Monthly Archive for November, 2010

Family Christmas

Published on November 28, 2010 in News, Personal and Pets. Closed Tags: Christmas, Family, Fun, Kelly, News, Personal, Pets.

We just had a busy, busy weekend with my wife’s family Christmas. My in-law’s were hosting it, but we had some of the spill over of my wife’s cousins. It was an extremely fun weekend, but bed at 3am was a killer.

Kelly got fed a 1/4 lb piece of butter by one of the little kids, so there was extra fun of vomit clean up all Saturday night – but she was well behaved enough when we went to bed that she managed a night with her crate open without an accident – at least till the morning when she got told to shut up for barking at the hot water heating pipes expanding when she squatted from anxiety.

Bizarre Google Trend Search Spike

Published on November 24, 2010 in News. 14 Comments Tags: Bizarre, Google, News.

I was doing some mindless wandering in the Google Trends when I noticed a bizarre spike that appeared to be unrelated to anything. This was on a Google suggested search (Red – Penny Arcade, Blue – XKCD):

It’s discrete, but I saw it in a few other searches. Let’s look at another?

See the spike now? (Misc terms like Google, Travel, News – all unrelated but same spike on the same date). Perhaps it’s just these terms?

How about another group?

Light blue is Fun, Red is safety and bizarrely takes a huge plummet right at Christmas, orange is Holiday, green is Clothes, dark blue is shoes.

From a few dozen searches it seems to appear everywhere. Just thought the world should know that Google has had a data screw up for 3 years and no correction. That, or everyone in November 2007 googled everything they thought.

Deathly Hallows

Published on November 17, 2010 in Movies. Closed Tags: Deathly Hallows, Excited, Harry Potter, Movie.

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t immensely excited about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 coming out. Shame they couldn’t release like a 6-hour movie, because I’d be willing to tank it through it, but I guess I’ll have to wait until Deathly Hallows Part 2.

From the trailers it already looks epic, and from what I get of the books (I never read them as a kid, but I am reading through them now) is that it’ll be 10x more epic if done right.

Seems strange, they’ve gone from a silly kid with a wand in the first movie to this.

Henry “The Genius” Hedgehog

Published on November 15, 2010 in Pets and Photos. Closed Tags: Cute, Fun, Funny, Hedgehog, Pets, Photo, Picture.

I knew my hedgehog was a lot on the weird side for how animals go, but this morning I caught him being unusually smart rather than being usually stupid.

He’s overturned his food bowl and positioned it to make it easier to get to his water bottle. It’s not that he had difficulty, I guess he just got fed up with reaching a little. Although this looks 10x more awkward, so I don’t see the improvement – but then again I’m not a hedgehog.

The Fog

Published on November 13, 2010 in Personal. Closed Tags: Fog, Personal, Weather.

The Fog: It’s a bit like Stephen King’s The Myst, but less aliens and more reality. We’ve been in fog for over 24 hours now, but no monsters are attacking us yet – their flight out probably got rerouted.

Review: The Town

Published on November 11, 2010 in Movies and Review. Closed Tags: Action, Movie, Review.

This was a spectacular film, it really gave a lot more than I expected from a simple heist movie.

Dislike: The acting in general was very strong. However Blake Lively (Gossip Girl) was the weakest in the whole movie. Jon Hamm did a good job, but his character didn’t make sense in certain places. Especially (SPOILER) when he threatens to kill a victim so that he can pin the heisters with murder for a crime he has no evidence of proving. I mean anyone with a good lawyer would be able to get that thrown out in court, especially as one of these guys is said to have never had a criminal record.

Hamm’s characters weakness keeps occurring throughout seemingly whenever he has to threaten someone. The worst scene is where Hamm threatens Blake Lively – she didn’t know what she was doing and he was doing his best to be threatening.

Likes: It must be said that Affleck, Hall and Renner played their parts perfectly and worked together great. The Affleck-Hall and Affleck-Renner relationships were not only believable, but are what really sold the whole movie.

The action was great, the final heist and the finale are simply amazing.

Overall: 9/10

This is a buy for sure.

Time Change

Published on November 9, 2010 in Personal. Closed Tags: Personal.

The time change is once again assaulting my mental faculties with its lies. The Earth doesn’t mysteriously shift forward an hour – I’m sure the seismic events if it did would destroy modern civilization – I’m just being lied to by government officials to convenience farmers.

Rain, rain and a little bit of snow

Published on November 5, 2010 in News, Personal and Writing. Closed Tags: News, Personal, Weather, Writing.

Rain has given me a day off, so I’m not playing slip&slide in the mud wallows of new construction. So now I get the opportunity to catch up on writing I didn’t do yesterday because of a trip to the dentist.

It also gives me time to do some general cleaning around the apartment.

Nanowrimo is going dark

Published on November 2, 2010 in News, Personal and Writing. Closed Tags: NaNoWriMo, News, Personal, Writing.

It looks like my nanowrimo project is going dark. A dead brother, mother and father all in the beginning? Poor child. I think I’ll spare her from more death… at least until later in the novel.