The New Road

Peace Wreath

This whole silly battle (which the right wing lost) over the peace wreath in Colorado has proven one thing to me... that I need one. And thankfully, the good Internets provide. It even has lights!

Ah, these new fangled Interweb tubes. Makes a communist, socialist, fascist, peacenick, liberal, pinko, bleeding heart, heartless, valueless, traitor freako, like me, proud.

Let's all get peace wreaths and let our freak flags fly.

Another Wii Round

Joe brought over the Wii again for poker night. I was so tired that I would have rather spent what little time I had in me before sleep playing Wii instead of poker. But we played some poker and a little Wii.

This time Winsha got to try it out and I think she was instantly hooked. I think Lori is bought in as well, it's just a question of when to get one. I'd like to get it before we go to see Cooper and Jack up in Oregon. It would be wonderful for my sister to see that video games can be a family activity once again.

I'm finding it hard to explain Wii to people. It's so easy to talk about pixels, frame rates, hard drives and graphics chips. But that is not where the Wii competes. The Wii certainly fails there in comparison to the 360 and the PS3. But where it rules without peer is the funness factor. That the games are actually fun.

It also fixes what I would call the parity problem in video games. A video game can be multiplayer, but the owner of the game is likely to be a lot more skilled than any person off the street. So even though you can play together, it's usually just one person schooling the other. Not so in the sports games on the Wii. Experienced players and inexperienced players seem to have more parity with each other.

Take bowling as an example, I'm still working on a flat spin technique while Joe is working on a mean hook technique. And the game is designed such that, as with real life, you don't really know what will effect the spin on the ball. There is a kind of a mystery to it. And that keeps it really interesting.

Same thing with all of the sports games. And I can certainly see how someone could get so into to the motion of a game like Wii Tennis in the virtual world, that they would want to pick up a racket and try it in the real world.

Joe said something interesting last night about the sports games and how he thought that enthusiasts for a particular sport, say golf, would get the Tiger Woods games and not play the Wii game. Maybe so. But I think for most people having the games simplified to the point of Wii Sports is actually better. I really love the design of the games and how many features were left out. I love that in tennis you just swing the racket and don't worry about moving around. That turns the game from something that takes hours to even become competent at, to something you can pick up and start playing right away. It's genius.

Enough said about Wii at the moment... Suffice to say, huge fan.

Wii Rave

Joe brought over his new Wii on Sunday and we spent a couple of hours playing it. I fell in love with it immediately. You see, I find the direction that video games have gone to be really kind of sad. Most games are now very solitary first person shooters that reward only extreme violence. The whole idea of the easy to learn and play family video game seemed gone forever. Replaced by the ever escalating war of pixels and frame rates between Microsoft and Sony.

Now Nintendo has decided to depart from the pixel war and go in a completely different direction. To bring back the family fun of games that are incredibly easy to play. Where people from age 4 to 60 could play and enjoy themselves. Last night, Lori, Joe and I were jumping up and down for a strike in a game of bowling. And I worked up a sweat boxing. And this morning I can feel the tennis I played in my arms. How cool is that?

I really appreciate the design of the games too. Instead of trying to get every nuance of the sport right they simplified everything. In tennis you only worry about hitting the ball. The computer moves you around. In baseball you throw and hit, you don't field or run. In golf there are only four clubs; driver, iron, wedge and putter. In bowling, you just throw the ball. You don't worry about the weight of the ball, or stepping over the line, or anything like that. You just hold the trigger, swing the controller back, then swing the controller to the front and let go of the trigger to release the ball. The twist in your wrist spins the ball to the left or right. It's incredibly intuitive and easy.

Will Microsoft and Sony try to rip this stuff off? Probably. Sony's PS3 controllers already have "six axis" motion detection, which is the "secret sauce" of the Wii controller. But what Sony doesn't understand is simplicity. Hell, their PS3 ad about their "six axis controller" has eggs being thrown against a wall turning into ravens or some such crap. I don't know what that has to do with anything. What I know is that I had a lot of fun with Lori and Joe last night bowling, golfing, boxing, batting, and playing tennis in my living room.

Update: This is what I am talking about. It's a whole family thing. Young and old. Father, son, daughter, mom. Everyone can get into it.

The New Bond

All in all, I really liked the new Bond movie. I think all of those geeks who said that Daniel Craig couldn't handle the roll need a life. Seriously. It's not Lord of the Rings, after all. ;-)

I did think the pacing was a little off, going from insanely fast in the fight scenes to mind-numbingly slow in the casino scenes. Of course, a big part of that was the original source material.

Daniel Craig did an excellent job with playing a much more nuanced and complex Bond. If I have one grip it's only that his physical toning seemed uneven to me. He has clearly spent a lot of time in the gym. And from his pecs up he looks phenomenal, and his ass and legs look good. But comparatively speaking, his mid section was not very toned. Not flabby in any way. Just thick and without definition. It might have been something that they were going for. Like how models do a lot of weights, and then drink milk to cover hide all of the definition.

The whole package with Craig just seemed off. Like there was a knotty part at the top of a stocky base.

President Cheney?

I have to wonder if Cheney is acting more bat shit crazy than normal to provide cover for Bush. I mean, recently his rhetoric has been off the chain. Telling his friends over at Fox that we will bomb Iran with or without Congress (BTW, it's illegal without Congress, but I digress.) That kind of talk really gives the "Impeach Bush" folks (like on and off me) pause. President Cheney? That could be even worse than Bush. And Bush is the worst President ever. Can we get a two-fer deal on impeachment and go with President Pelosi?

Go big, go long, go home

Yeah, this pretty much sums it up.

I think Feinstein was right on target when she asked Bush what exactly he was referring to when he said that he heard the public on November 7th. Oh, really, Georgey? Where is the action. The deciderer seems to be looking for advice for once. When for once I think the best thing to do would be direct action... to get the fuck out. This war was a mistake from the beginning and has gotten nothing but worse since. All we are doing now is throwing away good people.

Fast Food Nation

With all the fun stuff in the theaters over the weekend I decided instead to see Fast Food Nation. And I felt like I had gone through the grinder along with the meat. The plot and action are just thin wrapping around an exploration of the meat packing and slaughterhouse business, and it's not pretty. A guy gets chewed up in a grinder. You get to see everything from the head tap of the bolt gun, to the skin being torn off by a machine, to the bag of guts and entrails that they rip out and harvest from for kidneys.

It's pretty intense. The crowd in the theater was small. And it got smaller as time went on. It's a tough subject to cover without the material overwhelming the viewer. It's not a pleasant read. And there were no pictures in the book. So I can see why they wanted to cut the intensity a little by going with a fictionalization as opposed to a straight documentary. The documentary style would have been way over the top.

If you eat a burger that costs you a dollar now and again you may want to think about just what it would take to still make a profit on a dollar burger. And where corners would have to be cut to get to that price. Once you follow that logic path, you may find yourself not wanting to eat off that menu any longer.

Glenn "peice of shit" Beck

Glenn "peice of shit" Beck is back with his rampant racism again. This time he asked Congressman Keith Ellison to prove his loyalty to the country because he is guilty of being Muslim. Honestly, you would have thought that this recent election would have been a kick in the head to morons like Beck. But they just come back being even more insensitive, more moronic, more racist, than before.

And why is it always, "If you don't believe what I believe then you are a traitor." Or that we "hate America" because we are critical of it. Now that Sean Hannity and Melanie Morgan have stated that they will oppose every action of the Democratic House and Senate do they "hate America"? Of course not. And I welcome them to criticize the people's elected officials before they even take office. It will further ostracize them from the mainstream of American opinion.

Republicans, please, stop confusing dissent with sedition. The freedoms that you talk about when you talk about how soldiers protect our freedom, includes freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom to think something other than Republican talking points.

Mission Peak

An update on the whole fitness thing. Three years ago I used to hike Mission Peak at least once a week. If you don't know, Mission Peak is about 3,000 vertical feet in the hiking space of about four miles. So it's tough, no matter how you cut it. I went a couple of times after Megan was born. Each time it was tougher and tougher until I finally gave up about 1/3 of the way up once. After that, I never went back.

I had let the mountain beat me and whenever I would drive into Fremont I would look up and see this peak and wonder if would ever be able to climb it again.

This weekend, I did it. And what's better. My times were really good. About ten minutes off my best, but it was slippery from the rain and I didn't take any of the shortcuts on the way up. Also, I never stopped on the way up. I never put hands to my thighs (the sign that your legs are giving out). And that was with the peak totally covered in cloud and 20 degrees cooler than the Stanford staging ground at the base.

I'm definitely back and I would say even better than before. I certainly couldn't have imagined also swimming two miles in the pool, especially not on the same day as an Mission Peak hike.

I'm such a whore

I'm a total whore for movie people. I admit that. You could have been the backup for the guy who delivers donuts to the gaffer on a B movie that went into distribution to three art house theaters in Cuba around 1972 and I would still do anything for you. But I think that's true for a lot of folks. There is the implicit implausible assumption that you might somehow catch them between bong hits and through the purple haze they would say, "This guy is a star!" And you would have your two seconds of no-dialog walk on fame in some B movie that shows only in Cuba and that doesn't even rate a DVD release.

I mention this because a guy mailed me over the weekend asking about the Wiki and as part of the letter he mentioned that his resume is on imdb. Of course, that was like sugar coated crack to me. Anyone who is on imdb is the moobies, dahlink!

I think that's part of the allure of working behind the scenes in the movie business. Sure, you get paid like shit. And sure your career, as it were, is as long as the current contract. But you can go to Podunk town USA and say, "I' did the Home Depot run to get set material for the easter egg on the Asian DVD release of Tremors VIII", and get whatever you want. Because you are in the moobies! Dahlink!

It's like working in the video game industry. The hours suck. The pay sucks. The benefits suck. But, hey, you are working on games! Hello! You may get to be in the same building with some NFL second stringer when they are doing the motion capture! Woo hoo!

(Aside: The perks of the video game industry appear to be waining in popularity. A couple years back a couple got all over EA about their lousy hours and benefits. They actually wanted a life! Shocker.)

Anyway, enough of the rant. Oh, yeah, and hey, if the guy is reading this, I in no way mean to imply that you are at the level of an uncredited materials fetcher type dude. ;-) And did I mention that I was in a cub scout play when I was six. I had no lines, but...

Uggh... I'm such... a whore.

Biking the 17 mile drive

I've driven the 17 mile drive on the Monterey Peninsula four times with various friends and guests. It's pretty amazing from the car. This weekend I took the time to bike it with three friends and, wow, it's a lot different from the saddle of a bike. The sea spray and smells are a lot stronger. And you get a much better feel for the surrounds and the layout of the area between Pacific Grove, Asilomar, and Carmel.

The bike ride itself was pretty easy once we got going in the right direction. When we started out we were going up hill all the way towards the Carmel exit of the 17 mile drive. Once I realized we were going the wrong way it was a blast going downhill towards the beach, getting up to around 35 MPH at some points. Which is pretty fast on a hybrid bike like mine.

I have to say though, even though the ride was pretty easy, in combination with the drive and the traffic I was pretty exhausted by the time I got home. I went to sleep around 8:30 last night and didn't wake up until 6AM. That's like a Megan sleep.

Star Trek TNG and Battlestar

I listened to the Battlestar podcast this morning and the difference between Battlestar and shows like Star Trek really struck me. In last weeks episode the Cylons found a beacon in space that had a virus on it that wiped out their ship. Later the humans found the ship and the beacon.

The head writer went on to explain that the beacon wasn't the focus of the show, so they left it on the ship and blew it up. He said that otherwise they would have spent the bulk of that show demonstrating how they were doing science work on it, and what they found and what not. Instead they covered the ramifications of a Cylon plague and dug into issues of genocide.

That's exactly, to me, the difference between Star Trek and Battlestar. Star Trek would have geeked on the science minutiae instead of dealing with the hard topic of genocide. Which is to me why Battlestar is the far better show.

Arsenic and Old Lace

When I wasn't swimming or hiking yesterday I took a little bit of time in the morning to watch Over The Hedge again. Over The Hedge was the best animated film of last year. It's about a group of animals coming to grips with the humans who moved in over the hedge. My favorite animal from the film was a squirrel named Hammy. He has infinite speed and zips all around the place. Very funny, and well done.

When I was finished with Over The Hedge I realized that I needed a present for a kids birthday party so I went to Learning Express. And there I saw a poster for a local production of Arsenic and Old Lace which was happening last night. The last performance in fact. So I decided to go.

Turns out it was a high school performance and I was probably the only person who wasn't a student or family who was there. I'd never seen the play for, so I had no idea what to expect. About ten minutes in I was going to leave, but then the old aunts who are at the center of the play got to explaining their latest murder, and the play got funny fast. Not that the funniness was on stage so much, it was on the page. You see, this was like watching 15 Hammy's put on a play. Kids were zipping on and off stage so fast, and saying lines like they were on meth.

The two exceptions were the aunts. They started off the play and the pacing was good. But then Mortimer came on and amped up the speed and everyone else fell in line. So items like why the old ladies killed people and thought it was ok were completely lost.

Anyway, it was still more entertaining then a night at the movies.

Conservatives have lost it

It's fun watching the conservative pundits trying to find new positive talking points. When they aren't saying that the voters were stupid or deluded (which they do a lot) they are talking about how "republicans lost, but conservatism didn't". Sean Hannity, for example, is all about getting back to 'Reagan conservatism'. But hey doesn't seem to understand that his current party makes no structural sense, and it's in no way the party that Reagan had.

In the Reagan era the party was primarily ruled by the old-school fiscal conservatives, the board room cigar types. He brought in the Christians, but they took a back seat. Now the evangelicals want to run the bus. And even though the old-school types and the neocons think the evangelicals are nuts, they still have to listen to them.

Take as an example the Terri Schiavo debacle. I'd like to ask Sean about how sitting in front of the hospital is what Reagan would have done. And how meddling in their family affairs is what Reagan conservatism was all about. Fact of the matter is that what happened with Terri Schiavo is exactly what is wrong with this party. This junction between fiscal conservatism and the nutty evangelical dominionist faction is untenable.

So many people I talk to say the same thing, "I used to be a conservative when it was about small government and fiscal responsibility". They went Democrat because the Democratic party actually is fiscally conservative, and doesn't get into your bedroom, and involved in your deathbed decisions.

Reagan wouldn't approve of the unholy concoction which is today's Republican party. They need to split it in two, with the old school Republicans going into one camp. And the freaky dominionist bible beaters in another party.

Impeachment

Let me be on the record at this point for being opposed to impeaching Bush. I have been in favor of it in the past. But then Bush was riding high and there was lots of talk about war with Iran. At this point, with two years left, I think a war with Iran is really out of the picture.

That being said, I disagree with Pelosi's position that 'impeachment is off the table'. Impeachment should never be off the table. Not when Republicans are in charge. Not even when Democrats are in charge. It's a tool of check and balance and it should be used accordingly.

John Dean said in his most recent book that the Democrats had enough on Reagan to impeach over Iran Conta. But for the good of the country they met with him, got him to clean up his act, and didn't impeach. Because the stability of the country was more important than a political vendetta. Of course, Newt Gingrich didn't feel that way, but that's another story.

So I think we need to have a good ole fashioned "come to Jesus" sit down with Bush and get him to stop the torture, stop the secret prisons, to start using the FISA court, and to start listening to his critics. For the good of the country it's at least worth a try to knock some sense into the moron.

Your damn right I'm glad

I've been reading some of the rightie blogs and they are all bent out of shape because the Democrats are happy. Damn right I'm happy. Republicans thought that if they lost the world would end because Al Qaeda operatives would cut in line on the $2.99 lobster special at Bo's Chik'n Shak on route 80.

Democrats had different worries. You see, vocal opponents of authoritarian governments don't do too well personally. Generally they end up dead, or locked away in a place that nobody ever knows about. And that's a very real issues since Bush has 35,000 people locked away in his secret CIA prisons. And last week Cheney had a shredder truck outside of his offices. So it's possible that there are people locked away, or killed, that we will never know about.

So, yes, I am crying tears of joy and relief that there is some sanity returning to my government. There were days when I thought that I might get dragged away in the night from some of the things I said on this blog. And that Lori and Megan would be holding up a picture of me at some burnt out prison after the revolution wondering if they will ever be able to get my remains.

Now I think we have a chance to turn it around peacefully. To figure out what's going on with people who have been illegally detained, tortured and sometimes killed in this country and around the world.

What Happened in 2006

My feeling is that what happened in last night's election was that the era of talk radio politics is over. Or at least, the first round is over. Americans are tired of conservatives and republicans going around and saying that people are un-American or traitors simply because they question the current administration's actions.

Why? Because most of the rank and file Republicans kept their jobs. But the vocal Republicans. The one's that stole elections. The ones that bashed gays. The ones the called people traitors. The ones who said Al Qaeda would have parades on American streets if the Democrats won. They are all gone. Chris Matthews had an interesting point last night when he said, "These are people I know losing. These are big ticket Republicans. The ones that come on the talk shows." Exactly, Chris. Exactly.

Second, conservative talk radio hosts tried what they could to suppress the vote. As an example Laura Ingraham tried to disrupt the Democrats vote fraud service by having her listeners spam the phone lines. Thankfully that failed because with the falling ratings these talk show hosts are whistling past graveyards. But the call I heard that was recorded was really funny. I could listen to that all day.

Anyway, I'm hoping that this election starts to heal the split that Rove and Gingrich have created in this country. That split is artificial. We all want to do better. We all want to win wars against our enemies. We all want to keep our kids safe. We all want to be healthy and live happy and productive lives. Let's all work together towards those goals, and eschew these politics of hate and the people that preach them.

Katherine Harris

Of course Katherine Harris lost, but what I like best is that she even lied about the $10M she was going to invest in her campaign. Looks like she invested a little over $3M, and I think a lot of that was before her pledge to invest the $10M.

Freedom Video

Here is an excellent, and fun, political video that will get you off the couch and to the polls to throw the crooks and liars out of office.

Wine Lists

I'm beginning to think that wine lists at restaurants are pretty stupid. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about wine. I know the varietals. I know how to describe the taste of the wine. And I know what I'm looking for in the wine I drink. But when I'm presented with a wine list, particularly at a non-chain restaurant, I usually recognize only three or four bottles out of the hundred on the list. And the information on the list, which is basically the name and the price, is worthless.

Case in point, Mel, Lori, Megan and I went out to dinner at a very nice local Italian restaurant. The wine list rolls around to me and I looked at it, shook my head and thought to myself, "I have no clue." Since we had been talking about a time that the three of us had gone out before and had a great Barollo (after one that had been corked), I just asked the waiter to bring us a good Barollo. And guess what... he did. It was an awesome bottle.

So unless I recognize a good bottle, or I've had a bottle there before that I like, I think I'm going to let the waiter decide after I tell him or her what I'm looking for. Hell, they know their wine list far better than I ever will.

I'm skeptical

With the Republican vote suppression already in the works I'm skeptical about our ability to take the House or Senate. Rove and the Republicans have set the expectations so low that they could win by only a single seat in each and still claim victory. And with the disgusting suppression tactics the are already using I know they will hack the voting machines and rewrite to totals. And with partisan hacks still running the polls, and with only Democrats on the other side of the electronic vote fraud problem, the Republicans have no interest in changing the system. It's like Republican Rick Santorum says, "They have the polls, we have poll workers."

That being said, I'm definitely voting today. I have to do what I can do to vote the bums out.

The Daily WTF

I made The Daily WTF with a story about one of my Web 1.0 jobs.

Cute Megan picture

Don't lecture me, just do your job

I don't care who Ted Haggard schtups, or is schtupped by.

Aside: Conservatives, learn from this. I don't care what Haggard did in private, just as I don't care what Clinton did in private. It's called consistency. It's the opposite of the double standards that you use on a daily basis. You should try consistency sometime. It's a lot easier on the brain pan.

What I do care about is that Ted Haggard, and all of these evangelical hypocrites, try to lecture us about morality when they are obviously living in glass houses. It's simple. Keep your nose out of other people's business. Don't bash gays. Particularly when you are gay.

What I even find worse is when politicians moralize. We all know that all politicians are crooks. Hell, there are 18 Republican members of congress currently under indictment or on their way to prison. So they don't have any moral high ground to preach from. And even if they did, they shouldn't be preaching. They should be working. You know, fixing the country. Fixing health care. Fixing the quagmire in Iraq. Doing, you know, work. As opposed to being the "do nothing congress" that spends more time blowing hot air and attacking the patriotism of it's citizens than it actually does writing legislation that fixes anything.

Lesson here is, if you spend most of your time telling other people how to live their lives, you are probably a hypocrite, and you should spending your time fixing your own house instead of meddling with others.

Ted Haggard

Ted Haggard just resigned because he allegedly slept with a gay hooker and snorted meth. All the news media are covering it, but what they aren't putting in the story is that Haggard has very close ties to the Bush administration. Which is a point that Haggard continuously brags about. Every time I have seen him on video he is talking about how he has a regularly scheduled teleconference with Bush every Monday, and how he often calls up Bush on an as-needed basis to discuss policy. Why are the news outlets covering this up? And what is it with these preachers anyway? Can any of them be trusted to be living a life where public perception is actual reality?

Kerry, Kerry, Kerry 'til the election

The moment the GOP started the fake outrage campaign on Kerry I knew that Fox News would ride it all the way to the election. This morning I checked the news sites of ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN and found on all of them exactly one mention of Kerry. In total! Fox News on the front page, 11 mentions of Kerry. Fox News, fair and balanced. Riiiight.

For those who watch Fox News, here is what else is in the news. Bush has abandoned one of our soldiers to the Shiite insurgency. A chart was leaked from the Pentagon that said that Iraq is bordering on chaos and there is extensive ethnic cleansing occurring. And last month had the worst casualty count since Bush said "Mission Accomplished". So clearly, John Kerry should be the lead on a news site.

Seeing Mom at Pebble Beach

For a while now I have wanted to go down and just sit on the beach in front of the spot where I put Mom's ashes at Pebble Beach. Since Lori is off to Disney with Megan next week I've decided to take the opportunity to go down there and see her. And since it's such a nice spot I've decided to add a bike ride to the mix and bike around the 17 mile drive, which is beautiful in it's own right. I think it's going to be a really nice day.