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Fun Movie to See With the Family

Dan in Real Life is a cute, touching movie about a widower / single father of three girls struggling to hold his family together and find love. Dan (Steve Carell), an advice columnist has been a widower for 4 years and has focused all of his attention on his kids, who are growing up, despite his best efforts. The kids are all starting to grow a little weary of dad’s “focus” on them and need a little breathing room.

The family goes away for a yearly “bonding” weekend with the extended family and that’s where the fun begins. Dan meets an amazing woman, whom he later finds out is dating his brother. He loves her, she loves him, but this love is FORBIDDEN. Will he back off, will they sip wicked nectar of this off-limits lovin’? Well, I’m not going to spoil it for you.

Let’s just say that it’s a fun, funny, touching movie that I watched with my wife and my teenage daughter. One hug (daughter) and one cry (wife) let me know that it was a good choice.

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Media, Movies comedy, movie, review

Special Halloween Edition of Best Lyrics Evah!!!

In the spirit of the Halloween season, I decided to do a very special edition of “Best Lyrics Evah!!!” My lyrics pick is for the Misfits classic “Skulls”

In 1982, The Misfits recorded “Skulls” on the “Walk Among Us” album, one of the best “horror punk” songs ever. This song is short, sweet, and to the point… This guy is a bit of a collector, if you will. He wants, no NEEDS human skulls to hang on his wall.

Now, you know as well as I do, that when you gotta have something, well, you just gotta have it!

I’d love to say that it’s these lyrics alone that do it, but there’s much more going on here. The upbeat tempo, snappy feel, and vocal styling all come together to form an old-school masterpiece.

Never before have you felt so happy about “hacking the heads off little girls” before.

See some cool Skull Related Paraphernalia at Skull-A-Day.

Why don’t you grab a seat and just sit back and let the brilliant lyrics from this gem just wash over you.

You’ll be glad you did.

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Media, Music lyrics, misfits, Music, skulls

Doing What You Love, Loving What You Do

Most people have their lives broken up into numerous compartments. Family life vs. friends vs. work. Hangin’ with the boys (or girls) vs. your significant other. Then, there’s the age old battle between your passion and how do you pay the bills.

Mine is a little different, there is a lot of overlap between the two for me. By day, I’m an E-Learning Guru at a financial services company. I design and develop training courses on financial applications in systems area. I basically spend my day writing, maintaining web sites, designing graphics and simulations, and fiddling with software. A handful of times each month I teach classroom sessions (which I love). Increasingly, everything that I do is Web Based Training development for remote users who “consume” my content, most of whom I will probably never meet.

I find that I am rare among most people I know in that I LOVE what I get paid (pretty well) to do.

After putting in 3 or 4 grueling hours a day (I do my share of talking, coffee drinking, and attending thrilling meetings) you would think that the last thing that I would want to do is rush home, sit in front of another computer, read a bunch of other technical mumbo-jumbo, and write about it to a bunch of anonymous readers. I guess that’s the crazy part. I love both of these things.

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Miscellaneous Ramblings, Personal career, work

Save the Earth, Save Some Money, and Maybe Win a Nobel Prize

Today (October 15th) is Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day is an effort set up by a group of bloggers interested in helping save the environment. Their idea was to get as many blogs as possible (12,000 and counting) to post an article on the same topic “Saving the Environment” all on the same day.

Here is their basic mission and idea:

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

Sure, I think that we should get off fossil fuels. (Not just for the environment.) Sure, I think that we should chase down and stop everyone polluting the air, land, and water. But, really, what are the odds on that happening? Well, here is my two cents on the issue.

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Miscellaneous Ramblings

Do You Love Cryptozoology As Much As I Do?

Ever since I was a kid and I saw the Six Million Dollar Man episode “The Secret of Bigfoot” as a six year old kid, I have been fascinated by Bigfoot, Yeti, Loch Ness Monsters, and any other form of mythical creatures. I remember shows like “In Search Of…” hosted by Leonard Nimoy (Yes, Mr. Spock) which would delve into such weighty mysteries. If I saw or heard that a show about these creatures was coming on, I was all over it. By the way, this took dedication in the days before VCR’s not to mention Tivo.

Cryptozoology, as defined by Wikepedia is the search for animals believed to exist, but for which conclusive evidence is missing.

Well, the greatest moment in my bizarre fascination was when my dad took me to see the premier of Sasquatch, The Legend of Bigfoot in 1977. For a seven year old freak show like me, that was like seeing Gone With the Wind and Citizen Kane all rolled into one. That sealed the deal, I was hooked for life.

I remember in my early 20’s how the first few episodes of the X-Files and that were the next closest thing. They always mixed in some cryptozoology type stuff among the UFO chasing.

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Miscellaneous Ramblings, Web Surfing bigfoot, cryptozoology, loch ness monster, sasquatch

Is it OK to Do a Photojournalism Piece on Roadside Memorials?

Did you ever see those white crosses with pictures, candles, signs, etc. on the side of the road where people have died in an automobile accident? Me too, the whole phenomenon has fascinated me for as long as I can remember.

I always want to get out and look at them, to figure it all out. Who was it? How old were they? How did it happen? Who built this memorial? So many questions and usually not many answers.
Now, I carry a camera with me just about everywhere that I go. I always try to grab shots of things that strike me as weird, funny, cool, or interesting. Some of my stuff interests people and some makes them scratch their heads.

Every time I see one of these roadside memorials, I want to get out and document the whole thing. The problem is, I’m usually either with my wife and/or daughter. Both of them think it’s creepy, inappropriate, and disrespectful. Plus, nobody ever wants to stop and wait around for me to do my thing. If I tried to go out and find these memorials, while I’m alone, I probably never would anyway.

So, here is my question: Is it OK to shoot and document these memorials or am I just a creepy freak. I really don’t want to offend or gross anybody out. Here’s your chance to put your two cents in. You may be determining a future article.

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Miscellaneous Ramblings flickr, photography, photojournalism, poll, roadside memorial, survey

Are you a blogger? If not, you should probably skip this article and check out some others. Do you like FREE stuff? I thought so.

Well, Problogger.net is running a Birthday Bash contest on their blog. The site is an incredible resource for bloggers on the subject of making your blog better, more interesting, and best of all more profitable. There contest runs this week and they are giving away a whole bunch of prizes that would be useful to bloggers.

So if you have a blog and want to win some cool FREE stuff, head over to the Kickoff Post on Problogger.net to see the complete contest details.

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Miscellaneous Ramblings, Web Surfing

How Many Social Networking Tools Do You Really Need?

Every time I turn on the Interwebs, there is some hot new future bankruptcy social network that is going to revolutionize the world. I usually go over and sign up, if for no other reason than research. Well, most of these world beaters turn out to be a bust. First of all, social networks are terrible for early adopters, unless you have 20 or so close friends who will join with you. Second, you really only need a few to take care of the 12+ hours a day that I spend on the computer.

What Services / Products I Use

Myspace – I love, hate, and use MySpace as much as any of the others. As hideous and annoying as Myspace is, all of my friends are there. It was hard enough for some of my friends to get email addresses, I can’t just say, “Hey, let’s all switch over to Facebook.” This is the AOL of this decade. 30 million people sure can be wrong!

As hideous and annoying as Myspace is, all of my friends are there. It was hard enough for some of my friends to get email addresses, I can’t just say, “Hey, let’s all switch over to Facebook.”

Facebook – I love Facebook, but none of my real friends do. I’m trying to switch people without a lot of success. Does my wife really count? I can talk to her using mouths and ears.

LinkedIn – I use this to build out my professional network. It is really good from that point of view. I have found friends and colleagues from numerous old jobs. It is great for that type of thing.

Plaxo – What a turnaround for Plaxo. They used to be a spam factory, but now they have an invaluable service. If you have multiple web and desktop solutions for mail, contacts, and calendaring then Plaxo can save your day. You can set up your Outlook, gmail, aol, yahoo, hotmail, profiles to all sync up to one central database. This way, if you add a new Contact, To Do, or Appointment to any of your profiles, it will automatically by synchronized with all of your accounts. Now, all of your information will be in your web and desktop systems all of the time.

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Productivity, Web Surfing facebook, linked in, myspace, social networking