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Life of the Closed Mind

I saved my copy of Newsweek this week. Not for their apology for screwing up, but for Anna Quindlen’s last page article ‘Life of the Closed Mind’.

Under the cover of watching the class of 2001 graduate this year, Ms. Quindlen asks the question when did everything become black and white? Right vs. wrong? Red vs. blue? When did having a public dialogue about the issues die off?

And as Ms. Quindlen begins her closing paragraph, she sums it up well:

So the young men and women who began their college years in the shadow of September 11 graduate in its shadow as well. The intolerant, the monomaniacal, the zealots driven by religious certainty engineered the worst attack on American soil, and the result has been intolerance, monomania and zealotry driven by religious certainty.

This week's purchases

A bunch of good stuff this week:

Books:

  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. A cow-orker lent me this to read last week and it was fantastic. A must read, review coming soon.
  • Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Stranger than Fiction; all by Chuck Palahniuk. Author of Fight Club, Mr. Palahniuk’s writing style is very unique, and Stranger than Fiction are some non-fiction stories from his time on the road.
  • A Spell for Chameleon, by Piers Anthony. An author near and dear to my heart from my childhood. Last year I picked up the Incarnations series and Bio of a Space Tyrant series from my favorite used book store. A Spell For Chameleon is the first Xanth novel, published in 1977. I’m going to re-read it and see if Alex is ready for the series.

Music:

  • Gorillaz, Demon Days: Special Editon. From one half of the team formerly known as Blur, Gorillaz’ Demon Days is a fantastic alternative rock album flavored with a bit of hip-hop.
  • Audioslave, Out of Exile. The sophomore effort from Chris Cornell and the former bandmembers of Rage Against The Machine.

Movies:

  • In Good Company. Topher Grace is Dennis Quaid’s boss, and tries to date his employee’s daughter as well.
  • The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Wes Anderson’s (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) third film, with an ensemble cast. I think the Royal Tenenbaums was one of the final straws for my friends in movies I recommended and made them watch that they hated.

Lost Season Finale.

I watched the Lost finale last night, including last weeks and this week’s 2 hour finale.

The finale was well done, I especially liked the multiple flashbacks for each character. Hurley continues to crack me up, and the show did a very good job tying the characters and stories together.

This website looks to continue the finale, and starts more questions than there are answers.

HP dv1000

I received a HP dv1000 as a gift from the Company last week, and quickly threw Ubuntu 5.04 on it.

It’s a gorgeous laptop – Centrino based, with an Intel 54g built in, built in 5 in 1 card reader, firewire, USB everywhere, and widescreen 1280×768 monitor. It’s pretty sexy for a notebook too, with a silver finish on the outside, and a shiny, glossy black finish on the inside.

Ubuntu worked great on it, other than the Centrino wireless, but Intel is starting to make a push in supporting Linux with their wireless cards. Following the How-To on the Ubuntu Forums helped, but it didn’t work until I changed my kernel from 2.6.10-5-386 to 2.6.10-5-686, and bam, everything worked.

Ubuntu works great on it, the card reader is supported, installation defaulted to the correct widescreen, DVD-RW, Synaptic touchpad worked, and battery life is excellent.

Need to throw some other applications on it before the weekend, including Tomboy, Bluefish, MP3, DVD playing, and Muine, and I’ll work on the blog layout while visiting the in-laws this weekend.

If you want to read a decent review and see pictures, click here.

Episode III

I got home from Seattle Sunday around 3, played with the kids for a few hours, and headed out after dinner to watch Episode III.

It was easily the best of the prequels (which wasn’t hard to do), and I need to watch it a few more times, but my gut says it will come in at #3 out of the six in my list of favorites.

(Empire, New Hope (nothing beats the rush of the first one, though it’s a bit rough at times), Sith, Clones, Jedi, Phantom).

The lightsaber battles were fantasic, the pacing was well done, Anakin’s conversion and fall were well handled, and even Obi-Wan defeating Anakin was nicely done. I was disappointed with the de-emphasis of Padme, especially as she was such a strong character in the first two, the love scenes and dialogue was rough as usual, and it seemed to break continuity with two minor points. Other than that, it was excellent all around.

I highly recommend it, Lucas brought it to a fantastic finish.

And in other news, Lucas doesn’t like hands.

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Back from Seattle

Back from Seattle, though we’re heading home this weekend.

Lots to write about, including the trip, Episode III, 24, and other misc. stuff. More posts incoming.

Playstation3 Unveiled

Trumping Microsoft in the aesthetics department, the Playstation3 was unveiled tonight.

Gorgeous, sleek design (with the exception of the controller, blech), in 3 colors, with more connectivity than you’d ever think you need: 6 USB, 3 Ethernet, 6 Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (for PSP!) and best of all…2 HD outputs.

Check it:

Speaking of video, Sony Computer Entertainment’s Chief Technical Officer Masa Chatani was on hand to show off the PS3’s panoramic video functions. Since the console has two HD outputs, it is can be hooked up to two side-by-side HDTVs to projecting video in a 32:9 extra-widescreen format (think Cinemascope in your living room). Like a gigantic version of the Nitnendo DS, the dual digital outputs also allow for an extended game display, with the action on one screen and either game information or video chat on the second.

With just a little less system memory than X-Box 360, and launching 4-6 months later, it will be interesting to see the big bad mega-corporations duke it out.

The story of the horsey



100_0318, originally uploaded by silwenae.

10 years ago (doesn’t seem that long ago), I was working in Maryland, the first time I was in management.

Our Video Supervisor, Dave, made me this horse as a present, it was a hobby of his, when Alex was born.

Alex wasn’t a big rider, but Dave was one of the cooler guys I’ve worked with in all my time at retail. A bit older (especially older than me), he was one of the few that really made me feel welcome after we had moved cross country.

Zoe really likes to rock on the horse, as evident in the grin on her face. Every time she rides, it takes me back to those days, and I think of Dave, one of the best experiences I had for as long as I’ve been with the Company.

More theme stuff

I came across a new theme yesterday, Relaxation, that adds a 3rd row as a Flickr badge of your latest photo’s.

I’ve decided to give up IE compatibility, and focus on Firefox. This theme, as well as a number of others I’ve played with, works fine in Firefox (go go standards) but not in IE.

I’m traveling later in the week, and getting a new laptop as well. Memorial Day I’ll be home in Wisconsin, and plan on coding the new theme’s CSS then.