Surrogates

We went and saw Surrogates last night.  It’s the newest movie from Bruce Willis about how the earth became subject to people’s own laziness; that’s sounding less and less like science fiction every day!  Trying to get people outside to do something in real life here is an exercise in patience all of it’s own.  The small group of us are constantly going out and having fun in the real world but there is an entire civilization of people around us that would rather sit in their house, hotel, apartment or condo and do nothing but watch TV and DVDs while playing video games.  Wake up, people!

I’ve been using those new washer sheets for a while now and I’m pretty impressed.  These are the sheets that already have a pre-measured amount of laundry detergent in them and they have a strip of fabric softener at the top.  I think the fabric softener is supposed to melt in the heat of your dryer and spread around to all your clothes but I’ve found it just gets marks on my Blues shirts and makes me wash them again.  I just don’t transfer the sheet to the dryer when I’m washing my uniforms and everything turns out clean and smelling slightly of a summer day.  And for the record, these are much easier to travel with than a bottle of detergent.  That and I can just throw one in my laundry basket when I’m getting ready to take a load to the washer and not have to worry about carrying the whole messy bottle of liquid with me.  Great idea, let’s work on making them a little less expensive.

I got a watch lately that has tritium vials on the numbers and hands to make them easy to see at night.  I thought it was going to be some hokey form or glow in the dark paint that doesn’t really do much after about an hour or so in the dark, but it turns out tritium is a radioactive isotope of helium and it glows when it decays and reacts with the phosphors painted on the inside of the glass vials.  I’m just hoping this is the kind of radioactivity that gives me superhuman strength or x-ray vision and not a disease.  I jest; I’ve been told there are no ill effects because tritium cannot be absorbed through the skin so long as it’s contained in glass and it doesn’t emit harmful beta particles that would cause any ill effects.  Let’s hope they weren’t just lying.

Sherlock

It turns out the new RockBand that allows more than one singer is kind of difficult to do well at.  When you don’t really know the songs to begin with, catching a harmony with other people who may or may not be able to sing becomes increasingly more difficult.  Again, it’s all about the fun with friends aspect, not the trying-to-do-well aspect.  We grilled some burgers and ribs and played Apples to Apples and then broke out the band!

I’ve been reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in my attempt to read the entire Sir Arthur Conan Doyle canon of Holmesian literature.  Even though they always end with Holmes as the hero, I still feel myself intrigued each time I start a new  story.  That’s a testament to true literary prowess; being able to draw in your readers to each and every story no matter how repetitive or constant they may be.

I finally took the back seat out of my Jeep and put it in my room.  I don’t know why, but it makes the car feel a whole lot bigger on the inside; it’s possible that the seat didn’t have that much leg room (I fit back there, but I wouldn’t want to spend days sitting back there) and taking it out leaves a large blank space.  This does turn my car into a two seater.  I suppose it’s a coupe now because it only has two doors and seats two people, but I doubt the people who are coupe aficionados would appreciate me saying that about anything that requires a truck license plate.

I’ve completed my first full week without cable television and I’ve found that I don’t miss it in the slightest.  I do miss the capability to record shows and watch them later; I’ve embraced online viewing for that very reason.  Hulu and iTunes provide me with all the shows I want to watch (The Office, Bones and Glee) and it keeps me from just idly turning the television on when I get home and forced me to read more.  I can’t see how that would be a bad thing.  After all, with American literacy declining I suppose I need to do my part to make sure the next generations of humans aren’t incapable of reading the greats that we get to enjoy.  It all starts with a novel.

Game Changer

My blessing America — as I look at your flag
I silently pray — thanking God for your existence

Although your leaders — may lead you astray
I pray that your people — will never let you loose sight of love

It’s only because of your trust in God — that you’ve held such power
Never lose sight of him — he’s why you are my blessing America

As I look at your flag — I realize how blessed I am
Although your leaders allow there to be — such unholy sanctions

I know your heart is as pure — as your Mississippi is humid
Carry on with business as normal — but in your hasten never forget Christ

He’s your future to prosperity — if your people lead you away from him
That’s the day that you my blessing America — will be of no more

As I look at your flag — I realize how blessed I am
To be of you my blessing America — My one nation under God

-Ahrend R. Walters

I’ve decided this is the era of Android. Motorola announced a new phone this week that is on the new platform and there is going to be at least one Android phone for each carrier by the end of the year. This can only be good for competition! And speaking of phones, Sprint made an announcement this past week that is going to save them from obscurity. Instead of allowing unlimited calls to and from only a few phone numbers for free, they are allowing unlimited minutes from and to any mobile phone on any network for free. The other companies are going to need to catch up if they want to have any chance at keeping up. That coupled with a couple really good handsets is starting to make me think that Sprint really has a fighting chance now!

And while I’m at it, happy birthday to all the various people in my family and happy anniversary to the same. I’m not sure when they all are, but they are sometime this past/coming week and I wanted to be sure I covered all my bases.

Work Week

You kind of realize you’re working too much when you hit enough hours to have a full hour workweek by lunch on Wednesday. We’ve been wrapping up three different missions and having to do all our Intel reports and Assessment reports at the end of the day simply to keep our day hours free to finish up the prep and actions for our next mission. I actually didn’t work 80 hours this week because we only worked four days; I’ve only had to do that a couple times since I got to my squadron. Every now and then you get a 70 hour week, but usually it’s around 50 or 60.

I recently got my Snow Leopard disk in the mail (I had pre-ordered it from Amazon a while back) and installed it after a lot of work. My DVD drive doesn’t work in my laptop anymore so I had to use another computer with a DVD drive to create an image of the disk and then convert it to a dmg. Next, I restored that image to a USB drive and then installed off the USB drive by booting from it. Even though it took forever to accomplish, I got 14 GB of disk space back from the new operating system. That’s a heck of a lot of hard drive space to have trimmed an Operating System when a different company is doing nothing but growing the size of their OS.

Sprint announced their new Android phone coming out in October. This is the phone I have been waiting for and will hopefully be the answer to many of my phone complaints for Sprint. Basically, it will get me off a BlackBerry (that’s much needed because I’m just a consumer and have no need for the enterprise aspects of the BlackBerry) and it will allow me to properly support an open source movement. I think that closed source phone software is giving companies a lock on hardware for each phone company. By removing the hardware/software ties, innovation can take place in a stale marketplace. I think open source software is going to make a huge dent in the closed source architecture. You stay strong Android!