Charge me!

In this article, I ask the ever burning question that is on all of our minds - When the Zombies take over, how long until the electricity fails?. Well, that's actually pretty easy to answer, as you can see from the article. How important is electricity to us? I would think if you want to read my blog, you definitely need a power source!

My thought today came from spending this past week conserving my CI batteries. See, my batteries are rechargeable, and I have 3 of them to change out every day or so. However, without warning, my cable that powers the box that charges the batteries decided to die out - and the only way I could recharge was to drive around using my car charger until my replacement parts arrived. It took 3 days..... 3 long days of making decisions like "can I afford to listen to music right now, knowing I need my CI at work for the phone?" or "should I go through the drive-thru, getting some charge on the 2 batteries, but sacrificing charge on the 1 battery I'm wearing now?"

Kel laughed me. But I took it seriously because it could mean a difference of 10 minutes of battery life at my job! :-o ;-)

The Hunger Games

I haven't been really doing much reading lately. Setting aside the time to peruse a good book is a luxury these days, consumed as I am with training, sports, work, friends, relationship, family, and pets. Silly pets, to tell you the truth. Not quite as funny as those on LOLCats but darn close! My boys, Rascal and Fizzlesnitch, generally take it upon themselves to make it worth keeping them fed and pampered - for example, Fizzy will walk the tightrope of my railing between the split level living room and kitchen, a fall of about 12 feet. He will even turn around on all four paws, balancing precariously, as if he's unfazed by the prospect of meeting his doom below. These kitties have skillz, I tell ya.

So it's freezing outside. Nothing new, but it's getting old. I got two books over Christmas - "The Hunger Games" and its sequel "Catching Fire." Excellent reads. The notion of society breaking down and the only way to maintain order is by forcing different "districts" to annually send "tributes" of teenagers to compete in a battle royale to the death where only one winner can emerge.

The story follows a female, Katniss, as she enters the tourney motivated to win. Since this is set in post-modern times, every move in the tournament is televised and broadcast. It's almost as if it's a teenage version of Running Man or Survivor with quite a bloodbath involved. But the magic of the book is the insights and introspection of the character and the inequality of society - it could just as well be applied to today where people see America (the Capitol) being all lavish and abundant in resources while other countries (the Districts) are lacking.

The sequel has some interesting twists and kept me guessing. Fantastic stuff. Looking forward to the 3rd installment - coming out on 8/24/2010!

Avatar

Soooooo pretty.

Caught Avatar last night with Dad. He's in town for the weekend, basically a last minute jaunt over to see myself and my younger brother. This is like the most difficult time in the world to travel to Kansas - snowfall happens randomly and heavily affects flight schedules - so just our luck that his flight into KC was only delayed an hour. Lucky for him, as my flight to KC from Vegas for work earlier this year was cancelled entirely! Thankfully, that time I still made it home in time to meet up with Kel when she drove back from Colorado. Talk about great timing!

The fictional world of Pandora featured in the movie (actually, it's a moon of a gas giant planet - but we're not gonna nitpick ;-) ) was a lush jungle world that nearly was a living being all by itself - the moss on the ground lit up wherever people stepped; whole mountains were floating in air, tethered by vines; and gigantic trees taller than the Empire State Building ruled the skyline. The whole message of the native peoples living there was a bond with nature; when the natives hunted, they apologized for killing their prey.

I can absolutely see why people have said they would be depressed after seeing the movie. Here is this perfect world, full of harmony, that completely exists only in the mind. There's no place to visit - I bet not even a virtual reality simulator of the place would be enough to satisfy someone's thinking that they were born in the wrong reality.

I'm hoping this isn't a trend towards creating more ways to make of reality-escaping pasttimes. The real world is hard enough with people who have a tenuous grasp on reality at best. What will happen when more and more people start confusing virtual reality with meatspace?

Home Improvement

See that hole Tim Allen is peering through? Yeah, that looks to be about the size of the hole that was in my ceiling.

Let me back up.

Right before my Turkey Day party in 2009, I was cleaning up things around my house and generally ready to have a blast! Well, I had done some changes around the house before that requiring a small hole drilled into my basement ceiling to fix a pipe. Well, this day, I find that it was dripping a bit - hmm, can't have that now, can we? So I go up on a step-ladder and do a tiny, tiny, TINY adjustment to a lever to close up the drip.

What happens instead? A deluge of epic baby-raining proportions (an inside joke - this was definitely an outpour!). Oh, frack! A whirlwind of activity ensues - looking for towels, finding the water shutoff valve, trying to fix the leak, having more "oh no!" moments, and finally, succumbing to calling the 24 hour emergency plumbing hotline.

So, after all is said and done, I've got this big hole in my ceiling. Next job? To patch that hole.

My dad's coming out this weekend to see my place for the first time. Admittedly, I'm not much of a toolman, but I'm gonna give my best shot to see if I can at least cover up one glaring problem with the house. I've got the sheetrock, the nails, the 2x4's, and the plaster.... wish me luck!

As an aside.... Go CSUN! We're #1 in the nation in college men's volleyball... just beat top ranked USC. http://www.latimes.com/sports/spw-volleyball-2010feb04,0,6707624.story Rawk!