Hiatus

My computer is temporarily dead. I think the video card died. And by died I mean the fan seems to have locked up and I suspect the card fried itself. So I'm offline and only able to work from the laptop until I can get the video card replaced. If anyone has suggestions for a cheap card that provides a decent amount of power, let me know. For comparison, before I was using an ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB card and that seemed to do just about everything I needed (and apparently is now only $60 at CompUSA, but I can't seem to find a location that's carrying it).

And thanks to Buddy for photoshopping a NASCAR into the picture of Quinn from yesterday (which I'll go ahead and include since I can't access of my media).

Return Of The Ring

We had the kids play outside some today since it was so nice out. Plus this might be the last time they can play outside for a while without really having to start bundling up. As you can see above, I doctored up another photo of Quinn using his Green Lantern ring. When I mentioned to him I was going to do that, he suggested I make a picture showing him using the ring to create a NASCAR race car. Right, like that should be really easy to photoshop up. I did try and get some pictures with both Quinn and Catherine using their rings together, but none of those turned out the way I wanted. So I may and try and get one of just Catherine tomorrow.

I watched Kaena: The Prophecy tonight. It's pretty bad. I admit it, I got completely fooled by the cover art. I saw the art for it and thought "that looks pretty cool." So the whole never judge a movie by it's cover art is very appropriate in this case. It's anime, but it's all 3D computer animation. The problem is, the animation isn't that good. It sort of has the look of those cheap computer animated shows that were on Saturday mornings about five years ago when CGI was all the rage. Plus it puts a severe hurting on the DVD player at times since there are several scenes where the update rate just slows to a crawl. To add insult to injury, the story isn't even that good. And for the first half of the movie, the main character is running around in leather Prince style ass-less pants which just feels gratuitous.

Allergist Appointment

Quinn had an appointment with an allergist today. I only got my info third hand from Ginger, but it sounds as if the Doctor was pleased with how he's doing, especially considering how much pollen there was this past spring. All of which is very good since one of the scenarios if he doesn't continue to do well is shots on a weekly basis for like five years. Which in theory would completely cure him of his allergies, but I have a hard time contemplating the idea of putting him through that if he might somehow grow out of it on his own.

Ginger dropped Catherine off with Karen and Amanda while she took Quinn to the Doctor. I'm a bit fuzzy on the timeline of events, so I don't know when they got there or whether they played for a while or what. All I know is that even though it's a 'holiday' and the kids didn't have to go to school, I still had to go to work.

I do know that over the weekend Quinn missed out on lot of sleep. Apparently he got some of that back today by taking a two hour nap. And let me tell you, he had just gotten up not too long before I got home tonight, and boy was he grumpy. Ginger claims both kids get that from me since I have a tendency to be a bit grumpy when I first wake up or if I'm running on little to no sleep (as a theory, I'll admit it's definitely plausible).

Here's a shot of the kids watching the new PBS Curious George show. George had just done something they thought was funny.


Monday continues to be a big TV night here with the one show I look forward to most still being Heroes. Seems like they're still the process of simply laying groundwork on the show at this point. Spoilers / theories abound from this point on, so don't read if you haven't watched and plan on watching. It seems we may have even gotten the first glimpse of the big bad of the show: Sylar. It seems pretty obvious that he actually has all the powers of the individual cast members. And then there's Peter, who's special power appears to be a Rogue rip-off, meaning he can temporarily use the abilities of the others. He could fly briefly because his brother could, and earlier in the first episode he came into contact with that artist that draws the future and then later drew that picture in the hospital (while on the pain killers, just like the artist does his drawings under the influence) that showed the scene with him 'flying' next to his brother. The only thing I can't explain so far is the 'bond' he shares with his brother about how he knew when he had been injured (not that we saw this, but the character explained it had happened). And since he couldn't fly this episode, it would seem he can only take these abilities temporarily. And so far I'm having a really hard time believing the girl that's helping Mohinder isn't actually one of the bad guys.

A Day At Pebble Creek

Ginger had nursery duty at church today. So she wasn't in the service with me so she didn't hear the news. The pastor at our church is leaving. It certainly seemed like from the way it was being talked about that this had come up before and was a known thing. If so they must have announced it a while back when we were in the new members class, because I certainly don't recall hearing anything about it before today (and from Ginger's reaction when I told her, she hadn't heard anything either).

After church we headed out to lunch. We tried eating at what used to be Catbo's, but is now Border Cafe. So here's my opinion, back when the restaurant was Catbo's, it was just a mediocre restaurant. And I can also say I think it was much better back when it was Catbo than it is now (if you're getting the impression we didn't like it, that would be an accurate assessment, so I think they need to change their "good eats" slogan).

While we were at lunch, I could hear the television in the other room with the Redskins football game. This caught me off guard, because Quinn and I had been invited over to Rob and Gretchen's to watch the game (Ginger was also invited, but she was going to have to go pick up Catherine from her visit to Richmond over the weekend). For some reason, I had thought the game was going to be at four, so I realized we were already late.

Once we got home, Quinn and I headed over to Rob and Gretchen's Which they refer to as Pebble Creek. Strangely enough, I can't find a reference to Pebble Creek in Rob's Wiki. Tsk tsk, one would think he would be keeping that more up to date, guess I'll have to fix that by adding the entry myself (you gotta love being able to edit someone else's web pages).


Quinn played with all the other kids downstairs for a bit (okay, okay, we both played with the kids downstairs). Eventually Quinn convinced all the other kids they wanted to go outside and play on the equipment outside. The kids volunteered me to go out and be the resident adult supervising them. The only problem with that plan is no one realized how muddy it was back there. The funniest part of it was I finally met a kid that is even more anal about getting dirty than Quinn. One of the kids got some mud on one of his fingers and started to get really upset. I foolishly suggested he just wipe it on his sweatshirt and the response I got was "Noooo, it'll get dirty." So I ended up taking a couple of the kids back inside so they could clean up and not worry about getting dirty. By the time I got back outside, Quinn and Autumn were already getting into trouble by trying to get to the creek.




After the party was completely over, Quinn and I headed home. On the way back home we stopped at a school along the road and Quinn played on the playground there for a while. To his credit, he tried doing the monkey bars. I got a nice photo of him swinging between the bars. Unfortunately he slipped and fell right after that. He didn't hurt anything except for maybe his pride (he was trying show off for a little five year old girl who had just been on the monkey bars by trying to show that he could do it too).


Once we got home and had some dinner, Ginger and Catherine eventually showed up. I know I've commented in the past that I don't like her being completely girly, so I can only assume Ginger's mother has some axe to grind with me by sending Catherine home looking like this (I'm joking, I don't actually think she does it just to upset me, I think that's just a bonus *grin*).

Bowling Has Gotten Expensive

Yowsers, today was a busy day. So grab a drink, settle in and let's get to it. We started out this morning by going to IHOP, usually we can't go there due to it being a bastion of nuts (and since Catherine's allergic to peanuts, that's just not an option). But since Catherine is down in Richmond this weekend visiting Grammy, it meant we could take Quinn there for breakfast. He took full advantage and pigged out on some pancakes.

After that we headed home and waited for Ken and Amanda to come over. Their house is getting painted, so we invited them over to hang out so they wouldn't have to deal with the paint fumes. Everyone played in the basement, but they didn't do a lot of playing together. Amanda played with Catherine's Polly Pocket toys (the Polly Pocket stuff really annoys me since it's such a girly girl toy, but despite my best efforts, that's the stuff Catherine seems to like). And while Amanda played with that, Quinn just played with Thomas the Tank Engine Legos and then switched to playing football.


Just after lunch we all headed out to the bowling alley. Quinn really likes bowling, but Catherine doesn't care for it as much. So again, since Catherine wasn't here, it seemed like a good choice. So we all played one game, then the kids and Ginger played a second game.


I tried taking some pictures, but something really odd seems to be going on with my camera. It seems to be really dragging out the shutter speed even when I use the flash, resulting in this ghosty after effect around a lot of the things in the pictures. It was basically a forward synch flash, but still capturing some image data after the flash has gone off, resulting the data acquired after the flash having a translucent appearance. I even had the film ISO speed set to 800, so I have no clue what was causing the problem. If anyone has any idea what might be going on, let me know, but for now, I'll throw up some of the photos even though they're not so good.

I decided early on I was only going to play one game. The good thing about the alley was that since we went earlier in the day than we did the last time we went, there was no one smoking in the alley (that I could see). The bad thing is the place was overrun with kids and kid's birthday parties. Evidently a lot of people (especially kids, but their parents too) don't understand bowling etiquette. I would be standing there getting ready to make an approach, and the people on the lane next to me would just go anyway. Or they would throw their ball and never get off the lane to allow people next to them to go. I guess I can't expect much considering most of the people there had never been on a league before. And eventually we got to be just as bad when Amanda was up bowling (due to her using the kid's ramp and Quinn and Ken both being up there when she bowled also).


Since we had the kids, we had them put the bumpers up. The bumpers actually negatively affected me at least twice. I typically throw my ball along the right edge and let the spin bring it back to the center. A couple of times the ball actually hit the bumper over on the right just enough to completely throw off the track of the ball (and no, just because it hit the bumper doesn't mean it was going to go into the gutter).


I didn't do so well picking up spares today. In fact, I never managed to get a spare the entire game. Although I sill manage to break 200, so I can't complain too much (I ended up only getting seven on the last ball after the picture above was taken). I seemed to be in some mode where I would either get a strike or a split. I definitely didn't feel as good about my game as I did back when I was playing regularly, but I did okay I suppose. I would have felt better had I gotten at least one spare, but I take some consolation from the fact that I would have had one spare had the bumpers not been up once.


And Quinn is still having some issues rolling the ball down the lane and he basically shot puts it out there now. At one point I honestly thought he was going to pull a Fred Flintstone and throw the ball into the neighboring lane. Near the end of the second game he started doing really well and rolling it along the ground. It's a lot of fun to watch Quinn bowl, he still doesn't quite understand the physics behind it yet, so even though the ball is heading over to the edge and you can tell it's only going to get a couple of pins, he's still convinced he might get a strike out of it and is jumping up and down (or on the floor) watching the ball.




Amanda started getting really tired halfway through the second game. To the point where she would just start laying down everywhere. So we probably pushed it a bit with her playing the second game, strangely enough even though she seemed really tired she did a lot better on her second game than she did on the first and even broke 100.


After bowling Ken took Amanda home, then as we were getting ready to leave, Ginger noticed something odd about the receipt for bowling. Now either they made a mistake, or it seems as if bowling has gotten a lot more expensive than I recall. I went back in and checked they assured me that they didn't actually charge that much to my credit card (I still need to call the credit card company at some point and verify that they didn't charge that much though).

After that we headed to the really big Target up on Rt 50. Evidently when Quinn went down to Richmond last time Catherine got some new toys, so Ginger felt it was only fair that Quinn get some new toys this time. So after a brief visit and buying a couple more NASCARs we finally got home.


Quinn played with his new NASCARs for a while, then decided he wanted to try on his NASCAR driver uniform that he's planning on wearing for Halloween. He even pretended the chair was a NASCAR and he was jumping out of it after his 'victory.'



After Quinn went to bed, Ginger and watched some TV (a couple of episodes of Bones), then I got to watch my shows after Ginger went to bed. I must say, any doubts I had about the new Doctor Who were put to rest this week. I give the new doc a big thumbs up. And the quality of the filming (especially the first scene) was really well done I thought.

BSG Premiere

Tonight was the premiere of the third season of Battlestar Galactica. Unfortunately Ginger had some stuff recording on the TiVo tonight, so Battlestar Galactica didn't start recording until it's second run (which was around 11). And since Ginger said Ken and Amanda are coming over tomorrow morning, not watching the premiere tonight wasn't really an option since Ken has a habit of sometimes spoiling stuff (to his credit, he's gotten a lot better recently). So that's my excuse for why I was up till all hours of the night watching television. It wasn't just because I wanted to watch it, nope, that wasn't it at all. Did I mention the premiere was two hours long and I didn't actually start watching it until close to midnight?

I will do my best not to have any actual spoiler information here, but I will talk around several things that happen in the episode. Having said that, if you haven't watched the premiere yet (and you're planning on watching it), continue reading at your own risk.

When I started watching and they showed Saul, it reminded me that I hadn't finished watching the Wedisodes. So I had to pause it and head down to the computer and crank out the last couple of webisodes I had yet to watch. After having watched them, I can say there I'm not sure I would have really missed out on anything had I not watched them. They provide some background motivation for a couple of characters, but nothing that you wouldn't have been able to pick up and figure out after watching the TV episode.

I'm still trying to determine whether I liked tonight's episode or not. It's definitely different. It feels really different than what they were doing before. The thing is, I have no doubt they'll eventually return to the previous status quo, but at present I don't see how they can do that and have it make sense. The Human / Cylon relationship seems to have a different dynamic associated with it now.

Speaking the Human / Cylon dynamic, I was more than a little disappointed with the Cylons new method for interacting with humans. Seems like if they really did want a peaceful coexistence there were better ways to go about it. I do like the idea now that the Cylons are trying (in their mind) to save the humans. This in my mind will go a long way towards easing my concerns about how the humans can keep from being completely wiped out.

And I really didn't like the tactics the resistance started using, although it's sure to stir up a debate on the issue if nothing else. Basically after this, I have no idea who the good guys are and who the bad guys are anymore.

Couch Potato

This definitely falls in the category of being one of the stupider things I've heard in a long time. If you happened to watch the first episode of Heroes last week (not this week's episode, but the pilot episode from last week), there was a scene where the cheerleader who has regenerative powers (think Wolverine type healing factor) sticks her hand into a garbage disposal where it gets completely mangled and then instantly heals. You see, this scene was there as a 'subtle' clue to the viewer that she has healing powers. It was a scene included for the express purpose of further cementing the character's healing powers, which is obvious because how many people in real life end up sticking their hand into disposal while it's running. I'm not sure what the message was here, it was either she has healing powers (which we had already been shown), or that healing powers make you stupid. Anyway, apparently you could briefly see the manufacturer's name on the disposal, and they've taken offense and now claim the scene "casts the disposer in an unsavory light, irreparably tarnishing the product" (I'll bet a little cleanser with bleach could clear that tarnish right up, ba-da-bum crash). They've filed a lawsuit to prevent the re-airing of that particular episode (I'm guessing this won't bode well for the eventual DVD release of the show). I'm not sure if the disposer manufacturer really care or if this is just a publicity stunt on their part, because I watched the episode and couldn't have told you the brand name of the disposal if I had to (I do remember groaning internally when the scene occurred thinking how over the top it was a demonstration of her healing power). The good news though is that NBC has ordered up a full season of the series based on the initial numbers it did.

I got home late tonight, and the kids were already getting ready for bed. I really wanted to get home earlier tonight so I could spend some time with them since Catherine is going to be going down to Richmond for the weekend tomorrow. And since Ginger has a meeting about the Fall Fair at the school tomorrow morning, she's taking them in to school instead of me.

So once the kids were asleep and before we started watching TV tonight, I finished watching Lucky Number Slevin (I had watched the first half of it last night). I liked this movie a lot. And I'm not sure why I liked it. It think it was probably the pure sarcastic wit displayed by Josh Harnett's character. That and the overall dialogue. The dialogue is great. The banter between the characters is really well done, and comes across as believable without sounding scripted. The story is decent, if not overly predictable at times.

After I finished watching Slevin, Ginger and I watched CSI. After three weeks of not really solving any cases, they made up for it by having four cases that they solved in one night. Strangely, I still don't recall the case from the first three episodes being solved yet. While I didn't like having this many cases crammed into the hour, I did like the fact that it was a "done in one" episode versus part of some larger season long complex story. My personal preference is that CSI not do multiple long storylines that stretch throughout the season, but rather do more of the done in ones (with the occasional dramatic mandatory ratings two parter). One long storyline is fine, as long as they only devote a small amount of time every so often toward the larger storyline, sort of like they did back in the first season.

And finally, here's a couple of pictures I took outside recently.

Way Up High In The Apple Tree

This whole no nap during the day and the kids going to bed early is putting a serious crimp in my time to play with the kids. I even came home extra early today thinking I would be able to play outside with them some since today's suppose to be the last day where the temperature is in the 80s for a good while. No dice though, they had already played outside long before I got home and had come inside, showered and had put on their pajamas.

There was evidently a mishap at some point after the showers where Quinn jammed his toe on a dresser or something in Catherine room and tore his big toenail off. I saw the band-aid but didn't look to see how bad the damage was since it was still bothering him (plus it sounded disgusting so I had no real desire to look). I'm somewhat dreading tomorrow morning with him having to wear his shoes to school, sounds like it might still be pretty painful tomorrow.

And finally, Catherine has been doing a lot of singing lately, so I figured I would try and capture some of it. The video is just under a minute in length.

What A Difference

I never seem to realize exactly how much Ginger does around here until she doesn't do it. She was feeling ill this morning, so that meant I had to try and get everyone ready this morning. I have no idea what caused Ginger to get sick since neither of the kids have been sick and she didn't eat anything that I didn't except for a frozen pot pie dinner. But bless her heart, even incapacitated and only able to lay down, she still helped get Catherine ready by putting on her lotion after I gave her a shower. It was a mad scramble getting the kids showered, fixing breakfast for everyone, fixing Quinn's lunch and getting everyone ready to go. I don't know how Ginger does it in the mornings (I mean I know I help some, but I'll be honest, I'm don't help as much as I probably should). Somehow I managed to barely make it out this morning on time and I got the kids to school just slightly later than I normally get them there.

I called home around lunch to see if I needed to go pick the kids up, but Ginger insisted that she was good enough by then to pick up the kids. Still, I tried coming home a bit earlier than normal in case she needed help, but she was fine (when I got home, her and the kids were playing Uno).

There definitely seems to be some type of virus or something going around as evidenced by Curt and KennyG's entries. I was hoping I wasn't going to get whatever it is, but tonight I can already feel my nose getting stuffed up. Here's hoping it's just allergies and ragweed or something.

And finally I'll close with another picture from the backyard. Who knows, maybe walking around in the backyard earlier this week is why I'm having sinus trouble now.

Who Are These People?

Not much for me to report today, even though it was Catherine's ballet day. Catherine didn't really nap today and Quinn is still tired from the weekend, so by the time I got home at 6:30 the kids already getting ready for bed and they ended up asleep by a little after seven. At which point I napped for a bit myself (quite by accident since I merely laid down for a second). I managed to wake up in time to join Ginger in watching "How I Met Your Mother" (very good tonight), "Heroes" (more groundwork / setup, plus we get introduced to another cast member) and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" (not as strong as for the first couple of episodes).

Since I'm looking for some filler, I figured I would hit the archives. It's a blast from the past. Whoah, I can't believe how young we all look. I don't know the exact timeframe here, but I'm guessing these are from about twelve years ago. And yes, the images are pretty crappy since I simply took digital pictures of some old photos. Had I taken time to scan them in properly I'm sure they would look a bit better (as it is the color got hosed and shadows came out overly dark). Sorry John, but I don't seem to have any pictures of you from this party.

Fun At The Grocery Store

After church today we went grocery shopping. We had Quinn's camera with us so I decided to play around a bit. I had a ton of fun taking pictures, but without using the flash and being indoors, a lot of shots ended up being really blurry. Some of them were at least somewhat salvageable though, and those are the ones you see below. I may need to look into getting a compact point and shoot for myself.










Later in the day Ginger and I started previewing Curious George (we bought the DVD of the movie when it came out last week) while the kids napped. The movie seems kid friendly enough with almost nothing objectionable in it. And in fact, partway through previewing it both kids woke up and came in and watched the rest of it with us (which after seeing how there was almost nothing bad in the first half, we had no problem letting them watch the last half before we had previewed it). As far as the itself movie goes, they take a lot of liberties with the original curious George stories (although they do try and fit in a fair number of memorable George moments from the stories). The one thing I didn't like was they gave the Man with the Yellow Hat a name and a love interest. And the love interest is a teacher no less (I'm really not spoiling anything here since at no time does the movie try and hide the attraction between the two). Seriously though, anyone that's read the original Curious George stories knows that the Man in the Yellow Hat was macking on the nurse from the hospital when George swallowed a piece of a jigsaw puzzle (and if you don't believe me, explain why the Man in the Yellow Hat shows up at the hospital the next day wearing the same clothes). All in all though, the movie seems harmless enough to let the kids watch in full as a special treat at some point in the future.

My Eyes!

Nana is up this weekend. That means the kids got new toys since Nana always has to bring some silly new toy up and this weekend was no exception. This weekend we got an egg race kit. Where there's a spoon and a plastic egg (sort of like a plastic Easter egg). There was also yet another paddle ball set (because apparently the four we already have just aren't cutting it). So we headed over to the local park for the kids to play with the stuff for a bit. The kids liked the egg race for a while. As soon as he wasn't winning all the time, Quinn got bored with it though. And Catherine who decided not to nap today eventually started having meltdowns whenever Ginger would win. The egg has a little yolk looking beanbag in the middle that pops out when the egg is dropped and 'cracks' open. I use the quotes on cracked open because when Catherine initially got out of the car she stepped on her egg within 30 seconds and broke it (good thing there were four in the set).






Oh yeah, Nana also brought up a set of slinky eyeballs (the video is about 30 seconds).

Are You Going To Finish That?

We had dinner out tonight with Robert and his family and Ben (a big shout out to Ben for organizing the event). It was at Red Robin. Based on past comments, I know some people don't like Red Robin, but I do. It's a cheap night out. Five dollars for each of the kid's meals, five dollars for mine, and then a regular meal for Ginger. My meal is cheap because I just get the Chicken Tortilla soup (and hopefully remember to ask for it without the leeks on top). After that I can mooch off whatever the kids don't finish. Yea, that's right, I've turned into that guy. I remember years ago back when I was on a bowling league (this was pre kids) one of the guys on the team (we'll call him Clark) would sometimes bring his daughter to the game with him. And she would have some dinner or something and once she was done, he would eat after her. At the time, I remember thinking "That's crazy". I mean, think of their germs (especially from a kid). Who in their right mind would do such a thing. Apparently I would. Amazing how having a kid makes you suddenly do all those things you once swore you would never do. Point in fact, I've found myself sometimes saying "Because I said so" to the kids. I mean seriously, when did that happen?

Here in the US tonight is season premiere of the second season of the new Doctor Who show (season two started a long time ago over in the UK). Here's hoping the new good Doctor is actually good since I really liked the first season. I've heard there's a spin-off of the show called Torchwood coming soon, but I don't know when that will be out though. Funny story about that, Torchwood is actually an anagram of "Doctor Who". From what I heard they were so worried someone would make off with copies of the first season of Doctor Who before they aired that they mislabeled them on purpose with the anagram Torchwood. Someone later really liked the name and decided to create the spin-off.

Now that the new TV season has started, I expect I'm going to be watching less and less movies now, so I figure I would crank out a couple of reviews of some of the recent stuff I've watched. For the most part, I'll try to keep the following spoiler free.

First up is Lord of War. This movie is terrible. I hated it. I almost rated it as only one star in Netflix, but I went ahead and gave it two. Why you ask? Because the cinematography is very well done. Other than that, there's nothing good about this movie. The intro tries to be clever in showing the life of bullet from the bullet's point of view, but this just comes across as gimicky and pointless. The movie at times tries to be preachy about guns causing all the world's violence, but it doesn't even do that well. The 'story' for lack of a better word isn't that interesting and doesn't even go anywhere. The stories of the people around the main character might have been interesting, but we don't get to see those. All in all, I'm disappointed I wasted a Netflix rental on this one. It took me 4 nights to get through it. And near the end I felt like I was forcing myself to watch it and it just wasn't enjoyable.

Next up, Friends With Money. This movie actually has a lot in common with Lord of War. There are lots of differences though. There are multiple characters and stories all progressing simultaneously. The problem is it feels like you're coming into the story in the middle, and when the movie ends, you don't feel like the stories have really gone anywhere. There's not much in the way of emotionally likeable characters here either. This was a movie from Ginger's queue that I selected, so it's partly my own fault (that's two winners I've picked there).

And lastly, I made it through all six discs of 24 Season 4. I picked this up based on recommendations of people that season four got better than season three. After watching it, I'm not so sure. They've apparently decided people can't focus on one story line for the whole 24 episodes now. I remember first season was one long story. Then season two was one overarching plot and dealing with the fallout (no pun intended) of that plot comprising the entire story (oh yea, and there was a 'Kim' subplot that was completely worthless). Season three was one long plot divided into mini subplots of episodes where the story seemed to reinvent itself every six episodes. Season 4 seems to be many many small subplots none of which last longer than 2 to 4 episodes. Perhaps this isn't as noticeable when you watch over the course of an entire season and this is their way of keeping it 'fresh' so to speak, but when viewed in it's entirety it seems overly contrived. And here's a major issue I have, and I've actually had this complaint about the franchise since season two, but on the DVD when you select an episode, there's a preview image that usually contains a scene from the episode. And for some reason they make that image one of the major plot points that occur in the episode, usually with the scene being a huge spoiler for upcoming show. Because of this I've taken to covering my eyes and only looking at one spot on the screen so I can avoid seeing the image. I do remember one time back in season two one of the images had a picture of one of a character after they had fallen and were lying in a puddle of blood, had I seen that beforehand, I would have had prior knowledge of that character's fate and had the 'wow' and 'surprise' factor removed. I shouldn't complain just about TV DVD shows doing this (although that's where I've noticed it the most), but movie trailers are basically doing the same thing these days. Heck, some of them actually show the end scene money shots right there in the trailer. I can't stand it. Whoops, I appear to have gotten off topic. Anyway, the acting and production quality of 24 is really well done. I just wish they had more respect for the viewers and didn't keep veering the plot into these mini subplots every couple of episodes.

ZOD!

I picked up Quinn from school (I was only slightly late, but there were lots of other people in line behind me, so I consider that on time). Once we left the school, he insisted on playing on the playground for a couple of minutes before heading home, and I went ahead and let him play.

I stayed at work tonight longer than I would have liked (again), but once again today was a good progress day. We finally figured out why the interrupts weren't working (surprise surprise, it was because the software supplied by the vendor wasn't actually enabling them).

Smallville premiered tonight. I personally think the wrapped up all the plot threads they had from last season's finale a little too quick. At least they were able to use the "Kneel before Zod" line before wrapping up the Zod storyline, that line is a classic. And I especially would have liked to see some more ramifications on the Clark and Chloe kiss from last year's season finale instead of just pretending it meant nothing and introducing Jimmy Olsen as a new love interest for Chloe. By introducing Jimmy and having it be such an obvious attraction thing they're insuring that they won't follow up on that kiss. That's one of the big problems with this series though, the Chloe character. Chloe isn't in the mythos, so we know she doesn't play into things long term (I mean, it's common knowledge Clark and Lois end up together in the end), but her character works really well for how they're currently using her. It's a shame they can't do more with her since her character on the show is much more energetic and likeable than the Lois character on the show. All this is complicated by the fact that Chloe currently is a combination of Lana and Lois from the mythos. She's Clark's confidant who knows his secret (in the mythos, that role belonged to Lana). Chloe is also a reporter for the Daily Planet taking on aspects of the 'Lois' role. Since she's part both, and yet neither and doesn't exist in the mythos, I don't think she's going to survive the series (before the end of the series, Chloe's character will have to be removed from play).

The rest of the pictures are just ones where I've been trying different stuff. Nothing too fancy or too good this time around. Ginger's told me she needs like 10 more really good photos, that have to have green, blue or yellow in them. Every since she's requested good pictures, I've found it's impossible to take good ones when I'm trying to take good ones. So that's how I ended up with these. I think the mushroom shot at least had a shot at being good had I adjusted the depth of field to get the stem in focus also (but when I tried that, the top part of the shroom was thrown out of focus). And the lamp shot shows me I really need to clean the glass in the lamp at some point.

Wait, I Thought They Sued Them

Quinn drew this at school last week. He's still just doing stick figures for people. I wonder how long it will be before he actually starts putting some effort into it and fleshing out his people.


And here's a piece of news that will be of interest to almost no one (and I say almost because I know of at least two people that may care). Marvel is apparently is going to team up with Cryptic studios for the production of a MMORPG that takes place in the Marvel Superhero Universe (the 616 one). Here's an article about it. The reason I find this so interesting is because it was just about two years ago that Marvel sued Cryptic because their hero creation program allowed people to create heroes that had the likeness of some Marvel heroes. Which most people thought was a pretty silly reason to sue, since Marvel wasn't suing Crayola because kids could use crayons to draw the likeness of a Marvel character. The suit was dismissed if I recall correctly (and quite harshly at that).

Finally, has anyone else been having issues with Blogger recently? Seems a lot of the times I try and publish these days I get the yellow triangle with the spinning graphic that just refreshes continuously and always stays at 0% done. Is this something happening across the board, or just to some individuals?