Crash's blog

Q: What do you call a roller coaster that only goes down hill?

A: The stock market.

Closed below 8,000 today. Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

So last night our friend T started her sabbatical from jujitsu. Just to make sure we would miss her while she is gone she made a BUNCH of cookies. As if we need food to remember our friends. The crispy peanut butter and chocolate bars were the best though.

I gave her an assignment; come to the web site, create an account, post things. That way she'll have an additional line of connection.

Along those lines (connections) I think we need to get started on planning a Christmas party for the dojo. Last year we talked about a party, but didn't get one planned until Duane left. This year let's try to do better.

OK, I saw it. Twice. Too much work to do otherwise I probably would have watched it a third time.

In a nutshell, I don't think they did anything wrong which was my greatest fear. It seems that the producers are treading carefully with this largest of movie franchises.

I have some minor complaints, in that the editing could be improved. A couple of scene changes happened a little fast and I missed some minor things (like a couple of shots in the opera/gun fight sequence). I'm sure it's difficult to identify how much time it takes for the audience to capture a concept when you (the editor/director) know what's coming already.

Overall, they got a lot right. It was more of a Bond film for Bond fans rather than one with more general appeal. If this were to be your first James Bond movie, I don't think you'd like it.

About Q and the gadgets: Ian Fleming didn't really write a lot of them into the books, but they were there. Interestingly enough, it was mostly the bad guys who had them. Dr. No had his torture chamber (mostly left out of the movie), and Emilio Largo had his boat the Disco Volante that turned into a hydroplane (Thunderball). One of Bond's earliest gadgets was the briefcase in From Russia With Love, but it was rather simple and straight-forward. I think the first big movie gadget was he Astin Martin in Goldfinger complete with machine guns, smoke screen and passenger eject button. The car was a movie creation, but from the book they included the lethal bowler hat that Odd Job carried. From there on we were hooked.

Ian Fleming seemed to have James Bond be the underdog, outgunned by the bad guys. It was the movie adaptations that gave him the gadgets. All the same, I love them and always looked forward to the small parts that "Q" would have. (I thought he was best in Tomorrow Never Dies.)

I hope they bring them back, but not to the extreme so that they upstage Bond himself.

To say that I am a James Bond fan is to say that water is wet, or that space is big. With every James Bond movie release for as long as I can remember I have counted the days, planned ahead, read the reviews -- I've done everything I could to learn about the movie, but to avoid learning too much about the movie. It's kind of like peeking at your Christmas presents, you want to know, but you don't want to spoil Christmas morning.

For Casino Royale I was so VERY but the only part people wondered about was whether or not Daniel Craig was going to do well holding up the franchise. To blond or not to blond, that is the question.

Well, today I'm nervous. The movie sold well in Europe last weekend, but some of the reviews here aren't very excited about it.

One review I looked at (I had one eye covered in case I saw something that would be a spoiler) said that this installment is tying up the loose ends and introducing us to who James Bond really is. I guess that this is our Empire Strikes Back.

See you at the movies.

We've been through what seems like an eternal presidential campaign and have been listening to endless claims from both sides as to what we're going to deal with if we don't elect the right group. Well, now the suppositions are done and we finally get to see what's in the pie we've cooked. In the words of Mr. Spock, "What you want is irrelevant, what you have chosen is at hand!"

All that said, there are a few things that I really hope the Obama opposition were really wrong about, because the possibility scares me.

Check out this youtube video of Jim Moran talking about the problems we face.

"We have been guided by a Republican administration who believes in the simplistic notion that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it and they have an antipathy towards means of redistributing wealth. And they may be able to sustain that for a while, but it doesn't work in the long run."

I find Moran's words interesting and insightful into the current political climate. In times past words such as these would probably get him laughed off the stage be all but the most socialistic, but I wonder how many people now would hear those words and think that maybe he's onto something.

I think it's important to remember that although the senior executives where I work make lots of money, my cart is hitched to the same set of horses. If we trip them up, I just might go down too. One of the comments attached to the youtube video pointed out that the wealth of past prosperity is shared by creating jobs.

Regards
Crash

So, this weekend we purchased a cheap car for the kids to drive. Now with one boy out of school and needing to work full-time and the youngest getting his drivers license and having a job and Mrs. Crash starting a new job next week we realized we're kind of short on wheels. So we're rearranging things a bit.

Which got me thinking...how many cars have I owned in my life. Mark from work tells me that I've purchased more cars in the past year than he's owned in his life-time. Well, here's the list.
Cars

1. 1975 VW Rabbit
2. 1967 Ford Mustang
3. 1969 Opel GT
4. 197? Ford E150 Van
5. 1976 Cadillac Coupe Deville
6. 1972 Datsun Pickup
7. 1982 Honda Civic
8. 1975 Buick Regal
9. 1979 Subaru GL
10. 1984 Chevrolet S10 Pickup
11. 1980 VW Rabbit
12. 1992 Chevrolet Cavalier
13. 1986 Olds Delta 88
14. 1980 VW Vanagon
15. 1976 Porsche 914
16. 1984 Chevrolet Suburban
17. 1982 Olds Delta 88
18. 198? Chevrolet Sprint
19. 1980 Subaru GL
20. 1986 Chrysler LeBaron Convertable
21. 199? Mitsubishi Mirage
22. 1989 Mitsubishi Eclipse
23. 1992 GMC Safari
24. 1986 Isuzu Trooper
25. 1996 Mitsubishi Montero
26. 1987 Chrysler Lebaron GTS
27. 1990 Plymouth Sundance
28. 1989 Chrysler Lebaron Convertible
29. 1996 Dodge Ram 1500
30. 1995 Plymouth Neon
31. 1997 Dodge Neon
32. 2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser
33. 1995 Chevrolet Beretta
34. 2007 Jeep Patriot
35. 1994 Jeep Cherokee
36. 1994 Chevrolet Beretta

Motorcycles

1. 1982 Honda Passport
2. 1982 Honda 450 Nighthawk
3. 197? Yamaha 175
4. 1972 Honda CB 450
5. 1980 Yamaha XS 850
6. 1982 Honda CT110
7. 1982 Honda CT110
8. 1984 Honda CT70
9. 1974 Honda CT70
10. 1979 Honda CT70
11. 197? Honda ST90
12. 1990 Honda GL1500

I was talking with geekboy this weekend and we discussed the Netflix change where they are dropping their user profile service where you can split your account and create a new rental queue. Great feature for kids etc.

When the announcement came I posted a comment on the Netflix Community Blog, sent a note to Netflix support and signed an e-petition promising to drop my account by at least one disk if they dropped profiles. Well, today I got an email from Netflix stating that they have been persuaded to keep the feature.

Wow! only 11 days between announcements.

It's always been a well-known fact that if the number of natural predators of an animal decrease, the population of that animal will increase. Then because of the abundance of the first animal the predators will increase until an equilibrium is reached.This is the first time I've seen any study of equilibrium on a global scale. (Link) An increase in the amount of CO2 in the air causes more plants to grow, which may in turn balance out the level of CO2.

A Texas A&M student has just finished her thesis and has found that the fat in beef brisket is high in monounsaturated fat and can promote HDL's (the good cholesterol). Link

I'll be in the back yard.

It's about time that the law was changed to allow us to see more of Utah from the rear-view mirror, but I'd like to see the law modified to make the government pay us back for the speeding tickets.