives them skills in determining power structures in the groups of kids and learn what is acceptible in dealing with other kids. I think there is something there. At the same point, as parents, we are so heavily scheduled, we end up doing the same to our kids, even if unintentionally. But when I looked at the reasons you put in from the book I thought some just didn't make sense.

Reasons listed:
destruction of the larger family unit, thus loneliness of the parents with the resulting desperate need to connect with the inmature child
pressure to perform makes parents push kids harder than they can actually take
lack of role models for healty parenting, both for parents and for kids
misguided, romantic drive for freedom of mind and action, even in a 2 year old (the Flower Children are reaping a harvest they did not expect with their anti-authoritarian attitudes)
lack of understanding of the healthy development steps of a forming mind

So let's see if I can make another numbered list to talk about them.

Alright, I totally buy this one. Add to it smaller family sizes has led to smaller family groups. And add into this one, the break down of local neighborhood groups. Remember when you knew all your neighbors?
What is meant by this? Is it a lack of giving praise? Honestly I think this ends up only affecting small pockets of parents. I think more likely you get parents that are involved in their prior lives and fail to give the appropriate time to their new lives with kids.
Dysfunctional begets more dysfunctional is the basics there. In the end, we will tend to fall back as parents to the same things that our parents did. Those are our role models. As for kids, it comes down to us as parents.
Yep.
I am pretty sure that we are further along understanding the developing mind than we were 20 or 50 years ago. But the bottom levels of understanding in society are probably at what we were years ago though, is that bad?

Really, I try to compare what society is like now versus 50 years or 100 years ago. Is what we have as a society better or worse than before. I honestly think we are doing better just because we have time to think about these problems. But then we take these things that could help us get better and we blow them out of proportion.

Alright I think talked to long on that topic given I only planned to give thanks :)

To James on the same thread, personally responsibility is not a trait we have instilled in the current culture. Definitely is something we should work toward.

Otherwise, that is all I have for now. Back to work, since deadlines are looming.

I hate Big Media

2008-06-09T08:23:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, there was a tragedy in the Akihabara district of Japan. 7 people were killed and many injured when an individual with an unhealthy mind decided to go on a rampage. I really feel bad for those that have suffered.

What has got me a bit irritated this morning, is how it was covered in the New York Times. They have taken this horrible event and then applied a hatred for video games in it. Sigh, why do they feel the need to do this through a time of suffering for the people in that area of the world.

Offending article

He also wrote that he liked the popular video games Tales of Destiny, a fantasy role-playing series that employs the distinctive art style known as anime, in which adult characters often resemble children, and Gran Turismo, a car racing game in which the cars can crash and suffer damage but the focus is on racing rather than destruction and human figures are rarely visible.

Review: Maple Bacon Lollipop

2008-06-07T14:12:00.001-07:00

Alright, ish was kind enough to send me some Maple Bacon Lollipops due to the fact that we have hypothesized that all things bacon are good. I want to reaffirm that guess as these are quite good if and only if you are prepared for what they are delivering. My first try at the lollipop was not a good experience. I wasn't sure what to expect, but at the same point the lollipop just didn't sit right.

The part the initially surprised me was how not sweet this lollipop is. The maple flavor is subtle, and not overly sweet. It was kinda water down flavor. The second part of the flavor that hits you is the underlying salty, smoky flavor that is there as well. It really tastes like you took your bacon and dragged it through the last bits of maple syrup still on your plate. You can really see the bacon pieces in the lollipop as well.

Highly recommended to bacon lovers.

Lord Stanley's Cup

2008-06-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

Well I was able to watch the NHL finals this year and it offered a great experience for me. The main reason for that is because my two favorite teams were playing for it all, although my favorite is the Wings. Overall I found this cup well played by the Wings, but the Penguins did not until their back was against the wall. Especially in game six when the started having better puck control and being more aggressive as the Wings got the puck. So I am looking forward to next year and I really hope that the Penguins can keep their team together.

Back from the Midwest

2008-06-01T19:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a bit of an absence from blogging and the web in general as I toured around the portions of Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan visiting friends and family and letting Miranda get acquainted with them. We had a couple of rainy days, but really ran into absolutely lovely weather sitting in the mid 70's most of the time.

Originally we were supposed to go to a wedding on Memorial Day weekend, but in the end the travel was trying and Miranda can be a bit stubborn and exhausting, so we made a quick change in plans and headed to Michigan to let Miranda unwind from being placed in a harness for a long time. This gave us an extra day with my grandma where Miranda could be her goofy self and skin her knee.

Sunday though was a party my parents put together and they were able to get a lot of my relatives together and just have a nice cookout. We were able to get another Aunt and Uncle to visit on Memorial Day, and overall it is was a very fun weekend. Even managed to get a bit of sunburn on the bald spot.

Tuesday, Michelle and I had one of very few and infrequent dates. Went to El Rodeo and caught Ironman. Great food and a fun movie.

We then spent the next 4 days slowly visiting my friends from high school and seeing all of their kids. We also spent a day going to Grand Rapids where we got Miranda's photos done by Sadies. I think next year, we are going to use our friend Jodi as she takes some really good pictures. Either way, once I get the pictures I will be sure to post and share.

Either way, we spent some more time with family and friends, and on some level we were very sad to go. We caught Michigan at a beautiful time and it is good seeing all the folks were are friends with. But in the end, we are exhausted. Miranda was exhausted. So we spent all day today traveling back to our home in the Northwest.

Don't forget your night vision

2008-05-18T11:06:00.000-07:00

Night Vision is really the best way to avoid falling into a puddle.

Bringing back up to date

2008-05-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Not a lot has happened recently, so I really haven't felt like blogging. Football seems to the major source of my blogging material. The other one is reviewing stuff I have read, watched, or otherwise used. This will be a couple of half-assed reviews for a couple of things.

Book: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein

The sequel to Number of the Beast, which I didn't really care for, but I found this one more enjoyable than the Beast. Still not on par for some of his other works however. Again we find ourselves with a bit of Author Masturbation, where he has included many of his past favorite characters, however we do get introduced to a very strong male lead character that is very interesting if not similar to his other leads in previous books. The plot starts out pretty straight forward as a murder mystery and then twists and turns like a snake into a hero story. I won't give away the ending, but heck, I re-read the ending twice and still didn't know what happened. If you like Number of the Beast, you will like this one. For me, I still like Starship, Stranger, and Mistress much more.

Book: Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets by Constantinos C. Markides , Paul A. Geroski
Pretty good business book to read, but with a few caveats. Most of these style books (innovation centric) will tend to have lots of case studies and talk about the hypothesis as to how some companies made it and others didn't. This book didn't have any case studies. Instead, it looked historically at which companies innovated and came up with a new product idea, and which companies had staying power. I know that sounds like case studies, but this felt more like a history lesson to me. The hypothesis put forth is that companies that innovate on the product and create the product are never the companies that succeed. The companies that succeed are the ones that are able to efficiently deploy these product ideas to the market. The authors go on to talk about companies that specialize in bring products to a market are never good at innovating new products, since their culture and skills tend to marketization whereas other companies that innovate really focus on the technology and not how it will apply to the mass market.

Either way I recommend picking this up if you are into big business innovation, as I found it easy to read and insightful.

Phone: Samsung Blackjack II Black Smartphone (AT&T)
So far, I have had this phone for about 2-3 weeks, and I still like it. Given that it is a Windows device I was prepared to reboot it every couple of days like one of my friends runs into with his mobile Windows device, but I can happily say, that it has happened once, but it was mostly my fault. Rather than review every little aspect of the phone, I will give the condensed version.

Pros: 3G is fast and reliable. GPS is cool, but a little inaccurate. Video and picture camera are decent, though not high res. Phone calls are clear. Reception is good even in some nearly dead areas I know of.

Cons: Keyboard is slippery and hard to type on. Battery case is slippery and hard to open. Mobile Internet Explorer is horrible. Wish I had an extra 1/2 inch of screen width.

Overall: I like it, but really anything should have been better than my 4.5 year old Sony Ericsson T637. But battery life is about 7 days idle, or 3 days doing some surfing and texting, or 1 day if you talk alot.

Video Game: Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition

I am about 25 hours into the game and 45% in. I really like a lot of it. The sandbox aspect of the game is just really addictive. The driving is ok, and I think I liked it better than Yahtzee, although I don't think I have played as many of the GTA games as Yahtzee has. The voice acting is superb, and the plot is engaging (at least to me). Some things I can complain about is my "friends" in the game. It feels like they wait till the most inopportune time to give me a ring and want to hang out, and if I turn then down, they like me less. So I have drop everything and go hang out with. Not only hang out with them but pick them up and get them home. Seriously. Can't we just meet somewhere? Give me more than an hours heads up. But in terms of depth of content, I think there is more stuff to read in here than any of The Elder Scrolls games which really says alot. Also would like to note, THIS IS NOT FOR KIDS!

And in conclusion: It seems that Miranda has taken a liking to Rock Band. Frequently we here the phrase, "I rock?" Which lets us know she wants to play the drums.

I keep wondering how he got re-elected last time...

2008-05-16T10:20:00.001-07:00

Kwame is at it again. Way to rail against your voting public and their right to information.