The cat’s out of the bag, and the verdict’s in: No one has a clue as to why a company called Apple keeps pumping out releases named after Large Felines. We’d think that logically, there’d be a Granny Smith, a Washington, etc. Nothin’. All cats...

I haven’t made the jump yet to the new OS, but I’m going to. Eventually. When I get that new computer I keep talking about. And talking about. And talking about. Eventually I’ll get one. Soon enough. The next time they upgrade the lineup. For real this time. No, I mean it.

No but really I do. We’re doing well-enough financially that I think we’re going to go credit-happy and splurge on some things we want. We’ll both get new computers, selling my current one and doing something else with hers (not spoiling the surprise, sorry). I plan on also getting some new camera equip, which will run me probably about $3k by the time I’m done, which now that I think about it ain’t all that bad! I’ll have two top-tier lenses, a decent body, and a nice bag to carry it all around it.



A Different Bag?
Yeah, I changed my mind about which bag(s) I want in my arsenal. I wanted to find an all-in-one solution. This solution had to be able to fit my camera with the longer of the lenses attached (as that’s what I shoot with most frequently), my 17” Laptop, and have a space for the hiking day’s essentials, namely jug of water for the dogs, a small bowl (again for the dogs), and maybe a light jacket or something.

Doesn’t exist. I can’t find it. I knew I’d be paying for a bag of this caliber, but I figured if it could do all I asked, I could use it as my hiking bag as well as my all-around bag, but the damned thing just doesn’t exist. Plus, I figured that more than likely, I’ll not want to have my Laptop with me when on a hike. Because, I fall, computer go boom, not only am I out a laptop, I’m out all the info on it. Boom.

Yeah I know I should back up more often, but even with the aforementioned release of Leopard and it’s now-famous Time Machine, if you read between the lines you know that right now it’s been crippled from its initial scope. Booh! Hey I try to get around to it, it’s just a pain. I know I know, I should just step up, but hey… I’m lazy.



This just in: Baseball sucks
The World Series of Baseball (which, with the exception of a couple Canadian towns, is entirely a US affair. Strange…) just finished. I noticed only because I was out to dinner at a restaurant that had it going on the TV. And. They. Wouldn’t. Turn. It. Off. So I had to suffer through endless replays of a double play. Endless. Endless, I tell you.

Look, I’ll play baseball, just ask me. Hell, I’ll play badminton. I’ll play Barbie if there’re rules and competition. But watching it? Yawn. Why does a game that contains 15 minutes of action require a 3-hour time slot?

And before anyone tries to even form a thought about football and replays, yes there’s replays in football, but only the exceptional plays get it, and only once, maybe twice if it’s an issue of questioned call (was he out in bounds? Both feet?) Baseball just beats every play to death like 4 or 5 times, because there’s just too much dead space to fill up. And it is for this reason that I cannot watch baseball if I have an option otherwise. There’s not enough action, and too much crotch-grabbing. And coming from me, that’s saying something. Cuz I’m a crotch-grabber, is what I’m sayin’.



Having said that…
Congrats to the Boston Red Sox. Now all of you! Go play a real sport!

Peace.

Tags: Entertainment, hate, Technology

Yeah I saw this movie. It seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it affair really, with some raving and some crying “please stop, no more,” but my current boss said it best when she left to silence most of the points and stated simply “it’s not a movie I’d watch again.”

Fair enough, and that’s about where I stand on the issue as well. It has some great cinematic moments in it, coupled together with some weak, B-movie ones with very weak transitions from one end to the other. The story is decent enough, though to me there were some things that should have gotten more attention.

More than anything, I think it’s a story of man’s wickedness. You watch the movie and you see firsthand the gruesomeness of humanity, to take from others what is not yours & leave others dead, damaged, & despaired with no concern of your own. You watch the first 30 minutes and you instantly hate all republicans – even the ones you’re good friends with – and every instance of waged war ever stricken on this earth. What I find most amusing about this is that it’s a Mel Gibson Movie. You know, that staunch right-wing christian advocate who made that film Passion of the Christ & later slandered every person of Jewish decent in a drunken stupor? Yeah, that Mel Gibson.

Well if you look at things as they are in the film and as it relates to current times, the morals of the story are that war is bad, man is wicked, and man’s organizations & societies are built upon this wickedness & the perversion of all our finer qualities, instead focusing on superficialities, and the mere appearance of being close to god and all that stands for. In other words, all that the right-wingers like he stand for and fight (read: war) to protect. The underlying message of the film is that he & the history of his belief system have been so verifiably wrong & evil that suddenly I don’t care how many whips JC took, I hate christianity in all its glory. Especially the Crusaders.

Not that they’re alone, mind you. Almost every religion is guilty in this same regard, and thus feels my ire almost as much as the protestants. Though not quite, because the protestants are the ones building the biggest soapboxes from which to profess their innocence, despite their long history of violence & subversion.

Ahem. It’s a movie worth watching I think, if only because it personifies the evil that is man’s war against himself, and in such close-knit settings of family ties, really does a good job of showing the grief of loss & suffering wrought upon the innocent, when we don’t think about the consequences of our actions beyond our own selves. If you’re of right mind, you can easily see the fallacy of having a rich elite making decisions about the paths of others’ lives, when they will not take part nor see the effects of their decisions firsthand.

If you can forgive it its few silly camera tricks & cheap cutbacks here & there, it’s a workable film with an important enough point to be made, even if that point contradicts the point-makers' views, oddly enough. It’s worth watching, though yeah, only once. I’ll give it a straight B.



Birthday treat issued this fine day
For my birthday, The Girl got me a full-body massage from a local spa/hair place. We went together & she got her hair done as I got my body rubbed down, and it was a perfect day for it as well, with an intermittent drizzle coming down. So yeah, the warm rubdown in a sauna-like room was a great idea!

The only real issue I had was the massage itself. It was good, don’t get me wrong, seeing as how back rub=like sex to me. But we started off with the masseuse asking me if I had any sore spots or anything to be cautious of, and I said that heck no, I’m really healthy so go for it, but instead I got the granny rubdown.

Maybe I should have been a bit more forthright in what I meant; Maybe I should have said something more like “please throw bricks at my body” or maybe “I am impervious to pain” or something like “family problems? Boyfriend issues? Troubles at home? Please let me be your punching bag. Feel free to take out your aggression on me.” Because the massage I got was meant for an 80 year old woman with a hunchback, not a 20-something male with a proclivity to lift heavy objects over and over again, just for the fun of it, just to see if he can, just so he can lift heavier objects next time.

I didn’t say anything during it mainly because I didn’t want to upset the help. I’ve never been there before! Maybe that’s how she works, you know? Maybe she starts soft and ends rough, maybe it’s just a warm-up, maybe she’s just lulling me into ‘ho-hum’ land before throwing the elbows in and trying to remove meat from my ribcage.

Turns out No, she’s just massaging me as if I got out of spinal surgery a few minutes ago or something. So next time? If there is a next time? See 2nd paragraph up from this one. One of those or all three or maybe a combination of those and some other fancy lines I can come up with.

On a lighter note, The Girl actually liked her haircut, though she admits she could have stood to go a few inches shorter (that’s what I keep telling her. Insert sexual innuendo here), and it only cost $35 dollars, which ain’t bad for girl’s hair. So I think she found a good place to come back to and maintain that sexy mane.



Speaking of Manes
My hair is growing so much faster up here. I think it’s the healthy new beginnings. Seriously. I used to be able to go 2-3 months between haircuts, and people considered my shag to be growing fast. Today I looked at it and thought to myself that it was getting long in the tooth (so to speak) and needed a good cutting. I looked up the last time I had it chopped. Not even a month. Damn.

Like Greased Lightning, man. And I’m italian, so that’s really not too far from the truth. The lightning’s all that’s missing.

Peace.

Tags: Entertainment

Watched this flick over the last week. It wasn’t too bad, actually. Had a few laugh-out-loud moments, though it balanced with a number of lulls that almost put me to sleep. I grew curious about it when I was checking my list of “movies to see,” (yes I keep one of those), and lo-and-behold, it’s the one of the highest rated flicks thus far this year on rottentomatoes.

My only real complaint about the film was that they make the main guy a little too much of a dufus. I mean there just wasn’t much time left near the end to make him a respectable guy, yet damn if they didn’t try. And to me that was a real travesty to the whole rest of the film. You root for them, but you feel that unless he changes, it may very well be best for their split. Then suddenly presto chango, he’s different and has corrected the few things he really needed to (job, drugs).

But you didn’t really see it. Which makes it very, very fake. And the most horrible thing about it was, if you watch the deleted scenes, they actually shot the scenes that the audience needed to see, they just didn’t show them.

Which I guess makes perfect sense. For Hollywood. And all things considered, even the fact that it is a Hollywood flick, I give it a B-. It’s a decent waste of expendable time is what I’m sayin’…



Movie on Thursday?
Yeah. The Girl has been sick since Wednesday, and was pretty bad. She’s all but over it at this point, just trying to get her stamina back, but there for a while I was checking out all the babes to see what my options would be in replacing her. Turns out that I’m not that wanted, as the best I could muster was a dead fish, and even that was arranged. So thankfully she’s recovered, otherwise I’d be gettin’ none.



My new toy(s) of desire
OK, so I think I’ve decided to stay on the DSLR bandwagon. As I discussed with others (and possibly YOU), I got into the DSLR craze not because I imagined being famous soon, but because my desire to create had outgrown the lesser equipment’s offerings. The real reason I began to question my hobbyist commitment was that the creation was becoming to be a burden. Before – in So Cal – I kept my camera in the ‘runner, and it came out when the opportunity called, which was few & far between. Now though, the opportunities to shoot something awe-inspiring crop up almost daily. Between that & my desire to carry my Laptop with me more often, it proved to be quite a chore if not impossible to accomplish. At least that is, with the current state of bags in my arsenal.

So I found some bags that will suit my needs. First up, a backpack that is rugged, fully loaded with harnesses to take me into the wilderness, yet fit my camera with telephoto lens attached as well as my 17” Laptop.

Most of the time that’s probably what I’ll be carrying with me, even around town, but there are moments when I don’t want to have the laptop with me & just have the camera in a smaller case. While this won’t be all the time or for too long – think ‘beach trips’ and sand – I found a bag for those occasions as well.

And of course, if I’m going to be going around with these fancy bags, I guess I’ll need some fancier equipment to fill it up, huh?

First up? New lenses for the camera. The ones I want, though few, are kinda pricey. But this is one of those “you get what you pay for” things, this I already know from experience with cheaper glass, and I have no desire to shoot for the middle of the pack and end up still dissatisfied.

Next up is a new camera to compliment my new glass. Nothing too fancy, but enough to get better pictures in a wider range of lighting. A Canon Rebel XTi ought to do. I’d prefer a 40D or a 5D, but I’m not rich and no one seems to want to donate to the fund, so I’ll stick with the Rebel series. It’s not quite “...what you pay for” with these. I can get good pictures out of the Rebel I already own, and I can get even better ones out of the newer ones, but the difference in quality between the Rebel series & the 40D/5D and up is minimal, but the price difference is substantial.

And of course, I’m gonna need a new Apple MacBook Pro 17" with the HD glossy screen & 160GB 7200rpm drive to edit all those pictures. Oh, and type up my blog entries about the newest, latest & greatest tech I want/must have.

Because I know everyone wants to hear about that! Yeah!

Oh well. Hey, it’s a give & take, this blog. Sometimes I give you what you want, other times I take you for granted. But I’m always, always truthful. Except when my fingers are moving ;-)

Peace.

Tags: Technology

Sad but true very often. Yea, being a consumer is hard, what with trying to get what it is you want/need in life, all the while trying to not break the bank. And sometimes, though rare, you manage to do both. Rare of course being the key operative here.

Case in point, a recent trip to Ross. Yes, that Ross. The dress for less peeps, the ones that apparently take clearance stuff from other places that’s way out of season. Well fall is upon us, and where I live now, Fall & Winter are closely linked. It’s getting chilly at night, and though I sleep like a champ once I’m there and tucked, warm & content, the initial shock of cold sheets against naked body was becoming a little more than I could handle. So we figured maybe flannel sheets were in order. Yes, I said naked, now just drop the mental image and move on.

We get to Ross early on the off chance they might have in-season stuff at the out-of-season store, and imagine my surprise when right in the front on display was a boatload of flannel sheets. Who knew, right? Which is probably why they had them up front, because no one would ever expect winter items near winter time at Ross. So we start digging through, looking for a Cal King set that we were pretty sure we would not find in Ross, on clearance, in a big “throw it all in there” display. Imagine our surprise when we find a set, and behold, it’s only $15. Yikes, this is great news, right?

We figure we’ll take a look around some other stores (oh yeah, we’re at a mall, btw) before we jump in for the $15 ride. Well, we passed through every place we could think of, but $15 sounded better than all the $40-$70 price-tags we kept seeing elsewhere.

And let me reiterate, you often get what you pay for. This was an example of that rule. We paid $15 thinking we were getting flannel sheets, but more specifically we got flannel explosion. Yeah.

And I swear we washed them first. We fitted them, then washed to get the lint and whatnot off. We put them on, and notice a lot of lint sticking to our comforter. But it’s late by this time, after 11pm or so and I’d just gotten off of work, and I’m tired and need to be at work early in the morning. Screw it, lint or no, I’m a trooper and I’m going in.

Maybe not the brightest idea, but in my defense, it was late and I was tired and probably not thinking my clearest. We got up in the morning. What did we wake to? It looked like a bunny exploded under our comforter. No, make that 3-4 bunnies. 3-4 cute, khaki-colored bunnies, all dead and spread out over my inherited Cal King bed. Thank goodness the comforter had sacrificed itself to save its friends – um... floor & curtains – by throwing itself atop the blast. It could have been much worse.

We learn quick ‘round here
This has been another quality example of the “you get what you pay for” mantra, and I think that this time I will bother to learn from it. We’ve done this dance before, and quite a few times just recently: A) we bought some cheap kitchen food containers, because $10 seemed much cheaper than $20 for the airtight ones. Until the ants came that is, and we bought the airtight ones anyway. B) We bought a cordless phone for our new home. But we didn’t see any reason to pay more than the $60 necessary to buy the cheapest one at Target that had the minimum of what we were shopping for. That is, until we actually tried to use it and realized that one wall & 20 feet was all it took to make it more of a cordless fetch toy than a cordless phone. C) We bought a cheap plastic water nozzle for the outdoor hose (I specify outdoor because we do indeed have hoses inside. Don’t ask), because we didn’t want to spend $4 extra for the metal one that seemed like it was almost the same thing. That is, until we used the plastic one and found out that it did not have a return spring, so we had to pull it off, rather than simply release the handle, and the little “stay-on triangle thingy” thing didn’t actually fit where it was supposed to, so you couldn’t lock it in the on position either. Then of course, we had to buy the one we should have bought first a few weeks later anyway. Work gloves? Same thing. Work shoes for the girl? Same thing.

All this buying the cheap one first then buying the good one second is really killing the pocketbook. I’m all for not being taken to the cleaners – unless I'm dirty – but I think the sheets are the last time we do this song & dance. I can’t dance better than the average white guy by the way, so any way I can avoid it the better, and I’m willing to pay extra for the convenience.

We took the sheets back (“These sheets, um… aren’t the right size….DON’T OPEN THE BAG!”), then we price checked only the stores we felt had merchandise of reputable quality (read: $40-70 sheets). We decided on what we found at Mervyn’s, which as you might have guess was the $40 variety, though only in a way. They were $50 the days before, but had gone on sale so we jumped. These sheets? Red. Scared? You bet I was. Need I have been? Not really.

A few small stray pieces of lint, but they’ve worked out well so far otherwise. Even through a small “break-in” session. Yeah baby. I’m all about the visuals & mental images tonight!

So anyway, take it from me. The saying? It's pretty damned accurate. Research the product. If you find a price that's too good to be true, it is. It's not really [insert product here], it's actually [insert the word "crap" here]. And that's just the way it is.

Peace.

You know those round little bugs you find in a garden that roll up into a ball when you poke at them? Roly-Polies, right? We all grew up loving the roly-poly, right? Well fueled by a recent desire to look absolutely everything up, which started with information hunting on Mosquito Hawks (which, btw, do NOT eat mosquitoes and are pests themselves – so kill on sight!), I found myself attached to my favorite laptop in search of info on roly-polies.


First trouble was that I had no idea how to spell roly-poly. Who knew? I figured that it’d have 2-l’s. Wrong. OK so I found out that it’s roly-poly, but that they are also commonly known as pill bugs, and some that don’t roll up known as sow bugs, are actually wood lice. And what’s even more interesting than that is, that they’re actually crustaceans! Yeah! They even breathe with gills, taking oxygen from water still. Fine dining in your backyard. Boil & crack, just like crab I guess.

Now I know. And now too, do you.



Overview: 3:10 to Yuma
I had the highest of hopes for this film going in, which can often be a recipe for disaster & disappointment (or disappointment & disaster). This film has superstars littered throughout, from leading men Russell Crowe to Christian Bale, to Peter Fonda and even featuring Luke Wilson for a short stint. Yeah, it’s packed.

It’s a gritty story about an average man trying to do right by his family, though he’s not outstanding in the least, and to the dismay of his sons, he’s not a superstar, and often makes decisions that they deem weak, lowering their father in their eyes. He takes the job of escorting a captured outlaw to Contention to catch a train to Yuma for trial mostly because he’s in desperate need of money to keep his farm afloat, and his family fed & with roof.

The acting is top-notch throughout, with strong performances from everyone. The only place I can complain about the acting is from that of Ben Foster, who plays Charlie Prince. I recognized him immediately as the asshole older brother from “Alpha Dog,” a movie that you may recall I didn’t quite enjoy immensely. And it’s not that I recognized the face so much as I recognized the character. Yeah, he’s the same exact guy here, same mannerisms, same speech, same everything, just subtract 140 years for period and add a beard & hat.

And while the characters had substantial depth & substance and the acting was quite good, for me there was still a lot missing or just inaccurate or inconceivable. Like for instance, the fact that they had Christian Bale talking as if he was born & raised in these scenes (Southwest US), when in fact his character is a recent transplant from the Boston area. Shouldn’t he have a Boston accent & speech patterns? And though I loved the complicated nature of the characters & motives, and the codes of honor and whatnot, there’s still a lot that simply doesn’t make sense except that it furthers the movie towards the preconceived climatic ending. And to me, that should never exist. If you’re putting a story together (pay attention, future screenwriters), there should never come a time when you’re introducing plot elements that don’t follow from the previous; it’s call the “deus ex machina,” and it’s basically insulting your audience in order to make it to the end of the story you already conceived, but now realize would be impossible to attain without some unexplainable, implausible notions and/or actions taking place.

Such as, say, the bad guy running where the good guy tells him to, even though the good guy’s being shot at by the bad guy’s buddies and baddy could really just turn a corner and be gone while the good guy gets swiss cheesed. Or the bad guy getting into a cell willingly, after there’s no one left to force him into it as they’re all dead, even though he’s been trying to escape for the last 2 hours (film time). Or the bad guy not shouting or making gestures to his buddies that are watching as the good guys try the ol’ bait-and-switch maneuver. All of which happen in this film, by the way.

So it’s sad to say that though it’s getting pretty glowing reviews all around, I’m not going to be on that side of the fence. A shame yes, as I like the actors & I think that pretty much all the performances were strong. Yea I cannot ignore the inconsistencies of the characters in those moments when they do something so stupid that it’s obvious only a movie character a la John Wayne would do that. As soon as they slap me in the face and insult me, I lose interest I guess.

Grade: C+



Feeling the Rhythm
For the last week or so, my right butt cheek (laugh it up) has been twitching non-stop. Funny to hear about I’m sure, not so funny to deal with when you’re trying to sleep. Or sit and concentrate. Or just sit.

I hope to god that it’s rhythm invading my body, and soon I’ll make a remarkable transformation from bad dancer to good dancer. Because that would totally justify the temporary (I hope it’s temporary) butt spasms. If not? Well I guess I’ll just have to find a good butt masseuse or something. I could dig that.

Peace.

Tags: Entertainment

Tonight I put up some photos that I have culled through a few years of photography. This catalog is comprised of a few pics here & there of the Pacific Coastline, from the northern ends to the southern ends of California.

Obviously there’s more to be seen, and more that’s actually in my catalog, but I don’t want to suck up the entire internet or anything ;-)

Take a stop by and tell me what you think!



Friends? STAY AWAY
Last night I had one of the strangest dreams that I can remember of recent. I have no idea why I had it or what it meant, but boy was I glad when I woke up that it wasn’t real – I was convinced during it that it was specifically not a dream.

I blogged not all that long ago about having discovered that an old acquaintance – “Smyle Kith” – that lived a street or two away from me as a child had happened to move to the same area as me now, and only a street or two away. And I discovered this info through a mutual friend of ours, possibly one of my best friends (definitely the longest-lasting friend), Mr. Daniel, that lived directly across the street from him.

Now for whatever reason, Smyle had called me over to his new place (in my dream), and wanted to talk to me about some serious subject or other. He told me that Mr. Daniel was on his way up, and he had a plan that he needed my help with. His plan? To Kill Mr. Daniel. Yeah, this makes no sense now, but the logic in the dream make perfect sense. I don’t remember all the skinny, but I do recollect that it had something to do with Mr. Daniel’s current life situation – whatever it was – and the fact that the world was overpopulated. We were going to correct that wrong by killing one person. Because obviously, 7 billion and one was just one too many.

Like I said, at the time the logic seemed sound, so with heavy heart I set up and pulled the trigger. After Mr. Daniel’s brains were exposed, we buried his body in a planter at Smyle Kith’s new pad. And right about that time, the motive started to not make sense anymore. I instantly started to regret going along with it, and then his mother got worried about where Mr. Daniel was, and initiated a search. Now this wasn’t good for us, because everyone knew he was on his way to visit Smyle. And the deep sorrow she felt really tugged at me hard; hard enough that I wished it were all a dream and I could wake up from it.

We didn’t get caught or anything, but the guilt of killing one of my bestest friends was hell on me, and haunted me even during a shopping trip to Costco. And that’s about when I did wake up, during that shopping trip, and breathed a very real sigh of relief. Yes, see I told you my dreams make no sense; I bothered to dream about shopping in Costco? Where’s the naked women? Where’s the 72 virgins? Hell, where’s the beef?

I think the moral of the story is, if you’re a friend of mine, you may want to not visit me or any mutual friends of ours that live close by. Overpopulation and all.



Peace.