Flyover Blog

Vacuous

I know I've been on about movies a lot in this blog. But it's my latest past time, so deal.

I downloaded the movie called Night At the Museum starring Ben Stiller. First off I know it's kind of kid film and I know they are predictable by nature. But as one of my favorite podcasters, Mark Kermode said, if you go see this movie with adults or by yourself, you are a vacuous person. I totally agree with this. It doesn't even come close to anything approaching a preferable diversion to watching paint dry. A complete waste of time. Once again I gave Ben Stiller a chance. Ben, I really am trying to like you but my god man, can you find a film worth watching? You're nothing more than a short bumbling idiot in every role. No depth, not funny and you need to take some comedy training from your dad.

Be gone winter!

I thought that maybe we might escape winter with only a few days below freezing. Wrong! We had a about a month long cold snap with temps hovering around 10 F. After a very mild December and January, winter reared it's frigid self and reminded me how much I dislike cold weather. I'd take a month of 90 F days over a month of 10 F days. But this week the mildness returned. I welcome springtime with open arms as usual.

Speaking of springtime and flowers I'm still enjoying working at the Garden. I like working there because the environment is relaxed and not run by soulless corporate masters like my last job. Last week we got kind of a surprise dropped on us. One of the big projects we are working on has been very successful, the botanical world seems to get a lot of use out of it. It's written using Microsoft technologies like .NET and SQL Server. Good solid framework and coding has been done. The kind of stuff that makes you feel confident that nothing can break it. So one of the benefactors (we are entirely driven by charitable donations) is giving us $45 million to continue to expand this project and suck in all of the whistles and bells. But there is one caveat to the whole deal. Isn't there always when that kind of money is being spent? All the coding must be done using open source languages as in follow the LAMP model. Strange request when you think about it. We have no problem posting our code on sourceforge or allowing anyone to have a copy. In fact we've burned source code CD's for other botanical institutions in the past. Hey code is code as long as it delivers what it promises, what difference does it make how it works behind the scenes right? After some talk we think this is an an anti-Microsoft move since most of the academic world uses free or open source tools due to lack of funds to purchase mature tool sets. From experience users of these tools do tend to develop an attitude that borders on bigotry in the sense that anything from big bad Microsoft is evil and should be avoided at all cost. It's an emotional response, knee jerk, a comfortable delusion. So now our manager has to play politics with this crowd. He has said when he goes to a conference and explains the tools we've developed he gets a lot of groans whenever he divulges that it's written using .NET. So now we are tossing around idea of possibly switching over to Mono which is a free open source compiler that uses the .NET type specification. It's not a complete implementation and will always be in a catch up mode with the latest .NET SDK from Microsoft. Also we've looked into maybe using PHP and Apache. These are nice tools and can be leveraged to work in certain situations. But I've never been convinced they are truly road worthy. When you want to deliver something enterprise level you go with the mature tools. I know a lot of the botanists like using these tools and do well with them since their user base is usually a handful of people and only deliver a subset of functions of what we are trying to bring to the community. The funny thing about this is that this project has gone through several iterations over a 10-15 year period. Each time it has crashed and burned using the open source tools. This last go around they decided to try something more mature and spend the money to bring in a seasoned staff of programmers. The result is something that finally works, is robust and can easily be scaled up with minimal cost. I guess what's needed is a good dose of psychology here. Get inside their heads, see where they are coming from and form a plan of attack to convince them that the open source gambit is unnecessary and the wrong direction. This is an area where the "people skills" pays off. Of which I have very little :)

Well now that warm weather has returned it's kind of kicked me in the butt to get some things done around here. That cold weather just puts me in comatose state. I just don't want to do anything but veg and watch tv. Lots of projects at home to do. Mostly I'd like to finish up the lighting in the kitchen. I want to put in some can lighting, get rid of the ceiling fan. After that Annette and I are going to spend some money and rehab the garage to make it more carpentry friendly. Right now it's more of a place to pile crap into. Need to build a workbench, bring in a separate electrical line for more lighting and outlets, add shelves and maybe get a roll around tool chest.

We are having our movie of the week club lunch tomorrow. This week's movie is The Edukators. It's a German film about 3 young people with high ideals on being socialists. I really enjoyed it, good characters and storyline. It made you stop and think about our Western way of life and value systems. There's good and bad to our capitalist consumer lifestyle. Always room for improvement. I think the socialist agenda is getting more attractive to people with corporations having their way with our lives, unhindered by laws that are suppose to contain their influence. Anyway getting away from the topic. That last few German films I've seen have been very good. I'm hoping the trend continues, good stuff. The girl that played in this film played in the last German film I saw, Sophie Scholl. She was great in that film too. My friend John is having a big movie night with friends soon. He's picked up some B movies and a few art films. Should be fun to hang with a bunch of movie hounds.

Talent show formula

How do you create a successful tv talent show?

1. Include 3 judges, one must be a jerk know it all from England. One must be an ex-(insert talent show talent) who loves everyone. The last one must be middle of the road. Sort of like the 3 Bears! Also be sure to invite washed up (insert talent show talent) to judge who can kind of shrug and wish somebody would pass them a line of coke.

2. Have the audience vote and promote the highest bidding phone company.

3. Include drama by digging up back stories of the contestants. Make sure you include at least one crack baby in the mix or whatever the latest tragic childhood tear jerker is (see Oprah Winfrey show for the latest in that).

4.  And last but not least drag the whole affair on for several grueling months to promote the hell out of the (insert talent show talent) business. If you are successful you will have completely duped the American public into thinking they are taking part in this ludicrous charade and feel like they are "really making a difference". All the while some fat cat that's probably connected to the underworld will rake it in and the winners of the talent show will quickly be forgotten before the next 15 minute star comes along.

Super Sunday

So I'm off to my friend John's house with Kenzie in tow to watch the Super Bowl. I think the Colts are going to blow the Bears out of the game. The Colts have been waiting too long to let the big game get away from them. Should be a good game. I'll be rooting for the underdog Bears since St.Louis fans usually line up with Kansas City and Chicago teams when our teams don't make that far.

It's darn cold today. Finally winter has arrived in St.Louis. I was wondering if we were going to ever get a sub 10 F day. Last night I think it got down to 7 F. Kenzie had a sleepover at a friend's house so Annette and I got chinese food, made a fire and watched a couple of movies. One was called Little Children. I'm kind of a Kate Winslet fan so I "obtained" it. I think she's got an Oscar nomination for it. I enjoyed it more than Annette who labeled it a "Craig movie". It was kind of a cross between the show Desperate Housewives and the movie American Beauty. I give it an 8/10. Definitely not a movie for the kids. The sex scenes with Kate Winslet bordered on pornographic. Hey I'm not complaining The other movie we watched was Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voigt. Ummm.. not quite as good as I anticipated. Definitely a late 60's movie with all the drug references, especially the psychedelic party scene. Felt like just clicking the 30 second skip button to get through it. Yes parts of it were definitely dated but not enough to hose up the movie. I guess it was kind of predictable and my expectations were set too high. A bit of trivia on the movie is the taxi cab scene. When they are crossing the street and a taxi drives in front of them, Dustin Hoffman slams his hands on the hood of the taxi and yells "I'm walking here!". Famous scene that's been repeated a hundred times in other shows based in New York City. Anyway that scene was not planned. Apparently the rude cab driver drove through the movie set and almost did hit the actors. So Hoffman just played into the mistake and luckily the director kept filming.

I finally finished watching Band of Brothers this weekend. It was kind of over hyped for me. I didn't know what to expect. The acting was good, action scenes were very realistic but I thought the stories suffered. Just your standard run of the mill war buddy stories. It didn't really stand out for me. The last two shows were excellent though. Once they got into Germany and faced the German people with their anger of having to waste the last 3 years of their lives fighting this meaningless war. Also when the stumbled across a Jewish concentration camp and the total shock of it all. Powerful, stirring episodes. Anyway I think I'm among the very very few who didn't care for this mini series that much.

Speaking of movies. Myself and two guys at work started a Movie of the Week club. One of them was always kidding me that I watch all of these cool movies so we decided to share a little. I compress the movies down to divx avis and put it on my usb drive and give it to them at work. Tuesday we go out for lunch and discuss the show. It's been a lot of fun so far. More fun that I expected really. This week we watched Kung Pow. A comedy making fun of blackbelt movies from China. Definitely a movie to watch while your drunk :) There were some funny parts but mostly it's a gag that ran on too long. Anyway it's my turn to offer up a film. We've done some serious films lately, Kung Pow was a nice break so maybe I'll continue with the theme. Find a memorable comedy. Of course one of the guys has seen almost all of the movies I've seen so we may run into repeats between us.

Finished a book this weekend too. An author I've recently found to like a lot, Nancy Kress wrote a trilogy that starts with the book Probability Moon. It was a good book. Her books usually deal with genetics and biotech, so it was a surprise to see her delve into quantum physics with this book. I enjoyed the inhabitants of the alien world who experienced "shared reality". They would get terrible headaches if their individual thoughts strayed from the common thoughs of those around them. Interesting way to prevent wars but a deterrent to innovation. Kress kind of made a few missteps with this universe and could have explored it deeper but I forgive because the whole concept sent me off on my own ponderings.

I almost have all my taxes ready for my accountant. I need to check my condo mailbox to make sure I didn't get a tax from from somebody I forgot about, like one of the several financial institutions I have money in. It will prove interesting to see how much I owe on 4/15. I think I need to find better places for my money to avoid the taxes. One idea I've tossed around is moving from an LLC to an S Corp. The 15% tax rate alone is a good deal. Plus I can turn my car into a company car and turn all of that into a business expense. Speaking of cars... Annette has complained about my Honda Civic since I got it. Says it makes her seasick with all the shifting (I bought a manual transmission). Kenzie also complains but to a lesser degree. So I'm considering trading it for an automatic. I looked at he new EX model they have. Really nice, runs about $22,000. I checked my trade in value which is around $15,000. The difference is about how much I could get for my Ford Escape which I still haven't sold. I guess money does grow on the tree in the backyard right?

Getting back to work life. This week a new guy is starting at Missouri Botanical Gardens, Mark. Jay and I worked with him at BEC (Busch Entertainment) and Jay successfully sucked him away from that life sucking black hole. I'm excited having Mark join us, he's a great guy to work with. A couple of years ago he got me to go out with his buddies and play paintball. He's ex-Marine so I can see why he likes that game. But I wasn't too impressed. I'm too much of a wimp and hide too much and don't shoot back. I'd be dead meat in a real war.

40 years for porn spam?

Ski trip

After a long absence I'm back with the blogging. Inspired by Chris who also started up his blog.

So what's new with my life... Well I just got back a ski vacation in Vail Colorado. If any of you know me, I'm a novice at skiing and probably would not have taken it up if it wasn't for Annette. Annette, Kenzie, Sheila (Annette's sister), her husband Don and I left last Friday and spent 3 full days in Vail. The first 2 days I took ski school and enjoyed it much more than I did on my last ski trip. I actually skied down the hill this time The instructor I had was excellent, a model to emulate if I ever find myself in a teaching role. I felt confident and actually experienced a bit of fun going down the hill for the first time. The second day I skied, I was admittedly a bit weary from the first day (out of shape being my fault, I had plenty of time to get in shape for this trip). The instructor took us out on the green runs and at first I kind of felt like baby ducklings following the mother duck. It was exciting for me to get off the beginner slope and be with the rest of the mountain. However towards the end I was totally beat and couldn't control myself too well since my legs were hurting too much. So I packed it in. I planned to come back on the third day of ski school to get in a last day of practice but I was just too beat and couldn't get my legs to work. So I was a bum and hung out at the condo and read. So I will probably try it again next year. I feel I'm close to establishing the necessary muscle memory required to have fun at skiing. On a down side I didn't take any pictures while I was there. Totally lame I know. I should get some from Sheila and Don later on though. The last day of the trip everybody decided to go snowmobiling. They ended up 13000 feet up in the mountains and spent most of the time in a national forest. Sounded like fun and I think Don took some pictures there too.

I discovered this new Google tool called Picasa. It's a free picture gallery with a nice editing and management tool. They are giving away the first 250 MB. I posted a few of my picture albums already here. So when I get some of the ski trip pictures I'll post them there. The cool thing about it is there is an RSS feed in case you want to be notified of any new pictures being added.

On a separate note, has anyone also noticed how ubiquitous spell checkers are today? I'm not sure if this blog has one built in or if it's a Firefox extension I added. I wasn't sure if I spelled "admittedly" correctly. The little red line showed up when I tested it. Cool stuff.