One of my good friends recently sent me a link to one of the funniest collections of Charles Barkley quotes on the Internet. Take a look.
Slashdot recently had an article about who’s duty it is to recycle computer parts. One of the comments was an absolutely hilarious parody of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant.
Another friend passed along a link to Store Wars, which is really quite well done, even if you don’t care whether or not you’re eating organic foods. You’ve got to tip your hat to the folks that put it together.
One of the things that I wanted to talk about but haven’t blogged about is that I went to the LJB Presidential Library last Saturday. It was really, really good. I didn’t realize how much fun I would have there or I would have gone a long time ago. It has prompted me to want to visit a bunch of the other Presidential Libraries. There was a really cool exibit on “The Swinging Sixties” which was very well done. I was also really impressed with the wall of official Presidential portraits and the selection of gifts from various heads of state. There was a lot of information about the JFK Assassination, which has always fascinated me along with millions of others. I even got a book by Max Holland called The Kennedy Assassination Tapes, which is a collection of transcripts of taped conversations during the LBJ administration about the Kennedy Assassination. It’s really well written and quite interesting. All in all it was a really good trip.
The Pacers lost. I have to say it was quite a moving basketball game. Reggie looked like he could have played another 2 or 3 years, but as he said in one of his many post-game interviews, we should look at how he played in all the games of the series to see if he should continue his career. I grew up watching him play. It’s sad to see him end his career without winning a championship, but it was really nice to see him play the way he did.
Honestly, there’s more to playing the game than winning a championship. There are third stringers with half his talent that manage to get rings on the championship team every year. I don’t want to downplay their contributions to their teams, but it does show that winning a championship doesn’t directly relate to what an individual brings to a team.
Reggie meant so much to the team and to the community because he gave everything he could on and off the court. He stayed in Indiana when someone burned down his house. He holds a charity bowling event at Cooper’s Stardust Bowl every year. He has been loyal in an environment where disloyalty is encouraged. He could have easily left as a free agent for a team where he might have a better shot at a championship. Certainly the Pacers have been a great team over the years, but what team wouldn’t want an absolutely clutch shooting guard?
Reggie stayed though, and they came so close. Reggie’s Pacers were arguably the toughest team that Jordan’s Bulls played against late in Jordan’s career. They lead the league in wins and got to the NBA finals. They came as close as you can come to a championship team without winning. It’s a shame that people are going to hold that over his head.
I recently saw the last Star Wars movie. Twice. I saw it on opening night at the Alamo Drafthouse and then the next day with some guys from work at a more traditional theater. I’m a fan of this one. I really didn’t like the first two prequels, but this one showed me that the series could have been a lot better. I would have smashed the first movie and about half of the second one into one movie. I would have then expanded the second movie to cover more of the Clone Wars and show Anakin and Obi-Wan fighting together. Then, I would have left the third one pretty much as it is. Episode III is really good, even if the first two needed some revision.
Now you have to wonder what’s next. I would like to see about where Yoda came from. In Episode III, Palpatine talks about a Darth Plagius who was able to create life with the force. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the only life he was able to create was a little green turd named Yoda? I would also like to see what happened with Luke. How does he form the Jedi counsel again? What new Sith lord comes to replace Palpatine and Vader?
It’s West Wing week on Bravo! They claim to be showing West Wing reruns all day and night, but they don’t have one one right now. Either way though, I’m hopeful for tomorrow since it seems like they are doing West Wing episodes all day long. This could mean that every lunch from here to the end of the week I’ll be able to run back and watch the West Wing!
The Pacers play tomorrow night (tonight) in Detroit. It’s a critical game 5. Last time we managed to win a game 5 on the road, but then we blew the game 6 clincher at home. I think it will be a lot harder to manage a game 7 road win in Detroit than it was against Boston. This means of course that game 5 is a very nearly a must win. (As if a game 4 at home to go up 3-1 wasn’t…) Anyhow, I’m actually considering skipping my Bible Study for the game. How bad is that? Will God smite the Pacers if I choose to watch the game?
So I got tickets for the last of the new Star Wars movies almost a month ago and it just happens to directly conflict with game 6 in the Pacers – Pistons series. I’m going to go for the “record the game and hope no one tells me the score” philosophy since I can’t very well pass up seeing the Star Wars movie on opening night. I also found out today that this Friday afternoon my group at work is going to be going to the movie as a team building exercise. Between all the television, sports and movies this week, I can honestly say that I’m gearing up to be very American by Memorial Day.
When are we going to get the Wal-Mart of the medical profession? A place where you can go and get the most basic of products and services done for a modest price shouldn’t be impossible to create and maintain for the medical profession. However, it doesn’t exist most places. Why can’t I go to one place for a dental checkup, a physical and an allergy test? It’s frustrating to have to drive all over the place just to get three rather related and relatively basic services. Furthermore, why do we require 30 different forms and documents just to get these things done? Is America really that litigious that we have to have a backup, backup form to validate your parking in the dental offices’ parking lot?
As if my annoyance with the health industry wasn’t enough, the Pacers lost tonight. They were leading the series 3-2 with a home game tonight to wrap it up and yet they managed to find a way to lose. It actually looked like they were going to win after a really hard call to swallow down the stretch that gave Reggie a free throw to tie the game and ejected Paul Pierce. However, we still managed to lose. Now we have to go to Boston and play a game 7. I really hate Boston.
I have tickets to see the Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith on opening day. I should have got the tickets for the show that was Wednesday night/Thursday morning at 12:01 am. That would have been a kinda cool way to do things. Anyhow, I rarely go to the movies these days, but this is an exception. It’s more like a movie-event and it’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of things.
I certainly hope this one is better than the previous two prequels. If I were to have done the first two prequels, I would have merged as much of them as possible and made the second movie more about the actual war of the clones and less about how the war started. It would have picked up the pace of the movies and perhaps restored more of the clarity of good and evil that the previous trilogy had.
I am sometimes surprised at how relaxing vacation can be, even when all you do is go home for a few days. Sometimes the small things can really rejuvenate you. There are tons of stories written about how Americans don’t take or get as much vacation as various other parts of the world. I usually look at those and think something like, “Well, that’s because the rest of the world takes too many vacations.” However, perhaps I’m wrong in thinking that. If a vacation always rejuvenates a person to work better and harder then having a balance of vacation time and work time that leads to a better overall effeciency would make good engineering sense. It’s hard for me to argue with that logic now because I can really feel myself regaining some zeal that must have been lacking.
I watched “Gods and Generals” today. I was familiar with a lot of the story before having seen it because I’ve read a lot on the civil war. It was pretty well made as far as movies go, but there were many times that it seemed more like a historical documentary than a movie. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it would work better if it were advertised as such. Going into a film with the wrong expectation can really make it go from well-made to trash. I don’t think “Gods and Generals” was trash though. It was just not what I expected.
I did learn a few things. I didn’t realize how very religious those Civil War leaders were. They were really quite devout for the most part. I would be curious to see how this compares to the current US Army. It would probably be against the law, but it’s hard to know in situations like war where law applies.
There were also a lot of educated men in the armies. I don’t mean to say that there aren’t now, but it does seem rare to find a professor leave his post to join the army. Perhaps that would not be the case if it the wars we fought were physically more close to home. The distance may not be relevant in reality as a result of the way that technology has shrunk the world, but I think the distance is still a very big part of war in terms of psychology.
Anyhow, the movie was interesting. Movies based on books sometimes convince me that there are some good books out there that I really need to read or some good subjects out there that I should learn more about. Of course, there are also some movies on books that make me want to do quite the opposite. This wasn’t one of those movies though.
I bought a wireless router for my mom’s place today. It cost $50 less than the router I bought for myself three or four years ago, and it’s easily better technologically speaking. The setup was absolutely drop dead simple and it was up and runing within 10 minutes of taking it out of the box. I was quite pleased. Sometimes you don’t notice the progress we’ve made until something like that creeps up on you.