New Blog

Lately, as I've gotten back into HTML and CSS and all that good stuff instead of only using Flash, I'm starting to learn or relearn a lot of new things. I've decided to start cataloging all that information, partly cuz someone else might find it useful, but mostly because I'm pretty forgetful. So, without further ado... I've started another blog. It keeps all my geeky mumbo jumbo off this one and spares you all from reading it (unless you actually want to).

It can be found at this URL.
Or go learn something about cross domain policies.

Blood Diamond

Last night we watched the movie Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, and Djimon Hounsou. It is about the diamond trade and diamond smuggling in Africa, particularly Sierra Leone around 1999. I bought the DVD based only on the theater preview, and it turned out to be worth it.

The movie overarching message is pretty chilling, and makes you think twice about the jewerly you have bought. There is pretty good dialog and lots of action. It really reminds me a lot of Hotel Rwanda, which is another great movie with a similar 'world-ignoring-Africa' theme.

Clearly the goal of this movie was to move the viewer to the point where they would not buy these 'conflict diamonds' and thereby help the situation in any small way they could. However, I think there's a problem with that motive.

*MODERATE SPOILER ALERT* If all these movies that are trying to change the world focus in on a happy ending about one person instead of the hundreds, thousands, or millions of deaths and terrible endings, people here are never going to get it. I don't know if anyone would go to a movie that had a bad ending, or if a bad ending would even constitute a movie, but when Solomon walks into the G-8 conference to speak and gets a standing ovation, that's not a typical ending. Everyone leaves the theater feeling better about that than if he didn't make it. That softens the message on the way out the door and helps you forget all the stuff you saw before that. There has to be a way for Hollywood to solve this problem.

Shooter

We went and saw the movie Shooter this past weekend. It stars Mark Wahlberg, who, much to my chagrin, is becoming one of my favorite actors. He's been pretty good in a ton of movies, and I personally thought he was great in The Departed. I had been looking forward to Shooter since seeing it in a preview, and then I kinda forgot about it. When we were driving around looking for movies Saturday, I saw it had come out and we decided to see it.

Turns out it was a pretty awesome movie. I'm always a sucker for a conspiracy movie or a police chase movie (Yes, I'm still hung up on Prison Break). Combine the two and add some good acting in; you've got quite a movie.

Anyway, I'm not going to give much of it away. I think the promos make it known that Mark Wahlberg is hired to help plan out an assassination of the president, in order to "stop it from happening." Then, the "company" (who seems to have turned up a lot in movies/tv/entertainment lately... tells you what we think of the government) frames him for the job. The rest of the movie is his attempt to save himself/get out of it. I'd recommend seeing it, and seeing it in a theater with some good speakers... the audio is really great.

Carey Park

We went to Carey Park today and I took some pictures. I'm trying to see if this photo album thing I built works, so here you go... maybe:

Comment Count

Well, I haven't been able to find any documentation about comments, so it is proving difficult to program my comment scorecard.

However, I have manually added it, and we'll see how well I can keep up. Good luck to you all.

A walk in the park

Today we watched a little basketball and ran a few errands at Target, where we bought 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.' Yeah, I bought the fullscreen edition. Don't get me started. This topic warrants an entire post of its own. So I took it back, and they didn't have the widescreen. We ended up heading down to the big park in Hutchinson and strolling around a little to check it out. The park is pretty nice; it's really huge for the size of this city. There are a lot of ponds and a couple waterfalls and bridges. There's a bunch of shelter houses, park equipment, baseball and softball fields, and a bike path that goes about 4 miles to another park in town. Anyway, it was pretty cool, and I'll have to take some photos and put them up when it gets a little greener. After that we rented Anchorman, and it was decent. I wouldn't give it four stars or anything.

Also, all four of my Final Four teams are still in the tournament.

Life With a Woman

So, back at the end of January Brandon mentioned it wouldn't be long before Scott was forced to watch HGTV and Oprah. I claimed, with zeal, I do not watch that stuff...which I stand by. However, Scott was shocked and apalled to discover the DVR set to record Girls Next Door. I have no idea why I watch the show. Perhaps it is jealousy for their lifestyle (the living in a mansion with a sexy wardrobe and butlers not the living with an old guy part). More than likely it is just the 'girl' coming out in me. On my own behalf, I watched almost three days of basketball. I consider myself well-rounded.

Grillmaster

Although it took me about three hours, I have successfully put together our new grill. I'd put a real picture of it on here, but the door that came with it was broken, and it was too dark outside. So now I'm waiting 7-10 business days for a new door and it will be complete. Luckily it was the door and not a burner or something. Anyway, the grill will be in full effect Friday for the March Madness celebration. I'll let you know how it goes.

When cats attack

So a couple of days ago, one of the kittens escaped. She managed to jump out a window thru a space she shouldn't have been able to get through. As I'm trying to recover the youngster, she decides she's scared and I'm not making the situation better. So when I reach down to get her, she proceeded to scratch the hell out of me. (Graphic is for illustrative purposes, and is not actual scratch.)

Anyway, Katie still loves the cats, so make your own inferences.

Why 2007 will be the best tournament ever

I haven't watched as much college basketball this year as I usually do, but I've kept up with PTI and SportsCenter, and I've been watching most of the conference tournament games. From what I know, and what I've seen, I'm pretty sure this is going to be the most competitive NCAA tournament ever. Allow me to explain.

1. The best teams aren't unstoppable.

Every one of these teams that are in the hunt for a #1 seed have had their struggles. They all have weaknesses. Florida has struggled lately, but maybe they have gotten back on track. Ohio State is so young, and their star players were cutting down the nets in the Indiana State High School basketball tournament this time last year. Wisconsin is having injury problems. Memphis hasn't played any competition. No one knows anything about UCLA because they are on the west coast, but they blew a game at the end of the regular season and then chalked it up in the Pac-10 Tournament. Kansas is probably the strongest team at the moment, but nobody was talking about them a couple months ago. It really just feels like a toss-up at the top.

2. The best teams are getting the automatic bids

Check out this list (conference-bid winner-regular season rank):
Ivy League-Penn-1
Big South-Winthrop-1
Atlantic Sun-Belmont-2
Southern-Davidson-1
Ohio Valley-E. Kentucky-2
Missouri Valley-Creighton-2
Colonial-VCU-1
Metro Atlantic-Niagara-2
West Coast-Gonzaga-1
Mid Continent-Oral Roberts-1
Horizon-Wright State-1
Sun Belt-North Texas-5
Northeast-C. Connecticut-1
Big Sky-Weber State-1
Patriot-Holy Cross-1
America East-Albany-2
Conf USA-Memphis-1

Minus the Sun Belt, every bid has gone to a team that finished first or second in the regular season! This may not necessarily lead to upsets, but I think it's going to be one of the most competitive first rounds, top-to-bottom, ever. These teams can play. Winthrop is ranked #24. Davidson is 29-4. Wright State has beaten Butler more than once. Memphis thinks they deserve a #1 seed. I'm glad I'm not on the selection committee deciding who gets a 13-14-15-16 seed, because that's going to be tougher than ever.

3. Great Players (Thanks David Stern!)

Thanks to the NBA's new age rules, college hoops have been given a chance to see some players they'd have never seen. Kevin Durant is amazing. He can carry Texas all the way through this tournament if he gets hot. Greg Oden has been fun to watch, and I can't wait to see what he can do with a good right hand. There are so many other freshmen and sophomores that are palying major roles this year, and now that they've gotten a taste of college, some of them are seriously considering sticking around. Not that they will, but we'll see.

4. More hope than ever

Every one of these teams has seen what George Mason did last year, and knows they could be next. Eight of the teams I listed above were in the tournament last year, and 14 of them have players who've been to the tournament. All this experience has to lead to some improved play. The parity in college basketball is stronger than ever and these teams can legitimately win.

So anyway, with Selection Sunday around the corner, I'm gonna settle in for the end of this A-10 championship game and prepare for a great three weeks of basketball. The upsets will come, the great ending will happen... but let's hope there are more opportunities for those great endings because of all the close games. We'll check back in on all this stuff after next weekend.

Borat

I'd heard so many good things about Borat that I assumed it couldn't possibly be as funny as I had been told. I still figured it would be pretty funny. So as I do with most movies, I decided to buy it sight unseen. It turned out to be worth it before I ever put the disc in the DVD player. I opened the case and the disc was made to look like a pirated DVD... it's supposed to look like a Memorex CD-R with Borat written on the disc in marker. I'll admit, it fooled me for a second until I read a little closer.

So we watched the movie; it was pretty funny. Clearly some of the "scenes" had to have been scripted, but many of them sure didn't seem to be. The way some of these people responded to him was hilarious. The story of the movie was pretty lame, but I think that's something I expected. I have a hard time believing that none of those people knew who this guy was tho. His TV show was fairly popular before this movie was shot, and Borat was, as far as I know, one of the characters there. Either way, I laughed quite a few times, and I think it was money well spent.

Electronic Field Trips

I spent nearly three years working at my old job at Ball State, the Electronic Field Trip program. It's a great program for educating kids and allowing them to see places they might not normally get to see on a real field trip. It's also a pretty good tool for giving parks, museums, and other points of interest some exposure to people outside their normal demographic. In the past few years, the program developed a solid relationship with the National Park Foundation, leading them to do many EFTs with parks, including well-knowns like Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, and Hawai'i Volcanoes, and some lesser-knowns like Manzanar National Historic Site.

It was interesting to work with these different parks and see how they related to us, how efficiently they worked, and who really pulled the strings. It was also quite rewarding to see the reactions of the staff when things were over. I feel that we exposed kids to some wonderful places and things; hopefully things they will remember, and parlay into actual visits to some of these places if they ever get the chance. After the recent Manzanar show, I read a blog post at Park Remark about the show. It was always great for us to get some PR from our shows, so I'm sure everyone was happy to see this. The post plugs many of the major parts of the show, including the video podcast "webisodes," which deserve to be exposed more than they have been so far.

It's too bad the author challenges the restricted access of some of the materials. It's hard to tell if he's unhappy about it or just looking for the answer. The answer is: public dollars don't go far. The program is funded by private dollars, but with the help of public servants (rangers, education staff, and many behind-the-scenes people). By restricting access, the program is able to keep a much better list of who is accessing the materials, and is in turn able to use that information to try to get more private money. More money = better product = happier, smarter kids.

China Buffets

Today was our first trip to a Chinese Buffet in Hutchinson. As many of you know, I've been to a chinese buffet a time or two in my day, and I've decided that the chinese buffet is the first line of offense in the brewing USA-China "cold war." Clearly China saw it coming much earlier than we did. They saw us planting McDonald's(es) all over the world, making people of all nationalities fatter and fatter, and thought, "Hey, how can we possibly one up the US in our quest to take over the world?" The first answer that popped into their heads must have been 'feed them until they burst.' And we graciously oblige.

I had two big plates of some real good rice and chicken, and some crab rangoons that made Muncie's seem pretty bad. But deep down inside, I could hear all the waiters and waitresses chuckling in the back room at how they were winning the first battle, slowly but surely...

You win again China. You always do.

Comments

The idea of this blog was to let everyone back home know how things are going with us here in Kansas. And really, the only way we can know people are reading it is if they comment. I'm trying to come up with a good incentive for people to make comments, but I haven't been able to find a good one within the Blogger world. This surprised me, but I am not deterred. If I have to code something myself, I will find a way. So, having said that, keep commenting (if your name is Jeff or Brandon) or start commenting. Sooner or later you might find yourself rewarded in some way or another.

My website

Even though I have a million things I should be doing. I sat here this morning and finished up some stuff on my website so I could make it live. I wanted to link from it to this blog, just cuz I felt like that should be there. So when I was trying to decide where to add that, I came up with the idea to make the site taller and add the little "promos" across the bottom. I'm sure it's a blatant rip off of apple.com (and to a lesser degree, the EFT site, Jeff), but I don't really care. I kinda like it, and it adds some more color to my site. It also gives me a couple more places to promote whatever it is I feel like promoting at the time. Right now, I created a couple spots with software and websites that I like. Who knows what else might end up there. Anyway, check it out if you're feeling bored. Lemme know what you think.

TGIF

It's Friday. I thought I was going to have to work this weekend, but it turns out not. Katie's working most of the weekend, so I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. Tonight, I went over to a friend's house and got raped playing poker. I did not win a hand; I really didn't even come close to winning a hand. Finally, I was sick of it and tried to bluff and still lost. I was kinda glad, cuz it was pretty frustrating. Now I'm home watching PTI and watching Katie do homework.

Also, despite my dislike for cats, the cats are pretty fun. I've been having a good time entertaining myself with them when they are a in a good mood anyway. Right now they're fighting. But here's something fun they do:

Getting Entrenched

Well, in accordance with my plan to immediately get as entrenched in Hutchinson as possible, Katie and I have joined a gym here. It's called Genesis Health Club... it's a local place with three or four locations in Wichita and one here in Hutch. So yesterday was our first time out. We both spent a little time on the treadmill, and I think we're headed back tonite to give it another shot.

The health club has a ton of cardio equipment, and each machine has it's own TV/DVD player/CD player/MP3 player... which is pretty impressive. On the other side, it has a weight room. It also has a snack bar, a racquetball court, two big class areas, and some pretty decked out locker rooms with wood lockers and 42" flatscreens on the wall.

Anyway... just felt like getting that positive news out there.

Also, I think we are down to four boxes. Three of them are mine. Two of those could be in the garage by now, but I'm just too lazy. And, yes, I did notice that after banging out 5 of these things in like a week in January, we only managed 6 for the whole month of February. I plan to step it up a notch in March. I know you're all as disappointed in me as I am in myself...