Weekend Update
Weekends all too soon for my taste gentle readers. I would much rather have a four day weekend and three day work week. Of course, not too much would get done each day but we would have time to rest.
Southern California Weather
Just before the current wildfires in the bush covered hills started, we had some really great weather. It was warm and clear and really one of the best demonstrations of why I live in Southern California.
I was able to see the Southwest Airlines jets make their turn after taking off from the Hollywood Burbank Airport. I should point out that I could only tell if they were the old paint style of the red, orange, and yellow. These jets stand out nicely against a blue sky. It is much harder to tell with the new jets and their mostly blue paint style.
The Hollywood Burbank Airport is maybe eight to ten miles or 12 to 15 kilometers [line of sight] away from my office building. This is one of the nice things about being on the tenth floor of an office building.
Now, we have two large wildfires burning in our local mountains or hills if you live in a place like Denver or Salt Lake City where they have real mountains. The smoke has no where to drift off to. It blows out to over the ocean during the day and then drifts back over the land at night. The mountains that surround the land side of Southern California trap the smoke and ash until the winds eventually dissipate things, usually a couple of days after the fires are out.
In the meantime, the air is foul and smoky smelling. Ash covers everything, especially black cars that were only washed and waxed a week ago.
Yesterday, I woke up and there were hardly any clouds in the sky over by my house. A half hour after I started doing some laundry, my house was completely fogged in. The fog never really lifted by my house until briefly on Sunday afternoon.
It was warm, almost hot, and sunny everywhere else. This probably explains why a lot of people were driving to the beach. I know they cooled off in the damp chilly fog.
Days
Friday was Day 54 at the building next door. I think the wind blew the dust around differently.
The Big Guy’s G5
I think I mentioned that the Big Guy or my son Doug was having trouble with his Apple G5 machine. It was taking forever to run programs and processes.
Doug took the G5 into the Apple store for a repair job. I am sure glad I purchased the extended warranty service. The warranty was about $300 and the repairs, a new 250 GB hard drive plus labor to install it, will run around $450. The repairs will take about a week so Doug has to limp along on an older Powerbook machine.
One thing that surprised me was that Apple could not transfer the files onto the new hard disk drive. But, since it was a disk drive failure, that makes sense to me.
The bottom line is that Doug is soured on having an Apple machine right now. The alternative is obviously a Wintel machine from either Dell or Lenovo. I have an externally floppy disk drive for the laptop that was made by Lenovo and it works just fine for me.
Mindy Mallard Treatment
The bank I work for has a film finance department and I have my office there in some empty space. Doug came to visit Dad during Summer break and was impressed with the division.
I spoke to one of the other officers in film finance to see if he could ask one of his contacts in the industry to read Doug’s school project treatment [film synopsis] as a favor for me. He said he would take a look in his Rolodex and see if he could find a name or two. On Friday, he said he had sent the treatment off to two professional readers and felt confident that we should get some comments from one or both of them about the artistic merits of the film idea and the technical merits of how the treatment was prepared.
Doug was excited because this would be more valuable commentary than his professor who is an English professor and has never worked in the film industry could ever provide any student.
People are correct when they say the entertainment industry is all about whom one knows.
Weekend Cinema
I had planned to go watch SERENITY this weekend. It is a science fiction movie based on a one season television series on the Sci-Fi Channel, sort of like STAR TREK I, I guess. Unfortunately, its first showing was at an inconvenient time so I decided to pass on seeing it. I will catch it next weekend when my schedule is less full.
Lunch at the Office
The entertainment finance group had their lunch catered in on Friday. They invited me to join them because not inviting me would have been ever so awkward for everyone.
One should never complain about free food unless the food is a MRE. A MRE is the standard field food service issue for the United States armed forces. The Marines I served with in the Reserves said MRE stood for Meals Rejected by Everyone. Having consumed more than my fair share of military field food, I can say or burp that a MRE is several steps above starvation.
I ordered a grilled chicken breast with melted mozzarella cheese. It sounded healthy and the salads were not that interesting to me. It was very tasty and I enjoyed it completely.
Now, there were those staffers who were unhappy that the food took longer than anyone anticipated to be delivered. I suppose we could have hopped in one of the cars and driven to the restaurant and picked up the food instead of waiting for the driver to deliver it.
I’m not sure what the occasion for the meal was. I just enjoyed it.
Saturday Night Dinner or More Food
Sharon called me around mid-morning on Saturday to see if I wanted to be her guest for dinner before the play. She has a unique way with invitations.
“Hey Reinhardt, it’s me. Do you want to go to dinner tonight? I’ll buy.” This sort of shows how long we have been friends or acquaintances.
We talked about a revised time for me to pick her up. We worked backwards from when the play started. This was one of those casual, unplanned events. We picked our dining spot based on not having a line of people outside of he front door and being able to get a parking spot close the front door of the restaurant.
Using the simple but highly effective criteria we ate at TGI Friday’s.
I had a small steak and Sharon had a grilled jalapeno cheeseburger. Our server was less than attentive. Sharon asked for a glass of ice because she really likes her iced tea cold. The glass never showed up.
Oh well, TGI Friday’s is not Morton’s and our server certainly wasn’t Amy.
The Foreigner
The Foreigner, that was the name of the play Sharon and I saw on Saturday. It is a comedy and very funny and enjoyable.
The play is based on a character who pretends to not speak or understand English so he will not have to interact with a bunch of people in rural Georgia. He hears things that he shouldn’t and becomes aware of the complex relationships and conflicts that are just under the surface.
The play has enough bad characters to give everyone a villain to hate. They range from the neo-Ku Klux Klansman to the duplicitous reverend out to take his fiancé’s money.
In the end, good triumphs over evil and the cavalry comes to the rescue of the embattled local citizens, banishing or arresting the Klan. It is a play worth seeing if you have a chance.
The Immortal Yi Soon-Shin
I did not miss too much last night while I was at the theater with Sharon.
The Ming Navy finally has entered the war as allies of questionable worth. There are the obvious joint command tensions that exist today in a modern navy or army. The Chinese see themselves as saviors and the Koreans see them as a bunch of late to the ware wastrels with nothing to offer.
After all, Yi Soon-Shin has been undefeated in 20 straight engagements with the Japanese. Yi fought the Japanese again in tonight’s episode without any Chinese help. He was outnumbered four to five by the Japanese. The final score of the 21st victory was that Japan lost fifty warships and over 16,000 warriors. The Korean losses were less than minor; no ships sunk and only a limited number of wounded sailors.
This defeat causes or leads to the fall of the Toyotomi Shogunate and gives rise to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Since the Tokugawas did not start the war in Korea, they can end the war without any loss of honor to their clan and bring the surviving samurai home.
Just like in modern international politics.
The Japanese only have one problem, the Korean navy stands in their way as they plan to withdraw. The Koreans want to destroy every last Japanese samurai in the peninsula before they will be satisfied.
It looks like Yi will get his wish as he was seen leading the combined fleets to attack the unprepared Japanese at Wekyo in 1599 at the end of tonight’s episode. If the Korean-Chinese forces prevail in this battle, the war will be over or so everyone thinks it will.
Since this was Episode 99 tonight, I can accept that theory. The series will soon have to end because the war is about to end or soon will end in maybe another five or ten episodes.
And so gentle readers, that was my weekend.
Be well and stay happy.
Southern California Weather
Just before the current wildfires in the bush covered hills started, we had some really great weather. It was warm and clear and really one of the best demonstrations of why I live in Southern California.
I was able to see the Southwest Airlines jets make their turn after taking off from the Hollywood Burbank Airport. I should point out that I could only tell if they were the old paint style of the red, orange, and yellow. These jets stand out nicely against a blue sky. It is much harder to tell with the new jets and their mostly blue paint style.
The Hollywood Burbank Airport is maybe eight to ten miles or 12 to 15 kilometers [line of sight] away from my office building. This is one of the nice things about being on the tenth floor of an office building.
Now, we have two large wildfires burning in our local mountains or hills if you live in a place like Denver or Salt Lake City where they have real mountains. The smoke has no where to drift off to. It blows out to over the ocean during the day and then drifts back over the land at night. The mountains that surround the land side of Southern California trap the smoke and ash until the winds eventually dissipate things, usually a couple of days after the fires are out.
In the meantime, the air is foul and smoky smelling. Ash covers everything, especially black cars that were only washed and waxed a week ago.
Yesterday, I woke up and there were hardly any clouds in the sky over by my house. A half hour after I started doing some laundry, my house was completely fogged in. The fog never really lifted by my house until briefly on Sunday afternoon.
It was warm, almost hot, and sunny everywhere else. This probably explains why a lot of people were driving to the beach. I know they cooled off in the damp chilly fog.
Days
Friday was Day 54 at the building next door. I think the wind blew the dust around differently.
The Big Guy’s G5
I think I mentioned that the Big Guy or my son Doug was having trouble with his Apple G5 machine. It was taking forever to run programs and processes.
Doug took the G5 into the Apple store for a repair job. I am sure glad I purchased the extended warranty service. The warranty was about $300 and the repairs, a new 250 GB hard drive plus labor to install it, will run around $450. The repairs will take about a week so Doug has to limp along on an older Powerbook machine.
One thing that surprised me was that Apple could not transfer the files onto the new hard disk drive. But, since it was a disk drive failure, that makes sense to me.
The bottom line is that Doug is soured on having an Apple machine right now. The alternative is obviously a Wintel machine from either Dell or Lenovo. I have an externally floppy disk drive for the laptop that was made by Lenovo and it works just fine for me.
Mindy Mallard Treatment
The bank I work for has a film finance department and I have my office there in some empty space. Doug came to visit Dad during Summer break and was impressed with the division.
I spoke to one of the other officers in film finance to see if he could ask one of his contacts in the industry to read Doug’s school project treatment [film synopsis] as a favor for me. He said he would take a look in his Rolodex and see if he could find a name or two. On Friday, he said he had sent the treatment off to two professional readers and felt confident that we should get some comments from one or both of them about the artistic merits of the film idea and the technical merits of how the treatment was prepared.
Doug was excited because this would be more valuable commentary than his professor who is an English professor and has never worked in the film industry could ever provide any student.
People are correct when they say the entertainment industry is all about whom one knows.
Weekend Cinema
I had planned to go watch SERENITY this weekend. It is a science fiction movie based on a one season television series on the Sci-Fi Channel, sort of like STAR TREK I, I guess. Unfortunately, its first showing was at an inconvenient time so I decided to pass on seeing it. I will catch it next weekend when my schedule is less full.
Lunch at the Office
The entertainment finance group had their lunch catered in on Friday. They invited me to join them because not inviting me would have been ever so awkward for everyone.
One should never complain about free food unless the food is a MRE. A MRE is the standard field food service issue for the United States armed forces. The Marines I served with in the Reserves said MRE stood for Meals Rejected by Everyone. Having consumed more than my fair share of military field food, I can say or burp that a MRE is several steps above starvation.
I ordered a grilled chicken breast with melted mozzarella cheese. It sounded healthy and the salads were not that interesting to me. It was very tasty and I enjoyed it completely.
Now, there were those staffers who were unhappy that the food took longer than anyone anticipated to be delivered. I suppose we could have hopped in one of the cars and driven to the restaurant and picked up the food instead of waiting for the driver to deliver it.
I’m not sure what the occasion for the meal was. I just enjoyed it.
Saturday Night Dinner or More Food
Sharon called me around mid-morning on Saturday to see if I wanted to be her guest for dinner before the play. She has a unique way with invitations.
“Hey Reinhardt, it’s me. Do you want to go to dinner tonight? I’ll buy.” This sort of shows how long we have been friends or acquaintances.
We talked about a revised time for me to pick her up. We worked backwards from when the play started. This was one of those casual, unplanned events. We picked our dining spot based on not having a line of people outside of he front door and being able to get a parking spot close the front door of the restaurant.
Using the simple but highly effective criteria we ate at TGI Friday’s.
I had a small steak and Sharon had a grilled jalapeno cheeseburger. Our server was less than attentive. Sharon asked for a glass of ice because she really likes her iced tea cold. The glass never showed up.
Oh well, TGI Friday’s is not Morton’s and our server certainly wasn’t Amy.
The Foreigner
The Foreigner, that was the name of the play Sharon and I saw on Saturday. It is a comedy and very funny and enjoyable.
The play is based on a character who pretends to not speak or understand English so he will not have to interact with a bunch of people in rural Georgia. He hears things that he shouldn’t and becomes aware of the complex relationships and conflicts that are just under the surface.
The play has enough bad characters to give everyone a villain to hate. They range from the neo-Ku Klux Klansman to the duplicitous reverend out to take his fiancé’s money.
In the end, good triumphs over evil and the cavalry comes to the rescue of the embattled local citizens, banishing or arresting the Klan. It is a play worth seeing if you have a chance.
The Immortal Yi Soon-Shin
I did not miss too much last night while I was at the theater with Sharon.
The Ming Navy finally has entered the war as allies of questionable worth. There are the obvious joint command tensions that exist today in a modern navy or army. The Chinese see themselves as saviors and the Koreans see them as a bunch of late to the ware wastrels with nothing to offer.
After all, Yi Soon-Shin has been undefeated in 20 straight engagements with the Japanese. Yi fought the Japanese again in tonight’s episode without any Chinese help. He was outnumbered four to five by the Japanese. The final score of the 21st victory was that Japan lost fifty warships and over 16,000 warriors. The Korean losses were less than minor; no ships sunk and only a limited number of wounded sailors.
This defeat causes or leads to the fall of the Toyotomi Shogunate and gives rise to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Since the Tokugawas did not start the war in Korea, they can end the war without any loss of honor to their clan and bring the surviving samurai home.
Just like in modern international politics.
The Japanese only have one problem, the Korean navy stands in their way as they plan to withdraw. The Koreans want to destroy every last Japanese samurai in the peninsula before they will be satisfied.
It looks like Yi will get his wish as he was seen leading the combined fleets to attack the unprepared Japanese at Wekyo in 1599 at the end of tonight’s episode. If the Korean-Chinese forces prevail in this battle, the war will be over or so everyone thinks it will.
Since this was Episode 99 tonight, I can accept that theory. The series will soon have to end because the war is about to end or soon will end in maybe another five or ten episodes.
And so gentle readers, that was my weekend.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 9:20 PM
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