Doug's Sounding Board

This past Saturday was Fullpower’s Christmas party and it is my favorite of the ones I have been to since I started working at Borland. Borland’s had good food, so-so music, and lots of people I know. Oracle’s, Agile’s, and Verisign’s I skipped because we didn’t work at the main campus so I didn’t know anyone. Spyglass had the best food but it didn’t allow you to much with any but those seated around you. Tropian I can’t recall having one.

So Fullpower’s had good food, good music, it was easy to socialize with everyone, there was a pile of games to play with, holiday trivia, co-worker trivia, guessed for number of Hershey’s Kisses in a jar (894), of how many marshmallow’s are in 3 jars (563), and for how many bows in the jar (82 I think). The Kisses were won by my cube neighbor and he doesn’t like chocolate so they are in my cube. I separated out the mint ones this morning so they don’t contaminate the rest. I won the marshmallows but I don’t like marshmallows so they’re on my desk too. Oh yeah, there was a series of boxes to guess the contents of too. For the kids there was a magic show and face painting and toys, and later Santa Claus came in with Mrs. Claus to give gifts to the kids. The whole thing was just right.

It was more crowded at our local polling place than I have ever seen it. There were more voting booths, more workers, and more people to fill them up.  There was some chaos as I don’t think all of the poll workers were trained very well, but for the most part it went smoothly.

Now comes the waiting.

My iPod Touch was stuck at version 2.0. Telling it to check for updates would tell me that 2.0 was the latest version and that I was there. Trying to “Restore” it to the initial settings and force the upgrade that way resulted in a message “There was a problem downloading the iPod software for the iPod.” I kind of already determined tghat since downloading the update manually resulted in 0.4K downloads.

Finally I found an answer way down  in a support forum:

1. Turn iPod Touch OFF completely
2. Plug iPod Touch into PC/MAC while still off
3. Turn iPod Touch on if it wasn’t turned on my plugging it in and IMMEDIATELY do the followign steps
4. Hold the ‘Home’ and ‘Sleep’ buttons down for at least 5 seconds. It will restart and the Apple logo will appear
5. Release the ‘Sleep’ button, keeping the ‘Home’ button pressed
6. The iPod Touch will switch to restore/recovery mode and you can follow the prompts on the computer to erase and restore the iPod Touch

A few weeks ago the microwave door wouldn’t latch shut anymore. Since the hooks in the door were intact and seemed to be moving okay I figured it was the latching mechanism. So I took it apart and took out the latching mechanism but nothing seemed to be wrong. Still, I called around to appliance parts stores and even though I was going to need to bring it in for proper identification, the total would be under $10. While it was out I held it and ran the door into it so I could get a good look and realized that the hooks weren’t settling down into the latch which meant they must be pulled down. Shaking the door yielded a rattling noise so I opened it up and found the spring on the bottom. The hook on the door frame that it latched on to was torn off. I guess that tiny plastic tab wasn’t enough.  I went to the store for some appropriate glue, found about a hundred kinds of glue depending on what kind of plastic you have. I had no idea so I settled for one that claimed plastics in general and had a strength of 2300 lbs/sq in.  It was an epoxy without the nasty smell, 90 minutes of work time and 6 hours for complete ready to use time. It’s worked perfectly ever since!

The broken thing was the Blackberry Pearl I had for work. It was still in my jacket when I washed it. I took it apart made sure it was dry, re-assembled it, and it would charge the battery and blink some status LED but that was it. Then I followed the directions I later found that said to put it in a sealed comtainer with rice and put that over something warm like a DVR  for 5 days. That definitely pulled more moisture out and the backlight came on and some bad looking streaks showed on the LCD and then it was back to how it was the first time. I now fully admit it is dead and just when I was getting used to the keyboard and starting to appreciate the e-mail features.

Weeds season 4 finale – This is the first Weeds finale that didn’t leave it with the assumption that it might not get renewed fort another season while still ending on quite a cliffhanger. I don’t know how much longer the show can keep going but at this point I’ll keep enjoying it as long as it goes.

The recently were free preview weekends for HBO and Starz and now I’m making my way through the backlog on the dvr.

The Reaping – This is the best religious horror movie I’ve seen in a long time. No stigmata, too many candles, or arcane church lore necessary. It has a similar kind of satisfaction as I get when watching something like The Omen (haven’t seen the remake).

Dudley Do-Right – I wanted to see this because I like Brendan Fraser and George of the Jungle was great. This wasn’t great, but it still had a lot of fun. Unfortunately most of the fun came from the announcer. I think perhaps they should have borrowed the writers and director from George of the Jungle. The casting was fine.

The Devil Wears Prada – Great movie about a hell job and what it takes to get what you want.

Epic Movie –  There was just enough entertaining to keep watching and a few funny parts. If it didn’t haev the cast that it did (and how did it get that cast?) then it wouldn’t even have that. But hey, Stiffler’s mom.

Les Triplettes de Belleville –  Making a movie with no dialog that keeps you focused and doesn’t put you to sleep is a challenge but this movie is just that. It’s an odd story, and it’s funny, and it totally sucks you in.

Run Fatboy Run –  Despite Simon Pegg, based on the trailer and how long it lasted in theaters I didn’t expect this movie to be nearly as funny as it is. Not only that but it also manages to represent a good portion of what makes Rocky the movie it is in its own way.

Flushed Away – Most of this movie is pretty good except for the parts with the slugs. The slugs are awesome! See this for the slugs!

Babylon A.D. – The action is good but the plot seemed like a jumbled mess in the end. Apparently that’s because 70 minutes was cut out when the completion guarantee forced it to market. At least it comes out better than Highlander II did in that case. The action carries the day.

The Invasion – I think in 20 years there will be more remakes of this movie than any other movie, if it doesn’t already have that status. Surprisingly for a remake, it has a lot of good tension and it’s well done! I’m not so sure about the very end but I don’t think it really detracts from the rest of the movie.

I was just noticing that several of the close states, according to electoral-vote.com, have very short legal residency requirements for being elligible to vote. Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington all require 30 days to be allowed to vote. Arizona can be thrown in too since it’s fairly close and only requires 29 days.

I’m not moving anywhere, it’s just an observation.

From everything I’ve read about her she would fit in perfectly with the Bush administration so I think the party insiders forced Palin on McCain. That way when McCain dies in office she’s in charge and the party insiders get their control back.

Star Wars: Alliance by Timothy Zahn – Timothy Zahn, as usual, serves up an exciting Star Wars novel with pacing similar to the original trilogy. It’s also rare to get a novel set in the original trilogy era so that’s another bonus.

Star Wars – Darth Bane: Path of Destruction by Drew Karpyshyn – This is the start of the story about how the Sith came to have the rule of two; master and apprentice. One Sith destroying the rest is well done and I look forward to the sequel that establishes the rule of two in Star Wars – Darth Bane: Rule of Two.

Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact – by Karen Traviss – Karen Traviss has defined more of the Mandalorian culture than any other author and now that is expanded to include the clone soldiers. She covers a lot of issues with cloning scattered throughout the story and gives humanity to the human clones. No longer so you look at them on screen and think of them as disposable droids. This was based off a video game and I think it has surpassed that game.

Star Wars Republic Commando: Triple Zero- by Karen Traviss – More growth of the clones from Hard Contact as well as introducing new characters that were only alluded to in Hard Contact. This story doesn’t go exactly where you expect it with awkward love interests for some of the clones and how that impacts the troopers in and out of the relationships. Their sergeant vowing to find a cure for their rapid aging to give them a chance at a normal life. Also seeing how one squad raised with fear and punishment act versus one raised to try and please their sergeant also provides an interesting take on nature vs nurture and what that gets you as an end result.

Why the Jews? – The Reason for Antisemitism by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin – I’d been asked “Why the Jews?” a number of times over the years and I would answer something like: “Because they saw the Jews as controlling the banks,” or pulling the strings or doing something else to make things miserable for the people. That never seems like a good answer to me but it was all I had; various excuses I had been taught in my years of schooling at temple.  The book looks at every major incident of antisemitism for the past couple thousand years both at the surface causes and the root causes. From this come the four main reasons for anti-semitism over the years: Being a separate people, that Jews are the chosen people, the pressure of their ethical monotheism on the society they live in, and the increased quality of life the isolated Jewish communities with better education had over their neighbors. The book has been updated in 2003 to cover modern increases in antisemitism in Europe and university campuses and the relabelling of anti-Jewish messages as anti-zionist.

Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Ppoint in Western History by David Klinghoffer – Not necessarily continuing on the antisemitic themes from Why the Jews? this book covers at all the stages in Christian history the reasons why Jesus was rejected by the Jews and the methods employed on both sides to convert/resist. One of the most interesting parts was the look at early Christian history. The conclusion was the in the beginning the Jews couldn’t have rejected Jesus as a whole because almost none of the Jews at he time knew about him. This goes more in depth in places and fills in nicely in some places where Why the Jews? leaves off.

Finally some fiction!

Chosen by Chain Potok – This is a book about people from different backgrounds learning to appreciate one another even if they don’t fully understand one another. In this case, Orthodox Jews and Hassidim. In it there is a basic history of the Hassidic movement and after reading Why the Jews Rejected Jesus I can see why there was such a big split. Jesus basically taught that the rabbis should be ignored and people should judge how best to serve god by interpreting the Torah themselves. The founder of the Hassidic movement had a similar message except you would go to the Tzadik to interpret things for you. Anyway, to some degree I identify with the character of Danny since I sometimes felt I lived in the intellectual and “had no soul”. I feel like I’ve gone in and out of that over the years and I’ve always worked to help myself in that regard; mostly with success.

Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer – This book takes place in Poland just before WWII with everyone waiting for the impending invasion from Hitler. There is a lot going on in this book, liek the kind of goings on that a lit class could analyze for days, but at the same time the story is good. Arele married his past and when he had to flee Warsaw, his past died and he could not take it with him.

Political Numeracy by Michael Meyerson is an attempt to show the mathmatical underpinnings in the Constitution. A few of the examples hold true but most of them end up being things like illustrations of mathmatical principles in court decisions or other laws. That can still be interesting and most of the time it is, but it isn’t what the book really claims to be.

With God’s Politics – Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It by Jim Wallis I was hoping would clarify where religion falls in politics and it does that. It discusses how the right has been allowed to define religious issues to the very narrow scope of abortion and gay marriage while the left has tried to steer clear of any mention of god. The book then goes on to define many other things which are religious issues, like poverty and war, and advocates that the people who believe in that need to get involved and take back the religious discussions to turn it to those “liberal” issues. I agree that it needs to be turned away from what the right has defined as religious issues and I think some of that is happening in this current election cycle. I did have some trouble reading the book because it is so heavily focused on getting Christians involved in politics on the left side. It definitely wasn’t written with the non-Christian in mind and as a result it at times feels alienating and occasional references to Jews and Muslims don’t really help.

The Presidents: Every Leader from Washington to Bush edited by Michael Beschloss is a set of short biographies of every president we’ve so far had in this country. It even includes up to aroudn the 9-11 time frame on Bush so that one is more of a wait and see what he does and we know how that turned out. Reading history fro the perspective of the presidents is definitely different in some cases. Instead of covering what did happen it also can cover the issues and conflicts that president faced. I did find it interesting that even including recent elections the mudslinging of presidential elections hasn’t reached the heights it did in the 1800s.

Before reading Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick I can pretty safely say that all I knew about the pilgrims is that they came over on the Mayflower to avoid religious persecution and the indians helped them survive. In reality the history is full of peril and war and political intrigue! The compromises they had to make with their faith to survive, the changing relationship with the indians over the years, the relationship with other colonies established after Plymouth. Also in reading you start to get in impression of the start of the American character. Many thanks to Cathi for lending it to me for over a year before I got to it.