Omphaloskepsis  -

+ 5 - 3 | § ¶Flight 93

Josh and I went to see Flight 93 Friday night.

The film was very well made. The music was appropriate, the directing was intense, and the acting was very realistic. This movie may very well win Best Picture in the 2006 Academy Awards.

And yet, I would not go see it again. It was such a great movie that watching it brought flooding back so many memories of September 11, 2001 for me. The horror, the uncertainty, the fear. At the end of the movie, I was shaking in my seat, trying to hold back sobs. It was, at least for me, too realistic.

Still, a very, very good movie.

davidh

P.S. Josh was interviewed by a reporter from WHOI, along with a few other people, to get his reaction to the movie. He appeared on the 10:00 news Friday night.

+ 4 - 4 | § ¶The play's the thing...

...that I went to a couple of weekends ago.

Josh and I saw Hairspray Sunday evening (April 16) at the Peoria Civic Center. This was the first musical I've seen on stage since Amahl and the Night Visitors some dozen or more years ago. I was very impressed with the performances and the lyrics. The dad (Jim J. Bullock, from Hollywood Squares) and mom (whose actor's name I don't recall off-hand) had some wacky ad lib moments that had the audience--and the performers--cracking up. It was a bit expensive, but the tickets were half-price and we both had a great time, so it was well worth it.

Other recent events:

* Josh, a friend of his, her son, and I went to see Scary Movie 4 at the movie theater. The price for Josh's and my tickets, plus a large popcorn and soda, totalled $12.50... have I mentioned lately how much I love the Nova Cinema? The movie consisted of four main influences/parodies: The Grudge, War of the Worlds, The Village, and The Saw. I've seen the first two, and recognized the third from its trailers, but it was Josh who pointed out where it spoofed The Saw, about which movie I previously only knew that it involved a saw. There was also a single Brokeback Mountain spoof scene, which I found to be quite amusing.

* I had a Brokeback moment of my own last week... almost literally. Technically, it was more of a Backsprain... when I woke up last Thursday morning, my lower back was in excruciating pain. Josh was out of the house at the time, but when he got back, he helped me with some Tylenol, and drove me up to MedPointe, where a doctor examined me and prescribed a megadose of ibuprofen, as well as a muscle relaxant. I was told to take it easy for a couple of days, so I spent most of the rest of Thursday, all of Friday, and Saturday morning mostly laying in bed, or sitting downstairs with a heating pad on my back.

* Doug and Misty are moving to South Dakota, as I found out Friday evening. There's an air of mystery surrounding this, which has me a bit concerned. I hope everything's okay. We went over to see them Saturday afternoon, and got to see Zoey and Alayna enjoying the playground.

* I went to the dentist about a week ago. My gums are getting healthier, thanks to increased brushing. Flossing is still something I need to work on, though.

* The Psi Phi end of the semester party's coming up. Some members have proposed replacing the traditional pizza with a cookout. Sacrilege, I say! Adding grilled food to the menu would be okay, but don't take away the pizza, man!

* Google Calendar is pretty nifty.

davidh

+ 4 - 4 | § ¶Ooh...

I'd forgotten (as I always seem to do) that $Client takes Good Friday as a holiday. $Employer does not give it as one of our paid holidays, but I could take it as paid vacation time if I didn't want to go into the other office for the day and work on miscellaneous stuff. However, I may not even have to do that. I've put in a few extra hours here and there the past couple of weeks, including about an hour and a half last Sunday night preparing a report and sending out messages to various content owners, so if I work just an extra half-hour today, I will have worked exactly enough to balance out taking tomorrow off, without needing to dip into my vacation time.

So I think I'll do that.

Whee, an extra day of rest and relaxation. I think I'll celebrate with a marathon of The Unit on DVR. :-)

davidh

+ 4 - 4 | § ¶Lunchtime random bits

I got my taxes done a couple weeks ago. My Illinois refund was direct-deposited last night, and should be getting my federal refund any day now.

I had a weird dream last night. I got caught in some sort of deadly lawn-type spray, for which I hadn't received prior innoculation, and I had only a few hours left to live, so I went into dangerous parts of town to visit people I hadn't been brave enough to visit before, spoke to people about the dangers of lawn chemical sprays, and engaged in risky behavior in other lawns in the neighborhood. But it ended up that I was immune to that particular spray so I was going to live after all.

I've felt a little light-headed this morning. I'm not sure what's been causing that (maybe lawn chemicals!), but I'm feeling better now.

I really like seeing all of those zeroes on my weekly debt sheet. Each zero represents a credit card, medical bill, or loan I've paid off. I'm not completely out of the woods, but I'm getting much closer.

Since March 2, I've banned 654 IP addresses for blog comments spam, 318 for a group of four spam referer URLs, 22 for another referer URL, 349 for republika.pl, 227 for casino spam, and 132 for various other spam. That's a total of 1703 IP addresses that have attempted to spam this site in the past 40 days, or a little over 42 IP addresses every day. At that rate, I should have everybody banned in just over 100 million days (about 275 thousand years).

All in all, I've got 6342 individual IP addresses banned, 544 24-bit subnets banned (which, at 255 hosts per subnet, blocks 138,720 more), and 1 16-bit subnet (which, at 255*256 hosts, blocks 65,280 more). That's a total of 210,342 blocked IP addresses, or 0.0049% of the internet. I've been banning addresses for about three years now, so at this rate, I've only got about 610 years left before nobody can reach me. :-)

Oh, and as I type this, in comes one more comment spam. I'll take care of that one, then I guess my lunch break is over.

davidh

+ 5 - 3 | § ¶Domestic Bliss-Eww mud!

Today proved to be an incredibly busy day. David and I went to the Landmark Health Club, Barnes & Noble, Sears, Hardee's, Hoerr Nursery, Lowe's, and Cub Foods.

At the health club, I stopped in to find out about membership, and was ready to sign up; however, the membership person didn't come in until 1:00, and this was about 9:30.

At Barnes & Noble, I purchased a new hardback journal, mostly because I couldn't find my old one (which David later found in the trunk of the car), and David bought Children of Dune on DVD.

At Sears, we purchased a new lawnmower and edge trimmer. We currently have three non-working lawnmowers, and it'll nice to finally have one that functions. The lawnmower was on order, and it will be in the store on Friday for pick-up.

We stopped by Hoerr Nursery, because I was on the look-out for a Pat Nixon rosebush, which I have been unable to locate. The nursery, which boasts a large selection of very nice plants, was unfortunately closed today.

I planted two rosebushes after we got home: the Ronald Reagan (red rose with white on the reverse of the petal) and Nancy Reagan (apricot-colored rose) varieties. A friend called to go to coffee during the lunch hour, and we met at Denny's. Afterward, she came over and helped me with the lawn a bit. I planted the Diana, Princess of Wales (cream with pink blush) rose while she was here. It was nice to have the company.

At Lowe's, I purchased new rose food, and three more rosebushes to complete the row along the sidewalk to the driveway: Moon Shadow (lavendar), Chrysler Imperial (maroon to scarlet), and John F. Kennedy (pure white) (which I had already planted last year, but had died). We ran into Erich from Psi Phi there, as I was looking at books on gardening in Illinois. I did not find any books specifically about roses, which I'd been looking for, but maybe I can at Amazon. There is one in particular, called Roses For Dummies, which I think may be appropriate.

Today, I planted six rosebushes in total. I'm finding this hard to believe.

I'm hoping that my plants will do well, and I'm planning to take good care of them.

At Cub Foods, we bought many groceries which I won't list and bore you with, but we got everything on the list. Two weeks of food for $100.82 isn't bad.

Upon arrival at home, I made mulligan stew, which consists of hamburger, macaroni shells, stewed tomatoes, and tomato sauce. It's my grandmother's recipe, and it's yummy.

-Josh

+ 4 - 4 | § ¶...and some personal stuff

* Over the past three week, I've reunited with (1) Matt, a Psi Phi alumni member who lives in Washington, D.C. He had come back to Peoria to give a speech, "Why Democrats Sound Like Wimps" (sponsored by the BU Student Democrats) on Wednesday, March 22. Josh and I went, and I found the speech rather interesting. We also had lunch together that Saturday. (2) Brad, my manager at my most recent previous employer. When the company tried to recover from the loss of a major project, he was among the half of the staff that was first let go (though the vast majority of the remaining staff followed over the next few months), but he got a job in Bloomington. I was at Best Buy in Bloomington with my mother Saturday night when I ran into him in the check-out line. (3) Lou, former vice president at the same company. Josh and I were eating at Bob Evans on Tuesday night when he and his family were seated at a nearby table. He came over and we chatted for a bit about how things have been going.

* Two Tuesdays ago (March 21), I went and voted. There were only about three actual races on the Republican primary ballot: Governor, Lt. Governor, and something else that I don't recall off-hand (maybe school board?); all of the other races had only one Republican running, or none at all. Like a plurality of Republican voters in Peoria County, I voted for Bill Brady (38.4%, vs. 33.4% for Judy Baar Topinka and 20.8% for Jim Oberweis), whereas statewide, Topinka had the lead (unofficially, 38%, vs. 32% for Oberweis and 19% for Brady). I believe I picked Joe Birkett for Lt. Governor (locally, 50.0%, vs. 32.9% for Steve Rauschenberger; statewide, unofficially, 51%, vs. 30% for Rauschenberger).

* Last Saturday, Josh and I went over to Bloomington-Normal for Dan's birthday. It was actually March 26th, but he was travelling that day, so we observed it on April 1. I got him a hardcover copy of ST:TNG: "Genesis Force", by John Vornholt.

* I fell for one April Fools Day joke: On our way to B-N, we stopped at the KFC in Morton to pick up some lunch. Using the drive-through, I handed the cashier my debit card to pay the six bucks or so that the food cost, and a few moments later, she returned and said that the card was rejected. I briefly panicked, since that account should have had plenty of money left, but her "April Fools!" quickly reassured me that all was okay, and I ended up having a good laugh about it.

* I've got some new cover artwork I need to post over in the Star Trek Books database. In addition to the many (and wonderful) 40th Anniversary covers, there's also a paperback reprint and the hardcover of "Vulcan's Soul, Book II: Exiles", plus several SCE covers. I'm going to have a full schedule tonight, but I'm thinking tomorrow night should work.

* I also need to work on my taxes. I've been ready except for one piece of information for about six weeks now, but since it doesn't look like that'll be ready in time, I'll just file without it, and file an adjustment later if circumstances warrant.

davidh

+ 6 - 0 | § ¶Some local stuff...

* Greyson Long, brother of Christian music artist Greg Long and morning show co-host on WCIC-FM, left the radio station and Peoria this past Thursday. He, like so many before him (e.g. Dave B., Aaron), moved to Mobile, Alabama.

* Starting April 1 (no fooling), westbound I-74 through East Peoria and Peoria is now redirected onto the eastbound lanes. This will last until mid-October, when Upgrade 74 will re-open the finished westbound lanes. At that time, the speed limit should be raised back to 55 through the entire span of the two cities, and all exits and entrances (other than southbound University to westbound I-74) will be completed. It's been a long time coming, but given how smoothly traffic had been flowing on the eastbound lanes when all lanes were open over the winter, I am hopeful that the wait will be worth it.

davidh