Category: Personal

Here’s what I’d expect to see more of from people with ridiculous bank accounts: McGregor to Embark on Global Motorcycle Trip

I have one of those semi-coveted invitations to try out the new Google mail service but have been sitting on it for the last week. Do I really have any use, much less need, for yet another account? I have my choice of pretty much unlimited addresses at the billsaysthis.com domain, four on Hotmail (two that capture my name, with no numbers, which I figure are worth hanging on to, one that was my chat handle and one just for my eBay activity) plus one for Yahoo! that I only use for Yahoo! activity. People have written both positive and negative about the service and a free gigabyte of storage sounds nice… but really, it’s just one more time sink and I can’t figure out the purpose. Cool as it might be, Google seems to be a little late to the game for this heavy email user.

Later: What the heck, I decided that I might as well take the freebie, so you can write me at b<mylastname><at>gmail.com.

Cool: With Tiny Brain Implants, Just Thinking May Make It So. Only for seriously injured now but, assuming privacy and security issues can be handled (and those are HUGE issues), such tech would be amazing.

The best, non-racist, balanced definition of a Jew, or a Jewish person, can be found at the Wikipedia and nowhere else. Please spread this comment and help stamp out hate speech on the Net. The reason for this campaign is to counter attack a certain anti-semitic website which has made its way to the top of the Google listing when the word “Jew” is put in as a search term.

The Lazars took home a young new family member yesterday. Meet Zorro the Beta:

 

Note: Neither Viv nor Zorro are responsible for my abysmal photographics skills.

One of my pals from NetDynamics uncovered the true reason Microsoft paid Sun $2 billion the other week!

I suppose that’s putting the mildest spin I can on the last few days. Liverpool lost twice, to Arsenal and Charlton, and the Quakes could do no better than a scoreless draw. Houllier has got to be a goner if the Reds slip from the fourth position (and last qualifying spot for the 2004-05 Champions League) and I’m really wondering what other changes will be seen over the Summer at Anfield. Reports are that French striker Cisse is a sure thing to come on board, probably pushing Heskey into a transfer, but we have to have something new in central defense next season as neither Henchoz nor Biscan seem to have an answer. Overall Liverpool seems to be about the worst fourth place team in the (short) history of the EPL.

Renny Harlin and Shane Black were clearly going for an over the top, cartoon-level action flick in this 1996 outing. Consider just three bits:

• “Life is pain, get used to it,” Geena Davis tells her daughter after an ice skating accident. Later we find that the eight year old broke her wrist
• “Continue dying. Out,” Craig Bierko, the chief baddie, said to a henchman who was radioing for help.
• Blood trickling artfully down out of her nose, Davis urges the daughter to run away from the climactic bomb. But the daughter can’t bear to leave her dying mom and tells her “Life is pain, get used to it.” Of course the next shot is Davis getting up off the ground.

But The Long Kiss Goodnight is good cartoon, the way the first two Die Hards (Harlin directed the second) and Black’s Last Action Hero were. Maybe I’m just reacting to my longstanding attraction to Davis, who is both Amazonian and a red head, but I don’t think so. Because there are also lots of tight situations barely escaped and big explosions too.

recommended

Barely 20 years after the events depicted, director Alan Parker made a very courageous movie about the murder of civil rights workers in the Old South. The specific acts are fictionalized but there were so many sad, terrible real events that the authenticity is no problem. The fight by the powerful whites to keep their black neighbors down was often violent and always tragic and that is what Parker brings to life.

Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman star in Mississippi Burning as FBI agents sent in to investigate the disappearance of those three workers who were trying to set up a voter registration facility in some dinky dusty town. Dafoe, running the investigation is a young agent who is sure of his procedures while Hackman is a veteran who’d been the sherriff of a distant Mississippi county as a younger man; predictably, by the end, the two come to an understanding and Dafoe is not so sure of himself.

But Parker is an excellent director and while there are few surprises he has no problem bringing out powerful emotions and a quickening tempo that keep a viewer involved. Other actors who help him achieve this quality are Brad Dourif as an evil deputy, Frances McDormand as Dourif’s wife (who, catching Hackman’s eye, is the closest thing we get to a romantic subplot), Darius McCrary as a black teen who understands the reason for the fight and Pruitt Taylor Vince as a white coward (named Cowans).

The film won the 1989 Oscar for Best Cinematography (by Peter Biziou) and was nominated for six more: Best Picture, Hackman and McDormand for acting, Parker for directing and Best Film Editing and Best Sound. Can’t complain about losing Best Picture, Director and Actor to Rain Man (Barry Levinson for directing and Dustin Hoffman for acting).

definitely recommended

Quakes did better than last week although 0-0 leaves a taste like ashes in my mouth. ESPN missed the first half hour showing a women’s tennis match that ran long and then Landon just could not get past the defense–two of the times he did a Chicago defender pulled him down anyway without drawing a foul call of any sort from the joke of a referee. Next in the sequence would seem to be a win, one can hope it will play out that way next Saturday against the Revolution.

If you can read The year to fear for Taiwan: 2006 and can tell me afterwards your fear meter didn’t move up a notch, you are lying. All these assholes with guns and bombs are really stupid, immature and a danger to us. And I mean everyone from the guy who owns a .22 for the range to the terrorist suicide bombers all the way on up to those big ‘nucular’ toys in Washington, Beijing and Moscow. I see all these weapons as just sad hangovers from people who can’t get their heads around the idea of pleasure and happiness.

Have to start keeping track of Dann Sheridan’s efforts as he’s the only storage blogger I’m aware of so far.

Nasty but at least you can buy the t-shirt!

Here’s an email that came in today, apparently in response to this entry about the fun I’ve had with my HOA work, followed by my response. Was I too polite? Anyway, I quote verbatim, bad spelling, grammar and such intact, but will leave him nameless:

Why do you defend HOA’s? Oh thats right you are the pres of one. home come only board memebers love HOA’s and noone else does? HOA’s violate the Consitution and our American freedoms. They sicken me, defend them if you want after all your part of the problem but that will not change the fact that what you are doing to your fellow homeowners is busy body evil work. Do you pay their mortgage? NO, so why get in other peoples business then? We live in the USA, a great country. HOA’s are trying to take our freedoms away. Fine you might say then don’t buy a home in one. Almost all new homes come with a HOA so where is our freedom of choice? Oh and taking homes away from 70 year old homeowners, WOW don’t you feel good about that one! And HOA’s are in bed with laywers, you keep such good company. I thought Microsoft was evil but HOA’s take the cake!

——- end of his email

G,

I’m curious, you claim HOAs are unconstitutional but as far as I know there is no court decision ever handed down that makes this so–can you give me the citation? We have only five board members and 23 other owners, so obviously the non-board member owners could outvote or replace us if they had any interest in doing so. Yet in the three years or so I’ve been on the board, the other owners have not even attempted to overturn one decision or oust one board member.

You also say that these days almost every home is in an HOA so that homebuyers choice is an illusion. But in my neighborhood, not counting rentals, the single family homes by my informal count outnumber HOA units, so excuse me if I disagree.

Personally my reason for living in an HOA, other than financial considerations, is it makes my life easier. I have a management company that handles a lot of chores that my parents had to take care of for themselves.

And as for the homeowner in the story you read, that person bought into this development well over 20 years ago, when HOAs were far less common than they are today and certainly had plenty of SFHs to choose from if that’s what that person really wanted. If this place was considered truly as bad as you claim by the people who own the homes, there is even a process in the bylaws to dissolve the association but not even that person has suggested we start to dissolve.

Finally, when you pay MY mortgage, you are welcome to some small say in my living arrangements. Until then, get your own blog and post your opinions there. There are plenty of sites that will give you the software/service and hosting at no charge, I used to work for one of them–isn’t America great?

Regards,

Bill

One of my hot buttons, I guess you’d say, is companies that attempt to hype their offerings in stupid ways. Case in point is this weekend’s FX Network movie Redemption, an original production that tells the life story of Crips gang founder Stanley Williams. I don’t know much about Williams beyond the bare facts and an apparently astonishing reformation after spending years on Death Row, but I do know that all the advertising (and even the one newspaper review I’ve seen so far) make a huge deal about Williams having been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Woopty fucking doo! Tons of people are nominated every year for that award and being nominated and $1.35 will get you a medium cup of coffee at Clocktower! Now perhaps Williams has come to understand how sad, bad and tragic his younger life was, how much harm he’s done to other people in this world for so little good. Maybe he does regret all this and wants to spend his remaining years trying to put some good back into whatever he can.

But the FX executives ought to be ashamed of themselves for hyping the quality of this movie, or the story behind it, based on something as meaningless as this.

However… here’s one comment: Is TV Guide turning into TV Gossip? Nearly every issue over the last few months has featured an article that was worthless nattering and this week took the cover with speculation over how long the Simpson/Lachey marriage will last. The feature articles rarely rose above puffery–I’ve been reading or skimming for probably 35 years more or less regularly–but this is just sad and I’m glad the current subscription runs out in a few months.

All the while I was job hunting, I wondered what would happen to my blogging after work started. Now I know–I’m tired and way less inspired to do the writing. I don’t know how, say, Scoble and Garret do it but props to them. Maybe after an adjustment period things will snap back.

I haven’t followed hockey enough to make predictions for the playoffs this year. Of course I’m rooting for a Finals matchup of the Sharks and the Devils and, for a change, I think this is not completely out of the question. Of course some of the SpoFites are picking both teams to be upset in the first round, so no certain thing either but room to hope.

I’m watching the second half of the Detroit-Nashville opener and seeing why the Red Wings won this season’s President’s Trophy. When I turned the game on, about halfway through the second period, Nashville was up 1-0 and looking strong. But Detroit was dominant during an end of period Nashville power play and then in the first minutes of the third scored two goals to take the lead; they just have such depth and power that they can never be counted out. Sharks against Red Wings in the Western Finals would be a great matchup too.

A Few Minutes Later… Robert Lang gave the Wings a third goal a few minutes from the end and it was a beauty, a breakaway with only one defender on him in front of Nashville’s Voukun. No matter that the defender and Lang were falling down tangled in each other, Lang poked and prodded as he was sliding and twisted Voukun out of position and put the puck where it wanted to go. These guys are going to be tough to knock out.

At least I think so. No nudity but sex is the topic. Check for yourself…

At least now we know why Grum is called grum!