I figured I'd finally post up here to let everyone know we made it through hurricane Ian just fine. Since the storm shifted trajectory at the last minute, we dodged the majority of the winds and water. As a result, there was no damage to the house. The only mishap we had was that several trees in the preserve out back fell over in a domino effect, with the last tree landing in our back yard. Since we have nothing in the backyard, there was no damage to anything. The tree still needs to be removed, but since it originate from off-property, the CDD is expected to remove it. I reached out to them on October 9. I suspect it'll be a little bit before they can make it around. A view from the treeline. The opposite view, from the lanai. The trees covering the walkway in the preserve. Carl...
Category: Movies
It’s February Already?!?
Wow. I just looked and saw that it’s been about three months since I posted last. I guess a quick recap is in order of what transpired during that time. Thanksgiving was great. I took off from December 18 through January 2 to relax and get some projects around the house done, however I was mostly bedridden that entire time as I threw out my back on the FIRST DAY off. As a result of that, and that the girls were out of state for Christmas, Cari and I did very little and postponed Christmas day for a couple of weeks. Last week I got a little bit of the flu. That’s about it. I finally received my Bobcat Helium coin miner that I ordered in June of 2021. It’s up-and-running, but is mining slowly. I intend on replacing the stock 4 dBi antenna with an all-weather 8 dBi one...
Time Management
It's Saturday again. I've spent my morning doing some usual things like updating my financial portfolio and scheduling bills to be paid, cleaning my desk (i.e., going through the week's mail) and ripping Blu-rays for the video library. I've been struggling with productivity the last month mainly due to having to devote so much extra time to my day job. I was meticulously planning my time for a short while. And while this helped keep me moving forward on things, it was hard to constantly be scheduling that. But, since I can't seem to be productive without that tool, I need to figure out a better way to manage the time. On Thursday I started Keto in an effort to loose weight. Today is #KetoDay003. The last time I did this was about 10 years ago, so it'll be interesting to see how my body responds now that I'm older....
Slow Day
Was a busy week at work, so I didn't get much done. The only thing creative that was accomplished was in Minecraft. I created a redstone circuit that allows me to turn on and off the iron farm I built a while back. The massive output of that farm was making so I had to tend to it every few days, whether I wanted to play or not. Now, it's off until needed. I've been relaxing all day today, and will likely be doing a bunch of reading to catch up on some magazines. I have five flight magazines, three Raspberry Pi magazines, and another miscellaneous one on the docket (won't read them all today, of course). Added to movie library today: Big Trouble in Little China, Enter the Dragon.
Weekend Loose Ends, Scheduling
I added Marriage Story to the library today and fixed the cover art to Jojo Rabbit. We completed assembling and populating the new fish tank and I was able to put the surrogate 10 gallon tank and all the supporting tools back into the garage to dry out over the next few days until I can properly put them back on the shelves. I went through the hard drives of my old PC and cleared off all of the data I might need and put it on my new machine. I have a lot of projects I want to complete and have decided to start properly planning them out and putting them on a schedule. This basically means that I'm going to take all of my non-day-job time and divide it up and organize it so I can start to get things completed. Once I figure this out, I may...
Bucket o’ Updates
I really need to get back on board with blogging. It's been so long... I've re-enabled my subscription to HakerBoxes. So far, I've received boxes 54 (Smart Home), 55 (High Roller), and 56 (Demon Seed). I've created some project pages on my internal wiki, but have made no progress toward assembling the kits. I have a large box of unpainted D&D minis sitting here next to me that were originally intended for a campaign I created for a bunch of friends. Of course, this was all before the COVID-19 craziness. We haven't played yet, but I do want to start chipping away at painting all of these. Eventually we will use them. About a month ago my main PC crapped out. I decided to do something I've never done before; spec out a high-end machine and order all new parts. I did such, and got all of the components from...
Quick Cap Recap
Sunday we went and saw Captain America: Civil War at the AMC West Shore. I'm not going to spoil it for anyone and go into details, but I loved it and would like to see it again in the theater. It was a long movie, but flew by. Yesterday was a big day - I resigned from my day job. I have something lined up. More to come. I'm now going to spend time organizing all of the comics we bought on Saturday.
Discs
Stopped at Best Buy this morning and picked up a copy of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: Game of the Year Edition and started to play it a bit. Gotta say: I didn't think this franchise could get any better. I've only made it three chapters into the game, but it looks and plays amazing. I hope Naughty Dog continues this series beyond Uncharted 3 (due in November). Added it to the Museum too. Got a copy of National Lampoon's Vacation on Blu-ray too. Think I'm going to watch Kick Ass on NetFlix in a minute.
Buried
Earlier today I listened to the American Cinematographer Podcast with Eduard Grau, the Director of Photography for the movie Buried. After hearing about how he shot the film, I was intrigued, so this evening I rented the movie on iTunes and gave it a watch. I have to say, it really kept me on the edge of my seat. The premise of the story is that Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is buried alive in an old pine coffin. He has a few things in the box with him, including a cell phone that he uses to communicate with the outside world and a Zippo-style lighter. Grau had to be incredibly creative with the shots and lighting throughout the production. He and the director, Rodrigo Cortes, really wanted to vary the scenes as much as possible (there are only so many ways to shoot coffin scenes). The result was very interesting,...
Giant Idiot Shadows
Recently I decided to start up my NetFlix account again and have been enjoying some movies, catching up as it were. I've been getting more recent titles in the mail and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen just made it's way into my mailbox today. I was somewhat disappointed with the first movie, as I was a fan of the toys and cartoon TV series when I was a kid. I'm not going to get into why it let me down, as I'm sure you already know if you've seen it. Suffice it to say, I wanted the second movie to be better, but Bay decided to raise his skirt, squat and shit all over my childhood again - covered it in pure diarrhea. As I watched, I tried to digest what was on screen. I tried to enjoy it, but a single thought kept popping into my head: "Shame on you,...
