or how i learned to elevate the mundane

I’m fascinated by all of this Tom Cruise scrutiny lately.  One of the things that we’ve discovered about him is that he’s something called an “Operating Thetan 7″.  It’s like you have to have 100,000 experience points to attain that level, or something.  You get +10 to score with a Hollywood hottie and you get $20,000,000 gold pieces per film otherwise it’s not worth your time to collect the loot.

Unfortunately, I think with every level up you get -1 on Intelligence even though you gain +2 on charisma.  And such is how it is with Tom Cruise.  It’s all very strange.

Still, the buzz on MI:3 is pretty good.  Even Jeffrey Wells has given it the go-ahead sign.  So has Kevin Smith, though he also liked Star Wars – Episode III so take this with a grain of salt if you’re so inclined.  I count myself as a Kevin Smith fanboy, but his glowing review of SWEIII was just so disappointing.

Not that it matters much to me anyway since it’s unlikely I’ll catch this in the theaters. Since having kids I think I’ve seen all of a half dozen movies in the theaters and most of those have been due to Work Morale Events.  It’s just another in a long line of DVDs to rent from Netflix.

5. “I’m rubber and you’re glue”
4. “I know you are but what am I?”
3. “That’s not the rule”
2. “I’m tellin’ on you”

And the #1 phrase that is bearable only coming from a kid….

“I’m the decider”

Addendum:  WordPress doesn’t seem to be able to count down even if I do the counting.  Lame.

“Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young

An electrical part on our refrigerator broke sometime last Sunday evening.  We noticed last night that the freezer seemed a little warm and assumed that the door must’ve been left slightly ajar during the day.  When the stuff in the freezer seemed even more melted this morning, we knew we had a problem.

So I called the refrigerator repairman from Sears (since that’s where we got our fridge).  They said we were scheduled for an appointment somewhere during the hours of 8am to Noon.  Super.  It, naturally, wasn’t until 2:45pm that someone actually showed up.  Nice.

The repairman replaced the part and the fridge seemed to work fine after that.  Not a warranty replacement, so it was a “bargain” to get out with just a $275 charge.  The only problem is that the stuff in the freezer was so thawed that it could not be refrozen.  It’s actually nice to chuck out a bunch of stuff that was just taking up space in the freezer.  I highly recommend just such a purge to everyone, regardless of the working order of your freezer.  Probably be useful once a year.

The only bummer is that there was about a month’s worth of frozen breast milk in there for little Zoe.  All that had to go.  Now Zoe is at risk for not getting a full year’s worth of breast milk exclusively.  We’re not very happy about that, but the lactation consultants were quite clear about tossing the milk. 

What do these two fictional characters have in common?  A cuddly, strangely anthropomorphized sidekick (e.g. Chloe O’Brian and Boots respectively)?  Or could it be an amazing ability to traverse vast amounts of distance in what seems to be an amazingly short amount of time?

Nah, it’s neither of those (though readers who guessed either should give themselves a pat on the back and perhaps reassess their T.V. watching habits).  No, it’s not those two things.  It’s their incredible bags! Those bags are what every man or woman dreams of carting around with them.  They contain just about anything you need in just about any situation you could think of.  Need to fly over a canyon?  Backpack has a hang-glider for you!  Need to diffuse a thermonuclear device? Jack’s bag has just the trick!  And there’s next to no bulk to these magical napsacks, it’s as if you weren’t carting around literally tons of equipment!

I want a bag like that.  Do you think they sell them at REI?

Next up:  Diego’s little computerized animal encyclopedia versus Jack’s totally rockin’ PDA.

The Wife has been jonesin’ for a new laptop lately. I selfishly bought her a Dell Inspiron 5150 a couple of years ago, mostly because it sports a whoppin’ 3.2 GHz Intel CPU. Unfortunately, it’s also a boat anchor and this is what she mostly hates about it. It’d be one thing if the GPU were upgradeable, but I don’t believe it is so I’m stuck with some crappy ATI video card that won’t do games very well, which is about the only thing that would make the phat CPU worthwhile. Stupid buy on my part.
So I’m looking for a replacement laptop in the Ultraportable category (not even gonna touch the UMPC here). The Sony TX series is priced WAY out of control. The Alienware Sentia series looks interesting, but starts to get pricey when you add in the options, and the Dell M710 comes in at a good price point when you find it on sale, but is very uninspiring in just about every other category.

Except now you can get Apple hardware and dualboot XP. How cool is that? Very tempting for the gadget fetishist in me to get the nice Apple hardware yet sacrifice none of the app interop. Plus for things like movies and photos we can get the user-friendly goodness that Apple leads in. It’s going to be hard not to consider this a viable replacement laptop option moving forward. I need to run the numbers now.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns ‘n Roses

I think it’s safe to say that we have dodged a bullet with Zoe and the Chicken Pox.  It’s now been almost a full 4 weeks since exposure and she hasn’t broken out with the little white pox.  Thanks the Lord!

Last week I got an Xbox 360.  I’m such a slave to gadgets, it’s so bad!  When the original Xbox came out, I resisted until after the first price drop.  The Wife got me the Xbox for Father’s Day.  Note that I had been a father for all of a month at that point, but I still qualified.

This time out, I was determined NOT to put forth much effort in obtaining one.  I didn’t pre-order to slap down any money to reserve one.  I just would occasionally check with various stores when I happened to be near one to see if they had any in stock.  My local Game Crazy(tm) had one last Wednesday, so just picked it up.

First impressions are that PGR3 look pretty good on the ol’ high-def TV.  I’ve only played with it for a couple hours in aggregate so far, and I only have 2 games (PGR3 & Tiger Woods).

Some early observations:

• The Windows Media Connect support for media files is nice to have.  I have a Roku device upstairs that I use to stream music to the living room.  Now I have the same access to the music in the downstairs HDTV room.  Nice.
• The WMC music UI scales for shit.  God help you if you have 300 unique artists to scroll through.  I don’t even want to try scrolling through song titles.
• I love – LOVE – the wireless remote and that it turns on/off the console VIA RF (RF!) as well as IR!
• The optical out port on the A/V cable does not hold the toslink cable very well.  Lame.
• The boot sound scared Andrew the first time he heard it.

Overall, an improvement over the original Xbox.  Heck, it’d better be.  So far, unfortunately, the game selection has been less than inspiring.  I’m sure it will improve over time.  Unfortunately, the game library for the PSP really didn’t.  Sony has really under-performed with its handheld console.  The UMD movie format is all but dead.  And the PS3 will likely not see US shores until 2007.  This should be interesting.

Meanwhile, I’m looking to unload my Xbox and associated games and accessories.  Drop me a line if you’re interested.

My son Andrew does not like to go to the QFC.  However, he really enjoys going to the PCC.  He also seems to derive much enjoyment out of saying “the Pee See See”.  He’s very deliberate about it.  He enunciates QFC just fine, but he doesn’t seem to put as much personality behind it.

Recently, our local QFC has undergone what I would call a “fancy facelift”.   It’s nice.  Sorta like shopping at the UVillage QFC without all the parking hassles.  And you still occasionally get accosted by those guys who just need a little help with their car or maybe $20 for gas.  No childcare, though.