Month: May 2006

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Review: X-Men – The Last Stand

Josh and I went and saw “X3” today, and I must say, I was pleased.? I had read a few reviews before seeing it, saying such things like “lots of action, little ‘heart'”…or “not quite Bryan Singer, but still worth the popcorn”…? Personally, I thought it held its own very well with the other iterations.

The story mostly deals with a mutant that’s discovered that can “mute” the powers of other mutants, allowing for a cure for mutant-ism.? Some mutants are cool with this (mainly, Rogue…) while others (just about everyone else…) isn’t.? This theme allows for a large number of ethical issues to be brought up, and they were.? I thought there was a pretty good mix of “issues” and “action” thrown together in the movie; while the action in “X-Men” and “X2” were generally spread throughout, this one really concentrated the brunt of it at the end (I mean, there were action scenes in the movie, but they seemed relatively short except for the ending…).

My only real complaint was with the very beginning…? I read a few reviews mentioning the digital effects used to make Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart look 20 years younger…and while Picard’s were done relatively well, I thought McKellan’s was a bit too obvious.? For the rest of the movie, the effects were pretty damned cool…especially the Jean Grey – to – Dark Phoenix transformations…? The action was well-choreographed and many favorites (Colossus and Storm) got much more “face time” than in previous movies.

I’ll make one thing perfectly clear, though: you must stay through the credits to watch the scene played at the end.? It is absolutely imperative.? Honestly, I thought the movie was “pretty good” when the credits started…and by the very end, I had to upgrade that analysis…’cause what was left hanging from earlier (threads that weren’t quite tied together…didn’t quite make sense as to why that scene was even in there…) was dealt with…and in spades…

Go see it in the theaters.? Don’t wait for the DVD release.? Buy it when it comes out, though…it’s a keeper…

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And So It Goes…

…Well, my 23rd birthday has come and gone and I am now an old woman with wrinkles (according to my cousin, Griff). All in all, it was a good weekend, though. Andy made me a green Jello poke cake on Friday and we barbequed some pork chops and watched Sin City. Then, we drove to Columbia on Saturday morning to do some laundry and go shopping for the strand of pearls I wanted from Andy for my birthday, but alas, could not find. Went to church, ate some tasty enchiladas, had a nice chat with the in-laws, and headed to bed. Went for a walk on the MKT on Sunday morning, then headed to Millersberg for some chillin with the Poors. Got a bit of a sunburn and ate too much, drove back home and here I am, watching CSI and working on a quilt. Not too bad of a weekend, if you ask me…now if I could only find a job, I’d be the happiest girl in the world!

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Ahem…

As stolen from Tom Yonker’s Facebook profile:

“However dominant in terms of numbers, Christianity is only a thread in the American tapestry – it is not the whole tapestry. The God who is spoken of and called on and prayed to in the public sphere is an essential character in the American drama, but He is not specifically God the Father or the God of Abraham. The right’s contention that we are a ‘Christian nation’ that has fallen from pure origins and can achieve redemption by some kind of return to Christian values is based on wishful thinking, not convincing historical argument.”

–Jon Meacham, NEWSWEEK Managing Editor, author of “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation”

Indeed…

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For the one with everything…

Looking for something special for Memorial Day presents this year? Why don’t you try the Concerto Table? It comes with an iPod dock and two 50 watt speakers…and is shaped like a piano…

The blurb about it is from Engadget…damn, that site helps waste some time at work…

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Review: The Da Vinci Code

Brooke and I saw “The Da Vinci Code” last night (for free, incidentally), and I must say that it was pretty good.? For some reason, I knew I’d like it in the end, despite what many reviewers were saying…but having read the book (Brooke read it twice, even…) and watched plenty of TV shows over the past year dealing with some of the issues brought up in the story, I was interested in seeing it on the big screen, putting a visual to the words in the book.

The movie, overall, was pretty well done, I thought.? I’d say it stuck with the book a good 90% of the time.? There were many times I thought that the words spoken on screen were taken directly from the book, as well as the transitions from scene to scene…but there were some other times where Ron Howard took a few “liberties,” especially in the specifics of the ending…but none of these changes were particularly distracting, unlike a movie I saw last Christmas…? I especially liked the way Howard added some digital effects so that we could see what was going through Langdon’s mind as he tried to crack the various codes…

Anyway, I thought it was a good movie.? From the perspective of someone who read the book and was interested in the subject matter, it was good.? If you haven’t read the book, or if you’re expecting some glorified action movie, then you may not…? It did have some suspenseful moments, but no truly crazy car chases or gun fights…although, there was a lot of running…

“The Da Vinci Code” is simply another good reason why you shouldn’t trust the critics in all matters…not that I do…ever…? 😛

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Miracles Happen…

Real ones. Here’s the story for all of you doubters:

Wednesday night, my dad went to his weekly Hannibal Rural Volunteer Fire Department meeting and training. Everything was as normal, and Dad has been on the department for probably almost 15 years now. All of the guys had just finished their training with some sort of pump apparatus and were standing around chatting when my dad suddenly fell face first to the ground. Good firefighters that they are, the men standing nearest my dad quickly realized Dad wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse, so they began CPR and ran to get the department’s defibrillator, charged it, and shocked him three times before his heart started. During all of this, someone radioed for an ambulance, which my youngest sister heard on the scanner. Rachel has some weird sense about these things (when Mallory, Ben, and I had our car accident she knew it was us on the scanner before anybody else did) and started freaking out and ran to get Mom who was doing laundry and watching tv. At this point, Mom raced out the door to go to the hospital (Rachel stayed home to study for her Algebra final) and called me and Andy so we could come to be with Rachel. Needless to say, we were both pretty shaken up on the drive to Hannibal and got there right before Mom pulled in the driveway to tell us that they’d flown Dad to Columbia and she was on her way there. Apparently, in the couple of hours Dad had been at Hannibal Regional Hospital, they’d run every test they could think of and could find absolutely nothing wrong with him except that his heart had stopped. Mallory met Mom in Columbia since she was coming from the Lake of the Ozarks where they were up all night as more tests were run. Anyway, during all of this, Dad was sedated and hooked up to all kinds of medical implements and Andy and I were in Hannibal cleaning and mowing and taking Rachel where she needed to be. Nothing much changed until we finally had a chance to make it to Columbia on Friday afternoon. By then, Dad was awake, but still confused and having problems with his short-term memory. He asked Andy about school at least 3 times in the few hours we were there, but by Saturday, he could remember most everything that happened after Friday morning. So, the final verdict is that Dad has Brugada Syndrome, which has something to do with a part of the small arm of the third chromosome that controls some kind of sodium channel that makes the heart pump. Because of this, though, it means that there is a possibility that members of Dad’s family could also have this syndrome, which is not as scary as Dad’s heart stopping, but is still something to think about.

The moral is that it seems that this thing would have happened no matter what Dad was doing or where he was, so it’s pretty amazing that he was at the fire station with capable people instead of anywhere else. The crazy thing is that not enough people have actually lived through this kind of thing to have any sort of standard for treatment or to even know anything about it. So, on Monday, Dad’s having surgery to put a defibrillator in his chest, in case it happens again when Dad’s not in such a lucky place. He’ll be home on Tuesday and it will be a few weeks before he can do anything too physically strenuous and then six months before he can drive, which will be an interesting life for him. That’s about all we know for now, and I’m not sure I understand all of the physiological aspect of it, but that’s what Andy’s for!!

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Sigh…

“There are people all over Rome dressed up like Romans!”

— Kristen

…time to get back in an American school, kiddo… 😛

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James T. Kirk rules!

So, I was watching The Late Show with David Letterman from Monday night (May 15, 2006) and, most specifically, Letterman’s interview with William Shatner…They didn’t talk about much besides Shatner’s horse ranch and his competitions, but towards the end, Dave asked about Shatner’s kidney stone. For those who don’t know, he had a kidney stone and, after he passed it, someone suggested that he sell it. The thing went for $75,000 grand (to a casino, I think…)… Apparently, Shatner used his $75,000 grand from the kidney stone, added it to the cash raised by the other “Boston Legal” cast members, and they donated $95,000 to Habitat for Humanity to build houses in Louisiana…

So…some lucky bastard in New Orleans is living in a house primarily paid for by Jim Kirk’s kidney stone…

Only in America, yo…

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It’s about time…

…for another computer upgrade (that title, complete with “…”, is for you, Kai…). I’ve had my Shuttle motherboard running since late-Sophomore year when I started running Linux and Windows on separate systems…and I maxed out the processor to an Athlon XP 1900+ early in my Junior year… So yeah, essentially, I’ve been using the same hardware (with minor upgrades/replacements) for about 5 years. That’s an eternity in computer time, so I’m ready for an upgrade. Recently, I’ve noticed the system slowing down with every reformat and I’ve had yet another Maxtor hard drive go out, so I’m ready to make the jump.

Here are the specs I’ve been looking at, using Mwave‘s pricing for a barebones system:

  • Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Manchester) — $297.00
  • MSI K8N NEO4-F — $73.50
  • 1 GB DDR400 RAM (dual-channel 512 MB) — $83.00
  • NEC 16x DVD+/-RW — $38.90
  • Black Apex SQ-328 case (350W PS) — $41.00
  • Seagate 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM hard drive — $69.00
  • Gigabyte GeForce 7300GT PCIe 128 MB — $63.00

Total cost for the specs listed above comes out to a grand total of $665.40 using Mwave’s pricing and as of May 15, 2006. I’m assuming that the price will come down overall by the time I can buy this thing sometime mid- to late-summer. The processor, especially, should drop in price by the time I can afford this…and things like the motherboard, hard drive and video card probably will change. Honestly, I don’t really need much so far as video cards go, but I’d like to have something cheap yet capable for whatever I want to do with it in the coming years. I’d really like to get 2 GB of RAM in there running dual-channel ’cause I think the 64-bit dual core system would really like to use it, but that’ll depend on RAM prices… I’ll also have to figure out Linux drivers. This is an nForce4 chipset and I think it’s support is somewhat limited under Linux…

Anyway…suggestions? While I like Ubuntu a lot, I’d probably try Gentoo again initially so I’m sure that the 64-bit and dual core shenanigans are being used to their full potential, just to see how blazing fast I can run it…may switch back eventually…who knows…

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It's about time…

…for another computer upgrade (that title, complete with “…”, is for you, Kai…). I’ve had my Shuttle motherboard running since late-Sophomore year when I started running Linux and Windows on separate systems…and I maxed out the processor to an Athlon XP 1900+ early in my Junior year… So yeah, essentially, I’ve been using the same hardware (with minor upgrades/replacements) for about 5 years. That’s an eternity in computer time, so I’m ready for an upgrade. Recently, I’ve noticed the system slowing down with every reformat and I’ve had yet another Maxtor hard drive go out, so I’m ready to make the jump.

Here are the specs I’ve been looking at, using Mwave‘s pricing for a barebones system:

  • Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Manchester) — $297.00
  • MSI K8N NEO4-F — $73.50
  • 1 GB DDR400 RAM (dual-channel 512 MB) — $83.00
  • NEC 16x DVD+/-RW — $38.90
  • Black Apex SQ-328 case (350W PS) — $41.00
  • Seagate 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM hard drive — $69.00
  • Gigabyte GeForce 7300GT PCIe 128 MB — $63.00

Total cost for the specs listed above comes out to a grand total of $665.40 using Mwave’s pricing and as of May 15, 2006. I’m assuming that the price will come down overall by the time I can buy this thing sometime mid- to late-summer. The processor, especially, should drop in price by the time I can afford this…and things like the motherboard, hard drive and video card probably will change. Honestly, I don’t really need much so far as video cards go, but I’d like to have something cheap yet capable for whatever I want to do with it in the coming years. I’d really like to get 2 GB of RAM in there running dual-channel ’cause I think the 64-bit dual core system would really like to use it, but that’ll depend on RAM prices… I’ll also have to figure out Linux drivers. This is an nForce4 chipset and I think it’s support is somewhat limited under Linux…

Anyway…suggestions? While I like Ubuntu a lot, I’d probably try Gentoo again initially so I’m sure that the 64-bit and dual core shenanigans are being used to their full potential, just to see how blazing fast I can run it…may switch back eventually…who knows…