pres.umptuo.us

On Ken’s recommendation, I picked up A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami. Ken was pushing Murakami more than he was the book, and rightly so. I’ve been drawn in after only reading a few pages.

All of his books are translated from Japanese, so I’m not quite sure how much of it is really him, but it’s awesome. His prose just glides and feels so natural that he can pull anything off and does it well. Some choice quotes:

“What’ve you been up to this past year?” she asked me.
“Different things,” I said.
“Wiser for it?”
“A little.”

So it was that she and her slip vanished forever. Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. But all in all, this was hardly what you could call a tragedy.

Alright, so I’m bad at making selections considering it fits better within the rest of the work. But you get the idea.

Some authors you admire because of the stories they craft and the creativity they use in their stories. But the ones you idolize and aspire to become are the ones that write in ways that make you smile and shake your head, wondering how they could make words dance the way they do.

Thanks again to Kenneth Pattengale, who’s new album Dust Bowl Dreams is out now.

I neglected to mention in my laptop post that I placed an order for the 12″ Powerbook through Amazon in early April. However, it had an expected ship date of May 19th, so I figured I had a lot of time to still shop around.

Then late last week it decides to ship a whole month early. Not that it’s a bad thing, but I was sort of hoping on that month to research laptops even more.

Here I am now, blogging on the Powerbook for the first time. It’s great. I haven’t actually gotten to any writing yet, but so far I’m not regretting it. OS X is a blast to play with. I’ve never been a big fan of trackpads, but luckily OS X offers tons of keyboard shortcuts and Quicksilver is easing things quite a bit. And this is one sweet keyboard to type on.

I’m sure more thoughts will come along as I get more opportunities to fiddle with the laptop. I’m loving it for now though.

My Powerbook (I’ll explain my choice in a later post) may or may not have arrived today.

valloq: so at 7:20am it says “out for delivery”
valloq: and at 4:41pm it says “delivery”
valloq: wtf does that mean
calkidd32: wow
valloq: what is “delivery”
calkidd32: it means it’s there foo!
valloq: shouldn’t it say “delivered”?
valloq: stupid tenses
calkidd32: haha
calkidd32: only a writer would have issues with UPS confirmation pages
calkidd32: lol

I don’t do too many book reviews. I think cause it’s hard for me to describe and critique them. Nonrequired Reading is just a compilation of works that may or may not be interesting. I would recommend this if only cause it seems to offer something for everyone, and acts in a way as a gateway into other types of literature.

Stand-outs in this collection: Bones by Tom Kealey, The Fifteen-Year Layover by Michael Paterniti (The real-life story that The Terminal was based on), Full House by David Sedaris, and We Have a Pope! by Christopher Buckley. Coincidentally enough, I read that last one just before all this stuff with the Pope happened. The story itself is quite humorous by playing the whole Papal election off as some big PR stunt.

I saw this twice last week and found myself entertained both times. The movie is obviously not meant to be taken seriously and has a lot of humor mixed in with the zany kung fu action. The love story was really underdeveloped though, but you don’t tend to think too hard while watching a movie like this.

Would’ve been fun to catch this in the theater with a buncha friends.

Google movie reviews for Kung Fu Hustle.

Site was down earlier for unknown reasons. I should probably look into getting a backup of this site.

Serenity Trailer on Tuesday.

Fire - Can of Coke and a Chocolate Bar. Next time I have an hour to burn ( Heh heh. I made a pun.) I can try this.

Looks Like Batman Can Beat Up Superman. This guy says exactly what I was saying to everyone else after the latest photo of Superman in costume was released. On a related note, yet another Batman Begins poster has been released. I think this could be the best one yet.

Penguins in Airport Security. How cute.

• Peeling the Onion.

  Friday April 22, 2005

• The First Look at Superman! Liking the materials they used and the colors seem to fit well. I don’t know if this new kid, Brandon Routh, can pull off Superman, though.

  Friday April 22, 2005

$131 is coming back to me from the government. I’d like that in gold, please.

• WoW General Discussion. Greatest forum post ever.

  Thursday April 21, 2005

valloq: a hur!
calkidd32: a hur?
valloq: a hur
valloq: it’s the sound a retard makes
valloq: A hur!
calkidd32: a;lijae;oijeo;aije
calkidd32: lol
valloq: hahahah
calkidd32: i feel like a retard now cuz i didn’t get it
calkidd32: ass

This shall go down as the official “…” award of the month.

IPOWER IBOOK G4: those dvds i bought
IPOWER IBOOK G4: not dual layer
IPOWER IBOOK G4: they are double sided
IPOWER IBOOK G4: should i still buy them?

Doughy637: he got it from here
Doughy637: http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/463182/
Doughy637: i would like to point out the text that says “NOT DUAL LAYER”

IPOWER IBOOK G4: lol
IPOWER IBOOK G4: i saw dual layer

• The Perfect Prescription. Target redesigns the prescription bottle. I am all about the accessibility and clean design.

  Tuesday April 19, 2005

I can’t recall ever being this indecisive. Picking a college was a snap. New car? Nothing a day of test driving didn’t solve. Job opportunities ended up being fairly straightforward. Choosing the right laptop though, this has become an ongoing project for nearly a month now.

For a while now I’ve been whining about how sitting at the same desk all the time to write has become rather uninspiring. I’m bound to my computer because I’m more of a typist than I am a writer — thoughts flow out a lot quicker on a keyboard for me, but I admit I have to use the notebook just cause it’ll rack my brain in a different manner. Getting a laptop seemed the obvious answer.

My Needs: A full-size keyboard so I don’t get frustrated with hitting the wrong keys; Decent battery life, at least 3 hours; Lightweight, probably 5 lbs. max; Compact size, anything under 13″ will do; Stylish (Let me indulge myself).

At first I was gunning right for the cheapest and best value - The Dell 700m. A gorgeous 12″ screen, 4.6 lbs, and with the right coupons it could be had for around $1000. But then I found out the keyboard wasn’t full-sized, and after playing with similar keyboards at Fry’s, I knew it was going to bug me at one point or another with all the typing I’d be doing. Add to the fact that the 700m gets lousy battery life on it’s standard battery, requiring an extended battery that sticks out the back of the laptop quite a bit.

Next I found out that Amazon had specials going on with the 12″ Powerbook, bringing the price to $1350 after a $150 mail-in rebate. With no tax and no shipping, $1350 sounded really good for an Apple Powerbook. It had all the features I was looking for, but $1350 was a bit more than I was hoping to spend.

After going through a fiasco involving a Powerbook available for $999 that I missed out on and a dream where the Amazon Powerbook was no longer available for $1350 (It still is until April 26), I vowed I would put the order in. And then I meet the Fujitsu S6231.

Amanda (who incidentally cracked her LCD screen the day after she introduced me to it) brought up the Fujitsu. 13″ LCD (A great compromise between the 12″ and 14″, if only more laptops used a 13″ LCD), full-size keys, and weighing slightly over 4 lbs. with the sweet option of taking out the cd-rom drive to drop the weight down to under 4 lbs. or popping in an extra battery to get a whopping 8 hour battery life out of the laptop. The lowest price I could find was at Newegg at $1299 + tax bringing it to around $1410.

I headed back to Fry’s, this time to check out the Fujitsu and the Powerbook. Both were excellent, but having a little Apple with OS X to play with greatly appealed to me over having another PC which offered nothing new. Powerbook set, I place my order in, and unfortunately they’re backordered and I won’t get it until the middle of May.

The story should end there. It doesn’t, though. Cause I’m indecisive. I took a trip to the Apple store yesterday with Tim and Nathan (after going to Santa Anita to check out the 700m at the closes Dell Retail Kiosk thingy) and scoped out the iBooks and Powerbooks.

I’m now at a standstill between buying the 12″ iBook, upgrading the ram to 768 and installing a bigger and faster hard drive, coming to an estimated total of $1150, a whole $200 less than the Powerbook. Potentially it could be faster than the stock 12″ Powerbook, but the general look, weight and size difference, and extra options of the Powerbook has me swayed.

There’s even more speculation now that the Apple laptops are all a bit outdated with the G4 chip when the G5 laptops should be hitting soon, so a purchase now would most likely be one of the last gen G4 laptops. Perhaps waiting for the G5 laptops would be best and just buying a junker laptop until then?

As you can tell, there’s a lot to ponder here as I’ve been heavily researching laptops for almost a month now.

Now some links for any other people looking into laptops:
NotebookReview.com. The forums are rather handy, although the administrators are all pretty biased towards the Fujitsus (for good reason).
MacNN. Again, check the forums out for any iBook or Powerbook information.
Notebook Forums. The reviews here are good as they’re all user reviewed.

And finally, for any other PC users interested in entering the Mac world, three great articles on switching:
Tao of Mac / How To Switch To The Mac.
AnandTech: A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User’s Perspective.
AnandTech - A Month with a Mac - Part II: The Mobile Experience.

Pac-Man Hat. How cool is this? Imagine if they had another version as a motorcycle helmet. I’d be drivin’ all over the divider lines gobbling them up.

Movie Gadget Friday: The Machine from Contact. Contact has to to be one of my favorite movies. Not exactly ground-breaking or innovative in any particular sense, but all around it’s a very solid film. I’m linking to this entry to point out comment #5, which brings up some interesting points in comparing the book (which I haven’t read) to the movie. Reading what the commenter says has me wanting to read the book.

The motivation wasn’t just “hi, how’s you doin’ time to go back now” - they want to know “God” and they thought our race has some special connection so they want to examine us to find out. They �have faith� in a greater being, and after the trip, so does Ellie (her major character arch in the book � from not believing in God because He took her Dad away from her when she was young to �if these super advanced aliens believe in something greater than themselves, what am I doing not believing�)

By sheer coincidence we must have gotten seats in the “friends and family” section of the audience. Sitting two rows in front were the parents of Seth McFarlane. Directly in front of us sat the director of the famed banned episode When You Wish Upon A Weinstein. And directly behind us, laughing the entire time, sat Sarah Silverman.

The Family Guy Live! show started out with a music video for Stewie that got old rather quick. The cast came out next with brief introductions from Seth MacFarlane and then launched into a live reading of When You Wish Upon A Weinstein. To hear the different voices come out of these people is quite jarring at first, and the actors all got applause when we first heard them say their lines. Poor Mila Kunis though, Meg doesn’t really have a “voice” other than that of Mila’s own.

For the most part the action was narrated and the actors would just say their lines with a big projector screen behind them showing a close up of the actor. Some of the cast had their fun when the projector did a cross-fade effect to display two actors at once. On occasion animated bits would be played, but only for important scenes where the animation was necessary.

They then did a musical number from the upcoming “Family Guy Live In Vegas” album coming out in a couple of weeks. Nothing of real note here as they played it like a marketing stunt and the song and music is what you expect from Family Guy.

Finally the much-awaited first act of the first episode of the new season of Family Guy premiering May 1 was shown to the audience, and it was freakin’ hilarious. People kept yelling for more when the clip ended but according to the cast, the rest hadn’t been completed yet. Definitely far better than American Dad

They ended with a brief Q&A session (no autographs) where people asked about obscure references, fanboys made requests to Seth Green, and casting choices were revealed (Lacey Chabert was fired?).

And this is where we stood up to leave, only to see Chris get all excited and shout, “That’s Sarah Silverman!”, and then Brad wanted to touch her and Richard couldn’t figure out how he knew her. According to Chris, seeing her was the highlight of the night.

I still don’t think she’s that hot.

I never really use highlighters. I enjoy keeping everything I own in pristine condition, and yellow marks all over the pages of my books doesn’t go along with that mentality.

I still don’t and probably won’t highlight things I read today, but I can see the importance of being able to locate a favorate passage easily. Perhaps with just little stickies, or marking down the page number on the inside cover of the book. Nothing too intrusive. Regardless, I found the big yellow highlighter would work fine for this task.

It requires effort to get the cap to stick into the little peg on the back of the highlighter, and as I try to pry it off again I squeeze it ever so hard, enough to make my finger physically hurt. Don’t ask me why I did; I don’t know either, I’m probably just used to pen caps being fairly pliable.

Highlighter in hand and ready now, I begin reading through the descriptions until I finally come upon one that interests me. I’m not sure how visible of a mark the yellow color will make, so I make a curly stroke with a little loop at the end that comes back up. Yeah, that’s visible. Didn’t need to get fancy.

I found out about the 19th Annual Iowa Summer Writing Festival when Jennie sent me a link about the top creative writing programs in the nation. Iowa was listed as the top school, so I went to their site, browsed around and found this summer program. It seems great; They have weeklong workshops as well as just weekend workshops. No application needed, only as long as there are open spots.

I figured the emphasis would be on fiction, but classes cover biographies, a few on playwriting, a couple of really interesting classes on screenplays, and even a narrative journalism class.

The poetry workshops I skip right over. Never been a big fan of poetry. They take too much analyzing for me to really enjoy, and some of them require knowledge of the poet’s history/background to really get to the root of the meanings.

Maybe that’s why I enjoy Death Cab for Cutie’s music so much. Their lyrics are always so literal yet still very beautiful. The Weakerthans are a bit like that too, but they’re far too smart. “Rely a bit to heavily on alcohol and irony /
Get clobbered on by courtesy / in love with love, and lousy poetry.”

I’ve heard back from an old writing teacher from college on some other summer programs offered, so I’m going to look into those as well. Either way, I need to move forward with this. Imagine that, me paying to learn.

Follow-up on a previous post, looks like Schrader’s version of Exorcist: The Beginning will be getting a theatrical release after all. Shame I’ve never seen the original or I might be more excited about this.

strjules: it’s only a 2star hotel
strjules: hmmmmm…..
strjules: that’s the hotel that i wanted to live at
strjules: or was looking at
valloq: I bet they’re some b-movie stars too
valloq: like corey feldman and the dad from different strokes
strjules: i gave it to you earlier
strjules: i’m not talking to you anymore

Saved by the Bell History. That’s right, you know you want to read it. Lark Voorhies was quite the hottie.

Tango DropBox. Could be handy.