As I had bought the trilogy, and gone through the effort to rip them for my Plex server, I feel like I should watch them all. For some reason, I didn’t watch Star Wars: Episide V – The Empire Strikes Back in the first run. In fact, I think it was 2012 or so, when I finally watched the middle episode, having seen both the first and the third in the theater.
A fond memory of my youth was watching Star Wars in the theater. 1977, and I thought that was the best-est movie EVAR!!!!1!!! Action, great special effects, space scenes, aliens, and the voice of James Earl Jones as Darth Vader. What was not to love about it. I watched it a few times afterwards, but unlike some people I know, I moved on, and into other pursuits. I probably hadn’t seen the...
Around Christmas, I began seeing all my friends on Facebook posting show they got Instant Pots for Christmas, and I was intrigued. Having never heard of the device before, my instinct was to dismiss the hype. But, when I was browsing Amazon, a recommended book was “Indian Instant Pot Cookbook” by Urvashi Pitre, and for 8 bucks, it jumped in my cart. A lark. Reading the recipes more...
I have been a life-long, avid consumer of Science Fiction. The bug really took root when I was in high school, and I was bitten hard. Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, and other titans of the genre were my apetite and I voraciously devoured them all. There were some authors that I attempted to get into, but at the time, and for many years after, I struggled to appreciate. One was John Brunner, whose...
Last year, one movie that I really wanted to see was Valerian (full title: “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”), a film by Luc Besson, who made one of my go-to SciFi movies, “The Fifth Element”. Known for making movies that are visually stunning, blending humor and action, and a penchant for strong female characters, I thought this couldn’t go wrong. Alas, I didn’t make it to the...
Bagging on netflix is becoming a recurring theme, but alas, I need to circle back. When Netflix streaming began to take off, it was pretty much the only game in town. At the time, the catalog was far from complete, but Netflix got in at the ground floor, and all the content owners pretty much granted access to their catalog. Not complete access, and there were significant holes, but the selection...
More Funnies. Not sure where I harvested this, but every time I re-discover it, I get more than a couple chuckles, and remember to share it with a friend. Now I am sharing it with you. AT&T Customer Service Memorandum Please stop submitting compliants. This is our system. We designed it, we built it, and we use it more than you do. If there are some features you think might be missing, if the...
I grew up in a weird time. Living in the heart of Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale and San Jose), I was at the epicenter of the rise of tech. But also, I was a car and motorcycle guy. As such, I was exposed to some oddities and interesting troubleshooting of electrics of various mobiles. One pleasure I never had was owning anything with Lucas electronics, for my auto shop friends in high school would...
One day, a long time ago, I began watching Forensic Files on Netflix. It started as a way to kill time, something in the background, but since it had 9 “collections” of up to 70 episodes each, it took quite a while to get through it. The premise is each episode is a crime (usually murder, but not always), and how forensic and scientific evidence helped capture the guilty parties, sometimes after...
I was on the train home, after a truly grueling week at work, and I just got the urge to listen to some vintage Malmsteen. Thinking back to his time before he broke out, I picked up my iPhone, opened the Spotify app, and searched for Alcatrazz, the band he played in with Graham Bonnett before he broke out. I had a specific album in mind, “Live Sentence”, a live (duh) recording from 1983 or 1984...