Month: January 2005

Not to be a simpleton, but I’m having a simple problem installing City of Heroes. I get the game all installed fine, but when it tries to connect to the server, it simply can’t.

I know Matt is a Playa, and he also has a hardware firewall. He must have fixed this at some point. I simply don’t know what simple things I am talking about, so forgive simple ignorance, but help me Matty-wan-kenobi, you’re my only hope.

Well, I had a very productive three-day weekend. We were able to take care of a lot of boxes — got our books on the shelves, got some artwork onto the walls, etc.

And I was able to start setting up my basement music studio. Got my Korg 01-W and battered old Toa amp from my mother’s garage, where they’ve sat dormant for years.

And the piece de resistance, the Sansui 6-Track Multitrack Recorder that we used to affectionately refer to as “God”.

The last time I used it, I thought it was broken — I got a horrible buzz in the left channel and couldn’t get anything to play normally. Hooking it up last night, I got the exact same problem. But, being a little smarter about electronics than I was at 20 (although, let’s be fair, not much), I was able to reason out that the problem lay not with the recorder itself, but rather with the RCA cable still attached to the stereo outputs after 9 years. A quick cable replacement and it’s good as new!

I dug through the box of tapes and regaled myself with some early-90s Wayward Sun esoterica that I’d completely forgotten about — Matt’s instrumental “Back to Reality”, Sam’s early gem “Just As I See You”, my power-ballad “Megan” (with lyrics by the eminent Weed), and hours of screwing around.

While I have no intention of living in the past, it’s fascinating to dig through some of these old recordings – rejected takes, partial songs – if for no other reason than to recall where we were at the time. And as I’m trying to go back into songwriting for the first time in nearly a decade, it’s nice to hear where I’m coming from.

I’ll try to hook it into my laptop and record some mp3s from time to time.

So I decided I need to start archiving some of the cute stories about my kids. Yeah, I know, not everybody’s interested, but hey, it’s my blog 🙂

Sara volunteered to cook dinner tonight — bacon and eggs. My children seem to learn best the same way I do, by experience, and particularly by screwing up.

We discussed the particulars of bacon and egg cooking in the front room. “OK, now Sara, the first part of this is a math problem: how many eggs do we need to cook? Well, I’ll eat two. You’ll probably eat two. Zach and Elijah will probably only eat one apiece or so. Christy will probably have two when she comes home, and there probably will be enough left over for little Joshua. How many eggs do you need to prepare?”

Sara thought for a moment, then replied, “Eight!”

Having just arrived home from a hard day, I headed up to the facilities to do the usual “just finished a one-hour commute after drinking way too much water” duties. Upon completion, I walked downstairs, and began setting up my laptop in the front room on a large table set aside for the purpose.

“Hey, Dad!” called Sara from the kitchen, “This is so cool! Did you know that I can carry eight eggs, cradled in my arms, from the refrigerator to the stove?”

I stifled a grin, knowing what was coming. “No, Sara, I didn’t know that. That’s pretty impressive. How did you manage to carry eight at once?”

The answer was the unmistakable sound of an egg smashing from a height of roughly four feet onto a vinyl floor echoing in my ears. I gently shook my head side to side, a half-cocked grin on my face as I plugged in the power cord and mouse on my laptop. I chuckled softly to myself.

“Well,” Sara intoned ruefully from the kitchen, “I can carry seven, at least.”

Christy brought up bullying and I’d like to follow up with a post specifically to that subject. I’ve got teachers asking when we’re going to release a show on bullying. I know this is a current national concern in the education world.

Are you parents out there really seeing this happen?

Sam

We rent, borrow, or buy many movies. It’s a better deal, at this point, for us to just buy a movie than to take the family out to see the movie new in the theater. Don’t get me wrong, we go out to movies, but unless it’s a “must-see”, we just don’t go, and wait for it to come out on DVD.

So anyway, Friday night Christy and I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” together. The thing I really enjoy about Shymalan’s movies is that they are rarely about what you think they are about, and that unpredictability keeps you guessing, without in-your-face gore and horror-type stuff.

I’m not sure I want to give the movie a rating, really. It’s a movie that made me think. Made me think about how legends are born and grow. It made me think about issues that touched intimately on how I view the world.

If you haven’t seen it yet, please bookmark this review and come back another time. There are some spoilers contained herein that very well might ruin the movie for you. It’s a movie about a blind girl taking a scary trip through the woods in order to retrieve medicine to save her ailing fiance. In a nutshell, that’s what it’s about.

---

But that’s not at all what it’s about.

The movie opens, and one is left wondering whether the people displayed are Amish or something. Something’s not quite right — they all have stories of murdered loved ones, for instance — that causes one to resist stereotyping them into some sort of religious group. For one, there is no mention of religion anywhere in the movie, except one:

Those Whom We Do Not Discuss

As J.K. Rowling put it, using the voice of Hermione Granger, “Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself.” And, actually, they discuss Those Whom We Do Not Discuss quite often.

Now, I’ve read some reviews (after seeing the movie) that rip Shyamalan a new one for playing the same tired trick again and again: the surprise ending. The Big Shock. The Unexpected Twist. Yet, I think that in this movie, Shyamalan actually plays on the audience expectation of The Big Twist by delivering it early, and ending the movie with simple, classic drama. It seems as if he expects the audience to come to the conclusion early this time, and to wait to see how it plays out.

And, in my opinion, it delivers in a big way, leaving many unanswered questions and allegories to relatively modern-day events which kept me thinking about it for days afterwards:

• Where did the Walker Foundation get the money to buy the whole reserve, and continue to keep security guards employed keeping it safe?
• Who administers this Foundation on a day-to-day basis?
• Why did The Boss let his employee steal the medicine right in front of him?
• What did the employee do after his encounter with the blind girl?
• Why did the people of the village choose to abstain from all contractions and slang in their speech?
• That one fat guy who wears the suit… it didn’t look homemade. How old was that suit he wears for basically the whole movie?
• Why can’t the schoolteacher have a relationship with the gal played by Sigourney Weaver? And when did Weaver get so @$!^*(!% old???
• What happens after the story ends?

The movie is about heartache following humanity regardless of our attempts to escape it. It’s about a girl choosing to perpetuate a myth based on her subjective realities, even when confronted with the truth of their mythology.

It’s about the birth of legends, and how easy it is, with a little vigilance, to deceive others, particularly if one has the best of intentions.

That last point, to me, is the biggest, and has many allegories to my past, and that of many others I know. A man leads a group of others, united in heartache, to a new land in an attempt to get away from worldly influences. The leaders agree to perpetuate a myth in order to persuade the townsfolk to live in a way most suited to their control (of course, with the best of intentions to keep evil at bay). Yet despite their efforts, things fall apart in the specifics, and those who challenge the myth are alternately venerated and suppressed by those in power.

And finally, the one most motivated to do what needs to be done is let in on the secret, but even the leader involved doesn’t understand that her unique perspective will only reinforce the strength of the legend. By passing on the torch, the schoolteacher has created another generation that will continue to use the same myth to control their children.

The real question is: is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Does serving the “higher purpose” of keeping the community isolated from external “bad things”, in the long run, mean anything at all? Since even in such an isolated community, bad things continue to happen, does this just mean that such efforts to protect the sanctity of the “chosen people” are, ultimately, doomed to failure?

A very interesting movie, with very interesting ramifications. Then again, one of my friends said it’s a “snoozer”. I wonder why our perspectives are so different?

So tonight at diner my family was sitting down, and my husband made the comment that my now 8 year old daughter was looking a little pudgy in the cheeks. Now to him and I this just means that she is getting ready for another growth spurt. She on the other hand began to cry. She was devestated over weight at barely 8. Well we tried to explain to her that no matter what size she is she will alway’s be beautiful. I asked her why she was so concerned about her weight and she said that she didn’t want to take up to much space. That one stopped me. So I tried a different approach. I told her that it is the beauty on the inside that reflects on the outside. Her reply was… “That’s why they made make-up.” I really didn’t think that I who was never a very vain person would have to deal with this from my very young daughter. What have we done to our children?

So my wife & I have been entertaining ideas of packing up and moving to Arizona.

Mind you, I’ve lived in the same 15-mile radius mile my whole life, minus the 5 years I spent at college. My entire family (and my wife’s as well) live within half and hour of us. So it’s not like Graber moving again. Not to mention the 2 year old and the 5 month old.

But…life feels like it needs a change. My job is unfulfilling because they seem to lack the proper respect for IT. Especially a growing company with remote offices that wishes to collaborate together. 8+ years at the same job and maybe I’m getting the itch. Plus my wife and I hate cold weather.

Plus with me being in the IT field and my wife being a nurse, finding a job shouldn’t be TOO hard 🙂

Any ideas or insights about Arizona? Or about the moving in general. I know there are some on this board who have packed up and moved out west away from family before, and I’d like to know what they thing. I don’t know if it would be permanent, maybe for 10 ot 20 years.

My $.02 (is it worth $.02 in Arizona as well?) Weed

So I partitioned my drive Downloaded Fedora Core 3… Burned the DVD And I am now installing Linux on my home machine.

After I get it installed, I play to play a lot. Set up an LDAP server. Install SAMBA and see if I can be a Domain Controller. Install Mambo and make a cool portal site. Learn Apache & PHP. MySql as well. Make my opensource funk match my Windows funk.

Any tips or hints? I am a certified computer geek, so you don’t need to worry too much 🙂

More importantly, any cool programs or apps out there I should know about?

My $.02 (minus the licensing and CALs) Weed

EDIT by matthew: Adjusted teaser length.