Kirk's Knook

DVD Update - January 2012

2012-01-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

JANUARY 2012 - DVD UPDATE

For January it looks like I just have two DVDs and I didn't spend a single dime on them. I got them from a "yankee" gift exchange party.

Leatherheads (2008)

I've only seen bits and pieces of this movie. It is one of those dramatic "feel good" sports movies where a group of ragtag players end up beating the odds and making history. I'm not sure if this is based on a specific historical events or just based on the early days of football in general.

Time Bandits (1981)

This is a comedy/adventure classic from the demented directing of Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. I forget how many times I've seen this film the basic story is about a 10 year old boy who gets mixed up with a band of time traveling thieving dwarfs who have stolen a cosmic map from the Supreme Being (aka: God) to collect historical wealth.

Book Update: December 2011 Books

2012-01-23T17:00:00.000-05:00

DECEMBER 2011 BOOKS

I got a bunch of books back in December pretty much all of them were through Ebay. I even got two editions of the same book (originally for the different covers). I noticed after I received the second one that in addition to the title being switched a bit there was a chapter that had been updated/changed with the second edition. So cool and all that for double dipping that one.

Doctor Who: The Stone Rose

As I mentioned last month (Book Update: November Books) this book Doctor Who: The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner was on order and due to arrive in December which it did. I also mentioned that it is for the Sci-Fi Adventure Book Club I belong to at Goodreads. We start reading then discussing this book in March (September is another Doctor Who book).

Doctor Who Annual 1978

For who knows how many years World Distributors LTD has been cranking out hardcover annuals for Doctor Who. In the UK the tradition of Annuals for TV shows is very popular, even when shows end up getting cancelled after only one year (and thus one annual).

Doctor Who Annual 1981

Lookie another Doctor Who Annual from World Distributors LTD. This one I noticed is highlighted as an example of the different editions WD LTD publishes. They produce a local UK edition that gets branded with the year on the front cover and spine and also on the title page inside, plus a unit price is put in the corner on the title page. They also make an international version that doesn't have the unit price on the cover page and doesn't have the year printed on the outside cover. I noticed I have the international version.

Peter Pauper's Pun Book

Just a Pun little book published in 1962 edited by Robert Margolin. The Peter Pauper Press also printed another little Pun book I think with the title "The Liitle Pun Book" with a red cover I'm certain that my family had a copy of I think we also had a copy of this pun book as well, but I'm not 100% sure.

Between A Heart And A Rock Place

This is the autobiography of Pat Benatar. As a Benatar fan I had to get this. Somewhere I've got the only other two books on Pat Benatar that had been published. I'm not sure exactly where those are right now.

NCIS Series by Mel Odom

These next three books are part of a series of books that follow a team of NCIS agents. The series is not associated with the TV show in anyway. I do think that the show inspired the author Mel Odom to write these books. Odom apparently has military background and according to his bio on the back cover he has a background in forensic science. The books are published by Tyndale House Publisher's Inc. which specializes in Christian Fiction.

Paid In Blood (NCIS Series #1)

In this first NCIS book by Mel Odom we meet a team of NCIS agents who are based out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Most of the characters had military careers before transferring to NCIS. The team leader Will Coburn has to balance family problems with his workload. The team has to track down terrorists who are into smuggling not only drugs but nuclear weapons. This book does tend to get a bit preachy, more so than the second book in the series does so far (I'm about 40% though reading the second book at the time of posting this). I enjoyed this book even though it had nothing to do with the NCIS TV show. The only thing I didn't like about it seems to be a common complaint of it being a bit too preachy.

Blood Evidence (NCIS Series #2)

So far this second NCIS book is just as good as the first and it isn't as preachy as the first one was, but does have a little bit of the characters thanking God and praying for stuff. This time the team is involved in the reopening of a case of a murdered 16 year old girl whose mother is a Naval Officer and stepfather is now a big political figure on the rise. At the time of this posting I haven't finished reading this one yet.

Blood Lines (NCIS Series #3)

The third book in the NCIS series. I don't know much about the plot to this one yet I'll find out soon enough when I start reading it.

City Of The Dead (Seven Wonders Novel 2)

This is the second book in the Seven Wonders Series of books by T.L. Higley. This one takes place in ancient Egypt and centers around the main architect for the Great Pyramid of Giza. It is a first person narration which at first annoyed me some but I got used to it as I read through it. Even though I had heard this book is Christian Fiction it doesn't seem like it. The closest it seemed to get is when they talk about a group of people that are of the one and talk about one god. To me that didn't seem preachy but it could be considered a veil to Christianity, except that the time this story takes place these people would most likely be Jews.

The Hardy Boys And Nancy Drew

This is one of those "old" books by Scholastic Books Published in 1977 this book tells some of the behind the scenes of the television series of The Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew Spin-Off Series.

Nancy Drew And The Hardy Boys

This is the same book as the book above except that the chapter on the actress playing Nancy Drew has been updated changed. It also has a different cover. It also was printed in 1977.

A Pound Of Paper: Confessions Of A Book Addict

This book by John Baxter is simply one man's journey of book collecting. I am currently only a little less than 20% though reading this book. It tends to get a bit slow, especially when he goes on a tangent about a certain author or a book seller or collector.

The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook

This is one I had as a kid and I'm pretty sure I read it at that time. It was one of the "hand-me-down" books from my brother(s). I recall they had 20some Hardy Boy books and when I started getting into them I added about 10 more or so to the collection. I think the originals from the collection went with my brother and his wife ages ago. I decided recently to try to rebuild a collection of them. More Hardy Boys fun for January. Anyway this book is more sort of a reference type book that tells how some aspects of police business is handled or was handled back in the late 50s early 60s. There have been a few updates over the years I think I also had the 1974 edition of this book at one time.

DVD Update (November and December 2011)

2012-01-22T03:47:00.000-05:00

UPDATES for NOVEMBER and DECEMBER 2011

Wow! I noticed I had forgotten to mention my November DVDs when getting ready for this update that was supposed to be just for December UGH. I probably won't do much more than mention the titles since there are quite a few for November, not so many for December. Sorry due to the volume of November discs I will not add the covers, maybe I'll get back to doing that for my January list.

NOVEMBER 2011 Discs

Casper
Captain America: The First Avenger
Doctor Who: The Movie R1 (double dip Ialready had the R2 Version)
Green Lantern
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Forbidden Planet (50 Anniversary Edition)

Doctor Who: The Five Doctors 25th Anniversary Edition (Another double dip I have the regular old release with just the DVD update version, this has the original broadcast version and the DVD update version)

DECEMBER 2011 Discs

The Smurfs (2011)
The Incredible Hulk (3 Disc Special Edition)
Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
V: The Complete Second Season - This is the 2009 reboot series. Unfortunately the 2nd season was the final season for it and I hear the ending was left hanging. Dag nabit.

New Year's Eve 2011

2011-12-31T22:08:00.000-05:00

Another year in the books bye-bye 2011 and hello 2012. I'm not one to make new year's resolutions mostly because I would never write them down and after a few weeks forget what it was I was going to try to do or not to do for the year. I guess I do have some ongoing resolutions though: Get better organized, try to keep up with all the various intenety things I do (yeah like that one will happen).

Soon I will post up the December DVDs and Books. I got a ton of books in December. I went Ebay shopping happy. I was going to try to do those tonight for the last entry/entries for the year but fell a bit behind in planning things. OH well "the best laid plans of mice and men".

UPDATE: Internet Annoyances

2011-11-30T21:58:00.001-05:00

Final Update for The Internet's Little Annoyances Now the dreaded blue bar is gone. Must have been a temporary glitch. Hopefully it wasn't a virus.

UPDATE: 02 Dec 2011: I spoke TOO Soon the dame thing is back. CRAP! I hate when webservices make changes without giving advanced notice they are making a change. Stupid mofos.

UPDATE: 03 Dec 2011: FINALLY Found a sollution. Had to add some "filters" to my Adblock Plus:How to Hide blue "Click here to start sharing Google+" bar Fenistil's 3 filter solution worked. The "LOG INTO" Google solution didn't as I was already in Google when I noticed the damn thing.

Book Update: November Books

2011-11-30T17:00:00.014-05:00

NOVEMBER 2011 BOOKS

Not much this month. I did get another book from the MLB Insiders Club I have to double check to see the title I think it was "Greatest Rivalries" or something of that nature. I'm not really concerned about that right now. Anyway the bulk of what I got I found at decent prices on Ebay since I haven't been to a proper bookstore lately and the ones I've dashed in didn't have these books when I looked.

STAR TREK (2009)

First up the Novel version of the most recent Star Trek Movie (2009) by Alan Dean Foster. His adaptations of stories for films are usually pretty good. I hadn't planned on getting this book but it is the first book to read for a sci-fi book club I joined at goodreads.com. The schedule for this group as it stands right now seems to be that every other month we will read a book and discuss it while reading it. I think the wide birth of reading time is to give people time to pick up the next book to be discussed.

WAREHOUSE 13: A TOUCH OF FEVER

Next up is the first book based on the Sci-Fi Channel hit show Warehouse 13. Hopefully there will be many more books in this series. This one Warehouse 13: A Touch of Fever by Greg Cox sounds interesting but I'll find out when I read it if it is an exciting enough story to start a book series with. Who knows.

Incoming:

DOCTOR WHO: THE STONE ROSE

Speaking of "Who" this final one is a more recent Doctor Who book with the David Tennant Doctor (#10). Another book I'm getting via Ebay due to arrive in early December Doctor Who: The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner. It is the second book for my goodreads sci-fi book club which we don't start reading till March. I'm not sure if I can wait that long. The companion for this story is Rose Tyler.

The internet's little annoyances.

2011-11-29T23:32:00.001-05:00

ARGH! Don't you just hate when a website, service or browser you have used forever makes a sudden unannounced change that you can't opt out of?

Take the latest annoyance from Google.

I am talking about the blue bar with this blue bar:

As far as I can tell there is no way to remove the advertising blue bar that wants you to start using Google Plus and ignore anything you are enjoying with the standard Google. Once you start using the regular Google search the thing goes away until you click refresh, or in my case go back to your browser's home page because I have Google set as my Home page.

I use the latest version of Firefox with AdBlock Plus and that doesn't hide the dang thing yet, that I know of.

When will the programers for major internet programs/applications realize that making sudden unannounced changes with no opt out feature really pisses of your customers/users?

UPDATE: Weird my machine at work doesn't show the bar. I thought I had the same settings for both home and work 'puters. Maybe the extra security blockers that my company's firewalls block out have something to do with it. More likely it hasn't hit my work computer yet.

Need to catch up on Book Reviews

2011-11-27T00:14:00.000-05:00

I have really fallen behind in my book reviewing. I have 13 books that I have read over the last year and a half (closer to almost two years) that I have not written a "recent read" for. I am trying to catch up on that the next two I have the drafts set up with the book cover image and the publication history info I like to include at the end but I don't have the book quote or the actual review written. So technically the next several reviews will not be "a recent read". Maybe I should do away with the "recent" bit and not bother with numbering my reviews... I might do that when it hits #20. I don't want to have juggle with two review lists the other one would be something like "a classic read" or "a not so recent read" but I'm sure I would soon get confused and also confuse anyone who bothers reading my reviews.

So I will probably just have to title the future reviews as whatever the book title is plus "review" and forget about being anal retentive with numbers.

DVD Update - August thru October

2011-10-31T23:49:00.000-04:00

AUGUST - OCTOBER 2011

It has been many many moons since I've updated any of this blog, ACK the last few minutes of October are passing me by. This update has just August and September DVD purchases since I didn't get any in October, although I do have a couple of discs in transit from Columbia House.

NOTE: At the time I started working on this post my Amazon Associates link thing wasn't working properly so I couldn't add the links I wanted to, perhaps I'll have to edit later to improve this entry.

Source Code

First up in August I went to Target and got a DVD that I had forgotten I also had on order from Columbia House. It was the Sci-Fi Action Time-Loop movie Source Code. It is a blind buy. The first thing about the film from the trailers I've seen is the main plot of having to go back into the past just before some tragic event and try to make it right, re-doing it if you fail. Sort of along the lines of the 90s TV Show Seven Days.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Moving back a little further through time we have the Third installment of The Mummy Franchise The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I haven't watched my DVD of it yet but I have seen the flick. Got this from Columbia House.

The Jerk: 26th Anniversary Edition

This Classic Steve Martin comedy I got for real cheap at one of my local Safeway stores. Excellent comedy with the classy Bernadette Peters. They worked well together, too bad it was only because they were dating at the time.

Termination Point

A sight unseen very B-grade Sci-fi Time Travel movie. Perhaps straight to DVD starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Jason Priestley. Again a very cheap purchase from Safeway.

National Lampoon's Pucked

Yet again a Safeway sight unseen B-Grader this time a Sophomore or perhaps Freshman comedy from National Lampoon called Pucked looks like a parody of high-school Hockey flicks with a girls team. These movies can be very Hit or Miss.

That was the August fair next the two September Flicks I got.

Thor

First up from Columbia House as the Director's Choice of the Month pick one of the latest Superhero flicks from Marvel Comics Thor. Looks to be 10 times better than that Hulk vs. Thor Made for TV movie from the late 1980s.

Zulu

The last entry was a DVD I got from one of my friends so it was a Freebie. He upgraded to Blu-Ray so he gave me this copy. This historical action Classic starring Micheal Caine might make one want to chant weird things.

Marlins change name in 2012 (sort of)

2011-09-30T18:30:00.001-04:00

Just a quickie. Next season the Florida Marlins will become the Miami Marlins. Technically the name changes on 11 November.

I wonder could this be their new logo?

It's Almost like 2005 all over again!

2011-09-29T23:30:00.003-04:00

The Washington Nationals finished the 2011 MLB season in a pretty good state. Since moving to DC and becoming the Nationals the Ex-Montreal Expos have never had a winning season. In their inaugural season of 2005 the team was at an even .500 with 81 wins 81 losses. The franchise's last winning season was 2003 when they went 83-79 and were in 4th place in their division. The year before 2002 they had the same winning record 83-79 but landed second place. You have to go back to 1969 with the Washington Senators (the franchise that would become the Texas Rangers in 1972) to have a winning season in Washington Baseball they went 86-76 finishing in 4th place.

Since being in DC the team has usually finished in last place (5th in the NL East) well 2011 the Nats had their second best season of 80-81 just one game under .500. They had a rained out home game with the Los Angeles Dodgers so they could have been 81-81 the way they had been going this season, or they could have been 80-82 two games under .500. Oh and they finished 2011 in 3rd place just 3 games over the NY Mets and 8 over the Florida Marlins (who will be the Miami Marlins next season, actually their name will change this November 11). They were .500 in the division at 36-36 and had a winning Home record with 44-36

So 2012 should be a pretty good season for the Nats. Watch out National League East the Nats are beginning to be contenders and not pretenders.

July DVD Update

2011-08-01T18:00:00.003-04:00

Here is my DVD Update for the month of July.

These first three DVDs were ordered in late June. Two were released on the 28th but Columbia House didn't ship until the 30th the last day. The other one was released on 21 June and was my Columbia House Director's Choice for July. It arrived on the first of July.

The Adjustment Bureau: From the previews of this it seems like a sort of Inception meets Dark City sort of movie. I generally don't go for Matt Damon adventure movies but this one looked like it would be pretty good and it has some nice eye candy in Emily Blunt.

Warehouse 13: This is season two of the show. It introduces the character Helena Wells AKA: H.G. Wells as a bad character who redeems herself later on, or tries to.

Sucker Punch: I think this movie is based on anime characters or a video game of some kind? Not sure, but I really liked the previews when I first saw them.

Blazing Saddles: 30th Anniversary Special Edition: Classic Mel Brooks. Classic Gene Wilder. What else could you want? Actually I'll have to find a comparison of this edition to some of the others. I might have to dubble dip.

July Books Update

2011-07-31T12:00:00.032-04:00

Here are the books I got in July. This first batch I almost thought about making it's own little post since they are from the same series. I still might have to do a special posting on this series sometime. Anyway on with what I've gotten during the month of July.

These first four books are from the series of sci-fi books based on the early 1980s television series "V" which fans know is about a race of reptilian aliens who disguise themselves as being more humanoid. They pretended to come in peace but really wanted to conquer and take all our water and resources. I didn't know it at the time but after about a year or so the series of books switched from being published by Pinnacle Books (the same US publishers who published a 10 book series of Doctor Who Novels from televised stories) for the first 11 books to being published by TOR Books (the folks who published the popular Fantasy series Gor by John Norman) for the final 5 books + the new novelization of the original story (of the original mini-series and "Final Battle" mini-series in one book) re-edited to tie into the "Second Generation" which is the novelization setting up the reboot television series. With the change in publisher I noticed a slight change in the cover designs. The Original Pinnacle books have the book title and author's name at the bottom, while the TOR books have the author's name and book title at the top of the cover.

The Crivit Experiment by Allen Wold. When I first saw the author's name I thought it was weird (my contacts were not focused right) that someone would use the pen name Alien World. Silly me.

Path To Conquest by Howard Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein might be more well known for his involvement of Star Trek novels and Trek Conventions.

Below The Threshold by Allen Wold. There is that Alien World guy again.

Symphony Of Terror by Somtow Sucharitkul. This is this author's second V series book the first one I already have (but haven't read) was called The Alien Swordmaster. From the synopsis on the back of this one it looks like the author is once again pulling from his Thia heritage since there is a Ninja in this one.

I found a nice cover gallery on a website for these books plus the UK versions of the books which I think I will try to pursue sometime. www.tonystrading.co.uk V Books Gallery The only thing they don't show is the very original green cover to the book "The Pursuit of Diana" I think that was only a hardback version. They even have the "Annuals" that were published in the UK (they do that thing over there). I have the 1986 one.

Switch to another genre completely.

MLB Insiders Club

I got another installment from the MLB Insiders Club Book Library. The series that is like those Time-Life series that have 20-30 books or more and you get one book every 6 weeks or so for about $20-$30 or whatever they charge. This latest book is "Inside The All-Star Game". I get a little frustrated with these books and the occasional DVDs the MLBIC sends me because they are never in any database of known books or DVDs in the collection tracking sites I use. So sorry there is no picture of the books cover. I don't think I'll get a chance to scan mine in before I post this at the end of the month.

Next up to Bat:

Safe At Home: Confessions of a Baseball Fanatic by Alyssa Milano.This is sort of an autobiography mixed in with a fangirl's ravings of her fave team and the sport that she learned to love because of her father.

June DVD Update

2011-07-01T00:30:00.057-04:00

OK Time for the DVD stuff I got in June Starting with some Doctor Who DVDs I hinted at in the May report that I technically ordered and paid for via Paypal on 30 May. They came in on Thursday 02 June, but I couldn't pick them up from the post office til Saturday 04 June.

Doctor Who: Dreamland This is the second Animated Doctor Who DVD that I know about and have. (The first one is Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest with Martha Jones as the companion) Both animated adventures were shown on TV in the UK but not here in the States. This adventure though has two new companions not in the television series, they are one time companions or "one-offs" I suppose (I still prefer to say "one-of"). I have watched this one and it is a fun watch. The animation is computer generated and is a little choppy and jumpy in some spots but once I got into the story I hardly noticed the problems with using computer animation. This DVD has a bonus disc that contains the 2009 mini-series Doctor Who Greatest Moments. I'm not sure if this has been shown on US television or not. BBCAmerica has shown the occasional Doctor Who Mini-Series or inserts the interview clips from these things (Doctor Who Confidential - the extra bits they put on some of the DVDs) so often I can't keep track of which have been shown.

Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol This is the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special. Yes it is based on the Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" story. It is not bad, it is very enjoyable even if a little predictable.The producers of Doctor Who probably at the fan's requests have wanted to do a Doctor Who Christmas Carol for many years.

Doctor Who: The Complete Specials This is what should have been Series 5 (Season 5 for Americans who get confused by the use of the word series) of the Doctor Who reboot series. It is the final DW "series" for actor David Tennant as The Doctor (he makes a cameo in the next DVD I got).

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Third Season As I hinted at above for the specials DVD this DVD has The Doctor show up to help out Sarah Jane Smith.

Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series Season 5 of Doctor Who the first season with Matt Smith in the title role will Karen Gillan as his traveling companion Amy Pond.

Star Trek: The Animated Series Before there was The Next Generation and a few years before The Motion Picture there was an animated series of Star Trek with the Classic Original Crew (TOS - The Original Series). The cartoon series lasted 2 seasons "finishing" the original five year mission of the USS Enterprise.

Highlander: The Source I haven't yet watched this movie so I forget if it is a prequel or series ending sequel for The Highlander Franchise.

Highlander: The Complete Animated Series I vaguely recall seeing an episode or two of this series on afternoon television. I don't recall if it was a weekday when I was off of work or on a Saturday afternoon. It might have been a Saturday morning.

On an outing to Target I picked up a couple of animated (well one of them is live-action with CGI animation) discs.

Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel I've got the first one might as well get the second one. Need to watch them.

Hey There, It's Yogi Bear! Hard to believe that this was the First full length movie for Hanna-Barbera. I haven't seen this in it's entirety for ages. I've seen a few clips here and there but not the full thing.

Well that is if for the June DVD's close to my biggest month of 13 DVDs August of 2009.

Some books recently bought June Edition

2011-06-24T12:00:00.002-04:00

I've got some books that I recently read that I have to sit down and write reviews for, they are making a nice little pile for me to think about. This post is not about that. It is about a few books I recently got, most of them from Quality Paperback Book Club. Two of them were kids books of those two one of them I had as a kid the other one is a recently published one.

So the kids books I got (wow this one I got at the end of April.)

When I Grow Up by Al Yankovic
Yep that book was written by "Weird Al" Yankovic the parody musician. This is his first attempt at kids books and it is pretty good. It has that strange wacky humor of Al's so you know he wrote it, or someone was channeling the spirit of Shel Silverstein (and cleaned it up). Somewhere online there is an interactive version of the book that you can purchase or download. I haven't tried that although I thought about it.

Next a book I had, or rather my family had, when I was a kid. I think it was eventually either handed down to my nephew (who is now 24), given away or donated. But the version I got is a special anniversary edition of the book. I figured "Why Not?". Um it was actually May when I got this one. (So much for this being only books I got in June).

The Story of Ferdinand: 75th Anniversary Edition by Munro Leaf
As I said my family had this book when I was growing up. Like many of the books in our family library from my childhood this book was probably a 1950s or 1960s edition. I don't know how many times I read it or had it read to me. I think the original copy we had may have been defaced with crayon by either the 5 year old me or one of my older siblings at that age. Aren't most kids books defaced by the kids at a young age? Who then in their Adult life find the childhood memories in a trunk in mom's attic or basement when they are moving out for the final time or many years later when they are packing up the estate.

Growing up in the suburbs of Washington DC, in the small city/town of Wheaton, MD there was an Italian restaurant that was named "Ferdinand's". They had excellent food, and a fantastic salad bar. The restaurant was family owned and seemed like it would last forever, even though many times there would be barely a soul in the place. Sadly they closed down a few years ago.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

This is the third book in the Robert Langdon series by Dan Brown. I haven't had a chance to read this one yet. I'm sure if they are making a movie of it I will read it before seeing the movie as I did with the previous books from this series. I'm not sure what the full synopsis of this story is at the time of this writing (I plan on starting it soon after composing this post). All I know is with the picture of the Capital on the cover and from the first stirrings I recall from hearing about this book some of it takes place in Washington DC.

And Another Thing... (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
by Eoin Colfer
This book is on my list of books to read (although I haven't added it to my goodreads list yet. So I don't know when I got it exactly.) It is sort of officially unofficially the sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams, except it's written by Eoin Colfer the author of the Artemis Fowl series. I plan on re-reading the first five books of the H2G2 series before starting this one to get back to wherever it is that Arthur Dent has gotten to since then.

Another Google Verification word.

2011-06-10T17:00:00.003-04:00

"Hunes"

Every once in a while something you read in another blog will stir up your own creative juices, or just plain remind you of something you did a while back. This is one of those times when I read a blog and it reminded me that it was something I do every once in a while myself.

Adam (aka: Spankee) who writes the trading card blog "My Cardboard Mistress" reminded me of this word verification game on his post "Word Verification Fun". For those of you not familiar with this when you go to post a comment to someone's blog at blogger.com or one of the other Yahoo/Google owned blogging networks you get a nonsense word to verify to make sure you are making a legitimate comment and are not planning on sending that person spam, or trying to steal someone else's identity. I've played that word game a couple of times on this blog and now I am doing it yet again. Some people would say it is something to do when you are board. I say it is fun and if the word is strange enough it stimulates the imagination and you can come up with some very interesting things sometimes.

Here is my comment I made in response to his post. The word I got for it was "hunes".

"Yes that is fun. A couple of times when I couldn't think of anything to say on my regular blog I did that here is a link to those times:
http://klandersen.blogspot.com/search/label/Yahoo

Hmm for this post I have a boring "hunes" guess that is the lesser known sand dunes on the outskirts of Hollywood. Or hey I came up with a more interesting one. Songs that have no real words like the Crash Test Dummies "Mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm" song.

Thanks for this post I'm going to save my comment here and make a post out of it myself since I thought of an interesting definition for my word right now. "


Crash-Test Dummies and "Weird Al" Yankovic

Whenever I think of that Crash Test Dummies song I always picture "Weird Al" Yankovic with his parody of that song "Headline News". So there you have it folks a game you can play with junior and all the kids. While reading and responding to a few other blogs I got the following words:

inglo - Hmmm I guess that is a trendy ice made hut on the Alaskan Tundra.

I also got the cousin of one of Rowan Atkinson's television characters. The word was "Adder" yes it was in green lettering so it was The Green Adder.

Upgrade to website

2011-06-06T08:30:00.001-04:00

After what seems like ages tweaking and trying to figure out new ways of doing things I finally got some of my upgraded pages on to my website klandersen.com.The upgrades/changes are not anywhere near complete but I at least have a majority of the main pages updated to my new CSS style look.

One of the biggest problems I've had recently is trying to remember where some of my images are tucked away if I don't have them on my website or on my thumb drive that I use to keep my current working files for my site. I also noticed that many of my links to anything I used the old Geocities technique of just needing the file or page name, without the rest of the website URL so there are many places where I wanted an image that I don't have one right now. For some reason some of these the latest version of Firefox (4.0) ignores images it can't find so the page doesn't show a space for it. ACK!

DVDs From May

2011-06-05T00:05:00.023-04:00

OK so I only got a couple (literally) DVDs in the merry merry month of May.

The Green Hornet

I got The Green Hornet from Columbia House it was the "Director's Choice" for May I think (or was it for April)?

Bitch Slap (Unrated)

This second DVD (Bitch Slap) I got for some of the actors that are in this. Most of the main cast members from the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess - Kevin Sorbo, Lucy Lawless, Michael Hurst, Renee O' Connor and Ted Raimi have supporting roles in this film. I think most of them are small cameos or supporting roles that many movie watchers consider "small roles" or "unimportant" roles.

I just got some Doctor Who DVDs but those I'll mention for my June DVDs Update. Technically I ordered and paid for them in May (Monday 30 May) from Who North America. The post office attempted delivery on Thursday 02 June. Today (Saturday 04 June) I picked up the order. I also ordered some stuff from Columbia House again. A couple of those were pre-orders that are being released at the end of this month so those two might have to wait til my July Update.

DVD catchup (2011 DVDS)

2011-05-15T05:10:00.007-04:00

Wow I thought I had mentioned something along these lines back in February or March but I haven't mentioned my recent DVDs from ANY of 2011. So here is what I have gotten up till April. I will try to update once a month unless I don't get any, then I occasionally slip up and forget the next month or two.

So here is the breakdown for February through April 2011.

FEBRUARY

Extreme Days

Evil Alien conquerors

Despicable Me

MARCH

Red

APRIL

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Primeval: Volume Two

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Salt (Deluxe Unrated Edition)

That is about it for that. I will have at least one title for the May Edition in a few weeks.

A Recent Read Number 17

2011-04-01T01:30:00.009-04:00

"Again Langdon forced himself to consider the implausible. If the Illuminati were still alive, and if they stole the anti-matter, what would be their intention? What would be their target?"

NOTE: This review may contain SPOILERS.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. I'm getting to this review very late. I read this book around December '09 to January '10. After reading it I re-watched the movie adaption of The Da Vinci Code and watched the movie of this book (I will probably point out the differences as I go along). Chronologically this book was written before The Da Vinci Code but the movies were released in reverse order and the Da Vinci Code movie claims that adventure as the main character Robert Langdon's first mystery case. That forced the producers of the movie to act as if this adventure came later.

The mystery begins with the murder of a physicist working with anti-matter experiments at the CERN (Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire AKA: European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland home of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Left by the body is an ambigram (an artistic depiction of a word to make it read the same way from another angle usually upside down) depicting the word Illuminati. The main character Robert Langdon is brought in because he is an expert in symbology. An odd and grisly fact about the murder is one of the scientists eyes was removed. The reason is soon discovered a container holding a piece of anti-matter was stolen from a lab that had a sophisticated retina reading security system. The big problem is the anti-matter has to be contained in a certain way, without this containment it becomes a bomb with a set time to explode, unless it is returned to it's containment system. Only two people had access from the secure lab the murdered scientist and his partner/daughter. Of course Langdon falls in love with Vittoria Vetra.The movie version changes the murder victim to being an assistant of Vittoria The movie also changed some of the other character's personalities around, making one of the characters I didn't like in the book likable in the movie.

The main goal of this adventure is to get back the anti-matter before is explodes In the meantime the Pope has recently passed away and the Vatican is in the process of electing a new Pope. One big problem the main candidates for the Papacy turn up missing. It is made known that the Illuminati are indeed alive and are responsible for the disappearance of the main candidates. Soon they start showing up dead. Langdon now has to not only race against the clock to keep the bomb from exploding but he has to help find the missing cardinals before all of them end up dead.

Like The Da Vinci Code this book digs deep into Catholic traditions and culture. It also gives some very vivid descriptions of areas of Rome and the Vatican. As part of his investigation Langdon has to gain access to the Vatican's Library vaults to research the Illuminati and follow all the clues to finding the cardinals in time. As with the other book it has a nice fast pace to it and was difficult to put down.

As I said I read this book before seeing the film version I am glad I did because it helped to understand somethings about the movie, but as I said they did make changes to some things. It is always interesting to see a film adaptation of a book you have read. There were a few scenes in the movie that were completely different from what I had envisioned while reading the book. I think a few of them could have been done the way I imagined, but one or two of them couldn't. The ones that I thought could have been done I was a little disappointed with how the movie handled them. Oh Well.

My review of The Da Vinci Code.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown 2000 (2006) Pocket Books 710 pages. - ****

March Madness to April Fools.

2011-03-31T23:59:00.002-04:00

I am preparing a book review of a book I read a little over a year ago. I am just squeezing this post in at the end of March. As I type this post it is approaching and passing Midnight on 31 March to 01 April, 2011. So although technically it is starting in March it is ending in April. I will still count it as a March entry and I think Blogger has it marked as March. (If not I can fudgit the posting time slightly and it I won't feel like I'm cheating too much.) OK so technically it was posted in April, but when I previewed it the post time said 11:59 on 31 March so I'm adjusting it to that.

Five Year Anniversary!

2011-02-20T05:46:00.015-05:00

Hey you know what today is?

Yes that's right it is the 5th Anniversary of me starting this Blog. And there was much rejoicing. "yay!"

~Nuff Said!

I synced up this post with the time of my first original post...5:46 AM!
AM?
AM?
AM I CRAZY?

Oh wait it was President's Day I was off of work for the holiday. Silly me.

December DVDs and a CD

2011-01-31T00:35:00.000-05:00

I was going to post this back in December when I only had gotten 3 DVDs but I got 6 during the month. Some months I'd have many times that anyway First I had gotten my second DVD from the MLB Insiders Club. Plus a surprise. This one was not $10 as the first one was. I was sucker fished into a $30 ($29.98) "Major League Baseball: Memorable Moments". As with the previous DVD this one is a repackaged disc which of course No websites have good large scans of, not even the MLB Insiders Club Website shows any of the DVD covers. UGH.

Next my order from the Quality Paperback Book Club came through. I got a double dip of "Sex And The City 2" so I can compare the standard issue with the Target Exclusive version. Also so I could have a cover that has Kristin Davis and Kim Cattrall on the cover not just SJP (or actually a semi-look-a-like in wearing shades to cover the fact it's a stand in)

Then I got the Complete First Season of the 2009 "V" Reboot series. Now I can compare it to the original 1980s series.

Through Columbia House I got the Leonardo Dicaprio movie Inception.

The Movie version of the 1980s smash TV show The A-Team (2010) from Target. It was enjoyable, pretty good they didn't mess it up too much.

Also from Target I got "Family Guy: It's A Trap" the third Star Wars Movie Parody. They probably won't do parodies of the prequels.

In the music department I got a couple of CDs of Jen Chapin, Harry's Daughter her 2004 album "Linger". Proceeds of the album go to World Hunger Year (WHY) and her 2006 release "Ready". From the samples of her stuff I've heard online she is really folky, following pretty much in her dad's footsteps.

I also got Paula Cole "This Fire".

[I might get around to adding some cover images of these things sometime later, maybe maybe not]

FINALLY!

2010-12-30T19:06:00.002-05:00

Hey they finally did it. Now Netflix accepts payments through Paypal. It's about Time!

I restarted my account, I had to build a new queue since my old one was older than 5 years old or so. Weird when they used to ask me to restart before they accepted Paypal they would let me use my old queue. Guess they finally deleted that since they are pushing their "View INSTANTLY" download service. I also had to fiddle a bit with the "renewing" to "delete" my old credit card info and be able to choose Paypal payments. Now I have switched to the 2 movies out service instead of the full 3 movies out. That was a bit over the top. This way I can still have one to view while the other is in transit. Now to fiddle with my old excel file (which I have actually updated to keep track of purchases somewhat) and get some of those obscure titles back on.

Ron Santo Cubs Legend and Fan Favorite Dead at Age 70

2010-12-04T18:08:00.000-05:00

Ron Santo Banner from chicago.cubs.mlb.com

Sad News today. One of the Chicago Cubs Legendary and most loved by fans players passed way last night (Thursday 02 Dec). Ron Santo died of bladder cancer he was 70.

AP news story from msn.foxsports.com.

comics tracking.

2010-11-25T02:34:00.000-05:00

I haven't seriously collected comics for many years. Probably not since the late 1980s. I've got many boxes filled with comics most of which I want to eventually sell, giveaway or possibly trade. Anyway like with some of my other hobbies I figured there was probably some sort of online "collection tracker" site. I was right.

The first place I checked out I had found from some chat forum that was the result of something I had been looking for or possibly a sidetracked idea from an Ebay search. Anyway I found comicspriceguide.com.

It looked great. You can search your collection and it also gives price info on your issues. Great right? I noticed you can sign up for free, but there is also a higher level pay membership. The difference? I found out after I signed up that the difference is the free membership only allows you to list 50 titles the paid membership gives you unlimited space of course. The paid membership is something like $45/year or some silliness that I think is too expensive. UGH that is like the book site Library Thing, which is why I use Good Reads.

OK so then I found another site that looks a bit more promising for us cheap guys.
stashmycomics.com is also a free to use site. It has some forums, and it also has a way to find out the prices of your comics but it is not as accessible as the comicpriceguide prices were. There the prices are shown in the list view of your books, at stashmycomics you have to click on to the specific issue to get a full detailed page with pricing info. I think I can live with that even though the site title makes me think I'm hiding my collection from my mom in the basement.

October End of Month plus DVDs

2010-10-31T03:48:00.000-04:00

Well here it is the end of October and I'm getting this post in barely. My post count for this year will be at an all-time blog year low. Shoot!

Speaking of All-Time... A few weeks ago I got a package from the MLB Insiders Club of which I'm a member (I also paid a little extra to be a "Life-Time" member to get all the cool stuff) . I've been getting some of the books that they offer. You know the "Greatest hits of the century" Time-Life type of books. Inside the package was not a book but a DVD.

According to the back cover the special is an hour long of Major League Baseball All Century Team. This DVD apparently was first produced about 10 years ago from some of the images and info on it I found about it on the internet (DVDprofiler has the older version listed, but this version isn't in their database yet). For $10 bucks I figured what the heck?

Before I move on to the other DVDs I got this month I'll put in my .02¢ worth about the show I directed that is now closed.

Yes that's right I directed a production of the Neil Simon Play "The Odd Couple" for the Sandy Spring Theatre Group. The story of how two recently divorced men learn to cope with each other and their opposing life habits. The old slob vs. neat-freak story. The show was well received and everyone I talked to who saw it really enjoyed it. Most thought I had cast the show very well. As with all community theatre productions I made do with what I could find, and I was very fortunate with the actors I cast. 'Nuff Said on that for now.

Moving On back to the recent DVDs I got. On Saturday 30 October I went to Target and bought along with some pairs of pants for work and some jeans the following two DVDs.

"Predators" the latest installment from the sci-fi franchise about alien sport hunters. As with the Predator vs. Alien DVDs I got this one sight unseen. I'm confident that I will like this film even if it is terrible. I like the series.

I also got another sight unseen movie, this one a chick flick. "Sex and the City 2" the second installment of the 30 now 40 something gals from the HBO hit series. I know this movie is probably not worth the salaries of the actresses in it, but what the heck I liked the show even though it's a chick series. Oh the version I got was the only version that I saw at Target the special 2 Disc Special Edition "Target Exclusive". Apparently the 2nd disc was made exclusively for Target yadda yadda. I'm guessing there is also a special "Walmart Exclusive" version that turns out to have the same special stuff.

Some DVDs for September.

2010-09-26T02:56:00.001-04:00

I decided to try something, dangerous I know. I've seen others do this but I decided I'd try it. I made a rough very rough video of me showing some recently bought DVDs. I'm not sure if I'll do this anymore or not. I'd like to if I can remember, but I really need to get my webcam skills down a bit better for showmanship. Anyway I made a video on UStream.tv on which I'm CaptKirk42. My other videos there are trading card related and have no audience, this type of thing has more audience for people who do YouTube, I'm not sure about UStream though, it was a bit popular with the trading card people.

The link to my video is here: DVD Update 25SEP10

The DVDs I barely mention are:

The Greatest American Hero Season One and Season Two (Target as a Two Pack)
Warehouse 13 Season One(Target)
Max Headroom Complete Series (Best Buy)
JAG Seasons 7, 8, 9 and 10 (Columbia House)
NCIS Season 7 (Columbia House)
NCIS:LA Season 1 (Columbia House)

The stuff from Target and Best Buy I got in August, the Columbia House ones are from September in the following story:

I told my tale of ordering through Columbia House. After I had placed my order they said that JAG Season 10 was out of stock and would be shipped separate, which it was and the other DVDs would ship in one huge box. Long story short a week after they ship the bulk of my order I get the individual box of JAG Season 10, and one of those "You've Got A Package" slip/card. So the next day I go to the post office slip in hand and get the rest of the order. Long story short I got the entire order the "same day" even though one was sent some two days later.

Dang CD/DVD Packaging.

2010-08-29T22:04:00.000-04:00

I've ranted this before on some DVD board sites, but I don't think I've mentioned it here on my Blog. One of the things that really gets me is the silly security stickers that keep CD and DVD cases closed.

OK so with the CDs there is a little trick you can do that makes it a little easier and most of the time it works. After taking the outer plastic off they usually just have one of those silly plastic stickers on the top of the CD case. The thing to do is carefully "pop" the hinge on the bottom of the CD case that way you can open the thing from the bottom to the top using the sticker as the hinge (the case has the hinge on the left side so you normally open it from the right to the left.) Once you have it opened up you can separate the two halfs fairly easily and then take the sticker off the remaining side.

The other day I got a CD from Best Buy and while in the parking lot decided to open the CD to listen to it in the car. I got the wrapper off and then went to pop the hinge on the bottom, and the hinge broke. ARGH. Then I went to separate the two halves of the case and the sticker broke off from the top section. It only came cleanly off the back part of the case. The front part of the sticker came off in about 3 pieces.

Now DVD cases are completely different. Some of the companies like to put the stickers on all three sides that open up, those type really suck. Fortunately most DVD cases like the CD cases will just have the sticker on the top. There is no secret way to get the sticker off cleanly though. The one exception is the type of plastic that Warner Bros. Uses on their "Snapper" cases the ones that are plastic hinged but have cardboard as the main part of the case. They don't make those much any more so most of the "Snappers" that are still around are old "new" stock. Anyway what really sucks about DVD cases and the security sticker label thing is sometimes the paper from the cover of the DVD (front or back sometimes both) will be just far enough out of the plastic sleeve part of the case that the sticker is in contact with the paper, and no mater what you do the sticker will take some of the cover away with it. This has happened to way too many of my DVD covers.

Now when these stickers come off, or don't come off completely they usually leave sticky residue that fortunately there is a product called "Goo Gone" that if used correctly and carefully can keep some of the headaches from this security sealed stickers that the CD & DVD Manufacturers like to use.

End of July?

2010-07-31T20:30:00.000-04:00

Eek it is the end of July already. I haven't had much time to blog because I have been getting ready to start the rehearsal process for the production of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple" that I am directing for the Sandy Spring Theatre Group (SSTG).

The show opens up in October. This past week we had auditions and Thursday was callbacks, with some more callbacks today (Saturday 31 July). I think I can get a full cast. I've locked in the two actresses to play the Pigeon Sisters. Yes there are two women's roles in The Odd Couple it isn't just Oscar, Felix and Murray (The Cop) with their three poker buddies Speed, Vinnie & Roy (Oscar's Accountant). The Pigeon Sisters (Gwendolyn & Cecily) are from England and live upstairs from Oscar they met in the elevator when the power went out.

Well at any rate more details about our production will eventually be added to the SSTG website. SSTG Home

G.I. JOE: The Rise Of Cobra

2010-06-30T21:12:00.010-04:00

I watched my DVD copy of the 2009 G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra Movie. This is a mini-review first because I don't feel like giving a full fledged review and second because I need to crank out a blog entry before July comes around.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: Is a very cool action adventure movie. Plenty of testosterone, and some estrogen in this guys flick. Basically it is based on the characters that Hasbro toys created in the early 1980s for the rebooted line of G.I. Joe Action figures. When they shrunk the 12" "Boys Doll" down to a little 3" action figure. The basic plot line deals with some nanotechnology war heads being stolen by The "Joes" arch-enemy group Cobra. The only things that really brings the movie down is some of the flashbacks that tell each of the main characters and supporting characters origins and background stories. These stories give audience viewers who are not familiar with the newer G.I. Joe (A Real American Hero) characters and stories that were told in comic books, a cartoon series and an animated movie or two.

Now the real reason(s) I like this film. Well not the only reasons but it is nice to have some eye candy while having an action movie frat party.

One of the things that Hasbro did when they created the mini Joes toys was to have some female characters. For "The Joes" the good guys there is sexy redhead Scarlett.

Brought to life in the movie by the lovely Rachel Nichols. I wonder how single she is if she is?

Reason enough? I thought so.

Then for the villainess er Baroness the just a lovely and sexy Sienna Miller.

And here is some of the action sort of.

As I said just a sort of mini-review. Oh I almost forgot one of the things I wanted to mention. Christopher Eccleston (of Doctor Who fame as Doctor Number Nine) plays the main bad guy James McCullen/ Destro. Overall I liked the film, even if you take the women out of the equation. I gave the film 4.5 out of 5.

US Quarters

2010-05-31T22:46:00.009-04:00

Regular US Quarter. WHEN WILL I SEE YOU AGAIN?

It has been 10 years since we have seen a regular release (minted) US quarter. The kind like this with George Washington on the front and an Eagle on the back. The kind of quarter you don't bother to look at and admire the design, because you know what it looks like. You might check out the front just to see what year the thing was minted. Sometimes it's fun to see a coin with the year you were born on it, or some other special year for you.

1965 Quarter front

Front and back of Regular US Quarters (1932-1998)

The George Washington Eagle Quarter went mostly unchanged from 1932 to 1998. The profile of Washington went through a couple of slight modifications once or twice over the years, but they were subtle and only coin collectors really cared that much to notice. The eagle on the back has also gone pretty much unchanged. In 1976 for the Bicentennial the US Mint made special Bicentennial Quarters. The special commemorative quarters still had George Washington profile on the front with the years 1776-1976 underneath in the regular spot for the year of mintage. The back had the portrait of a colonial drummer. Then in 1977 they returned to the standard George with the Eagle back.

This regular familiar design was interrupted in 1999 when the US Mint started their 50 States Quarters Program. Each year from 1999 - 2008 they minted a different design for each of the 50 states. They released 5 different state quarters each year in order of when that state joined the republic of the United States.

Front of US State Quarters (1999-2008)

The Front has similar George Washington Portrait as the old quarters, but the writing on the front was majorly changed. United States of America was brought to the front, the word Liberty was moved down from the top to the side and made smaller. The words Quarter Dollar was also brought from the back to the front.

Back of Delaware State Quarter 1999

The backs were each unique and distinct for each individual state. The state name along with the year the state joined the United States and the year of mintage were put on the back. More details and all the designs can be seen here: http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/50sq_program/

OK so now it's been 10 years since we've seen an eagle on the back of a quarter. Sure there are still tons of these coins in circulation, but new ones have not been produced since 1998. Sometime during the 10 years of the States Quarters Program people seeing the schedule for the coins started wondering if or when they would produce a quarter for the Nations Capital Washington DC. Technically not a state DC was not included in the States program. This past year 2009 the US Mint released a Washington DC quarter in their six quarter District of Columbia and U.S. Territories quarters. The quarter for the territory of The Northern Mariana Islands by the way is the most difficult one to find as they minted very few of those and the distribution of them was more limited than the other designs of the Territories coins. To see the list and links to their designs visit http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/dcandterritories/

NOW the US Mint has started a New Quarter Program. This is another 10+ Year Program. Called "America The Beautiful" this program features designs with US National Parks. The coin fronts will still have the familiar 1932 George Washington Portrait on the front, with the Park design on the back. The release schedule seems to be when the park was designated a National Park. This program starts this year 2010 http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/atb/ and will end 2021. There are 56 quarters in this set. Each year they will release 5 quarters with a design of a State Park. There is already a generation of kids who haven't seen the regular design as a NEW quarter. By the time the Parks series is finished those kids will probably barely recognize the regular design. This will be a large set for collectors to acquire. It also means it will be at least the year 2022 before we see a REGULAR QUARTER ever again.

Mailinglist Name Misspelling Rant

2010-04-29T23:30:00.000-04:00

Or What's In A Name?

OK I can live with the common misspelling of my last name using an "o" instead of an "e". It used to really tick me off, but I've learned to accept it, as I'm sure people with the last name of Smith who spell their last name Smyth. The Scandinavian spelling I use seems to baffle most people, even though Hans Christian Andersen is probably known more world-wide than Pamela Anderson (except to fans of Baywatch and Playboy magazine subscribers). Still most people spell the name Andersen with an "sOn". It's only natural since the surname in most languages and cultures means "the son of Ander (or Anders)".

I can even put up with some of the weird misspellings of my first name but the one that gets my goat, or grinds my gears is "Kirl". ACK! that's right some idiot data entry clerk at some credit card company, probably Citibank about 2 or 3 years ago, maybe even earlier somehow deleted my second "k" and combined my middle initial to my first name. Now there is a mailing list with that name on it. Wait, What? KIRL isn't even a name, it's not even the proper spelling of Curl. It's what you do to your hair, or with a set of weights, or even a very bad misspelling of a young person of the female gender.

I don't know how many times I've received junk mail under that "name". I used to tear them up and recycle them, but now if I want to take the trouble I mark those letters "Return To Sender" mark up the name a little and put a note that says something like "No such person", or "Nobody by that name at this address" and I usually put "Please remove from mailing list". Of course all this returned mail won't even be looked at, and half of it won't even be delivered by the post office. So why should I bother?

OK this made me feel a little better.

Maybe I should try to get a second identity under that name and get a second Social Security number. NO I would probably be arrested for identity theft, or trying to use an alias. Then how the frack do all those criminals steal names so easily, yet the victims spend many years trying to get things fixed and it never gets corrected?

Other misspellings of my name I can recall have been:

Akirk -I think this was another CitiBank special, using the first letter of my last name added to the front of my first name.
Curt - Often people ask me if I spell my name that way, Um NO I'm a Kirk not a Kurt. It is interesting how I haven't heard of a spelling of "Cirk".
Kick - Another Non-Name.
Kurt - Again I've been asked if this it the spelling for my name.

Rick -I know sometimes I've been called that by people who have misheard my name. I don't think I've received any mail under that name. Oddly enough I have sometimes also been called "Erik". I have a brother Erik, but often the people asking have no idea I have a brother with that name.
Turk - This I've just heard from people who have misheard my name. Again another NON-Name. I have never received any mail under it Thank Goodness

Not sure If I've gotten a "Kirt", or even a "Krik", but once several years ago from the magazine Scientific American (or maybe just Science Magazine) the label was addressed "Dr. Kirk Andersen". Somewhere I think I still have that subscription form. I liked that I was tempted to subscribe to the dang thing just because of the title on the label. It wouldn't have been worth it though as the subscription rates for that magazine was pretty expensive. With doctors as subscribers I guess they do gouge their subscribers a bit.

Good thing I don't have a complicated Middle Eastern name, that would get butchered by most English speaking people, both in pronunciation and in spelling. OK Rant over for now.

Google Yahoo Word: Dodgent

2010-03-12T10:20:00.001-05:00

DODGENT

Another Wacky Sign-In Word. IN another of my random wacky words. I got "dodgent". I'm not sure what to make of that. The only fun thing I could think of was the Los Angeles Dodgers. Either the Dodgers don't or that is what you call their agent a "Dodgent". Unfortunately when I entered that word I entered it wrong, or entered my password wrong because I got an error that said the word didn't match, so I got another word. I don't recall what the other word was it wasn't as fun a word.

Merlin Olsen (1940 - 2010)

2010-03-11T23:00:00.003-05:00

Merlin Jay Olsen (September 15, 1940 – March 11, 2010)

Today is a sad day for Rams fans. HOFer Merlin Olsen (Age 69) passed away due to mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer often related to exposure to asbestos. He played with the Los Angeles Rams from 1962 - 1976 he was enshrined into the National Football League's Hall of Fame in 1982.

Olsen played left tackle in the Rams' legendary front four nicknamed "The Fearsome Foursome", with David "Deacon" Jones at left end, Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier at right tackle and Lamar Lundy at right end. Jones, who lined up to Mr. Olsen's left, coined the term "sack" to describe tackling the opposing quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. Olsen is the second member of the Fearsome Foursome to pass away, Lundy passed away on February 24 2007 at the age of 71.

Fearsome Foursome: (L to R): Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, Merlin Olsen and Deacon Jones

Merlin was also known for his acting in television roles for "Little House on The Prairie" and "Father Murphy" . Teammate Lundy also did some acting he portrayed the boulder-hurling cyclops in the (previously) unaired pilot of Lost in Space (this pilot was later made into episode 4 of the series, entitled "There Were Giants in the Earth").

Lamar Lundy as the Cyclops Monster in "Lost in Space".

Another Wacky Yahoo Word: Repturl

2010-03-10T00:29:00.004-05:00

Gotta love those code words that Yahoo (or is it Google?) randomly comes up with when you enter some comment on someone elses blog, or you sign-in from some odd site somewhere. Well my latest blog-worthy weird word was "repturl". It made me think of these aliens from a Doctor Who book story or two. They were a warrior race of turtle-like creatures.

The aliens are actually called "Chelonian". They are lead by a great "mother" who is referred to as a "he". It has been several years since I've read these books. Doing a little research it looks like "The Highest Science" by Gareth Roberts was published first in 1993 then "Zamper" by the same author was published in 1995. I have read both books, but I think Zamper is the one I most remember vaguely more of than the other. These creatures have appeared in other Doctor Who Stories. In my research they were in an early script for what would become the TV Episode "Planet Of The Dead". They were replaced by the fly-like creatures called Tritovore. At least that is what I made of some of the info I gleamed from The Doctor Who Wiki website.

Max Headroom Coming to DVD

2010-02-26T21:00:00.001-05:00

Well It's About Bloody Time!

Matt Frewer as Max Headroom

From an email I got from TVShowsOnDVD.com I got the heads up that one of my favorite Mid-1980s Sci-Fi television dramas is coming to DVD. Yes Finally MAX HEADROOM (20 Minutes Into The Future) is coming to DVD legitimately. Here is a blurb on it Max-Headroom DVDs Planned.

Matt Frewer and Amanda Pays

Max Headroom is a computer generated image (with assistance from scanned images of Matt Frewer in prosthetic make-up) that in the plot of the series a teenage computer whiz-kid created. I won't go into details of the series just yet here at least not in this post.

The character of Max Headroom first started out in Coca-Cola commercials in the US and I understand that previously in the UK he was a VJ host of some kind. Anyway first a British Made TV Plot was filmed (It was available on VHS it is long out-of-print) then a US television series was made.

This soon to be released DVD is for the US series. I hope that they include the original UK Pilot, or at least soon release that to DVD. There was even a Max Headroom talkshow after the US TV series died out way too soon, hopefully that will see the laser-light of DVD sometime soon.

So soon we will be able to toss back a few Zic-Zac cola's and skip the blipverts. Now Disney has to release Song of the South to DVD and my world will be back on track.

Release date is scheduled to be 10 August, 2010.

Ford 2010 Models Mailing

2010-02-23T01:05:00.015-05:00

Back in November I think, maybe even as early as Sept or Oct, in the mail I had received a Ford promotional mailing thing for the new upcoming 2010 models cars and trucks.

Oh boy exciting.

I was going to throw it away actually recycle it, but I noticed there were some stickers. Then I realized the entire promo package was stickers so I decided to keep it for a weird collectible type thing. It won't become valuable for any real amount of money. Maybe a few years down the road I will sell it for "Wow Factor".

They start things off with a little "Edge". Each vehicle in the promo has an information sheet, and then on the back are some stickers of that model and some Ford Logos or car parts. I guess they intended to give the adults who were thinking of buying a Ford all the info on the various models and then give their kids something to do while Mommy and Daddy are out buying their new ford.

Then they brag a little about how tough their trucks are and how much they can haul.

Next for those of you who want to help keep the Earth green they have their Hybrid card The Fusion.

Finally they end with their popular economy car Taurus.

Pretty neat, but hopefully I won't be buying a new Ford this year.

I'm trying to make my 2002 Focus stay in focus for another 2 years before I even think about getting a new car. Plus financially I can't afford a new car until probably next year.

Celebrity vs. Non-Celbrity Rant

2010-02-17T17:30:00.002-05:00

Celeb Rant

OK so who is this? Lara Croft Right? Angelina Jolie? No it's Allison Carroll she's been the official Lara Croft for the video games promotional stuff since 2008 where have you been? (That is what many people will say about me after this rant I guess)

I am beyond tired of Non-Celebrity-Celebrities. The people who are famous for just being famous. How the heck did they become famous? People who appear on or win these reality TV contest shows are NOT CELEBS! WHY OH WHY Does the frack'n Media treat them as celebrities?

When I first heard about that couple who had eight kids and got a reality television show to tell about them just because they had eight kids I didn't know or care what their names were. Then I started hearing about Nick and Sally or Cathy or whatever her name was/is. Every once in a while there would be a news headline that said "Sally upset over wedding cake" OK who the heck is Sally again? Oh Yeah she's that woman on that stupid reality show. People actually watch that show?

I am also sick of when the media using just one name in a headline. "Jessica is Pregnant" OK WHICH JESSICA? Simpson? Hawn? Beal? Sarah Parker? Rabbit? Private Lynch? WHO? WHICH ONE?

It used to be in reporting you would give the person's full name THE FIRST TIME you mention their name (an usually also in the tagline or headline) THEN after the first mention you can give just their last name. Since you have already mentioned their full name and your readers know who you are talking about. If you have a small closed audience and always mention the same people I guess you can get away with this type of first name only reporting, but most of the time this is just too confusing.

The same applies with organizations and companies. You give the full company name, or the companies public trading name FIRST then later you can use the acronym or abbreviation. The few exceptions are The FBI, CIA & KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti - English translation is Committee of State Security) organizations that are widely well known often world wide and are not often confused with something else.

OK we can get when someone says "Jacko" they mean Micheal Jackson or "Jay-Lo" is Jennifer Lopez but other than that most of the time it can get pretty confusing and then frustrating if you aren't up on the Celebrity of the Minute.

So please World Wide Media stop with the "Simpson goes back to Jail" Head-Lines. Which One? Jessica? O.J.? Bart? You know it's worse when the name is Smith or the first name is John. OK which John are you talking about now? Which one is currently the most popular John?

[Edit note:] Why is there some bracket like lines with the KGB translation? It doesn't show when I preview, but shows up in the final form. Weird.

Stuper Bowled 44

2010-02-04T04:25:00.001-05:00

Coming Sunday it's the annual NFL Budweiser Clydesdale Commercial Celebration with a football game. Wait that's not right, OH yeah it's the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue? Um the revival of Rock 'n' Rollergames? Oh that's right the SUPER BOWL. The Indianapolis Colts vs. The New Orleans Saints. It's the first time for the Saints to the big show, and the umpty umpth for the Colts.

So what commercial will everybody be talking about on Monday morning 8 February 2010? I don't know and I don't really care. I will of course watch the game and actually pay attention to the commercials, except for when I really really gotta go to the head.

Sometimes I take pride in the fact that I am as old as the Super Bowl, but since Super Bowl XL that pride has fallen by the wayside along with my youth and my excellent health. Just call me Middle-Aged Man!

The first Super Bowl I recall watching or being interested in was SB VII (7) The Washington Redskins were the favored team, even though the AFC Miami Dolphins had an undefeated season, and ended up winning 14-7. It was a major disappointment. It was also disappointing because my fave quarterback Sonny Jurgensen didn't play because of a leg injury he had during the season. I recall my brother used to (and probably still does somewhere) have a joke book that had photos of the Redskins season that year with cartoon "thought" balloons. One of the pictures was of Sonny on the sidelines on Crutches. I forget what the saying was. I don't have many clear memories of the actual game, like so many other games though the years. The Skins did have revenge 10 years later in SB XVII. My fave Super Bowl though is XXII when the Skins beat the tar out of the Broncos 42-10. That was the best 2nd quarter of any Super Bowl I've seen, and as I said the first one I saw was number 7 and I've seen every one ever since. I've been bored with some of them especially during the 1990s but the last few have been exciting. For a few years there the commercials were more exciting than the game.

I do have some vague memories of a commercial campaign around that time for Noxzema cleansing cream. One of the Super Bowl commercials from back then was with Joe Namath and a the Noxzema girl who was a then unkown Farrah Fawcett. I recall she used to sing the jingle part of which went "Let Noxzema cream your face.." something something "it can't be beat"

Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett from Noxzema shoot.

If I recall correctly at the end of that commercial with Joe and Farrah she smacks him in the face with a handful of the stuff. see it on youtube OK so maybe the last part of my quote isn't right.

Anyway a classic Super Bowl commercial is the famous Coke commercial with Joe Greene and a kid, where the kid gives "mean Joe" his Coke and Joe gives the kid the sweaty jersey from his back. My faves have always been the Budweiser Clydesdale commercials. One of the best I think is the one where the horses are playing football and you see a zebra "reviewing" the last play, two cowboys are standing against a fence, one of them says "That referee is a jack-ass" the other one says "Nope I believe that is a Zebra".

Zebra Referee Commercial

Remember during the 80s, if you were alive then, the Bud Bowl commercials? It was one of the first concept "mock Super Bowl" commercials where they pitted regular Budweiser Bottles up against Bud Light, the bottles had on little helmets instead of bottle caps, I think they were stop motion type animation. Pretty silly but they had them for a few years until people got sick of them. I think they are much better than the "Waaazz UP?" or that STUPID E*Trade talking baby. UGH I can't stand those things.

There have been some side line gimmicks that feed off the success of the Super Bowl. The Puppy Bowl, Various Half-Time Specials like the "In Living Color" Live Half-Time Special one year and more recently the Lingerie Bowl. The LB is apparently a real thing though as there is a real Lingerie Football League. I think it started as a joke, but got such a super reaction it became a reality. CSI:NY a couple of weeks ago had an episode that featured the LFL the story centered around the death of a quarterback for the NY team that was found dead floating in the whirl-pool sauna. I've never really watched any of a Lingerie Bowl, or a LFL game if those are real.

Anyway with the game I hope the Saints win because I always think its cool when a team that has never been before beats a more established team.

Mabye I'll cheer to see more of this:

Credit Score Rant

2010-01-21T23:55:00.004-05:00

Rant: WARNING this got me so angry I might use some very strong language.
As if anything related to credit scores could get any worse. I heard that now some companies are thinking of looking not only at your credit score, but also at your history on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The idea is to check out your associates and friends credit histories and compare theirs to yours. WT? Apparently some Creditors are Using Social Networks to check your credit worthyness. The idea is if your friend Joe Blow is chronically late with his payments then you might be also. Well if your friend Joe Blow had blonde hair and dyed it Pink and got a Mohawk then the chances are pretty good you would too. Right? Well that is the logic they are following and with a whole boatload of other things associated with your credit score THIS IS WRONG AS WELL.

First of all your credit score is oh so mighty and powerful, that without it you can't get bank loans to buy a car or house and now they are saying even getting a job can be affected by your credit score. UGH.

OK so there are thousands of commercials that say you need to know what your credit score is and you can get it FOR FREE. Well the catch is you can ONLY GET IT FOR FREE ONCE A YEAR! If you want unlimited access to YOUR OWN CREDIT SCORE you have to pay $7.00 a month or a year or some asinine amount to each of the 3 credit reporting companies. IT SHOULD BE FRACKIN' FREE 'NUFF SAID.

Oh and any creditor who wants to can check out your score any DAMN TIME THEY FEEL LIKE IT. AND YOU NEVER GET TOLD! Unless you start looking at your credit score yourself.

THIS SHIT NEEDS TO CHANGE. The individual should have access to their score AT ANYTIME. It's the CREDITORS SHOULD HAVE TO PAY $1,000.00 EVERYTIME THEY LOOK AT YOUR SCORE.

So Equifax, Experian and whoever else the BIG AND MIGHTY THREE CREDIT SCORE COMPANIES ARE PLEASE START GIVING ME MY FREE CREDIT SCORE EVERY MONTH AND TELL ME WHEN SOMEONE REQUESTS TO LOOK AT IT. AND CHARGE THEM, NOT ME TO SEE IT.

How long have credit scores been around anyway? It seems they have only been around for 20 or 30 years or less. Maybe I'm just too damn ignorant of what exactly the credit scores do or how they are collected, like millions of other Americans. If the crap is supposed to be so damn important than how come it's SO DAMN HARD TO FIND OUT and to correct if there is a problem. Worse yet why is it so damn hard for the victim of identity theft to correct the problem and straighten out their credit score, after having had their ID stolen.

I am beginning to think this whole credit score business should not exist at all. AMERICA LETS GET RID OF IT FOR A BETTER system that helps the individual and NOT THE BANKS or the CRIMINALS.

Last words of 2009 (barely)!.

2009-12-31T23:52:00.004-05:00

OK so here we are at the very tail end of the year 2009. This past year has been OK for the most part, except I did lose two good friends in the latter half. I'll have some of the boring details of my year (maybe in a day or two) on my website Nesredna's Knook on my Year In Review page(s) there.

RANDOM PICTURE:

So Happy New Year all 4 or 5 (if that many) of you who read this silly Blog. I've been in shows with some of you, I've laughed with some of you, I may have cried with one or two of you, and one of you I might have... well never mind that I'll just edit this bit later. LOL!

Back To Classic Pinstripes.

2009-12-30T22:01:00.009-05:00

I should have posted this a week or two ago, but didn't get around to writing it until now.

Anyway... Nick Johnson who at one time was the first baseman for my beloved Washington Nationals was traded to the Florida Marlins during the 2009 season. I first blogged about that on 31 July in my NO Nats NOT NICK! post.

Nick began his Major League Career with the New York Yankees in 2001. Around the time I wasn't really paying much attention to baseball let alone the "Damn Yankees".

Well then in 2003 at the end of the season he was traded to the Montreal Expos, it was around this time that I was beginning to get back into paying attention to baseball, a little before the talks about getting an MLB team back into DC started. Nick was with The Expos when they made the transition to become the Washington Nationals. Once the Expos/Nationals were established in DC I immediately followed them, since I had been a Senators fan from way back. Nick when he was healthy with the Nats was one of the best at finding a way to get on base. His On Base percentage is exceptional. I got used to seeing number 24 on first base for DC. That was until around the middle of this past 2009 season when the Nationals traded him to the Florida Marlins just before the deadline for mid-season trades. The Marlins switched his number to 20.

Well now Nick has traded in his "fishstripes" for the classic pinstripes of the Yankees. He signed a one-year contract 23 December, 2009 with the Yankees for a cool $5.5 Mil. Well he's back to his roots, I'm not too thrilled with the team he is on now, but I will still sort of keep track of his career (at least through baseball cards LOL). Well it looks like both numbers 20 and 24 are already taken on the Yankees Roster so I don't know what number he'll end up with.

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Gas Pump.

2009-12-05T00:33:00.003-05:00

Friday 04 December, 2009 While on my way home from work, I stopped to get gas at a Shell station that is about 4 or 5 miles from my apartment. It is somewhere between 6:30 and 6:45 PM. Well first I have to wait a little bit to get to a pump that will put my gas tank on the correct side. There was a spot that was in front of a minivan's rear-side (the van was facing me) the pumps right in front of me had cars. I had to squeeze between the van on my right and the car in front of me. To get to a right hand side pump that was free. As I'm going for that pump a car appears in front of me and is backing up, and unbeknown to me the van was now pulling away. So after an irate guy requests that I move back to the pump the van just now left. I start to go about my business.

Then a newsguy with his cameraman approaches the guy in front of me who apparently doesn't want to talk the news guy (Richard Reeve with WJLA-ABC 7) with his cameraman approaches me and asks me if I have a few minutes to answer some questions about the upcoming snow storm. I agree and I answer a few questions for about 3 minutes. The news guys leave. I Then go back to pumping my gas.

While I'm driving away I think "Cool, I'll probably end up on the 11 O'Clock News" which I did for about 3 seconds.

The main point of the news story was to tell about the upcoming winter storm we are supposed to get tomorrow evening and a new road treatment mixture they are going to try called "Ice Bite" which is a natrual organic blend of enzimes and beat molasass. Well if it works why not?

Here is a link to the video.
Region Readies for Winter's First Bite|ABC 7 News

Schneider-Man moves from NY to Phillie

2009-12-03T23:22:00.009-05:00

Well once again my favorite current MLB catcher Brian Schneider is moving on to another team. This time he's going to Phillie. When I first got back into baseball around the time the Montreal Expos were set to become the Washington Nationals Brian "Schneider-Man" Schneider was their catcher. He began his Major League Career with the Expos in 2000, and was their starting catcher during the transition to Washington DC to become the Nationals in 2005 and my favorite current catcher in the game. He was with them until the off-season in Dec 2007 when he was traded along with outfielder Ryan Church (who is now on the Atlanta Braves) to the New York Mets for youngster Lastings Milledge (Now on the Pittsburgh Pirates). That trade really got me upset, but I started getting used to seeing Brian and Ryan in The Mets Blue and Orange (or are they Blue and Purple with black?).

Well now Brian is going to once again be wearing red.

Um remember this from 2007? The media seems to have all but forgotten. The media circus of the "Race to the Record" is a thing of the past, but it still turns my stomach every now and then.

OK I said wearing RED!

There that's better, except now he will be looking more like this:

Wait that's the guy he will be backing up Carlos Ruiz. Oh well you get the idea. Anyway Brian signed a 2-year deal with Phillie for $2.75 Million. Well now that sort of rounds out the NL East division with Ex-Nats, Schneider now with the Phillies, Church with the Braves, 1st Baseman Nick Johnson with the Marlins, and Pitcher Tim Redding with the Mets.

A Recent Read Number 16

2009-11-29T02:49:00.000-05:00

"Since hanging around with the Crime Scene Cleaners, I have been giving serious thought to the choice of method by which people put an end to their own lives, and what these methods say about them."

NOTE: This review may contain SPOILERS.

Mop Men: Inside The World Of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan Emmins. This is a fascinating book. If you have ever wondered who has to clean up after a messy murder or a suicide involving blood splatter then you might want to crack open this book. The author spent a month traveling around and working with a man an his company that for a fee cleans up the blood and what-not from crime scenes and messy suicides.

The author often poses philosophical questions about death, life and his views on it before and after hanging around with the Crime Scene Cleaners company. The owner of the company got the idea for his company after seeing the movie Pulp Fiction (the author mentions the movie a few times in the book). He said he was originally going to go into the mortuary business, but he wanted to do something with his life. He is quite a character, but seems to have his head and heart in the right place. If it weren't for the crime scene cleaners it would be up to the family of suicide victims, and motel cleaning staff to clean up the gory mess. The author mentions a few times that most people wouldn't be able to cope with that responsibility.

At first the book seems to be a sort of behind the scenes look at the business of cleaning up after messy suicides and murders. It soon becomes a cross between that and a mini-autobiography of the author with a little bit of drama tossed in. There are a few areas where the book drags, but maybe it was just that I took a bit of time reading this book.

Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan Emmins 2004 (2008) Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martins Press) 306 pages. - ***.5

A Recent Read Number 15

2009-11-19T18:50:00.000-05:00

"I desperately wanted to talk to a human being, but knew I would never get the chance. You are kept from any form of fellowship, conversation or human interaction. "

NOTE: This review is written about 5 months after I finished reading the book. This is the last of my back-logged book reviews for now. This review CONTAINS SPOILERS.

23 Minutes In Hell - By Bill Wiese. Before I begin this review, this is another near-death experience book written by a Christian author that skeptics will pass off as an oxygen deprived fantasy. There have been a few reviews and website postings that point out some inconsistencies in the telling and then go on to crack jokes about the book and it's author.

In a nutshell the author a Christian preacher came home one night, went to bed and then had an awful experience. He was in his bed and then at "3:00 AM" he was suddenly falling and finds himself landing in a dark prison cell. The cell walls are solid stone, he then becomes aware of nasty evil creatures that then proceed to torture him physically. At some point he manages to escape from them and "explore" other areas of the dark world he has found himself in.

He describes pits of fire, with people burning in them screaming and trying to escape only to fall down or be pushed back be other nasty looking creatures. His descriptions are in line with everything about "Hell" that is in the Bible in fact later chapters go on Ad nauseum about where the Bible mentions hell, the exact wording and how many times it appears.

The first couple of chapters tell of the author's Hellish adventure, which is similar to other books I've read one being My Decent Into Death: A Second Chance At Life by Howard Storm. The descriptions of Hell are pretty much the same, how they got there is where they differ.

I'm not sure what to think about this book, as I had originally heard nothing but the nay-saying skeptical "reviews" of the book. I tend to question the authors knowledge of the timing. How did he know was "3:00 AM" when he first "fell" into Hell? Was he looking at the clock at that exact minute? He was supposedly sleeping before he found himself in Hell. I can understand his knowing it was 3:23 AM when he came back as people usually check the time when they get back home after being someplace else. Seeing the time when you come back gives some sense of comfort.

I will leave it up to people who read the book what to think about it, and wither or not they believe the author really experienced what he has written about. As I said at the beginning skeptics will take this story with a grain of salt and call it a fantasy. Christians may get scared of some of the things in it and try to increase their faith in God and in Jesus.

23 Minutes In Hell by Bill Wiese 2006 Charisma House (A Strang Company) 170 pages - **

A Recent Read Number 14

2009-11-18T21:30:00.001-05:00

"He's Alive! The dead man started singing with me."

NOTE: The review for this book is being written about 6 months after I had finished reading this book. It does CONTAIN SPOILERS.

90 Minutes In Heaven by Don Piper. This is an interesting "autobiography" about a man who had an out-of-body experience. Skeptics will say that what he experienced was a typical chemical induced mind created fantasy. The author and many Christians believe that he actually experienced the after-life in Heaven.

On the cold rainy evening of January 18, 1989 Don Piper an ordained minsiter was returning home from a Baptist Church conference. He didn't make it home. He was in an accident on a small bridge with a very large truck. When the paramedics arrived on the scene, they found no pulse on his mangled body, he was pronounced dead at the scene.

A fellow Baptist preacher came upon the scene. He was told by God to pray for this man, even though he was told, and knew that he was dead. It turns out that he knew the man he was praying for, although he didn't know it at the time as the body was covered with a tarp and he didn't lift up the tarp. He was there to pray for this man, even though the emergency workers at the scene told him the man was dead and nothing could be done.

State law said that he had to be officially pronounced dead before the body could be removed from the scene. While they were waiting for someone who could make that official pronouncement a preacher was praying over the body. He only knew that he had to pray for the dead man and to pray that there were no internal injuries. He then began to sing. He sang a hymn called "What A Friend We Have In Jesus", the man who "was dead" then sang along. The preacher alerted the emergency workers on the scene. The authors very long road to recovery then began. He would never be completely back to normal but he has gone a long way.

The first three or four chapters describe the accident and the authors experience of Heaven in great detail. The other chapters then describe his pain, and the progress of getting back to his life. As he tells of his recovery he also tells of the tests of his faith in God and his desire to return to the Heaven that he caught a glimpse of.

Skeptics of these types of experiences will say that he didn't see or experience Heaven. It was all just chemical reactions. Christians may believe this fascinating story of one man's trip to Heaven and the Hell of pain he has endured to tell others his tale.

Unlike typical near-death experiences the author didn't travel down a dark tunnel to a light. From the moment of the accident, he was enveloped by an intense light and then was in Heaven. His vision of heaven was being surrounded by immense love and people he had loved in his life who had gone on before him. Family, friends they were all there and they were all happy. Music was all around being sung and also being experienced. The only thing missing is an image of Jesus and angels floating on clouds playing golden harps.

I am not going to try to determine if what the author experienced was real or not. I'm not going to say it was all just a well meaning fantasy. I think that each person that reads the book needs to decide that for themselves. I feel that for books like this one Christians will probably have their faith in God reinforced, and skeptics if they choose to read it will pass it off as a fantasy produced by an oxygen deprived hallucination.

90 Minutes In Heaven by Don Piper 2004 Revell (Baker Publishing Group) 207 pages - ***

NCIS Episode 7.8 "Power Down"

2009-11-18T00:10:00.013-05:00

NCIS EPISODE 7.8
"Power Down"

This Review may contain SPOILERS.

This episode was another very good one. It is an episode that reminds me why I watch the show. It didn't have a lot of action, in fact there was only a little bit at the beginning of the episode. Without giving too much of the plot away the basic gist of the story was that the power in the majority of the DC area was knocked out (there was a pretty cool scene of DC lights shutting down) due to the events of their case of course. The NCIS team had to solve their case without electric power. OK so they cheated a little bit and gave them a little backup power for necessities like the body freezers in autopsy and minimal power in the MTAC room, but for the most part they had to do things old school, actually a little more than old school since the phones were also out. They didn't like it and each character asked "How did people do [blank according to their specific job function] before [blank specific technology for their job]".

They even found an old mimeograph machine in storage that Gibbs had to give them a non-verbal demonstration on to show how to use it. That was truly just a site gag and a jab at Gibbs' age compared to the young ages of his team. They even found the time to make a reference to Doctor Who. McGee mentioned that the storage shed they were searching was like the TARDIS, Dinozzo asks him what he means. McGee says it's the time ship that Doctor Who travels in. Puzzled Dinozzo then asks "Dr. Who? Who watches Doctor Who?"

In recent years I have often wondered what people would do if modern technology was out of commission for an extended period of time. This episode shows that excellently. Most of us modern technologically dependents would be lost. I do fear that there will come a time when technology fails us and many things will be lost.

All in all a very good episode. 4.5/5

The NCIS: Los Angeles episode that followed it was also pretty good, not quite as good in my book as this NCIS episode, but for NCIS: LA it was one of the better ones.

NOTE: This review was updated to reflect the Doctor Who references that I had forgotten about. I also added the Spoilers warning in case people consider the Doctor Who references, or other parts of this review as spoilers. I may have even corrected some grammar and spelling errors, or not.

A Recent Read Number 13

2009-11-13T17:00:00.005-05:00

"First of all, I told myself, I must get rid of the persistent sensation that none of this is really happening"

Note: This is a book that I read a few months ago, and some of the details are a little fuzzy at the time I write this review. Big sigh.

WARNING THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Charisma by Micheal G. Coney. "Reality what a concept" is the title of a Robin Williams comedy album, but it is also something that is vital to alternate reality science fiction. This story is a combination alternate reality, multiple Earths story and a plain old fashioned murder mystery with a small seaport town setting. The main character of the story John Maine, I forget what his primary job was, except that he was a hired hand at a Hotel of a boating club, and had a side job of being in charge of the Hotel Owner's boat fleet (If I remember correctly). He falls in love with a girl named Susanna.

Plot number 2, or is it plot 5? Boy, well man in this, meets girl falls in love with girl loses girl finds girl again, maybe loses girl again, but finds her by the end standard plot. There is a science fiction twist though. The girl in this case is involved with a scientific organization that is conducting experiments that lead to the discovery of parallel worlds.

Our hero, or rather the primary character meets a beautful girl who he eventually learns is named Susanna and she works at a research station that has a few secrets. The main secret is that they have discovered a means to travel to parallel Earths, what they eventually learn is that the timelines of these Earths are converging and will possibly destroy them all. John Maine falls in love with Susanne, the catch is that she is really from one of these parallel Earths, and the Susanne from John's primary Earth is dead. He soon learns that many people he has been in contact with are dead, and even he is dead on one and possibly more of these Earths.

John's love for Susanne drives him deeper into exploring these parallel Earths, and also the fact that on his primary Earth he is a suspect in the murder of a respected man in the seaport town the story takes place in. Long story short he is not actually the murderer, however due to his mucking about in all these alternate worlds, and the fact that these worlds are converging, he is constantly incriminating himself.

By stories end the loose ends are tied up, and some of the events that John experienced didn't happen, a few of them canceled themselves out. The story doesn't have a typical feel of science fiction other than the traveling between the parallel worlds. If feels more like a romance story set in a seaport town, that makes me think of Maine, or maybe it is the character's name that makes me think of that area.

I stumbled across this book quite by accident really. I had actually ordered another book by the same author from an Ebay seller, and the seller accidentally sent this one. I was intrigued by the synopsis of this book and rather than send it back, I decided to keep it. The seller only charged me the cost of the book not the extra postage, and sent the book I originally ordered. The book I had ordered was actually a book I had read before, but wanted a better, cleaner copy of. That book was Cat Karina a book writen by the same author a few year latter than Charisma. Some day I should reread Cat Karina, or at least try to drum up a review of it.

Cat Karina

Charisma by Michael G. Coney 1975 Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 250 pages - ***.5

CSI: Crossover Episode 3

2009-11-13T01:22:00.002-05:00

CSI Episode 10.7 "The Lost Girl"
(CSI: Crossover Episode 3)

This review may contain SPOILERS.

Well the famous CSI Trilogy Crossover story has finally been finished. Until this across the board story arc, the only combinations of crossovers apparently were CSI/CSI:Miami to kick off the Miami Series, a couple of CSI:Miami/CSI: NY episode to gorify Horatio Caine (played by David Caruso) and get him into New York. There didn't seem to be any crossovers from CSI to CSI:NY before this story. This final episode is set in Vegas, where the whole story began only in CSI: Miami.

The whole basic plot of the entire thing centered around a missing girl Madeline Briggs played by a cute actress named Amanda MacDonald, who I could have sworn was a regular in some other series I've seen, but it looks like I've just seen her here and there in single episodes of other shows. AH I know I was confusing her with Amber Tamblyn (Joan of Arcadia). They managed to get her into each of the three CSI series as part of this story. There were virtually no other supporting or guest characters that managed to be in all three shows. The plot followed Ray Langston as he vowed to find Madeline.

As usual in this trilogy story it could have been a shorter self-contained episode. This final episode felt like the second part of a two part story arc where they leave some of it open for later on. In their own episodes Miami and NY seemed to have some minor elements that may pop up later on during the season,, but I'm not sure.

As with the episodes from the other two shows, the regular cast managed to make their appearances while doing their part to solve the case. One of my personal faves from CSI: Vegas is Wendy Simms played by Liz Vassey. I wish they had brought her in to the series much earlier, but they hadn't created the character at that point.

So now that the Trilogy Crossover is finished the various CSIs will have to return to the same old dull routine of digging up months old corpes and figuring out what happened to them and who they were.

Even though this episode was along the same sort of lines as the other two I will give this one a little better rating of 3.5 CSI thumbprints.

CSI: Crossover Episode 2

2009-11-11T23:37:00.009-05:00

CSI: NY Episode 6.7 "Hammer Down"

(CSI: Crossover Episode 2)

POSSIBLE SPOILERS:

OK well this episode of the special CSI: Trilogy Crossover story, was a little better than episode one from CSI: Miami. I do see a common trend in these episodes though. Dr. Ray Langston (Laurence Fishburne) hopping out of a helicopter to meet the Officer in charge of whatever city he is traveling to.

Welcome to NY Ray!

OK so this episode starts with a car wreck on a bridge between a car and a big rig. The driver of the car is drunk and talking on a cell phone, he drops the phone on the floor and stupidly fumbles for it while still driving at a high rate of speed. The trucker is also distracted but by a passenger he has locked up in the compartment behind him. The driver of the car dies and is insignificant to the main plot. Darn. The truck driver turns out to be yet another piece in this massive trilogy puzzle that from previews and from further details revealed in this New York based episode deals with human trafficing in addition to the forced prostitution from the Miami Connection.

A character that was originally a suspect in the Miami part, becomes a victim in Miami and is now transported to New York along with another piece of the main puzzle black market organ transplants.

Again this was an episode that could have been contained within just one city but they needed to do some November Sweeps and make a spectacular crossover storyline that only uses Langston as the only character that crosses over. That saves some cast scheduling I guess. You just have one actor to transport between all the shooting locations.

While watching this particular episode I started thinking about the various crimes that are dramatized in the show. Sadly things like human trafficing and black market organs are big crime business, that is kept under the big media rug and has a certain air of mystery to them, but I digress.

I really enjoy CSI: NY over the other two series, but this episode was lacking in some areas and didn't seem like a true CSI: NY episode. Even though it was still an alright episode. I guess again I'll give it 3/5 CSI thumbprints.

CSI: Crossover Episode 1

2009-11-09T23:23:00.009-05:00

CSI: MIAMI Episode 8.7 "Bone Voyage"

(CSI: Crossover Episode 1)

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Well this episode was OK as far as CSI stories go. It seems to me that they have parceled off sub-plots to build up the main trilogy plot. I don't want to give off too much here but basically the plot involves the Miami CSIs getting a missing person's report and then finding only severed limbs. The problem is the second body part they find belongs to a second victim, that was reported missing by the Las Vegas Crime Lab. So to solve the mystery they bring in Dr. Ray Langston (Laurence Fishburne) to help them. He of course can't leave until they have solved this thing. They figure out part of the mystery the who did the cutting, but not necessarily the killing. They need to find out who originally dumped the victim's body.

A sort of subplot to the main theme is the victims wanted to be models (big universal cliche plot) and were forced to prostitute themselves. The Miami victim's story seems to be self contained and almost complete, but the Vegas victims story apparently is the plot that crosses over all three series.

All in all I enjoyed the episode, but it really could have been toned down to just one of the series, so far. I'll give it a 3/5 CSI thumbprints/stars.

A Recent Read Number 12

2009-11-08T19:40:00.001-05:00

"Herein you will find truth and fantasy. Each is necessary for the other to exist, but each must be recognized for what it is."

Note: This is the second of five of my recent book reviews of books I read earlier this year, and never got around to writing up my reviews. So I may have missed some details that at the time of reading these books I may have had.

The Satanic Bible - By Anton Szandor LaVey. It took me a long time before I had the nerve to read this book. When I first heard about it I was scared to read it. I'm not sure why, maybe because I had that paranoid Christian viewpoint that it was somehow cursed and would warp your mind, or some other such nonsense. I think there are some Christians who do believe that the book is evil and should be destroyed. It may also have been from all those stories you hear about teenagers committing suicide because they read this book, or got into Satan worship.

Well this book is basically just one mans philosophy that has been shaped by childhood clashes with organized religion. He grew up a "circus kid" and at 18 left the circus to join a carnival. His early introductions to Religion were from watching so called Christians who would spend Saturday night watching half-naked girls dancing at the carnival and then the Next Sunday morning those same men would be in the church pew with their wives and children. Needless to say this, and the pomp and circumstance of Religious ceremonies turned LaVey off of religion particularly Christianity.

In a nutshell LaVey's Satanism is part anti-Christianity and part self preservation. Throughout the book the theme is do whatever you want, try not to harm others, but if they harm you or prevent you from doing what you want then harm them.

The first half of the book is this basic philosophy and the description of what LaVey's Satanism is. I think most of his Hail Satan! stuff is just to annoy Christians. I think that the attitude that many atheists have of Christians being intellectually inferior to free-thinking atheists comes partly from them reading this book.

Often he mentions that Christianity doesn't let you have any fun, particularly when it comes to sex, but his Satanism says Go FOR IT! So long as you don't abuse or harm the other person (unless they want you to). He claims that Christianity keeps people from being themselves and enjoying the material world.

The second part of this book I think is total nonsense, and is extremely difficult to comprehend. Maybe it is because it has some of the "Satanic Rituals" which LaVey calls "Enochain Keys" (whatever they are, that part went right over my head and I forget how they were explained). This final part is difficult to read partly because the "Keys" are first written in Latin and then the following page written with the English translation. Many of them are lyrical but are very cryptic. They are supposed to be read by a Satanic priest during their Black Mass. Some of them are to be done to curse people, but it seems that most of them are just to satisfy the Satanists need to Sieg Heil er HAIL SATAN!

I don't think Christians, or people of non-Satanist religions should fear reading this book. Mr. LaVey's Satanism is not the Evil Human sacrifice Satanism that is depicted in Hollywood movies, and condemned by Christianity and particularly the Catholic Church. His Satanism to me is a slightly twisted "everyone fend for themselves and forget everyone else" philosophy. Don't hurt people unless they hurt you first. I don't even think his concept of Satan is the same as that of Christianity, although he does seem to exploit that way of thinking. Except for the final sections about the Ceremonies this book as I said is basically about a "look out for number one" way of life.

The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey 1969 Avon Books (Harper Collins Publishers) 272 pages - **.5

CSI Trilogy Crossover Special Episodes

2009-11-07T01:38:00.007-05:00

OH BOY. Starting Monday 09 November 2009 CBS will air a trilogy of crossover episodes in each of the CSI shows, starting with CSI:MIAMI which airs on Monday, then they will go onto CSI:NY on Wednesday 11 Nov and finish the storyline arc with the Original CSI (sometimes called CSI:LAS VEGAS or CSI:VEGAS)on Thursday 12 Nov. I am not a real big fan of crossover episodes that spill over into each and every one of the individual entities. I don't like it with comic books and I certainly don't like it with TV shows. I don't mind when a spin-off show starts off on a crossover episode of the original show to set up the spin-off, but once they are individuals I don't like the crossover story arcs to jump between the series.

UGH. My biggest peeve about all this is I am not a huge fan of CSI:MIAMI, although I do like the actresses in that show, but I haven't watched an episode of it in a very long time. Not since probably season 2 or so.

I am a fan of the other two shows, but not Miami. I hope when it comes time to release the DVD of this story that they do the right thing and have it as it's own little package, not only as the respective epsiodes in each series. Since I have no idea what season CSI:MIAMI is currently in I wouldn't know which DVD season to buy. OK I can look it up on imdb.com, and it looks like they are WOW in season 8 (CSI is in season 10, and CSI:NY is in season 6).

I will watch the episodes. I probably should record them all on the same tape to keep the story together. I normally don't record the shows much anymore unless I am out at the time they are being aired. Mostly since most shows are released pretty quickly now on DVD.

Post Office Whoa! 2

2009-11-06T15:45:00.006-05:00

OK it happened again within about a week or so of the first time. Part of it is the change of the post office times. I think another part is postal workers getting a little lazy and slowing down.

ON Wednesday, once again I got one of those little cards that lets you know "You have a package" So on Thursday I go to the post office around 9:00 AM I got there a little after so they were already open. First I went directly to the door/window where you normally pick up packages, well no one was there so I knock on the door a couple of times. One of the clerks at one of the main windows says the pick up area is closed you have to wait in the main line. OK so I do that wait my turn for about 10 minutes. Go to the next employee at the counter when it is my turn. Turns out it is the same lady from last week. Should have been a clue.

Anyway the same song and dance. Last time I had remembered wrong what the excuse is. It isn't that it takes them too long to unload the truck from the day before, it is that mail left over from my mail carrier is actually dropped off at another postal station (one without public access I think). So mail that they attempt to deliver and can't is taken to that center first then to my post office. So I have to wait until at least 9:30 before I can claim any packages it looks like, unless I wait till the second day.

So I picked up the package they attempted to drop off Wednesday, today (Friday) at around noon when I leisurely went to pick the package up.

I also dropped off in the regular mail a post card from a company that had badly misspelled my name. I marked the thing "return to sender" along with "No such person, remove from mailing list". I know it will do no good, it probably won't even be returned to the damn company, the post office will probably just toss it. Oh the Misspelling you say? I think it originated with some stupid credit card company, they dropped the last letter of my first name and added my middle initial so now I occasionally get mail for a "Kirl Andersen" How the Frack do you think "Kirl" is a name? It's an exorcise with weights or a Canadian sport not a name.

A Recent Read Number 11

2009-11-03T14:18:00.009-05:00

"For the record, I should state what is hopefully obvious by now. If you asked me the question 'Are you trying to use science to prove the existence of God?' my response would be, 'Absolutely not. What I am attempting to do is to use the scientific method in an open-minded manner to enable God - if he/she/it/they exist - to prove his existence himself.'"

The G.O.D. Experiments: How Science Is Discovering God In Everything, Including Us by Gary E. Schwartz with William L. Simon. Wow what an interesting angle to an age old debate. First off this is not a pro-Christian book attempting to Bible thump at skeptics and atheists the Gospel of Jesus. This is an open-minded exorcise that leaves the question of "Is there a God, or Not" still pretty wide open. The author at the time of publishing was a professor of psychology, surgery, medicine, neurology, and psychiatry the University of Arizona. He approaches the age old question of "Does God exist?" from a skeptical scientists view. Rather than quote the Bible at every opportunity and say "It's in the Bible, so there!", he conducts psychological experiments to try to show that there is some sort of force or energy that influences the universe. He uses a rather clever term "Guiding, Organizing, Designing" Process (G.O.D.) rather than God.

Even though this book tends to read like a college text book, it does have some pretty interesting events and results. One thing that I think readers will come away with from reading this book is that the universe is not just made up of random cause and effect events. There is some sort of force that at least started some organization in the universe. The author doesn't attempt to claim that the G.O.D. process he describes is the Abrahamic God of the Bible, or that God even still influences people and events in the universe. He leaves all that up to the reader to make his/her own conclusions.

It has been several months since I last read this book to when I am writing this, so my initial thoughts I had while reading the book have been lost to time. Just as the author lets his readers draw their own conclusions about the existence of God or of Intelligent Design of the Universe I will let readers of this review draw their own conclusions about whether or not they wish to read this book.

I do recall that when I heard about this book and saw a description of this book, I had some questions that I thought this book would answer. Well those questions were not answered. The book does follow a similar train of thought that I have had for several years concerning the nature of God. Most peoples views about God don't fit that thought. People who are looking for some kind of physical or human trait God will be disappointed. This book tends to follow the belief that what we tend to call God is actually some sort of force or energy that has some influence on the universe in ways that we don't really look at.

The G.O.D. Experiments: How Science Is Discovering God In Everything, Including Us. by Gary E. Schwartz 2006 Atria Books (Simon & Schuster, Inc.) 305 pages - ***

YES! A Win!

2009-11-02T00:20:00.012-05:00

OK so the NFL season is about 1/2 over and a first win at this time of the season isn't great, but at least it is a start to something good. It boosts confidence for a team. I am talking about the St. Louis Rams 17-10 win over the Detroit Lions.

The rams end a 17 game losing streak, and last season they were only 2-14.

So guys you can take off the bags.

Most of last season and this season things have looked pretty much like this. The rest of the NFL chasing down the Rams and knocking them down.

Yeah the look on Lions Coach Jim Schwartz's face is the face Rams fans have had all season long, and most of last season.

Now for the last couple of weeks Redskins fans have been annoyed at their team during their losing streak, and are so ashamed of them attendance for home games are down, and people are making jokes like "How do you keep the Redskins out of your yard? Put up a goal post" One fan a few weeks back was so upset they created this new logo for the Skins:

I was tempted to try and make a similar one for the rams, and while writing this post up decided I'd give it a try. So here is my quick attempt at a Rams-Shame Logo, it's not terribly good, but it ain't too bad:

Photos of Rams vs. Lions game from Getty Images from Yahoo Sports.

Post Office Whoa!

2009-10-29T17:04:00.006-04:00

OK so yesterday (Wednesday 28 October, 2009). I get one of those little post cards in my mailbox that tells you there is a parcel waiting for you at your local post office. I live in an apartment so any package larger than a small loaf of bread has to be picked up at the post office. Unless I am home when they first try to deliver the package. This is normally not a problem, I go to the post office wait in line and find out what package it was that was too large to fit in my tiny mailbox, and who sent the thing.

Well today at about 8:45 AM I go to pick up the package and two things happen:

I see a sign on the door to the post office that says they have changed their hours to Retail Hours 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM (previously their hours were 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM). I liked the 8:30 time because I can go to the post office on the way to work without being too damn late. Great so now when I have to pick up a package I either have to wait till Saturday, or get into work even later than late.

The guy that was cleaning the floors at the post office noticed I just had a pick up so he said that he could help me, by getting one of the postal clerks to get my package. Well I go to the pick up door/window and wait for one of the postal persons to help me. She checks my ID (which also is the only way to get my address as this particular card didn't have my full address on it) and looks for the package. She doesn't find it telling me it probably hasn't been taken off the truck yet, and mentions that the card should have had a delivery time on it or something to that effect. She says that it should be available at about 9:30 or so. Well I couldn't wait a full half hour as I was already going to be late to work as is. Oh well I'll have to try picking it up tomorrow after 9:00 AM.

Next Up World Series 2009

2009-10-26T04:53:00.009-04:00

UGH. The world series will be between last years champs the Philadelphia Phillies (their fans can be worse than those fair-weather Patriots fans from a few seasons ago) and the Bronx Bums New York Yankees (or are the Mets those bums?).

I'm not a fan of either team. I'm not sure which team I dislike more. I don't really hate the Yankees, except the musical "Damn Yankees" was one of my favorite musicals growing up, maybe it was just because it was based around the Washington Senators. The Phillies have been really really nasty to my Washington Nationals these past 5 seasons.

From my rough World Series research it looks like the last time these two teams met in the big show was back in 1950 and the Yankees swept Phillie. Phillie won last year and are trying for a repeat. The question is can they do it? We shall see very very soon.

So who will I root for? Not sure. If I root for the Phillies in a way I'm kind of dissing the Nationals. If I route for the Yankees then I'm dissing the National League of which the Nationals belong. Dilemma dilemma dilemma. Oh it would have been soooooooooo easy if one of those other play-off teams had won. Is it possible to watch (or keep track of the series) without really rooting for either team?

Self appointed posting quota.

2009-10-25T21:26:00.002-04:00

Lets see it the middle of October and I only have 14 posts for 2009, well 15 now with this post. That is just a little over one post per month, my barely bare minimum. I like to at least keep with previous years so my goal is usually 32 posts per year minimum. That is the number of posts I had my first blogging year in 2006. I'm happy if I get just one post per month, meaning I am relatively happy with the bare minimum of 12 posts a year...almost. My goal of 32 is about an average of 2.6 posts per month. I guess part of my problem is I don't want to post just any old thing, and I don't want to post things that are too personal in a security conscious way.

I wonder if I will make my self appointed quota for this year?

A quick humorus thought - Flumo Wrestling.

2009-10-19T21:42:00.006-04:00

I think it was on this past Saturday, while 'net surfin' I made a comment on a blog I was reading. The Google verification service that you have to log-into to post a comment usually gives some random letters that don't make up any real word. This time was not really different but what it did give was at least to me pretty funny.

It gave me: "Flumo" my first thought was what what a cool new Sport Flumo Wrestling. What exactly that is I don't know. The second meaning could simply be when the Muppet Elmo gets the flu. I hope it isn't anything nasty that would offend anybody in a different language, if so then my deepest sincerest apologies.

Finally while trying to find an appropriate picture of Elmo, I couldn't find what I was looking for but saw this:

Elmo in Lego

AH That might be it.

Trading Card Blog

2009-10-16T16:40:00.006-04:00

Just a quickie. I started up another blog that has a trading card theme. I will try to keep it updated semi-regularly and may refer to it from time to time. Check it out. There should be a link to it over there on the right-side bar, you might have to view my full profile first. It is very simply called CaptKirk42's Trading Card Blog.

Later.

See you in Sept...er October...

2009-09-30T00:23:00.002-04:00

EEK September is almost over. Loads of things to do 'round here. I was going to do a rant but I think I'll try that tomorrow if I remember, I've got it written down, it is a matter of remembering to type it up here. Its all Facebook's fault, that and being bummed out about the Nationals having more than 100 loses, the Redskins losing to the Detroit Lions, and The Rams not winning any of their games yet. UGH Good thing Hockey season is starting.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

2009-08-04T01:23:00.004-04:00

NICK JOHNSON

Nick started out his MLB career as a DAMN YANKEE, then was traded to the Montreal Expos and they became the Washington Nationals when the team moved to DC for the 2005 Season.

OK so what is wrong with the following picture?

Well old familiar #24 is now #20 and is back in pinstripes, excuse me now in fishstripes with the Florida Marlins. I was really annoyed when the trade happened, but I'm not too upset anymore. I've always sort of liked the Marlins except when they play the Nationals.

NO NATS! NOT NICK!

2009-07-31T20:36:00.013-04:00

Yeah Nick's Grimace in this pic just about shows how much I liked today's Mid-Season Trade Deadline Trade.

The WASHINGTON NATIONALS announced a Mid-Season Dead-Line Trade with the Florida Marlins. The Nats just traded one of my all-time fave NATS, who was part of the Original 2005 Season Nationals who were the Montreal Expos, First Baseman Nick Johnson (The last Expo who was still with the Nats) for pitcher Aaron Thompson from Florida's Minor League System Oh and some cash considerations. The biggest sucky part of this is we won't see Thompson in DC for at least a year, maybe two since he's still Minor League.

I haven't been this annoyed at a trade the Nationals made since the Church & Schneider for Milledge trade with the Mets during the winter of '07 just before the 2008 Season. Chruch is now with the Atlanta Braves (after a recent trade a few weeks ago) and Milledge is with the Pittsburgh Pirates from another recent trade. I think Schneider is still with the Mets, thank goodness.

I wasn't even annoyed when the Nats traded away their closer Chad "The Chief" Cordero (another fave of mine), who was their last real closer they've had for sometime.

I know there had been rumors of trading away Nick for sometime, probably even when he was out due to that collision with Austin Kearns in 2006 vs. the Mets in New York that broke his leg.

The Nats are saying they would have gotten rid of Nick at the end of this season anyway. Say What?

OK so how long will the rest of my Fave Nats remain Nats? Ryan Zimmerman, Austin Kearns, Jesus Flores, Will Nieves, Josh Willingham, Jordan Zimmerman even Adam Dunn and the new kid Nijer Morgan. Well at least Nick looks pretty good in pinstripes. After all he did start as a Damn Yankee.

Dream Blog?

2009-07-29T21:45:00.006-04:00

Dream Blog or No Dream Blog?

I've been toying with the idea of making a dream blog. It would be a blog version of my personal dream log that I already sort of do in a word document. My biggest strike against it though is when real people I know (or celebs I may or may not like) are in my dreams I would have to change the names for several reasons. I don't want to embarrass myself or the other person in case of any compromising situations. I also don't want to open myself up to any sort of law suit. I thought about making up aliases for people but that would require me to make a master list of the aliases and remember who I call who? (or is that whom I called who?) It could get confusing to me.

Although they are just dreams? Right?

Another strike is often times I don't describe things well enough to give the reader the same vision that I saw in my dream. Sometimes when I reread my old dreams, I have no idea what had happened even though I wrote it down. Most of the time I do recall some of it after a little thought.

It's not good for someone who sometimes wants to get into writing to write stuff that doesn't make any sense to the reader, or give any vision of the action. I'm noticing the same problem when I try to write stories. [super big sigh]

OH well maybe there is still the porn biz, or am I too old for that now? (Joking)

Childhood Icons First thought.

2009-06-25T22:44:00.004-04:00

Just a quick one, I think I will expand upon it tomorrow. This past week within the last 3 days 3 Entertainment Icons from my childhood passed away. Starting with Ed McMahon who for many years was Johnny Carson's Sidekick on NBCs The Tonight Show. They had started sometime before I was born or close enough so I grew up with the Tonight Show being a staple on late night television. I didn't always watch them, and some years the only time I watched them was when they would have the Mighty Carson Tonight Show Players to see their silly sketches with Johnny trying to do a character that was not very convincing. Ed passed away on Tuesday 23 June 2009. For several years he had some problem or another, the sad thing is some people upon hearing of his death said "I thought he was already dead". I guess that shows how bad some of his illnesses were.

Then there was Farrah Fawcett 62. Super Sex Symbol of the 1970s. I admit it she was the first of at least 3 reasons why I watched Charlie's Angels starting in 1976 (or was it 1975?). Her passing today (Thursday 25 June 2009) was not a total shock, but it still jarred the system. For the last couple of years she had been battling renal cancer, which a month or so ago had spread to her liver.

Then the Total Shocker Michael Jackson today suffered cardiac arrest and passed away. He was 50. The last few years its been odd thinking about his chronological age vs the age he seemed to act as. I'm not saying he was childish, he just didn't seem completely "grown up" either.

The Politics of Sports.

2009-05-07T01:10:00.010-04:00

Who says that politics and sports don't mix?

In recent years first professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura was elected the Governor of Minnesota.

He also appeared in a small Hollywood action movie you might have seen with the Governor of California called "Predator". His acting wasn't bad, wasn't great, but wasn't bad. He also appears to have been a pretty good Governor.

Now a professional basketball player has been elected as Mayor. Former Detroit Piston (and Washington Bullet) Dave Bing was elected Mayor of Detroit.
So now the mayor's office will have to have a regulation backboard for the Mayor's One-On-One games with the President.

EDIT:
A link or two: bingformayor.com, espn.com news

Sigh another app at Yahoo being closed down.

2009-04-25T20:40:00.006-04:00

Changes, changes changes. Yahoo is making more. I learned of this latest change they are going to do from a blog I follow Eye of Polyphemus. Yahoo is closing down their free website hosting "Geocities". They have just made the announcement so far, and say that the shut down will happen around the summer. Details on how to save current accounts will be given a little later. They will no longer have a free service you will have to pay $4.95/month for their Yahoo domain service. At least it looks like you can choose your own domain name.

Back in 1997 when I first set up my free account with Geocities the choices of free website hosting was limited to about 3 or 4 services, and the webhosting services that you had to pay for had prices that were skyhigh. Also at the time when you set up your Geocities website you chose a neighborhood to move into there were neighborhood categories like "Hollywood" for entertainment related sites, "Soho" for arts related sights yadda yadda. For my sight I chose the Athens/Olympus area because I wanted mysite to be mostly original poems and writings I wrote, well I branched out in to other areas. Shortly there after Yahoo bought Geocities and the website urls were renamed from the long neighborhood addresses to simply "geocities.com/youraccountname". For extra $$ you can get your own domain name and that eliminates the ads that appear on your site.

Oh getting back to my main part of this rant. Earlier this year Yahoo shut down it's Breifcase function, which was primarily another storage area for all sorts of files. It was primarily designed to shuttle files from your home computer to work or vice versa. At least that they gave some warning about. About a year or two ago they got rid of their Yahoo Photos service, which was like photobucket, or flickr without any warning (at least without any warning I remember). Unfortunately for me I didn't know about the photo shut down and lost who knows how many photos. I think anything of any real importance I still have elsewhere, but since I didn't have anytime to make preparations I don't know if I lost anything that was just over there. Sigh. With the briefcase, which I used a little bit but not too much, I was able to save whatever was there that I wanted. Hopefully with Geocities I will be able to save what I want. Right now there are some photos there that are only there that I know of so I'll have to do some saving. Most of my regular pages over there I have updated/duplicated at my own website klandersen.com.

Gee thanks Yahoo.

Gotta Get Blogging More.

2009-04-16T01:47:00.010-04:00

(*Found this picture here clearwave.ca)

Yeah, OK I've gotta get offa my tush and get blogging more often. It's Mid-April and I've only done 4 posts this year. Lets see, I average about 37 posts a year, which is only about 3 posts a month. Hmmm not bad, but not good as far as the blogging world is concerned. I guess it's all that time I spend on Facebook and Twitter. One thing about Twitter that I don't like is when you follow someone (or a group) you get ALL their updates whenever they update, so for twits that Twit (or is it Tweet?) constantly your homepage is filled updates from that one group. You can't follow someone and only occasionally check their updates. OH Well.

Anyway I have two books that I need to review here, and add to my A Recent Read listing. I also need to update and fix somethings on my website klandersen.com For that I was going to try learning about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and started doing that, because that is how most websites now-a-days are coded. My big problem with it though is I want a link list on a side bar like my site has so I don't have to always update a million pages when I want to add or delete a link. So far I'm confused as to how to get that actually done, because when I experiment with it the ways people have mentioned how to do it don't seem to work. So I will probably have to continue to do things the very long old-school HTML way.

A Spam of all Spams

2009-04-16T00:15:00.006-04:00

OK so we have all gotten Spam email, or at least have heard about it. You know there are the "Chain-Letter" spams that are now on email, there's the Get Rich Quick scams, and the "Bank Of Anerica" (notice there is usually a misspelling such as I did here) Well in my Yahoo email, oddly enough on my birthday (I just now noticed that, weird or coincidence?) I got the Mother of all Spam-Scam-Emails. This is supposedly from of all places THE FBI Um yeah, like the FBI would send an anonymous email instead of sending an official letter via the USPS or a Hand Delivered subpoena or some other real official notice.

I originally didn't even bother reading what the thing was saying, I just read it while posting this message about it. I only saved it for the purpose of posting here just to say Neah neah neah neah, neah. The text was all in bold font. A couple of the big RED Flags that indicate it's a scam: All the misspellings, the email address. If it had really been from the FBI it would have had an email address of fbi.gov and it would probably have had some sort of extra stuff in the header or footer that had some sort of "this is official government correspondence" and mentions of official use and abuse of government documents yadda yadda yadda.

So here is the email I got directly cut & pasted:

APRIL 2009 NOTICE

Saturday, April 4, 2009 8:03 AM

From: "Federal Bureau of Investigation"
Add sender to Contacts
To: undisclosed-recipients

FROM: Federal Bureau of Investigation

This is an official advice from the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI). It has come to our notice that some certain individuals have used your name as the beneficiary of funds worth Millions of United States Dollars from abroad. These individuals with their collaborating banks knowing fully well that they do not have enough facilities to effect this payment from any part of the world to your account, used what we know as a Secret Diplomatic Transit Payment (S.T.D.P) as well as the ATM card system to pay this fund which has not been completed till this day. Direct transfers are difficult and Secret Diplomatic Transit Payment (S.T.D.P) are not made unless the funds are related to terrorism activities and we ask why must your payment be made in secret transfer, if your transaction is legitimate. We do not want you to get into trouble as soon as these funds reflect

We decided to contact you directly to acquire the proper verifications and proof from you to show that you are the rightful person to receive this fund, because of the amount involved. Be informed that the funds are now with a top bank in the United State in your name and under the monitoring/custody of the FBI. At the moment, we have asked the bank not to release the fund to anybody that comes to them, unless we instruct them to do so, this is to enable us carry out a comprehensive investigations first before releasing the fund to you. Hence, you are to forward the document to us immediately if you have it in your possession, if you do not have it, let us know so that we will direct you where to obtain the document and send to us. Thereafter, we will ask the bank holding the funds, to go ahead and credit your account immediately. FBI Identification Record and Diplomatic Immunity Seal of Transfer (DIST) often referred to as a Criminal History Record or Rap Sheet is a listing o

Final Instruction;
1. Credit payment instruction: Irrevocable credit guarantee. 2. Beneficiary has full power when validation is cleared. 3. Beneficiaries bank in U.S.A. can only release funds. 4. Upon confirmation from the World Bank / United nations. 5. Bearers must clear bank protocol and validation request.

NOTE: We have asked for the Diplomatic Immunity Seal of Transfer (DIST) document to ensure the most complete and up-to date records possible for the enhancement of public safety, welfare and security of society while recognizing the importance of individual privacy rights. If you fail to provide the Documents to us, we will charge you and take appropriate action against you for not proving the legality of the funds. The United States Department of Justice Order 556-73 establishes rules and regulations for the subject of an FBI Identification Record to obtain a copy of his or her own Record for review. The FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) division processes these requests to check illegal activities in USA and beyond. An individual may request a copy of his or her own FBI Identification Record for personal review or to challenge information on the Record. Other reasons an individual may request a copy of his or her own Identification Record may include internati

FBI Director,
Robert S. Mueller, III.

Huh?
What the heck did that say anyway. It was all just nonsense to me. It sounds like a variation on the Nigerian Scam but it doesn't seem to give any instructions on what they want you to do or to reply, if you are stupid, or gullible enough to reply to them.

Oh it apparently is The 419 Scam a form of the Nigerian Scam. I forwarded it just now to the abuse email at live.com (report_spam@live.com) and I will mark it as spam in my Yahoo Mailbox.

Here is a link to a Hoax Alert from about.com about a similar email http://crime.about.com/od/scams/qt/fbihoax.htm

Who the Frack are these scammers and how stupid do they think people are? OK so they are not relying on people being stupid, they are relying on people being naive about financial matters and hoping that people will just see the You can get $1 Million in the notice or however much they say you supposedly Won, inherited etc..

New Look for Screech!

2009-03-06T01:32:00.006-05:00

Well changes are coming for The Washington Nationals in 2009 in more ways than one. If news of trades for good or bad, or firings of coaches and resignations of general managers and whatnot was not enough for you then here is something else for you. The Nationals Mascot Screech, has a new look. The news media is calling it
a grown up look, I call it molting or something.

Here is SCREECH in The early days:

On Final Saturday Night Game at RFK Loss to Phillidelphia 22 September 2007.

The next day at the Official digging up of Home Plate Ceremony after the Final Game at RFK Win on Sunday Afternoon 23 September 2007.

And now here is the New very Toned down Screech:

I'm not sure that I like it. I think the "00" jersey number is a nice touch for a Mascot, but I liked the "05" he had to indicate the year of his Hatching. Well like many other changes it will take some getting used to.

Nice Face, Shame About the Anorexia

2009-02-25T23:25:00.004-05:00

A few days to a week ago, I spotted this Ralph Lauren ad while on Facebook. My first reaction was dang how much skinnier and bonier can those two get? Get Anorexia much?

Why am I reminded of those cartoons where the character gets flattened and they look normal until you see the side view and they are a very paper thin line?

That is so not healthy. I can see using a healthy skinny model for your ads but skin & bones? No. Its a real shame because the one on the left would be pretty cute if she had some meat on her bones!

Give then girls some Pizza and some Girl Scout Cookies Stat.

First Words of 2009!

2009-01-01T03:58:00.004-05:00

It's a brand new Year so lets get going with it and hit the ground running. I usually send out an email near the New Year that gives my Year In Review. I am not sending out that email this year. I end up adding it to my website anyway so that is what I will do from now on. I think I will make monthly updates to it and just post the updated version as I go on the website. Of course I need to make sure I can still update my old site. It seems they might have changed the way files get uploaded to the site so I'll have to play with things to see if I can still make changes if not I'm SOL.

Me being Goofy (Circa 1993)

I will not make any New Year's Resolution, because I don't make those. Why make an outrageous promise that you might not be able to keep. Also who checks at the end of the year to see if you kept your resolution. Who remembers the resolution they made? EXACTLY!

Last Words of 2008!

2008-12-31T01:44:00.006-05:00

OK so here we are at the very tail end of the year 2008. Two-Thousand and Eight Years since the last transition of how man keeps track of his own made concept Time. Well really something like 2053 years the calendar has been used (See Julian lendar). If your Jewish it's still 5769 So Party On! You've got plenty of the year left! This past year has been pretty good to me for the most part. I'll have some of the boring details on my website Nesredna's Knook on my Year In Review page(s) there. I should have it updated in a few days or so.

RANDOM PICTURE:

Womanizer Baby?

2008-12-01T03:51:00.012-05:00

BRITNEY SPEARS
WOMANIZER!

OK so the latest Bright-knees Speared hit is called Womanizer. It is a pretty catchy tune, but I have noticed that it is a little contradictory or maybe ironic. Especially when she sings "Womanizer OH, You're a Womanizer Baby". Then again what do you expect from a Pop-Tart who is trying to make a comeback and become Madonna Jr. Did I just type that out loud in a blog? Silly me.

Have you seen the video for this song?

It starts off with Britney making breakfast (scantily clad in lingerie) for her "Womanizer Baby" and switches between that and her buck naked in a sauna. I would love to know how to make those square eggs she makes.

It then breezes through some scenarios of Britney in various roles in the day of the life of her Womanizing Man, her "Womanizer Baby". She goes from a sexually harassed co-worker to a redhot suductress waitress, to sexy pantsless chauffeur back to the quiet stay at home wiffie. Man how does she drive like that?

I'm not sure which character I like best the waitress or the co-worker? I'm leaning toward the co-worker because of her smooth moves. Then again it could just be the glasses and tight skirt.

New Threads

2008-11-30T21:43:00.007-05:00

In 2009 my two local MLB Teams: The Washington Nationals and The Baltimore Orioles will be wearing new uniforms.

For the Orioles they are only changing their road jerseys back to the old "Baltimore" script like they had back in the 60s-70s. To be honest I hadn't noticed since I rarely see any O's games. I really hate it when they wear the hats with the "O's" I prefer the ones that have either the character Oriole's "face" or the ones with the full body oriole.

The Nats will have a more noticeable change or two. The left arm patch will be the interlocking DC logo instead of the commemorative stadium patch they have had. The "Washington" on the Road jersey's will be in script instead of the block letters it had been. An alternate jersey will be a blue top with the "DC" logo on the front.

Do those models come with the uniforms?
I think they should, and Lastings Milledge thinks they should too.

Here is the initial story on the Nats official site:
http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081106&content_id=3668093&vkey=news_was&fext=.jsp&c_id=was

And a good take on the new uniforms on the Blog NATS320
http://nats320.blogspot.com/2008/11/2009-new-uniform-unveiling-espn-zone.html

And an update:http://nats320.blogspot.com/2008/11/more-on-new-uniforms.html

The Baltimore Sun on the O's New Uniforms:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/baseball/bal-sp.os5023jan23,1,7145811.story?coll=bal-baseball-storyutil

Dancing With The Candidates?

2008-10-22T00:22:00.008-04:00

Take this lovely Dancing With The Stars photo of Pop-Singer Mario (Who? What is his full name? Is that it?) and Karina Smirnoff. Again Who?

I don't watch the show so I didn't see any of their moves on the dance floor/ stage/ TV studio. I first saw a parody of this photo Monday Night on a blog or a chat board, and I of course got some emails that had it as an attachment. It is a nice photoshop parody and here it is.

Wow uncanny, so why is Barack Obama dancing with Tina Fey? OK I know it's Sarah Palin. At any rate it is a very good photoshop job. Congrats to whoever did it. By the way I had a Dickens of a time trying to Google the parody. Maybe I was checking with the wrong words or maybe it has been deleted from some places. I don't know, but I ended up using a copy from an email attachment. Speaking of Dancing with the Stars, I still don't watch it. Even when they had:

Marie Osmond, or Lisa Rinna, I was tempted to watch it then. I was also tempted to watch it some other time but I forget who the stars were that I wanted to see .

Personally I'd rather dance with Lisa if I could dance (I'd have to get by Harry Hamlin on that score, the lucky dog) than Karina even though she has slightly nicer looking legs. Yeah I know, Paula Abdul says she can teach anybody how to dance. Hey maybe I should take her up on that. Teach me to dance Paula!

Facebook Fun or Princess Bride Classic Stuff

2008-10-15T16:24:00.011-04:00

I found a humorous picture on Facebook.com.

Ah a famous quote immortalized in it's literal sense. For those of you who have been under a rock for about 20-25 years or don't get to the cinema much. The quote "Hello my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!" is from the movie The Princess Bride uttered by the character of the same name Inigo Montoya portrayed by Mandy Patinkin who starred in the TV shows Dead Like Me and Criminal Minds.

Hmm must be a popular idea. OH Well. Hey I like this red version.