Weekend Update
Hello gentle readers. I hope you had a good weekend. One of the nice things about the Weekend Update is that I have more time to write it. Normally, I write my daily blog posting after my dinner and before I go to bed. That limits the time available to think first and then write.
On the weekend, I have a couple of hours to think and write each day. Since this is a holiday weekend, I have an extra day.
Thursday Holdover
I did have a holdover from Thursday that I never got around to including in that blog. I had called the Big Guy to confirm the Saturday home networking project. That conversation went smoothly and quickly which is not all that surprising since we had been planning it for several days and more than one prior phone call.
What was odd was that when I phoned the Big Guy on the cell phone I got the Old Girl Friend instead. This was truly odd and obviously unexpected. After we got over the initial shock, we had a nice little talk. It was an odd talk.
She was waiting for friends to join her so they could all go to dinner. I had finished my dinner an hour and half earlier. I figured it would be a late dinner for her. I caught up with her on Friday and learned that she did not get home until after midnight. I know that she is not a morning person and one who enjoys her sleep.
If the play is crummy, we can always walk out at intermission and go do something else.
I mentioned that I was going to be going past her office building on Friday on my way to our Glendale office. I had to go there and get some information so I could work on two loan requests. She said that I should stop by and that we could go to lunch. I said I would call her if I would be able to join her.
Non-Deconstruction Days
It was Day 35 for the building next door.
But, things were happening in the floor hallways in my building. The paint had been touched up overnight; you could smell the paint odor as soon as you stepped off of the elevator. The ripped off sign holes had all been patched and were drying before they can be painted. This was real progress. Maybe the workers will finish up over the long weekend.
Donut Friday
I woke up on Friday morning precisely at 4:54 AM with a horrible shooting pain from a really nasty cramp in my right calf. There was just no way too massage the cramp away. I was up walking around and stretching my leg for about 15 minutes. In spite of all of the work to fix the cramp, I was troubled by pain all day and into Saturday afternoon.
Friday was the first Friday of the month. That means it is Donut Friday. I bring in donuts for the office staff. This is something that they look forward to. So do I.
I also bring in a box of donuts for the valets who park my car every day. I know I do not have to do this but I would just feel odd if they saw me getting out of my car with a box of donuts for my office. I just think it is the right thing to do.
I am confident that they appreciate the donuts. The box is always gone by the end of the day when I leave. I just assume that the donuts have been eaten. I believe that I benefit from doing this. The valets park my car in the first stall every day so it is easiest to get out. I don’t know how much time this saves me but I figure a couple of minutes here and there in Los Angeles traffic is worth something.
The only problem with being the first car in the parking structure is that it is the one that is covered with construction dust from the outside. It looked really bad this weekend. But, in another week, the construction will change and my spot will not have as much dust blown on it. I may even get my car washed to celebrate the construction progress.
Munching along on a chocolate donut.
I make a point of buying selected donuts for the office assistants [clerical support staff members]. They all have their favorites and I make sure one of each is included in the box I get for the staffers.
One of the staffers changed her mind and failed to tell me. She ended up eating a cinnamon roll that was intended for someone else. Because my office is at the end of the hall in our space, I was out of the loop when one of the staffers got upset because her cinnamon roll had been eaten by someone else. I think everything got sorted out in the end. At least, I hope it was sorted out properly.
I sometimes wonder if buying the donuts is the right thing to do. I do not receive any tangible rewards from spending my money. I know some manager would have put in an expense claim for the donuts but that just seems so wrong on so many points to me.
University of Utah [American] Football
Our beloved University of Utah opened the 2005 football season with a win over the University of Arizona on Friday night. [I can say our beloved because the Princess and I went there.] The final score was 27 to 24 but the game was much closer.
Utah has the second longest unbeaten string in the Division I now; trailing only the defending national champion University of Southern California. That is a tremendous accomplishment since the head coach from last year’s team has moved to a new school and many of the key players from last year are gone as well.
The Princess and I were both very happy with the outcome. We were also overjoyed to see BYU lose 20 to 3 to Boston College. Our second favorite school is any team playing BYU.
The Princess was also very happy that her other college [graduate school] football team win its first game of the season under their new coach. The University of South Carolina is in a rebuilding program and will not be ready to challenge for national ranking for a couple of years.
Last year, Utah ended up the football season ranked as Number 4. This is very good for a small school, second tier program.
Saturday
I had to fill up my car to go to the Big Guy’s house for the home networking project. The station at the bottom of the hill had raised its prices for the grade of gas that I buy from $3.01 a gallon to $3.03 a gallon or $0.80 a liter for those of you in metric land. The other station that I go to raised its prices from $2.85 a gallon to $3.03 a gallon.
I know the United States should move to the metric system and we probably will some day, just not very soon.
I felt very smug and self confident as I drove out to the Big Guy’s. I was driving slower in the Honda Prelude that gets great gas mileage or kilometerage. I snickered to myself as these big gas sucking trucks with their large engines roared past me almost as fast as their gas gauges declined.
Home Networking Project
In a word, the home networking project did not go well for the Big Guy and me.
We discovered that we lacked a key component. That resulted in a call to our ISP’s tech support in Mumbai or Bangalore. After listening to really bad music, Tony said we needed to get a router. He gave us the part number so we were off to the computer store.
There was an accident on the road to the computer store so that made the drive all that much longer. We made it to the store and picked up the router and headed back, confident that we would only be a few minutes at plugging things in and loading software.
Our first attempt at loading the router software onto the Big Guy’s Macintosh G5 failed. We could not get it to load. We tried everything we could think of.
Then, it was back to the boys and girls in tech support.
I spoke with Christine, then Alvin, then Susan, and finally Gabe.
We were not getting anywhere fast. We were not getting anywhere slow for that matter. Not surprising, none of the tech support could help us even though they were the Mac specialists at our ISP.
One of their biggest problem was in not listening to me explain what the problem was. They were telling me how to plug the cables in. They did not hear me say that I could not get the software of their recommended router to load on the G5.
Then, the battery in the cordless phone died or discharged.
We were beginning to get desperate now. The Big Guy phoned the router company’s tech support number on his cellphone. We found a tech support person but he did not know Macs. He shouted out to see if there were any Mac people in the office so he could transfer our call to someone who might be able to help us.
There were no Mac experts on duty to help us. At this point, we knew we in deep, deep trouble.
The router tech support guy suggested that we call Apple for help.
At this point, we were three and a half hours into the project and all we had to show for our efforts was frustration and more frustration. We decided to call a halt to our efforts and go grab some food. Neither one of us had eaten since early morning and it was not getting close to 4:00 PM.
Lunch or Dinner
We went to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers for lunch at the almost local store. We both had the Mega Combo which is three patties of beef, three slices of cheese, tomato, onion, pickles, and chili; chili cheese fries; and a very large drink. You need the very large drink because of the chili. The hamburger is wrapped in paper and it leaks chili all over the place. You have to use paper towels as napkins; they are so much more effective in picking up the messes.
I was very pleased with myself since I did not spill any chili on my shirt. Neither did the Big Guy.
This is a very satisfying and extremely messy. I did not have anything else to eat all day after lunch. I felt full when I went to bed around six hours later. I know my spirits improved as we were eating the food.
DVD Planet.com
The Big Guy had hinted earlier in the week that we could go to DVD Planet.com, our favorite DVD store after we ate at Tommy’s. I was feeling poorly and I figured he was as well.
Going to DVD Planet seemed like a good idea to me. We needed something to go right for us on Saturday. The Big Guy picked up four DVDs that seemed on the obscure side to me. Since he is a film studies major at university, I guess he knows what he is have me buy for him.
I have been building a DVD collection over the last year and a half. My collection is based on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest American Films. While one can argue that CITIZEN KANE is over rated and complain that all foreign films are off of the list and therefore deeply flawed, it is still a reasonable basis to start a collection from.
DVD Planet has just organized a section of the store that has the AFI 100. Now, I can go there and look for any new releases instead of having to wander aisle and aisle in different sections looking for a new release. I picked up seven of the missing films and felt very good about that. I now have 84 out of the 100. I will pick up two more by the end of the month so my collection is looking very good now. I think that by the end of the year I will be close to completing the collection as I can be since some films are not available on DVD.
The Immortal Yi Soon-Shin
I caught the weekend episodes and they are up to 91 now. The program could end at 100 and then I would be out of luck for my weekend television viewing. I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
The Saturday episode was devoted to mostly non-combat activities. The replacement admiral learned plain, cold, simple truth that Yi was correct and that he could not attack the Japanese because he did not have enough warships and because the Korean army could not seize the heights that control a key waterway.
The combat situation is almost like the Gallipoli campaign in the First Word War with minor changes. The Japanese, like the ANZAC forces nearly ninety year ago, are bogged down in a beachhead lodgment area and are unable to advance. They are currently being supplied by sea. Their morale is good.
The Korean forces resemble the Turkish forces. They are poorly led and fed, are ill-equipped, and ruled by a corrupt and ineffective monarch.
The battle is in a stalemate position now. The Japanese think they can break the stalemate and break out of the beachhead area. They have sent a new army of 120,000 soldiers to the area. They believe they will succeed because the Koreans have removed their most successful leader Yi Soon-Shin and made him a private soldier now.
The Japanese see this as a key shift; they have momentum and will of force behind them. They believe correctly that Yi’s removal will weaken the morale of the Korean forces opposing them. This has already happened. The weakening of the Korean leadership and battle capabilities has increased as the replacement admiral has removed more and more of the mid-level officers of the navy because they do not believe in his tactics or battle plans.
The Japanese almost destroyed the Korean fleet in a nicely setup ambush battle that the replacement admiral fell for. The battle was still going on at the end of the episode so I don’t now the final outcome but I can make a really good guess.
The Koreans sailed through a storm to get to the battle area. This exhausted their rowers; the vessels are mostly powered by oars. The Korean ships have sails but they rarely seem to use them. The Korean fleet navigator reported they are missing twenty warships just before they started to engage the Japanese. The replacement admiral realized that he was in no position to engage the Japanese and withdrew.
One of the key points one has to remember is the Korean vessels are all built for coastal waters and carry very limited supplies. The Japanese ships are not that much better. They both have to land frequently to resupply the crews with food and water.
I found the lack of deep water sailing capability odd. Their neighbors, the Chinese, had built large, ocean going, deep water ships that traded with the Persian Gulf, Australia, and even sailed to North America. These large ships were build over 150 years earlier than where we are in the timeline. I find it amazing that the ship building knowledge and ability did not get passed on the Koreans and the Japanese.
Back to the episodes.
Episode 91 ended with the landing party being attacked by well rested and better armed Japanese soldiers. It was not an even fight and the Koreans took heavy losses. The survivors retreated to the beaches where their ships lay anchored in very shallow water or beached on the sand. Perhaps, when the survivors reach the ships, they will have a chance to make it out of the battle in one piece.
The battle should go to the Japanese. The Koreans apparently lost twenty ships in storms at sea and the other ships took damage from the larger number of Japanese vessels with cannons. The landing party is in extremis right now. This is not going to make happy reading for the unbalanced Korean king.
Movies
I saw only two films over the long weekend. Of course, Saturday was spent engaged with the home networking project.
The first film I saw was THE CONSTANT GARDENER. The Big Guy thought it was a very good film so that was a plus for it. The film is directed by Fernando Meirelles who made the CITY OF GOD, a film that made both of our Best Films of 2002 lists.
While I liked the film and thought it is well worth seeing, I felt that it could have been made better with some judicious cutting. After all, a butt shot of a naked woman who is extremely pregnant does not have to be shown several times for example. Once is more than enough. There were other scenes that seemed to be added for no apparent reason.
The film uses a great deal of what the Big Guy calls “shaky camera,” where the handheld camera is unstabilized. This provides or is supposed to provide a more realistic image on the screen. It can be a bit annoying to some people like me.
At the end of the film, I was unsure of which character I disliked more. There are many to choose from. There are the obvious, stylized generally dislikeable characters like the greedy industrialist, the honorless intelligence agent, and the politicians at home. I ended up disliking the Ralph Fiennes character because he was so out to touch with everyone except his plants until it was too late to do anything about the events as they came crashing down around him.
The other film was TRANSPORTER 2. This was a straight forward good versus evil film where the good guy wore black. There are no subtle plots or significant messages except that the Audi A8 is a great car for tight situations so long as you can drive like Frank Miller. I guess Audi put up more production assistance money than BMW who provided the car in the original TRANSPORTER. Or, maybe BMW did not want to be associated with a character whose past is anything but neat and tidy and whose habits and practices only seem to skirt law.
I think the A8 deserves honorable mention as best supporting actor for its work in this film. The car chases through Miami are excellent and very well done. At one point, I was expecting Crockett and Tibbs from Miami Vice to appear in a cameo.
The plot in this film is very linear. The good guy is introduced. The bag guys are introduced. The bad guys do something bad. The good guy sets everything right and kills almost all of the bad guys.
The Frank Miller character plays like a young Clint Eastwood “man with no name” and “Dirty Harry.” I liked the character and his sense of honor and duty. The film also has a bunch of the other usual characters from a crime drama including the overweight Southern police official who is really slow and semi-toothless Caribbean immigrant cab driver who ends up with a yellow Porsche 911 convertible as his cab after the bad guys shoot up the Ford. Since the bad guys are dead, no one complains about the change of use for the Porsche.
I would recommend both films.
They are both well made in their respective genres. TRANSPORTER 2 is a pure Summer action adventure film while THE CONSTANT GARDENER is one of those thought provoking films that usually show up in the Fall in time for Academy consideration.
Odds and Ends of the Weekend
I sent the Old Girl friend some stamps. She has been trying to send out thank you cards from the first part of July. I figure the stamps will be a big help to her; I have already given her the addresses three times now.
I spoke to the Big Guy today. He had not any luck with the Apple tech support. He thinks we may have to abandon the whole project. I think it is a solvable project but we are missing a key element and I am not sure where to turn for help. I suggested that he talk with his friend Derek because Derek has set up a Mac based home network.
I had asked my friend Sharon to go to the theater in Pasadena with me in October. We were going to see a one woman play, starring Kate Mulgrew, about Katherine Hepburn. I got my tickets for the other theater that I go to on Saturday. They are having a performance on the same night as the Pasadena performance. I guess I will ask her which one she would prefer to see and then pass on the tickets to some other friends that I know will enjoy the play.
Wowie kazowie; this blog has spilled onto eight pages of a Word document. Well, I did promise you a longer posting and I think I gave you your money’s worth today. Obviously, Tuesday will be a smaller version of this effort.
Be well and stay happy.
On the weekend, I have a couple of hours to think and write each day. Since this is a holiday weekend, I have an extra day.
Thursday Holdover
I did have a holdover from Thursday that I never got around to including in that blog. I had called the Big Guy to confirm the Saturday home networking project. That conversation went smoothly and quickly which is not all that surprising since we had been planning it for several days and more than one prior phone call.
What was odd was that when I phoned the Big Guy on the cell phone I got the Old Girl Friend instead. This was truly odd and obviously unexpected. After we got over the initial shock, we had a nice little talk. It was an odd talk.
She was waiting for friends to join her so they could all go to dinner. I had finished my dinner an hour and half earlier. I figured it would be a late dinner for her. I caught up with her on Friday and learned that she did not get home until after midnight. I know that she is not a morning person and one who enjoys her sleep.
If the play is crummy, we can always walk out at intermission and go do something else.
I mentioned that I was going to be going past her office building on Friday on my way to our Glendale office. I had to go there and get some information so I could work on two loan requests. She said that I should stop by and that we could go to lunch. I said I would call her if I would be able to join her.
Non-Deconstruction Days
It was Day 35 for the building next door.
But, things were happening in the floor hallways in my building. The paint had been touched up overnight; you could smell the paint odor as soon as you stepped off of the elevator. The ripped off sign holes had all been patched and were drying before they can be painted. This was real progress. Maybe the workers will finish up over the long weekend.
Donut Friday
I woke up on Friday morning precisely at 4:54 AM with a horrible shooting pain from a really nasty cramp in my right calf. There was just no way too massage the cramp away. I was up walking around and stretching my leg for about 15 minutes. In spite of all of the work to fix the cramp, I was troubled by pain all day and into Saturday afternoon.
Friday was the first Friday of the month. That means it is Donut Friday. I bring in donuts for the office staff. This is something that they look forward to. So do I.
I also bring in a box of donuts for the valets who park my car every day. I know I do not have to do this but I would just feel odd if they saw me getting out of my car with a box of donuts for my office. I just think it is the right thing to do.
I am confident that they appreciate the donuts. The box is always gone by the end of the day when I leave. I just assume that the donuts have been eaten. I believe that I benefit from doing this. The valets park my car in the first stall every day so it is easiest to get out. I don’t know how much time this saves me but I figure a couple of minutes here and there in Los Angeles traffic is worth something.
The only problem with being the first car in the parking structure is that it is the one that is covered with construction dust from the outside. It looked really bad this weekend. But, in another week, the construction will change and my spot will not have as much dust blown on it. I may even get my car washed to celebrate the construction progress.
Munching along on a chocolate donut.
I make a point of buying selected donuts for the office assistants [clerical support staff members]. They all have their favorites and I make sure one of each is included in the box I get for the staffers.
One of the staffers changed her mind and failed to tell me. She ended up eating a cinnamon roll that was intended for someone else. Because my office is at the end of the hall in our space, I was out of the loop when one of the staffers got upset because her cinnamon roll had been eaten by someone else. I think everything got sorted out in the end. At least, I hope it was sorted out properly.
I sometimes wonder if buying the donuts is the right thing to do. I do not receive any tangible rewards from spending my money. I know some manager would have put in an expense claim for the donuts but that just seems so wrong on so many points to me.
University of Utah [American] Football
Our beloved University of Utah opened the 2005 football season with a win over the University of Arizona on Friday night. [I can say our beloved because the Princess and I went there.] The final score was 27 to 24 but the game was much closer.
Utah has the second longest unbeaten string in the Division I now; trailing only the defending national champion University of Southern California. That is a tremendous accomplishment since the head coach from last year’s team has moved to a new school and many of the key players from last year are gone as well.
The Princess and I were both very happy with the outcome. We were also overjoyed to see BYU lose 20 to 3 to Boston College. Our second favorite school is any team playing BYU.
The Princess was also very happy that her other college [graduate school] football team win its first game of the season under their new coach. The University of South Carolina is in a rebuilding program and will not be ready to challenge for national ranking for a couple of years.
Last year, Utah ended up the football season ranked as Number 4. This is very good for a small school, second tier program.
Saturday
I had to fill up my car to go to the Big Guy’s house for the home networking project. The station at the bottom of the hill had raised its prices for the grade of gas that I buy from $3.01 a gallon to $3.03 a gallon or $0.80 a liter for those of you in metric land. The other station that I go to raised its prices from $2.85 a gallon to $3.03 a gallon.
I know the United States should move to the metric system and we probably will some day, just not very soon.
I felt very smug and self confident as I drove out to the Big Guy’s. I was driving slower in the Honda Prelude that gets great gas mileage or kilometerage. I snickered to myself as these big gas sucking trucks with their large engines roared past me almost as fast as their gas gauges declined.
Home Networking Project
In a word, the home networking project did not go well for the Big Guy and me.
We discovered that we lacked a key component. That resulted in a call to our ISP’s tech support in Mumbai or Bangalore. After listening to really bad music, Tony said we needed to get a router. He gave us the part number so we were off to the computer store.
There was an accident on the road to the computer store so that made the drive all that much longer. We made it to the store and picked up the router and headed back, confident that we would only be a few minutes at plugging things in and loading software.
Our first attempt at loading the router software onto the Big Guy’s Macintosh G5 failed. We could not get it to load. We tried everything we could think of.
Then, it was back to the boys and girls in tech support.
I spoke with Christine, then Alvin, then Susan, and finally Gabe.
We were not getting anywhere fast. We were not getting anywhere slow for that matter. Not surprising, none of the tech support could help us even though they were the Mac specialists at our ISP.
One of their biggest problem was in not listening to me explain what the problem was. They were telling me how to plug the cables in. They did not hear me say that I could not get the software of their recommended router to load on the G5.
Then, the battery in the cordless phone died or discharged.
We were beginning to get desperate now. The Big Guy phoned the router company’s tech support number on his cellphone. We found a tech support person but he did not know Macs. He shouted out to see if there were any Mac people in the office so he could transfer our call to someone who might be able to help us.
There were no Mac experts on duty to help us. At this point, we knew we in deep, deep trouble.
The router tech support guy suggested that we call Apple for help.
At this point, we were three and a half hours into the project and all we had to show for our efforts was frustration and more frustration. We decided to call a halt to our efforts and go grab some food. Neither one of us had eaten since early morning and it was not getting close to 4:00 PM.
Lunch or Dinner
We went to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers for lunch at the almost local store. We both had the Mega Combo which is three patties of beef, three slices of cheese, tomato, onion, pickles, and chili; chili cheese fries; and a very large drink. You need the very large drink because of the chili. The hamburger is wrapped in paper and it leaks chili all over the place. You have to use paper towels as napkins; they are so much more effective in picking up the messes.
I was very pleased with myself since I did not spill any chili on my shirt. Neither did the Big Guy.
This is a very satisfying and extremely messy. I did not have anything else to eat all day after lunch. I felt full when I went to bed around six hours later. I know my spirits improved as we were eating the food.
DVD Planet.com
The Big Guy had hinted earlier in the week that we could go to DVD Planet.com, our favorite DVD store after we ate at Tommy’s. I was feeling poorly and I figured he was as well.
Going to DVD Planet seemed like a good idea to me. We needed something to go right for us on Saturday. The Big Guy picked up four DVDs that seemed on the obscure side to me. Since he is a film studies major at university, I guess he knows what he is have me buy for him.
I have been building a DVD collection over the last year and a half. My collection is based on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest American Films. While one can argue that CITIZEN KANE is over rated and complain that all foreign films are off of the list and therefore deeply flawed, it is still a reasonable basis to start a collection from.
DVD Planet has just organized a section of the store that has the AFI 100. Now, I can go there and look for any new releases instead of having to wander aisle and aisle in different sections looking for a new release. I picked up seven of the missing films and felt very good about that. I now have 84 out of the 100. I will pick up two more by the end of the month so my collection is looking very good now. I think that by the end of the year I will be close to completing the collection as I can be since some films are not available on DVD.
The Immortal Yi Soon-Shin
I caught the weekend episodes and they are up to 91 now. The program could end at 100 and then I would be out of luck for my weekend television viewing. I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
The Saturday episode was devoted to mostly non-combat activities. The replacement admiral learned plain, cold, simple truth that Yi was correct and that he could not attack the Japanese because he did not have enough warships and because the Korean army could not seize the heights that control a key waterway.
The combat situation is almost like the Gallipoli campaign in the First Word War with minor changes. The Japanese, like the ANZAC forces nearly ninety year ago, are bogged down in a beachhead lodgment area and are unable to advance. They are currently being supplied by sea. Their morale is good.
The Korean forces resemble the Turkish forces. They are poorly led and fed, are ill-equipped, and ruled by a corrupt and ineffective monarch.
The battle is in a stalemate position now. The Japanese think they can break the stalemate and break out of the beachhead area. They have sent a new army of 120,000 soldiers to the area. They believe they will succeed because the Koreans have removed their most successful leader Yi Soon-Shin and made him a private soldier now.
The Japanese see this as a key shift; they have momentum and will of force behind them. They believe correctly that Yi’s removal will weaken the morale of the Korean forces opposing them. This has already happened. The weakening of the Korean leadership and battle capabilities has increased as the replacement admiral has removed more and more of the mid-level officers of the navy because they do not believe in his tactics or battle plans.
The Japanese almost destroyed the Korean fleet in a nicely setup ambush battle that the replacement admiral fell for. The battle was still going on at the end of the episode so I don’t now the final outcome but I can make a really good guess.
The Koreans sailed through a storm to get to the battle area. This exhausted their rowers; the vessels are mostly powered by oars. The Korean ships have sails but they rarely seem to use them. The Korean fleet navigator reported they are missing twenty warships just before they started to engage the Japanese. The replacement admiral realized that he was in no position to engage the Japanese and withdrew.
One of the key points one has to remember is the Korean vessels are all built for coastal waters and carry very limited supplies. The Japanese ships are not that much better. They both have to land frequently to resupply the crews with food and water.
I found the lack of deep water sailing capability odd. Their neighbors, the Chinese, had built large, ocean going, deep water ships that traded with the Persian Gulf, Australia, and even sailed to North America. These large ships were build over 150 years earlier than where we are in the timeline. I find it amazing that the ship building knowledge and ability did not get passed on the Koreans and the Japanese.
Back to the episodes.
Episode 91 ended with the landing party being attacked by well rested and better armed Japanese soldiers. It was not an even fight and the Koreans took heavy losses. The survivors retreated to the beaches where their ships lay anchored in very shallow water or beached on the sand. Perhaps, when the survivors reach the ships, they will have a chance to make it out of the battle in one piece.
The battle should go to the Japanese. The Koreans apparently lost twenty ships in storms at sea and the other ships took damage from the larger number of Japanese vessels with cannons. The landing party is in extremis right now. This is not going to make happy reading for the unbalanced Korean king.
Movies
I saw only two films over the long weekend. Of course, Saturday was spent engaged with the home networking project.
The first film I saw was THE CONSTANT GARDENER. The Big Guy thought it was a very good film so that was a plus for it. The film is directed by Fernando Meirelles who made the CITY OF GOD, a film that made both of our Best Films of 2002 lists.
While I liked the film and thought it is well worth seeing, I felt that it could have been made better with some judicious cutting. After all, a butt shot of a naked woman who is extremely pregnant does not have to be shown several times for example. Once is more than enough. There were other scenes that seemed to be added for no apparent reason.
The film uses a great deal of what the Big Guy calls “shaky camera,” where the handheld camera is unstabilized. This provides or is supposed to provide a more realistic image on the screen. It can be a bit annoying to some people like me.
At the end of the film, I was unsure of which character I disliked more. There are many to choose from. There are the obvious, stylized generally dislikeable characters like the greedy industrialist, the honorless intelligence agent, and the politicians at home. I ended up disliking the Ralph Fiennes character because he was so out to touch with everyone except his plants until it was too late to do anything about the events as they came crashing down around him.
The other film was TRANSPORTER 2. This was a straight forward good versus evil film where the good guy wore black. There are no subtle plots or significant messages except that the Audi A8 is a great car for tight situations so long as you can drive like Frank Miller. I guess Audi put up more production assistance money than BMW who provided the car in the original TRANSPORTER. Or, maybe BMW did not want to be associated with a character whose past is anything but neat and tidy and whose habits and practices only seem to skirt law.
I think the A8 deserves honorable mention as best supporting actor for its work in this film. The car chases through Miami are excellent and very well done. At one point, I was expecting Crockett and Tibbs from Miami Vice to appear in a cameo.
The plot in this film is very linear. The good guy is introduced. The bag guys are introduced. The bad guys do something bad. The good guy sets everything right and kills almost all of the bad guys.
The Frank Miller character plays like a young Clint Eastwood “man with no name” and “Dirty Harry.” I liked the character and his sense of honor and duty. The film also has a bunch of the other usual characters from a crime drama including the overweight Southern police official who is really slow and semi-toothless Caribbean immigrant cab driver who ends up with a yellow Porsche 911 convertible as his cab after the bad guys shoot up the Ford. Since the bad guys are dead, no one complains about the change of use for the Porsche.
I would recommend both films.
They are both well made in their respective genres. TRANSPORTER 2 is a pure Summer action adventure film while THE CONSTANT GARDENER is one of those thought provoking films that usually show up in the Fall in time for Academy consideration.
Odds and Ends of the Weekend
I sent the Old Girl friend some stamps. She has been trying to send out thank you cards from the first part of July. I figure the stamps will be a big help to her; I have already given her the addresses three times now.
I spoke to the Big Guy today. He had not any luck with the Apple tech support. He thinks we may have to abandon the whole project. I think it is a solvable project but we are missing a key element and I am not sure where to turn for help. I suggested that he talk with his friend Derek because Derek has set up a Mac based home network.
I had asked my friend Sharon to go to the theater in Pasadena with me in October. We were going to see a one woman play, starring Kate Mulgrew, about Katherine Hepburn. I got my tickets for the other theater that I go to on Saturday. They are having a performance on the same night as the Pasadena performance. I guess I will ask her which one she would prefer to see and then pass on the tickets to some other friends that I know will enjoy the play.
Wowie kazowie; this blog has spilled onto eight pages of a Word document. Well, I did promise you a longer posting and I think I gave you your money’s worth today. Obviously, Tuesday will be a smaller version of this effort.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 5:09 PM
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