Okay, I haven’t been posting about the Amazing Race lately, because it just hasn’t excitetd me this time around. I think that it is because I don’t like any of the final contestants left. Plus, their bickering has put a damper on the contest that it is hard to be excited about it. That said, tonight is the season finale. I’ll be watching, and like the rest of those interested, I’ll be rooting for Kris and Jon. It will probably be Freddy and Kendra who win it though.
Trixie Update is a collection of data as someone’s child is growing up. Lots and lots of data. In myriad of charts. Metrics, man, is crazy sometimes.
One of the first things that I had tried bidding on on ebay was a full set of Bill and Ted comics issues 1-12. Last minute sniping pushed it from my $15.00 bid to $25.00 which I thought was too rich for my blood. I should’ve doubled down. Imagine my gall that I missed out on the complete set, and that they have become hard to find as a complete set. Imagine, also, someone actually wanting a full set of this comic. Why would anyone want to own one issue let alone 12 issues of the lame early 90s comic adaption of a pre-matrix Keanu flick? Well, it was one of the earlier works of Evan Dorkin of Milk and Cheese fame. I had bought issue 12 when in college just because Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey was one stupid funny flick. Little did I know that the writer and artist would end up being my favorite comic author.
Anyway, Evan Dorkin is releasing the Bill and Ted comic in a bound paperback. I must make my way to the local comic shop. As Milk and Chees would’ve said, “Onward to mayhem!”
Hoped for: Patriots 14 :: Eagles 24
Actual: Patriots 21 :: Eagles 17
Can’t stand for the New England area to be champions in both baseball and football within several months of each other. The whiniest of all sports fans are least deserving. It would be great to have McNabb win one once. Plus, TO getting a ring would be awesome. Can you imagine the mouth going off!
I won’t bore you with the full title to this movie. It was truly a sequence of unfortunate events that lead me to watch this. Actually, it was just one, deciding that it would be a good movie to watch. How I wished it were so! Boring and forgettable. I had watched it at least 2 weeks ago, and I normally post my review immediately, but this movie I completely forgot about until I was posting the previous review. Watch it at your own peril. (Or just wait for it on TBS in a year.)
2 of 5 stars.
This was not the worst movie that I have seen this year. This was not the best movie I have seen this year. This was the most predictable movie I have seen this year.
Right from the start, as soon as your main character begins to have “flashbacks”, you know the end of the story. I sat there impatiently waiting for the story to unravel in its predictable course. I was not disappointed. The trailers showed a lot of what was to happen, but you would’ve already figured it out.
Dakota Fanning I can’t stand. She has got to be a robot or something less human. She channeled Wednesday Adams. She had me laughing aloud. I did not like her from the start, but once she went into Wednesday mode I could’nt help but think that she magically turned in a campy performance, a tour de force of unseriousness. She was the only actor in the film to acknowledge that the movie was a crock. I walked out stunned, because I think I have to change my attitude towards her. Dakota Fanning I only dispise a little bit.
2 of 5 stars.
Kevin Drum provided a running commentary of Bush’s State of the Union speech. While not as comprehensive as the other times he had blogged a speech, he watched more than I did. I only watched half of it. Right at the point I decided that the speech was incredulous, I see that Kevin had the same reaction:
9:36 — “Taking on gang life”? Laura’s going to head that up?
It’s the new and improved “just say no” 2005 edition. While attempting to eliminate this problem is worthwhile, I can’t even imagine it being done under the guidance of the first lady.
I guess if I had made it a new year’s resolution that I should clue you into how well I have kept up in my quest to read at least 3 books a month. I read 2.5 books last month.
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Finally finished a book that has been sitting on my nightstand for over a year. The first part was boring and a chore to get through as compared with the later half. I guess that’s why it took me so long to get involved in it. The second half, while he’s on the life raft was extremely interesting. It had me devouring page after page. But then, the coda. What a shock. It ruined the book for me. I just spent a few days breezing through the book enjoying it, and to throw that change up to explain it all just was dismaying. C+
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling. I read this while it snowed outside. For twelve hours, I was loving it, and still had not finished it. What a tome! What a story! The best Potter book so far, and it makes me contemplate pre-ordering the next one. A-
The Emerging Democratic Majority by Ruy Texeiria and John Judis. Disappointing and depressing. Disappointing because it is a tough read. Depressing because I think their premise is way off base. Look at this past presidential elections. I am only partway through so this is a preliminary grade. B-
Speaking of smalltalk programming. I am using BBEdit’s younger, punky brother TextWrangler. I miss color coding. It seems you should be able to write a language module that gives me all the yummy goodness of syntax highlighting. I hoped that someone already has done one, but since I didn’t find an easy installation of smalltalk on Mac OS X, then I figured that there isn’t a big Mac smalltalk development community. Admittedly, I haven’t looked hard enough, but being lazy enough I hope to find something on these internets.
Any help, please, would be much appreciated.
Well started my assignments for the OOP class. It’s a simple introductory to smalltalk programming. I have to create a derived class from another provided by the professor. When I “compiled” the file, and passed it to the smalltalk interpreter, I encountered a problem! Smalltalk did not like me using my instantiated object:
” My Main! “
| sa |
sa := SavingsAccount new initialize: 50.
sa postInterest: 0.05 .
sa inspect
!
>./gst ~/Documents/grad_school/ooProgramming722/dev/savingsAccount.st
“Scavenging… 15% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
“Scavenging… 0% reclaimed, done”
Not so good, hunh? I am sure you smalltalk gurus already see my problem. Besides running smalltalk as a program and not installing it wherever make install puts it. Hint for all you non-programmers: interpreted languages are read from start to finish at the time the program is run.
See it yet? My SavingsAccount is derived from another class Account. (Am I using the correct smalltalk terminology?) I am passing only the savingsAccount file to the interpreter, and I am missing it’s parent. How will smalltalk know what the parent class looks like? Smalltalk was able to interpret the object in this file by just creating instances of a generic object to take place of the SavingsAccount’s super class. I guess it doesn’t like garbage collecting in this scenario. I must read the oop.h file to understand why but for now passing the parent class on the CLI does the trick.
