Archive for February, 2008

Knight Rider

Posted by Rob in Movies on Sun Feb 24, 2008

The entire movie is available for watching here. My thoughts:

  • I think we watched an 80-minute Ford commercial. Kind of like watching 24.
  • Extremely short on plot and character development. So short that Patrika wouldn’t stop bugging me about “why didn’t they explain this?” “why don’t they explain that?” “I don’t understand …”. NBC needs to understand that certain segments of their audience can’t just watch a movie about a car and be happy. So they need to write in some plot to pacify that segment so the rest of us can just enjoy the movie.

Whatever. One signs up for all that when they decide to watch a movie based on a 25-year-old TV show.

[photo]

The one unforgiveable flaw was that this movie about a CAR didn’t highlight the CAR. There were a few nice sequences of self-healing nano-technology (what back in the day would have just been a bulletproof car) and some other low-budget special effects, but NBC promised a super-advanced “weapons system”. Even the old K2000 had a grappling hook (which was removed from the K3000).

Instead, we get a lot of scenes shot inside the car with the two leads talking to each other. Meh.

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Doppelganger

Posted by Rob in Reading on Sun Feb 17, 2008

[book cover]

I like to buy used books for $3 or less. For every few stinkers like W.E.B. Griffin Special Ops, I get a gem like Doppelganger by David Stahler, Jr.

The fact that it was $3 should have been a good signal that it would be good. As a counter-example, I await with trepidation a 1066-page $1 copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth.

Doppelganger is a short 258-page read; I finished this book in one week of Muni time. I can’t say much about the plot without spoiling it since the story is very very tight, but the story contains what I would expect a good book noir to contain:

  • Enough to make me disappointed that Muni is running on time, for once. For comparison, there were days when I’d rather stand amidst a horde of zombie commuters than work my way through another chapter of Special Ops.
  • A nice, tight noir plot, with a complementary completely unresolved ending. Good book noir is everything that formulaic weekly television is not: no episodic stories that are neatly resolved within a neat 30- or 60-minute time slot.

I suppose Doppelganger’s story could be described as putting Smeagol into a John Cusack story, in book form.

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Sausalito

Posted by Rob in Photos on Sun Feb 17, 2008

Sausalito is your typical waterfront community; Bridgeway (the main drag) is lined with boutique art galleries and kitschy tourist shopping. There is a stretch where there is nothing but a walkway next to the water; it reminds me of a similar walkway near the Newport Mansions in Rhode Island.

Patrika succumbed to the tourist shopping and bought a puffy white coat for $20:

[photo] [photo] [photo]

If you have nothing else to do and it’s nice and sunny outside, it’s worth a trip.

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Armchair Generalz: El Guapo

Posted by Rob in Photos on Sat Feb 16, 2008

Winning a Super Bowl requires dedication, teamwork, and 110% from every player involved. We are speaking, of course, about the Newcastle Brown, 2007 champions of the Armchair Generalz Fantasy Football League, and winner of the coveted El Guapo trophy (nice job, Commissioner!):

[photo] [photo] [photo]

El Guapo stats:

  • Height: 5½”
  • Weight: ½ lb.
  • Base: marble
  • Noggin: bobble

The secrets to success this year:

  • Key double-up-combo big weeks of Big Ben to Hines Ward.
  • A big-play go-big-or-go-home San Diego Chargers defense.
  • Reliable TDs from Chris Cooley in our peculiar TE-favoring scoring system.
  • T.J. Houshmanzadeh.

Busts this year:

  • Frank Gore.
  • Ronnie Brown and the ineffective Jesse Chatman handcuff.

But that’s not all. Winning El Guapo was only half the battle. Bringing El Guapo home required Sisyphusian effort as well. The trophy was sent to my home address (ask me for my work address next year, please), which resulted in a “We Deliver For You!” slip left at the door and a 5-day delay to wait for the weekend to get a chance to go to the post office for pickup.

I’m sure that the USPS, FedEx, DHL, UPS, Airborne Express, etc., all have similar hub systems where packages go to some processing center before final delivery to its final destination. There ought to be a way for recipients to somehow register with these delivery services so that:

  • I register with USPS or FedEx or UPS or whomever.
  • If someone sends me a package, the delivery service sends me an e-mail telling me something is coming my way.
  • I go to their website or something and provide instructions on what to do: continue delivery, deliver to alternate address (e.g., my office, where I am every day), or hold because I’m on vacation for three weeks and won’t be around.
  • Everybody wins: the recipient doesn’t have to make a pickup run, the delivery service doesn’t have to make a wasted delivery run, and the planet wins because of less wasted gas and traffic.

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Sprint Sucks

Posted by Rob in Rants & Raves on Thu Feb 14, 2008

Yet another “my cell service provider sucks” post.

When we moved here from the East Coast, we wanted to change our number. We were told by the Sprint service person on the phone that it would require signing up for a new two-year contract. We were on a discounted plan (state employee), so we didn’t want to enter a new contract just for a new phone number, and thus we put up with a few annoyances for about a year:

  • Voice mails with East Coast timestamps (I think). Sprint told me that getting the timestamps corrected would require getting a new phone number.
  • The handyman for our house was unable to call us because we were outside his metro calling plan’s range of service (no out of state calls).

Finally we decided to switch to a pre-paid (“pay as you go”) plan (T-Mobile, $0.10/minute), so it was time to cancel service with Sprint. I called them tonight, and:

  • First rep transferred me to the “cancellation department”.
  • Second rep at the cancellation department transferred me to a “special” cancellation department because of the discount plan.
  • Third rep (finally) said that changing numbers would not have required a new plan (oh well), and that they would cancel the service after the billing cycle was over.

So we are now stuck with paying for two more weeks of service we don’t intend to use.

Ironically, when moving to the East Coast, I had switched from T-Mobile to Sprint, and T-Mobile had canceled my service immediately after the phone call. So welcome back to T-Mobile!

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