Is it real or memorex?

I was surfing this evening when I came across this video:

glumbert - Genius 3-year-old finger painter

At first I was completely floored and super impressed with this kid. But then I started thinking, is this for real? And I started looking at the video again, but with more cynicism (I know, I know, those of you who know me can't believe I looked at it without cynicism the first time - hard to believe).

Personally? It think it is fake. You never really see the kid painting the actual picture. You see close ups of a hand painting, you see far away shots of the kid putting his fingers in the bowls, but you never actually have a shot where you see the kid applying paint to the actual painting. There are two shots where it looks kind of convincing. One is where the kid is getting paint on his fingers, and then putting them on some paper, but all you can see of the paper is the corner. No one can see what is on the rest of it. The other shot is at the end where it looks like he is putting the finishing touches on the painting, but then he picks the painting up and it is dry.

At the end, watch the end, when he picks up the painting, notice anything missing? Yeah, me too, his shirt is way too clean, and not one drop of paint can be seen on the table. RRRRIIIIIGGGHHHHTTT

14 years in the making

A little over 14 years ago, the 5/8 and I sat in line for several hours attempting to obtain tickets to the Garth Brooks concert. We were at the Jones Store Ticketmaster outlet. Several things about that ordeal ticked me off. One, is that this outlet didn't start selling tickets until almost 20 minutes after the official start time. Second, the bloke in front of my bought up the last two tickets.

Well, we get another chance to see him in concert. Garth is coming to Kansas City, and the radio station in Kansas City is billing it as 'one city show'. That is, he is not doing a whole tour, just playing Kansas City.

This time around, we had better luck. And we didn't stand in line, and we didn't have to deal with smelly, rude people while not standing in line. This time we went online to the Ticketmaster website and got tickets to see Garth Brooks show in Kansas City next month. The radio on Friday reported that Garth had said he would make tickets available as long as people were buying them. I thought this was a kind of bogus line. I mean, seriously, the Sprint center only holds so many people.

But as we were frantically trying to obtain the tickets - three of us; myself, the 5/8 and No. 1 Son all hitting the Ticketmaster website over and over trying to obtain the tickets, we got a message the original 14 Nov show was sold out, but another show date, 12 Nov, became available. We were able to snag tickets to that one. The last I looked at the Ticketmaster site, there were 9 dates for Garth in the Sprint Arena in Kansas City. I guess he was true to his word.

Along with this, I was impressed with the price at $27/ticket, they were extremely affordable. We paid $60-something a ticket to see Shania Twain about three years ago. And that $27 is for all seats, they all carry the same price. Which is way cool. And Ticketmaster stated the online and phone sales were limited to folks in Kansas, Missouri, SE Nebraska and SW Iowa, based on the credit card billing address. Which was also way cool. This would keep the ticket bots from buying up all the tickets like that Hannah Montana fiasco.

I could have made it all up.

This whole 30 days of posts thing doesn't seem to be going over very well. Here is it, 4 days since my last post, and I don't have any valid reasons for not posting. Sometimes, you just have nothing to say, and sometimes you have plenty to say, you just don't have the right words to say it. Then again, sometimes you might put the whole thing at the bottom of the list of things to get done. Placing a lower importance on it than, say, pressing the "Stumble Upon" button in the browser tool bar. Sometimes, you just want to kind of vegetate and do mostly nothing, especially something that will require you to think, and possibly express some kind of idea, or thought, or tell a story.

But who knows really, mostly I think sometimes things just - are; and you are just too damned apathetic to give a rat's hind end about much of anything. So here it is, yet another Sunday, and I haven't posted anything since Thursday and I'm thinking to myself 'why didn't I just take five minutes and put something, anything up?' and there is no answer. Just nothing. But I'm making the effort anyway. As this whole experiment goes on, it just seems like what there is to write about doesn't seem all that interesting. And if it isn't interesting to me, I have to wonder how interesting it is to anyone else. I'm not going to give up on it though. I missed a few days, but there were some days that I posted multiple times, so that should count for some extra credit at least.

But then again, I could have just made the whole thing up.

Bionic Woman Redux

After two episodes, I'm still trying to get past the vast and sweeping changes to the Bionic Woman mythos that are created in the re-imagining of the show. About the only things that are retained from the original show are; the bionic woman's name is Jaime Sommers, and she has robotic parts. Apart from that, almost nothing is retained.

There is no Oscar Goldman. There is no government spy agency called OSI. There is no Dr. Rudy Wells who pioneered the bionics project. And there is a bionic woman 1.0 - who is 1/2 crazy - running around mucking things up.

Instead of the OSI, Jaime works for some super-secret private firm who are trying to keep the world from being destroyed, and she cost $50 million (instead of $5 million in the original). I guess it would have to be a private agency to get all those bionic parts (two legs, 1 arm, 1 ear and 1 eye - the eye is another deviation from the original) for only $50 million. I'm quite certain if it was a government project, it would have run closer to $5 billion. In a government program, she probably could have gotten a bionic little toe for $50 million.

I'm going to give it some more time. At least with Battlestar Galactica they mostly kept the familiar names around. With this, the only name they kept was Jaime Sommers. But I'm still waiting for Lindsey Wagner to do a guest appearance - I'm almost certain that is in the works.

Leaving Las Vegas

One of my favorite shows the last few years has been "Las Vegas" on NBC. I started watching it because of James Caan. Since "Rollerball"(the original, not the crappy remake) I will pretty much watch anything James Caan is in.

Caan's character was great. Ex-CIA spook guy now running a Casino in Las Vegas. Knows all the old-timer mob guys, and how to take care of business 'off the books'. Last season (I believe it was) Caan's character left for awhile. The show was somewhat draggy then. Without Caan, it just wasn't going to fly. I was about ready to give up on it when he came back.

In this season's opener, he left for good. And I'm pretty sure it is for good this time. But I have faith that they can do the same great show without him this time. Last time, when Caan left, there was nobody to fill his shoes. All that was left was the young eye-candy characters - don't get me wrong, the eye-candy is nice. This time though, they have brought in a new character, and new old salt kind of guy. A Wyoming rancher who simply 'wrote a check for $247 million to pay off the casino's back taxes. The character is portrayed by Tom Selleck.

Twenty years ago, Selleck was the bomb as "Magnum, P.I." but his after Magnum career has somewhat stifled. He did some crappy movies and some guest shots on other TV shows. If the western genre was better received, he would have had some good hits with westerns. He seems to just kind of slide into the cowboy role, and this character acts exactly how you might expect a cowboy to act. When an oncologist from Kansas City is caught cheating at black jack, instead of sending the guy to jail, Selleck himself deals cards to the fellow and makes the proposition "You stole over $1 million of my money. Now, I believe sometimes people make mistakes. So what we're going to do is play blackjack until I win all my money back, every cent, then you go back to Kansas City and save some lives." (ok, it was paraphrase, my memory isn't that good, but you get the drift).

I think Las Vegas will last without Caan just fine. Unfortunately, I don't think "Criminal Minds" will last without Mandy Patinkin. Another show I started watching for the actor, Ever since "Princess Bride" I have watched most things Patinkin has done. Sadly, I missed the whole "Dead Like Me" era of his career, but I'm sure that somehow I'll get over it.

Holy Cow! Look at all those reference links. You'd think I'm getting paid for that many links but alas, I don't.

Have a great rest-of-your-Monday!

The weekend is winding down. I'm just waiting for some pants to dry so I have something to wear to work tomorrow. The kids and the 5/8 are in bed and the house seems eerily quiet except for the wood-cutting sounds of the dog snoring in the next room. Every now and again I can hear someone sneaking around upstairs, the floors in this old house creak something awful - a burglar would never make it around the house without being heard.

The weekend was mostly uneventful. Friday night was great, no casino runs, no picking kids up at the football game. Just me, my mates, and several uninterrupted hours of killing bad guys in Raven Shield. Some members from the Strike clan showed up on our server. Back before we had our own server, the Strike clan server was pretty much our home away from home. There were times though, that the server would get full and they would kick someone off to allow one of their own members to play.

It was then that we noticed they usually kicked people who weren't "wearing tags" to make room. Wearing tags is a term referring to people who are not in an organized group or clan. We decided to devise a tag of our own, so we could appear to be a clan, and save us from getting booted. Originally our clan symbol was "(.)(.)playername". But we changed that about eight or nine months ago as our kids were getting old enough to play with us. We just felt it was not appropriate for 12 and 14 year olds to have a symbol representing womens' breasts as their tag. So we changed it to "[FGN]playername".

The strike server is gone now. They have mostly moved onto newer games. We haven't. Many of our players are in the military, and simply cannot afford to upgrade or purchase new computers that would allow them to run the newer games. Raven Shield is 5 years old. And there are enough after-market maps around to keep it lively. Add to that, in multi-player mode the maps are never really the same because you are playing with other live people, and people very seldom do the same thing over and over again. The ones that do don't last long in the round because others playing will figure out their pattern and lay waste to them.

Even though we had our collective rumps handed to us by the strike clan, it was a great deal of fun playing with them again. You would think that after playing the same game for five years we would be better at it by now, but sadly that is just not the case, we still stink.

Machinima

Machine + Cinema = Machinima

Machinima is a fairly new artform which utilizes graphics engines from games, and creates short (3 - 7 minute) movies. You record the game, and then go back and add voice-overs, background noise/music or whatever, then upload it to the YouTube.

I have obtained a passive interest in this since my kids turned me on to "Red vs. Blue" via YouTube. Red vs Blue are a series of Machinima shorts created in the Halo game. They do contain some bad language, so I wouldn't recommend that any young kids be allowed to watch them. I would rate them along the lines of PG-13 movies.



The above is episode 1. You pretty much have to start at the beginning. And even if you are not a Halo fan (I have played it only once or twice myself), you should still find them enjoyable. It would be great to get all of these on a DVD as one continuous episode.

It doesn't always pay to be the smart one

I got a call from my brother yesterday. Seems his computer has started giving him a message from Norton Anti-Virus saying he has a "Trojan.Vundo" residing in "C:\Windows\System32\mljigda.dll". Of course, the virus (according to Norton) is over 2 years old, so I suppose this is the reason Norton can't get rid of it. Their website says to download their "FixVundo.exe" file to fix it. I tried to talk him through it on the phone, first by asking him to disconnect his computer from the internet.

Him: "How do I do that?"
Me: "Well, just unplug it from the cable modem."
Him: "How do I do that?"
Me: "Well, you could just unplug the cable modem from the wall."
Him: "What the hell is a cable modem?"

That is when it occurred to me that the only thing he ever does on the computer I think is read his email and do his fantasy sports stuff, and when I knew this was not going to be solved over the phone. He was supposed to bring me his box on Friday, but showed up Wednesday night with it instead. Tonight I plugged it all in, booted into safe mode, and ran the FixVundo app. Nothing. The application said it could not find Vundo virus on the machine. Have I mentioned how much I hate Norton? Personally, I use AVS and have had zero problems with it other than having to manually start the email scanner after every other update. And it is FREE! And it took over two hours to search his machine.

After that, I rebooted into regular windows mode and went to install Ad-Aware (I love ad aware for malware detection). And sure enough, the stupid "you have a virus I can't fix" message comes up, constantly. Click to close it down it alternates messages from "Unable to repair file" to "Access to the file was denied." So I figured I would run the FixVundo in regular mode (completely disconnected from any network, BTW). I start running it, and about 2 minutes into it, I get some debug messages saying the FixVundo is trying to improperly load a C++ library.

Fracking NORTON! I HATE YOU GUYS!!!!

I click through those, and the thing is still running so I'm simultaneously running AdAware (probably not a good idea, but doing it anyway). I'm heading to bed and will just have to see what pops up in the morning.

Have I mentioned how much I dislike the over-priced, bloated resource hog that is Norton Anti-Virus?

AAAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!

*** 28 September, 2007 - Updated ***
Ok, just to show you that I am not unreasonable in my dislike of Norton Anti-Virus, here is an image from my brother's machine.

Now, please note the bright red box which says "Norton AntiVirus has detected a virus on your computer." You see that? Yeah, that came up just about 30 seconds after the box that said "Trojan.Vundo has not been found on your computer."

Why math is important.

We all did it. Well, the 'normal' ones anyway. All through Jr. High (that's Middle School for you younguns) and High School. We complained incessantly about math. Why do I need math? When am I ever going to use math? Why do I need to know how to divide fractions? And on and on with the whole "I don't need math" rants.

Never mind that math is so basically and utterly important in every day life. Never mind that you use math constantly, without even thinking about it. To figure out how hard you have to stomp on the brake pedal at your current speed so you don't hit the lady crossing the street with a baby carriage? Yep, it's math.

But forget all that stuff. You NEED math. It is essential. Because you people in the 7th grade now, in about 30 years your probably going to have kids in the 7th grade. And guess what? They are going to be taking math. And they are going to ask for your help. Do you really want to look stupid to your kids?

Ancient methods of the plumbologists

It is said, whispered really, in the great halls of plumbers, that the ancient practitioners of plumbology had a great and closely guarded secret. It is not discussed openly. Very few will actually admit to believing in the tales. Somewhat like UFO's. Many want to believe, but few will actually admit to believing. It is currently rumored that some scholars of plumbology have stumbled upon something that borders on the miraculous.

After spending centuries chasing the secrets, and spending untold billions of dollars traversing the globe, it is said that a small, but powerful group of elite plumbologists have happened upon ancient writings which reveal the grand secret. That is the secret of hot water. No, not just water heaters, or just heating regular water, but of actually creating hot water from nothing. Just out of thin air so to speak.

This is my belief. I can't help it. I have tried for months to figure out another explanation, but, believe it or not, this one seems most plausible. Let me explain:

Back in February "Bertha", the water boiler at the downtown YMCA was replaced. She was old and tired and had seen her best days long, long pass. It was time to put her out to pasture. But now, this new hot water system boggles the mind and, quite possibly breaks several laws of physics...or psychics...or something like that.

This is what happens; one enters the shower area and turns the shower on to hot water. As expected, a short time elapses and hot water comes pouring from the shower-head. Then a second person enters the show area and turns his shower on to hot water. The first person, having spent more than 4 decades in learning the proper mannerisms of hot water behavior, tenses, ready for his show to get colder as person 2's water gets warmer.

That is where the magic comes into play. It has to be magic, because I can find no other logical explanation; and as Sherlock Holmes once said "We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." The magic is that the when person 2 turns on his hot water, the water for person 1, instead of getting colder, actually get hotter! Amazing! I know, I know, I can hardly imagine it myself, but that is what happens, as true as I'm sitting here typing this out.

How else can this be explained? Water gets hotter the more of it is required? And colder when less hot water is required? It is so backwards. I'm certain that the physics police, or the quantum militia are, even right now, as I type this, hot on the trail of those brave, intrepid plumbologists who have not only discovered, but have had the gumption to actually use this ancient and forbidden wisdom.

Swollen shoulders

A conversation between No. 2 Son and myself at the YMCA one morning:

No. 2 Son: "Dad, I think there is something wrong."
Dad: "Why? What do you mean?"
No. 2 Son: "My shoulders, they're all swollen."
Dad: "Well, do they hurt?"
No. 2 Son: "No, they're just swollen."
Dad: "Let me see." Observes No. 2 Son's shoulders closely. "Dude, they aren't swollen, that's just muscle."
No. 2 Son: "Really? How?"
Dad: "Well, you know how we've been coming to the Y? And how we've been lifting weights? Well, that's what happens when you lift weights; you get muscles."
No. 2 Son: "Cooool."

Missed a day

Well I missed yesterday's post. I apologize for that, and promise to strive to ensure that it never happens again. I had a good reason though - really. Today is Little Sister's birthday, and we had her party yesterday. So my house was full of squealing, giggling 8 and 9 year old girls running up and down the stair and in and out the doors. In short, complete and utter chaos.

Little Sister isn't one of those 'follow the crowd' types of girls. Oh sure, in some she is, but mostly she isn't. Case in point, for her birthday cake, she wanted a cheesecake (girl after daddy's own heart that one). So Friday night we worked together and made a cheesecake. The 5/8 had also purchased a regular cake because she thought there was a possibility that some of the girls might not like cheesecake. I told her she was nuts, that no one in their right mind doesn't like cheesecake. Turn out, I was wrong, there were some girls that didn't like cheesecake. The 5/8 gleefully made a note on the calendar because, you know, it isn't that often that I am wrong.

Lessons Learned

If your house is full of fruit flies, and you simply can't for the life of you figure out where they are coming from; check the kitchen window sills for mangoes you might have placed there - two or three months ago - to ripen.

Oh, and mangoes don't smell when they rot!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Some things never change

Can hardly wait. Monday 25 September is the season premier of Heroes! And just in time too. I wasn't quite certain what I was going to do with my Monday nights now that "Saving Grace" ended its first season. Which, I might add, was a tremendous season. The redneck angel Earl is a hoot to watch. Sure, it is quite dicey at times, and the show, in my opinion, would be just as good without seeing Holly Hunter tied naked to a bed with a happy face drawn on her back and some guy's name drawn across her buttocks in lipstick. But it is what it is.

On the home front, Topeka High is set to lose another football game tonight. Don't get wrong, I love the Trojans, but I am also painfully realistic. No. 1 Son is in the marching band and MJROTC so he has to be there for every home game. I wish I had thought of that back at enrollment when we purchased the $40 activities card. The activities card gets him into all of the home games free, and, by coincidence, being in the band and MJROTC, he gets into all of the home games...free. The MJROTC kids clean up police the stadium after the games and pick up all the trash.

It never fails that when one thing slows down, another jumps in to take its place. For instance, for the past 8 years or so Friday night has been "Dad's game night." A group of friends from across the country get together online and play video games and talk about life, the universe and everything over voice chat. We used to use Roger Wilco, which was a great, tiny free app, but have since switched to Teamspeak, which is another free app, but has a server component to it. A couple of years ago, for some reason, I seemed to become the Teamspeak host. So instead of having to manually start the server every time I rebooted my machine, I wrote a Windows Service to do that for me. Now it is always running. The problem we are running into now is my DSL. For the entire four or five years that I had cable internet I think my IP address changed maybe three times. With DSL it seems to change three times a week. So every Friday, as part of the routine, I send out an email address to the folks with the new IP address.

Crap, did I get off the subject or what? Okay, so I was saying that when one thing slows down, something else jumps in. We have established that for nearly the past decade, Friday night is dad's game night. About a year go, mami started having real problems driving at night, so I agreed to pick papi up at the casino up north on Friday nights and every other Saturday night. Well, that put quite the damper in my Friday game nights because picking papi up isn't as simple as just driving the 30 minutes up there an back. I have to drive up there, and then wait for him to finish up. If I am not in one of those moods where I become disrespectful, this could take up to an hour or more.

For about the last 6 weeks he has not gone up to the casinos. w00t! I get my game nights back! Did I mention No. 1 Son is in the band? And has to attend all of the football and basketball games. Okay for those following along at home, that means that I 1) get to take No. 1 Son to the football/basketball games and 2) pick No. 1 Son up from the football/basketball games. Granted, this is not nearly as time consuming as making the trek up to the casino to collect papi, but nonetheless, it really cramps my style. I mean seriously. Do you realize how hard it is to be really in the zone, wiping out the enemy in Raven Shield, then have to stop to go pick up some danged teenager at the ball game, and then try to re-enter the zone? It is nearly impossible, I telling you.

Pete's Barbers

When I was a kid, my brothers and I would always get our hair cut at Pete's Barber, down on 8th street in downtown Topeka. My father always took us there. Pete's was that kind of quintessential barber shop one thinks of when they think of a barber shop. The kind that Floyd had back in Mayberry. Complete with the spinning red, white and blue barber pole just outside the door.

I don't remember the shop ever being empty. Whenever we went in there was at least one person in the barber chair, and usually two or three older men sitting in chairs along the wall. I don't think they were there to get their hair cut though, just to chew the fat because we always went right after the fellow in the chair was finished.

The first time ever that I saw a woman's breast was at Pete's Barber. Well, not a breast really, it was artwork. Pete had a calendar, and above the months was the picture of a lady wearing some sort of lingerie. My dad motioned for me to look and he lifted a clear film from the lady, the film is what the lingerie was drawn on, and beneath, the lady was pure nakedness. For a twelve year old boy, that was pretty exciting. Sure, it was a small picture, and sure it was clear across the barber shop, but I knew what I was looking at.

Pete had an employee named Don. Don was quite a bit younger than Pete. He had that cool beach boys hair cut and wore turtle necks a lot. Pete is, of course, gone now, but Don is still there. The place is now called Don's Barbers. Except that there is only one Barber. The chairs are looking old and somewhat grimy and the spinning red, white and blue barber pole just outside the door is broken. It was smashed some time ago and I can't think of when. I have taken my kids to Don's to get their haircut a couple of times. That trip was usually followed by a trip to Super Cuts because, to be frank, Don just doesn't seem to be able to cut hair strait. The Beach Boy do and the turtlenecks are a thing of the past. Maybe, like Samson's hair gave him strength, those things gave Don the ability to give a decent hair cut.\

As always, thanks for visiting!

A post a day

Hello, dear reader, I am going to try something new here. An experiment of sorts. I am going to make a commitment to make at least one post a day for the next thirty days. I can't pretend that they will be about me, or my family, or my home town as most of what is on this blog. And I can't pretend that anything I write is going to be worth reading. Of course, I never tried to pretend that in the first place. Some things come out and I think 'wow, that's really good.' But let's face it, most of the stuff - well - most of the stuff would fall into the category of "all most, but not quite, completely horrible."

I don't know what the purpose of this exercise is. I haven't thought it through all that much. I don't even know why I'm doing it. It isn't like I've lost a bet or feel the extreme urge to make a complete ass of myself. It is nothing like that. I was simply setting up the coffee maker for the morning brew, and the idea popped in my head. I don't know where it came from, or even if the idea was meant for me in particular. I suppose it could have just been floating around out there in space and for some unknown reason, I happened to walk into it at just the right angle, and just the right time and it latched on to my mind.

Whatever the reason, I've got it in my head to do, so I will. Be warned though, it isn't like I'm some great purveyor of words or anything like that. I hope that you'll continue to stop by, even if what I am writing over the next thirty days is complete and utter crap. And I hope that, once in a while, you might drop a comment every now and again to let me know what you think.

As always, thanks for stopping by!