Michael's Shower

Disney War comment IV

It is amazing Disney got anything done. There was so much childish fighting among executives. I guess the magic of Disney somewhat glossed over all the silliness.

Modern Music

I still frown on people with headphones who are oblivious to the world. No response to polite good days. Outbursts or random actions. Turning the volume up loud enough for everyone to hear...

Had iTunes (online radio) or XM radio been around when I was growing up, I just might have taken the time to learn the artists names of my favorite songs. I suppose I would have wasted money on buying their albums too.

I have been flipping through streams as I did with radio stations on occasion when I was a kid. It seems such a waste... Looking for songs I like just as I did years ago!

Some songs like oldies (50's, 60's...) might just live forever. I like a lot of songs my parents did. I want my kids to hear them too.

Disney War comment III

Wow, this book shows how jerky wealthy people can be. Still somewhat interesting, but I am getting tired of it... hopefully it will get better.

Disney War comment II

The book is fun to listen to. It's nice to hear the stories behind movies and events from my past. I kind of wish I was on the board of directors, but I'm not sure I care enough to do a great job... not to mention I'm not really sure how to do a good job.

I was shocked to learn Disney had the opportunity to buy Pixar when it was in it's infancy... but did not. Now? Or at least last year, they wished they had?

My Dad is a Disney nut, but I guess the apple does not fall to far from the tree?

ITunes finally downloaded

I've been fighting the latest craz, much like I did with Napster. I just don't care all that much for music... but I do like books and downloading the individual MP3s off podcasts wasn't all that fun.

So, thank you to the developers of the nice software, the podcasts, and the neat RSS feeds... All FREE!!!! Excellent.

I might even look into buying a few songs... Doubt it!

Indoor Soccer Team Cancelled

I tried to join this soccer thing. To get me out during the winter and what not, but this email just came:

Hey, I just got an e-mail from the league organizer saying that the league has been canceled. For those of you that have already sent me checks, I haven't cashed them yet. I'll just rip them up. the gym we were going to play in is under construction and won't be finished until the middle of December. Thanks for the interest, and I'm sorry about that.

Man, this stinks. Now what am I going to do?

Disney War

I have been skimming over the book Disney War. I have found it very insightful.

I had heard that the movie industry was pretty much ran by Jewish people, but I only heard about Spielberg. Apparently Eisner is Jewish too.

It talks about other figures I have heard about and the stories that they went through. Including Marriott's desire to take Disney over back in the 80s. And no Disney story would be complete with out Pixar and Lassiter.

The book is like a missing link. I have really enjoyed it thus far.

Bruce Schneier and the ACLU

I just learned that I have been reading an ACLU member’s blog for the last couple years. Wow, I never thought I would agree with someone from that somewhat wacked out group.

Louvre Pyramid

One thing great about Dan Brown's book was the interest in the places, myths, and other points of interest mentioned. For me, it was the Louvre Pyramid. I'd like to see it but I have no intention to go to Paris... Thanks to the Internet I do not have to leave my desk to see it.

I heard of I. M. Pei on the Simpson's. Curious, I tried to look up this place he designed. Not knowing French, I had to look up pictures.

I also thought it was interesting the reference to Phi. I'm curious to try some of the tests to measure stuff...

Nancy Stouffer's Potter

Wikipedia's brief account of the leagal battle between Stouffer and Rowling sounded rather suspicious. It seemed like Rowling, as would be expected, cleverly preempted a suit against Stoufer.

Rowling... pre-empted Stouffer with a suit of their own seeking a declaratory judgment that they had not infringed on any of Stouffer's works. Rowling, through the use of expert witnesses who brought into question the authenticity of Stouffer's evidence, won the case with Stouffer's claims being dismissed with prejudice and Stouffer herself being fined $50,000 for her "pattern of intentional bad faith conduct" in relation to her employment of fraudulent evidentiary submissions, along with being ordered to pay a portion of the plaintiffs' legal fees

It makes me want to read Stouffer's books. Or at least look over them.

I also would like to read the book released in China. My Harry Potter story would have been better than the ones that have come out. I mean book 5 and 6 really blew chunks. The DA was cool...

My story was like that of WWI, the American doughboy wizards help out and defeat Voldemort for good. This feared wizard who should not be named and his equally weak minions seem to always loose to a bunch of kids. If this is such a world epidemic why is England the only ones trying to do anything?

I hope Harry dies in book 7 and Voldemort lives forever! Well, until the American wizards and witches clean up the mess left by the UN.... :)

MBA or not MBA?

Like other times in past history I have known people going to grad school or what have you and have felt left out. I often consider going back for different subjects but not for a particular degree.

If I could take a few classes and eventually get a degree is what I’d like to do. I am not fond of the idea about going back to school full time.

I than thought what subjects to study. I’m sure I could find a lot of great info on the net. I found this site for starters. I then explored the demand curve. It’s more of a line then a curve. Algebra teachers you that.

Legal First-Aid

We dressed in proselyting clothes to do this service project. I was going to man this wooden basket dragon. It was for a mini golf putting thing. When the ball went in the hole, I would pull the lever on the back of the giant dragon and make steam come out of its mouth.

One time, my finger caught one of the edges of the woven wooden strips. It started to bleed and everyone panicked. Well, except me and Elder Jensen from Oregon.

One guy ran off to find a band-aid. I left to get some water and a napkin. Jensen was denied some ice from a vendor but got some napkins. I stepped on a hose and we traced it to end hoping the water was on – which fortunately it was.

I used it to wash off the area. It was a clean cut; the bleeding stopped easily. The guy came with a band-aid and I went back to work.

Shortly afterward, this golf cart with a siren pulled up. He was responding to someone’s call. There was a Doctor in that branch and he came running over.

Even though I told them I was alright, they wanted to see the cut. The Doctor laughed and walked away when he saw it was nothing alarming. I laughed when they asked if I wanted to go to the hospital. In retrospect, I guess they only asked because they did not want to be sued.

Random Pirate Event

This morning, I randomly or haphazardly picked a Pirate theme for my evite that I sent out. I got to reading someone's blog who happened to be on the evite list. She had some post about International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

I thought it was strange, yet I was curios if it really was Talk like a Pirate day. Earth Calendar said it was!

As I typed the word strange above, someone here spoke it! Arg, All Hope Abandon?

We had a Pirate Day on the cruise. Wonder if Talk like a Pirate Day was mentioned to whomever is on the ship now.

Dr. Zobell and the family crests

If you login in to Google, you can save address searches on the map. I just found that out. You can also set the default address... which is my parents house.

I remember good old Zobell drive. I'm not sure if there is any relation ship to the Zobell family of which my Google search lead me to the image.

Cool, check out the Damron crest or the Manning crest.

A house divided

It was good to move out of the Duke Street apartment, but the last few weeks have seen changes that put me back in one state to which I moved out. All five of us here at the house went to this year's Greentop event in, you guessed it, there were 5 different cars.

Aside from that and similar garbage, the event was awesome. Different from last year of course, but on it's own? Awesome.

One of the funnest parts was the "service project" we did. I volunteered to join a small group to leave the camp to go clean a park. We never found the park. We'll we stopped at a bunch of places in the town, cleaned up and had some fun.

Mistic Journey

I got this Mistic drink the other day. My brother used to drink these all the time. Of course, I wondered who made it, who distributes it… A quick Google search lead me to Cadbury Schweppes.

I took some time on that site to look up other products and found this page on Dr. Pepper. No way, I like a lot of their products!

The old shower post and further poking around lead me to believe I already knew all this. Just did not recall it?

More numbers at Sea

I think we took the elevator twice. It was quicker to run up and down the eleven decks. Granted we worked off a lot of the good food in the process.

Someone said it took one gallon of gas to go fifteen inches. Not sure I believed that one. I forget how many gallons of distilled water they made from the ocean. I think there were two diesel engines providing electrical power.

I miss the games we played: chess, shuffleboard, foosball, and minigolf... Well it was only putting. We missed the chipping activity. We also had plenty of movies on the stateroom TV.

Numbers at Sea

The cruise ship (not boat) could sleep roughly 3,000 people. 900 where crew: including the stage acts. There were 3 pools, 3 major restaurants or dinning halls, 2 theater's, about 1500 cookies devoured per day, 900 gallons of ice cream consumed.

I liked the Topside buffet the best. Ate breakfast there a lot. Not sure I liked the fancy food...

I asked for cherry coke the first night and got Coke with those ice cream cherries. After drinking, I had to pull the cherries out with a fork.

New things

This last week, I did the following new things.

• I left the country.
• Went on a cruise. (Disney)
• Went to St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and Castaway Cay.
• Sailed in a mock race.
• Parasailed for 7 minutes. That was peaceful.
• Rode a wave runner around a bit. That was a bit freaky.
• Saw part of the Space Shuttle launch.

Atlantic Voyage

I finished up my voyage with a glimpse of the Space Shuttle Alantis launch. I saw it from the airport. I had to go to NASA's web site for the link, because all the news sites seem to be closed for the weekend.

Visited a couple islands: St. Maarten, St. Thomas and Disney's Castaway Cay.

It seemed too short, but I counted the days. I'm glad I went instead of backing out.... My sister at least had a valid reason.

Security happy people

I admit I could find some uses for this browser, but I kind of like auto-complete features (including the IE form field retention feature -- whatever MS calls it.)

I type slow, so it is nice to type a few keys, select a previous entry and hit enter.

I do need to be careful on other machines not to have IE save my passwords. Just another short cut, but very non-secure. I actually have a password safe program. I just run this application, unlock the safe, select the password I need for a given site, and paste it in!

C# (C-sharp) code samples

Because a "friend" killed my fairly trafficed sample site, I thought I would advertise my new one here. I basically just moved the PHP code to another server.

Hopefully I will not loose that too. I'll have to start paying for it to make sure it stays up.

Printing issues

I almost could not print out my boarding pass. IE 7 (BETA) was doing funny things and locked down the text boxes I needed to type my confirmation code in. Maybe it was just the site?

Printing is evil anyway, that is why I installed the PDF print driver. Get your free copy here.

My mother used to, and probably still does, print out her email. Agh!!! What are you doing? I admit I do print stuff just because I can sometimes.

Camp Greentop (again)

The ward could not schedule the place for Labor Day weekend. Fortunately, for me, they chose a different weekend. It should be fun, maybe not as great as last year, but I'm looking forward to it.

Looks like I'll have some fun things to do when I get home from the cruise. The Sept. 11 game of the Redskins isn't one of them. Especially after the mud slinging.

Oh well, life goes on.

Family pets

• Dog: Bandit
• Dog: Buiffy
• Gerbils: No names?
• Fish: No names?

I wanted a bird, but I did not want to clean up after it. The dog(s) were bad enough. I just want plants in my house. That and people.

No water last night

Not because of some natural disaster, unless you consider "dung" for brains natural. He's got looks though. He's charming, smooth, pious and he's not completely dumb. Confident and stubborn, even with wrong information.

Why the names on the account didn't just get swapped is beyond me. Maybe he thought we wouldn't pay the bill? A very poor joke?

I suppose I should be glad it was last night instead of tonight. Well, hopefully the water will be running tonight. Always trying to help? Please, just stop trying and leave already.

I should have taken a leak on his bed. A compliment to another brilliant decision. Instead I went in the backyard, in the rain.