Fu Man Chu
I mentioned to Todd that for next year’s baseball bets, maybe the looser has to grow a fu-man-chu. But what would I look like with one? Well, now I know:
(Holy crap this thing is creepy!)
I like the way this guy thinks:
In a rant against movie theaters and the commercials that play during at the supposed start time of the main show, he says:
- When you take my money for popcorn, at least I’m getting a tasty treat
- When you take my cash at the box office, I’m getting to come in to watch the movie
- When you take my time for commercials on TV, I’m getting a “free” TV show out of it
But what are we getting for our time with commercials in movie theaters? When the ad says “Movie starts at 7pm” and I’m in my seat (that I paid admission for) at 7pm, it’s time for you to start giving me what I paid you for… the movie. If you want to show me commercials, fine… give me the movie for free then.
The theater industry is pulling in RECORD amounts of income from those commercials, and unlike TV (where we get a free show), WE GET NOTHING IN RETURN FOR OUR TIME SITTING THERE WHEN THE MOVIE IS SUPPOSED TO START.
He then goes on to show the value of time. It’s a good read.
Read More at his blog here.
I have to agree with him. It used to be just movie trailers that ate into the start time. Now it’s Coke and Visa commercials. Very annoying.
At least I don’t go to that many movies anymore for it to be that big of deal for me. I wouldn’t mind keeping a package like HBO for the reason that time is very valuable. I currently don’t have the home theater system to rival any movie theater (even the really bad ones). But some day, when HD televisions become more affordable, HD programming more widely available, and I purchase an impressive home audio system, the need for movie theaters will greatly diminish for me. I hope one day to have a beautiful setup (5, 10 years from now – don’t worry honey, I’m not going shopping this weekend), combined with DVR, pay-per-view, and DVD rentals, watching movies on my time and commercial free is the best way to go.
Social Atlasing
So, I just discovered a cool new tool on the internet. The Social Atlas. This is a site that takes Google Maps and allows you to add places of interest and then share them with friends. It’s a neat idea.
To start, I created a map of All the Places I’ve Lived – from the city I was born in, to the different homes during college, to our present house.
Check it out: http://www.wayfaring.com/maps/show/26331
There are all sorts of cool posibilities with this thing. Coming soon: Travel Destinations I’ve been to.
Oh crap – the landlords are here!
We had a nice weekend. On Friday, Sara’s mom flew into town for her baby shower, which was Saturday morning. They got a hotel room for the weekend, too. Sara and her mom stayed there Friday and Saturday nights, while I stayed at the house.
Friday night, the friends whose house we are staying at, drove into town as well. They needed to stop into town to check on the house and bring a few things back to Michigan with them, like warm clothes.
They have an 18 month daughter and I was blown away by how smart she is. She has an incredible memory and a large vocabulary. My favorite moment was at breakfast Sunday morning when she was done eating and wanted to get down from her booster seat. Her mom told her just a moment, and she started saying, “Patience. Patience.”
Saturday was Sara’s shower and apparantly they had a fun time. No silly baby shower games though. At the guest of honor’s request. Meanwhile, I ran around and did a bunch of errands since the carpenters were working on the house once again.
In the evening, we went back to the house we’re staying at to hang out with our friends and another couple in our small group. It was fun to hang out with them again.
We’re obviously very grateful they’re allowing us to stay in their empty house, but at the same time, it’s surprising to me to hear them say how grateful they are to have people staying in the house and taking care of it. So it’s a win-win situation for everyone. And as much as we hope they can sell it soon, we’re still hoping not too soon.
On Sunday, we were invited over to the house of our friend’s parents for lunch. This worked out really well because there was an open house from 1-4 in the place we’re staying, so Sara in particular had no place to go.
It was also very nice because our friend’s dad is a doctor and has a very nice large screen HDTV and tivo. Great for watching Bear’s football games. We could watch the start of the game, then go eat dinner without tv interuption, and then after dinner go back to the game and not miss a thing. Technology really is a wonderful thing. But now that I’ve seen a football game in HD, it’s really hard to watch regular tv again.
The rest of the day was dedicated to the initial stages of getting electricity back in the house. Now that I have some walls to work with, I can run conduit to the proper places. It’s exciting to see progress, but we still have a busy few weeks coming up.
PODCAST 2!
Ladies and Gents, Todd, Doug and I are proud to introduce:
This is the new home for our podcasts. Subscribe to them or listen to them right on the page.
And we have a new episode to show off too. This one sounds a million times better than the first one because we were using much better equipment.
So enjoy!
PODCAST!
That’s right, Todd, Doug, and I recorded our first podcast Tuesday night. Now, we have a new webiste that will be exclusive for our podcasts and you’ll be able to subscribe to it and all. For instance, if you use iTunes, any time a new one is released, iTunes will automatically download it for you. That’ll be nice.
Unfortunately, there are a few minor technical difficulties. So… instead of wait for those issues to be resolved, we decided to host the file here and then blog about it. So this technically isn’t a podcast – right now it’s just a recording.
So what is this all about, I’m sure you’re wondering. Well, nothing frankly. It’s 3 guys who always have a good laugh when chatting with each other, so we thought we’d just record a loosely structured conversation and see what happens.
Now, to us…it’s hilarious. We had such a great time doing this that we can’t wait to do it again. This first one was a bit rough. The mix isn’t spectacular, but I’m blaming that on crappy mics. Our next one will sound much better.
So, if you have 55 minutes to kill, download the file and enjoy. Please let us know what you think and if you have ideas, let us know!
Recent Pics
