CaelynTek Blog

So last Sunday afternoon Anna and I went with a small group to see Avatar in 3D.

My short summary is: FANTASTIC movie, I want to see it again in the theater before it goes to DVD.

Now, that is not to say I don’t have a few critiques to share, and if you haven’t yet seen this movie, you may not want to read any further. Just know that I think you SHOULD definitely go see this movie in the theater. If you can see it in 3D, that’s great, but I don’t think the 3D was so fantastic that you NEED to see it in 3D, though my color blindness may have played a factor in that.

OK, so the sort of in depth critique.

As many have said, you could hardly say this was an original story line. The story line of this movie has been covered so many times, both in fiction and non-fiction, and in real life that no one could possibly say this has an original story. But the way they pull it off makes up for that.

The story is basically that an unscrupulous and perhaps  evil group of  humans (British empire builders, American colonists, evil corporations etc) has invaded a wild country and is trying to remove/steal/connive a natural resource out from under the natives (native american, indian, aztec, mayan, african) who in this case happen to be 10 foot tall skinny blue people who wear very little in the way of clothes, act a lot like native Americans and Aborigines, have a lot in common with the Fremen (Dune) and the Aeil (Wheel of Time)

The thing the evil corporation (in this case) wants is an element that is only abundant on this particular planet. Now this is one of the things I didn’t like about this movie. They called this element the most corny, un-imaginative name they could possibly have found. “Unobtainium”. OK, I get it, the element is nearly unobtainable, except on this planet. But seriously, whoever first discovered this element, would not have known at the time of it’s discovery how unobtainable it would be, and unless it was discovered by an idiot, I find it highly doubtful that anyone would name it such a corny and stupid thing. I suppose it’s possible that they (the writers) called it that, so that they wouldn’t have to go into any detail on why it’s so important and valuable.  Which they didn’t…. they gave absolutely NO detail on what it is and what it’s used for. All they said is that its the most valuable substance in the universe and that the share-holders want it.

The movie had a very clear and non-mistakable anti corporate greed moral going on. Which I was cool with.

It also had a very unmistakable Gaia/Mother Earth thing going on. Which I was also cool with.

I would like to have known more about how they came to develop the Avatar technology, specifically the technology that allowed them to transmit nervous system function from one body to another. They just kinda zoomed over that.

Anyway, so yeah. Great Movie, even with the few things that bugged me.

Long time since I blogged I know….

I’m gonna start off with my life story. Well, I’m not going to write it here and now, but I am writing it, trying to anyway. You’ll laugh at what made me decide to do it. So I was looking over my Facebook profile…….. (You can stop laughing now). I noticed that the about me section of my Facebook profile was old and could use revision, so I thought I’d post in there a quick rundown of the important things that happened in my life. Well, then I realized that there are a LOT of different things that have happened to me in my lifetime, and I could never fit that in my Facebook profile. So I decided to start writing my life story instead. For now it’s just more or less a chronological outline. I’ve gotten as far as age 16 and I’m up to 6 pages of just short blurbs about things that have happened in my life. It’s going to take me a while, so don’t hold your breath…..and I know you would too, cause you think it’s going to be the coolest thing ever, right?

Hah.. so, on to the weirdest dream ever. On Christmas eve I had this weird dream. And weirdly, I remembered it almost in it’s entirety. I’m going to go into dream recall writing mode here, so I don’t have to keep saying “so in this dream”…. ready?

<DREAM RECALL MODE>

Anna and I were throwing this party in our condo in Cincinnati, except it wasn’t exactly our condo. I was, but instead of being 700 square feet, it was the full lenght and width of our building, like a loft. It was a pretty crazy party and at some point Governor Howard Dean showed up. The party was quickly becoming the hottest party in Cincinnati history, and then everything went “FIZZLE, WARBLE, FUMP”.

Next thing I know I’m laying against a wall outside, about half a block up the street. Some people were walking by and I asked them how I got there, and they were just laughing, obviously intoxicated. I got myself up and walked up the street towards my Condo and when I got there…. all the stairs were missing off the building. All the wooden stair ways that led up to our doors were gone, like they’d never even existed. The fire escapes too. I was totally confused and started asking people who were wandering around what happened to the building, and no one seemed to hear me.

I walked around the Corinthian (the resturant/nightclub next to our building) to the front side of our building and walked past it to the group of people standing in front of the Fries Cafe (A bar next to our building). They were all talking pretty loudly and I overheard them say “Hey did you hear, Governor Howard Dean died at this party down the street last night”…!    !    !. I blinked a couple times and said “Hey, that was my party, are you sure that happened? And do you know what happened to the stairs to the building?” They just pointed back down the street towards my building and kept on talking.

So I turn around and walk back towards my building, only….. it had changed again, now, this time, all the stairs were back, but the Corinthian restaurant was missing, and in it’s place was what sort of looks like a stage, and there were mourners all over the place, on the sidewalk, the stage, and the steps to my building. Holding signs about Howard Dean and how much they’d miss him. I started asking around about how he had died, and no one could say, I started to think perhaps it was a hoax. So I decided to go up to the condo and ask Anna what had happened.

When I got into the Condo though, it wasn’t as I remembered it, it was full of people who looked like death warmed over… almost like zombies.  There was a desk just inside the door and a person who explained this was where the dead could come to try to come back to life if they wanted. I asked the person, without even protesting about it being resurrection land, if he/she (I’m not sure if it was a man or woman) had seen Howard Dean come through, and the person said no, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t. So I decided to go walking around and look for him.

I asked around and while looking for Howard Dean, I came across people who said they saw Madonna (as in the pop star, not the mother of Jesus) and that she might know if Howard Dean was there. So I went looking and eventually found “Madonna”. Except I didn’t believe she was really Madonna, I asked her to prove it, and so she decided to sing a song for me. Not a Madonna song, but instead some song from the roaring 20’s. Suddenly she was dressed in a flapper like dress. As soon as she started singing I knew it wasn’t really Madonna, I grabbed the hair off his head and it became immediately clear it was a drag queen, he even suddenly had a goatee. I yelled at him for wasting my time and went on looking for Howard Dean. Suddenly there was that “FIZZLE, WARBLE, FUMP” thing again.

I found out that I too must be dead, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to be here, and that if Howard Dean had died, he must have already been resurrected. So I found the place where you go to get resurrected, it was this weird thing that looked like a stage that a snake oil salesman might have used back in the day to con his customers. I found that in order to get resurrected, you needed to put this coin (one that until this time I didn’t notice I had) into the machine at the front, and you had to get at least 4 lights on the machine to light up or you were stuck there forever.

After watching for a while I noticed that one coin, only ever made one light appear. And if you didn’t have at least 4 lights appear, that the door would open, the person would walk in, and you would hear blood curdling screams and some kind of creature or monster growling and gnashing.

So it turns out, to have any chance, you needed 4 coins. So you either had to steal 3 coins from 3 other people (thus depriving them of any chance of resurrection) or talk 3 other people into giving you theirs (or a combination o the two).

“FIZZLE, WARBLE, FUMP”…..I don’t recall how I got my coins, but suddenly I had 4 coins. The guy in front of me put 3 coins in, and he appeared to come to a grizzly end, with lots of screaming and noise. It occured to me that I hadn’t really seen ANYONE go through this resurrection machine well. But I had to get out, come back to life, to prove once and for all if Howard Dean had died at my party.

I approached the machine, put in my 4 coins, got my 4 lights to light up, and the door opened… for a split second I saw the face of  a Lion, and….. I woke up.

</DREAM RECALL MODE>

So yeah, that was it… apparently I did get resurrected, and when I woke up, I was in bed with my wife at my side, and I still don’t know if Howard Dean had died at my dream party.

Tonight Anna and I were watching an episode of  Southpark called “Wing” from season 9. It’s about the kids becoming talent agents and representing an illegal immigrant woman named “Wing” who is a terrible singer who covers popular American music. After all the usual ridiculous escapades of the boys the episode comes to a close with Wing singing for Sylvester Stallone’s kid’s birthday party…. and he loves it.

Then it gives the URL to the REAL world Wing’s website:

http://wingmusic.co.nz/

So Anna and I of course have to go see it.

Anna couldn’t stand listening to it after the first couple of songs, but I kept listening, like a deer in headlights, except with sound and ears instead of lights and eyes. When I came to her cover of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell….my PC decided that was enough.

Yes that’s right, my PC itself decided that was all it could handle, and one my PC speakers leapt off the desk, crashing to the floor with a distint sound of pain. I’m not kidding… this woman’s music made my speaker jump off the edge of the desk.. it happened right in front of me.

If you into that sort of thing, and you have the courage, you should check out her website and listen to some of the samples…. they’ll kill ya.

This Saturday was the official release date of a game called Space Hulk. It’s the third release of the game from Games Workshop in Britain. I used to play the first edition version of this game back in the early 90’s, and since my re-entry into the table top gaming world, i’ve been hoping that they would make it again. And they did, I got my copies 4 day’s earlier than most due to a mistake made by the GW distributor in the states, so I had my sets ( I bought 2) all assembled and ready to play with on the official release date this last Saturday. A Cincinnati gamer who goes by the online name Makari set up a release party at the comics and gaming store in Cincinnati called Up Up and Away.

I showed up a little early and had my Space Hulk games set up and ready to go when everyone else arrived and we ended up playing a total of 4 games. Below are a few photos from the event.

Today Anna and I both went to the Ohio Renaissance Festival. Last year when we were there we both bought some new costume pieces, and throughout this last year I found a few more pieces to complement my costume so we both nearly had our full costumes. When we were leaving today we stopped at the ATM at our bank, and we thought it would be funny to take a photo of me in front of the ATM wearing an 18th century lords outfit.

At the magic money box.

Of course after we got there we went to see a show, and saw a juggler performing on the Pirate show stage, then went shopping for some more accouterments to go with our costumes. Anna bought herself a silver ear clip, and a cool silver ear adornment that has a dragon on it. It sits on her ear and it’s tail wraps around her ear lobe.

You can see her new ear jewlery in this photo, but it’s not that clear:

Then I went looking for a “gentleman’s pistol” to go along with my Baroque Lord’s costume. I mean what kind of rich man doesn’t pack heat?

Here is a close up of the pistol I found,  tucked into my belt:

We ended up watching a couple more shows while we were there, a great balance and acrobatic guy who was standing at the top of a ladder… without the ladder leaning against anything, and balancing things on his head and spinning plates on sticks.

We saw a trio of bar wenches singing really bawdy bar songs. The last one they sang was pretty bad, we ended up leaving.

We also saw some of the final joust of the day. I really dig the armor that the guys at this faire wear, full plate mail that reminds me of the armor that the knights of the last table wear in the movie Excalibur. We will most definitely be returning to the faire this year, but we aren’t sure when.

Here is a good photo taken of us by a nice couple from Columbus that we saw near the end of the day at the Faire:

Anna and I had been holding off on buying this set for a long time, but we finally did it. The entire Star Trek Deep Space 9 series in a box! All seven seasons.

Now when you buy it from a place like Best Buy or Amazon.com, it comes in 7 boxes…. like this:

and costs a whopping 315 dollars!

Well we searched all over for a better deal including ebay, and eventually Anna found it here:

tvshowdvdboxedsets.com

For the rare low price of $106.97 shipped to our door.

Now If you looked at the link, I’m sure you noticed the different packaging vs the one at Amazon. Well the packaging it actually came in was a little different than that:

As you can see, they’ve packed all 48 discs into a tiny little box by just putting the disks in plastic sleeves. Discs 1-24 in one little booklet and 25-48 in the other. Now think about it, we got it for over 66 percent off the cheapest price at Amazon. How?

Well it turns out tvdvdboxedsets.com is in China! And in China they apparently don’t waste money on things like fancy plastic dvd cases for every single disc in a boxed set. And because of that (and I’m sure for other reasons..Cough Cough) we got it for really cheap.

When I think about it, and I think about all the space our movie and tv series boxed set collection takes up on our shelves, I wish all DVD’s came with such minimalist packaging, not only for space on our shelves, but for environmental impact.

I post an update after we watch a few discs worth and let you know what the quality is on these discs.

Woo Hoo! Deep Space Nine is ours!

As evidenced by their vote yesterday on a bill that would eliminate medicare.

The Republican politicians don’t care shit one about their consituents, they don’t care about whether or not their supporters can afford health care, or even if they are dying of a disease because they can’t afford to go to the doctor. Republican politicians care about one thing and one thing only, getting rid about Barack Obama at all costs, no matter the damage they do to the country in the process.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/32179495#32179495

So the Republicans have finally shown their hand, they’ve been doing everything they can to delay the health care bill till the August break, so they can spend the entirety of the August break running television commercials against the idea of ANY health care reform, trying to trick their constituents into believing their crap so they will call their congressmen to demand the health care bill go away.

The Republican politians believe that if they can kill the Health Care reform, that it will hurt Obama’s chances at re-election… and thats ALL THEY CARE ABOUT. And now they don’t even care if people know that’s all they care about.

If your a Republican, I hope you can finally see the true colors of your political leaders. Whether you agree with Obama’s proposed policies on other subjects, do you really think that Health Care reform, reform meant to let us ALL get affordable health care… should be stopped in it’s entirety? Wouldn’t you rather your Republican leaders at least TRY to help reform the health care system? Or do you agree with their stance of “NO” on every issue?

So for those of you who didn’t already know, I was in the hospital at the beginning of July to have an Angiogram to diagnose possible heart disease and cardiac artery blockages. They ended up finding numerous blockages and performed angioplasty and gave me two stents to hold open the worst of the blockages.

I was in the hospital for 32 hours. From 6AM to 2PM the next day.

Well I just got my explanation of benefits from Humana today for that hospital stay. It explains how much the hospital charged AND how much my Insurance actually paid, and how much my Insurance told the hospital to suck it for.

Bear in mind that this is ONLY the hospital bill, I have yet to receive anything from the various doctors who took part in the procedure, or the doctor visits that occurred up to and after the procedure.

First for dramatic effect I’ll tell you the total charged, then I’ll show you the breakdown.

You Ready?

The TOTAL Hosptial Charge was:

$40,065.24

Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but that’s my yearly salary.
32 hours in a hospital for what is considered a routine operation = one year’s salary.

How much did the insurance pay for?

$21,466.03

So Humana paid just over 50 percent (53%) leaving the HMO  “SUCK IT” charge of:

$18,599.21

To be absorbed by the Hospital, who passes that cost on to the uninsured, either in the form of higher costs to uninsured patients, or in the form of lower payed hospital workers resulting in less quality of care.

Here is the breakdown of that $40 grand bill:

Accommodations/Room and Board: $2,125 (Well it WAS a really nice private room)
Drugs: $2500 (Exactly how much drugs did they give me in 32 hours?)
“Medical Services”: $75.55
Medical Equipment and Supplies: $13,326
Laboratory Services: $872
Diagnostic Radiology: $21,166

So yeah, If I weren’t insured, I would either be in the poorhouse after one nights stay in the hospital, fighting with collection agencies that never let up, adding to stress and anxiety which makes heart conditions worse, and would probably eventually die of a heart attack.. all because I went to the hospital to AVOID a heart attack.

I’d like one the representatives or senators who are trying to block health care reform to come to my house and tell me face to face that we don’t need reform. I want them to look me in the eyes and tell me WHY they are trying to make sure no reform happens.

I’m one lucky ass bastard that I have insurance, and this still pisses me off to no end. Imagine how it feels for people in a similar health status as me, who DON’T have insurance.

You know what.. screw health insurance reform.. I want full socialized medicine in this country. Nothing else will satisfy me. I’m sick and tired of money being the deciding factor for whether or not you can stay alive.

Today we bought a new vehicle. With us moving a bout twice the distance from my office as we used to, I didn’t think I would like to have to walk to work every day, that and I could use a good way to zip around campus and stuff so…

We bought a Buddy 125 scooter made by Genuine Scooter Company.

It gets close to 95 miles per gallon and has a top speed of about 55-60 mph (on level ground)

It can carry two people of course, but wouldn’t be able to go as fast with 2 riders. Using it to go to work, I can probably go on a single tank of gas for 2 months.

And because of the hilly nature of Cincinnati, the roads are all curvy and fun to ride on.

Yay!