Taking It Easy (Sort of)

So, after slogging through the past couple of weeks, my team at work has finished its latest milestone. I got a cold last weekend and worked through most of the last week with a lousy fever. Now that things have settled down a bit, Noelle and I are enjoying the company shutdown by traveling through the Pacific Northwest, which is a trip I've always wanted to do. Tonight we're staying at a B&B in Eureka, CA, just down the road from where I proposed 15 months ago. Tomorrow we'll head to Crater Lake in Oregon. The next night is in Portland, followed by a stay in Seattle. Then a couple nights in Vancouver, BC. Heading back home we'll visit some friends in the Seattle area after making a return trip though Vancouver Island. Then another night in Portland and a long, long drive home to the Bay Area.

So, it doesn't sound terribly restful, but hopefully lots of fun! It'll be nice to get out of the Bay Area which appears to be trying to melt at present.

Uh, Wut?

Why is it that when I go to see the lyrics for the song Bliss by Muse, there's an informative ad on the page from Gillette on how to "make the tree taller by shaving the bush?" Is it because the name is Bliss? Am I missing something? (Oh, there's an ad for Ecstasy, a product from Trojan, there as well.)

And do people really do that? (That's a rhetorical question, kids, in case you're wondering.)

Istanbul Honeymoon Photos Posted

(click to go to set)

After much travail, I have finally pushed through the first set of pictures from our honeymoon. These are taken mostly in Istanbul. About half are annotated at present, so more annotations will be forthcoming shortly. Now just ten days of photos in Greece. <sigh>

Guitar Hero Aerosmith

So, I like GHA so far, but it has this thing where when you're playing Aerosmith songs, it puts this pattern down on the fret board and I frequently have a hard time seeing the yellow notes on top of the yellow background. Who thought that was a great idea?

Brutal Legend

I wasn't sure if this game was going to see the light of day, but EA is saying October. We'll see.

iTunes Time Travel

Whoa, my iTunes just went on a trip back to 2003. First I get the live version of "The Great Below" by NIN (wish I could have heard that live one more time), followed up by Darts from System of A Down. Weird.


Arise, as did the gods Ninti
Arise, as did the gods Ninti
Arise, as did the gods Ninti,
And Ishkur, Ishkur, motherfucker!

Ok, back to 2009...

Air France Crash

When I heard that an Air France plane had disappeared in the southern atlantic, I thought maybe The Island was in the Atlantic, not the Pacific.

Up

When not helping Esther move into her new house (which is beautiful and up in the hills, btw) I managed to get out to see a couple new movies, one of which was Up, the latest Pixar venture. The story of an elderly man who in his waning days decides to go on the adventure he'd always planned as a younger man, but never did. In a most unorthodox way. Ad Asner is the grumpy old man (real stretch there) and Christopher Plummer also appears as the Bad Guy. As one might expect from a Pixar movie, it looked great and was well written. While not my favorite Pixar movie, it's up there. So to speak.

Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell = Evil Dead - Ash + Mira Sorvino clone + gypsy curse + lots of bodily fluids + Mac + Modern special effects.
I saw the trailer and thought this movie looked unbelievably cheesy, then found out it was a Sam Raimi film. I was entertained. If you're expecting something serious, go elsewhere. Not Army of Darkness or even Evil Dead 2, but still fun.

Back From Utah

(more pictures to follow RSN)

Well, Noelle and I survived our trip to Bryce Canyon. We drove out and back in five days, which was a little extreme, but manageable. We stopped over at the Ritz in Las Vegas on the way out which meant we were fairly rested, which helped out immensely. The weather was funny there: clear as a bell at sunrise, followed by rain and occasionally thunder in the afternoon. Kinda put a damper on sunset pictures, but oh well. Besides wandering the length of the canyon, we visited Kodachrome Basin State Park, Escalante Grand Staircase, and on our way out we drove through the bottom of Zion National Park. Zion is beautiful, I look forward to returning. The road we took through the Burr trail in Escalante was also beautiful, very much like I remember Arches a few years ago. We also saw rainbows on the alien terrain of scenic Hwy 12 (it really is!). It was nice to get back though.