Month: July 2004

So in the middle of the big move, Weed calls me, and makes some off-hand comment about how my fingers will hurt by the end of the day.

Weed, how right you were. I can barely type, much less open and close my hands into a balled fist. My forearms are gone as well.

10 hours of moving boxes, and we’ve only just begun!

Sammy G

So I’m off work this week, visiting friends on the East Coast. I’m sitting at Justin‘s PC typing this up while checking email.

Unfortunately, somehow the Apache web server startup script on my box got foosed, and it looks like my virtual hosting provider had some kind of outage yesterday. Since I’m on vacation, I don’t feel like taking the time to debug the problem, but I’m sure it’s something fairly trivial. Using “apachectl”, the built-in apache control script, started the web server just fine, but “/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache.sh start” didn’t do the trick — which would prevent the http daemon from starting up automatically.

It’s been an interesting few days. I flew in Tuesday, and Justin picked me up from the airport. We’ve hung out, hashed on a few tunes on the guitar, and generally had a relaxing, enjoyable time. Today I’ll be hitting the National Air and Space Museum with Jon Brusco. Not sure what else we’re going to do, but considering my flight leaves tomorrow, it doesn’t really matter — it’s just nice to hang out with friends I haven’t seen in nearly (or, erm, more than nearly) a decade.

Disinfopedia, a non-partisan watchdog wiki for political spin doctoring, led me to a story today that the Bush-Cheney campaign has been asking religious volunteers “to turn over church directories to the campaign”.

My gut reaction here? That’s just repugnant.

My wife and children, all church-goers, have their information on the records of their church so that other church members can contact them about church-related business. Not that I think that here in Utah, the Republican political equivalent of Nirvana, there’s any doubt who our electors will be voting to be President this fall.

But encouraging church members to be activists for a campaign by having them submit rosters of church members to the GOP without the consent of those on that list? Ugh, that’s vile. Particularly when (at least on our local church rosters) there’s a big, important-looking notice informing readers that any non-church-related use is prohibited. And volunteers doing this could endanger their church’s tax-exempt status.

Maybe I’m way off base here. I’d love to learn that I am, since I voted for Bush in 2000, and I supported him through 9/11 and the early days of the Iraq war. I’d love to learn this was some kind of big mistake by an overzealous Bush campaign writer. But this latest bit of information sure seems to be another black mark against Bush for the “John Kerry Is A Douchebag But I’m Voting For Him Anyway” page.

Hey.. I rarely do this, but I’ve copied this review at both barnson.org and timpane.com.. Oh.. and this review is Spoiler free.

Why?

Because everyone should get out and see this movie now. yup, thats right. Send a message to hollywood that making superhero movies with charm, wit, intelligence, real acting, and a well thought out story is ALWAYS the way to go.

Its true.. this movie is better than the (exceptional) first movie. Like X2:XMen United, this movie picks up from a flawed but good first story, and runs with it, improving on everything good abotu the first one, with lots fewer flaws.

Acting: I hated Dunst as Mary Jane in the first one, but this time she actually had me involved in her story. Tobey is a LOT less bored looking. The villian is 3 dimensional, and not as showy as Dafoe was. Aunt May has an expanded role and plays it beautifully. James Franco as harry osborn takes his character to new heights.. it is just, well, better.

Action: Less of it this time, but when it does come.. it blows away the first movie by leaps and bounds. The CG was seamless.. the scenes tighter.. and there are quite a few “wow” moments.

Story: More complex, less convoluted. It ebbs and flows nicely, and doesn’t rely on some of the contrived conventions of the first film.

Overall: It is a slower movie than the first, but thsi isn’t a bad thing. Instead of a smattering of 2 minute action sequences, it gives you big sequences with more time inbetween centering on story, LOTS of humor, and some real human drama things..

Its hard to do more without giving stuff away. So.. go out and see it.. its worth it.

Just in case you can’t leave home for Independence day:

http://www.scottferguson.com/pages/LadyLibertyFireworks/LadyLiberty.html.