HerdingChaos

Andrew is 6. I still sometimes do not believe this because he will engage in activities that I normally do not associate with a 6-year-old. For example he likes to play chess. He likes to play a computer game called Civilization. He chats with me on Yahoo IM when I am out of town. He questions me about cars and then proceeds to explain the difference between front, rear, and 4 wheel drive vehicles (something that, as far as I know, I did not teach him). He does other things like reading and spelling right in line with what you would expect from a 6-year-old. But my parent filter always picks out the above average performances. But sometimes the normal behavior is the most memorable.

I was away from home for work. Andrew was sending me instant messages to just say “hi” and other general chit chat that you might have with a 6-year-old.

We had the following conversation:
(2:31:58 PM) Andrew: hi
(2:32:07 PM) Mike: hi.
(2:32:19 PM) Mike: how has your day been?
(2:32:59 PM) Andrew: god
(2:33:12 PM) Mike: i will be home in 2 days
(2:33:16 PM) Mike: i miss you all
(2:35:16 PM) Andrew: I miss you to.
(2:36:02 PM) Mike: i bought an upgrade to civilization
(2:36:21 PM) Mike: the upgrade adds new leaders and civilization types.
(2:36:32 PM) Mike: we can play it together sometime.
(2:37:33 PM) Andrew: coo

Then a little later:
(5:20:33 PM) Andrew: hi
(5:20:37 PM) Mike: hi buddy
(5:22:03 PM) Andrew: how era yow
(5:22:10 PM) Mike: i am good.
(5:22:21 PM) Mike: I am still working
(5:22:26 PM) Andrew: good
(5:27:49 PM) Mike: http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/warlords/warlords.html
(5:28:08 PM) Mike: click on that and you shoud see the page about the new civilization
(5:28:37 PM) Andrew: cool
(5:32:01 PM) Andrew: osim

I always love reading his IM’s since they are usually phonetic. I saw “osim” and was a bit confused at first because it was the first time I had seen it. Then I said it out loud.

Blueeyes: 1993-2006

I picked him up from the pound when he was a little kitten. He died in his sleep yesterday afternoon.

Sequels and formulaic crap is all we seem to get out of Hollywood lately. We have not had a really compelling original story in quite some time (remember I am talking about Hollywood and not the indie scene). Recently the best story/character based movies have been adaptations of books or a remake of a classic film. Of all of them I have only really been pleased by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Therefore I spend most of my entertainment time buried in books or at the one of the local theater companies or reading interesting blogs online.

One of the blogs that I have always found very entertaining is Jessica Stover’s blog at JSDC. Jessica is a screenwriter/actress/performer living in LA. I originally was sent a link to her blog entry describing her visit with the Star Wars nerds. Many hours later I am sitting up in front of my computer when I should be in bed and I realize that I have read all of JSDC.

So why I am going on like a little fanboy about Jessica? Well she is different.. the good different. She self published a book called Aidmheil that is a collection of short stories, poems, and entries from her blog. Of course I bought the book and I loved every page. I read a ton and I love a good story. I read Greyfeather in Aidmheil and badly wanted more. Usually that type of reaction only happens when I read well established authors that are considered “one of the greats”. Normally I go to the local bookstore and buy the rest of everything they have written and read it all. But with Jessica I have to patiently wait to see what type of awesome she is going to do next. This time is different. This time she needs me to help make the awesome happen. This time she needs you.

Jessica has completed a screenplay codenamed TSL. The story is an original fantasy feature trilogy that has already garnered good feedback from Hollywood. But not enough good feedback for taking a chance on something that is not American Pie 5. The story is not well suited for a small independent production so Jessica is taking another approach. A new website called Eventful allows fans to request a performance in their town. One of her fans made a demand on Eventful and it has slowly been building. The Hollywood types pay attention to numbers. Jess was told that is she could show interest from 100,000 people she would have a good chance of making this movie. So all two of you that read my blog have to go right now and demand a screening of Jessica’s movie. Instructions are provided on JSDC, or you can just click the demand button below. With the power of all those tubes that make up the internet I am sure we can get the demands to 100,000.

This is free and will only take 30 seconds (or 4 min if you are still on dialup). So get clicking!!!!

Tonight while driving back from the baseball game Andrew was singing along with KT Tunstall’s Black Horse & The Cherry Tree.

Andrew sang, “Well my heart knows me better than I know myself.. So I’m gonna let it do all the toppings”

Just thought it was cute. I think he had ice cream on the brain.

Last night I downloaded the trial/demo for F.E.A.R. It is a first person shooter that has been out a while. While I was playing the game for the first time, in the dark, in a quiet house, I scared the everlivin’ crap out of myself. This game is spooky and it totally got me a couple of times.

We were out today getting lunch and doing some general shopping. I ran to Best Buy and left the fam in the car while I ducked in to buy the game. I was going to get the DVD version, but all they had was the CD version. No big deal. I buy the game and use my 12% off coupon that Becky found in the mail.

We get home and after playing with the kids a bit and installing all the stuff we bought at Home Depot I decided to start the install of the game. I was not planning on playing it until the kids went to bed, but I did not want to spend my precious no-kid-time waiting for the 5 CD install to finish.

Well, probably because of some stupid copy protection Disk 2 has a read error of a very strange type. I looked online and sure enough there are about a gabillizion people with the exact same problem on the exact same file. So tomorrow I will try and exchange of the media. I already sent a problem report to the game company. *sigh*

If I downloaded a cracked version on a bitttorrent network I bet it would work fine…. The whole “treat everyone like a criminal” mentality that has infected all of the entertainment industry is pissing me off. I don’t download movies from the net. In fact I have a bunch of cheap DVD’s I bought at Sam’s Club yesterday sitting in the next room. Does anyone else (that is not downloading movies) get a little offended that there is a “pirating is stealing commercial” at the front of most DVD’s? And you cannot skip over them (well, unless you hack your DVD player). Between coding anti-piracy crap on the DVD’s so you cannot skip it, and making many games refuse to run if you have CD burning software or virtual drive software loaded is nothing short of calling me a criminal right after I have given them money. I bet none of the people who download movies on the net have to watch that anti-pirate commercial. Simple rule of selling to the consumer: If you degrade the customer experience and there is an alternative, then you will lose.