Catching up with the shows from abroad

Thanks to the sufficient processing power of the new MacBook Pro, I am now able to enjoy using Chromecast without the screen going into fits and starts.

Got caught up with A Trip to Italy on the BBC iPlayer. Once again, Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan are on the road under the guise of being food reviewers. We see the food, we get to guess the bill, but we never hear if they liked it. Instead, like the first series, we hear Michael Caine impressions and the pair singing along to Alanis Morrissette while driving in a rented Mini through the Italian countryside. It's a fine way to spend a half hour and chuckle throughout, although the premise is starting to wear thin. I understand that, thankfully, there will be no third series. That's what I like about British television, they know how and when to end a show.

Also invested time in the long running quiz show Mastermind. It make Jeopardy look like a kids show. Contestants are grilled for two minutes by the host in two rounds. The first round is a subject the contestant chooses, the second on general knowledge. The questions, be they about Scottish lighthouses or Italy's role in World War One are tough, and the contestants can be visibly terrified. The show is based on the creator's experience during World War Two, when he was interrogated, while sitting in a chair under a single spotlight, by the gestapo.

So there was a great tension in the air when Clive Dunning of Stockton chose the life and poetry of Philip Larkin and won the Mastermind title. Dunning looked like he was about to vomit at the end of the program.

And what does the winner get, nothing but a lovely glass bowl, bragging rights, and the people's ovation and fame forever. Well done!

Circling the wagons

The NHL is now in playoff season and for the second time in franchise, the Blue Jackets are in the dance. They're playing the Pittsburgh Penguins, who are on paper a much better team. This is why the game is played though, after four games of a seven game series the teams are tied at two wins a apiece, which means the Blue Jackets have won their first two playoff games in franchise history.

Last night's game was quite dramatic, the Blue Jackets were down 3-0, on home ice, with about ten minutes gone in the game. I was a bit distracted setting my my new laptop to get bummed, although I did suggest the team replace their goaltender to, perhaps, shake the team up. That did not happen.

What did happen was a slow, grinding comeback the Blue Jackets have become successful at. They picked up a goal late in the first period, another late in the second and tied in on a brutal mistake by the Penguins goaltender with about 20 seconds left in the game.

It was quite the moment. A moment that, for me, removed the curse of so many horrible things in franchise history; the last second defeats, the routs, the use of Boomer the Cannon as a mascot, Doug MacLean, the time the team let a person in the opposing teams jersey ride around on the zamboni between periods, all of the failed first round picks, the time the team played the opposing teams goal song after they scored, all of the failed trades and on and on.

The game went to overtime and the Blue Jackets won it three minutes in. I have not seen a team so resilient since, well, the Buffalo Bills of over twenty years ago.

Anything can happen in a best of three now. Both sides are bruised, hurting and willing to battle more. Because it's the Cup.

After almost seven years, my trusty Macbook that I have taken so many places was finally slowing down. I'm not sure if the hard drive (the second one) or the logic board were beginning to fail, but I was not going to put any more into it. So I picked up a MacBook Pro last night (thanks Mom!)

It's quite the device, with a lot of processing power so we can really use Chromecast to watch A Trip to Italy and Mastermind with no buffering problems. It has Pages so maybe I can get off my ass and put desktop publishing to use.

Traveling Light?

How much stuff does one really need to travel with? Clothing aside, how many electronic connectable to the world wide web devices do I want to bring?

I have a camera, laptop, iPod, iPad and they're not all coming.

The camera yes, because the camera on the iPod sucks.

The iPod because it's a nifty portable device that does every thing I want it to, except take a decent picture when I want it to.

The iPad is nice. Large enough to scroll through stuff easily. Easy to connect to the cloud. If I have to get something down in writing Google Drive is becoming a good friend of mine. Light enough to travel easily.



The laptop has my life on there but it takes up more space and weight. I'm not sure if I want to travel with it this time. I'm too reliant on it and I want to get away from it for a few days. But if someone wants to look at pictures...oh Hell no one wants to see those.

Yes, I'm answering my own question here.

No Blue Jackets Rant

Working with ceiling tile in the kitchen today was a bad idea. Not as bad as the attempt I had with the toilet earlier this year though. There is a bad bracket that I cannot seem to fix right and cutting a piece of tile to fit in a spot was a small disaster.

Later, instead of raking, I tried mowing down the leaves. It started raining about a third of the way through. At least the load of laundry I did went well.



We went to dinner at one of the newer pizza places in town. It was ok. Not as great as some of the reviews. A bit over priced and not enough mozzarella in the pie. I like the cheese spread around, not in a quarter sized splotches on each slice.

In better news, the fan on the laptop has been replaced properly. Seems the old fan blades fell apart and while the new fan was being installed some of the pieces hid. After the laptop was reassembled the pieces moved and jammed up the new fan. Regardless, it's back now and in good working condition. The repair only took five days, should have been two and was still returned faster than the two weeks I was told by another local repair shop.

Back in the shop

The laptop fan quit over the weekend. One local repair shop told me the fix would take two weeks, another said five days.

Two weeks? Really?

So I'm typing this out on the iPad, which is not as troublesome as I'd have thought. The keyboard is a decent size. The font is tiny though. Maybe by the end of the week, or early next, this first world problem will be solved.

The IDPF finally arrived in email yesterday. It is the death file of my great uncle, who was killed in WW2. It is a 35mb PDF file and I have not had much time to look at it. Need to transfer it from work on a flash drive or disc as it is too big to email. Plus. No laptop. At first glance there is nothing.too revealing other than my grandfather and his sister had a tough time getting his personal effects back. Seems the army sent them to an old address of his and they were returned, then lost. Looks like it took a couple of years to resolve that situation. I see a few letters from my grandfather asking for assistance. He was more polite than I would have been.

Short Round Up

As a Bills fan you understand that turning the ball over three times in a Super Bowl is not going to help your team win the game. Well played Packers.

Many other bloggers, pundits and internet tough guys have their commentary about last night's game. I'll let the Deep 13 bunch speak for me.



At least it was not a blow out.

One bottle of Drano later, and the bathroom sink is unclogged.

I've figured out an unbelievably easy to convert certain types of files into other types of files on my Mac. This makes me dangerous.

Back it up. I'll Take it!

Got everything packed for the move to the new offices. Tune in on Monday to find out if everything got there in one piece and is hooked up properly. I've spent the last day and a half working a group project at the Fine Arts Library. Pulled a few hundred books off the shelves and the physical activity wreaked havoc on my legs, but mostly my right ankle. It was on fire today!

Never been in that part of the building before so the moving shelving on the second floor was pretty cool to play with the first couple of times I had to go up there. That's where the over sized art books are kept. It was also a kick seeing a few books I've processed over the past four years. My scrawl behind the title page is quite recognizable.

I hit a wall a bit early today and left earlier than I wanted, but I was overwhelmed - and it a bit of pain.

Did head out to the OSU Forestry Department's annual Christmas tree sale and picked up a Scotch Pine. It's lovely, but a bit wonky on the bottom. A lot smaller than last year's, which took up a third of the living room. I recommend this place, the prices are fair, the trees are farmed from Ohio and the service is great. They're located on Fyffe Road due west of the Schottenstein Center.

The other new addition is an iPod Touch. To synch it up we had to upgrade our operating system to Snow Leopard, which took some time but seems to be well worth the twenty nine bucks. As I type this I'm backing up to the external hard drive with Time Machine. Seems to be quiet and seamless.

One of the main reasons we got the iPod is to download some apps for autistics. When we borrowed an iPod a few months back my son seemed to be very interested in touching the screen and playing with it. I've found some free apps for some basic things he may try to communicate to us, we'll see how this works out. There is some more expensive software available, but I'm not willing to jump into that yet.

Been quite the whirlwind this week. More over the weekend, but not as intense. My son's been feeling better. Off the bus earlier he seemed more his old self than he's been in a few weeks. Swimming should be fun for him in the morning.

Was it the Meds, or am I Going Mad?

I'm not sure if this dream was being watched on television, or actually happening.

John Goodman was a cop who had uncovered some serious conspiracy stuff. There was a major convoy, by rail, that I think the Russians were leading straight down the center of the United States. There were even cruise ships in this convoy, really weird looking on train tracks. The reason was unknown and if you tried to find out, you were eliminated. There was a lot of black ops technology used, a lot of surveillance used against you if you tried to speak out. Wow, who knew Henry Winkler could hide cameras that showed Goodman liked to look at nasty things!

There was a lot of bad reporting done, technology released that turned cities snowbound and Kent State being on fire was major news.

I hope this does not become a nightly event.

The Macbook came back on Saturday, with a new hard drive. I hooked up the backup and hoped. The last backup it seems was in April so all was not lost. I've never been quite sure if any of the transfers worked.

The pictures are in a jumble, which is the worst thing, and six months of photos are gone - but the better ones are most likely on Facebook. Lost a small amount of writing, what's been completed is on paper and/or archived in gmail. Lost some music, but that's the lightest loss. Overall, it could have been a lot worse and I'm thankful it was not.

More than 140

So I did the unthinkable and got a twitter account. Hey, Steve Martin's funny! If you want to rag on me after all my diatribes about it, go right ahead I deserve them.

I'll give it at least a week then see about whether or not I want to continue.

Friday night I'm going to see Roger Waters recreate The Wall. Never been much of a Pink Floyd fan, but do like Waters. For the record, my favorite Pink Floyd album is The Final Cut. Spoke to a local reviewer about the concert months ago. He went off, calling Waters a guy who uses his high school diaries for material. Guess that makes him the James Cameron of rock and roll.

Still waiting for the Macbook to be repaired.

In the midst of all this, I have been writing. Whether or not it's any good is part of the answer.

Put Snow White in the DVD player to see if my son would show interest. He sat all the way through Dumbo, which is a short feature. After about half an hour, he switched chairs. Fifteen minutes later, he lost interest completely. This is not a bad thing, he did try for half the film. What's more important is that he pooped in the toilet. Comet sighting celebration. When's the next one?

This Artifact Belongs in a Museum

This could be the week the Macbook returns. New hard drive is being installed.

Watched an interesting documentary called The Art of the Steal over the weekend. Dr. Barnes assembled a massive collection of post-impressionist art in the early 20th century and built a home in a Philadelphia suburb to display the work. There was never any intent to house the work in a museum like atmosphere but to use the facility as a learning institution.



Barnes and the Philadelphia elite and arts community were often at odds. When Barnes died, he left no heirs. Barnes will specifically stated that the collection not be loaned, moved, or sold. The Barnes Foundation was run successfully as a school with very limited public access until the 1980's. Soon after the endowment ran out of funds and the Barnes Foundation neared bankruptcy. The years to follow brought a long struggle between Barnes' wishes and those of political and moneyed institutions who fought for the collection.

It's a rather shocking story and I have very mixed feelings about the conclusion. The collection should be preserved in the conditions of Barnes' will. But how do you fund it in this day and age without a bunch of so called do-gooders and yoo-hoos with deep pockets and political influence getting in the way?

Tell Me Something New

Been mining the moleskine the past few days. Got a couple of poems out of it and found a few others I have not read anywhere. Some are better than others. What's newer is better, including the one I started at the writing group on Sunday.

Been also doing some online research about another poem I'm working on. Searched for a few dozen articles, interviews and other credible sources. Trying not to come off half assed. Looking for facts amid the poetic license. Wrote up a draft while my son had vision therapy. Had a pile of lines that had no shape, found a beginning and an end. It's a bit different than what I usually do. Not related to autism either, a bit of history and fist shaking.

Going to shake some rust off tomorrow night at open mic and Friday at First Draft.

The macbook is in the shop, should have it back in less than a week with a new hard drive. The old drive is dead and I doubt anything can be saved from it. The backup was a pain to use so I have no idea if there's anything to retrieve. Not sure it's hit me yet.

I Welcome This

This weekend has been a technological ordeal. All is fine, as long as I avoid getting computer parts and attempting a hard drive repair.

The macbook will be taken care of, but not by me.

It felt really good to get out for a couple of hours and write with some friends and strangers. I've had some unpleasant writing group and workshop experience in the past so I was a bit apprehensive giving it another shot. There was some very good prompts handed out, some friendly criticism given and a boat load of ideas were written down. Have not really written in the past few weeks and putting the pen to page in a free write was something that really kicked me in the ass to write. Looks like it's going to be a Sunday night thing.

Now, if I can only decipher my handwriting!

The Bills are now 0-5. I think they have a good shot at not winning a game this season. Sad, but true.

Things I Have Meant To Say

The progress bar is still as the Disk Warrior does its thing. It has not moved for about thirty six hours now. The number of broken files increases while the likelihood of replacing the hard drive by this weekend goes up. Accepting losing three plus years of work is not easy.

Off to a culture shaping retreat for work today and tomorrow. It's not something I'm being cynical about attending. I'm just anxious as being around a group of strangers and discussing anything with them face to face scares the crap out of me. I do not think we'll end up holding hands and singing Kumbaya or getting Block O tattoos on our biceps, but I'm optimistic for positive results.

As a bitter and disgruntled ex-employee, I grumble when I see a lawn sign, billboard or see other propaganda regarding Issue 4. Let me state here that I am not against it in the least. In fact I will be voting for it, and if you live in Columbus, you should too. If you want reasons, ask me and I'll go off as to why. If you want me to put a sign on my lawn or change my Facebook profile picture go elsewhere. I'm putting as much effort into their campaign as their efforts into my career advancement when I worked there. Yes, there are issues.

My son's IEP meeting is next week. Having a special needs kid is hard when it comes to educational expectations. At this point, limited conversation is seen as a big step. Pooping in the toilet would be nice. Slowly, he's beginning to sleep thought the night regularly - that is massive progress.

Got to love the Wexner Center. Last night they brought in Joe Dante to introduce Matinee. It's a fun movie that was very overlooked about Sci-Fi movies of the fifties and the Cuban Missile Crisis. And Mant, the film within the film about a half man - half ant, was much funnier than I remember. Dante was very gracious and had some important things to say about the state of horror films and today's film in general. He spoke like Scorcese's calmer cousin. Very entertaining.

One Hard Drive Later

Been listening to Write About Love, the latest from Belle and Sebastian for the last couple of mornings. I'm concluding that, with this record, B&S is a band and not the efforts one person. There are songs by Stevie Jackson and Sarah Martin that, while not in the style of Stuart Murdoch, fit the record and theme.

I'm not pleased with the celebrity cameos, especially the Norah Jones duet and am puzzled that the lovely yet voiceless Carey Mulligan gets a track. Why not include one of the singers from the God Help the Girl soundtrack, or has Murdoch cut away completely from that project?



There are a couple of fine songs on this record, the opener I Didn't See it Coming and I Want the World to Stop are quite infectious. I'm not sure how much longer B&S will sustain itself now that special guest stars are showing up. When will Cousin Oliver add his vocals?

In other news, despite massive efforts at resuscitation, it looks like the hard drive on the macbook is now an ex-hard drive. For the moment, I'm taking the loss rather well. I guess losing a lot of pictures and three years of music does not effect me much. Most of the writing can be reassembled. It's not going to be an easy transition. Realizing that lists and songs are gone, probably forever, will be tough when it hits me.

Down for Maintenance

The laptop is in the shop so I'm not quite sure when the blogging can recommence.

Here's a great book you should be reading in the meantime. Not for the squeamish as it has santorum coming out of many of the pages.