It's quiet… too quiet…
Quiet week at work as I start coming up to speed on new technology. Speaking of new, I just moved up from a Toshiba Tecra to a Toshiba M200 Protégé TabletPC. Still learning it but it certainly seems sweet. I don’t use the Tablet mode a whole lot, but I’m interested to see if I think differently when writing with the pen vs. typing with the keyboard. There’s no way the pen can keep up with the keyboard, I know. The handwriting recognition is pretty good, though.
Return of the King
Return of the King: only a few things will get me up at oh-dark thirty, and being able to see Return of the King on the opening day for free (and free of crowds) is one of them. It was good. I shouldn’t have read all of those reviews because so many critics gushed over the movie and I was expecting more than it was. But it was good, especially the Oliphant battle scenes with Legolas. I can’t imagine how long the special edition of this is going to be on DVD (five hours?).
Brian Setzer in Seattle
Brian Setzer Orchestra: Elisa and I headed to Seattle’s Paramount for Brian Setzer’s Christmas show. It was fun! Boy, I sure don’t remember who opened for Setzer (Dan Hicks, or something like that?) but he was pure awful; it was the first time in a long time that I’ve been amongst people enthralled by a performer that sounded about as good as fidgety nails on a blackboard to me (that expression is in need of updating).
Anyway, Setzer was great and played his swinging version of various Christmas sounds, then dropped into some of his classics (both swing and rock). Great production.
The Two Towers
Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers – special extended two disc four hour commit a large portion of your life-to edition. Whew. It was great. I really enjoyed this version of The Two Towers. The new stuff didn’t drag at all. Once scene I wish they hadn’t had cut was when Faramir captures Frodo and Sam and muses over “good” and “evil” while considering the body of a warrior he had just killed. “Did he feel evil in his heart?” While the movies seem to project this idea of absolute evil and absolute good, a little bit of consideration for the worlds of grey would have been great to keep in, especially in reflection of today’s events.
Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving – Beau, Bella, and I just hanging out at home. I spent the day wiring up a new receiver and moving the downstairs receiver upstairs. Who knew that connecting wires would take so much friggin’ time? Anyway, this is my first step to getting a projector system setup. I now have the hardware to drive a nice HD-quality system, I just have to wait to decide whether to do this before we move or after we move (most likely after).
Pre-Thanksgiving
Church at All Soul’s followed by a journey to Sparks for an early family Thanksgiving. Yet another wonderful party with LOTS and LOTS of food.
Engagement Party
Engagement Party – the engagement party was wonderful. Elisa’s Mom, Susan, put a lot of effort in to pulling it all together. Not only was Elisa’s family there but also my folks and relatives plus Jim and Sandra and John and Adrian. It’s great to be happy and to have all sorts of happy people gathered together.
Engaged!
Today Elisa and I became engaged!
Company Meeting
Company meeting: instead of showing fancy computer graphic loops this year, Microsoft did a wonderfully wise thing and showed all of their historic “fun” mock videos. These videos typically can’t be released outside of company events because some contain blatant copyright violation (okay to do, I guess, as long as you don’t let it out of the wild).
Some of my favorites (before and during the meeting):
Linus and Leadership
The articleWired 11.11: Leader of the Free World is a profile of Linus Torvalds. I have to say, he’s a great example of how to deal calmly with a chaotic system, let alone some chaotic characters. I respect him for that.