Text Talk

No profanity in this post, but I can't vouch for the comments.

While working at Astronomy, I had Yahoo! Radio playing on the computer. One of the commercials was sponsored by Chevy and was a "translation" guide for text messages. The first example was LOL; the second and third were gobbledy-gook that "translated" into features about some truck. The last one was WTF which they said stood for "Wow! That's fantastic!"

That's certainly not what I thought WTF stood for. How about you?

Feeling Old

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2011 lists some interesting facts about most of the students entering college this fall.

Stardust... and Bourne

The Bourne Ultimatum was a great movie: an edge-of-your-seat, almost non-stop action wild ride. If you liked the first two, you won't be disappointed.

I can't say enough good things about Stardust. It's wonderful, fantastic, amazing, insert other !!! adjectives here. It's a fantasy story about a young man who offers to retrieve a fallen star for his lady-love in exchange for her hand in marriage; he has one week or she will marry his rival. Of course, finding the star turns out to be the easy part...

Really, you need to stop reading this and whatever else you're doing and go see this movie.

Guaranteed Smile

...probably also at least giggles, if not downright laughter. If not, seek professional help. How can you not feel better after seeing these four kittens attacking a box...and each other, of course.

Hawai'i Weather

It's actually been a really good week: the earthquake was scary, but not as bad as last October; Hurricane Flossie petered out (we had no winds and not much rain); and the tsunami from the earthquake in Peru never materialized. Due to "projected weather-related hazards" schools were closed on Tuesday and Wednesday, and wow! did I get a lot done at home.

And, of course, Friday is a state holiday -- hooray for the two-day workweek!

Bye-Bye Bookshelf

I have officially canceled the amysbookshelf.com domain. I wasn't doing anything with it and my life is only going to get busier.

I will keep this blog and my flickr account (which only has three pix at the moment, but behind the scenes, I'm organizing my digital photos, so soon eventually it will have more) and maybe some other communication tools in the future (Twitter intrigues me a bit, although right now mostly just to read what others are writing).

But for now, good-bye amysbookshelf.com -- I'm sorry I didn't make better use of you. My intentions were good.

NASA TV

I don't know how anyone could watch the coverage of the shuttle launch and not be awed and impressed and proud of what has been accomplished. I'm sitting here watching the shuttle go into orbit courtesy of a camera on the main fuel tank. I just saw the shuttle detach and (seemingly) drift away from "my" position.

Sometimes technology is amazing.

Thanks to NASA for the goosebumps!

Shuttle Launches

Godspeed, Endeavour!

btw, the NASA TV Public Channel is fantastic!! I watched the launch via my computer and saw all kinds of nifty closeups and heard lots of chatter.

Harry Potter: The End

Spoiler-free post, but I can't vouch for the comments.

I finished the seventh Harry Potter book, an as I previously noted, it's difficult to put down once you pick it up. This was even truer with the second half.

In the interest of not saying too much, I'll settle for observing that I think it was a worthy end to the series.

And now, back to Book One...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Spoiler-free post, but I can't vouch for the comments.

My pre-ordered copy of Harry Potter 7 finally appeared in my mailbox yesterday, a mere 12 days after the release date. I'm gonna go easy on Amazon 'cause every other order I've ever placed has arrived much more quickly than expected and I can't be sure it's Amazon's fault (USPS, I'm thinkin' of you).

Anyway, I'm barely able to keep my eyes open after being at the theatre until midnight on Tuesday and reading until almost 3 a.m. last night. I'm just past halfway and while I would like to finish it tonight, I think a good night's sleep is probably the wiser choice.

I don't want to give anything away, but I really hadn't planned on reading that long last night. I was just going to start it, read a little, read a little more tonight, and then finish it in a Friday-night marathon. The spell JKR weaves still has lots of power left.

Movie Reviews

I recently saw both Ratatouille and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Ratatouille is the usual Pixar perfection: everything is very detailed and very lifelike -- the views of Paris will take your breath away and if you don't like rats, you will be creeped out. Despite this, it's probably last on my list of Pixar flix -- hey, somebody has to be at the bottom!

HP5 was good -- it's been some time since I read the story, so I can't speak to how closely the movie sticks to the book, but as a movie, it rocked.

I read somewhere that this might be the last HP movie they do because someone thinks the actors are getting too old to play teenagers. I don't agree; I had no trouble believing that Daniel, Emma, Rupert and the others were 15. I would very much like to see them film the last two books (but that could just be my completion fixation).

Who Ya Gonna Trust?

I'm relieved to know that at least some of the next generation has critical thinking skills.

Impotence of Proofreading

This brilliant video is for anyone who has ever typed anything. Some adult language.

I could practice for 100 years and still not be able to recite this...

HP5 Movie

Three reviews of the movie version of Order of the Phoenix from Pop Goes the Library (they all liked it). The reviews contain spoilers if you haven't read the book.

Yes, it's possible. I actually know two people who haven't ever read any Harry Potter. Yeah, I'm shakin' my head, too.

Toby Keith

I'm officially removing Kenny Chesney from my voices-that-make-me-weak list.

It's not that I don't still enjoy his music, 'cause I do. And it's not that the reason he went on the list in the first place doesn't still exist, 'cause it does. But unlike everyone else on the list, there's only one time that he makes me weak: the 'on and on and on' part of the chorus in the live version of 'What I Need to Do'.

On the other hand, I have to watch myself anytime I hear Liam, Alan, Kiefer, John, or Johnny*.

And Toby Keith deserves to be on the list. Back in February 2005**, I became seriously addicted to The Big Dog while waiting for Honkytonk University to be released. This addiction keeps getting stronger and stronger. There have been very few days since then when I haven't listened to at least some TK, and plenty of days when he's all I've listened to.


*I mean Johnny Depp as Johnny Depp, not in any one particular movie -- most of my experience with his voice as himself comes from his episode of Inside the Actors' Studio

**Yes, I've been meaning to add him to the list since then, but haven't gotten around to it. I'm a bit of a procrastinator, remember?

HP7

I am determined to not believe anything I hear about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I don't care if the person swears that it's the black-on-white truth, I'm treating all spoilers as rumors.

Alive?

Yes, I'm still among the living. May was very busy with helping Mom pack and move and build her house. The Ohio trip was wonderful right up until the very end, when I was next to the toddler-from-hell on the plane home who shared his germs with me which them combined with the dust and mold from the renovation at work to make me sick for most of June.

A few wedding photos are available.

I was working on beefing up this post until I found this entry at Lori's site. Look for a lot more short posts from me...

Mom's House

I won't mention names yet (maybe later), but if a company tells you that 3 people can build their pre-cut kit structure in 2 days, don't believe them. If the incredibly hard-working, dedicated crew of 7 that we had wasn't able to do it in 4 days, it can't be done.

Also, don't believe them when they tell you the lumber will be marked as to where it belongs (F=floor, W=wall, etc.) or that it "comes with the thinking all done."

We didn't believe some of their claims and knew that others were exaggerated, but we had no idea just how far off they would be...

Ms. Dewey

I'm really surprised that I haven't seen Ms. Dewey mentioned on any of the blogs I read. So here she is.

Saturn's Rings

Call me a geek, but this movie of Saturn's rings is awesome*.

From the intro page: "Image scale is 48 kilometers (30 miles) per pixel."

Per PIXEL. Think about that.



*I'm not even sure awesome is the right word, but it's all my tired brain can come up with right now.