Life In Austin

Biking on hills

2012-01-05T08:34:00.000-06:00

Biking on hills: Check out this movie

For those (grandparents) who haven't seen the kids in a while, Ms. El Paso recorded them riding bikes. 2 of 3 of these are mine. They all look very much not small any more.

LEGO LOTR Part 3

2011-12-20T10:31:00.001-06:00

Now that some set box images have been leaked I almost feel like it's not worth moving on with Return of the King. Plus, the Hobbit movie adaptation(s) is going to be different from the book so that will weigh on the design of the sets.

But, I'm nothing if not a glutton for completion so here we go.

Our first scene is Smeagol and Deagol (I'm not typing in the é every time, sorry) fishing and then fighting and then dying/killing over the ring. Probably not a good set. Followed by a meeting of the remaining Fellowship at Isengard to have a last word with Saruman. Seeing as Grima stabs him, then he plummets to die on a spiked wheel, it's probably not a good set. However, that scene isn't in the theatrical version so it may not make it to a Lego set.

Meduseld - The first thing I can see being a set is the hall of Meduseld in Edoras. The group is back together for the most part, they are hailing their victory at Helm's Deep, Merry and Pippen are dancing and everyone is drinking. Lego likes to make medieval houses so having one with a lot of Rohirrim and neat cups would be cool.

Gollum, Sam and Frodo - The three travel through many wastes and rocky outcroppings, there are only going to be a couple of times that a good set might come up. Early one we'll skip their travels.

Pippen sneaks a peak at the Palantir, gets in trouble, he and Gandalf leave. Arwen is leaving for Valinor but has a vision and comes back to Rivendell. Sadly, I can see her leaving with all her house accouterments and elf friends/servants as being a set. Lots of elves, some horses and trees. They don't do anything, but I bet you TLG will try to get some girls out of this by making an Arwen set or two. (See Fellowship)

Steward - The sword of Narsil is reforged and Gandalf and Pippen meet Denethor, which I can see as a set. Three minigifs, a guard, the throne and the steward's chair. Also, Denethor might have the broken Horn of Gondor. Denethor is a crazy person so I wouldn't be surprised if he had an Emperor Palpetine type face.

Also, just realized. Star Wars did flesh colored minifigs, I wonder if LOTR will do the same?

The Beacon is lit. This will probably be a set. Merry climbing up a little tower with some thatch and pitch while two guards look on.

After this there's a lot of fighting in this so let's just quickly sum up what's left so I can get back to work.

The Rohirrim assemble, Frodo and Sam go past Minas Morgul up the stairs to Shellob. Frodo is captured but Sam rescues him. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli leave Theoden and take the Dimholt road to the Dwimoberg mountain and recruit the King of the Dead. (I'll have to look this up officially, the movie script just calls him the king of the dead.) Orcs attack Osgilliath, Denethor hates Faramir and sends him back to basically get killed and then the Orcs attack Minas Tirath. The Rohirrim show up and attack, the army's of the south show up and then the army of the dead arrive and wipe out the remaining bits of the Army of Mordor. Eowyn takes out the Witch King of Agmar with Merry's help.

Sets out of this will be:

Shellob - Sam and Frodo vs. a giant spider.

Osgilliath - A few orcs, Faramir and some ruined buildings.

Minas Tirith - Aside from a throne room, there will be at least three battle sets for the Battle of Pellenor Fields/Breach of Minas Tirith. I see one set with Gothmog (that disfigured orc) on a warg with a siege machine or catapult. A big set with the outer wall of Minas Tirith, some Gondorian soldiers and orcs. And an interior fight set with Pippen, Gandalf and the Witch King. Finally two concluding sets, one with Theoden on a horse, maybe with Eomer, as well as at least one Oliphaunt. The other being some dead warriors engaged in battle with Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn.

Although the corsairs from the south have ships and Lego likes boats, I don't know that these are important enough to make into sets, but I could be really wrong.

Dwimoberg - A set of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in the kingdom of the dead would be awesome. A trans-green castle, lots of skull minifig heads and neon green soldiers. Wicked.

Cirith Ungol - Frodo is capture, Sam goes to save him. Sam's luck holds as the orcs end up killing themselves. But the tower would be a good set, plus some uruk-hai, orcs, Frodo and Sam.

Frodo and Sam in Orc Gear - Marching into the vast emptiness leading up to Mount Doom and past the Eye of Sauron, the two hobbits dress as orcs to get past the last of the army.

The Eye of Sauron - It's the most iconic symbol in the whole of the movie and should only be dealt with here. How they'd build it I have no idea, but it has been done. The thing is, Lego won't build on that scale. Much like the Republic Y-Wing I built, TLG group isn't worried about scale. The tower will be big the same way the Death Star was big. It's big enough to be the biggest thing in the series, but not stupid enough to preclude actually buying it. The same will go for The Eye of Sauron and possibly a Minas Tirith set.

Mount Doom - All their marching and trudging and fighting off Gollum will ultimately pay off by their scene inside the volcano of Mt. Doom. Lots of trans-orange and brown, disheveled Frodo and Sam minifigs and Gollum. How they're going to do the ring I have no idea. Maybe a gold 1x1 rounded plate?

The Black Gate - As a distraction, Aragorn leads a last distraction to the black gate where they fight to give Frodo more time. It's not really a needed set but I can see it happening, especially as it'll now be the new Aragorn in his king minifig printing.

Rescue by the Eagles - I think an exterior of Mt. Doom with Frodo, Sam, Gandlaf and a couple Eagles would be a good set.

After that the movie is over as far as playsets are concerned. There's the recovery, the crowing ceremony and the march back to the Shire. There's the marriage of Rosie and Sam and the eventual departure of Gandalf, Celeborn, Galadriel, Elrond, Bilbo and Frodo.

So, my guess is there will be a lot of Castle line like playsets for LOTR. Which means the sets will be either really big or really small. As you can see from the leaked images, there are already sets with a LOT of figures and minifigs drive up prices. This will be an expensive line but it's only a preview of the minifig smorgasbord that is The Hobbit. Along with Bilbo and Gandalf, there are 13 dwarves and for the most part they are all doing everything together!

If I were Lego, I'd release the Twelve Dwarves and the Nine Fellowship Companions (as well as maybe the Nazgul, because technically there are nine of them as well) as their own sets and then go light on the figure count per each set. I feel that'd be the best way for everyone to enjoy the sets but not feel like they are missing anything from the story itself.

I hope you enjoyed reading all this and if you have any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

Carry on.

LEGO LOTR Part Two

2011-12-16T14:03:00.000-06:00

In the previous post, we discussed my hesitation at jumping on the Joy Bandwagon that is running driverless around the internet. LEGO and Warner Brothers have teamed up to bring Lord of the Rings to life via Lego.

My fellow Lego nerd (and girlfriend) Tiger Lily had some things to say about it. She is actually quite excited about the prospect and enjoys the idea of Lego bringing their castle knowledge to LOTR. Rivendell and Helm's Deep were of special mention. While we disagreed on some aspects, I agree that the larger areas would be really fun to set up. I'm thinking mostly of Minas Tirith, but we'll get to that later.

At any rate, here are some things I think TLG will do for the second film, The Two Towers. Now, keep in mind, there's no reason they couldn't just release everything under The Lord of the Rings title and be done with it. In fact, I fully expect them not to differentiate between movies. Star Wars did that to some extent by not necessarily saying that the Imperial Shuttle was in fact a Lambda Class Shuttle first seen in Empire Strikes Back but made more popular in Return of the Jedi. Similarly, an Orc Battle set could be avoid being tied to any specific point. But therein lies the difference. A TIE Fighter shows up all over the place in Star Wars, but the Balrog shows up for just a few minutes in The Fellowship. Not that that has anything to do with anything, just pointing something out.

The first non recap moment is with Sam and Frodo hiking through Emyn Muil and finally being approached by Gollum. You could have two or three small scenes with them hiking through different areas. Rocky, marshy, mountainous, etc. I won't dwell on those.

The next set could be the Uruk-hai carrying Merry and Pippen around. But again, lots of minifigs, little set pieces. It's a major story point but hardly worth building.

Edoras - Next is our introduction to Rohan. The Rohirrim live in Edoras, a hard scrabble town on top of a rocky outcropping in the middle of the plains of Rohan. Two sets here, maybe. One, the Great Hall and the town itself. The later is only slightly featured, the former might be a good place to introduce Eowyn and Grima and maybe the possessed Theoden.

There are some more bits with Uruk-hai and Merry and Pippen, as well as Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn meeting the outcast Eomer and his riders, but nothing that you couldn't do on your own with all the minifigs. I think the biggest next set would have to be...

Treebeard - Now, you could build a lot of ents, in fact someone already has, and done it quite well. But this would be a good first set. Treebeard, Merry, Pippen and an orc. Put in some background trees for scene building.

Next is some more of Frodo and Sam walking around with Gollum. Next good scene would be when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli meeting Gandalf the White. I only say this because the fight with the Balrog on Durin's Tower that Gandalf talks about would be an epic set.

At this point we have the Black Gate. This could go back and forth. The black gate shows up twice, right now when Sam and Frodo almost go inside, and then later in The Return of the King in which now King Aragorn leads a pitiful army against it.

Warg Riders - It may seem I've jumped a lot but between the Black Gate and the Warg Rider attack on the caravan, there really isn't anything new. It's a lot of talking in established locations. The wargs would be great mounts for minifigs, but I imagine they'd need a special mold not unlike the dewbacks from Star Wars. I can see a set like that with three wargs with orcs, three horses with Theoden, Aragorn and maybe Legolas/Gimli.

Helm's Deep - Get this out of the way now. Helm's Deep is THE set piece of this film. Deforested Isengard with attacking ents aside, this is the big battle. Now, everything in LOTR is epic, so it's not like you can have a set with a giant castle, 300 elves, 1,000 men and 10,000 uruk-hai. My guess is it'll be a large castle set with a minifigure representing each race. Haldir would be there, or at least an elf. You'd have a couple uruk-hai, maybe a couple orcs. The castle itself would be really big, but you'd have to leave room for a couple points. 1) The wall. 2) The ramp to the gate. 3) The side door next to the ramp. 4) A way to bring down the wall. You also might want to include those rad grappling catapults Saruman's army used to bring up the big ladders. Yes the battle doesn't take place till later, but I don't think chronology is going to be important.

Meeting with the ents - Merry and Pippen should be around while the tree herders say "Good Morning."

I jumped around a little but the next set I think would be doable would be where Frodo and Sam run into Faramir while his Gondorian Rangers ambush some southland soldiers and their Oliphaunts. Now, Oliphaunts would be great to build, but it'd be like building an AT-AT. These aren't just elephants, they'd need to be able to hold several solders on their back, and stomp on a horse. The creator series Lego put out had some dinosaurs so I think that could be done.

Ranger hideout - Faramir takes Frodo and Sam back to their cave HQ, grill them about their mission, and capture Gollum. Maybe a nice pool with some rocks around it and a few minifigs.

Osgiliath - The river garrison can be used many times. First Faramir shows up with Sam and Frodo and later releases them. There's the flashback when Boromir retakes the city. Then there's the battle in Return of the King in which Faramir and his troops are over run from the east. But the "city" is a ruins of what once was a fortress sitting across the Anduin. It was there to prevent anything coming out of Mordor from reaching Minas Tirith. So what can a set be? It can be full of Gondorian soldiers or rangers. It can have Frodo and Sam and Gollum and a few Nazgul and Faramir. It can have a river setting with orcs and boats. You could probably get a couple sets out of it.

Which leads to two final battles scenes. Helm's Deep in which the Rohirrim riders arrive with Gandalf and Isengard where the ents lay siege to a vacated Orthanc.

To me these are all so epic that you could spend years building little one off sets that display moments of the story, but in order to truly capture the quality of the story, even the scene sets would have to be epic.

(continued next in part 3, Return of the King.)

LEGO LOTR

2011-12-16T11:20:00.001-06:00

It was announced today that The Lego Group has entered into a partnership with Warner Brothers to produce construction toys based on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies.

This comes as little or no surprise to Lego aficionados and fans of both the toy and the films. Ever since TLG picked up the rights to do Star Wars back in 1999, it's been a foregone conclusion that successful and geek related media were going to be rendered in studded brick and minifigures. Since then, we've seen Spider-Man, Batman, Spongebob, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, even Winnie the Pooh and Bob the Builder.

As exciting as this news is, and as much as I knew it was coming, I have some trepidation about seeing the Tolkien universe in Lego form. With Star Wars it made sense. Even with Harry Potter and Pirates it made sense. Even with Spongebob it made sense. What sense am I talking about? Well, it's hard to describe, but it comes down to playability, or the Swoosh Factor.

As a fan and builder and collector of Lego since 1979 (go ahead and look it up, there's nothing supporting that) I've come to expect Lego to give me a sense of modular playability. I want there to be a theme, but items within that theme that can do as well by themselves as they can within the group. I'd like there to be a single set that's really cool and something I can play with, but that also is in line with other sets that are cool and can be played with. Some of my favorite sets are space themed. They are ships that you can fly through the house, land in the back yard, explore a bit, then fly off again. Cars and trucks and planes from the City line are equally as enjoyable. Star Wars spaceships (with some design problems) are of the same ilk.

The sets I have a problem with are scene sets with little function. Sets that have a couple minifigs and a set behind them. Two Jedi and a door. A ninja, a skeleton and a tree. A couple pirates and a treasure chest. Sure it still promotes building and creative playing, but the piece count is really small and at that point the playability is limited. There's only so much you can do with a tree or a door. Those types of things are backgrounds, the things the main characters and the cool vehicles or ships go PAST on their way to the fun stuff.

In this same vein, I think Star Trek would make a horrible Lego line. Star Trek in all forms is a giant hotel in space. Rather than the drama coming and going from the single location, the location now moves from story to story. Sure a giant model of the Enterprise or Deep Space Nine or a few shuttles would be kinda cool, but outside of that what you do? Random Vulcan locations? Starfleet Academy barracks? Iowa? Star Wars was perfect for Lego because the ships and robots were just as much part of the story as the characters.

The Lord of the Rings is a great story and was the best fantasy movie ever. However, when this discussion came up a while back, I found myself trying to get excited about Lego versions and failing. Sure the property is a treasure trove of minifigures and the games themselves will undoubtedly be insanely enjoyable (you can bet your plastic-molded ass I'll be getting them) but in terms of sets I'm not sure what will happen. I think it'll be somewhere between the Castle line and the annoying small scene sets. Let's break down a likely list of sets they might have.

Bag End - You have to know that from the beginning there's going to be a small round door set in a hillock. You'll be able to remove the roof and see inside and play with Bilbo and Frodo, or Bilbo and Gandalf.

Gandalf's Cart - As much as making minifigs of hobbit children will require legs that are too small even for Lego to mold, this is a great scene set for Gandalf. Some fireworks and Frodo to go along with it.

Bilbo's Party - A tent, some benches, some random hobbits, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, Frodo and Bilbo.

Bucklebury Ferry - I've skipped Farmer Maggot because we don't see him in the movie. Right to the small skiff that takes the hobbits across the Brandywine. All four, plus a Nazgul.

Bree - Or at least the Inn of the Prancing Pony. Since no other places in Bree were mentioned in the movie, and since the Barrow Downs were skipped entirely, the only place in between the Shire and Rivendell worth mentioning is Bree, and the only place in Bree worth mentioning is the Inn. So, basically you'd have a tavern, but it's the first sighting of the minifig Strider/Aragorn.

Weathertop - This might be one of the best sets so far. At the top of a large hill lies the ruins of the watchtower of Amon Sul. Now, the Lego group will call it Weathertop, but just remember it's not. The hill itself is Weathertop, the ruins are Amon Sul. Either way, we'll have Aragorn, all four hobbits and all the Nazgul on foot. The set would be a pretty nice Stonehenge type scene.

The ride to Rivendell - Frodo is hurt and needs to be carried swiftly by Arwen. So you'd have her, a scene with a river and trees, some Nazgul and a way to build water horses out of Lego.

Rivendell!! - Oh what to do, what to do. It's such a pretty place and so sparsely populated. You almost never see anyone there, but when the elves are leaving for Valinor there are dozens just marching along the forest paths. Here is our first look at the minifig of Elrond. Rivendell could have at least two sets, a recovery room for Frodo and a meeting place for the secret council. The secret council would just be an orgy of minifigs (including now Legolas and Gimli and Boromir) around a round table. Throw some arched backgrounds and voila!

I realize at this point were I to keep going I'd have way too many sets, but considering how many Star Wars had, I think I'll at least finish The Fellowship of the Ring.

The nine companions leave Rivendell (and don't think there wouldn't be just a set released of just nine minifigs) and head east. Their ultimate goal is of course getting the ring to Mordor to have it destroyed, but their most immediate destination is Moria. If you remember the movie, they couldn't go south and the other passes over the Misty Mountains were watched. So at first they tried to go over...

Redhorn Pass - In the movie Gandalf calls it the Pass of Caradhras, but good luck getting kids to say that. This is the snowy pass in which Saruman sends a blizzard to try and kill the Fellowship. Good excuse to include a lot of white bricks for a snowy path and an "action" event causing an avalanche.

The Gates of Moria - Moria is going to have a lot of sets, lots of battles, lots of monsters. Our first is the Western Gate. This is the riddle magic door that stymies the party for a while and then they are attacked by the Watcher in the Water; a giant tentacled beast that nearly kills a few hobbits and ends up trapping the Fellowship in the mines. Based on Lego's Atlantis line, I think they've got tentacles licked.

The Chamber of Mazarbul - This is the room in which the Fellowship fights a horde of orcs and a cave troll. It's a records room and has the tomb of Balin, Gimli's cousin. This could be a very big set with lots of little traps and stuff. Also a minifig heavy set. Come to think of it, through most of this movie, you'd be getting at least 9 minifigures. Maybe they'll do the Fellowship as their own set and then you just take them with you through all these other sets.

Durin's Bridge - Or the Bridge of Kazhad-dûm is a narrow stone bridge. It is here that the party must cross to get to the Eastern Gate and out of the mountain. It is here that Gandalf faces off against the Balrog (which should be an epic construct in Lego) and is dragged down into the abyss after he shatters the bridge sending the Balrog down. The set would of course collapse when triggered.

* There's also a scene in the movie built for suspense and comic lines. The stair way scene after they encounter the host of orcs and the first tremors of the Balrog's steps. The stairs are precarious and they end up crumbling as orcs fire arrows at the party. Would make for a good Lego set.

After this the 8 travel to Lothlórien. They meet Haldir who takes them to Caras Galadhon to meet Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn. There could be some sets here, Lorien Encounter in which we meet Haldir and a couple elves. The Great Tree where they meet Galadriel and Celeborn, the mirror in the water scene with just Frodo and Galadriel (in which she's tempted and totally freaks out) and the departing scene in which all the party get cool gifts.

Argonoth - They take their boats down the Anduin to the Argonath, two enormous statues of kings warning travelers. No action here, but man it'd be cool to build those two statues.

Battle on the Anduin - Although they are away from the river, there are a couple scenes here. One is with Frodo and Aragorn on top of a weird structure that has no name in the movie but seems perfect for holding one of the seeing stones. It's here Frodo flees and Aragorn starts fighting Uruk-hai. The other is Boromir valiantly defending Merry and Pippin.

Then finally we have Sam almost drowning in the Anduin.

So, not a bad selection of sets, but I think they're going to be HEAVILY influenced by the minifigures, which means, for those not to up on Lego prices, they will be very expensive. Licensed product line + Lots of minifigs = money I don't have.

(continued later for The Two Towers, The Return of the King, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and There and Back Again.)

UPDATE:

Yes, I realize I'd completely forgot about Saruman and Gandalf's fight in Orthanc. I think there could be a few Orthanc sets but the one where they grow Urak-hai from interbreeding men and orcs should probably be left off. However, a giant eagle saving Gandalf would be pretty awesome.

Remember Remember to Write in November

2011-11-15T10:44:00.000-06:00

Forgive me Internet, it's been nearly two months since my last post.

For penance I will say 5 Nyan Cats and 10 Honey Badgers.

Of the myriad things going on in the world that is the Crazy Realm of the Austin Goofnuggets, I will say the biggest being Ms. A and Ms. El Paso flew to NYC and got married. Yay! We're all super happy for them and while it's worth a snowflake's chance in the Bahamas, we'll support efforts to make it legal in Texas. You know, the last place gays will ever be legally allowed to be married.

That aside, we are all busy, relatively happy and I would say health but that's not the case. I'm currently under the influence of a debilitating head/chest ailment I can only label The Devil's Grip. I likely got something from Tiger Lily who had Viral Laryngitis. If you don't know TL, she has a cute little nerd girl voice WITH a lisp. To have her communicate by squeak on top of it has sent me into a diabetic tailspin with all the sweetness. Additionally, G-man is seeing a new doctor for his breathing issues. He now has a new inhaler with a pre-breathing chamber so he doesn't have to time it breathing in the medicine. It's kind of neat actually. His reading and writing are still problematic but we're all doing our part to help him. Little Miss Austin is earning money doing chores, being a good big sister and taking on more responsibility including walking home from school with her little brother and being home till a parent arrives. It's done wonders for her attitude and all the adults agree she's quite nice to be around the last few weeks.

Yes we saw the Muppets a little early. TL got some passes from her job at Austin Film Festival. We got ahead of the line AND saw the movie early; it was a good time and the movie was fantastic. I won't spoil it for anyone but I will say it was very wholesome, cheesy and funny, just like early Muppet endeavors. I don't know for sure if they're going to use this to launch a new show, but I'd watch it if they did. I hope the movie does well and I can't wait for the kids to see it. I'd let them watch this over most things on Disney Channel or Nickelodeon right now.

Austin Comic Con was this last weekend as well and TL and I went and spent a few hours walking aimlessly around trying to simultaneously look for good buys and restraining ourselves from buying everything we saw. The shirt I had on was a big hit, which is any fanboy's dream come true. You wouldn't believe the number of nerd shirts there, and very few repeats. TL and I got a couple more shirts and a book put out (edited) by a mutual friend. I wanted to get figures and toys and nerd hockey jerseys but I knew I couldn't justify anything but the most minor purchases.

But it did get me thinking, as I walked through Artist Alley: I should bring the Robot Portraits to the comic con or Staple. I think they'd be a hit and I could probably do 10 or so while sitting at a table. The problem is that I don't have a book or anything else to sell other than custom portraits. I'll have to think about it more, but we're already planning on going to Dragon Con next year in full costume and I think my time will be spent making those over the next year.

Speaking of costumes, TL and I were Muppets again this year. Her Kermit was really well done, my Fozzie (and yes that's supposed to be Fozzy and not that old country kitch desinger from Trading Spaces) was half assed at best. Without Kermit around people had no idea who I was, much like last year.

Up next, TL is graduating from UT in December and is currently looking for a job. She'll need to work till next fall at which point she'll go to graduate school. I'm still drawing robots. We've not done with Lego lately but it's all still there. We kind of dropped out of working with the Lego User Group in Texas because, well, frankly, the people running it are assholes. What little we've dealth with them has not been amicable and it seems that unless you're a pushy, know-it-all old white guy, you're not going to fit in. We've already agreed that the convention next year (in Houston) is not going to be something we do. However, we may eventually go to Brick Con in Seattle.

That's all for now. I'm in Server 2008 training all week. So much fun, but at least I'm learning.

Carry on.

The Kia is dead. Long live the Kia.

2011-09-27T10:58:00.000-05:00

A person's car is a unique object in the history of humanity. It's terribly expensive but it only serves one purpose; to get us places faster and at a farther distance than our feet could travel. The nicer and newer the car, the higher in social status we are perceived. The type of car you have gives a brief (and perhaps incorrect) glimpse into the type of person you are. Not only are cars expensive to initially purchase, but they could require financing and subsequent upkeep. For the average person, it's next to only a house in cost and maintenance and equally ranked in terms of headaches and hassles.

Cars are meant to break, they are designed to last a certain time. Cars are complex machines that are becoming more so as we discover new gadgets to cram inside. In the span of a century, an automobile went from a hand-cranked engine barely able to haul two people around to massively powerful engines with computer brains smart enough to handle multiple driver settings, driving conditions and even satellite communication and self diagnostics. The cars today are smarter than their drivers.

At least smarter than I am. I didn't change my timing belt when I should have and it cost me. It broke while I was driving with Tiger Lily. The engine shut off and wouldn't start. For those that don't know, when your timing belt breaks, if you are driving, the pistons and cylinder heads tend to smash into each other like they're trying to find the Higgs Boson. So now my Kia is basically a collection of wires and metal framing around some chairs. I'm selling it for parts.

It's not entirely a horrible situation. The car needed a lot of work, most of which I couldn't afford anyway. At last check it needed new gaskets, shocks, brakes, HVAC blower motor, belts apparently, a quarter panel window and CV joints. The cost to repair this new problem was more than the car was worth, not to mention the rest. I'm able to carpool with Tiger Lily thankfully and ride my bike. This will give me an opportunity to take this money I get for selling it, save monthly on car insurance and start saving for a new car in about a year and a half, if not longer. Considering I can't save much per check, it's a good thing that happened.

Plus, it happened on a weekend near a parking lot. If we hadn't taken my car then, I would have taken it to work on Monday and died in the middle of the highway. So I guess fortune smiles on even the stupid and mechanically disinclined.

So in 18-24 months I should be getting a new car, maybe a Kia Soul. Green.

Carry on.

We're All Fine Here, Now, Thank You.

2011-09-15T08:59:00.002-05:00

Well, the big news of the year, Ms. A and I are officially divorced. The comes as a surprise to no one as most people who follow us on Facebook and Twitter or phone calls or texts or in person knew this. Which is why it won't get much mention here. I will say there are things I need to do as a newly minted but vintage single person. I had to change my health benefits, will have to change my IRS filing, get new car insurance, etc. The biggest thing on the horizon now is either fix or replace my car. I have 2001 Kia Sportage and while it's not in great shape it runs pretty well. And by pretty well I mean it starts, takes me to work and doesn't explode. It needs a lot of work but I've had it for 10 years now and as someone mentioned to me it's probably not worth sinking a lot of money into it if the better condition resale is less than the amount I use to fix it over the poorly condition resale.

That said, Ms. A has been working tirelessly to fix both of our credit from the problems we've had with the house on Rodeo and a couple cars. Losing jobs is never a good thing and the years between 2004 and 2007 were not great on our credit. Hopefully we've made some progress and I can actively look into buying a new car; maybe a Kia Sol, I've been eyeing those for a while.

The problem is, most of my paycheck goes toward child support. I have enough set aside for me for what I need but it was taking into account a paid off car. If I get a new one I don't know that I can afford it. I don't know a dealership will sell me one if they know how much I actually take home. Hopefully I can qualify for a nice reasonable monthly payment and we'll just go from there.

But this isn't why I wanted to write today. I'm a Star Wars nerd after all and today is the release date for the prequel trilogy on Blu-Ray. I got to thinking after I got the DVD Empire email (way to stay relevant guys) and read the tagline "Own Every Moment."

My problem with the constant tweaks and changes to the Star Wars movies is not so much a financial one but an artistic one. If it was merely a media update (Laserdisc?) I'd understand, but each new update contains new scenes, changes to lines, additional bits that may not have made it originally. I'm not talking about an extended edition like Lord of the Rings, but severe changes that shape the way the movie is perceived.

Imagine you bought Stephen King's "The Stand." Years later the industry changes and you can listen to an audio version on tape, but King has gone in and changed some parts. It's still roughly the same story but let's say that instead of the superflu accidentally getting out, it's was allowed to get out. Instead of the Army developing the virus, it's a virus they found on an asteroid. Okay, no big deal. Buy the tapes. A few years later the industry changes again, you can download it on your computer. King rewrites it again and insinuates that Mother Abigail isn't a spirit of good, but a robot sent back in time by the survivors' descendants to ensure that Flagg is stopped. Pretty neat twist, makes you think about the story differently but it's still the same plot. Buy it again. Now it's 2007 and Amazon releases the Kindle, makes it easier to buy, store and read books. It's a huge sensation and King releases "The Stand" again, but this time he adds a character, The Moon Man. Tom Cullen thinks everything is spelled M-O-O-N because he's in fact a servant of an even more evil character that's been controlling Flagg the whole time. Tom has escaped but at the cost of his mental faculties. His constantly spelling "moon" is the only thing that remains and is a clue the others need. Randall Flagg isn't the big bad guy any more, Abigail's a robot and the superflu is an alien lifeform, not a bioengineered military project.

Do you still by the book? Does it matter to you now that it's delivered in a technology some would argue is superior than the original?

I know the prequels haven't changed since they were released and my "The Stand" analogy isn't perfect, but the idea remains the same that after all these years, the technology is changing the story. What limited the story in the first place and espoused by its creator as just a vehicle to tell the story is now changing the story with each new iteration or media type.

I won't be buying the Blu-Ray. I will be dusting off my VCR and watching the original (but not quite the original) VHS tapes until TVs no longer accept RCA cables.

Rise of the Urban Eagle is out!

2011-08-09T09:20:00.000-05:00

Rise of the Urban Eagle

Written By Ed Gehres, Jr.

Illustrated by Ben Rollman

Release Date: August 2011

A book and activity application designed specifically for children, this is a story about an unlikely hero. It features both a fully illustrated story and three separate games and activities all in the same application. Download of the application is free. Pay only for the content that you and your children like and want. Designed for children ages 5-12.

For more information visit the Rise of the Urban Eagle page on the Apple AppStore.

Review - Transformers 3: Dark Side of the Moon

2011-07-11T11:19:00.001-05:00

Okay, Mr. Bay. You've had your fun. I'm not going to give you any more of my money. In three films, we've seen robots peeing on humans, giant monster bots with wrecking ball testicles, obvious racist stereotypes and Shai LaBeouf.

What weighs on me the most is the complete literary ineptitude from the movies. With the exception of Sam and the soldiers, the characters are pointless. It's a story about sentient robots bringing their war to Earth and we don't know a thing about the personality of the robots other than they like to fight. We get three movies of Sam and his family and his girlfriend(s) being snarky and bantering back and forth about masturbation and marriage and discipline and job markets as though there aren't 50 foot robots blasting at each other right above their heads.

I'm trying not to compare this to the original cartoon, or the later cartoons or the movie from the 80's but it's hard not to. Each film introduces new links that Humans and Cybertronians share from their pasts. Each movie has Sam in the middle of the bad guys trying to take over the universe via Earth. Each movie has a hot chick, Sam's parents, some annoying but human size robots and lots of explosions. What they don't have is a good direction. I felt like the screenplay was written at an elementary school workshop.

The story idea is fine, the plot for each is shaky but not horrible. What bugs me is the idea that a collection of disparate characters and situations somehow makes the human side of the story entertaining. Well, it doesn't. It makes us look like fumbling idiots who can't keep track of our own history. We'd rather worry about money and status despite the existence of alien life. I want to see a story about the robots from Cybertron. Don't make me care about Sam or his parents or Patrick Dempsy or John Tuturo. I want the giant robots to the be the characters, not the sweaty, stupid, weak humans. I know their story. I saw it in Independence Day, and Battle for Los Angeles and Mars Attacks and the other million invasion stories. I want to know about the giant fucking robots that turn into cars and planes and guns and tanks. Isn't that cool enough? Isn't the Autobot's fight the same as our fight? I don't want flashbacks and exposition, I want the actual fight that doesn't involve Josh Duhamel and his intrepid squad of unkillable humans.

I know the cartoons all had human characters, they were on Earth after all. I just get tired of thinking that in light of an invasion by giant robots, what humans do still frickin matters. That after eons of fighting, Sam can do what the Autobots couldn't, and that they rely on him. It's cute, but these are giant robots. I still don't understand why Sam matters so much. The script writing makes us seem stupid and the screenplay makes the robots look inept.

In the end I'll take my 1986 movie over anything Bay has done. Recognizable characters, solid story telling, a plot with fewer holes and Leonard Nimoy. Oh wait, he was in this too? But I swear I heard a Star Trek line. (Yeah, that was horrible.)

Brick Fiesta 2011

2011-07-04T12:22:00.001-05:00

Sold Out
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Brick Fiesta has come and gone. It was a fantastic event. We weren't able to participate in all of it because we had some other plans as well. There was a lot going on so I'll just try to recap the high points for us.

The convention received a boost from local TV and newspaper coverage. The first day sold some 700-800 passes and the next day that was at least doubled. The line at one point was an hour and a half and the available tickets sold out about 1:30. Toward the end people were let in free only because there wasn't a lot of time to see everything. It may have upset some parents with expectant kids wanting or thinking they'd just pop in and look, but over all I think it was successful.

Our UT Tower did pretty well considering the competition. At one point we were third over all in the architecture category and someone mentioned we were 6th in the public voting. We were nominated for the final voting round and we're very happy with that.

We participated in a parts draft with about 10 people and got some great parts. It was a lot of fun.

There was an amazing group of MOCs of all types. The photos, as usual, don't do it justice. The level of detail made me want to just spend dozens of minutes with each model. The usual big names in Lego were there but it was great to see young builders doing exceptionally well. One young man took home four awards for his Batman statue and winning a speed building contest.

We didn't see but one speaker or participate in the games or other competitions but we heard it was quite entertaining.

At one point while volunteering at the registration table, I sold a ticket to Bob Schneider and his son. I was struck not so much by the fact that it was him as much as he wanted to come see all the Lego. Yay nerds!

TL and I already have plans for what to build next year, but for now we're going to do some much needed sorting and I have a lot of drawing and studying to do. So in a way I'm glad it's all over.

Click the embedded picture to see more shots from the event. There may be more in the Brick Fiesta group later.

Here are some news clips.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/at-lego-convention-a-life-size-batman-a-1577956.html?cxtype=rss_ece_frontpage

http://www.kens5.com/news/124912634.html

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/Lego-convention-comes-to-Austin

http://www.kvue.com/news/Austin-LEGO-convention-draws-crowd-during-holiday-weekend-124910694.html

Father's Day

2011-06-20T09:17:00.001-05:00

Mowing
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Greetings all! Another Father's Day has come and gone and I thought I'd use this opportunity to update anyone reading this as to what's going on in the lives of the weirdest family in Austin.

To start, I'm still working on the children's book. It's called Rise of the Urban Eagle and it's a story about a young pigeon who learns a life lesson from his father about always doing your best. I'm in the coloring stages of the book now and hopefully will be done with it in a few weeks. There will be a free copy available with more features to unlock in the paid version.

Taking summer classes, actually just class. Ms. A is taking a couple classes as well. My course is Intro to Literature and after reading some of the fiction in the text book, it should be renamed "A Reason Not To Get Into Literature" or "How ACC Made Me Hate Reading." Some of these stories, while "classic" are just abysmal to read, but I suppose are there to make you think about reading and writing and analysis of literature. It's certainly not terribly enjoyable, but rather than be branded a cretin, I'm just going to roll with it. It's a needed class.

Adventure Summer 2011 continues for the kids as they have already completed one round of swim lessons and are also enrolled in gymnastics and karate. LMA has advanced in swimming so much the only thing she can do now is join the swim team in middle school, which she has said she doesn't want to do. The ladies take them on scooter to area pools during the day and on weekends to make sure they get out and do stuff. We've restricted video games and TV to almost nothing. However, with Austin reaching almost 108 yesterday I'm seriously reconsidering that stance.

To that end, the kids are always at each other's throats and we're especially worried about LMA. We've tried everything we can think of and it's likely time for some therapy at the very least so she can talk with someone who isn't her parents. I don't like this idea mainly because it feels like I've failed as a parent but as Ms. A has said before, she'll do whatever it takes to make sure LMA is happy and healthy. I get some EAP through work for a few sessions and then I think it's partially covered after that so we'll see what happens.

Tiger Lily and I are doing wonderfully. She took a trip to France with some friends and had a great time. Her sister is in town for the summer for an internship so the two of them will be able to spend some time together.

Brick Fiesta is fast approaching. If you haven't made plans to be here, that's a good an excuse as any. TL and I will have a couple MOCs up and the whole thing should be a lot of fun. If you're in Austin at the end of June, make the trip to the South Omni Hotel and come find us and say hello.

Father's Day was really nice. I got to sleep in while everyone else made breakfast for a change. Got a nice book about Geek culture, got to have some quiet time to do homework and draw and I watched some crappy movies on TV. Wasn't bad.

Hope you are all having a good summer. Carry on.

Happy 7th

2011-05-26T09:50:00.000-05:00

7 years ago, some time in the afternoon, little G-man came into the world. 7 years is a long time to try and remember every detail about those early years and how we felt and thought and behaved. I don't remember G-man being a problem child. I remember his immediate bouts with jaundice and then RSV, an issue that's turned into his asthma and propensity for allergies. Aside from that, he slept well, smiled a lot, gave a lot of hugs and really just wanted to be around people.

Not much changed, honestly, as you can see in the photo. G is a sweet boy with the desire to do only a handful of things; play games on someone's phone, give long, clinging, unbreakable hugs, and make sure everyone is playing. He's tapped into a vast store of energy that all little kids do and he's barely able to contain it. He must jump and run and sing and whistle and play at all times. If he can't, I think he explodes, but we haven't tested the limits.

He and his sister are, while not exact copies of their parents, very close replicas. Where LMA is more forward thinking, emotional and tactical, G-man seeks homeostasis and just wants everyone to be happy and sweet. He also prefers to put on a show for anyone who will watch, whether it's a planned drama with his sister or just hamming it up because people will watch him. In that he is very much like me. But I see good things for him in the future, provided someone doesn't take advantage of his good nature. I think, like me, he will be happiest when others are happy and the most blue when he's alone.

I don't miss him as a baby or a toddler. I lived through it and while I don't remember details, I don't feel like he's growing up too fast. I always feel like he's been 7 forever or that last year he had been 6 forever and so on. I'm worried that soon he won't let me snuggle with him or tickle him just so I can hear his laugh, but for now he's my favorite little boy.

Happy birthday G!

Happy 10th

2011-05-09T08:54:00.000-05:00

LMA turns 10 today. All I can say is, "Oh my god, ten years?"

Yeah, ten years. I can't really say much more about it. She constantly amazes me. She and I don't get along all the time, but I try to be her friend and I hope that when she's older she can say she was a happy child. Happy birthday little lady.

Spring Update

2011-05-03T17:06:00.001-05:00

Hey folks, long time. Rather than apologize about the delay between posts or get creative with introductions, let's just jump right into it.

First the big news: I've been commissioned to draw a children's book for the iPad. Now, it's not that Apple contacted me, but rather a return client is developing an e-book for the iPad. It's a children's book that has games and reading tutorials. I'm doing all the artwork. It pays well and I get some exposure and experience. This is my first children's book and after this I can say I've been officially published. It's been a lot of work but well worth it so far. If it does well, there's likely room for more books down the road.

Second, I'm also the featured artist for May at Bored in the Basement, a shirt site. An online friend suggested me to the site/shop manager and off we went. I did one new design and regurgitated some old ones as the book was taking up all my time. Shirts are on sale through May at least, so go check it out.

TG and I just got back from Festival International in Lafayette, LA. It was loads of fun. We volunteered for two of the days and got nifty shirts. We also were able to see a few really interesting and fun bands, drink festival punch and eat wonderful food. Most of the weekend was spent at the festival so we didn't do much else while we were out there. We each brought work to do (studying, drawing) so even while we were listening to music we were hard at work.

On the home front, Ms. Austin took a trip to Mexico with her lady friend and they tied the knot. The ceremony was done by an Mayan holy man and they came back with rings and smiles and lots of stories. She needs a site name for LIA, (Ms. El Paso?) and you might see pictures on Flickr. Those in the know already know. I've been slowly moving stuff out of the house and into TG's apartment (where I spend half my time) and so far everyone is quite happy.

Lil Miss Austin and Pilgrim are coming up on their birthdays. LMA is going to be 10 which means she's almost not a Lil' anything any more. They're growing like weeds and both are enjoying school but definitely looking forward to not being in it for the summer. No big summer plans yet, though there's talk of going to San Diego as a big ol' weird family. We'll have to see how that goes.

TL was honored at UT as a Distinguished Student and she will likely graduate (in December) in the top 2% of her class. We're all very proud. Her sister, Ms. A's ex just moved to Albuquerque were she plans on going back to school. I've signed up for another class this summer and Ms. A is still taking classes at Texas State. We're all so very studious. Hopefully someone will get a good job out of all this.

Robot drawings are still in demand (though very rare) and the Lego convention is looming. The kids and Ms. A are planning on another adventurous summer so there's a lot to look forward to.

Carry on.

Trying New Things

2011-03-27T08:31:00.002-05:00

Shoot
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Last Friday Tiger Lily and I were invited to a party at Cebuana Filipino Store in south Austin. They were playing host to a shoot for a pilot that will be seen (hopefully) on the Cooking Channel. (Which, I'm not really sure about the Cooking Channel. I think it's a spin off of the Food Network.)

Friends of ours visit the store regularly and are friends of the owners. They regularly go shop and eat there and sing karaoke. Cebuana is a market, street restaurant, video rental store and karaoke bar. It's also about the size of my dining and TV room. So having it beset by about 100 people was pretty intense.

The food that was there to eat was mostly rice and coconut recipes but it was all outstanding. The rice, chicken and ginger soup was amazing. And do yourself a favor and find some pork siopao right away.

The TV crew was three hours late. They were apparently filming at several places and were just behind schedule. The market had put out a really impressive spread of Filipino food but it was all gone by the time the crew got there. What was left was some tinikling (bamboo stick dance) and candle dancing. After that it was the balut eating contest. Our friend was in the contest, being the only girl involved.

By the way, balut is a delicacy but it's a delicacy that sounds like it's from Indiana Jones. Balut is 15-20 day germinated duck eggs that are boiled. Yes I ate one. They taste like hard boiled eggs, which I don't like anyway. But it wasn't that it tasted bad, it was quite good. If you like hardboiled eggs, you'd love belut.

So our friend had to eat as many of these large hard boiled embryonic duck eggs in three minutes as possible. She ate 11. She beat two other guys and tied one other. She one some gift money to the store (which she promised to use to take us all out) and a shirt. The host of the show tried one too and then made everyone else who'd never had one to try it.

By then it was near midnight. We'd arrived at 7:45 thinking we'd be late. The film crew was off again to film yet another bit at a Moroccan restaurant. While we were eating cake we noticed they left a camera behind and had we not run after them as their cars were pulling away they'd have left without it. Our indie zombie movie was almost made that night.

All in all it was a lot of fun. There was a lot of standing around feeling obnoxiously in the way, but we acclimated and truly enjoyed the experience. I even sang karaoke.

Carry on.

Cross Posting Robot

2011-03-23T09:13:00.003-05:00

(originally posted over on Robot Portraits.)

A couple years ago, I moved to Pflugerville, TX with my family. We'd lived in Austin for a couple years but got burned on the last house we bought and decided to rent outside of Austin. As we were moving in, a neighbor came over to help. He was really nice and we'd talked a couple times about what each of us did for a living and for fun. After that we stopped talking as most Americans do; there just isn't a lot of neighbor-ness any more.

A week ago I get an email from someone asking if I can do a robot portrait. They also notice that my email is in Austin and that's cool because they are in Pflugerville. I open the attachment to see that it's my neighbor. He'd apparently been keeping an eye on this little project for some time and had always wanted one for his friend. So I was able to draw it and walk it over to him at which point we spent a long time talking about model making, Make magazine, Lego, sci-fi, fantasy and just general geekiness.

After spring break he said he'd bring his trebuchet to the park down the street and show the kids. The world is small and funny some times.

I didn't do a video of this drawing, but instead, here are some videos Jason and his friend Sean made of all their projects. Yes they remind me of Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.

Trebuchet:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7619407764264468704#

water rocket:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8941076924019852803#

Hovercraft:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1180646592768613137#

Jam Jar Jet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKFUG9wmvII

Potato Cannon

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-build-formidable-potato-cannon-267302/

Carry on.

Rite of Passage

2011-02-22T22:20:00.001-06:00

Rite of Passage
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

G-man didn't originally take to bike riding like his sister. He was very hesitant and favored the safety of his big wheel. Even his bike with training wheels was seldom used. A few months ago we finally got the training wheels off and made a few successful runs at it, but he seemed to not want to ride it still. Just recently he finally mastered the two wheeler and is now fairly unstoppable. While he's not as fast as his big sister, he's still as enthusiastic.

He also wiped out pretty hard while at the school. Too much speed coming off a sloped sidewalk and the front wheel wobbled out from under him. He hit the pavement pretty hard, right after shouting, "Daddy watch me!" So I watched as he did a belly flop onto the asphalt.

Luckily a soccer mom was driving by. (And I literally mean a soccer mom, she was taking her little girl to soccer practice.) She had an impressive first aid kit and gave us a big band-aid. G-man was in just a little pain but soldiered on home. Once safely home he limped around as though he'd just had major surgery. I gave him a little grief for that (mainly because it's worse to limp on it) but I stopped when I remembered I did the exact same thing when I crashed.

Carry on.

How Far We've Come

2011-02-01T10:53:00.001-06:00

Yes. We've come a long way. In 17 short years, we've gone from individual pages, university library searches, email and pictures hosts to...well, the same thing but with Google.

What strikes me as telling in this video is not so much the camp and quaintness of the Today show hosts not knowing what the @ symbol was, though I find this hard to believe as that symbol has been around for ages. Those working with quantities and prices (merchants, grocers, accountants) would use @ all the time to indicate how much something was given a certain quantity. Sandwich boards in front of small corner stores still say things like 10lbs @ $2/lb. It's not completely unreasonable that an intelligent person, apparently not a talk show host, would know what this meant.

No, what struck me was just how violently ignorant Bryant Gumbel was. I'm surprised he made it this far in the world of television sounding so dismissive, petty and snarky. This isn't the first time he's seen acting this way but if you search now for "gumbel snarky" all you find is this video. And it's like this with all talk shows. There's always a jerk on the show who is balanced by softer spoken, chipper but equally dim-witted co-hosts. Learning of new things and events on these shows is like learning about them from your grandparents. It's worthy of being noted, but it will be presented with scoff and maniacal-nostalgia.

So maybe we haven't come a long way after all.

Brick Fiesta

2011-01-19T12:45:00.000-06:00

Last year, a couple of the long time members of TexLUG decided Austin should host a LEGO convention. There are a few LEGO cons in the US, mostly on either coast, one in Chicago. Having one in Texas will give southerners a chance to gather, show their models and network with like-minded builders.

http://brickfiesta.com/

While these two show-runners are on the hook for all the startup costs and organizations, it's up to the rest of TexLUG to provide the manpower needed to pull this first convention off. If you've never seen a LEGO convention in person, you're missing out. It's a huge endeavor and the two men in charge of the operation have a lot riding on it.

I've personally never been to one. It was only a few years ago that I started building things that didn't come in a box or with instructions. Plus the idea of flying to Seattle (as fine as that city is I'm sure) whilst dragging my MOCs along didn't really appeal to me. I stress enough over traveling. Traveling with models that could fall to pieces just seemed like an exercise in frustration.

So I'm glad this started up. I've been trying to be as involved as possible, but my efforts have been largely ignored. I can't tell if it's because of my standing in the group or if it's just a case of being accidentally (albeit consistently) overlooked. However, I'm going to be doing my best to help set up, break down, load, transport, educate, inform, corral and fetch. TG and I are already planning and building our moon base display so at the very least you can come see that if you're in Austin. At most I'll be the assistant to the guy running the Space theme and helping at the public event.

Last weekend, TG and I set up a portion of a space display, as well as our UT Tower, at the Jr. First Lego League competition. It was our first public display and we learned a lot about how to set up, how to talk to people and what we need for next time. It also gave us a chance to hang out with two of TexLUG's veteran members. We talked shop and exchanged some ideas, but most of the time we were keeping small hands off the models. Out setup included a motorized monorail and the kids LOVED to touch it. One of the guys told me that most of the time that's not really allowed, but because this was a LEGO style event it was probably okay. Plus our stanchion/rope line wasn't very far out.

I've very excited about Brick Fiesta. If nothing else, I'll be able to see other models up close and hopefully help behind the scenes to make it all work. It starts on my birthday as well, so that's what I'll be doing for those couple days.

Carry on.

Hello 2011

2011-01-03T09:09:00.001-06:00

Donut Friday
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

A lot happened in 2010 that I'm very happy about. On average, the events of the past year were positive and productive. Each problem faced was met with acceptance and a desire to push forward. Each change greeted with optimism and excitement.

Personally I'm in a really good place, some thing I haven't felt in a while. Despite the rigors of separated parent scheduling, things are going quite smoothly and without incident. In fact, given the nature of the situation, I'm shocked more hasn't gone wrong.

There were downsides, however, from which there is no recovery. The loss of loved ones is neither easy nor simple. They leave behind memories and paperwork and property and it requires a great deal of effort and composure to wade through it all and get to a point where you can equalize.

There is a lot that will happen in 2011. Big things are planned and there are going to be more changes. Through it all I hope everyone in our family can meet the challenges head on and grow and learn from them while holding together as people who like and love each other.

I'm grateful for all the people I know that made it a wonderful year. I have no resolutions for 2011 because I don't believe I need a single day to jump start any change, and also because life will sort itself out the way it must. I'm looking forward to the next year and hope it's as exciting as the last.

Cheers!

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

2010-12-14T09:29:00.000-06:00

"If you see only one fiendishly bizarre Finnish film about an evil Santa Claus and his naked band of marauding elves this holiday season, make it Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. - Rotten Tomatoes Review

Last night, TG and I went to see this quirky little film called Rare Exports: A Christmas Story. Our 2 year anniversary was Friday and we wanted to go see something but nothing was grabbing our attention: We'd already seen Tangled and Harry Potter, I didn't want to see Black Swan, neither of us had any desire to see Unstoppable or Burlesque and we weren't sure about The Tourist. That left Rare Exports.

So we watched the trailer and read the synopsis and really couldn't figure it out. Was it a spoof? Were they making fun of action or horror movies? Was it based off something or was it an original screenplay? All the lines seemed campy and forced and it seemed like a big joke. My only real dealings with Scandinavian film was Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal starring Max von Sydow and the MSTK ribbing of Sampo or The Day the Earth Froze, so I was a little skeptical. I kept thinking, "It'll be filmed in some cold place, it'll make little sense but I'll leave feeling like I should have learned something about my place in the universe."

No way, José. Rare Exports takes itself very seriously and yet brings with it the charm and humor you find in every day life. It's not forced or practiced, it seems very real at times. At others, it seems like something Guillermo del Toro dreamed up. From the opening with the harmless geological survey team to the fiery explosion at the end, the film builds suspense and emotion meticulously but leaves you feeling raw and exposed as though you were in the cold and in the dark.

The story begins with the owner of a mining company being shown by the lead geologist that a core sample has come back with sawdust. In the old days, you would keep ice frozen by covering it in sawdust. (To me this was hilarious as the film takes place within the Arctic Circle. Who has trouble keeping ice frozen there?) So what was being frozen under this giant mountain? The owner of the company knows, but he's not telling anyone just yet. It turns out, he believes that Santa is being kept in some kind of icy prison and he's going to dig him out. Things go awry when something falls into a local man's wolf trap, however, and young Pietari is forced to face his fears about a real life Santa who steals children.

Santa Claus as depicted by Macy's and Coca-Cola has only been around for some 60 or so years, but it's based in some older legends from Northern Europe, specifically the Lapland region of Finland. Santa, or Joulupukki, lives not at the North Pole, but on Korvantuturi Fell; a place from which he can hear all the children from around the world. The name Joulupukki means "Yule goat" and Pietari sees a lot of images of Santa with horns or with a goat head. Rare Exports has its roots in Finnish Yule traditions but doesn't linger. The bleak landscape immediately makes you tense, waiting for something to jump out. There's talk of Russian wolves and there aren't any women in the film. You get the feeling right away that something isn't right, but you don't know what and the characters don't know either. You and Pietari and his dad and the potato farmer and the reindeer hunter all find out together what's been buried in the mountain. And it's not even what you think.

We missed the opening night at the Alamo where you could get your picture taken, holding weapons, next to a grizzled old Santa in a cage. Instead we saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which gets my vote as among the top longest movie titles.) It wasn't bad, better than the second, but it was maybe unfairly discounted as not being the movie we'd intended on seeing. And now that I've seen Rare Exports, I feel right in saying it's the better of the two.

It's not a kids movie. It's not a first date movie. It's not a feel good Christmas hit. If you like movies that are surprising and exceptionally made, I would highly suggest it.

Carry on.

Lego Lego Lego

2010-12-01T10:56:00.001-06:00

LUG Showcase 2010 Austin
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

I think some folks may get tired of all the photos and posts I do about Lego, but that's what my life is about right now. And it's in Austin, hence the title.

Moving along.

This little scene wasn't built entirely by me. In fact, the only thing built by me was the big read truck. Another TexLUG member, Will Heron, built the winter wonderland. Tiger Lily helped with the big tree on the front and we spent an evening at Will's making trees and ensuring all the components worked together.

It's now on display in Barton Creek Mall's Lego Store. The Lego Group has restarted its community program by allowing a showcase of models by area LUGs (Lego User Groups.) Tiger Lily is also contacting them to see if UTLUG can participate as well.

We've still been buying Lego as often as we can afford it. Gas and food and some bills come first. I try to find deals on Craigslist but some times it's hard not to go to that store and buy something. We've got boxes of brick to sort and I have a feeling we'll need bigger bins very soon.

That aside, the family is still holding together Ms. A and her lady friend are still together and seem to be having a lot of fun being around each other and are both graciously involved in the other's life and activities. I have my time split between P-ville and TG's place in Austin but I do get most of the weekends with LMA and G-man which is nice.

Individually there have been some problems. G-man officially has been diagnosed with asthma. He also has some boy part problems that have made both Ms. A and I really question our skills as parents. It was something we didn't know about and don't remember our pediatrician ever talking to us about. Needless to say it's something he'll again grow out of, but in the mean time there's antibiotics and steroids involved.

LMA is still trying to skate, but the darkening days means the outdoor practices have all but stopped. The new league is, honestly, floundering and hasn't secured either a good place to practice nor enough people to warrant its continued operation. That's my opinion and I'm sure it'll try to pick up again after the holidays. In the mean time, she's taken up knitting. Her grades have been stellar this semester and that coupled with her improved attitude and responsibilities, should result in a pet fish all her own soon.

Ms. A suffered a concussion last week and has been unable to function. She had accidentally hit her head and spent the next day and a half with some classic symptoms. Unfortunately, her history of migraines really prevented anyone from seeing that and it was a few days before she went to the doctor. They did a CT scan yesterday and the tech was unable to give her a diagnosis. However, they didn't call right away which is good news, or at least news that there isn't major trauma. She's not allowed to drive or go to school which sucks because it's finals. Hopefully she can talk to her professors and work something out.

TG is also nearing the end of the semester and indeed the end of her time at UT. All her courses are now senior level. It's unknown yet whether she'll go to UT for her graduate studies or if she'll go right away. There's talk she might move back to Louisiana to finish that out, which would mean a bit of travel for us back and forth.

I have to get some drawing done soon. I have a few portraits to get done as well as this year's Christmas card. I have no idea what to do with it so it could be anything. Suggestions?

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving and was able to get most of their shopping done. I hopefully have a five year bonus coming that will be used for that and fixing my car. (That's my holiday gift to myself.)

Carry on.

Costumes

2010-11-01T11:23:00.002-05:00

The Band
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

It's six o'clock and Lil Miss Austin has decided that her third iteration of Halloween outfit isn't right. She does, however, know without a doubt that all her friends hate her because they won't return her calls to go Trick-or-Treating. At 6:10, she has more or less settled into a costume, has found a friend to go with and also has a two year old to escort around. By 9 o'clock she was ready for bed with eye makeup and lip stain only partially washed off.

G-man was Spiderman.

Costumes have always been part of my Halloween and I try to pass that love of dressing up to my children. Ms. A does her part as well and was instrumental in getting LMA into what eventually became a Vampire Queen outfit. (See, it's not enough to just be a vampire, she has to be the Vampire Queen or it just doesn't make any sense.) Originally she was a gypsy with a nice out fit Ms. A got her. Then that wasn't good enough so it changed to a belly dancer. All we had to do was cut the outfit in half. She had plenty of sequence and glitter and she had this great idea for these things trailing from her feet because she'd be going barefoot.

That wasn't working so then Ms. A suggested she read about Persephone and maybe use some of her dresses and costuming bits to go as her. LMA agreed but the more she dressed, the more she looked like a vampire. So a little eye make up, some blood on the lips and we were ready to go.

G-man was Spiderman from the get go, no changes. He didn't wear a mask or face paint. He just jumped around like Spiderman all night. Ms. A may have got a picture of them, but I forgot. A TXRD skater and family friend brought her 2 year old daughter over (dressed as the Statue of Liberty) and we all went out to get candy from strangers.

The night before, Tiger Lily and I dressed as Floyd Pepper and Janice from the Muppets. Dressing as slight less well know characters produces an interesting reaction. People were really impressed with it and were all smiles, but honestly couldn't place us. Without my mask I looked like the Fifth Cuban Beatle. With it, people said I was Dr. Teeth or Animal. When I said Floyd they looked confused or like I'd blown air into their face as if I didn't know what I was talking about.

I was for the most part with a group of people like myself who had grown up with the Muppets so they KNEW who I was even if not specifically.

And just like LMA's, I finished my costume minutes before leaving for the party. My mom will be happy to know I used a sewing machine to make the front of the shirt.

Hope all your ghouls and goblins has a wonderful and spooky Halloween.

Carry on.

Mary

2010-10-14T13:00:00.003-05:00

Family
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

I got a call yesterday from my mom. Shortly after exercise class, my grandma suffered a massive stroke. She was kept on life support for a short while until it was determined the damage was irreparable. She died around 7pm last night. She was 87.

After 37 years, I don't think I truly knew her and that's the worst part about her death for me. I don't mourn like other people. I try to be supportive for those left behind and I try to remind them of what the deceased was like in life. Personally I try to imagine what I'd like to see people do when I die as though I were looking in on them from beyond the veil and I can tell you I don't want to see them sad. I want them to remember me and say how awesome I was, so that's what I do for people.

My grandma was awesome.

First of all, she put up with an artist for 57 years. My grandpa Joe died in 2003 and he was a great artist, but I can see them being at odds over a great many things, especially early in their lives. My grandma saw WWII, the building AND tearing down of the Berlin Wall. She was alive for 17 Olympic games. She saw Kennedy's assassination, the first man on the moon, the first man in space, and Pearl Harbor.

What I don't know about her is what she did during all this time. I'm sure I'll find out from my family, but all I know is that at one point she worked as a banker. She raised three kids, two of which had kids of their own. She had to drive my grandpa around because he didn't have a license until late in their lives. She always made dinner for Christmas eve and it was usually delicious. (I say usually not to be mean, but there were times as a kid when I couldn't get through the adult dishes.)

I know her family came from a long line of German and Irish citizenry. Her family line was Ganley and Rueves. She has family in Minnesota and I've always made fun of the fact that they all listen to or have been mentioned on Prairie Home Companion. Once about 15 years ago, she bummed a cigarette from me and my brother as we were outside smoking. (I probably shouldn't tell my mom that one.)

Ms. A said to me "...the Jedi just don't feel death as a great sadness." This is very true for me. I have been devastated before, I have been sad and depressed. I feared the loss of my kids to the point of bawling for hours. But when someone dies, I don't have the same reaction. My grandma died quickly, apparently painlessly. She'd lead a good long life with as many hardships and joys as anyone could need. I don't feel sad she's gone, I feel happy that I knew her when she was alive. I'm grateful she gave birth to my mom.

I'm not real happy about that cigarette though, sneaky "ex-smoker." :-)

Carry on.

Tech Support

2010-10-13T16:06:00.000-05:00

I believe ISPs find out my job title and spend extra support time with me just to see how long it takes for me to snap.

Something in the way I call in must say to the tier one specialist, "I work with computer systems and network equipment all day. If possible, please speak to me as though I know nothing."

I'm trying to set up an internet account at TG's apartment. She already has cable for free but no internet. I volunteered to have it in my name and get it all set up. Time Warner had a special so I called. After paying a deposit (don't ask) we got the equipment for a self install. It's super easy and stupid if you don't. You get the cable from the wall to the modem, modem get your network cable to the wireless router, done. Some times you'll need to configure your wireless but that's a different story and there's easy software for that. The communication between the wall, the modem and the wireless should be a no-brainer, unless there's a problem.

And there usually is. Why? Because I work in IT, so there will be a problem.

I get everything connected and of course it doesn't work. Laptop sees the wireless, but gets no outside connectivity. (I hate saying "I don't have the Internet" or "I can't connect to the Internet." It's semantics but it drives me nuts. Sadly it's the only thing even level 1 support people understand.) I'm unable to reach outside addresses. After doing the regular troubleshooting on my own I call support.

First thing is they can't find my account. I'm already tweaked about the connectivity, now I'm double spiked about the account info. Finally they are able to find it and it's because a different phone number was listed. I called from my work number and despite giving them my cell number as the MAIN ACCOUNT number, they put in my work number anyway. Okay, sorted, no problem. Now let's look at this problem.

Can see your modem from where you are?

I'm going to stop and say that I understand why tech support people do this. I'm sure there's a large slice of the pie chart that leaves things unplugged, loosely connected, soaking in the fish tank, set on fire or otherwise unable to function. I'm not them, but I don't know how to tell them without making me look like a PowerDouche 4500. So after trying to explain my circumstance and what I've already done, I just shut up and let them read their script.

Yes I see the small black box with the flashing green lights.

Okay I've checked all the connections.

Yes it's plugged in.

No oddly after those three steps I still can't get to the Interwebs.

The first guy at the local Time Warner office here in Austin, was nice enough though I had a feeling he was on the 9pm to 6am shift for a reason. After running 2 hours of trouble shooting (mostly involved with me rebooting my laptop, which takes 59 minutes each time) he decides it's a software problem. It may also be the memory. And you should try taking the battery out and tightening all the screws.

-__-

Okay thanks dude.

I give up for the night because my head hurts from all the dumb. The next day is too busy and we aren't done till late so I don't even try. Today at lunch I get on chat because I mainly want to find out what's wrong with my account and why they can't find it. I had no intention of troubleshooting mainly because I didn't think anything would come of it. I'd already resigned myself to calling for a tech to come out or just bring the modem back to the local office and get a replacement. But, while I was on the Time Warner Grand Help Chat You Save Time, Go Fun! I decided to actually mention my problem. Here's what follows (edited for personal information.)

Jennie Jones: Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable. At the end of our chat you will be given the option of taking a brief survey. My name is Jennie. Please give me a moment while I access your account.
Jennie Jones: Hello!
Jennie Jones: Thank you for waiting.
Ben_: sure thing
Jennie Jones: You would like to know whether we provide service in your area. Correct?
Ben_: No, I would like to make sure my account exists. I signed up for service, got a self install kit, and it doesn't work. When I call or email for support, I'm told my account doesn't exist.
Ben_: So I'd like to find out why, maybe get an account number, and possibly set up a trouble ticket.
Jennie Jones: Thank you for the information.
Jennie Jones: I understand your concern.
Jennie Jones: It'll be my pleasure to direct you to the right support in order to get this done for you.
Jennie Jones: Since, I belong to the technical chat support for Time Warner Cable video services, we do not have access to check the status of the new order for the services.
Jennie Jones: I would appreciate if you would contact our sales team at 512-485-5555 or 1-800-418-8848, as they are specially equipped to handle this type of request.
Jennie Jones: The working hours are from, 7:30am - 9pm Monday -Saturday and 9:45am-9pm on Sundays.
Ben_: So you can't look up my account?
Jennie Jones: Let me try once again.
Jennie Jones:
May I know the account holder's full name, please?
Ben_: Ben Rollman
Jennie Jones: Thank you.
Jennie Jones: May I have the complete address associated with the account, please?
Ben_: (address)
Jennie Jones: Thank you for the information.
Jennie Jones: May I have the PIN on the account? The PIN is a 4-digit number that was selected by you and it allows me to authenticate that you are an authorized account user. You are required to provide your PIN for all issues needing account information.
Ben_: (pin) (by the way, it's not pin number)
Jennie Jones: Thank you for the verification.
Jennie Jones: Your account number is (numbers).
Ben_: excellent
Jennie Jones: I appreciate your patience and understanding.
Ben_: Is your support for only TV?
Ben_: You said video.
Jennie Jones: I mention, Cable video services, which means cable service.
Ben_: Okay, not road runner then, right?
Ben_: Not that it matters, I wouldn't be able to chat with you if we started troubleshooting anyway. :)
Jennie Jones: May I know you need assistance with which services?
Ben_: When I call the local number, are there options for tech support? Last time I called the local 485-5555 number I was then transfered to Austin as though I'd called a HQ number. But I just called the local number.
Ben_: Sorry, I have a cable modem, I'm not able to connect from multiple devices. I've called a couple times and have been told it's a software issue. It can't be. If you have it, I could use some upper level help.
Ben_: So, internet services.
Jennie Jones: Thank you for the information.
Jennie Jones: It seems that this issue needs to be escalated to National Road Runner support. We will transfer you to that support group.
Jennie Jones: One moment please, while I connect you to our National Road Runner support.
Jennie Jones: Again, my name is Jennie. Thank you for chatting with Time Warner Cable. We value you as a customer and are here to assist you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Jennie Jones: Please wait, while the problem is escalated to another analyst
Irina: Hello! Thank you for choosing Road Runner Internet Technical Chat Support. My name is Irina.How may I assist you?

(This is where I begin to worry. I'm connected on my laptop via Clear, which is a little USB device that picks up a WiMax signal. Before you ask, I only have one, so TG would have to wait till I'm not using it for her Mac and the Playstation would never be able to get it, hence the need for Time Warner.)
Ben_: Hi Irina. I have a new account, self install kit. Cable modem, Netgear wireless router, PC MAC PS3. So far I'm unable to get online.
Ben_: I've gone through some local connection configurations and tests and I'm left thinking it maybe a DNS issue or something wrong with the modem configuration.
Ben_: The last person I spoke with said it was likely a software issue, but two of these devices connect to other wifi locations just fine.
Irina: I understand that you are unable to access Internet connection , am I correct?.

(facepalm)

Ben_: Yes
Irina: Thank you for confirmation.
Irina: I am sorry to know this.
Irina: I'm more than happy to assist you. To get us started, I'm going to need to verify some security information and then we can move on to understanding your setup. We will need to perform some troubleshooting steps together, and I'll be running some tests on my end. Feel free to ask questions along the way.
Irina: Before we begin, please provide the following three pieces of information to verify your account and to document this interaction for future reference:
1. The account holder's 10 digit telephone number. (xxx-xxx-xxxx)
2. The account holder's Full Name (First and Last)
3. Please tell us your name.

(again)

Ben_: (number)
Ben_: Ben Rollman
Ben_: acct (number)
Ben_: PIN
Ben_: SSN (last four)
Ben_: (Address)
Irina: For some reason I am not able to pull your account details, may I have any other phone number that is registered with RoadRunner?
Ben_: Try (work number)
Ben_: You can't look it up by any of the other info I gave you?
Ben_: I'm worried that TW's inabilty to find my account is somehow related to not being able to get online. As though the account is inactive so tht modem hasn't been provisioned.
Irina: I understand your concern.
Irina: I regret this inconvenience.
Irina: Please provide me with your Modem Mac id.
Irina: It is a 12-digit number starting with 00 located on the back or side of your cable modem (the small box with the flashing lights). If there is more than one MAC ID listed we will only need the C-MAC, CM-MAC or HFC-MAC number specifically.

^ that's unedited BTW, the parenthetical phrase was all hers - the small box with the flashing lights. God, my mistake ma'am. This whole time I've been troubleshooting my toaster.

Ben_: (mac address)
Irina: I am sorry to inform you that I am unable to locate your account with any of the information you have provided.
Ben_: Then how do I have the equipment?
Irina: Let me explain it to you.
Irina: The issue you are facing is because your 12-Digit modem MAC address is not registered with our Road Runner local office.
Irina: This process of getting your modem MAC address registered is called as modem provisioning.
Irina: There is nothing much to worry about. I will provide you with one more alternate solution.
Irina: You need to contact our local office and get this modem MAC address 001BD7FFABE6 registered with them over phone.
Irina: Also I will provide you a ticket number, so that you will not have to explain the issue again.
Irina: Can I provide you the number to call them?
Ben_: Is it 512-485-5555?
Ben_: And yes please, a ticket number would be great.
Irina: The number for the department is 866-701-3588
They work 24x7.
Ben_: Okay.
Irina: Kindly hold on for a minute.
Irina: Please make a note, your ticket number for this session is:RQST00079368472
Irina: Just provide them the ticket number as I have put in special notes instructing them to do the needful and documented your chat against the same number.
Irina: You can always visit http://help.rr.com for online FAQs to get more help and knowledge about the products and services offered by Road Runner.
Irina: Is there anything that I can help you with?
Ben_: Nope, will be calling immediately, thank you for your help.
Irina: Thank you for contacting Road Runner Technical Chat Support, again my name is Irina, we value you as a customer.
Irina: Analyst has closed chat and left the room

I know that was long, but it goes to show that a) I wasn't a dick b) I had given them all the information I had, including the steps I'd taken to solve the issue and c) that I kinda know what I'm talking about. In the end it didn't matter, I'd have to make another call.

So I called the number Irina gave and I end up with an automated system. After not finding my account again, I'm transfered to a technical support member. I use the "call you back in X minutes" option and they do call me back. I get Amanda who also can't find my account. She then says, after I give me address, "Austin Texas?"

Yeees...as opposed to...?

"Oh honey, you're in a South Carolina call center." She apologizes profusely and tries to find the right number. The 485-5555 number? I ask. No, here's one, 202-bla-blah. That's not Austin, I say. Oh, well then yes the 584-5555 one. Okay I said, but I'm worried. I called that one the first time and they couldn't find my account either. Okay, she said. Let me just transfer you there. The call doesn't go through and I have to call back. So I call the local number and get Bob.

Bob was the man. After all this, he asks what the problem is and I say, "I need to have my modem provisioned. It's not letting any traffic out." Bob's on it. Okay, can you power it for me? (That's tech for turn it off, wait ten seconds and turn it back on. See, he already knows.) I do, he sends a configuration file. I power it again. He says he can see it but it's not behaving. He sets up a tech visit. I say I can bring the modem to the office and swap it out. "Yeah, but I'd hate for you to waste your time if it's something in the line and not the modem. I'd do the trouble call and if you DO take it back and it works, just call and cancel."

Bob's the man.

The sad part is, after all this, the only person that didn't have a survey follow up was Bob. Everyone else made damn sure I had a venue to tell them how unsatisfied I was.

Carry on.

Email

2010-10-01T11:45:00.002-05:00

Humans differ from animals for various reasons not least of which is our ability to communicate through language. All life communicates on some level, but no other animal writes, reads or retains language like we do. We recount events verbally, we write down events and save it for historical purposes, we spin tales of pure fiction, we pass along instructions. We also communicate in order to exchange ideas or things. We sell and buy, barter and trade. We bargain, haggle and compromise.

Over the past 170 years, our ability to communicate took a couple giant steps forward. We were able to send signals across great distances to relay messages. At first it was in short bursting sounds, then voice traffic was possible and eventually we would be able to communicate by sending anything we wanted over thousands of miles of cable and even bounced off orbiting satellites. For thousands of years, our spoke and written languages have remained within our mouths and ears and fixed to paper. Since 1940, we've been able to send those ideas and thoughts and requests without opening our mouths and without writing with ink.

Email is ubiquitous. It's household, it's common, it's no longer a fad. I still remember the days when people carried pagers and had no email. To have an email address was a thing of wonder and wealth. The address was free, the service was free, but the cost for the internet usage was prohibitive and people didn't check it often. If you had access to email, chances are less than half the people you knew did as well. To this day there are folks who don't have email or do and don't use it. They feel it's gimmicky, impersonal and a waste of time. They'd rather pick up the phone or write a letter or plan a visit.

And that's fine. The world will always need Luddites to anchor the frantic expansion of technology. If it wasn't for all the legacy mindsets in the world, we wouldn't still be using fax machines. And who doesn't love a good fax now and then?

The problem is the half-assed attempts to bridge both worlds and no where is it more common than the small business web site. Take a look at any web site out there and you will see a Contact Us somewhere on the first page. The type of contact from that point is varied, but it will undoubtedly contain an email address or a way to send information to the company via a form. It does include a phone number or maybe a fax, but email is fast, it allows you to write out exactly what you want and it creates a record of your conversation. As someone who has worked in customer service, I truly appreciate being able to go back in time to see exactly when someone contacted me or I responded to them.

That all falls apart if there is no reply.

If you're a company that has a web site and you run advertising that points to that web site, and that web site has an email address, you must reply to emails the come in to your company. Even if it's an automated response saying something about calling you instead, do something. Email is just valid as a phone call and I find that more than half the time, I receive no response from companies using email. The exception being those with a dedicated problem tracking system that generates a ticket for a trouble call. But for general inquiries, I'm almost certain that if I send an email it will not be addressed and I'll have to eventually make a phone call.

Why not call in the first place, you may ask. Two reasons. 1) I don't like the phone. I get anxious and panicky on the phone and I tend to forget why I called and tend to leave out important information. My mind blanks out and I end up not getting what I need from the call. And 2) My belief is that if I email you, you should answer. If you have an email and phone, you're signally to your customers or clients that you can be reached that way. If you don't answer an email, it's a signal that you don't value the customer that approaches you that way and that's offensive.

I realize large companies get millions of emails and it's hard to negotiate the trash and spam from the actual correspondence, but there are tools for that. Mail servers and spam blockers are smart and sophisticated today and overload can no longer be blamed for the inability to respond to requests.

So what's to be done? Were I in charge of the world, I would force companies that don't reply to emails to remove the option from their site. If you want people to only make a phone call, only list a phone number. If you list an email address, you are acknowledging that a response will be sent. If not, it's akin to ignoring your phone when it rings or throwing a letter away before opening it.

There's no way to fight this, but moving forward, I will at least try. Every phone call I make from now on after having sent an email will also include the request to remove the email from their site since they don't use it. Hopefully the trend will catch on and more people will do likewise. I don't want to punish these people, I want them to act with some social responsibility. Ignoring people isn't responsible.

Carry on.

The Wheels Are Off

2010-09-27T09:28:00.000-05:00

Big days for G-man.

Last week the little dude lost a tooth and yesterday he rode around with his training wheels removed. After much hemming and hawing, we were finally able to convince him to try it out. He did really well and I'm really happy for him. Too often his sister goes blazing around the neighborhood without him because his little bike is too slow to keep up. Now that he's free to ride like the wind, I foresee many more local adventures. G is the type of kid that will take two hours to ride around the block because he wants to literally stop and smell the flowers.

We also have a video of me totally biting it. I may save that one for friends and family only because I might try to win $10,000 on AFV. I was running with G-man, holding on to his handlebars, you know, Dad style. I was waiting for him to say "Let go!" but he didn't and I was running into a low hanging tree and then a truck in a driveway. I let go and fell to the ground and G-man fell shortly after on the other side of the truck. At first he got really upset until I showed him my skinned knee. Then he laughed.

After his triumphant couple rides, he smashed his inner thigh on one crash so we called it a day, but not before a fist pumping four house long ride on his own.

Very proud of you little dude. I can't wait to ride around with you.

Carry on.

Season Ender

2010-09-20T15:12:00.002-05:00

Rowan is ready for roller derby.
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

TXRD's championship bout was last Saturday. The Cherry Bombs were triumphant over the Hellcats in a nail biter of a match that was hard fought, tightly contested and full of emotion. Skaters flew off the track, fought, danced and skated their brains out. The last jam saw two rival skaters arms around each other's shoulders, pumping their fists in celebration. Despite the animosity seen on the track, in the end they are all skaters and they all belong to the league and they all do it for the love of roller derby.

I told someone about the upcoming event and how LMA was going to be manning a table to raise funds for her new league, and they rolled their eyes and said with much derision that there was a group of people you want to get involved with. At the bout when I could sit in the crowd and watch the bout, I sat in front of an older couple that seemed to take pleasure in tsk-tsk-ing and belittling everything that went on in front of them from the music, to the dress code to the actual match.

I'd always thought that roller derby now is like what comic books used to be in the 70's. Mostly a cult following but slowly growing in popularity. At first it's just those involved and their friends and families. People in the know really appreciate what it means to be involved but have a hard time relaying that to The Everyday Joe. Eventually enough people across the globe are involved, a movie is made based on the idea and suddenly it lives somewhere between cult and mainstream. People know about it, may have participated in it, but most generally don't know enough about it and some even look down on it.

The difference is, a comic book nerd is much less likely to start a fight over costuming.

Derby girls are hard working, genuine and passionate folks who aren't afraid to speak their mind. They are loyal, creative, determined creatures who have found in derby something meaningful. They are strong and at the end of the day, I'd rather have my girl emulate them than any girl scout or beauty queen or movie actress. These ladies are entrepreneurs and business owners and athletes and they have thousands of girls looking up to them. Not only because they skate fast and hit hard, but because they are successful at doing what they want when other people shake their heads.

So the next time you're not sure about how to react at a bout, or what to say to someone affiliated with derby, it's probably best to keep your mouth shut. Because while they may be role models to young women, they'll still punch your lights out for being a judgmental douchebag.

Carry on.

The Littlest Capitalist

2010-09-13T11:35:00.001-05:00

Button Maker
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

A sign would show up on the counter, "Shop Open!" with hearts and stars and rainbows and an arrow pointing into the living room. Behind the steamer trunk sat Lil Miss Austin with an open lock box full of all the change she'd been siphoning off laundry and her parents' pockets. The shelves of her store were bookshelves, end tables and chairs. The merchandise for sale were items from around the house; DVDs, books, kitchen utensils, tools, knick-knacks, toys and jewelry. Often the items were marked with a price tag. Other times she had all the prices in her head.

She summon us from whatever adult thing we were doing and we'd make the slow walk through the emporium to sample her wares. It felt like a role playing game in which the store may not have what you actually needed, but you felt the urge to spend money on it just the same. I'd end up buying (back) a few DVDs and a ceramic kitten. I'd part with my nickels or quarters and be on my way. If she didn't have what I needed, I'd be put at ease at her placing the item on order if I wanted to come back later.

She built blanket forts and played dress up too, but to me the single activity that defined LMA was her capitalist nature. She likes to organize, plan and make money. If she can delegate, she will. If she can pull in favors, she will. She dislikes the idea of raising money for charities and would rather earn pure profit. She's not greedy, she doesn't just ask for money. She's constantly thinking of ways to make money. So this is a big deal for her.

She had a plastic button maker set, the kind you get from Michael's for $12. It came with a handful of buttons and you could order refills. She loved making them and wanted more. Ms. A had an acquaintance with a button maker for sale and so surprised LMA with it with the understanding that she'd make buttons and sell them to support her derby league. It's one of those giant, official, professional button makers too.

LMA's going to be part of the 3rd Jr. Derby league in Austin. It's brand new and will start skating soon. They're associated with the Boys and Girls Club of Austin. The reason behind this third group's formation is a weird and almost sad conflict of politics and bloodlines, but needless to say we're mostly just happy LMA can skate.

So this Saturday is the TXRD Championship. Part of Ms. A's derby responsibilities is marketing and merchandise. She's in charge of getting sponsors and setting up a lot of the tables and helping with vendors at the event. She's also signed on to do the same thing for the new Jr. league, which means LMA will have a table to sell her buttons at the big girl championship.

It's like a dream come true for her.

So a couple of the TXRD girls came over for "family dinner" night and helped make a lot of buttons. My guess is we'll need a couple hundred, so hopefully LMA doesn't run out of ideas.

So if you're going to the bout this Saturday, stop by the TXCR (or Jr. Derby) table and buy a button.

Carry on.

Closing of Adventure 2010

2010-08-24T17:04:00.001-05:00

Rowan and Gregory walking to school
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

So Ms. A really gave it her best this summer. She ensured that the kids did something adventurous nearly every day of the summer. Some time around the 2nd week of summer break, she decided that TV watching and video game playing were over and that G-man and LMA were going to be active and adventurous.

What we ended up with is a couple tan, healthy, happy kids. TV watching was limited to times when there was really nothing else to do - a last resort. If there was only one parent there and that parent was sick, TV watching was okay. I picked some family movies to watch over dinner on occasion but for the most part the TV was off. Ironically, the kids wanted to watch pretty much one show; Phineas & Ferb, a cartoon about two boys who do something new every day over the summer.

It started with swim lessons. They both took two sessions of swim lessons in late June. Then they took gymnastics at the rec center. After that it was "let's find every creek, pond, swimming hole, lake and river we can" time. With their new found abilities, they took to rocky swimming holes with gusto and even Lil G-man was seen fearlessly diving from outcroppings.

Even if the adventures were small, it was more about doing things. They went to baseball games, saw the President's motorcade, visited the local air force base, swam in the lake dozens of times and explored a dinosaur trail. I tried getting in on the action on the weekends, but most of my efforts were movies. We did however visit the Lego store grand opening and the un-related Lego Games tour as well as an ice-cream festival and a trip to Colorado to see family. There was no Derby Brats over the summer, but we did try to get to a couple TXRD bouts.

To quote a Calvin and Hobbes title, "The Days Are Just Packed."

Gregory even got a girlfriend.

We also hung out with a lot of new people, made monsters after Ms. A got a sewing machine and built a lot of Lego. Surprisingly I still go a lot of drawing done and was able to PASS my summer classes. I'm not taking any fall classes as I need more time to focus on work, drawing, lego, the kids and what exactly I'm going to do with this "education."

So now the 2010 Adventure Season is closed. G-man started 1st grade today, LMA is in 4th. Ms. A started classes today as well. Her census job is over so this is good timing. TG's UT Lego group starts soon and I hope that's a fun group for her. Everyone in our immediate vicinity and group of friends is fairly healthy and at least happy on the surface. Some times it's hard to tell.

The next update may be about TG and attending the Intergalactic Nemesis show on Sept. 3rd. We're utterly geeking out about it and I think the creators might be thinking we're stalking them. More about that later. Right now I'm going to the Lego store and then draw.

Carry on.

Finished

2010-08-02T08:16:00.001-05:00

Finished
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

On May 16th I posted the first pictures of my first big Lego build. 77 days later it was finished.

To answer the next question, no we're not putting a sniper in it.

I don't have exact measurements, but at the roof it stands just over a meter, with the antenna is roughly 1.25m. I don't know how many pieces we used so don't ask. The structure is fairly hollow to allow the lighting, we used a rope light coiled up tightly and a bunch of trans clear bits to make the "1" effect.

The clocks aren't done, but my mom's husband fashioned and painted some gold/brass metal rings to serve as the outside and we'll probably put a sticker inside it. We haven't been able to find anything small enough kit wise to make our own time telling piece.

We're both extremely proud of this building. We worked very hard on it and spent a lot of money getting the needed parts. Between us we had a good amount but neither of us had that much white. I spent $175 getting brick and I know TG spent easily that much as well. We fought and argued about how to build certain parts, but we always came back together and agreed and I'm very happy to say this was a true collaboration.

I don't know how long we'll keep it together. There are a handful of parts left to buy to replace ones we used to fill in for color reasons, but the main part is done. Now we can go back to building spaceships and dragons.

You Can't Go Home Again

2010-07-29T16:47:00.001-05:00

Above the Clouds
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Last weekend I took the kids and Tiger Lily up to Colorado to see my cousin get married. You'd think I was close to said cousin to make this trip but in reality I'm not. At one point in our lives we were close-ER but since I moved away 13 years ago I haven't been close to anyone up there. Most of my family lived in Denver or surrounding suburbs so it wasn't hard to remain in contact. While we wouldn't spend every weekend with my aunts and uncles, we would see them several times a year.

That changed after moving to Texas and it's harder and harder to go back each time. When I left I was still young. I wasn't a child, but I was not quite the perfectly responsible adult you think one would need to be in order to make that kind of transition. I wouldn't even think of myself that way today. In my head, I'm much younger than my years on this Earth. I may not remember exact details, but the nostalgia for times gone by is strong and I've noticed it's becoming painful. It's no longer a wistful recollection of sweetness and innocence and reckless abandon, but a scraping of your soul with a laser all the things you've lost, haven't done and likely never will do.

We crammed as much as we could into the few days we were there, including a drive to the summit of Pike's Peak. Tiger Lily had never been to Colorado, never seen mountains this large and had never been higher than a few hundred feet, with the exception of flying. We drove to Manitou Springs where we had buffalo burgers and ice cream. We drove through the Garden of the Gods and then eventually went through the neighborhood where I grew up.

It was small.

It was small and run down and really quite sad, but it was in the exact place I'd left it. The fences and buildings and most of the trees were just like I'd left them. The sidewalks and fire hydrants and hills and signs were mostly there. But I felt like an alien. I felt as though it was still me but I'd been pulled through a rift in time and space and dropped into an alternate universe, a universe in which everything was vibrant and real and tangible, but not right. I can still trace the path of the bike ride to the rec center in my head, but the route now seems wider and with a strange buzz in the air. The park and elementary school have different paint jobs and playgrounds but the structures are the same. Trees grow quite a bit in 13 years.

It was sad and unnerving and it made me want to cry and scratch my skin all over. I wanted to just walk into all the houses of my friends like I had done for so many years, knowing that the line "I used to live here" would not stop the current residents from pressing charges.

I think the saddest thing is that it looked like every where else.

There was no feeling of familiarity outside of knowing which way to turn. There was no warm feeling of being almost home or almost to my buddies house or nearly to the top of the hill on my bike. It was the moon from Baron Munchausen. It was all front and nothing behind it. It was really quite dead to me.

Instead of the PDQ it was just another Diamond Shamrock. Instead of long drives in between sub divisions, it was one long strip mall. Instead of it being small and quaint and unique, it was homogeneous and average. It was exactly as I remember it and nothing at all like I wanted it to be.

But what do you expect, really? I'm not 9, riding on my BMX Mongoose to the hills down between the neighborhoods. I'm not building Lego starships and leaving them buried in the sand at the rec center. I'm not riding my skateboard down the main street. Why would I expect it to be the same for me now? Because my brain was formed then. My life and my habits and my fascinations and hopes were all forged in that crummy little area of north west Denver, a few miles from a mall or a county airport or our church in the next town. That's the place I decided I wanted to be a cartoonist/fighter pilot/Lego builder/astronaut/movie star. That's the place I fell in love for the first time, had my first kiss, my first sexual encounter, my first car, speeding ticket, alcoholic beverage, video game, ice cream and X-Wing from Kenner.

Since then, I've accomplished much in the same way that the neighborhood has evolved. I work in an office. I got married and had kids. I have a car, a pet, bills and my hair line is receding. I feel like everyone else and the older I get the less distinctive I'll be, just like my neighborhood is now to me.

The trick is, never go back. Just move ahead.

How to not study for a test

2010-07-03T11:50:00.002-05:00

Make a short stop animation with your daughter.

Lego Update!

2010-07-02T08:04:00.001-05:00

Loves
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

The LEGO® group is opening a store in Austin. A "soft" opening is scheduled for July 15th and the grand opening should be some time in early August. As part of TexLUG, Tiger Lily and I will be meeting at another member's house to help build the "Brand Ribbon" sets as well as some retail sets for display at the opening.

This is nearly a dream come true for me. I've been building Lego most of my life and to be able to build stuff that Lego sent to display in a store is bouncy-dance, fist-pumping exciting. When I'm at the store and people are looking at the sets on display, I can say, "I built that."

Next step is designing them.

There was a post on Eurobricks about a product designer job opening and I about fell out of my cubical. The catch? It's in Denmark. Which led me to ask them if any jobs like this are available in the US. I'm guessing no and that will really change my plans for the future. I hear Denmark is nice, but I'd rather not have to move there.

Closer to home, Tiger Lily and I have finished about 3/4 of our tower. We get more parts in almost every week and this last batch put us really close. I don't know that we'll be able to show it at the opening of the Lego store (I don't think they allow MOCs) but we'll at least be able to take it to other places TexLUG puts on a display.

That's all for now, carry on.

Robot Prez Shirt RIPT

2010-06-28T16:02:00.000-05:00

I wish I could have posted this sooner but I missed out in the morning. Anyway, go to RIPT Apparel and get a Robot President T-Shirt. It's only up for today so you have to act now!

www.riptapparel.com

Robot Prez Shirt RIPT

2010-06-22T12:01:00.001-05:00

Robot Prez Shirt RIPT
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

On Monday, June 28th, this shirt will be available on RIPT.

riptapparel.com/

Please consider purchasing one or at least posting about it. Thank you.

Deus Ex Machina: A Lost and Battlestar Galactica Comparison

2010-06-04T09:21:00.000-05:00

With the UK shaking its head at America's tunnel vision toward science fiction, fans of the genre here in the States are now without a flagship television drama. It's been almost two weeks since the series finale of Lost and somehow the world still exists and die hard fans find ways to fill their empty hours.

I felt moved to write because I feel I'm on the wrong side of fence as the bandwagon leaves the station. The ending of Lost wasn't for me. I thought it was cheap and focused too much on the last season and not enough on the show as a whole. It tied up loose ends with a very soft touch and some gold ribbon, and then handed its final message to the viewers on a warm plate covered in love and chocolate and joyful tears.

And I call bullshit.

In 2005, J.J. Abrams told the world that one of the leading theories about Lost was not correct. The island inhabitants were not in fact in Purgatory. Co-creator Damon Lindelof did the same a year later. As people tried to make sense of all the story lines and all the hints and side stories, it was probably natural that we lost focus and just chalked it up to something spiritual. But the show runners said we were wrong.

Turns out, in 2005, we were. But in 2009-2010, the tune changed. When the bomb went off at the end of last season, we began a new and final chapter in which the characters were in Purgatory, or at least a realm in between the living and the soon to be dead. The reality of the Island, such as it was, remained intact. Elusive, inexplicable, frustratingly vague, but intact. There was no split timeline, no alternate parallel universe. It was some blissful Matrix like construct each cast member created in their mind or soul or whatever in order to meet their loved ones after they die...whenever that was going to be.

But it was only the loved ones from the Island. Kate's mom wasn't there. Juliet's sister wasn't there. Hugo's parents weren't there. Did the four-five months these people spend on the Island completely replace the love and affection they had for their families or the rest of the world? I would appear so.

So the last season was the one that would explain it all, and it did mostly. Except for why CJ was there in the first place and why she killed Jacob and Blackshirt's real mom. Oh and except for the Heart of the Island. Oh and why were Hurley's number's so important again? So important that they infiltrated every thing in the show? I'm sure there are more, but we know that a good deal was wrapped up in the last year and it really didn't matter to the fans what the Island was. It was magic, it was light, it was goodness, that's apparently all we need to know. It was Moya and Jacob was its Pilot.

Which brings me, with a worthless segue, to the ending of Battlestar: Galactica. This show caught a lot of flak for its initial claim that it was a military science fiction show and not the spiritual space opera it turned into. It lost viewers and the ending brought scorn from those who stuck it out. Again, I went against the grain and felt the wrap up of BS:G was nearly perfect and if you watched it twice on DVD straight through, you would probably see that. The main argument was that everything ended too neatly. Starbuck came back for no reason, they found Earth on luck and the Final Five story line was made up as they went along.

There's truth to some of this. Interviews with Ronald Moore indicate that the story didn't go where he originally wanted and that toward the end they were winging it, but that's how stories go sometimes. We all thought Lost had a big scheme to it and in the end we were proven wrong. It was a little unexplained well of spiritual energy accompanying a glimpse into the personal afterlife states of a handful of people. So why can't another show be about angels and gods and fate?

Starbuck died, but was brought back for a reason. She was brought back long before finale. Before she died we're given glimpses of a special symbol. She follows this symbol so that she can die and be reborn or at least delivered to the crew as a messenger, the harbinger of death. The Final Five hear a song of Earth origin (All Along the Watchtower) which Starbuck plays on a piano. The notes align with the drawings of a half human, half cylon child. They're also numbers, numbers she uses to chart a course away from the climactic battle with the Cylons to a habitable world. The battle was to save this child, one that was born early on in the series and became a rallying cry for the human fleet. Along the way, we're reminded of the fight between the people believing in the gods and the one true God.

So to have Starbuck type in some numbers to save their ass was not Deus Ex Machina any more than the Island being a mysterious living thing with no explanation as to its existence.

I've been told I don't understand the concept of Deux Ex Machina. In my defense, I understood it to mean that at the end of a story, some new thing just shows up out of no where to change the course of the story. In most cases it saves the day, at least in modern stories, but it comes from a time when people actually believed in the ancient gods. The stories would show people struggling with some task only to have it cleaned up by a god and displaying how our will and our choices don't matter. Fate is all that matters and the gods control that. More recently it's a tool to help creativity handicapped writers find a way out of the corner.

And thus the fans cried D.E.M. when Kara Thrace found Earth, but again I call bullshit.

Why? Because she's not a new character. She was with the show from the beginning. So was the idea of gods and God, making the idea of angels not that extraordinary. To me, it's not D.E.M. if the entire show had built to that point and it makes sense. All the clues, all the symbols lead to their fight and their finding Earth. Does it defeat the idea of free will if there is a God pulling the strings? If it's done from the beginning of the story? Did anyone in that show have a choice or were they being manipulated? Were they being lead by God to find Earth?

At the end of Lost Jack said, "This is what I'm supposed to do." His choices, his will, his meaning in life up until last season was to get off the Island and hopefully save as many people as he could. Where did that get him? Most of the people died, including him. It was only when he let go and almost stop making choices did he become content. Even in death he appeared happy.

Both shows started as science fiction. Both ended with enormous ties to spirituality. It's much like cutting edge scientific thought wherein the unexplained is turned over to The God Factor. We understand things to a certain point, and after that we just don't know. I think the creators of both shows started with good intentions, but in the end just didn't know and fell back on religion. The difference is, one did that early on and wasn't ashamed of it at the end.

I'll let you decide which was which.

Carry on.

Gregory vs. His Birthday

2010-05-26T12:01:00.001-05:00

Gregory vs. His Birthday
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

I drove up to G-man's school today to have lunch with him. It's his birthday and I wanted to make sure he felt liked. It's more important to kids that that feel liked or that they are good kids. Love is a weird emotion for them, they love everything and everyone for some reason, but "like" is a sacred emotion.

I arrive on time but they're already in the cafeteria and I can't find him. All these little 5 and 6 year olds look the same and I'm frustrated at myself for not being able to find mine. I check with the office because I don't see the teacher either. Yes, they're at lunch now. I go look again, this time getting some weird looks from the lunch room ladies. Eventually I find him, at the end of the table, wearing a birthday crown.

So I've already lost 10 minutes of lunch time and I feel like a crap dad for not being able to recognize my own son in a crowd. After about five minutes of eating with me at the little picnic tables outside of the cafeteria, he asks if he can go back and sit with his friends.

Ms. A reminds me that it's not what he knows now, it's what he'll remember when he's 30 and telling his kids what their grandpa was like. It's the memories he'll have of these small events like lunches at school that he'll cherish. Plus, we at least had a few minutes together and I'm really glad he has friends he likes enough that he'd leave me for them.

But he's six now and these times are not as often as they were and they'll get fewer and fewer as he gets older. My hope is that he and I stay friends, because I like him.

Happy Birthday Little Man.

Big Time

2010-05-25T08:33:00.002-05:00

079_Doc
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

A couple moths ago, I decided to move my art desk into the garage to make room for more Lego storage. I hadn't receive any robot drawing requests in several months. Toward the end of last year I think I did 5 total. No big deal, it was never a huge thing and I knew that my set up was simple and I'd be able to do some for anyone if I needed to later.

I'm fully into Lego building now and what few art requests I have are a bit of an albatross. I don't want to do them, I'm done with drawing. I just lost the love for it as the love of Lego took over. I really only have time for one hobby, or do I?

I see a great photostream on Flickr where a guy makes Doctor Who minifigure vignettes for the countdown to the season premier. I write a post to submit to Neatorama and send it off only catching the typo after I posted it. Not seeing a way to edit the post, I fire off an email asking if it can be fixed. The reply said I can't but they can, oh and by the way they love Robot Portraits and would I be interested in collaborating with their shop?

I said SURE OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M GOING TO BE LISTED ON NEATORAMA!! In my head. I waited a customary 15 minutes before replying and the site founder and I work out an agreement. He doesn't seem to think I'll get many orders, but we'll see. I find it hilarious that I'd just put all my supplies away and in posting something about my current hobby, I get business pointing back to my old one.

So that's the story. It probably means I'll be doing more of these for the time being.

That hasn't stopped the Lego building though. TL and I are building a replica of the UT Tower right now and it's probably our official entrance into the world of AFOL. Up to this point we've both been just buying sets but now we've each purchased bulk brick from BrickLink in order to complete the nearly 3 foot tall structure. We're doing it for a student group she started at UT, the University Lego Users Group or U-LUG. If it's a good enough build, I also hope to include it with any shows TexLug does as well.

Carry on.

Gallery Night

2010-05-21T10:15:00.001-05:00

Ghost Rider Samurai
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

For those that attended Gallery Night at Springhill Elementary and took one of the cards off my table, I hope you learned a little from the answers I gave to your questions. I know it's scary talking to grown ups you don't know, but I appreciate you coming by and looking at my artwork. I hope you enjoyed it.

I'll try to answer the questions again so you can read it and maybe understand a little more without being scared of being at a table talking to someone you don't know.

For those that weren't there, last night I was a guest artist at LMA and G-man's school. The event was to show the artwork the kids had done and was displayed throughout the school. There were vendor's there as well and i believe sales went toward a fund raising venture, but I'm not sure. In one area there were four guest artists and we were all quite different. I was presented as a cartoonist. There was a lady who worked with pottery, another who did sculptures and another who painted. I brought laptops to show a slideshow of my work and the YouTube videos from Robot Portraits. I also had my old comic book, a portfolio folder and a robot sketchbook.

Each child had a piece of paper that had questions on it and they were to ask each artist one question and have us sign the paper. They'd get something from their teacher if they got them all signed.

So here are the questions and the answers I gave. These are a little more in depth as I wanted to make sure I gave short answers in person.

Q) How do you use math when you create your art?
A) When drawing cartoons and comic books, there's a need to sometimes draw buildings and rooms and objects. These need to be drawn in perspective. Especially city streets and buildings must look realistic, so you need to understand how to draw and measure shapes and distance, something you learn in geometry.

Q) How do you use language arts when you create your art?
A) Especially in comic books, I need to be able to write what people are saying. I have to know what they sound like, what language they use and how to put that down on paper correctly. If I spelled the words wrong or put them in the wrong order, you wouldn't understand what they were saying. That would make it hard to read and hard to enjoy.

Q) How do you use science when you create your art.
A) This was a tough one. I have to understand colors when creating art. I have to know what colors make other colors and how they work together to be pleasing or jarring to the eye. This comes from an understanding of how our eyes see light which is a part of spectroscopy. Knowing how colors work together is called Color Theory.

Q) Who influenced your decision to become involved in the field of art.
A) The short answer I gave was that my Grandpa was an artist and the older I got I began to really enjoy his work and wanted to be an artist too. The longer answer is that I never stopped drawing from the time I was a child. All kids draw, they all want to draw, they draw to communicate and express themselves. Artists just never stop doing that and along the way they are influenced by other people. My influences include my Grandpa, but also other comic book artists like Jim Lee, Larry Stroman, Ron Lim and Joe Quesada. I have a few friends and acquaintances like Len Peralta and Adam Koford and Mike Peterson and Jeremy Dale and Olli Hihnala who have also been a big influence to how I draw and what I want to draw.

I got a lot of people telling me they have kids or brothers and sisters who draw and are trying to get into animation or comics or just love drawing manga or super heroes and I really tried to encourage them to stick with it. One lady said she had a graphic design degree but got it right as we went to war and was unable to find any work. I don't see art as a way to make money, but a way to express yourself. Kids don't draw because they want to start a business, they draw because they like to. The longer you can hold on to that, the happier I believe you will be as an artist. If you can monetize that, then you get to let it work for you.

Sadly I gave up on a lot of opportunities to continue being an artist by trade. I tried a few times to do comic books but the returns weren't something I could live with. It's a struggle being an artist when you need to pay bills. I do commissions now but it's a hobby and not a business.

So if you're still in grade school and are reading this, my advice would be to draw as much as possible, but work hard to find a way to make your art work for you. If you really love it, find a way to do it for the rest of your life and you'll be happy. As soon as it becomes a chore, find something else to do.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by. Again, if you were there and wanted a comic book, just email me your address and I'll mail you a copy.

ben (dot) lifeinaustin (at) gmail.com

Carry on.

Rockin' Rowan

2010-05-16T09:55:00.000-05:00

This is Rockin Rowan with the Austin Derby Brats as jammer during their last scrimmage with the Ann Richards Derby Girls. The little girls for ADB skated against themselves as the ARRG don't have any small girls. Rowan scored a few points this round.

Happy Birthday

2010-05-10T09:28:00.001-05:00

same little girl
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Yesterday was LMA's 9th birthday. Yesterday was also Mother's Day. Ms. A probably couldn't ask for a better present.

It was a low key affair as she has a big slumber party planned next weekend. There were presents and cake and some adult friends were there. Her little brother asked me to take him to the store so he could buy her some presents with his own money. He also bought flowers for mom. It was the picture of sweetness.

So Rowan Michelle is now 9 years old. She sings along with the opening music to Wizards of Waverly place. She dresses in fancy clothes and knee high boots. She has a new day bed with pink blankets but likes socks with skulls on them. She gives you attitude like a 16 year old but still cries like a toddler. I guess this is what a "tween" is. Although I despise that word, I can't think of a better description.

Her last scrimmage is this week for Derby Brats. Last Saturday at the TXRD bout, she got a birthday spanking and a couple of the big girls new her from her Derby Brats team. She also claims that at her big scrimmage at the Ann Richard's school, the Hellcats came to see just her.

She said yesterday was the best birthday she's ever had because she was surround by people who loved her. But today she'll talk back after not feeding the dog. It's just who she is and I'm very proud of her.

Happy Birthday, Little One.

Lemonade Day

2010-04-30T10:00:00.001-05:00

This Sunday is Lemonade Day in Austin. It's actually a nation wide event to encourage children to become entrepreneurs. I don't believe we'll officially be taking part in the event in a public park or whatever they're encouraging, but we will be setting up a stand. At the very least we'll be setting up a stand in front of our house.

We'll start around 10am and go until we're out of supply. There may also be cookies and green tea.

We're really close to the main road running through Pflugerville, so if you're up north on Sunday and you'd like to help support future business owners, stop buy and get a glass.

View Larger Map

Formspring

2010-04-28T14:48:00.000-05:00

I was wondering how long that would take.

A few months ago I signed up for an account over at formspring.me. It's a little site that allows people to ask questions of you anonymously. While this could turn into a truly horrifying escapade, I thought maybe it would be neat way of communicating with any readers, be they regular or passer-by.

I didn't know it would post to Blogger as it did, I thought it might update the widget on the side rather than make hugely titled posts. I don't much mind it, but I thought I'd ask you. Are the formspring posts annoying? Would you rather not see them?

Feel free to comment below.

Do you know any local artists who either enjoy, or are exceptional at, the comic book format of linear storytelling who would work on a project written by another artist (namely me)? I have many wonderful ideas but need a capable artist to create with.

2010-04-28T12:39:00.001-05:00

The only local Austin artist I know is Paul Maybury. He's a wonderful talent, you should look him up.

What would you like to know?

If you could pick any comic to work on (or something to turn into a comic) what would it be?

2010-04-28T12:37:00.001-05:00

As an artist I would like to draw the Silver Surfer for a couple books. As a creator, I would like to do a story based on the origin of The Fifth Element.

What would you like to know?

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

2010-04-27T14:36:00.002-05:00

Syrup
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

This past weekend, Tiger Lily and I drove to Louisiana for Festival International, a three day music and artisan fair in downtown Lafayette, LA celebrating Francophone and African inspired music.

We didn't actually go for all three days (four, I think it was officially open on Thursday.) The plan was to drive out Thursday night and do the festival Saturday, maybe Sunday. TG also had plans to visit her family and friends while we were out. I had plans to eat a lot of cajun and gulf coast cuisine. No one left disappointed.

Her family is from Abbeville which is about 20 miles south of Lafayette. Abbeville is home ot Steen's Pure Cane Syrup. The town is about 10,000 people and is surrounded by rice paddies and crawfish farms, as well as cane fields. It's an adorable little town with a very pleasant downtown.

While in Abbeville, we saw her dad perform at the Abbeville Players, they did Andrew Bergman's "Social Security." Before hand we had dinner at Riverfront and while the Crab meat au gratin was delicious, the etouffee was not. And at first I felt bad because while TG and her sister had made us ettoufee and gumbo, I always thought that going to a local restaurant was going to be different. The spices would be stronger, the roux would be darker or thicker. Something would differentiate itself from the home made fair I'd been used to - even though the makers were from the region.

I pushed through, trying to hide the distaste of the taste with vegetables and drink, but people noticed my plate was not being emptied. When they tried it, they agreed it wasn't good. TG's friend who worked at the bar blamed it on the teenagers cooking that night. Aside from that, the rest of the time I ate like a pig because I knew it wouldn't last. I think the high point was the crawfish and spinach bread bowl I had at festival.

The drive from Austin to Abbeville is about 7 hours. Some say it's six, but we left Austin at six with a stop in Houston for Lego (Lego store in the Galleria people!) and got in about 01:30. Same going home. My car does about 75 max, and the distance is 400 miles. Given the stops for gas and slow parts for small towns, I thought we did well.

Once in town we stayed at her parents house and the next morning we drove up to her old school to visit with friends and teachers. It's an all girl catholic school and I was one of three boyfriends. So the 8 of us roll in and it felt like I was part of a famous entourage, but as a support staff or roadie. We also visited her Nanny and we helped fix her computer. We got round steak and rice out of the deal.

Festival was just one day for us and I'm glad. We spent about 11 hours there and it was a really long day filled with good music and food and friends. We met up with her friends again later that afternoon but most of the time it was just the two of us walking around and pausing to listen to music. A couple bands we both enjoyed were De Temps Antan and Babik. Fishtank Ensemble sounded good but we didn't give them a long listen. The Givers were great, but not necessarily Festival Material. (They sounded like cross between Moldy Peaches and Phish.) The last band, Le Breastfeeders were high energy and a good way to spend your last bit of strength before heading home.

The following day was lazily spent eating, packing and driving. The drive home took just the same amount of time but felt longer as usual. We brought back a lot of happy memories, a couple bags of Lego and some full bellies. I think I'd like to go back for the Omelette Festival and the Star Wars exhibit in Lafayette.

Also, found my headaches were probably eye strain. My right eye was bloodshot the entire time but no headache, like a pressure valve was released. Two days back and they've started up again. Must get eyes checked.

This week is another history test, next month is full of birthdays. That's all for now.

Catching Up Is Hard To Do

2010-04-19T12:04:00.000-05:00

I recently received a message via Flickr from a friend I haven't spoken to in nearly a decade. In grade school he was one of, if not my best of friends. I was always jealous of his assortment of Star Wars toys and video games. We rode our dirt bikes (he had a Diamondback and I had a Mongoose) over the hills behind the subdivision. He was one of the few kids at my 13th birthday when I had the chicken pox. But he was a year ahead of me and when I was in 9th grade at the Jr. high school, he had already gone to high school. We connected a couple times in college when I became friends with the lead singer of a band he was in. After that I think there were a couple emails, nothing really substantive, always asking, "So what are you up to now?"

Why do we do this?

Don't get me wrong, I love nostalgia. I love thinking about how easy things were back in the day. Everything has a glimmer of perfection when viewed through that aged lens. And yet they never hold up. I watched a movie with Tiger Lily recently. It was one I hadn't seen for many years, but had always told people it was the greatest. It was The Last Starfighter. We watched it because a) it was one of those classic cult sci-fi movies everyone should see, like Tron and Flash Gordon and Dune and b) there was some news of a sequel coming out in the next few years. So we watched and I think she fell asleep. The Last Starfighter doesn't hold up really well, but it also isn't that bad. The problem was, it wasn't that great to begin with. I think it's an awesome movie, but I'm realistic in my understanding of how memory laminates everything in a glorious mix of perfection and raspberry preserves.

So when I get an email or friend request or some other form of communication from someone I haven't seen in over ten years I'm not exactly sure how to handle it. I've always accepted them and responded as I'm genuinely interested in what they've been doing. But it's the 8 year old me interested in knowing what the 8 year old them is doing. It doesn't take but the length of a commercial to reply to someone and if they live farther than 100 miles away, it's not likely you'll ever actually see them. The energy you must invest in communicating is low; no plans need to be made, no travel, no drumming up courage or interest or then excuses for leaving early if it becomes tiresome. Firing off a response is a negligible effort.

Which is why we all do it.

TG and I spent about 30 minutes this last weekend going over my Facebook friends. I had a bet with her that she didn't know all 420 of her online friends. She said she knew 95% and that floored me. So I went through mine and I think I actually knew 30%. And of those, most were people I have not seen since I was at that post graduation party where that one girl left me for another guy. (S'okay, she turned out to be gay so the sting wore off.) Point is, a large number of people we "know" on line we really don't know at all and the term friend as become just another watered down version of a once powerful word. I don't know anything about these people, yet I list them as my friends.

I think I'm going to change my answer to "I know OF them." Explaining who these people are in relation to you when you're having a face to face conversation is laborious. When I talk about Ms. A or TG or LMA, the people I'm talking to already know. But when I say, "I heard today from so-and-so, you know him, the magazine writer, lives in Chicago, we did that thing together." I can't just say, "You should of heard what Simon did today." It doesn't help now that there's this layer of knowing them in the past but not knowing them now.

These types of way-back-machine relationships are like winning a pricey electronic gadget that you have no use for. It's shiny, it's new, you won something, but you know you'll never use that USB waffle iron.

Carry on.

Disconnected

2010-04-14T14:53:00.001-05:00

Disconnected
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

I realized as I'm blundering through another day in IT that I'm beginning to be unhappy with my job.

It's not healthy to keep doing the same thing despite poor results. It's not good for your mental or physical health to remain in an environment where you feel you don't belong or you're not very good at your work.

Don't get me wrong, my job is a good job to have. I have one, first of all. I have insurance, a bonus. It's a non-profit so there's very little effort to please shareholders or trim the fat. You have to do something spectacularly stupid in order to get fired. They have a 401k, it's downtown, my boss is flexible with my schedule and I get a fair amount of vacation.

But I feel like an idiot when I do my job.

It's one of those feelings you get after doing something for a long time, be it a hobby or paid position: The more you know, the less you understand. It may be that a wise man admits that he knows nothing, but admitting that in IT means termination. Telling your boss you don't know or you can't do it, means they'll hire someone who can at half your pay. So you end up doing things quickly but wrong just so you can get them done. You hesitate in pulling the trigger on projects and any big decisions you leave to other people.

I feel like a child.

I'm going back to school to learn a trade, to perfect a skill. I'm going to use that skill to get a better job, but one that might require me to move somewhere in 5-10 years. In the mean time, every new piece of software I install and every guide or manual I skim through and every service call I make reminds me just how much I don't know. At some point I'd like to know what I'm doing.

See, I spent 15 years drawing comic books and at no point did I ever feel confident in either my skill or knowledge. Despite having gone to school to study art, I'd always felt like an outsider and a hack, doing just enough to get in but not enough to make it feel like it was what I wanted to do. I want be a better person, a confident person, a knowledgeable person so that whatever job I have, whatever hobby I'm in, I don't look at all these wires or bricks or pencils and think to myself that I'm a fraud and it's only a matter of time before someone finds out.

Ta daa!

I found out today that a Lego builder I'd never heard of died. I didn't know him or what he'd built. He was apparently so influential that people are suggesting Lego name a piece after him. The man was also a graphic artist and had two kids. He was killed in a car accident.

That could have been me and it started me thinking that I shouldn't just sit here and feel the way I do while I do my job. Yes I get paid, but there's got to be more to it than that, and no amount of money should cover feeling small and worthless.

I can't say I'm strong enough to change, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Color of Life

2010-04-08T12:15:00.001-05:00

Color
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

I am procrastinating on much needed study time - at work - by writing this so you better enjoy it. I don't care if the content is nigh meaningless, you WILL enjoy this or so help me...

Much of the free world knows by now about the biggest event in the house since Ralph Furley took over the apartments. Ms. A and Miss LA broke up. It's only just resolved and Miss LA is now living in her own place. There was a lot of moving and crying and she said/she said, but as of now it's done, as least property wise. The two mixed a lot of pots and pans and pennies and while Miss LA and her dog are gone, there are remnants.

For my part I'll miss her. We'll still hang out when she has time but her presence was seldom a problem for me. I say seldom because that first little while after they started dating was still awkward for me. But over time we grew to like each other. I have a hard time hearing the stories from both sides about who did what and I feel bad not being more involved, but it's my nature to avoid causing people harm and through my inaction I feel I'm causing the most people the least amount of grief.

Aside from that, I'll let them tell their own stories on their own blogs.

Tiger Lily and I are doing just great. We've been assembling larger quantities of Lego, studying together, seeing movies, playing video games, watching sci-fi shows, just generally being very geeky. I think it's starting to make people a little sick of us. But I for one don't care, I'm very happy.

But other events are conspiring to make my life hellacious. Work is ramping up and as I commented to someone earlier, I'm barely competent enough to keep up. I feel at times overwhelmed, as though if I pause in the major workloads, I'll succumb to the pressure and beg to be terminated just to get relief. My work ethic is combating with my procrastination. There will either be triumph or epic failure. (Dad, don't read too much into that, I'm being poetic. My job is fine.)

I have some geeky news to report as well.

A couple weeks ago I moved my drawing table from my bedroom to the garage. I was getting no Robot Portrait requests and the few drawings I was doing didn't require an entire setup. I could do them on the kitchen table just as easily. This made room for some much needed Lego storage. Now, I have a fantastic amount of space in my small room and I'm in no danger of standing on any plastic bricks. I've pretty much abandoned my drawing in favor of building. I consider both artistic, one is just nerdier and more expensive.

So the other day I was submitting a link to Neatorama, a site I frequent, and I noticed a typo. So I emailed and asked if that could be changed before being published. The reply was that it couldn't, but the post would be checked and changed on their side so no worries. Then the replier, Alex, said he loved my Robot Portrait drawings and asked if I'd like to do a collaboration with him. After looking him up, I realized it was the founder of Neatorama, Alex Santoso.

Now, it may not seem like much, but being recognized on teh intarwebz is a huge deal. There's the rule of 1000 that states you work your ass off to be noticed and hope that your craft or talent is enough to sustain you, but once you reach 1000 fans, your notoriety will sustain itself and you don't have to work so hard to reach people.

My example would be internet favorite Adam Koford, or ApeLad.

Before the 700 Hoboes, before Areas of My Expertise, Adam likely did very well as a cartoonist, getting commissioned work regularly and with a steady client base. But the 700 Hoboes and his sudden association with Boing Boing and John Hodgman put more eyes on his already fantastic work. Then he created the spectacle that is the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats and now he's a household name...among savvy internet users.

The point being, his work is well known now and he likely doesn't wait long in between requests for work. He's likely backlogged and maybe even has to refuse requests if they don't fit his workload. He hit that tipping point where by more than 1000 fans are able to, by linking and talking and posting about him, sustain his freelance independence. He likely doesn't have to work very hard to maintain a client list now.

(In all honesty, this is all assumption. I know very little about Adam. He works for Disney in Utah doing character design for games so I doubt he actually has to do a lot of commission work. What I know of him I've extracted from posts online. Please don't think we're roommates. Mr. Furley can't find out.)

The irony is, I'd put all my art supplies away because I wasn't using them. In an errant post about Lego (my rekindled passion du jour) I stumble upon something that might require me to draw more than ever.

Of course it could amount to nothing. Alex himself even said that it would probably not amount to more than a couple a month, so we'll have to see. But in the mean time, keep an eye on the Neatoshop and hopefully you'll see my work there very soon.

Carry on.

TexLug at SXSW

2010-03-16T13:01:00.001-05:00

Co-op SXSW Dragon
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Austin has been invaded!

This year, as every year, the South by Southwest (SXSW) media frenzy visits Austin, TX. SXSW is a music and film and interactive extravaganza in which all the convention centers, bars, clubs, meeting rooms, hotel lobbies, pool halls, patios and theaters fill up with musicians, support staff, aficionados, hipsters, geeks, fanboys, reporters and fans.

I've always said I'd try to avoid downtown during this time. The film and interactive portions aren't bad, but the music festival literally shuts everything down within a 20 block radius of the capital for three days. Ms. A loves it and is going again to as many free shows as she can find.

This year was my first actual attendance to anything SXSW related and it was to see some Lego. The TexLug group had a exhibitor display in the Screenburn section in the convention center. Screenburn is basically showing design tools and games. TexLug had a big table with a lot of the MOCs (my own creation) that the group members have built. They ranged from a T-Rex skeleton display with visiting museum patrons, all the size of a matchbox, to a 10ft long replica of the 360 bridge over Town Lake. We took some pictures but it's not the same as being there and seeing the intricacies in person.

The best part was, off to one side was an area with a kiddie pool full of Lego. The idea was you build something and put it on the table nearby to show off what you built. It turned out to be a magnet for me and Tiger Lily. The kids hung out with us but were bored shortly after realizing we weren't moving until our dragon was finished. G-man took about 100 pictures, mostly of his tongue and Spongebob shirt. Rowan pleaded for popcorn that wasn't available. (Silly girl, hipster gadget dorks don't eat popcorn.)

As the TexLug group started to pack up all their models, we finally finished our dragon. It was really cute and well put together and we wanted to take it home. Someone was so impressed they took a picture of it. The TexLug group even included it on their media updates of the event. I wish we'd have done it on Friday, it may have been put in the main display with the other dragons and beasties. (Yeah, it was that good.) The best part is we did it together. TG made the head and wings and belly and I did the legs and tail and kind of the attaching of it all together. The kids helped us hunt down pieces.

LMA made a neat remote controlled boat vignette as well but she started later and wasn't able to finish before it was time to pack up. G-man was oddly not into it. I haven't figured out his Lego meter yet. He likes them, wants to play and build with mine, but doesn't much care for the ones I buy him. I see them in his room, on the floor, but when I ask him to build something he gets frustrated rather than excited. He wants me to build him things to play with. I'm not going to do that. I want him to use his imagination. I know it's there.

That way when the next TexLug meeting happens, we can both go and bring our builds.

Carry on.

Let's hope it's not the knee.

2010-03-05T13:01:00.003-06:00

(this is not a scan of my knee, just an image I found online.)

I totally forgot to mention that I had an MRI done on my knee last week. For a couple years now it's made a crunching, scraping sound when it bends, especially if I put weight on it. It doesn't get any more or less stiff or sore than the other one, which is to say not much. If I walk a lot from the bus or run or play ball it gets stiff but it's never hurt.

A friend of ours injured her knee at work and had to go through surgery to repair it. It was your basic ACL repair and subsequent therapy. I showed them (or made them listen to) my knee and everyone said I should have it checked out before it got really bad.

So I scheduled an appointment for the same orthopedic doctor that helped Ms. A get her knee fixed after her skiing accident blew out her ACL. She was in recovery for about 2 months and then after that she was restricted to what she could do. Now she skates roller derby so I consider that a success. The doctor is really nice but I can tell he's busy. He doesn't spend a lot of time with me. In fact I think I probably talked to him for about three minutes. He asked me about the knee, I told him there wasn't any pain but it's making a horrible sound. He listened, agreed it was bad and I got an x-ray done. The x-ray came back fine, no bone problems. So he scheduled an MRI.

Now, I'd never had an MRI done before. I figure, if the office visit is $xx.xx copay and the x-ray is covered, wouldn't the MRI? Turns out, no it's not. Well, it depends on your deductible. My MRI ran me $375 and I was a little shocked at first. I know the big Magnetotron (seriously, it was called that) is expensive to run and you have to pay the techs to run it. MRI techs get paid pretty well. On top of that, I wasn't injured, this was preventative at best. It was my idea to go in.

I have a follow up this Monday and I think the doc is looking for a flap of cartilage. He seems to think that physical therapy will help and wants to avoid surgery. My thinking is that I'll take whatever is covered without having to meet my deductible first. But I'll keep y'all apprised of the situation.

School is going fine. I took, and I think passed, my first ethics test. I've got another history test this next week for which I'm getting ready. I love history but have never been a fan of American history. Not this time, however. I don't know if it's age or the material, but I'm fascinated by it.

I've also decided, and I don't remember if I said anything about this, that I'm going to try to turn my degree into something I can use to get a job with Lego. I've talked with them and apparently their builders come from all kinds of fields; design, engineering, architecture, etc. So I'm going to skew my studies toward that and hopefully take those skills and love of the brick and become a designer/builder. It might mean eventually moving to Enfield, CT, so I don't know how crazy I am about the idea. I guess I should pass history first.

That said, I'm trying to get into the community more and that means central Texas TexLug meetings, the first being this Saturday. It's an early South By Southwest (SXSW) event at a toy shop where TexLug members gather and meet and talk. I'm taking the kids because G-man loves Lego. Hopefully I can get some pictures.

That's all for now. Carry on.

Snow in Austin

2010-02-24T16:49:00.001-06:00

Snow in Austin
Originally uploaded by xadrian

It closed down the city!

We had 1/2" of snow on Tuesday and it shut our southern asses down. Farther north in Dallas and surround areas, they had a respectable couple inches, but they're used to that. Amarillo gets some mean storms as well so it's not like Texas is ignorant of snow.

But in Central Texas, we don't get much. I don't even have to take off my shoes to count the number of times Austin has seen snow in the decade I've been here. Even ice storms are infrequent though more likely. There's also this weird atmospheric bubble over Austin and its metro area; we don't get a lot of storms. I know storms are basically a disturbance in the air - cold air falling, warm air rising, dry air mixing with moisture. But it seems the added heat of a metro area further disturbs the storms into nothing and once a line reaches us it's strength has left it. We always seem to get the tail end of the big storms; the last throes, the southern tip of the front, the remaining rainfall from something that opened up a bit out to the west. We're too far inland to worry about gulf weather and too far south to worry about tornadoes. We're in this pocket of stability that's pretty boring meteorologically speaking.

Which is probably why my office shut down after it snowed for 10 minutes. Which is probably why schools and businesses were on a two hour delayed opening even though it was nearly 50 degrees and sunny outside. Which is why I think it's hilarious that despite the actual weather going on outside, the city sends out sanding trucks.

Now I know there's a danger of overpasses icing up, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that at 35° it's not going to happen. Once the snow stops, there's no moisture. Once it starts warming up, there's no ice. Austin panicked like an overprotective parent and a vaguely rug-burned knee. I had a friend tell me he had to shovel 6 inches of show just to get to work.

For those that don't know, I grew up in Colorado and if there's one thing I know about, it's snow. My mom and dad both taught me different lessons on driving and they both taught me that if you can drive in the snow, you can drive anywhere. But their point was also, don't drive in the snow. What happened in Austin yesterday was no where near what I've seen even on the lightest of days in Denver. What happened in Austin was visible rainfall. The streets didn't ice over and by that night even, before the sun had completely set, the "storm" had passed.

The fact that they closed schools the next day was just...well it was kind of fucking retarded.

Sorry Austin, it just was. You won't close the city for SXSW, which has a much larger impact, but a few snowflakes and you send out the sand trucks and shut down schools? This isn't Louisiana where we can get away with shutting down for Mardi Gras, this is fluke snow fall. Go outside, get a couple on your tongue, and get back to what you were doing. It's not radioactive, it's not going to bury anyone in giant drifts. It's softly falling moisture.

I feel as though my city let me down by this. Sorry to anyone else if you heard news of our baby storm. DC had Snowpocolypse, we had Snow Big Deal.

Carry on.

Girl Day

2010-02-22T08:58:00.001-06:00

Bunny Copter
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

This weekend was full of events. First, TG and I got to take in a viewing of Cirque du Soleil - Allegria. It was a great show, do try to go if you get the chance. I was talking to Ms. A about it and she took LMA to see it later in the weekend and we both agreed that it seemed shorter than the previous time we saw it.

It was at the Cedar Park Event Center, home of the AHL Texas Stars. It's a nice, almost cozy venue and there were really no bad seats. Our only complaint was that Community Coffee is one of the sponsors and they don't have a coffee bar. The coffee you get is from any of the concession stands and it's just from a dispenser. Kind of a let down, especially considering CC's posters and banners and such are all over the place. I joked that Austin Community College was a sponsor too, didn't mean I could take a class while I was there.

I tried to study a little on Saturday but that didn't work out. We spent most of the day at the Women in Engineering Program's event Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day or just Girl Day. It was at the UT school of engineering and they had several buildings set up for events designed for girls ages 6 through 12. It was mostly hands on, thought a few were just displays with explanations. Little Miss Austin had a lovely time. As with most events like this, she now wants to be an engineer and build robots. If we take her to a home and garden expo next week she'll want to be a landscaper. I'm pushing hard for math and science and engineering because it involves robots.

That night was a birthday party for TG'm roommate. It was sci-fi themed so I went as Arthur Dent (easy costume) and TG was a certain fanboy dream come true. (Take a guess.) It was fun and graciously not too late.

Sunday Ms. A took LMA to Allegria while G-man and I went to Chuck E. Cheese. He played and I read Ethics. (Yes, I can focus while I'm there, it's really odd.) We all came home and had a nice family dinner of lasagna, some specially made for Ms. LA who had seconds. It was the first time any of us had seen her eat seconds. For those that don't know, if she turned sideways, Ms. LA would disappear. She's about 5'2" and weighs maybe 90lbs soaking wet. It was a small victory for Ms. A to make food she liked so much.

And then we watched Olympics. NBC upset me a little with it's non-coverage of hockey. We record the prime time show and I should have known hockey was going to end up on MSNBC or something. But unless you're a die hard Olympic fan, you're not going to pay real close attention to the schedule and after a week it just got away from us. Subsequently we watched Ice Dancing most of the night until they cut away to 20 seconds left in the 5-3 US victory over Canada. Stupid NBC.

That's all for now. I have a study a lot this week again. My first test in Ethic is Friday. So far in History I have two A's so I'm confident I'll do well.

Carry on.

Ask me!

2010-02-18T11:52:00.000-06:00

I put up a little widget over on the side, it's from formspring.me and it's just a little comment tool in the form of a Q&A. So, if you have questions for me, feel free to ask. I'll try to be entertaining but informative. Witty but factual. There will likely be tens and tens of questions so I would likely be able to get to them all. Ask about anything; the kids, my world, Lego, drawing, science fiction, views on politics, upcoming projects, school.

Even if you want to use it to ask something crass, mean spirited or insulting, I'll do my best to rise to the higher ground and give it an honest answer.

In other news, I got a 90% on my second history test, so that's two A's so far, out of 5 tests and a paper. Haven't taken any Ethics tests yet. We'll see how that goes. I have a feeling I'm going to struggle with those.

PS, a plane just hit a building here in Austin so I'm going to go watch the live news feeds for a while.

2010 So Far

2010-02-09T13:34:00.001-06:00

Middle Fuselage
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

I think this blog has become a cliché. I don't post often and when I do it's usually to write about how I've not been writing enough. I'm frankly a little worried about what to write here. Not because of the reaction I'd receive, but more because it's filler content that is not truly about anything but what's happening in the three foot bubble that surrounds me.

I truly am a creature that lives in the here and now. Much like a dog or infant human who doesn't understand the concept of time or distance. It's part of why I'm really bad with organization; a skill like that requires a view of events to come. I'm mostly concerned with what's happening immediately around me and at this very moment in time. I was joking with someone when I said I live in three day increments, but I wasn't joking by much.

I blame TV (because who doesn't?)

I'm bad with prioritizing and completing projects at work. I'm lousy with long term planning like trips or events. I can't seem to get the hang of doing creative or work related tasks before the last second has arrived. It's not that I procrastinate for that connotes an understanding of when something was needed and my refusal to take action now and willfully put it off.

No, I don't even know it's out there. My subconscious procrastination is so strong that it blinds me to everything but what is immediately important. Thus I am a reactive creature and I wait until something bumps into me. I am a prehistoric single cell organism.

I'm planning a trip to DC in the summer, by which I mean TG is planning and I'm agreeing with everything. But even saving for the trip is foreign to me. I have this architecture in my brain that says it'll be okay if you don't put $50 in a jar right now. It'll be okay if you start saving in May. It'll be okay if you don't buy plane tickets now. I have tests next week and videos to watch and cars to fix, but I can't keep these things forefront in my thoughts. It's as if to do so would mean I'd cease to be me. It would change who I was if I was to constantly walk around with a mental day planner hanging in front of my eyes.

And yet I find time to do this. I find time to watch a cartoon or a movie I've already seen. I find time to sort Lego and build little bits of nothing. I find time to write about TV shows and research them to what end? I don't get paid to do any of that, but I do it.

So that's what I talk to you about. Because the rest of the world around me is currently a little jumbled. Things are happening fast and I'm just trying to keep up. They aren't bad things, they are just things. It's like a multi-person project that sits for a long time in the planning phase and then suddenly you're smack in the middle of acting and doing and there's that feeling of uncertainty where you don't know if you'll end up on the other side the same as you were or better or not at all.

It's hard to describe without using names and events and time lines, but almost nothing stays the same around the house much longer than a day. We keep agreeing on schedules and finances and activities and then making exceptions not hours later. It's like living in a blender in a dryer in a wind tunnel.

The positive news is that I'm taking the bus more and more. It's good for the legs and heart and it's better on my car. I have a bus pass through ACC (which I've already had to replace) and I can only imagine the gas I'm saving. I'm only driving to work two days out of the week now so that's got to be a substantial savings. Plus I can read or do homework or nap. It's nice.

The Saints won the Superbowl. Who dat? No one! We had a few people over and the Cajuns made etouffee and we drank too much. (PS, for those of you who don't know, rice and beer will make you bloat like Violet from Willy Wonka, don't say I didn't warn you.) We missed the forth quarter however. The downfall of technology is our reliance upon it. We paused it at the start of the forth quarter, it was 17-16 Colts. We were waiting for a friend to get off work. She arrives, LMA hands me the remote, we juggle it and it lands between me and the couch and it changes the channel. I quickly change it back to find there's 90 seconds left in the game and it's 31-17 Saints. We were crushed we couldn't see it and oddly only mildly happy the Saints won.

I couldn't have recorded it? Yes I tried not making LMA cry, it wasn't her fault...entirely.

Alright, I should go do some work. Carry on.

Hey there!

2010-01-26T17:00:00.000-06:00

Nothing really new to say.

(Big F-in lie.)

But, in my defense, I have been busy.

Did you hear the Saints are going to the Superbowl?

California Hotel

2010-01-14T14:47:00.000-06:00

I was listening to Hotel California the other day and trying to sing along. I say trying because I get the phrases mixed up all the time. Then it hit me, I get the phrases mixed up because they are modular and interchangeable. To test the theory, I switched the lyrics in as a symmetrical way as possible. If the first line, first stanzy is two parts, part one being, "On a dark desert highway" and part two being "cool wind in my hair" then you should be able to mix it with the first line of the last stanza. I took no liberties with words to make it work better, the idea being someone with sound editing powers could remix the song later. I did nothing really with the chorus other than swapping the last lines. Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but I'll wager it makes as much sense as the original.

So here it is, "California Hotel."

On a dark desert highway I was running for the door.
Warm smell of colitas to the place I was before.
Up ahead in the distance we are programmed to receive.
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim, but you can never leave.

There she stood in the door way, pink champagne on ice.
And I was thinking to myself, "Of our own device."
Then she lit a candle and they gathered for the feast.
There were voices down the corrider but they just can't kill the beast.

Welcome to the hotel california
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the hotel california
What a nice surprise, bring your alibis

Her mind is tiffany-twisted, please bring me my wine.
She got a lot of pretty pretty boys since nineteen sixty nine.
How they dance in the courtyard from far away,
Some dance to remember just to hear them say.

So I called up the captain, she got the mercedes bends
He said, we haven't had that spirit here, that she calls friends.
And still those voices are calling, sweet summer sweat.
Wake you up in the middle of the night, some dance to forget.

Welcome to the hotel california
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
They livin? it up at the hotel california
Any time of year, you can find it here

Mirrors on the ceiling, I heard the mission bell.
And she said, "We are all just prisoners here, this could be heaven or this could be hell."
And in the master's chambers, she showed me the way.
They stab it with their steely knives, I thought I heard them say...

Last thing I remember, cool wind in my hair.
I had to find the passage back rising up through the air.
"Relax," said the night man, I saw a shimmering light.
You can checkout any time you like. I had to stop for the night.

Goodbye Tennant

2010-01-04T09:41:00.001-06:00

This weekend saw the passing of somewhat of an icon in television. David Tennant spent three seasons playing one of, if not the most recognizable television character in the world; the Doctor. Say what you want about Jack Bauer or Jack Shephard or Jack Tripper (needed a third Jack,) the Doctor has been around longer and enjoys a world wide audience. I'm not saying we Yanks can't appreciate a good show, but it's another one of those soccer/football things. (Yes, the World Series of baseball, where America plays...America.)

Tennant played the 10th Doctor. Beginning in 1963, Doctor Who was able to get around the problem of contracts and aging actors by transforming the character. He's an alien, after all. The writers created a way that he could regenerate himself, thereby continuing the story. To date there have been eleven Doctors and eleven actors have played them. All but two have had an on screen transformation. The 1996 movie featured Paul McGann as the 8th doctor and then nothing until 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the 9th. We saw Sylvester McCoy (7th) turn into McGann so we know the movie to TV cross over is canon. We just didn't see 8 become 9.

Eccleston's run was short lived, only one season. I was so taken by his run, having been a childhood fan of Doctor Who, that when he regenerated after one season, I was already predisposed into disliking David Tennant. It's natural, you don't like change, but it's a part of life. I wanted to be excited about seeing another Doctor, but I just liked Eccleston's moody, manic, jolly and action oriented Doctor so much that I was worried a new one would be back to the same old goofy, hackneyed Doctors of yore.

But Tennant proved me wrong. He was every bit as dark and emotional as Eccleston and while his Doctor was seemingly smarter, maybe even nerdier, he was also not without his mysterious past which he rarely shared. For four years, Tennant touched a great many lives as the Doctor, especially his companions. Rose was always the 9th's companion and she left after one season with Tennant. We also spent time with Mickey, Captain Jack, Sarah Jane, Martha Jones and Donna Noble. Oh, Donna. I dismissed her at first like I did Tennant but she grew so much as a character on the show that by her final episode I was distraught at the knowledge that she would be leaving. Many fans responded that her story wasn't finished, but the show runners disagreed, leaving her last part to play at the very end of Tennant's run a small and insignificant role overshadowed by her own father.

Which leads me to the Doctor's final days on Earth. I think in previous episodes, it was assumed that the Doctor, while not immortal, was at least a long lived fellow. By the end of "The End of Time" he says he's 903 years old. Fans of the show in previous decades must have known he was able to regenerate himself, but I wasn't privy to the media blitz (if any) surrounding the replacement actors. I don't know if there was knowledge before hand that Baker would be replaced by Davison and when. I have a rose-colored vision of fans being completely blind sided by the transitions; a death to their beloved Doctor only to be reminded that he can rub some dirt on it, walk it off and keep on truckin'.

But what happened with Tennant was sad, and I mean that in the literal way not in the "man, that was lame" way. It was morbid and depressing. It was like watching someone die. Doctor Who stopped regular series production in 2008, this after Tennant announced he was leaving the show. 2009 saw only four specials, the last of which would see the 11th Doctor, played by Matt Smith. This meant for a whole year, we knew Tennant was gone and we only had four shows to mourn his eventual loss. We weren't sideswiped by it. We weren't surprised. We were told again and again that he was leaving and we had only a couple episodes in which to celebrate how much we loved him. It made the last 15 minutes of "The End of Time" pretty horrible to watch.

First off, he goes back to all his old major companions to say goodbye or his version of it. He saves Martha and Mickey from being shot by a Sontaran. He saves Luke Smith who tells Sarah Jane. He gives a note to Captain Jack that the man about to sit next to him at a bar is named Alonso. He gives Donna's family (at her wedding) a winning lottery ticket. He sees Rose in 2005 and says she's going to have a great year. Then he goes back to his TARDIS, fires it up, begins glowing a little and finally says, "I don't want to go."

A flash of yellow energy, a change in features, a bit of goofiness and a "Geronimo!" and we now have our 11th doctor. I didn't want him to go either, but doing it this way made it hurt. I blame Russel T. Davies.

And who knows, Matt Smith may be the best Doctor of all time. He may be so witty and charming that inside of six episodes we'll have forgotten Tennant entirely. I'm hopeful, but I doubt it. Tennant will always be my Doctor. It was Baker at first because he was the first one I watched, and had the show never revived I would have stuck with that. But Tennant's run became, to me, a great example of what the show is and I hope Smith and Moffit take over and run with it as fast as they can. Moffit's credited episodes were some of the best the show had. I hope the two of them continue to make me want to watch.

Allons-y!

Happy Holidays

2009-12-18T11:25:00.002-06:00

Holiday Card 2009
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

This has been an interesting year for the BGF. We've made new friends, discovered new loves and participated in a lot of life changing events. I have to say this was a pretty good year for me. It was rough and emotionally challenging and promises to end in a fist fight or a trip to the ER, but I'm quite happy with this year.

A lot happened in 2009. Remember Obama? Yeah, his presidency started in 2009. It seems longer doesn't it? We lost a lot of people in 2009; some famous and some I'd not heard about until doing a search. The US went into then came out of a recession. Swine Flu reared it's sickly head. Climate change became a big political topic. And the world was rocked by tsunamis and earthquakes.

Locally, two people in our house became roller derby girls. Both Ms. A and LMA started skating over the summer. Mom got into TXRD and daughter skated for Derby Brats. Both of them love the sport and will continue to pursue it in 2010.

Ms A. and Miss LA got engaged.

All of the adults went back to school as well. Ms. A started in Fall of 2009 by going to ACC. Miss LA and I will be starting in Spring of 2010. I'm going for a degree in Art and Miss LA is going for a medical technician degree. Ms. A is studying to be a social worker. I didn't draw or build as much in 2009, but I wrote a lot and watched a lot of TV. I quit smoking and started running.

G-man started kindergarten in the fall. So far he loves it and his teacher is a wonderful lady who loves all the kids and has a great time teaching. He's made new friends but still plays a lot with his sister (when she lets him, that is.) LMA did Destination Imagination AND Math Pentathlon. She started 3rd grade in the fall and continues to get high marks in school.

This last year has given us a lot of opportunities to change and for the most part we took them. 2010 promises more change and more adventure and I hope we're all up to the task.

So Yule 2009 will have special significance. While Ms. A and Miss LA's plans to have a commitment ceremony have fallen through, there will no doubt be a lot of merry-making around our house. We'll awake on the 22nd to see what Santa has brought, share a nice breakfast, play with our new toys and then likely try to take naps. (The adults.) I'm sure the kids will be high on new toy smell for at least a week. We'll then likely spend the 25th finding an open restaurant in which to have dinner, as is our tradition.

Something struck me in this past week. Twice actually. The first was from a few comments made on this site (which I sadly had to delete) and the other from a holiday parade we attended last weekend. People believe Santa Claus has something to do with the real Christmas.

And by "people" I mean Christians. And by "something to do with" I mean "was at the nativity." A parade float we saw actually had a Santa kneeling in prayer in front of The Manger. The comment left on this site was, "If you guys don't believe in Christmas, why do you have so many pictures with Santa Claus?"

I'd like to address this because I do it every year, but it bears repeating: Christmas is a Pagan holiday.

Ok, technically "Christmas" is Christ Mass and yes it celebrates the birth of Jesus which happened some time in June. And yes it was taken by the Romans to go along with the Germanic mid winter festivals when they went steaming through Europe and needed to appease everyone. Just think about it for a second, were there any pine trees in Nazareth? Snow even? Elves? Were any of the gifts left in stockings above the sheep and mules and oxen? The the wise men come in on a sleigh?

No. No, not really, no.

Santa Claus is Odin. He's a different spirit from a different realm than Christendom altogether. In fact, some Christians believe that Santa is a hurtful lie perpetuated by commercial interests in the United States and some European countries. It removes the true meaning of Christmas from the holiday and teaches children to believe in a false idol.

To say a Pagan, then, can't believe in Santa is ludicrous. Santa was a Pagan god first, a Christian co-opt second. To say Santa is some how tied to the story of the birth of Jesus or his teachings is akin to saying George Washington was a great Civil War general or that da Vinci was the first man in space. It's just not true.

But, here's the kicker. You don't have to be of any faith to believe in Santa Claus. Just like you don't have to be of any faith to believe in snow or mistletoe or bells or ribbons or wassail or gift giving. Just because it's not technically right doesn't make it morally wrong. I believe what I want to and so do you, dear reader. If I want to believe that a giant bell goes from house to house delivering candy on Easter, the Christian thing to do would be to let me believe it, not give me reasons why I'm going to hell because of it.

My choice to believe in what I believe is inherent with being a sentient human being. My appreciating others' beliefs and letting them do as they will is inherent with being a compassionate human being. If I were to think less of someone because they don't believe what I believe, it turns out, that's inherent with being a Christian.

Happy Yule everyone.

(PS, I didn't intentionally turn commenting off, but Haloscan is moving to a pay only service so I'm trying to enable Blogger commenting. I'll try to make sure it works.)

Wikis, Lego and Running

2009-12-02T10:31:00.001-06:00

First of all, I hate wikis. I hate giant public wikis that are run by 5 guys with Napoleon complexes. I hate the fact that they are useful. I hate that I try every once a year or so to be involved in one or more only to have my additions or changes reverted back because of someone's concept of quality or notability. No matter how big they are, they always ask to make the page better by editing it. So I do, and then it gets changed back. And frankly, I don't want to invest that much time. So, have fun Alpha Geeks. I'm sure your noble contributions will not go unseen by the great Eye of Time or whatever awaits you.

Next up, Lego! I have a new project, which actually lead me down the wiki path. Star Wars: The Clone Wars, while actually quite good, has also been an inspiration for Star Wars ship building. I haven't taken advantage of this because I've been organizing and sorting and I can't build and sort simultaneously for two reasons: First, I get panicky. I'm not a hoarder or OCD about sorting papers or pens or canned vegetables, but for some reason Lego all has to be in its place. LMA and G-man both have their own sets and as children they are, to their rights, constantly losing pieces and scattering bricks hither and yon. I think they do this to watch my eyes twitch. Reason two, I have a limited space and can't have a giant thing of unsorted bricks hanging out on my drawing table AND build on it at the same time. Not to mention if I've got drawing to do (which I don't, order a robot people!) as that would require the same flat surface.

The drawing I can get away with doing elsewhere, but I doubt I'd get the same amiable response to a giant box of Lego. On top of being underfoot and a nemesis to vacuums, Lego is really loud when you're pushing it around in a box while looking for that one piece. Hence the sorting.

So I'm building a T-6 ambassador shuttle. I was going to build a little snow planet speeder seen last season but I got distracted. Now they actually have a set for it and I must say it's a little weak. But this is on the heels of the SERIOUSLY weak Republic Y-Wing set. I say weak because I did the same thing to a much better scale, in my opinion. The problem I have with minifig scale items from Lego is that they are generally more playable, but they don't line up really well with actual scale. For instance, the image of the shuttle here looks to be a fairly monsterous size, were it to be built out to actual size. The cockpit seats four and there's room to walk around behind the cockpit seating. I drew it out based off screenshots from the TV show, and I took my minifig to human scale of 1 in. to 1 meter and the ship turned out to have a 30" wingspan. To give you an idea of what that looks like, when I built the Nebulon Ranger last year, that had roughly a 30" wingspan and that thing was a beast.

(I realize the descrepancy between a minifig being 1" and a human being ~1.5m, but for sake of building, 1:1 is easier. Also, minifigs tend to be shorter and fatter so that changes much of the perspective. For more on this, read here.)

So I'll be spending my next few non-drawing months building that. I don't know why I take on these big projects. I don't have the right supply of bricks for big ships and yet I do them anyway. Which reminds me, the holiday season is coming up. If you really want to be an awesome reader, you can order and ship me some Lego sets, I don't care what they are or how big or small. In fact, if you did that, I'd draw you whatever you wanted. Say you sent something like this, that's worth, to me, two 8x10 robot portraits. But I mean we could totally work out something else. Pencil, ink, watercolor, photoshop graphics, posters, whatever. I think I might start a new business model. Get paid in Lego. Hmm.

Meanwhile I've started running again. I get horrible shin splints and I'm pretty sure the crunching sound in my knee is a bad sign, but I'm 210lbs at 5'8" and that's just not healthy. When your kids say things like "Well, at least your not fat like daddy..." you know it's time for a change. I stopped smoking a while back (or as my Grandma Vi would say, "I choose not to smoke now") no reason I couldn't drop a few pounds. Plus it'll help when I play basketball.

So far it's no bad. I can run in the gym at work and watch Daily Show repeats and the time just flies by. I'm no fool, though. I run/walk a mile so far and that's about my limit. I'll just slowly build up until I can actually run the whole mile and move on from there. Even if I don't lose much weight, it beats doing nothing.

Thanksgiving was a blast, had a fantastic time with the folks that were at our house. It's like a new little family that we've adopted. If you've been watching Ms. A's and my Flickr pages, you'd have seen most of these people. It was wonderful to have a full house, beer, food, music and laughter.

Miss LA and Tiger Lily were in Louisiana for Thanksgiving so we had to do without the cajuns, but it was a good time none-the-less.

Speaking of Louisiana, guess where I'm going for Christmas? That's right. I'll be taking a drive to Abbeville to hang out with Tiger Lily's family. Last year she went and I stayed and it was a long sad three weeks. We were a newly minted couple but it was still hard to be apart in that tentative and formative time. We text like crazy so were at least in communication with each other. I know my parents will be upset by this seeing as I said I wouldn't be able to make it up to Colorado for either holiday. To be honest, it's a sight easier to drive alone for six hours than it is to fly with two kids. Think about it, come the 23rd or 24th or whenever I leave, I get up, grab my bag and go. I stop for gas, maybe a donut and coffee and I'm gone. And I'm a guy so I don't have to stop and pee for three weeks. (Tried it once, true statement.) If I went with the kids, it's getting up two hours before you have to leave for the airport, then you have to get to the airport and hour before your flight, then the flight is two hours, then getting out of the airport is another 45-60 minutes. So, let's plan for maybe early in 2010. I want to go to DC next year too so we'll have to see.

Finally my car needs to go to the hospital. It's getting sick. It didn't pass inspection and will likely need the following: transmission flush, head gasket, O2 sensor, shocks, breaks, belts. Time for a new car? Probably, I've already pulled my free credit reports to see what I can clean up before buying a new one. And it's time for a new one. I've had this car for 8 years and the exact same model for two years before that. I want a nice, fuel efficient sedan with an mp3 jack and cup holders that don't sit in front of the vents. I'm leaning toward a VW Jetta or maybe a Kia Forte. We'll see. (I'd also like a 47" Vizio LCD but that's just me being selfish.)

Off to do X-mas cards. Carry on.

Fall Update

2009-11-18T15:37:00.000-06:00

Well hello! Fancy seeing you all here.

I wish I could say there was some ground breaking news from the BGF House, but there just isn't. A visit to Four Pines at Rollman Manor would result in any number of friends hanging out, studying, working, singing, making food, playing with children or dogs, watching TV or drinking beer.

Just like everyone else.

There have been high points and low points. The low points are of the "We don't talk about it in public" type of things, so don't expect to hear about anything calamitously juicy or worthy of repost on a gossipy site somewhere. (And yes, I fully expect that. My fans are rabid and uncouth and would push their mom in front of a speeding 18-wheeler if it meant a retweetable twitpic. Some of you may have to look that up.)

On to the more high of the points then.

Lil Miss Austin is truly enjoying Derby Brats. She has a scrimmage coming up and I'm excited to attend. Her group ranges in age from 8-18 so it can be a little unfair to the little girls, but they break them up. Among the littler of the skaters, she's one of if not the fastest. She goes to practice twice a week and still has time to complete all her third grade homework.

However, she has been tired lately. We worried she was not getting enough sleep, but knew she was getting 10 hours. Eventually a visit to the doctor confirmed she had mono and so she's been at home recuperating for the last two days. It's been a little stressful for her as she really doesn't like doctors.

Nothing new with G-man, though he is doing fine in kindergarten. He has taken to reading more and more. He's able to put letters and sounds together to actually form the words. He's moved away from knowing what the words in books are because he's memorized them, to actively breaking them down and reading them. It's quite exciting to see his brain working. And he's a Rollman so you can tell his brain is working because his mouth is opening and closing like a fish desperate for water.

The BGF as a whole is a little larger as well. As you may have been able to tell from the photos on Flickr, the house is a bee-hive, though not the dying of indeterminate fungus type of bee-hive. The ladies have friends who visit at least once a week if not more. Everyone's social lives seem to have been turned up a few degrees and the house just never seems empty. I personally enjoy that and I think if I were by myself for too long without kids or company or friends I'd probably become depressed. We've adopted a derby girl and her daughter as near permanent fixtures in our lives as well. Also, Ms. A's mom's dog (which I've loving dubbed Jerk Dog) continues to pee and poop his way into our hearts. (Don't tell anyone, but it's me who leaves the doors open and then feigning shock when he has run off again.) (Not really.)

The past couple weeks my time's been consumed with design projects of small and helpful kinds, some robots and a LOT of review writing for TVZ. We recently switched our cable and internet from Suddenlink to AT&T U-Verse. DVR, HD Channels, faster internet connection AND a home phone and we're staving about $20 a month. So my TV viewing hasn't stopped. In fact, at one point I was reviewing five shows for TVZ. Don't ask where or why I found the time. Luckily one show was canceled and the other was picked up by Tiger Lily so I'm down to three.

As to the new cable, like most things AV, the equipment and knowledge I have surrounding the available technology is lacking. Our surround sound system and TV are about six years old and probably about two years old when we bought them. They are scratched and don't exactly work right. I don't have the time to muck with repairing or replacing the receiver or getting a new system so that center channel will just have to be out. The downside of that is you can't hear anyone. But U-Verse fits our needs so far. I have a TV in my room that's also hooked up, which means I can watch all my shows in my room without upsetting the non-geeks. It also means I'm watching sci-fi shows in my room surrounded by Lego. I own my geek-ness, I have no shame!

I've officially registered for classes at Austin Community College. Now I have to officially see if the government will pay for it. I have my financial aid paperwork done, but I may already have too many credits to qualify.

The holidays are coming up and all our plans are still unmade. We have general ideas about them and I can say that we'll all generally be at our house or somewhere in Louisiana. As much as I'd like to see my family in CO, it's just too much this time. I've said that the last five years I think, it's starting to sound dick-ish.

So overall, no complaints. Life is decent. Carry on.

Well, Hell.

2009-11-18T14:22:00.001-06:00

I was going to write a post today, but Blogger is either having problems or I'm having problems with Blogger.

Nothing really major going on, but I thought a couple weeks was too long to let the site go by without some attention. I'll have something up as soon as the editor is fixed.

Review: V 1.1 - "Pilot"

2009-11-04T10:32:00.007-06:00

(for more news, reviews and discussion, visit www.televisionzombies.com)

Quoting an online friend, "It moved so fast I felt like I fell asleep and missed huge chunks of it. And then it was suddenly the season finale."

(Review contains spoilers, if you don't want to be spoiled, never saw the original series, don't expect the aliens to end up being villainous lizard people, please don't read on.)

Originally aired in 1983, V was a two part miniseries running on NBC. It was followed by a sequel mini series in 1984 and then a regular series that ran for 19 episodes until 1985. This reimaging (which has been the catch phrase of remakes since BS:G) focuses on the same principle plot points: Aliens from another world visit Earth under the guise of peace and cooperation. Their cover story is they have no home and need resources which are abundant on Earth and once they are replenished they will leave. We come to find out that they are not what they say and a resistance forms to drive the aliens away.

ABC hyped the coolness right off this show. When it first started putting out ads for it, it was exciting, but you couldn't go a single commercial break without seeing Scott Wolf say, "Excuse me?" When it finally aired, my first comment was, "Really? It's only an hour?" To which a friend responded, "Hey, you don't mess with my Dancing with the Stars."

Truth.

I watched this on my DVR after waiting the traditional 20 minutes in respect for the TV gods and so I could fast forward through the commercials. However, between the DVR skipping and jumping to different spots (well done Suddenlink) and the kids needing to be fed and bathed, I had to watch it in starts and stops. At one point I had to let the recording finish and start over. My reaction, then, was unsettled. Whether or not I gave the show enough of a chance at this point is academic.

Without further ado, meet our story lines.

Erica Evans (Elizabeth "Lost's Juliet" Mitchell) is an FBI Agent (of course) who is investigating terrorist cells with her partner Dale Maddox (Alan "I make everything I'm in a little better" Tudyk.) Erica has a teenage son Tyler and he has a best friend Brandon. They're in a clinic after being in a fight.

Chad Decker (Scott "Party of Five" Wolf) is a news anchor who really wants to be a reporter but the network won't give him a shot. When the Visitors arrive, he makes a joke and suddenly becomes the news liaison to the Visitors.

Ryan Nichols (Morris "Yes this is my name" Chestnut) plays a banker or clerk (his abc.com bio says "business man") who is buying a ring and getting ready to propose to his girlfriend Valerie Holt (Lourdes "24" "NYPD Blue" Benedicto.) He's being hounded by an old acquaintance, Georgie Sutton, who wants him to come back to the operation. Ryan tells him to shove off.

Father Jack Landry (Joel "The 4400" Gretsch) and his mentor (I don't know how priest hierarchies work) Father Travis are arguing over the fact that no one comes into church any more.

And along come the visitors.

Anna (Morena "Firefly" Baccarin) is the leader of the Visitors. They arrive on their giant space crafts which they stole from the Independence Day aliens and hover over several dozen major metropolitan cities. Why is it aliens love to hover over major cities? Wouldn't you want to land somewhere or stay in orbit and send down smaller craft? It seems like a perfect way to scare people and waste a lot of fuel. Yes, they've perfected the technology behind gravity manipulation, but it still seems a bit showy.

Anna calms the people by saying, "We mean you no harm. We are of peace. Always." The once panicked humanity actually applauds the giant jumbotron screen in the sky. Anna gets Chad Decker to do an interview but doesn't want any negative questions. The Visitors were once like humans in their emotions but have since learned to control it and realize that negative emotions are wasteful.

Meanwhile, Agents Evans and Maddox are investigating a terrorist cell. They noticed a certain group's activity increased after the Visitors arrived, rather than decreased like all the others. They go to track some leads but are one step behind at each turn. Finally a clue leads them to a resistance meeting led by Georgie Sutton. Erica and Father Jack are both there and suddenly a floating shrapnel bomb explodes and kills several people. The hideout is then raided by people wielding bladed weapons. They start tearing down resistance members. Erica is attacked by her partner and when she hits him with a metal bar, she sees reptile skin under his human skin.

Erica's son Tyler is smitten with a recruiting hottie named Lisa (Laura "Smallville" Vendervoort) and forges his mom's signature so he can be part of the Visitor Youth something or other. As his mom and Father Jack are escaping with their lives, he's accepting a toast at the first meeting of the Visitor Community Awareness shindig.

Oh, also? Ryan is a visitor and helps Georgie escape. He's a traitor. The visitors have been here for decades. This "arrival" is just the last phase of their plan to take over the world.

I have to go back to the quote at the beginning of this post. I rewound several parts of this first episode because I missed something truly integral to the rest of the show. I mean, if you blinked you missed the whole reason Agents Evans and Maddox were investigating an underground storage area. You missed Georgie's speech about who the Visitors really were. You missed the recruitment pitch by Lisa and the interview post mortem by Chad and Anna's first in command Marcus. It was a breakneck pace and at the same time it moved too fast for me to appreciate what was going on.

The comparison I have to V is to the recent film District 9 in which an alien race becomes stranded over South Africa and are forced to leave their ship and live on Earth in a refugee camp. At the beginning of the movie, we are told the entire back story in news clippings and interviews and it takes about 15 minutes. Comparatively, in Independence Day the entire invasion takes place over just a couple days but also spans the full movie until they are fought off right at the end. V took this unsure middle ground where the ships show up in the first couple minutes, but then we spend the rest of the time in an unsure time machine. The only part that gave any indication of how much time had past was half way through when we see the caption "Three Weeks Later" but by that time I was already confused as it seemed much more time had past or none at all.

This treatment could have been given a better chance had it run two hours. I'm not saying that because I think Dancing With The Stars is a waste of my time, but because it was hard keeping up with everyone. You have 40 minutes to introduce four different plots, 8 major and several minor characters AND an alien invasion, something's going to get lost. And in this case it was the identification I had with anyone. What also suffered was the writing. Because we only get a few short moments with each character, their lines have to be jam packed with emotion, meaning and clues. We don't get the film approach to dialog that can be drawn out to explore the full range of an actor's abilities; we get sound bites that are awkward and stiff. Even Mitchell, who is great in Lost had some lines that were just flat. Alan Tudyk was only mildly interesting. The rest of the cast was fairly boring.

I will make an exception for Georgie, played by David Richmond-Peck. He had the typical task of being the Resistance leader and in doing so had to deliver conspiracy and paranoia in a limited space, but I feel he did a bang up job. His revulsion but ultimate need to remain close to Ryan was painted skillfully on his face and the indoctrination scene with Erica could not have been handled better.

There was a lot that didn't make sense in the show. Early on when the alien ship first arrived, the army was already in place to section people off in some random order, but right out in the middle of the streets of New York. There was no reason given and there was no obvious need to do so. Erica and Tyler were a family without a husband and dad and yet despite the arrival of another life form, they can't work out their mistrust. Also, despite the arrival of aliens, Agent Evans continues to work on terrorist threats. Little things like that make me pull my hair out. I don't know about you, but if an alien ship started floating over Austin and Morena Baccarin came out, I think I might quit my job and go wait around by that ship.

This series is going to be set up as a constant fight between the Resistance and the Visitors. It can't go forever and one side will have to win. But they crammed the entire fight into one episode and now instead of any meaningful discovery, all we have left is the fight and I'm not sure I can deal with 17 episodes of rebellion.

Three out of five Anna heads.

Review: Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol

2009-11-03T08:10:00.003-06:00

Man, it's another The Polar Express and Monster House with those creepy zombie eyed people with the CG mouths that are close but just not quite past the uncanny valley. Plus, aw hell, it's got Jim Carrey in it. This is going to be awful. It's in 3D too? Yeah, it's going to be horrible. I still haven't forgiven Zemeckis for Contact.

These are all the things we said going into the theater. I was cautiously optimistic. The trailers looked promising, but I really hated The Polar Express and I was worried this was going to be another single actor ham fest with unsettlingly real yet not real animation. But it was a free screening at IMAX and it was 3D so why not, right? Halloween is officially over, I can see a Christmas movie.

I'll cut right to it. While I was not blown away, I was really impressed. A Christmas Carol is as charming, spooky, funny, scary, and emotionally charged as I've ever seen it. Up until now my favorite renditions were Patrick Stewart's one man theatrical performance and Scrooged starring Bill Murray. This would rank among my favorite versions of Dickens' classic tale.

The film is done in what's called "performance capture." I've never heard the term until today, but I know what it entails. Unlike movies that create the characters with the computer, performance capture sets a skin over the recorded movements of real actors. It's modern day rotoscoping and while it produces very believable movement in what is obviously a computer animated world, it also creates some barriers.

The first barrier being what I already mentioned, the uncanny valley. The hypothesis of this is basically that the closer robots look and act to humans they reach a point where our emotional response becomes negative and they begin to scare and revolt us. Nothing in robotics is quite human enough to over come this, though some people say there are puppets that can be made to act near human without being creepy. (To me "puppet" and "creepy" can be synonymous.) This carries over into the digital actor world when the technology to capture lifelike movements and reactions and emotions begin to dip way down into this valley and start to unnerve the viewers. Regardless of how lifelike the animation is, people will (so far) be adverse to it. The Polar Express (a Zemeckis movie) was one of these. The people moved like people, but the eyes were wrong, the mouths were off. They seemed like dolls or zombies. There wasn't a spark behind the stares and the smiles were heinous grimaces doing not much more than baring oddly gapped teeth.

Carol is able to get past that for the most part. I won't lie and say it's perfect, but the main characters are without the vacant quality Express had. The side characters and street people still showed signs of this and likely only because they didn't have the man hours at the computer to bring them to as much life as Scrooge, Cratchit and the spirits.

The second barrier is one that may not be avoidable with this type of animation. The designers and directors work so hard on making Victorian London believable and real that they designed themselves right out of some of the more fantastical abilities inherent to computer animation. There's not much in the way of lightsabers or heavy blasters or ancient goddesses in A Christmas Carol but there is a whimsical aspect to the spirits and the times they show Ebenezer. In one part of his past, a dance is held and his old boss, Mr. Fezziwig, and his wife cavort and careen around the makeshift dance hall in odd, jerky movements. Their jumps linger, purposefully, too long and at one point Mrs. Fezziwig pirouettes herself into the air like a helicopter. Now, it's one thing when the candle-head spirit of Christmas Past takes Scrooge on a hair raising flight through snow covered fields, but when real people suddenly move like fairies, it can make you suddenly feel again like you're watching something that's not quite right.

However, all in all the animation is top quality and the design altogether was remarkable. We walk through Ebenezer's home in the evening and true to form in late 1800's London, there's no electricity or central heating. His large house is cold and dark and at times the only light is his small candle and the only sound is his breathing and the creek of stairs. The character's breath seen in the cold is just the right visibility. The clothing drapes and moves realistically and without the stretching skin quality seen in early and dodgy CG attempts.

The spirits (all voiced by Carrey) were true to the original story and completely brought to life. Everyone who went to the showing came away with a favorite and each specter (including the last) had qualities than made them enjoyable to watch on screen but also of which to be afraid. They were frightful in the way they were intended to be, not because of an emotional attachment to their animation. They were well executed if not, at times, a little gratuitous.

And finally Jim Carrey's performance was quality. This was like watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or even Ace Ventura: Pet Detective again. It was nice remembering that despite some of the crap work Carrey has done (and let's face it, most actors do crap work from time to time) his Scrooge was a wholly enjoyable and well put together performance. Despite some of the trademarks of performance capture (that animates the characters to look like the actors) Scrooge was superb and almost never did I think "That's Jim Carrey doing that." Later in the film as Scrooge becomes more light-hearted, you can see Carrey's face in Scrooge and it does pull you out a little. Up until then the hawk nose and plow chin Scrooge was his own man and not one driven by a comedic actor.

The other actors were obvious and for the most part it did not hurt the story to have them so any more than if it were a live action telling, which in the end is the highest praise a movie like this can earn.

If you have little ones, this is not the movie for you. Rent the Muppet version and be done with it. Zemeckis's version is every bit as creepy and at some points down right frightening as the original could be.

God bless us, every one.

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic

2009-10-21T08:32:00.004-05:00

A facebook contact joked, "How awful it must be to be blind and dyslexic at the same time."

So, without giving up my day job and completely divesting what little time into auditions, workshops and low paying entry gigs into the world of voice acting, I've instead decided to volunteer to read for the blind.

Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic is a non profit, nation wide organization dedicated to making written material available to the visually impaired and cognitively challenged. It started over sixty years ago when a woman named Anne T. Macdonald began reading to veterans of WWII who had returned without their sight, having lost it do to injury or illness while in the service. It eventually became more than the New York Library's Women's Auxiliary could do alone and soon it became a nation wide organization.

I drive by the school of the blind often enough to see the sign for the studios (there's also a state run organization) and I hear about volunteer opportunities on the local NPR affiliate KUT quite a bit. I decided to go.

This is going to be rad.

Coming from a theater background, I have a bit of an ego-centrism issue; I like hearing the sound of my own voice. It's probably more than just wanting to talk, I actually like reading aloud. For a while I'd read to Ms. A so she could go to sleep. I'm sure it was a combination of someone's voice and the science fiction or science material that put her out, but I enjoyed it and would read till I went hoarse. I love reading to the kids and if I didn't have this, I might have tried to get in on the story time events book stores do (except those are always on a Wednesday at like 9am.)

The added benefit is the material I'd be reading is all educational. There are requests for fiction, but for the most part the RFBD focuses on text books. It's their mission to provide educational materials, so there will be a lot of reading of history, chemistry, sociology and a lot of foreign language. Sitting in with a couple people last night, I listened to a recap of most of the political events of the late 1960's.

The studio on 45th and Burnet is quite nice too. It's small and cozy with 7 or so recording booths, some offices and a lot of reference and training material. I've only gone in twice, but the staff is very friendly and the two volunteers I worked with last night were equally as amicable.

I'm really excited.

This is also the time where I say that if you're looking to volunteer, RFBD is always looking for more volunteers. If you can't but know someone who might like it, tell them about it.

Carry on.

Houston

2009-10-13T14:30:00.002-05:00

Weee!
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Last weekend we visited my cousin in Houston. The trip was timed with my mom and aunt's visit so we could all spend the weekend. Technically I wanted to leave early Friday but a problem at work kept me there till late which means we got to Houston (or the Cy-Fair area of North West Houston) by 9pm.

Also, it was a short trip because we had originally planned to go to the TXRD championship bout on Saturday night, but we ended up not being able to get tickets in time and the prevalent thinking is that the kids don't do well at bouts so we skipped it. Tiger Lilly came along and got to meet a small fraction of my family.

By the way, Ms. A is officially a Texas Roller Derby skater. Her skate name is Fishnet Stalker. She'd gone through a few names but ended up choosing this one because it more accurately reflected her propensity to stalk people online and off. I warned her people might call her Fishy but she was ok with that.

School is going ok for the kids. They missed a chunk with the flu but LMA's grades are all A's thus far this semester. As far as we've heard, she hasn't beaten anyone down recently. Maybe derby brats is teaching her something or just giving her an outlet. She still a few weeks left of this season and I can perfectly envision her picking it up again. She genuinely seems to enjoy it despite the requirement that you have to practice.

I've been trying to do more drawing and actually do something with all those interlocking piece of plastic hanging around my room, but work has been really busy and lately when I'm home I'm either working more, doing some chores or sleeping. I've got four shows to write for at TVZ and half the time I don't have time to watch them.

I was able to record and watch the the Discovery Channel's "Discovering Ardi" which was terribly exciting. If you don't know anything about evolution or human paleontology, you may at least know about Lucy. Lucy was the, up until about 1992, the oldest known skeleton (or partial skeleton) scientists have discovered. Australopithecus afarensis, a 3.2 million year old species, Lucy was thought to have been somewhat of a missing link back in the 1970's. It was an upright walking ape, but was more human than monkey. Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus) predates Lucy by more than a million years, to roughly 4.2 million years ago. Ardi was another hominid but with some striking features. Foremost was that of a grasping foot.

Whatever your beliefs are, you have to admit that finding a hominid skeleton that walked upright but had a grasping foot is pretty cool. There's really no comparison in the animal world. The find makes Lucy look positively Cro-Magnon. Scientists were able to determine that not only was A. ramidus bipedal, but also that they were changing in terms of social and sexual traits as well. They were still instinctual, but the instincts were becoming refined.

Anyway, Tiger Lilly and I watched the show on Sunday, absolutely fascinated. We're nerdy like that. Miss LA continues to be sick but was able get someone to fill in for her at work and get some much needed rest. Ms. A is still going to class though she missed a few days when she and the kids were sick. Life still rolls on here.

Carry on.

H1N1

2009-10-05T10:12:00.001-05:00

H1N1
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Aside from the threat of pandemic, this weekend was quite lovely.

First thing's first: Yes, little G-man got sick on Saturday. My dad came to visit the grandkids for the weekend but all outdoor festivities and external or traveling plans were squashed by a combination of rain and illness. But it wasn't all gloom and iron-lungs at the BGF. We still had plenty of fun.

Lil' Miss Austin has been religiously attending her Derby Brats practices and this coming week is her big bout. It's more a scrimmage with the other girls, but it'll be a lot of fun regardless. Her speed skating practice is at Playland Skate in N. Austin and we usually stay after and skate for a couple hours. Grandpa was there to hang out with G-man (who doesn't like skating much) which left me and LMA and Grace (who will be nicknamed Tiger Lily for this blog) to skate for a while. LMA is becoming a really skilled skater and more often than not she was outpacing me.

And speaking of skating (which is what we all do lately) Ms. Austin's final practice for TXRD was Saturday. We don't know if she's been picked to be on one of the five teams, but she felt she nailed the evaluation practice. She'll likely find out today or tomorrow; I'll keep you posted.

So we watched movies and TV a lot. G-man had a fever most of the weekend but when I took him to the clinic on Friday, the doctor said that because he had an appetite, no coughing or congestion and just a fever and headache, it was likely not the media darling H1N1 (aka Swine Flu.) By the way, we call it the Heinie Flu because of the spelling. Which actually sounds just as bad as Swine Flu.

So G-man and I roll up into the clinic and are met by a line of 20 people just to check in. There area lot of kids. I pull G closer to me as though I emit a force field that protects him from contracting even more germs. Yes, my logic is sound. We check in and go to the waiting room where I kid you not there was no where to sit except the floor. There were easily 25 families in there, some with two or three kids. About half the people in there were wearing masks.

Madagascar's ports were all closed.

But the doctor didn't do a swab test. The presenting symptoms were not indicative of flu, just a common virus, so he sent us on our way. Which is fine because frankly I don't have $300 to spend on Tamaflu anyway. Rest and fluids for you kiddo. G spend most of Saturday and Sunday sleeping on the couch, being adorable and just a little warmer than normal. Today he woke up with me as I was leaving for work and was bright eyed and bushy tailed.

LMA is having attention pains. It's hard to say if she's actually not feeling well, but she is a little warm. Her friend and skate partner was actually diagnosed with H1N1 and that's where we think it all started. Which is really sad. The girl's mom and Ms. A are New Girls in Derby and she's a really rad lady but is having a rough time currently and now a sick kid. We want to be the good people and make sure they're both ok but it's hard to want to take care of sick people knowing you'd be compromising your own family.

For Sunday I was able to talk Miss LA to make some gumbo. My dad said he's never had it, so it was a treat for everyone. Miss LA makes some mean gumbo and it's always nice to have a house full of people and good smells from the kitchen. You know it's fall around our house when there's gumbo, wassail, football and Rock Band. Her sister helped her, a couple friends came by to watch the Cowboys and Broncos game and we all drank beer.

As I type this, though, I have a sore throat and a headache. I'm congested, which isn't saying much considering how much it's been raining, and I'm a bit worn out. I don't want to get sick, but I think considering how much time I spent around G man, it's inevitable. I'm hoping it's allergies and lack of decent sleep.

Still, it was a good weekend. How was yours?

(PS, I have four reviews to write, but my weekend was a bit tied up. They will be up soon.)

Review: FlashForward 1.1 - "No More Good Days"

2009-09-25T14:32:00.002-05:00

These reviews are done for Television Zombies, please visit for discussion, news, commentary on science fiction, fantasy and cult television.

I think it's the announcer. Yeah, I'm pretty sure ABC needs to replace their promotional voice talent because everything I see on ABC that isn't Extreme Dancing with the Makeover Wives, sounds like Lost. It always sounds like everything depends on if I watch this show. Even the sitcoms seem as though something catastrophic is going to happen.

Why is that important? Because it colors the programming. If your introductory hype makes your show sound like something it's not, it unfairly skews your perception of that show. When that guy's voice pimps any ABC show, it always sounds to me like Lost. Plus, Penny Widmore is in it.

Okay, okay. Unfairly, I'm comparing this to another show so let's boil it down to what it really is.

Flashforward is a novel by Robert J. Sawyer. ABC's show is loosely based on this science fiction story in which scientists at CERN run an experiment having the side effect of everyone on Earth going unconscious for two minutes and seeing a future 21 years from now.

FlashFoward starts our fairly regularly and instead of scientists, it's regular people in Los Angeles. We're inserted very deftly into the lives of the Benford family. Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) is an FBI Agent (again? really? ya really) whose wife Olivia (Sonya Walger) is a surgeon (yes really.) They have a little girl named Charlie who is watched during the day by the nanny. Mark's partner is Demetri Noh (John Cho) and Mark's AA sponsor is Aaron Stark. Aaron is an electrician whose daughter was killed in Afghanistan. One of Olivia's residents is a guy named Bryce, Mark's boss is Stan Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance, from Law & Order: Criminal Intent) and the nanny has a boyfriend.

Mark and Demetri are trailing some suspects when their whole world goes awry. Olivia is in the middle of surgery, Bryce is committing suicide on a pier, the nanny and her boyfriend are about to have sex and Aaron is climbing a pole to reach a power line. The entire world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. But the time doesn't go by uneventfully. Mark has a vision of himself drinking in his office in front of a big case planning board with numerous photos, strings, notes and other pieces of paper. He loads his gun and off in the distance, men with laser sites on rifles approach. He comes to and he's upside-down in his wrecked car. LA is a mess and we find out it happened everywhere at the exact same time for the exact amount of time. We also find out, everyone had a vision. These visions are also corroborated with others to give a precise date, six months into the future. Everyone had them except for Demetri, he had no vision, which he thinks means he'll be dead by then. Olivia has one that she's with another man. Aaron has one in which his daughter is alive. Little Charlie Benford says she had a dream in which there were no more good days.

Mark, Demetri and another agent, Janis Hawk, are given the task to coordinate the effort to find out what happened, what people's visions are and if it could happen again. They call the project MOSAIC and start with the same board Mark had in his vision. Already we see the small threads of the envisioned future start to tie together. Mark talks of drinking again, which is the only reason Olivia would leave him. The other man Olivia envisioned is the father of a boy she saved the day of the blackout. Demetri is planning a wedding with his girlfriend but is always thinking of why he had no vision. Aaron is now hopeful about his daughter, but angry that he's hopeful.

And the world went into chaos. Just stop and think for a minute of what would happen if nearly 7 billion people just passed out for two minutes, what would happen. Would would happen in traffic, airports, people on stairs, people in surgery, athletes, people in baths or hot tubs or pools or lakes. I'm not sure the death toll will ever be mentioned, but it wouldn't be surprising to think of something in the hundreds of millions. Granted, most of Asia would have been asleep at the time and would they even notice? So far the show is very good at throwing questions at you.

But where do we go from here? FlashForward was well put together and at least decently written and acted. It follows the same formula as another show I'll try not to mention in that we start with a huge event and then spend the rest of the time digging for answers. Will it be sustainable? Will the answers sate the viewers? Is it a big enough mystery to overcome any story telling problems?

I enjoyed watching the pilot, but I felt more than a couple times that it was trying to be overly dramatic, overly serious. A meeting the FBI agents had with their boss took place in a lobby and they were standing in a circle, I kid you not, 15 feet apart. The only reason you do that is to get nice camera angels. I want to know what happens to the world I live in when we all fall asleep for 137 seconds, not what happens in Michael Bay's world. Give us some realism and some believable human interaction and the show will do well. Give us short scenes in which people lie or withhold information to push the story along and you'll end up looking pedantic.

At the end, Agent Hawk finds something that will keep the show going for at least two more episodes. During a curious (morbid?) viewing of security footage from around the US in which people are dropping like well coordinated flies, she sees a man in a baseball stadium who is not out. While the entire crowd and both teams are unconscious, this man in black trenchcoat and knit cap walks around very secretly like. He's not panicked, he looks like he's trying to avoid something.

Maybe he's trying to run from low ratings.

It's not a bad outing actually. It's one of the more entertaining pilots I've seen. I may be thinking too far ahead to give it much of a sustainable chance. John Cho and Sonya Walger are very pleasing to watch, as well as much of the supporting cast. That voice over guy, though...have him do just Lost please?

Three and a half broken clocks.

Review: Fringe 2.2 - "Night of Desirable Objects"

2009-09-25T14:31:00.002-05:00

These reviews are done for Television Zombies, please visit for discussion, news, commentary on science fiction, fantasy and cult television.

First off, we have a new intro. It's Nina Sharp recapping who works in the Fringe Division and what their emerging purpose is.

Pennsylvania. There's a construction/road work team wrapping up for the day. On one man's truck radio, the local news continues the story of the six local missing persons. One man forgets something and goes back to get it. He senses something odd in a cornfield near a scarecrow and goes to investigate. He sees something on the ground, it looks like a blue hand. As he digs it out, the hand grabs him and pulls him into the ground.

Opening Credits.

New York. Agent Olivia Dunham is being released and Peter is there to help her. She had a fractured hip and so is walking with a cane. As they reach Peter's car, we see Agent Charlie Francis in a car watching them. Peter senses something and looks around, sees Charlie's car, but Charlie is hidden. Back in PA, the man underground ignites a lighter and looks at his wounded leg, then around the cavern he's in. There are body parts everywhere; some human, some animal. He sees a tunnel and crawls toward it when he sees a creature emerge from the tunnel. It's just a silhouette but we sense that it's almost human, the same shape and sound as Gollum from Lord of the Rings. The creature attacks.

(sea horse, light lower left)

Peter meets with Broyles, asks about the requests Walter has. Broyles says it should be no problem, but the C-130 might be hard to get. They talk about the mispers in PA and that it'd be a good thing to look into proactively. At the lab, Walter and Astrid are recreating Olivia's accident using a toy car and a frog (1.21 Gigawatts?!) to see if he can make the frog disappear. Olivia was missing for over an hour. Walter tries to explain his multiverse theory with branching time lines, but then stops realizing he's done it before, then gets very sorry for what Olivia went through. Then he talks about the consequences of visiting an alternate reality, then drops it. (We'll see later, I'll let you know.)

Peter, Olivia and Walter go to PA and talk to Sheriff Golightly (Charles Martin Smith) about the mispers and the Sheriff quibbles with the crew about rules of evidence, but they're finally allowed to investigate. Back at the Sheriff's office they again butt heads about this being a local investigation. Olivia starts getting angry but then stops when she hears a fly quite clear and loud, cleaning its legs. Peter jumps in and deflects the tension by talking to the Sheriff about this great lure he has in his office.

Olivia calls Charlie and asks for some help getting some information run through. He agrees to help after he's done running an errand. Charlie goes into the typewriter shop, gets the key from the becrutched proprietor and goes into the backroom. He types, Target Trusts Me Completely. Believes I'm Her Partner. Awaiting Instructions.

(flower, light upper left)

Olivia and Peter pore over the extensive but almost useless information the Sheriff's office has collection on the missing persons. Walter discovers the blue liquid found at the scene is a paralytic, interacting with human DNA or containing it; a possible mutation.

There's a light in the darkness coming towards us. As it gets closer, we see the dead body of the road worker. Then we see a shovel and someone says, "Oh no." We pass up through the ground and come to light in view of a mailbox marked 'Hughes.' Olivia and Peter are on the porch knocking when a grizzled man with a shovel appears behind them. He his Mr. Hughes and as he lets them in, he indicates he's been digging wells. Olivia's super hearing kicks in and she asks if someone else lives there. Mr. Hughes says no, but Olivia goes to investigate. A fairly tense few minutes of her limping along hearing a heartbeat and breathing, she finds a lab of sorts upstairs. When she opens a closet and finds nothing in it, Peter appears in the door behind her and she whirls around and shoots at him, just missing his head.

(frog, light lower right)

Mr. Hughes is in an FBI room behind questions by Agent Dunham. He says he visited the families of the mispers to try and comfort them. He had lost his wife and child, his son died after five minutes. Olivia asks for a blood sample and Mr. Hughes refuses. Broyles asks Peter about Dunham's gun and he says it was a misfire. Olivia is getting a check up on her injuries. She's getting dressed and we see a lot of bruising. Nina Sharp comes in and talks to her about a man who helped her after her cancer. She gives Olivia a note with the name Sam Weiss.

The FBI is going through the Hughes house. Agent Jessup finds an area with a few crosses and a Bible. In the bible is a news clipping of the death of Mr. Hughes wife and child as well as an inscription from a Pastor Lisburn saying it wasn't his fault and they are with God now. Peter tells Walter that Jessup thinks they may have been killed and an exhumation order is requested. The crew digs up the caskets and opens the wife's first, nothing obvious. Back to Hughes in the holding room, he has taken the wire casing off the lights and is bending it and chewing at it, shaping into something. The crew digs up the baby's coffin but there's nothing in it, but a hole has been chewed, clawed, blasted out of it and they see under the coffin is a tunnel leading into the ground. They go back to question Hughes but he has hung himself with the wire.

(frog, light lower right)

Agent Dunham finds Mr. Hughes hanging from the light. Back at the lab, Walter, Peter and Astrid discuss the findings on Mrs. Hughes. She had lupus, there was no way she could have kids, but still she had a baby. We flash back and forth to the Sheriff putting stakes in the ground wrapped in crime scene tape and the ground swelling behind him. Olivia talking with Broyles and her super hearing kicks on again for a second. Walter tells Peter the Hughes boy wasn't all human and likely had scorpion and mole rat DNA to combat his mother's lupus. Olivia arrives and they determine the boy must be under the house.

The Sheriff sees burrowing come toward him when the ground explodes and he his pulled under.

(butterfly, light lower left)

Agent Dunham and Peter revisit the Hughes house and search it. Peter finds a door that's been wallpapered over and behind the door is a nursery. They also find a store room/shed/lab with a large canine tooth on the floor and a cinder block wall. They move away some bricks and a rotting dog head before Peter goes to get a shovel. Olivia sees bones and corpses and looks back for Peter when a thing springs from the darkness and drags her into the tunnel. She and Peter fight it off. It's a nasty looking teenage boy sized creature with an elongated head ending in a gruesome muzzle of teeth. Its skin is pale and covered in blood and dirt. Peter is able to stick the thing with a broken shaft of wood and the creature begins digging away. Unfortunately it digs under the Sheriff's car which comes crashing down on top of it.

Olivia rides back with Charlie and recaps, talking about all the holes Hughes dug in the ground. She says she may not want to remember. He says it may be important and whatever it is, they'll deal with it together. Peter tells Walter he's going fishing, tells the story of a boy who bought his dad a special lure but the dad didn't go. Walter doesn't gather that he's the dad or the one Peter wants to go fishing with, but asks if he can go with him. Peter and Astrid exchange knowing glances. The lure he gives him is called Night of Desirable Objects.

Olivia is in the bath tub when she starts hearing bubbles, a fly, voices, sirens, seemingly the whole city. She goes to a bowling alley and asks for Sam Weiss. He originally says Sam moved away but then chides Olivia for giving up easily. He says Nina told him she'd be coming and asks if the headaches have started yet.

Charlie Francis is in the typewriter room, he types: Target Visted Other Side, But Remembers No Details, Please Advise. Response: Unacceptable. If She Can't Remember On Her Own, Then Do Something To Help Her.

(frog, light lower right)

The glyphs spell MIRRLR, which is a disappointing oversight. We want it to say mirror, and the glyph for L is close to the one for O. Is it really an oversight or a way for the producers to see who's paying attention?

Monster of the week with an inordinately long denouement. The monster was captured with 7 minutes left to go, meaning Fringe is really trying to get the bigger story more air time. I think they realize that they can't do Peter's new Proactive Fringe Division AND keep fighting mutated humans, but the transition will happen slowly. After a full week debating on whether or not I like the Charlie Francis mole, I think it's a good move. It builds tension that only the viewer and that character can see. The rest of the Fringe Division crew and the FBI have no idea, and that makes it juicy.

The problem the show will run into is trying to mix too many monsters with the larger Olivia, Massive Dynamic story. They are at times completely separate, as is the case this week, and may only cause each episode to feel short. Olivia Dunham and crew were able to help the families of the missing persons by solving their disappearances, but they learned almost nothing about the Hughes family, which seems more important to the overall story. Nothing tied Andre Hughes to Massive Dynamic or William Bell or Walter Bishop and if they get more stories like this we'll have to have two teams. One to follow the Bishops, one to follow Olivia.

This was a little repetitive and reminded me too much of "Unleashed" or "The Transformation." Yes this is part of the show to have mutated people, but at least give us a link to the bigger story.

Three out of five randomly chosen glyphs.

Review: Fringe 2.1 - "A New Day in the Old Town"

2009-09-23T10:23:00.003-05:00

The fall TV season is yet again upon us. No doubt most of you have already picked the shows you are going to watch and have decided to give some new shows a chance. I was not as prepared this year as I was last year and I know I'm missing Glee and Vampire Diaries but I am going to try and pick up Modern Family, V, and Flash Forward.

I'll also still be reviewing Fringe, Dollhouse, and Clone Wars for TVZ, as well as a couple others possibly. The fall season took most of us by surprise as we'd all be watching summer shows with much enthusiasm and I think the new shows didn't see that spectacular. I know we've all been surprised a little and I hope V and Flash Forward continue that.

Fringe premiered last week and I have a review pending at TVZ, so make sure you stop by and check it out when it posts. Also, ABC posted the first 15 minutes of Flash Forward and I know it's probably too early to say anything, but I think I'll like this one. Give it a watch, let me know what you think.

Meanwhile, here's the review of the latest episode of Fringe.

...and we're back. A quick recap of the season finale is in order. Thought not a cliffhanger, there are some parts that are integral to the story line in the premiere.

The season one bad guy, David Robert Jones, is dead. He was trying to use equipment powered by a power cell from Nina Sharp's robot arm to open a gateway into another universe. (If I had a nickel...) Peter stopped him by using a "patch" that Walter found in an old beach house. We also find that this universe's Peter may have been pulled from the another when his other version died. Walter mourned him at a grave that indicated he died when he was seven. The Observer intervened, helping Walter find this patch device. Olivia, still bubbling with uncertainty about her cortexifan induced powers, visited William Bell at the top of the World Trade Center.

That's all you need to know for now.

A man wakes up with a cut forehead in a car that's been in an accident. We're in Manhattan. He flees the scene, gains entrance to an apartment building, jumps a guy in the laundry room and drags his body back to his apartment. Once there the man crushes his own face like Playdough. He then takes a tool that looks like a large RF switch with two wires coming out of it, each ending in a three-pronged attachment. He jams one of these into the soft palette of the dead man, the other into his own mouth, hits a switch and begins grunting and shaking. The TV is playing the X-Files movie and we see now that the car wreck man now has the face of the dead man. The FBI and police are investigating the crash and when the agent asks who was driving the vehicle, another agent hands her a print out of Olivia Dunham.

Boston. Walter and Peter are in a grocery store shopping for custard ingredients. They banter, Peter's birthday is coming up, Walter makes a few unintended dirty comments about custard, when Peter's phone rings. They arrive at the scene of the accident and meet agent Amy Jessup (Meghan Markle) who begins grilling Peter as to what Fringe Division does for the FBI. Peter tells her it's all classified and asks where Charlie Francis is. Walter is checking out the car. Peter asks where Olivia is, and Agent Jessup says there was another vehicle out of which a man exited and left. No one was in the SUV licensed to Olivia Dunham. Walter, inside the car, hears static as the electronics all kick on. He gets out, the car revs its engine, the alarm goes off and suddenly Olivia Dunham crashes through the windshield onto the pavement.

Opening credits.

**A quick note here. Shortly after the season finale last spring, Kirk Acevado posted on his Facebook page a note that he'd been fired from the show. In shifting the production company to Vancouver, it seemed like a cost saving move to not pick up the options of secondary characters. Some saw it as a publicity stunt, some marked it up to reportedly common outbursts by Acevado as experienced on other shows, but no one knew if it was true. The production company and Fox said he wasn't fired, but the summer news was somewhat quiet about the matter.**

Dunham is wheeled into the ER at New York General with quite a few injuries. Broyles intercepts Agent Jessup with the "report" of the accident that says nothing was out of the ordinary, and makes her sign it. A doctor comes out and tells Peter and Walter that Olivia sustained too severe an injury to the brain and will likely not regain consciousness. Walter goes to see her, and apologizes, calling her Olive.

At a nearby bar, Broyles joins Peter for a few drinks. He tells Peter he's going to Washington; Fringe Division is being shut down. Peter questions what they were doing anyway, saying they were always too late. Too late to save Olivia. Back at the Federal building, Agent Jessup gains access to Fringe Division's files via a scrap of paper with a number on it. Where she got the paper we don't know yet. Peter runs into Rachel at the hospital who tells him Olivia had a living will saying not to put her on life support and in the morning they were going to unplug her. He goes in to see her, wrestles with emotions, leans in to kiss her and say goodbye when her eyes snap open and she speaks a phrase in a foreign language and then screams and sits up.

Olivia says she went somewhere, but someone is trying to stop her, but she doesn't remember anything. She begins freaking out and asks Peter to go get her gun. He goes to the Federal building in Boston where he finds out his credentials have been revoked. When an agent tries to escort him out, he throws a nifty release move, surprising the agent. Amy Jessup says she'll escort him. She already has the file he was requesting about the accident. The tire marks indicate the other car was speeding up, not stopping. And surveillance cameras got a picture of man they're en route to question. When she asks what Fringe does, he says, "Nothing." They find the body of a man matching the photo, but he's been dead a while. Jessup allows Walter to take to body to his lab. She asks if Walter's crazy, Peter says he is.

The man from the apartment enters a typewriter shop asking for a specific model that's never been made. The shop keep says as much but when the man persists, he says "Oh, you're one of them." It's been six years and he's not waiting around forever. The man takes a key and goes to a back room with a desk, a type writer, paper and mirror. He puts in paper and types, Mission Accomplished, Target Eliminated, In Fatal Car Crash, Meeting Prevented, Request Extraction. Then from the mirror, the reflection begins typing in an odd reverse sound. The message is, Negative, Mission Failure, Meeting Occurred, Target Still Alive. The man types, Request New Orders and the response is, Interrogate Target, Then Kill Her.

Peter takes Amy Jessup to the lab and gives her a little back story. They introduce everyone, Walter asks for custard ingredients and autopsy tools. Amy sees Jean the cow.

Charlie Francis visits Olivia in the hospital, she says she's fine. Charlie recaps a story about a domestic disturbance that went really wrong, in which his partner died and he was shot. He kept telling people he was fine but he wasn't. He was shaken and like him, she probably has a gun under her pillow. She cracks a little, says she's so scared she can't even load it. At the lab, Peter gets Walter to focus on the dead body instead of the custard (which Astrid is making) and they see in the mouth the three holes and it makes Walter remember something. A video tape of an experiment Walter and Bell did with a subject and a lot of drugs. The 30 year old taped subject talks about three nails in the mouth and a soldier from somewhere else that can look like any of us. Peter and Astrid put in a law enforcement alert for bodies matching that description. Olivia frantically tries to load her gun.

(right hand, light on the right)

Washington. A committee says Fringe Division is basically taking too much money and not providing any results. Broyles reminds them he's a colonel and they should thank God they don't see what's being stopped by Fringe Division. Another senator says that without some kind of proof, they have no choice. Nina meets Broyles on the steps and says it's important that the division stay operational. She and Broyles then kiss and she tells him to save the day like he always did.

Peter and Agent Jessup find another body with three holes in its mouth. Jessup reminds Peter that if this shape shifting person is a soldier, they do one thing; stay on mission, that being to kill Olivia. The soldier arrives at the hospital, surprising a nurse on a break. The same nurse shows up in Olivia's room and asks about her memory. She can remember going to meet someone but that's it. She feels like she went somewhere, talked to someone, then came back to the accident. (If you remember episode 1.20, right before she met with Bell, she was almost in an accident that I commented on seemed to have no purpose.) But she doesn't remember who she was meeting. The nurse prods her but she can't remember what she was supposed to do or what this person said. Something's hidden, but she doesn't know where. The nurse jumps on her and starts strangling her. Charlie, Peter and Agent Jessup arrive and put a couple bullets in the nurse who jumps out a window about 60 feet down and flees into the lower levels. The three pursue. The nurse jumps Charlie and he fires a few shots. The other two catch up to see Charlie standing over the nurse. The electronic changing box is on the ground nearby.

Peter brings Olivia flowers and they recap a bit about the soldier and what she asked Olivia. Peter repeats the phrase she uttered when she woke up. She doesn't remember, but asks if it's Latin. Peter says it's Greek and his mother used to say it to him every night before he went to bed. It means, "Be a better man than your father" and was a code between them meaning keep your people close. They smile at each other. As he leaves she asks if they're shutting Fringe down, he says no.

In front of the capital, Peter stops Agent Broyles and gives him the shape-shifting box. Walter had said the technology is not from here and it's proof. The Feds can have it, use it to make an army to look like anyone, but they are not shutting Fringe down. Peter says they're done reacting, they're not going to be too late any more, they're calling the shots. Agent Jessup is cataloging Fringe cases and ties them to Bible books, chapters and verse, ie 7546B-FD - The Beast, R19:19. Peter returns to the lab where Astrid, Walter and the cow surprise him with birthday custard. Olivia loads her gun with a smile.

In the hospital basement, Charlie Francis wheels a laundry basket to the incinerator. He removes a bag of laundry and we see the body of...Agent Charlie Francis. The shape shifter dumps Charlie's body into the incinerator.

(Commercial glyphs spell TOWER)

Was Kirk Acevado partially right? Was he "fired?" His character certainly was. I think, however, his option on Fringe was not picked up but they felt the need to wrap up his character. And wrap it up they must. The Soldier now is without its shape shifting technology, which means it has to be Charlie for a while. It interrogated Olivia but didn't kill her. It also didn't discover anything as her memory was scrabbled via windshield and asphalt. He now has to be close enough to her to find the information he needs without causing her suspicion enough to withhold it. However, how long can this soldier remain Charlie? Does this transfer via the little box change just the physical appearance or does some of Charlie Francis go with it, enabling this soldier to act as Charlie? The length of this character's run is uncertain.

The tone of the show changed at the very end. Peter says they're going to stop just reacting but what that means exactly for their group will have to be seen in weekly installments. We will have to see if Olivia regains her memory of what she and William Bell discussed. We will have to see if the shape shifting Charlie continues to be the killing soldier or if he becomes something more intricate and sustainable.

And what of Agent Amy Jessup? She was brought in rather quickly as though Charlie's departure was a foregone conclusion. Given the Acevado news and her early debate with Peter, you could see the cast list shifting from space. But what will she bring if not another eye-rolling skeptical attitude, playing by the Federal book and only willing to get involved if it moves the plot along. Her itemizing the Fringe cases by scripture was unique to this show. The area of spirituality has yet to be explored by Fringe and my guess is Agent Jessup will become the Christian foil to the group's emerging war on other plains of existence. I'm also wondering where she got that paper with the access code needed to get into Fringe Division's files. Is she a mole? Is someone using her?

I'm disappointed we got roughly 20 seconds with William Bell and now he's a nearly forgotten memory. I'm also a bit disappointed that Nina Sharp and Agent Broyles had to kiss. It immediately reminded me of season two of Heroes and the Petrelli matriarch, and frankly the less I'm reminded of Heroes the better.

I'm looking forward to season two and this episode picked up right where we left off. I liked the nod to X-Files and I'm excited to see more.

Three and a half randomly chosen glyphs.

Word Usage - Corporate Speak

2009-09-18T12:00:00.000-05:00

Corporate meeting speak is a bane on most wordies' existences. When middle to upper management convenes to go over plans for the year or catch up on everyone's progress, we understand that time is a factor. You may have only a short time in which to get important information across and dwelling on minutia eats up precious seconds and it bores the crap out of those not intimately involved. So you dumb it down and shorten it up, but the words are still smart sounding so as not to reveal the true nature of the actions. You don't want people to think you're ineffectual either, and being to curt can impact your ability to manage your people.

However, there are some words and phrases that are meaninglessly long or overblown and what they are replacing may not need replacing.

The following are examples of words or phrases that should be retired from our vocabulary and not because they are wrong, but because they border on double speak or redundancy.

Spend (or other verbs) as a noun, ie "...our third quarter spend." That "ing" was really tripping people up.

Take it off line. To a tech, that means shut something down. To a manufacturer, it means to remove a worker. To cube dwellers, it means to talk outside of the meeting. You can't say, "We'll talk later?"

Skill set. You're adding an 'e' and 't' to say the same thing. More words doesn't mean better meaning. "This doesn't fit my skills." That works for me.

Going forward - (quoting my friend Dstew) "Indicates I am an executive; I'm keeping this intentionally vague." This can be said for most things said during quarterly meetings.

Higher level - Another friend (Mer) suggested this one as a way of indicating that nothing will be accomplished at the meeting. "Those decisions will have to be made at a higher level."

30,000 ft. view - I don't know why this one bothers me. It's to indicate a broad, macro view of a project or business goal. Rather than get mired in minutia and micromanaging, a group will step back and assess things as a whole.

Big pole in the tent - Again, don't know why this gets to me; probably because it's over used. To indicate the biggest problem/project a group or company is currently addressing. It makes me feel like if it's not accomplished, the whole thing falls apart, which I guess is the point. I just hate the idea of getting paid by a circus.

If you have more, please add them to the comments.

Word Usage - Misuses

2009-09-15T13:50:00.006-05:00

Listening to NPR this morning, an interviewee used the word decimate. It was used incorrectly. It wasn't the man's fault, we all use words incorrectly. Either through lack of knowledge, high levels of laziness or a zealous adherence to tradition, we all use words and phrases as they were not meant to be used.

We use words and phrases to describe things, as humans are want to do. Our language separates us from other animals. We represent objects and ideas as symbols written into a medium to be read later by other humans. Over time these symbols change, grow, evolve and in a few hundred, or even a few dozen years can mean something completely different or lose their meaning altogether.

Phrases are zeitgeist and will drop out of use once the need for them has passed, but some linger and become indelible points in the lexicon. We move passed the use of certain transportation, we no longer adhere to archaic laws, we've modernized many agricultural or pre-industrial methods. The phrases and words used to tell other humans about these things passes in time as well.

The problem is that some don't. Some linger but without the original context they tend to be used incorrectly. Take decimate. The word, as agreed to by a selection of usage experts, can mean to destroy but not completely. Its original meaning is to take one tenth; it's in the word itself. Decimatus or decimare in Latin; to kill (or have killed) one tenth. My Latin/Roman research is weak at best but I've heard tell it was a punishment from the ruler of the time to upstart villages that a Roman legion would go in and kill every tenth male. Hence the term.

Now we use the term to mean 'near total destruction.' It could be 'destroy 9/10ths of something' leaving only a small portion. It's generally accepted that a large number of people killed is okay for this usage, but livestock and crops it's not. The hilarity was the phrase "literally decimated."

But that's not the only word that's being misused in our 21st century vocabulary. Without going the obvious route of trying to wrap a single blog post around the use of 'irony,' I've asked some folks what their pet peeves are with English words and uses. Feel free to add yours to the comments.

Literally - Literally has become a punctuation. When you want to express how large an impact an event had or how truly awe inspiring someone's actions were, you include literally to indicate to the listener that was happened really happened. "He literally jumped out of his skin." No, he didn't. Literally has become what super and mega and ultra have been in past decades. It's not enough something has to be good, it has to be best, then super, then mega, etc. etc. Someone can't almost jump out of their skin, or virtually, or nearly, or seem like, they have to literally do it. Let's use literally with actually more often, please.

Fall Down - Redundant. The definition of "fall" is to descend or drop or be lowered or lose status. The converse being the phrase rise up as though you could rise any other direction.

Similarly, Flush Out. I've never seen anyone flush in anything. Also, it does not mean the same thing as flesh out. (I'm looking at you, corporate consultants.)

For all INTENTS and PURPOSES - It's not for all intensive purposes. Though you could technically use the later phrase for a product that you use in emergencies, for all your intensive purposes.

In lieu of - means "instead of." It doesn't mean "in view of" or "in light of." Incorrectly used: In lieu of recent events, the offices will be closed. Correctly used: Please contribute to the fund in lieu of flowers.

A whole nother - I'm extraordinarily guilty of this one. Derived from another whole or a whole other, this surprisingly dates back to the early 1900's, something I thought was rather odd. It always felt like a newish phrase.

There are other words that are just plain misspoken. You could spend days with people, listening to their idiosyncratic turns of phrase; an 'x' here, a dropped 'g' there. After a time, I begin to wonder if the language is evolving again to suit the needs of lazy tongues.

Supposively or supposibly or supposenly - For all concerned, say it with me suh-pose-ED-lee. This sort of relates to 'supposed to' not 'suppose to.' Yes that d-t combo is hard to get your mouth around, but let's give it a shot.

Sufficide to say - Sufficide, from Pfizer. Treats swollen tongue and hurty brain. It's suffice it to say.

Strenth - When sports broadcasters use this, it makes me throw up a little in my mouth. Then I realize they are broadcasters because they were likely athletes, not English majors. Gimme a G!

Then there are those that just plain don't make sense.

Head over heels. Understandably. We are normally walking around with our heads over our heels. Originally said as heels over head to indicate someone doing a cartwheel or somersault.

Next - Corporate lingo.

9

2009-09-10T08:22:00.003-05:00

What stars Elijah Wood and contains a hero's journey fighting against all odds against a red-eyed monster and where his party numbers up to nine?

But wait, some of his party die. There's a couple of old stage and screen actors lending their talents. There's a fight on a bridge, there's winged beasts and a talisman that rules all nine souls.

If you guessed 9 then you're right. If you guess something else...well, you're right as well but let's stay current, shall we? The similarities between Lord of the Rings and 9 are mainly Elijah Wood's fault. His voice - at times pleading, at others resolved - is so ingrained into our film going subconscious that it's hard to picture him doing anything but his Frodo role. At times during 9 I was actually waiting for him to mutter something from The Fellowship. Wood is sadly one of those actors whose careers will be ever tied to the one ring. It will take an Herculean effort and so many films over such a length of time to remind us that he's able to do other things.

But first, he has to do other things. If he continues to be the wide-eyed manchild who sets upon a nigh impossible mission to save Middle Earth or Post Machine Earth or even Penguin Earth, he's going to always be remembered as Frodo, just with different outfits.

9, then, ends up being a very short, action packed reminder of what Wood did in Fellowship and the rest. 9 in and off itself is charming and fun and entertaining. It is not thought provoking or ground breaking. Its thickly veiled messages are a spoof meant to eliminate themselves from the story entirely. This leaves you with the feeling that you've possibly watched a 79 minute commercial for a unique line of toys.

The movie's attention to detail was stunning. All the doll characters sprang to life and each was gifted with their own stunning personalities that had only a little to do with the voice acting. The screenplay and direction was really incredible. The pace and tension the movie builds and releases was enough to keep me riveted and a little sad when it was over so soon. But in the end, its length and Wood's ubiquitous voice reminded me only too well that there wasn't much of a story to be told.

It's a definite theater viewing movie, just make sure you go some place that has good food or go to a matinee. Otherwise you might feel cheated. Also, the role of the scientist in charge of building the big thing the military wants to use as a weapon? The actor's name is Oppenheimer.

Avatars and Aliases

2009-09-01T10:56:00.002-05:00

D&D Dwarf Figure
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Lil Miss Austin asked me the other day why people on the computer call me "xadrian." I didn't have a good answer for her right away.

I spun in circles. At first I was taken aback that she would utter that name. She has an email address and I've sent her some links to Flickr sites with neat Lego builds, so she may have seen my name somehow that way. But that name to me is not something my family or my friends in Austin and surrounding areas use. If you asked my old friends from high school or college who I was, they wouldn't say xadrian.

It's a name I picked up, or made up, a long time ago. I was writing a fantasy story in which the villain's name was Xadrian. When I started becoming more and more involved in the Internet community back in 1996-97, I started out with names like Chimaera and Muad'dib but ended up using xadrian when I registered for an AIM handle. Since then I used it for all my forum names until most people online knew me only as xadrian (or Ex Adrian.)

One guy's kid even thought it was pronounced X Ray Dan, which became a back up handle used at DeviantArt (which doesn't matter because I don't use that site any more.) But it is pronounced with a Z, zay dree un. It's funny, people don't say Ex Avier.

So LMA posed this question to me and I didn't want to give her the whole back story, but I wanted to make sure she understood. I told her that she and her brother call me daddy. The people I live with and go to parties with and play basketball with call me Ben. The people with which my interaction is just on the computer call me xadrian. I said it's just a name, but that doesn't mean I'm a different person.

And as soon as I said that I knew it was wrong.

Daddy, Ben, xadrian are all different people. Daddy doesn't complain about work or ask if they talked about the UK taking over Turks & Caicos at kindergarten. Ben doesn't talk about the latest episode of Phineas and Ferb while out for happy hour. xadrian doesn't talk about his rent or car troubles. They are different people. They are based on different interactions. They are forged in different environments and respond differently to stimuli.

They're all based on the same person, but that person has interchangeable masks to meet different situations. Normally you just go through life like this; everyone has a drawer full of masks. I've just named mine.

I don't think she wants her own mask for the Internet yet. She wants a bank account instead.

Carry on.

TV Without TV

2009-08-27T09:26:00.002-05:00

The BGF has been throwing around the idea of nixing the cable for some time. It's costly, no one watches it that much, and what we do want to watch we can get online. It'd better if we didn't have it.

Would it?

If I were to break down our TV viewing patterns, it wouldn't be consistent. It's not about summer viewership being low either. There are plenty of year round shows or seasonal shows or documentaries that don't live or die by sweeps week ratings. But let's take a look by person. I won't include time slots because most of the time we DVR everything. It's rare I habitually watch a show as it airs unless I'm just too excited to watch it, or it's a news/commentary program.

Mr. Austin - In no particular order, these are the shows I watch or will be watching in the next year. The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Rachel Maddow, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Lost, Doctor Who, Fringe, Dollhouse, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, hockey games with the Avalanche, football games with UT, Air Force or the Denver Broncos, Futurama, V, The 2010 Winter Olympics, the 2010 Tour de France, the 2010 World Cup in S. Africa, possibly Day One and Flash Forward. This doesn't include random "hey what's on" episodes of The Cosby Show, M*A*S*H, Discovery Channel/History Channel/Science Channel shows or movies.

Ms. A and Miss LA - In no particular order and since they watch TV together, it makes it easy to group them together. I have no idea what they plan on watching or even if they care about what shows are coming out soon. I also may have these wrong. The Closer, The Office, 30 Rock, Entourage, Hung, In Treatment, Big Love, Raising the Bar, and Grey's Anatomy. They also watch Fraiser, Golden Girls and Will & Grace. They don't watch as much news as I do, and unless LSU is playing UT, they don't want sports either. If there's a documentary about marching band, Ms. A is all over it.

The kids. The kids watch what they want, but early in the summer, Ms. A put parental controls on the upstairs TV so on G and Y shows were allowed. Even Spongebob was off the list at Y7. This left most of LMA's tween shows out of the mix. However, they can be found watching: Phineas and Ferb, Handy Manny, Imagination Movers, Electric Company, The Mighty B, Spongebob, Wizards of Waverly Place, Ni-Hao Kai Lan, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. They like watching science shows with me; Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs are among their favorites.

So that's a few shows. Roughly 30 regular broadcasts plus more event type things that only last a few weeks. The networks are all different as well. The ladies watch TNT and HBO almost exclusively. I watch Sci-Fi (screw you I'm not calling it SyFy), Comedy Central, MSNBC and the docu-science channels. The kids watch Noggin, PBS, Nick and Nick Jr.

But here's the question. Can you get any or all these shows without cable? How much can you get with just over the air broadcasts or watching online?

Most broadcast channels offer the option to view the latest episode of most of their shows the next day. Comedy Central and MSNBC will do the same. Sci-Fi Rewind offers some of their line up, mostly about a week after and after that it's only a handful of the latest episodes. It's good if you missed it the first time around, and that's what most stations are going for. If you don't have a DVR but have access to the internet, you can catch up on a show you missed recently. No one has backlogs of MacGyver or Falcon Crest, but new and popular network shows you should be able to see.

But can you ditch cable and still watch the latest and greatest shows?

Yes and no. It's obvious you can, by the next day, watch anything from the big four. You can watch recaps or full episodes from CW, Comedy Central, and a few shows from SyFy. Even if you wanted to watch Project: Runway on Lifetime, you can catch the first episode online. Most big time sporting events have a live feed and even offer more options if they're covered by a worldwide market. Versus offered a live streaming video of the Tour de France, but you could get that from French sites as well. The World Cup will likely have multiple outlets covering it. NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB are all available in some capacity online and live. (Not sure about Nascar.) Kids channels constantly play episodes of their cartoons online. Discovery and History and Science Channel have enough content that'll keep you busy and raise your IQ without worrying about it being a new episode or a rerun. You can even watch Cosmos online.

Add YouTube and Google Video and Hulu to the mix and you'll start making a case for never having to order cable again. But, if you like having everything show up on your TV, you'll have to find a way to connect your laptop or PC/Mac to your television and that you have decent internet connection that'll allow the kind of streaming you'd want.

Also, no HD. As much as the BGF hates when I grumble about dpi quality and aspect ratio, I love HD for Discovery Channel and sports. They want TNT HD for The Closer and NBC HD for the Office so I know it's being used.

But, if you just wanted to watch the show, yes. I believe you could get away with watching many of the shows you watch now without having cable.

Don't tell Ms. A I said that, she'll cancel it today.

End of Summer

2009-08-24T09:41:00.001-05:00

In Awe
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Thus ends the summer.

The last couple weekends have just been packed. Between shopping and derby practice and house reorganization, the BGF at Four Pines was just crazy. The adults had parties and work and practices and meet ups with friends. The kids go to see the circus and finally got their own rooms.

School starts this week.

And it starts for Ms. A too. She starts at Austin Community College today. I don't know what her classes are, but I know she's going in for a social and psychology area of study. After graduation she wants to get a teaching degree as well and go into social services.

Lil G-man starts kindergarten tomorrow as well! I got a call last week from a phone number I know I recognized but didn't know why. It was their school and my first thought when his teacher introduced herself was that one of the kids was in trouble. Then I realized they weren't in school yet.

So we get to take supplies to their room today and meet the teachers. There was an orientation last week but we missed it, scheduling issues. But that's the beauty of having a 3rd grader already in the school: We already know what to expect.

G-man is going to have either the time of his life or the worst few days ever. He's completely wrapped up in his home and his sister and his mom. Aside from the few weeks in day care and the summer he spent at the Montessori school (which seemed a lifetime ago) this will be a long time away for him. My hope is he makes a lot of new friends and is so distracted by the experience he won't have time to miss anyone.

Everyone always says, "Well, plus his sister will be there." Yes, she'll be in the building, but it's not like they go to a small school where all the kids are in the same room. She'll be in a different area of the school, have lunch and recess at a different time and likely won't see him till after school. We'll be taking him to his class by way of her class so he feels better knowing where she is, but that's probably as far as that interaction will go. I don't remember seeing my brother at school outside of the walks we took to and from each day and even then, as we got older, we went with our friends.

But G-man is a bit of a loonatic. He's hyper and moody and likes to talk in sound effects. In other words, he's a five year old boy. As much as Ms. A tried, he hasn't pick up much reading yet. He knows what the letters are and what sounds they make, but he's just now getting to the point where he knows that words are made up of letters and being able to tie them together. I hope he doesn't get frustrated in school.

I hope they don't try to make him take a nap.

Carry on.

Review: District 9 (spoilers)

2009-08-17T08:33:00.005-05:00

The only name you'll recognize in the credits for this movie going in is that of Peter Jackson.

The name you will remember for a while long after seeing District 9 is Sharlto Copley.

The ads for District 9 oddly give away little about the major plot of the movie and that in itself was masterful. The commercials give the impression there are aliens living on Earth against their will and an all out war is taking place. We're trying to keep them here but for what reason? An interrogated alien in a dark room says in its rumble and click language that they just want to go home.

That's really all the ad says that's true. That dark questioning room isn't even in the movie.

The story starts with news recaps of the aliens and their arrival above Johannesburg, South Africa. Notably, the commentators find it odd that this hovering, city sized craft did not arrive over New York or Chicago or Tokyo or London or any other typical point of fictional alien contact. But as we later find out, there's a parallel reason to having them being plotted to arrive over a country known for apartheid.

We quickly catch up and find that the aliens are stranded, their giant mother ship inoperable (but apparently operable enough to remain about 1500ft above the city) and they have some technology we can use but not a lot of intelligence. They are called "prawns" in a derogatory manor; they resemble crustaceans and they feed and live off of human trash. They eat cat food. They are put in a shack community called District 9, but the conditions there are horrible and the neighboring denizens want them gone. MultiNational United (MNU) a fictional South African based conglomerate, organizes a move for the million and some prawns to a new tent settlement called District 10, 200 miles outside of Johannesburg. They've lived in District 9 for 20 years. Some MNU people such as Van De Merwe can understand them and they can understand us.

That's where the story picks up. We meet Wikus Van De Merwe (Copley), a middle management nerd who has been promoted to head up the great eviction of District 9. We see footage of friends, family and coworkers talking about him but you get the sense they are talking about him as if he were dead. You begin to think something horrible is about to happen, and that tension lingers throughout the movie.

The film is shot in a mix of traditional action camera work, CCTV angles, documentary footage and news clips. It chronicles Van De Merwe as he and an MNU force storm through D9 in order to serve each prawn (who likely can't read) an eviction notice. Along the way they find illegal weapons and activities and Van De Merwe's actions become callous and almost excitedly unfeeling. In a scene were he clinically but enthusiastically aborts a whole nest of fetal prawns, we begin to get the stomach churning idea of how humans really feel about these creatures. We want their weapons but can't use them. We want them gone but are unwilling to help. Our best effort seems to be segregating and forgetting about them instead of communicating with them to reach some kind of peaceable coexistence or help them go back home.

There is more to the story, but I'll let you see it for yourself. It's a lot I did not expect and will let it unfold for you as it did me, hopefully pleased by the experience. This was a hard movie to watch in that there were social implications and scenes of violence and brutality that were very visceral but undeniably human. The morality play was obvious and writer/director Neill Blomkamp pulls no punches but does not try to preach about the way human beings deal with what we fear and what we see as different. It would seem no matter what race, religion or even what planet you're from, human beings will want to segregate you and only an insane amount of conflict will change our minds. It wasn't told from a holier than thou standpoint, as though Blomkamp thought his tale was better than its viewers, but rather it was used as a backdrop to tell the story of one man coming to grips with his humanity.

Copley's performance is stunning. He came out of nowhere, apparently getting this role because he was a friend of the screenwriter. But I bet you he'll be an international star very soon. His transformation is really quite impressive and the absolute pivot for the entire film.

Don't go in expecting anything. The closest thing I can relate this to is Enemy Mine but you'll just have to see it.

My criticisms are of the nerd variety. We don't know what the aliens are really called. We don't know where they are from. The movie ends much like a typical Earth regional conflict in that it doesn't end. It was a single event in a larger conflict. We don't know why the aliens are here and we don't know if they'll ever leave.

This was one of the better movies I've seen in long time. It's a definite diamond.

Happy Birthday Cheryl

2009-08-13T10:05:00.001-05:00

Roller Girl
Originally uploaded by xadrian.

Ms. Austin turns 'leventy thfour today.

She's battered, bruised, loved, and lingered. She's played flute, done pushups on asphalt in the summer and paid someone to put ink on her back. She's owned a business, raised two kids, put up with a geek husband and found herself and a new love.

She's gonna be a roller girl. She's jumped out of an airplane. She has AP credentials. She took family wedding photos with Karl Rove. She's going back to school.

She has a head like a rotten peach and if you bump it, she sees fireworks and speaks Farsi. She both drinks too much and not enough. She quit smoking.

She's a fearless flirt, a compassionate caretaker and a stubborn sexpot. What she doesn't know, she'll learn. What she can't learn she fakes. What she can't fake, she delegates. She's quick witted, sly, clever and loves laughing really loudly.

She's loyal, supportive and giving, provided you don't give her reason not to be. She keeps her friends close and her enemies closer. She keeps her skeletons away from the closets. She's a party animal in PJs. She likes home cooked meals at outdoor festivals. She likes beer with lime. She doesn't like bagels.

She's pretty cool.

Please wish her a happy birthday.

Wishes

2009-08-06T09:19:00.002-05:00

Kind of a filler post, but this is something I always think about. Plus, Twitter is down so I have to do something.

Have you ever thought about what you'd do with Three Wishes? Let's say there really is a lamp with a genie, or let's say the most powerful organization in the world offers you hush wishes for your knowledge of how Zelda is a mind control test gone wrong. Regardless, you have three chances to ask for something; something wonderful and extravagant and fulfilling.

What do you wish for?

Ever since the movie Bedazzled came out, my thoughts on this subject have changed. More often then not, the story of the genie is always one of knowing what you have now and appreciating it or realizing that acquiring things can only lead to suffering and heartache. The genie or devil or wildly wealthy benefactor always seems to twist your words and you end up with literally what you asked for, but not in the way you'd imagined it. You want a million dollars, so you get a winning lottery ticket. The problem is, it's all taxed and you end up with 500,000 dollars, plus undue family and friend attention, and all that goes with the windfall award. You wish to be famous and suddenly you've been turned into a serial killer who's murdered 20 nuns on a 14 state spree. You wish to be in movies and you are now an unpaid intern for an independent film company.

Knowing things can be interpreted differently the broader the scope, I started thinking of ways to get these elaborate things without confusion and I ended up running mental circles and keeping track of long statements laying out exactly it was that I wanted. I didn't want there to be any misunderstanding, any room for interpretation. The wish was to be as concise and as simple as possible.

This meant wishing for simple things.

There's just too many ways you can become rich. You could be a drug lord, or running a human traffic ring or just a regular gang member. They are technically well off because they avoid paying taxes and don't generally deal with a payroll department. The point being you could be any number of salacious individuals whose power and status have made them well off. But would you want to live like that? Would a wish like this need to be more well defined or simpler?

Think about what you'd really like. Do you want to be rich or do you want to be well off? Do you want to be fabulously wealthy or comfortable? Are you willing to trade your life for another just to be able to accommodate the trappings of a large bank account?

To me the answer is sadly pedestrian. I know that money doesn't solve everything and it doesn't bring happiness. But I'm practical enough to know that when people in my house get paid, everyone relaxes for a day. The stack of bills doesn't seem as big because some get taken care of. Our gas tanks are filled, our fridge is stocked and we even some times have enough to take a night out to forget that we have to work for the next 60 years. Or we buy our selves something we've needed put have constantly put off, like an oil change or a pair of shoes or a toy for the kids.

I like my job. It affords me time off when needed, the people are nice, the company is respectable and for the most part is less susceptible to market conditions. It's not drawing or writing for a living, but it's good work. What I'd wish for is a 10% raise on my salary without changing jobs. I'm not going to live outside my means, but knowing you can leave below your means makes it even sweeter when suddenly you don't have to. All I want is to be able to take my lady out on dates, take my kids to movies, make sure people have birthday parties with presents, gas in my well tended to car, chewing gum in my dashboard when I need it and the ability to buy a breakfast sandwich once in a while. I'd like to take my family out to eat once a week. I'd like to take a weekend road trip and not worry if I can swing a hotel room.

There's a song by Ingrid Michaelson that has a line which says, "Let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France - Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance." It's a wonderful notion and yes it's a song that requires fanciful and lyric twining of words, but the idea of being comfortable and friendly and giving with your wealth is especially endearing to me. But it again shows how careful you'd have to be wishing to be rich.

But wait, I have three wishes.

I think the easiest thing to do is to wish for something that would make you happy for a little while, but is not able to be twisted. Being rich and powerful and famous leaves the door wide open. Being happy or not worrying in general can be something twisted into a blissed-out drug induced existence. Even something like world peace can be taken wrong. An Earth without humans is a world at peace, right?

The Bhagavad Gita (among others) teaches us that material possession is unseemly and should be avoided in favor of spiritual awareness, but does allow for gradations or levels of enlightenment. Buddhism talks of moderation in all things, we can only assume that means materialism. Some schools of philosophy teach us that things don't make the self, the world does not make the self, sometimes the self doesn't even make the self. But there is, in all these cases, something to be said for creature comforts.

That said, I love Lego. I love Star Wars Lego and I'd love to wish for every set Lego put out, but that would mean I'd have no room in my house to put them up. I'd also have to be careful how to wish for it. I don't want EVERY SINGLE Star Wars Lego set because I'd be receiving every single one, removing them from other people AND ensuring I'd need a warehouse to hold them all. I'd have to say something specific, "I wish for one of each set of Star Wars LEGO." Actually, I'd probably wish for two of each so I could trade with other people for different types of sets and parts. Then for storage or display I'd figure it out on my own. I'm sure eventually I'll have enough room to have a Lego room where I can build and store, but for now having the sets would be great.

It's an exercise, a game. I'm not as greedy and materialistic as all this may seem. It's fun to think about, but you know practically that you make your own way in life and what you do along the way and how many people you can impact positively is more important that how much you have when you die. We all want what's best for our family and friends and given the opportunity, I know most of us would wish for their health and happiness.

Wait, three wishes?

Finally I'd wish for a Snickers ice cream bar because those things are delicious.

Carry on.