John Cleese shilling for Compaq, circa 1980s and 286/386 CPUs

Classic/vintage Cleese, very amusing stuff. Though, having worked with Compaq on a network, they were a royal PITB to work with in my ever so humble opinion.

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/tech-time-warp-week-watch-john-cleese-compare-compaq-dead-fish/

Movies Seen, 2014

12/21 The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies
12/12 The Homesman
12/7 Mockingjay part 1
12/5 Penguins of Madagascar

11/28 Rosewater
11/15 John Wick
11/8 Big Hero 6
11/8 Interstellar

10/26 Book of Life
10/23 Fury
10/20 Maze Runners
10/19 Kill the Messenger

9/4 November Man

8/3 Guardians of the Galaxy

7/29 Hercules
7/24 Monty Python Live (mostly)
7/24 Lucy
7/18 Sex Tape

6/22 Chef
6/10 A Million Ways To Die In The West

5/30 Godzilla
5/24 X-Men Days of Future Past
5/2 Peabody & Sherman

4/3 Captain America: Winter Soldier
4/3 The Grand Budapest Hotel

3/23 Divergent
3/12 Three Days to Kill
3/11 Philomena
3/10 Pompeii
3/3 Non-Stop

2/6 Monuments Men

1/28 jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit


I would have to say that, overall, the best movies that I saw were (in no particular order): Monuments Men, Philomena, Grand Budapest Hotel, Chef. Honorable mentions to Rosewater and Homesman. There were lots of good action movies including Three Days To Kill and November Man. The two Avengers movies, Captain America: Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy were both excellent, I was amazed at how well CA:WS integrated with Marvel's Agents of SHIELD on ABC, but I guess that's an advantage of everyone working under the same corporate umbrella. Hobbit: 5 Armies was an excellent conclusion to the series and I really think Jackson provided an excellent interpretation of Tolkien's bed time story.

Funnest Movies: Penguins of Madagascar, Big Hero 6, Book of Life, Sex Tape, Chef, honorable mention to Million Ways to Die in the West. Half are animated, that's interesting. I've seen Big Hero 6 twice and will definitely be buying the DVD. Oddly I haven't picked up the DVD for Chef yet.

Biggest Disappointments: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Mazerunners. I used to be a fanatic for Tom Clancey books, I was really in to military fiction at the time and thought Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising were great. But he so Mary Sue'd Jack Ryan that I stopped buying him long before Clancey passed away. Mazerunners: well, it didn't make sense to me. Yes, it's YA, but I want some sort of logic, and some times the stupidest things can break suspension of disbelief for me. For example, the new runners are injected in to the world by this freight elevator that seems to be 30 stories tall or more, yet when they escape, everything is at ground level. So they bored down umpteen stories, then over to the compound, then back up just for an elevator? I won't be bothering with the subsequent movies nor the books, whereas I'm a big fan of the Hunger Games series and enjoyed Divergent and am looking forward to more of those.

I need to add a Disappointment tag for Hobbit, but it was an instance where the 'print' was bad. The digital copy had an audio distortion in the end credits that made it sound like the film wasn't tight around the sound pickup head, but since almost everything is digital these days, that makes no sense. Apparently the cost for a new print to fix this is rather formidable, so it will be a flawed print for as long as they're showing this in Boulder.


I think the releases for 2015 that I'm looking forward to the most would be the new Avengers: Age of Ultron movie, I can't remember if the new James Bond movie is '15 or '16. And there's a new Godzilla movie coming from Japan which should be cool, but again I don't know if it's for this year or next. And I think Luc Besson has another action movie due, but the title is not coming to mind. Yes, they're mostly mainline pictures, but Kurosawa and Itami are dead and Miyazaki is retired, and it seems like Joss is the only American film maker anymore who is on the 'must see' list.

Next Up: I think tonight will be Night At The Museum 3 or possibly The Interview. I know the latter will be a very uneven and not very good movie, but it still looks like a lot of fun. NATM3 will be bittersweet since I think it'll be one of the two last appearances of Robin Williams in film, the other being something called Absolutely Anything, due in late June, which also stars most of Monty Python as extra-terrestrials. That could be quite strange.

Gas prices are just nuts

I can't get over them. While I appreciate them being low, I feel sorry for the people buying monster-sized vehicles (not really). They're going to be in for a rude awakening when Saudi Arabia et al decide to stop flooding the market with cheap gas. OPEC is maintaining high oil production to screw with Russia and Iran, and it's been very effective, especially in conjunction with American-levied sanctions.

To give you an idea of what gas prices are like, and at how weird I am about retaining data, I have a spreadsheet that goes back to 11/21/1987 when I bought a used 1983 Mitsubishi Cordia, it was a two-door hatchback that was later the basis for the Ford somethingorother, I don't remember what. Anyway, on the day that I bought it and filled its first tank, gas was $0.999 a gallon. When I gave it its last tank on 6/24/90, gas was $0.975 a gallon. In those 2.5 years gas had not gone above a dollar a gallon. These were mostly fillups in Phoenix with some travel to California and such.

Jump ahead to my current car, a 2005 Toyota Matrix All-Wheel Drive, bought new on 11/11/2005 and filled for $2.169 a gallon. In those nine+ years I've seen gas go down to $1.999 a gallon a month after I bought it, then up and down to drop below $2 on 1/12/2007 then it hit and maintained $3+ a gallon four months later. A year and a month later it touched $4 a gallon,

And now we're back to under $2 a gallon.

While tweaking Russia's nose and making them burn through their capital reserves at a very fast rate, do we really think that's a good idea, driving a country with nuclear ICBMs, to distraction and desperation? Especially when a wannabe emperor like Putin is in charge?

I don't think it's that great of an idea. And when gas starts going back up, as it most certainly will, and starts dancing with the $4 mark again, I wonder what all those people who bought a big sedan or SUV will be thinking about.


Oh, I might as well mention fuel economy. That Mitsubishi got an of 24-28 MPG, its successor was a '90 Mazda 626LX that got high teens to low 20s. My Toyota Matrix gets mid/high 20s to low 30s. The Cordia wasn't my first car, that honor went to a 1973 Chevy Impala 4-door which I know got horrible mileage, that was followed by a 1975 Toyota Celica GT (major rice rocket) and a 1983 Mitsubishi Tredia. I find it a little amusing that I wouldn't consider a car that got less than 30 MPG on the highway and am quite intrigued by a VW diesel that advertises 70+ MPG on the highway: it achieves it by turning off two cylinders on the engine once you're cruising at a steady highway speed.

All told, I'm on my 8th car. In 35ish years. Man, there are days when I feel old, and I really ought not dig out stats like this to reinforce the feeling! ;-)