Willy Wonka, WIlly Wonka

Bob and I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today. The melding of Roald Dahl and Tim Burton seems to work very well. It is much darker than the prior film version, and much closer to the feel of the book. Johnny Depp gives another over-the-top performance. The music by Danny Elfman fits, especially the instrumentals. I am still undecided about the Oompa-Loompa songs. All in all however, I would say I enjoyed it.

Bangkok Street Dogs

This blog should interest Chuck, as he might have seen some of these dogs when he was in Bangkok. Bangkok Street Dogs

Amazing Honda Ad

Sometimes advertising is art. Whoever did this ad was both very talented and very patient. Amazing Honda Ad

A Safari shortcoming

Something I just discovered is that Safari does not play well with the Blogger editor. You can create a blog, but the only formatting options that show up are spell check and insert picture. I never knew about this on my old iBook since I didn't start my blog until after it had died, so all my blogging up to this point had been done on the PC. I will use Firefox to post, but Safari really is my browser of choice these days. Hopefully this will be remedied at some point in the future.

The Apple of my I

I am now happily typing this on my new Mac. I got a 12" Powerbook to replace the 12" iBook that died. I like the smaller size and weight, plus the 15" Powerbook I would have wanted was $500 more, so....

Everything about it is better than the old iBook except for one thing: wireless reception range is terrible. With the old iBook I could be anywhere in the house and still get a signal to web surf. With the Powerbook I have to be in the same room as the base station. Apparently the aluminum casing of the Powerbook shields it from receiving the wifi signal very well, unlike the plastic case of the iBook. Maybe I will research if a booster antennae for the Airport base station would help. Otherwise it certainly is much faster (G4 1.5 GHz versus G3 600 MHz) and I get almost 4 hours off a battery charge. All in all, I am very happy with it. :-)

Deep in the heart of Texas

We evacuated for hurricane Dennis last week, but luckily it turned out to not be any threat to New Orleans. Since it looked like to was going east, we went west to Texas and visited some friends. We spent the first night in Houston with the ex-in-laws. Very nice folks. Then we went on to Brenham and home of Bluebell Ice Cream. We drove to Austin one day and went to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. Everything and more than you could ever want to know about Texas history. It was 102° in Austin, but at least the humidity was lower.

Although it was nice seeing friends we were glad to get back home. Let's hope the rest of the hurricane season is less active.

Go Martians!

I saw the new version of War of the Worlds. Disappointing. I feel about it the same way I felt about A.I. There just aren't any sympathetic characters. Tom Cruise's character is a jerk, and in my mind he never redeems himself. The son is annoying and selfish and the daughter screams way too much. Dakota Fanning is a fine actress (the next Jodie Foster perhaps) but her character goes from acting very mature for her age to screaming hysterically in fear. Humans are portrayed as a bad lot (as they are in reality actually) and as usual, I was rooting for the Martians to wipe out humanity. I also have problems with some of the logistics and science, which I won't go into for those who haven't seen the film yet. Bear says I just "think too much" and over analyze. Guilty as charged. The special effects were fine, but I never got involved with the movie. I give it a grade C.

Free Katie From the Clutches of Tom Cruise

Self explanatory. What IS she thinking???

FreeKatie.com - Free Katie From the Clutches of Tom Cruise

Cindy sucked, Dennis might too!

Tropical storm Cindy, a minor storm, rendered us without electricity for nearly 18 hours. Luckily we didn't have any damage to the house. But New Orleans in the summertime without AC is not pleasant. And now hurricane Dennis might hit us this weekend. Yet another reason for us to move from the Gulf Coast. Someday a devestating hurricane will hit the Crescent City, and we hope NOT to be here when it does.

Arkansas, the Natural State

Having gone on two separate visits recently and done months of web research, we've decided that Arkansas is probably not our future home. Being in the Ozarks wasn't any cooler than summertime is in New Orleans. We looked at houses and most are dismal in our price range, or devoid of character and lots with any view cost too much to leave enough to build a house we would want. Plus, I think we both decided we want a more urban environment. So while we could probably live in The Heights in Little Rock, Russellville (and Hot Springs too) has too little to offer us in amenities we want, like shopping and restaurants.

When you aren't constrained by work and can pick anywhere to live (finances permitting) it becomes more difficult to decide. Our next round of exploration lies in the west, probably in the Portland, Oregon region. The climate is better, it's gay-friendly (and a "blue state" even!) and it has a large enough metropolitan area to have diversity. If we go out there and don't like it either it's back to square one. We'll see.