Busy weekend, lots of fixing going on

This weekend I've been, and am still in the middle of, fixing several different things.

A client software installation went less than perfectly Friday, so I've been working on that from home. I've made progress, but it isn't complete yet.

Outlook Express on Jessica's PC suddenly stopped working properly 10 days ago, and I've been trying to figure that out since last night. So far, no dice there.

AND, the most fun has been our dryer. Late last week we noticed that the dryer produces no heat. Last night I took the dryer completely apart, ultimately determining the failed part was something I could have removed and changed by just removing a small panel on the front. (A thermal fuse. Also, it's advised to replace a thermostat along with the fuse, so I'll be changing the thermostat as well.) But, the work was already done. I took advantage of the situation and vacuumed out every nook and cranny of the machine. It's MUCH cleaner now, inside and out. I'll order the replacement fuse/thermostat tonight from RepairClinic.com, an outfit that gave me outstanding service a few years ago when I performed a different repair on the same dryer, and should receive the parts Wednesday.

Something tells me I won't be allowed to reassemble the dryer on Thurday during Yom Kippur, so the repair job is probably not happening before the end of the week.

Gotta go to soccer now - Nate's team, the Sharks!, will be taking on the Rams today.

Visual Studio 2008 form-design tip for the inexperienced

I've just encountered a seemingly trivial hurdle, and thought I'd add the solution here in case others run into the same problem. Google searches turned up more complex solutions, to more complex problems than what I was running into.

When I dragged a label control on to a form, the label was not re-sizable. I could play with the size properties - height, width, Max/Min heights and widths, all I wanted, to no avail.

Turns out, there is an 'Autosize' property. Once I set that to False, I could adjust the size of the labels normally.

Making up for lost time.

I've gone a month since the last time I posted here, and this is the third post tonight. It's Feast or Famine!

Last June I decided I wanted to learn C++, in order to port a software app to my smartphone. As expected, I never really followed-through, and the project went nowhere.

For the last couple of weeks things have been frighteningly slow at my job, so instead of spending my days reading Slashdot and waiting for the phone to ring, I decided to try and learn C#. (Why C#? It's what my company is beginning to use for development, and they are in need of C# programmers.)

I started with a short, slick book called 'Microsoft® Visual C#® 2005 Express Edition: Build a Program Now!'. I'd purchased the book months ago, primarily because it was $5, so I had it handy. The book was useful to teach how to use the Visual Studio 2005 software, but it didn't really teach the C# language at all, so by the end of the book I'd written several neat little programs by following the steps in the book, but still didn't know C# at all.

After I'd finished that book last Friday, I went to Borders and bought 'Head First C#'. This book is excellent! It's actually fun to read. (Really!) The book is entertaining, interesting, and informative. It's well-suited to a beginner like me. I assume that an experienced programmer woould be frustrated by the lack of depth, but for anyone trying to learn programming from scratch, I can't recommend this book enough.

I'm on page 89, and several times so far I've found a bit that was so funny I had to recite the text to Jessica. And, she actually found the bits funny too!

The authors host an online forum for readers of the book as well. The discussions on the forum discuss exercises in the book and clarify things for confused readers. There are listings of corrections for early printings. People can post questions and get answers from other forum members. People can upload their own programs for others to download and review.

The whole thing is a lot of fun.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll pursue this to a conclusion, and actually learn something...


PS: There was nowhere above to really fit this in, but Visual Studio is a very neat program. It's always fun to bash Microsoft, but I've now played around with both Visual Studio 2005, and Visual Studio 2008, and VS is just an excellent program. The intelligence this program contains is remarkable. It just blows me away.

Coach Steve (No, I'm not kidding!)

A few weeks ago I received an email from a commissioner of the town soccer league. It seems Nate was on one of 4 teams that had no coaches, and the league was desperate. They were asking if anybody would volunteer to coach a team.

I replied that I was completely ignorant of soccer or coaching in general. Hell, my idea of being athletic or active in any way is walking across the den to retrieve the remote control. BUT, if they wanted me anyway, I'd do it.

So, I'm now the Coach of The Sharks, Sunday 1-2 Division, Mountain Top League In-House Soccer. (Check out that gut!)




Nate and I had to attend a family function the day of the first game, but I've got a fantastic assistant coach, and he took care of things far better than I could have. The picture above is from our second game (we won the 2nd game, fwiw). Nate had fun at the second game too.




Since becoming Coach, I've gone to a Coachs clinic and also a Parents clinic, and I've learned a bit about soccer. I'm still not really knowledgeable, but I'm not as ignorant as I was previously. And coaching the team is fun.

What's going on? (aka, I'm clueless)

The talk for the last week has been the impending meltdown of the United States financial system.

I'm a pretty smart person. I try to keep up with the news, more than most Americans I think, and probably to my emotional detriment. On the other hand, I was never a very interested student during school, and I tend to have little interest or aptitude for financial matters.

As far as the financial crisis goes, I have to admit, I just don't get it. I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, and this isn't a rhetorical device to make a point. I honestly don't understand the crisis.

As far as I can tell, on a huge scale, enormous banks made a lot of unwise loans, to people that were unlikely to be able to meet their obligations and pay off the loans for their houses. Then, a too-large number of those borrowers were unable to pay the loans, and those unfortunate people lost their homes when the banks foreclosed.

So at this point in the story, the banks now have a bunch of homes, when they'd prefer to have money. And a bunch of people have to find somewhere to live.

This scenario resulted in a bunch of banks facing bankruptcy, or needing to sell themselves to somebody with deeper pockets.

Question: I have no connection to the in-trouble bank. Why/how does this affect me? Other than a general sense of compassion for a failing business and the soon-to-be-out-of-work bank employees, why would I care? Bad stuff happens all the time; what makes this a special case?

OR: I do have dealings with the bank. I'm a borrower - undoubtedly somebody else will buy the loan, so I still need to make my payments - how am I affected?

OR: I do have dealings with the bank. I'm a depositor - the FDIC will cover me up to $100,000/account, right? And if I've somehow acquired that much moolah, surely I'm sensible enough to not keep more than $100,000 in any single account, I'd think. So, again, where's the problem?

Given the above, what's the rationale for the government to step in and give $700 Billion to the banks? The Daily Show last night played a clip from, I think CNN, stating that amount equates to 2000 McDonalds apple pies *per US citizen*. I think the apple pies run 2 for a dollar. If so, and if my off-the-cuff math is correct, that works out to $1000/person.

So, $1000/person?

Seems to me, IF Congress and the rodents at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave can give out $700B to help the economy, sending $1000 to every taxpayer in the country would probably stimulate the economy, and help substantially more than giving that amount to Lehman and JP Morgan.

Again, I really don't know what I'm talking about here, and to be fair I haven't taken any time at all to try and learn about the problem yet. I've been busy, and the idea of reading economics webpages sounds about as much fun as washing the paint out of a roller after painting my den.

But sooner or later I guess I'll have to read up on this, just so I'm not ignorant when I hear the economic disaster discussed in my presence.

In a more perfect world, the crisis discussed around the water cooler would be the failure of the Sega Dreamcast, or the inability of the Saints to put Denver away last week. Oh well...

Learn something new, Windows Mobile 6 Edition

I just noticed the below post in my list of blog entries, listed as a 'DRAFT'. I dont' know why it's a draft and wasn't posted. I can only state that the linked-to solution I write about didn't work for me, and until I factory-reset the phone several months later I still had the Windows Live email choice. Maybe that's why I never finished the original post...

FROM September 17, 2008:
=====================================
Last June I bought a T-Mobile Dash smartphone, running Windows Mobile 5. Last September, the phone was stolen, and the replacement used Windows Mobile 6.

While setting up the replacement Dash, I clicked on the Windows Live icon out of curiosity. Partway through the Windows Live setup I decided I didn't want to use Windows Live.

Unfortunately, ever since then there was an entry in the Messaging application to check Windows Live messages. Once I tried to delete the entry, and couldn't figure out how to do so. This afternoon I decided to look online for a solution.

I found a few pages with instructions for removing the Windows Live entry. All provided this solution:

***********
open Windows Live in Start - Programs on the device. In the Menu, select Account Options and select Switch Accounts. This will remove all emails from your device. When done, the EULA page will appear. On that screen, make sure you select REJECT. Windows Live setup will stop and you will be taken back to WL main page - The page with Live Search and the Sign-in to Windows Live link. Check in Messaging and Windows Live mailbox is gone.
***********

What's good for the Pachyderm is good for the Donkey?

For several years now, I've been absolutely disgusted, discouraged, dismayed, and depressed as the crooks infesting our White House ignored, desecrated, and trashed the Constitution of the United States. It's become clear that the Constitution has become an historic relic, admired in museums, and ignored in reality.

I've railed about the above previously, and the above is not at all the point of this post. In fact, I've just watched President Clinton give his speech to this year's Democratic National Convention, and I'm in a pretty good mood. My thought at the conclusion of his speech was that if the GOP can ignore the Constitution, so should the Democrats. I want Bill to be Pres again! He's good! I consider him one of the country's greatest presidents ever, and would LOVE to vote for him again.

God knows we need someone competent and well-meaning, to begin to recover from the worst disaster to hit the United States in history.

Of course, not being a Republican I can recognize reality, and understand the above is just wishful thinking. I WILL vote for Barack Obama in November, and God (& Diebold) willing, the election won't be stolen again, and President Obama will begin to repair what's been done to us.

Learn Something New, July 24 2008 Edition

Suppose you want to know who installed a program on a Windows server?

Enter the registry, and navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData. You'll find branches for each user that has installed anything on the server, identified by SID. Within the branches you'll see a 'Products' branch.

Expand the Products branch, and every product that user has installed is listed, by GUID.

You're probably reading this thinking to yourself that you don't care about the SIDs and GUIDs, those don't help you at all! True, but keep reading.

Now, if you expand the Product branches, and then click on 'InstallProperties' for each one, you'll see details of the installation. One of those details is the 'DisplayName'. The Display Name describes the program that was installed. You can now, obviously, go through the list and find a particular program you're interested in. Once you've found the program, you can look at the UserData branch that contains the installed program branch, and this will give you the SID of the user that did the install.

NOW, scoot over to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. This branch lists SIDS for each user that has a profile on the system. (Effectively, any user that has ever logged on to that machine.)

Each SID contains details that describe it, including a key labelled 'ProfileImagePath'. This points to the Documents and Settings folder for that user. These are almost always named according to the user, so if the folder is called
jsmith, then that profile is likely JSmith's profile.

Be aware that if the user has a local profile as well as a domain profile, there
will likely be two similar paths in Documents and Settings - i.e. jsmith, and
also jsmith.domainname.

Something funny...

Found at the end of a blog-posting about Obama and American Jewish voters:

On the flip side, the study suggests that there is room within the Jewish community for the presumptive Democratic nominee's support to grow. As Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent noted in a review of the J Street poll, Jews are "liberal as hell."

"Seventy-four percent of us view Bush unfavorably and 83 percent of us disapprove of his job performance," Ackerman wrote. "While 76 percent of the country as a whole says the U.S. is on the wrong track, an astonishing 90 percent of American Jews say the same. Only 21 percent of us approve of the Iraq war and only 29 percent think Bush is good for Israel, and those are clearly the shmucks that kissed ass in Hebrew school and snitched when the rest of us used the synagogue phone booth and cloakroom to make out."

A symptom of Parent-itis

A couple of weeks ago our family made a trek to Chicago to visit Jessica's sister and her family. It gave us a chance to hang out with my sister/brother-in-law and their new son, Ian. While gas was costly, the total expenses were a fraction of what it would have cost the four of us to fly.

While in the area, we spent a day at Kiddieland, an amusement park. This amusement park paled when compared to Disney World, but standing on it's own it was fine, and we all had a fun time. I don't really remember Pontchartrain Beach, but I imagine Kiddieland must have been similar.

I've always been ambivalent about thrill rides like rollercoasters. On the one hand, I'm usually terrified of and by them. On the other hand, when I manage to force myself to ride one, I find them thrilling, and want to get right back in line to ride again.

The rides at KL were very tame, intended for the pre-teen set. But I was as scared as I've ever been on the rides. Even the Ferris Wheel was frightening. I wasn't scared so much for myself, as I was that something would happen to my kids. Mainly, I feared that they would fall through the safety bars, given their small size, and plummet to their deaths.

And this fear wasn't exhilirating, and I didn't want to go right back for another ride.

BUT, I suppressed my fear and let Nate ride some of the rides repeatedly, most notably the 'Galleon', a ride where a pirate-ship pivoted around a center beam like a swingset-swing, rising at each end of the arc until Nate was nearly horizontal, looking down at the ground from a couple of stories up in the air.

I suppose this either makes me a good parent, letting my little birdy fly, or it makes me a terrible parent, not protecting my kid adequately. Hmmmm......

The Cost of Gasoline

As is all the rage lately, I've been paying attention to the ever-rising cost of gas.

A couple of weeks ago the teaser on the nightly news mentioned something called 'hypermiling', and implied they would tell viewers how to dramatically increase your car's gas mileage by doing something simple. Of course, they didn't get to that story until the end of the broadcast, and by then I'd changed the channel.

So I took it upon myself to browse the internet and see what the series of tubes had to say about the topic. I found a couple of interesting articles online.

1) Hypermiling
2) Countering Traffic Waves

The first article basically talks about things we all already know, but most of us probably don't do in practice. Things like accellerating gradually, braking gently, etc, etc.... In other words, don't drive aggressively, and don't do quick starts and stops.

The second article examines in extreme detail thoroughness the formation of traffic patterns and behavior, and how you can prevent traffic build-ups, or defuse jams in progress.

Since March, 1992, I've calculated my gas mileage literally every single time I've filled my tank. Until a couple of weeks ago, my current car had attained 24mpg in city driving once or twice, but usually managed about 22 or 23 mpg. When I began trying out the techniques discussed in the two pages referenced above, I pulled in 24.1mpg. Two nights ago I filled my tank, and attained 27.1mpg.

I've made two changes in my driving behavior:

1) In the hypermiling article, a point I took to heart was this:

The points to take away from this page:
People who don't leave much space between their car and the car in front use their brakes more often.
Braking turns motion into heat via the friction of the brakes, slowing down your car.
Gas was used by your engine to achieve motion.

So when you apply your brakes, you are turning gasoline into heat instead of using the rest of the motion - by coasting through the space buffer between you and that car ahead, or that red light ahead - that you paid gas money to obtain in the first place.

2) The other change I've made was to flat-out reduce my speed when driving to and from work. I drive 30 miles each way between my home and my office, almost all of that on the highway, opposite rush-hour. When I began this commute, I consciously decided to set my cruise control to 70mph, as a means to save gas, and also avoid being ticketed. The traffic flow is somewhere between 75 & 80mph, and if I wasn't apying attention I'd easily hit 80mph on a regular basis. The cruise control allows me to go 70mph, and not carelessly speed up to traffic ticket land. Two weeks ago I knocked the cruise down to 65mph. One week ago I moved it down to 60mph, and began living in the right lane. But my miles-per-gallon jumped to 27.1mpg. I can now go over 400 miles on one tank of gas.

The hardest thing is staying alert and attentive. Driving this slowly, it's easy for my mind to wander.

On another topic, I've been seeing more and more businesses close their doors lately. I filled my tank at my regular gas station on my way home from work last Thursday. On my way home Monday evening, that gas station was closed, out of business. This evening on my way home, I saw another station that I don't usually pass, but it was also out of business, and looked like it had also closed very recently. I also saw an out of business diner, an out of business Italian restaurant, an out of business Ponderosa Steakhouse (also newly closed - it was open this past weekend), an out of business Blockbuster, and an out of business Hollywood Video, all just on my way home from work tonight. And that's just what I can recall right now.

Things are bleak out there.

Just watched Juno

Last night Jess & I watched Juno.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it was worth all the hype it seems to have generated. After all, my recollection is that popular media seemed to imply this was one of the greatest movies of all time.

However, I did enjoy it, and I think it was, without a doubt, one of the most memorable movies I've ever seen. One thing I found notable was the inclusion of clumsy, awkward moments that can occur in real life, but are seldom seen in movies or television. The movie felt 'real' to me, more so than most movies.

In Hoboken

Just a quick note - I've just begun reading a new book that I heard about over the weekend on Vin Scelsa's Idiots Delight on WFUV.

The book is In Hoboken, by Christian Bauman. I'm only up to about page 40 so far, but it's a very funny, very clever book. It's worth checking out (and then renewing if you haven't finished it yet).

Is the water warm enough?

My wife and I just celebrated our 9th Wedding Anniversary. Neither of us had gifts ready for the other (I suppose we're a good match for each other!). However, Jess presented me with a bag filled with gifts she had meant to give me for a few previous occasions, but hadn't ever wrapped. After all the time that had passed, she decided to give them to me on our Anniversary, giving up on her intention to wrap them eventually. Me, I don't care about wrapping paper, I got new toys!

The neatest gift was the Heroes Season One collection on DVD. I popped Disc 1 in the DVD player to begin checking it out. During the beginning credits of the first episode, I saw a credit to 'Wendy Melvoin & Lisa Coleman' - Music Composers. I immediately paused the screen, and yelled for Jess to come take a look. She of course thought I was nuts, and asked who they were.

I ran downstairs and pulled out my Purple Rain soundtrack LP from 1984. (ASIDE: DId any of you remember the album included a fullsize poster of Prince and his band?) I scanned the credits on the album, and while Wendy's last name wasn't printed, Lisa's last name was, sure enough, Coleman. Turns out, the Wendy & Lisa that used to work with Prince are now doing music work for Crossing Jordan and Heroes, among other things.

Me, I just thought it was neat that I saw the pairing in the credits, and immediately remembered they were part of Prince's band 24 years ago.

Once I got over myself, we drove to dinner, listening to Purple Rain on the way there.

Mr. Fix-it strikes again!

Monday morning I was at a client's office, helping them with a couple of computer-related issues. The man I work with at this particular client pulled a broken PS2 out of a drawer and gave it to me. He explained that one of his coworkers had left it there for me, as it was broken and he thought I might want it.

I was out of town for work Tuesday through Thursday, and began working on the PS2 Friday evening. On my way home from work I stopped at Toys R Us & bought a $5 PS2 game - Rayman Raving Rabbids, and a wireless PS2 controller. After we'd had dinner and put the kids to bed, I hooked up the machine and turned it on to begin testing it out.

I tested a music CD, a Playstation 1 game, the new PS2 game, a very old DVD with few special features, and a dual-layer DVD. Every different type of disc gave me a Disc Read Error, except for the Dual-layer DVD.

Somebody at Digital Press referred me to an excellent page on repairing 'Disc Read Error' problems (DREs) - http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/ps2.ars. I read the article, and then began following the steps on my own PS2, hoping to fix the problem. I was carefully adjusting the laser lens adjustment, and testing things, repeatedly until I realized I hadn't tried simply *cleaning* the lens.

I reset the lens adjustment back to where it had been before I changed anything, and then cleaned the lens. Once the lens was clean, I successfully played every different type of disc.

So, I've been playing Rayman Raving Rabbids on the unit (even if it isn't very good), and can now watch DVDs in the basement, as an added bonus.

Happy Feelings

A couple of months ago I wrote here about my venerable CD changer that I'd enjoyed for almost 20 years, but that had suddenly died. Having almost no time to try and figure out how to fix it, and almost no idea how to even begin to figure it out, I reluctantly bught a new CD changer and removed the old one from the stereo system.

I did spend a little bit of time one evening with the player, trying to identify what was wrong with it, but I made no headway and ended up putting the cover back on, and offering the CD changer up on the FreecycleNJ mailing list. In my posting, I even included a link to a promising-looking webpage I'd found with information on the likely defect and how to fix it.

I saw no responses from that post. I then posted the same message to Craigslist. A young (-er than me, anyway) guy responded with interest, and I gave the CD player to him, along with the spare cartridges, remote, original packaging & paperwork.

A few nights later I received an email from him:

> Hi Steve,
> I opened the CD player and found the laser pickup is missing its lens.
> It is round clear plastic piece that about a 1/4 inch in diameter. Do
> you know where is might be?
> Thanks,
> Steven

I replied that I didn't think the lens was anywhere in my house, but I'd look. I was disappointed, thinking the lens must have fallen out somewhere in my home, and by now had been vacuumed up and thrown away. It was sad to think that the whole device was rendered worthless over such a small thing.

Then, last Friday I received this msg:

> Steve,

> I found the lens. It was underneath some paper on the table where I
> disassembled the machine.It now works after I re-glued the lens back
> to the pickup assembly. It is a really nice machine. It sounds good
> and its disc changer mechanism is very fast. I think it should last
> another 10 or 20 years.

> Thank you very much.

> Steven

Now that just made me feel warm all over. I wish I'd put in the time and effort to salvage the machine myself, but I'm happy to know that this guy now has a good CD changer and saved it from the dump.

S.S.D.D. - Same Scandal, Different Day

In other news, I read an article a few minutes ago about NY Congressman Rep. Vito Fossella. It's yet another story about some politician that undertook actions that would be deemed 'scandalous' or 'immoral' by most people. I'm a live-and-let-live guy myself. In my opinion, anybody should be permitted to do anything they feel like, as long as it doesn't harm somebody else or interfere with that person also doing whatever he/she feels like doing. I think Rep Fossella should NOT have done what he did, because it was wrong to treat his wife and (first) family this way. Plus, how could he explain to the daughter with the second woman the assumed secrecy he'd need to exercise ?

As I've written before, it seems to me that the Democratic Party is often criticized for what's considered excessive meddling in commercial/business matters. BUT, I believe the Republican Party excessively meddles in personal and social matters.

IT ALSO SEEMS VERY MUCH to me that the Republican Party have an almost complete lock on the title of HYPOCRITE. With the admittedly huge exception of Bill C and Monica, everytime I hear or read of a scandal involving a politician, Democrats are always caught with their hands in the cookie jar (or freezer). Republicans, though, seem to always be caught in scandals related to sex - pedophilia, prostitutes, extra-marital affairs.

Truly, the only explanation I can find for the Republican Party managing to be known as the party of 'Family Values' all these years is that they run aaround rampantly producing more and more families!

Seriously, the only thing the Republicans seem to do well, and better than anyone else, is branding and marketing.

Are any Christians out there paying attention????

Request for Software

I want a software product that will intercept my incoming emails, and anywhere there are multiple exclamation points or question marks, convert the characters to one single exclamation point or question mark. THEN, at the bottom of the message, a note should be appeneded, inidicating the replacement took place.

Ideally the app could magically work with any email viewer I use (Outlook 2003, Ooutlook 2007, OWA, Windows Mobile 6, The Bat v3), but if it only worked within Outlook 2003 and 2007 I could tolerate that.

If the app lived on the Exchange 2003 server that might be tolerable, but it would have to only affect my mailbox as opposed to all mailboxes, and even then I doubt I'd have the courage, daring, or permission from above to install it to the production email server.

This could actually be an app that many people would find useful. I'm declaring here and now that I'd offer $15 for it.

I'm simply tired of receiving emails from specific individuals that ALWAYS use ??? or !!! or ??!, !?!, !!!! in every!! message !!! they send!!!!

Feels like a Sunday Morning

I woke up this morning at 5:50am. For no reason at all; I just woke up. For about 10-15 minutes I tried to go back to sleep, and then gave up and decided to see if I could find anything interesting to watch on TV.

I started on channel 2, and had made my way through the program guide into the hundreds wothout finding anything. I was nearly ready to give up when I came across a Woody Allen movie I don't think I'd ever heard of. It was called 'Melinda and Melinda', from 2004.

Ordinarily I'd have passed this up, but as there was nothing else on, and nothing to do that early on a Saturday morning, I pulled up the Info page on the movie to investigate. I like some Woody Allen, and find other Woody Allen films boring, so the fact it was Woody Allen was only slightly intriguing. The summary of the plot didn't interest me, but the info page mentioned two actors in the movie. I'd never heard of the female lead, but Wallace Shawn was the other name mentioned, and I like him, so I decided to give the movie a shot.

As it turns out, having missed the first twenty or so minutes, I only saw Wallace Shawn for about 2 minutes in the rest of the movie. And the movie was really more like 2 different movies, spliced together. Piecing together the very last scene (that did have Wallace Shawn) and the summary description, I think the idea is there are two guys (directors, maybe?) that each describe the way they would approach a movie or play about a particular woman and her lovelife. One chooses a dramatic, intense, and ultimately sad portrayal, while the other goes for cute, funny, and whimsical.

The movie that I watched is the two different takes, showing some from one style, and then scenes from the other, switching among the two every few minutes. I found the dramatic story to be a little bit dull and cloying. I very much enjoyed the lighter story.

Sometime in the late-90's I registered at the Internet Movie Database and began rating movies on a scale of 1 to 10. A few years later, Jessica pointed out to me that I almost always assign a rating of 7 to every movie I see. After watching the movie this morning, I wanted to give it a 7.

Lying in bed I thought about this. I see two ways to look at this. It could be that I seldom rate movies a low score, because I have very good judgement, and successfully avoid rotten movies. OR, it could be that I'm too risk-averse, and only choose safe movies that I know I'll like, potentially preventing myself from seeing anything that would be adventurous and ultimately more rewarding.

For example, Melinda and Melinda starred Will Farrell. It also had a bit role by Steve Carrell. I never liked Will Farrell in SNL, and every movie I've ever seen him in has looked very, very stupid. (Except for one, where some fiction writer is writing his life. That looked good, but I haven't seen it yet.)

If this movie had been presented to me as a Will Farrell movie, I'd have never given it a chance. But as things worked out, I liked his character the best, and he had the only two really funny lines in the movie.

I noticed something else interesting to me as well. In the movie, there are two instances of interracial dating. In each case, a white woman dates a black man. I think I've seen this in other movies as well as TV. In nearly every filmed case of this I can think of, the couple is a white woman and a black man. I can only think of one instance of a white man dating a black woman (Firefly and the Firefly movie, Serenity). Curious.

Anyway, as I write this Jessica and Maren are still sleeping, Nate's dressing up in superhero costumes, the morning sunlight is streaming through the living room window, and I'm listening to a GRP Jazz Sampler CD I got years ago, on my new CD player. (Thanks Mom!) It feels very much like a Sunday morning, although it's really Saturday, hence the title of the post.

Another post, from another airport.

Last weekend I flew to South Florida to celebrate my Dad's 65th BDay. About this time last Friday evening, I received an email that my office had scheduled me to travel to Atlanta yesterday morning (on a 7:15am flight) through tonight. SO, I am now sitting on the floor at gate D22 in Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. My 8:20pm flight from ATL to Newark, NJ, was delayed until 10:58pm, scheduled to arrive in NJ sometime around 1:45am.

Having nothing else to do after finishing my work at the client today, I explored Fry's Electronics for about an hour (we don't have those in NJ). I then drove to the airport, returned the rental car, and began puttering around the airport at about 6:30 or 7:00pm.

Around 8pm I went to Friday's for dinner. ( TIP: A Security Agent offered me the very nice tip that there are more dining options in terminals A & B, as opposed to C, D, and E. If you're ever in the Atlanta airport looking for a bite, maybe this will help you too. )

While waiting for my meal, I got a phone call from home. My 3-year-old daughter was crying hysterically because she missed me and wanted me to come home. She settled down when I assured her I'd be home when she woke up. (So, to whatever crew is flying my plane and working Air Traffic control, you better not make me a liar!)

I finished my dinner, and proceeded to walk to my gate at a very leisurely pace. While on a very, very long escalator, I overheard a conversation behind me. A lady was telling a man about her family, including 3 children. Her husband returned home from Iraq this morning, and she was on her way to reunite with him. She mentioned that this was his second tour of duty over there. The first tour was 18 months, and the once concluded today was 13.5 months.

Maren was distraught after I'd been gone for 2 days.