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So this weekend I went to visit some friends in the North Bay.  It was the first time I had driven the R32 in a few weeks (since the Jetta has been fixed it’s back as the daily driver) and as I was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge I was thinking that maybe I should try taking a different way home.  So I ended up doing this:

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It was a VERY fun drive.  While I’ve spent plenty of time playing in the Santa Cruz Mountains I had somehow never really taken Hwy 1 all the way down past Half Moon Bay and I really enjoyed it.  There are some cool little towns in there like Montara that I had never been through.  Places like that are high on the list of places I would want to go shopping for a house if I ever won the lotto.  Also, since that stretch of road will be going away I want to drive it a few times before it does.  (Somehow a dark ugly tunnel won’t be the same.  Especially when tanker trucks explode in it.)

Taking this little detour helped to remind me why I like Northern California so much and the central coast especially.  There’s something about the coastline here that is just different and it just strikes me as being amazingly beautiful.  And right around here is where you get the blending of the central coast vegetation combined with a bit of the redwoods that you see farther north.  Of course, since this wasn’t planned, I lacked a camera.

The only real flaw in my plan was that I was coming back a bit later than I had hoped.  I underestimated the time it would take.  So by the time I got to Page Mill Road…it was dark.  And I had forgotten just how technical that chunk of road is.  Doing it in the dark did make me a bit nervous, but there are a couple of turnouts where you can see a very nice chunk of Silicon Valley.  Usually when I’ve done Page Mill in the past I’ve noticed that while the view is nice but the haze gets in the way.  At night, however, it was all twinkly lights and pretty pretty. 

Stuck on the train during the week it can be pretty easy to forget how beautiful things are around here.  There are worse places to live.

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Originally uploaded by Cine Fanatico

I know I haven’t said anything about movies I’ve watched recently but…wow. This was really bad.

First off, I hated the kid. I was kinda hoping Bill/Neo/Klaatu would just off him. I hope that’s not like he is in real life or the Fresh Prince needs to start laying down the law. The thought of this kid and Jackie Chan in a Karate Kid remake is just repulsive.

Of course Jennifer Connelly’s character was at fault – the first time the kid got fresh she should have put the smack down. I think parents should be allowed to taser their children. Yeah yeah, she’s just a stepmom and dad’s dead….don’t care. The upside of his head – let me show it to you.

Secondly, the special effects were just meh. The nano cloud of death was ok, but a lot of the compositing was off. On Blu-Ray at least, at 1080p, you could see how out of place the helicopters looked. I just was never impressed. If the goal was to be a special effects masterpiece…it wasn’t. Weta has done better.

Thirdly there was Keanu. Ah, Keanu. What can one say? You should have stopped with Johnny Utah. Srsly.

Finally there was the “green” message. The aliens are here to kill us because we’re harming the earth. They, of course, had their own crisis and developed nanotech. They want to knock us back to the stone age. Hey, guys – I’d think a species that valued life would care about sapient beings and not want to wipe out six billion of them.

Oh well, movies like this are why I have Netflix. I will happily put this one back in the envelope and send it back from whence it came.

I got my tax refund yesterday. Today I paid off my car. It may not be stimulating to the economy, but it’s stimulating to me. 4.5 years and one tree later she’s all mine. There are only about 43,000 miles on the clock and with my old car back running it should stay low for a while. I hope to keep this car for several more years.

Yes, it’s a cheezy post title. Ask me if I care. Oh wait, I can’t hear you.

I waited a week to watch the BSG finale.  The idea being that since my best friend was coming down for the start of the F1 season we could watch it together.  Last weekend was kinda bad – I feel like I missed out a little on a chance to watch it with all the fans at once.  And as hard as I tried I did get spoiled a little – I knew that Lampkin was going to be President and I knew that Laura died in a Raptor flying over some planet.  That, uh, left a lot of stuff in between.

All in all I liked it.  No, it didn’t wrap everything up in a nice neat bow. Some fans aren’t happy if there isn’t a lot of pseudoscience in their science fiction.  Calling them “angels” and the particular force behind the scenes “God” (although supposedly “he doesn’t like that name”) may seem a cop out to some – but they don’t get that it was never about what exactly Kara was.  Or who/what “Chip Six” was.  It was about these people and their journey. It’s like the folks who read David Webber over Lois McMaster Bujold. 
Bujold has 4 Best Novel Hugos, Webber has none.  Why is that?  It’s about the characters, stupid.

And I don’t understand what the folks are upset about?  You had a full hour+ of awesome military sci-fi.  Epic battle.  Guns.  Robots.  I mean what the hell did you people want?  I suppose they may have wanted more of a “Ship of Lights” thing – you know, you can’t actually have beings who have evolved into Gods but don’t need a magic spaceship…

The coda (in Vancouver/NYC), though – that part I didn’t really need.  It was cute, I suppose, but I could have done without it.    Then again, it’s not my show.  One thing, though – I wonder if the Star Trek franchise is kicking themselves right now?  They had this amazing storyteller working for them.  Just think what they could have had if they had let him off the leash?  Oh, that’s right – they could have had perhaps the finest SF TV show EVER.

One thing I gotta say is that I found was this thread on the official SciFi forums where Ron Moore (the creator/showrunner of BSG) answers fan’s questions through the intermediary of his wife.  It would seem his wife has been engaging fans during the seasons – the woman must be a saint.  Talking to SciFi types?  On the intartubez?  She’s crazy.  Clearly she needs to be informed of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.  After the emotional rollercoaster of seeing such an amazing show end the last thing either of them need is to be doing is trying to talk to annoyed fanboys.

Chris showed me the manga before, but I wasn’t in to it.  It was released in the US as Apocalypse Meow, but the Japanese title was Cat Shit One.  The original manga is set in Vietnam.  This is, obviously, Gulf War – although I’ve seen rumors that it is also Iran Hostage Crisis.  (But that wouldn’t make sense with the 1991 time frame.)  I just keep expecting Solid Snake to wander in.   I think it looks very good, and would be fun.  They’ve gone for a very realistic look and it’s just awesome to see some hardcore tactical action offset by…bunnies.

Update: A friend said “whoever came up with that must hate furries”.  I hadn’t even thought of that.  And I wish he hadn’t.  It’s…disturbing.

Update 2: Chris says that there is a rumor that our heroes are part of a PMC.  He then asked, “Does that make this Blackwatership Down?”  When he gets here on Friday I think he’s earned a slap.

Killzone2-Packfront

Originally uploaded by PlayStation.Blog

So these days I’m playing a fair bit of Killzone 2, and I’m pretty happy with it. I suppose part of it is the “new toy” factor – I had gotten burnt out on COD4, and I had left Halo 3 a while ago (although I get tempted to bring it out once in a while).

The game is great. The graphics are just amazing (it’s pretty – it’s oh so pretty) as is the sound design. Having classes to play (meaning ranking up brings more than just new guns) is fun. So far I’ve only unlocked the Medic and Engineer badges but I, as all of the players do, want to get to the Scout badge with the invisibility cloak.

Some folks have said we’ll only be playing this until COD:MW2 comes out. That may be true – but that’s not ’til Christmas and until then this will be a lot of fun.

You better believe I’m collecting tolls…

I know the new rules are there for a reason. And yes, it’s *really* nice to see slicks back. But I am just not liking how the trends are going. That tiny rear wing just looks WRONG, and the huge-ass front wing is MOAR WRONG. As friends have pointed out it will be VERY interesting to see how they do nose changes now that there are either electrical or hydraulic motors in the front wing (so that the driver can change it on the fly).

Also of note is that supposedly the exhaust on the F60 is totally illegal, and that will have to change before they start racing it. But I’m pretty sure they can’t fix the ugly…

So I’ve been chugging through the movies, so lately I’ve seen:

A lot of folks have said they liked Prince Caspian better than they liked the first movie.  I’m not sure I agree.  While the story is better I found Peter to be annoying in his need to be manly, and I found the faux-romance to be lame as well.  Still, it was a good spectacle.  Visually stunning (until LOTR comes out on Blu-Ray anyway) and a great sound design.

This wasn’t nearly as funny as I thought it would be.  Everyone made such a big deal of Downey’s performance and that was decent.  But if you ask me Tom Cruise stole the show.  He was amazing – they even threw in a tiny tidbit of the “you complete me” speech from Jerry Maguire.  His dance moves during the end credits are at the very least worth a rental.

This one came across as not being as nearly as funny as the trailers.  I guess I was expecting some of the amazing energy from SNL and…it’s not there.  Maybe the format’s not right for them or something, but it wasn’t as funny as I’d hoped, although it was sweet.  Definitely plenty of estrogen in the flick – I felt like watching First Blood or something to cleanse the palate, like a testosterone sorbet…

Next up will be Dark Knight…I didn’t see it in the theater and just got it in Blu-Ray.