It finally happened. Unexpectedly, my nearly eight year old son questioned the existence of Santa Claus. That’s right… in September, long before Christmas, he came to the conclusion that SC might not be real.

We were very dramatic. “Are you sure you want to know? Once we tell you the answer, there’s no going back, you’ll know forever.” There was no going back. He asked again, promised he wouldn’t cry, said he wanted to know. So I told him (somewhat gleefully.)

I did forget to make Mica promise not to cry before delivering the bad news. She, of course, burst into tears. This made B break his no-crying promise and make another one to “never grow up and leave you.” He promised to stay forever.

Later, with the cat out of the bag he asked about the Easter Bunny, no not real either. He then wanted us to list all the holidays in order in case he forgot one. Mica didn’t want me to do that so he asked if I could repeat them backwards… and then, when that didn’t work either, randomly. I just told him that there aren’t any more holidays with fake present-givers. He was very interested in how much money we had spent on his gifts, trying to figure it out himself when we wouldn’t tell him. Somehow, the Tooth Fairy never came up, though he has lost two teeth in the last week. I’m expecting this conversation in the near future.

I was proud of my son. Reality matrix… intact.

Happy vacation Santa.

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Fall TV is ramping up quickly and has more than the usual complement of good shows (I usually count on maybe two a year.)

CW’s entry into the ‘Best Show of the Season’ contest is a little fantasy entitled ’Reaper.’ The pilot episode is directed by Kevin Smith (warning, Kevin Smith’s blog is rather offensive) he of the Dogma, Clerks I & II and other assorted movies fame.  Who in the world is better qualified to make fun of the Devil and Hell than Kevin Smith? Nobody!

This show is very, very funny. Snort beverages out your nostrils type funny.

Sam is a 20 year old slacker. A community college drop-out who excels at exactly nothing. He and his best friend Bert “Sock” Wysocki work (as it were) at the local Work Bench, a Home Depot type hardware store where Sam and Bert are pretty much the worst employees.

Sam has a crush on his extra cute co-worker Andi, though he can’t quite ask her out even though she’s obviously interested.

Never fear though, Sam has a secret (though he doesn’t know it yet) that’s cool enough to win the girl as long as she doesn’t know the details: Sam’s parents sold his soul to the devil, and on Sam’s 21st birthday the devil is here to collect.

The devil (brilliantly played by Ray Wise) wants Sam to help him out by being Hell’s bounty hunter “...not forever, you’re done when you die, right!” All Sam has to do is capture souls that have escaped from hell and in return the devil won’t, well, “take you’re mother.”

Not entirely perfect (it bogs down a bit when it’s not trying to be funny) but there’s more than enough to like in this twisted comedy.

Given that the show is on the CW, this might be a good time to get involved because I’d be willing to bet it’s going to be around for awhile and that’s a very good thing.

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About Me

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Back To You

I love Frasier and I’m seriously in like with Everybody Loves Raymond, mostly because of Raymond not Patricia Heaton.  Back To You is neither of those shows, which is a disappointment though not surprising; the commercials weren’t all that good.

My first thought: “Look, Frasier’s on the news.” I suppose the hazard of playing the same character (even one as great as Frasier) for twenty years is obvious. It’s hard not to see Frasier whenever Grammar’s on the screen.  He sounds like Frasier, he dispenses advice like Frasier, all he needs is to do to complete the illusion is punctuate his sentences with “I’m listening” and I won’t be able to get past it.  Luckily Frasier is funny and I don’t mind more of him.

My second thought: “Look, Mrs. Raymond’s on the news.” Without Marie across the street, you realize something about Patricia Heaton: she’s kind of annoying. She’s not awful, but she’s not great either.

The show itself is rather bland. Easy, obvious jokes, only a couple of which are all that clever. The characters, for the most part, come straight from the ‘Sitcom Guide to People That Are Funny’ including ‘Slutty Girl’ and ‘Guy Who Makes Inappropriate Jokes.’ I’ll admit to liking Josh Gad’s too young News Director, most of the funny bits involved him.

All in all, not horrible, certainly an above average sitcom, but that speaks more to the awful quality of the average sitcom than to the quality of this particular show.

Which brings us to:

The Big Bang Theory

This is a below average sitcom. In fact it’s downright awful. The big idea behind this show, such as it is, is that dorks/geeks are funny and what could possibly be funnier than sticking socially inept nerds next door to a REALLY PRETTY GIRL. Hahahaha, hilarity!

Note to show: successful shows have characters you care about. All of the jokes here are at the expense of the main characters, if you laugh at them you laugh at the main characters, definitely not with them. Really, though, you won’t be laughing; it’s not funny. If you find yourself laughing during the show, it won’t be the shows fault. Maybe someone around you made fun of the show’s writers, maybe a clown walked into your living room, maybe the show was interrupted by the latest presidential address, I don’t know. What you won’t be doing is laughing at the jokes, though you might feel like whimpering softly to yourself.

My favorite part, if I can say anything was my favorite, was the staircase. It had the magic property of being exactly as long as was necessary to finish the conversation. Obviously the same set, repeated with slightly different decorations until the dorks finished their last sentence. Look, door without caution tape, now the door has caution tape, now it doesn’t… Caution tape? Oh, I forgot, I’m pretty sure the apartment building where everybody lives is supposed to be run-down and maybe full of crack-heads. How do I know, well, there’s caution tape on doors sometimes.

Seriously, don’t watch this show. There’s only so many IQ points floating around the world and it’s not worth losing some to these geeks.

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The story centers around a young man, Ned the piemaker, who has a gift, not given to him by anyone in particular, where he can bring someone (or thing) to life merely by touching them. The problem being that if he touches them again they die instantly, never to revive.  And if he doesn’t touch them within one minute, someone else dies taking their place “it’s a random proximity thing,” he explains.

Ned makes pies for a living (being able to bring wilted strawberries back to life comes in handy for this) though he supplements his income with the reward money from solving murders.  Turns out that the easiest way to solve a murder is to ask the victim who killed them!

The show twists around the Ross/Rachel, Jim/Pam will they or won’t they bit quite brilliantly when Ned’s childhood sweetheart Chuck is murdered on a cruise ship.  There’s reward money involved so Ned resurrects her to ask the usual questions but is unable to bring himself to end it before the minute is up.  Of course this means that the random proximity things happens, killing the man in the bathroom nearby.

“He was a very, very bad man, he stole stuff off dead people and sold it on the internet” explains Ned to the business partner in murder-solving.

“Oh that’s very nice, the fact that he was a very, very bad man make you feel better about what you did?”

“Yes, immensely!”

Now, however, there’s a problem, Ned and Chuck are desperately in love, so the question isn’t really will they get together… it’s how in the world can they.  If he touches her, she dies. Which means the show gets to be very clever in how it advances their short-distance relationship.

The pilot episode was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and is just as quirky as that would suggest.  It deals with dark and somewhat disturbing things, all while maintaining a light-hearted attitude to it and a bright palette of colors to offset it. The stars are immensely appealing and have genuine chemistry together.

The show premieres October 4th on ABC and more than deserves an audience. The pilot was very, very good (best pilot since Lost and the show may be better...) Watch it, I’d hate for it to die an early and undeserved death.

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It looks very cool on TV, I wanted it, but not that bad (meaning as long as I bit my tongue hard enough I could resist flying out the door to buy it.) Then I saw one in person. Oh my. Oh my. Geez… I’m a sucker for gadgets and this was such a gadget. You may have read complaints about it, people finding one thing or another that wasn’t quite right, and they’re true. It is definitely a flawed device. But only in context of what might have been.

It is, without question, the best phone I have ever seen. Solid, curvy, smooth, a slick tech device that is booth oooo and ahhhhh worthy. Ooooo and ahhhhh. It is smaller than I expected, but solid for it’s size. The interface is fast and flashy. Lots of zooming and sliding that is fancier than any portable device I’ve ever seen.

A few complaints

Mind you this is in context of the iphone only, things that could be improved. It is still better than any other phone, it just sets its own standard way high.

First, the headphone jack. You need an adapter to use regular headphones. It’s recessed a bit in the top and, while the jack itself is normal, most headphones don’t fit into the little hole it’s placed in. I don’t get it either.
Second, while it feels awesome, it’s slippery, the brushed aluminum is not grippy at all. It feels like you’re always about to drop it. I don’t like that feeling. Easy enough to fix, and you’ll want to anyway to protect the surface from painful scratches. Best Skins Ever

It doesn’t support WPA Enterprise. Which is what you ask? Well, it’s a wireless standard that is used in environments where lots of users have access and giving everyone a username and password makes sense. Like, say, a university campus. Say, the University of Utah campus. Which means I can’t log into the regular wifi network at school. Easy enough to fix with a firmware update so get to it Apple!

It’s only on AT&T… ok that’s not a big problem, just hack it! (Already done, hello T-Mobile, thank you geek community.)

You can’t install third party programs. Oh, but you can, see ‘hack’ link in previous paragraph.

It is somewhat harder to type on the screen than with a physical keyboard. It’s not that bad, just remember that it registers when your finger leaves the screen so you can slide your finger to get to the letter. Also it has some sort of delay in registering so if you accidentally slip your finger off the letter it still types the right letter. Plus it predicts fairly well what you meant even if you completely mistype the letters.{pagebreak}

Now things I like.

It’s beautiful. Seriously. Which is par for the course for Apple lately.
The volume buttons on the side. Love it.

Coupled with the silence switch, no messing around with menus to turn the ringer off. Just flick a switch. Genius.

The web browser. I have used lots of portable web browsers and the ALL suck. Safari on the iPhone doesn’t. People complain about flash non-support, but seriously people… try ANY OTHER PORTABLE WEB BROWSER. This one is brilliant. One thing you don’t get from watching the commercials that is awesome is the zoom. Double tap to zoom in, but it doesn’t just zoom all the way in like I expected. It zooms to fit the width of whatever box you tapped in.

The iPod part truely is the best iPod ever. It’s loads of fun to play with and zoom through coverflow and from track to track. The album art is awesome.

I can live without youtube, but you can also watch quicktime videos off the web, such as movie trailers on apple.com

The interface is really quick. And zoomy. You’ve got to try it, it really does work like the commercials.

Google Maps is freaking awesome. Better than the online version seriously, and you can dial and find business and and and… it’s sweet.{pagebreak}
Summary:

Bad:

• Headphone Jack
• Slippery
• No WPA Enterprise
• Minor keyboard issues
• Only on AT&T unless you’re sneaky
• Cannot add multi-day repeats (such as every week on MWF) to calendar entry (but CAN for the alarm clock!)
• Doesn’t have 160 GB

Awesome:

• iPod portion
• Volume switch and silence switch
• Mobile Safari kicks trash
• Widescreen video
• Flicking, double tapping on things is WAY fun.
• Email app rocks
• Google Maps is… awesome.
• Apple Trailers
• Awesome alarm clock
• The little talk bubbles in the SMS app are fun.
• The iPhone theme song is catchy (I hear it my head whenever I use it!)

Trust me… It’s awesome.

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Ok, I get that this is an attempt to update this game to work electronically but come on, how hard is it to add $100 + $100?  How are you supposed to slip that extra $500 under your seat so no one knows how much money you actually have?  Where’s the fun in that?  Where’s the benefit to being the banker if you don’t get to skim a little bit off the top each time you pass Go?

Legions of kids learned how to do simple math in their heads by buying Park Place while watching someone else buy Broadway.  Now we can teach them how to use a calculator as soon as they can punch the buttons and we won’t need addition anymore.

What I really can’t wait for is for a totally cashless society so I can buy a Monopoly that simply scans the barcode tattooed on my forehead.  That would be easy.

[Edit: My wife pointed this out to me, so credit where credit is due.]

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The bathroom door was locked, my child said he thought he needed to throw up.  I said (why, why, why!) ‘you’re fine, lets go downstairs.’ (Why, why, why!) If I were reasonable I would have done the only sane thing: kick in the bathroom door and chuck my child in the direction of the toilet before he could up-chuck on me. I chose the insane thing instead and we went downstairs. 

Three steps across the living room he looked up at me, startled, and said two, haunting words: ‘It’s coming.’  He then exploded, spewing his gooey insides into a horror-movie mess on the floor.  I stared, in shock, at the mess while my son’s outer shell collapsed on the floor like dropped laundry.  I kicked his boneless skin to the side and… ok, I’m scaring myself, he was fine, but he looked no less shocked than I.

He looked up at me. I looked down at him.  He looked at me.  I looked at him ...I looked at him again. Then we turned and looked back at the floor.  I put my hand on his shoulder and said "go take a shower bud." Nothing else could be said.

It was stunning. He’s not big enough to have all that in his stomach. I’m fairly certain that at least three laws of physics were broken last night, not the least of which being that a container that is only yay big can only hold yay much chunks.

To be fair he mistook a stomach ache for hunger pains (why? have a six year old, you’ll stop asking why, it never makes sense.) So he just kept eating, saying he was hungry when what he meant was ‘I’m sick.’

I’ve decided to simply stop feeding him, it’s safer that way.

(What? I have to feed him? Aww crap, fine… here’s a corn-dog.)

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However, I always imagined that even idiots had a limit to how far they would go.  I passed a guy, on a motorcycle, while tailgating, driving a bit erratically because… he was text messaging.  Yes, on a motorcycle and no he wasn’t wearing a helmet, or even a bad-ass leather jacket.  He probably didn’t crash, but I’m fairly certain our gene pool will be that much cleaner soon. 

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We had him for all of three days and already I miss him more than I should. It turns out that Mica (and probably Braeden) is allergic to dogs, so back he went (which is another story, it was much harder than I think it should have been, but I’ll leave it at that.) I have never met a better puppy. He was friendly, calm, loving, snuggly, smart and lovable (just look at his face!) He was perfect for us in every way but one. I really, really want him back.

It’s funny how attached I became in those three days, almost unfair. I hope that, whatever happens, he goes to a good home where he can be loved half as much as he was here for three days. Bye Darwin! I’ll miss you fiercely.

More Darwin Pics

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Fall 2005: A, A-, A, A, A (woot!)

Spring 2006: A, A-,A,A (woot again!)

So, at Utah I have managed a 3.925 GPA, which I am happy to take. Despite all my efforts to sabotage myself, luck and the God of the Really Bad Class Curve have been very kind to me. Combined with my transfer credit (stupid, nasty ‘C’ in MATH 1010) I’ve got a 3.8, which is right where I need to be.  The hardest thing is the amount of time it takes, though I have spent FAR less than my professors keep insisting is necessary to pass. Mostly, I’ve just done without sleep in order to have enough time in the day to do homework and watch the couple of TV programs that help me relax. 

Fun things like Golf have pretty much been out the window (managed one game in between Spring and Summer semester) and my son has told me that he wants me to hurry and be a doctor so I can come home sometimes, poor thing.  The good side of all of this is that I REALLY appreciate those days that I have completely off. Working and/or going to school seven days a week is harder psychologically than I thought it would be, though you do kind of get used to the rythm of it.  I’m really excited to get into the thick of it when I can quit working (go Mica!) and focus on what I need to do. I’m seriously stoked with the idea of getting involved in some form of research and have done some heavy geeking out to surgical videos and medical news, etc. Thankfully, I really enjoy it, much to the boredom of those around me… Anyway, Since I’ve paid for the site again, maybe I’ll get up the energy to write some serious stuff… well… we’ll see.

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