Weekend Preview - July 5th

Weekend Preview
Is it the weekend already? It seems like it was Monday only yesterday.

Oh well, life moves on, perhaps too rapidly for me right now.

I saw some commercial or advertisements for Heineken’s Light Beer recently. I do love a cold Heineken’s regular beer so I thought that I could try the light beer version. Having taken classes on research methods, I am doing this test correctly. I have a control six pack of regular Heineken’s and a test six pack of the new beer. Individual bottles or cans were not available at my market.

Last night for dinner, I tried a bottle of the new beer and the regular beer. Based on my first test, the new light beer has a very good beer taste to it. The new beer went very well with my steak and baked potato.

So far, I like it.

I do have one minor complaint with the light beer. It was only in a slender bottle in my market. I would have preferred to have it in a can so I could slip one of those foam coolers around it to help it stay cold longer. It is possible that the cans were all sold out in anticipation of the weekend.

Of course, I still have five more test events to conduct before I can come to a final conclusion.

The things I am willing to do for my readers. Testing beer is a new one for me.

My Japanese limited series drama, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun, will end this weekend. The ending looks like a gunfight at the OK Corral or a shut out in Dodge City. The high school girl, hence the sailor suit, became a leader of a minor and small yakuza gang. She was against the use of violence to resolve conflicts.

A larger rival gang thought she had their shipment of heroin and was willing to take any measure necessary to get the heroin including killing her father and members of the small gang.

Last week after almost everyone has been killed, she changed her mind and will use violence to settle the score with the other gang. She was handed a World War II era German Schmeiser Machine Pistol at the end of the show. The Schmeiser was the assault weapon of choice for the German army because of its light weight, large magazine capacity, ease of use, and rapid fire cyclic rate.

She will have an element of surprise in her favor since she has always forbidden the use of weapons before. On the other hand, she will be seriously outnumbered; her gang is down to her and one other member.

I’m certain that John Wayne had a line in some film that was appropriate for the long odds and desperate situation. I just can’t seem to remember it now.

There are only a few questions left to answer on Sunday. Does she survive? Probably. What happens to her gang? Don’t know. Will anyone else survive? Don’t know.

The other gang’s headquarters has a large fish tank in the middle of the main room. You just know that it will be shot like the fish tank in SCARFACE.

It will be an interesting series conclusion

My Brother
I got an email from my Brother today; always nice to hear from the family.

He wrote about me using a line from his industry email newsletter that he writes. It seems we had both used the phrase, “It was the best times; it was the worst of times,” Charles Dickens classic, A Tale of Two Cities this week.

All great minds think alike.

In my defense, I would point out that I gave proper credit to Mr. Dickens for the authorship of the line I used. My Brother omitted that reference.

Strangely, my Brother said nothing about me having the wrong Wednesday Make Up Woman on the blog yesterday. I wonder if he even noticed. Judging from the lack of email comments, no one else noticed the error either.

Don’t bother sending me an email to say that I made an error on Wednesday. I already know that I made an error.

iPhone and Movie Posters
Doug and I are having an informal contest on which will arrive first. His mother got him an iPhone for graduation and I got him four movie posters.

Doug thinks the iPhone will arrive first because he ordered it last Friday when they went on sale. He went to an AT&T store that did not have any iPhones for sale. The last time we spoke, Tuesday, he said that his order was still “in process.”

Your guess is as good as mine for what “in process” means.

I ordered the posters on Tuesday afternoon from a dealer in Los Angeles. He said the posters would go out on Thursday by United States Post Office Priority Mail. I ought to have the posters by Saturday, Monday at the latest.

I think my posters will win.

I typed too soon.

Doug called me around noon today to tell me that he was expecting his iPhone to be delivered by FedEx sometime before 3:30 PM today. That beats the Post Office by a couple of days.

Quarterly Back Up and Windows Vista
I did my first quarterly backup on the new laptop yesterday evening. I make it a practice of backing up everything on the hard drive at least once a quarter. I back up more important stuff on a more frequent basis. For example, I back my dissertation up every time I add something to it. I also backup the Woman of the Moment files whenever I add a new set of images.

The process for Windows Vista Business was unfriendly and difficult to use compared with the Windows XP Professional version I had on the old laptop. First, it took way too long to complete, something close to an hour or so.

The file selection to be copied process was unintuitive for me. The XP version was simple, slick and highly intuitive.

I was amazed at the slow transfer rates with the new laptop. This is truly troubling since it has 3 GB of RAM to work with and a much faster hard drive and faster CD drive.

Of course, it is possible that I did not follow the simplest path to copy one set of files onto a new CD. If Microsoft had simpler and clearer instructions, I think the task would have been much easier.

Doug would say something like, “Dad, you wouldn’t have those problems with an Apple.”

My Friend Lara
My friend Lara is my oldest and longest online chat friends. We met online when I posted to the Empire magazine’s bulletin board for films. Empire is a British magazine. I think Lara is Doug’s oldest and longest online chat friend as well.

We have never met in person but we have written each other, the old fashioned way with paper and ink, and we have talked on the phone although not in a while since our schedules do not correspond as well as they do in the past.

Lara was the one who convinced me to even enter a chat room.

I didn’t know how wild chat rooms could get. I thought she took me to a chat room that was largely populated with adults. I knew there were some younger adults but I didn’t know there were some children present. To make a longer story much shorter, I was stalked online by a child who as obsessed with me. I was able to get rid of her quickly and that was ten years ago.

I do not know what ever happened to the child. Hopefully, everything turned out normal.

Lara sent me an invitation to join her as a friend on her Facebook account. I found out that I have to be a member to become a friend so I joined Facebook. I don’t think I will have many visitors to my page, I sort of fall out of the target age range for typical customers.

I do intend to use Facebook since it will be easier to keep up with what she is doing. Lara is busy with the video rental stores that she own. Her business seems to be a success and is growing.

Good for you Lara.

Woman of the Moment style="font-weight:bold;">
Today is the last scheduled appearance by Jessica Vincent. She had a short run her because I was unable to find more than sixteen photos of her in the Speed Options web site.





The next Woman of the Moment will be Faline Song who is also a Speed Options model. I was able to find over thirty photos of Faline so she will be with us for a while longer. This is something to look forward to in the Weekend Update on Sunday.

Haircut and the New Stylist
I made an appointment with the New Stylist for next Thursday morning. I am in her appointment book for 9:45. The receptionist said to plan on arriving at 10:00 AM. The New Stylist uses the appointment times as a suggested starting point and believes they do not necessarily apply to her. I am getting a little ratty around the ears now and could use a nice haircut and trim up.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon called me yesterday right after she sent me an email.

Sharon wanted me to look over a PowerPoint presentation that she planned to give as part of an employment interview. This will be the 313th interview with the company. Actually, I’m exaggerating the number of interviews that she has had over the last six months with the company.

It seems as if the company can not make up its mind what it wants to do.

I spent about two hours working on the presentation. I made a few changes to what was a good solid presentation. Mostly, I was making editorial changes like adding a slide or two so the information could be spread out and not be cramped and eliminating redundant phrases and information.

The presentation had to be turned in today. It was lucky that I was home when Sharon called me. What would have happened if I had taken and long weekend and gone out of town?

Well, we’ll never know what would have happened will we now.

4th of July Television Shows and Carbon Dating Myself
After I finished Sharon’s PowerPoint review, I tuned in to watch the televised 4th of July fireworks displays. The need to work on her presentation meant that I would be unable to catch the local fireworks display.

By and large, I thought most of the television shows were poor to terrible.

There seemed to be too much emphasis on recent commercial music and not enough from our historical past. I think it would have been better to play music that some of us associate with our military and periods of time when our Nation faced its greatest challenges.

It would have been nice to hear some songs from our Civil War that help define us as a nation. Songs like “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Dixie,” and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” would have worked for me and honored our members of the armed forces.

I guess some people have forgotten that we fought a war for independence.

I planned to watch the Boston Pops Symphony 4th of July broadcast because I can remember how good I felt when I watched it in the past. Arthur Fiedler was the long time conductor and he was a masterful showman and always brought a tear to my eye with his programs.

Their signature piece was the concluding selection which was the “1812 Overture with Cannon.” As a former gunnery officer, I could appreciate the use of cannon, the way the piece was originally written. Yes, I know the “1812 Overture” was written to celebrate Napoleon’s defeat at Moscow in the Winter of 1812. It still worked for me.

The show I saw was over produced and commercialized more than necessary by CBS. They managed to play “I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy” twice but missed out on playing our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Rather odd.

Maybe Boston is no longer part of the United States or CBS is no a foreign company.

I suppose I am rapidly becoming a grumpy old man now.

Maybe patriotism has become passé and I missed out on that email.

I suppose I am rapidly becoming a grumpy old man now.

Our nation is at war now; we have young men and women dying in a foreign land. We ought to be able to play some music that celebrates them on the 4th of July.

I suppose I am rapidly becoming a grumpy old man now.


Time for me to go. I hope you all have a great weekend.

Be well and stay happy.