I have recently moved the contents of this blog to a new address. Please update your favorites with this URL http://justplainron.com

New look – same great content.

I wanted to make a shout-out to all of those who helped me win cause it was your comments that won me the prize. So watch this space and I will let you know when the new space is up and running.

I will make sure that all of you who subscribe will continue to get the goodness delivered into your mailbox/feedreader so don’t stress about that.

Like I mentioned here, I I’ll be using Human3rror‘s awesome simpl3 wordpress theme, Marla is going to be working on some images so that I can correctly broadcast what I am about.

Hope to see you over at http://justplainron.com in record time.

Caption Please

Last night we saw “Brothers” with Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire directed by Jim Sheridan (IMDB). If you are planning on seeing the film then probably don’t read further.

Briefly (as you can see in the trailer). Older brother, Sam, (the good brother) goes off to Afghanistan leaving his wife (Grace) and daughters at home. Helicopter is shot down, Sam is presumed dead. Grace and daughters morn his death and are comforted by rebel brother, Tommy, who turns out to be a saving grace (no pun intended) to the three ladies left behind. Then Sam is rescued (not having died but rather been taken captive) and returns home. He notices a warmth between his wife and his brother and freaks out. He cries, she cries, movie ends.

Seriously that is all that happens, apart from some moving scenes involving the children (who were the best thing about this film).

Rated R in the US because of violence and language, somehow it was only given a 13 age restriction here in SA. The violence (mainly implied and not visible on screen (unless violence to a kitchen cupboard counts)) was appropriate to the subject matter and was not the center of attention as it would be in a Tarantino flick. I hardly noticed the language, which also indicates that it was appropriately used within the context of the film.

I wrote a while ago that Hollywood usually only does stories that fit into a defined pattern. This film looked set to go the same way but ended before it could resolve. Seriously the film either ended 20 mins too soon or it should have ended 5 mins earlier. There was no resolution, no real cliffhanger ending set to inspire debate over coffee afterwards, nothing. As I said previously: He cries, she cries, the end.

The film dealt with some real issues that soldiers in war time have to deal with and how they adapt to life afterwards, and while it was not badly written, directed or acted, the way it ended left the whole thing feeling dull and uninspired. The writers/director could have done way more with it.

I would seriously only give it 3/5 and even then a very low three.

Seen the film? Your thoughts? Disagree with me? Agree?

I was dropping the girls off at school and the principal, who knows I work with computers, asked me if I could take a look at the computer that ran the security cameras at the school. It is just a PC, so her assumptions were that I would easily be able to fix it because I work with computers.

What she does not know, and what I preceded to tell her was that I don’t even fix my own computers. I am not a hardware guy, I write software. I have done the obligatory PC build (where you build a PC by assembling the parts yourself) but that was ages ago and the silly thing was always way too noisy). But generally I can help fix software that I actually wrote, but don’t let me loose on hardware.

I really did not want to be down on my hands and knees staring at the insides of a computer, like some guy on the side of the highway jiggling the spark-plug cables in his car because he has to look like he knows what he is doing.

Any way I was convinced to help out (all the time thinking and saying that I would not be able to).

So first things first: is it getting power?… Follow the power cable to the UPS… Ah the UPS is not on… Turn on UPS… UPS makes funny beeping sound, but still wont power the PC… What else is plugged into UPS? … Monitor, it also won’t turn on… Bypass UPS… computer turns on.

You see how that went?

• Me: I can’t fix computers.
• Her: please?
• Me: ok let me look… Ah the UPS is broken.. look it works now.

How was I to know that it would be that simple? I just did not want to have to open the PC up and stare for a while. I’m not that kind of geek.

I should have said “Sure I’ll take a look, but I can’t promise anything. I usually get someone to help me with these things.”

Ever lied to someone, unintentionally and without actually knowing you were doing it until later?

The premise for the game is simple. You are presented with a puzzle that you have to solve using the items that are given to you. There is some flexibility in the solution but generally there is one way in which the puzzle can be solved.

For example: Make the basket ball go through the hoop.

In this puzzle (with gravity and air pressure acting as we would expect it) bowling balls behave like bowling balls will. If the machine is started like this the ball on the left would fall off the screen, puzzle unsolved.

However if you use the mice and connect the mouse wheels up to the conveyor belts you can start a chain reaction that eventual will throw the basket ball through the hoop. (Hint: the mice start running if you knock the cage)

Sounds simple right? But the game can be incredibly frustrating.

Consider the image below where the task is to fire all three guns . In the diagram below the second gun won’t fire despite the bucket hitting the sea-saw from above because the trigger of the gun will be pulled the wrong way.

To make this machine work you would have to:

• Connect the string that is currently connected to the second gun to the third gun.
• Put the additional bucket in midair somewhere near the pully on the left of the screen
• Connect this bucket with the piece of string via the pully to the trigger of the second gun.

Despite all that I really feel like doing to one of the neighbourhood cats what a friend told me his neighbour once did to an annoying cat with a shotgun.

What an annoying racket. I just chased the stupid things away from the front of the house and now they are braying around the back of the house.

Aaaaaarrrrggggg

In both these cases you can do it the private way or you can employ the services of a professional to do it for you. What with all the other stresses this project is sure to bring, we decided to involve an estate agent.

So on Monday morning I pinged a bunch of agencies via their website and called some others (6 in total),  and as of today all of them have come back to me and arraigned a time to view the house. I lined them up one a day (2 yesterday) every night of this week (except Friday). There was a part of me that felt guilty about contacting so many agents, so I tried to hide the fact that we had contacted so many. Yesterday one of the agents remarked that they all use the same central property database and that he had (when doing his homework) noticed some very recent (like this week) updates to our properties statistics. Clearly the cat is out of the bag.

Once he had left Marla said something like “Busted!”, and I felt bad, for a while.

But then after sleeping on it I thought “No, I can contact as many agents as I like, I can talk to them knowing they know that I have spoken to some others. I don’t have to feel guilty.”

Because in this case I am an employer looking for a short-term (hopefully) contractor. They are not coming through to tell me what my house is worth, they are coming through to impress me. They need to convince me that I want them to sell my house for me. This is an interview process.

So I no longer feel irritated with the agent who wants to come around to “give me a presentation of their evaluation” (tomorrow evening), because these people have the right idea, they realize they are being interviewed, and the fact that they know that, and that I am interviewing a number of other people at the same time will hopefully give me better results.

And if they don’t like that… Well they had better not give me that impression. Just saying.

Do you agree with me, or is it too sneaky for you?

So I thought I would give it a bash.
What I had to do was post a comment on the original post stating my goals for blogging in 2010. Then you, my loyal readers (ha ha) have to post a reply to my comment. the person with the most replies, wins free hosting. To make things fair the competition holders are going to pick one other entrant at random. So far I am the only person to enter so I guess I can win twice

Here is a copy of my entry, go here and leave a reply.

Well here goes! First a disclaimer. I am a Christian and I blog, having said that I am not sure that qualifies me as a ‘Christian Blogger’. While I do blog every now and then about things directly relating to Christianity, it is not the theme for my blog.
About goals for my blog (and I am sure this is going to disqualify me)…
I am not sure how easy it is to set goals for a blog. I can’t make people read or comment on my material. I am not sure I even blog for other people, it is more for myself. But, since I started blogging in January of last year, I went through a few months of blogging once a day (sometimes more), and then my second child was born, since then my activity has been sporadic and infrequent.
So I think the big goal for me this year is to regularly post 3 posts a week (I know nothing like setting the bar high (lol).
So go check it out http://justplainron.wordpress.com and if you want to hear more from me, leave a reply (here or there), cause if I win free hosting I will have to post more often (even if it just to assuage some guilt).

So go there now

A friend at work just sent me this.

SPOILER AHEAD

Thanks Matt Bateman (I don’t know who you are, but your name is on the image so I assume you were the author of this piece of work.

personally I thought Avatar was a remake of countless high school romantic comedies. You know the one where:

• The Popular Girl breaks up with her Popular Boy
• PB wants to get back at PG and make her jealous.
• PB’s friends dare him to date Unpopular (and usually unattractive) Girl.
• PB accepts dare, but as he gets to know UG he falls for her.
• On the eve of prom UG finds out about the dare and tearfully breaks it off with PB
• PB is devastated.
• PB does something heroic to win UG’s affections (back) (usually this has something to do with dissing PG).
• PB and UG (who turns out to be devastatingly beautiful in a prom dress) get back together again (for real this time).

Having said all that I loved Avatar. Especially the funky ponytail filamenty things.

Seen Avatar? Your thoughts?
What do you think of originality vs sell-ability?