Daily Life

I knew that my car's alternator was circling the drain, over the past four months I noticed that it was recharging the battery at lower and lower levels. Last weekend I decided to drop by my parents to set up domain hosting for my parents. As I was turning on to their street my car started to stall. For a lack of any better idea of what to do I stomped on the gas, given stalling while sideways on a high traffic street would be a really bad idea. Luckily the car lurched to life just enough to make it through the intersection and maintained a weak pulse until it finally died as I was pulling into their driveway.

After talking with my dad and locating an auto parts store that 'claimed' to have a new alternator in-stock, we sent my mom after it and we started taking out the old alternator. Naturally about the time we finally yanked the old alternator out of the car is when we got the call informing us that the alternator the auto parts store thought they had was clearly a very dead alternator. I should mention that this was 8pm on Easter Sunday, it was starting to rain, my car windows where all down and the car only had power windows.

We managed to get the windows covered in plastic and taped down before the monsoon hit. On the third attempt, I located an alternator that was 1) the right model and 2) functional and we managed to install the new one in time to make it to my morning staff meeting.

Though I usually refuse to spend a dime on any any pro sport, I have to say that the S.F. 49ers - Giants game was completely amazing/insane. The 49ers pulled off the second biggest comeback in the NFL playoffs. Though when I hear about big comebacks, I have to ask why the team was playing dead for so long to require the comeback. It's kinda like watching a talk show about someone giving up drugs after 20 years and having everyone in the audience clap for them. I have to ask if they're clapping for getting away with taking drugs for 20 years or the fact that the person gave up such a long term addiction.

I feel somewhat conflicted about football and the NFL. I actually enjoy playing tackle football with friends in the park (especially in snow), but I refuse to pay money to watch what the NFL (and the NBA) have turned into - 75-80% full of dimwitted thugs that are paid absurd amounts of money to try and maim each other and look good in the replays. It's the other 20% that keep me just interested enough in pro sports to notice they still exist, but not enough to pay for anything.

Actually, to be completely honest I would have paid to see the 49ers if they were playing the Seahawks and were playing when I was up in Seattle a couple months ago. I might have paid for marginally good seats, but avoided buying anything else while in the stadium.

Like about 1/3rd of the US population, I went to see LOTR: Two Towers today. The theater was packed and even with showing up 45 minutes early, we didn't get that great of seats. The movie was amazing, it was three hours long and don't even think about heading to the bathroom. The battle at Helms Deep was amazing, but I spent the first 30 minutes trying to piece together the first movie with the second movie. What I'm planning on is watching the extended version of the LOTR: fellowship of the ring, then go see LOTR: Two Towers the following day.

I look forward to early to mid 2004 when theaters play all three LOTR movies in a row, with intermissions and bring in some decent food. Of course they are going to try and charge an arm and a leg, so this might just turn into movie night at my place.

This movie is quite possibly the most disturbing movie I have ever seen, in a very black comedy kind of way. Yes there was more gore in the various Elm street, Friday 13th, Halloween movies, which may be shocking but not disturbing like this. When I went to see it with Emily I thought it would be something like a modern, dirtier version of Animal House, funny, political, and thumbing your nose at authority.

After seeing Rules of Attraction (RoA), I would feel more comfortable playing an uncut porno or a horror/gore movie at grade school then RoA. There were several scenes in RoA that were truly disturbing, even if you knew they were coming. I won't go into details on the plot, but I did actually have an experience of what it was like for the characters in the movie, which I rarely feel and for that I would (selectively) recommend this movie.