The Evil Eyebrow

Happy American Independence Day, everyone. The world would be considerably different right now if King George had been a bit more reasonable or the Continental Army a bit less lucky.

Declaration of Independence
If you haven’t read the full document since grade school, you should try it on for size again. There’s a lot more to it than Life, Liberty, etc.

Our fourth annual Peachtree Road Race is complete! We just got home, about 5 hours after we left, as mentioned in my earlier post.

The race was fun, as this isn’t one we run for time. It’s the largest 10 kilometer race in the world, with 55 thousand participants. That means it’s elbow to elbow from start to finish. Thankfully, this year we moved up to time group 2 (of 9), which meant we started the race only 6 minutes after the elites took off, unlike previous years where we waited for upwards of 30 minutes.

Let’s see, the tally of the race: 1:08, 4 water stops, 1 fan who came to see us, 2 donuts, 1 beer. I finally “made” it on the race because I got a donut from the Publix that gives them away. Previously I’d been too far back and they’d run out. I also got a donut from a random bystander (”Thanks!”) and a Pabst Blue Ribbon from another (”Double Thanks!”)

It was well organized as always and we’ll do it again next year.

I have asked myself the same question on July 4th every year for the past 3 years. “Why am I getting up at 5:00 AM? It’s way to bloody early!”

The answer of course is the Peachtree Road Race and the coveted Peachtree Road Race t-shirt, the only problem I have with which is that it always has a peach on it.

Alas. It’s time to drive to MARTA. Catch you later.

Jim, of Physics is Phun, sent me a link to a page of sectioned camera lenses and other tidbits. It’s quite interesting.

Here is one day, approximately 24 hours, of the spam caught by Akismet, which automatically kills comments that it thinks are Spam. To date, it seems to do a pretty good job for me.

I’ve heard rumors that it is very difficult to become rehabilitated if you accidentally get logged onto the Akismet auto kill list, but they’re only rumors.

Suffice to say, it seems that auto-spammers think I’m interested in Porn, Poker, Free stuff, Sex, and various other things. The “URL”, “Jul”, “Post”, “IP” and “Spam” words should be disregarded because those mostly came off of the Akismet screen on my blog management page. I didn’t bother to remove them. Too lazy.

“Thank the maker!”, as C-3PO would say. Google has released a program designed to synchronize Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook, either 2003 or 2007 (and only on XP or Vista).

This may not be news, but it’s news to me because I was using Funambol and it was giving me hell.

Now I need a phone that I can synchronize with Outlook and all will be right with the world. Or, at least, I won’t have to call back my dentist to reschedule an appointment because I didn’t know there was an overlap.

Jenn and I saw Hancock on opening night, yesterday. Short and sweet version: It met expectations (Jenn says it didn’t quite meet her expectations, but close).

If you saw the previews, and how could you not if you own a TV or a computer, then you’ll be happy that they didn’t bait and switch like so many other movies do. A lot of the preview scenes occur during the first third to half of the movie, so there’s plenty that you don’t already “know” to see.

Spoilers Ahoy, but if you’ve seen the previews, then you’re safe. If you haven’t seen the previews and you want to go to the movie fresh, stop reading.

Hancock was fundamentally about the human condition rather than a straight up super hero action film. (I’m going to go out on a limb here because my observations may seem redundant to people who read a lot of comic books. I don’t therefore my insightful thoughts may be old hat.) Hancock is a super-being who is invulnerable, can fly, and is super strong. He is also alone, and the scenes of him as a drunken wino in the previews were, I think, the most telling part of the movie. Here is a guy who is fundamentally separate from the human race; he has no real brotherhood with anybody. He can take whatever he wants, and no one could stop him (there’s a scene which reflects on that). Think about how that could mess with your psyche! You’ve got skillz, but you don’t actually belong. There’s some deep-seated moral issues there that the movie touched on, but didn’t fully explore. I found myself wishing that I had had this idea five years ago, and had written about it. It’s a fascinating topic to explore, although I don’t think my ending would have been as happy as the movie.

Anyway. It was a good movie. I enjoyed it and would see it again in the theater. There were some weird things about it, though. For one, it’s rated PG-13 but I could swear I heard one of the characters say “fuck”. I thought that was an instant “R” rating? Beyond that, there was a lot of “shit” and “asshole” in the dialogue, plus the violence level was quite high, but other than the “fuck” I suppose they hit the PG-13.

I wondered during the movie where Hancock got his money. At no time does he ever do anything that might earn him cash, so how does he purchase his liquor? Hmmmm…

Another nitpick was… never mind. It’s a spoiler. Let’s just say that there was an abrupt character transformation that they milked a bit heavily to provide some slapstick. I thought it was over done in that scene.

It was good. Go see it.

14:21 Edit: I totally forgot to mention something! If you have an advanced degree, especially if you’re a college professor, there is a scene in this movie that you have to see/listen to. It’s a must. You will be tickled pink, I promise.

If you’re a die-hard gamer, you own lots of dice; it’s almost a requirement.

My own dice bag is, ummm…unique, possibly, and if you don’t already know why, I’m not going to tell you. Here is an example of a dice bag in opposite sense to the normal one. It’s a bag, shaped like a die, intended as a purse. Lovely!

All of the instructions for making it are at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

I heard on the news this morning that Starbucks was planning a closure of existing stores. Approximately 600 outlets will be shuttered and their employees will be relocated to other, surviving, stores, if possible.

From a personal standpoint, I’ve never understood why Starbucks has been as successful (to date) as it is. Its stores don’t have the same welcoming ambiance as most other coffee shops that I have been in; they’re more like a fast food joint for coffee. Of course, again from a personal standpoint, it’s always bugged me that they refuse to use “small medium large” and instead use “vente vedi vici” or whatever. If I were more fundamentalist, I might call that un-American! But what can you expect from a joint out of Seattle?

However, I also never understood how their business model could sustain the number of stores that are opened within shouting distance of each other. Apparently, it can’t. I feel bad for the number of younger folk who are going to be laid off because of this, but maybe other, local stores, will emerge to take up the slack and compete agains the Evil Empire.

Physics is Phun points us toward a website that sells plush toys that represent the various subatomic particles, both actual and theoretical.

I point out that they missed something that comes straight from the science fiction canon.

I’m daring to assume here that not everyone already reading my blog is reading Jim’s.