Sunday, July 22, 2007

More ketchup?

Yeah, another "golly gee, it's been ages since I've posted here" post. Not much to say, really. Things have been busy on all fronts, and I haven't exactly felt terribly "inspired" to put anything here. I think it's time to back off and slow down a little...not from the blog (that's already been done, as you can see), but from other things. It's just tough deciding what to back off from and/or where to do the down-slowing, you know? I've got a few ideas I've been collecting, though...just can't post anything about them as yet. Need a bit more time to think and pray and ponder and so forth.

On another note, I saw Ratatouille again tonight...er....last night, this time with my whole family. Still struck me as strongly as the first viewing, and this time, I actually got to see all the credits. The first time I saw it -- with Emmah, a couple weeks back -- the projectionist chose to turn off the film shortly after the main credits began to roll. I wasn't pleased. I voiced my unpleased-ness, but was told that people were waiting for the next show.

I'm sorry, but I paid to see the whole film. Our showing had started late anyway, and I didn't hear any complaints about the late start, so why can't the folks in the hall do what we all did wait an extra minute or two for the credits? It's a huge disrespect to the artists (and to any folks in the theatre who are waiting and expecting to see the credits) to cut them off. I was extra disappointed considering that this was my first visit to a new theatre that had opened in our area. I was too upset about it to talk to the theatre manager before I left, so I voiced my feelings to the corporate office via e-mail. I won't be going back there for a while.

Let's see, what else? Saw Transformers...yeah, it was a little corny, but I didn't expect a stupendous plot. My wife and I both loved it, and want to see it again if we can. Harry Potter 5 was also quite fun. Picked up the final HP book last night. We read the first couple chapters aloud together after we got home, then read a bit more aloud this morning, but then Genie just took off on one of her reading sprees, and now has less than 90 pages to go.

Biggest news on the home technological front was the death of my old 17-inch CRT monitor a couple weeks back. I was about 45 minutes into my first Animation Mentor Q&A of the summer term, when it just died. Shut off completely. Wouldn't come back on no matter what I tried, and made a strange pinging noise when plugged in. It was about 6+ years old, so it was about time for it to perish anyway, and I was just waiting for some excuse to get rid of the ol' clunker so I could switch to LCD. My wife also used it as an excuse to replace her CRT as well, so I ended up taking the funds I'd originally planned on putting toward an iPhone and put it toward two 22-inch widescreen LCD monitors instead.

That'll probably wrap it up for now. There's more that could be said (I think), but it's just past 1am, and I do have church tomorrow...er....today. Hopefully it won't be months before the next update...we'll see...