David’s Neighbors

Went to see the new Batman movie

nobody@vox.com(Rastl) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:32:56 -0700

Of course, it doesn't have the word 'Batman' in the title but I'm guessing everyone knows what movie it is.

Don't worry - no spoilers here.

My Batman is Michael Keaton as done by Tim Burton. Sorry but I'm a child of the 80s. But I refuse to judge other movies in the franchise by that.

I freely admit I didn't see the previous Batman movie with this actor playing Batman. Maybe I would have been more prepared for some of the storyline if I had. Or maybe not.

Overall it was an enjoyable movie. We saw it at the drive in so I know I missed details (text on cell phones and such) and it was dark enough on the screen some of the action was difficult to follow. Which means we'll have to see it either in a real theater or on DVD.

I don't know if it's just me but I found Batman/Bruce Wayne to be more of a plot device to launch other characters rather than the center of the movie. Odd, but that's how it looks upon reflection. All the other 'main' characters were given much more in-depth treatment and more fleshed out roles. And then there's Batman. Maybe that was the intention and the deeper meaning is that they're defined by how they perceive Batman. But to me if the movie is a Batman movie then maybe, just maybe, Batman should be the main character?

Oh well. It was a lovely evening and we had fun. But we didn't stay for the second feature (Hancock) because we were tired.

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Raindrops keep falling on my head...

nobody@vox.com(WQRob) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:38:27 -0700

It is not exactly unusual, but it has rained every day since we got here. No complaints: the area could use the rain. But Tuesday we went to Busch Gardens and in the early afternoon it just poured on us. Today we went inner-tubing in a local park and appear to have beaten the rain this time. We're learning to get all our outdoor stuff done in the morning (when it is cool) and save the indoor stuff until the early afternoon, when it either gets very hot or starts pouring.

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Mommy Bloggers Hit the Road

nobody@vox.com(Team Vox) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:38:06 -0700

Summer Road Trip '08

Although we typically post on Team Vox to let you know about things that are going on with Vox (to, uh, state the obvious), once in a while, we like to let you know about other cool things that are happening around the blogosphere. And we think the idea of four hilarious mommy bloggers traveling across the U.S. on their way to the BlogHer '08 conference - all the while blogging and video blogging the journey - is one trip you will not want to miss.

Four adventurous bloggers from the Silicon Valley Moms Group were selected to participate in the Summer Road Trip '08 and blog about their travels, hotel stays, media appearances, time away from their families, and life on the road. Six Apart helped them partner up with General Motors, who provided the blogging mommies with a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV to help make their journey comfy, safe, and a little more green.

In case you're not familiar with them, SV Moms is a group of over 200 bloggers who showcase the ups, downs, outrages, struggles, victories, and everyday humor of motherhood. There are currently nine regional and demographically tailored sites that give mothers from D.C., New Jersey, the Deep South, Rocky Mountains, L.A., and Silicon Valley a powerful voice and sense of camaraderie across the country. Whether you're a mother, a child, or just a person who enjoys a good blog, you'll really love reading the words of these amazing women.

Packed and Ready!

The moms buckled into their Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV on July 11th and even got an encouraging message from Katie Couric to kick things off! They are currently somewhere in the middle of America making their way to San Francisco where they'll attend an SV Moms Group Party, as well as BlogHer '08.

You do not want to miss these entertaining and irreverent bloggers -- or their spontaneous contest giveaways! -- as they blog from the road. Experience the journey at MomRoadTrip.com.

And let us know about your summer road trip - or plane/boat/bus trip - in the comments! (I like to live vicariously.)

~daisy

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Inspiration high. Motiviation low.

nobody@vox.com(Rastl) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:54:37 -0700

I've got all my great ideas. But actually doing something about them is tough.

But I did work on my design for the large display base I'm doing. It's in two pieces - inner and outer. I'm starting with the inner since it will have more detailed painting. Yes, I'm faux painting again.

Since the pieces are assembled pieces there are join lines. In the past I've just painted over them and lived with the result. This time around I'm trying an idea of filling them in using caulk.

I did some pre-assembly last night. I consider pre-assembly things like making columns to length and working with sub-sections. Essentially making the pieces that will make the larger pieces.

Tonight I filled the join lines. One of the sub-sections will become a hemispherical roof and there are join lines all over the place. I'm hoping the caulk will fill them enough so there are nothing but smooth sections where there should be smooth sections. Considering I'm going to be faux painting those areas I'd like them to be smooth.

I also got smart enough to make a test piece that will be a small section of the intended whole. That way I can see if my color ideas will work. I think they will but without a test I can't be certain. I caulked that thing too.

Tomorrow I hope to do more assembly. The columns are at length but still need to be glued together on the long sides. The roof is down to 8 sections from 16. Tomorrow there will be 4. Then I'll fill the join lines on everything again. I'm working on the join lines as each sub-section is assembled because it's easier to get into all the little nooks and crannies when they're still separate. It might take longer but I'm hoping the final result will be smoother and nicer.

Right now there's nothing that would warrant pictures. It's just some partially assembled pieces. And the caulk filling really doesn't show up well. I don't expect the pictures to start until the main unit is dry-stacked and the test piece is painted.

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A 5$ MP3 Player?

nobody@vox.com(WQRob) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:13:55 -0700

When Mrs. WQ runs, she listens to books on her MP3 player. Well, yesterday she noticed that the USB-USBmini cable that she uses to move stuff onto and off of her player was missing from her purse. We turned the house upside down looking for it, but it was gone. So we went to the store to discover that a replacement cable (which was about five and a half feet longer than the original) would be $20. But a new MP3 player with the short cable and twice as much memory as the old player was $25. So, WQRob got a new MP3 player, and we're sharing the new cable.

Otherwise, we're all good. Church was fine, but not very interesting. I have to say that the one who is having the most fun on vacation is my dog, who has surprised all of us by not running off when he gets outside of the screened-in porch but instead just meanders around, chasing squirrels and watching the lake. He lackadaisical attitude is at once both inspiring and trouble. Inspiring in that it reminds me to relax (especially about my anxiety that my dog will run away someday) and troubling in that it indicates also that he is getting along in years.

On a lighter note, I've been cruising around some of the free alt-D&D stuff on the interwebs. There's loads of "old school D&D" material out there, which I'm mining for good ideas for my own campaign

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My Dinner with the Admiral

nobody@vox.com(WQRob) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:18:35 -0700

Last night I ended up being taken to the country club by my father-in-law (along with my wife) to have dinner with some friends, including a retired Dutch admiral who was sporting a red and yellow silk cravat, black shirt, and cream blazer with leather elbow pads. I'm wearing that to diocesan convention.

Today we went back to the library (in hopes of getting some better books) and I bought some supplies to make the kids marshmallow shooting guns. There's a blueprint in a book I bought Ammo Grot before the trip. All those marshmallows rolling around in the dirt reminds me of the strangest part about living here: caterpillar poop. The area is infested with these little black caterpillars that are all up in the trees. They munch on the trees and poop everywhere. We parked our RV under a tree in the driveway and now it looks like it is coated with chocolate jimmies. Blech.

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Quoted from an opinion piece...

nobody@vox.com(Israel) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:48:46 -0700

Quoted from an opinion piece by Ted Rall.

"When it works, nothing is better at creating an endless variety of reality TV shows than free market capitalism. But when it doesn't, it isn't just that extra brand of clear dishwashing liquid that goes away. Businesses fold. Banks foreclose. People starve. And no one can stop it.

The G8 nations met in Osaka last week to try to address soaring food and energy prices--a double threat that could plunge the global economy into a ruinous depression. But the summit ended in failure. "Any hope that the G8 meeting would result in coordinated monetary action--or concerted intervention in foreign exchange markets--to counter rises, principally in commodity prices, was dispelled by their failure to agree on the phenomenon's underlying causes," reported Forbes.

So the G8 ministers punted. "Due to the lack of consensus, they have stated the need for further study," wrote the magazine.

The problem isn't the weak dollar or the non-existent housing market. It's capitalism. A sane government doesn't leave essential goods and services--food, fuel, housing, healthcare, transportation, education--to the vicissitudes of "magic" markets. Non-discretionary economic sectors should be strictly controlled by--indeed, owned by--the government.

Consider, on the one hand, snail mail and public education. The Postal Service and public schools both have their flaws. But what if they were privatized? It would cost a lot more than 42 cents to mail a letter from Tampa to Maui. And poor children wouldn't get an education.

Privatization, particularly of essential services, has always proven disastrous. From California's Enron-driven rotating blackouts to for-profit healthcare that has left 47 million Americans uninsured to predatory lenders pimping the housing bubble to Blackwater's atrocities in Iraq, market-based corporations' fiduciary obligation to maximize profits that is inherently incompatible with a stable economy whose goal is to provide people with a decent quality of life."

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What a village, town etc... really is

nobody@vox.com(Israel) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:43:11 -0700

This was taken from an article in The Buffalo News.

Following a whirlwind eight-month tour of all 44 Erie County towns, villages and cities, citizen activist Kevin Gaughan today is proposing a drastic move — dissolving all 16 villages in the county.

Under his proposal, unveiled during a noon luncheon presentation at the Harbour Club downtown, Gaughan is proposing that each of the 16 village governments merge into its surrounding town by 2012.

"This reform will place us among those successful communities unburdened by overlapping governments, reduce taxes, free more public funds for service delivery, and most important, reconnect citizens with their communities," Gaughan states in his eight-page written report to the community.

In the report, titled "Ending the Age of Large Local Government," Gaughan zeroes in on the high costs county residents pay for their relatively oversized village governments.

The numbers show that the 16 villages account for some 9 percent of Erie County's population, but 23 percent of the elected officials throughout the county.

One example: the village of Orchard Park has 3,147 residents and six elected officials, according to Gaughan. For the city of Buffalo to have the same ratio of residents to elected officials, it would have to have 445 Common Council members. Instead, Buffalo has nine Common Council members.

Gaughan knows the opposition that will greet his proposal. Politicians will claim that village government is needed to create the loveliness of Orchard Park, Williamsville and East Aurora.

"But the same quality of life exists in places like Eggertsville, Wanakah and Snyder," Gaughan states in his report. "And while these locales maintain services and setting equal to villages, they are not incorporated governments that add to our tax burden."

A village, he added, is not a government.

"A village is an idea, a sense of place, a community."

During his tour of the county's 25 towns, 16 villages and three cities, Gaughan attended 150 town and village board meetings.

Witnessing those local meetings, formal affairs that follow Robert's Rules of order, is akin to traveling back to the age of horse-drawn carriages, gaslights and frock coats, Gaughan wrote.

"Local government is our nation's most intimate level of government," his report states. "In Erie County it is also the most remote. By holding meetings in which decisions are pre-agreed — and limiting citizen participation — politicians have broken citizen spirit sufficient to have them all but give up.

"Which makes repairing the system more difficult."

All I really have to say is I totally agree.

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A Mixed Blessing

nobody@vox.com(WQRob) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:21:35 -0700

Since arriving here, the weather has been uncommonly rainy and cool. It is as if we have brought Ohio with us. I am refraining from complaining too much, however: I am not a huge fan of overly hot weather and this area continues to be suffering from a lack of rain. In fact, the lake outside is about four feet below normal, and as been so long that the definition of "normal" may end up being changed.

Otherwise, we all are fairly well. We went to the local library yesterday to load up on books--the one I purchased for the trip, The Sorensen 4 Incident, turned out to be a complete dud. Tomorrow we'll take the kids to see a aviary rescue place (they are doing a special show for kids). As for today? Well, we may go see a movie, especially if it rains some more.

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Vox Meetup This Saturday: Cincinnati, Ohio

nobody@vox.com(Team Vox) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:12:24 -0700

Cincinnati, Ohio Vox Meetup

Do you live in or around Cincinnati, Ohio? If so, you're in luck because Scott and the Queen City Voxers Group have organized a Vox user meetup!

WHEN: This Saturday, July 12th

WHERE: Ault Park Playground. 3600 Observatory Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45208. "We'll look for each other at the playground marked by the red X below. If it's raining, head for the shelter to the north of the [red] X."

Ault Park Map

EATS: Bring your own picnic and, if you're so inclined, bring something yummy to share with the other Voxers.

To RSVP (which is not essential, but is appreciated), reply to Scott's announcement or send him a private message. All Voxers, as well as their friends and family, are welcome to attend.

If you do attend the meetup, have a great time and please take lots of pictures and send them to me so I can post them in Team Vox for everyone to see!

Thank you so much to Scott for organizing this meetup. Wish I could be there!

~daisy

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