A Song,Telemarketers and the Anthology

Good morning!

Someone complained to me recently that I never update my blog any more. Tis true. Most of my writing time happens over at Fifteen Minutes Of Fiction. Speaking of which, Jonathan just created an account and posted some Passion Week monologues. I'm also doing a series of Passion Week Perspectives. I hope to add another one today.

Anyway, part of the reason for this blog entry is to post a link to a song I wrote recently, titled "Lift Up Your Eyes". It was written for a church's missions conference. Lift Up Your Eyes.

On the subject of telemarketers, take a look at this: Credit Card Fraud. I was inspired to follow this line of questioning with inbound cold calls, and it is very interesting. When you ask for their web address, they all do one of the following:

• Ask, "Why do you need to know?"
• Say, "We have a website, but it's only for members"
• Say, "I don't have that information"
• Hang up

And if you ask for a physical address they, without fail, hang up on you. That may gives you a good idea what percentage of telemarketing calls are actually scammers!

If you haven't heard, the FMOF site is putting out a Fifteen Minute Anthology - an anthology of the best pieces of writing on the site since its beginning. This is taking up quite a bit of my time these days, and I'm quite excited about it.

Okay, Beth, there ya go - I posted something here! Happy? ;)

Grief

Don't watch Hallmark's "The Russell Girl" unless you're in the mood for a serious tearjerker. Seriously. I don't know when I've seen a movie that was as much of an emotional roller coaster as this.

On the other hand, like the movie We Are Marshall, which came out in 2006 (not too long after Tommy's death), "The Russell Girl" is an awfully good look at the kinds of things that grief does to people, and the turmoil it causes in their relationships with...well, with everyone.

But don't say you weren't warned.

My Christmas Story

Good morning! For anyone who is interested, I've finished writing my Christmas Story over at Fifteen Minutes Of Fiction. It's a three part story titled "The Toyota And The Stable", and you can find the first part here: The Toyota.

What Do I Think Of Vista?

Okay, every time I mention that I have a new computer, I get two questions:

"Does it have Vista?"

and...

"What do you think of Vista?"

The answer is, after spending a day and a half installing software, transferring files and such, I'm finally starting to figure out the ways that Vista makes life easier than XP. The problem is, most people don't use their computers enough to figure out those differences, and get impatient with not being able to do things the way the used to.

One example of this is the Windows explorer window which has some really slick features, but is enough different in its layout that it irritated me at first. In XP you have an "up one level" button, which I used all the time. But not in Vista. At first I thought this was a horrible oversight, until I finally realized that the window's address bar was made up of clickable folder names, which allows me to not just go up one level, but also up two levels or three levels, with just one click.

As a developer, I do have one frustration which most people will rarely face...

If I want to manually tweak an ini file or configuration file, I can't just open it in Notepad, edit it, and save it. I have to open notepad as Administrator ("Run as Administrator" is an option available by right clicking on notepad), then open the file from within Notepad, make my changes, then save it.

I've got most of my software installed (both Flash 8 and Visual Studio.net installed without major problems, which is a relief, since between them those two pieces of software cost more than the computer itself, and I didn't want to have to upgrade them)

I am going to have to upgrade a couple less expensive programs, but I can live with that.

And, my printer driver installed without a glitch (in fact, it was easier than installing it on XP).

And aside from all that, I'm loving having a computer with a screen so big that half the time I don't even bother maximizing my windows. :)

Dell's Random Fluctuations

The order confirmation email from Dell after my purchase last week has a link to click to view product information and tracking information.

Only, based (apparently) purely on the luck of the draw, clicking the link displays one of two different items, both labeled as a computer. Each has its own tracking id, and one of them is shown as scheduled to arrive today, while the other is scheduled to arrive on Thursday.

Since they're both labeled as An Inspiron 1720, one could hope that I'm actually getting two computers for the price of one.

But probably they've mislabeled one of them, and it's actually a wireless mouse, or a carry case.

And knowing my luck, I'll get the carry case today, and nothing to put in it until the end of the week.

Or, knowing my luck, one is a mouse, one is a carrying case, and they forgot to send the computer. :D

3:47 PM: Package number one was a mouse AND a carrying case. So. Lucky me. At least I have something to put my mouse in. :)

Beowulf? You must be joking...

Haven't been to the movies in awhile (other than taking Daniel to see BeeMovie, which he liked much more than I did). Tonight I decided I'd go see Beowulf.

What a disappointment that was. I knew going into it that it was a "motion capture animation" - they put the actors into the fancy high tech suits that track their movements, and use that as a framework to build CGI characters.

Even knowing that's what I was getting myself in for, it was still a big disappointment. All through the movie I kept thinking: Why? WHen you've got the likes of Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovitch, let us see THEM. Don't waste their talent by replacing their ever so expressive faces with animated caricatures of humanity that aren't even a tenth as expressive.

Not to mention the fact that I cringed every time I saw one of the CGI horses galloping. That was a sight to make any equestrian cry.

I just visited imdb to see what people there were saying about the movie. One statement caught my attention: I saw this movie today and every movie I've ever seen in the last 40 years now looks as quaint to me as the silent movies looked to me in my era.

You are kidding, right? I mean, granted, if you've seen nothing but Saturday Morning Cartoons, this is mighty impressive, but otherwise, if you've ever seen anything with a bit of humanity to it...

What makes it even worse is...I just went online and read a plot summary of Beowulf (the epic peom) and found that they seriously massacred the story.

I suppose that's no surprise, but it makes me wonder...why did they make this movie in the first place? :D

Mitt Romney, Vincent Price

The picture below is one that Laura took while visiting Salem, Massachussetts. I swiped it from her facebook album. It shows a gravestone from someone in my family tree.



If you don't know who Rebecca Nurse is, you should go find out. :)

But anyway, if you're wondering why the post is titled "Mitt Romney, Vincent Price", it's because Mitt Romney and Vincent Price are both direct descendants of Rebecca Nurse. So yeah, if you go back far enough I'm related to both of them.

I wonder if that's a step up or down from being related to President Taft? :D